#every single character would be put on trial for war crimes every week | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

beaniegender · 4 years

Text

Gen Tolkien fic recs

A Tolkien fic rec list? I guess so!! Written lovingly for @tolkiengenweek, here are my ten favorite gen fics in the fandom (a mix of Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion - The Hobbit is nearly unrepresented here, sorry). There’s a focus here on strong friendships and family love. List beneath the cut, from shortest to longest word count!

(If you know that any of these writers are on tumblr and I’ve failed to tag them, please let me know so I can properly credit them!)

1. Pilgrim Through This Barren Land by @naryaflame, 2064 words

Gandalf stays behind after Thorin's funeral to speak to an unexpected guest.

It’s Gandalf & Maglor friendship (frenemies?) fic set at the end of The Hobbit! Both characters are appropriately badass, and Gandalf’s POV is great. It’s sort of a speculative Maglor-in-the-future fic, which you’ll see on this list that I love.

2. alive and richly colored by @captainelectroniccollectiondonut, 2600 words

Maedhros comes home to his family's house in Formenos after two years away for college. He comes bearing gifts.

I love this little modern AU in a pretty unique setting, and this is a great meditation on Maedhros’s thoughts about his different family members.

3. Throw the Fight if You Want To by..... me, 2722 words

“Doomed you were, and Doomed you are, and Doomed you shall ever be. You have spilled the blood of your kin a fourth time, and lost your right to change course and beg forgiveness. The Valar reject your petition to stand trial and consign you to Endor to find what peace or torment as you may. Go now from this camp; none shall stop you. Do not return.”

Or, Elrond and Elros are there with the host of Valinor when Maedhros and Maglor steal the last two Silmarils. It shakes Maglor enough that the whole plot gets shaken up. What’s a little eternal damnation if your brother and foster sons still love you?

The mortifying ordeal of putting your own fic on a rec list. It’s my contribution to the sappy kidnap fam hurt/comfort genre! (Although I personally see the focus as being Maedhros & Maglor.)

4. Lonely Watches by Canafinwe, 5056 words

Haunted by solitude outside of Archet, Aragorn finds respite unlooked-for in the company of a friend.

My favorite of a quartet of Aragorn-centric Ranger fics. Gandalf finds him in the wilds and offers him some sorely-needed friendship. Poor Aragorn, y’all.

5. Grey in the Dark by rhymer23, 11044 words

Fog has descended on the lower levels of Minas Tirith, and a killer stalks the streets. In the Citadel high above the fog, Aragorn wants the killer found. Down where the fog is thickest, a young man raised on the streets is trying to find him, too. These two men, whose lives are so very different, will end up being brought together by the fog. Because in the fog, everything looks different. Everything is changed.

Minas Tirith murder mystery! The main characters are Aragorn and an OC who I love. It’s a fascinating look both at the beginning of Aragorn’s rule and how he handles it, and at what everyday life is like in very-recently-wartorn Minas Tirith.

6. Many-Colored and Splendid by @acommonanomaly 29839 words

Sometimes it's the people you meet when you're at the end of your rope who can change the course of your life forever.

Perhaps more so when that person is a mysterious stranger whose compassion seems to spring from a deeply troubled past.

Maglor in the modern age fic, baby!! Outsider POV from a New Yorker who meets Maglor at a crucial time in their life. Traces their lives and friendship for years from there. Bonus Finrod sucking at blending in in normal life, too. I love this fic and this OC so, so much.

7. Two Stars in Time by ArlenianChronicles, 43376 words and counting

While undergoing a hunting test, Elurín and Eluréd have a strange setback and wake up under the Two Trees. Lost in a land of old, there is only one person whom they can think of to search for: Adar Maedhros.

A time travel AU within my AU, In Elin Gelebrin, where Maedhros saves the twins after the Second Kinslaying.

We all agree that Eluréd and Elurín obviously deserved way, way better, right? Well now we get it. AU of an AU, so maybe you want to read the background about Maedhros and the Twin Princes of Doriath first, or maybe you want to skip right to the time travel shenanigans. Featuring vaguely sentient silmarils, badass Finwe, and two homesick children who have a chance to stop the darkening of Valinor. WIP, updating regularly.

8. The War of the Ring by morwen_of_gondor, 98904 words and counting

It was foretold in the First Age that Fëanor would never return to the world of the living until Dagor Dagorath. The same was not said of his sons.

At the beginning of The Lord of the Rings, there were few Elves left in Middle-Earth who could ride against the Nazgûl, let alone Sauron. Chief among those was Glorfindel, sent back after his death in the First Age to aid Middle-Earth in the Third. What if he was not the only one sent back? In the First Age, Fingolfin went toe-to-toe with Morgoth. Finrod did the same with Sauron. Neither of them was accounted the mightiest of the Noldor.

In a world where the Sons of Fëanor, reincarnated, returned to Middle-Earth to atone for their crimes, The Lord of the Rings happened very differently. It began in the council of Elrond, but it did not stop there. This is that story.

Y’ALL. READ THIS ONE. Yes, LotR has sweeping, complex battle sequences, a great ensemble cast, a rich and heavily-referenced in-universe mythology, and meditations on the meaning of honor and bravery - but imagine how much more of all those things it could have with seven Fëanorians running around too! I’m in awe of how this author is weaving together so many plot lines, and every single POV has been believable so far. There’s lots of fun unexpected character interactions - who doesn’t want to see Pippin and Maedhros hanging out together? WIP, updating regularly.

9. The Ways of Paradox by naryaflame (again!), 133244 words

How do you pass the time when you know you're facing eternity?

Maglor agrees to appear in a student production of The Pirates of Penzance, and gets more than he bargained for.

This one far and away sets the bar for modern Maglor AUs, in my opinion. The setting (coastal Scotland) and the OCs are all really vivid. This fic fits really nicely with the “grey spaces” prompt for the week, cause the relationship between Maglor and the POV character really resists categorization. Something I love about this fic is that, although the mystery of who Maglor is is definitely a big deal, it’s ultimately the regular everyday characters who drive the plot and conflict. There’s so much more I could say, I LOVE this fic and it’s better than so many published novels that I’ve read!

10. The River by Indigo Bunting, 143512 words

The Fellowship must cross a river before it can enter the land of Hollin. When disaster strikes, Sam and Legolas find themselves trapped between the river, a party of malicious strangers, and each other. A story about friendship and sacrifice.

A cool side-story about the Fellowship as an ensemble, and Sam and Legolas specifically proving themselves to each other. I can always re-read this one for the tense plot and pacing!

#lotr #fanfic #tolkiengenweek #i love friendship fics the most can you tell? lmao #also sorry i can't shut up about povs while writing fic recs lkdslksjfd

43 notes · View notes

betweentheheavesofstorm · 4 years

Text

i keep thinking i’m done beating this dead horse but no, because i’ve now read an interview with Kester Grant that explains, Well, a Lot.

I’m also pissing myself because on her Agent’s site bio, she’s listed as being born on December 5, “alongside notorious British rebel Guy Fawkes” which strongly suggests that SOMEONE involved thought Guy Fawkes was born on November 5.

I then looked at her About page on her own website, where the note is “Death-day of notorious British rebel Guy Fawkes celebrated annually in the UK by giant morbidly ironic bonfire's & firework displays” which is ALSO wrong because he wasn’t even brought to trial till the following January ?? the fireworks commemorate the gunpowder plot aka the actual thing that happened on the 5th of november ohh my god kester grant use wikipedia challenge

Anyway, this is gonna be a Long Post, so I’m gonna put the quotes + commentary under the cut:

Firstly, Marius DID appear in an initial draft, only to be deleted later:

He was present in the first draft of the book when I sold it to the publishing house and I just struggled every time I had to write a scene with him. All the scenes with Marius and Enjolras St. Juste (it was Marius originally as well as St. Juste, and St. Juste was just a secondary character) and I was saying to my husband ‘if only I could write this scene with just St. Juste it would be 3 million times better’ [...] So I said to my editor, “listen, could I cut Marius?” and she said “absolutely!” and everything was just three million times better and now we just have St. Juste who became the amazing star that he is and I love him.

so we did get Marjolas, just the other way round than we normally do.

On her writing process:

I had the idea for The Court Of Miracles and I wrote it in six weeks to apply for a competition called Pitch Wars where you get mentored by two published authors and then at the end of the mentorship of two months they help you edit it.

Really? Written in six weeks? you certainly couldn’t tell...

Then, when asked about research:

I started to do research on a 48 hour flight from the States to where I live now in Mauritius [...] So I had this raging fever and I had a million tabs open on my computer and I was just eating the history of Paris, from this origin all the way through to Napoleon’s fall. And taking notes and getting ideas.

honestly her having a fever while doing the research suddenly means EVERYTHING makes sense

On how she came up with the Guilds:

Then I went online to see what kinds of crimes there are and I looked up laws. I had a whole list of different crimes and said ‘okay, we can split these into guilds’ and then I thought if you’re two young girls living in a criminal world, who is the most terrifying criminal?’ and obviously it would be the human trafficker. So automatically I was like ‘okay that’s your big bad guy. That’s your Shere Khan’.

what kind of crimes there are

Being in the first person is interesting because I don’t normally write in the first person. Being of a certain age, I’m 35, everything I’ve ever read in England was written in the third person, but I knew I was writing a young adult book, or at least one bordering on young adult, so I had been advised to write in the first person, which I hated. It was completely unnatural to me but I think it’s worked very well for Nina. [bolding mine]

once again, you definitely can’t tell that she hates the first person !! not at all!! also that’s definitely not the sort of thing you should say in an interview?!

I have since been told, from my best friend and all of my siblings, that Nina is actually like me and of course it was easy to write her because she does what I would do.

ohoho it’s self-insert o’clock! and, as Briar pointed out, it’s just a wild coincidence that her self-insert is also universally beloved by the Hot Young Men of the novel. (Not that in fic I’m against self-inserts - but once again, this is published !)

There’s going to be two sequels [to The Court Of Miracles] so there might *hint hint*, be a bit of jealousy or triangles or things between [Ettie and Nina]

personally i’m delighted by this! we already have a love square, what is it gonna become? a tetrahedron? is the dauphin gonna suddenly fall for Cosette? or Montparnasse, or Enjolras St. Juste????

Nina, if pushed a certain way, if she allowed herself to go a certain way, could easily become very similar to [Kaplan, the villain]. I’m not saying she would become a human trafficker but Nina is basically a walking PTSD case. She’s like Batman! She’s like Samuel Vimes in Ankh-Morpork [in Discworld]!

nina is like batman. right, got it.

Originally the book had the history of Paris by the Dead Lord in between every single chapter and I think it was a bit too weighty and a bit boring in places. So my editor said ‘let’s scrap that’ and I said ‘okay but then I’m going to put the short stories in’.

you know, her editor dropped the ball in a lot of places, but at least they got rid of that, because I was skim reading the folk story bits as it was

I have another book coming out next year, it’s basically like The Jungle Book but on speed.

this is the bit that made me almost spit peppermint tea everywhere because who the fuck describes their own work like that

and finally, last but not at all least, here’s her overview of the French Revolution:

I mean the nobles [in The Court Of Miracles] were always monstrous in a way but they have become 100 times worse because they saw what the people of France were about to do to them. Which historically, the people of France, the revolutionaries, led the terror – they murdered everyone right left and centre! Then of course the revolutionaries famously turned on their own.

There was terrible suffering that led to the revolution but the revolutionaries were all mental. They literally murdered each other because they were so paranoid! Robespierre got rid of the Roman Catholic Religion entirely and then invented his own religion! Look it up its called the Cult Of The Supreme Being!

Then there were three guys who had joint power who were supposed to form an equal government. One of them rose to power and his name was Napoleon and he became a dictator. Although he was a dictator who took over almost all of the world, the people of France loved him. [Then] the people of France themselves in a strange turn of events turned on him in the end and betrayed him. Otherwise, he might still have been in power for years and years. And Napoleon is a big feature in Books Two and Three… just saying…

napoleon!! we’re getting NAPOLEON in the next two i am so genuinely excited because I have no fucking idea what she’s gonna do

#CoM Salt #i have spent a lot of this evening reading different interviews and looking at her twitter feed #she's bizarrely self-obsessed AND self-deprecating #remember remember the 5th of november #it's guy's birthday and we forgot to get him anything

30 notes · View notes

mvadowes · 5 years

Text

DORCAS CLEMENTINA MEADOWES is 26 years old and works as a DRAGON RESCUER/SPY and is loyal to THE OOTP. she was a RAVENCLAW and is a MUGGLEBORN. SHE looks like DIANE GUERRERO. ( and it’s cami, bitch !! )

dorcas was born into a rather large working-class family in leeds, and quickly stood out ( some would say, for all the wrong reasons ). the meadowes were quite proud of the respectable reputation they’d earned inside their social circles over the years, and expected their children to be models of just that - quiet, obedient, polite, soft edges.

she was different from them all long before she knew magic ran in her veins

the mere concept of reputation always felt absurd to her, even as a little girl who dared to look in the eyes those who’d even consider glancing at her. her parents thought her daredevil and somewhat cynical behaviour would tire itself out and she’d eventually copy her siblings, but they were wrong.

something fiery in her was intensified by the weird occurances she couldn’t explain, and when her tongue grew sharper, more imaginative, she was uncontrollable. sometimes even to herself. dorcas meadowes was born a wild card.

the very muggle meadowes didn’t take lightly the news that their odd girl was a witch, and that aversion never really went away. inside the household, the reactions would always range from complete disinterest in anything magical to terror of what she could TECHNICALLY do. she’d accidentally won the power struggle in the family. she simultaneously held it all and none. the double edge sword of her status made it so that no one even tried controlling her anymore, but also left her lonely and lacking affection, regardless of how much she insisted she did not need it.

ravenclaw, home of the curious, imaginative, individualistic sharp-witted. dorcas fit right in, although that didn’t stop her from being in all other common rooms at all times. hogwarts was the biggest playground she could have asked for - somewhere new where no one knew who she was; somewhere magical where her curiosity could be fulfilled; somewhere where suspension of disbelief was common; a bubble she could experiment with. of course she’d tried lies back at home ( how many times had her mother bitterly called her a liar anyway ? ) but this was storytelling. dorcas sharpened her lying skills like one sharpens a weapon, and after some trial and error she found her tricks. after that, the options were limitless. she was a social butterfly, telling 10 different life stories in the same day, carrying them over for months. once she fooled a single hufflepuff into thinking for 4 weeks that she was in his house and year. even got a hufflepuff tie.

despire hogwarts being where she truly learned how to lie and how to put up fortresses around her, it was also when she was at her most internally chaotic. her identity was still shaky and between her crisis and her offputting ways, she truly opened herself up, more than before and certainly more than after. she holds dear to her heart the friendships she’s made back at hogwarts, with a special place dedicated to the so-called d squad, or dick squad. she’s made up so many stories about they all met that she now can’t pinpoint how exactly they all came together, but the four wild cards that are dorcas meadowes, daisy hookum, mundungus “dung” fletcher and caradoc “doc” dearborn eventually united and brought terror upon hogwarts. marauders who? golden trio who? the dick squad was chaos and friendship and family - she cares for all of them very specially and very individually, and to this day they’re the ones she always goes to.

hogwarts was also where she found her love for magical creatures. growing up, she’d bring home bugs and lizards, tried to take in stray cats, wanted to be a vet. magic opened up a new world of animals and her personal favourite - dragons. giant flying lizards that burned down entire fields? y e s.

after a few summer internships, she graduated with a job at a dragon reserve, but it wasn’t fulfilling. not just yet. after falling victims to too many of her lies, her superiors realised where she’d be able to put those skills to use, and as such she became a dragon rescuer. with no real experience, she was tasked with giving herself a cover, a way into a dragon smuggling ring, get vital evidence and then let the authorities tear it down. she succeeded. it was addictive.

soon she built up her little network of other spies, ID forgers, crime connections - dorcas is represented in every seedy corner, hears talks in every dark bar, has covers to pick and choose from. the latter, the criminal world is one she dips her feet in far too often, honestly just for the thrill of it. a lot of what she does can be justified with that.

the order too knew how to use her skills. when she isn’t on dragon missions or visiting a reserve to help out, she’s spying for the order. once again, contacts everywhere, dorcas meadowes is always listening.

is she way in over her head? yes. dorcas is young, reckless, only has SIX years of experience in spying and is honestly just making it up as she goes. does she see that?absolutely not. that’s her mortal flaw; she can’t see mortality. even in a war, surrounded by death, the concept is foreign. it’s a mix of her bravado and her detachment from reality what causes it. it’s this what gets her killed in a year.

activist to her very core. can always be seen arguing about something, especially animal rights. has been arrested for trying to free the gringott dragon. will keep on being arrested.

openly anti-government. anti-capitalism. anti-separated muggle and magical worlds. long live the anarchy.

part of her misses being a full-time dragon carer. even though most of her missions are animal traffic and animal cruelty related, she doesn’t spend quite as much time with the dragons as she used to.

loves the punk rock underground scene and all of her muggle friends are from it. catch her going to weird secret bars and rocking out to ‘noise’.

she has very few things grounding her, since for the most part dorcas is like a ghost. she has no home, living off a backpack and couch surfing, has no telephone, no fireplace, very few photographs. disappears for missions or just to satisfy a need to not be stuck in the same place far too often. dorcas meadowes will come into your life after two weeks of radio silence, with two dragon eggs and a simple ‘i’m staying with you this week’.

gets in trouble far too often. always did like to hang around the wilder more out fringe groups of society, and can also usually be found in the company of aurors. has a need for danger and excitement. would light up a car just to see how that happens. doesn’t lead the healthiest life, far too much alcohol and party drugs but hey at least she always sleeps a lot ??

she does have a fascination with fire. lieks to watch things burn, gets lost in the beauty of flames !!

lowkey just needs to learn how to be more emotionally honest and how to accept the rawness that comes with it, and to not run away every time something arises. lowkey needs to learn how to emote and live like other people. lowkey never will.

basically ??? she’s an irresponsible couch surfing slightly pyromanic compulsive liar anarchist, with a passion for animal rights and especially the breathing fire type, and an intense lack of emotional abilities

character parallels: gina linetti, eleanor shellstrop, cristina yang, elektra natchios, doug judy, veronica mars, natasha romanoff, malia tate, daisy johnson, heather davis, mazikeen, jason mendonza, gilderoy lockhart, peter quill, ilana wexler, jo wilson, titus andromedon, daenerys targaryen

some wanted connections:

- hogwarts enemies: dorcas got in everyone’s business all the time and also spread lots of fake rumors just for the fun of it. she’s bound to have upset someone.

- post hogwarts enemies: the exact same thing from the first one IHFBGJSHDBV

- a different life: people who know dorcas but as someone totally different. different name, story, maybe even looks due to polyjuice. oops.

- the name is bond: SPY PALS. people dorcas has worked with or against, who happened to meet through their missions or their contacts and understand each other, the way they live in lies...

- hot: someone please fuck dorcas. she loves fun so yall can’t tell me she isn’t boning at least one person. no feelings needed, just screw her.

- okay but someone love dorcas please

click here for a bad pinterest board and hmu for dorcas to come ruin ur life

#maraudrs:intro #animal cruelty tw #animal abuse tw

13 notes · View notes

chicagoindiecritics · 5 years

Text

New from Robert Daniels on 812 Film Reviews: CIFF Reviews: Sole, Once Upon a River, Jojo Rabbit, and La Llorona

My second dispatched from the 55th annual Chicago International Film Festivals finds a lot of coming-of-age and encompasses multiple countries from Italy to America to Germany and Guatemala: ranging from in subject matter from teen pregnancy to Nazism to ghost stories. My reviews for Sole, Once Upon a River, Jojo Rabbit, and La Llorona follow below.

Dead ends don’t just happen down the road, sometimes they’re put up at birth. In Carlo Sironi’s feature debut Sole two people come together who’ve known the street name of that dead end for decades. They’re the detached Ermanno (Claudio Segaluscio) and equally as dispirited Lena (Sandra Drzymalska). From Poland, and three weeks from giving birth, Lena has arrived in Italy to sell her unborn baby to a sterile couple Fabio (Bruno Buzzi) and Bianca (Barbara Ronchi). To facilitate the exchange, Fabio enlists his nephew Ermanno to look after the pregnant Lena. Each will be paid a tidy fee for their work. Seems simple.

However, the two are ever changing. Water marks one of Sole’s significant visual cues. In fact, Ermanno’s simple apartment, where Lena stays, is surrounded by its image. Rarely stagnant, water carries a cyclical effect, forever morphing yet remaining the same. Both Ermanno and Lena go under a change over the course of 90 minutes. The young man, who’s resigned himself to gambling and petty crime, begins to think of others. His expressionless glazed face becomes enraptured with the thought of a family, of holding a steady job, of his love for the woman he’s watching and the baby she carries. On the other hand, Lena also dissolves. She comes to care for a child she proclaimed so willing to give up. Throughout, Segaluscio and Drzymalska provide an incredible emotional tango of suppression, while tussling with their downtrodden characters.

Ermanno and Lena’s interwoven evolution anchors each successive avoidance of their true feelings, giving the first act a tension lacking in the second and third. Nevertheless, Sironi’s paired character study leaves one imaginative of the life the two could lead if they only had the ability to seize it.

Rivers in storytelling: especially fairy tales, have always served as magical avenues, where odd people and creatures unexplainably appear. While odd creatures don’t exist in Chicago filmmaker Haroula Rose’s feature debut Once Upon a River, a plethora of characters do appear to Margo Crane (Kenadi DelaCerna) in a coming-of-age period piece that offers magical moments during troubling events.

Opening in Michigan 1977, Margo narrates over images of her scouring the woods with a rifle and a copy of Annie Oakley. She’s a hunter, trained by her single father (Tatanka Means) who’s still reeling from her mother abandoning the two a year prior. In this town, her father’s half-brother Cal Murray (Coburn Goss) controls everything and he’s taken an uneasy shining to his 15-year old niece. Through grooming, much of which is done in plain view of his prejudiced sons Junior (Arie Thompson) and Billy (Sam Straley)—he dangles the promise of hunting with him to gain her trust, ultimately luring her into a shed to rape her. Later, Margo tries to shoot her uncle but in the melee her father is killed by Billy, causing her to she flees in a boat down river to search for her mother.

Over the span of the film’s 92 minutes, Rose charts a path where Margo discovers a litany of characters. There’s Will (Ajuawak Kapashesit), a traveling loner Margo falls for. She also enlists the help of Paul (Evan Linder) and Brian (Dominic Bogart), poachers who buy deer meat from her. And later, she meets Smoke (John Ashton): an aging dying musician who cares for her as a daughter and his friend Fishbone (Kenn E. Hedd). The milieu acts as the background to Margo finding her mother (Lindsay Pulsipher), her grappling with an unplanned pregnancy, and instances of racism: she’s partly Native American.

Rose provides a trimmed narrative. And though there are instances of unbelievable coincidences, maybe adding a hint of magical realism, Once Upon a River—with a tremendous performance from Kenadi DelaCerna as Margo—enchants us in this simple but evocative coming-of-age tale.

Hitler is boring. Well, if it’s Taika Waititi’s Adolph Hitler. His Jojo Rabbit—a coming-of-age story set during the tail end of World War II—sees Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis): a young fanatic of the Hitler Youth Core, question his allegiances even as the fuhrer accompanies him as an imaginary friend in a cheeky but all too safe narrative.

Waititi cleverly paints the normalization of Nazism and Antisemitism, first through the opening sequence playing a German dubbed version of the Beatles hit “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” comparing the wave of fascism to Beatlemania, then by displaying the myriad of ways Jojo attempts to prove the doctrine bandied by the Third Reich. All the while, the boy’s ole’ pal Adolph serves as his imaginary life coach and guru. Even so, the first act labors. Waititi’s Hitler isn’t all that interesting. Certainly he’s been sanitized because he exists in the mind of a child, but there’s only so much wink wink baiting that can happen before the expedition makes one weary of its odd safeness. Especially because each time Hitler appears, he snatches us off the narrative’s trail of Jojo’s personal journey.

Jojo Rabbit rarely remains on path, speeding ahead, until the film expresses his relationship with his subversive mother Rosei (Scarlett Johansson) and reveals the existence of Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie). Rosei, a single mother, deeply cares for Jojo but also realizes the depths of his fanaticism. Her independence, in thought and action, and her kindly courage carries the first act of the film. That bravery supports Elsa’s sheltering, a young Jewish girl hiding in the attic of Jojo’s home. The young boy discovers her one day and spends much of the second act questioning her. He’s heard many theories detailing how dangerous and vile Jewish people supposedly are, yet now he’s confronted with a real person. Waititi bases many of Jojo’s questions to her on actual Nazi propangada, such as prodding if she hangs from ceilings.

While Roman Griffin Davis offers a tremendous performance as the psychologically lost but lonely boy, Thomasin McKenzie as Elsa is just as spectacular. The film’s firmest grounding sits with its women characters, like the affectionate but valiant Rosei. Elsa serves as another brilliant example. In one scene, Jojo brags about his Aryian blood making him the superior master race, to which Elsa sharply defenses by cupping his mouth and pinning him. She asks who’s the stronger, in a sure handed test of will. McKenzie, after her head-turning performance in Debra Granik’s spectacular Leave No Trace delivers another immaculate reason to believe she’s fated for stardom.

Waititi also furnishes Jojo Rabbit with a number of intriguing supporting characters like Finkel (Alfie Allen), the assistant to the Youth Commander Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell, returning for your racist pleasures). The two possess an intriguing relationship that Waititi delicately develops, yet seems a scene short to fully flush out. Still, Rockwell covers any shortcomings with his usual top-tier work. Rebel Wilson as Fraulein Rahm finds herself with less to do than her cameo moments would seem to command, while Stephen Merchant as a gestapo officer quietly terrorizes in one of the more suspenseful instances of the comedy. However, Archie Yates as Yorki: Jojo’s jolly and enthusiastic best friend—charms in every second he’s on the screen.

Still, Jojo Rabbit is at its strongest when it serves as a Moonrise Kingdom flick—following Jojo and Elsa from their meeting to the waning days of the war. Their burgeoning relationship, and the young boy’s introspection of his anti-simentic thoughts in the face of a person he comes to care for marks a trying emotional punch, especially as the film peaks in an outrageous but deftly executed battle scene. Waititi easily balances grim and heavy material to make a lighter than thought comedy, even if his Hitler doesn’t add much to the equation other than a couple punchlines. Jojo Rabbit is deeply flawed, the narrative sags too often through its 108 minutes, but in its final forty-five Waititi discovers a deeply endearing relationship that makes the whole journey worth it.

A common Latin American folktale, La Llorona (The Weeping Woman) describes a woman who drowned her children only for her ghost to wander the earth looking for their bodies and bringing despair to anyone near her. That folklore is repurposed toward political ends in Jayro Bustamante’s somber but haunting picture detailing the genocide of indigenous people in his native Guatemala, La Llorona.

His film centers Don Enrique (Julio Diaz) a former general now on trial for genocide and rape while hunting for guerrilla forces. Enrique occupies a lavish mansion with his wife Carmen (Margarita Kenéfic), daughter Natalia (Sabrina De La Hoz), and granddaughter Sara (Ayla-Elea Hurtado). The Spanish-language picture watches as the superstitious and fearful indigenous servants flee from Enrique and his family. The only one who remains is Valeriana (María Telón). That is, until the mysterious Alma (María Mercedes Coroy) appears on their doorstep to help around the home.

Bustamante’s La Llorona has real-world roots, grounding itself in the historical events of the Silent Holocaust of Mayan civilians in Guatemala during the early 90’s. Those events, like any instance of genocide, predicated itself upon the normalizing of violence and disappearance, the willful ignorance to the ends of survival by the populace, and the moral compartmentalizing of brutal leaders. Enrique’s family fall to the same trappings. There’s Natalie, whose leftist husband recently disappeared yet she shows little urge to find the truth. Carmen, Enrique’s wife, also relies on self-perpetuated lies; claiming the women accusing her husband of rape are whores. Still, no matter what repression they devolve into the ghosts of the slain still surround them.

La Llorona culminates with the visceral haunting and reckoning brought on by these ghosts, which in turn, actualizes the legacy left behind. And while Carmen exasperatedly exclaims that the country needs to move on, Bustamante thoughtfully takes the phantasmagorical to inform the myriad of ways we shouldn’t just forget, for fear of letting down the victims who came before.

from 812filmReviews https://ift.tt/368cigU via IFTTT

from WordPress https://ift.tt/32TyidK via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress #CIFCC #film critics #movies #film #Chicago

1 note · View note

revolutionary-pirate · 7 years

Text

A’ight here’s the rundown on Richard Varick: Richard Varick was born in Hackensack, New Jersey on March 25, 1753. He studied Law under John Morin Scott, a successful New York Lawyer and founding member of the Sons of Liberty, in 1771 and studied for three years. He was then admitted to the Bar in October of 1774 and accepted a partnership with Scott that they had until the outbreak of the war eight months later. Varick joined the elite New York Militia Battalion and then, on June 28, 1775, was commissioned as a Captain in the 1st New York Regiment and served in that capacity for just three days before being nabbed by Philip Schuyler as his secretary thanks to Scott’s influence. Philip Schuyler then turned North and started for Fort Ticonderoga in order to launch the failed campaign into Canada. On the way north, Varick would meet Benedict Arnold for the first time and become fast friends and allies with him as well as Philip Schuyler. When Schuyler fell ill with a severe case of gout and rheumatism, he went back to Albany to recover, bringing Varick along with him. In Albany, Varick worked three jobs: secretary to Schuyler, unofficial quartermaster for the Forts of the Northern Army, and Deputy Munster Master General of the Northern Army. He was awarded the rank of Lieutenant Colonel by Schuyler for his hard work when he was promoted to the later. When Arnold was trying to build a fleet to stop the British Advance south, Varick picked up a fourth task: finding ship builders and materials. Varick worked tirelessly at the task, frantically sending out letter after pleading letter to businessmen all throughout New York and it’s neighboring states to provide Arnold with the supplies and men necessary for building the fleet and, somehow, it got done. Arnold set out to fight the British at Vancouver Island on October 11, 1776. A month later, on November 18th, he was at Fort Ticonderoga when a man named Anthony Walton White tried to assassinate him. A detailed account of that event can be found in this post I made. When the British successfully took Fort Ticonderoga in 1777, Schuyler was blamed and then replaced by General Gates in August. Varick was incredibly bitter about this. He hated Gates and anyone who was friends with him and all throughout the Saratoga campaign he praised Arnold and criticized Gates in every action. Varick also served as acting Muster Master General when the man who actually held the position, Joseph Ward, was captured in November 1778 during an unexpected raid by the British. Varick was called to Headquarters by Washington specifically to serve as head of the muster department in Ward’s place for several months and was about to be given the position officially on April 6th, 1779 when Ward was exchanged and Varick relinquished the position back to him, returning to Albany. Varick continued to serve as Deputy Muster Master General until the muster department was terminated by Congress on January 12, 1780. He decided that he would return to his hometown to resume his law career and wrote to Schuyler detailing his plans but, when he arrived, he found that his hometown had been recently attacked and raided by the British, leaving many of its homes in ruins. He joined the Bergen County militia instead of resuming his studies and served on patrol every other night. He was very frustrated with serving in an amateur militia after everything he’d done and the only reason why he didn’t leave was that he was concerned about what the neighbors might think if he did. In August 1780, a letter from Arnold would rescue him from his frustrations. Benedict Arnold wrote to Varick asking him to be his aide-de-camp and military secretary as soon as he’d been given command. Schuyler had told Arnold that Varick would probably be willing to accept the position and Arnold, aware that Varick had wanted to resume his Law studies before returning to the practice, also wrote that the position would only occupy a small amount of his time and allow him to continue his studies if that’s what he wanted. Varick accepted the position on August 7th, 1780 and would arrive at West Point just a week later. While working for Arnold, Varick and his fellow aide, David Franks, picked up on Arnold’s suspicious activities, but Varick admired Arnold and simply believed that he was only doing some illegal trading with some merchants in New York City. Varick was sick in bed with a fever when Arnold’s treason came to light. Franks had appeared by Varick’s window to whisper to Varick from outside that news had arrived of a spy that had been captured and that, upon hearing the news, Arnold started behaving strangely. Varick was upset at what Franks was implying and insisted that Arnold was “a gentleman and friend of high reputation and that it was uncharitable and unwarranted even to suppose it.” Varick was completely stricken when Arnold was revealed to have been a traitor. Varick and Franks were both put on trial for involvement in the Arnold affair and eventually cleared of any crimes, but the suspicions did not go away. Varick asked Washington for help and that Washington publish the court-martial’s findings and a certification of his character, but Washington refused because he did not have the money nor the authority to do such a thing. Instead, Washington invited Varick to join his military family and gave him the responsibility of arranging, copying, and organizing every single correspondence and record from headquarters including many confidential documents. Varick was officially appointed on May 25, 1781, and would continue to toil away at his project until it’s completion near the end of the war, after which he resigned because his task had been completed. His project became known as the Varick Transcripts and consisted of 44 large volumes, each 300+ pages long, and consisting of nearly every single official letter or order issued by Washington during the war along with many of Washington’s personal letters. It’s thanks to this project that we have much of what we have today in relation to Washington’s War career. As I said in this post, there are 6,193 letters on Founders attributed to the Varick Transcripts. So much would have been lost if it weren’t for him and the small staff he’d employed to help him complete his mission in just over two years. Following the war, thanks to Washington’s show of faith, all suspicions of him were cleared and he led an extremely successful career. He soon became the recorder of the City of New York, which made him the second in command of the city's government, as well becoming the Chief legal counsel of New York City. He married Maria Roosevelt in 1786 (he was 30 and she was 20 at the time) and they had no children. Additionally, Varick helped codify the city’s statutes in 1786, was speaker of the Assembly 1787-1788 and was Attorney General 1788-1789. He did all of these things while continuing to serve as recorder. In 1789, Varick was appointed Mayor of New York City by George Clinton and served in that capacity until 1801 when the government was swept by the Democratic-Republicans. He went on to be involved in various business projects including the development of Jersey City, New Jersey and being one of the appraisers of the Erie Canal in 1817. He was also a trustee of Princeton/Columbia University for 29 years, generously donating both his time and money to the college. He had a leadership position in the American Bible Society and the American Sunday School Union. He was present when what remained of the Continental Army Officers Corps assembled in 1825 for Lafayette’s tour of America. He was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, was active in the society’s charity work, and was president of the New York state’s chapter of it from 1806 until his death in 1831. Knowing that his death was imminent, he made an emotional trip out to Mount Vernon in May of 1831 before returning to his summer home in Jersey City where he would die a couple months later on July 30th, 1781 at the age of 79. His funeral was a huge affair, his body transported from Jersey City to New York City where it was met by a large military escort. His funeral was attended by a vast amount of people and numerous members of the Society of the Cincinnati wore badges of mourning. John Trumbull, one of the last surviving aides-de-camp to Washington, was one of his pallbearers. He was buried in his hometown of Hackensack, New Jersey. [Lefkowitz’s Indispensable Men was my main source for all of this but I also pulled some information from x and x]

#Richard Varick #aides-de-camp #Benedict Arnold #Philip Schuyler #Horatio Gates #Is it obvious that he was a workaholic yet?

31 notes · View notes

lodelss · 5 years

Text

The Martha Stewarting of Powerful Women

Ann Foster | Longreads | July 2019 | 14 minutes (3,613 words)

On March 5th, 2004, Martha Stewart was found guilty of obstructing justice and lying to investigators. At the time, she was one of comparatively few female CEOs, and she was irrevocably tied to her company’s success: her smiling, serene, WASPy perfection thoroughly entwined with her company’s numerous ventures. When she first faced charges of insider trading, news media and the general population reacted with schadenfreude, or as one New York Times article coined it, blondenfreude: “the glee felt when a rich, powerful, and fair-haired business woman stumbles.” And stumble she did: In the wake of the scandal, Stewart voluntarily removed herself from most of her roles at the company, and as part of her sentencing she was barred from involvement with the empire for five years. Stewart re-joined the Board of Directors in 2011, but the company never truly bounced back from effects of the scandal.

The Times named Stewart’s conviction among the 20 most notable cases of insider trading, and she is both the only woman charged on the list, as well as the person whose alleged financial gains amounted to the least ($51,000), drastically less than the millions — and cumulative billions — of dollars taken by the men on the list, including Kenneth Lay, CEO of Enron. Samuel D. Waksal, founder of ImClone, the stock Stewart was alleged to have illegally sold shares from, pled guilty to orchestrating stock trades and was sentenced to seven years and three months in prison. Yet, it’s Stewart who would become the lead character in two made-for-TV movies — Waksal’s role in each is found much further down the call sheet.

There are countless other instances of men investigated for stock fraud at a similar level to Stewart’s alleged actions, and most of these men were not charged. Stewart was both investigated more ruthlessly than many of her male counterparts and she was also publicly shamed in a way men were never subjected to. In the end, the Department of Justice charges against Stewart for criminal securities fraud were thrown out, and a civil insider trading case the Securities Exchange Commission brought against her was settled. Crucially, neither of these alleged misdeeds were what ultimately landed her in prison. She was charged and found guilty of lying to investigators in an attempt to cover up her lack of insider trading: Yes, guilty for trying to cover up a crime she hadn’t committed in the first place.

When news broke that she would face five months of jail time, it was greeted with delight by late-night TV show hosts, the news media, and seemingly most of the nation. Her case was covered more in the media than the concurrent investigation and trial of Lay by a vast margin, as coverage of Stewart dominated business, entertainment, home, lifestyle, and even some sports sections of newspapers. Between November 2003 and May 2004, the time period of Stewart’s trial and the Lay investigation, New York–based magazines featured Stewart in 1,507 articles; Lay, in just 12. Though Stewart was more of a celebrity than Lay, he had clear ties to then-President Bush and Vice President Cheney, as well as other high-ranking political officials. A scandal could have been made of his connections, but clearly that wasn’t as appealing to readers as minute-by-minute reporting on Stewart’s downfall.

Media coverage during Stewart’s investigation and trial was derisive, mocking the traditional feminine aspects of her empire as well as deriding her alleged “diva” behavior. This misogynistic treatment — both of her facing charges for lesser actions than men who never went to trial, and for the delight and nonstop news coverage of her trial and sentencing — would become the standard for treatment of formerly powerful women in the midst of a downfall. Let’s call it the Martha Stewarting of powerful women: a single-minded focus on their misdeeds, while countless men doing the same thing avoid the spotlight.

Martha Stewarting is hardly a new phenomenon, but the retrospective understanding of her treatment sets it in a new focus. Women as leaders have been rare throughout Western history, and those who strived to attain positions of power usually did so under designated survivor circumstances: There weren’t any male relatives left to take over the family property, the family land, or the kingdom. Nearly 1,000 years before Stewart’s sentencing, the heir to the throne of England was a 33-year-old woman named Matilda. The nascent country hadn’t encountered this particular designated survivor scenario before. In fact, the concept of a female monarch was so unknown that the word “queen” at that point meant only “the king’s wife.”

Let’s call it the Martha Stewarting of powerful women: a single-minded focus on their misdeeds, while countless men doing the same thing avoid the spotlight.

The rhetoric recorded as she attempted to rally support to take the throne is eerily prescient to the press around today’s female business and political leaders. Matilda battled for the throne against her male cousin for 18 years in a period then known as “the Anarchy.” Chroniclers of the time reported the 12th-century misogyny that prevented her from being able to rule: Matilda’s ambition, and the very concept of a female leader, was seen as unnatural. Her cunning, intelligence, and craftiness was interpreted as shrewishness. She was seen as unsympathetic for not displaying the charm or warmth of her male rival; a woman could never be a ruler, but also, couldn’t she smile more? It was Matilda who settled the Anarchy when she suggested her son take the throne as the new king; the nation, crippled from nearly two decades of war, relented. It would take more than 300 years after her death for Lady Jane Grey to become the next woman to — albeit briefly — sit on the English throne.

Hundreds of years later, our modern society is not too different. Our current equivalent of reigning monarchies, corporations, are overseen by men just as their predecessors held roles as dynastic kings and elected rulers. Most women who ascend to these ranks do so by virtue of family connections, inheriting companies or empires from male relatives or spouses. For a man to fail as a king, president, or CEO through wrongdoings is so commonplace as to be insignificant; in fact, the patriarchal system supports these men as they fall, leaving doors open for them to regain their former level of power. For a woman to ascend to these roles is novel enough, rare enough, that when they display the same fallibility or criminal activity, they dominate the news cycle for months. This when we reach peak Martha Stewarting: the particular schadenfreude expressed at the public shaming of powerful women behaving badly; the way that women who misbehave are treated as representatives for the entire gender and shamed far more than men would be for the same actions.

This double standard is similar to treatment of the mostly female victims of European witch hunts of the 15th to 18th centuries. During this time, approximately 50,000 people were put to death for alleged witchcraft. These were most often women who wielded some level of power and autonomy that caused discomfort to local magistrates. Women in many European countries at this time were not permitted to own property or control their own finances. But women with no male relatives — widows, women without children, spinsters — found ways to make ends meet on their own terms. These women ran their own businesses in fields like midwifery, herbalism, and the sorts of alternative healing popular today among female CEO Gwyneth Paltrow’s fans. The accusations made against these women were often that they had been consorting with the Devil and providing dark magic to their clients. In the Salem witch trials of 1691 and 1692, these women’s property was seized and turned over to the same men who accused and sat in judgment of them. In both the European and American instances, it wasn’t just the alleged witchcraft that led to these women being executed; it was the threat they posed to the patriarchal culture. If women were able to create their own livelihoods, to live outside of a patriarchal society, it threatened the higher status of all men — the notion of a “natural order” with men always in a superior position. Today, powerful women are still eyed suspiciously, though their trial is through the court of public opinion rather than through a Puritan tribunal.

Kickstart your weekend reading by getting the week’s best Longreads delivered to your inbox every Friday afternoon.

As rare as it is for an upper-class white woman to reach the level of success to warrant so substantive a fall from grace, it is even rarer for people of color and working-class people to attain. As such, Martha Stewarting happens primarily to wealthy white women, those whose privilege can fool them into believing their gender is a nonissue or even an advantage. That is, until they dare to make a mistake, in which case they become defined entirely by their gender — the invisible misogyny suddenly apparent. There are other double standards affecting people of all marginalized identities’ opportunities for success, in the amount or lack of support they are able to obtain for their careers, and how the media portrays them both when providing exemplary models of humanity and when breaking the law. With very few exceptions, it is wealthy white women who are able to get close enough to white male power to threaten it. And, if they threaten to make white men look foolish for following them, the Martha Stewarting comes on even more strongly as a defense mechanism to protect the woman’s former supporters.

Which brings us to former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes. In March 2004, the same month that Stewart was sentenced to prison time, then 19-year-old Holmes dropped out of Stanford to focus entirely on her healthcare startup. As CEO, Holmes stood out not just for her youth and gender but also for her conventional white beauty. Like Stewart, her fresh-faced idealism and awkward persona were enmeshed with the company itself, powering media coverage for her youth and ingenuity as well as for the healthcare disruption she promised. Fifteen years later, she — like Stewart — fell entirely from grace. Holmes’s company went bankrupt and folded, and she is still facing criminal charges.

Her case has not yet been decided, but she has been vilified and pilloried by the media in a similar manner to Stewart: her downfall representing not just her personal failure, but interrogated for what it might mean for any woman who dares to take on a leadership role. Holmes’s passionate speaking style, her widely reported tendency to promise more than she was able to do, and her ability to finesse away detailed questions with braggadocio are textbook behavior for Silicon Valley start-up culture. More start-ups fail than succeed — they have about a 40% success rate. Combined with the small percentage of female-fronted Silicon Valley start-ups (26 percent of the most notable start-ups of 2018 included even one female founder), this means that male-fronted start-ups fail more than those fronted by women. Holmes’s actions, like Stewart’s — and Matilda’s — reignited debate over whether their behavior proved women were inherently unsuited for positions of leadership and power.

Holmes herself has yet to admit culpability to any of the charges she’s faced. As reporter John Carreyrou recounts, Holmes “sees herself as a sort of Joan of Arc who is being persecuted.” The parallels between accused fraudster Holmes and literal Saint Joan of Arc may not be immediately obvious. When Holmes was 19, she left Stanford and began her company. At the same age, 15th-century French peasant Joan was executed for heresy and treason following three years of leading French armies against the English. Yet they may share a similar overall trajectory: Both possessed preternatural levels of personal charisma and a single-minded determination and passion to change the world. And both went from being lauded and adored to becoming pariahs.

Had she failed in her military campaigns, Joan’s story may have been a footnote. But she led the French in a number of campaigns that directly resulted in the coronation of King Charles VII. Under normal circumstances in Joan’s time and place, women were never entrusted with positions of power, let alone consulted on military concerns. A lower-class girl like her should have held even less sway. But Joan claimed to be in direct communication with God, her military ideas and dedication proof positive that he wanted the French dauphin to succeed in battle against the English. The people of France adored her as a heroine, but the defeated English and Burgundian troops refused to accept that they could have been bested by a young woman. They also knew that casting her as a witch and a servant of the Devil would taint King Charles’s validity. Like Martha Stewart, her prosecutors were determined to charge her with something. And so, Joan was arrested and tried for her habit of wearing men’s clothing.

She had worn men’s clothing on the battlefield, and, upon her initial imprisonment in England, continued to dress in this manner in an attempt to prevent sexual assault. While in prison, she was successfully pressured to sign a legal document disavowing her claims to have been acting on God’s orders and included a promise never to wear men’s clothing again. The circumstances upon which she was then found to have worn men’s clothing are unclear — had her captors intentionally removed her women’s clothing in order to force her to break her word and don trousers? Had Joan been forced to choose these clothes due to the ongoing threat of prison rape? Regardless of the reason, Joan is recorded as once again donning men’s clothing, and as such was found guilty of breaking her own promise. Her punishment was to burn at the stake.

By contrast, Elizabeth Holmes has settled fraud charges from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and has been indicted on nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The public’s perception of her remains critical — casting her as either a devious con artist or a wide-eyed naif in over her head. Her alleged choice to intentionally lower her voice has also distracted from her legal battles to make her into a source of pop culture mockery. This vocal styling, like her androgynous presentation, seem — not unlike Joan — to be at least partly deployed in order to obscure her femininity in a male-dominated arena. Holmes is a tall, slender, conventionally attractive young white woman — as rare a Silicon Valley CEO as Joan of Arc was as a 15th-century military leader. Holmes’s affect helped her gain the trust of the male investors she needed to succeed. She was able to attract incredibly powerful male allies and supporters, many of whom continued defending her even as Theranos became exposed as a house of cards.

It is here that, outside of Holmes’s self-identification with Joan, more similarities emerge in the stories of these two women. Both have been vilified by some for their actions to an extent unlikely to befall a man who had performed the same actions; their gender has made them more hated by their accusers and critics. Holmes’s acolytes, like the defeated English nobles facing Joan, refused to accept that they had been bested by a young woman. Ultimately, the men in both instances seem to have determined that the only way this could be true is if the women in question was somehow unnatural. Joan was, therefore, a witch and a heretic. Holmes, a sociopath and a master con artist. These men may have been, in very different ways, defeated by these women, but in retroactively recasting the women as manipulative, the men were allowed to emerge as innocent. The women were both temptress and villain, the men twisting reality to retain their own sense of importance. Twenty-five years after Joan’s execution, Pope Callixtus III declared the charges against her unsubstantiated, naming Joan a martyr. In 1920, Joan was canonized as a Catholic saint, and she is now remembered for her bravery, passion, and commitment to her cause. Perhaps Holmes, whose early success predicated on her passionate declarations of wanting to save lives and improve the world, is hoping to be reconsidered similarly.

Despite strides in American feminism, women are still socialized and groomed to be complacent — we are peacekeepers, subordinate to men’s desires, not raising our voices except to back up what a man has already decided. For a woman to reach a position of power in a patriarchal structure, however, requires her to lean into the game. Traditionally feminine traits like passivity, gentleness, and nurturing will not allow a woman to take a power position. Stewart, always seen as canny and bright, was thought to have betrayed her fanbase when her calculating behind-the-scenes scheming came to light. The sweet-faced Holmes’s leadership style has, post-downfall, been consistently described as bullying. To reach the levels of power of each of these women was to act like a man; facing consequences, they are vilified in a particularly misogynistic manner.

Case in point: Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman. The actors were the most famous of the fifty people charged in the college admissions scam dubbed Operation Varsity Blues. Huffman’s lesser charges — and less tabloid-ready family — have allowed her to recede as Loughlin has become the face of privileged overreach. Loughlin and her husband have both pled not guilty, with rumors holding out that their defense will be that this practice is so commonplace neither realized they were breaking the law. Both Huffman and Loughlin have been shown to have made secret payments to admissions consultant Rick Singer; emails have been made publicly available in which both women specifically discuss their actions. Huffman pled guilty, expressing remorse for her actions. It remains to be seen if this will be her defense strategy, and if that will succeed, yet there is truth to the notion that Huffman and Loughlin’s actions are not all that different from those taken by countless wealthy parents. But it’s Loughlin’s face that was featured on tabloid covers and gossip websites. As with Stewart, the dissonance between saintly persona and criminal prosecution was too salacious to resist. When Martha Stewart was released from prison, she expressed her belief that she had been charged and jailed as “an example … that’s it.” Martha Stewarting is not just a woman facing scorn for doing something countless men get away with every day; it’s being charged with these crimes at all.

While Loughlin is best known for her acting roles, she has also been working as a producer on most of her recent TV projects. After cocreating and producing the short-lived primetime soap Summerland, Loughlin took on the role of executive producer on all of her projects for the Hallmark network beginning in 2014. Now part of the 26 percent of female executive producers on television, Loughlin focused on projects that capitalized on her mom-next-door, wholesome vibe. Unlike the more elusive Huffman, who had rarely used her persona to sell her film projects, Loughlin had married her persona to her on-screen presence, as closely as Holmes had married herself to Theranos or Stewart to her eponymous media company. So when Loughlin was charged in Operation Varsity Blues, it affected both her ability to take on acting roles (she was fired from all upcoming Hallmark projects and the final season of Fuller House), as well as her brand as a TV producer. Above all else, the contrast between her persona and her actions led to her own Martha Stewarting: public shaming that focused more on her actions than on those of her 49 co-accused parents, including her husband.

Whatever their culpability, the charges faced by Loughlin, Huffman, Holmes, and Stewart are all backed up by evidence of their actions. Where the double standard comes in is the extent to which they have been publicly shamed for wrongdoing even as countless men have done and will continue to commit similar acts without facing the same consequences. All four women are white, heterosexual, able-bodied, and wealthy, allowing them to thrive in their lanes. However, even these privileges are not enough to protect them from our culture’s glee in watching a powerful woman fall.

The situations faced by these four women represent just one of countless no-win situations for women in our culture. Women are reprimanded for being too fat and too skinny, for being too meek and for being too confident, for failing to report a sexual assault or for bringing attention to one. When money and power enter into the equation, women are chastised for being too dependent on men or for being too much like businessmen. In all scenarios, failure becomes inevitable. The patriarchal system incentivizes greed and allows wealthy people to get away with as much as they do. In order for women to attain power, it must be within this same system, making women as fallible and corruptible as men. Yet the barometer is different for women: “Boys will be boys,” but a woman who is seen to misbehave is immediately condemned by the exact same system she’s leaned into. And it’s the culturally groomed sense of discomfort with women being in power, that it is “unnatural,” that leads to this demonization. We have been living in a false equivalency, pretending as if women can succeed in a man’s world. You can attempt to set aside your gender, like Joan of Arc and Elizabeth Holmes; you can present a sweet face to the public while working ruthlessly behind the scenes, like Martha Stewart and Lori Loughlin; but when you fail, you are nothing more than just a woman.

* * *

Ann Foster is a writer and historian living in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Her research interest is in the intersection of women, history, and pop culture, especially the lives and stories of figures both well-known and half-forgotten.

Editor: Katie Kosma Factchecker: Ethan Chiel Copyeditor: Jacob Z. Gross

from Blogger https://ift.tt/30IqtWJ via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes