#tris-falou

[tris-morreu]

nolan's the odyssey has such a fundamentally culturally christian understanding of religion and divinity that it is genuinely jarring to see characters in a supposedly ancient greek historical context describe divinity and its expression in those terms. characters wonder aloud why gods hide themselves (they didn't), question the existence of what nolan interprets the supernatural to be (they wouldn't) and talk of zeus's law (not real, and still somehow bastardized) in the same way we would talk about the ten commandments. it's so out of place. and it taps into that "defy the gods" thing.

like. we can defy the christian god, in a way, because we can choose to not do what he says we ought to. sure. but we cannot defy greek gods in the same way, because the god is not just an entity that commands you but the very thing you are doing. apollo does not just send plagues, he is plague. you know apollo is real because there is plague. plague is not just apollo acting in the world, it is an instance of apollo, in the same way that insight is athena, love is aphrodite, harvest is demeter, storms are zeus. gods are not just commanding nature and sending signs and acting upon the world; signs and nature and human nature are themselves the gods. the gods cannot be absent, because we still get ideas, and harvest, and go to war, and feel desire, and hunt. the gods cannot be defied because you cannot defy "getting ideas" or "harvesting" or "having sex" or "dying." to attempt to is entirely futile. like you cannot defy poseidon because you cannot defy the sea. you cannot defy aphrodite because you cannot defy love and reproduction. nature and human nature are unbeatable, and so the gods are unbeatable, because they are nature and human nature.

and it's such a beautiful way of looking at the world, and he chooses not to fully communicate that.

[warning to all: firstly, the "defy the gods" thing refers to a tagline used to promote the film. that is extratextual and i should have clarified and taken that into account. after further consideration, i would say that the film is more aligned with the concept here described than i gave it credit for, and the "defy the gods thing" is a separate issue (not the film, but how it was promoted and under what cultural context). secondly, i know about hybris. that's precisely what i'm referring to. the word "can" has many cool meanings; it indicates ability, possibility and permission. when i say "you can't run in the halls" am i indicating ability, possibility or permission? guess. you can't defy greek gods because the natural order reasserts itself and puts you back in your place. you can defy the christian god because he gives you free will to do as you please, even if it displeases him (and later results in a punishment in the afterlife). i am not a scholar, however, and this should be taken with skepticism. do not simply believe me. also stop dragging the movie in my notes. i like it fine and have since softened my language]

[tris-morreu]

"the imaginary or hypothetical harm that we believe a black person to be capable of enacting will always be less socially acceptable than the harm we know for a fact white people materially cause" the movie.

[tris-morreu]

something really cool about the drama also is that while we, as an audience, have access to emma's interiority, memories and anxieties, charlie does not. emma never has to articulate to us why she considered going through with her plan and why she ultimately chose not to. we can see exactly how she reacted to being confronted with the consequences of the kind of harm she wanted to inflict on others and the steps she took to prevent herself and others from enacting that harm. i don't think she would've been unable to explain it, but i find it crucial that we see it instead of hear it, because it dispells any indication that she is not genuine, and it impresses on us what her motivations were and what factors dissuaded her. charlie, however, does not have access to her memories and interiority the same way we do and would have to investigate and interpret her framing and narrative of that moment.

and, because charlie's portrayed as being functionally emotionally illiterate, the gaps emma leaves are filled with his own assumptions and bad faith, oversimplified interpretations of her actions. he can't, but also won't, do the interpretive work that emma cannot do for him.

[tris-morreu]

the final scene in the drama, when charlie "lies" to emma about his broken nose is actually deeply indicative of his character. he will not admit to things he did—he cheated on her and had no plans of telling her and humiliated her on a public capacity on her wedding day. the whole movie, he expects her to explain, justify and account for events that did not actually take place, while he cannot even bring himself to admit to what she knows he has done, and he barely takes any steps towards addressing the shit he actually did.

[tris-morreu]

the interpretation and ensuing argument over whether charlie did, or did not actually cyberbully a kid as a teenager is really interesting, but i find that a lot of people ultimately miss the point of what that interpretation, or competing interpretations, are meant to do. we need not discard one over the other, but rather see what meanings and conclusions they present us with, and which we find more compelling or productive for analysis.

if charlie is not lying about having cyberbullied someone, it makes sense that he cannot place himself inside of emma's situation at highschool and it explains why and how he downplays the severity of her hostile high-school experience. it's why he feels he needs to lie and make up excuses for her behaviour, because he does not view mild (or even severe) social ostracization as a serious enough issue to warrant a desire for this kind of violent retaliation. those of us who have been in these situations, however, can quickly infer why emma fantasizes about causing those people what she believes is the same amount of pain she endured. it's a testament to his emotional illiteracy and his position of relative privilege over emma—he occupied a position against which she meant to cause harm, and cannot empathise with her position.

if charlie is lying about having cyberbullied a kid, however, then that is part of a habit. he lied about reading emma's book, he lied about the mug, he lied to mike and rachel about emma's motivations and background, he lied to emma about misha, he lied (though ironically) at the diner about his injuries and, most importantly, he lied about the worst thing he's ever done—which is, in actuality, crucially, what we have seen him do.

and that is the crux of this conversation. whether or not he's telling the truth about having literally cyberbullied another kid at fourteen is relatively irrelevant in relation to the fact that this is not the worst thing he's done. we are, for the duration of the movie, following charlie's worst moment. we know the worst thing he's done, we know what he acts like under pressure, we know where his points of moral failure are and so does emma. and she chooses to allow him to present himself as he wants to be seen, and chooses to include both versions of him (the charlie he wants to be and the charlie he is) in her interpretation of him, as he should have allowed her. so it's upsetting to me that people cannot see the value in either interpretation, when both fit into the themes of the movie and would have told us different, but equally true things, about charlie's character and how we are meant to take him.

[tris-morreu]

the dj is so important, too, actually because if i remember well, charlie is the one who initially has a much less charitable interpretation of her actions, while emma just wants to address them. it's only when other people react poorly, only when other people partake in the social ritual of shaming, that emma's stance on the issue hardens. previous to that, they wouldn't have even known or had any reason to suspect her, as the dj showed no indication of any kind of dangerous or harmful behaviour and seemed to be a competent enough professional.

but what's interesting is that it is emma, who has been morally and ethically re-evaluated based on her worst moment throughout the movie, that develops a harder stance on this, because she seems frustrated not just by the things people do, but also by the fact that they refuse to address them. she gets agitated with charlie, prior to this, not just because he threw away his mug but because he lied about it. and she gets frustrated with the dj not just because she's a drug user (which is meaningful by itself) but because she refuses to admit to it. emma's also obviously stressed out and reacts in a way i don't know she would've had, in a different situation.

charlie, though, seems to misinterpret emma's reaction in that moment as an indictment of herself. if the dj has to be shamed and shunned and sent away despite her complexity and competency, then so does emma. but he crucially misunderstands what, to emma, is a very obvious distinction.

[tris-morreu]

i've said this, but i think it bears repeating that much of the discourse surrounding supergirl feels like the reheated seven year old leftovers from captain marvel. the level of vitriol directed at this movie, and the utter joy at its underperformance indicates, to me, that we are not as interested in discussing its artistic merits as much as we are invested in discussing symbols far removed from the content they supposedly symbolize.

gamergate did irreparable damage to geek/nerd culture and it will take decades to undo it. this movie is average and absolutely fine, a little clumsy and disjointed at its absolute worst, and yet we're having to discuss whether the dcu is "over before it starts" because thirty-year-old men have so closely tied their identity to media for kids that they decided that any attempt to include women in a protagonistic capacity constitutes an attack on them. marvel had its hiccups and duds in its early stages, and this meant very little about the capacity of men to lead franchises, but it is our obligation to tie every movie made about any minority ever and its success to the ability of that community to make compelling and interesting art. like what are we doing here

[tris-morreu]

people talk a lot about "fandom brain" but i think very few cases exemplify it as well as the phm fandom wholesale transplanting a character from another piece of media into their media of choice so that they'd have someone with whom to ship a character whose defining feature is his lack of (romantic and familial) connections to the point where it's brought up and held against him to his detriment. and i can hear you saying "let people enjoy things" and my answer to that is let me enjoy hating on shit.