#but the changes being made to reflect the modern audience and fit our time better are

[kilgarraghforever]

I am genuinely really enjoying seeing people who have clearly never read the Odyssey before reacting to EPIC's Ithaca saga. I haven't listened to EPIC myself (yet) but people keep saying stuff like "Odyseeus built their palace around an olive tree he carved into his and Penelope's marriage bed that's so symbolic" and "He really just murdered all the suitors wouldn't that piss off their parents?" Which are observations and questions that the Odyssey makes incredibly blatantly clear as to the symbolism or the answer because it's a really old poem and subtlety wasn't really Homer's strong suit.

There's something really endearing about seeing people interact with the Odyssey through the same way the Ancient Greeks did - a bard singing the story of Odyseus' nostos.

(I gather the details have changed a little, but that's what happens with oral storytelling, and that's how the Odyssey got created in the first place)

Also as congratulations have my favourite ancient depiction of Odysseus surfing with two amphemorae having stolen Poseidon's trident, being sped along by Boreas, stark naked except for a cloak he's holding onto.

[amandamazzillo]

Review: "Astrid & Lilly Save the World" Episode One - Delightful Monster-of-the-Week Goodness with Memorable Characters

Astrid & Lilly Save the World brings a new entry into the monster-of-the-week genre, highlighting the real world through its central characters. Astrid (Jana Morrison) and Lilly (Samantha Aucoin) are two best friends who open an otherworldly portal, bringing monsters into their lives. Astrid & Lilly Save the World is created by Noelle Stehman and Betsy Van Stone.

What makes Astrid & Lilly such a wonderful show is its main characters. The friendship between the pair feels natural, showcasing how the two are different, and how they bond together in a world of people who bully them for their weight and 'extracurricular' activities--which include patrolling the town to learn more about their classmates and solve mysteries like Olivia Benson.

Astrid & Lilly is a show I wish I had growing up. Every time I watched TV, the characters never reflected my world. Everyone was always skinnier than me in the shows and movies I saw on a daily basis. Astrid & Lilly reflects the real world and does so with joy, love, and hope. Astrid and Lilly both showcase the importance of loving yourself and not letting the bullies get to you, and during the hardest times, you have your friends who love and support you.

Their friendship feels natural. The writing in this show is a delight to behold. Astrid and Lilly are wonderful characters, both with specific personalities, and Morrison and Aucoin's performances highlight their chemistry and unique relationship.

Astrid and Lilly are both unapologetically themselves. And this is absolutely delightful to watch on screen. So often, we see characters changing themselves to fit in, especially plus size characters who are made to hide themselves rather than embrace their bodies and feel comfortable. Astrid & Lilly is a show about finding how to love yourself even though we are often surrounded by people trying to tear us down.

In a way, Astrid & Lilly is a response to Buffy. What if a show like this was written by women to highlight what it means to be a teenager in the real--often challenging--world. Seeing Astrid and Lilly become monster hunters tells the audience that being an outcast is a wonderful thing. Our differences bring us together. One of my favorite aspects of the show is how Astrid and Lilly are not written as the exact same personality/person. The show showcases their differences and how those make their friendship even better.

As a member of the LGBTQIA community--I am bisexual--it is wonderful to see LGBTQIA stories and characters explored in a way that feels real rather than just when convenient for a plot point.

Often sexuality is written as the main 'trait' of a character instead of an aspect of who they are as a person. Astrid & Lilly does a wonderful job of writing LGBTQIA identities in a way that reflects real life.

We exist and in this show, the LGBTQIA community is rightfully treated as a major part of the world instead of an anomaly.

Astrid & Lilly is such a wonderful show and its first episode brings a modern and unique comedic sense to its monster-hunting stories. The monster in this first episode drinks the tears of its victims, and using this to show characters we are introduced to as tough bullies as victims brings another layer to the story. Like the series shows Astrid and Lilly falling into an unexpected afterschool job, it also explores how everyone has their own problems. Everyone cries. Which makes this villain that much scarier, especially in this high school setting.

This wonderfully bright and colorful series creates mind-bending, fantastical worlds, while grounding its characters and relationships in reality. Astrid & Lilly will bring some Buffy, Big Wolf on Campus nostalgia for audiences from that generation, and has the perfect mix of nostalgic and modern tone to entice modern teenagers who deserve a more feminist and diverse entry into this fun, monster-hunting genre.

Astrid & Lilly has an engaging visual style and supernatural tone. The show has more gory moments, such as its opening and the creepy visual of long fingernails curling out of a sewer grate, but is subtle enough to be a nice entry-level horror for those who haven't discovered a love for the genre, much like what Big Wolf on Campus was to me back when I was scared of everything.

Astrid & Lilly's first episode throws us into its wacky, wonderful, and heartfelt world. This episode introduces us to a collection of memorable characters, each with their own insecurities and personalities. The friendship between Astrid and Lilly is absolutely delightful and I cannot wait to see more.

Episode two airs tonight at 10pm on SyFy.

[nissakii]

Significance of “Madness” in anime

We’ve already established in other posts about significant emotions and concepts in anime or specific media before. The Significance of losing or the one of visuals and metaphors in Haikyuu!! are some of those I would love to mention here, but today we shall delve into a broader topic that goes more along the lines of Makii’s thrilling post about Danganronpa and the Significance of Despair.

Today, our topic of interest is madness.

To ease your mind, in this post we will be talking about the representation of insanity and madness in some anime characters and how that reflects on the story and ourselves as an audience.To make one thing clear, a lot of the times we see overexaggerated versions of unstable characteristics in anime that aren’t realistic.

This is in no way a discussion about actual mental illnesses and not a professional approach to analysing them to our real life standards, but maybe a start to an interesting discussion about how we portray and handle what one may colloquially call “craziness”.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s start!

Artists, and no matter for example if they write or draw, use their platforms to deliver messages in cryptic ways. As humans, we have the innate ability to look at something and consume the facts through entertainment which makes us crave new media to follow and analyse.

We love to question things instead of just taking them as they are, and that is why most writers out there will play around with the perception of their audience.

You may be familiar with the common question that ghosts through your head as you enjoy the latest episode of your favorite anime.

Why did he do that? Is she a traitor? What makes them think that way?

Although one might always do it consciously, we most definitely analyse whatever media we consume and decide for ourselves if it is important enough to keep in mind for future reference.

What the writer or founder of the anime ultimately wants from the reader is a reaction.

No matter what they intend to do with it, if they enjoy the viewer getting excited or traumatised is not of importance, but a reaction is evidently one of the goals. 

And as strong emotions always evoke an even stronger reaction, anime characters are often very idealized and have ideologies that make them want to do one particular thing.

Be it save the world or destroy it, we focus and look at these characters and root for them if they give us a reason to do so. 

Both sides of good and bad can have deeply rooted admiration drawn out of us, and it sometimes doesn’t even matter because the more interesting part is the lovely grey area in between. 

We need a balance of good and bad to enjoy both.

Empathy makes us viewers want to relate to the characters, and if the author gives us the possibility to learn why someone does something, it gets harder and harder to dislike them. That’s why tragic backstories and flashbacks are such an overused tool in anime, because with the extreme behaviour some characters show they also need equal amounts of redemption.

We attach ourselves emotionally to characters depending on our personal tastes as well.

If someone likes and relates to a strong and independent protagonist who would drop anything for the sake of justice, you will find a lot of resembling characters in shounen for example.

On the other hand, if a darker or more obsessive character manages to take over a special place in a viewer’s heart, putting them on a pedestal gets more and more interesting, because you’re not supposed to.

Contrary to that, characters with insane or dark personality traits are often very popular, again tracing this back to human instinct of emphasising with wronged characters and curiously inspecting the fully deranged ones.

As this isn't something that should be put into vague concepts, we’re instead going to look at examples of characters and entities that are seen as ‘mad’ and how they’re interpreted.

It’s not just about villains being unreasonably immoral in this post, as we look into what madness entails and how it's shown, we also have some examples of corruption to look at.

So of course there are the typical evil-thinking evil-doing villains out there. 

Some of them have an actual backstory to make them more realistic and believable, some others are just pure evil. While they are often called mad for their actions to achieve their goal, the reason why they are put into that light is the stark contrast between the protagonist and the villain.

If the protagonist loves to save people and always has a smile on his face, of course he will differ from his counterpart when he finds out that his methods are a bit more vicious.

The protagonist perceives the villain as insane most of the time, but what does the viewer think?

We seek to look not only at characters that are enjoyable to watch, but also try to find similarities between us and them or draw lines in their behavior to understand them better. As mentioned before, empathy plays a huge role here as well, since whatever happens in anime doesn't have actual repercussions, we can forgive characters more easily. 

For example when they are taken by Insanity as a side effect rather than being insane due to trauma, we often get an 'ally turned traitor' trope through hypnosis or brainwashing, which is just as interesting to look at. 

If a person did something horrible under the influence of something they had no control over, are they still to blame? 

Does Insanity only involve a separate entity that comes from evil, or are we also looking at the gradual descent into darkness when life just isn't the same anymore? 

Insane and with no fear: Soul Eater

A great example of how insanity plays with characters be they good or bad is Soul Eater. 

With a premise that one needs a sound mind and body to inhibit a sound soul, we obviously know that people close to becoming Kishin-eggs will have a rotten soul drenched in bad deeds, but what about the good guys? 

In this instance we have a lot of different types of madness and insanity that touches multiple characters at different times, and by far the most drastic would be the black blood. 

The black blood being a synthesized weapon form of blood that can change form and harden into shape, is a weapon made by Medusa and introduced for the first time with Crona. He was melded together with Ragnarök as a weapon and used the black blood in his proficient fighting style. 

Soul Eater as well as Maka and other characters later come into contact with the black blood, and the consequence of the immense strength that comes with it is debilitating madness. 

As explained in the anime, the madness makes one deny the soul of oneself and others and takes away your fear. Now with no fear present, the person exhibits extremely erratic behavior and is not scared to hurt others or themselves.

This is an insanity that shows how essential a person's fear is, shown by Maka in one of the latest episodes when she fights Asura. The fact that she learned how to accept her own fear and realise that humans need it to survive is why insanity in Soul Eater is merely a concept to differentiate between what is human and what is Kishin. 

A Kishin kills and murders with no fear of anything. 

A human protects and masters one's own fear. 

The power hungry insanity: Hunter x Hunter

In Hunter x Hunter we have a lot of characters that don't exactly fit the norm of human action. 

With people like Chrollo, Illumi and even Chimera Ants there is enough crazy to go around. 

Still, the character we shall delve into to look at a different kind of instability is none other than Hisoka Morow.

Yes, in comparison to black blood madness Hisoka is an actual human being with no known influence outside of his own intellect. The contrary to another weapon or entity making someone insane is being shown in this anime.

Hisoka is just insane. 

We have no means to see if there is anything that might have caused Hisoka to be the way that he is, but what we do know is that his character is almost too nonchalant for his own good. 

His goal is to accumulate power and fight others that he seems worthy, as that is what attracts him. No person is spared if he believes he found a worthy opponent he will make that clear to them and pursue them passionately. 

We could rule that the clown is just eccentric, but with the given information from the anime he definitely had some sort of mental difference next to his peers. Harming himself holds no problem to him, and his behavior is deeply rooted only to suit himself. He has no self-preservation except for when he needs to accomplish something, and he even enters the spiders just to get close to Chrollo. 

Now we see a single person carry themselves throughout a story only to achieve one thing: a good fight. 

After having looked at these two examples of insanity in anime, let's look at how that insanity can be portrayed visually. 

A famous way to show someone's psychosis is the “Kubrick stare”. A directorial technique that got named after the director Stanley Kubrick who used a forward tilt of the head with eyes locked onto the camera to show the actors of his movies at their peak of madness. It became a very popular stylistic device and is used still very often in modern movies.

The character is supposed to look menacing, evil-plotting and absolutely unhinged.

Such devices, if used often enough, automatically invoke the message to the viewer.

If you’ve seen the Kubrick stare once in a psychotic character, you will definitely associate it with the same derangement again.

In anime we have a similar thing, and you might be aware of this already.

Familiar with the ‘eye angle just before a character goes insane’ meme?

It’s a running gag that shows multiple characters such as Asura from Soul Eater, Pain from Naruto, Light from Deathnote and Jason from Tokyo Ghoul in a frame where you can only see their eyes and it somehow looks extremely grotesque as if they were looking into different directions with their eyes.

As much as it is a joke, it is a perfect example of something extremely similar to the Kubrick stare used in anime culture. It goes so far that if any anime watcher would see a new character look like in a frame, one would assume they were about to go crazy.

Even Oikawa Tooru from Haikyuu!! was shown with a Kubrick stare in the last moments of the second Seijoh vs. Karasuno game, when his desire to win overtook him with incredible force.

Without loss there naturally can’t be any wins, and without sadness there will be no joy in laughter.

We need the different depictions of what one might call madness, to fill our stories with nuance that relies on our reality.

Be it an unknown entity, hunger for power, lack of fear or the good old fashioned thrive for world domination.

Madness is just another part of what we call life, and to be honest in healthy doses and for effect why not enjoy it in anime?

Now, do you guys know any other characters or concepts in anime that would be worth mentioning? I would love to see them in the comments! 

Until then, stay sane!

-Nissa

[the-lightning-strikes-again]

Hi, @pilotkinkade! No worries about a delay—real life and school are way more important than critical analysis of a cartoon, lol. I’m thankful you got back to me, though. I appreciate your response posted here—and no, it didn’t feel patronizing at all! I can see what you mean about things.

In terms of Wikipedia’s definition of white savior as a cinematic trope, I can see where that could be applied to the entirety of the VLD show as you mention, even in aspects to the Balmeran episode. In VLD, I do see how in every case, the largely unprepared MCs save a group of people and in doing so, usually learn something about themselves/achieve a power unlock that makes them personally stronger, especially compared to the people they assist/save, who remain without such power-ups. Or, in various other instances, Team Voltron is shown as “more enlightened” in ethics or willpower, etc. compared to the people groups they’re trying to save/convince to join their cause. That concern absolutely does make sense, and it’s definitely a problem that our paladins are placed on that kind of pedestal and that it’s...celebrated?

I also felt this line of yours in my soul, lol: “i think this is an issue with voltron: liberating a country, let alone a whole planet, is a long, tiring, bloody process. i guess voltron by its nature circumnavigates that, but. it is, to say the least, frustrating to watch.”

Yeahhh lol, I think in terms of how it handles war and heavy situations, VLD accepts a lot of “this isn’t realistic war/politics” moments by virtue of it being a Y7 cartoon? Its fantasy violence is targeted for, I guess, 7-year-old American boys... So, I think when we sensed those more adult themes and moments of realism, we wanted the show to naturally follow up on those struggles more, but I remember an interview where the dev team talked about having to cut politics because the stakeholders felt it was too adult for the target audience, RIP.

But just thinking about this larger conversation about the unsettling images and implications of VLD Voltron’s power as savior…I keep wondering if “savior complex” is in some way inherent to the franchise as a whole by virtue of how it was fitted to a young American audience back in 1984? Like, not only did the original pilots from 1981’s Beast King GoLion get white-washed for an American audience, but it seems like the whole story structure got some pretty major adjustments, and some characters got altered for better (I’d argue 1984 did humanize Lotor and other antagonistic aliens) or worse in various ways (the Voltron pilots became “foreigners” to the war they grew to fight in as the most powerful warriors, instead of the GoLion storyline of the pilots being a band of escaped slaves)…And that’s all on top of the original story being rated much higher at TV-14, while Voltron: Defender of the Universe 1984 was sanitized to Y7.

I wonder if these decisions in 1984 feed into the tangles and weird power structures/savior narrative we see in VLD?

I feel like the only Voltron iteration that really reflects on and questions the “powerful savior” narrative is the one that was rated for older audiences (16+), which is the Dynamite Comics (2011), written by Brandon Thomas...

It was perhaps one of the most innovative versions of Voltron, even though its artwork is criticized for its quality. I say innovative because Team Voltron actually recognizes that they and their machine have been fighting in the name of a corrupted Earth just interested in further conquest and corporate control of its own, and that Earth is actually no better than Zarkon or other despots. It’s a really sticky mess. So we really see Team Voltron try to disavow themselves from that past and their leaders, at the same time that the team and Drule Empire both are realizing that a far darker force (sentient rift creatures, basically) has been instigating the entire war across the universe, using Voltrons to carry out its will, and poisoning people against each other. In this iteration, team Voltron is not the most powerful, nor are they even the only Voltron. And anyone in this iteration could learn powerful magic. So it’s a really complex backstory that tries to unite long-standing opposing groups together under fairly equal powers. And while it’s clearly still got some problems, I really appreciate what writer Brandon Thomas was trying to do here. It feels like a critique on DotU 1984’s mentality around Voltron, while also reaching back to Voltron’s 1981 Beast King GoLion origins—in which, in that version, the pilots were actively victims of the war and had intense, personal reasons for further involving themselves to stop Zarkon.

VLD seems to lift a lot of plot points from the previous Dynamite Comics, along with GoLion. But in doing so, VLD seems to strip out a lot of involved backstory and the past gray morality of Voltron itself. Which seems to reverse the reboot back to its 1984 “yay we’re here to the save the universe” fluff.

An anon recently joined in on our discussion here to suggest that maybe the trope we’re looking for regarding Allura specifically is called “xenos savior trope”? Which appears to be in reference to the larger genre concept of a foreigner of any kind outside the group being the only one who can actually save the day/that group. So it seems to be related without necessarily taking on some of the criteria I suppose I apply to white savior complex specifically….

About Allura’s sort of “Chosen One” hyper-abilities even as an Altean… You’re right that the show isn’t terribly explicit about it. Episode 1 prefaces some of Allura’s powers by referencing that they exist because her life force is tied to Voltron. I talk about it in an old meta here if you’re interested. (I also have this other meta too, where I try to argue that seasons 1-5 have details suggesting Alteans aren’t inherently a master race, but that world-building contradicts the latter half of the show which hinges on that master race concept. But the meta itself also gets into the screenshots about Allura’s life-force tie and her abilities vs. Alfor’s.) 

Ultimately, the show certainly doesn’t take time after episode 1 to reiterate why Allura would be so special, but her tie to Voltron is the only thing I can think of for why she’s on such a different level even from Honerva or Alfor, both of whom also made it to Oriande. 

I keep thinking about what it would mean to fully update VLD for modern audiences, and I wonder how things would have felt if every major race involved in the war’s scope were still represented by the paladins (reflecting the s3 OG paladin diversity, which did feel really cool). And if everyone had magical abilities but simply that different cultures had different understandings or uses of it—but that they weren’t inherently incapable of learning another’s way. I wonder how much that would have changed VLD as a show…

[swanlake1998]

Article: Slowly, more men are dancing on pointe, including in Seattle

Date: March 25, 2021

By: Moira Macdonald

The first time Ashton Edwards tried dancing on pointe, it felt like coming home. “It was just like magic. It felt beautiful on pointe. I felt like I could dance forever.”

Edwards, originally from Michigan, has been studying ballet since the age of 4, and is now an 18-year-old student in Pacific Northwest Ballet School’s professional division. Those tentative steps last summer, however, were the dancer’s first: Edwards is male, and in the world of classical ballet, male students traditionally do not receive pointe training. But he dreams of a future as a gender-fluid dancer, dancing all the roles he loves. 

“I would love to do everything that would fit me as a person, not based on my gender but based on what I can do and who I am as a person, who I am as an artist,” he said. 

For those who love ballet, the sight of a ballerina dancing on pointe is an everyday miracle; born from years of training that culminated in ethereal, otherworldly movement. But until recently, the idea of a man dancing on pointe was a rarity, mostly restricted to comic effect in narrative ballets like Frederick Ashton’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” or the all-male dance comedy troupe Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. In a world engaged in conversation about gender and inclusivity, however, things may be changing in ballet, just a bit.

A Bay Area company, Ballet22, was founded last year with the purpose of breaking gender norms, particularly in the ungendered use of the pointe shoe. James Whiteside, a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, makes viral videos of himself dancing — beautifully — on pointe.

And here in Seattle, Edwards is at the center of his own tiptoed revolution: He is the first male professional division student at PNB to take pointe technique classes. “He is quite remarkable on pointe and very committed,” said PNB artistic director Peter Boal. PNB faculty member Marjorie Thompson noted that while some male students borrow friends’ pointe shoes to play around, Edwards is different. “Ashton is a serious young person, and he has a serious desire and he is totally supported at PNB,” she said.

He’s not the only man at PNB who’s comfortable in a pair of pointe shoes. Joshua Grant, a soloist with the company, is a former member of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. As a Trock, Grant performed for five years on pointe, fascinated by what he saw as the company’s mission to “blur the lines of what is masculine and what is feminine.”

He’s currently choreographing a new work, called “Bright Young Things,” that will debut in June and feature Edwards on pointe — and that reflects his own love of the technique. For that work, he said, his thought process was simple. “I just wanted to put a boy on pointe! Why is it that women get to have all the fun, why don’t boys get all the fun, too?”

Pointe shoes have been around for a couple of centuries, originally born as a stunt. In her book “Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet,” dance historian Jennifer Homans explains that pointe work was first performed by early-19th-century Italian dancers — the first was said to be Amalia Brugnoli — who “blithely hiked themselves onto the tips of their toes and perched there for all to see.” The technique was soon refined by ballet pioneer Marie Taglioni (1804-1884) who smoothed the stunt into something more refined and elegant, darning the toes of her soft slippers to give support.

Later in the century, Italian shoemakers devised the pointe shoe with a hard toe box, made from layers of glue, paper and fabric; it was revised further in the early 20th century, with legendary Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova credited with popularizing a more modern pointe shoe with additional support at the toes and a hard leather sole. But it was nearly always women who wore them, achieving that magical elongating effect. 

Grant remembers being fascinated by the soft thump of pointe shoes when attending ballets as a child. “I loved the sound the shoe made when it hit the floor,” he said. In his youth, he remembered watching ballets and feeling that “men always looked frumpy and dowdy, whereas women looked long and ethereal and weightless.”

When he finally saw his own foot in a pointe shoe, “it just took my breath away,” he said. “There’s something about putting on a pair of pointe shoes that gives me goose bumps.”

Men who want to dance on pointe face some challenges, the most significant of which is finding shoes that fit; men’s feet tend to be proportioned differently, and a woman’s shoe in a bigger size might not work. (It might be a bit easier these days: Two years ago, the first pointe shoe designed specifically for men became available, from the Russian company Siberian Swan.) And a taller, broader body might have more balancing issues — though, as Grant notes, there’s nothing natural about dancing on pointe, no matter what size you are.

Male students taking pointe class is new to PNB’s School, Thompson said, but a young man wanting to go on pointe would have been indirectly trained to do so through regular classes. The challenge is the structure of the feet, the ability to balance, to fully straighten the leg on pointe, to have enough abdominal strength to pull up rather than “sitting into the shoe.” All of these, Thompson said, apply as well to men as to women; some female students struggle with pointe due to issues with their feet.

“I think there’s a lot of misconceptions, that men are not flexible and can’t get on pointe,” said Theresa Knudson, executive director of Ballet22. She noted that in their company, “most of the men have better feet than I do.” At a high professional level, she said, “men and women are equal when it comes to taking class; the split is that the men are lifting and the women are on pointe.”

Edwards, who performed with Ballet22 for a digital show last year, was thrilled by the experience of being able to both dance traditionally female roles and contemporary new work. “It was just men, dancing equally as men on pointe, not trying to be women or trying to fit into any binary standard.”

Might ballet be headed toward a future in which roles aren’t necessarily dictated by gender? Tiny steps are being taken: At the English National Ballet in 2018, male dancer Chase Johnsey (a veteran of the Trocks) made history by performing female roles in the ensemble. Wendy Whelan, now co-head of New York City Ballet, commented at the time that “I don’t care what the body parts are, as long as artistically the dancer makes the choreography shine.” In that same New York Times article, she also expressed concern that ballet is already profoundly competitive for women, with men performing in traditionally female specialties presenting another hurdle.

But along with men dancing on pointe, women can learn what was traditionally called “men’s technique” — powerful jumps and leaps. American Ballet Theatre recently changed the names of its classes from “men’s” and “women’s” to simply “technique” and “technique with pointe,” to facilitate inclusivity, said ABT rep Kelly Ryan. Boal remembered a “legendary” men’s class taught at the School of American Ballet (New York City Ballet’s school) in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, regularly attended by the company’s ballerinas.

And PNB School managing director Denise Bolstad said in an email that female professional division students who request to take men’s technique classes will be allowed to do so, and noted that the school is “talking about mixing up the instructors going forward, men teaching women and women teaching men.”

Looking to the future, Grant thinks it might be a while before we would see gender-fluid casting in traditional ballets, but said it’s already happening in contemporary, nonstory ballets — “say, a plotless ballet with eight dancers, and you go on Friday night and it’s eight women, and on Saturday night it’s eight men.” He believes it’s the job of art to push boundaries, to get audiences a bit uncomfortable, “and then they can ask themselves why they feel uncomfortable. We’ve done our job by making them feel something. I think we’ll get there, eventually. It’ll be an interesting, turbulent flight.”

Meanwhile, Edwards keeps rehearsing, appreciating the support he’s receiving from teachers and fellow students — “all the girls are eager to help me!” And he’s imagining a future in which he might be able to dance “all my dream roles. I want to do Oberon and Titania [in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”]. I would love to explore all of the movement I can do, with no limits or restrictions. In a company, hopefully. Someday.”

[silentexplorer18]

Epilogue

Word Count: 2,500+

Series Masterlist  ▪  Main Masterlist

⪻ Previous 

Draco smoothed the front of his cardigan and adjusted his ring, twirling it once, twice, thrice around his finger for good luck.  You were watching him from the doorway, an amused smile twitching on your lips.

“Don’t be nervous.  You’ll do great.”

He gave you a halfhearted grimace through the mirror.  Hopefully things would go well, but the ache in his gut wouldn’t let him believe it could go well.  The headline from the morning’s paper still skittered through his brain.  Ex-Death Eater Draco Malfoy Unveils War Novel on Motives: An Exposé by Rita Skeeter.

You reached forward to squeeze his arm, chase away the worries that danced in his mind.  “Everything will be great.  I just know it.”

He managed to give you a real smile that time, hand reaching up to meet your own.

You liked to tell people Draco had taken to writing “like a duck to water,” but that hadn’t been the case at all.  The stories seemed to pull him under, drowning him in the clamber to escape from his soul.  Really, they wrote themselves.  Draco just listened to what they wanted him to say.  He could only hope that he would be able to explain it, coherently make sense of his intentions in some capacity.

Thankfully, The Quibbler was sending someone relatively relaxed to do the interview.  At least, that’s what the owl had claimed a few days prior when they reached out.  He was a bit choosey with his interviews, though not increasingly so because few deigned to write genuine reviews about his novels.  Thankfully Luna’s paper was relatively unbiased against him, so there was that.  He hoped whoever he was meeting—Argon? Adergon? He couldn’t recall—wouldn’t make things too difficult.

He felt your lips graze his cheek, pulling him from his thoughts.  “You’ll do great, darling.  And I’ll be here with lunch when you get back.”

Your unwavering support always shattered any fear he possessed.

~

They met at a coffee shop, informal but cozy, for the interview.  Draco sipped on some green tea as he waited, idly watching the people meandering along the shop windows across the street.

It was a quaint weekend morning; it made him think of waking up early to play quidditch in the yard before breakfast when he was a child.  He felt like he’d been transported worlds away from whoever that little boy had been.  Maybe that was for the best.

When the shop’s bell dinged, Draco started, retracting his hand from his cup as a man reached out to shake.

“Draco Malfoy?”  Draco nodded, inwardly chuckling at the man’s politeness in feigning ignorance on who Draco was.  His face has been printed in enough papers, no one would ever be able to forget post-war Draco in all his gaunt, exhausted glory.  The man carried on regardless.  “Adeon Heinrik.  Nice to meet you.”

Draco’s smile was stiff, but it always was with strangers.  Polite formality had been ingrained in him since birth; using it nowadays always made him uncomfortable, a muscle memory he didn’t care for.

Adeon settled into the chair opposite him, charming a quill like he’d seen Skeeter do all those years ago.  Perhaps this was payback for all the times he’d subtly suggested Potter was up to more antics to get the paparazzi on his tail.  Now Draco understood the discomfort of interviews.

Additionally, a recording device was placed on the edge of the table, charmed to catch their conversation and store it for later broadcasting.  Radio interviews had become quite the literary rage; how could The Quibbler resist expanding their reporting style?

Adeon adjusted his tie, clearing his throat subtly.  “This is The Quibbler Book Talks and I’m Adeon Heinrik here today to discuss Draco Malfoy’s latest work.  So, Mr. Malfoy, this article will be focusing primarily on your newest work, Snow on Peacock Street, a war memoir on your experiences with Voldemort, as well as the tale of your rocky relationship with your current wife.”  Draco nodded, and Adeon continued.  “However, before we discuss your newest novel, I’d like to take a look at your other works.  Dark Absolute and Scaled Terror were released seven and three years ago respectively.  Two Young Adult themed works, you delve into the fictive worlds of Algernon and Evelyn where the protagonists face incredible choices between family, faith, and country.  You also released a collection of essays titled The Purpose of Family, which was later synthesized into a children’s picture book four years ago.  Children, teens, you’ve focused on a young audience up until recently.  What’s your motivation for writing a war memoir now, for honing in on an adult audience?”

Draco licked his lips, fiddling with his ring under the table.  “Well, Mr. Heinrik, the truth of the matter is that the children weren’t there.”  Adeon’s eyes flickered with confusion, but Draco carried on, hoping his point would make sense.  “Unlike the children now that have a bit of a reprieve, I was a child of the war.  Although it was clearly the wrong side, it was a necessary burden that many of my peers faced as well.  We had been raised on tradition and weren’t willing to sacrifice our families at any cost.  However, the children, they aren’t having to make choices like that at present.  My works remain fictional because I can’t undo my past, but I can place the readers into similar morally unsteady situations.  Perhaps they can be more prepared to make their own choices after facing the situations in my novels.”

Adeon sat forward in his seat, eyes glued to Draco like a siren attempting to lure words from his lips.  Draco took a sip of tea, trying to hide the nervousness he felt as Adeon stepped in with the next question.  “That’s an excellent point.  But your newest work is obviously a war novel.  Why do you feel now is the right time to publish it?  Have things settled enough that it’s the right time to critique the situation from both sides?”

Oh dear.  “No,” he answered with a cool wave of his hand.  Or, as cool as he could manage with the worry jittering through his nerves.  He could feel it coming, the twisted commentary about his choices already lapping at his feet.  “Truthfully, there will never be a ‘right time’ to talk about the war.  No matter how much time passes, my generation will never be untainted by those experiences.  My intention isn’t to advocate that my side was better, nor to paint myself as some perfectly good person.  It’s merely to give an examination of the other side, to provide some humanity to the actions that occurred.”

“Provide some humanity, what do you mean by that?”

“Well,” he twisted his ring under the table, “there’s certainly a lot more nuance to human experience than the black-and-white exhibited in most modern war talks.  In discussing the experiences I had, perhaps it can provide some humanity and understanding for those who have had or will have similar experiences.  Of course, the Death Eaters’ actions—my actions—were reprehensible.  Our choices should not be absolved based on a single text.  Yet, the burden of choice is never easy, and being raised to take the wrong side or face death is a situation as old as time itself.  Perhaps the reasoning behind my actions and others will help those who face similar situations again someday.”

Adeon nodded, glancing down at his notes.  “I’m currently with Mr. Draco Malfoy as we discuss his latest work, Snow on Peacock Street.  The war novel, published in late November, has received praise from Philanthropist Harry Potter as well as Minister of Magic Hermione Granger.  However, less-than-stellar reviews have come from Head Auror Ronald Weasley.”  He looked up from his notes.  “Let’s discuss that for a moment.  Any ideas on why the Head Auror dislikes your latest work?”

Draco chuckled, running his thumb along the edge of his teacup.  “I’m afraid not everyone can have excellent taste in books.”

Adeon laughed, and Draco joined him.  Something on the recorder flashed red before returning to green.  He hoped it hadn’t broken.  Adeon seemed unbothered.

“So is that all it is?  He merely has poor taste while Minister Granger and Mr. Potter possess better taste?”

The thought put a grin on his face before he could really stop it.  “It’s certainly a nice way of putting it.”  Slowly, the smile dropped from his face.  He twirled his ring again.  Once.  Twice.  Thrice.  “I suppose it’s more to do with our past and upbringing.  Although I’m flattered Potter and Granger enjoy my work, I’m afraid I’m rather undeserving of their praise.”

“I see,” Adeon nodded, sensing Draco’s discomfort.  “Let’s talk about your work itself for a moment.  Your Young Adult novels have rather intense titles, I’m sure reflecting the nature of the work.  Yet your newest novel is titled Snow on Peacock Street.  It seems a bit lighthearted for a war story.”

“Partially because it isn’t.  At least, not in the beginning.  When I was a child, we had these marvelous peacocks.  Bright and beautiful.  They went to Naghini during the war, though; the last bit of brightness sucked out of the Manor.  It seemed a fitting reminder of what once was, to describe it as ‘Peacock Street.’  Though, it also reflects my relationship with (Y/n).” 

“Your relationship with (Y/n)?  In what way is that?”

“She’s…” He looked for the right word.  The English vocabulary didn’t seem to have a word spectacular enough for you.  “She was a lightness then.  She’s a lightness now, too.  But especially then.  It felt like the world was so hopeless and dark.  And then she showed up with a book and changed my life.  I couldn’t have survived without her.”

Adeon was smiling.  Maybe his interview hadn’t gone so poorly after all.

“And she’s written a book as well, hasn’t she?”

“Yes!  Yes,” he beamed, thinking of the smile on your face when you came home with the first printed copy.  “Her memoir Forgotten Burns and Papercuts will be available for sale next month.  It’s truly marvelous; I highly recommend reading it.”

“I’m sure you’re a bit biased in that regard, but I’ll take your word for it.”  Adeon glanced back down at his notes.  “Alright, we’re almost out of time for today.  Would you mind reading a little excerpt from Snow on Peacock Street to close us off?”

“Of course, I’d love to,” Draco said, taking the marked book Adeon passed to him.  It was only a few pages in, but hopefully it would be compelling enough to attract a few readers.

He cleared his throat, ring glinting in the light as he pressed the pages down to read.

They told me they loved me.  But what really is love without death?  What’s love without suffering and fear and hunger?  How do you find love amongst everything?  You can’t.  It’s impossible.  It may come in fleeting fragments, in silvery flutters like the faint trace of a Patronus.  Yet you never truly find it until there’s nothing else in the way.  When stripped bare before the masses, you find love.

Seldom is it expressed in gifts or other material, flowery things.  It rubs you raw, claws at your throat, tears you limb from limb.  Love is being faced with death and finding something worth living for.  It’s the cold blooded fear before a battle, the ripped cry of the lonely, the desperation of a dying man.  Contentment breeds complacency.  But fear breeds love.  I suppose that’s how I found her then.  How I loved her amongst a darkness so pungent it rotted the soul and slaughtered person after person with it.

I didn’t love her in an all-consuming fury, not until the world was dark and she was there, blinding, brilliant, stinging against my fingertips like fresh fallen snow, to remind me that my life couldn’t be over yet.

I would learn many things from her, but this, love roaring against the dying embers of life, would be her ultimate teaching.  It showed me more about the world than I could possibly describe, but in this text, I’ll attempt to impart that knowledge on you.

He glanced back up at Adeon, who barely looked composed as he shuffled in his seat, glanced down at his notes.

“That was Mr. Draco Malfoy reading an excerpt from his newest novel Snow on Peacock Street, available through Wizz Hard Books publishing company.  Mr. Malfoy, thank you for joining me today.”

“Thank you for having me,” he nodded.

“That will conclude this week’s edition of The Quibbler Book Talks.  I’m Adeon Heinrik, and I’ll see you next week when we join…”

~

The article had been a hit.  His work had been rather well reviewed all things considered.

Yours had done even better.  Hermione Granger had even written to you personally with compliments.  Though, it seemed only fitting as the torture scenes hit a bit close to home.

Draco had nearly retched proofing those scenes.  You’d had to hold him close for hours, reminding him that he didn’t know, that things had ended up okay.  The two of you had made it out alive.  He’d twisted his ring around his finger.  Once.  Twice.  Thrice.  You were alive.  Things were okay.

Things were better than okay.

Headmistress McGonagall had agreed to let the two of you deliver your books to the library for students to read.  Of course, the conditions required that you come during Winter Holiday when the students wouldn’t be distracted by your arrival, but that made things all the better.

Two copies, both as pristine and polished as ever, were handed to Madam Pince.  She thanked the both of you, moving to put them on the proper shelves.

Rather than leave, you pulled Draco toward the back corner of the library, smiles curling on both of your faces.

It felt like ages since the two of you had seen the dusty shelves where you’d spent years playing chase amongst the covers.  Names familiar and foreign dominated the shelves, mostly old, handwritten collections that would seldom be read.  Only the passionate—only people like you—would pull them down to decipher the hurried texts, pulled straight from the soul of the authors.

Draco pulled his hand away from yours, tracing the cover of the worn, black notebook.  It was no longer pristine, the interior scribbled and smeared with ink and the cover well worn with use.  His novel, the original.  It had been primarily completed after his first year of writing it, but he hadn’t been ready then to publish it, to even consider publishing it.  Sometimes he still couldn’t believe he’d printed the words, had them reproduced.  But he needed it.  He wanted it.

Your hands traced over a set of carefully bound parchments.  Your first draft, scratched out, written in the margins, revised.  The raw, the original.  Lines messy with emotion, edges crinkled with touch.

You looked up at the shelves.  It had all begun with those shelves, with those books.  Stories of ancient wizards and desperate souls.  And, oh, how your lives found ways to mirror those stories, mimic the past.

Draco pushed two books apart, making space on the shelves.  Delicately, you placed your set of parchments there, Draco’s notebook following.

Someone else could find your stories one day, remember your lives in all their messy, unpolished glory.  But in the meantime, they’d grow dust waiting for another soul to remember, to wonder, to learn.  The words would wait for a soul like yours.

⪻ Previous  ▪  Series Masterlist  ▪  Main Masterlist

Taglist: @yucksiedoodles, @rachie-ox​​

A/N: Thank you for reading!  It’s been so much fun writing this series.  I hope you enjoyed.  Sending you all the love! ~Silent

[commonplaceprojkelseyh]

Reflection!

Kelsey Harper

Professor Dr. Richards

(ENG-3298-01, WGS-3298-01, GBS-3298-01)

July 30th 2021

Individual CommonPlace Book & Reflection Paper

Feminism & Gender Equality

Did you know that eight out of the top ten countries have a larger female gender population compared to the male gender yet the percentage of women within the workforce was at 28% since 1959 up until 2020? That means for every 1 male, there are 7 females to that one male, making the population higher for women. It is sad to report considering I have been a part of that percentage since 2000.  To think that an entire race of extraordinary females for more than just one reason are not on the same working tier as man, even though woman represent a great deal larger within the population compared to men is astonishing. I know what you are thinking, it is due to our past ancestors that made the corporate world, “a man’s world” however, so much has changed in today's society to encourage women that they are just as equal to man in more than one way!

I, for one, grew up in a “both my parents work” home situation, which ultimately left my brother and I with a lot of babysitters. For many other people like me, that can be normal right? Well, what I didn’t know for the longest, was that my mom was working as a Merrill Lynch Financial Advisor managing over 500 million dollars in assets which ranks her in the top one half percent of all females and more importantly males in her industry. Ironically she has been doing this for over 34 years and the percentage of women who are at her level in the investment business has never moved past 15%. Making her one of only 200 other women in the entire industry at her level(which made her job an everyday event to consistently prove herself to the men around her.) She picked a career that was based on meritocracy, so there was very little subjectivity to her advancement. Basically, she was responsible for her own success, the harder she worked, the better she did. This inspired me at an early age because my mom never seemed to think that whatever she was searching for, shooting for or hoping for was unreachable. If anything it never even crossed her mind to not work as hard as she could to be within her industry and have the reputation she has built up to today. She has made it her mission to bring up other women to follow in her path. Okay, so you may ask well how does this even relate to our class? Well, part of the reason I was so interested in taking the class in the first place was the title, which is, “Woman’s Writing Worldwide”, which stood out to me because of the first word. It stood out because of that five letter & two syllable word that can make or break a human coming into the world. For others, within third world countries, like the ones we have been reading about, that word defined one from the jump and almost pre-decided that female's destiny. As much as I would like to say it is different in the United States, it is similar in the way that being a woman in today’s culture is a huge ever-growing adjustment because men are only making it harder for us to speak our truths and claim our spots within the working class. Trust me, I may sound like a hater on the male race, but I am eternally grateful to a lot of them for making me the person I am today, however if men truly understood woman, like we do them, the world would be a much fairer place because it is not a competition all the time like men tend to make it to be.

One person that spoke volumes to this exact subject was Meghan Markle, in her speech that specifically dealt with her first encounter with being a woman’s right advocate at the early age of 11. In that speech, she essentially told the audience that she was watching a TV show in grade school, when a commercial came on for a dish liquid with the tagline, ���woman all around America are fighting greasy pots and pans,” when two boys in her class quickly said after that commercial, “yeah that is where women belong, in the kitchen.” She was so bothered with this that she wrote to the first lady, then Hilary Clinton, Linder Elerby, Gloria Albred and the soap manufacturer, Proctor and Gamble to change the tagline to, “people all over America are fighting pots and pans.” When in fact, a month later they in fact did change the tagline and opened the doorways for Markle to really understand the magnitude of her actions within this topic. She then goes on to even say that, “women need a seat at the table, they need an invitation to be seated there, and in some cases when a seat is unavailable then they have to make their own. It is said that girls with dreams become women with vision. May we empower each other to carry out such a vision because it is not enough to simply talk about equality and it is not enough to simply believe in it, one must work at it. Let us work at it together, starting now.” I absolutely loved her entire story because it really hit home for me who was mesmerized by her willingness to stand up and say something. Without that willingness from women such as her, women as an entire race will never have a seat at the table. I am thankful to her and for the blessed opportunity to come across that story which inspired me to start a club chapter of CHAARG(changing health, attitude, actions to recreate girls) to encourage women to speak their truths, focus on themselves and be inspired by the powerful woman around them to step up and not only prioritize their mental health & wellness but their eating, their exercise, their self care, their mental health and overall happiness.

Another important factor to add, is that it has been observed in women's fight for equality in the workforce,  that there are a lot of women that fall into the category of being a part of the “sandwich generation.” This generation of professional working women have been tasked with both caregiving for their children and their aging parents. This has caused breaks within their career paths and deferred promotions. This is particularly felt within the wealth gap of income disparity between men and women. Recently, I have noticed a corporate trend towards improving this disparity. Corporations are offering more flexible work hours to accommodate these “sandwich generation” working mothers.

One speaker that really spoke volumes to this exact subject was the Msimang TED talk, where she described a time in her life where she had something taken from her by the opposite gender and felt for the first time the extreme difference between a boy’s perspective and a girl’s perspective. A great quote from our actual syllabus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was, “The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete. They make one story be the only story.” I enjoyed this quote because both the story by Msimang and the quote by Adichie, touch upon a common goal, equality in every form. Another element that really moved me within Msimang’s TED Talk was her inner passion for storytelling and really trying to capture what makes a good story. I also was really inspired by the TED Talk by Dalia Mogahed, a religious muslim that spoke heavily on the idea of Muslims within America. Although her topic wasn’t exactly about gender equality but more so about racism in general, she spoke about a time in her life when she felt embarrassed to not only be a muslim but also a female muslim. Her story about being scared for her life after the 9/11 attacks, was the first time in her life, she said, that she was afraid to be her true self. I felt for her in this way that I too, felt similar when walking down a city street by myself as a young adult female. Although the two are still very different, in the moment while watching her speak about her story, this was the first image that popped into my mind.

Most importantly, I enjoyed the TED Talk by Kavita Ramdas, with her extraordinary opener, which was: “ Given my TED profile, you might be expecting that I'm going to speak to you about the latest philanthropic trends -- the one that's currently got Wall Street and the World Bank buzzing -- how to invest in women, how to empower them, how to save them. Not me. I am interested in how women are saving us. They're saving us by redefining and re-imagining a future that defies and blurs accepted polarities, polarities we've taken for granted for a long time, like the ones between modernity and tradition, First World and Third World, oppression and opportunity.” This got me thinking more and more about gender equality as a whole and just how important and influential women are in society. Countries such as China, took a very long time to find this out, as many of new born baby girls were sold to the States for money because in their culture, “boys were the only ones that could work to bring the family up, girls are an embarrassment and are only here for one thing, reproduction.” However, after several years, they grew to know that they ended up needing more women because they were running out of women to bear children, hence the population drop in 2019 into 2020.

To combat that however, it has been proven through the last century that intellectually women are naturally more nurturing & emotionally smarter than men, just like the saying that “women develop maturity faster than men do”. So women tend to outshine men in industries such nursing.  However, men tend to rely more heavily on their physical strength in order to obtain certain jobs that are not typically where women fit into the picture such as construction and engineering. I, for one, have never viewed it like that because I have always believed that no matter the race or ethnicity, age, gender, religion, sexuality or financial standing, everyone deserves to work a job they love in any industry and that all judgement should be shoved out the window without reason.

In conclusion, I believe in the strength of women as a whole race to be able to one day never have to speak of women's rights. I envision a time within my life that women will have a seat at the table, they will be heard, understood and most importantly treated equal to men. I believe it starts with women empowering other women first and then men following that trend.

[domsideasgarden]

Fighting for social change through art

Ivan Kafka (1981) covered a street in Prague with 1,000 upright wooden sticks – the only way people could get to work was by trampling them (Credit: Ivan Kafka/Artlist.cz)

Through the history, art has been used as an implement by rulers to establish and profound their beliefs, which allowed them to keep their high position in society. Famous example of this might be considered religious propaganda that was supposed to enhance believes of people and was especially strong in the times of renaissance because it could portrait and celebrate events in the form of pictures from biblical stories.  Even though art used to be a leisure of the elites in society, the democratic shift of art enabled new opportunities and people stated being creative with it. New innovative ways are explored to engage communities, such artworks can take in place of a store, garden, website, story exchange or street performance. Socially engaged art has the potential to build collaborative communities whilst provoking them to think critically.

Artists started forming various movements to speak up on the current issues that have been happening within communities by leading meaningful protests or causing controversies that expose structures of society and provoke people to think differently. An example of this could be when in 1981, Czech artist, Ivan Kafka installed 1,000 wooden sticks that stood upright on the floor on a street in Prague, the locals were faced with the decision to walk over it or to preserve it and miss being at work. This was very controversial at that time because of the communistic regime it was illegal to act in the freedom of expression (Weiwei, 2018).

Artists might go after provocative themes which are likely to spark a debate between audience leading to higher engagement and social reach. Reports by Arts Council England and the All-party Parliamentary group has shown visible evidence of the positive impact of art and cultures on wellbeing, education and social presence. Study by Arts and Mind revealed that by implementing art workshops within community can decrease anxiety by 71% and depression by 76%, while the participants also felt their wellbeing getting better and 69% of participants stated that they felt more socially included (Slawson, 2017). The participants had the opportunity to work with a variety of materials which enabled them to make a piece that not only visually represented what they wanted to say but also allowed them to show their originality with the material it was made out of. This alone would have had a positive effect on the participants because it straight away sends the message that they are free to do what they want and this project is there, this allows people’s to get motivated for their project and the more they connect with it, they more it will help them release their emotions and improve their wellbeing. This shows that implementing social change through art can have positive benefit for more vulnerable communities who might face discrimination or other injustice within the system by allowing different communities to come together through something they all understand and love. This also can help with eliminating the “cookie-cutter” culture that tries to force everyone to fit in a box, and instead it gives an opportunity to people to freely express themselves and proudly embrace their personality Badenoch, 2021).

Supporting community art has shown to have positive effect on communities as it gives them shared purpose and meaning of their neighbourhood. This is a great opportunity for art organisations to engage groups of people in shared goals, bring awareness to variety of issues and carry out community building creative programs. Such a program would promote interaction in public space, increase public participation through annual celebrations, engage youth in the community and broadens civic participation (Borrup, 2009). This way, art organisations could bring up the interest in art and achieve higher civic teamwork by collaborating with various artists that have important or radical messages to say.

A good example of an artist who raises concerns about modern issues through contemporary art is Banksy. He is globally known for his controversial artwork that usually randomly appears overnight. His radical art is reflecting societal and political corruption and environmental neglect. He is using his art voice to raise debates and change the way we think about our system by criticising it and its society while also reminding people of the negative impacts that commercialism brought to universal culture. Through his art he is expressing his unhappiness with current norms and hopes to raise more awareness about them. He is keeping is anonymity secret and that might be adding onto his mystical persona.

By shifting people’s mindsets and changing narrative, the societal norms are becoming more inclusive, diverse and equitable, and are able to embrace the constant change by using their creativity and curiosity to turn it into new opportunities, while also being more fearless about the future and relying on intuition (Badenoch, 2021).

Art has been used through the history as a form of sharing and self-expression but also as a driver to bring awareness to social and individual issues that people in societies might face. Artists started forming creative movements as a way to express their disagreement with the system and possibly cause controversy surrounding certain political or environmental issues to spark debates and embrace critical thinking within their audiences. The research that has been done within this topic shows positive influence of art on societies and shows that it provides us with the option to connect local communities and increase civic participation within them.

[buzzdixonwriter]

Colonialism

You back into things sometimes.

One of my many guilty pleasures is old school pulp, which I first encountered with the Doc Savage reprints in the 1960s, then old anthologies, then back issues at conventions, and now thanks to the Internet, an almost limitless supply.

And to be utterly frankly, a lot of the appeal lays in the campiness of the covers and interior art -- brass plated damsels fighting alien monsters, bare chested heroes combatting insidious hordes, etc., etc., and of course, etc.

Once past age 12, I never took these covers or the covers of modern pulps such as James Bond, Mike Hammer, or Modesty Blaise seriously; they were just good, campy fun.

While my main focus remained on the sci-fi pulps, I also kept an eye on crime and mystery pulps, war stories, and what are sometimes called “sweaties”, i.e., men’s adventure magazines.

Despite the differences in the titles and genres, certain themes seemed to pop up again and again.

Scantily clad ladies, typically in some form of distress, though on occasion dishing out as good if not better than they got.

Well, the pulps that drew my attention were the pups made for a primarily male audience (though even in the 1930s and 40s there were large numbers of female readers and writers in the sci-fi genre).  Small wonder I was drawn to certain types of eye candy; I had been culturally programmed that way.

That’s a topic well worthy of a post or two on its own, so I’m putting gender issues / the patriarchy / the male gaze aside for the moment.

What I’m more interested in focusing on is the second most popular characters to appear on the covers (and in the stories as well).

The Other.

The Other comes in all shapes / sizes / ethnicities.  Tall and short, scrawny and beefy, light or dark, you name it, they’ve got a flavor for you.

“Injuns” and aliens, Mongols and mafiosi, Africans and anarchists.

Whoever they were ”they ain’t us!”

Certain types of stories lend themselves easily to depicting the villainous Other.

Westerns, where irate natives can always be counted on to launch an attack.

War stories, where the hero (with or without an army to help him) battles countless numbers of enemies en masse.

Adventure stories, where the hero intrudes in some other culture and shows them the error of their ways.

Detective stories, where the Other might be a single sinister mastermind but still represents an existentialist threat.

And my beloved sci-fi stories?

Why, we fans told ourselves our stories were better than that!  We didn’t wallow in old world bigotry, demonizing blacks and browns and other non-whites because of their skins.

Oh, no:  We demonized green skinned aliens.

Now I know some of you are sputtering “But-but-but you wrote for GI Joe!”

Boy howdy, are you correct.

And boy howdy, did we ever exploit the Other with that show.

I never got a chance to do it, but I pitched -- and had Hasbro accept -- a story that would have been about the way I envisioned Cobra to have formed and been organized, and would focus on what motivated them.

They were pretty simplistic greedheads in the original series, but I felt the rank and file needed to be fighting for a purpose, something higher to spire to that mere dominance and wealth.

I never got to do “The Most Dangerous Man In The World” but I was trying to break out of the mold. 

For the most part, our stories fit right into the old trope of The Other.

Ours were mostly about the evil Other trying to do something nefarious against our innocent guys, but there’s an obverse narrative other stories follow, in which our guys go inflict themselves on The Other until our guys either come away with a treasure (rightfully belonging to The Other but, hey, they really don’t deserve it so we’re entitled to take it from them), or hammer The Other into submission so they will become good ersatz copies of us (only not so uppity as to demand equal rights or respect or protection under law).

These are all earmarks of a very Western (in the sense of Europe and America…with Australia and New Zealand thrown in) sin:  Colonialism.

Now, before going further let’s get out terms straight.

There’s all sorts of different forms of colonialism, and some of them can be totally benign -- say a small group of merchants and traders from one country travel to a foreign land and set up a community there where they deal honorably and fairly with the native population.

The transplanted merchants are a “colony” in the strictest sense of the term, but they coexist peacefully in a symbiotic relationship with the host culture and both sides benefit, neither at the expense of the other.

Oh, would that they could all be like that…

Another form of colonialism -- and one we Americans are overly familiar with even though there are all sorts of variants on this basic idea -- is the kind where one culture invades the territory of another and immediately begins operating in a deliberately disruptive nature to the native population.

They seek to enslave & exploit or, failing that, expel or eradicate the natives through any means possible.

It’s the story of Columbus and the conquistadors and the pilgrims and the frontiersmen and the pioneers and the forty-niners and the cowboys and the robber barons.

It’s the story where different groups are deliberately kept separate from one another by the power structure in place, for fear they will band together and usurp said power structure (unless, of course, they band together to kelp make one of ours their leader, and build a grand new empire just for him).

It’s the story where our guys never need make a serious attempt to understand the point of view of The Other, because they are just strawmen to mow down, sexy lamps to take home.

I think my taste in sci-fi and modern pulp writing in general started to change around the mid-1970s.

Being in the army quickly cleared me of a lot of preconceptions I had about what our military did and how they did it.

The easy-peasy moral conflicts of spy novels and international thrillers seem rather thin and phony compared to the real life complexities of national and global politics.

Long before John Wick I was decrying a type of story I referred to as “You killed my dog so you must die.”  Some bad guy (typically The Other) does a bad thing and so the good guy (one of ours -- yea!) must punish him.

Make him hurt.

Make him whimper

Make him crawl.

Make him suffer.

The real world ain’t like that.

Fu Machu falls to Ho Chi Minh.

As entertaining as the fantasy of humiliating and annihilating our enemies may be…we gotta come to terms with them, we gotta learn to live with them.

That’s why my favorite sci-fi stories now are less about conflict and more about comprehension.

It’s better to understand than to stand over.

. . .

The colonial style of storytelling as the dominant form of story telling is fairly recent, dating only from the end of the medieval period in Europe and the rise of the so-called age of exploration.

This is not to say colonial story telling didn’t exist before them -- look at what Caesar wrote, or check out Joshua and Judges in the Old Testament -- but prior to the colonial age it wasn’t the dominant form of storytelling.

Most ancient stories involve characters who, regardless of political or social standing, recognize one another as human beings.

And when gods or monsters appear, they are usually symbols of far greater / larger forces & fates, not beasts to be subdued or slain.

Medieval literature is filled with glorious combat and conflict, but again, it’s the conflict of equals and for motives and rationales that can easily be understood.

It was only when the European nations began deliberately invading and conquering / dominating foreign lands that colonialism became the dominant form of storytelling.

It had to:  How else could a culture justify its swinish behavior against fellow human beings?

Even to this day, much (if not most) popular fiction reflects the values of colonialism.

Heroes rarely change.

Cultures even less.

We’ve kept The Other at arms length with popular fiction and media, sometimes cleverly hiding it, sometimes cleverly justifying it, but we’ve had this underlying current for hundreds of years.

Ultimately, it hasn’t served us well.  

It traps us in simplistic good vs evil / us vs them narratives that fail to take into account the complex nature of human society and relationships.

It gives us pat answers instead of probing questions.

It is zero sum storytelling: The pie is only so big, there can’t be more, and if the hero doesn’t get it all, he loses.  (John D. MacDonald summed up this philosophy in the title of one of his books:  The Girl, The Gold Watch, And Everything.)

It’s possible to break out of that mind set -- The Venture Brothers animated series brilliant manages to combine old school pulp tropes with a very modern, very perceptive deconstruction of the form -- but as posted elsewhere, imitation is the sincerity form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness, so while I certainly applaud The Venture Brothers I don’t want to encourage others to follow in their footsteps.

Because they won’t.

They’ll pretend they will, but they’ll veer off course and back into the old Colonialism mindset.

We need to break out, break free.

Here in the U.S. it’s African-American History Month.

The African-American experience is far from the Colonialism that marks most white / Western / Christian storytelling (and by storytelling I include history and journalism as well as fiction; in fact, anything and everything that tells a narrative).

It’s a good time to open our eyes, to see the world around us not afresh, but for the first time.

Remove the blinders. 

I said sometimes you back into things.

Getting a clearer view of the world I’m in didn’t come from a straightforward examination.

It came from a counter-intuitive place, it found its way back to the beginning not by accepting what others said was the true narrative, but by following individual threads.

It came from Buck Rogers and the Beat Generation and Scrooge McDuck and the sexual revolution and Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance and the civil rights era and Dangerous Visions and the Jesus Movement and Catch-22 and the Merry Pranksters.

It came from old friends, some of whom inspired me, some of whom disappointed me, and yet the disappointments probably led to a deeper, more penetrating insight into the nature of the problem.

This Colonialism era must come to a close.

It can no longer sustain itself, not in the world we inhabit today.

It requires a new breed of storytellers -- writers and artists and poets and journalists who can offer 

It’s not a world that puts up barriers by race or gender, ethnicity or orientation, ability or age.

There’s ample opportunity for open minds.

All it asks of us is a new soul.

  © Buzz Dixon

[briangroth27]

Dora and the Lost City of Gold Review

Dora and the Lost City of Gold is a very fun all-ages adventure! I’ve never seen more than a clip or two of Dora the Explorer, but that didn’t hurt the movie at all for me. The film starts with a summation of the cartoon’s style to get new audiences up to speed on the conventions of the show and it worked perfectly. I was in the mood for a fun jungle adventure flick, saw the good reviews this was getting, and I’m happy to report that it lives up to both those standards!

Full spoilers…

Isabela Moner more than capably leads the film as Dora, whose enthusiasm for learning, exploring, and life in general is absolutely infectious. Dora’s expertise in the jungle and her drive to find the lost city of Parapata were awesome! While her childlike enthusiasm is written as a side effect of being secluded from most of modern society to a large extent, it was refreshing to see a teenage lead who isn’t dour and down on life. Her dauntless willingness to go it alone when she had to was a relatable and realistic trait, and her acceptance of the fact that she was even stronger when she had a team backing her up was a cool message. I’m glad Dora didn’t lose her exuberance by the end of the movie or change to be more socially acceptable to her new high school friends, even if she does choose to stay and get to know them better rather than go off on another adventure. Her journey isn’t that she needs to remember to be herself regardless of whether she fits in or not, it’s that she needs to let people in to her world again, so Dora getting to remain true to herself while making new friends was very cool. Of course, it’s always great to see a female-led adventure film (particularly in this subgenre) with a nonwhite lead and cast (or at least the overwhelming majority of it) too! More of that please!

Dora’s cousin Diego (Jeff Wahlberg), her intellectual rival at school Sammy (Madeleine Madden), and everyman student (and impressive breath-holder) Randy (Nicholas Coombe) provided a share of challenges for Dora she wasn’t expecting at all: high school. Diego’s embarrassment over Dora’s personality felt like a realistic (though unfortunate) reaction to a younger sibling who doesn’t want to conform to high school society’s standards, while Dora’s scientific take on Diego’s feelings for Sammy was funny and built their sense of familial bonds nicely. Theirs is the strongest relationship in the movie and emotional core. I thought the breakdown of their bond felt realistic and painful (leading to Dora largely shutting everyone out as a kid and opening that wound all over again as a young adult) and that the repairs to their relationship were well-done and satisfying. I was glad Dora and Sammy’s rivalry wasn’t over some guy and that Sammy wasn’t written or performed as a mean girl, but one who was concerned about her standing in the class GPA. She also generally couldn’t understand Dora’s outlook, which is ironic given how Diego and apparently the other students at school don’t understand her, vilifying her for her outlook and “attitude” as well. The common ground she and Dora came to with Dora’s know-how and Sammy’s contributions to the quest for Parapata created a nice build to their budding friendship. I liked that Randy didn’t have toxic vibes to his crush on Dora, and he brought a nice balance of pure terror and truly wanting to help his new friends to the adventure. These kids have their issues, but none of them were ever unlikable and they all felt like real people, not caricatures or an adult’s attempt at writing “annoying youths” (or cartoons). I also liked that all four of them came together to keep each other alive and they all contributed to solving the traps protecting Parapata’s treasure. That was a cool way to unify Dora’s quest to save her parents (Michael Pena, Eva Longoria) and finish their search for the city with her arc toward sharing her life with people and depending on friends instead of just herself.

Dora’s parents don’t have much to do here, as they’re kidnapped for most of the film, but I liked how supportive they were of Dora (even if they were just as bewildered by some of her habits as her friends at school were). I really liked that they spelled out the distinction between exploring and learning vs. treasure hunting and plundering cultural artifacts. CBS’ Blood & Treasure made a similar point of noting who should get to display what artifacts (if they are to be displayed at all), and it’s good to see a more socially conscious approach to archaeology taking hold in the movies and on TV. Films like the Indiana Jones series are among my all-time favorites, but those artifacts don’t belong in an American museum, they belong to the cultures that originated them. I didn’t expect the movie to bring in an actual Inca royal/goddess (Q'orianka Kilcher) with an army to protect Parapata, but that was an excellent addition that felt totally natural with the world they’d established! I always want the supernatural stuff in films like these to be real, so seeing these people appear was very cool. It was also a neat twist on the formula (and execution of her parents’ guidelines on exploring) that Dora & co. didn’t get to keep the treasure, only increase their knowledge by confirming its existence.

Most of the villains are ultimately just muscle, but Eugenio Derbez’s Alejandro Gutierrez gets a lot of screen time thanks to initially disguising himself as a friend of Dora’s parents. He was affable enough that it was reasonable Dora and her friends would fall for his lies (particularly with the stress of their situation and his apparent rescue of them). I wonder if the more comedic persona he puts on was designed to fit with and manipulate Dora’s eternal optimism, which would be a solid take on the older generation manipulating the best intentions of the younger one to fuel their greed. He certainly uses their intelligence to further his own interests (and, depending on how deep his cover was, to keep him alive in the first place). He also personifies the old-school treasure hunter method of archaeology, contrasting him nicely with the younger, more socially and culturally conscious generation. I definitely wouldn’t have included him disrobing in front of teenagers though, even if it was caused by hallucinogenic pollen in an animated sequence. 

That moment not being a great look aside, it was refreshing that like Dora herself, a modern adaptation of a kid’s property didn’t take the “dark and gritty is cool and mature” path in an effort to draw in older audiences by ignoring what made the show a success in the first place. Instead, this fully embraced what I assume is the upbeat vibe of the cartoon and absolutely ran with it. They do poke fun at some of the conventions of the animated series, like Dora breaking the fourth wall to teach the audience vocabulary and science, but those self-deprecating jokes absolutely worked and it didn’t feel like the filmmakers were embarrassed by the source material or like they were outright mocking it. It would’ve been easy to make those moments part of the video diary/podcast she has at the beginning of the movie (particularly with the popularity of Instagram and Snapchat stories nowadays), but playing them straight and just having everyone else think she’s weird was so much funnier! Her Map (Marc Weiner), Backpack (Sasha Toro), and possibly her pet monkey Boots’ (Danny Trejo) abilities to talk were played as her childhood imagination and/or hallucinations, which felt like the right balance for the very fun, heightened reality she lives in. I’m glad that they kept the talking, masked fox Swiper (Benicio del Toro) here as well: he feels like a major part of the series’ world and I’m sure fans would’ve been bummed if they left him out. I loved that the questions surrounding him from our heroes were not that he was a fox working with mercenaries, but just that he wore a mask!

While Dora works for all ages, kids are definitely the main target audience and some of the other humor reflects that. I’m not a fan of toilet humor—it’s not that I find it inherently juvenile, I’ve just never thought it was funny—but the two gags in that realm here (quicksand that sounds like farts and the difficulties of using the bathroom in the jungle) didn’t go on long enough to make it feel like this was only for kids; it felt like this was just one style of comedy at play among many. Like Alejandro’s pollen trip, I wouldn’t have included everyone running by Sammy while she was using the bathroom though. Unlike so many movies described as “all ages” but which are really just for kids, the rest of the movie’s comedy, the character development, and the action-adventure sequences totally work regardless of your age and they successfully made it feel like our heroes were on a real adventure with actual dangers. Even if “jungle puzzles” aren’t a thing in the real world, the ones showcased here felt classic and were a lot of fun to see our heroes solve. The pacing moved the story along briskly, but I didn’t feel like Dora’s problems fitting in (and letting others in) were rushed or underdeveloped. The score hits the exact right vibe for this and I liked the original song at the end of the movie too.

If you’re like me and in the mood for a fun, all-ages jungle adventure with a great cast, good action, and a solid emotional core, Dora and the Lost City of Gold will absolutely deliver! I’d definitely watch a sequel. If this one’s still in a theater near you, go see it!

 Check out more of my reviews, opinions, and original short stories here!

[legionofpotatoes]

Okay then, since both of y’all are just delving in I’ll try to keep things (relatively) spoiler-free and stick to story sense and semiotics! Few caveats:

Have not had prior experience with Kojima’s body of work and if that’s a prerequisite in how I “should feel” about it then yike on a bike (just getting this out of the way based on what I’ve had talked at me)

My read excludes the entire context of moment-to-moment gameplay; I basically watched chronological story cutscenes stitched together with NPC interaction vignettes sprinkled in-between. 9 or so hours in total. 

I did this because the gameplay does not interest me at all - and not in protest of chill social games (I adore both No Man’s Sky and thatgamecompany stuff, for example, and try to champion anything without Gun in it), but because the setting and length did not align with my expectations for something to invest so much time into. Still, I was super intrigued by the story, and, to a lesser extent, the plot.

also I have a hard time writing in condensed English, so this may run quite long. I’ll put the rest under a break. Second language, sorry!

I’m trying to think of a good way to start this. Like I said, the story, or what the thing was ABOUT, was infinitely more interesting to me than whatever wacko packaging Kojima thought up for the narrative. Which was a complicated, thought-out piece of fiction shattered into many disparate pieces and fed to us in a mystery-box-filmmaker kind of way, making us reverse-engineer what essentially was a rather simple interpersonal uhh. family tragedy, I guess. 

But to its credit the lore is visibly built solely to support whatever thematic messaging Kojima would want to weave in there - something I can respect. Meaning it gets as wacky and as nonsensical as it needs to be in order to reflect the high-concept allegories at play, aaand then it does so to a fault. I adore works of fiction that don’t give a shit about “tone” - I hate that word more than anything in modern media - but effective symbolism in storytelling, IN MY OPINION, requires a deft hand, nuance, strong authorial position, and a good grasp of social context. 

I want to like, go through these four points individually and nitpick my problems with the game in their lens, because I think they cover pretty much everything I feel like saying:

1. A deft hand - to me means to selectively dramatize correct themes and plot points as you go so that shit makes sense in the end. I felt this was incredibly lacking here. It was like a symphony going for hours without a crescendo. The absolute wrong bits of soulless exposition would be reiterated THRICE within a single cutscene while necessary context of, hell, character motives or even plot geography would be left vague. Intentionally vague, some would argue, but their later function would never arrive. Other times, what would visibly be conceived as wink-and-you’ll-miss-it foreshadowing could overstay its welcome to the point of inadvertently spoiling a later plot point. My girlfriend sniped the (arguably) most important reveal of the game, which is left for the tail end of the final epilogue (!), in the first hours of watching. The symbolics and allusions were just too plentiful where they should have been more subdued. I am DYING to provide examples here but I’m keeping it spoiler-free. Again, if this is a Kojima-ism, too bad; but it’s not a catastrophic failure of storytelling by any means. There are very few masters of this thing working today. But what can be easier to navigate, I think, is...

2. Nuance - this kinda goes hand-in-hand with the upper point but is a bit more important to me and applies to what SPECIFICALLY you decide to heighten in order to slap us across the face with your deeper meanings. Certain characters - not all of them - feel like caricatures. The silly names and overt metaphors (wearing a mask means hiding something! connected cities all have ‘knot’ in their name!) are honestly, genuinely FINE as long as their function isn’t betrayed, but the lean into metaphor worship can sometimes wade into SERIOUSLY shitty territory as contemporary implications are ignored altogether, and that ties into my fourth point, which I’ll address before looping back to the third; needless to say, approaching sensitive subjects with broad strokes is not exactly the way to go. But broad strokes is almost exclusively what this game does, forgetting to incorporate...

3. Social context - and I feel like avoiding examples here will be difficult lest I end up sounding like a dogmatic asshole; but there is a right thing and a wrong thing to do when co-opting IRL concepts to fit fictional messaging/storytelling. I feel that a character “curing” themselves of a phobia by experiencing emotional growth that vaguely corresponds to what the disorder could have symbolized is a wrong thing. And I don’t even want to get into all the wacky revisionism the lore ended up twisting into, which was mostly honestly entertaining (the ammonite will be a good hint to those who’ve played it), until it decided to, again, lean a bit too hard into painting today’s reality as a crisis of human connection and imply some questionable things about why, uh, asexual people exist, for example. Yes it makes some sense within the context of the lore and what’s happening in the plot, but it’s completely lacking in social know-how of the here and now. In other words: a Bad Look. To me, this type of wayward ignorance is a much more serious issue that can historically snowball any piece of writing into a witless disaster. I don’t know if it quite does it here, but it’s not really my place to say. Still, you can have wacky worldbuilding that has no sense of dramatic tension, nuance, or awareness towards the audience, and yet containing one last vital glue holding it all together, and that would be...

4. Strong authorial position - or intent I guess, to speak in literary terms - and I still have trouble pinpointing how and where this exists in this game. A bullshit stance you say, and I hear ya; cause this here is a video game very pronounced in its pro-human-connection messaging, painting the opposite outcome as an apocalyptic end to our species. And as I understand the gameplay is all about connections too - leaning into that theme so hard it even renders itself unapproachable to most capital-g Gamers. I honestly respect the balls of that. But really, as an author who headlined the creation of this thing, what was it really about? What were you trying to say?

And beyond “human connection is real important to beat apathy” I got nothing, and I think that’s because of points 1 and 2 failing in succession, and then point 3 souring the taste. It just had to be apparent the moment the curtain fell, is what I find. You just have to “get” it immediately, get what it was trying to say, but that will happen only if it’s been articulated incredibly well up to that point. Maybe the entire punch of that message REALLY depends on you spending dozens of hours ruminating on the crushing cost of loneliness as you haul cargo across countries on foot and connect people to your weird not-internet? If so, I’ve missed a vital piece of context, and with this being a videogame and all, it’s honestly a fair assumption. But otherwise.. it felt like a hell of a lot of twisting and turning and plot affectations that only led to more plot affectations and sometimes character growth (which had its own bag of issues from point 3) and not a hell of a lot to say about human connection beyond the fact that it is. good and useful. It felt like a repeated statement instead of being an argument. Does that make sense? I understand the story optics here are zoomed waay out and set on targeting the human condition as a whole, but like.. if you’re committing to a message, you have to stand by it.

Why is connection good? it’s a dumb question without a DOUBT but since the game has set out to answer it then it.. should? Did I miss the answer? I may have, I honestly can’t exclude the possibility. My lens was warped and my framework of consuming storytelling is a bit rigid in its requirements (the four points I mentioned), so maybe I’m just too grouchy and old to understand. 

I just think Pacific Rim did it better and took about 7 hours less to do it! And yet, it, too, involved Guillermo Del Toro. Curious.

If you made it this far and are interested in my thoughts on the technical execution of it all as well, uhm, it’s pretty much spotless? Decima is utilized beautifully, the Hideo vanity squad of celebrities all do their very best with the often clunky dialogue, the music is great, the aesthetic and visual design is immediately arresting, and it certainly does an all-around great job at standing out from the rest of the flock. I fell in love with the BB a little bit. It is also a game that is incredibly horny for Mads Mikkelsen, which almost fully supplants the expected real estate for run-of-the-mill male gaze bullshit. It is. A change.

That’s all I got folks

[itsswimmingtragedycollection]

Netflix’s ‘You’ or ‘Why (young) people need to read more books’

First of all. the obsessed stalker plot is overdone. I mean Misery, Sleeping with the enemy, Fatal attraction, Secret window, The vanishing?? They’re suing. And despite this unimaginative plot, You is being sold as some kind of groundbreaking, fresh, modern take on the Stalker ™, so I guess it’s no wonder only teenagers can buy into that load of bs. Don’t get me wrong, a boring outline, doesn’t necessarily mean a boring story. Consider heist movies for a second. They are all the same, a group of people use their unique skills to pull off a never-been-done-before job, and get away with it. Regardless of whether it’s your cup of tea or not, different approaches, fresh perspective, suspense build up, comedy, action, character development can make this trope interesting over and over again. Unfortunately, You seems to have missed this memo since all of its characters, situations and outcomes have been done, in the same manner, a million times before. This is probably because the entertainment industry is big on recycling. As soon as a new generation of people, who are too young to have seen the classics of the past, matures enough to actually enjoy them, we are flooded with remakes  of this and that. Easy money. But, you know what? Being boring and unimaginative isn’t a crime nor does it do any real damage. The actual problem with You is the message it sends. Or better yet, doesn’t send. Not only do we see Joe humanized to the point where he might just be in the right, the show failed to condemn his actions at any single point. And if we take into account that their main audience are young people,it becomes worse. By a lot. As much as the term ‘young and impressionable’ is a cliche, it’s true. If you showed Joe Goldberg to a thirty year old, aka someone with a clear sense of self, firmly set values and moral compass, they wouldn’t face the dilemma of ‘Shit! Maybe he has a point!’ and ‘Damn lock him up and throw away the key!’. Like, for example, an eighteen year old would. At the same time, the vast majority of events that unfold in the season are presented through Joe’s eyes. Therefore, it’s reasonable to assume we don’t get an objective perspective on anything. Or anyone. Which is a fairly weird choice if the aim is to show how easy it is to sympathize with a psycho given the fact that we don’t usually experience those type of people through the inner workings of their minds, but through their actions. But, that alone didn’t have to be a deal-breaker, if we had something to compare his impressions to, for good measure. Contrast is a powerful tool and its proper usage is what accentuates the main message in a movie/tv show. But who tf is Joe’s contrast. Peach? She’s about the same as he is, except for the fact that her idea of ‘helping’ Beck is using her wealth and influence in hopes she will stay by her side forever, and Joe’s is to essentially bend her to his will. Beck? I don’t think so. The only striking difference between them is how she doesn’t fit in anywhere, not her first job, not her second job, not with her friends, not with her family, not in her apartment, while Joe seems to fit in anywhere you throw him. Probably stems from the fact that Beck feels like a fraud while Joe feels everyone but him is a fraud (also part of the reason why we found the characters boring or fake, since he described them to us). His past? If anything it justifies his present actions. Paco? Joe’s mini-me? His purpose is basically to paint a picture of how an abused child grows up, so we’d find it even harder to dislike Joe. Even more so since Joe tries so hard to make life easier for him and eventually kills Paco’s abuser, which, in retrospect, justifies what he did to Mr. Mooney. Ethan? The most annoying mash up of every hipster stereotype you can think of? Barely even worth a mention. Honestly it would have been quite interesting to see the differences between how he experiences the world vs how it really is. Or maybe point out some red flags that nice-guy-by-day-murderer-by-night archetype displays, so we can spot them out. And it would also help get the point the show claims to make across. Instead, what happened was, people liked him and hated everyone else, and the show producers, writers and actors acted as if they pulled some grand prank.  ‘HaHaHa joke’s on you, even though we made him completely relatable,good-intended, smart, understandable and likable and all those other people stupid, shallow, boring and mean, he’s the shithead and you all fell for it!’ Kinda like when a three year old covers his eyes and thinks no one can see him.   I mean, the only time his portrait of Beck is questioned is when she pours her heart out to Dr Nicky and we get a glimpse of what is actually going on with her. But by that time, there’s no escaping this diluted, fantasy, basic white girl with daddy issues, attention thirsty, cheating whore, promiscuous fraud Joe’s been showing down our throats. Not only that, but up to that point, his conclusions were, one way or the other, confirmed. He didn’t like Benji, Benji turned out to be a prick. He had doubts about Peach, Peach turned out to be obsessed with Beck. He said Beck craves attention, what do you know, she has no curtains in a first floor New York apartment she can’t even afford. He says he knows what’s best for her, she becomes happier and more fulfilled when he takes over her life, until he kills, that is. The viewers don’t side with him because they really, really, actively want to, they side with him because it’s in the structure of the story. Which is reflected in the ‘Ozma of Oz’ by the way. That’s the first book of the series where Dorothy doesn’t crave Kansas anymore and Oz becomes what she wants. Much like the whole world of You is Joe’s fiction, and we are invited to abandon this world, where psychos are not desirable. Similarly, Peach and Joe both have a thing for the Oz books, specifically ‘Ozma of Oz’,they even get into a bit of a conflict over it, meaning they both want their ‘Oz’ to win. Also, another detail I consider important to the plot, is that Peach is a Salinger. Obviously not a coincidence. Salinger is known for his ‘Catcher in the Rye’ and controversial life. But mostly ‘Catcher in the Rye.’ That book is crowned *the* coming of age book, emphasizing how societies high expectations of young people and no consideration of each person as an individual put too much pressure on them that eventually leads to mental disorders. Basically, how the world ruins innocence. But on the other hand, and more interestingly, the most famous criticism calls it ‘a fictional hall or mirrors in which his own self was replicated and congratulated for its brilliance, charm and integrity over and over again.’ Doesn’t that sound familial? Isn’t every character in You just a version of Joe? Paco is a young Joe, Peach is a rich, female Joe with pedigree, Benji is a brute, rich, stupid Joe, Mr. Mooney is what Joe could have become, Dr Nicky pries into people’s lives and abuses his power (sleeping with a patient), same as Joe. Even Beck. She’s your average Joe, not taken to the extreme. And on top of that, he is congratulated for his charm, brilliance and integrity throughout the season, hence why the audiences like him over everyone else. As interesting as that may be, You asks the questions no one needs asked. And gives the wrong answer. Under which circumstances are psychos likable? How easy is it to identify with one? Can sick obsession look desirable? You says yes to all of that. And it says it to teens and preteens who are already being told that boys hit girls when they like them, so why tf not sell them on hot and sexy murderous stalkers as something to lust over? And them blame them for giving in and not their poor storytelling. Encourage your local teenagers to be better than that. See, shows like You, only thrive because they are well accepted. If young people read more books, watched more old and older movies, took more interest in understanding things in depth instead of taking them at face value, we wouldn’t have to even have the conversation ‘Why being attracted to Joe Goldberg is wrong.’ If more young people knew how may bigger, better things exist, a watered down, bland story like this wouldn’t stand a chance. And most certainly couldn’t get away with calling itself fresh, new, brilliant and provocative. My lit professor used to say ‘Every story has been already told.’ We change the names, the places, adapt it to our time, but in essence, all the love stories, the tragedies and everything else in between, have been written. Basically, everything ‘new’ draws its inspiration from somewhere, it doesn’t come from thin air. With that in mind, the more you see, read and hear, the wider your grasp on things becomes, and the easier it is to smell the bs. Which Netflix in general is full of.

[hub-pub-bub]

Whether you’re currently writing a book, querying agents or on submission to publishers, allow me to share this small-but-important truth: There’s an editor out there right now—sorting stacks of pitch letters, book proposals and manuscripts, thumbing through literary agent submissions, reading selections of the manuscripts she requested from authors directly—who is seeking to buy a book similar to yours.

So, in a sense, your future editor is out there thinking about you.

Picture this person for a moment: Perhaps she’s an associate editor for a mid-level imprint, working her way up at a growing publishing company. She majored in creative writing or English literature or journalism in college, where she developed a passion for Jane Austen or Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion or Anne Lamott. Whoever her muse, she knows good writing when she sees it. She wrote articles for the school newspaper or poems for the literary journal, nabbed a good internship after college and she’s worked hard ever since to finally land her dream job—acquiring and editing books full time and getting paid for it!

The 7 Deadly Sins of Novelists (According to Editors)

Now she fills the role of champion for her authors and books. She pitches the books she discovers to her own internal publishing team, during which she makes a case for both the editorial and business side for acquiring said manuscripts.

Her boss expects her to acquire a handful of new books every year, and though she’s still learning and growing into the job, in part, her performance is tied to the performance of her selections. If she acquires and takes a huge financial risk on a book and it bombs a year later, it reflects on her directly. Of course, like anyone in a new position, she needs time to grow and, sure, she might have more seasoned editors guiding her through this journey. But eventually, given a couple of years, her acquisitions become hers to own.

Does all of this create a little pressure on our friendly associate editor? You bet.

Every editor’s list of acquisitions is viewed (especially by management) as their own personal business within the greater publishing company, complete with its own profit and loss statement (P and L). As a result, each individual book might get more or less scrutiny depending on how it fits into the greater scheme. The worse the editor’s books perform, the harder time she’ll have convincing her team to take risks on her projects in the future.

When you’re writing a book, preparing a proposal or query (for publishers or literary agents, because agents make decisions based on whether they think a publisher will be interested), it’s important to think about your future editor. He is a human being, just like you, and every day he is facing the very real difficulties of the changing market, the shifting retail landscape and his own internal company pressures. He, like many editors in this business, hopes to come across something special—a work of unique power or appeal or finesse or authority—that makes him feel like he did in college when he read Jack Kerouac.

As someone who once sat in the editor’s chair at publishers large and small, I know those simultaneous pressures and hopes firsthand. My first publishing job was as a junior editor acquiring and editing 10–12 books a year for a small, family-owned press. To be honest, for a long time I had no idea what I was doing—but I worked hard and soaked up every lesson I could. Despite my inexperience, over the course of several fairly successful years, I found myself the publisher of that small imprint: hustling to make budgets; publishing competitive, influential books; learning the fast-changing worlds of marketing and publicity; and managing a team that shared my goals.

1. Do Your Homework

Every category and genre of publishing is governed by unspoken rules. In the world of traditional trade book publishing, fiction and nonfiction aren’t the same. For instance, most editors sign nonfiction book deals based on one to two chapters. But for fiction, and especially with first-time novelists, editors typically need to read the full manuscript before a deal is done.

If you’re submitting the next high-concept business book to an experienced agent, or an editor at a business imprint, make sure you’ve done your research. Do you know what other books the literary agent has represented, or the editor has acquired in the recent past? Has that press recently published a book like yours?

Immerse yourself in books similar to your own. Read in the category, but also study the jacket, the acknowledgements page, the author’s blog and their previous books. Conduct industry research on publishing houses, editors and literary agents through sites like Publishers Weekly. Attend a conference, watch lectures on YouTube. Read relevant articles, essays and blog posts.

To know a category is to know the world in which your future editor lives every day.

2. Use Concise Communication

The volume of reading material that accrues on the desks of editors and literary agents is immense. These folks read mountains of content every day, sifting through stacks of submissions for eye-catching queries.

Which is why yours should get right to the point—in such a way that compels them to read more. Don’t belabor your initial synopsis or write a three-page email. If in doubt, the fewer words the better. Share a little about yourself, but only the most relevant points.

Most important: Any sample writing you include should read fast and clean. Editors aren’t looking for reasons to reject, per se, but when inundated, it’s far too easy to dismiss a submission for little things like spelling errors, awkward phrasing or poor formatting.

3. Sign With an Agent

Inking a contract with a good literary agent can help avoid some of the above issues. When on submission to publishers, agents almost always get a faster read than unsolicited queries—especially in certain categories. There are several reasons why this is the case. First, most literary agents take the time to build relationships (and a level of trust) with acquisition editors in the genres they work within. Second, because publishing professionals have such limited time, agents effectively serve as a filter, siphoning in projects with higher-caliber content. Plus, most have also taken the time to work with their authors to develop and shape their book concepts, which adds additional value for the publisher.

I’ve also had countless conversations with authors who published their books agentless, and suddenly found themselves in a strange new world with no idea how to navigate it. Their books released to the world and their lofty publishing dreams slowly wilted as they made mistakes, agreed to bad contractual terms, blindly trusted editors, or neglected their marketing and publicity campaigns. The best literary agents act as a trusted guide, thinking through these details long before a deal ever comes to fruition.

4. Grow Your Platform

Here’s a fact of life in modern publishing: Attracting (and holding) attention is difficult in any medium, especially in a world of social media, streaming television and unlimited self-publishing. As a result, presses look for projects with a built-in audience. It’s thus through a platform that authors can do just that.

I define platform as any outward-facing method a writer uses to attract a readership prior to publishing—which will, in theory, translate to that readership purchasing the writer’s book. It can manifest as anything from a YouTube channel, podcast, blog or Twitter following to an email newsletter or college classroom.

Think of your writing as a business, and take the initiative to build your influence via a robust platform, which will only increase your chances of publishing.

5. Forge a Relationship

Once you sign a book deal, you’ll be assigned a “champion.” More often than not, that person is an acquisitions editor or developmental editor, but it may also be the marketing manager or the publisher herself. While every press is different, often that person is your point of contact throughout the publishing process—from beginning to end.

Whoever your point person, be intentional in building that relationship. If possible, meet your champion face-to-face, or at least set up regular phone calls. Get to know her. This small investment of time and effort on your part can pay off big in the long run.

I’ve seen authors send a nice handwritten note after a meeting or a phone call, thanking the participants for their time. And sometimes I’ve seen those simple thank yous tacked to the wall of an editor’s office years later. A small, kind act goes a long way, and when you need a favor down the road, your champion will remember you.

Guide to Literary Agents 2019

6. Remember to Engage

Shift your thinking about the publishing process: Turning in your manuscript is not the end, but the beginning. The more engaged you are at each subsequent stage, the better chance your book has of making an impact in the market. Writing a terrific manuscript is step one, but you must also help to market, publicize and sell.

Seek to be included in the key publishing decisions along the way, including the final title, cover design, marketing and publicity strategy and so on. Believe it or not, each of these things is regularly decided without the author’s input—but by becoming a part of these decisions, you can bring your vision to the table.

7. Be Your Book’s CMO

Remember: You are your book’s Chief Marketing Officer. You are its first and last advocate. Be clear that this book is still your baby, while remaining cordial and professional.

Consider setting aside some of your advance (if you received one) to help market your book when the time comes. Thinking that far ahead is tough, but every bit of marketing is important: strong Book 1 sales pave the way for Book 2.

If you know your publisher’s marketing strategy (presuming you’ve stayed engaged in the process), then you can supplement it. For example, if the publisher focuses on store placement, ads in industry magazines, focused banner ads and a book tour, then perhaps you invest in hiring a freelance publicist to line up TV, radio or print interviews.

Once you’ve garnered a book deal, it’s easy to sit back and let the professionals handle everything for you. But resist, for your own sake (and the sake of your book). Your book is your baby. When it gets out into the world, you’re the best one to teach it how to walk.

You’ve devoted hours, days, months—even years— to writing and editing your novel or nonfiction book. With all that time invested, it’s natural to want recognition for your hard work and dedication. Take your writing one step further and tackle the publishing process. When you enroll in this online course, you’ll learn the details of the query letter format and how to write a query letter that catches the attention of agents and publishers. Learn more and register.

[ollyarchive]

Olly Alexander Is Leaning Into The Gay Thing

BY:  PHILLIP HENRY  10 NOV 2018 

 “I started to hear people referring to me as ‘that gay singer’ and a part of ‘that gay band,’ and I said to myself ‘You know what? I am.’ I decided to lean into the gay.”

English actor, pop star, and frontman of the synth-pop band Years & Years Olly Alexander has found himself growing more and more comfortable with his sexuality as it relates to his artistry. Having just released the band’s sophomore album, Palo Santo, this summer, Alexander says he found himself embracing his identity, and “the multifaceted nature of it.”

“You know, inside I’m still kind of this scared gay boy that got bullied at school,” he tells INTO. “But having the kind of response we got from audiences and success that we had after the first album, I felt more comfortable, confident, and okay being more explicit.”

At the age of  28, has been out publicly as long as Years & Years has existed, ignoring the advice of his media trainer who encouraged him to keep his sexuality out of public persona.

And Palo Santo is a reflection of that; the album takes a more direct route when addressing his sexuality, using more male-specific pronouns in the lyrics in comparison to the band’s first album, Communion. Alexander has also been much more free in discussing his sexuality, advocating for HIV screenings, promoting safer sex practices and even supporting anti-LGBTQ bullying campaigns.

Seated in the corner of a New York cafe wearing a Rihanna T-shirt and lounge pants, Alexander’s confidence and charisma exude a certain type of energy that grows as he speaks about the things he loves with such candor.

In just a few hours, Alexander would be performing a sold-out show at Terminal 5. He’s grateful for where he is, sharing thoughtful sentiments as he talks about his fans and his work. He knows that at this point in time, when so many queer people have the wind in their face, right now, it’s at his back and he can soar brightly into the future.

As the main songwriter and leading visionary for Year & Years, Alexander is pushing himself not only as an artist but also as a public-facing advocate.

“Obviously, the UK is stuff I’m most familiar with, but globally we’re all kind of witnessing this dumpster fire descent to Hell,” he says. “Though, I don’t always think it’s that bad.”

“Personally,” he continues, “I didn’t ever imagine I’d be engaging in advocacy the way that I have, but I just find it so meaningful. It makes me feel like I have a purpose in life. Getting out of bed and feeling like you’re working to create positive change is a good feeling.”

One of the hallmarks of poor advocacy is arrogance, a self-centeredness Alexander seems hellbent on avoiding. Being a white gay man comes with a lot of privileges, and he is aware of that, referencing it often as a limitation of his own worldview. He’s chipping away at the underpinnings of our how oppression operates with a precision and consciousness you might not expect from someone who had been cast in an Academy Award-nominated film before being old enough to to vote, acting alongside Dame Judi Dench (“a naughty grandma who only drinks champagne,” he says of his one-time co-star) in his early twenties before launching his international music career. Still, he notes, “This [advocacy]  has been a journey for me and I’m still learning every day.”

“There are so few queer people taking up space in media or in a public forum and I feel like there is a responsibility to use it properly, because people are listening to what you say and so many people aren’t being listened to,” Alexander says. “Silence is complicity. You have to come with something.”

He seems exasperated by the idea that everyone isn’t working to liberate others from their struggles.

“We can’t really step outside all of society’s rules and things that govern us anyway. Like white patriarchy, just because we’re gay that doesn’t go away. We have all the same structural oppressions that exist outside of that. We’ve chosen to band together because we’ve had to and there are so many benefits to that, but we’re so diverse and it makes us ripe for conflict.”

Right now, Alexander is concerned about the Gender Recognition Act in the UK, a proposed reform of the act that will make it easier for trans folks to self-identify.

“It’s created this insane hysterical discourse in the UK media and public. It has been a full-on assault on trans people in a way that’s so horrifying. It’s front page news in the media every day.” Alexander says. He likens it to the fear-mongering that gay people have gone through in the past. He wants to use his privilege to do everything he can to help.

It’s not all just talk for Alexander, who’s well aware that change doesn’t come through just bloviating on platforms to crowds who already espouse your beliefs, but through action that helps others be heard. He’s working alongside other public figures including Sir Patrick Stewart to pay the travel costs of UK citizens who want to attend the march that will be calling for a referendum on the final Brexit deal. Those in opposition to Brexit, which has been scrutinized heavily by many for it’s classist and xenophobic motivations, have been advocating for a second vote on the plan, confident that the majority of citizens don’t really support it.

“We can hide behind this kind of veneer of sending a tweet or retweeting someone’s post or saying ‘I’m woke,’” he says. “But are we really doing the work?”

Behind that motivated and eager passion for change is a gay man still exploring facets of his sexuality with zero fear and even less shame. He giggles in excitement with a “Yay” as he reads over my list of topics filed under “GAY SEX STUFF.”

“I use Grindr now, but I didn’t use it in my early twenties because I was going out and meeting men at clubs and hooking up that way,” he says. “Then I was in a couple of monogamous relationships, so I thought it was gonna be weird, but also a sort of initiation [into modern gay culture].”

That fear didn’t stop him from pursuing that desire to meet men for hookups and fun. “I’ve managed to hook up a couple of times through [apps], but it’s difficult because it’s hard to establish trust,” Alexander says. “People are like ‘Are you using a fake picture?’ or ‘Are you really Olly Alexander?’ And that becomes less sexy. I’m also not about to send a dick pic.”

Being a celebrity in a digital dating culture surely has its struggles, but he’s found that Grindr’s utility serves as a comfort for him in a different way.

“I like to open it up just to see that there other gay people around me, because I travel quite a lot. Sometimes [just so] that gay people are so visible to each other,” Alexander says. “We’ve created networks to find each other.”

In these kinds of social networks, queer people also find ourselves shaping the way we view each other and ourselves. Alexander finds the apps to be a place where so much time can be wasted just soaking up the attention and he isn’t above the kind of validation that connections made through such apps can provide.

“It’s like a dopamine hit when someone likes you or sends you a nice comment and I really understand how that feels good, but then following that up seems like hard work,” he says. “Then you’re like, ‘Oh, but what about someone else?’ It becomes this sort of endless appetite for sexual desires and I think that’s kind of changed the way we view intimacy. I don’t know if it’s for better or worse, but it’s definitely made some interactions harder.”

He’s not wrong. The apps can soak up so much time for those who love being bombarded with validation, but it’s not true for everyone. While it has made access to the type of intimacy that gays had to “work harder” to get in the past easily accessible, for many people, it provides a space where they can feel more confident than in the crowded and judgmental spaces that are gay bars and clubs. Also, perhaps, it’s just highlighted the way we’ve viewed intimacy all along.

His growth and journey with intimacy have changed over the years. He speaks as someone who wants his relationships to be as progressive as his politics. Unsatisfied with the idea that gay relationships need to fit cultural norms, Alexander discusses his most recent open relationship as a challenge that turns him on more than causes him fear.

“It presents a different set of challenges than you experience in a monogamous relationship,” he says. “In a monogamous relationship, you have like one rule which is: don’t cheat, basically.  In an open one you literally write the rulebook yourself, so you have to communicate with your partner a kind of endless list of potentially hard to talk about topics. Who are you allowed to sleep with? How many times? Are you allowed to see them more than once? Is anal okay? Is it just oral?”

Aroused by the idea of these difficult topics that many people would find a hassle to breach over and over, he thinks the ideas difficult to talk about in an open relationship greatly outweigh the simplicity of establishing monogamous trust. His light fetish seems to be emotional masochism that leads to self-discovery.

“In lots of ways, confronting those issues with someone and being able to get into the nitty-gritty of things, you have to go into some really emotionally intense and raw places,” Alexander says. “Those kinds of feelings are what make them more of fit for me than something monogamous which isn’t quite right for me. I’m glad I did it, because I learned a lot about myself and how I deal with aspects of intimacy.”  

Olly Alexander is an explorer, expanding his boundaries and expectations. He speaks openly about his love of daddy porn, smiling in recognition of the cliche. Alexander is curious and demanding of the content he consumes. “[All I want] is for the people to look like they’re enjoying it and for their dicks to be hard,” he says. “Obviously, whoever is fucking their dick is gonna be hard, but if someone is being fucked, I also want them to have a hard dick. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m sure they might still be enjoying it, but when I’m doing it I’m hard. I just like to see both people turned on.”

For Olly Alexander, sex as a gay man should be free of shame and be easier to talk about. He opens up about a sexual experience gone awry: “I guess a lot of people in the US are circumcised but most people in the UK aren’t.” He uses his hands to demonstrate how the frenulum (colloquially called a “banjo string)” is attached to the penis.

“One night, I was in the hotel with my boyfriend and we were having sex. I fell off the bed and basically tore this string right off,” he recalls. “ It was like a crime scene in the hotel. Obviously, like my dick was erect and had so much blood rushing to it so it was like fountains of blood squirting everywhere.”

Alexander and his partner at the time ended up in an emergency room shortly thereafter where his attending nurse recognized him and began talking about his music. Even in that awkward circumstance, he manages to be so excited that someone knows and loves his music.

They should love his music. It’s incredible in its range but most impressive in storytelling.  The performance later that night is electric — the audience hanging onto every word and Alexander consuming every bit of that energy. It’s as if without it, he’d be incapable of finishing the performance.

In a sheer white leotard, shiny black pants, and large bedazzled necklace that borders on gaudy, Alexander leads the audience through Palo Santo. Alexander’s voice rings throughout the three-story concert hall filled with young queers belting every lyric to the band’s hit single “If You’re Over Me.” He leads the audience and his bandmates through an electrifying set, running around with a rainbow flag he was gifted from a front-row audience member.

“I just want everyone having a good time,” he tells the crowd.

They absolutely are.

Images via Getty

[designfordisplay]

Marstine, J. (Ed) (2006). New museum theory and practice: An introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Notes:

Museums are so ubiquitous/omnipresent in our  ‘“cultural landscape that they frame our most basic assumptions about the past and about ourselves”.

A lot of people’s perceptions of history are based of what is displayed in museums. This can be dangerous as it can manipulate and focus people’s mindsets, not allowing for alternate and contradicting histories - Hiroshima vs Enola Gay.

Huge controversy over who the items may belong to - a lot of Maori taonga was confiscated and taken and is not connected to its whakapapa. These such items on display have tikanga surrounding how it should be handled etc.. te papa enforced the mana taonga principle to ensure cultural significance and history are taken into consideration when dealing with taonga. Tribal elders are also asked for advice. Other places do not have respect for the items in their possession or do not care that they are reunited with their whakapapa - what ever culture they may be from. Such as the elgin marbles of greece who are in in the possession of the British Museum where they refuse to return them - stating that they were “rescued” and that the british are keeping them still to guard against damage from the neglect, earthquakes and pollution they might face in greece. Timothy webb says that they have come to represent britain as the “inheritor of democracy from ancient athens” and in turn, justifying their “political” decisions such as “colonisation and domination of other peoples”. Greece is seeing this as a humans rights issue- sculptures were gained through illicit means (stolen) and they are being denied of their heritage.

We see museum objects as ‘unmediated anchors to the past’ - teachers often take students to museums making real of the things talked about in class.

But they’re not authentic a lot of the time, museums are about individuals making subjective choices - mission statements, architecture, exhibition display etc.. what is meant to be a neutral space is influenced by ‘subconscious’ opinions.

What does it mean for something to be ‘authentic’? “Claiming authenticity is a way for museums to deny the imperialist and patriarchal structures that have informed their institutions. They control the viewing process and suggest a tightly woven narrative of progress, an ‘authentic’ mirror of history.

Andreas Huyssen believes that museums are a mass medium, “a hybrid space somewhere between public fair and department store”. ‘They are a response to the quest for authenticity fueled by the cultural amnesia of our times; the information overload and fast pace of the digital revolution evoke a desire for stability and timelessness.

Museums are well trusted, american association of museums survey, 87% deem museums trustworthy vs 67% books and %50 tv news.

New museum theory (critical museum theory/new museology) - while workers ‘naturalise’ their policies and procedures as professional practice, the decisions made reflect underlying value systems that are encoded in institutional narratives. Its about decolonising and giving those represented control of their own cultural heritage (mana taonga principle) real cross-cultural exchange. 1960s artists began to demand a voice in determining how their works were displayed, interpreted and conserved. The civil rights movement challenged the museum to be more inclusive.

What is a museum? These categories are not mutually exclusive and overlap.

Shrine: longest standing and most traditional view of the museum is as a sacred place. Has therapeutic properties, place of sanctuary removed from the outside world.collections are fetishised, objects ‘possess’ an aura that offers spiritual enlightenment. Leads people to assign meanings to objects unrelated to their original function. Objects are prioritised over ideas. Collections are thought to be reborn in museums, where they are better guarded and more appreciated. The shrine idea is influence by church, palace and ancient temple architecture - processional pathways, staircases, dramatic lighting.. Create and performative experience. ‘All museums stage their collected and preserved relics… (museums) use theatrical effects to enhance a belief in the historicity of the objects they collect.’ - Prezoisi.

market-driven industry: museums often position themselves as being ‘pure’ and unsullied by commercialisation. Obviously people understand the items are valuable but this information is usually hush hush - would commoditise the objects. Heritage and tourism are collaborative tourism. Museums have borrowed from the theme park and cinema to create a spectacle that engages all the senses.

colonising space: often look to/reference a postcolonial (eurocentric perspective) history. Appropriate objects from non-western cultures to tell their own history. Naturalise the category of ‘primitive’. Indigenous individuals were rarely acknowledged - seen as following conventions while ‘original’ western artists were seen as groundbreaking and intellectuals. Destroys rather than preserves. UNESCO declared that repatriation is a basic human right. Mansuline gaze

Post-museum: no longer a museum. Will acknowledge the politics of representation, actively seeks to share power with the communities it serves and the source communities. Encourages diverse groups to respond in museum discourse. Curator takes responsibility for representation. Doesn’t shy away from difficult issues but exposes conflict and contradictions. Redress social inequalities. Promote social understanding. Responsibility always rests with the researcher

Greater accountability, sensitivity and openness

Michel foulcault - epistemes -

Renaissance:15/16/17th century humanist desire to understand the world through seeking universal knowledge.science over theology. Finding relationships between objects, microcosm of god. Curiosity cabinet - mediates between the microcosm of humankind and the macrocosm of god and the universe. Precursor of the museum to represent the world in miniature - was private though

Classical: mid 18th century world was too complex, chaotic and fragmented to be contained in the cabinets. Linnean taxonomy classifies the natural world by genus and species. Repositories, study collections that were privated were founded for scholarly research. The rare in the laws of nature was rejected and seen as uncharacteristic or were made to fit in. displays were linear and embrace an ideology of progress.

modern: late 18th century marks the end of elitist institution and beginning of democracy. Military practice became standard. Biology and philosophy arose. Disciplinary public museum  -accessible to all. Aimed to fashion modern citizens. Art was royal, aristocratic or ecclesiastical contexts and reclaimed national patrimony and democratise and secularise the viewer. Temporary exhibitions were formed to celebrate napoleon's birthday.

(can’t change) Many believe museums still conform to this modern model. They may create new spaces and exhibitions for consumptions but at heart, remain elitist institutions. The decision making process often refrains from scrutinising their own histories. Continue to attract (more art galleries) an educated upper and middle class audience, often times remaining irrelevant to marginalised groups. They aim to generate consensus rather than conveying differing perspectives. Curators are above education department. Quantitative vs qualitative.

Are museums able to change or are they becoming obsolete?

(can change) they can because deconstructing the traditional value systems in just the beginning. Can occupy a third space, beyond elitism and consumerism. Some curators are eager to share power by initiating open dialogue and forging new partnerships with groups previously disenfranchised. There are many organisations that are taking diverse approaches to the representation of race, ethnicity, class and gender. Time of the museum as a ‘great collector’ is past. Provenance is important to consider!! Finding culturally sensitive ways to treat non-western objects. Museum is more than a material collection - a lot are still stuck with this. FORUM.

Biggest change comes with the relationship between institution and audience - should be equal. Some are supporting educational research that theorised the museum experience. Acknowledging diverse learning, lectures, performances, videos, workshops etc…

Constitionaries

Visitors must be critical about the choices made by museums.

[scripturehomosexuality]

Update: Why This Blog Has Been Silent, And This Blog is Moving

If you’ve been a regular reader here, I’m sure you noticed that this blog has been silent for the past few months. The silence has been so extreme, I missed posting on its third anniversary. Believe me, this silence was not intended. Certain circumstances forced it to happen, though given current events, it might have been a blessing in disguise. I’ll go more into that later.

Though I write this blog, I’m still a regular person who must face the same troubles as everyone else. As such, around the time that I made the last post, my life became quite unstable through no fault of my own. After a certain point, that instability put my living situation into serious doubt. Thus, I was faced with a choice - deal with the situation and neglect the blog, or keep up the blog while the rest of my life fell apart. I chose the former. I wouldn’t be able to give any help if, among other things, didn’t have a place to live.

Plus, believe it or not, the loss of my smartphone had an effect. Through that phone, I was able to maintain constant supervision of the blog and the g0ys subreddit. It inexplicably broke down in June, and I’m currently stuck with a substandard model. Thus, maintaining control over both became much harder.

At this point, though it’s not in an ideal place, things are much more stable now. That instability has reduced, and I’m working to get a better phone during this month. Plus, I was still writing in fits and spurts. I currently have three finished articles waiting to be published. One of them is the post intended for the blog’s third anniversary. I have many more drafts meant for publication this year at various stages of progress. I logged in periodically to keep the blog active, and did so again on December 26th to start resuming normal activity.

That was the first time I logged in for all of December, and as I know now, I was in for a surprise.

Earlier in the month, and after a revision in September 2018, Tumblr changed their Community Guidelines again. Under the subtitle “Adult Content”, they read as follows:

“Don't upload images, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples — this includes content that is so photorealistic that it could be mistaken for featuring real-life humans (nice try, though). Certain types of artistic, educational, newsworthy, or political content featuring nudity are fine. Don’t upload any content, including images, videos, GIFs, or illustrations, that depicts sex acts. For more information about what this guideline prohibits and how to appeal decisions about adult content, check out our help desk.”

Like the September update, this change is very problematic. In short, anything showing sexuality or nudity (even toplessness) is now banned from Tumblr. At least, they say as much. They also say that they will make exceptions for “certain types of artistic, educational, newsworthy, or political content featuring nudity”.

You might not realize it, but a huge problem lies within that phrasing. The policy doesn’t say that they will allow ANY nudity that is of artistic, educational or political value. They say that they will only allow “certain” types. Whatever counts as those approved “certain” types is totally up to Tumblr’s discretion, and is subject to their fleeting whims.

Nevertheless, you might think that such a policy would exempt this blog. After all, as you’ve seen, all nude photos featured here are shown mainly for their historical value. All of them were captured with the consent of those photographed. All of them are in black and white, which immediately shows that they have some age. While this blog has never felt squeamish about showing nudity, it has done so to teach history in the best way possible.

Well, you’re wrong. Within the past few days, four articles were flagged as being too adult for Tumblr, and were hidden from public view. They are

Capitalism’s Role in the Taboo Against Nude Swimming

The Innate Male Need For Communal Nudity (Under Appeal but Not Visible)

Happy Two Year Anniversary

What The Olympics Teach Us About Same-Sex Bonding (Since Restored)

So if you’re looking for them, please know that they still exist. I didn’t delete them, and I never would intentionally delete them. You just can’t see them. Furthermore, as you probably noticed, the first three are key posts of the “Everyday Nudity” series.

Personally, I’m not surprised that the series was among the first output affected. The “Innate Male Need” article was what nearly brought down the blog in March 2018. Some staff within Tumblr clearly opposed its publication, even though it violated none of their guidelines at the time. They were so opposed to it, they tried to hold the site hostage by shutting it down whenever I tried publishing it. Though I ultimately succeeded, it seems certain Tumblr staffers were looking for another opportunity to take it down again. They did, and this time, the guidelines are on their side.

Plus, I think I need to note the following: through their myriads of photographs, all three posts were a terrible indictment on U.S. society. They amply demonstrated

the failure of the U.S. education system to teach something that was ubiquitous just a generation ago

the utter and unprecedented prudishness of modern U.S. society

the cooperation of the U.S. capitalist system in sustaining this taboo on everyday nudity

the inconsistency of this reality in a nominally Christian country with supposedly “traditional” Christian teachings on homoeroticism

the role of “gay” and “straight” media in obscuring this story

These articles were some of the most read posts on the blog. And they had an effect. Information about the topics covered therein are becoming common knowledge, and I believe that’s due to articles like these.

Thus, I’m willing to make the following call on the Guidelines changes - they weren’t done just to purge itself of pornography. Furthermore, these changes have affected many Tumblr blogs, including some who didn’t publish NSFW content at all. To me, this was ultimately a political move. This was done to purge Tumblr of politically “inconvenient” content, and make it more palatable to corporations.

To prove my point, I will go back to my own content. All nude photos here were clearly attached for historical value. The posts that contained them were meant to educate and inform. To any reasonable mind, I’m sure that would count as “artistic, educational, newsworthy, or political content featuring nudity”. Even after being appealed - which would require human intervention - the ban was removed only for the “Olympics” article. So to me, the only other reason why they would be flagged was because the message they were sending was objectionable. In other words, from what I can see, the suppression of these posts is plainly political censorship.

Furthermore, Safe Mode already hid “adult” posts from people who didn’t want to see it. For their part, all three posts contained warnings that nude photos were inside the posts. None of those photos were visible in the post previews. If Tumblr admins were solely concerned with creating “a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves”, that was a somewhat fair (if deeply flawed) solution. It left more sexual blogs to operate in relative peace, and allowed more prudish viewers to mostly avoid them.

Plus, if the Guideline revisions were just concerned with adult content, why flag the “Olympics” post? That post contained no nude photos at all. The only thing that would cause offense was that, through its frank commentary, it tore apart establishment sexual concepts that are corporate in origin.

Along with that, from what can be seen, the porn bots on Tumblr (which are usually corporate in origin) are working just fine. The ban seems to affect only output from individual blogs. Thus, I don’t think that NSFW content was offensive because of its content. Instead, that content was offensive because it didn’t come from corporate producers. It came from the people themselves, as authentic expressions of sexuality often unseen in more mainstream output. It is this which is being hurt by this ban, and I don’t think that’s an accident.

The fact that Tumblr is now hiding them means that Tumblr hasn’t been comfortable with them for some time. The mere presence of community-driven sexual content evidently gnawed at them. They wanted them gone, but it didn’t want to do it too fast, lest it alienate their core audience.

Tumblr CEO Jeff D'Onofrio says that they will only hide posts that violate policy, and will not delete them. Frankly, I don’t believe him. Hiding them is a subtle way of abolishing them from public memory. Deleting them completely just finishes the job. Plus, this new change clearly signals that they are uncomfortable with having certain blogs on their platform. I can’t see why they wouldn’t take the next step and eradicate those posts, or completely delete the blogs that post them. Furthermore, as said before, abolition of sexual content is merely the pretext of the moment. Others will likely emerge to further apparent goals of purging Tumblr of its most unconventional users.

On top of that, I’m not the only one who thinks it’s political. In a recent commentary on the changes, Vox remarked that the change (and reaction to it) is reflective of larger trends. They explained that “on a deeper level, the giant outcry over this [policy change] reflects a larger anxiety from users — a fear that Tumblr is cracking down not just on porn but on the very essence of Tumblr culture: unruly, unsanctioned, and in many ways, united by the very spirit of deviance that Tumblr is trying to kill.” I truly believe that this is the case. Sex is just a pretext to remove the culture of free speech that has always characterized Tumblr.

Make no mistake - this move is totally in service to a growing American corporate state. It is a corporate state that is of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations. Its sole motivation is creating a culture of sheer conformity and neat division, because that ensures capitalism’s everlasting growth. It dislikes anything that rocks the boat, except if that rocking will make more money.

After all, keep the following in mind. This ban was apparently spurred by the recent actions of Apple, who removed Tumblr from its online store. On the eve of the ban’s enforcement, it was promptly restored. This is despite the fact that NSFW content still exists on Tumblr. The difference is that such content is now mainly corporate in origin, instead of the more community-driven content. So what was the issue here? Was the content the problem? Or that it came from the wrong source, and as such, had an authenticity that corporate content couldn’t compete with?

All signs indicate that the censorship drive won’t stop here. Tumblr has already gone to excessive lengths to crack down on content that most users didn’t object to. Meanwhile, the porn bots and others who supposedly caused the censorship haven’t gone anywhere. Adult content isn’t the problem. Instead, it is that Tumblr contains a potent people power that corporate America simply can’t tolerate.

As a result, I must read the writing on the wall that becomes clearer every day. I predict that this blog will be deleted along with many others. I believe that by the end of 2019, “The Scriptures Don’t Condemn Homosexuality” will cease to exist on Tumblr. I personally think the end will come by June. But even if that doesn’t happen, I can’t see how it will survive past December 2019.

This blog has consistently railed against modern sexual philosophy, which preaches that same-sex desire and behavior is inherently abnormal. As this blog has shown, that philosophy owes its growth to runaway capitalism (aka neoliberalism). Neoliberalism sustains and protects that philosophy, and vice versa. That system of thinking simply cannot tolerate challenges to its logic. And while the blog is mostly intact, I’m sure more changes will be made to make blogs like this less likely to exist on Tumblr. 

As such, barring any repeal of censorship, this will be the last new post on this Tumblr blog. No more content will be posted here. I don’t know if new posts will be used as pretext to shut the blog down. No messages sent to the inbox will receive a response here. However, I will not delete the Tumblr site, since this is the one that users know the most. This blog will remain in suspended animation until Tumblr inevitably shuts it down.

At this point, the Wordpress site will become the main site. The next few weeks and months will be spent transferring all articles to that website. I will try to recreate the Tumblr blog on Wordpress as faithfully as possible, including the extra links at the top of the page. I will also utilize Wordpress’ tools to make it even better. The Tumblr site will become an auxiliary site to direct traffic to Wordpress.

To be clear, I don’t see this as a final solution. This will be a real test of Wordpress’ tolerance of free speech. I have no idea how Wordpress will respond to what I will publish, but I hope for the best. Even as I’m heading to Wordpress, I’m also researching other platforms in case Wordpress doesn’t work out.

For the time being, my first priority will be helping reanimate the g0ys reddit chat. More than anything else, this blog aimed to make like-minded people connect with each other for personal fulfillment and social change. The Reddit chat seems best equipped to do that, and as such, I view it as the blog’s greatest legacy. Thus, I will be posting there more regularly in the days and weeks ahead. Furthermore, I also help see how to keep the chat active even when the moderators aren’t there.

I’m not going sugarcoat anything. This is a big step backward. Right now, I should just be concerned with getting new content out. I never thought that when the blog is so established, I’d have to move its content between platforms. This will be a time consuming process, because there’s over 100 posts to transfer. My finished manuscripts for this publishing year won’t be seen for months.

As such, the inactivity of this blog might have been a hidden blessing. If I continued publishing, it would have counted as more posts to move. Since output stopped in September 2018, it makes my job easier.

Furthermore, its readership has never been higher: for the first time, there were over 1000 trackable visitors in a single month, during November 2018. Its actual count was probably higher, so doing this move will be incredibly disruptive. During this transfer, I don’t know if all readers here will be able to make the switch.

However, in the end, this is what is needed. It helps accomplish goals that are bigger than Tumblr, this blog or myself. This Tumblr site merely wishes to further the work of the g0ys, the Man2Man Alliance, and other associated movements - to free humanity of sexual concepts meant to control, punish and enslave. Tumblr is just a means to an end. This work will go on with Tumblr or without them, because the stakes are too high to do otherwise.

Finally however, I want to thank David Karp and the version of Tumblr he oversaw. They created what is becoming an rarity - an internet platform where freedom of speech and thought truly ruled the day. This blog’s work simply would not have been possible without Tumblr, and was far better because of it. I’ve met and heard from many readers of like mind whose feedback aided me further. The photo content in the “Everyday Nudity” series came from other Tumblr blogs. I will always be grateful to them for allowing this blog to speak freely, and am sorry to have to leave.

However, times have changed and this blog must change with it. This work will go on. Concepts of sex have a tremendous effect on other parts of life. I will working to help make those concepts fit reality, so that all can be truly free.

- Herold Jennison