Who needs more protection than Cis White Boys? [it's sarcasm]
A very quick look at the series finale of Agatha All Along and how it manages to centre, in an almost all female cast, the importance (and innocence despite deaths) of the next generation of men
'Adoptive' Mother after she sacrifices herself for Teen? Pretty much...
AGATHA ALL ALONG FINALE SPOILERS
I'm not going to add a last two episodes analysis video, I think Propaganda All Along still stands. But here’s some scrambled thoughts, a verbose way to say “I Told You So” if you will…
Ironically what I did not see coming was how apt and repetitive was the idea of putting things / lies in the mouth of characters while our suspension of disbelief is on.
It's not just Lilia being offended at the commodification of witchcraft or letting Jen, the black witch, say "we have time to be culturally offended later" as if it doesn't matter to her. It's also the emphasis in the last episode of what a conniving lying creature Agatha is. One would think the death of her son Nicholas is actually punishment for Agatha's ways, and that justifies why she can't go in the afterlife: because she fears seeing him again.
So what's one more in-your-face lie, actually so blatant when she spells it out "I didn't sacrifice myself for you, I took a calculated risk". Bless the bad girl that cannot admit to her feelings, right?
Yet she does. Through the series Rio had to tell Agatha and spell it out for her that Billy/Teen was not her son. (also, let’s Bury our Gays yet again, the one actually sapphic kiss we get between Agatha and Rio? it’s quite literally the Kiss of Death)
The way Agatha is desperate when Teen gets hurt after a trial? Not anything she has a problem with anyone else. She literally says to Billy's face "you remind me of him". Nicholas, her child.
she's actually made to look completely lacking morals... except when it comes to... Young white boys.
Agatha absolutely sacrificed herself for Teen, and also takes the emphatic flak as if she caused with joy all the witches’ deaths when she conned them into the witches road before Billy/Teen actual made it happen.
But the way Agatha and Billy are causing the death of people is presented with the same difference of responsibility between premeditated murder and manslaughter. And who gets off easier and with sympathy inspiring story?
The white boy.
So the moral of the story is always the justification -through infantilisation- of white men a-la "he deserves saving, because poor thing, he doesn't understand, he didn't know what he was doing" (the video essay Lindsey Ellis did on Yoko Ono explains this beautifully)
And Agatha's cruelty? Stands only to other women (not like the other girls, I told you I had a F-Ton of research on female intrasexual competition or why there’s so much internalised misogyny some women do the dirty work of the patriarchy for them. Tripping the Prom Queen is just one book, Catfight is another, Odd Girl Out goes into how this starts in schools, on a wider take there’s Rage becomes her by Soraya Chemaly which is worth a read just because it exists.).
And who needs care and protection more than... Cis White boys, who are the next generation to be groomed to uphold patriarchy right? 🤦🏽♀️
As the late David Graeber made us notice all the way back in 2015…
One might begin here by considering who are the core audience for superhero comics. Mainly, adolescent or preadolescent white boys. That is, individuals who are at a point in their lives where they are likely to be both maximally imaginative and at least a little bit rebellious; but who are also being groomed to eventually take on positions of authority and power in the world, to be fathers, sheriffs, small-business owners, middle managers, engineers. And what do they learn from these endless repeated dramas? Well, first off, that imagination and rebellion lead to violence; second, that, like imagination and rebellion, violence is a lot of fun; third, that, ultimately, violence must be directed back against any overflow of imagination and rebellion lest everything go askew. These things must be contained!
And as a final note, remember when we talked about white feminism in TERFs and Witchcraft? How the only way (white) women have power is within the ladder that sees patriarchy (and cis white het able men) at the top, so they decide to work within it rather than break the ladder? Do you think they were tired of being subtle about it when Agatha (the white woman playing against everyone who's more marginalised than her, so lower in the patriarchal ladder than her) gets her power back from the white cis (albeit gay) boy? The only way women get power is through what power men decide to give them?
Happy Halloween.
Samhain is the 1st of November this year by the way…