Right? That's the usage. Or like, turning in old cans or something: they're being redeemed, purchased back, from you.
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The old religious usage is generally about Jesus reclaiming your soul from hell; there are Old Testament usages too, buying you out of suffering, or slavery, or death. The point is, though, that you can't redeem yourself!
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Replying to @mssilverstein @BootlegGirl
Well, there are stories of slaves buying themselves out of slavery, though this requires a certain amount of chicanery and/or largesse from the owner (since technically as a slave everything you own is your owner's anyway)
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In the case of American chattel slavery where slaves were uniquely disenfranchised this was usually a matter of being able to own your own skilled labor that can't be directly coerced You can force someone to pick crops every day on pain of torture, not so much do bookkeeping
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
Yeah, it's not *precisely* true that you don't/can't redeem yourself, and there were prisoners who ransomed themselves, but at least, it has that transactional element. Someone needs to pay the price.
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Replying to @mssilverstein @BootlegGirl
Yeah this is where Christians come in and talk about how no one can avoid going to Hell without Christ's sacrifice
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
Yeah. And theology aside, it's an interesting metaphor for these kinds of 'redemption' focused stories, because it shifts the focus about who's making the sacrifice. I mean, it's easily a form of fridging, too, the pure heroine sacrificing herself to save the antihero.
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Replying to @mssilverstein @arthur_affect
I mean, I think Jojo Rabbit is interesting because apart from the intrinsic evil of being who he is at the time he is, Jojo doesn't actually do anything particularly bad and Elsa doesn't end up sacrificing anything for him. It's just that he also, doesn't sacrifice anything
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Replying to @BootlegGirl @arthur_affect
Yeah - in the analogy here, she redeems him with...her pretty face? Which isn't a cost, but also not something that just anyone could do (and he can't do it without her).
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Replying to @mssilverstein @arthur_affect
Yeah, the story would be more powerful if the Jew Jojo's mother was sheltering was an old man or something
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Cf. the ending of the Grapes of Wrath deliberately subverting expectations with the baby dying and Rose of Sharon saving a random old hobo instead
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