#i think looking at their relationship through a familial lens undermines all my favorite things about their relationship

[cometrose]

sometimes i don’t like family hcs cause i think the relationship between the two characters is a little more fucked up that and i don’t think you’re giving it enough credit

“look they’re just like father and son!” and then i look and it’s two immortals with a messed up master servant dynamic where they would do anything for each other and slowly trying to overcome a relationship dynamic that is 1000s of years in the making

[stardyng]

Out of curiosity, which one that you think is most likely, political Jon or Kit is just a bad actor?

This is another one of these asks that I have been looking at for days not knowing how to answer it. As much as ‘’Political!Jon’’ is an interesting concept to explore, I don’t think it’s as likely to happen as many seem to believe but I completely understand why people want it to happen so much and there is definitely lines and events in the story that support it. People want it because as much as many don’t think it fits with Jon’s character, the story has presented the need for Jon to be smarter than his father and brother, and essentially to not repeat the same mistakes they did. Ned was blinded by his honor and stumbled down because of it, and Robb was blinded by love and stumbled down. If ‘’Political!Jon’’ isn’t happening right now, it ultimately means that there is no learning curve. Jon is just making most of his decisions based on the things that got both his father and brother killed (His honor is presented as being the reason for most of his decisions, and his ‘’love’’ for Daenerys led him to give her the North even though she showed no proof of being a capable ruler, and has already stated her wish to fight the white walkers). In theory, we should be seeing Jon be more politically aware than these who came before him, and make better and smarter decisions. However, we aren’t…and that can be frustrating for a lot of people who are into his character arc. So, they designed a theory that blatantly showcases him actively going a step further than his brother and father. 

However, that isn’t the only reason some people would want ‘’Political!Jon’’. A lot of people who are into this theory pair Sansa and Jon together and the quickest way for them to get together at this point is for Jon to not be truly in love with Daenerys, and actually be manipulating her. That would mean that Jon being into Sansa since they reunited is still possible. There’s not enough time for their relationship to go from familial to romantic, but there is enough time for it to go from romantic but in denial (and present in subtexts only) to just romantic. Like….there’s a limited amount of episodes, so him being deeply in love with someone, than having a bunch of shit go down, and then be put with another character who he thought was his sibling at the end just won’t seem convincing to anyone. Therefore, ‘’Political!Jon’’ only makes Jonsa more possible and palatable. That is the reason, much to the annoyance of a lot of Jonsa fans, that people instantly dismiss ‘’Political!Jon’’ and even ‘’Dark!Dany’’ as Jonsa theories because these are ideas that actively make it more possible for Jon to end up with Sansa at the end, even though one of these happening doesn’t mean they all of these would happen. So essentially, the theory that is ‘’Political!Jon’’ was created because it would make Jon a more interesting, complex and better character, and because it would rectify Jon sleeping with Dany as being non-romantic, which is kinda needed for Jonsa to happen in a satisfying manner. 

So with all of that being said, is ‘’Political!Jon’’ likely to happen? Well…there is some base to it. Facts are that the story presented Ned Stark’s extreme honor and Jon replicating it as being a bad thing. The narrative essentially showed that it was a bad thing through Ned Stark’s arc in season one, where he would have prevailed at least the challenges he had to face if it wasn’t for his extreme values. Then, at different point in the story, we had characters point to Jon that him inheriting his father’s honor isn’t that much of a good thing (Stannis Baratheon and Sansa Stark more specifically). They both make it clear that honor is what got his father killed. So, if Jon doesn’t learn from his father’s mistakes and manages to stay alive at the end….then that means that the story is contradicting itself, and if he dies, then there’s no substantial message beyond what initially happened with his father. Both cases are just quite unsatisfactory narratively and thematically speaking. There has to be something more. There’s also the fact that we’ve seen him get with someone with the goal of fitting in better with the wildlings who he was trying to spy on. That wasn’t honorable at all, and while he did fall in love with that character progressively, his initial motivation was still present. He’s been shown to do that kind of stuff in order to protect what he needs to protect (I’m not referring to boatsex by the way, just the general idea of ‘’Political!Jon vs his past acts). The only difference, and that’s an important one for his character, is that the first time, it was something he was ordered to do by someone else, whereas the second time (if Political!Jon is turns out to be true), he’s the one to do it himself, and it’s in that fact that lies the learning curve. His character is even linked with the wildlings, who in theory had an impact on him. Tormund at one point even states ‘’You’ve spent too much time with us. You can never be a kneeler again.’’. Then later on in the story, Daenerys asks Jon ‘’If their survival is more important than your pride?’’, which is ironically something that Jon asked Mance Raider a while back, and here was Mance’s answer: ‘’Pride? Fuck my pride. It isn’t about that. They followed me because they respected me. Because they believed in me. The moment I kneel for a Southern king, it’s all gone.’’. Then, if you just think at everyone who died in order for the North to achieve independence and all these who died to get the North back from the Bolton, it only makes the fact that it belongs to the Starks that much more important. To have Jon give it to some stranger who he barely knows who has shown time and again to be incapable is just…it essentially undermines all that he went through and all that he should have in theory learned the past few seasons becomes kinda meaningless. There’s even the whole thing with how everything before the word but is bullshit, and then you have Jon ‘’coincidentally’’ putting the word ‘’but’’ right after saying he’ll bend the knee to Daenerys.

And that’s not even going on about how the romance between Jon and Daenerys remains completely unconvincing. If the actors and writers were trying to present this whole mess as them starting to like each other, I might have come around to the idea of it being played straight, but in reality, we have different actors talking about how they are in love with each other, and they can’t even be consistent when talking about the moment they supposedly started loving the other. Jon and Dany legitimately know very little about each other. There’s nothing concrete about their ‘love’’. There’s a quote that I fell in love with from another book talking about how many boys will bring you flowers, but the one that truly matters is the one who knows your favorite flower, your favorite song, and your favorite sweet. Sis doesn’t even know that she executed the family of his best friend. Jokes aside, they know only the most superficial and general details about each other. The problem is that they had actual time to make a convincing romance. Robb and Talisa met in 2x04 before getting married in 2x10, and I was convinced that Robb was into her the second he looked at her. I didn’t even know I was supposed to look at Daenerys and Jon through a romantic lens until Davos and Tyrion pointed out him looking intensely at her, which is something that could be used to prove that he dislikes her just as much as it could prove that he likes her. Despite needing as much time to happen as other GOT romances, for some reason, none of their scenes together seemed the least bit romantic, and I found that odd. Moments where they could make Jonerys the least bit romantic weren’t written into the story. For example, Jon could have looked back at Daenerys before leaving, but he didn’t even glance at her for a moment, whereas a man who is shown to be in love with her does. There’s also the actor. Kit/Jon legitimately looks as if he founds her to be the most repugnant thing he ever seen in his life. Even in promotional pictures, there’s not even the slightest romantic vibe. We’ve seen the actor play a character in love, and it showed in every single one of their scenes through the writing and the acting. Here, we have nothing but random lines from other characters and a sex scene with a voiceover going on at the same time about how her brother is his father. 

So, getting back to the question…do I believe that ‘’Political!Jon’’ is as likely as Kit being a bad actor and D&D being mediocre writers? Honestly, I really don’t know. However…Kit isn’t the best actor in the show…but the issues with his actions in the past season don’t just boil down to bad acting. If the romance and him giving the north was played straight, it undermines his character arc, it shits on everything that he experienced and learned thus far and it’s just proof of clumsy and juvenile writing. So honestly, I’m not quite sure what to believe besides the fact that it fixes a lot of what was wrong about his story-line and arc in Season 7. 

[cait-el]

Keith Analysis - Season 3

Pre S1E1 + Introduction / Season One / Season Two / Season Three / Season Four / Season Five

I highly recommend reading the rest of the posts in this series to get the most out of this! But here’s my take on Keith’s role in VLD Season three!

Season Three

Boy oh boy, does S3e1 have a lot to unpack. Let’s start at the very end of S2/ the beginning of S3 where we see Keith up in arms about the fact that Shiro is gone. By this point, I’ve already established that Shiro is as close to an actual family that Keith’s got, so of course he’s upset. Also, this upset of normal is just another nail in the coffin that is Keith’s sense of safety. He was finally feeling like he had a place on Voltron, then the whole half-Galra thing happened, and that was sort of solved in Allura’s apology, but with losing Shiro, Keith is losing his own sense of validity. Season 3 will be about re-establishing that in his own way, without Shiro there to back him. It’s a huge opportunity for character growth.

Brief Lance Note

Another really good scene in S3e1 is during the fight on Planet Puig with Lance, Hunk, and the Blade of Marmora. Firstly, we have Lance starting to feel the pressure of being the face of a team that’s falling apart at the seams. He’s supposed to be the glue of Voltron or the light-spirited one that keeps things happy. Now that Voltron can’t really form, he’s starting to feel that pressure now more than ever.

We also have discrimination against the Blade for being Galra, which is understandable, but demonstrative of systematic racism/oppression. No wonder Keith feels so lost; he’s literally at the center of all of that!

Back to Keith

This is the instance that I referenced at the very beginning of this whole thing where Keith says that he won’t give up on Shiro because Shiro was one of the only people that never gave up on him. I think that startles the other paladins a little bit because they’re finally realizing that Keith isn’t just some “lone wolf” who’s full of shit. Yes, he can be volatile, but he’s really hurting now, which is demonstrated when he blows up at the diplomacy dinner.

The most important part about Keith’s outburst is what happens afterwards – this will draw on a little bit of Lance’s development as well, so bear with me. At the very end of the episode, we have Keith staring at the black lion, with the other paladins standing awkwardly in the background. They all look to Lance, who is the first to step forward and tell Keith it’s alright to be hurting.

Pidge, Hunk, Allura, and Coran jump in with their own anecdotes about how they feel about suggesting to replace someone who seems irreplaceable, but it’s Lance tying everything together that makes Keith take a deep breath and decide that he’s being irrational. This is the first in a long arc in season three that establishes Lance and Keith’s relationship in a way that goes beyond just a romantic ship. I’m going to return to what I talked about in season one with Keith having a borderline crush on Lance, which I still stand by. In season one, it was all fun and games. In season two, Keith had a lot of his own stuff to worry about with the Blade, but he had Shiro to talk to about it, both the Galra stuff and the Lance stuff, so it didn’t seem as overwhelming.

Now that Shiro’s gone, Keith is looking for something to fill the rapidly growing void that’s sucking away his sense of validation and trust, and he’ll find it in Lance, but most importantly, in himself, and I’ll prove that with my analysis of the rest of S3.

And just for fun, here are my two cents on Lotor’s introduction

Lotor is one of my favorite characters for a few different reasons that are established in this episode. Firstly, he’s crafty. He had Ezor watch Throk, and then used that to call him out in front of the whole crowd. He’s the embodiment of the honest and martyr-like villain (which will play into his romance line with Allura later, but that’s not for a while) in that he preaches that what he does will be good for the universe because it fosters loyalty rather than fear. Secondly, he’s charismatic as all fuck. He’s the villain that says “okay, I’m going to write down everything I’m about to do on a piece of paper and give it to you. You’ll know my entire plan. Will that stop me from completing it? You can bet the fuck not.” And he’s right. Even I believed him! When I first watched it, I was like “yeah, okay, this guy could actually be a good king.”

And then, the kicker, he gives all this confidence to Throk, and then demotes him to the farthest reaches of the empire under the impression that he just got this huge promotion. That’s savage. Lotor is so good at what he does. I’m thrilled to see what he does next for the sheer cleverness of it.

Back to Keith/Lance – I’m just going to start referring to them jointly for now because here’s where they start to become super intertwined

Man, S3 literally has so much in the way of character development that I’m only on the second episode and I already have so much to say. Let’s start with the discussion of who should pilot the black lion while in the lounge of the Castle. Pidge points out that everyone has their “thing,” and she calls Lance the goofball, which he doesn’t take well to (remember S2e10). He calls himself a ninja sharpshooter, to which Keith responds with “is that a joke?” Honestly he probably shouldn’t have poked the dragon, but I do believe he meant it in a good way. His eyes were nice and he was smiling. Lance was just feeling particularly insecure at that moment. Payback for S1e6 when Lance totally invalidated Keith’s tiny advance. Ugh, boys.

Anyways, Lance says that he would never follow Keith as a leader in retaliation, which sparks an argument and triggers Keith to say “that’s just what Shiro wanted.” This puts Keith in kind of a tough spot; it’s not that he’s against piloting the black lion, he just doesn’t want to 1) undermine Shiro, who is his idol, and 2) he’s afraid he can’t be what everyone needs him to be – he can hardly be what he needs for himself. This is reflected in the moment where he actually enters the black lion. While everyone else was thinking of themselves (except Lance, but I’ll get to that in a second), what caused the lion to awaken for Keith was Keith saying (about Shiro) “I can’t lead them like you.” This is the beginning of Keith learning to respect himself outside of what others project on to him.

However, he still doesn’t want to accept it. This is where Lance comes in. Lance literally tried so hard to be the one to take up responsibility of the black lion, but not for himself. This becomes apparent when he yields to Keith. Everyone is appalled at Keith’s objection to the lion even though it chose him, except Lance. Lance steps up, puts a hand on Keith’s shoulder, and tells Keith he can do it. And Keith actually listens. This shows that Keith responds well to respect; he just doesn’t have a lot of it for himself yet.

When Keith actually goes to fly the lion for the first time, he does so by saying “this one’s for you, Shiro.” This hearkens back to the idea of Keith being a self-imposed martyr – he justifies doing things for himself through the lens of doing things for others. This will be the season that subverts that, though, which I will discuss once I get to the end of the episode.

Now back to Lance for a moment. Blue shuts him out (quick interlude for some cute headcanon: Lance has referred to his lion as male in the past, but in order to get Blue to open up, he hits on the lion like he would presumably hit on a girl, as he is so famous for. Does this provide evidence that Lance is bi? Maybe if you squint and tilt your head to one side. It’s something to think about anyways). Then, which lion calls to him? Red, of course! Lance being Keith’s right hand is really elevating their relationship – it plays perfectly into all of their other interactions. They’re a messy team, but a team all the same, and they each need the other to properly function.

Also, something that starts in this episode and will continue through S5 is Lance’s reflection of Alfor and Altean values. Keith is a reflection of Galran values; this has already been made abundantly clear. We’re just setting up another parallel between the two and further entwining their paths in some way. Also, more of Lance’s insecurities show when he’s actually considering that he may not even have a contribution to the team as he originally thought, that he might just be “the goofball.” This starts to show a self confidence issue that is far from being resolved. He’ll definitely need a little help with that one. Luckily, he’s just starting to form a relationship with a little emo boy who is legitimately built out of insecurities and MCR. It’s beautiful. One last thing about Lance in S3E2 is that he says at the end “sometimes what you want is not necessarily what you get,” and I think this is starting to reference his shift in viewing Allura as an object for romance to a friend and true teammate, which is something we’ll see more of in S4 and 5.

And finally, Keith grows a lot during that battle, especially towards the end when he makes that terrible decision and rockets off to track Lotor without consulting the team. But here’s the thing about that scene: Keith made that decision of his own accord and not because he was trying to emulate Shiro. His whole arc in S3 is learning how to accept himself as a valid leader, and this is just the beginning of that. While I want to whack him over the head with a stick for putting everyone else in danger, at least he’s trying.

And now, a word on Lotor in S3E2

Lotor, you mother fucker. First, he says “mercy has never been the way of the galra…until now.” Again with the craftiness! And his whole role in S3E2 was just to gather intel on Voltron by using their need to protect to draw them out and force them to work as a team. What he doesn’t realize, though, is in forcing the paladins to make up for their shortcomings, he’s acting as a foil to the whole team. Without being pressed by Lotor, Allura and Lance would have never figured out that they needed to pilot different lions. This is the beginning to a long storyline of Lotor and Voltron working together that doesn’t actually get played out until S5.

Back to Keith/Lance

S3E3 takes us to the first real instance of the new team of paladins working under Keith’s leadership, and it’s pretty much a mess from the beginning. What I appreciate about this episode is that it further develops the bond between Lance and Keith as a team and as people, starting with Lance’s immediate opposition to entering Thaeserix (the gas planet that fucks up everyone’s sensors.) We have Keith barreling through and getting everyone lost until Allura finally can’t keep up and gets separated. Everyone’s freaking out, and Lance is the one to tell Keith they need to go back, and he finally does. As demonstrated before, Keith listens to Lance before he listens to the others. This shows that Keith has some measure of respect for Lance.

They rescue Allura, but Keith is still all hot for battle and continues forward, getting the team separated even further until it’s just him and Lance. This is the first time where Keith actually admits that he messed up, and he hits a low point for a second. He voices his concern to Lance, who responds perfectly, saying “yeah, you fucked up. But hey, we’ll fix it together.” This is what inspires Keith to keep going, and the team can eventually form Voltron because Keith is actually starting to think like a leader, and not just because of the leader Shiro was. He’s starting to become his own leader. He couldn’t have done it without Lance.

My favorite part is the cute line at the end where everyone is ragging on Lance for being dumb (not true btw, Lance is very intelligent and kind, he just has some self confidence issues, so shame on the other paladins for taking advantage of that), and Keith says “I’m glad we’re all making fun of Lance, but we have a job to do,” or something along those lines. It’s the look in Keith’s eyes that gets me; he’s teasing Lance, but not in the same way as the others. He’s really grateful to have the blue paladin there for support. It’s a different type of support than he’s received in the past; from Shiro it was support of an upper, someone he idolizes and thus tries to emulate. From Lance, it’s support from an equal, so it’s an even stronger sense of self-validation, which is something that Keith really needs at this point.

A quick note: in the episode where they enter the alternate reality and find Sven and Slav, Keith all of the sudden has the black bayard and Lance has the red bayard. When did that happen? That seemed to come out of nowhere, but I think it’s an important thing to note, especially when we get to some of the symbolism in terms of the past paladins at the end of this season. This episode also has good evidence of Keith stepping into the leadership role, which he will continue to develop over the next few episodes. I’m also glad that Keith was able to find Shiro, but as I’ll discuss in the next few paragraphs, I think he senses that something is not quite right.

The Symbolism of 6

I’m about to discuss S3E6, but begore I get into that, I’d like to talk a little bit about the symbolism of the number six as it relates to Keith and Lance’s relationship. Coran says pretty early on that he’s ordered the paladins by height, most notably calling Pidge “number five.” He doesn’t ever refer to the other paladins by these number names, but that implies that they all have a number (and they all have pretty distinguishing heights). Shiro is the tallest and the leader; he’s number one. Lance is the next tallest; he’s number two. Then comes Hunk, then Keith. Keith is number four. What’s four plus two? Six.

I already talked at length about the importance of S1E6 to Keith and Lance, with this being the first instance where Keith realizes he may have feelings for Lance (the “I cradled you in my arms!” moment). In season two, the distinction isn’t quite as obvious, but we see Lance questioning Keith running off with Allura. Granted, this is probably canonically related to Lance’s “crush” on Allura (which I’ll discuss a little more come season four and five), but the fact that he’s asking if the two of them are together and he’s so bent up about Keith doing anything with Allura could be in reference to his conflicted rivalry feelings towards Keith in the first place. He probably doesn’t realize it, but he’s just as annoyed at the idea of Keith being with someone as he is at the idea of Allura being with someone (hint: he’s bi /like meeeee!/).

Anyways, now we have S3E6, which has, in my opinion, one of the most important Klance scenes so far (save maybe the pool scene, but that was just too too cute so does it really count?).

Season Three, Episode Six

We open from Lance’s POV as he’s acting sniper for the rest of the team. He’s about to take someone out when Keith rushes in with some sword badassery (“Hey, Keith! I had that guy!”). He keeps the scope on Keith for a little while, then watches Allura do some crazy stunts with her whip, to be met with “Well, that was awesome!” Similar to what I was talking about back in S2E6, this is a neat parallel drawn between Lance’s feelings for both the red paladin and the pink paladin. This, in conjunction with the sheer symbolism of colors (red/blue/pink), practically seeps with Lance being bisexual.

Anyways, now that we have Shiro back, this episode throws a wrench into the leadership dynamic that Keith has built for himself. Throwback to season two where everything was going fine until he found out about his Galra blood, this is another instance of regression for Keith. He spent all that time building up his confidence and leadership skills, only to now butt heads with Shiro. Actually, he doesn’t even really butt heads; he yields. He completely yields the black lion to Shiro. Coincidentally, Shiro can’t use the black lion right away, and I think that might have something to do with the whole Clone Shiro arc (which I honestly still don’t understand completely, so I’m going to keep my theorizing about that to a minimum). It’s a complete back swing to his seeing himself as an invalid leader (“they need you, you know” – Keith is once again isolating himself from the other paladins in favor of doing what he thinks is right for the team and placing himself at a disadvantage).

This is interesting when we get to the major Klance scene, and I’m pretty sure you know where I’m going with this: Lance voicing his concern to Keith. Initiall, Keith is surprised at Lance’s advance, but he’s very accepting of it. It’s an interesting side to keith’s character that we haven’t necessarily seen yet. He’s soft and kind of flustered at the whole thing, which is sO cute.

Lance, on the other hand, is being so brave by voicing these concerns in the first place. We’ve seen multiple occasions of him wanting to be on team Voltron (for glory, for recognition, for the universe, etc – we saw this when he tried to pilot the black lion), but he’s willing to give all of it up if it’s what’s best for the team. Remind you of anyone? Yes, Keith!

Keith is appalled by this and instantly shuts it down, telling Lance not to worry about who pilots what. I think he’s surprised that Lance trusts him so much, but that trust gives Keith confidence. As we’ve seen, Keith responds to trust very well, even enough to make a joke (leave the math to Pidge + a bonus Klance smile). I also believe that he’s telling Lance these things just as much to comfort him as it is to comfort himself; he cares about Lance, and he doesn’t want him to leave. We see that in Keith’s initially reaction (“What are you talking about?!”). Another important line in this scene is Lance’s “this isn’t a participation game. This is war and you want you best soldiers on the front line.” Judging from Keith’s reaction, Keith honestly believes that Lance is one of their best warriors; he values Lance’s place on the team and wouldn’t think of jeopardizing that for a second. Overall, this scene was great. It had Lance’s vulnerability, and it’s the first time another member of the team has recognized that and actively comforted him for it. This will be important to remember once Keith leaves and Lance doesn’t have anyone to talk to about it anymore.

Also, when the Paladins are fighting Lotor’s generals, Keith is blindsided by Acxa, but then he is saved by a good shot from Lance and a reassuring “I’ve got you, buddy!” They really have bonded trust-wise. If romance does come out of this, it will definitely be a slow burn, built on a strong bond of vulnerability and trust. And the smile Keith gives Lance after that interaction! I headcanon that at this point he’s over his initial crush and is instead seeing Lance as a real person and teammate that he cares for deeply. Lance’s faith in him is a beacon of strength and light in a particularly dark time. And Keith switching hands with the bayard? That’s some cool shit. He just keeps getting better and better.

Side note for Keith and Acxa: I’ve seen the theories where they are siblings, but I don’t know if I buy it. We know virtually nothing about Acxa’s past except that she somehow got trapped in the stomach of a weblum for who knows how long until Keith rescued her. It’s just not enough for me to see them as related. If ANYTHING, they could be half siblings since we don’t know anything about Krolia yet either except that she’s a deep cover agent for the Blade. This versus the literal ten pages I’ve written on Klance thus far.

Okay, now back to Keith’s leadership conflict. It’s especially apparent when he starts arguing with Shiro about taking out Lotor on the recon mission. He shows off some of his old colors by wanting to run off on his own, but then listens when the team tells him to stick together. What’s important, though, is that Keith doesn’t completely give in to Shiro. In choosing between taking out Lotor’s ship and taking out the cargo ship, Keith makes a snap choice, against Shiro’s wishes, that targets both. He’s a good leader, and he’s making good decisions. The rest of the team just invalidates that, bringing back the doubt that has brought him so much trouble in the past, which we see in Keith and Shiro’s exchange at the end of the episode.

Final note on season three: past parallels

In the last episode of the season, we get some back story on Alfor and Zarkon’s relationship as well as some of the other past paladins. There’s the potential to see Alfor and Zarkon as a parallel to Shiro and Keith, but there’s also the potential to see it as a note on Lance and Keith, seeing as Lance is showing Altean traits vs Keith’s Galran traits. I’m about to try to debunk that with my own theory: there was also a scene in that episode where Alfor, in the red lion, saved Blades, the pilot of the blue lion. The connections between red and blue just keep being dredged up. There are red and blue stars in the astral plane. Red and blue are everywhere. Keith and Lance are literally written in the stars.

[how2to18]

I.

THERE’S A PHOTOGRAPH my mother can’t stop thinking about. She is about nine years old in it, dangling from her father’s arms as he dips her low to the ground, a blissful moment she can’t remember, one of the few they shared together. She texts me a picture of it one afternoon, its corner creased from an antique vanity mirror where she keeps it tucked up against the glass. She stares straight at the camera, and I can tell she is laughing, even though her upside-down figure is a blur. My grandfather leans too far forward; I can’t see his face. My mother tells me the photograph still makes her cry, but I wonder: For whom? The girl she once was, or the man he is no longer? That smeary snapshot is a substitute for other memories she’d prefer to forget. Its truth is a necessary fiction.

  II.

Ezekiel Hooper Stark is obsessed with family photographs. The narrator of Lynne Tillman’s Men and Apparitions — the author’s first novel in 12 years — pores over them, scrutinizing their subjects, often to the exclusion of his real family. A cultural anthropologist by profession, Zeke ricochets between detached analysis of heirloom pictures — his own, or others fished from flea-market albums — and theories of photography in a 400-page monologue packed with observations on gender, sex, and death. “My self is my field, and habitually I observe, and write field notes,” Zeke proclaims. His book, MEN IN QUOTES, a loose ethnographic study of contemporary masculinity, is excerpted at the novel’s end. Photographs here provide a basis for self-image and self-reflection, and Tillman seesaws between an analysis of physical pictures and an examination of the ways we picture ourselves and others.

“Photographs render worlds,” writes Tillman, and so from the outset Zeke’s world is constructed from photographs — or rather, from the medium of photography itself. “I wished upon the first star that winked at me in a black sky: preserve me, keep me safe,” he recalls, in the hope he might never grow older. Zeke soon learns that photographs cheat the aging process: “At nine I stared at pictures of Mother when she was nine, so cool, Mother, Ellen, a girl, and only I alone could force a Mother into Being.” They give him the power of time-travel, the ability to surround himself with people plucked from the past, like bugs encased in amber. His mother deems him morbid, for she understands photography’s relationship to death, something Zeke discovers only later. The episode recalls Roland Barthes’s photograph of his mother as a five-year-old, which he describes in Camera Lucida (1980) as collecting “all the possible predicates from which [her] being had been constituted,” a total image that rehearses her eventual death while freezing her in suspended animation.

Boy Zeke is a loner, more content to keep company with the dead. Close family and friends appear in static snapshots: “I see the barbecue pit, my father disdainfully flipping burgers.” His narration grows so detached, he calls his kin “the family,” and he refers to his sibling as “Little Sister” in a tone less autobiographical than anthropological. When Zeke’s father dies, his ambivalent eulogy is abruptly intercut with a paean to Polaroid film, which ceased production that same year; he understands his father’s impatience and materialism through the immediacy of the film he once favored.

Zeke’s one close live friend, Mr. Petey, is a praying mantis he spots in the family garden. A flighty endangered species with a talent for camouflage, Mr. Petey is the consummate observer, seeing more than his human neighbors while remaining unaware of ecological threats to his survival. If photography allows Zeke to trap metaphorical bugs, Mr. Petey is one he cannot catch (praying mantises are protected by federal law); but he keeps him in plush effigy, a stuffed witness to the Stark family drama. Mr. Petey might just stand in for a film camera, a mute super-eye threatened with extinction.

When Zeke finally gets his own camera, it gives him a sense of dominion over the world — the feeling it can be captured, developed, cataloged. “I wasn’t into the mechanics of cameras — lenses, focal length, speed — just the imagination behind the camera — me,” he recalls. “I was engaged in me, what was before me, which became a strange ownership, probably symptomatic or evidence of a little person’s pride in what he believes he controls. Silly tot.” His recollection of childish entitlement, which could portend an artist’s ego, is actually the admission of someone terrified by fate’s unphotographable power. What lies beyond the frame always determines what fits within it.

  III.

Framing, and the framed, are central to Lynne Tillman’s writing, which ranges freely across genres, from fiction to art to literary criticism. Among my favorite of her creations is Madame Realism, a sage proxy who browses exhibitions at art and historical museums, often addressing the signage and lighting with the same perspicacity as she does the objects on display. From the moment she appeared in a 1986 column in Art in America, Madame Realism made criticism personal, its analysis situated in real space trafficked by real people. In a form of critique reminiscent of Andrea Fraser’s early performances, her observations at once lance visible institutional biases and the hidden forces that instill them. She teaches us how to look, while revealing why we see what we do. Zeke Hooper might be Madame Realism reincarnate: his monologue is an essay, a theory of photography, that reveals as much about its author (Zeke? Lynne?) as it does about our acculturation by images.

Thirty-seven, white, male, and heterosexual, from an upper-middle-class family in the Boston suburbs, Zeke is the kind of guy who likes to hear himself talk. He often concludes self-lacerating statements with “kidding,” a verbal tic that seems somewhat insincere. As he considers the “glut of images” in which we live, his own mind comes to resemble that glut. Personal digressions suggest an intelligent polymath with an empathy problem, too aloof to relate to those closest to him. The novel’s facts start to seem suspicious; Zeke’s research for MEN IN QUOTES is strung through with joking asides and anecdotes that would surely invite academic scorn. Men and Apparitions is a work of fiction as ventriloquy by a winking puppet. If it is criticism, too, it knowingly undermines its own arguments. “A photograph doesn’t speak,” notes Zeke. “If it did it would be just another unreliable narrator.” What else is there?

Good writers are always ethnographers of a sort. They study human behavior in minute detail, connecting actions with their motivations, cultural forms with their social function. Writers are also always untrustworthy. Bias is a fact of writing as much as perspective is a quality of sight. “I don’t pretend I’m ‘just’ an observer,” Zeke proclaims. “In the field, ethnographers become engaged, entranced, involved, even entangled.” Tillman, Zeke, and their readers are both looking and being looked at. This book’s lens is also a mirror.

  IV.

Am I a “New Man”? A list of possible criteria, drawn up from Men and Apparitions: self-avowedly feminist, emotional, alienated, resistant to stereotypical gender roles, intimidated by machismo. Perhaps. “New Men” are Zeke’s subject of study for MEN IN QUOTES, though he clearly counts as one, too. He sets out to explore “what are ‘men’ now, after the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s, feminism, generally, how has that changed us, in what ways, and the women we know and love or hate, and what do we want from women.” The sample of men he interviews is self-selecting, composed of familiar peers. His true subject, it seems, is himself: “I could shape myself into an ethnographer without a knowing attitude, and could learn as much about my own as ‘the other,’ or discover the other inside.” At his core, Zeke feels alienated by society’s expectations of men, as if his privilege affords him no feeling of ownership over the world he was meant to master.

Zeke craves intimacy with women and is drawn to their strength, but he is ultimately more comfortable keeping them at a distance. The women he understands best live in silver gelatin: a long portion of the novel is dedicated to Clover Hooper Adams, a distant relative and amateur photographer, whose work was much acclaimed by her circle of New England patricians, including close confidant Henry James. There’s evidence James based his “Pandora” (1884) on her, a whip-smart, creative “New Woman” to match Zeke the New Man. Several of Clover’s photographs appear here, along with excerpts from letters she wrote to family and friends. Zeke wonders if he inherited his love of photography from her, though they more clearly share a sense of alienation from the world around them. Unappreciated by her husband, who disapproved of her practice, Clover killed herself one morning in 1885 by drinking photochemicals. Zeke suggests many causes for her gruesome suicide, but we are left to wonder if she wasn’t killed by photography itself, and the emotional space it forced between her and the people she captured. “Like a pair of binoculars with no right or wrong end, the camera makes exotic things near, intimate; and familiar things small, abstract, strange, much farther away,” Susan Sontag wrote in On Photography (1977). “It offers, in one easy, habit-forming activity, both participation and alienation in our own lives and those of others — allowing us to participate, while confirming alienation.” For Clover, as for Zeke, that psychic distance becomes too great to bridge.

Zeke’s infatuation for Clover grows when his wife, Maggie, leaves him for his best friend. Maggie appears throughout the novel only as a kind of cipher, thinly described, an image lacking true life. Zeke cannot perceive the emotional needs of the woman beside him and so returns to the company of a woman who cannot object to his advances. “I fell in love with an essentially always unavailable woman, the image of a beloved,” he laments. Photographs, unlike human beings, can’t betray us.

Recent conversations around sexual harassment and assault have focused on men as individual perpetrators but rarely have examined the broader cultural conditions that shape their relationships with women. It’s worth treating the first post-feminist generation of adult males as a test case for long-term solutions to the problem. If Zeke is a New Man in search of New Women, his notional feminism isn’t backed up by behavior. He still lacks empathy. He hates having his intellectual authority questioned. He idealizes a certain image of femininity, but lays blame when women don’t conform. The New Man is a paradox: self-aware of his privilege, and evaluative of his masculinity, but forced by analysis into a state of detachment that strains emotional engagement. He can talk the talk, but so what? All leftist politics face this same challenge, to move beyond the mere assimilation of radical discourse and into the realm of real action.

Tillman is 71, but she delves deeply into the psychology of a man half her age. In many ways, Men and Apparitions is a portrait of Generation X: caught between the analog and the digital, economic prosperity and recession, the sexually objectifying gender stereotypes of the Bush-Clinton years and the Obama-era gender revolution, Gen-X men are cleaved by history, left raw and ready for the malaise of middle age. Zeke’s world, and its expectations of him, have changed as rapidly as photography. He feels endangered, a Mr. Petey past his prime. The part of him left behind, wounded by cultural obsolescence, is perhaps his true “other inside.”

  V.

One recent gray afternoon, I found myself on the fifth floor of the Whitney Museum, in New York, browsing Zoe Leonard: Survey, an exhibition of the American artist’s nearly 40-year practice. On a quiet wall facing the Hudson River, as bright and colorless as a mirror, hung five photographs of photographs: portraits of a woman in a dark coat, silhouetted against the deck railing of a ship as it passes the Statue of Liberty. Across these five frames, the same two pictures repeat, as though Leonard’s film had been jammed. In one, the woman faces Liberty, while in the other, she looks slightly askance. Photographed on tables wrapped in crinkled white butcher paper, they appear worn by human touch, as if cut from the jaundiced innards of a family album. Leonard found them while looking through her mother’s pictures, and they show her grandmother as she first arrived in the United States after the long sea voyage from Poland. I think of my mother’s text message: a photograph of a photograph, its physicality preserved while also flattened. Leonard’s photographs have a metonymic quality, like tender relics of a relative she hardly knew, realer now than the person they capture.

Zeke Hooper is a picture of pictures, an amalgamation of the images he so hungrily consumes. “I’m a picture to myself, a mental image,” he remarks, “but when I look in the mirror, I don’t know that person.” The central crisis of Men and Apparitions is Zeke’s inability to match his own self-conception, a crisis that pervades our social media age. The self-representation Leonard so poignantly foregrounds has since been sapped of its agency, subjected to the manic expectations of a society reprogrammed by digital images’ instantaneous circulation. Our public personae are now simulacra, crafted to appeal to specific audiences and subject to constant reformulation. We snap, we look, we share, we move on. “For ethnology to live, its subject must die,” Jean Baudrillard wrote in Simulations (1983), and so now we die every day. Zeke’s melancholic obsession with analog photographs is also a refusal to let a part of him go that must expire so that photography can survive. New Men need New Pictures.

I return to my mother’s photograph, or my pixelated version of that glossy object. How does it suggest I can emulate my grandfather, while learning from his mistakes? He belonged to another era of masculinity, and so the image makes me think of my relationship to my mother, my mother’s to my father, my father’s to my sisters. Each time I look at it, I force my nine-year-old mother into being, hold her, giggling, all to myself. I imagine how Barthes felt about that portrait of his mother, how he saw her whole life in its fragment. Zeke would cherish my photograph, too, and its false promise to make sense of the past. “The self is a necessary fiction,” he observes. I love that fiction; I need it. It is Lynne Tillman’s true genre, her subject, her muse.

¤

Evan Moffitt is a writer and critic based in New York. He is the associate editor of frieze.

¤

Banner image from Diego de Silva.

The post A Necessary Fiction: Photography and Self-Image in Lynne Tillman’s “Men and Apparitions” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2IigTkw via IFTTT