Category: Movies

Natural

For me, growth comprises a series of unbidden crossings instead of some steady sequence of milestones. I come into initiation through early encounters with loss and precarity, where ethical awareness arrives ahead of skill but still demands response. These aren’t moments that announce themselves as formative; they register gradually, through absences that don’t resolve and conditions that don’t stabilize. I don’t just forget what I lose. My losses reorganize how I move, what I notice, and what I can no longer overlook. At the same time, spaces that are meant to confer direction or recognition reveal their own inconsistencies, wherein effort doesn’t reliably translate into security and merit is acknowledged without being supported. Moreover, I moved through these institutions with diligence and intent. I fast-tracked my degrees, kept a steady rhythm of research and publication, and approached my work—and people—in good faith, with the expectation that consistency and care would accumulate into stability. I met expectations and, at times, exceeded them as I navigated conditions that weren’t designed with my positionality in mind. This cultivated a disciplined, adaptive effort characterized by a willingness to continue even when the terms are uneven.

But the outcomes didn’t—and still don’t—align with the labour. Recognition appears intermittently, without continuity. Opportunities remain contingent. What becomes evident over time isn’t a lack of capacity, but a lack of translation between effort and security. To be acknowledged without being retained, to contribute without being anchored, is to occupy a position that is functionally provisional. This doesn’t make me exceptional. It just makes me attentive and teaches me to notice asymmetries of power, the fragility of care, and the ways survival tends to precede understanding. Continuity isn’t structurally guaranteed so much as it depends on conditions that are unevenly distributed and often withdrawn without explanation. After a while, my attention became less of a choice than a disposition further augmented by my disability and neurodivergence. I grew painfully aware enough to register shifts in tone, expectation, what’s said, and what goes unsaid. This mindfulness forms in advance of reassurance, and response becomes something I carry out without the promise that it will be met, reciprocated, or even recognized.

Maybe that’s why I felt by Kraven the Hunter (2024) which depicts initiation as something imposed. This reflects how my own relationship to the world took—and continues to take—shape through intensive perception and responsibility. The movie follows Sergei Kravinoff (Levi Miller) from a violent childhood under the rule of his domineering father, Nikolai (Russell Crowe), as he grows into a relentless personal code. During a hunting expedition in Africa with his younger brother, Dmitri (Billy Barratt), a fatal clash with a lion and an enchantment from Calypso (Diaana Babnicova) transform Sergei by endowing him with inhuman strength, senses, and stamina. But this fractures his family, precarious as is. Sergei withdraws into off-grid isolation while Dmitri remains—and matures—with Nikolai. Years later, Sergei (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) comes out as a hunter of criminal predators he deems “worthy prey,” which eventually forces him to contend with Nikolai’s criminal empire and the divergent fate of Dmitri (Fred Hechinger). Along the way, Sergei reconnects and partners with Calypso (Ariana DeBose), now a prosecutor. Their alliance draws them to conflict with Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola)—also known as the Rhino—and the Foreigner (Christopher Abbott), an ocular hypnotist assassin, whose brute force and mechanized violence crystallize the distortion of the hunt that Sergei strives to overcome. The film traces how his origin functions as an initiation that binds him to violence, ethics, and survival which informs his relationships and sense of responsibility.

Reading the film through a lens of initiation myths allowed me to reflect on my own experience. Maturity isn’t a destination so much as an ongoing practice of coming into, then carrying consciousness that guides our ethos. For example, initiation concerns spiritual encounter among the Dagara in West Africa (Tengan, 2016). People are drawn into initiation because something in their life breaks open—typically via illness, disorientation, or some disruption of psyche—signifying that perception has exceeded ordinary bounds. The trial evinces being in contact with forces beyond the communal norm, so initiation responds to a rupture already underway that teaches the initiate how to carry the deeper awareness without being consumed by it. The outcome is responsibility—not authority—manifest in the capacity to translate between visible and invisible orders. Likewise, Ifà initiation is open to all genders and centres on the ethical weight of knowledge over physicality (Clarke, 2004, p. 244, p. 264). The initiate undergoes ritual seclusion which proffers entering a cosmology where adulthood is defined by their ability to interpret signs and act in balance with unseen forces. This produces intermediaries whose insights carry consequences for others. Initiation here marks the moment when perception becomes obligation which binds the initiate to careful speech, restraint, and accountability.

Alternatively, trance and healing initiation occurs in altered states that bring the initiate near death for San communities in South Africa (Guenther, 2020, p. 11, p. 57). Pain, exhaustion, and visionary experience collapse the boundary between self and world. Initiation confers relational capacity—the ability to move between states of consciousness and return with knowledge that sustains the group—more than status. Survival qualifies the initiate as one who can cross thresholds without being overcome by them. Initiates become attuned to states and mediate intensity as opposed to being subsumed. Being attuned needs regulation where sensation, vision, and bodily strain are interpreted rather than resisted. The initiate comes to recognize shifts in threshold as meaningful and develops an awareness that enables them to hold proximity to extremity.

In Ancient Greece, the Eleusinian Mysteries were infamous for their radical inclusivity that welcomed initiates regardless of gender, class, or origin (Cosmopoulos, 2015, p. 106). These secret initiations culminated in reorientations to mortality instead of mastery over it. What arose was a catharsis regarding one’s relationship to loss and continuity. Initiates were known as those who’d seen something that couldn’t be truly spoken and who therefore carried life differently. Conversely, Orphic initiation focused on a soul’s connection to suffering and repetition (Edmonds, 2013, p. 110). The initiate learned to recognize existence as cyclical rather than progressive and grew bound to ethical restraint over conquest. Pain wasn’t resolved here; it was transmuted as intelligible within broader cosmology. Initiation was about living with a higher consciousness of consequence in knowing that actions echo beyond a single lifetime.

Across Siberian traditions, shamanic initiation is violently transformative (Siikala, 1982, p. 104). The initiate is purposed to be taken by spirits, symbolically dismembered, and reassembled in a mythic articulation of psychological and physiological rupture (Hoppál, 2006, p. 217). This marks a permanent change in perception that separates the initiate from ordinary social life while binding them to communal responsibility. It doesn’t matter who they were before, just that they survived dissolution and returned capable of moving between worlds. In Scandinavia, seiðr initiation—ritual work with fate, prophecy, and altered consciousness—defined aspects of Norse warrior culture (McKay, 2026). Initiation isolated the bearer from normative roles and cast them outside ordinary hierarchies while entrusting them with dangerous insight. The initiate became simultaneously necessary and unnerving because they were marked by knowledge that transcended everyday order.

Initiation happens because something breaks. The initiate doesn’t choose transformation. Familial or social authority recede and life obliges—not rewards—survivors. Initiation is defined by the burden of insight—an altered way of seeing that must be carried, translated, and lived with care—not by the acquisition of power. What follows from that break is a reorientation, so the world doesn’t become clearer in a comforting sense; it becomes more legible in its tensions, inconsistencies, and costs. What was once diffuse sharpens. What was once ignorable persists. This altered perception reorganizes relation because it changes how one interprets action, how one registers consequence, how one situates oneself among others. Authority no longer arrives from outside as instruction. Now, it’s encountered as obligation within perception itself. To see differently is to become responsible for that difference, even when no structure exists to recognize or support it. Insight is a condition that requires ongoing change respective to context since it must be translated into conduct without hardening into certainty or succumbing into withdrawal. Which is why the initiate becomes accountable to what they can no longer overlook. Accountability governs how they speak, when they intervene, and when restraint is needed. It also introduces friction. What appears urgent to the initiate can remain ambient to others. This discrepancy intensifies the burden of carrying perception without immediate confirmation. As such, initiation is less about crossing a threshold than about learning how to inhabit a world that has already changed in how it appears.

Across these hunting cosmologies, the hunt is structured by proximity and mutual risk that binds hunter and hunted to a shared respect. The carbine technology of guns and ammo convolutes this naturalist encounter, so Nikolai’s use of a firearm collapses that relational space and therein severs the ethical symmetry that sustains the hunt. This rupture then initiates a transfer of consequence. Since Nikolai—the one who fires—is literally and figuratively beyond reach, the effect displaces onto the one still positioned within the relational field of the hunt: Sergei. The likeness for sins of the father arises here as the son becomes a site where the broken ethic [of the father] resolves itself. Drawn out of paternal protection, Sergei enters a threshold where ordinary causality gives way to mythic logic. Impersonal forces exceed individual will, so Calypso intervenes in kind because he crosses a line where myth replaces choice (Pohoaţă & Waniek, 2017, p. 45). Events move beyond familial causality into a ritual order that can’t be traditionally reversed or overseen. Although the narrative is thematically underscored by “the sins of the father,” Nikolai’s survival is actually irrelevant to what follows because he’s excluded from the ritual economy he violated. 

Initiation myths tend to insist on this cruelty of severing ties without erasing them, so that the initiate is marked more by loss than inheritance. But not all traditions leave the initiate in exile. While many myths describe rupture and separation, they also describe return. The Dagara initiate re-enters community as mediator. The San healer comes back from altered states carrying knowledge for collective survival. The Siberian shaman, dismembered and reassembled, doesn’t remain outside the village; they stand at its threshold, translating between worlds. Even the Eleusinian initiate, sworn to secrecy, resumes ordinary life altered but not expelled. Separation is part of the rite, not its final destination. This distinction matters. Exile is permanent estrangement; vocation is marked differentiation within relation. The initiate is entrusted with a particular burden of perception, severed from others. Their insight becomes functional rather than isolating, so they’re needed because they’ve crossed. Sergei’s arc complicates this pattern. His initiation fractures lineage and displaces paternal authority, but it doesn’t lead to reintegration through communal recognition. He forges his own code instead of inheriting a sanctioned role. Theres’s no village to receive him as intermediary, no ritual language to translate his altered perception. His solitude becomes more structural than ceremonial, so what might’ve been vocation slides toward personal exceptionalism.

That slippage clarifies something in my own experience. There’s a difference between being set apart by awareness and remaining apart because no structure exists to hold it. When perception evolves without a collective framework to metabolize it, insight risks hardening into isolation since awareness without reintegration becomes exile by default. The initiate carries knowledge but lacks a community that can absorb or respond to it. Perhaps, this is one of the quiet distortions of modern life. Traditional initiation assumes return. Contemporary structures rarely provide it. Insight circulates privately, and responsibility remains individualized and the burden of translation falls inward. One learns to steward perception alone. Then, the question is whether solitude in this context is destiny or adaptation. If exile isn’t intrinsic to initiation, then the problem isn’t awareness itself, but the absence of structures capable of receiving it. Vocation requires recognition. Without recognition, differentiation becomes estrangement. Sergei personifies this tension as his discipline reads as strength, yet it is also a response to the absence of communal care. The hunt becomes his substitute for ritual acknowledgment. Each pursuit confirms his altered status in the only arena available to him. But confirmation through repetition isn’t the same as reintegration. It secures identity without restoring relation and that distinction reframes the entire arc. Isolation may accompany initiation, but it doesn’t need to define it. So, danger becomes about carrying clarity without a place for it to land.

Even though strength is commonly touted as a prize, it appears in Kraven as something inseparable from cost and consequence. Nature doesn’t choose the strongest. It chooses those who understand the cost of strength. When Sergei meets the lion’s gaze, it qualifies him because that understanding takes hold. Likeness is also operant here as their violence is spurred by the cruel authority encoded in patriarchy and natural order in addition to being used—and hunted—by Nikolai. So, Sergei sees himself in the lion. The tragedy is that this recognition can’t save him because violence has already been set in motion, which is central to his character. He learns that understanding nature doesn’t mean you can control it, no respect guarantees mercy, and power is about surviving violence more than strategy or coexistence. Power is passed on through violence. It’s not an asset, just something that must be carried. The lion doesn’t spare Sergei because the world Nikolai represents doesn’t allow innocence, empathy, or mutual recognition to survive.

The scene operates on totemic justice, not cause-and-effect realism. The latter is usually easier to understand since it operates through linear causality. Actions produce outcomes in a traceable sequence: somebody acts, an effect follows, and responsibility is assigned based on proximity to that action. Intention, evidence, and procedural logic matter here because we assume that events can be explained, judged, and resolved through identifiable chains of cause. Within this model, justice is corrective or adjudicative because it seeks to match consequence to action in a way that restores balance through explanation and accountability. That’s not the case for totemic justice which works through symbolic and relational logic instead of sequence. Consequence doesn’t exactly follow from direct action; it comes from recognition, position, and participation within a broader field of relation. Responsibility is transferred through likeness, proximity, or a breach of an underlying order, even if the affected people didn’t initiate the event—which makes intention secondary to order. It doesn’t matter who caused something in a procedural sense. What matters is who stands in relation to it [whatever was caused] after the fact. Whatever justice ensues is redistributive, often irreversible which isn’t corrective in a legal or clean-cut causal sense. The key here is less to explain events than reconfigure who must carry their weight. I think that’s why the scene feels so uncanny to me, because understanding drives change. Once recognition happens, something has to change, and someone must carry that. There’s no closure because initiation is an enduring condition that continues to inform how we live in the world. 

The classic Marvel comics—where he famously refers to Spider-Man as “the most dangerous game,” a nod to the short story by Richard Connell—show Kraven as an arrogant aristocrat fixated on Spider-Man. Domination defines his sense of worth, so the hunt serves to prove his superiority. Kraven’s violence remains theatrical and self-referential even when his stories become psychologically complex. He’s a character driven by reputation, legacy, and a need to demonstrate mastery over an exceptional opponent. Other adaptations—mostly video games and animated versions—tend to emphasize Kraven’s flamboyance, ritualism, or exoticism. Kraven appears as a dramatic, almost operatic figure in the 90s animated series. He was a hunter who became mortally wounded after saving his fiancée—a scientist who would later become Calypso—and transforms into a bestial antihero after being given a life-saving serum. This origin and personality loosely characterize miscellaneous media appearances, comprised of an identity that hinges on ritual hunts as well as objectives or displays of domination. Recent video game adaptations—such as Marvel’s Spider-Man 2—show Kraven as a legendary warlord who embodies a hunting philosophy in elaborate arenas, mechanized traps, and escalating trials. All these portrayals invest in spectacle, competition, and theatrical brutality that posit Kraven’s violence as something to be witnessed and overcome.

Kraven shows us someone whose defining moment is private. Sergei remains Sergei, and “Kraven” is his ambiguous albeit mindful alter ego. Both are recast as austere, solitary, somewhat introverted whose core logic of showmanship is replaced by values of initiation and loyalty. The film pares back vanity and excess to cultivate personae who are thoughtfully bound to a code that precedes ambition. Hunting is an obligation Sergei carries, not a performance he stages. It’s how he keeps faith with the consequences of his initiation and the cost of the strength he bears. What distinguishes this portrayal is the absence of audience. When he acts, he’s not seeking recognition or affirmation. Although he finds himself reflective after the odd callout by Dmitri, Sergei ultimately acts regardless of whether he’s witnessed or understood. This adds another layer to the “Kraven” identity as a condition that clarifies how he must move through the world. The name marks continuity between perception and action more than a departure from himself. There are no appearances to keep up, just a consistency to maintain. Each hunt reaffirms the ethos that connects what he sees and what he does to reinforce a logic that substitutes for external acknowledgment, so the absence of performance isn’t emptiness but compression, where meaning is contained within action instead of shown through it.

Hunters live in the same world as the rest of us, where goodness has no protective power. Being gentle, ethical, or well-intentioned doesn’t secure survival, recognition, or justice. What sets hunters apart from us is a more explicit acceptance that action and responsibility can’t be deferred to innocence or hope. Many of us are hunters in our right as we navigate a world that demands response once recognition takes hold. As Sergei is never spared despite his principle or prowess, what matters is how one responds once that truth is revealed. He doesn’t believe that moral virtue floats above consequence; he believes that action must answer for imbalance. Hunters accept that the world doesn’t intrinsically reward integrity, so they drive at responsibility instead of innocence. The reason Sergei is noble comes from refusing denial since he doesn’t hide behind intentions, excuses, or purity. He acts with the knowledge that survival, power, and harm are already in play—and he chooses to bind those forces to a code.

This Kraven is noble because his likeness acknowledges that justice doesn’t come independently, being ‘good’ doesn’t spare anyone from the costs of living in a violent world, and responsibility starts where comfort ends. That said, this position isn’t without its own ethical tension. If responsibility is always driven through action, then the threshold for intervention becomes hard to define. Acting in response to perceived imbalance can uphold order, but it also limits the prospects for which alternative responses might emerge. The commitment to consequence risks becoming continuous, where restraint must be actively chosen rather than assumed. This tension exposes the demands of Sergei’s ethic. When he’s working relying neither on innocence nor external oversight, each decision carries forward to inform conditions of the next—which means there’s no neutral position to withdraw from. The discipline that underwrites his nobility binds him to a mode that rarely permits suspension, so it stays exacting. It needs discernment without certainty, action without guarantee, and consistency without any reassurance of recognition or reciprocation.

There’s another tension in the hunter’s ethic I can’t ignore here: when accountability is centered on action rather than essence, and when institutions are perceived as compromised or indifferent, the temptation arises to assume the role of arbiter oneself. If systems fail to correct imbalance, the disciplined individual may feel compelled to intervene. In Sergei’s case, the hunt becomes a corrective instrument. He identifies “worthy prey,” assesses conduct, and enacts consequence. His code functions as an internal judiciary. The logic is simple enough in that if harm circulates through repeated action, then response must also circulate through deliberate action. But self-appointment carries risk. Without shared oversight, even principled judgment can calcify. The one who measures imbalance therefore becomes insulated from being measured in turn. A code may bind conduct, but it doesn’t automatically generate accountability beyond itself. The danger enclosure, not hypocrisy. When ethical authority rests entirely within the self, revision depends wholly on introspection. There’s no external tribunal capable of challenging interpretation, no collective forum through which proportionality is negotiated, so precision can become unilateral.

However, this doesn’t render Sergei ignoble. It clarifies the precarity of his position since he distinguishes being from action. He directs consequence toward conduct. He resists theatrical domination. Even so, the architecture remains solitary. The same discipline that restrains him also shields him from relational audit. His justice is rigorous, but not dialogical—and that distinction matters as the impulse toward self-appointment tends to come from disillusionment in life more broadly. When institutions falter, when representation substitutes for transformation, when accountability appears performative, the disciplined individual may feel justified in withdrawing trust and asserting private governance. Closed systems feel cleaner than compromised collectives. But private governance carries its own ethical burden. Think, who corrects the corrector? Who recalibrates the calibrator? The risk is subtle. Over time, discernment may begin to conflate consistency with righteousness; and the absence of contradiction may be mistaken for moral clarity. Self-regulation becomes self-legitimation. In guarding against predation, the hunter risks normalizing perpetual adjudication.

Precision gives clarity. It sharpens judgment, stabilizes response, and protects against misreading. It allows one to identify patterns, assign consequence, and maintain coherence across time. In a world where harm repeats, precision feels necessary since it guards against naïveté and refuses dilution. It ensures that what’s been learned isn’t easily forgotten. But precision alone doesn’t account for mercy. Mercy complicates accountability. It introduces elasticity into judgment without eliminating consequence. Where precision draws clean lines, mercy attends to context in terms of timing, capacity, contradiction, and the possibility of change that doesn’t yet register as pattern. It allows for response without immediate closure. Within a solitary ethical structure, mercy can seem indistinguishable from risk. Incorporating it requires tolerating uncertainty, and uncertainty reintroduces exposure. It asks one to remain open where closure would feel safer. For someone geared to discipline, this is a structural shift that means allowing for responses not fully determined by precedent.

Sergei’s code privileges restraint, proportionality, and consequence. It limits excess and avoids spectacle. Yet it rarely makes space for mercy as such. The hunt concludes in decision, not reconsideration. This aligns with his initiation, which binds him to responsibility more so than absolution. Still, the absence of mercy narrows the range of possible outcomes. Encounters tend toward confirmation as opposed to transformation. Generally, in life, a framework centered around precision risks foreclosing the variability that it seeks to interpret. When every action is read through established pattern, deviation struggles to register as genuine and change becomes difficult to recognize unless it’s already complete. So, mercy here entails the capacity to hold a moment open long enough to see whether something else might emerge.

Initiation myths traditionally guard against this through reintegration. The shaman returns to community to serve, not to dominate. The initiate’s authority is recognized yet bound by collective structure. Sergei lacks that reintegrative scaffold. His discipline remains internal, and therefore fragile. Without relational counterweight, even restraint can harden. The problem isn’t the decisions he makes; it’s the fact that the decisions are exclusively at his sole discretion. Ethical life requires conviction andpermeability. When one stands entirely outside shared processes, even in the name of integrity, the line between responsibility and unilateralism narrows. The hunter’s code can preserve order, but order sustained without reciprocal scrutiny risks becoming another form of control. All the same, this tension doesn’t negate Sergei’s nobility. If anything, it speaks to the complexity because his strength and discipline are admirable. Still, strength governed without dialogue is precarious. And maybe that precarity is one subtlety of the film: not whether his actions are justified, but whether anyone can bear the burden of acting alone without gradually becoming the very force they sought to correct.

Unlike the Kravens of yore, this one recognizes and accepts his own participation in harm and power, and chooses to act with accountability to their consequences. Like when he talks to Dmitri—“I don’t hate people. I hate what they do.”—he discerns between being and action. His hatred isn’t directed at existence, identity, or even desire; it’s directed at conduct and impact. That distinction matters because it places responsibility squarely in the realm of choice and outcome over essence. People aren’t condemned for who they are, but they’re answerable for what they enact in the world. This separation echoes an ethical orientation in which character is treated as but as something disclosed through patterned action by what is done repeatedly, and therefore what becomes attributable; not something fixed. Aristotle (2009) accounts of ethical life wherein virtue is something formed through habituation and actions that sediment into stable dispositions—hexeis—over time. What one is cannot be meaningfully separated from what one does because action is the medium through which character becomes legible. So, responsibility is defined by conduct that is enacted, reiterated, and made consistent in the world. As Alasdair MacIntyre (2007) argues, actions are intelligible within practices and traditions that give them coherence over time; responsibility emerges not from isolated intent but from participation in forms of life that shape what actions mean and what they produce. Harm, then, is not an abstract moral category but something that accumulates through conduct, taking shape in its effects rather than its justifications. At the same time, attribution does not collapse the person into the act. Paul Ricoeur (1992) frames the self as one who can be held accountable through action without being reduced to it. Basically, the self is a being capable of imputation whose deeds are owned, interpreted, and answered for without exhausting the entirety of one’s subjectivity. Impact becomes the measure, not intention or identity. What persists in the wake of an action—who is diminished, what is altered, what cannot be undone—grounds ethical judgment (p. 64, p. 74). Similarly, Sergei refutes the comfort of moral absolution that casts people as purely good or irredeemably evil because he accepts a harder truth instead; that harm is produced through actions, repeatedly and knowingly, and reckoning belongs there. This discourse preserves the distinction without softening its demands as it leaves open the possibility of change, but only through altered conduct, not redefined identity.

Centering action over essence brings everyday habits and performances into view as sites where harm continues to take root. When accountability is located in what people repeatedly enact—what they applaud, ignore, normalize, or excuse—the focus shifts from condemning humanity to interrogating participation. This reframing also redirects attention to scale. Harm accumulates through minor, sustained alignments that rarely announce themselves as ethical positions. Harm isn’t just produced through overt decisions or singular events. A laugh offered at the wrong moment, a silence maintained for convenience, a preference enacted without reflection—these aren’t incidental. They’re mechanisms through which environments take shape and sustain themselves. So, what becomes visible are the conditions under which wrongdoing remains legible yet unaddressed. Participation works through proximity instead of intention. One doesn’t need to endorse harm explicitly to help maintain it. Remaining adjacent without interruption can be sufficient. This complicates the notion of responsibility because it exceeds direct causality. Accountability begins to include not only what one initiates, but what one permits to continue through inaction or accommodation. This also changes how change is understood. Transformation is less about declaration and more about disruption at the level of habit, noticing where repetition substitutes for reflection and where familiarity absolves scrutiny. The ethical demand becomes ongoing rather than episodic, situated in the continuous adjustment of conduct as opposed to in isolated moments of correction. Responsibility is defined by the attention to how one’s presence participates in shaping what persists.

Which makes me think of the phrase “bread and circuses”—drawn from the Roman poet Juvenal—that describes a pattern where material comfort and spectacle are used to occupy public attention while deeper political or structural concerns go unchallenged (Aldrete, 2021, p. 4). This can be likened to how mass entertainment, consumer culture, and performative media cycles can subsume collective energy, which undermines civic action or critical reflection. Empire thrives on symbolic display, and people lend it their applause in ways that ultimately diminish their own agency. To be clear: there’s nothing wrong with joy. It’s just that when distraction becomes habitual, public life narrows to consumption instead of participation and people gradually forgo consciousness to the forces that define their conditions.

The same pattern appears in the language of representation. Under neoliberal logics, visibility tends to substitute for transformation, and symbolic inclusion stands in for structural change. Representation becomes a consumable image—circulated, celebrated, and monetized—while material disparities persist. In this economy, shared qualifiers do not automatically generate solidarity, because proximity to power can coexist with complicity. What unnerves me isn’t joy or visibility, but the way they are mobilized to signal progress while leaving the underlying architecture of oppression intact. 

I’m starting to see that this isn’t simply about employment, grief, or having been wronged. Those are real pressures, but they aren’t the whole story. What’s actually taken root is a generalized mistrust which comprises the assumption that institutions will fail, communities are conditional, and individuals will eventually withdraw. The instability and losses in my life have reinforced it, but the pattern extends beyond any single event. I’ve started to interpret contingency as inevitability and impermanence as proof that nothing holds. That stance feels like realism, even clarity, but it’s also a defensive consolidation; if nothing ia trusted, nothing can surprise me. The problem is that this posture protects me from disappointment while quietly narrowing my capacity to experience anything as secure, even when it might be. Generalized mistrust feels protective, but it also becomes self-sealing. 

Eliminating trust doesn’t eliminate risk. It eliminates intimacy.

It’s not wrong that some people are traitors.

It’s not wrong that solidarity rhetoric can prove hollow. 

It’s not wrong that institutions are unreliable.

But when mistrust becomes global, it prevents us from gathering—if even just experiencing—evidence to the contrary.

If I never confide in others, then I can’t gather data about whether anyone [else] can hold that vulnerability.

If I never expand my network, then I’ll never discover which people are worthwhile.

Isolation and preoccupation, even obsession seem to guarantee safety by shrinking exposure; but shrinking exposure also shrinks possibility. 

When Sergei assumes the world operates through predation, he refuses the vulnerability of innocence. 

Rather than risk being wounded, he chooses to wound first. 

Rather than hope for goodness, he aligns himself with brutality as oversight. 

The mantle of Kraven the Hunter is built on anticipation. The rationale being: if harm is inevitable, then the only rational position is dominance. Kraven has always transformed contingency into certainty and fear into control. Every iteration distrusts the world to be equitable, so he becomes its arbiter; preferring isolation and force over exposure and possible betrayal. His power reads as strength, but it’s sustained by the conviction that nothing and no one can be relied upon—which creates a closed system. Sure, closed systems feel controlled. 

But they also concentrate pressure.

Sergei is alone and lacks external relational anchors. Isolation strands him to deal with all emotional processing, all reassurance needs, all belonging, and all safety regulation. That’s heavy for anyone. Kraven leans into that weight to show him as someone who regulates himself through discipline over dialogue, and through codes instead of companionship. 

I talked about the Cassandra effect before and likened naming the experience of perceiving patterns of complicity, spectacle, or structural betrayal before others seem willing—or ready—to acknowledge them. While the defining aspect of Cassandra’s tragedy is just that she foresaw things people disbelieved, another element is how that recognition yielded isolation. Being unheard turns discernment into estrangement over time. This made me think of structural critique—attention to systems, incentives, and repeated behaviours that reproduce harm—that locates responsibility in what’s enacted and sustained. That clarity pays attention to consequence. The danger arises when structural critique drifts into totalizing judgment; when patterns harden into anthropology and participation becomes proof of essence. That’s when disappointment transforms into a global verdict about people as such. This distinction matters because one preserves analytic precision while the other negates variation. Structural critique questions habits, performances, and incentives. Totalizing judgment condemns humanity wholesale. The former allows for earned solidarity and selective trust; the latter converts clarity into exile. Holding that line—between naming structures and condemning people—may be the difference between living with consciousness and living alone with it. 

In my case, the Cassandra effect has started to vindicate some solitary absolutism. More often than not, consciousness imparts that relief and hope are naïve. But consciousness needs less isolation than selective containment. I choose where and with whom my clarity is shared, rather than doing so indiscriminately. I set boundaries around what I’ll engage, take on, and which relationships hold complexity without collapsing into denial or spectacle. Moreover, I assert my integrity and qualifications without apology. 

My experience, training, and labour are real—and they warrant respect. 

I recognize my rights to dignity, fair treatment, and material stability—and I refuse to internalize disrespect as I refute erasure or exploitation as the cost of participation. 

My boundaries aren’t hostility; they’re the terms under which I remain present. I engage the world with consciousness, and I insist on being met with the same respect I extend to others. 

My consciousness is stewarded instead of broadcast or hoarded; protected from dilution, but also from turning into exile.

Even with that, something remains unresolved. Selective containment offers structure, but it doesn’t dissolve the conditions that made it necessary. It refines engagement without restoring ease. The world remains what it is—uneven, inconsistent, and often unaccountable—regardless of how carefully I regulate my response to it. This is where my likeness to Sergei lingers. Not in violence, but in the persistence of orientation. Once perception sharpens, it doesn’t return to its former state. The initiate doesn’t “go back.” They carry forward. What changes isn’t what’s seen, but how it’s held. Sergei doesn’t stop hunting because the world doesn’t stop producing what he recognizes as imbalance. Likewise, consciousness doesn’t recede simply because it’s burdensome. It remains operative. It continues to register patterns, to detect dissonance, to resist the ease of forgetting. Then, discipline isn’t only in restraint or containment, but in deciding how much of that perception to act upon—and when.

Maybe that’s the quieter form of initiation. Not the moment of rupture, but the ongoing negotiation that follows it. How to remain lucid without becoming sealed. How to retain discernment without collapsing into inevitability. How to engage without surrendering to illusion, and how to withdraw without relinquishing relation altogether. I don’t think there is a stable resolution to that, only adjustment.

And maybe that’s the point.

Well, for now anyway. 

♫ Title song reference – “Natural” by S Club 7

References

Aldrete, G. S. (2021). “Bread and circuses”: Ancient Rome, modern science fiction, and the art of political distraction. Film & History, 51(2): 4-20. https://doi.org/10.1353/flm.2021.0004

Alves, M. R. P. (2020). The natural fallacy in a post‐truth era: A perspective on the natural sciences’ permeability to values. EMBO Reports, 21(2): e49859. https://doi.org/10.15252/embr.201949859

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For The Good Times

Sometime in the early 90s, my maternal grandmother was terminally diagnosed with colorectal cancer. She would undergo renowned Ayurvedic and First Nations herbalism treatments in addition to a mindful exercise regimen, which would mark her passing almost a decade later [as opposed to the mere months doctors expected]. Of course, I was too young to understand this prognosis. All I could fathom was the anguish of bereavement upon her loss. This was corroborated by several accounts of others who continue to affirm that I was never really the same after that loss—which would be punctuated by the relocation of my father, provinces away from me, shortly thereafter. 

Back then, I think, was when I started to second-guess the value of my emotions. What was the point of so much, if any sadness? Moreover, these early losses inform the way I view impermanence. These voids—especially since I couldn’t understand them, even though I felt their weight—naturally inclined me to undermine feelings. Specifically, investing in feelings that only lead to pain. This would also mark when, how, and why I felt an aversion to change because these transitions left me unmoored. These days, I find myself impassive as I sit with my grief rather than run from it. Happiness, I’ve accepted, isn’t found by trying to alter the past or secure a perfect future; it comes from being present. Love and loss are intertwined. Neither the acquisition nor pursuit of happiness concerns chasing time but accepting its passage, embracing moments that are ours to cherish. 

This is something I remind myself after the terminal prognosis of my cat, Edith, my maternal grandmother’s namesake. Over time, I realized that oversight defined a lot of how I bereave the departed. I agonize over not being able to see or care for Edith again. I want to protect and comfort her, even beyond this life. It’s a love that transcends time, and I recognize this bond isn’t easily broken by life or death. I like to think that my love for her will always be a part of her journey, here and beyond. However, I can’t help but feel sadder as I grow more self-aware and attuned to the impermanence around me. I’m sure my neurodivergence (amongst a plethora of adversities) factored into how hopeless I’ve felt and the [very rational] conclusion that engaging with the world emotively can only lead to further loss. But no one can refute the impermanence of life. 

Maybe that’s why, try as I might, I can’t shake my fascination with The Flash (2023). 

Unlike the DC Universe Animated Original, Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox (2013), a curious live-action interpretation marked the latest foray by the DC Extended Universe in The Flash (2023). Both films are adaptations of Flashpoint, a 2011 DC Comics crossover wherein Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) travels back in time to prevent the murder of his mother, Nora (Maribel Verdú), which inadvertently creates an alternate reality on the brink of apocalypse. But The Flash sees Barry sent further back in time where he’s knocked into an alternate timeline by another time-traveller. Therein, he encounters—and coexists with—a younger, happier version of himself (also played by Miller) prior to the trauma that would’ve come to affect most of his life. This duality adds a layer of introspection as Barry not only confronts the consequences of his time-altering actions, but also the person he could’ve been had iniquity not defined him. Yet, his time travel creates an alternate reality where superheroes are missing or changed, and Earth is threatened by General Zod’s (Michael Shannon, reprising his role from Man of Steel) invasion. He teams up with his younger self and the timeline’s Batman (Michael Keaton) and Supergirl (Sasha Calle) in an attempt to save the timeline by defeating Zod. 

Central to the narrative is retrocausality, the concept that future events can influence the past, as Barry realizes his intervention causes disastrous changes to the timeline which affect both past and present realities. Another key narrative element here is fate, the idea that certain events are predetermined and unavoidable, when Barry recognizes that death—the deaths of his family, friends, and other allies—mark fixed points in time that can’t be changed. Thus, all is for naught as the heroes face Zod and his fellow Kryptonians. The Barrys find themselves woefully outmatched. Their attempts to engineer a favourable outcome are futile because despite any of their interventions, Batman and Supergirl invariably perish. The end of this world is assured as Zod deploys his World Engine to terraform Earth and repurpose the planet as a new Krypton. 

Eventually, Barry faces the Dark Flash (also played by Miller)—an older, battle-scarred version of his alternate self; uniquely conceived for this film—who has been obsessively trying to “fix” this doomed timeline, running through time for an eternity as he attempts to engineer an outcome where everyone lives. He admits to pushing Barry into this timeline to ensure his own existence wherein he [Barry’s alternate self] could acquire his powers. This relates to earlier in the film when Barry reveals to his longtime crush—Iris West (Kiersey Clemons)—that his resolve to work in forensics was driven by a desire to correct systemic failures which belabour judicial and evidentiary oversights, as he also seeks to exonerate his father—Henry (Ron Livingston)—who was wrongfully convicted of Nora’s murder. Since Nora never dies in this reality, alternate Barry lacks the driving force to be a forensic chemist—and so, never interns at the forensics lab wherein he would’ve been struck by lightning and doused in chemicals to gain his powers. This necessitates the Dark Flash knocking original Barry into this timeline whereupon he, in an effort to preserve his future and ensure he can go home [to his own timeline], guides his alternate self to orchestrate this accident. The Dark Flash muses about how close he is to “fixing” everything, having run back in time over and over again to orchestrate an outcome in which Nora, Batman, and Supergirl are alive. 

But his efforts wreak havoc across the multiverse. 

We see glimpses of alternate worlds and peoples. There’s one where Christopher Reeve and Helen Starr observe as Superman and Supergirl; another where George Reeve is a Superman who oversees Jay Garrick; and one where Adam West’s Batman chases a Joker played by Cesar Romero, among others. All of them degrade as the Dark Flash’s interventions compromise the cosmic order. His interference doesn’t just destabilize the multiverse. It degrades time itself. His obsessive attempts to alter events also render his very own reality unsustainable. On principle, the implosion of other worlds won’t spare this one. Still, the Dark Flash insists that he can “fix” things, then moves to kill Barry lest he jeopardize this objective—but is undone when he mortally wounds the alternate Barry who dives between them. Accepting this tragic outcome, Barry departs to undo his initial alteration, understanding that restoring the original timeline is the only way to prevent further chaos and preserve cosmic order.

In contrast to The Flashpoint Paradox which emphasizes alterity and irrevocable outcomes, The Flash contends more with reflection and nostalgia. It allows Barry to witness the innocence and joy of his younger self, which underscores a sense of loss that transcends what devastation ensues after his Nora dies. Both films share a central outcome in that Barry ultimately realizes he must undo what he has wrought in attempting to save his mother, as his intervention in the timeline creates a catastrophic ripple effect that throws the multiverse into chaos that leads the alternate realities to the brink of destruction. And while his intentions were rooted in love and grief, he comes to understand that altering the past to prevent an outcome—however tragic—causes more harm than good. The alternate timelines, whether in the form of a world plunged into war in The Flashpoint Paradox or the fractured reality in The Flash, demonstrate the dangers of tampering with time; evincing the consequences of Barry’s actions, forcing him to confront and accept a bitter truth: to restore balance and preserve the greater good, he must return the timeline to its original state, accepting the pain and loss he once sought to avoid. This realization is key in both iterations, reinforcing the [relatively quantum] principle that the past cannot be rewritten without destabilizing the present and future. 

In many ways, The Flash personifies a conscious effort to live within the constraints of time, when one realizes that resisting change, tirelessly trying to ‘fix’ things, can be futile. We can recognize that retrograde efforts to ‘fix’ things create more harm than good, so we reconcile what we’ve suffered as we come to terms with the need to move forward. Our misfortunes are fundamental to who, how, and what we become. Which is why the Bruce Wayne in Barry’s original timeline (Ben Affleck) is nonplussed by the prospects of time travel. Quite accurately, he posits that any temporal interference could yield dire outcomes and notes how our adversities shape us. “These scars we have make us who we are,” he says. “We’re not meant to go back and fix them.” We lose out if we fixate on the past in ways that prevent meaningful engagement with the present or future. 

For all the disfavour elicited by The Flash—concerning Miller’s exploits offscreen and the studio’s commercial failure—I truly appreciate this film, in that it captures the ethos of the sacred speedster which proves immensely resonant as time goes by. It’s the personal tension between holding onto the past and learning to let go for a greater good beyond oneself, even if it means losing the opportunity to relive a life with neither error nor pain. This alone marks The Flash enterprise as an admirable cinematic feat that explores memory, identity, and the inescapable nature of time. Moreover, The Flash uniquely depicts time travel to evoke an ontological terror that is premised on our own associations with other characters. For example, Michael Keaton reprises his role as Batman; or rather, a Batman from an alternate timeline which conjures nostalgia. Somewhat ironically, as he opines on retrocausality, his presence reinforces the idea that time is fluid and splintered as his familiar likeness is at odds with what we expect. This prompts yet another unnerving realization: any- and everyone, no matter how cherished or iconic, can be altered beyond recognition or repair, by time—which punctuates the chaos that Barry has unleashed. The familiar becomes unfamiliar, which characterizes an existential horror wherein once reliable constructs of identity, memory, and continuity are eroded. As Barry encounters this alternate Keaton-Batman, the film taps into our associations with Keaton’s original 1989 portrayal, but now filtered through the lens of a world that’s doomed and unrecognizable. Time travel doesn’t just threaten cosmic order. It fractures the very essence of the lives, stories, and characters we hold dear. 

Which made me think of how Martin Tropp (1990) muses upon what makes for good horror: to “construct a fictional edifice of fear and deconstruct it simultaneously, dissipating terror in the act of creating it” (p. 5). He suggests that horror builds a sense of fear while also providing a way to dismantle or understand it through narrative  mechanisms—resolution, confrontation, or explanation—that allow us [the audience] to process and dispel that fear. In The Flash, we see this when Barry sputteringly grapples with the fact that his attempts to change the past bear massive consequences; the terror of unraveling reality itself. And as Barry realizes the futility of his actions and works to restore the timeline, this horror is deconstructed. We, like Barry, come to terms with the inevitability of loss and the cosmic balance, which transforms the initial fear [of losing loved ones and failure] into a shared understanding for the dangers of trying to rewrite history. I can further appreciate this in knowing how the ignoble powers that be, initiate and sustain the historical and ongoing erasure of marginalized positionalities; how the disparities which define us are assured in perpetuity.

Even now, I remember seeing The Flash on the big screen. It was during a time when everything felt hollow, when the anxious pulse of my own vulnerability pressed in on me. Grief over my brother’s death, the ache of feeling expendable, and the dismal horizon of my future—no gainful employment, no promise, no purpose—hung over me. As always, I sought movies as a means to stave off despair. I tried to lose myself in a blur of images, desperate for some reprieve from an endless churn of thoughts and rejections. But I guess I’d grown used to these film reels, so I found myself piqued less by the features themselves than in what mere segments afforded me small mercies; and even those failed to dispel my gnawing sense of negligibility and the loneliness of being unmoored, unseen.

When I was in that theatre, I remember thinking that if I was Barry—stranded in an alternate timeline where heroes who were once widely revered or empowered ceased to exist—I could’ve cared less. Time doesn’t just give context to existence. It agonizes life itself. As a species, we’ve yet to truly evolve or progress. Since history repeats itself in terms of pain, harm, and disparity—regardless of what we do or don’t change—what is the purpose of time, of a life relative to time or other people? While technological and scientific advancements may suggest progress, they don’t address cyclic problems of suffering and injustice. Time is also indifferent to these struggles, as the same issues reappear in new forms across generations. In this respect, time seems pointless, even cruel because it offers the prospect of change without assuring its realization. Therein, time travel becomes a mechanism to explore this horror while simultaneously offering a way to resolve it. 

Barry’s journey mirrors the core tenets of horror by confronting not external monsters, but the horrifying reality of devastation caused by his desire to “fix” what was thought to be broken. The fears that premise the time-traveller scenario arise from the catharsis that certain traumas, no matter how painful, are integral to the cosmic order; and that meddling with them can unleash cataclysmic chaos—which aligns with Tropp’s notion that horror works by creating and deconstructing fear in unison. Barry’s time travel offers him a fleeting sense of hope—of reversing loss and rewriting his trauma—but it also creates a terrifying new reality, where his happiness inflicts untold destruction. All iterations of Flashpoint provide audiences with a narrative framework to explore an experience that would otherwise seem chaotic and incomprehensible. In watching Barry wrestle with the horrors of manipulating time, we’re given a likeness to understand our own relationship to the past through a futility of trying to rewrite the inevitable. In the end, this story taps into an existential dread that forces us to confront the immutable nature of time and the consequences of defying it.

And while many people I’ve met have affirmed the existence of fate, that “everything happens for a reason,” it wasn’t until I saw The Flash that I could truly grasp this. Unlike The Flashpoint Paradox, it features Barry’s encounter with a happier version of himself—an alternate self who, in the end, dissolves into the sands of time, embodying the irreversible nature of certain losses. Alternate Barry was just too good to be true. Experiences, no matter how tragic, must remain so for the greater good. The literal and figurative dissolution of Barry’s alternate self speaks to how the personal is more crucial than political. While you may endeavour to change someone or something, unraveling the very fabric of time isn’t exactly selective. Reality and meanings are relative because they coexist. Good is palatable because we discern what is bad. When you aspire to eliminate one, you risk losing both. Just as these opposing meanings maintain balance, the Speed Force governs the equilibrium of time itself in DC Comics. It is an extradimensional energy source that fuels the super-speed abilities of speedsters [imbued with powers like The Flash], enabling them to move, think, and react at lightning-fast speeds, as well as travel through time. Barry channels the Speed Force to become The Flash, using its power to protect the timeline and uphold justice. 

On the other hand, Eobard Thawne, the Reverse-Flash, creates and harnesses the Negative Speed Force to maintain his existence and undo The Flash’s heroic legacy. Eobard exists as a living paradox. Despite originating from the future, his existence is contingent upon his enmity with Barry. He continues to exist even when erased from history due to the Negative Speed Force which purposes him outside the normal constraints of time. The lore states that the Negative Speed Force and Eobard’s status as a paradox insulate him from time-altering consequences, allowing him to exist unaffected as timelines shift around him; an advantage Barry lacks. Yet even with this power, Eobard isn’t actually happy. He finds himself at odds, imprisoned in an eternity of obsession despite his freedom from any temporal constraints. He’s denied love, connection, even the very humanity he sought to conquer, illustrating that even mastery over time cannot restore what it takes. 

In The Flashpoint Paradox, Eobard appears as the primary antagonist, exploiting the chaos of the alternate timeline to torment Barry and gloat about the catastrophic consequences of Barry’s decision to save Nora. And while he doesn’t appear in The Flash, it was confirmed that Eobard was intended to be the culprit who murdered Nora offscreen. This looms, as his paradoxical existence embodies a cautionary contrast, the very dangers of altering time; a lesson Barry ultimately learns. While Barry seeks to heal past wounds, Eobard thrives on distorting time in an effort to fulfill his own obsession. But this in itself reflects a refusal to change. His attempts to alter reality stem from idealizing or controlling his past, rather than improving who he is in the present. But despite what torment Eobard causes Barry, the latter manages to live a pretty happy life. Although Eobard is free from time, his inability to accept the limits of his own actions resigns him to an endless cycle of misery; a sharp contrast against Barry’s journeys to growth and reconciliation. 

I use to identify more with Eobard because of my own pessimistic avoidance, finding his existence as a paradox relatable as a means to shield one against inevitable loss; sparing myself and my beloveds of my very existence and engineering favourable outcomes for us. The Flash allowed me to empathize with Barry as he [his yearning to alter painful events despite knowing the cost] mirrors how I struggle to bear the emotional weight of caring for people who inevitably leave. For me, the film invoked a familiar question: is it worth forming connections that are destined to dissolve, whether through death, distance, or disinterest? The certainty of loss makes every bond feel tenuous, but Barry’s journey imparts that these merry moments may still be worth the pain they bring. The films show us this in a few ways. First, through Nora upon who he warmly scoops into a tearful embrace. Then, in the charmed life of his alternate self. This is also modelled through the multiverse as it begins to implode, conveying that the beauty of connection, however temporary, is intertwined with the certainty of its end. 

When alternate Barry dissolved into the sands of time, I bawled. Not because of Miller’s performance, Andy Muschietti’s direction, or even Henry Braham’s cinematography. It was because of the narrative itself. This characterization hinges on the catharsis of one’s own ephemerality. Alternate Barry exists as a flicker against a dying light. He’s a radiant albeit brief impossibility born of a broken time, where his happiness and joy are fleeting in a reality that was never meant to sustain them—which serves as a stark reminder that such sheer happiness can’t persist in a world fundamentally unable to uphold lasting fulfillment. When the sands of time claim him, grain by grain, it marks an erasure of flesh and spirit. Being mortally wounded sees him express a mixture of terror and acceptance, nascent of a child’s dream collapsing into a man’s grief. As he’s swallowed by the very void that his alternative selves tried so desperately to defy, each particle dissolves the laughter that once was. This visualizes the tragic loss of youth and innocence fated to be overtaken by the stark, unrelenting future. His dissolution isn’t just a moment of temporal collapse, but a miserable metaphor for the necessity of growing up and facing harsh realities. To watch him vanish was like watching the erosion of hope and idealism that gives way to the burdens of time and consequence. I felt an unbearable pang as I watched this, like I was witnessing my own innocence being consumed by the relentless hands of fate. Whereas, the Dark Flash, the embittered future [alternate] self—an incarnation of fear and obsession—stands as a testament to the truth I’ve always known but resisted; that happiness, however desperately sought, can’t sustain itself in the shifting landscape of time and loss. There’s an intimacy in alternate Barry’s disintegration that hauntingly echoes my own desire to rewrite past sorrows, yet always knowing that—even if I could go back—the past would remain imbued with the same tragic impermanence. 

Initially, I was content to watch to world burn—or in this case, implode—since I was exasperated by the iniquities that vindicate my cynicism. I resolved that if I was Barry, I could’ve cared less [to fix things] because this world’s cons overcome any [highly unlikely] pros and didn’t deserve saving. Like, what’s there to save? The perils of miscellaneous insecurities? The myriad of death and resignation which claimed my beloveds? Prolonging the despair of have-nots against the grain of what profane, performative politics comprise abusers and upper classes? But this scene imparts that time trumps any and every prerogative. It wrenched something raw and vulnerable from deep within, its truth so piercing that it brings tears even now, because it carries the likeness of my own futile longing for a happiness I was never meant to hold. 

Charlatans will never see reckoning. Same goes for obscenely privileged positionalities. 

My alma mater, amongst other local universities, will never endeavour to retain me regardless of my avowed—and pretty fucking obvious—assets.

My maternal grandmother will never live again. 

Neither will my paternal one. 

Nor my brother. 

Or any other beloveds I’ve outlived. 

My family will likely never set aside their petty grievances to simply get along. 

My boyfriend’s love will never be totally guaranteed, and he may very well choose to leave me one day although he assures me I’m not expendable [to him]. 

James and Vera will never be alive again. And as badly as I wish for otherwise, Clark and Edith won’t live forever. 

The reality of these impermanent connections only deepens the ache of knowing even the most cherished bonds can never be secured against the passage of time. Yet, time can also proffer great things that endure. I could one day find meaningful, gainful employment where I could work and effect positive change for years to come. My boyfriend has given me some of my happiest moments and our relationship could evolve into a lasting bond in any capacity. And I continue to create meaningful moments with my family in different ways. Even now, I have deeply cherished times with Clark and Edith, whose companionship brings warmth and comfort amid life’s uncertainty. Although I’m mindful of how I can’t be faulted for everything, that certain things are beyond my control, I still feel like I could/should be “accountable” when I fail to ascertain positive outcomes. The Flash motivated me to resist overthinking—via hyperfocusing on particular aspects or points in time—and aspire to be present in the moment, conscious of a grand[er] scheme.

Moreover, time operates on a double-bind of not knowing what’s to come. It’s defined by potential, holding both promise and peril as it unfolds. This uncertainty is equally hopeful as haunting. We know it will bring loss, but we can’t foresee what good may lay ahead. It’s this ambiguity that makes time so daunting yet so full of possibility, as every moment carries the potential to either deepen the wounds of the past or cultivate new, lasting joys. The problem isn’t merely the uncertainty of what’s to come. It’s the question of whether the anguish will be worth it. I don’t exactly fear the adversities time will bring; I just wonder if the bad will ever truly justify the good. Will I see any return on what hope, effort, and love I’ve invested along the way? Can joy, however fleeting, truly outweigh the depths of fated sorrow? 

The Flash (2023) seems to suggest the affirmative, as Barry ultimately understands that he must fix what he’s broken in time—not to erase the pain, but to preserve the sanctity that existed in spite of it. His decision reflects that even brief instances of joy or equity can make hardships worthwhile, reinforcing the belief that any good, however small, can transcend the darkness that surrounds it; purposing sorrow as a necessity for the cosmic order. Our despair serves to maintain an equilibrium that governs timelines, peoples, universes beyond our own. The prospect of happier, healthier Fallens who exist elsewhere grants me some closure to make peace with my own indignities; and I’m inclined to count my blessings, appreciating what better living conditions I’ve got in contrast to the Fallens who are worser off. 

Likewise, I also understand how disastrous it would be if any of us were to switch places. Imagine if I travelled back in time and wrought a timeline wherein I was a gainfully employed professor, but the absence of my beloveds—and very likely, my conscience—enabled my esteems. Regardless of whether they’d all be alive, I would’ve been estranged from my family. Probably no friends or felines. No boyfriend either. Or, what if my scholarship, salary, and success in that universe were contingent on becoming just as—if not, more—loathsome than the ignobles with whom I currently contend? Even now, I can think of several who are miserable with the familial cards they’ve been dealt. One in particular never misses a chance to impart I’m expendable because I’m not a parent and hold citizenship, absolving themselves of their own complacency, alleging that “suffering” would make me “a better person,” in contrast to more privileged colleagues; while they dote on—sparing no time or expense to ingratiate—themselves amongst internationals and within miscellaneous families in a pathetic effort to vicariously glean some sense of familiarity (notably, parenthood) in lieu of reckoning with their own lack thereof. By their own admission, they’re at odds with relatives—for whatever contrivance or another—wherein immediate relations refuse to indulge or cohabitate with them. It comes as no surprise that they’ve also proven to be anti-Black in imparting likewise, even worse to others. And, there’s another one who opines about how dejected they feel. They resent their family, opting to work late to stall going home for as long as possible. Their significant other functions less as a partner than a ward alongside the progeny neither can seem to civilize, whose narcissism grows as they do and renders their antics more of a nuisance than “cute.” Then, there’s the nepo-hipster whose parents’ [formerly tenured professors] spoils inclined them to cosplay as a queer liberal to supplant an utter lack of self-awareness. 

I could go on, but I digress. At the core, this intricate weaving of timelines and alternate selves echoes The Flash’s emphasis on why tampering with time, no matter how well-intended, can yield unforeseen horrors. As Barry confronts the potential cost of rewriting his past, I too recognize that achieving certain desires could mean sacrificing what makes my life meaningful, even if imperfect. In addition to many others, the aforementioned ignobles deplore accountability as much as honesty and kinship, even as they claim—and build personae based on—the contrary. Their measly modus outdoes any vocational and financial fulfillment to the extent that their vanity and trivial pursuits betray them being hollow, condemned to dissatisfaction. Which prompts me to be mindful of the moment. The Flash accentuates this, showing that the real tragedy lies not in what is lost, but in what could be lost by pursuing an illusion of “better.” Some things are truly too good to be true. 

Some times too. 

♫ Title song reference – “For the Good Times” by Al Green

Time in a Bottle

The summer I turned 22, I could finally appreciate the sentiment that underscored those mushy Hallmark platitudes. James had turned eight in the spring—just under 50 in cat years—and I loved him dearly. But I’d never forget when Edith came to me, jet black and demure as she seldom spoke; and when she did, she tended to whisper. Her voice remains one of the things that sets her apart from the others. First, from James whose tone was always intent and incisive. Later, Vera who had a voice that was distinctly dysphonic: raspy and mangled but bang on with its pitch. Then, Clark whose reserve and indecision distend even the most casual calls into wails. Even today, I still can’t quite explain it. All I know is that when we first met, Edith intoned a curious albeit honest endearment that etched into my heart forever. The fact that she speaks sparingly prompts me to acknowledge her whenever she does. Although I’m told that cats—like people—tend to talk more as they age, I still find myself keen to address what have become frequent utterances.

Like the others, Edith shares a namesake with one of my late relatives: my maternal grandmother, nicknamed ‘Ada,’ who was a devout optimist. I’m grateful for the time we shared since she succumbed to cancer when I turned eight. She proved to be somewhat of an anomaly, attributed to palliative care indefinitely and resolved—and largely, successful in her efforts—to be active. Her children remember her as selfless; raising them independently after my grandfather was lost to cancer many years prior, often foregoing her own intake and leisure to ensure theirs. They tell me that she often said things to me which seemed macabre, but I recall these things to be maudlin in hindsight. Aware of her ailments, she would tell me goodbyes. “I’m going to leave,” she said. “I’ll be here, but you won’t see me.” Several times, she emptied her purse to gift me the entirety of its contents, assuring me that they were better in my hands since her ‘departure’ meant these were things she’d no longer need.

Upon reflection, I think the loss of Ada defines why I still find death hard to come to grips with. I likewise find myself viscerally averse to any type of ‘departure’ from my life, even as I recognize people have the prerogative to abandon me beyond the context of mortality. This has fostered my tendency to mourn the people, places, things that are currently in my life to which bereavement overshadows them. I struggle to live in the moment because I find myself disassociating from it, knowing that the moment will inevitably pass. Even now, as I feel blessed to have Edith for 14 years—to which she’s roughly into her early 70s in cat years—I also feel sad in knowing she too will pass.

Like James.

Like Vera.

And Clark will pass too.

Everyone will.

Which is odd since I think I’m somewhat more amenable to that than the prospect of them leaving, living without me on their own accord. Surely, this betrays some pride or narcissism on my part, but this sentiment is hardly unique. The aftermath of any departure—a breakup, ghosting, abandonment, and so forth—embitters those left behind. It hurts whether we possess the wherewithal to be accountable for what parts we might have played in that exit, or acknowledge what toxicity underscored those who would choose to leave us as if we were expendable, or just accept that people are well within their rights to unravel our grasps upon them. Over the course of our lives, most of us learn—and nurse—that pain firsthand. Consequently, this pain defines us. Not in the sense that life is exclusively pain, but in that we cultivate the skills to push past this and muster the gumption to live life nonetheless.

But as Edith comes to purr at my side, these days, life as I know it has come down to outliving those I care for and staying after others have left. I think back to the summer we met: when her undertones complemented what reeds whispered and swayed in the breeze; and she would burrow her small face into the crook of my arm, then her pupils would recede to slits as we watched the sunset cast fiery hues across the horizon. Back then, I thought back to Ada who resolved to wash clothes by hand since she believed laundry appliances were insufficient. I remembered being a kid, carting soap to her pail, helping her peg each garment to the clothesline to later retrieve the dried colours and textures that would dance in the wind.   

It seems almost eerie that Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox (2013) debuted shortly after I first got Edith; and I say ‘eerie’ because the moral quandaries posed by time travel and prospects of quantum physics now endow me with a sense of relief. Like, this idea that all things—including the bad things—are fated to happen to oblige a grand [existential] design and we should neither rue nor alter them lest we jeopardize the fabric of space and time. Which encompasses the premise of The Flashpoint Paradox: the Barry Allen iteration of The Flash (voiced by Justin Chambers) travels back in time to prevent his mother, Nora (Grey DeLisle), from being murdered therein yielding an alternative universe and timeline. However, he lacks his powers in this reality. Barry also discovers his wife, Iris (Jennifer Hale), is married to someone else and the Justice League ceases to exist. This reality is on the brink of a world war, caught between the misanthropic Amazons led by Wonder Woman (Vanessa Marshall) and the speciesism that informs Aquaman (Cary Elwes) whose legions declare “land-dwellers” to be a scourge. In oversight, the powers that be duly conclude that contemporary society will be caught in the crossfire as the onslaughts foreshadow mutually assured destruction.

While Cyborg (Michael B. Jordan) has grown to become a government operative who the Shazam family aid, the Batman and Joker personas are assumed by Thomas (Kevin McKidd) and Martha Wayne (also Grey DeLisle) respectively while Bruce was the casualty of the fated encounter in Crime Alley. Hal Jordan (Nathan Fillion), although a decorated pilot, never becomes the Green Lantern. Martian Manhunter has also failed to materialize. Superman (Sam Daly) is later found to be imprisoned by the American government, neither utilizing nor realizing his powers. There are several other heroes and villains—Deathstroke (Ron Perlman), Lex Luthor (Steve Blum), Captain Atom (Lex Lang), Steve Trevor (James Patrick Stuart), Lois Lane (Dana Delany)—who assume covert operations to no avail. With Thomas’ help, Barry recreates the accident—being struck by lightning and drenched in forensic chemicals—that gave him his powers. While the first effort leaves Barry badly burnt, the second attempt succeeds to restore his powers. 

But all is for naught. 

In their quest to best one another, Wonder Woman and Aquaman have devastated the citizenry wherein they’ve overridden legal order and razed countless nations. Everyone who comprises resistance efforts—alien, metahuman, mortals alike—are killed. After Wonder Woman bests him on the frontlines, Aquaman refuses to concede and so detonates a nuclear bomb his forces have engineered using Captain Atom. 

Armageddon ensues. 

Barry notes that his initial time travel was possible because, during, his nemesis The Reverse Flash—Eobard Thawne (C. Thomas Howell)—was not simultaneously using the Speed Force. Conversely, in this timeline, Eobard now uses such—which means Barry lacks the power to time travel. 

Beyond the fray, Eobard emerges to reveal that Barry is to blame for this timeline, explaining that Barry fractured spacetime by traveling to the past to save his mother. Gloating, Eobard pummels Barry until he’s fatally shot by Thomas. With Eobard dead, Thomas implores Barry to use the Speed Force—now, free from Eobard—to travel back in time: “The only way to save the world is to keep this world from ever happening.”

So, Barry runs and confronts himself along the way, preventing himself from intervening in the literal event of his mother’s murder. He later awakens to discover his original timeline restored wherein he is The Flash and comprises Justice League. Iris is shown to be his wife again, by his side at Nora’s grave, and he gleans some relief in that his actions yielded this outcome. Afterward, he visits Bruce Wayne (Kevin Conroy)—the Batman of this time—to ponder the experience; musing on the fact that he retains the memories of his alternate self—joys, special occasions, milestones—that ensued with Nora in the other timeline. Bruce speculates these memories could be a gift of fate, affording Barry a small mercy of recollection given his tragic loss—to which Barry gifts Bruce a letter from Thomas. 

When Barry delivers Thomas’ letter, I think of the astronomical depth contained in that message; the weight those words must’ve carried across time. It’s nascent of our proclivities for people we’ve never met, places we’ve never been, or styles we never lived to model.

Kinda like how I love disco even though I’m a millennial.

When disco emerged in the 1970s, it transcribed a fusion of themes and cultural movements, integrating the festive and contentious aspects of its time. The core of disco is freedom, escape, and inclusivity. The genre historically offered a vibrant counterpoint to sociopolitical turmoil of the era like the Vietnam War, stagflation, along with calls to action which hailed from [Civil, gay, feminist] rights and other countercultural movements. Empowering BIPOC and LGBTQIA2S+ remained at the forefront for social change as this period was marked successions—newer waves—of initiatives for rights and inclusion that preceded them. For belaboured communities, disco served as a refuge of upbeat tempo, infectious rhythms, and [typically] glamorous lyrics that encouraged dancing and joy; which resisted conservatism and repression.

Of course, Saturday Night Fever (1977) would mark its decline. The film launched disco to unprecedented heights of mainstream popularity, transforming the genre—created and centered around marginalized positionalities—into a global commercial phenomenon that saw disco oversaturate markets. This would account for the deluge of disco records and themed products, noted for their subpar quality, that endeavoured to resonate less and maximize profit. All of this underscored a public fatigue as masses started to liken disco as formulaic, insipid, and sensationalized. Which would culminate in the ‘Disco Sucks’ trend that prompted a riot that overtook a stadium in which people set a pyre of disco records ablaze. 

Still, the eminence of disco is timeless. Which is why I find it resonant even though I didn’t live through its peak. In their respective plights and objectives, Eobard and Barry impart this through their time travel, conveying that things transcend their historical contexts for anyone, any place—any time—whereafter others may derive new meanings and respects. While The Flashpoint Paradox follows Barry and the accursed inhabitants of the alternate timeline, Eobard Thawne is truly at the centre of the dynamic. His manipulation—exemplified in replacing Barry’s costume with his own, including his taunts and blows—serve to affirm his omnipotence within the storyline. Although both Batmans undermine Eobard as a narcissist and sociopath, I still doubt either of them could’ve foreseen the lengths he’d go—or rather, run—to quench his harrowing contempt.

Even as Eobard declares that Barry is to blame for the doomed alternate timeline, he says it’s “worth it” should he himself perish in the catastrophe. The revelation that Barry’s own actions created the Flashpoint timeline—despite Eobard’s provocations—illustrates the interplay between villain and hero, wherein Eobard’s influence transcends mere physicality and delves into the psychological, even existential. Eobard’s ability to manipulate time, survive paradoxical shifts, and maintain his influence over events and [Barry’s] psyche, enshrines him as a central figure whose significance in the narrative is as profound as it is unsettling, emphasizing his power and the focus on his character even as the story follows The Flash.

The Flashpoint Paradox also marks C. Thomas Howell’s voice acting debut, and he absolutely knocks the characterization of Eobard out of the park. Eobard is driven primarily by a personal vendetta. What defines him are envy, hatred, and a desire to prove himself superior whilst knowing his pursuits adversely affect spacetime. His objectives don’t align with broader ethical principles. Rather, they are fundamentally selfish and destructive wherein his time alteration holds consequences which extend far beyond his personal antagonism. Eobard is not only cognizant of the fact his actions threaten universal stability in addition to countless people and timelines, he also relishes the broader implications of his pursuits which are rooted in personal animosity and a desire to subjugate or destroy despite collateral damage. However, this perspective is underscored by an obsessive refusal to accept any outcome that does not align with his desires. In 2010, Geoff Johns illustrates this excellently in The Flash: Rebirth where we see Eobard going back in time over and over again, striving to engineer his own favourable outcomes, only to grow increasingly miserable because he finds himself yielding the very same—and worse—outcomes that he sought to amend.

What makes Eobard so relatable is his inability to accept the things he can’t change and that he himself refuses to change. This underscores a universal truth about the futility of trying to achieve happiness or growth through harm, and the detriment of refusing to accept and adapt to life’s inherent limitations. For all his powers and ingenuity, Eobard is ultimately characterized by a lack of empathy and an objection to grow or learn from his experiences. Which is why he pairs well as a nemesis for Barry whose indomitable will is conversely shown to be a source of strength and resilience purposed for a greater good, whereas Eobard’s resolve begets anguished actions and outcomes which speak to his maladjustment and failure to constructively engage with the challenges of life. There may be elements within him that aspire to overcome adversity, but what takes precedence is a commitment to impose his will. His animosity with Barry imparts a broader theme that the nature of one’s will—whether it is used for growth and positive change or for selfish ends—plays a crucial role in defining heroism or villainy.

And Eobard’s motifs go beyond obsession. He’s so preoccupied with power, control, and altering reality that he neglects the importance of personal fulfillment, interpersonality, and goodwill. His happiness is contingent on the affirmations of others and systems, which is a precarious and hollow premise for one’s value. Eobard embodies what becomes of those who become more entrenched in their ways through ignobility and manipulation for which individuals who fixate on their pasts grow alienated, bitter, and trapped in a cycle of despair wherein they never truly “win” or heal. Another element to Eobard: his inability to grasp that the essence of life is change; and I think that inability is derived from the fact that he exists as a paradox in time, literally impervious to change. Other films and comics provide this insight as Eobard was actually running through time opposite Barry. Therefore, he was unaffected because history changed therein. These changes occurred when he was outside of history and as such, he did not comprise it. He lacks a marked beginning and end. He’s a paradox because, by this logic, he shouldn’t exist. 

Ironically, only after Edith had curled into my lap, this was something I could make sense of. Eobard exists like Schrödinger’s cat. And ICYMI: Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment in quantum mechanics that illustrates the concept of superposition—where, until observed, a system can exist in multiple states simultaneously. When applied to Thawne, this analogy speaks to his likeness as a paradox. Since he lacks a history, he comprises all states of being in unison. He can’t truly die because there’s no point of reference wherein he lived; and he can’t exactly be alive since he transcends the concept of life itself. Eobard is simultaneously erased and intact across different timelines. This duality allows him to exist in a state of quantum superposition, present and not present in the continuum of spacetime. He is alive exclusively in a narrative sense, acknowledged by those external to him. His impact is only real if observable by others, even though his origin point or historical continuity is not fixed. This puts his ignorance to internalizing a peace of mind into perspective; and draws an interesting parallel for us as we exist inasmuch the eyes of our beholders. 

This is punctuated by the fact that, in hindsight, Eobard is the one who spurs Barry to time travel. The former taunts the latter: “Enjoy your petty little victories, Flash. But no matter how fast you run, you can’t save everyone. Not the ones that matter to you.” While this taunt inclines Barry to go back in time to save Nora, invoking the grief that haunts him since childhood, it also resonates with a desire to prove Eobard wrong and alter his fate for the better. But save for his costume, Eobard is hardly seen for most of the film which serves to foreground the chain of events that define the complex moral and ethical dilemmas associated with time travel and the butterfly effect. And when Eobard does emerge, he calls Barry out, affirming that this doomed timeline is quite literally the hell to pay for interference. When Barry alters time to suit his own ends, he treats time as a vanity project. “You didn’t stop JFK from getting assassinated or make sure Hitler stayed in art school,” Eobard chides, “You saved your mommy. You missed her.” While Eobard merely goaded Barry, it’s the latter whose actions have wrought Armageddon.

Which ties back to the [Serenity] prayer that Nora imparts to Barry as a child, recalling her own grandmother telling her the same: “Accept the things you cannot change. Have the courage to change the things you can. And have the wisdom to know the difference.” This prayer raises the question of discernment in human agency: how we distinguish between what is within our power to change and what is not, considering the limits of our control and influence. It begs the question of not only how we reflect in terms of acceptance and action, but also in how we apply wisdom to our lives. In The Flashpoint Paradox, this is thematic in that even those empowered—whether superpowered or respective to a privileged positionality—must concede to inherent limitations because there are certain aspects of life and reality that we simply cannot change. 

The advice also affirms the importance of having the courage to change the things that are within one’s power—which kinda reminds me of Spider-Man as I think of my own elders when remembering how Uncle Ben famously said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Elders who loved me, who ultimately wanted nothing more than for me to grow into a good person; a kind, loving, and selfless person who would do the right thing with whatever power I have. They believed in me—my goodwill, pride, and all—and supported my dream of [permanent] professorship so as to be empowered within academia which would translate beyond. If you have the power to do good in this world, you have a responsibility to do that good. That also means accepting when you fail to do so; whether that’s all the time you wasted trying to find happiness in people who fail to see you, or all the love lost between yourself and beloveds, or the demise of those you loved because you refused this responsibility. 

Because people seldom recognize and undertake the truth of who (or what) they are or have become. 

And, some wistful part of me wants to believe that it was no accident that Edith’s advent coincided with this insight. As I hold her in my arms now, I’ve yet to let go of the fears I held back then. Which is ironic as most tend to hold me in high regard, yet never think twice to let me go. Most laud me as strong: a scholar who’s fast-tracked several degrees, working my fingers to the bone with several bones to pick with those who fail to appreciate my efforts; whose lectures impart competence and charisma; whose words decorate peer-reviewed and non-refereed publications. 

Except that’s not the whole truth. 

As a lonely, cynical workaholic, I’ve internalized that I’m powerless and expendable; that I’m doomed to squander what scant power I possess. My pursuits evince as much resolve as desperation because I refuse to concede to limitations and strive to act decisively where I can make a difference. I’m alright with the how, why, who, what, and where.

What gets me is the when. 

It’s not that I regret my mistakes in and of themselves. I regret making them in the first place. 

But this isn’t unique to me. The desire to travel back in time [to correct past mistakes or avoid pain] encapsulates a fundamental aspect of the human condition: our capacity to reflect and for shame. This longing stems from our ability to contemplate our actions and their outcomes, coupled with an intrinsic wish to alter decisions that led to negative consequences. It attests to understanding causality and how subtleties impact life as we know it.

At the same time (no pun intended), it evokes antithetical desires: the want to learn from our experiences, whilst wanting to negate what pain or loss accompanies these lessons. These desires belabour our efforts to live an ideal life of happiness as we strive to minimize our suffering and avoid loss. They personify our psyches through aversions to pain and capacities for care. When I yearn to go back—to prevent myself from acting in certain ways, being in certain places, meeting certain people—it’s not because I want a personal do-over. It’s because I broadly aspire for perfection and protection for myself and those I care about. 

So, I repine what is as I dream of what could be.

My parents would probably be happier if I didn’t exist. To call them estranged would be an understatement. Without me, they wouldn’t be obliged to cross each other. My absence would proffer them the freedom to pursue their happiness independently, so it’s conceivable that their lives may be better without me in them. 

Likewise, my siblings would be better off. My sister would be more favoured. We’re seven years apart, so I can only imagine how better established or aware my parents would’ve been had they met and conceived then—as opposed to prior with me—at that juncture of their lives. They could’ve given her more acclaim for lack of comparison. The same also goes for my late brother. If I was never born, my parents could’ve devoted themselves—more time, attention, and resources—to him. Maybe then, they could’ve ascertained and subsequently intervened to rid him of his inner demons; instead of fruitlessly pouring into me since my gainful employment or benefits have yet to—if at all—materialize.

Come to think of it, my partner might be content if we never met. I cannot begin fathom how he tolerates my flaws. An assortment of obsessive compulsions and anxiety mark my own struggle to even stand myself, so I can only imagine how burdensome someone else would find my insecurities. Given our own proclivities for isolation and resignation to our fates [which seem contingent on obliging others to our own detriments], I wonder if our connection ensued as a consequence of a misguided time traveller. 

On the other hand, my counsellors argue that my non-existence wouldn’t necessarily ensure these positive outcomes. Seemingly random or chaotic states of systems can arise from underlying patterns and deterministic laws, challenging traditional notions of predictability and control. Chaos theory, with its emphasis on the sensitivity of systems to initial conditions, provides a fascinating grounds for this; and is also a lens through which we might view the attempts of Eobard Thawne and Barry Allen who travel time to find fulfillment or happiness. It suggests that even minor changes to the past can lead to unpredictable—often vastly different—outcomes, rendering time alteration [to any extent] risky. This problematizes time travel because its uncertainty is not guaranteed to result in favourable outcomes. Less people are familiar with chaos theory than its famed butterfly effect, positing that even the smallest change causes profound impact. 

For Eobard and Barry, chaos theory notes their attempts to manipulate time are fraught with potentials to spawn incidental effects which are far removed from their original intentions and desires. This resonates in several of their story arcs where their attempts to alter the timeline cause collateral damage, complications, or further personal and moral dilemmas. As such, their stories often impart that the pursuit of happiness—especially using such drastic measures as time travel—overlooks the immanent caprices of complex systems, like human lives and societies. Additionally, personae and viewers alike come to the same realization: no matter the time or place, or intervention, inequities and disparities persist. Eobard grows bitter, entrenched in recurrent letdowns, to which he absconds goodwill, citing the absence of guarantees. For Barry, in contrast, the Serenity Prayer is practical wisdom to face—and respect—the interplay between order and chaos. As for me, my non-existence doesn’t negate what abject prospects my parents, siblings, and partner could face. My parents may have ended up with different [worse] partners. My siblings could’ve succumbed to darker forms of anguish. My partner might’ve fallen prey to a fatal attraction. These dismal potentials should therefore merit my existential value.

But they don’t.

These alternate “worse” scenarios denote less truth than pathos. Optimistic platitudes elicit irritation rather than comfort. To put it mildly, there’s a massive gap between these prospectively “worse” timelines and how my pessimism is affirmed in this one. I need concrete solutions and assurances, not rhetorical devices. Do people still think knowing “it could be worse” does anything to allay despair or anxiety? Do catharses ensue when we’re aware of grosser alternatives? 

The reason I identify more with Eobard comes from another paradox of [good] morality and material prosperity. Barry allows his mother to be murdered as ordained in the original timeline to spare the other one, which imparts we ourselves must suffer the bad to befit a greater good. But for marginalized peoples—historically enslaved, assimilated, genocided peoples—this doesn’t land. It is sheer fallacy to purport we must suffer to spare others given our peoples’ erasure and exploitation, especially when the “greater good” functions as a supremacist worldview that is hegemonized. To that end, morality has been—and continues to be—instrumentalized by privileged positionalities whom are empowered as gatekeepers as well as within stations of allocation and oversight. If I were to concede to hope—premised on an idea of a world whose atrocity justifies the reality of this one—I’d be lying to myself. These platitudes feel fake, engineered to quash any resistance and ensure complacency. 

Which draws me back to Edith: I remember when she first met James, how earnest she was to keep her distance. I remember how long it took for them to finally get along, weeks later, and being mindful of the fact that my desire for their camaraderie neither obliged nor guaranteed them to get along. As I supervised their exchanges, I mused upon how, just because I chose them, that didn’t mean they must follow suit. These days, Edith kneads when I find myself enraged by people who insist everyone else must right themselves towards their desires. People for whom, outside of their wants, we cease to exist; people who shrug as we perish, but volunteer to deliver our eulogies; people who insist suffering makes us better, yet are agonized when their karma takes shape in grievances. We’ve all met these kinds of people. Maybe once, we were them; but that doesn’t make us bad people. Because good people change. All the same, as much I try to be a good person, I don’t flatter myself. While people from several walks of life call me “distinguished,” I’m far from perfect. Like you, I struggle to make life work and to persevere against odds which feel insurmountable. Every decision I make comes with new problems to deal with.

How many times have you asked yourself, “What am I supposed to do?” 

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I just know what I’d like to do, and I try to be mindful of that distinction. While I can’t time travel, my ancestry has made me privy to historical and ongoing atrocities of the charred aftermaths of lynchings, frozen cadavers, and peals of agony. While these profoundly unnerve me, they’ve been glossed over or commodified by token wealthies, hypocrites, and charlatans—all of which conspire to cheat and demoralize me. I don’t have a morsel of their power, so my truth cannot overcome their falsehoods. I can’t relate to Barry because I don’t see any “greater good.” Like, how entitled is it to deprive me even more in the interests of a status quo wherein good itself [as is] can’t be salvaged? Like Eobard, I’m inclined to be amoral since the prevalence of injustices vindicate my cynical worldview. I’d gladly perish in an alternate timeline where I was assured acceptance, purpose, happiness—even if only for a short time—to spare myself further anguish and indignities I’ll likely encounter (or cause) in this time. 

I don’t choose to be a pessimist. I just can’t help it. 

What sets me apart from Eobard is people. 

Recent versions of Eobard cast him as somewhat of a victim when foes murder one of his ancestors, thereby eliminating his home [the future] and confining him to the present. Although this narrative isn’t definitive, it draws upon the sense of rage and displacement inherent to his character. Eobard was isolated and disconnected from everyone, everything, long before he became unmoored from time. Eobard becomes a super-speedster through replicating the accident that empowered Barry because he idolized him; and this idolatry is augmented by the absence of Eobard’s own sense of purpose and meaningful relationships. Their fated enmity comes to pass when Eobard snaps once he uncovers records which identify him as Barry’s nemesis.

As much as Eobard wants to emulate or best Barry, what he ultimately wants is fulfillment. His ends aren’t justified, only occluded by his extraordinary means. Moreover, Eobard is shown to deceive any and all allies. It occurs to me that Eobard doesn’t choose to be disloyal, but rather he can’t help it. He betrays others, even himself, because everything he does betrays an underlying sense of not belonging. His choices are informed by a desire to matter and be remembered—which betrays that he is so removed from humanity, striving to connect by manipulating time, only to further alienate himself. Eobard is thus truly tragic, the epitome of how the pursuit of power to supplant identity ensures antipathy.

Which parallels how my own pessimism—defined by my disempowerment—renders me perpetually at odds with the world and myself. Instead of adaptation or acceptance, vengeance seems to be a more apt objective for the injustices, inequities, and such that I’m subjected to. I want to get back at the iniquitous—former advisers, mentors, and grifters—who told [and continue to tell] me that my thankless, tireless drudgery would assure worthwhile outcomes. I want to reclaim a future I was denied, a glowing future that was promised to comprise my present. My timeline is literally up in the air because colonial regimes have murdered and cheated my ancestors; and I’m now told to “make do” by folks who came by their intergenerational wealth and cultivated assets off the backs of my peoples’ erasure, enslavement, and execution. And even after I oblige and surpass ascriptions of merit, I’m still denied. But those in oversight are in my ear, imploring me to “enjoy the journey” as I lament the future being unclear. This too is not unlike Eobard who, rather than accept and adapt to signs of the times, desires to avenge his lost futures, making his rage and displacement a natural albeit destructive path for him.

This is the irony of Eobard, exempt from the conditions of spacetime but remit to past grievances; a living paradox who lives outside of time only to define himself within it. Even now, I get teary as I look to Edith, in spite of her good health, pondering her inevitable departure. I could never forget her; I wouldn’t want to. Just like Ada. Yet, I can’t reckon with the finality of loss. That is, I strive so deeply to gain in an effort to negate my losses. Eobard similarly acts not so much in the interest of winning, but to appease his aversion to responsibility. Where, when, and how he runs indicts his attempts to run away from the pain [and accountability] associated with acceptance. 

But I actually have people I care about, the same people whose lives I wager my non-existence would benefit. They impart the value in facing the truth. The whole truth. Life is so vast. It can’t be consigned to gratuitous evils. There’s truth in that my family manages to chip away at my heart; and I hope that my partner, in his heart of hearts, resolves to hang in there for the truths our love evinces. Truth is what moors fear when you share your heart with someone. Specifically, the fear that expressing your truth is too much for your beloveds to bear. It’s hard, but this feat leads us to find—and feel—something greater, something more. Truth doesn’t undo us. It makes us stronger. Even though it takes time, even knowing that there may be more to overcome, your truth resonates with you more than what precedes it.

This was only something I came to realize after meeting my partner. For my tendency to make mountains out of molehills, what tides me over is knowing he isn’t subject to the [grim] whims of my imagination (although I still wouldn’t be surprised if a time traveller appeared and admitted they had a hand in things). Truth taught me to hold on, if only for a second longer. Although I wonder if those who’ve passed learned this, I can only wish them well, wherever they are; even alive and well somewhere else in time, and I can only respect what suffering I needed to feel, if only to assure their wellness. 

My mind wanders to alternate timelines where I can simultaneously exist and observe my non-existence.

I think of encountering my parents, both of whom radiate confidence and contentment, pausing as they’re struck by déjà vu as I hold a door open for them in passing. They might be together, they might not. In any case, they’d have more colour in their cheeks.

My mother wouldn’t be as tired. She would muster the energy to take charge, take stock of her ambitions, totally free to indulge her dreams and leisures since my absence would afford her more time and resources. And she wouldn’t consider the consequences for talking reckless. “Next time is next time,” she’d scoff. “Now is now.” 

My father would appear less wan and sound less hoarse. He wouldn’t think twice to regale anyone with his tales of memories, because he’d have so much more without me there to weigh him down. Even if I revealed who I was, I wouldn’t be surprised if he still reiterated what he often tells me; about how we can only go forward and learn to navigate our wants and abilities within the larger framework of what is right and possible.

My siblings would exchange looks after they caught sight of me, slurping an XL soda, when they make a pit stop for one of their road trips. Maybe my brother would replace his cap, shifting his weight from foot to foot, and derision would subsume my sister’s curiosity. Either one of them would remark on how they’d have to get back on the road, then opine about the unbelievable gas prices. Just the two of them, they’d play off each other better—even happier—without me to complicate the birth order. My sister would shine in the absence of my shadow, empowered to connect and laugh off others’ chagrins. And my brother…well, however he was, he’d still be alive. 

Then, my partner—whose charms I’ve devoted sonnets to—would want for not, whether he was alone on the sidelines, gauging his pride in observing the lack of others’ or bemused by some bombshell. I’d encounter him near campus. I’d blush when he’d answer the door, just as he did the day we met. But this time around, I’d be less stiff and proffer more insight to our conversation. Since his specialties are in science and mine are humanities, I’d admit to reaching across the aisle every so often because I was fascinated by generative adversarial networks and causal loops—until it’d occur to me that I was rambling, but he’d politely listen all the same. Then, I’d think of us together elsewhere, somewhere else in time; where neither of us would think twice to declare our truths. And I’d feel like crying, albeit I’d be consoled by the time at hand wherein my non-existence is for the best. 

And in all these encounters, if I ever found myself entreated by one of these people I care for, my answer would never change: “No thanks. Maybe some other time.”

♫ Title song reference – “Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce

Land of Confusion

Like life, movies hinge on fiction. Industries operate on the bases of myth. Products and personae are crafted to achieve success through the acquiescence of narrative schemes. When I learned this, I began to think more critically about everyday storytellers, vendors, retail markets who aspire to monetize narrative methodologies; that every telling is prejudiced by a desire to tell. Which made me appreciate the value of narratology that yields revelations; notably, the distinction between belonging and connection, a lesson imparted by my therapist.

Belonging carries a desire to recognize that our acceptance is independent from our activity or the sanctions of others. In comparison, connection entails behavioural efforts and an element of reciprocity which one can appreciate immediately or in hindsight. I realize that my tendency to think of the future underwrites my pessimism and most of my anxiety. I strive to belong to peoples and places because I fear my own—and since nothing lasts forever, maybe inevitable—displacement and disposal. Many revere my ‘strength’ to which my productivity, output, and immutability are allegedly testaments. I admit that I’m a fighter, but it never occurs to anyone that the reason I fight so hard is to convey that I’m worth fighting for.

The ostensible message of the belonging-connecting distinction is that it’s fruitful to adapt and conform accordingly whereas striving for belonging is futile due to the inconstancy of the species. Humans breed fatuity amidst societal disparity and turmoil. What hurts most in life isn’t the resignation that accentuates the grim catharses which play out on- and offscreen—it’s facing the bad faith inherent to our existence. This is often convoluted in “Don’t play God” motifs. Stories in this vein duly note our tendency to deny agency to what—or who—we create, which parallels the systemic dehumanization of marginalized peoples in real time and dependents who are infantilized or objectified as chattel. Fiction explores this motif ontologically, proffering the inhuman to be existential. Demarcations, however subjective, may posit animal or inorganic beings are not owed the same moral standing as humans; but their sentience intuits that they have moral standing nonetheless that goes unrecognized.

Which is what I took away from Jurassic Park (1993). Admittedly, I never watched the film or anything else from the series although popular culture has immortalized the franchise. John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) is an idealistic magnate whose facilities cloned dinosaurs and sought to purpose them as amusement park attractions. Despite what one would think are glaringly obvious problems with this concept—seriously, dinosaurs?—Hammond is only inclined to revisit his idea after a lawsuit is filed against him by the relatives of an employee who was mauled, then killed by a velociraptor. To appease investors who’ve since reconsidered the viability of the project, he solicits expert approval from a pair of paleontologists—Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern)—and mathematician, Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) who are toured through alongside his grandchildren, Lex (Ariana Richards) and Tim (Joseph Mazzello). Some scruples and existential tangents later, things unsurprisingly go left when the dinosaurs break free then proceed to terrorize, if not maim or devour whoever they can reach. Hammond employs scientists to clone Jurassic genomes extracted from mosquitoes preserved in amber, feminizing each subject so as to prevent reproduction and ensure thereby population control. To accommodate what gaps there are in the genetic material, the dinosaurs’ DNA are spliced with amphibians—which proves to be a crucial oversight once Dr. Grant finds a nest of eggs and notes how amphibians may change their sex for reproductive purposes.

When I sat down to watch Jurassic Park (and the rest of the Jurassic movies) earlier this week, I found a lot of parallels between the dinosaurs and Frankenstein. It all boils down to what ruination lurks in hubris: humans grossly overestimate their capacities, deluding themselves to believe they can subjugate progeny of any and all kinds. Perhaps, the most glaring example are the velociraptors who strikingly exhibit intelligence and determination. They retain memory, survey their enclosure for weaknesses despite the initially electrifying security measures, and tactfully collude in packs—the latter of which proves to be the warden Robert Muldoon’s (Bob Peck) downfall when one distracts him while another fatally closes in, subsequently elicits one of the most memorable lines in film history: “Clever girl.”

While Hammond and other venture capitalists speak to the potential for prestige and profit, the doctor[ate]s articulate concerns central to the problems. 

First, there’s the lack of failsafes. The dinosaurs run amok because their containment operates using a singular security measure whose foremost engineer—Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight)—is at odds with Hammond, the latter refusing to afford some relief towards personal financial difficulties despite his wealth. When Nedry broaches the subject, Hammond retorts with sanctimonious platitudes in a very “God helps those who help themselves” kind of way—even as he himself solicits others, experts, to help his cause. Consequently, Nedry arranges to sell assets to a rival company and powers everything down while doing so, resulting in the dinosaurs escaping their enclosures. Moreover, dinosaurs are beyond the scope of any defense ministry. There are no service personnel you can call in the event of Jurassic pandemonium. Who are you gonna call if the dinosaurs revolt? Police? Firefighters? Intelligence agencies? Ghostbusters?

Then, there are the research ethics—or lack thereof. Researchers should be as mindful of their work’s outcomes as much as their deliverables. Science has and continues to be utilized against marginalized peoples and nature by those who pursue ideological, political, or military objectives. BIPOC still navigate aspects of historical hegemonic campaigns such as eugenics. While none of the experts in Jurassic Park mention this specifically, they duly reproach Hammond for his unrelenting naïveté. For him, the prospect of novelty and patronage overshadow risks of human error and the savagery—and unpredictability—of wildlife. We can also appreciate the indigence from a socioeconomic perspective as Hammond’s idealism becomes almost Faustian since he is so obsessive. Even if there were no provisional risks, there is a failure to account for longstanding discourses which misidentify BIPOC as physiologically coded to be predators: a rhetoric popularized to substantiate their arbitrary abuse, exclusion, and dehumanization marauded to ‘hold them accountable,’ if not cast them as ‘beholden’ to their oppressors. It’s surreal when you think about it, how amenable positionalities like—or in proximity to—Hammond’s are keener to afford dinosaurs and likewise the benefit of the doubt in theory whilst denigrating BIPOC by weaponizing dangerous, if not fatal stereotypes against them in reality.

Dr. Malcolm speaks to these contentions in many ways, but most aptly when he says: “You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility for it.” This sentiment asserts that vanity hobbles growth. Despite how vehemently Hammond professes the scientific and remarkable value of dinosaurs, his adamance betrays that he indulges in the Jurassic less for results and more for access; just some vague, impassioned vision of opening doors irrespective of what lies behind them. Consequences may arise, but no one sets about crossing thresholds for outcomes. In contrast, the temerity to innovate or challenge injustice lands you nowhere as does vying for meaningful change. This takes on new meaning for those cast as transgressors against whom grudges are kept and enacted. Hammond embodies toxic, dysfunctional leadership that runs rampant. The failure of every initiative comes down to faulty oversight and poor, if not absent guidance. Tokenism exemplifies this as marginalized peoples devolve into personal tenures who fight over influence, resources, and sabotage principles. Hammond admonishes critique as cowardice or intolerance, but the real travesty afflicts those upon whom his wealth is contingent; the good, everyday people burnt by disparities and spat out of every space wherein they dare broach comfort. People like Hammond create, sustain, then ignore problems assume positions of oversight in perpetuity. This clearly isn’t the case for people like the fraught doctor[ate]s and employees: overworked, underpaid, even infantilized as they’re guilted into shirking their own needs to attain some noble goal despite no clear objectives or plans from affluents or superiors.

For me, the sight of the doctor[ate]s, Hammond, and his lawyer seated evoke the metaphor of having a seat at the table. Having been invoked by miscellaneous patriciates [some of whom many applaud and live through vicariously], I think it’s become futile. More futility is held in the emphasis of organizing the poor and working class who uphold high society despite having the most to gain from revolution.

I don’t know if this is a jaded insight, but I’m sure it’s at least a materialist one. Those who aren’t oppressed by the system—or are unaware of their oppression, or willing to overlook such to delude themselves—are unlikely to participate in its downfall. I often hold this in since it’s hopeless, hurtful, and I don’t want to be a downer, but it’s still true; and I still find it irresponsible that people—often, people with less, if nothing to lose—encourage us to simply ‘hope’ nonetheless. Find a tribe, they’ll say, Build your community.

Never lose hope.

The impetus to build community is overridden by the nonentity of conflict resolution. While intrapersonal conflict entails an active sustained effort to unlearn internalized hegemony, interpersonal conflict is compounded because marginalized peoples are—and remain—structurally disempowered which means they have more at stake. Despite our shared stratification, we are socialized to compete through cis-heteronormative nuclear models and capitalist regimes which cast difference itself to be adversarial. Spite underscores what social cues and hierarchies are encoded through an indirect verbiage and physicality. Moreover: spite is a comprehensive and rational trauma response to the convoluted, critical, alienating, thankless social interactions we endure. It’s almost cyclic in how a vast lack of love justifies a likewise barrage of hate wherein conflict is made palpable only in terms of avoidance or escalation, not management or resolution. This comes from idealistic albeit hegemonic tropes of love and safety, so uncritical reverence and deference comprise the ways in which people associate refuge. But these associations are unhealthy. Love and safety are not ‘givens’ contingent on performative or capitulatory variables. They come from your intuition and a higher wisdom which necessitates presence and consciousness regardless of who you’re with. This becomes driven home harder since I become increasingly solitary as I find myself exploited and alienated by networks of marginalized positionalities avowing a guise of community. My value is transitory. People are not. Welfare is a personal responsibility that comes from our vaster being.

True refuge does not call for ignorance—feigned or otherwise—or dimming yourself down to oblige a swarthy luminance. Too often, people misguide our ambition and valid suspicion, then trivialize our misgivings when we call them out. Rather than validate the sanctity of our distinctions, they instead incline us to downplay ourselves in some effort to empathize or sympathize with auxiliaries. It’s no coincidence that these people tend to envision safety as not being accountable. Never does it occur to them that progress comes down to being present where we apart from reasons to escape, as opposed to embodying an entirely new reality or living vicariously through the token acquisition of privilege.

Complacency favours an industrious denial of historical and ongoing harm, a denial that’s ironically enabled by optimism. Those like Hammond, who exert immense and rampant privilege, personify how opulence distorts even the barest virtue such as optimism or positivity—because not unlike the power they wield, everything they employ functions to thwart effective, crucial action conducive to their vanity projects. Moreover, this distortion is insidious in that it compels one to ‘look on the bright side’ which occludes even the clearest albeit darkest realities, dissuading the recognition or repatriation of harm because ‘everything happens for a reason’ or ‘will work out for the best.’ At large, people are urged to be positive to oblige imposed narratives of overcoming: good meets, then beats evil; the righteous and the joyful will prevail. Performativity obliges us to act happy, kindred, and occupied. Doing otherwise is deemed as ill-affect. As much I savoured the visuality and aural flair of dinosaurs onscreen, I didn’t feel much tension in their depiction as much as the grounds for their resurrection; just bearing in mind that Hammond—and to a lesser extent, the likewise not-so-BIPOC doctor[ate]s and grandchildren he consults—are keener to venerate dinosaurs whom are actually biologically coded to be predators with nary any commitment to absolve marginalized peoples (and even presently endangered species) whom are systemically and wrongly coded deleteriously.

Afforded by a vast budget and a confident motley helmed by Steven Spielberg, Jurassic Park marked the apotheosis of prehistory and dinosaurs onscreen through an extraordinary visuality in audiovisual virtuosity and immaculate marketing epitomized by prosperous merchandise. What makes it memorable for me though is that story wise, there has never been a clearer demonstration of analytical and corporate ineptitude.

The very same society that has—and continues to—degrade and demand things from marginalized positionalities like mine; the same that dehumanizes us and thereby imposes expectations upon us that we could never fulfill. It crushes us, inclines us to feel defective or worthless until we’re drawn to fight as if to earn our humanity or merit, but we never do. We can’t. The game is rigged. The odds can’t be beaten because they’re insurmountable. I can’t tell you how many I know still hoping, fighting, suffering; some young, some old, others fierce or resigned. In any case, none of us are free to be who we want. We’re just characters to those more privileged than us. From the sublime sticklers like Hammond to the quixotic counsel who misguide us—they don’t see our livelihoods as valid, if at all worth protecting. Because, who cares if we’re decimated by dinosaurs? Or, if we can’t get jobs or afford to live despite how avidly we’re told that ‘people like us’ are ‘needed’?

I understand how unhealthy or unhelpful it is to be consumed by the future, but I have never lived otherwise. I don’t hope. It feels dangerous. Despair is waiting without knowing what’s to come. The only way I can cope is to err on the not-so-bright side, trying to fast-track and create failsafes. Looking ahead is how I overcome adversity, including anxiety: knowing that it’s only temporary, that things will pass, that I’m bound for bigger or better things equipped with grit and qualification. Except this conviction has wavered in recent years. No matter how much I read or write, I will never be able to find the words to aptly convey the anguish that afflicts me more often than not these days. To be lauded for my perceived prestige and perseverance who’s clawed and scraped this far to become a doctorate candidate, assured that success was inevitable; as if things, life, gets easier just by sticking them out. Everything—the malaise yielded from my syndrome; the beloveds I’ve lost to death and dependencies who championed, sacrificed for my dream of professorship; the maudlin junctures I came to fear and avoid lest they break my stride—believe me when I say that I’m devastated to graduate; because contrary to the idylls sold by the privileged positionalities whose comforts expose them to be less trustful or genuine than capricious, it is now gallingly clear that nothing awaits me after graduation except abandonment by the very peoples and institutions who I need most. Which is why I can’t just ‘connect’ or live in the present. Presence is incorrigible when you are haunted by a fated absence. There are no words that can begin to express what that loss means to me.

♫ Title song reference – “Land of Confusion” by Genesis

Rock the Casbah

Many humanities and social sciences are kind of a paradox. Theories and inscriptions are rather solitary although the interests of masses underlie their objectives. This is a little different for me. Solitude and independence do reflect a lot of my own scholarship, but marginalization affirms how and why I make it a point to do many things in isolation. Positionality does not just inform me. It defines me. When it comes to praxis and pretenses of impartiality, it also nullifies idealistic attempts and assumptions. It drives home the reality that every community—however progressive—is ultimately rife with so many -isms and -phobias. This includes spaces which strive to empower marginalized peoples, particularly those operant on frames of the institution.

Which is why I think representation is a scam. The same disparities upon which the elites are contingent are the same ones which apply to skinfolk whom assume authority within the institutional status quo. There are no “ground-breakers” or “trail-blazers” which are operant within—rather than in resistance to—imperial regulatory systems. The avowal of those who ‘represent’ is why we struggle with the innate contradiction of traversing the violences of marginalization; because, at the same time, we strive to humanize these ‘representatives.’ Your faves will always quite literally profit at your expense, but you let it slide because they’re only ‘human’; and that discourse underpins many efforts to establish the existence of disparity. Some will argue the need to humanize everyone, including the ‘representatives’ who come by their come-ups in obliging—not ‘gaming’—the industrial complex. Likening them to be human, they say, is a part of emancipative efforts because dehumanization is a testament to the evils which prevail.

To which I honestly don’t care. These ‘representatives’ and their devotees insist upon the ethos of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism—in contrast to absconding marginalized peoples who repudiate those institutions. They employ multiculturalist and futurist imaginaries because they are keener to merely speculate about utopian prospects than work towards them. Which is why these folks can never reel in their adjacents. In the effort to humanize these types, people tend to overlook that they sparsely make space for their own because they strive to be distinct; and therein, arbitrate meaning at their own convenience.

In terms of academia, I find myself increasingly disinclined to pursue BIPOC studies or subjects which concern marginalized peoples because of the aforementioned. Those of us who see and experience the principles of imperialism and capitalism firsthand—which perpetuate colonialism, patriarchy, and amata-cis-heteronormativity—are precarious as is. It is nothing short of ridiculous to expect that we undertake the fruitless work of appeal. And it is fruitless: people are not amenable to conscience or reason when they’re the ones who reap the benefits. When push comes to shove, they will not prune their privileges to weed out what malignance comprise the root issues.

As I write this, a particularly pallid and privileged person who I have the displeasure of working with comes to mind; the progeny of a highly paid faculty and administrator who asserts that the systemic abuses and disparities we come by are through our own faults or choices.

Then, there’s another one: the Meghan who cosplays as the judiciary they aspire to become, whose arguments never cease to be facile since they are operant upon the assumption of an ideal world rather than the real one; as if the very laws they purport to uphold are impartial as opposed to being created, maintained, and even circumvented in the interests of hegemonic powers.

These people exemplify how marginalized peoples’ cannot be held to impart their realities. It’s not that deep to these types. But think of the depths in which we find ourselves sinking as we attempt to entreat or educate them. Our capacities (or lack thereof) to educate will always wane against these types’ obtuseness since they are unwilling and unable to grasp the basics despite the abundance of teachable moments; and their commitment to inaction under the guise of tolerance and civility is just a means to manufacture apologia.

And then, there’s us: endless and eclectic, a profuse populace with something for everyone. But our vast niches also work to disjoint us. Imperial legacies foster this disconnect through remnants of ascribed castes and concepts of capital which frame our worth and self-concepts in terms of eurocentric beauty ideals, disparate wealth, and productivity. We always fall short despite comprising a larger, more diverse percentile because we have yet to organize a collective, political dominion; and we instead acclimate to individualism only for anguish to make our needs manifest. I often think of this in relation to activists and content creators in “marginalized” genres. 

Another writer, whose anthology has received rave reviews comes to mind: featured in several prominent outlets and must-have lists, nominated for a few literary awards, read widely and locally—but still faces so much scarcity with so little support. I can’t help but wonder if they are bound to become another statistic; paged off as paltry in the coming year but immortalized by their glowing profiles only to be revived by an archivist who may one day stumble upon their work, long after its lure has waned. This person also exemplifies lateral violence since they have precluded the literary prospects of others, myself included; and likewise, continues to disempower us as they instrumentalize their privileges and connections to a problematic vendor. Moreover, against the grain of their alleged self-acceptance and luminescence, this speaks to the contrary: they have no real desire or power to change. Which is why they commodify their positionality as a point of entrance and reference only to anguish as they sow discord. What is also telling is how I encounter mentors and elders who never seem to hold this individual (and others like them) accountable but manage to hold them in high regard—which goes to show that shared identities or struggles are insubstantial when it concerns uncritical reverence and social capital.

This marks the conundrum of being an outsider regardless of whether you’re inside or outside. People would sooner burn everything to hell, including themselves, to oblige their faves or some prospective albeit improbable ally. People would also sooner light you on fire to keep themselves warm. Patrick Bouchard explores this in his short film Subservience. While the film primarily covers classism, it revolves around sheer disparity. Bouchard proffers a lonesome dystopian world in which vanity and their exploitation of an underclass nonetheless define the bourgeoisie. Lateral violence is subtly imparted as the servants do not glean solidarity in their shared oppressions, but uncritically oblige their overseers to their own detriment. What strikes me is each likeness attributed to the haute mode: a finely suited man who sports an impeccable cravat and satchel alongside a dainty costumed woman embodying a ballerina. These characters are fashioned after magnanimous patricians drawn in fairytales, if not the triumphant peasants whose principles afford them this aesthetic in conclusion. Consequently, karmic sentiments of goodwill and integrity are rendered ludicrous in contrast to the realities of systemic violence and exonerated—even encouraged—moral crimes wrought by the sheer existence of aristocrats.

Subservience also depicts class characteristics underscored by venal praxes and points of view. Neither likeness nor positionality is relevant when droves of everyday people become empowered by a party or enterprise. This is especially keen as masses are demonstrably, relatively easy to manipulate against one another. Regardless of whether it is to their benefit or detriment, it takes so little. What Bouchard conveys is how the sacrifices and resolve of survivors and marginalized peoples altogether in perpetuity will always give us insight into the living human beings who are overshadowed by the cults of politic or celebrity.

Bouchard’s servants are so modest, mute and downcast. They make me think of how similarly we may recount our own trials and tribulations. More often than not, we are not afforded justice or closure. Despair seems to be all that is vindicated when we revisit our pasts, including our adversaries. This is why we become increasingly curt and detached in our attachments or lack thereof: because we are conscious that this present is unlikely to be any exception, and that this present is likelier to dissolve into the callous precedents of which we are familiar.

So, maybe that’s how people get reeled into scams like ‘representation.’ Such concepts are reliant upon invoking nostalgia for a time, place, and being that never was. They build personae which are seemingly emblematic of who, where, and what we are in narratives. The key is discerning that these narratives posit these characters as ‘valid’ in a particular way: not as victors, but as objects worthy of consumption. In the industrial complex, it is the latter—not the former—of which tends to cultivate guises of adulation and ‘empowerment.’ And the thing about ‘representation’ is that, unlike worker autonomy, personae are not taking charge of their intentions nor do they revolutionize the parameters of dominant power systems. Once you grasp that, you realize that it matters not who wears the mask or enacts the pantomime since personae are not—and can never be likened to—the real people they purport to represent.

At its core, Subservience drives home how concepts like representation tether us to false positives and how proverbs which caution us to consider life at large—such as “All kinfolk ain’t skinfolk”—continue to resonate. The self-sacrificial retainers for Bouchard also reaffirm my own strength and survivorship in respect to myself and ancestry. Subservience inclines me too to remember from whom and whence I came; how the retention and assertion of this memory may honour its origins. That I may bear in mind which plots I have crossed and uncovered, what ground I have broken notwithstanding those whom have led me to quicksand; and what morsels I have nurtured to fruition beyond and within.

♫ Title song reference – “Rock the Casbah” by The Clash

Born To Be Alive

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Many other critics maintain that the Saw series forwent character development in favour of shock value, which rendered flat and consequently unrelatable personae; and that may hold true as viewers aren’t invested in player survival as much as they are passive to their imminent failure and demise thereafter. Fatality is conveyed through rapid, sometimes incorrigible reverse shots. Shots do linger, even in their haste, on timers and machinations which punctuate gruesome excisions. I never expected players to win as I watched each Saw instalment back when it debuted.

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What I found telling was the profusely low likelihood of victory. The odds of success never increase with the number of players, most of whose involvements are cited as unethical since the lives of others are not subject to their own games, but meant as pawns in another’s; contingent upon a lone player’s decision or success. For me, this is yet another unnerving element: everyone can or does have a role to play. No one is safe or absolved. Jigsaw purposes people as actants or accessories in each game.

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Saw is one of many franchises which vindicate my misanthropy as it evinces that—more often than not, regardless of what’s at stake—catharsis proves to be a fruitless objective. People are fickle. Proud. Rampantly complacent and unapologetic. Disparities which precede and prevail define our systems wherein too few, if any are truly invested in change. But Saw isn’t marked for me by its legion of losers or (very few) winners. It’s the indiscriminate subject selection. Games are not exclusive to particular demographics: they can and do include privileged positionalities. Had the series continued, I would’ve liked to see a wider inclusion of aristocrats and celebrities.

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I would say that the attention paid to cops is thematic, but it seems more coincidental than calculative. The players in blue are primarily those assigned to the case. I find their deaths—and therefore, lack of revelation—entirely too convenient respective to Jigsaw’s/John Kramer’s [Tobin Bell] favour despite how he waxes poetic about their obsessions or shortcomings. I find the bulk of them are as unrelatable as the other players. Detectives Tapp [Danny Glover], Kerry [Dina Meyer], and Gibson [Chad Donella] are my only exceptions. The first being avidly albeit ignobly compelled to pursue answers to his own detriment, whereas insurmountable odds were foisted upon the latter.

Then, there’s Detective Rigg [Lyriq Bent] who invokes a little of both.

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The entirety of the Saw series captivated me from start to finish. Quite frankly, respective to philosophy and cinema studies, I’m surprised by its absence in scholarship or wider speculation. For many, the franchise has been characterized and condemned as torture porn, coding sadism and gratuitous gore as a central [and tactless] narrative device. Others purport that Saw is an indictment of the very existentialism its eponymous antihero purports. That Kramer simultaneously establishes, maintains, and circumvents game parameters renders each trial to be a mere vanity project. What drives that prospect home is how he admonishes the murderous dimensions of his accomplices yet remains ultimately passive to them, allowing them to continue and therein subject players to inescapable traps.

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Compared to the other Saw movies, Saw IV (2007) isn’t exactly more intimate although it does feature the smallest roster of swine fated to reap what they sow. Viewers know that individuation is key to the Saw series, a standard effected through Saw IV’s predecessors: the frigid formality of Dr. Gordon [I]; Detective Matthews’ graft and outrage [II]; and Jeff Denlon’s irreconcilable bereavement and outrage [III]. Peripheral players had explicit connections respectively to each film’s main players: forsaken patients, victims, or bystanders whom wither or stagnate because of cyclic anguish.

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In Saw IV, Detective Rigg braves the moral quandary of complacency. He must acknowledge that he cannot—and moreover, should not—save everyone. That victory entails he be his own saviour imbues a degree of irony to this learning objective because goodwill is [ideally] supposed to be what motivates the intervention and prevention of violence, along with the subsequent detection or apprehension of its perpetrators. Bearing this in mind, it proves useful that players in Saw IV are rather impersonal instead of woven into Rigg’s personal tapestry because there is something distinctly universal in the conclusion he should arrive at. His game conveys that people are and can be accountable for their adversities despite the guise or actuality of victimhood. To impart this, one’s familiarity or lack thereof is inconsequential.

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Parallels can be drawn between Rigg as an impulsive agent of judiciaries whom are prescribed to affirm social order, and Kramer who entraps wayward souls as an essentialist paladin. Transgression marks the distinction between the two. Rigg is spurred to action less out of virtuosity and more because he succumbs to an idealism that casts him as sanctimonious and headstrong. Whereas Kramer acts in a state of pronoia, impassive to what transpires within or beyond the realm of his control, Rigg assumes he himself possesses the capacity—no matter how grand or infinitesimal—to change things for the better and his failure to do so results in a crisis of faith.

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Not once does it occur to either Kramer or Rigg that the system is broken. One need only consider the significance of hegemony and qualifiers of positionality which account for disparities. Introspectively, both men conclude—but cannot acquiesce—that no amount of conviction can absolve this. Kramer resolves to incite an appreciation for life itself in disconsolate people by subjecting them to excruciating machinations purported to trigger a survival instinct. He contends that he hasn’t actually killed anyone and that failure results because of the players themselves. Their fate, he maintains, is in their own hands.

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Alternatively, Rigg endeavours to arbitrate justice despite the prevalence of injustice. That he is the most fervent denominator in the scheme of things—against the grain of comparatively hapless or dispassionate parties—means that he assumes rather fruitless pursuits. This in itself may bear an element reflective of modernity wherein the individual grows increasingly alienated and tasked against the decline [and deregulation] of initiatives traditionally attributed to the welfare state. Antiquity is conversely imparted through Kramer’s brute, analogue machinations which are contrived in the interests of functionality as much as austerity. Likewise, the phylogeny of enterprise or capital interest evinces oppressive contingencies as the market fails to yield fair or equitable outcomes. It is the accrual of capital, not magnanimity which becomes tantamount to esteem; and it is the inordinate, systemic concept of accountability that motivates Rigg to take action. The latter would be admirable had this been successful. Instead, Rigg finds himself shafted each and every time he goes out on a limb. Deliverance, honesty, virtue: the glare of reality dislodges what hopes he pins on these things to pass.

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I think this is somewhat of a statement on how idiosyncratic it is to liken advancement to independence or free enterprise, as laissez-faire economics serve to embitter class brackets and monopolize any-/everything, including the welfare state. For me: I have yet to reconcile the anomie which afflicts labourers and the have nots while reckoning ceases to exist for cruel, parasitic elites whom own the means of production.

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I could ramble [even more] about the implicit themes of horticulture, agronomy, and livestock which could be gleaned from the Saw series overall: the tacit likeness of flesh and anatomization [wherein Kramer details the literal and figurative bodywork of each apparatus he devises in his instructive recordings] to industrial meat production. Another thing I could ramble [even more] about is the horological dimension underlain in Kramer’s adoption of the pig guise since Saw IV reveals its origins to be from a zodiacal festival; but I’d think Kramer is too much of an empiricist to afford that much to fate or some prescription of cosmic order. I’m more inclined to think of a more blatant likeness in which Kramer regards subjects as bonafide hogs and is more or less apotropaic as he personally adopts the literal guise of one.

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Saw IV markedly conveys the crucial roles played in everyday life and afterlife by law enforcement. Each film depicts subjects whose agonized [inter]connections arise from jurisdictive actors whom relish and uphold the venality of carceral regimes. Praxes and politics underlay the wrongdoing players suffer or execute. Depending on what you believe in—fate or magistry—sanctions Kramer interposes can be read overall as karmic or coincidental.

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Saw IV proffers that life is conditioned on the vagaries of law enforcement. Kramer transposes Rigg’s compulsion to ‘save everyone‘ to reflect the proclivity of disciplinary, surveillance societies to—perhaps, unwittingly—tyrannize its citizens. Judiciaries and officers can and do summarily have marginalized positionalities incarcerated or executed for thwarting their purview. As Rigg strives to take all matters into his own hands and obsesses over missing or deceased colleagues, he inadvertently absconds the very social order he resolves to maintain.  He comprises a class of professionals whom cultivate and are privy to a wealth of information, domains, and governance unbeknownst to underlings or outsiders. Everyday people cannot monitor, enforce, or escape law and order. Therefore, they oblige these things lest they be punished or exiled.

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Eventually, Rigg ascertains the prosaic likeness between people and gatekeepers. He realizes that anyone can be rendered invisible, powerless, and disposable regardless of panoptic polity. This revelation comes once he—under Kramer’s watch—is subjected to this asymmetrical oversight. This occurred to me earlier this week once I spoke to a [more misanthropic] colleague. No matter what came from the plight of our ancestors; no matter where or upon what one stands; no matter how ideal things may seem—we will always be captive. Modernity does not overcome, but rather breeds a wider spectrum of enslavement. An open-air prison is still a prison. So is a seemingly tolerant one.

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Prisoners may rebel. Others will say that prisoners may riot, but these terms are not exactly interchangeable. Riots span a range of mass acts where people abandon what they know for what they don’t. They surrender themselves. They wholly aspire to integrate. Then, the crowd assumes a life of its own that thrives on insurrection. Rebellions concern the resistance of oppressed peoples against systemic violence. Rioters ultimately tend to be incorrigible and disjointed. They want to disrupt politics while rebels aspire to redefine or eliminate them.

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Saw IV actually does a good job in illustrating these distinctions to me. Through Rigg, I see the heart of the judicial systems which subjugate—and quite often, sadly, fail to protect—life as we know it. His own life attests to how positionality renders hollow the impunity given to those in power who attempt to forge judicature with the master’s tools. Blackness compounds an already intuitive, identifiable figure whose persona is harnessed unbeknownst to its allusion. If imperial ascriptions of civil order cannot be leveraged concomitant to integrity and good faith by the successors of emancipation, only resignation is possible. What underpins his obsession is a desire for tangible action from the forces of order whose platforms are not only purported for, but capable of such.

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The problem with Rigg is that his thought process and rationale are always one step behind his emotions. He speaks too loudly through his actions which consequently render him silent, and therefore unable to articulate that the justice system coalesces around an impersonal consensus that fails those most vulnerable. Rigg embodies how we cannot amend our oppressions as agents of the very discourse which justifies them.

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The arm of imperial law is an empty platitude in and of itself. Which is why I think Rigg is such a relatable character. We are taught to value ourselves in relation to others. But our sense of worth is innately flawed because we seldom see real honesty or kindness in others, so we become enamoured less with what comprises actual people and more with what—or who—we imagine. Rigg is transfixed by the feat of rescuing others more than seeing people as (or for) themselves; and each time he ventures to save someone, he is unsuccessful and resigned to a litany of vain regulations. Kramer just sees people as a mere succession of genes and reactions to stimuli. He maintains that the will to live lurks within and he endeavours to coax it out because it is withdrawn from consciousness.

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And, this is where I had and still—probably always will—have a problem: Rigg doesn’t really ‘qualify’ for a game to me. An indictment of agents whom wield state-sanctioned violence with legal impunity can justify Kramer’s overall focus on law enforcement. But while we can admonish penal overseers and systems for their failure to care for those they systemically prejudice, Rigg is condemned for caring too much. At best, he illustrates the necessity for boundaries: that we must recognize and respect our own limitations; that we may have a reality and satisfaction which aren’t conditional on vacuous optimism or the descent into pessimism that repudiates the future.

I can’t fault him for the latter.

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Characters like Rigg [likewise marginalized, racialized] remind me of myself in that we are credulous albeit painfully aware of how miserable life is or can be. There are no windows of opportunity or to the soul. We don’t see windows. We see gutters. When we realize that we can’t tidy them, we become nauseated by what filth resolutely mounts. People then vilify us as ungrateful or obnoxious.

As if we choose to be like this.

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Contrary to what most assume, we don’t lack will or imagination. It never occurs to anyone that our outlooks are actually vindicated by our lived experiences. We are cognizant of the (often unwitting or unapologetic) micro-aggressions that define the bulk of interactions with new or unavoidable people. Our lives have cultivated in lessons which affirm how and why trying to educate or relate is futile since our efforts prove moot. Because most folks’ [maintaining] privileges or feels always undermine our realities. Absolutely no one is exempt. Not even our own since “all skinfolk ain’t kinfolk.” Rigg is berated for being reckless and hopeless. Not once does anyone consider that his growing pessimism, however absconded, is valid nonetheless. The same world that builds certain people up has a predilection to tear us down. When we grow nihilistic and misanthropic, it is not indignant. These perspectives are borne of a presiding sense of despair that is beyond our control. This despair is also timeless. It is evinced by blood memory and cyclic evils.

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Kramer urges Rigg to cherish his life. Of course, the implication is that one cannot watch over others at the expense of overlooking themselves. The most obvious moral is that people must save themselves. Another implicit one is that people cannot be saved if they don’t want to be. Sure, Rigg cannot and should not assume the responsibilities or plights of others; but I think that’s beside the point.

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People liken me as exigent since I dwell on ensuring my survival and question the purpose of survival. I see myself in Rigg as starved and restless. I see myself in his incensed bereavement and the sheer intent which serves as his only cudgel to go onward. Rigg is completely within his right to despair. Some of the most dehumanizing things I face concern the reproach and disbelief of my emotions. This world strives less for reckoning and justice than it does for composure. There is always someone or something, some richling or platitude, that rebukes me even when I know I have every right to be angry or despondent. It’s not that I should be happy to be alive. It’s that I should be happy that I’m allowed to exist.

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Which adds another dimension to how insidiously privileged positionalities appropriate our cultures and mechanisms to strengthen their condescension. Our grasps of value and welfare break free of imperial concepts in temporality which are linear and forever bind us to anguish, and are meant to afford us the power to determine our own paths as Arrivants and Indigenous peoples. We instead see these models adulterated and weaponized by colonial contemporaries to legitimate their inaction, indecision, or disengagement. It’s fine for a SWAM to vacate his office to the detriment of others citing a mental health crisis. Whereas it’s somehow not fine if I express contempt for maltreatment and abuses of power from that office—despite my own crises. I am often deigned insatiable because I question the absence of guarantees or precarious odds. My ND obliges me to a daily cocktail of prescriptions. I can’t sleep without sedatives. Every night, I knock myself out simply because I’d lay awake musing of all the ways my life can—or is bound to—unravel; and on all the people I’ve loved and lost, and how it’s only a matter of time before I lose the ones I’ve got now.

Saw IV doesn’t drive home that we can’t save everyone. It conveys that we just can’t win.

♫ Title song reference – “Born to Be Alive” by Patrick Hernandez

Another Brick in the Wall

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I think people largely enjoy films wholly for their narratives; as in, the principle of there even being a narrative. Although events may be disjointed and crucial moments tend to manifest later rather than sooner, the story still unfolds chronologically. Personae embody clear beginnings and endings despite whatever happens between, and we have some grasp of meaning or lack thereof which is something that we lack in real time. Because our lives are ultimately nonlinear albeit spatial or temporal. The prevalence of disparities or institutions incline us not to what we deserve, but to whatever awaits. I’ve known many people who see life as a precipitous, an ongoing avenue that can be climbed like a mountain whose inevitable lows are justified by heights which accord to joyous apex. Lately, I find myself thinking life is more of a descent: less of a mountain climb than a fall down a rabbit hole, more of a plunge than a summit.

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Nothing like the movies.

Narrative pretense is meant to suspend our disbelief which is usually accomplished by some resonant line or likeness. This obviously goes well beyond the movies in how we’ve literally been cultivated from infancy not only oblige, but perform particular social norms and mores. Performativity has been definitive in growth and learning. From day one, we’re groomed through positive and negative reinforcement. We’re told to act or think in certain ways so that we may optimize our odds of success or acceptance. Most importantly, we’re alienated if we fail to deliver the script.

This was driven home in each and every scene in Lesson of the Evil. Pretenses are the means through which its lead—the handsome, charismatic Seiji Hasumi; played by Hideaki Itô—accrues favour in social capital. His allure is fruitlessly dissected through pensive exchanges and musings from secondary characters wherefore his charms become inexplicably uncanny, but never cease to enthrall. Yet Hasumi thrives as much from his looks as his strong albeit sociopathic grasp of social contracts. He knows that the mechanisms involved respectability are grounded in reciprocity: the determinant of a star is applause, hence they must simultaneously gauge and appease their audience; and although the audience excises the power of their patronage, they are resigned because they are beholden to the spectacles before them. The transactions underlain in each exchange—of look, touch, dialogue—incline characters to distrust their instincts. Which is why their prolonged albeit valid suspicions never materialize.

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Nobuyasu Kita [director of photography] also effects the magnitude of social contracts as well as their innately contradictory nature through chilly colour grading and volley of deep space. The indistinction between genuity and pretension is thematic to many films for which Kita as served as cinematographer. He relates the tenacity and indecision of the ties that bind through ever-shifting rack focuses, and through profuse overhead and low angles which serve to alienate as much they put things in perspective.

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Kita also reinforces each characters’ positionality as most instances of match on action are low angle whereas Hasumi is primarily shot from eye level. This conveys how principle and reciprocity are inconsequential as charisma undermines the infrastructure of social contracts. People like Hasumi are beheld more than they are upheld because they feign relativity. In supplanting terms of engagement with terms of endearment, disparities and boundaries are things they can easily dissuade or neutralize. Which is kind of reminiscent of the conglomerate apparatus—celebrities, elites en vogue—whose simulations of amity or solidarity sustain fans and consumers. The sight of Hasumi straight on accentuates the uncanny albeit immaculate extent of this deception: how everyone, including the audience, are duped by his artifice of parity; and how we are inclined to uncritically cede, devoid of facts and instincts.

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Another noticeable aspect in the cinematography is the lack of montage. The only exception is an instance of cross-cutting wherein Hasumi is nonplussed by a pair of ominous crows, then revels in mortally wounding one of them. The pair are understood to be Norse mythological incarnates of thought [Huginn] and memory [Muninn], key to Hasumi’s fabled defense of absolution. This likeness eclipses subsequent character exchanges, and that was the only aspect of the film that I found disappointing. Unconsciously, these crows may serve as metaphors for thought and memory: looming, inconspicuous, and almighty albeit precarious. Everyone in Lesson of the Evil exhibits this, including Hasumi. Appearances, intents, and purposes falter because of harrowing memories, points of origin, and the inability to wholly suspend their disbeliefs. Which also speaks to how social contracts are largely operant upon efforts to contrive thought and memory to be selective.

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For me, this resonated on another level in terms of politics and scholarship: the conscious choices I make to not only secure, but reclaim my personal time and space; and it is no coincidence that that primarily entails disengagement. We are constantly told that establishing and respecting boundaries are the means to health, transparency, and productivity. At the same time, we are also told that maturity, efficacy, and compromise require that our boundaries be fluid, amenable to negotiation. And, nobody articulates that bullshit quite like the idealists I encounter whom aspire to be educators or judiciaries. These people are typically prone to tangents and false equivalences, assuming sanctimonious platitudes. Their lack of self-awareness sees them opine as if they were to adjudicate; and they are unable and unwilling to see that the very laws which govern us—to which they purport their loyalties—were created, gatekept, and circumvented by imperialist hegemonic powers.

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We like to think that these people will be duly dealt with; that their superiors will inevitably conclude that they are inimical or otherwise unremarkable; that their penchants or privileges will eventually count for little since they only count for so much; that cosmic justice or karma will prevail and they just won’t last. Unfortunately, that is hardly the case. These people tend to fall upward. Institutions are rife with them, and they are adulated by those likewise or none-the-wiser.

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Which is why our own likeness in Hasumi makes Lesson of the Evil all the more unnerving. The only difference between him and the majority is that he assumes a particularly callous and destructive stance without conscience; whereas others begrudgingly yield, weighing the pros and cons of pretension or conformity, and salvage what pride they can in conclusion. People like Hasumi embody the social contracts which force us to maintain the guise of civility. Not because of their success or disposition, but because of how they [claimers] the narrative as a means to sublimate their contempt. Their stories are principled on the idea that the pen is mightier than the sword and manifest in the realization that those who wield the sword incline those who hold the pen. Lesson of the Evil shows this as its other characters relinquish their own swords on principle and assume Hasumi has done the same, only to discover that he is innately driven to weaponize any means to an end.

UPDATE – 11/27/2020 – This piece was actually shared on the Takashi Miike Facebook page ツ

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♫ Title song reference – “Another Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd

How Soon Is Now?

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Most films I’ve seen tend to open with extreme long shots. Likewise, the cinematography employed in first minute is often termed to be establishing shots since this is where audiences are granted their first taste of perspective; and in these shots, the camera is impartial in being parallel. Subjects are occluded by a literal and figurative bigger picture as visuality unfolds along a linear axis. But this indistinction isn’t exclusive to long shots. Even in close ups or medium shots, impersonality can be effected since subjects themselves preclude the absence of narrative. Ambiguity may also maintain characters as unknowns if we can’t discern or relate to their motives.

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Which is probably why nothing gets under my skin quite like psychological horror. It’s a subgenre whose horrors I have yet to fully describe, but maybe that’s the point; maybe it’s meant to invoke aversion—angst, fear, irresolution, loathing—by an inarticulate form of unnerving. It’s a distinct vein in the body of horror. There’s no pun intended when I say the body of horror has become a corpse. It’s an apt figure of speech since the horror genre has become oversaturated with a multitude of half-assed tropes whose imitability have devolved into pastiche and clichés which cheapen narratives as camp and disingenuous. The vein of psychological horror isn’t exempt from the corpse-like genre’s autolysis, which explains why it’s acclimated—if not, collapsed—with hallucinatory dei ex machina purported to be abstract.

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For me, good psychological horror films lead down a path which turns outs to be along a hillside. You don’t think to go on because the rise is unassuming; but no matter how far you go, something seemingly innocent or happenstance always occludes the apex. When you finally reach the top, you settle in to take in the view—only to realize that all along, there was a path next to yours. Not only is it adjacent, it’s well-trodden and whoever has walked it is worlds ahead of you. When you retrace your steps, you discover that your path wasn’t a ‘path’; not because it was fundamentally different, but because you’ve got nothing to prove there was ever any path at all. Still, you know there was a path. There had to be. How else could you be here? After a cursory glance, you realize you actually aren’t at the top; but the path you’re so sure of has yet to manifest. However, whatever lies ahead is on even ground. There’s no up or down. There’s just forward. It just makes sense to distrust whether you proceed or pack it in. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Given humankind’s tendency to destroy itself, you have to wonder if there’s such a thing as an advance. Except this outlook isn’t about logic or entropy. It’s personal. Everything in your life has led you to this point. You lived under the impression that you were going somewhere; you were meant for somewhere.

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Now, you’re in the middle of nowhere.

Psychological horror plays upon the mundane. It evokes fear in the fact that life as we know it is and always will be fractal despite the totality of the human mind. This subgenre’s best movies effect that catharsis comes down to alienation and disenchantment; and living under the weight of revelation that you were never really alive to begin with, wondering if you’ll ever feel alive, or resigned to the conclusion that one can never truly feel alive in the absence of delusion. These prospects aren’t fantasy-like or speculative. They’re real, if not imminent. Life itself as a phenomenon is novel, but each life as it manifests is empirically unremarkable. Existence is recurrent. Evolution doesn’t boil down to cultures or technologies because everything is already preset. In this way, history is bound to repeat itself because the knowledge of the past hasn’t inclined us to heed it. There is no God or angels regardless of how miraculously one may take flight because any ascent is contingent upon obliging demons a priori. Any happy ending or inspirational anecdote is moot, if not fallacy when disparity has a predetermined meaning.

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It’s been a while since I’ve cracked open Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, or Ligotti; but I remember what they were on about. I’m sure when I dust off their classics—wherever they may be in my never-ending library—I’ll be able to better relate psychological horror to continental philosophy for an academic article down the line. Which makes me think of a recent exchange I had on campus. These days, as a PhD student, I’m usually the most senior in my [required] elective classes. I happened to take one last semester which concerned philosophy and artificial intelligence, specifically if the latter could be capable of sentience or actual intelligence.

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Although the crux of its was philosophical, this class was cross-listed as a psychology course; and I only mentioned that because that might account for why it ended up being predominantly dudes, some of whom were edgelords (and some of whom I’ve seen lurk and whinge on campus pages). One day, we happened to gloss over the virulent egotism and bigotry of an infamous academic who happens to be a patron saint for today’s edgelords. The fact that those in my class incline people to “consider” them is unsurprising. I found one of my fellow students who proceeded to explain Nietzsche surprising—and amusing. Nietzsche came up since he was frequently cited (and laughably, misread) by the notorious aforementioned academic.

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I pretended not to know anything about him; I let this student—who was an undergrad with little, if any background in philosophy (or by extension: early modern and contemporary studies, classics, English, and miscellaneous social sciences or humanities—all of which I was familiar with or had aced)—try to explain what was behind [and what justified that bogus scholar’s reference of] Nietzsche, of all people! I won’t recount the bullshit he proceeded to relay as if it were remotely corrigible; but I will say it was surreal to see someone so woefully wrong feign expertise, even as they registered that their inarticulation betrayed their very own fallacy.

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Which is kind of a good segue into the film I watched this week, Abandon. It follows Catherine ‘Katie’ Burke (played by Katie Holmes), a university senior whose ambition and meticulosity ensures she is bound for a corporate ascent. The plot is driven by the pursuit of her ex-boyfriend, Embry (played by Charlie Hunnam) whose estate seeks to declare him deceased given his disappearance two years ago. Benjamin Bratt rounds out the narrative tripartite as Detective Wade Handler who is tasked with privately investigating the case. Although it’s been dubbed as psychological horror and likened to the realm of mystery, Abandon employs psychological horror at its core. It’s a series of everyday albeit eerie sketches which unearth many seeds which have failed to flourish for our three points of interest. Repression is personified mainly in Katie, the austere beauty whose fanatic WPM and hyper-focused scholarship overshadow her sense of self, time, and space; while Embry—the bourgeoise narcissist with a penchant for theatre—embodies sanctimony and mania. Handler represents a grim sense of wonder as his gazes seems to search offscreen, into the distance, in pursuit of something further than answers; something I suspect may reference one of many ruinous machinations of modern capitalism wherein happiness ceases to overcome the technologies which augment reality, prosperity, and celebrity.

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Each character, including those peripheral (such as the now wider-knowns: Gabrielle Union, Tony Goldwyn, and Zoey Deschanel), is walking a hillside path despite lacking any concept of summit. Abandon builds upon this, but falls short because it lacks continuity and momentum. Integral aspects of character development are only referenced in passing. These could’ve been explored as opposed to several emphases on impersonal character exchanges. The institutional angle of Abandon—through lenses of post-secondary education, neo-liberalism, and law enforcement—effects just how much success and survival are operant upon quick, superficial, and incisive insights as opposed kindness or principle. In terms of cinematography, the film employs a maximum visual and expressive use of the depth of field in long-shots which are underscored by foreboding scores. Fatalism and disconnected are further conveyed as the characters’ interrelation is conveyed through a singular or flattened planes. These span cool palettes and barren landscapes.

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For viewers, the horror of Abandon is one that bleeds in. We’re gradually unnerved as we watch Katie, Embry, Handler, and the rest of the ensemble scurry by because we’re inclined to consider our own paths in contrast. Thematically, this is what defines the film. As we wade onward, even as we may have yet to cultivate any sense of direction, the people and the world as we once knew fall away; but even if we’ve outgrown them, we can never shake the sense that it is us who they’ve left behind. People don’t persist because of any particular objective, but because they are constantly reminded of how little the world thinks of them. As we grow older, we don’t grow freer. We aren’t entrusted with independence and responsibility in adulthood, we’re categorically tasked with such as we’re expected to hold our own on the market.

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And, that’s really at the heart of Abandon. It drives home that our most poignant moments ensue when we find ourselves as alienated and isolated, instead of appeased by some abstract sense of reckoning or greater good. People are vainly inclined to emulate some semblance life even as they gradually die inside because of what alienation prevails during our formative years.

♫ Title song reference – “How Soon is Now?” by The Smiths

When The Party’s Over

…if it ever started.

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I think a part of growing up in this day and age is discerning IRL prospects from fickle social capital. This may be part and parcel with the assertion: “High school doesn’t last forever,” a proverb engrained upon young student bodies by various adults; mostly career or guidance counsellors. The saying didn’t really resonate during the first half of the twentieth century since success and acceptance had been so politicized in terms of aristocracy and respectability. Since face was so esteemed, there wasn’t such a thing as outgrowing your class: literal or figurative.

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Then, “High school doesn’t last forever” was only alluded to in the sixties given the ascent of the middle class along with scores of rags to riches celebrities who became staples of transcendence, divination, and countercultures.

During the late seventies, it became a mantra to empower marginalized academics; people who were defined by isolation and scarcity with a penchant for STEM fields—who would go on to cultivate lucrative empires, some of which are revered to date. This carried on into the eighties where class divisions somewhat coalesced since students could be sponsored more openly as opposed to exclusively, if not painstakingly chosen or moderated by private benefactors. These ascensions would play into the innately contradictory pastiche of decadent albeit disillusioned yuppies and revellers. New drugs along with new cults [of celebrity and Darwinian sci-fi angles] bled into what became an antithetical outlook of existentialism and nihilism.

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What drove home the mantra was how everyone could relate to how high school was particularly hateful and hierarchal. Knowing it literally was only a matter of time was said as an assurance. What was ironic was that it had to be said in the first place, because it evinced the inaction of the adults who floated this consolation. The toxic cultures of high school were bred by the same people who sold this proverb as motivational. There were no callouts or interventions. No expulsions. Not much beyond a slap on the wrist. The very same people who swore the anguish wouldn’t last forever either ignored or idled by as it happened. Except in these decades, students had a firmer grasp of world events and a whiff of corporate politics. The wider range of press, peer groups, along with the seamless portals between nightlife and the high life shaped their emotive and intellectual landscapes—and with that came not only the cognizance, but reactions to adult hypocrisy.

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Of course, hypocrisy was nothing new; its awareness just materialized as a rite of passage. Pop culture monetized tropes of student solidarity on a local level. The villainous parliamentarians and warmongers were still screwing the world over, but students were inclined to note how they were otherwise antagonized; and to an extent, to note how their protectors [parents, guardians, voting or apathetic adults] had themselves played into the hands of the evil, elite overseers—whose legacy they would fare against once they grew up.

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The more they stewed and speculated, the clearer things became. The immediate adults didn’t have their best interests at heart which was even more of a betrayal than the tyrannous conglomerates. So, the objective became to overthrow, not merely outwit disgruntled parents and educators.

Even though ranks were clear, peer groups diversified by interest. There were still kings and queens, but also monarchies—which wasn’t too different from the real world. What marked the shift in the later decade was how one could not only climb ranks, but climb as high as they desired by any means possible to the chagrin of peers and elders. Growing up afforded the prospect of independence and outclassing anyone at anytime.

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Which would be great if life was only about reputation. The consolation that there are bigger fish to fry in the sea of life as well as possessing the agency to move with, lead, or even surpass the school doesn’t hold much water for the people who must swim against the tide. Everyday people internalized a morsel of that when they found themselves alienated; wholly investing in systems and socialites only to turn up short. The “cool kids” were everywhere and nowhere—the selective [back then, rare] social influencers, the glamorous heirs, the ingenious economists, the reclusive visionaries—all of whom were just as likely to be the gold stars or the odd ones out in high school.

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By the time the nineties rolled round, people began to notice that there was a distinct singularity of the real-time scene king or queen. They offered little, if anything of real value that was usually in the form of a single “circumstantial” asset. The royals were by default conventionally attractive which made their “good looks” unremarkable—something people invariably learned through the billion-dollar beauty industries which banked upon consumer insecurities, and the gatekeepers who absconded them. Beyond that, what was there? Contagious laughter? Comic “genius”? A golden arm or other appendage? Generous allowances?

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Whatever it was, it was always one thing. There was a range of depth (or lack thereof) in terms of personality or what made the cool kids unique as people in and of themselves; but when it came to popularity, all of that was insubstantial. While this fact wasn’t new, it struck home in the nineties for most of the same reasons students were inclined to think more critically about what did/didn’t set apart their peers and protectors decades before. The nineties just drew this out more because [of] most civil wars had been escalated or prolonged to a disastrous precipice; the hypervisibility and Othering of drug epidemics and state sanctioned brutality; the individualism and idealism which defined Generation X; and many people believed 2000 would be the end of the world.

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This decade also saw a break where adults could no longer assume an inactive or misguided whilst condescending stance for youth. What were understood to be adult ills found their way to high schools and afflicted students therein. Adults couldn’t simply sit back and assure students nothing lasted forever in this decade because by then, things had gone too far to the wayside on a grand scale. Surviving high school became a feat in itself. The drug use, gun violence, and a burgeoning attempt to acknowledge rape culture yielded too many casualties. I also think that a good chuck of adults in this era were also incentivized to act since they bore in mind their own youthful revelations and resistances. They had seen casualties firsthand of their own or of others. Grassroots initiatives and community outreach became transformative staples. Anti-bullying, anger management, and gun control (and education) campaigns emerged in the tragic wake of murderous spats between students. Active efforts were also explored to better suicide prevention. The derisive resolve of grunge icons and the underground also inclined folks against uncritically revering authority.

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And, that all gradually wilted once the internet flourished. There was the upside in enabling connectivity, insulating communities, and open access information. However, none of that outweighed the cons: cyberbullying, cyber-stalking, death threats, doxing, romanticism; and how the power of numbers is subverted to quantify rather than qualify merit, instead of uniting a working majority against a corrupt minority who control natural and monetary reservoirs.

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While people started to question and outgrow the popularity complex and the one-dimensionality of those at the top, the 2000s saw the internet completely transform the cult of the individual. Social media imbued users with a wealth of tools to assume airs. Unlike what folks came to see as the garden variety patrician IRL, online personae assume a sentience because of technological matrices. This is evinced in the disparities between the Kiki who gleans acclaim [by means of circulation and validation] from tens of thousands online, everyday people and celebrities alike; and the unremarkable mendicant who is ultimately faceless and penniless IRL.

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Truth or Die (also known as Truth or Dare) is one of many movies at whose heart is the confrontation of shifting positionalities and the culture shock of new versus old technologies. It follows the familiar setup of scores unsettled and bones unpicked premised through flashbacks which afflict what’s intended to be a friendly reunion. One of the integral conflicts sees a main character’s (Felix, played by Tom Kane) unrequited crush that sows discord—which would go on to ultimately hollow past and prospective relationships. While the character’s trauma remains in the foreground, a core focus is their deficit social capital as a result.

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While the murder mystery that unfolds is rather formulaic, what makes Truth or Die unique is the lens of it looks through. Reality hinges upon the fact that media and capital are at odds in how they serve to disrupt or fracture social networks. The main characters comprise a peer group whose members were popular in trademark fashion: the archetype one who is an optimist, the goof, the athlete, the rich, the rationalist—but nobody was ever more than one. The present day reunion makes for a contemporary past their former lives were set in, which informs the precarious rank they held over their nonplussed classmates.

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True to the adage, the group dissolves as time passed. They grow enraged, then estranged after a fallout. Most of them forget one another as they make new ties once they sever old ones. Felix’s brother, Justin—played by the handsome David Oakes [who has made me salivate since The Borgias]—orchestrates their reunion. He invites them to a dinner party; the occasion to celebrate Felix’s homecoming; the venue being a cabin on his family’s estate. While some might cite the lack of character development or back story could hamper the story, I find that’s exactly what strengthens the narrative in respect to the theme of reunion. What’s past or present is inconsequential since these archetypes, just like those of high school realities, are genuinely unlikeable characters. It doesn’t matter where they came from, where they’re headed, or what trials and tribulations they face. They’re the cool kids. Their existence—and status—is contingent upon their often cruel subjectification of others. Nothing justifies that. No insight into their personal lives or catharses would elicit sympathy; which is what makes Justin’s creed somewhat identifiable, if not noble. This role also drives home Oakes’ virtuosity as an actor. At least, if you’ve kept up with his filmography. This is one of many characters which evince his mutability. His personae are superb since he’s totally believable as hero or villain, and he’s married the two in this latest crusade.

20This kind of rising action isn’t exactly new, but precarity is what marks this departure: how easily havoc can be wrought by ranks and media is what’s thematic of the overall film. I found Truth or Die more honest and grounded than similar series—Gossip Girl being the infamous example—in its dynamics and execution. Profound revelations bleed through point blank dialogue in the absence of cosmic or quirky coincidences. The lack of pretension redirects viewers to the actual plot rather than suspend their disbelief. And the cinematography that hones in on every subject through mostly mid to tight closeups emphasizes both literal and figurative faces. An expressive focus is further diffused by russet, sparsely furnished interiors and dark forest thickets which comprise the mise-en-scène.

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There’s also an element of surrealism as bites of a melancholic, transcendent narration muse upon both living and dying in the moment. Moreover, how the moment loses rather than retains meaning as new technologies emerge to record it. Truth or Die incorporates a dimension of mastery which motivates one’s compulsion to photograph, videotape, scrapbook, or otherwise archive; where one can always assume a degree of control—however small or significant—over a moment that technology can capture. It also relates to a generational divide; where antiquated technologies crystallize precious moments versus the profuse modern, individual histories which hang online through public archives and activity logs.

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However, Truth or Die falls short in its adherence to the archetype tale. Occasional campy exchanges and emphatic, spontaneous outbursts undermine narrative tension. This ends up reducing a chunk of reactions to stilt performances. Erraticism then minimizes the characters’ desperation as they try to bully out confessions and search for escape routes. It’s hard to believe they’re driven wholly by a sense of urgency as they saunter through scene by scene since they can’t be bothered to tread lightly. It’s even harder to believe they’re sympathetic as they turn on one another in a way that’s more flighty than callous.

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Then, there’s Felix as a framing device: the clumsy recluse everyone is so keen to demoralize. His credulity makes for an obvious red herring. The camerawork is also a bit shaky in parts where it shouldn’t be; and cuts which go from straight on to canted angles disjoint the focus, particularly in sequences with dialogue.

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And, the obvious thread that ties everything together here is that life does indeed beat beyond high school. Ironically, this is a pretty obvious element that tends to be downplayed or entirely overlooked in high school whodunnit reunion tales. The only explicit, fleshed out references to high school are ambivalent flashbacks that allude to potential murder motives or scenes within (or following) the climax when the culprit is unmasked. You’d think that wouldn’t be the case given the literal premise of these tales. It’s a shame because it’s such a simple, clever way to frame plot and character development—which in itself motivates why people have high school reunions.

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No matter how much times change, the saying that “High school doesn’t last forever” resonates on the principle that happiness and bragging rights await those who take playground politics in stride. People don’t show up to high school reunions to check in or rekindle friendships. They show up to show out: drive home how they’ve become “cool kids” in their own right; gloat over how the cold, real world of adulthood overshadows whatever twinkled at the centre lunch table or bleachers.

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The motive is petty in hindsight, but something most of us can relate to. I’m not exactly stewing over things everyday, every time, plotting in the wilderness; wearing a skull shirt and trench coat, resolving to enact vengeance—only to realize no matter what, it will always consume me long after the final execution. But I’m aware there are past qualms I’ve yet to suss out which have manifest in how I relate to things; and I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t feel the teeniest bit vindicated if I heard tragedy struck the monsters I knew in high school. Truth or Die acknowledges this not so guilty pleasure as it reinforces not only how far its circle of friends have fallen from glamorous graces, but how these falls serve as comeuppance. Nobody is perfect nor are they exempt from karma, but there are certain people who are duly dealt a distinct brand of just deserters.

No Wonder in Wonder Woman

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Wonder Woman was the last Justice Leaguer I met when I was a kid. I spent most of my afternoons watching TVO, Fox Kids, and YTV: the latter of which featured debuts and reruns of the iconic DCAU Batman and Superman series. Between the stellar superheroines (even antiheroines) in X-Men and Spider-Man, I wasn’t exactly thinking too hard about the absence of women when it came to action and adventure; but I also wasn’t keen on the difference between DC and Marvel, the latter of which seems to have an endless erection for Wolverine despite its notoriously vast and diverse galleries of narratives.

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I met Wonder Woman in the early 00s when the Justice League animated series came out, and became more acquainted with her through cult coverage in documentaries or comic conventions. She seemed like a powerful character: a literal Amazon whose allies and nemeses were themed through Greek mythology, which appealed to me since I liked to read those classics in middle school. Her star-spangled costume with its trademark tripartite of red, white, and blue iconized her in the vein of Captain America: appealing to Americana and fashioning the heroism ascribed to the Allies whom ultimately won WWII whilst championing the USA. She was also strong and intent. Despite the chauvinism that marks faculty and fandom that surround a lot of canon, compared to her male cohorts, Diana was ironically less flushed or furious than forthright. What struck me about her story was how I felt it could parallel the X-Men [my favourite series tbh]. Her narrative was driven less by justice than discovery. Sure, she fought for ‘justice,’ but she was driven by a sense of urgency and reckoning that was yielded from an irresolute identity and past. She left Themyscira to war past (and despite) a realm of reservation, forged friendships, cultivated mortal enemies, and discovered the dynamics of being beyond duty.

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I’m sure there would’ve been an abundance of insight into that development and likely legendary enemies or allies added to her roster had she’d been picked up with her own DCAU series—but she wasn’t. Neither were a bunch of my beloved favourites, even if they did manage to earn the odd DCAU movie special or motion comic. Which is why the recent Wonder Woman movie was so ground breaking. Not only did it grant Diana her deserved debut to the big screen, it also reaffirmed the revelatory ethos she stood for and dignified her as a feminist icon: a beacon of light and strength amidst the otherwise all-male Justice League and spotlighted narratives. Wonder Woman was never a feminist idol of mine, although I did think she was a feminist and likewise represented feminism. I was keener to Catwoman, Poison Ivy, and Zatanna when it came to DC; while Storm, Rogue, Jean Grey, Black Cat, and Calypso were my faves for Marvel. Wonder Woman was great, but I felt a bit conservative in how she emblematized Americana and idealism whereas my picks were pronounced through power, prowess, and prerogative.

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That doesn’t make Wonder Woman a ‘bad’ feminist or superheroine by comparison. It just means that I hold respect and space for Diana in a different way. Admittedly, I looked at her with new respect when the Injustice games came out. She not only mobilized the misguided Amazon army to rise above an autocratic regime against her evil twin, but she inclined people to discern between independence and interpersonality as well as pride. Her feminism was explicit rather than just implied according to her prior incarnates. She spoke directly of how men can convolute women: how misogyny drove the adoption the autocracy of Superman, and how any allegiance to him was self-destructive as well as superficial against the ethos and hubris of real warriors. And, she did actually say this stuff. Not word for word or quite as abstract, but there’s a portion where she declares these principles during the story mode. It was then my heart took a dive as she proceeded to emphasize ideas with the clank of her sword against her shield, then knocked her evil twin out cold, and led the charge of her warrior sisters against Aquaman’s army. This Diana got me thinking. I could get into this side of Wonder Woman.

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Then, some years later, Wonder Woman was announced. Knowing that it was going to be run and adjunct to the lackluster series of films which comprise the latest DC hero franchise, I wasn’t exactly thrilled. For me, the recent movies—Man of Steel and Batman v Superman—bastardized any original character or canon which kind of undercut the source material. Not to mention we saw Superman and Batman on the big screen many times. Given the span of time, the frequency and continuance of their reboots was becoming more of a nuisance than a running gag; a lot like Wolverine. So, a Wonder Woman narrative which shared a similar budget and campaign was refreshing, if not surprising. It wasn’t just going to be great to see an alternate take; it was going to be epic because it hadn’t been done before. Yet, I still found myself mildly unimpressed with the promos and previews—and eventually, the actual movie. Diana was reduced to romance and rebellion rather than strength, urgency, and undertaking. Themyscira read like an afterthought to her fascination with the outside world. She embarks to eviscerate not because she can, but because of clumsy attraction. This Wonder Woman was nothing like the champions I’d read into or watched onscreen over the years, and she was the polar opposite of the star Injustice had made me fall in love with. I still don’t have the spoons to do a film review, but all I can say is that she was like a caricature: a witless warrior whose quest wasn’t to innovate or liberate, but to become one of the guys.

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Which is accentuated by Gal Gadot. She was briefly scandalized for being a Zionist, but people could’ve cared less once Wonder Woman broke. The movie captivated critics and was acclaimed by audiences as revolutionary. Folks fancied that it was a text which transmuted the mainstreamed misogyny and signal boosted ‘feminism’ as a matter of representation. Little girls and teens could now assumedly identify with this genre because it had afforded them a leading woman. As if Wonder Woman’s regalia hadn’t already afforded them that before this film. As if everything would’ve been undermined had it featured another actress.

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Consequently, Gadot was iconized akin to Wonder Woman by fans whom thereupon imposed their ideologies. She became an avatar of ‘girl power’ in light of her casting, and further assumed the role when she refused to work with Brett Ratner whose sexual harassment was exposed in the wake of callouts which followed Harvey Weinstein. I honestly don’t think much of celebrities when it comes to activism or advocacy, especially the declaredly ‘feminist’ ones whose social justice is operant upon their social capital. For me, Gadot’s Zionism and cult of celebrity discredited any likeness to Wonder Woman and feminism as I knew it. Because, the personal is political. Politics inform and reflect our worldviews, and their principles signify encoded values we abide and legitimate. Zionism is not merely problematic nor can it be divorced from someone’s personality; and given historical horrors and current events, I don’t think it should be taken lightly, especially when it’s assumed by a prominent celebrity who is cast as some symbol of feminism or revolution. I also just don’t think it’s wise or realistic to levy that much likeness upon one person or one text. The personae of Wonder Woman and similar heroines related as feminist are vast in and of themselves. Gadot and Wonder Woman are simply singular instances, however informed they purport to be by the whole.

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Which is why when this story broke, I was unmoved by the shock and outrage it has elicited from Wonder Woman and Gadot fans. Regardless of the script, Gadot’s correlation to Zionism spoke to a degree of amorality and antipathy which was evident in her deliverance of the role. I could also note that she seldom spoke of feminism or politics beyond that in real-time—which made all these assumptions of her feminist fervor all the more ludicrous, if not unfounded.

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When it comes to the hype of Hollywood and celebrity, prospects aren’t so much limited as they are sustained. If something is made, it’s bought. Its dislike doesn’t discount its dollars. Which is why Wonder Woman and others like her can be commodified and commercialized through any means. If their stories are ever dignified, they’re applauded. Their mere existence is seen as radical even if there is nothing particularly innovative in how they are delivered or conceived, even in considering their constituents or market objectives. I don’t know if Wonder Woman will ever get the diverse, continued cinematic treatment equivalent to her comic counterparts. What I do know is that I’m not the only one displeased by this one as it stands; nor am I the only one who discerns between the face of the character onscreen and whom or what that face belongs to IRL. Diana might not have had the profound, perspective feature film I’d hoped for; but she has had a good run and I won’t let Gadot or any other casting discredit that.