#said story being a formely thin tv star got fat and was fired for it and is sad and insecure ever since.

[greekprodigies]

Why Shows Like Insatiable Are So Toxic, Despite Their Intentions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[true-halloween-tales]

2017: #2-WITCHES

Round about the cauldron go; In the poison’d entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter’d venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

- Macbeth.

It is now time to get to the bottom of the topic of witches - but we are staying away from witches’ bottoms!  Once the topic of witches is raised, the cauldron of creepiness starts bubbling out witches all over the place.  The Wicked Witch of the West is the archetypical witch, with the long pointy nose, green skin, black clothing, and conical witch hat.  There were other Oz witches such as Glinda the Good Witch.  Long before Oz, Greek mythology provided Medea and Circe.  In Jason and the Argonauts, Medea mainly made potions and then ran off with Jason.  Homer’s Odyssey had Circe trapped on an island turning sailors into pigs.  The Middle Ages bubbled up Morgan Le Fay in the King Arthur legend.  Shakespeare wrote famous plays with witches, such as in Macbeth.  Witches were also featured in quite a few fairy tales.  The Brothers Grimm’s Hansel and Grettel is perhaps the most famous witchy fairy tale.  Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and the Margarita includes witches and the Devil galavanting with glee in Russia.  Lloyd Alexander’s The Black Cauldron features the three witches of Orwen, Orgoch, and Ordxu who are actually helpful.  Fritz Leiber wrote of witches in his novels, Conjure Wife and Our Lady of Darkness.  Anne Rice wrote a three-book series, the Lives of the Mayfair Witches.  But beyond literature, witches are also bubbling up in film.

I Married a Witch was a 1942 comedy, but 1960’s Black Sunday is horror.  1962’s Burn, Witch, Burn was  based on Leiber’s Conjure Wife.  Vincent Price hunted witches in The Conqueror Worm, but he was the villain persecuting the innocent.  Christopher Lee was voodoo-dolled by his witch daughter in The House That Dripped Blood (see 2018: #1-GREAT HORROR FILM ACTORS).  Rosemary’s Baby delivered us a delightfully witchy Ruth Gorden.  The Witches of Eastwick had three witches summoning the Devil, Jack Nicholson.  The Blair Witch has almost appeared in three films and probably has the greatest name recognition for a witch in popular culture.  Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell was about a witch’s curse.  Even Marvel superhero films have included the Scarlet Witch (see 2017: #10-SUPERHEROES).  Witches bubble up in the cauldron of creepiness beyond film and into television programs.

The Addams Family includes the witches of Grandmama as well as that of Morticia.  Lara Parker portrayed the regular witch character, Angelique, in the original Dark Shadows tv series (see 2016: #7-GUIDE TO DARK SHADOWS).  A few years later she played a witch in Dark Shadows’ creator, Dan Curtis’ other cult horror tv series, The Night Stalker, in the episode, The Trevi Collection (see 2015: #5-GUIDE TO THE NIGHT STALKER).  There was a comedy tv series with witches, Bewitched, including the witches Samantha and Aunt Haggadah.  Witches have made appearances in Doctor Who in the episodes, The Daemons and The Shakespeare Code which offers witches Mother Bloodtide and Mother Doomfinger (see 2018: #2-GUIDE TO DOCTOR WHO).  The three-season series, Penny Dreadful, centered around the witch Vanessa Ives who was well-played by Eva Green.  American Horror Story had an entire season, Coven, about witches and introduced us to such noteworthy witches as Cordelia Foxx and Misty Day; the Roanoke season featured Lady Gaga as the primal witch Scathach.  Most recently, Game of Thrones has included the child-sacrificing witch Melisandre, the red priestess, who resurrected Jon Snow.  Men can also be witches as seen with Lafayette in the True Blood series.  There are even cartoon witches such as Winnie the Witch, Popeye’s watery Sea Hag, and there is Broomhilda from the Chicago Tribune comic strip.  They are also in video games such as in the Dark Souls series with Karla the Witch and the fiery half-spider, half-woman, Chaos Witch Quelagg.  The cauldron of creepiness overfloweth with a bevy of witches!

What sort of classifications can witches be put into to better understand them?  Dungeons & Dragons is a good resource for monster listings and the game includes: Sea Hags, Night Hags, and Annis.  There are evil black witches and white good witches, even neutral gray witches.  Most witches are alchemists and make potions.  Some witches have additional specialization of their magical ability, such as with Circe polymorphing people into pigs.  There are solitary witches in comparison to covens of witches.  But there are not too many classifications of witches.  Desert dwelling witches are certainly not sandwitches, hold the mayo!  The term, death hag, is not a classification of witch, but is a type of person who morbidly goes to cemeteries, reads obituaries, and indulges in other death-related past-times.  What best distinguishes witches is what they do.

What do witches do?  Witches tend to have the same goals and activities in mind.  They primarily stand over their large cauldrons cooking up hideous magical stews and potions; in a way, they are pharmacists.  The common crazy concoction they cook up consists of children and babies; few witches are vegetarians.  Witches are often known to lure children, catch them, cook them, and eat them.  Otherwise, they have to go to “witches supermarkets,” cemeteries, and dig up dead children.  Witches cannibalistic proclivities primarily exist so they can make themselves younger.  Witches are often very old.  To make themselves either appear younger or actually physically become younger are their goals.  This is seen with the famous illusion of the Young Lady or Old Hag.  Witches deeply need to appear young and innocent, and they particularly enjoy the deceit of helping witch finders.  In The Blair Witch Project, no physical form of the Witch is ever seen.  However, early in the film, an eccentric town local, Mary Brown, is interviewed who very much looks like a witch as well as having interests and educational degrees beyond her age.  I have always thought Mary Brown to be the normal human appearance of The Blair Witch.  Witches also fly on brooms, often coating the broomstick or themselves wth a greasy oil they make from the fat of cooked children.  Witches enjoy staying out late at night, generally doing evil things, and they hang out with the Devil and his minions.  Midnight is known as the Witching Hour.  Witches often summon up horrible things from beyond as well as have familiars reporting to them, usually in the form of black cats.  They cast spells and excel in black magic.  Witches often seem to feed off of fear itself, as seen in the Blair Witch films with wooden x-shapes that are left about decorating the forest to terrify the victims (see 2017: #1-THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HORROR).  

Which are the most well known, supposedly real, witches?  Folk tales do provide us with three well known witches.  Baba Yaga comes from Russia, first written about in 1755.  She was the typical old grandmotherly witch who created a hut that walked around on large chicken feet.  She could be harmful or helpful, but was rumored to have a nasty nose.  Black Annis is a witch rumored to live in a cave near Leichestershire, England since the Middle Ages (see 2011: #8-MONSTERS ON THE LOOSE 3).  Black Annis is certainly less friendly than Baba Yaga since she is known to use her iron talons to grab children and devour them, later wearing their skins around her waist since she doesn’t shop at Versace.  The Witch of Endor is not some witch from a Star Wars film ruling over the moon of the Ewok teddy bear people.  The Witch of Endor is from the Book of Samuel from The Bible.  She sees spirits rising from the ground and is a helpful and friendly witch…from The Bible?

Which is the most powerful fictional witch?  Circe was either the daughter of Helios, the sun god or Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft.  That would make her at least half divine, yet she was outwitted by Odysseus.  The Graeae are a trio of divine witches from Greek mythology and are related to Medusa (see 2013: #2-MEDUSAS).  However, the Graeae are old and share one eye, so they are handicapped.  The Graeae is what inspires trios of old witches appearing in fiction such as in Macbeth.  The Blair Witch certainly makes the top three since it is said to have killed more than ten people, often in rather groody and gory ways.  2015’s The Blair Witch showed the form of the Blair Witch if you freeze-framed the movie.  It was very tall, thin, mostly naked, with stringy black hair and impossibly long arms and legs.  Probably the monster form of Mary Brown.  The Blair Witch clearly has little helpers or familiars, and it may have illusionary, hallucinatory, and mind altering abilities.  It demonstrates an ability of manipulating time unlike any other witch.  The Blair Witch may be the most powerful witch we have almost seen.  But flying monkeys sure are cool.

In history were there really witches?  No.  Not at all.  Old women who were sick were persecuted, tortured, and killed.  It was an issue of people with bad brains contaminated with superstition and steeped in stupidity blaming others for their mishaps.  Then those who were insanely religious moved into to glorify themselves while they tortured, oppressed, and killed others.  Witch hunting clearly involved oppression of women, the mentally ill, and included the persecution of sexual deviancy.  They fueled their witch hunting by believing that witches were going to unleash the Devil and bring about the Apocalypse.  Books were written providing instructions on witch hunting, with the most well known book being the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches) from 1486.  “Early modern artistic representations of witches articulated and perpetuated beliefs about witch’s bodies, emphasizing their diabolical power and moral weakness. The typical witch was depicted as old, and often naked (to display her sagging breasts, a sign of depleted and supposedly repellent femininity), with flying hair (a code for errant and uncontrolled sexuality).  The cauldron—itself a perversion of female domesticity— also connoted a powerful, almost volcanic vagina (The Encyclopedia of Witches, p 132).”

What are the best witch films to watch for Halloween?  The most recent critically successful film release was 2015’s realistic, The Witch.  Rob Zombie’s The Lords of Salem is quite good.  The Masters of Horror tv series episode, The Dream in the Witchhouse, is a particularly good and chilling adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft story.  But the original The Blair Witch project is one of the best.  There are three magical foreign witch films I recommend.  Suspiria is Italian director, Dario Argento’s best film.  It was released in 1977 and includes the peculiar Udo Kier and Joan Bennett from Dark Shadows (see 2016: #7-GUIDE TO DARK SHADOWS).  Haxan is a 1922 Swedish documentary that was banned in the US; watch the version narrated by William S. Burroughs.  It is a creepy cornucopia of dark witchy images.  Viy is a 1967 Russian film worth seeking out about a young priest who must spend the night in a haunted church; the special effects are unique.  

I first became aware of witches when I was very young because a witch appears on Gypsy Witch Fortune Playing Cards which my grandmother owned.  Have I ever actually known a witch?  Yes, I worked with her at a strange retail store many moons ago (see 2009: #11-THE DIABLERO, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBES).  But lots of people call themselves witches these days, for lots of reasons.  Witches have permeated our culture from literature, film, tv, even music.  Mort Garson’s delightfully danceable, 1968 album, The Wozard of Iz, has all sorts of witchyness.  The topic of witches is very much like the two sides of the moon.  One side is dark, nonfiction, and is full of innocent people being tortured and killed thru witch hunts.  But the other side is illuminated, really interesting and creative, made of fiction and with possibilities of Halloween costumes and spooky movies.  Life is a witch, then you fly.