Tag: ragnarok discourse

Ignoring Tom Hiddleston’s Own Words To Fit an Agenda

philosopherking1887:

nikkoliferous:

seiramili7:

This writing is inspired by this post:  post: https://thesunwillshineonus.tumblr.com/post/177979140245/taika-and-i-went-out-for-a-bowl-of-pasta-before 

So, for all of you who’re curious enough to visit this post of mine, here’s the actual link/source of the Empire Podcast full interview of Tom Hiddleston that already existed since 4 months ago:

https://soundcloud.com/empiremagazine/tom-hiddleston-life-as-loki-interview-special 

The answers of this interview just recently got published in this article (basically he source of @thesunwillshineonus post): https://webbedmedia.com/2018/09/11/tom-hiddleston-on-loki-the-god-of-mischief-reveals-some-secrets/ , which contained the shortened versions of Tom Hiddleston’s overall answers. 

So, this article only contained the shortened version, it certainly couldn’t post all of the word Tom Hiddleston said in the interview. But of course, I find this article interesting in the way they published his answer, but I just want to highlight one part of what they published: 

Talking to Taika Waititi before Ragnarok
Taika and I went out for a bowl of pasta before Ragnarok and he said ‘I’m gonna change quite a lot. But I’m not gonna change you.’ And I took that as a huge compliment. I’ve always felt a responsibility to both honor the respect in which the character is held but also to try and progress it on. 

Here’s the minutes in which its sentences was taken for the writing purpose: 

From 9:38 – 9:50: Taika and I went out for a bowl of pasta before Ragnarok and he said ‘I’m gonna change quite a lot. But I’m not gonna change you.’ And I took that as a huge compliment.

From 10:12 – 10:25: I’ve always felt a responsibility to both honor the respect in which the character is held but also to try and progress it on.

As you see, there’s the space of between this word “I took that as a huge compliment”, and the word “

I’ve always felt a responsibility to both honor the respect in which the character is held but also to try and progress it on.”

For those of you who’re curious of those missing words (Tom Hiddleston’s words which cut off by the article writer, of course), here’s the real continuation right after “And I took that as a huge compliment.” part, with the bonus of full words taken from 9: 38- 9: 52 minutes. 

“Taika and I went out for a bowl of pasta before Ragnarok and he said ‘I’m gonna change quite a lot, but I’m not gonna change you.’ And I took that as a huge compliment.

BUT that he (waititi) did change things actually (9:50-9:52 minutes)” 

Anyone else is curious on why did the writers take this two seconds part —->>> “but he did change things actually”?? (Feel free to interpret this on your own to make your answer, as I already have mine). 

P.S.: It’s ironic how Ragnarok zealots calling us as “ignoring Tom Hiddleston’s own words” when in reality, they’re the one who ignoring Tom Hiddleston’s words just because it doesn’t fit their own agenda.

Your thoughts?? 

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I think part of it is, obviously, the tendency to accuse other people of the thing you’re guilty of yourself (e.g., accusing Loki fans who hate Ragnarok of ignoring Tom’s own words while they ignore Tom’s own words).

And I think there’s also an aspect of a tendency I see in discourse about politics all the time, wherein most people don’t actually read full articles or identify nuance. They see a headline or a blurb and they take that at face value instead of determining the context of what they’ve just read.

Obviously, neither of those fallacies are exclusive to Ragnarok/Taika zealots; they’re just generally a human tendency. But I definitely see them at work a lot with people who will defend Ragnarok to the death.

As to why the writers of the article decided to omit that short additional portion of his answer (for the fullest possible context; here is word-for-word absolutely everything Tom said in between “I took that as a huge compliment” and “But I’ve always felt a responsibility…”):

“But that he also–we did change things, actually. But [Taika] was really–of course, as we’ve–everyone’s seen Ragnarok, he radically changed things. Specifically with regards to Thor. You know, just, break him down, chop his hair off. And, uh… and Asgard too. But also, I do feel like it’s different every time, in a way that I’m not fully conscious of.”

….good question. And I am curious, actually. Specifically because in the fullest context, what he said in the omitted portion seems fairly neutral to me. He doesn’t speak especially positively or negatively about the changes Taika made. The main point I’d just want to highlight is that he never says Taika didn’t change Loki. Ragnarok lovers use this interview to claim that Tom approves of what Taika did with Loki in Ragnarok, but he never says that. He says Taika told him he wouldn’t change Loki. There’s no indication that he believes they didn’t change him. So at best, these fans are making an argument from silence. And at worst, they’re being intentionally disingenuous little assholes.

Thank you so much for doing the research, @seiramili7! I listened to the full interview, and you’re right that the context makes it ambiguous whether he thought Taika didn’t change Loki. It’s interesting that he remembered that conversation… I guess if it was one of his first significant interactions with him, it might stand out.

Speaking of making arguments from silence… it’s interesting to me that Tom has never said that he likes the way Ragnarok changed Thor as a character and the tone of the movies. He gushes about Kenneth Branagh and the depth that the original scriptwriters gave Loki; there was that similarly gushy e-mail to Joss Whedon where he said how much he loved the role:

It’s high operatic villainy alongside detached throwaway tongue-in-cheek; plus the “real menace” and his closely guarded suitcase of pain. It’s grand and epic and majestic and poetic and lyrical and wicked and rich and badass and might possibly be the most gloriously fun part I’ve ever stared down the barrel of playing. It is just so juicy.

I love how throughout you continue to put Loki on some kind of pedestal of regal magnificence and then consistently tear him down. He gets battered, punched, blasted, side-swiped, roared at, sent tumbling on his back, and every time he gets back up smiling, wickedly, never for a second losing his eloquence, style, wit, self-aggrandisement or grandeur, and you never send him up or deny him his real intelligence.

What Tom did say in praise of Taika in the Empire podcast was that he, like the other directors he’s worked with, “respected the brotherly relationship between Thor and Loki.” I would definitely side-eye that claim; there were some brotherly shenanigans, but they reflect a fundamentally unequal relationship in which Loki’s whole world revolves around Thor but Thor scarcely gives a thought to Loki’s feelings or inner world. And I’m sure some brotherly relationships are really like that. It was also interesting how Tom said that Ragnarok gave us a “capitulation or reconciliation” regarding Loki’s fraught relationship with his family. He then went on to talk about Odin’s acknowledgment of Loki as his son rather than Loki’s relationship with Thor. Still, interesting choice of word.

As a bunch of people have been saying, Tom is far too gracious to publicly criticize his co-workers or the films he’s been in (unlike Chris Hemsworth…). I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say a bad word about anyone, except maybe indirectly Donald Trump. So I’m not sure that we can take his positive words or omissions of criticism at face value. His omissions of praise, given his general tendency to gush about people and writing that really impress him, may actually be more significant. His downcast, disaffected demeanor and body language throughout the press for Ragnarok – but not so much for Infinity War, interestingly – could mean any number of things. Maybe he had just filmed the death scene in IW and he was depressed about that, about saying goodbye to the role; maybe he was getting a little too into his stage role as Hamlet, or was stressed out about preparing for it; maybe something else was going on in his personal life that we don’t know about because it’s none of our business. I don’t think we can determine for sure either way whether he approved of the direction in which TW and CH took the Thor franchise and the characters of Thor and Loki.

But as a bunch of people have also been saying, even if Tom thinks Taika didn’t ruin Loki, and even if Taika really didn’t intend to change Loki, that doesn’t prove what the TR/TW/CH stans want it to prove: that Taika did not, in fact, ruin Loki’s character. Tom is, in general, a sophisticated reader of texts and characters… but he’s not infallible, and he has an obvious motivation to see the best in his role in Ragnarok. And what an artist “intended” to do in advance of creating their work is often not the same as what they end up doing. Many of the things Taika has said in interviews do reflect contempt and lack of sympathy for Loki; I found this collection of quotes from him, but there was another compilation, I think by @yume-no-fantasy, that has even more evidence and I’m having trouble finding it, so if someone could help me out… I do remember a quotation of him saying “Not to want to humiliate Loki throughout the whole movie…” that reminded me strongly of when Trump says “I’m not even going to talk about X” and then proceeds to rant about X.

But even if Taika didn’t have malicious intent, even if he didn’t want to make Loki look like a shallow, incompetent narcissist with no understandable motives beyond “I did it for the lulz” and no legitimate grievances against anyone in his family… what matters is what the work shows. And the work does show contempt for Loki and an inability and/or unwillingness to understand his problems and motivations in previous films. My considered view, given the evidence both in interviews and in the tone of the film itself, is that this was malicious; but perhaps it was just the result of incomprehension and/or incompetence. My evaluation of the movie would not change even if Tom and Taika held a press conference in which Taika very earnestly and sincerely said that he was trying his best to do justice to Loki’s character and Tom said that he believes Taika succeeded; I would just say that they were wrong about the film that was actually made. Everyone on here is perfectly happy to say that even if Joss Whedon was trying to be feminist in his oeuvre, he failed and in fact made non- or anti-feminist works (I would dispute that generalization, but that’s not the point here). Artists can be wrong about the import of their work, the message or perspective it conveys. “The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” as they say; and the only way to determine the content or attitude of a piece of media is to examine it carefully and critically.

Oh P.S. I wanted to express my agreement with this remark from @nikkoliferous:

I think part of it is, obviously, the tendency to accuse other people of the thing you’re guilty of yourself (e.g., accusing Loki fans who hate Ragnarok of ignoring Tom’s own words while they ignore Tom’s own words).

This was also on display in the anonymous message that one of these Ragnarok/Waititi stans sent to @iamanartichoke, accusing her of “threatening” when the only person who had done any threatening was the person whom iamanartichoke (Charlotte) had rebuked for threatening to incite dogpiling on me. (I referred to this yesterday as a “No puppet, no puppet, you’re the puppet” moment.) The TR/TW/CH/Thor* stans like to play the victim when in fact they are the ones who send anonymous hate to anti-Ragnarok folks and disparage certain of us by name, implicitly (or explicitly) encouraging their followers to dogpile (this is another distinctly Trumpian behavior). They act like martyrs when people like me jump onto a thread to dispute their logic or offer counterarguments and counterevidence, but it’s extremely common for them to insert themselves into Ragnarok-critical threads just to insult the posters as hysterical, delusional, racist, homophobic straight girls who just want to fuck Tom Hiddleston, or otherwise just to say they “can’t believe” some people or put in some skeptical gif as if it’s a refutation (philosophers call this pseudo-argument “the incredulous stare”).

foundlingmother replied to your post “foundlingmother: philosopherking1887: iamanartichoke: Friendly…”

@philosopherking1887​ Well, I do say “participated in”, and that’s supposed to point to Thor’s actions on Jotunheim. That’s a much bigger part for me than the fact that Thor’s enriched by all the stolen gold. It’s those actions I want acknowledged more than anything. I don’t think it’s good to wallow in the crimes of the past, but I think it’s good to acknowledge them, which people aggressively avoid doing, insisting they possess no privilege.

In fact, I’m kind of confused why you got what you did from my post… do you mind telling me? I think I’m pretty clear about being critical of the cover up of past crimes, and never say anything about redistribution or the personal responsibility of those who benefit beyond the fact that we should be critical of those who think uncritically and deny that history did bias the results in a certain direction.

That doesn’t assume that we must forever lash ourselves to these crimes we are unwittingly the benefactors of, or set things right by giving away the shirts on our backs, only that the first step towards any sort of compensation, forward-thinking or otherwise, must be acknowledgement of the crimes of our ancestors.

I suppose my actual opinion, summarized, is that white people alive today need to accept responsibility, not admit guilt, for the crimes of our ancestors and work towards a better future not by undoing the crime (as you say, this is impossible), but through that forward-thinking compensation. So I’m not sure we disagree in principle, though our particular ideas of what forward-thinking compensation looks like might differ.

I thought I should get this discussion off poor @iamanartichoke‘s post because it was getting pretty long (sorry for spamming!). And it’s about to get longer.

@foundlingmother there were a couple things in your original comment that made me think you were ascribing guilt to the descendants of conquerors simply in virtue of their descent and inheritance, not in virtue of their refusal to acknowledge it or attempt to make amends. First: “I don’t think Thor’s at Hela or Odin’s level whatsoever, but he’s the crown prince of an imperial power. He did benefit from and participate (unknowingly) in this imperialism.” When you said “participate (unknowingly),” it wasn’t clear that you meant Thor’s invasion of Jotunheim. That could certainly be construed as unknowing participation if he didn’t think of ‘keeping the Jotuns down’ (to paraphrase Randy Newman) as a perpetuation of oppression, but just a strategic necessity, given their (presumed) warlike nature. The “unknowingly” made me think you were talking about just the wealth and power he inherited, rather than something he did knowingly and voluntarily… but given your clarification, I can see that it could mean something he did without knowing that it fell under a certain description. (Sorry if that came out jargony; I may have lost the ability to think in non-philosophers’ terms.)

The other thing that pointed me toward that reading was this: “Black Panther avoids insulting white viewers to the extent it would be appropriate to do so. … The wrongdoings of white people exist on the periphery, but they are not the focus. If Ragnarok’s critique weren’t so muddled, it would have been a critique of white imperialists. It would have been a condemnation of erasing history and the uncritical thinking that allows people who benefit to rationalize their relative good fortune.” It seemed that you were collapsing the categories of “imperialist” and “descendant who benefits.” Of course, the distinction isn’t all that clean when imperialism survives in the form of globalized capitalism… but there are white people in the global north whose primary fault is ignorance of the conditions that allow them to enjoy their cheap consumer goods, and who may or may not be in a position to do anything about it directly, so it doesn’t quite seem accurate to call them “imperialists.” As to Black Panther, I think it was pretty clear about the wrongdoings of white people: they are the necessary background condition of the dilemma that T’Challa and Wakanda find themselves in. The issue of what white people should do to correct the harms of past imperialism and continuing neo-imperialism is incredibly complicated, and it wasn’t the what-if question that Black Panther was interested in exploring as a piece of speculative fiction.

Perhaps I was being uncharitable in my reading of your comment… I do come into the issue with some annoyance at a certain strain of rhetoric on the Left that dwells ad nauseam on white guilt. They often make it sound as if they think white people are inherently morally worse than people of color – which is a particular instance of the general principle that members of oppressed groups are inherently morally better than members of privileged groups, but one that appears to trump all other instances of the principle. There often seems to be a mythic narrative at play in the background according to which oppression was invented by white people (i.e., Europeans) in the 15th century, and before that everything was hunky dory. There also seems to be the implicit assumption that the reason non-white people didn’t end up conquering the rest of the world was out of some sort of morally virtuous restraint… which ignores the amount of brutal conquering that did go on in every part of the world long before the modern era. So I can see why some white people end up feeling like the Left is blaming them for being alive, and why they end up feeling defensive. That isn’t enough to put me off my commitment to realizing racial equality, and it doesn’t justify the defensive white people in ceasing to be allies, but I can also see where it’s coming from. But of course that’s just my “white fragility,” isn’t it…? Oy.

Oh, and then there were the white people on Facebook saying they thought Killmonger was right. And I’m like… so you’re saying you’re in favor of arming all the non-white people with incredibly advanced weapons and just letting them have at it? Don’t get me wrong, I think they have some very real grievances against white people in general. But I also don’t believe in the inherent goodness of the oppressed, and I don’t believe that arming them indiscriminately would result in the overthrow of all unjust systems, the institution of just ones, and the punishment of those responsible for oppression in proportion to their level of responsibility. Also, most of the time I don’t want to die violently, and I suspect my white friends on Facebook don’t either, so I’m pretty sure all the “Killmonger was right” stuff was just social justice posturing/point-scoring. And no, my saying that doesn’t mean that I think brown people are evil and violent; it means I think they’re people (which goes to your point, @musclesandhammering). Arming oppressed white people doesn’t usually end well, either; look at the French Revolution. Achieving justice needs to involve cooperation between the (erstwhile) oppressors and oppressed, with the latter presenting their grievances and the former voluntarily divesting themselves of their undue advantages, not just turning over all power to the injured party and letting them wreak revenge.

… and now I’m gonna get a bunch of hate and “No wonder you didn’t like Ragnarok, you’re a racist colonizer.” Oh well.

iamanartichoke:

Friendly reminder that Loki never showed any general ill-will toward Asgard or intent to destroy Asgard and that usurping Odin at the end of TDW didn’t necessarily have to bode ill for Asgard’s fate, as we had no reason to believe he would rule poorly. That Ragnarok revealed his “evil plan” being community theatre shouldn’t be much of a surprise – by which, I mean I didn’t expect the community theatre part, but I didn’t expect to see Asgard in tyrannical ruins under Loki’s rule, either. Loki has always proven himself sensible, analytical, and highly intelligent. He would have absolutely nothing to gain by using Odin’s form to run Asgard into the ground. Despite what Thor says about the Nine Realms being in chaos, I’m pretty sure things were fine and were always going to be fine under Loki. 

#loki#loki as odin#the dark world#thor ragnarok#sorry but i just get tired of seeing posts about#how everyone was worried after Loki was revealed as Odin#at the end of tdw#like it meant asgard was doomed#why would anyone think that?#ragnarok didn’t do us some huge favor#of painting loki as a benevolent ruler#to everyone’s surprise#it did however#make him look very narcissistic with that play#which i’ve always been uncomfortable with#but i just pretend it doesn’t exist#and i manage okay

And the other thing is… that line about the Nine Realms being in chaos – which has encouraged everyone to trash Loki as a terrible king and paint his usurping Odin as another horrific crime for which he deserved any maltreatment Thor subsequently decided to inflict on him – is an example of just how half-assed Ragnarok’s “critique of imperialism” really is (as @foundlingmother and I have discussed at length). So conquest is bad, but non-interventionism is equally bad? Sudden withdrawal from protectorates that have been left in no condition to protect or govern themselves is certainly not great, but it’s a complicated issue exactly what kind of aid or training withdrawing conquerors should provide. (Is it “weaning” away from dependency, or just extending the period of dependency? Doesn’t “teaching” self-governance involve a kind of cultural imperialism, as the conqueror generally ends up teaching the ex-protectorate how to imitate its own system of government?) It’s understandable that a comic book action movie isn’t going to explore those kinds of issues in depth (and boy, did Civil War massively fail on that score – though Black Panther did a pretty good job wrestling with it), but… if you’re going to bring it up in the form of a ham-handed allegory, you can’t also have this glaring (at least apparent) inconsistency and not address it.

This appears to be another example of the film dropping the ball on its otherwise worthy anti-imperialism message when it comes to Loki – probably deliberately, considering the lack of sympathy and respect the film and its creator show for Loki in just about every other context. As I’ve also discussed at length, Ragnarok missed, or simply passed on, an obvious opportunity to address Loki’s place in Asgard’s imperialist history, as the child of a conquered people raised in ignorance of his heritage and with such contempt and hatred toward his own kind that when he discovered he was one of them he tried to wipe them out. I’m going to excerpt the most relevant part of that old post:

  • Loki’s story could have been used to flesh out the narrative about colonialism. Recall Hela’s dismissive remark about bogus “peace treaties” commemorated on the redecorated walls of the throne room: that might have been an allusion to the one-sided “treaties” that Britain and the U.S. signed with American Indian nations and then trampled all over. Loki could have been one of those stolen indigenous children raised among the colonists and taught to scorn the people to whom he was born. But for some reason Waititi and the writers didn’t make the connection, or didn’t want to tie Loki in to that aspect of the story. … maybe it was just because Loki has been a villain and they didn’t want to draw a connection between a (part-time) villain – or anyway, a character they just don’t like – and the oppressed of colonialism (though making him queer is OK, I guess). For whatever reason, they wanted to keep Loki firmly coded as White (which makes him easier to ridicule!) and gloss over the part where he’s only white-passing (literally; he’s actually blue). 

And I’m not the only one; @endiness put it nicely:

  • the movie features asgard’s ‘past’ history of imperialism and colonization as a major plot point… but then it excludes loki from the narrative when he easily has a place in it. like, how could he not when he’s the adopted (kidnapped) son of the leader of an enemy nation left in ruin after losing to asgard? and when odin literally admitted that he took loki for political purposes? but, again, nothing about any of this at all. (actually, even worse than loki and his heritage and the circumstances being entirely excluded from the story, it isn’t; it’s brought up but only in the context of humor explicitly at loki’s expense to make a mockery of the emotional complexity and depth of his character in the previous movies.)

So the upshot seems to be: hammer in your anti-imperialist message except when Loki might appear to be on the oppressed rather than oppressor’s end of the equation, when the issue threatens to give him more depth and complexity and make him remotely sympathetic. Condemn Hela and Odin (but only sometimes; Thor can still appeal to him for strength at the end) for being imperialists, but condemn Loki for failing to be imperialist enough.