#comparitive analysis

Ok, anon, thanks for your patience. Let's go.

Firstly, I have two ladies that do give me a similar vibe to Catra (though they aren't 100% matches as you'll see.) And I want you to take particular note of that: it's very telling that the characters you mentioned are both dudes. This is something I have been thinking about for literally decades because it is a deeply entrenched stereotype in our culture: male abuse victims are angry, frustrated loners who lash out until they find that one (girl) person that gets through their facade, female abuse victims are portrayed as either anxious messes (more common in recent years) or as just... These smiling caricatures who continue to pretend to be happy because that's what our societies expect women to be. And this is something I took note of at a very early age, because as someone growing up with an abusive birth father I looked to the MALE characters as a guide book on how to act, because getting angry and lashing out was what made sense to me at the time and I resented the hell out of that unspoken implication that I was supposed to just suck it up and plaster on a smile when I wanted to rage against the injustice of what I was dealing with. In hindsight it wasn't great behavior, but it was what I needed to keep myself sane at the time. I'm not even exaggerating when I say I have waited my whole life for a character like Catra: someone who is reflective of my experiences as an ex-abuse victim, someone who is angry and wrathful and still allowed to be sympathetic. Now on to our two ladies.

First up: Vriska Serket from Homestuck. (I know, Homestuck is a huge fandom with a lot of assholes, but I do still enjoy the original comic. I just don't interact with the fandom.) Vriska and Catra both have similar vibes in the way they project their outward personas of being the badass bitch who takes no shit and is on top of things, but we all know that's a lie. And they both come from abusive backgrounds: Vriska was forced to become a killer at a very young age because her parental guardian (a literal giant spider) would eat her if Vriska didn't feed her other kids. Doesn't excuse her jerkass tendencies or her terrible actions, but that was how she started out. And Catra's deal with SW needs no explanation.

They both have developed very similar gadfly tendencies in order to maintain a sense of control around other people (though Vriska is a lot more mean spirited about it) and both have moments when the facade cracks and they show actual sincerity and frustration at themselves and other people. The main difference between them is that Vriska's actions are driven by a sense of grandiose self-importance that she has cultivated and fed into as a way to avoid looking at her own actions (because she's the best, so everything she does is awesome, right?) whereas Catra's primary driving motivation is pain: either making sure she doesn't have to hurt anymore or hurting those who hurt her. Plus Catra grapples with her sense of guilt a lot throughout Spop and maintains those sympathetic undertones while Vriska's moments of clarity are so rare that you basically have to keep a chart to locate them. But you could totally picture them both teaming up to make fun of their respective frenemies, assuming they didn't kill each other first for reminding themselves of their deep underlying self-loathing.

Second candidate: Anthy Himemiya from Revolutionary Girl Utena. And boy howdy, if anyone is interested in this show and wants to avoid spoilers, skip to the end now, because we're going on a deep and dark journey here.

At first glance, she and Catra don't have much in common. In fact, she seems to fit the stereotype I described above: the placid smiling doll who takes the abuse and keeps going. Key word: seems to. Anyone who actually watches the show knows exactly where I'm going here.

We're introduced to Anthy as the "Rose Bride": the prize in a series of sword fights between students at a very strange school, with the ultimate promise being that whoever owns the Rose Bride at the end of the duels will gain some nebulous ultimate power. And yeah, I said "own" for a reason: whoever possesses the Rose Bride effectively owns her and some of the most uncomfortable scenes in the show reinforce the fact that Anthy tailors her thoughts and actions to whoever currently controls her. And as you can expect, this leads to BUCKETS of abuse. Literally everyone in this show is culpable in some manner for this, no matter how well intentioned.

But remember that "seems to?" Because that's only one side of Anthy; the outward persona if you will. On the other side of the coin you have Anthy the Witch, and that's where the parallels with Catra come into play and why Anthy was my go-to abuse representation before Spop rocked my world. Because the big twist we find out at the end of the series is that Anthy and her older brother Akio (formerly Dios) are the former literal personifications of the fairytale damsel in distress princess and the noble prince on a white horse, respectively.

But the balance was upset: having to constantly go around saving people was literally killing Dios, because one of the major points of RGU is that you can assist people in saving themselves but doing it yourself strips them of agency and traps them in a cycle of needing to be saved again and again. The more people the noble prince saved, the more people needed saving. When it became clear that he couldn't keep going, Anthy took a stand and prevented the people coming for Dios (angry that he wasn't saving them anymore) from getting to him, and thus incurred the wrath of everyone and got skewered alive by an angry mob in the process. This isn't hyperbole: the role of the Rose Bride is to instinctively bring out the disdain and hatred of everyone on the planet. It's a punishment for stepping out of line, for not being the placid princess who needs to be rescued anymore.

Because we're operating on fairy tale logic, no longer being a princess means that Anthy became a witch, and no longer being the prince made Dios into satanic archetype Akio. So behind the scenes of the entire show, Anthy is the witch assisting her brother in orchestrating the duels, and their ultimate goal is to find someone pure of heart enough to embody those princely virtues Dios once possessed and to steal that power so Akio can return to being who he once was. All of the psychological torments and head games are designed to weed out the potential candidates to find that special someone... Except it's an impossible goal because no human being can live up to that standard. And with each atrocity they commit it becomes even more impossible to return to being that person.

Ok, tangent done, here's where it gets interesting: Anthy is a character with two sides to her, the suffering Rose Bride fated to endure the hatred of the entire world and the Wicked Witch who manipulates and orchestrates the torment of those around her. But here's the deal: she's a victim too. She's a victim of a system that won't let her be anything other than these two binaries; she's a victim of her brother who has all the power over her and has trapped her in a codependent incestuous relationship, and I don't care how awful the things she's done are: nobody deserves to go through the shit she does. So with all of that in mind, the actions that she goes through as the witch make perfect sense. Why shouldn't she torment these people who do nothing but abuse her and deny her of agency? Even the best hearted of the duellists (aka the ones who don't hit her or abuse her sexually) nonetheless fall into the trap of projecting their own biases and expectations onto her, biases that her role dictates she carry out. Her actions as the witch aren't right, but nothing about this situation is. That's the entire point.

And that's where she ties into being like Catra. Catra does some truly fucked up things, but it doesn't cancel out the fact that she's an abuse victim that has been literally tortured for most of her life for no good reason and has received zero acknowledgement of that abuse in universe. And much like Anthy, she can't begin to heal until the situation is acknowledged, because that's literally step one of breaking the cycle: confirming that this is not okay and that no one deserves the shit she's been through. Just knowing that herself isn't enough: it's acknowledgement from others that enables that process to begin, because no one can recover from abuse in a vacuum. You need outside people to be touchstones, because so much of recovering from abuse is confronting the way it warps your perception and thought processes. You need at the minimum one normal perspective to give you that, preferably more, but one minimum.

Hurting the people who care about her is definitely not okay and I'm not excusing her actions in that category, but it doesn't change the fact that she is justified in wanting to rage and lash out, because she is still trapped in that cycle. She can't heal or let go because the process hasn't even been started. She's not off the hook for the things she's done, but neither should she be automatically condemned without taking those factors into account (which is the entire reason why the distinction between an excuse and a justification exists.)

And if I can be a little pithy... The other similarity between Catra and Anthy is I can guarantee that in twenty years people will STILL be arguing over whether or not Catra "deserved" to be freed from her abusive situation.

A Comparison of Original Work to Film Version of Plath’s “The Bell Jar”

The following is an edited version of the original Posted on April 10, 2008

A Comparison of Sylvia Plath’s Original Work: The Bell Jar, Versus the Film Version: : The Bell Jar: If I am an Arrow

By Trudy A. Martinez

In the film, The Bell Jar, the prelude imitates a young girl’s position within society; cinematic techniques create this allusion through the girl’s symbolic actions responding to a…

Ukraine – What the hell is going on?

The situation in the Ukraine has me puzzled.  The violence and protests leading up to the deposing of the Ukrainian president were not given much coverage in the media that I follow/ or I just plain missed it.  Whatever the case may be, I’m getting a couple of nearly diametrically opposed narratives of what is going on in the Ukraine and for my edification and yours we’ll go through them together.

So I bought Sabrina on DVD for 3 reasons:

1.) Because of Dan's vows

2.) Because I love Humphrey Bogart a lot

3.) Because it was on sale at my DVD store at basically half price

I watched it the other night and really enjoyed it - Bogie was awesome as always and Audrey Hepburn was lovely, so I'd definitely recommend it. Of course I had all sorts of Gossip Girl/Dair/Derena/Chair feelings so please allow me to ramble here with my take on how the 2 stories can be compared:

Mostly, I think what links Gossip Girl and Sabrina is 2 themes: class relations (Sabrina’s dad reminds her: "There is a front seat and a back seat and a window in-between. It’s important to remember your place.") And the idea that sometimes the person you thought you always wanted is not actually the right one for you, and just maybe you'll find yourself falling for the most unlikely person.

In 5x07 Blair dreamt about Sabrina - she was in the Audrey role of course (Sabrina is the chauffer's daughter who makes a glamorous return after 2 years in Paris), with Louis as David Larabee (the wealthy playboy Sabrina has been in love with her whole life) and Chuck as Linus Larabee (Humphrey Bogart's character - the older, more serious one who tries to charm Sabrina away from his brother in order to save a business deal, but ends up falling in love with her himself. Obvi.)

But the roles that Blair assigned really don't make much sense once you actually look at the characters. On some level Blair is a lot like Sabrina - she is a romantic and somewhat naïve, and there's the whole Paris thing. She's also overdramatic (Sabrina tries to kill herself by locking herself in a garage with 8 cars pumping carbon monoxide after witnessing David with another girl), but Blair is certainly not a chauffer's daughter. And Louis is not the playboy type - that's more suited to Chuck actually.

I could be giving them too much credit but the writers might have subtly pointed this out themselves in Chuck’s wardrobe choice in the dream. He is not wearing Linus’s traditional black tuxedo but instead he is wearing the white dinner jacket that David wore (Blair is dressed just like Sabrina in that scene so the change in wardrobe for Chuck seems odd). So I think the point is, even though Chuck is playing the role of Linus and he speaks Linus’s lines, the director might be trying to tell us that he is actually David in disguise (plus Chuck lets Blair/Sabrina fall off the umpire’s chair after saying she can trust him, which Linus never did in the movie).

So if Chuck is really David, then I would say that Dan is actually Linus. Especially considering the idea that Blair/Sabrina has been in love with Chuck/David for years, spends 2 years in Paris trying to get over him but is unable to until she connects with his brother Dan/Linus - someone she never imagined she'd like.

  So that’s one theory.

  But then Jacob Clifton at TWoP had an interesting theory in one of his season 5 recaps that it's not actually Blair who is Sabrina, but rather it is Dan. Which is very interesting considering a few episodes later the writers actually had Dan compare himself to Sabrina in "Louis's" wedding vows to Blair. Dan took his quote from a letter Sabrina writes her father on the eve of her return from cooking school in Paris:

"It is late at night and someone across the way is playing 'La Vie en Rose'. It is the French way of saying 'I am looking at the world through rose-coloured glasses'. And it says everything I feel. I have learned so many things, Father. Not just how to make [French cuisine] but a much more important recipe; I have learned how to live, how to be in the world and of the world and not just to stand aside and watch. And I will never, never again run away from life or from love either."

Dan has Sabrina's romanticism too (like Blair), and spent half his adolescent life idealising one person and not paying much attention to another, only to fall in love with the second person later ("I just never thought the person I'd want would be Blair Waldorf.") And the class dynamics are so much better suited to Dan as Sabrina with Serena as David and Blair as Linus, especially if we go back to the very beginning of the show.

Dan is the “working class” kid in the UES perception (but really he’s just middle class), he is not invited to the parties, he is on the outside looking in. Just like how Sabrina watches the Larabee parties from the shadows - hiding in a tree to watch David dance with beautiful society girls. Sabrina loves him from afar - just like Dan loved Serena pre-show. David randomly kissed Sabrina when they were children and she has never forgotten it (but when she returns he doesn’t even recognise her). Serena spoke to Dan at a party in 9th Grade and he never forgot it either (he even wrote a short story about it).

David/Serena is fun, charismatic and flirtatious but irresponsible. David falls in love often, he's been married 3 times and every time he says this is "the one". Serena also tends to fall "in love" with every guy she dates (Dan, Nate, Aaron, Gabriel, Carter, Tripp, Colin, Ben...) David/Serena is also a little rebellious, when the family finds out Sabrina/Dan is from a lower class and make their disapproval known (remember CeCe’s – and even Lily’s – first reaction to Dan?), it just makes David/Serena want her/him more. Neither is intentionally cruel, they just live in their own world where they do whatever they please - following their heart and not really paying attention to work or responsibility (David never shows up to work and can't even remember if it's Sunday or Wednesday which reminded me of Jacob's favourite Serena joke: “how do you be places?”). Mostly they’re just oblivious.

Linus/Blair is more serious and driven. Linus is a complete workaholic, and while he isn't necessarily after money or power, he wants to have an impact on the world. He graduated from Yale, where Blair should've gone (as opposed to David who fickly changed East Coast colleges every few months) He doesn't pay much attention to Sabrina at first, even when she returns from Paris. His only real interest in her is preventing his brother from running off with her (thereby breaking off his engagement with the daughter of an important potential business partner of Linus's) So he spends time with her to keep her away from David and they end up learning more about each other. Sabrina/Dan discovers a different side to Linus/Blair, that he/she is not as cold as s/he thought he/she was. It is hinted that Linus was in love once but it ended badly - he contemplated suicide by standing on the ledge of his office building, wanting to jump (like Sabrina trying to poison herself with carbon monoxide).

Despite having a really good time with Sabrina, Linus (Blair) goes into denial about his feelings, declaring that it is strictly business and that love is not for him.

Even when Sabrina (Dan) makes it clear that she has feelings for Linus (Blair), Linus tells her it meant nothing, believing that David (Serena) is the one she really loves because David is the one she has always wanted.

He even tries to set Sabrina and David up one last time (5.15 Blair/Derena anyone??) so they can sail off to Paris together, but David makes Linus realise that he is in love with Sabrina and Linus is the one who ends up chasing after Sabrina and going to Paris with her.