(This is... *extremely* resonant with my experience with older Asian-American guys Like eerily so)
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After a day of the petty humiliations of modern gig work even at the upper echelons of the modern service economy In a lonely apartment filled with screens Thinking about mowing the lawn and the smell of fresh-cut grass as the sun sets through the trees
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The nice job with the comfy office you've worked at for the past ten years and will continue to work at for the next twenty The boss clapping you on the shoulder over drinks, "You're an asset to the company, son" The pretty wife and the adorable kids, the big friendly dog
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The feeling of being safe, of being content, of *knowing where you're supposed to be* at all times Being a stupid dumb complacent shithead, but *having no reason not to be* one Being happy in your ignorance
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That smug Boomer confidence that the "OK Boomer" meme is about How many wins do you have to rack up, again and again, every goddamn day, to feel *that good about yourself* Sleeping soundly on a warm bed of accumulated handshakes and smiles and pats on the back and promotions
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Would it be so fucking bad? Is it so fucking bad to just *want* that? To want a *taste* of it? They drank deeply of that well their whole damn lives and I can't even have a *drop*
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Is it really a blessing to see the world more clearly, with fewer illusions? Is it "moral luck"? To have to live like this every damn day? The world with the focus and contrast turned up so you can see every goddamn wrinkle, crack and stain?
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I dunno man One thing that hits hard about this show is that it's very, very much a retcon Nobody when they were creating MCU Wanda Maximoff thought "Oh she's a throwback fan-of-the-past tradwife type, she dreams of being June Cleaver"
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Like they designed her to be the total opposite of that She rocks the lowkey punk look, she's a cool alternative radicalized anti-American Euro-teen Red leather jacket over a black dress with black fingerless gloves and whatnot Joined HYDRA
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But that's why the reveal works so well, I think It's the repressed, achingly earnest little-girl version of herself that she's been trying to hide and built a wall around for years since the bombs fell Something she never showed anyone, not even her brother, until Vision
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Like I absolutely headcanon that from the age of ten until the age of thirty Wanda would've angrily denied it if you accused her of ever having been a fan of black-and-white cheesy US dom-coms
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Even when she's chilling in the Avengers compound whiling away the hours watching TV by herself she's switched to watching Malcolm in the Middle, which is much more subversive and less embarrassing than being a fan of Dick van Dyke It's something she's in denial about
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I mean, isn't everyone? The 1950s American Dream is the most worn-out dunk target in, like, all of pop culture and academia It's cringe af to say you actually want that shit "I can't move to the suburbs, my soul would wither and die there", etc
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She doesn't admit it until she's completely broken down, eroded all the way to her exposed core, till she's lost absolutely everything real in her life and has nothing at all remaining but her dreams, her oldest dream, her last dream
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The last thing that changes in that scene is *herself*, after everything around her changes This defiant 21st-century badass rebel lady finally stepping into the empty hole in the picture and assuming the role of a Laura Petrie housewife
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And I really do think the subtext is there, especially with the jokes in the commercials about rubbing in the over-the-top sexism of the era "Yes, I know it's problematic Yes, I know it's demeaning Yes, I know I'm throwing other women under the bus LET ME FUCKING HAVE THIS"
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Wanda blasting Monica out of her fantasy world is like if the "Shh, let people enjoy things comic" came back armed with a shotgun and filled with intense feral rage
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Now that I think about it I dunno if this meta angle could possibly be intentional but it's definitely there This is absolutely a meta show about Enjoying Problematic Media About the sheer intensity of the emotion behind people who get ultra-fucking-defensive about their faves
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Like, that's my response to
@nberlat's thing about the moral links being muddled -- how almost no one who has a Problematic Life in the Suburbs is problematic in a way that you can point to them and say "These are the specific people you horribly victimized"Show this thread -
A lot of people's moral critiques *are* very hard to make literal and concrete, especially about "messages" and "attitudes" and "media" "This music is sending harmful messages about women, it's part of a larger social problem, and by playing it you're contributing to harm"
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And the obvious response is "Who the fuck am I specifically harming I'm not fucking 'brainwashing' anybody into thinking anything by listening to this music *myself* If I'm the one being brainwashed, I have the right to do that And I like it"
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And like They're right But their critics are also right If media never had any impact on anything then the world wouldn't be the way it is, and yet it's asking a whole fucking lot sometimes to ask people to give up something that gives them joy over seemingly abstract concerns
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I dunno, I think that as shallow as the writing may have been forced to be by being an MCU product there's absolutely something potent that resonated with a lot of people here Dreams don't die easy We don't *change* from our childhood selves so much as just add layers on top
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I dunno if this is intentional on the WandaVision writers' part I *do* know the FaWS writers were thinking about this stuff, hence the one Flag-Smasher who sheepishly admits he was a fan of Captain America as a kid (setting him up for his ironic fate)
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But like that one shot from the WandaVision penultimate episode (the true finest hour of the show) will stick with me a long, long time More than the "Love persevering" line That shot of the unexploded Stark Industries shell in the rubble, right next to the still-playing TV
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The blinking red light telling Wanda and Pietro they're going to die at any moment, while the Dick van Dyke show still merrily plays Wanda's favorite episode -- the one where Dick has a silly nightmare of his world falling apart but he wakes up and everything's fine
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The American Dream and the American Reality, side-by-side America's broken promise, in one shot
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These are the two things America gave the world They literally give you *both of them* at the same time, served on the same tray And you wonder why people's attitudes about this country are so fucked up? You wonder why people have no chill?
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