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Feb. 13th, 2017 01:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionYoung Pope 1.6
People who didn't assume he was out to destroy the Church should be catching on around now? Writers seem to think so - the symbolism is light in this one (that I noticed, anyway), which just made the dropping of the baby and the car almost hitting Gutierrez stick out more, which in turn made their relationship to one another clear. Shutting everyone out won't be for their own good if it kills or maddens them. And yet the baby and the man-child are both okay, and the parents now know to not hand their baby to a pope, the man-child to watch for cars.
The Cardinal brother's sermon makes that Richard III-looking "hero" sound kind of fucked up, probably connecting to his view of his saintly Pope brother. Weak liberalism is more human than terroristic liberalism - we may need to be saved from our saviors, afterwards. But in the meantime it's only the (like clockwork) fucking up of conservatives that gives us our openings, so assuming the persona of one and then fucking up world record-breakingly offers the chance to do more than weakly comfort those suffering under the status quo. So Scott (that's his name, I think) is basically like the PM, and maybe is being unknowingly groomed as Pius' successor - the person who can really give the dream speech from 1.1, but only because Lenny has made everyone hate everything he has taken pains to represent. That the Richard III guy sounds like he'll get people killed by charging them straight at fascists is a matter of potential concern, though: what if some people really do listen to Lenny? Toughing it out, like the ones in Alaska. Cars and floors can kill.
What was the young Sister Mary basketball sequence for? Showing us that strength and beauty are wasted in/by religion and its walling up of all those who are hurt or abandoned? Or has she somehow inspired Lenny's plan?
He's being genuinely silly about his beauty and Christ complex. Setting those up as his way out, I guess? Declaring himself to be Christ while displaying more terrestrial signs of narcissism would cause a genuine crisis, as the Church would have to either throw out the crazy person (I assume without precedent or existing mechanism) or immediately crack. Unless he wants to be assassinated? That's pretty much martyrdom, so would be immensely counterproductive, exposing his plan as hubris. I imagine we, the filmmakers and everyone else can agree that this plan would be too risky in real life - you'd go mad or bad with the power, you'd blab and be outed by someone, you'd accidentally make conservativism popular again, you'd be successfully blackmailed or killed or drugged. Or, likeliest of all, people would just learn to ignore your provocations and wait out the clock till your replacement. But that doesn't mean the story is being presented as a blueprint, or that its world will need to follow the rules of ours. Might just mean it can keep us in suspense by threatening that it will.
People who didn't assume he was out to destroy the Church should be catching on around now? Writers seem to think so - the symbolism is light in this one (that I noticed, anyway), which just made the dropping of the baby and the car almost hitting Gutierrez stick out more, which in turn made their relationship to one another clear. Shutting everyone out won't be for their own good if it kills or maddens them. And yet the baby and the man-child are both okay, and the parents now know to not hand their baby to a pope, the man-child to watch for cars.
The Cardinal brother's sermon makes that Richard III-looking "hero" sound kind of fucked up, probably connecting to his view of his saintly Pope brother. Weak liberalism is more human than terroristic liberalism - we may need to be saved from our saviors, afterwards. But in the meantime it's only the (like clockwork) fucking up of conservatives that gives us our openings, so assuming the persona of one and then fucking up world record-breakingly offers the chance to do more than weakly comfort those suffering under the status quo. So Scott (that's his name, I think) is basically like the PM, and maybe is being unknowingly groomed as Pius' successor - the person who can really give the dream speech from 1.1, but only because Lenny has made everyone hate everything he has taken pains to represent. That the Richard III guy sounds like he'll get people killed by charging them straight at fascists is a matter of potential concern, though: what if some people really do listen to Lenny? Toughing it out, like the ones in Alaska. Cars and floors can kill.
What was the young Sister Mary basketball sequence for? Showing us that strength and beauty are wasted in/by religion and its walling up of all those who are hurt or abandoned? Or has she somehow inspired Lenny's plan?
He's being genuinely silly about his beauty and Christ complex. Setting those up as his way out, I guess? Declaring himself to be Christ while displaying more terrestrial signs of narcissism would cause a genuine crisis, as the Church would have to either throw out the crazy person (I assume without precedent or existing mechanism) or immediately crack. Unless he wants to be assassinated? That's pretty much martyrdom, so would be immensely counterproductive, exposing his plan as hubris. I imagine we, the filmmakers and everyone else can agree that this plan would be too risky in real life - you'd go mad or bad with the power, you'd blab and be outed by someone, you'd accidentally make conservativism popular again, you'd be successfully blackmailed or killed or drugged. Or, likeliest of all, people would just learn to ignore your provocations and wait out the clock till your replacement. But that doesn't mean the story is being presented as a blueprint, or that its world will need to follow the rules of ours. Might just mean it can keep us in suspense by threatening that it will.
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Date: 2017-02-16 06:07 pm (UTC)Have you seen the rest yet? I feel like we haven't really been given the privileged glimpse into his heart. There are rooms full of possible Popes.
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Date: 2017-02-17 04:25 am (UTC)He's 3 popes so far: the first for the sake of the second, but disturbed now and then by the possibility that he may be a third.
1. The one he pretends to be - a believer in old time religion. There's authenticity to this because he's had to renounce quite a lot himself and is jealous that others haven't. So he inflicts it on them. God is a parent who dropped you off on earth and then ran off, for this Pope. Hard to tell if tough love or total lovelessness motivates this approach.
2. The one he would like to be, preaching a cheerful secularism. Many of the present Catholics aren't grown up enough to handle that, so he's kicking them all out of the nest so they'll learn on their own. Presumably he himself did when he went away and had that affair. God is love, for this Pope, so all who love are equals.
3. The one where God may be working miracles through him, meaning he should neither abandon God nor consider him infinitely remote and mysterious. What if the believers are right about the Pope? He's in the father role, but is young, so not only understands how children think still but displays vestiges of it. God is an active, supportive parent to this one, and asks that the Pope be the same for his people. This is the work he shirks when he does things like kicking out all gay priests, which causes a suicide but probably also the death of Dusollier (combined with his weakness), since his killer takes his cue about how to be a Catholic from the Pope. As Lenny treated the goat guy, the narco treats his wife's lover.
Three kinds of parental love, I guess. Tough/authoritarian, educative/egalitarian, condescending/indulgent.