also there is a very self-indulgent pun on wasps that i have no idea why it was there but i appreciated

anyway i’m rewatching the folding ideas video on annihilation again because i learned, after watching men, that it has the same writer-director

btw i should probably watch annihilation sometime

my first guess is that all the men in this film are meant to be understood as different aspects of the way her guilt* over her husband’s suicide is haunting her; at the end they are gradually morphed together into one, and then take the shape of her husband as he looked when he looked himself. so i mean.

* undeserved, but it is not exactly the case that trauma is rational

twin thinks the very long mpreg birthing sequence is meant to depict the way toxic masculinity constantly keeps reproducing itself, creating hurt people who go on to hurt others; he read something to the effect of empathy in the way Harper looked at her husband at the end

btw all the men in this movie who are not her husband are played by the same actor so this film is REALLY inviting reading them as parts of some whole

@aescling Annihilation was interesting

we were sidetracked by some of the racial dynamics of it, unfortunately, so it's hard for us to talk about it meaningfully

- 🎒

@alyssa who now?

@aescling Kunihiko Ikuhara, anime director among other things. directed seasons 2 thru 4 of Sailor Moon (well, most of 2). made Utena, Mawaru Penguindrum, Yuri Kuma Arashi, Sarazanmai.

@aescling mostly his anime are always very stylized and surreal and symbolically rich and go over my head but i'm still like "ooooh". also there's usually gayness that does not go over my head