#to the extent that I had a conversation about it with my hairdresser on thursday when it turned out she'd watched it

[thebeautifulsoup]

Some thoughts on Knowing You Are Loved and Bodies (2023):

I find it really interesting that Know You Are Loved is what Mannix's entire plan hinges on. It's the fulcrum on which his plan pivots.

Obviously it's a clear and not-even-disguised allegory for the cycle of abuse: it just so happens that in this case, and through time travel shenanigans, the cycle of abuse is being perpetrated time and again by a man towards himself as a child. Being and feeling unloved is what leads to the bomb in 2023 and Mannix's rise to power in the future (and the past), which is what leads him to what he desperately craves: feeling loved, however false and helped along by power and fear that might be. So he engineers his own upbringing to be as unloving as possible, in order that he might continue to be. Because genuine love would ruin that.

But what has really been scratching at my brain the last couple of days is the phrase "Know You Are Loved". Obviously, it's the calling card of a cult. But nothing about this cult is loving, not even this phrase. If we look at it:

Know You Are Loved

It is so passive.

No one here is saying "I love you". The love here is not active, and I just think it's amazing hearing that - cold, casual, passive - and having it compared to the vital and active love we see throughout the series: with Shaharah and her son, with Karl and Esther, Alfred and Henry and his family. And yes, those loves end tragically (in one timeline at least), but there is no argument that they do not make the characters' lives richer.

And then we look at what Mannix is doing to those around him and his younger self: he gathers people around him, but we can see there is no actual love there. He never tells them "I love you", they never say it to him. To the extent that Mannix mocks Hillinghead for sacrificing himself for love, which Hillinghead rightfully calls him out on.

"Know You Are Loved."

But not by me, and not I by you. It's just enough of a sign of affection for people to feel momentarily comforted by it, but it does not stand up to any kind of scrutiny.