we literally ruined society when we invented the fourth wall. let’s bring back call and response. heckling, even. fuck you hamlet you dumb piece of shit kill your uncle or shut up

"When we took Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” into a maximum security woman’s prison on the West Side… there’s a scene there where a young woman is told by a very powerful official that “If you sleep with me, I will pardon your brother. And if you don’t sleep with me, I’ll execute him.” And he leaves the stage. And this character, Isabel, turned out to the audience and said: “To whom should I complain?” And a woman in the audience shouted: “The Police!” And then she looked right at that woman and said: “If I did relate this, who would believe me?” And the woman answered back, “No one, girl.”

And it was astonishing because not only was it an amazing sense of connection between the audience and the actress, but you also realized that this was a kind of an historical lesson in theater reception. That’s what must have happened at The Globe. These soliloquies were not simply monologues that people spoke, they were call and response to the audience. And you realized that vibrancy, that that sense of connectedness is not only what makes theater great in prisons, it’s what makes theater great, period."

Oskar Eustis on ArtBeat Nation

I was in the front row of a Hamlet performance where the "Am I a coward?" was directed at me and I, being a no-impulse-control gremlin, hollered back "Yes!!" (they'd primed us ahead of time that audience interaction was encouraged). Hamlet got right up in my face as he kept talking and just kept going until I gently pushed him back; I forget what line it was on when it happened but he took the direction of the push and reeled away across the stage.

This meant that I had marked myself as someone willing to be fucked with, and so during the graveyard scene later he approached me again. "Here hung those lips that I have kissed--" he booped my mouth with the skull's "-- I know not how oft."

I have stories related to me from those at Blackfriars, the American Shakespeare Center (they play in a replica of the original Blackfriars, with modern safety conventions like lightbulbs in the chandeliers, but a great dedication to the way structure shaped the original work in the original Blackfriars. Their house is only about 45 ft deep (roughly 15 m I think), which is about the max distance two sighted people can be from each other and still make eye contact. They play with the stage and house equally lit, they talk to the audience, they enter from the audience, they whip up crowds from within the audience. It’s fantastic. But anyway, on to the stories.)

1. Hamlet. There’s a scene where Hamlet sees Claudius praying and debates whether to kill him now or wait (because if Claudius dies praying he will automatically go to heaven). The actor playing Hamlet was genuinely asking the audience the questions in the speech, and when he got to “and should I kill him now?” someone in the audience shouted “YES KILL HIM HE NEEDS TO DIE!” Hamlet took the entire rest of the monologue to that person, enumerating his reservations so persuasively that they started to nod in agreement.
2. Romeo and Juliet. In this production, the fight between Mercutio and Tybalt happens in several rounds, of which Mercutio won the first. Mercutio’s actor made the choice, upon his victory, to run down the audience with his hand out for high-fives. He decided this in rehearsal, so he had time to plan for the three responses people would probably give him: a) a high-five back; b) being stunned and not reacting; and c) the old “oops too slow.” What this Mercutio did not prepare for was the audience member who panicked and deposited their handful of M&Ms into his open palm. The way I heard it, Mercutio was still processing this when Benvolio came up beside him and stole the M&Ms out of his hand to eat them.
3. King Lear. Edmund has a speech in which he asks whether he should marry “Goneril? Regan? Both? Neither?” Again, the actor was legitimately asking the audience, and again he’d prepared for the audience to respond in favor of any of those choices. What makes it even cooler was that the next line is “Neither can be enjoyed while both remain alive,” which works as a response to any of those options. One night, though, Edmund got his answer as “KILL THEM BOTH AND TAKE THEIR MONEY!” To which he gleefully agreed, “Neither can be enjoyed while both remain alive!!”

All of this, but also all art is inherently political, even Bay's Transformers franchise. It's fair to say that the Bay films don't have a very well written political message, because their overall writing is in fact rather poor, but to say that they're nothing but spectacle with no political substance would be incorrect. As not only is it impossible to create art without some sort of political message beneath it, but the Bayverse movies also contain a rather strong pro-military political message.

The spectacle in the Bay Transformers films is done up to make US military look really freakin' cool so that the people watching the movies will be more likely to join the military themselves. These movies have the Autobots (the good guys) attack human operated bases in the Middle East to "keep the peace" as well as focus on the destruction of US cities, which is of course done at the hands of hostile aliens (The Decepticons) and then promptly rescued through the power of the US military (and military sanctioned Autobots). Not exactly a well written narrative interwoven throughout a finely crafted story, but that's far more than just noise and color. These movies are one of the many franchises that have been touched by the military-entertainment complex, and have no doubt been purposely created in this way in response to 9/11.

Movies can in fact be bad/poorly written/seem to be nothing but noise and spectacle and still have a political message they're trying to push, intentionally or otherwise, and in the case of Bay's Transformers films it is undoubtedly intentional, even if the movies themselves aren't all that well written so the message is far from subtle or deep.

It's important to remember that just because a movie may contain a message that you don't personally like or believe in, it doesn't mean that said message is no longer there, and/or can't affect other people and their personal beliefs. A poorly written political message is still very much a political message, whether it's one you like or not

But if we want to talk about dead children, imagine this stadium filled with children.

That's 10,000. There aren't even enough seats. We need 2000 more. That's how many children we know Israel has killed since October.

That we know of, mind you. They destroyed the ways to count the deaths, and the people counting them, so this is very much an inaccurate number. It's in truth much higher, possibly multiple times as many. We have no way to be sure. Israel made sure of that.

This doesn't even count all the children killed in the last 75 years while the world was silent. This brutality is much older than Hamas.

And this is just the children. Adults don't deserve starvation, rape, torture, and genocide either. No one does.

The truth is that Hamas could have done every single thing they are accused of ten times over, and it wouldn't matter right now. There isn't a single goddamn thing that can justify genocide in any circumstance. Period.

Israel will answer for its crimes against humanity, and Palestine will be free.

And to be clear, if anyone tries to twist this genocide into justification for antisemitism, fucking die. You're no different than Israel. Jewish people have been fighting against this evil since the beginning, long before the rest of the world knew or cared. You don't get to stir up nazism 2.0 just because Israel claims to speak for Jewish people (they don't). Don't forget just how many Palestinians were and are Jewish. And don't forget just how poorly Israel treats holocaust survivors. Israel is just standard western imperialism lIke any other. And they need to be stopped.

I have been saying this since the very beginning. Israelis are 110% complicit in the occupation, the destruction and the genocide of palestine. They say they hate Satanyahu but whoever comes next is gonna be the very same and they know that. their issue with him has nothing to do with palestinians and their safety and right to exist, they couldnt care less about that.

The issue here is they blame natanyahu for not committing these crimes extremly quietly so they wouldnt get this justified, hatred from the world for the crimes they know them and their previous leaders have been committing since 1948 and prior.

Israelis absolutely do not give a fuck about Palestinians. They want occupied Palestine for themselves, if this wasnt clear enough.

I don’t mean to be rude; but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this, does anyone have any examples?

• Supernatural
• Doctor Who (Steven Moffat specifically)
• Sherlock (Steven Moffat specifically)
• Actually Steven Moffat is basically just this sentiment given human form.
• A version of this happened with The Magicians, tbh. Though instead of expectation: men, reality: women it was expectation: smug nihilists, reality: mentally ill queer folks.
• Arguably Game of Thrones.

If we broaden it outside of television…I think Star Wars falls into this, at least the sequel trilogy. Maybe the MCU as well. And I can’t help but think of every band that’s ever complained that their fanbase is mostly women. 5 Seconds of Summer comes immediately to mind.

In general, most white male creators seem to have this massively entitled mindset where they want–and think they deserve–the time, attention, and enthusiasm that creative fandom (i.e. the side of fandom more dominated by women) is known for.

They want our eyes for ratings, our word-of-mouth for free publicity, our metas for social media buzz, and our spending power for merch and cons. But they don’t want us. And they don’t really want the responsibility of telling a story to a thoughtful, engaged audience, regardless of that audience’s demographic makeup. They just want to be praised for whatever schlock they cough up.

And like any other spoiled brat, they will break their toys before they share them.

It goes all the way to the top for kids shows. Toy sales will crash a show. Makes sense, but if those toys are gendered for boys instead of the female viewers, they won’t usually switch up the marketing and move them to the girl aisle. They cancel the show outright.

Mind you it is perfectly possible to make the switch in marketing, but execs would rather throw it all out than have something that doesn’t perform well with male viewers. For example the Rey merch was not expected to be popular, for some reason, there had to be public outcry to get merch of one of the main 3 protagonists. A PROTAGONIST. The fact that she wasn’t a huge part of the 1st launch says a lot already.

And what happened when female fans got too invested in the Sequel Trilogy? The entire writers room didn’t necessarily lash out, but they sure forgot how to behave.

Young Justice

Paul Dini: Superhero cartoon execs don’t want largely female audiences

#WhereIsRey (initial)

#WhereIsRey (ongoing)

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was designed to be the opposite of The Last Jedi

You’re all sitting on the hot take of the decade tbh

And yet when they fond out that boys were watching MLP:FIM in droves, they had NO PROBLEM with it.

#SONS OF ANARCHY!!!!!!!!!!!!!#LITERALLY SONS OF ANARCHY IS THE BIGGEST EXAMPLE OF THIS LIKE EVER#kurt sutter wrote that show for MEN and ended up with an overwhelmingly female audience#because he’s actually a good writer and knows how to develop characters well and wrote excellent female characters#but once he realized that his audience was almost entirely women he literally took it out on tara and gemma in the show#but like tara specifically#he resented her character for being a huge draw for female viewers so he tore her development to shreds and killed her#in the most brutal gut wrenching way possible#kurt sutter you will pay for your crimes#i actually wrote a manifesto about this on one of my old blogs i should try to find it sldkjsldfjsdljf#long post (via@m-oonknight)

OMG YES. I LOVED Sons of Anarchy, especially the women and then I got to season 6 and it was like - everything was just tossed in the trash? And like, why did Sutter hate that Tara drew tons of attention? That should have been a good thing! He should have been like “Hey folks, this girl’s getting us more viewers, let’s put her in more scenes!” It just doesn’t make sense to me. MEN don’t make sense to me.

The 100 too. I’ll never forget how Jason Rothenberg would attacked female fans on Twitter and mock them in interviews, and then post links to male fan discussions on Reddit to praise and thank them. In his goodbye letter to the show he SPECIFICALLY thanked Reddit and it was so disgusting.

Star Trek from TNG on was also a boy’s club, even though the TOS fans were mostly women. Women, in fact, who literally created modern fandom with their zines. But after TNG it was all, “Women don’t understand Star Trek, only smart men hur dur.”

I think it would be harder for us to find examples of when this DIDNT happen than when it did. It happens all the time.

Doesn’t stop it from boggling the mind

(though it could probably start to make some sense if you follow the money past audience bases to maybe a couple of investors or like a rich patron … 🤔)

Stooooop I just wrote a masters thesis on this shit. Media creation and distribution is a means by which dominant power structures consolidate their hegemony. Dominantly situated creators get upset when the audience they attract isn’t the audience they wanted, because they view the whole creation and sharing of the fiction as an exercise to sustain kyriarchal conditions that benefit themselves. When the audience is Other, they see it as a failure of those efforts and lash out.

Simply, they’re trying to assert a particular worldview via fiction, and upon getting confronted with something else, begin foot stamping. It’s not just men wanting male attention and gatekeeping. It’s that the fiction in the first place was an attempt to curate dominance and whoopsie! they miscalculated.

(anyway if anyone wants to read 35k words of philosophy about this, hmu)