#about writing about a period in history that is so horrific and complex

[uefb]

Chapter 4 of my post-SoD, semi-historical fiction Fantastic Beasts fic is up, With It’s Head Under One Wing.

Today, Newt puts a former DRCMC colleague in his place, Theseus tries to apologize for a clumsy reaction, and Newt and Theseus discover…autism. Next, we’ll see Newt dealing with a Quentiped, and then a sweet Tina chapter or two before we’re hurtled into the startling appointment of Germany’s new chancellor. (All while Grindelwald is, you know, still somewhere.)

Excerpt:

Newt stood there, processing for a moment, before dropping a hand into the pocket he’d been picking at to play with one of the loose strings inside.

“You came here just to tell me sorry? In person?”

Theseus nodded and shifted slightly on his feet.

“It’s all right. You were very helpful with your information–”

Theseus cut him off. “Newt.”

“It is, though,” he said again. “I did it once, to a hippogriff, when I thought he was – After a storm and he'd been – Well, the details don't matter. But I forgot my manners, despite the hippogriffs’ nature, and we were both quite upset by that in the end."

Theseus looked at Newt for a long moment, and Newt watched Theseus (eyes fixed on the minute crinkles between his brother’s eyes), and then he turned away to retrieve a pair of mugs.

“I forgot that you startle,” Theseus said from behind him. “I’ve accepted that you don’t like to be touched, even if it took me a long time—far too long, really—to stop forcing it on you.”

Newt could hear the unspoken confusion in his brother’s voice.

“At the same time, you’re different than you were when we were kids, you know? More sure. And you handle those beasts like nothing at all.”

Newt cracked his knuckles before unscrewing the lid from the can of Gunpowder tea and—without turning around—he flicked his wand over his shoulder, toward the teapot he kept on the built-in shelf above the sink.

“Newt?”

The teapot floated past Theseus’ head just as Newt turned back around, open can in his hands.

“I have more field data now,” he said simply.

Theseus stared, and then jerkily readjusted so one hand was in his pocket and the other on his hip, leaning slightly forward with furrowed brows as if being closer to Newt would help him better understand the meaning behind his words.

“Field – What?”

[20kmemesunderthesea]

AMC's Nautilus

Action, political intrigue, plot twists and a healthy amount of sea monster skirmishes:

These are just some of the many reason why even those unfamiliar with the works of Jules Verne will find "Nautilus" to be an engaging SciFi adventure series.

Here are my (spoiler-free) thoughts on the show.

Note: as I write this, "Nautilus" is airing only on SVT: This is How I Watched it Living Outside of Sweden

When I heard that there was going to be a TV series about Captain Nemo's backstory, I was mightily aprehensive. The main reason for this apprehension was the mere fact that Captain Nemo's past is so dark and tragic. Thankfully, the series begins after the horrific events of the 1857 rebellion and just as the Nautilus is launched. What happened to Nemo's family is shown in flashbacks which explain the events without being graphic.

When I began the show, I honestly had very low expectations. I didn't really expect to like it. To my delighted asonishment, it turned out to be one of the best film tributes to Jules Verne I've ever seen - no hyperbole.

Throughout the series, there are fight scenes, periodic depictions of people bleeding and a couple "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" innuendo jokes, so I wouldn't watch it with a small child, but I think it would be appropriate to watch with most young teenagers (13+).

I believe both well-read Jules Verne fans and those who've hardly heard the name "Captain Nemo" will enjoy the intriguing storyline, likable characters and aesthetic scenery. There are many other factors which made me fall in love with "Nautilus" as well:

The Man of the Seas

The character of Captain Nemo has always facinated me. I was blown away by how perfectly and accurately Captain Nemo was portrayed in this series. Shazad Latif, in my opinion, is an immaculate Captain Nemo and he really brought the character to life with all his complexities. Out of all the film portrayals of Captain Nemo I've seen, I'd have to say his has been by far my favorite.

Tributes to Indian History and Culture

I'm American an my husband is Indian. He and I were both very impressed with the way in which Indian culture and history were presented. I want to see more shows like this to teach our son about his heritage. 

Many of the action scenes reminded me of South Indian cinema. In one episode there is a scene where the Nautilus crew is playing cricket against some Englishmen, which may seem a little disconnected from the rest of the story, but Bollywood fans may recognize it as a delightful tribute to "Lagaan."

The Writers Were Well-Verse in Vernian Lore

Although the story wasn't 100% accurate to the book, the writers obviously had read Verne's books and knew the nuances of Nemo's story and background quite throughly.

There were certain details which made me excited, such as when Nemo has an enigmatic exchange with an Englishman in which they greet each other warmly and seem to be thanking each other for...something. Nemo ends the conversation by saying, "Give my regards to Phileas!"

In Verne's other classic, "Around the World in 80 Days," Princess Aouda is the widow of the Raj of Bundelkhand. Since Jules Verne often dropped little hints that his books existed in the same universe, I always wondered if Aouda and Nemo were distantly related, since Bundelkhand is Nemo's kingdom of origin.

A question is posed: in this conversation, was Nemo thanking the Foggs for saving someone he cared about? This is the first time I've ever seen anyone address the detail that Aouda and Nemo might be relatives.

Tributes to the artwork of Alphonse de Neuville and Édouard Riou

I noticed several shots which were obvious tributes to the first-edition illustrations of Jules Verne's classics, such as Captain Nemo standing on the submarine deck with his spyglass, and the map of Lincoln Island on a cave wall. Those details absolutely thrilled me! 

Everything I've Ever Wanted in a Verne-Inspired TV Series - Except for That Cliffhanger!

Everything about this show absolutely floored me. It was everything I could have hoped for in a Captain Nemo TV series...and then it ended.

Such a well-done series ending with fairly significant loose ends felt like a punch in the gut more forceful than the maelstrom itself. I've been trying not to let it overshadow the rest of the show. I wish with all my heart that there could be a season two!

If anyone's curiosity gets the better of them, I compiled a list HERE of questions I desperately want to know the answers to. I hope someone may be able to answer my questions one day!

I want NEED more!

While I'm still coping with my post-series let down, I find myself pining away for more shows like this; shows based off of classic adventure novels which honor the spirit of the origional author.

I want shows which are imaginative, exciting and engaging, but have snippets of real-life science, culture and history woven in. Incidentally, I daresay these are the same elements which make the stories of Jules Verne himself so timeless.

[officialpenisenvy]

no preferences for media/ships, just wanted to see how such dynamics unfold in works an Aficionado & Expert™ would award their seal of quality to 🥰

okay so this is mostly jjk with two. sigh. notable exceptions. im SURE there's some works i missed but unfortunately ao3 doesn't let you sort your history by tags so you will have to forgive me for that 😔

black sheep, green pastures is a family drama about the fallout from an alpha teenager going into unexpected heat and raping his kid brother. it's genuinely a masterpiece and the omegaverse element is very understated, it's not in-your-face at all but it works to accentuate and deepen the already complex themes the fic tackles.

one good thing is a blessing is a bodice ripper set in the edo period, as an alpha outlaw meets a pregnant omega on the run from his clan and helps him escape. it's my golden standard for well-written a/b/o longfics, and it's definitely a fic for the omegaverse fans, featuring many common tropes and lore elements that blend seamlessly with the historical setting to create a fun and romantic story that is a great intro to the average omegaverse.

honey drop is an abandoned longfic about a young alpha man who finds himself adopting an omega-to-be young child and grooming him into compliance. it's very heavy on the omegaverse, and it's a very uncomfortable read at times, but to me that only adds to the story being told, which is very self-aware about its own darkness despite being cloaked in sweet possessiveness (also worth noting that they don't have sex in the fic, the author abandoned it just before that narrative beat).

ripe is a very dark and short fic about an alpha man taking advantage of his child ward's heat, brought on early due to the boy having been molested by his father in the past. the omegaverse here is more of a pretense, an excuse for the horrific and mundane abuse more than anything; i really love the way it's written, it's incredibly evocative and the author always writes the point of view of the rapist with staggering accuracy (if you like fics where gojo is a disgusting creep you will love this author).

this heart, pierced by a sword is an insane star wars prequel fic where alpha child anakin is the antichrist and obi-wan is his mother mary. it's fucking crazy and weird and lowkey disturbing and well-written enough to keep you hooked for 30k words and also palpatine is there. go read this especially if you've watched the prequels or are in the star wars fandom. it's fucking batshit

the omegas will play is a fun and simple smut fic about two omega best friends fagging out in front of their alphas. it's very uncomplicated and it doesn't explore much of anything (though it has some interesting tidbits such as an omega with an alpha complex), the sex is decent, this foursome dynamic is quite fun to read and it's a trashy indulgence of mine.

head above the water is. sigh. an attack on titan omegaverse fic which has unfortunately grabbed me by my heaaart with its dirty claws. it's about a troubled alpha boy whose father is sexually abusing his younger omega stepbrother and if anything about that premise sounds appealing to you i promise it's not worth reading it. it's not well written at all (though it's by far not the worst fanfiction prose out there) and the omegaverse tropes are present to the point of being overbearing and cloying. to me it's camp but i understand that not everyone can share my delicate sensibilities. i read this out of morbid curiosity and it ruined my life so don't read this unless you're also ready for that or at least for a very bad fic. im only including this out of intellectual honesty lord have mercy on me.

yeah that should be about it as far as omegaverse fic recs. obviously i have read a lot more i probably have read them in the hundreds. however most of them are VERY badly-written and not particularly compelling. they're still great to jerk off to if you're like me and get turned on by a light breeze but definitely not worth examining out of intellectual curiosity. this is like a cream of the crop from my personal omegaverse history. hope you enjoy ❤️

[intersex-support]

Hi! I’m not intersex so feel free to ignore or answer other questions first.

I am curious about how eunuchs tie into intersex history. There seems to be a lot of similarities, but I’m not sure how or if it’s related. And I’m curious if ideas around eunuchs tie into how society treats intersex people today, or if perhaps some eunuchs were intersex people? I don’t want to speculate becuase I don’t think it’s my place, but I definitely see similarities with what you talk about.

I’m not totally sure how to frame this question because it is incredibly broad, and covers vast swaths of time and many parts of the world, but I would appreciate any information you could provide that would allow for further research or understanding.

Thank you, I hope you have a lovely day.

Hey! So it definitely is a broad question and really, really depends on the region. I can speak a little about some of the relationship between eunuchs and intersex people in Ancient Rome and Greece because I can read those languages, but I’m not an expert on there or anywhere else.

So there’s quite a few sources that talk about intersex people in conjunction with eunuchs. The Pandects, Roman laws collected by Justinian I, used eunuch as an umbrella term to describe both eunuchs by nature and eunuchs who were made (there also does seem to be some distinction between the language use of eunuchus and castratus, but I’m not convinced that eunuchus was only used to described intersex people.) At a similar time, Pliny the elder was going around recognizing that there were multiple sexes, and indeed spent a lot of time trying to classify what intersex was and how many intersex variations there were. Philostratus, who was a Greek writer who spent some time at the Roman imperial court, wrote an anecdote about this intersex person named Favorinus who was tried for adultry, and we know he’s intersex because Philostratus refers to him as “ἀνδρόθηλυς” (intersex), but he also refers to him as “εὐνοῦχος” (eunuch). There’s a few other examples, but basically, at different points in Ancient Rome it’s clear that intersex people were distinctly recognized as different than eunuch, yet often were lumped in with eunuchs in terms of legal treatment, although some of the Latin can kind of best be translated as “congenital eunuch.”

In the Archaic period, the Roman legal treatment of intersex people viewed intersex births as “prodigies” which is…not a great thing in Roman law. Trigger warning for horrific intersexism, but there’s sixteen primary sources that show some proof that some intersex children were drowned at birth as a way of appeasing the gods. This is obviously not going to be the same treatment that adult eunuchs received under Roman law, so that’s defintely a departure. There were also some reports of people who discovered that they were intersex in adulthood being killed as well, but that’s a lot fewer. Once we start getting into later eras of the republic the legal status of intersex people changes again, and the last reported intersex execution is 95 BC. After 95 BC, there’s a lot more mentions of intersex children in sources, which also shows proof that fewer are getting killed at birth. There is a gradual shift in Roman society and intersex people start getting classified as either male or female under the law, with responsibilities and rights determined by their assignment. Pliny specifically argued that intersex men should be considered semiviri and given the exact same legal rights as eunuchs. Eunuch Roman law is complex as has a lot of specific things about the extent to which someone is a Eunuch and whether or not you can marry, write a will, all of that, so it’s clear that some intersex people were legally limited in similar ways to eunuchs. Eunuchs in Roman society had a complicated role, and often times were enslaved, although some eunuchs/intersex people like Favorinus were able to have aristocratic success. So basically Roman society was really pretty bad for eunuchs or intersex people.

When it comes to the Greeks, the most information around intersex people is about the mythologic god Hermaphroditus, child of Hermes and Aphrodite, who was a beautiful, divine, and celebrated figure. We do have more positive descriptions of intersex people from sources of that time, Phlegon of Tralles, a Greek writer, described an intersex person near Antioch who was known as a beautiful maiden but than turned into a man at puberty. There’s also another intersex person who lived at Epidaurus who was described as spending his life gardening, which I think is neat. I’m not as familiar with intersex people in Ancient Greece, but it seems to be more positive. Eunuchs also had a bit of a different reception in Greek society, and I couldn’t find a lot of sources on intersex people and eunuchs and I’m just not as familiar with Greek history as Roman.

So overall, I can say confidently that in Ancient Rome, the history of eunuchs and intersex people is very intertwined, and societal response was also filled with stigma, prejudice, and violence. I’d say that it’s probably pretty likely that in other cultures and times through the world, eunuchs and intersex people have been related. I don’t know enough history about other regions, but if anyone does know I would love to hear some more. I’m not sure how much of an affect that the treatment of eunuchs really has on intersex people in the contemporary world, but I definitely think that at certain times in world history, eunuchs and intersex people were associated with each other. I listed a few sources for what I summarized about Roman law, but massive trigger warning for slurs and descriptions of violent intersexism. Here’s also a link to a post I made about the treatment of intersex people in medieval Europe (with similar trigger warnings.)

https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/unromantest/chapter/transgender/

https://www.academia.edu/45639485/The_Legal_Treatment_of_Hermaphroditism_in_Ancient_Rome_From_Persecution_to_Integration

https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2015/09/15/favorinus-was-a-hermaphrodite-tried-for-adultery-philostratus-lives-of-the-sophists-489/amp/

[lesbiansforboromir]

"Yet even so it was Gondor that brought about its own decay, falling by degrees into dotage, and thinking that the Enemy was asleep, who was only banished not destroyed. 

 'Death was ever present, because the Numenoreans still, as they had in their old kingdom, and so lost it, hungered after endless life unchanging. Kings made tombs more splendid than houses of the living, and counted old names in the rolls of their descent dearer than the names of sons. 

  Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry; in secret chambers withered men compounded strong elixirs, or in high cold towers asked questions of the stars. And the last king of the line of Anarion had no heir." 

Faramir's explanation for Gondor's ‘decline’ is... incoherent.. what the hell are you on about m’love?

The way this reads is so completely misleading when looking at the actual history and reasons for Gondor's receding borders and the loss of the watch on Mordor. Faramir puts the onus on Gondorian Kings wanting to live longer and not having kids... babe? Did you forget... the plague? Gondor WAS watching for activity in Mordor. For 1640 years! And then there was a plague so devastating that it turned the country’s most populous city into a near ghost town. It took 200 years for Gondor to recover, and even then it never truly reached the population levels it had maintained before. Osgiliath was never the same! And by then Mordor had taken the fortresses at the Morannon! 

There is absolutely no mention of Kings or Stewards who were desperately seeking to extend their life in Gondor’s history. Where are these tombs more splendid than the houses of the living? All the Kings not buried in Osgiliath are buried in the Silent Street... There is no mention of achingly elaborate tombs anywhere! 

There WERE however some Kings who did not marry or have children! ... Two, there were just two of them... out of thirty three. Narmacil I was Atanatar's son and reigned in the HEIGHT of Gondor's wealth. He essentially allowed his nephew Minalcar to run the country whilst he had a great time writing poetry and kissing men. And Minalcar did a really good job! He fought wars, he made alliances, he built the Argonath and when it actually came around to his time to be King, he had a nice and peaceful reign! And when his son Valacar wanted to marry a Northern Princess? Even though the worry in Gondor was that that would ‘weaken’ the King’s line and reduce their lifespan? He supported him! Gave his blessing! 

The other King who never married or had any children was Earnur! You all remember Earnur? Oh sure, he desperately wanted to extend HIS life past its natural limits! Fighting in two wars and then riding off into an obvious trap just because he'd been challenged really gives me a whole 'old man in his dotage fears death' vibe. And that was the ‘last king of the line of Anarion who had no heir’. You know WHY he was the last king? Because the King before his father Earnil II (King Ondoher) and his two sons had died! In a massive fuckall war with the Balchoth that nearly saw Gondor destroyed! PRINCE Faramir was TOLD to stay behind! But he was so anxious for his family and so wished to not simply sit and wait for death that he HID amongst the ranks of the Eotheod and went to war anyway!! AND DIED!! Asking questions of the stars??? Making strange elixirs?? Mused uselessly on heraldry??? WHEN? FARAMIR?? Was Ondoher daydreaming about stars and heraldry as he was cut down by a chariot??? Was Artamir brewing potions mid-battle?? WHAT are you talking about!!!

Where are these men fearing death who brought Gondor into it's decline that Faramir is talking about? Is he lying? No, I actually believe Faramir when he says he would not even snare an orc in a falsehood. The things Faramir says are things he believes. But then how, when he is so well known for his loremastership, can he be so misleading and plain wrong about something so basic to Gondorian history? Well I have a suggestion but it means Faramir’s at least a little homophobic so bear with me and I promise this is relevant.

So, obviously, the ups and downs of Gondor society in terms of queer liberation would be complex and rely upon a diverse number of factors. However, I’d say that, if you looked at an overall trend, it goes up in times of peace and takes a hit during times of strife. The basic reasoning for this is that one of the fundamentals of Gondorian society is the concept of doom and fate. This can give both correct and erroneous impressions of cause and effect throughout history. Gondorians tend to believe everything happens for a reason. And due to the (sometimes quiet but always present) elf-and-faithful-numenorean-ruled thinkers, who push ideas of proper marriage, celebacy, romance-superiority and other cis-het-normative agendas, the ‘reason’ that bad things happen is often blamed on the queer liberation of the times. The populace is open to being given reasons for bad things happening and Academia in Gondor is very much elf-revering, so it is often respected scholars who are pushing that narrative. 

HOWEVER, the queerness is rarely what is actually remembered or recorded in history, the wording of records are often bound up in the faithful numenorean rhetoric of ‘heretical kings’ and ‘they fell into the trap of king’s men ideology’ and so on and so forth. Scholars might understand what this means at the time, but it gets muddled further down the road and even academics in the future have trouble finding the intended emphasis. So! By the time we reach 3018 TA, the academic community as a whole has reached a general consensus that ‘the old sins of our past’ are to blame and that, whilst queerness was a part of it, it was more a symptom than a direct cause. 

So! The thought process I’m proposing for Faramir should be easy to guess at now, but I’m going to go more specific for the sake of... me uwu. 

GONDOR has not known peace for the last 500 years, not since Steward Denethor the first’s reign wherein the so called ‘watchful peace’ ended and Sauron returned to Mordor. NOW, before Denethor, his uncle Dior was the Steward and, as you’ve probably guessed, he had no children and nor did he marry. I would suggest that Dior lived through one of the most tolerant and open portions of Gondor’s history. I think he not only was open about his choice not to marry, but he also had a socially accepted partner and lived with him all his life with only a small, vocal minority voicing their objections. 

But then Sauron returned! And it was brutal, bloody and horrific. And that vocal minority saw an opportunity to use Dior’s life as a method to push Gondor once again into it’s regular crisis of conscience, faith and purpose. ‘We betrayed our founder’s’ and ‘We should have been ruled by Dior’s son but because of his weakness against his ill-fate we are doomed, he abandoned his duty! A pitiful fate but pitiful for us as well!’ And so on and so forth, there are reems of academic works written about it.

Now, this doesn’t have an immediate crushing effect on queer rights that one might fear. Denethor I loved his uncle dearly and would not hear a bad word about him, as did Boromir I! And Cirion? Cirion was almost more alternative than Dior. He sold off portions of land when the Stewards had been told to keep them IN TRUST for the king’s return. He made enduring and reciprocal alliances with the Eotheod ‘middle men’, he was very much anti-traditionalist! However, it was after his reign that Gondor truly felt the backlash of all this, spurred on by Cirion’s very alternative views, actions and methods. Because whilst he may have been an effective and charismatic Steward, Cirion had not found so much time to be a good father. And Hallas had been fifteen when his father had left him behind and ridden to war. He had a frightening and lonely childhood and was very open to the idea that his father was wrong, had gone too far, that things should be ‘brought back to normal’. Stability being key and all. The vocal minority had his ear. 

And since then, whilst opinion has still fluctuated, the constant unrest and simmering crisis of Gondor’s day to day has made progress against such concepts difficult and slow going. And it’s informed the opinion of history too, a lot more academic writing has compared Dior to Narmacil I (the first unwed and unmarried King) and has tried to find parallels between them and Earnur. Any explicit discussion of queerness has been relegated to Sindarin scripts (the language only really understood by academics and the upper classes), but the underlying tone is there HENCE! 

“falling by degrees into dotage, and thinking that the Enemy was asleep“ = Dior ‘abandoned his duty’ and Narmacil I ‘was indolent’.

“the Numenoreans still [-] hungered after endless life unchanging.” = A melding of heretical beliefs that occurred over centuries into one monolith that applied longing for endless life automatically.

“Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry; [-] compounded strong elixirs, [-] asked questions of the stars.” = This is all both reaching back to heretical practices in Numenor, whilst also harkening back to the periods of time in which Dior and Narmacil lived, peaceful times where more introspective and experimental pursuits could be indulged. 

SO! This is where Faramir’s erroneous and misleading opinions come from. And why he is at least a little homophobic. There, I told you all I’d get there. 

[nanshe-of-nina]

Favorite History Books || Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of Horror by Michael Wilson and Richard J. Hand ★★★★☆

The phrase ‘grand-guignol’ has entered the language as a general term for the display of grotesque violence within performance media, but it originates in a specific theatre down an obscure alley in Paris. The Grand-Guignol was a remarkable theatre. For more than six decades it thrilled its audiences with a peculiar blend of horrific violence, the erotic and fast-paced comedy. In its time it achieved international notoriety and became one of the most successful tourist attractions in the French capital.

It is, therefore, all the more extraordinary that, both in its lifetime and since its demise, the Grand-Guignol has been virtually ignored by academics and today has the status of one of the world’s great forgotten theatres. It is not difficult to lay the blame for this neglect at the door of institutional conservatism and general disdain in the past for the serious study of popular theatre in academic circles. For many years the Grand-Guignol was simply deemed unworthy of serious consideration and the very recipe for its success with the public was sufficient to secure its dismissal by theatre historians. It is, therefore, to be welcomed that recent years have witnessed a growing interest in popular culture; the horror genre, in its many forms, has now entered the arena of scholarly debate. This book has been prepared in that context and, partly at least, in response to the lack of material available on the Grand-Guignol, particularly to the English-speaking reader.

The Grand-Guignol emerged at a crucial and exciting time for theatre. It was conceived in the nineteenth century, directly from the groundbreaking work of André Antoine and his fellow naturalist radicals at the Théâtre Libre. In fact, it grew up to become a child of the twentieth century, emerging as a complex and seemingly contradictory mixture of theatrical traditions and genres characterized by its use of both horror and comedy plays, incorporating melodrama and naturalism, and going on to reflect the influence of Expressionism and film. Yet at its heart it always remained a popular theatre and, more crucially, a modern theatre. If the dawn of the twentieth century was a critical period in the development of European theatre, then the same can be said for the horror genre itself. As Paul Wells states: As the nineteenth century passed into the twentieth, this prevailing moral and ethical tension between the individual and the sociopolitical order was profoundly affected by some of the most significant shifts in social and cultural life. This effectively reconfigured the notion of evil in the horror text . . . in a way that moved beyond issues of fantasy and ideology and into the realms of material existence and an overt challenge to established cultural value systems.

The Grand-Guignol only became what it did because it emerged when it did and where it did. When talking of a ‘Theatre of Horror’ one might imagine the monster-iconography and Gothic extravaganzas (ironic or otherwise) on display in Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show, Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Phantom of the Opera, and even Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. But as a realist form that never strays far from a grounding in Zola-inspired naturalism, “Grand Guignol requires sadists rather than monsters”. Although the Grand-Guignol steers well clear of all things supernatural, it pushes the human subject into monstrosity, extrapolating, as it were, la bête humaine into le monstre humain. André de Lorde sums up this aspect of the Grand-Guignol when he writes in the preface to La Galerie des monstres, ‘we have a monster within us—a potential monster’. The psychological motivation of the Grand-Guignol protagonist/antagonist—in the comedies as much as the horror plays—is dictated by primal instincts, or unpredictable mania, the plots obsessed with death, sex and insanity and exacerbated or compounded by grotesque coincidence or haunting irony.

Aside from a few books on the subject, the Grand-Guignol’s most substantial surviving legacy is the collection of scripts, housed at the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, fifty-five of which are contained in Agnès Pierron’s Le Grand-Guignol. There also exists a number of photographic stills, documentary footage, press cuttings, programme notes and eye-witness accounts. The most useful of these are the memoirs of Paula Maxa, the most celebrated Grand-Guignol actor; what she is able to tell us about performing at the rue Chaptal is invaluable, in spite of her subjectivity and desire to create her own mythology. Apart from this we have very little to tell us about the nature of performance in relation to Grand-Guignol and we are left to our own hypothesizing. To this end we have established a Grand-Guignol Laboratory at the University of Glamorgan to investigate the performative nature of the form. Using student actors, we have attempted to learn more about Grand-Guignol performance through the practical exploration of scripts and themes in the drama studio and many of the conclusions contained in this book are informed by that work. We would agree with Mel Gordon that the Grand-Guignol greatly influenced subsequent horror films, even though it was, ironically, the cinema that contributed largely to the theatre’s demise. In the Grand-Guignol Laboratory we have found films particularly beneficial as an entry point into our speculative study towards understanding performance practice at the Grand-Guignol. At the same time, it would be a grave mistake to make assumptions about the Grand-Guignol based solely on cinematic evidence. Cinema and theatre are different forms and so we have always trodden with great care in this respect. It is a difference recognized by Maxa herself when she says:

“In the cinema you have a series of images. Everything happens very quickly. But to see people in the flesh suffering and dying at the slow pace required by live performance, that is much more effective. It’s a different thing altogether.”

[nealiios]

The Supernatural 70s: Part I - Corruption of An Innocent

"We're mutants. There's something wrong with us, something very, very wrong with us. Something seriously wrong with us - we're soldiers writers."

-- with apologies to the screenwriter of "Stripes"

Dear reader, I have the darkest of revelations to make to you, a truth when fully and wholly disclosed shall most assuredly chill you to the bone, a tale that shall make you question all that you hold to be true and good and holy about my personal history. While you may have come in search of that narrative designer best known for his works of interactive high fantasy, you should know that he is also a crafter of a darker art, a scribbler of twisted tales filled with ghosts, and ghouls, and gargoyles. I am, dear innocent, a devotee of horrors! Mwahahahaha!

[cue thunderclap, lightning, pipe organ music]

Given the genre of writing for which most of you know me, I forgive you if you think of me principally as a fantasy writer. I don't object to that classification because I do enjoy mucking about with magic and dark woods and mysterious ancient civilizations. But if you are to truly know who I am as a writer, you must realize that the image I hold of myself is principally as a creator of weird tales.

To understand how and why I came to be drawn to this sub-genre of fantastic fiction, you first must understand that I come from peculiar folks. Maybe I don't have the Ipswich look, or I didn't grow up in a castle, but my pedigree for oddity has been there from the start. My mother was declared dead at birth by her doctor, and often heard voices calling to her in the dead of night that no one else could hear. Her mother would periodically ring us up to discuss events in our lives about which she couldn't possibly have known. My father's people still share ghost stories about a family homestead that burned down mysteriously in the 1960s. Even my older brother has outré memories about events he says cannot possibly be true, and as a kid was kicked off the Tulsa city bookmobile for attempting to check out books about UFOs, bigfoot, and ESP. It's fair to say I was doomed - or destined - for weirdness from the start.

If the above listed circumstances had not been enough, I grew up in an area where neighbors whispered stories about a horrifically deformed Bulldog Man who stalked kids who "parked" on the Old North Road near my house. The state in which I was raised was rife with legends of bigfoots, deer women, and devil men. Even in my childhood household there existed a pantheon of mythological entities invented explicitly to keep me in line. If I was a good boy, The Repairman would leave me little gifts of Hot Wheels cars or candy. If I was being terrible, however, my father would dress in a skeleton costume, rise from the basement and threaten to drag me down into everlasting hellfire (evidently there was a secret portal in our basement.) There were monsters, monsters EVERYWHERE I looked in my childhood world. Given that I was told as a fledgling writer to write what I knew, how could anyone have been surprised that the first stories I wrote were filled with the supernatural?

"The Nightmare" by John Henry Fuseli (1781)

My formative years during the late sixties and early seventies took place at a strange juncture in our American cultural history. At the same time that we were loudly proclaiming the supremacy of scientific thought because we'd landed men on the moon, we were also in the midst of a counter cultural explosion of interest in astrology, witchcraft, ghosts, extra sensory perception, and flying saucers. Occult-related books were flying off the shelves as sales surged by more than 100% between 1966 and 1969. Cultural historians would come to refer to this is as the "occult boom," and its aftershocks would impact popular cultural for decades to come.

My first contact with tales of the supernatural were innocuous, largely sanitized for consumption by children. I vividly remember watching Casper the Friendly Ghost and the Disney version of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I read to shreds numerous copies of both Where the Wild Things Are and Gus the Ghost. Likely the most important exposure for me was to the original Scooby Doo, Where Are You? cartoon which attempted to inoculate us from our fears of ghosts and aliens by convincing us that ultimately the monster was always just a bad man in a mask. (It's fascinating to me that modern incarnations of Scooby Doo seem to have completely lost this point and instead make all the monsters real.)

ABOVE: Although the original cartoon Scooby Doo, Where Are You? ran only for one season from 1969 to 1970, it remained in heavy reruns and syndication for decades. It is notable for having been a program that perfectly embodied the conflict between reason and superstition in popular culture, and was originally intended to provide children with critical thinking skills so they would reject the idea of monsters, ghosts, and the like. Ironically, modern takes on Scooby Doo have almost entirely subverted this idea and usually present the culprits of their mysteries as real monsters.

During that same time, television also introduced me to my first onscreen crush in the form of the beautiful and charming Samantha Stevens, a witch who struggles to not to use her powers while married to a frequently intolerant mortal advertising executive in Bewitched. The Munsters and The Addams Family gave me my first taste for "goth" living even before it would become all the rage in the dance clubs of the 1980s. Late night movies on TV would bring all the important horror classics of the past in my living room as Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Invisible Man, the Phantom of the Opera, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Godzilla all became childhood friends. Over time the darkened castles, creaking doors, foggy graveyards, howling wolves, and ever present witches and vampires became so engrained in my psyche that today they remain the "comfort viewing" to which I retreat when I'm sick or in need of other distractions from modern life.

ABOVE: Elizabeth Montgomery starred in Bewitched (1964 - 1972) as Samantha Stephens, a witch who married "mortal" advertising executive Darren Stephens (played for the first five seasons by actor Dick York). Inspired by movies like I Married a Witch (1942) and Bell, Book and Candle (1958), it was a long running series that explored the complex relationship dynamics between those who possess magic and those who don't. Social commentators have referred to it as an allegory both for mixed marriages and also about the challenges faced by minorities, homosexuals, cultural deviants, or generally creative folks in a non heterogeneous community. It was also one of the first American television programs to portray witches not as worshippers of Satan, but simply as a group of people ostracized for their culture and their supernatural skills.

Even before I began elementary school, there was one piece of must-see gothic horror programming that I went out of my way to catch every day. Dark Shadows aired at 3:30 p.m. on our local ABC affiliate in Tulsa, Oklahoma which usually allowed me to catch most of it if I ran home from school (or even more if my mom or brother picked me up.) In theory it was a soap opera, but the show featured a regular parade of supernatural characters and themes. The lead was a 175 year old vampire named Barnabas Collins (played by Johnathan Frid), and the show revolved around his timeless pursuit of his lost love, Josette. It was also a program that regularly dealt with reincarnation, precognition, werewolves, time travel, witchcraft, and other occult themes. Though it regularly provoked criticism from religious groups about its content, it ran from June of 1966 until it's final cancellation in April of 1971. (I would discover it in the early 1970s as it ran in syndication.) Dark Shadows would spin off two feature-length movies based on the original, a series of tie-in novels, an excellent reboot series in 1991 (starring Ben Cross as Barnabas), and a positively embarrassingly awful movie directed by Tim Burton in 1991.

ABOVE: Johnathan Frid starred as Barnabas Collins, one of the leading characters of the original Dark Shadows television series. The influence of the series cannot be understated. In many ways Dark Shadows paved the way for the inclusion of supernatural elements in other soap operas of the 1970s and the 1980s, and was largely responsible for the explosion of romance novels featuring supernatural themes over the same time period.

While Dark Shadows was a favorite early television program for me, another show would prove not only to be a borderline obsession, but also a major influence on my career as a storyteller. Night Gallery (1969-1973) was a weekly anthology television show from Rod Serling, better known as the creator and host of the original Twilight Zone. Like Twilight Zone before it, Night Gallery was a deep and complex commentary on the human condition, but unlike its predecessor the outcomes for the characters almost always skewed towards the horrific and the truly outré. In "The Painted Mirror," an antiques dealer uses a magic painting to trap an enemy in the prehistoric past. Jack Cassidy plots to use astral projection to kill his romantic rival in "The Last Laurel" but accidentally ends up killing himself. In "Eyes" a young Stephen Spielberg directs Joan Crawford in a story about an entitled rich woman who plots to take the sight of a poor man. Week after week it delivered some of the best-written horror television of the early 1970s.

In retrospect I find it surprising that I was allowed to watch Night Gallery at all. I was very young while it was airing, and some of the content was dark and often quite shocking for its time. Nevertheless, I was so attached to the show that I'd throw a literal temper tantrum if I missed a single, solitary episode. If our family needed to go somewhere on an evening that Night Gallery was scheduled, either my parents would either have to wait until after it had aired before we left, or they'd make arrangements in advance with whomever we were visiting to make sure it was okay that I could watch Night Gallery there. I was, in a word, a fanatic.

ABOVE: Every segment of Night Gallery was introduced by series creator Rod Serling standing before a painting created explicitly for the series. Director Guillermo del Toro credits Serling's series as being the most important and influential show on his own work, even more so than the more famous Twilight Zone.

[margridarnauds]

Yesterday I realized, after seeing some neonazi use a Celtic cross on a banner, like... if you went up to an Irish person who was going thru a famine at the end of the 9 years war caused by scorched earth policies, & said that one of those crosses over there were being used to advocate for harm towards a specific group by virtue of them being a part of it, they'd be pretty horrifed? neonazis claim to love their "heritage" yet actively disrespect the memories of the group they claim to represent

Yeah. Like, there’s not much to say but “Yeah.” 

Like, in the field, we’re VERY careful to say that medieval and Early Modern Ireland was, frankly, a bit of a shit place to live - Like....pretty much any European (and the vast majority of non-European) society, it was classist, sexist, and xenophobic. We don’t skim over that. The standard of beauty described was overwhelmingly (though NOT exclusively) pale skin + blonde/red (”red gold” is a common descriptor) hair. (But also. Their standard of beauty was a little. Strange. By our standards.) They did keep slaves as a casual thing. But also....they absolutely WOULD NOT understand this. You defeated a group of people, and then they were tributes to you, until they’re able to flip the tables again. Upward mobility was difficult, but it wasn’t IMPOSSIBLE. As early as the 1920s (which is NOT what you’d call a golden age for the field as far as studying the complexities of race), you’ve got Eoin Mac Neill saying that “The genealogical doctrine, however, must be taken as often expressing political status rather than racial origin”. (Before discussing the “vassal tribes” of Ireland in my dissertation, I had to include about a paragraph or two discussing how, despite what SOME SCHOLARS might have said in the past, we can’t really use the term “race” to apply in the same way and, if we do use the term, it has to be done with the greatest amount of caution.) 

The Early Modern period did bring a lot of tension between the aristocracy and the peasantry (who, for a ton of reasons, had the reputation for being pro-English), with the former saying that the latter, for example, were descended from demons. (Lawrence P. Morris wrote a REALLY good article on it, “Race, Language, and Social Class in Seventeenth-Century Ireland”), but, at the exact same time that that is going on, you have Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh writing, “I ask, however, how genealogies or other categories of history can be thus disseminated without writing of both ignoble and noble, of free and unfree in turn thus, for the theologians themselves say that there was not ever a king who did not come from a slave, not a slave who did not come from a king; see how David was a shepherd and Saul a keeper of she-asses before they were kings, etc.” 

(Also, something that I DO think is interesting is that you have quite a few prominent Irish figures who are said to be descended from slaves, from Niall of the Nine Hostages to St. Brigit.) 

Overall, classist? Yes, absolutely. Xenophobic? .....ja. Richtig. But definitely not having the same conception of this sort of thing as the Neonazis have. They would NOT understand it, and I do believe that, especially for the common people from that time...they REALLY would have been horrified. (Because, of course, it isn’t like the Celtic cross would have been confined to aristocrats, even if they’re the ones who could afford the really intricate symbols that we still see now.) Like, as of the 16th century, it was something you saw predominately at churches, going back to the 9th century (so, over SEVEN HUNDRED YEARS). And to try to explain to them that that symbol, associated with something as really...quintessentially Irish as the Catholic Church (at that point in time, not touching the modern relationship. Not. Touching) being used to justify the subjugation of an entire group of people based on skin color... Like. The best you could say to them would be the Israelites in Egypt, but in that case...well, there’s a really clear good and bad guy, isn’t there? And it isn’t who the white supremacists would want it to be. 

It becomes complicated down the line, in terms of Irish immigrants’ own participation in racism in the United States/colonialism and how they came to be perceived as “white”, but, at this time? No, I really don’t think...they could or would understand it. And maybe I’m naive about my field, but I don’t think so. And I know I’m emphasizing that a lot, but in my opinion, it’s important to emphasize it, especially now. (In Ireland to this day, it’s not uncommon to find Celtic crosses at jewelry shops because...why wouldn’t there be? It’s an old symbol with a lot of relevance, especially to the Celtic Revival, and when, after a scholar came to lecture at my campus about race in medievalism, I mentioned to my paleography professor that, yeah, the Celtic cross has been appropriated by Neonazis, she was HORRIFIED.)

Neonazis are all about spreading the (INCORRECT) “Irish Slaves” meme until it forces them to actually consider that their view of whiteness and white solidarity is a relatively new phenomenon (given that an Irish person in the 16th century would NOT have felt any warm and toasty kinship with the English...even if you were descended from one of the English groups that came over in the Norman Invasion) and that they’re actively disrespecting everything the groups they claim to “appreciate” underwent. (Also on the long, long, occasional problematic history of the Irish and Native Americans/the Irish being perceived as POC before, essentially, tossing other groups under the bus, see: Fintan O’Toole, “Going Native: The Irish as Blacks and Indians” [not a title I’d have chosen, even in 1994, and I feel like there’s a fair bit of what he said there that wouldn’t have been said/phrased that way today and shouldn’t have been phrased that way then, but. Useful in its analysis of the sources. Use with caution]; Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White. And, of course, the solidarity between the Irish and the Choctaw people during the Famine, which is commemorated in the Kindred Spirits statue in co. Cork.)

Which, on one level...it’s par for the course, since it isn’t like these people understand the bare minimum of historical analysis, but. 

[kiranxrys]

You have been chosen! Use this ask as a free pass to rant about literally anything, regardless of whether or not someone asked your opinion! In fact, take this as someone asking your opinion! (this Free Rant card does not expire, use whenever you want)

this is a lot of fun, thank you. to be honest i’m just going to take this opportunity to rant about myself so consider this life updates with dylan plus a lot of opinions because i’m full of those. (spoiler alert: topics for this rant ended up including school, downton abbey and general rambling).

honestly until today i was considering this week to be one of those ‘wow this is the worst week of my life’ kind of weeks because it kind of went like, monday: cried in history class, tuesday: alright, wednesday: left school sobbing after exhausting and disastrous english assessment, thursday: woke up to find my computer broken (dented, hinges bent, busted screen) and none of my work done. really by that point i wasn’t even crying i was just like yeah this may as well happen you know. i came home from dropping my computer off at my school tech centre, sat down on the living room floor and proceeded to watch the entire season 5 of downton abbey while i stared miserably at the blank exercise book in front of me. 

downton abbey. that’s something. has anyone else seen this show?? for those who don’t know it’s a kind of british propaganda high-budget fast food period drama about early 20th century landed gentry and how the old order is all well and good and gay people are alright but they do have to suffer a bit to make up for it. or that’s one way of putting it, at least. this article is great, if you’ve got the time to read it. anyway i first watched downton abbey at a very impressionable age and it has stuck with me ever since even though i could rant for ten times longer about all its problems than the things i like about it. because really, it’s a masterclass in tv writing messiness and weird propaganda. and yet i still know every plot point off by heart somehow. 

probably the main reason i’m still attached to downton abbey (aside from it being just a familiar thing to have on the tv and not care too much about) is to do with thomas, whose defining characteristics (at least at the beginning of the show) can mostly be boiled down to evil and gay. i’m inclined to love thomas because no one else does (for sometimes fair reasons, like i said - evil) and because i think he’s by far one of the more complex characters in the show (who also doesn’t just randomly develop backwards once we hit season 6).

anyway, at the moment downton abbey is one of the few salvations in my school-stricken life. i’m sure to a lot of you at uni/college or working probably think i sound a bit mad sobbing over year 12 (senior year?? sixth form?? you sort it out) but really it is horrific. it’s only been going for 5 weeks and it’s horrific. i’ve got a mountain of work to do that i really don’t feel like doing. but i feel like i’ve lost the point here, this was supposed to be about my week from hell and how it suddenly became... not that. 

today was friday and weirdly enough, it has been a really lucky day for me. i got my computer back completely fixed and nothing to pay, i only had to attend two classes in the morning and have since spent my afternoon snacking on strawberries and chocolate-covered digestives. plus i don’t even really have to think about schoolwork, because it’s a long weekend and i’m surrreeee that will be plenty of time to get it all done.

a few notes vis a vis this blog - i am desperate to write fic again, but at the moment i simply haven’t the time and have several other projects i need to finish first besides. i’m going to be absolutely tied down with work and other nonsense for the rest of march but i’ll keep my queue running here as ever, plus maybe the occasional gifset whenever i get the chance.

if you read all of this... i appreciate it? but also what are you doing with your life. but also i love you and i hope you’re well! please take care of yourself. it’ll all work out, i promise :)

[a-queer-seminarian]

Hagar and Sarah - was reconciliation ever a possibility?

Sarah inflicts horrific abuse on Hagar (see Genesis 16 and 21): enslavement, rape and forced impregnation, beatings, and finally, banishment into the desert. It seems impossible that their story could ever have ended with renewed relationship and solidarity. As Jewish Cuban-American anthropologist Ruth Behar puts it in “Sarah and Hagar: The Heel-prints upon Their Faces,”

“The story of Sarah and Hagar is a story about women wronging women. It is a story so sad, so shameful, so sorrowful, that to own up to it is to admit that feminism has its origins in terrible violence and terrible lack of compassion between women.”

And yet, people across centuries have imagined what reconciliation between these two women could have been like. I’m compiling some of those visions here.

Many of them rely upon Sarah recognizing that she and Hagar share much suffering: Sarah too is used as property by men in their patriarchal world; Sarah too may have experienced rape when Pharaoh takes her from Abram in Egypt (see Wil Gafney’s Womanist Midrash); Sarah and Hagar alike are valued for their fertility and little else. If only Sarah had realized that patriarchy is what sets her above and against her fellow woman! If only she could have seen Hagar as a sister in solidarity, rather than a slave to abuse and cast away!

“Only at the end, When I witnessed my young son screaming under his father's knife, Only then Did I realize our common suffering.”

- Lynn Gottlieb

[image description: a painting of two women with curly brown hair and brown skin embracing; the one being held has a blue shawl with “Sarah and Hagar” written in Hebrew on it, while the one embracing her has a bright blue dress. A dove with an olive branch hovers behind them.]

“Sarah and Hagar” by Jewish artist Hilary Sylvester, who says: “Sarah the mother of the Jewish People and Hagar the mother of the Arab people finally find reconciliation through Mashiach.”

___________

Hagar’s and Sarah’s conflict & the Israel / Palestine conflict

In the article “Reconciling Hagar and Sarah: Feminist Midrash and National Conflict,” Noam Zion explains,

“In Jewish and Muslim interpretation, Hagar and Sarah represent the matriarchs of Abraham’s blessed heirs, the Arabs and the Jews. In classical sources, the break between the two women is never mended, but feminist readers of the Bible, Jewish and Muslim, have used midrash-style poetry to rewrite the ending of their story. Part of this endeavor is the hope of rewriting the contemporary conflict and reconciling between their putative descendants.”

...On a covenantal level, this story has an all’s well that ends well conclusion. God’s promises to Abraham and to each of the matriarchs will be fulfilled, as Isaac and Ishmael will each become great nations. But what about the interpersonal level? Is there ever a happy ending to the familial and, thus, national conflict?”

They continue with examples of reconciliation between various members of the story:

Reconciling Ishmael and Isaac: “The Torah itself implies a reconciliation of sorts between the brothers. First, after Abraham’s death, Ishmael returns “home” to encounter his brother once more at their father’s funeral: ‘His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah’” (Genesis 25:9).

Reconciling Abraham and Hagar: “In the biblical text, Hagar...is never mentioned after the story of the expulsion, leaving his breach with Hagar unresolved. In another example of midrashic rewriting of the narrative, some rabbis identify Keturah, whom Abraham marries after Sarah’s death (Genesis 25:1), with Hagar. (In the biblical text, the two are not identical.) ...Thus Abraham renews his responsibility and his affection for Hagar as soon as Sarah, who could not stand her, is buried.”

Reconciling Hagar and Sarah: “The one character who is never reconciled with either of the offended parties, in either the biblical text or the midrash, is Sarah. ...For these reasons, some contemporary feminist readers and poets have felt an urgent need to add a new episode to the narrative to bring the two women together.

Further, these feminist poets wish to reimagine the relationship between the nations born of these matriarchs in a period of ongoing violent conflict between Muslims and Jews in the Middle East and the fragile beginnings of a new religious and ethnic dialogue between American Muslims and American Jews in North America.”

___________

Common Suffering: Sarah Repents

In the opening to her poem “Achti,” Arabic for “My Sister,” Jewish Renewal rabbi Lynn Gottlieb suggests that Hagar is not a name but a derogatory epithet, and imagines Sarah’s regret:

I am pained I did not call you By the name your mother gave you. I cast you aside, Cursed you with my barrenness and rage, Called you “stranger”/ Ha-ger, As if it were a sin to be from another place.

Noam Zion says of the poem, “For Gottlieb, Sarah’s sin derives in part from her blindness to the patriarchal system that pressures wives to be fertile and generates an inhumane competition between women, breaking down their solidarity. Sarah admits to having tried to steal Hagar’s womb, as if another woman, her womb and her child, could be property.”

They used me to steal your womb, Claim your child, As if I owned your body and your labor

“Having offered an original interpretation of Hagar’s name, Gottlieb does the same with “Sarah.” Etymologically, her name is connected to “ruler” (שַׂר, sar), but Gottlieb’s midrash connects it to “see-far” (שׁוּר, shur). Thus Sarah ought to become, by virtue of her name, the far-seeing woman, the prophetess. ...Yet she realizes to her chagrin that Hagar sees visions of God, while God has stopped communicating with the woman meant to be a prophetess:”

I, whom they call “See Far Woman” / Sarah, Could not witness my own blindness. But you, my sister, You beheld angels, Made miracles in the desert, Received divine blessings from a god, Who stopped talking to me.

”Using the midrash on Sarah’s name, Gottlieb has Sarah contrast her own moral blindness with Hagar’s power of vision in having seen God. By contrast, Sarah never speaks to God or sees him. What she does witness, however, is the near death of her son Isaac:”

Only at the end, When I witnessed my young son screaming under his father's knife, Only then Did I realize our common suffering.

“...Gottlieb says Sarah’s trauma, seeing her son almost slaughtered by her husband, led her to repent. When Sarah is herself shunted aside and her son taken—without consulting her—to be sacrificed by the same Abraham and the same God who drove Ishmael away and exposed him to death, Sarah then discovers herself as an unwitting collaborator of patriarchy who betrayed her sisterly duties to Hagar by actively expelling a helpless woman and child into a life-threatening situation. Now that she has suffered, she develops an empathy with Hagar based on their common motherhood.

...She concludes her poem in the form of a ritual self-accusation, a vidui, the traditional confession characteristic of Yom Kippur, which follows soon after Rosh Hashanah, and is part of the same festival complex:”

Forgive me, Achti For the sin of neglect For the sin of abuse For the sin of arrogance Forgive me, Achti, For the sin of not knowing your name.

“In the spirit of her poem, Gottlieb takes it upon herself, through the character of Sarah “our mother,” to confess what—in her political and moral opinion as a left-wing liberal—are the sins of the Jewish people in their “abuse,” expulsion and depersonalization of Palestinian refugees which Sarah’s command to Abraham to expel Hagar and son Ishmael foreshadows.“

___________

Sarah Seeks Hagar

Eleanor Wilner has a long poem called “Sarah’s Choice.” In it, Sarah tells her son Isaac that she is going to go find Hagar and Ishmael “whom I cast out, drunk on pride,” and invites Isaac to come with her. He asks her how he should great Ishmael:

“As you greet yourself,” she said, “when you bend over the well to draw water and see your image, not knowing it reversed. You must know your brother now, or you will see your own face looking back the day you’re at each other’s throats.

In Reading Genesis: Beginnings, Kissileff writes, “The poem closes with the chilling foresight, emphasized by the pauses in the final line, that brings us back to the Bible as we know it:

“But what will happen if we go?” the boy Isaac asked. “I don’t know,” Sarah said, “But it is written        what will happen            if you stay?”

“What will happen, of course, is that Isaac’s own father will attempt to sacrifice him -- and that the future history of his people will be one of unending conflict with his ‘brother.’ Whenever I read this poem, I catch my breath at the last line. ...”

__________

Hagar writes to Sarah

“Hagar Writes a Cathartic as an Exercise Suggested by her Therapist,” by Syrian American poet, novelist, and professor, Mohja Kahf:

Dear Sarah, life made us enemies But it doesn’t have to be that way. What if we both ditched the old man? He could have visitation rights with the boys alternate weekends and holidays. Yeah, especially the Feast of the Sacrifice— everybody has forgotten anyway that it began with me abandoned in the desert watching my baby dehydrate for days— I dared God to let us die.

Anyway, you and I, we’d set up house, raise the kids, start a catering business, maybe. You have brains. So do I. We could travel. There are places to see besides Ur and this nowheresville desert with its tribes of hooligans

No. Your lips always thin when you disapprove, like the mother I can hardly remember from before I wound up in your house. I was barely more than a girl. You are the one Who brought me there from Egypt. You used to laugh back then. In those days, You could bear to look at me.

Oh, Sarah, you need years of therapy Can’t you admit that what he did to me was cruel? Admit it – for just one second It won’t make you hate him forever just long enough to know the world won’t fall apart. Long enough to pity him, yourself, me Laugh, Sarah, laugh Imagine God, the Possibility. Sincerely Love, Hagar

[scripttorture]

Maybe this is a silly question, but do we need to make a distinction between child abuse and torture when the one doing the thing is a monarch? I’m thinking of Peter the Great having his son tortured in Russia (he ordered it) or Zuko’s father burning him in Avatar the Last Airbender. Children are uniquely vulnerable to their parents’ will, but they are also citizens of their parents’ empires. Is there a distinction we need to consider or do we just focus on the symptoms for our characters?

I think you should make a judgement call based on the kind of story you’re writing.

 Categories can overlap, in real life and in fiction. For the purposes of the blog I often draw quite sharp distinctions in order to help people get an idea of what they want to write. Personally I think it’s more helpful to get an understanding of these things separately first and then think about how to mix them together. Otherwise I risk overloading people with information.

 Which, let’s be honest, I am on the verge of doing with most asks anyway.

 For the Peter the Great example remember there’s a difference between ordering torture and personally conducting it. Someone who orders torture is not going to develop symptoms while a torturer would. And a survivor might not have as intense an emotional response to a person who ordered torture vs the person who actually tortured them.

 Going forward here I’ll use Zuko as an example, because I don’t know much about Russian history.

 For anyone who hasn’t seen this show the gist of it is that Zuko ends up in a magical duel with his father (the king, Ozai) and when he refuses to fight his father burns his face as punishment then exiles him.

 Because the setting is an absolute monarchy Ozai occupies the highest governmental position. Which means this meets the legal definition for torture.

 Here’s where it starts to become a little more complicated: while this portrayal meets the legal definition for both the canon is not clear on whether it also follows typical patterns for torture vs child abuse.

 For instance, we don’t know whether Ozai physically abused Zuko in any way prior to this incident. From what I can remember there is nothing in the show itself to confirm or deny any other physically abusive incidents. Which means that it’s up to the author working with this canon to decide whether there was any additional abuse or not.

 On a similar note we also don’t know whether Ozai burnt any other non-combatants. I think that from the canon implications we can probably assume that he’s used his fire powers to fight before and that he’s probably used them in active combat against enemy soldiers. But I don’t remember any evidence that he personally used them against any other prisoners, dissenters, members of his family, subjects etc. Again, that means whether these things happened or not is a decision made by any subsequent author working in this canon.

 Torture is not typically a one off incident for either the torturer or the victim.

 And when something breaks from the typical pattern then comparison to how things ‘typically’ go might not be so helpful any more.

 Anyone working with that kind of backstory could decide to make this scenario line up with what you’d typically expect from torture: multiple incidents of violence over a period of days/weeks before the torturer loses interest and focuses on another victim. But they could also choose not to do that and neither choice is wrong.

 I personally feel as if the details of that particular story imply something closer to ‘typical’ child abuse then typical torture. But there’s nothing in the original story to contradict the latter interpretation. Which means that it’s more about the kind of story the author wants to tell.

 Torture implies a lot of attacks over a relatively short period of time, less emotional abuse/manipulation and a political focus. It could also mean a certain amount of comradery and support that comes from other survivors, the victim is more likely to be in contact with other survivors.

 I get the impression child abuse is a lot more varied but it typically seems to come with a lot more emotional control over the victim, it usually happens over a longer period (with attacks more spaced out) and it’s less overtly political. It’s also a lot more isolating. Survivors will not necessarily know other survivors outside their own family.

 So for me the main question is which of those lines up more closely with the kind of story you want to tell? Which sounds closer to the emotional focus you have?

 It isn’t about one answer being ‘wrong’. It’s about deciding which is closer to the story you want to tell and adjusting how you mix the elements together to show that.

 Torture might be a better fit for a story that’s heavily about the politics in this fictional kingdom. Child abuse might be a better fit for a story that’s more concerned with emotion then systems.

 And if the focus is entirely on the survivor and a recovery process then the precise label might not be as important as symptoms/the survivor character themselves.

 The labels are important for you as the author because they help you figure out how to approach writing a complex situation. They’re part of a body of learning tools that let us think about how/why people respond to particular horrific circumstances. That helps you construct the story.

 But labels won’t necessarily be important in the story itself.

 I hope that helps. :)

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[aion-rsa]

Why Turner Classic Movies is Reframing Problematic Hollywood Favorites

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Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a movie Alicia Malone fell head over heels in love with during childhood. Seeing it more times than she can remember in her native Australia, the future author and Turner Classic Movies host still recalls failed attempts to launch a high school film club with Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly as the star attraction.

“I thought for sure people were going to get excited about classic movies if they watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s because it has so much life to it!” Malone says today. How could they not fall for Hepburn’s iconic performance, which Malone still describes as luminous? “Holly Golightly is a complex female character, and for the times it was quite sexually progressive.”  Yet there was always another element, even in those halcyon days, which Malone recognized as uncomfortable—that discomfort has only grown to modern eyes.

Beyond the movie’s bittersweet romance between a pseudo-call girl and the kept man living in the apartment upstairs, there’s a grossly racist caricature of Japanese Americans in the movie’s margins, and it’s portrayed no less than by Mickey Rooney in yellowface makeup. It’s technically a small part of the movie, only appearing briefly and sporadically, but each time the character arrives, it’s like a sledgehammer swung across the screen. For decades the performance has been rightly criticized by Asian American advocacy groups, and even Rooney acknowledged late in life that if he knew people would become offended, he “wouldn’t have done it.” Nevertheless, the shadow that character casts over the movie has only loomed larger with time.

“I just kind of hold my breath and half shut my eyes every time Mickey Rooney shows up,” fellow TCM host Dave Karger says during a Zoom conversation with Malone and myself. “Mercifully, he’s gone pretty soon, and I’ve chosen actively not to let that performance ruin the movie for me, because ‘Moon River’ and the party scene, and George Peppard looking so great—there’s just so much to love and appreciate, so I actively choose to focus on that.”

Despite those personal struggles with the movie, Karger and Malone are both unafraid to examine the full implications of Rooney’s Mr. Yunioshi head-on. It’s why they hosted, alongside Ben Mankiewicz, a lengthy discussion of the character’s legacy last week during a special Turner Classic Movies presentation. That conversation was part of TCM’s Reframed series, a new season of content from the network which looks at some of the most beloved Hollywood classics of the 20th century—the crème de la crème, as Karger describes them—and studies why they can also be problematic and, in some cases, stunningly offensive. In the case of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, that can even lead to larger discussions about prevailing anti-Japanese attitudes and stereotypes in American society that persisted in the immediate decades after World War II… and can still be found as echoes in the anti-Asian stereotypes of today.

For Karger and Malone, these are the types of discussions TCM hosts have been having off-screen for years. So bringing those dimensions to the forefront for new generations of viewers felt only natural with Reframed.

Says Malone, “We often talk to each other about how we approach certain films when it comes to writing our scripts for our intros and outros for each individual film. We also talk with the producers about what we should bring up, what we shouldn’t bring up; if we should talk about an actor or director’s problematic past during that particular film, or if it doesn’t go with the content of the movie.”

So the five main hosts of TCM–who also include University of Chicago Professor Jacqueline Stewart and author Eddie Muller–were eager to have these frank discussions on screen while offering historical context from a modern perspective.

“All of us at TCM are watching the world change and watching the culture change,” Karger says, “and even though we show movies by and large from the period of the ‘30s to the ‘60s, we all realized that it doesn’t mean we can’t be part of today’s cultural conversation. It’s not a stretch at all to talk about classic movies from a point-of-view of the 21st century; that’s very possible to do, and I think a lot of our fans are looking for that kind of context when they watch the channel.”

The Reframed series, which was spearheaded in part by Charlie Tabesh, the TCM head of programming, and organized by producer Courtney O’Brien, looks to balance what Karger describes as the push and pull between nostalgia and criticism. Both Malone and Karger are acutely aware of the hesitance some classic movie fans might have about evaluating works from nearly a century ago through a 21st century prism, however the new program is intended to renew engagement with these movies—particularly in an era when there are just as many loud voices that attempt to dismiss or wipe away the legacies of these film’s from the cultural canon.

“That’s really important to remind everyone that this series is not here to shame these movies or to tell anyone that they can’t love these movies,” Karger says. “And if there’s a frustration that I’ve had in this last month, it’s to see some of the reaction to this series be along the lines of ‘you’re part of cancel culture with this series.’ It could not be more the opposite of that. We’re not cancelling anything; we’re showing the films a hundred percent in their entirety, we’re just talking about them.”

Malone further emphasizes this is what can keep so many of these movies vital in an era when sequences like the aforementioned Rooney scenes in Breakfast at Tiffany’s are being deleted from a Sacramento film festival—effectively erased from the collective memory.

“I think everyone at TCM sees this as the way forward,” Malone says, “the way that we can continue to make sure these movies stay alive for younger generations. We can continue talking about them, discussing them, they can change over the years, our feelings can change about them; you can love a film and not be able to justify parts of it at the same time. What’s so important though is just to have the discussion, to talk about these problematic areas and face up to them rather than hiding them. To me, if you take out a film from existence or you just delete parts of a film, you’re in a way saying these problems never existed.”

Indeed, even the opinions of folks as steeped in this history as the hosts of Turner Classic Movies can evolve as the culture does. Ben Mankiewicz, for example, is TCM’s unofficial statesman but he surprised some viewers two weeks ago when he revealed during a Reframed discussion that he can no longer comfortably watch Gunga Din (1939), a rollicking adventure movie set in British India. Based on a Rudyard Kipling poem, that classic film’s influences can still be felt in more modern blockbusters like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). However, Gunga Din is also a movie that glorifies the British Empire at the expense of then-contemporary Indian independence movement, with the villain being a character who Mankiewicz noted is physically modeled after Mahatma Gandhi, who would’ve been seen as subversive by some white audiences in the ‘30s.

“I’ve never been a huge fan of that movie, even though Cary Grant is my favorite actor,” Karger says. “And I was even a little surprised when Ben and Brad Bird included it on [the TCM program] The Essentials last year. Not because it’s not a revered classic movie, but because it’s more than a little offensive. And it was fascinating to be part of that conversation with Ben, talking about the evolution of his feelings for Gunga Din, because he’s been with the network 15 years. I can’t imagine how many times he’s talked about that movie, and it’s just showing you that culture and history are living, breathing things.”

Opinions change. Malone had a similar experience when she joined Mankiewicz and Muller to discuss John Ford’s seminal Western, The Searchers (1956), a movie where the director began reckoning with his depiction of Native Americans on screen. The film is a touchstone to this day for filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and George Lucas. Mankiewicz and Muller note that Ford is grappling with the racism of his earlier films via John Wayne’s lead character, an unrepentant bigot who becomes both the movie’s protagonist and antagonist. However, the film still bathes Wayne’s character in heroic imagery, and still relies on Native American stereotypes.

“Watching The Searchers again with the lens of talking about it during Reframed, I just saw so much,” Malone says. “I know John Ford was trying to have a conversation about racism involving Native Americans, but there’s just no doubt that many of his films contributed to the very dangerous and horrific stereotypes based around Native American people. And I think Native American people have suffered greatly because of the way they’ve been stereotyped in Hollywood films.”

That subject of intent comes up quite a bit during the Reframed series; Karger describes the movies they discuss as running the gamut from mildly problematic to extremely offensive, yet that ambiguity should invite education about the times they were made in, as opposed to preventing audiences from knowing about those eras.

Says Malone, “I think [Reframed] does show an attempted evolution on the parts of the filmmakers, and that’s interesting. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and The Searchers, and My Fair Lady are trying to comment on a particular issue. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers comments on the sexism of the brothers in the film; My Fair Lady comments on the misogyny of Henry Higgins; and The Searchers comments on racism. But at the same time, they are also sexist, misogynistic, and racist.” She ultimately concludes movies can be both progressive and not progressive because of the times they’re made in.

Read more

Movies

From Hitchcock to Star Wars: What Makes a Great MacGuffin

By David Crow

Culture

Was John Wayne High Noon’s Biggest Villain?

By David Crow

My Fair Lady (1964) will be the centerpiece of TCM’s final night of Reframed programming this Thursday. A lavish big screen adaptation of Lerner and Loewe’s Broadway musical, which itself was an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play, Pygmalion, it deals with the story of cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) being remade into Professor Henry Higgins’ (Rex Harrison) ideal woman through diction lessons. And the fact the musical, written in the 1950s, changed the more transgressive ending of the original play where Eliza leaves Higgins behind, will invariably come up on Reframed.

“Some people would look at that and say, ‘My Fair Lady? What could be the problem with that? It’s a very strong female character who stands up for herself and has so much agency and power in the movie,’” Karger admits. “But then when you really look at specific scenes, particularly the end of the movie, which is what I think we talked about a lot, there are certain things that just kind of make the movie, for me at least, have the tiniest bit of a sour note.”

The question of whether My Fair Lady is a sexist movie or rather a movie about sexism became the heart of its Reframed discussion.

Adds Malone, “We also talk about the fact that that ending has been changed by some stage productions. That is happening now, and we also talk about the idea of the makeover movie. I think the Pygmalion myth is something that’s fairly sexist and outdated when you look at it, but there’s also so much to love about My Fair Lady.”

The opportunity of having these discussions has been a gift for Karger and Malone. They both stress they don’t have the answers to all the questions they raise, and that even with added time for the outros on Reframed, there is no way to cover everything that needs to be said about a film in a handful of minutes.

“I thought about multiple things I wish I said or I forgot to say, or just didn’t have time to say,” Malone says. However, she hopes the series gives viewers the tools to begin engaging more seriously with these films and embrace a greater curiosity about the past. On tonight’s line-up alone, Malone and Karger will both get to engage in discussions of films they lobbied to have included in the Reframed series.

“I had just a brief conversation with Charlie [Tabesh] about including something around the idea of gender identity, or the transgender community, because I wanted to delve into that,” Malone says. “And of course from there, it becomes what do we have the rights to? What’s in license, what can we show? So there are certain limitations on the types of films we can show in the series.” The film they ended up agreeing on is Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

“I love the fact that it is one of the classic movies that everyone should watch, a horror classic,” Malone adds.

Karger by contrast will be discussing another Audrey Hepburn movie, this one dealing with Hollywood’s history of depicting LGBTQ characters on screen.

Says Karger, “I will never forget watching the documentary The Celluloid Closet in the mid-1990s when it was released, and that was one of the seminal moments for me, as far as looking at film critically. This was a history of LGBT characters in film history over the years, and one thing you learn when you watch a documentary like that, there was this trope in films where if there was a character who was gay, that character would not live to survive at the end of the movie. That character would either be murdered, have some kind of horrible accident, or end his or her own life.”

He continues, “So you think of The Children’s Hour in the early 1960s and at first you think, ‘Oh this is something to applaud. Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn playing two women who may or may not be lesbians. Wow! This is a great thing to bring attention to.’ And then you realize they couldn’t even use the word lesbian in the movie… then the character who ends up being gay also ends up being dead by the end of the movie, and I just think it’s this unfortunate trope that tells people, consciously or not, that you can’t be gay and you can’t be alive in society… It’s a shame, because it came so close to getting it right but you realize it didn’t have the opportunity to get it right in 1961. It couldn’t with all the restrictions in the film industry and society in general.”

It will be the last night that TCM dives so directly into the murkier waters of some of Hollywood’s legacy, although both hosts hope for a second season of Reframed. Karger, who admits he shouldn’t spend so much time on social media, has seen the predictable social media reactions of “you’re ruining these movies” by talking about these elements. But he’s also been heartened by responses from fans who wished TCM provided Reframed discussions on movies that aired later in the evening, like Stagecoach (1939) or Tarzan, The Ape Man (1932). Karger says if he has it his way, they’ll include all those movies in a second season of Reframed.

Meanwhile Malone would really like to continue a thread begun with the screening of the Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy classic, Woman of the Year (1942), from several weeks ago.

“I love having discussions for films where we talk about the representation of female characters,” Malone says. “That’s something I’ve done a lot of work on, so that’s something I’d like to continue—to talk about the way women have been portrayed in films throughout Hollywood history, and we could talk about that in terms of their beauty and how that was seen to be the most valuable quality a woman could have, or the way they could search for love. I love all the women’s pictures that forces the woman at the end to give up everything for love, but for most of the movie she is a fantastically independent woman.”

Other examples of this trope she cites are His Girl Friday (1940), and nearly every movie Katharine Hepburn made after The Philadelphia Story (1940).

Karger conversely would be interested in revisiting movies with extreme age differences between couples.

“I’d love to look at films like Gigi or Love in the Afternoon,” the host says, “because I think there are some people who have issues with the much older man and much younger woman pairing. And I think I’d love to hear what my fellow TCM hosts have to say about that, because you never see it in the opposite direction.” In fact, based on just this one comment, Malone began thinking aloud about all the ageist movies spawned by Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), a camp horror classic that kicked off what Malone describes as “hagsploitation.”

When it comes to revisiting (and reframing) Hollywood classics, the options for learning more are limitless. Not that the lessons should be intimidating.

“I think it’s quite exciting the way things change,” Malone says. “Society changes so quickly, and you learn more and have different opinions, [including] on films. I love being more educated and finding out more of my own blind spots and trying to fix them.”

Reframed continues that search on Thursday March, 25, beginning with My Fair Lady at 8pm EST.

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[montagnarde1793]

Ribbons of Scarlet: A predictably terrible novel on the French Revolution (part 4)

Parts 1, 2, 3 and 5.

Inaccuracies: the minor, the inconsistent, the fuck no and the unintentionally hilarious

I have no intention of detailing every historical inaccuracy in this book. I’d say we’d be here all day, but we’ve already been here all day, so maybe all week?

The book is riddled with minor errors, oversimplifications and dubious interpretations — some of which could be chalked up in theory to writing from a limited POV, but this is not a book that allows for that kind of complexity. Opinions may be those of the characters, but explanations for events and who belongs to what group and so on tend to be those of the authors regardless of which character is speaking.

Given the level of detail of this book, I would count things like Condorcet’s being made a member of the Constituent Assembly or the Revolutionary Tribunal being founded by September 1792 minor errors. They might even have been deliberate (combining the Constituent and the Legislative Assemblies or the Tribunal of 27 August and the Revolutionary Tribunal, for “simplicity”’s sake).

“Les Enragés” is also an official group and that’s their official self-designation in the world of this novel. Um. Ok.

Also things like the complete lack of self-awareness revealed by the assumption that because 21st century Americans consider omelettes a breakfast food this must be a universal constant.

Anyway, I find that kind of thing irritating but pretty inevitable. Errare humanum est and all that.

Other minor errors are forgivable in and of themselves, I suppose, but indicative of a larger lack of understanding, similar to some of the implausible scenarios the authors set up (cf. Manon Roland’s random trip to Caen).

There’s a moment, for example, when one of the figures on trial for “conspiracy” in the red shirt affair appeals to the crowd by saying “I am suspected merely because I am an émigré.” (p. 490) which is hilarious when you realize the fact of being an émigré and returning to France after the cut-off date was already punishable by execution — a law pushed among others by our friends the reasonable, moderate “Girondins.” And I say this not to condemn them (on this point, at least) — there were actual, serious arguments in support of such a law — but to highlight a trend. The authors have decided that certain figures are reasonable, so they give them what they consider to be reasonable opinions, whether or not those opinions line up with those they actually held and, as we’ll see, they’ve decided others are dangerous extremists, so likewise they only get to do things the authors consider extreme, or at best hypocritical.

Usually there’s at least some consistency to the errors — too much in fact, as noted. But the fanciful claim that the guillotine was painted red and that everyone who was executed was dressed in red to hide the blood is repeated more than once, before being replaced with the accurate assertion that dressing the condemned in red was reserved for assassins (also arsonists and poisoners, in accordance with the penal code of 1791).

More serious are the “errors” that serve a certain narrative, like the repeated assertion that Louis XVI abolished torture and notably execution by breaking on the wheel. Er… no he didn’t. I’m going to charitably assume that the authors just confused torture for the purposes of obtaining a confession with torture as a punishment. Louis XVI abolished the former, not the latter. That may seem like a nitpick, but they make a very big fuss about it.

People were still being broken on the wheel until the implementation of the Constituent Assembly’s penal code which provided that all executions should be equal and as quick and painless as possible — ultimately leading to the adoption of the guillotine. The first execution by guillotine is apparently such a crucial event that we have to implausibly have Louis XVI’s sister sneak out and witness it, but we’ll just ignore the fact that the “hero” La Fayette’s cousin bloodily repressed the mutiny of Swiss soldiers in Nancy resulting in a number of hangings and one man being broken on the wheel — repression that La Fayette applauded — in 1790, because 1790 is a year in which nothing happened.

Besides, as is well known, La Fayette never did anything wrong (Sophie de Grouchy forgives him for firing on her when she was petitioning for a republic in 1791 (p. 509-510) so you should too, I guess. Though while we’re here, her signing the Champ de Mars petition is a pretty unlikely scenario, actually, given that only the Cordeliers petition remained after the Assembly’s 15 July decree and that even before that Condorcet didn’t dare to sign his articles in favor of a much less democratic republic than the Cordeliers were advocating for Le Républicain (which prudently stopped publication after 15 July).)

The abolition of torture thing is merely one of a number of errors or exaggeratedly charitable interpretations of Louis XVI’s actions to fit the myth of the fundamentally well-meaning, soft-hearted reformer who was just in over his head. Mme Élisabeth’s violence, while I commend it for its accuracy, serves to highlight her brother’s pacifism. We’re meant to believe that of course it was nothing but revolutionary slander/conspiracy theories to think he was actually intending to use foreign troops to restore himself to absolute power, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Mme Élisabeth asserts that she would like that to happen but her brother would never and Manon Roland confirms it from her point of view too.

On a similar note, Condorcet gets his usual “consensual figure” treatment. We’re unsurprisingly fed the myth of Condorcet as the paragon of democracy and feminism, with nary a touch of ambiguity. Even Pauline Léon can only reproach him with being ineffectual. That’s par for the course, as is framing the people’s fears of grain speculation as a conspiracy theory at least from Sophie de Grouchy’s point of view, though nothing in the text contradicts her at any point (p. 61), but framing Condorcet’s pre-revolutionary math lectures at the Lycée as him and his wife opening a school for popular education and Sophie de Grouchy personally teaching Reine Audu to read at her husband’s invitation… That’s pretty disingenuous.

On the other hand, nothing is too awful to be believed without question of the “radical” revolutionaries, whether it comes from dubious sources (as regards the myths about Lamballe being stripped naked and/or raped before or — depending on the “source” — after being massacred, or about Charlotte Corday’s head being slapped by the executioner and her body examined for evidence of virginity, or Robespierre’s lusting over Émilie de Sainte-Amaranthe and personally participating in Catherine Théot’s rituals) or is just made up. Surely the September Massacres were bad enough without imagining that random bystanders — including children — were being raped and massacred in the streets? Since calling for the execution of adult royals based on their actual actions doesn’t sound sinister enough, let’s have Pauline Léon demand the massacre of Louis XVI’s underage children too!

On that note, I have to wonder whether part of the problem is that we’re so used to hearing about atrocities on a scale that dwarfs anything that happened in the 1790s that what the sources suggest — which could still be pretty ugly, don’t get me wrong — doesn’t live up to the hype. The French Revolution is built up in reactionary propaganda like it’s one of the periods of the worst violence in history. I suspect that it’s like with a scary movie: your imagination will conjure up something far scarier than what they could show you on screen. So, expecting to find horrors, you readily believe whichever sources (or “sources”) have the most of them and fill in the blanks when the sources don’t match up to your image of what terror, chaos and violence look like.

It’s basically just deductive reasoning: they say there was horrific violence, so I’m going to depict what must have happened according to my mental image of horrific violence. It’s no different really from deciding a character is reasonable and therefore giving them the opinions you find reasonable. But not only is this poor methodology (which perhaps you don’t care about, as a novelist), it sucks out everything that’s nuanced or complicated or surprising about history for the sake of flattering your own prejudices. And that’s a shame.

Anyway, as for the red shirt affair, it’s generally believed by historians to be a cynical maneuver on the part of the Committee of General Security* to make Robespierre look like a tyrant by executing a large group of supposed co-conspirators with would-be assassins Ladmirat/Ladmiral and Cécile Renault but needless to say — and following G. Lenotre’s lead — that’s not at all how it’s portrayed here. Robespierre is of course personally involved for his own (necessarily hypocritical) reasons. He wants Émilie de Sainte-Amaranthe but in this telling she and her family have reason to believe he’s cozying up to royalists like them for personal political gain too. Oh, also, Saint-Just and Fouquier-Tinville are lusting over Émilie de Sainte-Amaranthe too, because why the fuck not?

*To use the misleading standard translation (sûreté ≠ sécurité)

Particularly ludicrous is the insinuation that not only did the Convention abolish slavery entirely as an expedient — which, to be fair, some historians argue, though there’s ample evidence that proves there was more to it than that — but that they had to because otherwise the British and Spanish would come to the slaves’ aid first. As if the plantation owners were not doing their level best to deliver their colonies over to the British precisely to preserve slavery. That bit was just insulting.

But you know, why let a little thing like reality interfere with dividing the world into reasonable people and hypocritical demagogues and the mobs that they incite, am I right?

And it’s often the absence of certain realities that poses the greatest problem. Like, counterrevolutionaries aren’t a real threat, that’s all a figment of the revolutionaries’ imagination... but as usual this idea coexists uncomfortably with the existence of actual counterrevolutionaries in the narrative.

The war, which dominated everyone’s reality from 1792 onward, is barely mentioned. Manon Roland is made to treat the idea that the Prussians were well positioned to march on Paris after the surrender of Verdun as an absurd rumor (p. 268-269) and we’re meant to agree. (This was very much not an imaginary threat, if you didn’t know.)

Also! Get ready because I’m going to cite Serna favorably for once:

Il est frappant de noter combien l’historiographie s’est de suite intéressée aux massacres de Paris et aux prisonniers d’Orléans, sans vraiment porter son intérêt sur les morts civils sur le front et la mise à sac des villes et villages à la frontière, deux poids deux mesures qui ne peuvent qu’interroger.

–      Pierre Serna, « « La France est république » : Comment est né le Nouveau Régime dans le Patriote français de Brissot » dans Michel Biard, Philippe Bourdin, Hervé Leuwers et Pierre Serna, dir., 1792. Entrer en République, Paris, A. Colin, 2013, NP, note 37.

(Translation: “It’s striking to note how the historiography took an immediate interest in the massacres in Paris and the prisoners of Orléans, without really getting interested in the civilian deaths at the front and the sacking of cities and towns along the border, a double standard that we can’t help but question.”)

I mean, we know why: military violence, up to and including every kind of war crime, is normal and expected as long as it’s a proper war conducted between two foreign powers (though the various foyers of civil war also don’t really come up in this book). But yeah, that is a pretty big fucking hypocritical double standard, isn’t it? And one that this particular novel reflects rather than invents (as is also true of many of its other flaws, to be entirely fair).

It’s also particularly ironic, for a book that touts itself as feminist, that the real gains made by women regarding inheritance, marriage redefined as a contract between equal partners dissolvable by divorce, the rights of single mothers and illegitimate children and so on — even if the periods of Reaction that followed reversed them — are nowhere to be seen. Nor do we see women voting on the constitution of 1793 or fighting in the army or any of a number of things real women did. I concede that no one novel can be expected to show everything, but given the things they bent over backward to include, would it have been so difficult to include things that are thematically relevant?

This wouldn’t even piss me off so much except for the way Pauline Léon’s storyline ends. Her arc consists of her being convinced of the folly of those of her beliefs that the author doesn’t approve of so that she can be used as a mouthpiece for the moral the author wants us to take from all this and then being forced into marriage because she gets pregnant. And I cite (p. 433):

They would silence us all.

One woman at a time.

First the Angel of Assassination. Then Widow Capet, who had once been queen. Olympe de Gouges five days ago. Now proud Manon Roland.

A professed Girondin, Manon was still against tyranny and had been an advocate for the republic since the dawn of the Terror. Once, I wouldn’t have been able to admit that, but I could admit it now. Now that it’s too late.

And, when she tells Théophile Leclerc he got her pregnant, he replies (p. 435):

“‘We must marry. You’ve no other choice,’” he continued when I didn’t respond. […]

We had wanted liberty in France. But what freedom was there now? I had none. Théo would possess me utterly. I knew it, because the look her gave me had me wanting to crumble to the ground. All the choices I’d fought years for had been stripped away.

And now, I was nothing.

If there’s one point in history before the last 50 years or so that that’s not true it’s in 1793, when this scene is set. Will she be more comfortably off if she marries? Yes, and that would unfortunately be true pregnant or not. But there’s nothing forcing her to marry him if she doesn’t want to and even if she does he doesn’t own or control her under revolutionary marriage law. Were things perfect for women in 1793? Of course not, but given that they were a lot worse both before and especially after, I’m more than a little sick of 1793 being portrayed as the most misogynist of all the misogynist eras.

Ironically though, they omit Amar’s report and the closing of women’s political societies* which is a far more relevant and accurate point if you’re trying to make the case for revolutionary misogyny. Not to mention, it’s kind of baffling to leave it out of Pauline Léon’s storyline as it was targeted against the society she led in particular. (Her section ends instead with Manon Roland’s execution.) But I guess that would require introducing Amar and we can’t have people believing that Robespierre, Danton and Marat weren’t the only Montagnards; they might get confused otherwise. Maybe at this point I should just be glad they didn’t give Robespierre Amar’s speech in the name of consolidation of characters?

*NB, mixed societies were never closed (until the Thermidorian Reaction shut down all political clubs), so the result is a bit more ambiguous than is often claimed.

Anyway. We’ll finally conclude this mess in the next part…

[rewatchdoctorwho]

My Top 10 Classic Series Episodes

This list was incredibly difficult to compile.  You’ll no doubt notice how many of the stories I listed as my favourites from particular Doctors are not present.  You’ll likewise notice the complete absence of a couple of Doctors from this list altogether.  Ultimately I decided to go with the stories I would automatically think of when considering different eras of the series, even if those particular stories might not be the ones I think are the best or even the ones I like the most.  Doubtless many of you will curse my name and hate me forever after reading this list, which is fair.

10. The Seeds of Doom

There are many superbly classic stories from the famous Season 13, but my personal favourite has always been “The Seeds of Doom,” one of the darkest and most horrifying tales Doctor Who has ever told.  I mean yeah, it’s more or less ripping off H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness and the original Howard Hawkes version of The Thing from Another World, but it’s still wonderfully told and manages to keep the tension ratcheted up throughout all six parts, something very few stories of this time period manage to do.  The scenes in the arctic, showing a man slowly transforming into a plant monster, is still quite horrific to this day.

9. Remembrance of the Daleks

A cherished fan-favourite, “Remembrance of the Daleks” is one of the most exciting and action-packed stories of the Classic Series, and carried long-term consequences for the series as a whole and its titular character.  Never before had the Doctor seemed so powerful, so intense, and so frightening.  There are a lot of subtle hints that the Doctor, in his words, is “more than just another Time Lord,” and while these implications have been more or less overlooked in the modern series, this was the beginning of the controversial “Oncoming Storm” interpretation of the Doctor, and the story would go on to influence the legendary Time War storyline that still resonates throughout the series to this day.

8. The Keys of Marinus

Despite how much I love stories like “The Space Museum” and “The Tenth Planet,” I always find myself going back to “The Keys of Marinus,” what I consider to be the first really good Doctor Who story, and the one that is of high quality through all six installments.  I’ve always loved the structure of this story, with the first chapter introducing us to this strange planet and the challenge of the Doctor and his companions having to recover the titular keys that lie scattered across that planet. The next four chapters see us taken to four very different parts of the planet of Marinus, each with a different challenge for our heroes to overcome in their quest to collect the Keys.  This also offers the characters rare opportunities to have the screen more to themselves than usual as they pair off to pursue the Keys in different places, giving the actors a change to develop and show off their characters to greater degrees than previously afforded.

7. The War Games

What really makes “The War Games” so notable, beyond its ingeniously-written structure that keeps the dramatic tension up for the entirety of the mammoth ten-part story, is the sheer wealth of mythology the story introduces.  We learn for the first time that the Doctor belongs to an alien super-race from the planet Gallifrey call the Time Lords, a race he abandoned after stealing the TARDIS to wander the universe to both of his heart’s content.  We see the introduction of the famous Sonic Screwdriver (which is actually used to unscrew something), and witness the beginning of the Doctor’s long exile on Earth as a punishment for breaking the Time Lords’ most sacred rule of noninterference with the timeline of the universe.  Virtually the whole of the broader mythology of the series was birthed here, and watching it unfold was an unforgettable experience.

6. City of Death

When most people talk about the magic that was Tom Baker’s performance as the Doctor, scenes from “City of Death” are usually what they’ll reference.  Every Doctor Who fan worth their salt can recite the iconic “Wonderful Butler” scene from memory, and the sparkling writing combined with some truly beautiful location photography in Paris make for an endless memorable story.  The plot is a brilliant piece of melodramatic science fiction courtesy of the great author Douglas Adams, who penned many of the show’s best stories from the late 1970’s.

5. Tomb of the Cybermen

Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor is one of my very favourites, and in no other story is everything that is wonderful about this portrayal so well displayed as the legendary “Tomb of the Cybermen.”  Aside from the beautiful photography and iconic sequences, this is the episode where the Doctor’s gentler, nobler, and wiser side is first really centre stage, which contrasts wonderfully with the titular Cybermen at their most disturbing and sinister.  I was always a fan of the Cybermen, but this story really catapulted them into my number one spot on the list of favourite Doctor Who monsters.

4. Genesis of the Daleks

This is the first story where Tom Baker really got to show us what he could do in Doctor Who, and was (in my opinion) the first step on his road to becoming the greatest Doctor of them all.  The legendary moment when he, with the future of the entire Dalek race literally in the palm of his hands, questions whether he has the right to exterminate them just as they have exterminated so many other races, is still talked about as a definitive moment for the character.  The story is notable for other reasons too.  It fully fleshed out the origin story of the Daleks, something that had only been hinted at in previous stories despite their huge popularity with fans, and introduced what I consider to be the Doctor’s greatest enemy, the megalomaniacal Davros, the father of the Dalek race.

3. The Curse of Fenric

“Curse of Fenric” might just be my favourite Doctor Who story of the 1980’s, and I pin that mostly down to the very strong direction and borderline apocalyptic themes.  It’s a prime example of how one can tell a large-scale story on a small-scale budget and location.  The elements of gothic horror, Viking mythology, transcendental science fiction and complex emotional drama are blended together seamlessly into one very pleasing package.  This is the kind of story that I would have watched over and over again as a child had I known about it then, even if I would have done so from beneath the safety of my blankets.  A real masterpiece.

2. The Caves of Androzani

For a lot of the Classic Series, the viewer has to more or less meet the program halfway. The quality of the writing, acting, directing, and especially special effects aren’t always up to the standards we have these days, but if you can overlook that, there’s still a lot of fun to be had.  “The Caves of Androzani,” however, need no such contextual crutches.  This story holds up unbelievably well even today. The plot is nuanced and sensitive without being too complex, the directing feels very modern with a uniquely strong pace and sense of immediacy, the special effects are pretty strong by Doctor Who standards, and the acting is among the finest the program has seen in the entirety of its history.  There’s not a lot I can say about this story I haven’t already spoken about at length, but considering how poor the series would get in the next couple of years following it, it’s emotional clout and thematic weight is even more remarkable.

1. Shada

“This is absolutely unfair; ‘Shada’ was never finished and surely animated reconstructions can’t count” I can hear many of you say.  Well it’s my list and “Shada” is my all-time favourite Doctor Who story.  Of course it had to be a Tom Baker story, and this story shows off everything that was good (and everything I liked best) about his time on the show.  It’s simply a delightful story that takes you into places of complex morality and science fiction madness that few other stories from the Classic Series have dared or done so well.

What I like most about “Shada” is its tone.  As we’ve seen, Doctor Who is a show than can tackle a variety of different stories, some light, some dark, some heavy, some silly.  But the kind of Doctor Who story I always liked best were the ones that sparkle, the ones that show us just how magical and delightful the Doctor’s life can be, the ones that give us the biggest sense of how wonderful travelling through the universe aboard a spacetime machine that looks like a phone booth on the outside must feel.  And “Shada” is by far the best exemplar of this in the Classic Series.  Is it the best Doctor Who story ever told?  No.  Is it the most fun?  I say yes. And if you don’t like that, well, I don’t like your tailor.

[pantalaiimon]

A (very long!) personal review of Norma Jeane Baker of Troy

I was lucky enough to see the play twice during its final week, and I absolutely loved it.

This review is going to be very long and nowhere near as polished and articulate as I would wish, so here is a short review I found in the comment section of the New York Times’s own review, and agreed with : “[This] review of Norma Jeane Baker of Troy makes it seem overwhelmingly difficult to sort out the many characters who are indirectly present on stage, from Euripides to Arthur Miller to Persephone, Stevie Smith and Menelaus. However, witnessing the increasingly feverish transformation of the initially very composed narrator--down to every comma, colon and period of his dictation--into his own subject is a thrilling, breathless journey. While revealing all the artifice that goes into the creation of his mythic character - from the false hips to the wig--the play still sweeps us away with the authentic force of inevitability that makes for a Greek--or a tabloid--tragedy. The complexity and multi-layered-ness of Anne Carson’s text only adds to the escalating emotional intensity, with Renée Fleming’s ever more voluminous voice providing a Greek chorus all her own, radiantly exploding the small night office on stage, leaving us with so many shards and splinters, so many leads and ideas and feelings, and yes, haunted.”

(Rehearsal photos.)

On to my own thoughts! So, I appreciate Anne Carson’s writing a great deal, and what pleased me the most with that play was the brilliance and poetry of the language. There’s wit, cleverness, and beauty in the text itself. I’d recommend reading the play to anyone who likes reading experimental theatre or poetry.

The themes drew me in quickly when I first heard of the project. I was always interested in Helen’s story and viewpoint in the Trojan War, always struck by the tragedy and sadness of Monroe’s life, and that myth of the poisonous beauty. I was pleasantly surprised to discover other interests of mine also catered to, while watching the play: my love of etymology - especially greek - or even the bit about psychoanalysis. As a topic, war interests me less, but I did not find myself tuning out during the ‘histories of war’ as I have read others have, as they were short, understandable, and as well and efficiently written as the rest.

I have never read Euripides’s Helen, but know the gist of it, and I don’t know a whole lot about Monroe, but I found the play very self-explanatory, so long as you’re ready to let it “wash over you” as the creative team recommended, and don’t fixate on some of the more obscure references. I did not find it hard to follow at all, actually, nor all that abstract. And the huge reward is that the text has so many layers of meaning, and is so very evocative, that I found myself thinking on it, and making connections, and appreciating it, for quite some time after seeing the play. (I still do, actually, well over a week on).

(Rehearsals. You can see a wire running up his back to some sort of earbud, which he wore - quite conspicuously imo - during the run too. I’m guessing it was some sort of help for when he had to sing?)

I loved the text so much, so here’s an excerpt I find gorgeous and horrific and oh so efficient, made all the more brilliant for the way Ben’s and Renée’s voices interweave, sometimes speaking, sometimes singing:

“BW (singing): And isn’t that how it always starts, this myth that ends with the "girl grown bad"?

RF (singing, jazzy): She's in a meadow gathering flowers

twirling her own small sunny hours.

BW (speaking, darkly): When up rides a man on black horses.

Up rides a man in a black hat.

Up rides a man with a black letter to deliver.

RF (singing, jazzy, ethereal): Shall I make you my queen?

She's maybe 12 or 13.

RF (speaking harshly): Rape

BW (speaking): Yes, rape

is the story of Helen,

RF (speaking): Persephone,

Norma Jeane,

Troy.

RF (singing, more operatic): War is the context

and God is a boy.

Oh my darlings,

they tell you you’re born with a precious pearl.

((A precious pearl.))

Truth is,

oh, it’s a disaster to be a girl.

((It’s a disaster to be a girl.

A girl.

A girl.))

Up came the black horses and the dark King.

And the harsh harsh sunshine was as if it had never been.

In the halls of Hades they said I was queen.

((They said I was queen.

They said I was queen.))"

(For anyone who’s interested, here’s a link to a tumblr post where you’ll find an (illicit) recording of the whole play.)

I read the play before seeing it the second time around, and that helped me better understand some details from the previous night (I’ll get to what makes the play sometimes harder to get), and it also added to my appreciation of the text on the second viewing. I am grateful to the fellow fan who advised me to read it (when we were chatting, waiting for Ben to leave, the first night), and who told me they sold it at the bookstore set up in a corner of the lobby.

(I actually read the play while in my seat waiting for it to start, the second night. It’s a very quick read.)

(the set as seen from my seat the first night vs the second night.)

On to the actors and directing ! I know that part of what made me like the text so much is certainly due to the way it was told and presented. I liked a lot of directing choices. The way they explained away Ben being male and still being a voice for Norma Jeane worked very well imo. (It might not have worked quite that well with many other male actors, granted.) I thought I would find the set (an office space straight from the 60s) a bit drab, but I ended up liking it, and it fit well with the story. I also liked the sound design (made up mostly of recordings of Renée’s voice). And I loved the way that, at first, Renée’s voice is only heard in recordings that are meant to be her thoughts (echoing Ben’s words) - it worked really really well. I thought it was fine that we did not know much about either characters, their motivations, backgrounds, stories, desires and inner thoughts. There was a lot to be understood about them in the way they acted, reacted, and the emotions they showed. The rest is up to interpretation, which is liberating for the imagination. I like when the audience is not spoon-fed a message, an intent, a categorical viewpoint etc.

The play had this very lovely trick that has Ben’s character dictating what turns out to be the play’s actual text to Renée’s character (who types it) as if it were his own translation of Euripides’ Helen, complete with his own encroaching obsession with Monroe (due to her recent suicide). I thought it clever and original. Also what a feat of memory! It meant Ben was saying out loud every “comma”, and “new line”, and “brackets”, and so on! It also lent itself to some funny moments and laughter from the audience (see “Fritz Lang, the famous director. Period. New line. That’s enough about him. Period. New Line.”). I liked how Renée’s character slowly starts contributing to the text, and the tongue-in-cheek bits where she’s starting to get used to his writing style and answers “comma” or “new line” at the right place, and the way he beams right back at her. As a whole, the growing complicity between both characters is quite touching, and an efficient way to show it, is when they start both contributing to the text, answering each other’s line, and building it together, as it were (see the long quotation above). And the fact that everything in the text was said, including stage directions, provided the play with a very beautiful (imo) last line, “Exeunt omnes singing.”, which I greatly enjoyed, and found very fitting.

I thought the ‘history of war’ bits were cleverly interwoven, and useful for the getting on of what was also happening to the characters beyond the story they were telling about Helen and Monroe. That is to say: Ben’s character’s slow transformation into Monroe, as he seems to try to get as close to her as he can, to maybe try and understand her from the inside. The ‘history of war’ lessons were all pre-recorded by Ben, and would often play while he was gradually shedding his suit, applying - a lot of - makeup, putting on some lingerie and necessary padding (breasts, hips, buttocks), getting heels and the iconic white dress. And it made sense story-wise, as the ‘history of war’ lessons came in the shape of recorded tapes of Ben’s character’s notes, that Renée’s character would listen to as she typed them.

What worked less well for me, was when Ben was speaking while Renée was singing. It happened often enough, and while their voices were well calibrated most of the time, it made it hard to understand or even hear the both of them at once. I know I missed a few things the first night because of that, and I think it would have been easy to stop listening or give up trying to at some of those points. A lot of focus was required to keep track of both of what they were saying/singing.

The second night, I was in the eighth row, so I could see people leaving during the play, and there were something like 7 or 8 that did. A fan I chatted with afterwards mentioned how the men next to her kept whispering “Shall we leave?” to each other (which is just fucking rude and annoying for the people next to them, gdi). I have no idea what it was that made so many people leave (especially considering the cost of the seats!!). Was the play just too complex? Are people not used to poetic language? Were the anachronisms too disturbing? (And yet there was always laughter at stuff like “Arthur of Sparta and New York”!) Was it Ben’s slow transformation into a woman that was disturbing? Or did people feel they knew and understood too little about the characters?

Well, it was their loss, especially given the quality of performers they had the privilege to see before their own eyes. I’ll talk more about Ben than Renée because he is, ultimately, the reason I went to see the play, and he’s the one I’ve been a fan of for so long. But Renée was just great, her voice and singing were absolutely stunning and gorgeous. I know I had not heard her sing jazz before, but she was so good! I loved that there were different music styles. I really liked the pre-recorded swingy track that played while Ben was dancing (partly for the dichotomy between the joyous carefree singing and the text itself which was form a ‘history of war’ lesson)... One thing I don’t get is people wondering why she would take on such a part and project, when it should seem obvious why she did so: because she wanted to. She’s at a stage in her career where she can do absolutely anything she wants to, and she’s a sufficiently grounded person that she doesn’t need to be at the center of the attention all the time?? Maybe the text called to her, maybe it was the concept of a ‘melologue’, maybe the sheer artistry? She probably explains it somewhere in an interview I haven’t read, but I, for one, respect her choice, and feel very grateful that I had the opportunity to be mere meters away as she was performing. She clearly enjoyed a good relationship with Ben too (see their filmed interview (here’s an excerpt), or how they’d smile at each other during curtain calls, or the fact that they’d spend time together at the bar in the lobby after the play).

On to Ben ! I think I pretty much kept my eyes glued on him 99,5% of the time, which was a personal choice I’m happy with ;) He was everything I could ever hope him to be. A masterful actor, capable of a huge range of emotions and character, and great nuance and absolute authenticity. Everything he did felt true and on point (strangely enough, the part I believed him the less was a brief moment when he cried, the first night?? maybe I’m too used to the very best crying from him...). His American accent sounded pretty good to my foreigner ears. Mostly, I was deeply impressed by the way his character slowly transformed from a distant yet agitated male office manager to a sweet, distressed, extremely genuine, and very touching Marilyn Monroe. His character gained in depth (while seeming to express very simple things), humanity, and freedom, in the process. I really appreciated the authenticity he radiated, which struck me especially when talking about the daughter, Hermione, or the sweetly innocent way he laughed or danced. There was no vanity in the transformation, and no objectification of a woman’s body, which - as a woman - I was grateful for.

Ben’s utter lack of inhibitions while on stage felt like a true blessing, and was absolutely impressive. I hope it means that the way my considerations will soon turn quite objectifying is not too horrible a thing... To start off lightly, I’ll say that he sung beautifully, and could even hold his own in a duet with Renée, which is very very impressive. He also danced surprisingly well (with coordinated moves!). And I might have metaphorically drooled when he did. Good God, Ben’s dancing was a thing of beauty and sin. It was extremely seductive and playful, yet innocent and sweet. It felt both sexual and chaste. Idek. He would smile sweetly and laugh self-consciously a couple of times while dancing, which made his character quite endearing. Did I mention that it happened while he was wearing a corset, heels, and trousers that beautifully hugged his arse? That moment made crossing the Atlantic to see the play more than worth it.

The fact that he showed a lot of his body was far from displeasing either, omg. (And again, I marvel at his utter lack of inhibitions.) The only article of clothing he did not lose were his briefs (and he spent a lot of time adding padding to his hips and buttocks underneath a second pair of underpants, which meant there were a few minutes where he was adjusting things down there and being very hands-on). What looked the best on him by far was the corset, which he would put on expertly. I know I have a slightly obsessive admiration for his tiny teensy waist, and it was a joy to see it so beautifully emphasised. In a perfect world, Ben Whishaw should always appear in a corset...

Am I creepy yet? I hope not! To finish on appearances, I’ll say that while he’d kept his scarce body hair, it did not look too bad when he wore the feminine clothes, and that the dress and heels (of which there were two pairs btw) looked good on him. He seemed at ease in the clothing, and had no trouble with the heels, even though he was not 100% a pro at walking with them. The makeup also looked good on him, but I have reservations about the red nails (especially while he was still wearing his dark green suit). And I’m not too sure about the wig. Blond just does not suit him. At the end, he did not really look anything like Monroe. But it was obvious he was meant to, and it did not really matter that he did not, imo. It didn’t bother me, anyway.

There’s the matter of his muscles too, which another tumblr user commented on in her (great) review, talking them up so much that I started to fear they would be hideously big! His frame is slight, and I appreciate harmony. Thankfully, there was nothing disharmonious about his muscles, and I did not notice much of a difference from his more recent appearances. Sure, he’s more built than he was in his twenties, but not dramatically so. The point is, he looked definitely healthy, and that’s a big plus considering what he used to look like...

End of the objectifying ramblings ;)

For me it was a (very) long-awaited dream come true, to finally see Ben act in front of my own two eyes, and Lord were all my (high) expectations met. He is clearly in his element on stage, and delivers the best performances. I know I am influenced by my mother (who was an actress in her youth) when I rate the stage the highest, but truly, it’s the liveliest and most direct medium for story-telling. Ben has made me feel a lot for the past ten years of watching his on-screen work, but there’s something to be said about being in the same room, as he says the words, emotes, moves, and creates his character out of his material. I was especially glad for my (center) third row seat the first night, which allowed me to really see Ben’s and Renée’s faces and perceive all the subtle emotions that played there.

That third row seat also allowed me a one-of-a-kind experience, that can only happen at the theatre. The play starts with Ben’s character coming in and setting his things around. Then, seated at the front desk, facing the audience, he starts talking, recording history of war number nine. It’s a long-ish rambling speech, that his character says quite seriously but passionately, seemingly searching for words, and with many different ideas clashing about. It’s very stream of consciousness, and it takes place before the fifth minute of the play. And right in the middle of this, all of a sudden, Ben stares right into my eyes, and maintains eye-contact for the next 20 seconds or so, continuing to deliver that monologue of sort. Picture it, if you will : here I am, very intent on listening, and then, bam, we lock eyes, and I kinda freak out, trying to maintain a composed outer appearance. I honestly did not know what to do any longer. It felt like an eternity. It was spooky, intense, and amazing. I had no-one to my left or right for a couple of seats (which was unexpected?), so there was no mistaking he was staring at me. My mother confirmed that actors can see the first three or four rows of the audience perfectly well. She said she’d avoid looking at them, for fear of losing her concentration, but that it spoke to Ben’s level of professionalism, experience, and mastery, that he could afford to choose to look at anyone he damn well pleased in the audience, while acting perfectly...

Needless to say, it was a unique experience, that could have made my night all on its own. Only, I was a girl with a purpose, and I had also planned to try my luck at the stage door. Which did not exist per se. But thanks to this very timely review (thank you @moonwest!!), I knew that the performers were likely to exit via the lobby and that there was the chance to meet them there. So I chose to wait there after the play.

When Ben came down the first night, he made a beeline for the bar, to meet with Mark and someone else (some older man). So the few fans waiting about kept waiting about, and it was a nice chance to chat with a couple of lovely students from China. So much so, that I missed Renée’s departure. She had joined Ben & co at the bar, but left quickly, walked right past us, and was not stopped by anyone. She proceeded to take the subway home that night, as she posted about on her instagram.

Soon enough, Ben left too, we intercepted him gently, and he graciously stopped. Mark kind of disappeared, but the other man hanged about and carried some of Ben’s presents (including a rose bouquet from one of the girls I was chatting with), so that Ben could keep a free hand. He agreed with us that Ben was amazing and very kind. (This man is damn right.) There were maybe five of us, and we each got the time to talk to him, give him presents, take pictures etc. He was very humble, almost shy, but gracious, very kind, and very polite. He made me feel at ease. There was a beautiful gentleness. I got to thank him and compliment the play (quite articulately, to my amazement, haha). He signed my playbill. I gave him chocolate (almost apologetically, but he assured me he liked that kind of stuff). And I asked (very politely) for a hug, and he agreed, and it was sort of the best moment of my life. Maybe I should have mentioned that I had admired him for the past ten years, and came over to NYC especially for him and the play, but it felt too intense or extreme, so I did not. I did not dare ask for a photo then, but the next girl thrust her phone at me to take her pic with Ben. This started a round of photo taking. I was the last one to go up to him to ask for photos, having entrusted my phone to one of the two girls I had been chatting with earlier - and she, very wisely, took the liberty to take a photo of Ben while he was chatting with another fan (see above). She would also exclaim stuff to me in French (she’d jumped at the chance to practice her French with me). (Does Ben know what “Il est si mignon!” means? Cause he might have heard her ^^’. Well, he is cute.) At last (”it’s the last one”, mentioned the older guy, keeping up and talking about me), Ben posed with me, and I was amazingly calm. I think I was just too happy and contented to be anything else. I absolutely love the two photos that that fellow fan took of us, and I treasure them greatly. He left quietly then, having been extremely considerate with us all.

That stage door experience the first night was just perfect, so I was at peace with anything that might happen the second night. I had already accomplished a decade-long goal: see Ben on-stage, and get a chance to talk to him. He took longer to come down the second night, kind of scanned the lobby on his way down the escalator, finally found his friends and went to their table. I kept a discreet eye on it, and caught Mark’s arrival (the two of them hugged) later on. They took their time (and I almost left), then finally started leaving. I had struck up a conversation with a fellow Ben Whishaw fan (and kind of rescued her from watching the escalators long after Ben had already arrived in the lobby), so the two of us approached Ben. (Again, Mark is a master at disappearing??) (And so were the two friends.) The other fan mentioned that she’d seen him in Julius Caesar last year, and Ben asked if she’d been part of the crowd. I was too tired that night to think up of anything clever to say, so I just thanked him, completely forgot to give him the present I had prepared (more chocolate, with a little note this time, which had taken me so long to write because of my horrible handwriting), and asked if he would sign my copy of the play. He started by signing his name, then I panicked because I also wanted him to address it to me but didn’t know of a polite way to ask for it and so kept silent, but he totally rescued me by asking me my name. He struggled a bit with it, and I had to spell it twice because he stopped in the middle of it, lost. Then realisation struck, and he pronounced it out loud the English way (which sounds nothing like the French pronunciation of it). He added ‘love’ and an x to the autograph. I thanked him profusely, barely awake, but very grateful. The other woman asked for a selfie, my last waking brain-cell told me to congratulate him on his (very recent then) BAFTA, which I did (wondering if I sounded like an idiot), and he graciously thanked me and then left quickly. Renée did not appear in the lobby that night. (Or maybe I missed her. Again.)

As an aside : Mark’s fashion sense is an utter disaster. Seriously. Ben’s new overalls were very much in evidence both nights, and it’s quite cute (I don’t love them, but it’s cute). And his hair had regained all its famed wildness after being somewhat tamed during the play (see pictures above). Less shallowly, I’d like to stress how incredible the difference between his true character and what he can do on stage is. Irl, he’s this humble, gentle, quite introverted man, and on stage he shines and dazzles, dares all, and bares his soul. That dichotomy is beyond impressive. And it’s fucking fascinating.

(Curtain call photos from the first night I attended, source.) (And here are links to beautiful pictures of Ben at the ‘stage door’, taken by the fan with the rose bouquet I met the first night. She’s also the one who recommended I read the play. Have a peek at her photos, if you feel like it. She has many many more on her instagram.)

So... it’s been almost two weeks since all of that happened, and I have been very busy, but I am still filled with joy and happiness about it all. It makes me smile widely any time I think back on this gorgeous experience. I cherish my memories (and memorabilia!) of it, and will for a very very long time. I plan on going to see more of his plays, if I can, and if they speak to me. Finally fulfilling that old dream was the wisest decision I took this year. And as a psych student, I cannot help but notice that there is a lesson there, in actually realising one’s dreams if one can (eg financially), no matter how frivolous, extravagant, or silly we might judge them to be, because it will do us a whole lot of good, and bring tremendous happiness and appreciation in one’s life. I am truly grateful for this beautiful experience.

Thank you to any mad person’s who’s read me this far! Please to not hesitate to drop me a line if you want even further details (and i’ll delight in racking my brain & memory for you), or just to gush about the play and/or Ben Whishaw =D

[harry-sussex]

My Thoughts on The Duke of Cambridge, The Duchess of Sussex, Kensington Palace, Accountability, and the Cyberbullying Task Force

I recognize that not everyone agrees with me, and that’s alright.  I am more than willing to have a discussion but I implore you to be respectful about it.  I believe in my soul that The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and The Duke and Duchess of Sussex would want their fans to discuss things civilly, respectfully, and fairly.  As a fan of all four of them forever, I will engage in conversations that only treat them with the fairness, dignity, and respect that they deserve.

Prince William gave a powerful, honest, and bold speech today at the BBC on the topic of the cyberbullying task force he convened a year ago.  Instead of the typical praises, thanks, and platitudes that are often synonymous with royal speeches, The Duke of Cambridge delivered a powerful and polarizing analysis of his contributions and lack thereof to the task force, including both successes and failures.  Instead of proclaiming various successes on behalf of his task force, he admitted its faults, admitted its failures, admitted his own wrongdoings and biases.  He vowed to use this as a learning experience so he could use his incredible platform to help victims of cyberbullying, and to  - someday - eliminate it altogether.

This analysis came with a plea.  Not directed towards the public, but directed towards social media developers.  The plea was more of a subtle demand - a demand for social media developers to consider cyberbullying when further advancing technology for use in their platforms.  His message became clearer and more powerful as he added a personal touch - he brought up the perils of raising three young children in a world of cyberbullying after having seen firsthand as an air ambulance pilot the effect words can have on vulnerable populations.

He held accountable the developers of social media platforms who are often reluctant to make changes that do not result in a direct profit.  He commended these people for the undeniable impression they have made on the history of mankind, one that will last forever.  But, he put the power in their hands - it is up to the developers to expand the safety and filtering features available on social media platforms to protect users.  

He made it clear that it is not up to victims or the common population.  These people should not be forced to scroll through their own feeds and they should not be responsible for reporting cyberbullying comments.  In a perfect world, these comments should never reach anyone’s feeds.  This world is not perfect and nobody is claiming it is.  However, cutting off the availably of a platform for cyberbullying will eliminate or vastly decrease the number of comments made.  That, as Prince William made clear today, is up to the developers and the developers alone.

My impression of this plea was that it was a place to start.  Ultimately, the goal is to eliminate cyberbullying altogether.  This is a tall order, one that is complex and not easily fulfilled.  You cannot systematically change the minds of millions of people overnight.  One must start with baby steps, and that starts with the people at the top.  If developers admit their own accountability, vow to initiate programs and technological advancements that are for the good of mankind (if not for a direct profit), and initiate change in this way, it could trickle down to the masses.  If there is no platform for hate speech and cyberbullying due to advancing technologies, then the effect of such hurtful words is minimized.  Over time, this type of speech may even vanish.

This type of change cannot happen person-by-person.  It has to happen within the technology of social media platform development.  Prince William made that very clear in his speech today.

It is a noble endeavor supported by The Duke of Cambridge.  It is even more noble that he admitted his approach was faulty at first, and that he vowed to learn from his mistakes and alter his approach to continue to combat cyberbullying in a more effective and efficient manner.

When I read the full transcript of the speech, I was stunned.  And then I read it again, and I was proud.  We have seen more so than ever this year that Prince William has a certain kind of skill that prioritizes diplomacy, intelligence, and the ability to speak about polarizing and often political subjects without leaning even a centimeter to either side.  He is developing phenomenally as an heir, as the future Prince of Wales and as the future King.

It did not take long for people to condemn his words.

Reading the comments on the Kensington Palace Instagram page or Twitter feed is an exercise in restraint to Wales, Cambridge, and Sussex fans.  For every positive comment, there are at least three negative - calling The Duchess of Cornwall a home-wrecker/”Not Diana”, calling the Duchess of Cambridge a slut/mattress, and repeatedly insisting that The Duchess of Sussex does not belong in the British Royal Family for reasons that many of them refuse to write out in words.

Everyone knows why they say that about Meghan, though.  It may have a tiny bit to do with her being an American (xenophobia), it may have a tiny bit to do with her career prior to her marriage (classism/general judgment), and it may have a tiny bit to do with her being divorced (sexism).

The real reason, though, is that they’re racists.  Plain and simple.  They see the (relatively speaking) pure-white history of the British Royal Family, and they see that their beloved Prince Harry married a biracial divorced American actress, and they settle on the fact that she doesn’t “fit in.”  That she doesn’t look like William, Catherine, or Harry.  That she doesn’t have blonde hair or blue/green eyes or porcelain skin, that she doesn’t “match.”  That she “sticks out.”  It’s sickeningly racist.  It’s horrific.  It’s inexcusable and unforgivable and nauseating and cruel and disrespectful and I could go on and on and on with adjectives to describe just how terrible it all is.  Yes, these are all things that I have read with my own two eyes about poor Meghan, who just happens to be biracial, who has a big heart and such compassion and empathy and sweetness and strength and who just happened to fall in love with and marry someone who just happens to be a British Prince.

Reading it with my own two eyes makes my skin crawl, makes my heart ache for this woman who I have grown to adore and for her husband who I have loved for several years.

And it’s horrible, and it’s infuriating.  Whenever I scroll through, I often find myself seeing red not three comments down.  Chris Jackson has had to disable comments on his photos of The Duchess of Sussex (and, to my knowledge, only The Duchess of Sussex).  That’s not due to anything other than her being biracial.  If it was about divorce, Chris Jackson would have had to disable comments on photos of The Duchess of Cornwall.  If It was about sexism or classicism, Chris Jackson would have had to disable comments on The Duchess of Cambridge.

It’s about racism.  Period.  Maybe a tiny bit of xenophobia, but the real dominating reason for this is about racism.

People who have condemned Prince William’s speech today believe that he is being a hypocrite for speaking out against cyberbullying - especially so frankly and bluntly - because he does nothing to control the comment stream on the Kensington Palace Instagram and Twitter feeds.  “He is in charge,” they say.  “He doesn’t monitor the comment threads and therefore he is complicit in the racism that Meghan faces every day.”

Prince William has a job, and that job is to be The Duke of Cambridge, soon to be The Prince of Wales, the heir to the heir to the throne.  A father, and a husband, and a son, and a brother.  A Prince and a future King.  His job is not monitoring the Instagram and Twitter comment threads to which I can almost guarantee he has no access.  He does not control the Kensington Palace feeds or comments or replies.  I would argue that he likely does not even have access to these accounts.  Prince William - and his wife, and his brother, and now his sister-in-law - learned a long, long time ago to avoid the comments made about them and their family.  Nobody in the world knows better than William and Harry how damaging the media and the general population can be when they’re greedy and unkind.

Kensington Palace has a staff of people whose entire jobs are dedicated to monitoring the social media presence of the Cambridge and Sussex households.  Theoretically, these people could disable comments on all posts, and eliminate the platform altogether.  Maybe that’s a conversation that has already been had, one that we are not privy to.  Maybe it’s a conversation that they need to have.

But, in my opinion, what about the positive comments?  What about the comments that recognize these four remarkable individuals as instruments for good?  What about the citizens of the United Kingdom and of the Commonwealth who have a right to at least some access to the most relatable generation of the Royal Family?  What about well-wishers from across the globe who want to wish love, happiness, success, and prosperity on the young British royals?

Is the Kensington Palace staff really going to penalize the positive and supportive commentators for the actions of the racists and bigots?  How is that fair?  Are they going to really further limited already-limited access to the Cambridges and Sussexes?  

Eliminating the comments section on the Kensington Palace feeds does not teach people anything.  It just allows them to be cruel somewhere else, directed at someone else.  What does that accomplish?  That’s not in line with Prince William’s message at all.

A huge part of the success of the monarchy is in public relations.  If you take away yet another point of access to an already private group of young royals, people will only grow more and more aggravated.  Charles’ popularity suffered for years and years and years.  Even now, the polls (which should be taken with a grain of salt) indicated that the four younger royals hold significantly more popularity than the next King?  The monarchy does not need the most popular generation of British royalty - arguably ever - to take any massive hits in popularity.  

They could shut off the comment sections, sure.  But really, what would it solve?

Who is accountable for the racist remarks made against Meghan?  Easy - the commentators.  The racists and the bigots.  But, as Prince William made very clear in his speech today, it is immensely difficult to change the minds and perceptions of millions and millions of people all at once.  I would argue that it’s pretty near impossible to do so.

Prince William’s charge was clear - the social media developers need to analyze their platforms and brainstorm better ways to monitor what is being said in comment threads and posts.  These technologies will trickle down to the masses.  If the ability to cyberbully is physically restricted by developing technology that prevents horrible comments and phrases from being published, then cyberbullying will diminish.  Significantly.

Surely there are technological advancements that are within arm’s reach that could monitor for certain words and phrases.  A simple code can scan letters, numbers, and symbols for a combination that forms a sentence/phrase/word, which can then be automatically flagged for review.  Low-level staffers - employed by the social media platforms - can then review the automatic flags and make the judgment call on whether they’re considered cyberbullying or not.  Users can report comments as well to bring the platform’s attention.  They remove the comment if it meets the criteria of being hate speech in any way, and the staffers are held accountable in the workplace if they don’t.  It isn’t seen by the public, nor is it seen by the target/victim.  In the meantime, these staffers can peruse the replies and comments for anything not caught by the system.  Cyberbullies lose their platform, lose their ability to garner attention through likes, comments, and reactions.  Eventually?  They’ll give up.  It will take some time, effort, financial investment, and study.  Trial and error.  But theoretically?  It can stop.  Once the technology is developed and universally agreed upon by social media developers to utilize in their platforms, theoretically, hate speech on the Internet can cease to exist.

Is it Prince William’s job to come up with this?  Absolutely not.  His job, as I said before, is to be the heir to the heir, The Duke of Cambridge.  It’s up to the developers at Instagram and Twitter and other major platforms.  His job is to use his popularity, reputation, status, and platform bring attention to the matter, so more and more people begin to demand these improvements from the social media developers.

What did his speech today accomplish?  Exactly that.

He, a high-profile royal in direct line to the throne, made a speech, charging the social media developers to come up with solutions such as these to protect vulnerable populations.  He did exactly his job as father, husband, son, brother, former air ambulance pilot, Prince, Duke, and future King.

If these changes are made, they’ll also protect Meghan.  If the social media giants invest in technology that can scan for and flag phrases such as “does not belong” or “not a real royal” or “too dark” or “messy hair” or any of the other dozens and hundreds of disgusting, racist phrases used to insult people of color, these advancements will not only protect regular people.  They will protect Meghan.

If we broaden those phrases to include words such as “slut,” “home-wrecker,” etc., they’ll protect Catherine and Camilla.  They’ll protect millions of women, children, and people of color all over the world who are subject to cruelty at the hands of the Internet every single day.

We know that William and Meghan have a warm and supportive relationship.  We know that William is fiercely protective when it comes to his family - scarily so, if I may say so myself.  Everything we have on the record about William and his interactions with Meghan indicates that he would be the first one to swing if anyone came after her.  Maybe only second to Harry, but that’s because he’s just like his brother - passionate, fiercely loyal, even more fiercely protective.  I have no doubt in my mind that William would never stand idly by as his sister-in-law is subject to such cruel commentary.  And he hasn’t - as we have seen in the speech today.  

Prince William is not a hypocrite.  He does not stand by complicity while cyberbullying happens around him, while racism happens around him.  He gave an entire speech today demonstrating just that.  If anything, he is inciting exactly the change you all are looking for in the Kensington Palace comments section, albeit via a different method that you may have thought best.

In making the claims and charges he did in his speech today, Prince William began to incite change in an industry that has insofar been complacent by standing idly by, counting their millions while people suffer every day due to words spoken to them on the Internet.  I can only hope that the developers will hear his message loud and clear, that they will bow to the pressures of the future King challenging them and calling them out and make the changes that he has demanded in order to provide a safer online community for the entire world.