'Democrats have kind of lost the working-class'

Movies & TV Superhero Movie Rewatch “Families are complicated” — The Marvels A great, genuinely fun showcase for three great superheroes, this movie deserved to be a *much* bigger hit… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on August 1, 2024 Credit: Marvel Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Marvel Studios From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in the Superhero Movie Rewatch. He’s periodically revisited the feature to look back at new releases, as well as a few he missed the first time through. The character of Ms. Marvel was first created in 1977 in an attempt to ride the “women’s lib” wave of the 1970s. Marvel was always trying to appeal to broader markets, even if they were often ham-handed about it, and also have always at least stumbled in the direction of diversity. And so Gerry Conway and John Buscema repurposed Carol Danvers—who had been a supporting character in Captain Marvel, as well as in CM’s introductory appearances in Marvel Super-Heroes by Stan Lee and Gene Colan—as a superhero in her own right. However, her own title only lasted a couple of years. The character was then part of the Avengers until she was appallingly written out in that title’s 200th issue in 1980. She was an X-Men supporting character for a while, powered-up and renamed Binary, joining the space-faring Starjammers in the 1980s, then returning to Earth and rejoining the Avengers (renamed Warbird) in the 1990s, before going back to the Ms. Marvel name until 2012’s Captain Marvel series by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Dexter Soy, when she took on the name of Captain Marvel. The Captain Marvel name had hopped to several different characters over the years, starting with Mar-Vell, the Kree soldier seen in two issues of Marvel Super-Heroes and 62 issues of his self-titled series from 1967-1979. Mar-Vell died in Marvel’s first prestige-format graphic novel, The Death of Captain Marvel by Jim Starlin in 1982, and the name was then taken on later that year by Monica Rambeau in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #16 by Roger Stern and John Romita Jr. Rambeau was a harbor patrol officer in New Orleans who had an interaction with an experimental extra-dimensional device that gave her the ability to control the electromagnetic spectrum. She’s also a woman of color, a rarity in the superhero community, especially in 1982. She joined the Avengers, and became a mainstay of that group for a while, even taking a turn as leader of the team. She later gave up the name of Captain Marvel to Mar-Vell’s son, Genis-Vell, and took on the codenames of Photon (her current one), Pulsar, and Spectrum. After Danvers took on the Captain Marvel name, Marvel once again made an effort to diversify, this time having the Ms. Marvel moniker being adopted by a Pakistani American teenager of the Muslim faith named Kamala Khan. Debuting in 2014 in the rather unmanageably titled anthology comic All-New Marvel Now! Point One #1 in the story “Garden State of Mind” by G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona, that led to her own title the following year. Khan was a human who was exposed to the Terrigen Mists that created the Inhumans and gained superpowers, and has become a mainstay of the comics. Danvers and Rambeau were brought into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2019’s Captain Marvel, the former as the main character played by Brie Larson, the latter as a little girl who was the daughter of Danvers’ fellow Air Force pilot Maria Rambeau. Monica was seen all grow’d up in 2021’s WandaVision TV miniseries played by Teyonah Parris, established as having been blipped between Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame; Maria, established as having died of cancer during the Blip, was the founder of S.W.O.R.D. (an organization dedicated to gathering intelligence about alien threats to Earth). Monica follows in her mother’s footsteps, working for S.W.O.R.D. during the events of WandaVision. Finally, Khan was introduced to the MCU in 2022’s Ms. Marvel TV series, played by Iman Vellani. Since Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Inhumans TV series already did the Terrigen Mists thing, and since both those shows have been fobbed off into their own continuity separate from the MCU, they gave Khan’s character a different origin. She got her powers from a bangle that she inherited from her grandmother, which turned her into a super-powered hero over the course of her show’s first season. All three characters are brought together in The Marvels. Unlike Captain Marvel, this takes place in the “present” of the MCU, but it serves as a sequel to the 2019 film by, among other things, establishing how Danvers took the revenge on the Kree that she promised. It’s also a sequel to Ms. Marvel, providing the origin of Khan’s bangle (which is similar to the quantum bands, or nega-bands, used by Mar-Vell in the comics). Nia DaCosta—who had previously worked with Parris on Candyman—was brought in to direct the film, which was written by DaCosta, Elissa Karasik (executive story editor on Loki’s first season), and Megan McDonnell (story editor on WandaVision). Back from Endgame (via cameos in both Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Ms. Marvel’s first season) is Larson as Danvers. Back from WandaVision’s first season is Parris as Rambeau (with brief appearances by Akira and Azari Akbar as young Rambeau in flashbacks from Captain Marvel). Back from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is Lashana Lynch as two different iterations of Maria Rambeau (having played a third iteration in that Doctor Strange film). Back from Ms. Marvel’s first season are Vellani as Khan, Zenobia Shroff as Muneeba, Mohan Kapur as Yusuf, and Saagar Shaikh as Aamir. Back from Secret Invasion’s first season is Samuel L. Jackson as Fury (though the events of that TV show aren’t really acknowledged, which, frankly, is fine). Back from Thor: Love and Thunder is Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie. Back from Hawkeye’s first season is Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop. Back from X-Men: Days of Future Past is Kelsey Grammer as Hank McCoy. Appearing for the first time in this film are Zawe Ashton as Dar-Benn, a gender-swapped version of a Kree general from the comics; Gary Lewis as Skrull Emperor Dro’ge; and Park Seo-joon as Prince Yan. The movie did surprisingly poorly at the box office, and the future of all three characters is in doubt, though Danvers is likely to be in the just-announced Avengers: Doomsday in 2026, while the mid-credits scene establishes that Rambeau will be involved in however they integrate the X-Men into the MCU. It is unknown if there will be a second season of Ms. Marvel; Vellani has co-written two Ms. Marvel comics miniseries for Marvel. Credit: Marvel Studios The MarvelsWritten by Nia DaCosta and Megan McDonnell and Elissa KarasikDirected by Nia DaCostaProduced by Kevin FeigeOriginal release date: November 10, 2023 “No more touching shit! Especially glowing mysterious shit!” A Kree ship goes from their devastated homeworld of Hala through a jump point to a world with the rather bland designation of MB-418. Dar-Benn—a Kree general who now possesses the universal weapon that used to belong to Ronan the Accuser—and her team unearth a container that has a quantum band inside it. To her great annoyance, they only find one of the expected pair, and she wonders where the other one is. Cut to Jersey City, New Jersey on Earth, where we see Kamala Khan, who has the other band. She views it as a bangle, bequeathed to her by her grandmother and giving her super-powers, enabling her to become Ms. Marvel. We learn about this through the fanfic she writes, which also establishes that she’s a Captain Marvel fangirl and the fanfic has her helping Captain Marvel fight a big scary monster, and then becoming best friends forever. From the S.A.B.E.R. satellite, Nick Fury contacts Carol Danvers about a surge in the jump gate network. Danvers has been using the Skrull memory-thingie that they used to torture her in Captain Marvel to try to regain more of the memories she lost when she blew up the lightspeed engine. Danvers goes to MB-418 to check it out. At the same time, the now-super-powered Captain Monica Rambeau is leading a team to check out the jump point near Earth. She and Danvers both touch a messed-up jump point at the same time. Some Kree soldiers show up to remonstrate with Danvers on MB-418. She starts to use her powers, which causes the first of several switches: Danvers suddenly winds up in Khan’s house in Jersey City, Rambeau winds up on MB-418, and Khan is in Rambeau’s EVA suit in space outside the S.A.B.E.R. satellite. They eventually wind up back in their right places, with no idea of what’s happening. Khan’s parents are upset that her closet door’s been destroyed, but Khan is too busy fangoobering over the fact that Captain Marvel was in her living room and that she (briefly) met Fury (hoping that this was an Avengers tryout of some sort). Image: Marvel Studios When Danvers is restored to MB-418, she learns that Dar-Benn is on Tarnax, and—after disposing of the Kree soldiers—heads there. Tarnax is a Skrull refugee site, and Dar-Benn is seen negotiating with Emperor Dro’ge, though that negotiation quickly proves to be bullshit. Danvers attacks the Kree soldiers, but the switching thing starts happening again, with Kree soldiers brought along for the ride more than once. As a result, Danvers, Khan, and Rambeau each wind up fighting Kree soldiers, not just on Dar-Benn’s ship orbiting Tarnax, but also in the space elevator that goes between Earth and the S.A.B.E.R. satellite and in the Khan house in Jersey City. (At one point, Khan sees Goose swallow some Kree soldiers with her tentacles, and she is totally freaked out…) Apparently, any time two (or more) of the three of them use their powers simultaneously, it triggers the switch. Fury and Rambeau go to Jersey City to check on Khan (whose parents and brother are not exactly thrilled with how their house has been trashed), but Khan using her powers causes another switch. A few switches later and Khan finds herself in the stratosphere, having switched with Danvers when she was flying into orbit from Earth, and Rambeau has to rescue her (though it winds up being more of a team rescue). Eventually, they all go to Tarnax, just in time for Dar-Benn to open a jump point that sucks the atmosphere away from Tarnax and to Hala. It becomes clear what’s happening. Dar-Benn is using the quantum band she found to power-up the jump points so she can restore Hala. The three heroes have become entangled because Rambeau and Danvers both touched surged jump points at the same time, and that mixed with the energy from Khan’s bangle to cause the switches. The trio evacuate as many Skrulls as they can from Tarnax. Danvers summons Valkyrie, who takes them to New Asgard. At one point on Dar-Benn’s ship, Khan saw a star chart that showed their next destination, but the chart itself was meaningless to her. Danvers uses the Skrull memory-thingie so that she can see it—but it also triggers other memories of Danvers and Rambeau from thirty years earlier, and also of Danvers visiting Maria during the Blip when the latter was dying, none of which makes Rambeau happy The star chart has Aladna as Dar-Benn’s next destination, which is also a planet Danvers knows well, for reasons she’s cagey about at first. She also confesses to Rambeau why she avoided coming back to Earth to see the Rambeaus. The Kree have been calling her “the Annihilator,” and Danvers explains why: Danvers’ destruction of the Kree Supreme Intelligence led to a civil war on Hala, which left the sun badly de-energized, the atmosphere not entirely breathable, and with their water supply exhausted. Danvers felt guilty about this, and couldn’t face either of the Rambeaus—especially not Monica, because she didn’t feel worthy of being Lieutenant Trouble’s Aunt Carol anymore. Rambeau tells her she’s an idiot and that that’s not how family works. Speaking of family, Fury brings the Khans up to the S.A.B.E.R. satellite, where they aren’t thrilled about their daughter haring off into space to fight the bad guys (Muneeba’s exact words are, “Kamala, you are not going on any space adventures!”). Khan insists that she’s needed, and besides, it means possibly getting the other bangle which is, of course, a family heirloom. Her parents accept this and wish her well, though Muneeba says in Urdu that she’ll kill Danvers if anything happens to her daughter. Khan refrains from an exact translation for Danvers… On the journey to Aladna, the trio practice working the switches, including using jump rope to switch in and out from the one jumping to the two twirling the rope. Upon arrival at Aladna, Rambeau and Khan are amused to learn that the local language is singing and dancing, and Danvers is married to the prince, Yan. She says it’s just a political thing, but her arrival is treated with extra pomp and circumstance, including them singing and dancing together for everyone. (Rambeau asks if Khan is now writing new Captain Marvel fanfics, and Khan dreamily answers in the affirmative.) Yan is bilingual, so he and Danvers can talk without singing. She explains the situation apologetically, as Dar-Benn is obviously going after planets Danvers herself cares about. Dar-Benn arrives and fisticuffs ensue. Alas, Dar-Benn is able to maintain the upper hand and steal Aladna’s water, while the trio are forced to retreat. Having gotten air from Tarnax and water from Aladna, now Dar-Benn needs to re-energize Hala’s sun. Her target: Earth’s sun. In the meantime, strange pods are found all over the S.A.B.E.R. satellite. Then Dar-Benn arrives through a jump point, which damages the satellite very badly, including trashing some of the escape pods. But then the pods crack open, and it turns out they’re Flerken eggs: Goose had a litter! Which means there are a ton of Flerken kittens loose on the station. This actually solves a problem: they don’t have enough escape pods for all the full-sized humans, but the Flerkens can (temporarily) eat the people; that way they’ll take up way less space. So Fury and the Khan family have to herd cats, while Danvers, Khan, and Rambeau go after Dar-Benn. Unfortunately, Dar-Benn is able to get her hands on Khan’s bangle, so now she has both quantum bands. However, the power required of both quantum bands to do what Dar-Benn wants proves too much for her, and she’s consumed by the energy. Earth’s sun remains intact, but the jump point is severely damaged and has opened a portal to another universe. Rambeau can fix it if Danvers and Khan power her up, but she can only do it from the other side. Rambeau closes the jump point, saving everyone, though she is now trapped in the other universe. Fury and the Khans land safely in New York, along with the S.A.B.E.R. crew (once they’ve been horked back up by the Flerken kittens). Khan returns alone in Danvers’ ship—Danvers herself goes to Hala and re-energizes their sun herself. Danvers moves into the Rambeau house in New Orleans, assisted by the entire Khan family, with her stuff taken out of storage. Khan and Danvers both get into Maria’s plane, with Khan in the pilot seat. Later we see Khan in Kate Bishop’s loft, recruiting her for something she doesn’t actually call the Young Avengers, in a cute callback to the post-credits scene in Iron Man. Rambeau wakes up in a lab, being examined by Dr. Hank McCoy, a.k.a. Beast, and Maria Rambeau, a.k.a. Binary. Maria has no idea who this crazy woman who thinks she’s her daughter is… (And all the X-Men fans cheer!) Credit: Marvel Studios “So literally herding cats…” This movie should have been a huge success, and I’m going to go against the grain and suggest the two main reasons are not the ones many of its detractors have given. One is the SAG-AFTRA strike, which kept the actors from promoting the movie (the strike didn’t end until after this movie’s release). This is a bigger reason than you might think, simply because Iman Vellani is a national treasure and a joy and a massive nerd and her actually being able to do publicity for the movie would have, in my not-so-humble opinion, increased its box office tremendously. The other is the spectacularly idiotic decision to give this movie the bland, generic, meaningless title of The Marvels. Seriously, guys, what the actual fuck? You had a gajillion-dollar success in 2019 with Captain Marvel, why the hell isn’t the sequel called either Captain Marvel 2 or Captain Marvel: Some Sort of Subtitle, like you did with every other damn character in your pantheon? This is Branding 101! Not everyone who sees these movies follows all the stuff on the Internet about it; most just know there’s a movie coming out, and if it’s not branded as a Captain Marvel movie, but instead given a generic title that just indicates that it’s from the same studio, probably, folks are gonna miss it. And by “folks,” I don’t mean the hardcore fan base, I mean just ordinary, not-plugged-into-the-geek-community movie-goers, whose interest in these movies is why they’re so wildly popular. It’s especially maddening because this movie is an absolute delight, tremendous fun from beginning to end. A huge chunk of that, unsurprisingly, is due to Vellani’s mere presence. Her Khan is glorious, continuing the superb work she did in Ms. Marvel. (They really need to put her and Tom Holland together in a Spider-Man movie. I mean, they have to have a mainline Marvel Studios character accompany Holland in any Spider-film anyhow, so why can’t Holland’s next one also feature Ms. Marvel? It would be perfect!) The three leads have fantastic chemistry together, and it’s good to finally see why Danvers has stayed away from Earth until Fury specifically summoned her at the end of Infinity War: guilt, which is always a good motivator (especially for Marvel’s more angsty heroes). She didn’t want Lieutenant Trouble to see her as the Annihilator instead of Aunt Carol. An interesting shift in Rambeau’s character here, which intellectually I don’t like, but found myself taking to despite myself: Rambeau resists becoming a proper superhero in this movie. She rejects every overture Khan makes to give her a codename, and she prefers to be Captain Rambeau of S.A.B.E.R., not one of the Marvels. This is in direct contrast to her comics counterpart, who jumped into being a superhero with both feet, mostly because her career in the Harbor Patrol was stalled due to institutional sexism, whereas the Avengers accepted her without hesitation. Still, it works, and Teyonah Parris continues the good work she started in WandaVision, particularly with her resentment toward Danvers for staying away so long. Meanwhile, Larson perfectly plays Danvers as a loner. She’s reluctant to let anybody in, partly because of that guilt, partly because the last group of people she teamed up with turned out to be assholes (Yon-Rogg and the rest of the Kree gang from Captain Marvel). Watching her slowly come to accept Khan’s fangoobering and restore her relationship with Rambeau is very nicely and subtly handled. (Probably too subtly for far too many viewers who don’t notice nuance in female actors’ performances…) In addition, we have the absolute joy of the Khan family and the eternal Samuel L. Jackson. The Khan family dynamic grounds the movie, making it far more relatable to everyone except racists, as these are ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances and dealing with it as best they can. (I particularly love when Yusuf gives financial advice to one of the S.A.B.E.R. crew.) And it’s never not fun to watch Jackson be Fury (even in a disastrous slog like the awful Secret Invasion), from “Black girl magic!” to “No more touching shit!” to his encouraging Aamir to keep praying because they need all the help they can get. It’s not as strong as the movie it’s a sequel to. It’s more of a straightforward superhero adventure, which may be a third reason why it didn’t do as well. It’s become clear over the decades that the audiences are less interested in “ordinary” superhero adventures, as the ones that have either origins or major status quo changes are the ones that tend to be successful. Which is a pity, as this movie is a great showcase for three great superheroes. Plus, the Flerken kittens eating the crew and then horking them back up is just epic… Next week, we look at the last 2023 superhero movie, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. [end-mark] The post “Families are complicated” — <i>The Marvels</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News Slingshot Space Does a Number on Casey Affleck’s Mind in the Trailer for Slingshot In space, no one can hear you lose your shit By Molly Templeton | Published on August 1, 2024 Screenshot: Bleecker Street Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Bleecker Street If there’s one thing I’ve learned about space from the movies, it’s that it’s terrible. Sure, it doesn’t seem so bad in the Stars Trek and Wars, but basically every other space movie to arrive in my lifetime has come bearing the message: Space: Don’t go there! From chestbusters to evil Sam Neill to asteroids to getting burnt to a crisp by the sun to plain old mechanical failure to delusions and killer aliens (Alien and otherwise) to that part in Lost in Space where they have to escape in a chest freezer, the message is quite clear. It’s bad out there. Don’t go. Here to further cement this message is the trailer for Slingshot, which finds Casey Affleck, Laurence Fishburne, and Tomer Capone in a spaceship on a mission to Titan. As the summary explains, “As the team gears up for a highly dangerous slingshot maneuver that will either catapult them to Titan or into deep space, it becomes increasingly difficult for one astronaut to maintain his grip on reality.” They’ve been in hibernation and the hibernation drugs, naturally, have some unpleasant side effects. One might wonder why the space-masters would give said drugs to said astronauts. One might also wonder what’s really going on here; the trailer hits such familiar beats that an optimist might assume that it’s hiding something. [ed note: In Event Horizon, no one can hear you Solaris…] Slingshot also features The Walking Dead’s David Morrissey and Into the Badlands’ Emily Beecham. It’s directed by Mikael Håfström (Bloodline) from a screenplay by R. Scott Adams (Donner Pass) and Nathan Parker (The Underground Railroad). Go to space with them—if you dare—in theaters August 30th.[end-mark] The post Space Does a Number on Casey Affleck’s Mind in the Trailer for <i>Slingshot</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Books Close Reads Illustrating the Subtext: Edward Gorey’s Homoerotic Cover Art for Melville’s Redburn Gorey’s moody art meets a queer reading of Melville’s novel… By Paul Morton | Published on August 1, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Welcome to Close Reads! Leah Schnelbach and guest authors will dig into the tiny, weird moments of pop culture—from books to theme songs to viral internet hits—that have burrowed into our minds, found rent-stabilized apartments, started community gardens, and refused to be forced out by corporate interests. This time out, Paul Morton sets sail for one of Herman Melville’s early nautical adventures, Redburn, and the highly specific, very queer-coded cover Edward Gorey contributed. At the beginning of his career, from 1953 to 1960, Edward Gorey drew book covers for Anchor, cheap paperbacks of quality literature, available to college students and laypeople. Gorey would go on to become a Great American Weirdo, the illustrator of dozens of books, though I still know him best for the PBS series Mystery!, for which he designed the opening titles. He refined his style and sensibility through the years, but he defined both early on: spare, carefully chosen lines against even sparer backgrounds; a wicked, Edwardian humor. NYRB has reissued some of this work. On Gorey’s cover of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, the Martians are both menacing and awkward, comical bumblers as well as mass murderers. I first learned about these editions some years back, at a bookstore in Vancouver, which kept a full shelf dedicated to the Gorey Anchors. For five Canadian dollars, I bought a 1957 copy of Herman Melville’s Redburn, a novel first published in 1849, which was based on the author’s first voyage out to sea, from New York to Liverpool, one he undertook in 1837 at the age of 18. I was unlikely to ever display the book in my small, cluttered apartment, and I didn’t see myself reading it anytime soon, but the cover intrigued me enough to buy it: a sexual neophyte, the excitement in his crotch suggested in cross-hatching, glancing both curiously and longingly at three older, rougher men, who regard the boy with a combination of lust and contempt. It was a relic from a dark time when any hint of homosexuality was still transgressive. Gorey had read many if not most of the books he was assigned to illustrate, but his covers were never literal. Instead, as Steven Heller writes in his introduction to Edward Gorey: His Book Cover Art and Design, his drawings “evoked moods or set off sparks of recognition.” I eventually read Redburn, one night when I was eager for a taste of weird America, and no, the cover does not represent any one scene in the book. Redburn is, at heart, a thrilling work of reportage. Wellingborough Redburn, the eponymous hero based on young Melville, has more than an intellectual interest in some of his fellow sailors, but the book is mainly interested in the economies of transportation and transcontinental trade in the mid-19th century, how laborers, passengers, consumers, and owners negotiate a system that is beyond any one person’s control. The prose is precise and fine, descriptive and thorough. It is not the baroque or apocalyptic Melville of Moby-Dick or the Civil War poems, nor the proto-modernist Melville of “Bartleby, the Scrivener” or The Confidence-Man. This is Melville as John McPhee. Still, Gorey might have been thinking of one chapter in the book, 10 of the novel’s 300 pages, the one thirtieth of the book every Melville scholar writes about. Redburn, having disembarked in Liverpool, meets a young man named Harry Bolton, and although Bolton does not appear on Gorey’s cover, his subjects, at some point in their lives, probably took his like for an amour. He was one of those small, but perfectly formed beings, with curling hair, and silken muscles, who seem to have been born in cocoons. His complexion was a mantling brunette, feminine as a girl’s; his feet were small; his hands were white; and his eyes were large, black, and womanly; and, poetry aside, his voice was as the sound of a harp. Bolton’s appearance disrupts the narrative entirely and transforms Melville’s prose, turns what has been a controlled study of a capitalist machine afloat on the water into a mystical dream journey to the underground of London. Imagine if Ken Burns made a ten-part series about the shipping industry, hit a crisis of confidence on episode seven, and decided to remake Fellini Satyricon.  Bolton leads Redburn into a “semi-public place of opulent entertainment,” and in describing it, Melville anticipates the Symbolism of the late 19th century. “From sculptured stalactites of vine-boughs, here and there pendent hung galaxies of gas lights, whose vivid glare was softened by pale, cream-colored, porcelain spheres, shedding over the place a serene, silver flood.” Redburn, a solid reporter but a true naif, sees the well-dressed gentlemen, fine waiters, and a “handsome florid old man,” called the Duke, and assumes he is among a noble set. The establishment, Bolton tells him, is known as “Aladdin’s Palace.” Bolton directs Redburn to remain alone in a room for the night, throughout which he is haunted by mysterious sounds in the distance, “hushed ivory rattling from the closed apartment adjoining.” He suspects he has been drugged, and his nightmare visions are unmistakably phallic: “All the mirrors and marbles around me seemed crawling over with lizards; and I thought to myself, that though gilded and golden, the serpent of vice is a serpent still.” When Bolton reappears, Redburn asks if he was off gambling. Harry laughs and replies enigmatically. Gambling?—“what two devilish, stiletto-sounding syllables they are!” The once confident and deliberate young man is now manic and he asks Redburn to hold onto a dirk, telling him he has thoughts of suicide. What happened that night is unclear. Was Bolton servicing a gentleman? Was Bolton attempting to pimp out Redburn? Was Redburn himself violated? Melville doesn’t answer those questions. The boy returns to Liverpool, boards the ship and heads back to New York. It will not surprise you to learn that prominent scholars, as late as the mid-aughts, have resisted a queer reading. For one, the décor is common to heterosexual brothels of the period. And although it was highly possible that Melville, like most whalers, enjoyed homoerotic adventures during his long journeys on exclusively male ships, it is not so obvious that he sought out similar encounters on land. Moreover, the Aladdin’s Palace sequence is probably based on another’s experience, as it is unlikely that Melville himself ventured beyond Liverpool. Still, there is ample evidence that Melville developed strong romantic feelings towards his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, and his career, all the way up to his very last novel, betrays a profound appreciation for the beauty of the male body. Such critics do the same work of Bolton himself, refusing to name what cries out to be named. Like Melville, Gorey evokes a homoerotic aura. But he does not depict the decadent pseudo-upper-class world of Aladdin’s Palace, as much as the cruising culture from the period when he was working, a culture that collapsed the class structure of Eisenhower-era America. A curious middle-class teenage boy may have recognized himself on this cover, and he may have bought the book for 95 cents. He might keep a picture of James Dean in his bedroom. He might collect body-building magazines. He might have an immaculate Eagle Scout uniform in his closet. And he might very well spend nights by the railroad tracks or in a particular corner of the town park. Does he ever actually read Redburn? If so, the book may give him a taste for camp. And it may help him question the mores of the economic class just above his own. I don’t know if such teenagers still exist, avid readers hungry for the transgressive in capital-l Literature. No matter how often I move, I have no plans of ever dropping my Redburn. I hold onto it in memory of whoever among Melville’s few readers in 1849 felt a stirring of excitement when he read those ten pages, and of that teenage boy in 1957, who by the 1970s was organizing chic literary salons in SoHo. It is the glorious task of every generation to reinvent sex for themselves, hopefully for the better.[end-mark] The post Illustrating the Subtext: Edward Gorey’s Homoerotic Cover Art for Melville’s <i>Redburn</i> appeared first on Reactor.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A Catholic organization that tracks attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers and churches is urging the Justice Department to investigate over 400 known attacks since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The organization, CatholicVote, requested a meeting to discuss probes of pro-abortion violations of the FACE Act in a letter to Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke that it shared with The Daily Signal. “The [Biden] administration has repeatedly met and coordinated with the abortion industry, but has refused to meet with representatives of the millions of pro-life Americans and concerned Catholic citizens who are being threatened and intimidated across the country,” CatholicVote President Brian Burch writes in the letter to Clarke. The FACE Act prohibits “threats of force, obstruction and property damage intended to interfere with reproductive health care services.” The 1994 law protects abortion clinics and pro-life pregnancy centers. The Justice Department, however, has used the law to charge pro-life activists with FACE Act violations in the months since June 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned its 1973 Roe ruling and ended abortion on demand across the nation. Burch’s letter, dated June 21, asks Clarke why the DOJ disproportionally prosecutes pro-lifers for alleged violations of the FACE Act when the department apparently hasn’t prosecuted anyone for 439 attacks on pro-life Catholic churches since 2020. “Nearly every single prosecution of alleged violence against abortion clinics has involved application of the FACE Act despite the lack of enforcement on attacks against churches and pregnancy resource centers,” Burch writes. “What policies are in place at the DOJ which contribute to this imbalance, and what is being done to rectify it?” In June, three Florida pro-abortion activists pleaded guilty to conspiring to deface and threaten pro-life pregnancy resource centers in violation of the FACE Act. CatholicVote received an email from the Justice Department regarding the conviction, the letter says. This was CatholicVote’s first communication with the DOJ in over two years, the organization says, despite several outreach attempts. The Justice Department did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment before publication time. “We are happy to see that your recent correspondence affirmatively acknowledges that pregnancy resource centers, including those that do not perform abortions, are indeed protected by the act, and deserving of the same protection,” Burch says in the letter to Clarke. “Regrettably, the pattern has been disproportionately strong enforcement of the FACE Act against pro-lifers and minimal enforcement against pro-abortion extremists.” CatholicVote has documented relatively few arrests in response to attacks on Catholic churches and pregnancy centers. The organization’s letter to Clarke asks what steps, if any, the DOJ is taking to “identify, monitor, and investigate” pro-abortion groups behind the vandalism and other attacks, such as Jane’s Revenge and Ruth Sent Us. A total of 90 attacks on pregnancy centers and pro-life groups have occurred since the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022, according to CatholicVote’s tracker. “These are really concerning incidents, just from a public safety perspective, not even talking about the spiritual significance of them, and they are just not being touched,” Tommy Valentine, director of CatholicVote’s Catholic Accountability Project, told The Daily Signal. “They’re not being pursued with any diligence by the federal government, and a lot of these are centrally organized by domestic extremist organizations like Jane’s Revenge, like Ruth Sent Us, various anarchist groups that are clearly coordinating at least some of these attacks,” Valentine said. If any other religion or faith were being targeted like this, multiple federal task forces would set to work, but the DOJ turns a blind eye to attacks against Catholics, he said. “If we do not receive a response, we will assume the Department of Justice under our second Catholic president intends to continue turning a blind eye to the violence being perpetrated against his fellow Catholics,” CatholicVote’s letter to Clarke concludes. Mary Margaret Olohan contributed to this report. The post EXCLUSIVE: Catholic Group Urges DOJ to Investigate Pro-Abortion Attacks on Churches, Pregnancy Centers appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Those Illegal Jordanians Who Tried to Breach the Gate at Quantico? Feds Can't Be Bothered With Them

If something came over you and you felt compelled to drop a metal ball superheated to 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 degrees Fahrenheit) onto a piece of pineapple skin, you'd observe a peculiar phenomenon. Rather than burning, erupting into flames, or fizzing out of existence, the pineapple skin does, well, not much. How? It all comes down to a little something called the Leidenfrost effect.Such a bizarre experiment was shared in a video on X. In it, we see a defenceless sliver of pineapple skin on a table, minding its own business until a super-heated glowing iron ball is dropped on top of it.        The video rolls on and the pineapple skin looks pretty much fine until eventually the ball loses its orange glow. Flipping it over reveals that the fleshy innards never even got singed, so what’s going on? Is pineapple some kind of super material we should be crafting into armor?As much as we’d love to see that battle, the fact is that what we’re witnessing here is a nifty quirk of heat transfer. It’s something called the Leidenfrost effect and it isn’t unique to pineapples (see also: watermelons). It's a fun phenomenon that can make water flow uphill, and you’ve probably seen it in the kitchen.The Leidenfrost Effect acting on a water droplet.Image credit: Cryonic07, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia CommonsAs explained by Seppo Louhenkilpi from the Aalto University School of Chemical Technology, heat transfer is influenced by something known as Leidenfrost temperature. Above this temperature, a surface is so hot that when it comes into contact with a liquid it forms a layer of steam so the surface and the liquid aren’t in direct contact.Where you may have seen this before is if you drop liquid on a hot surface, it can form into little balls that appear to float. Similarly, if you put a really hot ball in water, it creates a little steam bubble so that the ball itself isn’t touching the water. Just check it out in the below video.     What this means for heat transfer is that on surfaces above the Leidenfrost temperature, the heat transfer rate doesn’t change much. For surfaces below the Leidenfrost temperature, the comparatively cooler hot surface can come into direct contact with the liquid, increasing the rate of heat transfer significantly.So, bizarrely, you could do more damage to a pineapple with a moderately heated ball than a superheated one. Something to remember should you find yourself facing an army of people who didn’t know about the Leidenfrost effect and took this video to mean that pineapple armor was a good idea.

The star V889 Herculis rotates faster at midlatitudes than either the equator or the poles, unlike the Sun and everything we would expect. The astronomers who detected the pattern do not yet have an explanation, but when we find it there could be some big changes to our assumptions about stellar behavior.Once astronomers started tracking the movements of sunspots, they realized the Sun rotated. That wasn’t so surprising, given that other astronomical bodies do too (even the Moon may appear not to until you think about it a little more). However, more detailed observations revealed that, unlike planets or moons, the Sun does not rotate at the same rate throughout. The equator takes about 25 Earth days to spin, while the figure for the poles is about 34 days, with intermediary values at mid-latitudes.This is thought to be because hot plasma rises to the surface nearly parallel to the axis of rotation near the poles, but perpendicular at the equator. Conservation of angular moment forces faster rotation at the equator, and in a fluid body the forces between regions are insufficient to keep the rotations matched.Even our most advanced telescopes lack the capacity to track starspots on other stars with the same precision. Nevertheless, we can see enough to know that some rotate much more quickly, and others more slowly. To the extent we could measure different rotation rates by latitude, it appeared they either shared the trait of rotating faster the closer one gets to the equator or had similar rotation at all latitudes.These conclusions were reached based on relatively short-term observations of rotations, but the physics fits the observations, and all seemed well with the heavens, until we looked at V889 Herculis.With mass and temperature just marginally greater than the Sun, but an age of 50 million years, V889 Herculis is considered one of the best proxies we have seen for the Sun at 1 percent of its current age. At 115 light years away it is hardly nearby, but still closer than 99.9 percent of the stars in the galaxy, making it a prime candidate for study.Stars spin quickly when they are formed, and slow with age. In this, V889 Herculis is no exception – it rotates once every 32 hours, allowing astronomers to observe a great many rotations. Fourteen years ago, a study reported the expected result that the equator rotates faster than the poles, lapping them roughly every 150 days, but this ignored the mid-latitudes. Given the gradual way the Sun slows down with latitude, that didn’t seem to be a problem, but a team led by Dr Mikko Tuomi of the University of Helsinki (best known for helping discover Proxima Centauri b) has complicated things. They found that the maximum rotation occurs at latitudes of 37-40 degrees. The equator turns slower, but the poles slowest of all."We applied a newly developed statistical technique to the data of a familiar star that has been studied at the University of Helsinki for years. We did not expect to see such anomalies in stellar rotation. The anomalies in the rotational profile of V889 Herculis indicate that our understanding of stellar dynamics and magnetic dynamos are insufficient," Tuomi said in a statement. The team used the same technique to explore the rotational profile of LQ Hydrae, a star 20 percent less massive than the Sun, and the same age as V889 Herculis. Its rotation could not be distinguished from a solid body, where the equator and poles turn at the same rate. However, the authors think its equator probably still rotates faster, just to such a small extent we lack the capacity to detect the difference.Both V889 Herculis and LQ Hydrae have been tracked for 30 years by robotic telescopes at the Fairborn Observatory that are the size of large amateur instruments, rather than the giants that dominate professional astronomy. Such modest instruments cannot make out the individual starspots at this distance, but they make up for that with long-term observations tracking a rise and fall in brightness. Tuomi and colleagues picked out curves they think are indicative of times when spots were predominantly located in one part of the star. With thousands of rotations taking place over the time each star was observed, this gave them a large sample to work on."It is amazing that even in the era of great space-based observatories we can obtain fundamental information on stellar astrophysics with small 40cm [16-inch] ground-based telescopes,” Tuomi said.The study is published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), better known as “forever chemicals,” have been found in almost every single fish tested in Illinois rivers, highlighting how these synthetic pollutants have become prolific in the natural world. In a new study, scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studied 17 different PFAS across nine fish species caught from 15 sampling sites across four waterways in Illinois. Fish were found to be contaminated with PFAS in every one of their 15 test sites, and elevated levels of one specific compound, called PFOS, were found in nearly all fish tested. Levels were especially high in fish at the top of the food chain, like channel catfish, suggesting that bioaccumulation is at play. They were also higher in fish caught near urban locations and industrial regions.PFAS are nicknamed "forever chemicals" because they are highly resistant to degradation due to their strong carbon-fluorine bonds, causing them to persist in the environment and living organisms for an extremely long time.“PFAS contain multiple carbon-fluorine bonds, one of the strongest bonds in organic chemistry. Because of this, they are also very hard to break down. They persist for a long time because they are very, very stable,” Joseph Irudayaraj, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who led the new study, said in a statement. Common carp were also found to be loaded with "forever chemicals."Image credit: Rostislav Stefanek/Shutterstock.comPrized for their durability and stability under stresses like high heat or exposure to water, they’re used in a wide variety of industrial and consumer products, including non-stick cookware, water-repellent clothing, food packaging, firefighting foams, and cleaning products. In recent years, a long reel of studies has shown how PFAS have become ubiquitous in the world’s water, soil, air, and life forms. Concerning levels of the chemicals have been found in everything from drinking water and rainwater to dog poop and breast milk.“About 99 percent of people living in the U.S. have PFAS in their system,” said Professor Irudayaraj.Needless to say, this is not good news. PFAS are linked to a host of negative health effects, including liver damage, thyroid disease, obesity, fertility issues, and cancer. However, we are only just starting to uncover the extent of the damage they can cause.Some action is being taken to address the planet’s PFAS problem, although the scale of the problem means this is no easy task. In April 2024, the US Environmental Protection Agency established the first-ever national limits for PFAS in drinking water. However, the law only limited six types of PFAS, ignoring thousands and thousands of others. The new study is published in the journal Science of The Total Environment.

The big Trump news story on Wednesday night and Thursday morning was the intensely hostile grilling he received at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago. Unsurprisingly, the networks pounced on Trump’s trolling claims that Kamala Harris used to identify by an Indian heritage, and then decided she was black. Norah O'Donnell at CBS led like Dan Rather was scripting it:  CBS opens: "We start tonight with a fact-check. The Vice President's heritage is both Indian and Jamaican. But that didn't stop the Republican presidential nominee from accusing her of downplaying parts of her identity during the combative interview in front of a jeering crowd." pic.twitter.com/HwXs0QgTr8 — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) August 1, 2024 But what did they omit? -- Kamala Harris skipped the black journalist convention, while Trump appeared. All the networks ran lots of commentary from Biden’s press secretary, and Harris, and Harris campaign statements, but mostly skipped the fact that Kamala skipped. On the Big Three, only on the CBS Evening News did reporter Nikole Killian briefly note “The vice president is in talks to address the NABJ in September.” The PBS News Hour had a sentence from Lisa Desjardins: “ Vice President Harris isn't expected at the journalists' convention, but is in talks to speak to NABJ members in September.” NPR’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition made no mention in their biased takedowns. The newspapers were also lame on this point. The New York Times noted it in paragraph 24, The Washington Post in paragraph 31, and The Wall Street Journal omitted it.  -- Harris has skipped all interviews and press conferences. The networks eagerly run clips of her Teleprompter speeches and repeat her campaign's press statements, but there's no mention of Harris hiding from the press since she undemocratically emerged as Biden's successor on the "Democrat" side. -- Most skipped the obnoxious opening question from ABC's Rachel Scott, especially ABC! NBC's Today ran the question in full. In both the evening and the morning, Scott's stories honed in on her pushy questions about Kamala Harris being a "DEI hire" as she refused to answer his question about what "DEI" means.  On CBS Tuesday night, Nikole Killion lamented: “One question in, the former president quickly panned one of the moderators who asked about some of his past comments….denigrating people of color and black journalists.” In between, she ran a clip of Trump asking in 2011 when Obama will release his birth certificate, and a brief snippet of Trump in 2018 accusing reporter Yamiche Alcindor of asking a "racist question." Viewers would have no idea what the question was.  (Alcindor asked: "On the campaign trail, you called yourself a nationalist. Some people saw that as emboldening white nationalists.") NBC’s Garrett Haake skipped the Scott speech on the Nightly News, but concluded his report with out-of-context spin: “Trump [is] defiant tonight blasting the questions at that event as rude and nasty, while a source close to the Harris campaign describes them as painful and completely unhinged. Lester.” On PBS, Lisa Desjardins began: "it quickly turned combative with ABC's Rachel Scott," and then only played Trump. NPR's All Things Considered refused to consider airing Scott's opening assault. Another so-called NABJ "moderator" (inquisitor?), Kadia Goba, complained "I was very surprised at the vitriol at the very beginning. It was very -- it was quite unsettling and kind of set the tone for a very aggressive panel." Excuse me? Who set the tone at the top? How bizarre. NPR host Ailsa Chang replied "Can I play a tape of that?" And then she played only Trump's response!