reading the verison of tma season 5 me and gabby @lesbianaglaya conjured in the dms tonight really makes me feel 😭🔨
alright since people asked and we couldn’t find a way to make a bulleted list here is an “abridged” verison of our tma season 5
jon in the finale aspirational moodboard <3
The formula [I WOULD PREFER NOT TO] is devastating, because it eliminates the preferable just as mercilessly as any nonpreferred. It not only abolishes the term it refers to, and that it rejects, but also abolishes the other term it seemed to preserve, and that becomes impossible. […] I would prefer nothing rather than something: not a will to nothingness, but the growth of a nothingness of the will. Bartleby has won the right to survive, that is, to remain immobile and upright before a blind wall.
yeah i don’t really know how i feel about the tapes having been part of the web’s plan all along/annabelle explaining their presence because it really was like. jon IS the narrative. he eats people just like the narrative eats people; he is a catalogue of terror just like the narrative is a catalogue of terror; he is entertained by fear and suffering just as the narrative is entertained and entertains others through fear and suffering. the whole season 5 thing of emphasizing the dichotomy between subject and object/torturer and torture victim could also be framed as the distinction between storyteller and story, between recorder and material for recordings. and we see that articulated in earlier seeasons, but i wish we could have seen jon and the others grapple with that AT ALL in the lead-up to the finale… to think about what it might mean to choose to end that violent, parasitic cycle somehow or to work to erase the distinctions between themselves as shapers of the narrative and others as its victims… AND on a more meta level for the narrative to make some kind of argument about what it means for us as an audience to be listeners and voyeurs in a similar sense and to be feeding on the fear that feeds the protagonists.. anyway
like. tape as thread is good. story as web IS good. getting tangled up in your own history and memories until you feel like you can’t move, continuing to walk along the path of a story you’re writing with your life while refusing to see the bigger picture because you know you won’t like the shape of it, struggling to decide whether the bind you’ve found yourself in was your doing or the work of someone else pulling the strings behind the scenes, and whether it even matters at all… but all that’s good about that is IN the ambiguity and uncertainty and the fact that we can never know for sure how much of our lives are up to us so. i think a lot of its thematic/symbolic power is lost by having it all turn out to be definitively part of someone else’s grand plan from day one. who’s to say
yeah i don’t really know how i feel about the tapes having been part of the web’s plan all along/annabelle explaining their presence because it really was like. jon IS the narrative. he eats people just like the narrative eats people; he is a catalogue of terror just like the narrative is a catalogue of terror; he is entertained by fear and suffering just as the narrative is entertained and entertains others through fear and suffering. the whole season 5 thing of emphasizing the dichotomy between subject and object/torturer and torture victim could also be framed as the distinction between storyteller and story, between recorder and material for recordings. and we see that articulated in earlier seeasons, but i wish we could have seen jon and the others grapple with that AT ALL in the lead-up to the finale… to think about what it might mean to choose to end that violent, parasitic cycle somehow or to work to erase the distinctions between themselves as shapers of the narrative and others as its victims… AND on a more meta level for the narrative to make some kind of argument about what it means for us as an audience to be listeners and voyeurs in a similar sense and to be feeding on the fear that feeds the protagonists.. anyway
knowledge is made for cutting; the sharp edges of labels and filing cabinets, the neat corners of categories and definitions, the interviews and exams and studies which chew you up and spit you back out as something predictable, digestible, processed and tamed. something with precedent which can be fitted into the orderly halls of history; something which can be filed away forever or called up at will. knowledge is not a feeling thing, but it is still capable of inflicting pain; it severs and shapes, it wounds and whittles and renders living breathing things immobile, trapping them in cages made not of metal but of meaning. when something about you is known, you are robbed of all the things you could have been; the freedom of possibility is exchanged for the claustrophobia of certainty. you are nothing so much as a specimen under a magnifying glass, a bug in a display case; pinned in place, clearly labeled, weighed down by heavy gazes and heavier glass.
anyway will probably never stop thinking about how both the magnus archives and the terror make explicit the fact that in order to go on living in the context of empire, you must constantly sacrifice and consume others.. whether you are embedded in the machine of the archive or of the navy, your survival means someone else’s suffering. for the surviving members of the terror and erebus crews to go on living, they must eat their sick; for jon to go on living, he must eat the statement makers - not literally, but rather in the sense that he is consuming their life stories and rendering them dead objects, no longer living and breathing but inert and available to be studied and dissected. more broadly, the respective projects of imperial exploration and imperial scholarship/knowledge-production are built on mass graves, both of the indigenous peoples whose lands and histories they violate and destroy as well as of the sailors and workers whose labor powered the continued forward progression of each project. the terror underlines this symmetry by conflating the consumption of imperial knowledge with imperial materiality. it doesn’t matter whether the consumption is literal or metaphorical; the effects it produces, both on consumer and consumed, are quite real, and the terror in particular argues that it is this dynamic of constant consumption that characterizes the english imperial project.
additionally, because tma and the terror are both horror stories, continued sacrifice is required not only so that individual characters can survive, but also so that the narrative can continue to provide entertainment to the audience. the story needs deaths to keep the plot moving; violence and brutality to shock the audience and to produce an emotional response. the impact of one death only affects spectators for so long before the spectacle has worn off and a fresh horror is needed to keep their interest. thus, for every episode or chapter that a horror story continues, additional violence is required.
stories that foreground the violence at the heart of both narrative and political projects and aren’t afraid to explore the fact that survival within empire will always come at a cost… yeah
can’t stop thinking about the fact that this time when martin gets trapped in the lonely, he’s not alone because he’s surrounded by tape recorders… all through season 4 martin talk to the tapes not as if there was someone on the other end, but rather as if the tapes themselves were listening to him, as if they were with him in his isolation; and now when he is trapped in the house of loneliness he sees the tapes as a friend, a way to remember what he has forgotten, a familiar face in the darkness.. tape as a method of knowledge collection that feels like it’s listening when it’s not, that calls itself memory as it takes the knowledge out of you, as something that wears the face of a friend while it feeds on your fear.. to be recorded is not to be witnessed in any real way, but to be led into the trap of self-disclosure which actually makes you more vulnerable, not less. i keep coming back to this:
but ALSO. martin throughout season 4 using knowledge in ways it maybe didn’t intend to be used; letting the tapes record him but using those recordings to send jon helpful statements and hints, piling the coffin with tapes to help him find his way back to the surface… knowledge is made for cutting, but maybe we don’t have to use things in the ways they were intended to be used.
can’t stop thinking about the fact that this time when martin gets trapped in the lonely, he’s not alone because he’s surrounded by tape recorders… all through season 4 martin talks to the tapes not as if there was someone on the other end, but rather as if the tapes themselves were listening to him, as if they were with him in his isolation; and now when he is trapped in the house of loneliness he sees the tapes as a friend, a way to remember what he has forgotten, a familiar face in the darkness.. tape as a method of knowledge collection that feels like it’s listening when it’s not, that calls itself memory as it takes the knowledge out of you, as something that wears the face of a friend while it feeds on your fear.. to be recorded is not to be witnessed in any real way, but to be led into the trap of self-disclosure which actually makes you more vulnerable, not less. i keep coming back to this:
tbh the statements in s5 feel like obligations to the format, not drivers of the plot
yeah so far i totally agree. which sucks because in s1-4 they did such a good job of keeping the statements relevant and making them feel like the heart of the show even when a lot of plot development was happening outside of them. something i LOVE about tma is how thorough it is in addressing the questions of why is this being recorded, why does it sound scripted, how do we have access to this information, what are the consequences of our collecting and absorbing it.. and the mechanics of statement taking were a huge part of that. they added something to the story, even if they weren’t always heavy on plot-relevant information; they built out the world and gave it stakes even in the moments when the archive wasn’t being attacked by monsters.
but the s5 statements don’t seem to be adding much to the narrative; i don’t feel like they’re helping me visualize the world, because it’s more a collection of images and sometimes just of words than a description of anything, and i don’t feel like they’re telling me much about jon’s headspace or powers because he seems to get sort of possessed whenever he records one. they’re not a vehicle for violence or for the development of relationships, because jon doesn’t seem to be extracting them from anyone, and he’s not talking to anyone about them; they seem to come to him out of the ether and he records them all alone. i’m not caught up yet so i don’t want to pass final judgement but. yeah at this point it’s sort of unclear why the statements are still around in season 5 when everything else about the world and the story has changed so drastically. i like the idea that jon as he was growing in power needed to consume knowledge but now he’s so full of horrifying information that he actually has to expel it, sometimes at cost to those around him; but i don’t think it’s being executed well at all, and it definitely feels more like the writers are going through the motions than making a deliberate and effective narrative choice.
it’s like. i feel like i get what they were trying to do with the season 4 finale and it was a genuinely cool twist to have the ritual have actually been happening the whole time and then have season 5 be in this new nightmare world … like i AM interested in how and why people choose to keep living when the absolute worst has happened and i think that was a good direction for them to go thematically and stakes-wise but imo they really missed the mark on writing horror that is surrealist or that takes place in a world where the normal rules no longer apply. like it CAN be done [blows a kiss to eskew and s2 of archive 81] but the new statements are so nonsensical and stream-of-consciousness as to be almost unlistenable and if i wanted to think about a series of gross images that have no relation to each other rather than following a story where awful events have significance and meaning i would just like. go to google images and type in knee replacement gone wrong instead
season five is so funny martin is like hey jon? and jon is like MAHTIN MY HANDS ARE RED WITH BLOOD AND THE RIVERS AND LAKES ARE BLOOD ALSO. THE SKY IS WEEPING AND THE TREES ARE SCREAMING; NOTHING IS WHAT IT APPEARS TO BE EXCEPT FOR THE BULLETS WHICH ARE BULLETS AND MY REFLECTION WHICH IS SWALLOWING THE WORLD WHOLE and martin’s like. ok lady macbeth i just wanted to know if we were there yet
update i thought seriously about macbeth and tma for more than five seconds everyone please look away
can someone come pick me up jon just did a like twelve minute long slam poem about a carousel and is now describing the miserable life of a man-worm named sam
can someone come pick me up jon just did a like twelve minute long slam poem about a carousel and is now describing the miserable life of a man-worm named sam
season five is so funny martin is like hey jon? and jon is like MAHTIN MY HANDS ARE RED WITH BLOOD AND THE RIVERS AND LAKES ARE BLOOD ALSO. THE SKY IS WEEPING AND THE TREES ARE SCREAMING; NOTHING IS WHAT IT APPEARS TO BE EXCEPT FOR THE BULLETS WHICH ARE BULLETS AND MY REFLECTION WHICH IS SWALLOWING THE WORLD WHOLE and martin’s like. ok lady macbeth i just wanted to know if we were there yet
HE’S EATING PEOPLE!!! literally for a statement to become part of the narrative that jon is constructing, the statement-maker regurgitate it and relinquish control over it, must go from person with agency living in the world to inert statement preserved in the archive… the narrative requires constant sacrifice in order to proceed, the plot is powered by the routine violence of extracting statements… when you take someone’s story for your own you do them a great harm…. archive as site of preservation only after thorough digestion, archive as tomb….
literally being dragged out of your life into your statement… from person moving on from trauma to character in a story that you can’t stop reliving…
update may never stop thinking about the violence and consumption inherent in qualitative research… the fact that you have to extract something from a subject in order to create an artifact or record, that you have to erase, leave out, edit down in order to create a coherent historical narrative… foucault voice knowledge is not made for understanding, it is made for cutting… and the making of knowledge requires cutting as well… the archivist’s whole thing is that they’re supposedly capable of extracting a ‘complete statement’ or whatever but a statement as an object can never be complete because a statement IS an object and not an experience… qualitative research, no matter how detailed or supernaturally augmented, requires the inherently violent reduction of complex lived experience into data via consumption by a voyeur, someone who did not live through the experience but merely appropriates it afterwards for their own gain…
the irreducible TENSION between the archivist and the people whose lives he is feeding on in order to build his archive… delicious <3
it’s about finally giving in to the things you’ve been struggling to break free of for so long that when you embrace them it feels like failure but also like coming home
something i like a lot about jon’s relationship with the beholding is that we never get a concrete moment of claiming/possession. we know that jon has always been a curious person, has always sought out knowledge; indeed, his first contact with a leitner came about as a result of his voracious reading habits as a child… while he becomes more focused on finding answers, more willing to pursue knowledge at any cost, more dependent on the statements over the course of the podcast, we never see an instant - if there even was one - where he goes from being uninterested, uninvolved, to suddenly needing to know. there’s no way to tell how much of jon is jon and how much is the archivist, how much his selection by the beholding fit naturally into the course of his life as it was and how much he has changed because of the powers and duties associated with his role.. whether the eye chose him or whether they chose each other…
IT STAYED BECAUSE I WANTED IT….
gonna start kicking and screaming… it literally doesn’t matter whether this is true or not because it fits with the story martin is telling himself about his life, the one that justifies his choice to align with the lonely… loneliness as one of the strongest self-fulfilling prophecies.. doesn’t even need to tell you any lies; just waits for you to believe the lies you tell yourself…
ok is this or is this not just a description of being a character in a story and knowing you’re a character in a story!!! a hand that can conceive of itself… being moved by some unseen mind without knowing the reasoning behind your actions….
ok i know they’re talking about a literal casket but. BOOK AS TOMB
i still can’t believe gerry literally died and then got trapped in a book and so he just had to continue existing as a page in a volume, no longer alive but not fully dead… herman melville voice pages and chapters as stoneless graves…. death can’t reach you in a book but also a book is no place for human life; life cannot be fully captured in sentences and so sentences cannot support continued life… this is just an extreme example of what happens to statement givers in a more figurative way like. when your statement is taken you are reduced to a record of what happened to you, preserving your story at the cost of your humanity
this tma ep as well like. to exist in any form or structure other than the body is to exist in a place that is inhospitable to human life, to be trapped within a container that doesn’t fit right… whether it’s the rigid binary of computer code or the orderly sentences that make up a book, you are forced to try and live using tools that aren’t meant for living…. “the angles cut me when i try to think”….. to be a character in a story or a play or an image on a screen or a voice on a tape is a kind of living death; your likeness is preserved forever but your life is gone for good…
ok i know they’re talking about a literal casket but. BOOK AS TOMB
i still can’t believe gerry literally died and then got trapped in a book and so he just had to continue existing as a page in a volume, no longer alive but not fully dead… herman melville voice pages and chapters as stoneless graves…. death can’t reach you in a book but also a book is no place for human life; life cannot be fully captured in sentences and so sentences cannot support continued humanity… this is just an extreme example of what happens to statement givers in a more figurative way like. when your statement is taken you are reduced to a record of what happened to you, preserving your story at the cost of your humanity
