It’s interesting to me when someone dies and their Wikipedia page almost immediately becomes past tense. Who does that? Is that someone’s job? Is it the grim reaper?
I walk into the bank with an open laptop and tell them to give me all the money in the vault, or else I edit Bill Murray’s Wikipedia page. 12 SWAT guys come in and shoot me in the nuts when I ask the teller what the WiFi password is
Baby It’s Cold Outside discourse is the same as Macbeth discourse.
Explain?
OK, so one of the big debates in Macbeth involves the scene in which Lady Macbeth talks Macbeth into killing King Duncan. People debate strenuously over whether it’s a scene of Lady M pressuring her reluctant husband into it, or whether it’s a scene of her sensing, due to their emotional intimacy, that this murder is something her husband secretly wants and has partially internally decided to do, and is arguing him into it in order to help him give himself permission to do it, in the same way that people see their loved ones wavering over the dessert menu and jump in with things like, “Go on, get the cheesecake, it’s your birthday!” Readers and scholars disagree strenuously about this – we even studied an incident in college in which two 18th century illustrators attended the same performance and happened to draw the scene the day after, producing two images that advanced opposite interpretations even though they’d seen the exact same actors do the exact same performance. It’s a big deal.
In the same way, the Baby, It’s Cold Outside discourse is about whether this is a song about sexual harassment, or whether it’s a woman singing about how she wishes she could spend the night with the guy she just had an excellent date with if only the neighbors wouldn’t talk, and him responding, “Stay, baby, it’s cold out! No one could expect you to go home in this!”
I really don’t know (baby stab his side) King Duncan’s a bro (baby cut through his hide)
I like him a lot (That decrepit old sot?) This plan ain’t so great (But what a king you’d make!)
The guards might worry (Darling, do it in a hurry!) His sons will rush the door (So knock them on the floor.)
I’m not such a knave (Bash his head with a stave) But I’d be a good king (Now you’re starting to think)
The dukes might all talk (But their chatter means naught) Say, love, what do you mean (You’d make such a king)
I simply must go (baby cut through his hide) There’s a war on you know (baby cut through his hide)
But what of his wife? (And what of his life?) It feels like bad luck (But that don’t mean much)
I’ve got a bad premonition (And I’ve got a mission) But that’s just superstition (My love, you’re a vision)
The witches said I’d rule (If they lied they were cruel) So baby let’s stab Stab his siiiiide!
of course, the irony about this cartoon – which I assume is meant to demonstrate shallow selfie culture desecrating the great classics – is that among other things a) hamlet is a disaffected young man suffering from depression and, frankly, deeply self-absorbed and b) the entire play is obsessed with the idea of performance and performativity and so absolutely hamlet taking selfies would be in the spirit of the original because a selfie is a new way of constructing the self through images
so what I’m saying is: fuck off culture snobs I’m coming for you
Yeah, my first thought was definitely “huh. That would make for a pretty good adaptation.”
absolutely. I can’t think of anything more in character for Hamlet than filling his snapchat with selfies taken in super-moody lighting with weird angsty captions about the peace of the grave, and no one can decide whether he’s losing his grip or if he’s a master of subtweeting
An adaptation of Hamlet told entirely through Hamlet’s SnapChats.
thranduil sleeps calmer knowing even if his son married a dwarf at least he married The Supermodel dwarf and singlehandedly crushed the hopes of single dwarves and dwarrowdams everywhere
this is my headcanon and you will never take it from me.
listen, just Listen for a second, okay.
Gimli Gloinul is from the line of Durin okay, he’s from the line of KINGS, his bloodline stands up against Legolas’ perfectly, if the elves and dwarves got their shit together for a hot second they would be like “YES, PERFECT, A DIPLOMATIC MARRIAGE TO BIND OUR HOUSES TOGETHER AND NEVER SHALL THE TWAIN THROW ONE ANOTHER TO DRAGONS…again.” because you have a king’s son and a king’s nephew which, well, I love Dain but he’s not an EREBOR KING and GIMLI IS FROM THE FAMILY OF EREBOR KINGS.
And Gimli acts like he’s from the line of Erebor kings, too, okay, he’s a diplomat and a warrior and a nobleman, he’s the sort of person who SAYS things like ‘faithless is he who says fairwell when the road darkens’ and stares down Elrond Peredhil in his own home when his strength and faith are questioned. And he’s the kind of person who swears his allegiance to people he barely knows because it’s Right and Good and Gimli knows it.
And Thorin Oakenshield was handsome, and his sister the lady Dis is beautiful, and Gimli’s cousins Fili and Kili were fine young dwarrows, and Gimli’s mother is a great beauty.
Basically my point here is that Gimli, proud strong gimli with his firebeard hair and bold laugh and mithril tongue and clever fingers, broke the hearts of everyone in Erebor and not a few people outside of Erebor when he married a goddamn elf. Like. Not even Arwen Undomiel (WHO MARRIED A GODDAMN HUMAN, it’s been a weird couple of years in Middle-Earth, everyone wonders strongly if they’ve been drinking too much). Like he’s not even marrying a great beauty of the elves, Legolas isn’t ugly by elvish standards but also he’s nothing particularly special, and he’s not a great diplomat, and he’s BARELY a king’s son because everyone knows that Mirkwood elves are…a little odd. Legolas is a big cheerful hunter who sings songs he doesn’t remember all of, who chatters to trees and has no sense of the right thing to say even if he’s developed enough self-preservation to know the wrong thing to say, and FOR THE LOVE OF MAHAL HE FIGHTS WITH A BOW.
“GIMLI” Gloin bellows “YOU TURNED DOWN THIRTY-TWO SUITORS FROM FINE DWARVISH LINES FOR THIS”
“Ignore him, amrâlime, he’ll get over it” Gimli says in amusement as he beckons Legolas over to his forge, where he’s carefully smithing mithril-inlaid gold marriage clasps that will grip fine elvish hair. It’s too hot in the forge to wear shirts, if you’re working. Every dwarf in twenty feet stops what they’re doing to watch Gimli’s biceps flex as he holds up a jewel for Legolas’ inspection.
“YOU COULD HAVE HAD A HAREM” Gloin wails from down the hall.
#a headcanon I never knew I needed until this very moment
I love the art but now I love the headcanon just as much
”I’m Thanos the Dark Lord and this is my pawn shop. I work here with my two daughters Gamora and Nebula, who both want to kill me. Everything in here has a story and a price. One thing I’ve learned after 21 years – you never know what is gonna come through that door.”
So one day a dwarf is talking to a human and finally realizes that when humans say woman, they generally mean “person who is theoretically capable of childbirth” because for whatever reason, humans assign social expectations based genital differences. (What a fucked up culture, the dwarf thinks.) But hey, better communication! So the next time the dwarf introduces theirself, they say, oh, by the way, I am what you call a “woman.”
And the trade negotiations just stop. They just stop cold. The tall people insist on speaking to the man, they insist on talking to the lady dwarf about all sorts of irrelevant bullshit, like recipes and childrearing and perfume
so the dwarf goes back home, enraged
and is like “BTW guess what happened, we’re all just going to be men forever now as far as the tall ones are concerned”
and everyone is justly horrified at this barbarism but they all agree to do whatever it takes to squeeze those tall bastards for all the resources they are worth
and the dwarves get surlier, and the trade agreements less generous
and the tall people are all “what a miserable and greedy race”
but really they’re just still nursing a grudge about how goddamn backwards and sexist the tall people are
because their best negotiator, one of their sacred cave people, got snubbed the instant she said she was capable of childbirth – and a mortal insult like that can never be forgiven
Just as an additional thought, we hear that women dwarves generally stay within the mountain and are a protected, guarded subset of the dwarves. There’s not many of them, so there’s an implication that women dwarves are too precious to be allowed out.
But what if this too is a mistranslation? What if the dwarves were talking to the Men and when asked “where are all your women?” they hit a wall. They whisper amongst themselves, and eventually come back with a question, “What’s a woman?” The Men are incredulous.
“Why, the members of your race that bear children, of course!“
More dwarven whispering.
They reach the conclusion that Men mean dwarves who are currently pregnant. Well! Of course those dwarves are currently safe within the mountain, well cared for and generally loathe to travel until the child is born. The Men take this to mean that all dwarven women are discouraged from traveling, and that their primary purpose is childbearing. Dwarves find this a satisfactory outcome, especially with the way Men treat their women, and so even when the misunderstanding becomes clear to them they never correct it.
Also the Pro-life movement used his line “a person’s a person no matter how small” on their literature without his permission, and he made them stop using it an apologize because he was pro-choice.
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