u/Traditional_Fish_504

Last night I went to aomething and they were doing the typical spiel where they were outlining how the discussion rules were going to be egalitarian like realize your positionality etc. etc. And they do the ones where “if youve been talking a lot maybe shut the fuck up for a little” where fine, but then they get to this crazy one where apparently you should only use equivocating, subjective language when talking about anything. So you shouldn’t say “the text does this” but “I feel that the text does this.” I’m sorry this annoys me to no end, declaring meaning completely subjective is not woke, if anything it’s neoliberal. Texts and arts are objects in the world that are distinct from our ‘feelings’ and should be treated as such. Also be confident in what you’re saying, what you’re saying doesn’t just have validity because that’s what you feel but because it can say something truly profound or maybe not. Part of being a grown up is the vulnerability to be wrong. They also had this bizarre warning against jargon in a reading group on a dense theoretical text?? I swear the left is infantilizing at times.

Firstly, her entire character is a plot device for Jesse. Jesse’s character is mostly concerned with finding acceptance and grace from his parents, his brother, Walt, and Jane fits into this lineage. Her character, who also struggles with acceptance, is mostly a fantasy of someone finally recognizing the goodness in Jesse that the audience has been seeing in glimpses. Through her, we see Jesse finally transforming into a good person. At the end of season 2, we see how Jesse’s addiction and involvement in the drug trade will ultimately collapse everything good through Jane.

Anyways, I see people treat jane as this really complex and well thought out figure when I just don’t see it. I think a great character is one that first of all has a degree of autonomy. Gus, Saul, Mike, Tuco, Hector, etc. for instance can be looked at distinct from all the other cast members in compelling ways, when Jane really has nothing going for her outside of Jesse outside of being your standard former addict with a caring father. Part of this is that I think a lot of the women characters in the show are for the most part designed to be plot devices for men rather than really interesting in themselves. I think the love for jane comes from identifying with Jesse’s fantasy and her looking attractive rather than a full character.

Was talking to the husband of a friend that was parroting the annoying “well marx would work if everyone wasn’t an individual, communism is when everything is the same.” This has always been such a strange take.

First of all, in the gotha program marx advocates having a system of labor vouchers where you get paid based off how much you work, and then once everything is developed enough people slowly stop working. There’s no part of marx that says communism is when you do all the work but get nothing. There is a social system that does that, a system where the people that actually generate value get barely any of the end product.

Secondly, there’s this weird presupposition from capitalists that expressing individuality requires a relatively large wealth disparity. Like most of the ‘the people’s’ demands are not to become capitalists necessarily but just to get basic security. Like getting an 8 hour work day with a lot of vacation days and job security will allow people to express their individual interests far more than stuffing people to the brim with debt that is impossible to work off so they can buy some shiny trendy commodities.

Linked to the second is capitalism’s ever shifting force to enshittification/ensloppification. Since the world is purely governed by logics of efficiency, everything slowly becomes the same, reducing the possibility for genuinely expressing individuality.

Anyways, always weird that you’ll meet the partners of the most radical academics and they will have these kinds of takes. Like these people will denounce their colleagues for not supporting an immediate revolution but with their partner as long as they say some empty shit like “genocide is wrong” it’s okay.