#She was deeply uninterested in doing any underground work for his character so he isn’t terribly real

[itspileofgoodthings]

I think the fundamental part of growing up re: Anne of Green Gables is that Gilbert Blythe is such a good idea but Lucy Maude didn’t spend enough time on him to make him a fully real person.

#I love him in the first book #and I think there are real flashes! But she kind of won’t … give you any more of him #and listen. It’s complicated because I LOVED them so much growing up and I think genuinely their romance taught me a lot about life and lov #the idea of it is so right and good #but in this case the tv series is better I think because he’s more of a real person #Lucy Maud was (imo) a little scared of men and romance #and her execution of Gilbert is that she forgot to give him enough to be his own person #like she just didn’t put in the work #the readers of Anne of green gables did!! And they’re so valid for that #Like I have this whole meta I wrote about him once and it is honestly such a good meta and I think it gets to the heart of the idea #but the execution just isn’t there. Especially with time #She was deeply uninterested in doing any underground work for his character so he isn’t terribly real #you know who made me realize this? Coach Taylor lol #well. Coach Taylor and Emma #And listen it’s not like Gilbert is actually evil. He is NOT and what is there is good! But it isn’t technically artistically enough #for it to endure #idk I’m not explaining it well also I feel mean even saying it #But I feel like I’m allowed to because I DID love them so much and they were so important to me #and their love story gets something so right!!!!!! The shape is so good!!!!! I still got all of that #it’s just imo one of her limitations #like she had all the right instincts to make Anne’s partner his own person #Someone who sometimes pushes back #But #idk because like. I can still do all the work of it and fill in all those spaces and I want to #the romance in Anne of the island still has me in a chokehold!!!!!! #I LOVE pining Gilbert and the flashes there. because it almost disguises the lack of substance. But yeah it’s not what it looks like #Idk I might delete but #I just wanted to share

[riganooona]

Out of focus: Solo, the Jungle Book, and self-imposed limitations

I saw two movies this week which meant I also saw a whole boatload of trailers. These were standard mega-plex movies (aka popcorn movies) so the trailers were largely awful. The first movie was Solo and the preceding trailers included one for the sequel to the Jungle Book which apparently considers what happens when Mowgli leaves the jungle. This is a great idea. Even as a child I thought the ending was even more rose-tinted than most. I had walked into the theater already turning over issues of cultural encounters, cultural mixing, and the infuriatingly entrenched legacies of Western imperialism so I immediately started keeping an eye out for hints of British presence in the world of humans Mowgli found himself forced to navigate. Plus, the original story was written by a Kipling, a man deeply embedded in the British colonial project. White pith hats appeared in brief glimpses towards the end of the trailer but its unclear whether or not they’ll play any significant role. Most of the trailer focuses on Mowgli’s relationship with the animals of the jungle. I was particularly struck by a moment when he asserted that doesn’t belong in the jungle but he doesn’t belong in the world of man either. This resonates as a person of mixed race who  is at once both and neither. Now, I have little faith that this will be a particularly astute treatment of the story but I think I’ll go see it, out of curiosity, out of an ever present hope that new stories will someday be told in intelligent ways, that the media landscape will start to tell stories that I can relate to without equivocation. 

It was with these thoughts in mind that Solo began so I freely admit that I started watching with a racially-minded critical disposition. This did not serve the movie well as it lost my goodwill within the first five minutes and never won it back. The film opens with a brief, energetic action scene that ends with Han standing in a vast underground chamber facing a Fagan-like leader. It becomes clear he’s driven by his desire to rescue a girl whose face is clearly singled-out from the crowd, a bright, sharp visage in a shallow-focus field of “ethnicity.” She, of course, shines like a beacon of whiteness. Honestly, Hollywood, if you’re going to continue to privilege whiteness so obviously at least don’t let us know that you’re aware other people exist. But no, there I am staring at the out-of-focus Asian girl standing just to the right and slightly closer than the, frankly rather uninteresting, heroine W’ira played by Emilia Clarke (apparently those long white tresses do a lot to contribute to her on-screen presence). 

[SPOILERS]

This dynamic continued throughout the film: the awesome bad-ass black woman (Thandie Newton) not only died, she sacrificed herself for her white, male co-workers (and lover). The sassy rebellious female-coded android L3-37 is killed after freeing android and biologically-based slaves (what do you call them? they’re not all human...), an event that is treated as a humorous event and plot device rather than a meaningful act of actualization and political defiance. In fact, everyone is exasperated with her constant articulations of disgust with the current status quo with Beckett (her fellow outlaw played by Woody Harrelson) even going so far as to joke that he would reboot her if it didn’t mean he would lose her amazing navigational knowledge. Well, they end up getting this solution: after her death her navigational knowledge is downloaded into the Millennium Falcon without any of her personal idiosyncrasies. With the exception of Lando Calrissian all the other characters are white. Even the leader of the incipient rebel-alliance, whose armor reads as “ethnic” removes her helmet to reveal Enfys Nest played by 19-year old Erin Kellyman (to be fair, she might be very light-skinned mixed race but she seems to be coded as British). Like L3-37, Nest presents a tantalizing counter-narrative: she points out that working for the criminal organization Crimson Dawn is the same as working for the Empire. She may have a compelling story, but with the entire history of global culture to work with they stuck to a pretty safe zone of Western-European based fantasy iconography. The narrowness of this choice was made even more striking by the setting: a desert planet that resembled photographs of starving Africa - all women and children in tattered huts, gazing out at the white arrivals with wide, tragic eyes. 

The choices made in casting and set design were sadly predictable and easily avoidable and I’m long past simply shrugging my shoulders and accepting it. It’s tiresome, it’s oppressive (both politically but also in the sense that it limits the imaginative potential) and it’s boring. 

Frankly, I’m much more interested in her story and that of L3-37 and Lando Carlrissian has always been a dashing character with a cult following. Isn’t it about time we get to see those stories in the center and in focus? 

(I won’t even get into travesty that is Peppermint in which a rich white women become an “avenging angel” after her family is killed by Latino gangsters who get off - apparently the rest of the movie features her shooting up the “ghetto” and being treated as a hero by its inhabitants. Truly. This is real. Hollywood is not the progressive liberal enclave people make it out to be.)