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nautical-language · 1 year

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The way Do Revenge is about people with marginalized identities playing by the rules of a system that hurts ALL OF US, and how the energy we waste doing that could be focused on dismantling the oppressive system instead of stepping on each other to get ahead in it

Drea attacking Eleanor’s queerness to distract from her own poverty

The way Tara lets Max’s infidelity slide because of the status boost she gets from the relationship AND because she can’t afford to be the Angry Black Woman (and honestly, the way race, gender AND classism play into Tara’s decision to align herself with Max their senior year)

The part where Drea LITERALLY says to Eleanor: “Going after a brown kid on scholarship? Not a good look.” But Eleanor doesn’t care because she KNOWS that this is Drea’s weakness and she wants to exploit it

And how, in the end, it’s ONLY when they stop the infighting, stop trying to use each other and truly come together that they manage to take Max down

The TRANSECTIONALISM is STUNNING

#UGH #THIS MOVIE #me speaks #do revenge #at the same time the movie acknowledges that until we can rely on each other #we have to keep playing by the rules of the fucked up game #GOD

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beforeward · 5 years

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RaaaaaaaaNT

I think that I may be driving my friends up the wall a tad right now, with all of these thoughts ruminating in my head, and all the time they want to echo and transpire. Idle time and good conversations set loose a slew of ideas and hypothesis, philosophical yammering, and I think it might be best to just slam them against a keyboard before I get sick of my own voice and half-formed rhetorical questions. We’ve spent some good days here, out of service, doing most thinks in the buff including practising ninja stars, cooking, and stretching, and all the while, having conversations that at once fill me up, and offer no out. I’m going try for an ‘out’ here.

We open the leather flap covering the mind and pull out string after string of topics, each bound together with transectionality, paradox, and common denominators. Topics surrounding humanism and feminism (one in the same, really); magik; psychology and sociology (though never in such textbook terminology); matters concerning different indigenous groups and the matrix of topics around these issues; sex; astrology; childhood and the strangeness of experiences; politics; poetry; and pretty much anything else we can think of. We usually do this in various stages of undress, sitting around the wood stove, which seems a perfect setting in which to try to untangle it all.

We talk of ambition and its dual nature. We present the nature of the negative toll of which we see around us; the defeating feeling of “not-enoughness” is prevalent in our generation and society (speaking from a white, middle-class perspective). Certainly there are links here to dominant Western society; definitions and parameters of success, value, and progress; capitalism; and many forms of oppression.

We toss the strand around, trying to differentiate between ambition in a competitive or self-gratifying sense, and personal goals, which we all agree are healthy, as long as one isn’t made to feel like shit for not accomplishing them. The last part is key. What is the harm in having dreams, as long as we can take failure with a grain of salt? But generally, in this society hell-bent on perfection, we don’t. We don’t know how to make mistakes. When dreams become standardized, and thus, expectations imposed on us as children, we’re fucked right from the start.

Now, there is a real problem with living simply and retreating from it all, living self-sufficiently and in a way that is symbiotic and respectful of the land. The privilege of turning our backs on the ugliness comes at a price paid by many.

In the short story, “Those Who Walk Away From Omelas,” the faceless characters who walk away from the town Omelas, which is a regular paradise, do so because they see the circumstance that breeds such unabated joy, and cannot bear to live there anymore. They cannot enjoy the fruits of sacrifice after seeing the squalor and inhumane conditions of a child locked in an unfinished basement, with no relation to speak of, and to whom no one has even even spoken.

Not to victimize oppressed and marginalized folks here by implying that they are one-dimensional and devoid of joy, but there is a definite allusion of a sacrifice made by society of the few for the many. The spirits of those who walk away from a system that institutionalizes such brutality are undoubtedly represented by those who choose to make good in this world, or at least, reduce the hurt. But again, is it enough to walk away in silent protest? Conditions borne of this system, one that rides the steady crescendo of disparity, makes me think that it isn't. For me, at least.

A good friend noted how he would love to buy some land somewhere (but from who?) and hide away from the world to which he belongs, yet loathes; and yet, the cities are the biggest messes, ones that we and those before us have made, and it is up to us to clean it up, and so he stayed.

This isn’t the path for everyone. To be certain it is imperative to coming generations and times that people are practising the life that we’re fighting for, to learn and unlearn as much as they can about that world. We need people on front lines, -figurative and literal- to be certain, but equally as important are people learning to grow food, survive in the bush, rework the system rom the inside out, create new ritual and revive old, tell stories, create technology to bring us out of this dystopian gutter.

Waxing a little extreme here, but we get riled up.

I think that what I am desperately grappling at, this rambling digression, was put so simply and beautifully by a warrior named Sakej Ward.

He drew a spectrum on the beige paper that showed legal protest, petitioning, etc. on one side, and warriors on the other. The spectrum depicted a movement. He said that it isn’t right for one part of the movement to look down on another for being too complacent or, conversely, too extreme or radical. Down the road, there may be points where parts separate based on different values. such as the use of violence as a tool, but until and especially then, we are all for the same thing and in the same lane (or trying to be).

We need fast-paced change and the slow wearing down of a current. We need good listeners and humour, and such things require time off.

I think the most counterintuitive aspects of movements, or ‘activism’, are finger pointing, comparison, and ego. It seems sometimes that certain people who belong to the demographic of the ‘oppressors’ are often more likely to ‘call out’ rather than ‘call in’ , keep points, or create new points of prejudice born from the ricochet of old ones.

This really is a rant. I don’t even know if I want to read or post this, since ideas stand skeletal and unformed.

(decided to, after all, now that I found it!

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