Down Here We All Float
Sep. 16th, 2017 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI saw the movie IT last weekend, and it was a good, solid, well-made piece of Hollywood cinema.
Twitter has also been a lot of fun this past week, with people making all sorts of jokes and comics about how they could easily be lured into the sewers with promises of controlled rent and affordable healthcare (this is a good example). This somehow (it's a long story) morphed into fan art of Pennywise and the Babadook dating and doing things like reading picture books and holding balloons (and so on). Some people have tried to explain this by saying that the young Scandinavian actor who plays Pennywise is actually quite attractive (which is true), but I think Twitter's recent obsession with Pennywise is nothing more than people playing around with something that is inherently silly and ridiculous.
If I had to read more deeply into this, I might say that there is a long history of horror movie monsters being coded as queer, and so people facetiously shipping Pennywise and the Babadook is about the normalization of queer romance, which was often characterized as monstrous in the era of postwar American horror films that IT references. I might also say that, now that many people have been forced to confront real-life political monsters due to the rise of militant xenophobic nationalism on a global scale, something like Pennywise (or the Babadook, whose film is widely understood as a Marxist-feminist critique of contemporary Australian society) doesn't actually seem that scary. In the end, these comics seem to be suggesting, it may be preferable to hang out with one's fellow "monsters" in the sewer than to be forced to deal with the monsters who are currently in charge of creating public policy.
Meanwhile, on Tumblr, there are several posts in circulation that are basically saying, WHY ARE ALL THESE ASSHOLES WHO SHIP PENNYWISE AND THE BABADOOK RUINING EVERYTHING BY DEMONIZING QUEER ROMANCE. These sentiments are so performatively radical and ignorant of actual queer issues that they read almost as parodies of Tumblr culture, yet they've received tens of thousands of notes and have been reblogged by people in my own circles of fandom who, by all rights, are old enough to know better.
Personally, I tend to think that people who care about representation in popular media would be better served by celebrating all the things that the actual movie did right, especially in its adaptation of the source material. Let's be real, the book was borderline homophobic in its villainization of queer sexuality. To give an example, in the original novel, Mike Hanlon (the farm kid who stays in Derry and becomes a librarian) is only allowed to join the central circle of friends because another kid turns out to be gay and thus too weak, mean-spirited, and cowardly to fight evil. In the movie, however, one of the child heroes is not only very clearly coded as gay but also gets a lot of screentime, character development, and fantastic lines. Also, unlike the book, there is no bizarre and intensely heteronormative child orgy at the end of the movie, thank goodness.
I feel like, if you want to talk about social justice as it applies to IT, there are so many more interesting and meaningful ways to go about it than to yell about how gay artists on Twitter are making jokes about the love life of a fictional clown monster, good grief.
Twitter has also been a lot of fun this past week, with people making all sorts of jokes and comics about how they could easily be lured into the sewers with promises of controlled rent and affordable healthcare (this is a good example). This somehow (it's a long story) morphed into fan art of Pennywise and the Babadook dating and doing things like reading picture books and holding balloons (and so on). Some people have tried to explain this by saying that the young Scandinavian actor who plays Pennywise is actually quite attractive (which is true), but I think Twitter's recent obsession with Pennywise is nothing more than people playing around with something that is inherently silly and ridiculous.
If I had to read more deeply into this, I might say that there is a long history of horror movie monsters being coded as queer, and so people facetiously shipping Pennywise and the Babadook is about the normalization of queer romance, which was often characterized as monstrous in the era of postwar American horror films that IT references. I might also say that, now that many people have been forced to confront real-life political monsters due to the rise of militant xenophobic nationalism on a global scale, something like Pennywise (or the Babadook, whose film is widely understood as a Marxist-feminist critique of contemporary Australian society) doesn't actually seem that scary. In the end, these comics seem to be suggesting, it may be preferable to hang out with one's fellow "monsters" in the sewer than to be forced to deal with the monsters who are currently in charge of creating public policy.
Meanwhile, on Tumblr, there are several posts in circulation that are basically saying, WHY ARE ALL THESE ASSHOLES WHO SHIP PENNYWISE AND THE BABADOOK RUINING EVERYTHING BY DEMONIZING QUEER ROMANCE. These sentiments are so performatively radical and ignorant of actual queer issues that they read almost as parodies of Tumblr culture, yet they've received tens of thousands of notes and have been reblogged by people in my own circles of fandom who, by all rights, are old enough to know better.
Personally, I tend to think that people who care about representation in popular media would be better served by celebrating all the things that the actual movie did right, especially in its adaptation of the source material. Let's be real, the book was borderline homophobic in its villainization of queer sexuality. To give an example, in the original novel, Mike Hanlon (the farm kid who stays in Derry and becomes a librarian) is only allowed to join the central circle of friends because another kid turns out to be gay and thus too weak, mean-spirited, and cowardly to fight evil. In the movie, however, one of the child heroes is not only very clearly coded as gay but also gets a lot of screentime, character development, and fantastic lines. Also, unlike the book, there is no bizarre and intensely heteronormative child orgy at the end of the movie, thank goodness.
I feel like, if you want to talk about social justice as it applies to IT, there are so many more interesting and meaningful ways to go about it than to yell about how gay artists on Twitter are making jokes about the love life of a fictional clown monster, good grief.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-17 10:21 am (UTC)Would you recommend going to see IT? I'm a bit of a weenie when it comes to horror movies, but at the same time it's had some really glowing reviews- is it like a jumpscary horror or more of a creepy build? Also @child orgy: what the fuck, stephen king. What the fuck.
That said, recently it does seem like tumblr is going down the "of course we want queer characters! but only if they're glowing beacons of morality who never, ever do bad things, and they can only be shipped with XYZ, and if you headcanon anyone outside of these things, you're an evil bastard. How dare you like this character. You must be straight." It's genuinely a pain in the arse. When did fandom stop being about having fun and playing with the source material again?
Gah...whenever a new thing becomes popular on tumblr, my heart always drops. Not because people are trying to critique it, but because the way they go about it is from some sort of parallel universe where the cows are green and the analysis of a multi-layered, well constructed story has to be boiled down to "THIS character is a rapistabuserpaedophile and no one is allowed to like them, ever". My lit teacher would have a heart attack.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-18 03:56 pm (UTC)To give an example that you may be familiar with, there's a lot of white supremacy floating around in the Ganondorf fandom specifically and the Zelda fandom more broadly, but to say anything about it after the "X Is Tired" social justice trolls salted the earth will only result in ostracization, so the people who've been made to feel uncomfortable by expressions of racism have gradually been growing silent and dropping off Tumblr altogether. Meanwhile, in a backlash against ideological purity, other people have been leaning into and supporting ideas and characterizations (in certain webcomics, for example) that uncritically and unironically reflect culturally widespread configurations of white supremacy.
Fun times! Anyway...
IT is a great movie. There are a few jump scares, but you know they're coming, and they're all very campy. IT is more of a horror-themed adventure than an actual horror movie, and you never get the feeling that the child protagonists are ever in any real danger, or at least not from Pennywise. There are two or three genuinely frightening scenes in which children are threatened by other humans (such as a group of teenage bullies and the girl character's abusive father), but it's cathartic to see the kids gradually find the strength to defend themselves and fight back.
Honestly, I kind of feel that IT is very much like Breath of the Wild in the positive and encouraging vibes it sends out. Both titles are just... oddly uplifting, you know?
no subject
Date: 2017-09-18 05:21 pm (UTC)Oh boy. ooooooh boy, the ganondorf fandom....I LOVE the big guy, but....god....his fandom...
Sometimes I'm kind of glad that some other dark skinned antagonists don't have as big a fandom as Ganondorf does, because...it seems like even the most well-intentioned of them still loop back around to using those tropes? I'm far from the most educated about racism, but the whole...big brute having to be 'civilised' around this smaller white woman, or taking advantage of them is just...ugh...not to mention how many of the analyses will also dip their toes into misogyny and ableism...
Kinda once again dips its toes into "you can only like the purest characters" where ganon either has to be The WORLDS WORST murderrapist OR he's a sad victim with no agency OR he's healed with the power of love (that just so happens to belong to a dainty feminine lighter skinned lady who can 'tame' him) and it's just. do we like this character? do we like the same characters??? because i'm not sure where they're pulling ganondorf the murderrapist who can only be healed with the delicate touch of a tiny lady while the Other One totally knows what's happening all the time but it sure as shit aint the games.
(and dont even get me started on how some of them react to demise. one more analysis about how this big scary dark skinned man also just happens to be a stupid hot headed abuserrapist and i might scream. i dont even LIKE demise that much.)
wow, that got away from me a bit...sorry! The zelda fandom is a frustrating place to be.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-18 07:54 pm (UTC)ganondorf the murderrapist who can only be healed with the delicate touch of a tiny lady
I mean, I get why this fantasy appeals to people, and I get that not everyone who gets off on it is white or female, but I also think this sort of overtly sexist and racist kinkbait should be relegated to the sewers of FFN
down there they all floatwhere it belongs.no subject
Date: 2017-09-19 05:32 pm (UTC)I don't think it's so much the fantasy itself (redemption arcs, healing with another ect) it's just...the way it's handled between them almost ALWAYS veers into Ganondorf the big brute who is probably a rapist and abuses people and has never had one positive emotion in his whole life and Zelda the soft waif who is SUPPOSED to be a manipulator and very clever but mostly falls into dramatics and all those annoying lady emotions. Some of that might go into author skill level and reading though...and also I'm biased against any story where the power of romantic love saves someone outright.