#as someone who has since deconstructed from religion I think seeing him go through that journey would’ve been great

[hellzabeth]

i have opinions about The Prince of Egypt musical adaption and you’re going to listen to them: An Essay

So, quick disclaimer: The Prince of Egypt is one of my favourite movies of all time. The casting, the music, the animation, I think it’s one of the top-tier movies that have ever been made. I went into seeing the London West End production of PoE with a full expectation that nothing I saw on stage would ever live up to how much I love the movie. I was fully aware there are plenty of limitations to what can be shown live on a stage with human actors and props.

That being said, I was enormously disappointed with how the whole thing was handled.

The Good

Now before I launch into a whole tirade of what I didn’t like about the production, it does behoove me to say what I think they did do well. 


The casting of the role of Moses was done fantastically, as was Miriam, Tzipporah, and Yocheved. The swings and the ensemble were really engaged and well placed, going through lots of quick changes to go from Hebrews to Egyptians to Midianites and back.


The two Egyptian queens, wifes of Seti and Ramses, are actually given names, lines, and character beyond being simply tacked onto their respective kings. We get to see how they feel about the events happening around them, and there’s even a scene where Ramses meets his wife and courts her, whereas in the movie, she stands in the background and says nothing. This is one of the areas I was hoping the musical, which would naturally have a longer run-time, would expand on, and I was pleased to see the opportunity was taken.

Light projections on enormous curtains were used to very good effect, taking us instantly inside the walls of the palace and then out to the desert. 


Over all, the work was really put in to be engaging and emotional, and the orchestra really worked to deliver the right musical beats.


One of two stand out scenes as being done very well was the opening “Deliver Us”, which included a bone-chilling moment of Egyptians separating a mother and her baby, with her screams as she’s dragged off-stage, and the blood on the guard’s sword. It really brings home the fear as Yocheved tries to lead Aaron and Miriam to the river with her, not to mention Yocheved’s actress nailed the lullaby. 


The second was at the other end of the show, “When You Believe” was beautifully performed by the whole cast, though it was somewhat stunted by what came before...

The Bad

Oh boy.

So the main problem with this show is not the music, not the staging, not even that sometimes the ensemble was a little off-beat (the lai-lai-lai section in Though Heaven’s Eyes comes to mind). Any mistakes there can all be forgiven, since sometimes things just happen in live performance, someone’s a bit off or something’s just not possible to do on the budget allotted. 


The problem is in the script.

The Prince of Egypt movie is a story that stands not only on the shoulders of its fantastic music and visuals, but also on its emotive retelling and portrayal of the characters within - mainly Moses and Ramses. And while the stage musical does spend a lot of time with the two mains, it neglects two other, incredibly important characters.

Pharaoh Seti, and God. 


In the movie, Seti strikes an intimidating figure. He is old, hardened, and wise in the ways of ruling his kingdom - and is voiced by Patrick Stewart, who brings his A-game to the role. Both Moses and Ramses admire him and look up to him immensely as young men, and the relationship he has with both of them deeply informs their characters as the story progresses. It’s from Seti that Moses learns that taking responsibility for your actions is the respectable thing to do (and later, the true horror of having your idol turn out to be not what you think), and it’s from Seti that Ramses takes a huge inferiority complex.

There are two lines that Seti gets in the movie, one spoken to Moses, and one to Ramses. These two lines define Moses and Ramses’ actions later on in the story:

To Ramses - “One weak link can break the chain of a mighty dynasty!” To Moses - “Oh my son... they were only slaves.”

Guess which two lines are absent from the musical?

One Weak Link is turned into an upbeat song, rather than shouted at a terrified and cowed young Ramses. Instead of being openly a traumatic, internalised moment of negative character development for Ramses, it’s treated as a general philosophy that Seti passes down to his son. Instead of a judgement that is hung over Ramses’ head like a sword of Damocles, lingering in his mind through the whole story and coming up in a shouted argument with Moses later, it’s said and then moved on from. 


The “they were only slaves” comment, on the other hand, is absent entirely. This changes Moses’ relationship with Seti enormously, as well as his relationship with the Hebrew people. Upon finding the mural depicting the killing of the slave children, Moses is appropriately horrified, and Seti shows up to comfort him and defend his terrible actions. Moses leaves this interaction... and then sings about how this is indeed all he ever wanted! He has no moment of horrific realisation that his father thinks of the slaves as lesser, as lives that can be thrown away. This means that the scene where he kills the guard doesn’t lead into a discussion of morality with Ramses as he runs away, but rather Moses breaking down about his heritage as though it’s a negative, instead of something he’s realised is just as valuable as his life as an Egyptian. Instead of Moses being shown as having a strong moral core that protests against the idea of any life being lesser, he bemoans his Hebrew blood loudly, and makes little mention of the man he killed. His issue that causes him to run away is being adopted, rather than his guilt that he’s a murderer, and nothing Ramses can say will change it.

Later on, we don’t see Ramses express this opinion either (in the movie - M:”Seti’s hands bore the blood of thousands of children!” R:“Hah, slaves!” M:“My people!”) so it seems the core reasoning for the necessity of the extremes God had to go to in order to convince Ramses to let the Hebrews go is completely gone.

Which leads us into God Himself, as a character. 


God is a tricky topic in general. He is hard to talk about as a concept and as a character, and even harder to depict in a way that won’t offend someone. The Prince of Egypt movie always struck me as a very good depiction of the Old Testament God - vengeful and strong-willed, commanding and yet nurturing, capable of great mercy and great cruelty in one fell swoop. God is incredibly present in the story, a character in and of Himself, speaking with Moses rather than simply commanding him. The conversation at the Burning Bush is bone-chillingly beautiful. Moses is allowed to question, he’s allowed to enquire, he’s allowed to express how he feels about God’s choice, and God is given the chance to respond (and reprimand, and comfort).

In the musical, the Burning Bush scene lasts all of two minutes, during which God (the ensemble cast, acting as one moving flame, speaking in unison) monologues to Moses, and Moses is not given room to question, talk to, or build a relationship with God. Later on, once some of the plagues have gotten underway, Moses rails against God, flinches in his resolve, and tries to back out... and God says nothing. It’s Miriam and the spirit of Yocheved that convince Moses to keep going. As a character, God is nearly absent. Even when it comes to calling upon the Plagues, or parting the Red Sea, God’s voice is absent. Moses does not pray. He does not even use the staff that God encouraged him to pick up as a symbol of his becoming a shepherd of the Hebrews out of Egypt. 


It’s these little changes, these little absences of such vital lines and presences, that ends up changing the whole vibe of the show. Seti is more like a dad than an emotionally distant authority figure, and God is more like an emotionally distant authority figure than a character at all. Ultimately, the whole feeling that one is left with at the end…

The Ugly

… is that the script doesn’t like God, or religion in general.

A bold statement to make, considering the source material is one of the central biblical stories in EVERY Abrahamic religion. Moses as a figure is considered so important and close to god, that The Prince of Egypt, even with its sensitive portrayal, cannot be aired in a number of Islamic states, because it’s considered disrespectful to depict any of the prophets, especially an important one like Moses. Moses is arguably the MOST important prophet in the Jewish canon.

However, I haven’t highlighted one of the most noticeable script changes - the elevation of Hotep, the high priest, to main antagonist.

In the original movie, Hotep is a secondary villain, a crony to the Pharaohs, bumbling and snide and two-faced. He and his fellow priest Hoy are there primarily to juxtapose how charlatans can control power through flattery and slight of hand, reassuring Ramses that Moses’ miracles are merely magic the same as what they can do. They even get a whole villain song, “Playing With The Big Boys” which is a lovely deconstruction of lyrics vs visuals, where while the priests boast that their gods and magic are much more powerful, in the background the staff, transformed into a snake by god, devours and defeats the priests’ snake handily. The takeaway from the song is that God’s power is true, and doesn’t need theatrics.

It’s a good little nugget of wordless world building. And it is completely absent from the stage musical, with only a vague reference to the chant of all the gods names.

Hoy is gone, and Hotep is the only priest. He actively speaks out against the Pharaoh, boasts about having all the power, and is played as bombastic and proud. He’s a wildly different character, even threatening Ramses at one point. In the end, it’s shown that Ramses won’t let the Hebrews go not because he has inherited his father Seti’s cruel attitude towards the lives he considers beneath him, but because he is being actively bullied by the priest, and will lose his power and credibility if he doesn’t do as he’s told. Ramses is even given a whole song about how little power he really has. The script desperately wants us to feel sorry for Ramses’ position and hate the unrepentantly, cartoonishly evil priest.

That’s another matter as well - a LOT of time is dedicated to making the Egyptians more human and sympathetic, portraying them as largely ignorant of the suffering beneath them, rather than actively participating in slavery. Characters speak out of turn without regard for formality and class, even to the royal family. They are casual, chummy even. And this would be fine - in fact, it’s good to have that sort of third dimension to characters, even ones who are doing reprehensible things, to show the total normalcy and banality of evil - if it were not for the fact they still include a completely open-and-shut case of evil right next to them.

Hotep has no redeeming features. And on the other side, God is barely present, certainly not in a relatable context. Moses has several lines about how cruel and unnecessary God’s plagues are - and you know what, in this version, they are unnecessary! Ramses is not the stone-hearted ruler that his movie counterpart is, he has no baggage over being a potential failure, because it was never really given to him in the same way! By taking away Ramses’ threatening nature, numbers like the Plagues lose half their appeal, as the back-and-forth ‘you who I called brother’ lines between Moses and Ramses are completely absent. Moses is faithless, and is less torn between the horror of what he’s doing and the necessity of it for the freedom of his people, and more left scrabbling for meaning that he doesn’t find. And the only thing hanging over Ramses is Hotep nit-picking everything he does and threatening him, which is considerably less compelling than the script seems to think it is.

This is best exemplified at the end, when all the issues come to a head. The angel of Death comes and takes the Egyptian first borns (which was actually a well done scene), and the Hebrews leave to a rousing rendition of When You Believe. But then we cut to Ramses and Hotep, with Hotep openly threatening to revolt against the Pharaoh - whom was believed, especially by the priesthood, to be a living god! Hotep is so devoid of redeeming features he cannot even be trusted to stand by his beliefs! - unless Ramses agrees to chase after the Hebrews. Reluctantly, Ramses is badgered into the attempt.

Back with the Hebrews, Moses parts the Red Sea… not with his faith, not by praying to God for another miracle, not even by using his staff as in the most famous scene of the movie… but by holding out his hand and demanding the ‘magic’ work. Setting aside the disrespect of Abrahamic religions to call one of the most famous miracles “magic” (and my oh my, if there was a fundamentalist of any religion in the audience they might have gasped to hear it), it again belittles the work of God, and puts all the onus on Moses, not as a conduit for God’s work, but as the worker himself. Then, the Egyptians arrive in pursuit, lead by Hotep, not Ramses. Moses sends the Hebrews through first, lead by Miriam, and stays behind with Tzipporah… to offer his life in penance to Ramses! The script has completely stripped both Ramses and Moses of their convictions towards their causes, and Moses cannot even stand by his decision to lead his people.

Then, in a moment of jarring melodrama, Moses has a sudden vision that Ramses, his brother, will one day be called Ramses the Great (an actual historical Pharaoh who reigned 1279-1213 BCE). There is no historical evidence that this was the Ramses that ruled over the Hebrews (there are 11 Pharaohs called Ramses through the history of Ancient Egypt), and maybe if the scene was acted a little better, it wouldn’t have been so sudden or jarring. Even more jarring, is that then Hotep arrives with the rest of the army, and Ramses refuses to lead the charge into the parted sea. Hotep does so himself, and is the one to have the final dramatic moment, being crushed under the water.

The Takeaway

After watching the show, I’m afraid I could never recommend it as either a play, an adaption, or even as a faithful retelling of a bible story. Its character drama isn’t compelling enough to be good as a standalone play, with it two main characters declawed and their core motivations reduced to a squabble between brothers rather than a grand interplay between two cultures and ideas and trauma handed down from their father. As an adaption of the movie it’s upsettingly bad, with grand numbers like the Plagues rendered piecemeal and fan favourites like Playing With The Big Boys missing entirely. As a retelling of the bible story, it’s insulting, completely cutting God out of the equation, taking no opportunity to reintroduce Aaron as an important character (which he was, in the bible, as Moses was a notoriously bad public speaker, with a stutter, and Aaron often interpreted for him) and more importantly, completely erasing God’s influence from the narrative.

I don’t know who this show was… for, in that case. If it wasn’t for drama lovers, movie fans, or people of the faith, then who the hell was it for? Why change such a critically acclaimed and well-beloved story? Why take away all these defining moments? If you wanted to tell a story about how religion is the true evil, how God can command people to do terrible things, and how those who uphold organised religion like Hotep are unrepentant, one-dimensional monsters… why would you tell that through the Prince of Egypt?

Underwhelming at best, infuriating at worst… just watch the movie. Or read Exodus. At least the Bible’s free.

[mischievouswritingblog]

Meta Essay: Medivh The Bisexual Icon

As of the time of this post, there’s going to be an update coming to World of Warcraft where the once all female ghosts in Karazhan will be changed to include male varieties as well.

Full details on the update can be found here: https://www.wowhead.com/news/female-only-ghosts-in-karazhan-updated-to-include-male-versions-324371

This has caused a lot of fun posts and people to take this as an ‘accidental confirmation’ by Blizzard that the character Medivh is bisexual. Pair this along with how some of his portrayal in Hearthstone was made into Warcraft canon, and in my opinion, it’s an excellent update to his character.

It’s no secret that Blizzard’s had a massive lack in LBGTQ+ representation for the longest time. Often when such subject matter did show up it was treated more as a punchline in some quests or was kept conveniently to the sidelines, with nonconsequential, blink and you miss it text, side characters, moments. It’s insulting, to say the least, and is the source of a growing frustration from the LBGTQ+ members of the audience. What’s more, whenever this frustration gets voiced it’s always talked down to. We are told that to ‘keep politics out of gaming’ and that we are too sensitive, when these are the same people that get bent out of shape when even a single thing changes or is called out in their game. It’s bullshit. LBGTQ+ people exist and the act of existing isn’t a political issue.

But of course, with people even making lighthearted jokes or posts of Medivh being a ‘Bisexual Icon’, there’s folks crawling out of the woodwork with reasons from “But the loooooooore!” (as if the lore isn’t constantly changing and being retconned from one expansion to the next) to “Well A-C-T-U-A-L-L-Y, those male guests were just for the female nobles that visited and attended his parties, Medivh was very straight”. To that, I’m going to say: “Nah, Medivh is a bisexual icon, deal with it”.

In my personal opinion, Medivh is an excellent character to explore queerness  with. He’s a character that’s been around since Warcraft 1 and the effects and ties from his story are still felt throughout World of Warcraft in various ways. Medivh is also a character that’s gone through a large amount of evolution and various portrayals. My personal favorite being the One Night in Karazhan take on him because it’s so different from the usual ‘brooding, grand powerful hermit-mage’ that his type of character usually is. Medivh in One Night in Karazhan is instead, vibrant and is a thriving social butterfly that loves to have and treat people to a good time. His reasonings for being this way make a lot more sense when you really think about what Medivh’s situation was.

Now, I have to mention that I do a much deeper dive and deconstruction of Medivh’s circumstances and just how messed up they were in this self indulgent essay/headcanon dump: ‘My Completely Self-indulgent Medivh Essay’. Feel free to give it a read but here is the basic gist for this essay:

Yes, Medivh was the Guardian, one of the most powerful mages to exist at the time. He was also possessed by Sargeras and was the one that created and opened the Dark Portal that brought the Orcs to Azaroth and changed Azeroth forever. But here’s the thing, Medivh had no choice in any of it.

To be the Guardian means you have to put your life on the line for Azeroth’s sake. This is a role that had to be kept to secrecy, people had to make a lot of sacrifices to be the Guardian. You gain phenomenal powers and it is a great honor but none of this was anything that Medivh ever asked for. He was literally born to become the Guardian, there was no other choice for his own future. 

Then you have Sargeras, he had his plans in play long before Medivh was even a thought. A sliver of Sargeras had entered Aegwynn (Med’s mother and the Guardian before him) from a battle between Aegwynn and his avatar. This influence hid within her and made its move when she decided that she wasn’t going to allow the Council of Tirisfal to choose her heir for her title and powers for her. Ignoring Chronicle’s softening of her, she used Medivh’s father, Neilas Aran, the court magician of Stormwind to sire a child. In TLG she let him know she flat out used him and felt nothing for him then came back later and tossed baby Medivh to him for free childcare. What neither of them knew at the time was that Medivh was possessed by Sargeras while he was in the womb. Sargeras would then screw him over even further by causing his powers to lash out when he was fourteen, causing him to accidentally kill his father and fall into a near 10 year coma, and wake up mentally and emotionally fourteen in a twenty-three-year-old’s body. So from the very beginning Medivh was always set up for failure.

So with this summary out of the way, the point of the matter is that Medivh is a character that had little autonomy for most of his life. His career and his fate were chosen for him from the start. Sargeras was in his head messing with him throughout his life, in TLG Medivh even tells Khadgar that he tried to fight it as much as he could. His story is a tragic one but with his reappearance in Legion there’s potentially a ray of hope.

I think there’s a lot of aspects in Medivh’s story that can tie well with the feelings and experiences of queerness. Not so much the being possessed by discount space Satan, but more so the struggle of trying to have autonomy and hanging onto who you are as a person. Being queer myself and looking at it through that lens, I see Medivh being vibrant and throwing parties as an attempt for him to seize what autonomy he could for himself. To exist, to be seen, and to have an identity of his own that had nothing to do with being the Guardian of Tirisfal. I think that it’s also something that separates Medivh from Sargeras. There were likely times where Sargeras may have forced the lines between them to blur as he gradually poisoned Medivh’s thoughts and twisted his soul throughout the years. Medivh likely had to struggle a lot with separating who he truly was from Sargeras. This being inside him, who wasn’t him but would at times take over his body suppressing Medivh’s true self. It’s a horror story where some elements can really hit close to home.

Medivh I believe surrounded himself with like minded, free spirited people like Barnes and the theater troupe (while there’s the joke Medivh’s only seen three plays, I choose to headcanon he’s a theater kid, given how he has a theater to begin with and his own love for theatrics). Whether you picture Medivh as aro, ace, gay, bi, pan, or trans, with the upcoming changes he clearly accepts many kinds of people into his home.

This also has the interesting effect of changing some of the tones for some events in his lore. One example being the titans sending down the Maiden of Virtue to punish Medivh and make him live a more ‘pure’ life. The Titans are Azeroth’s closest thing to a pantheon of gods. They are beings of order, having taken Azeroth in her rawest form and molding her into something they saw fit. Apparently, Medivh’s parties and behavior was seen as something that required ‘correcting’.

On one hand, it’s really easy to read it simply as Medivh being a selfish, spoiled brat. But with looking at it through a queer lens one can put a more positive spin on the situation. The Maiden of Virtue was sent to shame and punish him into conforming into something the Titans believe someone like Medivh should behave. It clearly didn’t work. Looking at this situation, one can read it as Medivh refusing to relinquish his identity because a ‘higher power’ wanted him to. In the real world there are so many that have to hide their orientation and gender thanks to people using religion and belief as a cudgel. So having a character like Medivh as queer, with the power and willfulness to flat out refuse and shut it down is a refreshing power move.

Medivh’s story and the way he is in general has elements that I believe many people of the LBGTQ+ can relate with. He’s a complicated character that has dealt with abuse and being forced into roles without his consent, he made identity for himself and it was stripped away by an oppressor (Sargeras), and, depending on if Blizzard decides he’s actually resurrected/alive instead of being a ghost, is a survivor.

So to me, I love the idea of Medivh being a queer icon in Warcraft. It hasn’t been officially stated by Blizzard at the time this essay was posted but it has started a fun conversation. There are and will be the haters who will scream and tantrum about the LBGTQ+ touching their precious (when convenient) lore with their filthy paws and tarnishing ‘their game’. But in the meantime, I’m going to continue having a blast with the idea and enjoy working the story potential it gives into fanfics, speculations, and essays.

If you enjoyed this essay, I did a few other bits of meta, headcanons, and speculation for fun: My Completely Self-indulgent Medivh Essay

A Bit About Wizards and Sorcerers

Headcanons: Medivh is Alive and Currently Uses ‘The Guardian’s Study’ as his Home

[jurakan]

What adaptations of King Arthur legends would you recommend?

Uh... okay. Coolcoolcool. I can totes answer this.

I’m including stories/books that are Arthurian retellings, rather than books that are good and contain elements of Arthuriana but aren’t really retellings of the stories (so The Dark is Rising, The Lost Years of Merlin and The Fionavar Tapestry, while good, won’t make this cut).

1. The Arthur Trilogy by Kevin Crossley-Holland

Okay this is a bit of a weird one because it’s sort of King Arthur and sort of not. The story is that Arthur is the son of a knight living on the Middle March, the border between England and Wales, during the 12th century. He’s given a Seeing Stone by the family’s old friend Merlin, and in it he sees the whole life story of Arthur. And as Arthur’s life goes on, he sees parallels to his own life and it helps him understand growing up, especially as he becomes a squire, learns more about his heritage, and eventually rides off to Crusade. Through his Seeing Stone, you see basically all the big name Arthurian stories, and a few that aren’t as common or popular.

I have some issues with Crossley-Holland’s depiction of medieval Christianity--he does, after all, have a cardinal declare that women are all evil, and he takes the shooing women out of the Crusaders’ camp as proof of this--never mind that all these women are the mistresses of the Crusaders, so, uh, yeah. And continuity between books is a little fuzzy; the second and third books have some gaps between them that made me scratch my head. But other than that? Crossley-Holland knows his shiz, man. There are so many random details about medieval life that made it into these books it’s astonishing.

It also has the benefit of being told through a filter. We’re seeing King Arthur’s story as something that already happened, as being watched by our protagonist. He’s sympathetic to a lot of these characters, but he does sort of judge them. Heck, the way Crossley-Holland tells it, it’s pretty judgmental of Lancelot in general, as a man who has deluded himself into thinking he’s done nothing wrong, even if he has the best of intentions. And this series, while it gets grim, does end on a somewhat happier note than a lot of Arthurian literature.

2. The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell

Cornwell attempted to write a “realistic” take on King Arthur and came up with this grim story set in post-Roman Britain. If I had problems with Crossley-Holland’s take on Christianity, I have loads with Cornwell’s. He does not like religion. Like, any religion. It gets to the point of having a scene where Merlin declares that all of Christianity is just a rehash of Mithraic cults, which is a common myth but definitively false if you’ve even dipped your toe into the subject. And there’s a lot of violence and sex and I wasn’t really into that. About a third of the way into the first book I almost gave up on it.

“This trilogy sounds terrible Jurakan, why is on this list?”

And then Lancelot is introduced.

If Cornwell hates religion, he seems to hate Lancelot just as much, if not more. And this is when the story become AMAZING because Cornwell’s Lancelot is THE biggest douchebag of all time, but he’s got a great PR crew (made up of poets and bards from his father’s kingdom) selling him as the greatest thing since Roman roads. And the protagonist, Derfel haaaaaaaaaaates him. Everyone does. Even Galahad (who in Cornwell’s telling is Lancelot’s brother rather than his son) hates him. And his affair with Guinevere is treated as just one more thing in a long line of betrayals that he plays off as him being the Good Guy.

Ultimately, Guinevere is played… well not necessarily sympathetically, but as a complex and interesting character who regrets her actions and tries to make up for them. But Lancelot? THE WORST. And once he and Galahad enter the story, is when it gets good, deconstructing that whole thing and it’s wonderful.

Maybe it won’t work for everyone, but I really hate that love triangle. So it worked for me. I also like that Cornwell uses a lot of lesser-known Arthurian characters? The main character is Saint Derfel, and Arthur’s retinue consists of his cousin Culhoch, Lanval, and Sagrimore.

3. The Pendragon Cycle by Stephen Lawhead

What if we tie a bunch of Atlantis stuff to a King Arthur story, use all the old Welsh names, and make it an explicitly Christian story? That’s Lawhead’s schtick. The love triangle is removed entirely; Lancelot only maybe had an analogue in the old Celtic stories anyway, and here he’s made Guinevere’s bodyguard and never a love interest. 

These books aren’t slow, precisely, but if you read the synopses you might get that impression because it takes a while to get to the parts mentioned there. And to be clear, Arthur himself doesn’t appear until the third book (which was the final book, but then Lawhead wrote two in-between-quels about Arthur’s adventures as king). This isn’t Lawhead at his best (that’s King Raven, which is his take on Robin Hood), but it’s pretty darn good, making the epic tale of Arthur even more epic as a battle for the soul of Britain.

Just be ready for hard to spell/pronounce Welsh names. 

4. The Squire’s Tales by Gerald Morris

I just started this series, and though it’s aimed at children and young adults, Morris goes hard into the details of little-known Arthurian stories and masterfully retells them. They’re sort of satire--they mercilessly mock a lot of the courtly love tropes that appear in the Arthurian stories. Tristan is, for instance, a completely unsympathetic moron and a bit of a meathead, who cannot understand why his love affair with Igraine won’t work (or how a vow of silence works).

Morris knows that Lancelot wasn’t always the Greatest of Knights, that Gawain was once The Man, and that any jackhole who tells you the Deepest Love is with another man’s wife is full of it. Lancelot and Guinevere are portrayed as shallow and silly when they start their affair, but when the affair ends they get a whole of character development that makes them much better and interesting characters.

Also these books are very funny. Gawain, for instance, is utterly baffled every time a knight makes him joust to just go down a road. “What are you guarding this creek from? Someone spitting in it?”

5. Sword of the Rightful King by Jane Yolen

Alright I haven’t read this one in ages but I remember it being good? It’s a cool little story about the beginning of Arthur’s reign, and how since people are questioning his reign, he asks Merlin to come up with a plan to legitimize everything. The result is… the Sword in the Stone. It’s a bit of a con, but if it works, it works, right?

Of course, not everything goes according to plan, and Morgan le Fay is planning something. Just what that something is, isn’t clear. And the new kid at court is a lot cleverer than he’s letting on.

It’s a fun little YA book. Like I said, it’s been forever since I read it, so I don’t know for sure how well it still stacks up, but I remember liking it.

Thanks for asking, friendo!

[psychichideoutpeace]

My take on this foreign family’s  intercultural and interpersonal problems

It was 31st August, Well I clearly remember the date because that's my girlfriend's birthday. I was chatting with her in messenger and planning about our upcoming date night and It was a pretty intense situation. The TV was turned on as background noise, i wasn't watching it. Suddenly Tv has all my attention because I heard someone is saying “amra bideshider shathe aageo bhasha niye lorai korechi abong joyi hoyechi, amader itihash ache bideshi der shathe bhashar jonno llorai korbar, uni amar meye ke bangla shikhte dey na” 2 young daughter of his holding his arm from both side while he was briefing the press. Few moments later that news made it to online news platforms and I have seen people going crazy in support of a man named Imran Sharif, no wonder why ?

                                                Photo source : Google

Language itself in its raw form is not interesting, at least to me because I took it for granted. I have been using it since I started talking and no one stopped me from doing so. When I got to know at my early age that in 1952 people lost their lives in order to achieve the rights of speaking in our mother tongue, it straight away gave goosebumps and as I am writing this blog it's still the same feeling. So that's the strength and power of the “idea of our Bengali language” which can create larger spikes in all Bengalis' heart rate. So we are emotionally attached to this idea of our Bengali language and how this idea affects the behavior of people demonstrates real power. Now the question is why I am mentioning this ? because power yields people !  We have just seen cultural hegemony in action in the comment section of this news of Imran Sharif’s case. Let's look at what this case is all about and deconstruct it with the lens of cultural studies. 

                                                Photo source : Google 

Eriko Nakano US-Japan holding citizenship and Imran Sharif holding US-BD Citizenship tied the knot on July 11, 2008, according to the law of Japan. Eriko is a physician and Imran Sharif is an It engineer, and has his own It firm. So they both belong to superstructure. They used to live in Tokyo and the couple has been blessed with three daughters aged 11, 10, and seven. The kids were studying at a school in Tokyo. On January 18, Imran appealed for divorce but it was held in processing because he didn't attend the hearing and left Japan later. Upon asking why did he file divorce, Imran replied to the press that Eriko and her father booked an apartment which costs around 2.7 million USD and Imran had to pay the major part of installment of US$ 3,800 monthly, Eriko was paying 2000$. Imran was facing a hard time in his business and proposed Eriko to move to the USA so that he can do better with his skill there and earn more money. But Eriko was not willing to move to the USA. Eriko said, pay the installment fees as rent because he was staying in that apartment but Imran was not generating enough cash to pay out the taxing 3,800 $ US monthly and he was not willing to pay this much amount from his savings for the property in which he was not even a stakeholder. Eriko then asked her husband Imran Sharif to leave that apartment. She even sent three legal notices to leave the home because Imran stopped paying the installment. This sounds more like straight out oppression and unequal treatment but I have seen many people who actually wear the feminist's badge on social media, blaming Imran as he is not paying the installment and why would he ask Eriko to move to the USA if his IT career and business is not doing good in Japan. We know feminism, which became the buzz word of the internet in the 21st century, is actually about the oppression of women by men and feminist's stand for equal rights and treatment. There are feminists and then pseudo-feminists come along.

                                               Photo source : Google

Pseudo-feminism suggests that women deserve more respect, or people of other sexes do not deserve respect. Living in a culture where women face many challenges every day is the worst thing is that some people hurt the term feminism. On social media, hardly anyone knows about feminism and they end up being pseudo-feminist. Do pseudo-feminists really want equal treatment? No, they want to create a world governed only by women. Will a woman be getting away with any wrongdoing? Women on social media who identify themselves as feminists want equality and recognition for women they think to deserve it. They’re going to bash a woman if he’s their lesser wife or sister like a politician but they’re going to support a woman bashing that same political leader. Hypocrisy and pseudo-feminism get a melting pot here. 

Feminism is simply about freedom and is not about judgment. People who recognize feminism don’t wear the feminist badge. These are the people who want a good education for their daughter, and support their companion if she wants to be working in the field. Some women want to give their husbands food; some women want to take more care of their house and children than work. That is not making them slaves; it is up to them to decide what to do.

After analyzing the available information, It feels more like there are pseudo feminism or women supremacy present in Eriko’s actions which build up to some degree and lead to the current situation. I am not entirely blaming her for anything and I am not here to judge anyone. I am just writing my take on this. Do humans only value other humans when they have jobs, money, status and are capable of paying for mortgages ? What about someone suddenly losing their job ? Let's break it down even further. What if  men, husbands loses their job while wife is still working or earning more, will this make the man or husband lesser than who they are as human beings ? No right. Then why do the relationship and power dynamics takes a paradigm shift all of a sudden in these situations, I wonder why ? 

As Marks describes, capitalist society will inevitably experience conflict between its social classes. The owners and the workers will have different ideas about the division of the wealth generated, and the owners will ultimately make the decision. This constant conflict, or dialectical materialism, is what instigates change. Marks also describes that the only real social division is class. Divisions of race, ethnicity, gender, and religion are artificial, devised by the bourgeoisie to distract the proletariat from realizing their unity and rebelling against their oppressors. Here in this case we see race, gender, religion, ethnicity and also social class differences between the proletariat Eriko and Imran. 

In this case of Eriko and Imran, when Imran refused to pay for the mortgage of Eriko’s apartment, the relationship dynamic changed and Eriko wanted to evict Imran from the house.  

On January 21, Imran filed an appeal to the school authorities to take one of his daughters but they refused following the objection of Eriko. Later, Imran picked up the other two daughters from the school bus to a rented building on February 21 and returned to Bangladesh with them.

On May 31, a court in Tokyo handed over the custody of the two daughters to Eriko. On July 18, Eriko came to Bangladesh in search of the custody of her daughters leaving behind their six years old daughter in Japan. Despite her report being negative, Imran did not believe the report and refused to meet her children. On July 26, Eriko’s mobile connection was cut and he was given the opportunity to meet the girls blindfolded. On 19 August, Nakano Eriko,  filed a petition with the HC seeking its directives to return her two daughters Jasmine Malika,11, and Laila Lina, 10 from their Bangladeshi father Sharif Imran. The court then asked the authorities to present the two children before the court on August 31. It also asked Imran not to leave the country with his daughters for the next one month. At the directives of the court, Imran and Eriko, accompanied by their daughters, are living in a rented house in Gulshan 1 of Dhaka. The court will issue further directives over their dispute on 16 September. High court ordered them to stay under the same roof and suggested they figure out a mutual solution as these kids were staying in a victim support centre before. Lawyers were also suggesting the same. 

                                                  Photo : Google 

Now comes the interesting part, Why did Imran come to Bangladesh with his two daughters ? Eriko and Imran were married legally in Japan and there is a case going on about the legal custody in Japan’s court. Their daughters have Japanese citizenship. He was living in Japan and has US citizenship, so why Bangladesh ? Imran was saying in his press conferences that he won't get custody of the child in Japan’s court. Maybe to battle the ethnocentric advantage that Eriko had in Japan. But as these daughters are minors, In most cases the custody goes to mothers side. Maybe Imran made a calculated move that he will get the empathy of Bengali people as we have seen him saying to the press that Eriko takes these kids out whenever Imran tries to teach their daughters Bengali language. Bengali has a long history of fighting against foreigners for language. I found these statements of his, a bit over the top, dramatic and only to shape the public's point of view against Eriko. 

If we analyze the situation carefully, we can see, Imran is using tools like cultural hegemony to get advantage as he is communicating and reaching out to the mass people through press conferences, YouTube channels and interviews. Imran is exercising the power of language and culture more efficiently. He is forging his words carefully and deliberately to get the empathy of the mass people and Bangladesh is the only place where he can have leverage over Eriko in this case because he is now identifying himself as Bengali and wearing it as a vanguard to defend anything that coming against him. In a interview he said to a journalist that “ I am a Bengali like you are and I have the rights of a citizen in my country, only my passport is American that doesn't mean I am not Bengali” Imran is using identity politics to create positive public opinion about him. He is trying to portray Eriko as “other” and not as the mother of their daughter. Also he is trying to create a us versus them situation with these statements so that public sentiment remains on his side. People have already made lots of propaganda videos against Eriko on their own Imran Sharif didn't tell them to do so, Its cultural hegemony in action.    

On the other hand he has already sought Tk 50 million as compensation for revealing defamatory information about him from Eriko. Otherwise, he threatened to lodge a case against her over the matter. But we hardly have any detail explanation from Eriko’s side.

The future of three minor kids are now dependent on the dialogue and intent of their parents. The High Court on 16th September directed concerned lawyers to settle the custodial dispute between Bangladeshi father Imran Sharif and Japanese mother Nakano Eriko over their two daughters within 12 days and fixed September 28 for further hearing and delivering a final verdict on the matter but as of today there is no latest news available.

References :

High court sends 2 children of Japanese mother to support centre. (2021, August 23). Dhaka Tribune. https://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/2021/08/23/hc-sends-two-children-to-a-support-centre-as-parents-fight-over-their-custody

Https://www.risingbd.com. (2147). CID rescues two daughters of that Japanese woman. Risingbd Online Bangla News Portal. https://www.risingbd.com/english/national/news/81810

Japanese mother files petition with HC to remove CCTV cameras from residence. (2021, September 6). The Business Standard. https://www.tbsnews.net/bangladesh/court/japanese-mother-files-petition-hc-remove-cctv-cameras-residence-298648

Japanese woman in HC for kids’ guardianship. (192021, August). New Age | The Most Popular Outspoken English Daily in Bangladesh. https://www.newagebd.net/article/146772/japanese-woman-in-hc-for-kids-guardianship

Japanese woman’s petition for daughters’ custody: HC asks father to present the children. (2021, August 19). The Daily Star. https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/crime-justice/news/japanese-woman-comes-bangladesh-starts-legal-battle-custody-daughters-2155956

জাপানি দুই শিশুর বিষয়ে যে আদেশ দিলেন হাইকোর্ট | বাংলাদেশ. (1970, January 1). Somoy News. https://www.somoynews.tv/news/2021-08-31/

[sinceileftyoublog]

Andrew Bryant Interview: Sidetracked By Mortality

BY JORDAN MAINZER

“I’m still trying to make something out of my life,” sings Andrew Bryant on “Birmingham”, a shimmery standout on his new album A Meaningful Connection. From an outsider’s perspective, he’s being modest, borderline facetious. The multi-instrumentalist and producer is a member of Water Liars, one of the most underrated rock bands of the past decade, and he’s released many intimate solo records over the years. His latest, self-released and out on July 9th, is perhaps the most reflective, thoughtful, and deep, soul searching without being navel-gazing. 

Dig more, though, and Bryant is still grappling with who he is; A Meaningful Connection is, at its heart, about changing things about yourself. For Bryant, some of these changes are new, and others have been building for decades. Growing up in an Evangelical Christian household, questioning his background, and eventually rejecting religion altogether shapes how he views the world, how he perceives what’s true and what’s not. Indeed, throughout the record, Bryant is concerned with what people believe versus what really is, and he writes about it through the lens of technology and the sociopolitical climate of the past half-decade. “So please, y’all, don’t @ me / I’m trying out this vibe / I don’t have to listen to your truth or your lies,” he sings on the fuzzed-out “Reality Winner”, a song inspired by the formerly incarcerated intelligence specialist and whistleblower with an eerily appropriate name. Of course, Bryant’s aware of social media rabbit holes and that not everything you read online is true: “Folk singers on Twitter / You know they’ve got all the answers,” he quips on album opener “Private Window”. In a way, the rabid pursuit of truth in the era of #FakeNews can prove just as dogmatic as the Trump-voting Evangelicals Bryant grew up with. “You can eat from the tree of the God that keeps you up at night,” Bryant continues on “Private Window”, this time more weary and wise.

Last month, I spoke to Bryant over the phone from his home in Oxford, MS, a year and change into the period of COVID-induced isolation we’ve all gone through, one ripe for the type of contemplation that pervades A Meaningful Connection. Though Bryant started writing these songs in late 2019, lockdown encouraged him to write every day. He got sober during the pandemic--the gorgeous and acoustic “Drink The Pain Away” was written a few months after his last drink--another move that has, among other things, aided his pursuit of not the truth, but self-truths, or perhaps a belief in yourself. “I want to be like Christ, but I don’t want to die,” he sings on “Fight”, wanting to find meaning in life that doesn’t involve atoning for sins or self-sacrifice. Of course, that’s, ironically, a lifelong project for all of us, but to Bryant, making meaningful connections along the way, within himself and with others, is a means to such an end.

Below, read my conversation with Bryant, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: Would you consider A Meaningful Connection mostly inspired by the COVID-19 lockdown?

Andrew Bryant: Absolutely. It’s kind of weird, because the title for me represents more the idea I had going into making the record, what it means to be connected with people. I really wanted to get into how we form connections that are and aren’t personal, and work it out in song. I wanted to use technology in song for the first time. I really don’t like to say things like “text” [in a song]. [But] in one of the first lines of the record, I say, “Twitter.” I don’t really like to do that in songs, because it dates them so specifically. But I really had that intention of going into this record that was doing something for the time. After the lockdown, I really turned inward a lot more than I intended to, with all of it. It ended up being another songwriter’s personal look at himself in the mirror. [laughs]

SILY: The first four words, “folk singers on Twitter,” are funny, because when you think of “folk singers,” you could think of the 60′s, but also the folk tradition. It’s time ambiguous when contrasted with something like Twitter that’s so specific. It really is a funny juxtaposition.

AB: That’s kind of how I approached it at the beginning. There’s a lot about time on the record, and I wanted to juxtapose phrases that were timeless with phrases that weren’t. I don’t think I did all that well--I think I got sidetracked by the idea of mortality because of everything that was going on.

SILY: You sing, “Don’t @ me,” on another song. What’s your relationship with social media? Are you on it a lot?

AB: Yeah, and I was on it a lot last year, like a lot of people. I’ve always had a fairly funny relationship with it. It’s something that came when I was in my 20′s. I grew up in a house without a computer at all. I never connected with people the same way that younger people do. In the last five years, because I’ve been using it for so long, it’s interesting for me to see how it’s become its own force in society and our psyche and the way that we are and relate to one another in a way that doesn’t exist when I was a kid. When I think about my memories as a kid, it’s hard for me to even imagine the way people related to one another.

SILY: On “Private Window”, you also sing, “In another 140 years, there will be another 140 people writing lines about what it all means to let it bleed.” Is the 140 a reference to the one-time character limit of a Tweet?

AB: It is.

SILY: Part of that line that also sticks with me, that I’ve noticed on a number of records that deal with grief, is that there’s almost an absurdity to the idea that coping with something makes for meaningful art. At the end of the day, somebody’s dead.

AB: Absolutely. I think that’s why I got so obsessed with the idea of time. It goes on and on.

SILY: On “Fight”, you seem to be grappling with the idea of legacy when you sing, “I want to be like Christ but I don’t want to die.” Are you saying you want to live for something valuable?

AB: Yeah. I’m still in a lot of ways deconstructing from the Evangelical past I was raised in as a kid. My family still says that being Christlike is the only thing that matters. It’s an easy thing to say, but not to think of it as the ultimate way of being, to die for no reason, or to be sacrificed. I think that song is a way for me to be okay with just who I am. Letting the art that I make be what it is, whether it’s great or bad, whether I think it’s good, just me wanting to be myself and not have to think about being a Christ figure in a lot of ways.

SILY: What’s your current relationship with religion?

AB: I’m an atheist on a really bad day and a little bit of an agnostic on a really good day. I pretty much left it all years ago. It’s one of those things where if you were raised the way I was, completely submerged in it--our entire family’s entire lives revolved around it--if you grew up that way during a formative 18 years of your life, it doesn’t really ever leave. It shapes the way you interact with the world even if you know that you’ve intellectually rejected it. There’s so much underlying inside of you that makes your body and emotions react in a Western Biblical way. So much of our country is like that more than people realize. A lot of our laws, the way we interact and do everything in society is a Judeo Christian, Western way of thought. I’m not naïve to think it doesn’t still have a little bit of control over me, unless I keep it in check.

SILY: How do you think it finds its way into your songwriting?

AB: I think the inward reflection does it a lot. Me judging myself. That’s the worst thing to come from it. How much self-doubt and judgement I put upon myself. It shows up in my work and my producing work. If I want to produce something that’s not me, if it’s not all about me all the time, it’s a struggle. Christians say you’re not supposed to think about yourself, but if you live in that world, for me, it’s all about saving your soul from damnation. It’s not about other people.

SILY: Would you say this album’s central theme of the truth versus lies falls into that idea as well?

AB: For sure. The Trump administration, too. The people who voted for him and put him in office, I knew them. A lot of people who are Evangelicals who voted for him were waiting for someone like him their entire lives. He embodied what they wanted. A lot of my worst fears of what could be possible were right in my face. But the thing that scared me the most was when Trump was talking about fake news. What is truth and what is reality really blurred for the last 5 years. In social media, too, that’s why I really wanted to interrogate that idea of truth and reality. I really wanted to get people to see that sometimes those things are the same, and sometimes they’re not. We’re each able to have our own truths, but they’re actually our beliefs. Where I think I failed on this record is not using the word “beliefs.” There aren’t two truths, there are distinct beliefs.

SILY: Do you distinguish between “the truth” and a personal truth?

AB: Of course. Each person has their own truth. I believe that. And perspective. Truth is fluid always. But 2+2 is 4 is accepted as a truth. The accepted truths coming from math and science is what I call truth. When it comes to everything else, it is just belief. If you grow up with an Evangelical worldview, you grow up with the truth and the only truth. Once you’ve spent 20 years really figuring it out, and these media figureheads like Trump come out and try to reverse it all, it’s so hard. It’s really, really jarring.

SILY: It’s interesting to me that the line “I guess I never really learned how to let go of the truth for a lie,” came in the song “Drink the Pain Away”, because if you think about alcohol, it’s something that can both be a truth serum and something that brings up emotions that can blur the truth. Was that an intentional juxtaposition?

AB: Absolutely. I got sober last year, during the making of the record, and that song was written when I was about 3-4 months sober at that point. But, yeah. [laughs] Alcohol definitely does make things true that weren’t true, or expose some truths that even then weren’t true. Truth serum is a great way to put it.

SILY: Is the song “Reality Winner” named after the person?

AB: It is.

SILY: Is there anything in that song actually about that person? Why did you title it that?

AB: Not really. I had the song written first. I had the riff, and was working on the chorus, and I wanted to write about her, but I went down a Twitter rabbit hole about it one night in particular to the point I was so full of anxiety I couldn’t deal with it anymore. I went to the park and literally wrote the song there in my head. What intrigued me, too, was her name. The name Reality Winner, the metaphors were too great. I needed to write about problems that I was having surrounding the ways she was treated. I sort of made it about myself, which is not great. But hopefully you’re gonna find out about Reality Winner if you don’t know about her already. I’m not that good at writing political songs. [laughs]

SILY: Do you think that “Truth Ain’t Hard To Find” is a response to the previous songs on the record that might state otherwise?

AB: Yeah. That was the last song I wrote for the record. I didn’t know how to sum it up. I always knew it was where I wanted to go at a certain point, but the album got sequenced around a couple times in my brain, and I cut a couple songs off. I knew I needed to say something to bring it all back together, so that was the point of that song.

SILY: The record’s really aesthetically diverse. Some songs are more power pop, while others have a slow lurking stomp. How do you go about juxtaposing a style or melody with the themes of the songs?

AB: Part of the reason for that on this record is during the pandemic, I hadn’t updated a lot of my studio here, and then I [finally] updated my [recording station]. A lot of it was learning on the spot. Basically, whenever I found a [new] sound, it made it in. I’ve been doing this for so long where I just kind of listen to things and just run with it. Usually, when I get everything tracked, I look back and try to make it more cohesive. It’s more all over the place in the early stages of mixing. I ended up re-tracking a lot of guitars that appeared throughout the album and honed in a lot of drum sounds.

SILY: What’s the inspiration behind the album art?

AB: That’s my wife on the cover. To me, I had an image I wanted to use for the cover that was really dark, that was just her arm in bed, and it was too dark. I wanted two people sleeping in bed together, and I wanted to show time, space, and technology. It’s an image that represents the big ideas of the album. We were actually in bed one day and were reflected in the window. I was thinking of the idea of “Private Window”, windows, reflections of how we see ourselves, how we see ourselves from our phones versus how other people see us. I came up with the idea and invited some friends of mine over and we shot it.

SILY: You mentioned wanting to do some acoustic house shows around this record. How do you feel about stripping these songs back down to play them live?

AB: Not too bad. I’ve been playing around with them. I got a new guitar the other day. They won’t have all the parts there, but that’s how it goes. That’s how it’s been for years. Sometimes, you just try to play the song and sing it well rather than having a huge band playing all the parts. I think it’s a personal and emotional enough record that if I play in a small room, it might come off better than in a club.

SILY: What else have you been working on in the meantime?

AB: I got a couple local folks I’m helping with their records, a local hip hop guy. Kind of their first time. I’ve pretty much got my next record written, which is pretty different from this one or anything I’ve done on the last few albums. Kind of acoustic-based, fictionalized writing. I’m gonna start tracking that in a couple months, I imagine. Trying to keep myself busy. I’m trying to work on a memoir. [laughs] Songwriters are not known for being good authors. Some of them can pull it off.

SILY: Anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately that’s caught your attention?

AB: That new Godspeed You! Black Emperor record. I’ve been a fan of theirs for a long time. That new Damien Jurado record, I like how short and beautiful it is. I’ve been a fan of his since the 90′s. I just finished watching The Crown on Netflix. My wife had watched that show, and I thought, “I’m not interested in the Royals, I don’t want to watch this.” But I had sort of run out of shit to watch, and I needed a series. I was really surprised how well done that show was. It really interested me. 

[bountyofbeads]

https://www.courthousenews.com/legal-fight-brewing-over-steve-bannons-academy-in-italian-monastery/

Legal Fight Brewing Over Steve Bannon's Academy in Italian Monastery https://t.co/xJOrZluorJ @cainburdeau

Legal Fight Brewing Over Steve Bannon’s Academy in Italian Monastery

By Cain Burdeau | Published August 27, 2019 | Courthouse News | Posted August 27, 2019 1:09 PM ET |

TRISULTI CHARTERHOUSE, Italy (CN) – When Steve Bannon comes to Italy, he likes to make his way to this walled monastery hidden away from the world in the mountains south of Rome.

Bannon, the globetrotting advocate of right-wing nationalism and former chief strategist for candidate and then President Donald Trump, has ambitions for this magnificent relic of medieval monastic life: He sees the old abbey one day functioning as his “Academy for the Judeo-Christian West,” a place where he can mold cultural and political “gladiators” to carry out his fight against liberal elites, Islam and socialists.

Think of it as a cauldron from which mini-Bannons and mini-Trumps might be released onto the world with a seal of approval to lead nationalist causes.

Bannon’s project is moving ahead despite the Italian culture minister’s move in May to revoke a license to operate the monastery for 19 years. The license was awarded to a conservative religious think tank tied to Bannon. Now a legal fight appears set to take place.

“The ministry has no grounds whatsoever to revoke the license or to annul the lease,” said Benjamin Harnwell, director of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, the think tank that runs the monastery.

Harnwell called Culture Minister Alberto Bonisoli’s actions “politically motivated.” Bonisoli is a member of the 5-Star Movement, an anti-establishment party with left-wing tendencies.

“I am looking forward to clearing our name and fighting as forcefully as possible when this gets to court,” Harnwell said inside the monastery in an interview with Courthouse News. He expected any legal fight to take a long time, possibly years, considering Italy’s complicated legal system.

The ministry charged that Harnwell’s think tank, which took possession of the monastery in January, has failed to pay rent and perform renovations as promised. Harnwell dismissed those allegations as untrue.

“If they [the ministry] don’t go to court, we will,” Harnwell said. “They’ve damaged our image.”

The ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment. As of July, Harnwell said the ministry had not formally ordered his institute to leave the premises.

In the meantime, Harnwell said Bannon’s visions for a nationalist academy are moving forward. He said his institute will provide more information about the academy’s courses, curriculum and degrees this autumn.

It’s not hard to imagine Bannon’s academy taking shape inside the cloister, churches, courtyards and nooks and crannies of the Trisulti Charterhouse, a 13th-century monastery.

In recent years as the monastery’s remaining monks died, the Italian government sought a new purpose for the charterhouse, which is owned by the Italian state and open to the public. The monks here tended to a prodigious collection of medicinal herbs and concocted sambuca, a sweet anise-flavored liqueur.

“For many years now it had lost its religious function,” said Giorgio Liberatori, an architect in the nearby town of Collepardo. “It was inevitable that it had to change hands.”

Liberatori said he and others in Collepardo are not opposed to Bannon’s academy taking up quarters in the monastery. He said no one else had showed much interest in the charterhouse. As for Bannon and his radical ideas, he said time would tell how having his academy close to Collepardo might affect the town. But he added: “The average citizen doesn’t care.”

Harnwell said Bannon’s academy will be housed in the former cloister, a secluded area where monks once lived in simple rooms, engrossed in prayer and silence.

Harnwell said about 1,500 people have applied, but there is space now for only about 25 students. In time, though, there could be room for as many 350 students, he said.

“Like the old monastic orders — the religious orders — would form a person into a monk, Steve wants to form someone who comes here and turn them into a gladiator,” Harnwell said. “Steve’s expression is that this is a gladiator school for culture warriors.”

These prospective “culture warriors” would be people who feel intuitively that Judeo-Christian ideas are under attack,” Harnwell said.

In a broad-ranging interview, Harnwell — a 43-year-old Englishman of working-class roots who’s worked as a Conservative Party political aide in the House of Commons and the European Parliament — went into depth about Bannon’s self-defines populist nationalist worldview, and his own views, which he characterized as libertarian and “anarcho-capitalist.”

This remote Italian monastery, where the occasional chime of bells breaks the silence, is an unlikely setting for an instruction into the thinking not only of Bannon but of Trump, who adheres to Bannon’s theories.

Harnwell denounced Islam, calling it a dangerous militant religion bent on imposing its will on others. He praised far-right leaders Britain’s Nigel Farage, who championed Brexit, and Matteo Salvini, Italy’s anti-immigrant interior minister. Salvini, he said, was Italy’s “savior.”

He called global warming a fairy tale. On government, he said it needs to be stripped away to allow capitalism to flourish. On wealth, he said there was too much envy of the rich and called policies to redistribute wealth a disaster.

An unabashed admirer of Bannon, Harnwell called him “the smartest guy” he’d ever met “without anyone being a close second.”

He said Bannon’s fundamental insight is to see politics not in a “pure left and right paradigm” but “a vertical paradigm” where “the ordinary working guy [is] being shafted by the working elites.”

“I would say that Steve’s view basically is that the little guy should have a seat at the table,” Harnwell said.

He said Trump was “the first person to win election explicitly on the Bannon paradigm” rather than a left-right paradigm. “That’s Steve’s genius,” he said.

Bannon aims to make government work for the ordinary person, Harnwell said. That, according to Bannon, is done by “deconstructing” an “administrative state” that benefits only so-called elites: politicians, financiers, intellectuals, contractors, university professors and others who gain their wealth through government policies designed to benefit the elite class.

“The state exists not to help the ordinary working guy but to help first and foremost, to benefit, the people who comprise of it and work for it,” Harnwell said. “It’s immoral.

“The elites have made themselves rich at your expense,” he said. “That’s not a Marxist paradigm here. It’s an argument that government has become too big and exists to promote the welfare of the people who work for it and the people who run it rather than the citizens.”

Harnwell said Bannon wants government to get out of people’s lives.

“Before the First World War, the only relationship most people had with the federal government was when they posted a letter,” he said. “Now it is omnipresent.”

He said the United States has “a unique role to play on the world stage” because it promotes liberty.

“So it is imperative, if you believe in liberty as I do, that that American experiment succeeds, that liberty can long endure on the face of the earth,” he said.

Harnwell said left-wing parties have abandoned their principle of “representing the ordinary worker.” For example, he said left-wing politicians now support immigrants over workers in their own countries. By doing that, he said, left-wing politicians are supporting people who will show up in a country and undercut that country’s manual workers.

“That’s not a left-wing party,” he said. He charged “the professional leftist party” doesn’t care about workers.

He argued that societies based around left-wing ideas are failures.

“All countries that are founded explicitly on social justice, economic justice principles are basket cases, empirically,” he said, and cited the example of Venezuela.

Yet he sees socialism on the rise in the West.

“Since the Second World War, I think society and the West has been shifting one degree to the left every generation,” he said.

“Here’s the irony, it’s after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which is the global visible failure of communism in practice as a means of managing an economy, that those ideas then, basically unopposed, via, I think, national educating system enter the bloodstream of the culture,” he said.

“So most young people, say anyone who is under 25, will hold communist views, unless for some reason they have explicitly taken a position to avoiding that.”

Harnwell dismissed criticisms that Bannon is promoting racist and Fascist views.

“Steve points out Fascists worship the state,” he said. By contrast, he said Bannon wants the state to be curtailed. Yet at the same time, Harnwell said, Bannon wants the state “to be strong enough to protect its national integrity.”

In this view, a country “has the right and the duty” to stop “people coming in on a large scale and being trafficked in” across borders. he said. “The [U.S.] border is too porous.”

He said it was proper and moral to stop immigrants. “I don’t believe that’s against the principles of the Judeo-Christian West to do so.”

On Africa and its deep problems, which prompt so many people to look for refuge in Europe, he said the continent needs to adopt the Western model.

“We know in the West how to take people out of poverty. It’s not through socialist world distribution, it’s through promoting societies built on the rule of law, having independent judiciaries, having solid property rights as the bedrock of your society, of having an entrepreneurial society,” he said. “Africa is incredibly resource-rich. What it needs to do is imitate the West if it wants to move out of poverty. You can make that transformation in one or two generations if you embrace the right principles.”

He said many African nations suffer from “a strong element of cultural Marxism” that “blended into the bloodstream during the anti-colonial period.”

Harnwell, like Bannon, sees Islam as a major threat to the West.

He said the Prophet Muhammad was militant and anything but moderate. “Islam was on the attack for centuries from day one,” he said. “It’s clear that Islam has designs on Christendom.

“All major world religions, all of them apart from the Muslim religion, have a variation of the Golden Rule in them,” he said. “There is not a variation for the Golden Rule in the Muslim religion.

“Does Islam believe that the penalty for apostasy is death and does it believe that because that is what Muhammad said? Well, the answer is yes and yes,” he said. “It doesn’t sound so moderate to me.”

He added: “The majority of Muslims are moderate. But they are moderate because they choose not to implement certain key elements of their own religion in their personal lives.”

Asked about other threats he sees, Harnwell cited “militant secularism” because it “does not tolerate any discussion of Christian god in the political space.” He said humanity needs “Christian faith” to be able to “survive and indeed thrive.”

He then called “out-of-control” immigration an “existential threat.” He said that low birth rates in the West and increased immigration pose a “demographic challenge” that he sees as “an existential threat.”

He called the “debt structure” and “welfare commitments” of Western societies existential threats too.

“This form of capitalism which isn’t capitalism, that benefits the elites to the detriment of the ordinary worker, that is also an existential threat,” he said.

What about climate change?

“I would put anthropological climate change in the same category as I would put the tooth fairy and unicorns and Father Christmas and the abominable snowman,” he said.

He denied that science has proved climate change is happening.

“I would cite the data as the suggestion that anthropological climate change hasn’t been proven,” he said.

He said most scientists are supporting the idea of climate change out of financial interests.

They “get their money one way or another through government, and government loves the idea of climate change because it can put its tentacles into every aspect of society,” he said. “The government can get everywhere on the back of this.”

What about environmental degradation more generally?

His solution was putting more of the earth into private hands.

“Again, property rights,” he said. “What we tend to see is what we know in philosophy as the tragedy of the commons. It’s those resources which have no ownership, probably for ideological reasons, that are then exploited. People tend to care about the property they own.”

He dismissed concerns about growing inequality.

“This is why the socialists screw up on everything, because they see the economic pie as a given,” he said. “And therefore if you want poor people to have more, you’ve got to take more money from the rich and give it to the poor as a straight transfer. All that is going to do over the long term is take wealth out of the hands of people who know how to create it and give it to people who will only consume it. That’s not going make your economic territory richer.”

He said the notion that the economic pie cannot grow is mistaken.

“It doesn’t really matter, the inequality between say the top decimal and the poorest decimal,” he said. “The issue is: Do the poor have enough money to meet their needs and to improve their living condition generation by generation?

“Can you please tell me what the injustice is of letting some people who happen to be wealth creators keep more of their own property? Why is that considered morally wrong?”

He said that his views, and Bannon’s, are not far-right but echo longstanding centrist and conservative ideas. He said they are viewed as far right and extreme right because the media has demonized conservative ideas.

“What 50 years ago would have been considered centrist is now considered to be right wing, if not far right,” he said. “I don’t believe there is any great coalescence around extreme-right or far-right politics. I think it’s basically where most people would have been around the 1950s.”

He shrugged off accusations that Bannon, Trump and he are promoting racist ideas.

“Racist, anti-Semite, Fascist – Nazi, I’ve been called as well, publicly,” he said. “It doesn’t bother me at all. I learned it from Steve: Don’t give a shit about what people say about you. Just get on with what you have to do.”

He then set off for a tour of the monastery — kneeling as he went before altars inside the monastery.

All the while, he praised Bannon.

“It’s a school which is designed in his image and likeness,” he said.

The bells rang and the hour of lunch had arrived.

[newslegion-blog1]

Richard Dawkins / Bret Weinstein Conversation - Chicago 23-Oct-2018

BW rubbishes mathematical models as proving an imperfect method of arriving at absolute solution so says he doesn't like the maths. But RD rightly sceptical. It's a case of advancing accuracy. You can start with people power and words, and these can cover ground in leaps and bounds, but then precision needs to advance and this moves to a make necessary the maths. The fact the maths is imperfect is an error in the variables and the functions used - human error remains - but it's no reason to suppose a reversion to human-only progress will do anything but decrease precision. This is a foolish backward step. Baby with the bathwater just cuz mathematical model has been imperfectly constructed.

BW mistakes RD saying we're rem ote from evolution when talking about the complexities of human affairs as meaning we're not affected by evolution but RD is talking in terms of evolutionary timescales and our ability to perceive the natural selection in operation - in any meaningful sense - when it comes to interpreting the details of human history (a mere 8000 years).

BW is keen to confront 'what we are programmed for' because he knows that evolution has built us but many now be the absolute opposite instincts needed for humanity to progress - in its own timescales on its own terms.

Key point here is that while our evolved mind and body will contain instincts that drive all the themes in human history, that end up defining that history, this doesn't mean we can apply an absolute judgment of what is and what isn't FIT to be respected/perpetuated based on evolutionary theory. It must always be a humanistic layer that takes into account the evolved instincts but also factors in the strata data of a plethora of anthropomorophic fields of study. "Byproducts" as RD says.

BW is wrong again equating journey into the unknown is NOT a prior step to suicide when the land mass is full - i.e. self sacrifice. The pioneers aren't sacrificing themselves. This is another temporal mistake. The pioneer is optimistic, it's closer to the 'leap jump test if I can' urge that surfaces from some high place, which presumably comes from our primate origins leaping through the trees.

RD is absolutley right to point out the complicated mixture of human level affairs as being NOT Darwininian and the domain of other subjects. BW wants to be a polymath when it comes to the complex edgecases of science but it's a Deepak Chopra approach from an actual scientist. Tempting but bullshit.

RD correctly calls these byproducts - even vastly emotive ones - relics of our genetic construction. It can be interpreted using biology, insofar as what it represents from our biological past, but that doesn't mean biology has any helpful role in further more precise deconstruction.

BW argues that genocide having been a feature of human history for 8000 years is enough reason to apply evolutionary theory to explain and ... then what? This is a case of how it's packaged rather than how it's precisely and profoundly deconstructed. If anything trying to reduce to evolutionary motives is to miss the detail that's necessary for an ACTUAL useful understanding.

Catholicism example, memes that help pass on lineage genes, it's judging based on cherry picking just cuz it matches a version of Darwinian interpretation.

54m RD worldview summary.

Genes and viruses as replicators, the difference is just the method they use to get into the next generation. Genes look after bodies cuz that's their vehicle. Cooperation is therefore inbuilt, zygotes are inevitable without them genes are dead end. Viruses have to use other methods like sneezing and poo. Memes more like viruses. The world is a replicator soup, croutons being tools of phenotype replication.

Extended phenotypes, this concept is the grey zone where evolutionary biology crosses into sociology history etc. Depending how far one extends them. This extension could be defined as the necessary conditions created by the phenotypic behaviour/activity of the gene-vehicles. No choice is involved.

Memes are synthetic a posteriori. Hard to make precise statements about their behaviour.

It's funny how large scale systems with a lot of component people make less mistakes in discernment choices where more discerning individuals are part of any process of meritocracy. Either directly or stages removed.

RD to be commended for working up the enthusiasm to stay mostly attentive to BW whose self-regard is way out of whack with his evident stature in the field of biology. I may be biased here as I've read BW's post-show tweets and even the way he refers to DAWKINS lacks respect and the impression he'd somehow given a good account of himself speaks to what must be something of an echo chamber existence. I'm no longer surprised he hasn't found a new job.

Example: BW was correctly placed at Evergreen and RD is correctly placed at Oxford, relative intellectual stature aptly reflected in the relative status of these institutions. BW has been described as the best high school science teacher in America. This statement is one of the best examples of damning with faint praise.

BW wants to tether his keen eye for sociology and psychology with the heavy weight of scientific truth. This means he's prepared to claim the big trends in human culture - the long lived meme - religion for instance. RD says religion is a mind virus and though this was obviously hyperbole to goad the religious, he stuck by the distinction when BW challenged him to think of religion as a Darwinian meme.

Presumably this clash of definition reveals how the two think of religion. RD doesn't presume to consider religion part of the human culture survival toolkit, preferring to see it as a plethora of viral strains contracted by billions and heavily resistant to being cured; though we're getting better at it in parts of the world. BW says it's cultural meme, serving a purpose that's simpatico (or even beneficial) to the survival of the human fittest. Two problems with this, the first one of perspective, second one of anthropology.

First: to use the fact religion is with the human species, in various forms, as a proof of its symbiotic role is - as BW snipes at RD, to not see the forest for the trees. Today yes, we humans are alive and religion is here. But who knows a hundred years hence? What if religious war escalated to nuclear holocaust and all humans were wiped out? An observing alien would judge religion to have been ultimately fatal to homo sapiens. No more people, no more religion, not symbiotic at all. It's not enough to say a thing is a meme just because it's present at the time of observation.

Second: BW cites religion as a good meme because he says it codified important survival rules like people doing things in life to justify an afterlife in heaven. While it's not literally true, BW says it's metaphorically true as the tenets of religion teaches moral goodness, which makes for better behaviour, which means stability and better conditions to get the gene letters into the next generation. This is bolx. Islam is a blueprint for jihad, the Bible would have us killing for minor crimes and various life choices (like homosexuality). The only way to square religion as a force for good in human survival is to invent one that inculcates a bunch of rules preselected for beneficial effect. No religion does this. None ever tried to do so. Cherry picking bolx like Irish priest in the family encouraged success for the gene letter replication for a lineage despite the priest's celibacy is a daft spin on a convenient social mix that has as many versions antithetical to continuing the lineage. Think of those suicide cults where whole families died together to satisfy religious laws. Are those religions mind viruses where Irish Catholicism isn't?

BW in the after video links evolution in meme culture to natural selection which, ironically, is a cipher for post-modernism. But why?

Two points. Firstly, let's not mistake the lateral spread of an idea at a point in time, however widely it may go viral, with the extension of an idea across successive generations. These are different axis. Secondly, natural selection, if used as the arbiter of what is 'good' or 'bad' in the grand scheme of survival of the fittest, operates on a different timescale to the blink of human history (what little we know) since the first civilisations. It's wild speculation to presume the weight of evolutionary theory applies to ANY aspect of civilised human culture - religion included. Play with the techniques by all means, use natural selection as a neat metaphor sure, but don't kid yourself the 8000 years of vaguely documented homo sapiens activity amounts to anything profound or predictive of which (if any) of our current 'big' ideas will ultimately be selected by the generations to come.

For comparison sake, I’ve included a link to the conversation between physicist Brian Greene and Richard Dawkins from around the same time, this time in New York. The content speaks for itself and Brian Greene is always enthusiastic and engaging. The calibre of the conversation is much higher than the Weinstein event. This is mostly down to Greene being a far more mature, erudite and loose. He’s able to engage Dawkins, who begins sluggish but wakes up when he realises he’s been booked to talk to someone genuinely intelligent and interesting.