![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Nov. 4th, 2015 12:31 amA lot of double meanings, metaphors in Walking Dead 6.4. There's been tons all over for a while now, of course.
Eastman (man of Eastern wisdom, man of dawn? I assume nothing to do with Kodak, or Ninja Turtles but who knows - he does have that "save the terrapins" shirt). Ahem, Eastman.
Points made:
The truly evil man, Eastman, and the goat Tabitha are all buried together, and identified in the same way, because all life is precious.
Eastman says 824 out of the 825 violent criminals were "damaged" in some way; the Wolf has an injury he assumes will kill him.
"These actions are pointless" is said by the man who uses a pointed weapon (and in fsct makes them compulsively) while the one who takes the points off knows peace.
Feral Morgan's and the Wolf's desire to "clear" is that of people who do not see clearly. All F. Morgan sees is the moment of his son's death, a son who I guess is who he's still talking to, and this fuzzes the camera.
The logo with Rick sitting in the W of "TWD" may be intended to make us think of the "W" on the Wolves' heads. Maybe Morgan's "M" is supposed to flip this, though I don't remember whether the initial has been highlighted. What was that stuff he carved in trees last season? Or was that just reading what others carved?
"Kill no one" doesn't work but neither does "kill everyone."
The effort out into a Sanctuary sign that we haven't seen yet (I assume?) suggests the details matter. Terminus was in fact a sanctuary, but only for the group that lived there. They had originally given sanctuary to others, but had nearly died when some of those others had proved untrustworthy. They decided to trust no one outside their group from then on, which led to their policy of tricking and eating all outsiders - apparently the policy of their one-time captors. "Terminus" because it's a rail terminal, because it's offered as the safe end of their dangerous journey for weary travelers, because it is their real end as all who arrive are killed. But terminus in Latin means also a line of division, I believe - hence terms of office etc. They drew a line around who they trusted and valued and refused to ever value or trust anyone outside that line. Their slogan - community for all etc. - is meant as a lie, but if Eastman is correct it is the true doctrine. Their insistence that one must go there to receive it, into the blotch (point?) in the center of the map, localizes "all" to a single place of welcome. Morgan, post- change, extends the true promise of community everywhere he walks.
Eastman reverses his decision to kill the Dallas guy in his treatment of Morgan, which involves the same cell etc. He gives him plenty of food, the cell door is unlocked snd the key has been thrown in the river - a point for point reversal.
Dallas had tried to kill him, and then had escaped in order to murder his family and then deliberstely go back into prison, only because he sensed that Eastman would never let him oout of prison. Dallas is the one person he considers evil, even among a group a large number of which would be disgnosed as sociopathic. He's been very nice etc., seems a model rehabilitant, has tried to have flowers planted in prison (flowers in the foreground symbolize Morgan's recovery, the recovery of "here"). And realizes that he still will not be trusted, and only then snaps, and in a way that seems designed to prove to the one that assumes he can never be good that he is as bad as possible. But that also makes Eastman do something to him worse than any of his own killings, at least considered individually. Death by 47 days of starvation is an unimaginable amount of suffering - though wandering around for weeks with a slice in your side and no medicine might not be far off. Dallas says Morgan is capable of doing good as well as bad - points out he's saved lives as well as murdered - which is true of himself as well, but may be true too of Dallas. Eastman had drawn a sympathy line he later learned to undraw. Even though he condemned only one person out of all those he ever assessed he still condemned, and that lost him everything - until he stopped doing it.
The single can of food sans can-opener and the single bullet for an absent gun seemed meaningful. Did it signify how little one gained by violence, or how the gains of helping people were small but real, or...? It wasn't clear if the woman was thanking him for saving them from walkers or for not murdering them. His silent nod of assent was meaningful, too - he made the same gesture when Eastman thanked him for looking out for Tabitha, which he similarly only half deserved (assuming the woman's thanks was for killing the walker).
Eastman does have a gun, but it's locked in a box - the one thing he does lock. It's for use on himself, bit eoiod he have approved of other uses? He doesn't tell Morgan he won't kill him, after all, he just keeps not killing him. Peace is being argued for, but perhaps not quite pacifism? Eastman, unlike Morgan, had never "made the journey" - from the looks of things had not seen another human being since Dallas' death. Aikido does translate to "not killing," I think he says, but the basic math problem of killing one to save two doesn't get addressed. Maybe the series doesn't give a shit about it, and therefore about pacifism per se? So lng as the box is the think you lock - need to override in very soecial circumstances - then maybe you're good.
The absurdity of burning walkers (total removal) vs the absurdity of burying them symbolizes the "kill/clear them all" and "all life is precious" mindsets. Even zombies are a part of the earth, since it is the source of all life and they're in some fashion living.
Morgan does his fateful act of clearing in A clearing.
Eastman is good at redirecting. He tosses the little book explaining his views in with Morgan but realizes that it is letting him be free to choose (stay, go, try to kill) that will impress him - and the costly signal of his yet again sparing his life, when attacked. Trusting him to choose for himself - killing and imprisonment being the ultimate expressions of mistrust in another's choicemaking. Morgan does not redirect the Wolf well, since he just tells him his story ratyer than giving him "everything" (which wiuld include trust) - though there is some real yesrning in the Wolf's voice at first. I don't think he actually says so, but his words amount to Morgan's earlier "kill me," or failing that to a demand to stay imprisoned, like Morgan's choice of staying in the cell for his sins.
Morgan lets a Wolf go and his oldest friend is almost killed by that Wolf (may still end up killed by him, since Rick is crying for help at the end after his desperate shooting of the Wolves to save his own life brings the vagrant half of the zombie horde down on him, and on the town he's been trying to save). He refuses to use guns, but the spared Wolf picks one up, so bu extension Morgan has ending up killing people with a gun. Rick's own mistake, which may have killed his own daughter, is from the opposite end of the spectrum, but less clearly than Morgan's own earlier mistake of killing and not "clearing" the apologetic son (since the couple he kills resemble what was left of his own family when Rick met them). Morgan later spares two, karmically balancing the two he'd killed - will the bullet save him, then? The food? But anyway, Morgan's mistake doesn't get Eastman killed (who steps in between himself and the death he'd esrned and oerhaps sought), his inability to accept having been the person who would have done such a thing is what gets Eastman killed. Eastman accepts what he did, symbolized by the saying of the full name - and putting it on the grave marker, and urges Morgan to accept who he had been. Drawing a symoathy line against our own past self doesn't fly either. Even the life of our worst self is precious.
Redirect vs. clear or confine (and since confining, walling, always seems to fail on this show, that's just a deferred clearing). Redirect - guide, teach. Did Nicholas think there was only room for one? And by choosing Glenn over himself did he, too, unfairly divide? And did he do this because of Glenn's repeated hesitation when endorsing him? The various people who make bad decisions and then die in the first three episodes of the season - Rick always predicts they will. Is it that they hear, or at least sense, these judgments? Or just that he isn't teaching, but instead letting them run off misguided?
Episode title: "Here is not here," to Morgan, had meant that since any world worth the name was now gone place itself no longer existed - the set was empty, which for him nullified the set. Eastman reverses the meaning, which fits the reversibility of the phrase: if here is not-here then not-here is here. Morgan had begged "not here" because Eastman had brought the practice (and practicing) of peace to the scene of Morgan's worst crime, and he felt he needed to cordon off that area and the past self inhabiting it, as worthy of death because exemplifying a bad form of life. Having to kill those who do kill is different from getting to kill those who have killed, pace Mississippi. We erase the humanity of our foes somthat we can kill them when we have to, bit doing so makes it harder for us to see when we no longer have to - that kind of thing. But Eastman permits no locked doors (even his house seems to have holes in it - the goat pen, with its also open door, seems built right into the wall). Here is not here not only because the way Morgan thinks the world is is incorrect (this plac is a different place from the horrible one you take it to be), but also because without boundaries there is no "here" to compare with "there." They are continuous, so neither concept is valid except as a heuristic (hence the Sanctuary map, where the Terminal blotch is drawn on - remove that defacing and the text of the sign applies to, like, everywhere). To make a here is to make a there, so don't. Decide any life doesn't deserve continuation or freedom in principle and you've made yourself a murderer or kidnapper in principle.
Eastman takes the child's idea of home off of the wall of his real home. And when his assailant cracks that most prized possession he (just) manages to forgive it. The crack doesn't quite hit the house, so the message of the chunk remains intact. Have this idea and nothing can be taken from you (defusing "I will take everything you have"). The idea of home/sanctuary, unlike a house, cannot be divided - if you don't let it by deciding someone else doesn't belong there.
But at the end Morgan has someone who talks a lot like he at first did to Eastman, who came into his home (his camo, his town) to take everything from him, life included, who believes everything needs to die. And he doesn't throw away the key (c.f. Glenn's and Maggie's decision to let Nicholas ("Thank you") be free. Eastman trusted him, then proved he would continue to keep trusting him, and that's what won Morgan over gradually (even if at first he retreated into the literal cell and the figurative one of his son's death). He locks the door, and it's not clear that the Wolf even has any food in there, in case Morgan dies in the oncoming crisis.
Rick's adding "No" at the beginning of the Sanctuary sign in 5.1 is the beginning of his slide. He means there is no sanctuary anywhere, not just that Terminus wasn't one - it ended his ability to trust. Morgan, who we can assume has failed the Wolf, may be able to reverse this. The episode ends with Rick's cry for help.
Eastman (man of Eastern wisdom, man of dawn? I assume nothing to do with Kodak, or Ninja Turtles but who knows - he does have that "save the terrapins" shirt). Ahem, Eastman.
Points made:
The truly evil man, Eastman, and the goat Tabitha are all buried together, and identified in the same way, because all life is precious.
Eastman says 824 out of the 825 violent criminals were "damaged" in some way; the Wolf has an injury he assumes will kill him.
"These actions are pointless" is said by the man who uses a pointed weapon (and in fsct makes them compulsively) while the one who takes the points off knows peace.
Feral Morgan's and the Wolf's desire to "clear" is that of people who do not see clearly. All F. Morgan sees is the moment of his son's death, a son who I guess is who he's still talking to, and this fuzzes the camera.
The logo with Rick sitting in the W of "TWD" may be intended to make us think of the "W" on the Wolves' heads. Maybe Morgan's "M" is supposed to flip this, though I don't remember whether the initial has been highlighted. What was that stuff he carved in trees last season? Or was that just reading what others carved?
"Kill no one" doesn't work but neither does "kill everyone."
The effort out into a Sanctuary sign that we haven't seen yet (I assume?) suggests the details matter. Terminus was in fact a sanctuary, but only for the group that lived there. They had originally given sanctuary to others, but had nearly died when some of those others had proved untrustworthy. They decided to trust no one outside their group from then on, which led to their policy of tricking and eating all outsiders - apparently the policy of their one-time captors. "Terminus" because it's a rail terminal, because it's offered as the safe end of their dangerous journey for weary travelers, because it is their real end as all who arrive are killed. But terminus in Latin means also a line of division, I believe - hence terms of office etc. They drew a line around who they trusted and valued and refused to ever value or trust anyone outside that line. Their slogan - community for all etc. - is meant as a lie, but if Eastman is correct it is the true doctrine. Their insistence that one must go there to receive it, into the blotch (point?) in the center of the map, localizes "all" to a single place of welcome. Morgan, post- change, extends the true promise of community everywhere he walks.
Eastman reverses his decision to kill the Dallas guy in his treatment of Morgan, which involves the same cell etc. He gives him plenty of food, the cell door is unlocked snd the key has been thrown in the river - a point for point reversal.
Dallas had tried to kill him, and then had escaped in order to murder his family and then deliberstely go back into prison, only because he sensed that Eastman would never let him oout of prison. Dallas is the one person he considers evil, even among a group a large number of which would be disgnosed as sociopathic. He's been very nice etc., seems a model rehabilitant, has tried to have flowers planted in prison (flowers in the foreground symbolize Morgan's recovery, the recovery of "here"). And realizes that he still will not be trusted, and only then snaps, and in a way that seems designed to prove to the one that assumes he can never be good that he is as bad as possible. But that also makes Eastman do something to him worse than any of his own killings, at least considered individually. Death by 47 days of starvation is an unimaginable amount of suffering - though wandering around for weeks with a slice in your side and no medicine might not be far off. Dallas says Morgan is capable of doing good as well as bad - points out he's saved lives as well as murdered - which is true of himself as well, but may be true too of Dallas. Eastman had drawn a sympathy line he later learned to undraw. Even though he condemned only one person out of all those he ever assessed he still condemned, and that lost him everything - until he stopped doing it.
The single can of food sans can-opener and the single bullet for an absent gun seemed meaningful. Did it signify how little one gained by violence, or how the gains of helping people were small but real, or...? It wasn't clear if the woman was thanking him for saving them from walkers or for not murdering them. His silent nod of assent was meaningful, too - he made the same gesture when Eastman thanked him for looking out for Tabitha, which he similarly only half deserved (assuming the woman's thanks was for killing the walker).
Eastman does have a gun, but it's locked in a box - the one thing he does lock. It's for use on himself, bit eoiod he have approved of other uses? He doesn't tell Morgan he won't kill him, after all, he just keeps not killing him. Peace is being argued for, but perhaps not quite pacifism? Eastman, unlike Morgan, had never "made the journey" - from the looks of things had not seen another human being since Dallas' death. Aikido does translate to "not killing," I think he says, but the basic math problem of killing one to save two doesn't get addressed. Maybe the series doesn't give a shit about it, and therefore about pacifism per se? So lng as the box is the think you lock - need to override in very soecial circumstances - then maybe you're good.
The absurdity of burning walkers (total removal) vs the absurdity of burying them symbolizes the "kill/clear them all" and "all life is precious" mindsets. Even zombies are a part of the earth, since it is the source of all life and they're in some fashion living.
Morgan does his fateful act of clearing in A clearing.
Eastman is good at redirecting. He tosses the little book explaining his views in with Morgan but realizes that it is letting him be free to choose (stay, go, try to kill) that will impress him - and the costly signal of his yet again sparing his life, when attacked. Trusting him to choose for himself - killing and imprisonment being the ultimate expressions of mistrust in another's choicemaking. Morgan does not redirect the Wolf well, since he just tells him his story ratyer than giving him "everything" (which wiuld include trust) - though there is some real yesrning in the Wolf's voice at first. I don't think he actually says so, but his words amount to Morgan's earlier "kill me," or failing that to a demand to stay imprisoned, like Morgan's choice of staying in the cell for his sins.
Morgan lets a Wolf go and his oldest friend is almost killed by that Wolf (may still end up killed by him, since Rick is crying for help at the end after his desperate shooting of the Wolves to save his own life brings the vagrant half of the zombie horde down on him, and on the town he's been trying to save). He refuses to use guns, but the spared Wolf picks one up, so bu extension Morgan has ending up killing people with a gun. Rick's own mistake, which may have killed his own daughter, is from the opposite end of the spectrum, but less clearly than Morgan's own earlier mistake of killing and not "clearing" the apologetic son (since the couple he kills resemble what was left of his own family when Rick met them). Morgan later spares two, karmically balancing the two he'd killed - will the bullet save him, then? The food? But anyway, Morgan's mistake doesn't get Eastman killed (who steps in between himself and the death he'd esrned and oerhaps sought), his inability to accept having been the person who would have done such a thing is what gets Eastman killed. Eastman accepts what he did, symbolized by the saying of the full name - and putting it on the grave marker, and urges Morgan to accept who he had been. Drawing a symoathy line against our own past self doesn't fly either. Even the life of our worst self is precious.
Redirect vs. clear or confine (and since confining, walling, always seems to fail on this show, that's just a deferred clearing). Redirect - guide, teach. Did Nicholas think there was only room for one? And by choosing Glenn over himself did he, too, unfairly divide? And did he do this because of Glenn's repeated hesitation when endorsing him? The various people who make bad decisions and then die in the first three episodes of the season - Rick always predicts they will. Is it that they hear, or at least sense, these judgments? Or just that he isn't teaching, but instead letting them run off misguided?
Episode title: "Here is not here," to Morgan, had meant that since any world worth the name was now gone place itself no longer existed - the set was empty, which for him nullified the set. Eastman reverses the meaning, which fits the reversibility of the phrase: if here is not-here then not-here is here. Morgan had begged "not here" because Eastman had brought the practice (and practicing) of peace to the scene of Morgan's worst crime, and he felt he needed to cordon off that area and the past self inhabiting it, as worthy of death because exemplifying a bad form of life. Having to kill those who do kill is different from getting to kill those who have killed, pace Mississippi. We erase the humanity of our foes somthat we can kill them when we have to, bit doing so makes it harder for us to see when we no longer have to - that kind of thing. But Eastman permits no locked doors (even his house seems to have holes in it - the goat pen, with its also open door, seems built right into the wall). Here is not here not only because the way Morgan thinks the world is is incorrect (this plac is a different place from the horrible one you take it to be), but also because without boundaries there is no "here" to compare with "there." They are continuous, so neither concept is valid except as a heuristic (hence the Sanctuary map, where the Terminal blotch is drawn on - remove that defacing and the text of the sign applies to, like, everywhere). To make a here is to make a there, so don't. Decide any life doesn't deserve continuation or freedom in principle and you've made yourself a murderer or kidnapper in principle.
Eastman takes the child's idea of home off of the wall of his real home. And when his assailant cracks that most prized possession he (just) manages to forgive it. The crack doesn't quite hit the house, so the message of the chunk remains intact. Have this idea and nothing can be taken from you (defusing "I will take everything you have"). The idea of home/sanctuary, unlike a house, cannot be divided - if you don't let it by deciding someone else doesn't belong there.
But at the end Morgan has someone who talks a lot like he at first did to Eastman, who came into his home (his camo, his town) to take everything from him, life included, who believes everything needs to die. And he doesn't throw away the key (c.f. Glenn's and Maggie's decision to let Nicholas ("Thank you") be free. Eastman trusted him, then proved he would continue to keep trusting him, and that's what won Morgan over gradually (even if at first he retreated into the literal cell and the figurative one of his son's death). He locks the door, and it's not clear that the Wolf even has any food in there, in case Morgan dies in the oncoming crisis.
Rick's adding "No" at the beginning of the Sanctuary sign in 5.1 is the beginning of his slide. He means there is no sanctuary anywhere, not just that Terminus wasn't one - it ended his ability to trust. Morgan, who we can assume has failed the Wolf, may be able to reverse this. The episode ends with Rick's cry for help.
