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sylvanfreckles · 4 years

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My Way or the Highway (Whumptober 2020)

Day Three!

(season 2 fic) A group of rogue hunters capture the Winchesters in hope of forcing Sam to use his psychic abilities for their benefit, and they’re not afraid to use Dean as leverage.

“So...rumor has it you got some kind of second sight, Sam,” Travis commented. He was tall and wiry, though not as tall as Sam. Years spent as a hunter had left his skin tanned and course, though his dark eyes were still bright with intelligence.

Sam froze for just a second too long and Dean kicked his ankle under the table. “What makes you say that?” he finally asked, trying to hide his nervousness with a sip of beer.

Travis and his two friends had pulled into town a few hours ago, to handle the salt-and-burn Sam and Dean had finished earlier in the day. They didn't all know each other but they all knew Bobby, which had seemed like a good enough reason to get acquainted over drinks. Now Sam was wishing they had left town after the job instead of waiting until morning.

“You been watching too much late-night TV,” Dean teased with a hearty laugh. It was too hearty to Sam's ears, but hopefully Travis and his friends wouldn't notice. “What kind of moron fed you a story like that?”

“Word gets around,” Travis shrugged. He leaned back in his chair and studied the brothers with a critical eye. “Trouble is, nobody knows what's true and what's just a fairy tale.”

“Yeah, well, a little advice?” Dean had already dug out his wallet and dropped a few bills on the table to cover the last round. “Don't believe everything you hear. C'mon Sam.”

Sam was all too eager to abandon his half-drunk beer and follow Dean out of the bar. He heard Travis and his friends burst out into laughter as soon as the Winchester were near the door, but tried to ignore them and just move on. It wouldn't take long to pack up and they could be back on the road.

They stepped out into the washed-out light from the bar's neon sight, the night air crisp and bracing. There weren't too many people out and about right now, thanks to the haunting they'd taken care of earlier, so it wasn't too surprising that the parking lot was practically empty.

Then someone struck. Sam was barely aware of movement in his peripheral vision before a burlap sack was shoved over his head and strong hands fisted in the back of his jacket to spin him off-balance and slam him against the wall of the bar. Judging by the muted curses he imagined Dean had received the same treatment. He tried to fight back, but someone was wrenched on the ties at the mouth of the bag, half-strangling Sam in the process. He flailed up feebly and tried to twist his fingers in the ties, but it was no good.

His captor drove a knee into his stomach, which doubled him over, then kicked his feet out from under him. Sam tried to fight against the attacker but his hands were wrenched behind him and bound up with a piece of twine that cut into his skin viciously.

“Good work.” It was muffled by the bag, but Sam was pretty sure that was Travis's voice.

“We just need the tall one, right?” Sam's captor asked. He'd planted a knee against the small of Sam's back to keep him down, one hand on the back of Sam's neck to force his head to be still.

“You never just take one Winchester,” Travis argued. “Connie learned the hard way, back when this one was still working with the old man.” There was the sound of an impact and a soft grunt—Travis had probably kicked Dean. “Put 'em in the van.”

Rough hands hauled Sam to his feet and he struggled against them, though it was futile as a vehicle roared up and he was shoved into a rough cargo space. Dean landed beside him a second later, one elbow hitting Sam's belly right where his kidnapper had kneed him. It hurt like hell, but he'd take it over his brother facing an uncertain fate. Judging by the way these guys were talking...it didn't seem like they'd leave a witness behind.

The growl of the engine filled the space around them as their captors took off to parts unknown. Sam tried to keep track of the number of turns the van made, but between the recklessness of the driver and the bag over his head muffling his perspective Sam lost track.

They screeched to a halt after maybe twenty minutes of driving, and Sam heard the doors slam open before he was gripped under the shoulders and hauled unceremoniously to his feet. He was propelled forward a few steps, then forced to his knees before the bag was torn from his head.

Travis was looking down at them, a smug grin splitting his face. “Just thought this might be a more private place to talk.”

Beside Sam, Dean let out a growl. “Listen here, you son of a bitch-”

“No, you listen,” Travis snapped. “We don't have time for throwing threats and promises back and forth, so I'm gonna give it to you straight, Sammy.” Travis pulled a gun out of the back of his pants and leveled it at Dean's head. “You're gonna work with us, or we're gonna see what's in big brother's empty head.”

Cold horror filled Sam's gut. They hadn't taken Dean because they wanted both Winchesters for something...they'd taken him to force Sam's hand.

“Well?” Travis demanded when Sam didn't answer. He took the few steps over to Dean and twisted his free hand in Dean's collar, dragging him around to face Sam with the gun pressed to his temple. “Whaddya say, Sammy?”

Dean was subtly trying to shake his head, and when Travis noticed he clocked Dean on the temple with the grip of the revolver he was holding. “I'm counting to three, Sam.”

“Wait, wait, please,” Sam tried to edge forward, but one of Travis's partners was behind him with a firm hand on his shoulder. “Just...just give me a second. What do you need me for?”

“I'm not hearing a yes,” Travis warned. He shifted his grip so that the gun was pressed to the base of Dean's skull. “Exit wounds aren't pretty, Sammy. Is this how you want to remember you brother?”

“I don't even know what you want!” Sam pleaded. “I can't...I can't agree to something if I don't know what it is!”

“One...”

“Travis, come on,” Sam tried to pull himself free, but the grip on his shoulders tightened.

“Two...”

“Yes!” Sam shuddered, closing his eyes so he wouldn't have to see his brother's expression. “Whatever...whatever you want. Just don't hurt him.” They only had each other left. He just couldn't handle it if something happened to Dean after everything they'd lost.

“Was that so hard?” Travis sneered. He released Dean and shoved him forward, into Sam. Sam leaned into his brother, nearly shaking with relief. “Now, lemme show you what we have planned.”

There were some crates in a pile a few feet away, with what looked like an old drafting table covered in a dust cloth. Travis whipped the cloth away with a flourish and gestured to the plans that were tacked up on the table.

Sam stared at them. It was a set of blueprints and a section of the city map, but it made no sense. Why would hunters need their help like this? Why take them at gunpoint and threaten Dean to get Sam's cooperation? They'd asked about his psychic powers...was that connected?

“You've got to be kidding me,” Dean groaned. “A bank? You kidnap us at gunpoint, drag us all the way out here...to help you knock over a bank?”

“He doesn't need to talk,” Travis said over his shoulder.

Sam tried to protest but he was shoved to the side as one of Travis's men caught Dean by the shoulder and laid him out with a punch. While Dean was dazed from the blow, a rough gag was shoved between his teeth and tied behind his head.

“We have our plans,” Travis continued as soon as his goons were finished. “We just don't know which ones will work.” He beckoned with his head and the man behind Sam hoisted him to his feet to drag him over to the drafting table. Now Sam could see different routes highlighted on the map and the notations on the blueprints.

“I don't understand,” he said. What did they want him to do? Help them plan a bank heist?

Travis rolled his eyes. “We want to know which plans will work.”

Sam looked over at him, mouth working as he tried to come up with an answer. “I...I still don't understand.”

Practically growling, Travis forced his head back around to look at the plans. “You're the psychic, boy. We want to know which of these plans will work the best.”

It was like a pit had opened beneath his feet. Not only had Travis and his men somehow found out about Sam's gift...they wanted him to use it for something impossible. As far as they could figure, the only visions he got were connected to the other psychic kids, or at least similar phenomenon. No way was it so specific that he could look at a map and a bank blueprint to direct an armed robbery. “It...it doesn't work that way,” he tried to explain in a small voice.

Travis sighed theatrically. “Boys?”

“No!” Sam twisted around in time to see one of Travis's men kick Dean in the gut. Two others joined him, stomping at his legs and back.

“Sam,” Travis tapped the papers on the table. “The sooner you give us what we want the sooner I call them off.”

Sam stared at the wiry man in front of him, then risked a glance over at Dean. Dean had managed to curl up to protect himself as best as he could, but with the hits he'd already taken and his hands tied behind his back he was at their mercy. Sam swallowed and forced himself to study the plans. Maybe he could at least pick out the one that had the least chance for collateral damage and go from there.

“There, your second plan,” he said, gesturing at the papers with his chin. “On the map the blue route...the one that goes through the construction zone.”

“Hmm...” Travis leaned around to look at the map, as though his men weren't beating Dean just a few feet away. “But the green route is much more direct.”

Sam's mind was whirling, his mouth moving almost on instinct. “But it goes through a school zone. If you plan to hit the bank at two pm it should be easiest to get in and out, and your getaway would take you past the elementary school right when it lets out. If you go by the construction zone you can avoid the slower traffic, and since they're replacing street lights the traffic cameras will be down at a few of the intersections, you can plant a replacement car there and swap out in a dead area.”

Travis grinned and clapped Sam on the back. “Was that so hard?”

“Make them stop,” Sam pleaded. “I did what you asked, make them stop.”

Shaking his head, Travis raised one hand. The men beating on Dean all retreated, leaving the older Winchester a bloodied mess on the floor.

“We still need to go through the bank plans, Sam,” Travis warned as Sam tried to stand up to go to his brother. “Don't make me call them back.”

Sam swallowed and turned back to the drafting table. He had to do this...had to fix this somehow so that his brother wasn't in danger. He just didn't know how.

* * *

“Time to load up!” Travis announced. Sam nearly crumpled in relief. His legs were asleep from being on his knees for so long as he and Travis had pored over the bank plans, and he still hadn't gotten to check on his brother (though he'd heard Dean groaning through his gag so at least the older Winchester was still alive).

The plan was just complicated enough that maybe Travis wouldn't notice the holes in it until he was inside the bank. Sam had never talked so fast in his life, spinning out a long, complicated description of bank procedures and guards on duty. But it had been enough to convince Travis, and now Sam was being shoved back into the back of the cargo van as the other men loaded up the gear they'd need. He almost protested, but then Dean was heaved in beside him.

He looked terrible. One side of Dean's eyes was swollen shut, the gag had been pulled so tight it cut into the corners of his mouth, and his nose was definitely broken. He slumped against Sam with a low moan and Sam shifted around to take as much of his brother's weight as he could. Tears stung his eyes and he fought to blink them away—no use giving Travis or his goons any more ammunition.

Travis hopped into the back of the van with the brothers and two of his goons, the other two in the front to drive and navigate with a grill separating them from the cargo compartment.

“Piece of cake, right?” Travis said, laughing to himself. He sat at the back, against the rear doors, while the two goons sat against the grate at the front.

Sam stared at Travis over Dean's head. His only hope would be that the men botched the robbery so badly that they were all arrested. Even if the cops found Dean's warrant instead of treating them like kidnapping victims, he'd at least get medical treatment at the prison. There was a catch in his brother's breathing that made Sam think some of his ribs were broken, and he was worried that Travis would find something else to take out on Dean.

“So. Sammy. How are we doing?” Travis asked.

“Huh?” Sam blinked at him. “What...uh, what do you mean?”

Travis let out a sigh. “The plan, Sam. How's the plan?”

“It's, uh...it's good?”

“Yes, but did you see it?”

Shit. Sam froze for just a second too long, feeling his pulse pound in his ears. “Of-of course,” he stammered. “Yeah, it's great. Great plan.”

Travis was climbing to his feet, though he couldn't stand up straight in the van. “Sammy, what have we learned about lying?”

“What? No!” Sam twisted up to his knees, fighting to put himself between Travis and Dean. “I'm not lying. The future...the future is too fluid to predict accurately, but this plan has the best chance of working!”

“I'm not asking for the best chance,” Travis sneered. He shoved Sam away with a brutal kick, sending the younger Winchester crashing into the two goons at the front of the cargo compartment. “I'm asking for victory.”

“I can't guarantee that!” Sam protested, though he knew it was useless. They were never going to get out of this alive. “Travis...no one could guarantee absolute success! This plan...this plan is the best one I could come up with, and it's good! It will work.”

“I don't believe you,” Travis called over his shoulder. He had Dean by the front of his shirt now, dragging him to the rear doors of the van. He shoved one of the doors open, wind snatching at their hair and clothes and stirring up loose papers inside the van. “I warned you what could happen to big brother, Sam.”

“No, don't do this,” Sam pleaded. The goons were holding him back now as Travis hauled Dean in front of the door, both hands twisted in Dean's jacket to hold him in place in the open door. For an instant Sam and Dean's eyes met, and Sam felt like his guts were being twisted in on themselves. Not like this. Not over some stupid bank heist.

“Say good-bye, Sammy!” Travis taunted.

“Dammit, Jake, hit the brakes!”

The sharp cry from the front of the van startled them all for just a second, then the van screamed to a halt with the shriek of metal-on-metal and the jarring impact as they ran into something. Sam was slammed into the grate separating the cargo from the driver, and Travis and Dean were sent flying into the cargo compartment.

Dean crashed into Sam, and even though his brother's shoulder his hit sternum hard enough leave one hell of a bruise Sam could have sobbed with relief. He'd knocked his head against the grating and was sure there was blood in his hair, they were still helpless in the hands of their enemies, but Dean was here and alive and that was all that mattered.

Then the door of the van was being torn open and rough hands were pulling Travis and his men out.

“Travis Jones, I oughta skin you alive. What the hell were you thinking?”

Sam blinked over Dean's head, seeing a very familiar face framed in the open door of the van. “Ellen?”

She already had a knife in her hands and was gently cutting the gag away from Dean's face. “Bobby called. Said this idiot had been asking the wrong questions and giving him a bad feeling. Max and I were on business in the area anyway, so he asked us to check on you.”

Behind Ellen was another woman, this one with short-cropped bright red hair sticking up in spikes, and more jewelry on her face than most people wore on their entire bodies. Ellen saw his look and rolled her eyes. “Baby shower. You boys okay?”

“You're my hero,” Dean muttered into Sam's shoulder as Ellen cut away the twine that bound his wrists. “I was almost road chow.”

Ellen finished sawing through the twine, but instead of helping Dean out of the van she coaxed him away from Sam just enough to lie down before turning to free the younger Winchester's hands. “Been looking for you two for a couple hours, didn't think we'd make it in time. Luckily Max's wife drives a tank, don't think this piece of junk even scratched the paint on her monster.”

“Travis...” Sam began.

“We'll take care of him,” Ellen said reassuringly. “I'll help Max and Julie pack them up to haul them to the city limits, then we'll go take care of the two of you.”

Sam hesitated. The twine binding his wrists finally broke and he brought his hands around to gently rub the life back into the bruised skin. He didn't want to kill ordinary humans, but the thought of someone like Travis out there who could hurt them again didn't sit right either.

“Hey,” Ellen had a hand on his shoulder, gently bringing him around to look at her. “Your daddy had a lot of pull in the community. Once word gets around what Travis did to you boys, they won't be able to get a decent job again.”

He let her guide him back to sit against the grating, shifting Dean over enough to put his head on Sam's leg. “I'll be back in a second, honey,” Ellen promised. “Soon as I get Max and Julie on their way.”

Sam nodded, the adrenaline fading to leave exhaustion in its wake. He didn't want to close his eyes, for fear that his usual nightmares would be replaced by the image of Travis threatening to throw Dean's battered body out of the back of the van.

“I'm okay, Sammy,” Dean whispered, reaching up to rest a hand on Sam's arm.

“Yeah, I know,” Sam replied. He finally did close his eyes, one hand on Dean's chest, just over his heart. “I know.”

#whumptober2020 #no 3 #My Way or the Highway #held at gunpoint #supernatural #fic #fanfic #kidnapping #dean whump

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer Review – Richard Ramirez Docuseries Speaks Plainly

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Netflix dives into one of the most horrifying cases of multiple murders with its eyes wide open in Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer. The documentary is told from the perspective of the investigators at the heart of the case, particularly a veteran homicide detective and his young, enthusiastic partner. They had nothing going into the case, and when they did dig out the clues, they often lost what they had because of its newsworthiness. The series works because it treats the audience the same way as the cops were treated: infuriatingly.

Every clue, setback, and recalculation in Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer is satisfyingly frustrating. We all know the story by now, so director Tiller Russell can leisurely fill in the plot. We don’t even get the name of the serial killer until the end of the third episode. It’s not in the title, and if the detectives don’t know it, the series won’t disclose it. This is an internal affair, and early disclosures to the media contaminate clues like dancing on a crime scene in a pair of size 12 Avia sneakers.

The four-part series opens in a hot and happy Los Angeles, filled with glossy tinsel and hair metal. The city hosted the Olympics in 1984, and the Lakers were international superstars. Archival weather reports continually update a sweltering heat wave, and the citizens cool off leisurely and diversely. But not after dark, where the bulk of the docu-series is set. That is LA Noir. The same kind of darkness that crept into the headlines when the Black Dahlia murder struck, but more similar to the Manson Family killings.

One bad boy, who will later be described as having incredible sex appeal, rips the nightlife apart. At the time, though, all anyone knows about him is he has bad teeth, smells like a goat, and loves AC/DC. Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer captures the mid-eighties period well, with archival TV news and clips of then-current shows. When the events turn creepy, Max Headroom is playing on a black and white TV in the distance, almost out of focus.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Detective Gil Carrillo and renowned homicide cop Frank Salerno are great storytellers whose obvious gravitas centers the documentary. There is one other standout from law enforcement. San Francisco Police Department homicide Inspector Frank Falzon actually breaks down what it’s like to be goaded into punching a possible witness. He completely explains the forces which lead him to do it. The frustration, the horrid images of the case which flashed into his mind. The disgust he felt at the actual details. Carrillo has a similar incident, convinced of a suspect who fits too perfectly only to be told “He’s a freak, but not your freak.” But his defining moment probably comes when he can’t bear to even listen to a discussion of putting a child who had been sexually assaulted on the stand to testify.

Even though we know how it ends, the limited docu-series captures the race against the clock tension of the summer of 1985. Initially tagged “The Walk-In Killer” and “The Valley Intruder” by the press, the satanic beast prowling Los Angeles came to be known as “The Night Stalker.” His crimes seemed disconnected because the victims were so varied. Serial killers usually have a specific type of victim. The Night Stalker’s crimes appeared to be random. “There was no pattern,” a detective bemoans in an interview.

The detectives get blowback from inside and out. We hear about an important theory being laughed out of a meeting. Investigators have to deal with cops in different districts not sharing information, as multiple jurisdictions spark “a pissing match between Type A dudes.” The investigators don’t only have to deal with the media blowing the case. They get the information from a politician who releases details which tip off the suspect. Many of these details have never been told.

We also get to hear Laurel Erickson and Paul Skolnick, the journalists who covered the story from the beginning, explain why they were so eager for details, and where they drew the line. Like the Hillside Strangler, who had recently been caught by Salerno’s homicide team, the Night Stalker was a once-in-a-lifetime case. Not only to the press, police and politicians, but to the community, which ultimately plays the most emotionally satisfying part in the documentary. When the suspect is caught in East Los Angeles, he tells the arresting officers “Thank God you came.”

The mystery unfolds through first-person interviews with victims who lived through the attacks, some of whom were allowed to survive. One woman remembers being dropped off at a gas station to call someone to take her home after the killer had sexually assaulted her in a dingy room. She was a child when that happened, one of the youngest of the Night Stalker’s victims. They ranged in age from six to 82; were men, women and children; some affluent, others poor; and of a mix of races. Anyone could be the next victim. The persistent updates on the heatwave accentuate this, because in a town under siege no one can sleep with their windows open. After Charles Manson had been caught, the people in Los Angeles didn’t feel the need to lock their doors, the documentary asserts. Now residents barred their windows.

Books

The Last Book on the Left Takes on the Grim History of Serial Killers

By Alec Bojalad

Movies

Crazy, Not Insane Doc Studies Serial Killers’ Minds on HBO

By Tony Sokol

The assailant also varied his weaponry, using knives, hammers, tire irons, and a .22 caliber pistol. The savage specter takes on an almost occult status when the investigators find pentagrams drawn and carved on walls, and occasionally on victims. The killer gouged the eyes out of one woman. He used thumb cuffs, which comes as a visual surprise to the detective recounting it. He relives that one moment of discovery with both a personal revulsion and a cop’s curiosity. He still hasn’t gotten his head around it, and it’s only one detail. Like an Avia sneaker, size 11 and a half, the only one shipped to Los Angeles since the company was founded.

There have been several features on the notorious killer at the center of Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer. Chris Fisher’s film Nightstalker (2002), Ulli Lommel’s Nighstalker from 2009, and Megan Griffiths’ The Night Stalker (2016). His story was dramatized in the 1989 TV movie Manhunt: Search for the Night Stalker. Zach Villa played Ramirez on American Horror Story: 1984. Director Russell, whose father worked in the Dallas DA’s office, grew up in courthouses, jails and police precincts.He keeps his focus steadily on the investigators and the victims.

Russell presents the evidence plainly. Emotionally, he wants to present the feel that anyone in the horrific footage could have been a viewer or someone they know. He never treats the victims like statistics. We get personal stories, like one told by a granddaughter remembering how she preferred a grandma who did cartwheels over any necklace heirloom which could be bequeathed. The documentary occasionally lets the camera wander around recreated footage too long, and takes leisurely pauses of action with only music over grim background sets to amplify the atmosphere. We also get the occasional emotion-cam closeup, with a frozen face willing a testimony into a camera wordlessly.

The first glimmer of a name the documentary provides for the suspect is Richard Mena, who is being treated for an impacted tooth. Richard Ramirez actually doesn’t get much screen time. We get a very curt statement on why he turned out the way he did. “All the things that could poison a child were part of his life,” a detective explains. The only detail is a recollection of how Ramirez was tied to a cross in a cemetery overnight as a reprimand from his religious father. Ramirez explains himself throughout, although without credit until we learn the quotes and affirmations come from a recorded interview the Night Stalker gave from prison. But we never learn how Satan was “a stabilizing force in his life,” which prompted “a motivational charge.”

The documentary explores the killer-groupie phenomenon, but it is from the amazed and uncomprehending reactions of the investigating officers, and the families of the victims. They don’t get it. The journalists who covered it have never seen anything like it. It proves everything about the case is unprecedented. We see Ramirez, upon sentencing, tell the families, as well as the judge, jurors and investigating officers: “You don’t understand me. You are not expected to. You are not capable of it. I am beyond your experience.” The doc cuts his last lines, “I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells in us all.” What replaces it is a snippet of Ramirez requesting a promise that his recorded interviews be erased after his death.

Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer is a satisfyingly exhaustive account of the investigation into the Richard Ramirez murder-and-assault-spree. But know it is limited to the crimes and the cities they were committed in. Los Angeles is a bigger character in the documentary than Ramirez. The docu-series isn’t about him. It’s about what he did, and the people he did it to. Survivors describe his very presence in the court as “evil,” and the documentary resolutely chalks the case up as a triumph for good. By following the timelines so deliberately, Russell lays out the arc of a perfect detective story. That being said, I could have watched two more installments on the villain and collateral damage.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer streams on Netflix on Jan. 13.

The post Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer Review – Richard Ramirez Docuseries Speaks Plainly appeared first on Den of Geek.

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architectuul · 4 years

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Zoo Story: The Future

Have an online walk through the past, present and future of the Lisbon Zoological Garden with the Gulbenkian Foundation, which was online before the online event started.

Map of the original edition “Guia do Turista em Lisboa” (1929) [property of Manuel dos Santos and Ascenção Araujo, Lisbon] modified by the curators with the satellite image of Lisbon (2020).

The project for the Future Architecture Platform 2020 will take you to the Lisbon’s Zoological Garden designed by Raul Lino asking questions like what role is the Zoo expected to fulfill in the contemporary city and what will it be in the future? For more check up online virtual exhibition “Staged Nature: Zoo of zoos” curated by Enrico Porfido and Claudia Sani from País(vi)agem with Arian Lehner and Theresa Margraf from Mies.TV, with whom we had a short talk about it.

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How do you see the future? Enrico Porfido: Do you mean the future of the zoo or the future in general? Because I don't really see any future coming... In this direction, with such a pessimistic interpretation of the imminent future, it doesn't make sense to make many plans for the future. But hidden somewhere, there is also an optimistic point of view where, “thanks” to COVID-19, this crisis represents an opportunity to change our way of living, interpreting and reading our realities. During the study and research phase for the exhibition in Gulbenkian Foundation we understood that the Zoo is not only a place where animals are kept, but it is a place where different themes can be discussed. For example, our approach to nature, its valorisation and the relationship with the historical city. It’s not only an issue of animals in a cage, but our anthropocentric approach to reality! If we can start changing it in the zoo, we might be able to change it also outside it, in our everyday life.

The original map of the Lisbon Zoological Garden, designed by Raul Lino at the beginning of XXth century | Source © Archive of Gulbenkian Art Library

How did you develop this project in the time of pandemics? Arian Lehner: The whole development of this project was very interesting, because we were all apart, in different cities. In the process of creating the exhibition we had a lot of discussions, where we very early understood how to talk about the zoo as an urban piece in the city. One important point which triggered an idea and vision for the future, was the thought of a biologist, who said that the zoo is showing naked animals itself without their natural environment. Such spaces like a zoo might in future show a variety of glimpses into different places of the world, where it won’t necessarily be needed to keep living animals in cages.

Why is then important in the whole environmental context? Arian Lehner: A zoo can transform into a condition of heterotopia which creates different worlds inside it. Animals will be linked to their environments to understand what is relevant to survive. It is a glimpse into the world, within your own city so you don’t have to travel around the world to understand other ecosystems.

Zebra, elephant and giraffe pavilion house designed by Raul Lino. | Source © Archive of Gulbenkian Art Library

You used different media for dissemination of the project, could you explain more? Enrico Porfido: More than innovative, I would rather say that we were complementary. We are two groups that cover different dissemination channels and networks. AtPais(vi)agem we are more traditional-academic, while Mies. TV has a more digital approach. I think it worked well because we mixed those two worlds!The main idea was to enlarge the public audience of the Gulbenkian Foundation’s archive within sharing their drawings via digital tools. So, we decided to drop an old-fashioned-paper archive in a contemporary digital media! This goes in the direction that the Gulbenkian Foundation took even before COVID. Indeed, they already had in mind those virtual exhibitions as instruments for making their archives accessible to as many people as possible.

Which types of media did you use? Arian Lehner: Because of the huge variety of new media, we did not fear of putting theoretical architecture-content in this new digital field. If you can buy shoes on Instagram, why can’t we use the same platforms for academic discourse as well? Our goal was to bring the content of Pais(vi)agem to as many people as possible in an understandable way. The exhibition consists of short and long texts, short and long videos, animations, sounds in order to make it understandable. Our exhibition is not closed but it’s a kind of open source, where you can learn and link to many other sites. Such as the cooperation with postcards by Modern in Belgrade

Postcard from Belgrade: "Belgrade Zoo's Ark: A Voyage to the Great War Island" designed by Hristina Stojanović, Modern in Belgrade.

The cooperation with BINA - Belgrade international week of architecture? Enrico Porfido: The collaboration with BINA was a nice experience, although we couldn’t develop it as much as we planned due to COVID restrictions. During the digital talk in September, we compared the zoo situation between Belgrade and Lisbon with local experts and this was really inspiring. And it also ended up in an ephemeral collaboration with the collective Modern in Belgrade, that supported our project sending some “postcards” from the Belgrade’s zoo.

Creating an open-source exhibition? Arian Lehner: This is a process of democratisation of information. We created a digital exhibition that doesn’t translate everything into representation through worlds or images drafted by the curators. What we have is live interviews with experts in the zoo, we didn’t do any representation or transcripts but left the video without the filter so you can listen directly to the experts themselves.

Map "A walk to discover Raul Lino's architecture in the Lisbon Zoological Garden" designed by the exhibition curatorial team

An amazing change of discourse and presentation coming from an institution like Gulbenkian; what did Future architecture bring to you? Enrico Porfido: From our experiences, there are many new synergies coming out from this adventure. During the Future Architecture fellowship, we started to build new connections and to consolidate our network. This platform has this big added-value of generating interesting synergies. In our small collective, we decided that there is no more time to work for somebody else or being employed for somebody that you don’t want to work for. We decided it’s time to do something different, because we have limited time to express ourselves. We are aware of what our generation of architects is doing today and which are our opportunities to raise our voice without being arrogant.

Arian Lehner: This current fear or the future has a global dynamic. It is not restricted to one nation alone, but the entire planet is facing challenges. Future Architecture Platform is some kind of global dynamic too – obviously a positive one – which is very important because we work within a transnational network and dissemination of information and knowledge.

The Rhinoceros' pavilion | Photo, illustration by the exhibition curatorial team

What would you say about the future after this talk Enrico? Enrico Porfido: That we have a long way to go! Especially for making people understand that architects do not only design houses. Architects are not just builders! Our superpower is to read reality and territories. There are many tools that we can use, in such a way architects can work as coordinators. We can gather and guide different experts from biology, ecology, anthropology, history, etc. because we can understand the territorial dynamics and coordinate different expertises. Territories have different scales within themselves and architects have the sensibility to understand, observe and work within them.

Is this something connected to a generation? Enrico Porfido: I guess it’s the approach we have to reality. The oldest architects’ generation would probably answer this question in the same way of how they work – alone.This is why we had so many names, the archistars of the recent past and present. But there are not 30yo archistars, why?

The Elephants' pavilion | Photo, illustration by the exhibition curatorial team

How could we develop tourism so that it could work as a creator of new destinations? Enrico Porfido: We can change the way of planning tourism but there is one thing that we all need to understand:we are all tourists at somebody else’s place. You don’t like to hear chatting in the bar under your place, but how is it when you visit another city? I don’t think you care much about the residents.I am obviously generalizing, but here in Barcelona we see the tourist issue as a really strong problem. I can agree that the massive tourism brings along some negative aspects, but we all need to learn how to cohabit. We need to be more tolerant as residents and more educated as tourists. We need to find new models for tourism. I have no clear idea how we should plan the tourism of the future, but I guess people will start to travel more for knowledge and for experiencing the reality of a specific place. Tourism is a social phenomenon, so when the society “goes massive” also tourism does it.

The Giraffes' house | Photo and illustration by the exhibition curatorial team

Arian Lehner: Psychologically speaking: I travel to somewhere far away because I want to experience different smells, sounds and newspaces. This uniqueness makes travelling attractive, rather than staying at home in the monotony of one’s own life. The important part of visiting places is that you are “only visiting” and many places you just want to see but not live there for the rest of your life. It’s really like a refreshment and before coming back to your monotonous life, which is also safe. Are there different ways though that can create the same effect of travelling somewhere else, diving in a completely different world, place, space? Maybe this could in future be visiting your local zoo because everything will look different, because of different elements that this place is composed of, maybe it is a techno park with different robots. In this way you don’t need to fly away somewhere else to be yet again in a city that has the same Starbucks, the same looking Airbnb – but you can have a different psychologically effect like visiting a different place. That is an interesting challenge.

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Staged Nature: Zoo of zoos: A walk through the past, present and future of the Lisbon Zoological Garden, Gulbenkian Foundation via Future Architecture Platform, 2020 (illustration exhibition curatorial team)

País(vi)agem is an independent research group, which aims to investigate the relation between tourism, landscapes and local communities, co-founded by Enrico Porfido and Claudia Sani in 2015. Enrico is based in Barcelona and working as researcher and freelance consultant on tourism and strategic planning. Claudia became a project manager in the office Urban Act in France, dealing with urban ecology and social district regeneration. In 2020 Elisa Brunelli joined the members’ board.

Mies.TV is a documentation and investigation platform with the goal to initiate discussion on the topic, resolve understanding and reflect on how the role of an architect is changing. The channel has filmed over two hundred interviews ensuring a vast archive of data to enable a thorough and widespread illustration of different standpoints and how these are positioned within a global perspective. Through open screenings, architecture festivals, television shows and panel discussions aims to communicate architecture to an audience internal and external to the realm of architecture with the use of modern tools.

#interview #future architecture #gulbenkian

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delphinidin4 · 6 years

Link

Forty-five percent of adults say they’re preoccupied with their weight some or all of the time—an 11-point rise since 1990. Nearly half of 3- to 6- year old girls say they worry about being fat.

...

I have never written a story where so many of my sources cried during interviews, where they shook with anger describing their interactions with doctors and strangers and their own families.

Chances of a woman classified as obese achieving a “normal” weight:.008%

SOURCE: AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, 2015

Diets do not work. Not just paleo or Atkins or Weight Watchers or Goop, but all diets. Since 1959, research has shown that 95 to 98 percent of attempts to lose weight fail and that two-thirds of dieters gain back more than they lost. The reasons are biological and irreversible. As early as 1969, research showed that losing just 3 percent of your body weight resulted in a 17 percent slowdown in your metabolism

“As a kid, I thought that fat people were just lonely and sad—almost like these pathetic lost causes. So I want to show that we get to experience love, too. I’m not some 'fat friend' or some dude's chubby chasing dream. I'm genuinely happy. I just wish I'd known how possible that was when I was a kiddo.”— CORISSA ENNEKING

“If you looked at anything other than my weight,” Enneking says now, “I had an eating disorder. And my doctor was congratulating me.”

...

This phenomenon is not merely anecdotal. Doctors have shorter appointments with fat patients and show less emotional rapport in the minutes they do have. Negative words—“noncompliant,” “overindulgent,” “weak willed”—pop up in their medical histories with higher frequency. ... In 2011, the Sun-Sentinel polled OB-GYNs in South Florida and discovered that 14 percent had barred all new patients weighing more than 200 pounds.

...

When Joy Cox, an academic in New Jersey, was 16, she went to the hospital with stomach pains. The doctor didn’t diagnose her dangerously inflamed bile duct, but he did, out of nowhere, suggest that she’d get better if she stopped eating so much fried chicken. “He managed to denigrate my fatness and my blackness in the same sentence,” she says.

“There is so much agency taken from marginalized groups to mute their voices and mask their existence. Being depicted as a female CEO—one who is also black and fat—means so much to me. It is a representation of the reclamation of power in the boardroom, classroom and living room of my body. I own all of this.”— JOY COX

Physicians are often required, in writing, to prove to hospital administrators and insurance providers that they have brought up their patient’s weight and formulated a plan to bring it down—regardless of whether that patient came in with arthritis or a broken arm or a bad sunburn. Failing to do that could result in poor performance reviews, low ratings from insurance companies or being denied reimbursement if they refer patients to specialized care.

...

Three separate studies have found that fat women are more likely to die from breast and cervical cancers than non-fat women, a result partially attributed to their reluctance to see doctors and get screenings. Erin Harrop, a researcher at the University of Washington, studies higher-weight women with anorexia, who, contrary to the size-zero stereotype of most media depictions, are twice as likely to report vomiting, using laxatives and abusing diet pills. Thin women, Harrop discovered, take around three years to get into treatment, while her participants spent an average of 13 and a half years waiting for their disorders to be addressed.

...

If Sonya ever forgets that she is fat, the world will remind her. She has stopped taking the bus, she tells me, because she can sense the aggravation of the passengers squeezing past her. Sarah, the tech CEO, tenses up when anyone brings bagels to a work meeting. If she reaches for one, are her employees thinking, “There goes the fat boss”? If she doesn’t, are they silently congratulating her for showing some restraint?

Emily says it’s the do-gooders who get to her, the women who stop her on the street and tell her how brave she is for wearing a sleeveless dress on a 95-degree day.

Ratio of soda and candy ads seen by black children compared to white children: 2:1

SOURCE: UCONN RUDD CENTER FOR FOOD POLICY AND OBESITY, 2015

This is how fat-shaming works: It is visible and invisible, public and private, hidden and everywhere at the same time. Research consistently finds that larger Americans (especially larger women) earn lower salaries and are less likely to be hired and promoted.... What’s worse, only a few cities and one state (nice work, Michigan) officially prohibit workplace discrimination on the basis of weight.

...Paradoxically, as the number of larger Americans has risen, the biases against them have become more severe. More than 40 percent of Americans classified as obese now say they experience stigma on a daily basis, a rate far higher than any other minority group. And this does terrible things to their bodies. According to a 2015 study, fat people who feel discriminated against have shorter life expectancies than fat people who don't. “These findings suggest the possibility that the stigma associated with being overweight,” the study concluded, “is more harmful than actually being overweight.”

...

Kids as young as 3 describe their larger classmates with words like “mean,” “stupid” and “lazy.”

And yet, despite weight being the number one reason children are bullied at school, America’s institutions of public health continue to pursue policies perfectly designed to inflame the cruelty. TV and billboard campaigns still use slogans like “Too much screen time, too much kid” and “Being fat takes the fun out of being a kid.” Cat Pausé, a researcher at Massey University in New Zealand, spent months looking for a single public health campaign, worldwide, that attempted to reduce stigma against fat people and came up empty. In an incendiary case of good intentions gone bad, about a dozen states now send children home with “BMI report cards,” an intervention unlikely to have any effect on their weight but almost certain to increase bullying from the people closest to them. [I have a friend who had to take a paper home in high school telling her family she was obese. Now, in her late twenties, she’s still dealing with the emotional scars.]

...

The effects of weight bias get worse when they’re layered on top of other types of discrimination. A 2012 study found that African-American women are more likely to become depressed after internalizing weight stigma than white women. Hispanic and black teenagers also have significantly higher rates of bulimia. And, in a remarkable finding, rich people of color have higher rates of cardiovascular disease than poor people of color—the opposite of what happens with white people. One explanation is that navigating increasingly white spaces, and increasingly higher stakes, exerts stress on racial minorities that, over time, makes them more susceptible to heart problems.

...

But perhaps the most unique aspect of weight stigma is how it isolates its victims from one another. For most minority groups, discrimination contributes to a sense of belongingness, a community in opposition to a majority. Gay people like other gay people; Mormons root for other Mormons. Surveys of higher-weight people, however, reveal that they hold many of the same biases as the people discriminating against them. In a 2005 study, the words obese participants used to classify other obese people included gluttonous, unclean and sluggish.

...

Fat people, though, never get a moment of declaring their identity, of marking themselves as part of a distinct group. They still live in a society that believes weight is temporary, that losing it is urgent and achievable, that being comfortable in their bodies is merely “glorifying obesity.” This limbo, this lie, is why it’s so hard for fat people to discover one another or even themselves. “No one believes our It Gets Better story,” says Tigress Osborn, the director of community outreach for the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. “You can’t claim an identity if everyone around you is saying it doesn’t or shouldn’t exist.”

“I think some folks are genuinely surprised that a man who looks like him is with a woman like me. As a fat person, I'm very aware of when I'm being stared at—and I have never been looked at this much before. So I thought that taking the photo in public would be a good idea. It feels subversive to show my fat body doing regular stuff the world believes I don't or can't do.”— EMILY

Since 1980, the obesity rate has doubled in 73 countries and increased in 113 others. And in all that time, no nation has reduced its obesity rate. Not one.

...

The problem is that in America, like everywhere else, our institutions of public health have become so obsessed with body weight that they have overlooked what is really killing us: our food supply. Diet is the leading cause of death in the United States, responsible for more than five times the fatalities of gun violence and car accidents combined. But it’s not how much we’re eating—Americans actually consume fewer calories now than we did in 2003. It’s what we’re eating.

For more than a decade now, researchers have found that the quality of our food affects disease risk independently of its effect on weight. Fructose, for example, appears to damage insulin sensitivity and liver function more than other sweeteners with the same number of calories. People who eat nuts four times a week have 12 percent lower diabetes incidence and a 13 percent lower mortality rate regardless of their weight. All of our biological systems for regulating energy, hunger and satiety get thrown off by eating foods that are high in sugar, low in fiber and injected with additives. And which now, shockingly, make up 60 percent of the calories we eat.

4% of all agricultural subsidies go to fruits and vegetables.

SOURCE: ENVIRONMENTAL WORKING GROUP, 2014-16

But that’s still no reason to despair. There’s a lot we can do right now to improve fat people’s lives—to shift our focus for the first time from weight to health and from shame to support.

...

In 2017, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the expert panel that decides which treatments should be offered for free under Obamacare, found that the decisive factor in obesity care was not the diet patients went on, but how much attention and support they received while they were on it. Participants who got more than 12 sessions with a dietician saw significant reductions in their rates of prediabetes and cardiovascular risk. Those who got less personalized care showed almost no improvement at all.

“My son and I both like to play the hero. There wasn't necessarily any intentional symbolism in the costumes we chose, but I am definitely a member of the rebellion, and I see my role as an eating disorders researcher as trying to fight for justice and a better world. Also, I like that I'm sweaty, dirty and messy, not done up with makeup or with my hair down in this picture. I like that I'm not hiding my stomach, thighs or arms. Not because I'm comfortable being photographed like that, but because I want to be—and I want others to feel free to be like that, too.”— ERIN HARROP

A review of 44 international studies found that school-based activity programs didn’t affect kids’ weight, but improved their athletic ability, tripled the amount of time they spent exercising and reduced their daily TV consumption by up to an hour. Another survey showed that two years of getting kids to exercise and eat better didn’t noticeably affect their size but did improve their math scores—an effect that was greater for black kids than white kids.

You see this in so much of the research: The most effective health interventions aren't actually health interventions—they are policies that ease the hardship of poverty and free up time for movement and play and parenting. Developing countries with higher wages for women have lower obesity rates, and lives are transformed when healthy food is made cheaper. A pilot program in Massachusetts that gave food stamp recipients an extra 30 cents for every $1 they spent on healthy food increased fruit and vegetable consumption by 26 percent. Policies like this are unlikely to affect our weight. They are almost certain, however, to significantly improve our health.

...

What does work, Corrigan says, is for fat people to make it clear to everyone they interact with that their size is nothing to apologize for. “When you pity someone, you think they’re less effective, less competent, more hurt,” he says. “You don’t see them as capable. The only way to get rid of stigma is from power.”

...

This has always been the great hope of the fat-acceptance movement. (“We’re here, we’re spheres, get used to it” was one of the slogans in the 1990s.) But this radical message has long since been co-opted by clothing brands, diet companies and soap corporations. Weight Watchers has rebranded as a “lifestyle program,” but still promises that its members can shrink their way to happiness. Mainstream apparel companies market themselves as “body positive” but refuse to make clothes that fit the plus-size models on their own billboards.

...

“Fat activism isn’t about making people feel better about themselves,” Pausé says. “It’s about not being denied your civil rights and not dying because a doctor misdiagnoses you.”

...

There is no magical cure. There is no time machine. There is only the revolutionary act of being fat and happy in a world that tells you that’s impossible.

“We all have to do our best with the body that we have,” [Ginette Lenham] says. “And leave everyone else’s alone.”

#fat pride

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kabane52 · 5 years

Text

The War Within

This is an old article from Christianity Today from 1982

Driving through Wisconsin on vacation this summer, a Leadership staff member passed a huge sign in the middle of the bucolic countryside. "Naughty Things for Nice People," it proclaimed, and as if to prove it, a gigantic cuddly bear peered out from beside the words "Adult Novelties."

"What's that mean, Dad?" came the question from the ten-year-old boy in the back of the van. "Yeah," piped up the siblings, "what's that all about, Dad?"

Such questions abound these days, as media penetrate our homes and vehicles with not just sleazy sex but carefully packaged titillations. One report has it that a recent convention of youth pastors created the highest rental of X-rated movies in the hotel's history. More than 80 percent of all customers signing up for cable TV opt for the erotic films. The availability—the near-ubiquity of so much sexual enticement, the constant barrage of innuendoes, and the nonstop polemic for indulgence inevitably attracts.

Many rationales tempt the mind of the Christian leader: "I have to know what's going on. … Voyeurism is better than adultery. … I need moderation—total deprivation isn't necessary."

Admittedly, there are no easy answers. We cannot shut off either our brains or our glands. But consider the following article by a man in full-time ministry. The article is blunt. But we felt it important to be just this honest and realistic. Sexual temptations in many forms have always lured Christians, but today's opportunities and climate make this article especially relevant to all of us.

* * *

"Lust is the ape that gibbers in our loins. Tame him as we will by day, he rages all the wilder in our dreams by night. Just when we think we're safe from him, he raises up his ugly head and smirks, and there's no river in the world flows cold and strong enough to strike him down. Almighty God, why dost thou deck men out with such a loathsome toy?" Frederick Buechner Godric I am writing this article anonymously because I am embarrassed. Embarrassed for my wife and children, yes, but embarrassed most for myself. I will tell of my personal battle with lust, and if I believed I were the only one who fought in that war, I would not waste emotional energy dredging up stained and painful memories. But I believe my experience is not uncommon, is perhaps even typical of pastors, writers, and conference speakers. No one talks about it. No one writes about it. But it's there, like an unacknowledged cancer that metastasizes best when no one goes for x-rays or feels for lumps.

I know I am not alone, because the few times I have opened up and shared my struggles with Christian friends, they have replied with Doppelganger stories of exactly the same stages of awakening, obsession, possession. Years from now, when socio-historians sift through the documents describing our times, they will undoubtedly come up with elegant explanations of why men who grew up in church homes are oversexed and vulnerable to attacks of lust and obsession, and why women who grew up in those same environments emerged uptight and somewhat disinterested in sex. But I leave that to the future analysts.

I remember vividly the night I first experienced lust. Real lust—not the high school and college variety. Of course as an adolescent I had drooled through Playboy, sneaked off to my uncle's room for a heart-thumping first look at hard-core pornography, and done my share of grappling and fumbling with my fiancee's clothes. I date my lust awakening, though, to the adult onslaught of mature, willful commitment to lust.

It hit on one of my first trips away from home. My job required me to travel at that time, and as I sat in a dingy motel room near the airport and flipped through the city guide of what to do in Rochester, New York, I kept coming back to one haunting photo of an exotic dancer, a former Miss Peach Bowl winner, the ad said. She looked fresh and inviting: the enchanting kind of Southern girl you see on TV commercials for fried chicken—only this one had no clothes on.

Somehow, I had survived the sixties sheltered from strippers and Woodstock-type nudity. And when I first saw the ad, I instinctively ruled her show out of bounds for me. But as I settled down to watch an inane TV show, her body kept looming before my mind with the simple question, "Why not?"

I began to think. Indeed, why not? To be an effective Christian, I had to experience all of life, right? Didn't Jesus himself hang around with prostitutes and sinners? I could go simply as an observer, in the world but not of the world. Rationalizations leaped up like flying buttresses to support my desires, and within ten minutes I was bundled in the back seat of a taxi headed toward the seamy side of Rochester.

I got the driver to let me off a few blocks away, just for safety's sake, and I kept glancing over my shoulder expecting to see someone I knew. Or perhaps God would step in, efface my desires, and change my mind about the wisdom of the act. I even asked him about that, meekly. No answer.

I walked into the bar between acts and was then faced with the new experience of ordering a drink. My forehead sweating, I scanned my memory of Westerns for an appropriate drink to order. Finally I decided on whiskey. I tried to make it sound casual, but the waitress flummoxed me by asking another question.

"How do you want it?"

How do I want it? What did she mean? What could I say? It seemed everyone in the bar was staring at me.

"A double," I stammered.

Sensing my naiveté, she rolled her eyes slightly and asked, "Is on the rocks OK?"

Bolstered by my first fiery sips of whiskey, which I tried to stretch out so as not to have to order another, I sat with my eyes glued to the stage.

Miss Peach Bowl was everything the ad had promised. With a figure worthy of a Wonder Woman costume, she danced superbly and was something of an acrobat. She started fully clothed and teased us with slow removals of each sequined article of clothing. Toward the end, when she wore only a G— string, whooping men near the stage bade her lean over and stuffed folded bills under the tiny swatch of cloth. She grinned invitingly. I stared in disbelief. In one final strobe-lit routine she cartwheeled nude across the stage.

The flush of excitement created by my first whiskey, drunk too fast in spite of myself, the eyepopping spectacle of this gorgeous woman baring all and jiggling it in front of me, and the boisterous spirit of the all-male audience combined to overpower me. I walked out of the bar two hours later feeling strangely warmed, intensely excited, and surprised that nothing had actually happened to me. I suppose it's the same feeling that washes in after a big event like marriage, or graduation, or first intercourse for that matter. In just a few hours, you realize that although in one sense everything has changed, in another sense nothing has changed. You are the same person.

Lust shares with sins like envy and pride the distinction of being invisible, slippery, hard to pin down. Was what happened that night a sin? I denied it to myself on the way home. To really rate as lust, I told myself, you must look on a woman so as to desire sexual intercourse with her. Isn't that what Jesus said? Whatever happened that night, I certainly couldn't recall desiring intercourse with Miss Peach Bowl. It was more private and distant than that. What happened, happened quickly, was gone, and left no scars. Or so I thought at the time.

Ten years have passed since that awakening in wintry Rochester, ten years spent never far from the presence of lust. The guilt caught up with me, and back in my motel room that very evening, I was already praying slobbery prayers for forgiveness. For a while that guilt kept me out of live shows and limited my voyeurism to magazines and movies, but only for a while. For ten years I have fought unremitting guerrilla warfare.

Being the reflective sort, I have often pondered the phenomenon of lust. It is unlike anything else in my experience. Most thrills—scary roller coasters, trips in airplanes, visits to waterfalls—lose a certain edge of excitement once I have experienced them and figured them out. I enjoy them and will duplicate the experiences if given the chance, but after a few tries, they no longer hold such a powerful gravitational attraction.

Sex is utterly different. There is only so much to "figure out." Every person who endures high school biology, let alone a sniggering sex education class, knows the basic shapes, colors, and sizes of the sexual organs. Anyone who has been to an art museum knows about women's breasts. Anyone who has hauled down a gynecology book in a public library knows about genitalia. Somehow, no amount of knowledge reduces the appeal—the forces may, in fact, work concordantly. What strange power is it that allows a male gynecologist to clinically examine female sexual organs all day long—there is nothing left for him to "learn"—and yet return home and find himself quickly aroused by his wifely peekaboo blouse?

"An ape that gibbers in my loins," wrote novelist Frederick Buechner about lust, and no experience comes with such a feral force. And yet, maybe by labeling it an "animal drive" we have missed the main point of lust. No animal I have heard of spends its life fixating on sex. Females in most species invite attention only a few times a year or less; the rest of the time males obediently plod through the mundane routine of phylogeny, apparently never giving sex another thought.

Humans are different. We have the freedom to center our lives inordinately in this one drive, without the harmony enforced by nature. Our females are biologically receptive the vast majority of the time, and no instinct inhibits us from focusing all our thoughts, behavior, and energy on sex.

I have tried to analyze lust, to fractionate it down into its particulars. I take a Playboy centerfold and study it with a magnifying glass. It consists only of dots—dots of four primary colors laid down by a printing press in a certain order. There is no magic on that page, only stipples of ink, which under magnification, show flaws and blurs. But there is magic on that page. I can stare at it, burn the image in my mind, fondle it mentally for hours, even days. Blood steams up when I gaze on it.

Early Marxists, heady with revolution, added sex to their list of human foibles needing alteration. Lenin pronounced his famous Glass of Water Theory, legislating that the sexual act was of no more consequence than the quenching of thirst by a glass of water. Surely bourgeois morality would topple along with bourgeois banks and industries and religions. But in a few years, Lenin had to abjure the Glass of Water Theory. By all reductionist logic, sex was like a glass of water, but sex proved immune to reductionist logic. It resisted being made of no consequence. Lenin, a historian, should have known better. Kings had renounced their thrones, saints their God, and spouses their lifetime partners because of this strange demon of lust. Dialectical materialism hardly stood a chance.

Books often question God's wisdom or goodness in allowing so much pain and sorrow in the world, and yet I have read none that question his goodness and wisdom in allowing so much sex and lust in the world. But I think the two may be parallel questions. Whether through creation or marred creation or whatever (we can't get into that here), we ended up with sex drives that virtually impel us to break rules God laid down. Males reach their sexual peak at age eighteen, scientists tell us. In our culture, you can't even legally marry before then, so when a male marries, if he has remained chaste, he has already forfeited his time of greatest sexual prowess. Mark Twain railed against God for parceling out to each human a source of universal joy and pleasure, at its peak in teenage years, then forbidding it until marriage and restricting it to one partner. He has a point.

Couldn't our hormones or chromosomes have been arranged so that mates would more easily find sexual satisfaction with just one partner? Why weren't we made more like the animals, who, except for specified periods, go through their daily routine (nude to a beast) with hardly a thought of sex. I could handle lust better if I knew it would only strike me in October or May. It's the not knowing, the ceaseless vulnerability, that drives me crazy.

Lust, I read somewhere, is the craving for salt by a man who is dying of thirst. There's a touch of perversion there, isn't there? Why were we not made with merely a craving for water, thus removing the salt from every newsstand, television show, and movie?

I know what you are thinking, you readers of Leadership. You are protesting that God never makes me lust, that I choose it, that he probably allows it as an opportunity for me to exercise my virtue. Yes, yes, I understand all that. But some of you know firsthand, as I do, that those pious platitudes, albeit perfectly correct, have almost no relevance to what happens biologically inside me when I visit a local beach or pick up any of a hundred magazines.

Some of you know what it is like to walk with your eyes at breast level, to flip eagerly through every new issue of Time searching for a rare sexy picture, to yearn for chains on the outside of your motel room to keep you in—unless it comes with that most perverse of all modern inventions, the in-room porno movie. And you also know what it is like to wallow in the guilt of that obsession, and to cry and pray with whatever faith you can muster, to plead with God to release you, to mutate you, to castrate you like Origen—whatever it takes to deliver you. And even as you pray, luscious, bewitching images crowd into your mind.

You also know what it is like to preach on Sunday, in a strange city, to preach even on a topic like grace or obedience or the will of God, or the decline of our civilization, with the awful and wonderful memories of last night's lust still more real to you at that moment than the sea of expectant faces spread out before you. You know the self-hatred that comes with that intolerable dissonance. And you muddle through the sermon swearing never to let it get to you like that again, until after the service a shapely woman comes beaming and squeezes your hand and whispers praise to you, and all resolve melts, and as she explains how blessed she was by your message, you are mentally undressing her.

The night in Rochester was my first experience with adult lust, but by no means my last. Strip joints are too handy these days. The drug store down the street sells Hustler, High Society, Jugs, anything you want. I have been to maybe fifteen truly pornographic movies, including the few classics like Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door. They scare me, perhaps because it seems so deliberate and volitional to stand in line (always glancing around furtively), to pay out money and to sit in the dark for an hour or two. The crowd is unlike any other crowd I mix with—they remind me I don't belong. And the movies, technically, aesthetically, and even erotically, are vapid and boring. But still, when a local paper advertises one more Emmanuelle sequel, I drool.

I learned quickly that lust, like physical sex, points in only one direction. You cannot go back to a lower level and stay satisfied. Always you want more. A magazine excites, a movie thrills, a live show really makes the blood run. I never got as far as body tattooing, personal photograph sessions, and massages, let alone outright prostitution, but I've experienced enough of the unquenchable nature of sex to frighten me for good. Lust does not satisfy; it stirs up. I no longer wonder how deviants can get into child molesting, masochism, and other abnormalities. Although such acts are incomprehensible to me, I remember well that where I ended up was also incomprehensible to me when I started.

A cousin of mine subscribes to at least fifteen of the raunchiest magazines I have ever seen. Books I have peeked at for just a few seconds in airport newsstands litter his house. He has told me that, even surrounded by vivid depictions of every sex act, every size and shape of woman he can imagine, he still wants more. He still devours the new issues. He and his wife are experimenting with orgies now, and numerous other variations I won't mention. It is not enough. The thrill will fade before long, and he will want more.

Psychologists use the term obsession to label what I have been describing, and they may say that I have more innate obsession than the average male. They would trace its genesis back to my repressive upbringing, and they are undoubtedly right. That is why I am writing to others of you in the Christian world. If you have not fought such obsession yourself, every Sunday when you step to the pulpit you speak to many who have, although you could hardly read it in their blank, freshly scrubbed faces. Lust is indeed an invisible sin.

At times the obsession has felt to me more like possession. I remember one time especially that scared me. I was in Washington, D.C., one of the places in the United States where any kind of lust is easily attainable. At three o'clock in the afternoon, after touring the cherry blossoms, I sauntered into a dark bar that advertised nude dancing. I fended off the girls who came to my table and asked for drinks, and instead directed my attention to the dancers. There were only two, and maybe five customers at most. One black girl with an unspectacular figure weaved over to the part of the stage nearest my table.

This was somewhat different than the other strip shows I had seen. There was no teasing or "visual foreplay." She was already naked, unashamedly so, and she wiggled maybe a foot from my head. She stared right into my eyes. This was so close, so intimate, that it seemed for a terrifying moment to be nearer a relationship than a performance. What I felt could only be called possession.

I found myself—it seemed as though I had not made the decision, that someone else's hands inside mine were doing it—fumbling in my pocket, pulling out bills and stuffing them in a garter belt high up on her thigh. In appreciation she maneuvered herself to grant an even better view. She had no secrets.

I staggered out of that bar. I felt I had crossed a line and could never return to innocence. That weekend I had important business engagements, but throughout them indelible images of that anonymous girl filled my mind. I yearned to flee and go home to my wife, to demonstrate to her my fear so that she could shelter me and mother me and keep me from following where all this was leading.

Just a few years before, I had sat with a distant, reproachful view and watched men lose control and act like country-fair churls as they stuffed bills down the G-string of Miss Peach Bowl. I would never stoop to that—I was smugly confident in Rochester. After all, I was intelligent, happily married, sophisticated—a committed Christian known by friends for my self-control. It would never happen. But it did.

When I went home, I did not tell my wife. How could I? The story was too long, and she, who had hardly ever known lust and had never been unfaithful to me, would not comprehend it. It would likely rupture my marriage, and then I would be cast loose on a sea I could not navigate.

I made a vow then—one more in a series. I vowed I would only look at Playboy and other "respectable" erotic magazines. No more raunchiness. I had certain rationalizations about lust, and pained realism about my inability to stay pure. I simply needed some safe boundaries, I decided. Here are some of my rationalizations that supported my conclusion to contain, not destroy, my lust:

Nudity is art. Go to any art museum in the world, and you will see nudity openly displayed. The human form is beautiful, and it would be puritanical to cut off appreciation for it. Playboy is photographed well, with an aesthetic, not prurient tone. Playboy and its kin have great articles. There's the Jimmy Carter interview, for example, and Penthouse's conversation with Jerry Falwell. I must keep up with such material. An aesthetic, not prurient tone. Some stimulation will help my sex life. I have a problem approaching my wife and communicating my desire for sex to her. I need a sort of boost, a stimulant to push me to declare my intentions. An aesthetic, not prurient tone. Other people do far worse. I know many Christian leaders who still do all the things I toyed with, and worse. For that matter, look at Bible characters—as randy a bunch as you'll ever meet. There's probably no such thing as a pure person anyway; everybody has some outlet. An aesthetic, not prurient tone. What is lust anyhow, I kept asking myself. Is fantasizing wrong in itself? If so, then erotic dreams would count as sin, and how could I be responsible for my dreams? I reminded myself of the definition of lust I had started with long before: desiring intercourse with a specific sexual partner. I experienced a general sexual heightening, a raising of the voltage, not a specific desire for the act of intercourse. Some, perhaps all, of these rationalizations contain some truth. (Do they sound familiar?) I used them as an overlay of reason and common sense to help calm the cognitive dissonance that tormented me. Yet I knew inside that the lust I experienced was not subject to reason and common sense. To my dismay, on several occasions I had already felt it burst out of containment and take on a sinister power. At other times, I could analyze lust and put it in perspective, but at the moment when it was occurring I knew I would not stop and analyze. I would let it take its course. Secretly, I began to wonder what that course would be.

Don't let me give the wrong impression. My entire life did not revolve around lust. I would go days without fixating on sex, and sometimes a month or two without seeking out a pornographic magazine or movie. And many, many times I would cry out to God, imploring him to take away the desire. Why were my prayers not answered? Why did God continue to curse me with freedom, even when that freedom led me away from him?

I read numerous articles and books on temptation but found little help. If you boiled down all the verbiage and the ten-point lists of practical advice for coping with temptation, basically all they said was "Just stop doing it." That was easy to say. I knew some of those authors, and knew that they too struggled and failed, as I did. In fact, I too had preached many a sermon on handling temptation, but look at me. Practical "how-to" articles proved hopelessly inadequate, as if they said "Stop being hungry" to a starving man. Intellectually I might agree with their theology and their advice, but my glands would still secrete. What insight can change glands?

"Jesus was tempted in all points as you are," some of the articles and books would say, as if that would cheer me up. It did not help. In the first place, none of the authors could conceivably describe how Jesus experienced sexual temptation, because he never talked about it, and no one else has ever been perfect and lived to tell about it. Such well-meaning comments reminded me of telling a ghetto dweller in East Bronx, "Oh, President Reagan used to be poor too. He knows how you feel." Try telling that to a poor person, and prepare to duck.

I felt a similar reaction when I read accounts of people who had overcome lust. Usually, they wrote or talked in a condescending, unctuous tone. Or, like Jesus, they seemed too far removed from my own spiritual quagmire to comfort me. Augustine described his condition twelve years after conversion from his lusty state. In that advanced spiritual place he prayed to overcome these besetting sins: the temptation to enjoy his food instead of taking it as a necessary medicine "until the day when Thou wilt destroy both the belly and the meat"; the attraction of sweet scents; the pleasure of the ear provided by church music lest he be "more moved by the singing than by the thing that is sung"; the lure of the eye to "diverse forms of beauty, of brilliant and pleasing colors"; and last, the temptation of "knowing for knowing's sake." Sorry, Augustine, I respect you, but prayers like that led to the climate of repression and body-hatred that I have been vainly trying to escape all my life.

I got a perverse pleasure out of knowing that this same Augustine a few years earlier had prayed, "Give me chastity, but not yet." He delayed purity for a while also, to sample more delights than I would likely get around to. Why is it that I scoffed at accounts of saints who overcame temptation but loved hearing about those who gave in? There must be a name for that sin, too.

Most of this time I hated sex. I could not imagine it existing in any sort of balance in my life. Of course I knew its pleasure—that was the gravitational attraction—but those short bursts of pleasure were horribly counterbalanced by days of guilt and anguish. I could not reconcile my technicolor fantasy life with my more mundane experience of sex in marriage. I began to view sex as another of God's mistakes, like tornadoes and earthquakes. In the final analysis, it only caused misery. Without it, I could conceive of becoming pure and godly and all those other things the Bible exhorted me toward. With sex, any spiritual development seemed hopelessly unattainable. Maybe Origen had the right idea after all.

It is true there is difficulty in entering into godliness. But this difficulty does not arise from the religion which begins in us, but only from the irreligion which is still there. If our senses were not opposed to penitence, and if our corruption were not opposed to the purity of God, there would be nothing in this painful to us. We suffer only in proportion as the vice which is natural to us resists supernatural grace. Our heart feels torn asunder between these opposed efforts. But it would be very unfair to impute this violence to God, who is drawing us on, instead of to the world, which is holding us back. It is as a child, which a mother tears from the arms of robbers, in the pain it suffers, should love the loving and legitimate violence of her who procures its liberty, and detest only the impetuous and tyrannical violence of those who detain it unjustly. The most cruel war which God can make with men in this life is to leave them without that war which He came to bring. "I came to send war," He says, "and to teach them of this ware I came to bring fire and the sword." Before Him the world lived in this false peace. Blaise Pascal Pensees This article is divided into two parts. The first part, which you have just read, recounts the downward spiral of temptation, yielding, self-hatred, and despair. If I had read this article several years ago, I would have gleefully affirmed every thing. Then, when I got to the second part, which describes a process of healing, I would have turned cynical and sour, rejecting what follows. Such is the nature of self-deception.

I have described my slide in some detail not to feed any prurient interests in the reader (after all, how many racy articles have you read in Leadership?) and certainly not to nourish your own despair if you too are floundering—God forbid. I tell my struggles because they are real, but also to demonstrate that hope exists, that God is alive, and his grace can interrupt the terrible cycle of lust and despair. My primary message is one of hope, although until healing did occur, I had no faith that it ever would.

Scores, maybe hundreds of times I had prayed for deliverance, with no response. The theologians would find some fault in my prayers, or in the faith with which I prayed them. But can any person assume the awful right to judge the prayers of another who writhes in mental torment and an agony of helpless unspirituality? I would certainly never assume the right, not after a decade—long war against lust.

I have not mentioned the effect of lust on my marriage. It did not destroy my marriage, did not push me out to find more sexual excitation in an adulterous affair, or with prostitutes, did not even impel me to place unrealistic demands on my wife's sexual performance. The effect was far more subtle. Mainly, I think, it cumulatively caused me to devalue my wife as a sexual being. The great lie promulgated by Playboy, television commercials, and racy movies is that the physical ideal of beauty is attainable and oh, so close. I stare at a Playboy centerfold. Miss October has such a warm, inviting smile. She is with me alone, in my living room. She removes her clothes, just for me, and lets me see all of her. She tells me about her favorite books and what she likes in a man. Cheryl Tiegs, in the famous Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, sweetly walks toward the camera, letting the coral blush of her breasts shine out boldly from underneath a net bikini. She lets me see them—she has no inhibitions, no pudency.

The truth is, of course, that if I sat next to either Cheryl Tiegs or Miss October on an airplane, she would not give me the time of day, let alone take off her clothes for me. If I tried to strike up a conversation, she would brush me off. And yet, because I have stared at Cheryl's breasts and gone over every inch of Miss October as well as the throng of beauties that Madison Avenue and Hollywood recruit to tantalize the masses, I start to view my own wife in that light. I expect her to have Farrah's smile, Cheryl's voluptuousness, Angie's legs, Miss October's flaming red hair and sparkling eyes. Envy and greed join hands with lust. I begin to focus on my wife's minor flaws. I lose sight of the fact that she is a charming, warm, attractive woman and that I am fortunate to have found her.

Beyond that, lust affected my marriage in an even more subtle and pernicious way. Over time, I began to view sex schizophrenically. Sex in marriage was one thing. We performed OK, though not as often as I liked, and accompanied by typical misunderstandings. But passion, ah, that was something different. Passion I never felt in my marriage.

If anything, sex within marriage served as an overflow valve, an outlet for the passion that mounted inside me, fed by sources kept hidden from my wife. We never talked about this, yet I am sure she sensed it. I think she began to view herself as a sex object—not in the feminist sense of being the object of a husband's selfish greed, but in the deprived sense of being only the object of my physical necessity and not of romance and passion.

Yet the sexual schizophrenia pales in comparison to the schizophrenia of my spiritual life. Can you imagine the inner rupture when I would lead a spiritual retreat for a weekend, winning sighs of admiration and tears of commitment from my devoted listeners, only to return to my room and pore over the latest copy of Oui? I could never reconcile it, but somehow I could not avoid it. If you pinned me down on what degree my succumbing to temptation was a conscious choice, I would probably search for an enigmatic response such as the one a Faulkner character gave when asked about original sin. "Well, it's like this," he said. "I ain't got to but I can't help it."

Paradoxically, I seemed most vulnerable to temptation when speaking or otherwise performing some spiritual service. Those who see Satan as personally manipulating all such temptation to sin would not be surprised by that observation.

Lust became the one corner of my life that God could not enter. I welcomed him into the area of personal finance, which he revolutionized as I awakened to world needs. He cleaned up many of my personal relationships. He gave stirrings of life to the devotional area and my sense of personal communion with him. But lust was sealed off, a forbidden room. How can I reconcile that statement with my earlier protestations that I often cried out for deliverance? I do not know. I felt both sensations: an overwhelming desire to be cleansed and an overwhelming desire to cling to the exotic pleasures of lust. A magnet is attracted equally to two opposite forces. No matter how small you cut a magnet or rearrange it, the two ends will still be attracted to opposite forces. One force never cancels out the other one. This must be what Paul meant in some of those strange statements in Romans 7 (a passage that gave me some comfort). But where was Romans 8 in my life?

Even when I had lust under control, when I successfully limited it to brief, orderly perusals through Playboy at the local newsstand, I still felt this sense of retaining a secret corner God could not enter. Often I would get bogged down in sermon preparation. For motivation to keep going, I would promise myself a trip to the newsstand if I could finish the sermon in an hour and a half. Can you sense the schizophrenia?

Just as I can remember graphically the precise incident in Rochester when adult lust moved in, I can remember the first flutterings of a commitment to healing. They also came on a trip out of town, when I was speaking at a spiritual life conference. The conference was scheduled for a resort hotel in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, near my favorite part of the country. Nothing affects me like the long drive up the rocky coastline of Maine. It is an invigorating, almost religious experience. Some people find deserts affect them like that, some wheat fields, and some mountains. For me, the magnificence of creation unwinds with each curve on the road up Maine's coast. I made plans to fly into Boston, rent a car, and spend three days cruising the coast just to refresh myself before the conference.

My mistake was spending the first night in Boston. I was then practicing a fairly rigid regimen of "controlled lust." I hadn't given in to any scary splurges like my Washington, D.C., encounter in some time. But sure enough, that night I found myself stalking the streets of the seedy areas looking for lust. I did not have to look far. Like many cities, Boston offers strip shows, porno movies—a veritable menu of lust. I usually avoided porno movies because they had proved so unsatisfying. But, Boston also features live nude girls on a revolving platform that you can watch for twenty-five cents. I went in one of those booths.

The mechanics are simple. Twenty curtained booths encircle a revolving platform. Each booth has a glass window covered by a piece of plywood. When you insert a quarter, a mechanical arm somewhat like a toll gate lowers the piece of plywood and lets you see the nude girls revolving on the platform. Then, about three minutes later the toll gate goes up, and you have to drop in another quarter to continue. This is lust at its most unadorned.

The girls employed by such places are not beautiful. Imagine for yourself what kind of women would willingly settle for such employment. You lie under bright lights, revolving like a piece of roast beef at a buffet table, masturbating occasionally to keep the quarters clinking. Around you, leering, furtive stares of men appear for three minutes, then disappear, then appear again, their glasses reflecting your pale shape, none of them looking at your face.

Maybe such booths do serve a redeeming purpose for society—by exposing lust in its basest demythologized form. There is no art or beauty, no acrobatic dancing. The woman is obviously a sex object and nothing else. The men are isolated, caged voyeurs. There is no relationship, no teasing.

The girls are bored stiff: over the whir of the timing mechanism you can hear them trading talk about grocery prices or car repairs. They masturbate as a routine for the customers, like an ape at the zoo who learns to make faces because the onlookers then laugh and point. This is what the richest, freest society in history spends its wealth and freedom on?

And yet, there I was, a respected member of that society, three days away from leading a spiritual-life retreat, dropping in quarters like a frantic long-distance caller at a pay phone.

For fifty cents you could go to a private booth, and one of the girls would entertain you personally. A glass wall still separated you from the girl, but you could, if you wished, pick up the receiver and talk to the girl. Maybe you could talk her into doing something special for you. I went into the booth, but something restrained me from picking up the telephone. I could not make that human an act—it would expose me for what I was. I merely stood, silent, and stared.

Guilt and shame washed over me in waves that night, as usual. Again I had a stark picture of how low I was groveling. Did this animal lust have any relation to the romance that had inspired the Symphonie Fantastique, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets, and the Song of Solomon? Certainly each of those works contained traces of glandular desire, but this that I had experienced was devoid of all beauty. It was too naked, and shameful.

I had felt all that remorse before. What shocked me more was my trip up the coast the next two days. I followed my usual practice of staying in homey inns with big fireplaces, and of eating by the waterfront and watching the sailboats bob in the shimmering sea, of taking long solitary walks on the rocky promontories where huge waves crashed with thunder, of closing my eyes and letting salt spray splash across my face, of stopping at roadside stands for fresh lobster and crab. There was a difference this time: I felt no pleasure. None. My emotional reaction was the same as if I had been at home, yawning, reading the newspaper. All romance had drained out, desiccated.

The realization disturbed me profoundly. By all counts, those wonderful, sensuous experiences rated far higher than the cheap thrill of watching a fat, pock—marked body rotate on plywood. And yet, to my utter disbelief my mind kept roaming back to that grimy booth in Boston. Was I going crazy? Would I lose every worthwhile sensation in life? Was my soul leaking away? Was I becoming possessed?

I limped through the conference, and everyone warmly applauded each talk. They were all blessed. Alone in my room at night, I did not pore over pornography. I pored over what had been happening inside me for ten years. I did not like it.

Exactly three days later, I spent the night with a very dear friend, a pastor of one of the largest churches in the South. I had never shared intimate details of my lust life with anyone before, but the schizophrenia was building to such a point I felt I must. He listened quietly, with compassion and great sensitivity as I recounted a few incidents, skipping over those that showed me in the worst light, and described some of my fears to him.

He sat for a long time with sad eyes after I had finished speaking. We both watched our freshly refilled cups of coffee steam, then stop steaming, then grow cold. I waited for his words of advice or comfort or healing or something. I needed a priest at that moment, someone to say, "Your sins are forgiven."

But my friend was no priest. He did something I never expected. His lip quivered at first, the skin on his face began twitching, and finally he started sobbing—great, huge, wretched sobs such as I had seen only at funerals.

In a few moments, when he had recovered some semblance of self-control, I learned the truth. My friend was not sobbing for me; he was sobbing for himself. He began to tell me of his own expedition into lust. He had been where I was—five years before. Since that time, he had taken lust to its logical consequences. I will not dwell on sordid details, but my friend had tried it all: bondage, prostitution, bisexualism, orgies. He reached inside his vest pocket and pulled out a pad of paper showing the prescriptions he took to fight the venereal disease and anal infections he had picked up along the way. He carries the pad with him on trips, he explained, to buy the drugs in cities where he is anonymous.

I saw my friend dozens of times after that and learned every horrific detail of his hellish life. I worried about cognitive dissonance; he brooded on suicide. I read about deviance; he performed it. I winced at subtle fissures in my marriage; he was in divorce litigation.

I could not sit in judgment of this man, because he had simply ended up where my own obsession would likely take me. Jesus brought together lust and adultery, hatred and murder, in the Sermon on the Mount, not to devalue adultery and murder but rather to point to the awesome truth about hatred and lust. There is a connection.

If I had learned about my friend's journey to debauchery in an article like this one, I doubtless would have clucked my tongue, questioned Leadership's judgment in printing it, and rejected the author as an insincere poseur in the faith. But I knew this man, I thought, as well as I knew anyone. His insights, compassion, and love were all more mature than mine. My sermons were like freshman practice runs compared to his. He was a godly man if I had ever met one, but underneath all that … my inner fear jumped uncontrollably. I sensed the power of evil.

For some weeks I lived under a cloud that combined the feelings of doom and terror. Had I crossed some invisible line so that my soul was stained forever? Would I too, like my trusted friend, march inexorably toward the systematic destruction of my body and my soul? He had cried for forgiveness, and deliverance, and every other prayer he had learned in church, and yet now he had fallen into an abyss. Already lawyers were dividing up his house and possessions and his children. Was there no escape for him—for me?

My wife could sense the inner tension, but in fifteen years of marriage she had learned not to force a premature explanation. I had not learned to share tension while it was occurring, only afterward, when it fit into a logical sequence, with some sort of resolution. This time, I wondered whether this particular problem would ever have such a resolution.

A month after my conversation with my friend, I began reading a brief and simple book of memoirs, What I Believe, by Francois Mauriac. In it, he sums up why he clung to the Roman Catholic church and the Christian faith in a country (France) and an age when few of his contemporaries seriously considered orthodoxy. I had read only one novel by the Nobel prizewinning author, Viper's Tangle, but that novel clearly showed that Mauriac fully understood the lust I had experienced, and more. A great artist, he had captured the depths of human depravity. I would not get pious answers from him.

Mauriac's book includes one chapter on purity. He describes the power of sexuality—"the sexual act has no resemblance to any other act: its demands are frenzied and participate in infinity. It is a tidal wave"—and his struggles with it throughout a strict Catholic upbringing. He also discounts common evangelical perspectives on lust and sex. The experience of lust and immorality, he admits, is fully pleasurable and desirable; it is no good trying to pretend that sin contains distasteful seeds that inevitably grow into repulsion. Sin has its own compelling rewards. Even marriage, Christian marriage, he claims, does not remedy lust. If anything, marriage complicates the problem by introducing a new set of difficulties. Lust continues to seek the attraction of unknown creatures and the taste for adventure and chance meetings.

After brazenly denying the most common reasons I have heard against succumbing to a life filled with lust, Mauriac concludes that there is only one reason to seek purity. It is the reason Christ proposed in the Beatitudes: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Purity, says Mauriac, is the condition for a higher love—for a possession superior to all possessions: God himself.

Mauriac goes on to describe how most of our arguments for purity are negative arguments: Be pure, or you will feel guilty, or your marriage will fail, or you will be punished. But the Beatitudes clearly indicate a positive argument that fits neatly with the Bible's pattern in describing sins. Sins are not a list of petty irritations drawn up for the sake of a jealous God. They are, rather, a description of the impediments to spiritual growth. We are the ones who suffer if we sin, by forfeiting the development of character and Christlikeness that would have resulted if we had not sinned.

The thought hit me like a bell rung in a dark, silent hall. So far, none of the scary, negative arguments against lust had succeeded in keeping me from it. Fear and guilt simply did not give me resolve; they added self-hatred to my problems. But here was a description of what I was missing by continuing to harbor lust: I was limiting my own intimacy with God. The love he offers is so transcendent and possessing that it requires our faculties to be purified and cleansed before we can possibly contain it. Could he, in fact, substitute another thirst and another hunger for the one I had never filled? Would Living Water somehow quench lust? That was the gamble of faith. Perhaps Mauriac's point seems obvious and predictable to people who respond to anguished problems with spiritual-sounding cliches. But I knew Mauriac and his life well enough to know that his observation was the culmination of a lifetime of struggle. He had come to that conclusion as the only possible justification for abstemiousness. Perhaps, just perhaps, the discipline and commitment involved in somehow allowing God to purge out the impurities formed the sine qua non, the essential first step toward a relationship with God I had never known.

The combination of grave fear struck in me by my pastor friend's grievous story and the glimmer of hope that a quest for purity could somehow transform the hunger I had lived with unabated for a decade prepared me to try once again to approach God in confession and in faith. I knew pain would come. Could God this time give me assurance that, in Pascal's words, pain was the "loving and legitimate violence" necessary to procure my liberty?

I cannot tell you why a prayer that has been prayed for ten years is answered on the 1,000th request when God has met the first 999 with silence. I cannot tell you why I had to endure ten years of near—possession before being ready for deliverance. And, most sadly of all, I cannot tell you why my pastor friend has, since our conversation after New Hampshire, gone into an unbelievable skid toward destruction. His marriage is now destroyed. He may go insane or commit suicide before this article is published. Why? I do not know.

But what I can tell you, especially those of you who have hung on every turn of my own pilgrimage because it so closely corresponds to yours, is that God did come through for me. The phrase may sound heretical, but to me, after so many years of failure, it felt as if he had suddenly decided to be there after a long absence. I prayed, hiding nothing (hide from God?), and he heard me.

There was one painful but necessary step of repentance. Repentance, says C. S. Lewis, "is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off if He chose; it is simply a description of what going back is like." Going back for me had to include a very long talk with my wife, who had suffered in silence and often in nescience for a decade. It was she I had wronged and sinned against, as well as God. Perhaps my impurity had kept our own love from growing in the same way it had blocked the love I could experience with God. We lay side by side on our bed one steamy summer evening. I talked about nothing, in a nervous, halting voice, for an hour or so, trying to break the barrier that held me back, and finally about midnight I began.

I told her nearly everything, knowing I was laying on her a burden she might not be able to carry. I have wondered why God let me struggle for a decade before deliverance: maybe I will one day find out my wife required just that much time to mature and prepare for the one talk we had that night. Far smaller things had fractured our marriage for months. Somehow, she incarnated the grace of God for me.

I hurt her—only she could tell how much I hurt her. It was not adultery—there was no other woman for her to beam her resentment toward, but perhaps that made it even harder for her. For ten years she had watched an invisible fog steal inside me, make me act strange, pull me away from her. Now she heard what she had often suspected, and to her it must have sounded like rejection: You were not enough for me sexually, I had to go elsewhere.

But still, in spite of that pain and the vortex of emotions that must have swirled around inside her, she gave to me forgiveness and love. She took on my enemy as her enemy too. She took on my thirst for purity as her thirst too. She loved me, and as I type this even now, tears streak my face because that love, that awesome love is so incomprehensible to me, and so undeserved. But it was there.

How can I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel! … For I am God and not man, The Holy One in your midst. Hosea 11:8-9 Saint Augustine, who wrote so eloquently of his own war within, describes our condition here on earth as a simultaneous citizenship in two cities, the city of man and the City of God. The lure of the city of man often drowns out the call of the City of God. Man's city is visible, substantial, real; as such, it is far more alluring. God's city is ephemeral, invisible, cloaked in doubt, far away. It may not even exist— no one knows for sure.

Cheryl Tiegs coming toward me out of the page, her teeth flashing, her eyes sparkling, her body glistening, is that city of man. She, and what she represents, fits well with my body and the hormones that surge inside it and the complexes that grew in my repressed childhood and whatever else contributed to my obsession with lust. The pure in heart shall see God. Set against luscious Cheryl, sometimes that promise does not seem like much. But that is the lie of the Deceiver, and the dyslexia of reality we are asked to overcome. The City of God is the real, the substantial, the whole. What I become as I strengthen my citizenship in that kingdom is far more worthy than anything I could become if all my fantasies were somehow fulfilled.

A year has passed since the late-night talk with my wife. During that time, a miracle has occurred. The war within me has fallen away. Only a few snipers remain. Once I failed, just a month later, when I was walking the streets of San Francisco. I felt myself pulled—it felt exactly like that—into another of the twenty-five cent peep shows to watch an undulating girl on a revolving table for three minutes. Not ten seconds had passed when I felt a sense of horror. My head was pounding. Evil was taking over. I had to get out of there, immediately.

I ran, literally ran, as fast as I could out of the North Beach district. I felt safe only when I got out of there. It struck me then how much had changed: previously I had felt safe when I had given in to lust, because the war inside died down for a moment, but now I felt safe away from the temptation. I prayed for strength and walked away.

Other than that encounter, I have been free of the compulsion. Of course, I notice girls in short dresses and halter tops—why else would they wear them?—but the terror is gone. The gravitational force has disappeared when I pass in front of newsstands. For twelve months I have walked by them and not picked up a magazine. I have not entered a porno theater.

I feel a sense of loss, yes. I enjoyed the beautiful women, both the art and the lust of it. It was pleasurable; I cannot deny that. But now I have gained a kind of inner gyroscope that is balanced correctly and alerts me when I am straying off course. After ten years I finally have a reservoir of strength to draw on as well as a conscience. I have found it necessary to keep open and honest communication with God and my wife on every little temptation toward lust.

The war within still exists. Now it is a war against the notion that biology is destiny. Looking at humanity as a species, scientists conclude that the fittest must survive, that qualities such as beauty, intelligence, strength, and skill are worthy factors by which to judge the usefulness of people, that lust is an innate adaptation to assure the propagation of the species Charity, compassion, love, and restraint fly in the face of that kind of materialist philosophy. Sometimes they defy even our own bodies. The City of God can seem like a mirage; my battle is to allow God to convince me of its reality.

Two totally new experiences have happened to me that, I must admit, offset by far my sense of loss at the experiences of lust I miss.

First, I have learned that Mauriac was right. God has kept his part of the bargain. In a way I had never known before, I have come to see God. At times (not so often, maybe once every couple of months), I have had an experience with God that has stunned me with its depth and intimacy, an experience of an order I did not even know existed before. Some of these moments have come during prayer and Bible reading, some during deep conversations with other people, and one, the most memorable of all because of my occupation, while I was speaking at a Christian conference. At such moments I have felt possessed, but this time joyfully so (demonic possession is a poor parody of the filling of the Spirit). They have left me shaken and humbled, renewed and cleansed. I had not known that level of mystical experience, had not, in fact, even sought it except in the general way of seeking purity. God has revealed himself to me. The City of God is taking on bricks and mortar.

And another thing has happened, again something I did not even ask God for. The passion is coming back into my marriage. My wife is again becoming an object of romance. Her body, no one else's, is gradually gaining the gravitational pull that used to be scattered in the universe of sexes. The act of sex, as often a source of irritation and trauma for me as an experience of pleasure, is beginning to take on the form of mystery and transcendence and inexpressible delight that its original design must have called for.

These two events occurring in such short sequence have shown me why the mystics, including biblical writers, tend to employ the experience of sexual intimacy as a metaphor of spiritual ecstasy. Sometimes, lingering remnants of grace in the city of man bear a striking resemblance to what awaits us in the City of God.

* * *

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d-criss-news · 6 years

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Emmy-nominated for both Ryan Murphy’s ‘Glee,’ in 2015, and now for an FX limited series in which he played serial killer Andrew Cunanan, the Filipino-American discusses “passing” as white, pre-‘Glee’ life (he made a living playing piano at Maggiano’s) and the tricky terrain of being a straight actor who has made his name playing LGBTQ parts.

“I can only join Ryan Murphy shows if they’ve had a successful, Emmy-winning first season,” cracks Darren Criss, the 31-year-old actor, singer and songwriter who burst onto the television scene during the second season of Murphy’s Fox musical-dramedy Glee and is now poised to win an Emmy, for best actor in a limited series or a TV movie, for the second season of Murphy’s FX limited season American Crime Story, subtitled The Assassination of Gianni Versace.

Criss, who is Filipino-American, was born and raised in the Bay Area. He says that his biracial heritage is “one of my favorite things about myself,” but he also noted that he has spent his life “passing” as white. He has previously been quoted as saying that he considers himself “lucky” to not appear to be Asian, but wanted to clarify the intention of his remarks during our conversation. “There are so many men and women that have faced a significant amount of obstacles — professionally or personally, perhaps — that they’ve had to get over in order to stake a claim in certain areas of life,” he says. “So for me to say that I have also felt those, and I have faced these hardships, is a fucking lie, and is disrespectful to those people and unfair … capitalizing on someone else’s struggle that I really didn’t have to go through by way of the way that I look. And in that regard, I have been ‘lucky.’”

Criss’ interest in acting dates back at least to the age of 7, when he rang up the father of a classmate, the actor Peter Coyote, seeking advice about entering the profession. Coyote encouraged him to study with the Young Conservatory at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre, and his parents enrolled him in that afterschool program until he went off to college years later. He also joined a musical troupe and studied the violin — all on top of his regular classes — and, by the time he headed off to the University of Michigan, he recalls, “I was ‘the music guy.’” While in Ann Arbor, Criss was always acting in or directing some production; a musical send-up of Harry Potter in which he starred that was made by a troupe he started went viral not long after his graduation in 2009, bringing him a degree of underground fame.

Before that, during his senior year in Ann Arbor, Criss took a trip to Los Angeles, during which a fellow Wolverine helped him to land an agent, who, in turn, secured for him an audition for the still-forthcoming Glee. That audition didn’t pan out, but Criss still moved to L.A. after graduating, and went out again for Glee, again coming up short. All the while, he was collaborating remotely with the troupe behind the Harry Potter project on similar web content under the banner StarKid Productions — and some of their music output even broke into the Billboard charts. “We were kind of moonlighting as these subcultural superstars on our computers,” he reminisces, “but during the day we were struggling actors going out on auditions for commercials, we were working at restaurants and bars, I was working at Maggiano’s in Los Angeles playing the piano.”

Then, just as he was preparing to relocate to Chicago with the rest of the StarKid troupe and complete its third production, he was offered a third audition for Glee, and this time he landed the part of Blaine, who would serve as a love interest of Chris Colfer’s Kurt. “I really owe my tenure on that show to these StarKid fans,” Criss insists. “It was just supposed to be a little guest character, and they ended up keeping me on that show for six years.” Catapulted by his rendition of Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” on his first episode with the show, which reached No. 8 on the Billboard charts, Criss quickly became a fan favorite. “It was an amazing boot camp,” he says of the show, which required singing and dancing and tons of rehearsal to do both, but, he insists, “I had an absolute blast. … I truly had the greatest time.” (Criss, with his musical composition background, also did some composing for the show, landing a songwriting Emmy nom in 2015.)

Glee ended in the spring of 2015, and it wasn’t long after that when Murphy first broached the idea of his playing serial killer Andrew Cunanan, another Filipino-American, on the second season of American Crime Story. (The first, which was being made at the time, was The People v. O.J. Simpson, and it became a critical, ratings and awards phenomenon.) Murphy has described Criss as his “first and only choice” for the part, which would subvert Criss’ genial screen persona, catching audience members who knew him from Gleeoff guard. Criss enthusiastically signed on, and embarked on an eight-month shoot, most of it in and around Miami in the same places where Cunanan himself had once traveled — or, in the case of the Versace mansion itself (now a hotel), tried to. The goal of everyone on the production was to humanize, but never to glamorize, Cunanan. As for the challenges and rewards of playing him? “Andrew was an actor himself,” Criss asserts. “He played several different parts in the course of his life with different people to varying degrees. And that was really fun for me as an actor.”

As Criss looks ahead to a future with more possibilities than ever before, thanks to the acclaim with which his Versace performance was greeted, he has been forced to ponder a question that much of the industry is currently weighing. Should heterosexual actors play LGBTQ characters, as he did in Glee, as a replacement in a Broadway revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch and, of course, in Versace? “It is tricky,” he admits. “Look, cisgender straight male playing these gay characters — that hasn’t been a conscious, ‘Oh, I must only play gay characters.’ That’s been just an honest-to-God coincidence. They’re such different people that their homosexuality is sort of the least of the things that make them interesting; it’s certainly part of their story, but not the central part of their narrative. But I do think about that now, you know, if roles come by that are LGBT-leaning, you know, I go, ‘Gosh, guys [addressing his reps], I really think it would be insensitive to the gay community if I was to take another role. I think they’d have my head, you know? And I would totally understand that.’ So I’m totally cognizant of that.”

#darren criss #the hollywood reporter #awards chatter podcast #acs versace #glee #team starkid #press #aug 2018 #starkids

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possiblyimbiassed · 6 years

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Sherlock and the media – ‘the full story’?

I’ve been thinking of writing this meta for a long time, but maybe now is as good a moment as ever? For the umpteenth time in the history of this show, a large part of the audience seems to pay more attention to what’s said in the media about it, than what’s said in the actual show. This show is screaming to us ‘don’t believe everything you hear from the media – it’s fairy tales!’ The show runners have told us repeatedly to not believe everything they say about the show, because they’re ‘lying liars who lie’. And yet… Same thing as always.

So let’s pay attention to the actual show instead. What is it with the media cover of Sherlock and John in this show – what role does it play? An essential role; in fact, I believe it’s one of the most important topics in BBC Sherlock. I’ll go through it episode for episode, so please bear with me.

Ariane De Vere’s transcripts are a veritable gold mine for this kind of research; all the spoken words are transcribed, but also what we see as text in the show, plus descriptions of the scenes. I can’t stress enough how useful this is.

I looked up all the times the words ‘press’, ‘paper’, ‘media’ and ‘journalist’ occurred in the dialogue or the descriptions, and the hits were so many that it almost got a bit worrisome. There are media references in every single episode except TFP – even in MHR - and in some of them media plays a central role.

Observations:

To begin with, John and Sherlock read newspapers a lot. This might give a touch of domesticity to the scenes at 221B, but maybe it could also mean something more deep and symbolic. Media is of course useful for Sherlock’s professional work, and we often see him studying newspaper clips as data collection for the cases. But in general, it’s not exactly a positive picture of the media that this show paints; all the contrary in fact.

Secondly, the whole show begins with a case that alerts the media. Apart from the scenes with John Watson’s solitary bedsit, the first thing we see in ASiP is a supposed suicide followed by the press. It escalates to a bigger police press conference when the number of similar ‘suicides’ grows to three. One of the journalists seems to be a bit sensationalist, since she’s immediately asking about serial killers and the public’s safety. Sherlock appears to have the phone numbers to all the attending journalists, since he repeatedly sends them the same text message, synchronized with Lestrade’s statements: “Wrong!” This indicates, to me, that the media isn’t getting the right picture of the events; thus, it’s not a reliable source.

This is a literal monster-post, so I’ll put most of it below the cut.

The forth victim of ‘suicide’ in ASiP is from the media according to Sherlock, going by the ‘alarming shade of pink’ of her clothing. (And what does he imply by this? Maybe that media people tend to want to draw attention to themselves, when they rather should reflect other people and the events?)

TBB Another media guy is murdered; Brian Lukis, a freelance journalist. This topic sounded promising to me; was this an investigative journalist onto some interesting case-related info? But in the end he turns out to have been a smuggler who was suspected for treason by his own criminal gang and executed. His diary does help Sherlock and John to solve the case though.

TGG Sherlock has collected old newspaper articles from the eighties about Carl Powers, the young swimmer who was killed by a supposed seizure in a pool. This info was wrong, however, as Sherlock could prove in what became his first ‘case’. But no-one listened. In the next case in TGG, media is gossiping about a dead celebrity – Connie Prince - and her family relations, which leads Sherlock on the track of the murderer. John and Sherlock themselves pretend to be from the press when they interview the victim’s brother. The murderer turns out to be the brother’s lover, who is crowded by the press when the police take him away.

ASiB This is where Sherlock and John start being famous; thanks to John describing their cases on his blog they have become an ‘Internet phenomenon’, and even Scotland Yard reads it. The press creates Sherlock’s famous deerstalker style when he grabs a random hat at a theatre crime scene to protect himself from photographers. But the effect is exactly the opposite; now Sherlock and John are suddenly ‘Hat-man and Robin’. The details of a news article (transcribed by someone in Ariane DeVere’s comment section here ) is particularly interesting; this is where media starts to make insinuations about the “confirmed bachelors” at 221B and the “salacious truth about their home life”.

(By the way – this newspaper also claims that John’s blog “has become one of the Internet’s most visited websites”. Yes; it got stuck on 1895 hits in ASiB, but if this newspaper is right (never trust that, though ;) ) the number from T6T – 18 493 – cannot possibly be correct either; the Internet is a vast thing… )

Sherlock doesn’t like his deerstalker image at all, but John publishes it on his blog, claiming some dubious reason for it: “People like the hat”. He thinks the whole hat thing is funny and can’t seem to resist teasing Sherlock about it when the picture shows up in a paper in THoB.

The central case in THoB is about Henry Knight, who believes a gigantic monster hound killed his father 20 years ago, a mythical animal which has eventually become the local tourist attraction of Grimpen village in Dartmoor. Media helps greatly to feed this myth, when TV makes a spooky reportage of it where Henry is interviewed. Sherlock does not approve of this take of the events, however; he stresses that he prefers to do his own editing. (Another little comment on media’s role, on the show’s meta level? Or maybe a hint about his mind palace being active?).

(In this same episode, Sherlock is also suspected of being a journalist when he starts asking questions about the Hound, but he quickly denies this).

TRF This is the point of no return I believe; Sherlock and John start getting literally harassed by the media. In fact the whole episode is a big media circus. Every new case of any public importance that Sherlock solves, the press seems to be present. It annoys Sherlock to receive unwanted gifts of gratitude in public – especially when Scotland Yard (smirkingly) gives him a new deerstalker to fit with his (false) press image. It’s also in this episode that Sherlock finds hidden cameras inside his and John’s flat. We’re never told who put them there, though; it could be Mycroft (who talks about ‘surveillance’ in ASiP), it could be Moriarty (who according to John’s blog breaks into 221B around this time and makes a video of it) or it could be someone from media.

By TRF, the ‘confirmed bachelor’ insinuations are suddenly all over the tabloids, a fact that now seems to worry John to the point of telling Sherlock that they “need to be more careful”.

I find this particularly interesting, because for the first time John is reacting negatively to their fame – which he is personally responsible for, having tried to draw attention to Sherlock’s work with his blog posts for quite some time. And John was never particularly ‘careful’ about the things he wrote about Sherlock. But now the whole thing seems to be descending into the area of homophobia; the papers’ badly hidden speculations about John and Sherlock being a gay couple are done in a sensationalist way, violating their privacy. John doesn’t take this lightly, but actually seems to blame Sherlock for it, who never wanted public attention in the first place (“try to stay out of the news”…) Shouldn’t John have to eat his own words here, having claimed earlier that ‘people want to know about the real you’? Which means they’ll also want to know about the ‘real’ John Watson? John seems to have some negative experience of this, going by how he now describes the media:

I believe this point in the story is crucial; here Sherlock starts to see himself as ‘bad for John’, believing that it’s he, Sherlock, who is drawing unwanted attention to John. If homophobia is personified by Moriarty in this show, this is where it starts to seriously persecute Sherlock, and by proxy John. Maybe this is the real reason why Sherlock faked his death and disappeared from John’s life for two years? John was threatened by media’s homophobia, which made Sherlock believe it was basically his fault, and that he ‘needed to disappear’ so John wouldn’t be associated with him any more, at least until the storm had blown over? Perhaps that’s why Sherlock was looking sad when John couldn’t see him, as Molly suggested? I strongly suspect this is actually the case.

This is also the point in the story where Moriarty appears again, commits crimes to drag Sherlock into his little ‘game’ again and meets him for the first time since the pool scene in TGG. And the media – press and TV - cover it all thoroughly, to the tunes of ‘Sinnerman’ by Nina Simone. It’s all so suggestive that I believe the homophobic implications must be intentional.

There’s also Moriarty’s trial at the Old Bailey and Sherlock put behind bars for contempt, in spite of being summoned there as a mere witness. This is the same court room and very similar procedure as that of famous writer Oscar Wilde in 1895 (same number of hits that John’s blog was stuck on in ASiB, by the way). There’s even a sub-textual pun about it in the press: “Crown Jewel thief is to be tried at the Old Bailey.” The same prison (Pentonville) figures, where Wilde was held in hard labour two years for ‘gross indecency’, which broke down his health and spirit entirely and eventually led to his premature death. But homophobia Moriarty walks free, after having blackmailed the jury.

In another detail beautifully captured by Ariane De Vere, The Guardian writes at the end of their article: “The case is riddled with irony and intrigue but perhaps reflects a deeper malaise that seems to be at the heart of a society.” Is this ‘malaise’ perhaps meant to be homophobia?

(I’m aware many of these things have been pointed out before, by meta writers far more eloquent than me. I just think they deserve to be mentioned again and not be forgotten. Feel free to link to those meta if you have the links at hand).

During Moriarty’s trial, Sherlock meets a particularly nasty tabloid journalist in the men’s rest room: Kitty Riley. Kitty is pretending to be a fan and tries to flirt with him in an over-sexualised way, in order to get some juicy story out of him. Which Sherlock of course immediately sees through. He deduces an ink smudge on her wrist: “Journalist. Unlikely you’d get your hands dirty at the press”. So - what does this tell us about Sherlock’s view of journalists? Not willing to do ‘leg work’? When he refuses to give an interview, Kitty chases after him, starts making insinuations about him and John and offers to help him “set the record straight” for the press. It ends with a furious Sherlock expressing his disgust right into her Dictaphone:

Some time after this, John is summoned to Mycroft’s Diogenes Club to talk about Sherlock. It turns out Kitty Riley has published a defamatory story about him in The Sun - a big tabloid known for its misogyny, homophobia and Thatcherism during the eighties, with some insulting right-wing messages that even its own print workers refused to print. Possibly a hint in Sherlock’s little comment to Kitty about not getting her hands dirty at the press? When John sees the tabloid he asks Mycroft: “You read this stuff?” The article claims that Sherlock is a fraud, supposedly revealed by his ‘close friend’ Richard Brook (Moriarty in disguise).

Interestingly, when the Chief Superintendent of NSY later orders Lestrade to go arrest Sherlock, after Donovan has told him about her (very poorly founded) suspicions regarding Sherlock, he refers to him as “That bloke that’s been in the press” – a direct cause-and-effect scenario regarding media’s influence? Another interesting thing is that Moriarty claims himself (at their later encounter in Kitty’s apartment) to be an actor, a ‘story teller’ – something that he then repeats when he meets Sherlock next time, up at the roof top of Barts hospital: “’Genius detective proved to be a fraud.’ I read it in the paper, so it must be true. I love newspapers. Fairy tales. And pretty Grimm ones, too.”

And consequentially, after Sherlock has jumped, we see Mycroft reading the headlines and straplines of The Sun: “Suicide of fake genius” and “Super-sleuth is dead” and “Fraudulent detective takes his own life”. Indeed; in this show the media is not depicted in anything remotely like a positive light.

MHR In this little interlude in the hiatus between TRF and TEH, we get another noteworthy detail: As Sherlock travels around Eurasia solving crimes in disguise, he manages to get someone called Trepoff sentenced for murder (a reference to ACD canon) in Germany. And the case makes it to the headlines of the British press: CAM Global News writes “Trepoff ‘Guilty’ Sensation!” So this is Charles Augustus Magnussen’s news empire – the media personified. More about that later. And who has the ‘guilty sensation’? Who is feeling guilty? Could it possibly have to do with Sherlock feeling bad for what he did to John?

TEH The episode starts with Anderson trying to make a case for Sherlock still being alive and theorizing about how he made it, while the TV reporters are telling the world that Sherlock has been posthumously freed of all accusations; Moriarty did exist for real (they don’t mention Jim’s supposed suicide though). But the blame is now on the police - never on the media! At the end of the episode, Sherlock seems to have resigned to his media image; now that he has ‘returned from the dead’ and finally meets the press, he puts on his deerstalker and talk to the reporters outside 221B. It’s unclear to me why he actually does this - any suggestions?

TSoT By the time we reach this episode, media attention has turned to other stuff: a series of bank robberies have been committed during the last 1½ years, and according to the papers the police are ‘baffled’. Greg Lestrade thinks that the only way to capture them is ‘in the act’. But when an opportunity eventually comes to him, and they’re waiting for the criminals to fall in their trap, Greg receives an emergency call from Sherlock (or at least that’s what he thinks it is), and has to leave the credits to someone else.

Later in the episode John tells Sherlock about his friend and commanding officer, James Sholto, who lost a battle in Afghanistan and let a group of new soldiers to their death. Sholto is now living isolated because “the press and the families gave him hell”, and consequently he receives death threats. Yet another negative example of media’s influence. And when John and Sherlock later visit the Queen’s Household Guard to speak to private Bainbridge, Major Reed receives John in a rather condescending manner. Reed suspects him of being a journalist, and doesn’t want to let him in. But in spite of this, we are yet again confronted with “I’ve seen you in the papers - hang around with that detective – the one with the silly hat”. No end, apparently, to the negative influence the press has on John’s and Sherlock’s work.

Another case in this episode shows the Mayfly Man, who uses the newspapers’ obituary columns to find empty apartments where he dates certain women for just one night. There’s no sex involved, though; he just does this to get info about Major Sholto, whom he intends to kill. It might be of interest that the criminal in this case is the photographer of John’s wedding. Which could mean, if you want to look at it symbolically, that ‘death in the newspapers’ is connected to taking photos of people, which leads to attempts on their lives.

HLV And here we get to Charles Augustus Magnussen (CAM); a villain whom Sherlock loathes. On John’s and Mary’s wedding in TSoT he sent a card saying: “...Oodles of love and heaps of good wishes from CAM. Wish your family could have seen this.” Which makes ‘Mary’ look worried, as if there is a threat to this.

In HLV we learn that CAM is a petty but very powerful blackmailer who owns a news imperium. Sherlock sees him as a shark with dead eyes and is absolutely disgusted: “I’ve dealt with murderers, psychopaths, terrorists, serial killers. None of them can turn my stomach like Charles Augustus Magnussen”. “He uses his power and wealth to gain information. The more he acquires, the greater his wealth and power. I’m not exaggerating when I say that he knows the critical pressure point on every person of note or influence in the whole of the Western world and probably beyond. He is the Napoleon of blackmail...”

This goes far beyond the evil Charles Augustus Milverton in ACD Canon, and I think this is extremely telling: media is depicted as a villain – by Sherlock as well as by the show itself. It’s not about individual journalists; it’s about the whole concept of persecuting people, finding their pressure points, stalking their private lives and publicly speculating about things like their sexual orientation. It’s a form of blackmail which is mostly legal (in the name of free speech), but which totally has the power to destroy lives. Like Jeff Hope in ASiP, media CAM drives people to suicide whenever they try to resist his blackmail.

Isn’t the fact that CAM personally intrudes into Sherlock’s apartment, uninvited and with armed body guards at his side, quite symbolic as well? They don’t go in with unsecured guns like the CIA agents in ASiB, so why would Sherlock even allow this? Why would he allow them to intimidate Mrs Hudson with their mere appearance (remember what Sherlock did to the CIA guy in ASiB)? Why would he allow CAM to urinate in his fireplace without even a protest? Something is too weird to be true here, but that’s for another meta ;). What I want to point out is the metaphorical similarity between CAM and media’s methods: violating people’s private lives, getting into their homes and doing what he wants with them, because he has a hold on them: anything an individual say can be used against them, to smear their reputation. And there’s no way of stopping him from printing rubbish; “The world is wet to my touch”, indeed.

I believe the symbolism is unmistakable here; media has its grip on the nation as long as people sheepishly lap up whatever ‘warm paste’ they are served; even the authorities are under its thumb. Sherlock believes that he can fool media CAM, by distracting CAM’s attention to something he is prepared of (his drug use). But he learns in HLV that this is delusional, because CAM has his weakest pressure point entirely in his hands: John Watson. And as we perceive in TSoT, CAM clearly has some dirt on ‘Mary’ that can potentially harm John, even if I do think this might be something different from what it seems to be in HLV. Following the logics of TRF, I believe it’s more likely this has something to do with destroying people’s private lives, than with assassins and such.

The interesting thing is that Sherlock doesn’t actually solve this crime; instead he kills CAM in frustration, which temporarily keeps John safe (or at least so Sherlock believes).

But before this, there’s the whole debacle with Sherlock being shot (by ‘Mary’). His fake girlfriend Janine (who is CAM’s PA) comes to visit him at the hospital, but is acting very strangely. Janine has of course all reason to be upset that Sherlock lied to her and used her only to get into her boss’s office. But instead she has taken a supposed revenge on Sherlock by telling the press that he’s some kind of a sex god and have the tabloids print it. Why would this be so detrimental to Sherlock’s reputation, considering the reigning heteronormativity in society? It would rather ‘set the records straight’, as Kitty put it in TRF, so I find this a bit hard to understand as revenge. The weirdest thing of it all, though, is that not a word is printed about the famous detective being shot and almost killed! How is it even possible to keep this secret?? This isn’t really media as we’ve known it from the show; too ‘good’ to be true. I can totally understand that it hurts Sherlock on a personal level to be called straight, though, particularly since he’s in love with John Watson. But that’s not public, is it?

TAB Even in TAB, which partly happens in the Victorian age (where ACD canon took place), media is mentioned repeatedly. The Strand Magazine with the Sherlock Holmes stories (directly from ACD Canon) is sold on a London street, and Watson gets a copy of course. But Holmes doesn’t seem the slightest interested in talking to the news-vendor. In other papers, there are lots of sensational headlines, though, about ‘murder, mystery and mayhem’. The unsolved case of Emilia Ricoletti - the vengeful ‘ghost’ - seems to have particular coverage. Later in the show, Holmes gathers the news clips and tries to solve the Ricoletti case inside 221B, while influenced by drugs. Apparently even here, where the events are confirmed as happening inside Sherlock’s mind, the press is gathered outside his home. And for some reason Mrs Hudson seems to be serving them tea…

T6T The few things I can find in T6T that has to do with media is a) that John (supposedly) says on his blog that “You’ll have seen on the news about how Sherlock recovered the Mona Lisa”and b) that Ajay, ‘Mary’s old AGRA companion whom Sherlock had been fighting with about a Thatcher bust, seems to have a false identity as a journalist; Eshan Mohindra. Strangely, this is the third media person who gets murdered in this show (the first being Jennifer Wilson and the second Brian Lukis).

TLD In this episode, the media is back again as a concept; this time in the form of entourage around Culverton Smith, a philanthropist and TV celebrity who owns a hospital. According to Sherlock, though, Culverton is “the most dangerous and despicable human being”; a monster that “must be ended”. Sherlock is attacking Smith on social media, trying to make him confess to being a serial killer, but he gets caught in Smith’s public shows aimed to gain fame and sell products. There’s the Cereal Killer adverts and then Sherlock’s public chat to the hospitalized kids, together with Smith. But Sherlock seems unable to present any kind of evidence against Smith; at the end of the show we still have no idea who he has killed or where or when. But Sherlock gets his confession while Smith is trying to suffocate him (on his own request!). Hmm.

TFP In the latest episode of BBC Sherlock, media is surprisingly absent; not even 221B being blown up or the capture of Sherlock Holmes’ dangerous, murderous sister seems to have attracted any press attention (and not much of anyone else’s attention either, by the way). I wonder why that might be?

Anyway, this means we’ve now arrived to the end of my little monster-post research - thanks to everyone who has had the patience to read this far! Just for the fun of it, I’ve intentionally tried to write parts of this meta in a speculative way, in some ways resembling media’s methods of asking leading questions, of which there are many examples in the show. But even so, I think there are also plenty of evidence in it that begs the audience to pay attention to the mechanisms of media, and hopefully apply critical thinking to it.

In summary, I think the negative picture of media’s role in BBC Sherlock is blatantly obvious. What this actually means is not entirely clear to me, because in our society I believe media also has a very important positive role of spreading knowledge and important information, providing public insight into things like power abuse, investigating wrongdoings that otherwise never would be exposed, etc. This is not depicted, though. But since I tend to believe that this show is entirely presented from inside Sherlock’s head in one way or another, what we see might actually be Sherlock’s view of media. Which also would be consistent with his personal negative experience of them in TRF.

But in any case, the message I take from all these negative media references, is that we - the audience - should not just lap up whatever is said about this show in real life media. There’s definitely more to it than the ‘face value’.

Tagging some people who might be interested: @ebaeschnbliah @raggedyblue @sarahthecoat @gosherlocked @sagestreet @tjlcisthenewsexy

#media in sherlock

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greekprodigies · 6 years

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Why Shows Like Insatiable Are So Toxic, Despite Their Intentions

As a teenage girl who has only recently grown out of watching Disney Channel, it was safe to say I was intrigued when Netflix released the teaser trailer for their new 12-episode series Insatiable, starring Debbie Ryan, who played the title character of Disney’s Jessie for four seasons. It was a 30-second clip of Debbie Ryan in a hot pink dress, walking down a junk food aisle at a colorful grocery store, smashing everything on the shelves with a sledgehammer. Ryan’s voiceover says, “I’ve heard stories of girls who grew up happy and well-adjusted. This is not that story.” My first thoughts were, based solely on this teaser, that the main character seemed to be the villain, or at least a girl with a grudge. And, based off of this girl’s seemingly bad relationship with food, I also figured it would portray fat shaming in a way that most popular television shows don’t. I was hoping that Netflix would take their power over the teenage demographic and show a perspective that strayed away from the (respectable and still necessary) insecure overweight character still coming to terms with her own body (i.e. Kate from This Is Us or Rachel from My Mad Fat Diary). A perspective that I, an overweight high school senior who has already been through the ringer of despising my fatness, could relate to.

It’s obvious, in retrospect, that I was thinking way too deeply into a vague half-minute teaser video. I had gotten my hopes up. Those hopes were soon diminished when the official trailer was released

The video starts off with Debbie Ryan in a fat suit (I’ll get to why that is so grossly offensive later), introducing herself as Patty and showing her constant struggle as a victim of bullying and fat shaming at her high school. Her classmates (who seem to all be thin) call her “Fatty Patty”, and go so far as to spray paint it on her locker. Irene Choi, who plays Patty’s cruelest offender, is shown shouting “Porky! Butterball!” through a megaphone in the cafeteria, pointing to the main character. Then, after what seems to be a fight over a chocolate bar with a homeless man, Patty is punched in the face. Her voice-over tells us, “Having my jaw wired shut lost me more than just my summer vacation.”

Enter Patty 2.0. She’s the sparkling image of every chubby girl’s dream weight after she watches a show like this and vows to cut off carbs. No stretch marks, no cellulite, nothing that reflects what somebody’s body actually looks like after losing a large amount of weight in such a short period of time. The trailer escalates to a montage style of clips of Patty slapping, punching, and even pouring liquor onto some of her classmates before lighting a match.

It feels like a fantasy that’s trying to be relatable. That’s telling us that every bullied teenager, who’s frontal lobe isn’t developed enough to have a lot of perspective, craves revenge from their tormentors. And it’s easy for this narrative to be confused as a realistic depiction of the experience of being a teenage bullying victim. It’s even in the news, shown in the series of article published about domestic terrorist Nikolas Cruz revealing him being an orphan and being described as an “outcast” in interviews following the Parkland shooting. Sure, Insatiable’s revenge plot is meant to be satirical the same way Dexter (which Lauren Gussis, the writer and executive producer of this show, also worked on) is, but because it’s set in a high school during modern day, Patty (possibly, based on what’s shown in the trailer) killing her classmates hits a softer spot.

In the Teen Vogue article that was released with the trailer, Gussis explains how she “felt it was important to look at [bullying] head on and talk about it.” But it’s hard to look at bullying head-on when its changed so drastically over a span of 20 years. It’s past mean nicknames and cruel but clever comments said as two characters pass in a hallway. And more recently, it’s past cyberbullying. Or, at least, the way adults view cyberbullying based off of tone-deaf shows like Glee and dramatized TV movies like Cyberbully (which stars not one, but two former Disney Channel actresses). I’ve never met a high school student who got called a slut or gay 200 times in the comment section of a Facebook post. And, if I am completely wrong due to the fact that I’ve grown up during the social media transition from Facebook to Instagram and Snapchat, that form of bullying died when the Facebook phenomenon did. It is a subtler conversation than the beautiful cool kids versus the ugly losers.The solution is simple: If you’re going to make a show based off of your experiences of bullying in the 80’s, 90’s or even early 2000’s, make the show take place during those decades. Colliding old stereotypes to a character who exists in 2018 is unrealistic and humiliating.

Intention wise, Insatiable can be easily compared to another controversial Netflix original series, 13 Reasons Why. In the warning videos that are shown before watching, the stars of the show say, “By shedding a light on these difficult topics, we hope our show can help viewers start a conversation. But if you struggling with these issues yourself, this series may not be right for you, or you may want to watch it with a trusted adult,” And this message perfectly conveys a show that’s purpose seems heartfelt but is ultimately clueless. Here we have a television program that is produced by a bunch of 30 year olds, where people in their 20’s play high school students (yes, everyone who plays a teenager in 13RW are actually in their 20’s), pretending to understand what it’s like to be a teenager as if the dynamic between young people and mental illness hasn’t changed immensely in just the past couple of years. Just in five, the use of memes and irony has shifted from simply making fun of something, to helping us cope with the fact that our world is on fire. Everybody is laughing at the jokes about depression because, since the rise of social media and the quantification of how many people like us, we all feel depressed. Suicide, though tragic, has now been boiled down to kids saying they want to kill themselves when they have too much homework. We have an education system that teaches us about the anatomy of sex but never teaches us what questions need to be asked about consent during our sexual experiences. So making a show to start a conversation about depression, suicide, and sexual assault that warns it’s targeted audience (who are constantly surrounded by these topics) that the show might not be right for them is simply irresponsible.

But, if I can counteract what I just said, 13 Reasons Why horrifically also is the only show I’ve seen that has the most correct articulation of modern bullying. That’s not to say that anything else with the show is correct, because it’s not. Perhaps what is so wrong about 13RW is that, because they focus so much on the bullying aspect of high school, it provides a direct correlation between bullying and suicide. Well, that, and the graphic/triggering suicide and sexual assault scenes that were used for shock value. Nevertheless, Hannah Baker doesn’t go home and find a bunch of Instagram DMs of her classmates called her a whore. Any secrets that Hannah’s offenders had regarding what could have led her to kill herself were events that happened IRL. And they were just that: Secrets. Because the bullies were ashamed of what they had done. Even before Hannah committed suicide, Jessica Davis didn’t just go around telling people she slapped her ex-best friend because she thought she had betrayed her.

With Insatiable, it seems like everybody in this fictional high school (except for Patty’s best friend and maybe even a popular girl with a heart of gold) is insanely okay with harassing a girl just because of her appearance. It’s insulting, both as a fat girl and an observer of modern bullying. There isn’t one school in the country where 99% of its students just allow this sort of cruelty. Because we have perspectives and opinions that (surprise!) aren’t always swayed by whatever Instagram model is trending right now. Just because Emma Chamberlain is successful and skinny, doesn’t mean that we’re brainwashed to only make skinny people successful. I’m not saying that there isn’t an institutional privilege that skinny girls have, and have always had when it comes to social acceptance. Because they do. But there’s a gray area where most people stand when it comes to issues as new and contentious as body positivity, and Insatiable is ignoring it. You don’t have to be a body-posi activist to know that making somebody feel like shit because of their weight is wrong. And I hope this show can have a character that, without having any relation to Patty, recognizes that what these bullies are doing is outrageous.

After we recognize that the intention of these shows is ultimately flawed, we can then try to take a step forward and look at the impact. 13 Reasons Why, after being loudly criticized by suicide prevention experts, broke virtually every rule of portraying suicide. And as a result, a study shows that searches such as “how to commit suicide”, “suicide hotline number” and “teen suicide” were elevated after the show’s release. The time period for the search ended on April 18th of that year after NFL player Aaron Hernandez committed suicide, which could have influenced data. And any searches related to the movie Suicide Squad were discounted. Sure, the show had increased suicide awareness, but it also unintentionally increased suicide rationalization. And I fear that Insatiable may be on the same path. Regardless of the revenge plot or the bullying, there is still a skinny actress in a fat suit portraying a fat character who only eats, sits on the couch, and feels bad about herself. Then, after a summer of not being able to eat, returns to high school skinny and composed.

Firstly, the use of a fat suit is sickly but overall not surprising. In a world where blackface and yellowface in Hollywood has only just become unacceptable, fat suits seem more defendable for skinny people who don’t understand that there are a plethora of plus size actors who could have played Fatty Patty just as well (and most likely better) than Debby Ryan with pillows stuffed up her shirt. Perhaps the show could have avoided being so oblivious to its fat-shaming storyline if they had an actual fat person weighing in on it.

Secondly, there is the characterization of fat people as losers who do nothing but eat and watch TV. If there were a time and place for these characters to exist, it is definitely not now, where the call for diversity in Hollywood is louder than ever. Plus, we’ve already seen these people before. And it’s the same plot every time. They are only created to provide a funny prequel to a supposedly more stable version of the character. “Fat Monica” from Friends and “Fat Schmidt” from New Girl show a universe where plus size people can’t be taken seriously until they shed the pounds. When in reality, fat men and women are perfectly capable of being successful in their professional and romantic lives. Ironically enough, another New Girl character comes to mind when I think of plus size characters being accurately portrayed: Emily. She’s Schmidt’s ex-girlfriend from college, who dated him when he was her “Big Guy”. After Schmidt reminisces about losing his virginity to her, she resurfaces into his life as a confident woman who goes on dates and isn’t ashamed of who she is. There even seems to be a layer to her character showing that there had been a time where she was insecure about herself and her body but has overcome them. This is an example of a healthy goal for young girls and boys who are self-conscious of their body. Not Debby Ryan’s character, who only gains confidence after losing an obscene amount of weight.

It may actually be the casting of Debby Ryan that could cause a rise in body dysmorphia in young people from watching this show. Since her face is plastered on every poster, teaser and trailer for the show, Disney Channel fans, and former fans might watch simply because she’s cast as the lead role. It’s certainly what sparked my interest in the show. And since Disney Channel’s demographic has gotten younger and younger, there’s a generation that will watch this show and not see it as fat shaming, but a way to become the person they’ve always wanted to be. Skinny, beautiful and confident while simultaneously making all of their classmates' jaws drop as they walk down the hallway. But Patty doesn’t lose weight healthily, she literally could not eat solid food. Depending on how the show addresses this, it is a possible glorification of anorexia. Just like 13 Reasons Why glorified and romanticized depression. But two wrongs don’t make a right, and anorexia and depression can not make anybody beautifully broken.

To make things clear, I am not telling you to not watch this show. And based off of the 100,000 signatures (and counting) on a petition for the show’s cancellation, none of us may even get to. But speaking as a person who fits into all of these groups, Insatiable gets everything wrong about being a high schooler, a teenage girl, and a fat person.

#insatiable #netflix #debby ryan #op ed #fatphobia #fat shaming #body positive #body posititivity #anorexia #depression #13 reasons why #13rw #suicide

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red-applesith · 6 years

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I love your meta works! I have a question regarding the interrogation scene in TFA. Why do you think Rey was so calm? Her first question is 'where am I?' and she sounds relatively collected given the circumstances. I imagened myself in her position. Strapped down to a chair, facing a massive guy in a mask. I would expect to be raped and be in utter panic. She only tears up much later. Do you think she's just not as easily scared, or is Ben not as intimidating to her as a 'monster' should be?

Thank you for your kind words!

Daaamn, that’s a REALLY good question! I think there’s much to say about that.

Context

First of all, when watching the movie (or any movie for that matter), it’s essential to make the distinction between what the character knows and what the audience knows.

It’s especially crucial with Star Wars because the audience knows or expects a great deal more than the characters themselves about the world they inhabit.

And that’s why fans tend to make connections between characters or events that are not connected in-universe.

Recent example: Rey’s parentage.

Rey must be Luke’s daughter!

Jyn Erso is Rey’s mum.

Qi'ra is Han’s love interest, and Rey’s mum, meaning Rey and Kylo are half-siblings!

It doesn’t matter if the timelines don’t align. Fans WANT to find connections and connect the dots.

In movies, especially in The Force Awakens, some things are meant to only make sense to the character at this point of the story (every single line spoken by Kylo Ren for instance) which leave us, the fans, speculating to no end.

However, to speculate, we need specific tools, which brings me to my second point.

What are the tools in our possession as an audience to understand Star Wars?

1. Star Wars legacy and tie-in materialOn top of their knowledge of the Star Wars stories that came before, Star Wars fans have access to supplemental content such as books, games, TV series and an extensive database to feed their theories about a character’s motivations or background. Doesn’t matter if some of that is not canon anymore. Some basic concepts exist.

That’s why Reylo fans correctly predicted the Force bond. We labeled Rey and Kylo the new Bastilla and Revan because the parallels existed and from there, the Force bond made perfect sense.

2. Codes and conventionsIn every form of art, ‘there’s a way to do things,’ codes and conventions that give us some clues about a character’s true feelings or where a story is heading. That’s why some movies are predictable while others have a shocking, unexpected ending. That’s also why ‘genres’ (romantic comedies, horror movies, thrillers, etc…) exist.

In movies, codes are what brings meaning to what’s going on on-screen, while conventions are more about how things are done.

And the truth is, there are many codes and conventions the audience understand instinctively, even if they never studied Media Studies 101.

Why is that? Because those codes emerged over the years, and as the audience saw them on-screen over and over again, they became part of our culture. For instance, imagine a character in a bathroom opening a medicine cabinet. How many of us expect to see the reflection of a menacing figure in the mirror as soon as the character closes the cabinet? (answer: a lot)

Another good illustration of that phenomenon is that meme:

But I’ll go back to that later; first I want to discuss one last point before getting into the breakdown of the interrogation scene.

3. The viewer’s experience/baggage

There’s one last tool we use as an audience: Our personal experience/feelings/bias.

That one is the most contentious because for obvious reasons, no two human beings have the same life experience, ambitions, or fears, and art is one of the most subjective human concepts. We all react differently to images and situations (Wonder what fuels nerd wars or ship wars? Look no further.)

Dynamic of the interrogation scene

Okay, let’s get into this for real.

Do I think Rey is afraid of being raped?No

Why?Because I don’t think that rape is a concept she’s ‘aware’ or afraid of.

Okay, some might think this is a bold statement, but let me explain my reasoning.

First of all, in Force Awakens, Rey’s Survival Guide and Before the awakening, we see a glimpse of Rey’s life on Jakku, and we know she’s been pretty much alone all of her life. Despite that, she’s not afraid; Not afraid to rescue BB-8 from Teedo, not afraid to refuse to sell BB-8 to Plutt, not afraid to fight Plutt’s thugs.

>> Rey isn’t afraid to say no to male figures.

If Jakku were a place where women are sexually exploited or mistreated, Rey would react very differently to these situations, wouldn’t she? She would hide and keep her head down at all time. That’s clearly not the case here.

Now, picture Jakku and Niima Outpost, especially in the movie. It’s hot and dusty, like Tatooine. Plutt is an asshole, like Watto. But do we see slaves in skimpy outfits or any sleazy bar? The answer is no.

World building 101: Jakku and Rey’s early life is sexless.

It doesn’t mean Rey is ignorant about sex; it just says she has no reason to associate danger or punishment to sexual violence, she just has no frame of reference for that.

And I believe that’s a very deliberate choice from the writers. In both TFA and TLJ, Rey and women, in general, are not sexualized. Even Bazine, who is the ‘femme fatale spy’ of The Force Awakens is clothed from tip to toe. And when we see boobs in TLJ, we see the Thala sirens and the weird lady in the casino with the floating dog.

(Btw, it’s super interesting because TFA and TLJ draw a lot of parallels with the previous movies obviously, but the exciting thing to study is what is missing.

For instance, even if we don’t know who Maz is, it takes no more than a scene in TFA to understand what she’s not: Maz’s castle is not Jabba’s palace. There are no cruel games, no slave dancing for the male gaze, etc…)

Is the audience afraid on behalf of Rey?Yes

Why?We didn’t grow up on Jakku. For us, sexual violence is real and female suffering and sexual exploitation a staple of our entertainment and culture.

Narrative codes taught us that female characters restrained to metal chairs do not belong to romantic comedies; they belong to horror movies and stories about serial killers. Our brain is conditioned to recognize such patterns, and it’s entirely reasonable to be afraid for Rey at that moment.

Is Kylo talking about sex?I don’t think so. But I think Lawrence Kasdan and J.J. Abrams knew that the audience was going to understand it that way.

Code and conventions:

‘That this is not the face of a villain threatening sexually our hero:’

Let’s compare with Javier Bardem’s character, Raul Silva, in Casino Royale

Code and conventions:

‘Yeah…That’s more like it.’

Codes and conventions are amazing, I love them

Why?In Force Awakens especially, Kylo is the writers’ puppet. His lines are the most meta of them all: What Kylo says and what he means are two very different things.

Is Ben intimidating to Rey?To an extent, yes, but not as much as Kylo/Ben is intimidating to us, the audience, and maybe not for the reasons we think of. Also probably not as much as he’d like to be, to be honest.

Seeing how Rey reacts when she’s with Ben/Kylo is essential to understand her character AND the nature of their relationship.

Now, to analyze her reactions, we need to separate what we know of Kylo Ren at that point and what Rey knows.

We witnessed him killing Lor San Tekka and giving the order to kill the members of the Church of the Force, but Rey didn’t; she doesn’t know who he is, except that he followed her in the Forest and he uses the Force.

Last thing she remembers:

Code and conventions:

That’s not how you carry a prisoner Kylo. What school of villainy did you go to?

Also, as established earlier, Rey isn’t easily frightened.

When Rey wakes up, Kylo is squatting a few meters away, watching her. As far as she’s concerned, she’s not in immediate danger. (Let’s be honest; if she’d opened her eyes and found him sniffing her hair or trying to cop a feel, her reaction might have been different tbh.)

Code and conventions:

Kylo, Y U not doing what you did with Poe??

Next, she initiates the conversation, asking with defiance where she is.

How she speaks to Kylo isn’t that different to how she speaks to Teedo and Plutt. Perhaps she’s assessing the situation at that moment. How is he going to react?

Kylo’s response and reaction gives her two clues:

He calls her a guest, not a prisoner.

He answers her question (He doesn’t shout, doesn’t stay silent, doesn’t ask her to shut up).

From the get-go, Rey is already -relatively- in control.

Code and conventions:

Usually the kidnapper is in control. You’re really bad at your job, Kylo.

Rey, you’re doing great, continue like that.

Next, she mentions the mask. What does Kylo do? He removes it.

Code and conventions:

Okay… What’s going on there?

Once again, even if she’s retrained, Rey is the one in control.

Once the mask is off, you can sense a shift in her body language. She’s not scared; she’s embarrassed and confused.

Code and conventions:

That is not how you react when you’re scared.

Then, Kylo tries to get into her head and things get tough. That’s when she starts crying.

Suddenly she’s lost the control. The things she’s never talked to anyone? Kylo is finding out and she’s embarrassed about it. Embarrassed because she’s a very private person, embarrassed because she has secrets, embarrassed because her defiance is a mask, and probably embarrassed because Kylo is cute and she doesn’t know how to process what’s going on.

Some people want to argue that the whole scene is a metaphor for rape, but it’s actually closer to someone finding a teenager’s diary and reading it out loud.

Rey is very private and obviously having her inner thoughts exposed brings back lots of bad memories.

Arguably, that’s when Kylo discovers her parents:

But as I said earlier, Rey isn’t easily frightened and she fights back.

Code and conventions:

Rey is no damsel in distress or victim! She will have none of your bullshit.

Rey orders Kylo to get out of her head and what happens? He immediately moves away from her.

That’s where they start fighting mentally and she gets into his head instead

And she wins!

^ That’s the face she sees before Kylo goes running to Snoke.

Code and conventions:

That guy isn’t a threat.

>> During the whole scene, Rey might be restrained, but she’s the one in control.

So overall, Rey knows that she has nothing to be afraid of when Ben is around because she’s had the upper hand since the beginning. Now that she’s been into his head, she also knows that he’s more afraid than she is.

Also, she still has no idea what he did before they met, nor does she know what he’s about to do.

Sure, it’s open to personal interpretation but let’s look at Finn and Rey when Han and Ben are talking.

Finn is scared because he knows Kylo Ren. Rey is curious because she doesn’t think Ben has the guts to kill Han.

TL;DR: Rey isn’t scared because Kylo isn’t scary to her.

#reylo #reylo meta #kylo ren x rey #rey x kylo ren #kylo x rey #rey x kylo #MyMetasAndTheories

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justkarliekloss · 6 years

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Karlie Kloss interview for Vogue Spain June 2018

This is my translation. Please credit the blog if you repost it anywhere.

And sorry if there are mistakes, English isn’t my first language. But, if you see a huge mistake or something that could be better said, please send me a message so I can edit it! I’m always open to learning new things 😊

Karlie Kloss (1992, Chicago) is the best example of what being a model means these days. Being beautiful and having an amazing body isn’t enough anymore; today you need to inspire people, and doing so, she is one of the best. As the leader of a new generation of tops whose voices are heard loud and clear, she has never doubted when it comes to fight against injustice. Her last cause is to fight against the lack of women working in tech. Now, because of her, its future could be lead by women.

In 2015, after studying a coding course at Flatiron School in New York, she decided to create a scholarship for girls between 13 and 18 so they could learn about a world that still today seems to be made just for men. The next year, Kode with Klossy grew up to be a free summer camp and also a scholarship to be able to attend university. Since then, this project hasn’t stopped growing, and this summer more than 1000 girls, divided over 50 camps in 25 cities in the United States, will benefit from it.

Besides that, Karlie also supports other causes, like the fight against climate change, or the different ways to improve people’s diet in her country. For the first time in history, a model seems to be ready (and more prepared) to save the world than all its politicians. Though she isn’t the only one. Fellow tops, like Doutzen Kroes, Cameron Russell, Sara Ziff and Adwoa Aboah also share her determination to make the world a better place. The fashion world can feel proud.

Respected by the industry, Karlie has always shown an untiring activism -even before it became a world wide phenomenon- that might have created some tension with her in-laws. Since 2012, Karlie is in a solid relationship with Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared, husband of Ivanka Trump and the President’s adviser. Her natural elegance has surely helped her get over any delicate situation; same way it has helped her nail her now more than usual tv appereances. One of the last ones was on Bill Nye’s tv show, “Bill Nye Saves the World”, where she travelled to Venice to report about the problems the climate change is causing the city.

Last year you travelled to Venice to show the effects of the rising of the sea level in the city. How was the experience?

I think we all should crontribute somehow on the conservation and preservation of the planet. Bill Nye gave me the opportunity to visit the Italian city and discover all the problems they have to deal with because of the sea level rising, and I am very grateful. It was a very revealing experience, because even though they don’t make it to the headlines all the time, the climate change consecuences are very real, and it is important that we start acting to try and save the world we live in.

What other causes worry you these days?

There are a lot of topics we should worry about; it has been very inspirig seeing so many people revealing things and demanding a change. From the #metoo movement to the students that are leading the conversation about the reform of the gun law and the violence in the United States. I find that admirable. We are witnessing a moment of huge changes for history. And even though there still is a lot to do, this gives me hope for the future, especially with the next generation, who is very compromised with all these problems.

Did you think about joining the #metoo movement?

I was very lucky when I started my career. My family was always with me, on every step I took. They even joined me at photoshoots and fashion shows, anywhere I went. My experience has been very positive, but I know that that hasn’t happened to other models. I think it is very important that people feel safe at work, and that it is the industry’s role to make sure of it. Even though I am sure this is just the tip of the icerberg, it is amazing that all these stories are finally seeing the light. As a society, we need to put a face to these issues so women and girls can feel respected. I hope that this movement is the begining of some very needed changes.

How do you think the models’ situation, and women’s in general, could be improved on their work eviroment?

We are witnessing an awakening in our culture. Important topics, like equal pay or women’s proteccion against abussive situations, have started to be talked about in the fashion world and many others. I hope these conversations start a change, and that everyone can feel safe and respected at work.

Karlie was discovered when she was just 13 during a charity fashion show in Saint Louis (Misouri), where she grew up and where her family still lives, and she made her debut on the runway when she was just 15 as an exclusive for Calvin Klein. The next season, just in New York, she walked 31 shows, and that was just the begining. “Back then I didn’t aspire to be a model, I thought it was a good way to save money for university. But I had amazing oportunities I feel unvelebely grateful for. Especially because, thanks to my family and close friends’ support, I was able to live that experience without disconecting from my previous life. During my first years I was still focused on the typical high school things, like doing homework or getting a date for my prom dance”. Not long after, her face was everywhere. Karlie has walked for all the big brands and names, and she has been the face of countless campaigns. Among the last ones, Versace, the perfume “Good Girl” by Carolina Herrera -they’ve always had a very close relationship- or Adidas, with whom she has been collaborating for a while trying to promote a healthier way of living. Besides that, she was just named an Estée Lauder’s ambassador, and the brand will collaborate with Kode with Klossy. But, despite being one of the biggest names in fashion and have more than 7 million followers on Instagram, Karlie has been able to stay away from controversies and anything that isn’t related to her job or her many charitable projects. The first one, born in 2012, was the one that made her one of the tops more known among her co-workers. When in backstage, she used to give away her famous Karlie’s Kookies, healthy cookies she developed in collaboration with Momofuku Milk Bar to help FEED raise money to help kids in need. Her support to those who need it the most has been constant since then.

You created Kode with Klossy as a way to help young girls in tech, a field usually made just for me. How did the idea started?

I’ve always been a very curious person, and I loved Math and Science. That’s why, in 2014, I decided to take some coding lessons. I wanted to understand how technology is changing our world. It is something that has significantly changed the fashion world in the past five years, with the boom of social media or e-commerce platforms. I wanted to know how all of that worked. I started a course at the Flatiron School in New York as a way to challenge myself, and I surprised myself when I found out how creative and easy it was to learn coding when you had the proper teachers and subjects. It just requieres solving problems and team work, two things I love; I finished the course thrilled with that I had learnt, and I wanted to share that experience with other girls. That’s how Kode with Klossy was born. A programme that encourages women to learn coding and to become the future leaders of the tech world.

Why do you think there still are work fields, like this one, that are thought to be just for men?

In 1995, only a 37% of techs were women, and today that number has gone down to a 24%. And it definitely isn’t because of women not being interested or talented enough. The problem starts with the early acces to technology and computer science. Only one of four public schools in the United States offer this options, and when it comes to the subjects, they aren’t created having girls in mind. On the other hand, there only are a few women with important jobs on the companies that belong to this field, which sends the message that opportunities are limited for women. There is a lot to do to try an close this breach.

When did you started being interested in technology?

I’ve always been very interested in Math and Science; but I think it is all because of how much I admire my dad, who is an ER doctor. He taught me to apreciate how you can use science in your daily life, in his case, to save lifes. At first I thought I would follow his steps and study Medicine, but life had other plans for me. That passion and curiosity for Science was still there tho, and it ended on me being very interested on coding.

Did you find any obstacle on this field because you are a woman?

When I decidedd to start taking coding lessons I got a lot of questions about it. And scepticism. People thought it was weird that a model wanted or needed to learn coding, but that’s the message I want to tell the world. You don’t need to be the number one in your Math class, or want to be a software ingeniere, to be interested in it. In technology, like on many other aspects of life, it is important to not let anyone stop you from getting what you want, from achieving your goals.

What do you dream to achieve with your project?

Something we talk about very often is the idea that you can’t expect to be something you can’t see. It is important that young girls not only get the technical abilities that will allow them to develop a career on the tech world, but also that they have role models to follow, to learn from, and to be inspired by. That’s why we want to create a comunity of women with interesting careers in the tech world, so they can come to our camps and share their stories with the girls. By celebrating the success of these women, we are showing the new generations what you can achieve with a bit of effort.

#karlie kloss #vogue españa #vogue spain #2018 #interview #kkinterviews

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chachaelt · 3 years

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FOR ADVANCED STUDENTS. Read the following article available on the Wall Street Journal website and answer the questions.

What cocktail parties teach us

The Brain Is Wired to Focus on Just One Thing; Which Tasks Are Easier to Combine

Melinda Beck on Lunch Break looks at the "cocktail party effect," in which people are able to focus on one conversation while being aware of conversations going on around them. Researchers say we can train our brains to maximize this kind of awareness.

You're at a party. Music is playing. Glasses are clinking. Dozens of conversations are driving up the decibel level. Yet amid all those distractions, you can zero in on the one conversation you want to hear.

This ability to hyper-focus on one stream of sound amid a cacophony of others is what researchers call the "cocktail-party effect." Now, scientists at the University of California in San Francisco have pinpointed where that sound-editing process occurs in the brain — in the auditory cortex just behind the ear, not in areas of higher thought. The auditory cortex boosts some sounds and turns down others so that when the signal reaches the higher brain, "it's as if only one person was speaking alone," says principle investigator Edward Chang.

These findings, published in the journal Nature last week, underscore why people aren't very good at multitasking — our brains are wired for "selective attention" and can focus on only one thing at a time. That innate ability has helped humans survive in a world buzzing with visual and auditory stimulation. But we keep trying to push the limits with multitasking, sometimes with tragic consequences. Drivers talking on cellphones, for example, are four times as likely to get into traffic accidents as those who aren't.

Many of those accidents are due to "inattentional blindness," in which people can, in effect, turn a blind eye to things they aren't focusing on. Images land on our retinas and are either boosted or played down in the visual cortex before being passed to the brain, just as the auditory cortex filters sounds, as shown in the Nature study last week. "It's a push-pull relationship — the more we focus on one thing, the less we can focus on others," says Diane M. Beck, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Illinois.

That people can be completely oblivious to things in their field of vision was demonstrated famously in the "Invisible Gorilla experiment" devised at Harvard in the 1990s. Observers are shown a short video of youths tossing a basketball and asked to count how often the ball is passed by those wearing white. Afterward, the observers are asked several questions,including, "Did you see the gorilla?" Typically, about half the observers failed to notice that someone in a gorilla suit walked through the scene. They're usually flabbergasted because they're certain they would have noticed something like that.

"We largely see what we expect to see," says Daniel Simons, one of the study's creators and now a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois. As he notes in his subsequent book, "The Invisible Gorilla" (co-authored with Christopher Chabris), the more attention a task demands, the less attention we can pay to other things in our field of vision. That's why pilots sometimes fail to notice obstacles on runways and radiologists may overlook anomalies on X-rays, especially in areas they aren't scrutinizing.

And it isn't just that sights and sounds compete for the brain's attention. All the sensory inputs vie to become the mind's top priority.

That's the real danger of distracted driving, experts say. "You regularly hear people say as long as your hands are on the wheel and your eyes are on the road, you're fine. But that's not true," Mr. Simons says.

2.5% The percentage of people who can multitask efficiently. Many more people only think they can.

Studies over the past decade at the University of Utah show that drivers talking on hands-free cellphones are just as impaired as those on hands-held phones because it is the conversation, not the device, that is draining their attention. Those talking on any kind of cellphone react more slowly and miss more traffic signals than other motorists.

"Even though your eyes are looking right at something, when you are on the cellphone, you are not as likely to see it," says David Strayer, a psychology professor and lead researcher. "Ninety-nine percent of the time, it's not that critical, but that 1% could be the time a child runs into the street," he adds.

Dr. Strayer's studies have also found that talking on a cellphone is far more distracting than conversing with a passenger — since a passenger can see the same traffic hazards and doesn't expect a steady stream of conversation as someone on a cellphone does. Listening to the radio, to music or to a book on tape also isn't as distracting, because it doesn't require the same level of interaction as a conversation. But Mr. Simons notes that even drivers may miss some details of a book on tape if their attention is focused on merging or other complex driving tasks.

Some people can train themselves to pay extra attention to things that are important — like police officers learn to scan crowds for faces and conductors can listen for individual instruments within the orchestra as a whole.

And the Utah researchers have identified a rare group of "super-taskers" — as estimated 2.5% of the population — who seem able to attend to more than one thing with ease.

Many more people think they can effectively multitask, but they are really shifting their attention rapidly between two things and not getting the full effect of either, experts say.

Indeed, some college professors have barred students from bringing laptop computers to their classrooms, even ostensibly to take notes. Dr. Beck says she was surprised to find that some of her students were on Facebook during her lectures — even though the course was about selective attention.

Still, she doesn't plan to crack down. "I just explained that doing Facebook in class means you will not learn as much, which will have consequences on the exam," she says.

Clearly, it is easier to combine some tasks than others. "Not all distractions are the same," says Dr. Strayer. Things like knitting, cleaning and working out can be done automatically while the mind is engaged elsewhere. But doing homework and texting simultaneously isn't possible. (Sorry, kids).

Even conversing and watching TV is difficult. "Just try conversing with your wife while watching football. It's impossible," jokes Mr. Simons.

PAY ATTENTION | How to stay in the zone

• Recognize your limitations. The brain can only fully attend to one thing at a time. • Make your senses work together. If you're trying to listen to someone in a noisy room, look directly at the speaker. • Focus on what's important. Many professions — from pilots to police officers — depend on keen powers of observation. Training and practice help. But experts say things like chess and videogames likely won't expand your overall attention skills. • Allocate blocks of time to specific tasks. Sometimes a deadline can force people to focus. • Avoid distracted driving. Don't talk on a cellphone, text or give voice commands while at the wheel.

ACTIVITIES

A - QUESTIONS

1. How does one of the researchers describe the phenomenon — the ability to hyper-focus on one thing we want to hear, even being amidst all kinds of noises —, avoiding the use of jargon and using clear trivial language?

2. Why aren’t humans good at multitasking?

3. What does one call the main cause of accidents brought about by unsuccessful attempts of multitasking?

4. Why were people who took part in the Gorilla experiment flabbergasted?

5. How do academics explain the results of such experiment?

6. Drivers talking on hands-free cellphones are just as impaired as those on hands-held phones because ______________________

7. What is the difference between looking at something and actually seeing it?

8. Which professions may lead people to train themselves to hyper-focus on relevant things?

B - WATCH THE VIDEO TWICE OR THREE TIMES AND FILL IN THE GAPS.

ANCHOR: What is the cocktail party effect?

MELINDA BECK: It’s a phenomenon where, in amidst of a ________ cocktail party, any kind of noises at a sporting event or newsroom... We are ______ ______ to focus in on the one conversation we wanna hear and somehow tune out everything else.

ANCHOR: And how come researchers and other scientists are _____ _____________ in this? Why is that? Why do they wanna know where this ability comes from?

MELINDA BECK: It’s part of this whole phenomenon of _________ attention wherein the human brain can _______ _______ focus in... _______ on one thing at a time. And this is a survival skill, you know, we’re _________ bombarded by this _______ and _________ stimulation. We couldn’t survive unless we could focus in like this. But we can also _______ ________ focus on one thing at at a time, and that’s... That’s what’s an issue in __________ driving and all other kinds of limitations of multitasking.

ANCHOR: Are there people who... Is there a small percentage of people who _________ have the super ability to focus on more than one thing or is that ???????????

MELINDA BECK: Yes, researchers at the University of Utah have found some of _______ people in the course of their other research. They think it’s about 2% of the population. The _______ problem is that most of us think we can do that and that can have some __________ consequences.

VOCABULARY

Copy the sentences where the words in bold below originally appear. The first two examples have been done for you.

- The brain is wired to focus on just one thing.

wired: in a nervous, tense, or edgy state : not much sleep lately — I'm a little wired. • under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

- Yet amid all those distractions, you can zero in on the one conversation you want to hear.

amid: preposition

surrounded by; in the middle of : our dream home, set amid magnificent rolling countryside.

• in an atmosphere or against a background of: talks broke down amid accusations of a hostile takeover bid.

yet: nevertheless; in spite of that.

to zero in: to take aim with a gun or missile: jet fighters zeroed in on the rebel positions; to focus one’s attention: they zeroed in on the clues he gave away about.

to pinpoint: to find or locate exactly: one flare had pinpointed the target / Figurative: it is difficult to pinpoint the source of his life’s inspiration.

to underscore: to underline, highlight, emphasize.

innate: inborn, inbred, natural.

to be buzzing with: (of a place) have an air of excitement or purposeful activity : the club is buzzing with excitement.

to turn a blind eye to: to pretend not to notice.

oblivious: not aware of or not concerned about what is happening around one: she became absorbed, oblivious to the passage of time | the women were oblivious of his presence.

to toss: move or cause to move from side to side or back and forth.

to vie: compete eagerly with someone in order to do or achieve something; to strive for superiority: contend, compete.

as long as: provided that, on condition that, on the assumption that, assuming that... we’ll take care of the horses as long as can stat at your house while you’ll gone.

impaired: disabled, handicapped, incapacitated; (euphemistic) challenged, differently abled.

to drain: to cause something to be lost, wasted or used up.

to converse: to engage in coversation.

hazard: danger, risk, potential source of danger, peril, threat, menace, problem, pitfall.

ostensibly: apparently or purportedly, but perhaps not actually.

to crack down on (informal): to take severe measures against: we need to crack down hard on workplaces that break safety regulations.

#EFL #ELT #advanced #advanced students

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hannahberrie · 7 years

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Stranger Things Returns Bigger and Darker Than Ever Before

[A/N]: I’m currently enrolled in a Magazine Writing class at university, in which we write magazine-style feature essays. For one of my assignments, we got to do a review essay on a media of our choice. I, of course, went with the second season of Stranger Things!

My professor wound up really loving it, she’s even going to use it to teach future classes! Some of you guys said you were curious to read it, so here it is! Small disclaimer: I kind of spill the tea on just a few things that I didn’t like about the season, so please don’t hate me for my opinions!

After the first season of Stranger Things skyrocketed into the pop-culture stratosphere last summer, the bar for the second installment was set dauntingly high. The creators of the infamous Netflix original series, twin brothers Ross and Matt Duffer, were no longer unknown underdogs with minimal experience under their belts, but rather household names credited with creating one of Netflix’s most popular television series to date.

Stranger Things 2 was released on October 27, 2017. The installment was largely promoted as a cinematic sequel, despite the season’s nine-episode composition. This would prove to be risky. “Netflix was like, ‘Don’t do that, because sequels are known to be bad,’” Matt Duffer said to Entertainment Weekly, recounting what had happened upon pitching the second season. “I was like, ‘Yes, but what about T2 and Aliens and Toy Story 2 and Godfather II?’ We want people to argue about what season is better. I want the debate. I want the Toy Story debate!”

So, now that the second season has been released, one looming question remains: Could Stranger Things 2 possibly live up to the first season?

Yes.

When we return to Hawkins, Indiana, the fictional town where Things is set, we’re reunited with all the characters we came to love in the previous installment. Will (Noah Schnapp), Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Lucas (Caleb Mclaughlin), and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) are now 13 years-old and back to doing what they love: geeking out over video games. Joyce (Winona Ryder), Will’s mother, has a new love interest in her life. Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Mike’s older sister, is still mourning the loss of her best friend from the previous season, while also dealing with the ongoing love triangle between Steve (Joe Keery), the once hard-hearted jock turned softie, and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), Will’s older brother and the quiet, ever-dedicated introvert. Police Chief Hopper (David Harbour) is back to dealing with the dull crimes of Hawkins residents, notably two farmers arguing over who poisoned the other’s pumpkin patch.

But, in typical Stranger Things fashion, nothing is as it seems. Will, having been rescued from The Upside Down (a dark, mirrored dimension of our world) in the last season, is still struggling with the trauma of his experience. The newly re-staffed Hawkins Laboratory is still shrouded with secrets. And who could forget about Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), the adorable, bad-ass, telekinetic 13-year-old who seemingly disappeared in last season’s finale?

To quote Matt Duffer, “It’s cliché to say bigger and darker,” but the second season of Stranger Things is exactly that, though it does take its time building up to it. While last season dropped viewers right into the action, this season is much more of a slow build. The first few episodes feel more like character studies than a sci-fi thriller, but it works. The Duffers have created a sandbox full of diverse and lovable characters, and now they get to play in it. There are several scenes that, while adding little to the overarching plot, are entertaining in and of themselves, as they just show the characters being themselves, like Mike and Lucas arguing over who gets to be Venkman (à la Ghostbusters) for Halloween, Steve providing Dustin with hair styling advice, Joyce struggling to play back a VHS-C tape, or Eleven breathlessly captivated by the soap operas she watches on TV.

While the last season kept characters’ plotlines grouped into three main categories (the kids, the teens, and the adults), season two blurs these borders. Relationships seamlessly broaden outside their natural boundaries as new character dynamics are explored. In particular, the bonds that form between Steve and Dustin, as well as Hopper and Eleven, are heart-warming and ingenious combinations. Both pairings provide not only humorous fun, but emotional weight, and the acting chemistry between the respective performers is undeniable.

However, the new season is definitely not all fun and games. As the episodes go on, the plot slowly builds upon itself, taking small moments and extrapolating them. Events that seem mundane, such as Will feeling chilly or Dustin finding a slug-like creature in his trash can, turn out to have monstrous consequences (no pun intended).

Nowhere is this phenomenon best executed than through Schnapps’ performance as Will Byers. In season one, Will hardly had any screen time, but in the new installment, he’s the primary driver behind all the main action. His performance starts off with a subdued Will, an average kid who feels isolated by his peers. When he tells his older brother, Jonathan, that he’s sick of feeling like “a freak,” because of how carefully he’s treated, his voice aches with the painstaking frustration of any child who just wants to live a normal life. But by the final episodes, in grating contrast, Schnapp’s performance explodes into a frenzied, darkened terror. As the darkness from the Upside Down overwhelms Will, Schnapp writhes in convulsive fits, screams in complete and utter agony, and at times (perhaps most horrifically) is completely, emotionlessly, and hauntingly still.

Despite being only 13 years old, Schnapp completely excels in Stranger Things 2, and I wouldn’t be surprised if his powerful performance makes him one of the youngest Emmy-award winners to date. His performance, along with the continually solid delivery from the rest of the cast, makes the show.

While the season may start slow, the payoff is completely worth the wait; it all cumulates in an electrifying, heart-pounding final two episodes that are some of the best hours of television I’ve ever seen.

However, this new season is not without its faults. The story falters when it dares to step outside of Hawkins. Two new characters are introduced: young tomboy Max (Sadie Sink) and her Jack-Nicholson-esque older brother Billy (Dacre Montgomery), but both feel largely one-dimensional. While not unlikable, Max doesn’t add much to the overall arc of the story, and largely serves as a plot device to create tension between Dustin and Lucas. Her brother Billy, while terrifying, often feels like he’s just there to bide time for the show and add a little drama on the side. There’s definitely potential to be explored with both characters, but this season leaves them thoroughly underdeveloped.

The biggest step outside of Hawkins takes place in episode 7, one of the most polarizing episodes in the whole series. The Lost Sister spends the entirety of its runtime taking Eleven out of Hawkins and into Chicago, where she meets up with a rag-tag gang of criminals who have darker intentions lurking beneath the surface. The Duffer Brothers insist that this episode was necessary, stating that “Eleven’s journey kind of fell apart, like the ending didn’t work, without it.” Even though the episode does give Eleven the opportunity to grow and strengthen as an individual, it’s unfortunately filled with unlikeable characters, feels painfully long and repetitive, and is the only episode of the series that I might consider skipping upon re-watch.

The Duffer Brothers reportedly want a four-season run for the series, but in order to do this, they’ll have to master the balance of expanding Hawkins while also staying true to the heart of the show. Season 2 shows hints of this, but it’s still a work-in-progress. Nevertheless, the new season is deeply satisfying and a true love-letter to its fans. I had the pleasure of watching it surrounded by friends and family, and throughout the entirety of its nine-hour-runtime, we were cheering, pleading, screaming, laughing, crying, and having the time of our lives, something that I believe is a welcome and much-needed relief.

Even though the original season of Stranger Things aired only a year ago, the world, particularly the United States, has arguably changed since its July 2016 release. Trump was elected into office. Three major hurricanes tore apart regions like Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico. We’ve seen over 17 terrorist-related attacks, including the worst mass shooting to date.

As tension seeps deeper into our world, the darkness can often feel suffocating. This is similarly mirrored in Stranger Things 2. The first season was bright with childlike ingenuity. Even when attempting a feat so immensely impossible as saving their best friend, Will, from another dimension, the characters found strength through relying on each other and relating their problems to familiar entities, like Dungeons and Dragons.

In contrast, despite all the monsters, superpowers, and multiple dimensions, the second season is weighted with the gravity of reality. The boys have to learn that not every problem can be solved like a board game. As Mike states when discussing how the boys should protect Will, “This isn’t D&D. This is real life.”

The second season is much darker, and not just in a figurative sense. The lighting often shadows scenes in blacks, reds, and yellows — colors that traditionally represent deceit, hazard, aggression, danger, and fear.

The violence is more graphic as well. Instead of a lone Demogorgon monster creeping out of The Upside Down and capturing a single victim, there are hoards that feast upon their prey with bloodied vigor. No character is safe as even the lives of the children are continually put on the line.

Times have changed. The stakes have changed.

But despite all this, it would be thoroughly inaccurate to write Stranger Things off as a depressing, nihilist series. For with every gruesome horror, there are pulsating moments of hope and light that continue to carry the show just as strongly as they did in season one. One of the most heart-wrenching and warming moments takes place in the penultimate episode, The Mind Flayer, in which Joyce, Mike, and Jonathan attempt to reach the remaining ounce of Will that hasn’t been swallowed up by the demonic force possessing him. Though tears stream down their faces and their voices are laden with sorrow, they powerfully recount their happiest memories spent with him: Mike meeting Will on the first day of preschool, Jonathan building a fort with Will after their father walked out on them, and Joyce’s proud recollection of Will’s 8th birthday, in which he drew a spaceship for her with his new box of 120 crayons. Will stares back at them, shaking, a single, intense light illuminating his wide-eyed face.

The moment stands out as one of the best written, directed, and acted scenes in the whole season, and reminds not only the show’s characters, but we as viewers, to never give up. Even when it seems that all we love has been lost, there is light, there is strength, and there is hope.

#berrie fics #i do like max fyi #i just think the duffers need to do more with her character #stranger things

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