#subversive re-interpretation

[cappymightwrite]

I think jonsas dismissing j+d as something a pure invention is dishonest. We know they're gonna have a connection with each other and if it's not romantic then GRRM shouldn't have made Val as a Daenerys stand in. There are grounds for their romantic entanglement.

We don't "know" anything. It's all theories and it's all differences of opinion and interpretation! Bar possibly R+L=J, I'll always bristle at any theory being proclaimed as "basically canon."

But I'll tell you, and I'm being honest here, the evidence I find most "compelling" re J+D is... it's just how fucking derivitive it is. Oh sure, there are grounds all right... derivitive grounds.

No, genuinely, that's what that theory rests on most of all... it's how expected it is—he's ice, she's fire, wink wink, nudge nudge. She's the hot dragon lady, he's the hot broody guy. She's a Targ, he's a Stark, rival houses but... oh, what if... what if love overcame and maybe, if just for one moment (before he nissa nissas her) they are infinite!!

Give me a break, give me something MORE! I'm putting Jonsa in the bin here and I'm talking from a narrative perspective! J+D is derivitive as hell and sure, people like derivitive things, I do too at times, but I think if GRRM really aspires to elevate his series to something more than your run of the mill fantasy he should also aspire to something more challenging and subversive in the romance department too.

Maybe I'm just being contrary, pushing up against the status quo opinion, but I think BNFs need to be far more rigorous with their analysis of their possible future dynamic, which, btw, I don't deny will be there, and actually, I'm looking forward to it because what I get from Val is far more foreboding, imo, than lovey-dovey romantic. Again, that's my opinion, which you can disagree with, that's not me being "dishonest" to myself, concealing some burden of J+D truth.

Look, if GRRM is a reductive, unimaginative writer when it comes to romance (this self professed Romantic btw) then yeah, maybe I'll eat my hat and he'll go there and we'll get a tarted up version of the dog's dinner we got on the show... riviting stuff, can't wait. I just think (again, my opinon here) that he'll be a lesser writer for it if he does.

Honestly, these BNFs love to throw about the Faulkner quote like it's going out of style, but I really do wonder how many of them have actually read him... hmm, could be something to do with agendas, but who am I to say! Thanks for the ask.

[genericpuff]

What are your thoughts on LO Krokos and LO Ampelus (Psyche) ?

These two male mythological figures, who had a gay relationship with gods, turned into female characters ! If they weren't included (especially since Dionysus is still a baby here), I wouldn't mind. But just using those names like that TWICE is strange, right ?

It's also weird how LO turns two virgin goddesses into lesbians, but don't even implement the canon gay relationships.

Can you find an explanation?

I mean I can't really offer an explanation because obviously I have no way of really seeing into Rachel's head, but it's definitely a choice that she's taken so many gods and characters from Greek myth and turned them into something else entirely, it feels very random and, in the case of the gods who were canonically gay/queer/etc. ... it's hard to ignore and give benefit of the doubt.

Another example is Persephone's therapist, Chiron, who's not just gender bent, but also put into the role of being a therapist ?? Which is like, okay, fine, but like... what is this accomplishing besides vaguely referencing Chiron's affiliation with medicine LOL

(this wound up turning into a bit of an essay so I'm including a jump to make it easier for scrollers lol)

To me, it just feels like it really cements Rachel as not being as well-read in Greek myth as she claims to be, because so much of the actual Greek myth in this comic is either taken directly from first results on Google (see: Zeus' definition of xenia which is taken straight from a Princeton study guide from 2004) and slapped haphazardly into the comic where it's convenient, OR it's just vaguely referenced at even if it's not being properly utilized (like she saw 'Chiron, wise centaur' and went "yeah cool she can be the therapist character!"). I have zero explanation or even assumption as to why she'd turn Crocus, a male lover of Hermes, into Krokos the flower nymph, or why she'd choose to use Ampelus as the name Psyche adopts after being turned into a nymph (which also didn't happen in the original myth). These are "creative choices" that come across as less creative and more just random attempts to make her seem smart.

Like, to a surface level reader or someone who's new to the series, it might seem neat and subversive (it definitely did to me back when I started reading and fell in love with it), but then you actually get further in and peel back the layers and go, "wait, she's just grabbing Greek names that are affiliated with real Greek heroes and gods and characters at random-" and it gets especially ick when it commits queer erasure in the process.

Don't get me wrong, I think having fun with character designs and swapping them or changing them up is perfectly fine, that's the fun of re-interpreting old stories, it's not that on its own that's the issue. It's just that these re-interpreted characters have literally NOTHING to do with the characters that she's basing them on. At least in Punderworld where Charon is a woman, she's still a psychopomp who ferries souls to the Underworld, her being gender-bent doesn't change much because her character and role in the story is still largely the same. Or like in Hadestown how the Underworld is more of a coalmine with Hades running it as a business, instead of the River Styx being a literal river it's a brick wall that protects the Underworld from outsiders ("and they call it freedom"). In both of these examples, they're taking the source material and making it fun and new, while still respecting the source material they're taking it from and keeping it on theme with that source material.

By comparison, Rachel just creates these character references and that's where it ends, they're just references and they don't do anything new or interesting with them, they're not even adjacent to what they're referencing. So we wind up with Chiron being a therapist, Ampelus being the nymph version of Psyche, the Fates looking and acting the exact same as each other even though they had different roles to play between Past, Present, and Future, and Aphrodite's children who... are literally made up from scratch, instead of pulling from the actual real children that Aphrodite had loads of in the original myths.

So many of Rachel's writing choices feel like attempts to be "subversive" when they're not, they're just random. Nothing about the things she changes from the original source material does anything to further explore that source material, it's just yoinking things at random to try and seem more Greek while also further separating her work from legitimate Greek culture. Even when you THINK something is about to be retold in an interesting way, it's very promptly either swept under the rug or veered off in a whole other direction that makes zero sense for what it set up (ex. Echo, what the fuck happened to Echo-)

It's very "ideas first, structure never" writing, she comes up with standalone ideas that sound good in isolation, until she actually tries to execute them and connect them and you realize they have no through line or reason to exist the way they do. It's giving real hard "first draft" vibes, so much of what Rachel chose to do should have been left on the cutting room floor (meanwhile the things that supposedly did get left on the cutting room floor SHOULD HAVE BEEN KEPT IN THE COMIC, ex. Hera's coat prophecy, Hades and Persephone having a date in the Underworld where she decides she might want to go into law, etc.)

Ugh. This got longer than I intended it to. It's just frustrating. I have inspiration to write that essay about queer erasure in LO now, at least. So yeah, hold on tight for that one LMAO

[kaurwreck]

Whatcha think of how Mori is depicted by Asagiri? People are always mad about it, so I do wonder your own opinion of it.

I think Kafka Asagiri is cheeky and clever, but I'm not very objective about his choices because I knew next to nothing when I first began watching the anime, and researching complex, multidisciplinary, and context-laden subject matter about which I have very little prior knowledge is something I love doing so much that I've made it my career and most of my hobbies. I'm very, very easily delighted by layers I can sink my teeth into, and I get immense satisfaction (i.e., a lot of dopamine) from untangling patterns, recognizing references, and exploring contours I hadn't initially noticed by deepening my contextual knowledge.

The rush I get from learning means that engaging from a starting place of near total ignorance and then retroactively piecing together more information ensures I'm continously starry eyed and dazzled by the depth I'm perceiving. But I'm an American reader who was entirely unfamiliar with the Japanese literary references or relevant Japanese history prior to watching the anime or reading the manga, and I'm piecing together context from limited English-language resources. So, much of what I'm getting a rush out of learning for the first time is likely common knowledge to the native Japanese audience. It's easy to think that the water is deep when you first jump in and can't touch the ground.

For an example of how my unfamiliarity manifests as bias: I love Fitzgerald as an antagonist and then uneasy ally, and I enjoy that Fitzgerald's skill manifests as green light. But I've already chewed his themes and source material references to bits, having studied the Great Gatsby and its period-relevance re: the disillusionment of the jazz age in high school. I was already familiar with the significance of the green light to Fitzgerald's relationship with wealth and how it enchants him such that he becomes so obsessed with its hazy distortion of his dreams that he forgets himself. I liked how the anime and manga both interpret the green light, and I especially like how the green light wraps around his body, lightly paralleling Chuuya's Corruption runes and thus tinting Fitzgerald's skill with the suggestion of possession/loss of control.

But although it's a lot of fun to trace those familiar patterns in a novel interpretation, it can't compare to the thrill I felt when I belatedly realized that Vita Sexualis isn't erotica but instead a skeptical reflection on sex and the purported objectivity of naturalism; or when I learned that irl!Mori was the most girl dad to ever girl dad. With Mori, my expectations were subverted, Mori's character became brilliantly nuanced where he was flat to me before, and I felt the same rush of pleasure as if I was made privy to an inside joke. Fitzgerald felt comparatively like rediscovering a favorite blanket buried in the back of my closet; warm and fond, but not gripping or perspective-shifting. (Unlike when I first read the Great Gatsby, and thought it saturated in clever and well wrought commentary that complicated my prior feelings and prompted me to grapple with my own sources of green light.)

In other words, I don't have any objectivity here for the same reason I shouldn't be trusted regarding how badly any of my tattoos hurt. I remember vaguely that they did, but the process flooded me with enough endorphins that the edges of my memories are blunted and tinted rose.

So, to actually answer your question, I think Kafka Asagiri's depiction of Mori is brilliant and witty and subversive, layered with insight into the blurred lines between love and imperative, fear and intuition. I think Mori is emotionally wrought but manicured with pathological attenuation, which renders his bursts of passion all the more compelling. He's also funny and silly and horrifying in how his levity only ornaments and never softens the weight and gravitas of his presence.

I used to feel like Kafka Asagiri's suggestive playfulness regarding Mori was in bad taste, given the severity of the implications. I don't anymore; Kafka Asagiri is hardly as irreverent as academic commentary on Mori Ogai's medical legacy regarding beriberi or Mari Mori's love for him. I wouldn't enjoy Mori nearly as much if he were reduced to an easily digested archetype or caricature without any of the dissonance that humanizes him.

I also can't take seriously my own first impressions of Mori's character either; I've rewatched and reread bsd several times over, and I can't recall the narrative ever affirming or validating my initial presumptions. I reacted rather than engaged, which is fine as an instinct, but I certainly shouldn't conflate it with analysis.

But, as I said, I'm not objective about bsd. I think Kafka Asagiri is brilliant and fun and thoughtful. I think Mori is a watermelon full of hamburger meat that I love gnawing. I think bsd is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Carthago delenda est.

[deseretgear]

Lilith

recently I saw a post where someone was claiming that since Lilith is traditionally in Jewish mythology a demon associated with death of children, death in childbirth, etc that its wrong to do modern feminist re-imaginings of her, as if it's like a white cultural appropriation that doesn't support Jewish interpretation

And this felt off to me but since I haven't really been a religious Jew (I'm a cultural/ethnic Jew) I didn't comment. But the thing is: Jewish feminists have recognized for YEARS the subversive potential of re-interpreting Lilith. There is even a feminist Jewish magazine named after her. As a general rule, while its important to be careful of modern appropriation and interpretation of other religions, its also important that especially with Jewish religion and culture that people don't fall for the idea that there is this monoculture or single set of interpretations, or that the ability to recognize subversive or feminist or suspect aspects of a story are like uniquely modern/white/western traits. Jews have been interpreting and reinterpreting our own stories for as long as we've had them and plenty of rabbis talk about reinterpreting Lilith through a feminist and sex-positive lens.

Another very interesting aspect of the Lilith story is that Lilith originates/was codified in the medieval text the Alphabet of Ben Sirah, and seems to have been created to explain why there are 2 creation 'stories' listed in Genesis; Genesis 1:27 describes god creating humans in male and female forms, and Genesis 2 describes god again creating eve from adam's rib (or side) because he was lonely. (Again I'm mostly reporting from what Rabbis like Danya Ruttenberg and others have said). Lilith is one of those figures who is not accepted as a real part of the mythology by all Jews, and her presence in the actual Torah and writings of the prophets is mostly by 'implication' or interpretation. There is a lilith mentioned in Isaiah in a more generic way, but this lilith appears to be treated more as a generic demon if i recall. Again, there are plenty of modern scholarship that also criticizes the use of Lilith as a feminist icon, and there are good reasons for both positions! But I do want to push back against the idea that somehow Jews are not a part of our own modern midrash.

[gayleviticus]

i finished reading damascus by christos tsiolkias (his novel about the apostle paul and early christianity) and was very pleasantly surprised by how it manages to be such a nuanced and complex look at such a controversial figure without descending into the saccharine preachiness of Christian fiction (and in fact, being written by someone who is not a Christian and also filled with enough shits, fucks, cunts, and reference to arse-fucking to instantly kill the average Christian fiction writer)

he manages to balance contrasts very effectively; a cruel, profane world of crucifixion and rape with a genuinely subversive religion of love and solidarity; a Paul flowing with genuine kindness and faith but also struggles with streaks of pride and jealousy.

but what impresses me most of all is the way the novel holds both Paul's apocalyptic gospel of resurrection in a world to come and its radical rejection of the injustice of this world with Thomas' naturalistic gospel that the kingdom has come and is among us already in Jesus' teaching. especially the way Tsiolkias acknowledges that even as Paul's gospel sits awkwardly with our modern scepticism it has heirs in any revolutionary tradition that wishes to change the world; it is this gospel that stands in condemnation of the systems of the world as they stand, and that spread the teachings of Jesus to the entire world (notably Damascus takes the interpretation that none of the other apostles bar Paul would fellowship with Gentiles). it would have been very easy to tap into the zeitgeist of scepticism and write a novel where Paul is a charlatan or crazy fundamentalist, and the gospel of Thomas marginalised and ignored as heretical and Gnostic is rather the true faith buried by orthodoxy. Paul is a very acceptable scapegoat to bash; if we can blame all the uncomfortable bits of the Bible on him (or the bloodthirsty and primitive Old Testament) we can maintain an unsullied image of pure Christianity. [and i don't mean to say this is entirely unjustified, especially given the way evangelicalism in particular loves to deploy isolated verses rather than entire texts! When your primary mode of engagement with him is not actually reading his epistles as works of literature, but throwing Romans 1.27 at gay people to convince them to stop being gay 100 times, that is naturally going to deeply warp your perspective of how much of his corpus is actually problematic (which, imo, when we account for 1) cultural norms re homosexuality and pederasty 2) the fact about 3-6 'Pauline' epistles were probably not written by him and 3) some verses possibly being interpolations, is really not that much).] But such a novel purporting to expose Paul as a fundamentalist charlatan would be just as didactic and simplistic as pious Christian fiction where Paul can do no wrong and harbour no doubts and is a direct mouthpiece for 21st-century evangelical doctrine. And so I very much appreciate the thought and empathy Tsolkias puts into this novel to understand Paul, rather than taking a few soundbites as an excuse to dismiss the man entirely. His Paul is flawed - a man who falls victim to jealousy, who sometimes makes his heart stone to avoid doubt - but also a man who believes in friendship and love across barriers of male and female, slave and free, Jew and Greek, one who hopes that this world mired in empire and oppression and crucifixion need not be the only way. and also a man who has a homoerotic relationship with Timothy that also has v queer-coded parallels in him bringing home an uncircumcised Gentile to the apostles in Jerusalem who he fears will reject this pagan. which is cool imo

[i-sveikata]

I’m re-reading the last chapter and I’ve just got to say I really like how you write Vegas’ character. Forgive me if I don’t explain this correctly but I believe the original character of Vegas (and the Vegas portrayed in most ff) is very much only interested in being in control and a Dom when it comes to sex with Pete. (Maybe I’m wrong and this is just the Vegas portrayal I tend to see). But in yours he is very into the idea of Pete taking on that role and whilst I’m sure he would love to do do the same to Pete he knows that’s not really an option atm because of their past. But what I love with your writing of Vegas is that you haven’t changed his whole personality because of this. Idk if it makes sense but soooo often when I read a ff of the characters switching this dynamic it’s like their whole personality changes with it! But no, your Vegas is still absolutely mad and I love it😂

I hope that makes sense but if not all you need to know is I love your writing and I looooove how you write Vegas’ and Pete’s personalities and the reasons why they act the way they do!

Hey anon!! Thank you!! Ohhh that’s really interesting!! Tbh I’ve only read a handful of fic about them and I’ve never actually read the original book so mostly all of the decisions I’ve made have been tv show vibes ✨ that I’ve interpreted from the characters.

I didn’t really think that I was doing something that different for him character wise lol I mean took one look at that man being an absolute loser causing problems for everyone else on purpose and just thought hmm that’s someone who is absolutely desperate for love and would be fiercely insane unhinged about it and here we are!!! Lol

Also just comparitively between him and Pete in the show- Pete has a distinct steadiness/ confidence to him that Vegas doesn’t appear to have imo. Or at least Vegas displays it like a game, wears a mask of confidence but defs comes across as emotionally and mentally insecure in a way that Pete doesnt. He strikes me as the one who needs love wayyyyy more than Pete to the point that he’s absolutely feral about it and these kind of character traits seemed to lend very easily (at least to me) towards Vegas being at Pete’s mercy in a lot of ways and Pete being the steady one who wants to take care of him. So yes that comes across in their sexual dynamic too.

But tbh I guess I also just love the concept of Vegas completely ignoring Pete in the beginning/ kind of writing him off as a non entity when he was trying to get Porsches attention only to absolutely lose his mind over him now. To not even be able to exist without Pete after he first dismissed him. I just especially think that turnabout is neat ahahahha.

Especially because it’s a lot more fun turning the typical class differential/power dynamic between them completely on its head then playing into what felt to me at times like the very one dimensional character Vegas was acting as. Like it’s very easy to write him off as a psychopath little raincoat murder boy who is willing to go to any lengths to get what he wants because he’s the villain of the story.

It’s 100% more interesting to me that he fucked around and found out and is now entirely swept up in his feelings and desire for Pete as a consequence of that and now he’s fully prepared to submit to Pete instead. To now be willing to do anything in order to keep him. So showing Vegas as a much more complex person and actually a painfully insecure and fucked up one who can’t believe that Pete might actually genuinely like him just came very naturally in this story. That kind of dynamic is much more spicy to me than it would be if it was simply Vegas sleeping with an adjacent subordinate and domming Pete because he likes to be in control. It feels more like a subversion of the serial killer/psychopath/mafia boss tropes to play around with Vegas’ submission to Pete than it would the other way around.

And tbh I think if it was the other way around I’m not sure I would find their dynamic so interesting esp because Pete starts off in such a powerless place in this story- so for him to still be in that position or dynamic obviously wouldn’t be good for Pete re his trauma- but it also allows for less of a shifting/ growing sexual dynamic that’s also running parallel to their own advancing relationship and growing feelings for each other too.

But yes I do hope I haven’t strayed too far from his personality in playing all of this out and I’m glad that you like what I’ve come up with!! It’s not about putting a character in a position where they do something that doesn’t make sense or reflect their personality or actions it’s about twisting the characters thoughts and feelings etc and their circumstances so there’s no other justifiable way for them to behave that really makes writing complex characters fun!

No you totally make sense! And it’s really great to hear peoples different perspectives and their experiences in the same fandom because we’re not all going to think the same about all of these things. It’s all such a wild ride! And truly fascinating to me how people interpret characters differently!!

[power-chords]

i waiting for heat 2 confirmed with adam and oscar

As thrilled as I would be to see Oscar Isaac in the role of Vincent Hanna, I think he's engaged with other projects that conflict with the general timetable. Adam Driver is clearly Mann's top choice for Neil McCauley and I would put money on Austin Butler for Chris Shiherlis at this point.

I am desperately curious as to who is on Mann's list of potential candidates for Vincent Hanna. Heat faced off two legendary New Hollywood icons with complementary careers, at that point both securely “canonized” and in middle age, and so the narrative functions at that postmodern, meta-mythological level. Adam Driver’s connotative figuration in the industry thus makes him an ideal choice for the role of Neil, and I personally would guess this is a much more important criterion for Mann himself than any sort of immediate visual resemblance to De Niro (which I’ve seen some people gripe about on Twitter). That is, the most important quality for any actor who is going to play Neil – secondary only to competence, to be sure – is his ability to embody a certain respected, authoritative presence that resounds between text and intertext.

My theory is that the role of Vincent will go one of two ways. Option 1: Mann has an analogous up-and-coming “Pacino Presence” in mind, and wants a leading man with the right cultural credentials to continue the symbolic subtext put forth by the original story (Oscar Isaac would fit beautifully here, I admit).

Option 2: He will go with a “nobody” (or a “relative nobody,” like a working actor known primarily for his TV or stage roles), thereby advancing the subversive relationship the novel has with the film. To the extent that Heat 2 invites a kind of Fishian operation on the text vis-à-vis Paradise Lost/Surprised By Sin, Vincent very easily transforms into a metaphorical stand-in for us, the audience members, the reader-detectives charged with (re-)interpreting meaning and authorial intention by way of perceptual clues left at the cinematic crime scene. The book explicitly introduces this possibility in a way that the film does not, so it would be interesting to see if he goes with it. With that in mind, as I’ve mentioned before, I hope he’s got somebody like Michael Zegen in the running...

[burningvelvet]

this is a long analysis on titanic (1997), re: my last reblog on titanic’s depiction of rose coming into her own sexuality, being sexually dominant, & actively pursuing jack romantically, + LGBT themes, feminism, & the cal/jack/rose triangle as a freudian representation.

—this is one of the great and unique things about this film and also i’d like to point out that although we see jack liking rose first, rose is the one who actively pursues him every step of the way which is almost never seen in films. the roles are almost always reversed. she’s the one who lies to protect him, she’s the one goes to see jack again on the deck under the guise of thanking him, she’s the one who snatches his art book and asks about the nudes, she’s the one who asks to be drawn and specifically drawn nude, she saves him with an axe, she’s the one who initiates sex, etc.

i despise it when people talk about titanic like it’s the most boring cishet movie of all time when it’s one of THEE most progressive/subversive imo (in terms of popular mass media). jack is one of the only major male romantic figures i’ve ever come across who never says anything sexist even in jest, who never dominates their scenes together whether emotionally/romantically/sexually, and who genuinely helps the female protagonist become a better person rather than vice versa. i can’t even think of comparable male characters, so yes in a way he is the perfect example of a manic pixie dream boy. i would go as far as to call their dynamic a subtle gender role reversal and i don’t know why this isn’t talked about more.

there’s also been a lot of queer interpretations and analysis on titanic which i think is apropos. jack and rose have been seen by some as being butch-coded/lesbian-coded ever since the movie came out, and you can also make a case for rose representing (metaphorically or literally) the experiences of gender-envy or being GNC, especially in the scene where jack nonjudgementally teaches rose to “ride like a man, and spit like a man” — and she says “why can’t i be like you, jack?” — etc. — jack actively encourages her to go against the gender norms and i don’t think it’d be a reach to say that he would be supportive if she was LGBTQ+ and vice versa & that they’re both clearly allies regardless of interpretation. Take for example Rose’s line to Kack: “I know what you must be thinking— poor little rich girl, what does she know about misery?” & Jack’s response: “No, no, that’s not what I was thinking. What I was thinking was, what could’ve happened to this girl to make her feel she had no way out?” — As Rose says, Jack “sees” people, and validates/recognizes them in a way that is similar to the queer theories on queer kinship, allyship, & solidarity. Rose and Jack find each other and feel kinship for each other through their mutual progressive/bohemian values in a way that is commonly experienced by LGBT people finding other LGBT people, which is heightened by Rose/Jack’s mutual attraction & their blooming relationship being socially frowned upon (due to classism + Rose’s engagement).

I also think it’s important to point out that sexuality is a core theme of the movie in general, & this is esp important considering it takes place in 1912. From Rose’s Piccaso painting of the prostitutes, to Rose’s comment at the table about Freud re: male overcompensation, to Cal slut-shaming Rose, to the nude French prostitutes, to Rose saying she’d rather be Jack’s whore than Cal’s wife. The theme of being a “ruined woman” is rampant. Many of Cal/Rose’s scenes are laced with subtle sexual implications with him wanting Rose to be sexually submissive/passive/exclusive/available (“do not deny me”) and her clearly not being interested in that role (Cal asks her why she didn’t come to his rooms late at night when he asked her to, and he’s always the one initiating contact, & she clearly hates him). It is also very clear that Rose sees her wifely duties as performative, and to some extent her gender itself is performative (see: the scene where she watches in anxious disgust as she sees a little girl being taught how to act like a lady through table etiquette, and Rose immediately runs off to Jack). I also think it’s ironically symbolic that Cal gives her his mens coat toward the end, and we see pictures of young her wearing pants and riding horses “like a man” as her and Jack fantasized, etc.

I also think it’s intentional that Jack is slightly tomboyish/androgynous looking, younger, and open-minded, whereas Cal is older, dominant, and represents a sort of Byronic “tall, dark hair, handsome, rich” version of masculine appeal. There’s also the split in politics, class, etc. — they represent opposite ends of male sex appeal while both being attractive. The love story wouldn’t be effective if Cal was unattractive bc his sex appeal is necessary to the narrative. Jack and Cal’s contrasting versions of sex appeal are what make this love triangle so effective yet conflicting (aside from their differences in personality and Cal being abusive/Jack being supportive) because the contrast between Jack/Cal highlights and brings out Rose’s sexuality and her transgressive sexual desires. She refuses to be sexually passive for Cal. In nearly all of their scenes together, Rose and Cal are constantly competing for sexual dominance through their dynamic—whereas with Jack, Rose doesn’t have to compete for dominance bc Jack accepts her for the way she is and actively lets her take the reigns and sexually guide him, and Jack feels comfortable in the role he plays. During the drawing scene and in the car scene, he’s presented as being shy and nervous but is still clearly enthralled by her, whereas Rose is suddenly the comfortable/confident/more knowledgeable one, even making jokes when Jack reacts to seeing her disrobe. Typically in cishet romances, the roles would be reversed, which is what Cal desires—that’s Cal’s tragedy, that in the end when he searches for Rose during the sinking and then later on the Carpathia, he’s mourning a fantasy of who Rose was, & tried molding her into a submissive version of herself & destroying her dominant/masculine side.

For these reasons, I believe Jack also represents a part of Rose’s subconscious mind, and that the lines “he exists now only in my memory,” “it was the ship of dreams, and it was, it really was,” are symbolic of this. I see their relationship as being more importantly a deep bond of friendship and a connection between two kindred spirits than being solely romantic. To use a Freudian model, Jack helps bring out Rose’s “id” whereas Cal tries to supress it and bring out Rose’s “superego,” and Rose ends the film by forming a healthy “ego”—this is what makes the Cal/Jack/Rose love triangle so riveting and effective, because it represents this clash of values and this tug-of-war thru this Freudian Trio.

I’m considering turning all this into an actual academic essay atp lmao

[adarkrainbow]

I am currently re-reading Jack Zipes' "Fairytales and the art of subversion". Well I am re-reading this book's chapter on French fairytales, and I do plan on reading the rest of the work. And I have to say I might have been a bit too harsh about Zipes. I still wouldn't recommend him as a way to understand French literary fairytales - but at least now I understand why he is wrong, despite seemingly getting so many things right.

Because there ARE many right and true things in this book's second chapter. The summarized chronology of French literary fairytales ; the double inheritage of French folklore and Italian literature ; the enormous influence French literary fairytales had on the 18th and 19th century Germany... It's all there, correct and good.

But the main problem of Jack Zipes' interpretation and description of French fairytales remain. However I don't blame Zipes for it because this book was clearly written in the 80s United-States, for the 80s Americans, and as such yes there are things debunked now and yes Zipes evokes things that "nobody" does when in fact some people have done them before - just in Europe (like the whole segment in the first chapter about nobody caring about the social or historical analysis of fairytales). Similarly, the main flaw of this second chapter is very simply put a widespread misinformation, a common incorrect belief, but that is unfortunately still surviving to this day, and that is no surprising to see in 80s works - this misconception still is seen today, and its debunking is relatively "recent", at least recent enough to not be widespread.

And here's the problem: Jack Zipes writes his chapter and his analysis with one preconception and one thesis. Perrault (and others like mademoiselle L'Héritier or madame d'Aulnoy) wrote their fairytales for both adults and children, but with a strong focus on children ; if they added morals to their stories it was because these fairytales were moralistic education tools ; and the main goal and nature of these fairytales was a social and cultural endoctrinment to shape the "adults of tomorrow".

The idea that Perrault and others wrote exclusively or mainly for children was indeed widespread thanks to the 19th century mishandling of fairytales as a whole ; but this is false. And from this false basis that fairytales were mainly aimed at children, Zipes creates an analysis that could have worked... But is actually false, or very, very superficial - because to consider that Perrault and co.'s fairytales were aimed at children is a superficial reading of the stories with a strong lack of critical view or context-knowledge.

The real deal of the thing is this - yes, the "wave of fairytales" started out for adults and ended up for children, as Zipes himself explains. But Zipes (and all the others he based himself on) are wrong in believing the fairytales were aimed at children since the beginnings. Perrault, madame d'Aulnoy, mademoiselle L'Héritier and the others, did NOT write for children - they wrote for adults. And yes, Perrault evoked how his stories were "for children"... But he also wrote about how his stories had been written by his teenage son and not himself - but a careful look proves that Perrault's fairytales were only aimed at children as a "pretense", as a sort of stylistic ornament, as a literary "game" so to speak, the same way Perrault had to pretend the stories had not been written by him but collected by his youngest son - it was all part of the... "persona" if you will. It was only by the mid 18th century, with the renewal of the "literary French fairytale (non-orientalist)" that some authors started to think "Wait... Maybe we could use fairytales to teach children while entertaining them! Actually do pedagogic fairytales instead of just "playing pretend" at being literary moralists!". The most defining and prominent of those authors was madame Leprince de Beaumont, the first to ACTUALLY write literary fairytales for children, as in REALLY for children, not as in "Yeah, we say we write for children but clearly only adults will read it". One might argue Fénelon did wrote, at the end of the 17th century, pedagogic fairytales for the child he was supposed to teach (THE ROYAL HEIR!)... But unlike Perrault or d'Aulnoy's fairytales, which were public, Fénelon's story were private and only published after his death, in the 18th century.

As for how Perrault and d'Aulnoy's stories, written by adults for adults, ended up as "classics of childhood literature"... Well its simple: the Blue Library and the peddling books. The Blue Library, the most famous and renowned collection of cheap books sold to the uneducated masses by peddlers, did their money by taking great classics or massively popular works and printing out heavily edited or simplified versions of them - and the Blue Library immediately took all the most successful literary fairytales of the salons, and printed them out, and shared them massively across France for the non-aristocratic folks, and the uneducated folks, and the poor peasants... Which is how the stories became part of French popular culture, but which is also why the entire literary context and socio-cultural meaning of these tales was completely lost. How could the barely-alphabetized countryside family understand the refined puns, the courtly caricatures and the book references made in these stories (often very simplified, chaotically edited or misprinted?). People only remember pretty princesses and talking cats and fairy godmothers, and thus they classified it all back into "children stories" and, in a full circle, these literary stories invented out of the folklore became in turn folktales of the French countryside...

So yes, Jack Zipes' chapter on French fairytales is wrong, and spread misinformation, but it isn't his fault - he just did with what was widespread at the time, and he did his best as a foreigner dealing with works even misunderstood in their own country, AND his work is simply a bit outdated. Its not bad, it just... Didn't age well

[mademoiselle-red]

I’ve been thinking about how my favorite genre of fanfiction are works that seem to say to the original work, “great concept but I want to execute it differently.” I love how it takes the building blocks of the original work and show how the resulting story could have been arranged differently.

A sub-genre of that I absolutely adore are fanfics that are beautifully written, gentle, whimsical, or romantic in tone, but whose concepts, thematic and stylistic decisions are explicitly hostile and antagonistic to those in the original work. There is something so enticing about the gentle violence of a Draco/Harry fic that turns some of values and choices of the original series upside-down.

I love the way this played out in the fandom for the Alexander Trilogy by Mary Renault. The second book in the trilogy, The Persian Boy is itself a “transformative” work that offers an alternate interpretation of the history and cultural myth(s) of Alexander the Great. It imagines a romantic relationship between Alexander and the eunuch Bagoas, his only male lover recorded in official histories. The story centers this relationship while sidelining the much more heavily mythologized and romanticized relationship between Alexander and the general Hephaestion, his friend / right-hand-man / maybe-lover . Historians from antiquity record in extravagant detail Alexander’s deep emotional attachment to Hephaestion, but nothing about sexual love was ever written in the official histories. By making its protagonist Bagoas, The Persian Boy centers the romance around the explicitly queer relationship over the maybe-queer relationship historians liked to call “platonic”. The novel does depict Alexander and Hephaestion in a sexless marriage-like kind of romantic love, but does not make it the focus of the story. The focus of the romance is between Alexander and Bagoas. I think the novel is very successful in selling this romance and challenging the Alexander / Hephaestion mythos. But it is apparent that the fan favorite couple, even in this fandom, is still Alexander/Hephaestion. And most of these fan works write back against The Persian Boy’s narrative decision to de-center Hephaestion by re-centering Alexander/Hephaestion in their stories, drawing from both Renault’s work and the works of Roman historians, medieval poets, renaissance artists, and other contemporary novelists & historians. When reading and writing Alexander/Hephaestion fanfics, it sometimes feels to me like the mythos itself is writing back against Renault’s attempt at subversion with the might of millennia of storytelling and the fury of millennia of marginalization. On a meta fourth-wall-breaking level, Renault’s Bagoas had foreseen this: Hephaestion will always win, in both The Persian Boy and in the cultural consciousness of its fans. He had won long before Renault set pen to paper, on the day the historical Alexander, the Alexander of our world, immortalized their love through his elaborate displays of devotion and grief. The part of me that reads literature like a blood sport delights in the knowledge that in the collective cultural consciousness, Alexander will always love Hephaestion more.

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this week (#169):

3 by forgotten [re-discovered?] Turkish director, Metin Erksan:

🍿  Dry Summer, a mesmerizing 1964 Turkish masterpiece I never heard of before. It tells of a greedy peasant who refuses to share the water on his field with his neighbors, as well as his scheme to steal his younger brother's new bride. (Photo Above). A rustic tragedy featuring one of the most insidious screen villains ever. Highly recommended. 9/10.

It was championed and restored by Martin Scorsese's 'World Cinema Project'. (I'm going to start chewing through their list of preserved classics from around the world.)

🍿 Time to love (1965) is a fetishistic, probably-symbolic, melodrama about a poor house painter who falls in love with a wall portrait of a woman, but who can't or won't love the real person. Lots of brooding while heavy rains keep pouring down, and traditional oud music drones on. Strikingly beautiful black and white cinematography elevates this strange soap opera into something that Antonioni could have shot.

🍿 "May Allah's mercy be upon her! May Allah's mercy be upon her! May Allah's mercy be upon her!"

In 1974 Erksan directed the cheesy Seytan ("Satan"), a plagiarized, unauthorized Turkish rip-off of 'The Exorcist'. It was a schlocky, nearly a shot-by-shot copy, and included the blood spurting, head spinning, cursing, stairs, a young actress that looked strikingly like Linda Blair, and even extensive use of Mike Oldfield's 'Tubular Bells'. But it eliminated the Catholic element and had none of the superb decisions of the William Friedkin's version. 1/10.

🍿  

Agnès Varda's deceivingly blissful drama, Le Bonheur. Exquisite, subversive and beautifully simple, about an uncomplicated man who's completely happy with his idyllic life, his loving wife and two little children. But one summer day he takes on an attractive mistress, while still feeling uncommonly fulfilled and undisturbed. Varda lets the Mozart woodwind score do all the heavy interpretive lifting of this disturbing feminist take of the bourgeoisie. Just WOW! 8/10.

At this point, I should just complete my explorations of Varda's oeuvre, and see the rest of her movies. Also, I'm going to take a deep dive one day into the many terrific movies from 1965 (besides the many I've already seen, 'Red Beard', 'Simon of the desert', 'Repulsion', 'The spy who came in from the cold', 'Juliet of the spirit', 'Pierrot the fool'...).

/ Female Director

🍿

2 by amazing Bulgarian director Milko Lazarov:

🍿 Ága, my first Bulgarian film, but it plays somewhere in Yakutsk, south of the Russian arctic circle. An isolated old Inuit couple lives alone in a yurt on the tundra. Slow and spiritual, their lives unfold in the most unobtrusive way, it feels like a documentary. But the simplicity is deceiving, this is film-making of the highest grade, and once Mahler 5th was introduced on a small transistor radio, it's transcendental. The emptiness touched me deeply.

Together with 93 other movies, this was submitted by Bulgaria to the 2019 Oscars (the one won by 'Parasite'). How little we know; If selected, we might have all be talking about it. Absolutely phenomenal! The trailer represents the movie well. 10/10

(It also reminded me very much of the Bolivian drama 'Utama' from 2022, another moving story of an elderly Indian couple living alone in the desert, tending to their small flock of llamas.)

🍿 Milko Lazarov made only one earlier film, the minimalist Alienation in 2013. It tells of Yorgos, a middle age Greek man, (impassively played by the father from 'Dogtooth'), who crosses the border to Bulgaria to buy a newborn baby. But it's not as bad as it sounds, because he's actually helping the impoverished surrogate mother (who looks like young Tilda Swinton) who can't effort to keep him. Another stark and snail-like drama about quiet people who barely speak, told with the masterful language of a true poet. Like 'Ága', it too opens with a stunning close up of a lengthy incantation in an unfamiliar language. I wish he made more movies. 8/10.

🍿  

2 more arctic dramas:

🍿 The original movie about indigenous Inuks, Nanook of the North, from 1922, was the first feature-length documentary to achieve commercial success. An engaging slice of life of an Inuit family, even if some of the scenes were staged. 💯 score on Rotten Tomatoes.

🍿 "Many of the scientists involved with climate change agree: The end of human life on this planet is assured."

Another fascinating Werner Herzog documentary, Encounters at the end of the world. About the "professional dreamers" who live and work at McMurdo Station in Antarctica; divers who venture to explore life under the the ice, volcanologists who burrow into ice caves, etc. Herzog's 'secret sauce' is finding the most outrageous, interesting spots on earth, and then just going there and letting his camera do his bidding.

🍿

2 fantastic shorts by Hungarian animator Réka Bucsi:

🍿 Her 2014 Symphony No. 42 consists of 47 short & whimsical vignettes, without any rhyme or rhythm; A farmer fills a cow with milk until it overflows, a zoo elephant draws a "Help me" sign, a UFO sucks all the fish from the ocean, wolves party hard to 'La Bamba', an angry man throws a pie at a penguin, two cowboys holding blue balloons watch a tumbleweed rolls by, a big naked woman cuddle with a seal, etc. Earlier than Don Hertzfeldt's 'World of tomorrow' and my favorite Rúnar Rúnarsson's 'Echo', it's a perfect piece of surrealist chaos. 10/10

My happiest, unexpected surprise of the week!

/ Female Director

🍿 Love (2016), a lovely meditation on nature, poetry and cats in the cosmos. 8/10.

/ Female Director

🍿

Françoise Dorléac X 2:

🍿 Her name was Françoise ("Elle s’appelait Françoise") is a fluff bio-piece about the utterly gorgeous model-actress, who died at a fiery car-crush at 25, and who left a legacy of only a few important films. It includes previously-unseen, enchanting clips and photos from her short life. But then is cuts into her and sister Catherine Deneuve practicing their "Pair of Twins" song-and-dance from 'The Young Girls of Rochefort', the most charming musical in the world, and life is sunny again.

/ Female Director

🍿 That man from Rio, her breakthrough film, was a stupid James Bond spoof, inspired by 'The adventures of Tintin'. Unfortunately, it focused on protagonist Jean-Paul Belmondo, and used Dorléac only as eye-candy. It's the first film I've seen from Brasília, just a few years after it was constructed. 2/10.

🍿

Paintings and Film X 3:

🍿 'Painting Nerds' is a YouTube channel by 2 Scottish artists, putting up intelligent video essays about the art of painting. Paintings In Movies: From '2001: A Space Odyssey' to 'Portrait of a Lady on Fire' is an insightful meditation which explores the relationship between the two art forms. Among the many examples it touches on are the canvases in Hitchcock's 'Rebecca' and 'Vertigo', 'The French Dispatch', 'Laura' and 'I'm thinking of ending things'. They even made a Wellesian trailer for that essay, When Citizen Kane met Bambi : The Lost Paintings of Tyrus Wong!

🍿 So I decided to see some of the movies mentioned above, f. ex. Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry from 1955. Famous for being Shirley MacLaine's film debut, his first collaboration with Bernard Herrmann, and this being his only "real" comedy. However, the only engaging element among the idiotic machinations on screen were the stunning VistaVision landscapes, painted in true Vermont autumn colors.

🍿 All the Vermeers in New York is my [5th film about Vermeer, and] my first film by prolific indie director Jon Jost. The Scottish essay above interpretated it as a "Charming mirroring of art and life, but also a deeply sad film... The gallery scene shows the transmission of feeling from painting to person, and ultimately, the vast amount of space between them. It plays out the entire drama of the film in microcosm.." But that Met Gallery scene was the only outstanding one in an otherwise disjointed experiment about the NYC art world. The abrasive stockbroker who falls for a French actress at the museum and mistakes her for a woman from the painting was mediocre and irritating. 3/10.

🍿

First watch: Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, an homage to Melville's Le Samouraï. An RZA mood piece about a ritualistically-chill black assassin / Zen Sensei, who communicates only with carrier pigeons, and who drives alone at night in desolate streets on mafia missions. 'Live by the Code, die by the Code'.

🍿

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Scorsese's only melodrama with a female protagonist (? - haven't seen 'Boxcar Bertha' yet). It opens in a tinted Wizard of Oz scenery, and tells of an ordinary single mom who dreams of becoming a singer. Hardly a feminist story, as she navigates between one unloving husband, an abusive lover and eventually bearded Kris Kristofferson, who ends up beating her son and promises not to do it again. 3/10.

[I finally watched it because of this clip of 15-year-old Jody Foster singing Je t'attends depuis la nuit de temps on French television].

🍿

The new well-made HBO documentary The Truth vs Alex Jones. About the collective mental sickness that is Amerika. It's hard to imagine how insane are the crazies over there. 💯 score on Rotten Tomatoes.

🍿

3 more shorts:

🍿 The Most Beautiful Shots In Movie History, a little mash-up clippy from The "Solomon Society" with an evocative Perfect day cover.

🍿 Joana, a beautiful tribute of a Spanish father to his little daughter. Reminds me of better times and another daughter.

🍿 From hand to mouse, a mediocre 1944 'Looney Tune' short from Chuck Jones, with the same dynamics that the Coyote & Road Runner did much better.

🍿

Ramy Youssef X 3:

🍿 I discovered first-generation Egyptian-American stand-up comedian Ramy Youssef. In his funny 2019 special, Feelings, he comes across as a sweet dude, a sensitive, observant Muslim, on a complicated spiritual quest in New Jersey. Recommended!

🍿 Ramy was his A24 TV-series that expanded on the themes. It had more of a sitcom vibes, reminiscent of 'Master of None', another one that dealt with an unexplored ethnicity, previously marginalized. I only watched the first season, and liked how unapologetic he was in having large part of the dialogue in other languages, Arabic, French, Etc. Episode 7, "Ne Me Quitte Pas", starring his screen-mom Hiam Abbass was a terrific stand-out.

🍿 “Where were you when the floods happened in Pakistan?”

More feelings, his brand new stand up which just dropped is dark and gentle. It opens with some dark truths from his friend Steve who wants to die, and moves right into the situation in Palestine.

(Later: He hosted Saturday Night Live this weekend.)

🍿  

(My complete movie list is here)

[humanperson105]

Gabriel Catren and Meta-Transcendental Philosophy

Gabriel Catren's project (as well as the work of Francois Laruelle) represents a continuation and radicalization of the Kantian/Copernican turn in philosophy that can be called meta-transcendental. “[If we read Laruelle not as a “non-philosopher” but as a meta-transcendental philosopher], [i]t then becomes possible to re-interpret the term ‘decision’ in Laruelle’s work as a synonym for transcendental synthesis [...] In this regard, Laruelle can be interpreted as a kind of renegade Kantian whose internal subversion of transcendental idealism not only rehabilitates the possibility of transcendental realism but also provides Kantianism’s posthumous rejoinder to Hegelian idealism in all its guises [...]” Ray Brassier - Nihil unbound pg 134.If Kantian transcendental philosophy is an account of the conditions by which experience and knowledge are possible, then meta-transcendental philosophy is an account of not just the genesis of the conditions by which experience is possible but the genesis of all possible conditions of experience. Insofar as the practicalist Aristotelian/Fichtean/Kantian orientation subordinates intelligibility to sensibility and roots experience in sensible intuition and apperception (rather than the Hegelian account of the self-determination of normativity, in which sensibility is subordinate to intelligibility), it then follows that possible experience is concomitant with possible sensible intuition, and given that the conditions of sensible intuition cannot be self-determinate, experience can be determined in the last instance by an external entity or unilateral immanence rather than a self-determinate universal totality and thus engender a multiplicity of possible forms of experience in which human experience is but one transcendental perspective among many.

In Catren's rewriting of Christian trinitarianism, the multiplicity of transcendental perspectives or types, what he calls the transcendental landscape, is knit together into a collective patchwork subject by Eros, understood as a force of binding together and integration, which is primary over the force of Thanatos in Catren's inversion of Freud. "... the drive par excellence is no longer the death drive but the drive for life (Eros). The will to remain relegated to the impersonal life, far from taking the form of a death drive that pulls the individual back to the undifferentiated one, manifests as an erotic desire to engender and federate the separated living beings into higher forms of living unity." (Pleromatica -Pg 359) The weak point of Catren's book Pleromatica is that, due to Catren's yolking intelligibility to the sensible, the speculative import of the transcendental landscape is rendered absurd as alien transcendental types become empty abstractions we can know and say nothing about that mirror Hegel's description and critique of the thing in itself as "total emptiness, only described still as an ‘other-world’ the negative of every image, feeling, and definite thought".

[mermaidsirennikita]

Yeah will someone explain to me why there are 15 different adaptations of Jane Eyre and only like 6 of Wuthering Heights??

I think there are honestly a few reasons, lol.

While Rochester is bad, Heathcliff is Worse. Rochester keeps his wife in the attic, yes, but a lot of people (incorrectly lol) brush it off because Bertha is insane (apparently). Heathcliff is based on resentful revenge, and he also does legitimately beat and does God knows what else to his wife, abuses his son, forces an innocent girl to marry his son because of his obsession with her mom... I think people romanticize Rochester and Jane Eyre and find it difficult to do so with Wuthering Heights.

I also think that people project onto Jane and simplify her into being. relatable heroine. Like, Jane is snarky and funny and honestly such a broad, lol. But people act like she's soft and this sweet girl who just neeeeeds to be rescued and is living some fantasy by getting with Rochester. Catherine Earnshaw is honestly difficult from the jump--proud, selfish, elitist, a general bitch. I adore her. A lot of people don't. Catherine Linton isn't immediately accessible, either.

The story is a lot darker; it doesn't end with the lovers together (alive). A cycle of abuse is broken--that's the upshot. There's shit like potential necrophilia, potential incest, ghosts. It's extremely compelling, but it's DARK. A lot of people expect a romance from it, and it's very passionate, but it's more like a horror show.

I also feel like WH has some more subversive interpretations to be found re: race and class, and due to that it's been a bit more suppressed. But tbh, I love Jane Eyre--but I prefer Wuthering Heights. It remains the only book that's inspired a tattoo for me. :)

[apenitentialprayer]

Interpreting Christ's Parables: Four Modes

My own parable research, in particular my doctoral dissertation […], has led to a number of theses that guide and inform me as I interpret Jesus' parables. The first three already formed part of my doctoral studies which focused in particular on those parables peculiar to Luke, and they have been expounded by various scholars worldwide. The last one has found shape more recently. Needless to say, theses are models of interpretation. A model is not a complete picture but a simulation of reality from a certain point of view. It functions as a lens that focuses on a specific area or a map that enlarges one area of an otherwise complex system. Furthermore, the named theses do not suggest they need to be equally prevalent in each and every parable of Jesus, be it the context of the historical Jesus or the narrative world of the Synoptic writers. The first thesis is that Jesus' parables are to be read as metaphorical stories. The whole story —and not just any one particular point— is relevant. As a teacher who challenges conventional views, Jesus' parables are mostly subversive stories and feature predominantly as diaphors that challenge the listener or reader to see reality differently. As I study of the parables of Jesus, I therefore always look for the juxtaposition of dissimilarities, the diaphor, resulting in the unexpected twist in the story, something that will shock the listener. If such a twist is not immediately apparent, it could be that I failed to read the parable within its 1st century social, economic, or political context. Secondly, parables of Jesus are creative language events. Jesus does not simply convey knowledge with his stories by means of fictive illustrations. The everyday stories draw the listener into the story. However, once the listeners are in the story, it either provides them with a promise or a challenge that does not illustrate a new reality but creates that reality. Jesus' parables are by nature speech acts. Thirdly, the parables of Jesus are inherently about the Kingdom of God. Although Jesus addresses various social, economic, and political issues in his parables and uses these to impact his listeners, the parables serve the purpose of conveying to his listeners a vision of the Kingdom of God: the new realm that is dawning upon them as he speaks and as they are listening. The parables form part of Jesus' core message that the Kingdom of God is near (Mk 1:15; Lk. 9:2; 10:9). Fourthly, Jesus' parables mirror the life of Jesus. Jesus does not simply announce the coming of God's Kingdom […], but embodies the dawning Kingdom of God, even as He speaks and tells his stories. 'When the blind receive light, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor' (Lk 7:22), the Kingdom of God is amongst them in the person of Jesus himself (cf. Lk 17:20-21). Being the embodiment of God's dawning Kingdom, the parables mirror (in certain aspects at least) the life of Jesus. As such Jesus himself is God's parable, his speech act. This fourth thesis is based primarily on the work of Georg Baudler, Jesus im Spiegel seiner Gleichnisse […] His work does not suggest that Jesus is always referenced directly or even indirectly in every single parable but that the parables told by Jesus express metaphorically his own experience of the dawning kingdom of God in and through him. These parables are also a reflection not only of the message proclaimed but also of the life that he lived. Baudler is well aware of the fact that the Synoptic writers assimilated and (re)interpreted these parables within their own context, but he contests that such (re)interpretations, often with strikingly different applications, are nevertheless informed by the core message of God's kingdom and the life of the historical Jesus.

- Dieter Reinstorf (The Parable of the Shrewd Manager: A Biography of Jesus and a Lesson on Mercy)

[kentray]

Definitely see what you mean about the writing being tighter in previous seasons, there have been moments when I've felt like a gag didn't quite land for sure. My interpretation of that whole thing is just that the intentionality here is the subversion of expectations - Jamie's growth and sudden use of more than one brain cell takes Beard by surprise because he's always been the one they've intellectually underestimated. Re: the prima donna/pre-Madonna thing, I interpreted that simply as wordplay that reflected the theme of Roy & Jamie's conversation about working hard to gain the prima donna status vs effortless talent - but I see how on the face of it, it comes across as a continuity error. Although maybe I'm just digging my nails into the script and refusing to let go because I loved the writing in previous seasons so much 😂

The thing is, I get all those points. I know exactly what they were doing. Jamie was never dumb, he was underestimated for sure. His learning was impeded by his ego and never being taught in a way that inspired him. We saw it in S1 when he told Keeley he appreciated her taking him to cultural events. She had the patience and understanding that Jamie likely never had before in a teacher/mentor. 

I'm not saying that Beard and Roy learning their lesson about being non-judgmental is my issue. It's the larger issue of the show and how it’s message is to teach people without having to criticize or make a dig or be mean. How many footballers could tell you the difference between if it was hypocritical or ironic... how much of the general population could? So it's a joke I'd get in a regular show, but Ted Lasso usually goes above that.

As I mentioned in another comment - how about Jamie knowing a linguistic term based on his interest in and knowledge of fashion. For me, that would have been more pointed. And Roy using pre-Madonna versus prima donna. Beyond the continuity error, all the reasoning Jamie pointed out to Roy? Roy would have been astute enough in cultural terms to know it. So it's against character for both Beard and Roy to make those mistakes. However, if Jamie had again used fashion to make a point, it might have enlightened Roy to the fact that not everything he thinks (canonically) is stupid is useless. So the intentionality would be to learn and for their minds to be broadened while Jamie made his point using his unique intelligence rather than it being about their errors in areas they have expertise. Lifting up rather than insulting.

I say all this about the show with love... so much love. (taking a bit from Brett's other show Shrinking here.) :)

[shatlass]

long unstructured uncle jack rant under the cut!! obvious warnings apply

tldr; i'm just really sick of him as a character and i don't see how they could make any of this feel worthwhile from a comedy or serious character development angle (especially what we saw in frank vs russia). it's unfunny, it's lazy, it's thoughtless, it's tactless

idk I'm just kind of sick of Uncle Jack and atp I don't have any faith in sunny as a whole to deal with him in a way that's thoughtful or respectful.

It was one thing when it was all coy “Is he really a paedo or is he just a bit weird?” but outright requesting suggestive images of children??? I’m sorry but what is funny about that? and besides how insensitive and genuinely unfunny he’s been all season, the ice cream truck?? it’s not even so overdone it circles back to funny, cos the whole thing feels so phoned-in. It's the kind of joke we all made in primary school without even the slightest subversion or switcheroo or anything new or interesting or clever. In the same episode, it’s implied that he roofied Charlie as a child. What the fuck.

I never found him particularly funny, but I get how it could be in the same way “the implication” can be funny. But, like the implication, you lose any and all potential for humour when you stop leaving any room for interpretation or plausible deniability. The joke can't be the guy's a paedophile. That's not a joke. And once you take away that plausible deniability, it makes the character unenjoyable. I feel the same way about Dennis and Dee in TUFTG, for example.

Best case scenario, the reason we're seeing him so much is to lead into Charlie confronting his trauma head-on (which he has already been doing ftr) and finding a way to sever ties completely. But even in that scenario, we shouldn't need to see that Jack has a whole operation going on, and have that played (unsuccessfully) for cheap laughs. It is possible for Charlie to deal with Jack in a way that's cathartic or shows development or closes an arc or whatever without spoonfeeding the audience this disgusting shit.

Also, I think we don't need to see Jack outside of Charlie. His character is only important in relation to Charlie. We only care about him in relation to Charlie. and we know what he's done to Charlie (at least it's heavily heavily implied) and its impact. What is the point of showing us MORE of that shit? It provides no additional context. Just feels super lazy and cheap. Literally its only purpose is "haha paedophile funny durrr".

I'm super concerned the whole storyline will end in “Charlie really didn't get abused -- he was telling us the truth the whole time!” as some godawful attempt at subversion since there's been no attempt to subvert expectations re Jack thus far. And how could anyone involved in the writing think jokes like this (executed in the way they are) are acceptable if they're not planning on going somewhere with them?? It feels like it's going somewhere. idk i hope this isn't what's happening but it's what i'm sensing

Also, as a lot of people have said already, there's a common thread between late-seasons Sunny's poor handling of sexual assault jokes and sexual assault/abuse in general :/ Obviously, this can't be placed on one person (especially since we know how involved RCG are in each step of the process), but I think it's interesting to note.