...and yet such force in that stance, / upright, heart thrust out / to the world, unguarded, no hope // without the possibility of a wound. / "To hold oneself in this pose," he said, / "takes incredible strength."
- Mark Doty
So what occurs to me is that Baby Boomers/Gen X and Millennials/Gen Z (the cutoffs are a little arbitrary, but bear with me) both grew up in the shadow of extinction, but have had qualitatively different experiences of it.
For the Boomers, the big fear was a sudden, violent catastrophe; nuclear war. US and Soviet ships start shooting at each other off the coast of Cuba; someone, somewhere in the huge and ponderous Cold War military apparatus, mistakes a meteor for an incoming ICBM, and just like that, your world is over. You’re always just one bad day away from death on an unimaginable scale.
This fear has never really gone away (and certainly it’s had something of a revival, recently), but it went into remission after the end of the Cold War. For Millennials, the overwhelming fear isn’t of a sudden catastrophe, it’s of a death by a million cuts; global warming. A slow decay growing faster; a downward spiral as everything you love and value crumbles and rots and turns to garbage around you.
When what you fear is a sudden catastrophe, normalcy–“business as usual”, abstracting maybe a few reforms of the political systems–becomes a refuge. It could all be gone in a flash, but at least it’s here now. It’s real, it’s solid. You can live in it, while it’s standing.
When what you fear is a slow rot, “business as usual” becomes part of the horror. You’re not escaping anything; you notice things getting worse around you with every passing summer; even worse, you are–however infinitesimally–assisting in your own demise; slowly and thoughtlessly, you are weaving the rope that will be used to hang you. Normalcy becomes your executioner.
finally decided to sit down and watch the incredibles again. there will be no commentary because i’m gonna be too busy watching it
okay i just gotta say
having been married for 3 years now (almost), i really love how bob & helen argue. when i was a kid it just came off to me that everyone in this movie was being super mean for no reason but when you watch it as an adult it’s different. i really appreciate that even when bob is frustrated/angry he basically never lashes out at helen or the kids, his problem is he’s withdrawn and existantialling. i also really appreciate that when they do fight they’re actually more expressing their frustration than attacking each other. it’s only later when things get real that helen (understandably) gets really angry.
also edna’s advice is actually really good, helen’s just melting down over the idea of losing her husband (which is sweet and helps us understand her character) but edna tells her to confront it immediately, hold bob to account by leaning into his concern (all his heroics being forgotten) and reminding him that she’s a super, too. direct action is a blessing in communication.
i love how the movie communicates bob’s competency, like he’s actually handling all the twists and turns of the situation rapidly deteriorating very well, the only thing that throws him off is when his family gets involved. we also see helen’s competency in the plane scene and how she immediately knows something’s up when no one responds on the radio
syndrome is such a fucking good villain, saying ‘i seem to recall you prefer to work alone’ and laughing at him when he believes he’s murdered the guy’s wife and kids???? holy fuck
as previously mentioned bob breaking down and sobbing alone in the containment room shaped my personality
ah the good old days of 2004 when having a voluptuous mom ass was a bad thing. good riddance, we don’t miss you.
also the it’s a neat little parallel to bob’s body image struggles, they really went to great lengths to showcase that these people are equals & soulmates
the kids are really well-written too, they feel very authentically their age and they both have motivations, the writing does a great job of showing how the gravity of the situation sinks in for them and forces them to rise to meet it. dash especially fascinates me in this movie because he’s just the right balance between immature and starting, just starting to get that life is a big deal and stakes are real and you’ve got to care about what you’re doing and try to do the right thing in every situation. the way the kids instinctively protect each other even though all we’ve seen of them so far in the movie is antagonism is just *clenches fist* so good
unfortunately social media puts the activist meeting, the bitching session, the public outreach, the group therapy session, the silly blow off some steam gossiping about people private chat, and the group d&d session all in the same place, and so people mistake, for example, an outpouring of legitimate grief and rage as somehow a public-facing political statement, or a carefully edited and tactical political statement as a reflection of a person’s most deeply held private feelings, etc
I first read “if you were lazy you would be having fun” on your blog and it has genuinely been a life-changing piece of advice for me and my friends - I’ve said it to like four of my other executive dysfunction judies and without fail it earns a ten second silence followed by a single revelatory “fuck”
My dad and I actually ran into the speech language pathologist who told me that over 20 years ago at a town hall a few months back—she is retired now, but still advocating for disabled students at IEP meetings and being a nuisance to school administrators. I thanked her for everything, and she was delighted to hear that I was passing her words along to other people who needed to hear them!
w. wait fuck. this is the first time I’ve heard this. hold on I need to sit down. I need a second. this shatters my worldview just a little bit h. hold on
I reckon it’s very telling how easily the Cop show replaced the Western as like the default US action genre. Both expressions of the same fundamental worldview just in different settings with different signifiers
I think a lot of stuff about DnD (especially the earlier editions themselves but also just the general assumptions that filtered down to today) makes sense if you realise how much influence the Western had on it. Like once again it expresses the same sort of ideology just with different signifiers; swords instead of sixshooters, knights instead of cowboys, orcs instead of “injuns”
Our Hero (cop/cowboy/adventurer) is marauding into a hostile, unconquered place (urban centre/indigenous land/fantasy wilderness) that, while notionally uninhabited, is occupied by an inherently-dangerous other (criminals/indigenous people/orcs) who are morally permissible to kill by the dozens - the power imbalance, which makes killing dozens of these opponents, without seriously fearing for one’s own life in each encounter, possible, is a natural, positive thing. The pure innocents being protected (white suburbia/white settlement/white townsfolk) are defenseless, sheep against wolves, needing above-human individuals as their sheepdogs. The Heroes take wealth and power in exchange for very little risk, and the ability to kill with impunity - but, we can be assured, they do it out of moral selflessness, defense of the helpless against an assuredly-real threat. They’re brave. They venture into the (drug-user’s house/indigenous family’s campsite/dungeon).
i see a post talking doom and gloom about how we’ll never escape toxic masculinity. i think about back in 2017 when american girl released their first boy doll, and a review for him went viral in the collecting community. the review was written by a mom, who said they went into the store to get their daughter a doll, only to see their son’s eyes light up like fire when he saw a doll that looked like him, and now every night he puts his doll in pajamas and rocks him to sleep. i think about the toddler in my daycare room a few years back who was obsessed with baby dolls, carrying them everywhere, and his mom proudly told us he uses his sisters’ old baby dolls and wants to be just like them. that toddler saw another toddler crying one day and gave her the doll he had to cheer her up. i think about the eight-year-old boy i saw a few years back, excitedly waving around raya’s sword in a target checkout line like all his dreams were coming true. there was a video on my instagram the other day of a little boy at disneyworld crying with joy upon meeting his hero, mulan. i think about the voice actor for bow in the she-ra reboot saying his nephews only wanted adora action figures. celebrity men are wearing dresses on tv now. last halloween i saw a little boy dressed as elsa. i went to go see spiderverse over the summer, and in the line ahead of me was a boy who couldn’t be older than twelve or thirteen, bouncing and beaming, giddy with excitement over getting to see the female-led romance movie elemental. i think about the five-year-old boy at my library who breathlessly asked me where the pinkalicious books were, eyes widening when i had more on my cart, his mom explaining that he is all about pinkalicious and fancy nancy. i saw so many pictures online of boys and men dressed in pink to see barbie. teenage boys are gonna open their phones and see the man who wrote fucking game of thrones dressed in pink to see barbie. when i was a kid, a boy dressing in pink was practically a social death sentence. there are boys running around in pink on my street right now.
In general I believe in the supernatural but I still approach things with a healthy degree of skepticism. However if you tell me you saw something paranormal at sea I will 100% believe you no matter what. If someone tells me they saw ghosts on land I would need some proof before I’m onboard but if someone tells me they saw ghosts in the ocean I’d be like yeah man we all do
