TADC: The Last Act and Suicide
So, I just watched the Last Act and I have thoughts and opinions on it, but I am going to hyperfocus on one particular little aspect and that's this little notion of suicidality that is brought up with Jax's Abstraction and how it fails for me as a person who has attempted twice.
First of all let's clear the air, having the (alluded to) transfem character fucking kill herself offscreen is really funny to me in a "Did JK Rowling write this shit" type of way.
Jax really didn't succeed for me as trans representation. There's the scene with Ribbit's bow and to me that just felt like a ersatz version of the ghost drawing scene from I Saw the Tv Glow, like a good moment taken from something else but replicated inferiorly. I wish this aspect of her character had been explored in more depth before she was taken out of the plot.
There is something interesting and tragic in internalized transphobia and repression that is touched upon in the episode, but only in the most unsubtle of ways. I mean, for fucks sake her femininity is represented by a maid outfit. Which, to me, is synonymous with an over-sexualized, terminally online view of femininity.
For many blooming trans women (myself included), a maid outfit and those striped miniskirts and thigh-highs were what the internet told us that "gender freaky" individuals wore. It allowed for a semi-ironic dawning of this skintight amazon basics attire to experiment with femming it up.
The film feels the need to throw away any subtlety and speak aloud this subtext; the maid outfit Jax literally says "oh yeah i'm just wearing this ironically..." It's like the writer is beating you over the head with a shovel.
DO.
YOU.
GET.
IT?
TADC's commentary on suicide isn't very interesting nor particularly subtle either. Abstraction in the last episode can be clearly read as a suicide allegory, and it doesn't really scan.
So, we see three abstractions this episode and I am going to try my best to recall the "reason" as to why each one abstracted:
Ribbit - Was pushed away by Jax; excluded from friend group; isolated self from others; died. Kaufmo - Went crazy over the fake exit; had problems with Jax; died. Jax - self isolated; ??? (offscreen); died.
Generally, what I found when rethinking over each character's "reason" for abstracting was that there was a need to show that the character was sad, or scorned, or depressed before abstracting. This depiction feels very trite, or cliched to how a "normie" would interpret suicide.
I'm not going to try to act like I am Jane Su Ecide (a professional authority on how this should be shown), but for me in my darkest moments there was a lot more going on into the "why" of killing yourself.
For one, when I tried to a thought that circled in my head was a sort of vindictiveness against everyone who hurt me a "This'll show em!!!" type of mentality, a way to get people to actually show compassion for my existence. Another brainworm that was floating around in those moments was a realization that I had no intrinsic motivation to live, and that the act of living itself was absurd or strange. The act of living was more odd and painful than just fucking dying.
So, what did I want from TADC: The Last Act? A one-to-one retelling of that time I tried to kill myself or that other one? No, don't misunderstand me. I do not bring up this example to be self-pitying or to say that it should've been just like this. What I am saying is that there were plenty of other underdiscussed or underrepresented mindsets and mentalities that could've been imbued into abstraction as a suicide metaphor with my experience as example.
To think that people just kill themselves because they are sad or nobody likes them is really tropey and shows a surface level understanding of the topic. TADC tries to pretend it has more depth than it actually does by referring to trite structures, E.G in EP 6 with Jax's whole archetypes speech. However, the Last Act really does fall victim to this triteness.
I have once fallen into this trap before. Being a trans women writing about closeted trans women, I had once before felt the need to confront trans suicide by virtue of the fact that I was trans and that I had to address this as a topic. Looking back at that work, it didn't really serve a place in the narratives that I had created and felt forced.
Others who had a superficial understanding of these topics thought my depiction was somehow deep or nuanced, but I don't think they were truely. It's really a shame how easily people are affected by claptrap emotionally manipulative bullshit.
I think Fire Punch does the topic of suicidal thinking amazingly, the act of living itself with all of the traumas and agonies that are actively burning you alive is what is painful. And yet, despite all of that when the main character actually finds an internal, intrinsic reason to live it really does feel like there is weight to it.
There's a myriad of other reasons as to why I disliked the Last Act, but this was the biggest and most personal to me. TADC is going to eternally be "Meet: Potential Series!" for me alongside Murder Drones. I just wish things had cooked a little better with a little more consideration.
