#any form of oppression he faces is not the center of his narrative its his obsession with Alina | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cobra-diamond · 4 years

Text

The East Asian Origins of the Fire Nation and Its Villains

Introduction

Over the years, many volumes of fandom blood have been spilled from discussions concerning the Fire Nation’s main villains, Ozai and Azula. Paralleling this have been arguments over their relationships with Zuko, Iroh, Ursa, Mai, Ty Lee, with each other, even with themselves. Since Ozai and Azula are the figureheads of the Fire Nation that Zuko must peacefully restore the honor of, it is worthwhile understanding why people “like them” are considered proper leaders of the current Fire Nation.

Most of these discussions have sought to create “theories” that explain these characters as exclusively combinations of mental illness, personality disorders and various emotional traumas.

A couple examples of these discussions are the essays “Azula, the Embodiment of Jealousy and Neglect,” and “Three Pillars Theory of Azula.” These two essays are just examples, but they capture the widespread strategy the fandom has employed in trying to understand the motivations and goals of Ozai and Azula and their various relationships with the other characters. In addition, the shouting matches between Azula “fans” and “haters” also illustrates these discussions. Since the franchise has yielded so few hard answers, these importance of these discussions has not waned.

What these discussions focus on, as represented by those essays, are the characters’ apparent emotional problems, theoretical moral compasses and perceived inadequacies in the eyes of their families. Typically, the “lens” these discussions view these villains through is one that tries to relate them to present day spousal and domestic abuse narratives, namely as being both “abuser” and “victim” in a cycle of abuse that can be related to the modern, real world.

What these conversations do not provide are adequate explanations for how the historical, political, military and cultural aspects of the Fire Nation molded these military leaders. You would think that people with “Lord” and “Princess” in their names, who train daily for warfare and hand-to-hand combat, would make their responsibilities take center stage in their lives.

While there is a place for “nitty gritty” psychological examinations for understanding certain behaviors, trying to depict the Fire Nation villains as purely allegories of modern day domestic abusers, empathy deficient bullies and people afflicted by personality disorders eliminates Avatar’s most unique and defining characteristic: its East Asian origins.

You don’t need beautiful animation, martial arts-styled bending and immersion in a fantasy world to explain how families in the modern era can hurt their children for petty reasons. We have that in our own lives. We have friends and families who have experienced that. It can be addressed in any other setting. It can be addressed in Avatar but it doesn’t need Avatar to address it.

What we don’t experience in our modern lives is ancient China 2000 years ago, or feudal Japan after the takeover of the Tokugawa Shogun, or religious monks living in their temples in the mountains untouched by the modern world, and so on.

The setting of Avatar is one of both beauty and relative detachment from the real (and modern) world, but it is one that is based on a period of history and human civilization that most of Avatar’s audience (North America and Europe) have little exposure to. If the characters’ motivations are too detached from the fictional world in which they live (i.e. by ignoring the historical, political, military and cultural context), then you begin to lose the world’s depth. At the same time, if their motivations are too connected to the present world, then all Avatar is is a visual motif of ancient East Asia.

By seeking to explain the Fire Nation villains as embodiments of modern psychology’s understanding of “bad” people, you erase the opportunity to apply East Asia’s very real history of warfare, monarchical domination and oppressive cultures to a fictional world that is trying to say something about that warfare, monarchical domination and oppressive cultures. Note that the show did in fact achieve this with the Dai Lee’s corruption and manipulation of the Earth King; it depicted loosely the very real occurrence of Chinese Emperors being “kept in the dark” by their advisors so as not to interfere with the “real” governing of the states.

If your goal is to view Avatar purely as an allegory for modern dysfunctional relationships and domestic abuse, you lose Avatar’s uniqueness as a fictional dive into an East Asian-inspired world, especially one that is ravaged by warfare and feudalism.

In this article, I describe an alternative model for understanding the Fire Nation’s culture and history, and how its politics and military molded its heroes and villains.

What We Know and Might Know

In order to fill the gaps in our knowledge of the Fire Nation, we first have to understand what is both known about the Fire Nation and what can be reasonably presumed about it.

First, what do we know about the Fire Nation?

1. The Fire Nation is an archipelago with a history spanning thousands of years.

2. The Fire Nation was originally the “Fire Islands” and was not initially governed by a central power.

3. The Fire Islands had a unified cultural and religious authority in the form of the “Fire Sages”.

4. Eventually, the Fire Islands were unified by a single power—the “Imperial Government”—and afterward became known as the “Fire Nation”.

5. The Imperial Government is headed by a supreme ruler: the “Fire Lord”.

6. The Fire Lord is a hereditary monarch whose family is considered the “Royal Family”, both of which are separate entities from the Fire Sages.

7. The Fire Sages remain a distinct entity from the Imperial Government.

8. Both the Fire Lord and Royal Family are military and administrative rulers.

9. The Fire Lord and their Royal Family are not sacred and everlasting; their power can be “challenged” by rival leaders.

10. Fire Lords are expected to “show their worth” and be competent fighters in their own right; prowess in military arts and control of subordinates are valued traits.

11. Agni Kais are a longstanding component of Fire Nation culture.

12. The Fire Nation experienced an “unprecedented time of peace and wealth” during the era of the Fire Nation, not during the era Fire Islands.

Next, what can be reasonably presumed given what we know?

Something necessitated the Fire Islands becoming unified, but this unification did not result in the Fire Sages taking power, nor did it yield a peaceful, democratic government.

The Imperial Government that resulted from this unification is rooted in military control and maintaining the fealty of its subjects; in Avatar and the Fire Lord, Sozin put on his “ruler persona” to Roku initially before acting friendly, only later to demand loyalty from him as if Roku was any other subject.

The culture of the Fire Nation values strength and bravery from its firebenders, as explained in an official description of Agni Kais. Presumably, the Agni Kai predates the era of the Fire Lord and has been used to settle disputes of various kinds. This could be interpreted as a “non-destructive” means of avoiding war and greater loss of life given how easily firebenders could wreak havoc to wooden buildings and crops (among other flammable components of society). Since nobody recognized Zuko on Ember Island in The Beach, despite his obvious scar, severe scars from burns must be common enough in the Fire Nation that a teen boy having one on his face is not horrifying nor particularly unattractive.

Presumably, the Fire Nation/Fire Islands used to hold its religion and spiritual ties in higher regard, but Sozin’s start of the war required this aspect of the Fire Nation to be suppressed, as implied by dragon hunting and the divided loyalties of the Fire Sages at Roku’s temple, and the fact that various generals and admirals have defected. At the same time, vast enough swaths of the country and its leadership did follow Sozin’s path, considering that he and his family remained in power for over a hundred years. If Fire Lords can have their power challenged, then either nobody tried to stop Sozin, or they were defeated. Azula’s comment about “rumors of plans to overthrow him (Ozai)” in The Avatar State implies betrayal of the Royal Family is not a dormant threat. Though she was technically lying, it must have been a credible lie since neither Iroh and Zuko thought it was preposterous; his brother being “regretful” is what puzzled Iroh, not that there would be plots against the Fire Lord.

Notably, the Fire Lord’s throne room changed between the start of the war and the present day. Prior to Sozin, it did not have the imposing wall of flame as it does now. Certainly it had to be rebuilt after Roku destroyed it, but the wall of flame is much more imposing than the old.

The Fire Sages still pay a role in the Fire Nation, but this role is not known. Presumably, they play some part in the succession of the Fire Lord since they preside over coronation. Perhaps the relationship between the Fire Lord and Fire Sages is similar to the relationship between the Japanese Emperor and the Shoguns, where the Shoguns held the true power in the country (military and administrative) whereas the Emperor maintained a facade of power as a cultural and religious symbol. What is known about the Fire Sages is that they have a temple in the capital and are divided between their loyalties to the Avatar and the Fire Lord.

Finally, the Imperial Government’s capital is located in an isolated, fortified city inside a volcano’s caldera, where coming-and-going is strictly controlled. The city is large, full of nobility, physically disconnected from the external port city (versus directly being the hub of economic activity) and contains numerous underground bunkers.

Why would the Capital require such extensive bunkers and fortifications? Presumably because the Fire Lord and Royal Family can be “challenged” and the bunkers are a defense mechanism against both external and internal threats. The Fire Nation did have a “darkest day” tied to solar eclipses, which suggests that the loss of firebending had profound military consequences. Whatever the reasons, the Imperial Government is so concerned about its survival that it has constructed massive fortifications around its capital, implying that warfare is a major concern.

Areas of Confusion

But what does all of this mean?

Was the Fire Nation previously peace-loving and compassionate while Sozin is responsible for all of its “evils”?

Have Agni Kais been performed for centuries and so Zuko being challenged to one was neither unusual nor particularly grotesque for the Fire Nation’s culture?

Did Sozin face massive opposition to starting the war or was everyone humbly obedient to the Fire Lord?

How is a Fire Lord’s rule challenged?

Why wasn’t Sozin overthrown if he had to “impose” the war upon the country?

Why did the Fire Lord come to existence in the first place?

Why has the Imperial Government not been replaced by the Fire Sages?

Why does the Fire Nation need a national government?

What is a more compelling explanation for the Fire Nation’s villains other than mental illness and personality disorders?

As it turns out, there is a way to understand the Fire Nation that adequately fills in the gaps, explains its heroes and villains and provides a lesson on East Asian history.

A Brief History of Ancient Japan’s Unification

The islands of Japan have been populated for tens of thousands of years, but the “modern” era of warlords and emperors did not begun until the past 1500 years or so. While the Japanese people were not united under a single state, there was an “Emperor” who was believed to have been descended from a goddess. Despite this first emperor having control over a certain portion of Japan, it did not take long until the country split into separate feudal states.

While the Emperor never went away, their power over the country waned. The real power in Japan laid in the hands of the various feudal lords (daimyo), who used their armies to defend their territories and capture new ones from other lords.

Since the Emperor represented a shared cultural connection among the people, their power was not completely absent. In the earlier parts of history, before the Emperor became completely subordinated, the Emperor would appoint a Seii Taishōgun, or supreme commander, of the Emperor’s armies. Eventually, this “supreme commander” became the actual ruler of the Japan since they controlled the military. By appointing them “shogun” they more or less had the public approval of the Emperor despite the Emperor not actually being able to control them.

Various shoguns came and went, but through it all were the daimyo using their samurai to battle for control of the country. Ruthlessness and murder were common. Building alliances only to later betray them were often wise tactics. For a thousand years, the rulers of Japan lived by the sword, died by the sword and used it to maintain their power. Things got particularly bad during the Sengoku Period, which is considered the “Warring States” period of Japan. That tells you all you need to know.

It was during this time that one of these feudal lords rose to power, a man named Tokugawa Ieyasu (first name Ieyasu, last name Tokugawa). Using a combination of political tact, military genius and European steel breast armor, he defeated all other daimyo during the Azuchi–Momoyama period and installed himself as the shogun of the Tokugawa Shogunate. This marked the end of over a thousand years of continuous violence and social turmoil in Japan.

The Tokugawa Shogunate represented Japan’s first unified national government. The country’s existing daimyo were placed under strict control to ensure they did not rebel. The military was nationalized and the existing feudal governments rearranged to ensure centralized control by the Shogun in his capital at Edo. Notably, Edo became modern day Tokyo.

National laws were written, along with cultural and religious standards to ensure social cohesiveness, stability and control. The economies of Japan also flourished, especially in the cities. A consequence of the Tokugawa Shogunate, however, was closing off Japan to the outside world. The Shogun wanted to ensure their rule and control of the populace. Allowing other countries to influence them and provide assistance to competing powers within the country was viewed as destabilizing.

A particularly unique aspect of the Tokugawa’s politic strategy was requiring the daimyos’ families to live in the capital while the daimyo themselves had to go back and forth between their homes in their territory (called a domain) and their homes in the capital every other year. The Shogun essentially held the daimyos’ families hostage to ensure they would not rebel or work against him, although they lived in the comfort and relative freedom of a modern city, not as actual prisoners.

Another tactic the Shogun utilized to quell rebellion was to keep careful control of who entered the city of Edo and its surroundings. Guards were at all entrances and major roads and registries were kept of all people. Essentially, if you weren’t suppose to be somewhere, you weren’t allowed to be there.

Bushdio also developed during this period as way of controlling the warrior class, and was much more complicated than most Western depictions. With war and feudal fighting no longer a constant threat, the samurai class became enforces for the new government. Naturally, the Shogun was particularly interested in controlling them.

Control is a common theme of the Tokugawa Shogun’s government.

The Tokugawa Period was one of peace and stability, prosperity and enjoyment of the arts, but Ieyasu Tokugawa was not a nice person. He hunted down and executed the families of rival clans, including kids, during the takeover. He held families hostage and made sure his subordinates feared him and never stepped out of line. He enacted strict laws to control the populace and made sure no one could challenge him and his government’s reign. And it worked. Japan did not experience another war until the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate 278 years later, when the Emperor regained control and ended the era of isolationism. There’s a reason why modern day Japan doesn’t view this period with derision and loathing; given the context of the time, it was a proud moment for a region racked by warfare and division.

A pattern is beginning to emerge: an island nation ruled by feuding lords with no central power to direct them; a religious and cultural figure with no real power; a period of intense warfare and turmoil followed by a lasting period of unification and prosperity; a powerful central government headed by a hereditary monarch who took power using ruthlessness and military might; a hereditary monarch who rules through fear and demands fealty; a capital city with strict control of who comes and goes.

Themes of control and subordination from a central power.

This is sounds very familiar.

The Military and Political History of the Fire Nation

The history of ancient Japan provides a real-world model for understanding the origins of the Fire Nation’s Imperial Government, the Fire Lord and why they rule through fear and military domination. Keep in mind that the Fire Nation is not Japan, but warfare, centralized control and a desire for peace and stability are universal. Ancient Japan’s experience with feudalism, warfare and the eventual peace that came from having a competent central authority can go a long way in applying Avatar’s “East Asian origins” to the Fire Nation and its villains and heroes.

Using the rise of the Tokugawa Shogunate as a template, the history of the Fire Nation looks like this:

The Fire Islands were ruled by various feudal lords. These feudal lords engaged in warfare with each other as they vied for ever increasing control. Firebending was the primary source of these lords’ military might. The Fire Sages were recognized as spiritual and religious leaders by the Fire Islands people, but they did not have the practical power necessary to enforce peace upon the lands.

At the same time, firebending was recognized as being fundamental to the influence of the Fire Sages and the power of the feudal lords. Since fire can destroy houses, burn fields, melt iron and lay waste to non-bending armies, whoever can control and weaponize firebending for their own purposes will attain the most power. On the other hand, this also makes warfare particularly destructive as even small rebellions could lay waste to cities given how much fire a single firebender can unleash.

At some point, in order to put a stop to the fighting, a central authority came to power, either as one of those warlords or a Fire Sage acquiring enough military and political power. Maybe an avatar helped them. Without a doubt, military might had to have played a role in ending the “Warring States” period of the Fire Islands.

In order to make sure the Fire Islands did not fall back into fighting and remained peaceful and stable, this new central authority created a sweeping national government to control them. Thus are the beginnings of the Fire Lord and Imperial Government.

Because the Fire Nation is full of people with ”desire and will, and the energy and drive to achieve what they want” (in the words of Uncle Iroh), the destructive capacity inherent to a nation full of firebenders must be kept under strict control; if the goal is to create a prosperous, flourishing society, you cannot allow it to be destroyed periodically by walking flamethrowers.

As a result, the Imperial Government is not a “friendly” entity. It controls the nobility and lords who act as the local “vassals” in their home territories; it amasses a large, overwhelming military to quash any attempts at rebellion, and to send a clear message to its people to not even try; it uses fear and threats of violence to control the people who might feel the “drive and willpower” to try their hand at acquiring wealth and power through force.

The Agni Kai exists as a means of settling conflict without the destructive consequences of firebending. Perhaps a Fire Lord enacted this to further tamp down on firebenders’ destructive tendencies. It may also be an example of how the Fire Nation’s “warrior class” handles internal disputes in a similar manner as bushido.

Bravery, ferocity and a willingness to fight are valued in the leadership of the country because the Imperial Government is supposed to be a military entity first; how can the Fire Lord, their family and government inspire fear in the people if the people don’t believe they will be crushed if they step out of line?

At the same time, since the Fire Nation is much smaller than the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Lord must ensure they can defend the Fire Nation from invasion; you need a large, devoted, competent military to go up against an enemy multiple times your size.

In order to further control the country, the Fire Lord requires the families of the lords and nobility to live in the closed-off, guarded capital inside the caldera in a similar manner as the Tokugawa Shogunate required. This is why the capital is so guarded and closed-off, yet beautiful and comfortable; it is both a defensive measure for the administrative officials and a means of holding the nobility “hostage”.

The Fire Lord and Royal Family views themselves as presiding over, and maintaining the peace and stability of the Fire Nation. Their responsibility is to ensure that the peaceful Fire Nation does not fall back into the chaotic Fire Islands. Being nice and democratic is not their means of achieving this; making sure everybody subordinates themselves to the Imperial Government is.

After hundreds of years of peace and an unprecedented era of prosperity, the Fire Nation began to lose its internal enemies. The lords and nobility were under full control. The Imperial Government was vast and efficient. Nobody was trying to invade the Fire Nation. Everyone was happy and proud of their culture and government.

This allowed Sozin to begin looking outward. Using the all-powerful Imperial Government apparatus developed over the centuries, plus the sweeping loyalty to it ingrained into the public, he was able to get the country to go to war against the world. The militarism inherent to the Fire Nation’s leadership was not crafted out of whole cloth but simply cranked up and sent down a dark path.

The military being so willing to go along with it was because of their inherent loyalty to the Imperial Government and their culture of aggression and lust for battle necessary for warriors. This is actually where the 20th century Imperial Japan connections come in, but that’s a separate topic.

In summary, the Fire Lord and Royal Family view themselves as stewards of the peace and order of the Fire Nation. They see their responsibility as doing whatever it takes to prevent the “bad old days” from returning and that the Fire Nation is never weakened by foreign invaders. They rule through coercion and fear in order to ensure a country full of people who can shoot fire out of their hands remain subservient to the Imperial Government’s will. They embrace a culture of fighting because their primary goal is to prevent fighting by deterring those who might want to try.

An Alternate View of the Fire Nation’s Villains

Viewing the Fire Nation’s culture, government and leadership through the lens of Japanese history paints a more coherent picture of the Fire Nation’s villains, versus the M.C. Escher-like theories that result from focusing entirely on mental illness and personality disorders.

Look at it like this: the Fire Lord demands fealty and obedience from the people yet Azula’s emphasis on controlling people through fear is a result of Freudian Excuses and personality disorders?

No way.

Ruling through fear and coercion is necessary from the viewpoint of a soldier-princess who is supposed to command obedience from subjects, or else.

Agni Kais are expected events in Fire Nation culture, so common that child-Zuko is perfectly happy to face the general over mere “disrespect”, but the Fire Lord challenging his son to one is uniquely out of line? It’s awful, I mean, really awful, but it’s not out of line and it says a lot about the ingrained culture of the Fire Nation; Ozai didn’t think it would be viewed as shameful by everyone watching. Keep in mind that the tale of the 47 Ronin started with one member of the nobility insulting the other (essentially) and being asked to commit suicide simply for drawing a weapon inside Edo Castle (strictly forbidden). If Ozai can have his power challenged as any other Fire Lord can, then nobody was willing to oppose him because everyone else supported him.

Iroh spends a lifetime invading the Earth Kingdom, no doubt killing tens of thousands, and he can joke about burning Ba Sing Se to the ground? Of course he can, because it’s what Fire Nation generals do and part of the terrible culture that must be changed, as horrible as it was. The prince-general is supposed to be a military leader and enjoy what he does. He better not be squeamish.

Zuko is expected to be “loved and adored” for having firebending talent, courtly manners (to quote official descriptions of Azula) and intelligence in a similar fashion as his prodigal, early-blooming sister? Yes, because she bloomed early as the type of princess the nobility and leadership want and expect. It’s unfortunate they were so hard on Zuko, but now we know why he wasn’t “adored” like his sister; she was what others wanted Zuko to be.

Ty Lee is strong-armed by Azula into leaving the life she loves, even having her life threatened, when Ty Lee is a family member of the nobility that the Imperial Government seeks to control? Of course she is strong-armed. Can you really imagine this scenario playing out:

Those lines are taken from the show. Sounds a lot different, doesn’t it? Ignore the smirking and smugness for a moment and think about what is actually happening: a supreme military leader and heir to the throne is bullying a subordinate in order to get what they are entitled to; unwavering loyalty from a subject. Doesn’t make it good. Doesn’t make Ty Lee’s fear and loathing of Azula any less justified, but it puts it in a much more relevant context than vague theories of sadism and personality disorders. It also tells us something about the real ancient world: this how military rulers in East Asia’s history behaved and now you’re getting to see it in a fictional setting.

Fire Lord Azulon orders one of his sons to execute their son? That’s bad. Really bad. Did you also know that Ieyasu Tokugawa ordered his own son to commit suicide over suspicion he was conspiring against him? He didn’t want to but those were the wishes of the lord he was working with to win the war. That’s really bad too, and not shocking for the era, unfortunately. The leaders of the ancient world valued human life a lot less than people do now. It’s sad they didn’t value it more.

Manipulating subordinates (i.e. playing them off each other) and being ruthless were not frowned upon, but legitimate tactics. Murder and backstabbing were useful means of getting rid of an opposing leader. What mattered was winning, and the blood on your hands could simply be washed off, and if people didn’t like you for it? Well, were they in charge?

None of this is “good”. None of this is moral, or righteous, or anything close to how people should act in the modern era. However, these were not kleptocratic dictators like we see around the world today. These were legitimate administrative rulers by their day’s standards, and we (you and me) will never truly know what they were feeling when they woke up in the morning with the responsibilities of warfare and politicking.

We will never be able to completely relate to what these ancient leaders did. Do you know what it’s like to be the law in the land who can order people to commit suicide, and who will do it? Do you know what it’s like to prosecute a political and military war against multiple opponents across a vast country? Do you know what it’s like to manage an ancient authoritarian government after hundreds of years of warfare and chaos? None of us will, but that’s the kind of situation that a fictional country like the Fire Nation can take inspiration from, and should take inspiration from.

These were all very real problems of the ancient world and problems which Avatar, as a fictional work, can allow us to explore in the safety and comfort of not actually having to be there (and without having to open up huge history books).

Summary

The Fire Nation’s political and military history can be modeled on ancient Japan’s, in particular the rise of the Tokugawa Shogunate, where the Fire Lord represents the shogun and the Fire Sages the emperor.

The Fire Nation capital is both the head of the administration and home to the nobility’s families, who are held as hostages (in comfort) to prevent the various lords from rebelling.

The Royal Family and Imperial Government rules through fear and threats of force because they have to keep a country full of walking flamethrowers in line.

As military leaders who can have their power challenged, firebending talent and military prowess are highly valued and necessary for Fire Lords. At the same time, the rest of the country’s leadership wants leaders who appear worthy of that power and authority, hence those who have all the right qualities (Azula) are viewed in higher regard than those who have less (Zuko).

Azula’s emphasis on using “fear to control people” is not a psychological hang-up but a natural tactic of the Fire Lord, military, and Imperial Government to maintain obedience; as a teenager with limited life experience, she has internalized her role as a princess and warrior to the detriment of her personal relationships and emotional maturity (this is where the “child soldier” narrative has relevance).

Ozai represents the pinnacle of self-interest, authoritarianism and militarism that the combination of Sozin’s War and the longstanding nature of the Imperial Government have combined to create. In the ancient world, lords waged warfare for two reasons: to acquire power or pre-emptively wipe out rivals. Ozai wants power.

Ozai challenging Zuko to an Agni Kai is awful but not unusual, hence why he felt he could do it at all. Agni Kais are a fundamental aspect of conflict resolution in the Fire Nation, most likely because the Fire Nation’s leadership values bravery and a willingness to fight very highly. As Zuko was a prince and future leader of the warrior class, those values applied to him as well, but they got applied to him far too young (again, this is where the “child soldier” narrative has relevance).

And finally, by modeling the motivations of the Fire Nation’s villains and heroes on the military leaders of ancient Japan, you have the opportunity to learn about and critique that ancient society while also giving it a fictional flare.

As a final remark on applying the history of ancient Japan to the Fire Nation, the Tokugawa Shogunate ended when the Emperor forcibly took control of the Tokugawa government in order to end the forced isolationism. If ancient Japan hadn’t been pressured to adapt to more advanced European civilizations (say, if it existed in a vacuum) then the Tokugawa Shogunate might have continued to be the longest and most stable period in Japanese history; post-World War 2 Japan is only 70 years old while the Tokugawa Shogunate lasted for 278. When the Emperor wrested control of the country from the Shogunate, there was already enough peace, stability and government bureaucracy in place to lead a rapid transition of the country into modernity. That was the ultimate value of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

If the Fire Islands had not unified under a central authority, then they might have never industrialized so rapidly during that “unprecedented time of peace and prosperity” and may have eventually been conquered by the Earth Kingdom (should an EK conqueror have found a way of killing the Avatar, or taking advantage of their absence).

Conclusion

Think about ancient Japan for a moment. All of the warring lords. The conquest and ruthless political maneuvering. The ruling through fear and totalitarian control. What is a more reasonable explanation for the behavior of that society: mental illness and personality disorders, or universal concepts of ancient nation-building?

What makes more sense for furthering Avatar’s East Asian themes in terms of the Fire Nation: sociopathy, personality disorders, lack of fundamental human qualities, petty bullies and insecure abusers? Or universal concepts of ancient nation-building in the context of people who can shoot fire out of their hands?

Was Ieyasu Tokugawa suffering from a personality disorder? Was ancient Japan swimming with people who lacked fundamental human traits? That would be and absolutely extraordinary anomaly of human genetic variation.

When discussing the evils of the Fire Nation, you have to start with the in-world context that created them, and in order to understand that context, you have to apply some East Asian history. Why “decent” or “normal” people end up doing terrible things is a question as old as humanity itself and should not be erased from Avatar.

In order to understand why Ozai and Azula seem like “bad” people to us, it’s because the rulers of ancient Japan acted like bad people. Zuko can’t be soft and fumbling. Azula can’t let people say no to her. Iroh can’t abandon the siege with no consequences. Ozai can’t let Zuko refuse to fight. As bad as many of these things are, they are driven by the fact these people are the most powerful entities in their country and must show their fire-wielding subordinates that they deserve their power and should not be challenged. There is no room for weakness, only strength and competence.

When you resort to psychological theories or genetic anomalies to explain the Fire Nation’s villains, you erase the opportunities to tie the Fire Nation to critical elements of East Asian history, namely the rise and success of the Tokugawa Shogunate. By relating the main villains of Avatar to the very real “villains” of the ancient world, you preserve the East Asian themes that make Avatar unique and informative to a Western audience and help shed light on what drove them to be what they were.

#Avatar The Last Airbender #atla meta #fire nation #Azula #ozai #Zuko #iroh

1K notes · View notes

queermediastudies · 3 years

Text

Beyond the Labels: Tangerine

Released in 2015, Tangerine, a film centered around transgender sex workers, follows the story of two bestfriends Sin-Dee and Alexandra, who are on a mission to find Sin-Dee’s boyfriend/pimp, Chester, who is accused of cheating on her while she was in jail. The two best friends set out to find Chester, as well as his mistress, Dinah, who is a cisgender white woman, immediately after Sin-Dee’s release from jail. Through their journey, the two encounter obstacles related to drugs, sex-work, romance and violence. In order to better understand the impact of this film, concepts such as queer production, transgender visibility and intersectionality will be discussed in relation to dominant idelogies portrayed throughout the film, such as gender, race, constructions of sexuality, class and ability.

The production of the film generated just as much buzz as the film itself. Shot on an Iphone 5 with a low- budget estimated around $100,000, director Sean Baker had a tight budget to work with. Issues surrounding queer production in Hollywood become apparent with films like Tangerine. Not only do questions arise about the lack of funding and resources for queer media, but concerns related to who is producing queer narratives also come into question. Sean Baker, a heterosexual cisgender white male, produced a film about transgender woman of color without being able to identify with their struggles or identity. In the article, “Pose(r): Ryan Murphy, Trans and Queer of Color Labor, and the politics of Representation,” author Alfred L. Martin Jr. further examines why representational politics is problematic in Hollywood in relation to the labor issues and white savior image within Hollywood. As a heterosexual cisgender white male, director Sean Baker profits from the production and storytelling of transgender people of color. As stated by Martin, “the fact remains that it is his white capital within a fundamentally racist industry that allows Pose to be made” (Martin Jr., n.p.). This narrative is problematic due to the overwhelming fact that transgender people of color still face adversity, whether from violence, homelessness, health failiures etc. while a white heterosexual or homosexual male is allowed the opportunity produce and ultimately benefit from their stories. Not only are labor issues in Hollywood problematic due to who is able to produce narratives of transgender people of color, but the image that a white male serves as a ‘white savior’ also becomes problematic. Queer audiences and the overall population is ultimately convinced that in order for transgender people of color to have a voice, white producers must be the only ones who have the resources and ability to produce such films.

Factors surrounding trangender visibility become evident with the films dominant ideologies surrounding class, gender, race, ability and constructions of sexuality. In the film Sin-Dee and her best friend are introduced as transgender black woman who are at the lower level of the class spectrum. In the article “Breaking Into Transgender Life: Transgender Audiences’ Experiences With “First of Its Kind” Visibility in Popular Media,” the author, Andre Cavalcante, discusses the importance of “breakout texts” as a form of audience-text interaction. In Tangerine, for example, the narrative that surrounds transgender people of color is negative and stereotypical. Negative portrayals of Sin-Dee as poor, violent, loud, assertive and codependent all shape and influence audience perceptions. As stated by Cavalcante, “the fates of transgender individuals and communities are understood as intimately linked to the films’ representation of transgender” (Cavalcante, p.3). Consequently, the image of transgender people of color becomes threatened by media portrayals when characters are solely introduced as possessing one narrative; usually negative. However, the film does introduce an unfortunately real narrative about survival and isolation for transgender people of color. Similarly, the film offers audience members the opportunity to create their own cultural interpretation, whether realistic or not, of transgender people of color. Although negative interpretations may arise, Tangerine reveals the various hardships transgender people of color experience in their day to day lives. For example, both Sin-Dee and Alexandra see sex-work as a necessity for survival. Although their gender and sexual identities are at times questioned, both women risk their lives to make money due to a failure in protection, discrimination and harrassment experienced in the work place and their everyday lives. Thus, questions surrounding transgender visibility arise. In the article, “Queer and Feminist Approaches to Transgender Media Studies,” by Mia Fischer, the author suggests that although an increase in transgender visibility has occured in media and national discourse, the representation of transgender people in media does not provide improved living conditions for the overwhelming majority of transgender people (Fischer, 102). This is particularly important when discussing and approaching intersectionality in “scholarship and social justice activism that moves beyond visibility politics and ruthlessly deconstructs oppressive systems and our own complicity within them” (Fischer, 103). In a system where racism, classism and (cis)sexism is at the core of opressive actions against marginalized communities, neither feminist, academic or queer activist can continue to exclude the voices of transgender voices. Without the inclusion of transgender voices, activist and scholarly groups cannot actively formulate strategies for resistance that cater to all marginalized groups. This is important due to the countless erasure of transgender voices in history. In order to continue fighting towards social justice, women like Sin-Dee and Alexandra must be heard and given the proper tools to simply continue living.

youtube

Sin-Dee’s and Alexandra’s intersectional identities further introduce the multidimensions that contribute to their struggles. In the article, “Queer and Feminist Approaches to Transgender Media Studies,” by Mia Fischer, the author states “I take intersectionality as a key framework for understanding how mediated representations of transgender people are linked to their daily interactions and experiences with systems of state power and violence” (Fischer, p. 99). In Tangerine, the last scene where men are seen yelling homophobic slurs at Sin-Dee and throwing urine at her accurately depicts the leveles of violence and powerlessness experienced by transgender people. This interaction between Sin-Dee and the men in the car is based on how the men identified Sin-Dee through her appearance and voice. Unfortunately, this scene serves as an example of how transgender people experience daily interactions associated with powerlessness and violence. In another clip, Alexandra is seen arguing in front of a cop car with a white middle aged man. In this scene, Alexandra is persistent about the money this man owes her while he urges the cop that she attacked him unprovoked. The cop proceeds to refer to Alexandra as “him” and Alexander to her partner on the job before getting out of the car and only checking Alexandra’s pulse for any signs of drugs while the man is given a warning to leave voluntarily before he has to alert his family of why he needs bail. This interaction perfectly represents how people in power view and handle transgender people of color. The man is given a pass, while Alexandra is humiliated and unpaid for her work. As a transgender woman of color, Alexandra is at a disadvantage socio-economically, in comparison to a white cisgnder heterosexual women. Alexandra’s intersectional identities, black, poor, sex worker and transgender woman all attribute to her day to day hardships and experiences.

youtube

As a young heterosexual college-educated woman of color, my own subject position allowed me to further examine how my various identities factored into the way in which I engaged with this film. While watching the film, I was able to empathize with both Sin-Dee and Alexandra as a woman of color. However, as a heterosexual cisgender woman, I am not able to relate to the struggles transgender woman of color face. Despite my inability to relate to Sin-Dee’s and Alexandra’s gender identity, topics surrounding transgender media studies influenced my ideologies around transgender woman of color. As a minority in America, this film is important to me because it dives into the unjust treatment and life of transgender woman of color in America. Although I myself will never experience what it means to be a transgender woman of color, it is important for me to continue the path of educating others and myself on how to be an ally for the LGBTQ community. Despite its flaws, Tangerine is raw and unforgiving. The film is exemplary in depicting the harsh realities transgender woman of color face whilst leaving its audience with an unsettling feeling. Ultimately, I was able to understand how intersectional identities as well as queer portrayals coexist to shape how audience members and queer people view and identify with queer media.

Cavalcante, Andre (2017). “Breaking Into Transgender Life: Transgender Audiences’Experiences With “First of Its Kind Visibility” In Popular Media.” Communication, Culture & Critique, 10(3), 538-555. https://academic.oup.com/ccc/article-abstract/10/3/538/4662971?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Fischer M. (2018) Queer and Feminist Approaches to Transgender Media Studies. In: Harp D.,Loke J., Bachmann I. (eds) Feminist Approaches to Media Theory and Research. Comparative Feminist Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90838-0_7

Martin, Alfred L. Jr (2018). “Pose(r): Ryan Murphy, Trans and Queer of Color Labor, and the Politics of Representation.” LA Review of Books.

#tangerine #queerproduction #intersectionality #queervisibility #transgender #feministapproach

5 notes · View notes

agentsokka · 5 years

Text

Nott’s Conflicting Narratives

[[Spoilers for Campaign 2 up to Episode 75]]

Man. D’you ever get the need to talk about how much you love your favorite character? Because I am feeling PASSIONATE for a specific little goblin girl right now.

I love Nott. She’s the peanut butter to my jam, the sugar to my spice, the awkward green butterball mushing around in my heart. She’s my absolute FAVORITE character of the cast and one of my all-time favorite characters in general. So, of course, I feel the need to bend over backwards, snap my spine into a pretzel, and projectile vomit my absolute love for this woman all over your dashes.

In this piece, I wanted to talk about her personal growth over the story and how she’s evolved from what viewers believed was merely a skittish, oddball of a green powder monkey klepto into an equally odd but emotionally resonant mother desperate to reclaim her life and family.

In my opinion, Nott’s overarching story revolves around a mother attempting to recapture her personal narrative from a world that has tried to tear it away from her.

Let’s first establish Nott’s position as the “mother” of the Mighty Nein.

Time for a recap.

As we discover in episode 49, Nott is a little goblin girl, who was once a young halfling woman, who was once a halfling child. In her desperate dash to protect her family from goblin kidnappers, the halfling woman known as Veth Brenatto is recaptured and put to death. Her corpse is then reanimated into the flesh puppet goblin suit we know and love today. In this process, her skin, body, and even mind are reconstructed to be more goblin-esque – a situation which Veth vehemently despises. To put distance between herself and her former life, she renames herself “Nott the Brave,” an anagram of Veth Brenatto.

“They made me everything… that I thought I was. Not pretty…not good. Just not.”

This event is significant for a multitude of reasons, primarily of which revolve around Nott’s relationship with motherhood.

In her essay The Symbolic Annihilation of Mothers in Popular Culture, Berit Astrӧm (2015) observes that mother characters are routinely devalued in popular culture via what she terms “symbolic annihilation.” Gaye Tuchman (1978) originally coined the phrase to describe the way in which media trivializes, condemns, or outright excludes mothers, but Astrӧm extends it to include the removal of mothers from narratives entirely.

We’ve seen this play out time and time again: for example, how many times have we questioned “what happened to the mother” in Disney movies? Often, we see that their exclusions leave little impact on the story and characters, with many media franchises unceremoniously minimizing the mother’s very existence as if it held no more meaning than an ironically titled paperweight.

Now, how does this apply to Nott?

Nott’s character is an inversion of this trope. Although she is killed by the goblins as per the trope’s wont, the narrative does not revolve around her son or husband trying to cope with her loss. Instead, the narrative remains centered on she the mother as this little goblin girl punches a fist through the earth and screams NOT TODAY SATAN. Her story revolves around her identity as a mother, and it takes shape in a plethora of different ways.

Nott exhibits many atypical characteristics that are not commonly associated with the idealized form of “motherhood.” She’s loud, she’s boisterous, she’s mischievous. She’s self-admittedly “strange” and eccentric. She saw it suit to dump a pitcher of cucumbers and proceed to eat them off the ground. Absolutely no one can convince me that this a goblin-specific trait and not just Nott being her weird little self.

And yet, Nott exhibits many typically feminine/motherly traits as well. In spite of her vulgarities, she’s gentle and kind towards Caleb, and it takes some time for their relationship to evolve beyond that. She likes dresses! She likes feeling pretty even though the situation rarely allows her to be. She likes to collect buttons and baubles and cutesy trinkets. And most of all, Nott expresses love. Beau’s the first person in the group to say it to someone else, but Nott is the first of anyone to emphatically express her love for this ragtag group of misfits they’ve wrangled together.

“I know we have things to do, and I want to do them, but the reason I want to find these people and rescue them is not to use them, or not because we’ve invested time in them. But it’s because… I love them.”

Nott is very much “the Heart” of the Mighty Nein, in spite of her idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. In this sense, she views herself as their mother – not just as Caleb’s parental figure, but the entirety of the group. It’s not just a meme, with adoption papers scrawled across a series of barbeque-stained napkins in chicken scratch. Over time, she’s genuinely adopted the M9 as her own, welcoming them under her stubby wings. Nott has said as much several times, but most significantly in episode 76, when she told Caleb that she wanted to protect everyone on their own individual quests.

“I protected you so that you could go on your journey and find yourself and fulfill your quest. I feel like I’ve got to do that for everyone now because, I don’t know, deep down inside it feels like my quest might not be done till everyone else has figured out who they are and what they want in this world. Everyone’s seeking something, you know?”

This protection – this overwhelming need to shield, to safeguard, to provide security and aegis – is crucial to recognizing what Nott is as a parent. A protector. A defender. Nott firmly believes that protection is representative of parenthood, its indistinguishable mirror image.

How do I know this? Nott confirmed it word-for-word in episode 13, when she explained her relationship with Caleb to the rest of the M9.

“Caleb and I have a very special…relationship. And it’s that of a parent and a child. But I am the parent, you do understand that, correct? I protect him. He’s my boy, and I keep him safe. … It’s my job to protect him, because I love him, and I am his protector.”

Nott clearly associates parenthood with protection. She reiterates it again and again. If you fall under her protection, you are her child. It doesn’t matter how old you are, how strong you are, how quick you are – she will protect you to the very last inch of her life. And over the course of the campaign, many, many times over, she’s nearly given said life to ensure the protection of others. An early example is when Nott threw her body over Caleb’s to shield him from attack. In 45, she drew the blue dragon’s attack to save Jester, shaving her hit points down to 1.

Nott again establishes this in 76.

“So I feel like, I need to be there to protect you all. To rescue you when there’s a dragon about to kill you and use my body as a shield; or to pull Beauregard out of the mouth of a worm; or to catch you when someone falls with a feather fall spell.”

This is a fundamental aspect of her character, and explains the majority of her actions. Even though she’s anxious and scared, Nott powers through her fears to protect her loved ones at any cost necessary – with a few nips to soothe her nerves, of course.

And as sweet as this gremlin of a goblin is, she doesn’t extend her protection to everyone she meets – she’s self-sacrificial, but only to her proverbial children, after they’ve spent more than enough time becoming comfortable with one another. In episode 75, for example, Nott suggested that Reani was expendable and thus should go first when facing the dragon. She likes Reani, sure, but if it came down to her and the M9? The outsider would be the first to go.

This further lends itself to the idea that Nott perceives protection as parenthood, self-sacrifice as motherly duty – she’s not just a nice gal throwing down her life in order to ensure the welfare of others, but only for the select few she deems in need of her protection.

However, Nott isn’t just a mother, which comes to the crux of this post. For the majority of the campaign, Nott has primarily identified as a mother figure – to Luc, to Caleb, to the M9 at large. But over time, she’s steadily developed into wanting to be more than just a mother. At the very least, she’s expressed her desires more openly over the course of the show as time has gone on. This development intersects with her identity issues as Nott struggles to reconcile two conflicting lives.

Throughout her short life – and I do mean short, she’s only about 25 (I’m turning 25 this month and the extent to which this little goblin has pushed herself through sends me into anxiety just by association) – Nott’s life has followed a very, shall we say, standard route. She’s always been someone’s daughter – someone’s wife – someone’s mother. Veth Brenatto grew up the small town of Felderwin with very few expectations of their people beyond the usual sort, assuming that said small town followed real-world small-town culture. As such, Veth traversed domestic paths in life, not straying far from those expectations. In spite of her intelligence and capabilities, Veth remained a housewife essentially, assisting Yeza when need be and taking care of Luc. This narrative held steady for some time.

And everything changed when the Fire Nation goblins attacked.

Veth’s narrative as a mother, as a wife, as a little halfling from the little hovel hole of Felderwin, was abruptly disrupted when she became Nott. Her narrative was stolen from her, manipulated and perverted into something she deemed grotesque. Forced to co-exist with the tribe, Nott becomes the torturer’s assistant – the absolute antithesis to motherhood in the representative forebearer of violence, depravity, and death. Her desire to nurture and protect is met with oppression and bloodshed.

It’s no wonder Nott detests the narrative the goblins thrust upon her. Her goblin exterior fundamentally represents a life forced upon her, a narrative chosen without her consent.

“I just don't like how I feel when I see my hands or my feet. They just feel wrong. I want to be different.”

“I'll be honest. I've started forgetting what it feels like to be a halfling, to be me. I don't remember everything any more. I feel like every day I'm more and more goblin. I don't like it at all. I don't like myself at all.”

“There's still something that's not right about this. This is not my body. It's just not me. And people liking you is nice, and people accepting you is nice. But if you feel wrong inside your own skin, then, well, you can't be a good mother or a good wife, or a good anything, really.”

Upon escaping, her narrative again changes: she’s no longer anyone’s assistant, but existing for herself. And only herself. Before she meets Caleb, she’s alone, unwanted by the populace at large and unable to return to Felderwin. She’s no longer a mother – just detested vermin looking to steal and connive, so people would believe.

That is partially why, in my opinion, she adopts Caleb as her own so quickly. Of course, Nott sees him as a means to an end in the beginning, as does he. They both admit that they had ‘other intentions’ in staying together than purely out of goodness of their hearts. However, it is evident that well before the campaign started, these two forged a bond that went beyond that of convenience. Nott fills the hole in her heart, the hole in her very narrative, by becoming Caleb’s adoptive mother, assisting him in his ventures and protecting him whenever need be. By doing this, she is able to choose for herself, to differentiate herself from the goblin’s narrative of pain and misery. She is no longer just “not,” she is Nott, Nott the Brave.

As was aforementioned, Nott’s motherhood narrative grows to include the rest of the M9. However, with time, she reaches a conflict within herself: while she hates being a goblin, she enjoys her new lifestyle. Is she afraid? She’s fucking petrified. Yet like the rest of the group, she’s fallen in love with adventuring, the highs and lows that demonstrate the extent of her capabilities. Nott isn’t just an assistant anymore – she can do magic! She can fight, she can pick locks, she can adapt firearms and create explosive weaponry. Hell, she can wield a crossbow with the dexterity of an Olympic gymnast and liquidate giant spiders into bloody pastes on the wall. With the M9, she’s seeing the world, far beyond the borders of Felderwin and her small-town life.

And suddenly, Veth’s narrative as a stay-at-home mom isn’t so appealing anymore.

Is there a problem inherent to existing as a housewife and full-time mother? No, of course not. Nevertheless, Nott has found herself in a strange position – she longs for her old life and family, ripped away from her by the gnarled claws of fate, yet remains enthralled by the wonders this new narrative can offer her.

In 36, Nott reveals to Cadeuceus that she believes the M9 could be representative of a new life for her – a new narrative.

“I’m not a religious lady, but I will tell you that, for me, this journey with the group has been a bit of a sign. … A sign that there could be, for all of us, another chapter.”

It’s a new chapter, a new narrative, a new life for Nott. One she could never have imagined possible for her in the confines of her small town. And by god, does she want to live it. Nott expressed this desire to live this life to its fullest, to live this new narrative to its fullest, in 27 after Molly’s death.

“Mollymauk was a rainbow man who represented life at its fullest. And. That’s what I want, even more than… even more than what we’re going for before. Together, we’re sort of living life now, aren’t we? And before, we were… in the darkness, so. … I want to find them so we don’t go back to the way it was, when we were hiding in the shadows and, and ducking into alleys to get away from people. We were safe, but we weren’t really alive, right? With these people, we’re having fun and winning contests. And. And killing bad guys, and rescuing children…it’s amazing.”

I’m of the opinion that Nott’s speech is reflective of both her experiences with Caleb as well as her own in Felderwin. She was living before – and she enjoyed it, yes! She obviously loves Yeza and Luc. But now, she’s seeing what life can be like when lived to its fullest, seeing what life can be like when she spearheads her own narrative. She gleans inspiration from Mollymauk, who decided to head his own narrative and remain unrepentantly unconcerned with what his past might have been like. With his death, Nott becomes convinced that she needs to truly lead this life, lead this newfound narrative with this family she’s amassed.

But with that realization comes conflict once the dredges of Nott’s previous life begin seeping into her narrative. This is especially once Nott reunites with Yeza in Xhorhas.

“Caleb, I’m feeling uneasy. … I, because. What the fuck am I doing here? I just was reunited with my husband, and I’ve – I -- we were given a chance to go on an adventure and I jumped at it like that. Am I a bad person? I just left him, I ditched my husband in a den of monsters to go adventuring with you.”

Rather than hold down the fort with her newly reunited husband, Nott instinctively leaps at the chance for adventure, the chance to go out and see more of the world. She doesn’t even think about it, it’s just oh? A side quest? Well fuck me rosy, time to knock my crossbow. Because that’s what Nott would do, not Veth. And once she realizes what she’s done, Nott begins wondering if she’s a terrible person for living her life. She begins questioning her intentions, wondering whether her actions are the ploy of some subconscious desire to remain free, remain independent of her responsibilities.

“You don’t think I’m just…delaying the inevitable? Scared of going back to my old life, or anything?��

Nott further recognizes the disparity between her two lives and how wide the gulf between them yawns.

“It’s just, I just don’t know like. Is he gonna…even like me anymore, I’m so different. Not just physically, I do different things now. … Will I like it? I’ve gotten a taste of adventure and, and seeing the world, and now I’ve gotta go back and be a…a housewife again?”

Nott doesn’t even know if she wants to be called Veth anymore. Not by people who have come into her life since Veth’s apparent demise. When Caleb asks her in 59, she dismisses the question and asserts that they should just go with Nott for now.

She asks Caleb to tell her what she should do, in a desperate plea for someone else to give her direction in life. Because driving your own narrative is hard. It’s a painful, painful process, full of ups and downs and mistakes and setbacks. But Caleb fundamentally cannot decide her narrative for her -- it’s Nott’s narrative, not his. He can help her along and support her, but he will never be able to direct it. She has to do it for herself.

(As a side note: I love, love, love how far Nott and Caleb’s relationship has come. Prior to the Xhorhas arc, Nott never bothered him with her problems, drudging on ahead as she didn’t want to “distract” him from his personal quest. She’s exactly like a mother, masking her insecurities and fears from her young child so that they won’t worry about what they can’t control. And now, as her child has grown up and become more aware of his mother’s struggles, she’s leaning on him more and more for support. It truly mirrors parent-child relationships and is representative of how far these characters have grown over time.)

With these conversations, it becomes evident that Nott is seeking more than family, more than the life of a housewife. And yet, simultaneously, she embodies the narrative of a mother, loves being a mother, and loves the people in both her immediate and found families. To merge these narratives will be an almost insurmountable task, from her perspective -- how can you raise a family when you’re constantly adventuring? You can’t endanger their lives. Conversely, is it responsible of a parent to endanger their own life, potentially risking everything for adventure’s sake? To widow your husband and orphan your child if something goes horribly wrong? If she becomes a housewife again, how long can she keep up the charade pretending she’s a halfling? If she stays, will she forever remain uncomfortable in her own skin? How long will she even live? Nott is juggling so many plates, and dropping even one could result in the partial devastation of these narratives she’s cultivated.

And she’s scared. She’s really, really scared. Nott is petrified of what comes next -- she knows it’s inevitable that she’s going to have to face these conflicting narratives in the future. She knows she can’t ignore it forever. And that prospect terrifies her. She says this explicitly in episode 69.

“I'm just scared, that's all. I'm scared of...I'm scared of what happens next. You know? I don't know what's going to happen after this. I found my husband. I found my son. And I want to go back with them so much. ... But I'm worried that if I go back, that'll be it.”

This overwhelming, paralyzing sense of fear has driven Nott to drink. Even more so than usual. Over the course of the show, Nott has made no secret of her drinking habits. She’s a drunkard -- she knows it, the M9 knows it. You, me, and the NSA agent watching you behind the screen know it. But it’s no accident the M9 has begun commenting more and more on her habitual intoxication. She simply is more intoxicated than usual. She’s depending more and more on her alcoholism to get through each day.

Nott is of course afraid of enemies, of secret dangers lurking behind every corner. She’s a perpetually anxious person, constantly filled with frenetic energy. But these anxieties have worsened ten-fold with the inclusion of her intersecting narratives and responsibilities. And honestly? With all that going on in her brain, Nott just flat out doesn’t want to think about it. She wants to live in the moment -- not in the past, not in the future, but the present.

“I'm thinking about things. And I don't want to think about things. I don't want to think about anything. I just want to be on an adventure with you guys and that's all I want and I don't want to think about anything else past that.”

And so, she turns to drinking. As she tells Caleb, drinking is her own form of self-care. While she may protect others, she herself needs protection too -- from her own thoughts, fears, and inner demons. From the physical dangers that manifest in front of her very person.

“I know you all have my back, I know you all care for me, but no one has my front. So this flask that I drink from, it’s not for fun, I’m not taking nips because I’m looking for fun. If I wanted fun I’d be in Nicodranus with my family. This flask is my shield. It allows me to do these things, to go forward and to protect all of you.”

Nott needs to shield herself from fears that she may not come back to her family. She needs to shield herself from fears that she won’t find a remedy to her situation, that she won’t ever be Veth again. She needs to shield herself from fears that these conflicting narratives will never reconcile, thereby isolating her from either family she’s come to love as her own.

All in all, Nott is currently torn between two lives -- one whose existence is linked to traditional motherhood, and another whose fate is yet undecided. And yet, by continuing with the M9, Nott has found herself on the path towards potential self-realization. This route she treads has the potential to shed the narrative the goblins thrust upon her and totally make one anew, one that is her own. In that sense, it’s representative of what this narrative means as a whole: Nott is more than just a mother. She’s a mother with autonomy. A mother with hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Unlike Berit Astrӧm’s (2015) analysis of symbolic annihilation, she is more than just a paper cutout of idealized motherhood left to be abandoned.

Indeed, Nott can be a mother without being the mother archetype.

Nott will certainly struggle to reconcile these narratives. She loves being a mother, but she clearly wants to love herself too. She wants to be more than just a mother, and thus she quests to recapture her personal narrative -- one where she can be both a mother and retain her personal autonomy.

I love the nuance and complexity Sam has demonstrated with this character, and I’m sure we’re only going to see more in the future.

#Critical Role #Nott #Nott the Brave

199 notes · View notes

officialtrashbin · 4 years

Text

Scraps of Dreams

Commission for anonymous who wanted Corvus x Proxima smut! (Did I mention commissions are open again? Cause they are!)

Rating: Explicit (aka shameless smut) Corvus x Proxima or: Thanos: Death Sentence left their sexual tension unresolved so I fixed it. Anon wanted Corvus to be more dominant and give his wife a little TLC.

* * * * *

The hotel room they lent him was fifty stories above what could be considered ground-level for a city that felt built into a fault line, with streets and skyscrapers varied in length and curvature like personal desire, not reflective of an idea but of a transitive notion of accomplishment in its smallest form to amass into something bigger than mere individual value. Corvus Glaive supposed the want to leave proof of one’s existence in the universe stemmed from the underlying oppression of meaninglessness. To find purpose or to forge it.

It came as no surprise when he thought it all a waste.

* * *

They didn’t talk about what transpired today. Not the emotional ups and downs, or the political navigations, or the pathetic mess Corvus had been afterwards, realizing he might have finally reclaimed his destiny at his rightful Master’s side. It was difficult to process, let alone address, the hazardous accumulation of transgressive narrative from the last few hours. In fact, it felt like an utter chore to say anything at all.

Proxima had her body turned away from him as she undressed in favor of clothes that reminded him suddenly of their normalcy; he didn’t have to see her face to know her exhaustion was present, palpable, even, with how she moved like her limbs were filled under their surface with water. In the low light from the fluorescence of the city outside, her body took on the quality of water, too—translucent blue, hair rolling up and crashing down across her back, her motions so overstated by the constant occurrence of mere existence he wondered if he might just buckle under the weight of her enormity.

“Oh, Midnight—”

It had been so terribly quiet. His words shattered the very foundation of stillness. She snapped her attention to him, eyes widened, doe-like, in the low ambiance of illumination.

“Yes, my love?”

Corvus was beyond modesty, especially in the dark, where the shadows accrued across his lithe chest to replace the cloak he’d left thrown carelessly on the desk chair. He knew his horrible visage was worsened in the night. A beast by nature, or by universal law to counterbalance all the do-gooders that were compelled beyond his understanding to Make Things Right, assembled of equal parts horrible intent and predatory design. Maybe he was merely accustomed to justifying his own happenstance.

He said to her, “I think I will never know if I’m making the correct decisions,” and thought of the time he’d seen Black Dwarf break open a Shi’ar’s ribcage to expose their tender, beating heart, and the way it jolted, jolted, jolted in its meaty cocoon. The explicit, horrible vulnerability. “I think I will never know certainty again. What am I supposed to do when my life has been devoted to all that which has amounted to nothing?”

Proxima approached him slowly. She was the opposite of hesitation, always moving and speaking and thinking with the same absolution of momentum; a constant force awaiting a collision regardless of pace.

“My darling,” she whispered to him in the dark, her hands framing his face. “Am I nothing?”

They hadn’t been alone with each other in nearly five standard months. He’d been reminded of his loneliness when they reunited, albeit briefly, earlier that day—the swollen warmth of her mouth, the bend of her skin in his hands, their insatiable togetherness under the veil of his office shadows.

“That is not what I meant,” he said, stroking her cheek with his thumb. Without his gauntlets or battlesuit to disrupt their closeness, he could feel the lingering static of her power traversing the neurons under her skin, jumping to his fingertips by proximity. Something inside him unknotted. “No, you aren’t. Of course you aren’t.”

“But are you?”

That was how he felt, sometimes, when he wasn’t in her presence. “No,” he said, pressing lazy kisses along the length of her jawline, noting the dampness of her scent with each sudden intake of breath. “Yet, as of late—”

One of her hands went to the back of his head and anchored him in place. Their exposed skins, gray-on-blue, blue-on-gray, melded together, indistinguishable in the low light, in the encompassing darkness. “We are trying to get our footing,” she said. Her logic (and, he thought softly, her love for him) stood as a counterpoint to all the instances in his life that made him feel less than what he’d earned. “No matter where we are, when we are, or why—you are everything to me.”

He trembled in her embrace. He wanted to echo her words, to intake the sanctity of their marriage and every little fulfillment, and transpose it all into the atrocities of war, or of whatever was required of him, with or without purpose; to tear, to maim, to love. The truth of them.

“I am nothing without you,” he said, his mouth hot against her skin. His confession rang through her mind clear as a bell struck calmly and with total acceptance. “Oh, my dear Midnight.”

His teeth captured the soft junction of her neck, stimulating her nerves. She groaned at the reception of the desperate, self-contained violence in his actions. He bit her hard but not hard enough, the method of practiced power that didn’t hurt when it so easily could. Her leg entwined with his. Her fingers curled against his ribs, splaying out where she could feel his pulse fluttering beneath hard bone.

The wet heat of her lips pressed to the blade embedded in his skull, which tethered him to his unending existence, and he reasoned there wasn’t any meaning in that either.

“Take me to bed.”

* * *

Most times, the victor was decided by the basis of conviction alone, filling the precious time allotted to them with little, violent tendencies until one surrendered the struggle. If they hadn’t been interrupted by their Kree escort earlier in the office, Corvus suspected he would have retained the utter dominance that compelled his desire to make Proxima come for him right there against the wall. But he was so debilitated by exhaustion that his sense of time skewed at the edges where one memory met another, and it felt to him like that morning occurred in an entirely different time and place. He didn’t have the energy reserves in him to instigate or resist.

Proxima pushed him easily up against the cool metal that composed the headboard. She must have noticed his absence of strength because he saw the way her head tilted in silent questioning, suspending her weight above his left thigh. “My love?” she said, stroking the centerfold of his chest with her forefinger.

“Your beauty is distracting.”

Her thumb slipped into the waistband of his undershorts, running casually over the jut of his hipbone and raising bumps on his ash-gray skin. “I can be distracting in other ways.”

It felt natural to be alone with her again. He growled low in his chest, and his hands worked their way up her sides to her full breasts, contrasting her rain-cold skin with the dry heat of his palms. “I’ve missed you terribly,” he said, kissing the center of her sternum. “I often refrain from asking too much, however—”

“You can ask anything of me.”

“Then I want to enjoy this night. I want to worship you.” His hands went to her hips and he pushed her back, meeting only a moment of resistance from her weight before she submitted to his motions. He laid them out across the bed, which became, he thought, suddenly too small for the conjoined mass of them both. “Slow,” he added. “It’s been too long since I’ve given you all of me.”

Proxima’s expression was one of knowing. She guided his chin down and kissed him, always combative by fault of genetic disposition, her tongue pushing against his own and her teeth working at his bottom lip; she brought them so easily together in the privacy of a room he’d slept in for months alone, not easily, and only out of necessity.

Corvus gazed at her as she worked his mouth open, but she must have sensed his attention was on her because the pads of her thumbs pressed against his eyelids, forcing them closed. He became acutely aware of the featherlight pressure in her touch and how easily she could crook her fingers and gouge his eyes out. His spine prickled with the anticipation of her lethality.

“We really mustn’t make a habit of being apart for so long,” she told him quietly, when she finally pulled away to settle on her back. Corvus delicately traced the swollen plush of her lower lip, already missing their connection. “I was not beyond taking you in the office, despite the interruption, though that speaks volumes on our lack of common decency.”

Corvus’ forefinger trekked along the curve of her shoulder, following the dip of her chest to her breast. “I should have cut his head from his shoulders and had you anyway.” His fingertip ran the circumference of her areola and she took in a sharp breath. “I care little for decency.”

Proxima groaned when he replicated his motion again, the fondness understated by the sweetness of it, how gentle he was being when he hardly ever was before. “And I care little for your—oh—stalling—”

“Am I distracting you?” he asked, flicking her perked nipple with his tongue.

Proxima’s only answer was a groan, barely emitted but somehow like a sudden gunshot in the stillness of the night. It rattled his entire being. Taking in her sounds and her presence, and threatening to shake apart under the strength of her existence alone.

Corvus’ mouth indulged on her breasts, leaving love bites along the inner blue skin before settling on one nipple, and she arched her spine, pressing closer, telling him without words what she liked (as if he didn’t already possess such intimate knowledge. As if they hadn’t defaced every ship, bed, or closet they’d ever been in just to experience the emotional implications of how desperate they’d been when taking another body against their own). Her legs parted around his waist. One of her hands curled into the threadbare sheets.

Corvus placed his touch everywhere she wanted him to: on her other nipple to ensure they were both treated properly, on a seamed scar above her stomach from stray shrapnel of their first mission together, on the soft inside of her thighs where nerves roped into the junction of her hip. He nipped at the dip of her navel, startling a laugh out of her, and then a frustrated moan when he gently bit the band of her skivvies.

“Corvus, do not tease me, I’m—”

“Enjoying this quite a lot, apparently,” he said coyly, tracing her labia from over her garments with the tips of his fingers, and gathering the wetness that had accumulated. She rolled her hips in countermotion to his hand. “You are as insatiable as you are impatient. Look at me, my love.”

She opened her eyes and gazed down at him, noting the way his eyes flared crimson in the dark. A feeling of ice slid down her spine. “Corvus—”

“Don’t I always give you what you want?”

She hesitated. He kissed the scar on her stomach again, devoting himself to the repetition of ensuring every part of her, especially the damages that made her feel imperfect or skewed, was loved, and she said, “It’s been so very long since we were last together. Don’t you know how I ache?”

“I will remedy that very soon,” he said. “Be patient, Wife. Be patient and I will take care of you.”

She exhaled, sinking into the mattress, into the swirl of sheets, allowing him the ease of her surrender. His mouth was hot against the slope of her crotch and he worked his fingers under the hem of her skivvies, pulling them down her thighs as if shedding a layer of skin. The black fabric slid from her ankles. He bunched the cloth up in his hand and looked down at it in disbelief, realizing in that moment the horrifying fact that he’d been without her for entire weeks of his life—that he had felt for five agonizing months the quiet, enrapturing terror of loneliness in the universe, and wondered how he ever survived before her.

The skivvies were discarded to the floor. He sank easily between her legs, pulling one over his shoulder and bending the other open at the knee. “You’re beautiful, my lady Midnight,” he said, and saw her chest hitch. He transposed his words into his actions—into unfurling his tongue from behind the cage of his teeth and pushing it lovingly against her clit.

Her moan broke the shadows in the room. “Oh, my love…”

Corvus was experienced with how she liked to be treated. Five months wasn’t nearly long enough for him to forget, and muscle memory guided his hands so he was stroking her sides, her hips, her thighs, slow and tender, feeling her muscles flexing under the impressions of his fingertips—and his tongue worked at her opposingly, rough and steady, increasing the pressure and pace of his technique. He alternated the pleasures as he went, stroked her labia, circled her entrance, sucked her bud. Made her louder, made her gasp and roll her hips and utter his name.

Proxima thumbed at one of her nipples, still swollen from Corvus’ treatment, and whined into the dark as the pleasure tumbled through her body. She reached down with her other hand and took his into it, their fingers interlacing, offering a semblance of resistance against her oncoming orgasm. He glanced up from between her thighs, and she must have sensed his intentions because she met his gaze and the look in her eye ignited him inside, like a flare diffusing behind his chest. It was the surest feeling—even in the moments when he doubted this all wasn’t simply, absolutely, the final fleeting memories of his brain in death—that he was truly alive.

Corvus dutifully lavished her with his tongue. He gave her no indication of letting up, forcing her closer to the edge, maintaining his violent, loving pace even as she began to buck her hips against his face, amplifying the friction of his wonderful mouth against her beautiful cunt.

“My love—”

He knew. She didn’t have to say it, but gods did he adore hearing it.

“My love, I want to—”

A warning. A desperate plea. The fire burning low in her belly and raging upwards, burning a bright, hot path throughout her entire being.

“—come for you—”

He growled an acknowledgement, focusing on her clit as her sounds became erratic and loud and deliciously desperate. Her entire body seized up. Corvus had her at the edge and he left her there, right at the peak of coming, for a single moment to take in the pressure of her thighs suddenly around his head, of relishing in the knowledge that he was the only person who could make her feel this way, who could bring Proxima Midnight of the Black Order to the point of begging for release—and he sucked on her clit again, sending her careening into an orgasm so intense she cried out as if in agony, bucking her hips violently while he locked her against him with his other arm across her hips. His tongue stroked her womanhood as she rode through her ecstasy. His name slid from her mouth in a euphoric chant. Her body pulsed with each wave of pleasure; coming undone, falling apart.

Corvus maintained his momentum until she settled into the bed again; he easily released her, redirecting the affections of his mouth to her stomach. She twitched hard beneath him. Groaned and fidgeted and tried to regain control, never once releasing her grasp on his hand.

She came back to herself several long minutes after. “Corvus,” she whispered to him, earning his gaze. His eyes still burned with hunger, though they appeared more calculated—pensive, even, akin to the look of a wolf considering its own brood. He was anticipating her response, obvious as it was: “I have been patient.”

“Yes, you have.” He loomed over her and took in the sight of her hair fanned out beneath them, furling waves of water tinged silver like starlight. She possessed the aura and presence of a goddess, he was certain. A trifecta of beauty and power. The embodiment of mortal absolution sending a king to his knees and all she had to do was look at him.

Corvus wanted to worship her until his final breath.

She said, “I want to have all of you now.”

And she would have all of him, wherever and whenever, for now and for always.

“Oh, Midnight,” he said, taking her into his arms. “Now, and until the end. Forever.”

#corvus x proxima #corvus glaive #proxima midnight #commission fill #proxivus

26 notes · View notes

yasbxxgie · 4 years

Link

On Sunday morning, President Trump tweeted an attack on the 1619 Project, threatening to withhold funding from California schools teaching the popular journalism project focused on the rise and impact of slavery in the United States. With his newest tweet, the President’s actions raise a troubling question:

Why is the Trump administration threatening to censor the way schools teach about the history of slavery and racism in the United States?

The President’s assertion came in response to a tweet from an unverified account stating that California schools were teaching the 1619 Project curriculum. In response, Trump tweeted: “Department of Education is looking at this. If so, they will not be funded!”

The 1619 Project is a long-form journalism and multimedia initiative of The New York Times Magazine, started in August of 2019, 400 years after African slaves first landed on the shores of America. In its own words, the project “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” Recently, the 1619 Project teamed up with the Pulitzer Center to develop school curriculum to use 1619 Project content in classrooms.

Trump’s Sunday morning tweet continues a trend of his administration’s provocative actions regarding educational approaches to racial injustice in America.

For example, on Friday, the Trump administration announced that it was planning to cease diversity training that it deemed anti-American. In a two-page memo addressed to the leadership of federal agencies, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought specifically directed federal executives to begin the process of identifying contracts with race-related content that it finds offensive.

“All agencies are directed to begin to identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any training on ‘critical race theory,’ ‘white privilege,’ or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil,” the memo states.

Despite the timing, Trump’s tweet isn’t the first instance the Trump administration and its allies targeted the 1619 Project. In July, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) introduced congressional legislation, titled the “Saving American History Act of 2020,” with the stated purpose of “preventing federal funds from being made available to teach the 1619 Project curriculum in elementary schools and secondary schools.”

The proposed legislation claims that “an activist movement is now gaining momentum to deny or obfuscate this history by claiming that America was not founded on the ideals of the Declaration [of Independence] but rather on slavery and oppression.” It goes on to state that “the 1619 Project is a racially divisive and revisionist account of history that threatens the integrity of the Union by denying the true principles on which it was founded.”

Both Trump’s tweet, as well as Cotton’s proposed legislation, beg a troubling question: why are Republican leaders trying to censor the teaching about the history of slavery and racism in the United States, and why now?

During a time when the United States is engaged in an emotional, and increasingly confrontational, dialogue over the legacy of its racist past, educators across the United States are also exploring ways to better teach the narratives of racial privilege and injustice that have led to the pervasiveness of institutional racism in America. By threatening to censor content that it finds objectionable, the Trump administration is not only treading dangerously on the underlying principles of a free and democratic society; it is also acting in a deeply hypocritical manner, as it otherwise generally endorses local autonomy on issues of education and school choice.

But perhaps most troubling of all, Trump’s tweet and the arguments of his administration and allies demonstrate a belief that history should be taught in a a way that limits criticism of the United States. Further, Trump himself has shown that he is willing to take actions to constructively censor those whose views of history conflict with those of the administration.

That’s not teaching history, that is shaping national propaganda.

For a president who proudly proclaims that he has done more for the Black community than any other President in American history, his efforts to censor the painful story of the Black experience in America are a slap in the face of every Black person who lived that history from the past to the present.

American descendants of slavery deserve more than patronizing claims of support from Trump or any politician. They deserve recognition, justice, and reparations. And at the very least, they deserve to have their story told...

Starting with 1619.

#the 1619 project #nikole hannah jones #california #department of education #education #forbes #donald trump #censorship

1 note · View note

slowpocalypsecooking · 4 years

Text

the top 8 tracks on folklore from least to most embarrassing to enjoy

Hi I’m Anthony Fantano and welcome to the needle drop. I don’t know if he says that, because I don’t watch him—if I wanted to listen to a repulsive white man talk about music, I could just go on a date. (just kidding, covid!)

Forgoing any further introduction, here are the top eight tracks from Taylor Swift’s new album, low-caps “folklore,” ranked from least embarrassing to most embarrassing to enjoy, according to me. The whole album is 16 tracks long, but I’m only doing the most noteworthy half because 16 is too many. You’re welcome for that decision.

Methodology: To get on this list, songs had to be both embarrassing and enjoyable. There will be natural fluctuation between tracks, but as we go down the list, assume that the songs are getting increasingly better to listen to and worse to think about, like this:

The rankings:

8. cardigan

This is a song about feeling at times like an unloved trash bag, as we all do, and then being warmly reminded that you matter because you are in fact someone’s fallback. The hook goes:

and when i felt like i was an old cardigan under someone’s bed you put me on and said i was your favorite.

Beyond reveling in this pathetic status, this song serves as an admission that the speaker a. uses the word “cardigan” and b. thinks of those bland, preppy sweaters as a comforting thing to wear. In a cooler universe, this song would be called “flannel.” It is just okay to listen to.

7. mad woman

This song has big Ophelia vibes, big Handmaid’s Tale vibes, big “daughter of the witches you couldn’t burn” vibes. One of the verses contains the line “and women like hunting witches too,” because, hey, woman-on-woman misogyny is bad, didn’t you know. Strong reminder that if being called crazy is the worst form of oppression you’ve experienced, you still have it pretty good. Sometimes sounds decent, sometimes too croony.

6. invisible string

This one uses a pretty lazy, commonplace device: She opens couplets within verses by just naming colors, and uses these to create a simple repetitive structure for introducing random, useless details:

green was the color of the grass where i used to read at centennial park i used to think i would meet somebody there teal was the color of your shirt when you were sixteen at the yogurt shop you used to work at to make a little money

Sure this device is tired, but that’s only the surface of what’s embarrassing here. More embarrassing is the image I’ve conjured of a teal-shirted teenage boy smiling through his braces behind the toppings station at one of those blindingly lit American-kawaii froyo stores. I don’t know who needs to hear this but don’t fuck the froyo boy. Song is pretty catchy.

5. illicit affairs

Title says it all here: This song is about how thrilling and fun and ultimately horrible it is to be involved in a romantic situation you’re not supposed to be in, and how that forbidden sheen can get you totally enthralled with a crappy garbage man. Not a whole lot going on below the surface. This song is both very enjoyable and very embarrassing because it is very relatable.

4. seven

We are back to the aggressive levels of white woman previously seen in “mad woman,” only the case has gotten much more severe. Here’s this song’s final chorus:

Sweet tea in the summer Cross my heart, won’t tell no other And though I can't recall your face I still got love for you Pack your dolls and a sweater We'll move to India forever Passed down like folk songs Our love lasts so long

Okay let’s just skate past the part where a presumed adult is telling a fellow adult (I sure hope!) to bring their dolls when they run away together. That in itself is too big a can of worms to crack open. What I want to talk about is the line “We’ll move to India forever,” which pretty obviously uses an Orientalist fantasy of India as some nebulous, ethereal image of the East. Real people don’t live there; it’s the exotic dreamland where sweet-tea drinking southern belles bring their adult toys when they elope. This song is very catchy.

3. betty

Let me start by saying that now that we’re in the top three, all of the remaining songs are vying for the #1 slot. I could very easily see this and the next as the Most Embarrassing to Enjoy. But “betty” is clocking in at number three today.

This is a song about a teenage romance gone bad, in which a speaker named James (who is “only seventeen, I don’t know anything”) has cheated on a girlfriend (Betty) and is now considering showing up at her party, begging for forgiveness, and hoping for a kiss in the garden. We get the backstory in the bridge:

I was walking home on broken cobblestones Just thinking of you when she pulled up like A figment of my worst intentions She said "James, get in, let's drive" Those days turned into nights Slept next to her, but I dreamt of you all summer long

First of all, “figment” of “intentions” is not really a phrase? But secondly, and more importantly: Excited bloggers all over the internet have posted a smattering of theories detailing why this song is Taylor Swift’s coded revelation that she actually maybe fucks girls, too, y’know, and hey, maybe the object of this song is the supermodel Karlie Kloss, whose middle name is Elizabeth. Apparently Taylor Swift is named after James Taylor, so she could be James, or at the very least James could be a woman. I’m going to allow for the possibility that the speaker “James” is a woman, because why not; it does not change the narrative. But said narrative doesn’t make sense: who is this woman pulling up next to James and picking them up on the cobblestone? Did James really spend all summer with her, and if so, why? James is only seventeen by the time they get back to ask Betty’s forgiveness, so like, where the hell are James’s parents? Do they not care that their child has gone off for the whole summer with a person I can only picture as a cheetah-print-and-goggles-wearing divorcee driving a convertible?

Furthermore, the Karlie Kloss/Taylor Swift fan theories are gross for the simple reason that these two tall skinny white women look pretty much exactly the same. What is it with the internet’s obsession with wanting practically identical people to hook up? There might be an incest thing going on there that you guys could stand to reflect on. And on the more cynical conspiracy-theorizing side, couldn’t this just be some convenient queerbaiting? Didn’t Taylor Swift get criticized for appropriating gay rhetoric and imagery for “You Need to Calm Down,” like, 20 minutes ago? If she were going to come out, wouldn’t it have been an ideal moment to do so when she was under fire for that? I’m not saying all celebrities are shallow opportunists, but, you know, maybe.

This song is infectious. You will need to lobotomize me to get it out of my head.

2. exile

I know I originally said this was gonna be number one but I lied. It is pretty rough, though. This track features Bon Iver, and it’s not the high-pitched sad boy of “Skinny Love” renown. This Bon Iver is deep-voiced and country, like Bon Iver playing Tim McGraw in an uncomfortable SNL parody. Also, the whole song is centered around the tired and overused metaphor that a person is a place, and the person the speaker is pining after is home, and the speaker is in exile because they can’t go home to the person they love. It’s a heartache-ballad, cry-sing in your car, absolute jam.

1. the last great american dynasty

I really tried not to let this be number one. I really didn’t want it to be, which is precisely why it is. This was the track that first alerted me to the entire album’s release, because Ed Markey supporters on Twitter seized on it and decided it was about the downfall of the Kennedy family. It is not. The opening verse goes:

Rebekah rode up on the afternoon train, it was sunny Her saltbox house on the coast took her mind off St. Louis Bill was the heir to the Standard Oil name and money And the town said, "How did a middle-class divorcée do it?" The wedding was charming, if a little gauche There's only so far new money goes They picked out a home and called it "Holiday House"

This is very obviously about a real couple, Rebekah and William (Bill) Hale Harkness, who had a real mansion in Rhode Island that they called “Holiday House.” The Harkness name is on basically every building in Connecticut and a lot of the Northeast because Stephen Harkness, Bill Hale Harkness’s great uncle, was a founder of Standard Oil along with John D. Rockefeller. In 2013, Taylor Swift bought the property known as “Holiday House,” as she says in the song:

Fifty years is a long time Holiday House sat quietly on that beach Free of women with madness, their men and bad habits And then it was bought by me

The cool, fun, left-ish internet reading of this song is that it’s a revolutionary tale about toppling class hierarchy—getting a hold of wealth and bringing the institution that created it to its knees by… “fill[ing] the pool with champagne”? How much would that amount of champagne even cost? This is not a song about revolution. Taylor Swift didn’t storm into the Standard Oil house and burn it down or take it over; she bought it. It is not a song about destabilizing the ruling class. It’s a song about joining it.

It absolutely fucking slaps, unfortunately.

#taylor swift #folklore #i am putting this in the tumblr tags in lowkey hopes that a rabid taylor swift fan will see and come after me #come on that would be funny

1 note · View note

globalworship · 4 years

Text

Christmas: divine humility, powerlessness & poverty are the foundation of all that exists

Scène du massacre des Innocents (“Scene of the massacre of the Innocents”), By the Parisian painter, Léon Cogniet in 1824.

+++

Fr. Kenneth Tanner writes:

God takes the form of a baby because divine helplessness is greater than any other force in the universe.

When on the first Christmas divine humility and powerlessness and poverty are revealed as the foundation of all that exists, this revelation of God in the flesh threatens all human notions of power, all human leadership that rests on exertions of might and personal charisma.

Real Christmas was and remains political. The conception and birth of Jesus—the silent infant who in the beginning spoke all things into existence, and who holds all things together, the helpless child who can do nothing but lay their in glory, the government on his tiny shoulders—set a challenge to all other leaders and governments, visible and invisible.

All temporal rulers instinctively know they are bested here by an eternal kingdom of others-directed, self-sacrificial love that does not seek its own, that does not keep a record of wrongs, that is not jealous, that seeks to serve rather than to be served.

Herod knew the jig was up, that the age of self-seeking rulers was now exposed and that the game was over. Herod turned to murder to try to reimpose the old order, as have so many visible and invisible powers down the centuries since the Incarnation, since God took up permanent residence as a member of the human race in Jesus Christ.

I appreciate the way this artist captures the horror real infants and real mothers faced in the aftermath of the real Christmas, the infamous slaughter of male Hebrew children in and around Bethlehem that we remember today [fourth day of Christmastide].

Fleeting worldly powers desperate to hold on to a false authority that is being defeated by divine humility lash out. They always do, for violence is their defeated way of maintaining strength. God answers them then, now, and I the future with the surrender of a world-converting cross.

What they did not know is that in (eventually) killing Jesus Christ they reversed the permanence not only of their rule but of all their violent actions. Violence has no future because of this infant God.

These poor children and all who suffer violence in the meantime have in Jesus Christ a glorious way now to endure beyond suffering and death, to shine forever in the kingdom of their Father, while the kingdoms of this world and their violence await permanent, shameful expiration.

Remember the Innocents. We have inherited a kingdom; we await a world without end. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10220896286054288&set=a.2253573056187&type=3&theater

Fr. Kenneth Tanner is pastor at Holy Redeemer Church in Rochester, Michigan.

+++

Cogniet’s ‘Scène du massacre des Innocents’ asks us to examine ourselves, to consider why this woman would be so scared of us, to examine the ways we have been coopted by the forces of empire, and sided with the powerful over the weak and the poor.

Empires continue to clash. The powerful continue to victimize children to secure their political goals. Mothers still cradled doomed children in their arms all around the world.

Is this the greatest Christmas painting of all time? https://mikefrost.net/greatest-christmas-painting-time/

+++

Dr. Esau McCaulley is an assistant professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and a priest in the Anglican Church in North America. He published an important piece in the New York Times about the ‘slaughter of the innocents.’ The Bloody Fourth Day of Christmas https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/27/opinion/christmas-feast-of-innocents.html

Here are some excerpts:

The Gospel of Matthew reports that an angel warns Jesus’ family of the impending danger, and they leave the country. Jesus spends the first years of his life on foreign soil, in Egypt. When he finally returns from Egypt, his family cannot settle in their ancestral home of Bethlehem because there is still unrest.

The Bible story, then, depicts Jesus as a refugee fleeing a nation marked by political violence and being displaced within his own country even after some of the violence settles down. And though he avoids murder by Herod, he does not escape death by the state altogether — three decades later, Pontius Pilate, an official of the Roman Empire, pronounces Jesus’ death sentence. Like Herod, Pilate does so to maintain power and remove a threat....

The church calendar calls Christians and others to remember that we live in a world in which political leaders are willing to sacrifice the lives of the innocent on the altar of power. We are forced to recall that this is a world with families on the run, where the weeping of mothers is often not enough to win mercy for their children. More than anything, the story of the innocents calls upon us to consider the moral cost of the perpetual battle for power in which the poor tend to have the highest casualty rate.

But how can such a bloody and sad tale do anything other than add to our despair? The Christmas story must be told in the context of suffering and death because that’s the only way the story makes any sense. Where else can one speak about Christmas other than in a world in which racism, sexism, classism, materialism and the devaluation of human life are commonplace? People are hurting, and the epicenter of that hurt, according to the Feast of the Holy Innocents, remains the focus of God’s concern.

This feast suggests that things that God cares about most do not take place in the centers of power. The truly vital events are happening in refugee camps, detention centers, slums and prisons. The Christmas story is set not in a palace surrounded by dignitaries but among the poor and humble whose lives are always subject to forfeit. It’s a reminder that the church is not most truly herself when she courts power. The church finds her voice when she remembers that God “has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble,” as the Gospel of Luke puts it.

The very telling of the Christmas story is an act of resistance. This is how the biblical story functioned for my ancestors who gathered in the fields and woods of the antebellum South. They saw in the Christian narrative an account of a God who cared for the enslaved and wanted more for them than the whip and the chain. For them Christianity did not merely serve the disinherited — it was for the disinherited, the “weak things” that shamed the strong.

Christians believe that none of this suffering was in vain. The cries of the oppressed do not go forever unanswered. We believe that the children slaughtered by Herod were ushered into the presence of God and will be with him for eternity. The Christian tradition also affirms that Jesus’ suffering served a purpose, that when the state ordered his death, God was at work. Through the slaughter of the truly innocent one, God was emptying death of its power, vanquishing evil and opening the path toward forgiveness and reconciliation.

1 note · View note

octaviainthewasteland · 5 years

Text

Wonder Woman: on female characters in comics PART 3

p. 1, 2, 3

Finally my lazy ass finished it. Warning: Image heavy. Please bear in mind that English is not my first language and we do not beta, we die liek mne!

Part 3: Woman: Warrior, Wife, Wonder

Summary: Critical analysis of the character of Wonder Woman

Under the cut

Previously, I have talked about gender inequality in the comics industry and poor portrayal of female characters in the comics. In this part, I am going to talk about comics as an active political tool, and Wonder Woman as a medium of gender politics.

Lepore and Fawaz both define Wonder Woman as the banner-bearer of the feminist separatist utopia (Lepore, 2016: 199) (Fawaz, Hall, Kinsella, 2017: 9), though they refer to different feminist movements. While Lepore stresses the importance of the movement of 1910s for the invention of Wonder Woman, Fawaz matches Themyscrira, the home island of Wonder Woman, to the idea of separatism of 1970s. As noted by De Beauvoir and Fawaz, it was impossible to imagine the life without men. Women have no separate history, no separate culture. They were attracted to the idea of an island, isolated from the rest of the world. This fantasy on the pages of the comic book has become a safe space for exploring the social, cultural and political possibilities and conflicting notions of a better, desirable world (Fawaz, Hall, Kinsella, 2017: 4).

The very birth of Wonder Woman is a political statement. In the early 1930s Margaret Sanger has led the birth control movement. (Lepore, 2016: 147) The question of to whom belonged the power over the woman’s body has been on everyone’s lips. On the pages of The Origin of Wonder Woman Marston tells a story of a matriarchal birth, a celebration of woman’s agency. (Wonder Woman #1, 1942) Parallels can be found between the legend of Wonder Woman and Christian narratives, even more so than, for example, Superman, who is typically analysed as a Jesus figure. She is born, fathered by no mortal man, and sets on saving the humanity from the forces of hate and oppression, fighting injustice, suffering, intolerance and destruction. She is omnibenevolent and wise, even being chosen by the ring of the Star Sapphires, because her heart is abundant with love (Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #2, 2010) However, Diana has neither father, nor any similar patriarchal figure in her life. She is born in a feminist utopia with no contribution from a man. The significance of this phenomenon cannot be overstated. Wonder Woman is devoid of the weight of patriarchy; hence she is the manifestation of the feminist fantasy (Curtis, 2017: 307). For 70 years she has been an exceptional figure within the pop-culture, centered around the question of Fathers and Children and ignoring the trope of the Absent Mother. The feminist utopian fantasy, though, has been killed in 2012. Of all people, by her own new authors, Azzarello and Chiang. Not only does Wonder Woman have a father now, trivializing her story, taking away her legendary status, but also this new version destroys the sisterhood. In the new version, Hippolyta lies, because she is scared of Hera’s jealousy and revenge. The same Hera, who has protected Diana and Hippolyta from Zeus’ forced advances. The same Hera, who has blessed Diana at birth. Goddesses and Amazons are no longer a monolithic front, now they are pitted against each other, fighting over the affections of a man. Wonder Woman used to be a character born from defiance. Now she is a character born from fraud, and the supremacy of the male principle has been reinstated. (314)

What early villains of the Wonder Woman comics share is their opposition to gender equality. Some villains were fictional, some of flesh and blood. Jill Lepore uncovers a schism, verging on an open war, between the writers of Wonder Woman in 1942 (Lepore, 2016: 210-213). Gardner Fox rejects the idea of the female superhero and downgrades Wonder Woman to typing out minutes and getting trapped to be saved by the male members of the Justice’s Society.

(All-Star Comics #14)

He refuses to include her in the action and show her fighting side by side with the rest of her colleagues. (All-Star Comics #12-17, 1942-43) On contrary, the political influence of Marston’s Wonder Woman grows by leaps and bounds, both in fiction and in real life.

It is worth to also compare the politics of visual presented by the case of Fox and Marston. Under Fox’s pen Wonder Woman becomes a meek female heroine, an incompetent lady, and the textbook token female character, which makes a team diverse without delivering any real contribution. After the death of Marston, she is stripped even of such nominal power. Just as Athena warns Amazons, if they submit to a man, they will lose their powers. The metaphor of the gauntlets is very curious, in fact. Amazons are bound, so that they do not forget what happens if they let man conquer them (Madrid 2009: 36). Surprisingly, Wonder Woman uses the gauntlets to protect herself, deflecting bullets and other weapons. We can see a careful threading of Marston’s motif on the struggle of women. A paradoxical situation of a shackle turned into a shield can be connoted as the remainder for women that they have broken free and they are powerful, but if they submit to a man, they will lose all their power. (Lepore, 2016: 220) Wonder Woman’s lasso is also a reference to a real-life phenomenon, specifically the lie detector. Its invention has fascinated Marston and on more than one occasion he has offered his services as the operator to the US Army (Lepore, 2016: 61). For him it has been a turning point in history of science and politics, and of course, Wonder Woman needs such a device in her adventures.

Opposed to Fox’s portrayal, Marston’s Wonder Woman stands against the International Milk Company that has been overcharging for milk, “an essential element of American children’s lives”. It has been a direct criticism of politicians such as Al Smith. On the pages of the comic books, Al Smith turns into a Nazi secret agent Alphonso De Gyppo, the evil president of the International Milk Company. Twice he tries to kill Wonder Woman, but she manages to escape him and lead a political rally. She captures his evil boss, Baroness Paula von Gunther, and the prices for milk drop, to the gratitude of American children and everyone concerned. Another example involves a fictionalized social critique of the working conditions in America. A textile workers’ strike in Massachusetts, in 1912, is retold as a strike against Bullfinch’s Department Stores, as the workers are underpaid and exploited. The real villain is the fiancé of the lady, who is owning the Department Stores, and when she realizes his true evil nature, she punches him and takes over, doubling everyone’s salaries as the first order. (Sensation Comics #8, 1942)

Everything feminine and girlish had been considered (still is) weak and boring (Lepore, 2016: 187). Marston, on the other hand, believed that men confuse desire with pleasure. They desire domination, while women can receive pleasure from both domination and submission. He felt that if there had been a strong beautiful woman (Marston wanted Wonder Woman to look like a Varga Girl), men would submit to her willingly and she would teach them love and peace. Never before such a character has existed (191). Submissiveness became power.

(georgia peach, alberto vargas, esquire, 1940s)

The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps are formed in 1942 by Roosevelt. Each issue of the solo Wonder Woman comic book has praised women, who have also been scientists, writers, politicians, social workers, doctors, nurses, athletes, and adventurers – or, in other words, Wonder Women of History. (Lepore, 2016: 220-222) Chained, tied up and gagged women are an allusion on the suffragist movement. Women seemingly reclaim the imagery of bondage and bound, giving it the implication of the struggle, the defiance, and resistance. Moreover, the idea of submission has been the new display of feminine supremacy. (236)

Fretheim suggests noting that Wonder Woman’s weapons form circles and defines them as ‘vaginal weapons’ (Fretheim, 2017: 24) as opposed to phallic weapons such as guns and swords. That it, I must correct myself, until recently. As can be seen in Chiang reimagination of Wonder Woman, she is often depicted on the comic book covers with swords, axes and other weapons.

As if drawn phallic weapons also raise the levels of testosterone, to match her updated apparel, new Wonder Woman is also more short-tempered, aggressive and has actually become the new Goddess of War after defeating Ares. (Cocca, 2014) However, some, like Walter J. Ong, have argued that even the earliest version of Wonder Woman has been ‘too much like a man’. (Lepore, 2016: 255) He criticizes her resistance towards marriage and family life, accuses her of sustaining only on the anti-social pure sexual allure, by standards of the men. He goes on to develop an argument that comics have been fascist propaganda, with the concept of ‘supermen’ directly borrowed from Nietzsche, ‘the herald of Nazism’. (256) If you are not sure who Walter J. Ong is, it is that same man who concluded that Batman and Robin promote homosexuality and we can say thanks to him for the Comics Code nonsense. So, we can see that Wonder Woman has constantly faced accusations of being ‘too masculine’. It is a hard job of being a girl in the boys club: you’re either the lady-friend who inevitably becomes the love interest or you’re a tomboy. Wonder Woman tries to be both, to be neither, to be something else entirely.

Nonetheless, in 1944, out of all comic book superheroes, it is Wonder Woman, who becomes a newspaper strip. There is a considerable difference in exposure between comic books and daily newspapers, opening a whole new audience to Wonder Woman. She joins Superman and Batman as the first trans-media superheroes and thus the Trinity is formed. Marston has always been quite open about Wonder Woman being feminist psychological propaganda for the new type of strong and courageous womanhood. (220) The message of Wonder Woman transcends the comic books and becomes a social commentary on the gender politics and economic environment of the twentieth century.

Unfortunately, this is the temporary liberation. The most sinister villain of them all turns out to be the peacetime. Once again, the comic book works as a mirror, reflecting the changes on the political and socio-cultural stage. With the end of the Second World War, there blooms a daunting realization that the service of women is no longer required. The period of high threat is relieved by the period of low threat and the decisive, tough heroes can loosen up. Not to undermine them and the returning soldiers, women all over the country are fired and urged, those unmarried, to tie the knot, and those married, to hurry up and procreate. Wonder Woman is stripped of her kinky red boots, of her position at the Justice’s Society and ultimately, her powers. She becomes a friendly guide for young ladies, who dream of fairy tale romance, a handsome husband and a multitude of little pink-cheeked copies of him, running around their little cozy house. (271)

Feminist movement gave birth to Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman has become the symbol of the feminist movement. When Wonder Woman has appeared to be chained and depowered and forced to fit into categories she has been fighting against since her creation, “fellow sisters” has come to her aid. She is put on the cover of the Ms. magazine and once again blazes the fantasy of the female superhero, equal to Superman and Batman, and of the all-women culture, glorious in its isolation from the discrimination and oppression of the male imposition. (Lepore, 2016: 283; Fawaz, Hall, Kinsella, 2017: 8)

Wonder Woman returns to peaceful protests on the pages of It Aint Me Baby and feminist newsletters. There starts the try and miss of the comic industry with the female characters. Wanting to cash in on feminists, Marvel attempts to introduce new female characters, but they all fail spectacularly after just a handful of issues. (Lepore, 2016: 289) Forty-five years later, the situation is not much better. Marvel executives even try to put the blame on the readers, because apparently the stories about diverse characters are not selling. (Cain, 2017)

To be fair, in 70s it has been a real issue. Nothing has been selling. Even Wonder Woman. The feminist movement is divided. Radical, liberal and intersectional movements emerge, at odds with each other. The Second Wave supports a predominantly white, heterosexual view.

In 1987, Wonder Woman is rebooted. Pérez and Wein make her more ethnic, acknowledging her origins. They finally bring up the fact that on an island with 100 percent female population, homosexual relationships take place. (Wonder Woman Vol. 2 #38, 1990) In the #180 issue Diana is in a relationship with an African American man, Trevor Barnes. She gains her powers back. She addresses the issues of race, sexuality and gender. Wonder Woman rises again on the crest of the Third Wave of Feminism: a struggle for equality, diversity, complexity, inclusivity, individualism and cultural critique. (Cocca, 2014) However, due to historical processes, as history does not evolve in a linear, progressive fashion, the maturity and growth call for a major backlash (Cocca, 2016: 10). The comic books are then overflowing with hyper-masculine men and hyper-sexualized women. The new Wonder Woman, Artemis, has been criticized and remained unaccepted both by readers and by the characters of the comics themselves. For instance, Batman is openly dismissive of her and objects to her presence, going as far as forbidding Artemis to even sit in Diana’s chair in the Justice League Headquarters. (Wonder Woman Vol. 2 #90, 1994) The problem with Artemis is that she is too aggressive, too rash, and therefore, does not fit the norms of femininity, imposed by the predominantly male audience.

Wonder Woman is rebooted anew in 2011, as mentioned before. Contrary to the critiques that Artemis has received, this Diana is also aggressive and ‘male-like’. Here we can notice a similar pattern. Because female empowerment associates in men’s mind opposite proportionately with male disempowerment, a strong female superhero that challenges the social structures terrifies the reader. Hence, Amazons are both objectified and dehumanized. They are no longer peaceful immortal protectors – after the reboot, in order to maintain their population and quench their sexual thirst, they engage in sexual intercourses with sailors, who have expressed dubious consent and are often killed off afterwards. Newborn girls are to stay on the island, while boys are sold into slavery to Hephaestus in exchange for weapons. Amazons’ queerness is erased from the narrative. Wonder Woman discovers that she has a brother, who is somehow more powerful than she is. (Justice League Vol. 2 #50, 2016)

She also pursues romance with Steve Trevor. Their relationship is truly a double-edge sword. He has appeared in the first issue of Wonder Woman and has remained her supporting character since. The polarity of his character lies in the interpretation. From one side, he is a ‘token boyfriend’ (Robbins, 2006), from the other, he is a lonely boy in the refrigerator. Robbins argues that introduction of Steve Trevor should ensure the reader in Wonder Woman’s heterosexuality. Therefore, he is the political instrument that positions Wonder Woman in the framework of heteronormativity. On the other hand, it is an interesting subversion of the ‘damsel in distress’ trope. Steve Trevor gets in trouble and Wonder Woman rushes to his rescue. His suffering propels her plotline and he is secondary to her character, not having much of a distinct personality, changing with the trends over time, reflecting what kind of man is popular at that instance. The only constant is the mesmerized ‘Angel’ to Diana, which, in fact, either baffles or irritates her. (Sensation Comics #2, 1942) Either way, the existence of the character of Steve Trevor restricts Wonder Woman from exploring her diverse sexuality, but on the other hand constructs a new meaning for visual representation of Wonder Woman in the comics.

During the Second World War, people have been constantly bombarded – by standardized imagery. With the rise of Communism and the National Socialism, the rhetoric of good and bad has returned to the military conflict. One side is morally right; their opponents then must be immoral and wrong. One side is the hero and the other side is the villain, aiming to oppress, torture and destroy. As we know from the fairytales, from everything we have been taught, the good side always wins the evil. The hero always arrives just in time and saves everyone. This stream of non-stop visuals from the media has produced something Alvin Toffler calls a ‘mass-mind’. (Toffler, 1980: 176) The comic books promote All-American ideology and the image of the superhero that defends the world with the help of the good sports from the American Army. It is a ready-to-wear moral certainty. The movements are represented by a particular group: the feminist movement is predominantly white and heterosexual; the LGBT movement receives one-dimensional representation of the G.

In the late 70s the stream gradually becomes less uniform. Toffler introduces the concept of ‘a blip culture’ (177), a culture of confusion, feeling of abandonment and anger, because now the visuals are fragmented, contradictory, people are left to give these ‘blips’ their own meaning. The system pulsates with bigger and bigger amounts of data. Today we want out information fast. Faster. Memes, photos, tweets, and headlines of the articles we are never going to open to read in full at the top of the IPhone screen. We prefer to digest information through visuals. It does not matter where we live, in a developed or a developing country, in a metropolitan city or in the countryside, we stay up to date with the pop-culture. It necessarily consists of the modern and old media, which become another ode of propaganda and promotion of the ideas, people and trends that just ought to become popular. The power of textual is substituted by the power of the visual.

Comics are the low genre of entertainment. It is primarily identified as being strictly for children and youth (Ndalianis, 2011: 113). And yet it has victoriously invaded the mainstream media. No matter how much so-called nerds desire to maintain the illusion of an exclusive boy-club, who are socially awkward and misunderstood by everyone, it is no longer a niche. The comic book characters’ faces decorate lunch boxes and backpacks; they become a new type of celebrity, symbols of the generations. It is no longer the comics in itself that is important – but the superheroes. The phenomenon of the superhero has transcended the medium of the comic book. Pop-culture turns politics into another component of the field of entertainment, and brings it on the transnational level. It becomes a performance, where the spectators are the citizens, divided into the politically charged individuals and apolitical witnesses. The superheroes are a fiction, but the borders of the fiction and the reality blur. With appearance of the superheroes on the screen, the audience starts associating the character with the face of the actor. Because the superheroes are already surrounded by myths, different interpretations and fandom, the figure of the superhero can become more real than the person, playing him or her. The imagery and simulacra, which are the foundation of the society, create a model of the prevailing life style of the said society. It is not the aggregate of the characters, but the social relationships between people, intermediated by these characters. (Baudrillard, 1994)

To support my argument about how the superheroes received the status of celebrities and how Wonder Woman has become a simulacrum of the political figure, we need to break down the process into five stages. I shall bring some examples to build a case to explain how the superheroes have evolved in our consciousness and from mirrors have transformed into active agents that represent and influence masses.

In 1996, a special edition comic book has been released, featuring Superman, to promote the landmine awareness among children. The comic has been distributed to Bosnia and the territories of the former Yugoslavia. DC has published the comic book in cooperation with the Department of Defense and UNICEF. So, exhibit one: the superheroes, as the role models, are suitable to educate children.

In 2016, a certain video has gone viral under the name Avengers Against Trump. In reality, it has little to do with Marvel and its team of superheroes, but it has starred some of the actors from the cast of the Avengers, such as Scarlett Johansson, who have been emphasizing the importance of each and every vote. Their disdain for Trump becomes the disdain of the superhero they play. Exhibit two: the process is started, the reality and the fiction begin to merge, the figure of the actor is perceived not as a celebrity of interest, but as the avatar of the superhero.

On February 7, 2016, Turkish Airlines has released a commercial, where they have been ‘pleased to announce the new destination: Gotham City’. Ben Affleck appears during the commercial, credited as Bruce Wayne. Exhibit three: real life companies utilize the superheroes as the ambassadors of the brand. The line between performers and the superheroes they play becomes even thinner. The superhero becomes more real.

In this fashion, Wonder Woman is no different. Maybe even more exemplary, as she has been created specifically as feminist propaganda. The artwork in Mural, Philadelphia, depicting Wonder Woman landing a punch on Donald Trump, illustrates quite well the extent to which the reality of our social and political consciousness and superhero narratives influence each other.

Wonder Woman is a superhero, which defends all defenseless and openly stands against discrimination and oppression – and there she stands against Donald Trump, a person in a position of power, who is infamous for his racism and sexism. Exhibit number four: gathering information and background from the comics, TV-shows and movies, we analyse it and draw our own conclusions and assume that the superheroes have certain opinions about the realm of noumena, to which they do not belong, and what these opinions would be. Most people would agree that Batman is – notice how the conditional would be is dropped – for gun control. Harley Quinn is crazy about Comic-Cons. Wonder Woman is anti-Trump.

Wonder Woman has become a symbol and a spokesperson of modern feminism through this fusion of fiction, politics and personalities of the actresses. Wonder Woman has become a simulacrum of a celebrity and by extension a political figure. She makes choices, supports some politicians and publicly disapproves others. The critical point of this development takes place on October 21, 2016, when the UN has decided to use Wonder Woman in an honorary role in the empowerment campaign to fight for gender equality, and thus, Wonder Woman is appointed as the UN ambassador. The final exhibit: it shows that the superhero is treated like a real person and has been given exercisable political power. One might point out that she has been demoted from the position two months after, but the case rests. We live in a world, where Wonder Woman has become an ambassador of the United Nations, even if only for two months.

(Wonder Woman design art, Harry G Peter, 1942)

Bibliography

Fawaz, R., Hall, J., & Kinsella, H. (2017). Discovering paradise islands: The politics and pleasures of feminist utopias, a conversation. Feminist Review, 116(1), 1-21.

Lepore, J. (2015). The Secret History of Wonder Woman. New York: Knopf.

Curtis, N. (2017). Wonder Woman’s symbolic death: On kinship and the politics of origins. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 8(4), 307-320.

Madrid, M. (2009). ‘Sirens and Suffragettes.’ The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines. Ashland, OR: Exterminating Angel, 2009. 145–81. Print.

Fretheim, I. M. (2017) Fantastic Feminism: Female Characters in Superhero Comic Books. Trykk: Reprosentralen, Universitetet i Oslo

Cocca, C. (2014). Negotiating the Third Wave of Feminism in "Wonder Woman". PS: Political Science and Politics, 47(1), 98-103.

Cocca, C. (2016). Superwomen: gender, power, and representation.

Cain, S. (2017). Marvel executive says emphasis on diversity may have alienated readers. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/03/marvel-executive-says-emphasis-on-diversity-may-have-alienated-readers [last accessed on 1 May, 2018]

Robbins, T. (2006). Wonder Woman, Lesbian Or Dyke?: Paradise Island as a Woman's Community. Available at: http://girl-wonder.org/papers/robbins.html [last accessed on 15 April, 2018]

Toffler, A. (1981). The third wave. London: Pan in association with Collins.

Ndalianis, A. (2011). Why Comics Studies? Cinema Journal, 50(3), 113-117.

Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press.

Fly to Gotham City with Turkish Airlines! Super Bowl TV SPOT (2016) Available at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS7JBHxdxko [last accessed on 8 May, 2018]

Avengers Against Trump. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnK9tEdNjX8 [last accessed on 8 May, 2018]

#Wonder Woman #Diana Prince #DC comics #dc girls

2 notes · View notes

ucflibrary · 5 years

Photo

The national celebration of African American History was started by Carter G. Woodson, a Harvard-trained historian and the founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, and first celebrated as a weeklong event in February of 1926. After a half century of overwhelming popularity, the event was expanded to a full month in 1976 by President Gerald Ford.

Here at UCF Libraries we believe that knowledge is key to living a good life and that sharing information benefits everyone. This is why our featured bookshelf suggestions range from celebrating outstanding African Americans to having difficult conversations about racism and American History. We are proud to present our top 24 favorite books by, and/or about, African Americans.

Click on the link below to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links for the Black History Month titles suggested by UCF Library employees. These 24 books plus many, many more are also on display on the 2nd (main) floor of the John C. Hitt Library next to the bank of two elevators. Blu-rays and DVDs for documentaries and popular films are also included in the display.

A Rap on Race by Margaret Mead and James Baldwin A black writer's emotional response to American racism is juxtaposed with the logical analyses of a social scientist. Suggested by Rebecca Hawk, Circulation

Backlash: what happens when we talk honestly about racism in America by George Yancy When George Yancy penned a New York Times op-ed entitled “Dear White America” asking white Americans to confront the ways that they benefit from racism, he knew his article would be controversial. But he was unprepared for the flood of vitriol in response. The resulting blowback played out in the national media, with critics attacking Yancy in every form possible—including death threats—and supporters rallying to his side. Despite the rhetoric of a “post-race” America, Yancy quickly discovered that racism is still alive, crude, and vicious in its expression. In Backlash, Yancy expands upon the original article and chronicles the ensuing controversy as he seeks to understand what it was about the op-ed that created so much rage among so many white readers. He challenges white Americans to rise above the vitriol and to develop a new empathy for the African American experience. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

Buffalo soldiers directed by Charles Haid Danny Glover stars in this historical epic of former slaves turned United States Army recruits--the Buffalo Soldiers. Freed by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862, many ex-slaves head west in search of a new life far from Southern oppression. In 1866, a year after the end of the Civil War, the U.S. Army enlists black men to fight Native Americans on the Western frontier. Nicknamed "Buffalo Soldiers" by the Plains Indians, these African-American troops also string miles of telegraph wire, escort settlers, cattle and railroad crews through the hostile West and patrol the wild United States-Mexican border in this moving drama that chronicles an untold, exciting part of United States history. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Crossing Division Street: an oral history of the African-American community in Orlando by Benjamin Brotemarkle This book includes an overview of the people, institutions, and events that shaped the establishment, growth and history of the African-American community in Orlando. We examine the creation of the neighborhood's educational centers, places of worship, and businesses, and the irony of how desegregation inadvertently led to the decline of the community. Significant instances of racial unrest in Orlando that are often overlooked are detailed in this manuscript. Suggested by Rich Gause, Research & Information Services

Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the dawn of a new America by Gilbert King In 1949, Florida's orange industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow labor. To maintain order and profits, they turned to Willis V. McCall, a violent sheriff who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve. When a white seventeen-year-old Groveland girl cried rape, McCall was fast on the trail of four young blacks who dared to envision a future for themselves beyond the citrus groves. By day's end, the Ku Klux Klan had rolled into town, burning the homes of blacks to the ground and chasing hundreds into the swamps, hell-bent on lynching the young men who came to be known as "the Groveland Boys." Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland At once provocative, terrifying, and darkly subversive, Dread Nation is Justina Ireland's stunning vision of an America both foreign and familiar—a country on the brink, at the explosive crossroads where race, humanity, and survival meet. Suggested by Emma Gisclair, Curriculum Materials Center

Everything’s Trash but it’s OK by Phoebe Robinson Written in her trademark unfiltered and witty style, Robinson's latest collection is a call to arms. Outfitted with on-point pop culture references, these essays tackle a wide range of topics: giving feminism a tough-love talk on intersectionality, telling society's beauty standards to kick rocks, and calling foul on our culture's obsession with work. Robinson also gets personal, exploring money problems she's hidden from her parents, how dating is mainly a warmed-over bowl of hot mess, and definitely most important, meeting Bono not once, but twice. She's struggled with being a woman with a political mind and a woman with an ever-changing jeans size. She knows about trash because she sees it every day--and because she's seen roughly one hundred thousand hours of reality TV and zero hours of Schindler's List. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

Frederick Douglass: America's prophet by D.H. Dilbeck From his enslavement to freedom, Frederick Douglass was one of America's most extraordinary champions of liberty and equality. Throughout his long life, Douglass was also a man of profound religious conviction. In this concise and original biography, D. H. Dilbeck offers a provocative interpretation of Douglass's life through the lens of his faith. In an era when the role of religion in public life is as contentious as ever, Dilbeck provides essential new perspective on Douglass's place in American history. Suggested by Christina Wray, Teaching & Engagement

Frederick Douglass: prophet of freedom by David W. Blight The definitive, dramatic biography of the most important African American of the nineteenth century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era. Suggested by Christina Wray, Teaching & Engagement

Heavy: an American memoir by Kiese Laymon In this powerful and provocative memoir, genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon explores what the weight of a lifetime of secrets, lies, and deception does to a black body, a black family, and a nation teetering on the brink of moral collapse. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

Hidden in Plain View: the secret story of quilts and the underground railroad by Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard The fascinating story of a friendship, a lost tradition, and an incredible discovery, revealing how enslaved men and women made encoded quilts and then used them to navigate their escape on the Underground Railroad. In Hidden in Plain View, historian Jacqueline Tobin and scholar Raymond Dobard offer the first proof that certain quilt patterns, including a prominent one called the Charleston Code, were, in fact, essential tools for escape along the Underground Railroad. In 1993, historian Jacqueline Tobin met African American quilter Ozella Williams amid piles of beautiful handmade quilts in the Old Market Building of Charleston, South Carolina. With the admonition to "write this down," Williams began to describe how slaves made coded quilts and used them to navigate their escape on the Underground Railroad. But just as quickly as she started, Williams stopped, informing Tobin that she would learn the rest when she was "ready." During the three years it took for Williams's narrative to unfold—and as the friendship and trust between the two women grew—Tobin enlisted Raymond Dobard, Ph.D., an art history professor and well-known African American quilter, to help unravel the mystery. Suggested by Jacqueline Johnson, Cataloging

Hokum: an anthology of African-American humor edited by Paul Beatty This book is less a comprehensive collection than it is a mix-tape narrative dubbed by a trusted friend―a sampler of underground classics, rare grooves, and timeless summer jams, poetry and prose juxtaposed with the blues, hip-hop, political speeches, and the world's funniest radio sermon. Groundbreaking, fierce, and hilarious, this is a necessary anthology for any fan or student of American writing, with a huge range and a smart, political grasp of the uses of humor. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin’s story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions–affection, despair, and hope. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche. Suggested by Rachel Mulvihill, Teaching & Engagement

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet A. Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an autobiography by a young mother and fugitive slave published in 1861 by L. Maria Child, who edited the book for its author, Harriet Ann Jacobs. Jacobs used the pseudonym Linda Brent Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood", and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be. Suggested by Athena Hoeppner, Acquisitions & Collections

March. Book One. by John Lewis This graphic novel is Congressman John Lewis' first-hand account of his lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement. Book One spans Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a climax on the steps of City Hall. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington D.C., and from receiving beatings from state troopers, to receiving the Medal of Freedom awarded to him by Barack Obama, the first African-American president. (Book Two and Book Three are also available at the UCF Curriculum Materials Center in the Education complex) Suggested by Emma Gisclair, Curriculum Materials Center

Middle Passage by Charles Johnson It is 1830. Rutherford Calhoun, a newly treed slave and irrepressible rogue, is desperate to escape unscrupulous bill collectors and an impending marriage to a priggish schoolteacher. He jumps aboard the first boat leaving New Orleans, the Republic, a slave ship en route to collect members of a legendary African tribe, the Allmuseri. Thus begins a daring voyage of horror and self-discovery. Suggested by Brian Calhoun, Research & Information Services

Obama: An Intimate Portrait by Pete Souza Obama: An Intimate Portrait reproduces more than 300 of Souza's most iconic photographs with fine-art print quality in an oversize collectible format. Together they document the most consequential hours of the Presidency--including the historic image of President Obama and his advisors in the Situation Room during the bin Laden mission--alongside unguarded moments with the President's family, his encounters with children, interactions with world leaders and cultural figures, and more. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson Jade believes she must get out of her poor neighborhood if she's ever going to succeed. Her mother tells her to take advantage of every opportunity that comes her way. And Jade has: every day she rides the bus away from her friends and to the private school where she feels like an outsider, but where she has plenty of opportunities. But some opportunities she doesn't really welcome, like an invitation to join Women to Women, a mentorship program for "at-risk" girls. Just because her mentor is black and graduated from the same high school doesn't mean she understands where Jade is coming from. She's tired of being singled out as someone who needs help, someone people want to fix. Jade wants to speak, to create, to express her joys and sorrows, her pain and her hope. Maybe there are some things she could show other women about understanding the world and finding ways to be real, to make a difference. Suggested by Rebecca Hawk, Circulation

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is a science fiction masterpiece, an essay on the inexplicability of sexual attractiveness, and an examination of interstellar politics among far-flung worlds. First published in 1984, the novel's central issues—technology, globalization, gender, sexuality, and multiculturalism—have only become more pressing with the passage of time. Suggested by Brian Calhoun, Research & Information Services

The Color Purple by Alice Walker Published to unprecedented acclaim, The Color Purple established Alice Walker as a major voice in modern fiction. This is the story of two sisters—one a missionary in Africa and the other a child wife living in the South—who sustain their loyalty to and trust in each other across time, distance, and silence. Suggested by Jacqueline Johnson, Cataloging

The Fire this Time: a new generation speaks about race edited by Jesmyn Ward National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time. The Fire This Time is divided into three parts that shine a light on the darkest corners of our history, wrestle with our current predicament, and envision a better future. Of the eighteen pieces, ten were written specifically for this volume. In the fifty-odd years since Baldwin's essay was published, entire generations have dared everything and made significant progress. But the idea that we are living in the post-Civil Rights era, that we are a "post-racial" society is an inaccurate and harmful reflection of a truth the country must confront. Baldwin's "fire next time" is now upon us, and it needs to be talked about. Contributors include Carol Anderson, Jericho Brown, Garnette Cadogan, Edwidge Danticat, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Mitchell S. Jackson, Honoree Jeffers, Kima Jones, Kiese. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

The Hellfighters of Harlem: African-American soldiers who fought for the right to fight for their country by Bill Harris The author paints a lively portrait of the Hellfighters of Harlem--the Army's most celebrated all-black unit during World War I--chronicling their fierce struggle to be allowed to serve, their exploits in Europe, their influence on American culture, and their continuing contributions in World War II and in Iraq during the Gulf War. Suggested by Rich Gause, Research & Information Services

The Sellout by Paul Beatty A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality: the black Chinese restaurant. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

#ucf library #black history month #book suggestions #booklr #reading

8 notes · View notes

cinephiles-delight · 5 years

Text

“Avengers: Infinity War” and the Tradition of the Classical Hollywood Narrative

Avengers: Infinity War, the third film in the Avengers series and the nineteenth movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), represents the culmination of a decade’s worth of comic book storytelling and the dramatic conclusion to a great many number of conflicts, events, and character arcs within the MCU. In bringing together over twenty heroes, most of whom have starred in leading roles in their own films, the Russo brothers were faced with the tremendous challenge of drafting a compelling story that meaningfully developed the arcs of each of its extensive cast of characters and allowed them to interact in an organic manner. To meet this challenge, they decided to draw on strategies from traditional cinema narrative and to adapt them to the needs of crafting a massive modern blockbuster. To that end, while Infinity War employs several of the same narrative strategies as traditional Hollywood films, the circumstances of its creation and the artistic pressures on the film led the filmmakers to utilize a sort of “intensified” classical narrative structure that elevates the film’s form to match the power of its spectacle. And though its basic premise may be high concept and relatively simple (antagonist attempts to collect a group of items while the protagonists fight to prevent this), the execution of Infinity War’s storytelling on the micro level is actually quite complex, relying on both classic formal elements and character investment from previous MCU installments to create meanings not fully derived from the film as it stands by itself.

Most of the formal elements of Avengers: Infinity War can be said to be taken directly from the classical Hollywood tradition, though the film may not superficially appear to have much in common with a classical Hollywood studio film. As a spectacular blockbuster, it adheres almost completely to the arguments set forth by Geoff King in his article Spectacle, Narrative, and the Spectacular Hollywood Blockbuster regarding the formal conventions of an epic Hollywood film, specifically that “they tell carefully organized, more or less linear cause/effect stories organized around central characters” (King 120). In line with that, the plot of Infinity War is strongly driven by character-centered causality, and every action taken in the film is clearly motivated. For example, part of the Russos’ strategy in juggling so many characters in one film was to divide the cast of characters into several groups, separated in space, that would battle Thanos at various instances, but to do that they had to write into the plot direct causes that would separate the heroes. This way, when the audience asks themselves “why are these characters where they are”, there is always an apparent and reasonable answer that relies on the previous actions of characters in the story. To illustrate, consider the following line of questioning: “Why are Iron Man, Doctor Strange, and Spiderman fighting Thanos on Titan?” Because they hitched a ride on one of Thanos’ spaceships that was going to Titan. “How did they come to be on the spaceship?” Ebony Maw had abducted Strange and was holding him captive onboard, so Stark and Spiderman staged a rescue mission. “Why did Maw abduct Strange?” Because Dr. Strange was in possession of the Time Stone, which Thanos needed to accomplish his goal of universal rebalancing. These sort of tight causal chains hold true at every juncture of the plot and there are little to no instances of coincidence progressing the plot, both of which are conventions of a classical Hollywood narrative. Even the events that may seem coincidental are motivated when investigated further: take the Guardians literally “running into” Thor, for example, which may seem like a rather large coincidence considering the vast expanse of space. We then, however, remember that the Guardians were called to the site of the wreckage of the Asgardian refugee vessel by a distress signal, the very same distress signal whose audio was played over the opening titles of the film. The recurring significance of minor plot elements such as these reinforces the idea that Infinity War takes advantage of the classical Hollywood technique of employing a tight narrative with strong character-centered causality.

The use of classical Hollywood storytelling strategies, particularly the aforementioned, is contingent upon having characters with clearly defined personality traits and goals that will act in a predictable manner, another area in which Infinity War follows traditional formal patterns. Take each character individually, and you will find that they all possess easily definable traits and goals: Iron Man is war-weary and seeking to minimize the human fallout of his actions while neutralizing the threat Thanos poses, Dr. Strange is fiercely rational and every action he takes will be to defend the Time Stone, Thor is stubbornly persistent and desperate for revenge, driven by righteous indignation at the murder of his brother and best friend, Star-Lord is “plucky” and self-centered, and anytime he acts it will be in a self-serving manner (either for profit or revenge), Captain America is a loyal soldier standing up against oppression of the innocent, etc. However, what sets Infinity War apart from a stand-alone classical Hollywood film in this regard is that it has a decade’s worth of stories from which to draw inter-textual significance and meanings, heightening our sense of familiarity with and investment in the characters. Not only is the viewer already familiar with the characterizations of Infinity War’s main players from previous films in the MCU, but also almost every character interaction or conflict in the film is written so as to reinforce them. We know Thor to be somewhat foolhardy and willing to take high personal risks in the hopes of a greater reward from events in the past films (such as in Thor when he throws himself into the mouth of a monstrous beast just to come out fighting through the other end) so it is no surprise to the audience when he decides to attempt taking the full force of a neutron star in order to forge himself a new weapon. His actions in Infinity War are incredibly dangerous and borderline suicidal, yet we are not surprised that he takes them because they do not contradict what we know about Thor’s personality from earlier Marvel movies. When Iron Man talks Dr. Strange into letting the spaceship take them to Titan in order to bring the fight to Thanos and avoid collateral damage to Earth, we understand that Tony is making this decision based on experiences from the previous films that we have seen shape his psyche. We remember the violent fates and horrific deaths of all those who perished in the Avengers’ battles that were shown to Tony as evidence of the necessity of the Sokovia Accords’ in Civil War, and we remember the lengths to which he went and the price that he paid in that film to ensure appropriate oversight was ratified and implemented. When Tony resorts to quips and one-liners in the face of an attack on New York by two of Thanos’ henchmen (“Earth is closed today”, “get lost, Squidward”), we are reminded that, in previous Marvel films, Tony has again and again resorted to cheap humor as a defense mechanism against having to cope with the gravity of a situation, and we remember that he has, for years, suffered anxiety attacks triggered by the original attack on New York and has been dreading the possible return of hostile alien forces. In almost every scene that features the Guardians of the Galaxy, each member of the team typically delivers one or more jokes, reminding the audience that these characters are meant to be, in some capacity, the comic relief (similar to how their films function in the MCU as a whole). Captain America attempts to fight Thanos in hand-to-hand combat with nothing but his bare fists and a pair of shields, consistent with what the audience knows of his never-give-up attitude and willingness to fight the good fight, no matter how outmatched he is (think of the back-alley beatdown he receives in First Avenger and his declaration that, “I can do this all day”). These are only a couple of examples from the film, but the same types of observations could be made about any member of the massive ensemble, and each demonstrates how the film as a whole takes advantage of the classical Hollywood convention of clearly-defined characters with unambiguous goals, while enriching this convention with added meanings by incorporating and reinforcing character traits and goals that the audience is already familiar with from the prior films in the franchise.

The film also makes use of several motifs to draw thematic parallels between story events and heighten the emotional impact of certain scenes, another technique common among classical Hollywood films. Most notable are two examples of dialogue motifs, concerning the relationships between Vision and Scarlet Witch and Vision and Captain America. When we first meet Wanda and Vision in the film, they are sharing a hotel room, and Vision asks Wanda to use her powers to try and see if she can determine if the Mind Stone is attempting to communicate with him. As she is using her powers to examine the stone, Vision asks what she feels, to which she replies, “All I feel is you”. Later, at the climax of the film, Vision demands that Wanda use her powers to destroy the stone (and consequently to kill him), and as he is reassuring her that it’s alright, he insists that he won’t feel any pain, saying “All I feel is you”. This simple phrase takes on a new and heart-wrenching significance, making the moment painfully bittersweet by using her own words to express that she could never hurt him and that any extension of her (including a lethal dose of her powers), is still a part of her and as such could only engender love within him. The second use of the dialogue motif/variation strategy occurs when Captain America informs Vision that forcing someone to kill him in order to prevent Thanos from collecting all six stones is too high a price to pay for victory, declaring that “We don’t trade lives”. In the climactic Battle of Wakanda, Captain America goes to rescue Vision from an attack by a member of the Black Order, and as he is fighting off the attacker Cap urges Vision to run away and save himself, leaving Cap at the mercy of his assailant. The camera follows their fight for a while, not showing Vision, so the audience assumes that he has fled, but when Cap is pinned to the ground and about to be killed Vision rams a spear through the attacker’s chest, reminding Steve that, “We don’t trade lives, Captain”. When he repeats Cap’s line from earlier in the film, the audience becomes more endeared of both Vision and Captain America, as we realize that not only was Steve right to take a hard-liner stance on the value of life, but also that Vision has grown in his ability to weigh issues of morality and empathy, in part thanks to Cap’s teaching.

After working through these examples from Infinity War, one may come to the conclusion that though, yes, the film does draw on the history of the MCU and established characterizations in order to be able to skip over some exposition and emphasize character decisions through imbued inter-textual meanings, on the whole its form takes roughly the same shape as the movies of the classical Hollywood era. This once again falls in line with Geoff King’s arguments and supports his assessment that, “Hollywood blockbusters… continue to invest strongly in narrative dynamics” (King 120). And while many epic CGI battle sequences define the visual spectacle and ostentation of the film, it is the strong, character-driven causal chain story structure that allows Infinity War to accomplish the herculean artistic task of delivering a visually dazzling crossover piece of unprecedented magnitude while still telling a compelling personal narrative that develops story arcs for a massive ensemble of heroes.

#mcu #marvel #marvel cinematic universe #infinity war #thanos #iron man #captain america #movies #movie review #hollywood #narrative #movie analysis #avengers #avengers infinity war

14 notes · View notes

xeno-aligned · 6 years

Link

copy & pasted under the read more in order to have a local copy.

A Brief His and Herstory of Butch And Femme

BY: JEM ZERO 16 DEC 2017

When America’s LGBTQ+ folk started coming out of the closet in the 1950s, the underground scene was dominated by working class people who had less to lose if they were outed. Butch/femme presentation arose as a way for lesbians to identify each other, also serving as a security measure when undercover cops tried to infiltrate the local scenes. Butch women exhibited dapper and dandy aesthetics, and came to be known for being aggressive because they took protective roles during raids and other examples of homophobic violence. The image of the butch lesbian became a negative stereotypes for lesbians as a whole, leaving out femme lesbians, who are (pretty insultingly) considered undetectable as lesbians due to their feminine presentation.

In modern times there’s less need for strict adherence to these roles; instead, they become heritage. A great deal of political rebellion is wrapped up in each individual aesthetic. Butch obviously involves rejecting classically feminine gender expectations, while femme fights against their derogatory connotations.

But while butch/femme has been a part of lesbian culture, these terms and identities are not exclusive to queer women. Many others in the LGBTQ community utilize these signifiers for themselves, including “butch queen” or “femme daddy.” Butch and femme have different meanings within queer subcultures, and it’s important to understand the reasons they were created and established.

The Etymology

The term “lesbian” derives from the island on which Sappho lived—if you didn’t already guess, she was a poet who wrote extensively about lady-lovin’. Before Lesbos lent its name to lesbians, the 1880s described attraction between women as Sapphism. In 1925, “lesbian” was officially recorded as the word for a female sodomite. (Ick.) Ten years before that, “bisexual” was defined as "attraction to both sexes."

In upcoming decades, Sapphic women would start tearing down the shrouds that obscured the lives of queer women for much of recorded history. Come the ‘40s and ‘50s, butch and femme were coined, putting names to the visual and behavioral expression that could be seen in pictures as early as 1903. So, yeah—Western Sapphic women popularized these terms, but the conversation doesn’t end there, nor did it start there.

Before femme emerged as its own entity, multiple etymological predecessors were used to describe gender nonconforming people. Femminiello was a non-derogatory Italian term that referred to a feminine person who was assigned male—this could be a trans woman, an effeminate gay man, or the general queering of binarist norms. En femme derives from French, and was used to describe cross-dressers.

Butch, first used in 1902 to mean "tough youth," has less recorded history. Considering how “fem” derivatives were popularized for assigned male folks, one might attribute this inequality to the holes in history where gender-defying assigned female folks ought to be.

The first time these concepts were used to specifically indicate women was the emergence of Sapphic visibility in twentieth century. This is the ground upon which Lesbian Exclusivism builds its tower, and the historical and scientific erasure of bisexual women is where it crumbles. Seriously, did we forget that was a thing?

The assumption that any woman who defies gender norms is automatically a lesbian relies on the perpetuation of misogynist, patriarchal stereotypes against bisexual women. A bisexual woman is just as likely to suffer in a marriage with a man, or else be mocked as an unlovable spinster. A woman who might potentially enjoy a man is not precluded from nonconformist gender expression. Many famous gender nonconforming women were bisexual—La Maupin (Julie d'Aubigny), for example.

Most records describing sexual and romantic attraction between women were written by men, and uphold male biases. What happens, then, when a woman is not as openly lascivious as the ones too undeniably bisexual to silence? Historically, if text or art depicts something the dominant culture at the time disagrees with, the evidence is destroyed. Without voices of the Sapphists themselves, it’s impossible to definitively draw a line between lesbians and bisexuals within Sapphic history.

Beyond White Identities

Another massive hole in the Lesbian Exclusivist’s defenses lies in the creeping plague that is the Mainstream White Gay; it lurks insidiously, hauling along the mangled tatters of culture that was stolen from Queer and Trans People of Colour (QTPOC). In many documents, examples provided of Sapphic intimacy are almost always offered from the perspective of white cis women, leaving huge gaps where women of color, whether trans or cis, and nonbinary people were concerned. This is the case despite the fact that some of the themes we still celebrate as integral to queer culture were developed by Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ folk during the Harlem Renaissance, which spanned approximately from 1920 to 1935.

A question I can’t help but ask is: Where do queer Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color fit into the primarily white butch/femme narrative? Does it mean anything that the crackdown on Black queer folk seemed to coincide with the time period when mainstream lesbianism adopted butch and femme as identifiers?

Similar concepts to butch/femme exist throughout the modern Sapphic scene. Black women often identify as WLW (Women-Loving-Women), and use terms like “stud” and “aggressive femme.” Some Asian queer women use “tomboy” instead of butch. Derivatives and subcategories abound, sometimes intersecting with asexual and trans identities. “Stone butch” for dominant lesbians who don’t want to receive sexual stimulation; “hard femme” as a gender-inclusive, fat-positive, QTPOC-dominated political aesthetic; “futch” for the in-betweenies who embody both butch and femme vibes. These all center women and nonbinary Sapphics, but there’s still more.

Paris is Burning, a documentary filmed about New York City ball culture in the 1980s, describes butch queens among the colourful range of identities prevalent in that haven of QTPOC queerness. Despite having a traditionally masculine physique, the gay male butch queen did not stick to gender expectations from straight society or gay culture. Instead, he expertly twisted up his manly features with women’s clothing and accessories, creating a persona that was neither explicitly masculine nor feminine.

Butch Queens Up in Pumps, a book by Marlon M. Bailey, expounds upon their presence within inner city Detroit’s Ballroom scene, its cover featuring a muscular gay man in a business casual shirt paired with high heels. Despite this nuance, butch remains statically defined as a masculine queer woman, leaving men of color out of the conversation.

For many QTPOC, especially those who transcend binary gender roles, embracing the spirit of butch and femme is inextricable with their racial identity. Many dark-skinned people are negatively portrayed as aggressive and hypermasculine, which makes it critical to celebrate the radical softness that can accompany femme expressions. Similarly, the intrinsic queerness of butch allows some nonbinary people to embrace the values and aesthetics that make them feel empowered without identifying themselves as men.

Butch, Femme, and Gender

It’s pretty clear to me that the voices leading the Lesbian Exclusive argument consistently fail to account for where butch and femme have always, in some form, represented diverse gender expression for all identities.

‘Butch’ and ‘femme’ began to die out in the 1970s when Second Wave Feminism and Lesbian Separatism came together to form a beautiful baby, whom they named “Gender Is Dead.” White, middle class cis women wrestled working class QTWOC out of the limelight, claiming that masculine gender expression was a perversion of lesbian identity. The assassination attempt was largely unsuccessful, however: use of these identifiers surged back to life in the ‘80s and ‘90s, now popularized outside of class and race barriers.

Looking at all this put together, I have to say that it’s a mystery to me why so many lesbians, primarily white, believe that their history should take precedence over… everyone else that makes up the spectrum of LGBTQ+ experiences, even bi/pan Sapphics in same-gender relationships. If someone truly believes that owning butch/femme is more important than uniting and protecting all members of the Sapphic community from the horrors of homophobic and gendered oppression, maybe they’re the one who shouldn’t be invited to the party.

As a nonbinary lesbian, I have experienced my share of time on the flogging-block. I empathize strongly with the queer folks being told that these cherished identities are not theirs to claim. Faced with this brutal, unnecessary battle, I value unity above all else. There’s no reason for poor trans women, nonbinary Black femmes, bisexual Asian toms, gay Latino drag queens, or any other marginalized and hurting person to be left out of the dialogue that is butch and femme, with all its wonderful deconstructions of mainstream heteronormative culture.

It is my Christmas wish that the Lesbian Exclusivist Tower is torn down before we open the new chapter in history that is 2018. Out of everything the LGBTQ+ community has to worry about already, petty infighting shouldn’t be entertained—especially when its historical foundation is so flimsy. Queering gender norms has always been the heart of butch/femme expression, and that belongs to all of us.

#lesbian #butch #femme #bi-#queer history #fenpost #wlw #sapphic #also #nlw #cause the author is a nb lesbian

380 notes · View notes

itspatsy · 6 years

Note

Part of me thinks JJS2 didn't want to acknowledge they'd majorly dropped the ball on race in S1, so in S2 they amped up the "Jessica is a part of a minority group" aspect, had a black woman say "you people," to turn the narrative even further away from Jessica's own white privilege, and destroyed Trish, who was a viable target because she wasn't a traumatized white woman like Jessica - she was a RICH white woman. And they were desperate to avoid their fuck-ups so they made Patsy a patsy.

okay, so this turned into a long, generally incoherent rant that starts with “this show absolutely fails at dealing with race” and ends with “wtf were they even trying to do with trish’s story,” and it should probably be separate posts or better yet just not posted at all, but it’s all generally related to this ask, so whatever. it’s a mess, i have a lot of confusing thoughts, ignore me.

rather than acknowledging the mistakes of s1 regarding race and trying to course correct, the show definitely seemed like it decided to double down. before the season started, as it was becoming clear they were going to do this “prejudice against powered people” thing, i was really weary about how they would handle it, and apparently my instinct was right.

to start with, it felt kind of pulled out of nowhere. realistically, sure, people would be weary of powered individuals, but it hasn’t really been fully built into the fabric of the mcu or the netflix mcu as a realized form of bigotry. it was also really only a thematic element in the first half of the season, and they made no effort to really explore it and its implications before they tossed it out and changed gears. it was just there to be used as a device for conflict and drama.

and it’s such a ridiculous thing when you only have one powered person in the show that’s experiencing that bigotry and she’s a skinny white heterosexual cis woman? like, the most direct parallel for this wasn’t misogyny or homophobia, but racism, and they didn’t try to tell multiple perspectives about it. having a black woman say “you people” at jessica was the most tone deaf bullshit, like, i could not fucking believe it (and then they later killed her off in the most disposable way, which is a whole other issue, and something this show has done repeatedly). they had oscar, a moc that had been in prison (of course), start out the same way, seemingly expressing bigotry and getting “righteously” called out for it by jessica. then there was pryce, another moc, aggressively going after jessica, trying to steal her business, calling her an animal because of her anger and powers, and he “never takes no for an answer” and jessica gets to be like “how rape-y of you” in what was supposed to be a moment of #femaleempowerment. but it just feels like white lady empowerment at the expense of poc.

but hey, gotta pile on to show how very oppressed jessica is in every aspect of her life, right? which, yes, she has absolutely been oppressed and violated and traumatized, and that is so important and real and should never be diminished, but the show didn’t attempt to contend with the ways she’s also privileged and the ways she’s been able to use it to her advantage and having her acknowledge it (including the fact that having powers, being able to protect herself, is an incredible privilege instead of only the awful burden it’s been portrayed as and she’s always interpreted it as). i probably wouldn’t have even said they’d need to explicitly deal with this under other circumstances, if they were focused on telling a different story, but they’re the ones that decided to make analogies to racist prejudice and have poc express it towards a white woman, so they put the expectation on themselves to tell a nuanced story about oppression and privilege and intersectionality, and they didn’t do that at all. they clearly weren’t actually interested in talking about prejudice in a serious, meaningful way.

but here’s the even bigger issue: the show tries to present itself as being feminist, but it can’t be feminist when there are no women of color in main roles or even supporting roles. it makes no effort to tell the stories and perspectives and experiences of woc, and that is an absolute failure. it’s inexcusable that they made no effort to fix this. it absolutely doesn’t help that the woc that are actually present in small roles keep getting killed off unceremoniously. i had some hopes when i saw that they had females directors that actually included some woc, but i don’t think they have any in the writing room, and that matters SO MUCH. it makes such a difference, and they could’ve probably avoided so many of these missteps if they just had other voices represented in the creative process. i just saw a headline with melissa rosenberg where she says, “oh yeah, i totally agree with the criticism we don’t have enough women of color,” okay, except this is not a new criticism, people were saying the same thing after s1, so if she agrees with it and cares about it, why didn’t she do anything about it while they were making s2?

the show has sort of attempted with men of color, in that they actually exist in the cast, but it doesn’t handle them well at all, some of which i mentioned before. then you’ve got malcolm. the only lead character of color in s2. he was set up to be the moral center of the show, but there was no real follow through. he was ultimately treated like an afterthought in most situations. he just? disappeared? constantly? when shit went down? i lost count of the number of times i was like, “umm, where the fuck did malcolm go? is he all right?” and the characters around him were pretty consistently awful to him. jessica almost always treated him like shit. his relationship with trish was a train wreck they both kind of contributed to, but trish turned on him pretty epically, and the emotional fallout for him wasn’t really dealt with. and the writers told his “proxy addiction” story in the laziest, grossest way possible (sex? really? that’s all they could think up? and then to use it as excuse to have him treat women like they’re disposable and faceless?). they just clearly have no respect for him.

it’s such a mess, and s2 was probably worse than s1 in this regard, and there’s no reason it needed to be. this isn’t an impossible thing. when people tell you, “hey, you fucked up. this is how,” you don’t double down or pretend it didn’t happen, you listen and you do better. this should be a show for everyone, not just white women.

turning to trish, since you mentioned her: i’ve mostly tried to avoid post-s2 reviews, but one of the few i read described her character arc as a critique of the white savior mindset. i highly doubt that’s what the show had in mind. as we established above, careful thoughtful commentary about race is not this show’s strong suit, and writing a critique of the white savior mold wouldn’t even occur to them. i could kind of see where the reviewer was coming from, there were some flavors of white savior-ism in trish’s behavior, but they had to pretend she had never experienced an ounce of hardship in order to make it fit. this was basically the conclusion: “trish is rich and has a family and could never under poor traumatized orphaned jessica’s life.” nevermind that money doesn’t stop you from being abused and traumatized, that a family member was her primary abuser, and that living in poverty and wanting money was the motivation for her abuser to sell her out. this take also ignores the thing driving trish the most. it wasn’t “i want to help people, and they should listen to me because i know best” or even “i want to be special, i want to matter.” it was “nobody touches me anymore unless i want them to.” she was tired of being the victim, of never feeling safe. that’s why she wanted powers. it was muddied by the writing, but it really is as straight-forward as that.

i think trish being rich has likely had some influence in the audience diminishing how she was violated and abused in most every kind of way (physically, emotionally, sexually, financially), but i definitely don’t think the show went after her for being a rich famous white lady as a cover for its various racial fuck-ups. i don’t think the show even really tried to contend with or acknowledge her rich white privilege anymore than it tried to contend with jessica’s privilege. if anything, it tried to do the opposite by showing her to be belittled and demeaned and disrespected by everyone around her, similar to how they were upping the ante on jessica’s oppression by having her face bigotry about her powers. granted, it’s clear the audience had an easier time relating to jessica (probably partly due to the money and fame aspect again; also partly because the narrative backed her up more: for instance, the dynamic of having trish envy the privilege of jessica’s power, but the show seeming to say “oh, gosh, trish just doesn’t understand it’s not a privilege at all, it’s a terrible burden” even though that’s kind of ridiculous, as i mentioned earlier). the execution was shitty, but they were definitely still trying to show that trish’s life was not good and people treated her like she was nothing and worthless in a way that paralleled jessica’s treatment.

tbh, rather than punishing trish for being rich or whatever, i sometimes got the vibe they were actually punishing her for daring to have ambition, but that probably wasn’t on purpose, just an unfortunate implication of the way they treated her in general. at first, i’d assumed they were trying to tell a story about addiction and the ways it can destroy your life, and they just sucked at handling it with any kind of thoughtfulness, but now i think that’s being too generous. they didn’t even really try to grapple with the reality of her addiction and mental illness, so much as use it as an excuse to make her more unstable and put her in a position where she’d keep escalating things.

i read an interview before the season dropped where melissa rosenberg talked about female anger (or, as the reality of the show is, white female anger), and anger definitely was a theme for all the female characters. if you recognize trish’s main motivator as mentioned above (protecting herself from further abuses), you can see where it fits into this theme, and that it wasn’t just senseless anger and was driven by vulnerabilities and never feeling safe. so, i don’t know, i guess trish’s story was maybe intended to be about an abused woman finally being so goddamn fed up with victimhood and disrespect and belittlement that she decided to take what she needed instead of quietly waiting for other people to acknowledge her humanity and treat her accordingly. that she finally said “fuck it” and tried to find her own power and become her own hero. except, if that was the story, the way it was executed was, wow… exceptionally awful and not remotely clear and not at all done in a positive way. a storyline like that could’ve had the potential to be powerful and affirming and perhaps empowering (once again, for white women at least), but that’s not the story they ended up telling.

like, i honestly don’t get what i’m supposed to take away from it. they seemingly gave her what she was after, but they spent the entirety of the season shitting on her and had her destroy everything good in her life to get what she believed she needed, which was really just to feel safe. what’s the point here exactly? you do you boo and fuck everybody else because it’ll pay off? don’t have dreams and ambitions for yourself because they’ll make you heartless and selfish and you’ll hurt other people? the desire for power always corrupts even when you’ve been a victim and just want the power to protect yourself? trauma doesn’t go away and can make you do terrible self-destructive shit that you think is helping you but actually isn’t? drug addicts are awful, amirite? what. are. they. trying. to. say?

#anonymous #replies #my thoughts about s2 are a constantly shapeshifting shadow monster #and it's hard to settle into any specific feelings that aren't just 'honestly fuck the writers in general and m rosenberg in particular'

10 notes · View notes

queermediastudies · 3 years

Text

Creating Identities: The Coming Out Narrative of Love, Simon

Love, Simon is a 2018 film adaption of the book Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, written by Becky Albertalli. The film follows the life of Simon Spier, a seventeen-year-old closeted high school senior and his relationship with his parents and younger sister, his friends Nick, Abby, and Leah, his blackmailer Martin, and his anonymous crush who goes by the alias of Blue. Simon himself knows he is gay and has known since he was thirteen. However, he has never had the opportunity to engage in this part of himself, as he has been in the closet for the last four years and surrounded by assumedly only straight friends and family (I say “assumedly,” because, later in a companion novel the audience learns that Leah and Abby are both bisexuals). Love, Simon, both as a book and a movie, explores concepts centering mainly around aspects of coming out and being gay in a heteronormative society, the production and engagement of queer identities amongst queer people who are in “the closet,” and finally touches on issues surrounding who is allowed to create and produce queer stories.

youtube

The movie begins with Simon narrating his life, explaining that he is a typical high schooler with a great family and amazing friends. However, Simon then reveals he has “one huge-ass secret,” he is gay. Moments up to Simon revealing this secret to the audience, we see him looking longingly at a boy across the street who is doing yard work and is interrupted by his dad, who jokes about Simon being in a relationship with Gigi Hadid. While this moment is deceptively simple, throughout the film, many characters make similar comments about sexuality. For instance, later on, when Simon and his family are watching the Bachelor, his father makes numerous comments about how the Bachelor is gay and describes him as “so fruity.” While Simon knows his family would still accept him for being gay, it is moments like this that queer audiences can relate to, and the exact reason that Simon does not feel comfortable coming out to his father. These scenes and jokes reflect both the dominant, mainstream ideology of heteronormativity and the reality many queer people face daily. Additionally, scenes such as this or the one between Simon and Leah, where they are guessing the identity of the anonymous gay classmate and Leah, assumes a classmate is gay because he likes Les Mis, which demonstrates contemporary stereotypes of gay people and the reinforcement of gender roles that support these stereotypes.

While we do see instances of Simon’s queer identity, it is not until Simon discovers Blue on the school’s blog, Creek Secrets, after reading Blue’s post about the ups and downs of being closeted, that Simon finally gets to engage queer identity work (Cavalcante 2017, 12-15). Queer identity work is “the collective labor of crafting, articulating, and performing LGBT identities” (Cavalcante 2017, 13). Throughout the film, we learn how Simon and Blue can engage in crafting and performing their identities as gay teenagers in the closet through their developing relationship over a series of shared emails. The boys have conversations about the dynamics of coming out being only for queer people (there is a hilarious, imaginative sequence where Simon’s friends come out as heterosexual out to their parents), college as a fresh start to be open, and the difficulties of being in the closet.

youtube

Although it is cute to see the developing relationship between Blue and Simon, at one point, Martin, another classmate, screenshots the emails and weaponize Simon’s sexuality against him by blackmailing him into helping him win Abby’s affections. Ultimately Simon agrees, fearing that if the emails and his identity were leaked, Blue would be scared off and goes through with interfering with his friends’ lives. Predictably this all goes wrong, and a hurt Martin exposes Simon’s sexuality anyway. As a consequence of being out to the whole school, there is an instance in the lunchroom where Simon and Ethan – an openly gay classmate – are bullied. Although the teachers and vice principal are on Simon and Ethan’s side, their bullies are told the school expects them to be tolerant. Walters (2015, 2) states, “it doesn’t make sense to say that we tolerate something unless we think that it wrong in some way.” This quote is important in its relation to Simon’s fear of coming out because he does not want to be treated differently or “tolerated,” Like many other queer people, he just wants to be himself and accepted. After this, the film quickly wraps itself up, with Simon becomes more confident with himself after some heartfelt conversations with his parents, reconciling with his friends, making a public post about his sexuality, and asking Blue to meet him at the Ferris wheel. In general, the last half of the movie does feel rushed, which is a shame because Simon seems to lose everything and get it all back too quickly.

youtube

While overall, I think the film succeeds on many marks relating to a more positive coming out story save for the part about blackmail and outing someone, there are moments in the film that can be perceived as problematic. Firstly, while I disagree with many of the points made in Ashley Kim’s (2018) review of Love, Simon whereby she explains why she sees it as a poor representation for queer stories, I can agree with her that the scene in which Simon learns Blue’s identity does feel like a “spectacle,” as she calls it. While it is nice that Simon has support, the fact that so many of his peers are watching him riding the Ferris wheel waiting for Blue felt strange, especially when one girl – who thankfully the other characters stopped – tried recording the whole event. It just felt odd that so many people were intruding on this personal experience, especially since I feel like having that many people watching would have made it difficult for Blue to want to reveal his identity to Simon (since this was a conflict throughout the movie of Blue being not ready to do so).

youtube

Another issue with the representation in this movie is that although there is a diverse cast in Love, Simon, it would have been nice to see a focus outside of the one placed on the coming-out narrative. In Dow’s (2018, page) analysis on the visibility politics on television, she mentions that there is a refusal to “recognize the existence of organized, systemic, or politically oppressive homophobia.” Similar to the Ellen episodes, I think while coming out stories are still necessary forms of representation, the lack of intersectionality with any other issues (besides two instances of Simon and another gay character getting bullied), there is no discussion about the repercussions of being gay in a heteronormative society. The biggest issue for Simon is coming to terms with himself and his identity, and the fact that he was outed to the whole school. Although the film does address that Simon is privileged with having an accepting family, I would have loved if this theme was explored more.

youtube

Finally, the last issue is about my point on how Love, Simon represents a debate about who can produce queer movies and stories. At the time of the movie and book, Albertalli was assumed by many to be a straight, cisgender woman. However, since then, Albertalli (2020) in a post called “I know I’m Late,” discusses how at the time she was questioning her sexuality, but so many people had already assumed she was just a straight, cisgender, white woman writing about a community she isn’t apart of. Albertalli also brings up how it is fair to question the production of queer stories and want more queer authors, but asks audiences to recognize not every queer author is out of the closet. Going forwards in our studies of queer media production, I wonder how we can reconcile queer content made by people who are in the closet and those who are straight and profiting on a community that is not their own.

References:

Albertalli, B. (2020, August 31). I know I'm late. Retrieved October 30, 2020, from https://medium.com/@rebecca.albertalli/i-know-im-late-9b31de339c62

Cavalcante, Andre (2017). “Breaking into Transgender Life: Transgender Audiences’ Experiences With ‘First of Its Kind’ Visibility in Popular Media.” Communication, Culture & Critique, 1-18.

Dow, Bonnie (2001). “Ellen, Television, and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 18(2), 123-140.

Kim, A. (2018, April 06). Stop praising Love, Simon. Retrieved October 30, 2020, from http://cu-sentry.com/2018/04/04/stop-praising-love-simon/

Walters, Suzanna D. (2014) “Introduction: That’s so Gay! (Or is it!?)” in The Tolerance Trap: How God, Genes, and Good Intentions are Sabotaging Gay Equality, 1-16.

#QueerMedia #Love Simon #coming out narratives #queer media production #The Tolerance Trap #Simon Spier #queer identity work #Queer Movie Review

6 notes · View notes

art-in-the-age · 3 years

Text

Part 2: Witnessing Conflict

Young people are increasingly getting their news through the lens of social media, which makes it that much more essential to understand the way different platforms refract information. For as long as people have used social media, the content posted has reflected current events more generally, something that is becoming especially acute as time passes. Tumblr users bore witness to several conflicts that unfolded across the world in the year 2014, something Rosemary Pennington chronicled in her article in the International Communication Gazette, “Witnessing the 2014 Gaza War in Tumblr”, through which she explores how several Muslim Tumblr users interacted with and witnessed the violence occurring towards Palestinians during the 2014 Gaza War. She writes in her introduction, “Traditionally, it has been witnessing that can make us feel close to those suffering through the violence we see in media as well as others we imagine are in the audience witnessing the event with us,” (Pennington). Tumblr as a platform provides both a means to witness the violence, as well as a community of fellow witnesses, inspiring feelings of closeness that would heighten emotions. In the case of the Gaza War, the bloggers take note of the fact that the mainstream media centers the experiences of Israelis and largely neglects Palestinian suffering in the construction of their narrative (Pennington). Through the usage of Tumblr, Palestinians can share photos and narratives that reflect their experiences, which can then be disseminated by bloggers elsewhere in the world, such as those who were the subject of Pennington’s research. The platform provides the space to construct an Oppositional Gaze, in the words of bell hooks. hooks writes of the oppositional gaze, “By courageously looking, we defiantly declared: ‘Not only will I stare, I want my look to change reality.’ Even in the worse circumstances of domination, the ability to manipulate one’s gaze in the face of structures of domination that would contain it, opens up the possibility of agency,” (hooks 116). Palestinians are able to control their gaze in a way that stares back at those who are oppressing them, counteracting the narrative that they are the sole aggressors and thus giving them agency. Tumblr elevated the narratives of Palestinians to the point where they could be held in conversation with and in contradiction to those pushed by wealthy media conglomerates. Communities centered around sending aid can also be formed on the platform which is only possible through the shared experience of witnessing. Pennington posits with her research that Tumblr was a crucial piece in raising global awareness of the situation in Gaza, a lasting impact of the platform.

Six years later, the world is no less familiar with incredible amounts of violence and suffering, especially as we live through the COVID-19 pandemic. Relegated to our houses, many Americans turned to TikTok for entertainment but found within it a well of resources for activists as the nation erupted in protests this summer in response to the killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans. TikTok, like Tumblr, allowed the average citizen to both bear witness to violence and share their narrative of the situation without it being refracted through the lens of a mainstream media source. TikTok, however, is still plagued by the same issues endemic to the platform; All content distribution is of course driven by the algorithm, which incentivizes outrageous or highly emotional content, raising the stakes to a point that may desensitize viewers after a certain amount of information. The algorithm can also end up prioritizing only a few voices, typically those who already have a platform. This in turn creates its own hierarchy which, although independent from traditional news networks, is still exclusionary. A lot of the information viewed is not controlled, as the primary interface on the app is the For You Page; if the average user is not putting in effort to control the type of information and content they are viewing, it’s not likely that they will put in effort to ensure that it is accurate or unbiased.

TikTok and Tumblr users alike are fond of their image-based communities and continue to source them on the same platform that they source their news, the unintended consequence of which being the fascist aestheticization of politics as theorized by Benjamin in his 1935 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. He writes, “All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war,” and later continues, “Mankind, which in Homer’s time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic,” (Benjamin 19-20) In the context of 2020 civil unrest, on TikTok, the juxtaposition of violent oppression with daily vlogs from teens in thrifted clothes dancing around big cities has led to both being subsumed into a dominant identity that holds “activism” as a core component. To truly be a member of the alt-TikTok community, one should be a self-identified leftist and activist. Both are noble ideas, and pushing for more accessible leftist literature is not a bad thing, but the issue arises when those looking for membership in the community are not willing or unable to do the work. The process of unlearning carceral understandings of justice and the subtle ways in which racism is intertwined in our everyday lives is a conscious, long, and oftentimes difficult process, that teens are undertaking with the ultimate goal being membership in a community of which the spokespeople are predominantly white and wealthy. The shortcut has become adding “BLM” and “ACAB” to a user’s bio, signaling to other users that they are socially aware. Memes that consisted of a cartoon character, such as Hello Kitty, saying “ACAB” were added to profiles, repositioning the acronym with long traditions in anti-racist and leftist activism as an aestheticized trend. The acronym is not entirely devoid of meaning, because leftist circles extend far beyond the teenage communities on TikTok, but to this new generation, adding ACAB to a bio means less a radical resistance to the carceral state and more a display of performative activism. This practice has led to the acronym being reappropriated into the pejorative term “Emily ACAB”, which typically refers to a wealthy, white teenage girl attempting to be performatively woke without renouncing any of her privileges. Emily ACAB is the rebellious teen daughter of the Karen who uses a movement meant to protect the lives of systematically marginalized groups as a way to separate herself from her family that “just does not understand” but ultimately won’t take too strong of a stance if it means sacrificing something of importance to her. The aestheticization of politics neutralizes the message, something that Benjamin knew all too well, and that TikTok teenagers, many of whom are well-meaning, now find themselves falling victim to.

Despite being only separated by six years, teens in 2020 find themselves living and comprehending current events in a dramatically different world. No generation comes of age without a tremendous amount of hardship, personal and interpersonal, but Gen-Z is the first to have that hardship published on the internet. Social media has revolutionized organizing in many ways for the better, but as with all developments, it is one that requires active participation and checking of power. TikTok and Tumblr have made positive contributions to activism, but the nature of social media’s democratization of information requires we all pay attention to ensure neither platform does more harm than good.

0 notes