u/miggovortensens

In one of their most famous arguments, Samantha said to Charlotte that sex only requires “two people who love sex”. I’m fully behind her there! The thing is: in that very situation, Samantha was just bragging about her latest sexual experience with a man she knew nothing about.

So while she can say for sure that the sex was consensual and pleasurable, she CAN’T tell at all if this guy (or the next one) joined her in bed because he “loved sex” like she did - or because they “missed sex”, or because they were “desperate for sex”, or because they were “addicted to sex” etc etc. She sees them as disposable partners who are treating the experience exactly like she is: no strings attached, no repercussion, no marriages to be ruined etc.

She doesn't care to ask. And that's fine. It's also fine for a very close friend to see this as a dismissive, indifferent, and objectifying attitude. Yet Charlotte – often openly mocked by the others for associating sex with emotional intimacy and trust – is treated as a judgmental sex shamer whenever she speaks her mind while the other two play Switzerland.

In the early episodes, Carrie is presented as an established journalist whose column about, well, “sex and the city” gathered enough of a following for the newspaper to feature HER individually in public buses as part of their OOH advertising strategy.

These episodes suggest that Carrie’s column resonated with many New Yorkers - men and women - that were also struggling to navigate the dating world in the late 1990s. And Carrie was actively researching and investigating the subject herself, as if she was pushing the boundaries of gonzo journalism in her daily life.

Her column - based on her narration - was super candid; her readers knew her as a chain-smoker who would be down to sleep with a much younger guy because he was a good kisser and because her curiosity to see how a man from the “newer generation” would fair in bed got the best of her. And then sometimes she would wake up in a flat that looked like the backyard of Cristiane F’s housing unit in 1970s Berlin.

But after the structure of the episodes started to showcase the friend group more and more, Carrie seemed to rely on the accounts of the other three women and vaguely wonder about the 'topic of the week'. She stared at the blank page in her laptop screen, writing hypothetical questions about matters that had nothing to do with her.

The sexually adventurous Carrie from season 1 became an observant even in her personal interactions with her closest friends - how often would she hide behind puns while the other three discussed their views on sex and relationships? Her own experiences were boiled down to a broad search for 'Love'.

To be clear: I'm not complaining about the show's focus on the other characters. I'm just pointing out this came at the expense of a fundamental change in Carrie's character.

While there’s of course nothing shameful at all about how Samantha conducted her sexual life, I was rewatching some episodes of the show recently and was surprised to realize that many of Charlotte’s reactions to Samantha’s detailed accounts of her latest adventures weren't as prudish or judgmental as I thought them to be back in the day.

Now I can also interpret those scenes as Charlotte manifesting how uncomfortable she felt with the constant "oversharing". I mean, maybe Charlotte wouldn’t have stormed out of a pub if Samantha had saved the “funkiest tasting spunk” tale for when the girls were all a bit tipsy over a glass of wine one night instead of blurting this out of nowhere in broad daylight before Charlotte had even digested her lunch.

I understand that interactions like these are a comedic device, but the common perception is that Charlotte is the one who is always a prude and not that Samantha – who, again, was free to be as sexually active as she wanted – was constantly ignoring Charlotte’s stated boundaries, which can be different even between the closest of friends. So yeah, that's my current take on her character.

This is simply for academic purposes. I’m not an American, and English is not my first language. I’m currently working on a thesis about lyric adaptation, and I'm now looking further into musical theater songs - especially those from English-language musicals, which are more likely to be staged in different countries - to analyze how the contemporary, Native-speaking audience interpreted the lyrics and how an adaptor can best preserve the original intent not just in terms of the melody and the structure of the song.

(An unrelated example: I was first looking into literature translation, and I came across a two-word expression in a 19th century book; this expression is now not used or understood by contemporary English speakers, yet I discovered that it used to stand for "prolix" or "wordy" back in the day, which meant that the author's original intention was to be humorous: he was being “wordy” himself by using two words instead of one, which is something that the readers of his day understood yet current readers do not, and every translation of this book that I could find didn't pick up on the joke nor did they attempt to adapt it by using an old-fashioned expression from their own language that would seem unusual to the present-day reader.)

Going back to the matter at hand... I thought “Newsies” might be a good musical for me to look into a further, because it covers the newsboys' strike of 1899 from a contemporary perspective, and the songs were written for the 1992 family-oriented movie and then featured in the Broadway musical 20 years later. And I’m particularly interested in your understanding of the expression “Carrying the banner”, which is of course the title of one of the musical’s most well-known songs. 

Since I’m not a Native English speaker, I first understood it as the act of “carrying the headline” – moving the papers and the news of the day around the city. At this point in the musical, we don’t know the characters will go on strike if we know nothing about the plot at all, so it works. It also works in a broader sense down the line, in terms of “carrying signs” as a protest or demonstration. But I also discovered that, in a historical context (19th-early 20th Century), individuals who walked the streets all night or slept outside because they were homeless were called “banner-carriers”.

So, this is where I ask for help of you English speakers who first saw the musical on Broadway in the 2012 run (not familiar with the work before, without having seen the 1992 film, since this group is potentially a different target for my work). Where you familiar with the historical context of "carrying the banner"? What was the immediate association you made when you heard it in the song? And how you would describe its meaning to someone who has no idea what "carrying the banner" means? (If you feel comfortable sharing your current age and the year you saw the musical on Broadway, I'd appreciate it, but that's not a requirement.)

Many thanks in advance!

This is the objective recap...

PoA: Winter, 1993. Hermione and Harry stayed in Hogwarts during the Christmas break.

GoF: Summer, 1994. Hermione got to the Burrow 1 or 2 days before Harry / Winter, 1994. Hermione and Harry stayed in Hogwarts during the Christmas break.

OotP: Summer, 1995. Hermione got to Grimmauld’s Place presumably weeks before Harry / Winter, 1995. Hermione and Harry were in Grimmauld’s Place during the Christmas break.

HBP: Summer, 1996. Hermione got to the Burrow 1 or 2 days before Harry / Winter, 1996. Spent Christmas break with the Grangers while Harry went to the Burrow.

Overall, that doesn't even make up for the next summer when she erased her parents' memories and went to the Burrow before Harry's rescue plan was executed. The Grangers are sidelined to a point - because it's probably easier to already have Hermione in the second location Harry is eventually taken for the rest of the summer - that I find it hard to picture a reasonable bond between parent and child here.

There's no way the doctor that was responsible for Derek's death would agree to be involved in Meredith's medical license trial as if he had idea that Meredith - also a well-known surgeon on her own merits - was also the wife of the world-class surgeon in his field who happened to die on his watch.

I have a cat, and he is an indoor cat, and he lives happily and comfortable in my apartment. Last night I heard a cat making noise in the hall and, what do you know, there was indeed a cat I had never seen before.

I am aware that its against our building's policy for any pet owner to let their pets roam free in the common areas, but I wasn't even sure if this was a stray that managed to get in, and even if it wasn't, I assumed it was someone's cat that got out when they opened the door or something.

So of course I took the cat to my place – and it was an inconvenience, because my cat is not used to other cats being around and I had to keep them in different rooms. And my only option was to get in touch with the superintendent because he was the only one who could know who this cat belonged to (I don't have the contact of the other residents).

Anyway, the superintendent was able to reach the owner of the cat and told her where her cat was. But she came by my apartment and instead of thanking me she was pissed because I took her cat to my place.

She said she was worried sick because she often lets the cat get out to explore the surroundings and walk in the garden and what not and he always finds his way back – except this time, because of course I had locked him inside my apartment. Plus she acted as if I had “reported” her for breaking the rules when I went straight to the superintendent.

I’m torn between thinking I overstepped or if she was the real AH here.

Now that I finally got around to watching Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer”, what stood out to me the most was how determined Nolan was in avoiding one the most common of biopic tropes when writing the script: the urge to condense a handful of real figures into a single fictional or semi-fictional character for storytelling purposes.

Here, instead of “the friend”, “the coworker”, “the boss” etc, we are introduced to a huge ensemble of characters, which could have made for a convoluted narrative but the editing helps us keep track of who those people are. The downside, to me, is that this decision deprived the film of a clear, dramatic core.

Nolan gives us a lot to occupy our eyes and our ears. And I yet I felt there's uncomfortable void in the experience of watching it. As it is, the story left me restive and unabsorbed - and even wondering if resorting to those ‘biopic tropes’ (or finding a balance half-way between the biographic and the imaginary) wouldn't have benefited his film after all.

The glimpses we get from those key characters didn't give much to many f the stellar actors in the cast to work with. They had no solid material to deliver something, and the narrative wasn't able to deepen our understanding of their characters, their underlying motivations, or whatever they were adding either to the picture's entertainment value or to the development of the lead character's arc.

To wrap this up, it seems that one of the creative decisions I respected the most was also the one that ended up disconnecting me from the story.

After watching the “Saw” video once again, I finally understood what had bothered me the first time around: while I get that Natalie used this franchise as the starting point of a broader discussion about the human condition and the role of fantasy - and the depiction of violence through fantasy - in fulfilling some of our core emotional needs, there's a huge gap when it comes to the impact of a cultural landscape in fostering, shaping, or even creating 'desire'.

While she mentions the new trend of ‘prestige horrors’ (the Ari Asters, the Robert Eggers, the Jordan Peeles), her main reasoning reminded me of an old-fashioned marketing concept: “It's not because people drink whisky that distilleries exist; distilleries exist because people drink whisky”. This is a view that reduces every single product – movies included – to a previously established necessity, as if trends such as ‘gore’ and ‘prestige horrors’ will come and go with the shifting winds of popular demand.

Except we live in a world where new wants are being fabricated and fostered everyday. We need shoes, but we want a Nike, because that’s what’s in in our social circles. I can see a similar sociocultural aspect with the “Saw” movies. I was in my early teens when the first one was released, and that film was part of a rite of passage that many a kid went through since the dawn of VHS and Blockbuster. I’m talking about the experience of gathering a bunch of young teens together and watching a scary or gruesome movie and feeling brave from getting through it.

This wasn’t driven by an unconscious need of violence through fantasy per se: a ghost movie would do it instead of “gore”, but gore was what was in vogue because of Hollywood marketing. The want” was simply to be part of this shared experience. I have the feeling that the longevity of the “Saw” franchise has something to do with a HUGE contingency of teenagers getting on board and turning it into a ‘minor phenomenon’. (Think “Pokemon”: the phenomenon feeds itself at some point.)

In a way, “Saw” has a nostalgic quality – like Disney grabs your childhood by the balls. There’s a generation that grew up with those movies. Both the critics who boiled it all down to ‘torture porn’ and Natalie herself, who built a case to contradict such critics, failed to pick up on the fact that audiences can be REALLY fond of these movies. They became part of both shared and individual histories.

To me, this isn’t just a matter of audiences being drawn or repulsed by fictional graphic violence. It’s mainly about “Saw” kickstarting a series of similar bankable projects. It fabricated a demand. Yet if we aren’t getting countless sequels of “The Hostel”, “Turistas” and “I Spit in Your Grave”, it’s not because the appetite for violence is limited to “Saw”.

The truth is: there’s no deeper emotional bond between those other movies and the mainstream audience. Like “Artemis Fowl” didn’t inherit the mass of “Harry Potter” readers, and “Digimon” couldn’t match “Pokemon”. If I watch a new "Saw" movie now, I might be unsettled by most of the graphic scenes, yes - but there's an added emotional layer of familiarity, nostalgia, and the goosebumps I got as teen in this feeling.

...that nobody went through with the idea of pitching in to cover the hundreds of thousands of dollars that she would definitely spending on defense attorneys after facing murder charges in season 8. It was like there were no financial burdens at all. This makes me hate even more how willingly Carlos chose to sat this one out.)