Where There’s a Will, There’s a War || M*A*S*H 10x17
Original Airdate: February 22, 1982
written by David Pollock, Elias Davis
story editing by Karen Hall
directed by Alan Alda
Thinking about the Hadestown proshot and Orpheus being introduced wiping down a table with his back to the audience. Hermes has to call out to him again to get him to take his opening bow, and for the show to start, Orpheus has to turn around.
"Learn the fundamentals first" seems like really sound universal advice, and as a former classical musician, I can vouch for it. You will have a more solid foundation for increasing complexity if you put in the time to study in a structured way. If you don't, you'll have a lot of shit to fix later.
As a former music teacher, I can also say that "learn the fundamentals first" is the death knell for a vast percentage of beginners, especially adult learners.
I've run into this with drawing several times, where some well-meaning artist has lectured me on needing to study anatomy properly or not use shortcuts like CSP brushes. And oh, believe me, I know. I know exactly how to learn an artistic discipline in a structured way. I just...don't want to!
The thing is, I'm not aiming to be a professional artist. I want to draw my gay little anime guys. I would undoubtedly improve at art much faster if I approached every gay little anime guy drawing as a study exercise. But I would also have quit drawing a decade ago if I couldn't just let myself enjoy drawing imperfect fucked-up little guys with whatever shortcuts I needed to body myself across the finish line.
With my adult piano students, my approach was always "What's your goal?" If their goal was to learn exactly one Elton John songbook to play at parties, then...that's what we did. We'd put tape on the keys to label the notes, and just fuckin go for it. Learning exactly one Elton John songbook is a good and noble musical goal, full stop.
Some of my students needed and enjoyed a more structured approach to learning; if they wanted to be able to play classical music, then yes, scales were going to have to enter the equation at some point. And yet others would learn the Elton John songbook, catch their white whale, and realize they wanted to explore more of the ocean. The scales were still there for them to learn!
Often the choice isn't between "learn art well" and "learn art imperfectly" - the choice is between "learn art imperfectly" and "don't do art at all." To which I say, learn imperfectly! Or, what the hell, don't 'learn' art. Just do, and enjoy the doing of it.
You have official permission from your local pretentious classical music snob: fuck the fundamentals. You can always unfuck them later (but only if you want to).
Dude I would have SO much preferred having these designs rather than the two white guys they found at Starbucks. Like yeah they're still a bit uncanny because it's CGI but it's definitely better, AND PLEAKLEY ACTUALLY ATE WITH THAT DRESS IN THE CONCEPT ART????
Thinking about Lilo & Stitch makes me really appreciate certain things about the original + the series. Almost every single named [human] character in the movie isn’t white: the only exception being Mertle, y’know, the bratty little girl we’re not supposed to like.
Besides all of the racial representation, Lilo herself is very much a neurodivergent icon, and her portrayal as the protagonist is amazing considering how characters like her are typically either sidelined or depicted in ways to make them less sympathetic/human (modern media does at least a slightly better job at adressing that kind of thing tho).
So all of that is great, but to anyone that hasn’t seen Lilo & Stitch: The Series, it also does some extremely refreshing stuff.
Pleakley gets tons of validation to dress in drag, everyone always referring to Pleakley as “she” when dressed up as “aunt Pleakley.” There’s even an episode that tackles Pleakley dealing with the pressures of his family that wants him to marry a girl and settle down to have a “normal life.” After the episode's shenanigans, there's a realistic depiction of the misunderstanding of a heteronormative/traditional parent with their non-traditional child: Pleakley's mom says that she just wants her children to be happy, but when Pleakley says that he is happy, she thinks he's only trying to console her as she insists, "How can you be happy? You aren't even married." But Pleakley finally gets it through to his mom when he says, "I don't want to be married, mother! I'm happy just as I am."
After getting to meet all of Pleakley's ohana throughout the episode and hearing from Pleakley himself -after all of the previous misunderstandings- that he really, truly, is happy, she's finally starting to understand.
Even though his mom comments as they leave that she wants him to “try wearing men’s clothes more often,” she still does walk away accepting that she simply doesn’t understand her son's way of thinking. It’ll definitely be hard for her since she’s so much more “traditional,” but she’s finally coming to grips with the fact that her son is who he is, and likes being that way, so she’ll love him regardless. She's trying her best.
The portrayal of people with physical disabilities is also great. It’s not because there’s one recurring character with some condition, but almost because there are non-recurring characters. It isn’t in every episode, but here’s an example: they want to show someone at the park playing fetch with their dog for just one shot. They could very easily have it be any a random person, but they decided to make it a lady in a wheelchair. There's another episode where Nani's friends from highschool show up and one has forearm crutches, but not just because she had some recent accident. No one in the episode questions her condition or feels the need to point it out, the only comment on it being that the friend will use the crutches to lightly bonk the others' arms, and Nani jokes, "You are still deadly with that thing."
The fact that they include characters with disabilities when they "don't have to" makes it that much more normal. These people aren't some special case or the main highlight of the episode, they're just another person. They're normal.
There's so much that all of the original Lilo & Stitch media did right, but now the name will forever be tainted with the association of the remake, which I'm sure will have absolutely none of the tasteful writing and ideas of anything prior to it.
Creatives have always fought to have representation in their projects. Even under a company like Disney, if the team has something they want to show, they'll find their way around whatever the suits and sales execs forbid (especially for non-theatrical releases/media, where they might be able to get away with a bit more).
It got me thinking about an episode of Lilo & Stitch: The Series! that I've mentioned before, the one about Pleakley's family wanting him to settle down with a wife. I thought about this episode specifically because Jumba and Pleakley may have been shipped by the writers through bits and jokes and one-offs throughout the show, but in this episode they really tried to do the most official, "We ship these characters," as they possibly could without actually getting in trouble with the higher-ups.
Here's the setup for the episode if you're unfamiliar:
Pleakley's mother wanted him to finally marry a girl, or else she would find a girl for him back on his home planet. Pleakley ends up lying to get out of the arrangement, saying that he already has a woman he's engaged to on Earth. Just a minute later, when he answers the door, he realizes he's only made the situation worse: his family's there on the doorstep, saying they immediately "hopped a wormhole" to be there before his supposed wedding day.
He begins to stack lies on top of lies and claims that Nani is his bride-to-be. Nani is only convinced to go along with it after being reminded that, if Pleakley left, the only remaining adult to supervise Lilo would be Jumba.
Both Pleakley and Nani don't enjoy the charade they have to put up with for the next few days. Nani begrudgingly plays her part up until the actual wedding day, where she finds out that a real ordained minister was hired, meaning she would be legally married to Pleakley, which is where she draws the line. Nani refuses to be a part of the lie any longer and leaves just before the ceremony begins.
Here's where the Pleakley/Jumba stuff begins (and where the creative team had to start tiptoeing around what would force a rewrite from the execs):
Lilo convinces Jumba off-screen to take Nani's place. This way there's no need to write any kind of "ew no I don't want to" joke or have Lilo bribe him or something of the sort to get Jumba to do it. We don't see or hear Jumba's thoughts when he would supposedly be told that he is legally marrying Pleakley. This way the writers are neither confirming nor denying anything about Jumba being interested in Pleakley or not.
During the ceremony, Jumba doesn't seem put off by it all. There's no gag that he thinks it's gross to be married to Pleakley, or is "only doing it" because Lilo said he has to, or that he wants to be the groom instead of the bride, or anything like that. When asked for his name, he does claim to be "Jumbina," but that's most likely because Pleakley's family specifically wanted him to marry a girl (and are a very heteronormative bunch; if Jumba walked down the isle as a second groom, they would've been just as upset as if they found out Pleakley wasn't actually engaged). Regardless, I'd say Pleakley looks content-enough that Jumba's the one walking down the isle instead of Nani.
When the minister then asks for the vows, the audience is only given a single line from Pleakley: "Dearest, the day we met, I couldn't take my eye off you." As he says this, the genetic experiment of the episode -who happens to be a lie detector experiment- starts beeping loudly, meaning that was a lie. Which actually makes total sense. That was a lie. If you go back to the day they met, Pleakley was being brought to Jumba's prison cell, where Pleakley was told he'd be shipped off to catch a deadly experiment with this criminally-convicted mad-scientist he just met. These two were absolutely not a case of "love at first sight." I mean, when Pleakley first saw him, Jumba was crazily ripping up and stuffing newspaper into his mouth.
And that's the ONLY vow that we get to hear either of them say at the wedding. The writers explicitly made the ONLY vow a false one so the lie detector could buzz at it. Jumba and Pleakley don't say anything about how much they might actually love each other, because then the writers would be forced to make it a lie so they wouldn't get in trouble for suggesting that the two male characters have feelings for each other. If it was all just part of the joke, it would be super easy for the characters to say how much they "really love one another" and then have the lie detector go off in the background. The writers can't have vows that would imply that these characters are gay, so they instead made the characters not say vows that would imply that they aren't gay.
Now, if you know anything about how the legality of marriage actually works, you know that most fiction gets it wrong: you don't stop someone from being married by interrupting their "I do"s, cutting the minister off before they say "I now pronounce you," stopping the kiss, taking the rings, or anything like that. You are finally "legally married" when you sign the marriage certificate and legal paperwork, which can be during, after, or even before the actual wedding.
So, while the ceremony gets crashed just before the end of it by Gantu trying to grab the genetic experiment, that doesn't actually stop the marriage proceedings unless the signings are postponed. Also, let's appreciate how Pleakley immediately hops into Jumba's arms at the sight of danger, and how Jumba accepts it.
After the ceremony is wrecked and Pleakley explains all of his lies to his family -and they apologize for being hard on him and not understanding- the minister stands up from under the rubble to ask who's paying for the officiation as he holds up some papers, supposedly the legal documents for the marriage. But no one actually responds. The scene ends with a look of newfound-understanding between Pleakley and his mother about their conversation from just a moment ago.
There's no further comment towards the minister about how they don't actually need marriage papers or that the marriage itself is being called off. No one says anything about it in the wrap-up scene just afterwards where Pleakley's family leaves. There's no, "Man, I'm glad I didn't actually have to marry Pleakley," from Jumba or some kind of, "I'm glad that's over," from Pleakley.
From all we know, Pleakley and Jumba did sign those papers for the minister to file with the state of Hawaii.
And this is the best the writers could do. They weren't allowed to canonize/confirm anything, even if they wanted to. They have to try making it as canon as possible by explicitly not stating certain things that would delegitimize it. It becomes a whole assignment to carefully slip past the people holding their paychecks.
As the industry and world have shifted a bit, different kinds of representation have become at least somewhat easier to include than these ever-so-meticulously-crafted inclusions from the past. But, when the people in power have doubts on what might make/lose money, they immediately look to topics like these that polarize extremist audiences. Taking any kind of positive/accepting stance on representation is the first thing they neutralize. So, even when the inclusion has to be as convoluted as this, I still personally see and appreciate everything that the creative teams do.
My friend, are you in for a treat! The lake sturgeon, which is the sturgeon found in the Great Lakes, can grow to be two meters long and weigh 90 kilograms! It is the biggest fish found in the Great Lakes!!
But, see, the lake sturgeon isn’t the biggest sturgeon species. That would be the beluga sturgeon, which regularly grew to be four to six meters long before overfishing took a toll on their populations. Belugas are a lot younger on average nowadays — these fish can live to be over 100 years old — and seldom exceed three meters, but I mean, even that isn’t anything to scoff at. The very biggest beluga sturgeon ever caught was a jawdropping 7.2 meters long, and weighed 1 571 kilograms!! Other beluga sturgeons of such sizes have been caught too, and some unverified sources say that there has even been belugas that exceed 10 meters! They are the biggest freshwater fish in the world, and are up there among the biggest bony fishes in the world. That’s so big, it’s hard to even grasp or imagine. Seeing pictures of sturgeons puts it in a better perspective, I think. Here is a 800 kilogram sturgeon, a bit more than half of what the biggest sturgeon weighed:
Like, look at that. You see this?? That’s so fucking insane!!! Sturgeons never cease to amaze me with how… impossible they seem. These fish are like aquatic dragons or prehistoric beasts from days long gone, and in a way they are the latter! Sturgeons have been around as a group for over 160 million years, so they did indeed live in the age of the dinosaurs. Whenever I see pictures like this I can only wonder what the humans who first saw big sturgeons must’ve thought. I know what sturgeons are but I still have trouble grasping their gargantuan sizes, imagine seeing the dark form of a giant in the water and not having the faintest idea of what it is, or even that it's entirely harmless to humans.
Other sturgeon species are also very really big! The lesser-known kaluga isn’t that far behind at a maximum length of 5.6 meters and maximum weight of about a ton. Several white sturgeon that have exceeded three meters and even just shy of four meters and weighed over 400 kilograms have been caught, and the biggest, but unverified white sturgeon even caught was around six meters long and weighed 900 kilograms. The critically endangered Chinese sturgeon maxes out around five meters and 600 kilograms. All this to say, these old fishes are massive!!!
I get really rambly about fish, sturgeons especially ^^’ I just…. look!!! Look at them!! Isn’t that the most gorgeous beast you’ve ever seen? Don’t you wonder what life they have lived, what they’ve seen, heard, felt? If sturgeons could talk… they’re wonderful animals, and. Ahhh!!! Everyone needs to know about sturgeons!!!
hawkeye and trapper have their first real spat when an ailment with a post - op case befuddles them and they disagree on the cause of it , putting sidney to work during his visit as he tries to resolve the stiff tension between them . klinger picks at some of father mulchay’s beliefs when he interrupts one of his sermons with a question he had not yet considered before . in response , mulcahy questions the rest of the 4077th about their beliefs to try and find an answer .
Division of labor in the home is one of the most important equity issues of our time. Yet at this rate it will be another 75 years before men do half the work.
The optimistic tale of the modern, involved dad has been greatly exaggerated. The amount of child care men performed rose throughout the 1980s and ’90s, but then began to level off without ever reaching parity. Mothers still shoulder 65 percent of child-care work. In academic journals, family researchers caution that the “culture of fatherhood” has changed more than fathers’ actual behavior.
Sociologists attribute the discrepancy between mothers’ expectations and reality to “a largely successful male resistance.” This resistance is not being led by socially conservative men, whose like-minded wives often explicitly agree to take the lead in the home. It is happening, instead, with relatively progressive couples, and it takes many women — who thought their partners had made a prenatal commitment to equal parenting — by surprise. Why are their partners failing to pitch in more?
The answer lies, in part, in the different ways that men and women typically experience unfairness. Inequality makes everyone feel bad. Studies have found that people who feel they’re getting away with something experience fear and self-reproach, while people who feel exploited are angry and resentful. And yet men are more comfortable than women with the first scenario and less tolerant than women of finding themselves with the short end of the stick. Parity is hard, and this discrepancy lays the groundwork for male resistance.
Though many men are in denial about it, their resistance communicates a feeling of entitlement to women’s labor. Men resist because it is in their “interest to do so,” write Scott Coltrane and Michele Adams, leaders in the field of family studies, in their book, “Gender and Families.” By passively refusing to take an equal role, men are reinforcing “a separation of spheres that underpins masculine ideals and perpetuates a gender order privileging men over women.”
While interviewing working parents for a book on parenthood, I spoke with one dad in Vermont who said: “The expectation among my male friends is still that they will have the life they had before having kids. My dad has never cooked a meal. I’ve strayed from that. But subconsciously, the thing that makes you motivationally step up and do something when you’re not being asked …” he trailed off, and then said: “I have justifications. It’s a cop-out.”
Take love out of the equation and focus on the workplace, and it’s clear how this plays out. Studies show that male employees sit back while their female co-workers perform the tasks that don’t lead to promotion. In a series of lab studies, the economists Lise Vesterlund, Linda Babcock and Maria Recalde and the organizational behaviorist Laurie Weingart found that in coed groups, women are 50 percent more likely than men to volunteer to take on work that no one else wants to do. But in all-male groups, the men volunteer just as readily.
In an interview with NPR, Dr. Vesterlund explained that the women do the work “because they’re expected to.” The men “come into the room, they see the women, they know how we play these games.”
We play the same games at home. I interviewed couples separately and found that the women were often angry, while many men didn’t seem to realize there was a problem.
The couples offered three explanations for this labor imbalance. The first was that women take over activities like bedtime, homework and laundry because men perform these tasks inadequately. But this isn’t “maternal gatekeeping,” the theory that men want to help but women disparage their capabilities and push them out. Instead these seem to be situations that necessitate the intervention of a reasonable adult.
A mother in California said: “It’s important to me that my sons are not falling asleep in class and that they’re not late for school. My husband does not share those priorities, so I do bedtime and school drop-off.”
The dad in Vermont explained: “I do laundry when I need it. When it comes to the kids’ laundry, I could be more proactive, but instead I operate on my time scale. So my wife does most of their laundry. Let me do it my way and I’m happy to do it, but if you’re going to tell me how to do it, go ahead and do it yourself.”
The second explanation involved forgetting or obliviousness. A mother in Illinois said: “My husband is a participatory and willing partner. He’s not traditional in terms of ‘I don’t change diapers.’ But his attention is limited.” She added, “I can’t trust him to do anything, to actually remember.”
A dad in San Francisco said that many of the tasks of parenting weren’t important enough to remember: “I just don’t think these things are worth attending to. A certain percentage of parental involvement that my wife does, I would see as valuable but unnecessary. A lot of disparity in our participation is that.”
Finally, some men blamed their wives’ personalities. A San Diego dad said his wife did more because she was so uptight. “She wakes up on a Saturday morning and has a list. I don’t keep lists. I think there’s a belief that if she’s not going to do it, then it won’t get done.” (His wife agreed that this was true, but emphasized that her belief was based on experience: “We fell into this easy pattern where he learned to be oblivious and I learned to resent him.”)
A father in Portland, Ore., confirmed that his wife takes on more but said: “It has to do with her personality. She always has to stay busy. No matter what day of the week it is, she has a need to be engaged, to be doing something.”
Many mothers told me they had tried to change this and had aired their grievances with their partners, only to watch as nothing changed. A mother in Queens said she spent three years trying to get her husband to do more before coming to terms with the fact that maybe it was never going to happen. “He notices the unfairness, but he just accepts it as something we have a disagreement about,” she said. “How much convincing of the other person can you do?”
All this comes at a cost to women’s well-being, as mothers forgo leisure time, professional ambitions and sleep. Wives who view their household responsibilities “as unjust are more likely to suffer from depression than those who do not,” one study says. When their children are young, employed women (but not men) take a hit to their health as well as to their earnings — and the latter never recovers. Child-care imbalances also tank relationship happiness, especially in the early years of parenthood.
Division of labor in the home is one of the most important gender-equity issues of our time. Yet at the current rate of change, MenCare, a group that promotes equal involvement in caregiving, estimates that it will be about 75 more years before men worldwide assume half of the unpaid work that domesticity requires.
If anything is going to change, men have to stop resisting. Gendered parenting is kept alive by the unacknowledged power bestowed upon men in a world that values their needs, comforts and desires more than women’s. It’s up to fathers to cop to this, rather than to cop out.
nope. it's oak. @the-acer-acorn - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
gamechangershow
gummygunk
yousharknotpass
blakekathryn
dailybridgerton
