#it's one of the strongest underlying tensions in the narrative - and one of the things that makes the story so interesting

[falsecardigan]

No bc I agree with everything about this. I truly want to believe that everything wrong with the season five finale will be somewhat rectified in season six. Especially because we have almost a year until it airs. It won't be able to rectify the fact that Adrien wasn't there or the fact that he will never get the closure his character so desperately needs. However it can have Marinette actually think about what she's doing and have her change her mind and have her tell him (obviously as Ladybug). I'd rather it not narratively cause problems because it does upset me that this was one thing that genuinely had nothing to do with relationship conflict and it never should have been but all I want at this point is for Adrien to stop being left in the dark. It's been an ongoing theme in the show since season two and there are so many episodes showing why that shouldn't happen (especially in season four) and yet it keeps happening. The truth might hurt for him to hear but he deserves to know and I really do hope Maribug tells him because the absolute worst thing that could happen is someone else tells him.

ok since i’ve really only whined but not actually explained my reasoning lol, here is my take on the s5 finale. (this is long, sorry)

I think we’re all on the same page about the idea that gabriel being seen as a hero, by all of paris but especially adrien, is icky. and on top of that it does not feel good that marinette is supporting that lie, even if it’s out of love for adrien. most people are assuming this issue will be resolved somehow in 6, probably by lila exposing the truth. cool. that’s my hope as well. but even if that’s the case, i still dislike the framing of his wish and what the surrounding context seems to imply about it.

it is not my assumption that gabriel’s wish included green initiatives and a reformation of the parisian school system lol. I assume that his wish was to exchange his own life for nathalie’s. but as we know, wishes literally rewrite reality. the fact is that paris improved after his wish, so it is still related. he remade the world, and the new world ended up better. It all supports the idea that his wish was a good thing—a noble sacrifice that redeemed him in some sense. my impression is that even if (hopefully) he is exposed as hawkmoth, the actual wish he made will still be framed as admirable. obviously marinette found it noble enough to agree to lie to everyone about gabriel’s identity as hawkmoth.

which brings me to another pain point: the fact that gabriel essentially won the long battle against ladybug and chat noir. i’ve heard arguments that he didn’t win because he died and how is that winning? he got what he deserved in the end. but imo, he just put himself out of his own misery, because he was on the brink of death anyway because of his cataclysm wound, and he basically escaped having to face any emotional consequences from his literal terrorism and child abuse. and even if you don’t consider that a win, you also can’t consider marinette’s end of the deal a win either. her goal was to prevent hawkmoth from unifying the miraculous and making a reality-altering wish. which is exactly what happened. so she failed her mission. ladybug lost. and to me it’s sort of bizarre that the narrative seems to be framing that as a good thing? ladybug lost, but the new reality that resulted from it is so much better than the old one, and she is actively choosing to lie in order to protect the seeming goodness of that reality.

marinette is lying, of course, to protect adrien, which does not feel out of character. we’ve seen her do this before. but it is frustrating to me for precisely that reason. the final battle was meant to highlight how much marinette has grown over the past five seasons, but her choice here highlights the ways she has not grown. starting with syren in season 2, she has witnessed how much it hurts chat noir to be left in the dark and how it weakens their partnership. in that case, she convinced master fu to let him be in the know, and trust was restored. but then she continued a habit of keeping things from him, putting more and more distance between them, till it culminated with kuro neko in s4—a total breakdown of the ladynoir partnership, where chat noir renounced his miraculous. i would have thought that marinette would learn from that experience and realize that keeping people in the dark is harmful and that even if the truth hurts, adrien has a right to know it. but she once again made the decision for him, and when he finally finds out, it will be all the more painful to know that the person he loves and trusts most in the world lied to him. i actually really appreciate that marinette as a protagonist has such a good heart but is still such an imperfect character, so i want to respect this choice as a manifestation of her flawed but good intentions. i just can’t help but be really disappointed that after 5 seasons of making the same mistakes again and again, she has apparently not learned from them, which makes me feel she has not grown the way the writers say she has.

her facing hawkmoth alone for the final battle is supposed to be a sign of that growth—and yes, I can see how she has grown a lot in confidence and capability since her shaky debut as ladybug. but i also feel that her flying solo defies one of the central themes of miraculous: that in the fight against evil, good people need to stand together. just think of the difference between the s4 and the s5 finale. in strike back, ladybug is broken and sobbing because she has lost the miraculous and feels like a failure who is all alone. but then she is buoyed up by her faithful partner and all of paris, who express unbreakable faith in her and vow to stand by her side. that was so powerful! showing that she doesn’t have to be alone, and she’s not supposed to be alone, and that part of being a hero means accepting help and working with others to achieve good goals. this message was a major part of marinette’s character arc in s4 and it’s something that was introduced from the very beginning and has been supported over and over in the show. but then in “re-creation,” she has no team, and she doesn’t need one. which … good for her, I guess? But then why did we have 5 seasons of “you and me against the world” if in the end it was always going to culminate with “I'm sure we can figure out a solution if we work together. You … and me”—referring to Marinette and Gabriel, while Adrien is literally locked in a blank white prison hundreds of miles away?

it just really kills me that in kuro neko, adrien gave up his ring under the assumption that chat noir was not needed—that he was entirely useless to ladybug. and then the narrative proved him right. ladybug did not need chat noir to defeat monarch. she just needed his ring. the writers confirmed in their recent commentary that they had planned a bug noire fusion from the beginning, and they intentionally sidelined adrien so that could happen—they even had to figure out an excuse for why he wouldn’t be there. so they traumatized him with nightmares of destruction and fear of akumatization to ensure that he would once again give up his ring and conveniently remained locked away while bug noire faced down monarch alone.

you could argue that it’s better for adrien to have missed the final battle anyway, since facing his own father would just be even more traumatizing for him. i understand that. (that’s the reason i liked that in the owl house, it ended up being just luz vs belos, and hunter did not have to face him again.) but at the same time it feels so narratively unjust that chat noir—who has been fighting against hawkmoth by ladybug’s side since day 1—has zero part in seeing his mission through to the end. even though it’s all about him. because while marinette is the protagonist, adrien is the connecting piece of the whole story. it’s always been ladybug vs hawkmoth, and adrien is in the middle of them, because he’s both ladybug’s partner and gabriel’s son.

you’d think, logically, that as the connecting piece, Adrien’s decisions would be vital to the plot. That he’d have the power to tip it either way. but instead he is completely stripped of his autonomy—literally, because he’s a senti, and also symbolically in the narrative, because he’s simply removed from the equation. Like, he’s still central to the equation but he has no say in it. It’s all about him but he’s not even present. Everyone is fighting for him but he can’t fight for himself. Everyone is speaking for him but he doesn’t even have a voice.

the finale kind of sets up marinette and gabriel as narrative foils of each other, showing how they have the same motivation—to make adrien happy. and they make the same decision to protect that goal. which is interesting, sure, but also kind of effed up to me? i’m not sure what to take from the idea of the protagonist mirroring the antagonist in this way. that’s been done loads of times, but in this context, for a child audience, i don’t know what to make of it. what kind of message that is supposed to send to the children who are the primary audience of this show? ladybug is a good guy, and in the end, she’s just like the villain because they both love adrien and want to protect him. so that’s why she agrees to tell everyone the bad guy was a hero. ????

that gabriel/marinette parallel leaves adrien to parallel emilie, which makes sense and is fitting but also just sort of … depressing and again, lowkey effed up. that adrien ends up with the same narrative role as a corpse in a coffin. almost, like, macguffin-esque—a thing that motivates the agents of the story but has no agency itself. despite him being so central to both sides of the main conflict, his decisions don’t affect the outcome. because he doesn’t have the option to make any. because he’s not even present. both gabriel and marinette made a life-altering decision for adrien, thinking it was best for him, without considering that what’s best for him is to know his own story and make his own choices. him getting the rings was somewhat relieving, but it also felt like kind of a slap in the face. because it’s like, “look, adrien’s free! he has his amok and no one can control him anymore!” but, like, how free is a person who is living a lie? will he ever experience true autonomy, or will his life continue to be dictated by the decisions others make for him? will the narrative give him decision-making power or will his role continue to be symbolic?

one thing that makes this all extra dissatisfying is that Adrien literally does not have the option of getting closure with his father, because he’s dead. maybe a dramatic reveal in the middle of the final battle would not be the best way to go about it, but now he can’t have any sort of closure. in the owl house, it didn’t feel necessary for hunter to be present in the belos takedown because he already had his confrontation with belos in graveyard possession scene. belos tried to physically control him, and hunter broke free, and spoke his mind, and as traumatizing at is all was, it was good for him to be able to do that. it would’ve been so nice if adrien also had that opportunity. if he did break free from his father’s control, either by overcoming akumatization or the control of his amok somehow. or if not that, if he were just able to have one honest conversation with his father about emilie. like he did with his alt self in the paris special. it was so significant for the writers that bug noire detransformed and spoke to gabriel as marinette. why couldn’t adrien have done that? Marinette is the one to tell Gabriel that Adrien wouldn’t want him to make the wish and hurt someone else, that Adrien has made peace with his grief, that he has learned to cherish his mother’s memory without living in the past. wouldn’t that be even more powerful coming from adrien himself? if adrien was part of that final confrontation just as himself, we could even still have bug noire play a primary role.

i get that adrien being part of the battle is a risk, since we saw in chat blanc one option of how it could play out. but we also saw in the collector another potential way adrien might respond to learning that his father is hawkmoth—charging into battle by ladybug’s side. especially if he was given time to process the idea beforehand. it’s not impossible. you’d just have to compose the scene and its buildup a different way. so honestly it feels sort of lazy to just remove him for the sake of ease? and also sort of a waste of narrative potential? the villain being the father of one of the main characters is such an interesting plot element. imagine if luke skywalker did not ever face darth vader. if he never even learned that vader was his father. or if he learned that fact after vader’s death, which was the result of a confrontation he was not present for.

of course, i know adrien is not the protagonist. marinette is. and of course i want her to be empowered by the story. but i’m getting a little tired of what i see as kind of cheap feminism in ML. like, girl power for the sake of visibility so the writers can pat themselves on the back about it, if that makes sense? this show does have so much good feminist power with a strong female lead who has realistic flawless and a big heart, who overcomes self-doubt and other struggles, and who has proven time and again to be a smart, capable leader who has earned the trust of everyone on her team. but all of that sometimes feels undercut by the narrative treatment of adrien—like he has to be put down somehow to elevate marinette. ML has subverted gender roles in a lot of ways by having ladybug lead with her brain while chat noir follows with his heart. and adrien has a lot of other strong feminine associations—the focus on his physical appearance, the expectation of perfection and obedience, his soft and gentle nature, his romanticism, etc. And one of the biggest ones is all the ways he is trapped, all the ways he is pushed down and made to be submissive. they even depict him as a princess locked in a tower, with marinette as the knight in shining armor to save him from the evil dragon (his father). with adrien in that traditionally feminine role, it would have been empowering to see him to take a leading part in his own liberation. instead, he was locked away both literally and symbolically in favor of a solo bug noire confrontation, so marinette could look like a girlboss in her cool new outfit, taking on the bad guy all by herself, even when it would (imo) fit better with the themes of the show and her own character arc for her to fight alongside her partner. but as Thomas Astruc said, “She's Barbie, he's Ken. You don't like it. I get it. It won't change. Anything else?” (X) it just makes me feel that the writers cared more about the cinematic value and feminist brownie points of that battle than its narrative significance—which i feel could only be increased by adrien’s participation. “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing” … and that is all adrien was allowed to do.

i think a lot of fans at this point are just assuming that whatever feels dissatisfying/off will be fixed in s6. they’re trusting that the writers have a brilliant master plan that we just have to be patient and wait to see come together. idk, maybe i’m just tired. or a little jaded. i think there will be a lot to enjoy in s6, but i’m also prepared for disappointment. i honestly did not love many elements of s4 as well as s5, and i had expectations that weren’t fulfilled there either. i’ve felt let down by the writers many times now, so i expect that many of their future choices will  resonate with me. but i still love ML, and I am eager to see how everything will unfold. i’ve also read a lot of other analyses of the s5 finale, and there are great points being made on many sides. this is just my personal interpretation and opinion. i did not like the finale when i first watched it, and after sitting on it for months and trying to evaluate my feelings and look at it logically, i still do not like it lol. if you do, great! this isn’t intended as a personal attack on anyone—just me expressing my two cents, which ended up being more like $20. thanks for bearing with me if you read all this ✌️

[jonroxton]

can you talk about chlark beyond chloe? personally i think it's weird that the writers kept adding kisses and weird romantic moments without any pay off. i don't know much about the fandom back then but i think the writers were baiting fans since clark/chloe seems to be the second most popular ship after clex. second i personally think chloe would never be happy with clark or anyone tbh and she doesn't seem like the type of person who would have kids so the finale was weird to me.

this got looooong :)

0. it WAS weird, and the choice to never not once go for it with them was to the story's detriment. I'll get into it a little later on in this post.

Re: shipping in sv fandom. there was definitely drama (clana was HUGE when the show was airing and every ship was basically derailed by it lol) but I stayed in my clois lane with a small circle of fandom friends much like I do now. a good measure of clois fans were fans of lois and clark from other mediums, come to sv just for lois and clark, myself included. we were pretty insulated as a fandom even back then. I do remember seeing more Chlark after the S5 finale (when Chloe kisses him goodbye), but those dropped off after Jimmy was introduced right away in S6. The most drama I encountered was with Chloisers: Chloe fans who believed wholeheartedly that Chloe was Lois. They hated SV!Lois and were convinced she would die so Chloe could take her name and job and place by Clark's side, thus a Chlark endgame. this was a popular theory amongst that fandom even into s9, when the clois ball started to roll for true.

bait and switch

a lot of Chlark is rooted in this notion that chloe WOULD be the best thing for Clark, the ideal Lois, the true best friend, the human hand guiding him through Earth's troubles. she would be could be the BEST possible lois archetype for Clark. it's not a wrong interpretation. she was specifically written as a lois-and-lana-proxy (teenage lana is a reporter in some AUs and even some as an adult as a tv correspondent) and she's given many lois-ish traits (tenacious, secretly crushing on clark and in denial), but this interpretation is deeply flawed. first, because lois does eventually enter into the picture and she has her own defining traits that, when compared to chloe, make chloe seem much shallower than realized. secondly, within the complete context of the story, her position in the greater narrative is not as ~the one who got away, the way it did very early on in S1-S4, but one who clark tolerates.

they're friends because clark is forgiving and chloe has staying power. their friendship is riddled with insecurities and unknowns the characters create for themselves. their dynamic is defined by conflict, not resolutions. this is not made easy by the fact that chloe is such a strangely written character, but ultimately she is positioned as a counter to clark achieving his happiness. not a thematic narrative foil but an obstacle clark eventually relents to.

2. and it has been so from the get-go

S1 is the best season for them and the single season which actually considers Clark's side in this dynamic. everything about them later on can be explained with how they are in this season. and that's the problem. when they're 14 it's nice teen angst drama and works perfectly to establish the dynamic. when they're 24 it's at best a pattern, at worst regression. we expect certain behaviors, dismiss them too, when it's children, at least I do. clark and chloe never move beyond the dynamic they establish in s1 and early s2. in essence, clark and chloe remain children around each other. they have many discussions in the later seasons that make at least one appear petulant.

so S1 clark has just been told the greatest secret of his existence and he imprints on lana hard that same night (right AFTER jonathan tells him, he meets lana at the graveyard and talks to her for the first time EVER, a lot of childhood imprinting going on in SV). all of s1 follows clark's heartache over lana, watching her from afar and figuring out a way to be near her. this pain is exacerbated by the fact that he believes he caused her her greatest grief: the death of her parents via the meteor shower which he arrived in.

here the first beat of the chlark dynamic is established: chloe's job and passion – the wall of weird and her pursuing the meteor infected oddities of SV - directly affects clark in a negative way (he's suicidal for much of s1-s3). so her crush on him is countered with her unknowingly causing him great grief. om top of that: clark becomes part of this passion of hers and she eventually begins to pursue him as a story to be uncovered, very superman yes. here tho, it causes nothing but strife for them and paints chloe in an awful light (and clark too, highlighting his refusal to open up). I personally enjoy this aspect of them in s1. bc they're so young I give em a free pass and it's a good conflict playing around with old superman tropes, but it makes for a fraught friendship.

3. the second beat

is that neither chloe's crush on clark, nor his asking her to stop pursuing his truth, do anything to stay her. her tenaciousness becomes intrusiveness and inconsideration (many of her accomplishments irt the daily planet are directly bc she betrays clark). she simply will not listen to her friend and does not believe his livelihood and autonomy is worth losing a story over. this is literally the opposite of comics/live action lois lane, who in various versions drops the clark reveal story to protect him. this passion turns vindictive pretty early for chloe, who eventually pursues stories about clark out of jealousy and entitlement (against lana also).

4. the third beat

is that clark doesn't ever see chloe as romantic prospect except this time in s1. the tornado trapping lana pulls him away from any solidifying of the clark/chloe dynamic, and that's that. but we know clark was willing to go for it in early s2 when he apologizes to chloe about running off on her. it's chloe who decides not to go on with the relationship. clark is visibly confused, but also 15 so he can't see that chloe is putting on a brave front to protect herself from clark running off again. I liked this too as it's another play on superman tropes, but my sympathy for them stops here.

5. and stays here

these beats are the entirety of this dynamic. everything about chlark can be distilled down to their childhood. it's why I don't hate them completely, bc I have a lot of love for kids who hurt in such a way and that time is never easy. in s8 (I think its s8) when we get a flashback to when they meet as kids (more imprinting!). little tenacious cute chloe kisses insecure clark bc of the funny awkward tension, acknowledging it, and then immediately takes it back because they're better as friends. (also they’re like 11 lol)

every single romantic moment with them is undercut either by chloe herself, or by the presence of other storylines/romances the writers wanted to pursue. the lack of integrity in chloe and the lack of interest in clark, regardless of how sincere their connection or how messed up, is a central part of their dynamic that needs to be reconciled with their friendship. and its exhausting bc there is never a point they are ever truly comfortable around each other.

6. to a fault

knowing the secret doesn't change chloe's methods. it doesn't make chloe clark's great confidante. if anything, it complicates matters for both because their relationship then becomes about the greater good and clark's great destiny. everything chloe does becomes about that, which in theory sounds awesome, but is executed much the same way as s1!chlark: by reiterating behaviors that highlight the negative aspects of that loyalty and the negative aspects of their characters.

the single time they do actively examine what this loyalty means and how chloe's hero complex complicates things for chlark is with s8 and davis. she protects davis with the skills of subterfuge and secrecy she developed as clark's friend. and it costs her jimmy and a lot of her personal integrity as a character. tho ironically it makes chloe the strongest she's been as a character. this is the first time clark is forced to view chloe as an enemy and he never quite recovers from discovering the dark depths she’s willing to go to. 

it's an arc dealing with the established beats: how far chloe is willing to go for a kryptonian (very far), how much she's willing to do for him (A LOT and all of it illegal), and what it costs her (jimmy). it deals with her jealousy (always second choice) and her motivations (uncovering the truth). this great want that she struggled with for years is turned on its head and examined, revealing just how weird and dark her hero complex is because obviously davis is not clark. davis/chloe served to highlight more than any other arc how it's really too bad that clark never saw her that way, because she has so much love to give and when channeled, it's a great force. only it's a great force for evil. clark has to confront that it’s not just lex but his other closest friend who is willing to go so far. they backtrack hard in s9 and s10 but they keep this underlying wariness in clark towards Chloe throughout. it’s not anything new, but it’s no longer subtext that clark doesn’t fully trust chloe.

7. And that's the rub

in the end. chloe and clark have many storylines they're in together and chloe's important.... to develop clark and as a counter to clark. clark never instigates anything, not once, for 9 years! when the show did give us Moments TM, clark is reacting, not actively making choices to connect to her. if anything, clark is incredibly awkward about chloe when they become intimate. he doesn't seem to know what to do with her crushing on him (the elevator scene is a great one to show just how awkward chloe makes him feel). more than that. clark never tells her his secret. and later on, chloe doesn't tell him half the crazy wild shit she does to protect him bc she knows he would disapprove. I still hold that the only reason they work is bc clark is a forgiving character and would give her chance after chance after chance. that's the watsonian explanation, but the doylist explanation is that the writers just never cared to explore them beyond this point.

8. and what was beyond that point?

they would've been a great counter to lexana in S6 and early clana (clark finally having a gf who knows). it’s playing the clark/Chloe as a straight lois/clark proxy before actually pursuing lois and clark. it could’ve been the precursor to davis and caused an even more personal conflict! the kiss at the end of s5 was their chance. they could've written chlark devolving much the same way lexana did in s6 (or not). but again. the writers never went that far and clearly never wanted to. it kept chlark forever in this stage of childhood friendship always on the brink of collapsing, tittering either way. it's also tough to speculate bc clark's just not into her. in fact he becomes more and more wary of her, to the point where he believes she can do horrible things, and he's right. the stories continually make their methods complete opposite.

they go out of their way to show chloe realizing how happy clark is with lois. and even play a joke on the fandom by literally turning her into lois and seeing the sparks between her friends. it's almost... cruel but it does serve to show how clark is when he's smitten and he's never looked at chloe that way except during the dance when they were kids. other unrequited dynamics have at least some spark from the desired, but nil from clark. clark is into chloe in late s1, but she shuts him down, and when he seems to be into her again (damn that s5 kiss was a good one lol), she shuts him down again. it's just a weird writing choice all around, and that they kept nuggets of it throughout the show is the thing I cringe at most whenever I rewatch.

9. bait and switch 2

with hindsight it is definitely ship baiting and that sucks for that dynamic bc without it their friendship would’ve been the stronger, or at least not full of so much negativity. all it did was remind everyone that chloe’s been duped since she was a kid and that clark is both stupid and strange for never noticing and letting her get away with shit just bc she’s the most loyal. I don’t ship them and even I get frustrated lol

[thatguyandy-02]

IT (2017)  - Review

I am a firm believer that there is nothing wrong with rebooting an old movie or TV series, if there are things that can be improved on from the original. Dredd, 3:10 to Yuma, and The Departed are clear examples of that. You have to find the balance of respecting the older material, but also having enough new to justify the retelling. IT (1990) I think is often remembered with tinted nostalgia glasses for being a true horror, and pushing the fear of clowns forward. However, the reality is that the only strong points are the kids portion of the story, and Tim Curry’s fascinating performance as Pennywise, the homicidal entity of the story. Having just seen the new 2017 version I can say that it has taken many leaps forward with the performances from cast, as well as the underlying themes and motivations surrounding the characters and the town of Derry.

IT (2017), as well as the original mini-series, are adapted from the 1986 novel from acclaimed horror writer, Stephen King. It tells the tale of a mysterious shape shifting being that terrorizes seven kids known as the “Losers Club” in the fictional town of Derry, Maine. The creature exploits the fears, and phobias from its victims to hunt them down disguised as their worst nightmares; whether it be clowns, werewolves, pestilence, and even deeper traumas manifested as cruel actions. It is told in two separate time periods. The club as kids, and club as adults. One can really say that it was the beginning of King tapping into themes he holds dear to his heart: childhood trauma, the power of memory, and the shattering of innocence.

Again, the highlight and saving grace of this movie are the performances from the cast. It is never an easy task to juggle one narrative from multiple points of view. And while it can still leave a bit to be desired, this version does a good job of establishing the motivations of each members of the club, and also their deepest fears that are used against them. Sophia Lillis, as Bev Marsh, in particular delivers a heartbreaking performance as the girl of urban legend in the town. The bullying she receives from a false rumor spread at school, and the abuse she suffers from her Father clearly impacts her in a negative way, but she never lets it define who she is or tear down her more positive disposition. In many ways, she is the strongest member of the group. Finn Wolfhard, he of Stranger Things fame, also gets to stretch his acting muscles as the group clown Richie Tozier. His jokes can sometimes miss, but when he hits he hits hard! It especially struck a chord with me because I have definitely met a few Richie’s in school. Then of course there is the actor portraying the eponymous creature of the story, Bill Skarsgård. I think he will be one of the more divisive opinions about the movie, with regards to his acting choices. They can very much be a take it or leave it scenario. Personally, I rather enjoyed his delivery and choices on his lines. The way he would let his drool seep down past his lip, his annunciation on certain phrases really highlight this alien otherworldly quality not yet seen in Pennywise. His piercing blue eyes really served to add this uncomfortable aspect to his appearance, too. And while not much time is given to the adults, what is shown only further lays credence to the notion that the perception kids have had for their parents is slowly breaking. As if the town itself is driving people crazy, and is a character itself. The cinematography and framing by newcomer Chung-hoon Chung, was also really nice as it definitely helped establish a lot of locations in Derry, making it feel very real, and helping the necessary tension in some of the quieter scenes.

However, this film has also become the victim of a lot of current day horror traps. For one, the very loud noises that often accompany a scare became increasingly frustrating, but more importantly severed a lot of the tension in certain scenes. By the end, I was laughing with my friend at some of the absurdity happening on screen, though I of course was still startled. Companies need to learn that loud “bwangs” are not frightening, they are startling! Once that wears off, the scare holds less weight. The film also loses some of the subtly present in the novel and original series. One of the more thematic and underlying themes with Bev, is her going through puberty, and her fear manifesting as blood. At risk of spoiling a scene, I will say that there is a sequence that started off very promising and scary, but became almost comical when it was over. Compare that to the original where there is less happening on screen, but it right away communicates her fears and the disturbing nature of the scene. Hopefully the filmmakers will take the groundwork they have laid here, and use it to accentuate the coming terrors that will target adults in the next movie.

All in all, IT (2017) is a welcome shake up to the year's horror line up, and shows that there is a lot of potential left in Stephen King's old novel. If you can get past some of the distracting audio choices, the cast will keep you invested, the set ups may have you laughing, but it will definitely keep you entertained. Fingers crossed they get Tobey Maguire and Bryce Dallas Howard as adult Billy and Bev!

Overall rating: worth the price of admission, but wait until a price drops on Blu-Ray.

[johnmauldin]

Takeaways from the Best Investing Conference I’ve Ever Attended

Two young fish are swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way.

The older fish nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?”

The two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

I told the above fish story as I opened my Strategic Investment Conference last week.

Most investors have no idea what water we are swimming in. They swim in a pool of consensus narratives. And that’s all well and good until the water changes.

The narrative now says that central banks and governments “have our backs.” They will do “whatever it takes” to make everything go on as usual.

Call it kicking the can down the road or whatever metaphor you like, but most investors extrapolate the recent past into the far future.

And that’s usually the right move. The cautious optimist usually wins, which means that the one most important thing to know is:

What could change the narrative?  That was my conference’s theme this year.

Most thinking investors sense a shift in the zeitgeist. We understand things are changing, but the question remains, “Change to what?” We know that whatever happens, it won’t be rainbows and unicorns.

Here I’ll give you a quick rundown of takeaways from the conference that got me thinking deeply.

David Rosenberg’s Case for Recession and Bear Market

Let’s begin with David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff who made a strong case for recession and bear market.

Rosie focused on the Fed overshooting the neutral rate. They are tightening as we go into recession by means of balance-sheet reduction and interest-rate increases. (Something I’ve also been ranting about.)

This comes with staggering implications.

Corporations have used record profits to borrow cheap debt and buy back their own shares. This increases the P/E ratio and creates the image of strength and growth even when neither is happening.

It is, as Dr. Woody Brock told us, a bastardized form (his words) of capitalism that Adam Smith would not recognize.

Mark Yusko: The US Dollar Is Poised to Go Higher

Morgan Creek’s Marko Yusko, along with many other speakers, pointed out how the US dollar could go higher. That’s not necessarily for good reasons or not for ones that we would like.

It is the result of being the world’s reserve currency. Again, a common theme was that the dollar’s reserve status is by default. There is no other realistic option. It’s the cleanest dirty shirt in the laundry.

Lacy Hunt: Higher Debt and Monetary Easing Will Lead to Lower Rates

Lacy Hunt of Hoisington Investment Management Company gave his best presentation ever.

He presented two theorems. First, federal debt acceleration leads to lower, not higher interest rates. This is because the stimulus effect ends quickly, but the debt burden leads to weaker business conditions that reduce loan demand.

Likewise, monetary easing eventually leads to lower, not higher interest rates. Debt productivity falls, which makes the velocity of money decline. So monetary policy becomes inefficient.

These are not intuitive to most people, so Lacy walked us through the numbers. He showed empirical evidence, comparing government debt to interest rates in the US, UK, eurozone and Japan since 2007.

All the graphs looked almost identical.

If true, these theorems are ominous. They show it is almost impossible for higher savings to both absorb the debt load and sustain consumer spending and business investment.

The only solution is prolonged austerity. 

The slightly good news is that in this scenario the US will likely stay the world's strongest economy. That’s because it has the best combination of debt productivity and demographics. Again, the cleanest dirty shirt in the laundry.

They Left Me Speechless

I genuinely try not to be surprised on stage, as I do a lot of prep work with each speaker. They still left me reeling.

I moderated a panel with renowned demographer and historian Neil Howe and George Friedman, a best-selling author and geopolitics expert, on the political outlook for 2020 and beyond.

I know both of their underlying cyclical arguments, so I expected some fireworks. I didn’t realize they would both describe (for different reasons) the same kind of social tension in our near future.

I just sat there stunned for a second. I literally was speechless, and I guess it showed on my face as the audience laughed.

I can guarantee you that I’m going to review Neil Howe’s slide deck and George’s speech more than a few times to assimilate it into my outlook.

I don’t want you to think the conference was more bearish than it was. There were actually numerous positive investment themes and opportunities.

At the end of one panel, which did not mention cryptocurrencies, the implications of what they said hit me so hard that it almost persuaded me to buy bitcoin.  That was just one of a dozen portfolio-changing takeaways that I gleaned.

You will see the impact of this Strategic Investment Conference and more takeaways in my coming articles.

The Great Reset: The Collapse of the Biggest Bubble in History

New York Times best seller and renowned financial expert John Mauldin predicts an unprecedented financial crisis that could be triggered in the next five years. Most investors seem completely unaware of the relentless pressure that’s building right now. Learn more here.

[thelocalrebel]

PERSON OF INTEREST (2011-2016)

Part 2: Spoilers ahead. Trigger warning for homophobia, BYG, character deaths.

In part 1, I talked about the better parts of Person of Interest (POI). But like any form of media (or anything, really), there’s always something that needs to be highlighted, because I doubt anything can be purely perfect and free of problems - but that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped waiting for the day, though. I’m still hoping for media to surprise me.

Without further ado, here are some reasons why POI might be best struck off your to-watch-list. (Ideally, read this AFTER you’re more or less done with the series)  

2 Reasons To NOT Watch Person Of Interest

Remember when I said about character deaths being spoilers? This is it. And this is where POI falls short - or at least, in the current mediascape. If POI aired anytime other than 2016, I don’t think minority characters dying wouldn’t be as problematic as it currently is - not in the sense that it’s okay to indiscriminately kill them off, but that it doesn’t reinforce/reflect systemic trends of violence (not just physical) directed at certain communities in society. 

1. Bury Your Gays

It's the death knell of 2016's TV. While it's been around for a long while, it's only in 2016 when people began talking about it. Thanks to the media firestorm headed by bitter queer fans of The 100 (affectionately known as 'the flopdred' by some), Bury Your Gays (BYG) became hot enough a topic to enter the public consciousness.

Essentially, BYG is about queer characters dying. Specifically, lesbian and bisexual women, regardless of whether they're in relationships. That they die isn't problematic. That they're barely represented in popular media AND are then killed off is problematic. That's why queer characters dying isn't the same as non-queer characters dying. (Remember, representation in itself isn’t always good - just see local television and their horrid stereotypes).

I thought Root and Shaw would've had a happy ending - for that to mean 'surviving' is just ... representative of the times - because throughout the show, the team's been cheating death and escaping sticky situations countless times because they're all terrific at their jobs, but then 5x10 happened and the day literally went away for me. Yes, Root died; (literally) taking a bullet meant for someone else, and there goes wlw representation and failing the “must be alive” section of the Bechdel Test.

Unpopular opinion alert: Personally, Root dying wasn't as problematic as the case of Commander Lexa of the 100 or Poussey from Orange Is The New Black. Root wasn’t killed by a stray bullet minutes after consummating her relationship with her bisexual lover, nor was her death used to humanise (white) perpetrators of police brutality. Throughout the series - unlike a certain show - the writers didn’t sugarcoat her chances of surviving (heck, they said only the dog was safe), and Root’s writing and characterisation was consistent. How Root died was also apropo, given her character growth across the series; from believing how some people are just "bad code" to how everyone is equally deserving of a second chance. And once you consider her relationship with the person she took a bullet for, get ready for your heart to be shredded, sliced, seared and stomped on. Plus, what the Machine and Finch did after Root's death was apt.

In other words, her death made narrative sense.

What I'm torn about is this: regardless of how sensible Root’s death was, it's still an instance of another queer individual dying, and that only adds to the towering body count that sends the message that queer lives are unimportant. That queer people never get happy endings. Seeing the shitfest queer people have gotten in 2016 alone, it's not difficult to empathise with bitter queer fans.

And as mentioned, killing off a character which I believe had the most character growth over the series is the greatest disservice one can do to any character. It’s like invalidating their efforts; that in the end, it doesn’t matter because you’re dead.

(But since I love being delusional and skeptical, I think Root's still alive. Watching the episodes after 5x10, there's enough evidence to suspect that Root faked her death. Or you can consider the show having ended at 5x09, and not 5x13. I mean, they even ended the episode with a ‘ride fade-into-the-sunset’ effect!)

Not only that, Carter dies. Yet another minority character - who is an African-American single mum raising a kid on her own - is killed off. While some say Carter's death is fitting given her profession and her story arc in Season 3, I ask this: did she really have to die? Because like Root, however well-written their deaths were, their deaths are still deaths. Maybe it's the cumulative effect of seeing your representation constantly tortured, killed off, demonised/villainised et cetera, because whatever it is, those deaths left me more than sad. They left me exhausted.

Still, I'm heartened by how POI treats its dead characters - especially Carter. Somewhere, somehow, they're always referenced in the story thereafter, and 4x20 is a perfect example of that. It's not so much about narrative continuity, but more about adhering to POI's theme of finding family. Of relationships: be it romantic, familial, or otherwise. And that is what I loved about the show. Because often, it's the little moments of humour or care between Team Machine that catches me off-guard, enough to make me smile. And if you don't find the concept of outcasts unexpectedly finding a family endearing, you're probably lying.

2. It’s A White, White World

There’s POC, women, and other minorities in the show, yes, but you can’t deny that POI has always been about Finch’s story. He created the Machine, the crux of the whole series, and despite the complement of minorities with their own independent storylines and arcs, they’re always seconded to the story of the relationship between Finch and his creation. Looking at POI another way, it’s basically about dealing with the consequences of Finch’s actions; and not just about creating the Machine. Incidentally, Finch is white, male, cis, and het.

Plus, the pivotal movers and shakers of the show are white. Despite the bajillion firefights, explosions and other acts of flashy destruction on a large scale, the underlying tension of the series is between the warring AIs, so naturally, it’s the people with the strongest ‘connections’ to them (Finch, Root, Greer) who matter the most in the narrative. Don’t get me wrong, race isn’t made into a plot point in POI (a good thing, since it’s how you normalise diversity), but that these people are incidentally white subtly reinforces existing racial hierarchies today.

Final Thoughts

In short, despite killing off its minorities, this show somehow manages to treat them with respect and nuance (intentionally or otherwise? You decide). That's why POI is still worth watching. But of course, this is what I think. It's completely understandable if POI reinforcing (fatal) media tropes is a deal-breaker for you. The day I heard about Root's death, I almost swore off watching the show because, well, BYG. And the whole issue of dead minority characters. Because no matter how hard I try, that’s what will come to mind anytime I think of POI, way before its multitude of merits. POI? The show with a dead lesbian.  

But for the sake of Root & Shaw (yes, I'm such a sap), Carter, and a whole host of other reasons, I took a leap of faith.

Fast forward 6 months, and here I am, writing this review.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Ways to Talk About Latin American and Latino Art

Raphael Montañez Ortiz, “Archaeological Find #22: The Aftermath” (Hallazgo arqueológico n 2: resultados) (1961), destroyed sofa (wood, cotton, vegetable fiber, wire, and glue) on wooden backing (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic)

LOS ANGELES — If you’ve been driving through Los Angeles recently, you might’ve noticed some curious ads plastered around the city. “There will be struggle. There will be art,” reads one. “There will be dissonance. There will be art,” reads another. They advertise the more than 75 exhibitions on Latin American and Latino art spread across the city and other areas of Southern California. Together they are a part of Pacific Standard Time (PST), an initiative founded by the Getty to encourage art institutions across Los Angeles to collaborate every few years on one theme. The first, in 2011, was centered on art in LA from 1945 to 1980 and the second, in 2013, on modern architecture in the city. The third installment, known as PST: LA/LA, which opened this September and runs through January, is by far the most ambitious and definitely the most generously funded — to the tune of $16.3 million, to be exact.

So why the focus on Latino and Latin American art? According to Deborah Marrow, director of the Getty Foundation, it took them and their partners — the Hammer Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the UCLA Department of Chicana/o Studies, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) — almost a year to settle on the topic. Marrow explained there was both a “historical” and “contemporary” reason for their decision. “We were, in our origins, part of Latin America,” Marrow said, pointing to how this heritage in LA is still palpable. “In the last census, which was 2010, nearly half the population of LA identified themselves as Latino or Latin American. And many people think that was underrepresented.”

And it mostly was — at least at the major art institutions. Chon Noriega, the director of the Chicana/o Studies program at UCLA and an adjunct curator at LACMA, affirms that over the past five decades, the big museums in the city have dedicated very few exhibitions to Latin American and Latino art. “But, if you look at the full range of exhibitions from galleries to community-based spaces,” he said, “you see a large amount in terms of numbers.” Some of these spaces are participating under the umbrella of PST, including the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), Self-Help Graphics & Art, and Plaza de la Raza.

The PST: LA/LA programming has been celebrated, in both its advertisement materials and by art critics, as broadening our world view and tearing down walls. “A Celebration Beyond Borders,” reads one of its slogans. New York Times critic Holland Cotter says the exhibitions share a goal: to “build bridges over borders and pull those damn walls down.” This kind of language feels hyperbolic and slightly opportunistic given the current political climate. I get the same sense when, back in the car, I look up at those PST ads: “There will be differing opinions. There will be art.” “There will be challenged perceptions. There will be art.” “There will be anger. There will be art.” It’s not to say the exhibitions do not contain or offer these things, but the narrative somehow feels convenient, and somewhat stereotypical and patronizing — playing into the image of a passionate, rebellious people — all while highlighting that these shows offer something ‘different.’

La Raza staff, “La Raza photographer documents police abuse” (circa 1970) (image courtesy the photographers and the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. © La Raza staff photographers)

Of course, a program like this shows a necessary openness and scholarly commitment to other cultures and it’s true that the exhibitions do feel scarily poignant at a time when wall prototypes are being constructed at the US-Mexico border and Latin American and Latino populations are being targeted for deportation in this country. La Raza, at the Autry Museum, is one exhibition that feels particularly relevant. Through the articles and photographs published in a local Chicano newspaper, the show traces the Chicano Rights movement of the late 1960s and ’70s. Until recently, the LA Unified School District had not approved the exhibition for field trips, expressing concern over the violent images of police brutality. Thankfully, according to the Autry Museum’s Communications department, the school district just changed its mind.

So while the exhibitions are inspiring at least a few uncomfortable conversations, a five-month art program won’t fulfill some utopian ideal, or suddenly make the Latino community feel included in happy La La Land. I am not saying this to be cynical or because the programming isn’t good — it’s excellent — but I want to foreground a discussion that has mostly been tucked toward the very end of critical reviews of LA:LA, perhaps because they don’t want to shoot down what is a valuable, well-intended, and vital contribution. Yet, in order to make an initiative like this truly worthwhile, we need to hold these same institutions accountable after the programming is over. To actually collapse those divisions and borders, museums will have to undergo structural change and hire, for starters, more Latin American and Latino curators (as of now, the majority of curators at LA’s largest art institutions is white, though that is not a problem particular to the city).

PST, at its best, is an auspicious start. It doesn’t make the world go round and bring harmonious bliss, but it does accomplish a lot else. Unlike the ads and grander narratives being drawn from the program, the exhibitions themselves resist stereotypes and easy narratives, and tackle Latin American and Latino art as complex topics.

According to Marrow, “Latin America” was a hotly debated term at one of the panels held in the process of organizing LA:LA. “Everyone on the panel was critical of using the term to cover so many time periods, places,” Marrow said. Indeed, the relevance and meaning of “Latin America” shifts across exhibitions, which range in focus from the ancient Americas to the Japanese immigrant community in Latin American countries, to artists who were born in Latin America but spent most of their working lives outside the region. “But, in the end,” Marrow continued in regard to the term, “they all agreed it was handy, and so we use it.”

A few years ago, I interviewed Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, the director of the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, one of the most acclaimed collections of Latin American modern, contemporary, and colonial art. We spoke about the increased visibility of Latin American art in the US and how institutions are choosing to frame it. “There’s this whole debate about what is Latin American art, the separatist position and integrationist position,” he said, referring to the tendency to either isolate Latin American art as its own category or incorporate it into a larger global discourse. Institutions will often take the former approach, creating, for instance, a Latin American art wing at a museum. Pérez-Barreiro, who is on the integrationist side, owed this divide in approach to a “tension between a very sophisticated curatorial debate and institutional politics.”

LA:LA would seem to suffer from this problem — by its very nature, it isolates Latin American and Latino art as their own categories. But with over 75 exhibitions, you won’t come away with a neat definition of either. In fact, some of the strongest exhibitions share an underlying theme: that a sense of place and belonging is a slippery, changeable thing.

Installation view of Home — So Different, So Appealing at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) with Leyla Cárdenas, “Excision” (Extracción) (2012) at center

Among these is the outstanding exhibition Home — So Different, So Appealing that was formerly at LACMA and is now traveling to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. According to co-curator Chon Noriega, before organizing the exhibition with Pilar Tompkins Rivas and Mari Carmen Ramírez, they asked themselves: “How do we get out of the conundrum of a category that is in some ways defined by its exclusion from art history?” In the end, they decided to “not focus energies on defending the category, and showing the artwork how it exists more broadly in the world.”

To feel less confined by a premise, they wrote on a sheet of paper the artworks that have remained with them over the years. And they realized they all had to do with the notion of home. 

The result is a stunning display, where home is at turns haunting, oppressive, and even unattainable. Houses are fragile and precarious, as in Leyla Cárdenas‘s “Excision (Extracción)” (2012), where she took a cross section of a room from a historical 1886 Bogotá home that has since been demolished. The chair and desk are sliced in half and bits of wall delicately hang; the barely intact room alludes to the country’s short-term memory, particularly when it comes to its violent past and present.

León Ferrari, “Bairro” (Neighborhood) (Barrio) (1980), diazotype on wove paper

Life is often so burdened by violent structures that one can’t even escape them in the privacy of one’s own home. Living during Argentina’s Dirty War of 1976 to 1983, Léon Ferrari obsessively drew a plan of a neighborhood, calling it “a sort of quotidian madness that is necessary for everything to appear normal.” Home, in other words, is never strictly of one’s own making.

Other artworks in Home feel, as Noriega put it, somewhat more “universal.” In Carmen Argote‘s “720 Sq. Ft: Household Mutations” (2010), she tore the carpet out of the home she grew up in and installed it along the gallery floor and running up the wall like a sculpture. The fabric, stained and used over time, is a poetic memorial to childhood.

Carmen Argote, “720 Sq. Ft.: Household Mutations” (720 pies cuadrados: mutaciones domésticas) (2010), carpet from artist’s childhood home and house paint

Looming over Home, and other LA:LA exhibitions, is the promise of a better life in the US. At the Japanese American National Museum, Taro Zorrilla‘s moving video “Dream House” (2007) documents the surreal reality of the Mexican village of Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo, which is inhabited predominantly by women, children, and the elderly. Each year, thousands of men travel to the US to send dollars back to their families, and mainly for one express purpose: to build the type of big, beautiful house associated with the American Dream. The families in Ixmiquilpan move ahead with construction, but often the houses are left uninhabited and the families are rarely reunited.

Taro Zorrilla, “DREAM HOUSE” (2010), mixed media installation (collage-maquette)

Zorrillo’s video opens Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo, an exhibition centered on the experience of Japanese immigrants across these diverse cities. Included is the Japanese-Mexican sculptor Kiyoto Ota, known for his alienating, life-size sculptures of houses that evoke his empty, lonely family home in Japan. Here, he has installed a wooden, nest-like sculpture that he likens to his mother’s womb. Elsewhere, Olga Moriyama presents her ceramic plates that appear incised with a language composed of squares. A caption accompanies each plate, such as: “I tell people that I don’t have a homeland. I’m Mexican but they insist that I’m Japanese. I feel Japanese, but Japan is not my homeland.”

Kiyoto Ota, “El Nido” (2007), red wood

What and where is home? The question pops up again in the Brazilian artist Valeska Soares‘s solo exhibition, Any Moment Now, at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Throughout the museum, Soares has gathered and created a taxonomy for domestic objects, from a collection of antique glasses, to perfume bottles, to foot stools. This obsession with serializing reminds me of a video by María Teresa Hincapié on view in Home, in which she arranges her belongings in concentric squares. Both artists at once treat objects with care and detachment; over time, through the cataloguing process, the objects become deeply lonely. In an accompanying text, Hincapié writes: “the dresses laid out. the black ones close to me … the bags are alone. the pencils are alone … everything is alone. we are all alone … a pile of coffee. a bunch of things.”

Valeska Soares, “Finale” (2013), antique table, 151 antique glasses, five pitchers, three decanters, liquor and mirror

Walking through Any Moment Now, you encounter hard marble pillows laid about the floor, 500 books about love stacked tightly on a shelf, a ghostly glass chair, and headboards detached from their beds. We cannot sit in these chairs, or read these books, or sleep in these beds; the objects in this largely uninhabitable house seem lost, distant, or out of place.

Curator Júlia Rebouças writes that “displacement” is “both circumstance and essence” in Soares’s art. The artist, who is Brazilian but has lived in New York for 25 years, “is ambivalent about belonging to either of these countries,” Rebouças continues.

Valeska Soares, “Et Après (Pillow)” (2012), hand-carved marble

While these shows are just a small fraction of what there is to see in PST:LA/LA, they feel emblematic of a larger, resounding point: that one’s geography or nationality is just a slice of one’s identity, and that to try to sum up Latin American or Latino art is of no real use or service. When you step into the personal worlds of these artists, yes, there will be struggle and dissonance, but there will also be many shared rooms and views.

Valeska Soares, “Love Stories IV (Collections V, VI, VII, VIII)” (2008), 500 printed and bound books, wooden shelves

Luis Camnitzer, “Living Room (Sala de estar)” (1968) (detail), vinyl

Oscar Oiwa, “Crowd” (2010), oil on canvas

PST: LA/LA continues through January. See here for a complete schedule of exhibitions and events. 

The author’s travel expenses were covered by Finn Partners. 

The post Ways to Talk About Latin American and Latino Art appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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