conversationswithmyrabbit

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Why We Fight (and refight)

Allison notes that moral ambiguity plays a substancial role in the film, highlighting scenes such as the death of the child and when the team choose to spare the life of an enemy soldier who later kills one of their own. Alongside this, there is also the use of guerilla tactics and multiracial units (cast includes a Jew, a Hispanic soldier, etc) which are all uncharacteristic of the Second World War. Instead, these are themes borrowed from the humiliating Vietnam conflict two decades later. In this sense, Allison argues that Spielberg decided to use the setting of the Second World War as an arena to refight Vietnam and help American audiences to come to terms with that loss within a setting of victory and moral safety. The setting here is imperative - WW2 is such an enduring and powerful signifier that it allowed Spielberg to mask the thematic links subtly and allow audiences to 'refight' Vietnam within the guise of WW2. Another example of this cinematic carthesis is Operation Finale, which depicts the covert capture of Adolf Eichmann (key figure in the Holocaust) by Mossad agents sent from Israel. Eichmann was one of the many Nazis who fled to Argentina after the war because of its stong facist links, before being later recaptured (although, many, like Mengele, were famously never captured). Whilst detailing Eichmann's capture with surprising historical accuracy, Finale is really an attempt to explore or invert Jewish experiences of the Holocaust. In comparison to Ryan, where the links to Vietnam are apparent but vestigial, the formidable presence of the Holocaust looms over the narrative of Finale and is referred to explicitly. For example, there are gruelling exchanges where the characters discuss their personal experiences under Nazi rule and who they lost in the persecution. This is used throughout as a device to amplify the evil of Eichmann, but also to motivate the characters as they realise the dangers of their espionage operation. But moreover, the portrayal of Eichmann's capture and the jeopardy the Jewish agents encounter in the process parallel the experiences of Jews during the persecution of the Nazis. For example, after capturing Eichmann, the agents are forced to stay hidden in a delapidated house with hidden rooms in order to escape the authorities. The portrayal is claustrophobic with the use of tracking shots in order to mitigate the space between characters. The characters bicker and argue as they pace and postulate about what their next move should be; they go to extreme efforts to remain silent; they become paranoid of being raided or of their location being betrayed. In this way, the scenes parallel our understanding of the experiences of Jews in hiding under Nazi rule. It is difficult to observe the scenes of Mossad Jews hiding Eichmann in a secret attic without conjuring the idea of Anne Frank's secret annexe. On top of this, the writers sacrificed a degree of historical accuracy in order to make the presence of Nazis more prominent in the film. In reality, though there was a groundswell of fascism in post-war Argentina, neo-Nazis played no role in the search for Eichmann once he had been declared missing by his family after his capture. In fact, there was only a scant police search. However, in the film, the Mossad agents are on the run from a local group of vehement neo-Nazis who have strong links with the police force. The visible iconography in these scenes, from the Swastika to the use of motorbikes which connote to effective use in Blitzkrieg, is a more overt homage to the Holocaust. Finally, in the climax of the film, the Jewish agents have to drug and disguise Eichmann in order to sneak him across the border. They are scrutinised and questioned in a knife-edge scene which completely inverts the experience of Jews attempting to flee or smuggle people across Nazi borders to safety. These examples demonstrate that style was deliberately managed in order to signpost the audience to deeper themes; in this case, the Holocaust. In this sense, the use of the successful capture and indictment of a leading Nazi as the setting and narrative acts as a safe arena in which to recapture the painful elements of the Holocaust and 'refight' them with a positive ending. The Jewish characters endure these Holocaust experiences in the film, but they survive and the Nazi is humiliated and convicted instead. It provides a happier ending to a tale that has pervaded the Jewish memory of the twentieth century. Even in the film, the idea that the Holocaust is inescapable is clear; the characters can't escape its shadow and discuss how it has affected them. Moreover, protagonist Malkin fears its hereditary characteristics by suggesting that his children, like himelf, would inherit the trauma. This is expressed through his refusal to have children with love-interest and supporting actor Hanna. Her pregnancy in the film's coda at the Eichmann trial is evidence of Malkin's cartharsis, but it is also metaphoric of the audience's experience - he has convalesced from his fear of the Holocaust by refighting it via his capture of Eichmann. The audience, too, is healed.

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King Dethroned

Another key component of satyagraha is that the means and the ends should be parallel. For Gandhi, one was not superior to the other. Perhaps in some subtle homage to Paley, he used the analogy of a watch to demonstrate this. He said that; In other words, what they have obtained is an exact result of the means they adapted. They used the means corresponding to the end. If I want to deprive you of your watch, I shall certainly have to fight for it; if I want to buy your watch, I shall have to pay you for it; and if I want a gift, I shall have to plead for it; and, according to the means I employ, the watch is stolen property, my own property, or a donation. Thus we see three different results from three different means. Will you still say that means do not matter? This was another part of satyagraha that King felt he could overlook. He was tenacious in his pursuit of his end to quell the oppression of blacks that he overlooked his means, which were at times antagonistic and crass, and at worst, negligent. A notable example of this was the Children’s Crusade, which was one part of the Birmingham Campaign, in which black students, sometimes as young as ten, were encouraged to march through Birmingham. In perhaps the most memorable and appalling spectacle of the Civil Rights Campaign, these students were mauled by police dogs and attacked with fire hoses at the orders of Birmingham’s Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor. He even advocated the use of a special fire hose, known as the ‘monitor gun’ which were capable of peeling bark from tree. The displays of violence against groups of innocents tainted King’s means, and thus, according to the principles of Satyagraha, his ends also. Whilst violence was also present at many of Gandhi’s campaigns too, such as the Salt March, it was less predictable and thus Gandhi’s responsibility is diminished. For example, whilst 2,500 Indians were attacked in response to Civil Disobedience, this was mostly performed by Indian policemen, who Gandhi may have assumed would not be as violent. In contrast, King was well aware of the threat that faced his campaigners. Bull Connor was notorious for his opinions on uppity blacks; he had stated publicly that the city ‘ain’t gonna separate no niggers and whites in this town’. Moreover, unlike the Salt March, inciting violence was not a necessary component of the strategy as was in Birmingham. King had spearheaded a tactic known as Project C prior to the Birmingham campaign, which outlined a policy to ‘provoke heavy-handed reactions from the police’. This was a personal reaction from his failures in Albany, which preceded the Birmingham campaign. Here, King had employed non-violent methods, but to limited effect. The police chief, Laurie Pritchett, had studied the non-violent method and knew how to subdue its impact. Unlike Bull Connor, he didn’t react with gross displays of violence that would capture the public’s indignation. He didn’t even give King the media attention of being arrested. Eventually, the protests just fizzed away. It was here that King learned that the non-violent approach relied upon public support, preferably disseminated nationally by the media in the form of scandal or disgrace. Hence, he appropriated the values of Satyagraha. Project C demanded controversy and violence from the police; King not only understood that this would be the reaction, he encouraged it. A progress report from a Project C meeting that lists the code words used during the campaign and the general aims of Birmingham, also contained a breakdown of all the media contacts who would be following every step of the campaign. The appalling scenes of the Children’s Crusade were merely the shocking response of Southern oppression, but were cleverly orchestrated by King as part of his grand strategy to make his dream tangible. In this sense, it was not a non-violent campaign at all. The principles of the campaign were buttressed by the necessity of violence; only his activists were the lambs that would be disarmed by his philosophy before being sent into the arena against it. Essentially, he had subordinated the means to his end. Furthermore, he was well aware that after the media had shown the scenes at Birmingham to the rest of America, pubic support, particularly in the North, which held cultural, if not legislative power, would circle upon those in the South. This, too, violated the mantra of satyagraha. He was not attempting to educate and convert his enemy through spiritual truth, but coerce them. In this sense, whilst King achieved his dream in a de jure sense, the de facto equality still arguably alludes his black contemporaries. Overall, it would be erroneous to deny that King and the Birmingham campaign were successful and that the ends that he achieved were not deeply significant and fundamental to equality to today. However, the evidence above dismantles the idolised image of King, leaving us with 3 options of how to perceive him:

1) His approach was noble, but philosophically flawed and despite being founded upon Satyagraha, was a hypocrisy to it. This seems unlikely considering his many doctorates in theology (despite the fact he plagiarised his thesis), but arguably, if true, means that we should not hold him in such high esteem when we think about how to approach activism and protest. 2) King was ignorant to what would happen at Birmingham. This, again, seems unlikely considering the transparent nature of those in ‘Bombingham’. However, if true, the idea of King as a great leader withers with this notion that he was ignorant in leading his followers into danger, in true Custer style. 3) Finally, if he understood Satyagraha and what would happen to those peaceful protestors in Birmingham, we are left with the perception of King as a man who sacrificed the sacrificed the safety of those who followed him willingly at the altar of his dream. He had subordinated his benevolence of his people to the pursuit of his aims. History has not always been kind to men with hubris, but in this light, King comes off less of the father of modern justice and more of a Nietzsche or a Haig. Whichever interpretation you chose, the nuanced King is preferable to the false idolisation of our popular memory.

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Vampire Sla-yer-very

Whilst this episode is stunning for it’s narrative, depicting the climax in the tension between these two characters as Robin tries to kill Spike as an act of vengeance for killing his slayer mother, it also has deeper interpretative depth. Perhaps being burdened with too much post-colonial anxiety, Biscuit found it impossible to shake the racial subtext of this conflict between Robin and Spike and felt that the episode was trying to communicate contemporary dialogue about the relationship between slave-owning ancestors and slave ancestors. On the surface, the episode is Spike vs Robin Wood and a lot of obstreperous blows to the face, which we’re unused to in BTVS where the audience has been conditioned to expect kung-fu over brute force. But interpreting what each character represents, rather than how each character appears, reveals a different conflict. I think it’s important to first point out the obvious; Robin is black. In contemporary television, this wouldn’t raise an eyebrow, but BTVS is a show that has often been criticised for its ethnocentric cast, so it could be argued that for writers to make a U-turn here was essential to the message they wanted to convey. Moreover, the audience is already aware of Robin’s desire to kill Spike, but in this episode it is clear he wants something more too. For example, he doesn’t try to murder Spike swiftly, which would be easy having fought side by side with him – instead, he makes the conflict personal demonstrating that he wants an apology. >Now, the singular experience of this character fighting against a white male would not be corollary to any racial message, but place him in a room with a 19th century English Romantic; the epitome of cultural superiority and imperialism and the racial tensions should be unbearably obvious. This is what Spike represents in this episode, and to make it obvious to viewers who may have forgotten, the episode has flashbacks of Spike’s past as a Romantic poet! So, maybe there’s a racial element now, but is it slavery the show is specifically referring to? Enter: Nicky Wood, Robin’s mother, who also appears in flashbacks. She is presented as some combination of proto-Punk and fallout from the Black Panthers, both movements inundated with subversive angst and a desire for civil equality. Moreover, she is the Slayer and a particular theme throughout the season, but particularly one that returns in season seven is that being the Slayer is a curse; it’s something that the person does not choose, but is forced to do. For example, Robin says in the episode “You know I love you, but I’ve got a job to do. The mission’s what matters right?”. In this sense, slaying here can be related to slavery. Nicky is forced to perform a duty for others at the expense of her liberty. This is really important to the episode too because Robin feels that he is personally affected, psychologically so, by this. He, too, suffers from slavery, despite never having experienced it, and he blames Spike for his role in this too. So the characters fight – in a room full of crucifixes I might add – important because both slaves and slave owners used Christianity to justify their claims. But the subtext is striking if the characters are understood in this way. Robin is fighting with Spike because he blames him for the things that happened to his slave mother. He wants Spike dead, but really he wants recognition, apology, maybe even some sort of compensation for the wrongs that his ancestors have felt. He feels that they have affected him also, transmuted to him by some hereditary osmosis. When Spike argues that Nicky knew what she was ‘signing up for’ when she fought a vampire, his riposte is that ‘I didn’t sign up for it’. He later complains that Spike ‘took his childhood’. Interestingly, Spike has a soul in series 7. This makes the battle so much more ambiguous in these terms because he is technically not responsible for the crimes of his past. The crimes were committed by a vampire in his body that he had no control of. When describing how a demon usurped his mother’s control when she was made a vampire, Spike demonstrates how vampires are absolved of responsibility once turned. He says; ‘When I sired her, I set loose a demon… but that was the demon talking, not her’. What is more interesting is that Robin seems to understand this on some level – he refuses to fight ‘Spike’ and uses his trigger to awaken his primitive vampire side before fighting him. Perhaps more interesting is that Spike displays very little sympathy for Robin’s suffering during the fight. This is consistent with Spike’s monochrome views on history – in Pangs he describes imperialism as a relationship between superior Invaders and those Invaded, and here he justifies what happened between himself and Nicky as a natural destination of their roles. He plainly retorts; “I don’t give a piss about your mum. She was a Slayer. I was a vampire”. The conflict strongly parallels the dialogue between post-colonial countries against their previous masters. Caricom countries such as Jamaica and the Caribbean have called for compensation to help them recover from the scars of slavery, both politically, economically and psychologically. The response from Imperial counties has been varied. Some, like Spike, denounce any ongoing impacts of slavery and even argue that the Paternalism received in the form of culture and infrastructure outweighs any damage caused by slavery. Softer views that acknowledge the evil of slavery are louder, but still contain disdain for being asked to bear the financial brunt of paying compensation for the actions of one’s ancestors. If we agree slavery was wrong and acknowledge that some still suffer, then surely something should be done to help? If so, who should be the one to help? These are the same complex moral questions that are being screamed in the subtext of this Buffy episode. The episode doesn’t provide an answer. It leaves Robin, broken and bruised on the floor, as Spike leaves carrying Nicky’s coat; the trophy of his kill. There is no resolution or panacea. Only the silence in which to speak.

[conversationswithmyrabbit]

Nice Guys Finnish Soon

The band formed in 1991 in Helsinki, in the same year that the lead singer of Black Metal pioneers Mayhem had violently commit suicide and images of this were being distributed by bandmembers in an effort to recruit purist metal fans into burning churches. It would be only 2 years later when prominent members of the Black Metal scene in Norway would regard arson as moderate and begin murdering members of the public as a pugnacious demonstration of their misanthropia. Whilst Helsinki and Oslo (the birthplace of Helvete or ‘Hell’, the meeting place of black metalers) are 900 km apart, it is evident that Scandinavia has been rife for musical and cultural osmosis, particularly in rock music. For example, during the early 1990s, the Norweigian and Swedish black metal scenes skirmished across borders for cultural superiority. Similarly, Ville Valo lists the Black Metal scene as one of HIM’s major influences, alongside Black Sabbath and Type One Negative. Interestingly, in this interview he parenthetically adds with a coy grin that church burning has nothing to do with religion, but ‘keeps us warm during the cold winters in Scandinavia’. This illustrates how Valo was not only obviously aware of the Black Metal scene, but able to reflect and respond to it. The sarcasm he employs there demonstrates his moderate approach to the same issues that Black Metal were fighting against so fervently. Valo is anti-establishment, just like Black Metal. He opposes organised religion, just like Black Metal. Yet his solution is one centred around love. And that’s the unique feature of HIM’s movement – they personified the amorphous and ethereal concept of love, so alien to young people, into something familiar and enduring. The heartagram is not only a canon of rock iconography and a convenient tattoo because it can surround your nipple, it is a fitting demonstration of HIM’s intent. The use of the heart subverts the classic pentagram, an icon saturated in the metal scene to embody radicalisation and evil, and transforms it into something more tender. It illustrates the band’s willingness to flirt with the iconography of evil, whilst being eager to move Scandinavian rock into something more positive and compassionate. The title of their first album ‘666 Love songs’ embodies this rather well. They were drenched in evil, but willing to love. This moderation, in the face of Black Metal’s radical approach, was also prevalent in their musical style, which borrowed as much from black and classic metal as it did from the melancholy of Scandinavian pop. To say the heartagram was what drove them is to overlook the fact that the symbol didn’t appear publicly until their fourth studio album, Love Metal, despite being created seven years prior on Valo’s twentieth birthday. It was in this album that they perfected their homemade style, branded as ‘love metal’. Its lyrics and themes were the antithesis to everything Black Metal preached on the surface and yet they shared common ancestry in their metal guitar riffs.

HIM shared a lineage with Black Metal, but their ethos was different. They prioritised love at the heart of their message instead of hate and terror. So even when they approached some of the same issues, they did this in different ways. A key example of this is how each channelled their anti-religion sentiments. The Black Metal scene burned churches to display its iconoclasm and between 1990 and 1993, 50 churches in Norway had been destroyed, some of which were not only places of religious significance, but were centuries old and deemed historical landmarks. In contrast, HIM challenged the orthodox of organised religion by supplanting its dogma with the values of love. In their song ‘The Sacrament’, Valo indicts specifically the Catholic church, which for him, in staunchly Lutheran Finland, was the foundation of corruption within world religion. He writes that ‘my church is not of silver and gold’, echoing the damning criticisms of Zwingli, Calvin and Luther in the 16th Century Protestant Reformation who stripped catholic churches of their wealth, arguing that religious locations should be about god and not about prosperity. He then sings ‘its glory lies behind judgement of souls’ and ‘my weak prayers are not enough to heal’ to criticise Catholic theology based on predestination and dogma. The song attacks the church, but not violently. Instead, Valo sings that ‘the sacrament is you’; arguing that organised religion has no place in the world, but that love does. For him, religion is interpersonal and in one interview, when asked about his religious beliefs, he declared that the closest thing he had to God was family. Like the Black Metal scene, he had some hang-ups about religion, but HIM wanted to create a positive message. In a world where everybody tries to be as radical as possible, HIM’s elegy becomes more important as they demonstrated how it was possible to be original, captivating and globally appealing with moderation.

[conversationswithmyrabbit]

Get Out of My Brain

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Sweet Home Montonui?

The key theme within Moana is identity. Many of the characters exhibit crises of identity. Antihero Maui is a self-proclaimed narcissist who constantly evaluates himself by his power and his accomplishments; the tattoos on his skin represent his victories and even they begin to turn on him. When he loses his hook, the source of his shapeshifting power, he states forlornly ‘I’m not Maui without my hook’. Sharing a similar superciality is (sort-of) villain Tamatoa who is obsessed with his appearance and tries to make himself look as glamorous and ‘shiny’ (as he constantly refers to in the Bowie-esque song) as possible. This is partly a predatory habit to lure fish who are attracted by ‘the brightest thing that glitters’, but he is also susceptible to flattery which is telling that his appearance is as much self-induced, as adaptive. Furthermore, Te Fiti (a sort of ‘mother nature’) defines herself by her mistakes and needs Moana’s reassurance in the climactic scene that ‘this does not define you’. Even the retarded chicken gets to demonstrate plot development. However, the dominant character arc is Moana’s journey to find out who she is as she agonisingly fluctuates between her father’s wishes of remaining on the island to be his successor and to explore the sea. There is fertile ground to analyse this theme, but most interesting is the relationship between the abstract island and the characters (kind of like in Lost where the island becomes a character of its own). This allows a comprehensive study of how space and place affect identity in Moana. The notion that is forwarded at the premise of the film is that space and place are strongly related to identity, or essentially that the place you are from and live strongly affects who you are as a person. This is the idea that is presented by Moana’s father and chief of the island who describes Montonui as an idyllic utopia which is the source and the reason for the inhabitants’ contentment. The island provides a plethora of natural resources that when paired with the organised and autarkical community provide everything that the people need. The villagers sing; ‘We use each part of the coconut, that’s all we need. We make the nets from the fibres, the water is sweet inside, we use the leaves to build fires and cook up the meat inside’. Moana’s father says; ‘Montonui is paradise… who would want to go anywhere else?’ and then adds, ‘it is where you’re meant to be’. This addition demonstrates his character motivation – he pressures Moana to abandon her dream of travelling to be his successor on the island. Her mother, though more sympathetic than the chief, is just as despondent about the idea of finding one’s identity beyond the realms of duty and responsibility as the Montonui community have shaped theirs for generations. She tells Moana that ‘who we wish we were, what we wish we could do, is just not meant to be’. The connection between space, place and identity is firmly implanted in Moana and the audience. There is an intrinsic link between ‘where you are’ and ‘who you are’. Moana is instructed she must find happiness ‘right where [she is]’ and that the stability of her identity is dependent on where she is. Despite Moana’s objections and mild rebellion against her father, she is taken to a pile of horizontal rocks on the peak of the island and asked by her father to place one of her own above it as a symbol of her leadership and the progeny of the island’s community. This is an monumental symbol. Whilst for the chief, it represents the buttressing of Montonui and being physically as well as symbolically ‘bigger’ than before, for Western audiences, the pattern of rocks relates to the semiotics of sacrifice. The rocks are a sacrificial landmark and she is being asked to sacrifice herself, her desires and her identity for the sake of her people. For these audiences, what her father is asking is not an honour, it is a burden that should be resisted. Moana abandons the mantra that identity is linked to place and embarks on her adventure beyond the reef she has been confined by. This is partly motivated by the fact that an external force has begun to corrupt the natural resources on her island. She leaves the island on the promise that she will find a solution, but we must also remember that she has been wanting to leave the entire film (like seriously, most shots of her on the island involve her solemnly staring out into the sea). Feminist readers would regard her ship sailing away from the island as a symbol of her liberation from her father’s hegemony, Marxists may view it as an expression of her rejection of society’s ideological weights, but ultimately this is Moana dissecting the closely knit bond between space and identity. She is no longer going to be defined by where she is, or by the role that is provided for her there. In its place, she forwards a new formula for the formation of identity; one that is based around internal ‘spirit’ and choices and experiences. There are numerous times in the film where she counsels characters on their identity crises. She reassures Maoi that ‘Gods don’t make you Maoi. You are Maoi’. This is a concept of identity that resonates with audiences in individualistic cultures –societies that are deeply connected to the global market and rarely regard their life as having a firm existence in one place. However, the predilection for the approach of identity in Moana by Western audiences shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, to view identity and place as separate ideas is a Western idea in itself. This is where things become troubling, because although there is nothing wrong with this Western portrayal of identity, Moana is set against a non-Western backdrop. Firstly, the Maori culture, like many others outside of the West, is communalistic rather than individualistic – they are based around the many, not the few – therefore, we could ask the question of whether a non-Western projection of Moana would really have left the island? Would she have placed her rock above her fathers and continued the legacy of the island because that would be the right thing to do for her people, rather than for her self? Some may argue that the accusation that Moana is in anyway ‘individualistic’ is moot anyway because her motivation for leaving is to fix the problem that her island faces (i.e. the deceased coconuts and the empty fishing lanes). However, her desire to leave pre-existed the problems on the island. Although they may have catalysed her decision, she was motivated by a ‘call inside’. In her big song, she uses daring imagery and a semantic field of adventure and exploration. These depict her personal ambition rather than her benevolence for the island. The projection of individualistic values onto a communalistic tribe is troubling, but when observed alongside the political treatment of these tribes, the film’s theme becomes dangerous. Again, this all comes down to Moana’s decision to leave and where she values her identity in regards to space and place. Right-wing commentators would establish the villain of the film to be Te Ka (evil lava demon thing) who represents the negative and destructive aspects of nature. They would laud the inhabitants of Montonui for not realising the threat of Malthusian traps on their small island and for not spreading or colonising the surrounding islands for safety and stability. Those comments might be fair in the context of the narrative of Moana, where the threat to Montonui was natural. But the most identifiable and the most devastating threat to tribes like the Maori but also other minority groups from a historical perspective have not been natural, but rather imperial. Colonists were the ones who forces aboriginal tribes from their homelands – or perhaps, more identifiable to American audiences, it was colonists who forced the native Americans onto reservations, where they remain today. Whilst it might be too much of a stretch to argue that Te Ka represents white colonialism, it is clearly a strong political dialogue in society today; a call that has still been unanswered, and whilst it may be refreshing for Western audiences to see Moana disassemble the link between cultural identity and a fixed place, it is dangerous also. It represents an idea that was used by colonists to exploit territorial gain and one that was used to justify and legitimise the unfair transposition of natives in America from their homelands to reservations. The idea was that natives culture was internal, it belonged to them and would not change if they were moved from their lands. There was no intrinsic connection for the colonists between a certain place and these peoples’ identities. They were as culturally nomadic as they were physically. But this is a Western idea and these people did certainly have a strong connection to their places of origin, which some have held for generations. For these people, there was a fixed link between identity and place. When Moana broke this idea, and importantly when Moana broke this idea as a member of the Maori tribe, she sent a message to all audiences, but particularly white Western audiences, that ethnic groups do not require their homelands to form a strong cultural identity. If this message is believed, internalised and transcribed into decree it could represent real danger for these peoples. Moana was great. It was entertaining and it was approached so creatively that making only one blog was incredibly hard (expect more), but it is important to remember that it was a Western export.

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A Room of One’s Own

In many ways this story is retold (and inverted) in Room, which depicts a woman (Ma) who is kidnapped, raped and held captive in a shed for 7 years. During this time, she bears a child (Jack) whose only experience of the world is inside this shed, which they fondly call 'Room'. Ma and Jack eventually escape, but face new difficulties in their liberation and struggle to adapt (or re-adapt) to the world. This was particularly difficult for Biscuit to watch and analyse and it was reminiscent of her time in the Pet Store (there was no rape, but she was left for long periods with little food and virtually nobody to analyse pop-culture with). Immediate comparison can be made between the two stories. The room represents the cave, Jack is oen of the priosners and he constructs his view of the world by observing the mere 'shadows' of the world that his senses are afforded. For example, Jack understands that 'spiders ar real, and one time the mosquito that was sucking my blood [was real]', but 'dogs are just TV' and 'the sea is too big to be real'. He believes in those things which he has directly experienced in room, but all else is disregarded - those things he perceives on the TV are never questioned, they are just not real. He even grows a certain fondness to the objects in the room and personifies them - for example, 'meltedy spoon is the best to eat with because he's more blobbier'. This reflects the 'game' that the prisoners play in Plato's Cave and the almost childish attachment that they grow to those vestigious fragments of their reality. Interestingly, as opposed to Plato's version, Ma does not try to inform Jack about the reality, but is satisfied letting him believe that room mirrors reality. Admittedly, Jack has some vague concepts of things outside of room that he has learnt from Ma, such as outerspace, planets and heaven, but these are abstract to him. They are escapism and have no grounding in reality. This perspective of the world is constructed through his senses to the extent that he doesn't believe in any existence outside of room. When Ma tries to convince Jack of an outside world to convince him to escape, she questions him by asking where Old Nick (their captor) gets their food from. He replies; 'From TV! By Magic.' Akin to Plato's story, Jack also escapes the cave. However, the outcome is not as immediately pleasant for him as Plato imagined. Instead of being enlightened to the truths of the universe, Jack is bewildered and confused. Room was claustrophobic, but it was at least constant, whereas he finds that the real world is uncertain. He doesn't understand how basic things work, he is frightened by human interaction and seems overwhelmed by the sheer size of the planet and the number of things to observe. He unsettles Ma's father who can't bear to look at Jack without seeing the rapist of his daughter. He also can't relate to his mother's descent into depression as in the face of her family and the media, she comes to feel shame and sorrow for the things she has suffered. Despite being free, she is also living in fear. Room for her was a prison, but she knew her devil at least. Ma distances herself from Jack, unable to cope with living in the real world and even attempts suicide. For Jack, reality has only offered him destabilisation and confusion. He says; 'There are so many things out here. And sometimes it's scary.' He longs for the sanctuary of his room which had fixed outlines and was constant. His agrophobia is placated by the media and police presence outside of their family home, which creates a sort of unescapable 'room' out of their house. This is where Jack feels most comfortable. This is an inversion of Plato's allegory and comments on contemporary fears of the outside world. We sympathise with Ma's ordeal, yet the enemies she meets in the real world (such as the media, legal fees, family issues) are the demons of our own making and all too commonly feature in our own daily ordeals. In this sense, our real world is just as scary and it's easier just to 'stay inside' [the cave]. The allegory is redeemed by a closer analysis of Ma's character. A duality appears between her self in room and the one set free. Although it may have been obvious that Jack was a metaphor for the escaped prisoner in Platos' allegory, Ma's position is more ambigious. However, instead of being a second escaped prisoner as might be first assumed on the surface (which doesn't feature in Plato's story), we shoudl recognise Ma as one of the prisoners who remains inside the cave for Jack to return to. Only her cave is not physical, it is psychological. Despite being in the real world, she cannot forget or leave room behind. Just as with Plato's analogy, it is Jack's challenge to convince Ma that there is a real world beyond the cave. He is able to achieve this because he is propelled from his trepidations about the world by his childlike inquisition and imagination. The world scares Ma, but it begins to excite Jack. He says; 'The world's like all TV planets on at the same time, so I don't know which way to look and listen. There's doors and... more doors. And behind all the doors, there's another inside, and another outside. And things happen, happen, HAPPENING'. One cannot help make the connection between Plato and Plato's teacher Socrates, who famously proved that even a young, uneducated boy could master the truths of universe through the Socratic method. Jack not only manages to save his mother's life, rescue her from the confides of her mental cave, but he also reaches the enlightenment that Plato promised. He brazenly comments with the intellectual hubris of a child; 'When I was small, I only knew small things. But now I'm five, I know EVERYTHING!'. By leaving the cave, he has understood and mastered the real world, just as Plato hoped philosophers would. The supposed moral of the story being that fear of the world can only be overcome by bravery and sanguinity. In the final scene, Ma and Jack return to Room (which is now a crime scene) however they return with different motives. Ma wants to prove she has overcome the fear she felt leaving it, whereas Jack wants to regress in the childish ignorance of youth. In the final dialogue they both demonstate their growth. Jack asks if Ma can shut the door because 'It can't really be room if door's open'. Ma, who once feared the door shutting and never opening again, shuts the door to appease her son.

[conversationswithmyrabbit]

Should we leave dogs in the house all day?

A friend and I once left his house to do something and in doing so, locked his dog inside of his house, whimpering after us dejectedly. When we returned forty minutes later, the dog was ecstastic. He jumped up my friend, elated to be reunited with his master, but my friend brushed him aside and remarked; "What's his problem? We were only gone like 1/2 an hour." "True," I replied. "But half an hour in dog time is much longer. So it probably felt like ages to him." At the time, I thought this was a witty response, but Biscuit wanted to investigate whether this was a valid claim to make. The old adage is that a 'dog year' is approximately 7 of our 'human' years. Therefore, if a dog lives for 12 years that means it has 'really' lived a lovely, long life for a dog of about 84 years. So, arguably (or as my previous self argued to my friend and his ecsastic dog) if a dog is left for an hour by itself, it would feel like it had been alone for seven times that amount. By this logic, if a dog is left alone an entire day, it feels more like the most part of a week!

The premise of this argument is that time is relative. Whilst this is a statement popularly used and regarded to be true, it is less understood what our time is relative to. I mean, relative to what exactly? Sometimes time is entangled with enjoyment and our 'feeling' of how it passes. For example, often we perceive time passing shorter or longer depending on how content we are in a situation. Waiting for the new Rick and Morty season has been long enough simply because Biscuit has been so unhappy without it in her life. But also our sense of time is always working against, or alongside, our construct of our own imagined timeline. These timelines are how long we imagine living until and time is relative to how much we have left. For example, ten years in a prison is such a painful punishment when understood that it is almost 1/7th of somebody's life. A train being delayed for an hour is more frustrating when understood against somebody's timeline of having 4 hours free in their evening to see their family. Time has no meaning on its own, but we subscribe meaning to it based on what we want to do with that time. On this premise, assuming time is relative to dogs as it is to us, by leaving a dog for days alone, the dog suffers from relativity on two fronts: on one hand, they're bored out of their mind so time perceives to move more slowly, but on the other hand, the dogs have a shorter imagined timeline than our own meaning that the stretch of time that they are left for is 'longer' for them according to their construct of net time lost in accordance to the gross amount of 'time' that they can experience. The first question to ask should be whether dogs experience time differently to ourselves. Surely the life of a gnat or a housefly, of which the lifespan is only a matter of days in total - is radically different to our own sense of time. They feed, mate, metabolise on a radically different levels to ourselves - so much so that their 3 days on this Earth feels like a lifetime. However, the same cannot be said for a dog necessarily. Partly because of the size difference making metabolism similar, but also because dogs, like humans are diurnal (opposite of nocturnal - although some species are crepuscular). Both animals have adapted their sleeping and eating patterns to fit the Earth's rotations around the Sun. In that respect, time is therefore probably measured, or 'felt' by responding to the Sun. In this respect, the way that dogs experience the passing of time would be remarkably similar to the way that humans do it. However the consequence of this is only worrying if we agree that dogs understand and process time against an overall 'timeline' of their own lives. The question therefore becomes whether dogs really have a sense of their own timelines - do dogs understand when they should die in relation to where they live now? Do dogs have any understanding of mortality and that they will die? Do dogs understand that a year of ourtime is worth seven of theirs? We might argue that all animals sense their own mortality. They run on instinct- an innate fear of death. But fearing eath is different to understanding that you willdoe. Arguably the only reason that humans understand death is because they are taught the processes of life; they start young, they age, they see their grandparents pass away and then they are eventually taught about how they should expect to die around the age of 80 onwaords. But dogs aren't taught that - yes, they might age and feel themselves becoming older and weaker, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they can predict when they will die. So, logically, if they have no construction of their own imagined timeline, the they can have no real understanding of the relativity of their time in comparison to our own. In comparison, dogs do not fear mortality as we do. Although they sense time as we do, they feel that theirs is infinite. An infinite time of catching sticks and fetching plastic bones.

[conversationswithmyrabbit]

Stake to the heart, not steak to the mouth

[conversationswithmyrabbit]

This is from Matilda...

[conversationswithmyrabbit]

Oh, I Wish It Could Be Halloween Everyday…

It would be false to suggest that Christmas is not equally ‘marketed’. On the contrary, Christmas is probably the most heavily marketed period of the year. But arguably, its marketing is a product of its popularity, not a cause of it. The existence of Halloween items offensively clogging up shelves in supermarkets by mid-September is an annual depressant. The fact that these gaudy displays often remain for over a month often makes it feel, like the monsters in NBC like we are living Halloween every day. Burton uses the character of the Mayor of Halloween Town to mirror the tiresome role of Halloween marketing. After the Halloween parade ends, he is already planning next year’s and he resets the town clock that counts down until the next Halloween. This is a comical gesture, but is one that can resonate with contemporary audiences. The Mayor spends the narrative annoying those around him by forcing them to prepare for the distant holiday, whilst always trying to convince them that next years will be somehow better, or different at all. Juxtaposing this is his spinning face which reveals his true intentions. Consumerism and personal prestige, not altruism, motivate him and these are common enemies of Burton. He often attacks them by using alternative culture as a vehicle to do this, but what is unique about NBC is that it is in man ways self-critical. It realises that the alternative culture is also a part of the problem. It is consumerist, and worse conspicuously consumerist in regards to Halloween and they have rotted the holiday. So much so that we negate potentially more important historical and culture holidays such as the celebration of Harvest and our nation's expression of religiou and political freedom on November 5th. We now prefer to dress up and scare each other. Tim Burton is the idol of alternative culture, but above this he is a social commentator, and he uses his iconic film to vehicle his idea of Halloween – it being presented as the real ‘nightmare’ before Christmas. Ironically, it only made the holiday more gimmicky and even bridged the gulf between the two holidays.

[conversationswithmyrabbit]

You Madden, Bro?

It might partly be that we are prone to retrospection with rose-tinted glasses, but Biscuit notes that this is a reductionist approach, instead suggesting that this phenomenon has pragmatic psychological causes more than any purposeful self-deception. It stems from our desire to understand our identities and constantly excavate our own histories in order to know who we are and why this is meaningful. How often do we look bad at a particularly moment and wonder how different we are, or how far we have come? In doing so, we deceive ourselves and propagate this notion that we, as people, remain constantly the same whilst changing dramatically or fluctuating only at certain tracebale milestones. This allows us to preserve our notion of self-conceptualisation. But the reality is that we have no idea who we are actually are, and actually 'change' slightly on a daily basis or even evently basis. With this in mind, we have a habit, or even a memorial necessity, to negate and forget banal moments of our lives in favour of storing only those that seem significat. At times, we even lose series of individual memories in favour of them being amalgamated into 'boxsets' of histories. Even tracing or picturing specific moments is hard with time and we have to question how much is effective memory and how much is simply a powerful ability to recreate scenes in our heads of what probably happened based on available contextual information. Our minds therefore streamline our consciousness to preserve our identity whilst our brains simultaneously struggle to store the memories required to retain our identity. But this is where music is very useful, because it allows our brain to store the memory of a whole length of time under only one synapse. In my case, I don't have to accurately recall Summer 2012 because my brain has sloppily tailored it to the finger-picked arpeggios of 'We Are Never Getting Back Together'. And Biscuit only has to hear 'Bright Eyes' to relive the repressed traumas he experienced inside that pet shop. What is more interesting is that it isn't just listeners who do this, but the artists themselves who begin to excavate their own histories in their songs. Arguably all songs deal with the 'past' as they are all written in it (except maybe Busted's 'Year 3000'), but few songs deal with specific days, months or years. And this isn't the portrayal of the past as an abstract 'catch-all' to appeal to a diverse collective memory of listeners, as with Bowling For Soup's '1985', but rather something specific and personal. And often when the artist looks back at their past and writes about it, they do the same thing that our memory does. They distort. When Bryan Adams sings about his 'Summer of '69', he remembers waiting for his girl and playing with his band and he uses the broad umbrella term of 'summer', a period of three months, to summarise this, which clearly negates the times he sat and ate cereal, restrung his guitar or engaged in banal experiences like unplugging one's socks from one another in the washing basket. These things happened in that Summer too, but Adams forgets these in favour of the events he thinks shaped and defined him. What Adams creates here and immortalies in his own indentation of identity is an 'imagined history' where he spent the Summer of 1969 in some sort of teen movie. A whole period of his life where numerous changes took place is compartmentalised into verse and it is much easier processed. These alterations to our malleable memory are harmless, necessary and often unconscious, but there are occasions when we can start to rethink the past so inaccurately that we trick ourselves.This is the curious case with the song '1979' by Good Charlotte. The song is an iconic demonstraton of Madden's verve for hooks and anthemic melodies, but lyrically and conceptually it stands apart from their other work. It tells the early story of Madden's parents and offsets their domestic tranquility against seemingly trivial events from the same year. Madden tells us that his parents 'hold each other close when they were newly-weds' at a time when 'Highway to Hell beat up Staying Alive'. For an outsider, it's a jaunty sing-a-long of the proleatariat nuclear family, but for those follow Good Charlotte's discography, it only foreshadows the abandonment of Madden's father and preludes songs like 'The Story of My Old Man' and 'Emotionless' thematically, if not chronologically. Madden has always been candit about his feelings towards his father - and though those feelings have changed (as you'd expect), he always wore his heart on his sleeve. 'The Story of My Old Man' is a self-depracating cautionary tale for dead-beat dads with only enough dark humour in the chorus to shoddily patch the melancholy of the verses. Whereas 'Emotionless' is a nuanced and sympathetic appeal to his estranged father, displaying Madden's proto-widsom in his harsh youth. '1979' is more autobiographical than these others; as mentioned above, Madden depicts scenes of his parents marriage against a backdrop of events from the same year. He tells of how 'they danced so slow to Just The Way You Are' and even uses his parent's names to give an additional edge of authenticity and realism. These aren't his parents yet, to him, they are two people in love in a year where the topography of music changed dramatically. But what is interesting is the year that Madden focuses on. In 1979, Madden was one year old. It becomes obvious then that these lyrics are not memories at all, but inventions, and possible even fantasies. Doubtlessly, there may be some truth in them, perhaps from questioning people from his past, but the way he tells the story of his parent's love as factual, is fiction. Moreover, it wasn't an attempt at history at all, but rather a means to understand and compartmentalise the trauma of his father leaving as something that had positive origins and that could have been avoided. In this sense, this year is gilded and used as an armour for his identity to protect it from the later downfall in his parent's relationship that he witnessed first hand. The give-away is the final line of the bridge where Madden personalises his narrative voice and speaks directly to his father, as opposed to giving a narrative of their marriage. He asks; 'No one can take away these memories, remember when you said to me that we'd be all right?'. What is sad is that these are not memories at all, but they have clearly become almost that via lyrical reprogramming.

[conversationswithmyrabbit]

Dumbledore’s Barbaric Practice

Use of Verisaterum on students

Considerable harm caused during quidditch matches (Harry broken arm, bewitched bludger, etc)

Death of student at Triwizard Tournament

Unruly three-headed dog kept on Third-Floor corridor which students are warned against, but room is accessible nonetheless to any student capable of doing 'Alohomora' (first-year capability)

Student transfigured into a ferret for the purpose of punishment

Slughorn and Hagrid get drunk with Harry on school grounds in Hagrid's private property to mourn the death of a giant spider which also shouldn't be on school property

Hogwarts' policy of extra-curricular activities is fairly consistent with this brash approach to education. As mentioned above, quidditch as an extra-curricular activity has certain safety faults, but perhaps more puzzling is the creation of the 'Duelling Club' in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. It is in the sequel that presumably Dumbledore decides to set up this club under the 'sound' guidance of Lockhart (who should be adored for Branagh's role in 'Rabbit Proof Fence'), however mentions of duelling as a practice amongst the wizarding community are mentioned in previous books also. The purpose of this club was to not only teach students the correct etiquette of duelling, but actually create an environment for them to practice their duelling skills, no doubt for the purpose of using them in later life. It is puzzling that in a school that so often promotes solidarity and co-operation to then also train and teach students how to fight one another. At no muggle school would we see teachers encouraging students to settle differences via physical confrontation. Biscuit wanted to find out why such a peculiar and even violent passtime would take place in Hogwarts. It could be argued that the decision to organise a duelling club was a product of the circumstance. After all, as the duelling club is established (we can infer it is a relatively 'new' idea to host a duelling club by the shock notice and the excitement of students about it) during a period of general trepidation inside Hogwarts due to the threat by the mysterious 'Heir of Slytherin' that the Chamber of Secrets will be opened at the expense of muggle-born wizards. It is plausible that Dumbledore instructed the formation of a duelling club in order to prepare students for any impending threats that they might encounter in the same way that the Heir of Slytherin had already petrified Sir Nick and Mrs Norris.

However, if the safety of the students was a priority for Dumbledore, the duelling club is an ineffective move for several reasons. Firstly, the duelling club actually causes numerous physical confrontations between members of the club. For example, Malfoy and Harry are encouraged to duel and Millicent Bullstrode actually gets Hermione into a headlock. More importantly however, duelling itself is not an effective form of self-defence. Simply put, there is already a period of scheduled time in Hogwarts witht he sole purpose of training students to use magic in order to defend themselves against any dangers: Defence Against the Dark Arts class. Not only does Duelling Club impinge on Defence Against the Dark Art's authority in this sense, but the way in which duelling was taught actually hinders effective self-defence. After all, learning about correct duelling etiquette and bowing and 'seconds' have no practical use should students find themselves in a confrontation with the Heir of Slytherin. Arguably, using Expelliarmus against a Basilisk is likely to just piss it off anyway - but that's fine because basilisks are like snakes and snakes are sworn enemies of rabbits anyway. So therefore it is unlikely that Dumbledore encouraged the students to learn duelling as a means of protecting them against threats within the school. The existence of the Duelling Club could be explained by Lockhart, who is the founder of the club. After all, the club only begins at Hogwarts after his appointment as teacher of Defence Against the Dark Arts. Being a new teacher at the school and being inexperienced (if not certainly unqualified) as a teacher, Lockhart may have wanted to organise his own extra-curricular activity to boost his status within the faculty (akin to how Flitwick runs the school choir and Snape and McGonnogal are head of houses). There is no evidence to support this theory, other than it being congruent to Lockhart's narcissism and unblinkered self-belief. However, even if we take this to be true, it doesn't absolve Hogwarts or vindicate Dumbledore of responsibility. If anything it compounds the responsibility of Dumbledore for not only authorising Lockhart's proposal, but hiring him in the first place! These theories don't wholly help to explain why the duelling club was set up in the Chamber of Secrets and it is better explained by understanding that duelling is part of an old culture of magic that the wizarding communities buy into and support. The culture of duelling in Harry Potter parallels the European medieval notions of duelling and Rowling no doubt transcribed ideas from history because she imagined that these cultures had developed in tandem. For example, in 15th-century duelling in Europe there was a process of bowing before fighting and there were 'seconds' who vouched and mediated each duel. Not only this but the general idea of a duel is congruent in both whereby disputes of honour are settled by physical confrontation. In Harry Potter, the wizarding communities use duelling as a device to hark back to this medieval 'Golden Age' whereby magic was at its earliest and peak stages of development. Of course, duelling isn't the only illustration of this magical renaissance; on the contrary, the entire decor and culture of Hogwarts is centred around Medieval Europe. We see this in the use of language (Latin), the attire akin to how European witches were perceived (cloak and pitchfork/broom) and most importantly the rejection of modern and muggle technology. This pursuit of 'old' bygone traditions may seem dated and even backward, but are no way alien or absurd. For example, public boarding schools work in very similar ways even today - where lagnguages, sports of passtimes are taught as a means of their cultural value rather than their practical import. For example, studying latin or learning the harpsichord. This shows that the teaching of duelling at Hogwarts was not a response for higher student safety but a means for students to be connected to their historical and cultural heritage. It could be argued that it was only added in 'The Chamber of Secrets' as a response to a higher influx of muggle-born students who were no doubt perceived to be diluting the shared cultural vision of the wizarding world. This fear of anomie parallels the propogation of British Values in our education system. On the surface, this practice might seem absurd to readers who may consider any cultural passtime that uses violence as a means to gain status one deeed disposable, however there are actually darker undertones of duelling being promoted as a cultural practice. After all, duelling belongs to a larger culture of xenophobia that it cannot be dissected from. From the Harry Potter series we learn briefly about the history of magic and how it began as a protected entity designated to only 'pure-blood' wizards. It is perhaps fitting actually that it is in the same book that duelling is cordially introduced that we also have the backstory of Salazar Slytherin and his 'racial' ideas towards muggle-born wizards. In this respect, by revering these customs we are dangerously close to tapping into the ideas that they grew from and in tandem with. Understandably, these statements have to be taken with caution. Obviously, not everybody that duels is a muggle-hater, in the same way that not every Eton student who plays polo belongs to the Tory party and fox hunts on weekends. However, we can recognise that these separate traits belong to the same cultural history and it is also true that prolonged exposure to this culture will certainly make one more likely to comply with its customs. It is therefore no surprise that Death Eaters and Voldermort predicate duelling. For example, in Goblet of Fire, Voldermort forces Harry to duel with him instead of just killing him. Similarly, Draco Malfoy challenges Harry to a duel in one of their first encounters. As with duelling in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, which was a means for high class members to skirmish for power and status, wizard dueling has an unmistakable aristocratic feel to it and certainly has roots to notions of pure-blood wiardry. The existence and promotion of duelling within the wizarding education system could also have a social explanation. The Wizarding World understandbly uses magic to separate itself from the muggle world. In this regard, the wizarding world will have developed to be much more practical and 'hands-on' than its muggle counterpart, in that they use magic to solve the majority of their problems. Despite the disdain that wizards often harbour for muggles and the way that Rowling presents muggles as naive, oblivious and simple, it could be argued that actually the muggle world are much more intelligent, despite perhaps being less 'advanced' due to their lack of magical skills. What I mean by this is that muggles are more likely to use their rationality and intelligence to solve problems rather than relying on magic. For example, if both a muggle and wizard were given a simple problem-solving task like pouring water into another container using only a handful of items and not touching them, the wizard would use magic to achieve this, whereas the muggle would think. It makes sense then that the wizarding world would therefore adopt this hands-on, practical and magical approach to confrontation -ergo, duelling. This suits them better than talking or reasoning in order to solve their problems. Overall, Hogwarts is obviously run by a group of evil, right-wing governors who just love everything about old-school magic, including duelling, riding brooms and burning innocent muggles at the stake.

[conversationswithmyrabbit]

The One Where Phoebe Gets Therapy From a Rabbit (or ‘Fur-apy’)

However, despite the stark contrast between the two that Phoebe propagates and despite their interactions in the show for the purpose of humour, the twins are not that different. This is why Phoebe can be considered a conflicted character, because though despising Ursula, she embodies many of her qualities and actually when Ursula is not present, it is very difficult to draw a clear divide between herself and Ursula. For example, when Phoebe interacts with the other ‘Friends’ she often displays a surly arrogance, as if to suggest that her stories or her experiences trump those of the others. For example, when Rachel and Ross are trying to decide who should go to dinner with Phoebe whilst the other watches after their baby, Phoebe undiplomatically and immediately votes for Rachel. When it is made clear that both can attend dinner, Phoebe responds sarcastically and even begrudgingly. Phoebe is often mean towards Ross, but her negative attitude is evident towards the other friends also. This is a very ‘Ursula’ way to act and in this sense, the filming technique mentioned above whereby Ursula and Phoebe are often depicted opposite each other not only shows their contrast, but mirrors them also. What is perhaps more troubling is that Ursula was in fact the ‘first’ or original twin. This has nothing to do with their age or who was born first (although Ursula too, was a minute earlier), but simply that the character of Ursula Buffay appears in the sitcom ‘Mad About You’ two years before Friends even aired! In this, Ursula is also played by Lisa Kudrow and is a forgetful and rude waitress – however, NBC only decided that this initially separate ‘Ursula’ character in ‘Mad About You’ was going to be ‘Ursula Buffay’ and thus Phoebe’s twin sister much later. Nonetheless, this suggests that a screenwriter or casting agent at NBC enjoyed Kudrow’s earlier portrayal of Ursula so much that they wanted her to embody some of that nastiness when playing as ‘Phoebe’ in ‘Friends’. In some ways this helps to explain the odd duality in Phoebe’s personality because Kudrow was always trying to be her separate character of Phoebe whilst also embodying parts of Ursula that audiences, and writers, found amusing. She was always therefore somewhere between the two sisters herself! But this practical theory doesn’t fully explain Phoebe’s schismed character. After all, as noted above, upon realising that Kudrow was performing two compatible roles within the same studio network, NBC decided to create a cross-over between ‘Mad About You’ and ‘Friends’ and made Ursula and Phoebe twin sisters. The network were essentially safe at this point to abandon Phoebe’s dysfunctional personality traits. After all, Ursula was a recurring character who appeared in 9 episodes (average of 1 per series), so if the show required a callous or rude character they could call upon Ursula if necessary, rather than demanding that Phoebe perform this dual-role. To use the example of Janice, who appears in 19 episodes overall, the show brought her back when they required a shrill New-Jersey catchphrase or to make Chandler dilapidate. The show did not incorporate these aspects into Ross’ character or Rachel’s character. This would be considered inconsistent with their characters, and yet we are much more comfortable with radical changes in Phoebe’s personality. The duality in Phoebe’s personality between her noble and sensitive self-image and her actual spiteful representation is explained better by analysing her background and her childhood. In many ways, we see that Phoebe is not only angry and disdainful towards Ursula, but moreover she seems to be in competition with her. In most ways that the characters skirmish, Ursula is the victor. For example, she wins Joey in one of the most negated emotional scenes in the series, she is sexually superior as she embodies Buffay the Vampire Layer and she is successful in finding men (that Phoebe desires) by pursuing immoral means. Truly the only clear victory that Phoebe could claim over her sibling is her morality. However, it is in this domain that Phoebe never feels comfortable when she is away from her sibling. As mentioned above, she often shows glimpses of her twin’s spite and amorality when she is with the others. The true reason for this lies in Phoebe’s childhood. After all the sitcom often veneers over the fact that Phoebe endured a terribly hard childhood in which she was abandoned and homeless after witnessing the suicide of her mother. On one hand, it could be that her personality formation is a result of the projection of her childhood experiences. Her traditional senses of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and ‘polite’ and ‘impolite’ are not only skewered by her upbringing and her unconventional social experiences, but in many ways she strives for the isolation that she became so used to throughout her early years. By defining herself in opposition to those around her, she ensures that she is always alone. In this sense, she not only forms a contrast to her twin sister, the closest biological link she retains on the planet, by acting morally and sensitively, but she forms a separate and paradoxical contrast with her friends and loved ones by acting rudely and spitefully around them. This schism in her personality is an illustration of the dissonance between her inability to accept what happened to her and her inability to move on and allow herself to be happy. On the other hand, it could be something close to the opposite. Having experienced such tragedy alongside her twin sister, it would most likely be very painful to have to let her sister go. Living in the same city as your sister, but being so emotionally distant when you have grown through such hardship together must be very difficult. By acting callously with her friends, Phoebe manages to overcome her abandonment issues and allows herself to keep Ursula with her at all times, by incorporating her within her own personality, however inconsistent it can be.

[conversationswithmyrabbit]

Buffy the ‘Camp’ire Slayer

Perhaps the best barometer of the show’s treatment of gays is to study the character of Willow, who comes out in Season Four. On the surface, she is the show’s kindest and arguably most powerful character, not to mention the most intelligent and tech-savvy. She basically has it all from the perspective of a Top Trumps card, and I would know because I have played with Biscuit many times and the key is to avoid getting the Anya card. But we have to look deeper than this at how the show actually portrays her character. It could be argued that her ‘gayness’ inhibits her as a character. As she becomes gay, she develops flaws – she develops an addiction to magic, that eventually leads her to murder and attempt to destroy the entire world. Arguably, early-season straight Willow wouldn’t have dreamt of doing such a thing, perhaps because she was too subordinate to patriarchal rejection to even ask out Xander. But perhaps more worrying is other commentator’s suggestions that she is only stopped from destroying the world in her Lesbionic rage by Xander who tells her that he loves her. Ergo, it is only the love of a male figure that can restore equanimity to her big murderous gay psyche. Furthermore, it has been argued that Willow’s admission of being ‘gay’ at all is an indicator of the show’s backward attitude. Many have argued that she is actually clearly bisexual, but that the writer’s felt they had to force the issue of gay to prove they weren’t homophobic. I guess, sort of similar to how you follow a racist statement with letting everyone know you have a friend called ‘Daekwon’. However, this discussion of Willow is meagre evidence to suggest that the show is in any way homophobic. Firstly, whilst Biscuit loves nothing more than to totally over-analyze pop-culture and whilst it is perhaps our shared dream to write a new fan theory that one day goes viral via Tumblr, this interpretation of Willow oversteps the marks of believability. To suggest that it is her homosexuality that demonizes her isn’t factual; on the contrary, Willow had showed signs of aggression in early seasons too (I Robot, You Jane) and had also exhibited signs that magic would become a developing problem for her. But moreover, Xander’s speech in the finale of season six is a sentimental act of humble compassion rather than a display of patriarchy, and it is the bonds of friendship and forgiveness that mollify her vengeance into grief. Finally, whilst it may have been confusing for some viewers to see Willow go from loving male-character Oz deeply to loving female Tara just a handful of episodes later and declaring herself as ’gay’ (rather than ‘bi’), it is neither an irregularity nor a sign of homophobia within the show. On one hand, Oz was always quite feminine. For example, he had black fingernails, which is fine because Biscuit has a manicure at the vetinary centre every 6-8 weeks. But moreover, who are we to tell anybody, especially a fictional character, if they are gay or straight or bi? Surely that decision is up to them, or moreover the decision itself, although belonging to the individual, is arbitrary. The importance is not who they want to be with as much as how they identify and which words they choose to describe themselves. If anything, all Willow’s sudden transformation demonstrates is that TV in the 90’s wasn’t ready or educated for such an ambiguous statement as having a bisexual character. Arguably, even Anne Tagaro’s introduction in season two of One Tree Hill a decade later threw people and there are still misconceptions today about what bisexual actually is. Whilst it would have been astonishing for Buffy to have approached this issue too, the fact that they shirked it is not a demonstration of the antithesis. Navigating the evidence chronologically, we can also look a Tara, who basically brings nothing to the show at all. But even she is welcomed into the gang officially in ‘Family’ as a demonstration perhaps of their unhomphobic attitude to even the most boring gay person on the planet. But ultimately perhaps her lack of personality is where the show’s latent homophobia exists, as she is nothing more than a device throughout her two season time on the show. Essentially she has been described as ‘peripheral’ and acts not as a character, but as Willow’s ‘ear’ to non-Scooby problems, or as Willow’s girlfriend, and finally she is Willow’s necessity for revenge. Upon her death we see the most arguable misuse of her character, as she is not given a funeral and the audience are not given the time to appropriately grieve for her. Rather, she is just gone and arguably this disposability is because she is a gay character. However, this may firstly indicate Biscuit’s own bias for the character and although Tara is maybe considered meek and peripheral in many conversations, she is still always relevant and has as much screen-time as Dawn or Anya. Moreover, she even warrants ‘her own’ episode in season five. This addition of a domineering family and importantly of a backstory make her a much more rounded character than simply being ‘Willow’s girlfriend’. Also, although her death was indeed quick, it was not a display of how disposable she was as a character (or some sort of ‘argument’ between her and the script editor) but rather Whedon’s indictment of gun crime. In fact, there are plenty of other allusions to this throughout the entire series but Tara’s death probably illustrates it best, and though shocking and potentially frustrating to fans of Tara (if there were any), it was also an accurate depiction of gun violence in America.

Finally we have Kennedy who is Tara's replacement. She portrays some of the more traditionally criticised lesbian traits. She is pugnacious, domineering and overly sexual. She is perhaps a stain on the so-far clean record of treatment of homosexuals in Buffy as she demonstrates perhaps the ugly and stereotyped traits of a lesbian. However it isn't clear that she is indicted for her homosexuality. On one hand, despite these traits Kennedy is quite a likeable and caring character. Moreover we only later find out about her sexuality and the depiction of her in this manner of thus not a commentary on homosexuality but an indictment on women who flaunt and appropriate masculine traits in order to progress. This is something that Buffy as a show and Buffy as a character do not need to do and arguably the running theme of the show is that women are powerful and strong by being nothing more than women. This was something that ran in contrast to female super heroes of the past. Buddy's subordination of Kennedy is a reminder of this theme. However, the most damning evidence comes from an unlikely source: Xander Harris. There is only one particular scene in which this happens, and it is a remarkable and hilarious one. Essentially it is actually though viewing how the characters interact with gay characters, rather that studying the gay characters themselves, that we see the true attitudes of the show towards homosexuals. Arguably, though parenthetically, Buffy doesn't have the best record here herself as she shrinks from willow upon finding out about her sexual orientation. Though admittedly this is more with shock than genuine disgust. But Xander's mistreatment of Larry in 'Phases' undoubtedly represents a homophobic attitude. He shivers as Larry puts his arm around him and he avoids even being socially associated with him. Whilst this is fairly humorous in the show, especially since before the confession, Larry is an aggressive misogynist, it does certainly present a darker homophobic attitude that exists in the American audience that the Buffy writers are pandering to. The scene is comical because Larry is gay. Xander is distant and cringey because Larry is gay. And Larry's sexuality becomes an ongoing joke that permeates the following seasons and even the spin-off Angel. Whilst when watching this episode back it was a little unnerving and certainly disappointing from this new perspective, Buffy is fundamentally redeemed in one aspect. And that is in an unforeseeable writing error in this case. What is perhaps less well known about the show is that Whedon always wanted a character to come out as gay since the beginning, but he wasn’t always sure who, and in fact has retrospectively suggested that it was always meant to be Xander. Therefore, his homophobic attitude in ‘Phases’ is actually just inappropriate foreshadowing by the writers who wanted to portray him as uneasy with his sexuality. In essence, his behaviour is a projection of his own fears through Larry. But of course, all this is lost on the audience because Xander never comes out as gay as he was supposed to at that point in the TV series. On the contrary, Whedon switches his focus to Willow instead. However, Xander can’t be homophobic in ‘Phases’, because technically he is supposed to be gay himself (perhaps subconsciously) at that point! Furthermore, this attitude of his is anomalous and beyond this episode, he has no homophobic encounters. In fact, he doesn’t even blink when Willow comes out to him and is strangely comfortable with Andrew in season seven. In conclusion, Buffy is life. The only perhaps disappointing feature of ‘Phases’ that should be tackled is why the writers felt the need to redeem Larry in the first place, beyond the obvious purpose of humour. It was such a 90s trope for every aggressively heterosexual Jock to actually be gay. It’s unrealistic really; in reality, there are just dicks in the world. And wouldn’t it have been better and more fitting if Buffy had physically subordinated the guy who was sexually harassing female students?

[conversationswithmyrabbit]

A Prisoner’s Dilemma

Scoffield begins with Kantian, universalist principles and has a strong, arguably 'traditional' moral compass. There are acts that Scoffield consdiers 'right' and those that he considers 'wrong'. As the series develops, we see all 'likeable' characters are moulded to suit this theory too. For example, we find out that loveable latino 'Sucre' is imprisoned for holding up a liquor store, but only so that he could steal enough money to take the love of his life on a date. We also learn that Franklin is imprisoned after he reports unethical treatment of soldiers out on military duty. Arguably, the retrospective redemptions of these characters demeans the moral subjectivity of the show and were clearly afterthoughts by the writers to make these likeable characters more compatible for American audiences. Regardless, Scoffield begins as a man who holds fundamental maxims about morality. For example, even when he realises he must commit a violent act to get purposely incarcerated into the same prison as his brother, he can only muster a soft and unconvincing armed robbery on a public bank - AKA the crime that John Dillinger, or at least the Dillinger that exists in the American popular memory in the form of Johnny Depp, made not only very cool, but also kind of 'moral' and anti-establishment in its own way. Even inside the ruthless topography of Fox River penitentiary, he continues to stand up for prison guards and break up fights. However, he quickly sacrifices this traditional morality in favour of a less rigid model and becomes a utilitarianist. This is a popular moral theory whereby decisions are made on a cost-benefit analysis. Therefore the 'right' decision is the one that benefits the most people and hurts the fewest. For example, one can perform a seemingly 'immoral' act, such as murder, if it were to protect the lives of others. Inside the unstable political environment of the prison, Scoffield abandons his traditional morality for this model. For example, he is forced to placate T-Bag; the prison's serial killer and aggressive homsexual (at least in prison). In doing so, he is unable to stand to stand up for T-Bag's victims; one of which is a vulnerable fledgling convict who hangs himself after Scoffield refuses to help him. Scoffield also organises the arson of the prison guard building and there are various examples of him stealing or organising fights and riots to help him with his escape. During these riots, many innocent characters are killed; not to mention, Scoffield's love interest is almost gang-raped. In this sense, he is not personally commiting the immoral acts, but he is complicit to them, or he is passive in the action of suffering and allows it to happen. It is perhaps ironic then that he uses origami cranes - which symbolise peace in oriental China - to communicate secret messages to those on the outside. This is an expression of his guilt and his desynchronisation from his moral norms. Scoffiel gradually and reluctantly is forced to shed his utilitrianism as he is cornered into making more corrupt decisions. Perhaps the most obvious tipping-point is him helping to break T-Bag from prison, who goes on to murder several innocent people. He does this as a result of Scoffield releasing him, so we can partially, albiet indirectly, blame him for these deaths. If we weight these deaths against the 'pleasure' of having his innocent brother spared from the death penalty, it doesn't balance. But moreover, perhaps a more interesting example is mob-afiliated Abruzzi. He offers Scoffield an escape plane in exchange for the known whereabouts of a righteous man who seeks to provide damning evidence against him. Michael is thus faced with the age-old philosophical question of whether you would kill, or in this case at least authorise the killing of, another man in order to save the life of somebody you loved. Michael struggles with this decision and is eventually absolved from it by another Duex Ex Machina from the show's writers who, like all the great moral philosophers, couldn't work out a suitable solution to this moral problem. However, the fact that Scoffield ponders it demonstrates his clear exile from utilitarianism. It could be argued that Michael, like many of the other charactrs, becomes an ethical egoist. This means that he makes decisions based on his own self-interest and any outwardly altruistic acts or acts to help others are really only long-term tools to benefit his own requirements. This is some evidence to support this claim. For example, Michael constantly tricks and schemes against the other characters (excluding his brother and the loveable Sucre). Perhaps the worst victim of this is Haywire who is manipulated several times by Scoffield until he eventually meets his demise. This theory might fit a lot of the characters who act out of their own self-interest, but for Michael and for the audience, it doesn't fit so well. By midway through Season Two (by which Scoffield is out of prison and on the run), Scoffield has comes to terms with his own bad decisions and maybe even scrapped such arbitrary concepts as 'good' and 'bad' altogether. That is not to say he becomes completely amoral, but that something determines his decisions and it isn't morality and nor is it egoism. Rather, it is truth, and the pursuit and publicization of it. He and Lincoln retain their vague and misty 'dream' of living in Panama and sometimes discuss it in the same weary ambiguity, but they and the audience never feel it is truly attainable. Rather, Scoffield disregards his own dream and would rather dismantle the despotic government powered by the mysterious 'Company' who initially imprisoned his brother in the first place. His pursuit of The Company and of the immoral President and of Steadman have little to do with the freedom of his family or personal vengeance, but truth and more importantly the sheer power that he hopes truth will have in toppling the oppressive government. It is this pseudo-Marxist theme, however subtle, that made Prison Break so popular for the post-9/11 audiences. In this sense, Michael does not succumb to ethical egoism or amorality like the others, but rather becomes a moral subjectivist. This means that every bad decision he makes is legitimised by his belief that it is ultimately 'right'. And what is more 'right' for Americans than goddamn truth and liberty? It is only by exposing the corruption of his government that Scoffield can absolve himself from a string of murders and lies and thereby become a moral man once more. > P.s. I spelled 'Scofield' wrong this entire blog but can't be bothered to change it. Deal with it. P.p.s Biscuit wanted to add that Scofield should have just buried under the dirt and out of the jail that way. Rabbit style...

[conversationswithmyrabbit]

Depressivision

Pixar have never shirked from approaching complex issues and 'Inside Out' is no exception as it tackles perhaps the most enigmatic object in existence; the mind of a pre-pubescent girl. The film follows Riley's main emotions; Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust, as they manage her difficult move from Minnessotta to San Francisco. Joy initially dominates the mind making Riley a happy girl, but Sadness begins to accidentally 'taint' Riley's memories. It is only when Joy and Sadness are removed from the mind that they have to collaborate. 'Inside Out' has been praised from a Freudian perspective for its accurate depictions of internal memory functions and the formation of personality. Furthermore, it is intwined with existential musings and probably allowed young children to philosophically exonerate their bad behaviour by blaming their latent determinism ("It's not my fault I got into a fight at school, Anger made me do it!"). But above all, it presents a healthy view of depression. For example, the way in which Sadness 'taints' Riley's happy memories, forcing her to look back on them with grief mimicks the way that depressed people often lament times lost instead of celebrating nostalgia. Furthermore, the core mantra of the film should be praised as it states the importance of all emotions in a healthy, functioning person. Joy and Sadness, two juxtaposing elements, reconcile their differences and recognise that each other have a place. Happiness might be something we aim for, but sadness has its place too. As the film redeems sadness, we should also allow ourselves to feel down sometimes and feel confident enough to communicate with those around us exactly how we feel.

Kaufman has often been applauded for his ability to capture the raw human spirit, and despite the bizzare appearence of 'Anomalisa', it is a remarkable effort to depict a depressed man's incremental breakdown. It follows Custoer-Service Guru Michael Stone as he stops overnight in a hotel room for work. Everybody that Michael meets has the exact same saturated voice and expression and seems to wear the guise of a general customer-service represetative. Being the only person in the world is shudderingly lonely to watch and even the people he makes close and unique connections with gradually expire and revert to looking like everyone else. What is incredible is Kaufman's mastery of time. He uses real-time to demonstrate how banal and enduring everyday experiences can be for depressed people. He films the walk through the hotel and in the elevator ride and up to his room in real-time to frustrate the viewer and present how inevitably banal these experiences are. Scrubs was remarkable in its ability to straddle fear, comedy and drama and many other critics have previously theorized about protagonist JD's psychosis, schizophrenia and even his latent homosexuality. The classic evidence for this is his constant introspective daydreaming which causes his frequent and involuntary outbursts ('We're gonna need a lot of gnomes...'" and even the fact that the Janitor was only originally scripted as a figment of his imagination before his role was extended due to popularity. But it can also be argued that JD suffers from bi-polar depression. This is because, beyond the comical facade, JD is an incredibly lonely character. The writer demonstrates this by cordoning the viewer inside JD's mind where he observes everyone else and communicates; but does little more. He watches his friends fall in love and marry. He constantly mentions the stress of medicine and of growing up and his fear of loneliness and even self-diagnoses at the show's most poignant times ('Honestly, the only thing that gives me comfort, you guys, is while I'm sitting at home, staring at the ceiling, just wishing that I had someone to talk to, is knowing that none of you idiots realize how lucky you are!'). The setting of the show, 'the hospital', which is such an imperious feature that it is often personified as such, provides a constant reminder of JD's misery. He is constantly confronted with death and sadness that his only choice is to tactically regress into the sophmoric comforts of his own mind where the characters are playful, quirky and even camp. He does this continuously and even more frequently throughout the series (at one point, spending an entire day pretending the hospital was more like a sitcom with a laugh track), but he always ends up in the harsh world of the hospital, unable to change the tragic world before him. In many ways, JD's struggle mirrors bipolar depression and how sufferers are pulled from their long periods of depression into heightened states of 'mania' in which they believe anything is possible and often attempt things that are improbable. Usually when sufferers fail in their mania, their depression is intensified. In the same way, JD constantly fails to change the world around him and despite his efforts, he remains lonely.