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Jack Graham

Jack Graham writes and podcasts about culture and politics from a Gothic Marxist-Humanist perspective. He co-hosts the I Don't Speak German podcast with Daniel Harper. Support Jack on Patreon.

4 Comments

  1. Anonymous
    January 6, 2015 @ 7:14 pm

    the American scapegoat meme seems stronger now, not just in everything Clint Eastwood does. Whedon moved towards it from a less neocon stance. but even back in Buffy he left the outsider – the english one – to do the killing (S5,22 final) so the rest could walk away with clean hands.

    Meanwhile we keep making human sacrifices (the poor, the old, the mentally ill, anyone who isn't a 'player,') to the great god we worship called 'free market capitalism.'
    through which the myth-peddlers do very well.

    I was particularly sad that the hunger games books, which had the potential to make us self-aware and revolutionary, were turned into blockbuster films which are the very circusses that keep the masses from revolting.

    Reply

  2. Turnip
    March 22, 2015 @ 12:19 pm

    This argument is very similar to the reason why I was bothered by The Day of the Doctor; it changes the world of Doctor Who from one where – like ours – sometimes unthinkable choices have to be made, to one where a hero can always sidestep them thanks to conveniences in the plot. Moffat's insistence that the Doctor would never do what Davies said he would seemed to me to really be a statement that Moffat didn't think a show like Doctor Who could take that sort of position, which is possibly why under him everything feels so much emptier.

    Reply

  3. Jack kevin
    April 5, 2017 @ 10:38 am

    The unity of the three concepts, itself striking, should direct the reader to a fact Gramsci frequently emphasized, that ideology and the superstructure of civil society must be dealt with as objectively as economic considerations. Please Visit Our Website http://www.assignmentstar.com

    Reply

  4. Vadron
    July 8, 2019 @ 4:33 pm

    I feel like your discussion of this topic, while fascinating, overlooks the very key element of Rowling’s Christianity. The seemingly-confused morals of killing people in “Harry Potter” make much more sense if one reads them as more virtue-ethicist than consequentialist. Rowling tells us as much with the “committing murder literally rips up your soul” plot point: the problem with killing people isn’t that it makes people dead per se, it’s that it is A Sin (with “in the Eyes of God” left implicit because you can’t be too openly theist in a mass-produced story). In fact, the fact that Voldemort’s failed murder of Harry was enough to tear up his soul once more stresses that whether the murder actually has any tangible consequences is entirely besides the point of how evil it is.

    Similarly, the fact that the necessary deaths happen despite Harry’s utter inaction, seemingly by sheer luck, is not plot convenience so much as Providence. He is unfailingly kind and does not give in to the Temptation to commit the Sin of Murder, and lo and behold, since an omnibenevolent God created his universe, no sin was ever needed for the Light to triumph.

    Reply

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