To liberals, to centrists, to color blind racists, to all the people who thinks silence or laughing about it, or fake satire are harmless, just an opinion, or a bit of nothing in a cycle that started with little things, this is for you.
This is why when the owner of a local bakery said something racist to one of her employees then asked me, the customer, if what she said was racist, I told her “Yes, that was racist and I’m not coming back,” before walking out without paying.
So for my AP United States History class we have to write a research paper; my topic is the gay rights movement in America. Today I began reading one of the books that I chose as a source
And I opened it up to the dedication page and found this
And if you don’t think that’s one of the sweetest and most romantic things ever then get out of my face
Ok, for the record, the author of this book, Jonathan Rauch, is a friend of my family, I’ve known him since I was a little kid, and I am here to tell you all that he and Michael have been together for 20-odd years now, got married in 2010, and remain to this day obviously, excessively, and adorably in love.
Anyway, they’re cute. Thought y’all would want to know.
One overlooked thing that really sets the Lord of the Rings films apart from other franchises is how earnest they are-
Most movies are so afraid of being “cheesy” that whenever they say something like “friendship is the most powerful force in the world” they quickly undercut it with a joke to show We Don’t Really Believe That! 😉 Even Disney films nowadays have the characters mock their own movie’s tropes (”if you start singing, I’m gonna throw up!”) It’s like winking at the camera: “See, audience? We know this is ridiculous! We’re in on the joke!”
But Lord of the Rings is just 12.5 hours of friendship and love being the most powerful forces in the world, played straight. Characters have conversations about how much their home and family and friends mean to them, how hope is eternal, how there is so much in the world that’s worth living for…. and the film doesn’t apologize for that. There’s no winking at the audience about How Cheesy and Silly All This Is; it’s just. Completely in earnest.
And when Lord of the Rings does “lean on the fourth wall” to talk about storytelling within the film, it’s never to make jokes about How Ridiculous These Storytelling Tropes are (the way most films do)…. but instead to talk about how valuable these stories can be. Like Sam’s Speech at the end of the Two Towers: the greatest stories are ones that give you something to believe in, give you hope, that help you see there are things in a bleak violent world that are worth living for
Earnestness is so much cooler than all the hip cynicism in the world. You go LOTR
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