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[the-crooked-library]

Human vs Vampire Violence in Nosferatu

I've talked about this in the tags of another post already but i can't stop thinking about this so here it goes:

The majority of Ellen's suffering is due to mundane and socially acceptable forms of violence (e.g. medical) and that is not an accident. The script intends this. It is the primary underlying theme of Nosferatu (2024), it is the undercurrent to all her motivations, and the film wants the viewers to be aware of this, at least on some level.

Over the course of the story, Ellen Hutter is forcibly isolated by her father, dismissed and infantilized by her husband, drugged and tied to her bed by a doctor and her husband's friends, pierced through the arm by another doctor just to demonstrate that her soul "isn't there," insulted and kicked out from the Hardings' house (while still having psychic fits nightly), left to care for her sick husband alone without any support, never listened to - and all these things are excused!..

There's always some sort of justification, and it's usually either misogynistic or medical or both.

Her father isolated her because her psychic abilities frightened him, because she was too abnormal, and he thought that she wasn't fit to be around other people. Thomas dismissed her nightmares and ignored her emotional needs because he thought her anxieties were childish, that she prioritized the wrong things in life (love over financial advancement), and that she was incapable of good judgement; it's also the reason he is unaware that she doesn't like cut flowers, or that Harding hates her (even though she is very well aware of that, she evidently didn't feel like she could tell her husband). Similarly, Dr. Sievers believed that he had to do what he did, because Ellen was mad and had to be controlled. Harding, naturally, let him do it, and then did worse, and justified it all with “logic” and family values.

The point is that every single character harms Ellen on some level, despite what they might consider best intentions; and I think that a significant drive behind some of the more vitriolic online responses to this film is that many people are uncomfortable with that aspect of the story. Nosferatu demands that the viewer confront a fundamental truth of human imperfection - that someone who looks soft and Normal is, in fact, capable of causing pain regardless; and that invites a deeper sort of self-reflection. Perhaps, even accountability.

Our recently-resurgent purity culture shares this discomfort with Ellen's societal setting. For Thomas, for Sievers, for Harding, for us, it is much easier to blame harm and sin on a Monster From Somewhere Else, and pretend that a witch-hunt would entirely eradicate the problem.

However, the film demonstrates the inherent falseness behind this assumption. Even if Ellen had not followed Orlok into death, she would not have suddenly become happy with her human life - because his destruction would not have changed how she is perceived. She would have continued to endure far more insidious, systemic, violent abuse as a disabled, arguably queer wife and woman.

This is why the sensuality of her death/wedding is so crucial to the presentation of the film.

in Orlok, she embraces her own perceived "darkness," the aspects of her that her society believes are harmful and grotesque - her lack of deference to her husband (he terrorizes Thomas), her queerness (he drains Anna and destroys Harding's family), her psychic disability (he kisses Ellen's heart and drinks from her, reverent and tender). it is a scene steeped in both terror and ecstasy. She is joining Orlok in sin and in death - a twisted version of his proposed eternity; and in doing so, she is ascended.

It is incredibly poignant that, when her power over him is actually shown, it is far more emotional and commonplace than could be expected. There are no torches or stakes, no physical explicit battle; Ellen's unique, magnificent, holy power is merely the ability to ask for "more!.. More!" - and be granted that wish without question. Here, in a monster's embrace, she is valued more than a promotion, or propriety, or even Orlok's own life.

All that to say - Ellen's personal journey through the film does not culminate in a straightforward battle of "victim vs abuser." Despite what a cursory overview might imply, the Final Struggle is a minor aspect; instead, the overwhelming majority of her story revolves around a build-up to a Final Choice. Similar to I Saw The TV Glow, or NBC's Hannibal, or a multitude of other narratives, it explores the balance between the horror of transformation and the horror of staying the same. A monster might grant the first one if you ask, and it will feel like dying - but society's already forced you into the second.

All there is left to do is make damn sure it kills you.

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Watched nosferatu (2024) and not sure how I felt (I think bad????)

First of all, right out the gate - I do wish there’d been a bit of a clearer warning leading up to the movie’s release about the themes of sexual abuse. Obviously Nosferatu is a predator by definition, but I felt that the sexual element was much more clearly articulated and depicted. I honestly was a little surprised and triggered (which likely impacted my reading of the film) and I imagine others were too. Saying this as a trigger warning - the following will discuss dynamics of abuse and predation - and to shed some light on where my perspective comes from.

Okay, into the more trivial stuff first:

- Beautifully filmed - especially the shot on the forest road when Thomas is going to the castle and it’s all misty. Beautiful homage to b&w cinematography of the 20s

- I absolutely loved Orlock’s character design. LOVED the moustache, it was period accurate and humanising in a sick and twisted way - he is simply a Count who was decomposing but stopped. I thought it was such a cool interpretation, while keeping key themes from the original (hands - loooooong fingies, bald head done in a slightly new way, physique - tall but skeletal and disproportionately lanky etc). Really loved it.

- The incorporation of classic motifs (e.g. hand shadows) was so fun!!!!!!! Really enjoyed them. Clearly the movie was made by people who loved Nosferatu!!!!

- peeved me a little that Thomas and Albin’s overcoats were too tight and the stripes on the back of one of Ellen’s dresses weren’t lined up. Derek, Bernadette and Jessica have ruined me

Okay, visuals aside:

- Not sure about how the whole predatory sexual abuse narrative undertone was presented.

I felt like Eggers, in wanting to give the female lead agency and interiority rather than simply being an object of desire/the victim of a predatory creature, perhaps overestimated how much narrative agency and choice she actually had while making her in some ways culpable or responsible for being preyed upon. It felt like she was plodding towards her pre-determined fate and didn’t really have a choice so the whole agency and acceptance of her sensuality and desire was undercut, in a way.

She also didn’t necessarily “accept” her sexuality, from what I saw - she sacrificed herself to save her world from a threat she believed to be her fault. There’s no acceptance of her lust or desire there - just a woman doing what she (and Willem Dafoe) perceives to be her duty - also, as an aside, a huge aspect of marital rape and rape in general (society believing men are owed women’s bodies and sexuality). Saying that she enjoyed her night with the creature or actively chose it, thus accepting her lust and desire, is bizarre to me when her consent was so clearly coerced - which has to colour the whole scene, no matter what enjoyment she presents to the viewer (us as the audience but also, and most significantly in the final scene, Orlock. Women commonly report visually presenting a sense of enjoyment and pleasure they may not feel, especially when being assaulted, as it’s hoped it will be over sooner. If she’s not actively visually enjoying it, Orlock won’t believe that he’s being saved and he might just kill her, meaning he won’t be destroyed by the light accompanying the first crow of the cock. She could also be enjoying it! Experiences of sexual abuse are complex. It’s still abuse and she still dies, though - before getting into the political dynamics of messaging suggesting women secretly enjoy being assaulted).

I say the above because I’ve seen it said online that it was more so a gothic romance and Orlock was a metaphor for the repression of female sexuality/desire/lust and she had to accept her sexuality/desire/lust and people who don’t get that and are just reading the predatory/assault undertones lack media literacy.

Maybe I do!!! Maybe I am just #triggered by movies featuring abuse. However, I’m not sure that her acceptance of her sexuality and desire (which, yes, was viewed as a monstrous thing in Victorian times - but interestingly, in my admittedly limited understanding, not so much in Weimar Germany when Nosferatu was made, which I feel like gets a little lost in Online Discourse sometimes. You’re not watching an adaptation of Dracula by Bram Stoker, you’re watching a remake of a 1920s German adaptation of Dracula and thus constantly talking about Victorian values and perspectives towards female sexuality feels like it’s missing the perspective of the media actually in question a little. Everything that is created is created in the context of its time - thus, a movie made in 2024 isn’t going to replicate the attitudes of a movie made in 1922 which isn’t going to replicated the attitudes of a book written in 1897, but critique them or shed new light on them - something I don’t feel this movie did successfully) reads super clearly in concert with the theme of predation it’s operating alongside.

There’s definitely a conversation to be had about victims of grooming/sexual predation feeling fear and disgust of themselves, the predator and the lust/desire they may feel for the predator, but… I don’t know, it feels like murky waters in this piece and its marketing. I’m not entirely sure that’s the conversation that they’re having, I suppose - when, to me, it feels like a self-evident and important topic that’s clearly raised by the themes of the film. While watching, it felt a little like they presented a pretty restricted understanding of the dynamics of abuse and predation - which, again, is a fairly clear theme (at least to me).

Even if this was the conversation that was being had, forcing Ellen to succumb to Orlock’s desire and die in order to save the world and her family - presenting her ‘choice’ as ‘beautiful,’ visually evoking Millais’ Ophelia - doesn’t really, in my mind, force her to actually confront her hatred, fear or disgust of herself or her desire for him in a way that is contextualised within the broader framework of predation - highlighting her lack of agency while being preyed upon as a lonely teen by a powerful supernatural force and understanding that his actions are not her fault or responsibility. Rather, it seems to confirm that it was her fault, or at least his behaviour is her responsibility, as she’s the only one who can save them - again, by succumbing to his threats and his desire, literally and, one could suggest, figuratively killing her self while so doing! It’s not subversive that she’s also killing him while she’s killing herself - it’s her only option. If she WAS enjoying this moment of physicality, it’s still coerced! It’s still rape! And we can’t know that she was, because her expressions that have been interpreted as joyful in that scene are tempered by his presence and her overall goal. Even her prior expressions are tempered by the fact that he’s a powerful being who’s assaulting her psychically and, it seems, she can do nothing to stop it mentally - she can only sacrifice herself, body and soul, to hold him captive in the light of dawn once her self has been spent.

Obviously it’s important to create art that addresses these topics without creating an entirely victimising narrative - but, again, it didn’t feel like Ellen had a choice about whether to use her body to save them or not, and it doesn’t exactly give empowering narrative about women’s sexuality when she’s forced to give up her body and her life to a creature that prayed on a vulnerable (lonely) teenager, never left her alone and threatened, harmed or killed everyone she loved so that she’d fuck him. It doesn’t give critique of Victorian ideas of male ownership of women’s sexuality when the Voice of Reason character (Willem) agrees that it’s Ellen’s responsibility to re-engage with her abuse to save their world - even seeming to suggest, through his acknowledgement of her power, that she called Orlock to her, placing the responsibility for his very presence upon her. Perhaps us having these conversations in response to the piece is the point, is the critique promoted by the film - but when these ‘Victorian’ attitudes still thrive today, replicating them in what I would argue is an internally un-critical manner (and even substantiating them by suggesting Ellen is in love with he who preys on her - the oldest piece of rapist apoligia in the book - throughout the marketing campaign and even suggesting that you as a director did indeed successfully return agency to Ellen’s character, which seems patently ridiculous and almost like a complete misunderstanding of the dynamics of abuse), perhaps relying on promoting critique from the contemporary audience is actively harmful. Those who would critique it are aware of the dynamics of sexual abuse anyway, and those who accept the presented narrative uncritically are the ones who need clear messaging to address rape culture that is so deeply embedded in contemporary society. I’m not necessarily saying that the movie needs to fix rape culture or it needs to be so clear to avoid all misinterpretation - but suggesting that this movie cannot at all be seen to embody narratives of abuse is also a bit far in the other direction. Again, media reflects the society it’s produced in, even if it’s interpreting another era it’s interpreting it through the lens of its time. I’ve seen posts talk about moral panic around sexual abuse warping people’s interpretations of the movie - and that’s fine, but I don’t think it’s wrong to see those narratives in this media, to have that experience evoked by what was presented to us. Yes, female sexuality and desire was horrifying and demonised and is incredibly stigmatised - but male sexuality is often expressed through narratives of domination, which I believe Orlock can be seen to represent in this movie.

She didn’t have to girlboss her way to victory and live at the end after destroying the monster or not be miserable about her situation - in fact, one of the strongest moments in her characterisation, I felt, was when she lashed out at Thomas and asked him not to touch her. That came across really strong and rang really true. Feeling like a horrible person, justifying the abuse to yourself and others through any means necessary, trying to push those close to you away, trying to regain ownership of your body through sex that you choose/want that’s still referential to the memory of your body being violated all felt like a really succinct exploration of the impact abuse can have after the fact when victims are in intimate and physically safe partnerships [edited to add physically safe instead of just safe as I’ve been seeing discussion about how dismissive and generally emotionally unsafe Thomas was to Ellen and I agree]

I don’t know. I guess framing her sacrifice - of her life, body and agency - as an acceptance of her sexuality, of Orlock, as a moment of agency where she “chooses” to seduce Orlock feels real off to me. It’s good for female characters to have agency, obviously - but claiming they do in situations where they simply don’t can perpetuate elements of rape culture that excuse sexual abuse, to be brutally honest. It could be more honest, insightful and empowering to explore how her agency was removed and the impact that it has, rather than returning some false echo of it to her by pretending she had a choice where there was none.

It’s also good to explore and accept female sexuality that comes in a range of forms that aren’t socially acceptable - including monster-fucking and rape fantasies - but again, how it’s been done here feels like it minimises the way in which Orlock prayed on Ellen.

I think overall I’m not sure that the directorial intent - a female lead with agency rather than an object of prey - came through or was even appropriate and I’m not sure how deeply or critically the film explored the themes of sexual abuse it presented. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an overly sensitive presentation - abuse is horrific, scary, confusing and each victim has an emotionally distinct experience that can absolutely include feelings of lust, desire and pleasure - but I suppose it felt under-informed, almost, and the agency Eggers wanted to return to the lead made her culpable for her abuse while also removing any real choice she had about how and when she wanted to use her body.

I’ve seen people denying that it’s abuse at all. While I agree with people saying that child sexual abuse is overstating the case somewhat, I’m also fairly certain Orlock first visited Ellen when she was a lonely teenager, rejected as an outsider by her family. That just is a vulnerable person. She says that at first he was nice and then it was awful - which has been interpreted by some as her fear of her burgeoning (and monstrous) sexual appetite. But I feel that it can also be reasonably interpreted as someone ingratiating themselves with a vulnerable person and turning the relationship into something that she didn’t want initially, or wasn’t prepared for. Considering he can access or attack her from anywhere in the world, I believe it’s reasonable to suggest he has more psychic power than she does (she also doesn’t seem able to banish him psychically) and thus we can talk about a power imbalance in their relationship, and grooming more broadly. He’s also clearly planning for her to save him since that time, so he’s using her for his own devices beyond even sexual. Now, can we see that she grows to enjoy his sexual advances? I’m not entirely clear on that, to be honest. It seemed like she was possibly possessed by Orock when she said to Thomas that he could never please her as Orlock could - so I don’t think it’s reasonable to take this as a true statement from Ellen herself. She’s definitely conscious of his presence being in the vicinity at the time, regardless. She does seem physically enticed by Orlock throughout the movie - which, yeah, not necessarily an uncommon experience of long-term abuse - but again, he’s threatening to kill everyone she loves unless she re-enters the covenant. You could argue she could still choose to not re-enter said covenant and thus she did actively choose to be with him (I’ve seen discussion about her choice to wear a wedding dress) and drive the plot forward - but again, it really does seem like a coerced choice, not only by Orlock but by Willem (the only other character who believed her experiences without being harmed by Orlocks hand) who suggests that’s the only way to be rid of Orlock. I don’t know, I guess - yeah, it’s the idea that this movie depicts a female protagonist with agency when she’s seen to give into the desires of a predatory man who is coercing her into an eternal bond with him.

Overall, I think that a theme of sexual abuse - and yes, perhaps even grooming - isn’t the most out of pocket idea in the world. Ignoring that social dynamics, patriarchal dynamics, play out - sometimes most prominently - in relationships between those that have power in such a system and those that do not does not help anyone, I think. I don’t think that Ellen SHOULD be a vulnerable, innocent virgin with no sexual appetite and no agency - I think this narrative removes more agency from her, hoists more blame, than it grants. You could argue this narrative blame is exactly the Victorian oppression of female sexuality that Eggers is wanting to explore, I suppose - and explore it he did. She died for, with, and by her appetite. I also don’t think it’s impossible that Ellen and Orlock would love and desire each other - but again, abusive dynamics can occur when one party is being threatened, followed, isolated, harmed. Reading abuse into this narrative - and critiquing the idea of agency presented in the piece - isn’t as unreasonable, I think, as the naysayers suggest. Eggers absolutely does explore Victorian terror of female sexuality, female insanity, female impropriety as well - but, for me, the undertones (or overtones!) of abuse make the discussion of Ellen’s agency a little less clear then simply: she chose to accept her dark, forbidden sexual urges, made peace with them, and in her death united her soul with Orlock’s forever, freeing herself of the guilt placed upon her by the world around her.

Anyways yeah I guess overall I felt icky about it! Agency in abusive dynamics and in a sexual world so dominated by the patriarchy is a tricky topic for sure! And people love their monsters 😂 Thanks for reading. I saw it a little while ago and have been wanting to disentangle my thoughts around it - why I had that emotional response. It’ll hit personally for a lot of people, me included, so if you disagree I’d be keen to hear your thoughts! Maybe I am media illiterate 🥰🥰 who knows

[philosophicalmisuse]

privatisation as anti-union activity

[philosophicalmisuse]

Research List

popping some sources here for personal reference later re: Patyegarang and revealing the early Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander critique of colonialism: https://open.conted.ox.ac.uk/sites/open.conted.ox.ac.uk/files/resources/Create%20Document/03_The%20ign%27rant%20present%27s%20all_James%20Bonney.pdf

Woollarawarre Bennnelong traveling to Britain, both object of, participant in and resistor of:

Friendship on the ‘Frontier’: Whiteness and Violence in Warrane/Sydney 1788-1800

Warrane, which the British called Sydney, was invaded in 1788. Rosalind Carr shows how just as polite male gallantry in the eighteenth centu

Colonial exploration continues, all too often, to be rendered as heroic narratives of solitary, intrepid explorers and adventurers. This edi

Bennelong’s Contested History

My first foray into the mainstream press was both stimulating and disconcerting.  A version of the article appeared here in The Guardian on

Bennelong and Philip: A history Unravelled by Kate Fullagar Time's Monster: History, Conscience and Britain's Empire by Priya Satia

[philosophicalmisuse]

reading The Dawn of Everything by the Davids² Graeber and Wengrow and gettin real hyped about it. gonna do a post of my Thoughts and Ideas and so on and also so forth. I have many so I will maybe do chapter by chapter!!!

[philosophicalmisuse]

Victor from From and Autistic Coding in media

Just finished season 1 and a couple eps into season 2, enjoying it lots so far! Only spoilers for season 1 I think, maybe mild for season 2

Just seen a couple of people discuss Victor and Autism and neurodivergence in general and wanted to add my two cents

I reckon he's autistic-coded (and I think the distinction between is autistic and is autistic coded is important) -

- trouble socialising (esp with other adults, but having an easier time with kids - socialising well with people below and above ur peer group is fairly common)

- restricted interests (the peaches being the one thing he liked to eat jumped out to me - thought it was so sweet how donna made sure that he had some and that she was rationing them for him specifically, both so others wouldn't have them and so that he could have them regularly for as long as possible and genuinely took seriously how important it was and attempted to hold back other supplies in case they ran out to provide an alternative but was aware it likely wouldn't work - she looked at why he liked the peaches and accommodated his needs not just in terms of well this will keep him happy but in a caring way for him as a person, such a little thing but damn made me like donna so much)

- the visual language of how he's presented - wearing his (casual flannel) shirt buttoned all the way up to the neck and pants cuffed, just like how he did as a kid, holding onto an object from his childhood, posture that is overly "correct", slightly shambley walk, 'evasive' body language that avoids eye contact etc - ! important to specify here that I'm not saying all autistic people dress or move like this, I for one hate things touching my neck so you wouldn't catch me dead in a button up all the way to my neck, but this visual language/costuming/physicality is super common for male autistic-coded characters as a visual shorthand to express restrive patterns of behaviour/outsider from social norms of dress, so it jumped out at me right away. Two other examples that spring to mind are young Sheldon and elementary Sherlock Holmes

- the language/tonality he uses - often repetitive to express the rules while not always explaining why (example being when jade takes his violin and ransacks his room, he doesn't explain why jade shouldn't go into his room or how it made him feel, he visually shows distress and repeats the rule that jade violated, even when jade explains his pov - victor responds in his face to the comment I thought you were dead, seemingly understanding that that's reasonable, but it's not relevant to the rule as he isn't dead so he repeats the rule) - he's often fairly monotone/expressionless as well - I don't know how to explain this but some of his inflections/patterns of speech are very familiar to me in terms of how I and other autistic people I've met talk. There's something about how and where the voice goes up and down in a sentence that I can't really explain

- disliking change (eg. peaches)

And I'm sure there's more but these are the main ones I remember

NOW!!! onto my broader points

I have seen some people online argue that:

he's not autistic he's just traumatised

This is rational and I get it! He's presumably been alone since a very young age so not 'socialised', he's had to learn the rules of this place and stick to them or die and so on. The behaviours of cPTSD and asd have a large amount of overlap.

However, my first point would be that a traumatised autistic person (which is most autistic people tbh) look/act different from traumatised non-autistic people. Most autistic people that you meet are traumatised, and there's a lot of traumatised people who aren't autistic. Having cPTSD and having a trigger to a specific sound, for example, is different from having SPD and getting tired/stressed/having a meltdown from most sounds being too loud and your nervous system being unable to distinguish between a relevant loud noise and an irrelevant loud noise and giving you all noises at the same level and stimulating your nervous system to react to them the same, for example. In cPTSD your nervous system is likely also inflating lots of noises, because lots of noises were relevant to your survival in a traumatic environment - but in SPD (something many ASD people have and some argue may be a major facet of the disorder that has, until recently, been unhelpfully diminished in diagnostic resources) this would happen whether or not you were traumatised.

The collection of traits in the DSM is descriptive of a way of processing the world around you - and when people argue that Victor is autistic, they're saying that he is behaving in a way that appears to be characteristic of a certain combination of traits. Additionally, he was old enough to experience some socialisation, and had enough resources to experiment with other ways of dressing - there presumably have been other people that have come to the village over the years, as well. What I see in the character is a very traumatised autistic adult using patterns of behaviour that are explicitly autistic in order to survive in a terrible situation, HOWEVER I would argue that it doesn't matter very much

Regardless of whether he is or is not autistic (he's a fictional character and we can never have enough info to really know unless the characters or creators of the show explicitly say it, ofc) what is relevant in my opinion is that he is CODED to be autistic.

The way the character is presented is similar to a lot of tropes in media about how autistic characters are presented. Whether you think that the character in and of himself is or is not autistic, I think it's fair to say that the way he is characterised is similar to a lot of other male autisic-coded characters in media

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

It's important both in terms of how we analyse/interpret the specific media, and how this can impact social understanding of autism more broadly

First of all, it may tell us something about how Autism is portrayed in media. An autistic character in another piece of media who has not experienced the same levels of insane trauma in a horror setting is thought to behave similarly to a character who has experienced these things.

Secondly, it tells us about how the other characters in the world relate to Victor. Why do they instantly see him as being weird, when initially the only thing he does is simply have a conversation with a new resident? He's instantly seen as a threat by the dad, explicitly seen as weird by everyone else, where the young girl who murdered someone is seen as someone safe, and positive for taking care of the child and distracting them from the horrible new situation they find themselves in.

Honestly, he's initially presented as a sexual threat to both children - I've seen some ppl online refer to him as 'paedophilic'. Why is this?

I would argue it's because autistic traits, down to the way autistic people move and speak, are seen as inherently threatening and other. I don't even blame the people who do read him as predatory, as it's so common in media to be presented with people who look/behave like Victor ending up being creepy and weird. Autistic people are infantilised, seen engaging with children, and the audience is told they're weird - even the dad was so strongly hostile to Victor harmlessly talking to his child BEFORE he took him into the forest (something that I completely agree any parent would be reasonable for responding to extremely hostily). It was clear this was something Victor was used too as well.

This is a common trope. A weird, socially inept older person forms an unlikely friendship with an open-minded child - who is often discouraged from being friendly with this person, as they are viewed as sinister and a threat from adults in their life. This is used as a double-bluff - the real threat to the child is actually the young woman who the adults are fine with spending time with their child, as they view her as fundamentally non-threatening.

This enabled me, as a viewer, early on, to discount the information that was alluding to Victor being a threat - but its also a really frustrating trope, because it relies on the fact that audiences do see autistic patterns of behaviour/speech/movement as fundamentally other/threatening. Even if you subvert this trope by making the threat come from somewhere else, and tell the audience that really they're bad/foolish/wrong for thinking Victor was a threat, you're still using the same tropes that make real autistic people be viewed with suspicion simply for existing in the world. Victor is still portrayed as creepy, and still has to earn the protagonists trust in a way other characters don't. He, and other autistic coded characters, still start off in a deficit, at a negative, where other characters start off with a neutral or positive. This really does impact real life people as well!

Another trope that is used that is relevant is the 'weird' character having a special amount of knowledge about the problem at hand that other characters discount because of their weirdness (knowledge often initially only shared with an open-minded child character). This is so frustrating! I even remember this coming up in The Dressmaker, when the intellectually disabled character (I think? It was one of those very generalist disabled character presentations, to my knowledge) witnessed the crime but no-one thought to ask them who did it till the end, and initially presumed he had done it or something (I still enjoyed the movie tho). Its bizarre to me that none's asking Victor what he knows - he even expresses early on to the kid that noone listens to him or cares, from memory. I find this so frustrating, and is again really common - and is also a part of the othering of autistic coded characters - they're 'not of this world', but are part of both and none at the same time.

While this is something that many autistic people feel and experience, it's partially because we're ostracised from our peers because we're so 'weird', so it's really frustrating to see this replicated time and time again in fantasy, horror and thriller genres especially - it sort of reenforces a social standard that's causing the problem. Rather than create understanding and support the elimination of notions of 'weirdness', even if the character is important and initially creepy but not a threat, they're still not of this world. It's still reasonable to see them as weird, because they are weird. The characters are rational for responding to the autistic coded character as if there's something off, because there is - even if they're ultimately on the same side.

This also has real-world impacts. People discount likely threats in favour of fear of unfamiliar behaviour. For example, the whole predatory thing - autistic people are more likely to be victims of predatory behaviour, not perpetrators of it (for example, autistic women are 3x more likely to have been sexually assaulted than non-autistic women). However, there's these stereotypes in media where an autistic character is so weird that they're viewed as threatening - and, in some crime genre tropes, for example, the threat is confirmed. Even though most predators are stand up members of the community (compensating for their misdeeds via good acts) and people are surprised that they were perpetrators of horrific crimes - crime is often so horribly mundane - the media focuses on portrayals of mentally ill loners, utilising coding that is similar and sometimes the same as the coding of autistic characters. Not saying that no autistic person comments a crime of course, they demonstrably do, but utilising a media shorthand for violent/predatory criminals that is also used for autistic characters - as it is much more conforting for audiences to feel as if they would be able to tell from someone's weird behaviour if they're likely to be a threat - can have some really troubling real world consequences. Also not saying that no autistic coded character can possibly be portrayed as a villain - I really enjoyed Zac's plotline in Bones for example, especially the relationship that the two characters had - but it's the focus on these 'weird, socially inept' villians, over the far more common absolutely totally 'normal' person/family member/ local upstanding citizen that makes people disproportionately fear/stigmatise autistic ways of being

Then, other shows play off of this coding to 'subvert' it, reenforcing the connection along the way

All this being said, I really like Victor, I loved his relationship with Donna, and I'm really enjoying the show more broadly. However, I could defs see a lot of the narrative of s1 coming because of the shows use of autistic coded behaviours for Victor

I found it interesting that some fan theories have actually centred Victor's neurodivergence, and suggested that other characters are also neurodivergent and that might be why some of them are here/chosen - I find that interesting, especially because of the use of 'psychosis' in the show being a conduit for seemingly real voices of people who have passed away there

It will be interesting to see where they take it, and I'm excited to see what else happens in season 2 and even more excited for season 3 - but yeah, Victor is defs autistic coded, and some of those tropes do have negative knock-on consequences. Defs something that will impact my enjoyment of the show, depending on where they take it! It could be awesome and exciting and could be devastating or eye rolling etc but still excited to watch

[philosophicalmisuse]

jkr b tweetin

here's a fun excerpt from jkr's latest public temper tantrum shrouded in 'feminism' and 'intellectualism' she says: "If they admit that even a single man isn't a woman because he says he is, the entire edifice of gender identity ideology crumbles." i feel that people are not focusing on this very much! This is a perfect line to provide to people when they ask if she's ever said anything transphobic, i think gender identity ideology = edifice

she's saying that if even a single "man" isn't a woman because she says she is, then trans people do not exist, and she believes that people do fake being trans for their own ends, so noone can be trans in her world. any gender identity at all is clearly an edifice, and a lie, in her eyes. i know we all know that that's what she believes, and there's been many mask off moments - but this feels like such a blatant mask off moment, to me. she has typed out and posted a line suggesting that trans people cannot exist at all in her ideology. if even one person detransitions (for example) it is proof that no-one is actually trans. This is bonkers!!!!!! fundamentally, her assumption to make any of her prison nonsense make sense is that trans people are just pretending - which is the definition of transphobia. I truly don't understand how she and her followers don't get this. your world view is that no trans person exists - and yet, you want everyone to "live in whichever way makes them feel happy" or whatever she said that one time????? ur lying to urself !!!!! no u dont!!!!!!! (also that one time she called trans rights activists rapists rights activists..... forgot abt that. the state of acceptance for these bonkers fascistic ideas is so horrifyingly high. she will never learn that actions have consequences, unfortunately, cos hers dont and wont)

[philosophicalmisuse]

Sam’s Sins - False Equivalency and Moral Judgement

The thing that gets me about his anti-Palestine arguments (cos I checked cos I knew he’d have something brain-melting to say) is it’s the most basic colonial rhetoric ever. It’s so sad to me that people listen to him still and nod and think hmmm the man has some points

His most recent nonsense is claiming there’s no moral equivalence between war crimes committed by Israel (collateral damage, in his eyes) and the “terrorist acts” committed by Hamas (to use his framework)

There’s so many basic basic things wrong with how he’s framing it, but GOD to take a few

The way he equates Palestine with Hamas, but would be so incensed if such a false equivalency was drawn between, for example, American neo-nazis and republicans - or even the IDF and Israelis

The way he declares that Palestine, due to being culturally barbaric, suggesting that they revel in war crimes, almost deserve to be taken over is just colonialism 101 - this culture is barbaric, and uncivilised, so no matter what the dominant culture that I agree with and support does to them, they deserve that and more because they are not really people anymore, to me. They are less moral, more bestial, automatically in a category of other that is equivalent to less. He mentions Hamas using hospitals as bases for weapons, with no mention of the target of said missiles, but suggests that Israel bombing the hospital is okay because well they warn the civilians in the hospital. And we all know that patients in a hospital are so easy to be moved, and there’s so many facilities available to Palestine to move patients into. So really, any “collateral damage” that Israel causes is Hamas’s fault, but really Hamas is a stand in for Palestine because of the false equivalence he draws that he accuses others of. So really, they’re kicking themselves cos of their brutal horrible culture, poor silly souls.

This colonial sense of moral superiority, too - well, I’ll be fair enough to admit that sure, my culture once did act in the way this savage, barbaric, backwards culture did - but that was ages ago, and absolutely doesn’t still happen, so I’m actually…. Better? And can decide who deserves to die on those grounds? Never mind that the colonial savagery that you admit to was caused by individuals deciding that they had the right to decide which culture deserved to die, and his very attitude is a perpetuation of the moral degradations he likes to pretend we’ve moved on from. Never mind that the colonial project prevented cultures from developing organically, and condemned what they did not understand, and violently moulded other cultures in their own image at a time which even Sam admits Western culture was morally bankrupt. And cultures that need to resist an oppressive force by necessity commit acts of extremism, and commit to strict cultural rules, as the very act of maintaining one’s culture is an act of residence, and no matter what that culture looks like it will be painted by the dominant culture as a brutal and backwards one.

It’s just so frustrating, and I starting writing this when his blogpost first came out and am posting it now because I think it’s become very clear that his argument of any crimes Israel did being not as bad as Hamas did has been so roundly debunked as to make me more mad - especially when he follows up with an essay saying sure wish Israel didn’t do so many war crimes :( doesn’t make them look very good - anyways how scary is antisemitism, right???? I’ve never taken it seriously in my life before, even as a victim of it, but I think now is the perfect time to discuss it

Like yes obviously people coopting Palestinian liberation to be antisemitic is fucking disgusting and terrible - but his argument is also that Islamophobia doesn’t exist and was created so that no-one could criticise Islam (despite him having made a dollar or two over the years for doing exactly that), despite like. Bro cmon painting one religion as de-facto uncivilised and representative of a broader cultures “moral vacuum” and then equating all brown people to said culture isn’t exactly what it seems like on the tin. It’s just. Yeah his arguments are off the wall bonkers