If you were Director Hayward and you were in charge of protecting Earth from evil magic purple dudes who can dust people with a fingersnap and whatnot would you just let a source of great power go if it were "the right thing to do"? You sure about that? Have you tested yourself?
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"Of course it's easy for you to be good, YOU HAVE NO CHOICE 'Oh, I've never cheated on my wife' -- cheated WITH WHO? Yeah I'm sure you're really beating 'em off with a stick as the assistant manager of Burger King"
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"You ever had someone just OFFER to give you a blowjob? Out of nowhere? For no reason except that they just think you're really cool and awesome for doing your job, that you already got paid big money to do? You ever had them LINE UP to offer to give you a blowjob?"
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"You ever had that happen OVER AND OVER AGAIN? And known you could get away with it, because you have a guy on speed dial you can call specifically to make sure you have an alibi to cover your ass if it gets out?"
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"Someone whose fucking JOB -- who gets PAID a hefty RETAINER -- to COVER UP THE BAD THINGS YOU DO, in case you ever do them And then you STILL CHOOSE NOT TO DO BAD THINGS? If you've ever experienced that then sure, you get an opinion over whether I deserve a cookie"
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It was very dark rant, and one that, you know, I hope he meant with a certain degree of irony for the sake of dark comedy But I mean, shit It's a pretty big fucking question, isn't it (This kind of thing is the heart of Nietzsche's whole deal with Herrenmoral and Sklavenmoral)
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And, like, WandaVision is this story about pushing that question to its limit This terrible mathematical equation where her power grows in proportion to her pain, which means it's always growing past her ability to rein in her desires
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She *tries* to be good, she *really really tries* -- when someone like Hayward deliberately pushes her to the very brink of what she can tolerate, makes her watch her husband's corpse being coldly dissected, in hopes of triggering a reaction, she still holds back
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But finally when she has nowhere else to go and nothing else to do and she just drives to that vacant lot where she wanted to bury Vision and finds the path there to be an emotional dead end it all comes pouring out It's a very visceral, real moment
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And it's like yeah Having seen it and felt it from her perspective, I can't *hate* her But it's... not okay This situation shouldn't happen It's wrong to put the responsibility for not hurting people on the shoulders of someone already so burdened
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I cannot actually sympathize with Roman Polanski for being so traumatized and sad he raped children I can, however, say that, trying to look at it from the POV of his own welfare -- it was a bad thing for him to carry the weight of so much loss *and* so much power at once
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To be lauded and celebrated as a filmmaker such that he made his living and affirmed his own worth based on how deeply he could dwell in his own pain To have immense amounts of money and fame and the ability to fly to another country to escape consequences
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It is obvious that not only would his victims be better off but also he would be better off if he hadn't had power (Even continuing to live a life of luxury and celebrity as he does, he wouldn't be racked with guilt and constantly looking over his shoulder as he obviously is)
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It's just, you know How do you go around judging people before they've actually done anything saying "Well it's not a good idea to let you have too much power" Who judges, who gets to take that power away, and how can we trust them not to keep it for themselves
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It's kaleidoscopic, right, like everyone right now is talking about how fucked up Sia's relationship with Maddie Ziegler is and how fucked it is that people let it go on for so long, but Sia herself says she's a survivor of abusive relationships and her art was her way of coping
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Before Sia shat the bed with her latest movie and made everyone double-take like "She's been doing this kind of shit with this girl since she was HOW old?", if you were the one standing in the way of her making her art with her muse everyone would call you the asshole
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All the other progressive academics circling around Avital Ronell saying that her unique way of working with her students was a form of queer feminist liberation, before her advisee gave a full accounting of how invasive and fucked up their relationship was
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Like I think this is a deep dark thing at the heart of how we look at art and creativity I did a thread before on how this is the message of the fucking Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie with Gene Wilder
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Charlie wins the game at the end because he understands that as abusive and unfair and tyrannical as Willy Wonka is, the Chocolate Factory is beautiful, it brings countless people joy, it's TOO IMPORTANT to let it be destroyed over his own grievance
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It's a choice people make all the fucking time Probably way more of the Great Artists and Great Works that make up our culture wouldn't exist than we're willing to admit, if everyone stood up for their rights
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It's a stereotypical way creative men leech off of women, but it's by no means a special power only men have And, like WandaVision is about it not being an easy question to answer
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The easy way out is to just say "Well fuck you, your pain isn't real, the very fact that you have power and privilege means this is just narcissistic wank and you can be dismissed" It's a very common response nowadays when a celebrity faces a "reckoning"
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But like WandaVision doesn't let you have that out The pain *is* real, and the suffering *is* real, and the power is *powered by the suffering* The citizens of Westview suffer precisely because her grief is so strong, because its echoing constant reality binds them to her
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And Westview *is* a beautiful thing, something that watchers like Darcy get "invested" in The twin boys and the false Vision are real within the Hex, and alive, and worthy of life in their own terms, and to give up the Hex is to sacrifice them
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The big moral question is whether it's worth it to keep on abusing and using and sucking the life out of the background NPCs to keep Westview going And of course the answer is no Of course it's an atrocity that must stop, no question But *actually doing it is fucking hard*
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They were trying to get at that with the last scene but ultimately I think, especially with the constraints that still being in the MCU put on them, they didn't have the range It's a tough fucking thing to try to confront and stay on that tightrope
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So much easier to fall on one side of the tightrope ("Wanda's a fucking monster and the Hex has no value, bullet through the head now") or the other ("It was a false choice and everyone calling Wanda a monster was a liar, the Hex can and should live on without harming anyone")
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(Lol okay if you want an obscure artsy reference to make you feel better than the MCU plebs -- This is essentially the final choice between the Bachelor's ending of saving the Polyhedron and the Haruspex's ending of saving the town in Pathologic)
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(And the Changeling's magical third option of saving both has a much darker cost in the end than either of the original two terrible choices)
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End of conversation
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