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whatsupspaceman · 3 years

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Lake’s trans narration in Infinity Train

Lake’s story in infinity train is clearly signifying their journey as a trans person and coming into their own identity, and it resonated in a way with me (a non-binary person) that I’ve never seen in mainstream media. Their entire arc is about them discovering their own identity, not knowing how to find a name or who they wanted to be and trying to convince this entire system built around them, one built to constrict them that they are real and alive- it is absolutely no coincidence that this season heavily references the Matrix, a sci fi piece of media about reality, identity, and transness made by two trans women.

There’s a reason the names: “Chrome girl, mirror girl, mirror tulip, sliver” are leveled against Lake, against their will, and Constantly reference either Lake’s perceived gender or their perceived “aberration”

kinda like the suits in the matrix using neo’s “professional”, non hacker name “mister anderson” against him.

Tulip is obviously her own person with her own identity outside of this season, but in Lake’s journey, tulip is the girl she was Supposed to be, the entire amalgamation of who everyone expected Lake to be and essentially a personification of their “birth” identity and deadname.

The problem isn’t Lake! it is the entire system built around what It’s idea of a “person” is, designed specifically to exclude denizens like Lake because they were never considered in the creation of the system!!

To reference the good place- Lake is the janet of infinity train, an entity designed to “help people along their journey” in this world outside of their own attrition, and ends up growing into their own identity! “I’m not a girl I’m not a robot. i’m not just a janet anymore! i don’t know what i am!”

I’m finally choosing their name, Lake takes the body of water that’s used to reflect themself, that the flecs have used for their whole individual LIFE to hunt them down and try to kill them, and reclaims that which was once used to hurt them and defining themself by overcoming it! the use of a reflective surface as a piece of their identity that they are reclaiming!!

Lake spends their whole existence in the season defining themself by the things they are not: not mirror tulip, not chrome girl, not a sliver, not just a reflection- and in the 8th episode we finally see them able to define themself with what they Are, leading to the emotional climax of “I am a real person! I deserve a number too!” a cry that directly mirrors the conflicts of so many trans people, who are wanting to be seen as a person, not wanting to be defined by what they aren’t and who they can never be (as lake’s “prime”, tulip, is for them)

The use of binary code in the “passenger farm” - (the metaphor of lake being unrecognizable by this system!) (especially a binary computer code) one-one’s obsession with math and numbers, the way Jesse’s problem leads to his number being non-integers, unsolvable by the train’s coding, getting stuck in a logic loop- Lake defies everything that the train’s system runs on, and everybody believes the problem lies within Lake wanting to be different, when it is actually the systematic issues around them that humans can be defined by their number. They end up being able to manipulate the system that is the train! like neo in the matrix

#text #lake infinity train #infinity train #infinity train hbo max #infinity train lake #it lake #it #trans #the matrix #the good place #analysis #infinity train analysis #neo the matrix #nonbinary #nonbinary lake

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variousqueerthings · 3 years

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Daniel LaRusso: A Queer Feminine Fairytale Analysis Part Three of Three

(another massive, massive thank you to @mimsyaf )

part 1

part 2

8. Queerness and femininity and masculinity and the colour red and *record breaks*

If we spin the record aaalll the way back to this paragraph: “…looking at what it is girls and women in fairytales have/don’t have, what they want, and how they’re going to get it. It’s about power (lack of), sexuality (repressed, then liberated), and men.” Reading Daniel as a repressed, bisexual boy in a society that doesn’t accept his desires it’s interesting looking at how he moves through the world of the Miyagi-verse, at how threatened other men are by him, at how obsessed they are with him.

He’s out in the symbolic woods and these large boys and men see him and decide for whatever plot reasons to come for him. And they are large and violent and attractive and apart from Johnny again, they don’t have the nebulous excuse of fighting over a girl and even that excuse dies by around the midpoint when Johnny kisses Ali just to get a rise out of Daniel. He’s not trying to “win her back,” he’s not even really looking at her. He’s just trying to get a reaction. They don’t have any of the fighters in Rocky’s excuse either of Daniel being a macho opponent.

You can read whatever subtext into TKK1 and TKK2 (which becomes especially tempting once CK confirmed that the guys he fought at seventeen have been thinking about him ever since – for thirty-five years), but TKK3 is where it’s really At in terms of obsession and lust and forbidden desires.

Silver is presented as both a handsome prince who saves Daniel and mentors him (where Miyagi is undoubtedly cast in a fatherhood role) and later on becomes twisted into a dark secret that Daniel has to keep, while he turns that thing that Daniel loves (karate, it’s… it’s karate… it’s also men, but it’s definitely karate, because karate makes him feel… things...) into an abusive, violent version of itself.

A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

But he’s also offering him something liberating. Whatever is going on in that nightclub scene is about something other than breaking Daniel down. Even the bloodied knuckles aren’t just about revenge. It’s about giving him something that he isn’t, in the end, willing to receive, at least not from Silver. In that roundabout, strange way of these feminine fairytales, it’s exploring hidden desires through the metaphor of karate.

Daniel wears red because it’s his colour. In the movies he wears red a lot. Often in scenes with violence in them (the beach/the hilltop in TKK1 and the date/the destruction of the dojo/the final fight in TKK2), but he also has a variety of shirts (and in TKK3 pants) that pop up all the way through the narrative. He wears a red jacket when he accepts Terry’s training, when he punches a guy in the face, and when he tries to get out of the training again (as badly as that goes).

Did anyone consciously think about red’s link to desire, obsession, and violence when they made these? Eh. But is it there symbolically? When he meets Johnny, when he fights Chozen, when he’s in emotionally fraught situations with Terry? Hell yeah.

Probably the most lust-and-violence infused red is that aforementioned punching-board-until-knuckles-bleed bit – not that I thought Terry was going to pull him in for a kiss, because I knew, logically, of course he wouldn’t right? There’s no way… is there? Or later on when Daniel punches that guy and ends up with blood all over his shirt and Terry once more grasps him, euphorically. Blood is violence. Blood is also desire. Red is Daniel’s colour, even though he doesn’t acknowledge it come Cobra Kai. (Maybe he just needs someone else - cough Johnny Lawrence cough - to inspire it in him again).

Daniel LaRusso’s narrative is exploring that most feminine of fairytale tropes: To want and be wanted by monsters and having to hide those desires.

“Maybe this time that strange churning in my stomach that feels like a mix of anticipation and fear will turn out good for me.” - Daniel’s mind.

At the end of the story, Daniel saves himself, with all of the strange mixed narratives around it, and the acknowledgement that the end of The Karate Kid Part Three isn’t satisfying and its aftermath will likely be delved into in the next season of Cobra Kai.

Nevertheless, he saves himself. Not from Silver or Kreese or Barnes, and not entirely, but he makes a decision not to give in to fear (and he continues to try and live by that decision, making it over and over again for the next thirty-five years, even when the return of Cobra Kai makes that difficult for him).

He doesn’t do it by being the strongest in the land or even through a lucky shot (although that too). He does it by refusing to be like the male antagonists that surround him, by telling them they have no power over him. The narrative isn’t just his getting lost in the forest and all the monsters he finds there, it’s about how he redefines power for himself within that forest.

He’s a man who isn’t violent, whose victories include helping out a girl whose ex-boyfriend just broke her radio, successfully doing the moves to a cultural dance he’s trying to learn, sitting with his father figure while he cries over the death of his own father, telling a girl that she’s just made her first friend, and breathing a sigh of relief that a tree that got broken has healed.

Daniel LaRusso is a good boy is the point!

Karate is a metaphor. It can turn into many things: A series of lessons learned about how to be his own man and take care of his own house, a respect for the history of the father teaching him and sharing his home and story with him, fear, desire, masculinity (and the different forms that can take).

When a tall, handsome stranger offers to teach him karate in the dark, without Daniel’s caretaker knowing how to help him, and twists that karate into something that hurts him - when he reclaims that, over and over, that means something too.

This man is fine and definitely isn’t carrying the weight of buried karate-based queer trauma - could a traumatised man do this? *stares blankly at a former tormentor as blood runs down his forehead*

9. In Conclusion Daniel Has Kissed Dudes… Symbolically… But We Can HC Literally:

So there’s Daniel and his coded feminine fairytale narrative. It’s all a series of fun coincidences.

1. Ralph Macchio is just Like That

2. Red. All the red.

3. large portion of his storyline is about lack of power. Yes, he regains that power by the end of the first and second movie through A Fight, but generally he is framed as powerless opposite these almost monstrously physically powerful boys/men. And in the third one it’s barely even about physical prowess (he’d still lose a real fight against Barnes or Silver) and more about regaining lost autonomy off the back of a manipulative, abusive relationship with an older guy.

4. The third movie in particular is narratively a mess, but if reimagined as a fairytale makes a lot of sense (because it’s secretly all about how karate is bisexuality and Daniel gets manipulated through that desire to be better at karate).

5. Queerness and femininity and themes about hidden desires that can only be approached sideways through couching those desires in symbolism: Handshake meme.

6. The fact that the more I think about it, the more feral I am for a Labyrinth AU.

7. To sum up over 5000 words of text: The inherent homoeroticism of wanting to be slammed against a locker by a bully, but extended over three movies and ever-more inventive ways of hurting pretty-boy-Daniel-LaRusso.

Johnny’s not going to be happy when he realises Daniel’s got other ex-rivals buried in his closet...

10. Some Other Stuff Aka The Laziest Referencing I’ll Ever Do

Further reading on trans Matrix

Further reading on masculinity and rape narrative in The Rape Of James Bond

Youtube Video from Pop Culture Detective (Sexual Assault Of Men Played For Laughs)

Some film/TV references in this: Dracula (Coppola), Princess Bride, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Labyrinth, The Matrix, Rocky, Princess And The Frog, Cinderella, Enchanted, Shape Of Water, Swamp Thing, Phantom of the Opera

Some fairytale references: Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, The Wolf And The Seven Little Kids, Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Company of Wolves (Angela Carter), Through the Looking Glass, Princess Bride

Also referenced is Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel and the subsequent musical Funhome. Further thoughts on this by @thehours2002 and @jenpsaki:

https://thehours2002.tumblr.com/post/650033577171533824/daniel-larusso-and-fun-home-click-to-enlarge

https://jenpsaki.tumblr.com/post/650530225997971456/cobra-kai-fun-home-inspired-by-goldstargirls

My list of Cobra Kai meta posts

I wanted to delve into fairytale movies more, but then I was like “fuck, I have actual work to do,” but I was interested in the ways male and female characters are written in these stories:

The Last Unicorn, The Never-Ending Story, The Dark Crystal, Legend, and Stardust.

The Last Unicorn is an interesting one because she’s not really human, until she is. It’s more like The Little Mermaid (the fairytale, not the Disney film) in tone, and of course there’s a pretty substantiated rumour that Andersen wrote that one as a metaphor for falling in love with another man (who eventually got married).

Andersen in general is just fun to analyse as someone who popularized so many fairytales and exists as an ambiguously queer historical figure – might’ve been modern-day gay, bi, ace, but we’re just not sure. All your favourite fairytales can be read through the lens of queer loneliness and ostracization. Just like horror.

Anyway I didn’t go into the whole Little-Mermaid-Last-Unicorn transformation bit so much as the Monstrous-Desires bit, but I think there could be something to that too, with monsters representing otherhood and all. Stardust is a kinda-almost-this, except she sticks to her human form and all is okey-dokey by the end, she’s allowed to marry the handsome man and be a star.

The Never-Ending Story has Atreyu and Bastian and because of a lack of female characters, an interesting bond between the two of them, but mainly Atreyu is absolutely a go-gettem Hero Type and it’s just interesting to see how Bastian relates to him as both an audience insert, but also eventually as his own character in that world.

The Dark Crystal contains certain… androgynous elements of feminine and masculine coded characteristics in the main character because of how he’s not human, but also they do have a “female” version of his species that he needs to go save (and bring back to life) by the end, so in a way it’s both more and less heteronormative in its characters.

Legend sees another example of a monster (literally called Darkness and looking like a traditional devil) trying to seduce a princess through promises of power, and she “goes along with it” in order to trick him and succeeds in that trick, but is ultimately saved by the male lead.

In conclusion: I don’t even have Shrek in this.

#daniel larusso #terry silver #the karate kid #the karate kid part three #cobra kai #ck #cobra kai meta #and in conclusion... brain brain brain

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turbo-overkill · 2 years

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Elaborate on how you see Optimus as trans /genuine. I, like, kinda 100% agree with you and don’t know why.

Comfort character go brr

Okay, seriously, I feel like the entire thing with the Matrix of Leadeeship works as a great metaphor. I'm going to be focusing specifically on TFP Optimus here:

- He fucks off into Cybertron's core only to come back with a different frame/name. That's kinda trans of him, not gonna lie. I have trouble Not seeing any shapeshifting characters/characters who have had their body changed in a similar way as being trans.

- Has Issues but is, at the end of the day, comfortable in his own masculinity. He doesn't need to prove anything to himself or others, and I just. Really find something about him inspiring.

I'd say that while Orion Pax would technically be considered his deadname, he has a complicated relationship with it. He doesn't hate it, but it doesn't really fit anymore. I mean, he's changed so much, how could he just take back the name that might as well belong to an entirely different person?

Honestly I think that the whole thing just boils down to me wanting to project on someone ajdjendnsbd

#asks #i could write a long essay and I have it saved Somewhere but i cant fucking find it jfc #is this a good explanation??? idk I'm tired and i don't really feel like putting off posting this until I figure out how to say my thoughts #out loud #every transformers character is trans yes that includes the humans

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arseniccattails · 3 years

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so. about ‘true form starscream’

I know a lot of people really don’t like it, and I do see why. I'm not exactly MScott's #1 fan, and the trans/race metaphor blender thing might be weird for someone, if they're unable to buy into the whole "speculative fiction" thing. despite this, I can't help but find Your First Mistake to be kind of compelling and I'd like to explore why and my thoughts on the matter under the cut.

most of the criticism levied at this and subsequent issues is that seeing what he would look like if he was forged pushed starscream farther into ethical behavior—and doesn’t that prove that anti cold constructed sentiment is right and at least somewhat based in truth? eh, I don’t think so. because even if that frame is what his spark would have made if it could shape a protoform itself, although I’m not convinced it is, it’s still not what he would look like if he was forged.

if you pulled a reverse Megatron on Starscream, if you plucked his spark out of a factory and planted it in a hotspot, that’s still not a ‘natural’ spark. he would still have been affected by the killswitch. do you know what changes? he doesn’t have dysphoria. he isn’t discriminated against, because people wouldn’t know. that’s it. that’s not a body that’s shaped by 'Primus' (unless you count the spark coming from the Matrix.) it’s just him. there is no ‘forged Starscream’, unless Cybertron in some offshoot timeline managed to muster up an identical spark.

and why do people assume that’s what he would have looked like in that scenario, anyways? the ‘true form’ is a body reflecting Starscream’s spark after countless years of war, after knowing so many different people—never touched by 'Primus', but apparently touched by Wheeljack, Bumblebee, Skyfire, Soundwave, Ravage. (metaphorically. probably.) it’s probably at least a little different than the above scenario, where his spark was only touched, truly touched, by himself and the matrix. it’s in the image of who he is now. don’t you think, in a species with mods and frame changes, that even forged bots who mostly like their bodies might change some things along the way? that during their long, long lives, their sparks, their very selves, are touched so deeply that they might want to alter parts to make themselves more at home? I think they probably do.

Windblade isn’t making anything by adding, she’s making something new by subtracting. she says, “is that what you were truly seeking, Starscream? escape from a foreign skin? the belonging you thought was lost forever?

“did you forget it was here all along?”

see, like I said, Windblade isn’t somehow channeling the power of Primus to transform Starscream into what he would be like if made by him. she’s just helping him molt.

so, why is it that he’s able to ‘molt’ whatever’s been holding him down? why is he able to realize the body that’s apparently been touched by all these people only now? he designed his recent frames, right? Windblade said he always had this belonging, buried. what buried it? why couldn’t he visualize the right one?

I think it’s because the ‘slag’ that fell away is the lie, the really big lie, that Starscream had been telling himself for a long time—his isolation. apparently his previous attempts at interpersonal connection had been cut off by Megatron, who literally ‘beat it into him’ that he had nobody, or maybe he felt like he couldn’t trust anybody because nobody stood up for him when he was being mistreated, and even if objectively that’s reasonable (I mean god look at Megatron) it still had to sting. either way, no matter how it felt or feels, Starscream has never really been alone. you’d think that Megatron would be among the ghosts, right? literally Elita One is there. Optimus Prime. Shockwave. it’s ‘every ally’ but also ‘every enemy’. except Starscream never doubted that Megtaron affected him, did he? what allowed Starscream to take his truest form when he never could before was Windblade showing him that he’d been touched by so many others, loved and hated both. Starscream had been viewing himself through the lens of a single relationship, and an awful one at that, that he backed his own self image into a dark, miserable corner. when Windblade took away this lie, he could visualize himself in a way that accurately reflected his spark, changed by so many other people as it was.

Starscream becomes a better person because a) he was already heading that way and b) he was, with help, finally able to pull himself out of an awful, stifling self image narrative intentionally or unintentionally instilled by a violent abuser. I think it's just part of his path to healing. I think it's sweet.

it’s not what he would have looked like if he were forged. it’s so much more than that, to me. and I’m, well, kind of enamored with that.

#transformers #analysis #character analysis #transformers analysis #starscream #idw #tf #i kind of liked this issue and i want to talk about why

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thosearentcrimes · 2 years

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Saw some discourse lately about how it’s actually not true that The Matrix is a trans movie, and while I get where those people are coming from (it is not one of the themes of the movie, and there is no simple metaphor anywhere in the movie for transness, there’s only Switch who is a supporting character anyway, and who was made less trans by studio censorship). But they are still wrong, I’m afraid. The Matrix is absolutely trans, it’s just trans in a way that’s not exactly accessible to everyone. It has trans vibes, fairly weak ones for a variety of reasons but still apparent.

To pick an example of trans vibes that’s a lot stronger, and much easier to demonstrate, some time back, a writer named Isabel Fall wrote an excellent story, I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter. The author was chased back into the closet by a mob of censorious idiots either unwilling or unable to put in the moderate amount of effort required to read and understand what the story is saying, or, what might be even worse, they correctly understood the story but hate what it says (which, for the most part, is a correct but challenging condemnation by way of horror of the “Coming Out as Transgender Made Me a More Effective CIA Officer” theory of queer assimilationism). When Isabel Fall was chased off the internet, she had the publisher pull the story, so it is now only available on the internet archive here. All that has relatively little to do with this post, I’m just still extremely mad.

What’s more relevant here is that it’s absolutely obvious from the way I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter is written that the author is trans. I am not making any sort of essentialist argument here, nor am I attempting to gatekeep trans identity, it is simply the case that there is a characteristically trans way of thinking and talking about certain topics, one that is very easy to recognize and very hard to pin down. I’m not saying it is a prerequisite of being trans, I’m just saying it’s very common among trans people, and I’ve almost never seen it from cis people. The only cases in which I’ve seen someone who is not openly trans authentically reproduce this way of thinking, they either come out as trans later, or they are basing it on a trans friend or partner.

I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter has much stronger trans vibes than The Matrix. The reasons here are pretty obvious. I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter is much closer in terms of themes and meaning to trans identity than The Matrix is. Perhaps more importantly, though, the trans vibes of The Matrix are filtered both through the film crew, and through the studio, both of which attenuate the vibes significantly, though they’re still there. You might not see them, and that’s fine. Nobody could expect you to identify a characteristic way of thinking which you have not experienced, and nobody could expect you to know what it is characteristic of.

I don’t know how to get people to learn to see (let alone write with) trans vibes, though I know it’s possible. I would recommend trying to do a close reading of I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter to start with because it’s very good, and also because it has some of the strongest vibes I know of. Be careful. It’s not the familiar and casual use of trans and queer jargon that you’re looking for, it’s a dead giveaway but it’s also something you could imitate with a couple hours of research, the vibes run through the text and aren’t as localized. What you’re looking for lies much deeper, it appears flashes in imagery and metaphor, questions that others would not be asking or thinking about. You’ll need other works to cross-reference with, probably. Try to go with some non-fiction, I guess? But keep in mind, I can never be sure of how to teach you to see something I identify on instinct, from experience.

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strangertheory · 3 years

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Will and El are technically the same person? Along with Hopper? Did I get that right? This is so confusing.

Hello there! Thanks for Asking.

My current hypothesis regarding what might be happening in Stranger Things is that we are following a story about a DID System and that many characters in the series are perhaps alters and hosts (separate states of consciousness and identity within one human mind) dealing with trauma memories and seeking to learn to work together to protect one another and the DID System as a whole.

The short answer to your question is: only if you perceive of alters (different states of consciousness that have their own individual sense of identity and self) that are sharing the same human mind as being “the same person.” Generally those with DID will refer to themselves as being “multiple,” as being hosts in a DID System, as being alters or as having alters etc. Each alter will have their own distinct memories and life experiences that they’ve lived (both in the external world and the internal worlds that might exist in their mind) and that are part of who they know themselves to be just as individuals with a single state of consciousness have built their sense of identity over many years of lived experiences.

kaypeace21 and I might be (?) the only two bloggers on Tumblr analyzing the concept that El, Will, and Hopper (and potentially many other characters) are all sharing the same mind and are part of a DID System (but if there's anyone else I'd enjoy following their blog!)

@kaypeace21‘s hypothesis is that the writers of Stranger Things are telling a fictional sci fi / fantasy story that, like in X-Men or Akira (etc.), involves characters with superpowers and psychic abilities. Her theory is that because Will has both dissociative identity disorder and psychic / supernatural abilities that he has unintentionally and subconsciously brought his alters, his trauma memories, and his internal worlds to life and they’ve escaped his mind and are now in the real world and in Hawkins.

Although I do consider @kaypeace21′s hypothesis that everything has been brought to life and has emerged from Will’s mind into Hawkins by supernatural means (like David Haller’s / Legion’s alters do in X-Men) to be a very well-argued theory and analysis of what might be happening in Stranger Things, I have recently pushed my own hypothesis regarding what is happening in the story towards questioning whether the supernatural events and superpowers of Stranger Things might exist exclusively within internal worlds in our characters’ subconscious. I’m unsure of how much of their “real” physical world we have seen yet in the series if I follow this train of thought, and how much of it is memories that are symbolically playing out in an internal world of their mind. In short: I think there might be a certain level of consciousness and wakefulness at which they’re all still in the same body that we have perhaps not fully seen or realized yet because of the creative way that the series is telling the story (although this might have been imaginatively represented in season 2 when Will and/or the Mindflayer are conscious/unconscious at the Lab with Dr. Owens.)

Perhaps El and Will only appear separately and can only interact with one another in internal worlds, while co-conscious, or within liminal spaces between wakefulness and unconsciousness because Hawkins is not always their “real” world but is an internal world in their shared brain. Maybe Hawkins is similar to the Upside Down, which I also believe is a mental construct, but more comfortable since it’s meant to be a home for alters to live rather than a place that trauma has been hidden away. I think that El is a gatekeeper in the DID System. And I currently hypothesize that Hopper is also possible part of that same DID System and that Hopper is a protector and potentially also a gatekeeper. (Hopefully I will find the time to write a new post about Hopper sometime in the near future.)

The questions that I keep asking myself are: what if some moments in the story are not actually taking place in the ‘real world’ even within the Stranger Things universe? What if many moments in the series so far have been fantastical because they were moments in characters’ lives that were re-imagined by their subconscious mind in order to cope with trauma? Not hallucinations (because as Hopper says “these aren’t nightmares, it’s happening”) but imaginative re-workings of "what happened” in their life that are easier for their mind to process. PTSD and internal flashbacks and also reworked memories that manifest themselves more symbolically and metaphorically within fantastical internal worlds.

Many movies on the Stranger Things 4 Video Store Friday movie list encourage me to continue questioning the boundaries between Stranger Things characters’ physical lives and what they might be experiencing as flashbacks or as memories within internal worlds and different states of consciousness. A few films on the list which inspire me to question what might be going on in Hawkins and what Hopper, El, and Will (and many other characters) might be dealing with include Altered States, The Fisher King, The Matrix, Inside Out, Inception, The Truman Show, What Dreams May Come, Drop Dead Fred, The Cell, The Neverending Story, and many others.

The first season of Stranger Things had a lot of artistic and thematic strength in its mystery and layers of ambiguity, but I suspect that once Stranger Things was renewed and they knew that they could have multiple seasons they began planning how to reveal what’s going on behind the curtain of mystery in a meaningful way by the end of the story.

The big question is: what has been happening in these characters’ lives? Am I “overthinking things” as some of my friends have told me? Is it really “not that deep?”

Here are a few blogposts that I have written on this topic in which I explore some of my thoughts regarding what might be happening in the series if Stranger Things is about a DID System, internal worlds, and alters dealing with trauma:

🧠 What is going on with the eerie parallels between Will and El?

👀 My response to an Ask: "Do you think there’s any relation or symbolism between a Brenner and Lonnie other than being shitty/abusive father figures?"

🦸‍♀️ My response to an Ask: "What are the source of their powers?" in which I share my "first layer" and "second layer" meta theories/thoughts (re: The DID Theory) + a brief follow-up Ask regarding the concept that El's powers might only exist in internal worlds if she is a fictive alter

🏞 My response to an Ask: What do you think is going to happen with the Upside Down especially if Will and El's connection grows?

In this post I briefly address how El, if she were a teenage girl alter that exists in an internal world of the mind but who is sometimes conscious in Will’s body in the “real world”, would have experiences comparable to those of a trans girl

Truthfully: I am at the point that I speculate that nearly all of the characters exist as alters either exclusively or are introjects which are alters based on people that the DID System knows that exist in the external world. But I realize that would be quite the plot twist and might push the question of “what is real?” farther than some fans might be willing to go.

I recognize that this is a lot of information and theoretical content and blog links to provide to you in response to your general Ask but I wanted to offer you reference points and direct you to other blog posts regarding this theory in case you wanted to learn more about the evidence and analyses that led me and a few other bloggers to these hypotheses. If you have any other questions regarding my theories regarding what might be happening in Stranger Things (whether that’s this topic or others) please don’t hesitate to send me another Ask or to DM me directly. I always enjoy talking about ideas with other fans. :)

If this concept interests you I know that kaypeace21 would greatly enjoy sharing her own theories with you and answering any questions you have. I highly recommend that you visit her blog, read her posts, and message her if this topic interests you because my thoughts are often very different from hers and you might enjoy reading both of our blogs for two different theories based around the same hypothesis: that Will has dissociative identity disorder and that this influences all events in the series. If you are interested in reading about her current analysis that hypothesizes that superpowers are real in Stranger Things, that Will has dissociative identity disorder, and that both monsters and some other characters have emerged from Will’s subconsciousness into the “real world” of Hawkins then I recommend reading these two blogposts that she wrote: 🧠 Part 1: Will Created the Mindflayer and Upside-Down Theory + Part 2: Some of your favorite characters are Will’s split personalities (psych/narrative analysis) CW: abuse, sexual assault, psychological trauma (a content warning is also noted before the section in the post itself.)

I do agree with many aspects of kaypeace21′s theories and I think she explains how dissociative identity disorder might influence many events of the story so far in a way that I do find compelling, but the critical difference between our hypotheses is that kaypeace21 currently proposes that Stranger Things features characters with DID that also have superpowers (like David Haller in X-Men) but I currently think that the vast majority of what we have seen on screen in the series so far is “not real” and exists only within characters’ minds and I do not believe that El has any superpowers except when she is within internal worlds. (And that’s a fairly notable difference.) I also don’t think that the Mindflayer exists as a blobby mass of melted people except within internal worlds in their mind. I wonder if the vast majority of season 3 took place entirely in an internal world version of Hawkins and when Will said “what if we locked him out here with us?” to El that he might have been more accurate if he had said “what if we locked him IN here with us?” in very simple terms: I want to know if Will has actually woken up yet from being sedated in season 2 at all, or maybe whether he's sometimes present in the external world but then sometimes switches back to the internal world, etc. (But perhaps the events of season 4 will invalidate this thought of mine. I look forward to seeing what happens!)

Thank you again for your message. I hope my response wasn’t too rambling, that I didn’t repeat myself too much, and that it remained coherent in spite of how late at night I am writing this. I might return and edit this in the morning. (I’m wrapping up this reply at 12:56 AM but I started writing this at 10PM. Time flew by! Time for sleep.) Goodnight :)

#stranger things theory #stranger things theories #the did theory #stranger things is perhaps about a did system + internal worlds alters and trauma #el and will #will and el #and hopper #and many others

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breakingbadfics · 3 years

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Death of the author

CW: Light discussion of politics, mentions of the Alt-Right, and White Supremacists.

Consider this a “Change of Pace” entry. I’m trying to figure out what the next essay is to be about as well as the eventual long term for this blog.

I wrote this essay back in mid 2019, long before the idea of this blog would come to mind, it’s been lightly edited prior to posting and added to. and I think this essay shows some of my influences much more heavily than my other writings.

What does My Little Pony and The Matrix have in common? Death of the Author.

Death of the Author is not to be confused with “Separating the Artist from the Art,” a self explanatory concept to distance a work from a creator who’s beliefs are more than a little unpleasant, easiest example is acknowledging that, yes, H.P. Lovecraft was a Mega-racist, however, his contributions to the horror genre have created a base that is nearly ubiquitous with the genre to this day, like wise with Orson Scott Card. this concept in itself is an especially controversial subject, but is not the focus of this piece.

Death of the Author is what allowed The Matrix, a movie with a collection of metaphors about being an lgbt person, and an activist for the rights of yourself and your allies to be grossly misinterpreted as a way to justify being a bigot, the most egregious misinterpretation being that of “The Red Pill Scene.”

In the context of the film, The Red Pill Scene is the part of the traditional heroes story where the hero “accepts the call”, Neo is quite literally making the choice to leave the safe world he’s been living in behind and embark on his adventure that will result in a death and rebirth into being The One who will save humanity. In the now very much understood to be the direct metaphor, it’s a scene in which Neo, the stand-in for a lgbt person, specifically a trans person, is being told by a much older lgbt person “You are trans, you have the choice to embrace it, but regardless of what choice you make from here on out the road ahead is going to be bumpy and rough on you, because the system around you is designed to make sure people like us aren’t able to prosper, and if you join us, you won’t be able to opt out.”

That is the very understood metaphor that most people accept with the modern understanding after The Wachowski’s came out as Lily and Lana in the “post-matrix trilogy” reality of the real world.

However due to the Moral Neutrality of Death of the Author in other circles the Red Pill(and all the other metaphors in the film) takes on an alternative meaning. And I can be “polite” in my explaing the bad take on how this scene plays out, but just to hammer the point home we’ll get dirty so you can know where the take is coming from, The Red Pill Scene for White supremeacists, and The alt-right (but I repeat myself) is such. Neo, a disgruntled white person is being told that the world is controlled by soulless machines. Jews, people of color, etx. Everyone around him is mind controlled and can and will attempt to stop him from saving the people smart enough to also realise they’re being held captive by non-whites and save them all. This of course, all being told to him by Morpheus, a black man. So have fun working your head around that.

This of course the most extreme example being the most ubiquitous, poke around on chan sites and sooner or later you’ll see the phrase “red pill” having been memetically adjusted to mean “hey tell me about this thing” or even more specifically “I already had an opinion about this but either way I want you to confirm my choice.” But I digress.

These two interpretations are so wildly on the opposite ends of the spectrum that the only commonalities between them is “You will likely need to be violent at some point”

I’m naturally only covering the two interpretations, the matrix itself has been picked apart by an untold number of people and people interpret it in as many ways as possible in terms of philosophical meaning. That is the nature of Death of The Author.

Death of the Author also covers in a round-a-bout fashion, selective canon, a subjective acknowledgement of canon elements throughout a long lived franchise- see; Star Wars, Star Trek, the belief that there was never any sequels to The Matrix. This variant of the philosophy allows one to be able to continue interactions with a text, specifically a text that consists of multiple volumes (or contributions, each one made by an individual author) but also deny interactions with parts that they personally dislike.

More often than not, you can attribute the death of the author to a bad take in a case of fiction, another primary example being Fight Club, often missed for the scathing critique of unhealthy male behaviour and propped up as some sort of moral guideline for how to live your life. Which is again, not to say this is the fault of Death of The Author as a philosophy, it is morally neutral, these bad takes can more often be attribued to the simple fact that unless directly stating it most attempts at satire or parody will have a contingent of people who agree with what is said, not what is meant, and death of the author unfortunately does make that..very easy, for good, or ill.

Where does My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fit in with all this? Well there are certainly alt-right members of the brony fandom who are painfully missing the point, but we’ve already dwelled on the negative enough, so let’s get happy.

In Episode 1 of Season 1, the first part of a two part pilot, in the background of a shot during a party scene; a pony with a grey coat and blonde mane and tail is seen in the background. This particular pony stood out the most amongst other background characters due to a mistake caused by the animation staff. According to the supervising director at the time, this particular error was spotted after hasbro greenlit the episode for air, and because it amused him he chose not to order a correction so it was left in as a nice little easter egg.

The nameless background pony would eventually be caught by 4chan among other places and very rapidly developed a following of fans and given a nickname, Derpy Hooves. This particular following and new nickname would echo back to shows staff becoming the name internally referred to by the show’s staff.

Friendship is magic creator Lauren Faust, who also enjoyed the popularity of the character when asked in an interview would state that a character named Ditzy Doo existed in an unaired episode, that would be implied to be this particular background pony, So naturally now depending on the fan this particular character would be reffered to as either Derpy Hooves, or Ditzy Doo.

Ditzy Doo would go on to become a recurring easter egg with in the show, something similar to that of “where’s waldo” but with horses. This practice would continue until episode 14 of season 2 where the character would have a set of spoken lines and would be addressed by name. This however resulted in a degree of controversy in which some people expressed concern that the presentation of the character was an offensive attempt at portraying people with mental or physical disabilities. This event resulted in the episode being altered in future airings and the character disappearing from the show for the vast majority of Season 3. Beyond Season 3 the character would continue to appear until season 5 where they would finally have a voiced role in the 100th episode of the show, and then eventually having another speaking role in the christmas special “The best gift ever.” It is also worth noting that Hasbro never gave her an “official name” with almost all of Ditzy’s merchandise either having no name present, or more often than not a singular image of a muffin in place of a name, even going so far as to have “Muffins” be the credited name she was given in all voiced instances of the show.

Muffins, Ditzy Doo, or Derpy Hooves isn’t the only case of background characters growing a large following of fans with in the show; a variety of characters have been swept up by the fans, given names and personalities built entirely out of bit gags. Lyra, Bon Bon, Vinyl Scratch, Octavia Melody, and who knows how many more have all been seen in background moments which would be built on by fans and then echo back into the staff to be integrated into the show further. One would say this is fanon but at the end of the day, the writers and show staff had very little more intent with the characters beyond “does this background character look good?” and “Does this bit part character stand out enough to automatically be recognizable for the bit they need to be doing” it is still what I believe to be an example of Death of The Author, an act of choosing to ignore the intended meaning,and giving what amounts to window dressings a full life as fleshed out characters in fan content and in small instances of the show; an interpretation separate from the writers original intent.

Now the question is does someone need to actively defy the author to participate in The Death There-of? No. I don’t believe so. In much the same fashion no one need actually be a clan member to inadvertently say or do something that's passive aggressively racist(yes a bit of an extreme, I know) one need not actively defy the author, merely ascribe to an alternate interpretation of a work of fiction. Refer to Fight Club, the film does everything it can with out directly stating “most of the people in Fight Club and later Project Mayhem are bad people, because they were already doing the things Tyler Durden was ascribing to” and almost unilaterally all the bad takes are built around this idea that they’ve achieved the perfect ideal masculine because they’re the “living in the moment, violent psychopath” nihilist the movie is actively condemning.

The simple fact is that death of the author ultimately, in a grand scale amounts to this; did a writers intent show through hard enough for their intent to be heard? And Subjectively, how much does a person believe in the meaning that they, or the writer themself have imparted into the story?

#change of pace

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theinsatiables · 6 years

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10 Years Later, Why the Wachowskis’ Flop ‘Speed Racer’ Is Actually a Masterpiece

The ability to roll with punches and follow a movie into different emotional realms, especially goofy ones within serious narratives, is the ability to not take yourself too seriously. It is the ability to be adult and roll into all kinds of states of emotion, not just the ones we think we want to be in. To that point, Speed Racer basically requires you to roll with the punches on a pretty extreme level. Yes, the silliness feels silly. But if you accept that, then the danger is dangerous, too. And yes, the epic race across the desert goes on “too long,” but in doing so, it genuinely feels epic.The film is always itself. Especially as it slides back and forth between dramatic and comic emphasis with the blistering assuredness of pure operatic glee, all while living and breathing every moment sincerely. And what else would an 11-year-old’s fever dream about weaponized race cars, ninja fights and family togetherness be but achingly sincere?Speed Racer came out 10 years ago today, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t shut up about it since. But for good reason. I think it remains one of the most criminally overlooked films in recent memory and also one of the most oddly inspiring. While I know there are fellow fans who would wholly agree with this superlative, the notion runs contrary to the conventional wisdom surrounding the film’s release.

Coming off of the unparalleled success of the The Matrix films (even with the under-baked reaction to Matrix: Revolutions), fans were so excited for the Wachowski siblings’ next cinematic foray into something new. And it was going to be Speed Racer! An update of the beloved ’60s anime that many had grown up with! It implied there would electrifying, matrix-esque car chases! Frenetic action! All from the two filmmakers who had come to define the new serious-cool-ass cyberpunk! Hooray!

But for those who loved the leather-clad adult fare of their previous work, they had no idea what to do with this fluffy, neon-soaked bit of confection that was being sold to them. And neither did the general audience. Speed Racer bombed, and it bombed hard. And as a result, many came to dismiss the film without ever seeing it. Or worse, those who saw it simply had no idea what to do with it.

Which is unfortunate.

But to really get on board with Speed Racer, you have to accept its varied intentions. Starting with the fact that yes, this is indeed a true-blue PG kids film. Because of that, it will be unapologetically goofy, over the top and prominently feature monkey gags. Moreover, you have to accept that it is going to devote itself to the notion of being “a live-action cartoon,” one that constantly eschews realism in favor of a hyper-stylized, bright aesthetic as far removed from The Matrix as I can think of.

A lot of people argued that the film’s aesthetic existed in the uncanny valley (which suggests “humanoid objects that appear almost, but not exactly, like real human beings, and which elicit uncanny or strangely familiar feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers”). But, to me, it works precisely because it’s not even trying for the in-between. Instead, it’s trying to something closer to the humans-in-toon-space of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Simultaneously, you have to accept that this PG kids film will also be, at times, incredibly serious: a two-hour-and-fifteen-minute epic that delves into convoluted plot-lines of mystery identities, corporate white-collar intrigue, nonsensical plot fake-outs, a surprising amount of gun violence and even a weird climactic rant about stock price manipulation. And all the while, you have to accept that within this, the emotional backbone of the film will be a surprisingly wholesome exhibition of family love, understanding and togetherness.

Yes, all of this exists within Speed Racer. And, tonally-speaking, I mean it when I say it is one of the weirdest movies I have ever seen in my entire life. (It’s also a testament to the trouble that a lot of anime and non-naturalistic Japanese storytelling has in terms of adaptation.) And so I get why that is hard for people to swallow, I really do.

But what we’re really talking about is the push-pull of tone-changing filmmaking, wherein I will argue until I’m blue in the face that singular tones are dead-ends to adventurous storytelling. For instance, I love the work of Christopher Nolan, but if you just layer an entire movie in a singular tone you are, in a way, just lying to the audience. From start to finish, Nolan’s films feel propulsive, adult and entirely serious—even if when they, you know, aren’t on the deeper textual level of a moment. But that’s all part of the emotional coding for the audience and in service of the end goal: it makes them feel serious, too. All because it validates their interests as being equally serious.

This is why so many of those inclined to like singular tones have trouble with the work of someone like Sam Raimi. I hear people commenting that his films are “too corny” all the time; that word choice is both telling and bizarre. Because, while Raimi’s movies can be goofy and over the top, they are also achingly dark, sincere, and full of emotion. So really “too corny” is just code for: “this was often goofy and I don’t like movies that make me feel like my interests are goofy.” Which, ironically, I find to be an incredibly juvenile attitude—one that is not trying to be an adult. It’s trying to dress up kid-interests to seem adult, when really adulthood is just rolling with the punches and embracing things for whatever they really are.

The film is always itself. Especially as it slides back and forth between dramatic and comic emphasis with the blistering assuredness of pure operatic glee, all while living and breathing every moment sincerely. And what else would an 11-year-old’s fever dream about weaponized race cars, ninja fights and family togetherness be but achingly sincere?

Even the much ballyhooed stock price rant is inspired: that’s the point of the film’s laser targeted messaging. While so many kids’ films depict the ethics of villainy as some mustache twirling vehicle for evil and evil alone, Speed Racer has the guts to tell you that evils of the world are far more mundane (and lucrative). But as one-note as the stock market speech feels (as Roger Allam gives a deliciously unhinged performance), the message itself is not some reductive estimation of art and commercialism. Given literally everything else about Speed and his family’s business, Speed Racer is arguing there is nothing wrong with success, fandom, and connection between the two. It is simply pointing out that any system that puts the tiniest bit of money and “the perpetual machine of capitalism” over the sanctity of that connection, will only ever manage to sever that same connection.

That may seem “too adult” for a kids film, but I think it’s inspired, especially as kids are a lot smarter than you think (especially when you don’t talk down to them and trust them to handle things). So, if you buy this notion, and if you buy the family drama that has brought Speed to the final race, then it all comes together thematically into one of the most electric, abstract and emotional endings I can think of—one that wholly reaffirms that we are so much more than any single moment, but the product of everyone who helped get us there along the way. I cry every damn time I watch it.

And nestled within that ending is the larger meta-narrative of the Wachowskis’ entire career, their core theme if you will: the notion of intrinsic identity and becoming your best self. I’ll admit, I often have a lot of trouble with the idea of “destiny” in modern storytelling, precisely because I see a lot of irresponsibility associated with it. What used to be a giant metaphor for hubris has sadly become short-hand wish-fulfillment to believing you are the specialist hero in the universe, an attitude that often reeks of a lot of unintentional uber-mensch vibes.

But within Speed Racer, the metaphor of “race car driver” doubles with artist, or any other childhood dream—the kinds of dreams that must be stuck to, and chased after, with gleeful joy in order to bring said dreams to life. More than that, the metaphor gains so much within the context of the Wachowskis’ personal lives, as we now can look at so much of their work within the landscape of trans messaging—to the point that a lot of their work now has slid into “full text” metaphors of trans identity shifting, such as with Cloud Atlas and Sense 8. In that, I find their work to be the most powerful. By reclaiming destiny and the hero’s journey, they take it all away from “you are destined to be better than everyone else” and make it instead “you are becoming who you always really were, while discovering empathy in all those around you.” This is precisely the sort of loving, hallmark messaging that many too-cool-for-school folks would eye-roll at, but there is no doubting that the Wachowskis’ arrival at this earnestness is both hard-fought and hard-won.

This is all not to say that I’m unaware of the contradictions within their work, most specifically within the catch 22 of violent glorification against anti-violence. But within the “hyper language” of cinema, their violence just becomes part of the operatic aching sincerity.

But I understand that a lot of people aren’t sure what to do with the aching sincerity of it all. I remember how many people saw Jupiter Ascending and made fun of Eddie Radmayne’s truly gonzo performance, but I feel like he was the only one who really knew what movie he was in. He wasn’t pushing it too far; everyone else’s plasticity was weirdly holding it back. I genuinely love him in that film. Sure, the performance might be “too corny” and make you feel “weird,” but it’s precisely the kind of weird that opens the world up and imbues it with life and verve.

Maybe weird and jarring is exactly what we need. For, in a cinematic world full of carefully structured disaffection, the Wachowskis are still the most passionate, jarring and unworried filmmakers we have. And in that journey of self-discovery, it’s the odd mix of gee-golly sincerity of Speed Racer that is both exemplary of (and marks the transitional point of) their entire career.

Which only leaves me with one question: why, in a career full of identity questions, systematic oppression and selfhood, is their most exemplary film about the message of family perseverance and togetherness? In truth, I don’t know what their relationship is like with their larger nuclear family, nor does it matter. What we do know, and have always known, is who Lana and Lilly Wachowski are to each other: friends, collaborators, sisters. They are as loving a literal family as we have ever seen in cinema. And within their art, they’ve been telling us of their specific, powerful experience in the most universal and commercial of cinematic ways.

For well past 10 years now, they’ve telling us by shooting, chopping, rocking out, screaming, singing, dressing up, joking, lecturing, goofing, laughing and anything and everything in between. Many often roll their eyes at such naked, heartfelt audacity. “Too corny,” they say out of the side of their mouths. But such disdain is all part of the pains of being pure at heart.

And really, they are the joys.

< 3 HULK

#Film #Favorites #Speed Racer #The Wachowkis #Essential Truths

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thecinephale · 7 years

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The Wachowski Sisters and the Importance of Behind-the-Scenes Representation

The second season of Sense8 came out a week after I did. Well, sort of. The first two episodes of the season had been released as a holiday special and by “came out” I mean I told my girlfriend, my best friend, and my therapist that I was genderqueer but unsure to what capacity. We both chose a gradual release strategy.

I’ve seen portrayals of transness and gender nonconformity in film & television over the years. And, in fact, I blame many of these portrayals for why it took until now for me to begin coming out. It’s hard to watch Silence of the Lambs, as great of a movie as it may be otherwise, and go “Oh yeah! That’s me!” Instead I turned to the work of cis women filmmakers for identification. I just sort of accepted that for some reason I was a 15-year-old boy who found my closest identifiers in the work of Jane Campion.

The first time I truly felt a deep connection to a genderqueer character was watching Transparent, and I can’t help but connect that to Jill Soloway being themselves genderqueer and making a point of hiring cast and crew who are trans. That first week after coming out I turned to films because that’s how I cope. I was depressed by how little of myself I saw in The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and then surprised to tears how much I did see myself in Ed Wood’s misunderstood, I’d now call it a masterpiece, Glen or Glenda.

Before I turn back to Lana and Lilly Wachowski and Sense8, an important clarification should be made. Of course artists for centuries have told stories about people with different experiences than themselves and many have succeeded. There are no rules here. I’m sure Priscilla means a lot to some people who are trans and alternatively I know others can’t stand Transparent either due to the immense class and race privilege most of the characters have or due to the casting of Jeffrey Tambor, a cis man to play the lead. In addition, Soloway, Wood, and the Wachowskis deserve recognition purely as artists beyond their gender identity. I’m just speaking personally. When you’re rarely seen on screen, and even more rarely seen positively, there is power going into a work knowing the artist understands on a personal level. It’s a matter of trust and a matter of safety. I feel safe when I’m watching the Wachowskis’ work.

The Wachowskis began their career with the wildly entertaining and subtly subversive film noir, Bound. It’s a truly remarkable debut that takes a classic film noir story but centers on two women (and includes the Wachowskis’ burgeoning unique visual style). Due to the explicit queerness of this first film, the desire to approach all of their work from a queer perspective feels appropriate even if nothing was known about their personal lives. Suddenly the confectionary colors of Speed Racer feel less kids-only and the acting styles in Jupiter Ascending feel less accidental. And Cloud Atlas requires just about no depth of thought to see how its cast of gender-bending (and more problematically race-bending) characters represent transness. Rather their entire filmography begins to fit nicely into the ever-evolving, impossible to define, oft-limiting, oft-necessary umbrella category of Queer Cinema. Brigit McCone’s wonderful essay “Dysphoria Dystopias in The Matrix and Glen or Glenda” does an excellent job explaining these connections in the Wachowskis’ most famous work (Read that essay here! http://www.btchflcks.com/2015/09/dysphoria-dystopias-in-the-matrix-and-glen-or-glenda.html#.WWrmi9PyuL9).

Then in 2015 they released the first season of Sense8 which is just about the most Wachowski work the Wachowskis could ever dream of Wachowski-ing. And it is glorious. The show follows eight individuals from all around the world who share a metaphysical connection that ultimately allows them to inhabit each other’s bodies. The action is incredible, of course. There are sequences throughout the series that rank among the very best I’ve ever seen. The ways that the characters are able to jump in and out of each other’s bodies creates new opportunities allowing the show to completely reinvent the action sequence much the way the Wachowskis did a decade and a half earlier when they combined Hong Kong action, anime, and Hollywood SFX in The Matrix.

The craft in these sequences is impeccable but what truly makes them captivating is how much we care about the characters involved. The eight main “sensates” are complex and empathetic and the show spends at least as much time on their individual stories as it does the interconnected plot. These eight individuals share equal screen time but for me, and it seems for the Wachowskis, the two characters that matter most are both queer: Lito, the closeted gay actor from Mexico, and Nomi, the trans woman hacker from San Francisco (portrayed by a trans woman, Jamie Clayton, who is so good in the role that anything less than full blown movie stardom in her career will be proof of the industry’s prejudice). Both characters have partners so supportive that I’d suggest it was unrealistic if I wasn’t so fortunate to have a partner like that myself. Lito’s boyfriend, Hernando, is by his side as he begins the process of coming out under the public eye. And Nomi’s girlfriend, Amanita, is by her side as she runs away from the evil corporation trying to hunt all of them but especially her.

It’s hardly a coincidence that in season one the sensate that is hunted down most vigorously is Nomi. The villains use Nomi’s transness and our society’s prejudices towards her identity as a way of holding her captive. They succeed in convincing Nomi’s mother that Nomi needs a lobotomy because her mother already believes her gender identity is a mental illness. The show is honest about the dangers trans people face while also using Amanita and the other sensates as a safety net so we feel hopeful instead of hopeless.

Towards the end of the second season Nomi expresses her gratitude to Amanita for supporting her through all of the danger that comes with being a sensate. Nomi: Is this our new normal? Amanita: I can think of a worse normal. Nomi: Are you okay with it? Amanita: What do you mean? Nomi: I mean, you didn’t sign up for all this. Amanita: It’s not like you did either. Nomi: But I didn’t have a choice. These voices are in my head whether I want them or not. Amanita: True. But when I think back I don’t remember being given a choice either. When this nerdy girl walked into City Lights and this voice in my head was telling me, “Whatever you do, do not let her go until you get her number.”

Sitting on the couch watching this scene next to my partner, it didn’t require a lot of deep thinking to read this exchange about coming out as a sensate as a metaphor for coming out as trans. The show it takes place in was co-created by two trans women and the scene stars a trans woman. The dialogue might be as corny as a scene from The Danish Girl but here it’s real corny. The kind of corny that’s been allowed in scenes between cis-het people since the beginning of cinema. I believe this scene, and this show, and this body of work, is a more accurate portrayal of transness than most Hollywood attempts. But maybe it just goes back to the trust I have in these women telling their own stories. And even if that trust is the only difference I don’t think it’s any less important.

Last year at the GLAAD Media Awards, Lilly Wachowski made the following statement: “There’s a critical eye being cast back on Lana and I’s work through the lens of our transness. This is a cool thing because it’s an excellent reminder that art is never static. And while the ideas of identity and transformation are critical components in our work the bedrock that all ideas rest upon is love.”

As I’ve obsessed over their work these past few months, I felt this love. And I needed this love. I’m just really grateful that two unique, visionary trans women filmmakers are out there allowing me to feel seen.

#sense8 #the wachowskis #trans #transgender #gender queer #lgbtq #representation #queer cinema #comingout #renew sense8 #bring back sense8 #they did #nomanita #bound #the matrix #speed racer #jupiter ascending #transparent #glen or glenda

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meyerlansky · 7 years

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OK I know I'm horrendously ignorant about these things but what exactly is meant by 'red pilling' in that Laci Green post you reblogged? Am I right in thinking it's a reference to The Matrix?

nah don’t worry, it’s unfortunately like... armpit-of-the-internet jargon that never should have come to light in popular terminology, except this is the darkest timeline so. it has. and now we all must suffer. yep, it’s a reference to the red-pill-blue-pill scene in the matrix, except now it’s also an mra/anti-sjw dogwhistle, wherein instead of waking up from a virtual reality prison in which your unwitting (biological) labor makes it possible for a ruling class of beings with next-to-zero empathy to keep a system of subjugation in place in a liberation narrative produced by two closeted trans women, “red pilling” as used by people on the internet mostly means coming to the realization that y’know, actually, despite literally every shred of evidence to the contrary, women DO have power over men on a structural level and feminists are only so vocal about the problems the patriarchy produces because they “wish they were hot enough to be rape-able”

kinda bullshit that they stole the metaphor tbh

#THE LATEST ANSWER sorry yesterday was A Lot #ifigaveyouthemoon #asks

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khatrimazak · 4 years

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Matrix director Lily Wachowski confirmed the long-running theory that the franchise is about trans identity – Hollywood | Khatrimaza

Lily Wachowski, co-director of the Keanu Reeves-starrer The Matrix Trilogy, says it was her and sister Lana’s “original intent” to see the films as transgender metaphors. During a Netflix video interview, Lily discussed the theory often promoted by LGBTQ activists that the films embodied the experience of a close trans person and ultimately realizing their real self.

“I’m glad it turns out that this was the original intention. But the world wasn’t quite ready for it – the corporate world wasn’t ready for it,” Lily said. “I like how meaningful it is to bring those films to people and the way they come to me and say,” These films saved my life “.

For years, fans of MATRIX have discussed the film through a trans lens. If you’ve heard the theory before or learned about it, here’s the transgatory of the film is separated from the trans writers and critics.

Welcome to the desert of Asli. (Thread) pic.twitter.com/XlgY8hAcNI

– NetflixFilm (@NetflixFilm) August 6, 2020

Also read: Matrix director Lily Wachowski slams Elon Musk, Ivanka Trump for referencing the film for her agenda: ‘F ** k you both’

Lily and Lana, who are both trans women, started the franchise with The Matrix in 1999. The film spawned two sequels – The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolution, released in 2003.

The filmmaker further noted that the very idea of the Matrix, a fake reality created by machines as a distraction for humans “was a desire for change, but it was all coming from a closer perspective”. She also revealed that the original plan for the Switch – run by Belinda McClory – was to be “a woman inside the character matrix, but a man in the real world”.

“I don’t know how much of my seriousness existed in the backdrop of my brain as we were writing this … We were always living in a world of fantasy. That’s why I turned to sci-fi and fantasy and Dungeon. And played the role of dragons. It was all about making the world. It freed us as filmmakers because we were able to imagine stuff you didn’t necessarily see at the time, “Lily said.

Lily’s sister Lana is currently making a comeback as Neo and Trinity with Reeves and actor Carrie-Annie Moss, working on the much-awaited trio in the franchise. Jada Pinkett Smith and Lambert Wilson are also reprising their roles from previous films in the new installment. He is joined by newcomers Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Neil Patrick Harris, Jessica Henwick, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Jonathan Groff.

Follow @htshowbiz for more information

source https://khatrimazak.com/matrix-director-lily-wachowski-confirmed-the-long-running-theory-that-the-franchise-is-about-trans-identity-hollywood-khatrimaza/

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