Seth Harris

My Favorite Disturbing YouTube Videos and Channels

Unedited Footage of a Bear

Adult Swim decided in 2013 to experiment with its deep late night programming. They took the banal infomercial that you come across if you’re up in the wee hours and turned it into some of the most powerfully transgressive film making out there. Most of you have probably seen their most famous output, Too Many Cooks, which, while funny, is nowhere near as powerful as this short film from director Alan Resnick. It starts out with what looks to be footage of people watching a grizzly bear, then becomes a commercial for allergy medicine, and then evolves into a nightmare. I’ve watched this around half a dozen times and there is a lot to take from it.

This House Has People In It

Another short from Alan Resnick. This one is harder to crack than “Bear”. It’s a series of CCTV feeds from a home security system. There is weird stuff right from the get go. A couple arguing, a teenage girl lying stiff as a board face down on the floor, grandma watching a bizarre pottery show, the baby wandering around. Things just get more odd and you will need to watch every window to catch what’s happening in the yard. It all culminates in creepy climax that leaves you with tons of questions. This one has a very extensive alternate reality game attached to it. See if you can discover the clues and get lost in this strange art piece.

Hey Kids

Get your sport shoes ready! At first glance, the majority of the content on Hey Kids is just a series of repetitive and dumb finger family videos. However, you eventually come across the strange bald figure with over-sized eyes and mouth superimposed on its face. It speaks in a hard to pin down accent and talks in almost nonsensical sentences. The more recent videos on the channel seems to show an obsession with the Illuminati and creepypasta. Is there meaning behind this string of increasingly insane gibberish? What mind generates all of this demented content?

Poppy

I always felt there was something off about Ariana Grande. I thought the apparent overnight flip from tween star to twerking Molly enthusiast by Miley Cyrus was bizarre. The entire assembly line of female pop in America is strange to me. Even stranger than American pop is the highly manufactured KPop and JPop scenes. This is where we come to That Poppy. She is influenced by the Asian pop scene and has a very polite demeanor in all her videos. Watch closely though, something is wrong with Poppy. All that Illuminati iconography in her video for “Lowlife. Such cryptic sentiments in her videos. Something is wonderfully wrong with Poppy…

Moving, Reading, and Digital Media

Google Infinite Bookshelf — The experimental digital bookshelf developed by Google.

I just moved into a new house. We bought it, first time homeowners. After having moved multiple times in my 20s, I decided I would spend the money to hire professional movers to handle the furniture and heavier boxes. It went off so smoothly, I was literally stunned. They arrived at 8am and by 11:30am everything was in the new house and unloaded off their truck. Yet, somehow I still ended up pulling a muscle in my neck (I blame unhooking some very tight washer hoses).

One thing we did before moving was sell off most of our books and DVDs. Once upon a time, I was a rabid collector of physical media. I used to go into bookstores and have an almost euphoric and disorienting haze come over me, being unable to recall a single title or author I might look for. I started keeping a piece of notebook paper folded up in my wallet with these names in case I happened to go into a bookstore. When I was in college, we would regularly visit the local Blockbuster and pour through their cheap DVD selection, growing my collection by dropping $100 a trip. Once I was out of college, I hit some hard times and sold off most of my DVDs for some coin to buy groceries with. Slowly but surely they whittled down.

Now, I only have a very minimal collection of things I consider fairly obscure: Seasons 1 & 2 of Frisky Dingo, Wainy Days, Seasons 1 & 2 of Upright Citizens Brigade, and so on. Mostly things that aren’t easily accessible on the streaming platforms I subscribe to. I no longer own many physical comic books and my weekly reading is done purely digital. For literature, I mostly read off the Kindle app on my iPad and only buy a physical book if I don’t have a digital option.

Throughout my graduate school days and into the present I still hear people bemoan this shift from physical to digital. Whether it be with movies, books, music, or anything else you can find someone who is slightly saddened by a decrease in the tangible. I remember sitting in the Writing Center where I worked at my university, where freshmen came to have their papers critiqued and revised, and having conversations with a couple fellow tutors who were totally against the idea of reading off a screen. Having been through an involuntarily move that forced by books into storage I was on the side of the digital. Their arguments touched on the sensory aspects of a physical literature mostly (feel, smell). I have begun to think of this as the fetish-zation of physical media. The same way a music lover might wax poetic about the groves on a vinyl record, so does the book lover talk in erotic tones about the smell of a used bookstore and the crack of a hardback spine. I personally just don’t get much from those sensory experiences.

Digital means a few different things to me. Because of my personal experiences moving so often I felt that my physical books were either not accessible or a burden I had to think about when going from place to place. Since I got my first iPad and started reading digitally reading and literature feeling freer to me. I can carry my whole library around with me no matter where I go. I can stream movies where ever I have a connection and I can sideload video files onto my devices for watching whenever I choose.

In a world where we have to become increasingly more aware of our impact the environment, moving from printed paper texts to digital ones seems like a necessity. I admit I haven’t researched the carbon impact of a tablet computer versus analog media, but I would have to think that over time the digital option is more environmentally friendly. It also takes less space on a planet that is becoming increasingly overcrowded. Being able to compress media is one way we create more space for each other and our environment.

Digital media is also revolutionary is what it can do for developing countries. Distributing books to people in rural, poor areas through pre-loaded devices would be easier in a digital format. In the same way I would have been able to move my library throughout my 20s if it had been digital, I can imagine how helpful it would be for refugees to hold onto their books despite having to leave their homes. Add in digital photos as a way for them to preserve memories instead of the sad reality of leaving physical photo albums behind when you don’t have time to pack up your life.

There’s a lot of fears around dropping physical media that are very valid. The infamous case of Amazon wiping DRM copies of 1984 off users Kindles rang as one of the most ironic thing our culture has experienced. DRM should be a major concern for digital users. It’s the one great hurdle to making digital media a universal form of the free exchange of information. This ties into copyright law which transcends the digital and affects all forms of media currently.

The future is always uncertain. But I feel very passionate and sure that the future of media lies in the virtual world. The ability to compress an entire library into a single handheld device is one of the most revolutionary things humankind has accomplished. My generation and the next will likely be the transitioners, but in handful of decades reading on screen will be the norm. Like vinyl, there will always be a niche market for physical books, but the way to open the doors of communication across the globe will be in how we develop digital literature.

Games for Two – Above and Below

Above and Below
Designed by Ryan Laukat
Published by Red Raven Games
Purchase here

Above and Below is the story of rebuilding after disaster. Your village was destroyed by barbarians and you’ve moved your people to a new place to start a new life. However, you find beneath the ground is an intricate series of tunnels and the opportunity to discover great treasure. You’ll need to build new buildings, recruit new villagers, harvest resources, and explore the world below to win.

You start the game with three villagers: one builder, one trainer, and one explorer. All are capable of going cave diving, the explorer just has the chance of rolling better. You can spend income to purchase new buildings, each of which have special actions, or purchase new villagers to train. If you choose to go into the caverns you take a cave card and roll one die. The pips correspond to a paragraph number in the adventure book. Another player reads and gives you options to choose from. Different options provide different rewards but you won’t know what those rewards are until after you roll. The game is played out over seven rounds and at the end you calculate points based on the number of buildings you have, how many of each resources you’ve accumulated, your reputation score, and any bonuses you get from specific cards.

My wife and I had a wonderful time playing Above and Below. Sometimes you come across games that say they are for two players, but as you play them you realize the experience would be more complex and interesting with at least a third. Above and Below works beautifully as a two player game and plays surprisingly fast. My wife actually commented that she wished there were a few more rounds. In total we played three full games. The first game was naturally a lot of figuring out the mechanics and making sure we were comprehensive in our actions. About halfway through that first session things began to click. By the third game, we were deep in the strategy and realizing what benefits delving into the caves beyond creating a very fun, light fantasy story.

Above-and-Below-board I was reminded a bit of IDW’s Machi Koro, a city building game, where certain cards are considered top shelf premium ones based on their cost and benefits. In Above and Below, there are six star buildings that provide multiple benefits if you can afford their large cost. There’s also four interchangeable star buildings that provide similar but less powerful benefits. Three pools replenish during your rounds of play: new villagers, regular buildings, and underground buildings. Each playthrough created vastly different villages for the both of us. Resources are harvested either from buildings or going into the caves. Once you have resources you can either stockpile them (which increases your income) or offer them up for sale to other players. At the end of the game you add up the resources you have stockpiled and multiply them by a point value based on where they were place on the stockpile track. So, selling resources can help the buyer increase that score while giving the seller a few quick gold pieces.

Above and Below is a game we would definitely play again. It takes a little more time to set up than the simple card games we had been playing, but nowhere near the set up time of games like Eldritch Horror and the like. If you are looking for a very deep, complex resource management game this is not for you. A perfect game to introduce someone to resource management without overwhelming them with too many actions and options. Because of the numerous building and variety of villagers, including special villagers that can only be recruited through going into the caves, there is a lot of replayability. Highly recommending this game.

Comic Book Review – The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol.1: Squirrel Power

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 1
Writer: Ryan North | Artist: Erica Henderson
Purchase here

unbeatable_squirrel_girl_vol_1_squirrel_power Without planning it, I decided to review the first volume of Squirrel Girl in the same week the internet is abuzz with Anna Kendrick pushing to play the character in a Marvel film. Kendrick has admitted she doesn’t know much about the character beyond that she is half-squirrel, so let me have the honor of helping to educate to Ms. Kendrick, and those of you in the audience who wish to read on further, about just who Squirrel Girl is.

Doreen Green was born with the genes of a squirrel mixed with her own. Not a mutant, but the victim of genetic tampering, Doreen first outing as a superhero had her teaming up with Iron Man and taking down Dr. Doom. Pretty impressive. She would later join the Great Lakes Avengers, a team that poked fun at the ubiquity of superhero teams in the 1980s. From there she ended up the nanny of Luke Cage and Jessica Jones’ infant daughter and is now solo in her own series. She is akin to Dr. Doolittle, except limited in her communication to just squirrels. She has a big bushy tail and can climb trees without strain.

In her first solo series, Squirrel Girl has just enrolled at Empire State University in NYC and has a roommate, Nancy Whitehead. Nancy is an introverted, take no nonsense character who at first has no clue her roommate is a superhero. There’s also Tippy Toe, Squirrel Girl’s sidekick, a squirrel who ends up converting an Iron Man glove into mini armor for himself. While our heroine takes on Kraven the Hunter in this first issue, I’m sure you can tell it’s not a deeply serious battle to the death. As Squirrel Girl encounters these villains she references her deck of Deadpool’s Guide to Super Villain cards.

Unbeatable_Squirrel_Girl_Vol_1_3 This is a very light-hearted view of the Marvel Universe and it is a pretty fun read. I would admit this is not my usual cup of tea when I read comics, but it wasn’t terrible. The jokes are very clever and I love the Deadpool villain cards that pop up every issue. While each issue is essentially a stand alone tale, there is a plot thread throughout of Galactus’ impending attack on Earth. The artwork is perfect this style of comic, very cartoony, conveys a sense of motion and kicks in when things get crazy. I saw a criticism online comparing this to Mike Allred’s X-Statix work as an insult. I think to have your art compared to Allred’s is a major compliment and Erica Henderson earns it.

If you’re getting annoyed and tired with a second Civil War and a little overkill with darker storylines in comics, Squirrel Girl provides a good palette cleanser. If you were a fan of the self-referential style of Giffen & DeMatteis’s Justice League or Joe Kelly’s Deadpool, Squirrel Girl continues that fun, less than serious tradition.

The Jungle Book (2016, dir. Jon Favreau)

junglebook2016

If you’ve seen the original animated Jungle Book then you pretty much know the story: Mowgli, the man cub adopted by the wolves and watched over by the panther Bagheera, pals around with Baloo the bear, has some misadventures, and ends up in a life and death battle with the brutal Shere Khan. This live-action with CG animals adaptation by Jon Favreau is the latest in Disney’s new trend of remaking past animated films with real people. They have had mixed success: Maleficent did add a lot of unseen story to Sleeping Beauty while Cinderella felt like a banal retread of familiar territory. The Jungle Book is somewhere in the middle. While not the first live action attempt at the story (see 1994’s version with Jason Scott Lee as adult Mowgli) it is very entertaining and the effects are done well enough that you don’t have to travel the uncanny valley for an hour and a half.

Neeli Sethi as Mowgli is our singular human presence (save for one flashback) of the entire film so he immediately has a ton of weight to carry. He does a champion’s job though there is the occasional “act-y kid” moment which can be forgiven when you realize he was playing to some simple hand puppets and green screen. The voice work is great and each actor matches their role. Bill Murray is a perfect Baloo and Ben Kingsley sounds just like Bagheera should. I was not a great fan of Christopher Walken as King Louie though. His casting in anything just feels like a stunt at this point. Lupita Nyong’o voice Raksha, the wolf mother of Mowgli and brings a lot of emotion to the role. My favorite of them all was Idris Elba as Shere Khan. Both his vocal performance and the work of the animators created such a terrifying and insidious villain.

The songs are minimized from the 1967 animated picture to this one. The closest we get is Bear Necessities and just a hint of King Louie’s “I Want to Talk Like You” number. Scarlett Johansson voices Kaa the Serpent and just touches on “Trust In Me”. The personalities are all as you remember them and the plot beats pretty much hit the same as the animated original. The one big divergence and my one major hang up is the way this film chooses to conclude. In the original Rudyard Kipling “Mowgli” stories he ends his time in the jungle upon discovering his birth mother and in the animated original he leaves after seeing a girl about his age come to get water for the village. This version decides to forgo Mowgli ever having a real struggle between the jungle and the village. There’s some brief tension but it ends with him playing around with his pals in the jungle.

For me, Disney’s bittersweet endings like The Jungle Book, Winnie the Pooh, The Fox and The Hound, and others were important. These are metaphors for transitioning from the innocence of childhood to learning about the difficulties of life as an adult. Now, maybe they didn’t need to have Mowgli go back to the village but I never felt like the character struggled with it as much the script would have liked me to believe. The village ends up serving as a convenient plot device for the third act but then is forgotten about. Maybe they have plans for sequel to revisit this more, but I went from really loving this film to feeling a little off at its conclusion.

Comic Book Review – Clean Room Vol. 1 – by Gail Simone

Clean Room Vol. 1: Immaculate Conception
Writer: Gail Simone | Artist: Jon Davis-Hunt

cleanroom 02 Two women marked by death attempting to understand the evil that lives in the shadows. This pretty much sums up the basic concept of Gail Simone’s first venture into Vertigo Comics territory. Chloe Pierce’s fiance killed himself and she miscarried their child. Now she wants to know what a Scientology-like cult run by Astrid Mueller. Astrid is a German woman who was brutally run down by a madman in a car when she was a child. After that experience she began to see what we might call “demons”. However, the series makes an effort to challenge our preconceptions about the nature of these monsters. In this first volume, we follow parallel stories of Astrid confronting a literal demon from her past while Chloe must decide if she trusts Astrid’s cult while attempting to figure out why her fiance killed himself.

I can’t say that I have ever intentionally followed the work of Gail Simone. Birds of Prey and Batgirl sort of passed me by. I have always loved her Secret Six titles, spotlighting a rotating cast of villains and anti-heroes who are less than happy to be working together. I’d had tremendously high hopes for her Wonder Woman run around 7-8 years ago and was really disappointed. Her Red Sonja work has been on my Must Read list for awhile. I think I entered into Clean Room with a pretty open mind, interested to see what Simone would do in the less prohibitive environment of Vertigo Comics.

Clean Room throws us right in the middle of things very fast. I had to re-read the first five pages a couple times due to how quickly the stakes are set up. The entire first issues feels paced way too fast in a effort to pit Chloe and Astrid against each other. It takes awhile for the character development to come out and even by the conclusion of this first volume it feels like a two hour pilot for a larger tv series. As you would expect with most Vertigo work, there is a lot of sex and violence. The gore is pretty much an essential element in this type of story and it goes to just the right places to make you uneasy and creeped out. One scene of a demon possessed man digging into cheeks and twisting the skin of his face upside down comes to memory. The series really gets interesting when it is slowly unraveling the world around the Mueller cult and their work with celebrities. We get to see the inner workings of the organization and how they cleverly and efficiently deal with problems.

cleanroom06 The artwork is very uneven. Artist, Jon Davis-Hunt draws an awesome demon, and brings a lot of interesting variety to their designs. Elements of insects and sea life are interwoven into his monster work and this adds to a sense of the larger than our perception Lovecraft style of horror. However, his normal humans often look like mannequins. His figures are very posed and there is a lack of sense of movement through the panels. It improves as the series goes on, but still retains a stiffness. His linework is very smooth and detailed though.

Clean Room has a very promising concept and I will definitely continue reading through the next couple arcs. The mystery behind the “demons” is intriguing and if written cleverly could end up being a great longform horror story. There’s room for improvement on the art, but the overall series is one of the best offerings I’ve seen from Vertigo lately.

John Wick (2014, dir. Chad Stahelski, David Leitch)

john wick

I remember seeing the trailer for John Wick a couple years ago and thinking “You can’t be serious. Because they killed his dog?” Now that I’ve seen the film, I sit here thinking…well, I’m not sure. The film tells the story of retired assassin John Wick, played by Keanu Reeves. His wife died suddenly and not long after he receives a dog that was her last gift to him. The dog is brutally killed by Iosef Tarasov (Alfie Allen), the son of a Russian crime boss, and this pulls Wick back into the game he thought he had left behind. Throw in supporting roles from a bevy of character actors: Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, Willem Dafoe, Adrianne Palicki, Lance Reddick, and David Patrick Kelly (Warriors! Come out and play-ayyy!).

This film felt like a comic book. That is it felt like I picked up the collection of “John Wick Returns”, a mini-series wherein a popular crime comics character was brought back after an absence of a few years. The way we were introduced to the world and its inhabitants without tons of exposition to explain themselves, made me feel like this was a world I could go back and read about in other titles. Of all the places and characters the world was peppered with, I enjoyed the Continental, a hotel that caters exclusively to assassins and paid killers, the most. I also loved the sense of history John had with everyone. We have no idea what the details are to these connections, but it felt like there would be dozens of stories to tell. Marcus (Willem Dafoe), John’s mentor, held a lot history in his interactions with John and, like any good comic book universe, I am sure the equivalent of “John Wick Begins” detailing his training under Marcus would be amazing.

I would never say I was a huge action movie fan so I was not the target audience of this film. Not being an expert on the craft and technique behind movie fights, I thought everything felt realistic. Nothing John did was too incredibly unreal. If you’re used to more hyper-stylized fighting you might think this was a more toned down version, but it looks like the way someone like John Wick would really fight. It’s funny now that I think about it; the action which you would expect to be the exaggerated element is played fairly real while it’s the world building that goes over the top.

There’s definitely some nods to classic action directors: The shooting out of the glass walls made me think of John Woo. Wick is your archetypal silent, stoic killer along the lines of a lot of French noir crime films.The acting is fine. I didn’t see any performances that blew me away, everyone sort of knew who they were playing and did that. I always love seeing David Patrick Kelly in anything and I did really enjoy the mannerisms he brought to his “clean up crew” character.

There’s a sequel on the horizon and I’m interested to see what they do. This film really plays like “the final John Wick” story and the stakes used to pull him back into action are about as intense as they get. Something taking place before this would work but I would like to see this older, broken Wick continue however they decide it might work. This isn’t going to be one of my favorites of the year, but it is an enjoyable film that kept my attention the whole run time. If you enjoy films with sense of a deep, developed world then I definitely think John Wick will deliver.

Movie Review – Swiss Army Man

a24 visions

Swiss Army Man (2016)
Written & Directed by Daniels

swiss_army_man_SD3-_758_426_81_s_c1

This is the film that had people walking out of its Sundance screening. This is the film about the farting corpse with superpowers. This is also a musical. If you’re still there, let’s go a little more in depth with very unique film.

Hank is stranded on a desert island about to hang himself when he glimpses a body washed up on the shore. Hank names the corpse Manny and discovers that his new friend has an array of superpowers, from using his farts to act as a jet-ski to becoming a human water fountain and more. The duo begin an odyssey to return to civilization and reclaim the love they think is there’s. And things get even stranger.

Continue reading “Movie Review – Swiss Army Man”

On the Soul of Arya Stark

arya-stark

After posting my quick thoughts on HBO’s recently wrapped up shows I noticed a comment online referencing what I referred to as Arya Stark’s “dark path”. The comment mentioned how there was no critique of the bloodshed dealt by Jon Snow or Daenerys Targaryen. One note of clarification, Arya Stark has killed ten people so far in the television series. Walder Frey was not her first, but just the latest in her path of revenge. But it I think Arya Stark is a topic worth exploring in some more depth so let’s do this.

First, I want to speak about my personal perceptions of Arya. When we are introduced to the character in the television series the actress playing her was around 12/13 years old. My view of the timeline of the series is not as much time has passed in show as in real life. For instance, the end of Season 5 with the murder of Jon Snow is immediately continued with the start of Season 6 with maybe a few hours passing. There may be some reasonable fan timelines that work it all out, but from my own personal perception Arya is not far removed from when we first met her. The same goes for Bran, I still see him as the child he was when we met him.

Now, my teacher brain sort of takes over when it comes to Arya in certain instances. If I were to meet a child in their early teens who had these sorts of anger issues and had composed a revenge list I would be very worried for that child, and I hope you would be too. We recognize that as unhealthy behavior. Spending your life plotting revenge against people is no way to live. When I say “dark path” I am thinking about the emptiness of pure revenge as a goal. Once all the names are crossed off on that list, then what? I believe you’re left with the trauma of reliving those deaths in your mind over and over again and that is destructive. Game of Thrones is chock full of characters in that situation, not the least is Arya’s old pal The Hound. While he puts forth a sense of callous detachment, he has been scarred psychologically by what he has done.

Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen have also killed their fair share. Jon, as leader of the Night’s Watch and leading the Battle of Winterfell, is responsible for the deaths of many. We don’t even have the time to get into the thousands of deaths Dany has personally ordered. Why do I perceive what they do as different from Arya? Jon Snow seems to be forced into almost every major action he takes and I view him as a character who should have a tragic ending. Everything about him so far sings of tragedy to me. I expect he’ll be given a heroic ending, which feels lazy. As for his actions, colored by his role as a military leader I have probably excused them. He didn’t kill for his personal benefit but out of duty. Now there is definitely a conversation to be had about the morality of that and as I have gotten older I have grown into more a pacifistic. Killing White Walkers is one thing, but killing anyone else should come with serious moral quandary. I would like to think the way the Battle of Winterfell was shown in the series highlighted how grotesquely chaotic being in the heart of battle was. The execution of Ramsay Bolton was also a moment that I felt very conflicted about. There is plenty of narrative justification to have him die a truly horrible death. Yet, I looked away from the screen as the dogs were set loose. It wasn’t because I’m uncomfortable with the gore, it’s just the larger moral implications as to what this does to Sansa. Yes, she murdered her rapist and he will never do that again. But as a person, I would think killing anyone is going to deeply damage parts of yourself. I think we can see that Jon Snow has shown lots of signs of a person with PTSD.

Dany seems to be the character we all cheer for when she goes about mass slaughtering. She’s killing slavers, right? So that makes it okay? No, they’re still people. People albeit who have probably killed lots of other and we know for sure have stolen the lives and freedoms of millions. More on this later. Dany’s goal can be summarized as “free the people of the known world and take back the throne of the Seven Kingdoms”. This goal lies somewhere between that of Jon Snow (duty) and Arya Stark (revenge). Freeing the slaves is a good thing. Taking back the throne of Westeros is a purely selfish thing. I’ve often thought why she shouldn’t be content to rule the lands where she is. The people love her, she seems happy among them. But there is this implied sense of the throne being a rightful honor. How has the Iron Throne been claimed throughout history: One ruling house is killed by another ruling house who is killed by another, so on. No one is actually entitled to the throne other than someone who is simply good at killing for it. I think Varys has had a number of moments where he enlightens Tyrion and us to that fact. Any King or Queen is inevitably going to end up dead for the next King or Queen. To paraphrase Mel Brooks, “It’s *not* good to be the king.”

Revenge has been one of the most common themes in literature through the ages. And it’s been handled in a number of ways. Hamlet ends with everyone dead, Carrie ends with our protagonist losing her humanity while getting revenge, and The Count of Monte Cristo may be one of the happiest revenge stories. I think my views on revenge were shaped by a World Lit class I took in college where we read a few of the plays in The Oresteia. I had to brush the cobwebs away and do a little googling to get my mind refreshed on the details of these works. The Oresteia were a trilogy of Greek dramas about the fall of the House of Atreus. If you’re interested in reading them the three plays are Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides.

The dramas are about the cycle of blood vengeance. It begins with Clytemnestra plotting and carrying out the murder of her husband, Agamemnon when he returns from the Trojan War. From there it is one act of vengeance after another to “balance the scales”. The chorus of these plays are the Erinyes or Furies, the embodiment of revenge as justice. But as the story goes on the absurdity of this type of justice is highlighted. When the gods become involved, particularly Athena, it’s decided that man must develop a system of laws that take retribution out of the hands of the wronged and works to truly balance the scales. The Erinyes are transformed as a result and become the Semnai or Venerable Ones. This series of plays was focused around ideas of law and justice that were being developed in Athens. It was the birth of social progress and justice, stepping away from blood retribution and finding a better more humane way. So anytime I watch or read something where a protagonist is getting a violent style of personal justice I get a little uncomfortable. I understand the buttons it pressed in our brains of narrative satisfaction, but I appreciate when writers show the aftermath as well.

With my view as Arya as a child, I see her as the hope that the culture could move on from the old ways of blood vengeance. Narratively, it is very satisfying to see her scratch the evil bastards who harmed her family off the list, but I truly hope that we get story about what she does after. If you focus your entire life around revenge, then what happens when you get your revenge? Dany at least plans to rule Westeros, her methods are very questionable, but at least that goal has additional goals implied if she achieves it. What does Arya do when the last name is scratched off the list? The story of how she processes that and tries, or fails, to become someone beyond vengeance could be a fascinating story. Or, like the end of The Searchers, we could see her unable to enter the gates of Winterfell, changed into something else and wander off into the winter wastelands. There is temporary satisfaction in the moment of the kill for her, but if she is to feel like a real person, I want there to be contemplation on what it means for her as human being to travel this path. There have been moments where Dany has had to face the folly of her naive choices, that’s something I would like to see for Arya. I think I like Arya so much that I want that character to have a meaningful ending beyond simply just killing the bad guys.

TV Reviews – Game of Thrones, Veep, Silicon Valley

Game of Thrones: Season Six

game of thrones

I almost dropped Game of Thrones during seasons 4 and 5 but kept trucking along. I am incredibly glad I did. This season felt like the well needed payoff for the set up for the previous two years. We saw characters coming together who we had anticipated meeting. There was resolution to a number of plots, not the least of which was the wandering and pointless “Girl With No Name” antics in Davos. That particular story did bring something to the table for Arya but it took way too damn long to get to its point. But overall, I was incredibly satisfied with this season.

Continue reading “TV Reviews – Game of Thrones, Veep, Silicon Valley”