Christiane Lhr: 'Lwenzahnkissen' (2009) Medium: Dandelion Seeds

Christiane Löhr: 'Löwenzahnkissen' (2009) medium: dandelion seeds

Junkee

'Black Widow' Finally Views Natasha Romanoff With A Female Gaze

'Black Widow' offers a striking humanised view of the character, that even critiques how Natasha Romanoff was viewed by men in the MCU.

I wrote about the ways Cate Shortland's Black Widow (2021) remedied the large scale male gaze Natasha was subjected to in the rest of the MCU, and made a film that was a fitting eulogy for Natasha Romanoff.

i’m losing my mind over Black Widow (2021) because to me, natasha romanoff is the character u imagine for yourself when you’re a kid like “this character is ME! but they’re cool! and can do cool things! and even though they’re sad like me, they are strong and interesting! they are everything i am and that i am not !!and everything that i would like to be, but can’t be!! and they can do flips!” so idk how to explain to people how absolutely deleightfully unhinged i feel that i finally got to see her be on screen what she’s been in my head for forever!!! like idk how to tell you besties this movie is so good that it makes me very personally angry it’s all we’ll get for her!!

what do you think about digital blackface as in white people frequently or even exclusively using reaction gifs showing black people that would fit the extreme/over the top behaviour stereotype and thus serving as hyperbole for white people to put on like a costume to extend their personalities online?

(There’s a short thing that I wrote on this already here)

Something I’ve been thinking about in the past few days and since that Teen Vogue essay brought the conversation to the fore, is that this conversation has been happening for a long time on the Internet in different forms. Perhaps we haven’t been able to succinctly name the problem as “digital blackface,” but even then I see the problem as deeper than a practice, which is perhaps why after all the critical energy black people have expended explaining the nuances of the problem to non-black readers (for years!), behaviors generally remain unchanged.

But it’s not only about behavior. My feeling is that, as useful as the term “digital blackface” is, it may also prevent us from getting deeper into the structuring antiblackness of which “digital blackface” is evidence. This requires a deeper meditation about what it would mean for non-black people to be creative on the Internet if they did not have access to the likenesses, mannerisms and vernaculars of black people. It’s as deep as the very definition of what it means to be funny on the Internet… white (and non-black) people need to ask themselves why blackness is at the heart of the production of comedic affects/vibes on the Internet. I would say we, but black people mostly already know what the deal is and have known since the era of vaudeville. While I’m not really interested in leaning on the Internet as a liberatory space or technology, it at least provides us/y’all ample space, possibility and instruments to explore this question in creative ways. To recycle an afro-pessimist phrase, that would risk the undoing the world (of Internet comedy); perhaps the fun would evaporate if New York, Cookie Lyon or Beyoncé were no longer at your finger tips. What would then be required would be to prioritize a different sort of logic that is not parasitic on blackness.

I don’t think that the recommendation that a non-black person think critically about their manipulation and circulation of blackness will be independently sufficient, but I see it as a necessary beginning. 

😭😭😭

@thefatmfanclub THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU.

OH MY GOD

THANK YOU

Hiya,

To your knowledge, has a transcript (either official or fan-transcribed) ever been released for the dialogue & spoken-word components of The Odyssey?

If so, do you know where I could obtain a copy?

The film is so affecting and the spoken word has always haunted me (as do F's songs), maybe even more so as it/I age(s).

(cannot understand how HBHBHB is 10 years next June! AAAH).

Thanks very kindly for your time,

/Kit

TRANSCRIPT

Scene 1: What Kind of Man

Man: I heard you talking in your sleep last night.

Florence: What were you doing?

Man: I was just um, I was just watching. You seemed, uh, you seemed sad.

Florence: Why didn’t you wake me up?

Man: Uh, I didn’t, I didn’t want to, uh, I didn’t want to intervene. It just seemed like you were, you were suffering somewhere else. I, I didn’t think that it was my place to, to drag you out of it, so um, I just let you be.

Florence: So you just let me suffer? So you think that people that suffer together would be more connected than people who were content?

Man: Yeah, I do.

Florence: I suppose if you’d been through something. Like if you’d been through something catastrophic. If you’d been through like, like a storm or an earthquake together or something like horrendous, you, it would bring you closer together. But what if they are creating the disaster within themselves? *Laugh*.

Man: It’s not, it’s not…yeah that’s what happens, that…

Cut-scene

Florence: And there’s this big storm that’s all around us and we’re in the middle of it so it’s calm. But I can feel it, like it’s everywhere. And things are OK now but I never know when it’s going to change.

——

Scene 2: St Jude

Stranger: why are you traveling alone, are you lost?

Cut-scene

Florence: We’re not changing, I’m not changing.

——

Scene 4: Queen of Peace

‘Body Of Water’ - part 1:

To give yourself over to another body

That’s all you want really

To be out of your own and consumed by another

To swim inside the skin of your lover

Not have to breathe

Not have to think

But you can’t live on love

And salt water’s no drink

Scene 5: Long and Lost

‘Body of Water’ - part 2:

We're dying of thirst so we feast on each other

The sea is still our violent mother

The blood round here pours down like water

Each wave a lamb lead to the slaughter

And like children that she just can’t teach

We break, and break, and break

And break ourselves upon the beach

——

Scene 6: Mother

Man: When are you leaving here?

Florence: I don’t know, maybe I’ll stay.

Man: This is just a place you know, a visit. Pass through.

Florence: Yeah I don’t know, I thought…I guess I think this is what I wanted um…and sometimes I still think that I should stay.

Man: Nobody stays here. And you can leave. You will leave here.

——

Scene 7: Delilah

Man: you think you have lost your faith but you have not. You have only misplaced your faith. And you can find it where it lies now deep in your soul. And the way to do that is through the simple process of love. Love yourself. You can’t love and forgive other people if you don’t first of all love and forgive yourself. You have to realise that people are fallible beings. They make mistakes. They have to be excused from these mistakes, and allowed to continue in their quest for a better life and for goodness. So love yourself and then love other people. Please forgive yourself. Go on a journey of finding love and forgiveness…