The Amber Burning

I don’t know why I’m writing this, anyone who reads this is going to think I’m insane. Maybe I am. Damn it. So I’m just going to write it down. Because if I don’t I’m pretty sure it’s going to violently burst out my head. I need this out my brain.

So, first, I guess I should say writing isn’t my strong suit. I kind of hate it actually. How full of yourself do you have to be to just sit and write? It’s all vile and conceited really, when you get down to it. I like reading though. And I like reading about wizards. Everyone has an opinion on wizards. I don’t care. I like wizards.

I’ve been trying to die since I was 13. But I’ve always been too afraid. And I always found that kind of funny. I don’t want to live, I don’t want to die, I’m caught in some purgatory between them, never really trying too hard at doing either. Anyway, between living and dying, there are a few strange quirks you pick up along the way. When I was 15, long after I had broken a light trying to hang myself with my school tie but not so long after I’d tried cutting myself and got scared from all the blood, I started walking to the train station. One day I was going to throw myself on those tracks. Not in front of a passenger train, but one of those massive freight trains that speed right through the station and look like they couldn’t stop even if they wanted to. But, of course, that’s just a bit too terrifying. A few steps off the platform and I’m gone. I don’t know why being nothing scares me but whatever little, worthless, shit I count for always kept my feet on the station and my head from being turned into bloody pulp.

Still, I started to go to the train station. Every day, eventually. And I’d just stand there, watching the trains rush by. After a few weeks, I started sitting instead. Making judgy comments to myself about the commuters. And then some weeks after that, I started bringing my books. It was Autumn, in the afternoon, and I was sat reading. I’d not looked up at the trains in some time, I was somewhere far, far away from them. But, when I wasn’t looking, a train had pulled in. Off its passengers came, though I saw none of them except for one old man. He sat next to me and I realised something very strange. I’m 19 now. This man must have been in his 70s. Possibly older. But there was a strange kinship between us. Hell, he looked like me. But, with the twisted distortions of time, I realised it was yet another one of the universe’s mockeries. Every facet of my face that I hated, each one that I had pored over with disgust in the mirror, was amplified here tenfold on the face of a haggard, decrepit old man. He was me, if my chin had disappeared far into my neck, if my hair was thin and straggly, grey instead of black, and if my nose had never stopped growing.

We were sat together for a while, I soon returned to the land of wizards (though it had now lost some of its escapist appeal); he just sat. We said nothing to each other. That was until the old man stood up suddenly and, glancing at my book, said, “Do you want to know how it ends?”

I met his eye, looked at him directly and said, “No.”

“Yeah, I never found out either.”

And then he just walked off. But I noticed the train he’d got off was still here. And the carriage door was still open. And I really can’t tell you what was going through my mind in that moment because, for some reason, I jumped on.

As soon as I was aboard, the doors closed. It was like I jumped in at the last second, but I got the feeling that if I hadn’t got on board it would have waited longer. The carriage was mostly empty, though I could spot some tops of heads. I found a nice window seat, on the left hand side, and the train started moving. I really had no idea where to. There were no trainline infographics and no driver announcing our next stop. Realising I’d left my book behind, I started to fiddle with the chair in front of me. Then, I fiddled with my hands. I soon realised that I had nothing to do but stare outside the window as the train left the station. It wasn’t until after about an hour, when we had long since abandoned the concrete signs of human living, that there was the first sign that this wasn’t just a ghost train. A message came up on the passenger information display. It simply read: “APPROACHING: THE AMBER BURNING”.  

It was the strangest thing. The train never stopped, it never pulled into any station, but the world outside my window seemed to transform. Over a dense forest, the sun came to the horizon; its orange rays melting the leaves on the trees, mixing their colours together like a paintbrush swiping through a freshly painted vista. I took a moment to take in the vision. And then I started crying. Emotion washed over me. It was the same sunset I’d seen a thousand times before, but, for some reason, right then, it was the single most beautiful sight of my life. It was everything I needed, the answer to every unanswerable question. So I cried and I didn’t try and stop it. I didn’t wipe the tears away and I didn’t hold them back. I can’t be certain, but I think everyone else in the carriage was crying too.

A tone came through the train intercom, jaunting the carriage back to reality. The world was normal again and we'd left that enchanted rift. But the air we were breathing was different. We'd taken some of the magic from that place away with us. We sat, silently basking in the experience we'd shared, for the rest of the journey.

The train started to slow down and, wherever we were, I knew it was my stop.

I stood between the carriages, awaiting whatever lay on the other side. I was caught again, not between life and death, but between trepidation and excitement. The fear I felt of what I could meet at my destination was matched only by my desire to see it. The train started to slow down and I prepared myself. The button on the door lit up. I pressed it. The doors opened and I saw… that it was the same platform where I’d gotten on? The book I’d left behind was in the same position, on the same page, on the bench where I was sat. The sun hadn't even set yet. I can’t explain it. But, when I stepped onto the platform, I felt an ache between my shoulders. It was like the weight had come back onto them and was pushing down twice as hard. I felt dejected and had half a mind to walk out in front of the tracks before the train left again. Until I heard an announcement come from inside the train:

“See you tomorrow, Ben.”

And my shoulders loosened a little bit.

Simpsonian Status Quo in "The Mysterious Voyage of Homer"

The status quo, and a story's return to it, is often lambasted as a curse. In serial storytelling, few things seem to aggravate a media literate audience than the knowledge that, after this episode or this comic book, the characters and story will reset to where they were before the story's most recent conflict. It's limited whole genres, like the superheroes who everyone knows will inevitably reset to their most popular version, blockbuster film franchises like Star Wars which couldn't move away from a status quo for fear of impacting merchandise sales and, most notably, it has limited television and the sitcom. The downfall of The Simpsons is often attributed to the second episode of season nine, "The Principal and the Pauper", citing that both its deviation from and return to status quo pushed the core fanbase too far. Yet, it is in the realm of television where we can also find the great storytelling potential of the status quo. Not merely a mechanism for ensuring a reliable, popular structure for an audience, the status quo can be used as an effective tool to further immerse audiences into a character's perspective.

And The Simpsons' greatest success in this field came only eight months before its presupposed downfall.

If someone was to bring up the ninth episode of The Simpsons' eighth season, "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)", you would expect the conversation to diverge into discussions of its psychedelic, hallucination sequence. With a Johnny Cash guest appearance (as a talking-coyote-cum-spirit-guide), it's certainly the headline attraction of the episode and the most memorable feature on initial viewing. Yet, the imagery is mostly either tame or derivative. Where I find the true appeal of the episode is in the emotionally resonant core that reassesses the Homer/Marge coupling and the success in this renegotiation relates directly to how the story deals with status quo.

The episode's story concerns Homer's disillusionment with Marge after a "Guatemalan Insanity Pepper" puts him face-to-face with the idea that his wife may not necessarily be his soulmate (expressed via space coyote). So Homer's search for a true soulmate is the story's emotional centre where, specifically, he searches for one who has a "profound mystical understanding" of his Real self. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the conceptual Mirror Stage refers to the first time our infant selves see ourselves in the mirror and first understand ourselves as a whole individual. From there, we are caught perpetually distressed by the dissonance between the Imaginary self we outwardly portray and our unintelligible Real self. This is the conflict facing Homer, when he realises that Marge actually has no "profound mystical understanding" of him. If Marge doesn't understand him, then no one can and suddenly Homer is faced with bitter reality- that we are all fundamentally alone.

The early tensions of the episode are drawn from the status quo itself; Homer's reliance on beer is established as having previously embarrassed Marge and any semi-regular watcher of the show can attest to this. A flashback is included, but is wholly unnecessary; Homer the drunk is well known to us. There is no new rift put between them, only the exacerbation of this established one. When Marge allows Homer to go to the fateful Chilli Cook-Off, it is under the condition of him promising not to drink any beer. He sees this through, though not without challenge, to find Marge angry with him regardless. Unfortunately for him, misunderstanding's abound and Marge believed his Insanity Pepper trip to have been the result of drinking. To Marge, Homer has broken his promise. The audience is privy to this extra layer of misunderstanding, so when Marge tells her children why Homer isn't leaving the cook-off with the rest of the family, "Your father decided he'd prefer to come home in a taxi... Or a police car.", it particularly grates. 

Post-pepper Homer returns home and, now believing that he can't find it in Marge (his argument with her and their difference in record collections cement his doubts), begins his search for a soulmate elsewhere. This categorically fails. For a moment, his saviour seems to lie in the lonely lighthouse keeper "EARL". EARL, of course, turns out to be the Electronic Automatic Robotic Lighthouse, a machine no more capable of "profound mystical understanding" than any human being. So Homer is caught in an untenable, but ultimately relatable situation, finally exposed to the true loneliness of our individual selves and, for a moment, seems to understand that he truly cannot be known by anyone. Marge turns up, just in time, to prove herself as the soulmate after all and to assuage Homer's (and our own) fears.

Johnny Cash's most significant mark on popular culture: Homer's Space Coyote.

It's an enchanting moment, as Marge shows that she does in fact "know" Homer, by listing off the "important" things she knows about him. But, what, then, constitutes the "important" things? Marge refers to her knowledge of Homer's opinion on public transport, his preference to walking downhill and his love of blinking lights. More so than a profound knowledge of Homer's real self, Marge professes an understanding of his idiosyncrasies. Can we not say that the "important" things Marge remembers about Homer in the story's finale are really no more (or less) valuable than the "unimportant" ones Homer encounters earlier on? The distinction is drawn between Homer's taste in records and his love for blinking lights, but I'd say there's little functionary difference between them.

One of the truly haunting moments of Homer's pepper-induced hallucination, a reinforcement of the rift Homer is now feeling between himself and his supposed "soulmate". 

So, after an episode's worth of conflict and separation, Homer and Marge reunite. We return to the same Simpson family status quo at the end of "The Mysterious Voyage of Homer" as we do in "The Principal and the Pauper", but instead of aggravating the audience, this time the return moves us. We are grateful to return to the status quo. The episode's ending has been lambasted for its melodrama (and it's not wholly innocent from this), but it would be wrong to say that the emotion we feel at the episode's climax is manufactured or artificial. It's moving to watch Homer realise that Marge has some deep, transcendental knowledge of his true self, and it's moving because it is the fantasy which we all desire: the fantasy that someone can and will finally know us. More than that, it's an ode to the lives we already lead; the status quo of our own lives. Homer finds sanctity, clarity and fulfilment within the same family model that he was disillusioned with. Perhaps we are meant to do the same.

On one level then, Homer's return to the status quo is so easy to root for because of our own anxieties around our unknowable selves. We want to see Homer find his soulmate because it promises us that we also are capable of meeting someone with a "profound mystical understanding" of our Real selves. But, on another level, we can say that the resolution is so affecting because it not only reveals that the little, "skin-deep" differences are of no impediment to a successful relationship, but our lacking of the ability to understand each other is of no impediment either. And that, I believe, is the lesson to be taken from realising the loneliness of our individual selves. I cannot truly understand my Real self and, therefore, cannot expect any other individual to see through the Imaginary self I project and into my own reality.

Throughout this story, we are faced with our knowledge that Homer must return to Marge. The structure must be obeyed, the status quo must be restored. So the conflict of the story is directly concerned with this inevitable return to status quo and the tensions found within that. Why should Homer abet the return to his status quo if his world view, not only that Marge isn't his soulmate but that his true self is totally unknowable, has been flipped on its head? The inevitable return to status quo is on the minds of both audience and character and I think it is telling that an episode so concerned with status quo is also an episode concerned with married life.

It is worth noting that this usage of the status quo as an exploration of married life is not unique to this episode, it is seen in other lauded The Simpsons' stories, such as "The Last Temptation of Homer" (S5E09) and "Secrets of a Successful Marriage" (S5E22), but none quite reach the heights of Mysterious Voyage. That they don't tackle the fundamental rift between our selves and the unknowable nature of others is my suggestion as to why.

Perhaps we can argue that all further relationship problems Marge and Homer have in the series stems from the fact that they have never reconciled with this. They are perhaps doomed to an eternal cycle of believing and disavowing in their own profound, transcendental romance, until such a point where they break that cycle and declare that they can never be known in the way they desire (and change their behaviour because of it). But this matters little to how this particular episode's ending is so successful. We believe in the fantasy. We believe Marge can know Homer. Because we believe this, we can return to the status quo: a status quo treated with optimism and reverence. Here the status quo is left with no scratch or change, instead explored and addressed. Where status quo often creeps up like a phantom in a stories final moments to rob it of agency, "The Mysterious Voyage of Homer" allows the status quo its own narrative role and, in doing so, crafts a stronger episode.


That all being said, the episode does end with the Short-Shorts Song, so maybe I'm just overthinking it a bit.

Fantasy Story A

Imagine a castle. Tall, imposing and altogether fairytale, with colourful flags adorning each tower spire. It is unfortunate that we have visited this place on a thunderously miserable night. Rain strikes against an ornate window and behind it, you should imagine a King. Only a very sad King. With no beard, or round belly, or golden hair, but with dark, drab clothes and hair the colour of coal. He is resigned to his quarters, pointed against the window and brooding. He has this talent for brooding. A talent one can only acquire from years and years of practice. He takes  a glance to his side and lays his eyes on a small silver headpiece. It almost seems wrong to call it a crown. Crowns are golder, pointier, embellished with jewels and sometimes have a weird cushion bottom that I’m sure no one likes. Yet, crown it was and the burden of it was weighing heavy on our King’s mind. The thought of wearing it again was set to tear him apart, to cause him untold anguish and anxiety. He fell asleep in his chair soon after, but I’m sure it was a torturous, angst-ridden sleep.

You’ll be pleased to know the following morning was considerably more pleasant. The sun shone brightly through the King’s brooding window and woke him from solemn slumber. He dutifully put on that hated crown and moved himself towards the great hall. Today’s Kingly obligation was one of the most arduous. He had to attend his own party.

Walking past the portraits of his ancestors, each one of them a perfectly posed frame of the monarch and their partner, the King lamented the myth that had soured his childhood with false hopes and dreams. “An Unprecedented Era of Peace and Prosperity”. The family mantra would echo through his mind whenever he needed it least. According to the story, were his marriage to yield in a pure, unadulterated true love his kingdom would not only be peaceful and prosperous, but it would no longer be his kingdom. The promise is that on achieving true love, the monarchy would simply just fade away.

Load of bollocks obviously, but the King had tried absconding from a courtship party once and his mother tried to throw herself out the tallest tower. That’s the funny thing about family traditions. It doesn’t ever seem to matter how truthful or how useful they are. You just kind of get caught up with them, whether you want to or not. When the King at last entered the great hall, he did so with a sombre melodrama, and was met with the applause of local nobility. He was getting a reputation for eccentricity, but nobody really minds so long as you provide enough booze. Pleasantries and grand entrances complete, the only thing left was for the King to immerse himself in the party.

Now I’d like you to imagine again. If you find I’m asking for too much of your imagination, perhaps fantasy stories aren’t for you. I’m sure there’s some fascinating Wikipedia entries you could be reading or maybe you can watch one of those How It’s Made videos. I’d like you to imagine a woman. An elegant, noblewoman. A beautiful noblewoman, with long, shimmering blonde hair. Not just a beautiful noblewoman, but the most beautiful noblewoman you could possibly imagine. This woman, this awe-inspiring woman, was what stood before our King. He must have been so stunned by her beauty that he could not think straight, or form a sentence, because he walked directly past this woman. And then past the next inconceivably beautiful woman. And past the next. The hall was soon filled with a crowd of disappointed beautiful women.

Now I don’t want you thinking of our King as a shallow man. Or, at least, not shallow in the usual terms. It wasn’t the faces or the bodies of the women that repelled him, but their total ubiquity. Each one of them was otherworldly beautiful, each one of them was dressed in the finest gowns and each one of them curtsied in precisely the same manner. This was the one-hundred-and-fifty-seventh such party that he had attended since his coronation. The King had long abandoned any pretense of civility. He’d politely greet the women, of course, but no longer was he interested in hearing their carefully rehearsed marriage pitches. They were all the same anyway.

Our King was coming to the end of this round of prospective wives now. He’d almost stopped to talk to one redheaded woman, until he noticed that she was wearing a brooch shaped like a leaf and so, really, what was the point. He was ready to decrown himself and spend another evening lamenting his condition. It was then that something most peculiar happened. Just beyond his line-of-sight, there was a struggle within the crowd. Guards seemed to be in a fuss and the nearby noblewoman seemed mightily distressed. As the King marched over, the crowds split. The guards took to their knees and left in the centre of the commotion was a woman. Her skin was darker than her pale sisters. There was a tear down the skirt of her dress and her corset was on backwards. She quickly moved a stray strand of her hair off her face and met the King’s eyes. Time slowed. The King considered what to say. But decided against saying anything at all. He excused himself and walked back to his private wing of the castle.

In three weeks time, the two were married. For the kingdom it was Winter, but for them it was a great Summer. They talked unendingly about the most significant nothings, taking walks across the castle grounds and treading the first footprints in freshly fallen snow. The King loved her intelligence, they would often spend hours in the library mixing and matching characters from all sorts of books to create their own stories. She seemed to have no worry or responsibility and seemed to be making the most of every monarchical fancy or pleasure. She was kind to servants, even friendly with many of them, and had even convinced the King to take cooking classes with her under the castle’s head chef. Neither of them were very good, but their subjects naturally ate everything they were served and declared it the result of culinary genius. There could be no other response. The King wasn’t into decapitations, but he’d certainly give them a sinister stare. The two had a romance most of us only get to dream about (or read about in fantasy stories). They had an emotional connection, an intellectual intimacy. They had a unique bond. They had really great sex.

In Spring, the Kingly duties arose again. Grateful as he was to have completed his task of finding a wife, she had done little to absolve him of the boring matters of tax, diplomacy and whingy landlords. It was on a day where the King had taken Court that his wife took the time to meet his family. They were all dead, but one shouldn’t underestimate the power of oversized portraits and loneliness. She had a great deal of riveting conversations with her great-great-great-in-laws and promised to each of the painted couples that she would be the best wife she could be.

A servant, bringing along a replenishing fruit basket so the King’s wife could enjoy conversing with the long-dead as long as she pleased, noted that she seemed enamored with the paintings. The King’s wife said that it was because she was, she felt an odd kind of kinship with them. It was almost like they really were family, though she had never met them before tonight. She mentioned that she hadn’t known that her wedding ring had been passed on through so many generations.

The servant was shocked to hear this. They’d assumed, quite reasonably, that the King’s wife, of all people, would know the dynastic myth. But she didn’t. She hadn’t heard of it at all. It was much later that night, when she saw her husband again after his duties were completed, that she made her new discovery known. Unable to even look into her husband’s eyes, she soon burst into tears. His tiredness slipped away immediately. He asked what was wrong and pleaded to know what he could do to help.

So, she told him. About how on the day they met the guards were trying to throw her out the castle. That she had snuck in amongst the crowds. That she had stolen the dress she had worn. That, really, that wasn’t the first day they met. That really they first met years ago, when her company was passing through the kingdom. She had noticed his kindness, and his sadness, and all those gaudish rings. She had decided to stay in the hope of seeing the sad King once more. It all came out in a sputtering pace and the deeper she went into the story, the more lies that she uncovered, the more tears streamed down her face. She was okay with dooming a man. She thought that the worst that could happen is that she’d make a disappointing wife, and she was content enough with that, so long as she had the comforts of high society and one or two weeks of married bliss. She struggled a little more with dooming an entire people. She feared that her unwashed, innoble status removed any hope of the kingdom knowing that era of unprecedented peace and prosperity.

Her husband inhaled deeply as he weighed the news. Then, he responded:

“Back in the intercontinental wars, the King and Queen would spend all their days locked away in their chambers. Some historians figure they were trying to sex the war away.”

His wife gave a sad smile in response. The kind you feel obliged to give when someone makes a joke, but you’re not in the mood to laugh.

“Later, when the coffers ran dry and the crown found itself in insurmountable debt, the marriage at its head apparently couldn’t have been stronger. They were childhood rivals turned passionate lovers and their storybook romance just wasn’t good enough for the family myth.”

“Hell, that’s just the good ones. Even at the turn of this century, the throne has seen its perfect marriages grow sterile and stale. One Queen soon found that she was interested in far younger men than my grandfather. And the King and Queen before me? Well, if there’s was a love so gallant and true then perhaps my mother wouldn’t be living so vicariously through me.”

“The point is they all, at some point, thought they were in love. And if our thoughts are all we are then, I think, when you think you are in love, you must be. And even though you’re in love, sooner or later, it will all fall to shit and there’ll be no peace and there will be no prosperity and the Kingdom will wilt and the march of monarchy will go on and on and on.”

He stopped himself before continuing.

“This isn’t coming out right.”

“What I mean to say is, I don’t care. Wait, that’s not right either. I do care. I don’t care about some story or some idealised, magical, fairytale love that has never existed and will never exist. But I care about you. I love you.” He reached out and embraced his wife, pulling her onto his lap. “And you haven’t doomed us all.”

She rested her head on his chest, noticing that her eyes were drying and her mouth was smiling.

“Perhaps we were doomed from the start but, I mean, that’s hardly your fault. Am I getting this across?”

She looked up and met her husband’s eyes. The air in the room had shifted. They weren’t the words of a poet, but a poet’s words are often cold, heartless verses that promise beauty and bely artifice. No, these were his words and his awkward delivery assured his wife of their authenticity. Her fingers ran across his face, then through his hair and then she answered her husband with a kiss. And as their lips met, the rubies on their rings gave off the slightest bit of light…

Or, at least, that’s the way I heard it.

Reconciliation of Trope in Convenience Store Boyfriends

2017s Konbini Kareshi, also known as Convenience Store Boyfriends, is not a particularly revolutionary series. It's not, really, even a very good one. Yet as I watched this "slice-of-life" anime for the first time recently, I couldn't help but find it extremely interesting. Here we have a show that is harangued by trope and cliché, yet is also desperately trying to find a way to reconcile anime and slice-of-life genre tropes for a modern audience. It, in no uncertain terms, fails.

Convenience Store Boyfriends is the anime adaptation of the B's-Log Comic mixed-media project, having first been realised in prose and audio drama. It is this cynical, detached approach to storytelling that I think has caused the production to concern itself with the modern sensibilities of its audience. It is a series that appears to have been designed by committee, looking to utilise its high school genre, setting and character, to best appeal to, not only the romance anime fan, but a younger, more socially aware generation. It is in the conflict between these two demographics that we see the failure of Convenience Store Boyfriends' reconciliation. In one of the focal romantic relationships, between the character Honda, a popular soccer player, and Mihashi, the stalwart "Class Rep", we see the struggle between playing into safe generic tropes and appealing to an audience that has long moved past them.

As it has been said that Japan is still some time away from its "#MeToo" moment, it is noteworthy that, at least for a little while, Convenience Store Boyfriends put issues of consent and harassment right at the forefront of its depiction of this relationship. Honda is berated for his retrograde attempts to impress and romance the Class Rep, who often makes it clear that these are unwanted advances. It is in the return to trope where this all falls apart. Due to its nature as a romance anime, and its unwillingness to make any major diversions from its tropes, the Class Rep soon gains the confidence to accept the previously undesired advances. Issues of consent abound in the discussion of the anime trope, "tsundere", used to refer to female characters who disguise their true feelings behind layers of animosity, that the male protagonist must strip back in order to pursue the desired relationship. It's a female character seen across not just anime, but throughout all of literature, but it is the anime tsundere who is most well-known for their predictable behaviours and for promoting morally dubious wish fulfilment narratives. This is the character archetype that the Class Rep is forced to become because of Convenience Store Boyfriends' need to fall back on trope.

Yet those early moments, where it does seem like the series wants to offer us something interesting, were extremely exciting. Not just as viewers of television, but as citizens; for its, otherwise unimpressive, early episodes seemed to suggest that serious social change was taking hold and that the dangerous romantic tropes of yesteryear were being cast-aside for a new look at how modern relationships can, and should, be formed. So when this was done away with, Convenience Store Boyfriends' actually yielded from me its biggest emotional response. My sense of disappointment was palpable.

So, what does the failed reconciliation of trope then tell us? Is the failure to reconcile the tsundere trope with modern sensibilities down to the quality of this production or is it due to the irreconcilable nature of these tropes? I would argue that it is a little of both. Certainly Convenience Store Boyfriends' is no major piece of revisionary work. For example, the tsundere is not the only trope to be promised subversion and then remain unchanged in Convenience Store Boyfriends' (though it is certainly the most prominent and worthy of inspection). The step-sister romance, the strict household impeding romance, the school festival, the one that got away and so on, all make an appearance in this series that wants to play it by the numbers that no one uses anymore. The series has some very weak, uninspired storytelling, that means they can never get across their new perspective on tired tropes. More than that though, I would say that the attempt was doomed from the start. Even if the studio behind Convenience Store Boyfriends' wanted to pursue a new approach to the romance genre, they could never do so while still attached to tropes like the tsundere. I'd like to see an expectation-subverting story, where the person who thinks they are the romantic lead is shut down for misogynistic behaviour, but that show simply wouldn't be a romance show any longer. The tropes and genre effects are simply not fit for use when it comes to creating romantic stories for modern sensibilities.



The show does have one really nice song though. And a plot twist that I'm sure the whole board room were patting themselves on the back for.

Return of the SeX-Men: "Fixing" A Franchise

Despite an industry-wide decrease in sales and popularity of superhero comics on the whole, it's always the X-Men franchise which garners the most commentary on how it needs "fixing". Is this because X-Men's film franchise is perceived as limp and incomparable to its contemporaries, thus making the brand as a whole look disproportionately weaker? Is it because it's a franchise that has some of the most dizzying highs in the format, yet has also seen some of its most dire lows? Is it, perhaps, because the franchise peaked in the 90s, leaving only a core, militant audience behind? Whatever the case, proposed solutions proliferate, with every fan regularly filling forums, social media and direct lines to creatives in order to express their master plan to restore vigour to the ailing superheroes. Some of the most notable proposed solutions include: getting rid of the dorky costumes, bringing back the dorky costumes, keeping characters dead, bringing dead characters back, less time-travel, less politics and, of course, more guns. With this post, I don't intend to solve this argument for good. Rather, within this frame of "fixing" the X-Men, I want to point out a key element of the mutant's stories that has long gone forgotten.

That is, their rampant, unabashed sexiness.

Already, I have to backpedal and clarify. By sexiness I do not mean the conventional sexiness oft associated with the comic book superhero genre. Rather than exploitative, hypersexual super(model)heroines, what I'm talking about is sex and sexuality as an explicit subject. Grant Morrison's New X-Men run was unashamedly about sex, even whilst his artistic collaborators, such as Frank Quitely or Igor Kordey, were depicting the usually glamorous superheroes as increasingly ugly and grotesque. Similarly, I'm not talking about some puerile, monogamous copulation between longtime sweethearts. The torrid, lustful, angst-driven sexual relations that truly define the X-Men against their contemporaries is what's of interest to me.

And we can see that this sexiness, this seX-factor, penetrates throughout the franchise's history. The aforementioned Morrison has seen the promotion of his work, as having a "back to basics" design philosophy, scoffed at since its publication (as it featured, amongst other things, a malevolent germ), but the one "basic" he did return to was a deep sexuality. Not only was the familiar Cyclops/Jean Grey/Wolverine love triangle returned, but at the forefront of it all were questions of virility and progeny; as mutants declared themselves humanity's successors as the latter marched towards extinction. Tensions around the sanctity of sexuality abound particularly in the conclusion of this story, where a doomed future is averted because Cyclops, rather than sustain his infantile and sexless relationship with childhood sweetheart Jean Grey, opts to pursue a relationship with his sex therapist, Emma Frost.

Emma Frost occurs perennially in discussions of seXuality. She was introduced in the most defining X-Men run, Chris Claremont's, and as part of the beloved Dark Phoenix Saga (soon to be adapted, for the second time, in 2019's Dark Phoenix). There's a popular misreading that this story is a cosmic one, as it has some light science-fiction features. The reality is it's a grounded story and a deeply sexual one, as BDSM-imagery seems to clutter half the pages and the story itself is explicitly concerned with a destructive female backlash at the removal of sexual license and her transformation into a fetish object. Claremont used sexuality in his stories with reckless abandon, spanning topics from female puberty, body autonomy and dimensions of consent, to commentating on the AIDS-epidemic. The follow-up to Dark Phoenix Saga, Days of Future Past, for example, is literally about sexual license, as mutants have their breeding rights prohibited in a dystopian future.

Jean Grey in the Dark Phoenix Saga.

So, Emma Frost was a character created in an entirely sexual context. Yet now, detached from the time of her creation, Emma Frost is often the centre of a lot of reader anxiety. What you often seem to have is a sexualised character, wearing revealing, exploitative costumes, who appears in stories that are actually not about sex or sexuality. It would seem that reader anxieties around Emma Frost's depiction are located in this arena; she is a character about sexuality who no longer possesses (or at least professes) sexual license. Emma Frost is devoid of sexuality, allowed the kind of innocuous relationship with Cyclops that Morrison intended her to disrupt. She is a character who is sexual in nothing but her aesthetic. In this sense she is a microcosm of the superhero genre on the whole, the male-dominated genre (both in terms of creatives, audience and characters) which is caught constantly negotiating and renegotiating its opinion on sex, reaching a point where sexuality is simultaneously hypervisible and invisible.

Emma Frost.

Going back even further, we can highlight that sex was actually important as early as the Lee/Kirby collaborations at the title's launch in the 60s. It was subtextual, of course, thanks to the Comics Code Authority and general sensibilities of the time, but its presence was there nonetheless. Whilst revisionist readings of the X-Men's early years still stick to the idea that the franchise had always been a Civil Rights allegory, the reality is that those stories owe much more to Cold War narratives and the emerging youth culture of America's post-war economic boom. This generational conflict rears its head again in the Morrisonian interpretation of the franchise and in both realisations sexuality is important. It is more overt in New X-Men, without a doubt, but those early stories still concerned themselves with virility and sexual license, particularly with regards to Cyclops and Jean Grey (and the other bumps and tensions the relationship met along the way. Explicit sex was off the table in the 60s, Jean and Cyclops don't even kiss until the series is revived in the 70s, but what we saw in those early issues were normal, well-behaved children with acceptable American values lusting after each other.

So, why does the return of a seX-factor matter? It's because, as a concept, it unifies the Morrisonian, Claremontian, and Silver Age renditions of the book. Three wildly different, and popular (although people only seem to enjoy the Silver Age stories, retroactively, it was not a popular book at the time), interpretations of the same characters and core concepts. Even with widely derided, "cursed" runs on these books, such as Chuck Austen's Uncanny X-Men or Peter Milligan's X-Men, that sexual element ensured some slight success, though perhaps they went too far in some places. (It is worth noting that Peter Milligan and Mike Allred's X-Force/X-Statix professed sexuality in droves- and is widely lauded, in part, because of it).

With a recent influx of fan creators carving X-Books into their own images, we are seeing, once again, a return towards stories prominently featuring sexuality. Sadly, though, these only superficially deal with the subject, allowing a voyeuristic pleasure for the reader but never allowing sexual themes to permeate the stories. Kelly Thompson's Rogue and Gambit was a great horny start, but there also needs to be a move away from the "beautiful people" dimension of sexuality and this is an area X-Men stories have usually done well in. Stacy X, the snake-skinned sex worker who had a brief stint on an X-Men team in the early 2000s. I think it's telling that Stacy X has mostly been scrubbed from the franchise history and, on the rare occasion she is acknowledged, her snake-like skin is nowhere to be seen. Do ugly mutants, the Eye-Boys, the Maggotts and Thumbelinas, not possess the same sexual license as the glamorous ones?

Stacy-X.

It's important, as well, to note that simply existing in a sexual dimension is not enough. Like any other story element, there must be a reason, some justification, for a story's sexuality, lest it become glorified, softcore pornography. We don't want to return to the past of creating female characters whose explicit purpose is to allure the sexual attention of 12 year olds, so creating male sexual objects, whilst an arguably egalitarian pursuit, doesn't actually solve the meta-sextual void that superhero comics finds themselves in. The superhero has long been a fetishistic concern; the genre (and the X-Men) cannot move forwards without acknowledging this inherent quality. Yet this should not be implemented by the cynic, who sees this as yet another opportunity to insert perverted "realism" to the superhero genre, or a chance to again put infeasibly attractive characters in revealing costumes. Rather, the re-sexualisation of X-Men should come about by creators who believe in sex, who do not hold our cultural pretensions around "acceptable" forms of love.

Lester and Eliza: The Simpsons' Demented, Derivative Double

In the eighteenth episode of The Simpsons' classic seventh season, "The Day The Violence Died", we are introduced to one of the show's most sinister creations- the doppelgänger siblings Lester and Eliza. Unlike the horror-movie pastiches from the show's "Treehouse of Horror" Halloween specials, Lester and Eliza turn up at the end of an otherwise normal episode of the show. Rendered in reference to the early versions of Bart and Lisa Simpson from The Tracey Ullman Show, Lester and Eliza made a strong impact in spite of minimal screen time, yet it is how they make themselves known that reveals to us the true nature of their distinctly uncomfortable presence.

The Simpson family as they appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show. On the right we have Lisa and Bart, the inspirations for Eliza and Lester.

So, why do Lester and Eliza consistently find themselves at the top of fan's lists of most unsettling Simpsons moments? Why are these two siblings capable of instilling so much fear? On the textual level, these characters tap into a perennial fear of an identical other. Our doubles, who may at any given time, appropriate and remove our senses of identity, remind us of the Lacanian mirror stage; we feel a perpetual disassociation between our true selves and the bodies which we show to the outside world. The conceptual doppelgänger is frightening for this very reason, it highlights not only the disparity between the imaginary and the real but also our anxieties around others not being to perceive our true selves.

The episode's narrative concerns itself with Bart finding the homeless original creator of Itchy, Chester J. Lampwick, from the violently popular Itchy and Scratchy cartoons. Having had his work stolen from him by an untalented artist, yet savvy businessman, Lampwick fell into poverty and would never see any royalties or accreditation for his creation. Inadvertently, Bart's mission to find justice for Lampwick leads to the bankruptcy of the Itchy and Scratchy studios. Bart and Lisa attempt to get their beloved cartoon back on the air, finally coming up with a plan and rushing off towards the studio. The sinister siblings get there first and, by taking Bart and Lisa's narrative role as conflict resolvers, Lester and Eliza already imprint a disconcerting presence. It is worth noting that immediately before the appearance of Lester and Eliza, Marge Simpson reaffirms and recounts all the times Bart and Lisa resolved conflicts such as the one featured in this episode. It is presented as a mother motivating her children to succeed in their task at a moment of weakness, but it also serves the purpose of reacquainting an audience with the format of previous stories. There's really no reason not to think that Bart and Lisa will save the day once again. Yet, as we know, they didn't.

Lester and Eliza, resembling Bart and Lisa, resolve the episode's conflict.

In true Simpsons fashion, Lester and Eliza have solved, alongside the A-Plot of saving Itchy and Scratchy, a B-Plot of Apu's public nudity case/Krusty the Clown's estranged wife. We can imagine an alternate episode that exists within this one, where Lester and Eliza's inciting incident occurs at the cancellation of Itchy and Scratchy, telling its own story to the same resolution. Likewise, we can imagine Lester and Eliza experiencing a similar shock to that which faces Bart and Lisa at the end of this episode, only this shock happening on a far more regular basis, whenever Bart and Lisa's adventures are made public. There may then be an element of personal revenge to Lester and Eliza's appearance. These siblings, who only exist in relation to Bart and Lisa, are faced with the same fear of the double, only their doppelgängers are paraded around town as local celebrities. But what I find more interesting is the notion that Lester and Eliza are not so much characters as they are arbiters, particularly arbiters of punishment.

So, beyond merely the fearsome nature of the characters within their relation to the Simpsons and Springfield, there is a metatextual element that has made Lester and Eliza ring through the audience's mind. It is no coincidence that the designs for these doppelgängers so closely resemble Bart and Lisa's former selves, they tie into the stories themes of authorial ownership and originality. Lester and Eliza arrive to exact punishment on Bart and Lisa- the original versions seeking vengeance on the derivative. With the episode's earlier acknowledgment of Chief Wiggum's derivative status (his voice being an impression of Edward G. Robinson's), the show briefly dips into metacommentary. Bart and Lisa have no right to fight on the side of Lampwick, or originality, as they themselves are insipid repetitions. They are not allowed to succeed, with the conclusion delivering the punishment for their hubris.

The final disconcerting shot of Lester passing by, meeting eyes with Bart, is reinforced by a mind-boggling geography; Bart cannot be looking at Lester, from everything we know about the layout of the Simpson house, yet, look he does. Through the final moments of this episode, Lester and Eliza are repeatedly presented to us as something deeply, profoundly wrong. The distortion of the Simpson house is perhaps the most aesthetically clear realisation of this theme, alongside the Tracey Ullman-esque designs, but the distortion of episode normality, where the audience is prevented from ever actually finding out what Lisa and Bart's resolution to the conflict, is arguably just as significant aspect. Foiling their plan ensures the audience never get the payoff of finding out what their plan to save Itchy and Scratchy actually was, meaning that the episode ends on a dejected whimper, rather than any triumphant victory.

Bart looks out of the rear-house window to see Lester in the view of the front-house window.

Bart ends the episode with a comment on how unsettling it is that he and Lisa weren't the ones to solve the conflict. Here he speaks for an audience who are, for a change, suddenly challenged and made uneasy by The Simpsons. Lester and Eliza's fearsome nature, in their minuscule time on screen, is played up, so as to exist properly as arbiters of punishment. Not satisfied with merely stealing the joy of victory from Bart and Lisa, the arbiters of punishment go so far as to steal their individual identities and the natural order of their world. 

"The Day The Violence Died" is a deeply affecting, profound episode, even if all the elements which make it so only occur within the final minutes of the story. It taps into something primal and existential. Bart and Lisa would, of course, go on to have more adventures, paying this experience no heed, but the visceral, lasting effect this throwaway gag has had is worthy of note.

A World Without Sin: Reconciliatory Fictions In "Serenity"

With each passing day, opposition to our political class and its institutions has started to feel increasingly untenable. Not in that we cannot present viable alternatives, but in that we are so inundated by constant controversy that engaging in any kind of political discussion feels futile. This is by no means a recent phenomenon, but it is certainly best exemplified by our relationship with the "truth" under Trumpism. Both fake news and the spectre of fake news are utilised as tools to confuse narratives and, furthermore, this all takes place within a journalistic sphere that is tired and perhaps even no longer fit for use. News media has now evolved to such a state that a consumer can choose which "truth" to buy into, leaving any search for a true "truth" superfluous. The fictionalising force of journalism, the turning of events and information into a story, has accelerated this evolution, curating fictions designed for informing that stand side-by-side with fictions designed for entertainment. Yet, simultaneously, it provides the means through which these concerns will be resolved. It is in fiction that our own anxieties with fictions can be expressed. Joss Whedon's 2005 sci-fi film, Serenity, the pseudo-finale to his untimely cancelled cowboys-in-space tv series Firefly, then serves as an example of how speculative fiction, particularly genre films, serve as attempted resolutions to unconscious political anxieties.

I want to begin by positing the question, would the space-cowboy's plan work in our own political context? In the film, the protagonists discover the film's "truth": that the dominant, fascist government covered up an experiment which, in their attempts to introduce an airborne sedative to a population, directly lead to the creation of the Reavers, a group of mentally degenerated cannibals and rapists that blight the 'verse. In a multifarious attempt to find justice for the initial victims, to prevent further attempts at this experiment and to expose the dominant government's true nature, the protagonists seek the delivery of a government-exposing tape to a source who will distribute it across the 'verse. The film positions this as the happy ending, clearly implying that once the footage is distributed to its audience, the protagonists intended societal change will occur and the hero's sacrifices will have been justified. This small act of delivery is emblematic of the synoptic, journalistic ideal- of the many holding the few to account. Let's imagine that plan in the context of Trumpism. Would the imagined outrage at the system even manifest? The Trump administration has courted controversy after controversy to the point where only the most politically ardent avoid desensitisation, would Serenity's distributed imagery be capable of shaking and emboldening a populace to action? Could the imagery simply be dismissed as propaganda efforts, as fake news? The film offers a simple premise, that truth yields consequences, yet this has proved, time and again, a myth for real world politics.

The Firefly/Serenity franchise is, in a way, the ideological antithesis of science fiction narratives like Aliens, Starship Troopers, Halo and the like; the myriad of stories which hold the space marine archetype to its core. These, parodic or sincere, cast in its heroes the very fascistic, militaristic qualities that Whedon's libertarian crew deny. The "world without a sin" that Nathan Fillion's Mal distributes to the 'verse is a world without choice and personal liberty and across both the series and, film, the totalitarian government is constantly presented as an impediment against Mal's (and his crew's) self-determination. It is this libertarian perspective that informs not only the film's climax, but also its attempt to reconcile the very illegibility of holding power to account in its political climate.

Serenity then must be read in its post-9/11, Bush-era context, as this shows two things: the first, that Trumpism does not hold a monopoly on post-truth sentiment, and secondly, that the film's narrative works as an effort to placate and ease concerns around truth and authority. This film arrived in the midst of an estrangement with American authority, as 2004, the year preceding the film's release, saw instances like the CIA admission that there was no immediate threat from Iraq and the Killian documents controversy. Serenity absolves its fictional universe of such concerns, presenting a world where the freeing of information will have direct, liberating consequences, rather than sewing further animosity and confusion in a populace. Mal sacrifices information to the fictionalising forces of distribution and relies, totally, on the hope that the fictionalised narrative will elicit change. In our world, the distributed image may not resemble its original at all. But, Serenity, as fiction, and a specifically speculative fiction, is allowed to treat truth as the monolith its audience believes it to be. The Mr. Universe mantra of "You can't stop the signal", proves true and the film's antagonist, the Operative, is pacified and rendered faithless after witnessing the true nature of the government.

Ultimately, this resolution only exists in the film. It did not have any metatextual reaction, it did not reconcile real world concerns with truth and political authority, nor did it impede the rapid degeneration of news media into the even less authoritative state it is in today, but that is more or less the point. It is a fantasy. The resolution works in the film, and can only work in the film, because it presupposes that certain features of our society have clear-cut constants. Particularly, it presupposes that journalism exists as a means to challenge the powerful and that it, both as an industry and as something received by audiences, is devoted to universal, unquestionable truths. The reality, of course, is that journalism has now become as much of a power as that it is meant to challenge, that the pursuit of truth often comes second to a sensational, fictionalising frame and that there is no longer a single, monolithic truth.

Therein lies the necessity of interrogating popular speculative fiction, as, above all, it serves as the way in which people engage with contemporary issues. Not in a meaningful way, as that is the very nature of our predicament, but, for many people, as the only way. Policy is detached so far from our lives that our only hope for reconciliation is to observe, to see it take place through fictional narratives. We can see it in the ever rising prominence of fan activism and the fierce identity wars that rage in fan communities; more and more the political battleground has been shifted away from the intangible phantasms of democracy and bureaucracy and to the more real, more tangible realm of storytelling and fictional world-building. Even engagements that supposedly have more intrinsic meaning, such as the ballot box and the protest, remain similar to popular fiction in a sense, as they are all attempts by people to solve the unsolvable; to gain entry to the political sphere of which they have been denied access.

Popular fiction is far more useful as a lens than it is as a toolbox. Serenity does not provide us with a blueprint or instruction manual to reach the film's idyllic relationship with truth. It does not seek any kind of transformative platform. It exists merely as a struggle to reconcile harsh reality through escapist fiction.

"Fear makes people do stupid things": Containment Culture In Angel's "Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been?"

My reading of this episode owes much to Alan Nadel's book, Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism and the Atomic Age. 

"Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been" is the title of the second episode of Angel's second season. It is also a direct reference to McCarthyism and the House of Un-American Activities Committee's (HUAC) line of questioning towards suspected communists, "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?". The story, which is set against the backdrop of Cold War anxieties, goes beyond solely depicting the period's "Red Scare" and instead offers up a broader presentation of the various aspects of containment culture.

Angel, spin-off to Joss Whedon's teen-horror Buffy the Vampire Slayer, focuses on the eponymous vampire-detective, cursed with a soul, as he endeavours to "help the helpless" in early-2000s Los Angeles. This episode features a dual timeline, where most of the action takes place in flashbacks to the vampire's (relatively) younger years. The villain of the peace is a thematically appropriate demon which feeds off of fear and paranoia, with the flashback exploring Angel's first interaction with the creature and the present action showing Angel (and his supporting cast) endeavouring to scourge the hotel of its longstanding occupant. The episode, written by Tim Minear, is one that leans harder into Angel's noir genre inspiration than most, as its oblique themes of fear and paranoia converge with its 50s setting and its disgruntled, pessimistic protagonist. Angel's quiet life in the hotel is disturbed by Judy, a mixed-race woman who passes for white. Judy, fired from her job and abandoned by her husband because of her heritage, has stolen some money and has a Private Investigator on her heels. Race is prominent throughout the episode, with a black family being refused entry to the hotel in the early moments of the story, and ideas of blood purity and sanctity in Judy and Angel's relationship are abound. This culminates in the paranoia-fuelled mob of hotel guests attempting to lynch Angel, as Judy deflects accusations of her deviancy by identifying Angel's monstrous nature to the mob. This betrayal has the protagonist wilfully surrender the people to the fear demon until his later, redemptive return, to slay the demon. Interrogating the questionable depiction of a white man taking the place of a black woman in the imagery of lynching is beyond the scope of this piece, but an interesting discussion can be found here.

What is of interest to me (and writer, Minear) is the episode's sensationalised realisation of containment: the containment that yielded high-profile witch hunts and took a focal lens to Hollywood, particularly. Trials and blacklists of notable figures came to define 50s Hollywood and the containment policy enacted on America as a whole. The focus of McCarthyism on Hollywood was not because the American government believed there was a secret sect of communists operating out of Hollywood, but rather that these particular, high-profile, trials helped disseminate the principles of Containment to a nationwide audience. Americans were encouraged to be suspicious of others and to police themselves well, so as to not demonstrate any deviant behaviour that may incriminate them; deviation from the norm was career-threatening, as the high profile Hollywood cases demonstrated.  The "Hollywood" community is developed in the episode through a cast of hotel guests, who are actors and screenwriters, and iconic Hollywood imagery; the Griffith Observatory, for example, harkening back to Rebel Without A Cause, eliciting the necessary cognitive link between text and context. The historical context is as much a villain here as any other antagonistic force and, in many ways, the suspected murderer, or fear demon, serves the role of subversive Other. The Communist, the Soviet, has infiltrated the ranks of the hotel, the inhabitants of which serve as a microcosm of an American community- particularly the Hollywood community- who must eject the subversive Other not only to protect the status quo (or idealised America), but to protect themselves also. As Angel states, "Everyone here has something to hide.", and each individual's hidden quality is one that would be considered deviant or a threat under containment. Deviancies of the "social, sexual, political, economic, and theological" (Nadel) are under surveillance, from the left-leaning politics of a blacklisted screenwriter, to the hidden homosexuality of a movie star, the passing of a mixed-race woman for white or a vampire passing for human.

The "Lavender Scare" is a term that particularly refers to the treatment of homosexuals- as subversives and inherent, anti-American, communist allies- under containment narratives. These hotel guests, identified as potential subversives, then engage in a race to find the most deviant identity: the person whose repudiation would cement them as innocent or truthful engagers in American life. The second to last subversive is a black woman, passing for normative white; the last, Angel, is then representative of the most profound anti-Americanism. His vampire nature serves him well here, as vampires have been theological, biological and sexual threats in their storied existence. With classic vampires, like Dracula, they have also been presented as geopolitical threats, an external Other. Most important here though is the dual nature of the vampire, the human face that belies the inherent demonic qualities. Looking like a human, the vampire is assumed to hold human values and this assumption is what creates the vampire's victims. In much the same way, Americans were instructed to be suspicious of those who appeared human, but hid anti-American sentiment. Sentiments could only be identified by interrogating minute deviancies.

Angel is secluded in the hotel for that own deviance, policing himself so as to not bring attention to his subversive nature. His monstrous nature as vampire identifies him as a metaphorical Other- someone feared by a paranoid, mainstream society- but his existence is literally Otherised as well. Angel exists as a character who cannot perform the masculine function- he cannot hold work, reproduce, be a functioning subject of capitalism- and, as such, isolates himself. Sequestered away in the hotel with the other gender, sexual, ideological and race deviants, Angel falls into a meta guilt of association. We understand that Angel must be a viable avatar for punishment on account of existing in this community of subversives.

The search for "truth"- or hunt for the duplicitous- characterises the demonically-influenced lynching of Angel, yet it is markedly important that the participants in the hunt for deviancy- particularly the hotel manager and bellhop, who together conspired to cover up a suicide by promoting the idea of a loose murderer- are all guilty, complicit in some way, of subverting idealised American capitalism. The instant turnaround as the mob has a new target for its legitimisation is one thing, but it's also worth noting how the woman from the lobby, previously accused of solicitation, likewise accuses Judy of being a "slut". Like the rest of this mob, her innocence will be proved at the altar of another's. "If the willingness to name names became the informer's credential, the ability to do so became his or her capital." (Nadel) By isolating the most deviant of them, the inhabitants have absolved themselves of their own individual crimes against cultural norms. Only once all these hidden facets are brought to light is the veracity of their accusation of Angel legitimised, echoing the role that evidenced deceitfulness of ex-Communists played in convincing a court that they truly were "ex".

Nadel writes that, under containment, objective "truth" was endowed with a theological aspect. The good, domestic monotheist was positioned against the evil, foreign atheist. As such Angel, as an unholy entity, is realised as the deceiver who must be disavowed and destroyed so as to prove the credibility and innocence of those accusing him. Angel's lynching provides the guests no freedom from paranoia, provides them no veracity to absolve them of their own deviance, it only sustains the culture of containment. In Angel's reckoning with containment culture, we can see the qualities of containment which have manifested and persisted in popular culture when we revisit 1950s America. Surveillance of the Other, policing of the self and the search for an objective "truth" are perhaps the most resonant of the existential questions which containment narratives and McCarthyism left for the American populace.

Nadel, A. (1995). Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age. London: Duke University Press.

REFLECTIONS: Ant-Man and the Wasp

Spoilers may follow. Not that there are any that matter.

Ant-Man and the Wasp, sequel to 2015's not too bad Ant-Man and the 20th entry in Marvel's not too bad cinematic universe, is not too bad. It's an unfocused romp that never really earns its status as a big-screen entry to the Marvel story-world, often feeling like a spruced up one-shot, but still manages to glide by thanks to some great performances and the undeniable joy of the core gimmick. Shrinking and unshrinking people and miscellaneous objects remains as fun as ever.

Yet, 20 films, and 10 years, into one ongoing story-world demands something more than a harmless, safe, Summer blockbuster. At this point, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with every new entry, must justify its existence. Ant-Man and the Wasp's greatest offence, then, is its sheer mundanity. There are two different types of boredom to discuss when it comes to this film. The first derives from how the film does nothing new or particularly interesting, allowing only its post-credit scene to contribute to any form of over-arching narrative. The second derives simply from how the film's pacing often screeches to painful halts, never knowing which parts of the film we want to spend more time with and which parts we'd have rather seen skipped over completely. The two moments which best exemplify this are when the opening tells us, bluntly, the film's mission (to return the original Wasp from the Quantum Realm) and, later on in the film, when Ghost, the villain of the place, tells us of her tragic (Eh) origin. I use the word "tell" pointedly. This is all too often a film about telling, not showing, and overdrawn narration on top of flashback sequences haemorrhages any flow and rhythm the film might have had. The second instance at least has a moment of subversion, interrupting the villainous monologuing with a video call between Ant-Man and his daughter, but it only comes after the expository function has been completed. It's a good gag, reliant totally on the perfect chemistry between Paul Rudd and his on-screen daughter (Make Cassie Lang an Avenger, you cowards), but ultimately, it's safe. It never threatens to undermine the character the screenwriter's are so committed to landing. Naturally, they failed.

The first instance had no such subversive moment, leaving an opening completely devoid of entertainment. It is, almost certainly, the worst opening to any MCU movie, and really sets the movie off on poor footing. It's a rocky, uneven road in the movie ahead, anyway. Each of the scenes feel individually conceived, creating a disparate film that seems only motivated to move from one gag to the next. Transitions between scenes are so clear and visible that it's jarring, with cliche name drops that lead directly to the scene concerning that name.

As I said previously, the film's greatest sin is its mundanity. Yet, it clearly didn't have to be this way. Ant-Man is Marvel's most exciting, yet least realised, franchise. It offers a unique opportunity to deal with intimate world-building, exploring clear themes of family and offering up development of the story-worlds past; the CGI technology that de-ages older actors for flashback scenes is pitch-perfect here, yet never used in as pivotal a way as we have seen elsewhere (Tony Stark in Civil War comes to mind). Even in the film itself, you can piece together what seems to be thematic links and an emotional core. Familial relationships are at the forefront, combined and utilised in different ways. You have two generations of Ant-Man and the Wasp, forming an impromptu family unit, facing off Ghost and her father figure in Bill Foster, and, off to the side, you have the extended family of Ant-Man's daughter, her mother and her mother's husband. Yet nothing meaningful or memorable is ever done with these parts. Rather than converging into the film's thematic heart, they are left carelessly at the wayside. It is a film which squanders its potential, limits its scope and makes you wonder why this had to be a feature-film at all.

The other missed opportunity is the Wasp, particularly the Evangeline Lilly/Hope van Dyne version of Wasp, who never earns her title credit. She falls into this new trend of female superhero who, having won the battle to be featured as a non-derivative, desexualised franchise-helming character, is never allowed the functional traits of the archetypal hero. When Hank Pym offers to dive after Hope's mother, in her stead, his robbery of her moment of self-sacrifice reminded me of how Wonder Woman similarly gave its big moment of heroism to Chris Pine's character. If self-sacrifice is a key tenet of developing and characterising the hero, then we can see that women are now allowed to be superheroes, just not the hero. Aside from that though, the realisation of Hope as a superhero in her own right seems to have taken from her a character arc. She had one in the first film, alongside her purely civilian/romantic interest capacity, yet here character development has been replaced by superhero iconography. The relationships of the film likewise take a hit. The very nature of the broader MCU sabotages its own individual components, with this film dealing with ramifications from the third Captain America film and the deterioration of relationships that has happened in the downtime between films. Going from the first Ant-Man to this one would not merely be a jarring experience, it would be untenable. Characters who were on positive terms with each other previously now have to navigate retreads of character tension. Is there a triumphant feeling when Scott and Hope come together, through adversity? No! Because the adversity has popped up out of nowhere, in some kind of sick rerun of the character tension from the first film.

All my criticisms aside though, this film has a great Morrissey gag. No, really. From The Cure in the first film, to the Moz in this one, it would appear that director Peyton Reid has a great taste in music. Perhaps he should give Ant-Man 3 a miss and just make some Spotify playlists. It is the comedy and lightness that makes this film enjoyable, despite its shortcomings. Visual gags abound and almost enough Ant-Man family sweetness really does the heavy-lifting for the film. It has to be understood though, that this cinematic universe rests on the precipice: it is all but guaranteed to survive until the Avengers: Infinity War sequel, but after that will the long-promised superhero fatigue finally kick in? I'd argue that, with more films as safe, trite and unimpressive as this one, it could be right around the corner.