Ered²⁰

When will we be able to return to that mountain and talk like this?

Ophelia as a character is shown to be restricted as women were in her environment to her relationships with men. Her father, her brother, and her romantic interest. She isn’t just The Girl in this story- she can easily be interpreted as any woman of her standing at this time.

And because of this- as women were, and still often are- her personhood was reduced to the context in which she served others: a daughter, a sister, a lover. She is nothing else because all she is allowed to be, all she CAN be, is what she can offer, what she can PROVIDE, the esteem in which she is held by those men.

So we see a person whose personhood is, in effect, a shadow cast by the relationships in which she belongs. “Belongs” in the possessive sense, because she has no agency, no worth or value beyond those relationships, and it doesn’t matter if she is happy or not because she couldn’t live any sort of meaningful life apart from them.

In this circumstance in which Ophelia has been raised, in this society, in this position, the Existence of Ophelia is a shadow cast in the light of three candles. Her father, her brother, her lover, who can shine their lights and cast as many shadows as they wish while she cannot.

Her brother is leaving. He is no steady pillar. If she is not sistered, she is not a sister.

And then her lover, he loses his mind. He goes hot and cold, loving and then cruel and then kind and then completely nonsensical. If she is not loved, she is not a lover.

And then her father is killed. And if she is not daughtered, she is not a daughter.

Physically, emotionally, spiritually, the context she exists within is taken away, and so she is nothing. Just the shape of a girl left adrift in a vacuum.

She is a construction of other’s perceptions, and when she is no longer perceived in a way that is stable, she loses her stability. She’s never been truly alone in herself- never seen herself outside the eyes of those who see her, patronize her, value her, and so her fate is tied to their perceptions. Her value is what they find her value to be; her personhood is what they find her personhood to be.

Ophelia dies covered in flowers, singing in a river. A nonsensical caricature of what a girl should be- beautiful, whimsical, lighthearted, young, left literally and figuratively adrift. Desperately grasping to fulfill the role she was shaped into despite no longer possessing the context in which it has function. Like post-traumatic stress, all that’s left of her is the flinch-and-run response to the bang of a gun you hear on the radio a hundred miles from the battlefield. A reaction to an action that is no longer happening.

She is reduced to Madness as Madness truly is- the rational, logical, straightforward actions of a hero suddenly dropped into the wrong story, giving the right answers to the wrong questions.

I’m not an academic, so my interpretation might be way off, but I love Ophelia because broadly speaking she is an answer to the question of what makes us who we are. If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If a tree is not perceived, is it even a tree? If your only value is to others, what are you when there are no longer others to value you? What happens when their value of you wavers? Fluctuates madly without reason? What are you then?

When you read the text and then the lyrics, what the song is essentially saying is "Ophelia died because in her society, a woman without a man was as good as dead. Fortunately I have a man, so / don't *need* to be a fully actualized person in my own life. Hashtag girlboss". Which so wildly misses the point that it’s sort of amazing that the construction of the song itself betrays absolutely no rational reasonable shred of a clue that it’s anything less that 100% sincere in this interpretation.

I wonder how much of that was on the back of the industrial revolution. Maybe humanity had a similar "weird" moment in the Fertile Crescent when we figured out farming.

The baby will stop crying if I give it cocaine

My entire face is covered in arsenic

How Wonderful That I Can Buy Guns And Heroin At The Same Store! I Certainly Hope My Lead Poisoning Does Not Lead To Bouts Of Distemper And Irrational Thinking

There Are Bare Electrified Wires Running Through My House And My Technicolor Dress Is Highly Combustible, Which I Do Not Know Yet

My son, Lead Poisoning Georg,, shall someday inherit my gun powder and lead paint empire,,

NEW! Magical Miracle Substance! Asbestos! WILL NOT catch fire! CANNOT catch fire! YOU WILL NOT die! (From fire)

Impress Your Guests And In-Laws With The Tastiest Bright White Bread Chalk And Wood Shavings Can Produce

NEW! Baby feeding bottles! NEW! Glass baby feeding bottles! How do you clean them??? That isn't important stop asking questions. NEW!

Surely 500mg of caffeine will be good for me and help me function

The torment nexus glowing rectangle must be engaged with at all times

Look at all the profit to be made! This will surely grow forever.

Ignore the crowd begging for rational behavior, you dont want FOMO do you?

Money Georg, who has all the money in the world, is surely going to fix things

Wildly increased access to knowledge of things will not result in any cultural changes or upending of power structures

What do you mean there is a revolution in XYZ

Buy vapes! Use Ozempic! These novel things will have no negative health effects and will not be wildly popularized to the point of causing health crises

(I am aware I had a few historical points wrong there) but YES

I feel like that's *exactly* why new technology and ideas in younger generations always seems so scary while our present, boring technology seems so safe

we don't know the long term effects of ANY of it yet, but whatever bad things our parents raised US with, at the very least we aren't dead! Who KNOWS how this newfangled whatchamacallit might kill us.