#exploded lion

T.E. Lawrence & Sharif Ali

Just got out of a fantastic 70mm screening of Lawrence of Arabia, my favorite film so, let’s do it. Here's the system I'm using, let’s figure out these enigmatic characters. 

T.E. Lawrence is a tricky one to sort, because two of the central questions of this film are Who is Lawrence? and What does Lawrence want? I at least need an answer to that second one before I'm able to sort him.

We also get a few potential answers. Lawrence latches onto the idea of Arab Independence, so the obvious answer is – okay, he’s a revolutionary motivated by a Cause. But if that's the case, his Cause is less politics (he's NOT a politician) and more a manifestation of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’s’ love for Arabia in general.

When the movie starts, Lawrence has this kind of weeaboo-ish fascination with Arabia. He reads Arabic, he's memorized the Quran - but his engagement with the culture can also feel a little performative. He won't drink more water than his guide, makes an effort to eat local food he doesn't like, and is flattered when people think he has prior experience riding camels.

Lawrence isn't really motivated by a group-focused love of the people/culture, because he doesn’t know the people, and he romanticizes the culture. Prince Feisal calls him out on this: “No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees, there is nothing in the desert. No man needs nothing. Or is it that you think we are something you can play with..?” Lawrence accepts a job in Arabia he has zero information about because he thinks it's “going to be fun.” In a lot of ways, this is his version of running away with the circus.

Faisal, who is probably the character with the best read on Lawrence (although Brighton and Ali figure him out pretty well by the end) calls him “another of these desert loving English - Doughty, Stanhope, Gordon of Khartoum.” And good lord does Faisal nail him dead-to-rights. Charles Doughty was a poet and writer who traveled extensively in Arabia, Lady Hester Stanhope was an adventurer/antiquarian who who spent a lot of time adventuring wearing Bedouin/Turkish men’s clothing, and Gordon was a British military guy who became kind of a folk hero after he ignored orders to retreat. String those people together – and yeah. You DO get T. E. Lawrence. 

I also love that one of the people Faisal compares Lawrence to is a lady, because watching this movie now… oh man, Lawrence is SO queer-coded. Peter O’Toole described his character as “genderless,” and director David Leans comments “[homoeroticism] does pervade it, the whole story, and certainly Lawrence was very if not entirely homosexual. We thought we were being very daring at the time: Lawrence and Omar [ie Omar Sharif, who plays Ali], Lawrence and the Arab boys.” 

Lawrence is… just… very femme and very swishy, especially compared to the very British, very masculine characters surrounding him. There’s one scene with him literally skipping that got a huge laugh at my screening because it is just that blatant. This actually feeds into a key aspect of early movie Lawrence though - which is just how out of place he is. He’s remarkably ill at ease in his body (with his comically terrible salutes and badly-fitting, rumpled uniforms.) His introductory scene involves him pinching out a match with his fingers, saying “the trick is not minding that it hurts.” So this is a character actively disconnected from his physical self, in a way that’s pretty easy to tie into the queer experience. As he puts it, “it’s my manner that offends.”

(and... not here to comment on the historical TE Lawrence, BUT I will say that his signature gold-on-white Bedouin robes were wedding robes originally belonging to Prince Feisal. Apparently Feisal re-gifted them to Lawrence after his aunt sent them as a not-so-subtle hint that he really needed to get married already.) 

I came into this write-up thinking that Lawrence would be a Bird Primary, because he’s quiet and not particularly emotional. BUT… he’s got this preoccupation with freedom, which is definitely a Lion thing. Lawrence is happiest when he’s able to get away from his orders, take initiative, and have a sense of autonomy. When he gets to Arabia he’s finally in a situation where he is able to follow his own internal felt compass, and just comes alive. But (despite his love for the place) he isn’t actually changed by the experience the way I would expect an External Bird primary to be.

ALLENBY: Do you think he's gone native? BRIGHTON. No. He would if he could, I think.

General Allenby (probably a Bird primary himself) goes on to say that Lawrence doesn’t have any kind of Code or System to work within. “I have my own orders thank God. Not like that poor devil. He’s riding the whirlwind.” 

Lawrence is a bit of a Glory Hound Lion for the first half of the film: he eats up praise (“those are not followers. These are worshipers”) happily makes a billion snap decisions and is remarkably… rules optional. Lawrence authentically believes that rules don’t really apply to him, even ones like “no eating in the officer's mess when you’re not an officer.” Eventually, his Primary warps into a more Exploded Lion, and he gets very 'if you’re not with me, you’re my enemy.' We especially see this in the way he lashes out at the members of his crew who question the literally impossible ‘Invade Deraa’ plan. 

Things start going very, very badly for him after this failed “invasion." He’s captured and then… whipped (and like. he’s raped. It’s the 1960s, so we’ve got to imply it, but it’s *barely* implied. I’ll link the scene here. It’s not even subtle, this isn’t even a slightly controversial opion.)

After this experience, Lawrence seems to have trouble trusting himself. He thought the Deraa plan would work, it didn’t… and he goes borderline catatonic for a while, then tries desperately to ask for orders. But the generals tell him to just keep on doing his thing. HOWEVER. What actually seems to properly BURN Lawrence is the realization that he’s been *manipulated* by the British higher-ups, and has unknowingly been lying to the Arabs this whole time. They were never going to let Arabia be independent. “Let's have no displays of indignation,” says Dryden. “You may not have known, but you certainly had suspicions.”

So, Lawrence is faced with the weakness of his own soul, his own instincts. He can’t trust them not to betray him, just like he can’t trust his body not to betray him (first by looking physically other enough to catch the attention of the Turkish General, then by bleeding through his uniform in a way that lets the British generals put two-and-two together.) These two invasions of Lawrence’s being are absolutely linked by the film, and the more metaphysical rape is treated as worse: 

BENTLEY. What did that Turkish General do to him, in Deraa?  ALI. He was the same man after Deraa… What did the English General do to him, in Jerusalem? 

After Lawrence's Primary Burns, he starts performing a version of his old Exploded Lion: surrounding himself with a (paid) bodyguard, instead of recognizing his remaining loyal friends. We don’t know exactly why he makes the controversial “no prisoners” call during his attack on the fleeing wounded, but it seems like a combination of wanting to recapture that sense of good-feeling righteous warfare he got from conquering Aqaba, AND an attempt to get a little of his agency back, by going off-script.

But... that goes poorly too, and Lawrence trusts his Primary even less. By the end of the film, Lawrence has gotten subdued and reasonable in that way Lions only get when they’re extremely Burnt. And sadly, that’s where we leave him.

My insight watching the film this time was that Lawrence of Arabia T.E. Lawrence and Our Flag Means Death Stede Bonnet are very similar characters - just one is treated tragically and the other comically. Both are loud Lion primaries stubbornly insisting on a version of the world that doesn’t exist, an idealized version where they can get enemies to work together, where pulling off incredible feats of survival work miracles, where innocents don’t have to die. If they believe hard enough in their version of the world… then surely it will manifest. 

*

In terms of Secondary, Lawrence is also a Lion. He would prefer to handle a problem by charging at it, in as straight a line as possible. Even (especially) if that line is unusual or dangerous. Lawrence likes simple plans. He likes marching into people‘s offices and saying the literal truth. He’s completely comfortable insulting people, even powerful people he maybe shouldn’t be insulting. He also needs a strategy to fail, dramatically, before he changes his tactics. He's fiery and effective on the battlefield… but has no idea what to do in the council scene, where he’s supposed to be dealing with tiny, nitty-gritty conflicts between tribes. Maybe he has a little bit of a Bird secondary secondary model – he’s got a pretty impressive education he can pull out for trivia purposes. Mostly though, he just seems to wing it. 

This is the quality that makes him such an inspiring commander. It also makes people like Ali and Auda trust him when maybe they really shouldn't. Lawrence doesn’t lie, and when he does – it’s only because his personal version of reality doesn’t line up with the truth. 

BRIGHTON. He hasn't one-tenth so many men, sir.  ALLENBY. He’s lied, in fact. BRIGHTON. Well, yes and no, sir... he doesn't claim to have done anything he hasn't done. ALLENBY. Then there is an Arab North Army? BRIGHTON. No, sir. He has lied about that. 

Sherif Ali is the inverse of Lawrence. (Even visually he's the inverse of Lawrence.) He gets a villain introduction: matter-of-factly killing Lawrence’s guide for drinking at a well that doesn’t belong to him. Ali has an intensely Loyalist morality, and while he has no issue with killing people for threatening the group – he performs executions and is fine when Lawrence does the same thing – people actually do have intrinsic worth to him.

ALI. God help the men who lie under that! LAWRENCE. They're Turks. ALI. God help them.

I was all set to say Snake Primary for him, because his morality for the second half of the film is so focused on Lawrence. At first, he's impressed by Lawrence's suicidal bravery, which is why he commits to the plan to take Aqaba from the land. But what really makes him ride-or-die is when Lawrence risks his life to save one of Ali’s men. Gasim is not a particularly developed character, but that’s not the point – the point is that he’s one of Ali’s, and Ali starts off the movie kind of Burnt. I’m sure he would love to live in a world where he never has to leave one of his men behind (the way he absolutely REFUSES to leave Lawrence behind, later on.) But doing that isn’t smart, it isn’t practical. Over time Ali has had to lower his expectations. That’s how a Burnt primary thinks.

But the second Lawrence proves himself – Ali makes him part of the community in every way he possibly can: gives him water to drink, his bed roll to sleep on, a new name (Aurens) and then the signature white Bedouin robes. It’s all so, SO Badger. Ali starts the film as a slightly Burnt (slightly hopeless) Badger primary, and meeting Lawrence shows him that maybe things could be different. 

Then, at the end of the film, Ali's tragic ending is to be left without a community. He’s let the old animosities bubble to the surface and alienated Auda. Lawrence has rejected him. He can’t go back to his original way of life, because his perspective on what his "community" is has changed - he's an Arab now (this hypothetical category that mostly just exists in Lawrence's head) in addition to being a Bedouin. The one hint we get about what he’s going to do next is “learn politics” - something which the film has very mixed feelings about. 

No matter the situation, Ali adapts and does whatever’s required of him with the quiet confidence of someone who’s done this a million times. He’ll be differential and fade into the background in Faisal’s tent, he’ll be Lawrence’s hype man when they’re trying to get Auda to help, he’ll even take out his sword and fight alongside the group in a battle he doesn’t ideologically believe in. He struggles finding common ground with Lawrence at first, because he’s never met anyone like him, but he still tries. (“I have been in Cairo for my schooling. I can both read and write.”) This is honestly a great example of a Courtier Badger secondary. 

So, we get this complicated interplay between a Double Lion and a Double Badger. Lawrence is spectacular, but also prone to losing sight of reality in a way that makes him easy to manipulate. (This is a double Lion beat I wish I saw more, the only other example I can think of is, strangely, Newsies.) And Ali’s Double Badger makes him stubborn and conservative, but also reliable and grounded. He’s the one who survives the story. The film does frame Ali (and Colonel Brighton to a lesser extent) as Lawrence’s real legacy.

tl;dr

T.E. Lawrence: Glory Hound Lion that Explodes, then Burns, then starts modeling Exploded Lion, then Burns some more / Lion (slight Bird model) 

It sounds like you're just a Lion. (Maybe even a slightly Burnt lion, going from the apologizing.) Lions prioritize their goals, their causes, and their emotional response to things over the people in their life - that's just what a Lion *is.* I would say that the warning signs of an *exploded* lion are.

They are willing to do things in the short term that they know are bad, and even Feel Bad, because their end goal is just That Important. (or because they're just That Special)

Binary "If you're not with me you're against me," type thinking. Any critique or criticism is an attack. The only angry/abusive responses I've ever got from SHC stuff have been from exploded lions.

Hey! I’ve been wanting to write to you for some time.

I think I am a Double Lion, for the most part. At least, right now that’s what I feel comfortable with. If I had to talk about my values, right now my loved ones are more important to me than any big cause or my country etc. If anything happens to me, they’ll be the ones impacted the most. Naturally, I prioritise them more.

On the surface, sure this looks pretty Loyalist, but that little “right now.” Just that little acknowledgement that this is how things are now, but maybe not how they’ll be always makes me think that there’s an Idealist primary underneath.

What keeps me going at my worst moments is my desire to see my nephews and nieces. I really want to be an aunt. I want to see my sibling get married, and be there for them. And I will live to see that at any cost.

I am the most important person in my life. It’s my life, it should be centered on me. And this is a attitude I adopted recently after I went to therapy.

I don’t have too many universal values on here. But this one I like. Because the way I see it, the alternative is burning yourself out (and very possibly building up some kind of resentment.) At which point you’ll have made yourself someone else’s problem anyway.

Beforehand I used to run myself ragged trying to find the One True Purpose of my life. The idea of a cause that I could wholly dedicate myself to captivated me. Letting go of that idea wasn’t easy, but I had to because a) it isn’t realistic and b) it wasn’t good for me.

Oh there’s the Lion. This is actually a fun (and probably useful) way of thinking about Exploded Lion. Exploded Lions vanish into the cause - but what is there is no Cause? Probably something like this, hopping around and getting increasingly and increasingly desperate.

The opinion of my loved ones matters to me, but at the end there are some things I simply won’t budge on. And these things are not topics I am willing to waver on, and I cannot fully explain why I have come to value these concepts/beliefs so much. It’s definitely been a process though, little things adding up over time to create like a fort of belief.

Beautiful description of a Lion primary.

As for secondary, I think I am Lion because nothing else fully fits. I don’t know if this is a primary thing or secondary thing, but the idea of changing myself so that other people would like has always been utterly repellent to me.

It is a secondary thing - but in this case, yeah that feeling would be strengthened and reinforced by your primary.

Even when I was utterly desperate for social connection, I was adamant that I would rather spend the rest of my life alone than change myself for anyone. Companionship obtained that way is not worth anything. I don’t think in extreme terms like “spend the rest of my life alone” any longer, but my stubbornness on this remains.

Healthy Double Lions are such powerhouses.

I am at my best when I prioritise myself and do not allow my behaviour to be influenced by the way others behave. I mean, to a certain extent I am willing to, but that’s when it comes to making sure I am not making someone needlessly uncomfortable? That I am respecting their boundaries? I don’t think these things count as “changing my behaviour” though. It’s just being considerate.

Being a Lion secondary shouldn’t just be open permission to be an asshole :) Lion secondaries can always hit the breaks. In fact, they’re really good at hitting the breaks. Lion secondaries can hit a boundary and stop, or at very least lower the volume.

I can’t think of examples for singleplayer, but I really like fixing things if that counts for anything. Tinker around with the thing for a bit and it all starts making sense. It needs me to use my head without using it too much. It’s invigorating. I really like fixing things more than creating them.  I would’ve become a mechanic if it paid enough.

Awww. You, and other EXTREMELY LOUD Lion secondary Anakin Skywalker <3

(I would not be surprised AT ALL if this is a Single-Player Lion Pattern)

As it is, I will probably become an engineer. I think bird primaries are so cool. I thought I was a bird primary because it seems like the right way to go about things

You, and all the rest of the Lion primaries.

but it stressed me out and made me miserable.

Yep. (I imagine you probably had some Burning in your past, or even some Burning and Exploding happening at the same time, which would make you my first example of a Burnt/Exploded Lion.)

It’s so cool how their way of doing things minimises bias and they just. They choose based on what seems to them to be backed up by sound reasoning and that’s incredible.

I know right. It’s so cool.

I tried to do that but it just turned me around in circles. Everything can be justified if you try hard enough. I think I’ll stick what feels right over what looks right.

The is the the Lion primary way.

Thanks for reading all this way :)

I reckon my primary is Lion, maybe? My values often boiled down to “if I care about it, I care, if not then … **** it.” 

Probably an internal primary. Lion is certainly possible.

I’m normally very ambitious. It’s almost impossible imagining my life without this cause. At some point in my life, I’ve become my cause. I embodied it completely I couldn’t see anything outside of it. All my relationships, all my decisions were in service of the cause. However, lately I learn that it doesn’t do to hide myself behind to cause just to avoid my insecurities.

Ooooh, someone seems a little Exploded. Is it possible that you’re healing from an Exploded Lion primary? (and if so, the note about insecurities is some good insight on what it feels like to be inside an Exploded Lion primary.)

I realize that I can just risk getting myself exposed and it’s ok that not everything in my life relates to my cause. I mean … my cause will always be the most important things in my life. But having fun and cherishing relationships are important too, because in the end, when I’ve done all that I want to do. I wouldn’t be alone surrounded by charred bridges and enemies on all sides.

Yeah… that can be the problem with being an Exploded Lion primary. (I’m really thinking Lion for you. Snakes explode and burn a little differently.)

I’m not content working under anyone. I want to dictate my fate and my cause. I want power but not to satisfy my ego. I want it so I can dictate my cause and see it happen. I loathe those who yearn for power just for the power’s sake. Power must be earned and it must be used justly to make a positive change in this world rather than to satisfy one’s ego.

This cause is not really learned though. I’ve never second thought it. I only know I have to do it and it is right for me. It just makes sense on its own and it would be betrayal of self not to do it. There is not much to be said here, because this cause has been rather stable for as long as I remember.

Oh you’ve got a Loud lion primary.

It might vary in intensity (from ‘all that matters’ to ‘vital, but not the only thing that exist’) but it never changed.

You might be a Double Lion (a Revolutionary.) This bit about changing intensities is starting to sound kinda Lion secondary.

I think your guy's a badger secondary. I mean, "charming and gets along with people" - all things being equal, probably a Courtier Badger. And when Badger secondaries *burn* they can lose perspective and self-preservation, work until they can't anymore.

The deal with delusional people (and Exploded Lions are delusional) is they don’t think they’re delusional. They think they’re the only clear-seeing, unbiased, practical people out there. It’s a very flattering self narrative. 

So if you’re actively worried about this... my instinct says you’re fine, and not in any danger of Exploding. 

And I hear you about the Badger secondary. I hear you about the gaslighting. And I can tell you that what worked for me - is diary writing. I am a big diary keeper, and I was an even bigger one when I was more Burned. 

Here’s how it works. Something bothers you. Something makes you feel some kind of a way, but you’re not sure how or why. Write about it. No judgement, just write whatever comes up and stop when you’ve cleaned yourself out. By the end you’ll have sorted out your feelings a little more (they won’t feel so big) and you’ll feel better. 

And then (this part is cool) you get a little bit of a reputation for being a diary writer. And the next time the gaslighting person says, “What? When did I do that? I never did that.” YOU can say - “Well, I think I wrote about it, I could probably go back to my diary to find the date.” It doesn’t even need to be true, in my experience just saying that makes the gaslighter back off. And if you catch yourself thinking, “I’m probably overreacting, it probably wasn’t that bad.” DIARY.