#smith's character arc reached its peak in this one

[holybagelsstuff]

I didn't want to finish The Matrix trilogy after watching the awful Reloaded, but today I decided to watch Revolutions and I liked it. No idea what went wrong with the second movie.

[iviarelleblr]

This is gonna be a big one, but I have Big Thoughts about Perrin's arc exploring the false dichotomies between creation and destruction, and violence and peace.

So, when the story starts, Perrin is a blacksmith's apprentice, but he takes the waraxe for the adventure because a hammer isn't a weapon for a story, it isn't the weapon to defend yourself with. On his way, he learns to hate the axe, because of what it symbolizes, what a waraxe makes all too easy to do: destroy. It's a pure tool of war, there's nothing redeeming about it unless you turn it from its purpose and use it to chop wood. He meets the Tuatha'an, who offer an alternate solution: if you never raise a hand, then the violence can't hurt you in any way that matters. This sticks with him.

A little later, in Tear, Perrin has been on the road for over a year and he's tired and homesick and he asks a smith for some work to do just to keep himself sharp and feel like he might be back home again for an hour or two. He takes such comfort in creation that he doesn't even notice Faile sneaking up to watch him work.

Then he goes home, and infuriating irresistible Faile goes too, and the only way he can save her and everyone he loves who still breathes is to take up the waraxe, to take up violence and its tools. A lot of people feel like he reached the peak of his arc here and the rest of the books had to stretch out the denouement, but I think that ignores what comes next! Also, worth noting, the Tuatha'an are here too, and worse, Perrin has more or less inspired Aram to follow his lead instead of the Way of the Leaf, and Perrin feels immense guilt because he still values the pacifism of it all, he still wants peace and creation for himself and he feels so badly that his influence is what caused Aram to feel like he had to abandon it.

He gets his honeymoon book off, and when we return, he's mostly just being pulled around for a few books, placed where it's convenient, right up until he loses Faile again. And, now, he's been holding that axe for so long, close to two whole years, that tool of only violence, it's the only way he knows anymore.

Violence and the need for vengeance is what drives him to march his army in pursuit, and destruction is his goal. He has no time to think of anything but getting her back from them and wiping them from the face of the planet.

But on the way, he sees what it's doing to himself. He sees what he's become and he knows, in a moment of clarity, that he can't face Faile again in good conscience if he's still that man of violence and destruction. He might not even be able to face himself in the mirror over it.

So, in one of the most poignant and memorable scenes (IMO) of the PLOD, Perrin slams the waraxe, the violence, the destruction, into a tree so deeply nobody could probably get it back out again without chopping the whole tree down. He says he will not be that man who can only tear apart what he touches. And he walks away from it.

It's only when Perrin has chosen to leave pure violence, pure destruction behind, that he can start to face his future. He finds his wife, they make amends. He faces the truth about himself in the Whitecloak trial. He denies no truth, and he comes out the other side penitant.

And then he creates.

He sets up at a forge, and with Powered help, he creates the first Power-wrought weapon of the Third Age.

Only, it's not a weapon.

Mjollnir-- er, Mah'alleinir, is a smith's tool. It can destroy, yes, but it also creates. It can do violence, but with the right hand, it can also bring peace. It balances. It's both extremes and all it needs to be to get him home again. Perrin never needed to choose, because there was never really a choice if he wanted to be able to sleep at night. The blacksmith must be able to destroy the failed project, to salvage the iron, and also to work it into something newer, something better.

Perrin's arc has less pure, measurable plot events than the other main characters, in a lot of ways. A lot of it was stretched way too thin across way too many books and suffers for it in every way. But, in a lot of ways it mirrors part of the arc Rand goes through. Rand has to learn how to destroy, to salvage, and to create anew to restore the Dark One's prison to a perfect state until the next turning of the Wheel. Perrin's range of consequence is much smaller, he's only destroying what was once the Two Rivers to become a new Manetheren, and taking the scraps of his old self to become someone better.

So like, can someone explain Perrin to me? Like, don’t get me wrong I love Perrin! Love him to death but I just do not understand him or his character arc. Here’s the thing, I’m currently writing a meta essay on the Ta’veren boys story archetypes and how they relate and effect the modern fantasy genre. It was going smoothly until I reached Perrin and I just drew a complete blank on what to write. I settled on the gentle giant archetype but when I compared it to what I had written for Mat and Rand it felt decidedly lackluster and shallow. I’ve never really understood Perrin’s character, like with Mat and Rand I feel like I have a good grasp on what RJ was trying to say with them, how they work in the story and how they think and feel. I feel like I understand them in a way that I just never could with Perrin. Anytime I try to write about Perrin it feels like I’m just staring at big blob of nothing and trying to shape it into a coherent analysis. I really want to dig in and understand Perrin better, I’ve tried combing through the myths of Thor and looking into the mythological roots of lycanthropy but none of it has really helped me with his overall character

[gruby88]

The story clerks is kind of amazing. A lower-middle class kid from suburban New Jersey starts working at a video store, where he mets a guy heavily into movie. He broadens his horizons enough with some Independent Film Fair hangouts, a place where future classics like Linklater’s „Clacker” would appear. The kid, known as Kevin SMith, get so into it he ges to cheap canadian film school to make his own movies.

He drops out mid-semester, because school is boring and boring things are just not interesting. But he assembles a rudimentary crew of rpoducer Scott Mosier and cinematographer Klark, makes some credit card fraud for 30k dollars and starts making his debut movie - Clerks.

Shot over a month at a store Smith worked at - the movie is basically two dudes just having a weird day at work. They talk in a very verbose style, giving this sophistication to the most inane of topics while serving wacky customers and slowly bulding up to a broader lesson the love subplot signifies.

In spite of it’s blue collar setting of a convinience store, the movie appears to be ideologyless. IThe characters, or rather maybe SMith himself, seem to have no real  thoughts about politics. There’s no big boss acting as villain. there’s no goals.  A guy who sells chewing gum starts a riot in the store but that never gets any commentary, it’s just a gag. There’s just empty void of depression. And 90s kinda were like that. Reagan and Tatcher turned the world into a capitalist hellhole, everything seemed meaningless beyond monetary value, with no real way out of the system.

It still does btw.

And thus, the valued commodity of early 90s was realness. The was a market for what we believe to be real. Swearing, being drunk in public, greasy haired rockers were not the world finally manning up to some sick guitar riffs, it was an open craving for somethig real. Something raw. Or at least as raw as we can stomach, there’s a reason why pretty boy Eddie Vedder got famous, and shit-slinging rockers like GG Allin just remained too hot for tv.

And realness wasn’t just to be consumed, it gave us hope that we can too become recognizable for just being ourselves. And it times before reality tv, vlogs, instagram stories and facebook posts - to scratch that itch we had to look for people like us on the big screen. For validation that our averageness is significant in some way.

And Clerks was the perfect movie for the generation of directionless stoners, loners, geeks, nerds, outcasts, mclovins of their time. It was just two dudes being smartasses for 90 minutes.

So how does CLerks hold up in 2020?

Welp.

The movie itself is kinda good. Very funny still. It encapsulates early 90s attitude of not giving a fuck pretty flawlessy with worst attitued played up to maximum. There’s no stakes, characters hardly have an arc to follow, it just kind of is. It meanders with no purpose and that kind of is the point. It’s lack of effort seems to be intentional to signify the lack of effort in the characters. It’s as dull as your life, but also has all the things that make it bearable. The funny friend. The fact that low-paying jobs have the best stories because you mostly deal with other low-income people wh are usually insane from all the stress.

C A P I T A L I S M

One thing that caught my eye was contempt for store customers. You’d think Smith would find compassion for fellow low-classians, but no. I wroked commerce so I know, the best stories are the ones about people you don’t hold too dear to your heart and called names to their face because they just put you past the tipping point. But politics of clerks is basically - look at this dumb motherfuckers interrupting me doing fuck all at my job. There’s no hint of irony or self-awareness. Like, at some point the cool guy, Randall fucking GRAVES, just spits water at a guy point blank for being kinda stupid about tabloids. And is presented as the guy we want to be, the cold calculated friend with instant funny comment about anything.

I guess this is a display of Kev-dawgs immaturity. He is not aware, that what he perceives as cool carries a broader social commentary and a lesson that’s beyond a joke about customers being weird. Which is kinda part of the charm. That Smith doesn’t know, or simply doesn’t care that he shows us the worst people ever, which is why it’s so authentic. It’s brutal when put like that, but it is the voice of the part of america that gets the worst jobs. And this is what they think of you. That you’re assholes for making them work. ANd that speaks to countless generations of kids who would never have a voice in cinema. There was never a cool representation for chubsters with affection for superheroes. They want to believe that their lack of sex skills will result in a girl mistakenly fukcing a corpse in pursuit of them and not just straight rejection.

And it works like that because the movie is pretty consequenceless for our main characters. Randall has no stakes in anything and just spits onelines. He throws some food around which I guess is pretty dramatic, but that’s about his impact on the story.

The story centers around the main character of Dante. A guy who has unexplanedly two women fight for his affection even thouth his bed skills seem to be comparable to rigor mortis. And is just an asshole to both off them. He scolds his girlfriend for having broad sexual past, and then gets mad when he learns that his ex moved on. Lots of room for improvement as a person.

Anyways, his lesson? Ditch the ex who will most likely never recorver and is now useless as you can’t fuck, and go back to your main chick. This is actually the whole arc of the movie. Dante learns that his options are limited, and he should bank on girls that actually can stand him. And it’s not even my interpretation, the movie ends with the director, playing the iconic  SIlnet Bob, explaining the movie to us via a monologue to the main character.

But all of this makes the movie work. Becuase it perfectly captures tht moment in life when you’re kinda too naive to figue out that having good taste in movies does not a good person make, but also old enough to not be dismissed or get in trouble for challanging the status quo.

Even after dogma, where peoles good will towards smith reached its peak and for a second he was about to enter the mainstream legit, not just as an indie wonder funny guy. He was not treated as seriously as after Clerks. And smith ate it up. He played into it. 90s Kevin is way more full of himself than his later laid back slacker persona of the public speaking era. Kevin loves the implication that he is this working class genious, the smartass philosopher of the gen x, taking popular culture and treating it like art. Big words. And he is not wrong, lthout his takes.. usually are.

Kevin is prominently featured as an intro interviewer for Josh petersen, indie distributor that wrote  book about how he performs the most boring aspect of the movie making - selling the thing.

But seeing this movie now, being 10 years older than kevin when he made it. I can feel the excitement of voice emerging, and „that’s beautiful, man”.