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Hello! This is a side blog I am trying to run about Art. Capital A, broad range Art. It will dip into all kinds of media, probably including news, because journalism is a kind of writing and all stories are political. It will deal with all kinds of visual art, including things that not everyone likes to call art. Probably. It will definitely be dealing with pop culture.

As you can tell, there are already some posts here! That is because I have been attempting to get this blog up for a while. And not doing a great job of it.

Most of the reason was because I was trying to come up with a consistent and reliable tagging system. Yeah, I am terrible at those things. I am still going to keep a page where you can browse the tags, and I am still going to be throwing a lot of tags under each post, but like, clicking on the tag “movies” is not going to get you every post about movies because some of them I will just not have tagged that way (try “film” or “cinema”)? I figured content is more important that a perfectly indexed tag system. Anyone who disagrees is free to co-run this blog as tag editor. Please. That would be wonderful.

Oh, and sometimes I might seem like I am taking myself very seriously. That is because Art is totally serious business. But also it totally isn’t. And so those times are just artifacts from me caring a lot about things and that being filtered through having to write English papers for a long time.

Please, enjoy, reblog, submit, share with friends, whatever. Questions are always welcome!

My 5-year-old insists that Bilbo Baggins is a girl.

The first time she made this claim, I protested. Part of the fun of reading to your kids, after all, is in sharing the stories you loved as a child. And in the story I knew, Bilbo was a boy. A boy hobbit. (Whatever that entails.)

But my daughter was determined. She liked the story pretty well so far, but Bilbo was definitely a girl. So would I please start reading the book the right way? I hesitated. I imagined Tolkien spinning in his grave. I imagined mean letters from his testy estate. I imagined the story getting as lost in gender distinctions as dwarves in the Mirkwood.

Then I thought: What the hell, it’s just a pronoun. My daughter wants Bilbo to be a girl, so a girl she will be. And you know what? The switch was easy. Bilbo, it turns out, makes a terrific heroine. She’s tough, resourceful, humble, funny, and uses her wits to make off with a spectacular piece of jewelry. Perhaps most importantly, she never makes an issue of her gender—and neither does anyone else.

quigonejinn:

verysharpteeth:

Do y’all know how striking this scene in an action movie was to me? Main lead, who is young and gorgeous and the whitest of whites, oversteps his bounds. He touches a commanding officer. In any other action movie the dressing down would not be this severe (Elba’s adlibbing on this is terrifying…forget kaijus, Raleigh looks more scared by him than anything that crawls out of the breach and half the audience squirmed in chastened sympathy because WOW). And the thing is, Raleigh is right. His initial argument that Stacker is holding back Mako is for all intents and purposes, the correct assessment. He’s RIGHT. But he isn’t in a position to tell that to a commanding officer, especially the way he does. So Stacker puts him back in his place. Raleigh KNOWS he went out of line the minute he touched Stacker and rather than argue or shout “you know I’m right” or storm off or IGNORE a commanding officer like any other action movie would have the hero do, Raleigh backs down. Stacker doesn’t even let him get away with just the nod and choked back frustration, he makes him VERBALLY back down as well. There is no question who is in charge here. Raleigh is obviously angry and frustrated and still riding the testosterone high of kicking Chuck’s face, but he FREAKIN’ BACKS DOWN LIKE ANYONE WITH SENSE IN THE MILITARY WOULD. It’s always baffled me that main rodeo cowboy hero of every movie can just walk all over rank and command and not pay for it because he’s “special”. Raleigh only sort of does this once (and remember, his argument is valid) and he’s immediately reminded that’s not what he’s there for. And he KNOWS because he never complains about it, never goes off and stews about how unfair Stacker is, never holds it against Stacker later. He knows he crossed a line and he belly crawls back across it because it’s all about respect and he overstepped.This is something 9 out of 10 action movies wouldn’t address.

This is carried through in really fucking interesting ways throughout the movie, actually.  You remember the scene where we get introduced to Stacker?  The Becket boys are joking with Tendo about his disaster of a love life, and it’s cute and fun and casual and dude shenanigans — and then it gets announced that the Marshal is on deck.  The camera happens to be on Tendo, and you see him — you see on-fucking-screen how his shoulders straighten and he sits up and his tone of voice changes and goes professional.  And you see it again, too, in the post-double event scene where people are in a joyous, packed crowd around Mako and Raleigh — and then Stacks shows up at the door, and a path fucking parts for him like he is smoking-hot Moses in a double-breasted suit.    

That’s presence, folks.  That’s charisma, and even more than that, it’s people respecting a natural fucking leader who has earned respect.  

It’s been pointed out that people disobey Stacker in PacRim all the fucking time.  You’ll note that it’s not something undertaken for shits and giggles, though.  Instead, it’s because they’ve made an evaluation in the field and disagree because they think it’ll cost lives — each time, it’s presented in a sympathetic light, and each time, the movie shows that their disobedience Does Not Get What The Disobedient Ones Want. Remember that Yancy and Raleigh disobey Stacker’s order to stay back, and Yancy gets dead (and it’s not clear that they actually manage to save the dudes on the ship).  Chuck and Herc disobey the order to stay back because they’re trying to save the other Jaeger pilots, which they not only fail to do, but they get hit with an EMP pulse from the kaiju.  If Mako and Raleigh don’t arrive when they do, both it would’ve been a long, long fall into water for two Aussie pilots, and the world would have been well and truly fucked.  

The movie underscores this with what I consider to be the goddamn climax of the whole thing.  I mean, what’s the biggest command that Stacker gives?  Like, the single biggest one?  

To me, it’s gotta be when he tells Mako (Mako! Specifically!) during Pitfall that she can do this. She can finish it.  And Mako does it, even though it clearly fucking costs her not to try and go to Striker’s aid, even though it isn’t phrased as an order.  Stacker knows he doesn’t have to phrase it that way, because he knows that he has been Mako’s fixed point since she was ten years old.  He knows that she knows what should happen.  And he knows that he is right.  And that Mako agrees, too, because again: fixed point for how many years now?  The command doesn’t need to be verbalized as such.  It doesn’t even need to be entirely articulated, because the Drift that Mako and Stacker share isn’t a physical one inside a Jaeger with a Pons mechanism.  Instead, it exists because Stacker and Mako found each other in the wreckage of Tokyo.  Stacker raised Mako, and they share the same value system and the same way of looking at the world and the same fierce pride and devotion and willingness to lay down personal attachments to other lives if it means saving the motherfucking world.  

That’s their Drift.  

So Stacker tells Mako that she can make this sacrifice — his life, for the world.  It’s a parallel to the situation that Yancy and Raleigh have to make in Alaska, with the fishermen versus the city of two million, and the one that Herc and Chuck have in Hong Kong, with the lives of their fellow Rangers versus one of the few great coastal cities left.  Yancy and Raleigh and Herc and Chuck choose to disobey, and each time, not only does it not get them what they want, but it’s got shitty consequences.

This time, instead of laying it down as an order, Stacker tells Mako that she can finish it.  She’ll always be able to find in him in their particular version of the Drift.  

And Mako obeys because she agrees with him.  

And they save the world.  

Let me emphasize that: the world gets saved without further loss of life because Mako and Raleigh follow Stacker’s directive to Mako

Stacker fucking Pentecost, everyone.  This fucking movie, everyone. 

Consider the the rival powers in Westeros. The Starks are fatalistic, duty-bound, honorable but kind of unsophisticated. The Lannisters are appetite-driven plutocrats. The Baratheons were markedly varied, but the surviving one is driven and joyless, having perhaps inherited the Stark “hat” now that there’s not a Stark head left to wear it. The Martells are given to plotting and sexual license. We know less about the Tyrells, but they seem to value chivalry and court culture: consider Loras’ prowess, consider the splendor of Margaery’s entourage and weddings, consider how much more talented the Tyrell fool Butterbumps is than any of the other fools we’ve met.

Now, consider the rival powers among the Dothraki. Was it Khal Jommo’s khalasar that valued chivalry? Were Khal Ogo’s people the least trustworthy? Did Khal Drogo’s have a unique worldview shaped from their long tradition of cultural exchange with the Free Cities? Or are all the khalasars exactly freaking the same, because that’s how it works when you’re an oriental other in speculative fiction?

from OverthinkingIt.com’s essay It is known — Game of Thrones, the Orient, and Conventional Wisdom.   The full article is a good read. (via fatpinkcast)
yourfavisneuroatypical:
“[image of a man in a green button up shirt standing in an old abandoned building. the wall in front of him is torn apart to create a big gap. on this image is a title reading “Positive Representation for Neuroatypical...

yourfavisneuroatypical:

[image of a man in a green button up shirt standing in an old abandoned building.  the wall in front of him is torn apart to create a big gap.  on this image is a title reading “Positive Representation for Neuroatypical People”]

Silent Hill

While this blog is primarily about fan interpretations of characters as neuroatypical, I thought it would also be good to share examples of canonical representation for neuroatypical people. Silent Hill is a series of survival horror games which are well known for how frightening they are: but what many don’t know is that this series also represents neuroatypical people in a very good way.

Most horror stories show asylums as creepy places with those weird dangerous “insane” people out to get you - but in Silent Hill, it is the doctors, nurses, and institutions which are evil.  The patients are almost always seen positively, and if they aren’t it isn’t because of their illness.  Stanley Coleman, for instance, is a patient who is portrayed negatively because he stalks and terrifies women.

In every instance in which this series includes a hospital, the game touches on the abuses and violence neuroatypical suffer.  Silent Hill is all about justice - and these games heavily imply that the town punishes or has punished ableist, abusive neurotypicals.  

Brookhaven Hospital is a powerful example when you examine the notes left by both doctors and patients.  Patient notes are sympathetic, frightened, upset, fearful.  Doctor’s notes are abusive, dismissive, and violent.  These levels frame the stories in ways that look kindly upon neuroatypical people, and condemn abusive doctors and nurses violently.

This culminates in Silent Hill: Downpour, where the game moves from oblique subtle references to all out in your face condemnation.  St. Maria’s Monastery is a place where neuroatypical children were left by their parents to be “fixed”.  Notes in the level show how violently evil the doctors were, and how much the children suffered.  The level includes ghostly children crying about medicine that makes them feel bad, and hospital beds shaking as you hear a child scream.  One note literally has a doctor say that it is time to give an autistic child (who she calls horrific things) a lobotomy because he annoyed her.

This game also includes Araidne Johnson, and the story of how her horrible mother murdered her because she was autistic and was “tired of caring for her”.  This revelation is shocking and framed as being just as horrific as it really is - and given the town, it’s likely Mrs. Johnson never made it out alive.  Some of the monsters are screaming women who latch onto the main character’s back and weigh him down.  Given other themes of the story, this woman can be seen as relating to abusive mothers, perhaps even Mrs. Johnson.

These are not happy games.  They are violent and horrifying, but what is good about them, is they are true.  They show the reality of how these institutions work, of how bigoted doctors and nurses treat neuroatypical people, what neuroatypical people suffer, how they are abused and killed for being who they are.  It is highly upsetting and triggering - but also very refreshing to see such a candid representation of what is a very real problem in many places the world over.

Heroine Addiction: Dissecting “Strong”, “Female”, and “Character”

resurrecttheliving:

image

This is something of a dead horse, but while we are posting our definitive opinion on things, we might as well have at it. This issue is not just important to me, it’s a necessary step towards creating good narrative, so it really must be covered. It would be an understatement to say I feel passionately about this. Women and storytelling is pretty much all I care about, because “female characters” and “characters” are one and the same thing.

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resurrecttheliving:

ghost-y:

alaskanferaligatr:

vivvav:

kokorooji:

eren-jaegars-butt:

petrichoriousparalian:

inuchi:

I don’t want it; I don’t need it.

this scene is even more creepy when you realize Spirited Away was a metaphor for the sex industry in Japan

oh

oh

OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE!

NO IT WASN’T, YOU JACKASSES!

“Totoro’s about dead girls!”

“Spirited Away is about sex!”

You know what I hear?

“Maybe if I make up something that sounds smart, people will think I’m smart, even if it’s a complete fucking lie!

Hayao Miyazaki is a man of values. He’s a man who believes in the innocence of childhood and has a wonderful imagination. He believes in simplicity, kindness, the beauty of nature, and the old ways. He draws on these beliefs and his personal experiences when he makes movies.

Spirited Away was made for some friends of Miyazaki’s. Specifically, the ten-year-old daughters of some friends he invited to stay at his vacation home. It’s fairly common for Miyazaki to decide that he’s going to make movies targeted at a specific age group. Ponyo is for five-year-olds. Spirited Away is meant for ten-year-old girls, but enjoyed by a much wider audience.

I repeat, SPIRITED AWAY WAS MADE FOR TEN-YEAR-OLD GIRLS.

The bathhouse? Not a brothel. Based on a bathhouse in his home town, which he thought was a place of mystery and wonder when he was a kid. That scene where the bathhouse staff has to clean the polluted river spirit? Based on Miyazaki’s own experiences of a town coming together to clean up a river. This scene? It’s about Chihiro not being greedy, because Chihiro is a positive role-model for ten-year-old girls.

The themes of Spirited Away are courage, strength of character, and individuality. ESPECIALLY individuality. That thing where Yubaba takes away peoples’ names and changes their species? That’s her taking away their individuality. Chihiro’s parents are now pigs, not people. Haku’s name has been shortened so he forgets who he is. When Yubaba changes Chihiro’s name, the only Kanji she leaves spell out “Sen”, the Japanese word for “one thousand”, meaning Chihiro is just another pawn of Yubaba’s, not her own person.

You want to seem cool and intelligent? Talk about the movie’s actual themes. Don’t make up this shock-value bullshit for attention.

You stupid motherfuckers.

FUCKING THANK YOU.  I get so fucking sick of this shit, stupid motherfuckers trying to pervert movies by claiming there’s dark twisted themes in films where they don’t exist.  How about discussing how Chihiro was offered gold and turned it down because she needed to help Haku instead?  She turned down a ton of gold to save a friend.  THAT’S SOME PRETTY NOBLE SHIT RIGHT THERE, instead of the fucking brothel lies.

Why isn’t anything ever good enough as it already is? 

Depth is one thing, and searching for hidden meaning is fantastic. I love analysis. But trying to find depth by making every goddamn thing a product of your cynicism just gets really fucking old.

Why do we take imaginative worlds and stories and act like all the magic and wonder in them is a result of some sort of mental problem? Why do we take stories about innocence and always turn them into stories about the loss of it? Why do we inject bad into everything good?

Also, I remember reading that Miyazaki himself really dislikes when people make his movies darker than they actually are. He was legitimately upset about the spread of the rumor that My Neighbor Totoro was all a big allegory for death. Conjecture is one thing, but when you change the ENTIRE point of a movie and then spread that like it’s a fact, I feel you’re disrespecting the original work and you should stop.

Okay I appreciate the defense of Miyazaki here, because I think it’s pretty obvious that this movie can be taken at face value and have a lot of layers and depth when it’s just a movie for children, about childhood. 

ON THE OTHER HAND, I think it’s okay to interpret this movie as having some sexual metaphors AS LONG AS YOU DON’T IMPLY AUTHORIAL INTENT. Someone can see a certain facet of movie that was not intentionally placed there by the creators. That’s okay. I’m going to write about this a lot, but Spirited Away is such a good examlpe because the themes and lessons are SO universal.

The more universal a theme is, the more places you can apply it. When a greedy charater is throwing out gold while demanding, “I’M HUNGRY, MORE!” and the hero refuses whilst everyone else scrambles to obey, well, there’s a lot of scenarios in which that is a valuable, meaningful lesson. Seeing it as a metaphor for sexual appetites and the sex trade is perfectly valid, and in fact a kind of cool way to look at it. You can also understand it to be about modern corporate and/or consumer culture. That doesn’t mean that it was made to be about that or that more face-value interpretations are not correct. It’s just a cool way to apply the universal message in this scene.

The thing is people don’t just it read this a metaphor for greed and overlay sexual trade on it. People think that the movie itself was ABOUT the sex trade. See?

And it doesn’t even fit with the rest of the movie, or take into account what happens with No Face after this scene, anything that happens with Haku, or much else in the movie. I actually think it is a rather cheap and sloppy reading - reading sex into things is kind of the default, I think. But it is a pretty lazy understanding of the culture around bath houses, the culture around prostitution in Japan, especially more traditionally, given the setting the movie uses, and generally what roles and messages Yokai and animal spirits serve culturally and in folklore. It’s like saying "Alice in Wonderland is about drugs” and leaving it at that. Yes, you can read that into the text, but it does the symbolism and messages an injustice, I think. A message of appetite and greed that is supposed to be a kind of universal instruction for children, about gluttony and bullying and pollution shouldn’t be reduced to or condensed to a kind of sexual greed. I think it is definitely interesting, on a kind of meta level, to see how easy it is to read a much more adult kind of greed and gluttony, and by extension violence and abuse into a metaphor built for children to discuss taking only what one needs and being kind and helpful. That’s a very interesting and telling reflection on human nature, sure - but I don’t see how it is at all useful to read into the text itself? Why make it about explicitly sexual exploitation when the rest of the movie doesn’t really lend itself to that reading, while a reading of general greed and exploitation allows us to form a more complete narrative? Even one that works across texts into other Miyazaki movies?

stormingtheivory:

professorspork:

dealanexmachina:

If there was a precise moment that I could point to and say, here, this is where the show lost me with Ward, it was this exchange.

Because, you know what? I could handle Ward the Wet Blanket up until this point. Sure, he poo-poos on everything fun in this show and acts like he’s above it all. Sure, he is all Judgy Mcjudgerson with his flat characterization as the ~jaded but talented agent with the hint of hidden tortured ~manpain to explain why he is a no fun, killer of joy. But that’s pilot-itis.

But when the writers of a Marvel show decide to have a character take potshots at cosplaying fangirls? When he chooses to dismiss Skye by buying into the Fake Fan Girl myth and using it as an insult with all disdain and contempt of That Guy? And then her response is a punchline, because oh haha, she did dress up once?

Yeah, no. Not really interested in you anymore.

And maybe I am judging this show harder because it is a Marvel show. Maybe I expected more from the creators of Buffy not to even hint towards buying into or reinforcing those aspects of nerd culture that are most frustrating to female comic book fans.

But everyone else on the show is like a fangeek’s dream and is a delight to watch. I want to watch Melinda come back from whatever her trauma was and watch her grump around as a reluctant babysitter and kick ass. I want to see Fitz and Simmons rejoice in science and geek out with new toys and bounce ideas off each other. And goddamnit I want to see what Skye will do with her abilities and if she can operate in more structured environment than she did on her own.

Because she is an asset, and Coulson recognized it, and fuck you if she also wants to dress up because she is a fan of Tony Stark who, p.s. does amazing sciencey things. Being a fan of something does not invalidate your knowledge of it, and I find it really distasteful that Ward, as a character, buys into that attitude AND the Fake Geek Girl myth, on top of being arrogant enough to think he knows better than the Adults in the room.

The best part of the episode for me was when he was knocked out. And until they write Ward as a better character, I am going to mentally replace his character with Hawkeye in every scene and picture better arms and a nicer smile, thank you very much.

I agree with all of this except for one thing: I think it was absolutely a conscious, deliberate choice to give Ward this joke because they’re trying to show that it’s not okay. Wet Blanket Ward is a massive dick and we all know it—Maurissa, Jed and Joss went out of their way, over and over again, to discount his opinions (though not his skills) and show how much he has to learn about being a decent teammate and human.

So yes, they chose to make Ward, as you call it, That Guy—but I think they did it to be like “yo, when you’re being That Guy, you’re being a yucky Wet Blanket Ward.” Are there fans who will be so enamored of his Cool Guy Veneer that they miss or choose to ignore the fact that his personality is being judged and critiqued by the show? Absolutely. But I do think they’re aiming for us to dislike him, and to be on Skye’s side, on purpose.

If it were just this scene, I’d be more inclined to be upset. But think about where it goes! The whole bit with the truth serum was just… classic Buffy. There was no way Coulson was ever going to violate Skye’s privacy or dignity like that, and we, as an audience, knew that—we just didn’t know how we were being framed until it happened, and then suddenly, bam: Ward was drugged. Skye’s agency was maintained and respected, and Ward was given, literally, a taste of his own medicine—experiencing what it’s like to be judged and manipulated the way he judges and manipulates.

Ward may have been cited as having the best combat scores since Romanoff, but Skye’s the one who’s actually been treated the way Natasha was—viewed as the asset she is. Instead of being taken out, SHIELD made a different call, because she has too much potential and too much goodness to waste.

Yeah, the bolded passage in particular is important. Ward’s comment doesn’t exist as a contextless remark. It’s followed almost immediately by Coulson CHEWING HIM OUT. It’s one of the few times we’ve EVER seen Coulson look really, truly angry.

It’s interesting to me that Ward’s role at the end of the episode is to wait till Coulson can persuade Michael to stand down. He has to choose between just taking him down as soon as he has a clear shot, and waiting till he’s already been convinced to join SHIELD’s side. The fact that he chooses to respect Michael’s agency, in contrast to his behavior towards Skye earlier, suggests to me what his broad narrative arc is going to be throughout the show. I could be wrong, of course, and it’s still very early days, but that’s my guess for where they’re going to go with him.