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marionthegeek · 7 years ago

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Can We Talk About Pavi? Heck, Can We Just Talk About Ravi?

Because he needs to be a better man if he wants this to work out.

Ok, I know what you’re thinking. She’s a big-time RaviOli shipper, of course, she doesn’t like Pavi. But just hear me out a minute, okay? Because I want to like Pavi. I really wish I could.

I adore both Peyton and Ravi. I want them to be happy. I just have serious concerns about how Ravi (and to a much lesser extent, Peyton) views romantic relationships. Ravi’s so bad at it I don’t even want him with Liv until he gets his shit together. And you know I ship it...hard. This essay is not about one ship vs. another. This essay is about how Ravi needs to grow as a character.

Ravi tries very hard to impress Peyton. That, in and of itself, isn’t so bad. But he treats their relationship (and Peyton) like a prize to be won. Like an end goal. Not like the beginning of a partnership or the start of a life together. She deserves better than that. They both do.

I’m not saying they couldn’t get there. And if they do, I will at least be reasonably happy with the narrative. I could be happy for them and happy with Liv and Ravi as the best of platonic friends.

Ravi, even in season 1, has one real flaw. He likes to impress pretty girls. And yes, it’s with the goal of dating them. But he’ll talk himself into a corner to achieve goal one. He never thinks very far beyond what he wants to get out of it. See episode 1x2, where he lets a woman believe he’s a detective so he can chat her up.

Ravi is gorgeous and tall and smart. More than that, he’s funny and charming and a genuinely nice guy. In a show full of morally grey characters, Ravi is as close as we get to a perfectly good “good guy”. He’s forthright and loyal to his friends. He takes his Hippocratic Oath very seriously. He has a noble goal of finding a cure and saving the world. He’ll even put his life on the line to save one of the “bad guys”. And at first, his one real flaw is a “blink and you’ll miss it” thing.

When he’s first asking Liv to find out if Peyton’s dating anyone, he expresses interest in dating her. But, he has her best friend right there. Someone who he’s very close to. And he asks absolutely nothing about Peyton except if she’s dating anyone. She’s a goal. A thing he wants. He doesn’t ask Liv what Peyton likes to do or what her dreams are. He doesn’t even ask what kind of flowers she’d like or what her favorite color is. My point is, he takes very little interest in Peyton beyond her being a sexual object. A goal.

Once they have a few dates, he does try to tailor them more to her interests. Visiting the sites where Vertigo was filmed would probably have made Peyton happy. But it is still very much framed in the narrative as Ravi trying to impress her. And then Peyton leaves. And Ravi is more upset for Liv than he is for himself. Because he knows Liv has far more emotional attachment to Peyton than he does. Which strikes me as a little off, given how fast he formed emotional bonds with Liv and Major... It tells me Ravi views friendship and romance very very differently.

Now, let’s talk about Steph. Because Ravi’s epic f***-ups of season 3 were very well foreshadowed in season 2.

He meets a girl at a club the one time in his life that he’s high. But she’s cute and willing to sleep with him, so he decides to keep seeing her. They start seeing a lot of each other. She’s clearly into it. Into Ravi. And we see from the way he talks about her with Lv and Clive (and later Peyton and Major) that he’s just not that into her. But he keeps dating her. Because she’s cute and willing to sleep with him. She starts to assume a real relationship is possible here. And he panics.

Meanwhile, he’s enjoying the fact that his hot ex, Peyton, is staying with him. First of all, I’d like to point out that Steph is a class act. She wasn’t bothered by Peyton staying there. And when he tries to whine to Peyton about Steph becoming clingy, Peyton shuts him down masterfully.

Now, Steph and Ravi didn’t have much in common. And her sweet but misguided attempt to remind him of home is played for laughs. And their break-up was inevitable. But he treated her poorly. He let her believe there was relationship potential when there wasn’t because he likes getting laid on the regular. He knew weeks before he broke up with her that they at least needed to have a conversation about what they wanted. He put it off because she might take sex off the table. And even when he absolutely knew he was going to break up with her... he slept with her. He waited until the morning after. Dick move, Ravi.

The audience wasn’t emotionally invested in Steph. And Ravi is such a wonderful person otherwise. And Steph was played for laughs. But Ravi’s pattern of bad behavior is there if you look.

And hours... just hours... after he ended things with Steph, he tries to kiss Peyton. The woman who wants to be his friend and hang out. He goes in for the kiss without even thinking about it. And she calls him on it. Thank goodness. But he also doesn’t pick up on the fact that she needed a friend because he’s too disappointed that she isn’t sexually interested in him. She’s visibly upset and he retreats to his room because of the failed kiss, even though she clearly wants to still hang out.

When he finally does realize Peyton is having problems a couple of episodes later, we start down the saga of Ravi being hungover all the time trying to impress Peyton who can drink him under the table. The sad part here is this was the best time between them. They were talking. They were being friends. And Ravi was showing real concern for Peyton as a person, not just a potential lay.

Another window into Ravi’s dating habits is given in season 2. Darcy, the barista at Positivity Coffee from episode 2x14. Ravi thinks she’s the “city’s foxiest cashier.” And later in the episode, he tries to flirt with her. It falls completely flat. She’s never seen Star Wars and she likes transgressive rhymes. It’s played for laughs, and it is funny. But it also shows that Ravi knew nothing about this girl. He’s been making eyes at her for (at least) months, but all he knows is she’s cute to look at. Ravi’s priorities about the women he views as potential romantic partners are very one dimensional.

The end of season 2 sees Peyton and Ravi getting back together after Ravi jokes about “Nice guys finishing last.” Let’s pause for a moment at this point in the timeline to talk about this for a second. Ravi is a genuinely nice man. He’s a great friend. But in many ways, his dating life verges on him being a Nice Guy™️. Now, it’s definitely on the cusp. It’s one of the things that makes the writing in this show great. Ravi is shown to be a genuinely nice friend to Liv, a woman that at least in earlier seasons he cannot be sexually interested in without becoming undead. So, we know he can have a successful friendship with a woman. But Ravi doesn’t really have any other female friends. If you discounted his friendship with Liv, every other attractive woman --of the right age, who is available-- he’s encountered in the show has been a potential bang.

Now, I think Ravi fights these tendencies. He’s not blowing up at women who reject him. He’s the least violent person in the show. A true passivist. And he means his apologies when his romantic overtures fall flat. But it’s not hard to imagine Ravi as someone who would describe himself as “in the friendzone”.

So, Peyton and Ravi are back together. And then Ravi finds out she once slept with Blaine. He freaks out. Even he knows it’s irrational. But it still happens. Peyton is kidnapped and Blaine saves the day. And yes, Peyton is grateful to Blaine for saving her life. But as far as she was concerned, she was still dating Ravi. But he ghosts her for a week after she’s just had the most traumatic experience of her life. Because he can’t get right with the fact that one of her past sexual partners was Blaine. And Ravi tries to figure out why he can’t put it behind him and comes to the conclusion that it must be that he’s in love with Peyton. Which he blurts out at an extremely inopportune moment.

Of course, Peyton didn’t know what to think of that. Who would? He’s been ghosting her and treating her poorly for something she can’t go back and change. When she slept with Blaine, she didn’t know who he was. She didn’t know the horrible things he’d done. But Ravi was still holding it against her. I’ll give Ravi credit for knowing it’s his own stupid macho problem and not hers. But he handles it terribly. Peyton was 100% in the right when she told him off in her office.

Then there’s Katty. He’s just blurted out that he’s in love with Peyton. But he’s pretty damn sure he’s blown that up completely. So he accepts Katty’s offer of a hook up the very same day. And then kisses Peyton when she shows up with Katty still in the next room. Not good.

I saw a lot of upset in the fandom about this incident. Much was said of it being out of character for Ravi to screw up so badly. But the foreshadowing is all there. The pattern of behavior is there. I wouldn’t even call what Peyton, Ravi, and Blaine had a “love triangle”. Ravi screwed up his chance with her. Blaine was Peyton moving on.

Then it comes out that Blaine was lying and Peyton is now single again. Ravi, in episode 3x9, is straight up obnoxious to her while the group is playing D&D. He’s making her uncomfortable and he doesn’t seem to notice.

Now, let’s talk about Rachel. Because when Ravi thinks with his penis instead of his brain he gets stupid. He didn’t know very much about this woman, but on the off chance it’ll get him laid, he tells her all about zombies. She turns out to be a reporter, and Liv ends up on the front page of the Alt-weekly. He’s put himself at risk as the doctor who is working on the cure, and he’s put his very best friend at risk because she’s now Seattle’s only recognizable zombie. Good job, there.

Which brings us to season 4. Everyone seems to be getting along. Our core group of Liv, Ravi, Peyton, Clive, and Major have wildly different experiences in New Seattle. But they’re all friends. Ravi and Peyton seem to be getting along well, even though she’s dating other people.

One day, Peyton drops by the morgue. She’s having a rough week and she wants a win. She needs to find this dog. (Now don’t get me started on the fact that they live in a walled city and could probably have shown a picture of the dog on the news. It’s not like he could have gone far.) Ravi points out that the guy she asks Liv to eat is a heroin addict. All three of them agree this is a terrible idea. Liv does not eat the brain.

Then Ravi realizes it’s his (zombie) time of the month. And in his apparently never-ending quest to impress Peyton (Major even calls him on it), Ravi decides to do the stupidest possible thing. Even he knows it’s a terrible idea. That’s why he stopped Liv from doing it. When it works and actually gets him the attention he wants from Peyton, no one looks more surprised than Ravi.

Well, now Ravi’s won the affection of the woman of his dreams. Now what? That remains to be seen. Is he going to grow into this relationship and be the kind of partner Peyton deserves? I don’t know. I’m watching with interest to find out. I’d like to see him develop a friendship with her like he has with Liv. Something that could be a real foundation for something more. And if that happens, I’ll root for them. I’m already rooting for Ravi. For his character arc and his growth. And Peyton deserves much more than to be his learning experience. Whether she finds that “something more” with him or in herself in her own arc remains to be seen.

Characters need flaws. Otherwise, they’re boring and come off sanctimonious. Ravi is an excellent character. He balances being a compassionate, compelling man, with having flaws that stem, in part, from social awkwardness and a lack of relationship experience. And I think, for the most part, he’s actively trying to get better. Ravi’s incredibly likable, and even loveable, both to the other characters and to the audience. But he still has some growing up to do.

#izombie #meta #ravi chakrabarti #character analysis #pavi #character development

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susandsnell · 7 years ago

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it's been bugging me for a while now, but five worst parts of the dark Knight and one good part. bc I know you hate the movie 😂😂

boh. oh my gosh. b please don’t hate me. 😂😂

Five worst parts of the Dark Knight:

5. The Filmmaking. More specfically: LONG AND WASHED OUT PALETTE. IT’S SO FUCKING LONG. IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE OVER TWO AND A HALF HOURS WITH TEN PLOTS TO WRAP UP AND HAVE NO FUCKING COLOURS IN IT. WE GET IT, NOLAN, A MAN DRESSED UP AS A BAT BRINGS YOU NO JOY AND SO NOW WE HAVE TO NOT HAVE ANY JOY IN OUR HEARTS EITHER, THANKS A LOT. HERE I THOUGHT I WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE FUN AT A MOVIE ABOUT BATMAN, BUT YOU SURE PROVED ME WRONG.

4. The Writing. Holy pretentious dialogue Batman! Where do I begin?Harvey Dent’s “I will state the theme of my arc in the most lazy and blatant foreshadowing speech until Emma Stone literally says she’s gonna die in the opening of The Amazing Spiderman 2″ gets quoted all the time and yes, superhero movies aren’t known for their subtlety, and not all great movies need to be subtle, but the “die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain” is egregious not only for the reasons I stated, but is a nauseating indicator of the film’s cynicism (despite what the boat climax purports to be proving!). Alfred’s “some men just want to watch the world burn” speech is similar albeit less facepalmy and Theme Stating. It’s blunt and heavy-handed, overly expositional, and very hit-you-over-the-head with regard to commentary.

And here’s the thing! It could work in the context of the type of movie it is - The Shape of Water pretty much opens with a statement of the “who the real monster is” idea, but it works because the film is a fairy tale and presents itself as such, whereas this movie wants to have its cake and eat it too as a “super adult DEEP subtle COMPLEX movie” with incredibly clear and simple shit like this. Beyond that, Nolan really has a dialogue issue in a lot of his works where nobody just has a fucking conversation. Everything has to be the most serious issue in the world or a ten thousand word treatise on the fundamental dichotomies of human nature or some shit you’d hear in a freshman philosophy 101 course from that guy nobody can tolerate who thinks he’s G-d’s gift because he wears glasses or some shit, I don’t know. Even the Joker, an agent of chaos, gets wrapped up into it! Like he is a showman, but the yammering and rambles of shit that isn’t even that deep but pretends to be gets on my damn nerves. And the worst part is that it comes at the expense of the characters.

They don’t really…develop emotional bonds (even with Rachel, the token woman And Therefore the Object At Which Emotions are Thrown). I’m not invested because none of these characters are real or relatable or have human interactions. The script shouldn’t be an anchor that drowns the actors and suffocates the characters to the point that there’s no chemistry, no connection, no believable core. Alfred is practically Bruce’s father and I get no love out of them! Harvey and Bruce don’t connect at all! Lucius Fox, the only POC in the entire movie, is literally reduced to a plot device despite having moral concerns!

3. That damn third act. This one takes special mention because it just pisses me off. It’s just too much! The chase with the Joker would be fine, but that’s not the end. His plot already extends way beyond where it would logically end (hence the bullshit runtime), but on top of that, on top of the drama with the escape ferries hammering you over the head with the point they’re trying to make about humanity and the obnoxious moralizing, and then you have Harvey’s fall to the dark side which I’m sorry, needed a lot more time than just getting crammed in to the back end of the movie. His descent into evil happened way too quickly. Two-Face is a great villain! But take Batman the Animated series (to me, the best adaptation of Batman there is, while not perfect) as an example: he’s established as a character and his descent into Two-Face receives the full focus of entire episodes and impacts the characters later on! Having him play sideshow to the Joker is a huge mistake, especially with something as huge at play as threatening Gordon’s family; it completely disrupts the focus of the plot and unnecessarily prolongs the film as a whole, but he goes down pretty easily in one of the movie’s shitty-ass fight sequences that I’d make their own point if there weren’t worse things because I can’t tell who’s punching who. And if you’re gonna rush Dent into villainy only to kill him, that makes his whole plot kinda a waste.

And The Dark Knight Rises was a lot more criticized than the Dark Knight, so how’s this for a fix for the entire trilogy? Don’t kill Two-Face. Keep Joker getting carted away gloating about having corrupted him, but then have Two-Face get away too. Don’t make whitewashed lamely written Bane the villain of the next movie - instead, let the tail end of this movie build Two-Face up as the main villain for the final part! That way, you have more time for development, cohesiveness, consequences, exploration of themes, and you don’t waste characters.

2. Batman / Bruce Wayne’s entire character. Okay, so whenever I fawn over the Lego Batman movie and how it confronts the issue with modern portrayals of Bats and rightfully points out it’s not deep, he’s just a humongous dick, this feels like the source material of that popular portrayal. Of course, it pre-dates it in the comics - Miller and company are to blame for Grimdark Asshat who Batmansplains, but I feel like Dark Knight especially, for its success and greater accessibility as a film, is what widely propagated this portrayal.

Secret identity or cape and cowl, there is a serious issue in your Batman movie if your Batman is terrible. He’s the protagonist, the titular character, and he’s fucking terrible! At best, Bruce Wayne is like…completely deadpan and not even there (I don’t give Bale shit because I think a lot of the fault lies with the writing/direction, Ledger was pretty much the only lively performance in the movie), placeholder of a protagonist. At worst, he comes off as deeply self-centered, self-aggrandizing, entitled, and violently unstable. I don’t care how bad the Joker is, when in custody, he still had legal rights, and Batman fucking tortured him. Even brutal criminals should not ever be tortured for information! And the film never engages with Bats reaching the point of beating people to a pulp as means of interrogation; he just feels conflicted about who’s worse and broods over it after the fact instead of, I don’t know, maybe thinking twice about torturing someone. The darker Marvel Netflix shows have their characters doing a lot of grim things, but the narrative or other characters almost always holds them accountable for it in ways beyond “aww, I feel kinda sad that I beat mentally ill people to a bloody pulp” – it challenges them often, or has other characters call them out. Batman just does this shit and people are like “oh you shouldn’t do that” and he’s like “AHHH I’M A MONSTER” and it borders into uncomfortable real-life implications with regard to authority and violence. There’s something to be said for introducing grey morality into superhero media, and I get the anti-hero thing, but Dark Knight codified the “white guy grimdark antihero being actually just a terrible fucking person who is the good guy in name only” deal we see in a lot of our media today.

It’s one thing to have a complex and flawed protagonist, but you have to balance that out with redeeming qualities, otherwise, he’s not even a fucking superhero! Again, I refer back to the 90s animated series: Batman has his moments of ruthlessness, but it’s balanced out with the philanthropy work we see in Bruce Wayne, and moments of genuine compassion that he shows many of his enemies – he apologizes genuinely to Two-Face, often tries to give them an out, and is frequently super kind to Harley Quinn, bringing her the dress she was accused of stealing when she was sent back to Arkham in the episode where she tried to redeem herself, and frequently trying to get her to acknowledge that the Joker is abusive towards her, as well as convince her she can still start over and be a good person. On top of which, Batdad is super popular in both the show and the comics. He’s frequently shown as having an especial soft spot for children; addition to all his adopted kids, you also have a lot of his interactions with children, whether as Bruce or as Batman, marked by gentleness, care, and compassion, largely based on what he went through as a child.

You get no such moment in the Dark Knight. I cannot for the life of me think of kids who would go to see this as a Batman movie and leave looking up to Batman and wanting to be like him except on the surface level of wearing a cool costume and punching bad guys. There is nothing heroic or admirable about this Bruce. He fights crime as a vigilante - brutally, I might add -and this time, it comes off more as a desire for vengeance than a desire for justice, a point which the film raises, but ultimately doesn’t resolve or engage with in a satisfying character arc.

The closest thing we get to humanizing this character is his relationship with Rachel, and even then, his interactions with her have heavy shades of Friendzoned Nice Guy which is especially bullshit because he won’t pursue a relationship with her yet is bitter about any decisions she might make about her own love life. He doesn’t even care about her that much as anything more than a conquest! He really doesn’t, and Alfred tearing up the letter proves that – with regards to how he behaves towards her, it really feels like it’s not so much that the letter would break his heart as it is that he’d resent her beyond the grave!

Worse yet, he gives no shits about anyone else. This has a lot to do with Nolan’s scripts having a toxic masculinity problem where it’s not cool for guys to sympathize with or have emotional bonds amongst themselves, but like… he’s allies in a shared venture with the other characters, and nothing more. Alfred is practically his dad but you wouldn’t know that. Gordon, as revealed in TDKR, was kind to him after his parents’ deaths, but they’re just partners. Harvey is a rival for claiming a woman! In other adaptations, Bruce and Harvey’s friendship is fleshed out a lot so the guilt and shock of his transformation into Two-Face is really impactful! Here, Bruce doesn’t really give a shit beyond it just being another thing to do.

And that’s what heroism and motivations are to Batman in this - just a thing to do. I don’t want to watch a hero who’d rather bitch about doing good than actually just fucking do good, this is the safety of your city, not a school essay! He doesn’t really seem to want to help people, he wants to complain about people, but then thinks he’s so fucking special and such a snowflake martyr for still helping them regardless! It’s such a deeply childish and yes, toxically male mentality. I know it’s become a meme, but the ”I’m not the hero Gotham needs, but the hero that it deserves” line pisses me off so much for this reason, as well as the fact that he thinks that Gotham’s flaws justify the fact that he beats the fuck out of people and roars in their face to get answers; I think the perfect refutation to both that line and how a superhero protagonist that explores what heroism means can actually be found in Wonder Woman – “It’s not about deserve, it’s about what you believe.” In fact, that’s what made Wonder Woman so good (and feminist!) – it’s rejection of toxic masculine ideals and emphasis on love, compassion and vulnerability being one’s strength, and that people are inherently deserving of being saved if you believe in the good of the world - a much better treatise on good and evil than “see, people sometimes don’t explode boats but they still suck so it’s okay for a billionaire in furry cosplay to beat the shit out of mentally ill people because that’s what this city deserves, a guy who’s more into violence than saving people.” He just doesn’t care, so why the hell should we?

And there’s just no arc. He just reacts to shit and that’s it, which makes him boring when he’s not being a fucking maniac. Despite the script not allowing him to have feelings for other human beings, having him break his no-kill rule with Harvey at the end would have been impactful….had he not already broken it in Batman Begins by leaving White Ra’s al Ghul (Liam Neeson I love you but there is no reason to have whitewashed him or Talia the way Nolan did in the series - same as he did with Bane and arguably Catwoman since she’s been portrayed as a WOC many times before, actually come to think of it, there is a LOT of whitewashing in this trilogy) to his death.

The film comes up with no real way to challenge it’s hero, have him grow, or change, or even show consequences for his failure to change, making him come off as stunted, unlikeable, and yeah, not much of a hero.

1. The sexism. (You knew this was coming, and yes, it is the worst part). I already mentioned how the men in this movie all fall prey to toxic masculinity as is common with Nolan characters, then even more characteristic of a Nolan movie is The Dead Girlfriend, Wife, or Daughter (you know, the only three things women could ever be!) of Sad White Guy(s). Rachel is the only female character (strike one) and she is handled nothing short of atrociously. Her entire job as a lawyer, intelligence, and hard work established in Batman Begins (which is also too grimdark but actually doesn’t piss me off half as much!) is hardly even mentioned and takes a backseat to her being a prize for the men (including her boss!) to throw feelings at and squabble over. While the male characters have no personality except for one characteristic and a goal because this script was written by an edgy thirteen year old boy, Rachel has no personality except to be a living emotional crutch/plot device. She does not exist as an autonomous individual outside her relationships to the men in the movie. Shit, she’s barely autonomous within these relationships! Bruce is a bitter little shit about her not wanting him back and we’re supposed to feel for him despite him literally offering her nothing relationship-wise for two movies and actively pushing her away at times! He feels he can’t be with her, but the framing is such that she shouldn’t have the right to be with anyone else, either! What the hell? I would even go so far as to say that her choosing Harvey just as she gets blown up, as well as how both of them got to that point, almost feel like the narrative punishing her for not wanting Bruce. More male entitlement bullshit.

And her fate…well, I mean. There’s a damn reason The Dark Knight is my go-to example when I want to explain what Fridging/Stuffed in the Fridge means. After having every possible stereotypical pigeonholed white girl trope tossed at her, Rachel is killed off callously for the character development and man angst of not one, but two self-obsessed stubbled white guys who make it about themselves and their right to act like phenomenal turds. She’s Helen of Troy – a woman blamed for people’s reactions to her (Harvey becoming Two-Face, Batsy or Bruce being saaaaaad, etc). She’s the Lost Lenore; a person reduced to how their death impacts their romantic interests. We have reached peak Nolan here, and frankly, peak Batman too, because the franchise (comics, movies, etc) has always had this same problem with its treatment of women. Her fucking death isn’t even about her! It’s Harvey’s fucking villain origin and Bruce’s sad ending and Alfred’s resentment and note-burning and would she have waited, oh boo hoo, how about, did she have a fucking family, what would have happened if she hadn’t been murdered young, et fucking cetera.

The thing that really gets me is that Rachel is by no means the worst treated woman in speculative fiction (especially not those that make a claim to some degree of intellectualism); she’s white, so her death is beautifully tragic and she’s put on a pedestal rather than being subjected to racialized misogynistic tropes (being treated more roughly by the narrative, having her suffering ignored or erased altogether, her death being callously ignored except for a throwaway line of dialogue, etc), she’s not unnecessarily and gratuitously sexually brutalized for shock value (that looks uncomfortably like fetishism at times) like the women on Game of Thrones or in nu!Bond movies, or, if we’re still in the Batman universe, Barbara Gordon in any iteration of the Killing Joke (which is another tentpole of misogyny in the Batman universe and I fucking hate it and it clearly influenced the Dark Knight, so, chicken, egg). She isn’t forcibly sterilized and her inability to get pregnant treated as making her a freak like AOU Black Widow. She has no pointless and insulting fanservice scenes like Carol Marcus in her underwear in Star Trek: Into Darkness. Her suffering is not treated as empowerment like any number of women written by Joss Whedon, she isn’t used to be chewed up and spat out and destroyed in a romance with either a guy who terrifies her and in whom she’s shown no prior romantic interest or an outright villain who has caused her nothing but pain in some stupid half-assed not-redemption arc where she has to sublimate herself and be stupidly forgiving beyond the willing suspension of disbelief so some horrible man can evolve.

But why this sexism sticks out to me is that it’s so insidious; if it were more on the nose like the examples I listed above, it’d almost be less jarringly offensive, but it masquerades as her being an empowered yet tragic character and weaves into an overall narrative that validates all the tropes I mentioned, and legitimizes itself in a way that feels fundamentally dishonest about how sexist it’s being. Worse yet, there’s the fact that The Dark Knight is more than just self-contained; its influence on not just comic book movies, but all kinds of media as we know it, is undeniable. And as far as setting the example goes? This hugely well-regarded, influential film is almost entirely white, and tells us that women exist as distractions, tragedies, and extensions of men’s storylines, and this bullshit has been echoing in similar media works since.

AND NOW, THE ONE (or multiple!) NICE THING(S):

All this being said, I admit there actually are a lot of things I like about this movie if I can separate them enough from the main issues! 😂For one thing, Hans Zimmer’s work on the score is top-notch; I listen to Like a Dog Chasing Cars and Harvey Two-Face all the time and the music alone provokes stronger emotions for the characters than anything in the movie actually did. The opening heist is just fantastically entertaining, and up until the messy third act, the pacing and plot is pretty tight and engaging! Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker is of course fantastic; although he’s not my favourite Joker, he really gave it his all, and is by and large the highlight of the film. Nolan is really good with visual appeal (with the exception of that damn colour palette) and the shots are fantastic. I really love the chase scene with the Joker and wish the rest of the movie held my excitement like that.

Finally, it’s odd to say this, but I really like the world of the movie once I ignore the characters and plot. The Gotham that was built in Nolan’s trilogy, the contrast between the classes with the lavish receptions and dinners versus the underbelly, the corruption versus the goodness, how these disparate elements work in a terrible symbiosis, the architecture and technology reflecting this character – it’s incredibly vivid, both grounded in reality and yet sufficiently speculative fiction-y enough to be intriguing. I just wish that the people in it matched the quality of the setting. 😂😂😂

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elizabethrobertajones · 8 years ago

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Yesterday I finally caught up with probably half of Tumblr and finished watching Sense8 (*hugs my new Netflix account*)...

I really enjoyed it and I guess it lives up to the hype, though waiting forever to watch it kind of took the edge off, since I was curious enough to examine every gifset on my dash for the last... couple of years? since it appeared. I really like how everyone’s so in love with the characters and their dynamics that despite learning a great deal about almost every character and their relationships, I 1: didn’t even know Naveen Andrews was in it and 2: had no idea what the main plot was and assumed it was mostly just a great big action/romance romp with random soulmate dynamics thrown in to spice it up. :P

And it’s brilliant as a soap opera ignoring the main plot, as several characters have pretty much nothing to do with it (yet? I started off trying to analyse the plot and linked up Capheus, Kala and Sun as the most important players in an epic biomedical scandal involving the businesses and such they’re tied up in that must surely link further back to all the sinister stuff with the real bad guys, and then of course nothing’s come of that yet in a season + Christmas special...) and definitely one of its main strengths is the characters and their relationships and interactions, especially as with so many ways to sort them, and some plots with a lot of one on one cross over, characters you’d come to know and love were still meeting each other for the first time fairly late on.

Anyway, Daryl Hannah floating around being the fridged woman with a remarkable resemblance to Mary Winchester aside (I feel so sorry for actresses whose entire role is wearing a dirty/bloodstained nightgown while making spooky appearances for the sake of the main characters :P) the actual plot seems like Orphan Black in many respects, and the more I think about it the more connections I make, aside from the obvious of Weird Science bothering a group of seemingly normal people who then discover they’re actually clones/soulmates with a whole bunch of other people they have uncanny connections to. By the end of the current season of Orphan Black, our protagonist clone is even having sustained visions of the clone who started the series with the suicide of one of their own who, like Daryl Hannah, kicked off the entire plot for the main characters, and her daughter seems to be psychically connecting to the other clones through the same Weird Science as Sense8. There’s a strong focus on life and death and altogether too much childbirth stuff on screen :P

I think Sense8′s advantage is that it’s much less confined by the format not just that it can be absolutely openly as diverse as it wants to be, but because without having to be somewhat procedural or else fitting the regular format of TV shows, you can get the really long, weird sequences which aren’t really doing anything except quiet, meaningful stretches of character stuff. There are story arcs per episode, but the entire thing moves incredibly slowly. I swear Orphan Black made the same progress through the plot in a handful of episodes as Sense8 has done so far in its entire run.

Obviously neither show is finished yet, and in several important respects Sense8 blows Orphan Black out of the water, with OB being included in the great Onscreen Queer Women Massacre of the start of the year it only just bought my interest but not my trust back by backpeddaling that... and even if they always intended to bring said murdered queer woman back, they’ve not allowed the couple in question to just exist happily and unapologetically, and inflicted that trope on us in the first place... they also DID apologise while at the same time doing it, admitted they were aware they should use a trans actor to play a trans character but because of the clone thing, still used Tatiana to play a surprise brother clone they threw in for one episode basically, I guess, to show something about variation etc, and at this point I don’t know if it’s for the best he’s not in a ton of episodes, although weird they never mention him again after that.

Sense8 has a much clearer sense of these issues, though its attempt to portray a broad stroke of human existence world wide has netted it a lot of criticism for stereotyping & racist tropes in those portrayals, which I’m not equipped to comment on, but as someone who wearily watches a lot of media, certainly none of the non-western, white, stories felt particularly unexpected or not like something I could see elsewhere... Orphan Black has mostly stayed clear of those issues by just not going near them; the actual cast when you narrow it down away from the character list is still very white. Throw in the dozens of versions of Tatiana and the other clone guy and they’ve got endless room to add in as many more characters as they like, obviously all versions of the same white actors dressed up differently.

... in any case, Sense8′s plot gave me a fair amount of deja vu to the show I’d already watched, but because OB put me off several times (and yet I kept coming back to it :P) I don’t have a very clear memory of the first season’s plot to make a stronger side by side comparison. I’m mostly intrigued by the sense of the huge terrifying rich biotech and medical corporations, doing Weird Science juuust beyond the range of what we can understand now, or with a slight science-fantasy element to it, relying on real world conspiracies or Fortean Times level suspicions of what might possibly be real if you wanted to believe tales of precognition, telepathy, etc. In Sense8 there’s a few mentions of ~real~ stories of such things, but I can’t remember if OB went over it yet.

Certainly in both there’s a sense of unity and impossible but unbreakable family bonds, and a lot of exploration of who the Self is vs these huge faceless corporations. OB cycles through several villains or weird cults and such as the bad guys, each one in turn unknowable but powerful or embedded in a way with science or military or religious connections that make them dangerous to go up against. It’s hard to tell exactly what message Sense8 has about it because so much less plot involving it has unfurled but it’s obviously not good news with the big corporations, definitions of humanity, and secret conspiracy to police what is human and what is not. It even sets the entire viewing audience against the Sensates as part of a mass of non-sensate people who lack the emotional connection and empathy to feel like they do, implying the whole lot of us are murderous and cold as a result... In this way the evil scientists out to get them are only the very personal version of ALL the struggles they face, represented by that moment in the Xmas special where they all see the writing on the wall at Lito’s house transform into the worst things they have been called.

It takes a much colder view of humanity, making it us or them, and for us, switching which of those groups we identify with by way of sympathy to the main characters. OB is less personal in that way but focuses on the dangers of science trying to create a better human, and while the clones are supposedly all “improved” humans, they have enough flaws, physically and emotionally (although yikes, Krystal makes me sure they have latent super soldier genes none of the others have properly unlocked except maybe the unkillable Helena :P) that they don’t come across as totally othered for more than the unfortunate circumstances of their births they obviously didn’t ask for. Rachel as the only one raised in the know ends up the most dangerous of them all, perhaps for having her sense of humanity denied to her and knowing for most of her life that she was only an experiment and property of the company. What makes the rest of humans human isn’t in question so much as how much the clones might belong with humanity, and that they could grow up oblivious and fit in emotionally, and still have human values even when they discover they’re “only” property and experimental prototypes who’ve been living almost Truman show lives. In that respect, Sarah as the narrator is the most free and human because she was raised outside of the program with no influence from it whatsoever - narratively it’s not coincidental that she and Helena are also the only clones who are fertile and can have children.

... I’ve been making connections all day but this post is really long now so I’m going to stop here. I want to rewatch Orphan Black now, since I noticed it on the Netflix menu and I’m having a bit of a cackling wildly, world at my fingertips moment here. :P

#...#long post for ts #really long post #I really hope that mobile user thing isn't still true #I thought it was only when viewing blogs directly instead of on the dash #okay that's all the tag padding :P #sense8 #orphan black #just some thoughts comparing them at great length #I really want to analyse the ethics they're trying to convey better but I need to A: rewatch orphan black and B: wait for season 2 of Sense8

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helloworlddemo1122-yahoopar-blog · 7 years ago

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'UnREAL' Boss on That Surprising Ending (It Was Plan B!) and Why Season 4 Is Totally 'Different' (Exclusive)

Warning: Spoiler alert! Do not proceed if you have not watched Monday's two-hour season finale of UnREAL.

Now what?

In Monday's two-hour season finale of UnREAL, Rachel's (Shiri Appleby) desires to get out of the wretched, unhealthy bubble that is the fictional Bachelor/Bachelorette-esque dating show, Everlasting, comes to fruition when uber-producer Quinn (Constance Zimmer) lets her out for good. It should be a moment of relief for Rachel, who's spent the entire season trying to prove to Quinn -- through suitress Serena (Sweetbitter's Caitlin FitzGerald) -- that she's capable of being loved in spite of her age, success and power. Instead, what Rachel's left with by season's end is a lonely existence as she retreats back to her cabin in the woods.

The season-ending moment comes after she learns that the psychiatrist Quinn hired, Dr. Simon (Brandon Jay McLaren), is just as twisted as everyone else in her inner circle when he makes an inappropriate play for her love. That shocking revelation is the straw that breaks the camel's back, as Rachel's ex Jeremy (Josh Kelly), Serena (she tells Rachel she belongs at a "horrible" place like Everlasting) and others reiterate -- in their own way -- to Rachel that she's a god-awful person: Jeremy, for "producing" him to kill two people at the end of season two; Serena, for "producing" her to choose herself and reject two proposals at the Everlasting finale.

"The finale was about a piling on for Rachel, in the sense that she finds out this horrible admission from Dr. Simon. Then everything is turned into question for her," showrunner Stacy Rukeyser tells ET. "It makes her question everything that she has done as she has gone on this personal journey with him this season, and that includes cutting ties with her family. Now she is alone and he says all of these things, like, 'If anyone knew the truth about who you are and what you've done, they would never love you. You are unlovable the way you are.'"

"Everyone's basically telling her she's a piece of s**t or that she's a bad person," she says. "Those things are ringing in her ear when she goes off to her cabin." But things can't truly end there for Rachel. As we know, a fourth season -- premiere date yet to be announced -- featuring an all-star installment of Everlasting has already been filmed, and you know Rachel will be a part of it. How does she find herself back in Everlasting's clutches?

Following the conclusion of season three, ET spoke with Rukeyser about the season that was, the original finale ending and why the new season features a brand new (and much blonder) look for Rachel.

ET: Why did you end season three with Rachel alone at the cabin, having finally gotten out of Everlasting?

Stacy Rukeyser: I can tell you a little tidbit, which is that that cabin was originally shot as an alt ending before we knew there was going to be a season four. There was, in fact, a different ending, but then of course, we did get ordered for a season four and people were in love with this ending -- with her getting out and getting to the cabin. Since there is a season four, you know there's going to be a Rachel Goldberg. You know she's coming back to the show for one reason or another. If you happen to follow Shiri Appleby's Instagram, you will see that she's blonde for season four. She's blonde, not just because she's trying a new look, but it's coming out of a real internal panic and a desperate need to change herself or change her life. A lot of that has to do with what those people said at the end of season three that are still ringing in her ears and are terrifying her. Rachel lying there on the deck, it's everything she said she wanted -- it's that "beautiful place" -- and yet she's still alone with those thoughts. It's incredibly terrifying and destabilizing [for her].

Rachel Goldberg 2.0 🎥 #unrealtv

A post shared by Shiri Appleby (@shiriappleby) on Oct 27, 2017 at 5:12am PDT

What was the original ending that you had in mind for the finale if what we saw was Option B?

Basically, Rachel made the decision to stay at Everlasting, so she never went to the cabin in the first place. Everything is the same, where Quinn offers her the money and all of that, but Rachel decides to stay at Everlasting. In some ways, it's a similar thing because she'll be back at Everlasting in season four, but there's been that moment when she could have gotten out. She did get out, at least for however much time she's up there, which I won't say. This has been Rachel's internal struggle for the entire series. She's incredibly conflicted about being there, hates herself for the work she does there and yet feels very empowered. It does give her a sense of power, even though she hates herself for the fact that it makes her feel powerful, and there's the incredible relationship with Quinn. That push-pull has been a part of it all along.

Quinn and Rachel's last conversation really encapsulated their partnership, where Quinn tells Rachel she's "a star." That despite the backstabbing, the betrayal and the awful things they've done to each other, they're very much dependent on each other and cemented the fact that things are going to be different now. How important was it to have that scene in the finale?

We always talk about how Rachel and Quinn are the love story of the series, and you can imagine writing the scene when we didn't know if it was going to be a series finale. It was even more important to show that because I do believe that regardless of the bad things that they've done to each other or the ways in which it's an unhealthy relationship, that they love each other very deeply and that Quinn really does care for Rachel in a way that Rachel's own mother never did. That was really essential, whether it was going to be the end of the series or not. As we go into season four, look, they're going to have conflict again because Quinn ends up on Chet's doorstep and that is not necessarily something Rachel would support, I'll put it that way. Also, what does Quinn think about [Rachel coming back to Everlasting], after she's given her the money to get out?

The Everlasting finale featured a moment where Chet confesses in front of America that he's in love with Quinn, which leads to Quinn landing on his doorstep. Are things on slightly more stable ground for the two? What do you see for Quinn and Chet's future?

Chet's worked hard this season, in terms of his own personal growth. We've always felt that there's an undeniable love story between Chet and Quinn, as messed up as it is and flawed as it is. For Quinn, her personal journey this season was all about getting her career back up. First, getting the show back up and running, and then expanding her empire. But she, too, at the end of the day, has to come to terms with whether or not that's enough for her or whether she needs some human connection beyond her relationship with Rachel because she believes Rachel is leaving. She does show up on Chet's doorstep and it's intended to be a romantic moment. I'm sure there will be conversations amongst the fans, where some will be happy and some won't be happy at all.

Jeremy quits Everlasting. Is he still in the picture in season four?

He's gone. Jeremy does, in fact, get out and get away and he is not back for season four.

Did you feel creatively his story was complete?

For sure. I love Josh Kelly and he's gone through so many transformations on this show. His scene at the end of episode nine, where he says "I'm a murderer," that he has this realization is incredibly well done. That's a great, fitting ending for this character and frankly, it's nice that someone actually gets out and gets away. It was challenging only because there's a lot of love for Josh Kelly and a lot of love for that character, so even though it made sense storytelling-wise, we really had to talk and say, "Are we really OK without having him a part of the fabric?" It did feel, storytelling-wise, that that was the honest and right thing to do.

Lifetime

Serena ultimately rejects Jasper and Owen's proposals during the Everlasting finale and soon after, she's in the limo on the dating app. Does she regret not making a choice or taking the Everlasting experience more seriously or that she went on the show in the first place?

It's all of that. Thematically, one of the things we were interested in looking at this season is who is the right person for a woman like Serena? Should she be with the alpha dog like Jasper and together they'd be this power couple who travels all over the world, or should she be with someone like Owen, who doesn't have as fancy a career but he could be at home with the kids more? How do you distinguish between settling and this line where she says, "You persuaded women everywhere to wait for your Clooney." That became such a big point for us. Amal Clooney was very much the inspiration for Serena because we were talking about how if she had not met George Clooney, who was going to be good enough for her? Who the hell was it going to be? When Serena's back in the limo, she's back on the Tindr-like app, there is what we describe as the tyranny of choice. You can keep swiping and swiping and swiping, and there's always someone else. We really like to ask questions, rather than give answers. But what we're saying is it's tough to know. Should she have chosen one of those guys? I'm not so sure. But if she also doomed to this tyranny of choice? Yes, I think so.

Tracie Thoms' character, Fiona, was elevated to become the head of the network by the end of the finale. How big of a presence will she have in the new season?

Yeah, she's the president of the network now so she's back in season four.

For most of the season, Dr. Simon was the calming force, the guy with the crucial life wisdom -- until the very last episode, when you realize he's just as screwed up as everyone else. How did you justify that character turn so late in the season?

In the world of UnREAL, no one is ever just one thing. No one is ever able to just be good and not have a darker side, and vice versa. What we feel is part and parcel of this bubble that you get into on this show or on a show like this. It is a bit obsessive, but it's in this universe where people get sucked in and terrible things are completely acceptable and justifiable. He loses his way as almost all of these characters have done when they are at Everlasting.

What was it like seeing the sexual harassment storyline play out amidst the #MeToo and Time's Up movements?

It was crazy because when Quinn said to Gary that he was now the defendant of a class-action lawsuit, I think it was Bill O'Reilly [in the news] back at that point. It was really shocking and I wish that I could say that we were prescient and that we knew this moment was coming but we really didn't. These were things we were feeling and some of us had experienced as women and wanted to talk about, but it's exciting that it's become a bigger part of the cultural conversation.

Looking ahead to season four, which is the all-star season of Everlasting, who is coming back?

August (Adam Demos) is coming back and Alexi (Alex Sparrow) is coming back, and then a couple of other people from past seasons. (Breeda Wool, who played Faith in season one, is also confirmed to return.) The format is a little bit different. There is a Survivor-like challenge in every episode, as well as an elimination ceremony where people couple up and they spend the night together, so it's like every night is an overnight. It's the Wild West version of Everlasting. (The new additions include Megan Holder, Natalie Hall, Alejandro Muñoz, Alli Chung, Meghan Heffern and Christopher Russell.)

Lifetime

Rachel had a brief fling with August this season, but who will be catching her eye?

I can tell you that in the teaser for season four, you see Rachel is blonde and Quinn says, "To hell with being a producer, you're a suitress." You see Rachel with a lot of these different guys. I don't want to say too much beyond that about why Quinn gets that impression or if that's true or what's really happening. And we also have a new producer, Tommy, who's played by Francois Arnaud, and that's some fresh blood who's fairly attractive too, I'll put it that way.

I always ask, but is Adam (the suitor in the first season played by Freddie Stroma) back in the fold?

We would love to have him back whenever but he has not really been available. I'm sure we would dream up story if we could, but it's not in the cards right now. Unfortunately, no [Adam in season four].

Anything you would do over or do differently after watching season three?

We talked so much about Serena and who she was and whether she was "likable" or how to make sure the audience was rooting for her in her journey to try and find love. It's part of a bigger conversation about unlikable female protagonists that I think is really interesting, in terms of what makes a person likable or not. For us, we have a huge understanding for Serena. We never felt that she was unlikable. We, as women, related to her and to what she was going through and the vulnerability that she experienced. We were rooting for her and yes, she makes mistakes and yes, she's better at business than she is in her dating life. But the deck is also stacked against her because there are a lot of prejudices and preconceived ideas of how women are supposed to be that are incredibly unfair. That's what we're always trying to put forth with our characters: They're real women who don't behave perfectly. That's real life and I hope that it's relatable. It's not always easy to see people make bad choices or do bad things, but I think it's real. I haven't seen a lot of season debriefs yet, but those are the kinds of characters I want to see more of on television. It's very interesting to look at what women are allowed to be and what they're allowed to do on television then what men have been allowed to do for a long, long time. All we want is for people to be talking about it. We don't want everyone to be in agreement; an old boss used to say, "If your audience is happy, your show is dead."

Do you have any idea on when season four will launch?

[Lifetime] has not given us any indication. I don't think it's summer. They have You, the Sera Gamble-Greg Berlanti show that's airing in September. There's a chance we may air with that but there's a chance they might hold it till next spring.