The Baffling Politics of Cats (2019) and TS Eliot
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- čas přidán 23. 03. 2020
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So Cats was a weird movie, huh? Join me, Maggie Mae Fish (and my alternate cat personality), as I explore the weird origins of Cats in the poetry (and warped mind) of TS Eliot.
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Friends who contributed their lovely voices & other talents:
Cody Johnston: @drmrcody / / @smn
Lindsay Ellis: @thelindsayellis / / chezapoctube
Ian Danskin: @InnuendoStudios / / innuendostudios
Big Joel: @biggestjoel / / @bigjoel
Robert Evans: @IWriteOK / www.iheart.com/podcast/105-be...
Princess Weekes: @WeekesPrincess / / melinapendulum
Jamie Loftus: @jamieloftusHELP / www.iheart.com/podcast/105-th...
Sarah Z: @marysuewriter / / @sarahz
Dan Arrows: @_DanArrows / / threearrows
LaRon Readus: @Readus_101 / / readus101
Cameron Rice: @TheCameronRice / t.co/q0lVhpJsgM?amp=1
Crista Llewellyn did my makeup! -- / cristallewellynmua
Special Thanks:
Tanis Ridley for help with terminology
Daniel C Gogolen: Associate Director of Doing Crimes -- @AntifaNimorph / @iwriteokay - Komedie
Most of the Internet: "Cats" is awful! It makes no sense!
More nuanced Internet: The play was pretty strange too, maybe this shouldn't be surprising.
MMF: The original poetry (and poet) are so F'd up that the madness of the movie is the best quality.
466chalk well let’s not go overboard. I actually applaud the choice to do something different, but somebody somewhere along the line should have said “look wr tried this as a test, it was a good instinct but this clearly isn’t going to work”.
@@denniscalero9396 one of the problems with CG is you dont know how well the end result is going to work until you are near the end of production
@@onthefence928 I have to respectfully disagree with you. I work in entertainment. There likely was a series of test shots done before principle production that the director and executives saw. On a production this expensive, every decision is gone over many times, nothing is left to chance.
No. Several people saw this and either everyone really believed this was going to be amazing. Or, more likely, someone in charge liked it, and nobody said a word.
I've worked on sets where literally everyone, from the second unit guys, to the actors, even the producers, know the director is making a mistake and no one says a word.
Personally, to me as an artist, I don't think it's awful. I dont think it works, but I really think the reason people cringe is actually very simple: theyve moved the ears too high. I honestly think that if they had moved the ears to look more human, it would have looked more like human beings in weird costumes.
_But_ the CG and editing were both rushed and the music is terrible
python java bear with me. I agree that both of the things you say are true but it doesn’t actually contradict my point. The reason the cgi is horrifying is not because it was rushed. It’s because the director made design choices that intrinsically are bad choices, no matter how well or badly they are executed. They moved forward with a design concept that would not work, no matter how carefully executed. I would argue that, small mistakes and details aside, they succeeded in their intent. It’s just that the intent was doomed to fail.
Nabokov once observed that T.S. Eliot is an anagram for toilets
Lol, underrated comment
Goddamn!
@@picksleydust4985 shit, it is.
Smart man. Thanks for that.
Evan Suggs That’s amazing.
Honestly, this makes Lindsay's video so much funnier, since she recounts the history that when ALW approached Elliot's widow about adapting the poems into Cats the musical, she claimed that "he would have loved it". This is blatantly false and was clearly Elliot's widow having the last laugh after what was probably a really fucked up marriage.
His wife seems to have been a superfan, becoming his secretary was supposedly her career goal in highschool already. Maybe she was motivated by money and not really opposed to his ideology or his personal shittiness but it's hilarious either way.
@@c.w.8200 I think it's hard to believe that.
I@@samkeiser9776 It's true though. She has stated as much.
I like the idea of his wife, knowing how much he would have hated it, personally choregraphing the mid-play orgy
I know a 90-year-old man who worked for decades in the UK theatre industry as an actor, teacher and playwright. He's not someone who ever became famous but he worked on many stages across the UK, acting alongside the likes of Patrick Stewart, Maggie Smith, Glenda Jackson. He has written dozens of plays of which a handful have been performed at small fringe theatres and is also a poet (with over a hundred published poems) and took an interest in Eliot's poetry.
He told me that decades ago (in the 1970s I think) he wrote to the Eliot estate with the proposal to adapt 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats' into a stage musical. The estate replied in a letter to him explaining that they thought this was an "awful" idea and something that Eliot would never have approved of! You could then imagine his anger when, many years later, he found out that Lloyd Webber had been given permission to turn the poems into a musical when originally his proposal was rejected.
He has had very few regrets in life but one of them is that he never kept the rejection letter as proof that the Eliot estate originally thought that a 'Cats' musical was a bad idea!
Reading Animal Farm and asking for more "public spirited pigs" is the 40s equivalent of getting mad about Rage Against the Machine for being "too political"
TS Eliot is a trotskyist
Then again, Orwell was a government snitch, so… there ya go.
@@noahkarpinski1824
He called Orwell that, and was wrong, and sort of right.
In a vast majority of the "making of" documentaries, Andrew Lloyd Weber likes to always recount a story of how he got the rights from T. S. Eliot's widow, Valerie, to adapt "The Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" into a musical. In it he assured her (because she was worried that Weber and co. would butcher Eliot's work by turning the cats into cute cartoonish kitty-cats) that he intended the Cats to be portrayed in the vein of the Hot Gossip dance troupe. Her response to it was: "I think Tom would've liked that."
And after watching this video essay and hearing about Eliot's views and also considering how Hot Gossip was mostly made up of women dancing in skin-tight body suits, I am honestly starting to wonder if Valerie Eliot said this and agreed to such an adaptation being made, just to spite her dead husband.
My thoughts exactly!
I'm starting to wonder why T.S. Eliot's poetry is considered so great.
This is my new head-canon
@@AnkhAnanku same 😂
No one has ever misunderstood a book more than T. S. Elliot misunderstood Animal Farm.
He thought his fanfic was better.
I wonder, if he remembers, that Napoleon and the other pigs attacked (and most likely have him mauled to death by the dogs offscreen) Snowball, the pig, who well, organized everything, that kept the far running in the first place...
Richard Dawkins: Hold my memes.
your at-home makeup produced a more convincing, more aesthetically pleasing cat person than all their millions and cgi
@ULGROTHA yeah these were actually funny and character appropriate cat skits not just HAHA HAIRBALL
I thought she was going to do the entire video in the Cat makeup...
@@TheEmbessyNetwork I DID TOO
@@awkwardpawsome it would've been better than the actual movie lol.
SFtheWolf Yeah, that’s what rotoscoping and overworked VFX artists will do.
I can’t wait for said VFX artists to shoulder all the blame for the movie’s horrible look that was deliberately chosen by Hooper.
Expectation: "lol cats bad, look CGI, editing, acting"
Reality: Hour long T.S. Eliot call-out post with receipts
When I was younger I, being a Brit, was often on 'historical railways' (aka steam railways) and one of my favorite memories of them was the fact that one of them had a Skimbleshanks. It was a cat that got off at a station, walked around for a bit, got fussed by passengers, occasionally stole someones unattended food and then would clamber back onto the train once the whistle blew and then would follow the ticket inspect up and down the train. Being young I thought THAT was what the whole basis for the Skimbleshanks thing was about, assuming that was how things were back in those days, like naval ships had a ships cat, I just assumed railways always had a railway cat.
This is adorable. I am so ready to believe in cats who live on trains and commute for their own mysterious reasons
*sees Maggie dressed and acting like a Weberian Cat*
I hope this doesn't awaken anything in me
Anything ... PERVERSE?!
Steady on, Rex!
I would say T.S Eliot is rolling in his grave but he'd probably inadvertently stop himself from a long protrusion coming out of his body...
"I hope this doesn't awaken anything in me" - She don't need no fancy catsuit for that - "Don't You Dare Give Me That Look" did it for me! XD
What about the part where expressed her love of pegging ay 18:00 ?
Elliot's poetry (specifically The Waste Lands and the Song of Alfred Prufrock) were fundamental for me as a non-native speaker and I always felt them as explorations of the horrid staleness that war imposes upon the human soul. When I began my Masters in Scotland and learned about his fascistic inclinations, I just had another moment of "yet again, a writer that I admire would have advocated against my very existence, great"
Happy to come across another admirer.
My mother was a big fan so it goes back a long way with me.
am i the only one who suddenly started feeling like crying when maggie started talking about how we restrict our movements and emotions and how freeing her class and the cats choreo was?
There's so much to this is kind of ridiculous. This intersects with both neurodiversity and queerness and their stigmatisation in society on a fundamental level.
From a personal example, I'm an autistic trans person also ADHD. My movement has been policed my whole life on various levels. However the most jarring revelation came this year, for context I'm 38. I only figured out I am trans around the start of the year and have started living truly as myself after that. One surprising result is I stopped masking how I express emotion, which is very physically. Like when I'm really happy I'll jump with joy and/or drum any available surface and/or kick the air with my feet etc.
Thing is I have no memory of ever doing this in my life before. It's natural behaviour for me I hadn't been aware of until I was 38. Now I obviously can't say for certain as to the cause why I learned to hide this behaviour. I can pretty confidently say however how restrictive out society is when it comes to movement certainly didn't help.
"Behind every great man is a great woman"
...
It's called 'pegging'.
It is the only thing to do, now that the beaches are closed.
Maggie's face at 18:05 is worth every one of my Patreon dollars
*slow clap*
I'm the asshole that gave it the 667th like.
@@henchmen999 On the upside, you enabled the next 150ish of us to like the comment without feeling conflicted, so thanks!
I have an interesting yarn to tell you Maggie its that Eliot and Groucho Marx where penpals regularly sending letters back & forth and eventually T.S Eliot arranged a dinner at his London home, and both men prepared for the greatest night of their lives. They couldn’t have been more disappointed.
When Groucho arrived, Eliot was horrified to discover he only wanted to discuss books and poetry. In turn, Groucho was mortified to find out Eliot only wanted to talk about the Marx Brothers’ movie Duck Soup. Rather than reach an agreement, the two simply chose to live out their dream evening regardless: Eliot doggedly cracking awful jokes while Groucho tried to impress him with his literary theory on King Lear.
When dinner finally ended, neither man wanted to ever speak to the other again. They stopped writing, and Eliot never mentioned the evening to anyone. It’s since gone down as one of the worst meetings in history.
God, I wanna see that movie.
my god this is amazing
@@UltimateKyuubiFox someone needs to make this while they're stuck in quarantine
UltimateKyuubiFox We all do!
@@UltimateKyuubiFox we have a radio play by the BBC called Between the Ears on this incident.
i keep being like "OMG NOOOOOOOOOOO I LOVE TS ELIOT'S POETRY." and then i realize im thinking about E.E. Cummings. guess i don't really care about modern poetry.
Literally same, lmao.
E.E. Cummings was Joseph McCarthy's biggest fan lol
17:30 to play devils advocate, the motif of Saint Sebastian being shot with arrows was mainly painted so that renaissance masters could get their boyfriends to do sexy poses and be paid by the Catholic Church for the pleasure.
thank you, i wanted to come and say that. St Sebastian slowly shifted into being a very homoerotic figure in art, so it makes sense for him to see these images and call them sexual.
I lost my shit at the part about his feelings on St Sebastian, that he could look at those paintings and the element that disturbed him as homoerotic was the *penetrating* arrows and not the fact that St Sebastian always LOOKS LIKE THAT
I just love how the readings of T.S. Eliot's quotes sound snobbish like he probably did. The guy read animal farm and sided with the pigs!
There's recordings of the dude, and... Yeah, he really does sound like that.
We all know the motto of the jellicle cats: Four legs good, two legs better.
okay, I commented that before seeing the vid because I already knew it... ***that is an exact, dead-on impression of what this man sounded like.*** He sounded exactly like that, 100%.
Whoever read for Eliot here was having entirely too much fun
@@GelidGanef Oh god, it's Cody from Some More News, I've just noticed it. Yes, he did have too much fun, in the best way possible
Why does Maggie's description of TS Eliot make me think of a slightly more socially successful HP Lovecraft?
I don't know, when you break it down to inherent emotion, it seems like TS was more about deep disregard and disdain for other groups, while Lovecraft looked at them with a primal fear not even the old ones could instill in him. Like two sides of a fascist racist coin.
I think you cracked the code.
I was thinking about Lovecraft the whole time. Sounds like Eliot and Lovecraft would be big ol’ alt right fanboys if they were around today.
@@TroublingPath They do share exceptionally bad taste in cat names
Liska If there was an award for worst cat names of all time, those two would be in hot contention.
His criticism of Animal Farm is hilariously telling.
Maggi called be as an asexual “dope” my life is complete everybody I can finally ascend. Be well my friends, be well.
May the cake and garlic bread be with you.
@kevin willems oh no now you added questions to this. Is it the heavyside layer like a layer of a cake or is it heavyside lair like there's a hideout hidden in the heavyside layer. Like a lair in thr layer that only jellicle can access?? 🤯
~🧡 🦇
_Up, up, up. Past the Russel Hotel..._
@@rachelstaley9659 just to note it is not a good idea to indulge in both at the same time.
But as a fun aside cake as made by the romans to celebrate special occasions was usually a savory dish seasoned with olives, spices, and garlic.
So cake was og garlic bread.
Andrew Lloyd Webber, while he was busy preparing his new Broadway play in 2015, left New York in order to fly back to Britain for a single day to cast his _second vote at all of the decade_ in favor of tax credit cuts which would make poor British families even poorer, so something tells me he looks at T.S. Elliot’s royalist views very favorably.
Well, when you consider that the die-for-the-state framing device comes entirely from Webber...
He did threaten to leave England if Neil "Alright" Kinnock won the 1992 General Election
Given the tantrum he threw when Nicole Scherzinger left the revival cast, it was almost as if he thought he owned her.
UltimateKyuubiFox Yeah, Webber can huff my duff, the rich bastard.
And given his take on Phantom of the Opera, I absolutely agree.
The opening of this video yanked me into a journey of self-discovery I was grossly unprepared for and given no warning to. The internet is a perilous, absurd place.
give in to your perverse feelings!
@@MaggieMaeFish I have a thing for dressing in such things.
What I always found interesting about the song, “Jellical Ball” is that every character has their own idea of what physical traits a cat needs to have to be considered a “Jellical” cat. These traits vary wildly and many are contradictory to each other. It gives off the sense that no one actually knows what “Jellical” cat is. For the most part, each character just lists a trait that they possess. As though the only thing that distinguishes them from other cats is that they believe themselves to be “Jellical.”
Plus, ALW once said in an interview that all cats are Jellicle cats... so is there really a distinction, or is Eliot just trying to make one where none exists?
@@amiefortman7220But then with that there's a possible interpretation that intentional or not, it's an mockery of the idea of a fascistic master race, the cats are all concerned about which of them is "Jellical" based on trivial things like physical traits, the cats are bigoted about which of them are Jellicle, but yet despite that they all undeniably are "Jellicle" and their standards in reality are arbitrary.
OK Not really the point of the video, but this really stuck out to me;
I'm a trans woman, and while the concept is bullshit, I'm told I "pass" in everyday life, but I'm super self conscious about my appearance and my voice.
I also happen to find Maggie visually and verbally appealing, and sometimes I'm like "I wish I looked/sounded more like her"
So the idea that she is seen as trans by TERFS is....really weird to me XD
TERFS have NO IDEA what they're talking about. Ever.
This was really good as always...
Just one thing... the "erotic" st sebastian paintings were really kind of a thing for Renaissance italian painters, many of whom were gay or bisexual. St Sebastian nowadays is kind of a gay icon (in the literal sense)
I dont think Ts eliot's interpretation of the paintings as carrying eroticism are completely off
That's interesting! Do you know if there are any documentaries on this?
Yeah I felt this as well, I was surprised Maggie didn't come across it at all when looking up the painting, iirc it's even on the wikipedia page.
@@PinkRedBrisk i dont know any docs, but i read this article www.academia.edu/20578817/Losing_His_Religion_from_Outlooks_Gay_and_Lesbian_Visual_Cultures_eds._Peter_Horne_and_Reina_Lewis_1996_
I was hoping someone else would mention this!
Saint Sebastian is one of only a handful of saints and religious figures with an underground “gay following” in several of the sects that venerate him, including Roman Catholicism. He’s an (unofficial) queer icon.
A few others include the martyrs Saint Sergius and Saint Bacchus, the Marian icon the Madonna of Montevergine, and the biblical figures of King David and Jonathan. The culture (or perhaps counterculture) of LGBTQ christians who regard these figures as icons even when they belong to sects that don’t and won’t acknowledge them as such is quite interesting.
Googling “saint sebastian as a gay icon” brings up a good amount of info on the subject, but here’s the basic gist:
Unlike the other examples I listed earlier, nothing about the story surrounding his life or existence is particularly queer.
His role as a gay christian icon entirely stems from the fact that depictions of his martyrdom during the Italian Renaissance were almost all young and good looking, often quite nude and posed suggestively, as opposed to earlier, more historically accurate depictions of him as middle-aged and not especially interested in making him handsome. And the arrows=phallic objects isn’t an uncommon interpretation either among professionals.
Basically a bunch not very straight artists used him as an excuse to paint a hot naked dude and not get in trouble for it.
TS Elliot just sucked (in this particular situation) because his response to all of that boiled down to “ew gay people exist”.
uzumakikat13 "i'd rather he be a girl"... yea, TS, you got the same impression, too bad you're a coward
Also, I can't get over the use of "meow" as a substitute for "no duh".
And this is why "Cats" belongs to the theater kids, the furries, and the LGBTIA+ alliance, and T.S. Eliot can keep spinning in his grave until his head falls off. Thank you so much for this video--it gave me a lot to think about!
This and Lindsay Ellis’ essay are a delightful pair.
I love how gay Cats the musical is and now I love it more knowing that TS Elliot would have been rolling in his grave when it premiered on broadway. I now wish the movie would have been animated because the one thing he didn’t want, was for it to be cartoon cats running around the screen.
Oh I would have loved it if it was animated.
Me, having only watched a couple reviews on the movie: Yeah, this sucks
Me, having learned that the musical is very gay: I love this, truly a masterpiece
The musical made me want to go into theater in the first place--it is beautifully bizarre, and I love it even more knowing that Eliot would have hated it.
Also didn't Elliots wife like OK the use of it to make the play how it was & etc? Does it makes anyone else wonder if she also thought him rolling in his grave would be funny or maybe he was such a closeted gay and had all those weird thought in trying to hide it n that's why she said OK bcuz she was like Yuh if he was lying to himself & everyone else this is what would've come of it. You know? Just a thought 🤷🏼♀️
~🧡 🦇
It was almost made an animated musical by Amblin in the 90s but they went under. Which is too bad. As Lindsay Ellis points out, the absurdism, expressionism and abstraction of animation is perfect for the musical genre.
Let this forever be my mark. Pegging was invented by the gods.
Maggie Mae Fish is the only woman I will let peg me
God putting mens gspots in their assholes is the biggest giveaway that this is hell.....
Hell? Everything is a dildo if you're brave enough, this is heaven
@@freewilliam93 just cos some men are (conditioned to be) scared of the very concept of a prostate does not mean that is the normal state of being. having an open mind does not cost money
Had no idea what pegging was until looking it up during the video. All of the sudden, I'm seeing Wade and Vanessa celebrating International Women's Day from Deadpool, like an ah ha moment.
I watched Cube on a mushroom trip and felt fine with life. I watched Cats (2019) sober and was mortified.
I love how you talk about the dancing. Intellectually, I disdain Cats, but I have *also always LOVED* it for reasons I could never articulate - but it's exactly as you say. Watching the way it celebrates the human body is liberating. Dance is THE perfect marriage between sports and art, the ultimate way to be (socio)physical.
I think it's clear that _Cats_ will become the _Starship Troopers_ of a new generation.
Also your cat makeup is amazing!
@@OsirisMalkovich Man, I was thinking both those things all throughout!
in what way? starship troopers is a good movie
@@heliopyre I think it's a good movie too. But the book it was based on has a very pro-fascist stance that the movie is practically a parody of, the same way that Cats has diverged from its source material.
@@OsirisMalkovich Cats is a really bad movie though, prior to Cats release one of the film channels used snippets from Tom Hooper to drag everything wrong with modern film, and something she brings up here, that dead pan talking head shot is the worst possible way to tell a story, and used constantly by Tom Hooper. It has its moments, like when Anne Hathaway is about to drop dead in a gutter after she finishes her own eulogy, but for the most part its just used for cheap melodramatic effect, there is no reason to use it for an ensemble piece, which is what Cats was supposed to be.
I didn't realize Shakespeare was this woke.
Cloud Angel Shakespeare? More like Based-speare. Sorry, I’ll see myself out
For his time he was fairly radical in terms of the ideas he presents, especially in terms of how he represents issues of class and, occasionally even gender. At least one of his plays involves characters engaging in romance with people of the same sex and being perceived as being of different gender to their biological sex (though this may have been due to the medium of theatre only allowing men to participate, giving the playwright the abilitity to lampshade this for comedic purposes rather than being a big political statement. Equally there are people who theorise that he was queer, pointing to his poetry which just as often details romantic feelings towards other men as it does for explicitly female subjects, though again this could just have been down to him wanting to frame some of his work from another perspective, or because men in general were less afraid of showing affection to each other prior to the trial of Oscar Wilde, centuries later)
Its heavily based on freemasonry and a ton of it does go back to the ancient mystery schools. They taught logic rhetoric and political science.
@@sloanenewcomb6180 sounds like you're dropping a sick beat
🎶 soy OH boy OH sjwbetacuck OH 🎵
🎶 i parrot rightwing political jargon that makes me sound like an ass OH OH 🎵
oof follow me on SoundCloud for my alt-right rap
The talk about moving your body "the right way" brought back a memory I hadn't thought of in years and it also brought a new lense to look the memory through.
When I was six I ate with the fork in my right hand and knife in the left one. I remember one instance when in daycare I was told by the daycare worker to change my hold on the utensils into "the right one", aka knife on the right and fork on the left.
And now I don't know what to think of it anymore
That’s merely the European way. Americans tend to cut with the knife in their right and then switch the fork over to use it. I heard this from John Cleese trying to make fun of the American Python Terry Gilliam.
Big Joel's readings of Elliot's quotes are so fucking good I laugh every time
This video is an EXPERIENCE and tbh deserves to be in the extra features for the blu ray release of CATS
A Fish playing a cat?! What will this crazy year throw up next?
You had a much more productive Cats 2019 induced breakdown than I did
Learning TS Elliot was an incel is absolutely hilarious thank you for this cursed knowledge
Feels a little obvious in retrospect, Alfie's love song is just two steps removed from "all women are shallow, nobody wants a Nice Guy"
They are and they don't. @@cv5953
WHERE’S THE REY PALPATINE ESSAY, JAR JAR BINKS CAT?
So proud to be part of something so informative, chaotic, and feline.
The pleasure was all mine! meow!
So Elliot does not see Hamlet as having an object to correlate to his existential dread. Does the skull (aka perhaps the most famous prop in theatre) not count?
...... *mumbles awkwardly while looking at the ground*:
"The Waste Land" still slaps though...
Yup!
Still... Probably gonna keep pulling lines from it for writing inspiration for a _while._
I've always had a deep-seated appreciation for The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock but that was because the imagery of an industrial wasteland, lonely and still at night, was profoundly soothing to me. I don't think that was the intended tone
Sweet Jesus, Cats 2019 is Springtime for Hitler on even more levels than I could ever have imagined. This video essay is a blessing.
HOLY SHIT!
I SEE CLEARLY 2020
It’s not, spring time was intentional fascist as a joke so nobody would watch the play dumbass!
We could make more money with a flop than with a hit!
@@hanniffydinn6019 The guy who wrote the play didnt write it as a joke so nobody would watch it. He wrote it in earnest. Have you even seen The Producers...dumbass?
Hanniffy Dinn No springtime for hitler was a stage production based on the fictional fictional musical of the same name featured in Mel Brook’s Film the producers. Which sought to mock and satirize Nazi Theatrics through the fictional musical.
This might not seem like much of a difference but it is. The point of the producers is not “lol Nazis” it’s “this is Nazism everyone and boy is it ridiculous and pathetic.”
Save Meowtha.
Damn, you beat me to it.
Why did you sing that name??
Meowtha Speaks--uh, Sings.
I love your point on the use of different terms to pigeonhole people based on class.
Another way I've personally experienced the way language is used to classify people is "expats" vs "immigrants", as a POC who studies and works abroad I've only ever seen the term expat used to identify white immigrants.
I love how the meows slowly get less enthusiastic.
I can't tell what I love more: Cody as T. S. Elliot or Big Joel as T. S. Elliot.
You missed one of the policing bodies examples: Applied Behavioral Analysis, where neurotypical therapists physically manipulate Autistic children's bodies and the kids just have to learn to accept and obey, and, somehow, this isn't thought of as grooming for abuse by most people.
There seems to be a lot of nuance missing here. I'm reading an article in Spectrum News that says ABA is a highly varied therapy that's often used in conjunction with other therapies. There's a scary number of therapists who think punishments like electric shocks are acceptable, but there are also movements for adults with autism to educate today's therapies. Can I ask where you got your information?
@@MolecularMachine Spectrum News isn't the most trusted news site, in my opinion. I prefer Nueroclastic, written almost exclusively by Autistic people. My sources are articles on that site, god knows how many first person accounts of survivors, an in-depth essay on ABA called The Misbehavior of Behavioralists by Michelle Dawson, the ethical guidelines by the certifying board for behavioral analysts, and the Me Book by the founder of the therapy, Ole Ivar Lovaas himself. What are your sources, beyond Spectrum News?
So here's the problem with the 'highly varied therapy': there aren't actual guidelines saying that you can't abuse Autistic people. So, if you don't know what you're getting, and the guidelines aren't there, there's nothing to protect you from abuse. Here are two articles comparing the ethical guidelines for ABA with those of dog training, and showing that dog trainers have more stringent anti-abuse policies: neuroclastic.com/2019/03/27/is-aba-really-dog-training-for-children-a-professional-dog-trainer-weighs-in/ and neuroclastic.com/2019/11/24/bcbas-respond-to-the-dog-trainer-who-called-out-aba/ The author proves her point remarkably well; you can argue that you think that Autistic people are protected by therapists' consciences (although I'd counter that Judge Rotenberg Center exists), but I don't think you can argue that the ethical guidelines of ABA, as shown here, are as comprehensive as those of the dog trainers certifying bodies the author links.
@@MolecularMachine Also, Lovaas himself had views so disgusting that trying to salvage anything of this therapy to me is like saying that you can find things to combat anti-semitism in Mein Kampf. Why is it controversial and extreme to say that you shouldn't go looking for Autism therapies in the works of someone who referred to Autistic people as human only in the physical sense? His goals for his patients (notably, he said the parents, not the therapy recipients, were the true consumers/beneficiaries of the therapy) were blind obedience (to the point that it sounds like grooming for abuse) and masking (the act of hiding Autistic traits, linked to suicide), and his methods were explicitly denying his patients food, water, favorite objects, affection, and bodily autonomy except when they obeyed. That's before we get into adversives. Why am I, and Autistic person, blamed for, after reading the full book of that and becoming literally sick to my stomach, saying nothing he says should be taken seriously? In the introduction of the book, Lovaas writes: "With responsibility, the developmentally disabled individual takes on dignity and acquires certain basic rights as a person. No one has the right to be taken care of, no matter how retarded he is." Why are we looking for advice on Autism from someone who thought Autistic people only acquire basic human rights if they take on the correct 'responsibility' (defined, by Lovaas, as hard work and accepting the parents as boss)?
The full book, if ever you need to induce vomiting or lose hope in humanity: archive.org/stream/LovaasMeBook/Lovaas%20-Me%20Book_djvu.txt
#stoptheshock
@@madiunknown5013 you have laid out beautifully everything wrong with defending these kinds of practices, thank you it makes me feel heard as well
34:58 the actor's choice to make T.S. Eliot sound like Dr. Evil is **chef's kiss**
One of the strangest uses of language to shape opinion I heard came from a friend of mine.
She is a Red Letter Christian. After she talked about how it started as a movement against homophobic and anti-abortion Evangelical views in the 80s to favor social outreach to the poor, tolerance, and building strong families (like Christ talked about), they were quickly called "radical."
Radical. For wanting to help people. In the name of Christ. Like Jesus said. While calling themselves Christians. Weird.
Now THAT is some sociopolitical revisionism.
I used to think I was raised to be Fundamentalist. Actually I was raised to be Red Letter with a lot of Fundamentalists and JWs surrounding us trying to convince my family to their beliefs.
"Self expression is whack." T.S. Elliot, probably.
“I’m demonized because I cross-dress.” - Buffalo Bill
okay but Cat Maggie is turning me into a furry
Came here to say this
2020 *is* the year of the furry, after all.
Beastars weakened me and this was the final blow
gorgeous makeup, obviously took some serious effort
@@mirmalchik and the hair 😍
ALW: "Hal, it's just about Cats."
MMF: "Oh, honey..."
i really really appreciate the not falling into normal cis feminist routes of talking about a dangerous man as like, a joke, in a way that focuses on sexuality or sexual anxieties or even trauma while underplaying the cissexism and sexism behind it. have been on Edge constantly about how people talk about sexuality, bodies, genitals, etc because woof people suck at it :| you explained the transphobia and misogyny behind his attitudes in a way that was really sensitive and accurate and i fuckin Need this from other feminists honestly, trans and cis
This analysis is *chef's kiss*
About the dancing, if you ever want a workout, dance to Cats 1998. My friends and I did it every day for like a year in high school. So freeing, so much fun, and the most fun I've had 'working out'.
I love how INTO the cat outfit and act you were- and it exudes the feel of the stage play. You've also added so much depth to my viewing experience of this fascinating trainwreck!
I walked to my local theatre in 0 degree weather to see Cats, and I was the only one there. I had the time of my life.
I think the bit at the end about how not all feelings can be expressed in words helped me put into words the problem I have with talking about any piece of emotionally affecting media right after watching it! I just want to experience these emotions, they're too complex and powerful to reduce to mere words.
I loved this video! And your cats costume is great!!!
Pur-fascism.
Also this video is excellent, and I like the Hannibal analysis.
As an engineer who has to deal with chemistry every now and then...people are not metals.
We're mineral though (Carbon has enter the chat)
I enjoy a lot of these videos, but like I find myself going back and watching this one...a disturbing amount. I think it's the random meows? Maybe chewing on the moon in that one part? It's delightful. Top tier CZcams.
I feel like Maggie's acting skills don't get enough praise
Honestly the fact that people would interpret you as being trans for as far as I can tell literally no reason should be a relieving sign to trans people everywhere that transphobes "clock" people almost completely at random these days.
I think I tweeted something like that-- THEY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT!!!!!
It was to me!
It's like... they must clock a quarter of the female population as trans. Nothing about her appearance looks cis or trans, she's just a (pretty) woman. Nothing about her should make anyone assume one way or the other... and if anything, her voice should make people assume cis.
It really betrays a paranoia that verges on pathological if you're seeming to see members of such a small minority everywhere. And it also goes to show that transphobia will not stop at harming trans women. It will try to police the appearance of all women, cis and trans, and so cis and trans people should unite to stamp it out.
@callmecatalyst I couldn't agree more. Transphobia is misogyny because we live in a culture where one gender is subconsciously seen as the norm and the other as a deviation from it. It's a model that sneaks into every form of bigotry. Even feminists who become TERFs become more and more gender essentialist and hence misogynistic over time.
Transphobia against trans men has a misogynistic edge too: the trope is "silly women, you can't be men, you're too feminine and weak."
If we lived in a truly gender-egalitarian culture this would not be the case, but as it is, transphobia, racism and all forms of discrimination will go hand-in-hand and be exacerbated by misogyny.
@@georgeparkins777 If a recent very stupid subset of Qanon is to be believed, it's a lot more than 25%. There's entire websites now devoted to 'proving' that literally every celebrity is trans, except specifically the ones who are out trans who are lying.
i actually really, unironically love your cats oc. that design is cool and fun and looks like it jumped right out of the show
15:32 I stan an ace-affirming queen
I have to say, I am loving the FUCK out of how much fun Big Joel is having with his cameos.
This. Analysis of historical context and the shift of medium side by side with the insinuation T.S. Eliot needs to get pegged. I love this.
Fantastic, I especially enjoyed the section on your take on dance and human movement. Really woke me up to that kind of social programming I got as a kid in regards to that where expression is weakness. Also really broke down interesting passages for dummies like myself
Having Robert Evans as the voice for Orwell is so deeply appropriate and I feel like everyone is missing it.
Me: a former English major
Also me: wishes I knew all this about Eliot back in college
Elliot noticing Saint Sebastian's beauty is absolutely correct as that saint has historically been described as kinda gorgeous (and probably assexual, btw), but Elliot being incapable of dealing with the fact that he found a man beautiful and complaining that a female saint's death should have been made sexier instead is... wow, wrong on so many levels!
I never knew that Sebastian could be ace :)
There is a certain self-hating-gay aspect to Elliot, isn't there?
@@acuerden I've been trying to bury that thought during this entire video don't wanna seem like I'm projecting, but damn yeah it really seem like it to me.
The commonality of chastity in early (and ongoing) Christianity has nothing to do with 'asexuality' in the way it's generally used today, as in a person's inherent lack of sexual attraction. Frankly that's kind of a bizarre and completely ahistoric link to make
When you talked about Eliot's problems with Hamlet then said "now compare Hamlet to Eliot's favorite Shakespeare play," I said out loud "Coriolanus?" Of course that's his favorite Shakespeare play.
I was more expecting Taming of the Shrew to be Eliot's favorite (confirming male domination and all that)
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aethereal rumors
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
This was mildly weird to watch after prince Philip's death following a deadly pandemic
Though your contemporary interpretation of Eliot does reveal a type of thinking that seems absolutely ridiculous, and certainly deplorable, I can't help but defend the deep awe and beauty in some of his work. I challenge anyone to sincerely listen to Alec Guinness reading "Four Quartets" and not experience the deepest of poetic goosebumps. Universal themes like time and memory seem better subjects in his work than whatever mumbo jumbo he believed about culture.
Wow, I literally thought it was originally just a bunch of cute, harmless kids' poems about different types of cats.
RosaLui Nothing is harmless - unless it’s deliberately trying to be helpful.
@@phastinemoon Thanks, Confucius.
They kind of are. Any relationship between Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and fascism is quite tenuous.
Same here. Also eff me for loving the stage musical because I never did a deep dive on Eliot. No such thing as death if the artist I guess.
@@galacticsnufferpuss6851 Well, the weird death cult thing was an invention of the musical.
"Reincarnate me Daddy, meow" Thanks I hate it lol.
MMF: "Cats" is weird in part because the author of the source material was a fascist.
Me: Wait, I thought T. S. Eliot was just poking fun at stereotypes of Victorian society ...
MMF: [brings receipts]
Me: ... yeah no, Tommy hella fascist.
That is the HOTTEST Animal Farm take I've EVER heard
Eddie Cherry Cola “needs more pigs” for real wtf
Every video Maggie makes changes me on a molecular level, my whole upbringing is being deconstructed in a way I could never articulate. Thank you.
This is SUCH. A GOOD. ANALYSIS.
Seriously, the links drawn between fascism, the poetry, the historical context and personal attitudes is *chef's kiss* magnifique.
I wish Modernist scholars were more willing to confront the fascism inherent to Eliot's work. I felt quite shunned trying to apply such critique to the modernists, or even in raising my internal recoil at their ideas, both in undergrad and masters; it seemed like spoiling the party, that people just want to enjoy and revel in the poetry's genius or whatever, and blithely say that they were men and women of their time etc etc.
Essays like these justify my response at the time. And I think there is a lot of beauty in Eliot's work too - Prufrock is one of my most favourite poems, and always will be. But to ignore the historical attitudes engendered into works is to suggest that one ought to be selective about reading history into literature, when it fits, when it is comfortable to do so. And that is a privilege to those who may read these works without ever being inescapably drawn to their history
@@nullset560 I certainly didn't go to a remotely conservative university - but while Pound's fascism was openly discussed, Eliot's was not (We didn't really touch on Yeats much). There was a little acknowledgement that Eliot was a bit of an old-fashioned conservative, but nothing beyond that.
I relate with this a fair bit. I absolutely love his poetry but it’s in a strange way where I see it as this exploration of the disturbed fascist mindset (in the Hollow Men and Rhapsody on a Windy Night for example and their racist view of societal degradation)
Have you ever tried being a person of the future? It is a fairly good excuse. Very few artists from the past and present live up to our standards, and while their shortcomings may be reflecting in their art it should not spoil it.
I love the mocking voice Cody Johnston uses to read Eliot’s words.
You bring up amazing and insightful ideas, I wish I could internalize this entire essay. Your discussion about societal restriction on body language was eye-opening.
Also, you have a wonderful, infectious smile. :)
Not even a minute in and already chewing the scenery. Don't make us get the spray bottles!
PS: Cats have no kings, and Eliot should have understood this. Alas.
Where did TSE ever claim that cats had kings? Chewing the scenery is a proper reaction to this insane video but TSE should not be blamed for this.
incredibly adorable thumbnail
Holy heck, that "Not see flag" was filmed just like a Leni Riefenstahl scene...
Robert Evans as Orwell... you hit the nail on he head.
I'm glad for the existence of Cats because it has led to the existence of very entertaining critiques of Cats.
Saint Sebastian is historically an homoerotic figure so his analysis is quite funny.
I love that TS's reaction to finding the painting erotic is not "Maybe he is attractive" but "Arrows are attractive..they should only be on women or it'll confuse me"
@@ArturGlass.C This is working for me, why isn't it a women ?
@@saint_silver gives me nick fuentes vibes, lol
Folding Idea's abstract rant in to the uncanny valley... did not prepare me for the deep dive of this Channels caliber, but damn were both a wild ride!
"poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality"
WTF! How is this guy a poet?!
Poetry is literally in every way the opposite of what he's saying.
No! Poetry is just putting pretty words together to confirm the social status quo. Make the new things go away, blessed muse...
I legit did a double take. If being clinical and objective was the goal of the writing, why not just write an academic paper?
I think you have misunderstood the whole point, if you want to understand Eliot's point of view about how poetry should be made you should read the whole essay where those words come from, where he claims that your personal emotions and feelings are not important at all in poetry but what is important is how you work them out into poetry, how you are to-as Pound said- trascend your personal truths into art, how you are to go deeper into the very spring of those emotions that usually are simple and vague and have no poetic value.
There was an entire school of formalist poets who wrote like this in the mid 20th century.
not finished, but props for the dance discussion. i've been drawn to basically every dance class my university offers over the last year for much the same reason, despite a similar lack of previous dance training. recognizing your body as another form of communicating and expressing yourself in complicated and diverse a way as actual language has been a revelation. it has really helped me feel more comfortable and expressive with my body in general, especially in more delicate ways that go against my male socialization where using your body is primarily about strength and aggression rather than expressing emotions. so yeah, thanks for talking about that!
Really got sucked into the bit about fascism and genuinely forgot this video was about Cats. Was kind of shocked when you brought it back 😂
.... Your cat makeup and outfit is so spectacularly on point that it saddened me. I didn't pay to watch Cats, but if they had left the CGI for this style of makeup, I'd pay double!
I have never fallen in love with a creator so fast. WHY DON'T YOU HAVE MORE SUBS?!
Also the cameos are all mint.
Two things: One, I had no idea TS Eliot was like this so this was a very educational and insightful take onto why this movie is so fucking weird.
Two, my body was *not* ready for Maggie Mae Fish as a Cat.
U killing it with the makeup, how does a big studio wastes so much money and you look so much better.
Just use animation! Hollywood plz!
Not only do I enjoy the thoughtful and well-explained ideas you convey, but I adore your cat outfit.
I haven’t read Eliot or seen Cats. So I’m glad to have been introduced to these by you. Thanks