#it's about gender and power and the reversal of traditional gender roles <3 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

butterflydm · 8 months

Text

wot deeper dive 2x3: what might be

And here is my more in-depth look at the third episode, avoiding any book-related spoilers.

So the framing device for this episode is Nynaeve's testing for being Accepted -- we start when the testing starts and end when the testing finally ends for truth. This isn't the episode that takes place over the least amount of time, but it does take place over a short period of time -- Nynaeve goes in at night, the day passes while everyone (except Egwene) believes that she's dead, and then she exits the next night.

2. It cracks me up that Liandrin makes a point of mentioning that women could create ter'angreal before the Breaking. Because, yeah, Liandrin wouldn't admit in a thousand years that men might be able to do something useful (also: Liandrin hating 'men' but loving her son is actually a great example of the hypocritical nature of that kind of mindset in general; her son gets to exist outside the greater circle 'ugh men' because he is her son and special to her). I love us getting a bit of an explanation for ter'angreal, but Liandrin does crack me up. And the show does make a point of telling us that the Aes Sedai don't understand a lot about how the ter'angreal work, which sets us up for them being wrong that it's only possible for 'the way back' to come once.

3. Hmm, the White Tower waits for women to come to us (mentioned in the last episode) and we also put women out of the Tower if they can only make it through one part of the test and might need time before they face another part... I wonder why the Tower is getting emptier and emptier by the year. It's a mystery! But I do like all this exposition and it feels like it's well-placed, because Nynaeve genuinely needs the explanation. I wonder if Leane gets to be one of the people administering the test because she refused her first time, so having her there to honestly tell students that is meant to give them permission to decide they need a bit more time.

4. All of Nynaeve's tests made me cry and it definitely was starting early. Her scenes with her parents, and having to experience their deaths again was so painful! They did such a good job making her look younger/in the body of her younger self -- with her unbound hair and the style of her dress.

5. We have, here in the first test, Nynaeve bringing back crimsonthorn, which is reflecting another of Nynaeve's fears, which persists in all three tests -- her fear of being like Liandrin. "Red is dead" but a diluted version of crimsonthorn soothes pain rather than bringing death. But not all pain. It needs to be used for the right pain, we learned in the last episode. And the Red Ajah is essentially a hammer that is always looking for nails. The use of crimsonthorn in this episode feels like a mediation on moderation and picking the right tool for the job. Part of Nynaeve is sympathetic to the Red Ajah's causes in theory (being a watcher over abuses of the Power) but she is not a fan of their tactics in practice (she doesn't believe men who can channel are evil). But Nynaeve specifically having her father (a man) be the one who washes the crimsonthorn from her hands feels very pointed. "Red is dead" is something that Nynaeve is telling herself.

6. The Two Rivers continues to be a place of reversed gender roles to many traditional depictions -- Nynaeve's father is a nurturer and the one she's gotten her skill at herbalism from*, while her mother acts as the main protector of the family, using a bow against the attackers. The thread of allowing men to be caretakers is continuing strong in s2, with Rand working in the sanitarium and taking care of Errol and us seeing Nynaeve's father as the nurturing figure here.

(*though I will note that this is a key aspect of several male characters in one of the big OG western fantasy novels: LOTR, where Aragon is a nurturer/healer as well as a warrior, and we also have the hobbits, especially Sam.)

The fathers-and-daughters theme also continues strong. We have a lot of fathers and daughters so far in the series, and fathers wanting the world to be better for their daughters, specifically. Those themes are not exclusive to fathers and daughters, of course (Ila wanted a better world for her daughter) but we are getting a lot of focus on fathers and daughters and, specifically, on allowing men to be soft with their daughters and nurturing figures for them.

7. This is them continuing a story that Nynaeve originally told us in s1, so I wonder if we'll continue to learn more about it in the future -- will we ever find out who attacked the Two Rivers during this time and what their motives were? They don't look like they're wearing any kind of emblems, which makes me lean towards bandits of some kind.

8. Oof, but rewatching this made me cry again. Having to leave the people she loves behind (but they're already dead, my darling). Nynaeve trying to work out exactly how real everything was in that place. And getting 'idk?' in response from the Aes Sedai.

9. Both of the parental figures that she faces in the second test are parents of the children she believes that she's failed to protect (Rand is dead and Mat is 'who knows where') and now she can't even stay to give Tam the comfort of dying with a friendly face by his bedside. Again, heartbreaking! Again, we have the thread of the crimsonthorn, being used here to bring a peaceful death to those that can't be healed... except that Nynaeve knows that they could be healed, if only she knew how to do it. Her block makes her unable to help those she cares about. She failed Rand and now she's failed Tam too. "I may not be a Wisdom, but I'm the one who stayed," Natti says. And this also tugs on the thread that Nynaeve herself felt back in the first episode -- that Tar Valon has no interest in helping the Two Rivers or people from the Two Rivers (the story of the old Wisdom).

"This isn't your home anymore." Ouch.

10. Nynaeve copying the motions of the healing weave but not able to embrace the Power to actually use it: heartbreaking. And then lying to Tam about Rand, because she can't face the idea of telling his father that Rand is dead. And then she has to walk away from him, even as he's pleading for her to stay with him as he dies! Again, tears!

11. I love that the different jars that they use for the ritual -- one white, one black, one both -- I wonder if they remember why that would be the case or if they keep doing it because it's traditional.

12. I enjoyed the trick they played on us (it's implied that Nynaeve's third test is about her becoming Red Ajah and that leading to her killing Lan somehow) and the way she walks out on the White Tower. Our first hint that this isn't real is that there's no Elayne hovering around Egwene in Nynaeve's goodbye scene (Elayne is clearly bonding hard with Egwene and definitely would have wanted to go with her to talk to Nynaeve; she's already shown interest in meeting Nynaeve) because Nynaeve doesn't know about her! But I didn't twig to it until Lan showed up and then didn't tell her Rand was alive and instead was just like "oh yeah I can go with you to the Two Rivers". If Lan is disconnected enough from Moiraine to walk away from his duty and go with Nynaeve back to the Two Rivers, then he's disconnected enough to tell her that Rand is alive, even if he knows Moiraine might not want him to tell. But Lan can't tell her that Rand's alive! Fictional Lan doesn't know! He doesn't tell her any of the new info that Lan should be able to tell her now.

13. That being said, Nynaeve's AU version of her reunion with Lan is very sweet! And I was glad to get it even if it was very much not real.

14. The Sisters believing that Nynaeve is dead also was something that worked really well for me because it gives us so much interesting character information and motivation. This is what leads to Liandrin deciding to 'free' Mat and send him on his way with Min! It's what leads to her confrontation with Egwene! Also: Leane's disdainful look at Liandrin as she turns and walks out. Judging Liandrin hard for pushing for Nynaeve to go through the arches so quickly. And then Sheriam expressing her disappointment verbally. "I hope your conscience never lets you find peace with that. I know mine won't." And Liandrin looks close to tears here, as well (and then expresses her pain through anger, once again, by throwing the jug).

15. Ooof, Seanchan time. This is so hard to watch. The show did such a good job making them feel alien and different to the rest of the people of the show. Even Loial has never heard of them! And the helmets make them look like they are grinning (way too widely) all the time. Just seeing how clearly formalized and ritualized everything is.

That spike at the bottom of Suroth's palanquin. Yikes on bikes.

16. I am going to note that the two women who channeled the previous night are NOT the one who points out the other women who then get dragged away (unless my eyes deceive me). They specifically have a third woman who comes out and does that, which implies specializations to me.

17. The music cue for the Seanchan is so effectively creepy. And now it is time for our Cheerful Customer Service Representative to share the Good News that it is time to Update Your Oaths. That she says everything in such a pleasant way really makes the horror of everything that's happening stand out. The Shadow, before now, has operated under darkness, but this horror is happening in the broad daylight and with the attitude of complete certainty in their own rightness, despite the clear brutality on display. It works similarly to how the horror in Midsommar works, for anyone else who may have seen that movie. Brutality in broad daylight, committed by people who are convinced that they have the One Truth and that it's an honor to kill to uphold that truth.

18. It does seem pretty clear that Uno was picked out because he was noticed by one of the soldiers as behaving defiantly -- having a clear example of what happens to someone who refuses to take the oaths is probably seen as extremely useful in getting everyone else to agree. But, yeah, another scene that is difficult to watch, for sure! Suroth's smile after Uno is killed is so effectively creepy and awful.

And now Perrin & co have officially taken the oaths. I do not expect Perrin to feel at all obliged to keep his oaths but it may be useful for him that he's aware of the wording, so he can perhaps do some sneaky scouting in the future.

19. The Man's eyes are on Perrin pretty much the entire time. But, yeah, #PerrinWillNotForgetThis

20. Love Rand's scene with Logain here. Rand is trying to build up some trust with Logain before he broaches the subject of channeling but Logain already knows the score and wants them to skip to the ending, lol. Logain is aware that Rand can channel and channel strongly, so he doesn't want to waste any time on pleasantries. I also love Logain yanking Rand around and giving him a sidequest, lol.

21. We get a reminder here of how much Rand doesn't know: pretty much everyone else has more knowledge than he does right now. He doesn't know that the Dark One wasn't defeated at the Eye; he doesn't know even of the Horn of Valere's existence, let alone that Perrin is on the hunt for it (even Mat knows about that, due to Perrin's letters).

22. So Rand finds out about the queen's promise here ("half her fortune" to the one who finds the Horn and brings it to Cairhien) and then learns in the party scene coming up next that this was a dirty lie being used to get people to leave Foregate and go off somewhere, anywhere else. His time in Cairhien is Rand's first experience of class differences and the nobles are not coming off well to him at all.

23. It's pretty clear here that Rand is keeping all his 'searching out knowledge about channeling' activities a secret from Selene, which makes a lot of sense. He probably assumes that the second she finds out, she won't want to come near him. She does seem pretty happy about the idea of getting to dress Rand up in some fancier clothes.

24. Haha, I love that Elayne has no ill effects from their night of drinking together. Another little hint about her past. Her banter with Egwene is pretty adorable (before the angst comes in for Egwene when she finds out that the Sisters all believe that Nynaeve is dead).

re: fake deaths -- they really only annoy me if they're primarily for the audience. I don't mind if they're being used to push story/character forward. Here, we're shown Egwene's refusal to believe that Nynaeve could be dead vs Elayne's greater knowledge of how ter'angreal are believed to work and Tower knowledge and tradition.

25. I love that Egwene snaps at Elayne to leave here -- it's such a pure emotional reaction due to her intense grief. She's already believed Nynaeve to be lost once; she believes that Rand is gone; and now she's losing Nynaeve 'again'. It's too much and she doesn't know Elayne well enough to let her in emotionally right now.

Also, "Ny"! That's so cute.

26. Sheriam sucks at grief counseling. Egwene's friend is dead and all Sheriam can tell her is "don't burden me with your grief; grow as a person from this".

So... I wonder if Sheriam sent Nynaeve's things off to the Two Rivers this day, and all Nynaeve's stuff is already on its way by the time she comes back.

27. In addition to everything else about this scene with Liandrin and Mat, it tells us that she's able to sneak in without waking him up. I doubt that it's the first time she's done it. Also, I note that Liandrin does not tell him that Nynaeve is the one who died.

Of course, we know from the ending conversation with Min that this is not actually Liandrin 'letting him go' but her setting him up to leave with a spy in tow.

She is really really good at cutting into people with her words. Mat escaped one abusive older woman (his mom) and ended up trapped with a second one. This really was such a worst case scenario for him, in terms of grinding his feelings of failure and not being good enough into him.

28. Liandrin tries to pull her same tricks with Egwene that she did with Mat, trying to cut into her insecurities and made her feel lesser. But Egwene has not spent the past five months being forced to listen to Liandrin stomp on her as a person over and over, so when Liandrin pushes her, she pushes back.

29. Party scene! Selene has gotten Rand a coat and slipped the two of them into a fancy noble party -- she's out there trying to set up connections for Rand but he is focused on the mission. He gets a warning from another lady at the party that whether he replies yes or no to the invitation that he just received, it will be a subject of gossip, so he burns the letter (only to learn that this, too, is going to cause tons of gossip). The lady Anvaere then lets Rand know that she's figured out that he's likely staying in the Foregate and implies that she may or may not believe that he's an outlander lord. She lets him peek behind the curtain of nobility by telling him the truth about the Hunt for the Horn - that the queen doesn't care about it at all, just about getting some of the peasants to leave. We now get some of the history of the Aiel War from the nobles' side (after hearing a bit from the soldiers' side in the last episode) -- after the war, the farmers who had been devastated by the invasion sought shelter and protection nearer to the city and this has been an inconvenience for the nobles.

30. At this point, Selene returns with Rand's quest item but is disappointed when he immediately wants to leave the party without explaining why he wanted the wine and is offended when he asks her why she's helping him, after she shows herself to already understands that the Hunt for the Horn is just a political cover to push out the poorer residents of the city. In terms of costume design, they've really made it so that Rand is the only one standing out -- even Selene is dressed in the paler pastels that we see the rest of the nobles wearing. Rand is the only one I see in bold colors.

31. Rand returning so quickly with his Quest Item for Logain reveals his desperation to Logain. This conversation is... so incredibly queer-coded (which, tbh, male channelers in the books often came across that way too!). Rand has been suppressing something deep inside himself for so long but it just won't go away. It's an innate part of him and the more he tries to tamp it down, the more it builds up and demands to be seen. The metaphor of the overflowing wine glass was also fantastic.

"the answer to the question you already knew" (you can't make this part of yourself go away; "eventually, it will spill out of you. always.")

And Selene, at the party, "don't ask questions when you already know the answer"

We saw last season that Rand was really really good at ignoring things that he doesn't want to admit about himself -- he carries the secret about Tam's conversation with him all season! He manages to convince himself that Mat is probably the Dragon, until Moiraine reveals that it's the dagger that is influencing Mat. Part of him knew the true answer for a long time, but he wasn't willing to admit it to himself.

But it's not the answer that Rand wants to hear. And Logain losing it here gives Rand a convenient reason to dismiss everything else that he said.

32. So heartbreaking for Mat to watch Egwene crying and not feeling like he can go to her! I understand why -- Liandrin did a very good job of letting him know, over and over (a dozen letters!), that his friends do not care about him and would not want to see him again. So I understand. But it's painful to watch him turn and walk away from her. He almost does go to her! He hesitates! But he can't quite do it (which is only going to make him feel even more like a coward).

33. Min was just sitting and waiting for Mat to ask her to join him, wasn't she? I wonder if she was starting to worry that he would leave without her. She must be relieved that he came back for her.

34. Perrin's escape from Seanchan captivity (I notice that he's chained up, maybe because he was the last one to kneel?), but not before he gets a visit from our neighborhood Known Bad Guy. This scene is also very good and very intense, though I want to shake Perrin slightly and remind him that if the Bad Guy tells you something, he's probably trying to trick you! If he says that the wolf brings you closer to him, it's probably a lie! Do not trust this man! I am glad that Our Guy continues to bring intense homoeroticism to every scene he shares with one of our male ta'veren (let me cup your face and feed you water! let me stare intently into your eyes and talk about how you're mine!). Now we just need Mat to complete the set!

35. "You're dead! Rand killed you!" and now Perrin is the first of our ta'veren to find out that the world did not get saved back in 1x8. Doesn't have much opportunity to tell the others, sadly. He doesn't find out that Rand is alive, though.

36. Very emotional about Elyas and the wolves coming to save Perrin. That's their boy! They love him! Please don't be afraid of them, Perrin!

37. Mat and Min continue to have great banter. "Freedom is in the air tonight". And now we get our reveal that Min is working with Liandrin. I like that this feels like a consequence of Moiraine's actions from last season. Because being free of Moiraine, specifically, is part of the carrot that Liandrin is using with Min here. "If you succeed, Moiraine won't have anything over either of us ever again."

Okay, and Liandrin is asking Min to take Mat someplace specific because she checks, "You know the way?" and Min confirms it. So Liandrin does have a destination in mind. Min also does seem subdued in this scene with Liandrin, so I don't think she's eager to take Mat wherever they're going.

38. Rand has a dream about returning back to his room where Selene is waiting, and the two of them have sex (with him back in his fancy coat), and him channeling around her while she tells him that she's not afraid of him (but he looks pretty uncomfortable/scared/worried once the channeling begins). When he wakes up, he realizes that he's set the roof of the inn on fire, and Selene is at his door, and the two of them rush to safety and watch it burn. Oof, that had to be tough for Rand. Poor guy. *hugs*

39. Egwene trying to channel the arches back open again. Sweetheart! I love her so much for trying, and I love Elayne for coming to try to help her through her grief.

40. And now we jump back into Nynaeve's dream life -- she's back in the Two Rivers. She has a daughter with Lan, who is relaxed and comfortable. Perrin is back home, happy, and Mat has found a life elsewhere but is happy as well and visits when he can. Egwene has successfully become Aes Sedai. It's as happy as she can possibly make it, given the constraints that she started with (Rand being dead, especially, but also knowing that Egwene would want to stay and become Aes Sedai).

But they told us at the beginning that this was about Nynaeve facing her fears, and Egwene's letter brings the first hints of trouble as we hear of Trolloc attacks in Saldaea. And her dream world shatters apart as Trollocs attack the Two Rivers once again, just as her life shattered apart when they attacked the first time. I love the bookend of how she tries to protect her daughter the same way that she was once protected by her parents. This whole sequences really hit me hard, especially when she's still cradling her (no longer existing) daughter as she comes back through the arches. I'm really glad that Egwene was there for her when she arrived (and what an introduction for Elayne!) Again, it was so heartbreaking. The little girl wasn't real, but Nynaeve loved her like she was real.

41. I didn't notice on the night this first aired (probably because so much was happening in all three episodes) but this episode does not have Moiraine or Actual Lan in it at all. So they're still on the thread that we left them on in episode two, where Moiraine has left without Lan (and threatened him with having Alanna forcibly bond him to make sure he would let her go). So the question we have for episode four is: do we get a Lan x Nynaeve actual reunion at the White Tower or is Lan going to go after Moiraine as soon as Alanna's back is turned? We know that he stole the poem that she bought from Doman. I am intrigued to learn the answers in ep4.

#butterfly watches wot #wot #wheel of time #wot on prime #wot show spoilers #wot prime spoilers #wot s2 spoilers #wheel of time s2 spoilers #wot 2x3 spoilers #the wheel of time

42 notes · View notes

dystopiandramaqueen · 2 years

Note

Am I naive or does this mean that Nick's about to become a more central character?

Not naïve at all.

I've found that when something has to be advertised- promoted- publicized, it's usually useless.

If something is central or important? Doesn't need ads.

Think of they way they advertise whitening toothpaste but not water.

So when I see they way they "promote" and "advertise" Nick's character- I roll my eyes.

OH MAN WHERE IS HIS ALLEGIANCE? OH MAN IS HE BAD OR GOOD? IS HE BAD? WHO KNOWS! MAN HE'S MYSTERIOUS HE HAS A DARK PAST! etc. Its like an advertisement. Creating a false narrative to set up a twist ending.

Because your surface level viewer will go- uhhhh the ad said hes DUPLICITOUS and CANT BE TRUSTED he must be BAD.

Then those same surface level viewers will be super surprised when he turns out to be good.

Spoilers below.

In the Testaments:

-Atwood wrote that Nick was "so deep underground he needed a tube to breathe." That means: he's undercover. He LOOKS like a bad guy. He infiltrates the power structure. No one knows he's a spy. So YES DUH the undercover dude looks like he's really involved.

-Atwood also wrote that Nick survives to meet his grandchildren and be reunited with June. ---> doesnt die, ---> June still loves him ---> daughter loves him. Doesn't sound like a toxic father to me. If he was an evil soldier of Gilead- would June and Holly have invited him? No. He's good. It's super simple. The more I see them spend time and money trying to create a false narrative, the more I know our gut instinct is correct.

Watch the movie from the 80s. Nick is super smoldery and cute. He gets June out and says hes Mayday. Like- fucking spoiler alert assholes read the cannon scripture. He's a good guy. Posing as a bad guy. To help people. It's an incredible character.

--------------

I love that order of cast listing. Please give Nick the screentime he deserves.

I do think they made a conscious decision to not have him "save" June in the traditional hero sense- like- June has to save herself, and they're prob gonna do a gender role reversal and have her save HIM in S5. I think they purpousefully under-wrote and under-depicted him early on- to give June's character space to be her own person independent of him. Which is prob a good idea in the long run.

Anyway.

Yes Nick is central. Always has been. He gave June a reason to live. He changed the course of her life. He made a baby with her, smuggled her to physical safety TWICE. And delivered her rapist to her feet.

Find you a man like that.

Thanks for the ask <3

#asks

47 notes · View notes

hekatepoetryxxwriting · 3 years

Text

How is the transgression of boundaries explored in ‘The Bloody Chambers & Other Stories’ by Angela Carter and ‘Carmilla’ by J. Sheridan Le Fanu?

In ‘Carmilla’ by J. Sheridan Le Fanu and ‘The Bloody Chambers & Other Stories’ by Angela Carter, the idea of female oppression being thwarted by the women’s self-awareness of their sexuality and their ability to use it as a form of power is explored through various boundary transgressions in both novels. ‘Carmilla’ be Le Fanu was influenced by real life Countess Elizabeth Bathory and was the predecessor to Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’. ‘Carmilla’ is also referenced in Angela Carter’s short story ‘The Bloody Chambers’ (it is the name given to one of the Marquis’ previous wives), thus linking the two novels together.

In another one of Carter’s stories, ‘The Company of Wolves’, there is a transgression of gender roles regarding the girl in the story. In the Gothic genre, women usually fall into three types: The Trembling Victim, The Femme Fatale, and The Crone. However, the child in this story is none of these, and displays strength that defies the stereotypes in her confrontation with the werewolf as seen when she ‘burst out laughing; she knew she was nobody’s meat’[1], which is itself is sexual symbolism that makes the ‘meat’ a metaphor for the sexual objectification of women’s bodies, which she rejects by laughing. Her laughter is also a mockery of the patriarchal expectation of submissiveness that men believe all women possess. It suggests that the girl is aware of the power her sexuality carries, much like a femme fatale. The same could also be said for ‘Carmilla’, where Laura’s father ‘won’t consent to you leaving us’[2]even though he has no familial ties to Carmilla. In both stories, the fathers seem to be in a superior position within the family, and evidence of this can be found not only in that quote from ‘Carmilla’, but also from the line ‘Her father might forbid her’[3]in ‘The Company of Wolves’. The verb ‘forbid’suggests that he hold powers over his daughter and is able to control her actions. This is a reflection of the patriarchal family systems which were in place up until the late 1970s, when men were considered the breadwinners. Angela Carter, a feminist, was part of the movement that broke down those family systems; Carroll Davids referred to this in her review of Angela Carter; “Angela Carter’s portrayal of husbands and fathers not only reflects the ideals of her time, but also contradicts them on occasion with the femininity of the men.”[4]

There is also a transgression of gender through the empowerment of female characters in ‘Carmilla’ and ‘The Werewolf’. In both of these texts, the female character succeeds through her own means, rather than relying on a man to support her. In ‘Carmilla’, it is through death that Carmilla is able to gain power. This idea is strengthened through Laura’s speech to Carmilla in Chapter 4, where she asserts that ‘Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes’[5]. The use of this metaphor suggests that girls are only free of the constraints that surround women when they have died, a suggestion that is supported by Colleen Damman’s analysis of the novel “as a woman, Carmilla can only claim her sexuality after death. Thus, vampirism is the only way she can express her own carnal desires. Besides marriage, becoming a vampire is one of the only ways that female sexuality is licensed in the Victorian era”[6]. Meanwhile, in ‘The Werewolf’, the child represents the New Woman and is pitted against her grandmother, who represents the generation of women who have fallen under the thumb of a patriarchal society. The final line states ‘Now the child lived in her grandmother’s house; she prospered.’[7]which implies that the child benefits from the downfall of the previous generation and is able to live happily without a husband or children. This conclusion suggests that women can live complete and fulfilled lives without needing to be married. Angela Carter’s feminist views on empowerment were controversial during her lifetime, including negative reviews for her book ‘The Sadeian Woman’ due to its defence of the Marquis de Sade, who wrote violent erotic novels that many consider sexist and inspired the word ‘sadism’. In regards to the empowerment in ‘Carmilla’, Elizabeth Signorotti states that “Le Fanu allows Laura and Carmilla to usurp male authority and to bestow themselves on whom they please, completely excluding male participation in the exchange of women”[8].

The inclusion of the female ‘Monster’ in ‘The Lady of the House of Love’ and ‘Carmilla’ also transgresses the boundaries placed around gender and the roles women play in society. The Countess is a vampire, much like Carmilla, and bears similarities to Elizabeth Bathory, the acclaimed ‘Blood Countess' who was rumoured to be a relation of Vlad the Impaler. The Countess in Carter’s tale embodies the idea of a Gothic Femme Fatale through the description ‘Everything about this beautiful and ghastly lady is as it should be, queen of night, queen of terror’[9]- the repetition of ‘queen’ places emphasis upon her position within the story. She is the highest authority within the text, being the queen, and is not subject to male dominance. In ‘Carmilla’, the monster is humanised at its death by Laura ‘a sharp stake was driven through the heart of the vampire, who uttered a piercing shriek at the moment, in all respects such as might escape from a living person in the last agony.’[10]and a simile is used to liken the monster’s pain to that of a human’s, implying that Carmilla is not actually that different from human beings. It seems that Le Fanu, like Carter, is suggesting that women who are free from male dominated societies are not monsters but are in fact just as human as everyone else. Le Fanu’s decision to focus on a female vampire may have been influenced by the legends he would have known growing up, namely the stories of the Leanan Sidhe and the Dearg-Due. These myths revolved around female vampiric creatures that preyed upon Irish youths and left a lasting effect on the victims even after the creature’s death (Laura never fully recovers from the effect of Carmilla, and often imagines she will return.). A connection between Le Fanu and the myths of the Leanan Sidhe and the Dearg-Due can be made as his mother read Irish folk tales to him when he was a child.

The continued transgression of gender moves onto the reversal of gender roles in ‘The Erl King’ and ‘Carmilla’. In ‘The Erl King’, the titular character defies the stereotypical role of men in literature as it states that ‘He is an excellent housewife.’ -[11]Carter ironically using the feminine spousal term for him. Aside from this, he has long hair he frequently combs and he takes part in activities that were frequently considered feminine, such as cooking, basket weaving and collecting flowers. Carter may have taken elements from the traditional Pagan god ‘The Green Man’ and his myth; he completed a loop in which he would conceive a child with ‘The Goddess’, die, and then be reborn as the child he created. Certainly, the Erl King is similar in appearance, as well as the narrator of the story stating ‘I would lodge inside your body and you would bear me’[12]. This is a metaphorical reference to birth, something only females are capable of, which juxtaposes the idea of the Erl King birthing the narrator. ‘Carmilla’ does the opposite, as Le Fanu gives Carmilla masculine qualities, the most obvious being her inhuman strength ‘and unscathed, caught him in her tiny grasp by the wrist.’[13]The use of the adjective ‘tiny’juxtaposes the power Carmilla is able to demonstrate. Moreover, a less obvious trait of masculinity is Carmilla’s lesbianism which was , in Le Fanu’s time, sinful in Ireland, and sexual desire for women would have only been acceptable from men. The inclusion of homoerotic features in ‘Carmilla’ points towards Le Fanu’s possibly relaxed view of homosexuality, as pointed out by Christy Byks, who states “Le Fanu, one of the godfathers of Gothic, appears to draw upon features that women would not have been given during his era, and his writing of Carmilla and her inability to fit in with most female Gothic characters would likely have been a topic of controversy within Ireland, a country ruled by religion.”[14]. This idea is supported by the introduction of Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’, which takes many ideas from ‘Carmilla’. Many literary theorists suggest that Bram Stoker wrote ‘Dracula’ as an answer to the female centric ‘Carmilla’, choosing to re-focus the story upon men, with women being forced back into smaller, weaker roles.

Further transgressions of boundaries, including the transgression of religious boundaries, can be viewed in ‘The Company of Wolves’. This story mocks religion through an intrusive narrator who informs you ‘you can hurl your Bible at him and your apron after, granny… and all the angels in heaven to protect you but it won’t do you any good.’[15]This is the intruding narrator mocking the two key aspects that Carter believed held women back, that being the ‘Bible’and the ‘apron’, which is a not just a symbol of stereotypical femininity; a feminist literary study showed that almost every female character in a fairy-tale wears an apron, referencing their roles as the housewife. seems to be Carter herself, who openly stated that she thinks “Mother Goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths of these cults gives women emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place.”[16]Rather similarly, in ‘Carmilla’, Le Fanu presents Carmilla’s aversion to religion, and portrays a fight between Carmilla and Laura’s father, which could represent an argument about nature versus God. Carmilla speaks against Christianity ‘”Creator! _Nature! _” said the young lady in answer to my gentle father. “And this disease that invades the country… and under the earth, act and live as Nature ordains? I think so”’[17]. The caesura used between the words ‘creator’and ‘nature’ not only symbolises her anger, but in placing a caesura here, Le Fanu separates God from Nature, and therefore denies religion the claim of creating everything. This scene contrasts with Le Fanu’s own background, whose father brought up the entire household with strong Catholic beliefs.

This questioning of religion perhaps suggests why there is also a transgression of moral boundaries in both texts. The ‘Trembling Victims’ within ‘Carmilla’ and ‘The Lady of the House of Love’ are Laura and the Soldier. Both texts include a similar juxtaposition of feelings towards the ‘monster’. In ‘Carmilla’, Laura portrays the Gothic feature of ‘The Uncanny, in people’s reaction to her; “but there was also something of repulsion. In this ambiguous feeling, however, the sense of attraction immensely prevailed.’[18]This shows that Laura subconsciously knows that something is wrong with Carmilla, because like most Victorians of the time, she reflects the belief that the appearance of a person was an indicator of their moral standing. Carter’s ‘The Lady of the House of Love’ has a similar scene in which ‘Her huge dark eyes almost broke his heart with their waiflike, lost look; yet he was disturbed, almost repelled, by her extraordinarily fleshy mouth’[19]The descriptive imagery and modified noun phrases work to emphasise the Countess’ appearance and how the soldier is affected by this, and it also represents the notion of the ‘Male Gaze’, the theory presented by Laura Mulvey, that women are either sexual objects there to satisfy men, or the housewife. The two notions are represented in the Gothic genre as the Femme Fatale and the Trembling Victim, and the Countess in ‘The Lady of the House of Love’ has facial features that are stereotypical of both women. Her ‘huge dark eyes’ and ‘waiflike, lost look’ are used often in the description of innocence, whilst her ‘extraordinarily fleshy mouth’ is a sign of sexualisation. Freud’s theory of ‘The Madonna and the Whore’ also comes into play here, as the Countess and Carmilla both bear qualities (both physically and metaphorically) of innocence and sexuality. The presentation of the soldier as a Trembling Victim links with Angela Carter’s view that not only should women become more masculine, but that men should also embrace femininity.

Laura in ‘Carmilla’ transgresses the sexual boundaries placed around her by choosing to refuse medical treatment from her father and the doctor. In doing so, she rejects the idea of curing her illness, which is a metaphor for lesbianism, and becomes free to make her own decisions in regards to her body. She takes on the dominant role in saying ‘I would not admit that I was ill, I would not consent to tell my papa, or to have the doctor sent for’[20]by making her own decisions regarding her wellbeing. The first-person pronoun ‘I’ is used so that the readers understand that Laura is the sole maker of these decisions. Through this illness, she has been able to gain freedom from her father. According to Christy Byks, Laura’s illness is a visualisation of what Victorian’s believed homosexuality was: a disease that needed to be cured. Byks says “Two ideas are at work in this passage. First is Laura’s father’s attempt to control the women who are becoming “ill” and dying; the men want to “cure” her (Laura) by making her well and keeping her among the living, for it is in death that the women break free… By making these interactions with Carmilla a medical problem, the situation can be contained and defined, thus still under the control of men”[21]. Angela Carter also provides transgressions of sexuality when placing women in the dominant position. In ‘The Company of Wolves’, it is the girl who makes the first move towards sexual intercourse, as suggested by the removal of her clothes in the extract ‘The thin muslin went flaring up the chimney like a magic bird and now came off her skirt, her woollen stockings, her shoes, and on to the fire they went, too, and were gone for good[22]’. A simile is used to present the girl’s clothes as a ‘magic bird’, and this personification of her clothing suggests that by removing her clothing, the girl, like a bird, is free to go wherever she wants to. The use of listing used within this quote also suggests that layers are being removed, eventually revealing the girl’s real desires beneath. Angela Carter herself believed that women were not given an equal role in sex, as stated in her book ‘The Sadeian Woman: The Ideology of Pornography’. In her comparison of Justine and Juliette, she states “Women do not normally fuck in the active sense. They are fucked in the passive tense and hence automatically fucked-up, done over, undone.”[23]and it is clear that this idea of a preference of submissive women over dominant ones had a large influence on how Angela Carter shaped her female protagonists and their attitudes to sexual desire, especially in regards to ‘Wolf-Alice’, who’s title character, like the Marquis De Sade’s Justine and Juliette, was originally housed in a convent after being found with the wolves.

The portrayal of the convent in ‘Wolf-Alice’ itself does not conform to the traditional view of religion, and instead transgresses religious boundaries by presenting the nuns not as kind, helpful religious figures, but instead as oppressive matriarchs; the nuns’ only purpose in the story is to attempt to integrate Wolf-Alice into the human society they live in, evidenced when ‘The nuns poured water over her, poked her with sticks to rouse her’[24]and ‘Therefore, without a qualm, this nine days’ wonder and continuing embarrassment of a child was delivered over to the bereft and unsanctified household of the Duke’[25]. When they find they are unable to manipulate her into becoming like everyone else, their choice is to pass her off to a male figure instead, whose house is described as ‘bereft and unsanctified[26]’, which is ironic, as it means the nuns, extremely religious beings, abandon their ward in a house that is considered unholy. This irony serves the purpose of being a metaphor for how society treats outcasts as whole, by isolating them from those considered normal. Angela Carter herself believed religion to be mythical, and stated “I’m interested in myths because they are extraordinary lies designed to make people unfree”.[27]The second transgression of religious boundaries in ‘Carmilla’ is during the funeral scene where Carmilla states ‘Besides, how can you tell your religion and mine are the same… everyone_must die; and all are happier when they do.’[28]and uses a caesura, perhaps to indicate the way she views life. The use of ‘Why you must die--_everyone_must die’[29]indicates how short life is, and the suddenness of death is reflected in the caesuras. Furthermore, the use of ‘your religion and mine’ seperates the two, and conflicts with Victorian ideas of religion. Christianity was considered the one true religion, and therefore Carmilla suggesting she followed another religion would have been heresy. As well as this, her pain at hearing religious hymns in the line ‘”There! That comes of strangling people with hymns!”’[30]presents the idea of a supernatural aversion to religion and foreshadows the reveal of Carmilla’s vampiric nature.

In conclusion, the varied transgressions presented within the two novels provide solid evidence of both authors’ awareness of the problems that are faced by females within traditional literary roles, and both Carter and Le Fanu are able to present their arguments using a variation of language features and characters whilst managing to keep a strong theme of female sexuality at the forefront of their stories.

[1]‘The Bloody Chambers & Other Stories’ by Angela Carter [2]‘Carmilla’ by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu [3]‘The Bloody Chambers & Other Stories’ by Angela Carter [4]Carroll Davids on: How Does Angela Carter Deconstruct Conventional And Repressive Gender Identities In The Bloody Chamber [5]‘Carmilla’ by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu [6]Colleen Damman on: Women's sexual liberation from Victorian patriarchy in Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla [7]‘The Bloody Chambers & Other Stories’ by Angela Carter [8]Elizabeth Signorotti on: Repossessing the Body: Transgressive Desire in Carmilla and Dracula [9]‘The Bloody Chambers & Other Stories’ by Angela Carter [10]‘Carmilla’ by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu [11]‘The Bloody Chambers & Other Stories’ by Angela Carter [12]‘The Bloody Chambers & Other Stories’ by Angela Carter [13]‘Carmilla’ by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu [14]Christy Byks on: Women's sexual liberation from Victorian patriarchy in Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla [15]‘The Bloody Chambers & Other Stories’ by Angela Carter [16]‘The Sadeian Woman: The Ideology of Pornography’ by Angela Carter [17]‘Carmilla’ by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu [18]‘Carmilla’ by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu [19]‘The Bloody Chambers & Other Stories’ by Angela Carter [20]‘Carmilla’ by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu [21]Christy Byks on: Women's sexual liberation from Victorian patriarchy in Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla [22]‘The Bloody Chambers & Other Stories’ by Angela Carter [23] ‘The Sadeian Woman: The Ideology of Pornography’ by Angela Carter [24]‘The Bloody Chambers & Other Stories’ by Angela Carter [25]‘The Bloody Chambers & Other Stories’ by Angela Carter [26]‘The Bloody Chambers & Other Stories’ by Angela Carter [27]Angela Carter on: Religion by SlideShare [28]‘Carmilla’ by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu [29]‘Carmilla’ by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu [30]‘Carmilla’ by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

#literature #academics #literature essay #gothic writing #gothic literature #carmilla #dracula #angela carter #joseph sheridan le fanu #feminism #writing #academic writing #academic essay #gothic essay #writing essay #essay

21 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 3 years

Text

How Jujutsu Kaisen’s Female-Centric Fight Scenes Push Shonen Forward

https://ift.tt/2PgMWtM

For many anime fans, Jujutsu Kaisen shone as the highlight of the Fall 2020/Winter 2021 season. There are many possible reasons for this hype: The series delivered more sought-after supernatural action on the heels of 2019’s breakout hit Demon Slayer. Its darker approach both set Jujutsu Kaisen apart from its predecessor and offered a cathartic escape during a global pandemic. Studio MAPPA adapted Gege Akutami’s original manga with memorable visuals and smooth animation. After all, who can forget the first time Gojo tangled with Sukuna or used his mind-bending domain expansion technique?

But what’s most striking about Jujutsu Kaisen are its fight scenes. Even the show’s detractors will agree that, through clever action cinematography, the series showed us how well-executed sequences can elevate the otherwise simple premise of a boy who gets possessed by a demon. Less remarked upon, however, is how those same fight scenes utilize Jujutsu Kaisen’s female characters.

Jujutsu Kaisen’s portrayal of its female characters has won the series many fans. Episode 17: “Kyoto Sister School Exchange Event – Group Battle 3” drew widespread acclaim with its on-screen acknowledgment of the struggles women face in an overtly sexist society. What went less remarked upon was the backdrop against which those declarations took place.

Longtime shonen fans are familiar with what can be called “the obligatory girl fight.” It’s the match-up between two female characters. Sometimes, they’re the only female characters from the series in question. One variation may feature one-off declarations of throwing away their femininity through a dramatic cutting of hair. Another, sadly more common type uses the opportunity for gratuitous, male-driven fan service.

On its surface, Episode 17 showcases the obligatory girl fight. But in many ways, the explicit examination of the impossible standards that women are held to tells the audience this fight is anything but obligatory. And, even if any doubts remained, we need only look at the actual fights that occurred during the episode: Maki Zenin kicks her opponent off a cliff. Nobara Fugisaki nearly destroys the surrounding forest to take down broom-riding Momo. Mai Zenin, Maki’s twin, defeats Nobara with what could be called a cheap shot: sniping her from a distance while the other girl verged on defeating her opponent.

These observations may seem like small things, but they’re notable when looking at the history of female fighters in shonen series. In generations past, shonen’s female characters often found themselves relegated to support roles. They’re healers and medics. They patch up the other (male) characters’ physical and emotional wounds. Their abilities, despite being often presented as without peer, are used in the most benign and inoffensive of ways. Is she physically the strongest person in the entire series? Perhaps, but she would never hit a person using her full strength. She hits things, not people—even if that person is doing everything in their power to kill her.

Culture

Jujutsu Kaisen: Season 2, the Prequel Movie, and Their Possible Connections

By Vernieda Vergara

Yasuke Review: Netflix Anime Reclaims The Story of a Black Samurai

By Caroline Cao

When Maki kicks Kasumi Miwa off the cliff in Episode 17, she doesn’t hesitate. She presses her advantage. When you fight, you fight to win. And in their line of work, the physical injuries sustained from such a fall are nothing compared to the potential threat from facing and exorcising a cursed spirit. Mai’s attack may be considered cowardly, but the results can’t be denied. She eliminated Nobara from the competition. This isn’t to say that every female character in a shonen series should be bloodthirsty. That defeats the purpose of seeking multidimensional female characters in our media. But if a woman works in a dangerous occupation like that of a jujutsu sorcerer, she must accept the routine necessity of violence.

Unlike other shonen series, we don’t see the female characters grapple with that reality in Jujutsu Kaisen. The women have already come to terms with those expectations. In the case of Maki, the acceptance is crucial. Born with no cursed energy—something most jujutsu sorcerers have—she has no choice but to rely on her physical abilities. And make no mistake, she makes good use of them. She’s allowed to be strong in the same way that series protagonist Yuji is strong. She fights hard. She’s often the first to land a hit on an otherwise untouchable enemy. She can emerge from an encounter unscathed whereas her male ally is not so lucky. Individually, these are small things but together, they add up over time.

Nobara, on the other hand, reminds us that women don’t have to accept the unfair expectations placed upon their gender. In her memorable speech from Episode 17, she proudly states that she loves being strong as much as she loves dressing up and looking pretty. Embodying both may seem like a contradiction for the shonen female heroine, but Nobara is a study in contrasts right down to her signature technique. Her trademark ability involves hammering nails through a straw doll that represents her enemy. What the audience may not realize is that the technique has roots in a traditional Japanese curse ritual where scorned women nail effigies to trees. Nobara isn’t a scorned or rejected woman, however. Instead she’s adopted a process associated with feminine vengeance and transformed it in a brutal attack.

We see Nobara’s technique in action throughout the entire series, but it takes center stage in “Accomplices,” Jujutsu Kaisen’s season 1 finale. During the episode’s climatic battle, Nobara is underestimated by their enemies like many female characters in shonen series before her. And why not? Her partner, Yuji, serves as the host to Sukuna, the King of Curses. He is the more obvious threat. But in a stunning reversal, it’s Nobara who becomes far more dangerous to their enemies. She may not host a demon nor does she have intimidating physical abilities, but she has a quick mind for strategy and an understanding of the sacrifice required for victory. The ensuing action-packed scenes show us a battle where Yuji and Nobara fight as equal partners. Neither is more important or weaker. The girl doesn’t need protecting. She doesn’t need saving. In another shonen series, the fight’s conclusion would highlight Yuji’s protagonist status by giving him the final strike. But even here, the success of Yuji’s punch relies on Nobara’s long-distance attack.

In Season 1, Jujutsu Kaisen gives us fight scenes where women play crucial roles. They weaken and delay opponents to give time for stronger combatants to arrive. More than that, it gives us women who enjoy fighting. They defeat enemies with a self-satisfied smirk on their faces. They smile as they promise to deliver death. In Jujutsu Kaisen, the women aren’t constrained by being nice. They’re allowed to be ugly and brutal. And because of that, their fight scenes show us what female characters can accomplish when they’re allowed to move beyond agonizing over a violent life and instead embrace it as a requirement of their chosen profession.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Season 1 of Jujutsu Kaisen is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

The post How Jujutsu Kaisen’s Female-Centric Fight Scenes Push Shonen Forward appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2PfTzMS

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

3 notes · View notes

hellativity · 4 years

Text

No one looks at this blog right? I would like to expand on a high tweet i made

a 5 paragraph IB style compare & contrast essay about mulder/scully and claire/jamie.

Here is my outline of 3 body paragraphs keep in mind it is 12:40am, i am not sober, i can't believe i wrote this, and not much actual thought went into this. I will not be accepting questions at this time.

Thesis: mulder/scully & claire/jamie are similar in their reversal of some traditional gender roles and in how much they love each other, but the different genres and storytelling methods cause the relationships to be seen as very different

Paragraph one: Doctor babe & emo boy

CD: doctor babes

CM: women in stem!!! Powerful! Traditionally masculine role. they provide scientific/logical viewpoint on situations

CM: analyze time travel/ufos rationally to find out what's goin on

CD: mulder & jamie both motivated by family/belief/duty to a cause

CM: this heavy influence of emotion is more traditionally feminine role

CM: makes them love their science babes a lot for being so smart

paragraph 2: Doctor babe gets dropped into emo boy's life & quest unwillingly/ without expecting much & they become heavily dependent on each other & love each other

CD: Scully supposed to investigate mulder / claire supposed to travel home ASAP

CM: they end up rlly caring about emo boy & want to help him w his cause

CM: in Outlander it's romance & in x files it is not but it's still powerful & i love to see it

CD: idk just some clips of them seeing the other one sick/injured

CM: they are in love

Paragraph 3: the genre romance vs sci fi as well as big novels vs monster of the week format causes these relationships to develop & be seen differently despite similar bones

CD: where is the episode of x files where they get married & have sex 3 times in one episode?

CM: seriously where is it im waiting

CD: when does Jamie start showing claire slide shows for dramatic effect?

CM: i would like to hear him say "okobogee"

CM: also Jamie telling stupid jokes while describing a journey & claire rolling her eyes at him? On brand, cute, we need that

4 notes · View notes

jamesmoore · 4 years

Text

What is a kink?

We can generally define kink as a “specific taste in sexual behavior.” This could be anything from a foot fetish to full-on whipping and spanking. There is a slight difference between kinks and fetishes- we’re talking about kinks here. A kink is something that arouses us that's not considered sexually vanilla. A fetish is a sexual act or an object that is nearly always necessary for the person to become aroused and enjoy sex.

This list is split into 3 sections:

Vanilla Kinks – “mild” sexual kinks that most partners are happy to try

BDSM Kinks – “moderate” or more extreme sex acts that incorporate aspects of BDSM

Extreme Kinks – “extreme” kinks and risky sexual practices

Here is our list of vanilla kinks which aren’t too extreme:

1. Traditional Roleplay

This refers to roleplay scenarios that are commonly used in the bedroom – the kind of scenarios you get in cliché ‘70s porn films! A plumber comes to “fix the plumbing”, a sexy French Maid seduces a houseguest, etc.

Thought Catalog has a list of 50 roleplaying ideas you could try.

2. Lingerie and Sexy Outfits

Whether it’s lacy panties or a sweaty jockstrap, revealing outfits can help to build sexual arousal and get one’s kinky juices flowing. Men and women are often aroused by outfits related to certain types of professions, such as a sexy nurse or firefighter.

3. Rimming

Rimming, also known as anilingus, is the sexual act of licking a person’s (clean) anus. The butthole has many sensitive nerve endings, so rimming feels really good whether you’re male or female.

4. Fingering

Fingering refers to any sexual act where fingers are inserted into the body – usually into the anus or vagina of yourself or another person. Be sure to go slow and use lots of lubrication – our lube guide can help.

5. Food Play

Incorporating food into the bedroom is incredibly common, whether you’re seductively sucking strawberries or melting chocolate onto your partner’s body. There are also many aphrodisiac foods that can help get you in the mood.

6. Filming Yourself

A more vanilla version of exhibitionism, filming yourself having sex is a very common sexual fetish. Even if you never share the video with anyone else, just knowing that you’re being filmed can be a turn-on.

I feel like a porn star when I film me and my partner having sex. I feel like others are watching and getting off on it. It’s really hot.

7. Striptease

The art of the striptease is nuanced, but sexy stripping is a huge turn-on for plenty of kinky men and women. The anticipation of the reveal coupled with the sexiness of the dancing can really build sexual arousal for both parties.

There are many online tutorials showing how to striptease for women and stripping tips for men.

8. Oral Sex

Blowjobs, pussy licking, 69ing… oral sex is commonly enjoyed by many. Lots of men, for example, enjoy watching a partner perform oral sex on them while making eye contact.

9. Armpit Fetish

Some have a fetish for armpits, meaning that they find armpits inherently sexy. They might like to sniff them, lick them, or just look at them during sex.

Armpit fetishes are one of the many kinks covered in the gay hanky code – the code of colored handkerchiefs used by gay men and kink fans in the 1970s to indicate interest in different sexual acts when cruising.

10. Tickling

Known scientifically as Knismolagnia, tickling your partner (or enjoying being tickled) is a fun and enjoyable kink that is a real turn-on for some.

11. Sex in Different Locations

Get out of the bedroom! Have you tried having sex in the shower? Doing it on the stairs? Getting busy on the washing machine? Take the repetitiveness out of sex by switching up the setting.

12. Edging

“Edging”, also known as orgasm denial, involves bringing your partner to the edge of climax, but stopping before they orgasm. It’s often combined with bondage, but you can do it in a more vanilla way too.

13. Mirror Sex

Have you ever had sex in front of a mirror? It’s fun to watch yourself. It’s a bit like watching porn, but it’s you and your partner in real-time. Some kinksters like to put mirrors on the ceiling above their bed so they can watch while they shag… a bit like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, but with less murder.

14. Erotic Massage

Erotic massage usually involves massaging your partner while naked. Sensual massage oils and lotions add to the mood, with your naughty hands slowly but surely gliding to private areas of the body.

15. Dirty Talk

People love dirty talk – it’s a very common kink. You know what I’m talking about: “Yeah, you like that don’t you” “I’m gonna fuck you so hard” “Yeah I love your dick inside me” You get the picture.

16. Foot Fetish

According to a Men's Health study, 1 in 7 people fantasize about feet in some way. Feet are the most commonly fetishized non-sexual body part, whether you like to sniff them, lick them, suck them, or just look at them.

Film director Quentin Tarantino’s foot fetish is very well known – he often includes lingering shots of women’s feet in his movies. He famously sucked Selma Hayek's toes in From Dusk till Dawn.

17. Watching Porn Together

Watching porn with your partner is pretty kinky, especially if you’re both masturbating or pleasuring each other at the same time.

18. Unusual Sex Positions

Some men and women have kinks for sex positions like the Reverse Cowgirl or the Amazon sex position. Our guide to the best sex pillows should help to make these positions more comfortable.

19. Sex Swing

Sex swings and harnesses are commonly fantasized about. They make sex more comfortable, they give the active partner more power, and they have connotations of submissive/dominant sex.

The Fetish Fantasy 360-Degree Sex Swing is a cheap and versatile sex swing that I’d strongly recommend.

20. Anal Sex

Many have a fetish for anal sex, whether they’re gay, straight, or anything in between. Before attempting anal sex, I’d suggest that you learn how to anal douche and use plenty of longlasting lube.

21. Pegging & Strap-ons

Pegging is a sexual practice where a woman uses a strap-on dildo to anally penetrate her male partner – many see it as a form of gender role reversal. Lesbian women might also enjoy using strap-ons with one another.

22. Sex Toys

Have you tried using sex toys in the bedroom? Many women love using clitoral vibrators like the Lovense Ambi while their partner penetrates them. Bringing sex toys into the bedroom opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

23. Prostate MassageThe prostate is the male G-spot found 2-3 inches inside a man’s rectum. Many men love getting their prostate massaged due to the intense prostate orgasms that can occur. It’s possible for some men to ejaculate hands-free due to prostate stimulation.

You might enjoy our guide to the best prostate massagers.

24. Cum Fetish

Put simply, a cum fetish is a love of cum. You might like ejaculating, covering someone in cum, getting cum on your face, swallowing cum… the list goes on.

25. Crossdressing

Crossdressing (in a sexual context) usually describes a man who derives sexual pleasure from dressing up as a woman. Some also have an attraction towards men (and women) who crossdress.

Here is our list of BDSM kinks which incorporate moderate BDSM:

BDSM, which stands for Bondage, Dominance, Sadism, Masochism. Some also interpret it as standing for Bondage, Discipline, Submission, Masochism. These sex acts usually revolve around the idea of power exchange, where one person (the “top” or “dom”) has dominance over another (the “bottom” or “sub”) in a consensual sexual manner. Acts of BDSM might also involve pain, unusual sensations, and aesthetic turn-ons like leather and latex.

1. Power Exchange

This refers to a dominant-submissive relationship between 2 partners. It might just apply to the bedroom, or it could apply to other areas of your life too. It often includes intensive slave training where the bottom has to obey the top’s commands.

When practicing BDSM, you should always have a “safe word” to indicate that you want to stop. If your mouth is gagged, consider a “safe signal” such as rhythmic grunting or a hand movement.

2. Chastity

Chastity involves locking away a man’s penis or a woman’s vagina with a special chastity device like the Holy Trainer. The chaste person can only orgasm when their master allows them to.

3. Tickle Torture

Combine tickling with bondage and you end up with tickle torture. It’s a fun kinky thing to try as you watch someone laugh and wriggle around helplessly while tied to a bed!

4. Sadomasochism

One of the main tenets of BDSM, sadomasochism refers to enjoying pain being inflicted upon you and/or enjoying pain being inflicted upon others. Pain can be inflicted in many ways, such as pinching, slapping, spanking, whipping, flogging, etc.

The opening scene of Kill Bill famously features a speech about sadism and masochism from the titular character. Obviously, he takes it to the extreme. Don’t go shooting anyone.

5. Latex

Latex fetishists (sometimes called "rubberists") find latex outfits to be sexually arousing, whether they’re wearing latex themselves or observing a partner in latex.

6. Bondage

Whether you’re tied to the bed, put into medieval stocks, or stuck in leather ankle cuffs – restricting someone’s freedom of movement and instilling a sense of helplessness is a very common fetish that many people experiment with.

Bondage experts might want to try the art of Japanese rope bondage. Crystal from Rupaul’s Drag Race UK recently used Japanese rope bondage to create this amazing look.

7. Rough Sex

Slapping, pounding, hair-pulling… rough animalistic sex enhances sexual arousal for lots of people. Just keep it relatively safe!

8. Nipple Clamping

Nipples are powerful erogenous zones for both men and women – nipple clamping is just a more extreme version of nipple stimulation. Nipple suckers are great for amateurs, while Japanese clover clamps are favored by pros.

9. Taboo Roleplay

Are you a POC who enjoys being called racist names in bed? Perhaps you’re a gay man who enjoys being taunted with homophobic slurs? Experimenting with taboos is a fun fetish, just be careful to avoid trauma and triggers.

10. Rape Fantasies

Up to 66% of women have rape fantasies at least occasionally, though fantasies of being raped can be experienced by both men and women. This form of “consensual non-consent” allows you to give permission for a partner to “rape” you at any time under certain conditions, though this kink remains controversial in the fetish community.

11. Sensory Deprivation

Sensory deprivation is all about taking away your senses to heighten sexual arousal – it’s commonly explored with blindfolds and earplugs.

12. Candle Wax Play

Melting hot candle wax onto someone’s body is thrilling, feels interesting, and carries a sense of danger. You’ll often see this in S&M scenes.

I’d recommend a guide on how to do wax play before trying this kink. Not all candles are safe for melting onto the skin!

13. Sensation Play

Sensation play is all about experimenting with different sensations in the bedroom. Common tools for this kink include ice cubes, feather dusters, and claw scratchers.

14. Age Roleplay

Age play is about playing an age different from your own. It’s usually a mixture of older/younger partners.

DDLG (Daddy Dom Little Girl) is a form of age roleplay where women pretend to be submissive little girls and men pretend to be their dominant daddies. The r/ddlg subreddit is great for DDLG fans.

15. Rubber

Rubber fetishists are sexually aroused by wearing/seeing sexy rubber outfits. This often has some crossover with the latex fetish and sometimes the terms are used interchangeably.

16. Impact Play

Impact play is a common kink where one person hits another for pleasure. This could be in the form of spanking, flogging, whipping, caning, etc.

17. Imprisonment

In a sexual kink context, imprisonment is about being locked up in a cage (or locking someone else up) until a top allows you to be released. Some enjoy a sexual thrill from this loss of control and freedom.

It’s a little pricey, but this Jail Cell Cage from The Stockroom is great for imprisonment.

18. Spanking

Spanking is a form of punishment and sadomasochism that is often incorporated into roleplay and dirty talk scenes. OTK Spanking (over-the-knee spanking) is when the spanker puts the spankee over their knee like a naughty child.

19. Whipping

Whipping is a form of impact play – the sexual arousal comes from the pain, fear, and anticipation of the next strike. Whipping can be very dangerous and only certain "safe zones" on your body can be whipped safely without excess pain or damage. This kink is not for amateurs!

20. Ball Gags

Ball gags reduce someone’s ability to speak and breathe normally. They are usually incorporated into power exchange and bondage scenes. Some men and women also have a kink for gagging on penises, fingers, and other body parts.

21. Leather Kink

Lots of kinksters simply get turned on by wearing and seeing leather! In BDSM stores, you’ll often find leather boots, harnesses, hats, dresses, and more.

Rob Halford, the openly gay vocalist of Heavy Metal band Judas Priest, popularized the leather daddy look in the Heavy Metal community before anyone knew he was gay. They literally had a song called Hell Bent for Leather.

22. Queening

Queening, also known as “facesitting”, is a sexual act whereby a woman sits on a partner’s face while they perform oral sex on her. You can even get BDSM queening chairs designed to make this kink more comfortable.

23. Puppy Play

Common in the LGBTQ+ community, puppy play is when a submissive partner dresses in puppy-like fetish gear, yaps like a dog, and crawls around on all fours at the whim of their human “master”. Pups often wear dog tail buttplugs and leather harnesses.

To me, puppy play combines kinky power exchange with the inherent cuteness of puppies.

24. Electrostimulation

As you may have guessed, electrostimulation is an extreme kink where special electrical equipment is used to zap the body for sexual excitement!

25. Piercing

Piercing is a BDSM fetish where kinksters enjoy being pierced with special hypodermic needles. It’s often combined with bondage, and should only be attempted by experts.

Here is our list of extreme kinks that are not to be taken lightly:

Extreme kinks usually involve an element of danger. Most of these sex acts should be carried out by professional fetishists or very experienced kinky people who take all the necessary safety precautions. Many of these could also be classed as extreme BDSM, and some of them may disturb more sensitive readers.

1. Cock and Ball Torture (CBT)

Cock and ball torture is about torturing a man’s penis and testicles for sexual pleasure. This could involve biting, scratching, clothes-pegging, and a variety of special CBT toys like the spiked crusher. CBT is one of the most common fetishes discussed on forums like FetLife.

Fet Life is a fetish-themed social media site where kinksters can talk about their weirdest fetishes without judgment.

2. Medical Play

Regular doctor-patient roleplays are harmless enough, but more extreme medical play can involve specialized equipment like skin staplers and speculums.

3. Cuckolding

Cuckolding is a type of kink where a man enjoys watching his wife have sex with other men. The man is usually present when his wife is fucking the other man – he might masturbate while watching. Cuckholding porn has become very popular in recent years.

4. Pussy Pumping

Pussy pumps are sexual devices used to pump up a woman’s vagina and/or clitoris, giving her vagina a swollen, engorged look, as well as increasing sensitivity. Many women enjoy the feeling of blood rushing to their pussy, while some find the look of an engorged pussy to be sexy.

5. Penis Pumping

Penis pumps like the Bathmate Hydromax 7 are used to increase the size of a man’s penis over time, but they can also temporarily give the penis an engorged look and increased size. Some people have a fetish for a freshly-pumped penis!

6. Golden Showers

Also known as piss play or watersports, “golden showers” are a fairly common kink where people enjoy urinating on other people or being urinated on themselves. Some people might have someone pee in their mouth and then swallow it, which can carry health risks.

Despite what you might have heard, urine isn't actually sterile. Be safe and sensible when playing with piss.

7. Group Sex

Group sex, swinging, and orgies are a common kink for many people, though you should obviously be careful to practice safe sex with strangers. There are tons of great hookup sites to help you find multiple sexual partners and swingers.

8. Scatophilia

Scatophilia is an extreme fetish for human feces. Scat fans may enjoy many sexual activities involving poop, such as tarmacking.

Scat sex should not be confused with scat singing, which is very, very different.

9. Breath Control

A form of extreme power exchange, breath control involves things such as choking and covering the mouth/nose of a submissive partner to control their breath. Obviously, this fetish is extremely dangerous and should only be practiced by experienced professionals.

10. Exhibitionism

Exhibitionism is enjoying people viewing (or potentially viewing) you having sex or masturbating. It could refer to public sex, having sex in the window, or having sex on live webcam for internet viewers. Exhibitionism is inherently risky, but it’s incredibly thrilling for many fetishists!

11. Blood Play

Blood play is an extreme blood fetish where people may drink or “suck” the blood of others for sexual pleasure. It’s often tied in with vampire roleplay and (safe) biting.

12. Fisting

Fisting is a sexual act where a top inserts their fist (and sometimes their wrist or lower arm) into a bottom’s anus or vagina. Fisting is extremely dangerous and requires serious trust between the two partners. Special equipment like long-lasting fisting cream lube and fisting gloves is essential for this kink.

13. Urethral Sounding

Urethral sounding is a very extreme kink that involves putting sterilized sounds (thin metal rods) down the urethra of a man’s penis or woman’s vagina. If the rod goes far enough, it can directly touch a man’s prostate, creating intense sexual pleasure. Obviously, this is extremely dangerous and requires tons of special preparation from an expert.

"Hegar" urethral sounding rods are the standard tools that are often recommended for urethral sounding. Not to be confused with Sammy Hagar of Van Halen fame.

#glee ds rp #glee smut rp #mature rp #smut rp #sanctuary:starter #reblog: all #reblog: tutor things

7 notes · View notes

wisdomrays · 4 years

Text

REMEMBER MARY IN THE BOOK: Part 1

The Qur'an informs us of former Prophets and religious figures sent by God to proclaim His Oneness. Islam requires Muslims to acknowledge and respect these people, one of whom is Mary (Maryam), the mother of Prophet Jesus. She has a unique place in the Qur'an and the hearts of Muslims, and is remembered as a highly devout woman.

Mary is depicted in the Qur'an as an individual in her own right. The Qur'an usually mentions her and Jesus separately, and deals more with her life before Jesus and her own merits as a woman chosen, purified, and protected by God. Most Biblical figures who appear in the Qur'an are from the Old Testament. Mary is one of the few New Testament figures, along with Zachariah, John the Baptist, and Jesus.

Both holy books refer to women by their relationship to a man or a place. For example: the wives of Noah, Abraham, and Pharaoh, and the Queen of Sheba.

Only Moses, Abraham, and Noah are mentioned more often. The Qur'an's nineteenth chapter”Surah Maryam”is named after her, and its third chapter”Surat Al-Imran (Imran's Family)”is devoted primarily to her and her family.

While the Bible calls her the Mother of Jesus, the Qur'an calls Jesus the Son of Mary. Islam values mothers, and Muslims revere pious, devoted mothers. Mary is considered one of the greatest examples of female perfection, a person who reached one of the highest of positions.

The Qur'an, which lacks any mention of Joseph, moves in the other direction by identifying Jesus in relation to his maternal family tree. In the Qur'an, therefore, the spotlight is on Mary as a single parent who establishes Jesus' lineage. This is quite different from the New Testament, where her family history is unknown and her primary role is to conceive and give birth to Jesus, not give him a bloodline he can be proud of.

Her Early Life

God chose Mary and placed her in Imran's blessed household. Hanne (or Anna), Imran's wife and Mary's mother, prayed for a child despite her barrenness. Upon learning of her pregnancy, she devoted her child to God: My Lord, I have vowed to You that what is in my womb will be dedicated to Your service. Accept it from me, for You are the One Who hears, the One Who knows. When she brought forth the child, she said: My Lord, I have brought forth a female,”but God knew what she had brought forth, for the male is not like the female”and I have named her Mary. I place her and her offspring under Your protection from Satan, the cursed one (3:35-36).

Her piety was obvious. She dedicated her unborn child to God's service, and then, after discovering it is a girl, placed the child and the child's offspring, including Jesus, under God's protection. God prepared a virtuous lineage for Jesus by protecting Mary, the mother-to-be of a Prophet, from all evil and impurity, so that she would be a pure source for the miraculous birth.

As boys were more likely to be given to priests to be raised and educated, girls were rarely dedicated to temples. Hanne, probably not expecting a daughter, gave Mary to the priest Zachariah so that she would be raised in the purest place. Her gender, as well as the traditions and social conceptions of her time, should not prevent her from attaining closeness to God. She was a special person, one being prepared for a life of utmost belief and devotion, and to witness God's miracle. Her unique story started with a prayer while she was still an embryo. The prayer was accepted, and a life of faith and surrender to the Divine Will began...

God accepted her, caused her to grow up well, and had Zachariah take care of her. The exact nature of their relationship is unknown. The Bible notes that she was a relative of Zachariah's wife. Zachariah had a special tie to Mary, seeing that Mary's mother had placed her in his custody. Whenever he visited her, he found her with provisions. When he asked where they came from, she said: It is from God. Truly, God provides for whomever He wishes without measure (3:37).

Mary lived in a mihrab, literally a chamber, a place of honor, a sanctuary protected from impurity. The text says that Zachariah had to go there to see Mary, implying that she was confined therein and totally protected from the world. That he was always surprised to find her with food supports this interpretation. God was her true Provider, although she appeared to be in Zachariah's custody.

Her answer to Zachariah was notable. She stated that God is the true Provider and provides for whomever He wishes without measure. Immediately after Mary's suggestion, Zachariah prayed: My Lord, grant me offspring from Yourself. Truly, You hear all prayers (3:38). Thus she implied that God could grant any wish, regardless of its impossibility. Zachariah was old and his wife was barren, and yet he asked God for a child. The angels called to him while he was praying, saying that he would be given a son named John, who would be a Prophet. We could say that the Qur'an is hinting about the miraculous birth to come.

This scene shows Mary in all her wisdom and deepness of faith: The miraculous gift of food serves a double function in the story. In the first place, it is a tangible expression of the divine protection Mary receives of her dedication and devotion to God. Second, it functions as Zachariah's springboard to deeper faith and trust in the deity. In the process, there has been an interesting reversal of roles between Zachariah and Mary. What he provides for her, the superfluous food and drink he brings to the mihrab, is unnecessary for her survival. But what she provides him, a much-needed lesson about the power of God, is indispensable for his. Sequestered in the solitude of the mihrab, she has become his caretaker.

3 notes · View notes

voicesofchaos · 4 years

Text

VOC’s Review of the art of Magic The Gathering Core 2021

I an no art expert. Never studied art professionally. But I do consider myself a Vorthros (someone who appreciates the art, story, and flavor of Magic The Gathering). So I have been wanting to this for a while so let’s try it. If this is liked then maybe I will do it again for Zendikar Raising. I’m not going through every card in the set. Just a handful that really stood out to me and I just want to talk about.

Indulging Patrician by Miranda Meeks

Normally I like to save the best for last but this one is so obviously the best art in the set that I need to lead with it. When I first saw this card revealed my jaw dropped. It is purely captivating! It embodies what vampire artwork wants to be. From the powerful dominant vampire woman in the center, to her poor powerless victim, to the beautiful blood moon behind her, to the swarm of ominous bats, all highlighted with blood. Of course the traditional gender role reversal feels so perfect and not forced here. It is a beautiful artwork and you should want to play Magic just to look at this card.

Liliana's Scorn by Josh Hass

We are not moving away from the gothic horror yet though. This is sadly a card that most players will never see as it isn’t in the Core 2021 booster packs but is in the Liliana planeswalker deck. Making this art very easy to overlook but quite impressive when examined. You really feel the struggle of the victim as he fights a losing battle against a horde of zombies. Being in the center you might think he is the protagonist that we cheer on to escape but Liliana even in the backgrounds steals the scene and you know she wins this fight. This is just a great group piece where each individual zombie displays a surprisingly amount of depth which truly makes this piece feel even more hopeless for the poor victim and even more empowering for Liliana.

Basri's Solidarity by Paul Scott Canavan

Basri Ket is a new planeswalker in the set but instead of looking at him directly let’s check out his magic instead. This is a piece that perfectly embodies cooperation and teamwork, Each figure looks quite a bit different, has a different background, and a different specialization. Yet they are all subtlety bonded together through the sand that basri controls. The way it wraps around and protects them all it a cool and powerful effect.

Obsessive Stitcher by Joe Slucher

And we are back to dark and creepy. But I can’t ignore in crazy details in this artwork. On Innistrad, the doctor Frankenstein-like scientists that create ‘zombies’ though alchemy and science rather than straight-up necromancy are called “Stichers”. And this one piece explains all that without any words (except for the 1000 words a picture is worth). The corpses all have different faces showing that this is not simply a construct made from a generic stock but instead were actual living human beings at one point. The ominous green vat behind her is hooked up to them pumping them full of something that can’t be good. Plus we also have ominous test tubes in the background to really hammer in the point of “evil mad scientist”.But then her actual clothes has lots of handy tools to show a devoted craftsman. As she literally stitches thread through not only her diabolic experiment but also her passionate artwork. And finally I did not even notice until seeing the enlarged art but she is missing her right hand! I assume this counts as positive disabled representation right?

Village Rites by Bud Cook

I promise this is the last dark and creepy card (maybe) on the list but I have to give this one a shout-out. It is a throwback and homage to the card Village Cannibals from Innistrad. Even the same artist. Definitely one of my all-time favorite MTG arts so I am very happy to see a remake of that art! It is nice when Magic throws in the little nostalgia winks randomly.

Tolarian Kraken by Svetlin Velinov

Magic will often use what they call “Scale Birds” to show how big something is. These are tiny birds near a creature to show how much bigger the creature is than the birds and give a size comparison. Sometimes birds are too small and they use something like “”Scale Deer” or other mammals. Well then those are still too small we now have a “Scale Castle”! What is more terrifying than a Kraken this big! As if that isn’t bad enough it’s brain is actually visible and has like lightning coming from it or something. This feels like a very epic piece where you can feel the motion and terror from it.

Daybreak Charger by Forrest Imel

The next several arts are going to be under the category of “Things MTG does all the time but needs to make it new each time.” I feel it is most appropriate to start with this unicorn. You see unicorns take occupy a very unique position in both general fantasy genre and pop culture itself. Unicorns are very recognizable so they are very much a great fantasy trope to include. But they also have a reputation of being aimed at “young girls” and in the process made to seem very soft and non-threatening. MTG is a game about combat! You don’t want to summon a gentle non-threatening creature to fight for you but it wants to have unicorn cards. Meaning it wants “badass unicorns!”. Well they absolutely succeed here! But the beautiful thing is they need to over-correct. It wasn’t necessary to paint it all black and cover it in blood. We don’t need to put it on a heavy metal album cover to show its fierce side. Instead bright light is used in a way that makes it seem comforting but also powerful and not to be messed with. This is a unicorn that you are relieved to be on your side and terrified of seeing on your opponent’s side. That takes serious talent to bring it all together!

Chandra's Incinerator by Craig J Spearing

First I apologize that this art is a little cropped from the original. What is another thing that shows up all the time in fantasy art? FIRE! It gets hard to draw fire so often and make it feel different. This is a fire elemental so that is a bit different but still something we have seen a lot. The card Fire Elemental was in the very first Magic set. That card has had 4 different artworks and 3 other cards have some for of Fire Elemental in their name (Deepfire Elemental, Firefiend Elemental, and Wildfire Elemental). This one is clearly meant to be a nostalgic nod to the original art and it works so well! The fire is so detailed and intimidating but the creature is very expressive. It is very refreshing to see yet another Fire Elemental in such a new fashion and perspective.

Terror of the Peaks by Andrey Kuzinskiy

How many times have we seen a dragon in MTG? Over 200 times!! This set alone has 3 dragons! We have seen zombie dragons, skeleton dragons, dragons who breath lightning, dragons that breath frost, dragons covered in metal, and all kinds of other dragons. But sometimes you just need to go back to basics. But basics do not need to be boring. As we see here this is an awesome basic dragon that embodies everything you think of when you think of dragons yet still blows you away with how awesome it is! This is quality dragon art

Shacklegeist by Igor Kieryluk

Ghosts and spirits are again a common trope that gets redone a lot. I really like how this piece can just take a mundane object with some symbolism behind it and just make an entirely new creature from it. This is basically a giant lock with ominous chains attached being held by a specter and it all works so well together! This art style being more watercolors is a nice final touch to give this piece a spooky feeling but also a really cool feeling too.

Rousing Read by Campbell White

I am going to end this with a bit of a weird piece but I didn’t want to leave it out. This is apparently a follow-up to the card Hard Cover from the core set before. This guy has magical wings made from the pages of a book! Like I don’t have anything else to add. That is cool enough by itself.

Special Mentions

Alchemist's Gift, Chandra Heart Of Fire, Garruk’s Uprising, Peer Into The Abyss, and Sanguine Indulgence. All cards with awesome art but I don’t want this post to go on forever (and some of them I couldn’t find good clean versions of just the art). Please tell me what art from Core 2021 I missed that you really liked!

#MagicTheGathering #MTG #Core Set 2021 #Art Review #Vorthros

1 note · View note

paralleljulieverse · 5 years

Photo

Following our recent posts marking the 60th anniversary of the wedding of Julie Andrews and Tony Walton, here we shine a brief spotlight on how the newlyweds were covered by the media in the early years of their marriage. Their May 1959 wedding was a definite high-water mark of media exposure for Julie and Tony but public interest didn’t end once they’d walked down the aisle. Newspapers and magazines continued to feature regular stories and photos about the ‘happy couple’, detailing what they were up to and how they were adapting to life as husband-and-wife.

Much of the coverage presented the newlyweds as a quintessentially modern couple who were combining the twin demands of dual careers with companionate marriage. A multi-page profile in the January 1960 issue of British women’s magazine, Housewife serves a good case-in-point. Essentially a ‘celebrities at home’ pictorial, the article marshals the couple’s “delightful new home––a large flat overlooking Eaton Square––to which they went when they were married eight months ago” as a symbolic expression of the blended amalgamations of marital domesticity (Antony: 38).

The “Andrews-Walton flat is a combination of their two careers,” the article chirps, “Julie’s piano has a prominent place and one room is made into Tony’s studio” (Antony: 40). Elsewhere it describes a cosy everyday scenario of domestic give-and-take as “Julie spends hours practising her singing” with Tony acting as one of her “sternest musical critics,” while Julie in turn “gets a thrill out of Tony’s work for the theatre [and] enjoys posing for his costume designs” (38-39). The image painted here is a transactional blend of conventional married home-life with newer forms of egalitarian coupledom: “two young people––both so young and in love––embarking on a duet” in “their lovely new home...a good basis for security in their marriage” (40-41).

Other profiles were considerably less blithesome. A recurrent refrain in a lot of the media coverage of Julie and Tony’s marriage was the perceived challenges faced by a couple in which, as one early newspaper report put it, “the wife’s name has embarrassingly eclipsed the husband’s” (Wilson: 10). In an era still tethered to orthodox notions of male breadwinners and female homemakers, a union in which the wife assumed greater professional and financial prowess than the husband was sufficiently novel to evoke both curiosity and, at times, unease.

In the newspaper profile just mentioned, Cecil Wilson (1959) strikes a note of thinly-veiled anxiety when discussing what he apprehends as a gendered dilemma in the couple’s marriage. Titled “How Not to Be Known as Mr Julie Andrews”, the article asserts a very traditional view of marriage in terms of masculine dominance and feminine support. “No man could have done more in less time” than Tony Walton, it proclaims, “to rise above the reflected glory of being ‘Julie Andrews’s husband’ or, worse still, the ignominious label of ‘Mr. Julie Andrews’” (10). “Since his childhood sweetheart from Walton-on-Thames consolidated her...stardom in My Fair Lady, he has firmly established the name of Tony Walton by designing four West End shows...[and n]ow, to give Julie Andrews further pride in being known as Tony Walton’s wife, he has gone into management” as a theatre producer (ibid.).*

It is a testament to Julie and Tony’s fortitude and well-grounded emotional security that, for the most part, they deflected such concerns as immaterial. Responding to a reporter’s question about how her status as “one of the country’s wealthiest young actresses” impacted her new married lifestyle, Julie demurred: “I don’t know how much I’m worth...We haven’t a car, although I hold a licence. But Tony holds the important licence, the marriage one” (Hickey: 3). Later, on the eve of her departure for New York to start rehearsals for Camelot, Julie mused further on the ambivalent demands of career and marriage: “Of course it’s nice to get back to work. I love the stage. But what I really like and what I want to do is to settle down and be plain Mrs. Walton” (Tanfield: 12).

For his part, Tony Walton struck a particularly mature and, for the time, progressive attitude to the unorthodox dynamics of his and Julie’s marriage. When asked in a 1959 interview if he experienced “professional jealousy” of Julie, he replied with categorical pragmatism: “Not a bit. After all, Julie has one career and I have another. But I still wouldn’t rank my fame with hers” (Wilson: 10). It was a consistently balanced approach he maintained––at least publicly––right throughout the marriage, even after Julie had graduated to the exponentially increased fame and fortune of film stardom. “[T]he embarrassments people see for me are easily coped with because they’re so absurd,” he remarked in a 1966 article, “I’d be stupid if I let them affect me” (Leslie: 8). If there is any problem, he ventured in an admirably democratic take on modern marriage, it is

“who at any one time is going to be the support. I don’t mean financial but emotional––which is the basis on which the whole marriage is built. When Julie and I were both in the theatre, and she was rehearsing at something and I was working at something else, the pressure times would swing back and forth between us. And at times I’d find myself taking on an almost feminine role, trying to calm, soothe, protect or whatever. And then as soon as I was deeply involved and under pressure then the roles would be reversed. I think if I were an over-dominant kind of male I’d find this situation harder to cope with. But neither of us is over-poweringly masculine or over-poweringly feminine” (ibid.)

That the marriage of Julie Andrews and Tony Walton ultimately didn’t last is a matter of historical record. Following extended periods of separation, the two officially filed for divorce in November 1967, eight and a half years after they were wed (”Julie Andrews Suing”: I-23). But the pair have, by all accounts, maintained a strong and enduring friendship, even after both of them found and subsequently married new partners (Robins: D-6). In fact, Julie is fond of recounting how Tony and his second wife, Gen LeRoy-Walton, affectionately refer to her as “our ex” (Andrews: 323). “They’re best friends and they gang up against me,” explains Tony Walton of the relationship between his former and current partners (McDonnell: 3D). As Julie observed in a 2001 interview: “[T]he divorce was extremely sobering but I've known [Tony] since I was 13 and he was 12, and you cannot undo that knowledge” (Birch: 16).

Notes:

* This kind of angst-ridden discourse about the perceived gendered power imbalance of the Andrews-Walton marriage intensified once Julie made the move to Hollywood and the even greater success of global film stardom. “When a wife starts earning much more money than her husband,” wrote one especially egregious example, “the marriage is not long for the lasting” (Shearer: 15). Such sensationalist commentary was evident even in international reports.”Julie Andrews and her prince-consort” was how one French-language article billed the marriage (Von Cottom: 22).

Sources:

Andrews, Julie. Home: A Memoir of My Early Years. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008.

Antony, Jonquil. “Theatrical Duet in Eaton Square.” House Wife. March 1960: 38-41.

Birch, Helen. “Truly Andrews.” Daily Telegraph. 7 December 2001: 15-16.

Hickey, William. “For Julie it’s the Beginning.” Daily Express. 8 August 1959: 3.

Jordan, Ruth. “No Fashion Fuss for Julie.” Woman’s Journal. December, 1959: 26-27, 134.

“Julie Andrews Suing Designer for Divorce.” Los Angeles Times. 15 November 1967: I-23.

Leslie, Ann. “Beating the Hysteria: ‘Mr. Julie Andrews’.” Daily Express. 19 April 1966: 8.

McDonnell, Brandy. “Tony Time.” The Oklahoman / Sunday Life. 27 May 2018: D1-D3.

Robins, Cynthia. “When Art and Love Meld Successfully.” San Francisco Examiner. 6 September 1992: D-6.

Shearer, Lloyd. “When a Wife Earns More than a Husband.” Parade. 9 July 1967: 14-15.

Tanfield, Paul. “My Year of Bliss...by Julie Andrews.” Daily Mail. 18 August 1960: 12.

Von Cottom, Joseph. “Julie Andrews et son prince-consort: le pitoyable drame des maris de vedettes.” Ciné-Télé-Revue. 4 August 1966: 22-23.

Wilson, Cecil. “How Not to Be Known as Mr Julie Andrews.” Daily Mail. 24 September 1959: 10.

Photographs by John Dixon, George Konig, and anon.

#julie andrews #tony walton #my fair lady #celebrity #stardom #musical theatre #old hollywood #marriage #london #eaton square #belgravia

51 notes · View notes

sugasgummy · 5 years

Text

How BTS Paved the way

Okay so basically I wrote this as my JR paper for high school. I decided to write about BTS because I was allowed to pick what I wanted to write about and it's supposed to be a research/opinion page. It basically talks about what makes BTS so special and different from the rest. Its 16 pages long with citations and yeah that’s it basically. Please enjoy

@BTSCRAZED on IG AND TWT

The Entrepreneurs of Change: Why BTS is Different from the Rest

They’ve sold over ten million albums, sold out entire tours including their upcoming stadium tour with over one million attendees in a matter of 5 minutes, hold five world records and now known as the biggest boy band in the world. They are BTS and they paved the way for a new genre of music known as K-pop. This band has proved to be more than just a generic boy band. They have played a big role in a wave of new music and trends, created a strong fanbase who they’ve taught important life lessons like self-love and acceptance, broken many records, gain popularity all over the truly become the biggest boy band in the world but how come a boyband from one country (South Korea) managed to reach people around the globe?

First, let’s talk about what is K-pop and Korean pop culture? “They call it Hallyu, the Korean wave: the idea that South Korean pop culture has grown in prominence to become a major driver of global culture, seen in everything from Korean dramas on Netflix to Korean skincare regimens dominating the cosmetics industry to delicious Korean tacos on your favorite local menu. And at the heart of Hallyu is the ever-growing popularity of K-pop — short, of course, for Korean pop music” (Vox). K-pop has recently become very popular all over the world especially in the U.S. K-pop is often used as an umbrella term for all types of Korean music popular outside of Korea, so the genre can consist of rock bands, hip hop, indie, and basically any other type of music. The K-pop genre consists of main groups though there are solo artists who most of the time had previously been part, of other bands. Although you probably don’t know you have probably already been exposed to this wave especially if you visit Twitter regularly or were on YouTube in 2012 through 2013 when the song “Gangnam Style” by PSY came out. K-pop fans have a lot of power and can start trending thing in a matter of hours depending on the popularity of the idol they are promoting. Korean pop culture is very different than American. It’s like a whole new world with new rules, vocabulary and just way of being fans. It’s all very well planned and based around main fanservice. Periodically or for special holiday and events, idols what K-pop fans call celebrities to have comebacks – which is when they release new albums and start a new concept for their music or performances- or release special packages and collaborations like makeup, photo books, concert DVDs and collectibles that they fans can buy. Along with those new comebacks or packages they hold fanservice events like music shows and fan meets. That is one of the biggest reasons K-pop is so popular and has a big fanbase. This is one of the biggest reasons I think that K-pop more specifically BTS has become so popular outside of Korea. But who is BTS?

Who is BTS? First, what does BTS even mean? BTS in Korean is Bangtan Sonyeondan meaning bulletproof boy scouts but in 2017 they officially changed their name to beyond the scene because they wanted fans to see beyond than just the scene in front of them. They are one of the most popular boy bands in the world at the moment BTS has been called next generation leader by Time magazine and “have grown beyond the bounds of traditional K-pop acts, making a splash everywhere from Chile to California. Their devoted followers styled as “ARMY,” have kept them trending on social media at most public appearances.” (Time). They hold the world record for most views in 24 hours with 78 million views on their newest song “Boy with luv” from their newest album Map of The Soul: Persona and at the same time broke the record for the fastest music video to reach 100 million views broken at one and a half days since its release. Each of the seven members is adored by thousands of people all over the world. Kim Namjoon goes by the stage name RM is the leader, producer, and one of 3 rappers of the group he is the only fluent English speaker and the first member to join the band. Next is Kim Seokjin or just Jin the eldest member and vocalist of the group he plays the role of the dad of the group though originally, he wanted to be an actor he has grown a lot and is now one of the best vocalists. Up Next is Min Yoongi or Suga the main rapper and producer very well known for his quiet yet savage personality. Then there’s Jung Hoseok aka J-hope he’s one of the main dancers, producers, and rappers of the group he is also the happy virus of the group he is everyone’s angel and hope. Now for the three Maknaes which in Korean means the youngest members of the group we have Park Jimin who’s is very well known for his powerful yet elegant looks that can capture both female and male attention. He is one of the main vocalists and dancer of the group. Followed by Kim taehyung or V which is his stage name. Who is another powerful visual and was actually voted most handsome face in the world in 2017 and also ranked #5 in 2018 he is also a vocalist of the group. Last but not least is Jeon Jeongguk or just Jungkook the youngest member yet unspeakably talented, main dancer, main vocalist and center face of the group who was also placed #2 in the most handsome faces in the world 2018. Together Those seven men hold so much power they’re not only all good looking but all extremely talented in different things that when put together make the best boyband in the world. They have the power to sell out anything with just a single tweet it's insane. These seven boys didn’t just become famous overnight they made their debut but where were ignored and judged harshly until they broke through the charts in 2017 with all their hard work and the help of ARMY.

BTS is very well known because of their huge and very dedicated fanbase that will do anything to get them the recognition they deserve. This is because they have proven to be more than just a group of good-looking men that can sing, rap and dance. They try to share positive messages like self-love, touch on delicate topics like suicide and depression as well as being big supporters of the LGBT community by breaking gender-role buy wearing feminine clothes and makeup and advocating equality regardless of sexuality, gender, and race. All of this through music, videos, and campaigns that they launch. First, I want to talk about how they use their music and content to shine a light on controversial topics like mental health, sexuality, gender identity, growing up, finding yourself, and even political topics. Almost every music video that BTS release follows this storyline about a group of teenage boys and their struggles in growing up and finding the right path while facing different obstacles. The teenage boys are played by BTS of course and the story actually starts out from the very beginning of their career even though we had only figure out it was a storyline during a later era in 2017. The story begins with a group of rebellious teenagers who don’t like to follow the rules who are looking for acceptance and love which they get from each other. Each character hides their own demon and dark past. Namjoon the leader of the group of friend struggles with not know who he is and what he’s going with his life. Jin who is supposed to be the most mature member struggled with the fact that he’s growing up and being who his father wants him to be who forces him to betray his friends and leave them. Yoongi suffers from depression after his mother died in a fire and he couldn’t save her and holds himself guilty for and attempts to commit suicide. Hoseok was abandoned by his mother at an amusement park when was a small child and suffers from PTSD and also has narcolepsy which forces him to live in a hospital the majority of the time. Jimin is very similar to Hoseok they know each other the best because they were both forced to live in a hospital. Jimin suffers from abandonment issues but in the sense that he thinks everyone hates him and he isn’t good enough and also has seizures with an unknown and also tries to commit suicide at one point. Taehyung is a young delinquent who always seems to get in trouble. He isn’t a bad person he just has a bad life with an abusive father which leads him to murder his father one night trying to protect his sister. Then there’s Jungkook he’s the youngest he’s just trying to see his friends who are more like his brothers since they have basically raised him happy. He eventually realizes he can’t have the happiness or euphoria he wants and ends up committing suicide as well. That part of the story takes place during their albums called The Most Beautiful Moments in Life part one, The Most Beautiful Moments in Life part 2, Young Forever, and Wings. Then continues in their Love Yourself series. Which is when they try and find a way to reverse time and fix all their mistakes or stop themselves from splitting up and killing themselves. I feel like this story is something that you really wouldn’t expect from a boyband of any kind. Which why I think it's so important and makes BTS special and different. What boy bands do you know that have tried to even touch on the topic on this level? Apart from incorporating important mental health and life issues. They have also encouraged people to show who they are and speak themselves. On November 1st, 2017 the group launched their Love Myself campaign in partnership with UNICEF. This campaign was created as an anti-violence campaign but, in my opinion, it has grown to be much bigger than that. Over the last two years, I have watched as BTS has grown and spread their message teaching everyone that they don’t need to hide who they are and shouldn’t be afraid who they are to the world. This message has even led them to speak at a united nations conference in New York making them the first ever Korean Band to do so. The leader of the band Namjoon who fans have since then called their “President” made a very touching speech on how to find yourself. In the speech, Namjoon said, “After releasing the “Love Yourself” albums and launching the “Love Myself” campaign, we started to hear remarkable stories from our fans all over the world, how our message helped them overcome their hardships in life and start loving themselves. These stories constantly remind us of our responsibility. So, let’s all take one more step. We have learned to love ourselves, so now I urge you to speak yourself. I would like to ask all of you. What is your name? What excites you and makes your heart beat? Tell me your story. I want to hear your voice, and I want to hear your conviction. No matter who you are, where you’re from, your skin color, gender identity: speak yourself. Find your name, find your voice by speaking yourself. I’m Kim Nam Jun, RM of BTS. I’m a hip-hop idol and an artist from a small town in Korea. Like most people, I made many mistakes in my life. I have many faults and I have many fears, but I am going to embrace myself as hard as I can, and I’m starting to love myself, little by little. What is your name? Speak Yourself!". This is one of my favorite speeches Namjoon has ever given as a leader. I’m not going to say that they’re the only artist to ever say this, but they the apart of the few to have such a big impact and influence so many people. I’m also not going to tell you that because of them I have started to love myself, but I can say that I have learned to speak for myself and for what I do believe in. I have spoken out a lot about who I am where I come from like my sexuality and my immigrant background. All the things that the old me wouldn’t have done. But BTS has created a protective bubble that allows me to speak out and find more people like me be happier than I used to be. Because of I have become someone different who I like more than who I used to be. BTS have really set the stage for this new genre of music. Though they aren’t the first they are the only ones to have truly made an impact. The reason this one band from South Korea out of hundreds of other is because of their extremely strong a big fanbase. Over 10 million fans can’t be wrong.

Like I mentioned previously BTS’ fanbase is called A.R.M.Y. which stands for Adorable representative MCs for Youth and their Job is to spread the message BTS is trying to give and this Army is extremely dedicated I mean extremely dedicated to their job. Ages ranging from 6 years old to 60 years old BTS is for everyone to enjoy. Their fanbase is all over the world promoting their boys. They spend hours every day creating a thing for BTS a promoting BTS through any way they can. On an interview for Billboard, an Army said, "We want to see them break records and write history." And that’s exactly what we are working for. There are thousands of fan account that are run on twitter an Instagram alone and I’m one of them. The point of these fan account it’s to keep the rest of the fanbase updated, create content, promote BTS, and recruited a new member for the fanbase. This is exactly what I do on my fan account every day on my fan account and literally any chance I can anywhere else. The mission is to promote and educate everyone about BTS this raises their popularity and success. BTS fans are extremely dedicated to them for many different reasons. Some for their looks, others for their catchy music and of course for their message. “Their message is beyond just making good music. They talk about social issues. They stand for more than your typical boy band would stand for. I think that’s really important for people my age and the younger generation to really understand. Everything on social media, you kind of get desensitized to everything out there. But BTS brings it to the forefront. A lot of things that people younger than me or my age wouldn't care about or know about, they find out about because BTS cares about those things. That really sets them apart for me in comparison to anyone else out in the industry.” says Christine Gee 27-year-old BTS ARMY for Billboard. I totally agree with her joined the fandom for the very same reason. A lot of people think that because their speaking in a different language their message is unimportant, and people don’t care but we do we translate and decipher the meaning behind everything they say and that’s the truly important part. These boys have voices too and that’s what army is here to promote. Doing that is its own process alone as well.

The process is very complicated, but we figure out the most efficient way to promote them however we can. Take BTS’ new album for example first we take everything we know and piece it together like a puzzle. Which is a part of the idea of looking beyond the scene. Like I mentioned before they have a storyline to their videos. We had already figured out it’s a storyline and every comeback they add a new part or chapter. So, we spend the 6 months between each album piecing the story together and creating theories and trending them on twitter so even while they are away they continue to be relevant. Which is very important in all fandoms and I believe that this fandom is the most active. I've been a ton of other fanbases and it gets boring eventually. We get bored and run out content, but the army is different they're always creating new memes or theories keeping the content relevant. Once the comeback was confirmed they do many things they promoted it in every tweet they could and made sure to trend it then started setting new goals as well as participating in new activities released by BTS’ company. For the next month, Army spent all their free time trying to find even clues for the new comeback and preordering the album until we reach whatever goal we set for themselves this time we reached 2 million presales in the first 24 hours. Then they set goals for the music video and album streams the goal this time was to beat any previous record we had set so we settled on one hundred million views in 24 hours while the Korean fans who are called K-diamond army and Japanese fans the J-jewels were asleep every other army would stream the music video repeatedly. The American fanbase would buy single songs while the European armies would buy the whole album, so we could get the individual songs on the album on charts and then the full album all while still watching and sharing the new music video. That we get the album to be number one in more than 80 countries as well as making sure that the video and every trending tag on twitter are BTS related in order to capture more audience. Once the other armies were awake and together they set up street promotions by buying billboards and decorating train carts promoting BTS. That all was just for a new album. Every other day army promotes BTS by donating in their names. Every time it one of the members birthday Army donates to a cause. For this year for Suga’s one of the rapper’s birthday a hundred of army donated blood under his name. For other members, we would adopt endangered species under their names and save those animals. they do things like this because they don’t just want them to be well known but also because they want them to be known for good deed. Of course, BTS themselves also pay parts in these kinds of projects. One of the members J-Hope recently donated 250 Million Won which is over $200,000 just for scholarships for female students. They also normally don’t like when we buy them gifts so why not spend money on a good cause. It’s our job, in the end, we are their representatives we have to make them look good. Like I mentioned before I had been a part of many other big Fanbases and I have never seen this amount of dedication or activity. Not even the Directioners fans of One Direction the who previously were biggest boy band in the world. I feel like this type of dedication has been part of their rise to fame. The amount of time and loyalty they put in is like no other.

Many people argue that army is a very toxic and aggressive fanbase because of how dedicated we are to promote BTS and sometimes can start fights for being too dedicated with fans of other groups by boasting of our success and achievements. Other times is for being too dedicated for example in many occasions interview misphrase or say things criticize them harshly and Army goes on a rampage against them. For example, Richard Lloyd Parry who is a British foreign correspondent and writer. Parry interviewed BTS and made an insensitive comment about one of the members Namjoon who is the only fluent English speaker in the group English. Of course, Army wasn't happy at all and started to tweet hate at Parry and forced him to apologize publicly because of the insensitive comment. Army said very harsh thing which I witnessed on twitter thought it was very harsh but I believe that he deserved it not only cause I’m army and I support BTS until my last breath but because if this was said to any non-English speaker I would be upset especially since English isn't my first language either its really upsetting when someone underestimates your hard work because you speak differently. In an article about why BTS are way too dedicated and must be stopped it says “BTS fans are young, and youthful adoration isn’t meant to be measured or sensible. Those teenagers you see in floods of tears at Beatles concerts? Not measured, but joyous and warm, a life-affirming testament to the power of pop culture. But that passion, combined with the facelessness of social media, has given rise to something ugly and extreme, aggression that sullies the band’s name. The BTS ARMY marches on a message that is exclusionary, intolerant of others. You wonder if BTS are fearful of their own, intense fanbase.” (NME). I don't agree nor disagree with this quote cause I myself am one of those extremely dedicated fans. I agree that the pressure can get to the boys and all I care about is their happiness and wellbeing the last thing I want to do is hurt them and make them feel bad or ashamed but then again BTS and army have a very strong connection and they always express their love for us the same way we express our love for them. I believe the reason that army acts like this is because BTS has always been put under everyone’s else and now they are finally getting recognition and we won’t let anyone ruin that for ashough criticism is great and everyone has a right to their opinions army strongly believe in the phrase if you don't have anything nice to say don't say it at all we understand when you say that the music isn't your type and it’s not for you that totally understandable but if you come to us with “BTS sucks they don't even speak English why do you like them they look like girls” you're basically signing your death wish. So yes, we are aggressive but without Army, BTS would literally be unknown because people are ignorant and unfair for who they pick to like. By promoting them this way they have proven so many people wrong and have made BTS proud. Army has made BTS the powerful people that they are today.

BTS is breaking more records than other any other foreign artist in the U.S. but why? There are thousands of other Bands in all kind of languages, but they aren’t making the same impact? I honestly think it’s because of their fanbase and the way that they promote themselves. There is a formula to be the biggest boyband in the world. First, you need good music with a message that people want to hear. Many artists nowadays like to either talk about sex or drugs. BTS chose to instead choose to talk about self-love and acceptance but at the same time making their music fun and energetic. Next you need to promote it this can come in many ways BTS chooses to release a “comeback trailer” which is what American artist calls a single before the full album comes out they also release photoshoot sets that connect to the concept of the album to get fans excited to buy all the album typically one album comes with one version of the photo shoot and there are typically four different photo shoots so as a good fan you would want to buy all four raising the album preorders and sales. Speaking of fans, you need a big fanbase you need an audience to share it and watch it that’s where army comes in like I previously talked about we promote BTS any chance we can and divide up the streams in order to get them to trend in as many places as possible and beat as many records as possible. That’s how you become the biggest boy band in the world. Now you’re probably asking yourself okay but so many artists do that how come only BTS is getting all the attention. My answer to that is luck I believe they were lucky that so many people grow to like them, and they really do create amazing music that I believe many people can relate to something another artist may be doing. For example, BTS is made up of rappers, vocalist and dancers all with different styles, for example, one rapper is more into hip hop while the other Is more into RnB and the other is straight rap. Same with the vocalist part is pop the other part is a ballad and sometimes even rock. All different types that can reach different people and when you put them together everyone can enjoy at least a little bit of it. in comparison, you take a big artist like let’s say Drake who is a rapper very popular with today’s youth who into rap the same with Ariana Grande who makes pop music typically popular with the youth only reaching one type of audience. While BTS has all these different genres making more open to different groups of people. Which is very important because with a little of everything you get a lot and that’s what makes BTS special. They get a little bit of everything and when that comes together it creates something big.

Now you’re probably telling yourself I understand that they’re popular in America and different from American artist but what makes them different from other artists in Korea. First, let's talk about what the entertainment companies or record labels in Korea look like. Before BTS’ big success there was the “Big Three” a term used when talking about the three most successful record labels in South Korea. The big three includes SM entertainment which still is home to the biggest artist in the K-pop industry, JYP interment who also is very big and has some of the best artists in my opinion and lastly YG interpatient which has a lot of new talent. BTS comes from a small company called Bighit entertainment was essentially broke up until BTS success and is only home to now 4 different artists. But now the tables have turned and with the help of BTS bight has surpassed the big three by bringing in billions of dollars just from BTS related sales. But how? BTS Isn’t the first group to make it to the U.S. and stay on top. We all remember PSY who came from SM entertainment Back in 2013 who was really successful and the first Korean artist to become a global phenomenon. “Gangnam Style was phenomenal, but PSY’s persona was consumed as a character, not as an artist,” Choi says. “He didn’t have a strong fan base like other idol groups, but [US promoter] Scooter Braun found him marketable and introduced him to the American mass media. Despite his long career and musical talent, Psy was depicted in the United States as a hilarious, thus non-threatening, Asian male stereotype.” (SCMP). I agree with this yes PSY was huge and everyone was crazy for him but in American pop culture, he was a one-hit wonder. He did make more music which I absolutely loved and is honestly a big part of K-pop culture except no one outside of the K-pop fandom know about it and that’s the problem. The same thing happened with a boy band called Big Bang and before that all in 2009 a less popular girl group called the Wonder Girls who had made it into billboard charts and even toured with the Jonas brother in 2009. All those bands had tried but failed to stay popular in the U.S. afterward. After that, no other band had tried promoting like that in the U.S. until BTS appeared in the charts in 2017 and managed to stay there. Something that no other Korean artist has done in a long time. After that BTS started to pave the way for other Korean bands like NCT, Black Pink, and EXO on talk shows and award shows. They did what no other band was doing, and they didn’t even come from one of the big entertainment companies that exist in South Korea. Korean artist themselves have even agreed to this idea. A former member of the Wonder Girls and literally the biggest solo artist in Korean right now Sunmi mentioned BTS in one of her interviews when told that her work with the wonder girls had paved the way for K-pop in the United States. She replied “No BTS did” I find this so amazing because as a K-pop fan I am telling she is and OG she’s the first of the first a legend in K-pop books. For her to deny her part in the path of K-pop today and give BTS credit for their work is amazing. Army themselves couldn’t believe it but we totally agree with her. Though they weren’t the first to start the pave the path into popularity in the U.S. they did finish paving the way for a new artist to come.

In conclusion, seven Korean boys are now the biggest band in the world. Paving the way for many new artists to come and becoming global superstars. They’re doing this in many different ways. For example, using their popularity to shine a light on important controversial topics, having extremely dedicated fans and lastly for making great music for almost anyone. BTS are truly the entrepreneurs of change.

Works Cited

“BTS Pave Way for K-Pop Golden Age in the U.S, Doing What Psy Couldn't.” South China Morning Post, 20 July 2018, www.scmp.com/culture/music/article/2127984/bts-pave-way-k-pop-golden-age-us-achieving-what-psy-and-wonder-girls.

“BTS Speech at the United Nations UNICEF.” Performance by Namjoon Kim, YouTube, UNICEF, 24 Sept. 2018, https://youtu.be/oTe4f-bBEKg

“Five Ways BTS Changed the World of Pop Music.” Evening Standard, 12 Apr. 2019, www.standard.co.uk/go/london/music/bts-map-of-the-soul-persona-ways-changed-pop-music-kpop-a4110786.html.

Bassett, Jordan. “Why the BTS Army Must Be Stopped.” NME, NME, 18 Oct. 2018, www.nme.com/blogs/we-need-to-talk-about-the-bts-army-2389994.

Bruner, Raisa. “Everything to Know About K-Pop Group BTS.” Time, Time, 11 Oct. 2018, time.com/collection-post/5418827/bts-members/

Herman, Tamar. “Meet the Fans of BTS: Profiles of American ARMY.” Billboard, 29 Sept. 2017, www.billboard.com/articles/columns/k-town/7981702/meet-fans-bts-profiles-american-army.

Kolgraf, Jackie. “How Fans of BTS, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift & More Are Changing Music Marketing.” Billboard, 15 Feb. 2018, www.billboard.com/articles/business/8099836/fan-armies-bts-beyonce-taylor-swift-music-marketing.

Litovsky, Dina. “40,000 BTS Fans Can't Be Wrong.” Vulture, 10 Oct. 2018, www.vulture.com/2018/10/bts-and-the-army.html.

Romano, Aja. “How K-Pop Became a Global Phenomenon.” Vox, Vox, 26 Feb. 2018, www.vox.com/culture/2018/2/16/16915672/what-is-kpop-history-explained.

2 notes · View notes

gibelwho · 5 years

Text

Top 5: Best Films of 2018

2018 was quite a year for me personally. I got married to my best friend, we traveled to Japan for our honeymoon and we’ve spent the last few weeks of the year packing our house for an upcoming move. Attending the multiplex has not always been an option, but we endeavored to catch a few flicks in between major life changes. Despite these challenges, I wanted to post a special Top 5 detailing my best films of 2018. I have chosen my top films informally the last few years, but hadn’t gotten around to posting my thoughts. As I am surrounded by boxes and with all my film books packed away, I stole some time to reflect on this past year in cinema.

Gibelwho Productions Presents Best Films of 2018

5. Black Panther

4. Won’t You Be My Neighbor

3. A Star is Born

2. Crazy Rich Asians

BlacKkKlansman

Black Panther (February 2018): In the ongoing saga of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there are the the blockbuster movies that include multiple heroes and converging storylines, but there are also the small films that focus on one hero. While the Avengers themed films are usually aimed at the lowest common denominator, Marvel allows the hero-focused films to be infused more with a genre flavor or the stylings of a distinctive director. Thus, Ryan Coogler was able to forge Black Panther into a film that envisions an Afro-techno-centric future, engages in discussions of black repression and power dynamics, as well as showing kick-ass and smart women of color as soldiers and scientists. I did have some quibbles with some of the film’s elements, but overall, it was a huge moment for black cinema and should thus be recognized. Wakanda Forever!

Won’t You Be My Neighbor (July 2018): In a year where divisions in this nation were heightened seemingly by the minute, this gentle film comes along to celebrate one of this nation’s best champions of kindness. A man who could relate to children genuinely, even when communicating to them via a sock puppet, and took on difficult subjects such as assassination, divorce, and death. I have fond memories of watching Mr. Rogers Neighborhood as a kid, but this deeper examination made me appreciate even more the lessons he taught me as a child. The archival footage of Fred Rogers himself, the show, and the interviews all cut together paint a picture of a man doing his best to fight for children’s television; he was a flawed man, but one whose focus on kindness left a legacy this nation should tune into once more.

A Star is Born (November 2018): The fourth re-make of this age old tale shows a grizzled legend discovering a budding new star. While their romance shines as bright as her new stardom, it cannot last in the blinding spotlight. Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut and Lady Gaga’s starring debut combine to create movie magic. An homage to the Technicolor classics of old Hollywood, yet aware of the modern day challenges that come with fame and celebrity, the film doesn’t compromise on the quality of the songs and performances on stage, nor on the acting in between. I was especially impressed with the way Cooper and his cinematographer utilized light throughout the film, with some particularly stunning sequences that manage to comment on the state of the character’s evolution. Overall, this movie is incredibly authentic, an ode to the actors bringing these characters to life, but also to the way the musical performances were filmed on real stages.

Crazy Rich Asians (August 2018): This film arrived in theaters with much fanfare and didn’t disappoint! With fantastic performances from various Asian actors, incredible production value done on a tight budget, and a snappy and entertaining script, this film not only captured the heart of moviegoers, but also was a powerful statement about the importance and profitability of representing diversity on screen. I had so many friends that lauded the film as the first time they had seen a version of themselves and their family in the cinema. The dumpling making scene in particular reminded me of my adopted Filipino family (sans the tension with the potential mother-in-law). The mahjong scene at the film’s climax was intentionally crafted to translate both to audiences who intimately understand the game, as well as those who have never heard of it. In fact, that describes Crazy Rich Asians as a whole - one that is open to anyone who is a fan of romantic comedies, but one that shows a particular slice of culture, families, and faces that needs to be given more stories and opportunities to be seen and heard.

BlacKKKlansman (September 2018): All I can say is, Spike Lee better win some accolades for this joint. A film that tells a real life story, that speaks through the look and feel of the 1970s, but that speaks directly to today - a message that is shockingly re-enforced through the images in the last few moments of the film. Cinema history is deeply ingrained in Lee’s filmmaking - from the cross-cutting sequences that reclaims the editing technique from its roots in the racist film Birth of a Nation to the references to blaxploitation films of the 1970s. Lee is doing his best work in years, a film that is at once political, funny, artistic, and a gut punch that should make viewers leave the theater entertained and ready to take action.

Honorable Mentions:

Bohemian Rhapsody (November 2018): This film will be remembered for me as the most expensive movie date of 2018, where we spent $50 to attend the cinema. Yes, it happened to be a Friday night; it happened to be opening weekend; the time that worked happened to be the IMAX screening. And we bought a soda. Was the film worth the steep price of admission? Probably not, but we still enjoyed the experience nonetheless. Many critics have savaged the film, rightly pointing out that it was a conventional biopic made about the most unconventional man that has graced this planet. However, as someone who grew up knowing Queen through sportsball chants and not their incredibly compelling rise nor epic stadium concerts, it was a film that got the job done - exposed me to their members, their songs, their story - and Freddie. Rami Malek should win all the awards for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury. He layered the character with many levels and intimately captured the talent, the suffering, the queen in all his glory. One day, a brave filmmaker will make that creative and oddball biopic that Freddie deserves and - even though this wasn’t it - this film will serve as a foundation for Queen’s story.

Incredibles 2 (June 2018): When I turned 30, I rented a small movie theater in Los Angeles and screened one of my very favorite films - The Incredibles (2004). That film, those characters, the music hold a very special place in my heart and it was with a mix of excitement and nervous anticipation (don’t screw it up, Pixar) that I went into the cinema for Incredibles 2. While not a mother quite yet, I absolutely appreciated the reversal for the traditional gendered parent roles, watching an empowered Elastigirl kick butt and Bob discover that parenting is hard and exhausting. I also loved that the Pixar crew didn’t show the Dad as clueless and useless; rather, he was well-intentioned, did his best, and supported his kids. While I didn’t love every element (the villains could have used some work), perhaps my favorite laugh out loud moment of the year was Jack Jack fighting the raccoon.

Deadpool 2 (June 2018): This film is a movie that is made for this particular cultural moment, riddled with jokes and references that will fade from memory in a few months or years, similar to how Shrek will always be connected to the early 2000s. Ryan Reynolds slays as wacky and meta-aware Merc with a Mouth, and Josh Brolin as Cable and Zazie Beetz as Domino are awesome additions (can we see an action flick with just them!?) and the film tries to balance comedy with action with heart in a mostly effective mix.

#black panther #won't you be my neighbor #a star is born #crazy rich asians #blackkklansman #spike lee

2 notes · View notes

jaymes-ip · 3 years

Text

8/30 - Theme/Topic Brainstorm

Theme/Topic Brainstorm

Masks

Keep this as un-covid related as possible

As a barrier we put up

Metaphorically

A fear of being seen and understood by others

Masking as a thing that autistic and other neurodivergent people do

A fear of rejection

Horror

How it relates to being marginalized

Specifically for me in being queer

As a form of camp even

As part of our history

The ways in which people see us

Subversion

Things that are scary are actually good and vice versa

Taking power back

Maybe being a bit erotic

Monsters

A symbol of power, of fear

Taking back power but also being afraid of hurting the ones you love

Classical Greek

Minotaur

Horror movie/literature

Slashers

Frankenstein

Werewolves

Vampires

The idea of being predatory comes up here

Divine

This is one I have to consider borrowing from since I don’t have any real connection to religion

Transformation of the body

What it takes for a body to be grotesque

Transformation

Of the body

Of my own body specifically

For transgender reasons

As a representation of change

Both positively and negatively

Something that is always on my mind

As a way to gain power back

Get out of my own body and into something that can kill, something that has real power

Gender

A huge part of my life as I am trans

And everyone’s life in general

Something I have a huge interest in anthropologically

Body

As a place for transformation

The self and the place that holds the self

Act of making

I want to do work that reflects the medium it’s in

That explores that medium

That speaks to the act of making and about process

Sex

Eroticism especially

Even if this is a scary topic to cover for myself I’m always intrigued

Queerness

A huge and beautiful part of my life

Being trans is a huge part of who I am and my experience

Both with the world and my own body

Being bi in the same way

Both change the way I see other people and the way I see gender itself

Ursula K Leguin’s writing

Her sci fi work is incredibly influential on me

The way she writes the intersections between people and the way she writes the relationships between men and women is with and indescribable wholeness

Love

Connection to other people

How we connect

What makes us disconnect

Abuse

Trauma

Extremely common

Abuse as it relates to love

Not mutually exclusive

Something that makes loving harder

Something that a lot of us deal with

How wonderful it is to love and be loved

The feeling of serving other people

Love not being transactional

Self

It’s a core to all of my work, I don’t feel shy about my work being autobiographical, I feel it kind of has to be

Topics Derived From These Themes

The thing about deriving a topic is right now I don’t have a lot of wide reaching themes, or at least the ones I do either don’t have social implications, or if they do I have a lot of baggage with them because there is work I want to do that I’m getting caught up in. I’m starting from the point of what would be visually interesting as opposed to what the actual project is about. I think I need to start with what I’m interested in more broadly, I can pull from project ideas later, I won’t exhaust these topics any time soon. So let’s look through the list; what do I care about?

I care about the way that men and women are socialized to interact with each other

About how gender can be both an axis to understand each other, but often stands in the way of relating due to gendered socialization

Contexts: Western society, specifically America

I care about the ways that horror both demonizes and empowers the marginalized

Through a long and storied history

My focus would be on queer people

I care about what a gender anthropology can tell us about ourselves and others

Currently and in the past

I care about the ways in which trans bodies are seen

Through a lens of transformation

And through a lens of mutilation and destruction

Killing the original owner

Most specifically trans men/trans masculine people

How we’re removed from our own bodies; our own pallbearer

I care about the ways in which trans bodies are seen under a variety of lenses and the dehumanizing and empowering effects it can have.

Goals of exploring self, transformation, the act of making, and the mixture of many different mediums.

What do I want out of this project?

To do something physically large

Maybe imposing

To combine a lot of the skills I have and mediums I enjoy

Printmaking

Ceramics

Illustration

Comics and story telling

To do something personal

Honestly? To impress other people

To have something actually finished instead of simply conceptual

Though I do want to explore medium and material as well

I want it to be understood

I want to be understood

Mediums list

Proficient

Printmaking

Relief: lino, woodblock

Drypoint

Screenprinting

On paper and fabric

Drawing

Digital

This is something I keep shying away from as a finished product but I’m exceptional at digital illustration, I should use that skill

Charcoal

Acrylics

Watercolor

Ceramics

Mold making

Hand crafting

Writing

Comic making

Explore

Ceramics

Glazes

Larger molds

Fabrics

Sewing

Weaving

Knitting/crocheting

Painting/drawing

Pastels

Oil + chalk

Colored pencil

Watercolor

Fifteen Projects

I care about the ways in which trans bodies are seen under a variety of lenses and the dehumanizing and empowering effects it can have.

Goals of exploring self, transformation, the act of making, and the mixture of many different mediums.

Becoming, Busan Biennale 2010. Yishay Garbasz

Photos, steel, makrolon, motor, light, wood, foil, cloth, 300cm width. 230cm high (Zoetrope)

http://yishay.com/index.php/2019/08/10/becoming/

Motive + Method: It’s about the ways in which trans bodies are portrayed and talked about, but also incorporates a multitude of processes and materials in a way I am interested

Becoming an Image, 2012-Present and The Resilience of the 20%: Monument Project, by Cassils

https://www.cassils.net/#projects

Photos, 2000lb clay, performance, bronze casting

Motive + Method: their work is always highly charged and speaks to the perceived violence of trans people along with the ways in which they are seen. Their work is also extremely iterative and multimedia.

Both by Zackary DruckerThis Is What It Looks Like (To Go From One Thing to Everything)

Collaboration with Luke Gilford

Digital C-prints, dimensions variable

2013

Don’t Look at Me Like That

Collaboration with Manuel Vason

Duratrans on LED Lightbox

2010

https://www.zackarydrucker.com/photos

Motive; the former lends itself to the surgical angle in which trans people are seen, the later to the hatred of being seen against your will

Andy Warhol's 1975 "Ladies & Gentlemen" series

Screen print and paint on canvas, size variable (~2x3’) https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/warhol-exhibit-explores-roles-gender-sexuality-his-life-art-n1236516

Motive + Method + Media; an outsider’s perspective (or at least a non-out trans person's perspective) on the trans body as well as Warhol as an artist who popularized a lot of printmaking and mixed media printmaking techniques.

Gender Portraits, by Drew Riley, 2013-Present

Paint on canvas, size varies

https://www.genderportraits.com/paintings

Motive + Media; These are a twist on the traditional portraiture style and have a fun, bold way of portraying the subjects.

Eli Clare, by RIVA LEHRER

1997, acrylic on panel, 18" x 24"

Motive; Riva is an artist whose work focuses on the many different bodies that art stigmatized (often to the point of seeming monstrous).

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (Peter Hujar), 1989.

Courtesy the Estate of David Wojnarowicz and P·P·O·W, New York

https://elephant.art/how-david-wojnarowiczs-photographs-helped-me-overcome-my-grief-17052021/

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (One Day This Kid...)

1990

https://whitney.org/collection/works/16431

Motive + Method; unique ways in which queer bodies are portrayed, especially around violence and death as well as the combination of words and visuals.

FRANCIS BACON, 1909 - 1992. STUDY FOR PORTRAIT OF JOHN EDWARDS

signed, titled and dated 1986 on the reverse

oil, pastel and aerosol paint on canvas

198 by 147.5 cm. 78 by 58 in.

https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2020/evening-sale-london/francis-bacon-study-for-portrait-of-john-edwards

Motive + Media; the way the body is portrayed in such an odd and uncomfortable way as well as the way the paint has been layered and manipulated.

Lorenza Böttner, “Untitled” (1982), black and white photography, size variable

https://hyperallergic.com/494092/lorenza-bottner-requiem-for-the-norm/

Motive; portrayals of otherized bodies

Lorenza Böttner, “Untitled” (1986), pastel crayon on paper

Motive + Material; contrast with the other piece

Juliana Huxtable, Untitled in the Rage (Nibiru Cataclysm)

Date 2015

Medium Inkjet print

Dimensions 40 x 30 inches (101.6 x 76.2 cm)

https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/juliana-huxtable

https://www.hungertv.com/editorial/the-future-juliana-huxtable/

Motive + Method; This is one example of a long series of portraits along a similar theme. Her work is very iterative

Catherine Opie, Self-Portrait/Pervert, chromogenic print, 1994.Catherine Opie, Self-Portrait/Nursing, chromogenic print, 31 inches, 2004

https://arthistoryteachingresources.org/lessons/queer-art-1960s-to-the-present/

https://art21.org/artist/catherine-opie/

Miss D'vine I, 2007, Zanele Muholi South African, b. 1972

Chromogenic print

30 1/10 × 30 1/10 in

76.5 × 76.5 cm

Edition ⅗

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/zanele-muholi-miss-dvine-i

Motive; an intersection between identities. A uniquely Black African look at queerness.

Ndlunkulu, 2021

Beads glued on plywood Work

30 3/10 × 23 2/5 in

77 × 59.5 cm

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/zanele-muholi-ndlunkulu

Motive + Method; taking photos and turning into a beaded piece

Re-branding My Love, Njideka Akunyili Crosby

2011

Charcoal, acrylic, collage and Xerox transfers on paper

5.5 ft.× 4.5 ft.

http://www.njidekaakunyilicrosby.com/work/re-branding-my-love

Material + Method; multimedia collage and layered printmaking work revolving around the body

Roberto LugoWhitney Houston / Shirley Chisholm Urn, 2017

Method + Material; his work is intensely narrative even within single pieces and combines printmaking and ceramic techniques

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-20-artists-shaping-future-ceramics

Yun Hee LeeThe Castle Of The Spider's Web, 2017

ATELIER AKI

Method + Material; narrative ceramic piece that are non-sequential

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-20-artists-shaping-future-ceramics

Title: OriginsArtist: David Spriggs

Location: Collection Pierre Miron, Montreal

Date: 2018

Size: Each artwork 53 x 186 x 28 cm / 21 x 73 x 11 inches

https://davidspriggs.art/portfolio/origins/

Materials: Painted layered transparencies in display case

Method + Material; layering is a method I’m interested in using to create both depth and a sense of time

Nick Cave, 2012 Soundsuit

made from buttons, wire, bugle beads, wood and upholstery, ~6’

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/15/t-magazine/nick-cave-artist.html

Motive + Method; transformations of the body + collage

Frida Kahlo Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair 1940

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78333

Motive

Critical Question

Material:

How can I combine illustration, printmaking, and ceramics in a way that represents the diversity of the queer experience?

How can the materiality of the peice reflect the subject of the piece itself?

Method:

How can narrative and iteration be used as a reflection of the self?

How can layering be used to show the multiple ways in which trans people are seen?

Motive:

How can I combine both positive and negative depictions of trans people in a way that is empowering to queer viewers?

Finalized

How can layering and narrative be used to combine both positive and negative depictions of trans people in a way that is empowering to queer viewers?

Three Projects Brainstorm

Brainstorm

Aging

Me and/or other trans people as we age

Transformation comic

Huge multi media piece that uses layering to show the monstrous and the divine

Follows a narrative

Possibly a linear progression of time

Me growing up

Someone growing up

A transition

Has words

Either in the piece or at least following a written poem

Potentially the name and subtitle of piece could be this poem

Rot to growth

Progression of someone rotting and dying in their original form only to flourish

Plant symbolism

Reverse surgical portraits

Turning the idea of mutilation around

Unwanted body parts are portrayed as rotting flesh, removing them is freeing

Porcelain dolls

An idyllic ceramic doll of a female child cracks/is degraded in a series to reveal a grow man trapped inside

I would want this to be a progression from less to more from fake to real

Lovers

A trans man and a trans woman

Potentially a variety of t4t couples

A series of prints/illustrations of couples

Potentially based on some of the imagery from Running Up That Hill

Dissolving

Becoming real

Becoming abstract

Accompanying the images 2 large nesting dolls

Equal amount of pink and blue parts

The same shapes

Best case is they fit together like lovers

The outside could be a different/more distinctly human shape

The inner layers could be lighter and lighter in color

Viewers are encouraged to move them around together, mixing the different colored pieces

Whether this is a top and bottom pieces or just one larger body-shaped piece

Bestial

Series of trans people as any animal/mythical creature/monster of their choosing

Half man half beast would be best

Great time to practice character design

These could be in a variety of forms and styles

Depending on what people are looking for and how they see themselves

Main purpose is to show the dichotomy between how other see us and how we see ourselves

And the power we can take back through monstrosity

Project 1

Transformation: Large scale multimedia comic (combining multiple forms of printmaking, photography, illustration, and potentially ceramics) following a narrative growing up/transition with layered transparencies representing the different ways trans people are perceived.

Project 2

Rot and Growth: A multimedia portrait series that begins with interviewing the subjects of each portrait. Each portrait comes in two parts: the first before transition/surgery and after. The before portrait represents unwanted body parts as rotting and grotesque, reminiscent of the “mutilation” language used against us; the after shows what transition is actually like: joyous, life bringing. Transition does not have to be a physical thing in this case, but a realization and acceptance of the body.

Project 3

Bestial: Starting with interviews, this multimedia portrait series reflects the way trans people are demonized and allows for the subjects to take back their power by embodying the monsters they are seen as. Each subject picks an animal/mythical creature/monster to be combined with and the interview guides the medium the portrait is created in.

#8/30 #brainstorm #writing #journal

0 notes

merida-x-macguffin · 6 years

Note

do you have any ideas for a Brave 2? i really want a sequel

I’m never sure if I really want a sequel to Brave or not, but if there was one and I had supreme godly powers over the narrative? Oh my god, hold onto your buttcheeks mate.

There are so many loose ends I want to see tied up and, erm, non-bear oriented Scottish mythology to be tackled.

First the major loose ends.

- You don’t fuck with the stones

In Scottish folklore, custom, and tradition you just don’t mess with old stones. Hell I’m not even that superstitious, but you wouldn’t catch me drawing so much as a handlebar moustache on an old standing stone (mind you, I am a coward). People are still superstitious about standing stones today. Not so long ago in the 1960s there was a building site in my town that caused a lot of anger in the neighbourhood because they had moved an ancient standing stone. They were eventually forced to move it back (right smack bam in front of the house they had built).

A great deal of mystery surrounds the purpose of these megaliths. Were they used in Bronze Age rituals? If so, what about the older sites, such as the Callanish Stones (the inspiration for the stone circle in Brave) which were erected in the Neolithic era? Were stone circles a kind of early lunar observatory? Did they align with surrounding mountain ranges? The explanations in folklore are just as numerous: the Grannie Stone in Irvine tells the story of a Goddess turned to stone. Sometimes the stones are said to be haunted by faeries or ancestors, or they were giants turned to stone after refusing to convert to Christianity. In other stories the stones are soldiers- private armies ready to be called upon by their master. In these tales bad things tend to happen to those who harm the stones.

The climax of Brave saw Mor'du being crushed by the stone Elinor had broken, thus symbolically breaking the cycle of violence. But if we’re to follow the logic of Scottish lore, not only has a stone been felled, but a sacred circle has been broken. There could be consequences to that. Can’t imagine the Bear Witch would be much chuffed with it either. Seriously, there are tons of stories you could pull from this. Get on it, Pixar!

- Elinor’s necklace

At first Elinor’s necklace seemed to be important to be the plot. After all, we see Elinor wearing it in the film’s very first scene. In the end its purpose was largely symbolic. But maybe there’s more to explore there? The witch was certainly quick to snap it up. Maybe there’s a reason why… The necklace bore a symbol of three bears chasing each other endlessly, much like the Ouroboros symbol, and the stone circle that features in the film. However, once Merida gives away her mother’s necklace to the witch we never hear nor see of it again. So Brave ends with the stone circle broken and the necklace bearing an infinity symbol lost. Definitely something to work with there! Add to that is Elinor’s crown. We never see her reclaim it (but I guess that’s also symbolic of her own personal journey and changing attitude to her role as Queen and mother).

- The Ex-Suitors

I really, REALLY hate Once Upon a Time’s portrayal of the suitors. It’s just too easy, too obvious and too insulting to portray the young lords as stupid, arrogant dudebros who disrespect Merida because she’s a woman. How about a story where Merida and the young heirs have to put aside their differences and work together, preparing the four of them as future leaders? There’s a ton of stuff you could work with here. When we last see them, Wee Dingwall is slobbering kisses up Merida’s arm, MacGuffin has struck up a strong friendship with MacIntosh, and if we’re to take the cut epilogue from the artbook as canon (which I do as it explains certain things in the movie), Merida sees something in Young MacGuffin. I wouldn’t want a sequel to be a romance, however. I like the idea of hinting at Merida and MacGuffin as a future couple, without their romance leading a sequel or even being a major sub-plot.

I think one of the reasons Brave wasn’t so popular with audiences was its narrow focus on two characters: Merida and her mother. Now I personally love that. We rarely get mother/daughter stories that are adventurous and fun and genuine. But I wouldn’t want a sequel to have the same narrow focus. As Merida grows, her world should expand and a sequel should reflect this, developing relationships with people outside her family. Her ex-suitors are perfect for this. When we’re first introduced to them, they appear very one dimensional. MacIntosh is arrogant, MacGuffin is shy, and Dingwall is …uhm. Odd. By the end of the film, like Merida they are revealed to be more than first meets the eye: MacGuffin may be shy, but he’s also empathetic and kind, aware of the unfair situation the suitors and Merida have been forced into. MacIntosh may be arrogant, but he also cares deeply for his father and shows signs of great leadership. Dingwall is surprisingly lucid, even eloquent - despite his vague stares, he has strong views on his situation. They’re far from fully-fleshed out characters, but there’s enough there to build on. After all, if Brave is partly about not judging people by first appearances, then it would be good to explore and challenge audience expectations. Just because MacIntosh is arrogant and a bit of a git doesn’t mean he can’t have heart. Just because Dingwall is a bit of an oddball doesn’t mean he can’t be observant and clever. Just because MacGuffin is shy and fat doesn’t mean he can’t be brave or a romantic interest.

You’ve also got the makings of a cracking comedic set up with Merida and the young lords. Imagine Dingwall as this cunning Machiavellian strategist who also has a tendency of breaking into sonnet around Merida; MacGuffin trying desperately to keep the peace between MacIntosh and Merida who constantly pit their egos against each other; the occasional sweetly awkward moment between Merida and MacGuffin, with typical gender roles completely reversed (think MacGuffin damsel in distress XD); MacIntosh being the butt of every joke, but too enamoured with himself to realise. Each character should present some kind of challenge for Merida or support her in what she lacks. MacIntosh’s big ego presents a challenge to her own pride and ego. Where Merida tends to be a bit hot-blooded and quick to jump, Dingwall hangs back and observes. MacGuffin is humble and shy, where Merida is bold and brave. He is the antithesis to Merida’s stubbornness and opens up potential romantic feelings which are entirely new to her and take adjusting to.

Ultimately, I think the focus of a Brave sequel should take its lead from the first. Brave is largely a film about family, coming of age, and the connection we have to the rest of the world. The tapestry in Brave symbolises our interconnectedness - our decisions don’t just affect our own fates, but the fates of those around us (especially if you’re a privileged person with power). So a sequel should really be the next chapter in Merida and her kingdom’s story. What are the consequences of the first film’s ending? The stone circle is broken. Could that be symbolic of a threat to the unity of the four clans? After all, the Lords didn’t exactly intend their sons to stop competing for Merida’s hand.

Merida has had her first real taste of leadership and that should definitely be built upon. Will she be the future leader and Queen of Dunbroch, or will that title fall to one of her three brothers? Her relationship with her mother has changed, so how about exploring her relationship with her father? Fergus never believed in magic and his ignorance almost led to the death of his wife by his own hand. Would he blame the Bear witch? I can also totally see Fergus secretly preparing Merida to take his place when he’s gone, with or without Merida’s knowledge. How would the four Lords feel about that when it’s revealed?

I think if Brave was to get a sequel it should be part of a trilogy, with each film marking a new turning point and chapter in Merida’s life. This would tie in nicely with the recurring number 3 in the film: the symbol of the three bears on Elinor’s necklace, the triplets, Merida’s relationship with her parents, the three lords, the three clans, the three suitors. If this is Merida’s story, then her relationship with each of the aforementioned should be the focus of a trilogy. And I think at the forefront of that should be her relationship with the three young lords. The kingdom was forged in Fergus’s friendship with MacIntosh, MacGuffin and Dingwall. Therefore, if Merida is to lead then the second part of her story should be about challenging her (and the audiences’) first impressions of the young lords and forging a bond with them, strengthening the kingdom and thus symbolically repairing the broken stone circle.

The second part of the trilogy should also introduce a major conflict which has its roots in the first film. Maybe there’s a looming threat on the horizon; a supernatural threat i.e. the broken stone circle (could be symbolic of the threat to the four clans unity?) or the threat of invaders? Maybe it’s both?

So yeah, I think there are a TON of things you could do with Brave. I know it’s not one of Disney Pixar’s more popular films, but that’s easy to fix. Merida continues to be a fan favourite, so expanding the scope of her story would be a risk worth taking. Definitely more so than Cars 3 or Toy Story 4. -_-

#Brave #Young MacGuffin #Merida x Young MacGuffin #MeriGuffin #MerGuffin #Merida #Disney #Pixar #Weasley rants #meta #Brave sequel #Brave 2 #headcanons #rants

377 notes · View notes

muna111917-blog · 6 years

Text

labelling Theory (media)

Muna Salim AL-Mahri

ID: 111917

Date: March 18, 2018

What is Labelling Theory?

The launch of a number of names or the unwanted adhesion to the individual by others, making it unacceptable in society or community support. Which makes him alienate the society in which he lives because of the state of rejection in society, which makes him in a state of continuous psychological and social imbalance.

The theory also focuses on deviant behavior, which means that the society stigmatized to the deviant person. This deviation is a preliminary deviation in the sense that the individual comes in a slanted behavior but will not excite society so as not to call him deviation, the individual will not repeat this error. While the secondary deviation may come from deviant behavior of the individual, it called by the community with a word indicating its deviation, which makes it repeat the deviation from the reaction of society towards it.

What is the relationship between media and labelling theory?

The media have a role in the theory of labeling. Media used to classify these people and influence others to look at them according to the classification they put in them.

Examples:

Religion:

Western media reflected the stereotypical image of Muslims as terrorists, where Western society was influencing by the fact that Arabs are terrorists.

Ethnicity: (White, Black)

The media shows that blacks are criminals and gangs and have no value in the white community.

Persons responsible for labelling and affected category:

· The signatories are the owners of authority

· The rich are responsible for harming the poor

· Men have the power to harm women

· As well as older people on young people

Understanding:

By understanding that the classification of the individual in the category of criminals, and even not so, it affects him. Once someone have been identifying as skewed, it is very difficult to remove that label. Also that the person needs a long time to get rid of this classification.

Media representation of people with disabilities

The category of the disabled has suffered a kind of rejection and lack of care since ancient times and less the role of institutions to care for them. The role of the media in portraying this category, especially in films and drama, has been reflected in the fact that they are pathetic and cynical characters, evil or hateful figures. But with the passage of years and the development of society, the media has become an important role in the emergence of people with special needs better.

· The image of the disabled in the series Bab Al Hara: presented a distorted image of the disabled by portraying the image of "blind" murders in the hot.

· Indian film "Taare Zameen Par" He is unable to differentiate between letters and words, unable to understand written text and spelling, and he writes words and numbers in reverse. His father sent a boarding school away from his family and his small world, which made Ishan feel desperate and frustrated by that situation.

· The Latin America inspiring story about the artist “Frida” that was made into a movie in 2002, where it shows Frida suffering from a huge accident that had made her a crippled for a period. Yet she managed to regain her strength and to be back on her feet where she had accomplished a lot and became an icon of female empowerment.

· Japanese film about the story of Tsukasa, who suffered a serious car accident, had problems in memory, and forced to use the wheelchair for her inability to move, trying with her mother to live a normal life as much as possible and yet lived a love story and got married.

Understanding

I think the traditional media have not focused on people with special needs, but now this category has a clear interest in the new media. The way in which people with special needs are filming in the media affects how ordinary people deal with this category. This category of people has also been subjecting to negative portrayals by the media. But when we look at reality, we see many achievements in this category.

Media and Portrayal of gender

The media plays an important role in reflecting the stereotype of men and women in society. Such as photographing women doing housework and on the other side the man shows his work outside the house.

What is the stereotypes of women in the media?

· Lady kitchen

· interested in fashion and make-up

· thinking passion

· not mind, weak decision-making

· do not work

· raising children

· she loves shopping

What is the stereotypes of men in the media?

1-Hollywood

The male in American films usually appears to be strong, brave, successful, adventurous, Unemotional. Examples of films:

· 127 hours

· Fences

2-Arab

The man in the Arab drama, he is strong, authoritarian and oppresses women as well as not raising children. Examples of films:

· "The Game of Death"

3-South America

The man appears to be a criminal, immigrating.

Example:

· The Secret in Their Eyes

· Frontera

What is the stereotypes of LGBT in the media?

Since ancient times, the media has not focused on the ideals because society does not accept this category, but with the development or progress of the media, this group has a place in society.

Example:

· Carol movie: The story of a married woman falls in love with a shopkeeper during the 1950s in New York City.

Understanding

The media reflected the stereotype of men and women as well as homosexuals, but not necessarily all that the media rightly reflects. The new media has also contributed to the emergence of women and men closer to what is in fact, in addition to making the community sympathetic and receptive to LGBT.

2 notes · View notes

chisimage · 4 years

Text

Discussion of xenomania in East Asia and racialised migrants (‘foreign bridges’) in Taiwan

Author/ Chi Chu

The phenomenon of xenomania, such as the western dream, is prevalent in Asian. The slang, ‘the foreign moon is much rounder’, is deeply rooted in East Asian (EA) societies. Accordingly, the ‘white’ not only becomes the general standard, but also causes a presentation of self-denial of EA values. Therefore, this reaction paper through perspectives from Houria Bouteldja, Ben Ratskoff, Amira Ekwakil and other scholars will discuss the influence of ‘white patriarchy’ in EA and the racialisation of ‘foreign bride’ migrants from Southeast Asia (SEA). It will feature examples from EA and Taiwan concerning xenomania in cross-cultural romance (CCR) between local women and western men, and xenophobia surrounding transnational marriages between local men and SEA female migrants.

The first discussion is about how white patriarchy increases the perceived inferiority of East Asian males. In 2013, users of the Taiwan online forum (mobile 01, 2013) discussed the results of an experiment , which presented that Taiwanese female users of the Skout dating app have more interest in Western profile pictures than Eastern Asian profile pictures. This is a good example of the faith East Asian females have in CCR. Another case of this reported by Tomorrow News came in 2014 when David Campbell (White American) shared a series of videos of them picking-up Asian females in East Asia on the internet. These incidents provoked a series of arguments and petition #StopDavidBond (Kim, 2015). These cases indeed reveal the xenomania for the West by Eastern females, and the attitudes of white patriarchy and superiority held by a white male.

There are two historical reasons for these social phenomena. First, during the period of two world wars, the world’s great powers (white powers) divided up and colonised Asia and affected the social values of Asians. For example, China, including Chinese, was labelled the ‘Sick man of Asia’ (Scott 2008:9). Such discrimination and racism, as highlighted by Brah (2001), has always been a gendered and sexualised phenomenon. Men in oppressed ethnic groups are classified as ‘feminine’, and ‘the white man imagines the indigenous man as his feminine foil — passive and docile’ (Ratskoff 2018). This direct discrimination informs a sense of superiority for western values regarding Asia. Secondly, the traditional hierarchical system[1]is rooted in national characters influenced by traditional Eastern morality and philosophy. Consequently, Asian individuals internalise the national characters and subconsciously hold an inferiority complex while experiencing the successful progress and economic development of Western society. It is evident that Western hegemony and white patriarchy still affect the pursuit of the West (developed) in contemporary EA society, even though the economy and development of China and other EA countries have gradually taken off in recent years. Moreover, the media renders the West a utopia. Like the film, Pierre et Djemila showed, ‘how detestable our families were and how desirable French society was’(cited in Bouteldja 2017). The internal inherent values of EA present the intersection between the influence of Western hegemony and white superiority, resulting in colonialism that exists in EA until now. Ultimately, it has facilitated the core values of the male in EA, leading to the EA males’ sense of inferiority and xenomania of EA females.

The second discussion will explore the influence of white patriarchy in EA through transnational marriage between Taiwanese men and SEA ‘foreign brides’. Over time, ‘inferior other’ (Hsia 2000, 2018; Cast net 2009) has been a label for SEA migrants in highly developed regions and countries of Northeast Asia. For example, Taiwanese society labels SEA women who get married to Taiwanese men as ‘foreign bride.’ This term in Chinese, 外籍新娘, means ‘external brides (Others)’, both discriminatory and racialised. The reason for transnational marriage is that, for Taiwanese women, Taiwanese men are secondary compared to Western men as the cases mentioned above. As a consequence, Taiwanese men have chosen SEA women to fill traditional female roles in the family. In addition, because Taiwan’s economic development is better than some SEA countries, many SEA women have decided to pursue a better life through marriage with Taiwanese men (APMM, 2007). These observations show that the first comparison is between ‘Western’ (other/ developed/ superior) and ‘Taiwanese’ (self/ developing/ inferior), and secondly, ‘Taiwanese’ (self/ developed/ superior) and ‘SEA’ (other/ developing/ inferior). Furthermore, Taiwanese women, who accept Western values, juxtapose Asian and Western men, indirectly contributing to the sense of inferiority of EA males and the racism and discrimination aimed at SEA foreign brides. For these reasons, derived from the phenomenon of xenomania, transnational marriages racialise SEA foreign brides as ‘inferior others’ and affects the ‘xenophobia’. Hence, the values of white patriarchy directly/ indirectly affect EA and the transnational migrants of SEA.

Overall, as mentioned above, under the multi-faceted oppression of gender, race, class, and colonisation, colonised peoples are restricted to present themselves. As Elwakii (2017) states, the diversity of cultural forms is replaced by gradual homogeneity. The tolerance of heterogeneity has become a social issue faced by Taiwan and other EA regions. However, there are some attempts to reverse this situation. ‘We can never be free while our men are oppressed but also it is imperative to our struggle that we build a strong black women’s movement’ (Bouteldja, cited in Ratskoff 2018). Much literature and many films have portrayed Asian males beat up gangsters and protect Asian female migrants to present their masculinity (Shie 2009:45). Also, SEA migrants in Taiwan have started a Taiwanese new immigrants’ movement to promote the equal rights and replace the name ‘foreign bride’ with ‘marriage migrants’ (APMM 2007). All efforts resist the influence of white patriarchy and intangible colonialization. The continuous decolonisation by Asian males and the movement executed by Taiwanese new immigrants attempt to assist indigenous EA cultures and marriage migrants in rebuilding self-discussion and in the formation of subjectivity as feminist — ‘a thought and a form of resistance’ (Bouteldja 2017). Hence, regardless of invisible colonial oppression by western values and ‘white patriarchy’ in EA or the extensive discrimination of SEA migrants, the most critical social actions of decolonisation in EA need to be carried out by East Asians themselves, to emancipate intangible colonial oppression.

Reference

APMM (2007). Attitude of the Local People to Foreign Brides: A Research Project by the Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants. <http://www.apmigrants.org/articles/researches/research-attitude-local-people-foreign-bride.pdf>.

Bouteldja, H. (2017). We, Indigenous Women. E-Flux, 84. <https://www.e-flux.com/journal/84/151312/we-indigenous-women/>.

Brah, A. (2001). Re-framing Europe: gendered racisms, ethnicities and nationalisms in contemporary Western Europe. In Rethinking European Welfare: Transformations of European Social Policy, edited by Janet Fink, Gail Lewis, and John Clarke, 207-230. London: Sage.

Cast net (2009). The dreams of transnational marriages. [In Chinese] <https://castnet.nctu.edu.tw/castnet/article/1583?issueID=64>.

David Campbell personal website (2014). David Campbell Asian Woman Womanizer from America. <Retrieved from: https://davidcampbellasian.wordpress.com/>.

Ekwakil, A. (2017). Reflections on intersections: Searching for an anti-racist, pro-migrant feminist response to sexual assault committed by migrants. Kohl, 3(1). < https://kohljournal.press/reflections-on-intersections>.

Hsia, H. C. (2018). From Foreign Bride to Taiwanese new immigrants [In Chinese]. <https://opinion.cw.com.tw/blog/profile/65/article/6575>.

Hsiao, H. H. Michael (2003). Taiwan and SEA: South Policy and Vietnamese Foreign Brides [In Chinese]. Taipeo: Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies, RCHSS, Academia Sincia.

Kim, E. (2015). #StopDavidBond from harassing & sexually exploiting women in Asia. <https://www.change.org/p/stopdavidbond-from-harassing-sexually-exploiting-women-in-asia>.

Mobile 01 (2013). the phenomenon of xenomania of Taiwanese female on SKout [In Chinese]. <https://www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=292&t=3421428>.

PTT (2019). CCR板、ㄈㄈ尺板、真愛無國界板 [In Chinese]. <http://ptt.cc/>.

Ratskoff, B. (2018). Liberation Utopias: Houria Bouteldja on Feminism, Anti-Semitism, and the Politics of Decolonization. Los Angeles Review of Books. <https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/liberation-utopias-houria-bouteldja-on-feminism-anti-semitism-and-the-politics-of-decolonization/>.

Scott, D. (2008). China and the international system, 1840-1949: power, presence, and perceptions in a century of humiliation. NY: State University of New York Press.

Shie, S. T.(2009) . Masculinity and Desire Economics in Taiwan's Postcolonial literatures [In Chinese]. Journal of Taiwan Literary Studies, 9, 37-67.

Tomorrow news (2014). Hong Kong saw this video of westerners gaming their women and went berserk. <http://us.tomonews.com/hong-kong-saw-this-video-of-westerners-gaming-their-women-and-went-berzerk-2927513>.

[1] The solid social values of hierarchy in East Asia are derived from Five Disciplines (君臣父子), Four categories of the people (士農工商) and traditional Male chauvinism (男尊女卑).

#gendering #migration #asia

0 notes