puredrivensnow-blog

[puredrivensnow-blog]

Binged watched all eps of English Teacher and it’s so much better than I expected. Funny and heartwarming and so gay. And the music (soundtrack?) slaps.

[puredrivensnow-blog]

BRIDGERTON (2020-)

PEN AND COLIN

3.01

[puredrivensnow-blog]

I love the McCords.

I love "arm-candy-ness". I love having integrity together. I love "call the kids". I love "here's to government work". I love men fixing stuff and "I can be a few minutes late to work".

I love things they can't talk about and eventually can. I love them supporting each other and trusting each other. I love them still being in love, being attracted to each other. Not because it's new and shiny or unknown - but because it's familiar, sameness and home.

They are exactly what I need on my tv.

[puredrivensnow-blog]

Bridgerton opinion that will get me cancelled

As a Black woman who looks more like Marina than I EVER will look like Penelope, seeing people use Penelope being white and Marina being Black/mixed as an argument to side with Marina and act like she was the victim of Penelope’s racism always makes me itch. Y’all act like stopping her from baby trapping a man is a hate crime and it’s not.

There are issues with how Bridgerton has incorporated racially diverse casting and forgotten the real world implications of the decisions they’ve made, but none of that is an excuse for Marina’s behavior, and I’m not siding with her just because the person who called her out as white, and it’s not “racist” for Polin to be my favorite couple. I can see why making Marina a single unmarried pregnant teen as a Black woman makes people inclined to side with her, but in-universe none of that holds weight, especially when Marina’s nasty behavior has equally been directed at another Black woman (madame delacroix). If your argument boils down to “you just don’t like Marina because she’s Black” miss me with that. It’s weak and it’s a lie. I dislike her because she was wrong to do what she did to Colin (who would not have been fine and I’m also tired of him being collateral damage in this dumb Penelope vs Marina argument), and showed NO remorse about the damage she did to him, even when she had a year to reflect. I don’t feel bad she got called out for it. She might be the victim of society, she might even be the victim of George Crane, but she is in no way the victim of Penelope, who saw the harm she was doing and put a stop to it.

And while I’m on it- let’s talk about how this inevitably gets pulled into calling Penelope fans “self-inserts” for a White character. People- unless you are the author who is writing the character, a character cannot be your self insert. The only thing they can be is relatable to you. And any character can be relatable for any reason. Example- Julia Quinn, a white woman, wrote every character in Bridgerton. Shonda Rhimes, a Black woman, read Penelope’s story and found her relatable. In producing the show, Penelope is Shonda’s self-insert, but the audience can only find her relatable. Characters are SUPPOSED to be relatable. That’s not a flaw. You relate to Marina which is why y’all hate Penelope so bad, and I gotta PRAY it’s just because of race, because if it’s the baby trapping y’all relate to somebody needs to get Maury Povich out of retirement because there are a lot of men out there who are NOT the father.

Me whenever the Marina vs Penelope conversation is reduced to Black vs white.

[puredrivensnow-blog]

Bridgerton S3 is so interesting and engaging. No wonder everyone is talking about and it's such a success. In this presumably formulaic fantasy romance they went there and made the female protagonist the messy one with secrets, and the male protagonist a soft boy with a need to please and protect. The way some of you don't know how to handle that is wonderfully telling. It's fascinating.

[puredrivensnow-blog]

wanting to talk to people is so fucking embarrassing. literally hi it's me again I wanted to have a conversation with you because I think you're fun to talk to. oh god you can just fucking kill me if you want sorry

[puredrivensnow-blog]

Pop culture reduces It's a Wonderful Life to that last half hour, and thinks the whole thing is about this guy traveling to an alternate universe where he doesn't exist and a little girl saying, "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings." A hokey, sugary fantasy. A light and fluffy story fit for Hallmark movies.

But this reading completely glosses over the fact that George Bailey is actively suicidal. He's not just standing there moping about, "My friends don't like me," like some characters do in shows that try to adapt this conceit to other settings. George's life has been destroyed. He's bankrupt and facing prison. The lifetime of struggle we've been watching for the last two hours has accomplished nothing but this crushing defeat, and he honestly believes that the best thing he can do is kill himself because he's worth more dead than alive. He would have thrown himself from a bridge had an actual angel from heaven not intervened at the last possible moment.

That's dark. The banker villain that pop culture reduces to a cartoon purposely drove a man to the brink of suicide, which only a miracle pulled him back from. And then George Bailey goes even deeper into despair. He not only believes that his future's not worth living, but that his past wasn't worth living. He thinks that every suffering he endured, every piece of good that he tried to do was not only pointless, but actively harmful, and he and the world would be better off if he had never existed at all.

This is the context that leads to the famed alternate universe of a million pastiches, and it's absolutely vital to understanding the world that George finds. It's there to specifically show him that his despondent views about his effect on the universe are wrong. His bum ear kept him from serving his country in the war--but the act that gave him that injury was what allowed his brother to grow up to become a war hero. His fight against Potter's domination of the town felt like useless tiny battles in a war that could never be won--but it turns out that even the act of fighting was enough to save the town from falling into hopeless slavery. He thought that if it weren't for him, his wife would have married Sam Wainwright and had a life of ease and luxury as a millionaire's wife, instead of suffering a painful life of penny-pinching with him. Finding out that she'd have been a spinster isn't, "Ha ha, she'd have been pathetic without you." It's showing him that she never loved Wainwright enough to marry him, and that George's existence didn't stop her from having a happier life, but saved her from having a sadder one. Everywhere he turns, he finds out that his existence wasn't a mistake, that his struggles and sufferings did accomplish something, that his painful existence wasn't a tragedy but a gift to the people around him.

Only when he realizes this does he get to come back home in wild joy over the gift of his existence. The scenes of hope and joy and love only exist because of the two hours of struggle and despair that came before. Even Zuzu's saccharine line about bells and angel wings exists, not as a sugary proverb, but as a climax to Clarence's story--showing that even George's despair had good effect, and that his newfound thankfulness for life causes not only earthly, but heavenly joy.

If this movie has light and hope, it's not because it exists in some fantasy world where everything is sunshine and rainbows, but because it fights tooth and nail to scrape every bit of hope it can from our all too dark and painful world. The light here exists, not because it ignores the dark, but because the dark makes light more precious and meaningful. The light exists in defiance of the dark, the hope in defiance of despair, and there is nothing saccharine about that. It's just about as realistic as it gets.

[puredrivensnow-blog]

i am not made for letterboxd. i don't know how to have an opinion on a film. it was a film and i saw it. will report in 3 days to 5 months if it left an impression. i will change my mind in every subsequent viewing and chances i ever see this film again are slim to none. i have already forgotten everything about it.

[puredrivensnow-blog]

THE BEAR, 02.06 + Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson

(carmy version)

[puredrivensnow-blog]

skam is so good at showing instead of telling. this moment was brief, but so revealing of the other girls’ shift in feelings about sana. and their feelings reflect the audience’s feelings as well. we (the audience and the other girls) initially got to know sana as someone very blunt, harsh, and unwilling to take any bullshit whatsoever. but the thing is, sana is very soft - she’s just had to build big, powerful walls around herself, to protect her from the way people treat her based on appearances and prejudices alone. here, after getting little peeks into her thought process (”I poured water on them because they called you a slut”), seeing instance after instance of her loyalty (vilde literally just puked on her and she just rolled her eyes… an icon), we finally get to see her looking like her walls are down, she’s feeling safe with these people. the change from black clothes to white clothes is visually stunning and metaphorically not lost on me lol. the implication is, okay audience, you are now encouraged to see her as a being of light who hides behind a smirk and an eyebrow raise. the soft lighting and fresh-showered glow, too? it’s like a rebirth. the girls - and us, the audience - are seeing her for the first time. i loved this moment. so much

[puredrivensnow-blog]

You hate hanging out with us, don’t you?

[puredrivensnow-blog]

✿ SANA BAKKOUSH + DIMPLES (◠‿◠) ✿

[puredrivensnow-blog]

[puredrivensnow-blog]

So…Agent afloat?

[puredrivensnow-blog]

[puredrivensnow-blog]

The way she tears that heavy duty tape with her teeth