Maka's Place

I want to make a thread about why the situation between Lisa Miller and Scott Pilgrim was such an important and pivotal moment for Scott’s character development.

So here we go!

The reason that everyone always looked miserable in old photos wasn’t that they took too long to take. Once photography became widespread it took only seconds to take a picture.

It was because getting your photo taken was treated the same as getting your portrait painted. A very serious occasion meant so thst your descendants would know that ypu existed and what you looked like.

The comedy in the show came from the family’s “odd” lifestyle, rather than from infighting and petty bickering, or worse, as was common on other shows of the time, thinly veiled references to spousal abuse. They didn’t make fun of each other or act like their children were creatures from another world. Were they strange and outside of social norms? Yes. Were they united in creating a loving home and being good, supportive parents? Absolutely.

These two support and adore their children, care for an aging mother and an estranged brother, put family before everything, and they love each other, wholly, fiercely, without reserve. They are every bit as much in love after at least a decade of marriage as they were the day they met.

It’s nobody’s surprise that many of the aesthetic and thematic elements of The Addams Family in its various incarnations are influenced by Gothic tradition (not goth, that mostly came later. And not Goth, that was much much much too early), and I think Gomez’s words are a dead bullseye in terms of Gothic mentality.

“Make her feel like she’s the most sublime creature on earth”

The sublime is a recurring theme throughout Gothic literature. Although the word (like “awesome”) has lost a lot of it’s original luster over the intervening decades, sublime doesn’t really mean elevated and lofty (or even heavenly) as it’s often used today, but rather something possessing the power and grandeur to induce awe and veneration in the mind of the beholder. Although less than divine, something sublime possessed a wildness and power that transcended human ability to control…or even to comprehend.

Sublime is standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon leaning as far as you dare over the railing and still not being able to see the canyon floor below. Sublime is warrior-queen Galadriel being tempted by the One Ring. Sublime is waking up in the middle of the night in the heart of a wild thunderstorm.

“Make her feel like she’s the most sublime creature on earth”

Gomez isn’t advising Fester to treat a woman he fancies like a princess, or even elevate her to pedestal of angelic nature (who’s idea was it to equate femininity with purity anyway? What a laughable and historically damaging idea. Shame on whatever dead (probably) white dudes promoted that!)

Gomez is advising Fester that if he truly loves a woman he must do everything he can to remind her of how she’s an untameable force of nature who’s grandeur brings him to his knees in awe and terror. Just like Morticia, for Gomez.

I’ll sign off with one of my most favorite quotes of all time, because it feels suddenly very relevant:

“When I find myself surrounded by so much beauty, I feel as if I am the eye of a hurricane.”

IN THE FIFTH GIF HE PATS THE CUPS WITH HIS LITTLE PAWS TO MAKE SURE IT’S IN. BRB, DYING.

LETS PLAY A GAME. It’s called: Who directed it TIM BURTON or HENRY SELICK

We’ll start with the 2009 Laika film Coraline based on the novel by Neil Gaiman. Do you know who directed it? Burton or Selick?

Did you guess yet?

If you guessed Henry Selick, you would be correct. Tim Burton actually had absolutely nothing to do with Coraline at all in anyway ever. Reminder: Tim Burton has NOTHING to do with Coraline. At all. But that was an easy one. Let’s go to the Walt Disney Pictures adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel, James and the Giant Peach next.

Think you got it? Are you sure? Better double check…

Oh, look. It’s Henry Selick again! Tim Burton actually interacted with this project, though only as a producer. Bet that was tricky… Next one! Let’s go to the Disney/Touchstone Pictures film Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Have you guessed it correctly? Have you really?

Yep that’s right. Even Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas was directed by Henry Selick. Though Burton wrote the poem and created the characters in which Nightmare was based he didn’t have much interaction with the project beyond that. At the time he had already signed off to direct the film Batman Returns and did not want to be involved with the “painstakingly slow process of stop-motion animation.”

The girlfriend experience

> Any man who has ever had a girlfriend can attest to this.

There are negative notes….

WHY ARE THERE NEGATIVE NOTES?

ONE.