#a lot of people criticize it for not being overt enough in criticizing the grooming behaviors but i think thats a strength | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aimmyarrowshigh · 6 years

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@reliand @marysuewhipple -- I was midway through this response when you blocked, but let’s just bear this out after all, because you genuinely an actually seem to be confused on some of your canon and you might, like, want to know, for real, in a not-mean way.

Wow, you really bought into your own fanon and forgot that it literally is FANon, didn’t you.

No one knows what happened after Luke was knocked unconscious except for Kylo and the other students that left with him (presumably who became the Knights of Ren).

We literally see what happened in TFA. Remember? Kylo, and his knights, surrounded by the dead bodies of the other students in the mud. Kylo kills one of them. We saw that happen. We watched him kill them. That was on screen. That was canon.

I mean, you act like he is just plain evil and started training with Luke as an adult[.]

I can’t speak for Dan @raptorific, but I have never said that Ben’s training STARTED as an adult -- just that his decision to end his training with Luke and his choice to become Kylo Ren happened as an adult. He started training with Luke at ten, as far as canon has said, but canon has also presented two different timelines for Ben’s training with the Jedi because of the changes made to canon between TFA and TLJ.

Granted: in the Road To TFA materials, Ben “Jedi Killer” Solo became Kylo Ren at age 15; in the Road To TLJ materials, starting with Bloodline, this was changed to age 23 -- whether this change is because of actual canon-bearing narrative choices or just because Adam can’t play 15 because he’s 34, IDK, and it ultimately doesn’t matter.

The current canonical age that Ben Solo slaughtered all of his classmates except any who became the KoR -- and we only know for sure that they lived long enough to assist in the massacre, because we’ve only seen them in that singular flashback -- is 23. An adult.

An adult man who man the choice to kill all of his classmates.

That is what is canon.

First, Ben has had Snoke preying on him since he was in his mother’s womb. Keeping him up for days on end as a toddler, and getting into his head nonstop. Snoke has been grooming this kid from day one…

You guys straight-up invented this.

It is not even ALLUDED TO in any actual canon materials. Leia senses the Dark side of the Force while she’s pregnant, but guess what? EVERY Force-sensitive person is equally affected by the Dark side and the Light side. Their choices are what “choose their side.”

She does not sense Snoke, at least as far as any current canon has said, and Pablo Hidalgo -- I know you guys hate him, but he’s still the guardian of the SW bible -- has said that it has not been stated, or alluded, in canon. Will it turn out to be true? Maybe. It’s certainly a popular enough fanon that I could see LF throwing up their hands and surrendering to it.

But guess what else?

Even if Snoke were grooming Ben from the day Han’s sperm met Leia’s egg, it would not excuse Ben’s adult, agential choices.

Actual canon, in the films -- because Kylo and Ben have not appeared older than toddler-age in real-time in the extended canon materials yet -- makes it explicit that Kylo Ren’s actions are his own. He has a choice every time.

At Tuanul, Phasma asks him what to do with/to the villagers. It is Kylo’s directive to kill them all. Not Phasm’as. Not Snoke’s.

When Kylo Ren attacks and kidnaps Rey, he says -- in a defense TO SNOKE, so it clearly was NOT Snoke’s choice -- that it was his choice to take The Girl because she had seen the map rather than continue to search for The Droid. He’s chastised for this choice, sure. But he still made it.

When Kylo Ren murders Han, it is because Han is giving him the option to come home and come back to the Light. Kylo Ren does not want to be saved. He does not want to be loved. He was given the challenge by Snoke to kill Han because Ben Solo’s “greatest test” would be to kill the father he had loved and who loved him -- arguably, with that language, the person Ben Solo had loved most in the world.

Kylo Ren makes the choice to kill Ben Solo once and for all by choosing to reject Han’s offer of continuing love, welcome, belonging, and Light. The choice to remain Kylo Ren, NOT Ben Solo, was 100% Kylo’s agential choice. Snoke needed him to make that choice of his own free will for the Dark side to actually embrace it. He wasn’t controlling Kylo’s hands.

He wasn’t some kind of Kilgrave, Imperius Curse mind-controller. He was your average, run of the mill charismatic sociopath who radicalizes sensitive, smart, gifted, young men from loving families every goddamn day.

That is the metaphor that JJA set up. On purpose. As a writer, who is not an idiot, who wrote things on purpose in the script that he wrote with very unsubtle metaphors that he made on purpose.

The SW villains have always been mirrors of political and social threats in the era of their trilogy’s writing. The OT cast the Empire visually as Nazis, and included the Holocaust-analog event of the genocide of Alderaan, but the villain Lucas was critiquing, particularly through ESB and ROTJ, was the U.S.’ military-industrial complex and the war on Vietnam. (“Back in a 1973 note on “Star Wars,” Lucas made clear which side he was rooting for in the Vietnam War: 'A large technological empire going after a small group of freedom fighters.’”) In 1981, Lucas literally said in a press conference that Palpatine was based on Nixon; he’s held since that his inspiration for the series was less A Space Opera than “How do democracies turn into dictatorships?” Discussion of exactly how racist it is that he considers the ewoks to be based on the Viet Cong is for a totally other post...

This was also super unsubtle if slightly contemporized with the PT, when Palpatine became less Nixon and more Bush, working to create a global economic crisis that would precipitate a war against his own long-hated enemies. At the same time, it’s been pretty widely believed that part of what muddles the PT’s storytelling is Lucas’ dual focus on criticizing the Catholic church, who at the time that the PT was being written and filmed -- late ‘90s through mid-2000s -- was finally being publicly held to account for centuries of corruption and abuse that had been downplayed as just being part of the status quo because of the Church’s obsession with ritual and dogma. While a worthy thing to criticize, trying to go for moral ambiguity and “both sides are bad from a certain point of view” while also trying to adhere to Campbell’s schema while ALSO trying to make people sympathize for a character that the entire audience already knew grows up to be a mass-murdering cyborg was... a lot to tackle. Lucas arguably failed a lot of his intentions with his execution in the PT, but he still HAD intentions, and again: they weren’t subtle. ROTS literally ends with Anakin cribbing one of Bush’s jingoistic declarations post-9/11: “You’re either with me, or you’re my enemy.” In some ways, the most successful criticism Lucas made through the PT was that this kind of dichotomous sociopolitical dialogue eventually causes you to get three of your limbs chopped off as you backflip into lava to your own downfall -- and yet, it doesn’t cause you to die -- it just makes you come back stronger and angrier than before. Which leads us to the ST.

Although Lucas has nothing to do with the ST, it’s honestly rude to the Storygroup, JJ, Kasdan, and even RiJo to pretend like it isn’t following the same edict to use the fantastical setting of a Galaxy Far Far Away to level harsh, and super overt, criticism of the sociopolitical power structures of the real world contemporaneous to the trilogy’s release.

Snoke -- the gold bathrobe-wearing charismatic fascist megalomaniac who smooth-talked his way into a figurehead position of power despite functionally having others do all of the actual work of both “governance” and violence.

Hux -- the far-right neo-Conservative political schemer who actually WAS raised from bith to idealize the explicit, intentional SW-universe analog for Nazism and thus became a powerful and Dapper Haired neo-Nazi leader.

And Kylo Ren, the violent angry entitled man who sees the kind of power his life position (wealthy, male, Force-sensitive AKA educated and gifted) would have garnered in previous generations but doesn’t today in a Star Wars Analog For Democratic And Increasingly Diverse Landscape*) and is enraged by it, so thus turns to the rhetoric of the megalomaniac and the Neo-Nazi to find afocus for that anger beyond, idk, trying to fucking just be better.

SUPER UNSUBTLE METAPHORS FOR THE POLITICS OF MODERN AMERICA.

* See: Bloodline, and the differences in policy/goals of the Centrists and the Populists; as the Populists have more Senatorial power at the time directly preceding the destruction of Luke’s school and the chief schism between them and the Centrists is that the Populists believe in giving more planets and more sentient species equal rights to vote and self-determine governance, and the Centrists -- many of whom are secretly funding the First Order, not unlike how many Republican senators and congressmen IRL have turned out to have very strong ties to the Klan, the NRA, the TWP, the Proud Boys, various neo-Nazi groups, and alt-right supremacist organizations and militias, fwiw.

THIS PARALLEL WAS NOT AN ACCIDENT.

All of the insistence y’all make to it being Just A Kids’ Movie This Shit Is Just ~Ess Jaw Dubbayoo~ Reaching!!!! is a) something you have to know, truly, is just borne of wanting to stan for Kylo, and honestly, it’d be less irksome if you just... stanned for him without trying to rewrite canon and insult everyone else? and b) Insulting, both to fellow fans and to the SWST writers.

While TFA was written long before The Election, it was still written within the modern sociopolitical landscape. Trump already was out there leading the idiot Birther movement. Sarah Palin was a thing. Alex Jones and Glenn Beck and Fox & Friends had 24/7 airtime. Antisemitic hate crimes were on a steep rise both in America and overseas, and homophobic and Islamophobic hate crimes were still happening far, far too regularly. Police brutality and the unlawful extrajudicial lynchings of Black men and boys by Klan-affiliated police officers and unjust Thin Blue Line that protected their murderers was already (finally) a daily headline. Standoffs between the government and far-right fringe militia groups lasted months; conflicts between armed militias and civilians over access to statehouses and public spaces was on the rise. Mass shootings by angry disaffected young white men were happening every fucking day. Gam/e/r/g/ate was a thing, exposing the depths to which angry entitled young men could sink if they felt like their stranglehold on All Media Things was threatened. The writing for 2016 was on the wall long before the campaigns on either side officially began.

And you know who probably was not an unaware dumdum just scootin’ along without a clue of what was in the air?

Two Jewish men, one of whom was the son of a man who won two Emmys for a docudrama about the Nuremberg trials -- gee, wonder where JJ came up with the imagery for Hux’s Hosnian rally on Starkiller, though? -- and the other of whom does interviews of Holocaust survivors for the HMH.

Denying that is both to assert that JJA/Kasdan don’t have the right, as Jewish writers, to react to the world authentically, and to assume that they are too stupid to know what they wrote. You gotta stop pretending like everyone who fucking sees what they wrote into the ST on fucking purpose is either lying or crazy. Seriously. Stop it.

~*Antis*~ don’t en-masse see these parallels and metaphors just because wE tHiNk EvErYoNe We DoN’t LiKe iS A NaZi!!! It’s because that’s what they’re fucking overtly intended to be.

And guess what? Hitler was in the ear of the Hitler Youth from infancy, too.

It 0% absolves anything they fucking did.

SW is not subtle. The only thing LESS subtle than SW is Harry Potter, and they’re both the same fucking story. With the same fucking villains. The difference is that JKR is white and goyishe and you can tell. (As you can, tbh, in TLJ being written by RiJo. RiJo goyishe as hell and it, uh, shows. A lot.)

For all of RiJo’s faults and lazy writing, he ultimately did not undo the metaphors that JJ/Kasdan set up. He handled it in maybe the most circuitous and sloppily written way possible, but honestly, the longer since TLJ came out, the more it becomes clearer that RiJo really wasn’t trying to make Kylo seem heroic, or trying to subvert TFA’s storyline insofar as giving Kylo depth that belied his character’s setup. He was showing the audience just how easy it is to be hooked into a narrative like the one that suckered in Ben Solo, and that he tries to use to sucker in Rey -- and nearly succeeds.

In TFA, it couldn’t have been more overt if he were straight-up just constantly watching snuff film porn or something, but in TLJ, Rian’s cues -- which I STILL will always maintain are poorly executed -- are less “out on the street in Charleston with a tiki torch in hand” than “on Twitter sealioning female journalists until they delete their account, and then retreating back into anonymity on /pol.” It’s still Kylo Ren as the toxic masculine underbelly of rage, violence, and entitlement that is part of the current sociopolitical nightmare hole, even though he’s actively trying to seem like an empathetic #normie. Every single frame of Kylo Ren in TLJ, especially after Snoke makes him remove his helmet, is in service to the Dark and to all of the real-world metaphors of toxic masculine rage that Kylo represents.

Because when given the choice between being free and usurping Snoke’s power, Kylo chose to the power. That is Dark.

It isn’t even Dark inherently because he First Order are an explicit Neo-Nazi parallel, although they are -- and FWIW you don’t get to be antisemitic by rejecting JJ Abrams’ and Lawrence Kasdan’s right, as Jewish artists, to create fantastical metaphors for their Jewish pain and name them as such [“The original name for the First Order was the Neo-Empire,” etc.] in the name of ~protecting Jewish feelings~ when the entire schema was created by Jews and the fact that y’all are excited to claim that theyre are “six Jewish reylos” is... just yikes; I gotta say, as a Jewish ~anti~, there are more than six of us -- it’s Dark because it is the self-serving choice at the expense of the Galaxy.

And, truly, at the expense of what Ben Solo would have known was moral and ethical. Ben Solo was raised by Han and Leia. He was educated by Luke. He grew up with three parental/guardian figures, plus Uncle Lando and Uncle Chewie, who ADORED him and doted on him. He canonically had happiness and friendship in his childhood (per Bloodline). He isn’t a sociopath devoid of empathy; I’ll give you that, because it’s true. He knows exactly how much he is hurting people, both emotionally and physically, with his actions. And he chooses those actions anyway, because they further his goal of becoming the literal Master of the Universe.

Kylo Ren considers his own desires to be of higher value and priority than the well-being of the Galaxy or his own sense of morals/ethics, and that is a Dark choice. (See also: Anakin killing Mace Windu.)

(Cue Palps cackling about “POWAAAAA!”)

Being brainwashed by a fascist lunatic to murder for them does not absolve you from that murder.

Are you out campaigning for the release of Manson’s girls, too? Because they were brainwashed. Psychologically, medically, truly brainwashed to the point where they were unable to perceive the fact that Manson’s beliefs and orders were objectively fucking batshit and evil. But they still were responsible for their actions. They committed the murders. They are in prison for them because of the choices they made.

How about Allison Mack sex trafficking and branding women for NXIVM? Is she an innocent lamb-flower who could not possibly have made any other choices because her charismatic leader was in her ear for years and years? I’m sure that in her trial, her lawyers will make the same exact arguments about her relationship with Renier than y’all make about Kylo and Snoke, but uh, it ultimately doesn’t fucking matter. Allison Mack is the one who slowly and torturously branded her victims with a goddamn laser-pointer. That was her choice. That was her action. She will be held accountable for her choice.

...and his parents didn’t know what to do with him. They have a super force sensitive child, who has a presence constantly poking at him, and he’s highly emotional…

This just literally isn’t canon.

All of Ben Solo as a child’s appearances in canon have shown him as a happy, playful, mischievous child who knows that he is loved and is responsibe to the emotional cues of his parents and others. He is exactly as upset by things that would upset any child as... any other child. He doesn’t have a Presence Constantly Poking At Him in canon. You guys invented that, and it isn’t backed up by his largest pre-Kylo canon appearance, which is Last Shot. Ben, in Last Shot, is loved and knows it, and he loves back. He is happy. He is a normal, good-natured child. He babbles, he plays, he cuddles, he goes outside and gets muddy with his friends and beams and laughs. He has toys and watches cartoons.

He cries a) when he gets woken up, which is when all babies cry and frankly everyone else wants to cry when they get woken up lbr; b) when he doesn’t get to do exactly what he wants to do, and, tbh, it could be interpreted as foreshadowing of the way that Kylo Ren uses the display of emotion to manipulate people into letting him do what he wants in both TFA and TLJ. Or it could just be him being, you know, a normal toddler.

I will give you: he IS highly Force-sensitive. SO IS LEIA. Leia is the granddaughter of the Living Force for fuck’s assing sake. You really think that Luke and Leia are LESS Force-sensitive than Ben??? Being highly Force-sensitive doesn’t, and literally in canon did not, turn Ben into a hyperemotive mess as a child. He’s just, you know, two years old.

“But Kylo Ren is hyperemotional, so what happened HUH!?” you cry.

Well -- for one, the main emotion that he canonically shows as Kylo Ren is anger. He is an angry man, and he acts like an angry man, because he is in a social environment -- by his own choice as a 23-year-old thru 30-year-old -- that encourages violent expressions of male anger. He punches walls. He chokes subordinates. He destroys property. He yells at people. He SCREAMS at people. He is angry, because he feels entitled to more than he has, always more, more power, more respect, more control over others, and he has been encouraged to believe that acting on that anger will help him get what he feels he is owed.

That ain’t special. And it’s hardly even a scifi metaphor. That’s just how violent, angry men ARE.

“But he cries so much!” He cries once in the movies. Once when he is about to kill the father he still loves, because he craves the power he sees as his due more than he cares about anything or anyone.

The other time that it looks as though he might cry -- in the elevator after Snoke’s mocking and the Force lightning -- he instead does what violent, angry men DO when they live in a culture or subculture that glorifies male violence and disrespects all other emotions: subverts actual emotional processing or catharsis by turning it into an act of violence. He destroys his mask, the symbol of his obeisance to Snoke. RiJo even confirmed that was the moment he started to plan Snoke’s murder more concretely. His reaction to feeling sadness, or rejection, or guilt, or WHATEVER, in the face of his killing Han not actually getting Snoke to give him more control and power and leadership, was to PLAN A MURDER.

(AKA: It wasn’t to save Rey; Rey was only there because, using Snoke’s playbook of manipulation, Kylo got her to believe what he wanted her to believe and come to the First Order because Kylo couldn’t kill Snoke alone, and Snoke had to die for Kylo to get what he wanted: ULTIMAAAATE POWWWWAAAA.)

(And FWIW, I’m not saying Snoke’s murder was unwarranted, I’m just saying that it was borne of the same exact cocktail of toxic hypermasculinity that caused Ben “Jedi Killer” Solo to kill Luke’s students and flee to Snoke in the first place. Kylo Ren’s sole motivation, in canon, is the pursuit of total power over others, which he feels is his due because he happened to be born to the family he was and with the genetic makeup [Force sensitivity] that he has.)

[B]ut his parents are also war heroes and they’re trying to build a government and just rebuild in general after a war, so they can’t be there for their son. They’re not the best parents, okay. They leave him in the care of a kitchen droid instead of one suited for care giving. (Also, this kitchen droid tries to murder him as a toddler due to a…let’s call it a computer virus or malfunction. so that’s extremely terrifying).

They literally left him with BX for like 20 minutes because his actual nanny droid had to run an errand.

This argument is so tired and it also kind of proves that you don’t even actually read/watch canon, you take all of your beliefs and cues from what Reylo BNFs with vested interests in keeping y’all brainwashed to believe that Bennyboo is a Pure Sweet Angel Baby Who Never Did Anything Wrong so that they can maintain the social capital of having lots of followers.

Gee, I wonder if that’s similar to anyone we’ve been talking about?

That said, this argument is also exhausting because it places blame on working parents for being working parents, and that’s misogynistic bullshit. Han was Ben’s primary caregiver. In canon. T-2 is really only ever in full-on Nanny Mode during Last Shot, when Han has to leave the house for more than a day or so.

Otherwise, it’s literally canon that Han is a stay-at-home parent whose full-time vocation is caring for Ben until Ben leaves for Luke’s school. After that, he STILL is a full-time househusband, but does some charity ship-racing on the side to raise money for galactic orphanages. He does mentorships for junior pilots, too, and once one of them -- Greer Sonnel -- starts to seem like she has a terminal chronic illness that will keep her from flying, Han helps to place her in a safer job opportunity rather than have to go back to her impoverished home planet. MAN, what a BAD GUY who HATES KIDS and is BAD AT CARING FOR THEM.

Not even the nanny droid -- they kept T-2, who had programming for obstetrics and pediatrics, around because he was a protocol droid just like Threepio but with the benefit of specialized programming that would help them better care for Ben, from early on in Leia’s pregnancy at least through when Ben left for Luke’s school. God forbid parents have specialized, knowledgable help raising their child!

It is only after Ben “Jedi Killer” Solo destroys Luke’s school and becomes Kylo Ren that Han leaves, and that’s alluded to in canon -- although I’ll give you that it isn’t confirmed at this juncture in either Road to TFA or Road to TLJ material/timeline -- to search for Luke, search for Ben, and/or help raise and gather capital for the burgeoning Resistance. He isn’t a deadbeat who’s never around for his son. His son’s disappearance is the only thing that could make Han leave the domestic home and life that he’d wanted since before he even met Leia.

Second, his powers are erratic and POWERFUL and when he’s like a preteen or something he hears his parents discussing him behind closed doors…like he’s some sort of monster.

And what, exactly, did Ben do before they said this?

We don’t know.

We have had hints in both Road to TFA and Road to TLJ canon that something Ben Solo did, at age 10, was sufficiently powerful and Dark enough that Leia and Han did the best thing they could as parents to a child who did a Dark thing: get them help from a source who has the training and knowledge to help them in ways the parents themselves cannot.

That is not bad parenting. That was the right thing to do.

We don’t know what Ben did that caused his parents to worry about how Dark his behavior, in that act at least, had been, but parents admitting that they are out of their depth and getting their child help from a professional is not neglect, or a lack of love, or a lack of empathy. I get it; being forced to get help, when you view your own actions as justified, is scary and painful and embarrassing. When I was teaching, I had an eight-year-old male student who had been expelled from public school after breaking another kid’s arm and was in a specialized school for students with violent behavioral issues because he had kind-of-accidentally killed his toddler cousin by hitting him over the head with a chair when he was angry. I’m 100% sure that his parents talked about that event, amongst themselves, behind closed doors, with horror and the kind of language that would be immensely hurtful to this boy if he overheard it. That’s a human reaction. A monstrous thing happened, hard to comprehend, and like... parents are allowed to react like humans about complicated emotions of trauma or shock or horror, even though they are parents. But then they did the exactly right thing for their profoundly violent son by getting him professional help. That specialized school was not fun. The boy definitely saw it as, and talked about it as, a punishment. But it wasn’t a punishment. It was loving him enough to try to save him from himself.

Sending Ben to Luke’s school was not a punishment or some way to ~throw him away. Ben DID need help, objectively, although we haven’t yet been told exactly what the final straw was. I believe, IIRC, that the Road to TFA referred to whatever he did as a “great family tragedy,” but I don’t 100% remember -- I only recall that was part of why most people assumed that the incident occurring right around the time of Rey’s birth would ultimately be significant, and who knows, it may yet be. We don’t know. There’s no canon about it.

Also --

You guys act like Luke was some mean, scary stranger who hated Ben on sight, but Luke was Ben’s uncle. Leia and Han adored him, and he adored them, and he loved Ben. We don’t have any canon about Luke’s feelings towards whatever child!Ben did to warrant the intervention, but even in TLJ, there’s no actual objective statements of Luke hating Ben, or even Kylo.

The only person who asserts that Luke hates/hated Ben Solo is Kylo.

And frankly: he needs to believe that. Just like he needs to believe that killing Han will cause Snoke to finally respect him and give him more control/power/leadership. These are things that, honestly, he’s gotta KNOW are not true, but has to create the believe of their truth to continue acting as Kylo Ren.

So this belief, and those actions as Kylo?

Are agential, active choices. As an adult man.

Further:

Re: the moment with Luke in the hut, any interpretation that doesn’t take into account the filmmaking and CANONICAL choice to present it twice, once in Kylo’s POV and once in Luke’s POV, is missing the point of its being shown at all.

Kylo has already begun his manipulation of Rey in service to the eventual murder of Snoke and usurpation of the throne when he tells Rey about that night. He knows that Rey is frustrated with Luke on her own merits, so she will be receptive to a telling of that story that frames Luke as all of the things that Rey is already annoyed with Luke for being: stubborn, afraid of the Force, afraid of the Dark, quick to anger, irresponsible, whatever.

In the flashback from Kylo’s POV, he is telling Rey the story, so it is being presented to her for the purpose of garnering her sympathy in order to manipulate her. It isn’t even necessarily how Kylo remembers that moment when he’s just remembering it to himself, late at night, or whatever! We have never been privy to what’s actually in Kylo’s mind about that night. While you guys are using that as evidence that his mind was good and guileless and sweet, it’s equally (or more) likely that he was so Dark that night bcause he was, just like with Rey, already planning his next Dark act. In both TFA with Han and TLJ with Rey, Kylo’s choices in Dark actions tend to rely on someone else -- someone Light -- falling alongside him because he is a skillful manipulator of empathy.

Han steps closer and takes the lightsaber, blade-end pointed at himself, because he believes that Kylo Ren is choosing the Light and will come home.

Rey mails herself to the First Order, becoming a pawn in the takeover of Snoke’s throne, for the exact same reason.

When Kylo is telling Rey about the night that he destroyed Luke’s school and killed the other students, he is relying on the same tactic -- using someone’s own goodness and Lightness against them.

Han, on the bridge, even as he was dying, believed the best in his son and believed 100% that if given the choice, Kylo Ren would be Ben again, and that he wanted the Light and just felt like he couldn’t have it anymore.

So when he’s manipulating Rey with the story about that night with Luke, in Kylo’s POV, we can visually see from the filmmaking choices that he is telling it in a way tailored to her belief in inherent goodness. Rey, until after the throne room, believes that people are ultimately and innately good and Light -- it’s stated basically outright iirc in her Survival Guide -- and Kylo knows that because he mind-raped her and saw her thought processes and viewpoints and knows, exactly, how to mold his story to ply her. When we see that night with Luke as Kylo tells it to Rey to get her to come to the First Order, he tells it in a way that casts his choice to flee to the Dark as being borne of fear and confusion, not desire. (And y’all reylos buy that??? Okay.)

But if Rey herself weren’t being so muddled by her own confusion and sadness, honestly, TLJ itself presents her with enough evidence that wasn’t true: she knows Leia and Han loved him, and he tells her that he didn’t hate Han. And yet, he stayed. He stayed in the First Order for six years after that night. He didn’t destroy Luke’s school by accident out of shock and fear and pain in a whirlwind of Dark energy that he couldn’t control, and then, you know, feel bad and atone and try to make amends and acknowledge his bad deed and accept consequences and try to redeem himself.

He destroyed the school and fled to the First Order and stayed. He destroyed the school and kept on destroying.

But he IS a skillful manipulator, and he also knows that Rey most likely assumes that he wants to come home because, he’s seen in her mind AND she’s reaffirmed, that all she wants is a loving home and parents. If he tells about that night in the hut in a way that casts himself as the victim, his hand forced so that he doesn’t feel he can come home, she’ll believe it (despite literally having seen him in front of her face reject the invitation to come home with his dad, but whatever Rian).

So that’s how he tells it: Luke, fallen to the Dark side, his face twisted into something demonic in his fear and hatred, and Ben, still innately Light inside, only acting in the Dark basically by accident. THAT IS KYLO REN MASTERPIECE THEATER PUPPET STORYTIME, AS HE ACTIVELY MANIPULATES REY TO LEAVE LUKE AND COME HELP HIM KILL SNOKE.

It is, in the world of the story, and in the narrative through-line of TLJ, not the truth.

Personally, as with a lot of the things that Kylo claims to believe, I don’t think even he believes it’s the truth. It is what a convenient truth would be in that moment to further his progress towards his goal of supremacy. He KNOWS that he was steeped in the Dark side (by choice, as an adult) when Luke entered his hut that night. Even though you’re trying to insist that he was an innocent lamb that night, even your own pro-Ben Solo arguments rely on the idea of his being fully and totally steeped in Darkness by then -- don’t you think he was 23 years and 9 space months into being groomed by Snoke by that night? If Snoke really had been grooming him for so long, then by default Ben Solo was already Dark by then, and the Dark has no power unless you choose to act on it.

And to that end: what, exactly, if not kill all of the other students, destroy Luke’s school, and help to destabilize the New Republic in favor of the neo-conservative fascist junta of the First Order, was Snoke grooming him to do or be?

If you believe that Snoke was grooming Ben Solo to the level that ALL of his Dark actions were really Snoke, and not Kylo Ren actually making agential active choices to further his own agenda, then what was Snoke’s plan for him before that night? Because unless his plan for Ben Solo involved the destruction of Luke’s school... wouldn’t Kylo be starting out his tenure under Snoke’s tutelage with Snoke HELLA PISSED at him for doing something so rash and stupid?

So yeah, granted, it IS only an assumption that the Ben “Jedi Killer” Solo actually consciously and actively planned the destruction of the school and the murder of any classmates who refused to join him... but it’s an assumption based on all of his actions since that night. He has made zero efforts towards self-aware atonement or culpability, and if he truly did not mean to destroy the school and kill other students, one would think that someone who ultimately wants the Light and to be Saved Ben Solo Again would, idk, feel bad about it. Not try to blame someone else as a tactic to get a partner in another murder.

And you might hate the comparison to a school shooter, but that was as unsubtle in Ben’s destruction of Luke’s school as the comparisons to Neo-Nazis are in Hux’s rally in TFA.

He is an angry and entitled man, already steeped in Darkness and resentful that he doesn’t have all of the power that he feels is his natural due, and he scapegoats the adults in his life for making him get professional help that he didn’t want and was angered by because one of its tenets (if Luke was adhering to at least basic Jedi teachings) was that no one person should have that much power.

When he is caught continuing to act/think/speak/etc. in Dark ways -- like, IDK, someone’s loving parents trying to disconnect their internet access because they were so deeply entrenched in alt-right conspiracy theory that they were functionally insane and had become frighteningly violent -- his reaction is extreme violence (like stabbing to death the father trying to protect you from your own delusional conspiracy-driven subculture) in service to leaving his life for a literal, in-world neo-conservative fascist slave-owning militia planning a political coup through the equivalent of an atomic bomb in the capitol. Again: the parallel that JJA and Kasdan wrote and created for Kylo is not an accident, nor is it subtle. We’re MEANT to see him as a toxic masculinity-driven, entitled, violent white man, and we’re meant to view his slaughter of his classmates as having been driven by his rage and his quest for the power he feels is his due.

That is a school shooter. Trying to pull the “you can’t compare this overt fantastical metaphor to a real-life bad thing to the bad thing it’s meant to be because that would mean acknowledging the bad thing!!!!” card is really tired.

Like. There is no realistic, actual, canon-based scenario in which Ben Solo, by the night of the hut, DIDN’T have plans for violence against any who would not join him.

Remember? Star Wars has already cribbed-and-canonized the reactionary mindset once: you’re either with me, or you’re my enemy.

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The New Mutants and Its Nightmare on Elm Street Influences

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This article contains mild The New Mutants spoilers.

The New Mutants is an odd duck. The writing was on the wall back in 2017 when 20th Century Fox first pushed the film off its original 2018 release window. Apparently the delay was the result of the studio wanting to make it more of a horror movie via reshoots… reshoots that then never happened.

Even so, those horror elements are still on bonkers display in Josh Boone’s final cut of the film, now available on Blu-ray and VOD. Even without knowing Boone was vocal that the Nightmare on Elm Street movies were cornerstone influences, it’s clear his mutant mayhem wants to live on the same block.

To be sure, these aspects are more muted than they should be, which is the result of the film’s biggest problem: tonal inconsistency. New Mutants veers wildly between young adult drama, youthful hijinks, and a nigh ‘80s slasher sensibility where very few characters actually get slashed. If reshoots had actually upped the horror quotient, this could fit nicely as a continuation of the Elm Street Kids’ travails. But even in its bizarre current form, there is something there to appreciate, particularly for fans of Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.

Nearly 40 years after Robert Englund first growled his way through a Freddy Krueger movie, many fans still think of the first Wes Craven-directed A Nightmare on Elm Street when they look back on that series. But for horror fans of a certain age, 1987’s Dream Warriors was the only Nightmare on Elm Street movie that mattered. It’s the one where Heather Langenkamp’s Nancy Thompson returned, and a gang of street-wise ‘80s teen movie archetypes found themselves locked in a mental hospital with Freddy picking them off one pun at a time. And as these victims found ways to fight back in their nightmares, they became the “Dream Warriors,” just as their film turned into a superhero movie with a body count.

The high concept of a monster fighting the Breakfast Club inside of Nurse Ratched’s hospital is still incredibly appealing today. And it’s emulated from top to bottom in The New Mutants. Not that Boone and his stars have exactly been coy about this fact; Dream Warriors has been name dropped by the filmmakers ever since the first trailer introduced us to the movie’s versions of Rhane Sinclair (Maisie Williams), Illyana Rasputin (Anya Taylor-Joy), Sam Guthrie (Charlie Heaton), Roberto da Costa (Henry Zaga), and Danielle Moonstar (Blu Hunt).

Even way back in 2017, Boone told Collider that Dream Warriors was one of New Mutants’ big influences. “I do love Dream Warriors,” Boone said at the time. “I loved the first [movie] as well, but this is very much a rubber reality horror movie for the first about 75% of the movie and then it becomes something else.”

And unlike many X-Men adjacent films, the characters from early New Mutants comics are more or less recognizable in their live-action forms here. Nevertheless, how they’re introduced is pure Dream Warriors.

After a dubious opening sequence in which Hunt’s Dani Moonstar survives a “tornado,” the young girl is committed to an isolated sanitarium along with other teenage mutants. Their chaperone Dr. Reyes (Alice Braga) swears they’re being groomed by an unseen benefactor who we’re led to believe is Charles Xavier… but her evasiveness about the details suggests something more sinister.

All the while, each of the kids is plagued by nightmares, both when they’re asleep and awake. And the waking terrors are of their worst fears come to life. So, yes, this is basically a Freddy movie without Freddy. That in itself could be viewed as damning, both to horror fanatics who want more thrills and superhero fans who like their popcorn buttered the same way every time, but even with its (many) foibles, there is charm in New Mutants’ rough edges. Here is a movie decidedly not a product of the all-too-familiar blockbuster assembly line.

For instance, Boone takes his Dream Warriors aesthetic and runs with it via multiple visual references and plotting echoes, all of which feel unnatural for its superpowered fantasy. In one early scene, a character briefly entertains suicide while standing atop a menacing Gothic tower, not unlike how Freddy forced Phillip (Bradley Gregg) to throw himself from one in Dream Warriors, earning the label of “suicide” by other characters; in a more overt fashion, New Mutants’ Roberto sits in a wheelchair in another scene, just like the one Will (Ira Heiden) used in Dream Warriors; and the character is later seduced into a watery illusion by a dream girl who is not what she seems, a la Joey’s haphazard “wet dream,” as Freddy coins it, in the direct Dream Warriors sequel, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988).

All of these knowing nudges from Boone and his co-screenwriter Knate Lee are there for Freddy’s Children to catch. Yet they can also both improve and hinder New Mutants. In the plus column, they feel unusual and original for a movie about comic book characters; on the other side of the ledger, few of these “scares” actually go far enough to be frightening. Thus the movie feels strangely unfinished, even after spending years on a shelf. In fact, there are several scene transitions where you know something is missing from pickups that were never filmed.

And yet, that low-fi messy quality may add to its rough hewn, uneven charm for a certain set. Like all of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, this isn’t high art. But the fact it goes for these horror moments with complete sincerity is kind of refreshing. Like Dream Warriors, New Mutants and its cast take their plight seriously, probably too much so. But after a decade of most superhero movies relying on a smug self-deprecation—a persistent invisible smirk at the camera which promises we know it’s nonsense—New Mutants’ emotional earnestness will appeal to a smaller cult audience.

In this vein, the strongest aspect of the film is likely any scene involving Williams’ Rahne and Hunt’s Dani. The former has the benefit of being played by the lone actor to nail her thick accent, as well as the rich horror trope of being a hard-believing Catholic. Like many a teenager from a religious home, Rahne fears Hell, which Bone and Lee’s screenplay embrace in the thematic sense with Rahne also being a glorified werewolf who fears her “evil” mutation.

In the more literal sense, Rahne also struggles with her attraction to Dani. It’s a romance that doesn’t feel tacked on by a studio note or an afterthought for social media; like Boone’s earlier work, it’s presented as a sincere puppy love story. But even that has echoes in the Nightmare on Elm Street saga, with the second film, Freddy’s Revenge (1985) attempting to tell a subtextual gay love story–one full of shame and literal self-mutilation where the main character transforms into Freddy when he’s attracted to his buddy.

New Mutants does this element better by removing the “sub” in “subtext,” and the shame. Rather it commits to a sweet romance just as earnestly as it commits to a sequence where Rahne’s dead priest returns to haunt her with a demonic voice that sounds a lot like Freddy’s warble. Yet this, too, mirrors a locker room attack in Freddy’s Revenge.

Despite the tonal dissonance between these two elements both aspects embrace the LGBTQ+ undertones in X-Men comics better than most actual X-Men comics, and in their own way are reminiscent of how goofy ‘80s slasher movies could become comforting outlets for marginalized groups.

Movies

Is New Mutants an Ending for the Fox X-Men Universe?

By Gavin Jasper

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New Mutants: A Horror Version of The Breakfast Club

By Don Kaye

That New Mutants tackles these delicate aspects as brazenly (or some might say as tastelessly) as those ‘80s slashers is kind of wild. It also ensures that New Mutants will eventually find an audience. Perhaps not the audience who superhero movies are so methodically engineered for in the 21st century, nor in the mainstream commercial audience Fox almost quaintly thought this approach would appeal to. It certainly isn’t critics with the movie’s ungainly, batshit tendencies.

But as with Dream Warriors before it, here’s a film in which young people use superpowers to fight the man and topple authority while seeing each other in a way they, nor any superhero movie, has before. It gives this bloody mess teeth… and claws.

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corneliussteinbeck · 7 years

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How Internalized Misogyny Is Holding You Back

Note: Before digging in, I want you to know that though it isn’t my intention, it’s likely that some things I say in this article might make you angry—and that’s totally normal. Know that my intent is to free you from judgment, not impose more judgment upon you. I encourage you to question your feelings and examine where they’re coming from.

Misogyny. This word has been coming up a lot, particularly over the past year.

What Is Misogyny?

Oxford lists misogyny as “Dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.” Merriam keeps it simple and too-the-point with an abrasive, “A hatred of women.”

There are many levels of misogyny and specifically internalized misogyny. In its most simplistic of explanations, internalized misogyny is when that contempt, prejudice, and hatred is turned inward, toward oneself. It can also extend toward other women who surround us in our daily lives—a mother, daughter, friend, or lover.

The complexities of internalized misogyny are astounding, and when being examined for the first time, can feel overwhelming. Men and women are affected by it very differently on subconscious levels, and an article like this merely scratches the surface. My hope is that it will serve as an awakening (or reminder) that will help set the course for further conversation and self-examination.

What Does Misogyny Look Like?

Misogyny is tricky; it isn’t always a clear action. In fact, self-proclaimed feminists themselves can sometimes be the worst offenders. When we think of judgment or hatred toward women, it’s not hard to see the extreme outcomes playing out before our eyes. In barbaric and aggressive senses, we’ve been taught that lust’s blame rests in a woman’s hands. There are many religious and ancient texts one can pick from to learn more about the overt and extreme history of misogyny. By default in our society, the blame for anything involving temptation or a loss of control is more often than not placed on a woman and her devious ways or irresponsible choices. It isn’t the overt, but rather the more subtle and subconscious undertones that I want to bring out into the light.

It’s the overall belittling and judgment in which we often may not even realize we ourselves take part. It’s no secret that the current social climate has had its fill of political correctness. Perhaps it’s because “we” think it’s enough to say, “Women can do whatever they want, ok? Get over it. Let’s move on.” It’s not enough.

I imagine that right now, some of you may be thinking, “That’s not me. I definitely don’t have any misogynistic beliefs.” But that’s the thing.

Sometimes these beliefs are so deeply ingrained that we don’t see them for what they are. I encourage you to take a closer look.

How can you know if you are engaging in misogynistic thinking? Here are some questions you can ask yourself that will help you see things from a different perspective:

Do you tend to value, trust, and respect male teachers more than female teachers?

Do you catch yourself saying, “I need a man’s opinion” on various subjects?

Do you not exercise or train the way you want to because you’ve been told that women shouldn’t do certain types of exercise (like lifting weights), or that muscles aren’t feminine or “look ugly” on women?

Do you use phrases like “Real men…” or “Real women…”

Do you compete only against other women for men or women’s attention?

Do you judge women as better or worse based solely on their appearance?

Do you think women are catty or full of drama?

Do you say things like, “I’m only friends with guys because women are/aren’t…”

Do you say phrases like “Men are just like that,” or “That’s just how women are.”

Do you “slut shame” women for the same behaviors you find completely acceptable from men?

Do you feel you aren’t worthy of loyalty in friendships and romantic relationships?

Do you feel unsafe or uncertain when a woman is in charge of tasks?

Do you feel that being on time or being prepared matters less when dealing with women?

Do you think women are physically weak and need to be taken care of by men?

Do you think men should be “Alphas” and women should be submissive?

Do you think there are jobs that aren’t suitable for women or that women shouldn’t be allowed to have?

Do you underplay women’s talents and overinflate men’s?

Do you think all women should strive to achieve one specific body type?

The way in which we view ourselves and our gender can affect how we eat, date, train, prepare for education, and dream. If there was ever a topic in need of deeper examination to truly understand what is going on behind the curtain in our own minds, it’s this one.

My Own Misogyny

Growing up, I rarely identified with women. When I was a kid, society thrust upon me the idea that I had to like pink things, fluffy things, sparkly things, and fragile things. In fact, I hated it all. I was your typical tomboy. While I hate that term now, back then it was the only identifier I knew.

From a young age, I was taught certain ideas about gender traits:

“Female” traits: emotional, overly sensitive, physically weak, less intelligent, followers, easy to manipulate, nurturing, frilly clothing, needy behavior, scared, clumsy, and kind.

“Male” traits: strong, stoic, violent, leaders, manipulative, loners, smart, capable, mean, practical clothing, trustworthy, athletic and dominating.

These are obviously not traits I agree with today. Again, this was how my young mind worked. My life was far from typical or normal. I was a hard-living kid from the streets who learned early on that a good punch and smooth talk saved me a lot more than thigh-highs and platform shoes ever could. Nonetheless, it seemed like being a guy offered way more perks than being a girl. Looking at the list subconsciously presented to us on the day we’re born, it was an easy call. How would I not either, want to be a guy or, at the very least, look to them as leaders and saviors over women?

I was wrong.

In my life — a sociological study in its own right — I have learned that men can gossip, women can save the day, either can manipulate, and both can be kind or cruel.

My theories were gradually ripped apart in the face of my own experiences. Then I studied.

I explored history, gender studies, psychology, and philosophy. I studied my own sexuality, why I like the things I do and why I don’t. I started seeing misogyny (cautious about not confirming my own biases) in everything around me. The stories we tell, the way we say things, and to whom we say them. I learned to think critically, and above all, I learned to acknowledge the sex (not gender) of an individual.

It’s crucial to acknowledge that along with society’s prescribed gender roles comes a certain set of privileges (or lack thereof) that can’t be ignored.

The Importance of Understanding Privilege

A common misunderstanding about privilege is that it can be neatly categorized, like “white men at the top, and women of color at the bottom.” The truth is that privilege exists in varying degrees as it bends and weaves across intersections of society. It is also true that men, especially white men, are still privileged.

Bear with me…

It’s hard to deny that money, location, education, and other factors influence our life experiences and circumstances. Not acknowledging these interwoven factors often leads people to say, “Well, that isn’t fair! How can you say I’ve got it better when they are _____ and have it better than me! I work hard, and I’m not getting anywhere just because I’m _____.”

Privilege isn’t a right, it’s a privilege.

All it means is that, subconsciously throughout our lives and in all forms of media culture, some of us more than others have been psychologically pumped up, groomed, and cheered on in ways we’ve likely never noticed—and we reaped the benefits. Given the opportunity, you could lead due to having an advantage that you may not even be aware of having.

In simplistic examples, people are often quick to say, “Well, obviously that’s not fair, and X individual has an advantage.” Disagreements arise when the topics get more subtle and sociologically nuanced, and people quibble over whether a disadvantage is merely a confidence issue or one having to do with gender. Make no mistake about it, in our society there is an advantage to being a man.

Even at the gym, this subconscious privilege is present. When a man steps up to a heavy weighted bar, before he ever picks it up he already has a remarkable amount of men “with” him. He has superheroes, average Joes, Rocky, villains, athletes, saviors, his brothers, fathers, friends, gods, warriors by the billions—not thousands, not millions, but billions—standing behind him. Thousands of years of history, wars fought over land and sea, victories and stories of champions galore. David, Goliath, Jesus, and God himself. They’re all right there behind him when he steps up to that bar.

Women? Let me make it clear. We have Rosa Parks. Susan B. Anthony. Corazon Aquino. Malala Yousafzai. I could go on but it wouldn’t take you long to see that a common theme of their rise to legendary status was oppression. What do they get for that? More often than not, they get told growing up “You throw like a girl.” “Not bad, for a girl.” “But you’re just a girl.”

Even one of our most popular sports culture movies’ famous phrase is, “There’s no crying in baseball.”

Do you get it? Do you see it? That’s subconscious privilege.

So many movies we watch and books we read subtly suggest that women are less. In these stories, women will appeal to the power and submissiveness of a male dominated society. Women will believe that they are catty, competing, or left wanting. Stories in which women are strong, are an anomaly. It’s so unusual for women to be the strong hero, that when a string of just a few movies with a strong female lead are released, the response from both men and many women often sounds like this: “C’mon. Stop trying to please the liberal agenda. This role would be better with a guy in the lead, and you know it.” (That is an actual comment with 3,203 likes on Facebook about the new Rogue One movie.)

This isn’t about being more masculine or rejecting gender roles. There is nothing wrong with your gender identity relating to something to you. However you are more than your sex or literal genitalia. This is about undoing centuries of oppressive dialogue. It isn’t about ignoring the facts, but instead facing them. This is not about being an angry feminist, conjuring up the tired caricature of the man-hating lesbian who burns her bra and calls the penis a “phallic oppressor.” While that sentence was fun to type, no, it’s not about that. This also isn’t about taking anything away from anyone. What this is about is learning to give to yourself. And it needs to start with the way we treat women (including ourselves).

A Few Exercises For Improving the Language We Use for Ourselves and Others

Instead of, ”I can do anything a man can do,” try, ”I can do anything I want to do.”

It might seem nitpicky, but eliminating the “them” vs “us” narrative, is crucial in the fight for equal rights and against inequality in gender, sexuality, and race. One gender should not be the metric by which we all measure ourselves and others.

Instead of, “I’m like one of the guys,” try, ”I like what I like.”

If women like something that is stereotypically masculine or “manly” things, they are given extra credit for not being “prissy” or “high-maintenance.” They get rewarded for “manning-up” and being the girl who can simply be “one of the guys.”

There is no such thing, not even for men. The notion that a person is defined by liking any one thing or activity because of their gender should be an eroding concept. Instead of focusing on what you should and should not be or like, embrace what you actually like and what makes you feel most “you.” Do that, and you will notice gender stereotypes fade away.

Instead of, “Lift like a man,’ try, “Lift for what you want.”

There is no male or female way of training. There are ways to train which will improve muscular growth. There are ways to train which will improve cardiovascular health. There are even way to train to support your ability to consume mass quantities of hot dogs in one sitting in under 10 minutes. However, there is no one way to train like a man or a woman. If you want to be strong, get strong. If you want to be curvy, be curvy. If you are a 5’4 guy who wants to have better legs in heels, I love a reverse lunge!

Instead of, ”We are all equal,” try… “We are all equal.”

No change. Because that’s the very meaning.

Too often, I see faux empowerment or “feminism.” I’ve seen women chant the virtues of owning their sex and power, but are doing so because they are mimicking a caricature of what they think a man is. Knocking women who want to wear makeup or who want to embrace traditional gender roles doesn’t make a woman empowered. Enjoying sex and bucking conservative society doesn’t make a woman a feminist. It also doesn’t make a woman a feminist to pick only one body type. Feminists come in all shapes and sizes. Muscular, thin, round, tall, short, medium; It doesn’t matter what shape you want to achieve as long as you’re staying true to your desires, rather than pursuing an ideal you’ve been instructed by someone else to pursue because it’s what you “should” be or what you “should” look like.

Phrases like “strong is the new skinny” or “strong is the new sexy” are as limiting as stating that muscular women look “too manly.” Different people find different aesthetics appealing. Whether you want all the muscles, or you just want to feel strong and take care of your bones but prefer a less muscled physique, what is important is that your training goals reflect and satisfy your preference.

Check in with your desires and motivations and where they are coming from. One choice isn’t better or worse than the other if it’s what appeals to you.

A Homework Assignment: Re-examining Your Goals (A.k.a: What Do You Want?)

If reading this article overwhelms and frustrates you, it’s okay. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this subject makes a lot of women feel overwhelmed or frustrated, or both.

Go with these feelings. I want you to put pen to paper (or fingers to keys) and think about the questions and thoughts that come up for you. Does any of this make you want to reevaluate your training goals? Have you been living for you, or for someone else? What do you really want and who is it for—and why?

If you read this and think, “Damn, I’ve been more unfair to myself and other women than I realized…” understand you are not alone. I’ve been there. I don’t want to be presumptuous, but it’s safe to say on some level we have all been there. As we start to see things a little more clearly, we can start working toward examining what it is that we really want, who we want to be, and why.

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