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bau-rookie · 3 years

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a close examination of Hotch and Foyet

in which Hotch’s greatest strength becomes his fatal flaw.

(a/n: super long essay, because i don’t know how else to consume media apparently lol. i’ve been sitting on this since “100″ because it is really sad and I just wanted to make sure I get all my thoughts in order. It is, to my discovery, Aaron Hotchner’s birthday today, so what better way to celebrate than by explaining all the ways the Foyet arc reads like a Greek tragedy and how Hotch is an amazingly well-written character. Sorry the only way I can think about paying tribute is by making myself sad. Oh there’s GIFs too! I made them and that’s neat :D)

I. Ingredients for a Greek tragedy.

Greek tragedies stem from classical plays, usually about the nobility, and is centered around their struggle against the Gods/Fate. The noble character has a hamartia, or a fatal flaw, usually their own arrogance, that brings upon their own downfall.

Technically, Criminal Minds would fall under the category of modern tragedy which focuses more on common people and everyday problems. (Though you could argue that being a BAU profiler isn’t your typical career, which makes our characters noble not by blood, but in spirit.)

In modern tragedy, there is less of an emphasis on the involvement of a higher power or Fate. Every bad thing that happens is of mankind’s own making, and this is something that CM discusses often, that evil isn’t necessarily brought upon by a higher power. It’s brought upon by ordinary people choosing to do terrible things.

And Foyet is no different. He chose to kill all these people because he wanted to, but his fascination with Hotch and how his plans for him play out, entrap Hotch in a tragedy more Greek in nature.

What Foyet ultimately does is take Hotch’s greatest strength—his stoic resolve to serve justice—and uses it to hold him personally responsible for the death of his ex-wife, all while bending the hand of Fate to his will.

II. Hotch as a noble character.

In “Omnivore” we are introduced to the Reaper and the many ways he tries to exert control and power over his victims. After killing so many times loses its appeal, the Reaper decides to toy with detective Tom Shaunessey by offering him a deal—if you stop hunting me, I will stop hunting them.

While we sympathize with Shaunessey simply trying to save lives, he does so with the knowledge that he is deliberately letting a serial killer go free. The fear and the guilt eats away at him until his death.

Hotch, on the other hand, quickly establishes himself to be a resolute pursuer of justice. We don’t get to make those decisions. We don’t let them get away with it. He holds onto the idea that they have no right to decide who lives or dies and that the victims that unsubs like the Reaper takes, are not something he, or anyone in his line of work, should feel responsible for. Their sole responsibility is to stop them.

This isn’t to say that Hotch is unaffected by the increasing number of bodies. When he turns down the deal and the Reaper attacks the bus full of people, he is visibly shaken by this, so much so that we see Hotch cry for the first time. It takes Rossi delivering some tough love to remind him of what’s important.

Look, if you want to end up like Shaunessy, like Gideon, blaming yourself for everything, you go ahead. But that voice in your head—it’s not your conscience. It’s your ego. This isn’t about us, Aaron. It’s about the bad guys. That why we profile them. It’s their fault. We’re just guys doing a job. And when we stop doing it someone else will.

Hotch and the team in general, are faced with constant reminders that they are only human. They are fallible and cannot control every outcome.

Not everyone can handle the stresses of being a profiler. Despite the horrors, the chance of failing, Hotch’s greatest strength is his stoic resolve. He’s become our beloved Unit Chief, the person on the team who takes on the most pressure, takes it upon himself to, at times, shield the rest of the team from the greater burdens. Personally, he’s arguably also the one who sacrificed the most to have this job, having lost his marriage.

Yet despite the horrors, despite the toll, Hotch shows up for the job anyway. Because he can’t imagine letting the bad guys get away with it.

III. Foyet as a representation of Fate

“The Eye of Providence. A symbol adopted by the U.S. Government with the words: Annuit Coeptis. Latin for “Providence or fate has favored our undertakings.” The Reaper seems to see himself as the personification of Fate.” — Dr. Spencer Reid, “Omnivore”

From the beginning Foyet is shown to have a flair for theatrics. He leaves markings of the Eye of Providence, writes Fate in blood, calls himself the The Reaper. He has delusions of grandeur and posits himself as a higher power, one who gets to decide the course of other people’s lives. Everyone who has the misfortune of coming into contact with the Reaper, becomes another chess piece in his twisted game of Fate.

In another life, Hotch would never cross paths with Foyet. But because he did, Foyet acts as Fate, bringing down divine intervention in the form of driving Hotch into a tragedy of his own making.

Foyet acting as Fate is, paradoxically, also an argument against the actual existence of Fate. Everything that happens is a result of Foyet’s choices. It is him, a man, and not Fate who is choosing to kill, maim and be cruel.

When it came to Shaunessy, Foyet also emphasized pinning the blame of the death of innocent lives on the failure of law enforcement. It isn’t Fate when there’s something you could do to stop it. Shaunessy took the deal because he felt personally responsible for the possible loss of lives, an outcome that Foyet pretty much predicted, but one that doesn’t really affect him. Shaunessy agrees, he gets off on controlling the police. If he doesn’t, well, he can just keep on killing.

Foyet repeats the deal with Hotch. Offers him the deal, which Hotch refuses then immediately murders 7 people on the bus, setting a chain of cause and effect that makes it seems like Hotch’s actions led to this gruesome outcome. Again, placing the blame personally, on Hotch. And Hotch does blame himself, if momentarily.

Later, once Foyet escapes and corners Hotch in his own apartment, he makes it clear, you should have made a deal. Foyet acts as a vessel for Fate, a vehicle through which the consequences of Hotch’s actions are served.

Foyet takes it a step further, when he puts Haley and Jack in witness protection. Left all the usual clues, to simply say your wife and child are in danger because you never took the deal. I hold all the cards here, your fate will come for you eventually.

Then Foyet disappears, and waits. Leaving Hotch filled with guilt over endangering his ex-wife and child, at the mercy of Foyet’s arbitration of Fate.

IV. Dominoes and fatal flaws

By the time “100″ rolls around, you’re so captivated by the action happening on screen that it’s easy to overlook how we got there. When I first watched this season, I had assumed that Foyet would be put on the back burner until the end of the season. His quicker-than-expected return seems to be happenstance, the writers behind-the-scenes doing some plot magic, but if you reexamine the events that lead up to “100″ we see Foyet’s greater machinations at play.

On the surface, the preceding episode “Outfoxed” seems to be a straight forward throwback to an earlier case. Faced with a family annihilator, Hotch and Emily visit the original Fox in prison, believing the current unsub might be a copycat. The episode seems to be about the mental toll being a profiler brings, with Emily contending with a sense of disgust at having to get intimate with a serial killer (post-”Lauren” this reads very differently, but I digress). Until right at the end, when they reveal the admirer letters were actually from Foyet, and the one being outfoxed is Hotch.

When the events of “100″ go down, we hear Foyet repeatedly blame Hotch for what happens with Haley, calls out what we see as a noble resolve to instead be Hotch’s fatal flaw. It was the same thing that led Haley to leave him, a failing borne from Hotch’s own ego, the part of him that insists that it be him who catches the bad guys, that it be him who risks it all. And Foyet uses that to his advantage, uses Hotch’s resolve to trick him into thinking that maybe he did cause all of this tragedy to happen.

One small detail that caught my attention, and set me on this Greek tragedy path, is when they try to track down Foyet in “100″, Garcia notes that he had set an internet search alert for the name “Peter Rhea.”

At this point, Foyet was ready to go after Haley and Jack. He already had pictures and surveillance of the U.S. Marshall in charge of them. He could’ve gone and killed them anytime, but that’s not how Foyet operates. He needs Hotch to feel personally responsible for things ending badly. He set the bait with the letters and simply had to wait for Hotch and the team to get close enough, to find Peter Rhea. This is, of course, incredibly risky. The team could catch him before Foyet gets anywhere close to Haley and Jack, but Foyet is sure of himself and is an extensive planner. He made sure he was always two steps ahead.

The irony is that Foyet would never have gone after Haley and Jack if Hotch and the team didn’t get close to tracking him down. There’s an added layer of Spencer figuring out Foyet’s alias using his genius anagram deciphering brain and Garcia’s expert tech analyst skills. Foyet managed to hurt Hotch because this specific BAU team are just too damn good at their jobs.

Foyet set up dominoes that only Aaron Hotchner could tip to fall. He does it so well it almost feels like Fate.

V. The inevitability of fate

“Men heap together the mistakes of their lives and create a monster called destiny.” — John Hobbes, “Omnivore” closing quote.

A key aspect of Greek tragedy, is that Fate is often the result of divine intervention. They cause certain events to happen in certain ways so as to result in the most tragic outcome, usually death. It’s designed so that the audience is aware of what’s to come, and can see no other way for the story to end. The tragedy is supposed to feel inevitable.

One could argue, that there is no such thing as Fate. Life is simply a sequence of random happenstance, but our need to prescribe meaning to the chaos cobbles up stories of predetermined destinies. Especially when the idea of owning up to our mistakes and their consequences is too much.

All of this was the result of one sick man, George Foyet, choosing to be so cruel. And Hotch was simply a victim of circumstance because if Foyet wasn’t going after Hotch, he’d be going after someone else.

But what are the odds that Hotch’s first case as lead profiler happens to be The Boston Reaper? It was from that moment that Hotch’s fate was really sealed, he and Foyet would be forever intertwined.

Hotch, being who he is, had inadvertently, made the Reaper personal. Even when his BAU team was sent away, his resolve wouldn’t let the Reaper simply disappear. It led him to build his profile, alone and over many years. Any other person might’ve just let the case go, but not Hotch.

So when Shaunessy died and the Reaper resurfaced, the only person in the world who knows enough about the Reaper to track him down, is Hotch. It’s what leads him to George Foyet, a victim at first glance, and Hotch comes to him unaware that he is promising The Reaper a new, worthy adversary, one a decade in the making. And everything, from his prison escape, to his attack on Hotch in his apartment, plays out exactly as Foyet expects it to, because as much as Hotch can read him, Foyet can read his behavior too.

At the end of 5x03, “Reckoner”, Rossi talks about what could have been when it comes to his childhood sweetheart to Hotch. About how he was too obsessed with his job, with the hunt that he gave up his chance of having a family. Rossi warns Hotch, don’t make my mistakes, kid.

You have a family. When all this is over, what are you gonna do to make sure you’re not a lonely guy wondering why you let the purest thing in your life get away?

My initial reaction was that they were setting up for Hotch to leave the BAU for good. The man who hung on to the job so much that it cost him his marriage, for the first time, actually considers leaving it all behind him. Because what Rossi says to him, driven by the circumstances that Foyet has created, is too profound for him to ignore. Foyet is too big of a thing to just move on from once its over.

Of course, my hopes of Hotch riding off into sunset to live a quieter life and watch his son grow up were optimistic at best. It’s a fantasy that purposely ignores the reality of who Hotch is, simply because I want the alternative to be possible. By the time Haley is buried, and Strauss offers Hotch retirement, we already know what his answer is going to be. Because everything we know about this man can only lead us to one conclusion.

Aaron Hotchner is the man who goes after the bad guys, the man who doesn’t let them get away with it. No matter how much I yell at my screen about how Hotch should just retire and spend all his time with Jack, deep down I knew that was never going to happen. Him losing Haley and still going back to work, seems like the only logical outcome. It’s almost feels inevitable.

VI. Catharsis

The point of tragedy is, according to Aristotle, to achieve catharsis. The purging of emotion through the telling of another person’s suffering. And that’s what “100″ does (unless your heart is made of stone and you somehow did not tear up even once).

Others would say that tragedy is meant to teach us a lesson. Meant to teach us the limits of our mortal abilities, to warn against hubris and arrogance; to remind us that they are higher powers and unseen forces beyond our understanding or control.

Criminal Minds doesn’t try to give us that lesson. Like in so many previous cases, the premise of a crime procedural is really a way of examining human nature. Why do people do bad things? More often than not, though our profilers can figure out how an unsub goes from doing thing A to thing B, they don’t have a satisfying answer for why.

In Foyet’s case, he does all of this to Hotch because he can, because he enjoys making him suffer. It is evil, unnecessarily cruel. There is no sense to be found in what happened.

But “100″ does not deliver pure tragedy. It ended in the death of Haley but it also provided hope in the survival of Jack. Hotch finally rids the world of Foyet, though the way it went down, you can’t help but wonder about the price of justice, if the cost is too much for this one man to pay. But then the show reminds the audience, that this one man isn’t bearing that cost alone.

Aaron Hotchner has his team, his family, and with their support, a chance to recover from the tragedy that Foyet wrought.

I used to think that, despite being dead, George Foyet still won. He set out to hurt Hotch, and that’s exactly what he did. We’ve only seen Hotch openly cry twice at this point, and they both were directly caused by Foyet. And I suppose that’s still partly true. It’s hard to really tell with our stone-faced unit chief, but it’s hard to see how Foyet wouldn’t linger.

But that victory isn’t absolute. Foyet is gone, and he loses every time Jack gets to spend another day happy and alive. Foyet loses, every time Hotch shows up for the job and doesn’t let another unsub like him get away with it.

And maybe that’s the lesson. That though good doesn’t always triumph over evil, there is a way to move past tragedy. And that path lies not in solitude, in carrying the burden alone, but in the solace of our friends and family who can bear witness to all that we must face.

For all all my waxing poetic about how Hotch is a noble hero, this entire ordeal just shows how human he is. Yet despite his flaws and the tragedy, the core unassailable truth of who he is, the values he represents, remain unchanged.

He is Aaron Hotchner. The guy who hunts down guys like Foyet. The guy who doesn’t let the bad guys get away with it. The guy who, despite everything, managed to save his son. The guy who will keep his promise to the woman he was once married to, to teach their son that love is the most important thing. The guy who makes sure that his son knows that good people do exist.

Aaron Hotchner is the guy who, despite all the hurt, the pain and the loss, chooses to be the hero. And that’s the farthest thing from tragic.

#did i spend all day thinking too much about a fictional character?#hell yes #i don't know how else to be #i just think aaron hotchner is neat ok #and he deserves the happiest of birthdays #maybe i'll write a fic about it tomorrow #but for now i rest #criminal minds #charlie watches criminal minds #aaron hotchner #david rossi #george foyet #mine: gifs #criminal minds gifs

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prompt-master · 3 years

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Would you be willing to share how you might rewrite Yukizome, Sakakura, and Munakata to make them likable characters (if not ppl Bc there’s a big difference)???

ahhhhhhh this ask got me so stupidly excited that I was like wavin my hands around. I think about how to rewrite their characters OFTEN. very often. I’m gonna go with likeable character over likeable people because I think they work better where they’re actually not that likeable people.

The one I think about the MOST is Munakata. He was SUCH wasted potential and I partially blame the medium for that (a single season anime is too constrained for future, it needed more time and care to be a proper story). But Munakata is actually so close to being a compelling character but they made some MAJOR mistakes with him. This ended up getting really long and more like a 3 page ADHD ramble essay. SO IM VERY SORRY to anyone who cannot read this but TYTYTY if you did because these ideas make me very happy! Oh it’s only about Munakata btw because of how long it got

The thing about Munakata is that he is designed to be a foil to Naegi. In fact a majority of dr3 future FOCUSES on this foil dynamic. It is Naegi’s hope vs Munakata’s hope. The World’s hope vs The FF’s hope. And more importantly it is True Hope vs Corrupted Hope.

This is a fantastic concept...so why didn’t it work in canon? I think that the biggest most glaring issue with Munakata’s hope is his logic. Munakata is meant to be a logical man, although with corrupted morals that lead him astray. Yet in canon his logic is laughably infallible. For example as a major figure in the FF and someone who wants to spread hope....why would he tell Naegi to kill himself? More importantly why does he continue to try and slaughter Naegi? The issue here isn’t from the fact that he wants him dead but from the fact that he is under the IMPRESSION that this entire game is being broadcast to the world.

Think about this for a second. In Munakata’s eyes he is going to kill the Ultimate Hope, an international symbol of a better life, live on TV. He doesn’t just want to kill the Ultimate Hope..he wants to do it BRUTALLY as a MAJOR FIGURE OF THE FF. IMO this should have happened later on as the game furthers the emotional turmoil in Munakata’s head and he eventually snaps and gives in to the desire to kill Naegi despite the fact that this is live. And then there should be CONSEQUENCES for that. I wanted so badly a realization where Munakata realizes that he is hurting the Ultimate Hope in front of what he believes is the entire world.

Another issue with Munakata’s logic is saying things such as...implying that the HPA KG was...just a game. I mean...people DIED. it's not hard to see how wrong that logic is. you can't say “this is the real world now” when what Naegi experienced WAS the real world. I think that this could be fixed through a bit of world building. DR3 Future is rather isolated from its world. We don’t really know much about the world and its dynamics. I think it would make perfect sense if the general public viewed the HPA KG as a tv show, they got numb to the sight and even those untouched by despair had a hard time connecting that these are REAL people suffering. With this previously established Munakata expressing that the KG was not real would make a lot more sense and play into his corrupted idea of hope.

There is also Munakata’s connection to his other friends. Now I’ve talked about this before but the game was clearly designed to BREAK Munakata and Naegi. This way the FF would die, both the FF and World’s hope would be broken, and upon seeing this Mitarai would have no choice but to deploy his own forced hope. So it makes perfect sense that Yukizome’s death would break him (in fact if she hadn’t died in that way, her NG code was designed to be Munakata’s fault). But something about it felt...superficial. Again I think this is the mediums fault but it almost feels as though Munakata just forgets about Yukizome until later. I think they should spend more time establishing his pain and what he has lost and why this pushes him to kill. In his eyes if she can die then nothing else matters. It should be THE breaking point, not the first push. I do like the betrayal he feels towards realizing she had despair but it needed more time to fester.

And his relationship with Sakakura also felt weak. In all honesty it was hard for me to feel as though they were ever friends. Sakakura is written as though he just follows Munakata like a loyal dog and Munakata just orders him around. Establish their relationship more! Why are they such good friends? Why is Sakakura important to him? And more importantly why did Munakata decide to cruelly gut Sakakura knowing he was about to confess? This is because he believed that Sakaura was despair and that his confession was more manipulation, but they didn’t show this well at ALL. Munakata just comes across as a major a-sshole who does not care. I also personally found it distasteful that when changing his heart Munakata only seemed to cry for Yukizome. I understand that was his love interest but Yukizome at the end of the day killed herself. Sakakura however was an unnecessary betrayal he took into his own hands AS HE HIMSELF KILLED HIM. He should have more guilt over that! Not just in that moment where he runs to Sakakura, but ahead of time as well! Maybe even DURING his rampage they could have shown him having moments of guilt but he is so absorbed in the idea that all despairs have to die that he doesn’t even realize he has become despair in the name of hope.

A BIG weakness on Munakata’s part comes with interacting with other characters. He is a man who should know how to take charge, lead, and doesn't know what to do when things are getting too crazy even though he THINKS he does. Munakata is heavily flawed, OBVIOUSLY flawed, but many of the interactions with him are as tho his rampage isnt a big deal. There should be reasons for this! Why do people trust Munakatas guidance so much? I dont know! All ive seen from him is that hes insane! Maybe even pieces where around others hes a lot nicer so you can understand why they follow him, even though hes ready to gut Naegi alive with a flaming katana. His interactions with others feel like the writers just wanted to see the next big evil thing they could think of, but for Munakata’s character this doesn't make sense because he was appointed a high status in the foundation for a reason. Maybe even have people say they disagree with some of his methods but at the end of the day he gets the job done!

There is another major missed opportunity here and it's why Muanakata wants Naegi dead so badly in the first place. The remnants. Hiding terrorists in the apocalypse is a PERFECTLY valid reason to want someone dead and think they're a bad guy! But I think since Naegis initial arrest was already so hostile and violent we get the sense that the FF is simply just...crazy.

And let’s think about what Munakata WANTS from Naegi. He does not just want Naegi dead he wants something worse. He wants Naegi to suffer first. He thinks that Naegi doesnt understand his own personal pain. He thinks that because Naegi protected the remnants he must also not care about the suffering the remnants caused. He wants Naegi to feel despair and then die. This is important to his corrupted hope. He thinks the suffering must be shared in order to understand who must die, but he is creating a cycle of pain. Tie this back to the broadcasting issue. He wants Naegi to break for everyone to see. I think..and this is just a concept..I think it would have been a great idea for Munkata to force Naegi to watch the despair video so that he has no choice but to understand.

AND themes are majorly important to Danganronpa. And I don’t think its a stretch to say that there are parallels between Munakata and Naegi. In fact I would say that there are aspects of the og trio in this new trio. I think it would have been really cool if they showed how our favorite trio could have ended up if they had been corrupted as well. But the parrellels dont stick strongly. I think it would have been cool to show a past where Munakata’s idealism lies more strongly than Naegis. As the student council president there was a time where he himself had to use his words to solve problems. Perhaps he learned that sometimes his words made things worse. Munakata does not have Naegi’s talent of emotional intelligence. He is a man of action over words. So he interprets this as WORDS being the problem rather than understanding he does not have these skills. Especially when the apocalypse breaks out, it becomes all action over words. So he sees Naegi who is all talk as a genuine threat who will let everyone die through his “weak ineffective” idea of hope.

Another parallel could be drawn from the fact that they both have hope based careers. Their job is too keep things hopeful. Maybe Naegi stays safe doing public broadcasted speeches, while Munakata is on the field weeding out despairs. This would cause Munakata to feel as though Naegi is doing no real work yet getting all the credit for being a savior.

Munakata constantly complains that Naegi does not know true pain. But he and we as an audience have followed Naegi through his entire process of trauma. We know he is in the wrong. But what do we as an audience know about Munakata’s suffering? We are shown almost nothing! There are some implications, but for how intense he is implications are not enough. We need to see his suffering. We should see how he has witnessed death. Yukizomes death is not nearly enough for this because he talks as though he has suffered for years. How can we as an audience understand that when we have never seen it? How can we understand Munakata when he is outright denying Naegi’s trauma that we KNOW existed with no proper justification for his reasoning?

I also believe that Munakata should have died. It actually upsets me a bit that he was PLANNED to die but didn't. He should have died protecting Naegi after all that suffering and relentless brutality he offered him. Munakata again is a man of action over word, and protecting Naegi with his last breath is the perfect way to show how in the end he changed. Especially when all he wanted initially was for Naegi to die. I find that much more satisfying than just…...walking off to who knows where.

So lets recap some changes. Munakata needs a proper display of his past traumas and his relationship with Sakakura and Yukizome. Munakata needs a proper display of his work relationships and the respect he has earned. Munakata needs to fall into corruption at a better pace, and have geniune reasons for his illogical attacks on Naegi. Munakata needs to care more for his friends. Munakata needs to deal with the turmoil of wanting to hurt Naegi while he believes the world is watching. Munakata needs to die for Naegi

This has gotten long...and I still have things to say. There is so much to make Munakata a good character. Future had a lot of potential and is amazing for a rewrite concept. As for Sakakura and Yukizome since this has gotten long feel free to ask for another round of this individually when asks are open again! If you read all of this somehow….TYSM

#ask #danganronpa #kyosuke munakata #dr3 #dr3 spoilers #analysis #???#sorry sorry sorry ahhhhh i have so much to say fuuuuihkhuhi

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panharmonium · 4 years

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you can be my ride or die: a staggeringly long essay about a deceptively short appearance

(aka, pan’s personal depository of notes about prince william of ealdor.)

now that my fic is long since done and posted, i can finally transfer this monster piece of meta out of my google docs and onto my blog, where it can serve as an unasked-for, absurdly detailed, beginning-to-end analysis of my obscure fave.

(whose line ‘yeah, and i’m prince william, of ealdor’ is still the funniest damn shit i’ve ever heard and also the most shocking burn arthur has ever received; i hope he thinks of it sometimes and remembers that humility is a virtue)

(the BRISTLING DISRESPECT! the ZERO FUCKS GIVEN! i love him! please can someone else talk to arthur like this! he needs it!)

disclaimer before we begin: i wrote this over a year ago, as a character check for myself during the very early stages of working on my fic. i kept messily adding bits to it over the course of a couple weeks as i explored what i knew about this character and who i understood him to be, but at the time, i didn’t intend on posting it; it was just prep work for my own story-making. it’s still essentially just a record of my train of thought as i pieced this character together - i’ve cleaned it up a bit now and added some recent links to make it more coherent, but it was never meant to be a posted essay, just a collection of notes for myself.

be forewarned, it is more comprehensive than the things i’ve written about this character since, and it goes on for years. if you are not interested in many, many pages of super heavy in-depth musings about a character who appeared in one episode, now is the time to scroll on by. i promise i won’t mind in the slightest; i wrote this for my own purposes and don’t really expect people to read it - i’m posting it just to have it archived with the rest of my merlin stuff.

if you are interested in that sort of thing, however - hit the jump, and off we go!

i really love the episode where we meet will, though i’ve started to love it for new reasons since the first time i watched it.

the first time i watched season 1, 'the moment of truth’ was my favorite S1 episode overall, because it was the first time the Fab Four went off on an adventure together, and that was very exciting; and i also loved it because all the character stuff in that episode was so good; and i also loved it because look, all of us are suckers for that classic seven samurai plot, you know - i loved it in TCW, i loved it in the mandalorian, i loved it in merlin. not gonna get bored of ‘simple farmers defend their homes with pitchforks’ anytime soon. it is overall just a solid, self-contained plot with clear emotional arcs, and it sticks its landing well. it’s a simple, strong story.

nowadays, though, i also love it because of will.

i. will whomst?

prince william of ealdor, that’s who!

will straddles a kind of weird place in canon, because he feels like a minor character to the audience but is very much not a minor character for merlin, who has known will much longer than the brief hour we get to spend with him and who has spent his entire life with will as his sole friend.

but, because will only appears once - let’s start with a round-up. what do we actually know about him?

he’s a peasant farmer from ealdor, like merlin

his father was killed fighting for king cenred (as a foot soldier - these people are not wealthy enough or high-status enough to afford or be accepted into the knighthood)

his mother is either dead or absent

he’s painfully class conscious and doesn’t trust the nobility

he’s a “troublemaker” (the interpretation of which is...well, it’s left to the viewer’s discretion. fandom seems to jump to ‘fun mischief and pranks,’ though i personally don’t get that vibe from this episode. “troublemaker” in will’s case seems to mean more “doesn’t know how to keep his head down/can’t go along to get along to save his life.” it means when he sees something that he thinks is Wrong, he absolutely will not shut up about it even when all his neighbors are sick of him and want him to just let it go. it means he can’t stop rocking the boat even when rocking the boat makes everybody want to strangle him.)

he supplements his agricultural pursuits with carpentry. you can see in his house big piles of hewn timber along one wall, as well as a grindstone and a shaving horse, and when he comes out of his house on two separate occasions he’s holding woodworking tools (mallet, chisel, etc)

he knows about merlin’s magic - for how long this has been the case, we’re not told. it doesn’t feel like a new thing to me, but ultimately that’s guesswork.

he appears to have just one friend

that one friend is merlin

will loves merlin enough to die lying for him

merlin left will behind.

ii. it wasn’t what i wanted

so let’s talk about that.

merlin is asked “why did you leave?” twice in this episode, first by arthur and then by will. he gives completely contradictory answers to the two of them, and it’s worth remembering, before examining both responses, that one answer is inherently more honest than the other, because merlin is only able to tell the whole truth to one of these people.

so when merlin talks to arthur, it goes like this:

“why did you leave?”

“things just...changed.”

“how?”

*silence*

“come on, stop pretending to be interesting and tell me.”

“i just didn’t fit in anymore. i wanted to find somewhere I did.”

arthur has to drag this answer out of merlin, and it’s not because merlin doesn’t feel like sharing (i mean, come on, we know merlin; merlin wants to be in everybody’s business and he feeds off human connection like a starving man; he’d be thrilled that arthur was interested in his life) - the problem isn’t that he’s shy; it’s that he’s not exactly telling the truth and he’s trying to figure out how to do it in the least deceptive way possible.

i just didn’t fit in anymore. i wanted to find somewhere i did.

that’s nice.

it’s also a lie.

it’s not a total lie, of course - there’s an element of it that becomes true, after merlin gets to camelot and realizes that working for arthur is “not totally horrible all the time” - that he sort of likes the excitement, and the newness, and being somewhere where nobody knows him and nobody will judge him - but that’s the reason he stays in camelot, not the reason he leaves ealdor.

by contrast, when will asks the question, merlin gives a completely different answer:

“why did you leave?”

“it wasn’t what I wanted. mother was worried. when she found out you knew - she was so angry.”

it wasn’t what I wanted.

can we digest that for a moment?

merlin didn’t want to leave home.

not that he isn’t enjoying himself in camelot now, of course - which he conveniently doesn’t mention in this conversation, because will is upset with him and merlin feels guilty that he’s been off enjoying his new life while will has been struggling at home alone - but at the point of departure, merlin didn’t want to go.

his answer to arthur about finding a place where he belonged is certain-point-of-view bunk. he didn’t just up and decide that he wanted to run off and find a place where he fit in better. he didn’t leave because he wanted to escape a place he didn’t belong. he didn’t set off in search of adventure and a new life. it’s true that he didn’t feel like he fit in in ealdor, but that’s not what sent him packing. he left because his mother found out that will knew about his magic, and she panicked and sent him away.

iii. why did you leave

most fannish things i’ve encountered tend to interpret merlin’s departure in a much more generous light than i do, with merlin explaining to will that he’s leaving and will being unhappy about it but eventually understanding and kind of like...giving his blessing before merlin goes. this is fine, of course, but it did surprise me, when i started dipping my toes into fandom, because i never interpreted events in this episode like that, and i don’t think it’s even a plausible read, not from the conversations we’re actually given. the antipathy that accompanies merlin’s return doesn’t make sense under those circumstances, and moreover, from the way things actually unfold in this episode, we’re told, in order, the following three things:

1) the fact that will asks “why did you leave” tells us that he and merlin did not discuss it prior to the point of departure. there’s no other reason for will to ask this question. everything about will’s tone and body language in this scene indicates that he’s been stewing over this for a long time, that he doesn’t understand, that this is something profoundly difficult for him to address. and while it might be nicer to think that merlin sat down and discussed things with will before leaving for camelot, that’s not the inference we’re being asked to make here.

2) there is absolutely no way they wouldn’t have discussed it, if will had known that merlin was going to leave. like - if your only friend in the world told you they were moving to another country tomorrow, there’s no way “why?” wouldn’t be the first question you asked. there’s no way you wouldn’t have that discussion, at the most basic level, before separating. it just wouldn’t happen.

3) so, given that information, the unfortunate, inescapable conclusion is this: will didn’t know merlin was going to leave. merlin left without telling him.

everyone is free to continue to headcanon this in their own ways, of course. but this is what we’re actually being told.

iv. we don’t want your kind round here

the fact that merlin vanishes without so much as a word to his best friend goes a long way towards explaining why merlin is so uncomfortable when he first sees will in the street.

when they first encounter each other, merlin looks so apprehensive and wary, and the writers are playing it like ‘uh-oh, someone saw him use magic and now he’s nervous about it!!!’ but two seconds later, you realize that this can’t possibly be what’s causing merlin’s concern, because it’s made immediately clear that will already knows about merlin’s magic and isn’t going to say anything about it.

merlin isn’t afraid of being outed, in this scene. but he might, however, be afraid of the reception he’s going to get, given what we just discussed.

merlin just up and disappeared from home, and not so much as a letter since - we know will’s had a secondhand update, probably from hunith (“how’ve you been?! i hear you’re skivvying for some prince”) but he very clearly hasn’t had any direct contact with merlin since before merlin left.

merlin knows this was a big fuck-up. he feels guilty.

(and to be clear - i think there is a lot to be said about just how merlin’s departure unfolded, and what stopped him from getting in touch. it’s a complicated enough topic for its own piece, and it’s not quite within the scope of this essay, but suffice it to say for now that i don’t believe it stemmed from deliberate thoughtlessness or callousness on merlin’s part; it’s...deeper and more complicated than that. honestly, i think merlin looks back on this as like...the first major mistake he ever made in his life, his...original sin, sort of. and i don’t think he’s ever forgiven himself for it, either, but again, that’s a story for another day.) the point here is that merlin didn’t necessarily want to cause harm, but he knew that’s what he was doing regardless - he knew that leaving without a word was the wrong thing to do. and in this moment he feels rightfully guilty about all of it, and he’s afraid that his friend won’t welcome him home.

merlin’s moment of uncertainty is real, when will pretends to greet him with hostility. merlin is afraid that will is angry with him for leaving him behind.

(and let’s not kid ourselves, will definitely is)

it’s a festering thing that keeps boiling to the surface as we progress through the episode. it shows in the way will finally asks why did you leave, avoiding merlin’s eyes, the question laden with vulnerability. it’s in the exchange “are you going to abandon them?”/“what, like you did?” there’s real pain there, and confusion, lots of hurt feelings.

but.

despite all of that, will doesn’t freeze merlin out, when merlin comes riding back into town. merlin is rightfully afraid that will might not want to see him, afraid that “we don’t want your kind round here” might be less of a joke than it ought to be. and while all of the troubles that merlin is worried about are absolutely real and poised to cause friction later, the truth is that at that exact moment, when merlin comes walking up the road - none of it matters. will has been nursing a collection of hurt feelings for months now, yeah, but in the immediate moment, when it comes down to it - he puts them aside.

they both do. nerves, guilty thoughts, bruised feelings - they temporarily abandon all of that in favor of a momentary joy. you can see how excited they are when they reunite. how they start smiling at the same time. how they laugh their way into that hug. they’re so happy to see each other.

people get pretty worked up about ***That Time Arthur Finally Hugged Merlin!!!***, but i don’t know. i think it matters to remember that merlin had people who knew how to hold him long before arthur was even a flicker of a shadow in merlin’s mind.

v. why are you being like this

so they reunite!

and then they fight. D:

but what really matters is how they fight, because even when they’re having an argument, they never let things escalate quite to the level of interpersonal nastiness, certainly never to the level of cruelty for cruelty’s sake - just a few hard truths and a pile of hurt feelings:

“i trust arthur with my life.”

“is that so? so he knows your secret, then?”

...

“face it, merlin, you’re living a lie, just like you were here. you’re arthur’s servant, nothing more. otherwise you’d tell him the truth.”

the delivery in this scene is essential for understanding how these two interact with each other. it’s so telling. merlin and will are having an argument, and will is angry about everything we’ve already discussed, and on top of that, some prince is trying to round up a bunch of will’s neighbors for a fight that’s going to get a lot of people killed, and will sounds so sharp when he’s talking, up to and including the challenging “is that so?”

but then when he sees that he’s touched a nerve there and merlin knows he’s right, his voice drops those edges and goes gentler, regretful, like - he and merlin aren’t all hunky-dory right now, but he’s not out to rub merlin’s face in it, either. he’s not trying to “get back” at merlin for leaving him. he’s not like...happy that merlin’s situation is shitty.

vi. if i broke it (would you quit?)

we mostly only see these two in a tense season. they’re arguing with each other for almost the entire episode, and yet even in this at-odds state, there are little things that remind us of what they’re usually like - that they don’t want to be arguing, that this isn’t a natural at-rest state for them, that this isn’t what they’re used to. they butt heads, but they keep swinging around back to each other, and trying again, and trying again, and trying again. they never write each other off. they keep trying to make it work.

examples: merlin asking “why are you being like this?,” the implication being that will isn’t usually like this, that this isn’t how they usually act around each other. the two of them together in the background of arthur’s pitiful training session, coming right off the tail-end of another argument and busying themselves with their own work, but still reflexively hanging in each other’s orbit. merlin, even in the middle of a strained conversation, helping clean up the mess that the bandits made of will’s house, without asking or being asked, like it’s just the automatic, reflexive, natural thing to do. merlin using will’s proper name when discussing him with other people, but always the diminutive when they’re talking to each other. merlin following will every time will walks away; will doing the same when merlin’s the one who’s leaving. that moment up in the hedgerow, with will’s embittered “you know why,” which sets them to arguing again, except instead of it pushing them apart, it pulls them closer together - will climbs right up into the hedge where merlin is standing so they can sit next to each other and talk.

like. he’s angry! but the instinct isn’t to storm away, it’s to get closer.

i love that so much. i love how they’re starting to have another argument and merlin stands there and says “why are you being like this,” to which will, already upset, responds “you know why,” BUT -

but

will stalks up into that hedge and plops himself down right next to merlin, and merlin, without a moment’s hesitation, sits down beside him.

i love that. they’re angry with each other, but their first instinct is still to close the distance.

i wonder, sometimes, how much of that is a function of them only having each other. when you’re on the outs with someone, usually you can lean on your other friends, but what can they do? it’s different when the person you usually seek out for comfort is the same person who’s pissing you off. you don’t have anyone else to run to, so you can’t ever really storm off. you have to learn how to hash things out. you have to learn how to make it work. you have to learn not to give up on each other.

vii. she was so angry

the implied backstory for how merlin actually ended up in camelot is so painfully fascinating and, quite frankly, wrenching to think about, given how this episode eventually ends.

when will asks merlin why he left, merlin tells him, “it wasn’t what i wanted. my mother was worried. when she found out you knew - she was so angry.” this is telling us that merlin’s departure for camelot was directly preceded by his mother discovering that will knew about merlin’s magic. that is what ultimately prompted her to send merlin off to camelot. of course there would have been other contributing factors - it’s evident that merlin’s situation in ealdor has always been precarious - but her immediate reason for sending him away was the fact that she found out that will knew about merlin’s magic, and she was angry and afraid to learn that merlin had been lying to her about something that put him at risk.

“i wouldn’t have told anyone.”

“i know you wouldn’t.”

but merlin’s mother didn’t believe that, or she wouldn’t listen to him when he tried to tell her, and she shipped him off to camelot anyway, despite the fact that camelot is arguably more dangerous for merlin than ealdor ever was.

the web of how this played out is such a tangled mess. is it my fault, thinks will, before the episode even starts, desperately trying to figure out why merlin would abandon him like that. it’s my fault, thinks merlin, at the end, knowing that if he had used his magic sooner, or come back alone, events would have unfolded differently. it’s my fault, thinks hunith, realizing that the particular fear upon which she based merlin’s entire departure was utterly unfounded.

merlin doesn’t blame her for it, even though he has reason enough to be angry about it, by the end of this episode. he understands that she was just trying to protect him. but the truth of the matter is that she did make a mistake. she was afraid for him, and she saw danger everywhere, and so she made a misjudgment.

it’s the miniest of mini-arcs, but it’s there. at the end of this episode, right after will drops the Big Damn Lie, merlin looks desperately around for the only other person in the room who understands, and the camera rests on hunith’s face for one lingering moment, as she realizes what’s happening. when she’s exiting the house, there’s a shot where she pauses for a minute on her way out the door, staring back at her son's dying friend, who just offered himself up as a willing sacrifice to keep merlin’s secret safe.

she and merlin are the only people in the room who understand the real import of that moment, the real meaning of that gesture. they’re the only ones who know what’s happening, what it really means for will to say “i did it.”

hunith knows she misjudged that kid big-time.

viii. you can be my ride or die

so. will.

why am i even interested in him? what is it about this character that makes me want to write about him?

number one: i love him because he’s the only person we ever meet who cares exclusively about merlin.

everyone else merlin has met up until this point is either a) as beholden to camelot and arthur as merlin is himself, or b) aware of merlin’s “destiny,” which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but does change the way people talk to him and treat him.

it’s not that merlin doesn’t have people who care about him, but those relationships are not the same as the one he has with will. merlin is obviously #1 in his mom’s life, of course - but, importantly, even hunith’s immediate reaction to merlin’s uncertainty at the end of 1.10 is to tell him that he has to go back to camelot, that arthur needs him, that he’s “the other side of a coin.” this despite the fact that hunith has known arthur for all of five minutes and that merlin, in the moment where she talks to him, is in a lot of pain, and maybe it isn’t the most appropriate moment say, ‘hey, you absolutely must devote yourself to that guy i literally just watched lecture you about the evils of magic while attending your (supposedly magical) dead best friend’s funeral.’

and when it comes to merlin’s camelot network, well - he’s #1 in gaius’s life, too, but gaius also is deeply concerned with the greater good, with the future emergence of albion, with what merlin is meant to become and do. morgana and arthur - well, they don’t know merlin, first of all (really know him, all of him, the important bits) - they definitely like him well enough, and care about him in their way, but ultimately they’re royalty or pseudo-royalty and they have priorities that go beyond merlin, who, at the end of the day, is still a servant. gwen comes the closest to being on merlin’s level, but she doesn’t know him-know him either, and as time goes on she gets more involved with the Crown, with arthur, and with the responsibilities all of that brings. even merlin’s later friends all go on to have other missions - they absolutely all love him, but they all become knights, and they are as concerned about the well-being of the realm and the king as merlin is. even merlin HIMSELF puts arthur’s life ahead of his own - he defines his worth by how well he can protect his prince.

but will is the only person we ever meet who just cares about merlin - merlin the regular person, not the servant he pretends to be, or the legend he’s supposed to become. not the fake, non-magical merlin facade (which is what almost everyone else needs merlin to be before they can condescend to be his friend) and not some destiny-laden figure out of prophecy, either. will doesn’t know anything about destiny or prophecies. he’s never needed to know about any of that stuff to care. he’s always liked merlin. just merlin. just as he is.

that matters. all merlin ever does in this show is deny himself or be denied of the things every regular human being needs to thrive - love, acceptance, truth, safety. he constantly puts or is forced to put other priorities ahead of his own interests, to a point where now, by season five, he’s spent years defending a regime that oppresses him, protecting kings who would execute him.

will, in a display of true-to-character contrariness, upsets that entire narrative, because he does not care one whit about any of the things for which merlin is supposed to sacrifice his life. will gives less than zero (count them: negative zero) fucks about arthur pendragon, and he doesn’t care about camelot, and he wouldn’t know what “albion” meant if he heard the word. and it is refreshing - a blessed, beautiful, heartbreaking relief - to see one person in the world who only cares about merlin, for whom arthur pendragon, in comparison with merlin, isn’t the slightest bit important. arthur isn’t even on the map. he’s a non-entity. he doesn’t exist.

it’s a complete inversion of the way things are supposed to go, in this story. you know how it goes - arthur is the once and future king, and merlin’s job is to usher in his reign. "maybe that is its purpose,” gaius says, about merlin’s magic being meant to protect arthur, about merlin being born this way for that particular reason. it’s merlin’s job to save arthur’s life. it’s merlin’s job to teach arthur to be a better person, at his own expense. it’s all for arthur. i give my life for arthur’s. his life is worth a hundred of mine. what is the life of a servant compared with that of a prince?

will delivers the biggest fuck-you to that entire framework, because he doesn’t assess merlin’s worth based on what merlin can do for some random prince on the other side of the border. merlin’s magic wasn’t purposed for anything, as far as will is concerned. it doesn’t need to justify itself. it just is. it’s just who merlin is.

and who merlin is has always been just fine.

ix. am i the only one wondering who the hell this is

for will, it’s people like arthur who need to justify themselves. arthur with all of his power, arthur riding into little villages with his sword drawn, arthur and his bossing around and his “now, merlin!” conversation-interrupting. will makes no allowances for wealth and couldn’t be less interested in royalty - his frame of reference isn’t you’re the once and future king and merlin exists to prop you up; it’s who the hell are you? what gives you the right to be here? what did you do to earn what you have?

will, like gwaine after him, is acutely aware of the injustice of the reigning social system, and he’s not afraid to throw it in arthur’s face. he knows that people like himself and merlin and all of their neighbors are unjustly disadvantaged from birth until death, and he knows they’re disadvantaged solely because the people at the top of the social chain are greedy lords who sow no seed but reap all the grain, who do no work but enjoy the greatest rewards, who steal from the people with impunity and call it divine entitlement. will knows that he and merlin and all of their neighbors are considered no better than plow-beasts or war-fodder, and he knows that there is absolutely nothing they can do to stop the nobility from either taxing them into starvation or sending them off to die in a ditch - which makes him impossibly angry, and, unlike everybody else in his village, he’s not shy about saying so.

will is, at this point, literally the first non-villain to look at arthur and not immediately see some messianic pinnacle of human greatness - which is refreshing, to be honest, and fair enough besides! he’s evaluating arthur from merlin’s side of things, after all, which nobody - including merlin - ever does, and while i love arthur as much as anybody - for the people’s hero that he could be, and for what he is, sometimes, if not frequently enough - the truth is that he’s not good for all of his people, not yet, and he’s not good for merlin, not the way things stand right now.

will knows that. he looks at arthur and sees a guy with a lot of power, who also happens to rule over the the least magic-friendly place in the five kingdoms, to whom merlin needs to lie in order to avoid the executioner’s block, and he sees merlin deluding himself into thinking that this supremely unequal, extremely unsafe situation counts as friendship.

now, is will’s assessment of the situation a snap judgment based on personal encounters with an unjust social system and very limited knowledge of arthur as a person? yes, definitely. are there nuances to merlin and arthur’s relationship that he’s missing? absolutely.

is he wrong?

not really. and merlin knows it.

x. friends don’t lord it over one another!

i think about that line every damn episode.

over and over again, it comes back to me. i hear it every time arthur gets On His Shit and invokes power he pretends not to have, every time i see more evidence of how this supposed “friendship” between him and merlin is inherently imbalanced. it’s my favorite thing will says in all of 1.10, because it is so true and yet, most of the time, so unacknowledged as a dynamic.

we’re meant to love arthur and merlin together, and we do - i do; i do; when i see those moments that approach true mutual respect and care between them i am as swept up by the potential beauty of this friendship as anyone - but i still think about this line all the time. it’s not right, the power dynamic between the two of them. it’s not just about servants vs. royalty, though of course that’s a structural part of how it plays out. it’s about the fact that, in a real friendship, one person can’t just whip out “you ever say anything like that again, and i swear you’ll join her in exile forever” to shut down a conversation and cow you into silence. one person can’t just throw you in jail to spend a night “cooling off,” and they definitely can’t arrest you whenever someone levels a random accusation at you. in a real friendship, it’s not one person who has all the power.

but when it comes to arthur and merlin, that’s exactly what happens. arthur gets to decide when he and merlin are and aren’t friends. arthur gets to call merlin in or send him away. arthur gets to make all the decisions about when to listen, when to ignore, when to trust, when to believe. merlin can nudge, encourage, suggest, even defy, but ultimately, when you get right down to it, arthur is the king, and merlin is his servant, a dynamic which is compounded by the deadly particulars of merlin’s situation. the relationship isn’t unequal solely because of a difference in social class, it’s unequal because arthur literally has the power of life and death over merlin. arthur could (and would, as far as merlin knows) have merlin executed any day of the week, if he found out who merlin really was.

that’s why when merlin tries to tell will that arthur is his friend, will snaps, “friends don’t lord it over one another!” it’s not that you can’t care about someone who has more power than you, and it’s not that you can’t have some kind of relationship with them, but it is not real friendship if you think your “friend” will kill you when they find out who you really are. it is not a real friendship if you have to pretend to be someone you’re not in order to preserve the relationship. real friends don’t leverage impossible amounts of power to shut you up when you say something they don’t want to hear. real friends don’t say things like “you’ll be a friend for life if you do [x thing]” to convince you to lie to their dad while they go out with a girl and thus get you clapped in the stocks three times in a row, and then turn around and show their appreciation by letting people raid and ransack your house multiple times, throwing you in jail at least twice, accusing (and once nearly executing!) your loyal long-serving mentor more than once - among innumerable other issues. real friends aren’t “you’re my friend when i need you to be, but not when it’s inconvenient.” they don’t have the kind of power to turn things on and off whenever they want.

i love that will is the only person who ever acknowledges this, across five seasons of this show. i love that he spits it out immediately, without hesitation, the minute merlin tries to makes things sound better than they are. i love that he says it unapologetically, to merlin’s face, because he says it for merlin’s sake, after all - the point of saying ‘friends don’t lord it over one another’ is to say ‘that guy doesn’t appreciate you the way you appreciate him/this isn’t reciprocal and he’s taking advantage of you/this isn’t the friendship you want it to be and i don’t like seeing you settle for this.’ will is that friend who watches you interact with someone and then later gets in your business like ‘EXCUSE ME! I DO NOT LIKE HOW HE TALKS TO YOU! I DON’T LIKE HOW HE TREATS YOU!'

will knows that merlin deserves better than arthur pendragon, even when merlin himself won’t concede that point. merlin won’t advocate for himself, so will tries to do it for him. merlin can try to convince himself that arthur is a real friend all he wants, but will knows what’s up. he knows. he knows where this is going, if merlin’s relationship with arthur is allowed to continue on exactly as-is. will knows, from the very beginning, that this is a recipe for disaster.

[addendum 2020: speaking from a post season-5 perspective...will understood where merlin and arthur were headed long before even we the audience did.]

xi. friends don’t lord it over one another [reprise]

you know what real friends do do for each other, though?

a) listen - even when they don’t like what the other person is saying

b) care - even when they’re angry

that’s it. that’s what matters.

we don’t need more than an hour of watching will and merlin onscreen together to see that this is how they interact with each other. they’re arguing for most of this episode, and they’re both right, in different ways, but by the time they’ve had it out with one another, they both understand where their own arguments were wrong, too. they listen to each other despite the fact that they’re angry, and despite the fact that they both have very strong feelings about their respective positions. they care enough about each other to look past their personal injuries and accept where the other person is coming from.

merlin starts off this episode absolutely dead-set against using his magic to help ealdor, if there’s any chance arthur could find out about it. but later, before he and will have even officially reconciled onscreen, we can already see that he’s been listening to what will’s been saying, that he’s come around to will’s way of thinking, because he tells his mother “if it comes down to a choice between revealing who i truly am and saving lives - that’s no choice at all,” hearkening back to will’s “are you telling me you’d rather keep your magic a secret for arthur’s sake than use it to protect your friends and family?” and: “if arthur doesn’t accept me for who i am...well...then he’s not the friend i hoped he was” (you’re arthur’s servant, nothing more. otherwise you’d tell him the truth.)

merlin has been listening the whole time, even if he didn’t like what will was saying.

and the same goes for will, too. he’s (understandably!) bitter about merlin’s situation, about the way merlin left, about the new life merlin built for himself while will was suffering in a confused limbo of abandonment at home - and will also obviously thinks the Farmers’ Resistance is a total disaster, a noble-spun farce that’s going to get good people killed - but even though he doesn’t trust the camelot contingent and couldn’t give fewer shits about prince arthur pendragon specifically, he trusts merlin. he listens to merlin, even though they’ve been fighting. he comes back because merlin keeps telling him it’s the right thing to do.

they both listen, even when it seems like they’re just arguing with each other. and they both acknowledge where the other person was right, even when it means making themselves vulnerable. will comes back to help his neighbors fight a battle against hopeless odds. merlin exposes his magic to save people’s lives.

they teach each other how to do the right thing. they make each other brave.

xii. you just saved my life

let’s talk about being brave, then.

this kid jumps in front of a crossbow for a guy he doesn’t even like.

can we be clear about that? will doesn’t even LIKE arthur. he doesn’t particularly care about him. he doesn’t accept him as the noble savior of all mankind. he isn’t interested in defending the nobility, and he certainly hasn’t jumped on the camelot bandwagon. just because he’s seen that arthur wasn’t planning on sending them all to their deaths without risking his own neck doesn’t mean will is suddenly going to start flying the pendragon crest from atop his house.

but he isn’t going to step back and let a coward shoot another man in the back, either.

arthur’s still a prince, yeah. arthur’s still sitting at the tip-top of an unjust social system, benefitting from all kinds of privileges he didn’t earn. arthur’s still a crappy friend to merlin. heck, two seconds before that crossbow gets fired, arthur’s gone full-on inquisition-mode, interrogating merlin about sorcery, which, given that arthur can just go ahead and have merlin executed with a snap of his fingers, isn’t a great way to earn will’s respect or trust.

but you know what? when it comes down to it, will’s automatic, reflexive reaction upon seeing someone in immediate danger is to Get In The Way.

it doesn’t matter that will doesn’t like arthur. it doesn’t even matter that he actively dislikes arthur. will doesn’t even think about it, he just moves. instinctively. automatically. he isn’t going to let anyone standing right in front of him get murdered with their back turned, no matter how much he can’t stand them.

let’s all take a second to remember and acknowledge something in arthur’s stead, since i’m not sure arthur will do it himself - arthur pendragon would have been dead right there if it weren’t for a dirt-poor peasant farmer from cenred’s kingdom who never had anything nice to say to a prince but still stepped between a pendragon and a crossbow in the name of doing the right thing. without will, the story would have ended in season 1, episode 10. albion itself owes its future existence to a young man with no surname who will never be acknowledged or recognized for anything he did, not for teaching the future king a lesson in humility, not for saving the prince’s life, and certainly not for the greatest and most noble move he ever made, because that gesture’s success is predicated upon its remaining a secret.

this kid saves the entire World That Will Be. the show would have ended before it ever really began, if not for our man prince william of ealdor.

merlin knows that, and merlin never forgets it. but i’m not so sure about everyone else.

xiii. yeah, don’t know what i was thinking

let’s talk about defiance.

this kid is dying, and he’s still full of piss and vinegar. when arthur says, wide-eyed, “you’re a sorcerer,” will responds, “yeah. what are you going to do, kill me?”

what a power move. what a thing to say.

that’s not a question. that is a no-fucks-given, shame-and-blame challenge.

what are you going to do, kill me?

merlin uses those exact same words during his confrontation with morgana in 3.02. when he’s trapped - when he’s cornered and betrayed and angry - he reaches for the kind of defiance he once saw exercised on his own behalf, for a shameless bravery that burned itself into his brain. for the kind of strength he wants to channel himself.

when it comes to holding your ground in front of the pendragon dynasty, merlin learned from the best.

xiv. and i’m prince william, of ealdor

let’s talk about names.

william: from wil (will or determination) and helm (protection, a helm)

hence the common translation of resolute protector.

which, given the events of 1.10, seems very fitting.

xv. i did it

let’s talk about lies.

because resolute protector rings even more powerfully true when it comes to merlin than it does for arthur.

at the time of this writing, i have four more episodes to watch before i’m done with season 5. at this point, at the end of the show, merlin’s magic is still a secret. merlin’s gotten involved in a lot of dangerous situations, risking his life in other ways, but the one danger he’s never had to really confront is the executioner’s block, because none of the pendragons know his secret.

and the reason none of the pendragons know his secret is thanks to our boy prince william of ealdor, who turns his own untimely death into a last-second rescue operation by telling the Biggest Damn Lie of his life and then doubling down on it when merlin tries to tell him no.

will is the one who secures merlin’s next five years of relative safety. not from all of life’s dangers, of course; no one can do that - but when it comes to merlin’s greatest fear, the worst outcome, the prospect of being dragged out of his home in chains and murdered in front of an ogling crowd for just existing - will buys merlin’s escape from that fate with his life. merlin remains hidden and unexposed to this very day because will died protecting his secret, because will lied to the prince of magic-hunting and invited upon himself all of the risk and scorn and danger and condemnation that a false confession like that entailed.

i honestly don’t know how to express clearly enough the enormity of that moment. the momentousness of that gesture. i called it a bold and tremendous lie in some other post somewhere, and i don’t know how else to capture what it was. the thought of what it would mean, to be merlin, and to see someone throw themselves on the block for your sake, for your safety and your future and your freedom, when the rest of the world and every message you’ve ever absorbed says you don’t deserve to be safe, you don’t deserve to be free, you don’t deserve to exist.

it is impossible to overstate how much that matters. merlin carries that with him for the rest of his life.

xvi: i can’t fight you anymore (it’s you i’m fighting for)

let’s talk about love, okay?

this ep is called the moment of truth, right?

so here are some truths about will. in the time that we spend with him, we come to understand that he is the following:

a poor peasant kid with nothing to his name

a kid whose father is dead

a kid whose mother is either dead or absent

a kid who “people are used to ignoring”

a kid who’s been making his own way through this backbreaking subsistence-farmer’s life with no grown-ups to hold him or help him or listen to him when he comes home at night

a kid who isn’t trusted to protect merlin’s secret, even by merlin’s own mother, whom will has known for his entire life

a kid whose only friend in the world fucked off to the country next door without a hint of warning or any indication that it was something that should matter to either one of them, making will think he misread the only meaningful relationship he’s ever had, because if merlin can just vanish to nowhere and not even bother to send a note, then either merlin wasn’t actually his friend to begin with or merlin was his friend at one time but doesn’t want to be anymore, both of which options are soul-crushing

a closed-off, heavily-armored, hurting kid who’s been unspeakably lonely for the past few months but also angry and ashamed at himself for feeling that way, because how stupid did he have to be, to think that he mattered to someone, that someone would ever want him or love him or need him or miss him, to think that this time would be different, that this time somebody wouldn’t leave him -

and even in this state - even in the midst of all this -

at the moment of truth, he still puts himself on the chopping block. he still says, “you’ll have to go through me.”

he comes through for merlin. of course he does. the irony is bitter and beautiful - hunith sent merlin away precisely because she didn’t trust that merlin would be safe with will knowing about his magic, but in the end it’s will who gives up everything to keep merlin’s secret concealed.

not just to keep it concealed, even - to reverse merlin being outed. merlin had already been exposed. the deed was done! the magic was seen! it was all over - and then, miraculously, it wasn’t. what will did was the only way merlin could ever have slipped safely back under the cover of secrecy.

will didn’t have to do that. he didn’t have to lie about performing magic, and he didn’t have to save arthur, either. it would have been better for will to let arthur die, in fact, and it would have been better for him to let merlin get caught, too, because ‘maybe then merlin would have to stay here with me’ - but will is so much better than petty revenge. he’s so much better than anybody ever gives him credit for, merlin excepted.

the fight will has with merlin doesn’t matter to him, in the end. it was a complicated situation for both of them; will knows this. if he weren’t dying now, he and merlin would have talked it out and made up - will knows that, too. things could have gone a little smoother between them, maybe, and will still thinks going back to camelot is less than what merlin deserves, but it’s what merlin wants, and the mark of truly loving someone is when you want the best for them, even if it means you don’t get what you want for yourself. so ultimately, when it comes down to it, the truth for will is this: he wants merlin to have a good life. he wants merlin to be safe. he wants merlin to be happy. he wants merlin to be with him, too, but if he can’t have that, it’s no reason to withhold any of the other gifts he can bestow. if one of those gifts is freedom, if one of those gifts is safety - it’s no choice at all.

merlin is will’s one good thing. merlin deserves everything will can give him, as far as will is concerned.

xvii. the only place worth being

this place has been boring without you.

what a thing to tell someone.

what a powerful thing to say to someone whose entire life up to this point has been a litany of ‘there’s something wrong with you,’ ‘you don’t belong here,’ ‘you’re cursed/broken/wrong/unnatural.’ what a dauntlessly loving thing to tell someone whose entire life has been the message ‘people like you deserve to die,’ over and over and over again.

what a singularly beautiful thing it is, for someone like merlin to hear ‘you are what makes this place worth living in.’

xviii: the only one worth seeing

likewise it’s good to see you again.

because it’s not just “it’s good to see you again;” it’s an acknowledgement that merlin is the last person will is ever going to see.

and will is like, okay.

he’d rather be alive, yeah, but if he had choose - it’s good that it’s you.

xix: the only bed worth sleeping in (is the one right next to you)

the most devastating moment in this sequence, for me, is at the very end, when will confesses fear.

it doesn’t happen until everything else has been taken care of. arthur’s been fooled, merlin’s been safely shuffled back under the cover of secrecy, everybody’s been taken in by the ruse and sent away, none the wiser - all the necessary and important business has been dealt with.

only at the very, very end does will’s own predicament rear its ugly head. only after everything else is done does he even allow himself to feel it. he’s spent the rest of this sequence making jokes and roasting arthur and keeping it all together, but at the last second, when he falters, he comes undone for the only person he trusts, the only person who understands him, the only person in the world who gives a damn about him. his defenses come down, in that last moment, for merlin - and it could ONLY be for merlin - when will says, “merlin, i’m scared.”

we don’t need anything else, to understand their relationship. we’ve seen enough of will by now to recognize that he keeps the world at arm’s length, that even his walls have walls, that this is just not the sort of thing he would ever admit to. confessions of pain? acknowledging vulnerability? never. he’s not that kind of character. we know he has a big heart - look at what he’s doing - but we also know he’s had a hard life. he’s wrapped himself in layers upon layers of protection - snark and anger and deflection and sarcasm and still making jokes at the prince’s expense after being shot in the chest - nobody is allowed to see him open and undefended, never.

except merlin.

will is dying. he is so young. he has been so alone, for so much of his life, and he’s so young, and he’s dying. he clutches for this lifeline like it’s the only thing he has, because it is the only thing he has - merlin is his only friend. merlin is the person will loves best in the whole world.

merlin, i’m scared.

that is so unbelievably vulnerable. that is so utterly naked. that is totally defenseless, exposed, belly-up and barethroated under someone else’s burning gaze.

that is absolute trust. will would never have said that in front of anyone else. he would never have allowed anyone else to see him like that.

his confession is, like pretty much everything else he ever does, for merlin alone.

xx. your heart is on my sleeve

merlin, will keeps repeating. merlin.

how much do you have to love someone, to make their name your last words? how much do you have to care about someone, for that to be the only thing you can think to say, again and again, in your last terrified moments on this earth?

that’s a rhetorical question.

i know how much.

xxi: i missed you too

i think, sometimes, about will, when i watch the later seasons of merlin, and about how he would feel if he could see what merlin’s life has turned into.

i sometimes wonder how he would feel, if he could see how merlin allows himself to be passed over, disbelieved, disrespected. if he could see how merlin has started to define his worth in terms of how well he is able to protect Some Dude who doesn’t even know who merlin is, who keeps people like merlin trapped in the shadows of subjugation, hidden citizens in their own kingdom. if will could see how merlin has laid his entire life down for other people’s enrichment, if he could see how little hope merlin now holds for his own happiness, if he could see the way merlin in S5 has given up on his own liberation -

i don’t have to guess what will would say about it. i know how he would feel. if will could see merlin in season 5, his raging little heart would break.

i wish he were here to tell merlin exactly what he thought about it. merlin does all this self-sacrificing for the sake of his “destiny”; whereas will would think that any destiny making merlin this miserable was a steaming pile of trash. will would tell kilgharrah to get lost, and to take his questionable advice with him. will would tell arthur to fuck off - he’s done it already, in slightly less explicit terms.

does that mean i truly think merlin is supposed to abandon his mission and ditch camelot and run off to live his own life? no. merlin cares too much about making the world a better place to be truly happy with that kind of existence; he wants to change things for the common good; he wants to help the people he cares about. but merlin, as he tries to fulfill his mission, is desperately missing will’s kind of support in his life. merlin needs someone who is only here for him. he needs someone who is going to get up in his face and remind him, “you matter.” he needs someone to tell him, “you deserve better than this.” he needs someone who isn’t afraid to tell destiny to fuck off, when telling destiny to fuck off is in merlin’s best interests.

merlin needs someone who is on his side.

not camelot’s side. not albion’s side. not arthur’s side.

HIS side. merlin’s side.

xxii: he still is

the thing about will, then, for me, is this: i can’t minimize him.

i can’t do it. i can’t diminish that part of merlin’s life.

i don’t think it’s possible to overestimate his importance, frankly. merlin, when we meet him, has only ever had two people in his life. that is such an...unfathomable experience, for many of us. just two people. just two people to know you. just two people to love you. just two people, for your whole life.

will wasn’t just some friend. will was half of merlin’s world.

fannish pursuits that i have seen...the things where will appears are already so limited, and of course that’s completely understandable - it’s not like he’s a main character, or even a side character, by any means; i totally get that. but - so much of what i see is him serving solely as a set-up for merlin/arthur, or otherwise being shoved out of the way as soon as arthur shows up on the scene, or showing up only to be a receptacle for discussion about arthur and merlin’s developing relationship - even will and merlin’s own ship tag is 90% merlin/arthur fics.

and there’s nothing wrong with this, ultimately; everybody should continue to write exactly what they want and enjoy exactly what they want; that’s the fun of fandom. i mention these things here only because for me, personally, the whole point of will’s character is that merlin’s life is bigger than just arthur. the most important relationship merlin had for most of his life had zip-zero-nothing to do with arthur pendragon, and it still has zip-zero-nothing to do with arthur pendragon, after will is dead.

you remember will’s funeral at the end of 1.10? arthur has an entire conversation (a horrible one, fyi) with merlin, and merlin doesn’t look at him once. he answers arthur’s questions because he has to, but his eyes never once leave the pyre in front of him - not while he’s listening, not while he’s talking, not once. not ever. arthur comes, arthur chastises, and arthur goes, all without being granted so much as a glance, because this isn’t about him. this is none of his business.

the whole point of will is that it is possible for someone to love merlin and not give a tinker’s cuss about arthur pendragon. the whole point of will is that having someone love merlin without caring about arthur pendragon is, in fact, a good thing. merlin needs somebody like that in his life. he struggles when he doesn’t have someone like this around to advocate for him. just look at where he is in season 5 - look at what his life has become, when it’s been years since he had an in-the-know friend.

merlin suffers when he loses this kind of support. it’s easy to say that will is never mentioned again after 1.10, but there are real reasons why merlin wouldn’t be willing to explicitly mention him, and the lack of explicit references doesn’t mean we can’t still see him, if we pay attention. we see the immediate impact of his death in merlin’s attitude shift in 1.11. we see him in 2.02, when merlin names his fake tournament knight sir william and spends the rest of the episode roasting arthur to within an inch of his life. we see him in the season 3 opener, when morgana levels her sword at merlin and the first thing that pops out of merlin’s mouth is “what are you going to do, kill me?” we see him in gwaine’s intro episode, when merlin immediately cleaves to this class-conscious ‘people get sick of me too quickly’ stranger whose father was killed fighting one of the king’s wars. and his absence is felt, more generally (as is lancelot’s) in how quickly merlin’s life starts to spiral out of control once the only two honest friends he ever had are gone. their loss doesn’t have to be explicitly referenced for us to understand that merlin, without that kind of support system, is faltering. we see it happening with our own eyes.

[edit, post-viewing-of-S5-finale: and we see where it eventually leads, too.]

so, once again, as i said - i can’t minimize this character. i can’t overstate the positive impact of merlin having somebody who was here for him and only him, who affirmed merlin’s value independently of arthur pendragon’s fate, who knew and loved merlin without caring about a “destiny” that ultimately, in the end, turned out to be a cruel joke made at merlin’s expense.

if will had lived, i’m not sure we would have ended up in quite so dark a place. we might have landed in some other tight spot, sure, but i can tell you one thing for certain - will would not have sat quietly by and allowed merlin to throw his life away, not for camelot, not for arthur, and certainly not for a parade of empty promises.

xxiii: where you are, there i’ll be

the bottom line is this.

merlin spent the first two decades of his life with one friend.

one.

loved by one friend.

one.

merlin had his mother, who was there for him from the beginning, whose love was unconditional, who was an “of course.”

and he had will, who chose merlin, who kept choosing merlin even after merlin told him the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Secret. will’s presence in merlin’s life is the only reason merlin grows up believing himself to be deserving of love from people who aren’t his own mother. his presence in merlin’s life is the only reason merlin knows how to have and be a friend. his presence in merlin’s life is the only reason merlin is who he is - a merlin who’d spent his entire life without a single friend would not have been the same confident, optimistic, gregarious person who later walked into camelot and told arthur pendragon, “i’d never have a friend who could be such an ass.”

will mattered. we don’t talk about him much, because he only appeared in one episode, but it wasn’t “one episode” for merlin; it was closer to twenty years of companionship, of elbows in ribcages and smirks exchanged across the room and someone to natter on at, a person to sit next to and walk beside, in every season and all sorts of weather.

will chose merlin, and he kept right on choosing him, until he breathed his very last breath. that is enough for me to love him, to feel grateful that he existed. i don’t care how rough he is around the edges. i don’t care that he hates arthur pendragon’s guts, that he has a big mouth, that he speaks out of turn, that he has no tact, that he can’t suffer fools, that he has a chip on his shoulder the size of a minor planetoid and wings it at people’s heads when the mood is on him.

he loved merlin. actual, magical merlin; merlin as he truly is, merlin in all his gifted, unnatural, beautiful imperfection.

that is a desperately rare thing. that is worth celebrating.

#the once and future slowburn #no kings no masters #meta #<3

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ottomanladies · 4 years

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Hello, since some time already I've been trying to find more information about Ahmed's concubine Mahfiruz Hatun and I couldn't help, but wonder when or how she died. Somewhere I read she died during Ahmed's reign probably by sickness or in childbed and on another page I read the opposite and that she lived until her son became sultan. Also another confusing topic about her for me is who of Ahmed's children she is the mother of. Why are there so less informations about her?

I'll start off by answering your last question: there is so little information about her because she was overshadowed by Kösem, who was haseki sultan. If you look at other valide sultans who had not been haseki sultans, you see that about both Handan and Halime there is little information (in their case, they had been overshadowed by Safiye).

I have talked about her so many times so far but I have decided to put everything I was able to find in this answer so as to dispel any other questions. This is going to be long but I hope clear enough.

About Mahfiruze's fate, there are different schools of thought:

Peirce says that she was probably beaten and exiled for speaking against or offending Kösem, therefore she was alive when Osman II took the throne but for some reason was not called back to Topkapi to be valide sultan, and died in 1620.

Uluçay, Sakaoğlu and Öztuna say that she was alive when Osman II took the throne and that she was valide sultan for two years

Baki Tezcan says she died in 1610 at last (I believe a couple of years later, as I'll explain shortly)

Her name

Baki Tezcan says that her name "was probably Mahfiruz": "Although one comes across this name in quite a number of modern sources, its earliest appearance, as far as I have been able to determine, is in the chronicle of Nai'ma, who was not a contemporary" (The debut of Kösem Sultan's political career)

Öztuna calls her "Hadîce Mâh-Fîrûz(e)" and Sakaoğlu says she was variously called "Mahirûze, Hatice Mahfirûze, Mahfirûze, Mahfirûz, Mah-ı Feyrûz". Ahmed Refik refers to her as "Hadice Mahfiruz" but, as Tezcan says, "his source is not clear".

Her origins

Frequently it is said that Mahfiruz was Greek and that she taught Osman Greek. Tezcan has been able to determine that the source of this claim is not a work of historiography but a novel: Histoire d'Osman premier du nom, XIXe empereur des turcs, et de l'impératrice Aphendina Ashada by Madeleine-Angélique de Gomez published in 1743. Apparently it wasn't the only novel she wrote about the Ottomans or the Safavids.

Therefore even her origins are disputed and unsure. She may have been Greek nonetheless but Madeleine-Angélique de Gomez's novel cannot be use as the basis of this claim.

Her children

Osman II is clearly the only child we're absolutely sure was hers.

Öztuna lists other children: Şehzade Bâyezîd, Şehzade Süleymân, and Şehzade Hüseyn. Those who include Mehmed too in the list of her children nonchalantly forget that Osman was born in November 1604 and Mehmed in March 1605. Therefore Mehmed cannot be her son (it's Kösem's but people just won't accept it).

Cristoforo Valier said - between 1612 and 1615 - that Ahmed I had four sons: two with the sultana alive and two with the sultana who had died. Valier died on 15 July 1615 while returning to Venice so he had left Istanbul a little earlier, I assume. He doesn't say how long has Osman II's mother been dead though.

Tezcan thinks that Gevherhan Sultan was Osman's full-blooded sister because he bases his claims off Pietro della Valle, who says:

"Il giorno seguente alla morte di Nasuh, fu subito assunto al carico di primo visir Muhammed bascià, genero egli ancora del Gran Signore, cioè marito della prima figliuola, che è sorella di madre del principe primogenito..." // "The day after Nasuh's death, Mehmed Pasha was appointed to the office of Grand Vizier, he too the Gran Signore's son-in-law, that is the husband of his eldest daughter, who is the eldest prince's full sister..."

The Grand Vizier della Valle is talking about is Öküz Mehmed Paşa, the husband of Gevherhan Sultan. This bit is the reason why Börekçi too says that Gevherhan was the eldest of Ahmed's daughters.

Curiously, Pietro della Valle's is the oldest work that mentions Kösem by name. For this reason, I guess, he is held in high consideration by both Tezcan and Börekçi.

About the other princes, it may be that Süleymân or Bayezid as well were Osman's brothers. Süleymân was, in my opinion, not Murad IV's full brother because he's the first - with Bayezid - that he executes. That he first executed Bayezid (and Süleymân) means that he considered them the most dangerous. Why? Because they weren't his mother's sons and they could have been turned against him.

Bayezid is believed by Finkel to have been Osman's brother:

In a departure from recent practice, Murad had waited until he was home from his various campaigns before despatching his brothers: Bayezid and Süleyman – half-brothers to Murad and full brothers to Osman II – had met their end at the time of the celebrations marking the Yerevan campaign of 1635 [...] As Osman’s full brother Bayezid could be considered the rightful heir in Murad’s place. — Osman's Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire

Let's leave aside the claim that Bayezid could have been considered Osman's heir because as we all know, and as I am sure Finkel knows too, it is not Mahfiruze's blood that dictates the succession but Ahmed I's. Aside from that, I agree with her. We can't be sure that Süleymân and Bayezid were Osman's brothers (I think Bayezid has more chances to be), but Süleymân was definitely - in my opinion - Murad's half-brother.

The only problem with this is that Süleymân was born in 1615 (according to Öztuna), late in Ahmed's reign and too late according to the European ambassador's claims that Osman's mother had died around 1610 (maybe 1612 at the latest).

Which brings us to our next point in Mahfiruze's life:

Her death

As I have said, European ambassadors were certain that Ahmed had as consorts "the living sultana and the sultana who died".

the English ambassador George Sandys, who wrote presumably in 1610, or around this time, said about this:

"this also hath married his concubine, the mother of his yonger sonne, (she being dead by whom he had the eldest) who with all the practices of a politicke stepdame endevours to settle the succession on her owne...”

This bit not only would confirm that Ahmed has married Kösem at some point in his reign but that Mahfiruze died pretty early in his reign.

Cristoforo Valier, between 1612 and 1615 (when he died), said that Ahmed had four sons: "two from the sultana who died and two from the one alive"

Pietro della Valle too said that Osman's mother had died when he wrote about Osman II's accession to the throne:

"Othman figliuolo primogenito di Sultan Ahmed, ma non figliuolo della sultana Chiosemè vivente." // "Osman, Sultan Ahmed's firstborn son, but not son of the living sultana Kösem"

The French ambassador, Achille de Harlay, writing on Osman II's accession, said the same thing:

"non le fils de la sultane vivante mais l'ainé nommé Osman, orfelin de sa mère des il y a dix ans" // "not the son of the living sultana but the eldest named Osman, who has been motherless for ten years"

De Harlay had reported that Osman's mother was dead even earlier:

That Osman’s mother is dead is also stated in a relation on the life and death of Nasuh Pasha (d. 1614), written sometime after Nasuh’s execution in 1614 and sent by the same ambassador on March 5, 1616 — Searching for Osman

Then we have the second school of thought: Mahfiruze was in fact alive when Osman became sultan and died in 1620. This is usually said by Turkish historians (is it because they don't check Italian sources? Who knows but I wouldn't blame them tbh, there is literally nothing in common between Turkish and Italian):

Öztuna claims that Mahfiruze was valide sultan for two years, when she died on 26 October 1620. As he doesn't source his claims, we can only speculate who his sources are, but it's probably Uluçay who says the same thing:

"But these happy days did not last long. She died in the third year of her son's reign in 1620, and was buried in Eyüp Sultan Mosque"

Even a very recent work of historiography like Aylin Görgün-Baran's essay titled "A Woman Leader in Ottoman History: Kösem Sultan (1589-1651)" reiterates the same thing:

"By the way, the reign of Osman II had caused Kösem Sultan to take action and she had developed strategies to get on with Mahfiruz Sultan and Osman II and established relationships with them for her son Murat IV. She had sent gifts both to Mahfiruz Sultan and Osman II and given messages to them that she had taken their side."

Apart from the fact that I don't believe that Kösem was working to put Murad on the throne (how was she supposed to know that Osman II would be childless and deposed and killed? Please), this claim is not sourced.

She also said that Mahfiruz had died in 1621, in the same year in which Osman had executed Mehmed.

Back to Uluçay, he bases his claims on the chronogram on Mahfiruz's grave but, as Tezcan argues, that chronogram only means that the grave was built in 1618, not that she had died in that year.

The document that M. Cağatay Uluçay, Padişahların Kadınları ve Kızları, Ankara, Türk Tarihi Kurumu, 1980, p. 48, n. 1, cites as evidence for the date of her death specifies her burial place but does not seem to suggest that she died in the year that the document is dated. Peirce states that the document cited by Uluçay is "not to be found in the Topkapi Palace Museum Archives under the number he cites" — The debut of Kösem Sultan's political career

That Osman built a grave for his mother right after he became sultan may mean that he wanted to honour her with a better mausoleum. Also, who builds a grave for someone who is not dead yet and is also fairly young? I mean if Kösem was in her late twenties when Ahmed I died, Mahfiruze must have been around the same age.

Finally, we have Peirce's theory: Mahfiruze was alive but had been exiled during Ahmed I's reign and, for some reason, her son did not call her back to Topkapi when he became sultan.

Osman's mother, Mahfiruz, was alive when her son was finally enthroned in 1618 after the deposition of the incompetent Mustafa. However, contrary to the assumptions of modern accounts, she did not live in the imperial palace during Osman's reign nor did she act as valide sultan (privy purse registers from Osman's reign list no valide sultan). Mahfiruz died in 1620, two years after her son's accession, and was buried in the large sanctuary of Eyüb. From the middle of 1620, Osman's governess, the daye khatun, began to receive an extraordinarily large stipend (one thousand aspers a day rather than her usual two hundred aspers), an indication that she was now the official stand-in for the valide sultan. What seems likely is that Mahfiruz fell into disfavor, was banished from the palace at some point before Osman's accession, and never recovered her status as a royal concubine. Banishment in disgrace would explain both Mahfiruz's absence from the palace and her burial in the popular shrine of Eyüb rather than in her husband's tomb. The Venetian ambassador Contarini reported in 1612 that the sultan had had a beating administered to a woman who had irritated Kösem; perhaps this woman was Mahfiruz. Mahfiruz's banishment would have removed a serious obstacle to Kösem's efforts to save Mustafa from execution, since the party of Osman had the greatest stake in the survival of the traditional system of succession. — The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire

Honestly, I don't understand why she seems to think that Mahfiruze was alive - like Uluçay says - but then doesn't agree with his sources... strange.

So this is what we know about Mahfiruze. I have left out claims that she was related to Halime (?) or that the manager of the harem was her sister (?) or that she was related to Mahidevran as well (?) because I could not even find these things in books. I'm pretty sure it's someone's fantasy just going around the internet and for some reason people believed it.

I hope I did not forget anything!!

#anon #ask post #ask: ottoman history #mahfiruze hatice hatun #Anonymous

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cawfulopinions · 4 years

Text

Persona 4 Golden and the Problem of Appealing to a Wider Audience

I’ve been questioning how to go about writing this essay ever since I first finished Persona 4 Golden back in 2013. When I first finished the game, I came out of it not liking it very much – mechanically, it felt unbalanced; and writing-wise, I found it poorer than its original. My opinions on the game have shifted somewhat since then, helped along by the release of Persona 5 and the realization that many of the game’s mechanics were testbeds for that game. However, with time, I’ve found that I can articulate a lot of the problems Golden has with its writing a lot better. What I’ve ultimately settled on is looking at the Persona 4 we were originally given, then looking at its rerelease, and seeing what changed there and why I didn’t like it. Let’s jump in, shall we?

(Note: There will be complaining about Marie. My opinions on that subject sure as hell haven’t changed in the past seven years. Also, there will obviously be spoilers.)

I. A Brief History of Persona 4 as a Franchise

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 (later spinoffs would drop the subtitle) released in the west in 2008 as a follow-up to the very strange (at the time) and very niche Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3. Persona 3 was notable for deciding to go for an urban setting, an avant-garde aesthetic, and heavy philosophical themes, something that was rare for RPGs before 2010 (though not for its own franchise). While Persona 4 kept the philosophical focus of Persona 3, it decided to dial back some of the artsier aspects in favor of a more down-to-earth, focused story. Where P3 told a story about the inevitability of death and took place in a very modern Japanese setting, P4 decides to tell a story about the lies we tell ourselves and takes place in a rustic, rural setting.

Some of the first things that Persona 4 tells you after getting to its setting, Inaba, are that the town really only has one tourist attraction, it’s far from anywhere of real note, and its local businesses are all being driven out of business by the construction of a corporate superstore. It’s relatable, particularly to anyone who’s watched their local mom-and-pops go out of business after a Wal-Mart decided to move in.

The tone of this setting permeates through Persona 4 – all of its characters are pretty down-to-earth, and though there’s some cartoonish exaggeration in their writing, they feel more like real people than your average RPG character. Yosuke is the new kid in town who struggles with feelings of inferiority, something that’s not helped by his dad running the superstore that’s driving everyone out of business. Naoto is a girl with aspirations of becoming a detective, but hides her gender out of a belief that if she does so, she’ll be taken more seriously by the male-dominated police force. Even the game’s idol character, Rise, is someone who quit the business because the pressures of the idol industry became too much for her. Most games would take the opportunity to have an idol character written into the cast as an excuse for a pandering song and dance sequence and to play up her “waifu” aspects. Persona 4 spends the first hour after Rise’s introduced having her in and apron and slacks, serving tofu, and dodging paparazzi.

Persona 4 is not perfect in how it approaches its characters – in particular, Kanji and Naoto’s storylines have gotten a deserved level of flack for having essentially written coming-out stories for a gay man and a transman, and then immediately backing off and “no homo”-ing them. There’s a number of Social Links that end with the character deciding to go do the socially acceptable thing for them to do instead of following their own hearts, too – Yukiko’s comes to mind. But the character conflicts and stories told in the game’s Social Links are grounded and relatable.

The grounded-ness of Persona 4 was what really made it stand out in 2009, a time where RPGs and games as a whole were mostly concerned with showing off the cool things they could do with their engines (keep in mind, this was the early era of the PS3, and Persona 4 was a PS2 game). Looking back, it’s easy to realize that Persona 4 was made as grounded and rustic as it was because of budgetary concerns, but what was done with its limited budget was incredible. It looked at its setting and tone and embraced them, and that helped to make the game stronger.

And it worked! Persona 4 was easily Atlus’s biggest success in the PS2 era. Though the game was hard to find in the United States due to its short print run, it was inescapable online, and the early Let’s Play era helped keep it in the public eye. There’s a large number of people in the English fandom who only knew Persona 4 existed back in the day because of the hiimdaisy comic and the Giant Bomb Endurance Run. Meanwhile, the game was huge in Japan and topped sales charts for weeks.

Source: Gamasutra

And then Atlus almost went out of business! Oops!

Here’s what we know about Atlus at the time that Persona 4 came out: it wasn’t doing good. The PS2 Shin Megami Tensei games were all desperate attempts to try and find success, something that Persona director Katsura Hashino has been fairly public about in interviews. Dataminers examining the PS2 SMT games have found evidence that suggests every game was built on top of the previous, with every game using SMT: Nocturne’s models and basic gameplay system until after Persona 4’s release. Persona 3 and Persona 4 are so similar under the hood that model swap mods are everywhere for the two, with literally the only adjustments necessary being a reordering of animations to account for Persona 4 having a guard animation and Persona 3 not.

Persona 4 was a huge hit, but it wasn’t enough to save Atlus. The last games released under an independent Atlus were Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor (one of my personal favorites) and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (a massive failure for the company). Following Strange Journey’s release, long-time franchise artist (and, more importantly, producer and creative designer for Strange Journey) Kazuma Kaneko near entirely disappeared from future SMT titles, only credited for writing the scenario concept for SMTIV and as a demon design supervisor for later SMT titles.

Soon after Strange Journey’s failure, Atlus was snatched up by Index Corporation. Very little is known about the internal culture during the Index era, but evidence suggests that it wasn’t great. The first few games Atlus produced after this point were all remakes, save for the strange, marriage-drama focused Catherine, a game that was assuredly in development before Atlus was bought out.

It was the original games and spinoffs that Atlus produced after they were bought by Index that started to show a shift in tone. Devil Survivor 2 is a notably different game than its predecessor (which was made while Atlus was independent). While I won’t get into that too much here (that game’s worth an essay on its own), it decided to trade it’s classical SMT-style aesthetic for something more bombastic and widely-appealing. Many of the characters in that game are better summed up by what anime tropes they appeal to than by their own character arcs, and the game’s plot is an unsubtle ripoff of Neon Genesis Evangelion. And it worked. Devil Survivor 2 very notably sold better than its predecessor despite being a DS game in the 3DS era.

At around the same time as Devil Survivor 2 was released, Atlus was preparing to release the first anime adaptation of Persona 4. Persona 4: The Animation was released in October of 2011, directed by Seiji Kishi (of Angel Beats! fame) and animated by AIC. I’ll leave my thoughts on Seiji Kishi as a director out of this and focus on the content of Persona 4: The Animation instead.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. Persona 4: The Animation is a comedy anime.

The anime is a fairly faithful adaptation of the game in terms of plotline. It follows the game’s story to the letter, hitting every plot beat. When it needs to get serious, it gets serious, and when it nails its emotional beats, it nails them well. While I’ll go on record in saying that I flat out dislike the anime, I won’t deny that certain episodes, like the Nanako arc, are done very well. However, when it doesn’t need to be serious, the anime decides to look at Persona 4’s subtlety in its character arcs, and says, “Subtlety is for cowards.”

There’s an argument to be made that there isn’t time for subtlety in a 24-episode anime, which is why everyone’s character arcs needed to be compressed and character traits shaved down to only the most exaggerated bits. I disagree. You can easily show character without exaggeration in short-form media – the entire short story genre is built off of that exact concept. The decision to shave everyone down to their most basic traits was a decision made to make Persona 4 more accessible to a general anime-watching audience, who likely came in expecting a more action-packed, high energy deal.

And it worked.

For many people, Persona 4: The Animation was their first experience with Persona, period. The anime was incredibly popular, and it’s clear that at this point, Atlus (or, more likely, Index) realized they’d struck gold. Persona 4: The Animation was the start of a large spate of Persona 4 spinoffs, all of which adopting the character exaggerations of the anime in some form or fashion. Any time you see a scene in a P4 spinoff where Chie’s reduced to her love of meat and kung-fu? Blame the anime. Further original games after this point seemed to take a more mainstream shift as well – Shin Megami Tensei IV and its sequel, Apocalypse, are both very different games than their predecessors, with characters and plotlines seemingly written to appeal to Persona 4’s audience.

Atlus eventually managed to claw their way out from under the hand of Index, mostly because Index got caught up in a huge fraud investigation! Oops! Sega bought a whole bunch of Index at this point, and Atlus has more or less kept on trucking under Sega since. However, the shift in internal priorities hasn’t changed much – Persona 5, while still a good game, is much closer tonally to the games that came out under Index, Shin Megami Tensei V has been AWOL ever since its first preview, and the less said about Catherine Redux, the better.

II. Less is More, and Maybe Inaba Doesn’t Need A Nightclub

Which, after a long detour, brings us back to Persona 4 Golden.

Golden is a remake of Persona 4 with additional content, released for the Playstation Vita (RIP) during the height of its popularity in Japan. Like Persona 3 FES, a previous patch/remake for Persona 3, Golden primarily exists as a gameplay patch to Persona 4 with additional story content in places throughout the game. While most of FES’s additional story was segmented off into the controversial “The Answer” section, Golden’s additional content is peppered haphazardly throughout the game. Because of this integration into the main story, Golden’s issues are more pronounced than FES’s were – in FES, you could just not play “The Answer”. Golden isn’t letting you go home without at least pushing you toward Marie’s dungeon.

Golden feels like it was developed with an understanding that anyone who’s playing it has watched the anime, and decides to lean into chasing that mainstream appeal while also throwing out the intrigue of its plot and setting. This is first evidenced when you boot up the game and watch the opening. While it hits all of the same beats as Persona 4’s opening, Golden’s opening has a much cheerier tune to it, focusing on a dance sequence and colorful visuals instead of the larger tone of the game. It’s not like the Persona 4 opening is completely absent from the game, but you have to go out of your way to watch it, and first impressions are very important.

This change in opening tone is only one example of the general tone of the changes that Golden takes. While there are big issues with the game’s writing (specifically one big one, which, whooo boy, we’ll get to her), most of the issues are in the little things – the new gameplay elements, the new areas you can visit, and the new scenes that were added to the game.

I talked a lot about how important P4’s setting is to its game for a reason: most of Golden’s changes are ones that disrupt the carefully crafted tone and setting of the original game. From things like slice of life scenes about the party buying scooters for themselves, to a winter trip to a ski resort, to a goddamn idol concert on the roof of the supercenter driving everyone out of business, it feels like the game is trying to pull away from its rural setting and down-to-earth tone to appeal to the lowest common denominator: teenage boys who live in Japanese cities.

A big sticking point for me personally has always been that you can visit Okina City in Golden. In Persona 4, you visited the nearby city occasionally in social link events, but never explored it on the whole. It gave a sense that Okina City was somewhere inconvenient to go to – someplace worth going to for a day trip with your friends, but too out of the way to visit on the regular. In Golden, the city and all of its trappings are just a loading screen away. Having a larger setting change like this so easily accessible detracts from Inaba’s setting – it makes the anxieties that several characters have about being trapped by the town feel fake. It detracts from a feeling that’s so integral to the game’s tone.

Also, the first time you go there outside of a Social Link is because Yosuke wants to pick up chicks with his cool new motorcycle.

The first trip to Okina City is ultimately indicative of a larger problem with most of the added scenes in P4G have: because they were written after the anime, they’re written to appeal to anime watchers. You can immediately tell when you’ve entered a scene that is original to P4G because the writing almost immediately drops in quality – characters become less complex, scenes have nothing to do with the plot or character development, and, to be quite honest, the jokes get worse. The Okina City sequence ultimately just ends with a fat joke and another “no homo” moment with Kanji. It’s… really bad.

There’s four more of these additional sequences throughout the game, and they’re all similar slice of life sequences that rely on anime tropes to propel them. The next after this is a beach episode with the rest of your party. After that is the idol concert on the Junes roof, which gets a hastily written tie-in to the plot when an antagonist says that the concert was how he found the party. After that is the entire winter sequence of the game, which caps off with a ski resort trip that leads into the game’s extra dungeon (which we’ll get to), which THEN leads into the game’s second hot springs cutscene, which has even less purpose than the first one.

None of these scenes have any real substance – it feels like they were just included because they actually had the budget to include them this time around. It’s possible that Okina City and the nighttime areas in Inaba were originally intended for the original version of P4, and I’d believe it – the way nighttime jobs are implemented in the original version of the game is particularly awkward, and you visit Okina City enough times in Social Links that I fully believe it was intended for the full game. As for the idol concert sequence, it 100% only exists because they got Rie Kugimiya as Rise’s VA, but couldn’t fit a sequence where she sang into the original version of the game.

The problem is that these inclusions ultimately detract from the original story. They take a game with a pretty firm idea of what kind of tone it wanted to have and muddle it because, fuck that, we have a budget this time and we need more anime tropes, idols, and tsunderes for those kids who came in after watching the anime.

Which brings us to Persona 4 Golden’s biggest issues: its additional Social Links, the winter semester, and its new ending sequence.

III. We have to talk about Marie.

Like Persona 3 FES before it, Persona 4 Golden adds new Social Links to the game. The first of which is the Jester Social Link, which deals with Tohru Adachi, a local police officer and a major character. While I’ve never been a huge fan of this Social Link (I’ve always felt like it made the identity of the culprit too obvious), it’s fairly well received by the fanbase and I can see the argument for its inclusion, so I’m not going to spend time discussing it here.

The other is Golden’s new Aeon Social Link, who manages to encompass most of Golden’s issues in a single character.

Marie is a completely original character to Golden, the first of a long chain of Atlus “remake waifus” – characters who are added to a remake of a game that are intended to appeal to the otaku crowd, rarely fit in with the rest of the game, and introduce large changes to the game’s plot. These characters rarely work because the narrative wasn’t built around them, and the retcons these characters introduce are often detrimental to their games’ original plots or themes.

Marie has all of these problems. She feels like she was written by committee – designed to appeal to an otaku crowd with a fancy design and tsundere personality. On top of that, she’s voiced by a big name seiyuu (Kana Hanazawa), and her plotline is used to fill in gaps with the game’s ending sequence, since the original game struggled with setting it up and the anime barely even bothered to touch it (Persona 4’s True Ending was shuffled off into an OVA in the anime adaptation).

From the moment you first see Marie, it’s obvious that she doesn’t belong. It’s not that her character design is bad, but it doesn’t match with the rest of the game’s tone. This is something of a pattern for her. The first time you meet Marie, it’s in the middle of a scene that was originally dedicated to the protagonist meeting his new family in Inaba. It’s jarring, disrupts a scene that was about setting up the protagonist’s larger family dynamic, and interrupts the flow of the game’s opening sequence.

Personality-wise, Marie is probably the most tropey of Golden’s characters – she’s a tsundere with amnesia, has a mysterious past, writes bad poetry as a hobby, and has a very obvious crush on the protagonist. Romancing her is almost mandated – you’re required to complete her Social Link to access the winter semester of the game, and during the game’s new ending, she calls out the protagonist on television to talk about how much she loves him. You can choose not to romance her if you want, but the game does its best to push you into wanting to do so.

Marie ultimately becomes one of the Velvet Room’s new attendants, though a lot of the evidence suggests that she was intended to become one of your party members originally. This is partially because she has a unique Persona related to her, and partially because the game takes every effort to emphasize how much of a buddy she is to the party. Marie’s Social Link ranks are time gated, usually becoming available after a new party member joins your team. All of these early scenes are dedicated to the protagonist going on dates with Marie, and then a random party member will show up and immediately become friends with her. Probably the most egregious case is during any mid-game hangouts where you don’t rank up, because the entirety of your party will just show up at Junes at the same time as you and Marie. It’s so obviously artificially constructed and honestly feels insulting to the player.

This artificiality feels like it was a writer’s saving throw to justify why the team would go into Marie’s dungeon to save her. The problem is that it’s also an unnecessary move to take. The majority of Persona 4’s plot is about the party entering dungeons to save people that they don’t really know from a serial killer; it stands to reason that the party would decide to help Marie without that extra motivation. But no, it was important to the writers that Marie is also big friends with the party, so we got what we got instead.

Marie’s dungeon comes after the skiing trip that caps off the winter semester, a portion of the game that is only available if you’ve finished her Social Link. The skiing trip is mostly more slice of life/comedy scenes, right up until you get thrust into the TV World to help Marie. The dungeon itself is… notoriously bad. You’re stripped of your equipment and items, and can only use items found within the dungeon to fight back. On top of that, the dungeon constantly drains your HP and MP, and the boss of it can only be damaged by using items that give her elemental weaknesses, because she starts off immune to everything. Here’s hoping you didn’t bring Chie for that fight like I did!

As you go through the dungeon, it’s revealed that Marie was secretly Kusumi-no-Okami, a minor Shinto god in service to Ameno-Sagiri (the game’s first final boss). Kusumi-no-Okami’s purpose is that she’s supposed to observe humanity and suck up all of Ameno-Sagiri’s fog after the conclusion of the game’s plot, which will inevitably kill her. The dungeon ends with the party trying to appeal to Marie to convince her that she doesn’t need to die, and then beating her up to save her. It’s… not particularly well written, but if that was all to Marie’s character after that, it would be fine. Unfortunately, it’s not.

The game proceeds as normal after that point as you approach the actual final boss, Izanami-no-Okami. During the fight with her, there is a sequence where the protagonist is encouraged to keep going by all of his social links. In the original version of the game (assuming that you’ve done their Social Links), this sequence ends with Dojima and Nanako, the family he’s been staying with the whole game, encouraging him to keep going. In Golden, Nanako’s line is immediately followed by Marie showing up, once again taking a sequence about familial love to make it about Marie. It’s… kind of gross!

Then you beat Izanami, and in the scene immediately afterwards, it’s revealed that, just kidding, Marie wasn’t Kusumi-no-Okami after all! She was actually Izanami-no-Mikoto, the good part of Izanami that was shaved off so that she could do her whole evil plot. Once you beat Izanami-no-Okami, she absorbs that evil part back into her and everything is all hunky dory! Conflict resolved completely, no need to worry about it anymore!

The “Marie was actually Izanami all along” reveal undercuts the finale of the game significantly. It comes immediately after what was the final scene before the ending scene, where Izanami pledged to leave humanity’s direction to humans in recognition of your feats. It’s an unnecessary doubling down on a finale that was already pretty definitive, if somewhat bittersweet, by making it unambiguously happy. This remains a theme for Golden’s ending sequence.

Persona 4 ends with the protagonist leaving his friends behind at the end of the year. Though the killer is in jail and the mastermind defeated, Inaba is still in the same melancholy state as it was when the protagonist came to it, and ultimately, he has to leave his friends behind. There’s a bittersweet-ness to its happy ending – no matter what, you have to move on and trust that things will be okay without you. Obviously, the protagonist comes back – there wouldn’t be so many spinoffs if he couldn’t – but it’s important that Persona 4 ends the way it does at that point. It puts a definitive close on the game.

Golden, however, adds an extended epilogue sequence where the protagonist comes back a year later. In this sequence, you find out that Inaba’s businesses are recovering, Namatame (the false antagonist) is running for office with a lot of support from the town, Adachi (the actual antagonist) has been on good behavior in jail, and your party members are all making tracks toward happiness for themselves.

A theme of esoteric happiness runs through this entire sequence – it feels like it entirely exists just to tell the player not to worry, everything is fine now, don’t worry about any other points of conflict. If it was just one of these things, it would have been fine, but the gatling gun of happy endings makes every one of those little victories feel lesser for it. Marie, of course, is inserted into the ending sequence of the epilogue to cap off her involvement. The esoteric happiness started with Marie, and it ends with Marie.

Golden’s epilogue ties every conflict in the game up into a neat little bow, in a way that’s almost entirely at odds with Persona 4’s down-to-home nature. It’s a fantasy that doesn’t acknowledge the uglier parts of life that Persona 4 was all about confronting. It’s the same kind of lie that Izanami accused humanity of wanting to nestle itself into. Marie’s involvement in Golden sums up a lot of that game’s problems, but the epilogue brings them into sharp relief.

IV. So now what?

I wouldn’t call Golden a bad game – I’ve heard a lot of people call it the superior version gameplay-wise, and while I disagree with that (it’s got some balance issues thanks to its new mechanics), it’s definitely the most accessible version. But when it comes to how it relates to its original, Golden throws a lot of what makes it good out the window in favor of appealing to a more general audience with slice of life sequences, more familiar tropes, and a character who mostly exists to sell merchandise and tie up Persona 4’s ending in an unambiguously happy manner.

I realize I’m in the minority here when I talk about what I dislike about Golden – you’ll find a lot of people who dislike Marie, but not a lot who dislike the rest of the package. And if you have a Vita and haven’t played Persona 4 already, then you might as well use it as your entry point into the franchise. However, I can’t help but feel like Golden is the exact point where Persona as a franchise shifted from trying to tell philosophical stories with more grounded characters to chasing mainstream appeal. Even Persona 5, a game that tries to tell a story about very real societal problems, has a lot of the same problems as Golden does, and from what I understand, these problems only got worse with Persona 5 Royal.

At the end of the day, Persona is going nowhere anytime soon – Persona 5 is the best-selling game in the franchise period, and the influence Persona has had on JRPGs in general cannot be understated. But I wouldn’t mind if some of the things I disliked about Persona 4 Golden didn’t come back.

#persona 4 #persona 4 golden #p4 spoilers #opinion #video games #a massive pile of salt

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dyonoi · 5 years

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Davekat is one of the ships I'm not as into because it's ruined by the fandoms Biphobic nature. Dave and Karkat are both into girls and it's totally Normal for them to want to eventually date Jade too when they're older and mature, and it doesn't make them less into each other because you think it makes them Less Gay. It just didn't work out this time, in this timeline. Keep hating Jade Harley for getting into your sexy ship.

have you ever considered that a huge chunk of people in the homestuck fandom, especially on twitter/tumblr are...in fact lgbt themselvesdid it ever occur to you that youre sending this shit to actual bi people

im unironically gonna pull out the NO U card here and say the idea that bi people "cant pick" or are naturally drawn to polyamory and/or promiscuity and equating poly to bi is infact biphobic here. not to say real bi poly people dont exist or are doing anything wrong but this concept is often a negative portrayal of bi people in media

let me tell you my own experience here so that MAYBE you can understand someone elses perspectiveback in the midlate 2000s in highschool i dated a bi guy called brennan. i obviously had no problems with this, but in the lead up to this my friends had a whole discussion with me and basically told me not to date him. because he was bi. basically what it boiled down to was "theres double the chances of him cheating on you, you have to look out for him being friends with ANYONE" and "hes probably a manw***e." i dated him anyway for around 4 months before i found out he was cheating on me with 2 other people at the same time. the response i got from everyone was "I TOLD YOU SO" and i internalized this shit for years.

fastforward like 2-3 years and im in a relationship that im still in to this day. im a committed person when it comes to relationships and i am straight up monogamous. so thoughts of being bi were pushed down since i was 16 because i thought admitting to it or even exploring the idea would make it come across like i was less into my bf and an affront to him, that i would potentially wander off or be unloyal because i internalized that all bi people would be secretly unhappy unless "they had both" and that it would come across that way. it took me a ridiculously long time to be able to realize i could admit to finding some girls hot while staying monogamous

so...dave and karkat being bi AND monogamous is important to me. not just because of personal stuff, but also cause ive literally written multiple fucking essays about how its so crucial to karkats character and elevates him from "character i enjoy" to "incredibly well written and compelling character writing that im very invested in, and likely the only vehicle to his actual happiness." as for dave, it just straight up goes against his existing character and sometimes saying "this doesnt add up" is a legit reason not to like something. i find the argument that poly is something that has to happen as a byproduct of them "maturing" and that monogamy is inherently immature in contract is pretentious and condescending as fuck

i dont know how else to explain this multiple fucking times. all this is completely divorced from jade, and this would still stand if it was john, terezi, jane, tavros, obama, or whoever the fuck else in her place. though now the epilogues made it even WORSE in my mind because of the fact that she sexually harassed them for years and people are conveniently ignoring that but thats besides the point

and this idea that i think that bi people in het relationships arent "gay enough" and thats why i hate djk is... incredibly STUPID, considering thats the arrangement ive been in for a large chunk of my life.

im very sorry that i dont fit your neat little one-dimensional narrative that davekat shippers hate jade and are biphobic

anyway if you wanna ignore all of karkat and daves long standing characterization regarding this, and wanna ignore jade (and i wanna make clear here again- i do not hate her, i hate what she did, but it makes me find her WAY more interesting. i LOVE character flaws and think theyre extremely important and honestly jade needed more of them) and everything she did... have fun lol

#Anonymous

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edwad · 6 years

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If you had to choose 10 marxian econ books for someone who has only read marx, what would you recommend

by “marx” i have to assume you mean capital because that really is the root of “marxian econ”. it won’t suffice to just have read the manifesto or something like that and i don’t want to recommend books that will be saying things that you’re totally unfamiliar with because you’re skipping straight into the secondary literature which already largely assumes a reader which is familiar with capital. anyway, heres a list, which isnt in any particular order and which includes a few things that i’m still working through for myself:

1. essays on marxs theory of value - isaak rubin

hugely important book which essentially all value-form theory derives from. written by an extremely knowledgeable marx scholar who had a much better idea of what marx was doing in capital than most marxists today. last month brill published a book called “responses to marxs capital” which includes some of rubin’s other writings, most of them being published in english for the first time. hes a huge figure in the literature and definitely worth looking in to.

2. marx, capital, and the madness of economic reason - david harvey

i was obviously going to put something of harvey’s in here and i think his last book is a fairly good summary of the best of what hes done up to this point with some welcome additions (the visualization of capital, the stuff on anti-value, etc). not perfect but he definitely provides a good framework for how to understand the geography of capital which doesnt require necessarily agreeing with him on everything. honestly, if you keep up with harvey at all you’ll be able to tell that its mostly just typical harveyisms with the inclusion of some stuff from his recent talks (which have all been almost exactly the same).

3. in the long run we are all dead - geoff mann

maybe this looks more like a book on keynesian rather than marxian econ, but its real argument is that keynesianism as a long historical project (meaning long before and after keynes himself) has been an immanent critique of liberalism and revolution and that keynes is to us what hegel was to marx. a really great book that covers a lot of ground which isnt always explicitly economic, but definitely worth the read if you have the patience. if you want a longer review, i left a pretty lengthy one on amazon a few months ago where you can get a better idea of what i got from this book, what its limitations are, and why i think its so important.

4. monopoly capital - paul baran & paul sweezy

an older book which hasnt exactly aged well, but its thesis has become extremely popular again since the crisis. written by baran and sweezy, the fathers of “the monthly review school” of economics, its played a huge role in the direction of marxian debates from the 1960s up until today. the authors were both tending in the same intellectual direction in their earlier works (sweezy’s theory of capitalist development and baran’s political economy of growth, the former still being considered one of the best introductions to marxs work and its relevance to the 20th century, with much controversy of course) and this was the result of them coming together to talk about what they saw as a monopoly capitalism which was fairly different in character than the “competitive capitalism” of marx’s day and therefore had to be dealt with differently.

5. capitalism - anwar shaikh

probably the most ambitious work the left has seen in a long time which tries to thoroughly critique neoclassical theory and develop an alternative economics which is rooted in what shaikh calls the “classical” school (”classical-marxian” would probably be more appropriate but i think hes trying to downplay his reliance on marx). in it, shaikh takes a good look at many of the competing schools of thought (neoclassical, post-keynesian, sraffian/neo-ricardian, etc) and sees how they stand up analytically and empirically, taking issue with their underlying assumptions and the inevitable problems which arise from building a theory on false foundations.

one of his bigger points is that the neoclassical theory of “perfect competition” is nonsensical but wasnt thoroughly combatted by heterodox economists, who only made it so far as asserting the “imperfect” nature of competition, which, in shaikh’s eyes, is to simply add imperfections after the fact into the theory which necessarily begins with the absurd assumption of perfection. the book’s argument is that the theorists of “imperfect competition” still rely on the theory of “perfect competition” as their starting point and never really manage to escape the latter because they havent actually created an alternative way of thinking about competition, they’ve just inserted a complication into a theory which was a completely unrealistic assumption to begin with. much of his attack is directed at the monthly review school and the idea of a “monopoly capitalism” which is supposedly different in form than the allegedly “perfect competition” of capitalism during marxs life. in this sense, this book serves as a counterbalance to the MR approach and is also probably the most successful attempt at situating marxs TRPF within an empirical study of kondratiev waves.

hes also got a website with a bunch of resources and a lecture series from a course he did on the material in the book which is pretty interesting, but it assumes a good deal of familiarity with economics.

6. a history of marxian economics - michael howard & john king (2 volumes)

this is a pretty thorough history of the internal debates among marxian economists ever since the death of marx all the way up to 1990. it covers a lot of ground and doesnt shy away from controversies where marx didnt come out on top. of course, a good amount of this is subject to the interpretation of the authors and they definitely have a great deal of input, but its a very impressive work which i frequently use as a marxian encyclopedia of sorts.

7. the making of marx’s capital - roman rosdolsky

despite some problems, rosdolsky’s classic book on the development of marx’s critique of political economy is easily one of the most important marxological works ever written and it still holds a lot of sway. taking the grundrisse as its starting point, the author unpacks marx’s project and constantly asserts marx’s method and in particular his explicit reliance on hegel’s logic, pitting marx (as he was in his drafts) against the then contemporary thinkers and critics which were prone to misusing or misunderstanding the arguments in capital. as a disclaimer and partial criticism of rosdolsky’s portrait of marx, i dont believe that we can simply say that marx in the late 50s was identical to the marx of the 60s and 70s that wrote and published capital, but i also dont think that means we necessarily have to discount the grundrisse (or theories of surplus value, etc) simply because they werent written at precisely the right time for marxs thinking.

i only just got my own copy a couple of weeks ago so i cant say too much more but i have skimmed through chunks of the pdf and its totally unavoidable in the secondary literature so im not totally unfamiliar. its one i plan on tackling in full very soon.

8. moneybags must be so lucky - robert paul wolff

another marxological one, this tiny book is a literary analysis of capital and in particular the first part of volume 1. wolff does a great job of deconstructing the arguments in chapter 1 to try and clarify what marx is doing and why with a lot of humor and philosophical tangents. one of his biggest points is that marxs heavy reliance on irony was the only adequate way of capturing the contradictory nature of capitalism and is therefore part of the theory itself, rather than simply being a way to dress up the theory and make it more palatable to readers. i approached this book after id already “read marx” too, but it was extremely useful because it wasnt until i read it that i finally started to actually understand marx. for that reason, i dont feel particularly bad about recommending it to anyone thats already familiar with capital because it does a great job of making the most difficult part of volume 1 infinitely more exciting and comprehensible – especially since its never enough to just read capital once.

9. the production of commodities by means of commodities - piero sraffa

against my better judgement, i’m putting this on the list knowing full-well that i’m going to be harassed by an anon which has been on my ass for about a year now ever since i first recommended sraffa’s book in a reading list despite the fact that ive never finished it (barely even read it to be more precise). i do, however, know that its had a huge influence on the trajectory of marxian thought since 1960 and that many of the thinkers are still trying to recover from the theoretical displacement implicit in sraffa’s thesis.

its a math-heavy book (which is why i havent been able to wade through it) and its status as a work coming from the “marxian” approach is hotly contested, but its certainly had its way with the marxian school (not to mention the neoclassical school, which has an easier time simply ignoring sraffa entirely), generating countless debates among scholars, many of whom simply wish that this book had never been written. for a short summary of the debate and whats apparently at stake, ive got an old post where i worked out some of the initial responses to sraffa and how this has snowballed into the controversy that it is today. ive got it on this list because of how unavoidable it is. you cant go into the secondary literature at anything resembling an intermediate level without knowing sraffa’s name and why everyone feels so strongly about him.

10. an introduction to the three volumes of karl marxs capital - michael heinrich

i dont quite like that im ending this list with a book that presents itself as an “introduction” when we’ve already established that this is a bunch of recommendations for someone thats already acquainted with capital, but sadly this is the only full-length book that heinrich has in the english language and its reading of capital is so unorthodox that it feels totally alien against all the traditional interpretations of marx. honestly, it doesnt feel like an introduction in the first place, reading more like a challenge and an intervention into the secondary debates about what marx is saying in capital which derives from the german debates which constitute the parameters for the “neue marx-lekture”, or “the new reading of marx”, which sits uncomfortably among the more typical marxisms that surround it on all sides, especially among non-german theorists/readers.

as far as the dominant reading of marx goes, nearly everything this book says betrays marx’s project, but heinrich knows marx very well, better than most of us (as even his biggest critics readily admit). this may be considered reflective of a “new reading”, but that doesnt mean the old ones are any better or that this one is necessarily a “revisionist” project as many claim (or at least, i wouldnt consider it to be revising marx even if its guilty of revising “marxism”, which is by no means necessarily a bad thing). on the contrary, i think heinrich has the best understanding of marx out of pretty much everyone else right now and thats why i wanted to end with this one. yes, you should read all of the others, especially since you cant understand the way we read and think about marx without coming across the work of people like sraffa and sweezy, but that doesnt really change the fact that heinrich points to a big problem with the way we read and think about marx, that the debates have been getting it wrong all along and largely misunderstanding marxs actual project, miscontextualizing it and falling into dogmatism for various political or academic reasons.

what heinrich does is to show how the way marx is read and interpreted often misses or downplays the most crucial elements of what marx is actually trying to get across. marxs critique of political economy simply gets converted into a newer, more correct political economy which simply builds on the classical school (shaikh), or it suffers in the hands of those that believe its foundations need to be updated as if it isnt all that relevant anymore (sweezy and baran), or that many of its categories are lacking utility and can simply be done away with (sraffa). rubin’s work plays a big part in establishing the NML reading and harvey draws on heinrich’s scholarship a lot, but nobody really does it as well as heinrich himself and i genuinely think hes lightyears ahead of everyone else. a lot of people are starting to agree and i was one of the most recent converts on the heinrich hype train which has been growing for the last couple of years.

any day now, we should be getting one of his older books, the science of value, in english and i plan on devouring it as fast as i can, but sadly its been in limbo for several years, with its initial release scheduled for 2014 (if i remember correctly). in the mean time though, we’ve only got his introduction to capital and a bunch of shorter pieces/videos.

so i guess thats my list of 10 things to read after marx with some explanations on why i think theyre important, culminating in ideologically correct heinrich-worship. this was sorta fun and if you have any other questions feel free to ask.

#communism

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beneathamaterialshell-blog · 7 years

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John Berger, Lord Clark of Civilisation and Michael McNay

I was very sad to learn of the death of John Berger. He had a big influence on the way I thought about art. In some ways, a lot of the work had been done before I saw Ways of Seeing, as I was already a Marxist and I had read some Adorno and Benjamin, but the way in which Berger put, in Ways of Seeing, his insights into the nature of art was bold, direct, invigorating. I think only John Molyneux and Terry Eagleton can offer that kind of excitement and interest now.

There’s a nice obit in Socialist Worker by Molyneux at the moment, which points you in the direction of some of his other well-known works. In the wake of his death, I shall try to read more of them. Nice though it is, it falls short of the kind of lengthy summary of the man and his life that you get in the national dailies, so it’s a shame that the more comprehensive one in the Guardian is so poor.

I’ll admit, I was pretty angry when I read Michael McNay’s obit, but the internet’s already full enough of people just being angry so I wouldn’t have written a blog post about this if, when I thought through exactly what I found so objectionable about the piece, I hadn’t thought there were some serious points to be made that might be worthy of a few lines in a public space. Besides, if McNay’s work is in the public domain I can’t think of a good reason why mine shouldn’t be.

A minor issue

Clearly, McNay hasn’t come to praise Berger but to bury him. He has some nice things to say about some of his novels, but has little time for his work as an art critic and commentator. Here are a few of his remarks:

Ways of Seeing, made on the cheap for the BBC as four half-hour programmes, was the first series of its kind since Civilisation (1969), 13 one-hour episodes for which Kenneth Clark, its writer and presenter, and a BBC production team had travelled 80,000 miles through 13 countries exploring 2,000 years of the visual culture of the western world. Berger travelled as far as the hut in Ealing, west London where his programmes were filmed, and no farther.

in one, he made a hopeless mess of Picasso’s later career, though he was not alone in this; in the other, he elevated a brave dissident artist beyond his talents.

This who he? element became a regular feature of his writings, but never seems to have damaged his reputation.

“Lie” may be a bit strong, but in his early days Marxist dialectic did force him into uncomfortable contortions.

During the course of the obit his work will be criticised and/or derided, his beliefs and opinions casually dismissed and there will be lots of implications (though little outright statement) that Berger was some kind of middle-class Stalinist poseur rather than a serious thinker.

Is this a major problem? No, of course not. Obits don’t have to be positive or hagiographic, and if I personally didn’t like the man I doubt I would have registered it as an issue. This comes firmly under the gripe category of well that’s not what I would have written, which is no objection at all. It might seem an odd choice of writer for the Guardian, which is often seen as a the most left-leaning of the national dailies. However, the Guardian has never been a particularly left-wing paper, and has been wedded to the right wing of the PLP for, arguably most of the twentieth century. There is no real reason to expect a sympathetic obit from the Graun. I bring it up because I think that his approach to the subject of the obituary has contributed towards several of the more severe defects in the piece.

The Problems

I: Who is the subject?

Whilst McNay clearly has little time for Berger’s criticism it’s pretty clear that he does have time for Lord Clark of Civilisation and his now legendary series These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things (1969). As you have seen from the earlier quote, the BBC put a lot of resources into What I Did On My Holidays (1969), which was indeed 13 hours of an avuncular bigot standing in front of some (sometimes wonderful) works of art by (and usually of) Western European men while squinting at the prompt cards under the camera. Now, I like Show and Tell (1969) very much. I like the high-quality footage of some wonderful artwork and I find a lot of Clark’s meandering bletherings about what civilisation might be (something which the BBC apparently weren’t bothered about him clearing up before they gave him the BA tickets) and why he finds it unfathomable that some young people nowadays seem to be terribly upset about something-or-other genuinely hilarious. But this isn’t an obituary of Clark, and it’s an indicator of where McNay has gone wrong that when he compares the two programmes he at no point asks: why were so many resources put into Clark’s piece and so few into Berger’s? Was it political? Or was it more practically to do with the scope and subjects of each programme? I don’t know, but McNay seems so disinterested in Berger himself that he doesn’t bother to think about this from his subject’s point of view at all.

II: Where is Berger?

The example of Clark is not the only time where McNay doesn’t pursue his subject. At one point he mentions that his first collection of essays Permanent Red was retitled unilaterally by the publisher for American publication. What did Berger think of this? What outcome did it have on the book or on Berger’s reception in the US? I don’t know, McNay doesn’t think it’s worth pursuing. He merely wants to bring it up to have a pop at Berger for being a Marxist.

We’re also told that he had a middle-class upbringing and that his politics were shaped for life by his experiences of military service in Ireland. We’re told that this is an immense life-changing event for Berger, so McNay explains it and its impact in this level of scrupulous detail:

He left St Edward’s school, Oxford, at 16 to study at the Central School of Art; his course was interrupted in 1944 when he was called up and posted to a Belfast training depot, where he served as a lance-corporal in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. It was his first day-by-day encounter with the working classes and it shaped his politics for life.

That’s it.

The point is that Berger was a Marxist critic and artist, his life was unabashedly political, yet McNay doesn’t pursue these politics with any depth whatsoever. Instead he regards the politics solely as a minor affliction. Okay, as I’ve said before he doesn’t have to like his subject to write an obit, but perhaps in a piece of this length he could have shown some level of understanding of one of the things that drove him. Marxism doesn’t come in one flavour, and no one spends their life without intellectual development, so what were his ideas? Well, we’re told they were ‘prescriptive’ and in a quote from Berger himself we learn that he understood that under capitalism and in the age of mechanical reproduction art is commodified. Well, actually we don’t. I had to add in the context ‘under capitalism and in the age of mechanical reproduction’ (which is given in his TV series and book) because McNay takes a quotation about the nude and gives us a commentary relating it to the idea of commodification. In this commentary McNay singularly fails to do that which is most distinctive about Marxist analysis – placing an object in its context and showing how it is related to others.

III – Sniping

McNay’s obituary is over 2,600 words long – a good space for the assessment of a major cultural figure. Clearly McNay doesn’t like Berger’s politics or his criticism, and has a lot of issues with most of his work. Once again, okay. No one has to like their subject in order to write about them. But in that case, come out and say it. You don’t think Marxism can be a good perspective for a critic? Explain why – you’ve got the space. Take out the bit about Lord Clark if you have to. All this cryptic stuff about being ‘prescriptive’ or implying through general tone that there’s something foolish about Berger’s perspective isn’t the same as having an actual argument or objection. The closest we come is towards the end with

though he never ceased to believe in the perfectibility of society, he edged towards an understanding of Marxism as an analytical tool rather than an infallible cure for the ills of the world.

Okay, but what does that mean? What kind of Marxism are you talking about? What political organisations was he a member of and what were their activities that you think so objectionable? ‘all the ills of the world’ is indeed a grand claim – is that a claim Berger made? I don’t know, because despite the constant sniping and dark hints, McNay doesn’t actually say anything about any of this in any kind of detail whatsoever. What analysis does he think Marxism is good for? Who knows? But it’s only a casual write-off of the core beliefs of the subject of his piece so it probably wasn’t worth spending any of the word count on it. Yet he finds it important enough to imply that there’s something fundamentally wrong with Berger’s views. So what gives? I have no time for this school of writing criticism: if you think something, come out and say it and explain why. You’re not writing a novel or a poem and no one is going to make you house captain if you’re especially supercilious this term.

IV – Opinion = ‘Fact’ - Support

One of the most continuously unsatisfying things about the obituary is McNay’s frequent unsupported opinion about something being stated as fact. Take the quote above about Picasso and Soviet artist Ernst Neizvestny:

in one, he made a hopeless mess of Picasso’s later career, though he was not alone in this; in the other, he elevated a brave dissident artist beyond his talents.

If you read this it sounds like someone stating the truth of the matter, yet the content is entirely subjective. Certainly at no point does McNay think that he should support any of these things, although if the comments are complimentary we do tend to get a bit of detail. The critical stuff though is just left hanging.

However prone Slive may be to an art historian’s preference for painterly values over social discourse, his analysis is nevertheless closer to the heart of the matter than Berger’s fanciful account of a kind of class stand-off

Is it? Why?

not least because on another and more likely reading, given Hals’s approach to portraiture even of men and women in their prime, these two groups are painted with compassion but above all with a sharp eye for laying down what was before him.

Never mind why this reading is more likely that Berger’s interpretation, the bigger question is: so this invalidates a class analysis because …? (Note to McNay – people can have compassion for their opponents.)

Ah, well. Neither of these issues were probably very important anyway. Odd that he spent three paragraphs on the matter though.

And on and on, in much the same vein, throughout the obit. Here’s McNay throwing out an aside in a bit about prizes for the novel G in 1972:

The Guardian’s editor, Alastair Hetherington, said in his speech that he would double the prize money (admittedly small to start with) if Berger would give half of it to a constructive cause rather than the obviously destructive Black Panthers.

The Black Panther Party was a very complex phenomenon born at a time where liberation struggles in the third world, civil rights struggles in the US and the failure of peaceful civil rights movements in the US to tackle violence from the state and racists outside the state apparatus were all colliding. The Black Panther Party did many varied things including breakfast clubs for poor kids as well as its more famous policy of armed self-defence against the police, in a country where lynchings were still a very recent memory for many black people (three civil rights activists had been lynched in Mississippi in 1964). The party changed as it grew and collapsed over several years under enormous pressure from the state. The point here is that if you’re going to throw ‘obviously destructive’ about such a complex organisation and issue out and you don’t have either the space or the expertise to justify it, maybe don’t do that.

The thing is, McNay can justify himself when he wants to. Here’s his verdict on Berger’s novel G:

Yet G is a not just a powerful book, it is powerfully flawed as well. It is an experimental novel at a time when experiment was the norm, influenced by the French nouveau roman. The structure, with its lumpen authorial interpolations, is painting by numbers: here is one of many possible examples from early in the novel when the rich father of the hero is speaking of his journey through the Alps to be reunited with his mistress (whom he addresses as a sparrow):

“‘Ah! Laura. To think that I came under those mountains, the tunnel is fifteen kilometres long, fifteen. It is a marvel ... And on this side of the mountain, passeretta mia, you are waiting for me.’

“(The St Gothard tunnel was opened in 1882. Eight hundred men lost their lives in its construction.)”

Cervantes had made this sort of writer’s intervention with a better and lighter touch 400 years earlier.

Reading that, I’m fairly clear what his problems with G are. I’ve not read G. Having read through more than 2,000 words of McNay’s obit I’m fairly sure that I understand something of where he’s coming from (much more in fact than I do of Berger’s views and politics) so if he hates it this much I’ll probably find myself enjoying it, but the point is that when he wants to he can write clearly and explain what he means. It still boils down to a subjective judgement, but at least his points of reference are clear, and he uses evidence so that I can see that this is exactly the kind of book that I might well love. He clearly can say what he means and why, it’s just that for most of this obituary he chooses not to.

In the end

In the end I have spent about the same number of words criticising McNay as he did failing to write an obituary about John Berger. Was it worth it? I hope that it addresses some key problems with the article itself and illustrates how not to write an obituary, even if it’s of someone you didn’t like. I think though that it touches a wider problem. Now this is much more speculative than the criticism which has gone before, and unlike McNay I would like to stress that this is opinion, not fact. However I will try to explain why I think this.

I don’t know Michael McNay; from a look at other things he’s written for the Guardian he seems to generally write obits. But what this piece does is fail to take seriously left-wing politics. The Guardian has a generally pro-PLP-right political alignment, sometimes tipping over into Lib Dem support. In the internal battles for control of the Labour Party it has generally taken a cautiously pro-PLP line, sometimes doing outright hatchet jobs but often allowing dissident commentary online. Certainly it in no way reflected the groundswell of support that Corbyn represents. Why does this matter, and what does it have to do with a dead Marxist art critic? I think that this is a problem for them, not for me. I think that they have failed to realise that in order for Labour to win office they must offer something more progressive than New Labour. There is a narrative emerging from the PLP and its allies that the UK has swung to the right, shown by Brexit, and that more racism and conservative policies will be needed to win an election. This flies in the face of all the evidence – but I’m not going to prolong this essay still further by going into this in lots of detail. You can find a good summary of why this is mistaken here.

The point is that despite its lack of solid politics of any kind, the Guardian sees itself as in some way ‘progressive’. By getting McNay in to do a hack job on this obituary it is part of a general trend whereby the paper continues to ignore genuinely progressive politics and try to live in the past where triangulation was a thing and you didn’t have to address the hard questions like poverty wages, food banks and income inequality. Well, that approach only leaves one way for people to go – and it’s not a progressive route. As such they will continue to leave people’s real problems further and further behind and find themselves talking instead about ‘people’s concerns about immigration’.

#Michael_McNay Obit Berger John_Berger Obituary Marx Criticism #Michael_McNay #Obit #Obituary #berger #john berger #marx #marxism #criticism #michael mcnay #mcnay

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bluewatsons · 4 years

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Daniel J. Solove, “I’ve Got Nothing to Hide” and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy, 44 San Diego L Rev 745 (2007)

Abstract

In this short essay, written for a symposium in the San Diego Law Review, Professor Daniel Solove examines the nothing to hide argument. When asked about government surveillance and data mining, many people respond by declaring: "I've got nothing to hide." According to the nothing to hide argument, there is no threat to privacy unless the government uncovers unlawful activity, in which case a person has no legitimate justification to claim that it remain private. The nothing to hide argument and its variants are quite prevalent, and thus are worth addressing. In this essay, Solove critiques the nothing to hide argument and exposes its faulty underpinnings.

I. Introduction

Since the September 11 attacks, the government has been engaging in extensive surveillance and data mining. Regarding surveillance, in December 2005, the New York Times revealed that after September 11, the Bush Administration secretly authorized the National Security Administration (NSA) to engage in warrantless wiretapping of American citizens’ telephone calls.1 As for data mining, which involves analyzing personal data for patterns of suspicious behavior, the government has begun numerous programs. In 2002, the media revealed that the Department of Defense was constructing a data mining project, called “Total Information Awareness” (TIA), under the leadership of Admiral John Poindexter.2 The vision for TIA was to gather a variety of information about people, including financial, educational, health, and other data. The information would then be analyzed for suspicious behavior patterns. According to Poindexter: “The only way to detect . . . terrorists is to look for patterns of activity that are based on observations from past terrorist attacks as well as estimates about how terrorists will adapt to our measures to avoid detection.”3 When the program came to light, a public outcry erupted, and the U.S. Senate subsequently voted to deny the program funding, ultimately leading to its demise.4 Nevertheless, many components of TIA continue on in various government agencies, though in a less systematic and more clandestine fashion.5

In May 2006, USA Today broke the story that the NSA had obtained customer records from several major phone companies and was analyzing them to identify potential terrorists.6 The telephone call database is reported to be the “largest database ever assembled in the world.”7 In June 2006, the New York Times stated that the U.S. government had been accessing bank records from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Transactions (SWIFT), which handles financial transactions for thousands of banks around the world.8 Many people responded with outrage at these announcements, but many others did not perceive much of a problem. The reason for their lack of concern, they explained, was because: “I’ve got nothing to hide.”9

The argument that no privacy problem exists if a person has nothing to hide is frequently made in connection with many privacy issues. When the government engages in surveillance, many people believe that there is no threat to privacy unless the government uncovers unlawful activity, in which case a person has no legitimate justification to claim that it remain private. Thus, if an individual engages only in legal activity, she has nothing to worry about. When it comes to the government collecting and analyzing personal information, many people contend that a privacy harm exists only if skeletons in the closet are revealed. For example, suppose the government examines one’s telephone records and finds out that a person made calls to her parents, a friend in Canada, a video store, and a pizza delivery place. “So what?,” that person might say. “I’m not embarrassed or humiliated by this information. If anybody asks me, I’ll gladly tell them where I shop. I have nothing to hide.”

The “nothing to hide” argument and its variants are quite prevalent in popular discourse about privacy. Data security expert Bruce Schneier calls it the “most common retort against privacy advocates.”10 Legal scholar Geoffrey Stone refers to it as “all-too-common refrain.”11 The nothing to hide argument is one of the primary arguments made when balancing privacy against security. In its most compelling form, it is an argument that the privacy interest is generally minimal to trivial, thus making the balance against security concerns a foreordained victory for security. Sometimes the nothing to hide argument is posed as a question: “If you have nothing to hide, then what do you have to fear?” Others ask: “If you aren’t doing anything wrong, then what do you have to hide?”

In this essay, I will explore the nothing to hide argument and its variants in more depth. Grappling with the nothing to hide argument is important, because the argument reflects the sentiments of a wide percentage of the population. In popular discourse, the nothing to hide argument’s superficial incantations can readily be refuted. But when the argument is made in its strongest form, it is far more formidable.

In order to respond to the nothing to hide argument, it is imperative that we have a theory about what privacy is and why it is valuable. At its core, the nothing to hide argument emerges from a conception of privacy and its value. What exactly is “privacy”? How valuable is privacy and how do we assess its value? How do we weigh privacy against countervailing values? These questions have long plagued those seeking to develop a theory of privacy and justifications for its legal protection.

This essay begins in Part II by discussing the nothing to hide argument. First, I introduce the argument as it often exists in popular discourse and examine frequent ways of responding to the argument. Second, I present the argument in what I believe to be its strongest form. In Part III, I briefly discuss my work thus far on conceptualizing privacy. I explain why existing theories of privacy have been unsatisfactory, have led to confusion, and have impeded the development of effective legal and policy responses to privacy problems. In Part IV, I argue that the nothing to hide argument— even in its strongest form—stems from certain faulty assumptions about privacy and its value. The problem, in short, is not with finding an answer to the question: “If you’ve got nothing to hide, then what do you have to fear?” The problem is in the very question itself.

II. The “Nothing to Hide” Argument

When discussing whether government surveillance and data mining pose a threat to privacy, many people respond that they have nothing to hide. This argument permeates the popular discourse about privacy and security issues. In Britain, for example, the government has installed millions of public surveillance cameras in cities and towns, which are watched by officials via closed circuit television.12 In a campaign slogan for the program, the government declares: “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.”13 In the United States, one anonymous individual from the Department of Justice comments: “If [government officials] need to read my e-mails . . . so be it. I have nothing to hide. Do you?”14 One blogger, in reference to profiling people for national security purposes, declares: “Go ahead and profile me, I have nothing to hide.”15 Another blogger proclaims: “So I don’t mind people wanting to find out things about me, I’ve got nothing to hide! Which is why I support President Bush’s efforts to find terrorists by monitoring our phone calls!”16 Variations of nothing to hide arguments frequently appear in blogs, letters to the editor, television news interviews, and other forums. Some examples include:

I don’t have anything to hide from the government. I don’t think I had that much hidden from the government in the first place. I don’t think they care if I talk about my ornery neighbor.17

Do I care if the FBI monitors my phone calls? I have nothing to hide. Neither does 99.99 percent of the population. If the wiretapping stops one of these Sept. 11 incidents, thousands of lives are saved.18

Like I said, I have nothing to hide. The majority of the American people have nothing to hide. And those that have something to hide should be found out, and get what they have coming to them.19

The argument is not only of recent vintage. For example, one of the characters in Henry James’s 1888 novel, The Reverberator, muses: “[I]f these people had done bad things they ought to be ashamed of themselves and he couldn’t pity them, and if they hadn’t done them there was no need of making such a rumpus about other people knowing.”20

I encountered the nothing to hide argument so frequently in news interviews, discussions, and the like, that I decided to blog about the issue. I asked the readers of my blog, Concurring Opinions, whether there are good responses to the nothing to hide argument.21 I received a torrent of comments to my post:

My response is “So do you have curtains?” or “Can I see your credit card bills for the last year?”22

So my response to the “If you have nothing to hide . . .” argument is simply, “I don’t need to justify my position. You need to justify yours. Come back with a warrant.”23

I don’t have anything to hide. But I don’t have anything I feel like showing you, either.24

If you have nothing to hide, then you don’t have a life.25

Show me yours and I’ll show you mine.26

It’s not about having anything to hide, it’s about things not being anyone else’s business.27

Bottom line, Joe Stalin would [have] loved it. Why should anyone have to say more?28

Most replies to the nothing to hide argument quickly respond with a witty retort. Indeed, on the surface it seems easy to dismiss the nothing to hide argument. Everybody probably has something to hide from somebody. As the author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn declared, “Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find what it is.”29 Likewise, in Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s novella Traps, which involves a seemingly innocent man put on trial by a group of retired lawyers for a mock trial game, the man inquires what his crime shall be. “‘An altogether minor matter,’ the prosecutor replied . . . . ‘A crime can always be found.’”30 One can usually think of something compelling that even the most open person would want to hide. As one comment to my blog post noted: “If you have nothing to hide, then that quite literally means you are willing to let me photograph you naked? And I get full rights to that photograph—so I can show it to your neighbors?”31 Canadian privacy expert David Flaherty expresses a similar idea when he argues:

There is no sentient human being in the Western world who has little or no regard for his or her personal privacy; those who would attempt such claims cannot withstand even a few minutes’ questioning about intimate aspects of their lives without capitulating to the intrusiveness of certain subject matters.32

Such responses only attack the nothing to hide argument in its most extreme form, which is not particularly strong. As merely a one-line utterance about a particular person’s preference, the nothing to hide argument is not very compelling. But stated in a more sophisticated manner, the argument is more challenging. First, it must be broadened beyond the particular person making it. When phrased as an individual preference, the nothing to hide argument is hard to refute because it is difficult to quarrel with one particular person’s preferences. As one commenter aptly notes:

By saying “I have nothing to hide,” you are saying that it’s OK for the government to infringe on the rights of potentially millions of your fellow Americans, possibly ruining their lives in the process. To me, the “I have nothing to hide” argument basically equates to “I don’t care what happens, so long as it doesn’t happen to me.”33

In its more compelling variants, the nothing to hide argument can be made in a more general manner. Instead of contending that “I’ve got nothing to hide,” the argument can be recast as positing that all law- abiding citizens should have nothing to hide. Only if people desire to conceal unlawful activity should they be concerned, but according to the nothing to hide argument, people engaged in illegal conduct have no legitimate claim to maintaining the privacy of such activities.

In a related argument, Judge Richard Posner contends: “[W]hen people today decry lack of privacy, what they want, I think, is mainly something quite different from seclusion: they want more power to conceal information about themselves that others might use to their disadvantage.”34 Privacy involves a person’s “right to conceal discreditable facts about himself.”35 In other words, privacy is likely to be invoked when there is something to hide and that something consists of negative information about a person. Posner asserts that the law should not protect people in concealing discreditable information. “The economist,” he argues, “sees a parallel to the efforts of sellers to conceal defects in their products.”36

Of course, one might object, there is nondiscreditable information about people that they nevertheless want to conceal because they find it embarrassing or just do not want others to know about. In a less extreme form, the nothing to hide argument does not refer to all personal information, but only to that subset of personal information that is likely to be involved in government surveillance. When people respond to NSA surveillance and data mining that they have nothing to hide, the more sophisticated way of understanding their argument should be as applying to the particular pieces of information that are gathered in the NSA programs. Information about what phone numbers people dial and even what they say in many conversations is often not likely to be embarrassing or discreditable to a law-abiding citizen. Retorts to the nothing to hide argument about exposing people’s naked bodies to the world or revealing their deepest secrets to their friends are only relevant if there is a likelihood that such programs will actually result in these kinds of disclosures. This type of information is not likely to be captured in the government surveillance. Even if it were, many people might rationally assume that the information will be exposed only to a few law enforcement officials, and perhaps not even seen by human eyes. Computers might store the data and analyze it for patterns, but no person might have any contact with the data. As Posner argues:

The collection, mainly through electronic means, of vast amounts of personal data is said to invade privacy. But machine collection and processing of data cannot, as such, invade privacy. Because of their volume, the data are first sifted by computers, which search for names, addresses, phone numbers, etc., that may have intelligence value. This initial sifting, far from invading privacy (a computer is not a sentient being), keeps most private data from being read by any intelligence officer.37

There is one final component of the most compelling versions of the nothing to hide argument—a comparison of the relative value of the privacy interest being threatened with the government interest in promoting security. As one commenter to my blog post astutely notes: “You can’t talk about how people feel about the potential loss of privacy in any meaningful way without recognizing that most of the people who don’t mind the NSA programs see it as a potential exchange of a small amount of privacy for a potential national security gain.”38 In other words, the nothing to hide argument can be made by comparing the relative value between privacy and security. The value of privacy, the argument provides, is low, because the information is often not particularly sensitive. The ones with the most to worry about are the ones engaged in illegal conduct, and the value of protecting their privacy is low to nonexistent. On the government interest side of the balance, security has a very high value. Having a computer analyze the phone numbers one dials is not likely to expose deep dark secrets or embarrassing information to the world. The machine will simply move on, oblivious to any patterns that are not deemed suspicious. In other words, if you are not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide and nothing to fear.

Therefore, in a more compelling form than is often expressed in popular discourse, the nothing to hide argument proceeds as follows: The NSA surveillance, data mining, or other government information- gathering programs will result in the disclosure of particular pieces of information to a few government officials, or perhaps only to government computers. This very limited disclosure of the particular information involved is not likely to be threatening to the privacy of law-abiding citizens. Only those who are engaged in illegal activities have a reason to hide this information. Although there may be some cases in which the information might be sensitive or embarrassing to law-abiding citizens, the limited disclosure lessens the threat to privacy. Moreover, the security interest in detecting, investigating, and preventing terrorist attacks is very high and outweighs whatever minimal or moderate privacy interests law-abiding citizens may have in these particular pieces of information.

Cast in this manner, the nothing to hide argument is a formidable one. It balances the degree to which an individual’s privacy is compromised by the limited disclosure of certain information against potent national security interests. Under such a balancing scheme, it is quite difficult for privacy to prevail.

III. Conceptualizing Privacy

For quite some time, scholars have proclaimed that privacy is so muddled a concept that it is of little use. According to Arthur Miller, privacy is “exasperatingly vague and evanescent.”39 As Hyman Gross declares, “[T]he concept of privacy is infected with pernicious ambiguities.”40 Colin Bennett similarly notes, “Attempts to define the concept of ‘privacy’ have generally not met with any success.”41 Robert Post declares that “[p]rivacy is a value so complex, so entangled in competing and contradictory dimensions, so engorged with various and distinct meanings, that I sometimes despair whether it can be usefully addressed at all.”42 “Perhaps the most striking thing about the right to privacy,” Judith Jarvis Thomson observes, “is that nobody seems to have any very clear idea what it is.”43

Often, the philosophical discourse about conceptualizing privacy is ignored in legal and policy debates. Many jurists, politicians, and scholars simply analyze the issues without articulating a conception of what privacy means. However, conceptualizing privacy is essential for the analysis of these issues. Those working on legal and policy issues all have some implicit conception of privacy. In many cases, privacy issues never get balanced against conflicting interests because courts, legislators, and others fail even to recognize that privacy is implicated. It is therefore of paramount importance that we continue to work on developing a conception of privacy. But how? Why have existing attempts been so unsatisfying?

A. A Pluralistic Conception of Privacy

Many attempts to conceptualize privacy do so by attempting to locate the essence of privacy—its core characteristics or the common denominator that links together the various things we classify under the rubric of “privacy.” I refer to this as the traditional method of conceptualizing. This method seeks to understand privacy per genus et differentiam—by looking for necessary and sufficient elements that demarcate what privacy is.

In my article, Conceptualizing Privacy, I discussed a wide range of attempts to locate the common denominator of privacy.44 I examined several different candidates for the common denominator in the existing philosophical and legal literature. Some attempts to conceptualize privacy were too narrow, excluding things we commonly understand to be private. For example, several theorists have contended that privacy should be defined in terms of intimacy. According to philosopher Julie Inness: “[T]he content of privacy cannot be captured if we focus exclusively on either information, access, or intimate decisions because privacy involves all three areas. . . . I suggest that these apparently disparate areas are linked by the common denominator of intimacy—privacy’s content covers intimate information, access, and decisions.”45 The problem with understanding privacy as intimacy, however, is that not all private information or decisions we make are intimate. For instance, our Social Security number, political affiliations, religious beliefs, and much more may not be intimate, but we may regard them as private. Of course, intimacy could be defined quite broadly, though then it merely becomes a synonym for privacy rather than an elaboration of what privacy means. The purpose of defining privacy as intimacy is to develop a bounded and coherent conception of privacy, but it comes at the cost of being far too narrow.

On the other hand, some attempts to conceptualize privacy are far too broad, such as Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis’s understanding of privacy as the “right to be let alone.”46 What exactly does being let alone entail? There are many ways in which people are intruded upon that they would not consider privacy violations. If you shove me, you are not leaving me alone. You may be harming me, but it is not a problem of privacy.

Ultimately, any attempt to locate a common core to the manifold things we file under the rubric of “privacy” faces a difficult dilemma. If one chooses a common denominator that is broad enough to encompass nearly everything, then the conception risks the danger of being overinclusive or too vague. If one chooses a narrower common denominator, then the risk is that the conception is too restrictive. In Conceptualizing Privacy, I surveyed the various proposed conceptions and found all to suffer from these problems.47

I argued that instead of conceptualizing privacy with the traditional method, we should instead understand privacy as a set of family resemblances. In Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that some concepts do not have “one thing in common” but “are related to one another in many different ways.”48 Instead of being related by a common denominator, some things share “a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.”49 In other words, privacy is not reducible to a singular essence; it is a plurality of different things that do not share one element in common but that nevertheless bear a resemblance to each other.

In my work on conceptualizing privacy thus far, I have attempted to lay the groundwork for a pluralistic understanding of privacy. In some works, I have attempted to analyze specific privacy issues, trying to better articulate the nature of the problems. For example, in my book, The Digital Person, I argued that the collection and use of personal information in databases presents a different set of problems than government surveillance.50 Many commentators had been using the metaphor of George Orwell’s 1984 to describe the problems created by the collection and use of personal data.51 I contended that the Orwell metaphor, which focuses on the harms of surveillance (such as inhibition and social control) might be apt to describe law enforcement’s monitoring of citizens. But much of the data gathered in computer databases is not particularly sensitive, such as one’s race, birth date, gender, address, or marital status. Many people do not care about concealing the hotels they stay at, the cars they own or rent, or the kind of beverages they drink. People often do not take many steps to keep such information secret. Frequently, though not always, people’s activities would not be inhibited if others knew this information.

I suggested a different metaphor to capture the problems: Franz Kafka’s The Trial, which depicts a bureaucracy with inscrutable purposes that uses people’s information to make important decisions about them, yet denies the people the ability to participate in how their information is used.52 The problems captured by the Kafka metaphor are of a different sort than the problems caused by surveillance. They often do not result in inhibition or chilling. Instead, they are problems of information processing—the storage, use, or analysis of data—rather than information collection. They affect the power relationships between people and the institutions of the modern state. They not only frustrate the individual by creating a sense of helplessness and powerlessness, but they also affect social structure by altering the kind of relationships people have with the institutions that make important decisions about their lives.

I explored the ways that legal and policy solutions were focusing too much on the nexus of problems under the Orwell metaphor—those of surveillance—and were not adequately addressing the Kafka problems— those of information processing.53 The difficulty was that commentators were trying to conceive of the problems caused by databases in terms of surveillance when, in fact, these problems were different. The way that these problems are conceived has a tremendous impact on the legal and policy solutions used to solve them. As John Dewey observed, “[A] problem well put is half-solved.”54 “The way in which the problem is conceived,” Dewey explained, “decides what specific suggestions are entertained and which are dismissed; what data are selected and which rejected; it is the criterion for relevancy and irrelevancy of hypotheses and conceptual structures.”55

In a subsequent article, A Taxonomy of Privacy, I developed a taxonomy of privacy—a way of mapping out the manifold types of problems and harms that constitute privacy violations.56 The taxonomy is my attempt to formulate a model of the problems from studying the welter of laws, cases, issues, and cultural and historical materials. The taxonomy I developed is as follows:

Information Collection

Surveillance

Interrogation

Information Processing

Aggregation

Identification

Insecurity

Secondary Use

Exclusion

Information Dissemination

Breach of Confidentiality Disclosure

Exposure

Increased Accessibility

Blackmail

Appropriation

Distortion

Invasion

Intrusion

Decisional Interference

The taxonomy has four general categories of privacy problems with sixteen different subcategories. The first general category is information collection, which involves the ways that data is gathered about people. The subcategories, surveillance and interrogation, represent the two primary problematic ways of gathering information. A privacy problem occurs when an activity by a person, business, or government entity creates harm by disrupting valuable activities of others. These harms need not be physical or emotional; they can occur by chilling socially beneficial behavior (for example, free speech and association) or by leading to power imbalances that adversely affect social structure (for example, excessive executive power).

The second general category is information processing. This involves the storing, analysis, and manipulation of data. There are a number of problems that information processing can cause, and I included five subcategories in my taxonomy. For example, one problem that I label insecurity results in increasing people’s vulnerability to potential abuse of their information.57 The problem that I call exclusion involves people’s inability to access and have any say in the way their data is used.58

Information dissemination is the third general category. Disseminating information involves the ways in which it is transferred—or threatened to be transferred—to others. I identify seven different information dissemination problems. Finally, the last category involves invasions. Invasions are direct interferences with the individual, such as intruding into her life or regulating the kinds of decisions she can make about her life.

My purpose in advancing the taxonomy is to shift away from the rather vague label of privacy in order to prevent distinct harms and problems from being conflated or not recognized. Some might contend, however, that several of the problems I discuss are not really “privacy” problems. But with no satisfactory set of necessary or sufficient conditions to define privacy, there is no one specific criterion for inclusion or exclusion under the rubric of “privacy.” Privacy violations consist of a web of related problems that are not connected by a common element, but nevertheless bear some resemblances to each other. We can determine whether to classify something as falling in the domain of privacy if it bears resemblance to other things we similarly classify. In other words, we use a form of analogical reasoning in which “[t]he key task,” Cass Sunstein observes, “is to decide when there are relevant similarities and differences.”59 Accordingly, there are no clear boundaries for what we should or should not refer to as “privacy.” Some might object to the lack of clear boundaries, but this objection assumes that having definitive boundaries matters. The quest for a traditional definition of privacy has led to a rather fruitless and unresolved debate. In the meantime, there are real problems that must be addressed, but they are either conflated or ignored because they do not fit into various prefabricated conceptions of privacy. The law often neglects to see the problems and instead ignores all things that do not fall into a particular conception of privacy. In this way, conceptions of privacy can prevent the examination of problems. The problems still exist regardless of whether we classify them as being “privacy” problems.

A great deal of attention is expended trying to elucidate the concept of privacy without looking at the problems we are facing. My goal is to begin with the problems and understand them in detail. Trying to fit them into a one-size-fits-all conception of privacy neglects to see the problems in their full dimensions or to understand them completely.

Conceptions should help us understand and illuminate experience; they should not detract from experience and make us see and understand less.

The term privacy is best used as a shorthand umbrella term for a related web of things. Beyond this kind of use, the term privacy has little purpose. In fact, it can obfuscate more than clarify.

Some might object to the inclusion or exclusion of certain problems in the taxonomy. I do not advance the taxonomy as perfect. It is a bottom- up ongoing project. As new problems arise, the taxonomy will be revised. Whether a particular problem is classified as one of privacy is not as important as whether it is recognized as a problem. Regardless of whether we label the problem as part of the privacy cluster, it still is a problem, and protecting against it still has a value. For example, I classify as a privacy violation a problem I call distortion, which involves disseminating false or misleading information about a person. Some might argue that distortion really is not a privacy harm, because privacy only involves true information. But does it matter? Regardless of whether distortion is classified as a privacy problem, it is nevertheless a problem. Classifying it as a privacy problem is merely saying that it bears some resemblance to other privacy problems, and viewing them together might be helpful in addressing them.

B. The Social Value of Privacy

Many theories of privacy view it as an individual right. For example, Thomas Emerson declares that privacy “is based upon premises of individualism, that the society exists to promote the worth and the dignity of the individual. . . . The right of privacy . . . is essentially the right not to participate in the collective life—the right to shut out the community.”60 In the words of one court: “Privacy is inherently personal. The right to privacy recognizes the sovereignty of the individual.”61

Traditionally, rights have often been understood as protecting the individual against the incursion of the community, based on respect for the individual’s personhood or autonomy. Many theories of privacy’s value understand privacy in this manner. For example, Charles Fried argues that privacy is one of the

basic rights in persons, rights to which all are entitled equally, by virtue of their status as persons. . . . In this sense, the view is Kantian; it requires recognition of persons as ends, and forbids the overriding of their most fundamental interests for the purpose of maximizing the happiness or welfare of all.62

Many of the interests that conflict with privacy, however, also involve people’s autonomy and dignity. Free speech, for example, is also an individual right which is essential to autonomy. Yet, in several cases, it clashes with privacy. One’s privacy can be in direct conflict with another’s desire to speak about that person’s life. Security, too, is not merely a societal interest; it is essential for individual autonomy as well. Autonomy and dignity are often on both sides of the balance, so it becomes difficult to know which side is the one that protects the “sovereignty of the individual.”63

Communitarian scholars launch a formidable critique of traditional accounts of individual rights. Amitai Etzioni, for example, contends that privacy is “a societal license that exempts a category of acts (including thoughts and emotions) from communal, public, and governmental scrutiny.”64 For Etzioni, many theories of privacy treat it as sacrosanct, even when it conflicts with the common good.65 According to Etzioni, “privacy is not an absolute value and does not trump all other rights or concerns for the common good.”66 He goes on to demonstrate how privacy interferes with greater social interests and often, though not always, contends that privacy should lose out in the balance.67

Etzioni is right to critique those who argue that privacy is an individual right that should trump social interests. The problem, however, is that utilitarian balancing between individual rights and the common good rarely favors individual rights—unless the interest advanced on the side of the common good is trivial. Society will generally win when its interests are balanced against those of the individual.

The deeper problem with Etzioni’s view is that in his critique of liberal theories of individual rights as absolutes, he views individual rights as being in tension with society. The same dichotomy between individual and society that pervades liberal theories of individual rights also pervades Etzioni’s communitarianism. Etzioni views the task of communitarians as “balanc[ing] individual rights with social responsibilities, and individuality with community.”68 The problem with Etzioni’s communitarian view is that individuality need not be on the opposite side of the scale from community. Such a view assumes that individual and societal interests are distinct and conflicting. A similar view also underpins many liberal conceptions of individual rights.

In contrast, John Dewey proposed an alternative theory about the relationship between individual and community. For Dewey, there is no strict dichotomy between individual and society. The individual is shaped by society, and the good of both the individual and society are often interrelated rather than antagonistic: “We cannot think of ourselves save as to some extent social beings. Hence we cannot separate the idea of ourselves and our own good from our idea of others and of their good.”69 Dewey contended that the value of protecting individual rights emerges from their contribution to society. In other words, individual rights are not trumps, but are protections by society from its intrusiveness. Society makes space for the individual because of the social benefits this space provides. Therefore, Dewey argues, rights should be valued based on “the contribution they make to the welfare of the community.”70 Otherwise, in any kind of utilitarian calculus, individual rights would not be valuable enough to outweigh most social interests, and it would be impossible to justify individual rights. As such, Dewey argued, we must insist upon a “social basis and social justification” for civil liberties.71

I contend, like Dewey, that the value of protecting the individual is a social one. Society involves a great deal of friction, and we are constantly clashing with each other. Part of what makes a society a good place in which to live is the extent to which it allows people freedom from the intrusiveness of others. A society without privacy protection would be suffocating, and it might not be a place in which most would want to live. When protecting individual rights, we as a society decide to hold back in order to receive the benefits of creating the kinds of free zones for individuals to flourish.

As Robert Post has argued, privacy is not merely a set of restraints on society’s rules and norms. Instead, privacy constitutes a society’s attempt to promote rules of behavior, decorum, and civility.72 Society protects privacy as a means of enforcing a kind of order in the community. As Spiros Simitis declares, “[P]rivacy considerations no longer arise out of particular individual problems; rather, they express conflicts affecting everyone.”73 Several scholars have argued that privacy is “constitutive” of society and must be valued in terms of the social roles it plays.74 Privacy, then, is not the trumpeting of the individual against society’s interests, but the protection of the individual based on society’s own norms and values. Privacy is not simply a way to extricate individuals from social control, as it is itself a form of social control that emerges from a society’s norms. It is not an external restraint on society, but is in fact an internal dimension of society. Therefore, privacy has a social value. Even when it protects the individual, it does so for the sake of society. It thus should not be weighed as an individual right against the greater social good. Privacy issues involve balancing societal interests on both sides of the scale.

Because privacy involves protecting against a plurality of different harms or problems, the value of privacy is different depending upon which particular problem or harm is being protected. Not all privacy problems are equal; some are more harmful than others. Therefore, we cannot ascribe an abstract value to privacy. Its value will differ substantially depending upon the kind of problem or harm we are safeguarding against. Thus, to understand privacy, we must conceptualize it and its value more pluralistically. Privacy is a set of protections against a related set of problems. These problems are not all related in the same way, but they resemble each other. There is a social value in protecting against each problem, and that value differs depending upon the nature of each problem.

IV. The Problem with the “Nothing to Hide” Argument

A. Understanding the Many Dimensions of Privacy

It is time to return to the nothing to hide argument. The reasoning of this argument is that when it comes to government surveillance or use of personal data, there is no privacy violation if a person has nothing sensitive, embarrassing, or illegal to conceal. Criminals involved in illicit activities have something to fear, but for the vast majority of people, their activities are not illegal or embarrassing.

Understanding privacy as I have set forth reveals the flaw of the nothing to hide argument at its roots. Many commentators who respond to the argument attempt a direct refutation by trying to point to things that people would want to hide. But the problem with the nothing to hide argument is the underlying assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things. Agreeing with this assumption concedes far too much ground and leads to an unproductive discussion of information people would likely want or not want to hide. As Bruce Schneier aptly notes, the nothing to hide argument stems from a faulty “premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong.”75

The deeper problem with the nothing to hide argument is that it myopically views privacy as a form of concealment or secrecy. But understanding privacy as a plurality of related problems demonstrates that concealment of bad things is just one among many problems caused by government programs such as the NSA surveillance and data mining. In the categories in my taxonomy, several problems are implicated.

The NSA programs involve problems of information collection, specifically the category of surveillance in the taxonomy. Wiretapping involves audio surveillance of people’s conversations. Data mining often begins with the collection of personal information, usually from various third parties that possess people’s data. Under current Supreme Court Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, when the government gathers data from third parties, there is no Fourth Amendment protection because people lack a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in information exposed to others.76 In United States v. Miller, the Supreme Court concluded that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in bank records because “[a]ll of the documents obtained, including financial statements and deposit slips, contain only information voluntarily conveyed to the banks and exposed to their employees in the ordinary course of business.”77 In Smith v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that people lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in the phone numbers they dial because they “know that they must convey numerical information to the phone company,” and therefore they cannot “harbor any general expectation that the numbers they dial will remain secret.”78 As I have argued extensively elsewhere, the lack of Fourth Amendment protection of third party records results in the government’s ability to access an extensive amount of personal information with minimal limitation or oversight.79

Many scholars have referred to information collection as a form of surveillance. Dataveillance, a term coined by Roger Clarke, refers to the “systemic use of personal data systems in the investigation or monitoring of the actions or communications of one or more persons.”80 Christopher Slobogin has referred to the gathering of personal information in business records as “transaction surveillance.”81 Surveillance can create chilling effects on free speech, free association, and other First Amendment rights essential for democracy.82 Even surveillance of legal activities can inhibit people from engaging in them. The value of protecting against chilling effects is not measured simply by focusing on the particular individuals who are deterred from exercising their rights. Chilling effects harm society because, among other things, they reduce the range of viewpoints expressed and the degree of freedom with which to engage in political activity.

The nothing to hide argument focuses primarily on the information collection problems associated with the NSA programs. It contends that limited surveillance of lawful activity will not chill behavior sufficiently to outweigh the security benefits. One can certainly quarrel with this argument, but one of the difficulties with chilling effects is that it is often very hard to demonstrate concrete evidence of deterred behavior.83 Whether the NSA’s surveillance and collection of telephone records has deterred people from communicating particular ideas would be a difficult question to answer.

Far too often, discussions of the NSA surveillance and data mining define the problem solely in terms of surveillance. To return to my discussion of metaphor, the problems are not just Orwellian, but Kafkaesque. The NSA programs are problematic even if no information people want to hide is uncovered. In The Trial, the problem is not inhibited behavior, but rather a suffocating powerlessness and vulnerability created by the court system’s use of personal data and its exclusion of the protagonist from having any knowledge or participation in the process. The harms consist of those created by bureaucracies—indifference, errors, abuses, frustration, and lack of transparency and accountability. One such harm, for example, which I call aggregation, emerges from the combination of small bits of seemingly innocuous data.84 When combined, the information becomes much more telling about a person. For the person who truly has nothing to hide, aggregation is not much of a problem. But in the stronger, less absolutist form of the nothing to hide argument, people argue that certain pieces of information are not something they would hide. Aggregation, however, means that by combining pieces of information we might not care to conceal, the government can glean information about us that we might really want to conceal. Part of the allure of data mining for the government is its ability to reveal a lot about our personalities and activities by sophisticated means of analyzing data. Therefore, without greater transparency in data mining, it is hard to claim that programs like the NSA data mining program will not reveal information people might want to hide, as we do not know precisely what is revealed. Moreover, data mining aims to be predictive of behavior, striving to prognosticate about our future actions. People who match certain profiles are deemed likely to engage in a similar pattern of behavior. It is quite difficult to refute actions that one has not yet done. Having nothing to hide will not always dispel predictions of future activity.

Another problem in the taxonomy, which is implicated by the NSA program, is the problem I refer to as exclusion.85 Exclusion is the problem caused when people are prevented from having knowledge about how their information is being used, as well as barred from being able to access and correct errors in that data. The NSA program involves a massive database of information that individuals cannot access. Indeed, the very existence of the program was kept secret for years.86 This kind of information processing, which forbids people’s knowledge or involvement, resembles in some ways a kind of due process problem. It is a structural problem involving the way people are treated by government institutions. Moreover, it creates a power imbalance between individuals and the government. To what extent should the Executive Branch and an agency such as the NSA, which is relatively insulated from the political process and public accountability, have a significant power over citizens? This issue is not about whether the information gathered is something people want to hide, but rather about the power and the structure of government.

A related problem involves “secondary use.” Secondary use is the use of data obtained for one purpose for a different unrelated purpose without the person’s consent. The Administration has said little about how long the data will be stored, how it will be used, and what it could be used for in the future. The potential future uses of any piece of personal information are vast, and without limits or accountability on how that information is used, it is hard for people to assess the dangers of the data being in the government’s control.

Therefore, the problem with the nothing to hide argument is that it focuses on just one or two particular kinds of privacy problems—the disclosure of personal information or surveillance—and not others. It assumes a particular view about what privacy entails, and it sets the terms for debate in a manner that is often unproductive.

It is important to distinguish here between two ways of justifying a program such as the NSA surveillance and data mining program. The first way is to not recognize a problem. This is how the nothing to hide argument works—it denies even the existence of a problem. The second manner of justifying such a program is to acknowledge the problems but contend that the benefits of the NSA program outweigh the privacy harms. The first justification influences the second, because the low value given to privacy is based upon a narrow view of the problem.

The key misunderstanding is that the nothing to hide argument views privacy in a particular way—as a form of secrecy, as the right to hide things. But there are many other types of harm involved beyond exposing one’s secrets to the government.

Privacy problems are often difficult to recognize and redress because they create a panoply of types of harm. Courts, legislators, and others look for particular types of harm to the exclusion of others, and their narrow focus blinds them to seeing other kinds of harms.

B. Understanding Structural Problems

One of the difficulties with the nothing to hide argument is that it looks for a visceral kind of injury as opposed to a structural one. Ironically, this underlying conception of injury is shared by both those advocating for greater privacy protections and those arguing in favor of the conflicting interests to privacy. For example, law professor Ann Bartow argues that I have failed to describe privacy harms in a compelling manner in my article, A Taxonomy of Privacy, where I provide a framework for understanding the manifold different privacy problems.87 Bartow’s primary complaint is that my taxonomy “frames privacy harms in dry, analytical terms that fail to sufficiently identify and animate the compelling ways that privacy violations can negatively impact the lives of living, breathing human beings beyond simply provoking feelings of unease.”88 Bartow claims that the taxonomy does not have “enough dead bodies” and that privacy’s “lack of blood and death, or at least of broken bones and buckets of money, distances privacy harms from other categories of tort law.”89

Most privacy problems lack dead bodies. Of course, there are exceptional cases such as the murders of Rebecca Shaeffer and Amy Boyer. Rebecca Shaeffer was an actress killed when a stalker obtained her address from a Department of Motor Vehicles record.90 This incident prompted Congress to pass the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994.91 Amy Boyer was murdered by a stalker who obtained her personal information, including her work address and Social Security number, from a database company.92 These examples aside, there is not a lot of death and gore in privacy law. If this is the standard to recognize a problem, then few privacy problems will be recognized. Horrific cases are not typical, and the purpose of my taxonomy is to explain why most privacy problems are still harmful despite this fact.

Bartow’s objection is actually very similar to the nothing to hide argument. Those advancing the nothing to hide argument have in mind a particular kind of visceral privacy harm, one where privacy is violated only when something deeply embarrassing or discrediting is revealed. Bartow’s quest for horror stories represents a similar desire to find visceral privacy harms. The problem is that not all privacy harms are like this. At the end of the day, privacy is not a horror movie, and demanding more palpable harms will be difficult in many cases. Yet there is still a harm worth addressing, even if it is not sensationalistic.

In many instances, privacy is threatened not by singular egregious acts, but by a slow series of relatively minor acts which gradually begin to add up. In this way, privacy problems resemble certain environmental harms which occur over time through a series of small acts by different actors. Bartow wants to point to a major spill, but gradual pollution by a multitude of different actors often creates worse problems.

The law frequently struggles with recognizing harms that do not result in embarrassment, humiliation, or physical or psychological injury.93 For example, after the September 11 attacks, several airlines gave their passenger records to federal agencies in direct violation of their privacy policies. The federal agencies used the data to study airline security.94 A group of passengers sued Northwest Airlines for disclosing their personal information. One of their claims was that Northwest Airlines breached its contract with the passengers. In Dyer v. Northwest Airlines Corp., the court rejected the contract claim because “broad statements of company policy do not generally give rise to contract claims,” the passengers never claimed they relied upon the policy or even read it, and they “failed to allege any contractual damages arising out of the alleged breach.”95 Another court reached a similar conclusion.96

Regardless of the merits of the decisions on contract law, the cases represent a difficulty with the legal system in addressing privacy problems. The disclosure of the passenger records represented a “breach of confidentiality.”97 The problems caused by breaches of confidentiality do not merely consist of individual emotional distress; they involve a violation of trust within a relationship. There is a strong social value in ensuring that promises are kept and that trust is maintained in relationships between businesses and their customers. The problem of secondary use is also implicated in this case.98 Secondary use involves data collected for one purpose being used for an unrelated purpose without people’s consent. The airlines gave passenger information to the government for an entirely different purpose beyond that for which it was originally gathered. Secondary use problems often do not cause financial, or even psychological, injuries. Instead, the harm is one of power imbalance. In Dyer, data was disseminated in a way that ignored airline passengers’ interests in the data despite promises made in the privacy policy. Even if the passengers were unaware of the policy, there is a social value in ensuring that companies adhere to established limits on the way they use personal information. Otherwise, any stated limits become meaningless, and companies have discretion to boundlessly use data. Such a state of affairs can leave nearly all consumers in a powerless position. The harm, then, is less one to particular individuals than it is a structural harm.

A similar problem surfaces in another case, Smith v. Chase Manhattan Bank.99 A group of plaintiffs sued Chase Manhattan Bank for selling customer information to third parties in violation of its privacy policy, which stated that the information would remain confidential. The court held that even presuming these allegations were true, the plaintiffs could not prove any actual injury:

[T]he “harm” at the heart of this purported class action, is that class members were merely offered products and services which they were free to decline. This does not qualify as actual harm.

The complaint does not allege any single instance where a named plaintiff or any class member suffered any actual harm due to the receipt of an unwanted telephone solicitation or a piece of junk mail.100

The court’s view of harm, however, did not account for the breach of confidentiality.

When balancing privacy against security, the privacy harms are often characterized in terms of injuries to the individual, and the interest in security is often characterized in a more broad societal way. The security interest in the NSA programs has often been defined improperly. In a Congressional hearing, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales stated:

Our enemy is listening, and I cannot help but wonder if they are not shaking their heads in amazement at the thought that anyone would imperil such a sensitive program by leaking its existence in the first place, and smiling at the prospect that we might now disclose even more or perhaps even unilaterally disarm ourselves of a key tool in the war on terror.101

The balance between privacy and security is often cast in terms of whether a particular government information collection activity should or should not be barred.

The issue, however, often is not whether the NSA or other government agencies should be allowed to engage in particular forms of information gathering; rather, it is what kinds of oversight and accountability we want in place when the government engages in searches and seizures. The government can employ nearly any kind of investigatory activity with a warrant supported by probable cause. This is a mechanism of oversight—it forces government officials to justify their suspicions to a neutral judge or magistrate before engaging in the tactic. For example, electronic surveillance law allows for wiretapping, but limits the practice with judicial supervision, procedures to minimize the breadth of the wiretapping, and requirements that the law enforcement officials report back to the court to prevent abuses.102 It is these procedures that the Bush Administration has ignored by engaging in the warrantless NSA surveillance. The question is not whether we want the government to monitor such conversations, but whether the Executive Branch should adhere to the appropriate oversight procedures that Congress has enacted into law, or should covertly ignore any oversight.

Therefore, the security interest should not get weighed in its totality against the privacy interest. Rather, what should get weighed is the extent of marginal limitation on the effectiveness of a government information gathering or data mining program by imposing judicial oversight and minimization procedures. Only in cases where such procedures will completely impair the government program should the security interest be weighed in total, rather than in the marginal difference between an unencumbered program versus a limited one.

Far too often, the balancing of privacy interests against security interests takes place in a manner that severely shortchanges the privacy interest while inflating the security interests. Such is the logic of the nothing to hide argument. When the argument is unpacked, and its underlying assumptions examined and challenged, we can see how it shifts the debate to its terms, in which it draws power from its unfair advantage. It is time to pull the curtain on the nothing to hide argument.

V. Conclusion

Whether explicit or not, conceptions of privacy underpin nearly every argument made about privacy, even the common quip “I’ve got nothing to hide.” As I have sought to demonstrate in this essay, understanding privacy as a pluralistic conception reveals that we are often talking past each other when discussing privacy issues. By focusing more specifically on the related problems under the rubric of “privacy,” we can better address each problem rather than ignore or conflate them. The nothing to hide argument speaks to some problems, but not to others. It represents a singular and narrow way of conceiving of privacy, and it wins by excluding consideration of the other problems often raised in government surveillance and data mining programs. When engaged with directly, the nothing to hide argument can ensnare, for it forces the debate to focus on its narrow understanding of privacy. But when confronted with the plurality of privacy problems implicated by government data collection and use beyond surveillance and disclosure, the nothing to hide argument, in the end, has nothing to say.

Footnotes

James Risen & Eric Lichtblau, Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts: Secret Order to Widen Domestic Monitoring, N.Y. TIMES, Dec. 16, 2005, at A1.

John Markoff, Pentagon Plans a Computer System That Would Peek at Personal Data of Americans, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 9, 2002, at A12.

John M. Poindexter, Finding the Face of Terror in Data, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 10, 2003, at A25.

DANIEL J. SOLOVE, THE DIGITAL PERSON: TECHNOLOGY AND PRIVACY IN THE INFORMATION AGE 169 (2004).

Shane Harris, TIA Lives On, NAT’L J., Feb. 25, 2006, at 66.

Leslie Cauley, NSA Has Massive Database of Americans’ Phone Calls, USA TODAY, May 11, 2006, at A1; Susan Page, Lawmakers: NSA Database Incomplete, USA TODAY, June 30, 2006, at A1.

Cauley, supra note 6, at A1.

Eric Lichtblau & James Risen, Bank Data Sifted in Secret by U.S. to Block Terror, N.Y. TIMES, June 23, 2006, at A1.

See infra text accompanying notes 12–33.

Bruce Schneier, Commentary, The Eternal Value of Privacy, WIRED, May 18, 2006, http://www.wired.com/news/columns/1,70886-0.html.

Geoffrey R. Stone, Commentary, Freedom and Public Responsibility, CHI. TRIB., May 21, 2006, at 11.

JEFFREY ROSEN, THE NAKED CROWD: RECLAIMING SECURITY AND FREEDOM IN AN ANXIOUS AGE (2004).

Id. at 36.

Comment of NonCryBaby to http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/articles/2296/18105/threaded (Feb. 12, 2003).

Comment of Yoven to http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/47675 (June 14, 2006, 14:03 EST).

Reach For The Stars!, http://greatcarrieoakey.blogspot.com/2006/05/look-all- you-want-ive-got-nothing-to.html (May 14, 2006, 09:04 PST).

Comment of annegb to Concurring Opinions, http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2006/05/is_there_a_good.html#comments (May 23, 2006, 11:37 EST).

Joe Schneider, Letter to the Editor, NSA Wiretaps Necessary, ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS, Aug. 24, 2006, at 11B.

Polls Suggest Americans Approve NSA Monitoring (NPR radio broadcast, May 19, 2006), available at 2006 WLNR 22949347.

HENRY JAMES, THE REVERBERATOR (1888), reprinted in NOVELS 1886–1880, at 555, 687 (1989).

Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (May 23, 2006, 00:06 EST).

Comment of Adam to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (May 23, 2006, 16:27 EST).

Comment of Dissent to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (May 24, 2006, 07:48 EST).

Comment of Ian to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (May 24, 2006, 19:51 EST).

Comment of Matthew Graybosch to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (Oct. 16, 2006, 12:09 EST).

Comment of Neureaux to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (Oct. 16, 2006, 14:39 EST).

Comment of Catter to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (Oct. 16, 2006, 11:36 PM EST).

Comment of Kevin to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (July 24, 2006, 12:36 EST).

ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN, CANCER WARD 192 (Nicholas Bethell & David Burg trans., Noonday Press 1991) (1968).

FRIEDRICH DÜRRENMATT, TRAPS 23 (Richard & Clara Winston trans., 1960).

Comment of Andrew to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (Oct. 16, 2006, 15:06 EST).

David H. Flaherty, Visions of Privacy: Past, Present, and Future, in VISIONS OF PRIVACY: POLICY CHOICES FOR THE DIGITAL AGE 19, 31 (Colin J. Bennett & Rebecca Grant eds., 1999).

Comment of BJ Horn to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (June 2, 2006, 18:58 EST).

RICHARD A. POSNER, THE ECONOMICS OF JUSTICE 271 (1983).

RICHARD A. POSNER, ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF LAW 46 (5th ed. 1998).

Id.

Richard A. Posner, Our Domestic Intelligence Crisis, WASH. POST, Dec. 21, 2005, at A31.

Comment of MJ to Concurring Opinions, supra note 17 (May 23, 2006, 17:30 EST).

ARTHUR R. MILLER, THE ASSAULT ON PRIVACY: COMPUTERS, DATA BANKS, AND DOSSIERS 25 (1971).

Hyman Gross, The Concept of Privacy, 42 N.Y.U. L. REV. 34, 35 (1967).

COLIN J. BENNETT, REGULATING PRIVACY: DATA PROTECTION AND PUBLIC POLICY IN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES 25 (1992).

Robert C. Post, Three Concepts of Privacy, 89 GEO. L.J. 2087, 2087 (2001).

Judith Jarvis Thomson, The Right to Privacy, in PHILOSOPHICAL DIMENSIONS OF PRIVACY: AN ANTHOLOGY 272, 272 (Ferdinand David Schoeman ed., 1984).

Daniel J. Solove, Conceptualizing Privacy, 90 CAL. L. REV. 1087, 1095–99 (2002).

JULIE C. INNESS, PRIVACY, INTIMACY, AND ISOLATION 56 (1992).

Samuel D. Warren & Louis D. Brandeis, The Right to Privacy, 4 HARV. L. REV. 193, 193 (1890).

Solove, supra note 44, at 1099–1124.

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN, PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS § 65 (G.E.M. Anscombe trans., 3d ed. 2001).

Id. § 66.

SOLOVE, supra note 4, at 6–9.

GEORGE ORWELL, 1984 (Signet Classic 1984) (1949); SOLOVE, supra note 4, at 7.

FRANZ KAFKA, THE TRIAL 50–58 (Willa & Edwin Muir trans., Random House 1956) (1937); SOLOVE, supra note 4, at 8–9.

SOLOVE, supra note 4, at 27–75.

JOHN DEWEY, LOGIC: THE THEORY OF INQUIRY 112 (Jo Ann Boydston ed. 1991) (1938).

Id.

Daniel J. Solove, A Taxonomy of Privacy, 154 U. PA. L. REV. 477 (2006).

Id. at 516–20.

Id. at 522–25.

CASS R. SUNSTEIN, LEGAL REASONING AND POLITICAL CONFLICT 67 (1996).

THOMAS I. EMERSON, THE SYSTEM OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION 545, 549 (1970).

Smith v. City of Artesia, 772 P.2d 373, 376 (N.M. Ct. App. 1989).

Charles Fried, Privacy, 77 YALE L.J. 475, 478 (1968); see also INNESS, supra note 45, at 95 (“[P]rivacy is valuable because it acknowledges our respect for persons as autonomous beings with the capacity to love, care and like—in other words, persons with the potential to freely develop close relationships.”); BEATE RÖSSLER, THE VALUE OF PRIVACY 117 (R.D.V. Glasgow trans., Polity Press 2005) (2001) (“Respect for a person’s privacy is respect for her as an autonomous subject.”); Stanley I. Benn, Privacy, Freedom, and Respect for Persons, in NOMOS XIII: PRIVACY 1, 26 (J. Roland Pennock & John W. Chapman eds., 1971) (“[R]espect for someone as a person, as a chooser, implie[s] respect for him as one engaged on a kind of self-creative enterprise, which could be disrupted, distorted, or frustrated even by so limited an intrusion as watching.”).

Smith, 772 P.2d at 376.

AMITAI ETZIONI, THE LIMITS OF PRIVACY 196 (1999). 65. Id. at 187–88.

Id. at 38.

Id. at 187–88.

Id. at 198.

JOHN DEWEY, ETHICS (1908), reprinted in 5 THE MIDDLE WORKS: 1899–1924, at 268 (Jo Ann Boydston ed., S. Ill. Univ. Press 1978).

JOHN DEWEY, LIBERALISM AND CIVIL LIBERTIES (1936), reprinted in 11 THE LATER WORKS, 1935–1937, at 373 (Jo Ann Boydston ed., S. Ill. Univ. Press 1987).

Id. at 375.

Robert C. Post, The Social Foundations of Privacy: Community and Self in the Common Law Tort, 77 CAL. L. REV. 957, 968 (1989).

Spiros Simitis, Reviewing Privacy in an Information Society, 135 U. PA. L. REV. 707, 709 (1987). In analyzing the problems of federal legislative policymaking on privacy, Priscilla Regan demonstrates the need for understanding privacy in terms of its social benefits. See PRISCILLA M. REGAN, LEGISLATING PRIVACY, at xiv (1995) (“[A]nalysis of congressional policy making reveals that little attention was given to the possibility of a broader social importance of privacy.”).

Julie E. Cohen, Examined Lives: Informational Privacy and the Subject as Object, 52 STAN. L. REV. 1373, 1427–28 (2000) (“Informational privacy, in short, is a constitutive element of a civil society in the broadest sense of that term.”); Paul M. Schwartz, Privacy and Democracy in Cyberspace, 52 VAND. L. REV. 1609, 1613 (1999) (“[I]nformation privacy is best conceived of as a constitutive element of civil society.”); see also Ruth Gavison, Privacy and the Limits of Law, 89 YALE L.J. 421, 455 (1980) (“Privacy is also essential to democratic government because it fosters and encourages the moral autonomy of the citizen, a central requirement of a democracy.”).

Schneier, supra note 10.

United States v. Katz, 389 U.S. 347, 360–61 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring).

425 U.S. 435, 442 (1976).

442 U.S. 735, 743 (1979).

SOLOVE, supra note 4, at 165–209; see also Daniel J. Solove, Digital Dossiers and the Dissipation of Fourth Amendment Privacy, 75 S. CAL. L. REV. 1083, 1117–37 (2002).

Roger Clarke, Information Technology and Dataveillance, 31 COMM. OF THE ACM 498, 499 (1988); see also Roger Clarke, Introduction to Dataveillance and Information Privacy, and Definitions of Terms, AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, Aug. 7, 2006, http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/Intro.html.

Christopher Slobogin, Transaction Surveillance by the Government, 75 MISS. L.J. 139, 140 (2005).

Daniel J. Solove, The First Amendment as Criminal Procedure, 82 N.Y.U. L. REV. 112, 154–59 (2007).

Id.

Solove, supra note 56, at 506–11.

Id. at 522–25.

Risen & Lichtblau, supra note 1.

Ann Bartow, A Feeling of Unease About Privacy Law, 155 U. PA. L. REV. PENNumbra 52, 52 (2006), http://www.pennumbra.com/issues/articles/154-3/Bartow.pdf.

Id.

Id. at 52, 62.

SOLOVE, supra note 4, at 147.

Id.

Remsburg v. Docusearch, Inc., 816 A.2d 1001, 1005–06 (N.H. 2003).

SOLOVE, supra note 4, at 93–97, 100–01, 195–208; Daniel J. Solove, Identity Theft, Privacy, and the Architecture of Vulnerability, 54 HASTINGS L.J. 1227, 1228 (2003).

SOLOVE, supra note 4, at 93.

334 F. Supp. 2d 1196, 1200 (D.N.D. 2004).

In re Nw. Airlines Privacy Litig., No. 04-126, 2004 WL 1278459 (D. Minn. June 6, 2004).

Solove, supra note 56, at 526–30.

Id. at 520–22.

741 N.Y.S.2d 100 (N.Y. App. Div. 2002).

Id. at 102.

Wartime Executive Power and the National Security Agency’s Surveillance Authority: Hearing Before the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 109th Cong. 15 (2006) (statement of Alberto Gonzales, Att’y Gen. of the United States).

Daniel J. Solove, Fourth Amendment Codification and Professor Kerr’s Misguided Call for Judicial Deference, 74 FORDHAM L. REV. 747, 775–76 (2005).

#privacy #nothing to hide #data mining #surveillance #data collection #government #NSA #executive power #fourth amendment #constitutional law

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