#im just thinking about how matt reeves adamantly refused to use any flashbacks in the Batman

[stsebastiens]

ok so i love and adore moon knight but i can’t stop thinking about it in the context of the other disney+ marvel shows and this article about the trauma plot, specifically these lines:

“Trauma has become synonymous with backstory, but the tyranny of backstory is itself a relatively recent phenomenon—one that, like any successful convention, has a way of skirting our notice. Personality was not always rendered as the pencil-rubbing of personal history…Nicholas Dames writes in “Amnesiac Selves” (2001), describing a tradition of “pleasurable forgetting,” in which characters import only those details from the past which can serve them (and, implicitly, the narrative) in the present. 

Certainly the filmmakers of classical Hollywood cinema were quite able to bring characters to life without portentous flashbacks to formative torments. In contrast, characters are now created in order to be dispatched into the past, to truffle for trauma.”

And when you look at Marvel’s other body of television work, it’s basically this formula, over and over. Moon Knight is a more artful iteration of the cliche, but it is hardly unique. episode 5 itself is essentially a case study of the trauma plot, in an absurdly literal sense: two characters going room-to-room and exploring memories like they’re walking through an ikea display. 

from an audience perspective, the cathartic hit can be deeply compelling, especially when combined with an incredible acting performance (like Oscar Isaac’s). but at what point is this good/necessary storytelling, and at what point does it become pseudo-emotional indulgence? 

#lmao in the article they even name-drop wanda maximoff #so clearly it's not unseen #moon knight #ely.txt #tl;dr marvel is hopping on the trauma/mental health train because its trendy #and i think there is very little genuine exploration behind it #im just thinking about how matt reeves adamantly refused to use any flashbacks in the Batman #not just because people already knew the origin story backwards and forwards #but because he was more interested in showing the man in the present #living with his trauma #and how that affected his actions in a moment-to-moment way #he Showed you how this implied tragedy was affecting our main character #instead of walking you through it piece-by-piece #idk man im just thinking !! im just having thoughts