people you meet in russian class
kid who knows a ton of molchat doma and kino songs, but keeps forgetting how to say "hello"
heritage speaker who knows vocab but not grammar rules, who's besties with the language fiend who knows grammar but not vocab (this was my friend and I)
kid with scary politics
bored tech genius who speaks russian with the thickest american accent you've ever heard
the alt/goth kid. there's always one.
the one who always shows up late and gets called out by the professor every time
the one who dropped out as soon as they heard about genitive case
retired old guy who was in the military and is awkwardly singing cheburashka songs in the back of the classroom with the rest of the students
humanities student intimidated by all their stem and polsci classmates (this was also me)
"cyka blyat lol edgy communism memes" kid who really wants to commit to the bit
quiet slavic kid who never talks but is somehow tight with the professor
the one a little too into soviet history
the one who never tried to learn to read cyrillic
the one who insists on writing in russian cursive, despite the fact that none of the other students can read it and the professor keeps correcting it (this was also me. we didn't even have to learn cursive. I just wanted to learn it for historical research purposes)
the one romanov apologist (may also believe they're a reincarnation of anastasia romanova)
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i think ppl criticizing saltburn for being a bad addition to this weird influx of self-aware class conscious movies we’ve seen in these last couple of years are so funny because that is literally not at all what this movie is going for.
its so easy to conflate aestheticism with classism, especially when saltburn plays with this kind of gauche idea of beauty, but the problem isn’t that the catton’s have an unnatural relationship with wealth and material, it’s that they have an unnatural relationship with beauty and a seemingly never ending supply of it. and of course these things go hand in hand. in a house where desire is unheard of, to be of want is a messy ordeal that’s shunned and repressed.
but this movie is never asking what you would do for material gain. it’s about obsession with a relationship and a person that is close enough to touch but still off limits. how do you tell somebody that has never wanted in their life that you want them? how badly do you want them? would you do something ugly for them? would you kill for them?
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The past couple weeks it’s been really hitting me how much harder it’s been teaching Pride and Prejudice this year—which was so disappointing at first? Because works I’ve traditionally had a harder time with I’ve felt like i’ve broken new ground while teaching and am teaching the kids BETTER. So initially I was so frustrated that my historically easiest work to teach was feeling so difficult! But there’s been some good days that have let me see that part of what was happening was that I have simply never reached this number of kids with pride and prejudice before and so consequently I have never had so many kinds of reactions before! In the waking up from the sleep of simply never paying attention there IS going to be plenty of stupidity, contrariness, crankiness, and almost arguing? Like even with themsELVES. And that’s a good thing.
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some of Eli Clare's writing about diagnosis feels very relevant to discussions on tumblr right now:
"It’s impossible to grapple with cure without encountering white Western medical diagnosis—ink on paper in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the International Classification of Diseases, a process in the hands of doctors, a system of categorization. I want to read diagnosis as a source of knowledge, sometimes trustworthy and other times suspect. As a tool and a weapon shaped by particular belief systems, useful and dangerous by turns. As a furious storm, exerting pressure in many directions.
Simply put, diagnosis wields immense power. It can provide us access to vital medical technology or shame us, reveal a path toward less pain or get us locked up. It opens doors and slams them shut.
Diagnosis names the conditions in our body-minds, charts the connections between them. It holds knowledge. It organizes visceral realities. It draws borders and boundaries, separating fluid in the lungs from high blood pressure, ulcers from kidney stones, declaring anxiety attacks distinct from heart attacks, post-traumatic stress disconnected from depression. It legitimizes some pain as real; it identifies other pain as psychosomatic or malingering. It reveals little about the power of these borders and boundaries. Through its technology—x-rays, MRIs, blood draws, EKGs, CAT scans—diagnosis transforms our three-dimensional body-minds into two-dimensional graphs and charts, images on light boards, symptoms in databases, words on paper. It holds history and creates baselines. It predicts the future and shapes all sorts of decisions. It unleashes political and cultural forces. At its best, diagnosis affirms our distress, orients us to what’s happening in our body-minds, helps make meaning out of chaotic visceral experiences.
But diagnosis rarely stays at its best. It can also disorient us or de-
value what we know about ourselves. It can leave us with doubts, questions, shame. It can catapult us out of our body-minds. All too often diagnosis is poorly conceived or flagrantly oppressive. It is brandished as authority, our body-minds bent to match diagnostic criteria rather than vice versa. Diagnosis can become a cover for what health care providers don’t understand; become more important than our messy visceral selves; become the totality of who we are.
...
It is impossible to name all the ways in which diagnosis is useful.
It propels eradication and affirms what we know about our own body-minds. It extends the reach of genocide and makes meaning of the pain that keeps us up night after night. It allows for violence in the name of care and creates access to medical technology, human services, and essential care. It sets in motion social control and guides treatment that provides comfort. It takes away self-determination and saves lives. It disregards what we know about our own body-minds and leads to cure.
Diagnosis is useful, but for whom and to what ends?"
-Eli Clare, Brilliant Imperfection pg 41-42, 48.
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