I have spinster carved on my bones.

png-ified jewish desserts!!

The Uprising Trailer

Led by a farmer, an army of peasants revolt against King Richard II's tyranny. The film is inspired by the Peasants' Revolt, aka Wat Tyler's Rebellion or The Great Uprising, of1381.

The Uprising stars Andrew Garfield, Jamie Bell, Stephen Dillane, Tom Hollander, Cosmo Jarvis, Thomasin McKenzie, Jonny Lee Miller, Woody Norman, and Katherine Waterson. The films is written and directed by Paul Greengrass.

Darcy is kind of a socially awkward, snob looking guy, quick to judge but can be kind and considerate, based on his personality not when it suits him.

Flamingos can survive in low oxygen, high altitude, high temperatures, low temperatures, high alkaline, they can and will drink boiling water and they can be completely frozen at night and still get up the next morning

(animal death) this is a real undoctored photograph (*though the body was stood up for the shot) of a dead flamingo on the surface of lake natron, a lake so salty and so alkaline that it’s naturally carbonated like soda and would eat through your stomach lining if you drank from it.

When this photo went viral years ago, most people assumed this poor flamingo must have been killed by the lake.

It is actually the lake where 75% of its global population are hatched. This is a photo from the same lake:

Many years ago I wrote this post, which I've apparently sought and struggled to find multiple times because it didn't have a title! I wanted to amend that, but also to add some additional thoughts I've been wanting to shape into a meta for a while.

One thing that has always perplexed me about The Patriot is that Benjamin Martin's violent temper is framed as relatable and even endearing while William Tavington's comparative coolness is framed as aberrant and monstrous. I think there's more at play here than just a simple hero: good/villain: bad binary.

When we are introduced to Martin, he's in a barn working on a rocking chair as his children watch from their hiding places. When satisfied the work is complete, Martin sits down . . . and falls on his ass when the chair collapses. The children giggle as he gets up and throws the chair against the wall, where there are several others in similar condition, with a roar of frustration. Some time later, Martin is in a position of disempowerment that hurts far more than his pride. When Tavington commits all manner of violence against his family and home, Martin responds by arming two of his children and taking off to rescue his captured son from the detail of men Tavington ordered to hang him. Assuming all that and killing every soldier in the detail are necessary--which we'll get into later--what is definitely not is Martin hacking into the back of the last soldier repeatedly, again while screaming. Again, his children are watching, but this time in wide-eyed shock.

These are extremely different scenes that display the same character trait. Martin's response to feeling emasculated is violence, not against who or whatever is responsible but who or whatever is on hand. Even Martin's children know that this enlisted man is no more responsible for Tavington's orders than the broken chair is for Martin being a shit chairmaker. If someone's response to things not going their way is to lash out at whatever is within reach, and you live with them, that is cause for concern! And indeed both Samuel, one of the boys present, and Martin's mute daughter Susan are clearly (if temporarily) afraid of him.

Meanwhile, the list of emasculating things that happen to Tavington is very long indeed. At his first meeting with Cornwallis in the extended cut (also included in DVD bonus features), the general belittles him in front of his other officers by feeding his dogs from the same tray Tavington is attempting to eat from while making a premature ejaculation joke about Tavington to his face. In another meeting, their first in the theatrical release, he scolds Tavington for his treatment of Continental troops and makes him promise to give quarter in the future. In yet another meeting, Cornwallis accuses him of being "bested by a bedtime story." Indeed, if the historical Cornwallis has put as much effort into defeating the Continental Army as his fictional counterpart does into humiliating his colonel, we Americans might all be spelling "favorite" and "color" with a "u" today!

He doesn't fair much better with his Colonial enemies. Martin is able to walk/ride away from the two confrontations they have between the one at Martin's farm and the one on the battlefield. One of Martin's men spits in his face when he tries to bribe him. He is only able to survive a confrontation with Martin's oldest son by playing dead. Lastly and most dramatically, he is projectile launched into one of his allies, killing the man with his saber after Martin stabs his horse in the chest.

In spite of all this emasculation and adversity, Tavington never loses his temper, and because he keeps a cool head, his rate of success in getting at least some of the things he wants out of these encounters remains high. By biting his tongue in the Cornwallis scenes, he stays in a position to benefit from Cornwallis's own temper tantrum after Martin emasculates him! He not only grants permission for Tavington to commit atrocities but promises him a reward of land if they are successful. While Tavington does not learn Martin's whereabouts from Rollins, he does get a list of his men's families' addresses, which he uses to effectively stop the militia from blocking supplies leading up to the final battle. His possum tactic allows him not only to survive but to kill Gabriel. After Martin kills his horse, he gets up and kicks his ass. As someone who struggles with anger management issues, I find Tavington's focus on goals over of the moment emotions aspirational!

Obviously, Tavington is also a violent and terrifying figure. The rebels and those who aid them have good reason to be scared of him. His own men are not. He may put them in some irresponsible situations, particularly at the end, but he is not taking out his frustration with Cornwallis and Martin on them as many violent men would. His violence is always intentional and explicitly aligned with his long-term goals. Martin's is often excessive and driven by his emotions. Imagine if he had been as cool-headed and goal focused as Tavington is. Given that his stated goal at the South Carolina assembly in 1776 was to protect his children, would it not have made sense to send all of them to Aunt Charlotte while he went to reason with the officer in charge of the detail taking Gabriel to Camden, the same one who has already thanked him for his treatment of British soldiers, and build a case against Tavington? (Brandon Fisichella explains how this might have worked extensively in this video starting at 30:16.) He might not have gotten to be a war hero again, but he could have saved the lives of all the civilians Tavington kills in response to the militia's actions and the son he actually saves through violent means to boot.

Martin's masculinity is subject to far less stress testing than Tavington's. He is listened to and respected by his superiors as well as the men under his command and his family. When he makes errors in judgement, and there are some big ones, no one ever lays the blame at his door. Moreover, the consequences of his bad temper are ignored or minimized, as we see when Samuel and Susan. In two separate scenes, they conveniently forget their fear of the father at the moment of his departure. Martin's reckless attempt to rescue Gabriel could have resulted in additional headstones in the family plot, but conveniently all the soldiers guarding him are incompetent. Even going back to Fort Wilderness, Martin is extraordinarily fortunate that the Cherokees declared him and his men winners of the Atrocity Games and broke treaty with the French instead of doubling down on attacks against British civilians with them.

I find these contrasts especially compelling in light of the amplified double standards for masculine and feminine violence in the present-day United States, in which male folks can abuse their partners with near impunity but female folks face severe legal consequences for even firing a warning shot after years of domestic violence. Likewise, the open queer-coding of Tavington's character introduces chilling implications about the acceptability of killing a gay man. Given Martin hews to mainstream social expectations about whom he should be intimate with regardless of his actual sexuality, that paints a pretty nasty picture of compensatory manhood acts as normative praxis of American patriotism. Apple pie, anyone?

The contrasts OP draws here between the film's glorification of Martin's masculinity and its lampooning of Tavington's also make me think about how the bombast and flair of the latter's violence evokes tropes from "righteous female anger" narratives in other media. The Patriot goes out of its way to present the heavily personalized violence between Tavington and Martin as satisfying for the former in a way that military violence isn't, making me think of Waiting to Exhale's Bernadine serving exquisite looks while ransacking husband John's closet and setting fire to his care before walking away in a runway-worthy spectacle.

Some different narrative themes there obviously—Bernadine is getting back at her husband John for cheating on her with his bookkeeper and walking out on their marriage, a betrayal made worse by the racial dynamics of that infidelity. Meanwhile, Tavington and Martin are two white dudes separated by a common language, as OP delightfully illustrates with that note about British English spellings. But the energy Tavington brings to scenes involving Martin has always felt similar to me. Not only because he lights Martin and Martin-adjacent properties on fire while looking impossibly dapper, but also because he radiates a similar sense of wounded pride rising like a phoenix in a blaze of feathered glory.

It would make sense on a superficial level for Tavington to feel a strong drive to do The Most in besting Martin; he has already told us how much his ability to provide for his family and protect their legacy hinges on success in his military campaigns. Reading this analysis though, I find myself wondering if that drive also stems partly from the added frustration of constantly having straight norms of manhood and family upheld as the ideal while getting gruffly rejected by someone who still gets respect as a family man while clearly doing a shit job of looking out for his kids. Perhaps Tavington does feel some underlying anger at how Martin—as someone who's willing to play the game of straight life despite his sexuality likely being more expansive—gets more respect in society than a man like himself ever would, no matter how many Ohios he winds up getting in reward for his military successes.

Reading through those paragraphs in this reply made me think about how superficially similar Tavington's acts of violence are and yet how much their meaning changes. Every time Tavington burns a building, it's to send a message. Fire has the effect of not only destroying everything it touches but also making itself known to others far beyond its reach. Violence is always a strategic spectacle for Tavington; that's why he orders Gabriel taken to Camden to be hanged and, more importantly, put on display. If he were motivated by sadism, it would make more sense to hang Gabriel there in front of his family, but Tavington safely assumes they've already gotten the point by then. The Martins aren't special yet, as we seen when Gabriel comes across the bodies hanging outside Pembroke church.

But then the next house he burns is the one to which Martin's surviving family fled, the next ones belong to his friends. The last one he burns belongs to we don't know who, but it is after the Pembroke congregation member tells him the militia is hiding in Black Swamp at the old Spanish Mission. So . . . why don't the dragoons make for Black Swamp and the Old Spanish Mission? When I've asked that before I've come to the conclusion that it's bad writing. Tavington has to make bad choices so Martin can win. But what if the effect of burning the last house is what Tavington intended for it to be? It lets Gabriel's vengeance brigade know where the Green Dragoons are. Perhaps the only hitch in Tavington's plan is that he draws the wrong Martin.

While Tavington is hard at work being the most literally flaming gay man in cinematic history, Martin's violence is more personal and intimate. Not only does he "take [his] time, but he's afforded a huge amount of respect for the privacy of his violence. This is unsurprising coming from the Americans, whose position is, "Yeah, we know what Captain Martin did at Fort Wilderness. He WON!" It is a little surprising to see all the British officers in speaking roles focus exclusively on how many men he killed and not, um, how he killed them. Martin is also capable of some pretty spectacular violence, but not only does the audience not see it directly, apparently no one does. I would have thought finding one man stabbed enough times to kill twenty at least as memorable as finding twenty bodies. Martin's privacy is certainly respected by the narrative with respect to his interactions with Tavington. All of their conversations are fully in public in broad daylight, but that is not the kind of energy the second two are serving. While Tavington has to shout about Martin's stupid, dead son to get the man to so much as look at him, Martin is able to say "Before this war is over I'm going to kill you" so softly only Tavington can hear him. Even in their fight at the end you'd think they were the only two people left in the war. Where are Martin's friends? On the couch watching him fight for his life like he's on HBO?

What fascinates me from a historical perspective is how differently these characters would be read by an 18th century audience to how they're coded for modern viewers.

To them, Martin's outbursts of anger and destruction would have been the absolute height of unmanliness. Such violent passions would mark him out as a weak man and a dishonourable citizen. At a time when external expressions of feeling were considered direct reflections of internal moral character, his outbursts would code him as an unmasculine, unreasonable and unvirtuous threat to the social order. Martin is no gentleman; he's more like the racist stereotype of the borderland "savage", unpredictable and destructive.

Martin's masculinity is clearly a modern one meant for a modern audience, but it is really interesting to see how characters whose masculinities are more period-appropriate are treated. Tavington can certainly look and act the part of a gentleman when it suits him--as can Martin, as we see in the prisoner exchange negotiations--but he is still killing civilians, including women and children. General O'Hara and Cornwallis too, in most instances, have the demeanor of gentlemen and actually are endeavoring to fight with honor. And the film skewers them relentlessly. The entire humiliation ritual Martin drags Cornwallis through happens after Cornwallis lays down the law to Tavington about his atrocities. O'Hara literally saves Martin's life when he stops Tavington from drawing his sword on him, but months later at the Yorktown surrender Martin describes him only as Cornwallis's subordinate.

Martin is not the only man who benefits from standards of masculinity being so different from what they actually were in the 18th C. That scene where Gabriel is unable to win so much as a single recruit with his rhetoric, but when Anne Howard stands up . . . I mean, good for her, but being bested by a teenaged girl? Gabriel could kill every redcoat in North America and he'd never live that down.