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totallyjazzed · 4 years

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Analysing Copaganda (or "I watched seven seasons of Brooklyn 99 so you don't have to")

Introduction:

Several months ago my parents approached me asking if I wanted to watch Brooklyn 99, not knowing anything about it, my first instinct was to say no, but then I thought it would be interesting, to watch it and write a proper analysis for exactly what makes it propaganda and why it gives liberals brain worms. If you've spent any amount of time engaging with politics online for the last few years, you've likely already heard of Brooklyn 99. It's a sitcom written by Michael Schur, who previously wrote The Office (I'll get to that later), Parks & Recreation, and The Good Place. The show follows the lives of a squad of police detectives in Brooklyn and the wacky hijinks they get up to.

Brooklyn 99 has become famous, or arguably infamous, on Tumblr (and potentially other social media websites too) for being used as a "retort" to anti-cop sentiments (namely ACAB and any variation thereof), mainly taking the form of "the only good cop is Raymond Holt". In this essay (to use a funny Tumblr meme phrase) I will provide a brief overview of the show and the main characters, and analyse how the show, and each character individually, is pro-cop propaganda (copaganda).

The Show:

Brooklyn 99 is The Office, at least from what I understand about The Office. It’s a sitcom based in a workplace in which characters often pull pranks on each other and have wacky adventures pertaining to their job. The main thing that sets it apart from The Office is that the workplace in question is a police station, this makes it a cop show too. However, unlike more “classic” cop shows like CSI, Law & Order, The Wire, and so on, B99 doesn’t seek to glorify it’s characters as action heroes, but rather paint them as normal people living normal lives. This is far more insidious than the picture of the gnarled man of action who doesn’t play by the book, and by making the characters relatable the show gives viewers people to project onto, making them more vulnerable to the propaganda of the show.

Occasionally, in a break from the antics of Relatable Immature Prankster Archetype and Funny Overly Attached Best Friend Archetype, the show will attempt to say something about racism, or homophobia, or misogyny, or something like that, and while it usually feels well-meaning it often falls flat as it’s a watered-down safe-for-TV version of whatever the issue du jour is.

In S4E16 (“Moo Moo”), Terry is harassed by a racist cop while he doesn’t have his badge, and is almost arrested until he manages to prove his cop status, the rest of the episode revolves around how racism is bad and that one singular racist cop is a problem, in the end Terry submits a complaint to the NYPD higher-ups and gets his job application denied, and the racist cop gets away with a slap on the wrist. Throughout the show, Captain Holt tells stories about how he suffered from racism and homophobia, and still does. Transphobia is mentioned once (presumably for brownie points) in a throwaway line about Ace Ventura.

At the end of Season 4, Jake and Rosa are framed for a series of bank robberies and sent to prison, and the first two episodes of Season 5 work to show that prison is bad and prisoners are mistreated, they also make abundantly clear that everyone in prison is a menace and deserves to be there (Jake’s cellmate is a literal cannibal and he’s shown to be one of the nice inmates), once the duo are released from jail, there are a few lines here and there about how prison is bad, but they’re only throwaways used to serve as one-off jokes and never again used as an actual critique of the prison system.

Police Brutality is never mentioned, the closest it comes to bringing it up is in S1E19 (“Tactical Village”), where Rosa is introduced to a sonic-blast weapon and aims it as Charles, this is clearly supposed to be a very harmful piece of equipment, but it's only appearance is treated as a joke.

There are also recurring gags about Defense Lawyers being “the enemy” because they only defend guilty parties (the show heavily implies that none of the squad has ever arrested the wrong person), which meshes with the harmful stereotype in cop shows of only guilty people saying for a lawyer or a warrant or whatever, which has been documented before by others.

The Characters:

Jake Peralta (played by Andy Samberg) is the Relatable Immature Prankster Archetype I mentioned before, he’s the office funnyman and usually responsible for the majority of the goings-on and goings-wrong in the show, while he does mature and evolve through the show he never grows out of this character. He’s the closest the show gets to the “gnarled man of action who doesn’t play by the book” character I mentioned before, not because he is that character but because he wants to be, his favourite movie is Die Hard and it’s the reason he joined the police, so he could be like the cool bruce willis man. He’s also the most unlawful character on the show, in S1E7 (“48 Hours”), he arrests a man with no evidence and the squad is essentially locked down until evidence can be found, in the end it turns out the man is guilty. Jake is scolded for this, not for essentially breaking the law, but for wasting everyone’s time when they had much better things to do that night. Jake’s character is propaganda because he’s the zany relatable one with a heart of gold.

Amy Santiago (played by Melissa Fumero) is the overly-organised hyper-nerd archetype, in direct opposition to Jake. Her dream is to be the NYPD’s youngest female captain, and she’s very “I want to keep the people safe” in her approach to policing. In S3E3 (“Boyle’s Hunch”), she is used as the face of the NYPD’s poster campaign, only to have her image vandalised, which is painted by the show as being very bad and sad. Amy’s character is propaganda because she’s the uptight peacekeeper who sticks to the rules.

Charles Boyle (played by Joe Lo Truglio) is the Funny Overly Attached Best Friend Archetype I mentioned before, often depicted as bumbling and naive, he’s an incredibly competent detective, arguably more so than Jake. He’s usually polite and friendly, and has moments of childishness that compliment Jake’s character. Charles’ character is propaganda because he’s the nice guy who just wants what’s best for everyone.

Raymond Holt (played by Andre Braugher) is probably the character most people are aware of, he’s a somewhat stuck-up man who embodies a lot of the same characteristics as Amy, he’s highly-educated, incredibly smart and quick-witted, and emotionally restrained. Originally presented as an outsider, being the new guy to the pre-existing friendgroup, he learns to relax and let go over the course of the show, and acts almost as a father figure to the other characters, primarily Jake and Amy. Raymond’s character is propaganda because he’s a black gay cop.

Rosa Diaz (played by Stephanie Beatriz) is tough, aloof, and often scary in the eyes of the other characters, she is shown to have problems with engaging with people socially, particularly romantically, and while her exterior is rough as uncaring, she’s shown to be fiercely loyal and have some not-so-tough secrets. In Season 5 she comes out to the squad as Bisexual. Rosa’s character is propaganda because she’s the no-nonsense tough cop who secretly has a heart of gold.

Terry Jeffords (played by Terry Crews) is a kind and caring man with a firm-but-fair attitude, acting as Holt’s second-in-command he also acts as a father figure to the other characters, he has two (eventually three) children which he is often seen gushing about. He is the most mature of the group, on-par with Holt in some respects but sometimes more so, refusing to take part in hijinks to focus on his job. Terry’s character is propaganda because he’s the physically strong and imposing, yet kind cop who just wants to provide for his family.

Michael Hitchcock (played by Dirk Blocker) and Norm Scully (played by Joel McKinnon Miller) are an inseparable pair of bumbling, lazy, oafs. Scully is fat, lazy, and old, Hitchcock is lecherous, lazy, and old. They’re propaganda because they’re the lazy incompetent cop archetype.

There are plenty of minor recurring characters, as well as Gina Linetti, a main character who left after Season 6, however as she’s a liaison and not a cop I won’t be analysing her in detail.

There’s a lot more I could have mentioned here, from the dirty cop that sense Jake and Rosa to jail, or the police commissioner who wants to spy on everyone’s phones all at once, Holt even says the line “I don’t want to live in a Police State”, but I’ve left them out for the sake of brevity.

Conclusion:

Brooklyn 99 is copaganda to it’s very core, this much everyone already knows, but unlike serious cop dramas and high-stakes high-action cop shows, Brooklyn 99 offers viewers an escape to a world where the police are the force for good that people want them to be. The premise of “The Office but police” suckers people in with nostalgia for the late 2000s/early 2010s back when things were “good”. Given Michael Schur’s previous work I imagine he and the other writers didn’t explicitly set out to make copaganda, but it’s undeniable that this is what was achieved. And now with the political climate being what it is and the threat of a potential Season 8 addressing this year’s BLM protests, it’s now more important than ever to be able to identify and root out police propaganda, no matter how unassuming, no matter the source.

#long post

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retvenkos · 4 years

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“...so who has the better superpower?”

SO HERE WE ARE, IMAGINING WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE TO BE RALPH DIBNY’S SIBLING AND BEING A META-HUMAN...

to say you had an estranged relationship with your brother was generous

to be blunt, you hadn’t seen him in years

it’s not that you hated him or anything, you just,,,, couldn’t look him in the eye without seeing your father

and him leaving was hard on you - you were only nine, but you were dependent on him and to see him leave you behind was like anyone could leave you without looking back

and you couldn’t take that

so you resolved to leave others before they could leave you

so when you woke up one day and somehow flooded your apartment with your h a n d s when you were getting ready for work, ralph was the last person you thought to tell

truthfully, you were not going to tell anyone

last you had checked, comic book superheroes were not common in real life

but, as fate would have it, your roommate found out

honestly, it was unavoidable. i mean, you couldn’t really control it. and when you short circuited three different computers because your hands were spilling water, you’re roommate was suspicious and it didn’t take them long to see it in action

and even though your roommate was a sci-fi nerd, they were vvv unprepared

“you need to tell someone! some kind of scientist, maybe? this isn’t normal, (y/n)!”

“you think i don’t know that?”

“well, seeing as this has been going on for months now, i’m not exactly sure anymore!”

“the last thing i want to be is a lab rat! i think we need to wait this out.”

“then we at least need to give you some anger management classes.”

“what?”

and they point down to a puddle of water beneath you

and you curse

and so you resolved to wait it out

and then meta-humans became felons

“...”

“you were the one who wanted to wait this out.”

“don’t patronize me.”

and now you have a handle on it, but there will be times when you are at work and a news report of a new meta comes out and anxiety rushes you

and you have to rush to somewhere secluded so that no one notices your... abilities

and bless your roommates soul, they are trying their hardest to help out

but it’s not like any of this is n o r m a l

panic attacks become frequent, and it reminds you of the debilitating fear you used to get when your dad left

and when those used to happen, ralph was there for you - he could settle your nerves, take you down from your impossible high

but things were different now

“are they, (y/n)?”

and there are many times when your finger hovers over his contact in your phone, a centimeter away from the only family you really have left

and one time, you accidentally press it

“dibny, here - well, i’m not here, actually, this is my voicemail. leave me a message for when i am here. dibny, out.”

and you curse and hang up

and when he calls you back a few hours later, you don’t pick up

and he calls

and he texts

and he leaves you a goddamn email

and you refuse to answer him. it’s been too long. too much has happened.

and so when he shows up on your doorstep, you are simultaneously not surprised but also upset

and it crosses your mind to question how he found your apartment, but then you remember he works for ccpd - a csi, right? you couldn’t remember

but you already knew that this could not end well

“is everything okay?”

“of course. why wouldn’t it be?”

and ralph is a private investigator. and the two of you may be estranged, but you’re still you, right?

he knows something is wrong, and it takes him all of five minutes to figure out it must be because you are a meta

and so he confronts you about it

and you try your hardest to deny it, but your anxiety wells up inside of you and...

“you’re a water bender?!”

and you’re panicking, but your roommate shows up, eating doritos

“that’s what i said!”

and then, to put you at ease, ralph shows you that he is a meta too

and, in true ralph fashion, he makes some corny joke

“i knew elongated man was a dweeb.”

“you haven’t seen me in years and the first insult you use is ‘dweeb?’ that’s weak, barnacle boy.”

then you’re laughing again

and when you look at ralph, you see him - not your father, but your brother

your very, very flawed but present brother

and you start going to s.t.a.r. labs with him, and you start to get a better hold on your abilities

but even after you have a hold of things, you keep going to see your brother

to make amends for lost time

to give him another chance

...and to make memes of elongated man

and maybe cisco joins you

AND FLUFF ENSUES.

#the flash #the flash cw #ralph dibny #x reader #reader insert #imagine #headcanons #would include #platonic!reader #platonic #ralphdibnyheadcanons

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viralarcadian · 3 years

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cataclysm had the unfortunate luck to come our smack dab in the middle of "pop culture references are the joke, set-up, AND punchline" era of media, when family guy was at its peak popularity and everyone wanted a slice of that pie

this had the knock-on effect of a bunch of zones filled to the brim w pop culture references and LE EPIC MEME references that otherwise cluttered the storytelling

going thru westfall once as a newb was cute because i didn't know the lore behind the zone and heh hehe csi miami joke, but now it's like. grating. the lore of westfall is really interesting and it got screwed over and forgotten

same w uldum. people were, from what I gather, super duper interested in what exactly was beyond this big locked gate in tantric, and when we finally get to go there half the zone's storyline is just the plot to raiders of the lost ark, because they'd added a minor NPC to the game back in TBC that was an indiana jones reference. like, the lore of the cool cat-taur people is COOL but we only get such a small slice of it because HAHAH REFERENCE PLEASE CLAP

not to say pop culture references are ALL bad. you can have NPCs named after silly things and have them act out scenes from popular movies, but like, there's an art to knowing when and where to put them

to the dev's credit they've reigned this in a lot, so now you have to actively hunt for the little references again instead of having them be front and center

#the professor farnsworth boss in ICC i will defend i think hes funny and i like him #i like to think that working that closely w plague w/o any sort of protection just melts your brain into mush #whyd they bring back the rambo guy for bfa tho #hes a joke character why is he suddenly Lore Important

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findteenpenpals · 6 years

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Hiii

Hey everyone, I'm Jess and I'm 15 (16 at the end of the year). I'm from Australia and I'm looking for anyone to talk to and share my dark af memes with lmao, preferably around my age.

I really like musicals, my favourites are Hairspray and Grease, I also really like Dan and Phil. I like Pretty Little Liars, Riverdale, The End of the F***ing World, Prison Break and Teen Wolf. I loveeeee reading, my favourite series are Harry Potter (and ofc I ship drarry), LOTR, TH and anything written by John Green, I'm a sucker for YA romance novels. Camila Cabello is also my queen, just putting it out there lol. Ohhh and CSI is what I live and breathe for!!

I have quite a dark sense of humour and joke about touchy subjects so if you may be sensitive to things please mention it to me so I don't accidentally offend you.

I'm super open minded so I don't care about your where you're from, your race, sexuality, gender etc. I just hope I can make long term internet friends who I can trust to talk to about anything - p.s i come off as awkward and introverted at first, I swear I'm not!!

Byeeee :)

my tumblr: wwhenthestarscollide.tumblr.com

#pen pal #pen pals #penpal #penpals #pen pals wanted #Internet friends #friends #15 to 16 #submission

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Hannibal: Did Author Thomas Harris Try to Destroy Dr. Lecter?

https://ift.tt/3h4huHT

It’s appeared for a while now that Dr. Hannibal Lecter–the forensic psychiatrist, cannibalistic serial killer, and pop culture icon featured in four novels, five movies, and a TV show–has been unstoppable. Several of those projects were highly acclaimed by critics and tremendous hits with audiences. And Anthony Hopkins even earned an Oscar for playing the doctor The Silence of the Lambs, which itself went on to sweep the Academy Awards.

So why did it seem like Thomas Harris, the reclusive author who created Dr. Lecter and wrote the novels, tried his best to kill off the public interest in Hannibal–if not Hannibal himself–at the height of the character’s fame? Because that appears to be almost exactly what Harris attempted to do with Hannibal, the third book featuring the erudite monster, which was published in 1999. Less than two years later, the film version arrived in theaters (20 years ago this week, in fact) and received just as polarizing a response as Harris’ book.

Two decades later, Hannibal, a top shelf, A-list Hollywood production directed by Ridley Scott and featuring Hopkins in his second portrayal of Lecter, remains a bizarre, flawed artifact. Mostly faithful to the equally weird and at times repugnant book, it’s a borderline insane movie that turns the murderous Lecter into ostensibly a hero and, while not going quite off the deep end as the novel, features one of the most gruesomely bonkers climactic scenes ever filmed for a mainstream motion picture. Why?!

Well…

The Road to Hannibal

Harris, now 80 years old and a former journalist for the Associated Press, published his second novel, Red Dragon, in 1981. That story introduced Hannibal Lecter fto the world for the first time. When the book begins, Lecter is already imprisoned for his ghastly crimes, having been caught by the haunted FBI profiler Will Graham. When Graham is called out of retirement to catch another killer, he consults with Dr. Lecter on the case despite the serial killer’s ability to manipulate Graham psychologically. Lecter is very much a supporting character in Red Dragon, which was also reflected in the first film made from the book, Michael Mann’s Manhunter.

Released in 1986, the movie starred William Petersen (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) as Graham and Scottish actor Brian Cox (Succession) as Lecter (spelled “Lektor” in the movie). Cox is only in a handful of scenes, but makes a strong impression in his few minutes of screen time; both his performance and the film–which was not a success with either critics or audiences in its initial release- have grown in popular stature over the years.

Two years later, in 1988, Harris published his third novel, The Silence of the Lambs. Dr. Lecter is a much larger figure here, as he’s called upon to advise on a new serial killer case by Clarice Starling, an FBI agent in training whose innate decency and compassion stirs respect and even admiration in the otherwise psychopathic doctor. The parallel storylines, the introduction of a superb character in Clarice, and the further development of Lecter, plus the macabre aspects of the narrative made the book an instant classic and one of the great psychological horror novels of its time.

The Silence of the Lambs was a runaway bestseller, but this time the book’s success was equaled by that of its screen adaptation. Jonathan Demme directed the 1991 film based on Harris’ novel, in which Anthony Hopkins played Lecter for the first time, earning for himself both full-fledged movie stardom and an Oscar for Best Actor. Jodie Foster played Clarice, also landing an Oscar for her work; and the movie was just the third in history to sweep all five major awards by also picking up Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

With the film version of The Silence of the Lambs a box office success, and Lecter entering the pop culture zeitgeist (along with catchphrases like “A nice Chianti…”) as a monster with intelligence, wit and taste, the movie’s producers and the public began to clamor for a sequel.

Hannibal Emerges from His Slumber

It was 11 years before we heard from Thomas Harris and Hannibal Lecter again on the page, with Harris in no rush to deliver a new adventure for the doctor. In his book Making Murder: The Fiction of Thomas Harris, author Philip L. Simpson quotes Harris as saying, “I can’t write it until I believe it.” But in 1999, he finally delivered Hannibal, his longest book to date (484 pages in first edition hardback), and the first in which Lecter is clearly, and perhaps ill-advisedly, the central character.

Taking place seven years after The Silence of the Lambs, the story finds Clarice facing a career crisis when she is blamed for a botched drug raid. But when a letter from Dr. Lecter to Clarice shows up, the FBI puts Clarice back on the doctor’s trail. Meanwhile Lecter is living in Florence under a different identity but is pursued by an Italian detective named Pazzi. The latter aims to collect a huge bounty placed on Lecter’s head by Mason Verger, an incredibly wealthy pedophile who wants revenge on Lecter for disfiguring him during a drug-fueled therapy session years earlier.

To Harris’ credit, Hannibal does not simply retread the same ground as the classic novel that preceded it. According to a new introduction he wrote for Red Dragon, Harris reportedly “dreaded doing Hannibal… dreaded the choices I would have to watch, feared for Starling.” The book is nothing if not filled with dread, and its main theme is that every single human being is capable of corruption, evil, and depravity–a bleak assessment of the species, even for this book series.

Harris expounded upon his theme by making Hannibal his grisliest novel. Lecter murders Pazzi by disemboweling him and hanging him from Florence’s famed Palazzo Vecchio while the hideous-looking Verger, his face and body all but destroyed, plans to enact his vengeance on Lecter by feeding him alive to wild boars. Verger himself meets his end at the hands of his sister, who chokes Verger to death with his pet moray eel–and after violently extracting some of his sperm so she can have a baby with her lesbian partner.

The book ends on its most controversial and polarizing note: Lecter rescues himself and an injured Starling from Verger’s plan, then captures Starling’s nemesis at the Justice Department, Paul Krendler, and prepares a dinner in which he and Starling eat a portion of Krendler’s brain before Lecter kills him. Lecter then digs up the bones of Starling’s father and uses hypnosis to allow her to “see” her father and say goodbye to him, after which Lecter and Starling become lovers and vanish to Buenos Aires.

In the book’s logic, Starling finally accepts the love of the one man in her adult life who has treated her with respect.

What Was Thomas Harris Thinking?

Hannibal, the book, was the second biggest pop culture phenomenon of the summer of 1999 after the release of Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Some 1.5 million copies of the novel were shipped to bookstores. Other publishers, like movie studios getting out of the way of an Avengers flick, shifted their big titles away from June of that year. An advance review from no less an authority than Stephen King called it “one of the two most frightening popular novels of our time,” placing it alongside The Exorcist, in his New York Times review.

Then more critics got to read and review it. So did the public.

The novel, and especially its shockingly subversive ending, scrambled the brains of everyone who read it. An analysis of the book by the influential Kirkus Reviews had positive things to say about Harris’ “baroque new approach” to the serial killer genre and his “audacious epilogue,” but directly compared the Dr. Lecter saga to Star Wars in the sense that both had become a brand.

It was true: in the years since the release of The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter had transformed into a tangible intellectual property, becoming the subject of jokes and parodies, and a meme before we even knew what those were. The terrifying monster of Red Dragon and Silence had become the murderer everyone loved and laughed over–a transition which even Anthony Hopkins reportedly found unfortunate and disturbing.

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Yet it’s worth wondering then if that is the point in Hannibal. Harris is an intensely private person who did not care for the public spotlight. He told the New York Times in 2019, in his only interview in decades, that he found fame to be “more of a nuisance than anything else.” It is easy to imagine he might’ve viewed Hannibal as a way to short-circuit both the overhyped expectations of the public and the evolution of Lecter into some kind of weird fictional celebrity. And perhaps he saw his book as a way of moving past Lecter himself and freeing himself to write new stories?

“I like to think Harris at least partly ups-the-grotesque-ante in Hannibal to rub our collective noses in our collective love for a serial killer,” wrote Patrick J. Sauer in 2019–the book’s 20th anniversary–at Crimereads. “Maybe Harris knew another straight-forward thriller wouldn’t cut it, so he had no choice but to go Grand Guignol on his readers.”

Professor Mark Jancovich of the University of East Anglia (UK), mused in the same article that Harris had other ambitions. “I think Harris might just have wanted to finish Lecter off like Arthur Conan Doyle tried with Sherlock Holmes,” he said. “But there’s also the sense he might have been under huge pressure by the publishers. It’s not really clear what the impetus for the book is, other than the obvious commercial one.”

Whatever Harris tried to do with Hannibal, it doesn’t really work. While the book is gripping and the prose precise, making Dr. Lecter the ostensible protagonist is a mistake. We learn more about his background for one thing, including the unspeakable death of his younger sister during World War II, but that robs him of being the unknowable, terrifying force of nature that he is in the first two novels.

Meanwhile the once-formidable Starling is reduced to an almost passive supporting role, buffeted around without agency until she just essentially gives up and is saved by Lecter. Maybe Harris really did want to turn off his public so that he would never have to write about Hannibal Lecter again.

Hannibal Now Playing at a Theater Near You

The film rights to Hannibal were snapped up in record time for $10 million by Italian producer Dino de Laurentiis, who had produced Manhunter yet passed on Silence. But there was a problem: Director Jonathan Demme, star Jodie Foster, and screenwriter Ted Tally–all major components of the success of Silence, along with Hopkins–had no interest in coming back after reading the book.

Demme was reportedly disappointed by the novel’s copious gore and skewing of Starling’s character, with Foster also dismayed by the latter. Although she said at the time that she was committed to another project, she later came clean and told Total Film, “Clarice meant so much to Jonathan and I, she really did, and I know it sounds kind of strange to say but there was no way that either of us could really trample on her.”

Hopkins did return, however, and the role of Clarice was recast with Julianne Moore taking the part. According to the “making-of” feature on the DVD, Angelina Jolie, Hilary Swank, and Cate Blanchett were all considered as well. However, Hopkins personally lobbied for Moore after working with her in Surviving Picasso.

“In instances like this, the comparisons are inevitable and of course there’s some apprehension about it, because Jodie was really, really fantastic… I mean, she’s a great actress,” said Moore on the DVD. “But it’s a different movie, so that’s the way I have to approach it.”

An unbilled, unrecognizable Gary Oldman played the disfigured, malevolent Verger, while Ray Liotta took the role of Krendler. Inheriting the director’s chair was Ridley Scott, of Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise and Gladiator fame, while the script was handled initially by David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross) and then again by a major Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List) rewrite. With all that talent, the budget was said to exceed $100 million.

But there was a problem: that ending. While Scott found a certain baroque tone that echoed Harris’ book in some ways, and was perfectly happy to retain the gutting of Detective Pazzi (played by Giancarlo Giannini), the wild boars, and even the cooking of Krendler’s brains by Lecter–a scene which ranks high on the all-time insane list–there was no way the filmmakers were going to alienate audiences by having Clarice Starling eat those brains and then make love to the doctor. Not a chance.

“I couldn’t take that quantum leap emotionally on behalf of Starling,” Ridley Scott told the Guardian at the time. “Certainly, on behalf of Hannibal–I’m sure that’s been in the back of his mind for a number of years. But for Starling, no. I think one of the attractions about Starling to Hannibal is what a straight arrow she is.”

In the film, Clarice does not dine with Lecter and does not fall into the drug-induced hypnosis of the book. With the law closing in on them, Lecter finally professes his love for Starling, and when she manages to handcuff the two of them together so that he cannot escape, he sacrifices either his own hand or at least a finger (it’s never made clear) to slip out of the cuffs and escape into the night.

When we last see him, he’s on a plane to a destination unknown and he’s feeding a slice of leftover Krendler to a young boy seated next to him. Starling remains behind, her future also unknown.

Hannibal, the movie, was released nearly 10 years to the day that The Silence of the Lambs arrived in theaters. The R-rated movie scored $58 million in its opening weekend, the highest opening for a film with that rating until The Passion of the Christ came out in 2004. The movie ended up earning $165 million in the U.S. and a total of $351 million worldwide, good enough for 10th highest gross of that year.

Critics were less kind than audiences, with the film scoring just 39 percent at Rotten Tomatoes. The reviews were split along the same lines as those for the book. While some critics praised the film’s style and audacity, others bemoaned the lack of great character interaction and thematic resonance that made The Silence of the Lambs a masterpiece.

And it was true: Hannibal, as both a movie and a book, exhibits the same strengths and suffers from the same problems. The projects are stylish, exquisitely written/produced, and possessed of a fair amount of black humor and boldness. But putting Lecter front and center, while robbing Starling of her agency and motivation, creates a box from which the story cannot escape. Both characters are offscreen (so to speak) for long stretches while the Verger and Pazzi stories play out, and the story is so damning of essentially all of humanity that it’s hard to get a handle on anybody.

Yet both the book and the movie were monster hits, so if Harris really did intend to stop Lecter in his tracks with that bizarre ending, he failed.

The Aftermath of Hannibal

Producer Dino de Laurentiis insisted on making more Lecter movies. First he ramped up a faithful remake of Red Dragon, this time under its original title and with Hopkins once again in the role of Lecter, joined by Edward Norton as Will Graham and Ralph Fiennes as killer Francis Dolarhyde. Directed by Brett Ratner, the film grossed $93 million in the U.S. and $209 million worldwide, with critics again giving it mixed reviews but actually rating it higher (68 percent) than Hannibal.

De Laurentiis demanded more, and told Harris he’d move forward without him if the author did not wish to be involved. So Harris wrote a novel and a screenplay at the same time: Hannibal Rising, which explored–in excruciating detail–Hannibal’s entire early life, robbing him once and for all of any mystery he might have clung to. The film also didn’t really work, with French actor Gaspard Ulliel playing the young cannibal. He ultimately became the George Lazenby of the franchise. The movie was a dud all around, grossing just a paltry $82 million worldwide.

That seemed to be the end of the meal for Lecter, until he was resurrected again in the form of Mads Mikkelsen in the NBC-TV series Hannibal. The series, which ran for three years and featured elements of Red Dragon and the book Hannibal in addition to original material, was acclaimed for its macabre tone and painterly production values. Yet it never became more than a cult favorite, with ratings unable to sustain it past three seasons (although talk persists of a revival). Yet another TV series, Clarice, entered on special agent Starling in the years between Silence and Hannibal, also just premiered on CBS All Access to mixed reviews.

Even if Thomas Harris wanted to strip Hannibal Lecter of his popular veneer and make him a monster again with Hannibal, it didn’t really work. He left us instead with his most bizarre book to date and a movie that has its own depraved charms, yet ultimately pales next to its predecessors. And in the end, Harris may not quite be done with his most famous creation yet. While discussing Cari Mora, his latest novel, and the first in 38 years not involving Lecter, Harris teased the Times that “the Hannibal character still occurs to me, and I wonder sometimes what it’s up to.”

Perhaps creator and creation will once again sit down to dinner. Someday.

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sapphiques · 6 years

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i was tagged by @winkwinkluke (thanks my dude) (is “my dude” still socially acceptable? idk)

rule: answer the questions and tag 20 blogs to get to know them better!

nickname: Eva (my full name is Evangeline, but no one calls me that except my mom when she’s mad at me), Ev

gender: female

star sign: Aries

height: 5′4

time: 10:52 pm

birthday: April 9th

favorite bands: 1d, PRETTYMUCH, BROCKHAMPTON, 5sos, Green Day, Little Mix, CNCO

favorite solo artists: Harry Styles, Khalid, BØRNS, Ed Sheeran, Shawn Mendes, Drake, Childish Gambino, Logic, Bruno Mars

song stuck in my head: Morning by Marc E. Bassy

last movie watched: Call Me By Your Name

last show watched: Black Mirror

when did i create this blog: this one was only like a year ago but my original one was like sometime in 2014 lol (i added this bc my dumb ass ACCIDENTALLY deleted it)

what do i post: used to be hella 5sos content, now mostly PM, Zendaya, dogs, art, and the occasional posts about actors that i’m obsessed with at the moment

last thing i googled: “henlo you stinky lizard” i needed to show my friend the meme bc she hadn’t seen it before. quality content.

do you get asks: funny joke m8

following blogs: 140-ish

followers: 915, undeserving because i’m SO inactive (love you all, porn bots included)

favorite colors: navy blue, pastel pink, yellow

average hours of sleep: 7 aka not enough

lucky number: 13

instruments: self-taught piano, i played clarinet in 4th grade but idk if that counts

what i’m wearing: gray sweatshirt and leggings

how many blankets do i sleep with: 1

dream job: CSI investigator

dream trip: a trip around the U.K. or Australia

favorite food: mac n cheese

nationality: American and Chinese

favorite song right now: Open Arms by PM

I tag: i don’t have 20 ppl on here to tag so uhh @fightcal2k16 @calgasms @micool5sos @babyhoneyloves @portlandpolaroid @dropdeadhood @girlstalkcalum @unstablekuwonu sorry if i tagged any of you in the last one but i don’t think i repeated

#i meant to do this yesterday oops #things i’m tagged in #about me

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magneticmaguk · 7 years

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James Van Der Beek: 'I lived in fear of teenage girls'

Dawson Leery is the TV character that no one will let James Van Der Beek forget. The teen drama he moped about in for seven series is nearly 20 years old, and his career has been on a curious trajectory ever since, but still the possibility of a Capeside reunion is all that anyone wants to ask him about.

And so Van Der Beek begins our conversation by bringing it up before we’ve even ordered coffee. “That’s the question that comes at the end of every interview,” he tells me. “Somebody says, ‘OK now, I apologise, you know I have to ask…’”

Well, seeing as he mentioned it, would he indulge the show’s many fans – one of whom is absolutely not sitting opposite him in a hotel bar this morning and totally did not spend a lot of her early teens imagining that one day she’d fall for someone who spoke in impossibly long monologues – with Dawson’s Creek The Movie? Is there a Netflix-enabled future in which Michelle Williams, Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson and himself would play midlife versions of their former breakout roles?

Inevitably, the answer is a sighed no. “Some characters live with you for a while and you wonder how they’re doing and what they’d be doing now,” he offers. “I felt pretty complete putting that one on the shelf and not looking at him again.”

But the show’s theme tune still haunts him. “I have a complicated relationship with that song,” he says (for the uninitiated, it’s Paula Cole’s breathlessly irritating I Don’t Want To Wait). “If I was at karaoke and it started playing there’s a part of me – and I’m a fucking grown-ass man with four kids – that still wants to go hide under the table. I was at a pharmacy in Philadelphia and it came on and I immediately went into a weird panic. I think it’s tied to the pandemonium that accompanied that, for which there was no off button. Walking around at that time was very tricky because one autograph could turn into a mob scene. So I walked around,” he laughs, “in fear of teenage girls.”

No wonder he doesn’t want to resurrect Dawson. But it might also be because, while his wannabe film-maker may have been the poster-boy for sensitive teen romanticism in the late 90s, the character was astonishingly wet. The internet agrees, and in 2011 volunteered some shorthand by way of a two-second gif of Dawson mid-cry, lifted from an episode where he is dumped by long-standing crush Joey. The meme still makes him chuckle. He has a mischievous titter – at odds with his off-duty 50s film-star outfit of tweed trousers and cream shawl cardigan.

Kickstarted by Ugly Cry Face, he’s currently riding a second wave as a meta-star. There’s been a cameo in a Kesha music video, skits for the comedy website Funny Or Die – including one, “Vandermemes”, where he owns the Ugly Cry Face phenomenon by demonstrating more “intense emotional closeups” – and a role as himself in the TV comedy Don’t Trust the B---- in Apartment 23. Very soon he will be parodying superstar DJ Diplo in upcoming Vice series What Would Diplo Do?

His leap into comedy acting came after his big TV comeback show, NBC medical drama Mercy, was cancelled. “I was 33, I had my first kid, and I thought: OK, what doors are open right now?” he says. “And I was thinking, I’m having more fun doing this [comedy] than I would crying every day!”

Apartment 23 sounds in many ways like a bizarre kind of therapy. “It [was] great to go in and obliterate any shards of ego or self-preservation that may have been left,” says Van Der Beek of what it was like to play an inflated version of himself. “Any preciousness, any label that you’re fighting for or hoping to preserve – it’s the death of any interesting or worthwhile expression.”

In the 14 years since Dawson’s Creek ended, Van der Beek has taken all sorts of roles in mainly short-lived sitcoms, including Friends With Better Lives, made by the people behind Friends and Frazier. When that was pulled after eight episodes he took a role in police procedural CSI: Cyber but it was “a desert for me, creatively. There’s a lot of standing around and laying expositional pipe.”

You can see why he was drawn to his current role as an obnoxious tech entrepreneur in Sky comedy Carters Get Rich, in which his character appears out of a briefcase as a hologram, kimono-clad and dancing to 90s house music. But it’s while discussing What Would Diplo Do? that his blue eyes light up. It’s his first time as star and showrunner: “What we pitched was parables through the eyes of a clown: EDM Jesus Sucks at Life!”

The show started life as a video promo for one of Diplo’s live tours but soon spiralled into a scripted comedy miniseries. Van Der Beek hired writers – including, in an ironic twist, Hal Oszan, who played Dawson’s odious director-mentor Todd Carr back in the Creek – and they set about storyboarding the exaggerated world of Diplo (aka Wes Pentz).

“Every episode we would try and figure out: what is a universal truth about life, about ego, about relationships, or self-preservation? We’d write high-minded nonsense on the whiteboard and then layer ridiculousness on top. So the idea is that fake Diplo is able to channel philosophical wisdom at the same rate as he channels the right hook and the right beat. And he gets to ride a horse!”

Pentz was onboard from the get-go and, according to Van Der Beek, not taking himself too seriously either. “When I was first very famous and people were passing out and all that, I remember watching a Beatles documentary and George saying how people were looking for any excuse to go mad. That’s the first thing I heard that made sense about any of this. People say “I love you!”, but they don’t love me, I’m saying somebody else’s words. I’m wearing makeup for God’s sakes! They’re loving some representation.”

And it’s the same with club culture. “People really want to be moved, they want to throw their hands in the air. Music catches the edge of something metaphysical and these DJs – the good ones – are sensitive to that. We make a joke in the show about how they’re modern-day shamen.” And has any of that superstar DJ shine stuck? “I’d like to think so,” he smirks. “The crotch in the sweatpants that I wear has dropped an inch or two.”

#culture

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themikeymonster · 7 years

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Yep, in the whole galaxy the Jedi are only a small fraction. It was mostly me being unable to resist making a bad joke.

ps. Sorry it didn't come across as one. I've got to learn some emojis to help get tone across.

could have come with the classic “yeaahhhh!!!” CSI Miami meme or the "*ba-da bissh*” drumroll bit |D

Anyway, don’t be sorry about that, but I am glad you touched base with me and cleared it up! Even IRL, I tend to take things at face value and have to ask people not to ‘play’ with me like that. Jokes and sarcasm fly right over my head about 99% of the time. If it’s not a ‘script’ I’ve seen before, I just don’t pick up on the nuances.

#with context I can tell it's a joke #the whole 'wait for it ....' thing #honestly though social interaction is so stressful because I just don't get a lot of it #it's difficult to understand #that's why I hecking love memes so much #it's a familiar script #Anonymous

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newssplashy · 6 years

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Entertainment: James Van Der Beek doesn't cry in his new TV role

But on a recent Monday, all he wanted to do was fight. “Let’s get into it!” said Van Der Beek, 41, who was at 87Eleven, a stunt and choreography studio near the Los Angeles International Airport.

LOS ANGELES — James Van Der Beek may be best known for playing the title character in “Dawson’s Creek,” a 1990s teen drama fueled by adolescent angst and Sperry boat shoes, and maybe an ugly crying face GIF that spawned a thousand memes.

Wearing a black Under Armour hoodie with matching shorts and compression tights, he was trying to master a fight sequence for an action TV show he is developing. The scene had him fending off multiple assailants, so it involved complex choreography.

It’s not the only new project on Van Der Beek’s IMDB page. He had just returned from New York, where he spent the better part of the spring shooting “Pose,” Ryan Murphy’s new show about the 1980s voguing scene.

Van Der Beek plays a character named Matt Bromley, the swaggering right-hand man of Donald Trump, who personifies the era’s embrace of wealth and greed.

Unlike the many transgender actors on “Pose,” Van Der Beek doesn’t get to do any dancing or fighting. So he sought out the help of 87Eleven.

“What’s up, dude?” he said as he bro-hugged Kyle McLean, a stuntman with wind-swept blond hair who could pass for Van Der Beek’s brother. Turns out, he was Van Der Beek’s stunt double for several episodes of “CSI: Cyber.”

Entering the hangar-like studio, which was equipped with weights, a blue tumbling platform and a massive green screen, Van Der Beek eyed a wall adorned with movie posters for some of the big-budget films that 87Eleven has worked on: “The Matrix,” “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” “The Wolverine,” “Atomic Blonde.”

After being introduced to three additional stuntmen, Van Der Beek put on a black baseball hat and found a spot on the tumbling mat. McLean stood before the group and attempted to lead them through a set of stretches. But like a PE teacher failing to corral unruly students, he couldn’t stop them from cracking jokes at every turn.

“Have you always been that flexible?" McLean said after noticing Van Der Beek’s limberness when performing a butterfly stretch.

“Oh yeah! I was able to do the splits at age 6,” the actor said, prompting the group to burst out laughing.

After a brief warm-up, the group split off in pairs. Van Der Beek and McLean headed to one corner to run through basic fighting moves, including 10-repetition sets of jabs, hooks and uppercuts.

“Let’s try something more complicated now,” said Greg Rementer, a stuntman with a salt-and-pepper beard and bulging quadriceps, as he demonstrated a balletic fight maneuver. Van Der Beek, whose mother was a professional dancer, traced a V-like shape on the ground with his feet, before returning six punches.

“I haven’t seen you move before," Rementer said, impressed by Van Der Beek’s skills. “That’s really good. We should hire you.”

Van Der Beek smiled. He removed his hat and ran his hands through the long blond-highlighted hair he’d grown out for “Pose.” He hadn’t grown his hair so long since the “Dawson” days.

“I keep telling my wife, ‘Baby, I was hot the last time I had this haircut,'” he said with a laugh.

He was not exaggerating: When “Dawson’s Creek” first appeared, in 1998, Van Der Beek became a heartthrob celebrity. He required a police escort for public appearances and starred in racy coming-of-age films including “Varsity Blues” and “Rules of Attraction.”

“Dawson” ended in 2003, and, like many young stars, Van Der Beek had trouble shedding his most famous role. In recent years, however, he has experienced something of a career turnaround by flexing his comedic muscle with meta roles that play off his fame.

He played a fictionalized version of himself on the sitcom “Don’t Trust the B---- in Apartment 23,” and a swaggering caricature of the music producer Diplo on the Viceland series “What Would Diplo Do?” (he was also the writer, producer and showrunner).

“The fun of having a set of expectations is subverting them,” Van Der Beek said.

After an hour of piecing together his fight scene, punch by punch, he was ready to string it together. McLean yelled, “Action!” Van Der Beek spun in a circle as three stuntmen lunged at him. He shed the first two with choreographed punches to the throat, and the last with a perfectly timed kick to the midsection.

“You crushed it for having not done it for a while,” McLean said.

“It’s a weird thing to memorize at first,” Van Der Beek said. “Your brain doesn’t know what to do. But once you’ve got it instilled in you, it’s like riding a bicycle.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

source https://www.newssplashy.com/2018/06/entertainment-james-van-der-beek-doesnt_10.html

#News

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