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Mar. 20th, 2016 09:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* "Does TSA = Transsexuals Searched Always? :" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2016/03/does-tsa-transsexuals-searched-always.html
* "RIP Jasmine Sierra :"http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2016/03/rip-jasmine-sierra.html
* And... A whole entry got randomly eaten, including some absolutely beautiful work I did on the Black Sails XXVII entry that I doubt I can duplicate. I spent like 2-3 hours just dissecting that one scene. Apologies to all of you for my anal retentiveness there.
* Black Sails XXVII:
* I have a lot of feelings about this episode. I suspect we all have a lot of feelings about this episode. I know there are a lot of people quitting the fandom right now and I understand and respect the whys of that. I'm staying though, even though this is as close as I've come to mourning a character the way I would a person I knew since I became an adult. Let me explain a little of why. We knew going in that this was an epic tragedy. We know Nassau's future RL, and thus the future of the pirates of Nassau. We know that while one of the settlements of escaped slave survived most of a century, most of the others, not so much. For most of the RL pirates, like Jack Rackham, Edward Teach, and Charles Vane, we knew what would happen to them. For most of the treasure Island characters, like Flint, Billy Bones, and Ben, we know the same. It is and always has been an issue of why, when, and in what context. I have been bracing myself for the loss of Rackham for weeks and this season's arc for Charles has been very powerfully about his conflict between his past and his present, his ideals and practicality, and personal freedom vs. freedom of the many. Charles has been heading for death, the issue was when and why and what the context would be. Would it be fighting for Nassau, or in Blackbeard's fleet, or for freedom of himself, or for a friend, or for Flint's cause, or for his own cause? I absolutely wish it would have been longer. He was one of my favorites, but so was Mr. Gates. So I will continue. This episodes hurt. It hurt a lot for all sorts of reasons, but the story continues.
* Jack is in mourning already. "Charles Vane's sacrifice is in that box. If your man is unsuccessful in seeing to his rescue, Charles Vane's death is inside that box. Along with my good name. Along with her lost love. Along with your late quartermaster's life. All the awful sacrifices made to assemble that box are now part of its contents, and those things... are sacred things that I trust in no man's hands." Ouch.
* The last conversation between Eleanor Guthrie and Charles Vane is beautiful shot and lit. This season in particular has been doing amazing things with contrasting light and shadow. I've been often reminded of late 17th and early 18th century paintings watching it. Take a moment to look at the light in this scene. In the opening shot, she is in light and he in shadow. Her face is beautifully illuminated as she reads the plea they've written for him that she knows full well he won't sign. There is no hiding from the hardness of her expression for him. When the perspective shifts, he is sitting in a single shaft of light, looking like the painting of a martyr, his face half in shadow as he watches her, but the illuminated side is facing her as if she were the light source. The sunlight of freedom touches his body, but it's her harsher light touching his face.
* It is right after she says, "Good bye, Charles," that she moves out of the light and out of focus." She is out of focus and we can't see his face either when he describes Richard Guthrie's cowardice. She comes very deliberately back into focus as Charles describes her Father's betrayal of her. We can't see either of their faces and they can't see each other's. It obscures his motives and her original reaction. I think this is very, very deliberate, because the ambiguity of his motives and her complex feelings about both Charles and her father are rather the point.
* I keep thinking about Charles Vane's original framing of the murder of Richard Guthrie, and his speech about freeing her from fathers in light of what we know know about Charles' relationship with Blackbeard the father figure. Was it an act of vengeance or a gift? Was it intended as a strike to her heart or to free her to be herself without restraints, much as she once freed him from Blackbeard's shadow? I don't think he himself knows, and my bet is it's a miss of both. Love and anger tangle so deep between those two. I do think he loved her best the harder and more ruthless and more powerful she was. There is something in the passionate way they made war on each other that suggests he never could separate the two, that the more they hurt each other the more entangled they were.
* I believe Charles description of Richard Guthrie's last minutes alive. Richard Guthrie was a shit father and a coward and that sounds about right. He always did throw her overboard at the least opportunity and his love was only grudgingly given when Eleanor had power and he did not. It is easy to smooth over the faults of the dead and believe that if they'd lived everything would have been wonderful. I think Charles underestimates the power of that, but there is another factor: choice. Blackbeard wasn't dead, only banished, and it was something he himself chose. He freed himself of Blackbeard twice. Eleanor did not chose to free herself of Richard Guthrie. He was taken, and that is a big difference. I think there is an echo here with Anne in season two, debating with herself if Jack freed her or robbed her of a chance to free herself when she was a girl. I do think there is a massive difference between deciding you can't follow your stab dad's vision anymore (Charles), a child being freed from an abuser (Anne), and having your asshole father murdered by an angry ex-lover (Eleanor). I'm just not convinced Charles gets that.
I think this is a situation where the voice Flint warns Silver about later this episode comes into play. Like Silver, Charles thinks he has good reasons for what he did, but there's also the darkness that lives within him whispering, whispering. I think everything Charles says to Eleanor in this scene is like that, a mix of what he thinks he is saying for good reasons always called into question by the presence of darker motives. "Tells you he can give you all the things you want. Tells you I'm your enemy and just like that, his love is sacred and mine is an inconvenient obstacle to your ambition." Tell me that's not jealousy. Go on, tell me that, because it sure looks like it. His anger at her deep betrayal and his jealousy were and are so mingled with his other higher minded reasons for the murder that I don't think he can see them. She was right to call him out for baser reasons for killing, but I think she picked the wrong motive. Her father's body was staged not all that differently than the love gift of Ned Low's head. It wasn't cowardice about facing her, but more jealousy and a sense of betrayal hiding behind the story he was telling himself about freedom from fathers and cutting away her anchor.
* I want to make super clear at this juncture that even though her father was a shit and I never liked him, Eleanor has every right to be angry Charles murdered him. He was her FATHER. That's definitely on the short list of best reasons to be furious at someone. Yes, even if he was the sort of crappy ass father to abandon a young girl in a den of pirates to punish her for not being born a boy.
* I love that the line, "A man you love, who speaks the truth, shunted aside in favour of the next who will tell you whatever you want to hear," could refer either to her father or to Woodes Rogers.
* After she hits him, he's back in that beautiful beam of light pose, now bent over. Everything about his posture speaks of despair. There's been a lot of talk about Flint's death with in this space, but I think this is the moment Charles starts to decide to embrace his own death, to become a martyr. She is half in light and half in shadow, just as he's been all scene. Her face is turned away from him as she says her "you're not a man" "there is no goodness in you" speech. She has very good reasons (see killed her father and then framed it like he was doing her a favour), but I think she has to dehumanize him to do what she's about to do to him. She must know as we do that he's while he's a monster, he's not the unfeeling one she describes. She is turning him into the villain of her story. She needs to hate him utterly, to make him into something inhuman, an "It" as she says at the end of XXVI, to do this thing. It seems to me that as with Charles murder of Richard Guthrie, and Silver's handling of Dobbs, this is the other instance this episode of someone having really good reason, but also whispers from their darkness.
* I have been saying all along Eleanor Guthrie is a Pirate captain and her ship is Nassau. I wrote at length recently of how much she is like Flint character wise and how much like his early season two arc her season three arc is. She is ruthless to herself and everyone else around her in her relentless pursuit of her goals, exactly like Flint is. I think she has the same core set it all on fire anger that Flint has. I think the real difference is, that he both hates himself and cares what people think of him, and she is trying incredibly hard to pretend to herself she doesn't. As long as she can avoid looking to hard into that mirror she can pretend she's not a monster, but I think the bedroom scene in XXVI suggests she's starting to believe Charles that "You'll betray absolutely anyone, won't you" and trying with all her might to prove him wrong. Which suggests she cares what Charles thinks still. The other difference is, where Flint still has that longing for his life before his fall and so a sort of duel consciousness about what he does and how it looks, there really wasn't much in the way of a before for her. Nassau is her world. She grew up unloved by her surviving parent surrounded by pirates, and is amoral as Silver, for all she is currently wearing conventional femininity like armour where Woodes Rogers and the Red Coats can see her.
* "You're not a man. You're deformed. Unformed. Flesh, bone, and bile, and missing all that which takes shape through a mother's love. You cannot comprehend what you took from me or why it was good, because there is no goodness in you. There is no humanity in you, no capacity for compromise, nor instinct toward repair, nor progress. Nor forgiveness. You are an animal. Nassau is moving on from you, and so am I." Her list of accusations describe how history might remember him. Strip away the motives, context, relationships, and all the softer bits, it's like a crab shell after the gulls have picked away any flash that remained. This is how they likely look to outsiders: Charles Vane, Flint, Anne Bonny, Max, Hornigold, or Eleanor herself. (Possibly also the man Jack Rackham is becoming. Ask me again in season four). Charles surely lacks a mothers love, but so did Eleanor for the most part, her mother having died when she was young, and I think she hates compromise as much as him. She is certainly as unforgiving as Flint. She is condemning him with the sort of words I think they will condemn her with, with words they are likely applying to Flint already given the givens.
You're not a man. You're deformed. Unformed. Flesh, bone, and bile, and missing all that which takes shape through a mother's love. You cannot comprehend what you took from me or why it was good, because there is no goodness in you. There is no humanity in you, no capacity for compromise, nor instinct toward repair, nor progress. Nor forgiveness. You are an animal. Nassau is moving on from you, and so am I.
I am thinking about her list of accusations against him and how nearly any of them might be remembered that way if you strip out all the motives and the warmer motives. It's like the shell after the crab has been eaten. Charles Vane, Anne Bonny, Flint, Eleanor herself, all deprived of a Mother's love, shaped into ruthless pirates, and seen as monsters by outsiders and sometimes or often seeing themselves as one. (I don't know enough backstory for Hornigold, Silver, and Max, but they could very well fit, and possibly the man Jack Rackham is becoming, ask me next season).
* She turns back towards him round about "no forgiveness," as if the light on her face were the strong beat in a line of poetry or measure of music, a call back to her light as she read the formal accusations in the rejected plea, passing through his light and general shadows as she leaves.
* I think Woodes had a good idea of how sick he was about to be, as that sure looked like a very deliberate handing over of the reigns of power masked as relaying for decency's sake as "relaying." The question is, will he repudiate her and scapegoat her when he wakes, or keep her as an advisor. Either way, I expect it to get very nasty. Also, was anyone else thinking of Woodrow Wilson's wife? Because this set up was very much like that.
* Flint's dubious face FTW. Silver: "Well, he's carrying out the order, so have to hope he sees some credibility in it." Flint: "That or he doesn't know how to say no to the both of us at the same time." My money is on the later, which should scare the piss out of all of them. Flint and Silver with no one to tell them no is a terrible, terrible idea.
* Billy, that is an incredibly risky plan that assumes the ones in charge give a shit about rights. He's still his Father's son despite everything. "My father used to tell me that when the world promises undesirable outcomes, only a fool believes he can alter the latter without first addressing the state of the former. Now, we are living in a world where Nassau has embraced English rule, where former pirates now exchange pleasantries with soldiers in the street, and where the last man to stand up and defy England is about to be shipped back there to be hanged. And exactly no one seems to give a shit about it. So I'm here to remedy all that." Underneath the Pirate there is still a hint of the idealistic reformer he was raised to be. I do very much appreciate the mix of Story and force built into his plan. He's learned from all the ways various Powers have used propaganda to sway the beach, and wedded it to ideology that calls back to his upbringing, adding in a dash of Charles Vane swashbuckling violence.
* Damn, I just realize I'm never getting that second Charles Vane and Billy Bones conversation I've longed for.
* Toby Stephens face acting in the "What happened to him" scene? Also priceless.
* "I stood in Nassau and I realized when this war begins, it will have many different meanings, but to you, this war is a civil war between two cities you held together for so long with unseen bonds. You will have people on both sides of it. You will have daughters on both sides of it." And yet only one of those daughters gives a fuck that Mr. Scott is dying. Eleanor still has not asked after him. Eleanor, whom he pretty much raised, who is that furious at Charles over Richard Guthrie hasn't tried to find out what became of Mr. Scott after the Empire came to Nassau, whereas Madi, who barely has had any time with him has been mourning him even as she tries to get to know him. Just saying.
* His answer, "Only you," is also a beautiful affirmation that it really had all been for Madi and her future, what was sacrificed and what was built was done out of a father's love for her.
Well, he's carrying out the order, so have to hope he sees some credibility in it. That or he doesn't know how to say no to the both of us at the same time.
* I like that Max calculates Mrs. Mapleton sees Max as the future and thus the Power to tie her own future to, rather than falling for the telling her what to hear trick. Mrs. Mapleton is way better at this than Georgia was, but Max knows this trick too. At the same time, I think Mrs. Mapleton is not wrong, "Eleanor Guthrie used that chair not just to vanquish her enemies, but to create new ones. Because some people can only understand themselves through the eyes of those who hate them. They thrive only on sowing the seeds of their own eventual destruction. Miss Guthrie has new clothes now. Miss Guthrie has new friends now. But to my eye, she looks the same." After all, this is a pretty spot on description of nearly everything Eleanor does and says this episode. Just because something is said to manipulate doesn't mean it can't be true. Mrs. Mapleton has to be good at reading people and reading the politics of Nassau both. She can't have risen in her profession as high as she did and stay their as long without being good at these things.
* I am a bit alarmed as to Idelle's future.
* "The governor wants him to believe that Charles Vane is the cause of all their ill. It's a lot easier to watch a man swing if you're comfortable hating him just a little bit. His task is to start reminding everyone there's someone else out there that they're far more comfortable hating." Eleanor couldn't play better into Billy's coming rebellion if she were actually trying. Max even warns her outright. "In this particular instance, you would be wise to make sure, whatever happens to Captain Vane, those men have no reason to believe it happened because of you." Max is so damned good at this in such a short time, has come so incredibly far in three seasons. Ignoring Max here is a massive mistake on Eleanor's part.
* "I warned you, the closer you let me get to you, the more dangerous I would be." Eleanor surely did warn Woodes Rogers, conveying Charles complaints about her to him. She rattled her tail often. My suspicion is he'll pretend she hadn't, but we'll see. "I've never given a damn what people think of me. But I give a damn what you think." I maintain my belief that she's still trying to convince herself she isn't what Charles said she is, because she does not want to see herself as so utterly lost.
* The Flint and Silver is incredibly important. Flint seeing a man in the early stages of walking his incredibly dark path? Ouch. His resignation and brutal self knowledge is threaded into his face, his voice. He's like the old cop close to burn out talking to a younger cop he's supposedly mentoring early in the stages of becoming corrupt. The dead eyes and the dark touch of humor sold it in a way nothing else could. The acting was so good it made me ache. Silver's face is fascinating too. This is not a talk he is enjoying having, but you can see the self knowledge there too and a wry resignation, and wariness verging on a hint of alarm at the future he reads in Flint's face. He is taking this very, very seriously and rightly so.
* I'm excerpting the most important bit about the voice inside and not being able to trust it because it sounds so reasonable and is enrobed in true things, but comes out of the darkest place inside of one, because it's not only the best explanation of Flint just generally, and the thing Silver is discovering in himself and struggling with, but it really does explain Charles Vane killing Richard Guthrie and pretty much everything about Eleanor, as she is so much like Flint. "The point is that while you were doing it, you heard a voice telling you that disciplining him would prevent him from repeating the offense, a voice that sounded like reason, and there was reason to it, as the most compelling lies are comprised almost entirely of the truth. But that's what it does. Cloaks itself in whatever it must to move you to action. And the more you deny its presence, the more powerful it gets, and the more likely it is to consume you entirely without you ever even knowing it was there." Eleanor has been denying it's presence, and it's been quietly building behind her eyes. I this episode, I think it has begun to consume her, and she's started something I suspect will destroy her.
* Silver has a mentor in Flint and Madi and Billy Bones to advise him. Flint has been talking him through this all along. Madi has put in a word here and there. Eleanor? All of her mentors are dead by the end of this episode. She has Max to advise her, and Max is quite likely one of the brightest people on the island if not they brightest, but there is all that baggage between her and Max.... yeah. For the record I think Max has been giving her incredibly good advice since she returned to Nassau, but I don't think the alliance will last for a whole host of reasons.
* And so we bid farewell to Mr. Scott.
* Poor Billy, still naive enough to believe the Empire isn't arbitrary in it's "justice," but not for long, I think.
* Max warns Eleanor again and Eleanor doesn't listen again, "When the governor arrived and the island embraced him, a bargain was struck. Authority was ceded, in exchange for which the law returned. Law, which constrained that authority, made outcomes more predictable. But this outcome would seem most unpredictable.... If the bargain changes, there is no telling what else will change as a result, what trust may be lost and what chaos may abound. I am your friend, and I will help you weather whatever challenges may lie down whatever road you may choose, but as your friend, I am simply asking you to consider how treacherous this road may be... while there is still time to avoid it." Max: Eleanor, no! Eleanor: ELEANOR YES! Me: head desk.
* The look in his eyes as he spots Eleanor on the way to the gibbet; the next round in their war will start with his death. He's already decided before the Priest comes, before they put him in the cart. It was in the tilt of his shoulders as she vilified him that final time in the cell. The weight of all that love and hate and betrayal has such momentum I think it will careen on until it destroys her the way it destroyed him.
* "I understand the code you subscribe to. I understand you believe your violence is justified in the name of a defiance of tyranny, but there are mothers who buried their sons because of you. Wives widowed because of you. Children awoken in their sleep to be told their father was never coming home because of you." The Priest is not wrong in this, but I love Charles' reply "A shepherd? You are the sheep. And whatever I have to say to God, I'll tell him myself or not at all." You go, Charles. Die as you lived. It is easy for a man who's never made hard choices to judge one who has.
* They did a careful job of catching the complicated mood of the crowd and using Mr. Hopper's height to make the visual communication between Charles and Billy plausible.
* Words to start a revolution, "These men who brought me here today do not fear me. They brought me here today because they fear you. Because they know that my voice, a voice that refuses to be enslaved, once lived in you. And may yet still. They brought me here today to show you death and use it to frighten you into ignoring that voice. But know this. We are many. They are few. To fear death is a choice. And they can't hang us all." Billy gets it, Billy, who's intelligence is often underestimated, gets it and is using it to carry forward Charles' vision, flint's vision.
* Jack's "Another sacrifice for the cause" is for Mr. Scott, but the cut makes it sound like it's for Vane too.
* The first time through I could barely pay attention at this point. Second time I wasn't much better. I'm about the forth or fifth watch of this scene and I'm not really not concentrating enough to be clever. I'm going to stick a pin in this though, to think about later, "England may have removed Charles Vane from our number, but there is too much of him in me for England to fully will him away. In his absence, with everything that's at stake, I will be our Charles Vane."
* The Empire is bring Slave Catchers to the battle with the Pirates and the free slave community.
The Empire is bring Slave Catchers to the battle with the Pirates and the free slave community. This is what the Empire coming means. It means slave catchers and colonialism.
* Eleanor Guthrie giving good advice because she knows Flint and has been paying attention. "Jesus. He wants the force you bring to bear. He wants it. I know this enemy, Commodore. I know his mind. He took that cache with the express purpose of compelling us to commit your force to a battlefield of his choosing. Your force is factored into his thinking. He has planned for it. And I assure you, if you allow him to dictate the terms of battle, you court a disastrous outcome. If he expects your force, then we must send that which he does not expect. For we will have victory against this enemy. There simply is no alternative."
* Blackbeard is about to reenter the conflict. I am fascinated to see what happens next.
* In case it isn't clear, I don't hate Eleanor. There is a reason I keep talking about her exactly the way I talk about the other pirates. She is every bit as grey and messy and messed up and dangerous and pirates as the other pirates. Like the other pirates they have similarities that overlap in interesting combinations while remaining each uniquely themselves. The thing I fundamentally love about Black Sails is that with a few exceptions (I'm looking at you, Ned Low), everyone is the hero of their own story and a villain in a bunch of other people's. I love that people do horrible things for reasons that they can justify to themselves and others. I love that you can turn the story any number of ways and it makes sense from that PoV. I love that everyone is a Monster to somebody and sometimes to themselves. That's the beauty of it. I can love problematic characters without erasing the terrible things they have done. I get queasy when I think of Charles giving in to Jack over the slaves; it doesn't mean I wasn't horrified by him being gone. There are a million reasons to be angry at Eleanor right now, but it doesn't erase the existential threat/PoW thing I wrote in last weeks extra commentary. She's an anti-hero, just like Flint, just like Charles Vane. Given how badly people tend to respond to female anti-heroes compared to male ones, I anticipate this is about to get incredibly ugly in this neck of fandom. It's not going to be like that in this blog.
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* Zimbabwe has joined Ethiopia in disaster level drought People and animals are dying. Want to help? https://www.wfp.org/help
* "How to help Flint, Michigan:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/how-help-flint-michigan
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