"why we build the wall" from hadestown is really gonna trip up future media analysis students. they'll be like "ah a piece of media from the 2010s referencing building a wall to keep out the poor, clearly this is a reference to the president of the united states from 2016-2020", and then their professor will have to be like "actually the concept album for this musical came out in 2010"
how i hope this conversation goes from there is like:
"actually the concept album for this musical came out in 2010 and the original song was written in 2006"
"so she knew about the wall 10 years before Trump proposed it be built?"
"well, let's talk about that...
...but that wasn't when the wall was first built...
...this shift in the '90s marked the start of an enforcement philosophy called Prevention Through Deterrence, which basically says that if crossing is made more deadly, fewer people will cross (fact check: it just means that more people die on the journey). From the start, the purpose of the wall was not to physically to stop people from crossing -- it was to make it more deadly to do so.
...and we can also look at the song metaphorically and expansively, as a reference to the policing of migration, to company towns, to gated communities, and the physical and metaphorical walls that throughout history have kept people in and out and defined who does and don't belong.
Sources: 1 & 2 / 3 / 4"
"...how did you just say a hyperlink?"
"why worry about that when you can use this show as an entry-point into a deeper understanding of capitalism's investment in coercive control over human migration, and its long history in the United States?"
"so the song only seems prophetic because the long history of policing and militarizing the border has been ignored, and treated as an outsider position by Trump rather than the continuation of bi-partisan policy dating back decades? and it can be seen to reflect larger patterns of capital controlling people's movement in order to extract land, labor, wealth, and ultimately life from them?"
thank you so much for this well-researched response tho because, as a texan, the very concept that trump invented the idea of the border wall made me kinda. reboot. not mad at op! just surprised at the difference in our life experiences
The Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad is, to a modern audiences, what classicists have called âboring as hell,â but I canât help but think that if you were watching Homer recite it it would have been more like when comedians go, âanybody here tonight from Chicago?â and the Chicagoans in the back start cheering
Homerâs like, âand there were forty black ships from⊠LOCRISâ and the Locrians in the crowd start going absolutely nuts
reading this as someone who does cross stitch but is scared of the other kinds of embroidery is like overhearing an incredibly tall and buff person say they have beef with Mr. Tom, the kitten that chills at the bookstore
(The name flying pig/feizhuéŁçȘ is inspired by Nezhaâs mount the Wind-Fire Wheels. In the animated film, the Wind-Fire Wheels normally take the form of a flying pig.)
âIt's not fair.â The little ghost kicks impotently at the chalk lines around her feet. âI ain't done nothing.â
I nod, setting down my chalk and spellbook. âIt does sound like there might have been a bit of a misunderstanding.â
âShe took against me, that's what happened,â the dead girl says with a scowl. She looks about fourteen, round faced and spotty, with whisps of brown hair peaking out from under her mob-cap. Her face and her crossed arms have a tell-tale bluish tinge to them. A cholera death.
âI been here for don't know how long and never gave any trouble. Nobody ever complained about me 'till her.â
âŠwell, that's not strictly true.
Number 12, Barclay Street has been attracting rumours of haunting since the mid nineteenth century.
Sounds of faint singing and crying in the corridors at night. Cold spots. Doors that open and close by themselves. Animals acting strangely. Harmless, mid to low-level stuff, typical for a bored teenage poltergeist.
Still, pointing that out isn't likely to achieve much, and certainly the most recent complaints of blood running down the walls, screams in the dark and paralysing night terrors seem distinctly out of character.
The ghost toes the chalk again, more tentatively this time. It stays resolutely unbroken.
She could get out if she wanted to. I'm not one of those assholes who brings out their full arsenal of wards and sigils for a first meeting with a level 2 spectre. The summoning circle will keep her in one place for as long as I need her to talk, but it wouldn't hold for a moment if she really fought against it.
I take it as a good sign that she's still here. Pouting or not, she's clearly willing to work with me.
âNone of the others could do this,â she says. âNone of 'em even saw me.â She looks up. âAre you here to exise me?â
âExorcise,â I say instinctively, and curse myself when she flinches. âSorry, no, no! I don't exorcise people from their homes without good reason, not if they're happy where they are.â
âI was happy. Till she started calling in all them ghost hunters.â
Mrs Delaney had been quite persistent in her attempts to 'fix' her haunted house. Most of the people she found were charlatans, of course, but I'd still arranged an appointment as fast as I could once word reached me. It wouldn't have been long before she happened upon somebody with Talent, and unfortunately not everybody in this field knows how to behave like a professional.
âI think we might be able to help each other,â I say, careful to keep my voice calm and level.
âDon't see how. Not unless you can exorcise Her.â
âNot quite what I had in mind.â I pull out my phone and scroll through my photos. âYou say that you're not the cause of the most recent incidents of paranormal activity?â
A pause. The ghost gnaws on her lip. I wait, patiently, keeping my body language open and nonthreatening. âI⊠I knocked her coffee cup over,â she admits at last. âShe was being mean and talking on her telephone, saying I done all these things when I never did! So I decided to show her what I could do if I wanted.â
âHmm.â The ghost eyes me nervously, as if expecting me to pull out a book, bell and candle and banish her on the spot.
âI only tipped it,â she adds. âI didn't break it or nothing!â
âYou shouldn't have touched it at all,â I say sternly. âBut⊠I can appreciate that you were frustrated, so let's say no more about it.â
The ghost looks relieved.
âMy point is,â I continue, âif you weren't the one making blood rain from the ceiling or tormenting people in their sleep, then what was? There's no other ghosts on the property.â I find the picture I was looking for. âYou can get anywhere around the house, right? Including behind the furniture and in the backs of cupboards?â
âYes'm.â
I hold the phone up so that she can see the picture on the screen. âI'm going to let you go free in a moment, and I need you to see if you can find anything that looks like this.â
The ghost wrinkles her forehead. âWhat's that when it's at home?â
âBlack mould,â I say, reaching out a foot to break the binding circle. âAnd I'm pretty sure it's the cause of this haunting.â
Rewatching Truman Show for the first time in a long time, and the detail thatâs stuck with me this time is the set design.
The characters drive modern cars and hock modern products, but itâs all presented with a veneer of 1950s wholesome applecheeked Americana. Trumanâs life is presented as an escape for the audience from the drudgery of the modern day, and the aesthetic theyâve chosen for this is the post-war economic boom. This is the simple time, the movie says. This is the good time. Doesnât the modern day suck? Letâs go back and see our friends from the days when life was good.
And itâs a lie. Trumanâs life is a lie, and the image of white picket fenced suburbia theyâve presented is a lie. Itâs an elaborate construction to recreate a false memory thatâs comfortable for advertisers. The movie is a satire, but itâs also a very blatant statement against the nostalgia for a golden age which never existed. Itâs a lie. It doesnât exist.
I donât know. Iâm spitballing. Iâm biased because I despise mid-20th century Americana and I naturally treat it with hostility, but itâs very gratifying to see a movie kind of agree with me.
Earlier in the summer, I went to Florida with my friend. We decided to visit a town nearish to where we were staying called Seaside, as we had heard it was a cute place. What I did not know at the time was that Seaside is the place where they filmed The Truman Show. It was a "master-planned community," constructed in the 80s to be the perfect beach town.
Seaside, FL
Seahaven
And yes, it really does look Like That. Not just in their tourist-agency photos, in real life it looks like that. Arguably the irl Seaside is even prettier than movie Seahaven, because the the office buildings where Truman works don't exist; the town is 100% cutesy homes and little shops.
Every single house is pastel with white trim and a white picket fence with the family's name on it in a handwritten font. The streets are paved with red bricks and lined with palmettos, and families bicycle past. The streets are clean, the lawns manicured, the sidewalks pristine.
Soon after we arrive my friend says as we walk, "God I wish I could live in a place like this. Imagine having the money to live in a place like this." I reply, "I don't actually know for me...it's gorgeous don't get me wrong, but there's no grime, you know? Where's the grime? I'd feel uncomfortable. It feels like there's not a dive bar for a hundred miles."
We reach the town center, which is a wide square lined with shops on one side, food trucks on the other. We have a lovely time looking through the shops, though I start feeling kinda weird, and I'm not sure why. Probably the extreme cleanliness of the area is making me feel off-kilter. And the surreal feeling of walking through areas I recognize from The Truman Show only adds to the weirdness.
We go into a clothing store, and it's crowded with people who appear to have stepped out of a Land's End catalog. It sells boring tshirts, shorts, and sundresses in whites and blues, all needlessly expensive. Employees walk through, refolding already-pristine shirts. So perfect. "Anyone buying from here is so rich they can probably smell the poor on us," my friend jokes, "that's why they have so many employees refolding things, it's to fix anything we brush against." "Or even breathe on!" I add.
We continue on to the grocery store where, in the movie, Truman finds Marlon stocking the vending machine and first tells him he suspects his world is wrong. I buy some pasta salad there to eat for lunch (all the cafes are quite expensive), and we find a place to sit and eat. As my friend finishes up her food, I write a postcard to my sister, telling her about my trip overall and my day in Seaside, describing the town as 'vomit-inducingly picturesque.' (It has been weeks since my visit and she still has not received that postcard)
Lunch done, we decide to walk down to the beach and have a swim. And I realize something about the surreal feeling. "Weird question," I say to my friend, "have you seen any non-white people here? Am I imagining that?"
She pauses. "The lady cleaning the bathrooms?" she asks.
"No I mean vacationers. Guests, customers. Other than you, I haven't seen a single one who wasn't white."
"...No. I haven't either."
And now that we see it, we can't unsee it. It's a wealthy area, so I had been expecting it to be pretty white, but the fact that there is not a single nonwhite person who isn't working a service job feels so gross. It's as though the place is somehow still segregated, like we have stepped back in time, but not to the fun, fake, rock-n-roll-and-soda-parlor-nostalgia version of the fifties, but to the real racism-and-repression fifties.
It is so fucking weird and sinister. I feel I have stumbled into another realm. All these people giving us sideeye, riding around on their golf carts in their pristine $45 seaside-branded tshirts, taking pictures of the perfect houses all lined up in perfect rows. A whole town of Meryls wearing lulu lemon.
We walk on. It's hot, and a swim is exactly what we need. Surely they can't ruin the ocean. I myself am extremely excited to swim, because now that we've spent a few hours among the pompous populace, I want to piss in their perfect ocean more than anything in the world.
We walk along behind the beachfront bar patios that line the beach toward the access point, and the ocean looks so blue and inviting. Although the hedge growing between us and the dunes is strangely tall. "Huh," I think. "It's weird that they'd grow it like this, it blocks the view for everyone sitting on the patios."
We arrive at the boardwalk, and there is a man standing there. He says "Hold on! Do you two have a beach access pass?" I look at him in disbelief. It's a public beach, but the sign behind the man says you have to rent a beach chair to use the beach, and it's $35 per person. We glance at each other, turn wordlessly, and head back to town.
I seriously consider trying to sneak onto the beach somehow, because at this point I am very invested in the idea of pissing in their ocean, but I realize that with the tall hedge it would be nigh-impossible.
We went home after that.
So many reviews for Seaside on travel websites mention how they love to visit Seaside because they feel transported, they feel it reflects a "simpler time" or a "peaceful life." It's been weeks and I can't stop thinking about my experience. It really drove home how...complicit people can be in their own ignorance. A lot of people want to live in that perfect bubble, and especially if they have the money, they can maintain that barrier. It reminds me that part of the reason I often have trouble persuading these types of people is because they simply do not want to be persuaded. They're so proud to be the place where The Truman Show was filmed, but I rather doubt they really think about what it means that they live on a movie set, in a surreal dream.
Honestly visiting Seaside was a 10/10 unique experience. I would highly recommend it as a place to go for a couple hours if you're gonna be nearby and want to feel like you've been kidnapped into The Truman Show and/or your brain has been put in an easy bake oven. It's like a zoo for superrich WASPS. We had a really good time loudly making fun of how insane it all was, invading their little paradise with our riffraff energy. Treat it like an excursion into the jungle; you're gonna have to park a half mile away minimum, and bring all your food and water with you so you don't have to buy anything. You don't want to give them any money. They have enough.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, next time I go to the panhandle, I will be going to the nearest free public beach access to Seaside, and I will walk to the Seaside area of the beach, and I will piss in their ocean.
Shen Yuan who transmigrates into what seems to be a fairly standard and generic isekai harem story (not one he's familiar with), and yet every time it seems like he might add a waifu to his harem, things veer off at the last minute and she either leaves or gets paired up with someone else.
Ning Yingying, initially reluctantly betrothed to him? Yeah she doesn't actually warm up to the idea of marrying him, even after they become friends, and still breaks off the engagement when he arranges the option for her instead of insisting that she's fallen in love with him.
Liu Mingyan and Sha Hualing fight over him? You'd think that would mean they both want him, but if he's not around they'll just pick another guy to fight over instead. He's starting to think it might not even be about the man at all!
Little Palace Mistress, stuck in her unwanted betrothal to Gongyi Xiao? Actually she warms up to her betrothed when Shen Yuan gets involved and ends up inviting him to the wedding, instead of dumping Gongyi Xiao to pine after him.
Qiu Haitang, who claims he's a dead-ringer for her long-lost fiance? Actually seems to genuinely not like him because of it! Not even in a tsundere way!
It's starting to hurt Shen Yuan's self-esteem a little, honestly. Not that he wants all these women necessarily but he knows the tropes, he can see quite plainly that he's in a situation where he should be building a harem, and yet for some reason it's just not coming together. The problem must be him, but he's also read/watched enough isekai to know that even some pretty rancid guys manage to accumulate harems. He doesn't think he's so bad that he should be failing this utterly! Is he?
He'd ask his good male friends (which he has accumulated many of on his journey, having helped a lot of them with their various problems, quests, emotional difficulties, revenge arcs or mysteries) what they think, but he has no idea how to frame the question without sounding either insane or utterly egotistical.
#oh my god he would... 3 seasons and a movie before he clues in for real#He picked up Binghe early on after stopping some other teens from messing with the boy and giving him medicine.#listened so kindly to Binghes woes & helped him make a gravemarker for his adoptive mother? give or take a few headpats and binghe was sold#Saved Liu Qingge and acquired a life-debt. Also unaware of his feelings but just needs to know that SY is safe and likes being around him :#Yue Qingyuan also thinks hes a dead-ringer for his childhood friend and isn't entirely convinced SY isn't just him happy with amnesia#Even LPM's betrothed warmed up faster to Shen Yuan than she did! Shen Yuan is so confused (GYX is also confused. for sexuality reasons)#SQH joined#and got close with sy FAST. but also whatever they have going on is arguably worse for it. SQH is debating if he can pull of#a threesome with SY#himself and the big hot royal ice demon#zzl is a given. TLJ might be a character that pops in every dozen episodes to shoot his shot#and through all of this SY hasn't quite clued in to how devoted and very male his whole party is#Shen Yuan worrying aloud if he's really that undesirable and pathetic and theres just a small hoard behind him like... hes joking right?#honestly its giving My Next Life as a Villainess in that all the boys are fighting over him and he hasn't noticed and is like#'oh no this isn't following the script! I don't really even want a harem really but thats why I'm here isn't it?'#absolutely hilarious (peer reviewed tags by @thesadisticsiren)