Dropping the weekly puzzle going forwards on account of the fact that it's far more fun to do in Tradle than if you get one guess and that's it.
Just a short bit of commentary this Sunday because I’m chilling and I don’t want to kill my vibe. I was struck more than usual while reading responses to the government's crackdown on beneficiaries by how few people observe one of my core maxims, and how much that muddies conversations. Different people are different. In a liberal democracy of five million people, you have to account for how the diversity of people’s backgrounds and the choices they will make filter into a rainbow of outcomes when put through the prism of a policy.
In this case, supporters of making benefits harder to sign up for and keep receiving argue that people will get back to work once free money is taken away from them. Critics instead argue that doing so actually undermines one’s mental health, resources, and general availability to tackle jobseeking; you can find an example here. Even though the jobseeker benefit and the like are a relatively small percentage of government spending, they occupy an outsized place in the imagination of people who have never interacted with them - particularly for right-wing voters - because they cut to the heart of perspectives on hard work, charity and community versus governmental support.
The reality is that some people, put under pressure, will thrive where they previously would have languished, and others will crumple and just end up worse off. I’m not saying anything magical here, it’s obvious and intuitive that any policy will produce a range of outcomes and we’re talking about the likely and predominant result. Nonetheless, it’s startling how much anecdotes and narratives take over data. That doesn’t mean that there’s a magical truth we can download into everybody’s brains - I’m inclined to believe cutting welfare is shooting yourself in the foot long-term, but others will look at the data and interpret it differently - but better to argue about interpretations of data than the alternative we currently see.
There absolutely is a place for personal testimonies in terms of bringing home the practical, everyday impacts on and outcomes for New Zealanders. That highlights the stakes at risk here and provides colour to numbers on a page we can coldly sort around. Yet the end result of the insistence of each side of the political aisle on peddling a narrative around a vision of the country we want to live in, rather than constructing a persuasive argument around which direction a policy will actually move the country in, means we go nowhere on welfare reform.
Labour raises it a decent bit, National cuts it back a bit, ACT and the Greens make noise. The end result is that a lot of people whose personal lives have nothing to do with benefits get to feel alternately satisfied or distraught for several years at a time about benefits: hard work is coming back! We’re all going to be able to be slam poets! At the same time, thousands of people try to get by without enough to live on.
All this takes place parallel to, by a factor of five our largest welfare cost: superannuation given out to everybody, regardless of means. Bob Jones? Graeme Hart? You name it, they’re taking it, just the same as Luxon was claiming an accommodation supplement of fifty two thousand dollars a year, and others before him. Maybe we should start there for cuts or conditions or means testing in order to afford other services! Something to think about.
[The first three paragraphs contain no spoilers for Blue Eye Samurai, but the next several after the big gap do. There’s a bolded warning down there too.]
We have got to talk about Blue Eye Samurai.
I reserved judgement on the show until I'd finished the first season. Blue Eye Samurai is dark. Specifically, the visuals are ultraviolent, and the plot keeps returning again and again to the often eccentric sexual exploitation of women. I could see Blue Eye Samurai putting me off my going beyond the pale late in its run. Certainly there are some uncomfortable moments, but I come not to bury the creators of Blue Eye Samurai - but to praise them.
The second half left me with the realisation that this show I started out on as a passing fancy is a 9 out of 10. I can count on both hands with fingers to spare how many TV shows I'd credit that highly. So long as you're not deterred by my warnings, if you like action, or the setting of Shogunate Japan, you gotta watch this one. I wouldn't want to spoil anything, so I'll simply sum up the pros and cons of the show.
Pros: the action is some of the best-looking and most exciting I've ever seen. The character work is excellent: everybody in the core cast is a unique addition in their own right, taking cliched premises in really creative and yet intuitive directions. The performances are great; the main protagonist has an enormous range, and my favourite is the main antagonist, who is truly villainous. The plotting, with lots of flashbacks and ambitious expansion of scope, is really smart and purposeful, and so suspenseful! Again and again, without relying on cheap plot twists, I didn't know where the show was going next. I have total faith in these showrunners, who clearly have a lot they want to explore in the fields of theme and character.
Cons: the art isn't the best I've seen - to make the logical comparison for cutting-edge non-superhero adult animation, Arcane looks incredible all the time and this does not. The show still looks good, and you can tell that an impressive level of effort went into this. For how deftly the show weaves the stories they want to tell, the last episode is a bit of a pileup flipping a coin on whether each beat will feel clunky - or commanding. I get what they’re going for with the themes around sex work and the show itself doesn’t feel exploitative at all, but I can’t help but feel squeamish at some of those scenes. The show is serious and that means it’s not very funny. Yet the pros far outweigh the cons. Have I sold you yet? I don’t mean to overhype, but the show starts small in scale and picks up from there, so you can really take this at your own pace. Now it’s time to talk about spoilers for those of you who have seen the season.
Spoilers from here on out.
Like the titular character’s craft, you can split Blue Eye Samurai cleanly into two halves. The first, taking place across the first five episodes, is more flashback-heavy, slowly unveiling the mystery of Mizu and setting up its pieces. Everything I said above is most present in these episodes, as we follow individuals or pairs making their way across Japan and confronting occasional obstacles. There’s a lot of love given for disabilities and other disadvantages, like womanhood in a society of men and property.
Mizu’s the ultimate underdog story (and a fresh face on stories of gender non-conformity like Mulan) yet she’s going down the wrong path, Master Eiji and Ringo are lovable supporting characters, Taigen is Zukoing it up - Akemi and Seki have the only weak storyline. Randall Park gives an absolutely cloying performance as Heiji Shindo. Then we finish Episode 5, with its sick framing device of a story-within-a-story, and move on to the final trio of episodes.
I had, like, eight moments in the last three episodes where I was yelling at the TV “daaaamn, that’s crazy”, or variations thereof.
The castle assault in Episode 6 is perhaps the single best half-hour of action I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t believe some of the absolute scenes, from the melee by the spike pit to the inspired choice of psychedelics presenting a new side of the excellent swordfights we’d already seen. All this just for that final choice to crash out? Cinema. That’s promptly followed up by a perfect understanding of character in the next episode. Mizu can’t put aside vengeance yet - and she’s grown enough to know that! She doesn’t get to have a cool sword! Akemi finally comes into her own as somebody with power, still entitled but also with a philanthropic spirit. And all of the pieces come together to converge on Edo.
Yes, not everything hits now that they have to wrap up one season and save the next. The inner circle just standing still against the villain was awfully strange, and the bad guy army (and Fowler's own threat) practically dissolves just because of a fire...a fire that Taigen somehow survives?? Happy to have him back by all means, I just thought they'd construct a proper escape for him. But that can't obscure how triumphantly dramatic this episode still is - the rows of (inexplicably quickly trained) musketmen gunning down archers gate by gate - Mizu's symbolic vengeance literally destroying a city and killing thousands - and that unbelievable shot of Akemi framed against the burning castle, coming into her own. The show ended on its weakest note but also left me more hyped than ever for the second season. They thoroughly deserve that shot.
One final thing. CAN WE TALK ABOUT ABIJAH FOWLER. They got Kenneth Branagh for this?!? He kills it in what is now my gold standard for the colonial villain - not merely an interchangeable metaphor, but a personality towering over all. He’s so purely evil, but we understand him and we want to see more of him, thanks both to the lilting, playful vocals and his swaggering, menacing animation. The big cat looms over the second half of the show, particularly with that incredible chapel scene, outlasting his ostensible allies and playing one last card with Mizu. I really expected her to kill him. Imagine my delight when I saw those evil, feline eyes staring out from the ship’s hold right at the very end. London. The scope has expanded beyond my animation. I come away wanting more. What a season of television.
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