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sokkastyles · 2 years

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Do you think ATLA would have followed the same plot/ships had it been conceptualized today rather than the mid-2000s?

I already talked a bit about how I think the ships would be different if the show were made today, or been handled with a bit more care and more attention given to its female audience (rather than mocking them).

I also think the show is a bit of a product of its time related to some of its other more controversial aspects. This was an American show made in a post-9/11 world - and I am old enough to have been in high school when the towers fell, I watched the second tower collapse on live television during religion class - and you can see that in some of its themes, particularly the anti-extremism narratives with Jet and Hama as well as the whole Dai Li thing. When Zuko talks about how his government lied to him, which a lot of people seem to interpret as a plausible deniability cop out, this is how a lot of young people felt during the Bush administration. Nowadays the show's political stance comes off a bit centrist. Other people more equipped than me have also addressed some of the issues with the way the show uses the cultures it took inspiration from, and even saying that America is the Fire Nation doesn't really solve that issue because it's still seeing nonwhite people as symbolic for whiteness and centering whiteness in the narrative, even to serve as a warning to the American audience. Other people have also pointed out how the characters in the show talk like kids from California in the early 2000s. TV tropes used to call this "Buffy Speak" and there was actually debate about changing the name to "Avatar Speak." Particularly Sokka as a character embodies that. You know Seth Cohen from the OC? That's Sokka. I'm not saying his character is entirely westernized because of course it isn't, but there are things about the show that make it unique to the time and place in which it was made, even keeping in mind the amount of effort that was put into research and cultural sensitivity. I think if the show was made today, the Water Tribes would be South Asian, not Inuit, although I know a lot of people value the Inuit rep in the show and I don't begrudge them that.

Idk, it's hard to say, but every piece of art is reflective of when and where it was made, in ways both intended and unintended. The show also gets criticism for upholding the monarchy but that's a product of the fantasy genre in general, and if the finale of Game of Thrones taught us anything, it's that trying to be "progressive" within that framework can backfire horribly, especially when you've already got an all-powerful authoritarian character as your main hero.

AtLA also suffers the fate of all episodic shows in some ways, and that's a product of its format. This wasn't a "whole season released at one time on netflix" kind of show. A lot of the plot was made up by the writers as they were writing, because that's how shows were written in the cable TV era. That's why you got all that infamous stuff about arguments in the writers room, or wildly differently characterization from episode to episode because the episodes were written by multiple writers. Or the writers flubbing the end of Aang's arc because they had an idea of where they wanted to get but not as much of a clear idea of how to get there. These aren't necessarily condemnations, but they are what they are.

#atla meta #atla critical

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schrijverr · 3 years

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The Media in a Quirk Society

An essay or more a thought piece about how the media adapted to the appearance of quirk. How genres changed and how the media influences and is influenced by society.

On AO3.

Ships: none

Warnings: none

~~~~~~~~~~~

Something that makes me so very curious is how media must have developed in the BNHA universe after the appearance of quirks.

We hear almost nothing of media other than the news within the universe itself. For now it escapes me if All Might Cartoons are actually mentioned in the show or something of fanfiction. But another fanfic phenomena are pre-quirk movies, aka movies of our time.

The latter is a thing we must agree on, since there was a time before there were quirks wherein movies were made. This also implies that the pre-quirk superhero genre has existed (think MCU or DC)

I want to examine how that must have changed with the appearance of quirks based of what we’ve seen in the show.

When we see the beginnings of a quirk society, we meet AFO, who rises in the chaos and especially the scene where he takes and gives a quirk stand out the most. Quirks weren’t excepted yet, especially visible quirks, while at the same time a quirk means power. We also know the hero profession rises here, because it was too much for just law enforcement.

So we have these components, which all make for really great stories… in hindsight.

After the fact there must have been many stories about a lone police officer, becoming a hero as he saw the force around him crumble. Or a weak person, suddenly developing a powerful quirk that helps them get out of an impossible situation. Or maybe even about someone who feels they are deformed and shunned from society by their quirk and how they overcome it.

But at the moment it was happening there was still a lot of resentment about quirks and people who had them.

When quirks first entered the stage, people who had them plunged the world into chaos or had to hide like the man who goes to AFO to get his quirk removed.

I can imagine that if movie productions could continue in those turbulent times they would focus on the normal guy, still fighting against a suddenly super-powered villain or a quirkist (as I shall refer to it) take on a person who gets a quirk and turns evil.

Or they might even ignore the whole quirk situation in general with a new genre that can be boiled down to ‘No Quirks – AU’ wherein the movie is based in pre-quirk times. This genre would have a lot of nostalgia at first, probably, trying to call upon how simple life was when villains weren’t terrorizing the streets and heroes were just a funny thing of TV.

Maybe it will develop later.

Maybe it will become how difficult it must have been back then with no simple quirk solutions to problems. It might even turn into a genre about invention, mostly, with a fascination in the public of how things that run on quirk-solutions now, could have been solved by a quirkless scientist in the before times.

But back to the developing genre that is set the BNHA real world. Wherein quirkless people might have gotten a center stage in the early years, before quirks became so entrenched in society that quirkism developed against what used to be a majority.

I can picture a young Midoriya watching old movies wherein the quirkless protagonist was the hero against the evil quirks, telling himself that one day that could be him.

However, with the rise of heroes the media attention probably shifted.

The manga/anime describes it as ‘ordinary civilians with their own Quirks decided to take matters into their own hands to bring order to society, and thus the first "Heroes" appeared.’ as it says on the fandom wikia.

This shifts the narrative of quirkless hero against the chaos of quirks, to brave citizen stands up using the power they’ve been granted. Maybe they gave it religious undertones or maybe it was the story of taking the moral high ground and doing what was right for your country and neighbors.

In those early days you probably have more stories reflective of the pre-quirk fictional heroes, wherein the main character has to hide that they’re out there every night breaking the law to bring order.

It can be that at this time the narrative that the police is just the ‘villain taxi service’ starts to originate among bitter storytellers, who have seen the police fail where heroes did not. Though this would be more older filmmakers after this era is over, who start this. When heroes have become accepted, but they still remember how bad the police reacted before.

But on the topic of heroes becoming accepted, that must have been a civil right movement, a right that had to be debated with villains reflecting how bad an idea public quirk use could be.

You can see in the ‘Liberation War Arc’ how something like that could have played out and how it makes for interesting media entertainment as it is a story arc in our world, meant to amuse. Mixed with the fact that the first heroes created order in the chaos, there must be a ton of movies following activists or a hero not only having to fight the villains, but also the system.

And then over time heroes morphed into what they are now.

Hero became a profession and quirks the norm. After a while, just focusing on quirks got less interesting and using quirks as just a backdrop became more interesting.

Sure, you still had the hero genre and with actual figureheads these can range from documentaries to inspired by real life movies or just fictive fights with characters that are obviously based off a real hero or just the real hero. Especially when heroes became depended on their popularity, there must have been plenty that signed an acting contract in the hopes of getting their name and image out there.

With Midoriya’s comment about Todoroki having the backstory of a protagonist, it is clear that the hero genre is far from forgotten.

However, the “normal” genres also developed with society and with quirks becoming normal and no one truly aching for the before times, they must be set in the BNHA world we know.

The tropes we know (and maybe love) will get a new twist to fit this society or maybe disappear completely. New stereotypes and assumptions based off quirks appear, even quirkism might become prevalent in media, teaching kids that those without quirks are freaks or weak and weird.

In my mind I picture a movie trailergoing “She has a water quirk, he has a fire quirk. Will they fall in love despite their different personalities?!?” or “When his family is murdered, he must track down the killer with only the quirk as clue. Will he find out what happened on that faithful day or will the path this sends him on be the last of him???”

The horror genre will also be transformed with the fear of people misusing their quirk being a big thing in society.

As for fantasy, this genre will change with super-powered people being the norm, you can have to get more creative to make it truly fantastical. World building, visually, will be more important to distinguish it from our world, creatures too since there are literally people with bird heads, for example, walking around.

Not to mention the potential of quirks being hereditary that can be used in dramas where the partner has cheated or as plot point as grant reveal of a main character being related to one of the antagonists or even in gang movies as them training together to use their quirks and them all being the same. That would make for a cool visual tbh.

Disaster movies also will be different than they are now. With protagonist who can have quirks that work against them in their situation or if it’s a more hopeful movie how they work together, piling together their quirks and other skills to survive.

And the crime genre will be so intrinsically tied to hero society and with the police being seen as kinda useless, it will be so different than how we know it now. Did crime become part of the hero genre? Is this a piece of cop propaganda left wherein the police tries to save their reputation? I don’t know, but I wanna think about it.

It’s just interesting to me how in a world where the super is normal, media has adapted and this has been keeping my mind busy over the past few weeks.

The transformation in society of quirks as something dangerous that needs to be stopped, to a few brave people standing up for what’s right to finally the commercialization of heroes so that they can keep doing their job.

You see these changes, that’s unavoidable.

Media is such a powerful tool and it’s hardly referenced within the source material (which I understand because there are already so many movingparts), but with the fall of hero society it is interesting how all that propaganda for heroes might disappear back to when quirks first appeared and how the cycle may start again.

A/N:

There are probably so many genres and other stuff thatI haven’t considered, so tell me your thoughts about the media in BNHA!

((also I didn’t want to dive in how racism, homophobia, ableism will develop with quirks and notions people will have about them. It is important to think about, but I do not think that I am the right person to talk about it. If anyone does, tag me or comment the link, because I will 100% read it))

#RR writing #BNHA #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #mha #quirks #quirks in society #quirks in media #movies #movie and film #idk how to tag this lmao

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bethanysnow · 3 years

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Red Empress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nKqslNcYAE&t=1762s

(Inspired by above playlist)

“-And who are you?”

“OH HI YOU ARE REAL!?” The ‘hero’ yelled in shock.

“Yes, I’m real. And what do you want? You interrupted me watching British Bake off…”

“..wait, you’re not gonna...shoot me? With like, a freeze ray, or cut my head off. Send dogs after me, none of that?”

“...Do you want me to hero?”

“NO! I uh I mean no. Ma’am-”

“Then what the fuck do you want…I am busy.”

The hero looked up to a woman similar to what he had expected. She had black hair, wore gold jewelry, and glasses sat on her nose. But the person in front of him? The Terror of the 9 Hells, Dante’s Apprentice, The Red Empress? Wasn’t there. She had a grey cardigan on, yoga pants. She looked down at the little hero with disdain and an air of condescension. Like he was trying to sell her girl scout cookies and doing a bad job at it. The hero looked at his research. Scribbled into a composition notebook was the address of what he thought was the evil lair to the greatest supervillain of their era.

“I am a future hero, or I want to be-” She raised a hand, cutting him off.

“-So you came down to my apartment, which by the way is super creepy. How you got my address I do not know. Then decide to knock on my door. Knowing who I am, you still did so. Did you think this was a good idea?” Slightly amused look fixed onto her face.

“No, I don’t think it was a good idea. But I need to know.” He said with all the sincerity in his heart. “My grandma, she loves you. Has some of your newspaper clippings on her wall. She won’t shut up about you. Saying ‘there weren’t any more good heroes today’. Google just showed me all your recent stuff about how bad you are. You disappeared for like...10 years. Then came back a villain.”

She looked him over. Grabbed his notes out of his hand despite his protests. Flipping through pages she takes a red pen from behind her ear and starts writing in his book. Once she hands it back, it's annotated. Edited. Like how a teacher reviews a paper from a student. Leaning on the doorway she looks into the hall.

“Kay-” Standing back up on her feet she opens the door all the way pushing him in. “-You get until my episode of Bake off is done. C’mon kid.” Grabbing a fistful of his hoodie she leads him to her living room.

The apartment looked over all of Manhattan. Marble floors, red plush furniture. Bookshelves dotted with ‘souvenirs’. Some he recognized as heroes' weapons and memorabilia. A stone head looked in fear out into the room. The head was of the previous ‘supervillain’ from the 50s. A silver glove with runes carved into the surface glowed as the hero passed. A gun from the ‘Manhattan Mad Hatter’. A drugged out ultra-rich chemist who made it his mission to destroy and flatten everything from here to Tokyo in the 00’s.

“You want to talk, kid, or do you wanna look at the knick knacks?”

“Right!” He blurted, going to the couch next to her. A small brown dachshund curled into a ball on her lap. “Where did you go for ten years?”

“Rehab, Therapy for a bit. Um, Austria. Russia for a while. Went to Tasmania. Seattle. Mainly Rehab though-”

“-For ten years?”

She smirked. “You try being a hero for 30 some odd years and not have a drug problem. The 60s and 70s everyone was...disposed. In something. Or someone. There was always a cult to join, doctrine to follow, party to go to. Lots of those Heroes from the glory days died from cocaine, or other drugs. The cops shot the bodies so they could report that they died in the line of fire.” A dark and far away quality clouded her eyes. “-10 years for rehab after seeing your friends, coworkers, freaks of nature you got to call family die? Sounds reasonable to me. I spent the 80s in a fog. God knows what I really did.”

“Oh....”

She scoffed. “Yea- oh! They don’t tell ya that in history class do they?”

“No, Ma’am…”

“Thought as much.”

“You were a hero though! Post WWII there were comics, radio stations, songs, all praising you. Some I saw where you punched a Nazi and went for ice cream after. Don’t take this the wrong way please. I would like to get home today, but you look like you’re in your 30s. You should be 90 somethin”

“That I did do- but ya. And who said I wasn’t 90 somethin? You ever hear that fuckin super solider bullshit? They made Rogers and Bucky do? Where did you think the research was tested? They had to go from somewhere and I dunno...I had the day off.” She shrugged. Her face flickered with rage when mentioning the previous heroes. “And look where it got them, Steve is dead, and Bucky is off with some fuckin retirement bullshit. At least I didn’t retire! I got a job to do, I got taxes to pay.”

“...you pay taxes????” The boy looked at her very confused.

“I am a villain, not an asshole.”

She started to pet her dog, them nuzzling into her hand.

“So you became a villain- came back in 2000. Crashed the Met Gala. Stole the artifacts on display. Crashed a car. Set fire to buildings- why?”

“Ah- the age old question.-” She looked at him. Took a minute of silence with her. The air slowly left the room he felt. Under the steely gaze of the most deadly woman in the world.

“I got tired. Of being owned, propped up, posed, told what to say. The Hero's Union, a committee of people ‘sworn to protect the sanctity of Heroes’ and what they represent and fight for’ never was actually there for us. Type casted us into America's sweetheart, Funny side character. Big strong hero to save the day. Every interview I ever did as a ‘hero’ was never my actual words. I would have been a fuckin amazing actress I’ll give ya that. Smile and tell the people watching not to panic. Not to worry. Us ‘Hero’s got it handled. We were let to suffer unbeknownst to the general public. ‘Lady Justice’? She was 5 months pregnant and the Union wouldn’t let her stop the missions. She ended up having a miscarriage due to stress and what they were putting her body through. It's not just her, it's everyone.”

“So why not just quit? If it was that bad, go on strike or something.”

“That's easy for you civilians to say. You can strike when you work a normal 9 to 5. You can quit your job. You can move on. But as I said, little hero. I was out there for 30 somethin years. Punching Nazis, saving people. Being a Hero. When you are made basically immortal and are a freak of nature- there are things you learn you cannot do anymore. I can’t drive a car. I can’t work out without all the machines sparking out on me and breaking. No one wants to hire a freak now do they? There is no ‘pensioners plan’ for elderly heroes.”

“I guess not…You don’t seem all that Villainous to me though.” He says with a giant smile on his face. Ever the optimist.

She rolled her eyes, focusing on her show.

He looked closer at her face. Grey eyes with blue flecks. Slightly salt and peppering at the sides. She looked strong, obvious defined biceps and calves. Her neck and arms were covered in scars. A long scar ran from her forehead down her face leading in a curve to her jaw on one side. The red pen stuck behind her ear. Big 70s aviator glasses. Before he knew what was happening his hands were bound behind his back and his face was being pressed into the cold floor. She had not changed her position.

“You keep staring at me kid things will go badly for you.” She spoke not looking away from the TV in front of her. “-I don’t look evil, sure. But I will ask you.”

“What does ‘Evil’ look like? I was once a hero too.”

#Original work #story #creative writing #marveloc #Superhero #Superheros #Marvel #DC #OC #Red Empress

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meanstreetspodcasts · 3 years

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“He hunts the biggest of all game - public enemies who try to destroy our America!

“With his faithful valet Kato, Britt Reid - daring young publisher - matches wits with racketeers and saboteurs, risking his life so criminals and enemy spies may feel the weight of the law by the sting of The Green Hornet!”

Before Bruce Wayne became a bat to terrify villains, another wealthy playboy donned a mask by night in a war against crime. Crusading newspaper publisher Britt Reid led a fight against graft and corruption everyday in the Daily Sentinel, but he found there were limits to what he could accomplish with strongly worded editorials. His zeal for justice led him to a new life as The Green Hornet, a masked vigilante who pursued the political bosses and mobsters beyond the reach of the police. Aided by his valet Kato, Reid took to the streets in the “Black Beauty,” a sleek, super-powered sedan, and made his nightly hunt for criminals of all stripes. One of radio’s most popular heroes, the Hornet has continued to entertain ever since his debut on January 31, 1936.

The Hornet sprang from the creative pool at WXYZ, the Detroit radio station that just a few years earlier introduced audiences to “the daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains,” The Lone Ranger. Producer George W. Trendle wanted a companion show for The Lone Ranger, one that would feature a hero standing up to lawlessness and corruption in politics and the circles of power. Trendle worked with writer Fran Striker and director James Jewell, two of the creative minds behind The Lone Ranger. Eventually, they developed the concept of Britt Reid, the crusading publisher, and Kato - his loyal valet - as a sort of Lone Ranger and Tonto for the modern era. Instead of powerful horses, this hero would travel in the “Black Beauty,” a souped-up, sleek sedan. He traded the silver bullets of the old west for a high-tech gas gun that didn’t kill villains; it only knocked them out.

One tie to the earlier series was Britt Reid’s family tree. His father, Dan, had been the nephew of the Lone Ranger introduced on the earlier program (where he was played by future Inside the Actors’ Studio host James Lipton). The elder Reid eventually discovered his son’s dual identity, and (with the William Tell Overture playing in the background) he told his son about his family’s history of fighting for law and order.

The series premiered in 1936 and ran until 1952. Al Hodge (later the star of TV’s Captain Video) played Britt Reid and the Hornet until 1943. His performance was interrupted by military service, but he returned in 1945. Other actors (Donovan Faust, Bob Hall, and Jack McCarthy) played the character, but Hodge is the most famous of the radio Hornets. Fran Striker created a rich universe of characters that worked alongside Britt Reid. One of the more colorful supporting characters was Mike Axford, an ex-cop initially introduced as Britt Reid’s bodyguard but who later became a police reporter for the Sentinel. Axford used his old connections on the force to get tips and usually accompanied the cops on raids and pursuits. Axford was played by Jim Irwin from 1936 until his death in 1938. Gil Shea assumed the role and played the blustery Irishman for the duration of the show’s run. Axford was a bit of a bumbler, and he was prone to excited exclamations. “Saints preserve us!” was a favorite whenever he was talking about the dreaded “Haarnet.”

Lenore Allman (sister of director James Jewell) played Lenore Case, Britt Reid’s secretary. Late in the run, Reid took Miss Case into his confidence and shared his true identity with her. Jack Petruzzi played Ed Lowry, a hot-headed Sentinel reporter who occasionally landed in trouble due to his impulsive desire to run down a story. Kato was played by several actors, including Tokutaro Hayashi (billed as “Raymond Toyo”), Rollon Parker, and Michael Tolan.

On radio, the Green Hornet and Kato battled the corrupt and the crooked - everyone from slum lords to shady city councilmen to the mob. When the show first premiered, the opening narration announced that the Hornet hunted “the biggest of all game – public enemies that even the G-Men cannot reach.” This didn’t sit well with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, as no crook was beyond the reach of the Bureau. In response, the narration was changed to “public enemies who try to destroy our America.” As America entered World War II, the Hornet frequently did battle with spies and saboteurs on the home front. One of his greatest recurring enemies was Oliver Perry, an unscrupulous private detective who came close on several occasions to confirming his suspicions that Britt Reid was the Green Hornet.

Like his vigilante ancestor, the Green Hornet eventually made his way to television. Van Williams starred as Britt Reid in a 1966-67 ABC television series. Kato was played by a young Bruce Lee in his first American screen role. The Green Hornet was produced by William Dozier, who brought Batman to TV with great success just a few months earlier. In fact, he had the Hornet and Kato pay a visit to Gotham City in three episodes of Batman, including a memorable two-parter where the heroes teamed up to battle the same villain. Unfortunately, whereas Batman took America by storm, The Green Hornet failed to click and it left the air after a single season. Most recently, Seth Rogen brought the character back to the big screen in a widely maligned 2011 film. The tepid reception he received suggested it would be a long while before we ever sawthe Hornet on screen again. However, in late 2016, rumblings were heard about director Gavin O’Connor (The Accountant) developing a new cinematic adventure of Britt Reid. Whatever happens with the Hornet’s big screen fortunes, we’re lucky that his exploits from the Golden Age of Radio can still be heard and enjoyed today.

#Green Hornet #old time radio #golden age of radio

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leslieannefusco · 3 years

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Star Wars Episode I The Phantom Menace The New Batman Superman Adventures

Batman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern chase a time-traveling villain to the past, where they team up with the greatest heroes of the Old West.

The Justice League's adventures in time take them to a futuristic Gotham City, where they join forces with that era's Batman and his super team: The Justice League Unlimited.

When the evil Trade Federation plots to take over the peaceful planet of Naboo, Jedi warrior Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi embark on an amazing adventure to save the planet. With them on their journey is the young Queen Amidala, Gungan outcast Jar Jar Binks, and the powerful Captain Panaka, who will all travel to the faraway planets of Tatooine and Coruscant in a futile attempt to save their world from Darth Sidious, leader of the Trade Federation, and Darth Maul, the strongest Dark Lord of the Sith to ever wield a lightsaber.

The evil Trade Federation, led by Nute Gunray is planning to take over the peaceful world of Naboo. Jedi Knights Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi are sent to confront the leaders. But not everything goes to plan. The two Jedi escape, and along with their new Gungan friend, Jar Jar Binks head to Naboo to warn Queen Amidala, but droids have already started to capture Naboo and the Queen is not safe there. Eventually, they land on Tatooine, where they become friends with a young boy known as Anakin Skywalker. Qui-Gon is curious about the boy, and sees a bright future for him. The group must now find a way of getting to Coruscant and to finally solve this trade dispute, but there is someone else hiding in the shadows. Are the Sith really extinct? Is the Queen really who she says she is? And what’s so special about this young boy?

I’ve never experienced such delay in cartoons airing on TV as I have with the DC Animated shows. Ever since Superman: The Animated Series massive delays started it, it seems to have spilled over into every DC show since. Batman Beyond had it’s “Unmasked”, Justice League had it’s last half of Season 1 and almost all of Season 2 delayed for what seemed like forever, and now Justice League Unlimited it hitting every bump in the road: schedule changes, generic delays and problems with the episodes themselves, resulting in send-backs to the animation studios. “The Once and Future Thing” has been nearly every fans most anticipated story arc this season, and we’ve been waiting ever since June since the loglines were released. So was it worth the wait and agonizing speculation? Nothing ever is; fans over hype things to the point of exhaustion and by the time the episode airs everything’s been inadvertently spoiled via a careless lack of a spoiler warning. Nothing in this first part of “The Once and Future Thing” surprised me; things that would’ve excited me was the re-appearance of Jonah Hex (not seen since Batman: The Animated Series “Showdown”), Batman Beyond, Future Static and Warhawk’s appearance and the whole “Dad?!” line (I know I read somewhere that was going to happen). The Return of the Joker Jokerz gang did surprise me though, albeit if they are a bit changed (more on that later).

Where was I? “The Once and Future Thing” starts off with our first look at Future Gotham since Static Shock’s “Future Shock” crossover, bringing an already exciting mood to the episode (Batman Beyond is one of my all-time favorites, so I may be biased); we then meet the mastermind behind the episode, Chronos (“David Clinton” for those who are picky since “Chronos” was never directly named in the episode, aside from a quick throwaway comment on his suit). After a humorous scene with his verbally abusive wife, we’re thrown into present where he’s attempting to steal Batman’s utility belt from the Watchtower. The first odd thing in the episode occurs here: if an “intruder” alarm is sounded on the Watchtower, a supposedly impregnable fortress, wouldn’t more than just three heroes run to investigate? Batman, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman bolt right as the alarm sounds, while everyone else in the surrounding lunch room just sits and gabs away. I realize that’s probably an unavoidable hole due to only wanting Batman, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman to be the time travelers, but it’s still a bit odd, none the less. Before you sit down to watch this episode, you have to keep in mind that not all things are going to make sense; it’s time travel and that always manages to screw something up. We have mechanical Pterodactyls and Raptors with Cowboys riding on their back, robots dressed up as Old West Gun Slingers and a main villain who had a six-pistol gun. If you want to make sense of that…be my guest, but it’s really best just to sit and enjoy it as it plays out. Granted, you could justify everything that happened since Tobias just kept jumping into the future and hijacking this stuff back, but…dinosaurs? I don’t see the purpose for those, unless he wanted to scare people into doing his dirty work (ten foot robots and massive guns would do that for me anyway); regardless, they were fun to see, even if they were completely random. Heroes in the episode included El Diablo, Bat Lash, Sheriff Ohiyesa Smith and the aforementioned Jonah Hex. They were all great to see in animated form and I couldn’t help but laugh every time El Diablo talked, as his voice actor (Nestor Carbonell) played “Batmanuel” in the live-action The Tick! series (I think I’m one of few who loved that show). Jonah Hex was awesome to see again and Bat Lash was fun to watch as well.

The Wild West portions had their fare share of camp to them, but they were a fun little romp. Bruce refusing to carry a gun and then using his utility belt as a “Go on, I dare you” type move the cowboys used when reaching for their guns, Diana taking her time in deflecting the bullets (“These are the biggest, slowest bullets I’ve ever seen”) and John’s “Green Lantern” Ghost looked like something pulled from a Scooby Doo episode, were fun to watch. There were some nice character moments in this one, but honestly, I think we’re all just waiting for the second part. Speaking of the second part, we got a nice little teaser end to the episode. Landing in the future after chasing Chronos again, the League come up against the Return of the Joker Jokerz gang; descending immediately is the Future Static, Batman Beyond and Warhawk. Static appears much older than his “Future Shock” appearance and Batman seems to have lost the red on the interior of his wings, but Warhawk remains the same. The episode ends with the clinching “Dad?!” from Warhawk as he looks at Green Lantern, who then looks like he just saw Future Shayera in the shower. It was a great ending and created a session of out loud “I gotta wait a week to see the conclusion!?” cursing. Perhaps the most debated part of this ending was the reappearance of the Return of the Joker Jokerz gang; Bonk died on-screen (in both versions of the film, though one more graphic than the other) in the movie, while everyone else seemed to simply get taken away by the cops. One other thing to point out is Woof’s mechanical arms; definitely not on the original model and Chucko’s new look (different color shirt and is now carrying some sort of round object, similar to Ghoul’s pumpkin bucket), all suggest that the gang may be different. If they aren’t, I refuse to believe that one of the story writers of Return of the Joker and producers of Justice League Unlimited simply glazed over Bonk’s death or forgot; the gangs there for a reason that will have to wait for another week to find out. It’s sort of sad that all of the work that was put into the first twenty plus minutes of this episode are overshadowed by the ten second closer, but it’s to be expected. People have been hungry for more Batman Beyond and now that we’ve got him again, it’s gonna be hard to let go.

That was, bar-none, the most mind-twisting and blowing DCAU episode I’ve seen. It’s not that it was “crazy” or “kooky” or all together “spooky,” but trying to get everything straight with the Matrix code flying across the bat-computer screen and Bruce spouting off stuff about the “space time continuum”…just…ouchie. Confusing nature aside (and that will pass upon a few more viewings, I’m sure), this episode was pretty much what I expected it to be; not in plot points and twists, but just in that we’d get a fun romp through future Gotham City. I’ll be damned if it didn’t seem like time flew while watching it this though; commercial breaks came as soon as they ended and I had a goofy grin on my face the entire time, seeing the Jokerz back and Terry cracking one liners again…it was really was one of the biggest fan-moments I’ve had while watching Unlimited. The story itself, as previously mentioned, was quite the confusing experience. The first time I watched it I was just entertained by everything; by the second time I finally got a grasp on why Hal Jordan was appearing (other than to make everyone’s eyes bug out) and why everyone started to disappear. In the end, this trip to the future also ended up being an “alternate” trip to the future, as in the end everything was switched back to normal, albeit with Batman and Green Lantern only remembering what went on and Chronos stuck in a constant loop with his wife’s abusive language constantly recycling. D.R. Movie Co. threw in some new effects on the future Batman’s jet boots; instead of dissipating right away, they left swirly trails; though you only saw this once it was a great bit of animation. The city looked as dark and futuristic as ever and the Jokerz new designs were great as well. Chucko on a rolling ball, Bonk with a massive mallet, multiplying Dee Dee’s, a mechanical arm-enhanced Woof and a spinning saw blade on Ghoul. Anyone who didn’t get flash backs to Batman Beyond’s “April Moon” episode must’ve been delirious; then again, Chronos said he traveled into the future to get those upgrades, so either the doctor in “April Moon” didn’t exist yet or…ah hell I’m getting confused again. Regardless, it makes me long for more of Batman Beyond…but I’m sure I’ve said that enough by now.

Static was enjoyable as well; I never was one to watch the show much, sans the special appearances of other DCAU heroes, but an adult Static is definitely who I prefer. He’s got the wit of Flash and the strength of John Stewart and it was great to see the two interact as “old friends.” Warhawk’s “I’m shocked! Shocked! Well not that shocked…” revelation that he is Shayera and John’s kid and that they may have even gotten married (“Stewart” is his last name; he was named “Rex” after Green Lantern’s childhood friend, Rex Mason / Metamorpho) was nice to see extended upon. Even if we didn’t get much (due to the three Batman’s interrupting) else out of the two, it was fun to see where things progressed (and the look that John gives Shayera at the end of the show). The undisputed and best moment of the episode, however, was the scene with Bruce/Batman/Batman—we get the wise and old Wayne saying hello to his younger self and them both telling Terry to shut up in which Terry emits a “What’d they used to call it? Stereo?” quip. It was the things endless fan fictions are made of where the past meets future… I enjoyed this episode much more than part one; animation was awesome, music fit well with every scene and the characters were all handled nicely, even if there was an over abundance of them. Some may trash McDuffie’s writing, but I’ve enjoyed nearly everything he’s written on Justice League and Justice League Unlimited and this was certainly no exception.

Create sci-fi characters with this dress-up game inspired by the Star Wars movies, mostly the original trilogy with Luke, Leia and Han, and also with many items inspired by Padme, Anakin and Obi-wan. There are four themes in the game to approximate outfits from the show, and create new ones: Jedi martial artist, rebel, queen or princess, and slave. Complete her look with weapons, other types of accessories, body customization and a wide hair section. Also, to make the weapons brighter and the image altogether more dramatic, you can play around with the darkness setting!

This game inspired by the Star Wars saga lets you dress up a male counterpart to the original Sci-fi Warrior! Although the woman has more diverse clothes and some alien features, the man is more narrowly focused on the clothing style of Jedi and Siths (and restricted to humans). The religion of the Jedi, and this is reflected in their fashion style, is itself inspired by the Eastern martial arts and monastic orders such as the Shaolin monks, which combine a deep commitment to a spiritual path with the lifelong study of self-defense. While Jedi and Siths alike are warriors trained in combat, the difference between them is their power source: while Siths align with forces of destruction, and derive power from intense emotions especially anger and hatred, the Jedi curb their emotions and do not feel hatred for their enemy. The genius of this philosophy is that it holds the key to ending the cycle of violence: self-defense against an enemy who is not hated.

#Star Of The Universe

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amillioninprizes · 4 years

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Some thoughts on Veronica Mars, fan service, and noir

I’ve been on winter break and at home with a nasty combo cold-ear infection-stomach virus the past couple of weeks, and as so often happens when I don’t have much going on, my thoughts have turned to ruminating over the steaming pile of excrement that was season 4 of Veronica Mars. Why yes, almost six months and one cancellation notice later and I’m still complaining about it--as I told someone on Twitter, it was so stupid that it’s going to take years to unpack.

This particular rant is brought to you by a common refrain seen in both professional critics’ and S4 supporters’ reviews of S4: the movie was schlocky fan service, while S4 is TRUE NOIR. I’m here to argue that neither of those things are true, and that in the grand scheme of things trying to definitively call Veronica Mars noir or not isn’t the best qualitative judgement of the series.

A note on “fanservice”

Something that’s been very strange to me in the critical discussion around S4 is that the fan-funded movie has been retconned as a fanservicey failure. This is weird because it did get a positive Rotten Tomatoes score, actually turned a profit despite the unorthodox distribution model, and was overall well-received by fans except for maybe the 5 Piz lovers out there (he absolutely did not deserve better you guys; he works at This American Life and lives in Brooklyn, he’ll be fine).

A lot of the things pointed to in the movie as fan service actually weren’t. In every interview about the movie and S4, RT and KB always talk about how they started with the image of Veronica punching Madison at the high school reunion and worked from there. The problem is that almost no one had been asking for that. If they had bothered to read any online discourse about the show (and we know RT definitely does), they would know that fans are actually somewhat sympathetic to Madison--after all, she was the intended recipient of the drugged drink Veronica received at Shelly Pomeroy’s party, plus growing up in a family that she wasn’t meant to be a member of must have negatively impacted her. When the preview scene of Veronica encountering Madison at the reunion welcome table was released, Veronica didn’t come off sympathetically. In a similar vein, as much as I liked Corny as a side character in the original series, I didn’t need him to come back for that random scene at the reunion. Nor was anyone asking for an out-of-nowhere James Franco cameo (which given what we know about him now is super gross in hindsight).

So why was the movie well-received by fans? Veronica was in character after an unevenly written and performed S3, and she was back in Neptune, doing what (and who; Ay-yo!) she was meant to do. So while the mystery was subpar (and what Rob Thomas mystery isn’t?), the character side of the story made sense and was satisfying. I wouldn’t call that fan service so much as good writing. Plus, what is even the point of wasting time, money, and effort on making a tv show or movie if it’s going to actively alienate the audience?

S4: more trauma porn than true noir

Admittedly, I’m not exactly the world’s foremost scholar on film noir (in my opinion, the height of cinema is teen romcoms c. 1995-2005), but I do feel I have enough pop cultural knowledge to have a working understanding of what film noir is, and as internet folk would say, S4 ain’t it chief. Sure, S4 was bleak subject matter wise, but that does not automatically equal noir. HappilyShanghaied, who does have a film studies background, wrote a pretty excellent post about why that is shortly after S4 dropped that I could not improve upon, so I will just leave it here.

In addition to this analysis, I would also point out that S4 was lacking in a unique visual style common to noir films, especially compared to the original television series and the movie. The original series made use of green, blue, and yellow filters to fulfill a high school version of the noir aesthetic (quick shoutout to Cheshirecatstrut’s color theory posts for more on what we thought this meant before it turned out that Rob Thomas did not actually intend to imbue meaning into any of this), while the movie adopted a more mature muted blue-grey palette. S4, however, was more or less shot like a conventional drama and was brightly lit, perhaps signifying Rob Thomas’s apparent plans to turn the show into a conventional procedural.

The movie: more than fan service

If anything, the movie was more noir than S4. Take Gia’s storyline for instance. While Veronica was off obtaining elite degrees, Gia spent 9 years in a virtual cage being forced into a sexual relationship without her total consent (because that’s the only storyline women can have on this show), and then set herself up to be murdered at the very moment she could potentially break free. That’s pretty fucking grim.

Then there is the whole police corruption storyline, which is a hallmark of noir fiction. The glimpses we get of the Neptune sheriff’s department point to a larger conspiracy at play than just crooked cops; Sachs lost his life trying to expose it and Keith was gravely injured. This was the story I was excited for future installments of Veronica Mars to address, especially given its relevance to today’s politics. Unfortunately, this thread was entirely dropped in S4, where the police department (because, as Rob Thomas revealed in interviews but not onscreen, Neptune has incorporated) is merely overwhelmed by the scope of the bombing case rather than outright corrupt. (Side note but Marcia Langdon was also a more complex and morally grey character when introduced in the second book than she was on screen in S4. Another wasted opportunity).

Noir is also marked by a sense of inevitability or doom as a result of greater forces at play. An example of this in the movie is Weevil’s storyline. After building a life and family for himself, he ultimately ends up rejoining the PCHer gang he left as a teenager due to a misunderstanding based on his race and appearance and the assumptions authority figures make about him because of those things. No matter what he does, he is still limited by an unjust and racist society. Contrast this with the final explosion in S4; it’s not inevitable, just based on Veronica’s incompetence. Rob Thomas claims that he tried to create a sense of doom to LoVe’s relationship between the OOC Leo storyline and the last minute barriers before the wedding, but those aspects just served to make the story unnecessarily convoluted.

What is noir anyway? Was Veronica Mars ever noir? Does it matter?

But this is all assuming there is a set template for noir anyway. This New Yorker essay points out that trying to definitively establish a set of rules for noir is difficult and that the classic noir films were more a product of midcentury artistic and political movements than a defined genre. The noir filmmakers working at the time would not have described their work as such. The kicker of this essay is the final sentence: “But the film noir is historically determined by particular circumstances; that’s why latter-day attempts at film noir, or so-called neo-noirs, almost all feel like exercises in nostalgia.” I found this particularly amusing because as Rob Thomas infamously proclaimed in his S4 era interviews, he wanted to completely dispense with nostalgia going forward. Rob Thomas and S4 supporters have said that Logan needed to die because noir protagonists can’t have stable relationships; but, if there isn’t a defined set of rules other than “an element of crime”, then was it strictly necessary? Hell, writing a hardboiled detective who does have a stable relationship and maybe even a family could have been an interesting subversion of genre expectations. Unfortunately, Rob Thomas isn’t that imaginative.

There’s also the issue that noir and hardboiled detective fiction aren’t interchangeable genres. This article lays out that idea that they aren’t the same because noir is ultimately about doomed losers; in contrast, detective fiction, while dark, contains a moral center and has an ending where a sense of justice is achieved. An interview with author Megan Abbott makes a similar argument; she states that in hardboiled detective fiction, “At the end, everything is a mess, people have died, but the hero has done the right thing or close to it, and order has, to a certain extent, been restored.” Based on the descriptions laid out here, I would argue that in its original format Veronica Mars far better fit the detective fiction model; while she wasn’t always right, she was never a loser, and she solved the mystery. S1-3 all had relatively hopeful, if not totally happy, endings, but you never see anyone complaining that they weren’t noir enough; if anything, they were more emotionally complex than the ending of S4, where Logan’s death is essentially meaningless. One could make the argument that S4 did push Veronica towards a more noir characterization by the definition of these articles by making her more incompetent and meaner than she was in previous installments, but that is a fundamental change in character, which is not coherent writing.

And that is ultimately why S4 was so poorly received by longtime fans and why there will be no more installments of Veronica Mars anytime soon (at least on Hulu). Even if S4 had been noir (or at least shot like one), the serious issues with plotting, characterization, and lack of adherence to prior canon that this season exhibited would still exist. Defending the poor writing choices made in S4 with “it’s noir!” does not mask them or automatically heighten the quality of the product. Perhaps ironically, in ineptly trying to be noir in S4, Rob Thomas likely prematurely ended Veronica Mars by failing his creation and fans with lazy storytelling.

#Veronica Mars #Burnt Marshmallow #Yeah I'm still angry what of it #If only RT had put as much effort into writing the show as I did into this post

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falconwintersoldier1x03eng · 3 years

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The Falcon and the Winter Soldier 1x03 Season 1 Episode 3 watch Series TV online

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier 1x03 Season 1 Episode 3 online - https://bit.ly/3sJoHD8

Symbols are becoming increasingly central to superhero fiction, as the power and meaning of modern and classic images, heroes and structures continue to plague commentators and audiences in reality. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier contribute to this speech, as it continues in S1E2 to frame the entire series around not only the Captain America shield, but what the idea of the American hero as a symbol represents. The episode begins with a jazzy orchestral version of 'Star-Spangled Man', which sounds like a hot metal band 8, first heard in Captain America: The First Avenger (and written by supreme composer Alan Menken) as a propagandist representation Captain America's strength and heroism. "Who is strong and brave, is here to save the American Way?" sing the line of choristers as Steve Rogers parades on stage. "Who swears to fight like a man for what is right night and day?" It is intentionally stimulating and, of course, full of inherent stereotypes, fallacies and contradictions, but it works clearly in the context of the American moment in World War II, launching itself to destroy the “idiots of Berlin”. There is a reason, however, that music was avoided once Steve was unveiled these days and why she returns in a new form here, even borrowing the title of the episode (“The Star-Spangled Man”) from him . That reason is John Walker (Wyatt Russell), the new Captain America, briefly revealed at the end of the 'New World Order' as an encapsulation of the changes that the Falcon and the Winter Soldier are undergoing as a series. To the credit of the Malcolm Spellman series, Walker is immediately more than a cipher and an empty image. We spend time with a man who seems to be aware of the legacy of the shoes he is stepping on and comes with his own experience of what we would consider an American "hero". “I'm not trying to be Steve. I'm just trying to be the best Captain America I can be, ”he later said to a questionable Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie). However, Walker is, in its entirety, a symbol of the appropriation that permeates 'The Star-Spangled Man'. That's why the song and the title are revived. Walker is not a representation of America's future, but of America's tranquil past. His introduction reminded me of Eric Kripke's violent, nihilistic version of the superhero culture, The Boys, which I suspect will stand the test of time more acutely than any Marvel property. Walker is presented as a human being in a relationship, with his own doubts and questions about the role he is assuming, yet he is directed on stage in the same way as 'The Seven' in The Boys and evokes the character Homelander from that show . Homelander is, of course, an Oedipal psychopath beyond redemption, and Walker will never be portrayed as such in Marvel's softer cinematic universe, but he was cured just as much to appropriate a cultural symbol of America's celebrated history. The “American way” of music, which may have been clearer in 1942 - a thriving democratic nation of individuals struggling to free the world from the oppressive and totalitarian fascist domination - is cloudy, complex and troubling in 2020. Walker is designed, with its square chin, blond hair, charming arrogance and “totally American” behavior (even the square, solid root of its name), a United States of the 1940s or more than the 1950s that never existed entirely. One wonders whether Russell's cast is a coincidence, being the son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, two examples of home-made American beauty and charm that emerged in the era of counterculture that largely ended up reinforcing power structures now challenged in an unstable century.

Previously on The Falcon And The Winter Soldier: Sam Wilson, aka "The Falcon", is once again working with the U.S. Air Force and rescuing one of its members: an Air Force captain held hostage by a terrorist group called LAF He then has to deal with giving Captain America's shield to the government (which tells him that doing so is the right decision) to have it show on the Smithsonian, and to help his sister, Sarah, keep his fishing business going so that the The family boat does not need to be sold. Bucky Barnes, who was pardoned for crimes he committed during brainwashing as the Winter Soldier, has participated in government-required therapy sessions (in which he refuses to admit to his therapist that he still has nightmares about the crimes he committed during the wash. brain as a Soldier) and trying their best to make amends. A terrorist group called Flag-Smashers, who firmly believe that life was better during borderless and orderless The Blip The Snap, and who want the world to adopt that way of life once again. And Sam soon learns that the reason the government said that giving them the shield was the right thing to do was so that they could actually give it to the new Captain America, who is introduced to the world at a news conference. ADS THE STORY UNTIL NOW: Sam and Bucky cross paths once more when Bucky confronts Sam about his refusal to accept Captain America's mantle. The two end up on a plane to Munich, where Bucky accompanies Sam on his mission to track a shipment of vaccines stolen by the Flag Crushers. Sam and Bucky's attempt to stop them is not easy or successful, and it does not help when John Walker (known as the new Captain America) joins the battle to try to stop the Flag Crushers as well. Bucky informs Sam about a disturbing secret about the Super-Soldier Serum story, and how he and Steve Rogers were not the first or the only ones to receive him at that time. Captain America 2.0 quickly realizes that Sam and Bucky have no interest in working with him, and the Flag-Smashers are soon hunted down not only by the authorities, but by a mysterious individual known as The Power Broker. WHAT'S GOOD IN THIS EPISODE?: Sam and Bucky finally appearing on the screen together and headbanging like only they can. Bucky trying to rescue Karli Morgenthau (played by Erin Kellyman, whom some of you will recognize as Enfys Nest in Solo: A Star Wars Story) because he believes she is a hostage to the Flag Crushers, only to clear up this confusion by kicking him at fifteen meters from the rear of an eighteen-wheeled truck in motion. John Walker, also known as Captain America 2.0, preparing for the responsibility of what is to come and then being introduced to the world (along with his skill set and qualifications) through an individual interview with Good Morning America. The fight sequence between Sam and Bucky and Captain America 2.0 and Battlestar (also known as Lemar Hoskins, Cap 2.0's partner and Black's best friend) against Karli and the rest of the Flag-Smashers. Cap 2.0 and Battlestar trying their best to win over Sam and Bucky in the beginning, only to say the wrong things and end up failing miserably. Sam and Bucky going to Baltimore to meet Isaiah Bradley (played by the legendary actor Carl Lumbly), an African American super soldier who gained his skills in 1942 after being forced to pass tests in which the US government tried to recreate the Super- Soldier Serum that was given to Steve Rogers, and who fought against Bucky-as-the-Winter Soldier during the Korean War in 1952 before being sent to prison for thirty years and constantly experimented (even by scientists at HYDRA) for more attempts to recreate the serum. Sam being confronted by white cops who think he is a threat to Bucky until they recognize him and realize who he really is (and before they put Bucky under arrest for missing his therapy appointment, although they are still much kinder to Bucky than that were for Sam).

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chiseler · 5 years

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The Sound of Fury

“America, as a social and political organization, is committed to a cheerful view of life,” Robert Warshow wrote in his seminal 1948 essay “The Gangster as Tragic Hero.” Democracies depend on the conviction that they are making life better and happier for their citizens; only feudal and monarchical societies can enjoy the luxury of fatalism or a fundamentally pessimistic view of life. Praising the gangster genre as a form of modern tragedy, Warshow also accounts for film noir in his statement that, “There always exists a current of opposition, seeking to express by whatever means are available to it that sense of desperation and inevitable failure which optimism itself helps to create.” The gangster’s demise is the purest American tragedy because it is driven by his mania to climb the ladder of success. The end of his saga is inevitable, so in chasing success he is really chasing failure; his self-destructiveness expresses defiance at the inevitability of defeat, but also confirms it.

This underground river of pessimism and disillusionment unites the pre-Code films of the early thirties and postwar film noir; they share a tone of bitter gallows humor; a satisfaction in being wised-up, knowing the score; they flaunt the scars and calluses of lost innocence. Pre-Code movies reflected the free-fall of the Depression, the farce of Prohibition and the dizziness of a society edging towards anarchy. Noir exposed the suppressed anguish of WWII, the anxiety of the Cold War, the stresses of conformity and materialism.

Films like Cry Danger (1951)—recently restored to full glory by the Film Noir Foundation—depict a battered, abraded country that has turned cynicism into a running gag. A man just out of prison after serving five years for something he didn’t do trades sour wisecracks with a one-legged, alcoholic ex-Marine. They make their home in a dilapidated trailer in a scruffy park perched on Bunker Hill, where the proprietor sits around strumming a ukulele and ignoring the busted showers. The vet (Richard Erdman) falls for a pickpocket who steals his wallet whenever he gets drunk. The ex-con (Dick Powell) idealistically tries to vindicate his best friend, who’s still in jail, only to find out he’s a double-crossing liar. The film achieves an extraordinary blend of the glum and the snappy, a deadpan insolence that saturates the air like smog. “What’s five years?” Powell says of his stretch. “You could do that just waiting around.”

While pre-Code movies gleefully portrayed an “age of chiselry,” a country where everyone was looking for an angle, they never plumbed the depths of alienation, fatalism and misanthropy that noir opened up. For all their knowing skepticism, Depression-era films evoke a sense of camaraderie, a shared body heat from people huddled and jostling together—maybe cheating each other, but still sharing jokes and boxcars, Murphy beds and stolen hot-dogs. Noir, by contrast, purveys a chilling sense of isolation and social atomization; not only institutions but individual relationships are corrupt and predatory. There’s no longer a hard-times sense of being all in the same boat. As Kirk Douglas nastily smirks at his colleagues in Ace in the Hole: “I’m in the boat. You’re in the water.”

Noir used unpretentious, low-budget crime thrillers to smuggle this caustic vision into movie theaters during a time when, on the surface, America was at the height of prosperity and social cohesion. Unlike the early-thirties gangster cycle, which reflected a real wave of lawlessness, the crime movies of the fifties were made during a time when the murder rate was lower than in previous or succeeding decades, perhaps as a channel for other, submerged anxieties. Noir’s prophetic vision of disintegrating communities has become only more compelling with time, a development that may explain the passionate revival of interest in film noir in the last decades of the twentieth century.

Healthy, functioning groups don’t exist in noir; even gangs and criminal “organizations” fall apart because their members are out for themselves, ready to betray each other for a payoff or a bigger share of the take. Institutions like politics and business appear only in stories revealing their corruption. The police are the only representatives of government commonly seen, and they are often bullying and crooked, hounding innocent suspects with sadistic relish. Even films that take the side of law enforcement underline hostility between cops and the people they protect. Apart from the justice system, the public sphere does not exist: the town meetings and popular movements that crowd the screen in thirties films, with indignant and excitable citizens marching, rioting or celebrating, are unimaginable in film noir. People seem to exist in a vacuum.

In part, this vision reflects the privatization of life that accelerated in the postwar era, as cars replaced trains; television replaced movie theaters; appliances eliminated the need for servants, milkmen and ice men; suburban back yards took the place of parks, all part of the glorification of the detached home for the “nuclear” family. The homogeneity of the suburbs and the intrusiveness of media and advertising paradoxically diminished any sense of place or community. Meanwhile, Cold War paranoia meant that expressions of communitarian spirit or calls for collective action could rouse suspicions of communist sympathies.

Many of the writers, directors and actors associated with film noir were liberals, often former Communist Party members who had seen the left-wing idealism of the thirties buried by World War II and then vilified during the Cold War. Disillusioned, they used crime movies to indict a culture of rampant greed and cut-throat competition. Thieves’ Highway(1949), the last film directed by Jules Dassin before he left the country to escape the blacklist, slices open the produce business to reveal the rotten heart of capitalism. Even something as pure and nourishing as an apple becomes a poisoned agent of strife when it’s equated with money. A Polish farmer, enraged at being paid less than he was promised for his apples, flings boxes of them off a truck, screaming, “Seventy-five cents! Seventy-five cents!” The apples roll wastefully across the ground, an image foreshadowing the film’s most famous shot, when after the same truck has careened off the road and exploded, apples roll silently down the hillside toward the flaming wreck. When the dead trucker’s partner finds out that money-grubbers have gone out to collect the scattered load to sell, he begins kicking over crates of apples, fuming, “Four bits a box! Four bits a box!” Everyone in the movie is “just trying to make a buck,” and cash haunts the film, dirty crumpled bills changing hands in a series of soiled, coercive transactions.

It is easy to see why the House Un-American Activities Committee wanted to drive people like Dassin out of Hollywood. Films such as Joseph Losey’s The Prowler (another Film Noir Foundation restoration) and Cy Endfield’s The Sound of Fury, (a.k.a Try and Get Me! 1950, the FNF’s next project) are scathing attacks on a materialistic society, unmasking the American dream as a shallow and shabby illusion that breeds crime and shreds the social fabric. (Both directors fled to England in the early fifties to avoid persecution by HUAC.)

Endfield’s stark anti-lynching drama opens with a down-on-his-luck family man hitch-hiking on a dark highway; he tells the trucker who picks him up that he’s been looking in vain for a job. Howard Tyler (Frank Lovejoy) moved his wife and son out to the postwar California suburb of Santa Sierra, hoping for a better life; “I can’t help it if a million other guys had the same idea,” he complains bitterly. They live in a shabby little bungalow behind a wire fence that makes the place look like a miniature P.O.W. camp. Howard’s pregnant wife hates the idea of using a charity clinic, and frets over money owed for groceries, while his whiny little boy begs for money to go the baseball game (“All the other kids are goin’!”) A bartender at a bowling alley sneers at his cheap customer: “You take a beer drinker, you got a jerk.” If Howard weren’t so dejected and humiliated, he would never fall under the spell of Jerry (Lloyd Bridges), the vain braggart he meets at the bowling alley.

Primping and preening, flexing his muscles and showing off his fancy aftershave (“Smells expensive!”), the manic Jerry boasts about his sexual conquests and the big money he makes, and he treats the modest, submissive Howard like his valet. He offers to put him onto something good—“nothing risky”—just driving the car for his hold-ups. When Howard hesitates, Jerry snorts, “You guys kill me! The more you get kicked in the teeth the better you like it.” Their first job is knocking over the grocery store at a cheap motel (“The Rambler’s Rest”), where Jerry easily intimidates an elderly couple and pistol-whips their son. Intoxicated with the easy money—and a few stiff drinks—Howard bursts in on his family with armfuls of groceries. His wife gasps at the extravagance of baked ham and canned peaches, and he brags that now they can get their own TV, and won’t have to go over and watch their neighbors’. “And we’ll throw this piece of junk away!” he crows, pointing to the family’s radio. Soon Howard is buying his wife new shoes and dresses with hot money, telling her he has a night job at a cannery. His little boy sports a cowboy outfit and ambushes his jumpy father with toy guns.

Unsatisfied with these penny-ante crimes, Jerry comes up with a scheme to kidnap a wealthy young man and hold him for ransom. He’s overcome by envy as he fingers the victim’s suit, tailor-made in New York, and after they’ve taken him out to a gravel pit in a disused army base, Jerry panics and kills him. When Howard gets home, dazed with horror and guilt, his wife wakes and tells him about the lovely dream she was having: she had the baby and this time there was no pain at all; “I got right up out of the hospital and took her shopping. I was buying her a pinafore.” Even in her dreams she’s a consumer, subconsciously linking commercial goods with the fantasy of a painless life.

As Howard mentally unravels, the shoddy vulgarity of the culture around him takes on a sinister cast. Jerry shows him the ransom note he’s written in a diner while ordering a steak sandwich (“Cow on a slab!” the waitress yells.) For cover, they go out of town to mail the letter, taking along Jerry’s girlfriend, a glossy blonde, and a lonely manicurist she has dug up for Howard. In a nightclub, he’s subjected to a string of dumb jokes and parlor magic tricks from a burlesque comedian. “Blame my psychiatrist,” the comic quips, “I didn’t pay my bill last month and he’s letting me go crazy.”

From its opening moments, the film depicts the crowd as a mindless and malevolent force, which will eventually be stirred to frenzy by sensationalizing newspaper articles. Crowds in noir are always bloodthirsty mobs, surrounding and destroying strangers in their midst; the communal desire for security is tainted by bigotry and ignorance. This is a dark inversion of Capra’s rallying citizens, or even the all-for-one armies of bums who fight for their squatters’ rights in Wild Boys of the Road. Movies of the Depression era never saw anything wrong with wanting money, good food, a pair of shoes, or even fur coats and diamond bracelets. They are tolerant of people—especially women—who do whatever they have to do get ahead. By contrast, The Sound of Fury shows materialism—the desire to keep up with the neighbors, to make a better life for your family—as a force that corrodes souls and breaks down social decency. The deepest well of pessimism in noir is a distrust of change, desire and ambition. “I just want to be somebody,” people are always saying, but the urge to squeeze more out of life, to grab a chance at happiness, is brutally punished.

Below the surface, the force driving noir stories is the urge to escape: from the past, from the law, from the ordinary, from poverty, from constricting relationships, from the limitations of the self. Noir found its fullest expression in America because the American psyche harbors a passion for independence, an impulse to be, in the words of Walt Whitman, “loosed of limits, and imaginary lines, / Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute.” With this desire for autonomy comes a corresponding fear of loneliness and exile. The more we crave success, the more we dread failure; the more we crave freedom, the more we dread confinement. This is the shadow that spawns all of noir’s shadows: the anxiety imposed by living in a country that elevates opportunity above security; one that instills a compulsion to “make it big,” but offers little sympathy to those who fall short. Film noir is about people who break the rules, pursuing their own interests outside the boundaries of decent society, and about how they are destroyed by society—or by themselves.

The gangster, Robert Warshow wrote, is driven by the need to separate himself from the crowd, but in doing so he isolates and dooms himself. White Heat (1949), which brought James Cagney back to the gangster persona that made him a star, came out one year after the publication of “The Gangster as Tragic Hero.” It took the “man of the city” (as Warshow defined the gangster) out of the city, but Cagney’s explosive death atop an industrial gas tank is the supreme illustration of Warshow’s observation that the gangster’s pursuit of success—“Made it, Ma! Top of the world!”—is a pursuit of death.

White Heat is also a perfect example of what Edward Dimendberg (in Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity) called “centrifugal” noir: it’s a film without a center, about a world flying apart like the cooling fragments of an exploded star. Cagney’s gang, decaying under the strains of resentment, betrayal and madness, moves between equally bleak urban and rural hideouts. After robbing a train in a rocky no-man’s-land, they hole up in a frigid, creaky old farmhouse “a hundred miles from nowhere,” as Cagney’s wife gripes. Cooped up together in this gloomy Gothic house, surrounded by split-rail fences and naked, rolling hills, they snipe at each other and grumble about their leader. Cody Jarrett (James Cagney) suffers debilitating migraine headaches and huddles in the lap of his gaunt, fiercely loyal Ma. The realization that came to Cagney in Public Enemy as he stumbled into the gutter in the rain—“I ain’t so tough”—is here amplified into an infantile weakness, perpetually on the verge of breakdown. Cody’s frailty only makes him more vicious. At his orders the gang leaves a wounded member behind, bandaged and in pain, to freeze to death once they make their move to a motor court in LA. The motel is typical of the “non-places” (in Marc Augé’s term) where noir flourishes: marginal, transient spaces where “people are always, and never, at home.”

The banality of the modern west makes room for Cagney’s majestically psychotic performance, fine-tuned and sensitive as a landmine. Cody Jarrett crumples inward under the crushing pain and then erupts, and White Heat similarly closes in and then shatters people are either cramped in suffocating enclosures (Cody shoots a man while he’s locked in the trunk of a car, cruelly offering to “give him some air”), or stranded in vacant, inhospitable spaces. At the rural hideout, the wind is always blowing bitterly around the house, tossing the trees; Cody walks alone at night, talking to his dead mother, who was shot in the back by his wife while he was in jail. He tells a friend—really a police plant who will betray him—how lonesome he is, because “all I ever had was Ma,” and how hard his mother’s life was, “always on the run, always on the move.” White Heat brings together the ultra-modern—radio tracking devices; drive-in movie theaters—with the pre-modern, even the primitive. It proves not just that film noir can thrive in the country as well as the city, but that noir was not merely a response to the new—industrialization, the bomb, etc.—but drew on deep veins in the American psyche and the American landscape: the desire to stand alone on top of the hill, even if there’s nowhere to go from there but death; and an accompanying fear of being buried “on the lone prairie,” having no one to talk to but the night wind.

by Imogen Sara Smith

#Imogen Sara Smith #The Chiseler #The Sound of Fury #James Cagney #White Heat #Raul Walsh #Noir #In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the Cit #Buster Keaton: The Persistence of Comedy #the criterion collection

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bthump · 5 years

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Hi! What are your top 10 ships (any fandom)?

Hi, ty for asking! This is really hard to narrow down lol, but I tried.

In no particular order:

Guts/Griffith - Berserk

The current otp ofc. What can I say that I haven’t already said all over this blog?

Will/Hannibal - NBC Hannibal

This is my ideal ship. It’s stupid how perfect it is. It’s basically my ideal slowburn longfic but yk as a 3 season gorgeously shot and acted tv show.

Doctor/Master (especially Three/Delgado Master, and excluding het combinations lol) - Doctor Who

This ship is fantastic because it’s so versatile. You want childhood friends to lovers (to enemies)? Gallifrey era. You want bitter exes or frenemies with benefits? Three/Delgado. Five/Ainley was never my thing but if you want creepy villain/plucky hero there you go. You want former enemies who now live together in weird domestic bliss? Shalka. You want pathetic desperate protag willing to throw his ideals along with the rest of the world under a bus to get laid? Ten/Simm. It’s even got its own rairpairs, like cross era combinations or Two/Warchief. This ship can run the gamut from fluff to angst to serious darkfic and never be ooc. It’s a delight.

Harry/Draco - Harry Potter

I mean I loved it when I was 14 and even though I couldn’t care less about Harry Potter now it’s still there for me. Like, if I want to read something gay and can’t find anything that strikes my fancy? I turn to drarry man, there’s so much genuinely fantastic novel length fic out there, you’ll never run out.

Xena/Gabrielle - Xena: Warrior Princess

Xena/Gab is an odd ship for me because they’re not really my type lol. Friends to lovers is something I’ve always been a little meh about, and while they have their tense and interesting and complex moments their appeal is mainly the soulmate thing. But this ship makes the list for two reasons: 1. they are immensely fun to watch together, like what they lack in an interesting dynamic they make up for in chemistry, and it’s a delight to watch the show and soak in all the ott subtext, and 2. Conqueror AUs. There’s a subgenre of Xena fic where Xena never turned good and met Gabrielle while she’s ruling the known world with an evil iron fist, and some of that has the good dynamics.

Fraser/Ray Vecchio - Due South

Honestly the main reason I ship them is because I love Ray and Ray loves Fraser, and Ray is one of those very rare faves that I actually want to be happy lol. But they do have a really interesting, and somewhat unique for me dynamic - Fraser prioritizes the abstract concept of duty over everything else, to really destructive lengths at times, while Ray prioritizes Fraser over everything else, also to really destructive lengths at times, and this leads to an unbalanced but v interesting relationship. Especially because like, this isn’t just a result of the show prioritizing Fraser lol, the narrative is very aware of this dynamic and explores it in interesting ways.

Eve/Villanelle - Killing Eve

I was into it from the start, and completely sold when Eve stabbed Villanelle. They’ve got the interesting shifting power dynamics, the disparate morals edging towards meeting in the middle, the violence, the chemistry, even the cute little domestic moments here and there. tbh I am a little.. nervous about where this show is going with them, because I am concerned they’re playing the Villanelle as a psychopath who can’t ~genuinely love~ thing straight, which could not be less interesting to me, but still, so far I’ve gotten more than enough material to keep me happy and hopeful.

D/Leon - Pet Shop of Horrors

In general they’re just a ridiculously fun dynamic, like come on. You’ve got the odd couple thing, you’ve got Leon switching between criminally investigating D and basically coparenting his brother with him, they all go on vacation together at one point, they have like, a dragon kid together, and who doesn’t love the married couple bickering? Also the ending [vague spoilers] is exactly the kind of sad romance I love. They both realize they’re in love, and D chooses to run the fuck away because he doesn’t know how to love a human, while Leon chooses to run the fuck after him for the rest of his life if that’s what it takes. This is technically subtext, but only barely.

Troy/Abed - Community

They had me at the Somewhere Out There duet. I stopped caring about the show after season 3 and I’ve only seen a few episodes since, but man when Community was good it was great and Troy and Abed were the mvps and clear otp of the show. Tragic that Harmon couldn’t commit beyond gay jokes tbh, but at least we’ll always have the romantic zombie episode.

Starsky/Hutch - Starsky and Hutch

This is a bit of a weird choice because I was never super into the fandom, like I haven’t read much fic, and I watched the show back in like my first year of university but not really since because like, it’s a 70s cop show lol, there’s not a whole lot that’s worth watching about it. But man, Starsky and Hutch are the damn kings of the extremely emotionally intense homoerotic friendship. Their off the charts chemistry and constant hurt/comfort plots were next level, and fully engaging and super fun to watch despite everything else.

(Also the 4th season is terrible, but shockingly good and ridiculously coherent if you watch it with the understanding that in between season 3+4 they had sex or made out or something and Starsky freaked out and Hutch is alternately depressed and pissed off at Starsky for his avoidance. Like that reading legit ties everything together lol, from their suddenly strained relationship to random jokes(?) like Hutch encouraging Starsky to try free word association, giving him the word “closet” to start, and Starsky getting mad about it for no reason. And in the 4th to last episode (production order) they clearly finally get together for real, in the coda to Starsky vs Hutch. I mean come on they fight while dating the same woman and then make up off screen and the final scene is the two of them meeting her in a bar and telling her she gets both together or neither, then walking away with their arms around each other when she turns them down.

I may have just wanted to ramble about this lol.)

#Anonymous #ask #b #not berserk

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isagrimorie · 5 years

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[January Meme] - Discuss leading ladies in Sci-Fi TV

"Discuss leading ladies in sci-fi television shows. Compare, contrast, who do you lovel who do you not?" via @cleoselene

I’ll limit this to a few shows: Star Trek DS9, Farscape, Firefly, Fringe, Doctor Who, Star Trek Discovery, The Expanse, Legends of Tomorrow, Person of Interest, Killjoys, and Star Wars.

Breaking shows down further:

Space SciFi:

Star Trek, Star Wars, Killjoys, Farscape, Firefly, and the Expanse

Under Star Trek I’m going to focus on Deep Space Nine and Discovery and for me, I’ll pick Kira Nerys as the main leading lady, and for Discovery there’s Michael Burnham.

It’s interesting to look at both of them coming from different eras in-show and IRL. DS9 is the first time Star Trek tries something a little more complicated. (Not that Trek hasn’t done it with TNG but DS9 tackles things in a more in depth way, due to being a station with a set of recurring characters).

Kira Nerys was a rebel, a freedom fighter against the Cardassian Occupation and sometimes she also gets called a terrorist. It’s not something Kira shrugs off too, she knows what she did in the name of freedom. She’s very clear eyed on that. If DS9 were written immediately after post-9/11 this would never be allowed.

Michael Burnham is also a character of her time, where Kira embraced the morally ambigous side of her, Michael's comfort level with violence and the number of people who died because of her bad judgement sits heavy on her shoulders.

She’s not used to that, she’s a Starfleet Officer, and as a Starfleet Officer who grew up in Vulcan it’s not a prospect she grew-up with. Michael had a set path, which was derailed.

Kira and Michael have different-life experiences and upbringing. One isn’t necessarily better than the other, just different. Kira grew-up in fighting a guerilla war. Michael was traumatized at a young age and grew-up in a very emotionally locked down household. Michael struggles to find her feet between the two, maybe three worlds she straddles over. Michael chooses to be Starfleet.

Kira didn’t want to be Starfleet and only started softening on that stance later in the series.

ATM though since Kira has a finished story, and because she’s stayed with me the longest, Kira edges Michael out a little.

Star Wars This is another formative show but it’s only really recently that I’ve become really invested in Star Wars, with one caveat. I’m invested in the animated arm of the Star Wars Expanded Universe.

But! Princess Leia is the OG and she’s the template of most of the fantastic women in the ‘verse.

This top spot is shared together with Ahsoka Tano. Ahsoka was Anakin Skywalker’s apprentice and is instrumental for making me like Anakin in the way the Prequel movies failed to do. The other reason why I love Ahsoka so much is because of how she developed from a really snarky kid to one of the best characters in the Star Wars ‘verse. She has a rich history and an incredibly enigmatic future.

Space Opera

Farscape: This is such a fantastic, zany and colorful space show. It’s grand in scale and the acting is phenomenal. Everyone is fantastic here and then there’s the Radiant Aeryn Sun, a soldier who grows beyond what she knows and becomes such a vibrant character on her own.

Firefly: Space Cowboys, it’s only one season and as things go now I am glad we only have one season. This show had a lot of women but for me, the stand outs were Zoe Washburn and River Tam.

Killjoys seem to be a spiritual successor of both Firefly and Farscape. It’s another zany show with twists that surprise me, and really really interesting world building. It is also a space show where the lead is unquestionably a woman, Dutch. A former assassin slave Princess who forms complicated and complex bonds with people.

Hard Space Fi

‘The Expanse' has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to complicated and complex women. I haven't started season 3 but I know the season adds on with more fantastic women with their own stories and agendas.

Chrisjen Avasarala is one of the more fascinating people in the show, she is a seasoned diplomat and politician who always took an "Earth First" approach. This comes in conflict with several characters on the show who each have theth own agenda. There's Naomi Nagata a' Belter' who wanted nothing to do with fights and causes and slowly re-learn 8 to be one.

The Expanse is such a rich and vibrant story that I think everyone can stand shoulder to shoulder together in the number 1 spot.

The Douglas Adams Sci Fi

I mean, not really but I don’t know what else to categorize both Doctor Who and Legends of Tomorrow

Legends of Tomorrow

Zany doesn’t even cover this lovable show. It started out kind of a mess in season 1 and then slowly the writers threw the rule book out and what started out as a story with a standard squared jaw hero (Rip Hunter) and an unfortunate love story (Sorry Hawks) is now one of the most queer friendly and irreverent shows. The new lead of the show is Sarah, a former assassin and she leads a bunch of misfits accidentally breaking time to save time.

Sometimes they make the Doctor’s exploits... who am I kidding, they’re almost the same level of crazy.

Doctor Who

Speak of the devil, and the Devil walks in the form of a shape-changing ancient alien (at this point) eldritch and their Blue Box. To use the TV Tropes parlance: Doctor Who is the Trope Codifier. Doctor Who is space show, a time travel show, it can even be a procedural. Doctor Who is not stuck in one genre. It can be different things in every episode.

The force of Chaotic Good in their universe, and because of the Thirteenth Doctor, Doctor Who joins the list. Thirteen is a continuation of the Doctor we know but she is also someone new. Thirteen is a work-in-progress. It is interesting, in a list of ex-assassins and soldiers as protagonists, the Doctor has the highest body count of any heroic character I know.

SciFi Procedural

Fringe

Olivia Dunham started as a fantastic character with her own flaws and complexity and enormous badass-ness... until the moment the showrunners lost interest in her and started favoring Peter Bishop over Olivia. I still love her but it’s tempered by the knowledge of what happens to her character in the later seasons. Olivia deserved better. Astrid deserved better. Nina deserved better.

Peter Bishop took a lot of air and it annoyed me that the final shot of the show is about Peter.

Person of Interest

This show is so good. The final season might have dropped a ball a bit but man, I didn’t expect what seemed like a normal CBS procedural turning into a prescient, grounded cautionary Sci-Fi story.

It also is a show with a phenomenal set of characters and one of the best antagonist turned One of the Team characters in Root and then, later Sameen Shaw. If Fringe has superpowers and weird science Person of Interest is in a bit more grounded reality with one key difference-- Artificial Super Intelligence is real.

The show predicted the Snowden-NSA a year or two before it exploded, and it predicted that US elections could be tampered with.

So in this draft—- it’s really hard to choose, I love each of them for different reasons. Some stand a little bit over the others. This is a bit of a cop out, I know but I do love them all!

So, uh, DRAW!

#january meme 2019 #january meta meme #january talking meme #doctor who #tv: fringe #person of interest #farscape #firefly #star trek

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sebeth · 5 years

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Young Justice: Independence Day, Fireworks, and Stopover

Warning, Spoilers Ahead…

My goal is to re-watch the Young Justice series and re-read the comics before the January 4th launch of Young Justice: Outsiders. Let’s begin.

Episode 1: “Independence Day”

July 4th: We begin, appropriately enough, on the United States’ Independence Day. The title will have multiple meanings by the end of the first two episodes: the kids’ semi-independence from their mentors and Superboy’s freedom from the Cadmus Project.

Do cold villains hate the Fourth of July?

Dick is the only Robin who would have laughter as a trademark.

“Juniors doing this for attention?” – One of my favorite parts of this series is the depth of knowledge for the characters of the DC Universe – even the obscure ones. The current Icicle is a “junior” – his father was the original Icicle of the Golden Age era. As a huge fan of the B through D list characters, I have a huge appreciation for anyone who remembers the small details.

Kaldur was an interesting choice as he was a new but fairly obscure character when Young Justice debuted. Garth would have been the more logical choice as he was a founding member of the Titans along with Dick, Roy, and Wally.

I admit I wondered why the series was called Young Justice because all I was seeing were the founding members of the Titans at this point (minus Garth and Donna).

“You’ll chat it up with the cops, the bystanders, with Cold even.” – One sentence reveals so much of Barry’s personality.

“I knew we’d be the last ones here.” – Again, a Barry trait.

“Speedy is Green Arrow’s sidekick.” “Well, that makes no sense.” – Accurate.

“Why isn’t anyone just whelmed?” – Dick’s mangling of the English language begins.

“02” – The assigned numbers correspond with the members joining the team. The way to my heart is the small details.

Roy has a huge hissy even by his impatient, hot-headed nature. We discover the reason later in the series.

“We could make an exception.” – Really, the Justice League wouldn’t allow their proteges on the Watchtower? Why?

Zatara and Wotan! Yay, obscure characters for the win!

“Glad you didn’t bring you know who?” Foreshadowing!

The boys invade Cadmus in all its glory: Guardian, G-Nomes, Genomorphs, Dubbilex, and, of course, Superboy.

“Dr. Desmond” is a hint for his upcoming transformation. The “Blockbuster” label confirms it.

Wally is a science nerd. Makes sense with Barry as a mentor.

“File KR” – another hint.

“Sub-level 52”. – DC does love its 52.

Superboy! Looking more like the Teen Titans-era version than the early, scrawny, fresh out of the pod version.

Hack! – Tim is typically the Robin most associated with computers. To be fair, the Internet was pretty much non-existent when Dick and Jason were Robin.

Superboy, unsurprisingly, curb-stomps the team.

Episode 2: “Fireworks”

First appearance of the Light aka the Cadmus Board of Directors.

“Clone them.” – We later discover that one sidekick has already been cloned.

Dubbilex, the sneaky traitor, awakens the boys.

“Project: Sidekick” – Desmond is so imaginative when it comes to naming projects.

“He can talk.”

“Yes, he can.”

“Not like I said it.

Wally, listen to Dick and Kaldur and keep your mouth shut.

Kaldur is clearly the wisest of the original group.

“Batcave’s crowded enough.” – Well, it’s been said three is a crowd.

“What would Superman do?” – Everyone should apply this standard to their decisions.

“Don’t you give me orders either.” – I can see why it would be a sensitive issue – his whole life (all 16 weeks) has been controlled by others.

“You can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Still cool.” – Sweet Wally being supportive.

“Don’t apologize. This is perfect.” – That’s how you know Dick was raised by the Batman.

“I finally have room to move.” – Yeah, speed is more useful when you have to space to run.

“Grab something from Project Blockbuster.” – If you were familiar with the villain, you knew what was about to happen.

“The Genomorph hero.” – Unfortunately, this bit wasn’t followed up on.

“Everyone back.” – Protective Guardian for the win. Sadly, he’s outmatched by Blockbuster.

“Got your nose.” – Gross!

“You incredible bulk.” – Shout out to the competition.

Oh, look at protective Superboy and Aqualad covering their more delicate teammates.

The League arrives with Superman taking point.

Not loving Hawkgirl/woman’s costume.

Poor Kal breaks Superboy’s heart. Bad Kal! I understand Clark’s upset and confusion but don’t take it out on the newborn child.

“All 52 levels.” – Again, DC loves the 52.

“Why let them tell us what to do. It’s simple. Get on board or get out of the way.” – Superboy declares the true mission statement of Young Justice.

Red Tornado as team supervisor is a nod to the comic book version of Young Justice.

I did like the addition of Black Canary as team trainer. It’s a nice nod to Dinah’s combat skills which Gail Simone spent most of the 2000s building up.

“This is the Martian Manhunter’s niece.” – Another surprise choice as Miss Martian wasn’t very well known in the comics. Never will a character start out so cute and then devolve into creepiness.

M’gann’s obsession with Superboy begins immediately. We’ll discover why later in the season.

Young Justice #1: Stopover

The issue begins immediately after Superboy declares “Get on board or get out of the way.”

“Give me three days” Batman responds.

The group then realizes Superboy has nowhere to go in the meantime.

Kid Flash brings Superboy to Central City. Wally explains the situation to his parents. There is a cute moment when Mrs. West corrects Wally’s grammar: “Robin, Aqualad, and I…”

Superboy interjects with a “You weren’t there.”

Cadmus clearly didn’t instruct Superboy in conversation nuances.

Mrs. West informs Wally that he “leads a very strange life. But we’re use to it. Largely.”

Wally’s parents are way more understanding and supportive than they are in the main DC Universe.

Wally’s parents ask Superboy’s name. Wally responds “I call him Supey. I think he likes it.” Conner doesn’t look like he likes it.

We stop in on Kaldur and Arthur’s return journey to Atlantis.

Kaldur: “We meant no disrespect.”

Arthur: “I would not be much of a king if I did not allow my subjects freedom of expression. Especially when their words carry such wisdom.”

Somewhere, Garth is wondering why he never had this type of relationship with Arthur.

Conner wonders “Think Superman knows I’m here?”

Wally awkwardly reassures Conner that Superman knows he’s in Central City.

Wally awakens the next day to find Conner sleeping upright in his closet. Conner informs Wally that he is not “used to sleeping in a bed. Your closet reminded me of my Cadmus pod. Except for the funny smells.”

Poor Conner. A bed shouldn’t be a foreign concept.

The boys spend the day vegging in front of the tv. Conner is very bored. Each panel has Wally eating something different: a bag of chips, pizza, and a bucket of fried chicken.

Nice nod to Wally’s metabolism.

Late in the day a card arrives with a credit cart addressed to Wally “for expenses.”

Superboy wonders if it’s from Superman.

Wally vaguely confirms it’s from Superman with a “who else could it be from” even though he’s clearly aware it was sent by Batman.

Wally is so sweet – he keeps trying to reassure that, of course, Superman would care about Conner’s location and well-being.

Batman is also a very sweet Bat-Dad this issue. Bruce would deny it but he was consistently sweet and supportive to Conner in the first season. None of the other Leaguers thought Conner would need money to buy basic essentials like clothes. Or that the middle-class Wests would need financial support to care for Superboy. Wally’s appetite alone has to put a serious dent in their income.

If Wally hadn’t offered, I’m positive Bruce would have taken Conner back to the Batcave. If for no other reason than Alfred wouldn’t have been thrilled with the idea of an underage child being left alone. Batman would have also thought of the risks of leaving Conner on his own – Cadmus operatives could have tried to regain custody of a lone Superboy.

The boys head to the mall to shop for clothes. A nice easter egg is the name of the store the boys enter: “Forever Sixteen”. Conner was genetically locked in that age for some time in the comics.

Conner buys multiple copies of the same black shirt. Not someone who’s big on fashion.

We bop over to Gotham where Dick is impatiently wondering what Bruce is doing in the Batcave – it’s been almost two and a half days!

Alfred patiently reminds Dick that when one says three days, one means three days.

Poor Alfred has the patience of a saint. Imagine what the poor man endures on a daily basis: Bruce in all his glory; hyper, energetic Dick, Jason’s explosiveness, Damian’s demanding arrogance, and Stephanie’s boisterousness. Tim, Cassie, and Duke are the quieter children. They don’t cause Alfred as much fuss.

Back to the mall where Wally and Conner encounter Tommy and Tuppence, the Terror Twins – the same twins that Conner and M’gann impersonate at Belle Reve.

Flash and Superman arrive on the scene of the fight. Conner mutters a single “Superman” before Clark flees from the scene. To be fair, he was pursuing the Terror Twins but he couldn’t even offer a “hi” before he left?

Flash tells the boys to go home. Barry will pick the boys up in the morning because “Batman has made his decision”.

Honestly, Batman made his decision as soon as he told the kids “three days”. Bruce simply needed the three days to implement his plan.

Conner asks Wally if “Superman will be there tomorrow”. Wall responds “Uh, sure, you know…if there’s no emergency somewhere.”

Conner’s downcast face shows he doesn’t believe Wally’s statement.

Conner asks Wally “Why’d you invite me to stay with you?”

“Well, un, Aqualad lives underwater. And the Batcaves’s kind of a big secret. So I figured it’d be cool for us to hang.”

Conner smiles after Wally’s statement.

Wally is so sweet and supportive in this issue. It also shows that Wally is very trusting. He is inviting Superboy into his home with his civilian parents – and he knows how easily Conner curbstomped the entire team. But Wally knows Conner is one of the good guys and doesn’t even hesitate to bring him to Central City.

The issue ends with the final moments of the second episode.

#Young Justice #Superboy #Kid Flash #Robin #Aqualad

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thedoortoyesterday · 4 years

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From the silent era onwards, Hollywood has been a rich breeding ground for comedy. Solo clowns led by Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and W.C. Fields became giants in their field and their motion pictures are still entertaining worldwide audiences today.

Yet the comedic movie world wasn't dominated only by solo performers.

There were also remarkable double-acts and also formidable comedy teams

and here are four of my favorites…

LAUREL AND HARDY

To begin with, there was Laurel & Hardy.

Recently and lovingly portrayed in the 2019 feature film "Stan And Ollie", the universally popular Laurel and Hardy duo captivated cinema audiences for decades and re-runs of their films on television reignited their acclaim. The combination of British-born Arthur Stanley Jefferson

and Georgia-born Oliver Norvell Hardy made for the perfect pairing of two physically different gentlemen whose humor has transcended time and fashion. Their comical relationship and style was created in silent movies and effortlessly translated into sound pictures.

Here's a typical clip of Stan & Ollie's superb style of silent slapstick from one of their Hal Roach sound two-reelers "Busy Bodies" from 1933 where our two heroes were working at a sawmill.

https://youtu.be/_NUGRbozY04

In addition, here's a clip on YouTube from the film "County Hospital" (MGM: 1932)

in which Stan visits Ollie whose injured leg is suspended in traction.

The havoc that ensues involves the doctor played by Billy Gilbert.

https://youtu.be/-Oyt1fdU1k8

Laurel & Hardy's theme tune was DANCE OF THE CUCKOOS aka THE KU-KU SONG and it opened virtually all of their memorable films. It was composed by T. Marvin Hatley who also dubbed music for the boys when, in certain scenes in their films, they appeared to be playing instruments. These included Stan playing organ and Ollie playing double bass in the IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME sequence in "Below Zero" (1930), Stan playing the tuba in "Swiss Miss" (1938) and Stan playing trombone in "Saps At Sea" in 1940.

Here's a YouTube link to Laurel & Hardy's famous musical performance of the 1913 ballad

TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE

(Ballard MacDonald/Harry Carroll)

from the 1937 film "Way Out West"

https://youtu.be/MTrGk5-oGkU

Ollie & Stan sing the song accompanied by The Avalon Boys featuring off-camera bass singer

Chill Wills (dubbing for Stan). At the close of the song, Stan's 'high voice' was dubbed by Rosina Lawrence who played Mary Roberts in the film. Released as a single for the first time in the UK

in late '75. It reached #2 on the local charts!

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO

These two guys created the ultimate pairing of a straight man (Bud Abbott) and a bumbling but lovable clown, Lou Costello. Their first taste of real success was on the radio in the late 30's and then significantly when their were given their own show in 1940. Universal signed them up and

put them in a series of hit movies and in the 50's, they starred in a half-hour comedy series on TV.

Here's a YouTube link to a 1953 television performance by Bud & Lou of their famous

"Who's On First" baseball routine:

https://youtu.be/kTcRRaXV-fg

In 1941, Abbott & Costello recorded "Laugh, Laugh, Laugh" (Abbott/Costello/Grant/Mills),

a comedy disc featuring dialogue banter by Bud & Lou interspersed with a song performed by

'The Sportsmen' Quartet. It was issued in '42 in two parts on a Victor 78.

BURNS AND ALLEN

George Burns & Gracie Allen were a husband and wife comedy team of which George was the cigar-smoking straight man and Gracie was his scatterbrained partner whose illogical

reasoning was the basis of her dialog. They appeared together in a number of films

including the three Paramount “Big Broadcast” movies of 1932, '36 & '37, "College Humor"

in 1933 and with Fred Astaire and Joan Fontaine in "A Damsel In Distress" in '37 but their

major collaborative success was with their own radio series in the 30's & 40's and later

with their own television sitcom in the 50's.

Here's a clip from one of their TV shows which illustrates their comedic style:

https://youtu.be/yDCjhLOaNZI

(Incidentally, the 1920 composition THE LOVE NEST

(Otto Harbach/Louis A. Hirsch)

was used as the theme tune for their radio & TV series).

THE MARX BROTHERS

The magnificent team of Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo created mayhem and chaos, originally in vaudeville and most memorably in a series of motion pictures, primarily for Paramount and MGM. Zeppo appeared in the first five Marx Brothers movies and then retired from the team. (Zeppo's second wife Barbara later married Frank Sinatra).

One of my personal favorite Marx Brothers comedy routines is the Password sequence with Groucho & Chico from "Horse Feathers" (Paramount: 1932):

https://youtu.be/p0Gwe5gKgjo

Now, watch this priceless scene from "The Big Store" (MGM: 1941) in which Wacky (Harpo) needs to suddenly hide his cooking of an elaborate breakfast as Martha Phelps (Magaret Dumont) arrives at the office of so-called detective Wolf J. Flywheel (Groucho):

https://youtu.be/fTXot7cCe98

Music played a distinctive role in the Marx Brothers movies with both Chico and Harpo having their own tuneful segments. For example, in "A Night In Casablanca" (United Artists: 1946), Chico sat at the piano and played BEER BARREL POLKA and in "Love Happy" (United Artists: 1949), Harpo lived up to his name playing OLD FOLKS AT HOME(SWANEE RIVER).

Groucho was graced with a number of outstanding comical songs including LYDIA, THE TATTOOED LADY (Harold Arlen/E.Y. Harburg) which he sang onboard a train in "At The Circus" (MGM:1939). Most significant of all Groucho's other musical moments were the two Bert Kalmar & Harry Ruby compositions HELLO, I MUST BE GOING and HOORAY FOR CAPTAIN SPAULDING which were performed in a medley in "Animal Crackers" (Paramount: 1930) by Groucho along with Margaret Dumont, Zeppo Marx and the cast.

Here is the clip of both songs from the movie:

https://youtu.be/5BMtqqHRvB8

HOORAY FOR CAPTAIN SPAULDING went on to become Groucho's theme tune and, when he hosted the 1950's TV game show "You Bet Your Life", it opened every episode.

Bert Kalmar & Harry Ruby also wrote EV'RYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU for the the previously mentioned "Horse Feathers" (Paramount: 1932). I edited extracts from the soundtrack for a single release on MCA in the UK in 1982using Groucho & Chico’s versions for the A side.

Here's a link to all four performances of the song by (in order of appearance)

Zeppo, Harpo, Chico and Groucho:

https://youtu.be/N8hk9pUtVwA

Other comedy duos and teams from this side of the Atlantic included AMOS AND ANDY, THE KEYSTONE COPS, DEAN MARTIN & JERRY LEWIS, OLSEN AND JOHNSON, THE RITZ BROTHERS, ROWAN AND MARTIN, THE THREE STOOGES and WHEELER AND WOOLSEY.

GALLAGHER AND SHEAN

But let's close by harking back to the days of vaudeville and the comedy duo

GALLAGHER AND SHEAN…

Ed Gallagher and Al Shean wrote their own theme song called MISTER GALLAGHER AND MISTER SHEAN which they introduced in "Ziegfeld Follies Of 1922".

Here's their original Victor recording:

https://youtu.be/6bBvYO5FigI

The song became an instant hit in '22 and was successfully revived on a recording in 1938 by Bing Crosby duetting with Johnny Mercer. In addition, Al Shean (who in real life was the Marx Brothers' uncle) performed the song with Charles Winninger in the 1941 MGM musical "Ziegfeld Girl" and with Jack Kenney in the 1944 Republic film “Atlantic City”.

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daleisgreat · 4 years

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Batman: Dark Knight Rises

I picked up the BluRay for today’s film, 2012’s Batman: Dark Knight Rises (trailer), shortly after it hit video way back in 2012. I have neglected it to the backlog for so long because by the time I saw it in theaters I overdid it on the caped crusader’s films and needed a break. I say this because to get hyped for director Christopher Nolan’s final Batman film I watched the four Batman films from Burton & Shumacher in the weeks leading up to Dark Knight Rises and our local theater was doing a release day special to watch all three of the Christopher Nolan Batman films in a row which a friend and I did after I got done helping him move earlier in the day. It made for a long day, and while it was an unforgettable experience, it was still spending nearly half a day in the theater and I kind of associated the Nolan films with that memory for a period of time and so I needed a break from them for a bit. Nolan was riding high after the critical and commercial success of his previous two Batman films, so expectations were through the roof for Dark Knight Rises. This picks up in the aftermath of The Dark Knight’s ending where Batman indirectly killed a rogue Harvey Dent, but him and Commissioner Gordon decided to cover-up Dent’s darker half and celebrate Dent as a fallen hero that Gotham needed to absolve its crime dilemma. It is now eight years later and both Batman and Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) have disappeared from the public eye. The first act helps establish a new evil is on the rise going by Bane (Tom Hardy), who quickly accumulates power and establishes a base in Gotham’s sewers that prompts Wayne and Batman both to return to Gotham and meet his biggest foe yet.

Dark Knight Rises introduces a few other new players to Nolan’s films with the biggest standout being anti-hero master thief, Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman (Anne Hathaway). This was my first major exposure to her and she is flawless as Batman’s off-and-on ally. Officer Blake (Joseph-Gordon Levitt) is an up-and-comer for Gotham PD, and is one of the more proactive members of the force to react to the Bane threat and quickly gains trust from both Batman and Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman). Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) is trying to become a player in Gotham by establishing a future clean energy source. Upon this re-watch I was flabbergasted I completely forgot about Detective Foley (Matthew Modine) who is an incompetent cop who wants to bust Batman. It would be criminal if they were absent, but Nolan knew it would not be a Batman film from him without the returning affable Batman allies in tech-man Luscious Fox (Morgan Freeman) and his loyal butler Alfred (Michael Caine). I loved the first two acts of Dark Knight Rises. Nolan does a great job at establishing the new characters with Selina taking advantage of her stealth and cunning to keep me guessing which side she is really on and Bane gradually amassing resources and power to become a legitimate threat to Gotham. I loved how it plays off the consequences from the aftermath of The Dark Knight in a big way to set up the present-day Gotham. There is a fine balance of action and exposition sequences that constantly kept me glued in for the next big set-piece sequence. There is the nice gradual build in pacing in the first two hours when there is this sudden shift into overdrive I was never fully able to settle in with to the film’s detriment.

A nice side-effect from holding off nearly eight years to re-watch Dark Knight Rises is that I recall some negative press from critics on how Nolan’s trilogy wrapped up and I wanted to distance myself from it to go into this again with a fresh set of eyes. The chief criticism I recall was there being not a lot of fans for the voice used for Bane. The Elephant Man-esque voice has been the butt of many Internet jokes in the years since. I will admit, it does not sound all that menacing, but it grew on me throughout the film and that combined with Tom Hardy’s excellent use of body language resulted in it not coming off as a hindrance all these years later. A qualm I vaguely remembered is that even though Dark Knight Rises is two hours and forty-five minutes long, it flies by because it tries to crunch in about four hours’ worth of cinema into that timeframe. This is not knew from Nolan, and as a matter of fact he is usually pretty good at this type of filmmaking and making longer films breeze by with his brisk cinematography in mind-benders like Inception and The Prestige. However, I do not know whether if it was due to a poor script, clashes with corporate officials, budget or filming restraints, but something happened with the filmmaking here that results in many ‘straighten-your-tie’ moments. Minor-yet-pivotal points of the plot happened in a blink-of-an-eye, and there were several points where I found myself rewinding to pick up on some of these little details. This mostly breaks down in the final act where a lot happens in terms of events and time passing by. Bane pulls off a power grab at a football game in a big trailer-pleasing moment (featuring one completely unaware of his surroundings Heinz Ward) while Batman is banished to a mysterious pit. A lot of time goes by while Gotham succumbs to martial law, but the way it all plays out seems haphazard and confusing to keep up with. It felt like Nolan was told he had a half hour to forty-five minutes of cuts to make to keep the film under three hours and he chose the all-important final act to take the brunt of the cuts.

The last stretch of action also comes off clumsy and rushed. It requires a lot of suspension of disbelief where the seemingly unstoppable Bane established in the first three quarters of the film all of a sudden comes off as easy pickings for Batman and Catwoman. I get the whole ‘Batman does not kill’ edict from DC comics, but this once again leads to Nolan having to find another way for Batman to indirectly kill off a major villain for the third film in a row, but it comes off incredibly weak on-screen. Finally, there are convenient lines of dialogue thrown out for Batman somehow surviving a severe stabbing and escaping a six mile nuclear bomb blast radius…..sorry Bats, but I simply could not buy it. The BluRay has a bonus disc that has nearly three hour of bonus features on it. Far and away the marquee extra is The Batmobile. It is an hour long, in-depth look at the history of the Batmobile from its humble beginnings in the comics and early TV serials, until it started to really pop in the Adam West 60s TV show and evolved into the elaborate designs from the last several movies from Burton, Shumacher and Nolan. They interviewed designers of the cars from nearly all eras, have a great showcase of all the Batmobiles next to each other at a vintage drive-in and it wraps up with a touching tribute by bringing the Batmobile to a children’s hospital. Definitely do not skip past The Batmobile.

The rest of the extras are divided up into three areas: Ending the Knight, Gotham’s Reckoning and Reflections. Ending the Knight is comprised of about a dozen smaller features mostly highlighting an individual action sequence or set-piece moment and how the production team pulled it off. Gotham’s Reckoning is character profiles of Batman, Bane and Catwoman and is where we see the most interview time of Bale, Hardy and Hathaway. Reflections is only a couple quick features touching on the crews memories from making three films together and putting a bow on their trilogy. I am a sucker for these, and a lot of these are well made and do not come off as quasi-trailers like a lot of other shorter, thrown together behind-the-scenes pieces on other home video releases. From this two hour lot of extras I would say the half hour of character profiles and the Gameday feature detailing the football game bomb sequence stood out to me the most. A superb collection of extra features all around; I would have been bummed with the lack of a Nolan commentary, but he is featured prominently throughout these extra feature interviews so much that it more than makes up for it. I know it sounds like I bagged on a lot of the film, but it is mostly the last act of Batman: The Dark Knight Rises where things fall apart. Again, this is purely speculation on my part, but it mostly boils down to feeling like Nolan being told he had to cut a half hour out of the film and he decided to sacrifice a good chunk of the last act. The strong first two acts combine to make this a quality comic book movie and despite being a couple notches down from Nolan’s previous two Batman films, I would still rank it in the top third of comic book movies all things considered. Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street The Accountant Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron The Avengers: Infinity War Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: Civil War Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Countdown Creed Deck the Halls Detroit Rock City Die Hard Dredd The Eliminators The Equalizer Dirty Work Faster Fast and Furious I-VIII Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Guardians of the Galaxy Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 Hercules: Reborn Hitman Indiana Jones 1-4 Ink The Interrogation Interstellar Jobs Joy Ride 1-3 Major League Man of Steel Man on the Moon Man vs Snake Marine 3-6 Merry Friggin Christmas Metallica: Some Kind of Monster Mortal Kombat National Treasure National Treasure: Book of Secrets Pulp Fiction The Replacements Reservoir Dogs Rocky I-VII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Shoot em Up Slacker Skyscraper Small Town Santa Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Sully Take Me Home Tonight TMNT The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars Vision Quest The War Wild Wonder Woman The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Apocalypse X-Men: Days of Future Past

#random movie #batman #dark knight rises #dark knight #Christopher Nolan #Christian Bale #anne hathaway #Tom Hardy #Michael Caine #morgan freeman #gary oldman #Matthew Modine #marion cotillard #joseph-gordon levitt #batmobile #DC comics

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jennawynn · 7 years

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They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement by Wesley Lowery

Chapter 2: Cleveland: Coming Home

Antonio French. Another name I recall from Twitter. The St. Louis alderman.

I still just... there are no words. That a trained fucking police officer, sworn to protect and serve, just rolls up on a 12 year old kid and shoots him within 2 seconds. Two fucking seconds. That’s not long enough to think about shit. How much of that two seconds was spent pulling his gun from his holster? Releasing the safety? Chambering a round? Or was all that already ready to go and he was just looking for a target?

“A former supervisor, in a November 2012 note, made it clear he would not recommend that Loehmann, the son of a police officer, be given a badge and a gun, going on to say that the officer could not be trusted to follow simple instructions from commanding officers.”

“The talk” that most Black boys are given, keep your hands visible, say yes sir/yes ma’am, move slowly, NEVER RUN. It’s like we teach Black kids to treat cops like wild animals who might attack at any second instead of teaching cops to act with some fucking empathy.

Zimmerman man... so for those of you new to following me, you gotta realize how recently I’ve had my eyes opened. I was one of those “color blind” low-key racist people who never really cared enough to really think about other people’s struggles. Personal failings, moral deficiencies, lack of effort, etc. I was raised Republican. I had a Tea Party twitter account. I voted for Romney, that’s how recent this is. I also sided with Zimmerman. I didn’t bother looking too deep into things. I had my own life to think about. He must have Done Something to deserve being shot. It’s not GZ’s fault for following him or going all vigilante. Sometimes I just can’t believe how ignorant and callous I was when I thought I was just being ‘smart.’

Gingrich uses the term “lynch mob” to describe people after Zimmerman’s head as though they weren’t a tool used to kill Black men for centuries.

The origin of the phrase Black Lives Matter... a facebook status by Alicia Garza, extracted by Patrisse Cullors, and set up on Tumblr and Twitter by Opal Tometi. Who run the world? *queer Black women* all three of them. “As queer Black women, we are often misremembered as contributors and creators of our work, a consequence of deep-seated patriarchy, sexism, and homophobia.” -Cullors.

And these people... like the one who created the Sea of Blue rally... “Are there some things that need to be changed in law enforcement? Maybe. But it’s important that our officers know they have their community’s support.” ffs Mary Jo, it’s not *maybe*. Corruption in the police force is such a common thing practically every cop show on tv talks about it! There’s DEFINITELY things that need to be changed, and saying they need to be changed does not mean you hate every single cop and think they should be killed. You can critique the bad and still understand that they do perform a necessary service to a large society. We don’t need to be putting them on a pedestal where they aren’t held accountable for their actions. We don’t need to be worshiping them for doing their damn jobs.

Take this guy, Michael Brelo... “emptied two separate sixteen-bullet clips and reloaded a third time before leaping onto the hood of the vehicle and firing bullets through the windshield and into Russell’s and Williams’s bodies. Both victims, it turned out, were unarmed. They had never fired the alleged gunshot that prompted the chase. Their car had backfired.” What kind of wanna-be hero bullshit is that? For one thing, go fix your aim, buddy. For another, jumping on the hood of the car?? WHY? 137 bullets fired in all. Brelo was charged, but since they couldn’t prove the bullets that killed them were his, he was let off. What. The. Fuck.

Cleveland is 53% Black, their police force is 25%. And then they ruled that you don’t have to live in the city to be a cop there. Why would you not want your cops to come from the city they serve? The only reason to do that is to limit empathy- that’s what they did in the Navy when you got promoted to Chief. They’d move you to a different command so you could better “command” your subordinates without those pesky old friendships getting in the way. If you want empathetic cops who can show up at a scene and not immediately pull their guns, maybe being neighbors with them would help.

MLK Day 2015 turn this day of reflection into a day of disruption. I attended a rally in 2017 for reclaiming MLK here in Vegas. I hope he’d be proud to still be marching in name if not in body, even if angry that equality is still out of reach.

So many good lines in here.... Having a black president didn’t keep the police from killing Mike Brown. I voted for Barack Obama twice and still got teargassed. A seat at the table isn’t worth much if your fellow diners still refuse to pass you a plate.

The announcement that Tamir Rice’s killer would have no charges came between Thanksgiving and Christmas when the possibility of snow might quell protests... and that’s what happened.

Then the video with Tamir’s sister trying to run to her ‘hurt’ brother being tackled by the cops. Ugh.

Hey... Shaun King. I know that guy. Not like personally, but I follow him on FB and Twitter and newsletter and... wow they really went after him, didn’t they.

and Feminista Jones. Who doesn’t know her?

Sigh... this shit man...

#pbw #wynn reads #wynn reads they can't kill us all #raging about

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