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beautifulhigh · 6 years ago

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Language of the Falls: Ep 37

Insert something here. Something about words. Words good. Words smart. Understanding and interpretation is interesting. And other things. Good words.

Pretty words.

Favourite words.

And now for the standard disclaimer words with the download link:

Everything in here that's recognisably @kingfallsam was, is now, and will forever belong to The Make Believe Picture Company. The artistic fair use ramblings are mine. Any words not mine are cited, linked, referenced, or from the good ol' dictionary by way of Google.

Look, y'all know the deal. What's not mine isn't mine. What's mine under the transformative work rule is mine. Be nice, like proper nice, and don't come yelling at me.

*presses play*

Episode 37 – "…In A Row?"

Ducks? Ideas? Prisoners? Line 'em up and knock 'em down? Ben has a plan and who is getting in the way of that but my favourite distraction who is almost certainly more in tune with what's going on than people give him credit for. Doyle's talking about a spectre that has apparently stolen his "treats" and while Ben is dismissing him Sammy is giving him the air time. Even though Doyle's sure that Ben sees it as "ghost toast".

Used to express the opinion or knowledge that a statement or belief is incorrect or purely lies. Often used as a playful and polite substitute for shouting 'bullshit'.

Always the polite one is our Ben.

Kyle's affection for Kevin Smith gets a name check with Silent Bob. And because this is me I look for links and meaning in these mentions:

True to his name, Silent Bob rarely speaks, but when he does, he often has something intelligent or clever to say, delivering insightful monologues to the other characters only in appropriate situations.

Doyle is so often maligned and ignored and dismissed just because of his extra curricular habits but if you listen to what he has to say? There's meaning there. The apparition can apparently be summoned in his bathroom, the one he's already certain that can lead to another world? The allegory of messing about, not taking things seriously, continues in the use of "snoogens". Or "snoogems". Google, you fail me. But whatever the spelling it still means that you're kidding… if only for the sake of not getting the grief that comes with it. It's easier to dismiss Doyle as being high or whatever instead of considering what he's saying.

Ben cuts through Doyle's story by making it clear that sometimes the curtains are blue and it wasn't an apparition of a fictional character yoinking his treats. The call is cut off and Doyle is summarily dismissed.

It's clear that this time Doyle's comments about supernatural happenings in his bathroom have a very real and very non-super explanation and it's taken as "yet another example" of how Doyle is an unreliable character. Evidence should always be treated cumulatively and so one result should never dismiss another. This time? Fine. Happy Time Doyle got it wrong. But this doesn't mean I stop believing in him.

Jen is #TeamDoyle and #TeamChet. Give me your marginalised and stereotyped characters, reduced to simple interpretations and ideas and I will give you an essay on why they are not that. Or, y'know, a series of Language posts.

Meanwhile Ben is focused on the election. For an episode airing on 1 November 2016 it is not surprising that there's a huge political slant here. The advert is (another) Grisham one with the classical music in the background. Classical music has a number of benefits and certain ones will serve the intention and aim here.

Boost memory – remember who you're voting for! Makes you happy – remember who was being talked about when they made you feel this happy? Puts you to sleep – oh, I'm sorry. Were you listening to the radio and a late night show? Did you fall asleep halfway through listening to a political ad (Vote Grisham!) and then didn't hear anything else the hosts might have said? Oh. Shame.

HFBWhatever's advert echoes the language and imagery used in Grisham's own history. Not only does this help to reinforce those ideas – the quarterback, the work he's done – but it also serves to give an impression of unity. Grisham is not alone in this, he isn't mounting a one man charge against the system like Herschel is. And his support comes from high up unlike Ron's grass roots campaign. They are heading in "the direction of peace and prosperity" and the inference is clear that changing course now, changing drivers, would move us away from that. Into war and hardship. Which is an interesting point seeing as Hershel's military history and Ron's financial struggles are public knowledge. Moving towards either of them is moving in the opposite direction of where Grisham has led us – and we all love where we are now, don't we? And we know that he cares about us as he calls the listeners "friends". HFBWhatever doesn't do friends.

"The sea man from the worm place… fish food to water goers."

Leaving aside the near homophone of "sea man" having homophobic undertones there's a linguistic shift to the intricacies that come with association. Both "worm place" and "fish food" both work for what Ron's business is but it is deliberately understating and underselling. Worms have connotations of death and fish food is light and flaky. Neither of these reflect anything positive on Ron, nor on his business. You are not customers or valued, you are water goers. Like this is some little jaunt you decided to go on.

Hershel does not at all escape HFBWhatever's bile:

"…foul mouthed numbskull… senior citizen's lemon party talk hotline…"

Hershel may be foul mouthed but he is no numbskull. He is intelligent in multiple senses of the word but his language choices are being used to present him as someone who is uneducated. Because you don't use that kind of language in public.

Those with higher intellects were found to be more likely to curse, eat spicy breakfasts, and walk around the house naked. (source)

Swearing is an indicator of intelligence, not a lack of it. Swearing helps to reduce pain, it needs to show awareness of your audience and situation as well as choosing the placement and emphasis for the desired effect. Swearing is a crafting of language in the way that we do write essays on it – Do you bite your thumb at me sir? – so it is once again taking the social element of language and applying it to something else.

Lemon parties are not that hard to understand. Or to hold. If you want to risk your browser history then go for it – but suffice to say it's not the kind of thing you'll need to run a hotline for. So Hershel being unable to run a hotline for this just speaks to his apparent inadequacies.

"Do yourself a favour."

This is somewhere between advice and a threat. When you tell someone this it's because you believe that whatever course of action you are suggesting will benefit them in the long run. It will be a favour, something nice, something supportive and generous and good. But we also use it when we want to suggest to someone that the path they are currently on, or considering, might work out in the extreme opposite. Like when I suggest to students that they do themselves a favour and stop arguing with me because they will not win that fight and it will get them into more grief.

But this is HFBWhatever and he can't keep up the pretence that he's on our side. He slips back into "you lowlies" and he heads off to listen to his phonographs. For those of us not around in the 1800s this is a gramophone or record player. If you don't know what one of those is then go Google it, I'm not your teacher. But it reminds us of the antiquated nature of HFBWhatever and his behaviour. He is set in his ways and he isn't prone to flights of fancy or to doing something new. So when he does something he does it for his reasons and because it will best serve him in that colonial mindset that comes with the time period.

We later hear him use the word "peons" which speaks to this as well:

Peons (noun)

NORTH AMERICAN a person who does menial work.

HISTORICAL a debtor held in servitude by a creditor, especially in the southern US and Mexico.

For the "landed gentry" type person then the menial work aspect, well, works. To the man up on the mountain top everyone else does the menial work while he gets on with important matters. But given the history revealed in KFC3 we learn that the Beauregard family were once upon a time hailing from the more southern and Mexico-adjacent areas of the United States. So it isn't a huge leap of logic to start wondering who is being held in HFBWhatever's debt and what they got in return?

In case you weren't sure this all adds up to "this is not good". And Ben knows this. He rants about money in politics (again, topical for the broadcast… and still relevant today) while Sammy wants to focus on "the truth; cold hard integrity". Sammy isn't the naïve type and he's certainly been the one to see things that others have missed when it comes to the politics of King Falls. So why is he suddenly taking this stance? Is he resigned to the outcome? Or is he disengaging?

Both are equally terrifying.

He cares enough to vote and he's voting for who he believes in. But Ben is sure that it won't be enough. Looking back on the comments about a rigged vote in hindsight of November 2016 and the laughter is hollow but the pain is real.

Agent Spears calls in on line 8 – in numerology the number 8 usually indicates someone who is assertive, determined, and responsible. Just like our friendly law enforcement. There's a nice little "don't look at urban dictionary" comment which Jen really should have listened to. Just… don't. Yokels are uneducated and unsophisticated people from the countryside. Just that. Nothing else.

Who Is Sammy Stevens? gets another nod because he shuts down Regan's questions about where he's originally from, it's "not important". Sammy's past remains a huge mystery at this point and we are but a few episodes away from it blowing up so it's nice to get that little nod to it. A reminder that even though Sammy is our audience surrogate he is still an unreliable narrator.

Every kid who grew up in the '80s and '90s played Jinx at some point and I have to wonder why Sammy doesn't break it? You always had your wing person: if I'm ever jinxed you get me out of it and vice versa. If all it takes is someone saying Ben's name three times why doesn't Sammy do that for him? On the one hand he's not dignifying this display of immaturity by getting involved… but on the other he is disengaging in a way that breaks my heart. We are starting to see Sammy going through the motions. He is taking calls and listening to what anyone has to say because challenging it takes effort. He is taking the path of least resistance by accepting the election results a week out from them being cast. And now he's letting the kids play right in front of him.

Hindsight really is a bitch on a relisten. (Hindaural?)

Spears has the same aversion to the cop stereotype of "coffee and donuts" that Troy does and so it's not hard to develop a connection there. We know Troy, we like and we trust him, we are not happy when Eric tries to kill him off at every opportunity. And if Spears is the same as Troy, even in this little regard, then it can help transfer some of that allegiance to her. She's still an unknown quantity and we don't know where she falls on the whole trust/suspect spectrum. She's an outsider, a newcomer to the town and the story. She's Sammy but without the benefit of being in our ears every night/two weeks.

She's still investigating the murder of "one Mr. Richland Thurgood McGuff" and names, of course, hold meanings.

Richland -- A city (part of the Tri-Cities) with a deceiving name. While you may expect mansions and fancy cars and Mexicans mowing lawns fenced by white picket, you get there and think, "Hey! This place kind of looks like shit!" I love Richland. (urban dictionary)

Thurgood Name Meaning. from the northern Middle English personal name Thurgod (Old Norse þorgautr), composed of the þórr, name of the Norse god of thunder (see Thor) + the ethnic name Gautr (see Joslin). nickname from Middle English thur(og)h 'completely' + gode 'good'. (ancestry dot com)

Mcguff Name Meaning. Irish: Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Dhuibh, a patronymic from the personal name or byname Dubh 'black'. (ancestry dot com)

So deceptive, good, black. Deceptive: good and negative. And isn't that all of us? We know that Rich McGuff was a man with conflicting impressions – everyone loved him but he was racist and by all accounts not the most friendly of people.

Sammy Stevens, everyone's dad friend, is suddenly the mom friend. This isn't a feminising statement but it's more an allusion to the affectionate and caring stereotype that comes with the female parent. And given he's dealing with the childish banter of Spears and Ben it's perhaps more fitting. There's also the lack of the stereotype of action and punishment – sure, mum would tell you off but "wait until I tell your father" is the phrase because dad would be the one to really lay down the law. (It's a stereotype, don't yell at me.) So if Sammy is the mom now? Well that takes a bit of bite out of the parental reprimand.

In a potentially less-charged interpretation it's subverting the expectation. Sammy presents as male and so "dad friend" would be the logical assumption. Regan's use of "mom friend" applies the same parental role but without automatically falling into gender assumptions and stereotypes. Same idea, different parts. Also mothers are awesome and fierce and amazing.

Everyone's favourite fricative is on line 9 – he wants in on the Emily talk. He is still focused on the idea of perfection, calling Emily the "sweetest angel". Ben entertains him and it speaks to not only Ben's growth but his focus on the task. He wants to get Emily back and if that means potentially accepting help from Greg then that's what's going to happen. What that help will entail is a curiosity; at present Greg has done nothing to try and get Emily back whereas Ben has been in planning mode since #28 and while no one else may know the details we know that they're there.

Ben has a notebook, Greg has… a Kermit song. Rainbows have their own connotation but that episode is coming. Ben is willing to accept help from those who can make a difference, Sammy might be disengaging from things but even he has a line and hangs up on said line as soon as Greg starts making overtures of friendship. He's immediately back on line 3 though and is much more soft spoken. "I… don't… appreciate…" is very much in the same tonal area as "six… inch… voices". Greg really does want to play at the big boy's table and so trying to emulate the power that Gunderson's delivery has is a sign of that. Children do copy what the adults say.

It doesn't last as another call is terminated just in time for the hotline. Ben steels himself which is the biggest clue that something is afoot. Ben's confidence has grown over the last 30-odd episodes. He might be impulsive and emotive but he also plans and makes sure that he has all of his proverbial ducks lined up before he does something big.

Like send a lot of requests to Leland Hill for an interview. He's been putting in the hours, same as he did with Freddie Osborne back in #30 and so we are starting to form an idea of what is coming next. Which… doesn't seem to happen.

Sammy is very against a private meeting in the compound: he's still protective of Ben and while he might not fully understand what is going on he knows that this is much safer. We have the clear distinction between how Greg and Ben see Emily – Ben corrects Leland's presumption that Emily is Ben's girlfriend. Because he's not going to claim anything that Emily doesn't give him herself. Whatever his feelings for Emily are right now they are friends.

In all the money and science talk (y'all know about Monopoly and a c-meter is a capacitance meter, something that "is a piece of electronic test equipment used to measure capacitance, mainly of discrete capacitors") we get our first insight into the man behind the institution of the Institute.

Bear with the English teacher for the science bit:

A capacitor stores energy in a similar way to a battery but releases any stored energy very quickly. For this reason they can be liable to explode if used incorrectly. Most capacitors have a positive and a negative side and need to be attached correctly otherwise things will go wrong. Some are not polarised which are mostly used in loudspeakers to block certain frequencies.

So what the linguist in me is getting that science isn't inherently good or bad. Connect it right and you have something that can lead to massive and rapid progress. Don't connect it properly and, well, boom. And if it's neutral then it blocks frequencies? Like… communication?

The Electrolocaust is brought up again and it's confirmed that it affected "new electronics" (well that explains why the station managed to still broadcast). Hill denies involvement, saying that it inconvenienced them too. Inconvenience is an interesting word – to the dictionary!

Inconvenience (noun) the state or fact of being troublesome or difficult with regard to one's personal requirements or comfort. (verb) cause trouble or difficulty to

Loss of power causes difficulties if you rely on electricity. For Ben the lack of his phone clearly caused him difficulties with his comfort but somehow I don't think that was at the top of Leland's priority list. So what did he require electricity for? I mean, if you were creating a robot duplicate of someone then maybe the loss of electricity would be an inconvenience…

Leland doesn't have time to "fraternise":

Fraternise (verb) associate or form a friendship with someone, especially when one is not supposed to.

We mostly use this word when talking about forming a relationship with the 'enemy' as it were. So it's Ben vs. the Science Institute and things are just getting interesting.

Because we know who caused the Electrolocaust, right? So why is Ben blaming them? Or rather praising them… Sammy is confused but we should not be because we know Ben. We know that this is planned, intentional, and he's being way too focused on praising them for something that they didn't do.

Formatting rule break to show emphasis!

"Our business is our business."

Meaning changes with inflection, where you put the stresses on something. That's why writing this is very much something different to saying it. If something is "our business" (emphasis on the pronoun) then it is private, not for public consumption. "Our business" with no emphasis is simply capitalism in action.

Which is even more interesting for an institute supposedly devoted to scientific research across a large number of fields. The mentioned list encompasses everything from the abstract of existence through to that existence, including the metacognitive approach to understanding how we fit into said existence.

The hierarchy of the sciences is a theory formulated by Auguste Comte in the 19th century. This theory states that science develops over time beginning with the simplest and most general scientific discipline, astronomy, which is the first to reach the "positive stage" (one of three in Comte's law of three stages). As one moves up the "hierarchy", this theory further states that sciences become more complex and less general, and that they will reach the positive stage later. Disciplines further up the hierarchy are said to depend more on the developments of their predecessors; the highest discipline on the hierarchy is the social sciences. According to this theory, there are higher levels of consensus and faster rates of advancement in physics and other natural sciences than there are in the social sciences.

Basically it's the what, the how, then the why. What we do, how we do it, why we do it. Moving up those levels deepens our understanding of something and we are seeing that in action with Ben in this episode. What he is doing is talking to Leland Hill about the Electrolocaust; how is by praising his genius and having "the balls" to do it; why comes a little later for anyone not connecting the dots just yet.

"Roland is going to be sorely disappointed."

…why? Was it the hope that they were making in-roads with the voices of the community? What did Leland and Roland hope to achieve from this call? It's always more worry when something they plan doesn't come to fruition because… what did they want?

And now that HFBWhatever is on the line those dots are being well and truly connected – but possibly more worrying is Leland's statement:

"We do not have a weapon. Of that sort."

What sort do you have then?

Meanwhile good ol' Harry admits to being behind the Electrolocaust, confirming an open secret as he dismisses the "Science School". An Institute is a very different kind of establishment:

Institute (noun) an organisation having a particular purpose, especially one that is involved with science, education, or a specific profession.

Not that school doesn't have a particular purpose but it generally at a much lower level with a closer focus on making sure the little ones don't do something daft like eat the glue or doodle on the table or throw a chair across the room. Hardly the focus on significant scientific advancement. But the inclusion of HFBWhatever is enough for Sammy who finally gets it. Ben is now obviously playing dumb to get a public, on-air offer of the transmorgrifier. Those ducks of Ben's are all lined up and he knocks them done with ease.

The Science Institute does good for "King Falls and all of the human race", once again harking back to their first on-air commercial. When someone has a slogan and they work it into their everyday language it's because they want to continue selling that brand. It feels like election hustings have never really gone away but pay attention to the lines and phrases that come up again and again and again. It's a branding, it's association, and it's a form of control. My classes know that when I say "do you not want to leave/go home/have lunch/go to break?" it's because they need to shut up so they can be dismissed. They know when I ask "any queries, questions, problems?" it's the end of the explanation and the task is about to begin.

Leland has the opportunity, he has the audience, and it happens without him even skipping a beat.

"We're here, King Falls," he begins, once again echoing the patter from the advert, "and we are—" cut off. But that's not the big thing. Ben snaps back into control and we go out on him making arrangements to borrow the transmorgrifier, the plan clear for all.

What election?

Three weeks of gainful employment left. Then who knows? With any luck I'll get what I've heard being called "a life"? Think that's it. Apparently you balance it out with work. Shall see what happens.

But until that time: be well, fandom.

Jen

Twitter: @jennyreyn

Discord: come play!

#king falls #king falls am #language of the falls #overthinking jen is overthinking #ben arnold #sammy stevens #kyle brown #eric kimelton #long post #sorry if the read more fails on mobile

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