Winter Hiatus

 Hi guys!  I won't be able to upload my blog for a while because of finals and a family trip.  But I'll be back next month with commentary on The Awakening!! Stay tuned

- Leah

Settling the Mileven vs. Byler Debate

 Stranger Things Season 5 is coming out in 3 days, and I thought it would be a good chance to add my 2 cents on the whole Mileven vs. Byler debate that's been going on since season 1.

Mileven

I totally get why people love this ship so much, especially in the earlier seasons.  In season 1, Mike was the only person to treat El with genuine kindness.  Because she was staying at his house, she trusted him, and Mike got to know her the best.  They formed a deeper bond compared to the rest of the party.  Even though Mike isn't the most verbally affectionate person, he shows that he loves El in so many other ways.  He's very protective of her, and his encouragements give El the strength to fight.  When she moves to California, they constantly write letters back and forth which shows an insane amount of commitment.  It's very clear that they love and care about eachother very much.  They've been the central ship and couple for ten years.  It would make sense if they were endgame.  It started with Mileven, so it should end with Mileven.

HOWEVER, I think that what people forget is that when they started dating, Eleven barely knew English.  She couldn't grasp the concept of "friends".  At least for the first 2 years of her relationship, she probably didn't even know what dating was.  Because of her lack of social development, the romance feels rushed and it feels like she's making out and writing letters because that's what everyone else is doing.  When in Rome, do as the Romans do.  

In season 4, Mike outright says that he's afraid that El won't need him anymore.  He relied on El to make him feel wanted, and in the earlier seasons El depended on him for safety and emotional support.  However, after Max teaches her how to be her own person, Mike loses interest in who she is.  She doesn't need Mike's support anymore.  Mike doesn't feel needed anymore.  They both start losing interest and it leads to tension in season 4.

Ever since becoming a couple, Mike has been retreating from his role as the core four's Dungeon Master/ leader to spend more time with El.  This leads to instability within the friend group.  It's exactly as Will said in their rain fight: "You're destroying everything, and for what?  So you can swap spit with some stupid girl?"  Mike prioritizing El destroyed their friend group.

While narratively, it would make sense to end with Mileven, seeing as it would be a little rushed to change the ship, it wouldn't make sense for their characters.  They essentially broke up in season 4, and it would be disappointing if Eleven finds herself only to go back to being emotionally dependent on Mike.  It wouldn't make sense for Mike to become the group's leader again and be with the core four only for him to go back to pining about how El doesn't want him.  It wouldn't make sense as a narrative.

Byler

Let me preface this by saying that Will's crush on Mike is canon.  Now, it's a matter of whether Mike likes him back, which is ironic because when season 2 came out the debate was whether or not Will liked Mike back.  Oh, how the tables have turned.

Anyways, Mike and Will are best friends.  Even within their friend group, Mike seems to understand Will the most and has a "Will voice", which is a soft and kinder voice that he uses with Will whenever he's afraid.  They have a very deep and long emotional connection which could be the ideal setup for the couple of the century.  However, Mike isn't confirmed to like Will back.  he's in a committed relationship, he emotionally slaps Will around (espescially in season 3), and Byler could ruin some character development that Mike had.  On top of that, since there's only one season left, and it's the season meant to explain and explore the entire Upside Down, El's story, Will's time in the Upside Down, how it ends, etc.  If we add an LGBTQ+ arc for Mike where he accepts his queer identity and gets with Will, it could feel overwhelming.  Plus, if its rushed or gets poorly executed it could ruin the story by being too big of a plot twist.

On the other hand, there's 2 things to consider when it comes to confirming that Byler will happen.

1. Will is the ultimate Mileven shipper because he doesn't think that he could be loved.  He puts his feelings aside because he believes that he's unlovable and that he doesn't deserve love.  If Will dies before Mike loves him back, or if Mike rejects him, all it will do is confirm Will's negative beliefs.  Also, you wouldn't write a 10 year long slow-burn that ends with rejection or closure.

2. Queerbaiting.  Queerbaiting is when a movie or TV show adds a queer coded character to attract a queer audience without ever being good representation.  It' a move to profit off of the queer community without committing to the bit and giving them actual representation where it could risk losing the general audience.  A show made by nerds for nerds, that is meant to uplift minorities wouldn't queerbait to simply profit off of the queer audience.

Final Verdict

Byler is the most likely to happen!!  While Mileven is a stable ship that has its ups and downs, Byler adds emotional depth and connection between the two lovers.  On top of that, it would narratively make more sense.  If they were going to give Will a slightly happy ending, it wouldn't be by kissing a random boy.  It would be from finally having his feeling reciprocated by his long time best friend and lover.  A show for minorities wouldn't just profit off of queer people and not take responsibility.  If they can pull it off well, I will be ecstatic.

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams: Themes

Themes

Dream vs. Reality

    The battle between dreams and reality is embodied by the tension between Blanche and Stanley.  Upon losing Belle Reve, the love of her life, and her youthful glow, Blanche clings to her dreams and constructs a world of fantasy to protect herself.  She keeps her face in the dark to hide her aging features, romanticizes her life, and bathes excessively to maintain the illusion of composure and control.  On the other hand, Stanley represents the harsh reality.  He lives in a working class neighborhood with a rough job.  He aggressively exposes Blanche's true past, violently rapes her (remind her that chivalry is dead), and destroys her delicate illusions.  Reality crashing down on her caused her to lose her sanity because she couldn't handle it.
    However, I don't think that Tennessee Williams is trying to say that having hopes and dreams suck.  In the novel, Blanche and Stanley represent the extremes of their beliefs.  I think that the book is trying to say that the battle is constant and that we need to find a middle ground between the two.  Stanley and Stella only believe in reality, and they live a barely stable life because of that.  They don't think that they can get a better life that that, so they stick to their working class and stable life.  Stella doesn't want to run away from Stanley because his abuse is a good trade off for stability.  They don't believe that things will get better.  On the other hand, Blanche needs hope and dreams to survive.  She lives in her dreams to avoid facing her harsh reality because she knows that it will break her.  However, her hope lets her move on in life.  She may have lost her whole family and estate, but her hope that she will find a prince to rescue her keeps her in high spirits.  I think that Williams is trying to say that both of these extremes are wrong.  There's no right answer to this battle.  We can't depend on our dreams to live but we also can't be cynical and hopeless. 

Social Class

    This one's pretty straight forward.  Blanche represents the old ideals of class superiority and ethnocentrism (french is better than polish kind of idea), since she's a white aristocrat with generations of wealth from running a plantation.  Stanley and Stella represent the progressive and industrial working class.  The conflict between a declining traditional, more Eurocentric society and the new diverse, equal opportunity, and brutal society shows how the collapse of rigid social classes create not only freedom but also instability.  Although Stanley represents a new age of America, he also exposes how the struggle for progress can come with violence and loss of tradition (and therefore stability).  Blanche represents how people rooted in old fashion social values can be left behind when society evolves.  I think that the play is saying that when different social classes collide in pursuit of power, which in this case is Blanche and Stanley fighting over the house and Stella to fit their ideals, it can lead destruction and loss of empathy.  

Desire

    Each main character experiences the theme of desire differently.  
    For Blanche, desire is a coping mechanism and a response to loneliness.  After the death of her husband (and the cheating before it), she fills the emotional void with sexual encounters at the Tarantula hotel.  She's not just aroused by young men, she flirts with them because she's so desperate for validation, security, and the youth that she was promised.  Blanche believes that she needs to be romantically wanted by someone to have value in the world.  Her promiscuous past in Laurel isn't a reflection of how sinful and immoral she is.  It's a reflection of her fear of abandonment.  However, her desire is self-destructive.  The one thing that she believes she needs to have a life worth living, intimacy, is used against her by society to shame and destroy her.
    Stella's desire is a little different from Blanche.  It's a mutual desire between her and Stanley that's more physical (😏 😏 😏).  She is physically fulfilled by Stanley, which is why she forgives his violent behavior.  Their desire for each other is so strong that they become heavily dependent on each other.  When Stanley hits her at poker night, she is pulled back to him within minutes by her physical passion.  She needs him financially, emotionally, and physically to live a fulfilling life.  In her life, desire is a mechanism of manipulation, being used to bind her to a life that isn't necessarily safe nor happy.
    Stanley's desire is the most frightening out of the three.  His desire is a desire for dominance  and control.  He needs Stella to validate his masculinity and dominance.  He wants to feel like he has control over her.  He feels like he needs to have control over his home, the money in his family, and the people around him.  This is why he hates Blanche so much.  She is a threat to his desire for Stella, since she disrupts the mood and can influence her.  Her values of class, dreams, and virtue clash with his ideas and she resists his control.  Him raping Blanche was a violent fusion of fulfilling his sexual desire and destroying/controlling the 1 person who challenged him.  To Stanley, desire isn't passion.  It's a weapon of domination and control.  
    The play is saying that desire is both a primary motivation and a dangerous force that's capable of sustaining life but equally capable of ruining it.  Desire isn't bad, but the society that offers the characters no healthy way to fulfill it is. In the play, desire becomes inescapable, consuming, and ultimately destructive, revealing that what people long for could also be what destroys them.
P.S. The streetcar called Desire is important because Desire sets the characters on the path towards destruction.

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams: Summary

    Blanche DuBois, an aristocratic highschool English teacher, moves into her sister, Stella, and her husband, Stanley's apartment for the summer after she lost her family's plantation, Belle Reve.  Upon arrival, she is shocked and disturbed by Stella's lifestyle.  She comments on how she had fully given up her wealthy, old fashioned lifestyle to live in a diverse, working class town with an "uncivilized" man like Stanley.

    Her outburst ends with her revealing that she lost the plantation because the whole family died and she could not keep up with the payments on her own, and blaming Stella for running off and leaving her to deal with the mess.
    That night, Blanche meets Stanley for the first time.  As they make small talk, he changes his sweaty t-shirt in front of her and abruptly asks her what happened to her marriage.  She says that he died and leaves, saying that she feels ill.
    The next day, while Blanche is taking a rejuvenating bath, Stanley and Stella discuss Blanche, with Stella Stella explaining Blanche’s ordeal of losing Belle Reve and asking that he be kind to her by flattering her appearance.  But Stanley is mad.  He accuses Blanche of scamming them and that she spent the family fortune on the expensive clothes and jewelry in her trunk.  This pisses Stella off and she walks away.
    When Blanche returns, she flirts with Stanley (what the heck Blanche).  Stanley responds by asking why she's so rich, accusing her of selling Belle Reve.  Blanche responds by giving him a stack of papers containing documents about Belle Reve and love letters from her old lover (whoops).  But, yippee!  Blanche was telling the truth the whole time.  Belle Reve was lost in its mortgage, not sold for a profit. 
    That night, Stanley hosts a poker night with him and his friends, and Blanche meets a man named Mitch in the bathroom.  They begin to flirt and talk, and Blanche asks Mitch to cover the lightbulb with a Chinese lantern.  However, the night does not end well.  When Stella yells at Stanley for throwing a radio out the window, he beats her up.  (he did all this knowing she's pregnant btw). After this, Stella and Blanche escape to their upstairs neighbor, Eunice's house.  This leads to Stanley remorsefully crying for her, Stella forgiving him, and ending the night by making love.
    The next morning, Blanche is horrified by the abuse that her sister goes through.  However, Stella justifies it and claims that you just have to get used to it.  Obviously Blanche is appalled, and she goes on a rant of how he acts and looks inhuman and that Stella should leave him.  But oop, it turns out Stanley heard the whole thing and Stella knew it, so she hugs him tightly when he comes home.  Blanche and Stanley are now enemies.

   TIME JUMP: now it's August.  Blanche tells Stella about a letter she wrote to her old lover, Shep Huntleigh, telling him that they've been going to rich parties and visiting country homes.  On the other hand, Stanley is being horrible to Blanche.  He insinuates that he knows that Blanche isn't virtuous but in realty sleeps around in love hotels.  This leaves her shaken up right before her date with Mitch. Right before he comes, she kisses a teen delivery boy.  Then, Mitch arrives with flowers and takes her on a date.  When they come back, they share a kiss and they try to get their freak on but Blanche refuses because of her "old-fashioned ideals" (no boombayah till marriage).  So they begin to talk about life.  Blanche asks if Stanley hates her, Mitch says they met in the military and that he doesn't, he asks how old she is, and she asks him to marry her.  She also tells him how her old lover died.  She was smitten but she caught him cheating with another guy.  Even though she accepted him and went to a club with him, she told him he disgusted her leading to him committing suicide.  She begins to cry and Mitch comforts her and essentially fully commits to loving her.

TIME JUMP: now it's mid-September.  Stella is decorating for Blanche's birthday.  Stanley tells Stella the tea he learned about Blanche and her promiscuous past.  She wasn't on break, she was fired from her job for sleeping with a 17 year old boy.  She was sleeping around in a love hotel called the Flamingo and was told to leave by the whole town.  Even though those stories don't convince Stella, who excuses the behavior due to her lavender marriage, Stanley was able to convince Mitch.  There was no way Mitch would marry her now.  He also reveals that for her birthday, he got her a one-way bus ticket back to Laurel.
During the birthday party, Blanche notices Mitch's absence and calls to no avail.  When she opens the ticket, she starts to have a nervous breakdown.  Stanley is satisfied.  He begins to explain to Stella that she's a narcissist who needed to be put in her place for ruining their lives.  Then, Stella's water breaks and baby time is upon them.
    Later that night, Mitch comes for a visit.  She begins to talk nervously, to which Mitch asks why she's always in dimly lit spaces.  To take a good look at her, he tears the paper lantern off the light.  He says that he's not mad about her age, but that she lied to him all summer and pretended that she was a virtuous woman.  After talking for a while, Mitch tries to hook up with her, despite knowing that they won't get married.  Since Mitch know sees her in the sex worker way that other people do, she kicks him out.
    A few hours later, Stanley finds Blanche being delusional and acting like she's abotu to go on a cruise with Shep Huntleigh.  He tells her that they'll be alone tonight since the baby won't arrive until tomorrow.  She begins talking about her breakup and Shep, and Stanley replies by tearing down her world of make-believe.  When Blanche tries to run away from him, he prevents her from leaving,  Sensing the danger, Blanche smashes a bottle and threatens to hurt him with it.  However, he overpowers her and rapes her.

A few weeks later, Stella is crying and Blanche is bathing.  The guys are playing poker and Mitch is blackout drunk.  Blanche has completely broken psychologically.  She is constantly in a daze and is having delusions.  A doctor and a nurse come to pick up Blanche and take her to a mental asylum.  Stanley continues to taunt Blanche and she tries to escape the nurse.  She gets caught and is almost restrained when the doctor steps in and "rescues" her like a knight in shining armor.  Blanche willingly follows the doctor out and presumably gets sent away.  Stella watches on and sobs as Stanley comforts her.  Steve deals a new hand in their poker game.  THE END.

The History and Impact of Barbies

 The creator of Barbie’s birthday is tomorrow!!!  SOOOOO I decided that this would be a cool opportunity to write about the history and impact of barbies!

An Unexpected Origin

On June 24th, 1952, Bild Lilli was introduced as a sultry secretary in a series of comedic comic strips by the German Tabloid Newspaper, Bild.  Bild is now a widely read incredibly conservative news source which gives Barbie’s feminism a delicious touch of irony.  Lilli, and her subsequent doll form, and then the creation of the Barbie franchise may have never happened if it weren’t for the empty space on the 2nd page of the first edition of Bild that needed to be filled at the last minute.  That was when illustrator Reinhard Beuthein, threw together a small comic about a girl at a fortune teller, asking for the name and details of her future husband, who she hoped would be rich and handsome.  And thus, Lilli was born.  While she remained controversial until her demise in 1959, she served as a voice for the German women who were seeking social independence, through her woody comebacks at the men in her comic.  She became an international success, even getting her own film and dolls.  Although they were mostly targeted towards adult men to buy as a gag gift, they were also popular amongst little girls.

The Birth of Barbie

Barbie was invented by Ruth Handler, the cofounder of Mattel, after she noticed something about her children’s toys.  While her son had toys that allowed him to imagine himself as an astronaut or a firefighter, her daughter had toys that limited her to imagine herself as a caregiver or mother.  This wasn’t just a “Ruth should buy better toys” issue.  This was 1959, a time where girls were expected to get married, have kids, and be a housewife.

Ruth was disappointed in these gender expectations so when she and her daughter

discovered a Bild Lilli doll in a toy shop, she decided to give her daughter a toy that wouldn’t confine her daughter to that patriarchal future.  This led to the company she co-founded, Mattel, to release a near carbon copy of a Bild Lilli doll on March 9th, 1959.  This was the world’s first Barbie, named after her daughter, Barbara Millicent Robert.

Once the Barbie dolls began flying off the shelves, the company manufacturer of Lilli, Greiner and Hausser’s fought for the copyright and patent rights on Lilli, but in 1964, Mattel bought the rights, taking Bild Lilli out of production.  From then on, Mattel began pumping out new dream houses, designs, and careers for Barbie.  

Barbie’s Careers and Impacts

Through the years, they released dozens of dolls fitting the themes of the biggest movements in history, to show their support through their products.  This can be shown through Christie, one of the first black dolls ever created, for the Civil Rights movements, and Malibu Barbie, for the Women’s Liberation Movement.  However, Mattel has not only created dolls that are direct representations of revolutionary moments in history, but they have also brought awareness to the underrepresentation of women using Barbie’s careers.

Barbie has had over 250 careers, ranging from Circus performer to a nurse, but her first

ever career was as an astronaut, released in 1965.  This doll led to young girls feeling inspired to reach for the stars and begin exploring their own passions, leading to a new generation of girls entering the corporate world.  This was until Mattel began releasing more career dolls, such as UNICEF Ambassador Barbie, Paleontologist Barbie, and Surgeon Barbie.  These career barbies were used to recognize the fields of work in which women were underrepresented to show young girls that they can be anything and to encourage discovery.  Other than bringing attention to women's problems in society, they also brought awareness to other minorities  such as those with Down syndrome, hearing loss, alopecia and more with their Diverse Barbie collection.  They were created to help young children be aware that there were other people who were different from them and teach them acceptance and help young children who could relate to the dolls, find comfort that there were others like them.  This collection is relatively new, causing controversy online about whether or not Mattel was too late in releasing this collection.

Controversies…

On a similar note, as much as I hate to talk dirt about a doll that was my whole childhood, Mattel has been caught for some troubling messaging in their products.

The 1963 doll Barbie babysitter contains a health magazine with a very simple and harmful message: “DON’T EAT!”

Similarly, the 1965 Slumber Party Barbie contains a scale permanently stuck on 110lb (49kg).

These two dolls caused an uproar as, surprise surprise, people don’t love it when a progressive company gives them advice to give them an eating disorder.

While there were some morally troubling Barbies released in the past, their impact on modern day feminism is undeniable.  With the dolls representing political movements and fields in which women are underrepresented, it has assisted in our world evolving.  Barbies have helped our world broaden the potential for women and minorities, and become more accepting of those who don’t fit the norm and find beauty in originality.

P.S. If you're interested in Mattel's controversial Barbie dolls, I highly recommend researching banned Barbie dolls. They are so wacky and insane, it's hard to believe they made it past production.