#but im specifically talking about disenchantment here

[bxdtime-ceai]

it's so hard to enjoy a show when the villain is yet again the only person with an eastern european accent

[transmutationisms]

can you talk a bit more about weber (im refering to a post you made earlier today i think)? i know a bit about the protestant ethic theory but not really the historical context in which it was written nor how it's used today. thanks!

so, weber's argument is essentially that protestant (specifically calvinist and puritan) theology played a major causal role in the development of capitalism in northern europe following the reformation. his position was that protestant ethics, in contrast to catholicism, placed a high moral value on secular, everyday labour, but also discouraged the spending of one's wages on luxury goods, tithing to the church, or giving overmuch to charity. thus, protestants invested their money in business and commercial ventures instead, turning the generation of capital into a moral endeavour and venerating hard work and economic productivity as ways to ensure one's soul was saved (as the buying of indulgences was not an option for protestants).

this is a bad argument. at core it is idealist, subordinating an economic development to religious ideology. weber never explains how the actual, material economic changes he wants to talk about were effected by a set of ideas; he doesn't consider the possibility that the ideas themselves reflected in some way the material and economic context in which they were developed; he doesn't differentiate between protestantism as a causal factor in the development of capitalism, versus the possibility that capitalism and protestant conversion both resulted from some other factor or set of factors. <- these types of problems are endemic to 'history of ideas' aka 'intellectual history' because merely writing a history of the (learned, published) ideas circulating at a given time doesn't tell you jack about how and whether those ideas were actually implemented, how common people reacted to them or resisted them, what sorts of material circumstances the ideas themselves were formulated amidst, and so forth.

in the case of weber, it's very easy to poke holes in this supposed relationship between protestantism and capitalism. even in western europe alone, we could look at a country like france, which was quite catholic, never became predominantly or even significantly protestant, and yet also industrialised not long after, eg, the netherlands and england. we could also look at what historian michael kwass calls "court capitalism" in 18th-century france, which was a largely non-industrial form of capitalism that depended on the catholic king's central authority in order to ensure a return on investment. france at this time had a burgeoning luxury culture and a centralised, absolutist government that was closely entwined with the powerful catholic church—yet it also had economic development that is recognised as early capitalist, along with growing social and economic tensions between the nascent bourgeois and petit-bourgeois classes and the aristocracy. this is not even close to being the earliest example of capitalist or proto-capitalist economic development (some predates the reformation!), and again, this is within western europe alone—we could and should also point out that capitalism is not solely a european phenomenon and can and does coexist with other, radically different, religious ideology (i have problems with jack goody's work but this is something i think it can help elucidate).

weber argued that the 'spirit of capitalism' was no longer dependent on the protestant theology that had initially spawned it—but again, here we see issues with idealist methodologies in history. at what point, and how, does this 'spirit' become autonomous? what is it that has taken hold, if weber is not talking about the 'protestant ethic' itself and is also not interested in analysing the material changes that comprise capitalism except as effects of some underlying ideology? well, it's what he sees as a general shift toward 'rationalisation' and 'disenchantment' of the world, leading to an understanding of late 19th- and early 20th-century capitalism as a kind of spiritually unmoored servitude to mechanism and industry. this in turn relates back to weber's overall understanding of the legacy of the 'scientific revolution', which is another can of (bad) worms. there is a lot to say about these elements of weber's thought, but for starters the idea that europe was the progenitor of all 'scientific advancement', that it then simply disseminated such knowledge to the rest of the world (the apotheosis of the centre-periphery model, lmao), and that europe has become 'disenchanted', ie irreligious, as a result of such scientific advancement... is just patently bad analysis. it's eurocentric, chauvinistic, and simply demonstrably untrue in like twelve different ways.

anyway, when i see conservatives and reactionaries cite weber, i'm not surprised. his arguments are conservative (his entire intellectual paradigm in this text was part of his critique of marx and the premises of materialist / contextualist history). but when i see ostensible leftists doing it, often as some kind of dunk on protestantism (or christianity more generally, which is not even a good reading of weber's own understanding of catholicism), it's more irritating to me. i am not interested in 'leftisms' that are not materialist. weber's analysis is a bad explanation of how and why capitalism took hold; it doesn't even work for the limited northern european case studies he starts with because, again, idealist history fundamentally fails to explain how ideology itself creates material change. like, "some guy writes something down -> ??? -> everyone just agrees with him -> ??? -> stuff happens somehow" is not a good explanation of any phenomenon, lmao. if we are stuck on the idea that capitalism, a set of economic phenomena and real relations of production, is the result of ideology, then we will also be stuck trying to 'combat' capitalism on the ideological level. it's unserious and counterproductive. weber's analysis has retained an outsize position in the sociological historiography because it's an attractively simplistic, top-down, idealist explanation of both capitalism and protestantism that makes centuries worth of material changes to production forms into a kind of ideological coup ushering in an age of 'rationalism'. this is just not a text that tells us, leftists, anything politically useful. at best it is an explication of the internal psychological logics of (some) forms of protestantism in (some) places and contexts.

[cookinguptales]

ive been feeling a bit disenchanted with season 4. maybe its cause im dreading the finale based on the vague spoilers i saw, or the treatment of marwa or how the "the gang is separated unexpectedly" twist of s3 was totaly glossed over... i dunno. how are you feeling about it?

No specific spoilers here for 4.09 and 4.10, but just in case people want to avoid even my vague feelings and criticisms, I'm putting my answer behind a cut. Plus, as always, this did get long.

Honestly, I'm feeling a bit disenchanted, too. I'll write some meta about my exact reasoning after the episode airs tonight (and even more after the finale airs), but I just... Now that I know how the rest of the season is going to go, it kind of puts a lot of things I've been putting up with for the rest of the season into sharp relief. I thought certain storylines were going somewhere so I put up with the way they were being written, but now that I know they're not going anywhere with them, I've had to come to terms with the fact that what I thought was maybe hints was actually just lazy writing. That's kind of where I've been at the past couple days. Looking at the lil bits we've been picking through on fandom and realizing that they never really intended to flesh out any of those things or take them in any interesting directions.

I also agree thoroughly with Marwa. It's one of the things that's been a growing concern of mine throughout the season, and now that we have spoilers... idk, again, I'll talk about this a lot more thoroughly tonight? But I hate this storyline now. I also hate what I'm now seeing as an overdependence on hypnosis and Djinn-facilitated personality transplants, too. Like... I can recognize now that it's a season-long issue. Like damn, stop using this to dig yourself out of plot holes. It's lazy writing and the implications get creepy very quickly. I thought they were doing these things on purpose to criticize it later but maybe?? they're not??

I'd say the big two disappointments for me are Marwa and Guillermo... I won't get into details with Marwa, but Guillermo... yeah. I've been saying it since literally the premiere aired, but the whole one-year gap was a killer. I hate that we just don't hear from any of them for a year when they are doing important things. We miss all of Laszlo's bumbling through the beginnings of parenthood. We miss Nandor's journeys, for the most part. We miss Nadja's growing disenchantment with the council. And Guillermo, Guillermo gets the worst of it. He has the most change and the least of it is shown onscreen.

And I kept hoping they'd go back to it. They'd go back to what he must have been feeling and the decisions he must have made. That they'd explain why his focuses and motivations seem different. Why he's stopped being a weird little busybody who's a lil freak about the others' personal lives. Like... I cannot get over his behavior at the wedding. I keep trying to find a way to make it make sense! I don't care if he was no longer in love with Nandor or not! It didn't make sense for the nosiest, most interfering character in the entire cast to be the only one not to object! Mr. We All Need To Grieve Colin Robinson? Mr. I'm Going to Manipulate Everyone? Mr. Gail?

But as far as I can tell, they're really never going to meaningfully engage with any of that. And no, just saying that he got a boyfriend is not enough for me. You don't get a total personality transplant when you start dating someone! If you want me to buy that all these changes happened, you have to show me how they did! I feel so... idk, cheated with Guillermo. And when I'm feeling uncharitable, it makes me feel like they've adapted his personality to be whatever it needs to be to forward the plot elements they decided on. That's just... it's not good writing, and that is not a criticism I am accustomed to making with this show.

I have thoughts about Nandor, too, but it's a lot harder to talk about those without delving into spoilers... But I do think that in some ways his character has regressed as well. I think some of it might be purposeful...? Like a one step forward, two steps back situation? But I'll reserve my judgment on that one a little more until I've actually seen the episode.

It's odd, because I feel like Guillermo and Nandor have actually had some really nice moments in s4... when we're not focusing on the (imo) truly disastrous storylines that are their romances. It's like all preexisting characterization just flies out the window sometimes and that's so frustrating.

As for 4.09 in particular, too... I'm not going to say any spoilers, but it is bewildering to me to see my sense of humor diverge so wildly from a show that's always made me laugh more than any other, especially because the writers of the episode wrote two of the best episodes of the entire series. I haven't seen the episode yet, so maybe it will be way less bad than I'm expecting! I'm holding onto that hope. But I cannot see how they could make the spoilers I know funny and not just. Very upsetting to me, actually. There's a sort of cruelty there that WWDITS has never quite hit in the past, for all that it tortures its characters, and it goes into some tropes that I just find overtly creepy, honestly. I do not think I'm going to enjoy watching this episode at all, which is a feeling I have never experienced from WWDITS before.

As for the cliffhanger in 4.10... I have to say I find it unconvincing. I just don't believe it'll have lasting implications, and moreover, after seeing the way they casually disregarded the emotional arcs they set up in the s3 finale, I no longer feel like we have any guarantee that the events of 4.09 and 4.10 will ever be dealt with in s5, either. I'll talk about this in more detail after it happens, obviously, but like. It does feel like they're going WOW, ARE WE ACTUALLY GOING TO DO THIS? and I'm just sitting here like. no... you're obviously not... So it doesn't feel all that cliffhanger-y, tbh.

It's odd, because the one aspect of this season I was most convinced I would hate (Baby Colin) has been the one thing that I've felt genuinely touched by. I feel like this show has been at its best when it's used Baby Colin to delve into ideas of family and fatherhood and belonging, and it frustrates me a little that the back half of the season put that on the back burner for pretty extended periods only to return to it in the finale. The pacing is off.

I think in general the back end of the season has been... weird. 4.08 notwithstanding, because I think it's kinda it's own thing... I know we've gone around and around and around with episode order and such but I really do feel like some of these late-stage episodes smack of rewrites. I keep thinking about the fact that the Djinn wasn't supposed to be in this many episodes and I really have to wonder how that affected the Marwa and Freddie storylines, which I feel are by far the weakest part of the season.

Like damn, I thought they were gonna fuck me up because of the implications for my OTP, but I can write my way out of 4.10 fairly easily, if we're just talking OTP. I never thought that these storylines were gonna make me lose faith in the writing team. I feel a little adrift, if I'm being honest with you.

I felt myself just instantly shift into fix-it fic mode as soon as I learned about the events of 4.09 and just. It's never where I wanted to be with this show. I've been a diehard WWDITS fan since the movie first came out and it's always been a franchise where I've respected the writing above all else. Not every episode of WWDITS and Wellington Paranormal is an absolute banger, but I've enjoyed all of them and loved most of them. Nothing has made me laugh like WWDITS and I've come to be truly invested in the characters. So to see things to go so spectacularly sideways so quickly has me like... ah...

I'm readjusting, I think. idk. I've been thinking a lot. I've been talking to my cat a lot. lmao. I still have some hopes for certain elements of the last two episodes and I did really, really enjoy certain parts of season 4. It just... didn't ever end up being as cohesive as I'd hoped, nor did it have the same loyalty to characterization that I was expecting. (And it really, really did not seem to have any respect for most of its new characters.) It's frustrating to have bad so thoroughly mixed in with the good and to have to puzzle out which things don't work for you and which things do. It'd be easier if I just hated all of it! But I really didn't.

Either way, anon, you're definitely gonna see a LOT of words from me over the next two weeks. I have a lot of things to talk about and a lot of feelings to express and honestly, I'm really hoping I end up having meta to write about things I like, too. But who knows? I guess we'll see.