(no subject)
Brexit Chainsaw Massacre E4
Lamb conversation relevant for two reasons: L for lamb = the islanders are going to try to sacrifice Ellie; brings up issue of whether a child counts as a different animal. Anti-Bible study ex-vet Helen assumes we’re all animals - “mammalian flesh is mammalian flesh” - so maybe a point will come where she’ll have trouble allying with the children of the problem whites because she thinks they’re like their parents? If the show has a relatively happy ending (I’m not getting too attached to Ellie) it will be because it’s optimistic that a later electoral generation of white Brits will take immigrants’ and minorities’ side against their fucked up predecessors, after all. The astonished Lu finds thousands on her side. Britain will need immigration and reconnection to the wider world to overcome its two forms of stagnation (ugly island off in a corner few want to visit anymore, aging non-self-replacing population).
Of course the human-representing doll inside the actual lamb sacrifice (“K is for Kangaroo,” Julie remarked) might instead mean the islanders continue to assume if they sacrifice one generation’s fortune it will be to the benefit of the next. That lamb’s white, after all. But the life it dies to save is plastic, unreal, so that’s idiotic - you don’t save your children by killing yourself. The crucified pregnant Mary I guess also signified that? The guy who accosts Ellie is the one who wanted median voter Law dead rather than converted last time (a more purist, alt-right sort of viewpoint, willing to risk losses in the short term to avoid dilution of purpose?). Maybe he recognizes this problem and assumes sacrificing more traditional fascist scapegoats should be the answer rather than Britain’s economy? The assurances of both the Airbnb guy and the hotel owner that racism’s not the problem here might be denialism, or just a lie, but maybe there’s at least a grain of truth to it in the show’s view? Maybe those people represent those who will come around later. Fear-based xenophobia is hard to separate from ideological racism but maybe that’s the show’s point, that by confounding them we’re selling short the potential of the white English to change and thereby writing England off forever (rather than just for the near future, during which it agrees it’s going to be “a dump”).
Helen and Ellie might be versions of the same name, though - Helena/Elena - so maybe the question of whether child must be like parent applies instead to them. Or also to them? The Airbnb people seemed to be reconsidering something when they noticed Lu and Ellie were likely mixed race. Maybe that somehow qualifies them for sacrifice candidacy during Lamb Week, like the football thug type guy may have decided. But maybe it instead suggested some other solution to them - like the only realistic one, where Britain accepts it can’t stay cut off from the rapidly culture- and color-blending larger world thus, y’know, mingles. But the *show* won’t be condemning Helen as more “animal” than her lighter children even if the yokels do, so something more complex must be happening if it’s she who’s the lamb. Wonder what?
...
Wrote all that before the Law, as it were. Main thing that changes about what I was discussing is that the islanders have a plot-level reason to want them to replace Law, since the kids are also descendants of the manor people. On a thematic level I guess that represents cultural assimilation (enthusiasm for which would be the real acid test separating xenophobes from racists?) or anyway how, given the white birth rate, the middle class off-white cohort will soon *be* the deciding median vote Law’s had been at Leave time.
The replacement of sea-appeasing/blocking salt with earth-symbolizing fallen leaves maybe suggests a sea change in what the right wing establishment wants?
Lamb conversation relevant for two reasons: L for lamb = the islanders are going to try to sacrifice Ellie; brings up issue of whether a child counts as a different animal. Anti-Bible study ex-vet Helen assumes we’re all animals - “mammalian flesh is mammalian flesh” - so maybe a point will come where she’ll have trouble allying with the children of the problem whites because she thinks they’re like their parents? If the show has a relatively happy ending (I’m not getting too attached to Ellie) it will be because it’s optimistic that a later electoral generation of white Brits will take immigrants’ and minorities’ side against their fucked up predecessors, after all. The astonished Lu finds thousands on her side. Britain will need immigration and reconnection to the wider world to overcome its two forms of stagnation (ugly island off in a corner few want to visit anymore, aging non-self-replacing population).
Of course the human-representing doll inside the actual lamb sacrifice (“K is for Kangaroo,” Julie remarked) might instead mean the islanders continue to assume if they sacrifice one generation’s fortune it will be to the benefit of the next. That lamb’s white, after all. But the life it dies to save is plastic, unreal, so that’s idiotic - you don’t save your children by killing yourself. The crucified pregnant Mary I guess also signified that? The guy who accosts Ellie is the one who wanted median voter Law dead rather than converted last time (a more purist, alt-right sort of viewpoint, willing to risk losses in the short term to avoid dilution of purpose?). Maybe he recognizes this problem and assumes sacrificing more traditional fascist scapegoats should be the answer rather than Britain’s economy? The assurances of both the Airbnb guy and the hotel owner that racism’s not the problem here might be denialism, or just a lie, but maybe there’s at least a grain of truth to it in the show’s view? Maybe those people represent those who will come around later. Fear-based xenophobia is hard to separate from ideological racism but maybe that’s the show’s point, that by confounding them we’re selling short the potential of the white English to change and thereby writing England off forever (rather than just for the near future, during which it agrees it’s going to be “a dump”).
Helen and Ellie might be versions of the same name, though - Helena/Elena - so maybe the question of whether child must be like parent applies instead to them. Or also to them? The Airbnb people seemed to be reconsidering something when they noticed Lu and Ellie were likely mixed race. Maybe that somehow qualifies them for sacrifice candidacy during Lamb Week, like the football thug type guy may have decided. But maybe it instead suggested some other solution to them - like the only realistic one, where Britain accepts it can’t stay cut off from the rapidly culture- and color-blending larger world thus, y’know, mingles. But the *show* won’t be condemning Helen as more “animal” than her lighter children even if the yokels do, so something more complex must be happening if it’s she who’s the lamb. Wonder what?
...
Wrote all that before the Law, as it were. Main thing that changes about what I was discussing is that the islanders have a plot-level reason to want them to replace Law, since the kids are also descendants of the manor people. On a thematic level I guess that represents cultural assimilation (enthusiasm for which would be the real acid test separating xenophobes from racists?) or anyway how, given the white birth rate, the middle class off-white cohort will soon *be* the deciding median vote Law’s had been at Leave time.
The replacement of sea-appeasing/blocking salt with earth-symbolizing fallen leaves maybe suggests a sea change in what the right wing establishment wants?