#on top of all this I ended up remaking my tinder

[baconator-deluxe]

Y'all mind if I

[sun-undone]

You asked for Druck opinion questions - so here goes one: What are your 3 favourite Druck seasons and the best things about each one? Plus, one thing in each you'd like to change/improve?

ooooooh thank you for this! 

my top 3 druck seasons are hands-down 3, 5, and 6, in that order

i’m gonna talk a lot from memory and not really looking back at any notes that i have for these seasons so i apologize in advance if i forget about some things

let’s start with the best things from each of those seasons first

season 3: it’s really really hard to choose just one thing as being the best from this season, cause there’s just so much good in it. but i think i’d have to say that the thing that really makes druck season 3 stand out so so so much to me is how the writers really said “okay we see isak and even, we see them, we appreciate them, and we’re going to respectfully do our own thing thank you very much”. they completely switched up their isak and even characters, not just by making david trans instead of bipolar, but by changing their entire personalities and dynamic together. it’s so DIFFERENT and fresh and hits me in a personal way that i have to say has been even more poignant than how isak and even hit me when i first got into skam all those years ago. matteo and david really just feel like they are characters that have been specially made with my personal tastes in mind, and i KNOW that i’m not even close to being the only one who sees so much of myself reflected in parts of both of their personalities. i love when remakes switch things up, especially with the beloved isak season, and druck really went there with no fear. they made that shit their own, and the ways in which they did so just happen to pluck at my heartstrings so perfectly.

season 5: this season is just so well-crafted, i think a lot of people would agree in saying that it’s druck’s most well-written season. you can really tell that a ton of work went into the overall story arc, properly addressing very touchy subjects like alcoholism and mental illness, introducing all of these new characters, just EVERYTHING. and what a huge fucking task that is, putting out a new season almost completely from scratch right after pissing off all of your fans. but they fucking delivered. there’s so much good in this season, too, so it’s tough to pick just one element to be the very best. but honestly, i think i’ve gotta say mina’s acting??? i was WORRIED about what the acting would be like in the new gen because i was so impressed by the old gen actors and their ability to really make each of their characters so distinct and personable. so going into the new gen, my expectations were already low for a lot of reasons, and i was kind of expecting to just not be as convinced by the actors and therefore not be able to fall in love with most, if any, of the characters. AND BOY WAS I WRONG. i do think a few of the actors were a bit rocky at first, which was also the case with the old gen so i’m not bothered by that at all, but damn they really stepped it up and blew me away once they all found their footing and chemistry with one another, especially mina. i think she’s the second best actor in all of druck (behind michi and maybe tied with or just above anselm), which is insane considering how young she is. she absolutely killed everything she was given and completely drew me into this season that i was fully expecting to not be able to connect to. i really do think that if someone else had played nora, season 5 and the new gen in general would’ve had a much rockier start. she led us into this new generation of characters with such warmth and natural, charismatic talent, and she deserves so so so much credit for that. she had great material, yes, but she really put in the fucking work.

season 6: okay so i still haven’t rewatched season 6 cause i’ve been a tad preoccupied with a different obsession at the moment, BUT i still just know that this season is fantastic and groundbreaking by giving us a biracial couple with no white person in it, a black lesbian main with a learning disability, and tackling performative activism and racism in a really grounded, realistic way. other remakes could never. just like in other druck seasons, it is incredibly obvious that the team worked their asses off to make this season, especially in light of all the covid restrictions. i'm hesitant to name the best thing about this season because i haven’t rewatched it, so i don’t wanna miss something. i WILL say that the soundtrack for this season is fucking phenomenal and has introduced me to so many new artists, particularly artists of color, which i appreciate so much. druck’s soundtracks are always amazing imo, but fatou’s just has something extra to it that i can’t quite put my finger on. maybe it’s just simply most aligned with my own personal tastes, i really don’t know, but it’s fucking brilliant. i also do have to say that i really appreciate how fleshed out kieu my is as a full character, not just as a love interest. she definitely has an advantage from being introduced in the previous season, but the writers could’ve easily made her stagnant once she and fatou started getting together. but NO, they made her even MORE interesting. she really got a full arc along with fatou, and i just love her so fucking much. once i rewatch, maybe i’ll make another post with a more complete answer, but that’s what i’ve got just from my memories of watching the season live.

now onto the thing i would change/improve for each season (i’ll try to keep this more brief because jesus christ why do i talk so much)

season 3: it’s obvious, isn’t it? david’s outing was done poorly, the execution of episode 8 in general was weird and out of place, it’s the only time that i really felt like the show was relying on shock value and drama (maybe even trauma porn) instead of good writing and conflict. there was a way to teach the audience about trans issues and experiences without subjecting david to that pain and also without having him just be absent for so much of the season. in conclusion, the season needed more david but never at his expense.

season 5: i really think that this season is druck’s absolute best in terms of writing and pacing, so it’s hard to find something that i was disappointed by (i would put this season above season 3 if i wasn't so damn emotionally attached to 3). i’m really racking my brains trying to think of something, anything, that bothered me, no matter how small it was. the only thing i can think of is that i remember a few music moments that felt forced or badly edited to me, but that’s literally all that’s coming to mind right now.

season 6: this season definitely wasn’t as well-paced as season 5, but there’s still not many glaring narrative issues that i can remember. there were a few smaller things throughout the season, but nothing too major. the one that i would most like to change is the stupid tinder/”cheating but not really” thing at the end of episode 8 (i think that’s the right episode number). it was just unnecessary and then completely forgotten about by the writers and characters, which shows how unnecessary it really was. 

ask me some opinions about druck, wir kinder vom bahnhof zoo, or really anything!

[arcticdementor]

Martin Gurri's The Revolt Of The Public is from 2014, which means you might as well read the Epic of Gilgamesh. It has a second-edition-update-chapter from 2017, which might as well be Beowulf. The book is about how social-media-connected masses are revolting against elites, but the revolt has moved forward so quickly that a lot of what Gurri considers wild speculation is now obvious fact. I picked up the book on its "accurately predicted the present moment" cred, but it predicted the present moment so accurately that it's barely worth reading anymore. It might as well just say "open your eyes and look around".

…

In conclusion, 2011 was a weird year.

Gurri argues all of this was connected, and all of it was a sharp break from what came before. These movements were essentially leaderless. Some had charismatic spokespeople, like Daphni Leef in Israel or Tahrir-Square-Facebook-page-admin Wael Ghonim in Egypt, but these people were at best the trigger that caused a viral movement to coalesce out of nothing. When Martin Luther King marched on Washington, he built an alliance of various civil rights groups, unions, churches, and other large organizations who could turn out their members. He planned the agenda, got funding, ran through an official program of speakers, met with politicians, told them the legislation they wanted, then went home. The protests of 2011 were nothing like that. They were just a bunch of people who read about protests on Twitter and decided to show up.

Also, they were mostly well-off. Gurri hammers this in again and again. Daphni Leef had just graduated from film school, hardly the sort of thing that puts her among the wretched of the earth. All of these movements were mostly their respective countries' upper-middle classes; well-connected, web-savvy during an age when that meant something. Mostly young, mostly university-educated, mostly part of their countries' most privileged ethnic groups. Not the kind of people you usually see taking to the streets or building tent cities.

Some of the protests were more socialist and anarchist than others, but none were successfully captured by establishment strains of Marxism or existing movements. Many successfully combined conservative and liberal elements. Gurri calls them nihilists. They believed that the existing order was entirely rotten, that everyone involved was corrupt and irredeemable, and that some sort of apocalyptic transformation was needed. All existing institutions were illegitimate, everyone needed to be kicked out, that kind of thing. But so few specifics that socialists and reactionaries could march under the same banner, with no need to agree on anything besides "not this".

…

Gurri isn't shy about his contempt for this. Not only were these some of the most privileged people in their respective countries, but (despite the legitimately-sucky 2008 recession), they were living during a time of unprecedented plenty. In Spain, the previous forty years had seen the fall of a military dictatorship, its replacement with a liberal democracy, and a quintupling of GDP per capita from $6000 to $32000 a year - "in 2012, four years into the crisis there were more cell phones and cars per person in Spain than in the US". The indignado protesters in Spain had lived through the most peaceful period in Europe's history, an almost unprecedented economic boom, and had technologies and luxuries that previous generations could barely dream of. They had cradle-to-grave free health care, university educations, and they were near the top of their society's class pyramids. Yet they were convinced, utterly convinced, that this was the most fraudulent and oppressive government in the history of history, and constantly quoting from a manifesto called Time For Outrage!

So what's going on?

Our story begins (says Gurri) in the early 20th century, when governments, drunk on the power of industrialization, sought to remake Society in their own image. This was the age of High Modernism, with all of its planned cities and collective farms and so on. Philosopher-bureaucrat-scientist-dictator-manager-kings would lead the way to a new era of gleaming steel towers, where society was managed with the same ease as a gardener pruning a hedgerow.

…

Realistically this was all a sham. Alan Greenspan had no idea how to prevent recessions, scientific progress was slowing down, poverty remained as troubling as ever, and 50% of public school students stubbornly stayed below average. But the media trusted the government, the people trusted the media, and failures got swept under the rug by genteel agreement among friendly elites, while the occasional successes were trumpeted from the rooftops.

There was a very interesting section on JFK’s failure at the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy tried to invade Cuba, but the invasion failed very badly, further cementing Castro’s power and pushing him further into the Soviet camp. Representatives of the media met with Kennedy, Kennedy was very nice to them, and they all agreed to push a line of “look, it’s his first time invading a foreign country, he tried his hardest, give him a break.” This seems to have successfully influenced the American public, so much so that Kennedy’s approval rating increased five points, to 83%, after the debacle!

…

In Gurri's telling, High Modernism had always been a failure, but the government-media-academia elite axis had been strong enough to conceal it from the public. Starting in the early 2000s, that axis broke down. People could have lowered their expectations, but in the real world that wasn't how things went. Instead of losing faith in the power of government to work miracles, people believed that government could and should be working miracles, but that the specific people in power at the time were too corrupt and stupid to press the "CAUSE MIRACLE" button which they definitely had and which definitely would have worked. And so the outrage, the protests - kick these losers out of power, and replace them with anybody who had the common decency to press the miracle button!

…

Any system that hasn't solved every problem is illegitimate. Solving problems is easy and just requires pressing the "CAUSE MIRACLE" button. Thus the protests. In 2011, enough dry tinder of anger had built up that everywhere in the world erupted into protest simultaneously, all claiming their respective governments were illegitimate. These protests were necessarily vague and leaderless, because any protest-leader would fall victim to the same crisis of authority and legitimacy that national leaders were suffering from. Any attempt to make specific demands would be pilloried because those specific demands wouldn't unilaterally end homelessness or racism or inequality or whatever else. The only stable state was a sort of omni-nihilism that refused to endorse anything.

(I’m reminded of Tanner Greer’s claim that the great question of modernity is not “what can I accomplish?” or “how do I succeed?” but rather “how do I get management to take my side?”)

Gurri calls our current government a kind of "zombie democracy". The institutions of the 20th century - legislatures, universities, newspapers - continue to exist. But they are hollow shells, stripped of all legitimacy. Nobody likes or trusts them. They lurch forward, mimicking the motions they took in life, but no longer able to change or make plans or accomplish new things.

…

How do we escape this equilibrium? Gurri isn't sure. His 2017 afterword says he thinks we're even more in it now than we were in 2014. But he has two suggestions.

First, cultivate your garden. We got into this mess by believing the government could solve every problem. We're learning it can''t. We're not going to get legitimate institutions again until we unwind the overly high expectations produced by High Modernism, and the best way to do that is to stop expecting government to solve all your problems. So cultivate your garden. If you're concerned about obesity, go on a diet, or volunteer at a local urban vegetable garden, or organize a Fun Run in your community, do anything other than start a protest telling the government to end obesity. This is an interesting contrast to eg Just Giving, which I interpret as having the opposite model - if you want to fight obesity, you should work through the democratic system by petitioning the government to do something; trying to figure out a way to fight it on your own would be an undemocratic exercise of raw power. Gurri is recommending that we tear that way of thinking up at the root.

Second, start looking for a new set of elites who can achieve legitimacy. These will have to be genuinely decent and humble people - Gurri gives the example of George Washington. They won't claim to be able to solve everything. They won't claim the scientific-administrative mantle of High Modernism. They'll just be good honorable people who will try to govern wisely for the common good. Haha, yeah right.

…

Gurri divides the world between the Center and the Border. He thinks the Center - politicians, experts, journalists, officials - will be in a constant retreat, and the Border - bloggers, protesters, and randos - on a constant advance. His thesis got a boost when Brexit and Trump - both Border positions - crushed and embarrassed their respective Centers. But since then I'm not sure things have been so clear. The blogosphere is in retreat (maybe Substack is reversing this?), but the biggest and most mainstream of mainstream news organizations, like the New York Times are becoming more trusted and certainly more profitable. The new President of the US is a boring moderate career politician. The public cheers on elite censorship of social media. There haven't been many big viral protests lately except Black Lives Matter and the 1/6 insurrection, and both seemed to have a perfectly serviceable set of specific demands (defunding the police, decertifying the elections). Maybe I've just grown used to it, but it doesn't really feel like a world where a tiny remnant of elites are being attacked on all sides by a giant mob of entitled nihilists.

…

At the risk of being premature or missing Gurri's point, I want to try telling a story of how the revolt of the public and the crisis of legitimacy at least partially stalled.

Gurri talks a lot about Center and Border, but barely even mentions Left and Right. Once you reintroduce these, you have a solution to nihilism. The Left can come up with a laundry list of High Modernist plans that they think would solve all their problems, and the Right can do the same. Then one or the other takes control of government, gets thwarted by checks/balances/Mitch McConnell, and nothing happens. No American Democrat was forced to conclude that just because Obama couldn't solve all their problems, the promise of High Modernism was a lie. They just concluded that Obama could have solved all their problems, but the damn Republicans filibustered the bill. Likewise, the Republicans can imagine that Donald Trump would have made America great again if the media and elites and Deep State hadn't been blocking him at every turn. Donald Trump himself tells them this is true!

With this solution in place, you can rebuild trust in institutions. If you're a Republican, Fox News is trustworthy because it tells you the ways Democrats are bad. Some people say it's biased or inaccurate, but those people are Democrats or soft-on-Democrat RINO traitors. And if you're a Democrat, academic experts are completely trustworthy, and if someone challenges them you already know those challenges must be vile Republican lies. Lack of access to opposing views has been replaced with lack of tolerance for opposing views. And so instead of the public having to hate all elites, any given member of the public only needs to hate half of the elites.

You could think of this as a mere refinement of Gurri. But it points at a deeper critique. Suppose that US left institutions are able to maintain legitimacy, because US leftists trust them as fellow warriors in the battle against rightism (and vice versa). Why couldn't one make the same argument about the old American institutions? People liked and trusted the President and Walter Cronkite and all the other bipartisan elites because they were American, and fellow warriors in the battle against Communism or terrorism or poverty or Saddam or whatever. If this is true, the change stops looking like the masses suddenly losing faith in the elites and revolting, and more like a stable system of the unified American masses trusting the unified American elites, fissioning into two stable systems of the unified (right/left) masses trusting the unified (right/left) elites. Why did the optimal stable ingroup size change from nation-sized to political-tribe-sized?

…

The one exception to my disrecommendation is that you might enjoy the book as a physical object. The cover, text, and photographs are exceptionally beautiful; the cover image - of some sort of classical-goddess-looking person (possibly Democracy? I expect if I were more cultured I would know this) holding a cell phone - is spectacularly well done. I understand that Gurri self-published the first edition, and that this second edition is from not-quite-traditional publisher Stripe Press. I appreciate the kabbalistic implications of a book on the effects of democratization of information flow making it big after getting self-published, and I appreciate the irony of a book about the increasing instability of history getting left behind by events within a few years. So buy this beautiful book to put on your coffee table, but don't worry about the content - you are already living in it.

[captain-ross-poldark]

Poldark star Heida Reed on that notorious sex scene, and her new Scandi-noir show

From the Telegraph 6/2/17

Poldark star Heida Reed on that notorious sex scene, and her new Scandi-noir show Credit: Clara Molden Heida Reed has spent the past year being forced to defend Poldark. In 2014, the Icelandic actress took on the role of Cornish lady Elizabeth Poldark in the BBC’s update of its Seventies period drama series based on Winston Graham’s novels, having no idea whether it would be a hit or just another misguided remake.

It proved the former, of course – but the downside was that controversy, when it came, resounded loudly through the headlines. Towards the end of the last series, a scene which may or may not have portrayed our notional hero Ross (Aidan Turner) raping his former flame Elizabeth outraged critics and fans alike – so much so that many called for the show to be taken off the air entirely. For those who may have forgotten what all the fuss was about, the scene saw Ross confront Elizabeth after learning she had agreed to wed the evil George Warleggan, kicking in her front door, entering her bedroom against her will and refusing to leave, before insisting on having sex with her. The uproar arose from the fact that it showed Elizabeth resisting her former lover before apparently enjoying being overpowered by him. Producer Karen Thrussell described the portrayal as a “fiery encounter that concludes with a consensual act”. Sarah Green, co-director of the campaign group End Violence Against Women, said the depiction was “worse than a straightforward rape”, adding that it sent an “irresponsible” message about the issue of consent. I meet Reed ahead of the third series, which begins next Sunday, and expect her to be utterly fed up with being asked whether or not the scene was justified. On the contrary, I find she is ready for a fight, prepared to defend till the end the show that made her name. “I think it’s interesting how much people feel like we have a responsibility to carry some sort of a moral journey,” she says. “I don’t think that we necessarily have any particular responsibility to tell a story that’s morally correct all the time. What’s fun about that? Where’s the entertainment in that? I know that Ross sort of broke a lot of people’s hearts, but I think it’s so much more interesting than being this superhero kind of hero that never takes a false step or does anything wrong. "I might end up playing a serial killer one day – I don’t condone that. What’s interesting if you only take moral roles?” Reed also thinks the fact that the scene is ambiguous is a reflection of the way that situation might have played out in the 18th century. “Things that are very serious now weren’t even looked at that way back then,” she says. She wholeheartedly resents how blurry the lines still are when it comes to consent in real life, she says, but that doesn’t mean that drama should be compromised by letting modern interpretations cloud what is supposed to be a fictional, vaguely historical piece of TV. “There’s no debate that Ross was the one who was violent in the beginning and who charged towards her, regardless of whether she brought him to that place,” she says. “[But] she, as a woman of that time, wouldn’t have looked at it the way we look at it now. "Being sexually violent towards anyone was probably always an issue, but they probably also accepted a lot more [when it came to] sexual advancements towards them.” Reed – who, when we meet, looks almost preposterously cool, dressed in black skinny jeans, a cream frilly shirt and black leather jacket, her thick dark hair cropped short for her new role – is refreshingly upfront with her views, which possibly has something to do with her Scandinavian heritage, she says. “In Iceland, people are very direct and blunt and brazen and I still have those qualities, but I’m able to be a little bit more flexible with them now. I quite like that I’ve taken on so many British mannerisms.” The 29-year-old has been in London for a decade, having moved here to pursue a career in acting. “It’s home,” she says. “It’s where I grew up.” But for the past few weeks she has been back in Iceland, working in her native language, filming Stella Blomkvist, the latest Scandi-noir, in which she plays the titular lead, a black leather-clad lawyer who takes on mysterious and often dangerous murder cases. She loved being back – of all the pleasures of her home country, she misses the “pure, fresh, geothermal water” most, she says – and enjoyed living on her own in Reykjavik for the first time. “One of the requirements of me coming over was that I could live on my own in the centre of Reykjavik. I never did that because when I left I was so young – I never got to experience that, being a grown up.” But when filming for Stella Blomkvist is over, her plan is not to go back to London but to move to LA, to be with her American film producer boyfriend of two years, Sam Ritzenberg. She met him thanks to Tinder, she explains, though in a roundabout way. “My British friend moved to LA, went on Tinder and swiped once, went on a date and she’s now with this guy, moved in with him, got a dog. My boyfriend is one of his best friends and that’s how we met.” While many decry dating apps as the death of romance, Reed doesn’t see it that way. “I find something really romantic about the fact that if you hadn’t decided to go on to this thing, you would probably never have met. I think that’s fate.” Digitally comfortable as she is, Reed has an Instagram feed peppered with adorable pictures of the pair taking walks on the beach in matching beanie hats, or cuddled up on the sofa together. But does she ever hesitate before posting something personal on social media? “I didn’t actually want to [go on it] to be honest, I was advised to. And I think everyone in our industry is today. Often I wish I was an actress in the Nineties so that we didn’t have to do deal with any of this. It’s like extra work for everyone.” “I just try to give glimpses into my life and not make it look ridiculous. I don’t want to take glamorous selfies or bikini photos because I don’t see the point in it. I want to put out positive, encouraging vibes rather than showing off.” But she accepts that social media has a lot to answer for when it comes to the pressure young women feel to look a certain way. It’s something she tries to cut through with her own Instagram feed. Just this week, alongside a picture of Winnie the Pooh, Reed posted: Body image is something she has been thinking about a lot lately, as she has had to do a lot of nudity in Stella Blomkvist. Poldark is lightly bodice-ripping, but in a rather tamer, BBC-One way. “It’s been a really liberating experience. I had to do a whole day of sex scenes the day before yesterday. I’d just had two pieces of cake because I wasn’t sure we were going so nude. I’m so sick of not eating anything before I take my top off. "People eat! I thought: ‘I want to get to a place where I can take my clothes off at work and not worry about what the audience thinks, what they’re going to say and what they’re going to write.’” Note to the Poldark producers, then: they might want to consider getting the next series moved a little further past the watershed…