Hey, so uh … how are you, uhh … how ya feeling?

… so … I hate to bring this up now but … have you written anything?

            Let me be clear, I have barely gotten out of bed today.  The little energy I have is spent moving from my bed, to the kitchen, and back.  The only thing I’ve been able to get done is watch some mediocre programs on Netflix.

… Is that a no?

            No, of course I wrote something.

What about?

            Mediocre programs on Netflix.

Christ…

            Just be glad I had the energy to write anything at all.  The context is this; I’m into languages, I spend around 30 minutes every day practicing French and German.  And one of the best ways to practice is to watch television or films in the language you’re learning.  Fortunately, Netflix has a bunch of programs either dubbed or subtitled in various languages.  So when I watch Netflix, I try to watch in one of my target languages for practice.  And I almost always watch very average programs.

But why?  Why not watch something you like?

            Well, if I really care about a program, I want to watch it in English so that I can focus on the content, not the translation.  So, for language practice, I seek out programs that I don’t have too much investment in, like the above.

            So, here’s my take:  In each of these programs, we see–

Before you get into it, there’s just one last thing.  I know this may not be the best time to bring it up, but… you’ve gotten some … critique.

            That’s great!

It is?

            Yes!  If there are critiques being made, I’ve achieved my goal; it means people are actually engaging with the things I’m writing!  I gotta tell you, I was kinda worried I was screaming into the void; writing content that would be passingly read by a few dozen people.

I mean, it’s not much more than a few dozen people.

            Okay fair, but it’s the fact that they’re engaging with it that matters.  This means people feel like this content is worth engaging in, whether agreeing or (in this case) disagreeing.  And if it’s worth engaging in, they’ll probably show their friends, family, co-workers, etc.  This couldn’t be better news!

As your publicist, I’m not sure I agree with your “All publicity is good publicity” stance.  Regardless, you do have to address those critiques.

            And I will.  In fact, the timing couldn’t be more perfect!  I’ve had a few ideas that I wanted to talk about but didn’t want to commit a full essay to.  So, what I’ll do is introduce each program, introduce a few small ideas, and then use the program as a medium for addressing the critique.  Then, I’ll draw a through-line or two through it, tying together the disjointed ideas.

I don’t think you should necessarily be giving away the tools of the trade, but that makes sense.

            The existence of thematic through-lines across diverse works can be very useful in establishing broader societal or cultural trends.  While each individual work may comment on a very specific issue, the collection of those commentaries allows us to paint a broader picture.  Across these 5 works, The Order, Cursed, Knightfall, Luna Nera, and Warrior Nun, I see a broader commentary on the social structures by which we organize our society.  It also underlines a very particular impulse, one that I will call the Commune Drive.

Alright, interesting enough.  Okay, so here’s the list of critiques, any catch your eye?

            Hmm… oh!  Let’s start with this one! 

 “Your definition of leftism as fundamentally ‘anti-domination’ seems very anarchist to me.  Almost like you’re attempting to frame all ‘true leftists’ as essentially anarchists.  I thought you were committed to Left Unity?”

            While I disagree, I could see why you come to that conclusion.  Let’s use Netflix’s The Order to investigate this.  The program follows Jack Morton, a new student at Belgrave University, whose ultimate goal is to join the Hermetic Order of the Blue Rose (HOBR), a magical secret society with a monopoly on magic and a connection to his father’s murder.  After Jack successfully enters HOBR, he soon learns his new friends are part of a rival secret society, The Knights of Saint Christopher (KSC), who are also inexplicably werewolves.  Following a deeply unlikely set of circumstances, Jack too becomes a werewolf, leading him to straddle both rival organizations.  Hijinks ensue, after which (surprise surprise) Jack kills the Big Bad who killed his father, thus ending season 1.

The Order essentially takes the established magic school formula and gives it the recently popular “But what if we made it edgier and vaguely woke?” treatment.  A treatment applied badly, I might add.  The attempt at making it edgier is just bad CGI gore or “Ooh, let’s have them wear SpoOoOoky™ masks!”  Meanwhile, their occasional references to social justice really just take the form of clapbacks and attempts at making the characters seem quirky.

            Season 2, on the other hand, has something worth talking about.  The basic premise is the arrival of (yet another) rival secret society, Praxis, that has sworn to destroy both HOBR and KSC.  If you read my essay on post-fascism, that term may sound familiar.

Oh yeah, you mentioned something like that before.

            “Praxis” is the German word for practice.  Used in a political context, it refers to the strategies one engages in to achieve political goals.  Fittingly, Praxis in The Order are essentially magic communists.  They want to destroy HOBR and KSC so that they can teach magic to everyone so it can solve world hunger, cure the sick and destroy capitalism.

Sorry, and these are supposed to be the bad guys?  The folks trying to end world hunger?

            Yes, they are, and I had the exact same question.  So too, apparently, did the writers.  On multiple occasions throughout season 2, the protagonists have to keep re-justifying to the audience why they’re against Praxis.  First, it’s because of their violent opposition to HOBR and KSC.  Then it’s because the supposed leader, Cameron Foley, is power-hungry (despite claiming to be an anarchist, while also having portraits of Stalin around his home) and has a vendetta against HOBR.  And finally, apparently out of good reasons why Praxis should be the bad guys, the writers pull this out of nowhere; if too many people start practicing magic, the world will blow up.  You know, just like what happens when you do communism in real life.

Okay, so the writers have no idea what communists are, but really want them to be the baddies.  What’s your point?

            Well, the first is a pretty simple takeaway: just because a piece of media is progressive on questions of race, gender and sexuality, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily progressive on questions of class.  In the case of The Order, this is obviously, extremely clear.  Fortunately, their attempt at smearing leftism is so ham-fisted that the audience, let alone the actors, simply isn’t going to be convinced by it.  But you should always consume media consciously so that reactionary political positions don’t slip into your subconscious without realizing it.

         My second point is in response to the criticism we began with.   I understand the claim that “anti-domination” as the core of leftism might come off as anarchist at first glance.  While I prefer to call myself a leftist without adjectives (a riff on anarchist without adjectives), I confess to having a lean towards anarcho-communism, so it’s no shock my word-choice reflects that.  Perhaps I could’ve phrased it in a less sectarian way; maybe “human liberation”.  But regardless of the chosen words, I stand by my belief that anti-domination is the core, the nodal point of leftism as an ideology.  ‘Leftists’ that lose sight of this fact mistake means for ends, often with dire consequences

            To drive home this point, let us consider the character of Cameron Foley, supposed leader of Praxis (later revealed to be the #2 in command).  Canonically, he learns about magic through independent study and begins practicing in order to utilize it as a tool to advance communism.  However, once HOBR learns about this, they foil him on multiple occasions.  Now, it is correct for Foley to then be against HOBR as a result because they are opposed to his goal of Magic Communism™.  However, he becomes so embittered by HOBR’s foiling of his plans, that his quest for Magic Communism™ morphs into an obsession with destroying HOBR.  Foley even goes so far as to threaten the existence of Praxis simply so he could destroy HOBR.  In this, like some errant ‘leftists’, he confuses the means (destroying HOBR) for the ends (Magic Communism™).

I’m struggling to picture what you’re describing.

            I’m mostly referring to the infamous Tankies, so named for Stalin’s tendency to send in tanks to crush dissidents domestically and throughout the Eastern Bloc.  Tankies are essentially supporters of the most autocratic socialist regimes, particularly the USSR under Stalin or North Korea.  You’ll recognize them by their distinctive mating calls, such as “Stalin did nothing wrong”, “The Kulaks deserved it” or “The Holodomor was just a famine”.  They spend their time defending the authoritarian excesses of socialist regimes as necessary for the defeat of the capitalist, imperialist nations.  As such, not only will they defend Stalin and the Kim dynasty, but even non-socialist regimes like Putin’s Russia or theocratic Iran due to their position as geopolitical enemies of the capitalist, imperialist West. 

You’ll note that, just like Foley, the tankie’s obsession with defeating their enemies has replaced their drive to build communism; they’ve confused means (opposition to capitalism) with ends (communism).  It is perhaps no surprise that many online tankies eventually become National Bolsheviks, Nazbols for short, an ideology that marries Soviet economics to the ethno-nationalism of fascism.  In the Nazbol, we have this confusion of means and ends most clearly manifested; a ‘leftist’ that is so opposed to capitalism that they pick up ideological scraps of fascism.  It is ironic, perhaps, that the largest influence of National Bolshevism can be found in Putin’s Russia.

I am all for friendly but vigorous debate between different leftist tendencies.  There are aspects of the Marxist-Leninist’s Democratic Centralism that I find applicable both inside and out of single-party politics.  I think Mass Line as espoused by Maoists has legitimate organizational strength.  And I think the Trotskyist’s belief in Permanent Revolution is far more convincing than Stalin’s Socialism in One Country.  And I have much brotherly love for the non-communist leftists: the Democratic Socialists, Market Socialists and others.  But what we, as leftists, cannot disagree upon is why we believe in the larger leftist project; regardless of whether you call it anti-domination or human liberation.  Because if we lose sight of that as the goal, we are no longer leftists but anti-capitalists; no different than the Nazbols.

Okay, great, don’t lose the forest for the trees by being a tankie or Nazbol, noted.

            I did say these were shorter, non-essay length topics.  What should we address next?

How about this one, “In your essay on astrology (among other things), you speak of a singular occult culture.  Not only does that conflate various magic traditions, your critiques are functionally against a particular white, Western occultism but are levied against occultism generally.  If you considered the liberating role of other magic traditions, you’d probably come to a different conclusion.”

            This is 100% true!  I could probably weasel my way out of this by saying the essay was getting too long to cover the differences in magic traditions, but that’s just not true.  Though it sounds obvious now, it just didn’t even occur to me that there are fundamental differences in occult traditions, even just within the US.  Ironically, when reading The People’s Oracle’s twitter thread, I noted that the vast majority of people in the replies were women of colour but neglected to pursue that in any meaningful way.

Okay, so which program do you want to use to clarify that oversight?

            I think Netflix’s Cursed is relevant to the discussion.  In Cursed, we follow Nimue, daughter of the head druidess and a fay (in this universe, a marginalized race where individuals have different levels of animal features).  The action is kicked off when the Red Paladins, a church-sanctioned murder squad, attack Nimue’s village with the intention of massacring the largely druidic fay.  Nimue’s mother gives her a sword (later revealed to be Excalibur) and tells her to seek out Merlin, as only she, Merlin and Excalibur together will be able to rally the fay and save their people.  Thus, Nimue accepts the call to adventure, joined by love-interest Arthur (whose sole function is to get captured repeatedly, forcing Nimue to save him), the much older Gawain (who Arthur sees as a romantic rival for no discernible reason) and a few others. 

As you probably picked up on, this is essentially a woke retelling of the Arthurian legend where Lady of the Lake Nimue saves the day, rather than Arthur.  While similar to The Order in that sense, I will say that Cursed is more ambitious in commenting on themes of social justice as well as generally more successful.  There are questions of race and passing (where the Weeping Monk, a brain-washed Lancelot, is a self-loathing fay), addiction (Merlin is an alcoholic and was once ‘addicted’ to the power of Excalibur), and patriarchy (where there is pushback to Nimue’s leading of the nascent fay liberation movement).  Unfortunately, much like The Order, the acting and plot leave much to be desired.

So, just to clarify, when you refer to a program as a ‘woke retelling’, are you saying that’s a bad thing?

            No, not at all!  There’s a reason I gravitate towards story-telling that comments on social justice; because I like programs that have those themes!  Nor is it me commenting on the ‘retelling’ aspect, we’ve been retelling and recasting the same stories since the dawn of time.  In fact, I think retelling an old story in a different cultural milieu can give us fascinating insights into cultural values and how they evolve (amongst many other things).  Plays like The Jew of Malta or the more well-known variant, The Merchant of Venice, read very differently today than they did when they were written.  For me, describing something as ‘woke’ is just the quickest shorthand for explaining that something comments on or investigates themes of social justice.

I getcha.  But what does this have to do with different magic traditions?

            Within the Cursed universe, there are many magic systems.  The druids have a magic system focusing on nature and vitality.  There exists a pantheon of Dark Gods, gods no longer widely worshipped after Boudica’s slaughtering of the Romans, whose worship also grants magical powers.  The sword Excalibur also appears to have its own distinctive, intoxicating magic.  There’s also suggestion that the magic-hating Red Paladins also use magic (though they don’t call it as such).  Even the Shadow Lords, a faction the show spends little-to-no time explaining, also appear to have their own necromantic-ish magic system.  Oh, when I said “many magic systems” earlier, I actually meant “way too many magic systems”.

            Far be it from me to question the logic of having so many distinct magic systems that the audience can’t keep track, but notably, there is something gained by it.  While not explicitly stated, each of the magic systems is connotated differently, almost always negative.  The magic of the Dark Gods is associated with selling your soul or being possessed.  The magic of Excalibur is associated with strength, bloodlust and dependence.  And Merlin will up and murder a dude with lightning for the fun of it.  The magic of the druids, however, is connotated with nature, positive growth, and notably, with the liberation of the fay.  Here we find an analogy to the real-world implications of different magic systems.

            Antonio Gramsci, an Italian communist (and one of the very few universally loved figures of the famously contentious left), was responsible for the development of the theory of cultural hegemony.  In short, cultural hegemony refers to the ways in which institutions support the ruling class through non-physically coercive means, usually through naturalization.  Take the portrayal of the US military in action films; action films overwhelmingly portray it as good and natural that the US military would involve itself in other countries’ affairs.  This overwhelming portrayal serves to make US military interventionism in real life seem natural (and thus unquestionable), which serves ruling class interests.  The combination of the ruling class and the institutions that support it (intentionally or unintentionally) are referred to as the hegemonic bloc.  By contrast, those groups or institutions that serve to weaken the ruling class are counter-hegemonic (and can theoretically work together to form a counter-hegemonic bloc).  Institutions can vacillate between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic depending on circumstances.

            Magic systems, then, can also be hegemonic or counter-hegemonic in different contexts, just like any other institution or identity.  Like the commenter’s critique pointed out, there’s a proud history of anti-colonial (and thus, counter-hegemonic) magic systems across a variety of cultures, like the well-known example of Haitian Vodou, a syncretic magic system incorporating both aspects Yoruba traditional religion and Roman Catholicism.  French plantation owners tried to brutally suppress Haitain Vodou due to its perceived heresy and its function as a unifying identity for Haitian slaves (who came from all over West Africa).  Despite this, houngan and manbo (male or female Vodou priests respectively) inspired a degree of fear in plantation owners, who often tried to avoid confronting them directly when possible out of a “I don’t believe in Vodou, but I don’t want to test it and be proven wrong” logic.  Many houngan and manbo went on to become major figures in the Haitian Revolution, such as houngan Dutty Boukman who oversaw the Bois Caïman Vodou ceremony, largely seen as the beginning of the revolution.  Similar instances of counter-hegemonic magic systems can be seen in the Native American Ghost Dance movement, the Chinese Taiping Rebellion, and many others.

What would hegemonic magic look like then?

            While I’m certain there are more, I would like to point out two major forms of magic systems that serve hegemonic interests:

• Co-opted Magic Systems:
  • In an earlier essay, I spoke about co-option; the de-fanging or redirection of revolutionary (or in Gramsci’s vocabulary, counter-hegemonic) movements.  In the context of magic systems, this is seen most commonly in the appropriation of practices or aesthetics of certain magic traditions without including their counter-hegemonic aspects or implications.  For example, modern, Western conceptions of zombies (as seen in films) differ enormously from their origins in Haitian Vodou.  In the Haitian Vodou tradition, zombies are either unwilling slaves of bokor (necromancers) or the loa Baron Samedi (if they’d offended him) and this understanding of ‘unwilling slaves’ is inextricably connected to the history of slavery in Haiti.  Thus, the modern zombie disconnects the aesthetics of ‘zombie’ from its potentially counter-hegemonic roots in Vodou.  I believe it is this tendency that the commenter refers to.

• Mystifying Magic Systems:
  • A magic system (or any institution, belief or identity) is mystifying insofar as it causes the participant/member to misattribute an effect’s cause.  Of course, all magic systems are mystifying (I stand by my controversial stance that magic isn’t actually real), but here I speak of when mystification serves hegemonic interests.  You can imagine, for example, someone who is frustrated about their inability to get ahead in life and, instead of attributing it to the inherent flaws of capitalism, attributes it to Mercury being in retrograde.  And because they attribute this problem to Mercury in retrograde, they’re not going to act in a way that threatens capitalism (which would be counter-hegemonic).  Another example I alluded to earlier is The Secret, a book whose central thesis is “if you think real hard about something, that thing will come to you”, almost always referring to wealth.  The book serves hegemonic interests because lack of success is mystified, seen as the result of a different cause (“You didn’t think hard enough about X”) as opposed to its real cause (capitalism or other oppressive systems).  These kinds of magic systems serve to keep people from acquiring counter-hegemonic beliefs and potentially acting on them.

To bring things full circle, magic systems are not inherently hegemonic or counter-hegemonic and there exist plenty of examples of both.  In the Cursed universe, the druidic magic of the fay serves as a counter-hegemonic force by virtue of its role in protecting the oppressed fay while the other magic systems are largely hegemonic.  This neatly parallels the diverse roles magic systems have played in real life, like the liberating role of Haitain Vodou.  Thus, the commenter is correct in their critique that I was wrong to suggest magic systems are not or cannot be liberating.

A productive result, and they say discourse is dead!  Okay, let’s knock out a few shorter critiques.

            For sure, how about this one?

What’s this about?

            The commenter (a friend of mine) refers to the music video for Ashnikko’s Special.  I made the case (I think correctly) that there is evidence that the framing of certain shots in the music video is done to subvert the idea of male gaze.  However, I argued, they did so ineffectively as many of the shots actually ended up reproducing the male gaze.

And?  What of their critique?

            They’re right!  I wrote about the choices “Ashnikko” made in this music video, but I forgot to remember that she wouldn’t necessarily be responsible for those choices.  In fact, the director is Joseph Delaney, meaning they would have been responsible for the overall production of the music video, not Ashnikko herself.  Based on the director’s name, it’s reasonable to assume Joseph is male, which adds an interesting nuance to the discussion; the music video of a feminist artist is directed by a man in such a way that it accidentally reproduces male gaze while trying to subvert it. 

Okay, another short one.  “In your essay on postfascism, you referred to Max Weber as an important figure in the anarchist tradition.  Nothing I’ve read suggests Weber is important to the anarchist tradition.”

            Okay, really pathetic mistake: I mixed up my Germans.  I referred to Max Weber, an extremely important German sociologist, when I meant to refer to Max Stirner, a German individualist anarchist.  This is just a typo, probably because an earlier draft did feature Weber.  Isn’t that something you should’ve picked up on?

Are you seriously deflecting your mistake on me?  I’m your publicist, not your editor.

            To-may-to, To-mah-to.

Hmph, well, let’s move on.  “You acknowledge that many of Ashnikko’s songs have a lean-in feminist takeaway, I don’t disagree.  But you then say it’s okay to listen to Ashnikko as long as you’re doing so critically.  This strikes me as both classist and ableist; are only the sufficiently-educated allowed to enjoy Ashnikko or other ‘problematic’ media?”

            Of course I’m not suggesting that only people that are sufficiently smart/media literate should be able to enjoy Ashnikko.   The reason I think it’s important to point these things out and to be critical of the media you consume is more a factor of the wider socio-political context in which art is created.  To demonstrate that, let me use the History Channel’s Knightfall as an example.

            The program is a reimagining of the history of the Knights Templar, a Catholic military order responsible for conquering and holding the Holy Land, and their search for the mythical Holy Grail.  It is also a vaguely woke reimagining, with protagonist Brother Landry portrayed as heroic, frequently protecting Jews and treating women with respect (which actual crusaders did very seldom).  And I do emphasize ‘vaguely’, because the first scene begins during the Siege of Acre, often understood as the last time European states were able to seriously control parts of the Holy Land.  In this first episode, we see the Mamluks slaughter the inhabitants of Acre post-conquest when, in reality, they did no such thing and actually famously gave non-combatants safe passage to Europe.  Thus, we have this strange dissonance between the woke crusaders (not a phrase I thought I’d ever say) and the vicious Saracens.

And this is … woke?  It sorta just seems like it’s white-washing the crusades.

             Well, you’re not entirely wrong.  Now as the series progresses, we are also shown examples of good Muslims and evil crusaders.  The writers seem to be going for the “No religious/cultural group is inherently evil!” takeaway message.  It’s a very simple moral, but not a bad one, hence my tentative claim that it’s woke.  The problem, however, isn’t that there are way more good crusaders and way more bad Muslims.  Nor is the problem the questionable historicity that seems to portray the crusades as bad, but well-intentioned.  The problem is how they choose to portray their (theoretically) egalitarian, anti-discrimination message and how that interacts with human biases.

            While we like to think of our brains as pure logic machines, the fact of the matter is that the brain developed under evolutionary pressure.  As such, we’ve evolved several mental shortcuts, heuristics, which are correct often enough that they were evolutionarily selected for (despite being logically unsound).  While useful on the African savannah, these heuristics can cause us to come to illogical conclusions in different contexts.  In this case, the problem with Knightfall is how it interacts with the availability heuristic.  In short, the availability heuristic describes our tendency to make judgements about the world based on information we’ve engaged with recently (either by exposure or by recalling it in memory).  The vividness of a particular piece of information or memory (i.e. the strength of its sensory stimulation associated with it) increases this effect, with vivid memories/information being used at greater frequency. When applied to media, this means that recent or frequent exposure to certain images (and the ideas associated with them), particularly vivid ones, are going to disproportionately affect our understanding of the world.

            When we apply this to Knightfall, the consequences become clear.  We are shown numerous depictions of the crusaders saving Jewish refugees, protecting women from rapists and generally acting heroic.  Meanwhile, we are treated to a veritable feast of violence at the hands of Muslim characters, with the character Rashid representing the only significant good Muslim.  This preponderance of images of upstanding crusaders and barbaric Muslims means that those will be weighted highly in our understanding of the world due to the availability heuristic.  Moreover, the scenes of crusader heroism and Muslim savagery are intensely vivid, adding greater weight under the availability heuristic.  This is especially clear when compared to the milquetoast scenes of “Good Muslim #1” Rashid helping Landry through pep talks and free advice, which are much less vivid.

Okay, and that heavier weighting of ‘savage Muslims’ due to the availability heuristic feeds into anti-Muslim stereotypes, which is obviously bad.  Where’s the connection to Ashnikko?

            As I noted in that first essay on Ashnikko, the Boss Bitch aesthetic she maintains isn’t exactly new.  Mainstream artists like Cardi B and Nicki Minaj also cultivate a Boss Bitch aesthetic (though a different form than Ashnikko).  In fact, I would argue that Boss Bitch or Boss Bitch-adjacent aesthetics represents the overwhelming majority of representation of women within rap.  Now, my more niche leftist concerns aside, there is nothing inherently wrong with any individual artist taking on the Boss Bitch aesthetic.  However, it is a problem when Boss Bitch is the only major aesthetic available to women within rap.  Because due to the availability heuristic, if all we ever see are Boss Bitches within rap, our brain is more likely to incline towards a “Women in rap are/ought to be Boss Bitches” belief (as that’s the image saturated in our memory).  And herein lies my point, media criticism allows us to point out not only directly harmful behaviours/ideas in media, but also where our natural biases influence our media creation and consumption.  And by pointing out these biases, we provide more space for innovation and creativity through overcoming those natural inclinations.  By contrast, the role of media criticism is not some “Everyone has to be smart enough to be critical of media otherwise they’ll get wrongthink” type of argument.  Though media criticism can help filter out bad ideas, I would never suggest it’s imperative on every individual to be able to do so, because that would be ableist and classist.

Makes enough sense.  How about this: “In an early draft of your post-fascism essay, you have a section on identity where you talk about a friend’s short-lived sexual identity crisis.  The way they resolved it strikes me as a bit essentialist and problematic; with them citing attraction to masculine/androgynous-presenting women as evidence against their straightness.”

            Yeah, there are some fair points being brought up here.  I think this critique is valid, but that the problem stems more from unclear writing on my part than from a poor understanding of sex and gender.  But we’ll get into that in due course; let’s talk about Netflix’s Luna Nera, the first non-Anglophone piece I’ve looked at.

            Based on a series of novels by Tiziana Triana, Luna Nera is set in 17^th century Italy and follows protagonist Ade and her brother Valente.  The first scene opens up to Ade and her grandmother Antalia, a midwife, helping a village woman deliver her child when Ade is suddenly struck by a vision.  The mother comments on this and, when it is revealed that her child was stillborn, accuses Ade and Antalia of being witches.  Now, for those unfamiliar, accusations of being a witch in Early Modern Europe are, let’s say, a bit of a big deal, prompting Antalia to tell Ade and Valente to hide before the authorities arrive.  Now, who are those authorities?  Well, the benandanti, which were essentially Italian witch murder squads that operated at night.  Interestingly, despite nominally being against witches, benandanti were understood as magical as well, often being born into the role.  They believed that their night raids were their spirits exiting their bodies in order to battle witches and protect the harvest.

            Despite Ade’s protests, Antalia manages to convince Ade and Valente to hide, giving her a necklace and spell book/notebook, telling her these will help her find the group of women residing in the “Lost Cities”.  After witnessing Antalia getting burned at the stake, Ade and Valente flee and manage to find the women in the Lost Cities, later revealed to be Antalia’s coven.

            The coven is governed by Tebe, the most senior witch, and her non-witch partner Leptis, who immediately recognize Ade and Valente.  After learning about Ade’s periodic visions, often revealing the location of witches in immediate danger, Tebe is led to believe Ade is the prophesied witch who would save Italy’s witches.  The rest of the season basically follows the coven saving witches around Italy, increasing the coven’s power, while Ade navigates her romance with Pietro, son of the leader of the local benandanti.  Because it wouldn’t be mediocre Netflix if they didn’t shoe-horn in an unlikely romance.  This continues until the penultimate episode, where the benandanti manage to capture Leptis and Valente (with the help of some Papal magic, because of course they did).

I’m failing to see what this has to do with the critique.

            Well, hold onto your butts, because I’m about to reveal the most bizarre twist of a finale in mediocre Netflix history (spoilers ahead).  As you might imagine, the final episode revolves around the coven trying to save Leptis and Valente.  This attempt fails and results in the whole coven getting captured, who are then to be burned at the stake.  But, right before they are to be burned, there is an unexpected eclipse (hence “Luna Nera”, Black Moon), an event that canonically strengthens witches’ powers.

            After the eclipse passes, the witches disappear from their stakes, appearing in the crowd in a circle (again, an association between geometric shapes and magic).  At the centre of the circle is Valente, who floats into the air and starts casting spells at the benandanti, thus revealing that he too has magical powers.  And it only gets weirder from here, somehow.

            After killing the leader of the local benandanti/Pietro’s father (which, as you might imagine, complicates Ade and Pietro’s budding romance), Valente teleports the whole coven to the Lost Cities.  That is, with the exception of Ade and Leptis, who have to get back on horseback for some reason.  When Ade and Leptis get back, Valente appears to have become a woman and is surrounded by the rest of the coven who are putting flowers in her hair.

            Following some exposition from a ghostly apparition of Ade’s grandmother Antalia (the one killed in episode 1), it is revealed that Valente was actually always a woman.  More than that, Valente, not Ade, is the chosen one.  In fact, the reason Valente appeared as a boy was because Antalia (actually Ade and Valente’s mom) recognized immediately after birth that Valente was the chosen one.  And so she used magic to make Valente appear as a boy until 14 to protect her (conveniently, the day of the eclipse), and that this magic was so draining that Antalia aged considerably (hence why she claimed to be her grandmother).  In a parental dick-move, Antalia reveals she had Ade believe herself the chosen one in order to protect the real chosen one, Valente.  This angers Ade, both her mother’s lie and no longer being the centre of the coven’s attention, causing her throw a temper-tantrum, run away and magically banish Antalia’s ghostly apparition.  After this, her eyes turn black for some reason.  Fin.

I’m sorry, what?  What???  That’s not even just a curveball; that’s a change to the entire understanding of the story in its last moments.  How in the world did this get green lit?

            My thoughts precisely, even stranger because there’s almost zero foreshadowing beforehand other than Valente seeming a bit ‘off’ (complicated further by the fairly weak performance by the child actress playing Valente).  Interestingly, the magical change of Valente also raises allusions to transgender individuals and the question of transitioning.

Yeah I picked up on that.  Quite a subject to bring up in the last 10 minutes of a series.

            Ain’t that the truth.  Herein lies the relation to the aforementioned critique.  Valente is treated, after this revelation, as having always been a woman.  Magic aside, this belies a very particular understanding of sex and gender.  While there are many different frameworks for understanding sex and gender, there are three major schools of thought are relevant to modern discourse:

• Essentialist theory of sex and gender
  • Essentialism is the belief that objects or categories have characteristics that are necessary for its identity, that things have an essence that makes it that thing, and that that essence is objectively true and unchanging.  For example, an essentialist view of a pig might be “the essence of ‘pig’ is pink, mammalian and having a curly tail” and that that is an objectively true definition.  In the realm of sex and gender, this means that sex, gender and orientation all have distinct definitions.  For example, “male” may be defined as having a penis and XY chromosomes, or that “heterosexual” may be defined as attraction to the opposite gender.  In a more progressive example, it would also be essentialist to say “A man is anyone who identifies as a man”.
  • This was famously parodied by Diogenes, an ancient Greek philosopher.  Diogenes was (in)famous for attending and disrupting the Plato’s lectures, just for the fun of it.  On one occasion, Plato (an essentialist) was discussing the definition of man when Diogenes interrupted and demanded Plato’s definition of man.  Plato retorted “A featherless biped”, prompting Diogenes to leave.  He returned a little later, a plucked chicken in hand, flopped it down on the floor in front of Plato and proclaimed “Behold, a man!”.

• Social Constructivist theory of sex and gender
  • Social Constructivism is the belief that objects or categories are defined by how a society defines that object or category.  I understand that sounds like a tautology, but bear with me.  So in the realm of sex and gender, an essentialist might say “A female has a vagina and XX chromosomes and that is True and unchanging, regardless of what we believe”, but a social constructivist would say “A female has a vagina and XX chromosomes because that’s how we, societally, define female”.  So while essentialists believe a thing’s definition comes from a Truth that lies outside of human experience, social constructivists say that a thing’s definition comes from the truth of its usage within society.  One major implication of that is that definitions are arbitrary (i.e. the result of societal use) and can change with changing societal use of a word.  Thus, if there are reasons to do so, one can and should change the definitions of words (e.g. including trans men in the definition of man).
• Performative theory of sex and gender
  • Originally proposed by Judith “So big the Pope wrote about her” Butler, performative theory approaches sex and gender as simultaneously identity and social relation.  Society imposes on us from birth a number of identifying criteria (sex, gender, race, ethnicity, etc), categories that allow us to situate ourselves within the social fabric.  These categories imposed; we then perform the actions that are expected of our particular identity category (e.g. playing with dolls as a girl).  These performances not only serve to indicate to others our identity as a social function (e.g. “I am a woman, so treat me as such”) but are actually a part of the development of identity.  Specifically, it is through the act of performance that the subject has coextensive development of the subject as well as the particular identity category; “I know who I, the subject, am insofar as I know myself as straight/woman/POC/etc”.  Per performative theory, identifying categories are not something that exists separate to the subject, but are an inextricable part of their individual.  Most supporters of performative theory also assume these identity categories (sex, gender, ethnicity, etc) are socially constructed.
    • For example, a person born with XX chromosomes and a vagina is given dolls to play with as a child.  This child is inculcated with cultural ideas about sex and gender and so performs acts associated with that gender, playing with dolls in this case.  The act of performance of a female gender role reinforces the child’s identity as female.  This identity as female then leads the child to perform other acts associated with being female (wearing dresses, etc).  Thus, a repeated, self-reinforcing loop is born where performance begets identity begets performance, initially kicked off by cultural norms imposed on the subject from birth.

But hold on, how does performativity theory account for queer people?  If the social norm is straightness and there’s no way to pick out a queer child from birth (unlike with sex or ethnicity), wouldn’t that kick off the performance-identity-performance loop and only result in straight, cis people?

            Well, cultural norms/pressure can only do so much to override one’s inclinations, and just like how ‘correct’ performance strengthens identity, incorrect performance weakens identity.  Imagine you’re a guy who has just never really been that into girls, perhaps a virgin.  You go into the locker room to get ready for practice as usual, when in comes Chad McEndowed; the first-string quarterback.  All of a sudden, you get butterflies in your stomach, “But wait a second, that’s not supposed to happen!”  That is, even though it was a thought to themselves, this was an incorrect performance of straightness; being attracted to Chad.  This happens a few more times, prompting some reflection by the boy; “Huh, this is kind of gay”.  With each of these performances, his identity as straight is weakening while his identity as homosexual is strengthening.  Maybe he talks with a counsellor, goes on a few internet forums, chats with some other questioning folks, all constituting performances that strengthen his identity as homosexual.  Eventually, it becomes clear to him that his feelings and behaviour (read: performances) are more in line with homosexuality and then embraces it as part of his identity.  He asks out Chad McEndowed, they date for several years, eventually getting married and adopting two lovely children. 

Okay, that was a looong tangent.  How does this relate to Luna Nera?

            Let’s use those three schools to analyse the gender of Valente, a question made more difficult by the invocation of actual magic in Luna Nera.  Because Antalia’s magic is suggested to be illusory (i.e. not actually changing Valente, but merely making her appear as a boy until her transformation), an essentialist would probably say “Valente was always a woman, we simply did not see the Truth of this because of Antalia’s magic”.   While I obviously don’t know how 17^th century Italians would define gender, one could imagine their definition of man to be engaging in typically ‘manly behaviours’ like fighting, hunting, violence, etc.  Seeing as Valente pre-transformation showed an interest in archery and a particular drive to kill the local cardinal Marzio Oreggi, a social constructivist would probably say that Valente pre-transformation was male.  Similarly, Valente is seen having her hair done post-transformation, an activity that would be seen societally as feminine, and so the social constructivist would probably say Valente post-transformation is a woman (because that’s how 17^th century Italy would define woman).  Finally, the performative theory would probably come to the same conclusion as the social constructivist.  That is, pre-transformation Valente performs masculinity (making him a man pre-transformation) while post-transformation Valente performs femininity (making her a woman thereafter). 

And the commenter’s critique?

            So, in describing a friend’s short sexual identity crisis, I made a tongue-in-cheek chart where I listed a few pieces of “evidence” they brought up on whether they were straight or queer.  While I would’ve thought “Really into theatre” or “Played sports in high school” as being evidence of being queer or straight respectively would clearly be parody, evidently this is not the case.  First off, obviously I don’t think either of those things are relevant to one’s sexuality/gender.  But specifically, that chart was a parody of essentialism in particular.  Because the essentialist school tries to create an unchanging, True definition of various sexual/gender identities, they have to redefine those identities anytime someone displays traits that don’t perfectly map onto their established definitions.  This Sisyphean task of redefinition (and its consequences), I argued, is why postmodern or cyborg approaches to identity are superior to essentialist approaches.  To be clear, I find the performative theory of sex and gender most persuasive (where the identities performed are socially constructed).  I believe this with the caveat that people’s internal truth should be respected, regardless of their performance (e.g. in the case of trans people who don’t yet perform the gender they wish to be/internally believe themselves to be).

Alright, ain’t no rest for the wicked, this last critique is actually my own.  I see the game you’re playing.

            Oh?  And what might you be referring to?  Aside from my favourite Cage the Elephant song?

You didn’t just choose these programs at random, there’s a pattern here.  Each of these programs has some degree of medieval aesthetics as well as a socially progressive message (if sometimes poorly delivered).  What gives?

            Caught me.  While it is true that I selected these programs for language practice, there was a method to my selecting-mediocre-Netflix-programs madness.  And the reasoning revolves around the last program I’ll talk about, Netflix’s adaptation of Warrior Nun.

            So there I was, looking for a new program to practice my French and German, when I came across the “Trending Now” bar.  I started mindlessly scrolling through it when the title Warrior Nun came up.  “There’s no way”, I thought to myself, “that anyone could possibly be interested in a show with such a ridiculous title”.  It reminded me of the kind of title you’d imagine from a pulp magazine, inexpensive, often low-quality works made on low-quality paper (hence “pulp” magazine, also the inspiration for the title of the film Pulp Fiction).  Pulp magazines would often rely on outrageous titles or cover art in order to pull in readers.  And yet, I was wrong about this intuition, as Warrior Nun has received generally quite positive reviews, both from critics and myself.

Okay, so what’s the appeal?

            While similar to the other program’s I’ve talked about, I think one leg up Warrior Nun has on the other programs is its tongue-in-cheek approach.  From the plot, to the dialogue, to even the title itself, Warrior Nun doesn’t take itself overly seriously as do many of the other programs.  Granted, they did so at risk of appearing like it is mocking its progressive themes, but fortunately it didn’t come off that way.  The program begins with our protagonist, Ava, dead in a nunnery’s mortuary.

Hell of a way to start a series.

            Indeed.  The calm is ended when several bloodied nuns burst in (the eponymous warrior nuns), carrying one of their compatriots, Shannon.  She explains she’s been injured by Divinium weapons (a magical material later revealed to be derived from religious relics) and that she doesn’t have much time left.  She calls the surgeon to remove the halo from her body (a magical tool in this universe that grants the bearer fantastic powers) and to give it to the next bearer, Mary.  They’re interrupted by sounds of gunfire outside, evidently the people who they’d been fighting earlier, prompting the warrior nuns (including Mary) to try and fight off the attackers.  The surgeon waits patiently inside, hearing the situation go from bad to worse outside, decides to try and hide the halo in one of the corpses, Ava’s corpse.  To her complete shock, this actually revives Ava, who then escapes, the halo still in her back.

            Eventually, the warrior nuns (officially the Order of the Cruciform Sword or OCS) catch up with Ava and try to convince her to join the OCS as she is now the new bearer of the halo (to Mary’s chagrin).  After some classic will-she-won’t-she flip-flopping on Ava’s part, she eventually joins and begins training with OCS, helping them track down the people responsible for the attack on OCS and Shannon’s death.  This brings them into contact with a scientist using Divinium to try and heal her dying son (but accidentally, maybe opening a portal to hell, oops!), a power-hungry cardinal collecting relics to accumulate power and a celestial being trapped below Vatican City.

That sounds … kinda cheesy.

            Oh and it is, but they do lean into it.  And credit where credit’s due, the characters are well-written, the aesthetics pleasing (taking appropriate advantage of the Moorish architecture in Andalusia, the filming location and canonical setting) and the performances convincing from the whole cast.  And most importantly, yes, it’s true, I do ship Ava and Beatrice.  Anyone who ships Ava with that loser J.C. is bad and wrong and knows nothing of true love and I will fight them over this!

So I take it you’re pleased they confirmed a season 2?

            Yes.  Very much so.  Honestly, I deserve it after the shit-show that 2020 has been.

Well, that’s great and all, but you didn’t respond to my question.  Why did you watch these, as you put it, “Woke Medievalist” shows and what do you see linking them?

            Well, aside from my enjoyment of the program, there was a detail in Warrior Nun that kicked this all off.  Early on, Ava is taught about the origin of the halo, the power it grants its bearer and the origin of the OCS.  They reveal that the first warrior nun was Areala of Cordoba, a woman who fought bravely in the First Crusade, earning the admiration of the ‘angel’ Adriel.  However, at one point, Areala becomes fatally wounded, prompting Adriel to give her his halo, restoring her and granting her fantastic powers.  After this event, Areala goes on to form the OCS.

Hold on a second, a crusader?  And your first thought was that this was progressive?  You didn’t give that treatment to Knightfall.  And why did you put angel in quotations?

            Let me explain, though there will be spoilers.  The reason that I believed it at first to be progressive was the framing of the trailer; a bunch of kickass women slaying demons and protecting the world, etc.  With the revelation that the OCS was a crusading organization, my interest was piqued (hence this essay); “What a bizarre contradiction, a crusading organization (a quintessential example of reaction) that is framed as progressive!”  To try and suss out the how and why of this contradiction is what prompted me to write about the program and search for others like it. 

However, the ending of Warrior Nun made it clear that this apparent contradiction was purposeful.  While we are led to believe that Adriel was an angel (on account of his having a halo), when Ava actually meets Adriel beneath the Vatican in the final episode, it is revealed that Adriel is actually a demon.  Specifically, he is a thief demon who had actually stolen the halo from an angel.  This completely re-contextualizes the OCS; with the support for the organization and its role in the crusades coming from a demon.  That is hardly a glowing appraisal of the crusades, giving Warrior Nun a far more coherent message than the muddled mess that is Knighthood (and many of the other programs).  In fact, my suspicion is that, in season 2, there will be a re-evaluation of the OCS and their role in the crusades, probably leading them to distance themselves from it.  This takeaway is why I think Warrior Nun has a far more nuanced message than the other programs discussed (as well as being unironically better).

Okay, but what did you pick up on?  What’s “going on” in these programs that Warrior Nun supposedly does better?

            Across these works, I pick up on the idea of non-traditional social structures, specifically non-nuclear family social structures and the idea of “found family”.  Related to this, I see in these programs a phenomena I described in an earlier essay, what I’m going to refer to as the Commune Drive.

 Hmm, interesting.  So what’s your angle on family in these works then?

            The fact that one immediately thinks of “family” in these works, when none of these programs actually feature a family, underlines my point exactly.  In fact, with the exception of Cursed (where Nimue’s father is a major character), the family of the protagonist in each of these programs is either dead or killed within the first few episodes.  The inciting incident of The Order, Luna Nera, and Cursed is the death of one or more of the protagonist’s family members.  Meanwhile, Knighthood and Warrior Nun forego that step entirely, kicking the show off with the protagonist’s family already dead.

That’s not what I meant.  Like you said, I’m referring to found family.

            But here’s the rub, the social structures within these programs (covens, resistance movements, religious orders, secret societies, etc) are not families.  These are distinctly different social arrangements of people, ones that have dynamics and membership conditions that do not map onto our ideas of family.  But the fact that we see them as commenting on questions of family is revealing and is testament to how dominant familialism, the ideology of family (specifically the nuclear variety), is within our society.  The idea of familialism as an ideology is discussed at length in Michèle Barrett and Mary Macintosh’s The Anti-Social Family.

“Familialism”?  You’ve really gone off the deep-end here, there’s nothing ideological about the idea of family, it’s a natural social structure that’s been here since the dawn of time!

            Don’t forget, to paraphrase Žižek, we are most within an ideology when it appears as natural, as unquestionable fact.  Besides, I refer here to the nuclear family (made up of a breadwinner father, a homemaker mother and their immediate children), an export of 19^th century England’s bourgeoisie!  By contrast, consider agrarian peasant villages where childrearing is generally a communal affair, hence “It takes a village to raise a child”.  Consider that 10% of US households contain three generations and that only about ~35% of British families are nuclear.  Or for another European counter-example, consider the mess of relations that are European royal families, resulting in specimens such as Charles II.  Were it not for pro-nuclear family politics and the media saturation of nuclear families, it is questionable whether we would so easily naturalize the nuclear family at all!

Wait, if it’s so uncommon, why is it promoted?

            That’s a question you could write an entire essay on (and one I may well in the future).  But what I want to focus on is the emotional security provided by family.

Emotional security?  Seems pretty pedestrian.

            For many, home represents a place of comfort and safety; the familiar and unthreatening.  It is often the place where one has been at their most vulnerable; almost by necessity as a small child.  And the knowledge that there is a group of people that will always be in your corner, that your family will always support you, provides great emotional assurance.  At the same time, nuclear family structures are not without their problems.  You don’t have to have read Butler to know that the domineering father as breadwinner-and-head-of-household is patriarchal.  You don’t have to be a scholar in critical studies to recognize that the nuclear family is often a coercive social structure; “You have to do X, we’re family”.  That is, there are established problems with the nuclear family that aren’t only made clear through dense theory.

Right, none of that is surprising.  What’s your point?

            My point is that if people generally pick up on the problems inherent to the nuclear family while still recognizing its role in emotional security, media is going to reflect that.  And it does so either by directly commenting on the issues or by shifting towards different social structures entirely.  And that’s what I believe we see in these programs: programs that want to portray social structures other than families that still provide emotional security.  For example, each program has a moment where the protagonist is going through crisis, only to be helped/saved by members of their group.  In fact, it usually has one of the characters saying “You’re like family to me”, that is, even though they’re not family (hence “like”), they help each other like family.

            That said, these programs don’t always pull it off perfectly (unsurprisingly).  In fact, many of the authors end up accidentally reproducing the nuclear family in their works!  For example, in Cursed we see a resistance movement led by Nimue and Arthur, a couple, as analogous to the mother and father leading the family.  This is especially clear when you consider “father of the nation” metaphors.  In Luna Nera, the coven is led by Tebe and Leptis, another couple, who run the coven and discipline its generally much younger members.  Members of the Knight Templars in Knightfall (and real life) are called ‘brothers’.

            People need a sense of emotional security and this is often provided by family.  But just like the search for food and water, people can be pretty inventive in their search for emotional security if need be.  So when this drive for emotional security comes up against the genuine problems and insufficiencies posed by the nuclear family, humans can and have created other social structures to fulfill that need for emotional security.  Some are artificial and deliberately constructed (like religious brotherhoods) while others crop up organically (like informal mutual aid networks), but all fulfill that need for emotional security in response to different conditions.  This natural impulse towards creating new social structures to fulfill the need for emotional security (when old structures don’t suffice) is what I call the Commune Drive.  This Commune Drive is shown here in the range of social structures displayed across these works, in the wish to run off and live in a cabin in the woods.  Or even in the impulse to set up a commune in Sweet Water, Wyoming!

And there it is!  Okay, this is getting long so let’s try and wrap this up.  What do you think is the significance of the Commune Drive is?

            The drive to alter social relations in response to an unmet need for emotional security, the Commune Drive, has waxed and waned with time.  We can see it most clearly in times of upheaval, when emotional security is hard to come by.  Think of the 60s in much of the West, which saw radical experimentation in the different social structures people can organize themselves into.  Today, we certainly live in times of upheaval, particularly in 2020.  And so it’s perhaps not surprising that we see those anxieties manifested in media in numerous ways; the Commune Drive among them.  While I’m certainly not predicting the uprooting of the nuclear family, a social structure that has deep and established roots, perhaps this anxiety and consequent Commune Drive may provide an opportunity to change or alter our social structures.   And if there is the opportunity for change, there is the opportunity for improvement: social structures that do a better job of meeting our material and emotional needs.  And if there is the possibility to achieve that, we are beholden to at least try. 

Acknowledgements:

A major thank you to the folks who provided the feedback that served as the core of this essay. Your contributions are immensely appreciated and help On Second Glance continue to improve!