#it's too complex and well immoral for sure for general audience

[thesublemon]

Favorite movies/tv shows of 2019, and why? (Also, I really like your posts and hope you post more stuff!

Thanks so much! More posts are incoming. And sorry for taking so very long to answer this.

To be honest, I don’t watch a ton of contemporary stuff. I tend to think it’s healthier to take advantage of the great wealth of great art (or weird-but-interesting art) made in all time periods than to focus on keeping up with the present. Not that I don’t watch any contemporary things, I just don’t prioritize it in any way. So this list isn’t based on me watching everything and then picking out the best. It’s based on me watching a few things and liking some of them. But I hope that even if this list isn’t any more interesting than a list of awards ceremony nominations, I might at least have something worthwhile to say about the things in question.

Recent TV:

(I’m cheating and including TV from 2017-2019 that I watched in the last year or two, or else the list would be pretty boring and short.)

Succession (2018-present) - Maybe my favorite of the shows on this list, which is surprising to me because it’s not the kind of show I normally like. I don’t tend to care about rich people being mean to each other, or art that is glossily timely. I don’t get off on seeing the private dramas of powerful, immoral people. What I like about Succession is the sense of fragility and desperation that infuses it. It’s about the human desire for these stable institutions—families, kings, corporations—and whether or not they’re actually stable, and whether or not they should be destabilized. The whole thing is just a wonderfully rich text that has been made with a lot of craft. It’s nice to know that there are people making art that is very much about the present, and has something interesting to say about it.

Fleabag (2016-present) - The second season has gotten a lot of deserved praise, so I’m not going to dwell on its merits. It’s a complex and often moving exploration of the nature of love, whether romantic, familial, physical or divine. What makes it a truly “mature” artistic work is the way that it knows what it’s about from the very beginning (“this is a love story”) and complicates that aboutness in every single episode. It’s actually interesting to compare to the first season, which lacks the same maturity. The first season is still worth watching, but it doesn’t really become clear what it’s about until the last second, when Fleabag gives her monologue in the cafe. You keep waiting for it to get to the point, instead of having a repeated sense of anticipation about the point and accompanying satisfaction every time the point-shoe drops.

Killing Eve (2018-present) - Solid entertainment. Had a bit too much of the “contemporary TV aesthetic” for me to really love. But I’d missed genuine originality and clever writing in thriller-type stories. So it’s got that going for it. (Trying to actually define the “contemporary TV aesthetic” is a problem for another post).

unREAL (2015-2018) - I only watched the first season, and don’t feel a need to watch the rest. People tell me the subsequent seasons aren’t very good anyhow. But it was doing some interesting things. Things to do with femininity, authenticity, performance and love, and the degree to which they interfere with each other. I’m planning on talking about it a bit more in a subsequent post, along with Fleabag and the movie Weekend.

Sharp Objects (2018) - Mainly watched this and unREAL because I wrote so much about Buffy season six in the last year, and I was curious about Marti Noxon’s other shows (She was the main showrunner for that season, and you can definitely tell. Unhealthy relationships, mental illness in women, rough sex, and ideas of performance seem to show up in a lot of her stuff.). She has an interesting tendency to choose “trashy” subjects, but with a refreshingly non-cute approach to the (mostly-heterosexual) female id that I respond to. I keep trying to figure out what quality Sharp Objects had that other recent art about “women being and feeling fucked up in an artistically exaggerated way” didn’t have. Things like Midsommar, The Favourite, or Gone Girl. None of which I liked. And I think it comes down to that lack of cuteness. Watching a female protagonist furtively masturbate over the memory of a murder-shack in a way that’s not about fetishizing her? Either for a male or female or political audience? It’s weirdly satisfying.

Euphoria (2019-present) - Only watched the first four episodes or so, and probably won’t watch the rest. But it was interesting to me as a pretty successful attempt to be blatantly zeitgeisty. I like its vision of contemporary life as something full of hyperstimulus (“euphoria,” get it?). Whether that’s the hyperstimulus of porn, love, attention, validation, or actual drugs. It didn’t seem to be a reactionary condemnation of all of the above, more just a depiction of it, but since I didn’t watch the whole thing I can’t comment on its attitude with certainty.

The Vietnam War (2017) - Excellent Ken Burns as usual. I appreciated the variety of perspectives he interviewed, and I appreciated the episode dedicated to Vietnam’s history before the war started. If there’s one thing that American schools suck at teaching about the Vietnam War, it’s the Vietnamese side of things. I’m not a historian so I can’t comment on how good the history in the series is. I’m sure there are important criticisms to make of it, and like all Ken Burns documentaries he uses emotional tactics to tell the story that can at times feel manipulative in a bad way. But as someone who always wanted a more in-depth, multi-sided understanding of the Vietnam War, but didn’t know where to start, I was very glad to have watched it.

Black Sails (2014-2017) - Still haven’t seen the last season. But after watching I was honestly surprised I hadn’t heard more people talking about it. Or maybe that’s just my fault for not keeping up with mainstream writing about culture. It had some fascinating themes about the nature and fragility of civilization, and I think it would be interesting to compare to Succession on that front. Black Sails features characters on the outskirts of society. Whereas Succession features characters at the center of society. But both are about the desperation for stability that leads people to make societies—and disrupt societies—in the first place.

Recent movies:

(Sticking just to 2019 this time)

Once Upon a Time In Hollywood - What I liked about this movie is that it felt like a movie. I left it feeling like I’d had a big old cineplex experience. Which was fitting, because the movie itself was about the big artificiality of film. Throughout, there is this contrast between real violence, and movie violence, and who has an understanding of them. Cliff Booth, as a stuntperson, has a “real” relationship to violence, while Rick Dalton, as an actor, does not. Cliff can cut through a cult’s fakeness, and knows to turn aside an offer of underage sex. But although Dalton does not understand authenticity, he does understand fakeness. The point of the teenage terrorists in the final act is that none of them understand either authenticity or fakeness. They don’t get that violence is real, and they don’t get that movies are fake, which leads them to being destroyed by their own movie-inspired violence. In typical Tarantino form, the movie does have a smug-feeling nyah-nyah attitude about this theme, a feeling of “you idiot loser generation, you don’t get the seriousness of violence and you also don’t get that movies are fucking fun.” But it was a theme I found interesting nonetheless.

Apollo 11 - Unequivocally loved the cinematography. Just completely aesthetically compelling to me on every level. I would have have watched an entire Koyannisqatsi devoted to it. But I feel sort of weird saying that I liked Apollo 11 as an example of contemporary movie-making, since all of that footage I loved was shot in 1969. Still, the contemporary aspect—ie, the editing—did a good job as well. Mostly because it gave the impression of staying out of the way, even though it must have been a significant effort to select and organize the footage. As well as doing animations, titling, etc. I liked that the patriotism and mythology of it was mostly just conveyed via actual soundbites from the time. And that the competent chatter of scientists was given much greater weight. I watched Free Solo the other day, a climbing documentary from 2018, and I liked it for similar reasons—the fact that the presentation gave the impression of staying out of the way of the content, despite being obviously edited.

Parasite - Pretty understandable to me that it just won Best Picture, since it’s one of the few movies from the last year that knew exactly what it was about and how to do it, and did it with unpretentious panache. I appreciated its highly cinematic use of imagery. Say, the contrast between the concrete architecture on the upper and lower levels of society— how in the upper level it’s high art, and on the lower level it’s an inhumane prison. Or the way that characters keep visually crossing lines. I was actually pretty relieved to see that Joon-ho made this movie, because I hated Snowpiercer, and kept thinking it would have been a thousand times better if it was a thousand times less metaphorical and just depicted a real-world instance of inequality in a heightened, artistic way. Which is exactly what Parasite is. In fact, I think it would be interestingly instructive to explore why Parasite succeeded in creating iconic-feeling metaphors for social inequality where Snowpiercer failed. I also appreciated its basic vision of inequality as something symbiotic, and therefore systemic, rather than a matter of mere oppression. You find yourself asking more interesting questions about how to deal with systems when you acknowledge that systems are systems, even absurd and mutable systems, in the first place. Where I think Parasite was weakest was in the pace of the storytelling. I felt myself repeatedly getting ahead of it—eg, once you realize the brother is going to get the sister a job, you’re just waiting for the movie to finish up situating the mother and father as well. Whereas I think the strongest storytelling is perfectly aware of when the audience will start anticipating something, and uses that anticipation to create complications and surprise.

An incomplete list of some other things I watched in 2019 below the cut…

Movies that I watched for the first time and liked a lot:

Brink of Life (1958), Abigail’s Party (1977), Vigil (1984), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Resolution (2012) / The Endless (2017), Jungle Fever (1991), Festen (1998)

Movies I saw for the first time that did things I found interesting:

The Devil’s Playground (1976), Skin Game (1971), The Reflecting Skin (1990), Straight Time (1978), Late Spring (1949), Iceman (1984), Hideous Kinky (1998), Bad Company (1972), Gozu (2003), Spring (2014), Jamón Jamón (1992), eXistenZ (1999), Bull Durham (1988), Carrie (1976), Swiss Army Man (2016), Tully (2018)

Movies I saw for the first time that I’d have to write specific pros and cons for:

Cape Fear (1991), Fury (2014), Cruel Intentions (1999), White Men Can’t Jump (1992), Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse (2018), The Deer Hunter (1978), Jennifer’s Body (2009), It (2017), The Favourite (2018)

Movies I rewatched and still loved:

Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), The Ring (2002), Do The Right Thing (1989), F for Fake (1973), Tampopo (1985), Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011), Broadcast News (1987), Tangerine (2015), Weekend (2011), Conspiracy (2001), Bicycle Thieves (1948), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), The Thing (1982), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), The Hunger Games series (2012-2015)

Movies I rewatched and didn’t like as much:

Clue (1985), Before Midnight (2013), Vertigo (1958), Anchorman (2004)

[fandumbstuff]

Favourite films from 2017

1. Star Wars: The Last Jedi Directed by Rian Johnson

Star Wars fans suck, and I’m so happy to see Disney wrench the franchise from their greasy paws and deliver it to a general audience. Rian Johnson picks up where J. J. Abrams left off by fleshing out the character development of the new franchise leads. Poe learns hard lessons about sacrifice. Rey and Kylo’s complex relationship is given more layers. Even the oft-criticized Finn and Rose subplot is an important bit of character development for Finn to gain unconditional courage. The movie is highlighted by standout performances from Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley, a career best Mark Hamill and an iconic turn from Laura Dern. Rian Johnson delivers rousing action sequences (_that _throne room scene) and emotional highlights. Accompanied by polished sound design, visual (and practical) effects, and John Williams doing what he does best, The Last Jedi is one of the franchises best. It brings the franchise into a new era, reinstating the true spirit of Star Wars- that anyone can be a hero, as long as we look to the stars and hope

2. Lady Bird Directed by Greta Gerwig

It’s hard to stand out in the field of coming of age movies, but Greta Gerwig manages to do it and tell a story that is simultaneously unique and relevant. The often-ignored daughter-mother relationship is given full attention, exploring some poignant moments in middle age and young adulthood equally well. This is an incredible script that makes every plot detail and situation count, giving the actors a lot to work with. Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf deliver in spades, playing off each other with incredibly nuanced performances. Gerwig performs marvellously, allowing her actors to find the moments of humour and melancholy in her script, and creating a visually pleasing movie to boot. That she manages to do this all in her directorial debut is a remarkable achievement.

3. Logan Directed by James Mangold

Hugh Jackman is given a great vehicle for his final performance as Wolverine. Adapted from Mark Millar’s Old Man Logan, the movie hugely surpasses its source material. While it maintains the gritty sense of violence from the graphic novel, its emotional substance is much more… substantial. Logan is a superhero film that finds a distinctive voice both in terms of its visuals and its temperament. Its characters aren’t simply grappling with “doing the right thing” but with debility, lethargy, loneliness and remorse. Jackman and Patrick Stewart explore these themes expertly. They’re accompanied by Dafne Keen’s standout performance as Laura/X-23 forming an emotional crux to carry the story. It’s a story that stands out from the others in its genre, and one that I certainly consider one of the best.

4. Get Out Directed by Jordan Peele

In Jordan Peele’s directorial debut, he manages to tell a story that is remarkably relevant and important, without ever losing his distinctive creative voice. Get Out is very much a horror movie, but Peele lends a fair bit of levity whenever he can. He drops scares that are so jarring they’re practically self aware. The movie is sold by Daniel Kaluuya’s incredible lead performance, as we’re left to ponder the sheer ridiculousness of his circumstances, slowly evolving into genuine terror. This movie has a very clear message, and despite its importance if there are those who may complain that it’s too heavy handed, they need only look to it’s masterfully crafted finale. Watching the movie in a crowded theatre gives you a shared experience, where we all jump at the same scares, laugh at the same jokes, but most importantly feel the injustice that presents itself at the end, and cheer for the twist. It’s this shared experience that is Peele’s master stroke. A perfectly enjoyable finale that leaves us pondering the very real message of the film.

5. Wonder Woman Directed by Patty Jenkins

This is the most important superhero film since 1976’s Superman. Bringing to life the most iconic female superhero of all time took a long time to happen but it delivers in spades. Patty Jenkins has given the DCU it’s finest film yet, establishing a convincing mythos with interesting characters. Amidst DC’s penchant for dark brooding characters, Diana is a breath of fresh air: a hero that is compassionate and optimistic, even slightly naive. This lends to a truly compelling character arc that allows her to learn firsthand how complicated “the world of man” is. Gal Gadot commands the lead role expertly. She is the most convincing superhero performance since Christopher Reeve, and just like him it’s to bring to life an icon- a role model that she will forever be associated with.

6. Blade Runner 2049 Directed by Denis Villenueve

It is truly incredible that a sequel made 25 years after its predecessor can maintain the same tone and feel of the original, while lending a new creative voice. The original Blade Runner is one of sci-fi’s most contemplative stories, and it’s incredible that 2049 doesn’t do anything to damage this aura. It asks important questions while expanding on the franchise’s greater theme of what it means to be human. Denis Villeneuve is quickly becoming one of the most distinctive visual filmmakers currently working in Hollywood, and with this movie and Arrival it’s clear to see why. Hans Zimmer along with Benjamin Wallfisch manages to deliver some of his best work in years with a soundtrack that pays homage to Vangelis’s iconic original score. And then there’s the legendary Roger Deakins-lighting each scene with a painterly stroke to add a bit of nuance to already strong performances.

7. Thor: Ragnarok Directed by Taika Waititi

Perhaps more than any director in the MCU, Taika Waititi delivers his own distinctive creative voice to his entry in the franchise. While its easy to get carried away by the stunning 80’s visuals and synth score from Mark Mothersbaum, it’s Waiiti’s signature wit and charm that really shine through. He makes Thor, Loki and Hulk (and Banner) more likeable than they’ve ever been in the MCU and introduces new characters like Valkyrie and the Grandmaster that are instantly noteworthy. Stellar performances from practically the whole cast help to sell this, and we’re left with a movie that fully entertains while gearing us up for the MCU’s next big offering.

8. The Post Directed by Steven Spielberg

Amidst all the hoopla surrounding Ready Player One, Spielberg manages to sneak away and make a movie with his dream team of Tom Hanks, John Williams and Janusz Kaminski. And include Meryl Streep. I mean, just on paper this looked to be a sure-fire success, and shockingly it doesn’t disappoint. It is absolutely a movie that speaks volumes about the current political climate in the United States, but it also honours the importance of investigative journalism and freedom of the press. Hanks delivers an incredible performance, but it is purely to support Streep’s powerhouse portrayal of Katharine Graham. She charts a fascinating and incredibly relevant character arc to show us just how important it is to find your voice and your courage in the face of prejudice.

9. The Big Sick Directed by Michael Showalter

Being such an incredible comedic talent, Kumail Nanjiani is finally given a chance to create a personal story. Along with his wife Emily V. Gordon they deliver a comedy movie that is so much more than just funny. It is deeply affecting, introducing us to two leads that are charming and worth rooting for. Culturally, relationally and physically, they contend with serious struggles that makes their character arcs incredibly meaningful. This is one of the strongest screenplays of the year and a testament to passionate storytelling.

10. The Shape of Water Directed by Guillermo Del Toro

The Shape of Water is very much Guillermo Del Toro at his best- telling an extremely humanistic story under a fantastical lens. As per most of his movies, it features an isolated hero searching for self-actualization. Mirroring this character with that of a monster, he subverts the idea of abnormal for a sense of harmony. He trusts his audience to be empathic, to see the benevolence in the creature and the compassion in Eliza. This is balanced by his clear depiction of immorality in Michael Shannon’s Colonel Stickland. Supported by incredible compositions from Alexandre Desplat and ethereal cinematography from Dan Laustsen, Del Toro once again proves that he is one of Hollywood’s most affecting storytellers and that even the most high concept fantasy stories can be poignant ones.

Honorable Mentions

War for the Planet of the Apes (Directed by Matt Reeves), God’s Own Country (Directed by Francis Lee), Mudbound (Directed by Dee Rees), Call Me By Your Name (Directed by Luca Guadagnino), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Directed by Martin McDonagh), The Florida Project (Directed by Sean Baker), Phantom Thread (Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson), Logan Lucky (Directed by Steven Soderbergh), The Disaster Artist (Directed by James Franco), Wind River (Directed by Taylor Sheridan)

[thelegendofclarke]

I'm not sure that the Undercover Lover Jon thing is true, even though I get why people believe it. If it isn't true tho, what is the third treason that Dany's going to suffer? I thought it was pretty much agreed that it was going to be Jon.

Hokay I know I said I wasn’t going to talk about this, but I am nothing if nothing contrary af. SO anon I am going to use your ask as a kind of like ~general layout~ of my thoughts on the potential of UCJ.  I’m going to maintain though that I would prefer not to discuss any potential consent issues for personal reasons. 

I am also gonna shout out to the other few anons as, well as @ladyanyawaynwood and @lyanna-mormont, who also sent me asks on this topic. 

SO all right folks *drum roll* It’s the new favorite fandom Disc Horse! Either you love it or you hate it! Either you want to have its babies or want to kill it with fire!… It’s THE UNDERCOVER JON THEORY!

Before I start rambling, you should all totally check out the bottom part of this really excellent post by @him-e about some of the details and possibilities of this theory, because Claudia is so much better at words and explanations and life than me. There’s also this post by @blindestspot, whose no nonsense approach I always really appreciate.

Ok, first of all: I would like to go on record once more in saying that God I really dislike the name Undercover Jon. I primarily hate it because I feel like it’s misleading, at least in terms of what I personally would consider this theory to be. I feel like “undercover” implies deliberateness and ill intent and malice aforethought that I generally don’t really think is involved here. Also, I guess I don’t really subscribe to the Undercover Lover theory at all, because I don’t think Jon’s feelings for/sexual relationship with Dany have anything to do with it (i.e. I do not think Jon purposefully and deliberately seduced Dany for the sole purpose of manipulating her, nor do I think he is merely pretending to have feelings for her for the sole purpose of personal/political gain). 

I truly don’t believe Jon is in any way maliciously gaslighting Dany as part of any Grand Scheme. Personally, I feel that would be too much at odds with the Honorable and Noble character and narrative established for Jon. But that’s not to say that I don’t think the general theory is totally with out merit. I actually think some elements of it could definitely make up a potential plot line. I have explained my take on it as more Flying By the Seat of His Pants Jon- I think “scheme” would be way too strong a word, I think “plan” would probably even be too generous. It’s probably more along the lines of “ok so this is what we are doing now.”

Somewhere along the line I feel like this whole thing turned into something VERY black and white and moralized. I also think that somewhere down the line this turned into a VERY polarized and mutually exclusive theory, which I don’t think would be the case in the event that the theory ends up being true. I have seen a lot of comparisons being made to LF and Ned Stark. It’s either that Jon is Ned Stark’s son and he would NEVER act in this type of morally dubious manner, OR that if Jon were to be acting in this morally dubious manner that he is just as bad as LF. @blindestspot summed up this polarization kind of perfectly imo:

Hyperbolically speaking, either Jon is a cruel cad or he is a faithless idiot. If you step away from the hyperbole, his pragmatism or naivety might actually make him less of a righteous cookie-cutter hero and more like a flawed human being. But it’s the internet and ideas are quickly distorted into their most hyperbolic versions of themselves. If Jon isn’t wholly good, he has got to be evil. If Jon isn’t smart, he eats crayons for breakfast.

Likewise, I disagree with the idea that Ned Stark and LF are the only two applicable points of moral comparison, that just seems awfully restrictive imo. Also, both Ned Stark and LF are dead. This implies that in order to survive the game of thrones, you have to fall somewhere in between. I guess the best way I can think of to explain it is that I kind of view this theory and it’s different variations on a sliding scale… The more deliberate and manipulative the version of the theory makes Jon out to be, the less likely I think it is to happen in that manner. 

Jon is one of the heroes of the show; and not only that, he has often been used or portrayed as the Moral Compass Character. (And example being just this season when he refused to punish Ned Umber and Albs Karstark for the sins of their fathers). The show runners have never had any story line that explicitly and intentionally places Jon in the wrong or in an extremely negative light. There has been story lines where he has acted in a morally ambiguous manner (see: Ygritte and the Wildlings), but he has never done anything purposefully malicious or outright evil or immoral. Also, there has been no indication in the narrative that he is heading toward any kind of downward spiral. I just can’t see the show going the dark!Jon or evil!Jon or morally corrupt!Jon route in the final season when he has been consistently portrayed as the Knight in Shining Armor, Savior, and Hero of the story.

I am a lawyer… So my basic approach to things like speculation is to look at the evidence. Honestly, for this theory, imo the defense for both sides have created reasonable doubt.

Arguments for UCJ

Potential Evidence from Jon’s character:

Through the Wilding plot from s1-s3, the narrative has established that Jon is capable of deception. He is capable of having genuine feelings for someone while not being completely honest. 

Sansa told Jon he needed to be “smarter,” which he could have taken to heart. A plot like this, similar to the the Sansa and Arya vs. LF plot, could be part of the general theme of “I learn” and the Starks going from pawns to players.

Kit Harrington has said this about Jon Snow’s character in s7 and s8: “But this year, I think he becomes a politician… He starts manipulating people in a Jon Snow way - in a kind way, but he has a job to do.” (x) This not only confirms that Jon IS operating as apolitical actor, but could also imply that Jon has a strategic goal or purpose. However, Jon having real feelings for Dany is not necessarily at odds with him having a second agenda. The two things are not at all mutually exclusive.

Jon steadfastly maintained through out the season that he would not be bending the knee. He even went so far as to tell Dany “I am a king.” It could be difficult for people to see how he would make such a complete 180, and a seemingly needless and unnecessary one given that Dany agreed to fight the NK before he bent the knee.

Potential Evidence from the Show:

There have been story lines, like the Sansa and Arya vs. LF plot, that were dishonest on their face. The way they were portrayed was intended to mislead the audience. So D&D are capable of using this kind of plot device.

The way I see this kind of story line going, it would also essentially be a pretty significant parallel to the Jon and the Wildlings plot, where Jon had real feelings for Ygritte but the situation was complicated by duty and circumstance. However, this would mean that it’s material D&D are familiar with.

All of the finale was full of subtext about lying and lies and honor. They laid it on so thick. Thick enough, I felt, that it could imply that Jon is hiding something or that part of him is overcompensating and/or being motivated by guilt.

Arguments Against UCJ:

Potential Evidence from Jon’s character:

Obviously, Jon’s honor code and strong senses of morality and duty are huge parts of his character. It’s totally reasonable to think that he has no ulterior motives beyond forming an alliance to ensure Dany and her dragons will fight with the North.

I think that Jon knows The NK will probably have a dragon how (he has seen the NK raise people from the dead, and he knows from the wight hunt that the NK can also raise animals from the dead). He knows without the dragons, they do not stand a chance. So he is doing everything necessary to ensure the dragons are on their side.

Jon has been consistently portrayed as a Hero and Moral Compass type character. There would be no reason for them to do anything that had the potential to  turn the audience so vehemently against him in the final season.

Potential Evidence from the Show:

There have been some incredibly stupid story lines (jfc that wight hunt). It’s fair to be suspicious that a story line of this manner is beyond what D&D have the tendency to produce in terms of complex details.

There are only 6 episodes left. I have a really hard time imagining how they would pull this off in 6 episodes ON TOP OF everything else that has to happen before the series ends.

In regards to the plot device of characters using seduction and emotional manipulation as a tool, D&D have consistently been typical dude bro’s insofar as it has been largely female characters who have done so (Cersei, Margaery, Shae, Osha, ect.) It might be completely beyond them to think to have a male character utilize those techniques in such a manner.

I see valid arguments being made on both sides here to constitute a generally sufficient case for it going either way. I think that anyone who would argue “yes the is 100% going to happen” OR “no there is a 0% chance this is happening” would be willfully disregarding evidence from one side or the other. Obviously it’s natural that people will find one side or the other more persuasive, everything about speculation is subjective. But I just don’t feel like it would be possible to make any definitive statements at this point. 

All the reasons I have for thinking this could be possible or impossible have nothing to do with me shipping Jon/Sansa. They actually don’t really have anything to do with Sansa herself at all in any different way than they have to do with everyone in the North that Jon’s decision affects. I know there are some people who might not believe me when I say that, but I supposed there is nothing I can do about it. But that’s the thing about speculation: it’s always subjective, there can be arguments made for both sides. While some people may say “Jon has made promises to Dany and he wouldn’t break them and betray her,” the flip side is “in making these promises to Dany, Jon has betrayed his duty and promises he made to all of his subjects as their king whom they trust.” For every argument, there is a counter argument; for every action, there is a reaction. For every person who can’t believe Jon would betray Dany, there is another person who can’t believe Jon would betray his family. For every person who believes Jon was right to bend the knee, there is another person who can’t believe he would do it. For every person who thinks Dany deserves to rule the Seven Kingdoms, there is another person who believes the North deserves their freedom and independence.

All things considered, I do feel there could be some potential conflict in regards to Jon’s intentions and motivations. I think there are various events and ambiguities in the past and present plot, as well as in Jon’s actions and in Jon and Dany’s relationship, that support said hypothesis. My best guess is that Jon definitely has some guilt about bending the knee because he either: a) knows the north will NEVER go for it, or b) was being genuine and feels guilty for having unilaterally made such a huge decision that effects so many people, including his own family, with out their input (which he should because ffs dude come on!) .The only thing that I believe Jon has been outright dishonest about is telling Dany that the Northerners would bend the knee accept her as Queen. The North has a very deep seated rhetoric against the Targaryens. Whether it’s true or not is essentially a moot point, it’s just something that is deeply embedded in their history. In 7x02 they went out of their way to make a ~big deal~ about how “Targaryens can’t be trusted.” The North also has a historic distrust and disdain for Southern rule and the Iron Throne, going all the way back to Torrhen Stark, the king who knelt. I don’t think there is any way that Jon could reasonably believe that Dany won’t be met with opposition from the North… All the rest of it, including Jon’s feelings towards Dany, kind of falls into a gray area of words vs. actions vs. intent vs. motivations. Which makes sense, because this would be a morally gray plot; and it wouldn’t be the first time one of those was featured on Game of Thrones. 

I suspect that, like with Operation Wildling, Jon has no real escape plan or exit strategy here; I honestly don’t think that he has thought about it that much (also implying that any deliberate, premeditated manipulation or ill intent on his part would be minimal or non existent). Honestly, I think that Jon believes he is not going to survive to see the extended repercussions of and reactions to his bending the knee. I think that Jon truly believes he is going to die fighting the NK. He already showed that he was willing to die when he told Dany to leave him behind in 7x06. Like the rest of us, his he is probably wondering how in the ever loving fuck his ass has somehow managed to survive this long. (Honestly being like, “I’ll bend/pretend to bend the knee and then just die so I don’t have to face Sansa” would ABSOLUTELY be a Jon Snow thing to do.) I think Jon made what he saw as the best decision in the present, and isn’t concerned about the future or the fallout. Which, if true, could lead to a couple possible conflicts for next season:

Possibility 1- Jon dies in the BftD and Dany lives, leaving Dany to face the North and Cersei on her own.

Possibility 2- Dany dies in the BftD and Jon lives, leaving him to deal with the fallout in the North and Cersei alone.

Possibility 3- Both Jon and Dany survive the BftD and the North makes it clear that they will not accept his as queen, leaving Jon to decide who’s side he will be on. His decision then would obviously be complicated by his feelings for Dany and his loyalty to his family ect. ect.

Possibility 4- The White Walkers win and everyone dies so it doesn’t even matter!

(*Disclaimer: Obviously this list is just me speculating and is in no way comprehensive or exhaustive.)

And like Anon said, if Jon is going to be the third reason that Dany suffers, then Possible Conflict #’s 1 and 3 could definitely play into that. In #1 Dany would not only be dealing with Jon’s death, but also with the knowledge that he was dishonest to her. And in #3 if Jon ends up siding with the Starks in a potential conflict, that could possibly be a major betrayal.

I also think subjectivity comes into play big time here with regards to which parts of the story people prefer or find more compelling or are more interested in. Game of Thrones has SO MUCH going on and there are so many different lenses through which people can view it. Who are the most important characters? What is the most important plot? Who is The Hero™? Who is The Villain™? What is the ideal endgame? I would bet you pretty much anything no two people would answer all those questions the exact same way. We as an audience have been waiting 6 seasons for BOTH the Stark Restoration/Northern Independence AND the Dany Getting to Westeros plots to play out. I’ve kind of talked about it a little bit before, but for me personally (and I think for others as well), it was extremely narratively frustrating to finally get the narrative pay out from the Stark story line, only to have it be given up and taken away such a short time later. 

I also think that if Jon’s storyline is 100% completely honest, straight forward, and genuine as it stands, then like 90% of the major, climactic events of his arc will seem to have been pointless and he will have learned nothing from them. It would also seem that Jon bending the knee and unilaterally making such a huge decision for such a large number of people so easily would go against a lot of what he has supposedly learned. I’m not even saying that it was the wrong decision or that he didn’t have the authority to make it or even that it would be completely ooc. However, such a seemingly single minded action would show an alarming and annoying (imo) lack of character development… Which, again, is entirely possible. This is D&D after all.

In sum, I honestly don’t have that strong of a stance on this tbh. I guess mine is kind of like a Moderate View on the theory or like, “Undercover Jon Light.” I think some variation of it could definitely be possible and would be an interesting potential plot so I won’t rule it out completely. But I also won’t be surprised if it doesn’t happen.

[onewomancitadel]

@lovinghyacinths said:

I think that’s part of why I loved She-Ra and the Princesses of Power so much. Catra gets a really full and complex redemption arc over the course of the series, and she’s absolutely unambiguously bad…but she earns a happy ending.

Oh yeah totally, I think She-Ra tapped into a narrative niche that people who otherwise wouldn't watch She-Ra watched She-Ra because of it.

Catra also gets the romance and redemption arc so they really committed to that as well. But She-Ra is an interesting example firstly because it's so recent, second because it seems like the creators of the show really pushed for their creative ideas to make it happen as they wanted, and third because I wonder how much it adds to 'the discourse'. I didn't really keep track of She-Ra until it was too late and by that point was only hearing from other Reylos. XD

But generally speaking it's clear that there's an audience which is interested in redemption arcs, and living redemptions at that.

Although it does come to mind that I wonder if She-Ra had an easier time re: redemption arcs (and reception) just because of the animated medium (see also: Zuko), well not just him but it's easier to convey a sense of mythic 'heightenedness' with animation, which once you heighten all of the moral/immoral acts you can talk more broadly and in a higher way about themes of redemption and forgiveness about really big things, I suppose. (You can still do this without it but I think there might be a leg-up here. Like SW's leg up is the space fantasy and the lightsabers).

Obviously I post a lot about RWBY now, and RWBY's an interesting case because a lot of focus is on its anime influence (in being a Western production), but redemption arcs of certain resident villainesses come under a lot of scrutiny (and broadly speaking you can see a lot of modern redemption arc/cynical storytelling attitudes bleeding into the fandom). So teasing that out is really interesting. At that, I'm not sure how much audience crossover there is with She-Ra.

I think that's the strange thing about the media landscape now (and then?) is that the mythically-loaded epic fantasy redemption arc landscape is pretty... dire? Let alone for anything involving romance which is my wheelhouse. Raistlin is probably the chief example I can think of for a bad wizard who is redeemed (Dragonlance canon is.. kind of nuts) but his love interest Crysania is sent to the house for naughty girls who like bad men (written out of a narrative role).

I can certainly think of stories about redemption (for some reason True Detective Season 1 is the first which comes to mind, mostly because I've encountered a perception that it validates the nihilism of the deeply wounded character or that it fails narratively because it doesn't do so, and also of course Crime & Punishment in terms of literature and probably others I'm not even thinking about)...

Obviously it's a thing in anime and a well established thing in anime for that matter with certainly not the same controversy, which is a different question altogether (especially for R/WBY)...

But again there's that interesting thing where a) it's always about Vader and Zuko and b) apparently there are 'too many redemption arcs' in media and it's a really really really hot button online issue and I don't know why. It's just one type of character and story structure plz stop

Anyway it's just interesting that everybody and their mother and their dog has some reason or another for why Redemption Arcs Bad but they also don't get redemption arcs structurally, but also where are our narrative examples of them because this is probably genuinely contributing to the issue at hand. Because it's pretty obvious that Vader taught us sometimes you're too evil so you die, and then Zuko taught us that sometimes you can be not too evil and then you're allowed to be good, and I guess end of discussion. So that's actually a serious contributing factor. Like, your media response is informed by many other hundreds and thousands of other artistic responses (which is why myth/fairytale stuff is potent).

I think my broader point is that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, discourse about redemption arcs is poor because there aren't enough true examples and it's just not as much a normalised structure of storytelling? Also also see other ceaselessly annoying posts about death of media criticism, narrative, etc. etc. have to watch True Detective Season 1, to cope.

[the-master-cylinder]

SUMMARY It is 1998 and the city of Los Angeles has been quarantined off after a plague wiped out 120 million people in the country. Law and order no longer exists, but disease, violence and immorality are running rampant. A young man and his family are being terrorized by a local gang and nobody will help. When the gang kills his grandmother and breaks his legs, the computer savvy cripple goes on the defensive and sets booby traps around the neighborhood. It is war and the traps kill the gang members one by one in the most bizarre and vicious way imaginable.

PRODUCTION “Wired to kill is an original premise,” insists Schaeffer, an occasional science-fiction author and painter. “It isn’t post-nuclear holocaust with a motorcycle gang chasing people across the desert. Wired to Kill isn’t just about guys with spikes on their wrists, either. It’s an avant-garde action film with horrific overtones.”

In a way it’s a social comment on the fact that individuals can stand up and make a difference … and hence, the slogan of the film, which is “If you want history, you’ve got to make your own.”

Schaeffer shot Wired to Kill in 1985 on a $3 million budget. Shooting at a devastating pace,” the independent production wrapped after a breezy eight weeks on California locations, including an abandoned industrial complex that gets blown sky high in the movie.

“It’s loosely based on those movies and they’re some bits of CLOCK WORK ORANGE and THE TERMINATOR in it as well,” said McGuire. “This is definitely a violent film, but what makes it different is the treatment of the violence. We haven’t gone to extremes to glamorize the blood and gore, and those elements never overwhelm the action. Sure there’s a lot of bombs and explosions and people get killed but none of the violence in this movie is treated in an explicit way.”

With a shooting schedule that’s Spartan even by low-budget standards, the Wired to Kill crew literally ran from scene to scene. The editing process, which McGuire described as a lot of quick cuts aimed at the MTV generation, is in keeping with what Schaeffer said are the demands of a 1980’s movie going audience. “The present generation has been raised on television and rock ‘n’ roll,” he said.

SPECIAL EFFECTS “They’ve come to absorb images and information in a space of a few seconds. We edited with that audience in mind.”

Much of the special effects in Wired to Kill were natural effects courtesy of a closed, deserted and decaying steel mill in Fontana, California that served as the gang’s hideout and much of the storyline’s deteriorating landscape. “It was 10 miles of twisted pipes and rusting, littered pieces of steel,” said McGuire. “It was kind of like the spaceship set from ALIEN, and it would have cost a fortune to create. Lucky for us it was just laying there.”

It was on this site that the film’s major man-made special effects scene took place. The gang, in a modified transport vehicle called a Euk, crashes into a 2000-ton tower (in actuality a steel blast furnace that was built at the steel mill during World War II), knocking it down. This effect, accomplished with the aid of outside explosives experts, and others in the film were designed by Peter Chesney of Image Engineering.

“We have a number of special makeup effects, promises writer/director Schaeffer. “In one scene, a booby trapped Walkman sends an electric shock through a guy’s head when he puts it on. Michele built a mask in which the eyeballs popped out. Another fellow’s face burns down to a skull, and yet another snorts acidic cocaine that makes his face foam up. The terminal enema-a villain sits on a motorcycle and a massive blade pounds up was also particularly creative. But each death is tongue-in-cheek, besides being uniquely gruesome. We did things that others would say are too farfetched.”

One of those items, the robot Winston, was designed with some specific goals in mind. “We didn’t want to end up with a robot that was a clone of R2D2,” said McGuire. “We wanted something that wouldn’t grate on people’s nerves and that would look like something that a kid who was a genius would make. This thing has a believable look to it.”

Michelle Burke

Michelle Burke, who won an Academy Award for her makeup work in the film QUEST FOR FIRE, contributed bizarre tattoos worn by gang members and lifelike death masks for the movie’s more violent moments.

American Distribution Group plans to released Wired to kill in late summer/fall 1986. Schaeffer feels confident that his violent actioner will find its target teen audience, even if it’s a story that has been done countless times before.

“There’s never a 100 percent original idea in a movie any way,” he observes. “Everything is derivative of something else. But Wired to Kill looks right into the audience’s eyes and doesn’t blink. Many films give up when it comes to the punchline, they’re not brassy enough and don’t go all the way. Our film doesn’t pretend to be any. thing else. Wired to kill is as unrespectable as can be, it’s a pure revenge story. In that way, we are original.”

Francis Schaeffer

Interview with Francis Schaeffer

 It seems the film is literally about good versus evil. Francis Schaeffer: The plot is an allegory, a twentieth century version of Homer’s “Odyssey” – it’s as simple as that.

You have the forces of fate and evil arrayed against our heroes. Are they going to run away or are they going to stay and make a stand? ‘Steve’ and ‘Rebecca’ exercise their rights as human beings to make moral choices and change history. That’s what this movie is about. They are individuals asserting their rights to remain human and to function as humans, even though there are inhuman forces around them. It’s the same as the individual story of today of someone who refuses to bow, say, to the pressures of a deteriorating neighborhood. It’s the local grocery store owner who says, “I’m not moving out of this neighborhood. I was born and raised here and I’m simply not closing my store and boarding it up just because there’s some punks on the corner who keep robbing my store. I refuse to. I’m gonna draw the line and take a stand.” He’s saying “LET THEM MOVE!”

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Does the film hold out any hope? Francis Schaeffer: Oh, very much so, because I think in our film the hero and heroine are totally vindicated. They not only win their battles, but they do so in a way that proves the individual can triumph over adversity … that you can make choices that will not only change your life but also change the lives around you.

The character of ‘Reegus’ is so educated and articulate, yet he is the driving evil force behind this insane, brutal gang. What does he represent? Francis Schaeffer: The lesson behind ‘Reegus’ is that all the trappings of civilization don’t necessarily make you civilized, and that is what makes him so terrifying. Evil can come in very civilized forms, which is much more frightening than just violent, brutal thugs.

It’s the difference between the mindless psychopathic killer who just happens to kill every person he sees, and the premeditated, cold blooded and sadistic enjoyment of some university humanities professor who’s dismembered some kid in one room then holds a seminar on Nietzsche in the other. The mindless thug you understand. You hate him, you fear him, but you understand his actions.

“Reegus, like that professor, is art and civilization turned on its head. It’s the purest forms of evil with a human face – and that is a helluva lot more terrifying.

Is the scenario of “Wired to kill” plausible? Francis Schaeffer: Well, I think it could be, but basically I feel you should judge a film on its own internal logic.

The point of this film is, given the basic premise of the story, is there an internal logic which holds it together?

It isn’t ‘does this film mirror reality?”. If you want reality, you can stay home. That’s reality. You don’t go to a movie to see reality, you go to a movie to be entertained and stimulated.

But can audiences seeing your film be entertained and stimulated by the extreme violence in “Wired to Kill”? Francis Schaeffer: I would like to frame whatever answer I give on the question of violence in the film in a different sense and that is that all art – and film at its best is art – portrays human conflict.

You cannot make creative and artistic statements unless you portray human conflict, of which violence happens to be the ultimate and central point. It goes back to the Old Testament. All the great tales of human endeavor have centered around conflict and adventure, and the way that has always been portrayed has been through violence.

That is what makes it interesting. That is what makes it entertaining. It’s a very simple formula.

But in the film – Francis Schaeffer: Wait a minute. It’s a very simple formula, but it’s not a movie formula. I don’t like this judgment of violence being something bad – something wrong — with a film, any film. If film has been accepted as an art form, then it should have the same privileges as art forms in the rest of history.

You cannot make creative and artistic statements unless you portray human conflict. Violence is an aspect of human existence. To deprive the filmmaker of that tool is to tell him that he can’t portray the human condition.

I think it’s very strange that film is singled out for being criticized as too violent, when in the area of literature and painting and theatre you’ve always had ultra-violence and nobody makes an issue of it. You don’t give an “X” rating for violence to Shakespeare, or to Milton, or to operas such as “Carmen.” There’s not even a human drama in the scriptures without violent confrontation.

From the point of view of the public, what human beings are most interested in is other people, period. And the most interesting moments of everyone’s life are life – death, birth, sex – elements that make up the human condition. You just can’t set preconditions and say “well, you know, because film is a new medium we’re not going to take it seriously and we’re going to limit what you can put in movies.”

On the other hand, the filmmaker is responsible for the total impact his or her films have on an audience. But I would like to distinguish between gratuitous violence and violence that is essential to portraying conflict.

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What would you like people to say about the film when they leave the theatre? Francis Schaeffer: Well, I don’t know what they’ll say. What I would like the film to do is make the audience think or feel that you just cannot wish evil away. Wishing for a crime-free society doesn’t produce a crime-free society. You cannot have a society in which there is no army and no police force and no recognition of the fact that there are very brutal elements in the human race. I want people to feel when they come out of the movie that whether as individuals confronting evil, or as a nation confronting evil and the totalitarian impulse to destroy, that it takes guts to do so! They cannot be foolishly idealistic about evil — there are fine lines drawn between good and bad, right and wrong, in the moral dimensions of humankind. It is the person with their back against the wall, standing with everything to lose, who makes the moral choice to resist evil. And he or she proves with that choice why the human race is worth preserving. That’s what this movie is about!

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CAST/CREW Directed by Francis Schaeffer Written by Francis Schaeffer

Makeup Department Michèle Burke        makeup artist Peter Chesney        special effects coordinator Tom Chesney         special effects technician Bruce D. Hayes       special effects foreman Circe Strauss        special effects crew (as Jarn Heil)

Emily Longstreth     Rebecca Devin Hoelscher      Steve Merritt Butrick      Reegus (The Gang Leader) Frank Collison       Sly Tommy ‘Tiny’ Lister Sleet (as Tommy Lister Jr. ‘Tiny’) Kim Milford        Rooster

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY Fangoria#059 Cinefantastique v16n04-05

Wired to Kill (1986) Retrospective SUMMARY It is 1998 and the city of Los Angeles has been quarantined off after a plague wiped out 120 million people in the country.

[bambamramfan]

“protagonist, audience, and critics”

Last Dead Freddie post for a while (ie, recovering pieces of deBoer’s writing that were killed by his website hack). Mostly this was a really good piece about antiheroes in prestige television, and I wanted to endorse its good points, and engage with the fundamental errors of artistic criticism it has towards the end.

I’ll post my response later, since this is enough to read on its own.

Edit: the title of the post included the word “audience” not “author”, but either could work.

That the early parts of the Golden Age of Television were dominated by antiheroes is an idea that’s by now as cliché and tired as, well, the phrase “Golden Age of Television.” From Tony Soprano to Walter White to Don Draper to the various self-destructive cops and criminals in The Wire, the rise of high-production-values, critically-lauded narrative television was attended by stories told from the perspective of people who weren’t very nice. The essayist Brett Martin’s book on this period, in fact, was titled Difficult Men. In recent years, we’ve seen a growing diversity of perspectives on HBO and AMC and the like, with more racial and gender diversity, a greater range of themes and issues, and less reliance on the tropes of antihero fiction. Thankfully, for those of us who think that art should reflect the full diversity of human experience, the obsession with those difficult men seems to have subsided.

And yet I think that, as much as the antihero has been discussed to death in recent years, the concept could stand to be connected in a deeper way to a broader context: the tangled relationship between protagonists, the audience’s empathy for them, and the moral intent of the artists who create them.

Prestige TV – a term I find viscerally distasteful, but never mind – has famously engendered a cottage industry of analysis, recaps and reviews and explainers by the thousands. The structural incentives for such coverage is obvious; high-profile shows drive clicks for publications, and the regular episodic nature of television provides writers with steady work, a reliable income source of a kind that’s essential for the career of a freelancer. And though I’ve occasionally teased producers of this stuff – how many fresh takes, really, can there be on the same episodes of television, with dozens or hundreds of people doing it? – it’s good for art and for audiences for a robust critical conversation to occur alongside these shows. Not all of the takes will be novel, interesting, or convincing. (Indeed, given the nature of things, a majority won’t be.) But communally digging around and exploring in the text will often provide us with some useful insight.

And yet it’s important to remember that the vast majority of viewers of these shows won’t engage in the text in this way. I don’t just mean that most people who watch shows don’t write or read about them. I mean that, for the average viewer, the concept of treating a show as a kind of intellectual challenge, a puzzle to be disassembled and reassembled again, probably defies the point of watching in the first place. Distraction is a very valid reason for watching television, after all, and after coming home from a long day of work, many of us naturally want to turn off the analytical part of the brain and just enjoy the straight narrative of a given series. But what happens when the series is asking you to analyze? What happens when the basic moral work of the art you’re enjoying requires a deeper consideration of the tension between what’s depicted and what morals are intended?

I want to argue that the tension between fiction as entertainment and fiction as object of analysis – the difference between consuming a story straightforwardly and reading that story against the grain for more complex moral lessons – takes on added weight when so much of what’s depicted in our popular culture is not meant to be emulated or celebrated. I’m not trying to establish some sort of hierarchy of tastes here – the first purpose of art is to entertain, and no one should ever apologize for engaging with commercial art on the level of surface enjoyment. But the prevalence of antiheroes and immoral protagonists in contemporary narrative art leaves me profoundly nervous about the actual ethical impact of such work. There’s reason to believe that too many people are taking entirely the wrong lessons from the shows, video games, and movies they love.

YouTube clips from popular shows offer obvious, depressing examples of what I’m talking about. The Sopranos is exemplary in this regard. Hundreds of clips of Tony Soprano and various other bad actors on the show are presented as role models for life, their grim pursuit of (what they believe to be) their own self-interest and their capacity for violence valorized in video titles, descriptions, and comments. A particularly egregious example states that Tony tells it like it is when it comes to what really matters: family. The clip (since removed from YouTube, likely due to copyright issues) was of a self-aggrandizing Tony Soprano waxing on about the importance of family and how family members are the only ones you can really trust. This should be, to anyone with even a minimal knowledge of the show’s plot, a moment dripping with irony and indictment: Tony is comprehensively terrible to his family. He is a lousy father, a cheating husband, and a bullying and obnoxious sibling. He tries to kill his own mother and succeeds in killing his cousin and nephew. It’s hard to imagine a point more consistently established in the show than that Tony Soprano is an awful family man.

Yet such is the power of the protagonist (and the charisma of James Gandolfini) that the person who uploaded the video and dozens of commenters were convinced that Tony’s speech amounted to the show imparting a life lesson. And this general attitude, that Tony is someone to emulate rather than to despise, is replicated again and again online, with thousands of people taking his oafish violence, sexual aggression, and total indifference to the well-being of others as some sort of exemplar of masculine real-keeping. It’s here where the power of the protagonist is truly revealed, the way that simple depiction of a character’s point of view seems to overwhelm everything else we know about them. It’s as if the human power of identification is too strong, at least in art; we forgive in our protagonists things we know should never be forgiven in real life.

David Chase, the creator of the Sopranos, has talked about this frustrating tendency himself many times, betraying his irritation with audience members who seem intent on seeing the show as little more than a wish fulfillment fantasy for those who would like to be able to whack their annoying coworkers.

In another clip that’s favored by people looking to draw life lessons on masculinity, Mad Men’s Don Draper dispenses with a young rival at his advertising firm with a cutting putdown. “I feel sorry for you,” says gifted young copywriter Michael Ginsberg. “I don’t think about you at all,” replies Draper, asserting his masculine dominance via the Principle of Least Interest. In an age when “giving no fucks” is taken as a Zen-like state of effortless superiority, this is the ultimate alpha male moment. The clip is summarized by the person who uploaded it: “Don Draper puts Michael Ginsberg in his place. He’s still the boss.”

Except that the show has gone out of its way, that entire episode, to demonstrate that Draper is thinking about Ginsberg. Incessantly. Over and over, the episode establishes that Don can’t stop thinking about Ginsberg and the threat he represents. It’s a classic tale of the wounded pride of an aging worker who feels threatened by the younger, sharper, hungrier counterpart. Sure, Don looks cool when he dismisses Ginsberg. But the limits of looking cool is one of the most relentlessly depicted themes in Mad Men, all of the sharply tailored suits and gorgeous midcentury modern design hiding alcoholism, bigotry, and failed relationships. The essential dramatic tension of the show lies in contrasting Don Draper the myth with Don Draper the reality. During the sixth season, when the character devolved deeper into addiction and failure, his façade of control and professional mastery slipping away, many devoted viewers complained that they wanted “the old Don” back – the cool, sexy, invulnerable Don. But in doing so, they were denying the central message of the show, the essential point both in plot terms and thematically: Don Draper does not exist. The ideal is not possible. Both the man himself and the icons he represents are myths. To see the show as simply a depiction of a gorgeous and powerful figure of old guard masculinity means denying its most obvious thematic message.

Reflecting on the divide between authorial signaling and audience interpretation through the example of Walter White of Breaking Bad – a truly reprehensible figure – Isaac Butler writes,

With Breaking Bad, the major, unresolved issue was the character of Walter White. What sort of man was he? And how were we supposed to feel about him? And how did the creators feel about him?…

For many watching Breaking Bad, Walter White was in a morality play, and thus would be sufficiently punished by the time the finale concluded. For an odious group known as Team Walt, Breaking Bad was wish fulfillment, and Walter would in some way be rewarded for his awesomeness. For another group—one I belonged to—Walter was the anti-hero protagonist of a classical tragedy.

A classical tragedy, that is, in the sense that the point is not the Manichean moralism of an episode of Law and Order SVU but the challenge of seeing our own potential flaws in a work of art, to better understand ourselves. What troubles Butler is the show’s moral relationship to its own characters and its audience, and in particular those who are bent on seeing genuinely evil characters as badass instead of bankrupt. And the question I constantly ask myself is whether, in a culture that has so habitually depicts violence as cool and cathartic, that group will always outnumber those who respond to violence with horror.

The point is not that we should take some sort of blanket critical approach to protagonists, but that we should recognize the complexity and nuance in their depiction. The critical reaction to Fight Club shows how both an unthinking acceptance of protagonist behavior, and an overactive judgment of same, can both sand away the subtleties that are essential a movie. Yes, indeed, there are far too many “How to Be As Cool as Tyler Durden” articles and videos online. (Step one: look as good as Brad Pitt circa 1999.) The phenomenon of fans of that movie or book over-identifying with Tyler Durden and the narrator has come in for some deserved mockery, with many pointing out that starting your own fight club – or, even worse, your own Project Mayhem – is a ridiculous exercise, one that clearly misses the satirical and critical aspects of the story. (You should make your own soap, though, it’s fun.) The entire second half of the film depicts the narrator’s gradual realization that he has become involved in something far more destructive than he imagined.

Yet it would be easy to fall too far on the other side of the equation, and to see the narrator’s distaste for the triviality and consumerism of contemporary American life as itself pathological instead of natural. Yes, the violent nihilism he and his alter ego develop in response to that culture is childish and ineffective, but we shouldn’t take that to mean that the world of corporate speak, consumerist conformity, and IKEA aren’t worth rejecting. It means that part of the point of the narrative is precisely the difficulty in channeling legitimate distaste for the way things are into productive avenues.

The last shot of the movie, pregnant with emotional power, demonstrates the closest thing to a message for how to actually live in the film: finding a partner who is equally willing to look past your own flaws to navigate a world that seems bent on destroying the things that make us feel authentically human. Endorsing the romantic ideal as a potential cure for modern disaffection isn’t particularly novel, but the execution of getting there strikes me as the basic point, the recognition of the seduction of nihilism and its impediments to real human connection. You don’t have to think the movie pulls that off, mind you – many people don’t – but failing to really parse out the nuances of the film’s relationship to its protagonist means missing its artistic foundations. The presumption that depiction means endorsement kills drama.

The film and TV writer Matt Zoller Seitz, a great critic who sometimes strikes me as too concerned with whether the films he reviews conform to contemporary liberal social norms, demonstrated the perils of a certain politicized literalism in how we treat the prerogatives of the protagonist when reviewing last year’s Ghostbusters reboot. In contrast to the workaholic women of the newer film, he chastises the original film’s leading character, Bill Murray’s Peter Venkmann, as “a deadpan hipster who fakes most of the knowledge he claims to have,” complaining that he is part of “a long tradition of anti-authority posturing by straight white male characters who act as if the world’s indifference to their happiness is a personal affront.” But what, exactly, is the alternative that Seitz would prefer? That Venkmann conform to the stuffy dictates of elite academia, which he (accurately) sees as full of bullshit? Become a Company Man, another Reaganite yuppie content to play within the system without irony? Yes, it’s definitely true that women and other marginalized groups have traditionally had less ability to subvert the social and economic structures around them. But the response to that should not be to insist that everyone play by the rules, but that we spread the privilege Venkmann enjoys to everyone. It’s a strange form of progressivism that would compel a movie character to drop his sardonic critique of the way things are and get to work on those TPS reports already.

More to the point, if Venkmann was more of a tryhard game-player, going along with the conventional plan, Ghostbusters wouldn’t be much of a movie. Of course there’s a lot of male fantasy in the original Ghostbusters; the question is whether showing such a fantasy for enjoyment necessarily entails seeing the fantasy as a goal worth pursuing. Again, there’s an implicit assumption that artistic depiction presumes that the audience should want to emulate the protagonist. Comedy is full of smirking subversives not because everyone should act like those characters – no one is that clever or funny, and not everyone can be an iconoclast – but because everyone recognizes the need for subversion, the steady drumbeat of absurdities and indignities piled on us by the systems around us.

(Seitz also, incidentally, claims that Murray’s character has an attitude of “The only part of this that excites me is the prospect of getting laid by a demon-possessed Sigourney Weaver,” despite the explicit plot point of a possessed Weaver propositioning Murray and him turning her down, which seems remarkably uncharitable for a thoughtful critic like Seitz.)

The power of identification in art leads to bad political readings of music as well. In recent years, the Beatles tune “Run For Your Life” has been singled out as #PROBLEMATIC for its threatening message to the unnamed romantic partner in the song. (This is made somewhat more disturbing by the fact that John Lennon, the song’s author and singer, admitted to abusing his wife, which is of course inexcusable.) The lyrics are indeed disturbing. What’s strange is the belief that the song, or people who enjoy it, are somehow endorsing threats or violence against women. Depiction is not endorsement, not even in music, perhaps the art form we are most likely to feel intimately inside of ourselves. Lennon felt things that would be rightfully impermissible to express directly. That’s precisely why he embedded them in his music. To argue for the legitimacy of the song as art is no more an endorsement of violence against women than singing the praises of Lolita is an endorsement of pedophilia.

The prevalence of obsession and possessiveness in songs about love reveals one of the cherished functions of art: to depict that which is human that cannot be defended by the rational mind. We are, after all, animals. We remain defiantly irrational creatures. We lust, we feel jealousy, we fantasize, we yearn for revenge, we imagine ourselves as beings of impossible power, and we do it all out of proportion with what is reasonable. My conscious mind, which is what guides my behavior, wants to be a loving and respectful partner to someone, a partner that recognizes the autonomy and independence of that someone and reacts to their adult desires for space and time apart appropriately. My emotional self is filled with an unjustifiable need to possess. That is not an attempt to rationalize or defend jealous romantic behaviors in a relationship. It is a statement of the permanent irrationality of human emotions.

When Nicki Minaj releases a music video depicting herself as a fascist dictator, to considerable controversy, her critics are misunderstanding the basic nature of fantasy. Who hasn’t imagined themselves, at times, in a position of autocratic power? We can pretend that such fantasies don’t exist, thanks to their obvious political problems, or we can express them in art where they do less harm. When Selena Gomez depicts herself as a stalker breaking into a celebrity’s home in a music video, she’s not romanticizing actual stalking but exploring the animal intensity of human emotion and its uncomfortable outcomes in truly obsessive behaviors. Romantic obsession is a commonplace in music because it is in music where those powerful, ubiquitous human emotions can be explored safely.

The contemporary attitude that we must run all of our thoughts and feelings through a political litmus test before we express them in art simply means that many shared thoughts and feelings will go undiscussed. The heart is not woke, and it never will be, and to remove that which is unconsciously felt but consciously impermissible from art simply leaves us less aware of the human condition. Worse, such a condition leaves us bereft of the kind of understanding we need to navigate our tangled feelings for the Tony Sopranos – the ability to recognize that the power fantasies we might enjoy while watching such characters are natural, but that actually valorizing those behaviors is contrary to the public good.

I’m not too worried that the average viewer will take up a life of crime in emulation of Tony Soprano and Walter White, though I cringe to think of how such unthinking appreciation of them deepens the association between masculinity and the capacity for violence. I’m far more worried about our continued inability to recognize the ethical failings of the wealthy and the system that empowers them. Our culture is rife with depictions of wealth that straightforwardly valorize money and those who have it, the shameless promotion of luxury on HGTV and celebrity gossip magazines. Lots of movies and television shows attempt to correct for that by showing the moral rot and personal destruction underneath all that ostentation. But sometimes, the depiction of wealth and glamour is so emotionally compelling that the critical and satirical elements are undone. This is the Wolf of Wall Street conundrum.

I have no doubt that Martin Scorsese and the others involved in the production of the film intended to indict Jordan Belfort and his actions. But I don’t think they achieved such an indictment artistically. When the film’s defenders argue that it was intended as a critical depiction, they’re defending intent rather than execution, which is no more useful than defending a film’s intent at realism, emotional catharsis, humor, or drama. Scorsese’s work has always drawn from the productive tension between how arresting his characters are and how destructive their behavior is. At its best, this leads to a kind of fascinated revulsion, the way that Travis Bickle is both a contemptible figure and an impossibly magnetic one, the light in which the glamor and cool of Howard Hughes in The Aviator were cast by the intensity of his mental illness. For me, The Wolf of Wall Street simply didn’t provoke that same queasiness; the cars were too fast, the suits too well-tailored, the women too hot, the glee on the part of Jordan Belfort too palpable. The intent may have been satirical, but a cursory examination of the internet’s collective opinion on the film shows that for many of its ardent fans, its effect was salutary. And we really don’t need more affection for Wall Street sharks.

You can, of course, argue that Fight Club fails in the same sense, or that Wolf of Wall Street actually achieves its critical intent. At some level we are simply talking about differing subjective takes on the quality of different works of fiction. And you might well ding me for arguing both ways at once – saying that audiences need to do the work of excavating implied critiques of protagonist behavior and also that creators have a responsibility to make those critiques apparent. If nothing else, I am saying that the role of the protagonist seems to inspire deep sympathy regardless of the actions depicted, particularly over the very long haul afforded by a television series, to a degree that many artists seem unprepared for. I imagine this power is even more compelling in video games, where the player literally directs the main character through the story, occupying their point of view. And in a critical world where more and more people are explicitly subordinating aesthetics to politics – where more and more critics are erasing any distinction at all between a work’s aesthetic value and its perceived effectiveness in delivering progressive political morals – the relationship between what is depicted and what lessons are imparted become even more fraught, more pregnant with meaning. We should take care with such things.

The sophisticate’s take on this question has typically been to insist that no artist should be held to account for the misreading of their audience, and of course I agree, in a limited sense. Still, I am at this point profoundly ambivalent towards the concept of the antihero or unsympathetic protagonist in art. These tropes have been mined to great effect for centuries in various artistic genres and media, and I value much of that work. But the consistency with which devoted fans of antihero fiction completely miss the thematic purpose of that fiction makes it hard for me to enjoy it, these days. Authorial intent is, obviously, contested and uneasy ground, and getting invested in parsing it rarely a productive activity. But I cannot help but observe the frequency with which implied moral positions in contemporary artwork seem to completely bypass large parts of their audiences, often to the point of leaving them with the exact opposite lesson that was seemingly intended.

Perhaps, then, the exhaustion with antiheroes and flawed protagonists came at just the right time. Perhaps the fad fizzled out when it most needed to. There will always be antiheroes, and I will no doubt find myself following with interest the stories of protagonists who are not good people. But simple depictions of flawed characters attempting to do their best for others and acting in ways we associate with morality seems like fertile ground. Hell, at this point, the story of good people doing good might seem downright subversive.

[whatisonthemoonarchive]

All hail Kennith because as he says, "This is the reality as I see it. – Kenneth". I think the man has a serious "Moon" complex. He has spoken, all must obey.

Blame v. Responsibility in the Fall-out from the FFWPU and Sun Myung Moon I thank the folks who made comments on my posting. In this response, I will talk about the terms, “blame,” “responsibility,” or “judgment,” all of which have broad meanings. Let’s focus on the main definition as meant in the context, and postpone other definitions of each word for future discussion. ▶ # Let’s say Mary is another victim of Rev. Moon and his church. They pretty much ruined her life. She is too old now to do anything in her life to start over. Seeking her damage at court was impractical and she has given up on that. Thanks to help from her friends and the government, she is now able to make a living. What is the right thing for her to do about Rev. Moon and the church? This is the ethical question that we are now inquiring about. 1. The most popular thing to do would be to blame the offender and keep holding him responsible to undo the damage done to Mary. Both blame and responsibility must go to the offender. That is the perfect justice. The crucial problem with this idea of perfect justice is that we are living in a less-than-perfect world. All right, a FAR less-than-the perfect world. Perfect justice is impossible in this world. If you think otherwise, I think you are still unfortunately caught up in the cult mentality. Rev. Moon is dead and the church is now free from the liability for Mary’s damage. What can we do? I guess the second best we can try is to ruin the social reputation of the offender. But, how does that work for Mary personally? That was my point. The damage done to Mary was real and practical, but social reputation is a mental and emotional effect. The invisible solution does not add up to compensate the materialized damage done to Mary. Mary knows it subtly, and this unsatisfactory result only frustrates her and amplifies her anger. She suffered enough when serving the cult, and after leaving it. She has now entered into another stage of suffering with her anger and frustration. Pursuit of perfect justice usually ends up with a prolonged state of individual suffering. That was the Jesus’s insight and he gave us the warning, “do not judge.” In this case, yes, the concept of perfect justice is a bitch. 2. The person whom I will call Andrew is also a victim of the Church. Andrew was one of the early quitters from the church, with much less damage than Mary’s. He moved on with his life and is now living fine. When seeing Mary’s suffering, Andrew feels both sympathy and frustration. “Why is she stuck in the unfortunate past? Yes, it happened, but it has gone now. Move on. Be responsible for your life and do something for yourself.” Andrew has an attitude problem. He slightly blames Mary for what happened. “If she were a bit smarter, she would’ve left the church much earlier and got much less damage. Then she could forget about it and move on.” He is ignoring or putting way less weight on what the offender did to Mary. He ends up sending both blame and responsibility to the victim. Andrew is a victim blamer and he is a fool with this issue. He is so confused that he cannot see who the offender was. 3. Despite the stark differences in their attitudes, the ideal moralist and the victim blamer have one thing in common. Both believe, “blame and responsibility must go hand in hand.” The former believes that the blame and the responsibility must go to the offender; the latter, to the victim. Most of us know better – Blame and responsibility can separate from each other. Especially in Mary’s case, they must separate for Mary’s own emotional well-being. Conclusively, in my humble opinion, the right thing to tell Mary is – “Blame Rev. Moon, and be responsible for your own life.” (Don’t say it verbatim. Say it nicely with compassion.) As an adult, Mary must be responsible for everything that happens to her life. It is a shitty deal because of the unfairness, but it is the way of all life forms on the earth that has so many limitations. Even the God is not taking care of Mary’s emotion; who are we? Damage was done to the victim personally, but she cannot punish the offender personally, at least physically or financially. If she does not obey the at-least rule, she now becomes the offender and the Leviathan (government) will punish her. Instead, Mary should petition the community (if organized well), the government, or the God to punish the offender. Then, she needs to forget about it. Punishment is not her job. No point to judge Rev. Moon from this point on. She needs to move on with her life. She is also responsible to work on her emotions and to heal her wounds by whatever means that work, with or without help. A commenter mentioned about Matthew 18:15-17 as a dissent to my argument. The Gospel verse commented applies only when you belong to a well-organized community with right rules. That doesn’t work for Mary, because she left the UC community, let alone questioning if the community is well organized with right rules. Besides, her old-time community loves the offender (because he was the parent who gave birth to the community) much more than Mary. They will not honor her demands. In the particular section, Jesus was talking about something different from the subject of his teaching “Do not judge” which I was discussing. 4. Mary now wishes to expose to the public Rev. Moon and his church’s immoral or unethical behaviors. She can help protecting potential victims that way. This is probably the best thing Mary could do about her damage. Her effort has a practical benefit for lessening the potential damage to innocent people. It is also a good thing that could please Mary, and in turn it could help to heal her emotional wounds. For people like Mary, I suggested that they do the work without negative emotions (including anger) as much as possible, because the negative emotions quickly becomes a burden on others, and it will work against her efforts for good. 5. Lastly, Mary needs to know her target audience for her community awareness mission. (a) First, the die-hard church members are not her target. She cannot change a thing about the church’s legitimate membership. Both the church and the public know enough by now how weird and bad Rev. Moon was. Exposing further information about Rev. Moon’s fault would sound like, “we initially thought Rev. Moon stole about $1 billion, but we recently found out that the amount was close to $1.5 billion.” Do you think the new information would change anything significant in the readers’ mind, those who already know how bad he was? The core members know how bad Rev. Moon was – but it does not change their faith, because they value the underlying cause more than his revealed superficial behavior. They will ask you back, “why do you think he did such bad things?” Regardless of how bad the exposed morality of Rev. Moon was, to the members the information would just be about the means that he utilized to achieve the end – God’s providential goal that the members value much more than Mary’s emotional well-being. Here, Mary is practicing the Kantian ethics treating means as ends in themselves, and the church members are practicing the Utilitarian ethics that allows sacrificing people and things to achieve a higher goal, whatever that is. The Unificationists have one of the highest goals on earth, and they will consider Mary as a sacrifice. Again, the morality is a bitch. Don’t play with it. (b) The only group or audience in which Mary’s contribution would be significant is that of skeptics. Those who already have some doubts about their faith in Rev. Moon. They are the target audience Mary needs to focus on. How many are there? Nobody knows for sure, but I could show a snapshot of the reality on this particular forum ‘What is on the Moon’ (WIOTM): A couple of years ago, I included an outside link in my posting to show a picture, and the outside server computer was counting (without prior notice to me) how many readers clicked my link – not one by one, but roughly by an increment of 50, like “50 people clicked your link.” My posting was rather controversial and I believe most of the readers clicked on my link out of curiosity. The final count was less than 200. And we know the absolute majority of readers on this forum are the ones who already left the church and do not need Mary’s help. One of my 2nd Generation friends benefited from the exposed information about Rev. Moon posted here, and has stopped practicing his worship. But he is still staying with people in the community. Well, it’s been a couple of years now and the readership could have increased significantly. I don’t know, but I think this shows a picture of the reality. Not that the number is of the utmost importance, but I simply point out that Mary is facing a big challenge in her mission. It will be beneficial for her not to expect too much. © For other groups than this target – like the die-hard, those who left, and the public – Mary’s informational exposure is mostly a sort of entertainment. A means to kill the boredom of mundane life. I think Frank contributes a lot for this function. Personally, I am not interested in the conspiracy kind of politics or behind-politics stories. However, his postings should entertain many. Rev. Moon and his church is an interesting subject for a tiny segment of the population on earth. But it works for me because it is more fun than the usual chatting with the colleagues in my office. I once was a Moonie.

This is the reality as I see it. – Kenneth