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Merapi Volcano and Borobudur temple complex at sunset. May 2025, Central Java , Indonesia. Borobudur is a Buddhist temple from the 8th or 9th century.

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standing and judging you with mama

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Wimdy

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i beat myself up for not knowing enough about my special interests a lot but then i remember the average person off the street has no idea what the carboniferous is and i feel better

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Hoop dreams, Cal (@graphic.cal)

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Isabella Rossellini with her mother, Ingrid Bergman in Rome, 1970

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Helsinki, Finland

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The White Lotus (2021—) | Season 3, Episode 1 "Same Spirits, New Forms" | Aimee Lou Wood as Chelsea and Walton Goggins as Rick Hatchett

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The White Lotus (2021—) | Season 3, Episode 1 "Same Spirits, New Forms" | Aimee Lou Wood as Chelsea

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The White Lotus (2021—) | Season 3, Episode 2 "Special Treatments" | Aimee Lou Wood as Chelsea and Walton Goggins as Rick Hatchett

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The White Lotus (2021—) | Season 3 Promo | Aimee Lou Wood as Chelsea and Walton Goggins as Rick Hatchett

[Aimee:] “Why are you laughing at that?”

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I like you, Mook

The White Lotus | 3x02

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The White Lotus (2021-) 3x01: Same Spirits, New Forms

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Conclave (2024) dir. Edward Berger

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Conclave (2024) dir. Edward Berger

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Not me scrolling through the Conclave tag only to see no one talk about the deliberate positioning and framing of the women in this movie.

Pulling up this movie I completely expected to only encounter Sister Agnes as the one woman we see in the trailer, the conclave a space that has been kept from the female members of the church. Now, color me surprised when I started the movie and most of the establishing shots we got were focused on all the women working in the Vatican.

And it is such a deliberate choice, it does the film a disservice not to talk about it.

Because while Cardinal Lawrence is having his fifteenth breakdown during sequestering and Bellini finds the ambitious asshole within himself, Ray does all the leg work, and Bel---- we see the women work.

We see the kitchens, we see them cook, we see them stand aside. Most of the time when the Cardinals are conspiring it is the women who interrupt because they are busy working, walking, running errands.

And there is power in that.

I think it is very deliberate how often (and with such lingering gaze) the camera shows us the lives of the other half - partially to connect to the wider themes of the movie, on how Bellini asks for women to get more power but never thanks them, and how Benitez stumps them all by thanking the women preparing their meals when asked to say the prayer (considering his own probably tumultuous relationship to gender within the church).

But it also stands in direct opposition to a long tradition in story telling: servants don't exist. How often the heroes of a regency romance are "alone" because the two hand maidens and three maids don't really count.

Conclave doesn't do that.

It doesn't let us look away.

Between all the petty drama, the politics, and the real life consequences of the conclave, we never stop looking at the people doing all the work.

Yes, we follow the ups and downs of Lawrence and Co, but in doing so the movie reminds us again and again of the women working the kitchen.

And that was just such a powerful artistic choice in a movie about a famously misogynistic church... I loved it. And I had to talk about it.