Two days ago I finished my first year of grad school. It was quite stressful (to say the least) and my attention span has been more comfortable with Tumblr than DW/LJ. But now that the summer is here and my workload's lighter, I'm going to try to engage more over here! Fingers crossed.

The first thing I wanted to do is say how pleased I am with S1 of Elementary. It concluded tonight and pleased and surprised me (as it has always done) in the very best ways. Looking back on the season long character arcs, I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Now for some spoiler-y meta (which I'm bringing over from Tumblr TBH)...

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blacksquirrel and I had a conversation where she jokingly referred to a popular article in Queer Theory where the author backs up an argument with references to an episode of South Park with a "Pakistani Leather Man" character. It was memorable and it kind of represented the mysterious/strange qualities of academia to me.

Reader, I have come across that article! I never thought I'd see the day. But here I sit, doing coursework at 4AM, mere weeks from the end of my second semester of grad school, exhausted as heck (honestly: the chair of our department calls the course requirements of our first year "heavy lifting"; another prof bluntly says it's "hazing") and looking forward to the summer like you wouldn't believe, working my way through "Mapping US Homonormativities" and there on page 79 is the section title "South Park and the Pakistani Leather Man."

Followed by an adorable little defense: "South Park itself. . . . [is] perhaps a minor cultural artifact, may appear superfluous, but the implications of its representational praxis and approaches are not. The 'trivial' must be attended to precisely because marking it as such may mask or obfuscate its deeper cultural relevance."

L O L

I have arrived!

My favorite part is when, after a description of the leather man character "being anally penetrated by a gerbil," the author writes "One can open up this analysis to the level of geopolitics as well."

OH HONEY REALLY

REALLY R U SURE

Basically folks on Tumblr who want to claim I read too much into TV shows need to read this article and see what that would really look like lol

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“[T]here are elders in the field [of history] gleefully announcing the passing of the theory they refer to as the ‘linguistic turn.’ … employing conceptual tools they would renounce in the study of medieval society or modern intellectual history, they chronicle a succession of phases or stages (from the political to the social to the cultural, to language, to the postcolonial and the global) that totalize history’s practices at any point in time. They reduce the theoretical preoccupations of ‘language’ to a simple thematics, it becomes an object of study (in a succession of them) rather than (what it is) an epistemological position… . There has been great celebration recently, in the pages of the American Historical Review and elsewhere, o f the passing of the linguistic turn (a stand-in for theory more broadly) and the restoration of the empirical imperative in contemporary historical work. Sylvia Schafer refers to ‘the sigh of relief’ that has accompanied this commentary. ‘Declaring theoretically informed historical writing to be a certain kind of ‘dead’ not only distances history ever further from modes of thought that have never sat well with its preferred politics of knowledge. It also suggests that no ‘new’ insight can emerge from history’s past.’ … This thematizing of history, its placement in a succession of ever-evolving objects of study… nullifies its epistemological threat and renders it simply out of style, passé.”
— Joan Wallach Scott, “Wishful Thinking,” Perspectives on History, 50:9 December 2012

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You might enjoy this clip Judi Dench did in character. It's ADORBS.

I've made gifs. :)

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you’ve come a long way, baby

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I’ve been chatting on various fan forums about the finale, and several topics keep coming up. Below are some of the topics that have been raised and my POV on them.

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I rewatched the pilot last night. I hadn’t seen it since it first aired, and watching it right after seeing the (amazing!) finale had quite the impact. The thing that stood out the most to me was, as always, Emily and Nolan’s relationship. Mainly, that it just does not exist there, not as it comes to. And both of them are a mess. They’re isolated and working out of the very worst of their coping strategies. Emily is all cold rage, destruction, and only allowing herself to connect with her dead father and then only through her plans to burn everyone who hurt them down.

Nolan is just… he’s relating to the world through tech to feel safe. He carries a video camera with him to a party so he can have emotional distance from the people around him. He sits alone at home. He wears those ridiculous clothes as some kind of armor. His social skills are at an all time low. Even Jack, the nicest guy on the planet, can’t stand him.

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After the praying, after the hymn-singing,
After the sermon’s trenchant commentary
On the world’s ills, which make ours secondary,
After communion, after the hand wringing,
And after peace descends upon us, bringing
Our eyes up to regard the sanctuary
And how the light swords through it, and how, scary
In their sheer numbers, motes of dust ride, clinging—
There is, as doctors say about some pain,
Discomfort knowing that despite your prayers,
Your listening and rejoicing, your small part
In this communal stab at coming clean,
There is one stubborn remnant of your cares
Intact. There is still murder in your heart.

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