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arcticdementor · 4 years ago

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@mitigatedchaos, I can't reply directly to this post, since OP has me blocked, but, to respond in my usual manner:

First, who was it that said that if you keep seeing a mismatch between someone's tactics and what you believe to be their goals, rather than assume they're totally tactically inept, you should instead re-examine whether what you believe to be their goals are actually their goals. You keep noting that CRT doesn't advance certain goals… well, then, maybe that's because those who push CRT actually have different goals which it does advance?

It is a de facto racialized class strategy in which the racial component makes the organization easier.

Yes, and? If a racialized class strategy advances their goals…?

No one actually knows how to fully converge the outcomes for underprivileged minorities and groups that are at or above the median (jewish, asian, white, nigerian immigrants).

You talk quite a bit about "the absence of effective interventions which would converge demographic outcomes," but really, it's only an absence of effective ways to "close the gap" from below, to improve the performance of "underperforming" racial groups. But a gap has two sides, and can be closed from other. Rephrase the problem from being about "underperforming" groups falling short, and make it about how some ethnic groups are being oppressed by the existence of ethnic groups "out-performing" them. Put that way, there appear two clear avenues for addressing the gap: the "out-performing" part… and the "existence" part.

body of work known as Critical Race Theory, which holds that “whiteness”… essentially a form of spiritual contamination

[Slips the Advocatus Diaboli hat partly on] That it's a form of "spiritual contamination" is not proof that it doesn't exist. Maybe the Hindu is right, and the Dalit really is contaminated with an indelible and contagious spiritual impurity. How do you prove that all white people aren't spiritually contaminated with the immoral taint of "whiteness."

It has lead to proposals to build explicit racial spoils systems

And what's wrong with explicit racial spoils, so long as they're being done by the right people, to help the correct people… and hurt the correct people. No bad tactics, only bad targets.

And it has lead to teaching white children that they are permanently morally contaminated by their ancestry

[slips the AD hat a little further on] Which would not be wrong to teach if it is the truth. You haven't proven that white children aren't "permanently morally contaminated by their ancestry" — what if white people are indelibly immoral from birth?

as if a negative long-term racial identity were feasible

How long is "long-term"? It seems feasible that at least some white people are able to accept a negative racial identify for quite a bit of time. And you don't need to maintain a negative identity forever, just until white people have become a small enough demographic to be able to be dealt with by other means. Why not accelerate the shrinkage by getting those who can be made to have a negative racial identity to indeed have such an identity. Sure, the rest might end up developing a positive racial identity… but hopefully by the time that bypasses all the mechanisms and pressure and institutions at work both preventing it and preventing it from organizing effectively, such a population will be small enough to be solved permanently by harsher means.

Have you considered that the development of a positive white identity might not be a bug of the CRT push, but a feature? There is a long-standing tradition in fiction wherein the villain transforms into a monster… and therefore becomes a more "acceptable" target for the hero to slay. Like in the fourth Narnia book, The Silver Chair, where, after Rilian kills the Green Witch, he notes that he's glad she turned into a snake, because he'd have found it much harder — and would have felt guilty — about killing a woman. Or Maleficent becoming a dragon in Disney's Sleeping Beauty, which makes showing the prince stabbing her in the heart more "acceptable" for the kiddy audience than doing it had she stayed a green-skinned dark-fairy-lady.

There's only so much force you can reasonably bring to bear against "content of character, not color of skin; Dems are the real racists!" Republicans. But the Civil War and World War II show how far you can go against "organized white supremacy." And those stronger, harsher measures will bring the end of the enemy quicker than the slow tactics acceptably used against the DR3 set. So why not encourage the enemy to turn into a monster, that they may be slain more quickly? Why not have your enemy gone sooner, rather than later?

The brain-meltingly racist take “its impossible 2 b racist 2 white ppl lol” is …disproved by Rotherham.

Disproved how, according to which definition of "racist"? In one sense, Aristotle, Newton, and Einstein were talking about the same thing when they spoke of gravity… and in another sense, they were talking of very different things, in that they had very different models of what gravity is and how it works. And each obsoleted the previous definition. Are you doing the equivalent of disputing an element of General Relativity by using an argument based in the Aristotelian definition of gravity; of clinging to geocentrism while the scholarly consensus has moved on to heliocentrism; by taking a position based on an older definition of "racism" which has been superseded by a newer definition which all the most trained and most credentialed experts agree is more descriptive of reality?

>> Critical Race Theory is not known for actually measurably improving minority outcomes

Again, you can try to "improve minority outcomes"… or you can try to lower the outcomes of groups who "outperform" those minorities… or you can eradicate the groups who "outperform" those minorities. And destroying "the containment system around white identity" will transform at least one of those "outperforming" groups into the sort of monsters one can eradicate guilt-free.

Critical Race Theory was never necessary to teach about the Trail of Tears, Jim Crow, etc. These were routinely taught without it before

It's not just that they're taught, but how they're taught, the narrative context in which these are imbedded. Are these merely aberrations, places where America failed to live up to it's lofty ideals, and which we have struggled to move beyond… or are they merely predictable manifestations of America's core, intrinsic, defining character as a colonialist white supremacist endeavor from the first moments whites landed upon Indigenous lands?

incentivizes others to practice cultural and biological race science in order to defend their own demographics from accusations of immorality

[Puts the AD hat fully on]Except, the accusations of immorality being absolutely 100% factually true, any such defense must be definitionally false race science, thus a further immorality, and may be condemned and suppressed as such.

If you are even a little bit off about the “natural” demographic makeup of an organization

Except they cannot be "off," even a little bit, because CRT has with indisiputable, absolute certainty determined the one true and correct "natural demographic makeup" of every organization, and any who question this unquestionable absolute truth is wicked for doing so.

[Doffs the AD hat .]

I took payment in “it’s just a few college kids” back on 2014. In 2020, Coca-Cola paid to tell their employees to “be less white.”

Exactly. No more free “nobody actually means it seriously when they say it” passes.

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caveartfair · 5 years ago

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Long Demonized in Art, Eve Has Become a Pop Culture Icon

Divinely inspired or otherwise, the Old Testament story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is deeply rooted in the Western psyche. Eve occupies mere pages of the Genesis epic, but women have spent millennia atoning for her original sin. For the last 2,000 years, Eve has been invoked in the monotheistic world to suppress women’s rights and defame their characters. How many misogynistic stereotypes and prejudices stem from the reputation of the much-maligned, archetypal first woman?

The apostle Paul cited Eve’s narrative to justify women’s subservience to men, writing in the apocryphal book of Timothy that women should “keep silent” because “Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” In the Middle Ages, St. Bernard of Clairvaux sermonized to rapt audiences of men and women that Eve was “the original cause of all evil, whose disgrace has come down to all other women.” More recently, at a legislative dinner in 2015, South Carolina Senator Tom Corbin was confronted for his combative remarks about women’s right to participate in the state’s General Assembly. “Well, you know God created man first,” he quipped. “Then he took the rib out of man to make woman. And you know, a rib is a lesser cut of meat.”

Adam and Eve, 2015. David LaChapelle MARUANI MERCIER GALLERY

From these rigid perspectives, Eve is one-dimensional: inherently wicked and an afterthought to Adam. Yet across popular culture and the history of art, Eve appears as a paradox. She is guileful and naive, earth mother and fatal seductress; she is the problem of man, his downfall, his eternal scapegoat.

Such depictions have structured our ideas of beauty, gender, and morality. The oldest conceptions of Eve play out again and again in all reaches of contemporary culture. A judiciously placed apple in a woman’s hand in art, advertising, or film can immediately invoke Eve’s devious sexuality, and still other references abound. The Handmaid’s Tale (2017–ongoing), adapted by Hulu from Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, features a young, religious character named Eden, who is expected to help repopulate the country. By the same token, in Pixar’s animated children’s movie WALL-E (2008), the title robot meets a fellow android who has come to bring new human life to Earth. Her name? EVE.

Forbidden fruit

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Adam and Eve, 1528. Courtesy of the Uffizi Gallery.

Though never explicitly named in the Bible, the apple has become the de facto “forbidden fruit”—powerful nomenclature for that which is fatally desirable, and therefore all the more tempting and worthy of moral rule-breaking. The apple’s shiny red skin and juicy interior make it an apt stand-in for sex, and the seductive way in which Eve is often depicted eating it only reinforces its libidinal connotations. Genesis records that after Eve takes a bite of the fruit, she simply “gave some to her husband and he ate.” St. Jerome, however, used the Latin word seducta to describe Eve’s transgression.

During the Northern Renaissance, German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder perfected the bewitching female nude. In his Adam and Eve diptych from 1528, the couple faces one another beneath the Tree of Knowledge, little red apples bobbing tantalizingly above their heads. A self-possessed Eve holds one perfect fruit out to her husband, who scratches behind his ear in apparent befuddlement. In Cranach’s depiction, it’s not the serpent whispering in Eve’s ear or even the apple that is dangerous, but the perfectly beautiful and alluring woman who will be his pleasure—and his downfall.

Domenichino, The Rebuke of Adam and Eve, 1626. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art.

Men are often shown as helpless in the face of this female threat. In Domenichino’s 1626 painting, The Rebuke of Adam and Eve, God and his coterie of cherubim float down from heaven to reproach Adam. The first man throws up his hands in what looks like confusion or exasperation, diverting the entirety of the blame to his wife.

The image of Eve as sexual temptress has remained frighteningly constant, even in products and programs that purport to challenge ingrained sexist tropes. In the early aughts, for example, the soapy comedy-drama Desperate Housewives was lauded for casting five middle-aged women in the lead roles. The intended audience for the salacious TV show was presumably women, yet the impossibly fit, botoxed, and high-heeled characters seemed designed to appeal to men.

The apple’s shiny red skin and juicy interior make it an apt stand-in for sex, and the seductive way in which Eve is often depicted eating it only reinforces its libidinal connotations.

Red apples played prominently in promotional materials for the show. In the title sequence, an animated version of Cranach’s Adam is crushed by a giant falling apple as a blasé Eve looks on. In posters ahead of season five, the topless cast smiles coyly from behind a row of apples and the tagline “Even Juicier.”

So should one eat the apple or abstain? Designer Donna Karan exploited this ambiguity for her long-running DKNY scent Red Delicious. In the ads, a pouty model has just bitten into a green apple (how subversive), and the perfume packaging itself is shaped like the fruit. Sin is no longer the province of Eve alone: The “new temptation in fragrance” was marketed to both women and men.

Once in a while, the story of a woman with an apple doesn’t explicitly end with damnation or sex. In Disney’s Aladdin, the apples Princess Jasmine steals for a young, hungry boy lead to her meeting the titular male hero. They go on to have fabulous adventures together, but it’s Aladdin who reveals the world to Jasmine, and not the other way around. Sometimes apples—potent transmitters of dangerous information—are exchanged between women. In the 19th-century fairy tale that would later become a Disney classic, a witch proffers the poison apple that puts Snow White to sleep.

Snake charmer

In the book of Genesis, the tempting creature is explicitly referred to as “he” and is described only as a serpent. Yet Eve’s casting as an evil temptress gave rise to the belief that the duplicitous snake was female, too. In art, it was often depicted with a womanly upper body and a reptilian lower half. If wickedness is associated with femininity even before Eve gives Adam the Forbidden Fruit, which came first, woman or sin?

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel version of the Fall sees his muscular Adam and Eve joined by an equally hulking snake-woman wrapped around the tree. Her right arm grasps the trunk for support as she stretches out to meet Eve’s upraised hand. Both Eve and the serpent use their left, or “sinister,” hands, further signaling their deviousness.

Michelangelo, The Fall of Man, 1512. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Michelangelo was merely following a popular convention of his time. During the Renaissance, snake-women appear in Hugo van der Goes’s The Fall of Man and The Lamentation (ca. 1470–75); a terracotta sculpture of Adam and Eve by the workshop of Giovanni della Robbia (ca. 1515), which took inspiration from a famous Albrecht Dürer engraving; and the stone facade of Notre Dame. A blonde-headed serpent woman in Masolino’s Temptation of Adam and Eve (ca. 1425), a fresco in Florence’s Santa Maria del Carmine, is frighteningly funny: She snakes along the Tree of Knowledge with her comically tiny head popping out of the end of her skinny green body.

Left: Hugo van der Goes, The Fall of Man and The Lamentation, 1470–75. Courtesy of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Right: Masolino da Panicale, Temptation of Adam and Eve, ca. 1425. Courtesy of Cappella Brancacci.

Giovanni della Robbia, Adam and Eve, ca. 1515.

Even before the Bible story, snakes were associated with women in cultures around the globe. The hostility that is created between them in the Bible may have been a way to separate the nascent Jewish community from pagan traditions that had a snake as a powerful female goddess. The Canaanite cult of Baal-Asherah heavily influenced the newly formed Israelite nation. In the predominantly female cult, Baal appeared in the form of a serpent with his wife, Asherah, at his side. When the Israelites entered Canaan, pagan religions were demonized in lieu of monotheism.

In this light, the story of Adam and Eve has political undertones. The biblical narrator may have already witnessed an established association between the serpent and the woman in neighboring tribes. When God punishes them, a wedge is driven between the serpent and the woman, cursing everlasting “enmity” between them and their offspring. The story successfully alienates the woman from her longtime ally.

Left: John Collier, Lilith, 1887. Image via Wikimedia Commons. Right: Pantaleon Szyndler, Eve (Temptation), 1889. Courtesy of the National Museum in Warsaw.

They are indeed powerful together. Who can forget the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards, when Britney Spears walked onstage with an albino python draped across her neck? Dressed as an exotic snake charmer and scantily clad in artfully tattered rags and glitter, Spears fully assumed her onstage persona as an outlet to embrace her newfound sexual freedom. The conflation of the pop star with a sexual goddess transpired before millions of girls and women in the public forum of television. With that scene from Genesis, snakes and women received their eternal reputation of immorality. The snake became an erotic symbol as “the bad girl” gained sex appeal.

The fall of (wo)man

Britney Spears performs at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards. Photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage.

Spears’s performance resonates with an artwork made over a century earlier by Pre-Raphaelite painter John Collier. With her perfect, naked body and long blonde hair, the woman in the 1887 painting who nuzzles the head of the giant snake sensually coiled around her looks like Eve. But in fact, it’s her alter ego, the legendary femme fatale, Lilith.

Fed-up women looking for a new matriarchal origin story have taken in Eve beneath their own gaze. They have embraced the qualities—independence, curiosity, sexuality—that once demonized her.

In Jewish literature, the enchantress Lilith is described as Adam’s first wife, before Eve. Lilith was man’s equal but was devilish in her sexuality. According to legend, she felt repressed by Adam’s side, and she eventually leaves him to cohabit with demons in deep waters. In folklore and pop culture, she has come to be known as the mother of demons and vampires, eater of babies, husband of Satan—in short, a dangerous, sexually liberated woman.

Lilith Fair, 1998, Mountain View California. Image by Tim Mosenfelder / ImageDirect via Getty Images.

Finally, in our modern era, fed-up women looking for a new matriarchal origin story have taken in Eve, and her alter ego Lilith, beneath their own gaze. They have embraced the qualities—independence, curiosity, sexuality—that once demonized her.

Kiki Smith’s take on Lilith (1994) is a powerful and disturbing sculpture—a black-bronze horror movie demon, nude and crouched in a spider-like position high up on the wall. The glass grey eyes startle any viewer. An unlikeable woman, who is not sexually available, nor coy, is a forcefully unusual statement.

Madam Satan from The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Photo by Diyah Pera. Courtesy of Netflix.

Lilith appears in many guises in TV and movies: the progenitor of the vampire race in True Blood (2008–14); Madam Satan on The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018–ongoing); the frigid, hated ex-wife of sitcom icon Frasier. The sci-fi movie The Fifth Element (1997) turns the concept of Lilith on its head by having the main character Leeloo—a variation on Lilith—save humanity instead of devouring it. Her name has also been invoked as a statement of feminist independence: The Lilith Fair of the late 1990s adopted the legendary woman’s name for a music festival that showcased only female artists or woman-led bands.

Villanelle from Killing Eve. Courtesy of the BBC.

One recent TV show has gone above and beyond in complicating our understanding of Eve, and women. The BBC series Killing Eve (2018–ongoing), which follows an M15 agent, played by Sandra Oh, as she tracks down a psychopathic female assassin portrayed by Jodie Comer. Guess who is Eve? It’s not the assassin. The delight of the show is seeing the intense connection unfold between the so-called good and bad guys. Who is on which side becomes impossible to understand—both women contain multitudes. The sexual drama lies between the killer, Villanelle, and Eve—not a man. Though the title of the show probably refers literally to Villanelle’s overarching plans, it’s also a fitting metaphor for the destruction of the story of Eve itself—and all the misery, unfair expectations, and misrepresentation that have come along with it.

from Artsy News

#Artsy News

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tonidorsay · 8 years ago

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Ok, Tumblr peeps... ya'll are tough and cynical, but hey...

Yeah, I know. Fuckin Boomers fuck the world, the Xers do jack but watch it, and now you gotta clean that shit up while paying fucking debts or working for one third what they made at the same job.

So you know I wrote a book. I am writing more of them. Not the boring ass trans shit book that none of ya want, but a fun book about magical girls and stuff.

Only, it isn’t all that fun all the time.

You see, the Girls are fighting the Agents of Oblivion. Oblivion is the personification of his name, and that means he’s the end of everything.

He even has five Riders, because he thinks Apocalypse is a candy ass and that other guy is distracted.

But before we get to them, we gotta uncover what’s going on.

So, let’s talk about villains for a moment.

Oppression. Be it misogyny or transphobia or racism or the rest, it is always an expression of a formula.

I express that formula directly: Anxiety/Aversion/Animus, singly or in any combination plus social power is how oppression works.

Now, social power stems from those things which act to limit or hinder individual Agency – social power is Structure.

What if all those things were demigods?

Lesser powers, their will bent towards service of their masters?

Anxiety, Aversion, and Animus are The Three. This cycle of effort to bring Oblivion through, they are the major leaders. They played a role previously, but they didn’t succeed because they served other forces.

They are partnered with The Five: Apathy, Avarice, Deceit, Privilege, and Stigma.

The Five are the ringleaders of the larger group known as The Structure.

All of them have lesser demigods working for them.

Anxiety, for example, has Humiliation, Disrespect, Inadequacy, Alienation, and Terror working for him.

Animus has Aggression, Frustration, Insecurity, Envy, and Hate. Those last two have been around a very long while – they were Known in Ancient Greece. You might recall a less flattering version of Strife, who has gone solo, from the Disney Hercules.

He’s still pissed about that. Which might be why there has been so much of him in the Disney back offices and leadership team over the last several years…

There are over 60 of these buggers on the sheet I am referencing that lays out all the ways they work and interconnect.

One of Stigma’s Lieutenants has jumped ship, though. Seems he both wised up to the fact that when Oblivion comes, they all go to, but moreso it seems his power is not as influential as it once was – he is disrepute.

You may get to know him as Alley.

Avarice is the de facto head at present, and one of the most Powerful. So powerful he may just have assumed a role as a person on Earth. And be influencing events more directly.

Any of this sounding vaguely familiar?

Feel like you are living in a world that is controlled and dominated by demigods who corrupt people with miasmas and humours?

These are the folks that the Contras are fighting. Sometimes they are easy. Lazy or distracted or overconfident. Sometimes they are hard.

But they are Gods, able to twist reality and warp things, and as the gals climb the ladder towards the Tower, they will fight more and more of them.

Sometimes they will be joined by The Party. The Party is the West Coast magical guy team.

Yes, you read that right. Magical guys. And they will be done straight. Gay, trans, one AceAro who has a dark sense of humor.

Sometimes they will be joined by the Rebels, who have been at this a lot longer, as they gained their powers when they were in their early teens. They are on the East Coast. Vermont, specifically.

Oh, I should note that two of this team are a couple, and the black gal is Justice and the other gal is Liberty, and yeah…

Trans gal on that team, too.

I absolutely promise that Nazis get punched (one gets a full missile launcher shot at him in the first book!), and there will be two occasions where the orange one gets what is coming to him. As well as his cronies.

I can also state that apparently, and over my objections, later in the series we will see giant robots and we will see Kaiju. I was trying very hard not to let that happen, but, well, you know how villains are,

Motherfuckers do not know when to give up. Specially these villains, who more often than not understand that monologuing is bad, and killing them is more fun if it hurts a lot.

ContraMagica is a 300 plus page Outline spanning at least 11 books.

It may take the form of a light novel and the conventions of the magical girl and magical idol genres, but it is a full on, hard core, old style fairy tale structured within the Hero’s journey that has given us Epic Fantasy works from Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter to Song of fire and ice and more.

Except, for once, all the lead characters are women, and both women of color and lgbt women are everywhere.

If you have ever read my what is series, you likely know I understand this stuff on the “academic” level. You probably know that I get these things better than pretty much 98% of our haters.

This is what happens when you take those things and put them into a really fun story. One that is inspired by Ghibli films and Ghost in the shell and Madoka and Yuki Yuna and the darker stuff but still brings out the light.

Maybe you hear me talk about girl power and you think, oh fuck no, not more of this live and peace and kindness crap.

Well, this isn’t that kind of girl power.

When you get a moment, go out and do some research. Seriously. Go out and find twenty five characteristics that define what the fuck Girl power really if. Broaden your search into the power of the feminine, too.

It will take effort. Because the vast majority of it is either Terf shit that stops at three things or religious shit that stops at five or a bled of both that says smile bitch and say thank you when he pulls out.

Sorry, that doesn’t do shit for me.

But there is value in womanhood, in the bonds of it and the aspects of it that need not be opposite of or complementary to masculinity.

And toxic masculinity is rampant, as well.

I had to figure that out. I had to dive into it and go beyond the silly shit and let me tell ya, I got 40 elements of Girl Power.

That change things in a subversive way that you know I love.

That is the power of these gals.

But wait!

Even after all of that, and I know ya’ll are like “yawn, yeah, whatevs”, there are a couple more things…

Each of these gals has five romantic aspects to them. Over the course of the novels, they will explore these, from crushes to the two separate romantic leads for each on, to the person who keeps making stuff hard, and to the friend who is there for them.

Yeah, even the Ace lead. She’s Ace, but she’s not Aro. But she has more going on, and what you might think is her basis for being Ace ain’t it.

And then, of course, these women are not whole people. The Contras don’t have the happy background of your usual Magical girl. All of them had lives that sucked, lives that hurt and broke and pushed them.

Remember, again, I am both a sociologist and a psychologist. These gals have issues. And I am just starting to explore them. For instance, there is a moment mentioned in book one where Lark, who is easily the baddest black magical girl I know, with her everyday goth look and her Victorian plus maid powered gear and her snakes and Houdon force and old brujha, is accosted by guys on Campus and is pretty much unable to respond and it falls to the Latina gal to come in and scare them off.

Why would she be that way? Why did Tally spend forty plus years waiting for mr right, and what happened that she might do it again?

These are gals with issues you will recognize.

This is ContraMagica. It isn’t going to be PreCure or Sailor Moon (neither of which I have seen more than two episodes of, btw, lol).

It is everything I have in me – all of it – poured out for you, but cleverly disguised as a kick ass magical girl superhero women’s story hidden in the YA field.

That is all of it. If you still go meh, well, I at least tried, lol.

But tell people about this. Let them know that I have five years or less locked down of my life to tell this massive story, and if I am lucky, maybe make a bit (seriously, a buck a book is what most authors make on trade paperbacks retail, so it takes like everyone to make an HP).

It isn’t great art. Not war and peace.

But i like to think it’s a going to be a great read.

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sarabizmedia-blog · 8 years ago

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Reasons why “Beauty and the Beast” was a success at the Box Office

Disney’s new live action musical, “Beauty and the Beast” has already topped the $490 million mark at the worldwide box office as it nears into its second weekend. The musical took in $10.9 million domestically on Thursday, although down only 5% from the previous day, taking the week’s total to $228.6 million and making the film one of the top 7 opening weeks of all time in North America. The weekday numbers rival those for summer and holidays, as noted by Disney. "Beauty and the Beast” took in $17.8 million internationally, increasing the overseas total to $262 million. China is leading with $60.3 million, followed by the U.K with $34.2 million and Mexico at $18.4 million. The film is already the 171st highest worldwide grosser, running behind “Clash of Titans” with $493.2 million. It surpassed the final $452 million box office for Disney’s animated 1991 “Beauty and the Beast” earlier this week.

By updating a “tale as old as time” for a new generation of moviegoers while keeping the magic from the 1991 animated version of “Beauty and the Beast” for an older audience, “Beauty and the Beast” continues Disney’s successful collection of live-action remakes of their cartoon favorites, such as “The Jungle Book” and “Cinderella”.

One of the reasons why “Beauty and the Beast” was a success is because of the leading role played by Emma Watson. As an actress who started her career playing Hermione Granger in all eight of the Harry Potter films, movie fans around the globe grew up with Watson. After leaving Hogwarts behind in 2011, she has been very picky with her projects. She only took supporting or ensemble roles in “Noah”, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”, and “The Bling Ring”, and seemed to be waiting for the right blockbuster to headline. Emma Watson’s candor and political drive has also earned her a passionate following on social media, where her 24 million followers on Twitter surpasses Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Downey Jr., and her 34 million followers on Facebook was available to check out trailers and behind the scenes photo from the “Beauty and the Beast” set. According to ComScore survey, 28% of audiences went to see the film just for Emma Watson. As a film about girl power, 60% of “Beauty and the Beast” moviegoers were females. With the help of Emma Watson who is an active feminist, the remake continued the first film’s message of female empowerment.

The film’s success also comes from the beloved 1991 original animated movie. Many moviegoers who went to see “Beauty and the Beast” were the now grown up adults who watched and loved the 1991 film and they, in turn, wanted to share the magic of the film with their own children. Familied accounted for half of the opening weekend audience, with the two largest demograhpics made up from children under 12 and people between the ages of 26 and 34, the same age group that were pre-adolescents when the animated film hit theaters. The filmmakers also left the plot from the animated film intact, adding a couple of new songs. This increased nostalgia among the audiences, which contributed to the films success.

The film couldn’t have been successful without the studio's name. In the recent years, Disney is dominating the film industry, releasing the Star Wars saga, Avengers sequels, as well as the elaborate live action fairy tales. With Netflix, the internet, and quality cable programs making it harder for studios to figure out how to get consumers out of their homes and into theaters, Disney has figured out how to sell contents that can’t be replicated on an iPhone or high-tech televisions. Their logos promise audiences that their films will be high quality, good content films.

The timing of the film was a major key with its success. It has been a long time without a major family film release, and the box office has been dominated by many violent films, such as “Logan”, “Get Out”, and “Kong:Skull Islands”. With schools on rolling spring breaks, parents are looking for something to do with their children. This helped “Beauty and the Beast” become the number one choice for moviegoers with families over the weekend.

http://variety.com/2017/film/box-office/beauty-and-the-beast-emma-watson-box-office-1202011723/

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tonidorsay · 8 years ago

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So you know I wrote a book. I am writing more of them. Not the boring ass trans shit book that none of ya want, but a fun book about magical girls and stuff.

Only, it isn’t all that fun all the time.

You see, the Girls are fighting the Agents of Oblivion. Oblivion is the personification of his name, and that means he’s the end of everything.

He even has five Riders, because he thinks Apocalypse is a candy ass and that other guy is distracted.

But before we get to them, we gotta uncover what’s going on.

So, let’s talk about villains for a moment.

Oppression. Be it misogyny or transphobia or racism or the rest, it is always an expression of a formula.

I express that formula directly: Anxiety/Aversion/Animus, singly or in any combination plus social power is how oppression works.

Now, social power stems from those things which act to limit or hinder individual Agency – social power is Structure.

What if all those things were demigods?

Lesser powers, their will bent towards service of their masters?

They are partnered with The Five: Apathy, Avarice, Deceit, Privilege, and Stigma.

The Five are the ringleaders of the larger group known as The Structure.

All of them have lesser demigods working for them.

Anxiety, for example, has Humiliation, Disrespect, Inadequacy, Alienation, and Terror working for him.

He’s still pissed about that. Which might be why there has been so much of him in the Disney back offices and leadership team over the last several years…

There are over 60 of these buggers on the sheet I am referencing that lays out all the ways they work and interconnect.

You may get to know him as Alley.

Avarice is the de facto head at present, and one of the most Powerful. So powerful he may just have assumed a role as a person on Earth. And be influencing events more directly.

Any of this sounding vaguely familiar?

Feel like you are living in a world that is controlled and dominated by demigods who corrupt people with miasmas and humours?

These are the folks that the Contras are fighting. Sometimes they are easy. Lazy or distracted or overconfident. Sometimes they are hard.

But they are Gods, able to twist reality and warp things, and as the gals climb the ladder towards the Tower, they will fight more and more of them.

Sometimes they will be joined by The Party. The Party is the West Coast magical guy team.

Yes, you read that right. Magical guys. And they will be done straight. Gay, trans, one AceAro who has a dark sense of humor.

Sometimes they will be joined by the Rebels, who have been at this a lot longer, as they gained their powers when they were in their early teens. They are on the East Coast. Vermont, specifically.

Oh, I should note that two of this team are a couple, and the black gal is Justice and the other gal is Liberty, and yeah…

Trans gal on that team, too.

Motherfuckers do not know when to give up. Specially these villains, who more often than not understand that monologuing is bad, and killing them is more fun if it hurts a lot.

ContraMagica is a 300 plus page Outline spanning at least 11 books.

Except, for once, all the lead characters are women, and both women of color and lgbt women are everywhere.

If you have ever read my what is series, you likely know I understand this stuff on the “academic” level. You probably know that I get these things better than pretty much 98% of our haters.

Maybe you hear me talk about girl power and you think, oh fuck no, not more of this live and peace and kindness crap.

Well, this isn’t that kind of girl power.

Sorry, that doesn’t do shit for me.

But there is value in womanhood, in the bonds of it and the aspects of it that need not be opposite of or complementary to masculinity.

And toxic masculinity is rampant, as well.

I had to figure that out. I had to dive into it and go beyond the silly shit and let me tell ya, I got 40 elements of Girl Power.

That change things in a subversive way that you know I love.

That is the power of these gals.

But wait!

Even after all of that, and I know ya’ll are like “yawn, yeah, whatevs”, there are a couple more things…

Yeah, even the Ace lead. She’s Ace, but she’s not Aro. But she has more going on, and what you might think is her basis for being Ace ain’t it.

Why would she be that way? Why did Tally spend forty plus years waiting for mr right, and what happened that she might do it again?

These are gals with issues you will recognize.

This is ContraMagica. It isn’t going to be PreCure or Sailor Moon (neither of which I have seen more than two episodes of, btw, lol).

It is everything I have in me – all of it – poured out for you, but cleverly disguised as a kick ass magical girl superhero women’s story hidden in the YA field.

That is all of it. If you still go meh, well, I at least tried, lol.

It isn’t great art. Not war and peace.

But i like to think it’s a going to be a great read.

You can buy it here : https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B071YM6FJY/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1493094404&sr=1-1

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