Cinna in the 21st century

“It’s instructive, on this note, to compare Hannibal to the HBO hit True Detective. Much of True Detective’s appeal—the stylized visuals, the over-the-top lyricism of the dialogue, the cosmic-horror undertones, the hallucinations, the thematically significant conjunction of naked lady corpse and decapitated stag head—seems practically airlifted in from Hannibal. But True Detective is almost entirely reliant on the clichés that Hannibal studiously avoids. The plot turns out to be a standard buddy-cops-catch-the-killer mystery, complete with clichéd backwoods pervert in a tumble-down shack. Every single woman, up to and including Marty’s pre-teen daughter, is primarily relevant to the plot in terms of the sexual things she does or the sexual violence that’s forced upon her. It’s not enough to have a cult of serial killers worshiping Lovecraftian Elder Gods: They have to be a cult of Elder-God-worshiping serial-killers who also gang-rape children, or else it’s just not scary. And, whenever the plot stalls, we’re magically whisked away to a strip club or a harlot’s boudoir, so as to revive our interest in the show through naked breasts...

...The standard defense for these tropes is that horror filmmakers need them to get decent scares. It’s true: Child rape is a very unpleasant thing to think about. (Although there are plenty of True Detective fans who seem to spend multiple hours per week speculating about it on Reddit). But Hannibal’s most profound accomplishment is the fact that it proves these moves are unnecessary. It never comes across as prim or neutered. It’s horrifying, both on a jump-out-of-your-seat level and a queasy psychological level. It turns out that being buried alive until your skin disintegrates, or having to rip half your own face off to save your life, or just finding out that your psychiatrist is actively trying to give you brain damage, is still pretty disturbing, even when there aren’t any gang-rapes included in the package. And the plot doesn’t suffer when women are allowed to play real roles: Speculating on Abigail Hobbs’ precise level of complicity with her father, or what Bedelia du Maurier knew about Hannibal and what she thought of it, comprised a major part of the fan theorizing during Hannibal’s first season. For feminist filmmaking to succeed as a political statement, it has to succeed at being decent film, and that’s what Hannibal does. It’s horror with a profound respect for human life, and for the human beings who watch it. That, more than anything, is why it deserves the “Best Drama on TV” label.

”

Sady Doyle, “Hannibal’s Feminist Take on Horror”

Hannibal cancellation makes me sad :(

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.”

Blood is not blood. We left the old country for a reason, for peace, for happiness, for freedom to be who we are and do what we do, to escape judgement from narrow minds.

So why despair when we are in the republic half corrupt? Leave those ties that bind you unhappy and rise anew, reborn, to a mother with no children.

When You Are Old

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Yet I feel melancholy.

There are things to do,

yet I fear doing them.

Be gone, coward heart,

that eats my days and nights.

I am no serpent,

that eats its tail,

but a woman

with the world at her heels.

Don't let the moment pass in fear,

or who shall help you hence?

comfort me in this cold night,

and this melancholy day.

mon chère, mon frère, my soul

“If a woman has false ideas, if she is not very intelligent, clear-sighted, or courageous, a man does not hold her responsible: she is the victim, he thinks—and often with reason—of her situation. He dreams of what she might have been, of what she perhaps will be: she can be credited with any possibilities, because she is nothing in particular. This vacancy is what makes the lover weary of her quickly; but it is the source of the mystery, the charm, that seduces him and makes him inclined to feel an easy affection in the first place."

How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city.        Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?        Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache.

Spain has now been eliminated from the World Cup. How the wheels of fortune changed from when four years ago, Spain won the finals against Netherlands in South Africa.

Spain has been out of form the entire World Cup in Brazil. It lost an unprecedented 5-1 to Netherlands, that it beat last World Cup. Now, it has lost 0-2 to Chile which played a great game.