Framing jewish people as colonizers who should "go back to [unspecified location]" by North Americans in particular always gets me because, even if you do believe that to be the case, it is such a glaring double standard.
It's more than a double standard. It's more than hypocrisy.
It's an attempt by leftist Americans to deal with their uncomfortable feelings of postcolonial guilt.
Let Yad Vashem explain:
It's scapegoating.
It's how they struggle to cope with their own feelings of guilt.
Remember, they're not moved by facts or reasoning, they're only moved by emotional resonance.
The search for an authentic precolonial Filipino rests on the wrong premise. It turns history into a purity test. It asks anthropology and a
A few days ago, my friend and colleague Karminn Daytec Yañgot shared a post about a problem that many of us in Indigenous studies, anthropology, archaeology, history, and heritage work keep running into. Some of our colleagues, she noted, remain preoccupied with the idea that decolonization means locating an authentic Indigenous self in a precolonial past, as if Indigenous peoples are unchanging, as if history happened everywhere else but somehow stopped at the edge of Indigenous worlds.
That habit runs deep in Philippine public discourse. It appears whenever people ask what is truly Filipino, purely native, or really precolonial. It appears in arguments about food, ritual, architecture, and language. It also appears in national histories that search for one interior cultural voice that can stand in for the whole archipelago, as if the many peoples of these islands once shared one worldview, one cultural core, one story.
That story offers coherence and a way around colonial injury by searching for a self supposedly untouched by it. But it gives us bad history, and anthropology helped make that history possible. For a long time, the discipline treated Indigenous peoples as if they belonged to another time, as survivals, remnants, or windows into an earlier stage of human life. The “native” became someone to document before disappearance, someone valued for distance from modernity. In that frame, change meant loss, and engagement with markets, states, schools, or Christianity signaled corruption. The more a community appeared untouched, the more useful it became to anthropology’s archive.
Orientalism turns “the East” into exotic, sensual, mysterious instead of specific, real, lived cultures.
So instead of representation, you get “vibes.”
And those vibes are almost always sexy, dangerous and other.
And it matters because Talia is supposed to be a politically aware strategist, controlled and powerful but visually she’s framed as seductive, exotic, not a person but a fantasy.
They want her to be intelligent and dangerous, but they present her through a stereotype.
That contradiction happens constantly with Arab characters.
Also I’m crying because Batman recognizes her through lines like:
“her movements… unmistakably graceful…”
Sir. She is dressed like a walking stereotype 😭
And this isn’t just about Talia either.
Arab characters in media repeatedly get reduced to assassin, terrorist, or exotic figures. This is done over and over again.
Media scholar Jack Shaheen talked about how Arabs in Western media are often reduced to variations of the “bomber, belly dancer, or billionaire” stereotype.
And the wild part is… the Al Ghuls basically hit all three.
billionaire -> global elite, controlling resources
bomber → League of Assassins / terrorism-coded violence
belly dancer → Talia dressed like… this
So even when you think you’re getting a “complex” Arab character, they’re often still built from the same stereotypes.
Arab identity is not a costume. It’s cultural, historical, regional, linguistic, and deeply diverse. And it absolutely does not look like a belly dancer outfit from a 70s comic.
You can write Talia as powerful without turning her into an Orientalist fantasy. We deserve Arab characters who feel like actual people.
And even the dialogue reinforces the framing:
“serving girl”
“fluid as quicksilver… unmistakably graceful”
Even the narration objectifies her.
Her body = visual spectacle
Her movement = sensual performance
Her identity = secondary to fantasy
“If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heavens. No more damned magic. You hate me and I hate you. We’ll see who hates best. But first, first I will destroy your hatred. Now. My hate is colder, stronger, and you’ll have no hate to warm yourself. You will have nothing.”
“Our Hunger Was Different”: Queer Cannibals, Veganism, Feminism and Ravenous (1999).
Trigger warnings: discussions of SA and rape, violence against women, cannibalism, and colonialism
Antonia Bird’s 1999 Western cannibal comedy-horror, Ravenous, is extremely gay. Robert Carlyle (F. W. Colqhoun/Colonel Ives) doesn’t shy away from the homoeroticism of his character’s cannibalistic desire, explaining in an interview that “[Ives] doesn’t just want to eat Guy Pearce, he’s going to have Guy Pearce at the same time”, and the scene in which Ives sniffs at the blood coating his fingers before putting them in his mouth, all the while making eye contact with Captain Boyd (Guy Pearce), is nothing short of pornographic. But Ravenous’ queerness is not limited to representing the transgression of homoerotic desire in a heteronormative culture through the cannibal; Ravenous destabilises the very binary upon which Western heteronormative culture depends on, embracing the queer “open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances” (Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tendencies).
Om Nom (hetero)Norm:
The cannibal has, for a long time, occupied the cultural imagination as the embodied cultural ‘Other’; from the cannibalistic cyclops, Polyphemus, and Achilles’ cannibalistic divine rage in the Iliad in antiquity, to colonial mythologies legitimising the ‘moralising’ Empire, to NBC’s Hannibal and the homoeroticism of the “murder husbands”, Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter. The cannibal provides Western culture with a monster to define itself in opposition to; everything the cannibal is – monstrous, ‘savage’ , queer – the American or Western ‘Self’ is decidedly not. The cannibal in Ravenous is defined in relation to the Wendigo of Algonquian folklore, emphasising the racialisation of the ‘Other’. Although Edward Said conceptualises the West’s relationship to the East, the Eastern ‘Other’ as “a sort of surrogate and even underground self” (Said, Orientalism) offers a parallel to the American settler’s relation to the indigenous populations. The American ‘Self’ must locate the cannibal outside of its own culture to define itself in opposition; in Ravenous, the white settlers turn to the culture of the two Native Americans at Fort Spencer to source the monster, racialising the cannibal as the Wendigo. Yet even as George (Joseph Runningfox), one of two Native Americans at Fort Spencer, draws attention to the Wendigo as the monstrous ‘Other’, he begins to disturb the separation of the ‘Self’ from the ‘Other’, observing that “White man eats the body of Jesus Christ every Sunday”. The racialised ‘Other’ becomes “surrogate and even underground self” (Said, Orientalism) for the displacement of everything the American ‘Self’ seeks to distance itself from, highlighting the whiteness at the centre of this identity; everything it is not includes a notion of racialising, thus defining whiteness as an absence of race. Race becomes a further binary in addition to the ‘Self’ against the ‘Other’ as whiteness is conceptualised as the absence of race in opposition to the racialised body. Whiteness, in other words, becomes the norm, another binary assumed by heteronormativity. Ravenous, however, commits itself to the disrupting of such binaries. Just as George calls attention to the naturalised cannibalism of white Christian culture, Colqhoun/Ives’ character further embodies the collapsing of the white ‘Self’ as antithetical to the racialised ‘Other’. As Wendigo, Colqhoun/Ives embodies the cultural ‘Other’, but also brings the racialised Wendigo ‘Other’ into direct contact with the self through his white body. This contact is furthered in the construction of the cannibal as a metaphorical representation of Manifest Destiny, of Westward expansion and settlement, and the capitalism at the heart of the American identity. As the Eucharist is made a naturalised cannibalism, the functions of a capitalist American culture are likewise represented as processes of naturalised yet transgressive consumption.
Cannibalism and veganism probably don’t come to mind as a likely pairing, but Ravenous makes a good case for cannibalism as vegan propaganda – veganism being used here as antithetical to carnism. Boyd is emasculated as he seeks to distance himself from the consumption of meat. The opening scene cuts to the title screen after Boyd vomits after being faced with a plate of meat at a military victory dinner. Where Colonel Ives embodies an exemplary American masculinity, Boyd is repeatedly characterised as a coward despite his promotion to captain after making it behind enemy lines; “You’re no hero, Boyd,” General Slauson (John Spencer) chastises, “I want you as far from my company as possible”. Boyd’s revulsion towards meat is quickly replaced by his resistance to Ives, and his cannibalistic hunger: “It’s not courage to resist me, Boyd. It’s courage to accept me”. As meat and the human body become synonymous, Ravenous exposes the fallacy of carnism; the distinction made between the bodies of animals and the bodies of humans, the differentiation between the normalised consumption of animal meat and the taboo of cannibalism, begins to break down. In Ravenous, meat is just meat, and the consumption of meat is made power: “A man eats the flesh of another, he steals his strength. He absorbs the other man’s spirit”. Boyd’s veganism underlines his distance from the heteronormative construct of masculinity predicated on power and the domination of ‘Other’ bodies. Boyd, therefore, acts as a mirror to Ives, being made ‘Other’ to the masculine ‘Self’ that Ives embodies, but again like Ives, finding identification with the American ‘Self’ in his resistance to cannibalism. Questioning Boyd on his resistance to his cannibalistic hunger, Ives mocks the sense of morality cited by Boyd, and equates the morality identified with the ‘Self’ to the cowardice distancing Boyd from this ‘Self’: “Ah, morality. The last bastion of a coward”.
Boyd and Ives are able to queer the ‘Self’ in destabilising the binary that holds the ‘Other’ as ideologically oppositional. Heteronormative culture is dependent on the organisation of bodies, producing fixed and infallible categories in discourse on gender and sexuality, but to be queer is to disrupt such a narrative. To be queer, as Kosofsky Sedgwick writes, is to resist being made “to signify monolithically” (Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tendencies), to challenge the notion that the categories designed to impose order upon bodies are not fixed, nor rigid. In disrupting the notion of the ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ as two wholly distinct and contradictory categories of being, Boyd and Ives’ characters challenge the very organisation of Western culture that enables the production of heteronormativity.
You Are Who You Eat:
The familial unit acts as a microcosmic representation of heteronormativity, and so this too takes a queer form in Ravenous. The family of cannibals at Fort Spencer – Ives, Boyd, and Colonel Hart (Jeffrey Jones) – obscure the differentiation between the chosen family and the blood family. Ives chooses both Hart and Boyd to be “[brought] into the fold” , into his family, yet these bonds are forged in blood as they are faced with the choice to eat or to die.
It would be easy to suggest the queerness of the family at Fort Spencer lay in its androcentric organisation, and to an extent much of its queerness is in its displacement of women. The one woman at Fort Spencer, Martha (Sheila Tousey), is literally displaced from the screen in an exit both recalling and rejecting the trope of the final girl, appearing blood-soaked in the window before walking away, rejecting any involvement in the cycles of violence at Fort Spencer. But Martha is also displaced from the family emerging here. Where the heteronormative family and its (re)production is predicated on the feminine body, Ives never seems to even consider Martha as a candidate for his construction of family. The entire system of (re)producing the cannibal displaces the need for the feminine body entirely as the act of cannibalism – in Ravenous, Ives offering the ultimatum to “either famine or feast. Live or die” – brings bodies into the familial unit. But this displacement of women and feminine bodies seems to, almost paradoxically, provides a feminist critique of the heteronormative family. Ives is very conscious that the unit he is creating at Fort Spencer resembles that of the family, satirising it, even: “We won’t kill indiscriminately […] Good God… we don’t want to break up families. Of course, we’ve no wish to recruit everyone. We’ve enough mouths to feed as it is. We just need a home”. The family created by Ives seems to be wholly distinct from that of heteronormativity, but Ives’ domestic language betrays a closeness to the nuclear family. Ives, instead, creates the family at its most extreme, exposing the naturalised systems of violence predicated by the heteronormative family.
Heteronormativity necessitates, and is simultaneously necessitated by, patriarchy, with heterosexuality acting as “the traffic of women […] the use of women as exchangeable, perhaps symbolic, property for the primary purpose of cementing the bonds of men with men” (Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire). This “traffic of women” is reduced, in Ravenous, to its most simple: the traffic of bodies as meat. The bodies of women, exchanged as objects between father and husband, become the bodies consumed by Hart and Boyd, the bodies given by Ives. It’s hard to not see the undertones of sexual violence in Ives’ feeding of Hart and Boyd; the mouth, already an eroticised space, is penetrated whilst neither of the men can fully consent, with Hart waking up to Ives feeding him, and Boyd being coerced. With marital rape only being criminalised in the UK in 1991 and nationwide across the USA in 1993, within the decade of Ravenous’ production and release, the processes of naturalisation and institutionalisation of sexual violence within the family and its (re)production would not have been absent from Western collective consciousness. Ravenous produces a satire of the heteronormative family within which “the traffic of women” , the exchange of feminine bodies as commerce between men, becomes the traffic of bodies as meat, and the sexualised violence that reproduction necessitates, the symbolic rape of Hart and Boyd to generate the cannibal. The (re)production of family in Ravenous repeats the same processes of violence against women upon masculine bodies, violence extremified in the cannibal, highlighting the naturalisation of this gendered violence in heteronormative culture. Ravenous takes the patriarchal organisation, turns it on its head, and forces its audience to confront the horror of the violence against women stripped of its guise of normalcy produced by the familial institution.
To be queer is to disturb, and perhaps this is why, as queer audiences, we are so drawn to horror as a genre. Horror seeks to disturb through its destabilising of the culture it is produced within; in the West, to disturb binary constructions of gender and of the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’, and the institutions which produce and sustain such a cultural organisation. The cannibal in Ravenous is queer in a way that extends far beyond sexuality; the horror of the cannibal is located in its destabilising power, in its position as a figure in direct opposition to heteronormativity. The cannibal simultaneously embodies the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’, participating in mechanisms constituting the ‘Self’ of Western culture – violent masculinity, consumption of meat, the trading of bodies, domination of landscapes and bodies – yet at the same time representing the ‘Otherness’ that such culture insists on its distinction from. Ravenous embraces queerness as a radical political worldview, one that imagines restructured culture beyond the heteronorm and the institutions it both necessitates and depends upon. The quote from Nietzsche suggests that “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he does not become a monster” (emphasis added), but Ravenous suggests that the monster was perhaps the ‘Self’ all along.
Sources:
Ravenous (1999), dir. Antonia Bird
Edward Said, Orientalism (1978)
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985)
inspired by: lootera, a suitable boy, call me by your name, maurice, brideshead revisited
kabhī ham ḳhūb-sūrat the
kitāboñ meñ basī
ḳhushbū kī sūrat
saañs sākin thī
bahut se an-kahe lafzoñ se
tasvīreñ banāte the
parindoñ ke paroñ par nazm likh kar
duur kī jhīloñ meñ basne vaale
logoñ ko sunāte the
jo ham se duur the
lekin hamāre paas rahte the
once, we too were beautiful.
like the fragrance
living inside books,
our breath was still.
with so many unspoken words,
we used to draw pictures.
write poems
on the wings of birds,
we would send them
to the people who lived
by distant lakes—
those who were far from us,
and seemed so close
--- a/n: get excited! coming soon :3 apologies for any unwanted tags in the comments
The 1980s and 90s were among the most fascinating yet subversive periods for Neopaganism at large. While the 1950s through the 70s were characterized by relative optimism and the construction of an inclusive "pagan universalism," the subsequent decades brought pivotal fractures.
On one hand, we saw a surge in eclecticism, where Wicca became a "universal blueprint" for all witchcraft. Occult motifs flooded pop culture; alongside fantasy and gothic music, Triple Goddess symbols, tarot, and crystals became mainstream. For many, it was turning into an aesthetic rather than a countercultural movement.
On the other hand, in opposition to this dilution, reconstructionist movements began to gain momentum. This was a turn toward seeking the spirit of "Ancient Europe," driven by a disillusionment with progressing modernism and a longing to draw strength directly from distant ancestors. For many, it was a "return to earth" after decades of psychedelic trips—a search for solid, historical ground beneath their feet.
Countless essays have been written on these subjects, but I see something that often escapes those searching for "their own path." It seems to me that in Western Europe and the U.S., the specific experience of Young Europe (specifically the Slavic, Baltic countries, Finland etc.) is almost entirely overlooked.
I don’t know if anyone will find this blog, but as long as I am here, I intend to record my thoughts—the history of witchcraft, cultural analyses, my own para-pagan theories et cetera. May they serve as inspiration for those who also feel suspended between worlds.
A Deep Dive into the Art of The Next Prince Episode Seven~ Colonialism and Social-Gender Non-Conformity
I have spent my free time today researching and considering these two paintings that had their own shots in The Next Prince episode 7.
The first is The Triumphal Entry of Henry IV into Paris by Ruebens. This painting is shown above the sofa in Khanin's sitting room.
This 1627 painting depicts Henry IV returning to Paris as king, which ended years of warring between Catholics and Protestants. Henry IV was raised Protestant, but converted to Catholicism in order to become king and end religious violence. However, after he was assassinated by a catholic citizen just over 15 years later, violence between the Catholics and Protestants began again.
This painting is set in Paris, but shows the influence of the much older colonizers, the Roman Empire. The pillar-ed building in the background, the golden chariot, and the manner of dress all harken back to a time and culture viewed through rosy retrospection--the idea that the past was more positive than it actually was in reality.
Many scenes have taken place under this piece of art, and many more to come, I'm sure. What messaging can we glean from one prince, Khanin, sitting under a depiction of another royal returning to power ?
Firstly, Henry IV had to give up his childhood convictions in order make it there-- something that is also being asked of Khanin, even if it's not as clear-cut as converting from one religion to another. Khanin doesn't care about the class structure which is so integral to Emmalian life. He wants to interact with everyone as equals, he wants to have fun, and he wants to love who he loves. In order to gain power, he is already being asked to give all that up--and he may be faced with the idea of breaking apart a long standing tradition that "stabalizes the empire" if he doesn't offer himself up for power and control remaining in his bloodline. The question is--will he? Would it even be worth it, considering that Henry IV's sacrifice of foundational values was meaningless once he died and religious violence began despite his efforts to appease both sides during his life.
I also find this painting important when considering the theme of colonialism in this series. Henry IV's rise to power is portrayed as an extension of Roman rule over Europe--showing how Rome still influenced the power structures of the 1600s. By showing this painting so prominently in the series, I believe there is also a statement being made about how European influences are still very present in modern Emmalian (and therefore Southeast asia, where this fantasy land is located) life and rule. If Khanin is triumphant in winning the "war" and bringing himself and his family into further power, he will be continuing the traditions directly influenced by European invasion and rule.
The second painting is The Horse Fair by Rosa Bonhuer. This painting is above Khanin's bed.
in this painting was completed in 1855 and depicts horses being sold on a street in Paris. In the background, the asylum of Salpêtrière--a place for insane or impoverished women--can be seen. The artist stated the depiction was inspired by the sculptures of ancient Greek artists.
Earlier in her painting career, Bonhuer went to study drawing animals at a slaughterhouse, as was the practice at the time. She experienced such harrassment at this time that she applied for special permission from the police to dress as a man when she visited this street for a year and a half while making this painting--and quickly adapted to wearing pants during other pursuits as well.
Because of Bonhuer's experiences while making this painting, the depiction of these creatures be controlled is strongly tied to ideas about bodies acting and interacting in ways society seems unfit, how people in those bodies evade harrassment, and the looming threat of what may happen to your body if you go too far out of line.
However, even with the simmering threat of your body being controlled there is such vibrant life in this painting. The horses, though being sold, tower over the men holding them. And Bonhuer, who lived in a time when women commonly had no money or property, was able to be financially independent through her art.
The very creation of this painting is proof that you can succeed when going against cultural and gender norms. This speaks of hope in Charan, Khanin, Ava, and Ramil (and associates) succeeding when going against cultural norms--in gender roles concerning romance and leadership, hopefully (wink wink, somehow make Ava queen).
While I still think the use of a second french-associated painting that uses influences of older colonizer cultures points largly to the presence of colonization in The Next Prince/Emmaly/Southeast Asia, it's interesting to still be able to find links to other themes and character emotions.
But maybe I'm just reading too much into it. Maybe it's as simple as horse paintings-->Charan kept in horse stables--> shirtless Charan likes horses/horse stables.
Although, there was also this picture of a military official on a horse featured behind Ramil.
And while it is not a specifically known painting, it is a painting that was produced through a 19th century Spanish art trend, where soldiers on horseback were commonly depicted to exude military strength and leadership--as well as the general importance of the military in historic events. While I doubt they will deploy military force in this series, I feel the inclusion of this painting simply depicts further the violent and twisted influence of colonization in this culture.
