Critical Analysis - Tumblr Posts
(!Warning!- Slight hints at domestic abuse. Nothing that isn't in canon)
(Do not read if you do not want to see a critical analysis of Jmart. Some people don't want to see their comfort ship criticised and I respect that.)
Me on my first listen of magnus (aged 15): Omg omg there are gay people this is amazing. Wahoo Jmart!
Me on my second listen of magnus: Wow Martin is lowkey a bit of a secret gaslight gatekeep girloss. ICONIC. He and Jon are murder bfs :D
Me on my third listen of magnus: Hah. Martin really is kind of a bitch sometimes.
Me on my forth listen of magnus: God Martin can be so condescending wtf. I dont really ship Jmart anymore. And did he just hit Jon wtf ?!?!
Me after my 5th listen to now (Aged 18): Yikes. Martin has so many red flags oh god.
(Disclaimer: I do think these characters and their relationship are still well written and I do not dislike anyone for shipping them. However, I do think the fanon interpretation of their relationship removes how flawed Martin actually is and people don't hold him accountable nearly enough)
(Additionally this is all not to say that Jon is exempt from poor behaviour toward Martin. The way he treats Martin in s1 was dickish to say the least. However, unlike Martin this behaviour isn't perpetuated throughout the entirety of the podcast/ relationship, with Jon quickly coming to respect Martin at a similar level to himself.)
Martin Blackwood is not a kind person.
He never holds himself accountable for anything or so few times I literally don't remember them. In MAG 194- Parting, it is Jon that makes the decision to apologise to Martin. Additionally after Martin hits Jon earlier on he is never seen apologising for it, even after Jon's honestly heartbreaking line of "Thank you for not hitting me this time".
Martin also tends to get pissy at Jon for something he cannot help. Jon cannot help 'giving statements' in season 5 and yet everytime he does, Martin acts like it's some sort of attack on him. He is perfectly allowed to have the boundary of 'Don't do that around me'. However in instances where Jon accidentally does it around Martin, Martin responds with aggression, either lashing out and shouting at Jon or as previously mentioned, hitting him. These can be explained as maybe reasonable responses to high stress situations however Martin never apologises for them as discussed previously.
This also comes in the form of Martin antagonising Jon's well meaning suggestions. In S4, during the 'Gauge your eyes out' scene, Martin immediately shoots back, making it about him rather than the desperate attempts at salvation from a man who's been broken down to all hell.
There's a clear bitterness from Martin throughout. He clearly feels inferior to Jon and is trying to gain as much control over the situation as he can which often means doing all he can to control Jon.
And Martin is right at the end of S5 when he says it took 4 years of the shit they've been through to be compatible. However, what I think is more accurate is that it took 4 years of Jon being broken down and into a state of perpetual emotional vulnerability and loss of autonomy for him to be so alone that he reached out to Martin. And vice versa, Martin (being affected by the lonely and always having had an attraction to Jon) reaches out in return later in s5. Aside from that, they've not got much in common and although I do think that they at least get along as friends and colleagues, I can't really see them consistently bonding outside of the world of the fears.
Now I'd like to clarify that this isn't all to say that the way Martin acts isn't understandable, it is. Having to care for his mother for years has lead to him mothering Jon at times as well as his constant need to prioritise himself and defend himself in response to her abuse. He probably also has some left over resentment (understandably) from the way Jon used to treat him in s1. Along with a bunch of other stuff that explains his behaviour. But that doesn't mean that the way he acts sometimes isn't harmful.
Their relationship is more nuanced than I'm able to fit into a tumblr post. I might write an essay about it at some point. If there is anything i didn't mention it's either because it's been a while and I forgot, or I did not have space to fit it!
Anyways, what do you guys think about all this? TMA is one of those shows I've been a bit apprehensive to critically analyse due to the fandom but I found that Jmart is a lot more interesting than I initially thought.
(SUMMARY: Jmart is not as healthy of a relationship as the Fanon tends to show it. Martin has a lot of red flags and the two aren't all that compatible aside from their trauma)
"The best thing we can do with power is give it away" - On the leftist critique of superhero narratives as authoritarian power fantasies:
The ongoing "Jason Todd is a cop" debate has reminded me of a brilliant brief image essay by Joey deVilla. [EDIT: I SCREWED UP! This was created in 2019 by the guy who runs the Midnighter-Core page on Facebook, and Joey just reposted it!]
So here it is, images first and the full essay text below:
"A common leftist critique of superhero comics is that they are inherently anti-collectivist, being about small groups of individuals who hold all the power, and the wisdom to wield that power. I don’t disagree with this reading. I don’t think it’s inaccurate. Superheroes are their own ruling class, the concept of the übermensch writ large. But it’s a sterile reading. It examines superhero comics as a cold text, and ignores something that I believe is fundamental, especially to superhero storytelling: the way people engage with text. Not what it says, but how it is read. The average comic reader doesn’t fantasize about being a civilian in a world of superheroes, they fantasize about being a superhero. One could charitably chalk this up to a lust for power, except for one fact… The fantasy is almost always the act of helping people. Helping the vulnerable, with no reward promised in return. Being a century into the genre, we’ve seen countless subversions and deconstructions of the story. But at its core, the superhero myth is about using the gifts you’ve been given to enrich the people around you, never asking for payment, never advancing an ulterior motive. We should (and do) spend time nitpicking these fantasies, examining their unintended consequences, their hypocrisies. But it’s worth acknowledging that the most eduring childhood fantasy of the last hundred years hasn’t been to become rich. Superheroes come from every class (don’t let the MCU fool you). The most enduring fantasy is to become powerful enough to take the weak under your own wing. To give, without needing to take. So yes, the superhero myth, as a text, isn’t collectivist. But that’s not why we keep coming back to it. That’s not why children read it. We keep coming back to it to learn one simple lesson… The best thing we can do with power IS GIVE IT AWAY." - Joey deVilla, 2021 https://www.joeydevilla.com/2021/07/04/happy-independence-day-superhero-style/
- Midnighter-Core, 2019
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0bU6TrKdX6QgMLnUFk64jResHMVwiSyENASvJk7efasgZ94G4c81XJCVgGcLFPgPsl&id=594855544368212&mibextid=Nif5oz
not to be edgy but i unironically enjoy some things
Eli of Kittim — The Second Coming of Jesus: A Fallacy The phrase, "second coming," is a misnomer. According to the Bible,...
Textual Criticism: The Reliability of the New Testament
By Goodreads Author Eli Kittim
One has to be au courant with lower criticism to understand the significance and reliability of the New Testament. If we look at the number of extant NT manuscripts together with the relatively short period of time within which they were written (i.e, the time between the purported events and the written documents), no other book from Antiquity even comes close. First, we have over 5,800 manuscripts just in Greek (not counting those in other languages), more than any other book in history. Second, the texts were written within approximately two decades after the purported events. Other books have a much wider time-gap between the historical events and their initial documentations, as most were written hundreds of years later. Third, the New Testament has also been the most scrutinized book in all of literature. Its textual integrity has been relentlessly challenged down through the centuries. To date, no other book in history has been criticized and attacked as much as the New Testament. And yet its textual reliability has stood the test of time. Critical scholars still find it reliable! In fact, most of the variants are due to simple spelling errors, which do not significantly affect the meaning of the text. So, the textual reliability of the New Testament is well known among scholars. It’s the best attested book from the ancient world, as well as the bestseller of all time! And if you don’t think that it’s reliable, then you have no grounds to believe in Caesar, Homer, or Alexander the Great, whose biography, by the way, was written 400 years later! That’s how reliable the New Testament really is! In his blog, Bart Ehrman, the world-renowned textual scholar, writes:
“He [Bruce Metzger, Bart’s mentor] thought
that at the end of the day, we can be
reasonably confident of something like 99%
[reliability] of the text of the New
Testament. Textual scholars, in his
judgment, argue about that other 1%. As it
turns out, I don’t disagree with most of
that.”
Reblogging with words from the brilliant Chaédria LaBouvier — from her Instagram posts: 1, 2 — for additional context:
“It cannot be unseen that a museum, which posits its very existence is to preserve objects and this calling is so sacred you can’t know what it is that they do and how they do it, allowed a woman to wear the dress so singular the only other person to wear had to be sewn into it.”
1 /
“[...] this is a great time to discuss inequality, pro-choice, the oligarchy, ethics, museums, the Supreme Court, scholars and the fact that we are in hell. [...] I should preface this by saying many of you know me as a Basquiat scholar but! I actually attended film school and in my extra grad year, studied w/Deborah Landis, a legendary costume designer.
Marilyn Monroe’s dress that she wore in 1962 was sketched by a young Bob Mackie and created by Jean-Louis, a fashion and costume designer whose influence of/in Golden Era Hollywood rivals Adrian and Edith Head (my personal favorite). Its made of soufflé silk, a fabric created by the defunct silk weaving and textile company, Bianchini-Fériér, whose archives are now w/ The Design Library in upstate NY. It is impossible to recreate it; it is banned due to its incredibly high flammability. It also created a nude look that was unrivaled before or after, essential during a time when censor laws were stringent and enforced. Before it was banned (the 80s I believe?), Bob Mackie famously used it to create nude looks for Cher. I’ve included a photo of her &Mackie at the Met Gala, ‘74. Monroe was a Dietrich fan and also a heavy student of film history (she loved silent actors) and costume design. I believe she was inspired by this gown (slide 6) worn by Dietrich also designed by Jean-Louis. Monroe was doing what the best fashion does — dialogue w/history while elevating it. Monroe’s dress should’ve never left Ripley’s Believe It or Not. The dress was so custom for Monroe — she was sewn into the dress, totally nude so it would be made only for her, and Jean-Louis hand dyed the silk to match her skin— that there’s no way Kardashian’s body, crash diet starved as it was, would not stress the 60 yr old dress, weight, seams, fabric or one of the 6,000 rhinestones sewn into it.
We are in hell. Not b/c a billionaire on paper wanted to wear Monroe’s dress, but b/c all of the safeguards are failing. A Met gala while the SC quietly tried to gut abortion rights is so apropos, Seneca himself could not write it.”
2 /
“You’re probably like, “what does a dress have to do with abortion rights?” I mean that’s fair. But I would venture that Kardashian’s request — and the fact it was meant and met w/seriousness— is an example of the fact we have no recourse for how to tell people with everything, no. Some things are simply not for sale. And yet. It cannot be unseen that a museum, which posits its very existence is to preserve objects and this calling is so sacred you can’t know what it is that they do and how they do it, allowed a woman to wear the dress so singular the only other person to wear had to be sewn into it. Let us not forget the pole heels which surely crushed a few rhinestones too. A dress is a red flag. And is because we have gutted and devalued what scholars, activists and writers and artists do — who are almost always, when doing their job correctly, the first line of defense in a healthy and functioning society. We live in a society where women are not full citizens, Black people are not full citizens — and we refuse to codify that into law. Yet, corporations, as the Supreme Court declared, are people. The Met Gala is, in this decline and end of empire, a true reflection of the incuriosity which governs our imaginations, dullness which brightness the diamonds, and the obsession w/money when none of it is actually real. None of it. Historians have been crying foul at Kardashian wearing the dress, as they should. But I hope the irony is not lost on my colleagues — it *would* be a museum failing in this ethical responsibility to safeguard a garment which is irreplaceable the formation and ideation of (White)American ideals and ideas of its on sexuality, sensuality and vitality. It should be available to future generations. And how often have museums disregarded their responsibility to the archive and the public — it’s future— for a cheque? And at what point is the point of no return? We will soon find out. I am writing those questions and hopefully answers, but I have to say, this episode of End of Empire could not have been better staged and set designed than if we had been sewn into ourselves. #metgala #metgala2022 #marilynmonroe Citation: @thelingerieaddict
Conservators ‘speechless’ that Kim Kardashian wore Marilyn Monroe’s dress to Met Gala
[Image: Evan Agostini / Associated Press]
Los Angeles Times — 3 May 2022 | Byline: Nardine Saad, Deborah Vankin
“The Met Gala is now part of the garment’s history — and it didn’t need to be.”
Keep reading
one of the best things david jenkins does with OFMD is that when he fucks with the historicity of 18th century pirate-adventure genre, the effect is not just comedic. it’s not just getting a kick out of leather gang + clipper ships + dramatic capture scene set to fleetwood mac’s the chain + british royalists in their stupid wigs. it’s that the obscuring of that timeline and ours allows u to perceive the setting of imperialism that the characters are playing in as both a past relic and present reality. is this more intentional than just an aesthetic choice? feels like it. why not tbh? the Pirates Dicking Around genre has always been about 1700s western european empire. and in OFMD we get an eerie insistence that there is actually no post-colonial era. there never was. there’s just the iterations of that violent legacy: from the trans-atlantic slave route, the pillaging of asia-pacific, etc. to the current forms of global imperial militarism and armed police states that took its place. on paper the show is based on a true story. in tone it’s present-haunted. and the central motley crew here works bc they’re all dynamic, hilarious, flirty, grimy, etc. but they also work bc they’re all visually, clearly a little united nations survey of colonized peoples whose shit was fucked up by 18th century imperialists. and it isn’t even subtext?? the whole show is about piracy as refuge. yea sure, from everyone’s dicey personal life dramas, sour romantic entanglements, the general banalities of life etc. but also, piracy as escape from the larger ills of societal outcasting and poverty as a result of …. . british/spanish/french/etc colonialism. consider: blackbeard’s voice in the show is just taika’s actual māori accent. and there’s a scene where you find out the kraken isn’t real, that blackbeard is monster and man. and behind his infamy is just some guy who’s traumatized, forlorn as all fuck, with insane daddy issues, etc. but whose tender humanity is brought into question against his own monstrousness. you see the whites of his eyes peering out of a soot smeared face, a mirror of the savage native caricature that all 18th century western europeans held of their colonized pacific islander subjects. blackbeard’s final act is a regression into that mythic dehumanization but rly it’s just him at his most heartbroken and lonely. and yea, this is mainly the angsty climax part of a multi-act love story. but also perhaps a purposeful genre-aware moment among many other similar moments within a show whose historical/present context is very explicit. and is meant to define the parameters of the world these characters are struggling in. ultimately OFMD makes u feel like. the absurd horror and wretchedness of colonialism’s totaling stain on history is in fact the most surreal wasteland valley-of-death setting for a group of outcasts to go and find refuge in love, gay sex, hooligan shit, and jokes. in the 1700s pirate hostile open seas, among their own fellow-othered. u know
"The best thing we can do with power is give it away" - On the leftist critique of superhero narratives as authoritarian power fantasies:
The ongoing "Jason Todd is a cop" debate has reminded me of a brilliant brief image essay by Joey deVilla. [EDIT: I SCREWED UP! This was created in 2019 by the guy who runs the Midnighter-Core page on Facebook, and Joey just reposted it!]
So here it is, images first and the full essay text below:
"A common leftist critique of superhero comics is that they are inherently anti-collectivist, being about small groups of individuals who hold all the power, and the wisdom to wield that power. I don’t disagree with this reading. I don’t think it’s inaccurate. Superheroes are their own ruling class, the concept of the übermensch writ large. But it’s a sterile reading. It examines superhero comics as a cold text, and ignores something that I believe is fundamental, especially to superhero storytelling: the way people engage with text. Not what it says, but how it is read. The average comic reader doesn’t fantasize about being a civilian in a world of superheroes, they fantasize about being a superhero. One could charitably chalk this up to a lust for power, except for one fact… The fantasy is almost always the act of helping people. Helping the vulnerable, with no reward promised in return. Being a century into the genre, we’ve seen countless subversions and deconstructions of the story. But at its core, the superhero myth is about using the gifts you’ve been given to enrich the people around you, never asking for payment, never advancing an ulterior motive. We should (and do) spend time nitpicking these fantasies, examining their unintended consequences, their hypocrisies. But it’s worth acknowledging that the most eduring childhood fantasy of the last hundred years hasn’t been to become rich. Superheroes come from every class (don’t let the MCU fool you). The most enduring fantasy is to become powerful enough to take the weak under your own wing. To give, without needing to take. So yes, the superhero myth, as a text, isn’t collectivist. But that’s not why we keep coming back to it. That’s not why children read it. We keep coming back to it to learn one simple lesson… The best thing we can do with power IS GIVE IT AWAY." - Joey deVilla, 2021 https://www.joeydevilla.com/2021/07/04/happy-independence-day-superhero-style/
- Midnighter-Core, 2019
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0bU6TrKdX6QgMLnUFk64jResHMVwiSyENASvJk7efasgZ94G4c81XJCVgGcLFPgPsl&id=594855544368212&mibextid=Nif5oz