#through the suburb housewife persona

[angieschiffahoi]

if shauna really is the chosen executioner for all the sacrificies coming forward does it really surprise anyone that she’s so numb and desensitised from death? 

[hexonthepeach]

ok but imagine y/n & johnny being assigned to some suburb as husband and wife to gather? idk something about surveilling a suspects home life etc. and just the mr & mrs smith vibes of it all. trying to fit in with the neighbors. setting down some sort of roots. trying to cozy up to the suspects family. maybe even jaehyun coming to visit every so often as johnny's "step brother" and just the potential chaos of a neighbor maybe seeing y/n and jaehyun through a window and being scandalized.

i'm genuinely dying rn because while this scenario did not come up in what i currently am writing for the d&s crew it is absolutely perfectly aligned with it. like this is scarily perfect to the point that i need to know if we've synced brain waves?

thank you for planting this seed i hope you don't mind me using it in the future [lemme know if i can give you credit even if you just want to pick an anon emoji]

i'm on my first ever watch through of The Americans and spy power couple in suburbia is such a fantastic trope, i love the tension of persona vs identity. Don't Worry Darling was a disappointment but it got me thinking about how the dark suburbia cliches used could be done more meaningfully. also dating myself here but my life was inexorably changed by The X-Files s6 ep 15 Arcadia (the real monster of the week are HOAs) and Scully's constant exasperation at Mulder's in-jokes--which is something Johnny would be relentless at, so he's the perfect suggestion for this

as always with this trio it would have to be sex comedy with dark elements and maybe a little more weird? it would be incredibly funny to have the whole thing go sideways on multiple levels including an increasing escalation of violence

here's how i imagine this playing out (under the cut for spoilers):

this is a long-term assignment/infiltration and one of director lee's "special projects" i.e. team-building exercise for the throuple. unbeknownst to them the agency has a secret betting pool on how badly this can go (the winner is someone who put a worst case scenario so outlandish it was supposed to be a joke)

johnny and y/n are currently in the middle of a minor disagreement on their approach for this op--maybe someone wanted to "borrow" a kid to make it legitimate and the other put a kibosh on that based on the stakes being higher. or we're just dealing with a petty argument about the level of lethality involved. (i have another idea but don't want to spoil current wip). they're bickering behind closed doors and duking it out in subtext every time they're forced to play their roles

jaehyun is running surveillance and infiltrating houses. for validity of him being in the neighborhood from time-to-time, he's brought in at the "Johnson's" housewarming party/backyard BBQ as the blue collar handyman brother-in-law. they can get into more homes now, but he's also finding that every sink repair or ceiling fan light bulb replacement has him dealing with escalating attempts at being seduced. our best boy is now the unwilling target for every future divorcee on the block

johnny ends up forced to participate in a variety of Stepford Husband-like activities to get access to more information/be inducted into some kind of club, leaving y/n frequently at home pretending to be a housewife and growing increasingly more sick of the assignment. and also maybe just a little (a lot) jealous when she hears the gossip about/is questioned about her "brother-in-law" by the other wives at the hair salon, grocery store, etc

cue y/n inviting jaehyun to do some household repairs and initiating a little role-playing scenario straight out of a bad porno. unbeknownst to them of course (or maybe knownst!) they are caught in a very lurid scene by one of jaehyun's new fans peeking through the window. (i'd absolutely have to write this from the POV of the nosy neighbor--it would be too funny to pass up)

gossip spreads, suddenly its common knowledge. but--here's the kicker--johnny gets into the good old boy's club where it's revealed that they're one of *those* communities where cuckolding and exhibitionism are a bit of a collective turn-on. a little bit eyes wide shut/bohemian grove/society type escalation of weird beyond sex stuff

now it's the three of them versus a neighborhood--a little public shunning of course, but mostly under siege from those who want to get them to participate in some kind of bacchanalian ritual. a perfect opportunity to get into the head honchos' house but also a perfect set-up for things to go absolutely and horribly wrong . . .

we're talking actual violence and maybe a little murder and mayhem under the cover of whatever anonymity those ritual masks provide. all of it conveniently walked away from by the fact that this can't become public information although it will certainly add to conspiracy theory fodder

the morning after has them pretending to be moving out/getting a divorce. definitely will need to end on the agreement that they're never setting foot in a planned community ever again

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

Fantasies, dreams and desires, ideas of normalcy and fears of difference. A slightly queer reading of 15x14

Mrs Butters is a delightful character who is built to parallel so many things in the show. She occupies perfectly the semantic sphere that the narrative has crafted around Dean’s desires; also, you know, cake.

We could talk for days about the significance of food and drink in Supernatural. One of the biggest themes that run through the entire show is hunger (or thirst) and food is very often a symbol for an emotional need of sorts. Supernatural draws a lot folklore, and human stories have always used symbologies that put together food, desire, love, sex, family, goodness and darkness and all those human experiences.

We have discussed the shit out of every instance of food in the show, analyzed parallels to other stories and fairytales, scrutinized queer-codings and subtexts, got called nasty names by impolite people accusing us of saying that a slice of baked good means Dean likes sitting on dicks. So, yeah, I’m not gonna start explaining everything from the beginning. Let’s jump to the parallels.

- The comfort food. Motherhood, hugs, and the past that can never return: the ideal of childhood and the 50s fantasy

We’ve already talked about how Mrs Butters functions as a parallel to Mary and a symbol of the ideal motherhood that both Mary and Dean struggled with. In Dark Side Of The Moon, we see a memory from Dean’s childhood, where we learn that Mary would cut off the crusts off his sandwiches. Mrs Butters also says that she cut the crusts off, establishing a direct parallel to Dean’s ideal of childhood and child-parent relationship. Or, we should say, as both Mary’s and Dean’s ideals of a child-parent relationship, because we know that Mary set up her life with John and the kids as an elaborate “scene” according to her idea-slash-fantasy of the perfect safe life.

She strugged with that, because her ideal life could never match with reality - she had loose ends from hunting to deal with, she at some level liked having those loose ends to deal with because as much as she hated the hunting life and craved for safety and “normalcy” that was still something she was in her element doing, probably more than the perfect housewife role. Of course when she came back she attempted to recreate the scene but quickly discovered that it was impossible and dropped all attempts to do so, embracing the opposite, or at least what she perceived as the opposite (having a pretty dualistic view of hunting life-domestic life where they cannot be reconciled).

Dean, on the other hand, started out with a similar dualistic view, figuring that he’d always belong to the hunting world and could never have the domestic, “normal” thing at all, embracing his “freakness” as opposed to the concept of normalcy represented by civilians, by the middle class, by the suburbs, by the apple pie, white fence life (insert heavy queer subtext here). And yet there was always an ambiguity with him (again, he’s never one-or-the-other, he’s always both), because, while on the surface he embraces this rebellious, devil-may-care persona, that’s not quite what he is as a full individual. He grew up essentially a housewife from a very early age, has a very caregiving personality, and thrives in taking care of others.

Dean is both Mrs Butters and Mary, where the difference between him and Mary is that Mary couldn’t (didn’t have the time, support, resources?) reconcile parts of her that Dean instead was able to (and in fact recently helped her with: before dying, she’d reached a pretty healthy balance of living her own life as a hunter and having a warm relationship with her sons, at least as healthy as it can get in that kind of circumstances).

Another important parallel to Dark Side Of The Moon, borrowed by Scoobynatural, is the nightgown that feels like being wrapped in hugs: we are reminded of Dean’s “I wuv hugz” from when he was a kid, a symbol for his early life of affection and safety that he lost with his mother. Childhood hugs, comfort food, loving gestures like cutting off the crusts are all symbols of a past that cannot return.

On a level, from a “coming-of-age story” perspective, childhood, with its innocence and perception that adults will always keep us safe, is obviously something that everyone needs to accept as something that belongs to the past and cannot return, to embrace instead the responsibilities and risks of adulthood in a healthy way. In a sense, Dean needs to go through all these steps - acknowledging that his mother was a flawed person, that in fact both of his parents were flawed people who made mistakes but he can forgive them for his own sake in order to be able to let go of trauma and carry on... - to become a healthy adult able to be a good parent to his own child.

(There’s also the cholesterol thing - Mrs Butters chastizes Dean for his diet, but we know that there’s a depth to Dean’s diet, not only his extreme appreciation of food due to experiencing food scarcity and insecurity as a child, but also the memory of his mother’s comfort food, such as the “Winchester surprise”, a monstrosity of meat and cheese. While the “meat man” persona would appear on the surface as a sterotypical masculinity thing, it has layers, in a typical Dean fashion... not coincidentally, in the latest episode he calls himself the meat man while wearing an apron that we’re told he’s very fond of, painting him, again, in a mixture of different meanings, masculinity and femininity, fatherhood and motherhood, devil-may-care attitude and caregiver attitude.)

On another level, a more political level, there’s the 50s fantasy element. We all know the significance of the idealization of the post-war period as the “good ol’ times” in American culture, and it’s an ideal that Mary definitely drew from when she built her perfect life with her family. Mrs Butters represents this in a very literal way, being literally from 1958 when she “froze” herself, and acts as a very stereotyped governess for a bunch of men that feel like they are above housework, what is considered women’s work. Dean initially comments “how progressive”, knowing exactly how bullshit these conversative ideals are, but then appreciates the comforts of the perfect caretaker.

In fact, Dean’s “giving in” to the comforts of a governess makes me think of that famous feminist manifesto “I want a wife” by Judy Syfers... because housework is very much Dean’s work in the bunker. It’s interesting that Mrs Butters immediately comments negatively on the cleanness of the bunker and their clothes: we know that Dean cleans and washes, and, while it’s likely that he cannot keep everything super perfect like a governess would because he’s busy doing many other things, it’s a way Mrs Butters uses to establish roles that she knows and is comfortable with. She is used to being the one who does “feminine” work while the Men of Letters have absolutely zero skills in that regard, and doesn’t really even stop to question if that’s the case with the men in front of her.

Anyway, let’s go back to the 50s fantasy. The show has repeatedly made commentaries on the vacuity of it. Peace Of Mind is the most obvious instance, but there’s plenty of subtext in the show that deals with that typically American aspect. Just like the childhood aspect, the narrative tells us that the “good ol’ times” are also an idealized thing that cannot return (if it ever existed, because Dean’s childhood was built on a fantasy, and the “good ol’ times” are also a fantasy, because the real 50s were horrible for anyone who didn’t swim in privilege). Mrs Butters cannot stay, the 50s fantasy-slash-childhood fantasy cannot last, and Dean embraces his role as an adult-slash-modern housemaker. Blah blah gender, blah blah cake. (Yeah, sorry, but you can fill in the blanks.)

- The contaminated drink. Poison and weakness from the forbidden sexual desire to the forbidden family domesticity

Aaaand now the second branch of parallels that Mrs Butters pinged on my radar, which sends us in an even more queer-subtext-heavy territory. We’re going to talk about the smoothies and the tomato juice. Yes, I know, the smoothies are given to Jack, not Dean, but symbolically Dean and Jack share the same semantic area; both are given a magically conjured drink, and both end up locked away waiting to be killed. For this analysis, they basically overlap.

Let’s start with the tomato juice. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that Dean is given something that visually reminds of the blood the vampires drink. The tomato juice is a stand-in for blood, and blood in relation to vampirism has a long history of subtext in the show that connects to sexuality, sex, sexual fears and contamination. While vampires are not necessarily always invested of those meanings every single time they appear in the three-hundred-whatever episodes of the show, their main symbology is connected to sex and sexual fears, as vampires do in modern western literature, after all.

You’re probably going to think, wait, what? What has Mrs Butters got to do with sexual fears? Yeah, I know, it sounds weird, but hear me out.

The tomato juice - a stand-in for blood, with a vampire reference - parallels Mrs Butters (who represents trauma, remember) to 6x05 Live Free Or TwiHard. Sexual assault, blood, contamination via the poisoning liquid.

Next to the tomato juice there’s the smoothie. It’s a poison in disguise, a contaminated drink that makes Jack weak. We have, in fact, a pattern of Dean being given contaminated drinks that place him under another’s power. Not just the vampire’s blood, but also Jeremy from 3x10 Dream A Little Dream Of Me, who offers Dean a beer through which he connects him to his dreams. There’s Nick the siren from 4x14 Sex And Violence, who contaminates Dean through the flask. The venom in the siren’s saliva parallels straight to the gorgon Noah in 14x14 Ouroboros, and I don’t have to start explaining what all those things represent, right? (I have written posts about these things, it would be nice if tumblr didn’t suck and showed them to me when I go look for them.)

(Oh, there’s also Crowley’s human blood addiction, which is not, as one might expect, a parallel to Sam’s demon blood addition, but Dean’s First Blade/Mark Of Cain issue, and the First Blade/Mark Of Cain arc is all imbued by the queer subtext of the Dean-Crowley-Castiel triangle.)

Basically, Mrs Butters is inserted in a history of queer subtext, although it appears as obvious that Mrs Butters hardly represents homosexual desire, unless we go a pretty stretchy route of her occupying Cas’ space in the Dean-Sam-Cas-Jack family (I mean, that’s true, but it’s not simply that). It is also true that Mrs Butters represents Cuthbert Sinclair, and here the radar pings, because Cuthbert Sinclair is totally inside the pattern! He wanted to make Dean part of his collection just like the vampire in 6x05 wanted to make Dean part of his pack, with supernatural means of exorting control over Dean and heavy heavy rapey tones. (I know we don’t like to talk about this, but the show does play with incest subtext, John mirrors are often rapey.)

So, we have all this semantic area of poison, weakness and submission to external control painted in overtones of sexual assault and sexual fears especially in relation to homosexual desire. (I am NOT linking homosexual desire to sexual assult, nor the show is, it’s a wide and volatile semantic area where the common denominator is fear, fear of being hurt FOR being different sexually, it’s about vulnerability because of being different. It’s a horror narrative, guys, remember, queer fear is a recurrent theme in the genre. Dracula was about the horror of what happened to Oscar Wilde, we’re running in circles.)

Now, what kind of fear is explored in 15x14? Well, the episode is about the fear of losing family. The plot is about Dean’s feelings towards Jack after he killed Mary. Dean doesn’t know it yet, but he’s going to lose Cas soon also because of Jack. Mary and Cas are both very noisy absences in the episode, and we know that Dean is going to suffer something horrific again that will shatter his family again. This goes past the fears regarding forbidden sexual desire: we’re in the territory of forbidden familial desire, so to speak, Dean’s craving for a domestic peace with his family.

Jack is both the culmination of Dean’s process of family-building, as the son figure of the family, and the element of destruction of that family-building. Not a coincidence Jack’s birthday was referenced, as Jack’s birth coincided with Cas’ death and Mary’s supposed death or at least separation. Now Jack has supposedly killed Mary (or is it a inter-universe separation again? @drsilverfish​’s theory always pops up, and we keep getting reminded of other universes - the telescope is broken...) and we know that Cas’ ultimate death hangs above us.

We’re always running in a spiral, Dean’s relationship with Mary, Dean’s relationship with Cas, Dean’s relationship with motherhood and gender roles, Dean’s relationship with sexuality. There’s a big picture of mirrors in the semantic area of fantasies, idealizations, desires and dreams. I hope I managed to make this post make sense, but I’m always open to requests of clarification or elaboration. Thanks for reading!

[papermoonloveslucy]

100 ARTISTS & ENTERTAINERS OF THE CENTURY

June 8, 1998

Lucille Ball was one of the figures chosen to appear on the cover of Time Magazine’s June 8, 1998 issue celebrating the top 100 artists and entertainers of the century.  In a drawing by Al Hirschfeld, Ball shares the cover with filmmaker Stephen Spielberg, musician Bob Dylan, and artist Pablo Picasso. 

In the table of contents page, there is a photo of Lucille Ball, and her article is listed below Rodgers and Hammerstein, names that were frequently mentioned on “I Love Lucy.”  Also mentioned was Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, and Charlie Chaplin, who Lucy embodied on several occasions. 

LUCILLE BALL: The TV Star

The first lady of comedy brought us laughter as well as emotional truth. No wonder everybody loved Lucy

By Richard Zoglin

It happened somewhere between the clunky premier episode (”Lucy Thinks Ricky Is Trying to Murder Her”) and her first classic routine, the Vitameatavegamin commercial, in which Lucy gets steadily soused as she keeps downing spoonfuls of the alcohol-laced potion she's trying to hawk on TV. (Watch the spasm that jolts her face when she gets her first taste of the foul brew; it could serve as a textbook for comics well into the next millennium.) "I Love Lucy” debuted on CBS in October 1951, but at first it looked little different from other domestic comedies that were starting to make the move from radio to TV, like “My Favorite Husband”, the radio show Ball had co-starred in for three years. Lucy Ricardo was, in those early “I Love Lucy” episodes, just a generic daffy housewife. Ethel (Vivian Vance), her neighbor and landlady, was a stock busybody. Desi Arnaz, as bandleader Ricky Ricardo, hadn't yet become one of the finest straight men in TV history. William Frawley, as Fred Mertz, seemed a Hollywood has-been in search of work, which he was.

Then magic struck. Guided by Ball's comic brilliance, the show developed the shape and depth of great comedy. Lucy's quirks and foibles -- her craving to be in show biz, her crazy schemes that always backfired, the constant fights with the Mertzes -- became as particularized and familiar as the face across the dinner table. For four out of its six seasons (only six!), “I Love Lucy” was the No. 1-rated show on television; at its peak, in 1952-53, it averaged an incredible 67.3 rating, meaning that on a typical Monday night, more than two-thirds of all homes with TV sets were tuned to Lucy.

Ball's dizzy redhead with the elastic face and saucer eyes was the model for scores of comic TV females to follow. She and her show, moreover, helped define a still nascent medium. Before “I Love Lucy”, TV was feeling its way, adapting forms from other media. Live TV drama was an outgrowth of Broadway theater; game shows were transplanted from radio; variety shows and early comedy stars like Milton Berle came out of vaudeville. “I Love Lucy” was unmistakably a television show, and Ball the perfect star for the small screen. "I look like everybody's idea of an actress," she once said, "but I feel like a housewife." Sid Caesar and Jackie Gleason were big men with larger-than-life personas; Lucy was one of us.

She grew up in Jamestown, N.Y., where her father, an electrician, died when she was just three. (1) At 15 she began making forays to New York City to try to break into show business. She had little luck as an actress but worked as a model before moving to Hollywood in 1933 for a part in the chorus of “Roman Scandals”. Strikingly pretty, with chestnut hair dyed blond (until MGM hairdressers, seeking a more distinctive look, turned it red in 1942), she landed bit parts in B movies and moved up to classy fare like “Stage Door”, in which she held her own with Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers.

Buster Keaton, the great silent clown working as a consultant at MGM, recognized her comic gifts and worked with her on stunts. She got a few chances to show off her talent in films like “Du Barry Was a Lady” (with Red Skelton) and “Fancy Pants” (with Bob Hope) but never broke through to the top. By the end of the 1940s, with Ball approaching 40, her movie career was all but finished.

It was her husband Desi -- a Cuban bandleader she married shortly after they met on the set of “Too Many Girls” in 1940 -- who urged her to try television. CBS was interested in Ball, but not in the fellow with the pronounced Spanish accent she wanted to play her husband. To prove that the audience would accept them as a couple, Lucy and Desi cooked up a vaudeville act and took it on tour. It got rave reviews ("a sock new act," said Variety), and CBS relented.

But there were other haggles. Lucy and Desi wanted to shoot the show in Hollywood, rather than in New York City, where most TV was then being done. And for better quality, they insisted on shooting on film, rather than doing it live and recording on kinescope. CBS balked at the extra cost; the couple agreed to take a salary cut in return for full ownership of the program. It was a shrewd business decision: “I Love Lucy” was the launching pad for Desilu Productions, which (with other shows, like “Our Miss Brooks” and “The Untouchables”) became one of TV's most successful independent producers, before Paramount bought it in 1967.

Today “I Love Lucy”, with its farcical plots, broad physical humor and unliberated picture of marriage, is sometimes dismissed as a relic. Yet the show has the timeless perfection of a crystal goblet. For all its comic hyperbole, Lucy explored universal themes: the tensions of married life, the clash between career and home, the meaning of loyalty and friendship. The series also reflected most of the decade's important social trends. The Ricardos made their contribution to the baby boom in January 1953 -- TV's Little Ricky was born on the same day that Ball gave birth, by caesarean, to her second child, Desi Jr. (A daughter, Lucie, had been born in 1951.) They traveled to California just as the nation was turning west, in a hilarious series of shows that epitomized our conception of --and obsession with -- Hollywood glamour. And when the nation began moving to the suburbs, so too, in their last season, did the Ricardos.

Ball was a lithe and inventive physical comedian, and her famous slapstick bits -- trying to keep up with a candy assembly line, stomping grapes in an Italian wine vat -- were justly celebrated. But she was far more than a clown. Her mobile face could register a whole dictionary of emotions; her comic timing was unmatched; her devotion to the truth of her character never flagged. She was a tireless perfectionist. For one scene in which she needed to pop a paper bag, she spent three hours testing bags to make sure she got the right size and sound.

Most of all, I Love Lucy was grounded in emotional honesty. Though the couple had a tempestuous marriage off-screen (Desi was an unrepentant philanderer), the Ricardos' kisses showed the spark of real attraction. In the episode where Lucy finds out she is pregnant, she can't break the news to Ricky because he is too busy. Finally, she takes a table at his nightclub show and passes him an anonymous note asking that he sing a song, “We're Having a Baby”, to the father-to-be. As Ricky roams the room looking for the happy couple, he spies Lucy and moves on. Then he does a heartrending double take, glides to his knees and asks, voice cracking, whether it's true. Finishing the scene together onstage, the couple are overcome by the real emotion of their own impending baby. Director William Asher, dismayed by the unrehearsed tears, even shot a second, more upbeat take. Luckily he used the first one; it's the most touching moment in sitcom history.

Tired of the grind of a weekly series, Lucy and Desi ended “I Love Lucy” in 1957, when it was still No. 1. For three more years, they did hourlong specials, then broke up the act for good when they divorced in 1960. Ball returned to TV with two other popular (if less satisfying) TV series, “The Lucy Show” and “Here's Lucy”; made a few more movies (starring in “Mame” in 1974); and attempted a final comeback in the 1986 ABC sitcom “Life with Lucy”, which lasted an ignominious eight weeks. But “I Love Lucy” lives on in reruns around the world, an endless loop of laughter and a reminder of the woman who helped make TV a habit, and an art.

TIME senior writer Richard Zoglin still watches “I Love Lucy” reruns each day at 9 a.m.

(1) Ball’s father did not die in Jamestown, New York. He died in Wyandotte, Michigan, while on assignment for Bell Telephone. 

Some editions of the issue had an overlay cover that completely blocked Lucy from view!  She is not even mentioned in the text on the overlay!  

[how2to18]

MORE THAN FIFTY YEARS AFTER her death, Shirley Jackson has risen again.

The writer first shot to prominence in 1948 when her chilling short story “The Lottery” was published by The New Yorker, generating the most mail the magazine had ever received in response to a work of fiction; she went on to terrify readers in the American Gothic tradition of Hawthorne and Poe with over 200 short stories and six novels. Yet, for reasons both mysterious and typical, her work fell out of favor and was largely out of print just 10 years ago. The past few years, however, has seen a reviving interest in her work: several of her short story collections were reissued, including Dark Tales with a foreword by Ottessa Moshfegh, whose own work owes a lot to Jackson; Ruth Franklin’s biography Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life won the National Book Critics Circle Award; and, most recently, Netflix based its series The Haunting of Hill House on Jackson’s beloved ghost story of the same name. Jackson, who was described on the jacket copy of her novel The Road Through the Wall, as “perhaps the only contemporary writer who is a practicing amateur witch,” would no doubt have delighted in the posthumous comeback. Maybe we can consider it a literary haunting. If so, Jackson’s ghost has impeccable timing.

We are in a moment of deep political divisiveness, characterized by fear, and a nagging mistrust of institutions. An annual study conducted by Chapman University found that Americans biggest fear in 2018 was corruption of governmental officials, beating out a terrorist attack or even the death of a loved one. Between shady-seeming politicians, and the exaggerated online personas crafted on social media, there is a pervasive sense that people are not who they seem to be. After the 2016 presidential elections, many people woke to the disquieting realization that the country they lived in was not what they thought it was; the realization was not gradual, but spookily disorienting, as if it had been possessed by body-snatching aliens overnight. Totems of American wholesomeness have taken on sinister new meaning — neo-Nazis have swapped skinhead attire for all-American khakis and white polos. Upstanding men, many of them, like Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, projecting an image of the ideal family man, were accused of sexual misconduct and rape. In October, The New York Times reported that white supremacists co-opted milk as a sign of genetic superiority, apparently predicated on the ability to easily digest dairy. According to the paper, one supremacist wore in a racist Facebook post, “If you can’t drink milk, you have to go back.”

As fans of her work will know, this is pure Jackson territory — her work is characterized by the incipient horror that lurks in everyday American life. In “The Lottery,” the people of an unnamed village gather in the town square on a fine summer day in what first appears to be an idyllic portrait of small-town America … until the ritualistic stoning begins. In “What a Thought,” a bored housewife looks over at her adoring husband after dinner and is struck with the urge to murder him. In “The Beautiful Stranger,” a man returns from a business trip, unable to convince his wife he is really her husband. In “The Possibility of Evil,” Miss Strangeworth, a pleasant 71-year-old woman, beloved as the town matriarch, is revealed to have a habit of sending anonymous, incredibly hateful notes to various townspeople. She does it not out of malice but because “as long as evil existed unchecked in the world, it was Miss Strangeworth’s duty to keep her town alert to it.” Here, Jackson is particularly prescient: what Miss Strangeworth does with a stub of a pencil and sheets of colored paper, is what hundreds of thousands of perfectly nice people do on the internet today. We even have a supernatural nickname for them: trolls.

There is an old parable about a frog being boiled to death. It holds that a frog put in boiling water will jump out immediately. But a frog placed in water that is gradually heated won’t notice the change until he’s boiled alive. That’s what reading Jackson is like — the reader, like many of her characters, isn’t fully aware of the evil until it subsumes them, and then it is too late.

Hill House, the cursed Victorian mansion in The Haunting of Hill House, is immediately distasteful to the novel’s four main characters, who have moved into the house on an ill-fated research mission. But it isn’t until several days later that the root of the house’s wrongness is revealed — every angle in the house is a fraction of a degree off, giving its inhabitants a feeling of disorientation that is all the more unsettling because its cause is so hard to trace. Perhaps that’s why, once the initial ill impression wears off, the researchers find themselves quite comfortable at Hill House: “Odd,” thought Eleanor, the novel’s protagonist, “that the house should be so dreadful and yet in many respects so physically comfortable — the soft bed, the pleasant lawn, the good fire, the cooking of Mrs. Dudley.” Actually, that comfort is part of the house’s evil, a warm embrace that first placates and then suffocates its victims. Like the poor frog, Eleanor doesn’t realize the house’s hold on her until she’s already cooked.

Depending on the critic, Hill House has been said to symbolize everything from sexuality, the psyche, family, and the female body. Likely it’s some amalgamation of all these. Houses held a dual significance in Jackson’s own life. While she is best remembered for her ghost stories and thrillers, Jackson also penned humorous slice-of-life essays for women’s magazines that detailed her life as a dutiful housewife, raising four children in the suburbs. Jackson bore the brunt of childrearing and household chores, while her husband, literary critic Stanley Hyman, was a hands-off father, often embroiled in an affair with one of his students from Bennington College. In Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, biographer Ruth Franklin reveals how life in the home both stifled and inspired Jackson. “Jackson could not come into her own as a writer before she had children,” writes Franklin. “She would not have been the writer she became without them.” Later in her life, Jackson, increasingly unstable, alcoholic, obese, and addicted to amphetamines, would choose to spend most of her time in the family home, rarely leaving it but for the obligatory outing. She died there, at the age of 48, from an apparent heart attack in her sleep.

Whatever it meant to Jackson, Hill House’s menacingly seductive comfort is one that strikes a chord today. Modern life is safer and more convenient than ever. We have a dizzying array of gadgets that make our lives easier (and eliminate or ameliorate many of the household chores that would have occupied Jackson) and health care has progressed to the point that life expectancy has increased nearly a decade in just 50 years. Yet many of us are plagued with the sense that all is not well. Anxiety is at an all-time high, and the boom of the wellness industry testifies to the pervasive fear that our environment is trying to kill us: our air is poisoned, our bread is toxic, and our doctors are lying to us. Still, few of us choose to give up the modern comforts that have so ensnared us. In The Haunting of Hill House, the house is first introduced to us as “not sane.” We too can become comfortable in a house “not sane,” hypnotized by our phones and TVs, slaves to convenience, increasingly lonely and unhappy.

When Tessie Hutchinson, the loser of the draw in “The Lottery,” is ultimately stoned to death, it’s horrifying. But what really chills the reader is how easily her fate, and the entire tradition of the lottery, is accepted by the crowd. Old Man Warner, the village elder, scoffs at word that a neighboring village is talking of ending the tradition of the Lottery:

“Pack of crazy fools,” he says. “Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them. Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.’ First thing you know, we’d all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There’s always been a lottery.”

And he goes on for some time. It’s the kind of rhetoric many of us will recognize in today’s political discourse: if we let same-sex couples marry, next thing you know people will start marrying their animals! If we legalize cannabis, soon it’ll be heroin! If we let the immigrants in, the country will fall apart! Recently, the writer Lincoln Michel spoofed Jackson’s seminal work to make exactly that point, in his brilliant piece for McSweeney’s titled, “Stoning Our Neighbors to Death Makes the Corn Grow High, and Elitist Liberals Should Stop Attacking this Traditional Value.”

But Old Man Warner is not the only one guilty of perpetuating a brutal and inhuman practice. Each of the villagers is complicit, Mrs. Hutchinson included. “Be a good sport, Tessie,” says one of the other housewives. “All of us took the same chance.” It’s easy to imagine that if Tessie wasn’t chosen, she would have been throwing stones with the rest of the crowd. As the sacrificial victim, however, the tradition of the lottery looks very different to Mrs. Hutchinson. The short story ends with the following lines: “‘It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,’ Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.”

What’s amazing is how quickly each of the villagers forgets how it was only a stroke of random luck that saved them from sharing Mrs. Hutchinson’s fate. This is what we can learn from Jackson. In her work, the real evil isn’t violence or supernatural hauntings. It’s complacency. Jackson reminds us that, in real life, we don’t have to wait until we’ve drawn the bad lot to recognize the injustices around us.

¤

Hayley Phelan writes about culture, style, travel, food, and the internet for The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Elle, Conde Nast Traveler, Business of Fashion, and The Cut. She also has a column in the New York Times Thursday Styles Section.

The post Shirley Jackson, Trump, and the Evil of Complacency appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[allforshow93bsqo476-blog]

Where Will Allforshow93 StripCamFun Be 1 Year From Now?

Greater than a decade in the past, Once i was increasing up in Finland, my product of an attractive female was Pamela Anderson from “Baywatch.” She was my father’s preferred. Every time the boys at school questioned me who I Googled when my mother and father weren’t property, I stated, “Pamela,” and also the identify was greeted by using a unanimous nodding of heads.

I didn’t treatment much for her nude photographs, but I preferred that she was of Finnish heritage.

My nonsexual inner thoughts for Pamela were just one of several things which produced me an outcast. Yet another was that I most popular personal computers to persons. And so, as a youngster who cherished participating in board video games, I quickly discovered I could Enjoy them on the web with strangers with a Finnish gaming Web site.

To obtain the internet site, you typed your user title while in the blank discipline, waited for any slot to open and afterwards uncovered you in the principle chat space, where you could problem folks to your spherical of blackjack, keno or billiards. Other than it appeared not one person else was there to Perform Those people video games critically. The screen was a continuing stream of filthy messages.

I noticed not one person needed http://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=Allforshow93 to message using a boy in his early adolescence, but a lot of were being clamoring to talk with a sexy woman. And that’s wherever Pamela came in. To desire fellow gamers, I necessary to turn into a woman.

Utilizing Pamela’s age and several of her defining capabilities to create my new persona, I logged in towards the chat home as “CharlottaDD35.” Then the messages arrived pouring in.

I accepted an invite to Engage in billiards from Jarkko25. A screen popped up, and we were being escorted to A non-public area, where by an issue from him appeared inside the message box: “Are you experience frisky?”

“Why do you check with?” I typed.

“Could it be limited?” he requested.

I didn’t fully realize what he intended, but I understood it absolutely was dirty.

I waited a second after which wrote, “Yes.”

“Awesome,” he replied. “Age?”

“35,” I wrote. “But I love younger Adult men.”

“That’s sizzling. What do you seem like?”

I quickly Googled “Pamela+Anderson” and described what I noticed from the search results: “179 cm, blonde. I love to don heels and limited attire.”

“Mmmh. Do you've big breasts?”

“Indeed.”

“D-cups?”

“Yes.” I was firm to provide him everything he wanted.

“What kind of Gentlemen do you prefer?” he questioned.

Considering James Bond motion pictures, I stated: “Another person like Pierce Brosnan. Somebody who requires cost. Anyone trendy.”

“I am able to absolutely take cost,” he said.

I took a sip of my Kool-Assist. “6-pack?” I questioned. Now was time for me to be demanding; usually it wouldn’t seem real. Using a six-pack was a matter I’d listened to was desirable.

“Probably not,” he reported. “But I have one from the fridge.”

I laughed. Probably this man was wonderful.

What followed was my initial-at any time cybersex session, with him typing suggestive remarks and me typing, “Mmmh,” which looked as if it would perform for him.

My masquerade went on for months. I became a learn of giving Gentlemen the things they wished. The sheer amount of fascinated Adult men meant I might be picky, as well. I wished a conventionally handsome and pretty youthful gentleman. And considering the fact that I was a woman of these types of higher caliber, I didn’t Believe it absolutely was an excessive amount of to question.

I personalized my story to suit the opposite participants’ passions. I had been married with two young children. I'd a prosperous husband who couldn’t fulfill me sexually. We lived in a massive glass household with a private Seashore in one of Helsinki’s most distinctive suburbs. And due to the fact I had been a bored, lonely housewife, I normally required anyone to come back around and care for issues.

I discovered newbie pictures of naked women on line to send on the men and patched up regardless of what incongruities emerged: “The picture doesn’t Use a experience simply because I don’t want my partner to understand I’ve been submitting my shots on the net” or “I never give my quantity to strangers right until I’ve gotten to understand them very well ample.”

The back story also authorized me an escape just in case my dad and mom obtained household. “My partner just walked in, so I need to go now,” I would say. “Can’t wait around to talk to you quickly.”

I preferred this online seduction A great deal greater than I imagined I would. I explained to myself it was the Risk: of obtaining caught, of fooling the Gentlemen, of breaking rules. Whatever the scenario, I’d grow to be addicted. Each day right after school, I'd personally keep on my quest for the ideal gentleman.

That’s After i stumbled on Jussi. He described himself as a person who was 23, beloved the gym and had a 6-pack. He played ice hockey and basketball, masculine sports I’d usually wished to be superior at. But he was emotive much too. He despatched me messages such as, “You sound like an unbelievable lady” and “I'm able to feeling these types of heat in these messages of yours.”

He questioned me the usual thoughts: What are you donning? Exactly where do you like to do it? How do you like it?

I provided my standard answers: I used to be donning absolutely nothing (“I just acquired out of your shower and love to cool my body In a natural way”). I preferred executing it on just about every floor of the home and especially in public sites. All of the yoga I did designed me very adaptable, And that i beloved staying lifted up and twisted into adventurous sexual positions.

But then he started to look at what he hoped to uncover on the positioning: specifically, a romantic relationship that was actual and significant. I agreed I had been tired of sleeping all around far too. Typically I blocked a man at the time he began to insist on Conference in person, but Jussi was affected individual and sweet. I desired to continue conversing with him.

We logged in at the same time, day following day. I altered the routine around my school days by expressing, “I’ll ought to fall off the kids initially, so I gained’t be home right until three p.m. tomorrow.” He worked night time shifts for allforshow93 cam a safety guard, so he was constantly on-line Once i desired him being.

After a few weeks, he reported: “Can we meet presently? Please Charlotta.” He explained to me that he was Sick and tired of chatting Which if I didn’t say Sure, he wouldn’t think I was a true man or woman.

What we experienced was serious to me, and I didn’t desire to disappoint him. So I agreed.

We set a date for seven p.m. each week later. We agreed to meet on a street corner in the center of Helsinki, mere blocks from the place I lived. I hoped we'd figure out one another just because we had been chatting for therefore very long and experienced this sort of a powerful relationship.

As the times passed, nevertheless, the impossibility of it started to dawn on me. Even though I were to go meet him and have previous the First explanations, I could never come to be what he imagined me to get. And another thing dawned on me at the same time: I was starting to know I might be gay, and that’s why I was various from everyone else.

At seven p.m. that evening, my mother set sausages and French fries on the desk for dinner. I sat in silence, answering her questions having an absent-minded yes or no. Taking a look at the clock, it strike me: Jussi was now standing out while in the chilly evening, by yourself.

I wondered how long he would wait: Twenty minutes? 30? An entire hour? Would he camp out at a nearby cafe although wistfully on the lookout out of the window, hunting the passing group for Charlotta’s face?

I imagined him sitting around the bus on his way dwelling for the suburbs, hoping there’d been a mix-up: I’d both overlooked the day or mistaken time. I imagined him logging on to the chat room and scanning the checklist for my consumer name, only to return up empty: I’d blocked him to verify I didn’t have to read through by any excruciating messages.

A few several hours just after dinner, my mother came to knock on my doorway to tell me it absolutely was bedtime. As I lay by itself in the dark, I felt a similar loneliness Jussi have to have been sensation.

I would like there had been a way for me to inform him what his on-line companionship intended to me: That he had designed it possible for me to generally be myself inside of a strictly gendered world of Pamela Andersons and James Bonds. That he experienced helped me believe I had been funny, fascinating and price speaking to. That he had, if only by his presence, built it feasible for me to start to approach my sexuality.

By pretending for being somebody I was not, I'd shown him my genuine self, one particular I were too worried to expose to any person else. And in the end, I had been in the position to embrace that true self, an acceptance that may allow me — many years later on, as an Grownup in Ny city — to find real appreciate as an actual individual.

[theupsidedownunderblog-blog]

HELLO POSSUMS - IT'S DAME EDNA EVERAGE!

By her own admission, Dame Edna Everage is probably the most popular and gifted woman in the world! Her Facebook page explains that she is a housewife, investigative journalist, social anthropologist, talk show host, swami, children’s book illustrator, spin doctor, Megastar, and Icon. Along with Olivia Newton-John, Kylie Minogue and Nicole Kidman, she is one of a remarkable succession of female stars to emerge from Australia.

Dame Edna Everage Her success Down Under was repeated in London with stage shows including "Housewife, Superstar", "A Night with Dame Edna" and countless command performances for the royal family. Her recent Broadway show, "Dame Edna: The Royal Tour" received the Tony Award for Live Theatrical Event and was met with unanimous critical acclaim. Television credits include the now legendary UK special, “A Night on Mt. Edna” and two series of her own innovative chat show, “The Dame Edna Experience”, with special guests Cher, Robin Williams, Roseanne Barr, Sean Connery and Mel Gibson.

Her books include Dame Edna’s Coffee Table Book, Dame Edna’s Bedside Companion and her seminal autobiography, My Gorgeous Life, which is currently being adapting for the stage and screen. Possibly Jewish, Dame Edna is a widow, with three grown children. She spends her time visiting world leaders and jet-setting between her homes in Los Angeles, London, Sydney, Switzerland and Martha’s Vineyard. She is the Founder and Governor of Friends of the Prostate and the creator of The World Prostate Olympics. But who is she really? Dame Edna Everage is a character created and performed by Australian comedian Barry Humphries, famous for her lilac-coloured or "wisteria hue" hair and cat eye glasses or "face furniture", her favourite flower, the gladiolus ("gladdies") and her boisterous greeting: "Hello, Possums!"

Dame Edna & Barry Humphries are one and the same As Dame Edna, Humphries has written several books including an autobiography, My Gorgeous Life, appeared in several films and hosted several television shows (on which Humphries has also appeared as himself and other alter-egos). Humphries has regularly updated Edna, originally a drab Melbourne housewife satirising Australian suburbia; then he caused the Edna character to adopt an increasingly outlandish wardrobe after performances in London in the 1960s through which his Edna character grew in stature and popularity. Following film appearances and an elevation to damehood in the 1970s, the character evolved to "Housewife and Superstar", then "Megastar" and finally "Gigastar". Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Dame Edna became increasingly well-known and popular in North America after multiple stage and television appearances.

Barry Humphries Edna describes her chat-shows as "an intimate conversation between two friends, one of whom is a lot more interesting than the other". The character has been used to satirise the cult of celebrity, class snobbery, and prudishness and is often used by Humphries to poke fun at the political leaders and fashions of the times. Her larger-than-life persona and scathing commentary on society and celebrity, as well as her habit of treating celebrities like ordinary people (on her TV shows) and ordinary people like celebrities (in her stage shows) have become signatures. Although Humphries freely states that Edna is a character he plays, Edna refers to Humphries as her "entrepreneur" or manager. Humphries and his staff of assistants and writers only refer to Edna as "she" and "her", never mixing the character with Humphries himself. It is this precision and richness of identity which gives Dame Edna her unique force as a character. While Dame Edna is a fictitious character, so complete is her identity as an individual that Macmillan published My Gorgeous Life, Edna's "autobiography" (written by Humphries but credited to Edna herself), on its non-fiction list. Humphries has also written an "Unauthorised Biography" of his life as Edna's manager: Handling Edna, published in 2010.

Dame Edna Everage - My Georgeous Life According to My Gorgeous Life, and statements Edna has made over the years, she was born Edna May Beazley in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, with a sibling who would give birth to Barry McKenzie. Everage spends her time visiting world leaders and jet-setting between her homes in Los Angeles, London, Sydney, Switzerland and Martha's Vineyard. She is a friend and confidante of Queen Elizabeth II and has advised prime ministers and presidents. Edna once took an on-air phone call from President Ronald Reagan to assure him that he was, indeed, still the president; and at recent stageshows the character has claimed to be giving former Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, elocution lessons. How it all began It all began when Barry Humphries was invited to join the fledgling Union Theatre Repertory Company in 1955 and toured Victorian country towns performing Twelfth Night, directed by Ray Lawler. On tour, Humphries invented Edna gradually as part of the entertainment for the actors during commutes between country towns. Humphries gradually developed a falsetto impersonation of a Melbourne housewife, imitating the Country Women's Association representatives who welcomed the troupe in each town. At Lawler's suggestion, Mrs Everage (later named Edna after Humphries' nanny) made her first appearance in a Melbourne University's UTRC revue at the end of 1955, as the city prepared for the 1956 Olympic Games. The sketch involved a houseproud "average housewife" offering her Moonee Ponds home as an Olympic billet, spruiking her home as possessing "burgundy wall-to-wall carpets, lamington cakes and reindeers frosted on glass dining-room doors".

A young Dame Edna Everage wearing her Opera House hat At this time the character was billed as "Mrs Norm Everage" (Humphries describing this name as "Everage as in 'average', husband Norm as in 'normal'") and had none of the characteristic flamboyant wardrobe of later years. And so it was on December 13, 1955 that a Melbourne theatre audience first clapped eyes on Edna Everage who would over time transform herself into the globe-straddling, guffaw-inducing, gut-wrenching monster from Moonee Ponds. Fellow expat Clive James would eventually sum up this glorious and ghastly creation by  describing her alter ego Barry Humphries: "The Devil gets into him, and he seems to welcome the invasion. Certainly Edna welcomes the invasion. She would, being a witch." When she made her stage debut – over 60 years ago, at the Union Theatre of Melbourne University where Humphries was a student – she was Mrs Norman Everage, of Humoresque Street, Moonee Ponds.

University of Melbourne's Union House Theatre Humphries' mother was a major inspiration for Edna, although he denied it when she was alive to protect her feelings. Her first monologue in 1955 was about her lovely home, reflecting young Barry’s own site visits accompanying his builder father. Originally she was a "mousy" character and too quiet to please the raucous crowd at the Establishment Club in London. According to one author, Edna came into her own during the 1980s when the policies of Thatcherism—and what he described as the "vindictive style of the times" — allowed Dame Edna to sharpen her observations accordingly.  Lahr wrote that Edna took Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's "seemingly hypocritical motto" of "caring and compassion" for others and turned it on its head, Edna became the voice of Humphries' outrage. By the 1980s, Dame Edna had evolved from a drab housewife from Melbourne’s working class suburb of Moonee Ponds to an international star who hosted her own talk show. Celebrities including Sean Connery, Chubby Checker, Charlton Heston, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Mel Gibson and Dusty Springfield appeared on The Dame Edna Experience.

Dame Edna Everage with Sean Connery She became known for her glasses, her lilac curls, her ‘Hello possums!’ greeting and her ‘gladdies’ – the bunch of gladioli that she threw to the audience at the end of her live shows. Humphries’s characters have been such a hit in Britain that he was made a CBE in 2007 for services to entertainment. In the U.S., he won  the Tony award for best special theatrical event in 2000 for Dame Edna: The Royal Tour.

Dame Edna meets the Queen Honours On 7 March 2007 Melbourne renamed a city street in her honour: Dame Edna Place, formerly Brown Alley off Little Collins Street, was officially opened by the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, John So. Dame Edna Place is opposite Royal Arcade and The Causeway, between the major roads, Elizabeth Street and Swanston Street; it was, until its renaming, a service alley for adjoining buildings. Dame Edna was not at the renaming ceremony but was represented by ten look-alike Dames. Everage Street in suburban Moonee Ponds has also been named in her honour.

Dame Edna Place in Melbourne In 1982, Dame Edna's alter-ego Barry Humphries was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (OAM) for "services to the theatre" and on 16 June 2007 he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to entertainment. In MAC Cosmetics 2008 Winter Line-Up, a Dame Edna collection of cosmetics were released including eye shadow, lipstick, powder, and nail polish. A bronze statue was unveiled at Melbourne Docklands in January 2009. It is located by the Yarra river near Harbour Town which also includes statues of singer John Farnham, Dame Nellie Melba, and Graham Kennedy.

Dame Edna Everage statue at Docklands Controversy Dame Edna is certainly no stranger to controversy.  A search of the internet is rife with her somewhat satirically acidic comments. In 2003 Vanity Fair magazine invited Dame Edna to write a satirical advice column. She created a storm of controversy with a piece published in the February 2003 issue. Replying to a reader who asked if she should learn Spanish, she wrote: "Forget Spanish. There's nothing in that language worth reading except Don Quixote, and a quick listen to the CD of Man of La Mancha will take care of that ... Who speaks it that you are really desperate to talk to? The help? Your leaf blower?" Some members of the Hispanic community read this reply as a racist remark and complaints flooded in to the magazine. Actress Salma Hayek responded angrily, penning a furious letter in which she denounced Dame Edna. After Vanity Fair received death threats, the magazine published a full-page apology to the Hispanic community.

Salma Hayek responed angrily to Dame Edna's remarks Humphries commented later: "If you have to explain satire to someone, you might as well give up". When Dame Edna was questioned about the controversy on the eve of her 2003 Australian tour, she retorted that Hayek's denunciation was due to "professional jealousy", and that Hayek was envious because the role of painter Frida Kahlo (for which Hayek received an Oscar nomination) had originally been offered to Edna: When I was offered the part of Frida I turned it down, and she was the second choice. I said 'I'm not playing the role of a woman with a moustache and a monobrow, and I'm not having same-sex relations on the screen' ... I'm not racist. I love all races, particularly white people. You know, I even like Roman Catholics Dame Edna retires In March 2012 Humphries announced that the character would be retired at the end of the current stage tour; however, as of 2013 he has decided to bring her back. Video: Dame Edna Everage gives her usual cheek to Michael Parkinson on his chatshow. Free clip from the popular british talk show Parkinson. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dame_Edna_Everage http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/dame-edna-60-years-of-megastardom-20151211-glliea.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2116755/Dame-Edna-Everage-hangs-glasses-retires-6-decades.html https://www.facebook.com/DameEdnaOfficial?fref=ts Read the full article