Your post about romance was so spot on and this is from someone who really likes reading romances some of the time. I just wish there were more books where friendships (which after all make up the majority of people's relationships!!) were given the same weight and importance as romance gets unthinkingly. Like, I want books or fic which show the development of two (or more) new friends *as the plot and main part of the book*, and the same thing for the progression of pre-established friendship.

Human relationships are varied and complex and interesting and limiting writing to mainly concerning romantic or dating ones is infuriating! I enjoy reading character driven stuff, which is why I like some romances but I really want to see similarly detailed deep studies of friendship. Friendships are so important, and romantic relationships do not supersede them.  Obviously there is gendered bias against romance as a genre but that is not the only reason to be uninterested in romance damnit!

Sorry for ranting in your inbox about romance and thanks for the post

Hah thank and welcome. Very true!

Yeah, the problem is not just how ubiquitous romance is but the inevitability of it. So many people are so much in the habit of hanging their emotional investment on ‘couples getting together’ that not putting one in is a risk, as a creator, and the faint suggestion of a possibility that a romance might eventuate between two characters constitutes a promise that the audience will be outraged to see not followed through.

So making a story focus at all on a relationship between two people who are considered valid potential romantic partners means having to go through incredible backflips and contortions as a writer to get away with not pairing them up, or there will be outrage. There will be outrage anyway, but hopefully on a contained scale that doesn’t have people throwing your book away.

(The easiest way, of course, is to give one or both of them an alternate partner, but then you either have to build up that relationship as the central focus instead, because you aren’t allowed to love anyone that much and not be romantically involved or be romantically involved For Real with anyone but whoever you love most, or accept that you’ve plastered on a beard of some kind in a way that at this point makes your main duo look even more romantic to people who are looking for that in the first place, even if it lets you write a plot that doesn’t acknowledge this.)

This has contributed enormously to the cultural truism ‘men and women can’t be friends.’ They aren’t allowed to be. And this weird intense romantic pressure is now increasingly extending to same-sex friendships, and it’s like...it’s good that gay visibility and acceptance are growing! That’s great!

But it means that all relationships are increasingly exposed to this honestly fucked up set of expectations. That every single love of any intensity is romantic and probably sexual. That that’s the only love that’s real, or that really matters. With occasional exemptions carved out for parents.

And that’s cultural, I want to say. The inclusion of and an interest in the romantic lives of characters in fiction is definitely natural and practically inevitable, but the outsize role it occupies in our current media culture is abnormal and totally non-compulsory. The central role of romance in so much of narrative is just...a pattern, a narrative schema that currently holds sway, born of an assortment of historical accidents and trends, and I don’t think it’s a good one.

I think it would be better for us as a culture and all our individual relationships for that particular social construct to be broken down.

Because this cultural obsession with The Romance in media mirrors and continually recreates the obsession with The Romance in real life. You know how many people are making themselves miserable by either being in a relationship predicated on the need to have one, any one, rather than actual mutual affection, or about not having a love interest currently at any given moment?

Like, quite separately from the actual frustrated romantic feelings themselves, people feeling like they are less or failures or just...unfinished somehow, because they don’t have a romantic partner. It’s so harmful and absurd! We all know this!

And there are of course a lot of sociological factors that have led to that point as well, but it’s linked particularly closely I think to the atomization of modern society.

You’re not likely to retain any particular community for long--we move around so much over the course of our lives, anything you have is designed to be taken apart. School friends are only rarely retained after school, work friends are only until you get a new job, family is quite often something to be avoided or something you have to leave behind, and not usually an extended network anymore anyway.

We are always moving into new contexts, or knowing we might be moved, and holding onto relationships from one context into another is generally regarded as an unusual feat betokening particular, though not lionized, devotion, and leaning on these relationships ‘too much’ or pursuing them with ‘too much’ energy is regarded with deep suspicion.

This, too, is not particularly normal in the human experience. We are not psychologically designed for this level of impermanence. And we have developed very few structures as a culture thus far to make up for it, which is why the modern adult is so famously, dangerously lonely.

But we have all these social protocols for acquiring a person and holding onto them. A person who’s just yours, all yours, who it is promised will fulfill all those gaping needs all by themselves, and if they don’t it’s because you or they are wrong, and need either a different partner or fixing.

The fact that this is insane and not how romance works over 90% of the time is irrelevant to the dream of it, and the dream overwhelms and controls the reality. I agree that codependency is really fucking romantic, and having a kind and supportive mutual one is a lovely fantasy! It’s just...

A lot of harm eventuates from pursuing this fantasy in reality with a media-based conviction that it is 1) a reasonable thing to expect and 2) a necessary precondition for wellbeing and worthiness.

But we have poured so much cultural freight and need into this one single relationship format. At this point having need in any other direction is regarded as disordered and suspect and probably a misdirected application of sexual desire.

The law, too, has put a lot of energy into supporting the focus on seeking the romance as life goal, because the nuclear family is built on the codependent marriage, and capitalism likes the nuclear family very much. The nuclear family is extremely vulnerable to market pressures and bad at collective action, and tends to produce new tiny humans whose main social outlet has been within the school system, which is specifically structured to condition you to accept abusive workplace conditions as a normal precondition of existence, and not to attempt too much intimacy.

Ahem. Spiraled there. But! It’s all connected! Many of the privileges piled onto the institution of marriage were put there specifically because the nuclear family was considered desirable for the expansion of the economy. That’s clearly documented historical fact.

So yeah, the modern cultural obsession with the romance is a symptom of collective emotional disorder, and it chugs along at the expense of the more complex emotional support infrastructures most of us need and deserve.

It’s not just about me wanting representation, wanting an image in the narratives of my culture where I can see myself with the potential for happiness. Everyone needs this. We learn so much about how to be, how to relate to others, from media at this point, since the school system and other weird age-hierarchy stuff keeps us largely segregated from human society for a majority of our growing years and limits our exposure to live examples.

So the paucity of in-depth explorations of friendship, of mutual support, of widespread narrative acceptance that you can have a good life without a romance as its central support pillar, is harmful to people in general.

-

It’s funny, I get frustrated about this periodically, when a piece of media lets me down, or even when I’m following along a funny piece of meta and then the punchline is ‘and the ace character is obviously in denial about how they’re already dating their favorite person’ or whatever.

(The meta is annoying on a surface level and distressing on a deeper level because it’s a threat; so many times a good platonic relationship will buckle under public pressure and it doesn’t matter how asexual, how uninterested in romance, how emphatically platonic the affection has been established as being, The Romance arrives in the next installment of the story because it’s what people expect. Which reinforces the general perception that any other love is illegitimate, lesser, and as soon as it’s meant to be taken seriously it has to be crammed into that one valid shape, and invalidates future insistences in the same mode.

Seriously people stop doing this, we long since reached the point where a character saying in words ‘I have no romantic interest in [person]’ is perceived as a glaring neon sign that they’re destined to get together and that does not do good things for fostering a culture of consent. Obviously people are in denial sometimes but it should not be understood to be the rule.)

But I don’t get upset about it until someone starts in with reasons I’m bad and wrong for not liking these norms.

Like, whatever, media does not cater to my needs, I’ll cope, but when people start trying to get in my head and make me not only responsible for my own discomfort that I’m managing thanks but dishonest and malevolent I...get upset. There’s history there, okay.

‘You don’t care about this ship because you’re homophobic’ ‘you don’t want a love interest in the sequel because you’re racist’ ‘you don’t like romance in stories because you’re a misogynist’ fucking stop.

And occasionally it’s like ‘i guess you have the right to feel that way but how dare you talk about it where other people might hear’ which...well, is particularly common and particularly ironic in the context of people hung up on gay representation.

If we as a society had a healthy relationship with romance, there wouldn’t be negative side effects to that crowd’s pursuit of their worthy goal of applying that schema in places it has been Forbidden, but as it is we don’t, and there are.

I feel like the antagonists from Danganronpa are overrated and overhyped: -Byakuya did barely anything menacing to be considered an antagonist, the only thing he did was messing up with the scene crime (he did it because it was bored and it was super childish of him) and taking Kirigiri's room key away (I don't know if being a jerk is considering as antagonistic because Hiyoko who's a "hero" was a jerk too). Even if I dislike Celestia a lot, she was a better antagonist than him. -Nagito in my honest opinion, he bored me to death. For me he felt like an edgy version of Makoto (or in the worst case, the messed up child of Junko and Makoto) and his goal made little sense. He started a killing game to bring hope when the cast (pre-murder) were already being hopeful and chilling so his actions were unnecessary and absurd. Yes he had a sad past and his hope is an important part of it but it doesn't give him the right to do what he did. His "twist" was very forced, there weren't many forshadowing for this, while some might think "It was unpredictable so it make it better!", it was unpredictable but rushed. It was a bit too early for that and I would've loved if the twist would've taken more time. I feel like Mikan would've made a great antagonist/mastermind if the writter gave her a real chance, she would've had a sympathetic motive to be one (Nagito didn't felt sympathetic for me because he caused harm to many people just for his obsession and it was not so different from Junko's obsession with despair, who she also caused harm to many people). -Kokichi, as much as I love him and have him as my favorite, he was very inconsistent. His "reveal" as the good guy just felt as forced as Nagito's "twist", Kokichi got killed many people and only to be revealed as a good guy made little sense to me. His talent was a huge wasted potential and should've swapped with Angie, unlike him, Angie did what Kokichi wasn't able to do; create a sect/group and being a leader. And Kokichi barely used his talent, it was just a decoration, I feel like "Ultimate Prankster" or "Ultimate Actor" would've suited him better than "Ultimate Leader". I would've loved if he kept his lies more ambiguously instead of saying "iT's A LiE LMAO" and Celestia did a far better job than Kokichi with her lies. Angie should've been the antagonist/mastermind (Angie would've been a great mastermind, better than Junko and Tsumugi) and Kokichi just a supporting character.

For me, the true antagonists are Celestia, Monaca and Angie. Those 3 were better antagonists than the Class Trial Ruiners trio, and they don't get the credit they deserve. Tell me what you think!

(note that this will be loaded with my opinions and they're not even the same across the system)

with the rival character, i feel like it’s an archetype that very much has the potential to impress, but no rival character has appropriately utilized their ability to ruin the class trial with a decent reason.

of the three, Byakuya is probably the best iteration - not only is he not loaded with the ableism present in Nagito and Kokichi, but because he isn’t burdened with that ableism, his actions feel a lot more organic in the context of the killing game. he doesn’t screw up the class trial for the sake of hope, or to [MOTIVATION NOT FOUND] - he does it because he’s rich, a jackass, and doesn’t value the lives of those around him. the game knows he’s an asshole and doesn’t try to make you sympathize with him, unlike Nagito and Kokichi.

in that way, he’s also less insufferable because his punishment ISN’T death. he survives to the end with barely even a brush more brutal than Aoi slapping him across the face. his punishment is the realization that the ‘stupid’ and ‘insignificant’ classmates managed to outsmart him, and thus the killing game became boring.

(he was also not directly responsible for any character dying which helps imo)

but even Byakuya has his flaws - he doesn’t live up heavily to his role and his heinous actions within the context of the killing game are, as you said, infrequent and childish. when Nagito and Kokichi tried to ‘fix’ those issues, they forgot to keep what made Byakuya actually kind of work. Nagito still works, but just barely, and Kokichi is just a straight up draining experience that i’m still honestly surprised got green-lit.

i think that Celestia and Angie work better than Byakuya and Kokichi respectively, but i don’t actually agree that Mikan was a better rival character for Hajime. Mikan actually rivals Nagito better, in my opinion. i know this is going to sound somewhat out of left field, but i actually think Hiyoko would’ve been a good rival/antagonist character. yes, this includes after Mahiru’s death - in fact i think that could enhance it. she could take what worked for Byakuya and make it work even better (his actions are childish, and so is Hiyoko, hence her being childish makes sense). like Byakuya, she was born into and had to fight for her talent - not because taking it away would mean exile from the Saionji name, but taking it away would mean she straight up dies. her foulmouthed attitude is a deliberate coverup for the fact that she is extremely weak - which could absolutely make for an interesting rival conflict. (if the argument is that you can’t place any focus on the rival, Nagito was half the focus of SDR2)

Thoughts on Stephen Fry’s Troy

Sorta review/critique. A thing to keep in mind is that I‘ve not read a direct translation of the Iliad so this really is my first experience of the epic besides general knowledge of it that is present in pop culture and such.

It’s a long one so I’ll put a break here

First off, there’s a little preface, map, olympian family tree, and timeline of the entirety of ancient history. Very nice to include, though I used these very little in my reading. Nontheless they can be useful for people who are very new to mythology and the layout of the ancient world.

I think I read the epilouge section titled myth and reality after the preface. Not sure why they put it in the back, perhaps for spoilers, but it functions good as a disclaimer before stepping into the main story. There is also a list of actors after this, which are again useful but not something I used a lot personally. 

Now for the main story! I’ll not be going over everything, just the things that stood out for me. Again disclaimer that this is the first time I read a version of the fall of Troy, so my impressions may deviate from ‘canon’ but be sure to correct me/add where you like.

I did not know Helena was a daughter of Zeus or that she had any brothers oof. (Arguably the brothers leave the story very early so I don’t think it’s that bad of me).

I like the idea of a lottery to determine who will marry Helena, but also think that Menelaus is an obvious choice. Given that they have lived together and know each other for a long time, they have a good foundation to build a relationship on.

Agamemnon comes across as an honourable man, but does not shy away from showing his emotions. Iphigeneia in Aulis is a touching section where he stalls the sacrifice of his daughter as long as possible and comes with counterarguments to make it not happen. Fry picks the version where Iphigeneia is spared by Artemis, but does not tell where she is taken which is a bit of a shame.

Odysseus is a smart bastard. I like that.

Paris goes from a kind boy to a selfish man, something that is adressed by characters in the story. I would not go as far as to say that he is Bad, but his morals are very grey.

His siblings and Hebe and Priamos are on the contrary quite reasonable the entirety of the story. They try to make things the best for Helena given the circumstances, and stand up to Paris when needed.

Hector is amazing wow.

I think Kassandra is the most present after him, but I’m not sure if I liked the way Fry chose to depict the whole seeing-the-future-but-nobody-listens because it is done quite literally. At key moments Kassandra is there to cry out her observations but is just not adressed by the others around her. It stands in contrast with Laokoon, who is acknowledged but also ignored. I feel like Fry could’ve brought some more creativity in this case. In general Kassandra feels like the odd one out of the Trojan siblings, not really seeming to be one of them.

Kind of continueing on Kassandra, Helenus is briefly mentioned at times and his foretelling of things is even more minimal. It would’ve been an easy step to make some sort of connection between him and Kassandra, but again I’m not sure if that is in the original text.

Achilles and Patroclus are very well done in my opinion. Achilles has his moments of anger and honour, and Patroclus is not a softboy standing on the sidelines. I always thought Patroclus took Achilles’ armour in secret but here he discusses it with Achilles and he agrees to let him borrow it. When Patroclus dies, there is a section of how fierce the battle for his body is, signaling how all the Greeks cared for him.  

Briseis also seems like an addition to Patroclus and Achilles, if that is the correct phrasing. The dynamics they have can make you interpret them as either Pat and Achilles acting like big brothers of Briseis, or a “X has two hands” kind of thing (where they all hold hands). 

Diomedes and Odysseus act like colleagues mostly, frequently going on missions together to get someone or infiltrate Trojan outposts. I thought it odd that when they steal the Palladion, Odysseus suddenly has the desire to kill Dio as to take the honor for himself. It is brushed of by Odysseus as being an influence of the Palladion, but seems more ambiguous in Fry’s wording. Regardless, seemed out of character regarding the bond the two have.

Helena has regrets later of going with Paris. Fry leaves the options open wether she acted under the influence of Aphrodite or if it was her own decision. Aphrodite does pop up at times to force something upon Helena. While not a sympathetic characterisation of the godess, it does serve as an example that the gods generally do not care much for the wellbeing of those involved in their “games”. This is underlined by Fry in regards to Thetis by saying that the gods generally do not feel much empathy for mortals and that Thetis is very much an exception in the case of Achilles.

Thetis is a bit of an overbearing mom in this, but it does not feel wrong per se.

The other gods come on the stage at some moments in the first half. After that Fry draws a line with Zeus further prohibiting them from interfering with the war.

The Trojan Horse has some detail and is not just ships in the vague shape of a horse a la Troy 2004. It’s got colours, expressions,  a very funky horse.

The siege from within is Brutal. Neoptolemos is definitely not his father and much more aggresive. Fry points out moments where some good was done but emphasizes that the party we have been with and somewhat rooting for the past pages is not free of commiting atrocities. Kassandra predicts her own death and Agamemnon’s to him. Fry did make him say that Klytaimnestra would probably understand/be happy for bringing back Kassandra as a slave. All in all adding to the fact that he does not hate his wife like some other adaptations/people like to suggest, but is instead oblivious or just naive for the fact that the sacrifice of Iphigenia harmed their relationship.

The main story ends with the gods being Disgusted by all of it. I’m assuming Fry will save a bit of the return of the Greeks for a book on the Odyssey which is fine I guess but leaves this one a bit open ended. 

Would recommend this if you’ve never read an Iliad story before and want something that provides you with extended information as well as fun facts about the events. It’s a very accesible read despite some of its flaws.

Shakespeare Appreciation Week

TUESDAY, JULY 14th: Favourite Plays Day: Hamlet (Yes I know I’m basic) 

For most of my teenage and young adult life, I’ve been wondering what it is about Hamlet that has drawn me so much to him in particular. The tension between action and contemplation was an obvious one for me, but looking back at it now (more 15th century history orientated than before) I realise that with the ‘method in his madness’ he thematically reminds me of the perils faced by some of my favourite historical figures. So on reflection, my love for Shakespeare’s most famous protagonist has rekindled and redefined itself. Behold an old take of mine on whether Shakespeare presents Hamlet as sane or mad, admirable or not? (At least up to Act 3) @harry-leroy .

It is without a doubt that it was Shakespeare’s intent to portray Hamlet in a multi-faceted way, pertaining of a lot of paradoxes, such as Hamlet being both mindful of Ophelia for example warning Polonius about letting his daughter be blinded to the majesty that he projects: ‘Let her not walk I’th’sun’, yet at the same time condemning her for simply exhibiting more than one personality: ‘God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another’, which ironically is a central feature of his character. Therefore in many ways Hamlet is supposed to be portrayed as both admirable and mad to us the audience, as his character consistently changes depending with whom he speaks to, such as the ghost of his father in contrast to his mother, Polonius and the rest of the Danish court, as he is sometimes admirable in the way he accepts the moral responsibility that he has as heir presumptive of Denmark has, while simultaneously mad, as he is seen in some of his interactions and within his introspective soliloquys.

 On the one hand, Shakespeare’s intentions to depict Hamlet as a protagonist pertaining admirable qualities can clearly be seen through the multiple times he draws parallels between Hamlet and his storyline and Greek and Roman mythology, for example when he sees himself as Pyrrhus, who is a character that the term ‘pyrrhic victory’ derives from, the drawing of such a parallel subliminally portrays Hamlet in an admirable way to some degree, as it transmits Hamlet’s concern for morality in himself and others, because it shows how he acknowledges that even if he like Pyrrhus were victorious – in his case victory is avenging his father by bringing himself to conquer his ponderous nature, and murder Claudius -, his victory would still have moral ramifications for both himself and those around him, which is one of the main reasons why he procrastinates his vengeance despite wanting it so. For example, when he says in Act 1 Scene 2, line 244: ‘Though hell itself should gape’, he supresses his curiosity as a scholar, and wish for vengeance as the son of his beloved father – both roles that dominate his life and characters – in order to acknowledge how unorthodox this encounter would be, as suggested by the explored themes in that scene such as heaven, hell, death, the after-life and purgatory, which all pertain to a thaumaturgy which is a theme that would have been immediately linked to witchcraft and blasphemy at that time, and it is in many ways admirable for Hamlet to be troubled by the news of his father’s ghost returning instead of immediately trying to see it, without considering the moral implications, which can also be seen by how suspicious he is at the onset, questioning Horatio and Bernardo fervently about the smallest details: ‘pale, or red?’, ‘looked he frowningly’ and ‘armed say you’, while the stichomythic nature of the sharp and short exchanges between the three men, further emphasizes Hamlet’s suspicious and agitated approach towards occurrence, as he firstly maturely analyses if it is indeed his father they saw, before committing the heretic act of speaking to a ghost, who could judging by its description of the sun – often a symbol of clarity and bounteousness – as ‘sulph’rous and tormenting flames’, be a creature of hell and alluding to the dark side, instead of heaven. Yet, he himself often compares himself to the ‘sun’, whether intended for the pun between ‘son’ and ‘sun’, or when describing his relationship to the world and Denmark. For example, in Act 2 Scene 2 when he encounters Polonius and warns him to cease being his ‘fishmongering’ self and to"Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive" in Act 2 Scene 2, line 184 to 185, which is also delivered in prose instead of the more scholarly and sophisticated albeit removed iambic pentameter, which could suggest that he is speaking plainly and simply at this point, and his advice to Polonius should not be taken as one more of his paradoxes and mind-games. Hamlet’s delivering of that line though very strange in nature - as it is jux-ta-posed with the gruesome imagery of charion and maggots, which connote filth and deaths – can be one example of him exhibiting an admirable quality as he realizes that as ‘the sun’ he is in many ways Denmark and has a moral duty to act on what is better for everyone and the people around him than his own selfishness, as Polonius’ aside: ‘still harping on my daughter’ acts as a clarifier to the audience, that Hamlet still harbors feelings for Ophelia, which makes it clear that him warning Polonius to not ‘let her not walk I’ the sun’, serves as a warning to not let her be blinded by his position and the high-standard to which he is being held by Denmark and Ophelia as the heir presumptive: ‘the glass of fashion’, ‘the mould of form’, as he condemns himself for being so submissive to his own feelings as he calls himself ‘a rogue and peasant slave’, for not being able to take up the role of kingship like the actors ‘could force his (their) soul’ and pretend to weep for Hecuba despite meaning nothing to them, and thus making him more admirable as he realizes his own selfishness and thus does not vie for the position of a king or to selfishly love Ophelia.

 On the other hand, the frequency to which soliloquys form Hamlet’s dialogues could connote a certain degree of madness as the constantly introspective nature of Hamlet’s dialogue shows how far he lives inside his mind, which intrinsically suggests that he sees and experiences life to some subjectively, which can connote a certain degree of madness. This is primarily manifested by Hamlet’s constant use of paradoxes throughout the play for example in Act 1, Scene 4, Line 85, when he tells Horatio and Marcellus “I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me”, where ‘let’, which meant ‘hinder’ now means the exact opposite to ‘allow’ which depicts Hamlet as a very confused character as the diction of his speech is ambiguous in meaning, which often can also confuse the audience, getting them into the somewhat mad state of mind that Hamlet is in, another example that illustrates this is for instance: ‘you are the queen, your husbands’ brother’s wife’ that Hamlet says when talking to Gertrude, which not only serves to highlight the morbidity of the union of Claudius and Gertrude but also makes a paradox out of a fact, which serves to further blur the factual world of the outside and the paradoxical inner-world that Hamlet primarily resides in, which serves to further perpetuate the idea that Hamlet is in fact mad and not just play-acting, which he is clearly not capable of –switching roles like the actors have – which would explain the spiteful language that he uses when condemning the players such as: ‘monstrous’ and ‘horrid speech’. Additionally, in his encounters with characters like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (of whom he didn’t know were spies) Hamlet’s general mood despite changing: he is much more amicable towards the two men, then people whom he is spiteful towards such as his mother, Claudius and Polonius, still retains its air of madness, in both the language that it contains and the rhythm of the line. For example, he proclaims to them: ‘I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw’ in Act 2, Scene 2, Line 402-403, this which is seemingly a clever jape, aimed to show Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that, he (Hamlet) knows they are spying on him, and that beneath his ‘antic disposition’ he is perfectly aware of everything around him, on the other hand the completely offbeat comparison between a ‘hawk and a handsaw’, whose similar sounds no doubt brought their jux-ta-position in Hamlet’s head despite the inappropriate comparison, in addition to the weird repetition of ‘north-north’ in the direction and allusion to something as unpredictable and flimsy as the ‘southerly wind’ can suggest an internal disorientation, which could also reflect an internal perplexity in the construction of his intended jape towards Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and thus, an element of madness and disorder within his mind, which makes this intended clever remark about how he noticed that they were spying on him, into more of a joke on him, as the way it actually comes out of his head, would not make sense to the audience/reader.

 In conclusion, Shakespeare clearly intended to portray Hamlet as a multi-facetted character pertaining of many different identities and moods, which often appear erratic and baffling to both the recipient (character dialoguing with him) of his speech and the spectator/reader of the book, yet not so obvious as to make it clear that he is mad. Shakespeare further confuses us by having Hamlet proclaim that “As I perchance hereafter shall think meet to put an antic disposition on”, which leads the reader to constantly question when he is pretending or actually being mad, putting the reader in a similarly maddening and blurred disposition as Hamlet, which therefore makes it increasingly difficult to completely understand him. In addition, Shakespeare’s frequent depictions of Hamlet’s noble and admirable qualities such as his need to consider his moral responsibility and role, in addition to his sometimes selflessness, for example when he warned Polonius to keep Ophelia way from him, and warder her off on the grounds of being multi-faced, which he himself is, further mares the image that the reader developed of Hamlet, as he is a lot like the paradoxes in his dialogues: both selfish and selfless, both lucid and mad. Therefore, my overall view is that Hamlet is overall still pretending, but his inner-fight with his inactivity and procrastination in exacting his revenge, is driving him closer to madness, but not in the conventional sense.  

Let’s dissect the titles of each track on Seazer’s upcoming new Utena album!!

(EDIT: IMPORTANT UPDATE: J. A. Seazer made some last-minute changes to the tracklist after I made this post; I discussed those changes here).

1) 青銅製の人形俳優譚 オルフェウス洞窟劇場/Chant of Bronze Puppet Actors: Orpheus Grotto Theatre

There was a famous real-life “Grotto of Orpheus” that Seazer is most likely referencing! It doesn’t exist anymore, but you can see a detailed engraving of it here. It was made by Tommasso and Alessandro Francini for Henri IV of France. You can read about it and see another engraving here.

My guess as to what the song will be about: The grotto of Orpheus existed to glorify the prince by showing that he had so much power at his command, he could create a marvel like this. However, the object of wonder was a mechanical illusion: empty movement, so to speak. This was around the same time that some scientists began voicing the idea that perhaps the whole cosmos was like a machine built by God. This suggests the question, though it went unvoiced, of whether we ourselves are merely puppet-actors upon a cosmic stage.

(More under the cut--this will be long).

2)  宇宙卵プロトゴノス ―すなわちアンドロギュヌスのポラリザシオン(分極作用)―/Cosmic Egg Protogonos ―Namely Androgynous Polarization (Polarizing Action)―

This one is actually pretty straightforward if you understand Seazer’s language.

This song makes use of the Orphic creation narrative. Seazer used it before in a now lost version of Absolute Destiny Apocalypse (original source now here). Note: At the time when I posted that translation, I was under the mistaken impression that it was the same as the version on the Ohtori Kuruhi CD (because Seazer frequently does use pronunciation totally different from how something’s written). It is not; that set of lyrics is in fact the one used again more recently in the “complete version” in the Barbara CD.

Protogonos (literally “first-born”), also called Phanes (“bring to light”) ( "You scattered the dark mist that lay before your eyes and, flapping your wings, you whirled about, and throughout this world you brought pure light. For this I call you Phanes.") was described by Damascius as “the first [god] expressible and acceptable to human ears.” They hatched from the primordial Cosmic Egg, generated by Time (Chronos) and sometimes also Inevitability (Ananke).

Another tradition claims that a triad of the first three “intelligible principles” hatched from the egg. “What is this triad, then? The egg; the dyad of the two natures inside it--male and female--[Ouranos... and Gaia... Heaven and Earth], and the plurality of the various seeds between; and thirdly an incorporeal god with golden wings on his shoulders, bulls' heads growing upon his flanks, and on his head a monstrous serpent, presenting the appearance of all kinds of animal forms . . . And the third god of the third triad this theology too celebrates as Protogonos (First-Born).”

Another fact about Protogonos: They were a dying-and-rising god.

Since the title seems to focus on the severance of male from female (androgynous polarization), here are some passages that focus on that (source).

And he [Epicurus] says that the world began in the likeness of an egg, and the Wind [the entwined forms of Khronos (Chronos, Time) and Ananke (Inevitability)] encircling the egg serpent-fashion like a wreath or a belt then began to constrict nature. As it tried to squeeze all the matter with greater force, it divided the world into the two hemispheres, and after that the atoms sorted themselves out, the lighter and finer ones in the universe floating above and becoming the Bright Air [Aither (Aether)] and the most rarefied Wind [probably Khaos (Chaos, Air)], while the heaviest and dirtiest have veered down, become the Earth (Ge) [Gaia], both the dry land and the fluid waters [Pontos the Sea]. And the atoms move by themselves and through themselves within the revolution of the Sky and the Stars, everything still being driven round by the serpentiform wind [of Khronos and Ananke].

Ere land and sea and the all-covering sky were made, in the whole world the countenance of nature was the same, all one, well named Chaos, a raw and undivided mass, naught but a lifeless bulk, with warring seeds of ill-joined elements compressed together.... Though there were land and sea and air, the land no foot could tread, no creature swim the sea, the air was lightless; nothing kept its form, all objects were at odds, since in one mass cold essence fought with hot, and moist with dry, and hard with soft and light with things of weight. This strife a God (Deus) [probably Phanes], with nature's blessing, solved; who severed land from sky and sea from land, and from the denser vapours set apart the ethereal sky; and, each from the blind heap resolved and freed, he fastened in its place appropriate in peace and harmony. The fiery weightless force of heaven's vault flashed up and claimed the topmost citadel; next came the air in lightness and in place; the thicker earth with grosser elements sank burdened by its weight; lowest and last the girdling waters pent the solid globe. So into shape whatever god it was reduced the primal matter and prescribed its several parts.

Incidentally, the repeated severance and rejoining (solve et coagula) of male/female and above/below, was a key component of alchemy (of course, the materials they worked with were inanimate, but the alchemists insisted on gendering and even sexualizing them, always).

Protogonos bears some resemblance to the Gnostic demiurge, (shaper of the material world, creator of humans, associated with severance and procreation). However, the Gnostics denigrated the demiurge, whereas Protogonos was venerated. One could also make

3) ミッシング&ブーピープ ―快楽の園の修道院のイメージ―  /Missing and Bo-Peep -Image of the Monastery’s Garden of Earthly Delights-

Okay. Bo-Peep is, of course, a little girl in a nursery rhyme who’s lost her sheep but gets them back, wagging their tails behind them (wagging meant bringing). There’s an extended version where it’s specified that they’d actually lost their tails (but she found those too and reattached them). Before all that, “bo-peep” was used to refer to the children’s game of peekaboo, and in the Middle Ages, it was also a euphemism for being stood in a pillory. The Garden of Earthly Delights is a triptych by Bosch (viewable in detail here--arguably technically safe for work but only because it’s Art [tm]). From Wikipedia:

As so little is known of Bosch's life or intentions, interpretations of his intent have ranged from an admonition of worldly fleshy indulgence, to a dire warning on the perils of life's temptations, to an evocation of ultimate sexual joy. The intricacy of its symbolism, particularly that of the central panel, has led to a wide range of scholarly interpretations over the centuries. Twentieth-century art historians are divided as to whether the triptych's central panel is a moral warning or a panorama of paradise lost.

There’s also speculation that Bosch’s art (as a whole) is based on “esoteric knowledge lost to history.” The ambiguity is perfect for RGU.

I like this interpretation:

According to art historian Virginia Tuttle, the scene is "highly unconventional [and] cannot be identified as any of the events from the Book of Genesis traditionally depicted in Western art". Some of the images contradict the innocence expected in the Garden of Eden. Tuttle and other critics have interpreted the gaze of Adam upon his wife as lustful, and indicative of the Christian belief that humanity was doomed from the beginning...  Art historian Charles de Tolnay believed that, through the seductive gaze of Adam, the left panel already shows God's waning influence upon the newly created earth. This view is reinforced by the rendering of God in the outer panels as a tiny figure in comparison to the immensity of the earth. According to Hans Belting, the three inner panels seek to broadly convey the Old Testament notion that, before the Fall, there was no defined boundary between good and evil; humanity in its innocence was unaware of consequence.

This is of course very different from the traditional Christian view of Genesis, which is that before the Fall, there was no sexual desire. In many Gnostic texts, however, “original sin” is something that existed before the creation of the world; thus there was no innocence of any kind in Eden. The “original sinner” in this view was generally said to be Sophia (Wisdom, an Anthylike figure sometimes known as “the Bride,” who was both revered and maligned), an attribute of the Godhead, which was made up of syzygies, complementary pairs of principles, described variously as spouses and/or siblings, who (because they were God) reproduced without lust. But it was this same Sophia who breathed life and spirit into humanity, making them more than just bodies.

In this belief humans were inherently sinful creatures from the very beginning; it was also said that it was wrong for the demiurge to separate Eve from Adam (I believe this was the same text that said “This world is a mistake”--by the way, the demiurge was supposedly brought into existence by Sophia, but they’re enemies).

There’s also this idea that Bosch followed the ideas attributed to a Gnostic sect called the Adamites (unfortunately, the only contemporary sources we have on them are anti-Gnostic propaganda, so we cannot know how much of it is based in reality), which basically advocated freedom from all moral laws; the last image seems to suggest otherwise, but it certainly is, at least, a theme.

Incidentally, this triptych has been used for the covers of at least two books by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, whose works Seazer draws on extensively according to my research.

Anyway, for my attempt at putting the pieces of the title together... However you interpret the triptych, it’s not something you’d expect to see in a monastery. Wikipedia indicates a general consensus that it was probably commissioned by a lay person, not a member of the clergy. So the title suggests a contrast, or a confluence of opposites, rather like that title from his last Utena album, “Monastic Life is a Flesh Apocalypse.”

4) 幾何学とエロス/Geometry and Eros

This is, word-for-word, the title of a 1974 essay by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, whom, as I said before, I have known Seazer to draw from very frequently. It was published in this book, which also contains an essay on the “cosmic egg” concept and an essay on the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.

I have it from book reviews that “Geometry and Eros” discusses the 18th-century French Neoclassical architext Ledoux and the supposed “spiritual analogy” between his works and those of his contemporaries Fourier and Sade. Now, unfortunately, there are two different “Fourier”s from this time period that are both feasible candidates: the mathematician Joseph Fourier and the utopian socialist philosopher Charles Fourier. I lean towards the latter, however, because Shibusawa had published a translation of his essay “Archibras,” which Seazer drew on for Tsuwabuki’s duel song, Conical Absolute Egg Archibras. I suppose Ledoux would represent “geometry” and the other two “eros,” assuming I have the right Fourier.

Apparently, Shibusawa criticized Emil Kaufmann’s commentary on Ledoux, but I don’t know specifics on that.

5) 少女錬金術師/Girl Alchemist

The main question is whether this is Utena or Anthy, because the meaning would be different in either case. But alchemy is about unifying opposites, and they both do embody opposites, just in different ways. And they are opposites of each other, even though traditionally, in alchemy, the union of opposites is exclusively framed in heterosexual terms--think Angel Androgynous. This heterosexual union--often, incidentally, described as one of brother and sister--is meant to lead to the birth of the “philosophical child,” which can be interpreted as a new self. It’s kind of like Nanami’s Egg, actually, though that did not use the incest metaphor since one of RGU’s themes is how incest inhibits individuation.

Interestingly, while almost(?) all the surviving alchemical texts (at least in the Western tradition, which is what I’ve studied) were written by men, many of them stated that the first alchemist was a woman, and a Jewish woman at that. Unfortunately, all we know of her is from what men wrote about her.

There’s a quotation attributed to her that has an interesting interpretation by Jung, which you can read about here. Alchemy as a metaphor for psychological individuation is something he wrote about extensively, and it definitely makes sense in this context although it’s not, imo, the only meaning alchemy has in RGU. Marie Louise von Franz wrote about it extensively also! The two of them worked closely together as well as individually.

6) 人間人形 ―空想・イン・ザ・架空―/Human Puppet -Fantasy in the Imaginary-

(I’ve got nothing, other than the metaphor of puppets which I already touched on).

7) 絶対天秤卵/Absolute Balance Egg

This is not a new song. It’s taken from 2006 Banyu Inryoku production, Illusion-Flesh Verse Drama “Black in the Dark.” Of course, this is nothing new; even the duel songs were recycled (and this was Ikuhara’s idea, not Seazer’s), so this is just an extension of that. I found its tracklist in this review; it’s described as an “improvised reverberation poem of flesh burning up in the dark,” which must be from a playbill or something because it’s such a Seazer description.

Apparently, the “intro” (written in katakana) to this song was taken directly from “Paint it Black.” I can’t guarantee this will carry into our version, but if you hear anything that sounds suspiciously like The Rolling Stones... I called it.

Actually, I should note: It’s possible that Absolute Balance Egg is from an even older Seazer production and was recycled in both this play and this CD. One can never rule that out.

8) 人間人形 ―空想・イン・ザ・架空―/Philosophical Bread (?) Seed

This sounds like an alchemy thing, and I’m not ruling that out, but the results that I found searching “philosophical bread” showed me it’s a very common metaphor used in many contexts. Generally it refers to “higher learning” of spiritual matters, sometimes specifically “to know the mind of God.” Sometimes it’s treated as the ultimate endeavor, sometimes as pointless. Seeds, I suppose, would be the beginning of that.

Note: "Bread,” in Japanese, is パン (pan) , and the Greek god Pan sometimes has his name written the same way. It’s very possible that  パン is actually referring to the god here and shouldn’t be translated as “bread,” but we don’t know at this point. Either is plausible.

9) 法王驢馬寓意画意オペレッタ1 ―その声は人間の鳴き声に似る―/The Pope Ass Allegory Symbolism Operetta 1 -That Voice Is Like the Cry of a Human Being

The Papal Ass or Pope Ass, known from its use in a highly influential pamphlet by Martin Luther and Melanchthon, is often described as a caricature of the Pope. However, it’s not satirical like most modern political cartoons.It’s in fact based on the “monstrous birth” reports that were very popular at the time; this genre was referenced in the Rose Egg Sophia CD. To fully understand what the Papal Ass meant to its original audience, it’s necessary to have some understanding of the genre, so I’ll go into that. 

It’s important to understand that such records are not always made-up, although they are frequently exaggerated. For instance, researching the term  クシュポデュメー (no, I don’t know how to spell it) from Rose Egg Sophia’s Puchibanshou song (doragon no kodomo, offspring of a dragon) led me to a description of a “dragon” born with two heads, four arms, two legs, and one pelvis, said to have been part of the court of James III of Scotland. As a matter of fact, this bodily description corresponds to contemporary reports of a pair of conjoined twins known as the Scottish brothers, who were part of this king’s court. Many so-called “monsters,” from medieval times up until the xth century, were people. This particular one, however, was an animal, an actual donkey (or ass).

Luther wrote this for an updated 1535 version of the pamphlet:

The Papal Ass is itself a dreadful, ugly, terrifying picture, and the longer one looks at it, the more terrifying it seems. However nothing is so completely terrifying as the fact that God himself made and revealed such a wonder and such a monstrous image. If a human had invented, carved or painted it, one would scorn or laugh at it. However since the highest Majesty himself created and depicted it, the whole world should be dismayed and quake, for from it one fully understands what he thought of and intended.

From Monstrous Births and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Germany by Jennifer Spinks:

I was able to find a book, Monstrous Births and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Germany, that goes into great detail on how this was used by the early Protestant movement and has an entire chapter on this pamphlet: “Monstrous births could be viewed in positive and sympathetic terms, as the previous chapters have demonstrated. Yet this 1523 pamphlet by the two most important figures of the Lutheran Reformation forms a decisive shift in attitude, in which interpretation and representation became not only more polemical – and particularly anti-papal – but took on a notably apocalyptic aspect.” Of the Papal Ass and one of its contemporaries, the moon-calf, the author says, “The bodies of the monsters became texts to be read and argumentatively decoded using highly visual language.”

Notably, Luther and his coauthor did not invent the Papal Ass; they only named it. As Jennifer Spinks writes in this book:

The Papal Ass, washed up on the banks of the Tiber in Rome in 1495, made its way to Germany in visual form via an engraving by the Bohemian artist Wenzel von Olmutz, published in the late fifteenth century. Several decades later, and perhaps prompted by his colleague Melanchthon... Luther first became intrigued by the then-nameless monstrous birth and sought to incorporate it into his eschatological world view. He wrote a homiletic epistle that year (on the second Sunday in  Advent, concerning Luke 21:25–33)  titled ‘A Christian and well-substantiated proof of the Day of Judgement, and of the signs that it cannot now be far off ’. Although they were not referred to in Luke, Luther explicitly added monstrous creatures to his list and framed this addition as an attack on Rome and the papacy.

As for the pamphlet that made the Papal Ass famous, however, the section devoted to the Papal Ass was written by Luther’s coauthor, not Luther himself. Spinks states:

Melanchthon analyses the creature one body part at a time, utilizing biblical references, and conveying a central message about the corruption of the church in Rome as revealed by its bizarre physical structure. He begins his analysis of the Papal Ass with a reference to the Book of Daniel: ‘God has always indicated his grace or wrath by many signs, and in particular He has used such miracles for speaking to the rulers, as we see in Daniel’.

Melanchthon, she writes, “presents God in the guise of an artist who uses his creations to convey visual messages.”

The Papal Ass... has an almost jarring, collage-like combination of sharply delineated but ill-matching body parts. Step by step, Melanchthon describes and interprets these individual elements. He begins with... ‘Firstly, the head of the ass represents the Pope’. The Pope, he indicates... has brought the church into a worldly and physical, rather than spiritual, state. The low state of the ass in the animal kingdom is underscored through a reference to Exodus 13:13, in which first-born children and animals are consecrated to God: ‘but every fi rst-born donkey you will redeem with a lamb or kid; if you do not redeem it, you must break its neck’. That is, God does not value donkeys (or asses) as he does other creatures. That the head of the Papal Ass is formed in this way is a true sign of the creature’s low state.

Next, Melanchthon addresses one hand, which ‘like an elephant’s foot rep-resents the spiritual regime of the Pope’. As forcefully as an elephant, the Pope’s ‘regime’ makes its way into and corrupts souls with innumerable and intolerable laws. Melanchthon adds, in a metaphor that it is easy to imagine seizing the imagination of audiences: ‘like the great heavy elephant it tramples and grinds down everything that it comes across’. The human-shaped other hand of the Papal Ass, in turn, represented the Pope’s worldly ‘regiment’; that is, those secular rulers who gave support to the papal office. In Cranach’s woodcut accompanying the text, these hands are neatly displayed one above the other, emphasizing through contrast the peculiarity of the elephant hand. The right foot of the creature, in the form of the foot of an ox, is aligned by Melanchthon with the elephant-shaped right hand. The foot represents the servants of the church: ‘the papal teachers, preachers, priests and confessors, and particularly the scholastic theologians’. That is, it refers to those responsible, in the Pope’s name, for oppressing the ‘poor folk’ (‘arme volck’) with their activities. Identifying papal supporters with the End Times, Melanchthon refers the reader to Matthew 24:4: ‘There will come false Christians and false prophets’. The other foot, in the shape of a claw, is aligned with the human-shaped hand. It represents canons, as worldly servants of the popes. Melanchthon’s language becomes still more physical in the next section, in which the female belly and breasts of the Papal Ass are described: “[these] represent the body of the papacy: that is Cardinals, bishops, clerics, monks, students ... their life is simply guzzling food, boozing, unchaste lechery, and leading the ‘good life’ on earth.”

Melanchthon’s understanding of the belly and breasts as especially potent symbols was to be intensified in a revised 1535 edition of the pamphlet... In this 1523 version, however, he turns fairly rapidly to the arms, legs and back of the creature, with a metaphor that is a little less obvious: the scales on these body parts represent secular rulers, who tolerate the failings of the papal system, effectively protecting it as they cling on to its ‘body’. This passage makes a particularly intriguing visual appeal to the reader or listener. The innocuous scales represented in the woodcut must be imaginatively reconfigured by the reader into a multitude of earthly rulers. Much more anthropomorphic in form are the faces of the old man and dragon (‘trach’) that emerge from the Papal Ass’s backside. The man represents the coming end of the papacy, already growing old; the dragon represents the bulls and books published by popes with the purpose of universally enforcing their will. Melanchthon’s tenth and final point shifts away from the body of the creature and to the location where it was found: Rome... The distinctive shape of the Castel Sant Angelo in Rome is carefully delineated, and for those not familiar with the famous tower, the fluttering flag with the crossed papal keys could inform even the least educated of the connection with Rome and the papacy. The tower to the right is the Tor di nona, used as the papal prison. Dramatically, in his final point, Melanchthon claims that finding the creature dead, ‘confirms that the papacy is coming to an end’.

Also:

In 1535 Melanchthon prepared a new edition of his text on the Papal Ass, still illustrated by the original Cranach image. Melanchthon’s expanded text takes sharper, more polemical aim at the papacy in a number of short new passages, including one on the ass’s head as a demonstration of the foolishness of the Pope, and another on the human hand as a sign the worldly, aggressive ambitions of the Pope. Two particularly substantial new sections dramatically increase the anti-papal and also the apocalyptic import of the Papal Ass. Several new pages on the breasts and belly of the creature emphasize the themes of whoring and sin (and implicitly, perhaps, refer to the whore of Babylon), while the ‘shameless female belly’ (‘vnuerschampt frawen bauch’) represents the Antichrist’s worst excesses.

More from Spinks about what made this method of symbolism unique:

Some pre-Reformation publications had ascribed specific meanings to individual body parts in monstrous births, like the conjoined foreheads of the Worms twins. Yet none had so rigorously and polemically done so as Luther and Melanchthon’s publication. This pamphlet is at the heart of a tangible shift in the representation and interpretation of monstrous births, and one that fitted the aggressively polemical culture of the early Reformation... This period saw the rise of vigorous debates and fundamental shifts in visual culture. The most famous of these developments was the wave of iconoclasm, which saw the destruction of religious images and objects. More moderate ‘reforms’ of imagery included a move to remove any hint of lasciviousness (especially in female figures) in the images on church walls. Martin Luther had a pragmatic attitude towards the use of religious images, and contributed to a culture of visual propaganda that stood on the borderline of the religious and the secular. One of the most important aspects of the visual culture of the Reformation was the vigorous use of printed propaganda, deployed.. with remarkable success. Robert Scribner observed that ‘Luther and other reformers spoke of pious images as masks (larvae) behind which the devil lurked, hoping to lure souls to damnation’. This did not mean that Luther rejected the use of images, and Scribner provided examples of how what he called the ‘semiology of arousal’ (which went well beyond the sensual) could be ‘employed also for its revelatory effect, especially in Reformation propaganda, putting into practice Luther’s notion of the masks of the devil disguising diabolical reality’... Religious imagery nonetheless increasingly moved outside relatively controlled environments like church walls and elite manuscripts, and into the turbulent new world created by the widely available printed image.... Luther’s ideas about visual images are closely bound up with his views on the apocalyptic Book of Revelation – a connection seen in microcosm in the 1523 pamphlet.

The Apocalypse While Albrecht Dürer had created what many regard as the definitive illustrated series of the Apocalypse in 1498, a flood of other versions appeared in the first half of the sixteenth century.74 The increasing popularity of the Book of Revelation as a subject for illustration during the sixteenth century was evidently connected to the growth of an apocalyptic world view... In this environment there was a tangible value in giving shape to apocalyptic imagery, and a ready audience for the new editions that came onto the market. As Bernd Moeller has identified, the End Times (‘Endzeit’) were one of the four most popular subjects for sermons preached in German towns in the early Reformation period.

Another updated version was published in 1549 without Melanchthon’s permission, edited to include past writings of his that he had since renounced in favor of compromise.

Flacius... uses Melanchthon’s text on the Papal Ass... as a springboard to oppose any religious compromise... In an introductory text, Flacius argues that the papacy can be represented in both words and images as worse than the devil or the whore of Babylon from the Book of Revelation. He maintains the highly visual language used by Luther and Melanchthon, and even concludes by claiming that the arts of geometrical and arithmetical proportions are inadequate for the present times, which demanded instead a ‘new swinish art’ (‘newen Sewkunst’). Later in the pamphlet, Flacius adds additional texts that talk of the disastrous events leading up to the Last Days, specifically identifying the Pope as the Whore of Babylon, holding up her goblet, drunk on the blood of Christ, and seated on the back of the seven-headed beast which represented Rome itself (and also the ‘Roemische Reich’, or Roman Empire) and its support of the papacy. The increasingly voluptuous body of the Papal Ass accords with this emphasis on the Babylonian woman.

After this point, “wonder books,” which “collected together monstrous births and various other wonders and disasters across decades, centuries or even millennia,” became more and more common. Apparently, “negative and also apocalyptic rhetoric about monstrous births became still more deeply entrenched in this genre.” By 1569 (when Catholics started appropriating this trend for their counter-Reformation), “Monstrous births and the apocalyptic Book of Revelation were closely enmeshed, and overwhelmingly presented as such in German Reformation and Counter-Reformation print culture.”

Final note: The way “Pope Ass” is written in the title is nonstandard, which is why I went with the literal translation rather than the more common phrase “Papal Ass.” I did find one search result for this phrase that wasn’t about this album, indicating that it’s used in yet another Shibusawa book,  夢の宇宙誌 (this was also the only pre-Seazerian source I could find for  クシュポデュメー).

未来のヒユネロトマキア ―狂恋夢・薔薇物語・愛の秘法伝授―/The Future Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Love in a Dream・The Tale of the Rose・Love’s Secret Initiation -

So... there are many parts to this.

The Future Hypnerotomachia:

That's a reference to the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (”The Strife of Love in a Dream” is included at the end of the title in some editions; it’s a translation of hypnerotomachia) and possibly also The Future Eve (referenced in the Rose Egg Sophia CD, specifically in its version of Saionji’s duel song). You can look in my tag on tumblr for my thoughts as to what that book might signify in relation to Utena.

As for The Tale of the Rose, we all know it as the play in episode 34, but there’s another “Tale of the Rose” I think Seazer is referencing here as well. Seazer mentioned “the medieval Tale of the Rose” as one of the inspirations for the Rose Egg Sophia in its liner notes (I’m working on a translation, off and on). It’s this book. The Japanese title is written the same was as the title of the play is written on the tickets in episode 34; it does not have much in common with the play, but you can think of it as “a way duelists look at Anthy.” You can also think of it as something possibly taught uncritically at Ohtori; you can certainly see its worldview reflected in, say, Miki.

The last part of the title isn’t a specific text, as far as I know, but it does have a traceable origin in, once again, Shibusawa, specifically his essay collection 胡桃の中の世界.

Since this title is about the themes of two or three entire books, I think I will make a Separate post for how those texts relate to Utena--and, of course, a new, updated one once we have the actual lyrics. And possibly another one several years from now when I inevitably translate 胡桃の中の世界.

#890: ‘Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)’, dir. Alejandro Iñárritu, 2014.

Film critics are fond of making sweeping statements, and every time they do, they’re immediately met with a barrage of ‘what-abouts’ that render the original statement pointless. So as much as I want to say that Birdman is one of the five best films made in the 2010s, I won’t - not least because I haven’t given any serious thought to what the other four would be. What I will say is that Birdman is a great film, and one that resonated with me far more than many of the other films I’ve seen in the last decade. It’s ambiguous, imaginative and thoughtful, and I genuinely think the Academy got it right in awarding it (and Alejandro G. Iñárritu) Oscars.

Is my interest in this film because I spent most of my university years in the theatre, and gained a familiarity with the best parts of the art, as well as the worst, most pretentious parts? Partly. Is it because Iñárritu developed the film with the idea of having it appear as one long take? Partly, although the list has no shortage of films that were actually filmed that way, and Birdman lets the effectiveness of this technique slide a little in a few moments where it’s impossible for the actors to have moved between locations. Mostly, Birdman resonates with me because it’s about creative anxiety, and about those two little voices that drag you between doing things that are meaningless but make you popular, and trying to do things that are meaningful but which you suspect you won’t ever succeed at.

Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) used to be big in movies - about twenty years ago he starred in a trilogy of blockbuster superhero films - but after rejecting that art as too meaningless, he’s turned instead to putting on a Broadway play based on a Raymond Carver short story. When we first meet him, the preview season has just started, and Thomson needs to replace an actor. He immediately thrusts this job onto his producer/lawyer/best friend, Jake (Zach Galifianakis, almost unrecognisable here behind a pair of scholarly glasses), who seems to take an almost masochistic pleasure in solving problems. Riggan’s daughter, Sam (Emma Stone) is wandering around, fresh out of rehab and resentfully acting as her father’s assistant; his girlfriend Laura (Andrea Riseborough) is unsure if she’s pregnant; new Broadway actress Lesley (Naomi Watts) suggests her boyfriend, troublemaker Mike (Edward Norton) as a replacement for the former actor.

There’s not a single weak link in this cast - everyone in the film is at the top of their game - and Iñárritu makes the most of the performances. Working with Emmanuel Lubezki as cinematographer for their first feature collaboration, the director pushes into tightly-framed static shots for the more compelling dialogue sequences. This technique gives the arguments and agreements a greater immediacy simply because we’re tricked into believing as much time has passed for the characters as has for us - which is to say, none at all.

When things go surprisingly wrong for the characters and the play, there’s also nowhere for us to escape: the only thing that ever takes the camera and the audience away from something going wrong is something worse going wrong. At one stage, Riggan is trapped outside the theatre just before his final cue, and with his dressing gown trapped in the door he is forced to take the long way around in his underwear. Bursting in through the audience, after a string of humiliating encounters with autograph-hungry New Yorkers, Riggan gives a cringeworthy performance, gesturing wildly with his fingers until a stage manager gives him the prop gun. Just when we’re expecting to watch the whole embarrassment, Jake is dragged away by a phone call, and we go too. We’re left in the hallway upstairs for one of the few prolonged periods of silence in the film, and then we hear the gunshot, and the applause. It’s a victory - a rare event in Birdman - and we don’t get to watch it.

I’ve been roaming around threatres since I was a kid, and I’ve enjoyed looking at them in the same way Iñárritu does here - from the wings, from the lighting rigs, from the stage. A theatre is a place where things can be made that matter, but they’re also places where it’s easy to get trapped. I’ve been in technical rehearsals that lasted for five hours and in some of the most abysmal public domain school productions. Despite that, I know people who are doing incredible work in the industry. When Jake and Riggan are tossing around ideas for replacement actors, a few names come up: Woody Harrelson; Michael Fassbender; Jeremy Renner. All these actors were doing blockbuster franchise work at the time, and it’s clear that Iñárritu has some thoughts about the relationship between fame and theatre, but these moments also say a lot about what it means to make something that matters. Riggan is upset by the idea that he’ll never succeed at anything beyond the blockbusters he deliberately walked away from, but he’s even more upset by the prospect that those blockbusters mean more in the grand scheme of things than the play he’s working on. He’s surrounded by people who think he’s an egocentric fraud, or those who falsely tell him he’s brilliant, and he’s also haunted, quite literally, by Birdman, too.

In the end, Riggan has to do something stupidly drastic to make theatre that means something. I don’t know if it was intentional, but the glowing review he receives for What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is hackneyed to the point of feeling sarcastic.

In other words, Alejandro Iñárritu doesn’t always get it right. There’s a lesbian subplot that lands with a confused ‘thunk’, the sound you get when you hit a steel barrel and find out it’s empty. Some of the ambiguity of Riggan’s character is a bit grating, too - it’s clear that his ‘superpowers’ aren’t real, as they seem to manifest only in moments of emotional weakness, and are never commented on by others, but the ending of the film only really has an impact if these powers are real, if they’ve actually manifested in the real world.

But oh, what we get instead of certainty in this film more than makes up for it. Because of the ‘one-take’ conceit, Birdman had to be scripted in great detail before filming started, and the precision required to film that means that everyone is on top form at all times. Even with the roving camera, the imagery is perfectly-framed and everything, from the hallucinations to the stagecraft, looks like a vivid dream.

Every now and then, we’re lucky to come across a film that feels like it speaks our language. Not in the broader sense, but in the specifics - a film that knows what we look at, what we say and how we say it. For me, that’s a film about being excited and afraid; a film about making art of different kinds and bring one set of skills to bear on another; a film about time passing and not passing at the same time. Birdman is the film that speaks to me. It’s on Netflix right now, so it’s worth spending two hours with: I hope it speaks phrases in your language too.

The whole "His team is stopping/forcing him" trope is proof they have no concept of the entertainment industry. Darren's team consists of manager-publicist-stylist, none of which would have a job with him if he wasn't actively engaged in that type of work. They make and project his celebrity branding, not him as a person per se. Darren owns TSG, his team have nothing to do with promoting it or making it successful, that's on Darren, Mia and staff. Anything personal in on Darren, NOT his team.

You’re spot on.  What gets me is that DARREN is the BOSS. He hires his team- his manager, PR, stylist, agent, lawyers, accountants etc to work FOR him, to promote his business which is his own skills as an actor, singing, writer, performer, and host. But he also does a lot of producing and that is something that takes a lot of time and isn’t Instagram worthy. His team works WITH him on those projects as well. Ricky is a co-producer for Elsie every year.  

The point is that his team doesn’t own him, the team isn't the central figure and Darren simply hired to work for them. Darren is the CEO and Head of Human Resources for Darren Criss Inc. From various articles I have read, he also does a lot of the secretarial and assistant work himself. All the departments at Darren Criss Inc. report to Darren Criss. Full Stop. The team is put in place to advise him on the various areas in which they are experts, they don’t have a master plan and pull Darren’s puppet strings.  

The ccers have a trope about Ricky having Darren’s Power of Attorney (POA) which he misuses. They claim that Ricky signs contracts for shows and #ads that are harmful to Darren’s career. Because -once again -an unreachable contract is involved, Darren is “forced” to fulfill the contracts for whatever work Ricky can find that both hurts Darren and gives Ricky great work. Their main complaint is that the work is far beneath his 4x-award-winning skills. In other words, Ricky is forcing Darren to do projects that are far OFF of the yellow brick road to the A-list. Why you might ask, would Ricky do this when his income is dependent on Darren being successful? The ccers claim that he does this both out of spite-you know just to terrorize Darren- and his own short-sighted greed. He’s aiming for “all the money he can get” from Darren AND as the same time trying to ruin Darren before Darren fires him. But lawyer Abby knows this isn’t how POAs work. It’s either a gross mischaracterization or an outright lie. Google it for yourself.  A POA holder MUST do what is in the best interest of the person who gave the power.  This isn’t ambiguous. You aren’t allowed to just wreck havoc on someone’s life because they trusted you with their POA. Ricky has Darren’s POA for Darren’s convenience- so that Ricky can sign contracts and make deals without Darren having to be present to sign, but make no mistake, Darren is making the final decision. 

The other trope that makes me shake my head is the idea that Ricky is “forcing” Darren to do #Ads so that Ricky can get paid. Is Darren so stupid that he gave his manager a bigger cut of his income than he gave himself? Cuz that would make him a spineless twit. Come on, we all know that Darren is making the more money than Ricky is. I don’t actually believe all of the #ads are ads. Some are just people promoting their products they worked with Darren on the wedding- most makers and small businesses do that now -like it’s a “thing” on Facebook and Instagram.  Some are just # because it’s nice to link things that you love and some are ads. Who cares? It’s income. It’s his prerogative to support brands he loves. 

Darren isn’t a feckless idiot who can’t get his own life under control. In their haste to effort to rewrite history to delete all things Darren says that do not support crisscolfer, they have created a character who looks nothing like the Darren Criss we all see OR the Darren Criss they pretend to see. It’s like they can’t put the entire picture together.  Just a few nice comments about Darren from today: 

RE: His “bar baby” and a place he described as a long dream of theirs , and where his friends and interviewers have referred to “Darren’s bar” . 

klainecentric

I’ve always said, that place is just place for their own personal piss up, drug sniffing, vagina rubbing strip joint use. Just a place as a hang out for them and their “friends” and maybe on the odd occasion look like she has a job at her one convenience but never actually work, just drink what little if any profit they make which will be nil……and stand around a piano, block the view from patrons who pay to get in and torture them with whatever song she may screech out…my bet it’ll be “what’s up”…I could go on but its just too infuriating. Rant over.

About the CHARITY fundraiser Darren attended 

ajw720

Compare videos from last night to videos of Wednesday night.  Granted on Wednesday the entertainment sucked and on Thursday there was talent, but still, it is all about D bringing the people.

It totally erased for me that he went to a cool event. The event was chosen over We Day as it was a better opportunity to market the strip joint. Plain and simple.  There is NOTHING i can enjoy about D and 2019.  It is an utter shitshow and even the few good things are absolutely connected to bad starting with awards season.

ajw720 (about a photo of Darren on the red carpet with Bob Saget aka no Mia in sight)

An angel got her wings again:)

leka-1998

Of course, the man who swept award season should absolutely continue to be the piano man for a bar he doesn’t own and she got bored with a long time ago. At some point you should admit you failed. No matter how much D promotes this place, 1) it should be shut down by the department of health and 2) nobody cares about the place if he isn’t there.

Anonymous asked:

Thank god his I'm straighter than straight mate Ben is there 😒

I laughed when I saw the pic. BF and his wife are absolutely being pushed as the straight friends.

Wonder if they too went to the strip joint after.

emmywinnercriss

Remember when Computer Games had a club and you would get exclusive BTS for being in the club?

Yeah, what happened?

ajw720

Apparently nothing.

ajw720

Looks like a fun event. Still a one off thing. That’s the pattern.

And ofc he ended the night at the strip joint. So clearly the price of doing something semi fit him his promo for that place.

klainecentric

Can we just stop with all this BS now, I’m so sick of waking up in the morning and seeing “if it’s even possible” more crap involving this sham relationshit, and that whore house of a strip bar, I feel like I can safely say D’s career is almost officially up the shitter. Maybe not quite there yet but it’s heading there real fast. I can no longer scroll through SM without it being flooded with this sham. No where is safe that is a place to just revel in the joy that is just D and his talent. Looks like team shit is getting what they want…..to leech, to hog and to ruin a man’s career as it was getting off the ground. Bravo.

That is just one post from last night and the rest from today. They hate Darren and can’t see through their bullshit clearly enough to realize it. The fandom has no where to go but down into hell even farther. They are so caught up in anger, hate, misogyny there is no redemption. They even made fun of Ashley Weston for having an allergic reaction to something.  

If they are ACTIVELY and aggressively stalking Mia on social media, they gonna find her. They are want to be filled with hate.  

As the saying goes, if at first you don’t succeed, sign on to a Marvel property. After the backlash Jared Leto received for his portrayal of the Joker in Suicide Squad, the actor jumped the DC ship, and he’s now playing Morbius, the living vampire from the Marvel Universe.

RELATED: Venom And 9 Previous Movie Villains Who Should Return For MCU’s Spider-Man 3

It isn’t technically part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but there some strange links between them that are yet to be cleared up, which is one of the reasons to be excited about the movie. However, given the strange premise, as it’s about a doctor who inadvertently becomes a vampire after trying to cure himself of his rare blood disease, it’s a hard sell. Regardless, these are movies that will get any cinephile in the mood to see the upcoming dark flick.

10 Venom (2018) - Available On Spectrum TV

Sony has confirmed that both the Venom series and Morbius are set in the same universe, which doesn’t exactly come as a surprise considering that they are both villains of Spider-Man and everything is always tied to a bigger universe these days.

A crossover between the two antagonists seems inevitable, whether it’s going up against each other or teaming up to go against a larger force. And as Venom is an ugly beast that literally bites heads off people, and Morbius is a vampire with a rare blood disease, a team-up would be gruesomely exciting.

9 Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) - Available On FX

Given that Morbius is originally Spider-Man’s villain in the comic-books, it’s worth watching the first movie of the reboot, if only to see who Morbius could potentially be facing off against in the future.

RELATED: MCU: 10 Spider-Man Scenes That Prove He’s The Best

Not only that but Michael Keaton, who played Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming, will also feature in the vampire movie. And though it hasn’t been announced what Keaton’s role will be, it’s heavily rumored that it’s the same role he played in Homecoming, especially considering that his character name hasn’t even been revealed yet.

8 Suicide Squad (2016) - Available On HBO Max

The DCEU's Suicide Squad might have been a critical miss, but the aesthetics of the film are so appealing. The movie has colorful cinematography, a stacked soundtrack, and the first live-action portrayal of Harley Quinn. But the most talked-about part of the movie is the Joker, who is unlike any Joker that had come before.

Leto plays the character as a flashy gangster. He drives a pink Lamborghini, hangs out in nightclubs, and is covered in tattoos. Though it was polarizing, it was at least unlike any Joker that came before.

7 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) - Available On HBO Max

After so many years of playing Roman Pierce in the Fast & Furious franchise, Tyrese Gibson has finally gotten a role in a different property, and it seems like it’s going to be an important part of the movie. The actor plays FBI agent Simon Stroud, who is trying to hunt down Morbius. It’s hard to imagine Gibson in a serious role, as he’s such a hype man and somewhat of a joker based on his work in the Fast & Furious series.

But viewers can’t help but smile whenever he’s on-screen, and the best example of that is in his breakthrough movie, 2 Fast 2 Furious, as things immediately become something much bigger when he’s first introduced. Gibson is responsible for many of the best scenes, whether it’s antagonizing gangsters or busting Brian’s chops at every chance he gets. Bringing that kind of energy to Morbius, which looks pretty gloomy, is exactly what the movie needs.

6 Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) - Available On HBO Max

Though Suicide Squad was financially successful, it was universally panned and fans of the series were split on Leto’s gangster-like portrayal of the most famous movie villain of all time.

However, with the newly released Zack Snyder’s Justice League, a four-hour version of the 2017 movie with tons of new footage, the epilogue actually redeems Jared Leto’s Joker. The gangster attitude is dropped and it’s a brilliant philosophical conversation that goes back and forth between the Joker and Batman. And it’s the chief example of how great Morbius can be, being led by Leto.

5 Dallas Buyers Club (2013) - Available On Peacock

After getting so much flack for some of his more recent movie choices, it’s easy for viewers to forget that Jared Leto is actually an Academy Award-winning actor. In 2013, Leto won Best Supporting Actor for his role as Rayon, a transgender AIDS patient in Dallas Buyers Club.

Having swept up most of the acting categories at the Oscars, the movie is so powerful due to the performances, and there's a reason why most audiences, even its stars, love it so much.

4 Blade Runner 2049 (2017) - Available On HBO Max

Being the long-awaited sequel to arguably the biggest cult movie of all time, Blade Runner 2049 is one of Ryan Gosling’s best movies, but Gosling isn’t the only actor who pulls in a great performance.

RELATED: 15 Gorgeous Sci-Fi Movies To Watch If You Loved Blade Runner 2049

In the movie, Jared Leto plays the evil CEO of Wallace Corporation, Niander Wallace, and just like most of Leto’s roles, the character is typically strange, as he spends a lot of time sitting in a chamber surrounded by water. Given the dark tone of Morbius and how the character is a villain, 2049 is the perfect movie to watch to see how Leto could portray the vampire.

3 Lost River (2014) - Available To Rent On Vudu

After shooting two movies with visceral filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, Ryan Gosling directed a movie of his own in a very similar style to Drive and Only God Forgives. Lost River is visually stunning and completely ambiguous, just like the work of Refn.

The highlight of the whole movie is Matt Smith, who plays Bully, a man who lives up to his name and who runs the criminal underbelly of the small town. He’s psychotic in the way he deals with problems head on, and it’s quite a departure from the actor’s role as the Doctor in Doctor Who. In Morbius, Smith plays a friend of the titular character who suffers from the same blood disease, and it could be that he has a much bigger role than fans actually know.

2 Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows (2011) - Available On HBO Max

Jared Harris is one of those actors who pops up in so many films and can be found all over TV, even if he isn’t immediately known by general audiences. In Morbius, Harris plays the titular character’s mentor, which is the type of role he has become known for playing.

Having been a character actor for decades, he’s given so many great performances, but he’s most well known for playing the iconic James Moriarty in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows. After the first movie, A Game of Shadows pulled a Dark Knight, by having Holmes go up against his toughest foe, and outside of BBC’s Sherlock, it’s the best on-screen depiction of Moriarty.

1 Blade (1998) - Available On HBO Max

So many studios seem wary to make an R-rated movie, as they fear they won’t make any money. However, the 1990s was a very different time and studios hadn’t quite realized what was possible with the Marvel properties. Due to that, fans were treated to an R-rated Blade movie. The film follows the character who has vampire strengths and uses them to hunt down vampires.

Though it’s unlikely that it’ll happen, Blade is one of the characters fans want to see in a cameo. But as the character of Blade has been cast for an upcoming MCU movie, it just got a little more likely, as Mahershala Ali will be portraying the vampire hunter in the reboot.

NEXT: MCU: 10 Storylines Spider-Man Can Have In The Third Movie

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The Little Things Review: Denzel Washington Brings Back Creepy Serial Killer Thrillers

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With the 25th anniversary of Seven having passed and the 30th anniversary of The Silence of the Lambs upon us in just a few weeks, it wouldn’t be surprising if nostalgia for the serial killer thrillers of the ’90s is now upon us. That makes the arrival of The Little Things, directed and written by John Lee Hancock (The Founder), almost uncanny in its timing.

The film is an unabashed throwback with the visual and narrative cues of the films mentioned above, and others along those lines, like Manhunter and Kyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure, liberally baked into its DNA. With its rich sense of atmosphere, period details–it’s perfectly set in 1990–and formally traditional style, The Little Things (which Hancock says he wrote a first draft for in 1993) is the type of movie that we haven’t seen in a while. It makes its familiar storytelling and character arcs almost seem fresh again.

Denzel Washington stars as Joe “Deke” Deacon, a former LAPD detective who now spends his days as a sheriff’s deputy in Kern County, around 110 miles north of Los Angeles. When a reluctant Deacon is sent by his boss to retrieve evidence from the LAPD detective division for a trial in Bakersfield, his former colleagues (including The Deuce’s Chris Bauer) greet his arrival with a mix of friendliness and wariness. Deacon is well known here, it seems, as are his previous exploits as a detective.

But one rising young hotshot on the force, Det. Jim Baxter (Rami Malek), has a different agenda. Having heard of Deacon’s skills and curious about why he quit LA, Baxter invites Deacon to consult on the latest in a series of brutal murders of young women. Deacon is hesitant to join the investigation, but he does, and the reasons why he left soon begin to surface again–even as he and Baxter zero in on a suspect named Albert Sparma (Jared Leto) who seems to be deliberately taunting them.

Detectives tormented by death-filled pasts, underlying tensions between the protagonists, a decaying, decrepit urban setting, a game of cat and mouse between the cops and their suspect, and a sense that civilization itself seems to hang in the balance… all these elements are present in The Little Things, even to the point where certain shots–like bright blue-white flashlight beams cutting through the miasma of a darkened, claustrophobic apartment–trigger instant memories of Seven and others of its kind.

Yet despite the familiar trappings, or perhaps because of them to some extent, The Little Things is an engrossing, nerve-fraying watch for most of its 128 minutes. For one thing, the cops have to put some real shoe leather in the game: This is an era without cell phones and without the kind of DNA technology that would change police work in the decades ahead. But there’s also the somber atmosphere that Hancock evokes throughout, the steady accumulation of unsettling plot points and details–what Deacon calls “the little things”–plus the twin lead performances from Washington and Malek.

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The former, who we last saw onscreen three years ago in The Equalizer 2, looks like he’s going to vomit in a lot of his scenes, and we mean that in a good way. Washington wears all the pain, weariness, and cynicism of this character right out there on his face in an understated, complex performance. Malek transmits a different kind of energy: the Brad Pitt to Washington’s Morgan Freeman. He is full of confidence and swagger that hide a deeply obsessive personality. “You and I are a lot alike,” Leto’s Albert Sparma tells Malek at one point, and though the line is stock, the sentiment hits close.

Speaking of Leto, the actor who won an Oscar eight years ago for his sensitive work as a transgender woman in Dallas Buyers Club has gravitated toward more showy work in recent roles like the Joker in Suicide Squad (2016) and the twisted Niander Wallace in Blade Runner 2049 (2017). His efforts here are along the same lines. Leto immerses himself in the persona of Sparma with creepy results, but at the same time, the character is all but wearing a big, bright “I Am A Serial Killer” sign on his head.

On the other hand, the effect may be intentional. Although The Little Things suffers in the homestretch from a third act that stumbles and increasingly strains believability, it leads to a denouement that deliberately sets it apart from the other examples of its genre in its ambiguity. This makes the film less about the hunt for the killer and more about the effects that the process has on the people involved, with far less of the closure that human beings crave.

“When I look in your eyes, what I see, it ain’t good,” says Deacon’s friend Flo (Michael Hyatt), a medical examiner, as they dredge up the shared past they are complicit in. And hat we see in the eyes of all three core performances changes over the course of The Little Things, but also remains unnervingly elusive. “It’s never over,” Malek says at one point, and John Lee Hancock knows that that realization may be the most chilling “little thing” of all.

The Little Things opens in theaters and premieres on HBO Max this Friday, Jan. 29.

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CLAIRE DENIS’ ‘BASTARDS’ “I figured a captain would be more serene…”

© 2020 by James Clark

     Our film today brims with startling distemper. It also provides one of the most handsome instances of generosity to be found, in and out, of the once-called “silver screen.” A woman in Paris, Raphael, accompanies, one morning, her elementary school boy son to a carriage trade, very private institute. Then she walks by an antique clock and watch shop which attracts her. She asks to see a waterproof wrist watch which had now become important to her, on account of her becoming an underwater athlete and investigator during her summer with her family at their villa on the Cote d’Azure. She chooses an alpha-trade item, sturdy and designed with great taste. There is an inscription of dedication, which runs, “To my son who sails the seas.”

The love in that missive means nothing to her. But with that good will, the writer, a skilled entrepreneur in the field of premier women’s shoes, has found himself, in his last days, without a valid successor. The shambles that follow are showy, but not terribly unique. What does take our breath away is the father’s benevolence. Claire Denis does not want of a compass, for her intense offerings. She finds all the work in the world in the filmic cataclysms of Ingmar Bergman. With the film, Bastards (2013), that stream of clannish patricians which became disturbing in the film, Scenes from a Marriage (1973), and followed even more violently (in subsequent films) when unity failed, transfigured to venomous proportions pertaining to clinging for generations to murderous advantage. Whereas the disinterested father, Mr. Silvestri, who had  left Italy for the opportunities of Paris, had become a cosmopolitan, his daughter, Sandra, had remained a lead-pipe savage, not to be dealing in nuance when the going got rough. (Denis’ early experiences in Africa now putting on the table another range of clannish perversity to complicate an already challenged discernment.)

  Sandra of the Dark Ages had a husband who had nominally taken over the business. We find him, Jacques by name, in the first scene, committing suicide due to financial and sexual bankruptcy. During the police presentation, to her, of the suicide note, she rails against that agency. “My husband filed a complaint against that pig, that piece of shit. The police questioned Edouard Laponte and our daughter. Then nothing! It’s your fault Jacques died… Alone, I’m not strong enough. I have no one now… besides my brother… who’s never here. He’s always abroad.” (That last remark delivered as if his brother had no right to leave the nest.) A police lady intervenes with, “Marco Silvestri is your brother? The letter is in his name…” Sandra goes on to explains that Marco and Jacques had been good friends, having met at the naval academy, and that Marco had introduced them. Far less routine, however, is Sandra’s response to the cop’s mentioning, “You can read it” [the suicide note]. She glances at it, but soon puts it away. Her excuse for not completing her husband’s last words is, “It’s embarrassing…”/ “What?” the coroner asks. “That you read it,” she says. Perhaps the communication was ambiguous. Sandra being hard to embarrass; but not wanting to touch upon the bankrupt couple’s involvement in prostituting their daughter, Justine, at a sadomasochist attraction and having trysts themselves with several adventurers at Laponte’s, the creditor and brothel owner, for more solvent business clients. Of course, that area of the family has no more significance than rabid hyenas. Our saga, on the other hand, pertains to Marco, who had given his share of his father’s inheritance to them.

At the end of Bergman’s film, Dreams (1955), the gullible but game protagonist is confronted with another’s wisdom that, “One has to say no, at some point.” Marco, on his slow boat to wisdom, had no one to encourage him to wake up to the shabbiness of pleasing gauche and poisonous appetites. That his weakness for being led has to be carefully grasped, constitutes the heart of this film. Some preparatory considerations are needed. While his father could thrill to a son possibly making an important difference, Marco would soon be exposed as unable to maintain the concentration of sensibility by which to reveal and share something very different. As he plods back to a lowest common denominator, we realize that his honeymoon with very rare love has waned, leaving him ready for less demanding adventure. However, Marco’s waning, remains rather wild (or, better, pretty crazy), a function of following in the melodramatic footsteps of Jacques. A wealth of cinematic primordiality being overlooked, along with an irony of cinematic also rans, will help establish the terrain for future venture.

   The actress playing “the woman in Paris,” with her child at the school house door, and her monied, sea-sport, has a fascinating and incisive pedigree. She is Chiara Mastroianni, the daughter of actress, Catherine Deneuve and actor, Marcello Mastroianni. In her role in the film, The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), she is tasked to bring her elementary school brother, Boo-Boo, to the school house door every morning. In another of her roles, namely, the film, Donkey Skin (1970), she, a princess, finds nothing amiss about marrying her father, the king. The former film is implicated in the naval port of Rochefort. The latter film becomes implicated, for Denis’ purposes, with Sandra and Jacques’ resort to incest. (Jacques Demy being the filmmaker of the Deneuve “comedies.”) Mastroianni starred in the film, La Dolce Vita (1960), pertaining to anything goes. Good luck, Marco! The gloom pervading this gloomy tale could—and largely does, for the pundits—resemble the strictures of film noir, becoming neo-noir. However, the woes and woos of this action do not coincide with the sentimental perils of sweet but unstable business. The jaunty Raymond Chandler slogan, “Trouble is my Business,” does not even begin to touch the conflict, beauties and love which our protagonist had begun to fathom. Out there on the L’Avventura aerie, we find him on the craft’s bridge for the last time, embraced by light and waves and skies, soon bound for darkness and hatred.

   After the tantrums at the police station, Sandra gets into her stylish and reddish car (reddish factors early on in a film being a staple of Bergman’s), and she slumps over the steering wheel, unable to drive. She’s seen from outside at the front, and the overhanging trees convey a reflection on the windshield, all but submersing her self-pity, a magical moment from our point of view, but entirely lost upon her. With narrative so nearly complete to being a travesty, such figuration as that reflection becomes an elicitation of what life can be. (On the other hand, the first imagery we encounter in the film is a torrent of nocturnal rain, its one-track force approximating the odds which Marco had recently retreated from, without consulting the gamut of knacks to turn the tide. Along with the rains, there is the soundtrack of the band, Tindersticks, beginning with a singular drive which transcends to richer ambiance.) It is such cinematic invention which we will track in detail here, the melodrama being oddly close to those Bergman parodies of Hollywood “sensations.” However, Marco’s mad bid, to dovetail his early seaboard serenity with subsequent mean Parisian advantages, increases the dimensions which Bergman found urgent about not speaking the same language.

   We’ll march right through such optics and sonics, in order to touch upon agencies of sensibility defining the drama. Jacques, en route to his suicide, overlooks, in his mundane office, another crushing blast of nighttime rain, making of the façade of the factory a relentless and attractive cataract. His death is metaphorically presented by his gradually backing out of the film frame. A touch of couth, after a lifetime of tastelessness. Along with that, an aural complement of ringing maintains that life itself goes on. That the exiting executive is bald might imply that his was an anxious life, bereft of a poise which nature calls for.  Three lights are displayed vertically upon the exterior. A pan to the sidewalk, like a fast-moving stream. Steel and cement. The triad could have rung out in a joyful achievement of sharing. But it didn’t. A life of harsh interruptions. A white shroud on the pavement. This is followed with a nude young woman wearing high-heeled shoes, walking away from us in a square. In this of the first of two such apparitions, she vaguely evokes the mysterious nocturnal nudes of the surrealist painter, Paul Delvaux. The school seen in the early part of the film is called, “Ecole Action Bilingue,” which is to say, “not speaking the same language.” (Meaning heavy weather for many, in the world of Bergman and the in world of all of us.) The school might have a sanguine touch. But its focus of advantage at that juncture could be enough to kill. In the second meander of Sandra’s daughter, she is bleeding from her vagina, having submitted to sadistic assault. This shock brings to light many concerns—a major embrace being “marionettes,” as in the Bergman film, From the Life of the Marionettes (1980). (Now underway to the impossible, Marco’s last glimpses of a once-seeming-Mediterranean-idyll evokes a filmmaker, Michelangelo Antonioni, whom Bergman hated, but shouldn��t have. Denis knowing better, along lines of something missing.) Now on the hunt in Paris, he’s seen driving up to the enemy’s chic digs in an Alpha Romero, which, from the perspective of upper floors (one of them now being his) recalls a batmobile. (Marco, in classic crime adventure style, having sold all he has but that prop, not to mention nearly a dozen of $400 white shirts. Such trappings being a reprise of bourgeois, same-language advantage, conformists in several Bergman films.) The amateur sleuth, having no trouble pretending being a majoritarian, checks his laptop for Laporte’s wherewithal: “a personal success-story… biggest chairman ever… seen in “The Expansion”… dancing with the stars… a golden girl [the mom at the schoolhouse]…” The latter being a chain-smoker, like chain-smoking and non-patrician, Katarina, in Marionettes and chain-smoking and non-patrician, Pauline, in In the Presence of a Clown (1997), she discovers late at night that she’s out of smokes and rushes to the tobacconist’s. Her grotty concern is not without magic. The dark reflections of the street with its bumper-to-bumper parking, and a swatch of gold light on the wet cobblestones reign as if in absentia. One of Marco’s young daughters from his divorce several years ago spends a weekend, where, at the beginning of the get-together, she is stranded at the Montparnasse train station due to his being late. She tells him, “I’m not here to be treated like shit.” At the premises, with a mattress on the floor, he presents her with a very stylish jacket, and is rewarded with a quick kiss on the cheek. The roiling mood has, however, unearthed a heaven on earth, in the presence of the Montparnasse district, where more than 200 years ago a site apropos of the arts of the City sprang up and thrives to this day. Denis’ trademark of an instance of “naïve,” art for the sake of food for thought, appears here in the form of the enormous woman’s shoe on the roof of the now defunct profit centre. A case of big shoes to fill, aspiration and its perils.  The license plate of the Alpha: W319EK—WEAK. At the cigarette handoff, early on, Marco is graced with two lights, desperately needing a third. As he turns away, a third, being a blue neon, to the right of his head, appears—to no effect. The ship Marco sailed was a freighter. Do the mundane factors swamp the poetry? Raphael congratulates a young man working as a concierge while his mother recovers from some malady. He signs off with, “It’s family…” The virtually empty bivouac of his lodgings exposes his disarray in a field of great beauty. Something more directly gratifying finally emerges. He not only sells his expensive car at a premium, but the buyer is another former naval academy grad having enjoyed together the volatile two. (The three of them constitute a loose but quite striking dialectical process, only due to the disinterestedness of the newcomer. A “businessman;” a “daredevil;” and, now, someone who can see and feel.) The latter tells Marco, “There’s no denying I miss it” [the deep sea]. (But he, and his wife, have a sailboat—a dynamic force; and a solvent business, buying and selling cars.) More than a casual friend, Marco, unaware, is in the presence of an oracle—oracles being very important in Bergman films. Soon Marco is back. “I need a car and I’m broke.” The dealer doesn’t hesitate to say, “I think I can count on you [his having made a bid that few can]. Take back the Alpha. I don’t need it… We’ll figure something else later.” A moment of vision in a dynasty of blindness.

   The most deeply ranging visual resource announces itself in the least auspicious form. Raphael, the mom and Laporte’s wife, is lying in bed and Laporte, nude, lies down with her. They clasp hands gently. He says, “Jerk me off…” Next morning, Raphael and the boy bump into Marco, and he repairs the boy’s bike. He expertly does the repair, his hands and fingers displaying grace and strength. She watches him with envy. Raphael misses that closing time of the tobacconist’s and alert Marco, again to the rescue, tosses down from the balcony several cartons wrapped up in one of his white shirts. As she retrieves the godsend, her fingers on the white cloth and the plastic sheets describe ironically receiving a treasure. The treasure in those hands carries far more than she recognizes. The ambient ringing which accompanies that moment complements a further nudge for the sake of disinterestedness. Lying in her bed, smoking, she misses the best part of such a manipulation. He’s wakened by a nightmare, and his fingers are frozen stiff. As the suspicion of Laporte rises, there is a moment showing the magnate and the boy with hands clutched. A statement, not a launch. During their first reckless swing at coitus, both of their hands caress each other like an insurrection. Their  hands and fingers create a grinning mask. Her fingers are splayed on his chest. His hands and fingers are at her mouth, and then his fingers light upon her his arm. A gung-ho maneuver, lost in hostility and impotence. Then Marco walks through her doorway as if she were a stranger. Marco and Sandra, on the proceeds of the Alpha, crash the “daredevil’s” brothel in the afternoon, where a huge red ottoman, not so different from the playground of death in the film, From the Life of the Marionettes, becomes prominent. A girl matches her red fingernails with that bed. Her fingers are frozen on that surface. The second lovemaking at the best of Paris, this time in the stairwell, shows nuance and knack (that latter word being magic in Bergman’s endeavor.) Laporte takes the boy away from the lovers. On a large sailboat, the two enjoy the navigations, the handiness. Laporte’s skills match Marco’s bicycle repairs. Right touches; lost finishes. Raphael storms Marco’s flat, in fury that her son has been taken away. “He took him because of you… Because I slept with you. You used me.”/ “I had my reasons.” During the fracas, one of his fingers is in her face, in her eye. The film on the expensive key, shows Jacques, Justine and another woman—with Laporte watching in the wings. Also there we find an anonymous player outfitted with very long fingernails, for pain or gain. The gain occurring with the clown in the Bergman film, In the Presence of a Clown (1997), whose elongated touch could, given the right heart attending, race or poise, to lend a hand in nature itself.

   How, the question is now, having seen an infrastructure of sensibility ignored in favor of hardware and software, can we confirm that Marco is not a killer but a tedious gamester, having overcome his fondest reflections because they were extremely difficult? Soon after reaching Paris, he visits an insurance office to max out his premiums. He tells the clerk, “It’s just a year off. Everyone is entitled to one.” (I doubt if Denis is a subscriber to that term.)  “It’s nice in a man’s life. One year…” One year to do some good and have some thrills. The baying of Sandra (though the suicide would definitely have a melancholy appeal) must probably have come to Marco of more of the same hyperbole. Whereas his sister is a walking prehistoric, Marco, as we see him in action, is something more recent, more ambiguous. Though he was pretty much obliged to take seriously the crisis, he was not at all obliged to become a murderer, despite his sister’s personal and cultural hysteria. The cat and mouse game would, perhaps, get to the bottom of Sandra’s small war, which hopefully, to Marco, might develop into something, “nice in a man’s life…” Jacobean drama, with its fiery revenge, worked with a will in 17th century England. Those days are gone. Hot heads abound, and drag thigs down. But the complexities of major urbanism demand innovation, not devotion to the old.

  Having not what it takes for his father’s hopes of dynamic logic, Marco faces a problematic in Paris not that far from where he deserted. His last moments on the bridge face a fixed fog in the middle distance. His early moments in the orbit of his sister come in the form of a fixed fog of calumny, clearly without transparency. “You’re hiding things! I gave everything up! I need to know, goddammit!” With this lack of acquiescence, she declares, “I wish I were dead!” (People like her being unfortunately and insectile resilient. Justine will insist she’s in love with her pimp. Marco had spoken to her in her hospital bed, “I’m here for you…”) Marco signs several checks to keep Sandra out of penury. She complains, “You’ve changed styles.” In face of the inventory of shoes, he complains, “Low quality and tacky.”/ “Thanks,” is her non-care. She hands over her dad’s gun. “What do I do with this?” is his response. She tells him, “Hold on to it, please. You’ll need it.” Hoping to solidify a modern love, he tells Raphael, “I can’t believe there’s any love. You’re not even part of his life. He treats you like a concubine. He’s turned you into his slut.” She argues, “He was younger when I met him. He gave me the confidence I never had. I had no ties. I was floating. Then I got pregnant with Joseph. I don’t judge…”

   The doctor on Justine’s case also knows more than he says. We find him being dragged over the coals by Sandra, for one of Justine’s getaways. “You should have done your job beforehand. We pay enough. You’re in charge here. It’s your negligence.” He, fortunately, has drawn a more incisive bead upon his attacker. “You’re one to talk. She’s underage. You’re her guardian.” (A choir tone ironically sums it up.) Later that night, the doctor notices Marco at a bus stop and gives him a ride. “I figured a captain would be more serene.” The short-cut exponent excuses his disarray by way of poor form. “I came back for them. My kid sister and my niece… How am I supposed to stay calm with a suicide.” The no-nonsense doc states, “Justine has problems to work through. Part of the trouble comes from her family. Something went wrong.” By this time, Marco is able to report, “I’ve broken off from my family… I know little about them… I’ve cut myself off from everyone.” The driver adds, “It’s for what Marines do.” He trolls a red-light district, to confirm his sense of mountainous decadence. A solid citizen in the making.  (The key, detailing the ways of the brothel, opens Marco’s eyes about as wide as they can be. To a refrain of Sandra yelling, “I’m so ashamed!” and adding, “You can’t understand. It all went wrong!” he slaps her and she falls to the floor. “Get up!” he demands. She sits on the floor, bawling. He grabs her by her hair and says, “You disgust me!” She cries out, “You weren’t here!” Then he prudishly declares, “I’m glad I divorced. My girls won’t be contaminated. So this is my family!”

   Being prudish, as Marco will find to his horror, won’t get you far in the world of high stakes. Back at home, as it were, he enacts a nightmare, where the Alpha has been stolen for a joy ride by Sandra, Justine the pimp and Raphael. (A Hollywood melodrama, for prudes.) He goes on to interrupt the neighbors’ preparations for their summer, a brawl ensues and Raphael, picking up the gun from the floor, shoots him dead. The doctor accompanies Sandra for a viewing of the family at play. That big shoe being taken to the junkyard could be one way to start again; but where could it go? The treasure in the cinematic current awaits a true voyager, “who sails the seas.”

Thoughts on The Last Jedi (spoilers under the “keep reading” line)

I originally wanted to just make a small list of things I liked and did not like about this movie, but I’ve come to realize my feelings are a bit more complicated than I expected. I don’t hate it, nor do I think it is the worst film in the series; however, I am baffled by the arguments that it’s somehow a clever deconstruction of the Hollywood blockbuster formula or finding new ground for SW. If anything, I found it an aimless, poorly paced retread of familiar tropes and ideas with only a few interesting elements to save it from being mediocre.

I’ll start with what I considered all-around good: the acting is excellent across the board. Every actor is game, doing their best and even elevating the material at times. It was a bittersweet experience to see the late Carrie Fisher here and even with her limited screen-time, she brings a great deal of dignity and spunk to the princess/general we know and love. Mark Hamill gives one of his best performances as Luke, communicating worlds of pain and regret with his eyes alone. While he isn’t one of the greatest actors of all time outside of the voice-acting world, he is incredibly effective here. Thankfully, Oscar Isaac gets more to do this time around. And everyone else is on the whole fine, even great at times. I was also impressed with the visuals and editing, which are often breathtaking, especially on the big screen. The casino planet was pretty rad too; I can so see the rich and powerful hanging out in such a place. And—everything else is extremely mixed for me.

This movie reminds me of Attack of the Clones in that it is all over the place tonally. I am all for genre hybrids or movies that can touch on several emotional shades at once, but it is a hard thing to do and this movie isn’t up to that. One minute it’s dead serious and in the grand epic mode, then the next we’re dealing with broad comedy more appropriate for a Marvel film. That juxtaposition felt awkward in the prequels and it feels awkward here.

For all the critics’ talk of this movie breaking new ground, I remained frustrated by the same old rehash of lines and themes from the OT. There’s still the good versus evil, the empire chasing rebels Everything is also rushed beyond belief, which seems like a weird conclusion to draw about a 2 ½ hour movie. Rose is barely developed, despite her potential to be a great character (her romantic feelings for Finn are woefully half-baked; I would say the only thing that even makes you believe she was into him was her slight bout of hero worship in her initial scene with him). Finn doesn’t evolve beyond what he was in TFA. Rey doesn’t change, despite the challenges posed to her ideas about the Force by both Luke and Kylo. Her training with Luke, if you can even call it that, is basically nothing, even less than the crash course Luke got from Yoda in Empire. We’re led to believe Luke has some great development, but that’s yet another thing that has little payoff.

Overall, I am torn on Luke Skywalker’s characterization. On one hand, I believe he would become disillusioned with the Jedi after he lost his nephew to the Dark Side—however, do I believe he would stay on that island after hearing one of his oldest friends was MURDERED by the former student he feels he failed? I’m sorry, I don’t. I know people change as they get older and I know enough cranky old people to see how life can beat you down and make you emotionally exhausted. But the thing about Luke is that he’s stubborn and contrarian; when Yoda and Obi-wan told him to give up on Vader (a Sith who committed WAY worse sins on a much grander scale than Kylo-Ren ever did), he went with his hunch that his father could be redeemed, even though he had only his gut instinct as evidence to go on. I have a hard time believing he wouldn’t try to right the wrong he did to his nephew. Him retreating from the conflict feels as false as the strong-minded and very active Padme losing the will to live at the end of Revenge of the Sith. His death sits even less well with me, since I feel the character had more to do and should have been more active in trying to aid the Resistance and train Rey.

Kylo-Ren is more interesting this time around, more conflicted and morally ambiguous. His temptation to turn to the Light mixed with his savagery is great. His interactions with Rey, which are simultaneously uneasy and charged with sexual tension, are fascinating. And yet, like so much else in this movie, it all goes nowhere. I still have no clue why Kylo is drawn to the Dark Side. With Anakin, it was an outgrowth of growing up as a powerless slave and losing those he loved to war and violence, which makes it clear why the idea of a fascist dictatorship would appeal to him. For Palpatine, it was because he was a greedy psychopath. But Kylo? I have no idea what he feels he’s getting on an emotional level from the Dark Side. What do Snoke and the Dark Side promise him that makes turning evil so tempting? He didn’t hate his parents, however lacking he felt they were. Luke was hard on him, though we learn that’s because the kid was already turning to the Dark Side. So where does it all originate? I have no clue and I think, yeah, it’s not unreasonable for me to understand what motivates one of the major villains of this new trilogy. Because otherwise, it is hard for me to be fully invested in him as a character.

In fact, the whole First Order are just disappointing villains, a second-rate empire. I have no idea how they were able to come to power, not only because it’s never brought up in either this film or TFA, but because these guys are about as competent as the Three Stooges. Hux is a punchline subjected to “yo mamma” jokes and proving himself utterly useless time and again. Phasma is pretty much like Boba Fett: she looks cool and fights well, only to get killed off without ceremony. Snoke is a dumber Voldemort, built up as this clever, evil genius only to be proven even worse at underestimating his employees and enemies than Palpatine! I was never a fan of the character to begin with, finding him bland, but here, he just shows up, cackles evilly, then dies in a rather comical manner. How did he come to power? It has to be more than just his powers; even Palpatine was a politician and he preyed on the Clone Wars’ devastation to convince people to make him Emperor. But Snoke? Nothing.

The pacing was also a huge issue for me. Now, I normally dig slow pacing—but this was excruciating, probably because I felt like the story was going nowhere much of the time. Finn and Rose are wasted, given nothing but a McGuffin side-quest. Every time we cut to them, I just lost so much interest. As for the political “subtext” (if you can call an explicitly socio-political monologue subtext) in the Finn and Rose sub-story, I’ll just say I agree with critic Tim Brayton on the matter:

And this plotline feeds right into the absolutely unforgivably terrible subplot, which is the adventures of Finn (John Boyega) the cowardly ex-storm trooper, and Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), the class-conscious engineer, who go on a fetch quest that is every bit as pointless as the whole matter of the military nonsense, only even worse, because it hinges on terrible comedy, bad CGI, and a spectacularly horrible moment when Johnson stops the film in its tracks to provide a ruthlessly on-the-nose lesson about economic inequality and the military-industrial complex, and I hate this all the more for the film's message in this moment being one I passionately agree with - if something has to be artless and awful, better that it not take down a cause I hold dear as part of the collateral damage. And it really is awful; the worst thing in the movie, despite the best intentions of various film critics to defend it (I am sorry, but "has politics I like" is not all it takes to make a movie good. If all you want is for a film to spit your ideology back at you, and it doesn't matter if this is done with any grace or artistry at all, congratulations: you are a Stalinist. I like politics in movies - I love politics in movies - but not every political filmmaker is Sergei Eisenstein, and they should damn well not be treated like they are).

I have no problem with this political/social angle being there; hell, I love the idea of the Rose character and the theme of inspiring the downtrodden (the idea of legends and the power of storytelling really appealed to me, and I loved that last scene with the kids re-enacting the OT story in the stables), but like so much else they feel underwritten and clumsily implemented. It doesn’t help that this side plot feels oddly disconnected from everything else and is far less interesting than Poe or Rey’s stories. And once again, I feel like it accomplished nothing whatsoever, much like the majority of this story.

Now, people might argue the main theme of this movie is about failure and how we must learn from it, thus making this side-plot appropriate. The thing is, I don’t think anyone besides Poe learned much of anything from their mistakes or failures, let alone Finn and Rose. According to writer/director Rian Johnson, one of the big inspirations for this film was the 1964 classic Three Outlaw Samurai, a movie in which the titular heroes become disillusioned with the samurai code and the corruption of the culture in which they live. Concepts such as honor and loyalty become muddied. TLJ is clearly trying to weave a similar theme, with Kylo, Luke, and Ghost!Yoda calling for a new age in which the Jedi and Sith are no more. The problem? Kylo still embraces much of the Sith ideology as much as he claims he’s let go of it (okay, yeah, Abrams claimed he wasn’t a Sith, but that seems more like an in-name only affair given the dynamic between Kylo and Snoke), and Luke, for all his “the Jedi gotta go” lip service, ends his life by triumphantly claiming, “I will not be the last Jedi,” implying he’s passing the torch to Rey. So much for questioning the past.

At the end of the day, the movie left me frustrated and hollow. I’m not very excited to see where they take the story next, because it’s clear they’re going with same-old, same-old, only with vague motivations and no sense of direction. I don’t get what the big point of this new trilogy is. The OT is at its heart about Luke coming of age as a Jedi Knight and redeeming his father. The PT is a tragedy about the fall of both a man and a democracy. The sequels though? I have no clue. I don’t think they go far enough in their attempts to challenge our ideas about the Force or the Jedi, or good and evil. It’s the same old rebels versus tyrants fight, only this time around the villains are more inept than usual and the good guys, for all their failures, don’t appear to learn much of anything.

Mr. Gansa-

I am writing to you aware that you will likely never see this letter, but feeling that I need to express myself just the same. By way of introduction, I am a child psychiatrist. I have worked in state hospitals like Bellevue, on the neurology service of a VA hospital, in subacute rehabilitation centers for minors with complex medical needs who have been abandoned by families unwilling and/or unable to care for them, and with foster children and adolescents from the juvenile justice system, most of whom have experienced various forms of trauma.


Homeland was once my favorite show. I started watching as a fan of Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin, and because I loved the idea of a female protagonist who was so complicated and intelligent, passionate and strong and flawed. I have always been very interested in studies of our world post-9/11, and was excited about the story of a former POW and his return home. You had a platform, with your tremendous actors and writers and the critics’ attention, to address so many complex and timely issues. Sometimes you addressed these issues very well, other times not so much. You have had a second chance with a beloved character who you developed over time in Quinn, with an actor as talented and committed as Rupert Friend, to address what you have said you always wanted to, the story of a damaged soldier. And there were times this year when you exceeded my expectations. Rupert blew me away this season; he put his heart, body, and soul into this character, which made his relentless torture and death and its aftermath even more difficult to accept. And as you must know at this point, you have made grievous errors towards the character, the actor, the story, and the viewers, which for many of us you can never atone. 
 People are trying to communicate to you, despite your lack of curiosity and your silence, their many thoughts about the season and its finale, about the portrayal of the characters and their actions, the overall storytelling, the negative influence on their former love for Homeland, and the potential impact on people the show, and Quinn in particular, were said to represent. I would like to focus on two fairly specific points that were among the most meaningful to me.

As I am sure you are aware, because you orchestrated and planned it, Quinn’s death was followed both on- and off-screen by a disturbing silence. There was no recognition or honor of the impact of his death on the characters in the show, on the viewers both casual and committed, and the groups of people this character was meant to represent. It is in particular for those in this last category that this dismissal of Quinn’s death, which some have interpreted as a suicidal act, was particularly jarring, hurtful, and malicious. Do you realize that your apparent wish for this character and actor to just disappear mirrors what returning soldiers and individuals with mental and physical disabilities face every day? Wasn’t this the exact dynamic that you were supposedly preaching against? That, for example, veterans who are “damaged beyond utility” are forgotten, unacknowledged, and left to flounder, fighting, as Rupert Friend so eloquently stated, a whole other battle at home? And this apparent dismissal extends to the actor as well. Rupert reached out to others and deep within himself to create this character for which you had given a simple outline. He heartbreakingly transformed a person that was loved into a man who was beloved, into someone who spoke physically and emotionally for all of us. And yet there has been zero recognition, save for some clearly coached and targeted face-saving by one of your directors, of what he has given to the show over the course of years. I get the sense you are not one for sentimentality, and Homeland has certainly never been about that; it’s one of the things I appreciated about the show. But you have demonstrated in the past the ability to portray a connection between characters and the impact of a death in a way that is beautiful and honors a relationship without being maudlin, as in the season five finale (though Rupert Friend wrote the letter, so perhaps much of the credit goes to him), and a willingness to honor an actor who gave a character life, as you did following season three. So I ask, and I ask you to ask yourself, why were you not able or willing to do the same here? 
 My second issue with this season relates to another marginalized group. I for one did not have a problem, as many have had, with the Dar/Quinn reveal. This situation is a reality that is difficult to accept and to talk about but does occur, and it could have been a very brave subject to approach. I don’t mind that the details of what happened were not clearly spelled out. I don’t think it is for us to know more than what the writers or characters want to share. However this ambiguity, combined with the plot line seemingly coming out of nowhere and then not being followed through with, proved a point that once again I think you were trying to argue against. You had the opportunity to show a male victim of sexual abuse. That this was a man universally loved by viewers would have made any points you wished to make all the more powerful. But then you yourself stated in later interviews that perhaps this abuse had not happened.  Victims of sexual trauma are often questioned as to the veracity of their claims, whether what they experienced really “counts” as abuse, whether they gave implicit consent by their actions or inactions, whether a person can really be coerced into being used for commercial exploitation, if their abusers really love them, and if they really loved their abusers. Your comments and lack of commitment to the story fed into all these stereotypes and misconceptions, not to mention a sense of shame, and your ambiguity also led some to conflate sexual identity with sexual predation. Thank god the actor had the guts to come out and say that, regardless of the details, what happened between these two was inappropriate and, yes, constituted abuse. Unfortunately, many likely have not seen his remarks and are left still wondering what really happened, what was the point of the story, if what they think they heard was what was truly said, and, and this is true for perhaps all of us, why this topic was even broached. The irresponsibility in bringing up this difficult issue without any apparent larger goal, and then backpedaling and denying what we know we heard, is staggering. And to drop that bomb after two years of torturing this character, and maybe 72 hours before his cold and lonely death… Why? Was this all just for shock value? Do you truly hate Quinn that much?

At this point, any acknowledgement on or off the show of this character, his death, or the actor is too late. There is really nothing to undo the damage you have done. You can send your staff out to the media to try to reframe your story, to say that Quinn learned a lot about himself, that he died a hero, that it was never your intention for things to get so dark. But you have already shown us that he died thinking he was unworthy of love, was only capable of killing, that he had no heart, that his broken body and mind caused the death of one of the only people who truly loved him, and you have implied that his death was a form of suicide. This man who for years sacrificed so much for others, for his country, for Carrie, suddenly gives up on himself. So what exactly did he learn about himself? And do you even realize how this retcon mirrors what is happening in our society today, in politics and in the media: changing the story to fit your narrative, telling us we’re crazy because of what we think we saw, that we’re just too ignorant to understand? But that doesn’t change what you showed on the screen and your lack of acknowledgement after the fact. We are not puppets you can manipulate. We are not characters you can abuse and control.

I don’t know that I expect or even want anything from you in response to my concerns. In his interviews after the finale, Rupert spoke respectfully, empathically and directly to all our frustrations and achieved more on his own than you possibly could at this point. I think I speak for many when I say that any trust we had in you and your commitment to the characters and storytelling, our belief that all this torture and pain for both Quinn and Carrie must have a point- that trust has been destroyed. Too many times, you have said one thing and then contradicted yourself, said you were telling one story and then showed another. Too many times, storylines seemed to start in one direction and then end differently. Many people want Quinn back, but I believe that is your decision to make. You should not be forced to tell a story you do not want to, and I do not trust that this man would be safe in your hands. You made your decision, perhaps it is best for us to accept it. I don’t even have hope that it changes how you handle future seasons, because like many, I won’t be watching. And this is for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I won’t be able to trust what I see on the screen. Perhaps I just want you to hear what I and others have to say, to know that we are real people, that we also can’t be swept under the rug and forgotten, that our opinions and feelings matter, that we aren't just numbers and statistics and notches in your belt. Quinn may be dead and useless to you, and Carrie may have been diminished from a strong female character driving her own story into a pawn in your game of chasing relevancy and acclaim. But these characters live on in our hearts and minds. To many of us, it is Homeland that is dead.

New from Every Movie Has a Lesson by Don Shanahan: MOVIE REVIEW: Gemini Man

(Image: polygon.com)

GEMINI MAN— 2 STARS

Ang Lee’s new actioner Gemini Man is the cinematic embodiment of the figure of speech “chasing your tail.” A reminder from The Free Dictionary, defines that idiom as “to take action that is ineffectual and does not lead to progress” and “refers to how a dog can exhaust itself by chasing its own tail.” Boy, is that ever this movie. You have a multiple Academy Award-winning filmmaker chasing a technological benchmark that the industry cannot match. And you have a lead actor exhausting himself (and us) literally, instead of just figuratively, chasing his own tail.

Graying through his temples and whiskers, Will Smith plays his authentic 51 years of age as ultra-professional government asset Henry Brogan. The old guard assassin wants peace after losing his “feel” and growing a conscience after completing his 72nd confirmed kill. Seafront solitude with a little boat awaits Henry in Buttermilk Sound, Georgia south of Savannah. After demonstrating his chops in the opening scene, Smith’s confident exasperation and desire for this slowdown fits the actor’s appeal.

LESSON #1: “TO THE NEXT WAR, WHICH IS NO WAR” — This quote is Henry Brogan’s shared signature toast with his former brothers-in-arms from the old Persian Gulf and Somalia days, which include Jack (Red Sparrow’s Douglas Hodge) and Baron (Benedict Wong of Doctor Strange. The vibe is two-fold. First, there’s a celebration of success in making the world a better place with each dispatched despot and a survivalist wish of someday putting the bullets and triggers away.

Sure enough, retirement is short-lived when Henry learns he was fed spiked intel where the mark he sniped was someone of a less criminal background than he was told. Brogan and Danny Zakarweski (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, bringing only middling sidekick value), the burned babysitter agent who helps him, become loose-ends for erasure by the order of their head government spook employer Clay Verris (Clive Owen, dialed to 50% intensity). Globetrotting from Georgia and Cartagena in the Western Hemisphere to Belgium and Budapest in the eastern one, the chase is on.

The salt-grained rub is Henry’s indomitable opponent at every stop is someone younger, stronger, and faster with recognizable facial features and training. Over 20 years ago when cloning was the rage, Verris used Henry’s DNA as a test to create an experimental line of expendable soldiers packaged with fewer human flaws and more programmed discipline. The force matching Henry’s every movie is his 23-year-old homegrown duplicate raised by Verris as his own adoptive son and following his every command.

LESSON #2: SO MUCH FOR SUN TZU — Paraphrasing, knowing your enemy better than you know yourself is quickly derailed when your enemy is you. Insert the Dramatic Chipmunk, but watch out for the groan-inducing “clones are still people too” and “they get choices too” wet blanket lessons that preach and follow. Gemini Man becomes a battle of seasoned wisdom versus the superior vigor of youth. Brains tend to always beat brawn, and you can see the end result a continent away.

Through de-aging special effects and digital doubles, Smith plays and voices his own “Junior.” This glaze, if you will, is very well done compared to other incarnations we’ve seen with this performance technology. Most of the time, mouths and expressions match with minimal, though noticeable, creepiness. It takes some getting used to, but it’s still Will Smith. Like most of his duds over the course of the last decade, the fit action star is never the movie’s problem.

Plenty of keen and sleek aesthetics are fair to compliment here. The team of stunt coordinator Brad Martin (Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice) and fight choreographer Jeremy Marinas (The Fate of the Furious) executed action sequences that are kinetic and often clever. Two-time production design Oscar nominee Guy Hendrix Dyas (Inception, Passengers) and the art departments created vast arenas for these battles out of the worldly locales. Academy Award-winning cinematographer Dion Beebe (Chicago) shot them bright and tight while long-time Lee editing collaborator and fellow two-time Oscar nominee Tim Squyres (Life of Pi) stitched the work together with deft pacing.

Much ballyhoo is being made about the high frame rate shooting used to enliven all this action. Matching his 2016 effort on Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Ang Lee shot this film in full 4K HD for large scale 3D at a 120 fps clip, exponentially higher than the standard 24 fps rate. Good luck finding a theater or setting that can do Gemini Man full justice. There’s not a single theater screen in the country that can perform all three of those specifications and only 14 than can hit the 3D and the frame rate without the 4K HD. Cue your shrug of disappointment.

We can admire Lee for aiming towards new technological heights, but this reeks of hubris over smarts. Upwards of $136 million is a great deal of money and effort to waste on what amounts to an artistic STEM experiment where the intended visual detail and sensory effect will be lost on over 99% of audiences. If home viewing is the second wave of hope for this wannabe blockbuster to make an impression, even the current 4K HD televisions will have a difficult time hitting those technical specifications.

It is unfortunately understandable that this film probably could not be marketed to the masses without revealing the younger doppelganger crux. What a shame. Such a discovery should have been built as a jarring jaw-dropper rather than a foregone conclusion. The trouble is too often production secrets like that cannot be dependably kept safe in this day and age of scoop culture. That and, if you hold your bucket of popcorn to your ear, you can probably still hear the short-sighted marketing gurus at Paramount clamoring that two Will Smiths are better than one. This is not the 1990s or early 2000s Will Smith anymore. He was lucky with Aladdin but he’s not an A-list draw.

Gemini Man could have been something far greater if it traded much of that polish for punch. Other than the inventiveness of the action, there is zero to few potential thrills to be had when you can see every spot coming. The look is all there, right down to the close-up shot selection framed to capture the steely moments ripe for emotional stamping. There’s just no storytelling strength behind those hard stares. One of the mano-y-mano moments in the movie lets loose the clunker of a line “none of this is necessary” and it feels self-incriminating.

This original premise, scripted out by Game of Thrones czar David Benioff and Goosebumps writer David Lemke with a revision from Billy Ray of Captain Phillips, feels very much like a low-end Philip K. Dick concept. A hero is in minor peril wrapped in easy clues with the lightest whiff of unexplored science fiction floating in the background. There is a market for that to a degree. Preposterousness can work around being ambiguous and ill-defined if it has an interesting edge (look no further than the best of Dick). Gemini Man, with all its finely sharpened pixels, cannot lacerate our enthusiasm.

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Letters to Gansa

Mr. Gansa- I am writing to you aware that you will likely never see this letter, but feeling that I need to express myself just the same. By way of introduction, I am a child psychiatrist. I have worked in state hospitals like Bellevue, on the neurology service of a VA hospital, in subacute rehabilitation centers for minors with complex medical needs who have been abandoned by families unwilling and/or unable to care for them, and with foster children and adolescents from the juvenile justice system, most of whom have experienced various forms of trauma.
 Homeland was once my favorite show. I started watching as a fan of Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin, and because I loved the idea of a female protagonist who was so complicated and intelligent, passionate and strong and flawed. I have always been very interested in studies of our world post-9/11, and was excited about the story of a former POW and his return home. You had a platform, with your tremendous actors and writers and the critics' attention, to address so many complex and timely issues. Sometimes you addressed these issues very well, other times not so much. You have had a second chance with a beloved character who you developed over time in Quinn, with an actor as talented and committed as Rupert Friend, to address what you have said you always wanted to, the story of a damaged soldier. And there were times this year when you exceeded my expectations. Rupert blew me away this season; he put his heart, body, and soul into this character, which made his relentless torture and death and its aftermath even more difficult to accept. And as you must know at this point, you have made grievous errors towards the character, the actor, the story, and the viewers, which for many of us you can never atone. People are trying to communicate to you, despite your lack of curiosity and your silence, their many thoughts about the season and its finale, about the portrayal of the characters and their actions, the overall storytelling, the negative influence on their former love for Homeland, and the potential impact on people the show, and Quinn in particular, were said to represent. I would like to focus on two fairly specific points that were among the most meaningful to me. As I am sure you are aware, because you orchestrated and planned it, Quinn's death was followed both on- and off-screen by a disturbing silence. There was no recognition or honor of the impact of his death on the characters in the show, on the viewers both casual and committed, and the groups of people this character was meant to represent. It is in particular for those in this last category that this dismissal of Quinn's death, which some have interpreted as a suicidal act, was particularly jarring, hurtful, and malicious. Do you realize that your apparent wish for this character and actor to just disappear mirrors what returning soldiers and individuals with mental and physical disabilities face every day? Wasn't this the exact dynamic that you were supposedly preaching against? That, for example, veterans who are "damaged beyond utility" are forgotten, unacknowledged, and left to flounder, fighting, as Rupert Friend so eloquently stated, a whole other battle at home? And this apparent dismissal extends to the actor as well. Rupert reached out to others and deep within himself to create this character for which you had given a simple outline. He heartbreakingly transformed a person that was loved into a man who was beloved, into someone who spoke physically and emotionally for all of us. And yet there has been zero recognition, save for some clearly coached and targeted face-saving by one of your directors, of what he has given to the show over the course of years. I get the sense you are not one for sentimentality, and Homeland has certainly never been about that; it's one of the things I appreciated about the show. But you have demonstrated in the past the ability to portray a connection between characters and the impact of a death in a way that is beautiful and honors a relationship without being maudlin, as in the season five finale (though Rupert Friend wrote the letter, so perhaps much of the credit goes to him), and a willingness to honor an actor who gave a character life, as you did following season three. So I ask, and I ask you to ask yourself, why were you not able or willing to do the same here? My second issue with this season relates to another marginalized group. I for one did not have a problem, as many have had, with the Dar/Quinn reveal. This situation is a reality that is difficult to accept and to talk about but does occur, and it could have been a very brave subject to approach. I don't mind that the details of what happened were not clearly spelled out. I don't think it is for us to know more than what the writers or characters want to share. However this ambiguity, combined with the plot line seemingly coming out of nowhere and then not being followed through with, proved a point that once again I think you were trying to argue against. You had the opportunity to show a male victim of sexual abuse. That this was a man universally loved by viewers would have made any points you wished to make all the more powerful. But then you yourself stated in later interviews that perhaps this abuse had not happened.  Victims of sexual trauma are often questioned as to the veracity of their claims, whether what they experienced really "counts" as abuse, whether they gave implicit consent by their actions or inactions, whether a person can really be coerced into being used for commercial exploitation, if their abusers really love them, and if they really loved their abusers. Your comments and lack of commitment to the story fed into all these stereotypes and misconceptions, not to mention a sense of shame, and your ambiguity also led some to conflate sexual identity with sexual predation. Thank god the actor had the guts to come out and say that, regardless of the details, what happened between these two was inappropriate and, yes, constituted abuse. Unfortunately, many likely have not seen his remarks and are left still wondering what really happened, what was the point of the story, if what they think they heard was what was truly said, and, and this is true for perhaps all of us, why this topic was even broached. The irresponsibility in bringing up this difficult issue without any apparent larger goal, and then backpedaling and denying what we know we heard, is staggering. And to drop that bomb after two years of torturing this character, and maybe 72 hours before his cold and lonely death... Why? Was this all just for shock value? Do you truly hate Quinn that much? At this point, any acknowledgement on or off the show of this character, his death, or the actor is too late. There is really nothing to undo the damage you have done. You can send your staff out to the media to try to reframe your story, to say that Quinn learned a lot about himself, that he died a hero, that it was never your intention for things to get so dark. But you have already shown us that he died thinking he was unworthy of love, was only capable of killing, that he had no heart, that his broken body and mind caused the death of one of the only people who truly loved him, and you have implied that his death was a form of suicide. This man who for years sacrificed so much for others, for his country, for Carrie, suddenly gives up on himself. So what exactly did he learn about himself? And do you even realize how this retcon mirrors what is happening in our society today, in politics and in the media: changing the story to fit your narrative, telling us we're crazy because of what we think we saw, that we're just too ignorant to understand? But that doesn't change what you showed on the screen and your lack of acknowledgement after the fact. We are not puppets you can manipulate. We are not characters you can abuse and control. I don't know that I expect or even want anything from you in response to my concerns. In his interviews after the finale, Rupert spoke respectfully, empathically and directly to all our frustrations and achieved more on his own than you possibly could at this point. I think I speak for many when I say that any trust we had in you and your commitment to the characters and storytelling, our belief that all this torture and pain for both Quinn and Carrie must have a point- that trust has been destroyed. Too many times, you have said one thing and then contradicted yourself, said you were telling one story and then showed another. Too many times, storylines seemed to start in one direction and then end differently. Many people want Quinn back, but I believe that is your decision to make. You should not be forced to tell a story you do not want to, and I do not trust that this man would be safe in your hands. You made your decision, perhaps it is best for us to accept it. I don't even have hope that it changes how you handle future seasons, because like many, I won't be watching. And this is for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I won't be able to trust what I see on the screen. Perhaps I just want you to hear what I and others have to say, to know that we are real people, that we also can't be swept under the rug and forgotten, that our opinions and feelings matter, that we aren't just numbers and statistics and notches in your belt. Quinn may be dead and useless to you, and Carrie may have been diminished from a strong female character driving her own story into a pawn in your game of chasing relevancy and acclaim. But these characters live on in our hearts and minds. To many of us, it is Homeland that is dead.