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imaginariaextraordinaire · 3 years

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Episode 8 is one hella packed episode and it is an absolute joy to unpack it, beginning with this:

Clever, clever idea to have Ji-Woo repeat the line that Mi-Joo just said to indicate Ji-Woo is taking charge of things as far as Assemblyman Ki is concerned. It's also a good reminder of how tone and intent can change the meaning of a sentence even if the words are exactly the same (which is why we need good translators).

Seeing Mi-Joo stride across the screen with Seon-Gyeom behind her, it struck me that we've seen a variation of this many times before, beginning with the credit titles. While Seon-Gyeom is the sprinter, the one we see constantly trying to up the pace and charge ahead is Mi-Joo. She's always intent on moving ahead faster — perhaps to outrun the past that she finally makes peace with during the marathon? — while Seon-Gyeom moves at a slower pace, disentangling himself from the constraints of his troubled past and troubling father. The only one time we see him race ahead (in episode 2), we also see him come back and slow down.

What I particularly love about Park Shi-Hyun's writing is that in addition to all the layers and complexity she's written into the scenes and characters, she's also written a very, very funny show.

Both Shin Se-Kyung and Kang Tae-Oh do such a fantastic job with both the physical humour (without being over-the-top) and the timing that's needed to play up the wit in the dialogues. Not that Siwan and Soo-Young do a bad job — the scene in which Dan-Ah proposes to Seon-Gyeom is hilarious. My favourite is still May, who is very funny throughout this episode (the shot in which we learn she sleeps with her eyes open! GOLD).

The transitions in this episode are so well written. The insights from one scene ricochet off the next. For example, Dan-Ah in the scene at the bar — where she tells the bartender she can't risk keeping the book in her own study because she can't risk people guessing she has anxieties — gives us a look at the problems of the privileged. This is followed by a scene in which Yeong-Hwa and Mi-Joo discuss student debts, which is a relatable middle-class problem. This in turn is followed by Tae-Woong saying that he takes selfies because he's addicted to the validation he gets from the likes each of those photos gets him — a Gen Z problem. And so it is that we get a spectrum of problems that people face and hide behind performative façades.

The likes that Tae-Woong talks about pop up with manic frenzy at the end of the heartbreaking scene with Dan-Ah in the parking lot, presenting the viewer with a terrible contrast — driving away from him is the love and acceptance that he yearns for from a sister who (he hopes) knows him. All he has to hold on to is the superficial attention of the love professed by a fandom that doesn't really know him at all. Soo-Young's performance is fantastic in this scene, especially when she asks in a voice tinged with desperation why Tae-Woong keeps coming back to her despite her treating him so badly. For the first time, you realise how much it takes out of her to lash out at this desperately-sad boy. "It takes effort to hate someone," Tae-Woong tells her. My heart!

Another fantastic set of transitions comes later on in the episode, when Mi-Joo and May are unwinding at the end of a long day at the film shoot.

This is such a great example of writing inter-generational female friendships. When May remembers not being paid for working overtime, it's an acknowledgement that things are better for working women (especially in film) than it was before, but as Mi-Joo's experiences show, there's still a lot to be done because women are still driven by a certain insecurity and anxiety to push themselves way too hard (as we see a sick Mi-Joo do later in the episode).

Of course a man tries to break this gathering up — because he wants to go to bed. Superb excuse, particularly because these women are talking how much they have to work — and it is deeply satisfying to watch all three of them shut him down and establish their right to unwind.

This scene of female friendship is followed by one that shows the friendship between the three runners. Then we get to see a fight scene full of male actors. The machismo of that performance is a sharp contrast to the awkward tenderness of Woo-Sik and Yeong-Il's conversation.

While on the subject of toxic masculinity, this is the episode in which we find out Dan-Ah's father forged Myeong-Min's birth certificate to make him legally older than Dan-Ah even though he's actually 10 months younger than her. All to ensure he has a male heir. It's a nice detail that Myeong-Min's mother is the one laying out the memorial service for Dan-Ah's mother because it hints at a sense of solidarity.

Also dismantling traditional notions of masculinity is Seon-Gyeom, whom we see at his most domestic as he cooks and packs meals for May and Mi-Joo, and does chores around the house once they're gone. It's very much an inversion of the standard male-female gender roles with the woman going out to work and the man as the homemaker. To underscore this point, we see Seon-Gyeom consider the leopard-print shirt (that May and Mi-Joo hang to give strangers the impression they've got an alpha in the house) for a second before putting it away.

Speaking of alphas, Mi-Joo's really got a thing for wild cats. In addition to that shirt, her blanket is also a leopard-print and when we see her calling Seon-Gyeom, she's standing in front of a painting of a tiger. All these seem to be digs at her posturing that she's strong and invulnerable and I burst out laughing when Seon-Gyeom folds the leopard-print blanket while muttering, "I'd have guessed this is hers even if she hadn't told me."

As disinterested as Seon-Gyeom may be in films, they play a big role in sustaining him emotionally. In this episode, it's the film set that helps Mi-Joo and him come together after their stupid disagreement. Equally importantly, the film set is where he gets the time and space to reconnect with his mother.

Run On has so much fun being meta with the film bits. The film shoot within a drama is indeed an old fake.

There are two film sets we see in this episode — one with Ji-Woo and the other with Mi-Joo. While Ji-Woo's set feels relaxed, the one Mi-Joo's working in is chaotic and taxing. The two women are also at different ends of the professional spectrum. Ji-Woo is a star while Mi-Joo is not just working behind the scenes, but she's come to fill in for the person who was the juniormost member of the crew.

When pointing out the main players of their film crew to Mi-Joo and May, Hui-Jin describes the cinematographer as "a bit racist, but still a gentleman". (Mi-Joo's response is superb: "Weird.") It's an interesting choice to make the cinematographer racist because that's the crew member who decides how subjects and scenes will be framed. "Racist but a gentleman" feels like a precise summary of the orientalist perspective which (aside from being overwhelmingly masculine) shows the East through stereotypes that are often superficially beautiful, but also reductive and damaging. Not surprisingly, this cinematographer is the reason Mi-Joo flounders while translating on set.

The film set is also the first time that Seon-Gyeom sees Mi-Joo's vulnerable side when she falls ill. It's such a clever choice to have Mi-Joo stop performing in a setting that's all about performances. Not only does Mi-Joo give up the alpha act when she's sick, she admits to Seon-Gyeom that when she's feeling helpless, her instinct is to resort to a performative lie — calling out for mom because that's what she saw other kids do as a child in a sick ward (imagine how isolated and neglected she must have felt to do this. Also, she's felt this way so many times that this performance has become second nature to her).

The anecdote suggests Mi-Joo's mulish championing of her self has its roots in past incidents when she tried to fit and either failed or was rejected. And yet, for all her strength and confidence, she's chasing phantoms and has been doing so since she was a little girl. All because she was alone and didn't have anyone she could reach out to for help. Which is why what Seon-Gyeom tells her at the end of the episode is so relevant. He helps her to reorient.

To which Mi-Joo, bless her leopard-print-loving heart, responds with

But my favourite part of this episode is the conversation that Ji-Woo has with Seon-Gyeom when he visits her set. First of all, Ji-Woo is playing a "vegan murderer", which is brilliant as ideas go and it's adorable how delighted she is about her violent roles.

I love how Run On doesn't punish Ji-Woo for sacrificing her family life for her work. Instead, it holds out the possibility that it is ok if you have that imbalance. In this scene, we see Ji-Woo's family reforming at the film set with Eun-Bi sending the coffee truck and Seon-Gyeom showing up just because Ji-Woo asked him to be there.

The mother-son conversation gives us a glimpse of Seon-Gyeom's bleak childhood and we learn that everything Seon-Gyeom did for his father was actually him doing what his mother had asked him to do. It comes as a surprise to Seon-Gyeom that his mother has noticed what he's suffered and that she understands how he'd hoped silently suffering would keep the family together. It's almost as though he's feeling seen for the first time.

Much like Dan-Ah, Ji-Woo may seem self-centred because of her ambitiousness, but she does notice what's happening beyond the obvious, especially when it comes to people she cares about. Both women are up against the worst of patriarchy. Also, I love that when she's talking about motherhood, Ji-Woo is blood-spattered — after all, being a working woman and a mother in a patriarchal is nothing short of fighting a war.

In previous episodes, it seemed as though Ji-Woo was the 'bad' (or at least not ideal) mother while Director Dong was the ideal, modern mother. Yet in comparison to how Director Dong later reacts to her son coming out, you can't help but feel Ji-Woo, with her unconditional support for her kids, might just be the better parent. What is great about Run On though is that that the script doesn't pit the two older women against each other as competing examples of motherhood or femininity. The point is that everyone's struggling, making mistakes and trying to learn from them. Ji-Woo is doing that and so will Director Dong eventually.

Love that the scene ends with Seon-Gyeom effectively declaring himself his mother's son. Take that, patriarchy.

#Run On #Episode 8 #Rewatch #Kdrama #Mothers #mother series #Smash the patriarchy #Im Siwan #shin se kyung

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yououghtaknow · 3 years

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skam brighton season 5 music analysis

hello :) i’ve gone through all the songs on previous seasons of skam brighton and explained why i used them and i thought i would do it for season 5 now that it’s over.

tw for disucssion of addiction, racism, pedophilia, transphobia and homophobia

trailer

we begin with a bang with “don’t blame me” by taylor swift. now it has been said about me that i am a swiftie and it is true. and nick braxton is a reputation era bitch. this song has quite literally it all for nick’s character - we got christian themes, reference to drug addiction and an unhealthy devotion to someone. this trailer has gone through many songs to find the perfect one, but i decided on this one because of the themes, and also because of the line “they say she’s gone too far this time” - which, in regards to nick, can be read in many ways. we got the nick going “too far” with his love for james in subtly trying to break liz and james up, nick and their drug addiction, and nick and their relationship with their gender identity - going too far in both the masculine and feminine directions. also it bangs your honour.

episode one

we!! begin!! with!! saturday night’s alright for fighting by sir elton john!!! because it is saturday night and, as we’vee seen, nick isn’t afraid to get into a fight or two. this song specifically was chosen because of the movie rocketman, which i drew a lot of inspiration from, with the themes of drug addiction and sexuality. also, once again, it simply slaps.

we then get “ymca” by the village people playing in the background over the rest of the party scene. i chose this song because it is a very stereotypically gay song, and a lot of what i wanted nick to deal with was self-perception in regards to stereotypes. he is very stereotypically flamboyant because it’s both the way he is and a defensive mechanism - leading to his bisexuality being erased and being seen as gay a lot of the time. he ‘s pretty much the opposite in regards to his asian identity, with him not being academically intelligent and outspoken and being very british in their speaking patterns. it’s about the balance and duality and all that stuff.

then, as we are formally introduced to nick’s devotion to james, we get “where dreams go to die” by john grant. thank you to my friend katya for recommeding this song as a nick song because it is just. crazy. every line makes me want to scream. especially “this is like a well-oiled machine / could i please see that smile again? / it's all that makes me feel like i am living in this world”. like that just shows the extent of nick’s love - because sometimes you’re just in love with the idea of being saved rather than seeking help. is that poetic or am i just pretentiously talking about my trauma? who knows.

we then get “overprotected” by britney spears - because britney has been a nick staple the whole series. i first heard the song in the musical & juliet and i was immediately like “oh nick core”. the song opens with: “ i need time (time) / love (love), joy (joy) / i need space (love) / i need me (action!) / say hello to the girl that i am / you're gonna have to see through my perspective”. because we are literally seeing from nick’s perspective. i also wanted to introduce the gender dynamics early - including in the trailer, where nick refers to themself with she/her pronouns - and her nick is referred to in the text of the song as a girl. it’s also a very sad song about not having any control over your life with a fun pop backing track, which is very nick braxton.

we then get another party scene, that opens with “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored” (by ariana grande) covered by sam fender. i chose this song because 1) i love the cover and 2) god is it a nick song. literally nick has so many wants (to be loved by their family, to get sober, to succeed in school, to explore their gender freely) but he focuses on wanting james and wanting james to leave liz because there are less achievable and thus safer. also the song fucking slaps.

we close with “happy little pill” by troye sivan, a mlm classic. a staple of 2014. i chose this song because 1) drug in title, easy get, and 2) it’s actually a really good song???? it’s about the dissociation. it’s very similar to the scene with bree in season 4 episode 1 where “chandelier” plays as she’s clearly not doing well but she’s pretending for the sake of her friends. nick and bree are narrative foils and i love them.

episode two

the first song of episode 2 is “be great” by lolandre and jeremy pope after we see nick and his dad’s dynamic for the first time. and it’s really something huh. it’s about how christian does want nick to be great, but christian has a very narrow idea of what success and happiness looks like.

the next bit of media we get in this episode is nick watching the first episode of euphoria. when preparing to write various seasons of skam brighton, i watched a lot of teen dramas to get a good feel for the vibe i was going for. euphoria was one of them and it’s a show i have a lot of mixed feelings for - i think it’s very well crafted and extremely interesting but i also do have issues with the sexualisation of teenagers on screen, even if it is mostly realistic. i chose this scene specifically because nick and rue are very similar characters, in regards to their relationships with their parents (i believe nick is more of a jules kinnie but more on that later). they both just want to be a good kid and make them happy, but they can never seem to do it. gia, rue’s younger sister, is also a parallel to nick’s brothers.

we then get “old eden” by honeywater which is just simply a song i like very much that had the vibes of the scene. also the lines “i want love / but i don't just want love, i want you / i see the beach house, your sweet mouth / but the terrible news / is that love is not how it seems on the screen / yeah, real love has problems / but it's what's in-between that's the best” is simply just nick braxton huh. ambiguous disorder.

we then get “generation why” by conan gray as nick storms out of their house after a fight with their parents. i chose it very simply for the vibes because i only listened to this song once and thought “i do not wish to listen to this in my free time but it is a nick braxton time”. it’s just the angsty indie pop main character walking down the street vibes.

we!!! end!!! with!!! a song i love very much - “sex drive” by austin mckenzie of dwsa fame. this song plays over nick getting “rejected” by james and resorting to grindr to feed their want for human affection - which is where the parallels to ms jules euphoria come from. i chose this song specifically because it begins with the lines “who’s driving?” on repeat, which calls into question who is in control in the scenario. as seen on screen, nick is the one who initiates the “date” but, at the end of the day, nick is an underage teenager and the person he’s on a date with is an adult man. also the song is simply a fun bisexual time.

episode three

we open with “hurricane drunk” by florence and the machine, a song that has been decidedly nick core since 2018. like “i’m in the grip of a hurricane / i’m going to blow myself away”...... nick braxton you crazy little person

“yours” by greyson chance plays over nick and james driving out to the woods to skip school together….. it is quite insane. “no matter who i'm with, it's you that i adore / if you're not sure / baby, i'm yours” like i scream and shout nick braxton has always been in love with the concept of james cohen

“myrtle ave.” by mxmtoon plays as nick is feeling isolated from his friends…. like they just vibe with the song and the lyrics so hard. nick is just. i have no words other than i love them.

we close with “st jimmy” by green day because. goddammit isn’t he. like james just comes out as bisexual (just like st jimmy in american idiot the broadway musical) and nick is like “you are like a saint to me, i worship you, i will do anything for you”. like it’s a song about drug addiction but it’s also about being bisexual but it’s also about the performance of masculinity and the performance of being a “rebel” that james and nick both do i love them so much.

episode four

we begin with “lucy in the sky with diamonds” by the beatles. i do not listen to the beatles but i think the song is about drugs and the beatles is a james cohen band in canon so it has the connotations babey.

we then get “seventeen” by troye sivan as nick goes on grindr to seek out adult men. it’s genuinely such a nick song - once again, the fun poppy music in the background and the deeply upsetting lyrics. also, as in season 4, i chose this song to emphasise the fact that nick is seventeen and a minor and should not be doing these activities.

we then get “dancing on my own” by robyn as we’re at the vaguely halloween-esque party. it’s once again about the boppy music and sad lyrics and like. nick voice i’m in the corner watching you kiss her ohhhhhh i’m right over here why can’t you see me ohhhhhhh i’m giving it my all but i’m not the guy you’re taking home ooooh i keep dancing on my own. like he’s fucking insane (he is both me and nick)

and then!!!! we get a scene very personal to me. nick watching rocky horror for the first time at a shadowcast showing and watching “the time warp”. i first saw rocky horror when i was about 10/11 because i saw it on glee and wanted to watch the real movie and it made me so so transgender and homosexual. it is such a non-binary little movie and the time warp is just an absolute bop.

it’s followed by a brief showing of “sweet transvestite” because tim curry in that movie is such an experience for anyone involved. like oh to be gender questioning nick braxton and to see that. what a fucking experience. and also to be gender questioning 11 year old me and to see that and then find out my school is doing a kidz bop version of rocky horror. fucking insane transgender times.

we close with “cecily smith” by will connolly as milo and nick walk home together because. it is just such a sweet song. like life is not the things that we do it’s who we’re doing them with. and it is a very nickmilo song and i am the president of nickmilo nation. i love a non-binary romance i do i do i do.

episode five

we open with “halloween” by phoebe bridgers because it is literally halloween. insane. but it is also such a nick braxton song like come on man we can be anything…… nick braxton voice i’ll be whatever you want…… it’s about the people pleasing and the desire to be wanted and needed loved and goodness gracious. also nick braxton fig faeth kinnie for this song specifically.

and then!!!!! we get nick dramatically singing “girl crush” by the harry styles version in his bathroom mirror. because goddammit they do have a girl crush. it’s about the gender and the desire to both be with james and to be liz becausenick is non-binary babey……..

and then!!!!! in such a parallel!!!!! we get milo singing “inner white girl” from a strange loop on their instagram live. “a strange loop” was a big inspiration for this season, with very similar themes fo it (you should listen to it right now) and this song….. quite genuinely we have nick singing a song about wanting to be a white girl and then they hear this song….. like nick does cling to his inner white girl as a way of staying safe - they cling to the safe idea of mlm flamboyancy and humour to hide from their genuine emotions and gender……. like it is insane to me. also white girls can do anything can’t they!!!!!!!

we then get “the people who raised me” by gregory and the hawks after nick has a fight with their parents…. “but i won't mind no time spent to save me / just trying to be good to the people who raised me” literally nick is trying his best to be good but he can’t be and that makes him angry!!!!!! but that anger is born out of a deep, deep sadness that nick has no emotional language to express, but anger is a language he can speak and it is. insane. like it’s about masculinity, it’s about femininity, it’s about everything. fuck.

we then get "search your heart" by george feeny as nick sadly vibes at school…. also this scene does parallel with the liz/mary scene in season 2 where their parents fight. like liz is shitty to her friends but stays for her sister and nick is great to his friends but leaves his brothers behind….. the range.

and then!!!! we get phoebe bridgers’ cover of “friday i’m in love” because it is friday and nick is in love huh.

and then!!!!!!!!!! a moment i have been building up to!!!!! we get “back to black” by ms amy winehouse after nick finds out james has a crush on alistair thee fletcher. and just like. god. this song has everything for nick. it’s a song about depression, addiction, leaving your lover, anger, bitterness, second choice ness….. and also he is literally going back to black with his hair colour!!!!! because he thinks being more masculine is what will make people love him and he views pink hair as un-masculine!!!!! and he’s also going back to his family, so he’s going back to trying to hide himself to fit into their expectations….. like god it is an insane little time.

episode six

we open with “idk if i’m a boy” by blue foster - a song i got on my discover weekly and it was a deeply personal attack. like nick voice i don’t know if i’m a reject i don’t know if i’m a loser but i know that i’ve been feeling feminine since i’ve been teething…. and how the song uses humour as a way to cope with gender dysphoria like it’s nick bay bee.

we then get “green light” by lorde because god it is such a james/nick song i feel insane. like “did it frighten you / how we kissed when we danced on the light up floor?” because james and nick have canonically kissed many times before….. also lorde as an artist just has such intense nick vibes it’s so much fun

we then get "fluorescent adolescent" by arctic monkeys over a party scene because i’ve been told on the internet that it is a british teen party classic. unfortunately the rowdiest party i’ve ever been to is my cousin’s christening so i do not know if it is factual, but it does slap.

we then get vérité’s cover of somebody else by the 1975 because i just simply prefer this version. but like. oh nick braxton. oh it’s about the rori and the james and the nick being afraid of being open and committing to someone but still wanting to feel the sense of being wanted by someone and being the sole person they want….. literally it is very crazy.

and then we end with “sugar we’re going down” by fall out boy!!!!! like it it such a good song nick voice am i more than you bargained for yet!!! i’ve been dying to tell you everything you’ve ever wanted to hear!!!! because that’s just who i am this week!!!!! like it fits so well with his character but also it is so funny that sugar we’re going down plays as they faint at the party……. i am a comedian sometimes.

episode seven

the first song we get in this ep is “demi moore” by phoebe bridgers as nick is detoxing in the hospital. like quite genuinely “i don’t wanna be stoned anymore!!!!!!!!” they don’t want to be alone anymore!!!!!!!!!

then we get “bite the hand” by boygenius. just. like. “i can’t love you the way you want me to” is just. such a statement for nick’s season. like he can’t love james the way james wants to be loved by nick, they can’t love their parents, their parents can’t love them…… it’s all about learning how to love in a way that is felt by all parties involved in the relationship be it romantic, platonic, familial or otherwise. like. it’s so insane it’s all about love

and then we get “relay” by fiona apple - which was a contender for the trailer song at some point. like nick @ alistair is very “i resent you for being raised right etc.” because he knows liz is fucked up and has flaws, he’s seen them, but alistair is easy to project all of his hatred onto. also just like evil is a relay sport thank you ms apple.

we then get “girls just wanna have fun” by cyndi lauper and “dancing queen” and “mamma mia” by abba sung at the lgbt youth club karaoke night because. i mean of course they are. also they are very fun gender songs and i enjoy them :)

and then. my friends. the moment you’ve been waiting for. nick braxton singing alanis morrissette’s “you oughta know”. now this is gonna be a long one.

the you oughta know analysis

first things first, i got the jagged little pill broadway behind the scenes book for christmas and there’s a whole chapter about you oughta know being a song about the queer struggle of being unseen and unheard and i feel so validated like that is exactly what the song is about.

but for nick. oh baby. it is them singing to james, to rori, to al, to liz, to bree, to his parents, to his teachers, to everyone who perceives them wrong. it’s their moment of standing up and saying i am angry and i am serious about this and i deserve to be listened to as a young person. i will now give an in depth analysis of every line i want to.

“the perfect version of me” - bree and nick have had so many parallels throughout the series, which bree can be described as a “better” version of nick. they’re in therapy, she’s taking care of herself, they’re bisexual and it’s accepted by everyone, she’s a good partner to rori, she has parents who love her, and she can be gender non-conforming in a safe way. but this line also applies to al - because nick and al have also been compared this season, with al talking about how he’s comfortable with his femininity and james liking al, who, despite claiming to be more feminine, is still more traditionally masculine than nick. al, bree and liz are all very academically smart. they are all very creatively gifted. liz doesn’t struggle for money. nick, in their mind, compared to all of these people, is a failure.

“so she speaks eloquently / and she could have your baby / i'm sure she'd make a really excellent mother” - this applied to both liz and bree, who both try to be seen as very eloquent speakers, and who are both afab, so therefore can have james’s baby - something nick wouldn’t be able to do. but we have seen in liz and bree’s seasons that they both have sexual trauma, and bree especially is uncomfortable with having children. it’s nick having this idea of womanhood and femininity being something so unattainable and required for james - that it kind of segways into al. because al is also assigned female at birth and could, as he is pre-t, hypothetically have a child, which is playing into some transphobic notions, but nick sees al as both more feminine and more masculine than him - making al just perfect for james.

“and every time you speak his name / does he know why you told me / you'd be there until you died / 'til you died, but you're still alive” - nick changes to he pronouns here, now directly talking about al. we’ve seen james flirting with nick and we know they’ve kissed in the past, and james and nick are incredibly close friends. but james still, in nick’s mind at this point, chose al over him.

“it was a slap in the face / how quickly i was replaced / and are you thinking of me when she fucks you?” - the conversation about how all the skam brighton characters relate to the line between sex and love is so interesting to me. it is also the reason i do not allow my parents to read this show. but anyways - nick does feel so genuinely replaced by everyone in his life, like there’s always a newer, better version waiting just around the corner. what nick doesn’t know is that that is how everyone else around him feels as well. and the line “are you thinking of me when she fucks you” is such a pointed line because it’s not a line of confidence or a joke. nick knows that no one thinks about them like that because they feel repulsive but try to play it off as a joke.

then we get the “i” section, which is, in the script, more “ayes” and “nahs”, but i wanted to change it to be the word “i” specifically because so much of the season is nick existing for other people. for their parents, for their friends, for their clients, for james. in this moment, they are choosing themself. they are standing up and saying “what i feel is important and i fucking matter”

“'cause the joke that you laid in the bed, that was me / and i'm not gonna fade as soon as you close your eyes / and you know it” - because nick’s sexuality and nick as a romantic partner is treated as such a joke throughout the show’s run, and james has been trying to turn every time he kissed nick into a joke that will go away, but it’s not going to go away because nick remembers it. even if james tries to deny his sexuality to nick’s face, nick is always going to remember that james was, at some point, attracted to men enough to kiss him.

“and every time i scratch my nails / down someone else's back, i hope you feel it / well, can you feel it?” - every time nick has sought out sex with strangers it’s because they feel rejected and insecure in themself. they seek out this sexual validation as a way to feed their want to be loved and noticed by people and he wants james and rori to feel hurt by it - he wants to have the power, he wants to have the control.

“and i’m here” - this line is just. so powerful to me. because it’s a line of defeat - after all this time, nick’s ended up at some crappy youth group with his little brother babysitting him, and he’s been dumped and cheated on and overdosed and everything is so awful. but then it becomes a line of celebration. of “yeah, all that shit happened to me, but i’m still here, i’m still standing, and no one can take away the fact that i am here and i am alive and i deserve to be respected” - something milo taught them when they talked about their tattoo

“to remind you of the mess you left when you went away” - nick himself is the mess they all left - because they feel so abandoned and alone and like they are just a mess to be discarded, but he’s here to remind everyone that he’s here. it’s a call for help.

“it's not fair, to deny me / of the cross i bear that you gave to me” - this line i always saw as directed at his parents - they gave him this cross of being the perfect eldest sibling that ended up crushing him, and they deny that it ever happened. but nick knows it did. the same way he knows james like guys. the same way he knows rori didn’t like only him. the same way he’s been denying himself of the cross he bears of being non-binary, the cross of being an addict, the cross of being a mentally ill neurodivergent person. this song is him finally letting go of that denial.

“you oughta know” - he’s talking to everyone with that line. everyone should know about his pain, about his emotions, about what he’s gone through, because he’s kept it so bottled up for years. it’s not fair for him not to share it because he deserve to.

they don’t call me isaac tumblr user yououghtaknowmp3 for nothing.

episode eight

we open with “seven” by taylor swift as nick reads a letter they wrote to their younger self. like. “i used to scream ferociously any time i wanted” is such a line about being neurodivergent as a child and then being forced to mask as you grow up….. also the bridge is just james and nick core…. you should come live with me and we could be pirates…..

we then get “nonbinary” by arca because i feel like at this point nick would be trying to listen to more nonbinary artists because they want to see themself reflected rather than running from it!!!!

we then get “heather” by conan gray as nick and liz accidentally meet at the local mentally ill teen zone. because i am just fucking crazy like that. and yes, i chose that song before it got big on tiktok. but i think it’s funnier because it is a famous song.

we then get “falling” by harry styles as nick is being emo in their bedroom because nick is just the type of person who will dramatically listen to harry styles in their bedroom whilst being sad. it also completes the full circle of sad taylor swift to sad harry styles, but with no vehicular manslaughter.

we then get “400 lux” by lorde after james and nick have their big conversation because like it is just a them song. like you buy me orange juice. it’s also about the james/nick having a gansey/ronan dynamic in the way that nick is devotedly in love with him and james is just being homoerotic for the jokes. but not most other ways. honestly i haven’t thought about the skam brighton versions of these characters in trc….. many thoughts head full

episode nine

we open with “pink rabbits” by the national as nick redyes their hair back to pink. and i’ll be honest. i only chose this song because it has pink in the title. but it does still vibe with nick though.

we then get “be your own 3am” by adult mom as nick is dealing with some bad cravings. it’s just a very pretty song for listening to alone at night in your bed in that weird space between sleep and awake. i love it.

we then get “i am not a robot” by marina as nick walks down the street because nick is a marina bitch!!!!!!! and “you've been acting awful tough lately / smoking a lot of cigarettes lately / but inside, you're just a little baby / it's okay to say you've got a weak spot” is such a nick @ james line it makes me insane

also rich’s entire character and backstory is directly lifted from skins gen 3 because i am niche and make content just for me

we then end with “rager teenager!” by troye sivan because i have listened to that song exactly once, decided it had nick vibes, and just stuck it in an episode somewhere.

episode ten

we open with “strange torpedo” by lucy dacus because it is just. such a nick song. it is insane. i am insane. like it is about nick wanting someone but not being sure who or what it is because he just wants to be loved and discovers that sometimes being liked is better than being loved…….

we then get “used to you” by mxmtoon and like….. “tell me what i can say / and i can say it / tell me what i can do / and i can do my best / tell me who i should be / and i can change it” is such a nick early s5 lyric…… and how the song is kind of a love song but the line “now i’m just kind of used to you” is very nick about his feelings towards james

we then get “gay street fighter” by keiynan lonsdale as milo gets their sexy slow mo that all of the love interests get at some point. they deserve it.

and then “to be alone with you” by sufjan stevens plays as milo and nick have their first kiss in the pool because i always wanted to include that scene and thought “hey here is good”. and like. they are alone with each other a lot and they like spending time with each other….. they are friends, they are teens, they are falling in love a little <3

we then get “creep” by lena hall as nick has a little gender moment at school. lena hall played yitzhak in the broadway revival of hedwig and the angry inch and she just has so much gender. creep has always been a nick song and this cover just…. it’s them.

we then get some ambient guitar music during the nick/rori scene and i chose some songs from “your city gave me asthma” by wilbur soot because it is a fucking great album and nick is canonically a mcyt stan so i simply had to. we end with “your new boyfriend”, which is a funnier, happier wilbur soot song and it is simply a fun time.

episode eleven

we open with “gender is boring” by she/her/hers which is just an absolute banger. like “gender never really meant that much to me / til' people started telling me how it was supposed to be” is such a great line and it is very nick braxton because. like. it’s just gender babey everything is about gender except for gender which is about having fun.

“dorothea” by taylor swift plays as james and nick have their final big scene together and like. it is such a homoerotic and fun song i love it so much thank you taylor friend of the show swift. “and if you're ever tired of being known / for who you know / you know, you'll always know me” is just……. god.

we then get “i do (end credits)” by kevin abstract as we open on the final scene of the season because a) it has end credits in the title and b) it is just another song i think nick would enjoy listening to.

we then get “they/them/theirs” by worriers as we get another little party montage because it’s a vibe time and like. i do love a they/them pronoun moment. it’s a very good and fun pronoun to use.

and finally we get “prelude” from next to normal as al comes in late to the party and awkwardly stands at the back. i chose this song because. well. you’ll see :)

thank you for reading my analysis that no one asked for, i just love having fun and talking about my silly little show :)

#skam brighton #skam brighton spoilers #isaac speaks #who wants my two page long essay on you oughta know but specifically for MY nonbinary comic relief character with christian trauma #i am fucking crazy BUT i am free :)

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mcnypieces · 4 years

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THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

My muse is: canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless /

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK ( They’re missing out )

Is your character considered strong in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK ( It’s subjective )

Are they underrated? YES / NO

Were they relevant for the main story? YES / NO

Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG.

Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO? ( This is... also subjective. )

How’s their reputation? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL

How strictly do you follow canon?

As closely as possible, considering there’s not very much to work with in regards to his canon to begin with. There’s a lot of freedom in picking up any kind of minor canon character. I look mainly to expand on what little is present. I adore fleshing out even the smallest ideas so having something I can comfortably build on is great.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals.

Pica is loyal, beyond anything. Strong, well-built, and never wavering. Regardless of the situation, he is always on task, diligent to the last moment and perhaps longer. Devotion and collected functionality make a grand guardian. Always acts as a pillar; a collected foundation of a man centered around dedicated familial values. Being in contact with stone makes him nigh invincible, granting him not only the protective assimilation but the literal stature and appearance of a stone goliath given enough material. Strategic with respectable swordsmanship, constantly protective of what’s important. He’s nice on the eyes, quiet, and a good listener. There’s order and beauty laced within all that cataclysmic chaos just waiting to be found.

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?).

Distant, stoic, absolutely terrible with expression that isn’t hateful and violent. Pica is very strict, lacking a sense of humor. His voice is extremely disruptive. The smallest remarks set his short fuse alight and it burns on and on until there’s nothing left. That murderous intent settles for very few things, and getting him to open up is a long, grueling process. He’s self-conscious but in an overbearingly cocky way, in that pride often masks everything genuine. He thinks very highly of himself and looks down on other people constantly. He’s uncooperative, constantly wrapped up in solemn business, and heavily against indirect methods. Abrasiveness is a weapon and he uses it without remorse. Stubbornness and general unwillingness to speak with strangers make attempting to converse with him the equivalent of talking to a wall. Pica is impatience, wrath, and apathy tied together with coarse cobblestone.

What inspired you to rp your muse?

As odd as it sounds, I found certain parts of Pica relatable in very specific, personal ways. People never took me seriously when I was upset because I was so small ( sometimes they still don’t dskdsks- ). For awhile when I was younger my voice was really deep and hoarse due to adenoid issues. Speaking in general was hard, because breathing was hard. It made me sound very masculine, especially over any kind of voice-only system. Normally adenoids aren’t an issue at that point because they’re vestigial and tend to essentially be shrunk down to nothing. But something ( probably fighting off infections and never shrinking/bad allergies, nobody knows ) blew mine up and they were blocking 3/4ths of my airway for ages without anyone having any idea what was going on until it got bad enough to the point it was obvious something was wrong. I couldn’t have any stuffed animals in my room because it was legitimately dangerous and a lot of my non hypoallergenic stuff had plastic covers on it. Made me really sad. Eventually they were surgically removed, and it cleared up my breathing and in time my voice was relatively normal. Before then, nothing felt worse to me then than struggling to breathe trying to defend myself in tandem with all the emotional stress it brought on me.

I was always quiet and distant otherwise, and a lot of people thought I was just weird and unapproachable ( unless you wanted a laugh, anyway ). There were days before I made my small group of good friends I’d just spend sitting under the stairwell up against a wall eating lunch by myself. I’m probably one of the few people that listened to Pica talk for the first time and didn’t immediately burst into laughter. I didn’t completely click with him at that point, but watching that one little thing turn into a running gag constantly coming back to undermine everything else that was amazing about him really set my feelings in stone... pun completely intended. I’ve loved him ever since. That inspiration and adoration has only grown with time.

What keeps your inspiration going?

Quite a few things. Aside from the constant love pouring from my being, I love looking at highly detailed stonework. It’s beautiful. Scrolling through rolling mountain landscapes, listening to certain songs, daydreaming in between sentences. I never really lose inspiration for Pica. Something new hits me every day in the most mundane tasks. A lot of it does go unshared, but some of it is personal and other times I simply don’t have the energy or reason. Very well I could be brimming with inspiration for him all day and have nowhere really to put it without excess. Getting opportunities to do so really makes me smile, though. It’s amazing how much being invested in a character will keep your inspiration at an all time high even when you’re having a rough time. Sometimes all it takes is just an extra comment from someone else or an occurrence or some kind of image to put you right back on track. For me, seeing any kind of lovely stonework or abandoned, run down places really sets my inspiration for him in motion.

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice? YES / NO ( I would hope so! )

Do you frequently write headcanons? YES / NO ( I’m always thinking of new ones! )

Do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO ( It’s been awhile, though... )

Do you think a lot about your muse during the day? YES!! / NO

Are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO

Are you confident in your writing? YES / NO ( Generally speaking, I try to be! )

Are you a sensitive person? YES / NO

Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal?

Actual criticism, yes. I don’t mind it. At the same time, however, I’m really just here to have a good time ─ as is everybody else. Growing and developing my writing is always a bonus when I’ve the experience here in an environment I’m comfortable with, but critique isn’t exactly something I go hunting for. I’m here to write the characters I love and adore and honestly, sometimes, it’s better to have the freedom to do things as you wish without the worry of receiving it, no matter how well-intended it may be. It’s all chill times and good vibes doing what we enjoy most.

Do you like questions, which help you explore your character?

Absolutely! I love randomly being sent things that keep me thinking with any character. I’m always looking for little intricacies and tidbits to really bring them to life. Sometimes it takes a bit for me to think of something appropriate but I always appreciate the brain candy when it comes to new details! It goes without saying that I’ll happily accept anything that gives reason to my constant, aimless musings related to Pica.

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why?

Yes and no? I always love hearing other ideas on why someone else’s headcanons differ from my own. For all I know it might be enough to change my mind or, at the very least, give me a different perspective on something I’ve never thought about before. I’m always curious about stuff when it relates to a character I love. As long as they’re not rude about it and we’ve talked to the point it’s not out of the blue, it’s okay. On the other hand, it doesn’t really matter if someone disagrees. We all have our own headcanons and it’s very easy to be respectful about them. Despite what has already been said, there’s a high chance I’m going to keep to my own headcanons as they are regardless, because I put a lot of thought and heart into them. Someone disagreeing with them at face value isn’t going to make me up and throw all that work in the trash just like that.

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it?

That’s okay. There are plenty of different ways to interpret a character. People are allowed to like and dislike whatever portrayal they so choose, so long as they’re not bashing anyone outright. I would much prefer that be something that’s kept to oneself, however. It’s very easy to simply ignore something you don’t agree with, and it’s just as easy to be kind about things when expressing your own thoughts in comparison with theirs. Plus, there’s always making your own blog and writing whoever however you please! Someone out there is bound to enjoy whatever portrayal you prefer. ♥

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it?

Not personal, certainly, unless it was somehow directed at me personally. It’s very understandable. There’s a lot of potential present for actual progressing development, but on the surface Pica is very dislike-able. It’s very clear his purpose was to act as a stepping stone for another major character’s development and there wasn’t much left beyond that. Of course it’s always a sad thing being hopelessly attached to a character like that but as an avid lover of what are often viewed as very minor, niche characters, it’s something I’m very much used to. Perhaps not intense hate in every case, per se, but underappreciated. It just so happens that Pica is... not exactly a good person, putting it kindly. But that’s just another reason I love him so much as a character.

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors?

Sure! Though chances are I’ve probably already noticed at that point and have been embarrassed about it/fixed it. I’ve probably made many over the years and also not realized it. Most of the time it’s something minor anyway, and a lot of people just naturally read it as it’s supposed to be read. So there’s no trouble!

Do you think you are easy going as a mun?

I’d certainly like to think so! I tend to be very patient and accommodating. I wholeheartedly stand beside the idea that RPing is meant to be fun and enjoyable and not something that causes more stress. People should take their time with things and set their own pace. Being comfortable is part of what makes RP the wonderful hobby that it is. Really that applies to any hobby, but there are many little things that can turn someone away from doing something they love at any given time. There’s nothing that would hurt me more than unintentionally making something someone enjoys a chore for them. I try my best to make sure everyone knows that I’m really just a chill little bun having a good time doting on characters I love. Pica might not be cordial, but I certainly try to be!

That’s about it, congrats for filling out!

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

tagged by. @tenyxshx ─ thank you flamingo nerd ♥ ilu

#♠ // * etc ( pica. )#❥ // * passing bottles off the walls ( games. )#❥ // * ever running on stories of the sea ( long post. )#❥ // * the rabbit stowaway ( ooc. )#|| you knew I'd pick pica you heathen!#as if I'd ever NOT pick him for something like this.#''this won't be that long'' I say as it takes me an entire day to get to it.#sometimes you just get going and then you can't stop.#also this was a nice change of pace! it was fun!#clearly since I went nuts filling it out dskdkdskdks ||

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rebelians · 6 years

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In my previous post about Presentation, and positive Representation, I listed many of the first times I saw Myself. Because of shows like The Cosby Show and A different World, we now have so much Black Love and Excellence seen on TV today. I am proud to be a youth in a society where my people are renaming what is is to be Black, the ivtersectionalities that exist in our community. I am proud to see a vast color spectrum, a variety of Continental Africans, Western African Americans, Caribbean, and West Indians. The fact that I can choose which beautiful melanin drenched scripted magic that enforces our Glo. It is trailblazers like Donald Glover, Issa Rae, Ava Duvernay, and Mara Brock Akil, that continue to push us forward and make it alright for us to Shine. This list encompasses my favorite shows that promote healthy living healthy black plight and success in the black community. The shows don’t glamorize or dehumanize black people to un-attainable level but rather show the real in the black community, giving real models not role models. I’m blessed to have such positive and real representations in my life that are relatable while being a guide and versions of what life can be in both negative and positive reinforcements. The first of the many beautiful productions is Queen Sugar.

“Queen Sugar is a visually stunning production, making the most of the waterlogged bayous and swampy farmland of rural Louisiana.”(Saraiya) This colorful description of how Queen Sugar’s production is a visually pleasing aesthetic that takes the mud and swamp and makes it powerful and poetic. Queen Sugar is epic with its glossed frames and natural back drops. Using the actual land to bounce of the melodic skin tones of its leading stars Rutina Wesley, Dawn-Lyen Gardner, Kofi Siriboe playing the conflicted Bordelon siblings. The rough lives of community organizer, wife coping with adultery and separation, and a convict turned business man makes for many interesting tales. This contemporary drama, created by Ava Duvernay (my shero) with writing credits from Anthony Sparks, and on Oprah Winfrey’s network, stands in the sun and speak Confidence. I am Here is the theme for almost all of the positive shows on this list. The impactful and strategy dedicated filming is important to note. From the director of photography Ava Berkofsk of Insecure, to executive producer Ava Duvernay of Queen Sugar new tactics of shaping black faces has become major in creating these needed figures. “The sunlight filters through the clouds and over the shoulders of the Bordelon family with celluloid fluidity, rendering everything within the frame weirdly beautiful”(Saraiya). The importance of Queen Sugar is the humanizing of the south and the softening of our stereotype’s of it. The south is gorgeous, hot, sweaty, has good food, ghetto/country people, very masculine, behind in the times, and all about cooking, farming, and family. These are many stereotypes and fantasies of what the Black South life looks like. Queen Sugar stands up to the bar in order to show some discourse in the dehumanization of people with African ancestry. Although Aunt Vi can throw down and prepare food for her family she has aspirations for her talents. Being an ex-con doesn’t make Rah an unjust person it doesn’t take away from his heart. He is the personification of Tough Times not Lasting but Tough People lasting. While Nova likes to dance and enjoy the herb of the earth she also stands for a cause that isn’t just herself, she stands for her people. To be honest we all found Charlie extremely strong, to leave Davis, along with others I thought she was a role model of how to act with strength in abundance. But that over examination of black women has been in our movies, shows, and literature. Charlie’s character defies this. Having moments of breaking down, and being vulnerable is okay, and even better we will go on. I thank them for the tearing down and rebuilding of the black face. Thankful for the representation.

“…Because the lens so actively humanizes the Bordelons even as others in the narrative would diminish them.”

If we don’t tell our stories and show our face who will?

Continuing to look at how production and media representation is changing, the next show that is standing in truth and reality is Insecure. The white director of photography on Insecure, Ava Berkofsk, wants every scene to be aesthetically pleasing, like a photograph or painting. She says “When I was in film school, no one ever talked about lighting non-white people. There are all these general rules about lighting people of colour, like throw green light or amber light at them. It’s weird.”(Eweniyi)

The reason for this teaching is because the world we live in and the society we stay in have said white people are the worthy, they are going to be the ones on tv shows and movies so we need to not worry about how to light black skin because there will be no black skin in our all white cast. It is important that we are treated and seen as the prepossessing, light defying kings and queens that we are. Insecure captures that. With its writing on real issues that affect young black adults navigating who they are in their communities how to impact their communities and societies for the better, how women are viewed especially black women, and who is the narrator of our experience. The show brings to the table discussion of sexuality and how women are hindered by what they pursue, and how double standards afflict the black community by destroying itself from the inside out. It touches on losing our selves on the journey of life and how we can find our identity once again. There is talk about this show alone saving the “Black Sitcom,” and I believe in it. The ideals of teaching lessons thru humor and good dialogue are what our 90s Black sitcom was built on. The resurgence of genuine music and reality balancing each other out is giving us Soulful renditions of our movies and childhood. We are yet again given a model who exemplifies what is it like to be flawed and living in it day by day. Issa has repeated over and over that she didn’t want to create a show about “the struggle of being black,” but rather, one about “regular black people living life.” Which is a poetic way of giving different perspectives into how we live and continue to rise higher. I am thankful for this representation, and I am thankful to Issa Rae, Melina Matsoukas, Yvonne Orji, Amanda Seales, Natasa Rothwell, and Ava Berkofsk, I see you.

Honorable Mention: On January 10, 2018 at 8:30 on Freeform formally known as ABC family, Grown-ish the clever spin-off of Black-ish will premiere. The parallel of Cosby Show and A Different World, Brownish is exactly what college students like me are looking for. Similar to Denise’s story on The Cosby Show, Zoe goes to a fictional school, away from home leaving behind her younger siblings. Gratitude for this much needed series is more than overdue. For young-adults like me who love A Different World and aspire to be like the characters, having our own A Different World will be powerful. We Thank You Kenya Barris.

Dear White People, even with the freaking title we stepping on necks. Like honestly, this show was one of the best things to come out of this terrible year. With the alternative perspectives and new faces the meaning of what it is to be unapologetically black push through. The show is close to my own experience now, besides the bomb ass love life Sam has, with the pulling of many black groups, the division we face at PWI’s both from white people, disconnect with authority, and the hard journey of one of our most thought of attributes. Being black isn’t saying Dear White People you all are racist, insensitive, horrible, malicious people, but the show focuses on the pointing out of differences not ignoring them but the steps to readjust and fix the oppression that continues on our community. From intersectionalities and finding oneself through characters like Lionel, to the common feeling of trying to make black parents proud despite your goals in Troy, the outright nobility and courage in Reggie, the fear of failing and heavy value on americanization in Coco, and the restlessness and eager spirit of liberation and logic of Sam. Dear White People excels. I’m thankful for the experience of a black community at a White Institution. For me going to Towson is similar to DWP description of Winchester College. Issues like having more Black organizations than you can recall, and all being different in their own right, to slightly being attracted to a white boy, and feeling this betrays your Pro-Black personality, to the dynamic of having all white classmates who aren’t remotely close to you and all under the direction of a White Male teacher. So I thank Justin Simien for your bravery and transparent authenticity.

Another Honorable Mention: Survivors Remorse gives us a glimpse into why many of our pro athletes go broke, get caught up, or loose the bag all together. This show has taken many turns but I am glad to say I still love it- Even tho they killed off my Unc Julius. Still salty on that one.

Everyone’s favorite show to hate and love, Power always ignites a fire in black people to see a Boss like Ghost battle with keeping his footing in his place with success. From Black mothers being mad because Ghost starts falling in love with a white girl (who isn’t even really white, but because she isn’t black- she’s white), and siding with Tasha. To Tommy being a completely impulsive and un-resistable tough guy, who men love to watch. To Ghost making us fall for his charisma, fear his ambition, and be weary of his choices. Only one word sums the feeling of this show- Power.

From Mahershala Ali’s unforgettable, incomparable, and unbelievable performance as Cotton-mouth in only seven episodes, to Mike Colter’s irresistible stone face, Luke Cage makes us proud to be one of the newest Black Supper Hero series.

Honorable Mention: The Get Down and The Life of Jessica James. The series takes place in the Bronx during the 70s, and is all about the discovery of self through the arts, essentially music.

The parallels of different in the black community which usually end up being represented as weird. The fashionable love the 5 Kings have for each other. The rejection aesthetic that Jessica toys with. The love for the moments they all encompass. I’m thankful for both of these representations. I was initially so sad, and heated that Netflix pulled this all POC/black show, due to ‘funding,’ because I felt this was about race. But the way we can look at this is in the aspect of shows like Freaks and Geeks who only had one season and stand as Iconic, so Will the Get Down. Also sidebar Jessica James should be a series, she is literally a style, and self icon. I appreciate the representation.

This show made me wish the people who left my life wellness, had me write a new post-it every minute I felt ANYTHING, and made me see a glimpse of what my life could maybe consist of. Being Mary Jane. A show that doesn’t get enough attention or notoriety, but doesn’t need it. It pulls its weight in dialogue and interest in the community and isn’t affected by its lack of awards nor nominations. Of course as a day one fan of the show since the movie/pilot, I wish that one year my girl Gabriel Union would’ve swept best actress, or we would’ve won best Drama, but so is life. Being Mary Jane does a purposeful job and is deliberate. Of-course it has its times where we do not agree with the subject matter or find it demeaning, but this is seldom. The show gives us enough to be proud of and even more to relate to as growing black women in our careers. It gives light and passion on who we are and can be. I am thankful for this representation of a successful women who truly doesn’t have it all together, a real model. I praise you Mara Brock Akil and Gabriel Union.

Lastly and principally on the list is Golden Globe and Emmy winner, Atlanta. A dream winner who deserved all the accolades we wished them. This epic triggered so many emotions and did so in only one season. Remarkable is the only word to describe the progress. Many counted the rapper Childish Gambino out, thinking how can a rapper know anything of how to make a realistic and interesting show. But the realness Donald Glover brings to the screen is unbearable. From the light and cinematography to the use of trap music, rap, and social issues that strictly matter to the exploration of self, Atalanta is a crazy representation for real life. I praise Donald and Stephen Glover, Lakeith, Zazie, and Brian.

As I said in the first part of this two series epic, these beautiful people continue to promote positive energy for us as adolescence and young adults. It is major to my perspective especially, going to a PWI, that I have loved forced on me in different ways. The shows and short film up top have done just that. As the great hood scholar Tupac Amaru Shakur said “Marvin Gaye use to sing to me, He had me feeling like BLACK was the thing to be…” These souls are speaking to me and re-enforcing in me that Black indeed is the thing to be. We are More than Enough, Worthy, Beautiful, Important, and Needed, we continue to Shine, and to be amongst this ensemble of historic past and future makes me intensively proud each day. Peace x

Positive Representation: How We continue to Shine In my previous post about Presentation, and positive Representation, I listed many of the first times I saw Myself.

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arichardsonbbbwc-blog · 7 years

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Research notes from the beginning of the project

Feminism, Domesticity and Popular Culture, Gilles and Hollows.

“Whites have used blacks as a screen upon which to project a montage of the primitive for at least three hundred years.”

(The vulgar) “Contemplation would give way to noise. Aristocractic taste had been trained to transcend the narrow limits of time, place, and self and to view the world from the stillness of a larger perspective. Democracy is sunk in the here and now of pantheism, and the one subject available for its art is the individual, because ‘each citizen of a democracy generally spends his time considering the interests of a very insignificant person, namely himself’. The democratic artist cannot with a straight face write about gods, myths, or traditions. These are stuff of refined, transcendent culture, and the democrat who makes these his themes must end in pretension. The poet who is true to his democratic roots must be a vulgarian… He will be loud and common… He will depict passions and ideas rather than men and deeds… Noisy, primitive, and self-centred, the democratic ideal generates a vulgar pantheism. In the American South, this pantheism moves in an orbit with Romanticism and black primitivism. All these elements fuse in rock, the music of vulgar American democracy.”

“The source of rock is the primitive as interpretated by vulgar, democratic Romanticism, and the white man’s motive for adopting the primitive is his desire to get moved, to get real, real gone for a change.”

“Rock’s credo of feeling leaves it open to attack as a mindless species of musical barbarism. The attack has been the more persuasive because a movement holding instinct and feeling as its central values appears confused and inarticulate and therefore unable, unwilling, or uninterested in defending itself on the battleground of rational debate selected by its opponents. But in rock, as in the pantheism from which it springs, confusion and inarticulations are virtues substained by a network of Romantic arguments about self, world and change.”

“Pantheism need not share Whitman’s unyielding cheerfulness, but its never tragic… Tragedy demands a seemingly immensurable chasm between us and some immense power. When we cannot span it, we tumble into the intervening abyss of suffering. There is no gap in pantheism. Our suffering is whole, organic, and our own. Suffering and death are merely projections of our own self-ignorance. They are finally eradicated by blasts of self-sustaining energy. Death, tears, and defeat are the stuff of many rock lyrics, but always enveloped in an extravagance of words and music that is in the end comic… Rock has no room for the spiritual catharsis of tragedy, substituting for it the physical catharsis of the dance floor”

Because it cannot support tragedy it also cannot support heroic depictions

“Rock’s is the aesthetic of Romanticism vulgarized… The artistic virtues of rock and Romanticism are originality, primal order, energy, honesty, and integrity. The bad critics of the zombie world consistently misread these as incoherence, lack of discipline, immorality, madness, and confusion.”

Romanticism’s aesthetic is elitist because only few can recognise the artistic quality.

Genelle standing passively to metal because she has not been instructed to mosh

Constructed romanticism, me representing all the bad critical responses to romanticism.

“I suggest that we ‘unsettle’ feminity by pushing it over the postfeminist edge and I put forward the term postfeminity to highlight the challenges and paradoxes of a postfeminist feminity/domesticity that can no longer be conceptualised along a sharp split between feminism and housewifery, agency and victimization, work and family life. This is to acknowledge that femininity can be changeable and can operate in a variety of ways, acquiring a range of different meanings that have come to the fore in our postfeminist present. Post-ing femininity thus involves a certain amount of re-thinking, not a reversal of well-established dualisms, but a process of resignification that threatens to reinscribe what it also transposes.”

“Reality television uses relationships to illicit raw and spontaneous outbursts of emotion, what Laura Grindstaff (2002) refers to in relation to the talk show as the money shot… The currency placed on the unscripted emotion in ‘reality’ television can be related to the trend towards the commercialisation of feeling.”

FREUD’S NOTIONS OF THE HYSTERICAL WOMAN/

“Oprah Winfrey, calls moral entrepreneurship: making money through the sensationalising and exploiting emotional expression.”

“The transmutations of emotional life- the move from the private realm to the public realm, the trend towards standardisation and commercialisation of emotive offerings are being recycled back into individual private lives; emotional life now appears under new management… opens the family home to a larger world of feeling rules.”

In preparation for the slave market (“African women and men aboard he slave ships were only the intial stages of an indoctrination process… into a slave, so that (they) would be marketable as a ‘docile’ slave in American colonies.”

Camera positioned as casting call- pornography

“As American white men idealised white womanhood, they sexually assaulted and brutalised black women.”

“As white colonisers adopted a self-righteous sexual morality for themselves, they even more eagerly labelled black people sexual heathens. Since women was designated as the originator of sexual sin, black women were naturally seen as the embodiment of female evil and sexual lust.”

"younger artists no longer feel responsible for a black- ness that is itself increasingly hypervisible in the global market of multicultural commodity fetishism.

How to rewrite/refilm history when the very model of history is so much a product of the history the group wished to refilm/rewrite?

There’s a problem with placing a person in a situation where they have to act in a musical culture that is not their own

“The aversion to fiction, is what keeps me interested in the non-fictive, it’s what keeps me interested in questions of the historical, because they act as a powerful counterbalance ….to amnesia.” (Tate, 2015)

Genelle in her bedroom smashing things with a vinyl recorder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJPMtsGgoQM

this video made me want to be more collaborative in my approach and also do an interview with me and Genelle.

mlle bourgeoise noire lorraine o grady

“Minaj’s performances do not have the anti capitalist logic that most performance art has, by on the contrary she is situated in and expertly marketed as a highly consumerable product that imbues many historical and cultural narratives that she appropriates. Capital was always a necessary component (if not foundational principle) of black performance art… especially when its practioners were so often fungible commodities themselves.” (page 206)

“The late Stuart Hall, writing in 1992, characterised black popular cultures in exactly this way. If, as Hall argues, there are no pure forms in black popular cultures (but instead only hybridised ones), black popular cultures are also highly charged, mixed, and clashing spaces where cultural identities are imagined, stylised, theatricalised, and rendered ‘mythic’.”

…popular culture is highly mythic…”

“If fantasy itself is a part of identity formation, as Anne Anlin Cheng argues, then Minaj’s often-hyperbloic performances can be understood as an aggressive and imaginative form of self making… this has often taken form of her transubstantiation into mythic-like selves- a process I have been terming avatar production” (page 207)

CRITICISM- is Minaj exacerbating the angry black woman trope?

“Forsaking authenticity, respectability, and even reality, Minaj and her mouthy avatars instead embrace (even boast about) their pointed failure to properly perform any of these attributes, suturing hip-hop’s typically masculine braggadocio to frenetic, if oddly juvenile, paeans to a plastic artificiality.” (Page 208-209)

‘She wields grotesque aesthetics as a skilful strategy of self-estrangement. In doing so, while Minaj is in accord with the polygot meanings the grotesque suggests- its disruption of order, challenge to notions of the normal, and strange ability to evoke both fear and desire from audiences.” (Page 213-214)

OPTICAL DOUBLE TAKE

“The character’s operatic misbehaving is a rupture that punctures the tautly scripted understandings of proper behaviour, particularly for black women.” (page 217)

white background white sheet- armless

“Studies of heavy metal invariably link the preference for heavy metal among adolescents and people in their early twenties with issues such as low socio-economic position (Straw 1983), unsettled family life (Arnett 1991, 1996) and postindustrial risk and anomie (Locher 1998). Moreover, it is argued, the factors influencing a preference for heavy metal make for a ready associations on the part of disempowerd and disaffected young people with what Harrell (1994) terms the poetics of destruction in heavy metal lyrics, the latter frequently focuses on issues such as death, mutilation (Grooss 1990; Harrell 1994), physical violence and misogyny (Walser 1993; Sloat 1998).”

“Although appearing on the surface to be an individual act of daring or exhibitionism, stagediving relies both upon the willingness of the group performing to allow members of the audience up onto the stage and coordination between relies both upon the willingness of the group performing between stagediver and crowd… Despite the risks they are always caught.”

“… Cock rock performers are aggressive, dominating and boastful, and they constantly seek to remind the audience of their prowess, their control. Their stance is obvious in live shows; male bodies on display, plunging shirts and tight trousers, a visual emphasis on chest hair and gentials.”

“… the way that rock music in general, and death metal in particular, places the group, the fan and the ideology in opposition to the entrenched values of society- the ‘we’ vs ‘they’ mentality… serves to elevate the metalhead to a position of moral superiority.”

The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole's novel.

Among the aspects of the romantic movement in England may be listed: sensibility; primitivism; love of nature; sympathetic interest in the past, especially the medieval; mysticism; individualism; romanticism criticism; and a reaction against whatever characterized neoclassicism . . . The term designates a literary and philosophical theory that tends to see the individual at the center of all life, and it places the individual, therefore, at the center of art, making literature valuable as an expression of unique feelings and particular attitudes (the expressive theory of criticism) and valuing its fidelity in portraying experiences, however fragmentary and incomplete, more than it values adherence to completeness, unity, or the demands of genre. Although romanticism tends at times to regard nature as alien, it more often sees in nature a revelation of Truth, the "living garment of God," and a more suitable subject for art than those aspects of the world sullied by artifice. Romanticism seeks to find the Absolute, the Ideal, by transcending the actual, whereas realism finds its values in the actual and naturalism in the scientific laws the undergird the actual. (Harmon, 6th. Edition).

Gothic horror functions as an extension of the Romantic notion of literary pleasure, that literature should inspire deeply felt emotional responses. Gothic horror sought to instill a pleasing sort of terror and thrill from its emphasis on taboo subjects, such as satanism and matters of the occult, that both fascinated and repelled polite English society. The Romantic, Byronic hero equates to the brooding gothic villain in that both figures are tortured souls placed at the center of action.

William Wordsworth, the father of British Romanticism, gave us. He said that poetry is the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility"

One of the most complex developments during this period is the transformation of religion into a subject for artistic treatment far removed from traditional religious art. The Enlightenment had weakened, but hardly uprooted, established religion in Europe. As time passed, sophisticated writers and artists were less and less likely to be conventionally pious; but during the Romantic era many of them were drawn to religious imagery in the same way they were drawn to Arthurian or other ancient traditions in which they no longer believed. Religion was estheticized, and writers felt free to draw on Biblical themes with the same freedom as their predecessors had drawn on classical mythology, and with as little reverence.

Fake emotion versus real emotion

Being true to the romantic spirit by being true to yourself, a romantic reaction to romanticism.

Neoclassical works (paintings and sculptures) were serious, unemotional, and sternly heroic.

INSPIRATION

Mikhail and Sonia Boyce

John Akomfrah

Simone Leigh’s Breakdown

Yinka Shonibare Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz

Lis Rhodes Whose History

Ana Menedieta

Centre Jenny

Nicki Minaj

PLAN

SCENES Genelle with dripping green paint over her body, disappearing into the background

Falling into the stage dive

Ana Menedieta

Silence

Action Language Genelle at the desk looking at pictures of water and pours from out the screen

Slowly getting faster to ridiculous levels- never gonna give you up

Depictions of the primitive in romantic art

Black feminism

She takes the camera from me and films me

Selfie

Find her at home listening to her music Her snapchat In a gallery next to romantic artwork- by placing her next to the paintings, she becomes part of the history in modes of representation

Filming her eyes with my camera on her camera phone Metal sounds slowed down Flashes of light to light up the dark room

Chantel Ackerman- Jeanne Dielman- 23 quai du commerce

Sally Potter’s Thriller

Found footage

Film camera

Record metal sounds, growling

Drawings to overlay, Ed Pool

Lighting from only phone screens

Narcissism- compensation for lack of phallus, Freud, Otherness

Film her getting ready

Projection on the wall

Create vintage borders with subtitles for lyrics- bad music video

Good music video of Genelle singing

Rnb moves to metal, metal moves to rnb (dance) NO

‘I want you to do this” ‘why’ Re-creating an authentic scene- deconstruction of a music video, behind the scenes

Emotional labour

Poses= femininity/performance

Romanticism of death

Genelle in artificial nature- technology Psychology of listening to different kinds of music

Past ‘feminine’, present not ‘feminine’

Genelle holding things walking down a tunnel The camera lowers and gives her respect for doing work Project in bedroom

Black women ‘s portrayal in media

A narrative in a narrative, a deconstructed music scene

Black panther

Gang violence

Colonislism, imperialism

Genelle going crazy and smashing domestic items (bad)

Totalitatarism

Active/Passive

Breaking the fourth wall Grace Kelly

Metal music- death associations

Devil horn sign

The Emporium- 88 London Road

Marwoods- coffee shop

The Marlobrough pub.

Textured walls- bricks

Green scene- coffee shops

Costa/Starbucks décor

Semotics of coffee shops

Korakrit Arunondchai- deconstruction of large social narratives music videos, rnb

Camera always circling round, various voiceovers- Trinh T Minh Ha- Reasssemblage, writer. The frame by frame.

Jump cut, silence vs noise

Genelle reads out the iron maiden songs slowly

Stages of grief

First scene- Genelle in normal clothes- comes into the studio, seeming happy.

Second scene- Genelle putting on makeup clothes and changing- eye from phone

Second scene- reading out the lyrics for Iron Maiden (CLOSE UP )Genelle criticises the song because it’s about native American Indians not black people- I respond ignorantly

Third scene- putting on fake tears (CLOSE UP) Fourth scene- anger- moshing Fifth scene- PTSD- shaking Sixth scene- Metal sounds Two cameras- non objective, objective

Seventh scene- Long shot of her reading out the lyrics slowly

Eighth scene- Moshing

Ninth scene- Lunch break- her being quiet looking at her phone.

Last scene- she walks out, (LONG SHOT)

Tenth scene- playing dead (MID SHOT)

Eleveth scene- running to the hills

Twelth scene- reading out the lyrics (LONG SHOT) native criticism, well you’re all minorities

Stomping foot

Criticises the violence of the song and imagery

Green screen could have paintings from the romanticism era

Why metal and what song-

The romanticism of death and how we come to use it to come to terms with the horror of death and contemplating our own mortality and expressing that contemplation helps alleviate the anxiety around it. and hyper masculine performance – what the director intends to portray as satricial

The way that metal talks about important horrific issues such as war as an outlet for expression.

Talks about death with Genelle- make up a narrative about a racial issue.

Don’t use the green screen to project at all. Have the metal songs on laptop in the background off set.

Have Genelle putting on makeup offset

The atrocities of world war- The (emotional?) reactions against/by war

LOCATIONS Church/Graveyard

Somewhere where it is priviledge white male dominated

Coffeeshop

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creativemorningsbuffalo · 7 years

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BOOK LIST: TABOO

“She started thinking about all the euphemisms for death, all the anxious taboos that had always fascinated her. It was too bad you could never have an intelligent discussion on the subject. People were either too young or too old, or else they didn't have time.”

― Tove Jansson, The Summer Book

“Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.”

― John Steinbeck

I have always found it interesting to consider not just the topics we choose to avoid speaking about, but why it came to be that way. The word Taboo in itself draws odd glances when you say it out loud. I know this from personal experience since I wrote this in a coffee shop. The idea that merely speaking about something, that uttering into existence the concept is so heinous that it must be avoided, gives such a power to language and communication. Oddly, the very act of trying to suppress an idea inherently gives it weight. The irony there is inescapable and rather pleasing. This month we’re discussing the topic of Taboo and approaching it from many angles. Why does something get to be perceived that way? What can correct those views? Can reclaiming a Taboo be an act of resistance? We’ll find out in the books below.

7 Books Directly, Contextually, or Tangentially about Taboo Giovanni’s Room — James Baldwin

In America we have this weird way of acting like the smallest sliver of progress equates to a complete negation of the way things were before. I am twenty-nine years old and grew up through the early two-thousands in a sea of toxic-masculinity and homophobia. Both of these issues still exist and run rampant. When we hate things blindly it is often because we are unfamiliar with them, or only know of them through caricature representations. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin presents a narrative with complex representations of homosexuality and bi-sexuality. These were presented to a reading public in 1956 with empathy and artistry, and the novel is credited with creating broader public discourse on the topics. Suppression can cause misunderstanding, but shining the light on a taboo can begin the discussion of why we’ve labeled it that way.

Hate: A Romance: A Novel — Tristan Garcia

“Despite its cultured Gallic sensibilities, “Hate,” as translated by Marion Duvert and Lorin Stein, is surprisingly taut and readable. Garcia, a trained philosopher, has managed to write — in fewer than 300 pages, no less — the kind of social novel his American counterparts too often avoid in favor of solipsistic musings.

He certainly doesn’t write what he knows: born in 1981, Garcia was a toddler when the Marais became the epicenter of gay life in Paris. But through his narrator, the journalist Elizabeth Lavallois, he credibly describes (at least to this outsider) that world as AIDS encroaches.” – New York Times Book Review

Demonizing groups of individuals is one of the most tried and true methods to oppress them and keep them outside what is accepted as mainstream. When the AIDS epidemic shook the world it was given connotations, as if it were reserved for the LBGTQ community. Because of this, people overlooked HIV and AIDS as a human problem—as if it were not theirs—and made it a taboo. Garcia’s novel explores Paris in 1981 and takes us into a world that people of the time preferred to not speak about.

Harry Potter Series — J.K. Rowling

There are many reasons to include the Harry Potter series on this list. Aside from being banned because of offense taken by the Catholic Church for a representation of sorcery that they find heretic, we can also find multiple examples of Taboo in the text. There are scary parallels between mud-bloods, mixed magical and non-magical blood, Muggles, non-magical people who are viewed by certain entities in the series as “less than” and our own society. The most obvious example of taboo, which relates back to our observation on the power of words—and more specifically, names—comes in the suppression of the use of Voldemort’s name. As observed in the book, doing so gives him power. By being unable to face the monster, it retains its mythical status. Harry Potter is chock full of taboo and more often than not shows, the more we understand each other, the better off we are.

American Blasphemies — Megan Kemple

American Blasphemies is an upcoming chapbook from poet Megan Kemple. The book approaches topics of military family life, domestic and sexual violence, and the stains on the backside of the American flag. In the authors own words:

“It’s taboo for me for a couple of reasons. First of all, in a military community, being anything less than violently republican is tantamount to treason. The cover alone, before they read a single word, will be enough for most people I’ve grown up with to never speak to me again. There’s a code of silence, you don’t talk about the violence at home or abroad. Keeping family secrets is treated like a matter of national security. So talking about anything at all to do with the military in a real way is automatically taboo. Sexual violence is also something you’re not supposed to talk about. It makes people uncomfortable, it changes the way they see you, and if you talk about it too much people decide you’re just looking for attention. It puts people off to talk about rape and consensual sex in the same book, because it ruins the idea of “the good victim”, which is something that doesn’t exist. So if I had to boil it down, it’s taboo because I’m basically the Edward Snowden of military family life and my mistakes in life never made me apologetic.”

A Thousand Splendid Suns — Khaled Hosseini “Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them—in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul—they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation.” – Goodreads.com As Americans we avoided talking too much about the effects our countries actions have worldwide. It is difficult to fathom the impact of a drone strike, of destabilization, of rubble in the street, and how that can possibly fit into the outline that is a human life. We are removed from it. We are detached. Representations of it in a true sense, as in not American Sniper where faceless “bad guys” fall to a patriotic propaganda character, barely exist. If we are shown the horror, it’s from the perspective of the person on our side. A Thousand Splendid Suns breaks the silence barrier. If empathy comes from understanding, than understanding starts with talking about it. Frankenstein — Mary Shelley

There is a mystique among writers when it comes to Frankenstein and the book’s creation during a stormy summer in England. A workshop of writers sat down, and due to the weather, decide to write some horror stories. The result is the classic tale of man becoming God, what that entails, and the questions of science—how far our ability should outpace our understanding. The taboo here is apparent in many places. From Dr. Frankenstein’s obsession and the cadaver parts, to the assumption that man and God could possibly inhabit the same role, Shelley calls into question many topics that—especially at the time—were socially and religiously unacceptable.

Lord of the Flies — William Golding

In high school a teacher gave an assignment to write a parody of Lord of the Flies. For whatever reason I completely misunderstood that parody’s were supposed to be funny and instead wrote an allusion changing out the kids for soldiers and the concept in the book that intrigued me so much in the first place, the invisible ring around each of the boys, for the perimeter the soldiers must maintain. Early in the book, soon after they find themselves stranded on the island with no adults, an older child is throwing rocks in the direction of a younger one. It is observed that the only reason he is not directly striking the younger child is because he is afraid that someone will yell at him, suggesting that at our base, the only things really protecting us from each other is the fear of reprisal. We go to great lengths in our contemporary lives to convince ourselves that we are far removed from our most base instincts. To have to confront this may not be the case is cause for uncomfortable conversation at best, at worst it causes us to begin exploring a reality that exists right below our surface. One we’d prefer not to talk about.

Author: Benjamin Brindise

Benjamin Brindise is a poet, Teaching Artist at the Just Buffalo Writing Center, and curator of the CreativeMornings/Buffalo book list. He is a Buffalo-based writer, facilitating youth poetry workshops across the city, and in his spare time spits late 90’s and early 00’s hip hop lyrics with his band, Surviving Friday.

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