Can't believe my current hyperfixation broke me out of my month long streak of being unable to write anything just to write a potentially long ass byler fic when I never write romance. I'm so fixated on the idea of will getting to have something good happen to him

The Walking Dead is Over

When I saw the first episode of the third season of Sherlock(BBC) I enjoyed it and had a really good time but as days went by I started to think, What did I saw? I came to tumblr to see if I was just being ridiculous but turned out, other people was confused too and I got to read opinions of people who really knew what was going on, I discovered the meaning of fan service and that stories have an aim, a purpose, they’re not just whims, at least the best stories, the ones that stay in the collective memory, have an aim.

                             The Allegory Of The Zombie

The painting above, which dates back to 1562, was painted by Pieter Brueghel, its name is “El Triunfo De La Muerte” (the triumph of death)  it’s in El Museo Del Prado in Spain, it shows that the idea of the zombie is not of modern times, this is the oldest reference I could find(if you know another, please tell me) Around the time TWD aired on TV, zombies were having a boom, I don’t want to sound weird but I think they’re like a signature of the times, the most important features of a zombie are that they’re not alive yet not dead and they eat living people and sadly there is people out there who have those features, in a metaphorical way: people who have a vice(have you ever seen someone walking while high on solvent?); who only lives for money; who only thinks of ways to take advantage of other people, which would represent eating them; people who live without loving others, in all this cases the rotting is inside, and then come the questions: what is living? are we really alive? what is a truly worthy life?.

                 The Aim

Horror and Gore have been around for a few decades already but they’re not for general audiences and they never will, simply because people can’t take graphic displays of gratuitous violence just because of reasons, TWD was above everything a DRAMA, it was the story of normal average people and their struggles with real life issues and moral dilemmas under extraordinary circumstances, it was about how this characters were going to go through extreme experiences that would lead them to understand the worth of life. That didn’t happen, nobody understood anything, nobody grew up, and not learning under those circumstances is i-m-p-o-s-i-b-l-e because the lessons were learned through trauma, and trauma leaves an indelible mark, there’s no happy ending for this one.

I don’t know what intentions AMC had but I can tell that the changes they made were not meant to be fan service, I really think that they weren’t trying to please anybody(not even richonners or carzequiels) but their own agenda, they focused on gore and horror,  they changed the characters profile to adapt the plots, they represented situations where they made valid the excessive violence, they added unnecessary romance, the slow rhythm  never changed, the dialogs were poor in many occasions, there was a lot of emotional manipulation in many chapters, just for the sake of shock value, and especially by making team family look like victims (victims are always morally right, neither responsible nor accountable and entitled to sympathy, under those parameters whatever they did no matter how bad, was justifiable, many felt allowed to condone that behaviour and somehow authorized to do it themselves) adding those unnecessary elements took the story to the wrong direction that leaded to the moral degradation first of the characters and then of the audience, because yes, people do follow bad examples.

                   What’s Left?

In order to not discard the whole show I would make the last episode of the show “Them” the tenth of the fifth season, when they’re about to arrive to Alexandria, at that moment of the story, everyone is still cool and badass and I think we could imagine a better outcome, Also I liked the relationship of Sasha and Abraham because they both managed to give full circle to their arcs, with a well developed interaction they helped each other to grow up, Abraham became a good man who gave the life for his friends and Sasha who unlike Rick, understood that the only life she could sacrifice was her own. 

                                                 The Future

The Walking Dead has no future, no matter what plans AMC has, they only care about the money, that’s why they disrespected the story, the characters and especially the actors, from being the story of zombies they turned it into another story of zombies,  the best stories have a heart and this story’s heart is gone, AMC couldn’t even give him a proper closure, now the show is a zombie that needs to be put to rest.

I think that there is many people who feel betrayed, because after all, we were emotionally invested and we had expectations that won’t be fulfilled, because let’s not fool ourselves, they’re not going to get better, I really didn’t like seeing Judith holding a gun, children should never carry guns, they are going to keep the wrongness. All this time, What did we saw?

General audiences are a peculiar beast, sometimes they know nothing, sometimes they know everything, and although they can’t say when something is wrong, they can feel it, they will spit this one out and they will step on it, because although I loved this story with all my heart I can tell now that is not worth it anymore and we will forget it. 

#Rick Grimes deserved better

Day 2: Deepening the Context and Bearing Witness

We’re continuing to settle into San Juan! Day 2 continued to deepen our understanding of the context in which we’re working, artistically, historically, culturally, and politically.

(A representative photo here, in which we’re all having fun in the sun while TA Quenna works tirelessly to make this trip run smoothly <3)

The day began at the studio, where (after a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday to Asha!) we broke off to work in our studio groups for the first time. Six of us are working in masks and puppetry with maskmaker, puppeteer, and performance artist Deborah Hunt, and the other eight (including myself) are focusing on physical theatre with choreographer, improviser, and dancer Alejandra Martorell. Alejandra began our session with a quote from Nietzsche: “There is more reason in your body, than in your best wisdom.”  While pointing out the irony in this phrasing (in using the word “reason” Nietzsche still operates within the logic he seeks to critique), Alejandra set the tone for our work in physical theatre: we will be working with our bodies, changing our awareness of our bodies, seeking and storing knowledge in our bodies… For a bunch of NYU students (even theatre people) who are used to sitting in a classroom and using only our brains, this is exactly the push we need!

Alejandra started by cluing us in to a quick anatomy fact: your spine actually ends closer to where your eyes are, not where we normally think of as the base of the neck. Way up there, your skull rests on the top vertebra of your spine, nestled in sort of like if you fit the knuckles of each of your hands together. The way that most of us carry ourselves belies our own anatomy: our necks are usually tense, perhaps hunched over our phones. And it turns out that is a hard habit to break! The number of times Alejandra instructed us to release our necks, or physically lifted and shifted our skulls into their proper position indicated just how challenging.

Thinking about this part of our body was part of an aspect of Alejandra’s practice called Alexander technique. Frederick Alexander was a theatre actor who realized that the way he was using his body as an actor was hurting him, not from one instance of injury but rather repeated patterns that contradicted the body’s normal functioning (imagine the late 19th century version of hunching over an iPhone). Even though it’s hard to break those conditioned habits, returning to the body’s natural anatomy and way of being actually lets us try less hard, strain ourselves less, and work more sustainably.  Throughout the studio, various simple physical exercises allowed us to gain an awareness of this part of our body, and it became clear what a difference it makes. In a game in which one person guides another around the space, the follower became noticeably more willing to yield to the leader. Even just lying down becomes more restful when your head is properly aligned. Don’t let the photo fool you: supported rest is hard work when you’re trying to do it right!

While those of us in physical theatre were changing our awareness of our bodies, our mates doing mask work were having a similarly impactful experience. During a brief midday check in, they shared experiences of working to get out of their minds and into their bodies, disengaging from themselves and letting the mask tell the story, and embracing being completely out of their element. For both groups, today’s work set the stage for the creative endeavors to come during our studio time. You’ll get a more detailed report from a friend in the mask and puppetry studio soon. For now, a taste of their work for your viewing pleasure.

To continue our context-building around the history of Puerto Rico, we visited el Museo de las Américas, housed in a series of rooms connected by a terrace encircling an enormous courtyard. As children kicked a ball around the courtyard, we explored the African Heritage and Conquest and Colonization exhibits, which emphasized that Puerto Rican society has evolved from the melding of the cultures of the indigenous Taíno, enslaved Africans forced to the island against their will, and the colonizing Spanish. Throughout nearly 400 years of slavery on the island, both the indigenous Taíno and Africans and their descendants resisted their unjust treatment, rebelling against the colonization of their lands and revolting against their enslavement from the start.

Our final activity today was a lecture by another of the incredible artists we’re blessed to call a teacher on this trip: Rosa Luisa Márquez, a prolific theatre artist and pedagogue. Rosa’s lecture (though I hesitate to call it that lest I evoke a tweed-elbowed professor dryly talking at an amphitheater of yawning students) beautifully connected the seemingly disparate work of the morning and the museum in the afternoon. Armed with a table full of masks and other props, Rosa weaved together the arrival of the Europeans on the island and the disastrous consequences for the indigenous people and the Africans eventually brought here and enslaved, with a broad overview of the spectrum of street theatre in Puerto Rico and throughout the Americas. Much of this street theatre is explicitly political, such as that of Marisa Barsy, among whose works include tattooing “colony” on her back, the Clown Police in San Juan, who both satirize the violence of the state and act as mediators between the people and the police who aren’t wearing red noses, and Tito Kayak, an engineer and activist who doesn’t consider himself an artist, but who stages dramatic public acts to protest illegal development in San Juan and Puerto Rico’s colonial status (I recommend a quick Google search to find video of his aerial and aquatic feats).

The work of these artist-activists is situated in a long history of theatricality in the streets in the Americas, one that Rosa emphasizes predates the arrival of the Europeans. History as we learn it, she says, is written history. Everything else is considered “prehistory,” and is denied. Similarly, theatre that doesn’t stem from the written word is devalued, considered minor, a craft rather than an art. Speaking profoundly to this dual social studies ed and ed theatre student, Rosa used the history of street theatre to challenge these colonialist notions. She reminded us of the wisdom that exists in the body and not the mind, gave voice to history of marginalized communities that are often denied it, returned political agency to activists and everyday people whose actions are often ignored in favor of individual government leaders, and labeled the street as a stage, positioning those who perform there as artists. 

After presenting the work of Marisa Barsy, Rosa shared that that was where she had intended for the lecture to end. But, as she put it, life is stronger than art. We were invited to place our shoes on the stage, at which point Rosa told us about an action/installation created by two Puerto Rican poets when it was revealed that 4,645 people were estimated to have died as a result of Hurricane Maria, a number that far exceeded what the government was willing to admit. What began as these poets’ spontaneous work of art grew into a cemetery, as more and more people contributed shoes, including those of the dead, family members of those who died spoke, and the community honored those they lost. Through the placement of the shoes, Rosa said, “the absent bodies were conjured.” This was Rosa’s final example of street theatre, in which the community bore witness to lives lost, to the ineptitude and intransigence of the government in the face of this loss, and to their own capacity for closure and healing. It was a powerful reminder of the context in which we are here as students, educators, and artists from the United States at this significant moment in Puerto Rico, in the wake of a tragedy that is a result of a history of colonialism and government neglect. In this context, Rosa told us our responsibility as visitors: to bear witness.