I’ll probably have more to say about this later bc I’m going to sleep soon, but I feel like, you, oliveroctavius, me, and a few other people are like the small minority I’ve seen anywhere who actually criticize TASM for the eugenics and ableism, and it honestly floors me that no one talks about it when it’s so blatant and tumblr loves bringing up disability and ableism otherwise? Like, it’s not even a case of how everyone has valid differing opinions and needs/wants when it comes to how the vast range of disabled experiences should be approached in fiction and there’s nuance in how to do even tricky, but real experiences like grief and loss – we’re talking about a film series where an antagonist meant to be sympathetic makes a speech about disability being a weakness of humanity that must be genetically eradicated to strengthen it (which is never deconstructed or challenged) and has no other characterization beyond sad amputee whose only interest for a decade is his missing arm, and where Peter is some kind of genetic chosen one whose Good Genes give him cool powers, and the whole mess with Harry.
The few other times on tumblr I’ve seen it brought up is to like, woobify (internalized) ableism even though the films go way beyond realistic personal struggle and straight into eugenics, and as someone with a Lizard niche in the Spidey fandom, I’m floored at how everywhere else, I keep seeing the TASM version of the character topping best adaptation discussions by a huge margin compared to way better takes with zero references of the ableism (this was not the case even a few years ago, idk what happened), and you can correct me on this if I’m wrong bc you would know more about the Harry side of things than me, but I feel like TASM!Harry used to be very popular and be moved, at least until MSM2017 and Insomniac came along. -spider-xan
Hi sorry my brother just graduated college. Anyways, in regards to the Harry side of things, I think a lot of the ableism SHOULD be pretty obvious, but apparently it’s not considering how little critical thought there is with all these villains. There’s the good genes bad genes eugenics of Harry wanting Peter’s blood to cure himself and then it doesn’t work because the spider only worked with Peter’s “good genes” (I don’t care about their in canon excuse, it still buys into this trope) and it reacted so badly with the TERMINALLY ILL CHARACTERS “bad genes” that he turned crazy and evil. And that’s ignoring my general distaste for disability or “insanity” being used primarily as a source of fear for the good, noble, and of course able bodied protagonists.
Something that’s also pretty weird that nobody mentions is the fact that like, Electro in these movies just HAD to talk to nothing. Normally it wouldn’t bother me as much or I might be willing to give it a pass, but it’s these movies, which just love to make their disdain for disabled people clear, so it comes off as super bad taste.
Like… I’m only scratching the surface. Why are there three people who consistently point out how ableist these movies are? Especially when as you said, tasm Harry is pretty popular! Ignoring my beef with him as a Harry Osborn, it’s so odd to me because so much of that is either like, sort of romanticizing his chronic illness and breakdown or getting off on that ableist insanity I mentioned earlier.
And when you bring it up, people get SUPER defensive. I don’t know if like, the amount of invalid criticism just makes people defensive or if it makes people think there’s NO valid criticism but like… these movies aren’t bad for the reasons you think. The issues they have are like… the writing saying that eugenics is cool and fun alongside generally iffy writing.
I believe I am still shadowbanned from Tumblr so I can’t reply to this which is what I actually wanted to do, but I remember the ableism discussion well. I think the portrayal of Harry in TASM hit me rather harder than it should have. (It’s my least favourite movie eveeeeer to this very day.)
I do remember posts going around Back In The Day about the ableism wrt both Harry and Electro in TASM 2 specifically, but you know what, I feel like when the Kindred arc in the comics rolled around a lot of Harry-ableism discussion sort of shifted to there. Now that TASM is being re-released I wonder if we’ll see more.
OOOUUGGHHH I’M GONNA CRY, Obi-Wan going after Anakin to check on him and tell him he believed in him and he had a place as a Jedi, all while still grieving Qui-Gon’s still recent death, like this guy just lost his father figure and he’s still stopping to ask, “Are you all right?” and reaching out to put a reassuring hand on Anakin???
EXCUSE ME I NEED TO GO LOOK AT THE ENDLESS FATHOMS OF THE OCEAN FOR AWHILE THAT IS ALL THAT CAN ENCOMPASS MY FEELINGS ABOUT THIS.
At some point in your life, you were taught that being slightly annoying is an unforgivable sin. Maybe it was by your parents or a teacher or a friend or a bully or an older sibling. But someone taught you that being slightly annoying is a crime punishable by death.
You must unlearn this.
You must accept that all people will be annoying at some point or another in their lives, maybe all of their lives, and that this is okay. It is okay for strangers on the bus, it is okay for children in the grocery store, it is okay for people on social media, and it is okay for you.
If you ever want to truly love your fellow humans, if you ever want to truly love yourself, you must have forgiveness for being annoying.
Thinking about how each protagonist in the Fallout TV show believes themselves to be the last true American because each of them is a different kind of American myth. Is being an American all about getting to be the lone gunslinger who exists in a world without rules or limitations? Is it about being controlled by a corporation in a hyper-consumptive society that only gives you the illusion of free choice? Is it about being in control of such overwhelmingly dominant military technology that you believe your power grants you the responsibility of being the world’s moral authority? Let’s do some drugs about it.
the idea that restrooms, locker rooms, etc need to be single-sex spaces in order for women to be safe is patriarchy’s way of signalling to men & boys that society doesn’t expect them to behave themselves around women. it is directly antifeminist. it would be antifeminist even if trans people did not exist. a feminist society would demand that women should be safe in all spaces even when there are men there.
btw this is maybe the single most key distinguishing feature of the terfy strains of radical feminism, the seed all the rest of it springs out of: they have absolutely no faith in the ability of feminism to actually destroy patriarchy. they do not think feminism can truly build a better world. they cannot really even imagine that possibility. they think patriarchy is an inevitable natural consequence of unchangeable biological facts, and therefore the goal of feminism can only be to mitigate the worst effects of patriarchy, not to get rid of it.
they can imagine a society where women get some designated safe spaces without men around. they cannot imagine a society where the presence of men is not inherently a danger to women.
Lmao how is this real, “the ambient sounds of the world were wrong, sir”
Imagine paying Columbia-amounts of money to be taught by someone with kindergarten-level art literacy. Like, motherfucker, the wholeass point of 4’33” is to emphasize how every performance of live music is inextricably linked to the ambient sounds of the context in which it is performed!!!!!!! Paying attention to and thinking about thecontext of the performance is the point of the song!!!! If the point was to hear birds chirping and people walking, John Cage would have fucking recorded that instead. Insisting that art is only good when contains good things and makes you feel good things is baby-level art criticism. How the fuck is this dude a professor.
Actually I’m not done going off yet. This pisses me off so much. How can you teach the humanities and be so obstinately ignorant? Like bruh, if the chanting outside makes you feel uncomfortable and upset, maybe you should take about four and a half minutes to contemplate why you feel that way. During that time, you might consider things such as: why are there students chanting? What are they protesting? Why do they feel so strongly about this issue that they’re willing to disrupt their lives to bring attention to it? Should I also feel as strongly? Should I be protesting with them? Is my desire for silence more important than the students’ desire for justice? Why do I find the noise they’re making more upsetting than the genocide they’re protesting?
Being like “loud noise make me angy 😠” is so fundamentally incurious and baby-brained it’s honestly unbelievable
I’d like also to just contrast this with Palestinian poet Marwan Makhoul:
In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political
I think my number one Harry Osborn fancast might be Doug Jones (albeit when he was somewhat younger, considering the characters age). He is very much giving me dorky dad Harry, and he’s definitely got the tall and lanky built of Sal Buscemas take on the character
And not only that, but I believe his experience with monster roles could lend itself perfectly to the Green Goblin too. I’ve always been a fan of the Goblin as an elaborate LARP costume over some kind of high tech armor. Playing up that fantasy creature aspect could give Harry’s Goblin a delicious campy and uncanny energy
That is a GOOD FANCAST. (Doug Jones popped up in something I was watching recently, but I didn’t recognize him without several layers of prosthetics, so all I could think was “That’s the most Harry Osborn-looking man I’ve ever seen.”)
