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When Max Goodwin begins his first year at Los Caracoles University. He only has two goals in mind: party with his best friends Bobby and PJ, and win the annual Caracol X Games. He never could have anticipated Bradley Chichester the dreamy president of the Gamma Gamma Nus. Bradley is arrogant, stubborn and everything Max hates in a person. So why is he so drawn to him? And why is Bradley so persistent on making him a Gamma? In order to win the games Max will need to keep a cool head and an even cooler heart. Maybe even pick up a few tricks along the way.

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"She Looks Just Like a Piece of Cake": A Sugar Coated Reflection on Marie Antionette (2006)

Lushly rich and complicated, like bite into a dark chocolate covered, maraschino cherry. Visually that is the experience of taking a bite into Sophia Coppola's Marie Antionette (2006). From the endless montages of champaign overflowing from little glasses, to flower gilded porcelain filled with every powered sugary treat you can image; every second in this sumptuous piece oozes excess. It relishes in it it, celebrates it even. Kristen Dunst stars as a seventeen- then middle aged Marie Antionette as she is thrust from her life as a duchess of Austria into the silently crumbling world of the France bureaucracy. Her manner is sweet, coquettish and dare I say even a little ditzy, as she brazenly defies tradition by gambling, riding, dallying and hosting loud boisterous parties late into the night. My favorite scene especially has to be when a seemingly oblivious Marie encourages everyone at the opera to clap, boldly ignoring the conduct of polite society.

I have always had a complex relationship with Marie Antionette and her subsequent glamorization as both a person of history and popular culture. On the one hand I can acknowledge her as an unfortunate victim of violent misogyny. Her legacy has been poised as the catty, selfish, and idiotic queen who when asked to spare compassion for her people, mocked them with the all too famous "Let them eat Cake!". A quote which is still highly associated with her today, despite her never actually having said that. Furthermore it is known that historically speaking, women (even those in her position) would simply not have have the power to enact the large economic repair that France was desperately seeking. She, much like many of those executed in the French Revolution, was a convenient scapegoat. A constant, unpleasant reminder gnawing in the empty stomach's of the many without.

Yet even still knowing all that I know, I don't like the more modern day interpretation of her having been an absolute blameless victim. A poor child bride; uneducated, illiterate and too sheltered to understand the implications of any her actions. In many of the online discourse I see about it, is often on the emphasis on how young she was when she married (an entirely separate tragedy) and died. So much emphasis is put on her youth that you would think she had been a teenage girl when she was killed, rather than being well into her thirties. It is true Marie Antionette did not break the economy of France, nor did she mock the poor; however she did actively benefit and joyfully participate in an imperialistic system that fed off the bones of the peasantry. Before her execution she was spending extravagantly and excessively even as the divide between classes grew wider. As did King Louis IV, as did the entire royal court.

So even though they were not the sole cause, they were complicit and far from being blameless. Which is as point that I see so often left out, especially in the framing of this film. So much of the filthy, rotten, bleeding underbelly of 17th century France is swept away in a sea of swirling pastel ribbon and gold embroidered bed sheets. Marie Antoinette and her lords and ladies at court gorge themselves endlessly and drink without inhibition, a placid smile woven on their face in nearly every scene. How could anything go hungry, here in this fertile Eden?

When confronted with the slanderous papers, charging her with the condemning quote, her response is outrage at her slander rather than her people's pain and suffering. She sighs, "don't they ever grow tire it?". That sentiment to me is even more egregious than the cake.

To me the endless forgiveness constantly bestowed on Marie Antionette is a prime example of white feminism and victimhood. To quote JM's article for Medium The Glorification of Imperialism in Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006), "On the surface, this seems to be a quintessential feminist exploration of a misunderstood historical figure, but once we begin to discover the lack of diverse perspectives in this deeply influential re-telling of Antoinette’s legacy, we see a deeply problematic issue at the very core of the film, ie, the glorification of the imperial culture and an attempt to garner sympathy for the exploitative state that led to the decay of the French masses. The film focuses on Antionette’s personal journey as a woman but fails to take into account one simple fact, at the end of the day, Marie Antoinette was an instrument of the state, she was the face of the crown, the name which was used to pass undemocratic and unjust laws, the reason behind the bankruptcy of the entire nation." To reduce Marie Antionette to this vapid, infantilized little girl, is to reduce her very real complexity as a whole. And make no mistake her complexity does include the tangible harm she willingly caused. She was not a doe eyed cottage-core waif, dancing in a field of strawberries. She was not a virginal child bride nor was she a feminist patron of female power and sexuality.

So please, can we stop sugar coating who she really was? Because there's really nothing sweet about it.

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Suddenly I’m into high end perfume 😍

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Lest we forget

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Men are crying and seething at the barbie movie meanwhile my bf was almost more excited to see it then I was 😭

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I saw the Barbie movie yesterday and I take back most of the mean things I said about Ryan Gosling

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