#understand the morality of a straightforward cartoon | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

stranger-who-writes-fiction · 4 years ago

Text

Me, throughout the entirety of 6x05:

And I suppose I could just leave it there but NO, we’re doing a LIST. Of all the excellent things from “Prom Night!”

SPOILERS!

AV Club reviewer giving this episode the first ‘A’ of the season: :D

AV Club reviewer still insisting that “Midvale” was filler: D:<

Forever destined to disagree with the AV Club reviews in some way or another...

Okay, so! We begin with a very helpful reminder from Alex that things are different, in this Post-Crisis World!

(I mean, on the one hand, am I slightly distressed that key aspects of the Pilot and the WHOLE of “Midvale” are now gone, along with Earth-38? Yes.

On the other, Kara remembers her lived-experiences of everything that had transpired in the Earth-38 timeline, so they still sorta happened and have informed her characterization.

So...it’s fine. It’s fine. This is fine.)

I do love that, ‘Kara punched a meteorite out of the sky’ is now a Thing That Happened, though.

(Well perhaps NOT ANYMORE but I’m getting ahead of myself.)

KENNY LIIIIIIIIIIIIIVES!!!!!

“Scooby-Duo” listen, as someone who has already imagined all these kiddos in Hanna-Barbera cartoon style, running around Midvale, solving crimes and saving the day, I loved this description.

Alex being like, ‘DO. NOT. SCREW UP. MY PAST.’ ahhhhh we love to see that scary Older Sibling energy on full display.

And then Brainy and Nia are off to the past!

The only thing that could’ve made the utterance of ‘totes’ worse would’ve been the addition of, ‘magotes’. Thank goodness they exercised restraint in the writers’ room.

FORTUNATELY the terrible ordeal of reliving dated slang is offset by some truly excellent lines and line-reads throughout the rest of the episode.

For instance! Loved Brainy’s, ‘the perfect optical illusion’ and ‘off the dash, please.’ So great.

Other honorable mentions: ‘Damn it, Mitch!’ ‘That’s a LOT of exposure’ and I forget the line itself but when Cat’s like, ‘normal town my a--’ and then the cut to commercial break AAAAAHHHHHH so good.

Okay, back to the episode, Nia and Brainy, on the Legion Cruiser, AND THEN!

AND THEN AND THEN AND THEN!

OUR KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDS!!!!!

I love them. It won’t happen, but gosh, I want a Midvale spin-off so bad.

Like, the Crisis retcon made some space in the girls’ past for a spin-off to actually...kinda work.

(But sustaining the premise across multiple episodes/seasons would be tricky and there would always be the threat of running up against like. The current show’s continuity.

But hey! They could just ignore it, I guess! That’s what the Superman show is doing!) *insert frowny emoji here*

So the kids have gathered with Alex for milkshakes, which is delightful.

But ALL IS NOT WELL! As Alex reads about the ‘luckiest town’ and is like:

(Except with a lot more anxiety and frowning)

I feel as though we already knew Alex went to Stanford but I can’t remember if Kara’s (terrible) resume revealed that she went to National City University?

*Checks* Yes it did.

Another thing I LOVE is just. Alex as the Responsible One, whose anxiety is perpetually cranked to a 9.5, driving the Scooby-Duo around in the suburban mom van for super-ing jobs.

Also, ‘super-ing’ is an excellent verb, 15/10

Young Cat Grant! ....More on her later.

Nicole and Jesse did such a great job with the comedy in this episode--their initial attempt at a cover story/lie is so good.

And the masterful transition into an actual good lie that Nia knew would win Kara over...VERY NICE.

Kara being so obviously thrilled that there are OTHER ALIENS! WITH POWERS! HERE, IN MIDVALE! RIGHT HERE!

Fandom has ruined the whole ‘Kara has golden retriever energy’ as is their way but I must say...very much getting ‘excited puppy energy’ here.

Nia and Kara comparing powers was so CUUUUUUUUTE!!!!

As was the picture on Kenny’s desk of him and Kara. D’aaaawwww.

(But OH NO SADNESS...BECAUSE A BREAKUP IS IMMINENT.)

Okay in addition to all of the incredibly adorable content we also get lots of FAMILY FEEEEEEELINGS, which: Yes, good, yes.

But Eliza is only here as a PICTURE on Kara’s nightstand and a NAME on Alex’s badge, I am sad. :C

(Hope Helen Slater is in this last season at some point...need that soothing mom energy after all the Phantom Zone angst)

I think I’m out of order now but Kenny wanting to help Kara help people is just. The most adorable thing.

Spoiler alert: I use the word ‘adorable’ a lot in this list. Sorry...but also not.

The Brainy music when he’s in the school computer lab watching the printer is really great. I think we’ve heard it before, but it meshed so well with the whole vibe of both the character and the episode, just stood out nicely, I guess.

Okay, so. Do we think that Jesse could always do the baseball bat tricks, and the writers wrote it in, or do we think that he learned them for the show? My money is on the former.

Either way, very impressive.

And now for the truck situation! I kinda thought it would turn out that it was Cat’s doing, as she was trying to suss out the ‘super’, but nope, it was the blue dudes.

(Which makes more sense, since they have no qualms about endangering other people.)

And ON THAT NOTE, the blue guys! They are the perfect level of ridiculous, and they are wonderfully straightforward in ways that the Phantoms are not.

Also, I love that one of them is named Mitch?

Nia and Kara save the day!

After Kara busts the brakes and is like, ‘uhhh....they’re not working’

I noticed the Metropolis license plate and while yes it’s a little strange that plates are...apparently city-based in this corner of Earth Prime, stranger still is that Cat presumably drove clear across the country to check out this story. Right? Like, that’s the only way she has that plate out in Midvale?

Wait, wait. Totally forgot to mention Kara and Nia’s EXTREMELY OBVIOUS ‘don’t be suspicious’ sunglasses gambit at the Midvale College campus you absolute DORKS.

Right, so.

Remember those FAMILY FEELZ??? WELL!

We’ve got Nia’s call to her mom, which, oof. OOOOOF.

And then we have even MORE FEELINGS aka: The garage talk.

Okay. OKAY. So even though I’m a little sad “Midvale” no longer occurred in Earth Prime’s timeline, I am fascinated by the ways this new series of events have impacted Alex, Kara, and their past. (Also thrilled that Kenny lives, natch). Alex’s resentment and the burden of ‘protect Kara, PROTECT KARA’ have been left to simmer while Kara’s determination to help people has led to some...earnest but slightly careless secret hero work. The building blocks of the conflict introduced in “Midvale” are still there so while it might at first seem a little...repetitive, for Alex to lay all this out to Kara, it’s really just the reveal of a new boiling point; a post-crisis update on the scene in Midvale where Alex is like, ‘I had two parents before you showed up.’

AAAAAAAAAHHHHH IT’S EMOTIONALLY DEVESTATING I LOVE IT.

And then like. The new, but also not-new angle, of Alex leveraging her world-weariness against Kara’s youthful optimism/somewhat reckless desire to help, and then Kara throwing BACK that she’s explored other solar systems.

The LAYERS.

Also that Alex is like, ‘we need weapons, let’s tell mom and also call the DEO,’ classic Alex.

The garage talk ends with Kara determined to come clean to Kenny...BUT OH NO, THE HERO HIDEOUT IS SO CUTE, AND KENNY IS SO DEAR.

And the reveal that the almost-kiss in “Midvale” actually happened d’awwwww these kids.

Like. I am legitimately torn, here. I totally understand and support Kara in being honest with Kenny about the whole college situation--but also GAH. KENNY IS SO NICE AND CUTE AND EARNEST.

You know what ELSE is nice and cute and earnest?

Nia singing “9 to 5″ to Brainy to cope with stress and boost morale.

Heckin’ adorable, gosh.

Aaaaaand some other stuff occurred as the episode closed out but I don’t have them in my notes and BASICALLY I want the next hour like, now. Right now. Because this was WONDERFUL. FROM START TO FINISH.

So some Overall thoughts!

I said we’d get to Cat ‘CJ’ Grant later, so here we are: I...think I liked her? Overall? It was a performance that gradually won me over, is how I would describe it.

Absolutely wild that Cat built a media empire in a mere six years.

Also her whole, ‘I am going to find this extraordinary being and name them and kick Lois Lane into the classifieds’...I mean she eventually gets two out of three, there.

As I already started to mention, sad that Eliza wasn’t here! But it makes sense, since a lot of this, Kara is trying to keep on the DL.

Obviously, I am ALWAYS down for these flashback situations with the young Danvers. But it was also nice to take a break from the Phantom stuff. The plot here is simple/streamlined in a way the Phantom stuff...isn’t. I love the emotional character stuff coming out of the Phantom Zone arc but wow, the Phantoms are just. Needlessly complicated.

The little episode recap where Lena is explaining that Phantom Prime is like a bloodhound was like, ‘oh right, they do that too...in addition to all the other stuff that they apparently do.’

So, yes. Welcome change.

The change of scenery + type of action was nice too!

Though RIP to everyone’s hair, fighting against the moisture.

This episode also handled the Brainy/Nia relationship really well, IMO. Like, due to the whole, ‘trying to fit so much in, always’ approach to Supergirl episodes sometimes results in a bit of...one-sidedness, for various characters. Think for instance of Kelly needing to cheer everyone on in episode 2, but not having space for her own feelings/emotional needs in that episode.

I’ve felt that a bit with Brainy and Nia thus far--one will sort of take up more narrative space, so the relationship feels a little lopsided.

NOT SO HERE! They are both going through some stuff, they are both struggling to cope, they both come to rely on one another for help.

YES. GOOD. YES!!!!

Something I’m loving about season 6 overall is that so far, it doesn’t feel like the plot is stepping on character development too much. Like, it still isn’t a perfect balance, and some episodes manage it better than others, but compared to season 5? Leaps and bounds.

Everything was so nicely tied together and the dialogue was witty, the humor was delightful, EVERYONE WAS ADORABLE AND EARNEST AND DID I MENTION ADORABLE?* but they never lost sight of the themes and emotional through-lines and GAAAAAHHHHHH MIDVALE EPISODES ARE THE BEEEEEESTTTTTTTTT!

*Okay Alex was mainly stressed out but that’s to be expected.

TL;DR - Best episode of the season thus far? Best episode of the season thus far.

#SG post #long post #supergirl spoilers #supergirl season 6 spoilers #gif

13 notes · View notes

aquillis-main · 4 years ago

Note

Oh, on the topic of villains being redeemed, so Disney announced that they will release another villain movie in May 2021... about Cruella De Vil. Aside from wondering "Who even asked for this?", I don't understand what's the draw even supposed to be here. Cruella's entire character is that she's an evil mistress who wants to skin puppies. You know very well they are gonna go the Maleficent route here, but what kind of sappy backstory can you come up with here? I didn't watch 101 Dalmatians and think "Man, if only we knew how she ended up like this..." because she didn't need it. She was an effective and scary villainess in the original cartoon because of her straightforward motivation and how ruthless she was in achieving it. I'd even take an Yzma movie over this. Granted, I do partially blame the modern fandom culture for this, specifically the prevalent mindset of "if you like a morally questionable character who does morally questionable things, then you 100% condone and support said behavior, which means you are totally a bad person!"

Yeah. They did that with Hook of all characters in that stupid Peter Pan Remake, and it makes me sick at how often they keep on redeeming villains by making them ‘good’. The only remake I approve of is the Jungle Book remake, because they actually did add back in all the stuff that the original book had, but the original movie left out.

I just... I hate the ‘if you are protag, that means you have to be good’ mentality these days. I hate this dumbass belief. I would kill for Malificent being scorned by the fairies for not being kind over... the fuck the Angelia Jolie movie was about.

#Aquillis Answers #amida-mothrae #Disney #Malificent #Opinion

4 notes · View notes

magnhild · 5 years ago

Text

When Not to Redeem: Steven Universe, RWBY and She-ra

If there’s one thing these shows have in common aside from being fantastic fantasy cartoons, it’s that they all have a villainous character in them that some of the fandom are begging to be redeemed, despite the fact they probably really shouldn’t be.

Redemption has become big in the field of television ever since the days of Avatar: The Last Airbender, which pulled off a deep, up-and-down and wonderfull-written redemptive arc for Prince Zuko, the main antagonist. Since then, a call for villainous redemption has been commonplace if fandoms, especially when it comes to animated shows. But what many people fail to understand is that it’s not a simple change to make and there need to be a lot of factors in place to have the villain be deserving of redemption and to have it be believable.

Now let’s look at these three ladies.

Jasper, Cinder Fall and Catra are some of the biggest, meanest villains from their respective series. And yet, especially in the case of Jasper and Catra, the fandoms are begging for redemption for their ‘precious babies’. Why? Well, because a lot of these people have a deep misunderstanding of what redemption really is and under what circumstances it should happen. One thing these characters have in common is that they all have- though it’s only implied in Cinder’s case- a tragic backstory. Jasper has deep issues with her self-worth due to being created under unfortunate circumstances, Cinder is based off Cinderella and so likely grew up in an abusive household and Catra has been abused her whole life and then had her best friend leave her for the good guys. So, they’re probably pretty sad sometimes. In fact, Catra’s sad quite a lot. She and both of the others have all had moments in their shows that may have had us feeling a tad sorry for them. Sooo they should be redeemed right?

Wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy all three of these characters. But I enjoy them because they’re evil; because they’re actual threats and because powerful female villains are really cool. And have found myself feeling sorry for each of them at their lowest points. But having a tragic backstory and showing any emotion aside from ‘evil’ does not mean they deserve redemption. It’s a good start if you are going to redeem your characters, but several other factors should apply for the best results.

The first thing- and this is the most important- is that a character needs to actually acknowledge that they've done wrong. But all three of these characters either wholeheartedly believe that they are the ones on the right path or know and simply don’t care, so long as they’re getting what they want. In the case of Zuko, he came to realize over the course of two seasons that the Fire Nation wasn’t as great and powerful as he’d thought and that he wasn’t doing the right thing by enforcing their rules over everyone else. This is what ultimately led him towards his path of redemption. Neither Jasper, Cinder or Catra have had this heel realization, so turning good all of a sudden isn’t a realistic path for them in the slightest.

Then there’s the factor of actually regretting their actions. It’s been implied in the last couple of seasons of She-ra that Catra, at least, may have a subconscious regret over what she’s done, but it can be argued that anyone would after almost destroying the entire universe and yourself in the process. Jasper and Cinder, however, have never once shown remorse for their several murder attempts- and successful murders, in Cinder’s case. If you don’t regret hurting people, it should be a good sign that you are not deserving of redemption or even forgiveness.

The last important factor is one that doesn’t yet relate to any of the three characters I’ve been discussing, but it’s important nonetheless- redemption should never be a straightforward path. It needs to be bumpy. It needs to be gradual. There must be steps backward. Zuko didn’t immediately switch sides the moment he discovered the extent of the Fire Nation’s harm. He spent a whole season in conflict over it and then took several steps backwards when he allowed his sister Azula to manipulate him into taking down the heroes and returning to his villainous father. It wasn’t until halfway through the show’s final season that he realized he still wasn’t happy and had betrayed his uncle’s faith in him by making the wrong decision. And even after siding with our heroes, he still retained his grumpy personality. The change wasn’t drastic, but instead gradual and realistic.

Now, in the case of Jasper, all of this is for naught. Steven Universe, while one of my favourite shows, doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to redemption, with almost all of the villain redemptions being met with backlash from fans and critics. They do somewhat have an excuse; Steven Universe is set in an idealized fantasy world where it actually is possible for super bad people to truly regret their actions and want to do better. However, it still pushes the idea the bad people should be forgiven, which is a questionable moral. And in Jasper’s case, it appears she is still beginning to be redeemed despite not acknowledging her faults and not feeling any remorse whatsoever for what’s she’s done. At the very least, it’s looking to be gradual, but with 10 episodes left in the series, it may still end up being rushed.

For Cinder, I can’t find myself believing that she will ever be redeemed and I’ll be extremely annoyed if she ever is. RWBY doesn’t have Steven Universe’s trait of being a kid’s shown about forgiveness; it’s far more grounded in reality when it comes to how people act and it would be much too far-fetched if Cinder- who takes great joy in causing others pain because it makes her feel powerful- were to suddenly side with our heroes, especially given her extreme grudge against Ruby. Cinder is at her best as she is- a manipulative, clever and truly-evil villain.

Catra, I’m still on the fence about. As mentioned earlier, she literally tried to destroy the entire universe as petty revenge against her ex-best friend. Were this RWBY, I would be adamant that she never be redeemed. Luckily for She-ra, this is a kid’s show and doesn’t need to be as realistic in such terms. It would be great if it was, but I can accept that it isn’t. At the end of season 4, it looks as if Catra is going to be forming some kind of alliance with Glimmer, if just so they can escape their situation. Whether or not she’ll go back to being a villain after that is unknown, but I can’t help but feel she’s headed for a full redemption anyway. And with only two short seasons left, I’m not sure they have enough time to pull it off. Perhaps they’ll surprise me and do the best they can, but it seems more likely that it will be a rushed effort where all Catra will have to do is apologize to be immediately accepted as a good guy. Only time will tell.

To recap, these are the three most important factors in a good and effective villain redemption:

Acknowledgement of wrongdoing

Remorse for wrongdoing

A gradual and rocky path to goodness

The weight of what the villain has done should also be a considered factor, but this will differ from show to show depending on how realistic the characters and their decisions are. Though, if a character has murdered several people for their own enjoyment and power, it would probably be a good idea not to try and redeem them. That’s not a great message to send under any circumstance.

Hopefully, this little essay has made you think twice about which characters you want to be redeemed, or maybe even helped you decided whether or not you want to redeem a villain in your own story. And if not, I hope it was a fun read anyway.

#rwby #steven universe #she-ra and the princesses of power #essay #villains #avatar: the last airbender #prince zuko #cinder fall #catra #jasper

106 notes · View notes

arecomicsevengood · 4 years ago

Text

Quarantine Movie-Watching Journal, Continued

Throughout all this quarantine time I’ve been chronicling my watching movies, I’ve also been reading books, but have had assorted troubles on a level that seems close to basic comprehension, or just getting on their wavelength. Part of this is having a certain tendency towards the difficult or avant-garde in terms of what I think is “good,” but also wanting things to make sense or have a certain level of clarity: It’s maybe a difficult balance to strike but I don’t know, plenty of books pull it off, I have plenty of favorites. Nothing I’ve read recently has really been hitting, the only thing I’ve found compulsively readable is Virginie Despentes’ Vernon Subutex series, which I would hesitate to recommend as I also think they’re kind of bad. I want clarity on a certain level, and mystery on a deeper one; a lot of things essentially get the formula backwards, and feel incredibly obvious and free of ideas while employing obfuscatory language. (This isn’t to say I like “straightforward” prose, the “mystery” I’m referring to is basically created as an act of alchemy when language is functioning on its highest level, and insight, mood, imagery, and motion are all generated simultaneously. This isn’t “plain speech” I’m describing, but it doesn’t short-circuit the brain’s ability to make sense of it.)

In watching a lot of older movies I find that one of the things that help them maintain a level of interest is I possess a certain confusion about their cultural context. Even if something is a perfectly straightforward mainstream entertainment, there is still a sense of confusion or mystery about it, where you can follow it perfectly, but don’t necessarily know where it’s coming from, so it’s unclear where it’s going. In contrast, watching modern movies, especially more mainstream things but also, generally speaking, everything, I feel like not only do I know exactly where it’s coming from it’s also aggressively spelling everything out, as if to avoid moral confusion. This is also combined with a certain aggressiveness to the editing, so even as everything too fast-paced on certain level, it also ends up being too long, because it needs to fit in a certain level of redundancy. Older things tend to have a greater degree of storytelling clarity that’s also premised on a higher level of trust in the viewer’s ability to intuit things. Maybe there’s also a greater level of reliance on a set of semiotic devices that we’ve become more critical of over time, but what’s emerged in their absence feels more self-consciously insistent.

Little Women (2019) dir. Greta Gerwig

After watching this I looked up on IMDB to see what Gerwig is up to now and she’s slated to direct a Barbie movie? I hate this era, where success doesn’t lead to any actual clout to make important or interesting work, but instead forces artists into these traps of economic contract where they service a trademark. Also this movie is kind of weird because all these actresses are in their twenties but I think are meant to be playing teenagers for most of it? Or even younger? This movie basically feels like it is meant to be for children but is given this gloss over it to maybe seem appealing to young adult modern feminists but it doesn’t really seem like it would be except to the extent they’re indulging a youthful nostalgia.

Shirley (2020) dir. Josephine Decker

I’ve been wanting to watch Decker’s last movie Madeline’s Madeline because a lady I met and thought was cute has a small role in it. I guess all her movies are about artists and performers? I like that this one seems capable of depicting a fiction writer without just presenting their work as autobiographical but I guess that’s because it’s, you know, a real person whose story is being told. Elisabeth Moss is pretty good as Shirley Jackson. Jackson acts real weird and petulant and destructive and I sort of went in feeling like she would be depicted as a manipulative monster, but watching it I felt like it was probably well-researched and accurate to how she was but not in a way that makes me dislike Shirley Jackson — but also I do like destructive difficult personalities and I think that’s basically a fine and acceptable way for artists, or anyone, to behave. I still don’t think this is really a good movie, Shirley Jackson is not really the lead but more like the only interesting character: She’s got an obnoxious and self-satisfied husband, but the movie is more about this couple that moves in — a woman who’s pretty dull is the focal point, and her husband is boring, and manipulative too, albeit in a very commonplace way. Pretty average.

The Predator (2018) dir. Shane Black

A movie about how people with Asperger’s are the next step in human evolution that nonetheless uses the r-word slur to describe them, filled with some of the most generic actors imaginable. I like Shane Black movies as much as the next guy, but am indifferent to the Predator franchise. Maybe because, despite the R rating, they really do feel like they’re made to sell toys, like so many cartoons of the eighties? I hope the sequel the ending transparently sets up never gets made.

The Lighthouse (2019) dir. Robert Eggers

Wasn’t able to finish The Witch and I stopped and started this one a few times. Tries to avoid accusations that “all these modern horror movies are dumb as shit” by not being a horror movie but it also isn’t really anything else — Not funny enough to be a comedy nor evocative enough to be an art movie. Sort of like High Life in the sense that Robert Pattinson isn’t actually good in it but maybe it’s surprising that a mainstream actor would be in a “weird movie,” but he doesn’t really have to do anything in either, at least as far as building a character goes. It’s underwritten enough he might not even know how to read. Willem Dafoe is ok as a guy doing the sea captain voice from The Simpsons.

The Whistlers (2020) dir. Corneliu Poromboiu

Contemporary crime thing that vaguely reminded me of all the other post-Tarantino crime movies made in the past 25 years that I don’t really remember, particularly the ones in other languages. This one’s got characters learning a whistling language to communicate in a way cops will just thing is birds. Also a semi-complicated plot, told non-linearly. The female lead also pretends to be a prostitute and has sex with a criminal dude so the police watching him with hidden cameras don’t figure out what she’s up to, although, if I understand the plot, I’m pretty sure they work it out anyway.

Pain And Glory (2019) dir. Pedro Almodovar

This one stars Antonio Banderas, is pretty plainly autobiographical, being about a filmmaker approaching the end of his life -- Penelope Cruz plays the mother in flashbacks that are then shown to be a filmed recreation as an autobiographical work is begun, which is the sort of twist that could seem corny but isn’t. The film has a weird/interesting structure, the slow revelation of details from the character’s past forming a narrative a film can be made of eventually but before that there’s this totally separate story involving an actor, heroin use, and an ex-lover. That stuff’s good but also it sort of wraps up halfway through. Like, a bundle of narrative threads culminate, and then the film keeps going, to eventually tie up other bits that seem incidental. Maybe this would be fine in a theater but streamed at home I got a bit anxious. Penelope Cruz made me think “I could watch Vanilla Sky” but it turned out I can’t, it’s unwatchable.

High Heels (1991) dir. Pedro Almodovar

I love Almodovar, my stance has been that there’s a degree of diminishing returns the more of his work you see but it’s been years since I’ve seen one of his movies, and at this point I remember very little of any of them. This one’s on Criterion as part of a collection of films with scores by Ryuichi Sakamoto — Sakamoto’s not my favorite member of Yellow Magic Orchestra but he’s certainly an adept talent, and this one operates differently than I’d expect from him, most of the music feels saxophone-led, sort of in a jazz vein. Obviously you can compose for this instrumentation but yeah, not what I’d expect. The movie itself is pretty solid: bright colors, some melodrama, a ridiculous twist, a sense of humor which feels both over the top and somewhat deadpan. A woman’s mother returns to Spain after close to a lifetime away, she ends up sleeping with the daughter’s husband, he turns up dead, the daughter reveals he killed her stepfather as a child. The movie is primarily about the daughter’s yearning for the approval for an emotionally distant mother, at one point she summarizes the Bergman movie Autumn Sonata for her, but Almodovar is gayer and more sexually perverse than Bergman. so it’s less dour than I’m maybe making it sound. At one point the daughter is wearing a sweater with the pattern of the Maryland flag on it? But the credits reveal all her outfits are by Chanel.

The Handmaid’s Tale (1990) dir. Volker Schlondorff

The score is closer to what I would expect from Sakamoto here, in a martial/industrial vein, though not exclusively. Stars Natasha Richardson, and her performance feels related to what she did in Patty Hearst — a depiction of a woman shutting down parts of herself for the sake of her own survival, displaying inner reserves of strength through the appearance of submission. This seems a lot better than the current Hulu show, although I think it’s largely dismissed? It’s been a while since I read the book so I can’t remember how many liberties it takes. Obviously there remain traces of an exploitation bent in a weird way, through depiction of women in dehumanized sexual contexts but I feel like this movie is good at depicting competition between women in the context of a rigged patriarchal system.

Merry Christmas Mister Lawrence (1983) dir. Nagisa Oshima

Never seen any of Oshima’s films, despite the allure of explicit sex in an artsy context. This has Sakamoto in it opposite David Bowie. There’s a lot of English language being spoken in a thick Japanese accent. David Bowie plays a prisoner of war Sakamoto, as a military officer, falls in love with and tries to keep from harm, his score does the heavy lifting of highlighting these emotions. Was not super-into this movie but it’s always interesting to think about how popular YMO were, and if these are the type of faces you enjoy looking at you can do that. Sakamoto’s got a weird hairline. The movie is fine considered in the context of like, 1980s movies (not my fave decade) that are period military dramas (not my favorite genre) and exist in this Japanese film context that is neither super-insane and exuberant in its style nor is it super-austere and minimal.

A Farewell To Arms (1932) dir. Frank Borzage

Very well-shot piece of romance, starring Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes, in an adaptation of a Ernest Hemingway novel I don’t remember whether or not I read in high school. Hemingway didn’t like it, maybe because there were a lot of changes, which confuses the issue of whether or not I know the source material further. I don’t like this movie as much as I liked History Is Made At Night but it makes a lot more sense as a narrative, easily reduced to a bare-bones plot: He’s in the army, she’s a nurse, people don’t want them to be together during World War I, he ends up deserting to be with her. Feels lush, romantic, dreamy and swooning, but I feel like the strengths are more in the cinematography than the characters — the leads are fine enough, though not super deep, beyond the depths of their love, but the supporting cast is a bit dull.

War Of The Worlds (2005) dir. Steven Spielberg

Feel like I had heard this one was good? I appreciate Tom Cruise in the Mission: Impossible movies, and Spielberg some of the time I guess. This is a blockbuster that feels post-9/11 in a way where I wonder what a post-Corona thing would feel like — feel like it would shy away from away from a lot of spectacle or something but probably I’m wrong about that. So this one focuses on a parent and his children making their way across an increasingly demolished landscape to make it to the other parent, alien monsters are in the way, kinda just seems logistically weird or like the premise of the quest is unsound given the stakes should probably just be survival? But maybe this is post-covid thinking of how such a thing would operate — the disaster picture with a “human element” to focus the narrative on is a decades-old form and one I don’t really get down with nor do I think is generally considered to age well - i.e. I don’t remember growing up with The Towering Inferno being on TV.

My Twentieth Century (1989) dir. Ildiko Enyedi

Weird Hungarian movie where like… angels/stars observe? As two twins are born in the late eighteen-hundreds and go on to have separate lives? One as an anarchist, the other as like a party girl type who seduces rich men. The latter gets more attention than the former. Sort of a fairy tale atmosphere, which makes the explicit sex scenes awkward. There’s also a scene where a guy gives a sexist lecture about how women should be allowed to vote even though they have no sense of logic and are obsessed with sex. He draws a dick on the chalkboard and talks about how women can’t understand beauty since they are obsessed with erections which are disgusting. Not really sure what it adds to the movie as a whole since I’m not sure which one of the two characters played by the same actress is meant to be watching it, but it’s funny. A lot of things are confusing about this movie, but it’s still sort of interesting and therefore worthwhile I guess. Apparently the director has a new movie on Netflix — I don’t have Netflix at the moment but might get it for a month or two in the future to catch up on assorted things like Sion Sono’s The Forest Of Love and the David Lynch content.

His Girl Friday (1940) dir. Howard Hawks

not into this one. Rosalind Russell wears a cool suit at first though. Features the thing where a male romantic lead (Cary Grant) is openly manipulative but it’s sort of viewed as fine and funny because the woman in question is confident and modern, which kinda feels like a fascinating view into the gender dynamics of the time, although I don’t think it works as a comedy as far as me being able to figure out what the jokes are. The journalists getting caught up in crime intrigue plot is cool though, that kind of feels like something that always works.

Lured (1947) dir. Douglas Sirk

Kind of have no idea why I watched all the older Douglas Sirk movies on the Criterion Channel at this point, even the ones I liked I don’t think I liked that much? This one stars Lucille Ball, who I don’t love. Other movies I watched recently that were partly comedies and partly suspense things worked better than this. This one’s about attractive young women disappearing and Lucille Ball getting hired by the police to be an undercover detective. She ends up finding love, but then the man she gets engaged to is framed for murder by the actual killer. Features scenes where the police (led by Charles Coburn, who’s fine in this) talk about how crazy Baudelaire was. Wouldn’t recommend.

Far From Heaven (2002) dir. Todd Haynes

Not sure I have any strong feelings towards Todd Haynes, but it seems likely I might end up watching a bunch of his movies eventually. This came out in high school, and I had no interest in it, but I’m more charitable towards the whole fifties melodrama thing it’s paying homage to now. Julianne Moore stars as a woman whose husband (Dennis Quaid) is gay and repressing himself via alcoholism, who strikes up a friendship with her black gardener, (Dennis Haysbert) which scandalizes her neighbors. The moments Moore and Haysbert spend together are maybe the most interesting - particularly them going to an all-black restaurant - but the aspect of them being watched and judged feels more cliched. Similarly, the stuff about Dennis Quaid’s homosexuality is most interesting as a lived-in thing, and his drinking, hitting his wife, etc., is less so. The veins of sensuality running through the movie are richer than the plot structure that unites them. This might be one of the things that makes Carol a superior movie.

The Violent Men (1955) dir. Rudolph Mate

This stars a bunch of people I don’t like — Glenn Ford, Edward G Robinson, Barbara Stanwyck is fine in other stuff but boring here. Dianne Foster plays her daughter, and that’s the meatiest role basically- she gets to denounce violent men. This is a western about a guy being pressured to sell his land for cheap. Criterion Channel programmed this as part of a series called “western noir” and I don’t know about this stuff. Foster’s character is definitely the most interesting part — her parents are essentially these gangsters running the town, her teen angst feels like it stems from an inherent morality and disgust with them. Stanwyck is cheating on Foster’s father (Robinson) with a guy I think is his brother who also enforces the violence. The mom tries to kill the father, and then is herself killed by a woman in love with the person she’s sleeping with, so the daughter, you would think, would go through a gamut of emotions. But she’s a totally secondary to Glenn Ford’s male lead, who she ends up riding off into the sunset with — he initially was involved in a relationship with a woman who didn’t care about his inherent morality in favor of a materialism, but she just sort of gets dropped from the narrative at a certain point. The movie really tries to play it both ways with regards to the violence, but I feel like that’s pretty common actually: While I feel like today the title might primarily be intended as an indictment, it also feels like at the time it was very much the sales pitch to the audience.

Shane (1953) dir. George Stevens

Classic western, about homesteaders just trying to live who end up needing to get in gunfights with people who want their land. Jean Arthur plays the wife and mother, which is why I sought it out (especially sicne she had established rapport with Stevens) but she’s barely in it. The titular Shane is a good dude who wanders through and ends up helping them out. The kid’s infatuation of Shane is really annoying to me personally. I love how this has two big fist-fights though, the second of which is a They Live style thing, a conflict between friends that becomes incredibly drawn out. The first fight is also just incredibly brutal and well-choreographed, probably the high point of the movie.

Cast A Deadly Spell (1991) dir. Martin Campbell

TV movie made for HBO with very Vertigo Comics energy, I started off thinking “this is dumb” but very quickly got on its side. It’s a riff on HP Lovecraft mythology set in a 1940s Los Angeles where everyone uses magic except for one private detective, whose name is Harry Lovecraft. Pretty PG-rated, some practical effects (not the best kind, more like gargoyle demon creature costumes I assume are made of foam), and a pretty easily foreseeable “twist” ending where the apocalypse is averted because the virgin sacrifice just lost her virginity to a cop. Not actually that clever but clever enough to work and be consistently enjoyable. Julianne Moore plays a nightclub singer. My interest in this is brought about because there’s a sequel (where I guess the deal is the detective does use magic, and no one else does) called Witch Hunt starring Dennis Hopper and directed by Paul Schrader.

Jennifer’s Body (2009) dir. Karyn Kusama

The climax of Cast A Deadly Spell shares a plot point with this, which I think is being reevaluated as a “cult classic” to what I assume is the same audience that valued the Scott Pilgrim movie: People ten years younger than me who think it’s charming when things are completely obnoxious. A lot of musical cues, all mixed at too loud relative to the rest of the audio, bad jokes. This tone does help power the whole nihilistic, I-enjoy-seeing-these-superfluous-characters-die aspect of the plot but the sort of emotional core of the horror is less present. This movie is basically fine, by lowered modern movies standards, but it’s perfectly disposable and not really worth valuing in any way. I watched Kusama’s movie Destroyer starring Nicole Kidman a year ago and don’t remember anything about it now.

Dead Ringers (1988) dir. David Cronenberg

Rewatch. I think for a while I would’ve considered this my favorite Cronenberg but nowadays I might favor eXistenZ? Jeremy Irons in dual roles as twin brothers, with different personalities, but who routinely impersonate each other, and whose lives begin to deteriorate as a relationship with a woman leads to them individuate themselves from each other. They’re gynecologists, and the whole thing is suffused with an air of creepiness. There’s this sense of airlessness to the movie, a sense of panic, which is present incredibly early on and just sort of keeps going, getting weirder and more uncomfortable as you become accustomed to it, that feels like a sure sign of mastery. I’m fascinated to think about how watching it in a crowd, or on a date, would feel. Most movies don’t operate like this.

Imagine The Sound (1981) dir. Ron Mann

Mann is the director of Comic Book Confidential, which I saw as a middle schooler. This is a documentary about free jazz, featuring interviews and performance footage. Paul Bley and Cecil Taylor are both shown playing solo piano, which isn’t my favorite context to hear them in. Bill Dixon and Archie Shepp say some cool stuff, there is some nice trio footage of Shepp with a rhythm section.

Born In Flames (1983) dir. Lizzie Borden

Easily the best movie I watched for the first time in the time period I’m covering in this post. I heard about this years ago but only seeing it now, when it feels super-relevant. It is shot in New York in the eighties, features plenty of documentation of the city as it was, but in the context of the movie, there has been a socialist revolution ten years earlier, and this film then documents the struggle of the women, particularly black women, who are slipping through the cracks, and fighting for the ongoing quest to make a utopia, but exist in opposition to the party in power. While focusing on black women, there’s also plenty of white women, also opposed to and more progre.ssive than the people in power, but that are having their own conversations which are very different. There’s also montage sequences of women performing labor that cut between women wrapping up chicken to close-ups of a condom being rolled onto a erect penis. The title song is by the Red Krayola, circa the Kangaroo? era where Lora Logic provided vocals. So yeah, this movie rules! It would be a good double-feature with The Spook Who Sat By The Door, though in a film school context, or a sociology context, you would need to do a great deal of groundwork first. Could also work as a double-feature with The Falls for how what you are seeing is the aftermath of a great sociological reshaping realized on a low-budget. I think I put off this movie I think because I was skeptical of the director’s self-conscious “artist’s name” but it turns out they got it legally named as a young child.

State Of Siege (1972) dir. Costa-Gavras

Also really good! Better than Born In Flames when considered in terms of its level of craft. Would make for a fine double feature with my beloved Patty Hearst. Tightly structured over the course of a week, leftist terrorists kidnap an American and interrogate him about what exactly he’s doing in their Latin American country that’s being run by death squads. He denies wrong-doing, but basically everything he’s done is already known to them. This exists in parallel to police interrogations of leftists. Pretty large scale, tons of characters, some basically incidental. Screenplay’s written by the guy who wrote Battle Of Algiers.

Olivia (1951) dir. Jacqueline Audry

French movie sort of about lesbian love at an all-girl’s boarding school that’s weird because everyone seems like they’re feeling homosexual love, but just for one instructor who eggs everyone on. Everyone acts weird in this one, basically. There’s a lot of doting. The atmosphere is pretty unfathomable to me. Chaste-seeming in some ways, but also like everyone is being psychologically tortured by being subject to the whims of each other, but also just rolling with it in this deferential way. Seems like it could feel “emotionally true” to a lesbian experience but only in highly, highly specific circumstances?

Lucia (1968) dir. Humberto Solas

Good score in this one, which is not that much like I Am Cuba but I feel obligated to compare them anyway - both are from Cuba and use this three-story anthology structure. All the stories in this movie revolve around different women named Lucia, in three different, historically important, time periods. The first is about a woman who falls in love with a man from Spain, during the time of Cuba’s war of independence, he says he doesn’t think about politics, but this is one lie among several. This ends with brutal sequences of war. The second takes place under the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado. The third takes place post-revolution, and is about a literacy coach teaching a woman to read and write under the eye of a domineering chauvinistic husband. As with I Am Cuba, it is the very act of considering these three stories together that brings out their propagandistic aspect, and makes them feel less like individual stories. They’re all beautifully shot, although it’s less in less of a show-offy way than I Am Cuba.

Mr. Klein (1976) dir. Joseph Losey

This one’s got a cool premise- About an art dealer, played by Alain Delon, who is buying art from Jews at low prices as they leave occupied France quickly, but who then starts getting confused for another person with the same name as him, who is Jewish. Gets sort of Kakfa-esque but also remains grounded in this world where there are rational explanations for things. (at least as far as the holocaust is rational) So the line gets walked between bits that feel vaguely verging on nightmare but also sort of maintain the plausible deniability of belonging to the waking world, of a paranoia for something the exact scope of which remains unnamed. Ends with Klein as one of many in a trainyard full of people being sent off to concentration camps, which to me felt sort of tasteless, as a large-scale recreation, but that feels deliberate, as a way of offsetting the scope of the film being primarily focused on one person, whose relationship to the larger horror, before it affected him, was parasitic.

Husbands (1970) dir. John Cassavetes

Not into this one. The semi-improvisatory nature of the dialogue never coalesces into characters that seem to have a real core to them, there’s always just this sort of drunken aggression mode. What even is there to these characters, besides the aggression they treat women with? What separates them from one another, makes them distinct entities, beyond the sense they egg each other on?

Casino (1995) dir. Martin Scorsese

Rewatch. Joe Pesci plays the violent Italian guy, Robert De Niro plays the level-headed Jew, Sharon Stone plays the blonde who gets strung out on drugs. Three hours long to contain everyone’s arcs, but also sort of feels like it neatly has act breaks at pretty close to the hour marks, while also telling this pretty big historical sweeping piece about how corporate control comes to Las Vegas, the notion that “the house always wins” but even the individual whose job it is to run the house is himself situated inside a larger house. Both here and in Raging Bull, De Niro plays a character whose third act involves trying to be an entertainer for reasons of ego, and it’s so weird. Yeah, a great movie, one of the few that the reductive view of Scorsese as “someone who just makes mob movies” applies to, I have no opinion on whether it’s better than Goodfella or not.

Blue Collar (1978) dir. Paul Schrader

Not great. Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, and Yaphet Kotto co-star. Sometimes feels like maybe it’s meant to function partly as a comedy but doesn’t. It’s also mostly a crime movie, about people working at an auto plant who decide to rob their union’s vault. They end up not making any money from that robbery, but the union can claim insurance funds, so they get to benefit while the working men continue to be shafted, worried about the consequences of what they’ve done. Kotto dies, and Pryor and Keitel are turned against each other by circumstance, which the film tries to play off as being about the divisions among people that keep the working class weak. I definitely feel like the Schrader oeuvre begins with Hardcore.

Mona Lisa (1986) dir. Neil Jordan

This ends up kind of feeling like a lesser version of Hardcore, with British accents. Bob Hoskins, out of jail, starts driving for a prostitute, they dislike each other at first, but become friendly. She asks him to track down a younger girl she was friends with, who a pimp has gotten strung out on drugs. (Hoskins is also a father to a daughter, though his relationship with the mother is strained from having gone to prison.) Hoskins’ character isn’t that interesting and the film revolves around him, the female lead is more interesting but deliberately removed from the larger narrative. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good Neil Jordan movie.

The Untouchables (1987) dir. Brian De Palma

Rewatch. Great Ennio Morricone score in this one, a real reminder of a different era in terms of what constituted a blockbuster or a prestige picture. David Mamet provides the screenplay. De Palma is pretty reined-in, while Mission: Impossible is an insane procession of sequences of top-notch visual storytelling, the most De Palma trademark thing here is a first-person perspective of a home invasion scene, watching Sean Connery, that ends up being a deliberate choice of a limited perspective to surprise as he gets lured to his death. I feel like there’s a straight line between this movie and Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy (1990), but obviously what that line runs through is the reality-rewriting effect of Tim Burton’s Batman.

Pulp Fiction (1994) dir. Quentin Tarantino

Rewatch. Can scarcely comprehend how it would’ve felt to see this in a theater when it came out. I watched it the first time in college on a laptop and headphones and it blew me away, even after years of a bunch of it being referenced on The Simpsons and everywhere else. I haven’t seen it since. Rewatching is this exercise in seeing what you don’t remember when everything’s been processed a million times. Feels like Tarantino’s best screenplay due to its construction, more so than any dialogue, which is obviously a little in love with itself. Samuel Jackson wears a Krazy Kat t-shirt after his suit gets covered in blood. Quentin Tarantino casts himself as the white guy who gets to say the n-word a bunch.

6 notes · View notes

translationandbetrayals · 4 years ago

Text

A black and white cowboy: Shinichiro Watanabe and a contemporary dialog between Japan and America, pt. 1

*Minor spoilers of Cowboy Bebop*

The name Shinichiro Watanabe may be unfamiliar to anime newcomers. Nonetheless, his work stands as some of the finest in the art form, and even twenty years later the legacy of his works impacts the industry and its consumers. But let’s back up for a second; who is this Shinichiro Watanabe? Well, if you ever heard of anime series such as Cowboy Bebop (1998), Samurai Champloo (2005) and Space Dandy (2014)¸ then you can thank Watanabe for creating them.

Acclaimed as one of the most innovative and genre-bending directors of the 00’s, there’s a lot to say about his body of work: we could talk about his influences, his eclectic yet cohesive style, or his narratives motifs (such as yearning and the shadows of the past). Amidst all of these interesting topics, there’s one that shines above and, personally, find particularly curious, and it’s the relationship between his works and American culture (specially in Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo). So, for this little essay, I’ll try to shed some light to this issue, and maybe find the cultural influences that made Watanabe’s work so influential and so widespread not only in Japan but throughout the entire world.

Cowboy Bebop (1998) and bending the rules

“You told me once to forget the past, cause it doesn’t matter, but you’re the one still tied to the past, Spike”.

Exterior. Night. It’s all black and white, and a music box is playing a melody in the background. Rain is pouring, and a guy holding a bouquet of flowers just finishes his cigarette and starts walking. We focus in a puddle on the floor: a rose just fell into the water. As we close in, we see snapshots of a gunfight; maybe a memory, maybe a premonition. The rose turns red, and in a flashback we see as the man gets shot; he is smiling. Cut. Cue opening.

This is the first scene of the critically acclaimed anime series Cowboy Bebop. With only 26 episodes (and later a movie), the series resonated with fans both in Japan and in America. It originally debuted in TV Tokyo, but due to censorship only certain episodes could be aired. Luckily, it overcame those obstacles and it was aired in its entirety during 1999 via Wowow. Due to its success, it made its way to American TV, and in 2001it was broadcasted in Adult Swim (“adult” programming in Cartoon Network’s channel).

The series received widespread critical acclaim and commercial success and stands as a one-of-a-kind anime in its type. But you see, we come across the fundamental question: what type of anime is Cowboy Bebop? Its various influences make that question not so straightforward. Watanabe himself, during its promotion, created the tagline “a new genre into itself”, and even though we may say that it’s a little pretentious at first glance (Watanabe has also said this himself), we must agree at least on something: one word won’t suffice to describe the world of Cowboy Bebop. For this exploration, we will focus on two main elements of the series that are crucial for understanding it: its aesthetic and its music. Later, we will see how both elements come together into a single influence: America.

A black and white cowboy

The myriad of references to American pop culture can be found out of the gate in Cowboy Bebop’s title: Cowboy referring to the western genre and way of seeing the world, and Bebop for the erratic and energetic jazz style of the 50’s. But if we had to pinpoint an episode that masterfully shows how these influences are not mere aesthetic caprice, lets steer our attention to episode (or session, as they call them) number 10: Ganymede Elegy.

In this episode we focus in a secondary character: Jet. This man with a mysterious past on his back founds himself (along with our crew of bounty hunters) travelling back to his home planet. His old days as a detective and an ex-girlfriend arise from the surface, while at the same time the promise of a bounty to be hunted grabs the attention of our series protagonist Spike. Jet meets again with his old lover Alyssa, but time has passed for both; Alyssa is now with another man. It’s only later we find out that this new man is the bounty Spike is looking after. Jet realizes this and stops Spike: he’s the one that must catch him. Alyssa and his new partner try to run away, but it’s too late: a chase ensues and their hovercraft crashes in the shore. There, as the sun sets, Jet and Alyssa have a last moment of goodbye (while she points a gun at him). As the police arrives, Jet leaves the shore while the girl cries; as he walks away, he also leaves his past behind.

In this exquisite episode of Cowboy Bebop there’s a central element from American culture that we can refer to, and that is film noir. But what is film noir? and how is it related to Cowboys Bebop’s aesthetic?

Film noir is a style of cinema that has its origins in 1940’s and 50´s Hollywood crime dramas. Sharp contrast of light and dark – both aesthetically in its lighting, and narratively in its characters morals – define noir in its core, having criminals and detectives as their main protagonists. We can quote Stranger on the Third Floor (Ingster, 1940), Casablanca (1942), The Postman Always Rings Twice (Garnett, 1946) and Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958) as examples of classic noir. More recent films inspired by noir (referred as neo-noir) are: Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976), Blade Runner (Scott, 1982)and Basic Instinct (Verhoeven, 1992).

As Jet finishes his drink, he reminisces his relationship with Alyssa; time has moved forward and so has she. Flashbacks of her leaving him crosses Jet’s mind, as the shadowy bar closes for good. Love is faced against crime; a past relationship transform into a bounty Jet can cash for money. There’s no good nor bad, just a past that must be forgotten, and a man that must also move forward. If you ask me, it can’t get any more noir than that (well, maybe if it was animated in black and white, but it would be overkill).

Now that the noir influence for Cowboy Bebop has been settled, the next element to examine in Watanabe’s work is his soundtrack decisions – both in Cowboy Bebop and in his other masterpiece: Samurai Champloo – and how this relates to American culture, both past and present. But we’ll leave that to another post. See you space cowboy…

- Nicolás Iriarte

#Anime #Japan #essay #submission

1 note · View note

thirdmagic · 5 years ago

Text

me: man she-ra is so fun and cute and pretty to look at and i'm enjoying it but after steven universe i'm kind of spoiled on these kinds of cartoons, it's so obviously a really traditionally good vs evil morally black and white show and no real nuance beyond catradora but the potential and nuance there is so reduced by the show’s writing itself, and i bet it's going to have a boring straightforward good vs evil conflict and all the bad guys are going to be the same way, i can see it now it's going to end with entrapta realizing she's been misled and manipulated and then turning back to the good guys so so easily and there will be no nuance there and all the horde people are just going to be blandly straightforwardly bad and it’s all going to be like every single other cartoon--

she ra s2-s3: so you know how catra is how she is because she was manipulated and unloved all her life, well she is really really bad at handling her coping mechanisms and it pushes her in her desperation to really dark places even when it's clearly shown that she can function much better outside the horde in situations that play to her many strengths and make her truly happy and she really struggles to let go of the self esteem issues that lead to her obsession with adora, and scorpia is genuinely a really sweet and nice person and really loves catra for real and is even willing to do things catra doesn't want her to do in order to save her and help her and isn't even that loyal to the horde she just really really really loves catra that much this big powerful woman just does everything for this small angry cat who she is so smitten with (pssssssssst feel those faasan and belial vibes), entrapta isn't even that much of a good guy she's really truly chaotic neutral and only cares for science and doesn't even want to go back after adora tells her they didn't mean to abandon her because she doesn't even care at that point anymore she just goes where the science takes her, and also she has a cute dynamic with hordak who is obsessed with punishing people for their failure because he feels like a failure and also has self worth issues and grows to genuinely really really like and care for this girl who sees right through him and is immune to all his intimidation and offers him comfort and they truly understand each other

me:

#textpost #it's genuienly gotten really really good wtf #season 4 when???? i need?????

8 notes · View notes

trainsinanime · 6 years ago

Text

Carmen Sandiego vs. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

The two Netflix shows I binged this weekend were Carmen Sandiego and She-Ra and the Princess of Power. In both cases, I had never watched or played any of the original content, I just heard good things (generally true) about these shows here on Tumblr.

What I found fascinating is that She-Ra arguably ticks more of the boxes of stuff that I want, but I overall ended up enjoying Carmen Sandiego a lot more. This post is basically just me thinking out loud trying to understand that. As such, the usual disclaimers apply: This is only my opinion, not a fact. Nor do I mean to say that She-Ra is bad. It's still a good show, and easily beats Voltron. On the other hand, Carmen Sandiego isn't perfect either, and it doesn't reach the level of, say, The Dragon Prince or, off Netflix but on the subject of reboots, Ducktales.

First of all, She-Ra is in many ways more interesting, because the show has much more human drama elements. Especially the complicated, messy relationship and conflict between Adora and Catra is great. Carmen Sandiego has nothing similarly dramatic. She-Ra also deals with topics like growing up, diplomacy, friendships and so on.

Carmen Sandiego, in contrast, is a very straightforward cartoon, with very clear good guys, very clear bad guys, and no moral grey area to speak of. Yes, Carmen does things that are illegal, but it's for a good cause and she looks cool while doing them, so it's okay, the show tells us. Her relationship with her former classmates also lacks depth and nuance by comparison. Sure, there's a lot of "how could you?", but no moment where either side doesn't know what to do with the other.

Style

What does Carmen Sandiego have that She-Ra doesn't? The most obvious thing is certainly style. She-Ra doesn't look bad and has some good character designs, but the overall style is fairly standard fairy tale planet threatened by evil machinery. There are hardly any things that feel like fresh new ideas, visually speaking. On the other hand, Carmen Sandiego has a gorgeous glamorous South Park Art Deco style, where every single frame is very obviously that show only. And look at those frames! The careful choice of color palette to give every scene and every episode its own visual identity while remaining true to the overall style is just amazing. Maybe that's superficial, but there's a reason why these are animated shows instead of podcasts.

Also, maybe that's just me, but I love classic James Bond, by which I mean anything pre-Craig (you heard me), and similar things. Hell, even Jason Bourne has more similarities than differences. Carmen Sandiego taps right into that whole aesthetic, and I just love that. Even if the trains are not very good represenations. Oh, it's a cartoon you say? Well, they had no problem drawing that old Peugeot 309 or the old Range Rover perfectly, now did they? I did choose this URL for a reason, folks.

Needs more Ca-Characters

Carmen Sandiego also has the good sense to make its best character, Carmen herself, the hero of the show. No matter who is around, Carmen is always the most interesting person in any scene. In She-Ra, the best character is not She-Ra but Catra. Catra is constantly conflict, smart but angry, hurt by Adora and missing her. Her relationship with Adora is portrayed as both very important and providing much needed warmth to both of them, but also as being dysfunctional in a lot of ways. That's awesome! When we get to see it.

Sadly, most of the time, the focus is Adora and her new friends, a group that is literally called "Best Friends Squad" and has all the narrative depth and drama you would expect given the name. Meanwhile Catra is off growling in the distance. I honestly don't care much about Bow and Glimmer. Glimmer at least has a bit of a conflict with her mom, but Bow doesn't get any conflict, backstory or personality; he doesn't even get a name of his own and is instead just called after what he's holding most of the time.

I'm obviously exaggerating here, and it's not like e.g. Carmen Sandiego's Zack with his "I like most food but not all food" is really much better. But in Carmen Sandiego, that relationship is a fun friendship on the side, not the emotional core of most episodes. It's no coincidence that the best episode in She-Ra is the episode that has no Bow and Glimmer, and is instead all about Adora and Catra and the history of their relationship. Honestly, if the show had been all about Catra, with Adora doing her thing somewhere in the background, this post might well have been the other way around.

Carmen Sandiego, meanwhile… look, let's not beat around the bush: Carmen is sexy as hell. I don't mean just the amazing character design and fashion style: There's also the amazing voice acting, body language, and most importantly her entire demeanour. I think I'm kind of in love with her; the only question is whether that makes me too emotionally compromised to do this comparison, or whether it proves that CS is winning. What I do know, from looking at Tumblr, is that my response seems to be the default one that most people have when seeing her.

That aside, Carmen is also just plain fun. In a world of "I don't know if I can do this, and if yes, how", it's nice to have a protagonist who knows she's awesome and has full confidence in her own abilities. I don't mean to diss the "how do i become hero" thing, I really loved Into the Spider-Verse (make no mistake, that's on a whole other level), but damn, it is nice to have someone who is that suave. I think this ties back into my love of James Bond, because this is very similar; only this time, the prettiest lady is not a mere love interest, but the awesome main character.

Adora generally lacks memorable attitude, she doesn't seem to view her job as something that's fundamentally fun, and she doesn't really do much to differentiate her from most other Luke Skywalker wannabes out there. Though the few times when she does, e.g. the intense preparation for the ball or the arm wrestling matches with the annoying captain guy, are awesome.

The writing's on the wall

Ultimately, a lot comes down to the stories the shows tell and how they tell. And in that regard, it seems at first like She-Ra has the edge: The stakes are high and there's a strong overarching plot, while in Carmen Sandiego, the entire planet is not under threat and nobody would notice if you reordered a few of the interior episodes.

But I cannot help but feel that Carmen Sandiego maybe tries to do less, but is way better at doing what it wants to do. Its clear focus is one of its biggest strengths (apart from all the other ones). The show never hesitates to go straight for the things that it is awesome at; the heists, the action, the adventure, and the odd geography fact. In contrast, She-Ra has a lot of things that don't feel fresh or interesting. Going to a village, defeating the big bad there, then recruiting them for the rebellion? Going off in search of a training montage? Realising that you shouldn't only rely on your superpowers? Realising that your strengths lies in your friends even if they're generic and boring and seriously does Bow have any sort of background at all? I've seen that before and done better in things like Avatar: The Last Airbender (why don't more people compare Catra and Zuko? It's because it's too obvious, isn't it? That's the only explanation that makes sense to me).

Ultimately that's what this all comes down to: Stronger visuals, stronger characters, and a laser-like focus on the things that make it awesome all serve to make Carmen Sandiego the show that I'm obsessed with right now, and She-Ra just another show that I watched and generally liked.

Not everything's a competition

While I am talking about both shows: I've seen people argue that Carmen Sandiego and She-Ra have very similar premises, with the girls who grew up in an evil school, then left once they realised they were in an evil school. Personally, I'm a big fan of that trope, and while I think it has its issues, there's nothing wrong with more of that. But Adora and Carmen aren't really that similar besides following a (fairly mild version of) that generic background plot. In particular, Carmen as the master thief for chaotic good and Adora as the honourable warrior are on two completely different paths (though I could totally imagine them being friends), and the resulting stories are completely different.

By the way: My favourite incarnation of this sort of background right now has to be Violet Evergarden, where the brainwashed child soldier does not become an amazing child soldier for the side of good, but instead a professional love letter writer. It's poignant, beautiful, and I'm never going to stop telling people to watch it.

#carmen sandiego #she-ra #spop #She ra and the princesses of power

8 notes · View notes

princealigorna · 6 years ago

Note

It seems like a lot of Tumblr users will always claim that they're always a slut for multi-dimensional, complex characters and swear that gender has no sway on the matter... only to prove the exact opposite. I've given it some thought and I think one reason has to do with how it's less about the characters themselves. Rather it's the narrative around them. I mean, no duh but it's more than whether it's "bad or good writing."

Writers have often been about how it's actually pretty fun to conceive of characters and think of moments they're share within a vacuum like a headcanon or a some drabble they threw together just now. However, a full fledged narrative is where the real challenge lies. Trust me, I speak from experience. With those who instigate fandom discourse over characters, I feel that a similar principle's at play here where fans do like the characters when isolated from the official, canon narrative.

Outside the narrative, fans can think off many headcanons and many theories as well as how they interpret the characters. Thus when canon falls short of what they "expected," they retaliate. This is taken further when the characters in question are anything but white, straight and/or male. There's a desire for the role models those in these various groups never grew up with and when said "role models" fall short of this, it feels like a betrayal on the part of the writers' narrative.

Doesn't help when many on this site are pretty young and have a rudimentary understanding of true gray morality where not everything is as straightforwards as "good guys vs. bad guys." Maybe that's why many gravitate towards cartoons for kids more and expect that simplistic charm with a dash of complexity, neither one aspect compromising the other as they write long meta post about how they love this "balance." However, shows like Steven Universe completely turn this notion on its head.

I hope that diatribe came out semi-coherent...

But that’s the problem. Expectation. There’s nothing wrong with headcanoning or thinking up fun little scenarios for characters. Just as there’s nothing inherently wrong with shipping. The problem comes with expecting writers to be mind readers and just doing what you want. Even in this age of greater access to creators, they still can’t know what we want unless we actually tell them. And even then, they don’t have to listen to us. Sometimes they can’t, even if they want to, because they’re working in a shared universe or on a corporate owned franchise. Even if the crew at DHX wants to incorporate one of our ideas, if Hasbro says no, they can’t. A comics writer might have a fine idea for a specific character, but if editorial says no, it’s not gonna happen. 616 Peter Parker isn’t going to be trans. Main DCU Beast Boy is never going to be genderfluid (though I think he should be. I think all shapeshifters should be genderfluid. But again, that’s just me). Create whatever goofiness you like, but don’t expect it to be canon. If it becomes canon, rejoice. If you think canon decisions are stupid, express them (preferably with some degree of articulation that creators can find useful and helps fellow fans understand your position). But don’t expect others to read your mind and then cater to you.

As for the role model thing, I mentioned that last night I think. Like I said, I get it. The world is hard. It’s even harder if you’re non-white, queer, and/or non-male. It’s the worst if you’re some combination of any of those three, and the absolute worst if you’re all three. White gay men have it tough, but not as tough as black lesbians, who don’t have it nearly as rough as say Indian non-binary pansexuals. So when you finally do have main characters to look up to that cater to your group(s), you want them to be everything good in the world. You want them to be perfect inspirations for you, and perfect teaching tools for people outside your group(s) to understand the people like you can be kind, respectful, and heroic like anyone else. But that’s not how life really is, and it’s not exciting writing. Good people make mistakes, and bad people often believe they’re doing the right thing. At least for them personally. That’s just how it is.

And if they’re turning to cartoons expecting simplistic black and white morality...that’s no what cartoons do these days. They don’t talk down to their audience. They expect them to be able to handle a little more.

#matt0044

8 notes · View notes

today-only-happens-once · 7 years ago

Text

Further than Falsehoods: a Look at Deceit

The following post is taking a look at some aspects of Deceit in order to point out the ways his manipulation is much more than just straight up lies. I know Thomas and Joan (Joan especially) put a lot of thought and work into creating Deceit as a character, and some aspects I haven’t seen talked about in the fandom yet. So I wanted to kind of take some time to explain my read on Deceit so as for me to express my huge appreciation for just how much thought and nuance and work must have gone into his development.

So basically, this is an absurdly long analysis of Deceit in “Can LYING be Good??” with the aim of bringing to light some things Joan and Thomas did in his character design that I think deserves more recognition for the thought that had to go into it.

Disclaimer: In no way is this supposed to be a justification for manipulation and lying. There is substantial conversation about both lies and manipulation below the cut though.

With that said, let’s begin.

First of all--and this has been touched on by multiple people in the fandom--all of the little details when he was disguised as Patton that hinted that he wasn’t really our Happy Pappy Patton? Brilliant move. Some of these hints include:

he just “appears”, he doesn’t rise up

using his old cardigan instead of the cat hoodie

“I’m silly like that”

checking his hand as if for notes while saying “Right? you know how I love cartoons?”

his growing excitement (rather than discomfort like Roman had expected/shown himself) as the lying scenarios progress

“Yeah, everyone knows where babies come from. Messenger falcons.” (real Patton mentions storks in another video)

Now let’s look at how Deceit manipulates, shall we? Yes, he tells blatant lies. But I think it’s a mistake to think that’s the extent of the manipulation he does in this video.

Although Logan has seemed to gain in popularity, previous episodes has Virgil specifically identifying Logan as the least popular character. That means identifying him as “everyone’s favorite character” is probably meant to be a falsehood (hah). Many others have pointed out the same thing. However, I think the manipulation runs a bit deeper here.. Not to over-infer, but I think it’s likely that Deceit realized getting Logan, the Voice of Reason, on his side (get it?) will help him in his further manipulation through establishing good rapport.

Invoking Immanuel Kant in the way that Deceit does--given what we understand his end-goal to be--is actually a very manipulative strategy. He wants to lead Thomas to make the decision to lie on his own. In using Kant, Deceit is doing a few things. One is that he is working to leverage a certain level of authority in knowledge here. This is taking a logos-based approach as a foundation (which is precisely why it impresses Logan). However, he pushes this logos-based approach by including the dilemma:

What if a known murderer came to your house, asking where your friend was so they could kill them? Would you tell the truth then?

The answer is, of course, an emphatic no. But Deceit is careful to point out that this philosopher who does not support lying would say “yeppers”. This therefore creates a doubt about perceiving lying is bad by using a pathos-based approach to discredit the logos he had just set up. What does this effectively do?

It eliminates the absolutes. There is no convincing Thomas that lying is always good, but Deceit can and does convince Thomas that it is not always bad by using both an extreme example and backing his argument up with “outside authority” on morals. He even gets Thomas to admit as much:

Deceit!Patton: So you think Kant is wrong?

Thomas: Yeah!

Even when Virgil attempts to call him out on “his” hypocrisy, Patton turns the confusion (at best) and/or accusation (at worst) around on Virgil by playing on a substantial part of his role as Anxiety:

Deceit!Patton: Well, it’s all about priorities, friendo. What’s more important to us? Joan’s feelings? Or honesty?

This attempt at manipulation also comes in later, as we will see in a bit.

After deciding to act our different scenarios, Roman assigns roles to everyone. Except Deceit claims the role with (arguably) the most control for himself:

And even when Roman gives him some push back, he knows just the right threads to pull to make sure he lands the role that puts him in the pilot seat for lying. It’s a dangerous position for the other Sides (and Thomas). It is precisely why he convincingly worms his way into it.

Given this power, Deceit showers Roman with compliments, perhaps to keep him receptive to feedback and more open to allowing “Patton” to have that control he usurped from him a moment ago:

But since Thomas tells the truth in this first situation, Deceit intervenes.

Deceit knows he still has to seem like Patton, so his criticism cannot be too harsh. However, as Deceit is trying to condition Thomas to lie through exposure and “practice”, so to speak, he also must convince Thomas that his first reaction is the wrong one. Thomas, of course, is hurt by this feedback as we see here:

This is such a quick moment, but I think it’s an important one that nods to the layers of Deceit’s character that comes into even more play later on. But his nod to the fact that deception hurts ourselves as much as it can hurt others is a seed that is planted here in this moment that grows much more later on in the episode.

Deceit tries to push past this moment by quickly asking to run the scene again and ignoring Thomas’ hurt and confusion here. Another hint that “Patton” is not as he claims to be. But had Deceit allowed anyone to dwell on this moment (including Thomas), it is likely the bit of control he had asserted over the situation would have quickly been revoked.

After the lying scenarios fall apart, Deceit becomes more desperate, and his manipulations become significantly less subtle.

Feeling that he’s losing traction, Deceit turns to a more common mode of manipulation through the question he poses to Thomas:

The implication being, as he has been hinting at through the entire video, that the only way to avoid Joan’s anger is to lie to them. There’s an assumption in this question that is clearly meant to direct Thomas’s line of thought. “You don’t wan’t to make Joan mad at you, do you?” is a question that everybody already knows the answer to. Of course Thomas doesn’t want Joan to be mad at him. The implication, however, is that the only way for Thomas to get this desired outcome is to lie to them.

Even when Thomas expresses doubt, Deceit then turns to someone else for back up. Specifically, the person who has been the easiest to convince thus far.

“You won’t if it’s done correctly. Right, Roman?”

At this point, Deceit seems to be seeking to put a kind of peer pressure on Thomas. He is grasping at straws. This is emphasized even further when--upon Roman and Logan drawing the important distinction between acting and deception--he turns to Virgil. Here, we see Deceit return (with less subtlety) back to the manipulative tool he hinted at in the beginning: he toys with Virgil’s fear of Thomas losing his loved ones (which was stated explicitly in Moving On Part 2).

“Virgil, buddy, uh, I know you weren’t too keen on it at first, but come on! Could you stand to lose the support of one of Thomas’ friends?”

This is perhaps the clearest example, to me, of how Deceit’s manipulation does not stop at simply “he says things that aren’t true”. Here, he is intentionally amplifying the potential of one of Virgil’s greatest fears so as to convince him to back his side of the argument. He manipulates the insecurity as a means of convincing.

And when Virgil just shuts him down (one of my personal favorite Virgil moments) Deceit uses the last tool in his belt: his physical deception in his appearance as Patton.

He points to himself to reassert and emphasize his physical presence and appearance. In saying “Virgil, it’s me. Aren’t we friends?” Deceit has been forced to use Patton’s reputation and relationships as a last attempt at manipulation for his own benefit. But here’s the thing:

Deceit has already become his own downfall in this moment. His desperation has led him to not act like Patton would or should. Virgil knows this, and that is precisely why this attempt also falls through. Deceit is entirely on his own at this point, and has become backed into a corner.

His desperation is no longer subtle. He is floundering, and his mask is slipping as a result. He becomes more straightforward, and much more forceful. At very end, he seems to be trying to become downright intimidating in his frustration:

Deceit!Patton: Thomas! I know this sounds backwards, but sometimes... lying is good!

Roman: Mm... but you’ve said before--

Deceit!Patton: I know what I said. It doesn’t matter. In this situation, it is the right thing to do. Period.

Thomas: Patton, no.

And finally when he loses the last of the influence and control he had, when Thomas decides that no matter how much it might hurt he must tell Joan the truth, Deceit gives up the charade.

Deceit knows that the game is up. Thomas has made up his mind, and there’s nothing Deceit can do about it. Before, his manipulations were more subtle and nuanced. Now? Now, Deceit’s motive has changed.

Deceit wants to be able to try again. He can’t do that if he becomes truly unmasked, and Thomas is able to identify and name him. So for a brief moment, Deceit is all about keeping the mouths shut of the other Sides, even if his performance as Patton has largely become abandoned.

So long as he can keep their mouths shut, Deceit can try again. Manipulation can warp our sense of reality, and nothing expresses that in the Sides’ dynamic as clearly as literally stealing the words out of Logan’s mouth and muffling them.

However, Thomas ultimately has the agency here, as these are facets of his personality (as Virgil emphatically reminds him). Once again, Deceit attempts to manipulate the people around him. In this case, by potentially scaring Thomas.

This backfires, of course. Thomas reacts to being taunted in such a way by demanding he be told. As a result, Deceit is finally fully unnmasked.

And here, we see a final shift in Deceit’s motives, I think. He has been revealed. Thomas knows about him. He can no longer stop that from happening, but he can influence the impression he leaves and the ways he is perceived as a threat to Thomas. Here’s something that I think is really clever about his character: it’s not until this moment that the whole “Deceit just tells blatant lies” really gets under way, and it gets started immediately.

Boldfaced lies Deceit tells after he is unmasked:

Who’s she? Never heard of her.

Love the new outfit, Roman.

And Virgil, I adore the more intense eyeshadow. It totally doesn’t make you look like a raccoon.

[V: Did you just finish washing some dishes?] Yes.

What you don’t know can’t hurt you.

I am and always have been Patton.

You have no morality.

I mean that didn’t hurt me, at all.

This all went according to plan.

You’ve seen the last of me.

This is almost every line of dialogue Deceit has after he is revealed. But he didn’t speak in such blatant lies when disguised as Patton, even though it was still Deceit’s words and actions throughout. For me, that means that those lies are a deception not only in their meaning, but in their intent as well. Deceit wants to seem like less of a threat than he actually was posing through his many layers of complex manipulation earlier in the video.

In other words, we shouldn’t be quick to forget that the deception incurred when disguised as Patton was still very much Deceit. He is not merely who he is only after he is unmasked.

Additionally, Logan helps us understand the many layers Deceit represents: lying to ourselves being an extremely important and often overlooked one, I think. As Logan says, “you placed distance between who you are, and the lies that you tell. [Deceit] is responsible for your doing so”. He gets his power, in fact, from Thomas lying to and/or deceiving himself, more than from lying to another.

Frankly, I think Deceit in this video was a brilliantly nuanced and complex character for what he represents. The exposition provided by Logan means that Deceit’s role and operation in relation to the other Sides was fascinatingly powerful. He’s a fascinating character construction, and I give huge props to Joan and Thomas for their development of such a complicated character. Clearly so much thought went into him, and I can’t wait to see what else they may have in store.

#ts deceit #sanders sides #deceit sanders #analysis #meta #lies #manipulation #joan #thomas sanders #this is really long wow #deceit is a really well designed character #in my opinion

526 notes · View notes

seeminglyseph · 4 years ago

Text

“As you can tell the day isn’t saved and the systemic powers are still in place, nothing has changed.”

there’s... there’s a third season in production. It’s based on a long book series. ‘the secondary antagonist was dealt with but the main antagonist is still there’ congratulations you discovered overarching narratives, the main antagonist is till there because it’s only the beginning of the series. like they don’t melt the ring in Fellowship guys.

“They don’t spell everything out in blatant words and straight forward language”

I feel like a lot of people who are used to young adult media get really bent out of shape about this but it’s like... adult media tends to be more subtle with it’s commentary because it expects you have enough media history to understand the subtext.

like... listen, I’m not gonna say that there aren’t outliers, obviously there are, but a lot of cartoons and comics and stuff use really basic symbolism and have really simplified morals, the writing can be of quality, but you can’t use it as a metric to judge other media.

I’m not even saying adult media is more mature, it just assumes experience in subtext. That’s kind of part of show don’t tell, it’s honestly usually more impactful to use non-straightforward terms because the people who wouldn’t relate just by hearing like ‘it was totally homophobic’ might relate to ‘I felt like everyone hated me, entirely, deeply, and I was so very afraid.’ Metaphor and symbolism creates understanding, because you might not know one thing but you probably know something similar. and part of the point of a story is to let someone know an experience they haven’t had...

#my mind's all over the place god damn #ramble

0 notes

monkey-network · 7 years ago

Text

Good Stuff - THE TROOF ABOUT STEVEN UNIVERSE - Pt. 6

WARNING: If only I had this passion with College, amirite? Otherwise thank you, take care out there, and enjoy. <<Part 5 Full EP

I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m committed to this ramble and I’ll try not to take too much of your time. Steven Universe is a charming, popular show with a quad-polar fandom, and I’m only here to point out what I say is legitimately wrong with the cartoon. Simple enough? Fair enough.

THE TONE:

Man, what determines the scale to which drama can flourish?! Well, I believe it comes from the amount of stakes at hand, where a character is slowly pressured into making a decision, however rash, moderate, or “right” is may be, and said decision is the begotten turn the makes or breaks a story’s progression for the better. And with these decisions, they should possess a modicum of seriousness that, done right, gets the audience on their side. And, after the latest arc of the series, *sigh* what did they commit to? Why did they commit to it? To that? To a blind stumble of relationship melodrama that...was there?

Not saying a plot arc of Steven and Connie having a fallout is bad, but it raised more than enough points that made me go ‘Why?’, like why was Lars’s situation mentioned in a sincere light only once? Why did it 'Gemcation’ need to exist? Why were we unnecessarily teased with War lore again? Why didn’t we focus on building Lapis’s self-confidence for standing up for herself as well as Peridot’s inability to fully express her thoughts to her? WHY is this basically a rehash of when Pearl and Garnet had their fallout that was over 2 years ago? I hate sounding like YMS, but it always takes a second glance to unfortunately say this show was spinning its wheels again; giving us fondly, emotional moments to veil the fact that the situational focus is off the damn track. It’s like a student that’s blowing off their work until the last minute where the teacher is gonna expect something, and that’s when it gets real. The worst part is this has happened before and this, I believe, is the genuine root of my problems with this series. I could complain all I want about the basic looking fights, the unreal villains, & the passive sense of diversity. They are nitpicks compared to the placebo effect it has on your emotions and the lax attitude it has towards shit that should be present straightforward and seriously. Now, let’s talk on One Punch Man for a sec...

Because I love it & my ass is still strugglin�� for a season 2

I’ve noticed that when it comes to appreciating something, a short burst of something unique is better than a long stretch of something you’ve known for a while now. Seasonal anime has earned a rise in popularity over the years, with a majority having only 12 episodes compared to shows with 26 and beyond. All around phenom One Punch Man is one such that accomplished more of an arc in 2 out of all 12 episodes than Steven Universe did in 139. Hell, one episode accomplished more for their character(s) than the 3 episodes of the latest “Stevenbomb” did for Steven and Connie’s relationship. From the episode “Unyielding Justice”, we got...

1) an established problem or threat (this case The Sea Bro) that is holding all the cards on the matter

2) a standoff that tests the problem’s attention

3) moments where the character (this case Mumen Rider) looks like they’re at their lowest point and are experiencing genuine agony and anger for not being able to resolve the problem easily

4) the rise to the climax, where the character makes the decision to not back down from the problem even when they’re probably destined to fail

and a secondary element (this case the public) that aids the character’s confidence in going forth with their decision, not caring of what might happen but can happen

5) The character executes the decision, not being full of shit and makes the final step in taking on the problem again, this time with the full intent of succeeding

6) The climax takes place, and whether the character helps out or not, there’s an impactful reaction that carries on through the audience and those present in the scene

and lastly there’s 7) the resolution, where the character’s action is provided some form of support to show that what they tried to do was not all in vain where the story can then move along.

I don’t command you to see One Punch Man, but I implore you to look at that moment alone. That scene was three minutes long and even when you take away the part of it being a fight scene, these are the basic steps to establishing and confronting a conflict. That is what should get you, that is what you want in a story. Again, scene was only 3 minutes, and even with a predictable outcome, that span of time marinates well in giving you a) the context, b) the tension, and c) the payoff. you can feel for Bike Cop’s plight in being a hero on his own terms. Those seven steps, what I believe, are the key to having, dealing, and confronting problems in your story. What I also believe is that, if dealing with these seven steps, you shouldn’t give it too much pathos or distract us with contemporary plots to pad out the run time. “Oh, Steven...I didn’t notice you...”

“Ooooo, sorry. I’ll come back later.”

I’m not shaming the show for having drama and real life problems like getting worse than the friend zone. What stinks about it is that, if some things were addressed more earnestly instead of constantly blowing them off ‘til next time or never for lesser concepts, things would go a lot smoother and the progression for the characters, and the world, will feel real. Like,

Were we gonna explore the grieving weight Lars’s parents probably had with their son possibly gone for good? Nah, let’s focus more Mayor Dewey and how his failure relates to Steven’s relationship mistake. Give ‘em a mention of how they’re taking all this, they’ll be fine, I promise.

Well were we finally gonna look into Lapis’s self-confidence issues about refacing the past when she’s clearly stronger than she lets on? No no, that’ll be later. We gotta continue Peridot’s arc and how she’s been affected by Lapis’s control over their relationship because she has much more character to work with. Lapis shouldn’t be told what she’s doing to herself is wrong, she has the right to leave. She’ll be back, though. Promise.

Can we see how Lars and the Off Colors are doing? That will be the next arc, plus we gotta have Lion away go with Connie because..................reasons.

Can we see anything? Pink Diamond’s murder conspiracy? Jasper and the corrupted gems? The Cluster? NO. WHY NOT?! Listen buddy, there’s the right and then there’s the grand way, now do you want a grand adventure or not? Ughhhhhh THAT’S what I thought; now get that logic out of my face.

With seriousness comes focus, and with those two comes progression and good pacing. Without it, you waste valuable time sidetracking what could be accomplishing feats of character building and moral connections into plots that mostly amount to being FOOTNOTES that can muddy the point it was trying to make. I find it forgivable in season 1, but afterward when I was seeing that they were taking things to a more pressing, important route, I kinda expecting them to follow through with it? Instead ooooof half-assing it just to get by? To save the mmmm momentous episodes at the end of the Stevenbomb or season? Hmm? And in the meantime, release some episodes that people consider filler?Filler that could be shown after important matters are taking care of? Instead of putting ‘em in places that make the moment to moment pacing quite jarring? Have them sidetrack the next important matter to look over and happily waste time? Nah, they know exactly what they’re doing. In fact, there were two moments where they hit the nail on how to provide seriousness to their story. One was the first ever Stevenbomb and the other was the final moment from ‘Earthlings’ with Jasper’s final stand.

We see the gem warrior, on the verge of full mutation after failing to defeat the one she despises the most, reflecting on everything she knew about her situation up to this point. When she talks, there’s a slow build of devastation and frustration in her voice, knowing she’s slowly weakening and is kneeling before her enemy. And even then, she gets back up and continuously tries to tower Steven with her size and intimidation.

And even then, Steven is dazed and confused of how to take it all in, finally leaving Jasper with the thought that everything she tried to do until now was nothing but a joke. Then she gets corrupted, Peridot shanks her, and she’s finished. Then, with but a single line from silence, Amethyst puts her away with the final frame of her and Steven capturing the exhaustion yet potential understanding of what they just went through.

Noting that while Jasper’s fearless crusade came up short, it all wasn’t for nothing

If it ended right there, it would all have been perfect and it’s moments like that that should make up Steven U. more. Having comedy and boundless optimism in the mix is fine, but when something important and actually vital to building anything in your series is there, it should be followed through with weight and focus that adds to the nuance that makes a show like this worth watching. This plays into the world building, the characters, the themes. I don’t know how to express this beyond if you want shit done, the bare minimum doesn’t cut it every time, no matter teary eyed you look.

Jeez allov, maybe I’m rambling. Maybe I am looking too deep into a series that has quotable symbolism from ice cream sandwiches. I mean, in hindsight, things could have obviously been better if the writer’s room thought on it a little more instead of trying to captivate better love stories than Twilight into a binge-worthy material as well as a weak timebomb arc, two weak abduction arcs, episodes that could’ve just been comic book material, weak usage of new characters, pathetic utilization of established characters, and evolution that make sloths look like hummingbirds. Or maybe rewatching SU episodes is a bad idea on my part and I need to bring my blissful ignorance out more to enjoy it more. I don’t know, I’m sleepy.

Wake me when season 2 of True and the Rainbow Kingdom comes out

#steven universe #su #su critical #su criticism #su critique #cartoons #reviews #analysis #long post #storytelling #Good Stuff #Roy Macintosh #ye #one punch man

25 notes · View notes

brajeshupadhyay · 4 years ago

Text

Vaccine messaging faces unprecedented test with COVID-19 – success of a vaccine hinges on it

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had a problem: A new vaccine could save lives and end a viral epidemic that had infected millions of Americans. The immunization was safe, effective, and widely available. Most insurance companies planned to cover it. But few people were taking it.

That epidemic was human papillomavirus, or HPV, a sexually transmitted infection that sometimes causes cervical cancer and other serious conditions. In 2006, after federal regulators approved the first HPV vaccine, the CDC officially recommended that all adolescent girls be immunized. In 2011, the agency extended the recommendation to boys, too.

But uptake of the vaccine was, by all accounts, abysmal. So the agency launched a campaign to promote the importance of the HPV vaccine.

Extensive fact sheets, created by a consulting firm and released on the CDC’s website, addressed parents’ concerns that the vaccine would encourage their kids to become sexually active. Doctors and nurses began delivering talking points, provided by the CDC’s communications team and disseminated by partners such as the Immunization Action Coalition, a foundation-, industry-, and government-funded nonprofit, that touted the vaccine’s cancer-preventing qualities.

Immunizations jumped. By 2017, 49 percent of adolescents were up to date with the HPV vaccine.

That figure is still below CDC goals. But the HPV campaign, focusing on a vaccine that is entirely optional and given after early childhood, has become the subject of extensive research in the years since. And, as scientists edge closer to finalizing vaccines for Covid-19, lessons from HPV and other vaccine messaging campaigns are suddenly more relevant than ever.

Indeed, while it’s possible a vaccine could be approved for public use as early as this fall, and widely available sometime next year, it’s unclear how many Americans will be willing to take it. Many analysts are optimistic that an effective vaccine will be welcomed, but surveys indicate widespread suspicion. Officials appear to be preparing a response: In early July, CDC Director Robert Redfield testified at a Senate hearing that the agency has spent months developing a plan to build Covid-19 vaccine confidence, though he offered few details.

A preliminary CDC vaccine rollout plan, published in mid-September, describes good communication as “essential” to “a successful Covid-19 vaccination program,” and notes the agency will “engage and use a wide range of partners, collaborations, and communication and news media channels” in an effort to reach different audiences.

“There's often this assumption that if we build it, they will come,” said Kaitlin Christenson, vice president of vaccine acceptance and demand at the Sabin Vaccine Institute, a global nonprofit funded by a mix of government, pharmaceutical industry, and foundation sources. “But even the most effective vaccine is not going to produce results if it isn't taken up and delivered effectively.”

Sometimes overlooked, vaccine messages — from brochures in doctor’s offices to Instagram posts — are as vital to a vaccine campaign as the vaccine itself, some experts say. Over the years, vaccine messaging specialists have homed in on tactics, from those generating fear to others that evoke community values, that can boost compliance.

But results have been mixed, and fundamental debates remain over the best messaging strategies. And it’s not yet clear what Covid-19 vaccine messaging campaigns — launched amid a global pandemic unfolding in the shadow of intense political polarization — will look like, let alone if they will work.

Before the early 2000s, said Glen Nowak, a health communications expert at the University of Georgia and former communications director for the CDC’s National Immunization Program, CDC leadership believed that vaccines needed little fanfare to convince the public of their value. Up until then, Nowak said, it was “assumed that vaccines will speak for themselves.” Policymakers also often leaned on state day care and school vaccination mandates to win compliance.

But “telling people to do something because you say so isn’t a really effective way of getting them to feel confident,” Nowak added. He recalled that when flu recommendations changed to include children in the early 2000s, it became “clear that public and provider communications would be needed to foster awareness and compliance with the new recommendations.” The HPV vaccine, released a few years later, underscored the idea that just posting new vaccine guidelines wasn’t enough.

With the advent of Facebook and other online social media in the 2000s, anti-vaccine messages proliferated online, sharing stories of children harmed by vaccines. At the same time, more parents began taking advantage of philosophical and religious exemption policies that let them send their kids to school unvaccinated. That trend raised alarm among public health experts and created a need for persuasive messaging, wrote Xiaoli Nan, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Health and Risk Communication, in an email.

Today, the creation of vaccine messages, sitting at the intersection of marketing and medicine, can take months or years to unfold. Sometimes the process is spearheaded by vaccine manufacturers, hospitals, or pharmacies. Often, though, the campaigns are the work of government agencies trying to boost vaccine use or address looming concerns among hesitant parents.

The CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases has a contract with a communications firm that develops millions of dollars’ worth of educational materials and campaigns, mostly directed at flu and HPV messaging, according to Nowak. It also has its own communications team to develop materials, targeting messages based on data from the previous year about who did – or did not – have high vaccination rates.

In recent years, vaccine messaging has proliferated to include Twitter accounts, TV commercials, online ads, satirical campaigns, cartoon characters, doctor education efforts, brochures, posters, billboards, radio ads, and even dedicated YouTube channels.

What makes for an effective messaging campaign, though, is a more elusive question. Jody Tate, director of research and policy for the Health Policy Partnership, a consultancy, said effective messaging digs into survey and focus group data to understand people’s reluctance — whether it’s based on concerns about safety, or something more fundamental, such as a language barriers or access to medical care — and then tailors itself accordingly.

Who delivers those messages is also crucial, Tate said. Overwhelmingly, surveys find that doctors and nurses are the most trusted sources of vaccine information. A 2018 Wellcome Global Monitor survey found that roughly three-quarters of adults around the world trust their doctor or nurse ahead of family and friends, religious leaders, and celebrities. Doctors “are the ideal messengers,” Nan wrote.

Rejecting the flash of some advertising, many experts favor a simple, fact-based approach. And simple messages, repeated often, can potentially be effective, said Christopher E. Clarke, a health and environmental risk communication scholar at George Mason University. (Indeed, in a metanalysis of 14 years’ worth of influenza-related communications by the CDC, Nowak found that “visible and frequent reminders” raised vaccination rates).

Experts are divided, though, on whether a straightforward tell-the-facts approach is really enough. “There is growing evidence that traditional communication of vaccines — e.g., messages focusing on statistics — has not worked well,” Nan wrote. “More successful strategies,” she added, “rely on trustworthy messengers, telling stories rather than using statistics, and appeals to moral values.”

In 1999, when Nowak, then director of communications for the CDC’s immunization program, looked at why more people 65 years and older weren’t getting the flu vaccine, he discovered they didn’t think the CDC’s fact-based materials — which urged high-risk groups, including the frail and elderly, to get vaccinated — applied to them. They were, after all, in their 60s and 70s. They weren’t frail or elderly, they told Nowak in focus groups. They were healthy and active.

Over the years, the agency has remade its flu and other vaccine messaging to be more positive and appeal to people’s desire to stay healthy and maintain their quality of life.

Positive framing has proven, in some cases, to work well. A study published this May, which looked specifically at HPV vaccine messaging, found that negatively worded messages could actually increase the perception of risk associated with taking vaccine itself. “Negative messaging was not a good way to communicate,” said Porismita Borah, an author of the study and an associate professor of communications at Washington State University. Kelly Moore, associate director for immunization education at the Immunization Action Coalition (IAC) and a former CDC adviser, said that “fear and uncertainty can lead to inaction.”

Instead, she said, “it is messages that are positive — messages of hope and optimism and empowerment — that encourage people to take action, because they believe that by what they are doing, they can change their destiny.”

But some experts argue that fear can offer a more effective push. The chickenpox vaccine was licensed and recommended for all children in 1995. But its uptake was poor for the first few years, said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a frequent government adviser on vaccine policy who also helped invent a rotavirus vaccine that is produced by Merck.

“I think people thought of chickenpox as a benign right of childhood passage,” he said. But as many as 13,000 people were hospitalized and 150 people died each year in the early 1990s as a result of chickenpox — and the vaccine’s maker, Merck, used those figures to create a more aggressive advertising TV commercial campaign, which included interviews with parents who had lost children to chickenpox. “It was dramatic, and they were criticized for that,” Offit said. But the campaign, in conjunction with increasing public school mandates, also worked: By 2014, 91 percent of U.S. children 19 to 35 months old had received one dose of the vaccine.

Similarly, HPV vaccine messaging has sometimes preyed on people’s fear: In 2016, for example, its maker, also Merck, ran ads that featured adults with cervical cancer, asking their parents if they knew a vaccine could have prevented it. Some research suggests that, at least when it comes to the HPV vaccine, anticipated regret can be a powerful motivator.

“What convinces people?” Offit asked. “Sadly, I think fear is more powerful than reason.”

Some vaccine messaging campaigns simply fail. And some messengers can also endanger messaging campaigns.

In 2002, fearing that terrorists would use smallpox as a weapon, President George W. Bush ordered half a million military members to be vaccinated against the disease before launching a voluntary program for health care and emergency workers the following year. Amid concerns that the vaccine wasn’t safe, he had himself vaccinated and announced it to the press.

But fewer than 40,000 health care workers accepted vaccination. Some people still didn’t feel the vaccine, which can cause rare but serious complications, was safe. The administration didn’t consult with doctors, critics say, and didn’t anticipate that politics would play a role in people’s decision to be vaccinated. The program was launched just months before the U.S. went to war with Iraq, and many liberals believed the vaccination campaign was propaganda.

Today’s climate poses a distinctive, uncharted challenge: No other vaccine has been made at such breakneck speed, amid such publicity, and with such political division, said Clarke.

"There is no precedent for” this challenge, he said.

With at least several months likely remaining until the most ambitious Covid-19 vaccine will potentially go to market, a recent Gallup survey found that around one in three Americans say they would not get a free, FDA-approved Covid-19 vaccine. Surveys also suggest that Black Americans are more hesitant about the vaccine than White Americans — potentially a legacy of longstanding discrimination against Black people in the health care system.

Partisanship matters, too. The Gallup survey also found that only around half of Republicans currently plan to take the vaccine when available. The country has been divided along partisan lines on many preventative measures against Covid-19. That “political divide will likely spill over to the upcoming Covid-19 vaccine,” warned Nan, who, like Clarke, believes tailoring messaging to people’s political or religious views could be essential to uptake. While other kinds of public messaging campaigns match messages with the receiver’s worldview, Nan explained the technique has rarely been used in vaccination messaging.

But Graham Dixon, a science and risk communication professor at The Ohio State University, said that a Covid-19 vaccine messaging strategy that presents a consensus not only in the scientific community, but among policymakers, could be effective in increasing vaccination. “There has been a great deal of political polarization in this issue,” he said, “and it's almost inevitable that people's decision to get a Covid-19 vaccine will land in the same way if we don't create a messaging strategy that emphasizes a depoliticized message.”

In the past, other messaging campaigns have drawn on anti-polarization strategies to try to build consensus around contentious issues. A climate change awareness campaign from 2008, for example, featured famous political adversaries — including the left-wing pastor Al Sharpton and the right-wing evangelist Pat Robertson — sitting together on couches, talking about their shared concern about the environment.

“If and when a Covid-19 vaccine becomes available, messaging should be consistent across the political spectrum, and in a perfect world should feature influential leaders from the Republican and Democratic parties,” Dixon wrote in a follow-up email. But, he added, it was probably “wishful thinking to believe that Joe Biden and Donald Trump would appear together in a PSA encouraging Covid-19 vaccination.”

Despite what Redfield has described as months of planning at the CDC for how to build vaccine confidence, it’s unlikely the agency will unveil official campaigns until a vaccine goes to market.

Asked in July for details about its plan, a CDC spokesperson sent Undark a link to the agency’s existing framework for vaccinating with confidence and referred further questions to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. HHS declined repeated requests for comment and provided only unattributed information via email, writing that Operation Warp Speed (OWS) — the federal initiative to deliver 300 million doses of a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine by January 2021 — is committed to “maximum transparency.”

Since then, CDC has released some additional details of the campaign as part of a 57-page "interim playbook" that outlines vaccination plans for local and state public health officials.

Some journalists, legislators, and scientists have accused OWS of a lack of transparency about its process for selecting vaccine candidates. That opacity, critics say, exacerbates concerns over any potential vaccines’ safety and efficacy.

If the operation’s name foreshadows more messaging from government agencies, experts caution there is reason to be wary. “The term ‘warp speed’ was an unfortunate term,” Offit said. That particular message, he said, suggests corners are being cut to create a vaccine.

“Constantly saying you’re going fast makes people think you’re going recklessly fast,” said Arthur Caplan, a medical ethicist at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine.

Beth Bell, a clinical professor of global health at the University of Washington and member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, said she’s not sure how the name came about. (The committee is not directly involved in the nuts and bolts of vaccine messaging.) “I think those of us who are looking at recommendations are quite serious about not cutting corners and not sacrificing safety for speed,” Bell said.

To convince Americans already concerned about vaccine safety to take a vaccine developed at record — or warp — speed, transparency will be key: “Loud and clear throughout this period of preparation, and when a vaccine is available, it's going to need to be very clear what we know about the vaccine, and frankly, what we don't know,” said Jason Schwartz, a health policy scholar at Yale University.

Experts believe that vaccine messaging that presents more information — even if that information is incomplete, or changes as more evidence emerges — can sway people toward vaccine confidence. “I understand why members of the public are skeptical and hesitant right now,” said Moore, the Immunization Action Coalition staffer, during a conversation in July. “Someone recently asked me if I would take the first vaccine that rolls off the line, and I said, ‘I would like to see the data and then I'll make my decision.’ If that's my approach, then I respect others for having the same approach.”

Nonetheless, experts hope that a safe, effective vaccine — and any messaging that accompanies it — will be welcomed by the majority of Americans who will have to receive it to reach herd immunity.

“I'd like to think it would be like the end of the movie ‘Contagion,’” Offit said, “where everybody's lining up to get this vaccine.”

Jillian Kramer is a journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic, Scientific American, and more.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

via Blogger https://ift.tt/3655enL

#Blogger #followme instagood art friends beautiful prilaga like4like likeforlike fashion na

0 notes