Not a myth, not a legend, and not a man! The product of a failed lesbian and a con man, raised in a haunted house in a seaside smack town. They/them pronouns.
Rewatching Truman Show for the first time in a long time, and the detail that’s stuck with me this time is the set design.
The characters drive modern cars and hock modern products, but it’s all presented with a veneer of 1950s wholesome applecheeked Americana. Truman’s life is presented as an escape for the audience from the drudgery of the modern day, and the aesthetic they’ve chosen for this is the post-war economic boom. This is the simple time, the movie says. This is the good time. Doesn’t the modern day suck? Let’s go back and see our friends from the days when life was good.
And it’s a lie. Truman’s life is a lie, and the image of white picket fenced suburbia they’ve presented is a lie. It’s an elaborate construction to recreate a false memory that’s comfortable for advertisers. The movie is a satire, but it’s also a very blatant statement against the nostalgia for a golden age which never existed. It’s a lie. It doesn’t exist.
I don’t know. I’m spitballing. I’m biased because I despise mid-20th century Americana and I naturally treat it with hostility, but it’s 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.
i told my ex about this and they admitted that they didn't know if i was transmasc or transfem until our fourth date and they figured it wasn't their business so they just didn't ask
That's the term for this nonsense that puts all this work on the person who's in need of services. It exists in the way unemployment, food stamps, housing assistance etc other social safety net systems are set up. Fucking sucks on every end.
"The best thing we can do with power is give it away" - On the leftist critique of superhero narratives as authoritarian power fantasies:
The ongoing "Jason Todd is a cop" debate has reminded me of a brilliant brief image essay by Joey deVilla. So here it is, images first and the full essay text below:
"A common leftist critique of superhero comics is that they are inherently anti-collectivist, being about small groups of individuals who hold all the power, and the wisdom to wield that power.
I don’t disagree with this reading. I don’t think it’s inaccurate. Superheroes are their own ruling class, the concept of the übermensch writ large.
But it’s a sterile reading. It examines superhero comics as a cold text, and ignores something that I believe in fundamental, especially to superhero storytelling: the way people engage with text. Not what it says, but how it is read.
The average comic reader doesn’t fantasize about being a civilian in a world of superheroes, they fantasize about being a superhero. One could charitably chalk this up to a lust for power, except for one fact…
The fantasy is almost always the act of helping people. Helping the vulnerable, with no reward promised in return.
Being a century into the genre, we’ve seen countless subversions and deconstructions of the story.
But at its core, the superhero myth is about using the gifts you’ve been given to enrich the people around you, never asking for payment, never advancing an ulterior motive.
We should (and do) spend time nitpicking these fantasies, examining their unintended consequences, their hypocrisies.
But it’s worth acknowledging that the most eduring childhood fantasy of the last hundred years hasn’t been to become rich. Superheroes come from every class (don’t let the MCU fool you).
The most enduring fantasy is to become powerful enough to take the weak under your own wing. To give, without needing to take.
So yes, the superhero myth, as a text, isn’t collectivist. But that’s not why we keep coming back to it.
That’s not why children read it.
We keep coming back to it to learn one simple lesson…
The best thing we can do with power IS GIVE IT AWAY."
- Joey deVilla, 2021
https://www.joeydevilla.com/2021/07/04/happy-independence-day-superhero-style/
Okay someone asked me earlier "Hey CT, you study the occult for a living, off the top of your head, what's the most popular form of the occult in today's world?"
Pseudo-nutrition. Bar none. A massive amount of the fad dieting world goes beyond simple misinformation and ignorance and full on into a systemized non-scientific theory of anatomy and nutrition that 100% qualifies as magic. If you replace the term "toxins" with "evil ghosts" half of these blogs would sound like sumerian curse tablets.
i think the reason why Reflection & mulan as a trans man is impactful to me is the fact that mulan appears as a woman and has the social role of a woman. i love rep of transmascs who are fully transitioned/present masc or male! but ive thought a lot about the erasure & invisibility of transmascs throughout history. the bits of our history we do have tend to be people who had the ability to pass as men, but there were undoubtedly so many trans men&mascs who lived as women, who could not pass well enough to live full-time as a man, who were wives and mothers! and idk i find it really impactful to read Reflection as the pain of a trans man in the closet, or who doesn't even realize that being a man is a Thing they can Do. i love how it touches on the pain of failing to be a woman. i think part of it is how often people want to dissociate trans men from misogyny, or at least control how we are "supposed" to relate to it. again, the mainstream (queer) narrative around transmasc history (and present) is trans men who could/can pass as cis men, who live their lives fully stealth. but there are and always have been many transmascs who live as women, most or all of the time, and who have to struggle with the demands of misogyny to be good daughters/wives/mothers, and the knowledge that to be a trans man would make you such a disgrace and disappointment ("if i were truly to be myself, i would break my family's heart"). i think its important to give a voice to the trans men past and present who live as women and their gendered experiences! i desperately want to give a voice to every trans man throughout time who lived and died in a dress, who had children, who thought they were the only one or who didn't even understand what or why they were.
obviously mulan does crossdress and does pass as a cis man, but specifically "Reflection" to me means a lot because i love how it can be read to be an expression of closeted transmasculinity. with transmascs, the bits of history we do get are constantly scrutinized by everyone; there's an unspoken rule of "cis woman until proven otherwise, why do you want to erase women?" and again! thats just when it comes to "women who crossdress" situations! people are so stingy when it comes to who they will "allow" transmascs to claim, seeing a "feminine cis woman" expressing transmasculinity feels transgressive in a very good way to me. also, i think we need more recognition that there are a lot of feminine women who really wish they were men (because they are), and its important to represent that experience and make it clear that being feminine (while presenting as a woman, or in general) does not mean you can't be a man.
For those who haven't seen it, the extended storyboards for reflection (this is required viewing):
As good as the version that made it into the movie is, this one is even better and even more transmascy.
It's not just about failing femininity, in these lyrics, Mulan says "even if I learn all the rules and fool everyone else, I can't fool myself as to who I really am."
so when watching the storyboarded song it really struck me how personal it seemed with regard to trans experience, and lo and behold! trans writer! This makes me very happy. similar feeling as when I first read about Howard Ashman's work on some of the most famously queercoded films during the "Disney renaissance" (including The Little Mermaid, which has also been interpreted as a trans narrative, although it's not as "overt" as Mulan). I love that it's intentional, that queer people have been putting our own stories into these fairytales. Especially great that it's trans-maleness, being presented in a (relatively) positive light (bc of the whole thing where transformation is only seen as a good thing when you're transforming into the image of ethereal, heterocis-passing femininity- no trans men or transbians here! god forbid you're butch!). And the aspects about forcing yourself to try and be cis are very hard-hitting. a lot of cis people are of the opinion that trans people should just "give up" on transitioning, because "why would you put yourself through all that and not even be sure if you'll pass?", not seeing that it's even harder to deal with being stuck in a life where you can't even be a whole person due to having to repress your very self. I could learn all the rules to fool them but I couldn't fool myself. yeah
what if you were driving to philly and you saw a big billboard that said “im not gettin laid, but youre gettin paid: pennsylvania’s #1 asexual personal injury lawyer”
In light of @staff ‘s recent post, let me remind you of the absolute irony of this piece about censorship of trans identities and bodies getting hit with a mature label
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