#Scott is plant blind and its funny until its not

[whatgaviiformes]

Fic: All Hands Code Verde

Summary: “The hell did you do to that cactus?!”

Characters: Tracy Family, with a focus on Scott, Virgil, and Gordon.

Genre: General - Maybe threads of humor? It sounds funny, but I am not really a funny person soooo. Twinges of h/c and angst.

Words: 4.6K

Completed, One-shot

A/N: I am not the first person to write about plants for Thunderbirds, and I am certain I won’t be the last, but I got obsessive one day over the number of plants on Tracy Island in TAG - and then one of them looked cactus-like to me. So then this became the result. And I was dared to write it. So here we are.

Edit: I forgot to do thank yous! @the-original-sineater for the cactus help and for the glochids in the skin idea and @gumnut-logic for the nudge.

Read in Full over @ Ao3 | FF

~*~

Mission reports were always the worst when there was a casualty list. The events at the Global Seed Vault in the North Pole had been quick and sudden – one second Kayo had a lead on the Chaos Crew based on GDF intel, and the next John had also taken it upon himself to put himself in danger, and then both of them were fleeing toxic gas by the end.

It didn’t escape Scott that the casualty list could have been much longer with his siblings’ names on it, but there was still a list.

Gladys Tedford, Geranium

Age unknown

Cause of death – poisonous gas

Next of kin – Ned Tedford

“John! Really?” Scott asked, tabbing through the mission report on his data pad. “Ned’s flower was just a plant. Hardly warrants listing as a casualty.”

He heard a loud crunch from behind him as Gordon flung himself on the couch next to Scott, chewing messily on a celery crunch bar.  “Excuse me!” he argued, followed by a few chaotic, unintelligible syllables mumbled through his chewing.

“Ugh, you’re spewing celery crunch. Try that one more time when you’ve swallowed your food.” Scott flicked a crumb off his shirt. He hoped it was from the packaging and not from Gordon’s mouth.

“I said Gladys was not ‘just a plant’,” he answered after a moment. “She was a survivor. And this latest adventure was her last. She was Ned’s friend.”

“It was a tragic loss, Scott,” John agreed. Scott glared at the hologram of his brother above the lounge table. He expected the sass from Gordon, but John was a different story. And his space-bound brother thought he had no sense of humor.

Yet, there were no traces of that awkward John half-smile.

“I even wrote a lament,” Gordon mourned, before jumping right into his  dramatic recitation, using his half eaten crunch bar as his microphone:

There once was a plant named Gladys

who had in her not one lick of malice

She escaped the deep sea

and the dangers of space

But she couldn’t outrun poison’s embrace.

“That’s – not a lament,” John frowned. “It’s just about how she died.”

“It’s barely a limerick, Gords.”

“It’s not actually that either, you know.”

Gordon scowled. “Both of you shut it. Ned liked it and that’s what matters. It’s for Gladys. Not for you.”

Scott rolled his eyes and went back to reading the report on his tablet. “Still don’t you think this was still a relatively successful mission, John? Why mar it with a casualty list?”

“Because it’s the truth,” John advised, his lips tight. It was typical of Scott to review the minutes after debriefing, but he’d never so severely questioned John’s statements before. “It’s my report and I’m standing by it.”

“It was a plant!”

“She was a geranium,” Gordon snapped as he jumped up from his seat to face Scott, his hands on his hips and with an angry fire in his eyes.

“Seriously! What gives? Why does this matter so much to you two? We save people.” John was hardheaded when he felt he was right, but John and Gordon together were an utterly immovable duo. Little brothers. 100% infuriating.

“We know that.”  

“Look, Scott, Gordon’s mission to save Ned at the bottom of the ocean – that wasn’t just about Ned and Gladys. If that toxic waste had gotten into the water, it would’ve affected the entire ecosystem. That has downstream effects; it would’ve been a global catastrophe.”

“How is this at all similar?”

“Ugh!” Gordon growled, throwing his hands in the air. “Give it up, John. Trying to convince him is like trying to convince a wall. Dammit, Scott, we only have one Earth,” he shouted, “and you don’t even seem to care.”

“What?! I care.”

“Puh-lease. You are so plant blind you haven’t even noticed you keep elbowing the bromeliads.”

Sure enough he felt the pointed edges of the leaves jabbing into his arm, and he shifted his positioning on the couch to create more space between himself and the plant box that decorated the space in the lounge. “God. There. Better?”

Even though he’d listened, the question was a jab laced with mockery. And Gordon knew it. He stomped off, as Scott again glanced back down at the report with blatant dismissal of the conversation.

“I can’t with you.”

“What do you want me to say? It’s one plant. I still don’t get the big deal.”

“The deal is: what we do matters,” John scolded. “No one is arguing what constitutes life or death, Scott, but we can still be mindful of our impact and recognize when we could’ve done better.”

Through his peripheral vision, he saw John give a shake of his head before he clicked off.

Scott’s vision blurred, his mind wandering back to John’s intense eyes and Gordon’s frustrated retreat, as he tried to finish up the rest of the report.

He left the casualty list as John had written it and wondered if, before he closed comms, his brother had still been talking about plants.

That night, Scott looked up plant blindness.

Read More @ Ao3 | FF

[birdlord]

Everything I Watched in 2020

We’ll start with movies. The number in parentheses is the year of release, asterisks denote a re-watch, and titles in bold are my favourite watches of the year. Here’s 2019’s list. 

01 Little Women (19)

02 The Post (17) 

03 Molly’s Game (17)

04 * Doctor No (62)

05 Groundhog Day (93)

06 *Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home (86)

07 Knives Out (19) My last theatre experience (sob)

08 Professor Marston and his Wonder Women (17)

09 Les Miserables (98)

10 Midsommar (19) I’m not sure how *good* it is, but it does stick in the ol’ brain

11 *Manhattan Murder Mystery (93)

12 Marriage Story (19)

13 Kramer vs Kramer (79)

14 Jojo Rabbit (19)

15 J’ai perdu mon corps (19) a cute animated film about a hand detached from its body!

16 1917 (19)

17 Married to the Mob (88)

18 Klaus (19)

19 Portrait of a Lady on Fire (19) If Little Women made me want to wear a scarf criss-crossed around my torso, this one made me want to wear a cloak

20 The Last Black Man in San Francisco (19)

21 *Lawrence of Arabia (62)

22 Gone With the Wind (39)

23 Kiss Me Deadly (55)

24 Dredd (12)

25 Heartburn (86) heard a bunch about this one in the Blank Check series on Nora Ephron, sadly after I’d watched it

26 The Long Shot (19)

27 Out of Africa (85)

28 King Kong (46)

29 *Johnny Mnemonic (95)

30 Knocked Up (07)

31 Collateral (04)

32 Bird on a Wire (90)

33 The Black Dahlia (05)

34 Long Time Running (17)

35 *Magic Mike (12)

36 Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (07)

37 Cold War (18)

38 *Kramer Vs Kramer (79) yes I watched this a few months before! This was a pandemic friend group co-watch.

39 *Burn After Reading (08)

40 Last Holiday (50)

41 Fly Away Home (96)

42 *Moneyball (11) I’m sure I watch this every two years, at most??

43 Last Holiday (06) the Queen Latifah version of the 1950 movie above, lacking, of course, the brutal “poor people don’t deserve anything good” ending

44 *Safe (95)

45 Gimme Shelter (70)

46 The Daytrippers (96)

47 Experiment in Terror (62)

48 Tucker: The Man and His Dream (88)

49 My Brilliant Career (79) one of the salvations of 2020 was watching movies “with” friends. Our usual method was to video chat before the movie, sync our streaming services, and text-chat while the movie was on. 

50 Divorce Italian Style (61)

51 *Gosford Park (01) another classic comfort watch, fuck I love a G. Park

52 Hopscotch (80)

53 Brief Encounter (45)

54 Hud (63)

55 Ocean’s 8 (18)

56 *Beverly Hills Cop (84)

57 Blow the Man Down (19)

58 Constantine (05)

59 The Report (19) maddening!! How are people so consistently terrible to one another!

60 Everyday People (04)

61 Anatomy of a Murder (58)

62 Spiderman: Homecoming (17)

63 *To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (95) Of the 90s drag road movies, Priscilla is more visually striking, but this has its moments.

64 Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (92)

65 *The Truman Show (98)

66 Mona Lisa (86)

67 The Blob (58)

68 The Guard (11)

69 *Waiting for Guffman (96) RIP Fred Willard

70 Rocketman (19)

71 Outside In (18)

72 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (08) how strange to see a movie that you have known the premise for, but no details of, for over a decade

73 *Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country (91)

74 The Reader (08)

75 Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (19) This was fine until it VERY MUCH WAS NOT FINE

76 The End of the Affair (99) you try to watch a fun little romp about infidelity during the Blitz, and Graham Greene can’t help but shoehorn in a friggin crisis of religious faith

77 Must Love Dogs (05) barely any dog content, where are the dogs at

78 The Rainmaker (97)

79 *Batman & Robin (97)

80 National Lampoon’s Vacation (83) Never seen any of the non-xmas Vacations, didn’t realize the children are totally different, not just actors but ages! Also, this one is blatantly racist!

81 *Mystic Pizza (88)

82 Funny Girl (68)

83 The Sons of Katie Elder (65)

84 *Knives Out (19) another re-watch within the same year!! How does this keep happening??

85 *Scott Pilgrim Vs The World (10) a real I-just-moved-away-from-Toronto nostalgia watch

86 Canadian Bacon (92) vividly recall this VHS at the video store, but I never saw it til 2020

87 *Blood Simple (85)

88 Brittany Runs a Marathon (19)

89 The Accidental Tourist (88)

90 August Osage County (13) MELO-DRAMA!!

91 Appaloosa (08)

92 The Firm (93) Feeling good about how many iconic 80s/90s video store stalwarts I watched in 2020

93 *Almost Famous (00)

94 Whisper of the Heart (95)

95 Da 5 Bloods (20)

96 Rain Man (88)

97 True Stories (86)

98 *Risky Business (83) It’s not about what you think it’s about! It never was!

99 *The Big Chill (83)

100 The Way We Were (73)

101 Safety Last (23) It’s getting so that I might have to add the first two digits to my dates...not that I watch THAT many movies from the 1920s...

102 Phantasm (79)

103 The Burrowers (08)

104 New Jack City (91)

105 The Vanishing (88)

106 Sisters (72)

107 Puberty Blues (81) Little Aussie cinema theme, here

108 Elevator to the Gallows (58)

109 Les Diaboliques (55)

110 House (77) haha WHAT no really W H A T

111 Death Line (72)

112 Cranes are Flying (57)

113 Holes (03)

114 *Lady Vengeance (05)

115 Long Weekend (78)

116 Body Double (84)

117 The Crazies (73) I love that Romero shows the utter confusion that would no doubt reign in the case of any kind of disaster. Things fall apart.

118 Waterlilies (07)

119 *You’re Next (11)

120 Event Horizon (97)

121 Venom (18) I liked it, guys, way more than most superhero fare. Has a real sense of place and the place ISN’T New York!

122 Under the Silver Lake (18) RIP Night Call

123 *Blade Runner (82)

124 *The Birds (62) interesting to see now that I’ve read the story it came from

125 *28 Days Later (02) hits REAL FUCKIN’ DIFFERENT in a pandemic

126 Life is Sweet (90)

127 *So I Married an Axe Murderer (93) find me a more 90s movie, I dare you (it’s not possible)

128 Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (67)

129 The Pelican Brief (93) 90s thrillers continue!

130 Dick Johnston is Dead (20)

131 The Bridges of Madison County (95)

132 Earth Girls are Easy (88) Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum are so hot in this movie, no wonder they got married 

133 Better Watch Out (16)

134 Drowning Mona (00) trying for something like the Coen bros and not getting there

135 Au Revoir Les Enfants (87)

136 *Chasing Amy (97) Affleck is the least alluring movie lead...ever? I also think I gave Joey Lauren Adams’ character short shrift in my memory of the movie. It’s not good, but she’s more complicated than I recalled. 

137 Blackkklansman (18)

138 Being Frank (19)

139 Kiki’s Delivery Service (89)

140 Uncle Frank (20) why so many FRANKS

141 *National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (89) watching with pals (virtually) made it so much more fun than the usual yearly watch!

142 Half Baked (98) another, more secret Toronto nostalgia pic - RC Harris water filtration plant as a prison!

143 We’re the Millers (13)

144 All is Bright (13)

145 Defending Your Life (91)

146 Christmas Chronicles (18) I maintain that most new xmas movies are terrible, particularly now that Netflix churns them out like eggnog every year. 

147 Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse (18)

148 Reindeer Games (00) what did I say about Affleck??!? WHAT DID I SAY

149 Palm Springs (20)

150 Happiest Season (20)

151 *Metropolitan (90) it’s definitely a Christmas movie

152 Black Christmas (74)

THEATRE:HOME - 2:150 (thanks pandemic)

I usually separate out docs and fiction, but I watched almost no documentaries this year (with the exception of Dick Johnston). Reality is real enough. 

TV Series

01 - BoJack Horseman (final season) - Pretty damned poignant finish to the show, replete with actual consequences for our reformed bad boy protagonist (which is more than you can say for most antiheroes of Peak TV).

02 - *Hello Ladies - I enjoy the pure awkwardness of seeing Stephen Merchant try to perform being a Regular Person, but ultimately this show tips him too far towards a nasty, Ricky Gervais-lite sort of persona. Perhaps he was always best as a cameo appearance, or lip synching with wild eyes while Chrissy Teigen giggles?

03 - Olive Kittredge - a rough watch by times. I read the book as well, later in the year. Frances Mcdormand was the best, possibly the only, casting option for the flinty lead. One episode tips into thriller territory, which is a shock. 

04 - *The Wire S3, S4, S5 - lockdown culture! It was interesting to rewatch this, then a few months later go through an enormous, culture-level reappraisal of cop-centred narratives. 

05 - Forever - a Maya Rudolph/Fred Armisen joint that coasts on the charm of its leads. The premise is OK, but I wasn’t left wanting any more at the end. 

06 - *Catastrophe - a rewatch when my partner decided he wanted to see it, too!

07 - Red Oak - resolutely “OK” steaming dramedy, relied heavily on some pretty obvious cues to get across its 1980s setting. 

08 - Little Fires Everywhere - gulped this one down while in 14-day isolation, delicious! Every 90s suburban mom had that SUV, but not all of them had the requisite **secrets**

09 - The Great - fun historical comedy/drama! Costumes: lush. Actors: amusing. Race-blind casting: refreshing!

10 - The Crown S4 - this is the season everyone lost their everloving shit for, since it’s finally recent enough history that a fair chunk of the viewing audience is liable to recall it happening. 

11 - Ted Lasso - we resisted this one for a while (thought I did enjoy the ad campaign for NBC sports (!!) that it was based on). My view is that its best point was the comfort that the men on the show have (or develop, throughout the season) with the acknowledgement and sharing of their own feelings. Masculinity redux. 

12 - Moonbase 8 - Goodnatured in a way that makes you certain they will be crushed. 

13 - The Good Lord Bird - Ethan Hawke is really aging into the character actor we always hoped he would be! 

14 - Hollywood - frothy wish-fulfillment alternate history. I think the show would have been improved immeasurably by skipping the final episode.

[not-the-cleavers]

Target II - Chapter 5

I’m back with another chapter - still on alert for evacuation here but writing takes my mind off all the anxiety around this fire. 

Underneath the chapter I have a little snippet of pure friendship that came up while writing this chapter! 

Tags; @adrenaline-roulette​ and @amy-brooklyn99​ - if you would like to be tagged just let me know

Pairing; Four x Eight (female reader) Fandom; 6 Underground Warnings; Swearing, smoking, drinking, reader kissing a girl (read that how you’d like in terms of sexuality), mentions of sexual acts (including non-consensual but only briefly I promise), mention of arousal and hinting at masturbation.  Word count; 1.6k (total so far 7.9k)

Also I used an answer from this Ben Hardy interview in this chapter!

Summary; The team has moved onto their next target after dealing with Rovach Alimov, a war criminal named John Dough. Eight has just joined the team and is dying to show how much she deserves to be there

Catch up; Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4

“You first, your number is lower than mine” I laughed. Four ran his hands through his hair again as a smile broke out across his face. “Alright I’ll start easy. What’s your favourite movie or movie series?” he asked. “Super easy! I love the Saw franchise” He laughed at my response “Hey I know that it’s not the best horror series but I love them” I said pushing his shoulder a bit. “If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?” “Led Zeppelin ‘Thank You’ because it’s a beautiful love song, and everyone loves a beautiful love song.” “That’s kind of adorable” I sighed, why did he have to be so damn cute? “It’s super adorable I’ll have you know!” he laughed After a few easy questions surrounding hobbies, he blurted out “Tell me about your first kiss” “Not a question, but I’ll roll with it” I said gently mocking him “I was 14 at it was at a school camp a bunch of kids all entered our cabin and we played spin the bottle…” “Oh so a pretty boring story” Four interrupted “Will you let me finish? Mary King spun, and it landed on me, I thought she would just spin again, as were the rules laid out by the boys in the room, but instead she pulled me up and we kissed.” The look on Four’s face said it all. His mouth was slightly open and he looked like he was far off in thought. I waited patiently, sipping at my drink until he snapped out of it, finally he shook his head slightly and downed the last of the beer in his bottle before cracking open another one. “Tell me about your first kiss” I said lighting another cigarette, not giving him time to say anything in regards to my story. “Um, well, I was 15, down at the pub back home with some mates, drinking and smoking, being stupid kids really. In walked Ashley Reid, she was easily the prettiest girl in school and I had the biggest crush on her. We started dancing and having a good time and then all of a sudden she kissed me.” He said with a shrug, seemingly past the whole I kissed a girl thing. “What was your first sexual encounter?” he asked hesitantly, maybe testing the waters to see how I’d respond. But seeing as I’m a woman with zero shame I had no issue answering him. “Do you mean sex or messing around, those are two very different things.” “I guess just messing around” he shrugged. “I was 16 and I was at a high school party, I had been chatting with Scott Davis for quite some time and one thing led to another and I ended up giving him a blow job in the bathroom of this persons’ house.” I said sipping my drink, leaving out the fact I was blind drunk and he had basically taken advantage of me, I was trying to keep things as light as I could. “So…you’re not gay?” he asked, again very hesitantly “No” I laughed, ‘you have a shot with me’ I thought to myself. “Same question right back at you” “No, I’m not gay” he replied, laughing when he saw my pissed off expression. “You know what I meant” I half yelled, his laugher only making me angrier “You need to be specific love, and now you’ve lost a question” he patted my leg “Did ‘Jack and Jill’ ruin Adam Sandler’s career?” he asked, trying to calm me down by asking a pointless question. “Did he ever really have a good career?” I replied with a grimace, I couldn’t stand the guy. “Wait that’s not my next question!” I shouted, not about to lose another question to a technicality. “Good point, I guess you’re right there” he laughed. “Now you can ask the question you really wanted me to answer.” “Alright, have you ever done anything sexual in public?” I asked, slightly changing the question to catch him off guard. “Honestly, Ashley Reid when I was 15…” “C’mon don’t fuck with me, you can’t be serious” I slapped his bicep but his face told me he was in fact, being serious. “Yeah, after she kissed me we danced some more. When we got tired we sat down in a booth and she gave me a handy under the table. I had to run to the bathroom shortly afterwards and ditch my boxers. Went the rest of the night commando” he said jerking his head to the side slightly before taking another sip of his beer. Honestly was not expecting that response.

We kept going back and forth asking each other questions, going well and truly over the twenty question limit, but we were having fun. Our questions kept getting sexual and then easing back into being light hearted and funny and then back again, but as we got drunker the sexual questions became more heated. I could see Four was holding back so I piped up “I can see you have a question, I have no shame so go ahead and ask me” “Alright, do you have any kinks?” he asked, his eyes darkening slightly just waiting for my response. “Domination, tie me up and choke me…” I started rattling off a few things bound to get me hot and bothered while looking at my hands. I felt Four shift slightly to reposition himself on the bed next to me as I talked ‘am I turning him on?’ “Oh and I’m into pegging” I joked, which caused him to tense up. “Oh…” did he think that last comment was serious? I wonder how far I could take this, so I kept a straight face and asked him “what about you, what gets you going?” “Uhhh…” he scratched the back of his neck, seemingly considering whether or not to answer “You don’t have to say if you don’t want to” I told him, rubbing his arm. I didn’t want him to feel uncomfortable. “No it’s not that. I just haven’t really developed any kinks. I’m a pretty vanilla guy” he said shyly, his cheeks flushed in embarrassment. “Well there’s still time to work on that” I told him, trying to put his mind at ease. “How? I’m dead remember?” “There’s some people out there into that” I joked, causing us to collapse in a fit of laughter. My side felt like it was on fire but I didn’t care, I felt a complete sense of relaxation with Four that I had never felt with anyone else in my life. I found myself leaning against his chest, my body seemingly melting into his chiselled one. I had never noticed just how muscular he was, he was always wearing his hoodies, hiding his figure.

He eventually stopped laughing, and I felt his hand find its way under my chin, lifting it up so I was looking straight into his jade eyes. My eyes darted towards his lips right before those exact lips gently collided with mine. My hands flew up and my fingers knotted themselves into his blond locks. A slight moan escaped his lips. Without him breaking the kiss, he started to slide his leg underneath me and leant backwards so he ended up on his back. I rolled on top of him so that my chest was flush with his. His hands played at the hem of my hoodie, and I became acutely aware that I still had no shirt on underneath, but even with this sudden realisation, I didn’t stop him from snaking his hands underneath. The rough calloused skin on his hands felt unusually comforting against my hips. He only broke the kiss long enough for us to catch our breath and allowing me to steady myself above him, before crashing his lips back into mine. His urgency grew at the same rate as mine, and then I felt it, right against my thigh through both of our sweatpants, he was hard. His hands started to slowly travel up my back and I was loving every moment, that was until his hands made their way to my sides, causing one to land right on my healing bullet wound, causing me to jolt in pain breaking the kiss. “Fuck!” my eyes stung and the room felt like it was moving, I sat upright and moved myself off his lap. Four took a moment of realisation, before scurrying to check I was ok. “Shit Eight I’m so sorry, I don’t know what came over me” he said hurriedly, hiding his head in his hands, his face turning bright red in embarrassment. “Y/N” was my only response. “Sorry?” he lifted his head to search my face for some kind of clue. “That’s my name, I think we’re well beyond calling each other our numbers” I laughed weakly “Billy” he introduced himself “and I’m sorry, I crossed a line” he said sheepishly “Don’t be sorry, it’s just this fucking bullet wound. I was having the time of my life” I winked at him, causing his eyes to darken. “Look I, um, I think I should call it a night” Billy stammered. What the hell was he talking about? One quick look out the window confirmed that it was indeed late. “Holy shit, alright” I planted a quick kiss on his cheek “sleep well. Come see me again soon” I muttered. Within moments he was out the door, probably needing to go ‘take care’ of things.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And that’s chapter 5! I promise there will be more about John Dough in the next chapter, and again I don’t know when it’ll be out but I’ll release it as soon as I can! I hope you enjoyed this little chapter all about Four and Eight getting to know one another, maybe a little more than they were expecting! I’d love to hear from you guys!!

Also huge props to @adrenaline-roulette​ for all her help and for this glorious moment when I realised I’m shit at 20 questions!

Also yes I forgot the term “straight people” and went with non bi, you are allowed to judge me for that - also before anyone asks, the best way to describe my sexuality is Bi or maybe Pan (I don’t fucking know honestly, everyone is attractive to me!)...Anywho...This post has gone on for long enough, enjoy and I’ll catch ya in the next chapter!

[youre-on-a-starship]

Prompt - “Can you please do a fic w Scotty and the reader being someone who works in engineering. Scotty low key knows the reader likes him a lil, but doesn't do anything bc he's older. Reader has no idea he likes her back, til one day it just happens (like tension is too much, I dunno). If you don't feel like it could work, it's all good, I just love your writing haha. Thanks!” - Anon

Word Count:  1,773

Author’s Note:  It gets a little cracky in the middle? I think it opens and closes well in any case. I hope you like it!

Edit: I literally just realized that all my italics went way in the copy/paste process, so I’ve fixed that. Sorry!

“You know she likes you, right?” Jim folded his arms over his chest and leaned back against the console.

Scotty just kept tapping at his work screen, ignoring you at the far end of the corridor working on your own problems.

“Aye,” he muttered.

“So? You gonna make a move?”

“Ach, I don’t, shit,” Scotty hissed as he jabbed his thumb into the display. “Has anyone ever told you you’re the worst damn distraction?”

“So? Are you?”

“Probably not,” Scotty said with a wave. “There’s nearly ten years’ difference there. She’s nice and everythin’ but… I don’t know. I don’t think those kinds of relationships tend to work verra well.”

“I’ve seen the way you look at her. And anyway, my parents were like, five years apart.”

“And how did that turn out?”

“Well, they seemed to be doing fine.”

“Sorry,” Scotty shook his head and leaned on the heels of his hands as the screen in front him began to restart. “Tha’ was a stupid question. I don’t know, Jim, I don’ think so. It’s hard to explain.”

“Try me.”

“Well, it’s just sort of unfair, you know? I mean, with ten years you’ve grown up in different times, you know different things, you’ve got different levels of experience. And sure, it’s all well and good now if ye can look past all that, but the further on you get… I just remember my grandparents. They were thirteen years apart and it nearly killed Gran to take care of him,” Scotty shook his head before bursting back up to full height. “And anyway! I’m busy! I don’ have the time to be entertaining anyone, least of all a twenty-six year old. Or you, for tha’ matter, why are you even here?”

“I’m just checking in with my senior officers,” Jim said with a shrug. He pushed off from the console and clapped Scotty on the back. “Let’s call it health and wellness.”

“May I get back to work?” Scotty snapped.

“As you see fit,” Jim said before wandering off between the machines.

---

“Mr. Scott?” you asked as you stepped into the doorway of his office. You kept your eyes glued on the PADD screen until you didn’t receive an answer. You looked up to see if he was even in the room and you froze when you saw him in his seat behind the desk. It was those eyes. Disarming. And he just stared back at you.

“Uh…” you started.

“We’ve talked about this.”

“Oh,” you shook your head. “Scotty, sorry.” You returned your eyes to your PADD. “I was just going over the terminal C-12 diagnostics, we’ve got some kind of bug preventing the readouts from collating properly.”

“Can ye fix it?”

Wouldn’t it be nice to hear that voice every day?

“Probably? I’m not sure, Lieutenant Rogers is probably a better fit for the job,” you said, lifting your eyes again.

“Well get him on it then; I think he’s just getting in Kelly’s way downstairs,” Scotty said, lowering his hands to his lap. “Is there anything else?”

“Um…”

Can’t you come up with anything?

“I don’t believe so.”

“A’righ’ then. Back at it.”

Blink.

“Back at it,” you repeated.

---

“Don’t do that!” Scotty shouted as you went for the door panel.

“Do you have a better idea?” you quipped back.

“No, but-”

You didn’t wait to listen for the rest of his speech. Pounding your fist on the control panel, you held your breath as the door swished open, a deafening roar of rushing wind and a gush of heat met you and you lurched into the transporter room.

Scotty’s panicked voice cut off suddenly as the door swished shut behind you.

The creature was curling in circles on the transporter pad like a dog chasing its tail. The fiery spine blinded you to look at, but you weren’t going to let it get the jump on you if you turned away.

As the perspiration started to boil under your shirt, you wished that you’d taken the garment off outside.

You stumbled through the thick air and punched a series of commands on the scaldingly hot console.

A tube of golden rings appeared around the creature and it disappeared. You collapsed to the floor, contemplating why you thought that the heat would disappear with it.

The door swished open and a pair of cool hands appeared on your shoulders.

“Y/N? Y/N!”

“Mmm?” you hummed. “Can you… can you keep the door open? It’s so hot…”

“Are y’okay?”

“Yeah,” you said through a heaving breath basking in the rush of cool air from the corridor.

“Why the hell did you do that?”

“You have to do something every day that scares you,” you mumbled, trying to sit up. Scotty scooped his hands around your arms and helped you. “That and if he melted the transporter console, I don’t know how else we’d deal with him. And I don’t want to have to rebuild the transporter console again.”

---

“Lieutenant.”

“Sir.”

Your back stiffened as Scotty stood next to you while you waited for the turbolift.

“Mind if I ride with ye?”

“Not in the least,” you said with a smile, strategically turning so that you could look past his nose instead of directly at his face.

He nodded and waited in silence with you. The door swished open and you both walked in and turned around.

“Where are ye-?” Scotty asked as a siren wailed and the lights turned off.

“You have got to be kidding me,” you whined, watching as the crew outside the double glass all slowed to gawk.

“Tha’s real helpful! Thanks!” Scotty waved them off with a grimace. “I dinna have anything with me.”

“Me neither; I was going for lunch,” you admitted, digging your thumb into the bridge of your nose.

Scotty put his hands on his hips and started pacing.

“Of all the days…” he muttered.

You took your comm unit out of your pocket.

“Hawkins,” you barked.

“Forget something, Lieutenant?” came the response.

“Lieutenant Commander Scott and I are stuck in turbolift two.”

“Lucky you.”

“Shut it. Can you boot it back up?”

“Yeah, yeah, give me a minute.”

Your comm went silent and you stuck it back in your pocket. You folded your arms and leaned back against the far wall from where Scotty had planted himself.

“I’m sorry about that,” you mumbled, reinserting your thumb into the bridge of your nose. “He was just being funny.”

“I understand.”

You opened your eyes and looked at his chest past your thumb.

“You understand.”

“Aye.” Scotty shrugged and looked at his shoes, sniffing.

You let your eyes crawl up his neck to sneak a peek at his face. It was turning red.

Say something.

“Where were you headed, Sir?”

Good job.

“Keenser had something he needed me to look at up on deck 6,” Scotty said, looking up and catching your eyes.

Silence descended and you dropped your hand from your face.

Say something better.

“I-”

The comm in your pocket blipped. You sighed and pulled it out.

“Go.”

“You’ve got power in 20 seconds.”

“Thanks Hawkins.”

You clapped your unit shut and pushed off from the wall, turning back toward the door.

“You what?”

You half turned back to Scotty.

“It was nothing, Sir. Just making small talk.”

He didn’t answer so you grinned and added, “When I’m hungry I’m bad at having real conversations.”

He snorted and the lights came back on. You tapped the command screen for the recreation deck as well as that for deck 6.

“Happy birthday, by the way,” you said quickly before pressing your lips together.

Scotty turned redder.

“Old guy li’ me… don’t pay much attention to birthdays anymore.”

“You’re not that old,” you said, glancing sideways. “In any case, have one on me tonight.”

The door swished open and you left before he could respond.

—

You laid spreadeagled on your back on the mat wheezing.

“You gonna make it, lassie?” Scotty’s voice came from somewhere above you. It made the ache in your shoulders ebb as you relaxed into the sound. You lifted two fingers and tried waving.

“‘M fine.”

“Hawkins, ta’ five, I think she needs a rest.”

“She will decide when she needs a rest,” you groaned, tucking your elbows under your waist and pushing yourself up to a 45. Your head fell back, but you stayed up. “Hawkins, take five.”

Hawkins snorted and padded out of the ring.

“Engineers aren’t made for hand-to-hand,” you mumbled, letting your throat stretch as your sweat-soaked hair weighed your head down toward the mat.

“Ye can say tha’ again. Are y’a’righ’ though?”

“Sure,” you quipped, opening your eyes and pushing yourself up to sitting in earnest.

Scotty stood up and offered you a hand.

Take it.

“Thanks,” you muttered, grasping his hand and letting him pull you up.

You tipped forward and he steadied you with his free hand. You blinked at him; this was closer than you intended to get.

Scotty’s cheeks started tinting pink in the middle.

“Sorry,” you said quickly, pulling yourself back a few inches. “Thank you.”

Scotty just grinned before pressing his lips together.

Say something!

“Are you going to that thing in Rec C tonight?” you blurted.

“I wasna especially planning on it,” Scotty said, his eyes suddenly darting back and forth between yours. “But if you’re going, I could reconsider.”

Your mouth opened and closed a few times before you sealed your lips and swallowed.

“I mean, unless you weren’t going-”

“Oh, no, I am. Or, I was. I could still,” you stammered, feeling yourself flush.

Scotty was pinker now as well.

You can just say it! Since when are you this nervous?

“If you’re not sold on it, I - I mean, I dinna know if you drink - I’ve got a really nice collection of scotch; I could bring a bottle to the observation deck. We’re getting close to that nebula that Spock’s been on abou’ for ages,” Scotty ventured, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he petered off.

“I, yeah. That, yeah,” you stuttered, looking at your shoes and taking a deep breath. You looked back up and he was grinning. “What changed?” you asked.

Scotty shrugged.

“You have to do something every day that scares you,” he said, tipping his face down in preparation for your response.

You couldn’t help but smile. Reaching up, you wiped the sheet of sweat off your forehead with the back of your arm.

“Then I guess we’re going to see a nebula tonight. Meet you there? Eight?”

“Eight,” Scotty agreed with a sigh and a smile.

[differenceworkinggroupblog-blog]

GETTING IN AND OUT

Who owns black pain?

  By Zadie Smith

   July 2017 issue

    Discussed in this essay:

  Get Out, directed by Jordan Peele. Blumhouse Productions, QC Entertainment, and Monkeypaw Productions, 2017. 104 minutes.

  Open Casket, by Dana Schutz. 2017 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. March 17–June 11, 2017.

  You are white—

yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.

That’s American.

Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.

Nor do I often want to be a part of you.

But we are, that’s true!

As I learn from you,

I guess you learn from me—

although you’re older—and white—

and somewhat more free.

     —Langston Hughes

  Early on, as the opening credits roll, a woodland scene. We’re upstate, viewing the forest from a passing car. Trees upon trees, lovely, dark and deep. There are no people to be seen in this wood—but you get the feeling that somebody’s in there somewhere. Now we switch to a different world. Still photographs, taken in the shadow of public housing: the basketball court, the abandoned lot, the street corner. Here black folk hang out on sun-warmed concrete, laughing, crying, living, surviving. The shots of the woods and those of the city both have their natural audience, people for whom such images are familiar and benign. There are those who think of Fros­tian woods as the pastoral, as America the Beautiful, and others who see summer in the city as, likewise, beautiful and American. One of the marvelous tricks of Jordan Peele’s debut feature, Get Out, is to reverse these constituencies, revealing two separate planets of American fear—separate but not equal. One side can claim a long, distinguished cinematic history: Why should I fear the black man in the city? The second, though not entirely unknown (Deliverance, The Wicker Man), is certainly more obscure: Why should I fear the white man in the woods?

  <https://tinyurl.com/y8ryxglm>

  A few years ago I interviewed Peele as he came to the end of a long run on the celebrated Comedy Central sketch show Key and Peele. On that occasion he spoke about comic reversals—“I think reversals end up being the real bread and butter of the show”—and about finding the emotional root of a joke in order to intensify it: “What’s the mythology that is funny just because people know it’s not true?” Get Out is structured around such inversions and reversals, although here “funny” has been replaced, more often than not, with “scary,” and a further question has been posed: Which mythology? Or, more precisely: Whose? Instead of the familiar, terrified white man, robbed at gunpoint by a black man on a city street, we meet a black man walking in the leafy white suburbs, stalked by a white man in a slow-moving vehicle from whose stereo issues perhaps the whitest song in the world: “Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run run run …”

  Get Out flips the script, offering a compendium of black fears about white folk. White women who date black men. Waspy families. Waspy family garden parties. Ukuleles. Crazy younger brothers. Crazy younger brothers who play ukuleles. Sexual psychopaths, hunting, guns, cannibalism, mind control, well-meaning conversations about Obama. The police. Well-meaning conversations about basketball. Spontaneous roughhousing, spontaneous touching of one’s biceps or hair. Lifestyle cults, actual cults. Houses with no other houses anywhere near them. Fondness for woods. The game bingo. Servile household staff, sexual enslavement, nostalgia for slavery—slavery itself. Every one of these reversals “lands”—just like a good joke—simultaneously describing and interpreting the situation at hand, and this, I think, is what accounts for the homogeneity of reactions to Get Out: It is a film that contains its own commentary.

  For black viewers there is the pleasure of vindication. It’s not often they have both their real and their irrational fears so thoroughly indulged. For white liberals—whom the movie purports to have in its satirical sights—there is the cringe of recognition, that queer but illuminating feeling of being suddenly “othered.” (Oh, that’s how we look to them?) And, I suppose, the satisfaction of being in on the joke. For example, there is the moment when the white girl, Rose (Allison Williams), and her new black boyfriend, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), hit a deer on the way to her parents’ country house. She’s driving, yet when the police stop them he’s the one asked for his license. Rose is sufficiently “woke” to step in front of her man and give the cop a self-righteous earful—but oblivious to the fact that only a white girl would dare assume she could do so with impunity. The audience—on both sides of the divide—groans with recognition. Chris himself—surely mindful of what happened to Sandra Bland, and Walter Scott, and Terence Crutcher, and Samuel DuBose—smiles wryly but remains polite and deferential throughout. He is a photographer, those were his photographs of black city life we saw behind the credits, and that white and black Americans view the same situations through very different lenses is something he already understands.

  <https://tinyurl.com/ybdjlwwv>

  This point is made a second time, more fiercely, in one of the final scenes. Chris is standing in those dark woods again, covered in blood; on the ground before him lies Rose, far more badly wounded. A cop car is approaching. Chris eyes it with resigned dread. As it happens, he is the victim in this gruesome tableau, but neither he nor anyone else in the cinema expects that to count for a goddamned thing. (“You’re really in for it now, you poor motherfucker,” someone in the row behind me said. These days, a cop is apparently a more frightening prospect than a lobotomy-performing cult.) But then the car door opens and something unexpected happens: It is not the dreaded white cop after all but a concerned friend, Rod Williams (Lil Rel Howery), the charming and paranoid brother who warned Chris, at the very start, not to go stay with a load of white folks in the woods. Rod—who works for the TSA—surveys the bloody scene and does not immediately assume that Chris is the perp. A collective gasp of delight bursts over the audience, but in this final reversal the joke’s on us. How, in 2017, are we still in a world where presuming a black man innocent until proven guilty is the material of comic fantasy?

  These are the type of self-contained, ironic, politically charged sketches at which Peele has long excelled. But there’s a deeper seam in Get Out, which is mined through visual symbol rather than situational comedy. I will not easily forget the lengthy close-ups of suffering black faces; suffering, but trapped behind masks, like so many cinematic analogues of the arguments of Frantz Fanon. Chris himself, and the white family’s maid, and the white family’s groundskeeper, and the young, lobotomized beau of an old white lady—all frozen in attitudes of trauma, shock, or bland servility, or wearing chillingly fixed grins. In each case, the eyes register an internal desperation. Get me out! The oppressed. The cannibalized. The living dead. When a single tear or a dribble of blood runs down these masks, we are to understand this as a sign that there is still somebody in there. Somebody human. Somebody who has the potential to be whole.

  As the movie progresses we learn what’s going on: Black people aren’t being murdered or destroyed up here in the woods, they’re being used. A white grandmother’s brain is now in her black maid’s body. A blind old white gallerist hopes to place his brain in Chris’s cranium and thus see with the young black photographer’s eyes, be in his young black skin. Remnants of the black “host” remain after these operations—but not enough to make a person.

  <https://tinyurl.com/ychdagwr>

  Peele has found a concrete metaphor for the ultimate unspoken fear: that to be oppressed is not so much to be hated as obscenely loved. Disgust and passion are intertwined. Our antipathies are simultaneously a record of our desires, our sublimated wishes, our deepest envies. The capacity to give birth or to make food from one’s body; perceived intellectual, physical, or sexual superiority; perceived intimacy with the natural world, animals, and plants; perceived self-sufficiency in a faith or in a community. There are few qualities in others that we cannot transform into a form of fear and loathing in ourselves. In the documentary I Am Not Your Negro (2016), James Baldwin gets to the heart of it:

      What white people have to do is try to find out in their hearts why it was necessary for them to have a nigger in the first place. Because I am not a nigger. I’m a man…. If I’m not the nigger here, and if you invented him, you the white people invented him, then you have to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that.

  But there is an important difference between the invented “nigger” of 1963 and the invented African American of 2017: The disgust has mostly fallen away. We were declared beautiful back in the Sixties, but it has only recently been discovered that we are so. In the liberal circles depicted in Get Out, everything that was once reviled—our eyes, our skin, our backsides, our noses, our arms, our legs, our breasts, and of course our hair—is now openly envied and celebrated and aestheticized and deployed in secondary images to sell stuff. As one character tells Chris, “black is in fashion now.”

  To be clear, the life of the black citizen in America is no more envied or desired today than it was back in 1963. Her schools are still avoided and her housing still substandard and her neighborhood still feared and her personal and professional outcomes disproportionately linked to her zip code. But her physical self is no longer reviled. If she is a child and comes up for adoption, many a white family will be delighted to have her, and if she is in your social class and social circle, she is very welcome to come to the party; indeed, it’s not really a party unless she does come. No one will call her the n-word on national television, least of all a black intellectual. (The Baldwin quote is from a television interview.) For liberals the word is interdicted and unsayable.

  But in place of the old disgust comes a new kind of cannibalism. The white people in Get Out want to get inside the black experience: They want to wear it like a skin and walk around in it. The modern word for this is “appropriation.” There is an argument that there are many things that are “ours” and must not be touched or even looked at sideways, including (but not limited to) our voices, our personal style, our hair, our cultural products, our history, and, perhaps more than anything else, our pain. A people from whom so much has been stolen are understandably protective of their possessions, especially the ineffable kind. In these debates my mind always turns to a line of Nabokov, a writer for whom arrival in America meant the loss of pretty much everything, including a language: “Why not leave their private sorrows to people? Is sorrow not, one asks, the only thing in the world people really possess?”

  Two weeks after watching Get Out, I stood with my children in front of Open Casket, Dana Schutz’s painting of Emmett Till, the black teenager who, in 1955, was beaten and lynched after being accused of flirting with a white woman. My children did not know what they were looking at and were too young for me to explain. Before I came, I had read the widely circulated letter to the curators of the Whitney Biennial objecting to their inclusion of this painting:

      I am writing to ask you to remove Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket and with the urgent recommendation that the painting be destroyed and not entered into any market or museum … because it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun, though the practice has been normalized for a long time.

  I knew, from reading about this debate, that in fact the painting had never been for sale, so I focused instead on the other prong of the argument—an artist’s right to a particular subject. “The subject matter is not Schutz’s; white free speech and white creative freedom have been founded on the constraint of others, and are not natural rights.”

  I want to follow the letter very precisely, along its own logic, in which natural rights are replaced with racial ones. I will apply it personally. If I were an artist, and if I could paint—could the subject matter be mine? I am biracial. I have Afro-hair, my skin is brown, I am identified, by others and by myself, as a black woman. And so, by the logic of the letter—if I understand it correctly—this question of subject matter, in my case, would not come up, as it would not come up for the author of the letter, Hannah Black, who also happens to be biracial, and brown. Neither of us is American, but the author appears to speak confidently in defense of the African-American experience, so I, like her, will assume a transnational unity. I will assume that Emmett Till, if I could paint, could be my subject too.

  <https://tinyurl.com/y9kxfy8a>

  Now I want to inch a step further. I turn from the painting to my children. Their beloved father is white, I am biracial, so, by the old racial classifications of America, they are “quadroons.” Could they take black suffering as a subject of their art, should they ever make any? Their grandmother is as black as the ace of spades, as the British used to say; their mother is what the French still call café au lait. They themselves are sort of yellowy. When exactly does black suffering cease to be their concern? Their grandmother—raised on a postcolonial island, in extreme poverty, descended from slaves—knew black suffering intimately. But her grandchildren look white. Are they? If they are, shouldn’t white people like my children concern themselves with the suffering of Emmett Till? Is making art a form of concern? Does it matter which form the concern takes? Could they be painters of occasional black subjects? (Dana Schutz paints many subjects.) Or must their concern take a different form: civil rights law, public-school teaching? If they ignore the warnings of the letter and take black suffering as their subject in a work of art, what should be the consequence? If their painting turns out to be a not especially distinguished expression of or engagement with their supposed concern, must it be removed from wherever it hangs? Destroyed? To what purpose?

  Often I look at my children and remember that quadroons—green-eyed, yellow-haired people like my children—must have been standing on those auction blocks with their café au lait mothers and dark-skinned grandmothers. And I think too of how they would have had many opportunities to “pass,” to sneak out and be lost in the white majority, not visibly connected to black suffering and so able to walk through town, marry white, lighten up the race again. To be biracial in America at that time was almost always to be the issue of rape. It was in a literal sense to live with the enemy within, to have your physical being exist as an embodiment of the oppression of your people. Perhaps this trace of shame and inner conflict has never entirely left the biracial experience.

  To be biracial at any time is complex. Speaking for myself, I know that racially charged historical moments, like this one, can increase the ever-present torsion within my experience until it feels like something’s got to give. You start to yearn for absolute clarity: personal, genetic, political. I stood in front of the painting and thought how cathartic it would be if this picture filled me with rage. But it never got that deep into me, as either representation or appropriation. I think of it as a questionably successful example of both, but the letter condemning it will not contend with its relative success or failure, the letter lives in a binary world in which the painting is either facilely celebrated as proof of the autonomy of art or condemned to the philistine art bonfire. The first option, as the letter rightly argues, is often just hoary old white privilege dressed up as aesthetic theory, but the second is—let’s face it—the province of Nazis and censorious evangelicals. Art is a traffic in symbols and images, it has never been politically or historically neutral, and I do not find discussions on appropriation and representation to be in any way trivial. Each individual example has to be thought through, and we have every right to include such considerations in our evaluations of art (and also to point out the often dubious neutrality of supposedly pure aesthetic criteria). But when arguments of appropriation are linked to a racial essentialism no more sophisticated than antebellum miscegenation laws, well, then we head quickly into absurdity. Is Hannah Black black enough to write this letter? Are my children too white to engage with black suffering? How black is black enough? Does an “octoroon” still count?

  When I looked at Open Casket, the truth is I didn’t feel very much. I tried to transfer to the painting—or even to Dana Schutz—some of the cold fury that is sparked by looking at the historical photograph of Emmett Till, whose mother insisted he have an open casket, or by considering the crimes of Carolyn Bryant, the white woman who falsely accused him of harassing her, but nothing I saw in that canvas could provoke such an emotion. The painting is an abstraction without much intensity, and there’s a clear caution in the brushstrokes around the eyes: Schutz has gone in only so far. Yet the anxious aporia in the upper face is countered by the area around the mouth, where the canvas roils, coming toward us three-dimensionally, like a swelling—the flesh garroted, twisted, striped—as if something is pushing from behind the death mask, trying to get out. That did move me.

  What’s harder to see is why this picture was singled out. A few floors up hung a painting by a white artist, Eric Fischl, A Visit to?/?A Visit from?/?The Island, in which rich white holidaymakers on a beach are juxtaposed with black boat people washed up on the sand, some dead, some half-naked, desperate, writhing, suffering. Painted in 1983, by an artist now in his late sixties, it is presumably for sale, yet it goes unmentioned in a letter whose main effect has been to divert attention from everything else in the show. Henry Taylor, Deana Lawson, Lyle Ashton Harris, and Cauleen Smith were just a few of the artists of color lighting up the Whitney in a thrilling biennial that delved deep into black experience, illuminating its joys and suffering both. Looking at their work, I found I resented the implication that black pain is so raw and unprocessed—and black art practice so vulnerable and invisible—that a single painting by a white woman can radically influence it one way or another. Nor did I need to convince myself of my own authenticity by drawing a line between somebody else’s supposed fraudulence and the fears I have concerning my own (thus evincing an unfortunate tendency toward overcompensation that, it must be admitted, is not unknown among us biracial folks). No. The viewer is not a fraud. Neither is the painter. The truth is that this painting and I are simply not in profound communication.

  This is always a risk in art. The solution remains as it has always been: Get out (of the gallery) or go deeper in (to the argument). Write a screed against it. Critique the hell out of it. Tear it to shreds in your review or paint another painting in response. But remove it? Destroy it? Instead I turned from the painting, not offended, not especially shocked or moved, not even terribly engaged by it, and walked with the children to the next room.

  We have been warned not to get under one another’s skin, to keep our distance. But Jordan Peele’s horror-fantasy—in which we are inside one another’s skin and intimately involved in one another’s suffering—is neither a horror nor a fantasy. It is a fact of our experience. The real fantasy is that we can get out of one another’s way, make a clean cut between black and white, a final cathartic separation between us and them. For the many of us in loving, mixed families, this is the true impossibility. There are people online who seem astounded that Get Out was written and directed by a man with a white wife and a white mother, a man who may soon have—depending on how the unpredictable phenotype lottery goes—a white-appearing child. But this is the history of race in America. Families can become black, then white, then black again within a few generations. And even when Americans are not genetically mixed, they live in a mixed society at the national level if no other. There is no getting out of our intertwined history.

  But in this moment of resurgent black consciousness, God knows it feels good—therapeutic!—to mark a clear separation from white America, the better to speak in a collective voice. We will not be moved. We can’t breathe. We will not be executed for traffic violations or for the wearing of hoodies. We will no longer tolerate substandard schools, housing, health care. Get Out—as evidenced by its huge box office—is the right movie for this moment. It is the opposite of post-black or postracial. It reveals race as the fundamental American lens through which everything is seen. That part, to my mind, is right on the money. But the “us” and “them”? That’s a cheaper gag. Whether they like it or not, Americans are one people. (And the binary of black and white is only one part of this nation’s infinitely variegated racial composition.) Lobotomies are the cleanest cut; real life is messier. I can’t wait for Peele—with his abundant gifts, black-nerd smarts, comprehensive cinematic fandom, and complex personal experience—to go deeper in, and out the other side.

    “SIGNS,” by Deana Lawson, from a series of staged photographs that explore the perception of race in American culture. Lawson’s work was on view last month as part of the Whitney Biennial

  A STILL FROM GET OUT

  THE TIMES THAY AINT A CHANGING, FAST ENOUGH!, by Henry Taylor. The painting is based on the video made in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Philando Castile by a Minnesota police officer in 2016. Taylor’s work was on view last month at the Whitney Biennial.

  OPEN CASKET, by Dana Schutz.

  © 2017 Harper’s Magazine Foundation.