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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years ago

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Patricia Highsmith: The problem of good art made by bad people

No writer would ever betray his secret life. It would be like standing naked in public.

- Patricia Highsmith, the novelist writing to a friend in 1940

Patricia Highsmith, who died in 1995 having written a series of psychological thrillers, including The Talented Mr Ripley and Strangers on a Train and the romance The Price of Salt, left two sets of diaries hidden in a linen closet in her home in Ticino, Switzerland.

In one she recorded details about her professional life: plot ideas, philosophical musings and thoughts on writing. In the other she documented her private reflections and memories, including a single sexual encounter with the writer Arthur Koestler (a “miserable, joyless episode”) and her efforts, through psychotherapy, to “get myself into a condition to be married”.

She had no more compassion for men than she did for women. In one entry Highsmith writes that “the American male does not know what to do with a girl once he has her. He is not really depressed or inhibited by his inherited or environmentally conceived Puritan restraints: he simply has no goal within the sexual situation”.

Highsmith’s diaries, which run to more than 8,000 pages, have been pored over by biographers, but have never before been made public, or in this case interwoven into a single narrative of the life of a complex woman who thought deeply about themes of good and evil, loneliness and intimacy.

It was in her diary that she described becoming sexually obsessed with a customer at Bloomingdale’s in New York, whom she later followed to her home, provoking observations about murder and love.

She had an obsession about detailing absolutely everything in her life, very much like Sylvia Plath. And she drew on the diaries for her novels, which explore the notion of obsession, guilt and murder, and reject rationality and logic for the darker elements of human personality.” Dubbed “the poet of apprehension“ by the novelist Graham Greene, who said she “created a world without moral endings … Nothing is certain when we have crossed this frontier”, the Texas-born Highsmith was deeply influenced by European existentialists such as Albert Camus and Søren Kierkegaard, and those influences are deeply felt in her diaries.

She was a lesbian who hated women, totally politically incorrect in lots of ways, and certainly not a poster girl for the feminist movement. She hated blacks, Jews, men, and women. A sort of equal opportunities hater then. In mitigation Highsmith was self aware of her own beliefs and it mortified her and was a source of constant anxiety. She herself was fighting many demons including her mother’s rejection, an attempted seduction by her father as a child, and being sexually abused by two travelling salesmen. She had a tough life.

But there is a question over how far Highsmith can now be assimilated into contemporary culture of ‘wokeness’ and ‘MeToo’.

There is no question in person she could be a monstrous, violent and quite unpleasant woman. Knowing about her life and views could for some make it difficult to read her works. But for all that I think the diaries’ publication could help to again reveal that, contrary to popular imagination, creativity is not necessarily rooted in our best instincts.

These same highly culturally charged debates raged around the controversial French writer Celine in France. In Germany Wagner continues to be a touchy issue. Or back again in France, the recent controversy at the Césars where many people walked out as child minor rapist Roman Polanski was honoured for his latest film.

Going further back Gaugin was a pedophile. Degas was an anti-Semite. Caravaggio killed a man. Where do you draw the line? When do you draw the line?

Some argue art cannot be good or evil. Only the artist can. What he/she presents as art is a different dimension of thinking and somehow not really representative of the artist. I’m not entirely convinced by that argument. If only because great art is never transmitted through an empty vessel but is actively germinated through the life experiences of the artist. But also more importantly most artists don’t separate themselves from their art as they are convinced their art comes from the deepest depths of their being.

We don’t have to be puritans to acknowledge that some henious actions deserve more consideration than historically allotted to a consideration of the artist and his/her works.

But those who are ‘woke’ liberal left activists arguably seem to be advocating a one size that fits all approach. There is no wriggle room for discourse correction or allowing nuance to inform the conversation. And I use the word ‘conversation’ deliberately because such things are nearly always being worked out in real time and also each one of us ascribe different values to different things e.g. Picasso cheats on his lovers and so I don’t like his art, whilst others would say, so what? Grow up. There is a serious slippery slope that if you eliminate the bad artist and writer from the canon and you might as well eliminate art and literature itself. And that’s where we might well end up.

I believe that adjusting personal behaviour seems much easier than enforcing an interpretative cultural lens on a shifting audience and telling them this is how you should enjoy art.

I personally believe it’s a matter of personal conscience and conviction. If you’ve really searched your heart, and found that a piece of art is just that important to you, as many people do without admitting it out loud, then it should be fine to engage with it. But the imperative now is to privately think about why it matters to you. If I can justify that to myself then yes, I will go ahead and ‘enjoy’ that piece of art regardless of how much of a shit the artist was or is.

To me it’s not a question of compartmentalising, of ignoring or suspending my disgust with an artist's personal behaviour so as to concentrate on the art. I'm watching and reading because I expect art to be about moral dangers in a way that is less didactic than essays are. I expect art to be troubling because I expect people to be troubling. I am prepared to like and dislike something in every work. I can also appreciate the aesthetic genius of a moral monster without feeling that I am becoming inured to monstrosity.

For this reason when I for example look at Benvenuto Cellini, creator of Perseus With the Head of Medusa, was a murderer and a rapist. He killed at least two men and was accused by a model of sexually assaulting her. This does not stop me from looking with great amazement and curiosity at the naked and sexual Perseus With the Head of the Medusa. The knowledge of the immorality of the creator does not distract from my enjoyment of his creation; indeed I am made even more curious to know how beauty is perceived by a violently troubled man.

In the end for me, and I can only speak for myself, contrary to popular imagination, creativity is not necessarily rooted in our best instincts. Nietzsche said, “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” I like that.

A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To the artist, to paraphrase Pearl S. Buck, a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this a cruel overpowering necessity to create - so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.

In Patricia Highsmith’s case it’s revealing she said once in a sly backhanded way, “My New Year’s Eve Toast: to all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle — may they never give me peace.” A true great artist never know really knows peace or contentment for this is the price of creation. The intensity of personal turmoil is the fuel of their creativity.

The Greeks may have believed that they had “muses” whispering ideas in their ears. Or that the Romans believed they wrote with their “genius”. But I suspect the best artists are those that are in touch with and confront their humanity, at their best and at their worst.

#highsmith #quote #art #aesthetics #bad art #literature #nietzsche

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aotopmha · 3 years ago

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I loved how you paralleled mikasa to yelena but i feel like you didn't mention all aspects of yelena in your answer. While the character itself may not be deep, her presence felt important. I loved how she shoved the truth about hatred in everybody's faces by the fire. Don't you think it's interesting that what makes her character stand out is that she's mesmerized by the idea of saving the world?

Well, I think all of this really loops back to what I said about her character.

She's competent, but not particularly complex.

The idea of "saving" the world is her primary motivation, which she shares with Zeke as an unquestioning follower of him. Zeke wants to "save" everyone, so does she.

Despite the window-dressing of competency, all of her actions come down to helping Zeke's plan along.

Her calling everyone out is another action in the line of being really competent, but in the end I feel like it really doesn't say much about her as an individual.

I find some of her individual moments entertaining: when she shoots the dude who insults Sasha, tricks the Marleyan ships to go to Paradis or as you say, when she calls everyone out by the campfire.

I think I agree in that her character has presence, she's memorable, but when I dig in for depth, it again, all comes down to following Zeke because he saved her.

I've been trying to get into the FMA manga and she reminds me a lot of the female characters in that series.

They do the aesthetic "strong female character" thing really well and have "presence", but when you dig in, none of them really seem to have much depth beyond their identities as women (I think Riza is the closest). That would be fine if there were other complex female characters, but I think most of them come down to their relationships with men or having a child or your one-note characters with "presence" like Olivier and Lust.

I've seen the FMA manga/Brotherhood held up as some sort of feminist example of writing for so long on this site, but all of the female characters are as much as I've dived in, end up in supporting roles, too.

Ed, Al and Mustang are the important characters and I very much do not consider that kind of screentime allotment alone "feminist".

Anyway, I derailed a little. (I have a lot of feelings now that I've gotten to read more on the female characters in the FMA manga.)

The same is actually with Jujutsu Kaisen's female cast. Some of them have wonderful charisma and some depth – I like them, but they're not the most complex characters in the story. All of the dudes are still more complex.

Going back to Yelena, though, just like with Olivier, again, I appreciate presence and unwavering competency. Bad Bitch Energy can be wonderful.

But whenever I see characters like that, I wish they were backed by more depth and conflict and that they *would* waver.

Again, as with everything, each to their own, of course.

Thank you for the ask!

#Attack on Titan #Shingeki no Kyojin #Yelena #AoT #SnK #Asks

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thegnosticdread · 4 years ago

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Adam, Lilith, & Eve

Originally posted on: https://thegnosticdread.com/adam-lilith-eve/

The story of Adam & Eve is probably one of the most well known stories in history thanks to the widespread influence of Judeo-Christian culture. It’s a tale of the first man and woman whom all of humanity descends from according to the Biblical myth. In this post, I will use the Biblical and Gnostic traditions as well as sources beyond scripture to explain the symbolic significance of each of these characters as well as a character that is less known but has gained more popularity in recent times, Lilith.

Adam

Adam represents the Divine Masculine and Primordial Man, as well as the entirety of the human race depending on the context. For example, in Genesis 1:26-27 –

“Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness, so they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move on the earth. God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.”

The Hebrew word that is translated to “humankind” above is אָדָם “adam”, showing that Adam in this sense refers to the human race as a whole, both male and female being created together from the beginning. The verse also says that the human race, both men and women, were created in the image of the Divine. Therefore, the Divine must contain both masculine and feminine energies. Perfectly balanced. As all things should be. This verse also confirms that the human race has dominion over all the Earth. Therefore, the logical conclusion is that humanity, both men and women, are indeed God (Goddess) manifested into the physical. This is supported by many traditions including the Qur’an:

“Indeed, I will make upon the earth a successive authority.” – al-Qur’an 2:30 “We said to the angels, “Prostrate before Adam”; so they prostrated…”

– al-Qur’an 2:34

Many use Genesis 1:26-27 as proof that Adam (the first man) indeed had a wife that was created at the same time as him, namely, Lilith in contrast to Eve who was created later from Adam’s rib. However, this is either a misunderstanding or a misrepresentation of the source material. I will explain Lilith’s origin later in her section. For now, we will turn to the Gnostic tradition concerning the origin of Adam.

In the Gnostic scriptures, Adam is a personified principle that existed first within the Pleroma as pure mind distinct from matter and emanating from the Monad. This pure mind represented the human Reason conceived as the World-Soul (Anima mundi). This is similar to the concept of Adam Kadmon in Kabbalah. To summarize the Gnostic myths, they go on to tell about how Yaldabaoth (Yahweh or “God” from the Old Testament) and his Archons desired to create a being in the image of themselves and in the image of the original Adam within the Pleroma. When the formation of the body was complete, it was lifeless, for Yaldabaoth nor the Archons had the power to give the body life on their own. Yaldabaoth then took power he had stolen from his mother Sophia (the principle of Divine Wisdom and the principle of the Divine Feminine) and breathed it into the lifeless shell that they called “Adam”. When they had done this, Adam sprang to life. This caused Yaldabaoth and his Archons to become jealous, for them being born of ignorance, they had not realized that they had surrendered their stolen power to Adam, who was now luminous and more intelligent than them. This caused the Archons to throw Adam into the darkest depths of matter. It would later take Eve to raise Adam up out of darkness.

Lilith

The Hebrew word

לִּילִית

“lilith” appears only once in the Bible, in the Book of Isaiah 34:14 –

“Wild animals and wild dogs will congregate there; wild goats will bleat to one another. Yes, nocturnal animals will rest there and make for themselves a nest.”

The translators of the New English Translation translate “Lilith” to mean “nocturnal animals” and had this to say in their notes –

“The precise meaning of לִּילִית (lilit) is unclear, though in this context the word certainly refers to some type of wild animal or bird. The word appears to be related to לַיְלָה (laylah, “night”). Some interpret it as the name of a female night demon, on the basis of an apparent Akkadian cognate used as the name of a demon. Later Jewish legends also identified Lilith as a demon.”

It’s true indeed that the Akkadian language did have a similar word to Lilith – “Lilu” – and it is debated if the two words are cognates or related. However, it should be noted that Lilu in the Akkadian language is a masculine word, not feminine, and seems to be a general term for “demon”. In the Sumerian king list, the father of Gilgamesh is said to be a lilu. Referring back to the verse in Isaiah, it would make sense that it is referring to some type of wild animal or bird based on the fact the verses immediately before and following verse 14 are referring to animals –

“Her fortresses will be overgrown with thorns; thickets and weeds will grow in her fortified cities. Jackals will settle there; ostriches will live there.” – Isaiah 34:13 “Owls will make nests and lay eggs there; they will hatch them and protect them. Yes, hawks will gather there, each with its mate. Carefully read the scroll of the Lord! Not one of these creatures will be missing, none will lack a mate. For the Lord has issued the decree, and his own spirit gathers them. He assigns them their allotment; he measures out their assigned place. They will live there permanently; they will settle in it through successive generations.”

– Isaiah 34:15-17

The evidence doesn’t support the idea that Lilith was taken or censored out of the Bible to hide the fact that she was Adam’s first wife, as she does not appear in any Biblical apocrypha works, does not appear in any pseudepigrapha works from the Biblical period, is not mentioned in any of the gospels, and she does not appear in any of the Gnostic text from the Nag Hammadi Library, all text dating from a range of the 7th Century BCE to the 2nd Century CE. In Jewish tradition dating from the 6th century CE, Lilith is mentioned in three places within the Babylonian Talmud. Though she is not mentioned as being the wife of Adam, the text does seem to suggest she was a demon. However, it’s likely this view may have been established centuries later than when any of the previous biblical and deuterocanonical text were written and be based on the idea of the Akkadian word Lilu meaning demon.The earliest text referring to Lilith as the first wife of Adam comes from the medieval text titled The Alphabet of ben Sirach which scholars date as being written anywhere between 700 and 1000 CE. This work however was never understood as or treated as revealed or inspired scripture, rather the work was written and treated as a satire. It is from within this text alone that we are told the story of Lilith being Adam’s first wife who refused to submit to her husband.

“While God created Adam, who was alone, He said, ‘It is not good for man to be alone’ (Genesis 2:18). He also created a woman, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, ‘I will not lie below,’ and he said, ‘I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.’ Lilith responded, ‘We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.’ But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air.”

– The Alphabet of ben Sirach, fifth response to King Nebuchadnezzar.

Because of Lilith refusing to submit to Adam based on the idea that she was his equal, Lilith is sometimes exalted as a women’s empowerment or feminist icon. However, it should be noted and considered that the rest of the text goes on to describe Lilith as a demoness who terrorizes pregnant women, fornicates with demons, and murders infants. The work certainly does not paint a picture of Lilith being an ally to women. As the text is indeed a work of satire, it should also be considered that the text should not be taken too seriously in it’s treatment of Adam and Lilith. To the Gnostics, Adam and his wife Eve were seen as equals, and Eve especially was given high honor as she was responsible for Adam’s awakening.

Eve

Eve represents the Divine Feminine and is the archetype Mother of all Life. She is also responsible for Adam’s (humanity’s) awakening to their true Divine Self. As the daughter of or even a manifestation of Sophia, it was Eve who brought forth the life giving Light from the upper realms of the Pleroma into the darkness of matter so that Adam (humanity) can see. Upon seeing Adam cast in darkness by the Archons, Sophia sent her daughter Eve (also called Zoe which means “life”) to be a help and instructor to Adam and to reveal to him his true Divine nature and how to ascend back into the Pleroma from where his Spirit (the breath of life that was breathed into him) came. Eve then became hidden within Adam so that Yaldabaoth and his Archons would not be aware of her. While Adam laid dormant in the darkness he was thrown in, Eve spoke to him from within and said “Adam! Come alive! Arise upon the Earth!” Adam then sprang to life once again, and upon seeing the form of Eve said “You shall be called ‘Mother of the Living’. For it is you who have given me life.”While the Biblical text says that Eve was created from the rib of Adam, the Gnostic text demonstrates that this was a lie told in order to suppress the Divine Feminine principle and it’s role.

“Then the authorities were informed that their modeled form was alive and had arisen, and they were greatly troubled. They sent seven archangels to see what had happened. They came to Adam. When they saw Eve talking to him, they said to one another, “What sort of thing is this luminous woman? For she resembles that likeness which appeared to us in the light. Now come, let us lay hold of her and cast her seed into her, so that when she becomes soiled she may not be able to ascend into her light. Rather, those whom she bears will be under our charge. But let us not tell Adam, for he is not one of us. Rather let us bring a deep sleep over him. And let us instruct him in his sleep to the effect that she came from his rib, in order that his wife may obey, and he may be lord over her.”

Then Eve, being a force, laughed at their decision. She put mist into their eyes and secretly left her likeness with Adam.”

– On the Origin of the World

Having slipped away to be alone in the Garden of Eden, Eve was approached by the Serpent, though the exchange in the Gnostic texts is slightly different than the biblical version.

“And when he saw the likeness of their mother Eve he said to her, “What did God say to you? Was it ‘Do not eat from the tree of knowledge’?” She said, “He said not only, ‘Do not eat from it’, but, ‘Do not touch it, lest you die.'” He said to her, “Do not be afraid. In death you shall not die. For he knows that when you eat from it, your intellect will become sober and you will come to be like gods, recognizing the difference that obtains between evil men and good ones. Indeed, it was in jealousy that he said this to you, so that you would not eat from it.” Now Eve had confidence in the words of the instructor. She gazed at the tree and saw that it was beautiful and appetizing, and liked it; she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she gave some also to her husband, and he too ate it. Then their intellect became open. For when they had eaten, the light of knowledge had shone upon them.”

– On the Origin of the World

As you can see, Eve was Adam’s (and therefore, humanity’s) first Teacher, raising Adam up from the darkness of ignorance into the Light of Knowledge. She is also humanity’s first Mother, and therefore embodies the archetype of the Great Matriarch. Eve should never be thought of as being naive, submissive, or the blame for the Fall of Man in the way the Judeo-Christian religions have treated her with their Bible. It’s actually quite the opposite, and she should be honored as the Raising Up of Man. The Gnostics have always felt that we are greatly indebted to the Original Woman, who embodies the archetype of Sophia (Wisdom).To read the Gnostic text for yourself, check out

On the Origin of the World

& The Apocryphon of John

An excerpt of The Alphabet of ben Sirach concerning Lilith is on Wikipedia.

Peace, Love, & Balance

#gnosticism #hermeticism #spirituality #knowledgeofself #lefthandpath #thegnosticdread #alchemy #astrology #theurgy #magick #divination #tarot #tantra #yoga

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montagnarde1793 · 5 years ago

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Ribbons of Scarlet: A predictably terrible novel on the French Revolution (part 3)

Parts 1, 2, 4 and 5.

Style Issues

Stylistically, there’s a great deal of “tell don’t show” in this book, especially as regards the actual politics. The only things that are really concrete are the characters’ romantic entanglements and scenes of violence. This is a flaw that runs so deep that correcting it would mean writing a completely different book.

One thing that they could have done that would have made it somewhat more bearable, however, regards the use of language. In a book written in English but that takes place in France and where all the characters are French, please, I’m begging you, do not randomly (and often ungrammatically) insert whichever French words and phrases you half-remember from high school French class into descriptions and dialogue. It doesn’t give the characters a flavor of being French, it gives you a flavor of ignorance.

The key word here is “randomly”: note that I’m not talking about things like terms of address, exclamations, etc., for which there is an established convention, or terms for which there might not be an exact equivalent in English. No, I’m talking about this kind of thing: “[…] running a hand through his short-cropped noir hair” (p. 352). Please, resist the urge!

Also, this isn’t strictly a style issue, as the grammar is the least of the problems with it, but I don’t really know where else to put it... Each of the six parts opens with an epigraph. Here’s the one for Émilie de Sainte-Amaranthe’s (p. 437) :

“It was a sensual delight for l’homme rouge to see fall in the basket these charming heads and their ruby blood streaming under the hideous cleaver.”

—Archives Nationale [sic]

I can’t believe I have to say this to a fellow historian, but just saying a quote is from the archives is bizarrely and baffling amateurish. It’s like saying a quote is from the library, or from a book or from the internet. Without further information, it’s about as useful a citation as saying it came to you in a dream. Why? Because it tells us nothing about the author or the date or any kind of context and therefore gives us no real way of evaluating it — though the lurid, sensationalist language doesn’t inspire confidence. Since the author of this section more than any other seems to take as a principle of novel-writing that whatever is the most over-the-top makes for the best fiction, I would say sure, why not, but as the authors also apparently want their depiction of “history” to be taken seriously… I mean, what is there to even say?

Writing What You Want to Know

There’s a problem throughout this book with characters talking about 18th France like it’s a place they’ve only read about in books rather than the only place they’ve ever lived and therefore the only reality *they* know firsthand. Now, obviously, the authors, like the rest of us, *have* only read about a 200+ year-old setting in books (or come to know it through various types of primary sources), but good historical fiction should be able to make you forget that, or at least come close.

I can’t entirely decide whether we’re looking at a failure of research here or of imagination — or just clumsy handling of exposition. I suspect it’s some mixture of all three.

Allow me to explain. The clumsy exposition is a result of the aforementioned lack of trust in the reader as well, I suspect, of the few pages allotted to each author, which don’t allow for a more natural immersion of the reader into a world that is entirely alien to them but is made up of both new and familiar elements to the characters.

The research vs imagination issue is more complex. I’m a firm believer in the updated adage “write what you want to know,” but if you’re going to do that, the intermediate step between wanting and writing is inevitably research. And well, there’s research and there’s research. For a novel especially, you don’t just want to be researching what happened, the concrete material facts such as who was present for what event or what a given figure’s relationship was to the people around them, but also people’s mentalities/sensibilities. To plausibly write from their point of view, you also have to investigate the reasons they might have believed what they believed and to take that investigation seriously, whether or not you agree.

This was achieved better with some characters than others and again, I’m not entirely sure whether it’s for lack of research or lack of ability to empathize with certain points of view. Ironically, the chapter on Mme Élisabeth is probably the best handled. The author of that section says she wanted to be “fair” (back matter, p. 12) to her subject and I think she succeeds better than her co-authors, while showing that Mme Élisabeth, convinced of the absolute validity of the divine right of her brother, advocates at every turn for violently repressing the Revolution. She’s allowed to articulate her (frankly pretty abhorrent) beliefs in a plausible manner.

Perhaps the author of this section is just a better writer than her co-authors, but I think there’s more to it than that. I obviously can’t read minds, but from the text of the novel itself as well as from the authors’ notes, I get the impression that we’re dealing with a dual problem of epistemology (i.e. how do you know what you know?) and politics. In either case, it’s not a coincidence if Mme Élisabeth is the best drawn character… and Reine Audu and Pauline Léon are the worst.

First, on the epistemology side: whether consciously or not, it seems to me as if the authors largely started out with the assumption that they already basically understood their protagonists. Sophie de Grouchy is so ahead of her time she might as well be a modern woman, got it, no problem… Reine Audu is an avatar of the “mob,” (the author of her section’s words, not mine, back matter, p. 8), pitiable because of her poverty but with no real politics beyond that of hunger and resentment… Pauline Léon is a “well-intentioned extremist” to use TV Tropes parlance — you would think that label would apply better to Charlotte Corday, but the latter ends up being so saintly she basically converts Pauline Léon (in what is quite possibly the most maddening moment in the whole damn book)… and so on. If I’m right, the authors’ assumptions about these archetypes made them not really feel the need to dig too deeply into the question of what made these women tick, either through research or empathy.

We don’t know much about Reine Audu or Pauline Léon, but there has been a fair amount of research into the beliefs of the popular movement and revolutionary crowds from Georges Lefebvre onward (most of it tending to dispel the lazy stereotypes on display here). The authors either didn’t bother with it or made poor use of it (as is evidently the case with poor Dominique Godineau, who does figure in the bibliography).

The book does Pauline Léon a disservice on both sides, mischaracterizing her beliefs for good and for ill. They make feminism as a contemporary audience would understand it her primary cause and her support for the rest of the popular movement’s program (in which we learn that women and people of color are to be included, but not actually what it consists of...) accessory and easily disposable so Charlotte Corday can be proved right and “radical” men can prove to be the real enemy.

(Which… I could roll with it if the idea was just that men of all political flavors can be misogynists, but as usual, the message is all men are potential rapists (except Condorcet, Buzot, La Fayette and Louis XVI, of course) but the further left they are the rape-ier they get. That’s not how that works.)

Anyway, the point is, these are characters the authors seem to have gone in assuming they understood, either because they found them relatable or because they thought they knew what archetype they corresponded to. The author of the section on Mme Élisabeth, on the other hand, writes that this was a character that it took some effort to understand because the character’s worldview was so different from the author’s and that of her presumed readers. This was also the case to some degree with the author of Manon Roland’s section, who writes about having to grapple with her protagonist’s not being a feminist (a position that this author bizarrely seems to think was rare at the time). Regardless, in both cases, the effort to understand, along with the existence of more sources produced by the character they were attempting to inhabit, produced better results.

But again, I think there’s also a political element. Remember how I mentioned that this book’s main flaw is its feeling of artificiality? (I mean, to the point that the rest of this critique is really just about understanding why it feels so artificial.) One of the moments that felt the most authentic to me was Mme Élisabeth’s extravagant shoe-buying habit, her feeling bad about it and her confessor reassuring her that it’s fine because she hasn’t taken a vow of poverty, after all. And I don’t mean ‘authentic’ necessarily in the sense of ‘historically accurate’ — I don’t know enough about Mme Élisabeth off the top of my head to comment on her shoe collection. But I did think: there, consumerism and guilt about consumerism are in fact much more relatable to the middle class authors and their presumed middle class audience than hunger and privation — or activism relating to socio-economic issues, for that matter. Which is how we end up, here as in a lot of other media, with a relatable royal and revolutionary caricatures.

This is also a good demonstration of how research and imagination or empathy play off each other. Marge Piercy didn’t have more information about Pauline Léon than the authors of this book. In fact, she had less: she writes in the preface of her book that she learned that Léon’s mother was in fact still alive at the time of the Revolution when it was too late to change what she had written. Credit where credit is due, once again, this new book corrects that error.

But in every other respect, Piercy’s version is far superior, because Pauline Léon’s views as well as her experience are taken seriously. This is no doubt due in large part because Piercy herself has been an activist for various left-wing causes. Her activism surely allowed her to relate to her characters, but far from writing a simple projection from her own experience, it allowed her, just as importantly, to entertain the notion that there was something there to be taken seriously. And therefore, that it was worth researching what precisely these figures were fighting for and not simply the question of why people get caught up in “extremism.” That’s why Pauline Léon and Claire Lacombe’s chapters are the best in City of Darkness, City of Light, while Pauline Léon and Reine Audu’s are the worst in this book.

Next time: inaccuracies big and small!

#en anglais #French Revolution #Révolution française

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neshabeingchildish · 5 years ago

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Hensley & Char: Friends or Whatever || Part 4

@just-a-j-reallly @junknstu1f @henryharts

Hey, Friends. Mama has had A LONG week. Only a partial off day, and it was mostly crammed with stress of trying to get a friend miles away off of the streets, and also period probs and other pains. So, even though I know y’all ain’t rude about updates and are nice kids that allot me the time, I really wanted to get an update out to y’all. Thanks so much for reading this little thing.

Girl Code

Hensley. Was. So. Tired.

Between trying to be Kid Danger, keep it from not only her two best friends, but her unofficial girlfriend, Chloe… Who… It was difficult to work with on a daily basis because Chloe still wasn’t sure if she actually liked girls or not, but was certain that she liked Hensley, so Hensley just… never knew what they were supposed to be. Charlotte offered very little assistance, as she wasn’t a huge Chloe fan. Jasper offered no assistance as he was terrible with most girls in every way. Hensley was just about ready to give up on Chloe. Maybe some space was necessary. That would at least take away some of her stress...

It didn’t take away enough. Hensley was tired and Ray was not very attentive to her plight. Charlotte was forbidding her the very necessary usage of large quantities of coffee. Jasper was trying to talk to her about her bodily changes! And whenever she tried to cut corners, like with her Puerto Rican History test, things went wrong in inexplicable ways. Hensley was not a good liar and having to try to lie felt alien and awkward.

And now… Jasper had the AUDACITY to talk smack about Kid Danger??? She was hurt, offended, pissed off. The killing part was that she couldn’t even express WHY.

She couldn’t tell Jasper that he hurt her feelings for trash talking Kid Danger as Captain Man’s sidekick, because then she would undoubtedly break the oath, which was the most important deal that she had ever made in all of her 13 years.

“If Kid Danger were a boy, do you think she’d be better?” She asked, arms folded, glaring. Charlotte’s eyebrows raised and she and Hensley stared Jasper down.

He scoffed and asked, “Did you just assume Kid Danger’s gender?”And NOW, Charlotte was giving HER the look that she should have been giving Jasper.

Hensley fumbled over her words, and finally landed on, “She identifies as a girl, I’m sure I’ve heard somewhere, so no, I’m not assuming. But, you’re deflecting, and being sexist, anti-fair, ummm… using gender identity as a smokescreen AND only even considering the possibility of Kid Danger being someone other than a girl because you don’t value her services, or her womanhood.”

Jasper gasped, “I would never do those things!” he had his hand over his chest in disbelief of even the implication that he would be so sexist. Sure… he was… not a feminist icon or anything, but he was at the very least your average teenage boy.

Charlotte nodded, “Yeah, Hens… Jasper’s an idiot, but he’s not a bigot… I sure hope…” She looked suspiciously at him again, because for all she knew, maybe he WAS. He didn’t frequently have nice things to say about his mom... Jasper scoffed and gave Charlotte a pleading look. If Hensley was going insane, that was one thing, but he needed Charlotte, the voice of reason and respect to be in his corner for this. Their stares studied each other a while. “He’s not, he’s not..” Charlotte landed on. Focusing again on Hensley, she wondered, “Why are you getting this worked up? I’ve literally heard you say and watched you do things that were teeming with unbridled internalized misogyny. The dynamics of your little relationship with Chloe is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to even you being counterproductive for women’s rights and respect. When did you get all ‘Girls Rule’ on us?”

“It’s the power of Kid Danger. She’s helped me see my problematic gay area and also inspire hope in Swellview for not just kids, but GIRLS, Charlotte, and what’s Jasper suggesting? That he, a boy, would just BE a better sidekick? What are even his qualifications? Does he think bucket knowledge and overactive glands will catch the Phone Shark?” Charlotte started laughing.

Jasper shouted, “Hey! NOW who’s not being fair?” He looked seriously hurt, and felt like that was a low blow, but...

“Still you,” both girls answered. Jasper looked at Charlotte in disbelief, though she wasn’t sure why he thought she’d take HIS side, but Piper soon came in to terrorize him anyway, so Hensley was at least free from that distress. But, only a moment later, she had to rush out to work, on a Sunday, no less! Charlotte was suspicious. It wasn’t the first time that Hensley had left her at her house alone, but on a day that her job wasn’t closed and with a ridiculous excuse, piled on top of the fact that non of that feminist word vomit sounded sincere, even to Charlotte, someone who held feminist values very dear and often butted heads with Hensley for being a girl traitor. Once, she even said, “Piper has more Girl Code than you do!!!” And since then, Piper and she had been doing a thing where they call Girl Code, and Hensley can’t participate because she’s a girl traitor… But… Kid Danger made her see the err of her ways? In the midst of a Captain Man failure? “Something’s going on with that girl…” Charlotte mused to herself.

Hensley should’ve known that she couldn’t keep this secret for very long from Charlotte. She was too smart. She was as smart as she was cute, but how cute she was didn’t matter right now! She cost Hensley her job… the one thing that she was so fond of actually doing! She wasn’t necessarily GOOD at it, as firmly stated by Jasper, but it mattered to her, and Ray barely gave her a chance to explain herself. He fired her. On the spot. She came to him and honestly told him how her supersmart friend figured it out, and what should she have done? Continued to deny it and make a fool out of herself for trying to fool Charlotte, who knew, at that moment, that it was the truth? Should she have denied it until she was red in the face and Charlotte was consumed by the anger of her grasping so tightly to the lie? Should she have just sacrificed her friend and kept her oath?

The truth was, she had every intention of doing all of that. Of keeping the secret and moving forcefully forward with the lie, but for that moment that she saw that Charlotte knew, she realized that she had her best friend back. There were no more secrets between them and Charlotte wasn’t even mad at her for keeping this secret. She was just curious and felt accomplished that she figured it out. When nobody else did. Nobody else noticed that her hair and Kid Danger’s hair were growing at the same rate. Nobody noticed that they were the same build and size. Nobody noticed that her lies didn’t make any sense. Nobody except for Charlotte.

Hensley had always liked attention. She was a friendly baby and toddler. She was a class clown in elementary. She was the one that roasted her friends in small gatherings. She had nights that she cooked dinner and days that she hosted the group hangouts. But in her quest to keep her oath and in her mission to be the best Kid Danger that she could be… she had to fade into backgrounds a little. If she was going to be a secret super sidekick, she had to step out of the limelight some, at home and at school. She had to be noticed less and not stand out, even as the gay girl. She let her hair grow out and wore it down, brushed it and pinned it on one side. She wore bracelets on the arm of her Whiz Watch and stopped trying to find cute clothes. Her flannels were fine. She tossed her skirts. She had basically a casual uniform. Regular degular girl with no fashion sense, and a small sense of humor.

And it hadn’t taken long for kids to forget what they used to think of Hensley Hart. Mitch Bilsky still called her Henry and cackled at how unoriginal he was. Chloe still only kissed her in secret and pretended that she was just one of her friends in public. But, aside from that, everything else for Hensley had to change to fit her new sidekick narrative. Even her relationships with Jasper and Charlotte. She saw them both less and they saw each other more. She knew that they felt neglected at times, but… she believed in what she had committed to. Ray didn’t even ask her any of this. He declared, “You took an oath,” and lost all trust in her because she had one smart friend that she couldn’t bare the thought of leaving out another moment, and certainly couldn’t stomach the chance of losing her to a lie.

Charlotte felt terrible. Hensley was mad at her and they hadn’t actually had a fight since the first year that they met. It sucked, too. There was something very troubling about having Hensley look at her differently. She was still talking to her, but she was sad and sounded depressed and basically let Charlotte know that she blamed her for this. Well, Charlotte could be a lot of things, but someone who lets her friends down was not one of them. She couldn’t for sure tell if it was because she had so few friends in the first place or if it was because Hensley happened to be the single most important person in her life, but at any rate… She quickly took action to make this right.

Typical smart girl things - research, networking, and calling Hensley to make sure that she got her butt to business and did what needed to be done to save face in front of her kind of obnoxious box, Charlotte was starting to guess, but she’d have to figure that out later. Right now, she had a Hensley to fix.

And YAYYYYY! They saved the day! Well, Charlotte did, anyway. At least led Hensley to it. She couldn’t take credit for punching the guy and capturing him. But, now they both had a job in the Man Cave! She. Was. Working. For. Captain. Man… Who… She couldn’t deny it, was a little bit of a mess. But, she knew that with her around at the very least to keep Hensley on the up and up, maybe, just maybe, she could help out the hero of Swellview too.

After they went up the tube, Charlotte screaming and holding on to Hensley for dear life, they came out on the other end, from one of those old walk in phone booths that Charlotte had often passed and wondered to herself, “Why the heck is that thing still standing?” Hensley realized that she was still Kid Danger, checked her surroundings, and blew a bubble to get back into her regular clothes. She stepped out of the booth and reached for Charlotte’s hand.

Both girls’ adrenaline was still pumping. Charlotte’s because she had just for the first time been propelled through miles of tubing, like some type of amusement park thrill ride, and Hensley because she wasn’t alone anymore.

To be fair, she adored Ray/Captain Man, but that was a grown man with bizarre habits and less than ideal solutions. Charlotte was her best friend, and the smartest person that she knew. She was always getting her out of trouble and having her back and lifting her up. She threatened to slug her sometimes, and sometimes did take a swing at her, but also… nobody else would have worked to get her back into Captain Man’s good graces and take basically no credit for all of the work she did. She did that JUST because they were friends. Hensley smiled down at her and Charlotte looked at their hands and pulled hers back, suddenly. “That’s enough contact for one day,” she said.

Hensley shrugged her shoulders and they began to walk. “Thank you, by the way. You were right what you said back there. We really DO need you.” Hensley wrapped an arm around Charlotte and they continued walking. Charlotte was going to remind her that she’d JUST SAID that it was enough contact for the day, but… This was pretty comfortable. She didn’t mind just a little bit more contact today. Besides, the adrenaline was still coursing. She needed a nice, leisurely pace right now.

“You’re welcome,” Charlotte eventually said. She had been walking and thinking. It was unfair of Hensley’s boss to fire her that way and it actually wasn’t really Charlotte’s fault that she was smart enough to figure out the secret, so despite the fact that she felt bad that Hensley blamed her, she didn’t HAVE to do any of the stuff that she did. But, she did it, and she knew she would do it again. In fact, now, it was her job. She would actually be getting paid to take care of Hensley - something she’d sort of been doing since they became friends. She was grateful to have her friend back fully, but she also knew her worth. She deserved that thank you, and it was only polite to respond in kind.

#Friends or Whatever #Hensley and Char: Friends or Whatever #Hensley Hart #Girl!Henry wlw AU #Henry Danger #Nesha HD Fics

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Top New Horror Books in February 2020

Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland

Type: Novel Publisher: Balzer + Bray Release date: 2/4/20

Den of Geek says: Justina Ireland’s Dread Nation was one of the most-talked-about YA debuts of 2018, and for good reason! The story of Black zombie hunters in an alternate Reconstruction-era America is already one of the best premises of all time, and Ireland more than follows through on the promise of kickass, sociopolitically cathartic potential—with Dread Nation, and now with Deathless Divide. (We love this one so much, it’s also on our Top New YA Books of February 2020 list.)

Publisher’s summary: The sequel to the New York Times bestselling epic Dread Nation is an unforgettable journey of revenge and salvation across a divided America.

After the fall of Summerland, Jane McKeene hoped her life would get simpler: Get out of town, stay alive, and head west to California to find her mother.

But nothing is easy when you’re a girl trained in putting down the restless dead, and a devastating loss on the road to a protected village called Nicodemus has Jane questioning everything she thought she knew about surviving in 1880s America.

What’s more, this safe haven is not what it appears—as Jane discovers when she sees familiar faces from Summerland amid this new society. Caught between mysteries and lies, the undead, and her own inner demons, Jane soon finds herself on a dark path of blood and violence that threatens to consume her.

But she won’t be in it alone.

Katherine Deveraux never expected to be allied with Jane McKeene. But after the hell she has endured, she knows friends are hard to come by—and that Jane needs her too, whether Jane wants to admit it or not.

Watching Jane’s back, however, is more than she bargained for, and when they both reach a breaking point, it’s up to Katherine to keep hope alive—even as she begins to fear that there is no happily-ever-after for girls like her.

Buy Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland on Amazon.

The Boatman’s Daughter by Andy Davidson

Type: Novel Publisher: MCD x FSG Release date: 2/11/20

Den of Geek says: If it’s good enough for Paul Tremblay, it’s good enough for us! We love a good atmospheric horror read, and The Boatman’s Daughter sounds like it has more atmosphere in one page than most books do in their entirety.

Publisher’s summary: A “lush nightmare” (Paul Tremblay) of a supernatural thriller about a young woman facing down ancient forces in the depths of the bayou.

Ever since her father was killed when she was just a child, Miranda Crabtree has kept her head down and her eyes up, ferrying contraband for a mad preacher and his declining band of followers to make ends meet and to protect an old witch and a secret child from harm.

But dark forces are at work in the bayou, both human and supernatural, conspiring to disrupt the rhythms of Miranda’s peculiar and precarious life. And when the preacher makes an unthinkable demand, it sets Miranda on a desperate, dangerous path, forcing her to consider what she is willing to sacrifice to keep her loved ones safe.

With the heady mythmaking of Neil Gaiman and the heartrending pacing of Joe Hill, Andy Davidson spins a thrilling tale of love and duty, of loss and discovery. The Boatman’s Daughter is a gorgeous, horrifying novel, a journey into the dark corners of human nature, drawing our worst fears and temptations out into the light.

Read The Boatman’s Daughter by Andy Davidson on Amazon.

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

Type: Novel Publisher: Berkley Release date: 2/18/20

Den of Geek says: Who doesn’t love a good creepy motel story? From the author who brought us The Broken Girls, comes another female-driven foray into horror mystery. If you’ve been digging Nancy Drew or love Sharp Objects, there’s more where that came from.

Publisher’s summary: Something hasn’t been right at the roadside Sun Down Motel for a very long time, and Carly Kirk is about to find out why in this chilling new novel from the USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of The Broken Girls.

Upstate New York, 1982. Viv Delaney wants to move to New York City, and to help pay for it she takes a job as the night clerk at the Sun Down Motel in Fell, New York. But something isnʼt right at the motel, something haunting and scary.

Upstate New York, 2017. Carly Kirk has never been able to let go of the story of her aunt Viv, who mysteriously disappeared from the Sun Down before she was born. She decides to move to Fell and visit the motel, where she quickly learns that nothing has changed since 1982. And she soon finds herself ensnared in the same mysteries that claimed her aunt.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Read The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James on Amazon.

The post Top New Horror Books in November 2020 appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2Bhu8Di

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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toongrrl-blog · 5 years ago

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The Mommy Myth: The War Against Welfare Mothers (Part One)

This gif is from the 1970s film Claudine, a romantic comedy starring James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll about a garbage man and a welfare mother trying to make the relationship and where he helps provide for her home and kids without the social worker checking in.

We check in with The New Yorker, who took a break from their cartoons to cover a welfare mother named Carmen Santana (not her real name): she is Puerto Rican American (and judging by the text’s descriptions of her “wide nose”, complexion, curly dark hair, and thick lips, she must be Afro-Latina) who weighs over 200 lbs and boy the writer was having a field day describing her heft and body. She has no interest in “national or international events” (common flaw that goes across class lines), she spends her day watching soap operas, cursing in Spanish and giving her many kids “a good cuffing” and they just throw the trash out the window. Her kitchen is filthy and her philosophy is “what will be, will be” (a common thing) and sits all the time even when she is cooking while her kids’ bedroom is decorated with obscene graffiti; she had her first child at age 15 and went on to have eight more kids by three different men and her mother had three children by different men and now Carmen’s daughter is also on welfare. She spends the money from Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) on makeup and perfume and hair (honestly wasn’t that a thing at some point? Like Midge Maisel and her mother make sure their husbands never see them without perfect hair and makeup) and junk food for the kids and she also plays the numbers where she spends her winnings on “jewelry , beer, and liquour” and “trips to Puerto Rico”. I guess we are not supposed to sympathize with this woman.

Carmen was an example of a stereotype that was used to represent and demonize welfare mothers. Johnnine Tillmon, the first chairwoman of the group National Welfare Rights Organization saw welfare and the stereotypes as a feminist issue.

I’m a woman. I’m a black woman. I’m a poor woman. I’m a fat woman. I’m a middle-aged woman. And I’m on welfare. In this country, if you’re any one of those things---poor, black, fat, female, middle-aged, on welfare---you count less as a human being.

She even said that the biggest reason that people believe the stereotype of the welfare mother is that they are “special versions of the lies that society tells about all women”, sadly she wasn’t listened to in the mainstream media where welfare mothers were deviants in a culture that valued the rugged individual, relentless hard work and sacrifice, slim bodies aided by Bowflex or Thighmaster, and shiny blond hair with perky smiles. Yo because of this stereotype, women of color with several children are considered suspect. It was also another way to pit moms against moms, the resentment of packing the kids’ lunch and work at a dull 9 to 5 job or scrub the kitchen floors while this stereotype gets to have sex with whoever and drink booze with tax dollars. Even Time magazine went in:

Here’s a few facts: the average welfare family in 1994 had three members, the mother and two children. 39% were White and 37% were Black, African Americans numbered 12% of the national population but were about 35-37% of the welfare population and African Americans were three times as likely as White Americans to live below the poverty level. Only 10% of AFDC mothers had four or more children and 80% had one or two kids and figures in 1993 shown 75% of adults left welfare within two years and 1/2 of single mothers worked while on welfare and 1/3 were working to supplement the minuscule allotment and get off from unemployment. But that was lost on the media that focused on families with two or more generations on welfare (a tiny fraction of welfare recipients) even focusing on unwed teen welfare moms because they were...SHOCKING! Only 1% were teen mothers. Welfare mothers were known only by first name and she lived in the urban decay of New York, Camden (New Jersey), Chicago, or Detroit; they were black and unmarried and had a bunch of kids who don’t share a common biological father and she smoked and painted her nails and gave soda to her baby (OMG imagine 2010s soda freaks) and her face was pixelated in the media. Some of them were depicted as cynical about life and motherhood, it wasn’t sexy for them and at least they felt ambivalence (which was soooooo disco era).

youtube

Then came the 1990s where the moderate Democratic Clinton administration introduced “Welfare Reform” where President Bill Clinton ended “welfare as we know it” and he was just following his predecessors: Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush (the first) regarding their attitude towards welfare recipients. The Welfare to Work program who were being trained by job placement programs that prepared them for low-paying jobs in retail and in service and the resources for job training were limited (also if your hours took you away from your kids?). Also it was hard for welfare to work moms working to move up in their jobs and often mostly got gigs like seasonal retail.

The depiction of welfare mothers was different from the celebrity mom: she wasn’t ascribed emotions where her eyes welled up with tears or laughed, she wasn’t well lit with a light or a rosy focus, never seen holding her child up or clutching the child and magazines like Redbook or McCall’s never did a cover story with a welfare mom and her kids done up and showing the readers fun things they do with little or no money or touring New York City on $10 for a day or games to play while waiting in long lines (honestly that is a good idea, someone pay Susan and Meredith if the magazines do that). Also if you were a woman of color, especially a young one or a poor one (or both) you weren’t supposed to have the “baby lust” so gushed about in celebrity mom profiles; trust me I grew up a Latina kid in Central California and many older women like my mom would worry about the girls that want to have babies so bad or fall in love hard and fast, a young Karen Wheeler in 1967 can give all to family and babies and staying home but it is more precarious for a young girl of color.

The media depiction of poor people wasn’t always so negative: political scientist Martin Gilens found that when the “War on Poverty” began, where the Lyndon B. Johnson administration focused on eliminating poverty and started programs like Head Start rather than piss on poor people, coverage focused on poor white people in rural areas like Appalachia or in the Rustbelt where mines or factories closed down, these were the faces of The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family who fought against hardship on their way to a better life. After Michael Harrington published his book The Other America, public support for ending poverty was strong. But then came the riots in Watts, Newark, and Detroit (just a few) where mostly people of color fought back against law enforcement and the media used images of African-Americans to illustrate their pieces on welfare, which reinforced stereotypes about welfare and as the coverage became more negative, the skin color got darker (even though statistics then and now showed many more white recipients of welfare)

How about how the face of welfare became so feminized? In the 1930s, when the Welfare program and Social Security began under the New Deal by President FDR, a lot of women of color were barred from welfare because of discriminatory practices, this changed with the Civil Rights Movement which opened up some doors for women of color to get assistance for their children and households. Before the Welfare recipient was faceless or usually a man, who got rich off welfare and bought Cadillacs with the money, something that Richard Nixon really clung to and he asked Johnny Cash to perform the song “Welfare Cadillac” at a White House event sparking controversy. Indeed when Cash met with Nixon, he gave him a private concert with songs that were more compassionate and less reactionary than what Nixon wanted. In the early 1960s, magazines like Look or Reader’s Digest wrote to readers about women who sent their many children to beg for money while the mother ate steak with their boyfriend, or worse, spent the money on narcotics and kept giving birth to more than 10 kids. The image of poor, fertile mothers on taxpayer money was more infuriating than that of a able-bodied man getting the money, but making welfare moms work was shocking (as the system was designed for widows to stay home with their children and not worry about money), even a stinging David Brinkley chafed at leaving kids at a daycare center...it would cost the taxpayer more.

Ronald Reagan coined the term “welfare queen” (look it up) and made exaggerated anecdotes and given how people were drawn to him (looking at you Mike and Nancy’s parents), he was believed despite him not citing sources or studies. Reagan voters fell for the image of a welfare mother who spent money for fancy cars, vacations, designer clothes, and played the system (there were a few like Dorothy Woods, but again if this were common, the landscape of the inner city would look a lot different...) It was a dark time, the Religious Right took control, Proposition 13 in California put a limit on property taxes and started many tax revolts to limit government spending, and let’s not forget Ronald Reagan opposed the following:

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Fair-Housing Legislation in California

Legislation to declare Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as a national holiday

How does that Reagan/Bush ‘84 sign look Ted and Karen?

Stay tuned.....

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wovetherapy · 2 years ago

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Consultation/Supervision Services in New York City

Consultation and supervision at Wove Therapy is creative, collaborative, and challenging. It is informed by intersectional, anti-racist, anti-oppressive, feminist, liberation, and relational theories. A truly inclusive practice centers clinicians as well as their clients. Holding space for various identities and pushing clinicians to grow is a delicate process that requires constant interpersonal and structural reflection.

What is the difference between Consultation and Supervision?

Consultation and supervision are considered essential and ongoing practices of gaining insight, perspective, and learning from another clinician with more experience and training. While case consultation is a service that can be offered between any two clinicians, supervision is typically designated as a consulting relationship regulated by a state licensing board and implies legal responsibility for clinical events.

Do I really need consultation/supervision?

Therapists offer themselves as a medium through which clients work through their intrapsychic and interpersonal conflicts. No amount of studying or training or can fully prepare you for the real ruptures, plateaus, and transferences that happen in therapeutic relationships. Since we cannot heal or get rid of pain for our clients no matter how much we care, it is so important that we keep our psychic channels as clear as possible for clients to find ways to tolerate their own suffering within the treatment frame.

It is in our nature to seek out connection as social beings. However, real connection is never simple. As clinicians, we are witnesses and co-participants in the therapeutic alliance. What unfolds between you and your clients is a complex interplay of conscious and unconscious material. Consultation can help you unlock the meaning and potential to utilize that material into something clinically productive.

Therapists are human and have blind spots like anyone else. Case consultation is an effective practice to identify and work with them. When done thoroughly, blind spots can be transformed into highly useful clinical material that a therapist can then apply to the treatment. There are many ways to work with blind spots including tracing back the origins within a therapist’s own psyche, and tracking a dynamic that has emerged with a client in response to each other’s emotional output.

How does consultation and supervision work?

Presenting casework is a vulnerable process that requires the supervisee to be as authentic as possible in what is said and done in the treatment. The supervisee dives deep into their own countertransference reactions specifically to delineate their own intrapsychic reactions from the interpersonal relational dynamics that may be emerging between them and the client. By presenting and discussing cases to an experienced supervisor or consultant, they will uncover blind spots, inject novel material into treatment dynamics, dislodge “stuckness” with clients, and develop effective tools for some common issues that arise in treatment scenarios:

Strong positive or negative countertransference reactions (ie, agitation, sleepiness, shame, defensiveness, etc.)

Late to start or running over allotted session time

Overidentification

Projection

Traumatic triggers

Significant information that needs sorting and organizing

Insecurity/indecisiveness about therapeutic frame

Help with case formulation grounded in theory

Burnout

How is Intersectionality relevant in consultation/supervision?

Consultation at Wove is geared toward clinicians who are BIPOC and/or marginalized in identity. It is of particular benefit to solo practitioners and those who are relatively early in their career, though even more experienced therapists benefit from consultation. A consultant or supervisor who intentionally holds space for your identity is an incredible tool to becoming the clinician you aspire to be.

Early career clinicians are especially prone to burnout, especially if we are ourselves tolerating othering parallel to our clients. Good consultation and supervision will help you identify and establish a therapeutic frame, deepen your understanding of psychological theory to ground your practice, and gain the confidence to show up authentically in your therapeutic alliances.

Therapists have never been “blank walls.” We do not need to nor could we erase our identities in order to remain curious and nonjudgmental toward our clients. Rather, we must be attuned and receptive to the back and forth that occurs between people for what is exchanged verbally, through body language, and between identities on the individual and systemic levels.

If you are a BIPOC therapist or a therapist with other marginalized identities, then you already know firsthand some of the crucial gaps in academia and in the psychotherapy field in general. The field has a gatekeeping problem that we are hoping to disrupt by providing high quality consultation and supervision by/for therapists like you.

#mental health #individual counseling #intersectional counseling #bipoc #mental heath support

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makebritaingreatagain · 5 years ago

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War. War never changes.

Just started reading Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut.

The authors style is clumsy, rambling and disjointed. It reminds me allot of 'Remembrance Of Things Past' by Marcel Proust in that respect. But where Proust, as you might expect of a french aristocrat, is flowery in his prose, and talks of ladies fashions, the smell of a flower, the taste of a biscuit, Vonnegut is spartan in his prose, few details, more like George Orwell, never using a long or uncommon word where a short or common one will do, but almost to the point of being childlike in simplicity. I don't know if Kurt Vonnegut's other books are like this. It does make you think, and the author confirms that war makes you tough. It even makes the women who stay at home tough, as they learn to get on without men around to do the heavy lifting, and the dirty work; they get jobs in factories, as reporters, journalists, maybe even work in construction. It seems that war is a very emancipating thing for women. Maybe that's why they were so keen to hand goose feathers out to young men, encouraging them to run off to war and kill and die. Maybe that's why, even after women had been given the right to vote, we still had another world war, even though feminists told us that there would be no more wars if we let them vote. Gets the old noggin joggin.

I noticed this little gem on page 30: "Billy, after all, had contemplated torture and hideous wounds at the beginning and the end of nearly every day of his childhood. Billy had an extremely gruesome crucifix hanging on the wall of his little bedroom in Ilium. A military surgeon would have admired the the clinical fidelity of the artist's rendition of all Christ's woulds-the spear wound, the thorn wounds, the holes that were made by iron spikes."

Huh. Reminds me of Hagakure: "The Way of the Samurai is found in death. Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one's body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one's master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead. This is the substance of the way of the samurai" - 'Hagakure' by some random Japanese politician.

"Sell your shirt and buy a sword, for the end commeth, and right soon". - 'The Bible' by God. As true today as it was 2000 years ago.

Tradition is a funny old thing. Sometimes we forget the reason we started doing something.

I still haven’t read Slaughterhouse 1-4, but they are hard to come by.

#BookThoughts #Book #Reading #WarNeverChanges #War

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future-critical-blog · 5 years ago

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How Pacing Fucked Steven Universe

Note: this is anonymous because I know what will happen!

Steven Universe is without a doubt one of the best shows I've ever seen. It's certainly the best cartoon series I've ever watched. The first four series, and a large amount of the fifth, are truly wonderful.

So, I'm going to be entitled and complain about the last little bit that didn't work for me. I got all those hundreds of episodes, and I’m just going to take a moment to really honk about the stuff I don't like.

Because we live in an age where Nazis are back, feminists think trans woman are the biggest threat they face and the world is burning - at this point, a bit of a moan about Steven Universe/Future will get lost I think.

Bear in mind: this comes from a place of love. I care about Steven and the characters because they took me on an amazing journey that really had an emotional impact on me. Then they tripped me right at the end, and now they're fuck-twaddling around taking up space in my brain that should be used for thinking about how great the show is.

This is about how the inability to wrap Steven Universe properly sucks and undermines all the amazing work the creators put into it. Now, that work hasn't gone anywhere: I can, and will, re-watch the series to reminisce about it. About what could have happened. Nobody has taken that away from me.

But still, there's nothing worse than a story that buggers up the ending. Worse yet, that ending is still going in Steven Universe: Future.

So what's the problem? Let's start.

Pacing, pathos and atmosphere

Things used to be teased, hinted and slowly revealed. Steven Universe used to a slow-burn that really built things up with the even-hand of a masterful storyteller. Remember that long shot at the end of 'On the Road', after the characters leave? We see just the empty, sinister kindergarten whilst a discordant note builds in the background before... bang, credits. It builds atmosphere and tension.

What happened to that? Slowly building a feeling, weaving a narrative, and taking us on an emotional journey? We got a very rushed pay-off to all this with Series 5. The crew thought the show wouldn't be renewed, so they made the executive decision to wrap it all up.

· Everyone’s fixed now. Pearl, Garnet, Amethyst, Steven.

· Diamonds are friendly now. Blue got sad, Yellow got angry and White got… put in her place by a comeback?

· The bubbled gems/corrupted monsters are all fixed.

· The Off-Colours and Lars just got home. No further adventures, they just got home.

Bits got missed out. Things got rushed. Homeworld, the Diamonds and five series of build-up got dealt with in the space of 40 minutes. For comparison, just Series 1 alone was 8 hours long.

Yeah, the network created that situation. You're cancelled! They seemed to say. No you're not! HA! They continued. But it still sucks, narratively, and the creators are now compounding that problem by trying to go back and add in the bits they missed.

Worse, there's no pacing now because there’s no more overall story. No atmosphere. Fundamentally, post Change Your Mind, everything is done. The series was wrapped up. All we have left now is some loose-ends and Steven being moody.

It came back mostly just to tie up random ends. But more of something isn't always good: Series 1-4 and about half of Series 5 are amazing. We shouldn't clap and applaud we get more just because it's more for its own sake, we should cheer things for being good in their own right.

I don't just want more meep morp, I want the morp to have something to say and to mean something. Victory laps and adding unnecessary lore is pointless: characters and emotion are what drive stories.

This isn't about 'filler' episodes as such, nor is it about breaks and hiatuses. It's about spreading the story arc (and the individual elements within that arc) correctly over the allotted time. A story that takes 700 pages to set up, only to be resolved in 3 pages feels badly unbalanced - I'm looking at you, Stephen King. And that's exactly the problem Steven Universe has. The set-up is incredible, and the payoff is badly disappointing. That's pacing.

Being the Underdog

This was covered nicely, if ironically in hindsight, with the episode ‘Historical Friction’. The play about olde-time mayor William Dewey was utterly uninteresting until Pearl rewrote the play’s script to make him an underdog. This is part of pacing. It's dull to watch a winner win constantly. The characters need to be in situations where they're facing actual threats, otherwise we're just watching a series of foregone conclusions unfold.

What would Lord of the Rings look like if the Hobbits just marched from The Shire to Orodruin, with no setbacks or problems, and then just lobbed the One Ring into the fire? What's the point of the story? It'd be like a grand-scale version of watching someone go out for groceries. Nobody wants to watch that, not really: you can go to the supermarket and see it if you’re that interested!

This couples with suspension of disbelief. Usually, the good guys win. We know they're going to win. We need to be able to suspend our disbelief, and that's something that the pacing and storytelling need to enable. We need to be able to get caught in the story, even though we know everything will probably work out by the end.

When you get it just right, even the creators don’t know for sure everything will be alright. Remember when Picard was assimilated by The Borg? Even the writers weren’t 100% sure how it would play out, because Patrick Stewart was playing hardball with the studio at the time over his contract. There was a chance this could have been the end of his character.

But Steven isn't an underdog anymore. He's a bossy, self-important grump with a martyr complex. He wins all the time, not least of all because of the pacing problems. By this point:

· Steven has healing powers that can literally bring people back to life

· He has all the powers of a Diamond

· He has the backing of the three other diamonds

· He now has an army of friends who will fight at his side

So where is the story to tell? Consider, in Steven Universe: The Movie, Greg's arm gets hurt by the injector. There's no danger, no worry. We know Steven has healing powers. So why bother showing it? It's about as relevant or interesting as watching Greg brush his hair.

There’s no danger. There’s no suspension of disbelief because the hero is now so super-powered.

This is even worse when coupled with the uneven pacing: when something takes so long to be painstakingly set up, only to be knocked down in a heartbeat, then why get invested in it? The 21st Century reboot of Doctor Who falls into this trap a lot: multipart episodes about a Dalek (or whatever) invasion… but luckily their Evil Machine has a ‘reverse’ switch that fixes everything. Dust hands, job done. All that build-up utterly squandered on an almost supernaturally fast resolution.

You Need a Story to Tell

The first five series have a definite story. It gets rushed, badly, come series 5 but there is still a story. That is done now: there's no grand, overarching tale now. We're very much into 'oh, what if...' territory.

What's the problem with that? Things get missed, because they don't need to fit into a cohesive whole. They just happen because they're cool.

Consider The Movie:

· Spinel goes from a cuddly, professional buddy to a would-be mass-murderer

· Spinel knows where to find a stupidly powerful injector

· She knows how to work it

· It is tuned to work to her 'trumpet' sound

· It is shaped like her gemstone

· She knows specifically where Earth is

· She knows how to fly a massive injector, with no obvious engines, to Earth

· This all happens in an afternoon

And the explanation we're given, after the event in a Q&A session? It's because Spinel and Pink Diamond were close. That is supposed to explain the entirety of those bullet points. It rankles me because it's not truthful. Those questions aren't answered by that, they're answered by 'because we thought it would be cool'. It's an unsatisfying explanation, but it's true and they’ve tried to handwave it into something else.

It's also what happens when you run out of proper story. Sure, you can still come up with little adventures but there's no big narrative anymore. There is no large picture for everything to fit into.

That’s dangerous territory. Not only does it lead to weird scenarios, but it also starts generating new lore at a maddening amount. The fans don't help this, it seems to me that some people purely watch Steven Universe to demand moar fusions, moar songs and moar lore. Even when that’s all they get, it’s not enough.

It's like demanding more swimming pools in your home because you're bored with foundations. Sooner or later the whole structure falls down because swimming pools can’t hold a house up. Neither can lore hold a story up: stories are about characters.

Similarly, the concept of 'fusion' relies on characters otherwise it's nothing more than the character dumps we used to get in toy-driven franchises back in the 80s. Songs have to have an emotional resonance otherwise they're just empty pop.

Remember the X-Files? How they got into a rut just generating series after series with no pay-off, but lots more wrinkles to an already convoluted story? Then it got to the end and... you can't end it. It's too sprawling, too stupid and too contradictory. That's where lore without a story takes you. Lore has to serve a vision, not the other way around.

Filler

Not filler the way it's come to mean to SU fans. I like the 'boardie' episodes - they're full of interesting characters and ground Steven's world in something resembling ours. No, I mean filler in terms of stories that don't mean anything: the characters don't learn anything, the world isn't made any more interesting. Things just happen in a self-contained bubble with no payoff or consequence.

In itself, that's fine. Some episodes are like that. If that were the only aspect to 'filler' episodes in SU, then who cares? The problem is the pacing. After glacial teasing, hinting and laying down groundwork... things get wrapped up so fast it'll make your head spin.

· The cluster? We talked it into staying bubbled.

· The Diamonds? They're fine now.

· Bismuth? Steven chatted to her.

· Lapis? She's sort-of fine, but not really.

· Spinel? Sent to live on a farm.

These are all things that took many, many lines of dialogue and building to create and were knocked down in the space of a couple of sentences.

This is where the 'filler' comes in. Instead of another story about Onion being weird, why not devote it to tying up the plot in a way that feels paced properly? Instead of answering questions about Watermelon Stevens, why not draw-out a little more the actual conclusion to a big story point?

Why do I think Onion and Watermelon Stevens should be singled out for Calvary? Simple: they have no explanation and don't matter. They don't matter to the day-to-day lives of the characters or the world. They serve no narrative purpose. They don't advance other characters' arcs. They don't ground the world they inhabit. They turn up, do 'stuff' in a little bubble and then go back into the toybox until the next Onion episode.

As a side note, I would lay a lot of money that Onion will never get any sort of pay-off. He doesn't age. He's deeply bizarre. He's apparently a wanted criminal. He's terrifying. And I don't think for an instant he will ever get a reason for being any of those things: he'll just carry on as a quirky in-joke and take up episode space because apparently that is a story-telling priority now.

Songs

Songs are sung when something is too important for the characters to just say it. The song needs an emotional resonance, to show what a character feels effectively. Contrast 'That Distant Shore' to 'Independent Together': one is about a deep longing and sadness for a home the character has never had. The other is a soft-rock ballad about how great stuff is when you can be your own self but also be with other people... or something.

See the resonance that the former has, and that the latter lacks? Whether you like Lapis or Steg, or the songs, is irrelevant to the story and the characters. One song has something to say, the other is there for the sake of giving fanservice. Independent Together isn't something so important to say that the characters feel they need to sing it.

This really kicks off around the middle of Series 5. Previously, songs were a special event. Now, they're commonplace. Even in Mr. Greg, a fully musical episode back in Series 3, the songs have so much emotion. Plus, Mr. Greg is an experiment: 11 minutes, mostly held together by 6 solid songs:

· Don't Cost Nothing: how much Greg and Steven just love one another.

· Empire City: how excited they are to go on a trip together

· Mr. Greg: Pearl almost lets her guard down, then realises and shuts down.

· It's Over Isn't It? : A heartbroken character sings for a life they never had.

· Both of You: A child shows the two adults they have something special in common.

· Don't Cost Nothing: reprised as a coda.

I won't pretend that all those songs have a huge emotional impact, but they do all serve part of the story arc. You can see it there: the status quo, the trigger, the choice, the quest, the showdown, the resolution and the new status quo. Couple that with the fact that at least 4 of those songs (counting Don't Cost Nothing and its reprise) do have a very real emotional punch, you've got a great episode.

All in 11 minutes.

That's the level of truly amazing, genius storytelling we're working with. Now contrast that to the 1hr 20m of Steven Universe The Movie:

· The Tale of Steven: A prelude to a re-cap song

· Once Upon a Time: a re-cap song

· Let Us Adore You: The Diamonds are emotionally disturbed and co-dependent! How adorable!

· Happily Ever After: The status quo. Also another bloody re-cap.

· Other Friends: The trigger! Not huge emotional resonance, but up-beat and plot-relevant.

· system/BOOT.PearlFinal(3): The quest.

· Who We Are: NICE. This one has emotional impact and says something important.

· Isn't It Love?: A Garnet re-cap. So at this point we're recapping what we re-capped when we recapped the re-cap. Lost yet?

· No Matter What: Again, NICE. Emotional relevance and says something about Amethyst and Steven.

· Disobedient: Kate Micucci hadn't been given anything to do yet?

· Independent Together: Aimee Mann brought a friend! Can he have a job and some dollarydoos?

· Drift Away: CHARACTER. PUNCH. PATHOS. It's here, folks. They can do it!

and so on.

See the pattern? For every one song that brings what we saw in Mr. Greg, there are at least four that are there just because. Because we thought it'd be cool. Because we needed more tunes to fill the runtime. Mr. Greg achieved more in 11 minutes than Steven Universe: The Movie achieved in over 80 minutes.

What's the reason? The Movie doesn't really have a story to tell. It's a victory lap. It's not bad: it's fine. Bits of it are simply excellent. But this is what happens when you stop having a big, cohesive narrative arc that you're trying to bring together.

Characters

Characters grow and evolve. Specifically, they have arcs. Just like the plot as a whole, and just like the subplots that compose it. Generally, the stages are:

· A status quo (Luke on Tattoine)

· A trigger (his Aunt and Uncle die)

· A critical choice (he leaves to become a Jedi)

· A quest (the adventure)

· A climax (the fight at the Death Star)

· A turnaround (the Death Star is destroyed!)

· A new status quo (the Rebels are ready to take on the next challenge)

SU gave most of its characters arcs broadly representative of this. The problem is, once those arcs were done the characters got put back in their boxes. They were 'fixed' and that was it. Amethyst's arc probably worked best: it spread over most of the first five series and felt like a real progression. Hence her fusion with Steven (Smokey Quartz) felt 'earnt'.

Pearl doesn't really grow or evolve much at all until Series 5. Ditto Garnet. Lapis is basically the same throughout the show: she broods, runs away and then comes back because of Steven's coaxing.

So, it’s back to my main drumbeat: its pacing is badly off. Some things take their good time and evolve naturally, others are wrapped up quickly and cast aside. Examples:

· Peridot worked to become friends with the CG. She had a character arc that took half a series.

· The Diamonds: it mostly turned on a sixpence in the 2nd half of Change Your Mind. Off-screen they then became annoying relatives, rather than murderous galactic tyrants.

Why does this matter? Well, most of the characters are now 'done'. Pearl is no longer co-dependent. Ruby and Sapphire know they're together (as Garnet) for love. Amethyst no longer hates herself. Peridot is a sweet (albeit socially clumsy) sidekick. Lapis is... well, the same as she's always been but seems happier with it now?

How do you tell more stories when your characters are already done? When the veg is cooked, you can't put it back on the hob because you've decided you want dinner prep to take longer.

SU keeps wrapping things up, believing they're 'done', then getting more time and needing to draw it out. This means either dawdling around with characters not going anywhere (which feels like either a smug victory lap or just something for its own sake) or actively unpicking their development.

Scrubs, in my view, is the poster child for the latter option: the show's cancelled, quick wrap up JD; Elliot; Dr. Cox; Carla; Turk etc! Oh no, we got another series! Undo the happily-ever-after so we can do more stuff!

That's why the pacing, particularly around characters and where they're going, matters.

Fusion

Fusion is the absolute biggest muddle of a metaphor. Is it friendship? Understanding? Sex? All? None? In any case, it used to be meaningful. Fusion meant something, even if that something would vary depending on the characters and the circumstance.

It took special effort to do: characters had to synchronise themselves through dance, to bring their thoughts together to fuse.

Now? It happens at the drop of a hat. No synching, no dancing. Fanwank it away any way you like: the characters are all 'fixed' now, they all trust each other, whatever. Fusion now doesn't mean anything because it takes no effort: pop here's Sunstone, pop here's Smokey, pop here's Opal. The fusions have just become like alter-egos that take no more effort than a quick-change in a phone booth.

And then there's Steg. Yeah, I get it: he represents the familial love between father and son. But why is he so built? Why does he look like some sort of sex-god? I'm a long way from a prude - it's just weird is all. A 16 year old boy + his middle aged father + the memory of the mother/wife shouldn't create a weird Adonis! But let me set that aside: the true problem with Steg is we had no build-up. Greg and Steven didn't talk about it, Steven just suggests fusing (through whispered dialogue we don't hear) and then it just happens.

Steg also isn't saved by being an interesting exploration of either Steven or Greg. He's fanservice. Fans wanted more fusions and more 'what if so-and-so fused!!' so they got it. He has 0 character. Just like Sunstone has no character beyond being an 'after school special'. Rainbow Quartz 2.0 has no character, aside from being chipper and cockney.

Contrast that to Smokey Quartz. Smokey is a delightful, self-deprecating scamp. She has a definite personality and stood up to a full interview with Sardonyx. Smokey has enough of a character that it would be possible for her to act out-of-character. What would out-of-character look like for Rainbow or Sunstone? Provided it was cartoon-English and early 90s cartoon dialogue (respectively) it could be anything.

What happened? Fusions used to be characters, they used to have personalities that couldn't be written down on a postage stamp in luggage marker.

The answer is the story ran-out. The characters are all fixed now - so there's no emotional or narrative drive for their relationships. Hence the concept of fusion is now just serving fans who want to see 'what if' combinations of characters.

Too Many Endings

I’ve touched on this already, but here it is again.

The problem with wrapping up a show is you put all the pieces away as well as you can, and implicitly make work for yourself if it is not the end. You've just set up a load of strawmen you need to kick over if you decide you've got more story to tell.

That's what happened here. Change Your Mind ended it. Except it didn't, so we went back and unpicked what we could. Even though everyone is basically fixed now and the characters have no real growth or underdog-fight. Then The Movie ended it. Except it didn't, so we went back and unpicked what we could. Even though everyone is still basically fixed.

Will Future be the end? Probably not.

That's why Steven is now a moody little jackass with a hero complex - we needed some conflict to drive what little plot there is, which exists only as a vehicle for tying up loose plot threads (Jasper!) we left out because of how rushed the first ending was.

It's a bit like when you misspell something, then you go back over it with your biro. But now it looks unclear. So you go over it a few more times to make sure it's clear. But now it looks like someone took a biro and leaked half the ink onto the page. The very act of trying to tidy it has made it less clear.

A Special Note About Garnet

This isn't about pacing, but whilst I'm on the moan I'll leave this here.

I feel wicked for this. Garnet is a brilliant character. I love Estelle: she brings Garnet so well to life. Any LGBT representation in a cartoon is rare and amazing, and we need more. But Garnet also sucks.

Why?

She's a metaphor. She's a metaphor for being gay and together in love. She is a symbol of a same-sex relationship. On a side-note: yes Gems don't have gender technically, but let’s not be wilful here: they have female-coded designs and the subtext is so obvious as to barely be subtext.

It's nearly 2020. We're now 20 years into the 21st Century. 2001 A Space Odyssey was set 20 years ago. First contact between Zephram Cochrane and the Vulcans is now only 43 years away. And we can still only talk about gay (or, God forbid, bi or transgender) characters in children’s' media through metaphor. I cannot emphasise enough how utterly shitty that is, and how glacial progress has been.

Now, that isn't SU's fault. However, what is SU fault is their clever (and I mean that genuinely) ploy to sneak a same-sex couple into the show means that we don't see them as a same-sex couple 95% of the time. They're hidden. Ruby and Sapphire's love and relationship literally lives under a disguise called Garnet.

And that sucks. It makes sense as a plan. It's great we have Garnet. Garnet is still amazing. But she also sucks, because she acts as invisibility for the lesbian couple she represents. Yeah, that’s some tough mental gymnastics to work that cognitive dissonance but I managed it.

My God, I Get It: You're a Cat Person

This is also nothing to do with pacing, it's just a creator conceit that bugs me. I freely admit it's also piddly and petty.

So: I'm not a cat person. And no, it's not because I haven't met your adorable little Tiddles or whatever. I don't hate cats, it’s just that most of the cats I've ever met are simply ghastly little shits. Their owners, through some mental blind spot; ancient Egyptian curse or brain parasite have become convinced that these hairball-gobbing, furniture-shredding, wildlife-destroying little cunts are angels. Somehow they've convinced themselves everything they do is adorable.

No amount of murdered birds or small mammals change their minds.

I've met, officially, two nice cats in my life and I treasure their memories. The rest can go to hell.

Why does this matter to SU? Cat Steven. Lion. Peridot and Amethyst doing little kitty-mouths when they're being cute. My God, crew, you love cats. I got the memo.

Why does that work me up? Well, do you know what I'd like instead? If a tiny amount of that 'cats are brilliant!' energy went into a proper wrap for Pumpkin. Created by Jessie Zuke and obviously a puppy metaphor... what happened to her? The crew don't care, because they won't tell us. If they cared even a jot it would have a story around it. Instead, we got some half-arsed bullshit from Joe Johnston about 'pumpkins don't last forever' and... scene. That's it.

But Cat Steven, OMG, yes we have to make sure to include him. Whenever we're at the Beach House. Especially if Garnet is there. Because... lesbians all love cats? Or something? Just... CATS. MOAR CATS.

Couldn't you show a little more respect for a character, albeit a not particularly important one, rather than worrying about how much airtime the various cats all get?

In Conclusion

It bears restating, this is mostly ire directed at Series 5 onwards. The other series are all still there, and I can watch them to reminisce. I can still enjoy some truly wonderful episodes of just about the best cartoon I've ever seen. This show is incredible... but the endings kinda suck. And that's down, mostly, to pacing. And how it kinda fucked Steven Universe.

#steven universe #steven universe future #steven universe the movie

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