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alex-musicals-tss · 4 years

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Lin-Manuel Miranda Taking A Break From Twitter

Congratulations.

That’s all I can say to you. That’s all I can say to the people who have bullied Lin-Manuel Miranda so much that he’s now taking a break from Twitter.

All I can ask myself is why. Why would people do this? Here’s what I found on the matter and here’s what I think of it.

The first thing is about him… biting his lip? Seriously?! Everyone has a pose! Some people stick out their tongue. Others use their hand to make the peace sign. They don’t get hate for that! Why? Because it’s just a pose for a selfie! It’s not like it’s hurting anyone. Lin biting his lip is the exact same thing. If that’s how he wants to look when he takes selfies then go for it! If he likes it then go for it! It’s his life and it’s his photos! If you don’t like it then okay. That’s completely fine. Not everyone can like something someone does. But you don’t have to bully him for it! If you’re scrolling through Instagram and you see someone doing something you don’t like, then keep scrolling. If you see a tweet of someone doing something you don’t like, then move along! See? It’s not so hard. There is no need to be rude about it! Put yourself in his shoes for a moment. How would you like it if you get constant hate for just adding a pose to your selfie? See? It’s not a great feeling! And you’re causing someone to feel this way for something so harmless. He’s not hurting anybody!

“It works for me, and I'm people. Everyone has tics and poses and gestures that are very "them," and this is one of his. If it doesn't work for you that's OK. Don't marry him! But, also, please don't shame him. He's people, too.”

This was a tweet written by Vanessa A M Nadal based on this matter and she is completely right! As I said before, it’s completely fine if you don’t like something Miranda does. It’s natural not to like something. But cyber bullying him for it is seriously not okay. “He’s people, too.” Stood out to me in the tweet because this is something people forget often with celebrities. No matter how famous someone is, no matter how rich they are, no matter how much power they have, they are still human. They still have a right to be respected for who they are. They’re not just some machine used to entertain people. They’re not just an object with no feelings. They’re human! They’re people! At the end of the day, Lin is a person too.

The second reason why people are bullying Lin is because he said the n-word. At first glance, this does seem like a horrible thing for someone to do as we all know the history of that word. As he is not a black person, he shouldn’t be saying it as it’s extremely offensive.

“It’s so hard not to say n***a at the end of this sentence. I’m fighting muscle memory!” was what Miranda was found saying. However, people have taken out the context of this quote to make it seem like Lin was saying it just to be racist when in reality, he wasn’t! This quote was originally said by Daveed Diggs; as he is a black person, he is allowed to say it as it’s not racist for him to do so. What Miranda was doing was he was quoting something said by Diggs for an audiobook! There is no way this was used to be racist or offensive.

As we all know, that word is a slur towards people of colour. I’m not going to get too much into the meaning behind the word but the reason this word is racist is because it carries the history of racial discrimination towards black people. As I am a white person, it’d be very offensive and racist for me to call someone the n-word! I do not plan on doing so either. But there is a difference to saying it in a racist term or saying it in a way which isn’t racist. Many people are making it seem like Lin said the word just for his own pleasure and if he did then that would certainly be racist. However, it’s perfectly okay to say the word if you’re quoting it as quoting something is very different to saying it.

Some people have been attacking Miranda for still saying the word even though it was blanked out, like how I wrote it earlier on. But I understand why Lin still said it. As it was written like “n***a”, you can still tell what word it meant to be. If he just left it out in the audiobook, it would be confusing to hear as the quote would be changed to: “It’s so hard not to say at the end of this sentence.” And as he’s stating a quote, you can’t really change it otherwise it’s not the exact quote which is meant to be said. I understand that some people may not be comfortable with that word being read aloud but the easy thing to do is just not listen to the audio! It’s honestly that simple. And certainly do not alter the truth just to spread hate to a man who is still human!

Another reason why he’s getting hate and which also comes down under the category of him being “racist” is because of the well-known musical he wrote which is Hamilton. It’s recently been added to Disney+ which I am really happy about! I thought that all things would be positive about this but clearly, I had a bit too much faith in humanity. Instead of people enjoying the awesome show and learning things they may have not known about the Founding Father and first Secretary of Treasury, people have created #cancelhamilton. I was so confused at first how there was anything wrong with the musical. I read a few posts on Instagram and instantly hated the tag as it is honestly so stupid.

One of the reasons why people say it’s racist is because of how little the show talks about slavery. Um, what? This is a musical! Yes, it’s educational. I personally learnt a lot from it as I didn’t even know a guy named Alexander Hamilton existed until I heard the soundtrack. But the thing is, this isn’t a documentary. The musical recording was two hours and forty minutes long with a one-minute intermission which is a reasonable amount of time for a show! You can’t overdo the length of something which is why there are many cut songs in Hamilton such as Let It Go or Dear Theodosia Reprise. And the thing is, there is a cut song which is about slavery! As the show is based in the lifetime of a man who lived for 44 years, some songs were going to have to get taken out. Sadly, this song was one of them but I agree with Lin’s choice as the ending of the song was that Hamilton’s plan didn’t go through so it didn’t add any affect of his life. The song was called Cabinet Battle 3 and the demo track, sung by Miranda himself, was released on The Hamilton Mixtape. I think it’s a great song as it covers the topic of slavery really well. Unlike the first two cabinet battles, this version isn’t all fun and rap. The music is slower and more serious.

“Sir, even you, you have hundreds of slaves” was said by Alexander Hamilton to George Washington, showing that even Washington was a slave owner. And by saying “even you”, it suggests that there are many slave owners too just Washington would seem less likely to own them. So, why would Miranda take out a song about something so serious? As I said before, the musical was already almost three hours long. The show had to end at some point! The song ends with Washington saying, “Madison, execute your plan to the letter. Let's hope the next generation thinks of something better.” James Madison’s plan was to end the discussion of freeing the slaves. As his plan was accepted and not Hamilton’s, that point wasn’t as important in the musical as the other songs were.

Another reason why people say it’s racist is because, wait for it, slavery is involved! The complete opposite to the previous reason. The way slavery is involved in the musical is all down to the Founding Fathers. Most of them had slaves! I’m pretty sure Hamilton, himself, didn’t own any. However, I heard that he gifted a slave to Angelica Schuyler but I’m not to sure if that point is true. The issue is, almost all the wealthy people in those days had slaves. The slave trade is a huge part in history and no matter how hard you try, you can’t run away from it. You can’t change the past! We need to stop running away from the past of slavery and accept it! It was horrible, yes. I remember learning it in school and I found it so shocking the way human beings were treated just because they were black. But no matter how much we hate it, no matter how disgusted we are by it, it still happened. Are you honestly saying that we’re just not going to learn about anything in the past because the people in those days had slaves? I’m sorry but that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! Hamilton is fun to watch and is also educational. It teaches teenagers about some of the Founding Fathers, soldiers, and even a little about women’s rights in those days. I think it’s great!

The final point I managed to find is that people are mad about both the fact that Lin included Sally Hemmings and the fact that he didn’t include her enough. Again, two completely opposite points! This shows how ridiculous this is getting because no matter what Miranda does, he won’t be able to “get it right” and that is no way his fault. Stop being so picky about it! Now, let me get on to the point about Sally. The only time she appears in the musical is during the song, What’d I Miss?

“Sally, be a lamb darling, won’t ya open it?” was said by Thomas Jefferson to one of the ensemble members, who in this case is Sally Hemmings. The truth is, Sally was one of his slaves. I think it’s reasonable to add her name into it as it gives her a little bit of recognition. I understand why people could feel slightly uncomfortable with her name being said but the thing is, this isn’t your musical. You didn’t spend six years writing lyrics for the show so please don’t tell Lin what he can and not include! And I do understand the situation with Sally and I’m not trying to sound careless about what happened to her. She was only fourteen and he did awful stuff to her which I’m not even going to go into because it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable talking about it and I’m sure you won’t want to read it. However, if you’re a part of the Hamilton fandom you’ve probably heard of her story already. If you haven’t and you do want to know more about her, you can always search up “Sally Hemmings” and I’m sure it’ll explain there.

For the people saying that her story should’ve been told in the musical, I completely disagree and I’m actually shocked that people even used that as an excuse on why Hamilton is racist! I’m sorry I think I missed the part when the show was called “Jefferson: An American Musical”. This is a performance about the life of the Founding Father, Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s right-hand man, and the first Secretary of Treasury. Not the Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, the first Secretary of State, the second Vice President, and the third President of America! Sally Hemmings meant nothing to Hamilton. They never even met. I’m surprised if he even knew of her existence! I know that in Cabinet Battle 3, he says “How will Thomas Jefferson find his next mistresses?” which he was implying by Sally, but that doesn’t mean that he knew about her in real life. And even if he did, she didn’t affect him in any way so there is no point of including her anymore in the musical.

Hamilton seriously isn’t racist at all. In fact, it’s one of the least racist things I’ve seen! The Founding Fathers were all white. If one of the Founding Fathers were black, they wouldn’t even been given that title. They would most likely be a slave because that’s how life was back then. Miranda could’ve easily said, “I won’t be including people of colour because I want the musical to be historically accurate.” But he didn’t! Half of the cast are people of colour because they were good enough for the role they played. Lin didn’t take away that opportunity just so the musical would be more accurate to history! I think that’s great and the actors did such a good job too.

The final point which is quite short because I don’t know much about this but there is a sound on TikTok where Miranda is talking about some sexual stuff. I don’t know what he was saying it for but I read up somewhere that it was for an audiobook! I don’t know which one though. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that he was reading something, just by the wording and the way he was saying it. Those type of things isn’t something you just record yourself saying! Again, I don’t see why people are taking out the context for things Lin is reading in audiobooks? I think it’s perfectly fine for Miranda to say those things as he was reading a story. People have complained about the fact that the sound disturbed them; I wasn’t that comfortable listening to it myself! But you have to understand that it’s not Lin-Manuel Miranda’s fault that someone posted it on TikTok. Whatever he was reading would have an age rating and reviews so you wouldn’t accidentally come across something like that. Listening someone talking about sex make me feel slightly disturbed but I understand that Lin was doing his job by reading it and it’s not his fault that someone thought it’d be funny to add the sound onto TikTok!

We need to stop focusing on the things Lin-Manuel Miranda has done which you don’t like and focus on the positive things about him. Like, the fact that he wrote a two hours and forty-minute musical, which is just nonstop songs, about someone’s life is just incredible and inspiring to me! And the way he acted in all the songs were so great! He also told Justin Laboy’s story in 21 Chump Street in the space of five songs. His acting in Mary Poppins Returns was just amazing and it was clear that he enjoyed every second of filming it! And I loved the songs from Moana since I first saw it and when I found out that Miranda wrote the songs, I was so surprised that Lin wrote songs for another thing I enjoyed to watch! He’s definitely one of my idols.

We need to stop focusing on people’s “flaws” and pay more attention to the positive things about them. Especially with celebrities! Like I said before, they are still human with real emotions. They can still get hurt. When Miranda said that he was taking a break from Twitter, I was so upset that people have pushed him this far over the edge 2! He may not be leaving because of the horrible posts people have been making but I won’t be surprised if it is. I saw a reply on Lin’s tweet saying “WE’RE BULLYING THIS MAN OFF THE INTERNET LMAOOOOO” with a video of edits people made with Miranda biting his lip. But actually, it isn’t funny at all. With cyber bullying, you only hear about it with teenagers. You never hear about it with adults! But that’s what it is. This is what all of this is. Anybody who is attacking Lin-Manuel Miranda for the points I mentioned and are making the memes and edits, you’re actually bullying him. You may think that they’re just harmless jokes, but clearly, they’re not! I know that’s not something you hear normally about an adult getting bullied but it’s true. And I feel so sorry for him because some of it is because of a show he spent six years of his life making! He deserves to get praised for it – not attacked!

And if there is a slight chance, you’re somehow reading this, Lin, I just want to say that you have been so responsible with this matter. You could’ve easily snapped and had a go at the people doing this but you didn’t. Instead, you’re walking away from the situation until it’s settled down. You’re such a huge inspiration with everything you do! I really hope things get better for you very soon.

And to all the people out there attacking Lin-Manuel Miranda to the point that he has to take a break from Twitter? All I can say to you is “Congratulations”. I hope you’re proud of yourselves for being so horrible to someone who’s dedicated years of his life for the entertainment of others.

Congratulations.

#lin manuel miranda #cancelhamilton #hamilton #lin #miranda #linmanuelmiranda #cancel hamilton

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yvvaine · 6 years

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A Meta on Madness

Here’s the thing with Targaryen madness. Most weren’t just born raving mad. They developed it. Some as early as childhood, others well into adulthood; sometimes even instigated by some event (like the Defiance of Duskendale which affected Aerys II Targaryen’s madness). Grand Maester Phycelle even commented how Aerys had been “a good man. such a charmer....” until he became obsessed with his dreams of “fire & blood”.

It seems that that is the commonality. Fire & Blood. And also obsession. Most of the “madness” starts out as personality traits, like unchecked outbursts and impusliveness. Some form of violence (during said outbursts) develops shortly thereafter. Mixed in is usually a god-like self-image and some personal obsession / quest. Also paranoia. Delusions and hallucinations, for the most part, dont develop all that fast. Theyre “charming good men” with hot heads, and that slowly escelates, little by little until it begins to snowball. Again, some earlier than others.

But obsession seems to be reaccuring throught all the circumstances.

They fixate on something (Fire & Blood, religion, beliefs, etc) and take it too far, and the more they do, the more obsessed they become, the more the ‘madness’ seems to set in.

King Baelor the Blessed was overzealously obsessed with religion and purity, to the point that he starved himself into an early grave because he believed that food is of this world, and the material world is sinful.

Prince Aerion Brightflame, son of King Maekar and nephew of the Prince Rhaegel. Aerion killed himself drinking wildfire, believing it would turn him into a dragon.

Visery’s ‘madness’ (mostly outbursts, paranoia, and cruelty), according to Daenerys at least, was linked/instigated to a somewhat traumatic event; the selling of their mother’s crown. My guess is that he was old enough to be traumatized by the events that sent them into exhile, put all his hopes and dreams into that crown, idolized it, and losing it was kind of the final push.

Madness ≠ Certified Crazy Person

In fact I dont even really like the term madness, because it denotes that the Targaryen in question is 24/7 insane. And dont get me wrong, some def are. But in GRRM’s world their ‘madness’ is MUCH more subtle than that. Its pathology is almost like a disease. And people can live with the most terrible diseases for quite along while and work around it/not have it effect them. As a Certified Sick Person myself, I know that particular lesson more than quite a bit of people (thanks autoimmune system!) Id say. Look at diabetes! People can live with diabetes and not have to cut their foot off or die (like the olden days) with the right amount of lifestyle and personal choices. But untreated, without proper checks and balances, symptoms get worse, other manisfate on top of one another. To say they have the “Targaryen madness” is not a black and white issue, because their “insanity” is not as simple as : “that persons obv crazy and that persons not!!” You cant equivicate mid-story/life Daenerys with late-in-life Aerys. Its a cultivation of symptoms over years. Theyre not at equal points in their life to one another; obv shes not blinded by “KILL THEM ALL” attitudes yet.

Early-in Life Aerys (perhaps a better parallel to Daenerys’s timeline) was:

“...while not being the most intelligent, nor the most diligent of princes [I wonder who that sounds like? Cough Mereen] he was described as having an undeniable charm. He was generous, handsome and resolute, although somewhat quick to anger. [SOUND LIKE ANYONE. A good heart? Beautiful? Determined and passionate? SOMEWHAT quick to anger?] He was also vain, proud, and changeable, traits that made him easy prey for lickspittles and flatterers.”

The last part is more up for debate but Dany does think quite highly of herself and is VERY proud. Shes also reminded frequently of her amazing-ness, as well as her beauty, which would bloat anyones ego. And while she realizes the difference between blatant kiss asses (“People used to tell that kind of thing to my brother”) she also prefers those that agree with her or her line of thinking and suck up to her. Shes kinder to those that fall into step and bestows greater favor on them in that moment (even when the person in the room disagreeing is a “friend”).

“As he grew older, Aerys became increasingly jealous, suspicious and cruel, prone to furious outbursts.”

I think a lot of readers and show viewers see this increasingly “bratty” quality to her character. Even when her anger (toward the slave masters for instance) is morally and technically VERY justified (Personally I hate this POV, as I’m someone whos decided to dedicate my lifeswork to human rights law, so decidely I am not for cruel racist individuals. Moreover, I dont think many people, if there is any at all, who believe in dark!(or just a generally darker)dany are racist and pro-slavery - which is something i see stans misguidedly clapback with often in the face of criticism) her “justice” becomes all she see’s to disastrous consequences, including crucifying those that shouldnt have been.

“My father spoke out against crucifying those children. He decried it as a criminal act but was overruled. Is it justice to answer one crime with another?” - Hizdahr zo Loraq, S04E06 “The Laws of Gods and Men” on Daenerys crucifying his father because of the status he was born into.

She also seems to be developing more and more paranoia. “Betray me and I’ll burn you alive.” (obv betrayal should be punished WHEN IT HAPPENS, but like, shes already imagining scenrarios and felt the need to say something, ie paranoid). The entire beach tantrum and her turning against her ally and HAND Tyrion because she was upset at their(shared) battle failures. And while its great that she doesnt want to be the Queen of Ashes, in her right mind, in moments of anger and fustration she constantly has to be talked down from burning cities. So increasingly more worrisome.

Shes also increasingly fixated on ‘the iron throne’. As her obsession grows....

Sorta like: Aerys in his youth.

So while duh, shes not batshit insane like her father was right before the end of his life, people forget, her father wasnt “bad” or “mad” till his later years either. Comparing the two (her father right before he was killed and Dany now) is like comparing a seed to a flower. Same material and DNA. Same circumstances / needs the same to grow (unchecked symptoms like their anger and obsessions). But ultimately different stages in their lives, and as such different consequences and attributes.

GA (and Stans)‘s Short-sidedness

The “Mad Dany” theory mostly comes from people woh dont neccisarily see dany as stark raving mad like Aerys Burn Them All Targaryen (i know, shocking) but rather see this similarity (past face value cough cough), and see the parrallels between young Aerys the Charming Good But Slghty Tantrum-y Tararyen with Dany now, and made educated forecasts in what that means for future-Dany based on her current arch. The same Dany who is increasingly obsessed with conquering an entire ass continent that shes held up as a symbol and put all her hopes and dreams of ‘home’ into (kinda like the way Viserys did with their mothers crown) (also a continent that she knows nothing and hasnt bothered to learn anything about). She has no plans on creating a democracy or dispersing power to try to mitigate her faults because shes completely fucking blind to them. She plans on sitting on that uncomfortable ass stupid metal throne and being uncompromising because shes not a Politician shes a QWEEN #fuckcompromise #fuckdiplomacy #fuckpeace #bendtheknee #ammiright :))))) Meanwhile dancing on really thin ice that could any minute crack under her, and the more it cracks the faster it makes new ones until it snowballs quickly out of hand and suddenly it snaps and kills you. Only shes queen in this scenario with two resusable nukes at her disposal so in this case its not just her but the entire country that drowns.

Politics is a long game. We - in the real world - choose a leader who is not just best for us in the now, but who will create a better future for our children, and their children, and so on.

Dany is not a good, stable bet. I originally meant to do a short sassy one liner about this but then I got on a soapbox and started getting all philisophical and now this could literally be my senior thesis its that long. (My apologies!) Im also know where near finished with this so this could maybe be Part One?

#anti-daenerys #anti daenerys #anti targaryen #anti targaryen restoration #aerys 2.0 #mad queen no. 2 #got meta #mine

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brido · 7 years

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Mike and Vicky Go to Ecuador (Day 3)

When the Spanish missionaries were setting up Old Town Quito on the ruins of Incan temples, they didn’t really take into account that cars would exist in 400 years and an impatient tourist might come to visit from the U.S. and hate being stuck on the narrow streets in traffic, surrounded by city busses spewing an ungodly amount of exhaust in a city whose altitude already leaves you gasping for air. That’s a good place to start Day 3, when my wife and I hopped in a car with my sister and brother-in-law to see the sights of the first city UNESCO’s deemed to be a World Heritage Site.

Our first stop was up El Panecillo to see the massive aluminum Virgin of Quito statue that overlooks the city from a volcanic hill at 10,000 feet above sea level. It was built in 1976 and is actually based on a foot-high wooden sculpture by Bernardo de Legarda in 1734 that the city fucking loves for some reason. I don’t get it and I’m actually trying to. The original looks like something my Irish Catholic grandmother might have kept in her bedroom. But it’s apparently venerated throughout the Andes in the same way Mexicans see the Virgin of Guadalupe, but sans the whole miraculous origin story.

Well, I take that back. The Virgin of Guadalupe appeared at a chapel built on the ruins of a shrine to an Aztec goddess and the Virgin of Quito is high on a hill that the Incas used in their worship of the sun and is based on an original which is permanently displayed in a Franciscan church that was built over the ruins of an Incan temple. Or the home of Atahualpa. Either way, in both cases the Spanish Catholics went smashy smashy build build for Mary. Which basically means that El Panecillo is part Virgin of Guadalupe, part Christ the Redeemer, part Pieta, part Statue of Liberty and all Quito, bay-bee.

Our next stop was down the windy cobblestone hill of El Panecillo to the Basilica of the National Vow. Because no foreign trip with my wife is complete without taking her formerly-Protestant behind to some ornate monument to Catholicism. And there’d be even more of that in a minute. But the basilica is an impressive 19th Century neo-Gothic knockoff of Notre-Dame, complete with gargoyles of animals that are local to Ecuador, like armadillos, iguanas and Galapagos tortoises. Which is actually kind of fun.

The best part was that an elevator can take you to the top of the basillica, where you can walk nervously across rickety wooden scaffolding and then scale a horrifyingly steep 25-30-foot metal ladder to check out (literally) breathtaking views from the roof. I was scared out of my mind, even at the wooden scaffolding part. But when my sister and wife (who are just girls) happily sauntered across the wooden walkway, I had to talk myself into following after them. My sister bowed out at the metal ladder. But then my wife and brother-in-law basically said, “I’ll go if you go” to the death ladder. And so up we all went. Ohmygod.

The entire time I was at the top (well, there was one last set of steps to go up even higher, but fuck that shit) I was increasingly nervous about how I was supposed to get down from there. Like, do I trust myself to be able to go down backwards down the ladder? Or do I go down the ladder like they’re stairs, where I’d be one slipped heel away from an early demise. I’m getting that fight-or-flight sensation in my stomach just thinking about it now. And at the time, I actually found myself getting angry with how cavalier all the young tourists were on the ladder and the roof like we weren’t all going to die. I distinctly remember looking down and seeing actual cigarette butts on the roof up there, presumably from some health-nut European backpacker who didn’t understand how anything works.

As soon as I’d get the courage to go back down, I’d have to wait for more enthusiastic youngsters to rush up the ladder and then a wave of doubt would rush over me again. Basically, what I’m telling you is that I kind of regret going to the top of that fucking basilica.

In the end, as I was standing at the ladder waiting for that right mental moment to proceed, the sweaty tourist I hated the most asked me if it was okay if he could go down ahead of me. I obliged. The sweaty tourist I hated the most was actually the first person I saw go down like facing forwards, treating the ladder like they were stairs. So after one or two failed attempts at positioning my own body in a way I could climb down backwards, my wife said, “That one guy just went down facing forwards and I think it looked a lot easier.” That was all I needed to hear. I went facing forward. I made it down. I hated the sweaty guy a little less. And I still don’t like thinking about the way down. I just like the part when I didn’t die. In my brief moment of bravery, I didn’t even give a shit about the rickety scaffolding on the way back. Or the teenager who hit on my wife. The relief I felt from scaling down that ladder was a semi-religious experience in itself. Like I’d found my own personal Jesus at the top of ‘Chrysler 300 Notre-Dame’.

Leaving the basilica also ended up being a bit of a nightmare. At 11 am sharp every Monday, there’s a changing of the guard in Independence Plaza, right in front of Carondelet Palace, where the President, Vice President and the Ministry of the Interior of Ecuador all live. Sometimes the president even comes out and greats the public from a balcony that’s like, feet from the square. All right there in the best preserved colonial city center in the Americas. It’s nuts.

That’d be like if Independence Mall in Philadelphia still had the President’s House and Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Jeff Sessions and whoever the Secretary of Homeland Security is all lived in that same old house. It sounds like a reality show producer’s wet dream. Or the most expensive security detail in the history of of the universe.

Since we were on a bit of a tight schedule, we had to hop out of our car on one of Old Town’s narrow streets that were never meant to have cars in the first place and rush past the traffic and through the plaza (where there also happened to be a fucking protest) to la Compania de Jesus.

It was a kind of dizzying experience. Would it have been nice to take in the super historic plaza? Sure. But part of that history is secular president/dictator Eloy Alfaro (the guy who renamed the plaza and commissioned a statue to independence) being dragged through that same plaza in 1912 by a pro-Catholic mob before his body was set on fire. Also, the Bishop of Quito was poisoned with strychnine during Good Friday mass at the nearby Cathedral in 1877. And the pro-Catholic president/dictator, Gabriel Garcia Moreno, was also murdered on the palace steps by Freemasons with revolvers and a machete in 1875. I can keep going... Okay, I will.

In 1949, a radio station in Quito did the same War of the Worlds broadcast stunt that Orson Welles pulled in the U.S. 11 years earlier. It set off a wave of panic in the city with police and fire fighters rushing out to fight the aliens, which actually got much worse when the broadcast was revealed as a hoax. Several people died in the ensuing riots and fires, including the show producer’s girlfriend and nephew. The producer had to flee to Venezuela. I mean, I still felt brave from conquering my fear of heights in the basilica, but I wasn’t taking my fucking chances with any Ecuadorian riots.

The Church of the Society of Jesus is a super ornate, and gold-leaved Jesuit church they started building in 1605 and didn’t finish until 1765. And it’s deducted major points for not allowing me to take photos inside. I had a hard time following our English-speaking tour guide. But I know she kept mentioning Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Mariana of Jesus de Paredes, the patron saint of Ecuador. All while we were completely surrounded by baroque all-gold-everything and I fumed over not being able to take pictures of anything but a stupid old bell and the outside door that makes La Compania look like a Chinese restaurant.

My wife said the tour guide did mention the Jesuits getting the boot from King Charles in 1767, but I was probably too grumpy to notice. There was also some lady that just waltzed into our tour group without paying and kept standing uncomfortably close to me. But I guess it’s okay because I was able to look it up later. Essentially what happened is that the Jesuits, who were loyal to the pope, got a little too wealthy and independent for the liking of European empires at the time. Oh, and unlike those European empires, they weren’t cool with enslaving the native populations of the Americas. That was a big factor in the decision to import slaves from Africa, who worked on their land and helped fund their universities and led them to attain the wealth and power feared by people like King Charles III.

So Charles took a page from Philip IV of France, who got rid of the Knights Templar in 1307. The Jesuits got the boot from Spanish territories, despite the threat of eternal damnation from the pope, a lot of the Jesuits died on their way into exile and the Spanish confiscated their land to be auctioned off to people whose descendants might one day give me a tour of their rose factory. King Charles III is also known for trying to convince the people of Madrid to stop throwing their shit buckets out their windows. So there’s that too.

The Jesuits were eventually restored after the Napoleonic wars. They’re doing just fine now and Pope Francis even became the first Jesuit pope in 2013. Scorsese made a movie about some Jesuits in 2016. So everything is fine. I mean, it’s really declining in numbers. And Georgetown University had to apologize for slavery a few months ago. But it’s fine. They even have a big gold church in Quito where nobody is allowed to take photos.

The tour guide told us something I couldn’t understand about a picture of Mary in the church blinking one time or something. There was another miracle she talked about that was depicted on a gold wall about someone turning food into a bouquet of flowers or something. I might have heard it wrong, but I whispered, “That’s a stupid miracle” to my wife, but she shot me a look to be more respectful. And then there was even more stuff about Saint Mariana of Jesus de Paredes, who self-flagellated with the help of an indigenous servant and starved herself to become so pure that when she died, a white lily sprang up from her blood and bloomed on the spot. Again, I couldn’t really follow what the woman was saying.

Oh, and there was a horrifying copy of Hernando de la Cruz’s El Infierno painting (what happened to the original?), depicting various sinners being tortured in hell for whatever bad thing they did during their life. My sister asked what one of the words meant on the painting and the tour guide said, “This is loan shark.” She asked what another word meant and the guide just said, “Homosexuality.” We moved on. I’m actually frustrated right now that I can’t find more about this stuff Online. Especially since I know that if this shit was in Europe some historian would take it seriously enough to write about it. No word on whether one of the sins in the painting was photography. Yeah, I’m still mad.

As we headed off to lunch, my sister tried to convince us to go into the Church and Monastery of St. Francis, the same church the Spanish immediately started building after the city was founded in 1534. It’s where the mediocre wooden Virgin of Quito statue is proudly displayed. And right on top of those Incan ruins. There’s also a legend about the church’s architect, Cantuna, making a deal with the devil to finish the atrium, but then removing a brick to get out of his deal. That all sounded great to me, but my wife and I really had to pee. So we headed across the plaza to Casa Gangotera where I found a bathroom.

Casa Gangotera was another memorable, if not stuffy, dining experience. It’s a hotel and the former home of some Spanish gazillionaire in old timey Quito. Victoria and I were talked into the tasting menu, which was way too much food yet again. But I hate to admit that some of the courses were better than the versions we got at Chilcabamba the day before. I even tried llama meat. Remember yesterday when my guide said llama meat was better than beef? Well, it’s not. And I still hadn’t yet decided whether or not I was brave enough to eat cuy.

Our final excursions of the early afternoon were to go shopping at La Mariscal craft market and then to Olga Fisch Folklore (Olga Fisch is credited with recognizing the quality of the local, traditional handicrafts and making them popular again) to see local, traditional handicrafts we couldn’t afford.

One of my favorite things to do when visiting a foreign place I’ve never been to before, besides looking at a Frommer’s guide or searching for information Online, is to see what the locals find important about their own country by looking in the gift shops. Besides the coffee and chocolate and Panama hats and blankets and leather goods and animal masks and humming bird statues that every Ecuadorian store seemed to sell, La Mariscal also introduced me to Oswaldo Guayasamin (who I’ll get to on another day) and the Cucuruchos, whose figurines looked as much like Orko from He-Man as they did the purple Klan. I should probably explain.

Spain has the tradition of the Capirote, which originated in the Inquisition as a symbol of humiliation (like a dunce cap), and that tradition was carried over into a form of public penance during Easter ceremonies. The same is true with the Cucuruchos, who parade barefoot through Old Town Quito on Good Friday, carrying crosses and flagellating themselves during the procession. The best view of the whole thing is supposedly even at Casa Gangotera. Anyway, the anti-Catholic KKK might have borrowed the costume design for their own super terribleness. I’m guessing American tourists like to buy the figurines of the Purple Klan to shock their friends at home while simultaneously being able to go, “What? It’s not the Klan!” And then pronouncing it ‘la cucaracha’ because everything south of America is Mexico.

I don’t know. I half-heartedly insisted I wanted to see a real Cucurucho for the rest of the trip. That, and I kept quoting my 2007 Frommer’s guide by saying I wanted to eat at Zazu, “the best and hippest spot in Quito.” Just because I liked saying ‘Zazu’ and also noticed that nobody in Quito thinks that statement about its best-ness or hip-ness is true.

My sister did tell me that there was a place called Cafe Plaza Grande (right next to Carondelet Palace) that has a Cucurucho serve people ice cream and pose with them for horrifying photos. On the Philadelphia president house reality show, Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump would fucking love that place! Ice cream and the Klan? Jesus. But everyone in my family was adamant that any photo with a Cucurucho could be taken out of context on social media and the whole thing would be a bad idea. It’s for the best. We did buy a bunch of other stuff at the market though. And this concluded Day 3.

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archerton84-blog · 5 years

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Outlander and the Cost of Claire's White Saviordom

An Outlander episode on slavery was inevitable the second the Frasers set foot in 18th century America. The time-traveling drama touched on the cruelty of the slave trade in Season 3 when Claire (Caitriona Balfe) inadvertently stumbled into a slave auction and bought a man for sale to save him from further humiliation in the market square. She later set him free once he helped Claire and Jamie (Sam Heughan) find Jamie's nephew, but it was only a brief dalliance with the topic.

Season 4 took a deeper look at slavery in the Americas in its second episode as Claire and Jamie arrived at Jamie's Aunt Jocasta's (Maria Doyle Kennedy) plantation, River Run. Claire's distaste for the practice was immediately made clear. The audience understood Claire's perspective because we know she's an enlightened woman from the 1960s who knows how the effects of slavery will still be present some 200 years after her River Run stay, but for those in the show without knowledge of the future, her stance was not only contrary, but dangerous to their way of life.

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That's taken to another level when a slave named Rufus (Jerome Holder) took an axe to his overseer's ear. Claire and Jamie were dispensed from the main house to attend to the wounded man, only to find that he already took justice into his own hands and strung Rufus up to a tree with a rusted hook in his abdomen. Claire's attention immediately went to the slave being tortured and she put his life above that of his injured overseer. Things went downhill from there.

Despite the warnings from literally everyone around her, Claire brought Rufus back to the main house of the plantation, operated on him on Jocasta's dining room table and saved his life — for a few hours. The price of any slave drawing blood from a white man in that time period was death. Claire saved Rufus from the hook, but there was no way to save him from death overall. As she struggled to find an escape for the slave boy, an angry mob descended on Jocasta's house and demanded justice. Rather than hand Rufus over to the mob, Claire reluctantly poisoned him in order to give him a peaceful death rather than a violent one. Still, Jamie had to turn the boy's body over to the mob, which promptly dragged it through the mud and then strung his corpse up in the nearby tree as the Frasers watched powerless from the porch.

The preview for next week's episode showed that the Rufus incident will push Claire and Jamie onwards to settle Fraser's ridge, which was always the intended arc for this season. The slaves on Jocasta's plantation and in the surrounding area will stay behind in the heightened hostility caused by Rufus' actions and Claire's savior complex.

Caitriona Balfe, OutlanderPhoto: Aimee Spinks

"In this episode she's so lead by her emotions and she's not really thinking it through. What she sees in the moment, she just wants to help Rufus and doesn't think about the larger implications of what it will do to everyone else on the plantation," Balfe told TV Guide. "I think that's why she's so eager to get away from River Run, because for her to stay there in that position makes her feel complicit in the whole slave system or the system of slavery. It's not something she feels at all comfortable with. Obviously, her actions have probably made the conditions worse for every slave on that plantation."

And there we have our issue. Claire's actions in this episode have made the lives of an entire group of people she barely interacted with that much harder in a time period that wasn't trying to cut them a break in the first place. As this is a story about Claire and Jamie's adventures in the 18th century, we won't see exactly how those tribulations shake out. Instead, the pain of those slaves, directly increased by Claire's impulsive desires, are used as a catalyst for the Frasers' next chapter. It's a tool to propel the journey of white characters, and frankly, it's infuriating.

Outlander Just Introduced the First Worthy Villain Since Black Jack Randall

I am an Outlander fan and also a woman of color, which makes watching episodes like this deeply personal and complicated — perhaps more so than for fans without African-American ancestry. Most weeks, there's no need to divide the fan base along racial lines. We are all escaping into a fantasy where strapping tall Scottish men sweep us sassenachs off our feet for an hour every Sunday. I have to use a little more imagination perhaps, but who cares? Jamie Fraser is worth it.

But then Jamie and Claire stepped foot in America. I knew the slave episode was coming, even if I haven't finished Diana Gabaldon's novels on which the series is based. On weeks like this, I don't get to be like most Outlander fans, even with a little extra imagination. I can't pretend to be Claire, a noble woman from the future inheriting a plantation with her gorgeous Scottish husband, because no amount of imagination can erase the fact that if I traveled back in time to River Run, I'd end up as one of Jocasta's belongings rather than an honored guest. For this episode, I spent my time relating to the slaves on Jocasta's plantation that Claire interacted with rather than her, no matter how good her intentions were. I understood their fear when she did rash things. I understood the quiet way they tried to warn her that what she was doing would end badly for everyone involved, afraid to speak out in case they would end up like Rufus.

Outlander Season 4 Review: America Isn't Easy for Jamie and Claire

I can appreciate Claire's intentions in this episode and understand that she meant well. She was trying to be on the morally right side. I also know that a show set in 18th century America can't ignore an issue as big as slavery. Outlander has an obligation to depict the time periods that its characters inhabit accurately. Claire couldn't save Rufus because that never would have realistically happened. She can't singlehandedly end slavery, even for a small group of black people in North Carolina, because Season 2 proved with the battle of Culloden, history is fixed for this show. Outlander also has to be careful about how it deviates from the novel series, for every change it makes has larger ramifications down the line. They can't delete an important section of the book because it might make a section, and probably a small one at that, of the audience uncomfortable.

As I do these mental gymnastics to understand why this episode exists in the way that it does, I have to wonder did the show do any gymnastics of its own on my, and the fans like me's, behalf? A Google search of all the writers listed on the show's IMDB page revealed the Outlander writers' room is all white, and like Claire they undoubtedly had great intentions with this episode. But I have to wonder how the story might've been tweaked if there had been a person whose actual family history includes people represented the people on screen — people who might've cautioned that Claire's remorse doesn't make up for her ignorance, and repeated dismissal of the black people in this episode begging her to stop what she was doing. Her need to validate her own emotions were put ahead of these people's agency. In trying to be their savior, Claire actually robbed them of the little agency they had in that situation and her grief still took center stage.

Now You Can Get Your Outlander Fix Through Hulu!

I know she felt horrible about poisoning Rufus and it was hard for her to watch his lifeless body swing from that tree, but I also know it was harder for the enslaved housemaids watching a few feet away. It will also be hard for them to burn the tablecloths Rufus laid on, and probably the dining room table as well where his black blood was spilled — blood considered poison to everything it touched. These are things that don't occur Claire as she insisted she was right and knew what was best for Rufus. These are things she can push away as she settles her new land away from River Run, which is the problem with white saviors stepping into black narratives. They step out just as easily, whether they actually saved anyone or not. The black people left behind, and their descendants watching the stories about their struggles, do not get that luxury.

This is not a call to boycott Outlander. I am still a rabid fan and some of my favorite stuff this show has ever done occurs in the upcoming episodes this season. I am just angry at Claire in this episode, but not in the same way you get angry at your favorite TV characters who do stupid things like try to negotiate with Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies) by themselves or treat their first husbands like garbage for reasons said husbands can't control. It's a deep-bodied, seething anger that is difficult to articulate. It's not like I'm actually one of the slaves stuck on Jocasta's plantation, but I am a person that still sees the ramifications of that time period still alive and well in 2018.

Wait, Is That Frank's Voice in the Outlander Season 4 Trailer?

In this month alone voter suppression deterred tens of thousands, if not more, black people and other people of color from voting in Georgia, Florida and North Carolina. Our sitting president said that black people are too stupid to vote for him, amid other racist remarks and then invited the leader of a white nationalist group to the White House. There are still real people fighting against the oppression instilled in the DNA of this country, where the institution of slavery still lingers and the racist beliefs required to dehumanize black people flourish out in the open. Nevermind the exhausting microaggressions people of color experience on the regular, Claire's actions in this episode are a reminder of the allies who show up to the marches and write the eloquent Facebook posts, but then don't show up to vote when it truly matters.

So at the end of the week when I wanted to watch one of my favorite shows, I didn't want to have the scars of the past reopened for the sake of Jamie and Claire's next settlement. I especially didn't want to have to do mental and emotional hula hoops to understand Claire's entitlement and subsequent grief. I wanted an escape, and just like the slaves Claire's white saviordom failed in this episode, I was denied.

Outlander continues Sundays at 8/7 on Starz.

PHOTOS: These Outlander Season 4 Photos Will Send You Into a Shipping Frenzy

Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe, OutlanderPhoto: Aimee Spinks Source: https://www.tvguide.com/news/outlander-season-4-episode-2-recap-claire-rufus/?rss=breakingnews

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trendingnewsb · 7 years

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Issa Rae: ‘So much of the media presents blackness as fierce and flawless. Im not’

The creator of Insecure talks the dating totem pole, films obsession with slavery and the gender-race pay gap as season two begins

I dont want the stench of the current administration on this show, says Issa Rae. I dont want people to look back and be like: Oh, this was a Trump show. I want them to look back and say Insecure was an Obama show. Because it is: Obama enabled this show. The sharp, pithy, Los Angeles-set comedy, dubbed by US fashion and beauty site the Cut as the black, millennial Sex and The City, which Rae co-created, writes and stars in, first aired on HBO last autumn, exactly a month before the US election. Culturally, Obama made blackness so present, and so appreciated; people felt seen and heard; it influenced the arts, and it absolutely influenced how I see blackness, how I appreciate it, says the 32-year-old Rae. When a black president is a norm, it enables us to be, too.

Being a norm is a matter of some import to the actor and writer, who in spite of her personal allegiances had no desire to make an overtly political show. She never wanted Insecure to be, as she says with a generous eye-roll, a story about the struggle or the dramatic burdens of being black. At the heart of the series is the relationship between her on-screen iteration also named Issa, who works for an educational nonprofit called We Got Yall and raps soliloquies to herself in the mirror and her best friend Molly (Yvonne Orji), a high-flying corporate lawyer. Together, they navigate the professional and personal challenges of late-20s urban life.

I just wanted to see my friends and I reflected on television, in the same way that white people are allowed, and which nobody questions, continues Rae. Nobody watches Divorce [a HBO stablemate, starring Sarah Jessica Parker] and asks: What is the political element, what is the racial element driving this?

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Watch the trailer for season two of Insecure.

But so rare is it to see what its creator describes as a show about regular black people being basic in contemporary entertainment Insecure has nonetheless been hailed as revolutionary. It wasnt always so. Growing up, Rae was an avid fan of the predominantly black US sitcoms Moesha, Girlfriends and A Different World. Then they disappeared, she says of the film and television landscape. Somewhere along the way, being white became seen as relatable, and you started to see people of colour only reflected as stereotypes or specific archetypes. So much of the media now presents blackness as being cool, or able to dance, or fierce and flawless, or just out of control; Im not any of those things.

It is a hot and swampy summer afternoon in Manhattan, and Rae is in town doing the requisite rounds of late-night talkshow appearances ahead of Insecures season two premiere. On arrival, she seems a little lethargic entirely understandable, given her promotional schedule. But once seated in a buzzy restaurant, specifically chosen because its the sort of spot that the on-screen Issa and her girlfriends would patronise, Rae immediately perks up, emanating charismatic good humour.

Born in an affluent suburb of Los Angeles, Rae real name Jo-Issa Rae Diop is the third of five children, her father a Senegalese doctor, her mother a teacher from Louisiana. The rapid rise in gang violence in the city prompted Raes parents to move the family to Senegals capital, Dakar, when Rae was five years old. Her father tried to open a hospital there but things didnt work out and, three years later, they came back to the US, but to Potomac, Maryland, on the east coast, where Rae attended a predominantly white private school. When the family moved once again, this time back to LA, Rae entered a largely black and Latino school. Everybody thought I was lame and hated me, she says, matter-of-factly. It was a huge culture shock.

Part of the on-screen Issas insecurity of feeling not black enough for black people and not white enough for white people is, Rae says, something that I have been called out for by kids in my life. Ive experienced a real sense of feeling out of place. But with admirable chutzpah, she found a creative solution: I wrote a play and cast all of my bullies, and they loved it. They thought I was cool after that. She pauses, and gives a wry smile. Well, cool is a strong word. But I wasnt on their shit-list any more.

Big society … Raes character with co-worker Frieda (Lisa Joyce). Photograph: Justina Mintz/HBO

While studying at Stanford University, Rae began to notice that many of the television shows she loved, including Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld, were all-white comedies. Of course, sense of humour is relative, is subjective, but there is an assumption that black people wont find certain things about white comedies funny, she says. I got really frustrated and just wanted to start making my own stories. She conceived and directed Dorm Diaries, a mock reality show with an all-black cast, in the style of MTVs The Real World. When she posted it to Facebook, it quickly circulated, and Rae realised that she had a talent for portraying everyday black life; she has called it my epiphany moment. A few years later, she created what would be her breakthrough web series and the forerunner to Insecure, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.

A web show is one thing, of course, a mainstream television show on a high-profile cable network quite another. I ask her about the sociologist and civil rights activist WEB Duboiss concept of double consciousness, which she has referenced in the past, defined as the psychological challenge of always looking at ones self through the eyes of a white society. Does she feel that even more sharply now than before?

Absolutely. I didnt create this show for white people, I didnt create it for men; I created it, really, for my friends and family, and for their specific sense of humour, she nods. But now that we know we have an audience including HBO executives the double consciousness comes into play, because youre always wondering: How do they see what I am writing? Are they laughing at this specific joke for this particular reason? When season one aired, I had Asian women coming up to me on the street, saying: Oh my gosh, this reminds me of me and my best friend, she recalls. And thats wonderful thats what you want for a show but you are always wondering: What elements do they relate to the most?

I suggest that in future she stops fans and asks for further, more detailed feedback. She throws her head back and laughs. Yes. Excuse me, but why do you like the show? Tell me right now, please.

Boyfriend material … Jay Ellis as Lawrence in Insecure. Photograph: Justina Mintz/HBO

While Insecure may be only inadvertently political, this second season is noticeably more charged with social commentary, and examples of everyday discrimination. Through Molly, the show explores the gender pay gap, with an added issue to unpick: is she being paid less because of her gender, or her ethnicity, or both? These are questions that we constantly have to ask ourselves, as minorities, or double minorities, or triple minorities, nods Rae. In terms of the intersectionality of it all, you are constantly asking yourself: Which part of me is being discriminated against? Which part of me is being targeted? If not all parts of me.

The often-dispiriting experience of modern dating features prominently, too. At the start of this series, Issa has recently broken up from her long-term boyfriend, Lawrence (Jay Ellis), and thrown herself into the choppy waters of Tinder, Bumble and Hinge. Dating in todays digitally enabled world is rough enough but there is, Rae believes, an added dimension for her characters. Black women are at the bottom of the desire chain, of the dating totem pole; were not the trophies, she says.

In rap culture, especially, theres always an idea that once you achieve an amount of success, your trophy is the white girl on your arm. However, she asserts, thats not limited to hip-hop. Its not scientifically proven, but theres evidence, in dating apps for example, that were the last to be chosen, the least desirable. The theory is also explored in Aziz Ansaris Netflix show Master of None, which includes a scene in which one of his dates, a black woman, tells him: Compared to my white friends, I get way less activity [on app dating sites]. I also find that I rarely match with guys outside of my race.

Lawrence, meanwhile, is also experiencing discrimination, albeit in a different form. In one scene spoiler alert! he is picked up by two non-black girls at a grocery store, who lure him to their apartment, where they proceed to seduce him. Their fetishisation of his blackness has echoes of Get Out, Jordan Peeles racism-thriller which triumphed at the box office earlier this year.

That was based on a real-life situation that one of our writers shared, says Rae of the uncomfortable tryst. It didnt end well, which had nothing to do with his blackness, but we thought: How can we make this story apply to fit our show? Every show can have a threesome story gone awry, but how can we make it unique for Insecure?

Off the clock … Rae in New York last month. Photograph: Amy Sussman/Invision/AP

There is a show-within-the-show too, an antebellum-era television drama that several of Insecures characters are glued to. Last year, our show-within-a-show was Conjugal Visits, which was a comment on the trash TV that consumes us all. Setting it in a prison a system which, in this country, incarcerates mainly black and Latino people and making that entertainment, was definitely meta-commentary, nods Rae.

This seasons skewering of popular culture is no less pointed. Theres [been] such an obsession with depicting slavery that the last few years, I have been kind of slaved-out, she sighs. So we thought it would be funny to have the characters obsessed with this new slave interracial drama. A guest-starring role for Sterling K Brown, who won an Emmy for his portrayal of prosecutor Christopher Darden in The People Vs OJ Simpson, ups that meta ante even further, but Rae is quick to assure me that this wasnt a casting that she chased down. No! We actually have an anti-celebrity policy on the show, she insists. We were doing something together for the Independent Spirit awards, and he was, like: I love your show, if you ever want to cast me The musician Syd, another self-proclaimed fan of the show, also makes a brief cameo.

Although Rae resists comparisons between Insecure and Girls and of herself to its creator Lena Dunham: I get the inclination to compare us because were both young women, but the stories were telling couldnt be more different, she says the two share a deliciously frank depiction of female sexuality. Broken Pussy, one of Issas raps, became something of a refrain in season one, after she speculates that Mollys run of bad luck with men might be the result of a defective filtering system.

My friend and I have a thing where we talk in, um, pussy sounds, Rae laughs. I think that most women know whether they want to sleep with a guy or not within the first five minutes of meeting him, and so we speak in Marge Simpson voices about whether or not a guy could get it. She demonstrates. If its a yes, well say: My pussy was like: [Perky, eager voice] Mm-hm, girl. Or, My pussy was like, [Low, negative tones]: Mm-mm. So, the conversation about Molly feeling like she wasnt attracting the right type of guys was me suggesting her pussy might actually be broken.

What did her mother make of this particular piece of dialogue? She only saw it at the screening! Rae laughs. She pulled me aside afterwards and was, like: That mouth, were going to wash it out but, good job.

Insecure continues on Thursday 10 August, 10.35pm, Sky Atlantic

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nathandgibsca · 7 years

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Create High-Impact Data Visualizations: Nine Effective Strategies

I believe deeply in the value of making data accessible.

In service of that belief, there are few things that bring me as much joy as visualizing data (smart segmentation comes close). There is something magical about taking the tons and tons of complexity that lurks in our data, being able to find the core essence, and then illustrate that simply. The result then is both a mind and heart connection that drives action with a sense of urgency. #winning

While I am partial to the simplest of visualizations in a business data context, I love a simple Bar Chart just as much as a Chord or Fisher-Yates Shuffle. As we have all learned, tools matter a lot less than what we do with the tool. :)

In this post I want to inspire you to think differently. I’ve curated sixteen extremely diverse visualization examples to do that. By design none of them from the world of digital analytics, though I’ll stay connected to that world from a how could you use this idea perspective. My primary goal is to expand your horizon so that we can peek over and see new possibilities.

To spark your curiosity, the visuals I’ve worked hard to find for you cover the US debt, European politics, lynching and slavery, pandemics, movies, gun control, drugs and health, the Chinese economy, and where we spend our lives (definitely review this one!).

The sixteen examples neatly fall into nine strategies I hope you’ll cultivate in your analytics practice as you create data visualizations:

1: The Simplicity Obsession 2: If Complex, Focus! 3: Venn Diagrams FTW! 4: Interactivity With Insightful End-Points 5: What-if Analysis Models 6: Turbocharging Data Visuals with Storytelling 7: The Magic of 2 x 2 Matrices 8: Close Contextual Clusters 9: Multi-dimensional Related Line Graphs

This post has quite a bit of depth, and loads for you to explore, reflect and internalize. It will take a few visits to absorb all the lessons. In as much, my recommendation is to read one section per day. Take time to really understand what’s going on, go to the site, play, look at the higher resolution versions (click on the images), make notes of what you’ll do for the first time or change about what you already do. Most importantly, practice taking action. Then, come back, read the next one and take action. I promise, the rewards will be rich.

Let’s go make you an even more effective influencer when it comes to data!

Strategy 1: The Simplicity Obsession

One of the reasons so many visuals are so very complex is that the Analyst/Creator is trying to demonstrate how clever they are. Sadly in the process of demonstrating aforementioned cleverness, the visuals ends up being incredibly complex crammed with every little bit of amazesomeness they are trying to demonstrate…

(Click on the above image for a higher resolution version)

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Creator worked very hard, and, I sincerely mean this, they are very clever.

The problem is that the essence of what they want to communicate is probably only known to them, or to any person willing to take the time to first learn the job of the analyst, dig into the data themselves, create this picture and then understand what is being said.

It breaks my heart.

Go on. Scroll back up. See if you can understand what is being said.

In my humble opinion there is an additional subtle problem. The Creator was asked to plot the data, or perhaps share the insights, but it is unclear whose job it was to answer this simple question at the end: So What?

When you start with that as your destination, so what, as the creator of any visualization you are going to ask for a lot more context, you are going to make sure the visual is in service of the answer, you'll make sure your cleverness is focused on the outcome the data has to serve.

Please, please, please keep that in mind.

The complicated thing above is trying to highlight an important trend, is missing the context, and is simply not as dramatic as the reality of it actually is!

Here's a better visual showing the National Debt Burden, with four additional elements of context…

(Source)

Did you get what the point was in zero seconds?

Are you a whale-load more scared as you contemplate the red and the green?

Are you freaked out that if there is one thing both political parties in the US seem to be good at it is the red (!)?

That is what a good data visual does.

For the few of you that are a part of the team I lead, in addition to creating a visual for your analysis that is simple and effective, you know that my expectation is that you’ll come with recommendations on what to do.

To demonstrate that there are many paths to JesusKrishnaAllah… Here is another simple view of the debt, with a different x-axis, a stretched out y-axis, along with a different set of context…

(Source: CBO)

Different questions, different arguments, different outcomes. But, you'll get to them much, much, much faster than the first visual.

I can’t stress this enough: Don't try to earn your performance review from the client/audience. Earn it from your boss. Tell your boss how hard you worked, show her how clever you are, earn her praise. Spare your client/audience – show them the simplest manifestation of your brilliant insight, with the NACR criteria applied.

(For more on using NACR to identify out-of-sights, see TMAI #66.)

Strategy 2: If Complex, Focus!

You are going to see my deep bias for simplicity for the rest of this post (or in the 745,540 words written on this blog thus far). I do not want to come across as a simplicity snob.

Deployed well, there are instances where I love complexity.

I thought this was exceptionally well done…

(Source: Michael Paukner | His Flickr collection) (Click on the above image for a higher resolution version)

While it is a little difficult to follow all the arrows back to the original country, the shape of the graphic is an homage to the visual's topic. The background color could not have been more prefect. And, notice there is just the perfect amount of information about every tree.

There are other more subtle things to admire. I love, love, love that Michael put the US on the right. When we “trip up” our audiences like this, it gives them a pause and forces them to look at all the other information more carefully.

There is of course data itself that gives you many pauses. Notice the youngest tree in the graphic is older than Jesus Christ. Or, that we should all be so glad that the American West was settled last (by then we were more appreciative of nature as humans).

I am fine with complexity, if the essential makes it through. I am fine with complexity, if someone who’ll spend 1/100th of the time on the visual compared to you get’s it.

Strategy 3: Venn Diagrams FTW!

I love Venn diagrams. Ok, strictly speaking Euler. But, let's not get pedantic.

I've used them to simplify the presentation of complex topics. Ex: Six Visual Solutions To Complex Digital Marketing/Analytics Challenges

I am only slightly kidding but one of humanity’s most complex undertaking is to understand what the heck Europe is. One end's up ruing even asking, because you hear back EU, EEA, Euro Zone, Schengen, EFTA, and more.

I felt Bloomberg did a wonderful job with, what looks like an amoeba-inspired, Euler diagram…

(Click on the above image for a higher resolution version)

The color schemes are contrasted enough to allow you to follow along nicely.

The context from the sizes of the economy is a nice touch. (This is embarrassing but I was surprised how big Italy is, and how small Sweden is.)

The clusters of countries next to each other, for the sake of cleaner lines, all by itself has a built-in message. Cyprus and Ireland. UK, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia. So on and so forth.

Overall, this is a topic that has been tackled numerous times, with painful to see results. Bloomberg managed to make it as simple as possible, with valuable built-in context.

Staying in the same geographic area, and my Euler-love, here's another fantastic visualization of often a very complicated answer: What is each political party in the UK promising?

I adore this as the answer…

(Source: Economist) (Click on the above image for a higher resolution version)

Would you have believed that the totally out there UKIP would have something on common with Labour? Or that Labour is completely alone in the minimum wage issue?

The visual makes it easier to understand what we might be most interested in from the thousands of pages that form each party’s manifesto. You, the audience, is now empowered to agree more passionately with your party or feel the uncomfortable squirming that comes with realizing what your party is solving for. Both. Fantastic. Outcomes.

Clearly this is a political picture, and someone has to decide what to include and what to exclude because the parties promise the Earth, Moon and the Andromeda galaxy. But that is the life of an Analyst… They have to make tough choices.

Two hopes.

1. I hope every single news organization in every single country in the world will copy this visualization and create it for their main political parties. (Also see related NYT example on Guns below.)

2. What will you do with this? Can you pull out all the content types from your digital existence and create a visual like this one for which goal (overlapping goals) each type is solving for? How about displaying countries and products purchased? Oh, or your main traffic sources and the visitor acquisition metrics?

So much to do, so simply, and so little time!

Strategy 4: Interactivity With Insightful End-Points.

There is a common belief that your company’s decision makers would use data more if they could explore it – more efficiently, deeper, etc. This is almost never true, primarily due to the problem outlined in the orange and blue triangles that outline skill/competency and insights/action.

Hence, in a business context I rarely advocate for initiatives whose only purpose is to allow the broad collection of company employees to go on random fishing expeditions.

Exploratory environments can be useful, especially when they are 1. sharply focused 2. have an ability to eliminate dead end-points and 3. allow for smart elements like modeling. Let’s look at the first two below and the third one in the following example.

Here’s a valuable dataset from the Equal Justice Initiative on Lynchings in America.

(Click on the above image for a higher resolution version)

Even at a glance the data is useful, along multiple dimensions.

In this case exploration of the data makes it even more valuable. You hover your mouse over your area of interest, and click…

You get your data drill-down, but what’s of most impactful is that you also get an end-point with a valuable insight providing meaning to the data.

In this case the number 29 for Jefferson County would be an insufficiently valuable end-point. The inclusion of Elizabeth Lawrence’s story on the other hand provides meaning. That is what gives the exploration a purposeful end-point.

You can now zoom out, move on to exploring other areas, continuing to get enriched value from the data.

In a business context when you are working with interactive data visualizations, ask this very valuable question: In a sea of data, whose job is it to include a logical end-point with an insight of value?

Surely, your terabytes of Google Analytics data dumped into a Tableau exploratory thingamagigy won’t magically throw them out there.

Surely, lay business decision makers, even senior ones, won’t have all the context they need to have to convert thingamagigy fishing expeditions, sorry, explorations, into the brilliance you feel the data contains.

Interactive visualization are great, only when packaged with insights for actions at logical end-points in exploration. Tweet that.

[SIDEBAR] This is a difficult example to share because of the deeply emotional content it contains. But, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Beyond the value of the lessons from the visualizations, I encourage you to explore rest of the EJI website. At the very minimum please consider spending five minutes listening to the story of John Hartfield told by Tarabu Kirkland, and six minutes on the story of Thomas Miles Sr told by Shirah Dedman. Thank you. [/SIDEBAR]

Bonus: Another insightful visualization on this topic is at pudding.cool, The Shape of Slavery…

A bit more complex of a visualization, a function of the depth of data populated.

Follow the story of Louisiana as you reflect on the data.

Lots of data visualization, storytelling and life lessons in this data set as well.

Strategy 5: What-if Analysis Models.

Building on the thought above, if you create exploratory environments it can be exceedingly accretive to decision-making if we build in what-if type models. Rather than stopping at an end-point, provide an option of doing some type of sensitivity analysis with the goal of prodding the audience to take action.

For example… Let’s say they end up looking at Visitors, Conversion Rates, and Revenue. You can easily imagine how you want someone to explore that data by traffic sources or campaigns or geo or myriad valuable dimensions. You can create an environment where they press buttons to get that data.

Necessary, but not sufficient.

Why not build in a model where the decision maker can change Conversion Rates, to see the impact on Revenue? Move it from 1% to 1.5% to 8%. See what happens by traffic sources. Then, make a smarter decision.

Or, empower them to play with discounting strategies. What happens if they offer a 5%, 10% or 18% discount? Show impact on Revenue and Profit.

Even without bundling insights into your prepackaged environment, the what-if models allow your decision makers to play with scenarios, understand impact and make smarter decisions about what to do.

That’s the key. Don’t make visualizations with dead ends.

Here’s a great example of that from Mosaic. The visualization is about outpacing pandemics.

Quoting them: Vaccines are an essential weapon in fighting disease outbreaks. But how does the time taken to develop vaccines compare to the speed and frequency of outbreaks? And how can we do it better?

This is the simple view that greets you, outbreaks from 1890 to 2016 with vaccine development during that same time…

Each element is clickable.

As an illustration, the longest bar is Typhoid fever and the smallest, mercifully, is Measles. For each bar, click on Measles, you’ll see the first big outbreak (1917, 3,000 deaths) and the last (1989, 123 deaths). It is really easy to explore the data.

What I love is the sensitivity analysis.

Click on the yellow dot, and you’ll see that in action. First, you see what actually happened…

Simple exploration. Good reporting. Easy to understand.

The buttons with the number of weeks represent what I wanted to highlight here. Click on them, and it demonstrates what the outcome would have been if action was taken earlier.

I choose 22 weeks…

Even if the vaccine had been introduced after 22 weeks, a long time, we could have saved 1,628 lives!

The team also built in some hypothetical scenarios to help inform decision-making.

You can play with the implications of a fast-moving flu-like pandemic. It would have grievous overall impact, 30 mil deaths in 12 months.

But, what if we restrict 50% of the travel since we don’t have a vaccine yet. That would have an impact…

Not quite as material as one might imagine, but it slows things down.

What if a vaccine was introduced 22 weeks in?

Insanely helpful. 17 mil lives saved.

This type of modeling is rarer than seeing a rhino in the Ngorongoro crater. (We were there last week, you should go, it is pretty awesome.)

As an analyst, as a Big Data person, as a Data Scientist, pouring the right data on humanity is only marginally effective. In this example, in others above, I hope you’ll see the type of additional creativity we can bring to our work to power smarter decision-making. Starting with no dead end-points.

Strategy 6: Turbocharging Data Visuals with Storytelling.

You know this. Even if data is shared in a simple environment, most people are unable to internalize it. As has been hinted in most examples today, the problem is that the Analyst’s brain has not been packaged with the data.

The Global Gender Gap Report is a fabulous example how to solve this problem. The team nor only shares in a simple and beautiful environment, they also include the story they want to tell in that same environment. The output is not the reporting, the output are the conclusions from the Analyst’s brain.

It is very difficult for me to show the beauty of what they have done in static screenshots. You just have to go there and scroll.

Explore how the initial trend in the gender gap morphs into multiple visualizations, note the subtle but important emphasis on trends, and, most importantly, feel joy from how the story is presented with the data (text on the right).

The website and visualization will work on your mobile device (yea!), but it is best admired on the largest screen you can find.

To tempt you, let me just contrast the gender gap performance of the United States (precipitous decline in the last two years!) with… with… inspired by FLOTUS, the 10 year performance of Slovenia…

Play with the histogram and scatterplot options.

Go back and forth a few times (yes, gender parity is an issue I care deeply about), make sure you absorb the many nuances both in the story (why the above stinky performance by the US?) and the way the text (story) and the visualization (data) play together.

When you send data out, is it bundled with a piece of your brain?

Remember, you’ll be the last person with the intelligence and skills to understand the deep layers and nuances in what the data is actually saying (assuming you are an Analysis Ninja!). It is imperative that your brain go with the data.

Bonus 1: Another fantastic example of this type of sequential storytelling is Film Money….

Lars Verspohl takes you along on a wonderful journey through cost and profit structures of movies. Like me, you’ll love the simple and delightful visualizations, how gracefully flow it all flows, and that all the charts and data are primarily there to support the story that emerges from his analysis.

Please also note the thought put into the order in which the story is told, if and when the visualizations switch (from the one above) and the techniques deployed to keep you interested. All excellent, loads to learn.

Bonus 2: This is one subject, storytelling, that I just love, love, love. Indulge me as I pile on and share one more, dramatically different, example of storytelling where data and text go hand in hand.

The team at Reuters Graphics does a fab job of explaining China’s debt problem.

Almost all the visuals are extremely simple. As you scroll through, observe though how they peel back layers of the onion one by one, segment the data, and zero in on the core point they want to make.

Really lovely. Worth emulating.

Strategy 7: The Magic of 2 x 2 Matrices

If you’ve read anything on this blog, you’ve read the importance of seeking why answers to provide critical context to the what answers that you get out of Adobe or Google Analytics. Hence, the amazing value of Surveys, Usability Studies (on or offline), Heuristic Evaluations, shadowing Customer Service calls, and more.

Customers are an amazing source of problems they are having, sometimes they are also a good source of ideas. The challenge is that if you ask people for their opinions you get tons of ideas.

How do you value them? How do you present them? How fast can you get from data to action?

One solution I love is a visualization strategy used by the team at the New York Times. The example illustrates, simply, the ideas related to an emotionally charged topic: Gun Control.

Everyone knows this is a polarizing topic. Friend against friend. Blue vs. Red. Police and minorities and every other combination thrown in. It is a mess.

But. Is it really as fraught with angst as we believe?

No. It turns out if you ask Americans about individual ideas that will reduce gun deaths… A vast majority of us agree!!

The lowest supported idea is “Demonstrate need for a gun.” Support for it is just shy of 50%. A number that simply sounds unbelievable.

Did you think vast majorities in our countries agree with these common-sense ideas? I have to admit I did not. It is hopeful data.

But, this is not the reason for the inclusion of this visual on our list.

Rather than just share the ideas, the NYT team added incremental value (remember packing the Analyst’s brain?) by asking Experts to opine on the effectiveness of each idea. That’s what you are seeing in the distribution above.

From the 2×2 matrix, here is the slice of ideas American’s support and the ones Experts say are effective…

There are only two ideas rated as ineffective by Expert, but are supported by over 70% of the Americans (national stand your ground law and honor out-of-state conceal and carry permits).

We all basically agree on ideas, and a lot of them will have an impact.

I love the presentation of the ideas and the fact that Experts were brought in to give valuable context. This is what I meant in my above example by not simply taking all the customer ideas and running with them. A wonderful way for you to visualize multiple ideas, and you can combine it with an Expert dimension or a Customer Satisfaction dimension or even a Revenue dimension to give context to the ideas.

One last element of value from NYT.

I’ve said that all data in aggregate is crap. I’m so happy that the NYT team also segmented the data.

What does Mr. Trump support…

What do American law enforcement support…

And, lots more slices that make the data even more meaningful.

Segment. Always, always, always segment!

It is beyond the scope of this humble analytics blog to explore why in the face of such unanimity that nothing actually happens when it comes to reducing gun violence in the US. But, for lovers of data, for believers in the power of data to drive smart decision-making, this is one more reminder on the limitation of data if you can’t tell the story properly.

Strategy 8: Close Contextual Clusters.

Let’s close with examples of work that you’ll normally include in your enterprise analytics efforts.

Usually data we have is lonely. Just the Visits or Assisted Conversions or Order Size. Without other contextual elements, it turns out this data is less useful.

Consider this, conversion rate could go up by a statistically significant percentage… While revenue actually goes down. Or, the overall Visits to the site stay steady… But drop dramatically from your usually second highest source.

The European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction, also known by the gorgeous acronym EMCDDA (!), publishes a ton of data. Their Statistical Bulletin 2017 has a lovely collection of graphs and charts that we all use in some shape or form. The only difference is that we rarely report on Heroin Price and Purity. :)

Along with the use of (mostly) simple visuals to illustrate the data, I appreciated the context that they provide. Sometimes using the time dimensions, sometimes using geographic breakdowns, sometimes using two likely interplaying elements (like above), so on and so forth.

This simple strategy is quite effective at delivering insights – or at least causing the audience to ask relevant interesting questions.

I encourage you to take some time and explore the numerous examples on the site…

I’m confident the visualization strategies will spark upgrades to the work you are doing at your company to communicate data more effectively.

Our friends at the EMCDDA mostly avoid two things that I find as poor practices in data visualization. They triggered this in my mind, let me take the opportunity of sharing them with you.

1. Never ever, never, never, never create the loooooooooonnnnnnnggggggg infographics that seem to be in vogue these days. Essentially they are taking 69 “slides”/graphs/tables and shoving them into a 9-meter-long thing that no browser can render decently. By the time you absorb the third screen full of stuff in tiny font/image, you’ve already forgotten what’s on the second. You have many examples in this post as to how you can avoid making yourself look like sub-optimal Reporting Squirrel.

2. Pie-charts are a very poor data visualization choice. Humans find comparison by angles significantly harder than, for example, by length. I explain this a lot more in the May 14th edition of my newsletter The Marketing Analytics Intersect: Eat pies, don’t share them.

[You should subscriber to TMAI for a weekly dose of intelligence that’ll keep you at the bleeding edge of our industry.]

Bonus: In the spirit of government data, I’ll be remiss if I did not share with you three examples of interactive scatter plots from Our World in Data (produced by the University of Oxford).

The second one is timely, it shows how when we look at health spending and life expectancy the United States is a massive outlier (and not the good kind)…

I love fusion charts, the first one on the site, Child Mortality vs. Mean Years of Schooling, is a good example of that as well. And, it shows great news.

Please review all three. Then, consider plotting one for your digital data. Conversion Rates by Discounts for Top Ten Traffic Sources. Time on Site by Visits to site for Content Types. And, more.

Strategy 9: Multi-dimensional Related Line Graphs.

One final example, to cause introspection about the final years of your life.

Wait. Things really got serious.

They did. But, I really do want you to lean into this one.

A small reason is that you are likely creating graphs like these every single day for your dashboards. I hope you’ll find lessons in how to make yours simpler. Notice the use of fonts and colors. Notice the labeling, or not, of the axis. And other little things.

A big reason is that I care for you deeply and I want this data to be a cautionary signal to all of us to possibly start making new choices.

The plots are from the American Time Use Survey, a multi-year study from 2003 to 2015 conducted by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Age on the x-axis and hours we spend per day with on the y-axis…

(Source: halhen on Reddit | Github)

In our 20s we’ll spend most time with our friends and our parents. Our partner and co-workers will take over our lives from then on through our 50s.

I’ll let you internalize the rest, and please share via comments what you see as the lessons in this data.

Three things stood out for me, as I consider the larger latter chunk of life. 1. We might be giving an extraordinary amount of importance to our co-workers, perhaps worth a rethink. 2. I love my spouse, regardless of who goes first, I felt very sad after staring at the Partner and Alone graphs. 3. The data demonstrated the value of loving oneself – of being proud of who you are, of being comfortable in one’s own skin. After all each individual will spend huge chunks of a decade plus… alone. You have from now until you are 50 or so to get there. Hurry!

: )

The power of great data visualized simply.

Closing Thoughts.

The sixteen diverse sources and visualization strategies help you think differently about how you are bridging the critical last-mile when it comes to impact from data – from you to the person who’ll take and action of business value. We don’t give enough time and attention to this last-mile.

While some of these clearly take special skills (especially the ones that tell integrated stories), I hope you’ll note that most of them are simple and ones that you can create with just a little more effort.

What’s most important today is that I’ve sparked your commitment to upgrading your personal data visualization skills.

Good luck!

As always, it is your turn now.

Which one or two examples did you like the most? Why? Is there a visualization technique you deploy in your analytics practice that’s not covered in this post? What barriers prevent you from improving your data viz skills? What are your pet peeves when it comes to data visualizations? Do you have go-to sources when it comes to inspiring you?

Please share your tips, best practices, critique, and praise for the people who created the above examples, via comments.

Thank you.

PS: I was not kidding in the opening of this post… I've written a lot about data visualization and shared guidance for this type of storytelling in numerous different contexts. To continue your immersion, here's another collection of knowledge…

~ It's Not The Ink, It's The Think: 6 Effective Data Visualization Strategies

~ Great Storytelling With Data: Visualize Simply And Focus Obsessively

~ Data Visualization Inspiration: Analysis To Insights To Action, Faster!

~ 7 Data Presentation Tips: Think, Focus, Simplify, Calibrate, Visualize++

~ Excellent Analytics Tip #21: Convert Complex Data Into Simple Logical Stories

I hope you love it, and paint more beautiful pictures with your data.

Create High-Impact Data Visualizations: Nine Effective Strategies is a post from: Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

from SEO Tips https://www.kaushik.net/avinash/create-high-impact-effective-data-visualizations/

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Issa Rae: ‘So much of the media presents blackness as fierce and flawless. Im not’

The creator of Insecure talks the dating totem pole, films obsession with slavery and the gender-race pay gap as season two begins

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Watch the trailer for season two of Insecure.

Big society … Raes character with co-worker Frieda (Lisa Joyce). Photograph: Justina Mintz/HBO

I suggest that in future she stops fans and asks for further, more detailed feedback. She throws her head back and laughs. Yes. Excuse me, but why do you like the show? Tell me right now, please.

Boyfriend material … Jay Ellis as Lawrence in Insecure. Photograph: Justina Mintz/HBO

Off the clock … Rae in New York last month. Photograph: Amy Sussman/Invision/AP

Insecure continues on Thursday 10 August, 10.35pm, Sky Atlantic