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toneelspeelster · 4 years

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portraying trauma, a skam and remakes comparison

disclaimer: i’ll start this by saying this meta will be critical of the way wtfock portrayed their version of a traumatic experience (the gay bashing). if you do not want to engage with criticism on this, i’d advise you not to read. this will also discuss only a few versions (skam, druck, skam nl and wtfock) in particular because i didn’t want to make it too long and because i feel these versions deal with trauma in an interesting way.

common reactions

in any case, i’d like to start with common reactions after experiencing a traumatic event, be it a sexual assault, emotional assault, physical assault etc.

1. anxiety and fear 2. re-experiencing of the trauma. 3. increased vigilance 4. avoidance 5. anger 6. guilt/shame 7. grief/depression 8. self image and view of the world is negative, trust is difficult. 9. difficulty with sexual relationships 10. substance abuse (i’d include negative coping mechanisms here too). source

now, i mention this not because i think every remake hits these but rather because i want people to see what commonly happens after traumatic events to people and how wtfock in one instance (robbe/sander) misses the mark completely while in another (zoe) it actually sort of works. and how other remakes have dealt with the subject matter.

first off: skam

to start with even’s traumatic experience and his response. i’m starting with even mostly because it’s the original series, not necessarily bc i think it’s the most elegant portrayal (bc it’s definitely not). but in essence, what it does show is the effect of a traumatic event in the long run. even’s experience at bakka, where he kissed one of his friends he had a crush on; who rejected him; even being in a manic episode; resulting in a suicide attempt and his self inforced isolation from his best friends by going to another school and ignoring their messages - it’s touched upon in his initial season but expanded in season 4. and still at least one year later, still even freezes up in fear immediately after seeing his friends. even is incredibly anxious; it’s clear he’s recalling past memories he’s been trying to avoid for forever; he feels immensely guilty (he wants to see elias, he really does, he just doesn’t know how) and even though i think even’s self image is not necessarily the result of this experience, it does have an even more negative effect on his self-image. even has difficulties liking himself, seeing worth in himself, even in season 4. after reconciling w him (however that even went we don’t know) he appears in one of their vlogs and still you can see how uncomfortable it makes him to talk about it. but, this is what it ends on: you see the strength of even reaching out to those he loves and for them being able to reach out to him too. in the end, it’s healing. it is discussed throughout the season.

then, numbers two: druck and skam nl

i’m combining these two in one entry bc i feel like these two portrayals deal with the repercussions of traumatic experiences to the life of these two very well.

first off, we have david, who came out as transgender at a previous school and was met with intense transphobic reactions; deadnaming, invasive personal questions and just generally awful treatment by people - it resulted in david feeling very unsafe, difficulties sleeping and hiding and running away in the hopes of avoiding these situations. it affects his world view of the world as unkind, and him forcing himself to be okay with being alone bc the only one he trusts is himself. he doesn’t let people too close (wanting to stay anonymous) and when matteo breaks up with sarah he runs bc matteo is getting too close. and then, it happens again. he’s outed on social media in his new school, having difficulties even doing his exams bc his teacher is being a transphobic dick and he’s scared of both him and the kids at school. he then, after staying with his godmother, hides himself away at an unsafe, abandoned pool and even staying there for a night.

then, we have liv. earlier in her life, she’s implied to have had an eating disorder - a traumatic experience in itself. and although she seems very aware of her needing to be careful not to fall into those patterns again, it unfortunately does come to the front again when faced with the fact that she’s been sexually assaulted in her sleep and it’s been filmed without consent. as an eating disorder survivor, i’d say her body is already something she might have difficulties with. to combine that with sexual assault.. it results in liv isolating herself at home, resorting to doing her white(!) laundry multiple times in one week and her stress baking cookies only for her to give them to her roommates. her mum even asks her if she’s eating well - for a mother who seems emotionally and physically distant otherwise, liv must’ve not sounded well. even when she seems a little bit better, engel still comes over to check up on liv and cook for her. engel has similar ed experiences so she knows it’s not something that’s just gone one second to the next.

these portrayals work well bc it is clear that their experiences have become a detriment to their view of the world and result in them resorting to very unhealthy coping mechanisms. they both clearly feel the loss of control, the triggering of (past) experiences; the avoidance and the isolation. liv feels immense shame, david feels immense anger and fear - they both have difficulties trusting people, even the ones they care about the most.

but, in the end?

david does let matteo subtly know where he is, bc he knows matteo will see him and find him. matteo calls him even out on it: you are not a damned vampire who needs to hide away, he says - something that david didn’t even see about himself until matteo told him. he finds support in matteo and all of his friends and his sister. he doesn’t need to be alone anymore.

and liv? she tells her friends about her troubles eventually, and they support her wholeheartedly, telling her it’s not her fault and flashing boobs while doing so. liv finds the strength to confront her attacker and blackmailing him, and eventually her boyfriend tells her she needs to go to the police to report his brother.

these are both david’s season-long storyline and liv’s multiple episode storyline (all her clips for the first week after her experience focus solely on this). it’s healing to see this happen to survivors of these experiences.

as a ender: wtfock

i think it’s important to establish first that this is first and foremost about robbe/sander’s gay bashing. robbe and sander have been dating approximately three days when they are violently and verbally assaulted and seemingly left for dead in antwerp’s streets. the next episode makes a point of robbe and sander being hurt badly with bruises and cuts and black eyes, robbe doesn’t sleep much and is irritated quickly and sander has a very weird reaction to violence in general and doesn’t want to go to the police. later, robbe is scared that sander was put off by the idea of going to the police, that he felt forced. within that same first episode, robbe tells milan the true story and zoe a little off story and they react sympathetically, zoe even offering her doctor. robbe’s mum’s psych also refers him to a therapist and he calls her.

but then the storyline, after episode 6? it ends? milan seems to weirdly reference it sometimes but it doesn’t come to any conclusion in the end. after reconciling sander and robbe have no trouble kissing in front of everyone. there’s no sense of robbe or sander having internalised a different world view after this experience. they even never discuss it ever again after that first week. robbe going to a therapist is not even shown or referenced at all, even with the opportunity being there with social media updates. there’s no real repercussions, except for loss of sleep and sander maybe sort of seeing it as a way of destroying something time and again but that’s more his world view bc of his mental illness i’d say. it’s a storyline for one episode, that’s it. and with how irresponsibly they portrayed it by not immediately showing them being alright or together or taken care off but waiting hours for an update, it triggered a hella lot of audience members instead. as a bisexual woman myself, i felt scared watching that.

zoe’s storyline of having to testify even got more of an appropriate portrayal as she’s scared to testify and also feels pushed by the people who love her the most (milan and senne). her breaking up w senne feels more an actual genuine decision bc of messed up feelings about the whole situation (senne being quite... aggressive with how he approaches her about it sometimes.. it felt like he wanted it for himself mostly, not for her). her not being able to sleep and feeling exhausted, months after the actual traumatic experience happened. it has an effect on her and how she responds and how she makes decisions.

conclusion

experiences like these have repercussions. but apparently in belgium only sexual assault results in trauma. gay bashing doesn’t. it had no true purpose except to educate straight people about the plight of lgbt people being attacked violently. but, as people far more eloquent than i have said, why? homophobes will not watch this series and suddenly turn around. and the world is damned if people just don’t realise that beating up people is bad and shouldn’t happen.

the true purpose of skam is to teach people of all kinds, and to show people of a certain minority, community or with same/different life experiences that there is hope, and a lot more to them than just what they have experienced. now even the good portrayals could have all benefitted from telling the audience that it’s good and okay to go to therapy about this... but at least they didn’t shy away from a storyline that shows how deep this runs for people. they devoted time to it.

and that’s all wtfock really needed to do if wanting to make a point by including this. they didn’t. it’s sensational fodder at best. and i think that the characters as well as the audience?

they deserved better than that.

#skam #wtfock #druck #skam nl #skam meta #wtfock meta #druck meta #skam nl meta #mine

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maxbernini · 4 years

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watched the leaked wtfock wednesday clip and i hate hate hate how they framed kato telling off moyo as some kind of #GirlBoss thing. because the boy squad are incredibly misogynistic and it’s deeply frustrating to watch, but this feels like we’re supposed to be watching and celebrating kato in that moment as a Feminist Icon Taking No Shit From Men but within the context of the show i just felt icky and exhausted. we’re in season four and moyo has been given no personality outside of “Homophobic & Women-Objectifying”, and this just feels like another layer of “look how uneducated and offensive this Black man is”. (see also: yann being framed as homophobic in skamfr s3).

and yeah we don’t yet know what she said when she rejected him at the party, it’s highly possible she did say something racist and this is about how everyone has things to ~unlearn~ or whatever the fuck, but even if they do go down that path and we see her “flaws”...she’s the main, and you’re supposed to sympathize with the main, and attempting to have audiences sympathize with a racist is horrific. even more so when the narrative has already framed her as a Feminist Icon, as a victim.

like i can very clearly see this going down a “it’s okay that she’s racist because he’s sexist” route, or if the autistic rumors are true, then a “her racism is less violent because of her autism” route, or even a “it’s her autism making her racist, not her whiteness” route (aka: She Can’t Help Being Racist UwU, or acting like it’s a fun lil quirk she has to unlearn). which is not good autistic rep either!!

also. we’re not talking about a white woman hating a white man. we’re specifically talking about a very racialized dynamic of a white woman essentially publicly putting a Black man “in his place” so to speak. any storyline wherein a white person teaches a person of color something to do with being a decent person, or are framed as the savior, the educated, civilized, woke one, is racist at its core, no matter how misogynistic, homophobic, ableist the character of color is.

and yeah jens & aaron are gross too, but this is not their season, they’re not the focus the way moyo is. they’re not the ones seemingly getting humiliated each clip.

#wtfock meta #racism #did anyone else get ~girl boss~ vibes from that scene?? it reminded me of the faux feminism of the noora telling off william scenes #where you're supposed to view them as inherently empowering #(although this one is much worse obviously and it's a different context.)#the skamverse very much has a '(white) woman doing anything = inherently feminist' problem #(also framing racism as a character flaw is also terrible. like this is not a victimless quirk)#*

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lilbasthet · 5 years

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I loved all the mirroring going on in the clip (and how my sweet teenage babies didn't really see it and acknowledge it yet):

First Zoe pushes Robbe to get help. She really just wants to help and be there for him, but in a way she's overstepping.

A second later Senne (and then Milan) does the same thing to her, and suddenly she totally knows what personal boundaries are and that this is her case and nobody gets to tell her how to act.

This seems so very realistic to me. Because all of us live this kind of hypocrisy where we want the best for the people we love, but don't see that others want the same for us. I think this is a good way to portray that everyone has their own pain to deal with that we don't know about. That it's OK if we want to help, but that people can only be pushed so far before they have to take steps on their own.

I can't wait to see which steps Robbe and Zoe will take, and how Robbe will use what he's learning now when dealing with Sander later.

#Wtfock #Wtfock meta #mets

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druckaustin · 4 years

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it’s britt(ney) bitch

okay this post is probably about to get blown out of the water by what’s likely gonna happen later today/tomorrow (ohn 👀). someone may have already even pointed these things out. but anywhoo, i wanted to get this out before i’m likely proven wrong by the end of the season.

wtfock has obviously made a lot of big changes from the original, but so far, at least to me, these changes have seemed a little half baked. I’m assuming the assault incident will get some follow up but it’s likely many of the other changes the team has made won’t get delved into any further than their mere inclusion. which i think is a shame. but a change that i am really excited about is the role of Britt in this season.

Sonja and Even’s relationship is largely defined by how long they’ve been together. they obviously care about each other but it’s become an obligation rather than devotion. Even’s mi is something that makes her feel like she’s responsible for him, and that in turn makes Even feel like he owes it to stay with her while simultaneously growing resentful.

Britt and Sander have not been dating as long, and yet Britt has quickly inserted herself into being his caretaker and micromanaging his life? (for example, being present when the ambulance came, manipulating jana to fend off Robbe, taking it upon herself to search for him after he left the clinic when really his parents should be the one’s handling it.) for a long time we couldn’t be sure if Sander had really broken things off with her because she repeatedly demonstrated no understanding of a break up. I even wondered, if he really was homeless as conjectured, maybe he was staying at her house and couldn’t break it off without losing his place to crash. but the more i think on it, the more i can see Britt being an example of how people with mental illness are more likely to be victims of abuse.

sander saying he worries that no one will ever love him is one of the first red flags. it’s even said as a reason he ought to stay with Britt despite things not going well. he clearly believes he has no right to seek better. this sounds to me a lot like Britt convincing him he should stay with her because no one else will love him with his mi and making him feel like he should just be grateful he has her at all.

another obvious sign of abuse is when she hits him outside the school. what is most significant to me about that scene is that after she hits him she begins to pull him away like he’s a child or a pet. when he responds by yelling that they are over, she seems, as robbe said, to really not have known. But she’s also not emotional at all. she’s not even angry despite the fact that literally 1.2 seconds ago she was apparently mad enough to slap him. in fact she was a little bit flippant. to me it seems like she doesn’t take his words seriously.

in the same scene Sander emphasizes that he’s told her over and over again that they’re over. if his words are true (which is looking more likely but i wouldn’t say we know for sure yet) this paints a picture to me of a relationship in which whenever Sander says something that Britt doesn’t like she dismisses it as just being the result of his mi. which means she can gaslight him for anything.

he can’t ever disagree with her and have it matter. he can’t break up with her and have her believe he means it. now that i think of it, this puts the paintball scene in a completely different light. when i first saw him go ham with the paintball gun at her back i was honestly appalled. that was vicious. but now i think it was a demonstration of how toxic their relationship is. perhaps Sander was unleashing some repressed rage he felt from her abuse.

but even more than that, now i wonder if he wasn’t just trying to make her break up with him, trying to do something so bad that she wouldn’t forgive him, or hurt her so much that she’d finally believe him when he said he didn’t want to be with her.

my clown makeup might be exposed before the end of the season, even though i think this is a solid theory. skam, especially the original, tends to try to redeem everyone in the end (except niko he can rot). plus, it’s harder to imagine when you consider that jana is still friends with Britt. but wtfock already avoided giving Britt the minute by minute line and i think it would be very cool if they had developed these changes in Britt and Sander’s relationship as a way to explicitly show that ppl with mi have a higher risk of being abused, that there are multiple types of abuse, and that women can be perpetrators of abuse toward men.

tl;dr: britt’s abusive and wtfock should say it

#wtfock #britt #sobbe #robbe x sander #skam #sander driesen #sander x robbe #skam remakes #rosander #britt ingelbrecht #britt x sander #wtfock meta #i really do hope they confirm that as being the point of all this.#cuz otherwise it's just another half baked change #long post #sorry #i've never been brief in my life #this title is so stupid #you don't even want to know the other considerations

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tennesseewilliamshakespeare · 5 years

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Since no one on either side of the Sander debate seems to be able to tell the difference

Plain old immature teenage boy behavior

- pretending to think someone is a member of staff as a joke

- asking someone to name x amount of songs to prove they're a fan of an artist

- dangerous shopping cart shenanigans resulting in a mess in the grocery store

- disregarding your friend when she asks you to buy healthy food

Actual fucked up behavior

- shooting someone four times in a row with a paintball gun, especially at close range, especially when they didn't see you coming, especially when they're your girlfriend

#wtfock #sander driesen #pro sander #anti sander #use ur brains guys #wtfock meta

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skamremakesfromhell · 6 years

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wtfock just had the best version of the “getting alcohol/sana telling vilde to shush” scene!

like they got so much across it the way the girls talked and it was so natural and you can feel the girls as and actual squad even tho it’s so early! yasmine definitely didn’t seem to harsh on amber (which is a bit of a problem some versions have), amber going on and on about why she can’t pay instead of about her outfit! zoë standing up for yasmine by countering all ambers arguments! yasmine having everyone take a breath at the beginning ajdkejejfja, luca was great she kept interrupting amber lol and asking so many questions like i love her, jana remembering her plans with jens!!!!! amber being like “you don’t have plans with him anymore” and jana caving! really showcasing how jana is just going along with what other people are doing!

i love this girl squad so much and i love this scene!

#wtfock #wtfock meta #mine

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fatoumyvu · 3 years

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I was talking on WhatsApp about wtfock and I think it finally clicked what doesnt click for me about sobbe and s3 (also of course this is an opinion bla bla bla etc)

So I feel like at its core sobbe is what someone that doesnt understand what og s3 and what evak was about would write if they were trying to recreate evak

(this is way too long so i did the thing)

Og s3 (and I'm limiting what I'm saying to the s3s this is not taking into account anything post s3 for either of them) at the same time in a way builds a simple uncomplicated first love together forever love story and then dismantles it and creates a much more interesting but much more complicated and real love story instead.

S3 introduces us to the fairytale (and of course its a gay love story so theres other shit there since the beginning that make it complicated like isaks internalized homophobia and his parents and his friends im not talking about that here) and then it shows us that it was never real but it's ok that it wasnt cause that's life and it's worth it and its better. Even is this cool older guy that flirts with isak and that seems like an ideal uncomplicated first love but actually Even is a nerd and a dork and likes dumb movies and hes a complicated real person (character) with his own problems and flaws and a lot of history (that we slowly discover as isak discovers them) and shit is very complicated actually and relationships are hard (and they are awesome and romantic and real). And that's what life it's about it's about the highs but it's also about the lows and it's about opening yourself to feeling and to love and to getting to know other people and letting other people know you which also means opening yourself to pain and to heartache and disappointment. and of course evak had it's one liners too and I'm a terrible romantic so I love them but they have their slow moments and their opening up to eachother moments theres vulnerability there and it doesnt end with a promise of forever cause that's not what s3 is about.

(Please go back and rewatch the final eva and isak conversation cause it's pretty much what I'm saying but nicer and said in way less words)

Sobbe misses the second part of that so hard

It's all about the cheesy romantic one liners they double down on them so hard and then they torture the characters and make them go through hell and then theres more forever one liners (and sex cause I guess that was more needed than conversations) and then more pain and more pain and then a lackluster reunion with again the idea of them always forever (and I guess the reunion is supposed to be the vulnerable moment but it really just feels like a culmination of the pain not a shift in what this relationship is about) and then party and the season is done (and it has the life is now thing but it completely misses the point of what that was about in og too and its more like a we might die tomorrow so let's live tonight kind of line)

And ok yeah def you can argue wtfock s3 is about different things than og s3 was about (and to a certain extent I agree with that) but they failed at those so hard too (was it about robbes journey with his intermittent internalized homophobia? Or about external homophobia maybe? Or both? Idk cause both of those stories were resolved suddenly and badly and if they wanted to do that it couldve been much more interesting than what we got but they didnt commit to it soo) and the changes they made to evak (what i discussed above) made those storylines less interesting anyways cause at the end of the day they made sobbe less interesting.

What's funny to me is how much I complained and argued about fanon evak and how much it felt like watered down evak without all the complexity (and how much fanon even felt like even in ep 3 before isak actually got to know him and how much fanon isak felt like a fantasy people had created that was much more of a cliché and way less interesting than canon isak) cause that's exactly how I feel about sobbe

Anyways nobody cares but me but I thought I would put it out there anyways since it feels like I can finally put what I've been feeling kind of into words.

#sobbe #wtfock #evak #meta

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