ina

Oh, a human being is seeking a social response? Human being, the social animal wired to make and track social connection? A human desires the vital blood that permitted their species to survive for millennia? The human being who was born completely helpless and primed in every way by nature to seek attention and help from their community?

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

what the people want, the people get

you see

my professor’s take is that mary shelley is feminizing victor throughout the novel, as a way of flipping gender roles and putting a male character through female experiences.

evidence as explained:

victor is creating life. he is putting his health at risk (spends two years with little sleep or socialization) to bring life forth into this world

his illness after he is shocked by the creature coming to life is akin to both ‘hysteria’ and postpartum depression

he pretty much swoons, let’s be honest

henry clerval, a man who has been characterized as manly and heroic, has to chase after damsel-in-distress victor and care for him as he convalesces 

afterward, he hides what he did and went through, for fear that others will label him crazy and emotional and not believe him. sound familiar?

Victor in general is more emotional than the other characters and is constantly tempering his reactions to not be seen as irrational 

the book does not otherwise have central female characters 

Also, Shelley’s mother died in childbirth. It’s interesting, then, that Shelley presents the creation of life as something horrific and damaging. She parallels Victor with her mother.

Look Up

~~~

ITS ART

ITS ARTITS

ART I REPEAT ART

Pulling up this movie I completely expected to only encounter Sister Agnes as the one woman we see in the trailer, the conclave a space that has been kept from the female members of the church. Now, color me surprised when I started the movie and most of the establishing shots we got were focused on all the women working in the Vatican.

And it is such a deliberate choice, it does the film a disservice not to talk about it.

Because while Cardinal Lawrence is having his fifteenth breakdown during sequestering and Bellini finds the ambitious asshole within himself, Ray does all the leg work, and Bel---- we see the women work.

We see the kitchens, we see them cook, we see them stand aside. Most of the time when the Cardinals are conspiring it is the women who interrupt because they are busy working, walking, running errands.

And there is power in that.

I think it is very deliberate how often (and with such lingering gaze) the camera shows us the lives of the other half - partially to connect to the wider themes of the movie, on how Bellini asks for women to get more power but never thanks them, and how Benitez stumps them all by thanking the women preparing their meals when asked to say the prayer (considering his own probably tumultuous relationship to gender within the church).

But it also stands in direct opposition to a long tradition in story telling: servants don't exist. How often the heroes of a regency romance are "alone" because the two hand maidens and three maids don't really count.

Conclave doesn't do that.

It doesn't let us look away.

Between all the petty drama, the politics, and the real life consequences of the conclave, we never stop looking at the people doing all the work.

Yes, we follow the ups and downs of Lawrence and Co, but in doing so the movie reminds us again and again of the women working the kitchen.