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neikikardartv · 5 months

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Where is the true racism in True Blood?

While vampires are notoriously known for being sexy outsiders, HBO’s True Blood amps up the sexiness and takes the vampires out of the darkness and into the light of the public eye. True Blood aired in 2008 and is set in the fictional town of Bon Temps, Louisiana. The town resides in a version of the world where vampires “came out of the coffin” two years ago via “The Great Revelation” where they made their existence known to the world. They were able to do so because synthetic blood was created, called True Blood, that allows vampires to get their sustenance from it rather than needing human blood. Although vampires are now allowed to enter mainstream society now, they are not treated as equals. The American Vampire League is a political group that is lobbying to get the Vampire Rights Amendment (VRA) passed that would put an amendment in the constitution, permitting vampires to have the same rights as humans. As interesting as it is, vampire politics are not the main focus of the show and are just embedded in through references, and some TV interviews with the AVL spokesperson, Nan Flanigan. The show actually follows Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress with telepathy, who falls in love with the first vampire she meets, Vampire Bill (underwhelming name, I know), as it is only with vampires that she doesn’t worry about reading their minds. The first season of the show focuses on a murder mystery, as bodies of women who have had sex with vampires –referred to as “fangbangers”, a derogatory term– keep piling up in Bon Temps.

In the show vampires are “othered”, having parallels with Black people and Gay people in America, with the VRA being reminiscent of the Civil Rights Act and the “God Hates Fangs” image in the title sequence being reminiscent of the homophobic Westboro’s church slogan, among other things. While there’s plenty to say about these parallels and critical race theory, what I am going to analyze is the treatment of Black people in the first season of True Blood, in comparison to the new vampire minority group.

First of all, with the shows being set in the south there are mentions of The Civil War being a significant moment of history, but no outright condemnation of it. For some reason there is a trend of making vampires confederate soldiers. The Vampire Diaries did it with Damon Salvatore, Twilight with Jasper Hale, and in True Blood it is the main love interest of Bill Compton. Since Bill is a Vampire who’s been around a bit and was an original resident of Bon Temps, Sookie’s grandma presumes he was a confederate soldier. When it is confirmed, she gets excited and wants Sookie to ask him to speak at a meeting of her Civil War historical group, The Descendants of the Glorious Dead. As the title implies they’re not going to shame Bill for having fought to keep slavery, instead he is an honored speaker at their meeting, where as you can see the confederate flag also makes an appearance

The only stance he makes on his views of the war, was that he and the other soldiers didn’t understand what they were really fighting for or had a choice, which seems a bit revisionist Despite this we are meant to believe that none of the people of the town are explicitly racist towards Black people. Sookie’s grandma’s love of the confederacy isn’t a problem for Sookie’s Black best friend Tara, who sees her as more of a mother figure than her own mother. In fact, when Tara is the only one to actually acknowledge Bill’s role in the war by asking if he owned slaves–which he responds his family did!– she is the one that gets chastised for “spoiling the mood”, while Bill having owned slaves is not confronted.

This leads to a disconnect between the southern setting of the show and its treatment of Black people as all the racism has been displaced onto the Vampire race, who are mostly white. As Sabrina Boyer describes, “In Southern texts by many Southern writers, white characters tend to experience ways of becoming black, which is a recognition of a racist region, as well as a moderately progressive way to comment on racial relations within the South”[1].She argues that True Blood’s use of “white characters that embody blackness” is part of this larger Southern trend that puts racial “otherness” on white characters to confront racism. While, she does acknowledge that this is not unproblematic and makes an argument against it later on. I disagree with the initial progressive analysis of this phenomenon. White characters will never be able to actually embody Blackness and True Blood’s take on this is problematic. The attempt to show racism through “othering” vampires–again the main being a confederate soldier–- panders to white audiences and is a weak hegemonic negotiation. Especially as the show makes no references towards intersectionality with Black vampires who rarely appear. Boyer concludes, “the series, while it] attempts to counter the hegemonic forces surrounding racism in our culture, doesn't critically engage with the fact that people of color, because of their skin or when in the act of passing they are discovered, are immediately othered”[2]. Now, this statement I agree with because True Blood’s displacement of racism onto vampires takes away from actual racism. In doing so True Blood fails its two Black characters by undermining their acknowledgment of racism and putting the oppression of actual minorities below Vampires.

Overall, True Blood takes the metaphor of othering its vampire population too far when its paralleling of oppression of actual minorities takes away from legitimizing racism towards its human population. Despite its Southern setting and call backs towards confederacy, the show does not properly tackle actual racism to justify its use of those images. By not acknowledging the racism of white people towards Black people in favor of vampire othering, the show fails its Black characters and is not as complex as it could be within concepts of intersectionality.

@theuncannyprofessoro

1. Boyer, Sabrina. “‘Thou Shalt Not Crave Thy Neighbor’: ‘True Blood’, Abjection, and Otherness.” Studies in Popular Culture 33, no. 2 (2011): 21–41. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23416382. Pg. 28

2. Ibid. Pg. 36

#oxyspeculativetv

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ladymelisande · 1 year

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The ironic thing about Hess ruining HOTD and only writing her ridiculous headcanons (and those of people who haven’t even read the book), ideology and biases into the show is that she is supposed to be a profesional. At least fanfic writers know the source material well enough, understand the characters better and some of them even write incredible stories that make sense (even if it is a canon-divergence fic). She’s a hack and very unprofessional, because even if she doesn’t like F&B, they are actually paying her to do a job (write) and adapt a story. Not liking the source material is no excuse for her to basically write her own fan-service, there’s a lot of people who dislike their job and still manage to be competent in it. She’s unprofessional and she doesn’t have the skills nor the experience for the job. Even D&D were way better adapting the GOT series at first.

For real, I mean, I don't like how she and Condal wrote Alicent, but I am still trying my best to give her a proper character in my story. The thing is, I don't think Americans know the difference between 'sympathetic villain' and antagonist as a role. Or the difference between giving characters a POV and completely changing them so the audience would sympathise with them. In A Feast for Crows, Cersei is not sympathetic, but that doesn't make her baldy written. I don't know what is with Americans believing that all characters have to be 'relatable' to them as writers, like... That's not only unprofessional but very immature. If she isn't able to write an antagonist that goes against her own values (ergo book Alicent being abusive, homophobic, and ambitious) then you need to read more and write more. If she can't write Alicent without aging her down, turning her into a lesbian like herself and suddenly making her love Rhaenyra and not hating her, then she is a shit writer, plain and simple. I have read both original fiction and fanfiction that can do better. I have written myself on the POVs of female characters that commit murder, rape, and child abuse without justifying these actions by adding one million sob stories.

For all that television American writers jap about feminism, they don't seem to want to accept that women are perfectly capable of committing the same atrocities as men without their prompting or 'oh, surely they had a sob story reason.' Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. Yesterday I was watching the news, and they showed a woman that with her husband, beat her own four-year-old child to death. The father of the child (the one that murdered the kid with her was a stepfather) made multiple complaints to the police, and they did nothing. This was the result. I wonder if, if presented with a story like that, writers like Hess would just invent some reason why this woman was some little victim of her accomplice.

I don't think you are a good writer if you are not willing to explore the dark sides of humanity and unless Hess doesn't consider women fully human, then I see no reason why she can't put on her big girl pants and write something that makes her uncomfortable without adding her 'stupid 'headcanons' to it. Matt Smith has talked many times about how he doesn't judge the characters he plays, even if the characters are scum because it's not his work to judge. From that alone, I can say he is a wonderful performer and writer. He clearly thinks like an adult, something that Hess doesn't seem to do. You can see it in her interviews and how first she openly judged people that liked Daemon because he did this and that but then backtracked because she got backlash and tried to sound like a normal person... While also pretending people criticized her because she is a woman and not because she is a shitty writer.

I could make a case study about how Americans seem to think that reading and writing things out of their comfort zone or things that are not 'relatable' somehow changes their moral compass.

#may answers #anti sara hess #hotd

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redshift-13 · 2 years

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https://twitter.com/LeeStrobel/status/1537843321858510848

For me, this is always a key barometer of how seriously people are willing or able to investigate the validity of their beliefs - any beliefs.

If god belief is held to be central to someone’s view of themselves and the universe, then you might think that the belief would sit atop the most probing questions and the most serious mental effort in one’s life. In my experience this is almost never the case.

As an example of how much belief a god or gods is located in received habit and pre-rational intuition, as opposed to a more reflective approach, the Gallup question itself - Do you believe in God? - perpetuates an obscuration of what it is people think they’re agreeing to when say they believe in God. The ‘we’re all referring to the same thing when we use the word god’ reflex is also a form of philosophical ignorance.

What if instead Gallup asked:

Which of the following best describes your belief:

An all good, all powerful, all knowing intelligence created the universe and everything in it, can read your mind and intervenes in the universe through violations of natural laws?

An all good, all powerful, all knowing intelligence created the universe and everything in it, but since then has remained hidden and doesn’t intervene in human affairs or the ongoings of the universe?

A morally neutral, all powerful kind of intelligence created the laws of the universe.

A morally evil and all powerful intelligence created the universe and to this day seeks to thwart human striving.

A benevolent and powerful god didn’t created the universe but intervenes in human affairs to guide us.

The universe itself might be said to have an inherent intelligence and it’s up to human intelligence to investigate nature in order to figure out what values to have and to what purpose?

A morally benevolent intelligence had enough power to start the universe but does not intervene in human affairs?

Two principles, order and entropy, exist as actual intelligences that started the universe and underly its current order?

Three gods exist, one morally good, a second morally evil, a third morally neutral or indifferent, exist.

Three gods exist but with no moral qualities, only vast power and intelligence.

An infinity of gods exist.

We can know anything about any gods even in principle, nevertheless I believe a god or gods exist?

Etc., etc., etc.

I would like to see this nuanced parsing of god definitions because not doing so not only perpetuates a form of philosophical ignorance, but it keeps ammunition in the pockets of cultural and political reactionaries who believe, without evidence, that god belief is necessary for an ethical society.

God is the customary historical justification for almost any noxious views you wish to hold on race, the role and rights of women and LGBT people, sexuality, climate change and the environment generally, and even AR-15 ownership.

(Of course it’s the case that god believers have been active in and sometimes at the forefront of social progress. However, god belief is historically conspicuously multi-valenced, justifying mutually incompatible views on even the most basic moral questions. Doesn’t this suggest that a moral impetus other than god belief is at work?)

If you want to prop up a repressive, discriminatory and authoritarian social order, keeping alive the fiction that God mirrors your prejudices is a powerful move in a world in which god belief is seen as necessary for human life.

God is the authority against which you can’t appeal, is not subject to doubt or criticism, is valid for all times, places, circumstances and people. What idea could be more useful for the demagogue, for the homophobe, the sexist, the racist, the conservative, the colonizer and imperial power?

"If there is a God, then anything is permitted." -Slavoj Zizek

And has been.

If you’re a god believer and think that social justice is still a long road ahead, you should still welcome the following change:

Among other things, it likely means that bigoted demagogues are losing a foothold, and the controlling and stultifying grip of public statements like the following is weakening: ‘God intended X. Why did God intend X? Because God only wills that which is X’. And, maybe*, space is opening for a more self-aware human intelligence to realize its self-saving predicament.

*The retreat of God seems to have been a prerequisite for both scientific and social advances argues Mitchell Stephens in Imagine There's No Heaven: How Atheism Helped Created the Modern World.

#god #religious belief #atheism #agnosticism #gallup #public polling

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ear-worthy · 4 months

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Uncovering Roots: Recounting Overlooked Historical Tales Of Pain & Suffering

This review is the first in a series of reviews, recommendations, and essays about Indie podcasters -- their craft, their challenges, and the critical role they play in podcasting. These entrepreneurs display skills as disparate as hosting, sound production, graphic design, scriptwriting, interviewing, marketing genius, and financial watchdog. They are the heart and soul of podcasting.

Uncovering Roots is an independently produced (Indie) podcast that is a moving and powerful new show that gives a voice to lesser-known people whose stories need to be heard. The creator, producer, and host is Maxim Saakyan. He is Armenian, Spanish, and Russian, a complicated blend, to say the least. Saakyan was born in Italy, moved to London when he was young and studied Math for both his bachelor's and master's. His education led him quite organically to a data analyst job, but he craved doing creative things.

Why did Saakyan start a podcast, and why this podcast?

"I'm a strong believer that creative outputs are the best ways to teach people about certain topics," says Maxim. "Whether that's about history, culture or current affairs, audio is also such an intimate way of talking to people, most of the time, you're literally in their ears speaking to them. Maxim continues: "We seem to be living in a world where one-minute videos are the goal, but despite that, there is a rise in popularity with podcasts which can be 30 to even 60 minutes long"

The first three episodes of Uncovering Roots are about the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and beyond by the Ottoman Empire (modern-day Turkey). In those two years, over 1.2 million Armenians were sent on death marches to the Syrian Desert. In addition, about 200,000 Armenian women and children were forcibly converted to Islam and integrated into Muslim households.

Due to its strategic geographic significance, Armenia has suffered countless invaders and invasions throughout history. For example, from 1513 to 1737, Armenia was controlled by different conquerors 14 times. Saakyan begins by telling the story of Armenian Genocide survivor Aurora Mardiganian, who is the subject of the strong opening episode, pieced together with interviews from people who knew her. Resilient doesn’t come close to describing the woman who suffered torture and brutality before she eventually escaped to New York.

Saakyan comments on these episodes: "This three-part series of the podcast is very important to me. As an Armenian, the amount of people who don't know about the genocide really hurts me. Then we look at Aurora's story, and it's just so unbelievably shocking. It's so unbelievable that so many people didn't actually think she existed. Like she was a fictional character that was made up to represent the pain Armenians went through. But she was real. She not only went through the genocide, but she went through Hollywood exploitation as well. This story isn't just about teaching people about the genocide, it's about honoring her story."

Make no mistake about it. Saakyan's storytelling and narrative prowess are so good that these episodes rival the emotional punch of Holocaust horror tales. What's more amazing about the emotional core of this podcast is Saakyan's admission that, "I virtually had zero story-telling podcast experience, no sound design experience, no mic experience. This was an entire learning curve for me. From fact checking to interviewing. I think one of the hardest things was the sound design element, I never appreciated how crucial it is."

Despite Saakyan's protestations of inexperience, Uncovering Roots is an audio masterpiece for several reasons. First, his storytelling is so commanding that it can grab listeners by their ears. His voice radiates the kind of emotional intensity that can blanket listeners with the darkness of the human psyche. Second, the sound production is sonically eloquent and pervasive in its haunting nature. "For the first episode, I worked with the talented Olivia Melkonain on music," Saakyan notes. "We used a music library to try and find Armenian sounds. After learning a lot from her, I implemented a similar sound design to episodes two and three. The Armenian sounds, from Oud's to Duduk's, were a really important part of the series."

Third, Saakyan created this podcast with a sharp eye for the smallest detail. For example, his mother designed the podcast's graphics, and, while it was very much a solo-project, he solicited help from Olivia Melkonian and Al Shaibani."

What are the future tales planned for Uncovering Roots? Saakyan answers: "In mid 2024, we're hoping to have the first official season up and running where we tell stories from the SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) region and indigenous people from across the globe."

I highly recommend Uncovering Roots. This podcast resonates with the agony of an entire race, and creator / host Saakyan inserts us into the life and eyes of an Armenian girl, Aurora Mardiganian.

In effect, Uncovering Roots is the ultimate true-crime podcast, because it's true about the disputed Armenian Genocide, and it's a crime how these people suffered so much during World War 1.

#podcast #podcasting #genocide #history

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fozmeadows · 3 years

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race & culture in fandom

For the past decade, English language fanwriting culture post the days of LiveJournal and Strikethrough has been hugely shaped by a handful of megafandoms that exploded across AO3 and tumblr – I’m talking Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Dr Who, the MCU, Harry Potter, Star Wars, BBC Sherlock – which have all been overwhelmingly white. I don’t mean in terms of the fans themselves, although whiteness also figures prominently in said fandoms: I mean that the source materials themselves feature very few POC, and the ones who are there tended to be done dirty by the creators.

Periodically, this has led POC in fandom to point out, extremely reasonably, that even where non-white characters do get central roles in various media properties, they’re often overlooked by fandom at large, such that the popular focus stays primarily on the white characters. Sometimes this happened (it was argued) because the POC characters were secondary to begin with and as such attracted less fan devotion (although this has never stopped fandoms from picking a random white gremlin from the background cast and elevating them to the status of Fave); at other times, however, there has been a clear trend of sidelining POC leads in favour of white alternatives (as per Finn, Poe and Rose Tico being edged out in Star Wars shipping by Hux, Kylo and Rey). I mention this, not to demonize individuals whose preferred ships happen to involve white characters, but to point out the collective impact these trends can have on POC in fandom spaces: it’s not bad to ship what you ship, but that doesn’t mean there’s no utility in analysing what’s popular and why through a racial lens.

All this being so, it feels increasingly salient that fanwriting culture as exists right now developed under the influence and in the shadow of these white-dominated fandoms – specifically, the taboo against criticizing or critiquing fics for any reason. Certainly, there’s a hell of a lot of value to Don’t Like, Don’t Read as a general policy, especially when it comes to the darker, kinkier side of ficwriting, and whether the context is professional or recreational, offering someone direct, unsolicited feedback on their writing style is a dick move. But on the flipside, the anti-criticism culture in fanwriting has consistently worked against fans of colour who speak out about racist tropes, fan ignorance and hurtful portrayals of living cultures. Voicing anything negative about works created for free is seen as violating a core rule of ficwriting culture – but as that culture has been foundationally shaped by white fandoms, white characters and, overwhelmingly, white ideas about what’s allowed and what isn’t, we ought to consider that all critical contexts are not created equal.

Right now, the rise of C-drama (and K-drama, and J-drama) fandoms is seeing a surge of white creators – myself included – writing fics for fandoms in which no white people exist, and where the cultural context which informs the canon is different to western norms. Which isn’t to say that no popular fandoms focused on POC have existed before now – K-pop RPF and anime fandoms, for example, have been big for a while. But with the success of The Untamed, more western fans are investing in stories whose plots, references, characterization and settings are so fundamentally rooted in real Chinese history and living Chinese culture that it’s not really possible to write around it. And yet, inevitably, too many in fandom are trying to do just that, treating respect for Chinese culture or an attempt to understand it as optional extras – because surely, fandom shouldn’t feel like work. If you’re writing something for free, on your own time, for your own pleasure, why should anyone else get to demand that you research the subject matter first?

Because it matters, is the short answer. Because race and culture are not made-up things like lightsabers and werewolves that you can alter, mock or misunderstand without the risk of hurting or marginalizing actual real people – and because, quite frankly, we already know that fandom is capable of drawing lines in the sand where it chooses. When Brony culture first reared its head (hah), the online fandom for My Little Pony – which, like the other fandoms we’re discussing here, is overwhelmingly female – was initially welcoming. It felt like progress, that so many straight men could identify with such a feminine show; a potential sign that maybe, we were finally leaving the era of mainstream hypermasculine fandom bullshit behind, at least in this one arena. And then, in pretty much the blink of an eye, things got overwhelmingly bad. Artists drawing hardcorn porn didn’t tag their works as adult, leading to those images flooding the public search results for a children’s show. Women were edged out of their own spaces. Bronies got aggressive, posting harsh, ugly criticism of artists whose gijinka interpretations of the Mane Six as humans were deemed insufficiently fuckable.

The resulting fandom conflict was deeply unpleasant, but in the end, the verdict was laid down loud and clear: if you cannot comport yourself like a decent fucking person – if your base mode of engagement within a fandom is to coopt it from the original audience and declare it newly cool only because you’re into it now; if you do not, at the very least, attempt to understand and respect the original context so as to engage appropriately (in this case, by acknowledging that the media you’re consuming was foundational to many women who were there before you and is still consumed by minors, and tagging your goddamn porn) – then the rest of fandom will treat you like a social biohazard, and rightly so.

Here’s the thing, fellow white people: when it comes to C-drama fandoms and other non-white, non-western properties? We are the Bronies.

Not, I hasten to add, in terms of toxic fuckery – though if we don’t get our collective shit together, I’m not taking that darkest timeline off the table. What I mean is that, by virtue of the whiteminding which, both consciously and unconsciously, has shaped current fan culture, particularly in terms of ficwriting conventions, we’re collectively acting as though we’re the primary audience for narratives that weren’t actually made with us in mind, being hostile dicks to Chinese and Chinese diaspora fans when they take the time to point out what we’re getting wrong. We’re bristling because we’ve conceived of ficwriting as a place wherein No Criticism Occurs without questioning how this culture, while valuable in some respects, also serves to uphold, excuse and perpetuate microaggresions and other forms of racism, lashing out or falling back on passive aggression when POC, quite understandably, talk about how they’re sick and tired of our bullshit.

An analogy: one of the most helpful and important tags on AO3 is the one for homophobia, not just because it allows readers to brace for or opt out of reading content they might find distressing, but because it lets the reader know that the writer knows what homophobia is, and is employing it deliberately. When this concept is tagged, I – like many others – often feel more able to read about it than I do when it crops up in untagged works of commercial fiction, film or TV, because I don’t have to worry that the author thinks what they’re depicting is okay. I can say definitively, “yes, the author knows this is messed up, but has elected to tell a messed up story, a fact that will be obvious to anyone who reads this,” instead of worrying that someone will see a fucked up story blind and think “oh, I guess that’s fine.” The contextual framing matters, is the point – which is why it’s so jarring and unpleasant on those rare occasions when I do stumble on a fic whose author has legitimately mistaken homophobic microaggressions for cute banter. This is why, in a ficwriting culture that otherwise aggressively dislikes criticism, the request to tag for a certain thing – while still sometimes fraught – is generally permitted: it helps everyone to have a good time and to curate their fan experience appropriately.

But when white and/or western fans fail to educate ourselves about race, culture and the history of other countries and proceed to deploy that ignorance in our writing, we’re not tagging for racism as a thing we’ve explored deliberately; we’re just being ignorant at best and hateful at worst, which means fans of colour don’t know to avoid or brace for the content of those works until they get hit in the face with microaggresions and/or outright racism. Instead, the burden is placed on them to navigate a minefield not of their creation: which fans can be trusted to write respectfully? Who, if they make an error, will listen and apologise if the error is explained? Who, if lived experience, personal translations or cultural insights are shared, can be counted on to acknowledge those contributions rather than taking sole credit? Too often, fans of colour are being made to feel like guests in their own house, while white fans act like a tone-policing HOA.

Point being: fandom and ficwriting cultures as they currently exist badly need to confront the implicit acceptance of racism and cultural bias that underlies a lot of community rules about engagement and criticism, and that needs to start with white and western fans. We don’t want to be the new Bronies, guys. We need to do better.

#race #racism #c-drama #fandom #fan wank #fandom wank #microaggresions #culture #the untamed #bronies #whiteness #ficwriting #fanwriting #cultural bias #discourse

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qqueenofhades · 3 years

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Chatting with @extasiswings earlier and we were having Thoughts about homophobia in period-piece fiction, especially period-piece queer romances... which I'm still thinking about so I may scribble some of them down. Shh. 😂

Basically, we decided that society has evolved past the need for homophobia (I mean, it did a while ago, but y'know) and while it's not wrong to refer to/acknowledge historical manifestations of prejudice in your period piece, I feel like we (meaning queer writers writing for queer readers) need to normalise just... not making the Oppression the whole point of the story. We have all read queer tragedy for ages and ages and it is why I had to go make my "20 actually fun books for pride month!" list in place of the one that was all about pain and suffering and identity politics. This applies whether in original or fan fiction, since I for one have definitely cast a slight side eye at "Period Typical Homophobia" tags and similar on AO3. Not that writers who incorporate it are wrong or bad or anything, but when you're writing a transformative fantasy piece provided, at least presumably, for the pleasure and escapism of your readers, you don't actually need to include it! I feel like a lot of people are worried about getting setting details right, which I totally understand, but as a real live historian, I am telling you now that historical accuracy is a) deeply subjective, b) only applied in certain hot-button social topics anyway, and c) for fiction at least, not even strictly necessary. Because if your idea of "history" looks like a white conservative's wet dream re women, people of color, and queer people, it's probably not even accurate anyway.

Yes, homophobia existed in some ways in the past, sometimes damagingly so, and I'm not saying that shouldn't be written about. But it also didn't exist in the same way it does today (this is also my Queer Historian hat speaking). Queer people existed and had lives that were not uniformly marked by suffering, and people don't feel a need to constantly include a critique of Society's Unenlightened Prejudices in modern romances, even when a lot of those same criticisms could be made today. (I mean /waves hand at the world/ have you SEEN this place lately?) If your only justification for including "Period Typical Homophobia" in your work is that you feel it would be inaccurate without it, that is... not even true either.

Sure, there are narrative tropes and conventions, and tension and excitement that can result from a forbidden romance, but I am also gonna point out that these romances were neither all that forbidden or as unusual as your average histrom writer/reader thinks. You can actually write a largely or entirely "accurate" historical romance (and again, it's fiction, you're not even beholden to Accuracy Standards TM anyway) without homophobia playing a significant role.

For example, my current m/m fic is set in the 1980s Soviet Union, not exactly a gay mecca, but while there are references to how the characters deal with that and what they think about it and what their past lives have been like because of this, I don't need to include, idk, a random gay bashing to make it more accurate. And that is even in a post-Stonewall time period. If you're going back before the 20th century, I feel like people have a point they want to make about How Things Were Different Then, and it is just... not even really the case. And even if it was, it's still FICTION, and that which is being produced for a queer audience. (Don't get me started on the This Character Is Queer It Is Shocking histfic written by straights, looking at you, The Miniaturist).

Anyway, lol. The point is: "Historically Accurate Homophobia" isn't even really a thing, since as the constructionists like to point out, if you don't have "homosexuality" before it was invented as an analytical term in the 19th century, you can't have explicit and widespread homophobia either. And if as a queer writer you don't really want to include it, but feel like you have to, this is me saying: nah, son. Throw it directly out the window. You good. Go forth and live your best gay life.

#hilary for ts #meta #historical romance #here have some Thoughts #they may or may not make sense #but yes #history

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miraculouscontent · 3 years

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(non-Miraculous asks)

Anonymous said:

Ok this may just be me but I hate deconstructions. I feel like they are always mean spirited and try to be dark and edgy and thinks that every single person is an asshole because that’s “realistic” when no it’s not. This maybe because I like superhero stories and love it when the heroes overcome their struggles.

I can agree for the most part. Whenever I hear “okay but what if it was dArK--” I’m just okay, gonna stop you right there.

Anonymous said:

I swear, nothing bothers me more than people who want Miraculous Ladybug to literally just be Yandere Simulator(with Marinette as Ayano, Alya as Info-chan, Adrien as Taro, Chloe as Osana, Lila as Kizana, Kagami as Megami, and Luka as Budo). It just grinds my gears, especially because they're, once again, framing Marinette as a stalker, which just makes her look bad, AND pits all the girls against each other for Mr. Generic Harem Protagonist, once a-fucking-gain. Just go play the actual game, ok?

All I'm hearing is that now I have to ship Ayano and Budo and write a fic where the ghost girl uses fancy fantasy magic to merge her soul with Ayano and lets her actually have emotions, healing her from being a yandere while the ghost girl (in a way) gets to live a life she was cut short of, also allowing Ayano to be happy and go onto be friends with all the rivals.

Extremely convoluted but that’s the only way we get happy endings in this house.

Anonymous said:

I remember how, when writing Sailor Moon, Naoko Takeuchi refused to bow to older male writers wanted, say, for the girls to be stereotypical manga characters, with one being overweight, one being a stereotypical nerd, etc. But Naoko wanted each of the girls to be beautiful and feminine. While I don't like that they all share a body type, I admire how she didn't listen to grown men when writing for and about young girls. And I can't help but think about how Madoka is the antithesis of all that.

I can appreciate writers who put their foot down to stick to their values. There are limits of course, but yeah, a women writing women probably shouldn’t be listening to a man’s input. I’m sure good advice exists buuut...

Anonymous said:

What is your ranking of the seasons of the year from most to least favorite and why?

Summer - I work best in the warmth

Spring - Always brings images of flowers blooming to mind

Autumn - Things are getting cold and I don’t like it

Winter - It can go choke for all I care

Anonymous asked:

Someone on TV Tropes actually said that the name Feminist Fantasy should be changed because "feminism excludes men the same way meninism excludes women" and actually had the nerve to link that to the "Not So Different" trope, as if women haven't been excluded throughout the history of almost every human society. Fortunately, someone responded to them in a way that technically amounted to "do your damn research" but I'm still facepalming so hard at TV Tropes' "what about the men" rhetoric.

I feel like I lost braincells reading this.

Anonymous asked:

I feel like in fiction written by men there are only three flaws that female protagonists are allowed to have: clumsy, boy-crazy, or ashamed of their flat chests. I hate it.

Don’t forget, “having to listen to the men for how they’re supposed to feel.”

Anonymous asked:

Jatp. Nominated. For. Seven. Emmys. SEVEN!!!! Miraculous could NEVER. Literally.

omg!! Congrats to Julie and the Phantoms!

Anonymous asked:

WHAT ARE YOUR FLASHBACKS TO EVER AFTER HIGH?? I GOTTA KNOW? OMG?

Oh, I’ve seen basically the whole series, though the one I remember most is definitely Epic Winter. It was my favorite one though Beauty and the Beast is my favorite Disney movie so I’m biased.

I also like a lot of the “twists” and just--crazy concepts they rolled with, like with Red Riding Hood’s story and how Apple White gets woken up from her slumber.

Anonymous asked:

You're gonna be happy to hear this...I just started watching Cardcaptor Sakura today, and holy shit not only do I love it, but I also love how freaking META it is! I know you said you're not all that knowledgeable about Magical Girl, but this show is AWARE that it's a Magical Girl show! From Tomoyo(the main reason this show is so meta, tbh) realizing Sakura is a Magical Girl and asking if she has a transformation pose, to designing outfits for her(more on that later) to videotaping her(aka literally making a Magical Girl anime out of her Magical Girl friend), it just has fun with itself and plays with Magical Girl tropes without making a mockery of them like all those "dark" male-aimed ones do(lookin' at you, Madoka Magica and Yuki Yuna!).

And not only is it hilarious and adorable(especially with Sakura's crush on Yukito, Tomoyo's crush on Sakura, and Touya picking on Sakura, but playfully), but I love how it's riddled with girl power. While watching some of the first episodes I was looking forward to seeing Syaoran(partly because I love male Tsunderes and partly because I can't pronounce his name), and was surprised that he wasn't in the first few episodes, but more importantly I was so happy to see a show that treats its female characters with respect and shows women unironically receiving support from other women and being shown possessing power and authority.

I love Sakura and Tomoyo's friendship even if I hate the trope of "Lesbian Never Gets The Girl"(not that I think she's entitled to Sakura's affections or anything, but still.) and watching her support Sakura in her magic endeavors without being jealous or vindictive, I love that they're allowed to be independent and smart but that the show doesn't forget that they're kids, instead of making them like Manon and Chris, and I love that the show passes the Bechdel test in pretty much the first or second episode, and that pretty much every important and unimportant character we meet that's not Sakura's family members, Kero, or Yukito(plus maaaayyybe the Shadow Clow Card) are female.

Even little things, like all FOUR of Tomoyo's bodyguards in the second episode being female without there being a "reason" or the show making a big deal of it(either in a "yay girl power!" way or a "what but women can't x" way or an objectifying way) fills me with insurmountable joy. Also, I love that the show follows the Magical Girl trend of pretty much admitting that femininity is power, since frilly dresses are stated to be the most "fitting" thing for a Cardcaptor to wear, as without it, they might not be mentally up to the task, and this is an unironic truth rather than a joke(although Sakura is shown to be embarrassed, but it's much more likely that she's simply not used to that kind of gear due to not being rich as Tomoyo is.) or a gag.

I just thought I should tell you this because I know you like Cardcaptor Sakura, and with the crappy episodes that just came out of this show, I think you deserve to read an ask that's about a GENUINE girl power Magical Girl show, instead of yet more Miraculous Ladybug salt or Madoka Magica hate(not that there's anything wrong with either of those two, but it just gets grating after a while.). Overall, I'm looking forward to watching this show, since I've been looking for a Magical Girl show to watch nowadays(I've been meaning to watch Star Twinkle Precure but I can't find the third episode and all of Cardcaptor Sakura is on YouTube now, so.). So excited!

Hey, I’m glad that you’re having fun with it!

Though, just a warning, you might wanna steer clear of the Clear Card arc. It’s a sequel to the original series made waaaay after the original (think the equivalent of Yashahime for Inuyasha, though continuing with the original characters) but omg I hated it.

Anonymous asked:

With the crappy Season 4 episodes that just came out I'm glad I got into Cardcaptor Sakura when I did. Who needs "Marinette needs to make a mistake every episode and learn something from it" when you can have genuine girl power and sweetness incarnate?

Alya could never compete with Tomoyo, I’m just sayin’.

Anonymous asked:

Your comment about white men feeling "disenfranchised" because more shows are about black people and/or women(I say and/or because the two aren't mutually exclusive.), as if there aren't a million other things they could be watching instead is so true! It reminds me of how I was talking to someone recently about the new generation of MLP, in which I stated that we didn't need a male mane pony(spoiler alert: they have one, sadly.), and he claimed that it would be beneficial since many shows aimed at boys at least try to include at least one main girl, and that it would be good for G5 of MLP to have at least one strong male lead so that boys could have a role model and know that the show isn't "girly".

Okay, so far, so good, but this I could chalk up to just unconscious internalized misogyny, especially since he didn't say it in any sort of "way". So I respectfully told him that the scale regarding representation is already not equal and that boys can look up to girls and that a show being girly is not a bad thing and all that stuff that you already know about. Then he responded claiming some stuff about how he keeps trying to pitch stories about straight white male characters and how nobody is accepting his offers and so this means that straight white men are underrepresented compared to everyone else. He even explicitly said, and I quote "White people are actually critically underrepresented in media right now. Especially boys."; I swear to the Goddess above.

At this point I was officially upset as a black girl, to hear this white(and presumably adult) man telling me that he was underrepresented in media compared to me, even saying that the media execs are practicing "quotas and tokenization"(and yes, he repeatedly used those terms for any instance of representation, even when I asked him politely to stop.) by replacing women with men or white people with pocs and are making white men look like incompetent doofuses.

He also kept saying stuff about how shows are always shoehorning people of color in where they don't belong by casting them in settings such as Shakespeare and medieval times when "realistically" there were no people of color during those time periods(which is obviously not true, it's just not what the history books show us.), and made a really insensitive comment about how black children in the USA today don't know the significance of having the first black president because the media supposedly already shows them black people in various professions(despite also claiming he couldn't speak to the "black experience" and yet here he is whitesplaining that shit.).

It got to the point where he was seriously and unironically using the word "blackwashing". When I pointed out to him that white men aren't underrepresented and that it's just his self-centered ego telling him that they are, that the word "blackwashing" isn't a thing, and that mis/underrepresentation in media DOES affect black kids negatively(even citing myself as an example) he went on to claim that I was being tone-deaf and that "blackwashing" is just as bad as whitewashing, and that making Ariel black is just as bad as making Jasmine white.

At this point I had to bang my head on the table and explain to him the difference; his ass still wouldn't get it. Eventually he started saying some really skeevy and hypocritical shite that white men say all the time when whining about how "oppressed and underrepresented" they are: that black people and/or women

(it looks like there might be an ask missing here, in which case, sorry if Tubmlr ate it!)

avor of supporting the commonly believed LIE that "women and/or minority groups don't have as much history worth learning about, so there's no point in focusing on them." He also kept using patronizing, condescending, mansplaining language such as "let me explain it to you" or "you still don't get it do you?", and when he said women had nothing to contribute to society because "oppression" he even had the nerve to tack on "welcome to the unequal society" as if I hadn't been lecturing him about just that.

Because obviously only white men did anything worthwhile or important in history. At this point, I had to block him. I couldn't take it anymore and this was on an MLP site of all places(although I'm probably just as guilty of that part, but at least I wasn't an ass!). I just can't stand white men who "want to be oppressed so bad" but still want to claim that their achievements are more important and deserve to be more prominent. Honestly, so many white men are so fragile the second they're not in the spotlight. I can't help but think that despite all the privilege afforded to their class being a white man sounds like the worst thing ever.

“he claimed that it would be beneficial since many shows aimed at boys at least try to include at least one main girl, and that it would be good for G5 of MLP to have at least one strong male lead so that boys could have a role model and know that the show isn't "girly". “

I might be looking too deep into that but I don’t like the idea of, “Well WE squeezed in a girl and therefore YOUR SHOWS--” like it’s some sort of matter of “fairness” or that boys’ shows aren’t putting in girls out of a genuine like for them but because they “need” one or it’s some sort of obligation.

Also, we need to stop this idea that boys can’t look up to female characters and vice versa for girls. You already said it but yeah.

And yeah, I hear "quotas and tokenization" and I officially tune out of whatever the person is saying, lol. White men are critically underrepresented???? Newsflash, maybe it’s just because others are being represented more??

Just the whole thing about whites being “underrepresented” boggles my mind. White people don’t have some sort of special ability or skill that other races can’t do themselves unless you count the “superpower” of white privilege.

Like, oh my god, all that “whitesplaining” and having to read the word “blackwashing” was physically painful. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I don’t know how they got hold of the technology to communicate with you from whatever time period their from, presumably the Stone Age.

Don’t even blame you for blocking them. There’s just a level of absolute... blindness? Arrogance??? That comes with the territory with them sometimes, I swear. You had every right to be upset; other races come to ask for equality and fair representation and suddenly you have these white men (not all obviously but damn) coming by and crying that they’re being oPpReSsEd. U_U

Like, honestly, my father in particular is absolutely that kind of person so I’ve heard that kind of stuff before. it’s all gross.

On a slightly unrelated note (trying to end this with some positivity), I hadn’t even heard about a fifth generation of MLP until I read this, and just wanted to let you know that I really hope you have a really good time with it! Hopefully the male character isn’t... well, you know.

#other: ask and answer #other: non ml talk

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inkmyname · 3 years

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The Ember Island Players: performing toxic masculinity and narrative complicity in propagating misogyny

Initially I wasn’t going to respond to concerns about Katara’s racist/misogynistic portrayal in the Ember Island Players with anything more than snarky tags, but apparently I can’t keep my mouth shut, so I’m posting my response as a standalone meta about how the writers’ insistence on creating drama for drama’s sake leads them to--in lieu of actual character development--fall back on lazy narrative shortcuts whereby a performance of toxic masculinity against a gendered heternormative background is used to create tension in a romantic relationship, presumably with the goal of keeping the audience invested.

The Ember Island Players is problematic for a lot of reasons, not least of which is the pervasive tone-deaf misogyny, including racialized misogyny, directed at Katara. There’s a lot of meta on this, so I’d like to focus on something different: Aang’s relationship with gender and romantic attachments.

Aang seems so uncharacteristically chagrined the whole episode: “I’m not a woman!” Based on his previous characterization up to this point:

The Fortuneteller. This is the same Aang who makes a necklace for Katara when she loses her mother’s. Observe how he responds to Sokka’s jibe about jewelry-making, which can be seen as a feminine pursuit: Sokka: Great, Aang. Maybe instead of saving the world, you can go into the jewelry-making business. Aang: I don’t see why I can’t do both. Femininity isn’t presented as being mutually exclusive with narrative pursuits like saving the world which have traditionally centered male protagonists (especially if we take the entire canon of anything every written in any genre that’s not specifically, say, something like shoujo or jounen which are directed and young girls and women, the narrative focus on male personalities is overwhelming).

The Warriors of Kyoshi. Oh, and this is the same Aang that dressed up in full Kyoshi gear, kabuki makeup and all, without complaint. Why would he? After all, she was him in a past life. (There’s a whole meta here about gender-critical analysis of kabuki productions where male actors typically assumed female roles and how Avatar both takes inspiration from this real-life kernel and subverts it in Rise of Kyoshi where Kyoshi’s signature look is not only an homage to her parental heritage but also a reimagining of who can inhabit what roles. Her legacy, though imperfect, is also notably feminist, taking face paint worn typically by men IRL and expanding it into war paint for women warriors.) (There’s also great headcanon-adjacent meta here about gender non-conformity and non-binary identities in Avatar. Avatar was not overtly explicit about its feminist or gender-progressive mindset outside of episodes like The Warriors of Kyoshi or The Waterbending Master, but it was still way ahead of its time. If anyone was to be presented or headcanoned in such a way, it would be the Avatar who’s lived a thousand lives, inhabiting a thousand skins and a thousand identities, including gender identities. There’s also cool crossover meta here about the Legend of Korra depicting a female Avatar in Korra with masculine tendencies and visible muscle vs Aang as a male Avatar with a gentler pacifistic spirit and gender nonconforming tendencies.)

The Cave of Two Lovers. Aang wears a freaking flower crown and is generally wholesome and adorable, even leading up to the “let’s kiss lest we die” scene with Katara. He’s not pushy or overly concerned with appearing masculine and it is in fact Katara who suggests the kiss and Aang makes a fool of himself. From the transcript: Katara [Shyly, blushing.] Well, what if we … kissed? Aang [Very surprised.] Us … kissing‌? Katara See? It was a crazy idea. Aang [Dreamily.] Us … kissing … Katara [Fake-jokingly.] Us kissing. What was I thinking? Can you imagine that‌? Aang [Fake-jokingly.] Yeah. [Awkwardly laughs.] I definitely wouldn’t want to kiss you! [Beat.] Katara [Insulted.] Oh, well! I didn’t realize it was such a horrible option. [Angrily.] Sorry I suggested it! Aang [Realizing his mistake.] No, no, I mean … if there was a choice between kissing you and dying … Katara [Disgusted.] Ugh! Aang [Desperately.] What? I’m saying is I would rather kiss you than die - that’s a compliment. Katara [Enraged.] Well, I’m not sure which I’d rather do! [Slams the torch into his hand and storms away.] Aang [Miserably.] What is wrong with me … Aang, sweetie, this is not what you say to a girl you want to kiss, but generally, this is Wholesome™ and narratively, this is Good™. Eventually, they do kiss and that’s perfectly acceptable because there’s a whole conversation beforehand with humorous romantic framing. There’s consent and communication and initiative by the female protagonist. So solid A on the sensitive writing.

General Air Nomad culture. We don’t get a lot of Air Nomad culture in the show (and what little we do get what presented in such a misguided way, especially the whole commitment to forgiveness/pacifism which was handled in such an amateur black-and-white way from a writing perspective in season 3). But I digress. I really, really don’t think that Air Nomads who were so concerned with the spiritual side of bending and general existence had stringent notions of gender and romantic relationships–at the very least, they had very different notions of these issues compared to, say, the Northern Water Tribe. Canonically, even though AN philosophy emphasized detachment, Air Nomads practiced free love. Same-gender romance was freely accepted unlike in the homophobic Earth Kingdom (which even Kyoshi, a bisexual woman, wasn’t able to change) and the militant Fire Nation (Sozin outlawed homosexuality after declaring world war, essentially). And though the temples were gender-segregated, it seems that the burden of raising children fell to the entire community instead of just the women. Both male and female Air Nomads are revered. In the case of the former, Guru Laghima who unlocked the power of flight through achieving complete detachment from the material world. And in the case of the latter, Avatar Yangchen, who has statues everywhere because she came to be revered as a deity not just among Air Nomads but in the physical world in general. Nowhere in Air Nomad philosophy is the concept of gender, romance, love, sexuality, relationships etc. etc. tainted with jealousy and possessiveness (especially towards women) or rigid binary heternormativity.

So this was Aang for the better part of the first half of the series. Not overly concerned with gender roles. Pretty much fumbling his way through his first crush like a lovesick puppy and it’s all very wholesome. Supposedly a classic product of Air Nomad upbringing.

Meanwhile, Aang in EIP:

Checks out Katara’s butt as she’s sitting down.

Gets mad at being portrayed by a woman.

Accuses Katara of being the racialized misogynistic version of herself depicted on stage ([sarcastically]“Yeah, that’s not you at all.”).

Nods in agreement when the misogynistic stage production of Katara presents her as the “Avatar’s girl.”

Unable to differentiate between fiction and reality and puts the onus on Katara to do the emotional labor to justify something she never said (”Katara, did you really mean what you said in there? On stage, when you said I was just like a … brother to you, and you didn’t have feelings for me.”)

Assumes they would just… fall into a relationship… just because he forcibly kissed her at the invasion and again pressures Katara to do the emotional labor to justify why their relationship is not how he wants it (“But it’s true, isn’t it? We kissed at the Invasion, and I thought we were gonna be together. But we’re not.” / “Aang, I don’t know.” / “Why don’t you know?”)

Forces a non-consensual kiss on her even though “I just said I was confused!”

So, there’s so many things wrong with this, most of which are a laundry list of behaviors typical of toxic masculinity:

Ogling

Outdated misogynistic humor (what’s wrong with being a woman?)

Verbal abuse

Offloading emotional labor

Gaslighting

Pressuring a potential romantic partner

Lack of direct communication about romantic desires

Lack of sensitivity

Lack of active listening

Lack of emotional intelligence and empathy

Lack of consent and sexual assault

I could go on and on.

My question is Where and when did he learn these toxic behaviors? What happened to the wholesome boy making necklaces, wearing flower crowns, and generally being adorable in a kid with a first crush kind of way when it comes to romance?

Now, you can argue that EIP players Aang has been through a lot, including being shot by lightning and actually dying, and after the failed invasion, he’s stressed out with the weight of the world on his shoulders and maybe not expressing himself or his desires in the best way and taking out all of his frustrations on Katara.

Except… that is all just conjecture because the actual writing of the show doesn’t put in the hard work and make those connections. Instead, they fall back on misogynistic tropes and toxic heternormative romance tropes and a forced love triangle subtext and they just, to put it politely, fuck it up, two and a half seasons’ worth of work, gone, in the space of one episode. And even if it weren’t conjecture, it would still be wrong of Aang to act the way he did.

Let’s list Aang and Katara’s interaction in relation to each other in season 3:

The Headband. “Don’t worry about them. It’s just you and me right now,” Aang says as he pulls Katara into a dance. I have qualms about the writing of this episode: the creators wasted a golden opportunity to flesh out the Air Nomad genocide because they were too busy playing footloose in a cave, they wrote Katara–the same Katara would said fuck you to Pakku, freed enslaved earthbenders from a Fire Navy prison, and became a spirit goddess ecoterrorist to help a village in an enemy nation–as uncharacteristically shy just so Aang could sweep in and pull her into a dance. But like fine, whatever. It’s cute and really well-chreographed and there’s actually appropriate romantic framing here for once and at the end of the dance, look at Katara’s face–she’s happy! Positive Kataang interaction, and I don’t actually mind it. 7/10.

The Day of Black Sun Pt.1. He forces a kiss on her on the mouth, taking her completely by surprise. A chaste kiss on the cheek and a wistful pining last look and “Be safe” might have been acceptable, but given Katara’s shocked and uncomfortable body language, the kiss on the mouth was not. Worse yet, the show just… forgets… to follow up on it for several episodes and when it’s brought up again, it’s used as a sledgehammer to punish Katara for not magically being with Aang. 0/10.

The Painted Lady. Let’s look at the transcript: Katara [Using a disguised voice.] Well, hello Avatar. I wish I could talk, but I am very busy. Aang Yeah, me too. I hate that. [Looks at Katara’s face from behind the veil.] You know, you’re really pretty, for a spirit. I don’t meet too many spirits, but the ones I do meet, not very attractive. [Looks at Katara suspiciously. Tries to look under the hat.] Katara [Giggles nervously.] Thank you, but- Aang You seem familiar too. Katara A lot of people say that. Aang [Suspicious.] No, you really seem familiar. Katara Look, I really should get going. [Covers her face and runs, but Aang uses his airbending and blasts her hat up into the air, exposing her.] Aang Katara? Katara [Guiltily.] Hi, Aang. Aang [Shocked.] You’re the Painted Lady? [Pointing at Katara.] But how?Katara I wasn’t her at first, I was just trying to help the village. [Takes her hat off.] But since everyone thought that’s who I was anyway, I guess I just kinda became her. [Drops her hat on the ground.] Aang So you’ve been sneaking out at night? Wait, is Appa even sick?Katara He might be sick of the purple berries I’ve been feeding him, but other than that he’s fine! Aang I can’t believe you lied to everyone, so you could help these people. Katara I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have … Aang [Happily.] No, I think it’s great! You’re like a secret hero! Katara Well, if you wanna help, there’s one more thing I have to do. Aang gives her a curious look. Cut to the Fire Nation factory. Aang and Katara run along the river’s edge toward it. Aang looks at the polluted water. Aang You wanna destroy this factory? Katara Yes. Sokka was just kidding, but he was right. Getting rid of this factory is the only way to help these people permanently. He helps her blow up the Fire Nation smelting plant! Yes, he does call her pretty, but more importantly, this is one of the few times he acknowledges her faults (lying, deception, putting the mission at risk to help the enemy nation etc.) and still thinks she’s so fucking cool. He calls her a secret hero! There’s a lot of admiration and support here from Aang. He’s raising up Katara (instead of putting her down as in EIP) not because he sees her as a potential love interest but because he admires her and her compassion! This is great. Solid wholesome Kataang interaction. 10/10. But all good things must come to an end…

The Southern Raiders. I’m not going to spend too much time on this because there’s a million pieces of meta on this episode. He’s completely out of line asking Katara to be forgive her mother’s killer, the source of her greatest trauma as a victim of targeted ethnic cleansing. Given that he’s a victim of ethnic genocide himself, although he personally wasn’t there for it/didn’t actually witness it unlike Katara, he should have understood. He does say “You need to face this man,” which is good and supportive and he should have stopped there, because he continues on to say, “But when you do, please don’t choose revenge. Let your anger out, and then let it go. Forgive him.” Stop. Stop stop stop. No one should tell a traumatized victim of ethnic cleansing how to deal with their trauma. By the end of the episode, Katara doesn’t kill him–but she crafts a third path as the conclusion to her hero’s journey and it is not the path of forgiveness that Aang preaches. Ironically, it is Zuko, who also confronts Ozai, the source of his greatest trauma, who never tells Katara what to do but follows her lead instead: even though he redirects lightning at Ozai and could have killed him, he doesn’t go through with it. He understands Katara and he understands that she needs to this. Kataang interaction rating: 0/10.

So that’s where we are with Aang and Katara in Ember Island Players. Some positive interactions that are appropriately romantically framed and some that are just wholesome and good… but all ruined by forced kissing and moralizing about Katara’s trauma instead of offering understanding. So that still doesn’t answer when Aang would have learned all of the toxic masculine/heternormative behaviors he displayed in The Ember Islands Players.

The only answer, I’m forced to conclude, is bad fucking writing, where the creators were not only tone-deaf in portraying Katara in a racist/misogynistic way or, you know, in writing solely for the male gaze because fuck half the audience, I guess, but they just wanted to create drama for drama’s sake. They completely disrespected their female lead and I would argue they disrespected Aang’s character too in making him a stereotypical self-insert Gary Stu who displays toxic masculine behavior without consequences because that’s what’s expected of a toxic heternormative romantic plot device.

And worse yet, they never follow up on this, just like with the kiss at the Invasion. In the last five minutes of the finale, Katara looks up at him with admiration for saving the world and then kisses him. This is not only a missed opportunity for character development for Aang, but also a big fuck you to the female audience because the message is clear: the guy gets the girl as a trophy for saving the world, and fuck input from the female half of the partnership because that’s just not important and is not worthy of screentime. But I guess screentime dedicated to displaying toxic masculine/heternormative behaviors without ever condemning such behavior as a follow-up is just fine! :)))

If the EIP was supposed to make an argument for Kataang, then it failed. but more important:

By the show’s own high standards, The Ember Island Players is a failed episode, full of bad writing and worse characterization. For a show that was so ahead of its time, this episode is a narrative black mark, a failure of progressive representation and a disservice to its main characters.

There’s some wholesome Sukka and Zuko/Toph interaction, but even that doesn’t manage to save this episode, especially given there’s no resolution to the central conflict: the relationship between Aang and Katara. The entire unnecessarily OOC and forced Kataang drama drags it down.

We know Aang is capable of lifting up Katara and being supportive of her, as he was in episodes prior. We could have had honest, supportive, and open dialogue between Aang and Katara that actually followed up on the Invasion kiss, with Aang clearly expressing what he wants, Katara expressing that maybe she didn’t want that right now, and Aang completely respecting that and them hugging at the end because their friendship/connection is much more profound than pre-teen romance. This is an instance where Aang could have chosen to center Katara’s feelings, for once, instead of his own out of selfless love. If this happened, I would have been okay with a Kataang ending. But that isn’t what we got, obviously.

Part of what appealed to me about Aang as a male protagonist in media aimed at young audiences is that he–at least initially–did not start out as a toxic self-insert Gary Stu lifted from every problematic heternormative romance film ever. In fact, given his playful trickster archetype, general kindness/gentleness, and his stance against violence (a typically masculine trait), he both subverted expectations of and expanded the boundaries of what a male protagonist in children’s media can look like. Unfortunately, the creators don’t go all the way with Aang. In fact, they took a step back with his portrayal in The Ember Island Players, where the creators not only rely on misogynistic tropes to create drama but also make him complicit in propagating said misogyny. And that’s just a damn shame because we could have had a wholesome Kataang storyline and a sensitive male protagonist who cares not about your outdated gender roles and respects his partner’s autonomy!

#atla #aang #katara #kataang #eip #meta #my meta #aang deserved better #katara deserved better #queer #heteronormativity #toxic masculinity #misogyny #feminist criticism #kataang critical #but only in the sense that the writers messed it up #nothing against kataang personally

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starberry-cupcake · 4 years

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This may be a bizarre subject of discourse to bring up, but let’s talk about Daisy Duck. Or, in other words, about sexism and classic Disney.

I just had the displeasure of reading a comment on a post about Daisy and Donald in the Ducktales reboot, about how Daisy is “actually a bitch” in the comics, etc. (I’m gonna spare you the whole sentence).

This may blow your entire mind, but characters are fictional. People write them. There is a very clear reason why Daisy Duck has consistently been, with very few exceptions, depicted as several negative stereotypes: she was inherently created within a sexist mindset. It’s insane to me that men talk about Daisy as if an anthropomorphic lady duck was a real person, instead of looking into why the men behind her characterization have, most often than not, had the need to depict women in this fashion.

Minnie and Daisy were born out of a sexist idea. They were created to be Mickey’s and Donald’s “girlfriends” and “female counterparts”. They weren’t made out of nowhere, like Mickey, Donald, Goofy or Pluto; much like other female characters of Disney’s early universe, they are female “versions” of their male lead counterparts. They were thought as Mickey and Donald with a bow, so to speak. And maybe kind of literally.

In Minnie’s case, they ended up creating a demure “angel-in-the-house” archetype. Because early on, after criticism on Mickey’s problematic aspects, adult audiences of the 30s wanted Mickey to be less of an asshole and more pure and wholesome as a “role model” for kids. Mickey’s shortcomings started to become something born out of his innocence and honest mistakes, to avoid this perception of him being a “negative role model”.

So Mickey being always positive, well-intentioned and pure turned Minnie into the “feminine” version of that in most of her depictions, especially from the 20s to the 40s: a lady in distress and, later on, a demure housewife. Minnie cooks, cleans, attends to the house, keeps Mickey down to earth and scolds him when necessary. A very clear example is the 1941 short The Little Whirlwind, in which Minnie requires Mickey’s assistance to work on the garden while she bakes.

Donald, on the other hand, was the character allowed to go wild. He was referred to as the “problem child” by Walt Disney and he permitted the type of comedy Mickey was not allowed to provide. He was easily angered, violent, prone to physical comedy and sometimes downright a jerk. Which is, probably, why he’s the most featured character in all of Disney, with even more appearances than Mickey or Goofy.

Even if Donald’s characterization has fluctuated through the years, maybe being the most developed out of all of the classic Disney characters (something possible due to the fact that he was allowed to be flawed), these basic notions are the ones they used as a base to create Daisy in 1940. The feminine version of Donald’s charming wild manliness was, for the 40s mindset of womanhood, a “bitch”.

Daisy was conceived as a more “refined” female character, because making her a “high maintenance” girlfriend was a prompt to give Donald more “funny moments” in which to fail and get upset. Daisy’s nature, matching Donald’s in attitude, added what they considered a feminine poise and a constant need to try to change him and “better” him, which turned hypocritical when she herself was also quick to anger. Because, women.

With time, some of Daisy’s characteristics were refined and developed. She became a career woman in instances like Quack Pack and in other instances she has been shown as a fashion designer, in 2018 she had an entire meet and greet centered on her designs for Donald’s Dino Bash, for example.

Still, for both Minnie and Daisy, some of their early characteristics were never fully gone.

House of Mouse (which is a really good show, don’t get me wrong) still saw Minnie as a manager for Mickey’s business and Daisy as a diva wanting to shine. The Three Musketeers, which is one of the best trio movies, still had Daisy playing the "hard-to-get” object of Donald’s unrequited attentions until the very end. In the Mickey shorts, Donald and Daisy often show up in opposition to Mickey and Minnie as a couple with issues, like in The Adorable Couple.

Before Ducktales, Daisy’s last animated appearance was Legend of the Three Caballeros and OH BOY. All the steps forward, albeit minimal, that things like House of Mouse or The Three Musketeers had done with Daisy, this show erased. And it’s a pity, because the show is funny and the Caballeros are fantastic, but Daisy once again becomes the nagging girlfriend with high standards who wants to change her boyfriend and blah blah blah.

I didn’t know if the Ducktales reboot would be allowed to have Daisy, because the old show did not and they don’t have authorization to use certain characters (seriously people, how would having Mickey in an episode tarnish his image?).

When I heard she was going to be in season 3, I was hopeful yet hesitant, because things were not going well historically for my girl Daisy. Was she going to be the nagging ex like in Legend? A spotlight-seeking Diva like in HoM? Play “hard to get” as in 3M?

The answer was: none of the above. Donald and Daisy did not know each other previously. They don’t immediately fall head over heels for each other. Donald isn’t insistently seeking her despite her rejection and she isn’t constantly nagging him despite his attempts to be better.

They are just two people with similar ways of reacting who, listen to me, respect each other. I was floored.

Daisy is a designer, much like in previous iterations of her character, and she is bossy around her job because she’s intent of seeing things through and wants to succeed in her field. Donald isn’t immediately taken by her, he gets to know her and sees some of himself in her, as she does, and then they defend each other from those attacking them.

But the most mind blowing thing in the Ducktales episode was that the key to their relationship so far is...wait for it...communication.

Donald has been established to have communication issues with his family, not only literally, because he speaks like that, but also because there’s a lot he doesn’t tell others, like when they discovered he was seeing someone about his anger management issues because he wanted to take good care of his nephews after his sister disappeared (how good is this show?). He even struggles sometimes reaching his friends, Panchito and José (although he had a heart-to-heart with Goofy that was pretty sweet). And he fights a lot with Scrooge, especially when both had to pretty much deal with Della’s disappearance in their own distinct ways.

So Daisy comes in and listens to him. She understands him. And he listens to her. This is HUGE.

I don’t know how this will be developed, but the fact that Ducktales was able to introduce Daisy in a way that didn’t erase her personality and yet treated her with respect blew my entire mind.

So, to respond to this person’s comment, maybe it isn’t that “Daisy is actually a bitch”, maybe Daisy is a fictional character who has been consistently written and produced by men with a sexist mindset and it took a reboot that actually gives a damn to give her the foundation necessary for her to be a character that is independent from these outdated ideas.

#long post #ducktales #ducktales season 3 #disney #daisy duck #i have Thoughts and Feelings #sorry for writing long posts #i was going to add visuals but #i thought it'd be too much #i know I'm gonna get 'well actually's but this post is mainly centered on animated appearances #because the comics are a can of worms i'm not gonna open #but the point of who writes her still stands the exact same #albeit in a different specificity #also I'm not making a complete chronological dissertation on daisy because you wouldn't read it lol

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filmista · 3 years

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Vertigo (1958)

“Here I was born, and there I died. It was only a moment for you; you took no notice.”

Alfred Hitchcock was generally a no-nonsense man who, when interviewed about his work, kept on talking about plot and audience manipulation: how do I keep the audience in suspense with a good story? Intellectual, thematic discussions of his own work were largely foreign to him, but of course that doesn’t mean that those themes were not there.

Fear of the irrational, a perverted sexuality and obsessive thoughts were just a few of his hobbyhorses, which, consciously or otherwise, popped up again and again. And that may never have been more the case than in "Vertigo," his most personal and complex film.

At the time, the film didn’t receive good reviews and the public wasn’t interested either, but over the years its reputation grew, until it was routinely included in lists of the greatest films of all time. Most Hitchcock films show the director as a professional. "Vertigo" shows him as an artist.

James Stewart plays John "Scottie" Ferguson, a police inspector who sees a colleague jump off a rooftop. Physically injured and mentally traumatised he decides to say goodbye to old job, only to be hired as a private investigator shortly after by his old school friend Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore). Gavin's wife Madeleine’s (the unforgettable Kim Novak) behaviour becomes increasingly absent, she makes long journeys through the city and speaks increasingly about death and suicide.

Scottie starts to follow here and slowly but surely he discovers that Madeleine believes she is possessed by the ghost of Carlotta Valdes, a woman who died tragically many years before. He also discovers that he fell in love, perhaps for the first time. Scottie becomes dangerously obsessed with Madeleine.

And that romantic-erotic obsession is an immediately important theme of "Vertigo". Basically this is a movie about people in love with people they can’t be with. Scottie falls for Madeleine, who - beyond the fact that she’s the wife of his friend - also lives under the delusion that she is possessed by the ghost of a dead person.

Meanwhile, Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes), a friend of Scottie’s is in love with him, without Scottie seeming to realise it or feeling the need to correspond that love. The characters are frustrated from the start, and the events in the film only serve to trigger those frustrations to a critical.

Madeleine kills herself by jumping from a church tower. Scottie's fear of heights prevents him from stopping her, and afterwards he stays behind with a sky-high sense of guilt. several months later he meets Judy (again Novak), who bears an eerie physical resemblance to Madeleine. He talks to her and as the two enter into a relationship he purposefully changes her appearance to that of Madeleine (clothes, haircut, and so on).

He uses Judy as blank canvas on which to bring Madeleine back to life, and she allows that. Why? Because Judy was hired by Gavin to frame Scottie. Gavin killed his wife and threw her body down from the tower.

Scottie's story made that no one would have trouble accepting the suicide. Undercover Judy, however, really falls in love with Scottie. Which immediately causes the third unrequited love in the movie - Scottie doesn't feel anything for Judy, he was in love with Madeleine, with the fictional creation Judy and Gavin had made for him. With which Hitchcock reintroduced a time-honoured question: when we fall in love with someone, do we feel affection for that person themselves, or for the image we’ve imagined of that person.

That was a very personal theme for Hitchcock. He was himself Married for more than 50 years to his wife Alma Reville, but his movies are packed with icy blondes who in most of his stories who in most of his work have to endure at least one scene of mental humiliation or physical pain. From his work speaks a very ambiguous attitude towards women, and in "Vertigo” director decides to study that for the first time, on a psychologically profound level.

After all, what else does a director do other than fill the actress’s empty canvas with the behaviours and appearance that he himself has in mind to make his film? Judy / Madeleine is dominated by two men in the movie (or, if you like, directed): first off camera by Gavin, then by Scottie. In who she herself is, neither gentlemen are interested.

Visually, "Vertigo" is probably Hitchcock's most ambitious film, in the sense that there is a strong symbolism throughout the film.With important roles for the colors green, red, yellow and blue. Green is continuously associated with Madeleine, her green dress when we first see her, her green car to the natural green that often surrounds them. Why specifically that color?

Green is traditionally the color of jealousy, and further it provides a kind of traffic light contrast with the red identifying Scottie: just look at his red ties, his red front door and the bright red interior of his favourite restaurant, where some important scenes take place.

Scottie is someone who until he meets Madeleine, keeps romantic feelings at bay as much as possible: he pretends he doesn’t understand Midge’s advances, has never married and prefers to be so.

He is a rational man, who rejects everything that threatens his rational, carefully demarcated world (including powerful emotions such as love). When Gavin is asked at the start of the film if he believes in ghosts, he answers immediately, resolute and without thinking "no". As the story continues that certainty crumbles - as is often the case with Hitchcock, rationality disappears the life of the main character.

During a key scene in a forest, Madeleine walks away from Scottie as if in a trance, only to disappear behind a tree. Scottie stares dubiously: Where has she gone? Suddenly disappeared as the ghost she is? No, of course not, she’s standing just behind the tree, but Scottie (and the audience) are in doubt briefly.

Yellow then is the color of Midge, a safe, warm color which suggests homeliness. Her relationship with Scottie is in part love, partly motherly. And blue than reappears when the feelings of guilt of the characters returns (note Scotties bright blue suits during the second half of the film). The visual motifs of ‘Vertigo’ don’t end there - spiral forms constantly return as a visual representation of Scottie’s dizziness and then of course there's the infamous technique that Hitchcock used to zoom in while he camera physically moves backwards, which made Scotties fear of heights palpable. It's perhaps one of the most imitated shots in film history.

James Stewart had played darker roles more often than ever since the 1950s (as opposed to his overbearingly wholesome image that he acquired in the 30′s in films like ‘It’s a Wonderful Life ’and‘ Mr Smith Goes to Washington ’). He knows how to give Scottie real emotional depth, nominally the hero of the movie, but actually a mentally deeply hurt person.

His monologue at the end, in which he confronts Judy / Madeleine and his own anxiety is probably one of the best moments from his career. Kim Novak, who during the first half hour of the film has almost no lines plays the ultimate Hitchcock blonde with Madeleine: cool, distant, troubled and - for the hero at least - irresistible. The complete opposite way in she plays Judy indicates how good and varied her register as an actress was.

"Vertigo" is a slow, methodical film, especially according to current standards. It’s a film that requires patience, but one that also rewards that patience. Thematically, this is without a doubt the best film that Hitchcock has ever - not to mention his most daring - visually its his most complex and thoughtful. With "Vertigo", Hitchcock faced some of his own demons. The confrontation resulted in unforgettable cinema.

@idasessions @mad-prophet-of-the-airwaves @siobhanlovesfilm @purecinema

#back with a new movie analysis!#vertigo #50’s cinema #vertigo 1958 #alfred hitchock #kim novak #movies #films #cinema #review #film analysis #filmista

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maddie-grove · 3 years

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Little Book Review: Sin Eater

Author: Megan Campisi.

Publication Date: 2020.

Genre: Alternate historical fiction (?).

Premise: Strap in, y'all, because this is complicated. May Owens, an orphaned teen laundress in Fake Elizabethan London, is arrested for stealing a loaf of bread. Expecting to be hanged, she's instead sentenced to be a Sin Eater for life. This means hearing confessions from the dying and then eating foods that symbolize their sins off their coffins. There are various other unpleasant requirements--speaking to no one except when hearing confessions, being forced to wear a non-removable collar, getting one's tongue tattooed, social ostracism, eternal damnation if one doesn't do everything right--but it does come with free room and board. Then the Sin Eater who's supposed to be mentoring May gets tortured to death. Why? A deer heart (symbolizing the murder of royalty) appeared on the coffin of a deceased lady-in-waiting, and the mentor wouldn't eat it because the lady-in-waiting had confessed to no such thing. Can May figure out what the hell is going on, adjust to her weird new life, and address a bunch of lingering childhood trauma?

Thoughts: Sin-eating, as depicted in this novel, never existed in Britain. Campisi was inspired to write this novel by a real-world tradition that started in and near Wales as early as the seventeenth century, but died out completely by the 1920s. Accounts vary as to how socially stigmatizing it was to be a sin eater; at best, they were poor, disreputable people doing a low-status job, and, at worst, they were feared and despised as people who had traded away their immortal souls and possibly consorted with demons. However, it was definitely not an island-wide, state-sanctioned role that people were officially sentenced to; it didn't require body modification, nor was it solely assigned to women.

In short, Campisi has created a fictional tradition that technically could have existed in Elizabethan London (as it doesn't involve magic or technology that didn't exist at the time), but demonstrably did not. This puts her in an interesting position that most historical fiction and fantasy writers don't find themselves in, because she has the following options:

Write a straightforward historical novel that just happens to have this one weird, fictional thing going on, with no further explanation. This would probably be the easiest option, but she either has to put an awkward author's note at the beginning or run the risk of readers thinking she knows jack shit about Elizabethan London.

Write an alternate history novel in which she explains how her version of sin-eating came to be in Elizabethan London. (Off the top of my head: Welsh people brought the tradition to London and other parts of England after migrating, but it only caught on in a big way as a response to the Black Death, during which time it developed distinctly English characteristics. The pious Henry VI was the first monarch to officially recognize it; however, the crueler official requirements didn't come about until the reign of Henry VIII, for reasons similar to the passing of the Tudor Poor Laws. Edward VI tried to ban it, but Mary I brought it back with a vengeance. Now it's allowed, but only because Elizabeth I branded it as an Anglican thing.) I think this makes for an interesting setting, but it is a lot of work for a story that's really just about one regular girl and some Tudor drama.

Write a story that takes place in a world that's similar in some ways to Elizabethan England (geography, level of technology, etc.), yet is substantially different. Maybe there's a young reigning queen, but she's not the often-disfavored daughter of a king with six wives; instead, maybe she had seven brothers who all died untimely deaths. Maybe the country's been torn apart by decades of religious conflict, but sin-eating is at the heart of the conflict instead of Fake Catholicism vs. Fake Protestantism. This might actually be the most organic way to handle things, but it does put the book in a weird place, genre-wise; people who want to read straight-up historical fiction won't be into it, and people who want to read fantasy might be put off by the lack of magic.

Any of these are better options than what Campisi chose, which is an unholy union between #1 and #3. Sin Eater is set in a world that's almost identical to Elizabethan London, except that (a) Campisi's version of sin-eating exists and (b) everybody has slightly different names. Instead of Queen Elizabeth, we have Queen Bethany, the daughter of King Harold II and his second wife Alys Bollings. She had an older sister named Maris, daughter of Harold II's first wife Constanza of Castile, who was a Eucharist. Harold II's third wife was named Jennette Cheney, whom you might think had a son named Edwin or whatever, but no, she had no children. What. You might also think that Jennette had a brother named Titus Cheney, who married Harold II's sixth wife and widow Katryna Park or whatever, but also no. He was named Titus Seymaur (no relation?) and he was married to Katryna...Parr. Confused yet? Because God is always called the Maker, and clergy are always Maker-men who preach sermons in Maker-halls, but Judas is still Judas and Eve is still Eve. Also, Roma people are called "eg*psies" (honestly, if you're going to make up a stupid word, at least use the opportunity to make it not a slur); it's something of a relief that the Jewish characters are just Jews. Oh, and the whole thing takes place in Angland.

This is some of the most irritating, distracting world-building I've ever encountered. It doesn't help that the only reason for the fake Tudor drama is a rather tired, mean-spirited mystery involving Queen Elizabeth/Bethany's secret baby and Katryna/Katherine Parr's long-lost daughter. And it's a shame, because when the story focuses on May--a lonely, angry, scared girl struggling to do the right thing and make a place for herself in the world--it's emotionally compelling. Her mixed feelings towards the fellow outcasts who start squatting in her home are particularly well-done, as are her encounters with religious outsiders. The mechanics of sin-eating are also fascinating; I liked seeing May visit dying people of various ages and stations in life. I think a person without my exact pet peeves would enjoy this novel a lot more, but it still wouldn't be great.

Hot Goodreads Take: There are many criticisms of this novel that I agree with, such as bad world-building, a weak mystery, a sophomoric understanding of religion, and gratuitous unpleasantness. (I love the dark, I love slippery things, but there was no reason for the tongue tattoo except to drive home that this whole thing sucks for May. I did not need to be further convinced!) There are also criticisms that I get, even if I don't feel the same way; for instance, I like the weird, bitter heroine, but I understand that she's not for everyone. On the other hand, one reviewer states, "I also didn’t care or need to know about the author’s childcare arrangements that she acknowledges at the end of her book." Like...cool, reviewer, but I don't think you understand the point of acknowledgments. They're to thank people. Are you going to complain that you "don't care that the book was manufactured in America, as the copyright page says"?

#little book review #sin eater #megan campisi #antiziganism #mutilation

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izlaria · 4 years

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Some thoughts on Enola Holmes

I’ve seen people come up with all kinds of criticism towards this movie and I feel like venting a little. There will be light spoilers ahead.

Is it a movie about Sherlock Holmes? No.

This is probably one of the main complaints that I’ve seen, which I don’t get at all. People are complaining about the lack of Sherlock and Watson and I just... don’t understand. This movie is very clearly about Enola, who is Sherlock’s sister. In general I dislike the purists who hate on different adaptations simply because they aren’t their cup of tea, but the fact that people are irritated by the familial connection is just strange. This is a work of fiction, inspired by another work of fiction.

We’ve had hundreds of interpretations of Sherlock already, so why does it bother people so intensely that a new character has been introduced to create a new universe of canon? I find the idea of a sister quite intriguing, because it puts Sherlock and Mycroft into a position that is yet unexplored, as brothers to a young girl. It also creates an interesting starting place. What would be of a girl who was raised by the same people who raised the genius Sherlock? How would she handle the expectations her surname raises?

Is it loyal to the Enola Holmes books? I don’t think so.

I haven’t read the books, but, from what I’ve gathered, there is a lot the movie has changed. Comments on the books have led me to believe Eudoria, in the books, doesn’t actually care about Enola and that the girl is actually “alone” in the world. Sherlock, it seems, doesn’t take the same level of interest in her that they show in the movie, and Mycroft’s character was also changed, though I can’t say exactly how. Book Enola is younger (14yo), not a detective and not interested in a romantic subplot.

Having said all that, I can see why Netflix would have changed these points. The romance attracts attention in a way that a simple coming-of-age female-led movie would not. I personally don’t think it subtracts from the story. I’m glad that the actors and the characters are the same age, and I’m even gladder that they were written as somewhat flirtatious friends that don’t go any further than that. A kiss would have probably seemed forced and, with the actors being so young, it would have also been a bit uncomfortable to watch. In this house, we are against the sexualization of minors.

Also, who doesn’t love a bit of yearning? That hand kiss was peak wholesome romance.

On the matter of the family, I can see why some people would be irritated. I myself enjoy a good family dynamic and I loved to see Sherlock grow into his role as a brother, but I also know that plenty of the series’ fans were inspired by Enola’s independence and her ability to move forward despite being met with indifference from her family members. Again, the happy ending with Eudoria seems to be a more sellable take on the story. This is probably one of the most reasonable criticisms towards this piece, though I confess it was a change I enjoyed. In my opinion, it was nice to see a story about a mother who was not perfect, but who still had her daughter’s best interests at heart. Like every good mother out there, I would imagine.

The feminism

This is another controversial point. I’ve seen people say it was too feminist (there’s no such thing), but also that it was the wrong kind of feminism and this last one I can kind of get on board with. It did lean towards a type of feminism that we’ve seen a lot, the “not like other girls” type that villainizes femininity and only values more male-coded abilities, like fighting and pure rationality.

It does make sense when in context: Enola was raised apart from normal society, in a house where her only measure of normalcy was her mother and the news articles she obsessively collected about her genius brother. She was never exposed to more female-coded activities and, so, she has a strong disregard for them. As a part of the narrative, the message gets a bit iffy, because it repeatedly deprecates a lot of abilities associated with womanhood that are not harmful in and of themselves. The strong female characters are all too “extraordinary” to be representative of women in general.

On the other hand, there were certainly things the movie did right.

I did enjoy the subversion of the interests between Enola and Tewksbury. Tewksbury is not helpless, but his knowledge lies in botany, not fighting. He is the one in need of Enola and he’s the one who wants to stay by her side, even though she wants to forge her own path. It struck me, as I was watching, that these roles usually fall to the female romantic interest and that it is the male lead who usually goes off on lone quests to find himself.

At the same time, Enola is not completely separate from her femininity. Her empathy and her inability to stop herself from helping Tewksbury are both qualities that can be seen as female-coded, especially when in contrast to Eudoria’s messages of individualism.

One last thing that I would like to comment on is the corset scene. I understand why a lot of people may be irritated to have another movie corset-bashing, but I honestly think a different interpretation was intended. I think the corset, like bras and all types of shape wear, does factor into a system of female repression, since it helps create an idealized image of the female body that is seldom natural. The root of the problem is not in the corset itself, but in the society that demands that women alter their bodies or else be exposed to shame and ridicule. Enola, in this sense, is a young girl who never had an interest in fashion and who was so far satisfied with her figure, but who had just been told by Mycroft and Miss Harrison that she was inadequate.

When Enola says that the corset is a symbol of repression for those forced to wear it, she is absolutely right. It’s a matter of choice. The garment does serve her, as it does all women of the time, when she must blend into London society.

I would like to see Enola find a female friend, someone whose abilities lie towards the ordinary, in order to have her see the use of female-coded activities, even if they do not interest her. It would be a good way to balance out the message of this movie and to show the value of women in all the different areas they might apply themselves.

#enola holmes #lord tewksbury #millie bobby brown

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drivingsideways · 3 years

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Misaeng review

Ok, it's been almost a week, so I feel like I can get my thoughts (somewhat) in order. As usual, I'm late to the party, given that Misaeng aired 6 years ago, and is already considered a kdrama classic. Still: thoughts!

(under the cut)

I came to this drama with quite a lot of expectations, both because I'd seen it on a lot of rec lists, and also because I'd watched director Kim Won-seok's Signal and My Mister, which are justifiably as beloved as Misaeng. I'm happy to report that Misaeng mostly lived up to those expectations!

The writing & direction work together to make Misaeng a very immersive experience, which is good, considering the entire run time is over 20 hrs. The level of seemingly mundane detail of the operational aspects of running a trading firm that they delve into (and other dramas might have avoided for sake of pacing) seemed odd to me at first, but eventually result in a world building that's incredibly well fleshed out. The (formerly unlikely!) high stakes of a misplaced piece of paper or octopuses in a shipment of squid end up being parts of an emotionally wrenching narrative whole fairly seamlessly. Still, at 20+ hours, Misaeng also does get into the kind of pacing issues that most of the slice of life kdramas I've watched so far have. And it didn't need to! I think it had a wonderful ensemble of characters, and if they'd maybe given a little more time and space to characters other than Jang Geu-Rae (Im Si wan) and Oh Sang-sik (Lee Sung-min), the mid portions may not have felt quite so, well, stuck.

But more than the strong writing and direction, it was really the actors who delivered. They made what could have easily been a dull-ish office drama into a heart warming story about human connection and the joys and troubles of leading an "incomplete life". I'd never watched Lee Sung-min in anything before, and about half way through the series I was like, HOW IS HE MAKING A SHORT TEMPERED, ALCHOHOLIC MIDDLE MANAGER SO SEXY? Like, serious props, dude. Lee Sung-min is by turns annoying and brash and too shout-y and stubborn and funny and so incredibly vulnerable as a man trying his best to live by his principles in a world that thinks they are an impediment to "success", that you forget that he's playing a fictional character-- he's someone you know, he's someone you've seen in the mirror.

His performance as Oh Sang-sik is very ably matched by Im Si Wan's Jang Geu-Rae. This series would not have worked if these two actors didn't have the chemistry they do, and play off each other in every scene. I had watched Im Si Wan recently- in JTBC's "Run On", in which I liked his performance quite a lot, but I absolutely loved him as the naive and endearing Jang Geu-rae. Misaeng, is in part, a bildungsroman narrative centered around Jang Geu Rae. Im Si wan brought a kind of vulnerability to the role that might have felt cloying and emotionally manipulative in the hands of other actors, but Im Si-wan manages to do it with a light touch. I feel he's one of those actors that uses his whole body in a scene, not just relying on facial or verbal expression, and it's a joy to watch.

Each of the other actors in the ensemble also bring that dedication and talent to their roles, even if it's in a single scene. There are lots of one-off characters that we meet during the course of the series, and every single one of them leaves an impact.

But! I'm going to pick a fave from the supporting cast and that's Byun Yo-han, whom I'd last watched as the broody, troubled (and very sexy) swordsman Lee Bang-ji in Six Flying Dragons. I can't imagine a character more in opposition to that one than Han Seok-yul in Misaeng, but Byun Yo-han just knocks it out of the park as the scheming, cheerful and mostly inappropriate clown with a heart of gold; Han Seok-yul is the definition of Chaotic Good, and you're equal parts horrified by his antics- which include sexual harassment dont @ me -- and yet charmed by him. I wish they'd given him a few more scenes and a larger plotline to work with, but I also suspect that he might have just walked away with the entire series if they did that. (Am I plotting that series in my head as I write this? MAYBE.)

Alright, this is getting a bit too long, so I'm going to get to the bits that disappointed me. That's really one major thing: the gender politics. I don't know how different the show is from the web toon it's based on, so I can't tell whether they made significant changes to the basic plot and characters. As in- I have no idea if the webtoon was as male dominated in every way as the show is, so I'm not sure how much of the show's treatment of women as a class, and its female characters in particular, I should lay at the door of the original writer vs the screenwriter and director. I'm also lacking the Korean context in which this was written and made and aired, so you may take my criticism with a pinch of salt, if you please!

That the show features mainly male characters is perhaps unsurprising and realistic, since we know that the kind of corporate life it depicts is very male dominated, top to bottom. The show also portrays the very real and horrific overt and subtle misogyny that women face in the workplace and out of it; mainly in the character of Ahn Young-yi, played with steely determination and quiet suffering by the lovely Kang so-ra. There are only 3 other female characters that have any sort of real speaking role- Sun Ji Young (played by Shin Eun jung), a senior manager at the company, Jang Geu-rae's unnamed(!) mother (played by the amazing Sung Byoung-Sook) and Oh Sang-sik's unnamed (!) wife (played by Oh Yoon-Hong, who's a delight in every tiny scene she has). There are other women who appear but in very minor roles, and often in "comedy" moments that often rely on sexist tropes to start with.

Anyway, right there you can see one of the problems- 4 women characters that have any kind of real screen time, and only 2 of them are named. Aigoo! Screenwriter Jung Yoon-jung is a woman, and like, I don't like putting the burden on any one woman to y'know fix structural misogyny, but I can't also help feeling disappointed that she overlooked even this "small" thing among the larger things.

But that apart, the main issue for me was that while the show doesn't shy away from depicting egregious sexism in the form of sexual harrassment, verbal and physical and certainly emotional abuse, in a manner that's clear that we are meant to be horrified by it--it falls short of depicting how women deal and work with it. It just doesn't give enough space to women or their worldview.

It's very comfortable depicting victimhood, but doesn't put work into depicting the ways in which women survive by finding solidarity with other women. We have a scene or two where Ahn Young-yi who is this show's poster child for female victimhood interacts with the older women who offer sympathy and understanding, but no real strategy or support. And yes, we see men also being targeted by their seniors for the grossest verbal and physical abuse; and it's men who help Ahn Young-yi strategise on how to deal with her situation. Real life experience tells me that it's the women who do this work for other women. I have certainly been on both sides of this equation, for one, and so has every woman that I know in corporate life. And yes, one of the show's core philosophies is that those who endure, survive--but it is none the less extremely painful to watch Ahn Young yi "endure" the kind of abuse she does as a coping strategy and a survival strategy.

At the end of it, when she slowly manages to gain the support of her sexist team, it's shown as a victory-- though naturally imperfect, because this show takes its Realism very seriously (right until the end where it makes a tonal shift into quirky that I was a little ?? about)-- and y'know, sure, it is a victory. And I absolutely understand the choices she makes and why she does it-- I guess I just got annoyed by the fact that other antagonistic figures in the narrative get a more straightforward comeuppance for their egregious behavior, but Ahn Young-yi doesn't even get a goddamned apology from her abusers. Instead, we have a half humourous, half serious moment where she comments on how she's working at turning herself into "someone cute"- because she understands now that sometimes the right strategy is to "go with the flow". Be the water that slowly wears away at the rock. It's an interesting moment- the men she tells this to are taken aback by her bluntness, but also a little clueless about what she means. It's the kind of nuance that I would and do enjoy. Unfortunately, it also closely follows one of the show's most annoying scenes at the tail end of the series- where it tries to play off workplace sexism and misogyny as comedy- boys being boys-Reader, when I tell you that I had to WORK to unclench my jaw--!

I'm not saying we should have a single and obvious narrative of female emancipation. I'm not against realism in fiction, but god, sometimes, please do remember that when we look for escapism, we are actually imagining a better world. The first step toward liberation is allowing yourself to imagine it.

And the show does allow other characters its moments of unfettered fantasy- Im Si Wan parkour-ing all over the rooftops of Amman- and having a semi mystical + Indiana Jones moment in the deserts of Jordan--so why, I ask, are the women not given that gift?

*looks into the camera *

Tl;dr: I enjoyed it, it made me cry every episode, and I cared about all the characters, and if you haven't watched it yet, treat yourselves.

PS. Yes, Han Seok-yul is a disaster bi, sorry, I don't make the rules. Yes, hotties Oh Min Seok and Kang Ha-neul are canonically naked in a hot tub six feet apart because they are bros. Yes, I will be writing the fix it in which they fuck like angry bunnies. Yes, I am going to put my shipper cooties all over this gen slice of life show, deal with it.

#misaeng #kdrama #thinky thoughts

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dwellordream · 3 years

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“In theory, Victorians concerned with troublesome issues on the margins of respectable fiction for girls could deal with them within the family reading circle. Reading aloud was perhaps the most common domestic entertainment within the Victorian family, used as reward, improvement, or therapy for life’s challenges. The sisters taking turns reading to accompany their needlework, the matron at the sickbed, the daughter reading to her father at the end of a business day—there were myriad arenas in which families used reading to ease, amuse, and instruct.

At its most basic, reading aloud enabled the sharing of resources (a book, or a fresh installment of a periodical) among many. But beyond that, it was a profoundly social way of responding to the lessons of history, current fiction, or poetry. The critic Andrew Blake suggests that the novel, in particular, was ‘‘a most important point of contact between the public and the private’’ because ‘‘it gave people a chance to discuss domestic ideology in public without touching on domestic secrets.’’ The semipublic sphere that was the family circle provided an important venue for the discussion of reading. Within this context, instruction in morality could be accomplished informally, gently, impersonally, with reference to fictional characters rather than through direct criticism and rebuttal.

The convention of the family reading circle generally restricted polite novels from treating illicit sexuality or immoral characters, but if any lapses occurred, the family circle could deal with them most effectively. Thus Elizabeth Gaskell said of her own novel Ruth, which features an orphan who has been seduced by an aristocrat: ‘‘Of course it is a prohibited book in this, as in many other households.’’ The one circumstance that would change its unsuitability for young people, she opined, was if it was ‘‘read with someone older,’’ perhaps with an older female relative within a family reading group.

The kind of family conversation which could improve all who participated was explained by Sarah Browne in a private diary in 1859. ‘‘Albert brings [Harriet Beecher Stowe’s] the Minister’s Wooing. We sit quietly and hear how James is brought back to the living, we calmly rejoice with Mary, plan and maneuver with Miss Pressy, call Parson Hopkins in very truth a Christian and wind up the evening by wishing to see Mrs. Stowe, knowing how she would seem and if she would talk at all, like other women.’’

Albert Browne Sr. was generally the reader in the Browne family, sometimes of ‘‘superior articles in the Atlantic Monthly.’’ In these moments of quiet, Sarah Browne most idealized her shared family life, ‘‘sitting as we do in our little western chamber, Father, Alice and I storing in the rich thoughts of others as a life element of our own.’’Reading aloud enabled a submersion of family tensions in a focus outward on the problems of others.

The idealization of the shared reading experience suggested stylized familial communion to daughters as well as parents. During the final days of the Civil War, as she anticipated her own marriage, Helen Hart thought to memorialize the evenings reading aloud together. ‘‘I think I never enjoyed evenings more in my life. First Bertie reads, then Hady, and then Mother and I; from History, Shakespeare, the Atlantic, and other miscellany. Such peaceful, happy winter evenings at home! Something for us to look back upon in after years when we are scattered. I have treasured up each one as it passed, as a sweet and sacred memory.’’ The pleasure came from the contrast between ‘‘our quiet harbor’’ and ‘‘the world with its commotions, its struggles.’’

Never did home seem so secure and safe as when implicitly contrasted with the adventures and misfortunes of fictional characters, warring nations, or past princes. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s biographer noted that Charlotte and her destitute and emotionally distant mother were at their best when reading aloud to each other, their fraught intimacy dissolved in their shared focus on the lives and feelings of others. Those moments of community might even be resurrected by rereading books so experienced. (‘‘It seems as if we were gathered around the nursery fire again. I can almost hear Aunt Mary’s voice.’’) The pleasures of reading aloud were those of reading mediated—reading mediated by the fiction of shared purpose.

Reading aloud did not have a single simple meaning, however, nor did it model only one kind of power relationship. The Browne family’s shared reading was patriarchal, with father reading and other family members (according to the hardly impartial mother) celebrating familial harmony. Alice Stone Blackwell, in her irreverent and spritely diary, offered another example of paternal reading aloud, lightly satirizing her father, the noted reformer and women’s rights advocate Henry Blackwell:

‘‘Papa sat with his feet on the top of the stove, saturated with laziness, and rated me for enjoying stories [fiction], and formed plans to give me a taste for instructive literature, and ended by making me bring Plutarch’s Lives, and beginning to read them aloud.’’ This depiction of a well-respected father indulging in playful tyranny of his only child suggests a quite different emotional shading—if a similar actual structure—to the idealized portraits of patriarchal reading circles.

Daughters also read on their own, though, and given the risks of immoral reading and the gains from uplifting reading, good parents attempted to mon- itor what they read. The goal in choosing reading, as in all the lessons of character, was to instruct gently and surely so as to encourage daughters to make familial lessons their own. Advice to parents ranged from the relatively cut and dried—‘‘Parents should choose the books that their children read until the age of 15’’—to the more subtle: ‘‘Wise parents put so many good books in the way of their children that the taste for them is formed unconsciously, and there is never any feeling of restraint.’’ (The latter piece of advice, made in 1901, was clearly advice for the book-wealthy.)

Ellen Emerson’s correspondence with her mother while away at boarding school suggested the appropriate supervisory relationship of parents over girls’ reading. Explaining that she was reading Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, which she found ‘‘a very funny book,’’ she went on, ‘‘I never read any that I am not sure you would be willing to have me,’’ and recorded her assumption that Scott, Gaskell, and several others were ‘‘not forbidden.’’ She went on to query, ‘‘May I read [Margaret Oliphant’s] ‘Head of the Family’?’’ Middle-class or elite parents who participated in genteel Victorian culture assumed an important role in controlling the reading of their daughters—its quantity, its contents, and its circumstances.

In the elite midwestern Hamilton family, a family with a strong and eclectic reading tradition, novels were doled out prudently like candies during vacations from school, so as not to interfere with schoolwork. When her daughter was fifteen, Phoebe Hamilton gave her ‘‘Ivanhoe for my holiday reading, she always gives me one of Scott every vacation.’’ The next year her mother was more liberal, providing Scott’s Quentin Durward for a Christmas book and giving permission for the reading of Dickens’s Little Dorrit and Jemima Tautphoeus’s The Initials. As January arrived, Agnes lamented, ‘‘I have finished the latter but I am afraid as I go back to school next Monday I shall have to let Little Dorrit wait till summer.’’

There was a hierarchy within Hamilton family reading, and despite her voraciousness, Agnes felt that her tastes fell short of her family’s preferences. ‘‘Oh! why haven’t I the love of learning of the family?’’ She indicated what was expected in her next breath: ‘‘Knight’s England vol. III has been read all but two chapters since last fall and during two months I have read but four books of the Odyssey.’’ She forced herself to be realistic. ‘‘During this next week [probably a school vacation] I want [to] finish half a dozen or more books which I have begun but I dare say the novels are the only ones that will be looked much in.’’

Like the Hamilton reading regimen, other family routines, too, involved matters of both quality and quantity. There were appropriate ages for the reading of different books. At fifteen, Margaret Tileston wanted to read George Macdonald’s Alec Forbes of Howglen, an homage to the dignity of Scots country life. The author was certainly approved, but Margaret’s mother didn’t want her to read the book ‘‘yet.’’

At eighteen, Margaret was still reading under adult scrutiny. Sick at home she was ‘‘allowed’’ to read Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, considered excessively charged for young girls, and polished off 340 pages on the first day. Reading was one way of being inducted into family ideology; when Margaret reread Pilgrim’s Progress in 1883, she was conscious that she was reading a book that had been important to her mother when she was young.”

- Jane H. Hunter, “Reading and the Development of Taste.” in How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood

#victorian #history #american #how young ladies became girls #jane h. hunter

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