captain america, one time

This is an amazing sequence

No doubt you ladies coul’ve handle these fools all on your own, but I couldn’t risk them harming the merchandise. What merchandise?

“that’s why i got closer, motherfucker!” // episode 114

if you read this section on someone’s wikipedia before the other sections you’re gay

we’ve been watching too much food network at my house lately. i made a thing

“Hamlet” by William Shakespeare

Public Theater, 2017

Starring Oscar Isaac, Keegan-Michael Key, Roberta Colindrez, Ritchie Coster, Peter Friedman, Michael Saldivar, Anatol Yusef, Gayle Rankin, & Charlayne Woodard

i will drop this here, and see who understand my joke….

Love it.

OK, that’s INSPIRED.

a little something i thought of during breakfast: when hamilton introduces himself to angelica, he doesn’t follow the melody of the song and instead uses the one in “my shot”. “my name is angelica schuyler / alexander hamilton” he’s in his own pace and expects others to keep up. but then angelica keeps up and uses his melody in her next question–where’s your family from?–and that is basically the melodic equivalent of what angelica describes in the next verse as “matching wits with someone at your level”.

OK OK OK yes but what is really vitally important is that something similar but also REALLY DIFFERENT happens again in non-stop:

alexander/i have to go/alexander!/look around, look around/HELPLESS

in which alex uses the sisters’ thematic line for the first time (i think?), but, goddammit alex, he’s got the wrong one: he know he should be trying to speak her language, but he’s on the schuyler sisters and she’s on helpless, and they’re so close but still not quite together.

but then in take a break, we again get the glorious giggly “angelica!/ELIIIZA” and now alex fills in the end at the right place!! (the schuyler sistersss) and THEN.

angelica sings “alexanderrrr” in the line of the schuyler sisters. his name isn’t said in the my shot style (staccato, alex-ander-hamil-ton), but is instead a higher schulyer sisters ELIIIZA (alexaaaaander. [hi]). angelica brings him into the schuyler fold and forces him to keep up with her.

which is really really fortunate, because that’s exactly what alex needs to be able to reconcile with eliza in it’s quiet uptown: speaking her melodic language of “it would be enough” - for the first time, really, truly, connecting with her at a fundamental level in her language.

alex is a schuyler as much as eliza is a hamilton and angelica doesn’t have to change her language to match wits: literally the current thesis statement of my life.

I’m tired but a quick doodle because I’m really emotional about sisters.

Do I know you? Yes.

Hamilton + Act 1

it’s so weird that harry potter took place in the 90’s

space jam was being filmed while voldemort was taking over the wizarding world

come on and slam and welcome to azkaban

It actually makes a lot of sense - JK Rowling was a single mother on benefits around the time when I was the child of a single mother on benefits.

In the late eighties and early nineties in the UK, the narratives of ‘the underclass’ and ‘the undeserving poor’ started to gain traction and become culturally dominant. In part this was because of the rising number of long-term unemployed people after the loss of industry, coupled with a rise in the number of one parent families and the recession of the early nineties and the accompanying trend towards social conservatism.

All of these gave way to a culturally dominant narrative about ‘scroungers’ (although that word has only come into wider use more recently) ‘costing the taxpayer money’, who are by definition lazy, feckless cheats who are ‘worthless’ by dint of the fact that they do not ‘contribute to society’ by paying [income] tax.

As a child in that situation, we could barely afford to eat or heat our home but I knew from a very young age to never admit to that - it was shameful. Sometimes, my mothers benefit would be stopped or be paid late (or our house would get broken into, or my mum would lose her wallet or any number of minor costs or inconveniences that would be complete calamities because we didn’t have any cushion to fallback on) and we would go through periods of intense poverty. 

These periods usually coincided with visits to the DHSS (Department of Health and Social Security - which was what the Department of Work and Pensions was called before they changed the name to sound more middle-class) which would sometimes entail days on end spent in a grey-carpeted waiting room while my mother waited for an appointment with an assessor for a crisis loan or to find out why her claim had been inexplicably closed or why she hadn’t received her Giro (a kind of cheque that can only be cashed at a Post Office, which was how all benefit claimants were paid at the time). 

The early nineties were a really dark time in Muggle Britain - you might have been revelling in Space Jam and Toy Story 1, but me and JK Rowlings’ kids were being made fun of because we couldn’t afford real school uniforms or being tutted at the school gate because our mums’ were ‘unwed mothers’. 

It’s not surprising to see this darkness translate into the Potterverse - JK Rowling was struggling to make ends meet and experiencing the stigma that went with claiming benefits when she began writing it. It’s arguable that the reason food features so heavily in the first two books is because JK Rowling wrote them when she didn’t have enough to eat.

In fact, there are a lot of parallels to be drawn between Muggle Britain and Magical Britain, from the recession that has the Weasley’s struggling to afford floo powder, the oft-abounding insults about the size of their families (a key feature in class-hatred), the childrens’ second-hand clothes and their reluctance to talk about money.

There are implications in the first book that while the Weasley’s have enough to eat, but not enough to eat well or to cater to specific tastes and preferences, and their homemade Christmas presents (which the children are embarrassed by) further allude to class, money and the stigma of not having them.

The Dursley’s make references to Harry’s parents being ‘on the dole’ (i.e. receiving government benefits) and this is clearly intended pejoratively (even though it is ultimately untrue) which serves to highlight how unpleasant but average middle-class muggles view benefit claimants. 

At the height of Voldemorts’ power in the books (The Order of The Phoenix), Diagon Alley is clearly in deep recession - Ollivanders Wand Shop, Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour and Scribbulus Writing Instruments are all described as having closed down and several other shops are described as being boarded up. This is a direct allegory to the social conservatism of the wizarding and muggle worlds which causes middle and working class people to become worse off while profiting the historically rich (or ‘pureblood’).

Similarly, the way that the Ministry of Magic is described could be seen as a clear reference to government buildings which JK Rowling would have been forced to visit to access benefits before she began writing Harry Potter. Harry is summoned to a hearing with no notice, then the time and location are changed with no notice in an attempt to avoid having Harry or Dumbledore testify at the hearing. These are well-known tactics of the DHSS at the time (and something that my mother certainly experienced), done to avoid reopening claims for benefits that had been wrongly closed. 

As magic is easily seen as an allegory for money - magic means prestige, social capital, access to an entire *literal* world, as well as transport, enjoyment, learning - the use of the the same room in the Ministry of Magic as the setting for muggle-born hearings in OoTP clearly correlates to the hearings and judgments and approvals for benefits (the receipt of which often made the difference between ones’ ability to continue to be a part of society) in Muggle Britain. 

TL;DR - Voldemorts’ rise, and the accompanying social conservatism in the wizarding world - class hatred, allusions to racism, recession, a small but powerful government - actually tallies really well with what actually happened in Muggle Britain in the nineties. 

Clara Bow, flapper, with hamburger sammich and Coke.

Urban ZigZag Francoise Gaujour

NY metal stairs relief have been much photographed … They are part of the urban landscape and in the collective imagination … just like yellow cabs. Like everyone I like them because they are unique with their original ironwork, often beautifully carved … they give poetry to the red brick facades.

Images and text via Francoise Gaujour