So we don’t have the full context for the “Smooth Criminal” scene of 3x11 yet. Accordingly, what follows represents an “unscientific” and rather flailing attempt to parse purely the body language of the scene in terms of power dynamics.
We have Sebastian. We have Santana. We have a whole lot of tension.
Feelings, feelings, feelings after the cut.
#This performance is so fucking intense #It has overtones that I’m not sure Glee is even prepared to explore #This is not about sex—this is about power and attempting to dominate someone #Sebastian attempts to dominate Santana #Both Sebastian and Santana have made their ‘careers’ using sex as a means to intimidate subdue and influence their peers #but in this situation? Neither of them has a sexual interest in the other #so the sex of this all becomes about something else: it becomes about power #Sebastian moves like a predator #He attempts to dominate Santana with his movements his voice and even the lyrical content of the song #But she won’t allow herself to be dominated #She sees what he’s attempting to do—just look at her face #in those first few gifts as she sizes him up—and she #refuses to respond to it in the way that he wants. #She isn’t intimidated; she returns his aggression full-force. #The power politics of this scene are incredible. #Santana stands up to Sebastian blow for blow. #This is a strong independent woman everyone. #Santana negotiates the space in the room and the dynamics of the song to perfection; she stands #her ground. And in the end? She fucking wins. #A million points to Santana Lopez. #Who run the world? GIRLS. #This scene has everything to do with power and nothing to do with sex.
Artie is like: “Is that a theme? Why are we doing marriage songs? What?”
Sugar is like: “I can’t read your handwriting. What does that say?”
Santana is like: “Mmmm, I still taste Brittany.”
Brittany is like: “Oh, it’s going to be one of those episodes. Damn.”
Quinn is like: “I’d like to marry you, Rachel.”
Blaine is like: “But gay marriage isn’t legal in Ohio…”
and Kurt is like: “Oh, act surprised… okay.”
Whenever I need to escape the insanity that is Brittana, Naya-drama, and the all around Glee ridiculousness I hide out in the Pezberry tag. Where all is peaceful and everyone lives in their happy little fantasy bubbles.
Can you please expalin to me how you expect them to last as a married couple when they can’t even last six months without breaking up.
Or how Finn zones out whenever Rachel is talking and refers to her as ‘boring’.
Or how Finn can’t even remember that his girfriend is a…
Remember last year when Santana was alone on Valentine’s Day and Blaine was dick and told her that love wouldn’t come at all?
Remember this year, when Blaine isn’t even in the Valentine’s Day episode and Brittany and Santana are girlfriends and love is in the air?
Yeah, me too.
‘For instance,’ [Meryl Streep] says, forking at a bread-crumbed oyster, ‘we are taught about Benedict Arnold, the first traitor in America, but I’ve never heard—until I went onto the [National Women’s History Museum] Web site—about Deborah Sampson, the first woman to take a bullet for her nation.
She was 21 years old in the Revolutionary War. She enlisted on the American side under a man’s name, wore boys’ clothing, was cut with a British saber across her forehead, and took a musket ball in her thigh.’ She’s a good storyteller, with a warm, urgent voice. ‘And her compatriots carried her six miles to the doctor’s, and he stitched up her head and she wouldn’t let him take her pants off—because he would discover she was a woman!’ So did she die of her wound?
‘No—she was very good with her needle, so she cut the musket ball out and sewed her own leg up and served another eighteen months. In 1783 she was discharged, went home and had three children.’ Sampson was granted £34 by the state of Massachusetts for exhibiting ‘an extraordinary instance of feminine heroism by discharging the duties of a faithful, gallant soldier, and at the same time preserving the virtue and chastity of her sex unsuspected and unblemished.’
Amazing story. ‘And I am 60 years old and I learn this story,’ says Streep. ‘I should have learned that story in the fourth grade. Because it helps you as a child to know that it is not just Paul Revere riding a horse and calling, ‘The British are coming, the British are coming.’ It’s not just Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and the battles won, it’s the bravery of all these people that are undiscovered, unknown.’
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“Meryl Streep: Force of Nature,” Vogue (via thatluciegirl) (via foodmusiclife) Meryl Streep donated the $1M she made playing Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady to the endeavor of building a National Women’s History Museum on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Stuff like that is why I love her. (via occupadified) |
