#tom jones meta | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wildwren · 1 year

Text

The thing about The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749) is that it is fundamentally about women’s desire. I’m not saying that I like everything that Fielding has to say about women’s desire, or that his own obsession with women’s sexuality isn’t baldly plain on the page. It is! It definitely is! For every one of his culture’s biases about women’s sexuality that he aims to deconstruct, there are several more of his own that remain unexamined. It’s one of the knottier (and perhaps more compelling) parts of the text as a modern reader — to observe how these sort of proto-feminist threads are at tension with the lazy misogyny still on the page.

However, it is undeniably the female characters' desires that shape and propel the narrative, so it’s very interesting to see how modern readers who have never read the book or have only learned about aspects of it through osmosis apply a knee-jerk assumption that it’s Tom’s desires that are shaping the story. They know it’s about a man who sleeps with several women, so therefore Tom must be a seducer, a womanizer, a rake, a playboy, or even a rapist. When in fact, it’s a central conceit (if not THE central conceit) of the novel that Tom is never interested in a woman who isn’t interested in him first. The romance begins when Sophia decides she wants Tom, not when Tom decides he wants Sophia.

There’s certainly a lot to unpack in the fact that Fielding wrote an 1000-page novel about horny women lusting after his hero, but in as much as it’s possible to back something like that up, he does back it up. Women don't just like Tom because he's attractive, they like him because he’s genuinely good with women. He actually likes women, he enjoys spending time with them in both sexual and platonic contexts. He feels safe to be around because it's not his default mode to objectify women -- he literally never once considers sleeping with a woman until she has already propositioned him. He regularly leverages his privilege to defend and advocate for women who others around him have decided are worthless and maintains positive feelings towards his partners after their sexual relationship has ended. He remains friends with his ex-girlfriend Molly for the rest of his life!! He is -- literally -- the definition of a himbo in its truest form.

Anyway, I'm just really grateful that Gwyneth Hughes and Georgia Parris both understood this about Tom as a character and understood the opportunities in the text for actively centering the women -- giving the voice of the story to Sophia and adding much needed roundness and complexity to the other female characters on the page. It's really what I've always wanted for this book. Of course the story still has issues, some of which are baked in, most notably the execution of the HEA and how it requires Fielding to uphold the systems he's spent the novel critiquing (but that's a different essay.) But at the end of the day, I love these characters so much and it's just nice to read interviews with Hughes where she makes it clear: "I didn't update Tom. This is Tom."

#tom jones #the history of tom jones #henry fielding #tom jones pbs #tom jones 2023 #gwyneth hughes #tom jones meta #i wrote this post in the green room before my gig last night akljdhfasfas #i just have so many feelings #tom my boy my actual son and heir

63 notes · View notes

thecarnivorousmuffinmeta · 6 months

Note

Does Lily from the art of being I don't know how to spell that word love wizard lenin

Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus and the shameless plug of The Heart of the World which is the OG version of the first portion of the fic (more to come).

The short answer is yes.

Among other things, the story is about Lily's fundamental and unrelenting love for Tom Riddle in spite of everything. It's not really a romantic love (Trotsky has his... things, which is part of the reason it got the tag, but Lily's too young and Lenin doesn't see her that way for obvious reasons), but it is one the driving forces of the story and the main thread.

#harry potter #lily and the art of being sisyphus #the heart of the world #the heart of the world meta #sisyphus book series #wizard lenin #tom riddle #ellie potter #wizard lenin sisyphus #john jones sisyphus #iff sisyphus #ellie tylor sisyphus #lily sisyphus #meta #pinkillumination

31 notes · View notes

nicholasmoorethetwittermigrant · 19 hours

Text

I’m an advocate for overexposed characters not needing to constantly have their own movies out, but it’s crazy how we’ve gone from MCU Spider-Man making an appearance nearly once a year on average for 5 years, to what will likely be 5 years between appearances.

Like it’s really hitting me how this will almost certainly be the longest break in between theatrical Spider-Man outings since Raimi’s first film.

That said once he’s back I’ll bet you anything the hype will be absolutely unprecedented. NWH was the last MCU project to really feel like a worldwide “event”, and as soon as audiences sniff Spider-Man in the water after a long break, then shit’s gonna go wild.

#marvel cinematic universe #mcu #spider-man #spiderman #peter parker #tom holland #zendaya #Michelle jones #no way home #far from home #homecoming #Ned Leeds #jacob batalon #meta #does this count as meta?

2 notes · View notes

academicgangster · 2 years

Text

New pet peeve: people using pictures of Ethan Hunt as Maverick Mitchell. What in the hell? That's...that is Ethan. That is not a military haircut. That's a maths nerd who's never been in the military in his life. I do not and would not ship Iceman Kazansky with Ethan Hunt.

#THAT'S.#THAT'S ETHAN #Ice and Ethan do not exist in the same universe and thank fuck they don't lol because Ethan and Mav would not remotely get along #tom cruise is one of those actors who really does not look the same in different roles #i would buy a picture of tom cruise as himself out of character with a mav-style haircut as mav a lot easier than a screenshot of ethan #(or tom cruise out of character but with ethan-style hair for that matter. that ain't mav.#the hair is important to ethan! there's hairstyle meta to be had about ethan hunt!)#not all (tom cruise) is (maverick mitchell)#you can use practically any picture of Harrison Ford as Richard Kimble but you can't swap one Tommy Lee Jones character for another #cruise is like jones in that regard: people keep saying they play one (1) character #but the truth is they subtly don't even LOOK the same from one character to the next

35 notes · View notes

anoseforrottenapples · 2 years

Text

//I've debated the fan interpretation of T. Barnaby and Troy being like a father and son duo for some time (mostly because I watch shows with GREAT father/son styled duos) but I've finally figured it out. Barnaby and Troy ARE like a father and son due...the kind that are very fond of each other, they care about the other one's wellbeing...and they have no hope of ever really understanding where the other one is coming from. Personally, I think that Jones was the Sargent Barnaby was closest too, followed by Troy...and he and Scott were starting to build a very interesting relationship before THINGS happened and we never saw how it played out. I also think it's interesting to note that Scott was the only Sargent he didn't really "train". It's implied that Troy was a newly-minted DS when he started working for Barnaby, and Barnaby basically handpicked Jones who was still in uniform when they met. But Scott came from the Met, and showed up in Midsomer already trained up in the London way of handling things, a situation that lent to quite a bit of their tension. Barnaby is a man who likes things done HIS way, even if he won't admit it, and having a DS who's already comfortable doing it a totally different way throws him off a bit.

#Gavin Troy #Dan Scott #Ben Jones #Tom Barnaby #Midsomer Murders #Meta that got away from me #It was only supposed to be the Troy bit and then Scott had opinions to share XD

10 notes · View notes

william-shakespeare-official · 1 year

Text

Here's THE masterpost of free and full adaptations, by which I mean that it's a post made by the master.

Anthony and Cleopatra: here's the BBC version, here's a 2017 version.

As you like it: you'll find here an outdoor stage adaptation and here the BBC version. Here's Kenneth Brannagh's 2006 one.

Coriolanus: Here's a college play, here's the 1984 telefilm, here's the 2014 one with tom hiddleston. Here's the Ralph Fiennes 2011 one.

Cymbelline: Here's the 2014 one.

Hamlet: the 1948 Laurence Olivier one is here. The 1964 russian version is here and the 1964 american version is here. The 1964 Broadway production is here, the 1969 Williamson-Parfitt-Hopkins one is there, and the 1980 version is here. Here are part 1 and 2 of the 1990 BBC adaptation, the Kenneth Branagh 1996 Hamlet is here, the 2000 Ethan Hawke one is here. 2009 Tennant's here. And have the 2018 Almeida version here. On a sidenote, here's A Midwinter's Tale, about a man trying to make Hamlet. Andrew Scott's Hamlet is here.

Henry IV: part 1 and part 2 of the BBC 1989 version. And here's part 1 of a corwall school version.

Henry V: Laurence Olivier (who would have guessed) 1944 version. The 1989 Branagh version here. The BBC version is here.

Julius Caesar: here's the 1979 BBC adaptation, here the 1970 John Gielgud one. A theater Live from the late 2010's here.

King Lear: Laurence Olivier once again plays in here. And Gregory Kozintsev, who was I think in charge of the russian hamlet, has a king lear here. The 1975 BBC version is here. The Royal Shakespeare Compagny's 2008 version is here. The 1974 version with James Earl Jones is here. The 1953 Orson Wells one is here.

Macbeth: Here's the 1948 one, there the 1955 Joe McBeth. Here's the 1961 one with Sean Connery, and the 1966 BBC version is here. The 1969 radio one with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench is here, here's the 1971 by Roman Polanski, with spanish subtitles. The 1988 BBC one with portugese subtitles, and here the 2001 one). Here's Scotland, PA, the 2001 modern retelling. Rave Macbeth for anyone interested is here. And 2017 brings you this.

Measure for Measure: BBC version here. Hugo Weaving here.

The Merchant of Venice: here's a stage version, here's the 1980 movie, here the 1973 Lawrence Olivier movie, here's the 2004 movie with Al Pacino. The 2001 movie is here.

The Merry Wives of Windsor: the Royal Shakespeare Compagny gives you this movie.

A Midsummer Night's Dream: have this sponsored by the City of Columbia, and here the BBC version. Have the 1986 Duncan-Jennings version here. 2019 Live Theater version? Have it here!

Much Ado About Nothing: Here is the kenneth branagh version and here the Tennant and Tate 2011 version. Here's the 1984 version.

Othello: A Massachussets Performance here, the 2001 movie her is the Orson Wells movie with portuguese subtitles theree, and a fifteen minutes long lego adaptation here. THen if you want more good ole reliable you've got the BBC version here and there.

Richard II: here is the BBC version. If you want a more meta approach, here's the commentary for the Tennant version. 1997 one here.

Richard III: here's the 1955 one with Laurence Olivier. The 1995 one with Ian McKellen is no longer available at the previous link but I found it HERE.

Romeo and Juliet: here's the 1988 BBC version. Here's a stage production. 1954 brings you this. The french musical with english subtitles is here!

The Taming of the Shrew: the 1980 BBC version here and the 1988 one is here, sorry for the prior confusion. The 1929 version here, some Ontario stuff here, and here is the 1967 one with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. This one is the Shakespeare Retold modern retelling.

The Tempest: the 1979 one is here, the 2010 is here. Here is the 1988 one. Theater Live did a show of it in the late 2010's too.

Timon of Athens: here is the 1981 movie with Jonathan Pryce,

Troilus and Cressida can be found here

Titus Andronicus: the 1999 movie with Anthony Hopkins here

Twelfth night: here for the BBC, here for the 1970 version with Alec Guinness, Joan Plowright and Ralph Richardson.

Two Gentlemen of Verona: have the 2018 one here. The BBC version is here.

The Winter's Tale: the BBC version is here

Please do contribute if you find more. This is far from exhaustive.

(also look up the original post from time to time for more plays)

#adaptations #macbeth #hamlet #king lear #twelfth night #much ado about nothing #henry iv #henry v #richard iii #julius caesar #timon of athens #troilus and cressida

55K notes · View notes

rabnerd28 · 16 days

Text

Watching Cats (2019) DvD Commentary

Thoughts as I watch:

Tom is literally basing this entire movie on the one time he saw Cats in 1981 when he was 8 years old

He called the movie a coming of age film about Victoria meeting characters that effect her and that Tugger represents the sin of lust (yes I am laughing)

He said abandoned three times in a row to describe Grizabella

Tom made up the thing about Grizabella used to be with Macavity happened because he wanted to cut out the idea that she was a prostitute

Has Bustopher eat trash because he thought that's what cats would be more interested in

The pause in Bustopher Jones when he says to gather the cats is a meta joke about the cats actually being people

The food was CGI

"Sees the implication of his unchecked appetites" in reference to Victoria and Bustopher Jones

Hooper brought his niece and nephew to set to play on the Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer set

He keeps insisting that there is a learning and growing arc for Victoria, but I have no idea what he's talking about

He has barely talked about the characters as actual characters and mostly just talks about how great it is to work with famous celebrity number five or how they're symbolical. I think he's making things up at this point

He added the love story because he thought Misto trying to figure out how to be a magician was a good parallel with Victoria's story of finding herself

Originally the first barge scene was longer with a lot of improv from James and Rebel as Growltiger went on

"Robbie Fairchild is brilliant" that is the only thing Tom said that makes sense

This man really said "women can be the god of cats in 2019"

Judie and Ian were the ones to decide that Gus and Old D had a thing...well at least they followed the pattern of cats actors making weird decisions for their characters

I've come to the conclusion that Tom chose his cast based on which famous actors he's always wanted to work with

Tom has no idea how to describe choreography...just like how he has no idea how to film it

Giving Victoria a solo to sing was ALW's idea

He thinks the call and response of Beautiful Ghosts and Memory is brilliant and doesn't understand how he fucked that up

They almost cut "Moments of Hapiness"

He keeps talking about how great this film is for women, but where is Demeter sir!

He didn't know that it's Jellylorum that sings Gus' song and because Ian couldn't tell what the relationship between the two was he cut out her singing it for him

He talks about the advantage of mixing the CGI with the practical clothing, and I'm like, you know what would be even better? No CGI!

I don't know who's playing Bomba, but she was the first person to be cast in Cats

He said that he thinks Macavity works better as a solo and it didn't need to be a duet...I have never felt more like murder in my whole life

Taylor Swifts dad gave him the idea for the catnip

He likes the idea of Macavity being evil yet still plays by the rules...why?

He's talking about the changes from the musical to Mr Mistoffelees, and boy is he not bringing up that Tugger is the one that sings the number

Talks about community like there was any in this movie

This man has no idea who Jemima/Sillabub is, does he?

He finally mentioned Mette Towley as Cassandra at least. Recognize that she's the best character in this film goddamit!

Apparently Munkustrap was supposed to be learning about leading this whole film...wat

Apparently he watched the 98 film several times while writing the script...and yet this movie is straight

I'm not watching the commentary for the end credits. Fuck I hate this man

#cats musical #cats 2019 #tom hooper #i will keep my gag of not knowing who that is going even on my tumblr #cats the musical #cats movie

72 notes · View notes

no-where-new-hero · 6 months

Text

I’m missing my nightly Fire and Hemlock metas, so here’s another one: it’s very thematically important that Diana Wynne Jones makes Polly an actress in addition to a writer. In the first place, Polly gets to experiment with different identities, which actualizes her fondness for Playing Pretend. It’s embodied and gendered in a way that her writing isn’t. It gives her a safe space to experiment when the creation of writing—or imitation of writing—is too loaded with Tom’s curse and her own adolescent sexuality. In the second place, it’s an arena where she must be seen. Her heroics—or being a heroine, which DWJ tells us are two different things—are more meaningful when nobody knows about them. But part of heroism, as she learns, is visibility. It’s leaving yourself open to critique and mockery and not caring. This is the lesson she forgets when she allows herself to be embarrassed by Laurel, and it’s notable that she does forget it, because she is able to remember it—or at least harness it—while on the stage. Acting in front of a crowd can be the most embarrassing thing, and Polly recognizes this as Pierrot, when she understands why the audience jeers at her for being hopelessly in love with Columbine. Polly is able to be both inside and outside herself while acting, which is what heroism is: being Hero as well as Polly, and Tan Coul as well as Tom Lynn.

#fire and hemlock #diana wynne jones #dwj #immortal poets society

40 notes · View notes

arshipweek · 1 year

Text

AR Ship Week - Shipping in 2023

This is the first weekly post in the lead up to Alex Rider Ship Week. There's a little over 4 weeks to go!

This week we’re going to look at Alex Rider shipping fandom again, one year after our previous meta on Shipping in 2022.

Another year and a frankly spectacular amount of shipfics later, here we are again, about to look at the state of Alex Rider ship fics.

So what's new in the top five ships this year? Nothing, actually. As expected, the undisputed top ship is Yassen/Alex (1), but the entire top five remains the same, though Yalex is dominating shipping fandom more and more. Yalex now has 10 times more fics than the second most popular ship, up from 7.7 times last year.

Yalex has added an impressive 192 fics to the count (an increase of 52 percent!), while Yassen/Ian (Yian) has almost overtaken Tom/Alex (Tomlex) for the second ship on the list. Last year, Tomlex was at 48 fics and Yian at 41. Now the count is 56 and 55, which means Yian might overtake Tomlex's spot as the second ship on the list by next year.

Since the rankings remain the same, we decided to dig a little into ratings and tags instead and take a look at what characterises the three most popular ships (also the only ships with more than 50 fics each).

For all three pairings, two of the three most popular tags are 'Hurt/Comfort' and 'Fluff' (2). For Yalex, the third tag - to no one's surprise, presumably - is 'Yassen Gregorovich Lives'. For Tomlex, it's 'Angst', and for Yian, it's an equally unsurprising 'Ian Rider Lives' as the most popular tag for the pairing - a tag that exploded in popularity with the TV show's arrival. The AR ship fandom lives by the motto of 'I reject your reality and substitute my own' and will embrace it to its fullest (3).

The real differences begin to show when we look at the ratings:

Just as Yalex is hands-down the most popular pairing, it's also the horniest. 39 percent of the fics are rated 'Explicit' (4) and another 26 percent are rated 'Mature'. 'Teen And Up Audience' and 'General Audiences' together make up 32 percent.

For Tomlex, 'Teen And Up Audience' is the most popular rating (55 percent) and 'General Audiences' is a distant second at 22 percent, probably as a result of the age of both characters (5).

For Yian, 'Teen And Up Audience' is also the most popular rating (53 percent) but this time followed by 'Mature' and 'Explicit', which makes up a combined 29 percent.

In terms of general stats, there are also noticeable differences:

The average Yalex fic has around 6.6k words, 136 kudos, and just under 1700 hits. This is helped along by a number of multichapter, 50k+ fics as well as the general popularity of the pairing.

The average Tomlex fic is just under 3.2k words, has 91 kudos and around 950 hits. In contrast to Yalex, the pairing has no fics with more than 25k words, which results in the much lower mean wordcount.

The average Yian fic is just under 3.9k words, has 94 kudos, and around 750 hits. Like the Tomlex pairing, there are not yet any longfics with the pairing (the longest is around 15k), but a smaller percentage of fics below 1k words means that the average fic is longer than for Tomlex. Yian also has fewer hits but a slightly higher kudos-count.

Other fun observations:

Yalex, like all three of the most popular pairings, is generally a solo pairing. Out of 563 fics, only 9 of them have Yassen/John as a pairing as well, along with 7 fics that have Alex/OMC. Tom is tagged in 44 fics, Tulip Jones in 39, and Jack in 31.

For Tomlex, the only other pairing of note is Yian (which shows up in 6 of the 56 fics), and Jack is tagged in 11 of the fics.

For Yian, the same 6 fics Tomlex appear. The only other character of note is Alex, who appears in 23 of the 55 fics - almost half of them.

Alexmis fics are generally much more centred in the Artemis universe than the AR universe. No other AR ships commonly occur with Alexmis, and of the top ten characters, all are from the Artemis series, except Jack in 3 fics.

For Helen/John, Alex appears in 30 of the 43 fics, more than two-thirds. That can either be because of the family relation (as Alex is also commonly tagged in Yian fics) or because the tag appears as a background or past pairing in some Alex-focused fics.

There you have it: A brief overview of shipping in the AR fandom in 2023. Next week we will be back with a fresh bunch of shipping recs!

______

Notes:

(1) On an impressive note, 89 of the Yalex fics are written by Suzie_Shooter over the course of eleven years. That's 16 percent of the total amount of Yalex fics and includes 6 of the ten most-kudosed fics of the pairing as well as a number of beloved classics.

(2) Definitions of 'fluff' and the 'comfort' part may vary between pairings, so someone looking for delicious, tooth-rotting fluff would probably want to check the rest of the tags on the fics.

(3) Though to be fair, with Ahorz's grasp on continuity and the addition of the TV show, the concept of 'reality' is probably debateable.

(4) This admittedly also covers graphic violence and similar beyond just graphic smut - or in the case of Yalex, sometimes both at the same time - but a glance at the AO3 page will reveal that yes, the fandom is, indeed, horny.

(5) That, or TV!Tom's beanie is just that much of a mood killer. The jury is still out on that.

Disclaimer: All AR-specific data was current as of the writing of this post (February 11th, 2023).

#alex rider #arshipweek #meta #mod posts #yalex #tomlex #yian

30 notes · View notes

thesixthplaneteer · 6 months

Note

2, 8, 47 for ralph!

Thank you for the ask!! Hope you don't mind I'm going to combine the asks from @crownedinmarigolds.

2. what was your original concept for this character? how did playing them change that concept? - The main thing that changed was I intended to go a lot harder with him being a creep and boundary pusher. He was always meant as a self insert so after a session or two I kind of realized I wanted to ease back on the creep factor.

8. what songs remind you of them? if there are specific lyrics or movements, list ‘em! - Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus. It's basically his anthem, even into adulthood.

19. what sparks genuine, unadulterated rage in them? - Someone messing with or hurting his coterie especially if someone messes with Khloe.

47. what could they talk about for hours on end? - The Civ 6 meta and how wrong movies usually are in depicting soldiers and military stuff. But honestly, many things. Dude is a dweeb and will go off on whatever subject has his attention.

59. what’s an element of their philosophy that you disagree with? - Ralph's sense of justice is certainly shifted since he was embraced. He has a much more extreme reaction to slights. They can be instant actions or a long drawn out acts of justice against the offending party. It can definitely cause more trouble in the process.

65. what would their go-to karaoke song be? - What's New Pussy Cat by Tom Jones. Because he is immature and it's a great song to just belt into the microphone.

#oc ask game #Ralph #vtm #vampire the masquerade #vtm oc #world of darkness #thinblood #duskborn #clan nosferatu

4 notes · View notes

wildwren · 1 year

Text

Some incomplete and perhaps incoherent thoughts on class, race, personhood and women’s sexuality; Tom Jones (2023) in conversation with Fielding’s text

Warning: spoilers for The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling and Tom Jones (2023)

I’ve been thinking about the changes to Sophia’s story and how they both serve to add dimension to her character and to engage with existing themes of the text in complex ways. In Fielding’s text, Sophia is the white English-born daughter of Squire Western and the offspring of a “legitimate” (but very unhappy) marriage. In the 2023 adaptation, she is Squire Western’s granddaughter, born in Jamaica as the offspring of a non-consensual union between her white slaver father (Squire Western’s son) and her Black mother Beneba. She, like Tom, is a bastard, but she has been legitimized, given her father’s name, and declared sole heiress of her family’s fortune.

These changes don’t make Sophia’s storyline easier to witness — her arc is essentially about violence and the erasure of women’s wills by society, and they now include a racialized component as well. Sophia and Honour experience racial prejudice and harassment while fleeing to London, and Sophia’s entrapment and abuse by Lady Bellaston involves racialized as well as sexual violence, as Lady Bellaston quite literally tries to whitewash her. To make these moments land, the adaptation has endeavored to strike a tonal balance by giving the narrative voice of the story to Sophia herself, consistently framing the action through her gaze, and allowing appropriate space and gravitas for the injustice of her imprisonment and assault. They’ve also explored the text’s existing themes of class, personhood, and women’s sexuality within this new context.

In as much as it is possible to attribute prescient thematic points to the sort of madness Fielding was writing, there is an ongoing critique throughout the text about the artificial construction of personhood based on class, and particularly the relationship between class and women’s sexuality. Even in the novel, both Tom and Sophia are subject to conditional personhood — Tom due to his status as a low-born bastard, and Sophia due to her status as a woman. But this parallel takes on new meaning in the adaptation. Sophia’s new backstory means that now both lovers have been “rescued” from the conditions of their birth by benefactors to whom they owe their gratitude: Sophia to the grandfather who brought her across the ocean, Tom to his adopted father Squire Allworthy, who raised Tom as his son but never as his heir. Of course, both Tom and Sophia are betrayed by these benefactors as soon as they fail to meet the requirements of their conditional personhood. I appreciate how this adaptation brings attention to Allworthy’s hypocrisy as well as Squire Western’s, as it makes the parallel more coherent. It’s because of this conditional personhood that Tom and Sophia are even able to fall in love in the first place — all those intimate hours together are only allowed because Squire Western doesn’t fundamentally see either of them as full people capable of their own wills.

Tom is marked from birth as less than a full person, by nature of his association with his “ruined” mother (a teenaged serving girl presumably impregnated by her middle-class master). His “base” nature is further reinforced by his continued association with other “ruined” women. His status as a gentleman (or lack thereof) is fundamental to his identity and entirely outside of his control. Whether by the manipulations of Mr. Blifil or the willful bias of others such of Allworthy, Tom’s actions are consistently interpreted in the worst possible light, cyclically upholding the assumption that he’s not a “proper” gentleman after all.

Of course, Tom still gets away with quite a lot (he is a handsome white man after all!), no more so than at the story’s finale, when he himself is legitimatized and all is forgiven, doubly proving Fielding’s point. If it feels contrived that Squire Western should immediately and inexorably reverse his opinion on Tom as a match for Sophia, it’s because it is contrived. Squire Western’s refusal of Tom never had anything to do with his personality, charm, sentiment towards Sophia, or personal honor, but merely his lack of sufficient legal personhood to match Sophia’s. It’s a frustrating feature of the story that in order to deliver Tom and Sophia to a happy ending, Fielding must in the end uphold the very systems he spent much of the novel’s breadth critiquing. However, I do believe it’s meant to land with some irony. And there are some nice touches to Fielding’s execution of the twist — for instance, that Tom’s legitimacy comes from his relationship with his mother, not his father, who in fact does not matter at all.

Of course, Sophia’s arc is also very much about the relationship between personhood, class, and sexuality. She has the status of personhood by virtue of her wealth, but keeping it is dependent on her consenting to marry within her own class. Her sexuality is so constrained and controlled that her desire for Tom is described by Aunt Western as “monstrous inclinations” and is at one point compared by Squire Western to beastiality. To marry Tom would mean relinquishing her own claim to personhood, a fate so unthinkable that neither Sophia nor Tom ever seriously consider it beyond a few passionate outbursts. When Sophia flees Somersetshire, she is not running to elope with Tom, only to buy herself more time to make Squire Western see sense and hold off her marriage to Blifil.

There’s a certain aspect of this drama that is a bit hard to buy, especially for modern readers. Sophia is an heiress — she’ll inherit her own wealth. She’s in love with Tom, who is one of her father’s dearest friends. Why can’t everyone be happy? Aside from the reasons stated above and the constraints on Sophia’s sexuality that exist already in the text, the adaptation has added additional context. As a Black heiress, Sophia’s status as a legal person in English society is already so fragile that Squire Western and Aunt Western feel justified in acting to preserve that personhood by any means possible — namely, by securing her marriage within her class against her will. In the show’s first episode, Squire Western says to his sister: “My girl is beautiful and she is rich. Who cares if she be Black and a bastard too?” to which Aunt Western replies, “Good lord, Brother. The world may care rather a lot.” The fact that this personhood does not include the right to consent is already explored in the novel, but the adaptation includes the arc of Sophia grappling with the knowledge and grief that her mother died while enslaved.

The relationship between Sophia and Squire Western is one of my least favorite parts of the novel, but the changes to Sophia’s backstory add some additional context and complexity, and some careful tonal choices go a long way. It makes sense, after all, that Sophia would feel some devotion for her doting grandfather, her last family member not bound by lived experience to her memories of Jamaica and her slaver father. At the same time, the adaptation never minimizes the fact that Squire Western still sees Sophia as a form of property — the granddaughter he brought across the ocean at great expense, the last living reminder of his slaver son. In some ways, they’ve made him less awful — he’s certainly less explosively violent than he is in the novel, wherein he hits Sophia, verbally abuses her to a much more intense degree, and regularly threatens her with death. But the implicit violence of his banal small-mindedness is not erased.

Aside from the issue of Sophia’s forced marriage, which is cut-and-dry violence, their relationship seems to evoke some of the painful and complex dynamics that can arise from interracial adoption. Squire Western declares himself to love and cherish his perfect, beautiful Sophie, and Sophia has an honest experience of feeling loved by him, but ultimately, he doesn’t really understand her experience or her pain, and he makes no effort to.

Just as Tom’s happy ending must uphold the very systems that have oppressed him, so too must Sophia’s. In the novel’s finale, Squire Western does not receive any comeuppance for his role in the drama, despite acting as much a villain to the lovers as Lady Bellaston and Mr. Blifil, both of whom receive their just desserts. Within the context of the story, there is no ending for Sophia wherein she disowns Squire Western and lives out her days as an independently wealthy woman. Her happy ending can only exist when her will and Squire Western’s will align, which is made possible by the novel’s final twist. In the end, Sophia must live with the complexity of her relationship with Squire Western, not overcome it. I’ll let you decide how you feel about the adaptation's handling of that. I’m still not sure how I do.

I can never get to the end of this story without wanting to write fic about it, specifically about Sophia’s trauma, and how that might impact her relationship with Jones and with Squire Western going forward. I wrote fic about it when I finished the book and I’m writing fic about it now in the context of the show’s canon and characters. In some ways, the ending leaves more questions for me than it leaves neat conclusions. Whether that’s a strength of the story or a weakness is, I suppose, a matter of taste. The adaptation put a lot of love into rendering Sophia’s arc and illustrating her experience in this 18th-century world. It centered her voice and her gaze as much as possible, and it gave the spotlight to Sophie Wilde’s performance, which is the ultimate heart of their story. For all of those reasons, I appreciate it as an example of race-conscious historical drama and as an adaptation engaged in post-colonial dialogue with the English literary “canon.”

Whether it ultimately succeeded in giving Sophia all the justice she deserved, I’ll leave to voices other than my own.

#tom jones #tom jones pbs #tom jones 2023 #the history of tom jones #sophia western #tom jones itv #henry fielding #tom jones meta #my meta #oh im anxious about posting this one #just a lot of thoughts and feelings and always the doubt whether im the right person to express them #but of course i am very open to good faith discussion about any and all of this

49 notes · View notes

earlymidsomermurders · 2 years

Note

I wanna know your definite ranking of all the DSes and pathologists, if that’s not too much to ask

ohhhh LET’S HAVE IT. It’s always the first ones I love most. With anything, I just work that way. It’s Tom. It’s Joyce and Cully. Troy. George. It’s always the characters that were there when I first fell in love with the thing because they made that love and they’re forever part of it. And there are REASONS why I love Troy, I wrote all the meta, I have the receipts. That problematic soft dumb smart boy owns my whole heart. But most of all he made me love the show??? With Jones and Scott, I love what they bring to it. Scott adds such a playful freshness to the DS bit and Jones is made of irony and balls and heart. But Troy is.......I watched that dumbass grow up while I went from wtf is this show to no one touch me I’m watching The Green Man?? Same with the pathologists. Kate is incredibly hot and beautiful and Fleur I’m obsessed with. But George is THERE when the Rainbirds meet their gruesome end and he’s there when they rise from the dead 50 episodes later and when Cully gets married and when Tom leaves. He says his two lines per ep with that dry humour and twinkling warmth and in a small way he makes Midsomer Midsomer. I’m just. love them....

#midsomer murders #ask #faves #if anyone else feels like sharing who are your faves and why???

25 notes · View notes

legion1227 · 9 months

Text

Asteroid City: Movie Review

Pretty strong first impression to me from an esteemed director.

Wes Anderson has been directing films since the 90s. Anderson has made many critically acclaimed films like Isle of Dogs, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The French Dispatch, to name a few. However, his latest escapade from this year, Asteroid City, was the first film of Anderson's I had the privilege to watch. I've wanted to watch a Wes Anderson film for quite some time, and for the first one, I gotta say…

It's pretty good. And kinda complicated.

The plot is meta and contains layers, but at face value, Asteroid City follows a group of people attending a Space Cadet Convention in a desert town in America circa 1955. And yet simultaneously, the convention's events are shown to be staged as a play, with scenes sprinkled in to show the play's creation. The film features a dynamic ensemble cast including Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Tolda Swinton, Edward Norton, Bryan Cranston, and countless others.

One of the best aspects of the film has to be the cinematography. The way the film is presented shows a lot of still shots within a vibrant, colorful setting. Nearly every character or object of importance is placed in the middle of the screen. Your eyesight will tend to fixate on the center as he intended. Combined with eye-catching blues, yellows, greens, and otherwise, merely looking at the film is aesthetically pleasing. Like, if you watched the movie on mute with no subtitles, it's a treasure to stare at.

Story and character play second fiddle to the looks. The large cast gathers together to throw witty lines and banter amongst one another in the desert town to intriguing levels. Jason Schwartzman simultaneously plays Jones Hall, who plays war photojournalist Augie Steenbeck. (Remember, this is a play within the movie). As Augie, he shares tender moments with Midge Campell, whose character is an actress. (Played by Scarlett Johannson…so Johannson is playing an actress who's playing an actress?) Schwartzman works best off of Johansson and Edward Norton as Conrad Earp. There's a compelling theme across the board as Schwartzman and his dual characters deal with love and loss. The unfathomable loss of a lover plagues Schwartzman's characters throughout the film. As both Augie and Jones are trying to cope, differentiating between the two with scenes of color or black and white, it's rather apparent that these characters are the driving force of the emotional impact of the story.

As far as the other characters go and their addition to the plot, it's a mixed bag.

The majority of other characters focused on in the film vary from fun to okay. Tom Hanks, as Augie's father-in-law, has some humorous and entertaining banter with some of the young children. Members of the government merely exist to be foils to the townspeople. Edward Norton is engaging in his few scenes, and Bryan Cranston is equal in his limited screen time. But others like Liev Schreiber and Steve Carell's characters feel like missed opportunities as side characters with quirky side material going on.

Honestly, it's just an odd film, but I really enjoyed it. Some characters went through decent arcs, and others were there to be silly and eccentric. I want to see if other Wes Anderson movies are similar to this vibe. It's gorgeous to look at, and there are a couple characters to gravitate toward. I'd say it's worth at least one watch. Good film. 3.5/5.

#wes anderson #asteroid city #movie review #movie #review #fypツ

5 notes · View notes

denimbex1986 · 10 months

Text

'The viral sensation that's been caused by the same-day release of Barbie, from Greta Gerwig and Oppenheimer, from Christopher Nolan has caused a stir from TikTok all the way to Hollywood premieres as moviegoers both famous and anonymous are keen to treat themselves to the most contrasting of double bills, as AMC have announced today in a press release, revealing that over 20,000 customers have already purchased double bill tickets.

The movies could scarcely be more different, and yet, both have captured the imagination. Oppenheimer is a super intense and gritty three-hour drama with Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., and Emily Blunt, about the American theoretical physicist who's the mastermind behind creating the atomic bombs that finally ended the Second World War. Meanwhile, Barbie, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, is a wild and hilarious fantasy comedy. It's all about Barbie and Ken, your childhood doll pals, from Barbie-Land, who decide to explore the real world and find themselves on a meta, self-aware, deranged adventure of self-discovery.

The portmanteau of Barbieheimer or Barbenheimer has been used on social media to pair up the two films — which are competing in one sense and not in another —with many enthusiastic fans planning to see both films on the same day. They're not alone in this, as even Tom Cruise, the star of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One which will be playing in movie theaters alongside the two films, has stated that he'll be going to see Oppenheimer in the afternoon, and seeing Barbie later in the evening. Cruise and his director on Mission, Christopher McQuarrie, also took part in a campaign for Cineworld in the United Kingdom encouraging fans to go and see both films as well as Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Oppenheimer star Murphy endorsed the phenomenon, saying "My advice would be for people to go see both, on the same day. If they are good films, then that’s cinema’s gain."

AMC Are Delighted By The Sensation

“That more than 20,000 moviegoers have already made plans and purchased tickets to see Barbie and Oppenheimer on the same day is a great sign that the growing online conversation around seeing both of these incredible films is turning into ticket sales,” says Elizabeth Frank, executive VP of worldwide programming and chief content officer at AMC Theatres. “Just as exciting, with 10 days to go until these movies open, this may only be the beginning. From Friday to today, we saw a 33% increase in the number of guests who decided to create their own double feature by purchasing tickets to see both movies on the same day. We are thrilled to see this momentum.”

Based on preliminary forecasts, Barbie is projected to surpass Oppenheimer in terms of initial ticket sales. Ironically, Oppenheimer is forecast to have greater legs than Barbie as it's believed Barbie may be top-heavy when it comes to front-loading box office returns. However, there is a possibility that Mission: Impossible with its substantial budget, could reclaim the top position on the domestic box office charts during the weekend prior, as that has a nine-day head start on the pair.'

#Oppenheimer #Christopher Nolan #Cillian Murphy #Barbie #Greta Gerwig #Margot Robbie #AMC Theatres #Matt Damon #Robert Downey Jr.#Emily Blunt #Christopher McQuarrie #Ryan Gosling #Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 #Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

5 notes · View notes