Of Many Blessings A Great Curse: Fingolfin's Divine Wisdom.

The Silmarillion, or to give it it's full name: I Quenta Silmarillion. A book that collects the material J.R.R Tolkien left unfinished, into a semblance of a story. It's not an easy read, but it's an important one if you want to understand Tolkien's mythos. Most people who read The Lord of the Rings are left hungry for more, drawn into the stories because these stories speak about the troubles we all face. And despite it's grand scale and disappointing lack of detail on occasion, the Silmarillion also contains stories that speak to us. Few moreso than the story of Fingolfin.

Finwe was one of the first elves, those who were not born but who awoke under the stars at Cuivenen. He accepted the invitation to Valinor from the Vala called Orome. The Valar are kind of like a cross between the Judaic idea of angels, and the ancient Norse idea of gods. Valinor is their homeland. Finwe followed the Vala alongside Ingwe and Elwe, on a long journey westward. At it's end was Valinor, lit by the magical trees Laureling and Tyelperion. Finwe, Ingwe and Elwe returned to the elves at Cuivenen, and persuaded them to take the long journey to Valinor. It took the elves centuries to make the journey, but they do not die of old age and so did not rush. The people of Elwe did not finish the journey, tarrying in villages and forests or taking to the sea but landing on the islands. The elves who dwelt on the islands would become known as the Teleri, and those who lived in Middle Earth would be known as the Sindar. Finwe and Ingwe finished the journey with their people, and set up homes in the lands of Valinor. Finwe married a woman named Miriel, and had a son with her: Curufinwe, nicknamed "Feanaro" or Feanor.  After bearing him, Miriel wasted away and went to the House of Mandos. This is what elves do instead of dying, their souls are bound to the world and so the house of the Vala Mandos is a peaceful resting place for them. Finwe married again to Indis from the tribe of Ingwe, and had two more sons: Ngolofinwe and Arafinwe. Ngolofinwe would eventually become known as Fingolfin. Some said Feanor caused Miriel's weakness, they said he had stolen her strength.

But that was only the first of the troubles Feanor caused. He made three gems in which he had trapped the light of Laureling and Tyelperion. They were beautiful, the most beautiful things ever made by elvish hands: so everyone agreed. So beautiful that Melkor, one of the Valar [also secretly evil], wanted them. He turned Feanor against the other Valar, making him believe that they didn't truly care about the elves but only their usefulness as servants. He wanted to get Feanor away from the protection of Finwe, Finarfin, and others. Then he destroyed the Two Trees. Feanor's Silmarils were the only pieces of them left: but Feanor would not part with the jewels. For this, Feanor was exiled. Angry, Feanor went to Alqualonde and stole ships from the Teleri elves there, killing some of them in the process. The Kinslaying. Though Fingolfin went with Feanor and participated in the Kinslaying, Feanor was too much in a rush and abandoned his brother. Fingolfin might have turned around and begged forgiveness of the Valar. But he did not.

Fingolfin chose to look on his brother with different eyes. So, he chose to lead the people who followed him across the Helcaraxe: the bridge of ice that connected Middle Earth to Valinor in those days. Meanwhile, Manwe had caught wind of Feanor's actions and cursed Feanor's family. Fingolfin was thus cursed, though less strongly than his brother. He had no desire in his heart to own the Silmarils, it was enough for him to admire his brother's creations and be proud of his connection to someone so skilled. He simply understood something that Manwe did not: it is never right to wrong someone just because they have wronged you. That simply escalates the conflict: it does nothing to solve the problem.  As Feanor's brother, it was Fingolfin's duty to support him. Just because Feanor abandoned him, didn't mean he should abandon Feanor. He decided to instead use their exile as an opportunity to defy evil directly.

Fingolfin chose to challenge Melkor to single combat, knowing he would lose. Now, Ngolofinwe means "Wise Finwe" in Quenya, so we must investigate this action. On the face of it, it seems stupid. He's the King, and he's going to ride to certain death in front of his people who have no home in this new land. What? Ah, but all is not as it first appears. Feanor's masterwork has been turned into a curse. Now Fingolfin's masterwork will turn the curse into blessings. He cannot keep Manwe's curse from taking effect: Fingolfin does not have the divine power of the Valar. What he can do, is modulate his own behavior. Manwe has cursed the creations of the Noldor to fade, be lost or destroyed. Fingolfin is going to turn that curse into the source of their strength. The strength they will need to oppose evil and defeat it, the strength to do the job the Valar are unwilling to do. Fingolfin is challenging Melkor, but he is also challenging Manwe. His actions are an indictment of the Valar and their self-centered ideology. This is necessary, because the Noldor have every reason to be angry with the Valar and Manwe in particular: even though they have done something very wrong, and which they know is very wrong. If this is not addressed, then the Noldor will be vulnerable to the manipulations of Melkor. But that is not all. He is also showing them the proper course of action in the face of suffering.

Indeed he was showing the proper course of action in the face of suffering not just to elves, but also to the Valar themselves. Elves have no reason to fear death, they go to Mandos when their bodies are destroyed to live peacefully in the blessed lands. But that does not mean they will necessarily oppose evil, or that they cannot be tempted into evil. Indeed, it means there is also no end to their suffering. That is the tragedy of elves which gives them their aura of mystery: they, like the Valar, are bound to the world forever. They must heal or go mad, and Melkor can easily hijack the process of healing from grief. He has every reason to do so. See, a mad elf is an orc. They are abused so much that they dissociate: the memories of their former elvish personalities locked behind a wall of rage and self-hatred. Orcs aren't evil because they are ugly, their bodily ugliness is the remains of the torture which turned them evil. Tolkien was intimately familiar with the ways that unhealed trauma could twist a person psychically or even physically: he'd seen his compatriots from the war destroy themselves with drink, obsessions and psychotic behavior. He furiously self-medicated with his art: and indeed that is probably the reason why his mythos seems so vivid. It was born from pain: not really constructed, but in fact begotten. And this leads me back to Fingolfin, through a concept that Tolkien called estel.

Take a deep breath, because we're about to dive into the linguistic deep end here. The stories that we know from the Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion are the mere tip of the iceberg when it comes to Tolkien. To him, they were secondary. To Tolkien, the whole point of the works were the languages. In particular, Quenya and Sindarin: the elvish tongues. Many thanks to the übernerd Helge K. Fauskanger and to the rogue of words Thorsten Renk. Thanks to their websites Ardalambion and Parma Tyelpellassiva I've been able to learn a lot about linguistics, through Elvish, and was able to work out this derivation. We start with a Base, a skeleton from which to form a word. Our word estel is Sindarin, but it seems to be a rare example of a borrowing from Quenya: which narratively makes sense, since this concept is connected to the Valar and Valinor. It would have started it's evolution as the Base SED, a proto-word that suggested the idea of "rest" or "calm" to the elves. But this base would only suggest a momentary phenomenon, and a fairly minor feeling of mere calm (for example, it also gave us the Sindarin words sidh, meaning "peace" with the digraph "dh" indicating the sound "th" as in "the"). It would simply suggest a period of little activity. We need a strong word representing an enduring phenomenon, not suggesting a lack of activity but rather an attitude of obstinate serenity that seems to defy logic. We need ESEDE: with the stem vowel reduplicated twice, both prefixed and suffixed. And we need a noun, while this base could represent any part of speech. There are several nominal suffixes, but the one we need is "-la", a suffix denoting a tangible thing: because we are talking about an attitude that can be spread to other people, not an emotion. Now we have a word: êsedela. The middle vowel in a word like this usually drops out: giving us esdela. Finally, short vowels at the ends of words had a tendency to drop out in Elvish, so we get esdel. In Noldorin Quenya, the cluster "sd" turned into "st", the "t" being influenced by the voiceless "s" giving estel.  In Vanyarin Quenya the opposite happened, and so the word turns out as ezdel: with the "s" being influenced by the voiced "d".

Either way, we have a word that is not readily translatable at least into modern English. The Greek word αποκαλυψε (apocalypse) comes close. Calypso is a verb meaning "to turn", and "apo" means "upwards". The upwards direction then as now was associated with goodness and hopefulness. But this word is burdened with many connotations by modern associations: estel is pure, being newly invented. This concept of estel is what Fingolfin understands which Melkor, and Manwe and virtually everyone else in the world, does not. It is not a momentary phenomenon, a place of quiet where rest can be easily found. It is instead the ability to look at bad situations and see them as opportunities to do good: not reacting out of fear, dismay or anger, but instead reacting with grace and love. Fingolfin didn't simply understand the concept of estel: his death exemplifies it.

His valiant death is an example of someone acting out of estel when confronted with evil. Melkor's overwhelming power is not a source of fear for Fingolfin: it is instead an opportunity to turn Manwe's curse into a blessing, and to show others how to turn Manwe's curse into a blessing. If the creations of the Noldor are doomed to be consumed by the passage of time: then let them be consumed for the purpose of opposing evil. If the Noldor are doomed to suffer anyway: then they might as well do something that would inevitably entail suffering, like oppose evil. Manwe's curse, through the application of estel, can become the thing which makes the Noldor into an unstoppable force for good in the world. In the end, in fact, Fingolfin will force Manwe's hand: Finwe and Finarfin upon hearing of Fingolfin's death along with Eärendil will petition the Valar to put an end to Melkor. He will also inspire some among the Maiar (that is, the lesser angels who are servants to the Valar) to come to Middle-Earth and help the creatures there to face evil directly: these would become known as the Istari, or the wizards. Manwe's curse is indeed great, and it was made from Feanor's abuse of the Valar's blessings. Yet in Fingolfin's hands, the curse becomes a source of blessings: for the Noldor and for those who chose to stand with them. And when the final members of the Noldor leave Middle Earth, they leave Estel behind: quite literally. In order to hide his true identity, Elrond gave Aragorn the name "Estel". Aragorn represents estel for Gondor: turning that city's curse, it's location close to Mordor, into a blessing instead of a problem. Gondor's location makes it vulnerable to the forces of Sauron, true: but only if it's leader lacks the strength to oppose those forces. But if Gondor's leader has the will to oppose evil: then it is well placed to lead the fight against the orcs. 

Most beautifully of all, this mythos was and is estel for our world. Tolkien saw the demise of the horse as a draft animal, and the introduction of the gasoline engine: and he didn't like any of this one bit. But far from simply being a curmudgeon, Tolkien was prescient: his criticisms of modernism are not those of a romantic apologist, they are rather the same ones that postmodernists would make later on. He didn't hate everything new reflexively, nor did he have any rose-tinted glasses about the recent past. His criticisms can be boiled down into three things: 1) environmental degradation, 2) lack of attention to quality, 3) cultural insensitivity. But far from despairing and giving in to depression: Tolkien saw an opportunity to effect change. 

He is directly responsible for the paradigm shift of the 1960s, when inventors abruptly shifted from developing labor-saving devices to developing communications technology. Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring was published in 1954. It fired the imaginations of young people instantly: speaking to the deep-seated problems that they had with their parents' attitudes. They were not rebels without a cause: they were rebels with a very real cause, even if they could not put their cause into words. Tolkien and the Beatles don't seem like they could possibly have anything in common: but they were driven by the same deep-seated dissatisfaction with modernism, and this same idea of estel. Nothing ever written in the English language exemplifies the concept of estel better than the song "Here Comes the Sun". The puzzling line "and baby I say, it's alright" seems to even hint that this indeed what they were trying to convey. Why would the speaker need to assure his significant other that the sunrise was a good thing? because s/he views the sunrise as simply the prelude to more pointless pain. When Lennon sings "and baby I say, it's alright" he is saying that the sunrise will indeed bring pain, but the pain is something you can use. It is not just a thing that you must endure: you can turn it into something good through your actions. That is estel: the divine wisdom of Fingolfin.

Great British Baking Show's Radical Foundation.

The Great British Baking Show, it's a reality tv show just like all the others that just happens to feature cooking right? It's a fun romp through British culture, with plenty of British humor but not fundamentally different from things like RuPaul's Drag Race or Project Runway right?

Wrong. so wrong.

No, it's not different because it is more inclusive or more feminist or because they brought on new judges who are "edgy". No, it's because of something very much foundational to the show: something built into the show's design. Something incredibly radical, but which goes unnoticed. It's not the cakes and pies and breads. It's something much more basic than that. It's the underlying ethic of compassion that the show's incentives are set up to maintain. There is no room for the greedy and ruthless competitor in this show: tactics like lying, cheating and stealing are not rewarded. Honorable conduct is enforced by the very structure of the contest and by the behavior of the judges. Not through fear, but through the simple fact that you cannot lie to Paul and Mary. If you skimped on something, or did something wrong and tried to cover it up they will notice. Your mistakes are not something you can hide from, you must own them. But they are also not something to be ashamed of: the only thing to be ashamed of is falling short of your personal best. We have an irrational fear of being seen as less than perfect: but when we are put in a situation where hiding our flaws is impossible it does not turn out to be as bad as we expect.

Yes, this is a show where someone has to go home at the end of every episode, and this is a show with a single winner. But, that's not in itself a bad thing. This is because each episode is broken down into three contests: the signature challenge, the technical challenge and the showstopper challenge. The show also never has fewer than three contestants (thus, one contestant is always safe from threat): and does not rely on the fact that someone can be sent home for it's drama. The drama is instead found in whether the contestants can complete the challenge they have been set in the time alotted, and what they will do if something goes wrong. Contestants are not punished for bad luck: they are punished for not creatively dealing with bad luck.  More importantly, the judges genuinely want the contestants to do well. An experimental idea that fails is "unfortunate", not "naughty".  The winner is not likely to be the person who was the most impressive in the first week: in fact, more often than not that person doesn't make it to the final. The winner is going to be the person who can learn over the course of the whole show, from their own mistakes, from the other contestants, and even from their successes. The point of this show is to inspire people to bake, not to scare people off it. It's to put on display Britain's baking tradition, and to track it's evolution in real time. Paul and Mary don't simply rate each bake: they give nuanced and detailed feedback. How the contestant responds to that feedback, affects whether they get sent home or not. Mouthing off to the judges gets you nowhere, though that obviously doesn't stop some guys from trying it. But although Paul Hollywood may be fit and dress like a 20-something, he's not and he has the gray hair to prove it. He knows how to deal with overeager alpha males, he knows all the tricks men like that use. Not that this happens often, it's a show about baking after all.

But, Paul isn't there to scare you.  There was a contestant once who put his failed signature challenge in the trash, because it didn't work the way he'd hoped. Instead of getting angry, Paul just looked at him with genuine sadness. He said: "why did you do that? If I can't see it, I can't help you." This contestant had failed to understand what the GBBS is about: learning. It's about learning new recipes, learning new ways to make old recipes. It's about trying new things, and sometimes not succeeding. Destroying your mistakes means you can't learn from them, and indeed means that you aren't interested in learning from them. Many would even say, it defeats the purpose of baking. Art is not about doing things perfectly, because perfection is by definition unattainable. Art is about doing your best, and presenting it even when it has glaring flaws. It is about making something in reaction to the world around you, and about taking in the reactions to your art. Baking is art, and that is the point of the Great British Baking Show.

That is why this show is radical: it is taking something which for centuries has been overlooked and undervalued, and revealing it for what it truly is.  Baking is art and a baker is an artist in their heart: just because their medium is food does not mean it is any less artistic than painting or music or drama. The Great British Baking Show is a piece of art about art, about the process of creating art which is itself a work of art: a drama that usually unfolds behind closed doors and is a secret carried in a single person's heart. It is about the high of artistic success, and the sadness of artistic failure: and it is about the ordinary people who are extraordinary artists. Baking is an art that anyone can engage in, without needing special equipment. Indeed, it is perhaps one of the first arts humanity ever engaged in: the clay oven is one simple step up from the spit over an open fire. But because it was an art that was by definition domestic, and the role of the woman, it was overlooked. It was then undervalued by feminists, who charged into a new world of factory-made meals without considering the consequences to individual and social health. The point of the Great British Baking Show is to celebrate British culture: and the overlooked people who are shaping it's future. The contestants on this show are not just hobbyists: they are the heirs of a long and complex tradition, practicing it in a world that sets up numerous obstacles for people like them.

A culture is not something you have. It is not something you can put in a box and jealously guard. It is something you practice. It is something you do. Because it is something that you do, it will naturally evolve. Only a culture that has ceased to exist can be pinned down and separated distinctly from what happened around it. But cultures rarely cease to exist, precisely because they are something that people do. Cultures can outlive the people who created them, sometimes to a ridiculous degree. Constantinople fell in 450 BC, yet the culture of the Eastern Roman Empire survived through the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Rus: not the blood descendants of the Romans who created it, but the tribe of Germanic warriors they hired as bodyguards who fled northwards taking their customs, their religion and their artifacts. Empires rise and fall, but cultures live on.

The Achaemenid Empire fell, and the Hellenistic era ended, the Ottoman Empire rose and fell in it's turn. But if Cyrus the Great were brought to modern Iran he would know his own people, and they would know him. He would recognize the tongue they speak, the clothes they wear, the government they have, the buildings they build, and the food they eat: how they think and act on a daily basis, especially the actions they don't think about. If Shi'ism was explained to him, he would chuckle: knowing that of course his countrymen would create this sect, since it is precisely how he himself would modify Islam. If he were told of the Iranian revolution, he would not be surprised. But he would be equally unsurprised to hear that now the revolution is unpopular. He would laugh, and clap his hands in pride if shown the Twitter war between President Trump and Iran's present leaders: glad to know that his countrymen are still the consummate diplomats and patient masters of strategy that he knew and loved. Much has changed for Iran since his time, but the Iranians have not essentially changed.

Culture is born from the hearth fire, not from the palace. A truth the ancient Greeks recognized. As Hesiod said: "Hestia has no temples, and yet is the greatest of all the gods." Hestia is not a goddess of cooking or even of the home: she is the embodiment of Greek culture. Without her, none of the other gods would exist. Culture starts at home, with the necessities of life: the food, the tools, the clothing and the dynamics of family. Culture starts in the kitchen: when mom opens the fridge and discovers sixteen eggs, six containers of half-eaten veggies, one sausage and two quarts of cream. So was born the Christmas frittata in my house. It is the actions we take when we are not thinking: the things we think of as normal and mundane.  We love to watch Koreans eat meals because the way they eat is so different from how we do. The same is true in reverse. They aren't thinking about their eating process any more than any of us would.

We create and practice culture every moment of every day. We simply are not usually conscious of it. What something like the Great British Baking Show does is it makes the unconscious, conscious. Which is what any good piece of art should do. Yet, that is something incredibly radical in today's world of deliberate obfuscation, where people of European heritage are told lies every day about what culture is, and about theirs in particular. This is not being done by some shadowy cabal of outsiders, Jews or Muslims or blacks etc. It is being done by other Europeans, and it is the method being used to control Europe. Culture is a threat to industrialization, to corporate capitalism. Oh, the veneer of it is fine of course: the symbols of it, packaged neatly and ripped out of their context. But culture in it's entirety is a threat, precisely because it originates from outside of the corporation and it's evolution cannot be controlled by the corporation. Fascism is the mechanism for corporate control of culture. And that is why The Great British Baking show is radical: because it gives the middle finger to the corporation. This is a show about amateur bakers, who circumvent the factories and create things that they cannot. The mistakes and flaws and even collapses are not "naughty" they are something to be celebrated, because they are the byproducts of the creative process: the process that this show puts from and center.  It shows that the soul of Britain is still in the kitchen, despite the industrialization and then post-industrialization of the country. The contestants on the Great British Baking Show are the people who will determine it's future, not the Prime Minister or the Queen.

The Madness of Athena: Ancient Responses to Mental Illness

We have only recently begun to talk about mental illness as a society, which can lead to the illusion that it is a new phenomenon. In the same way that laypeople observe the uptick in early diagnoses of autism and blame vaccines for them, many people blame modern social ills for mental illness. We must have more stressful jobs, or perhaps we live in communities that are uniquely unsafe, or perhaps we are overwhelmed by the amount of information that bombards us. Others will say that people are becoming weaker, less capable of dealing with the problems of the world. They will say that our modern comforts have made us fragile and unable to accomplish the kinds of feats our ancestors did. But both of these arguments are fundamentally wrong. Mental illness is not a new phenomenon by any means.

Normally it's hard to diagnose someone who lived a long time ago with a mental disorder (or, for that matter, a physical one). But Sophocles gives us a clear-cut example of what we would now call PTSD in his play Ajax. Sure, he uses the figure of Athena in order to induce the disorder: but she can be removed from the play entirely and the story still makes sense. Sophocles simply had to provide a cause for Ajax's madness that his audience would understand. The story takes place after the Trojan War: a ten year long conflict, where rests from the chaos of battle were few and far between. Ajax has fought bravely and well for ten years, only to find that there is no glory in war. What will Salamis, where his father is King, have when Ajax returns that it does not already have? So, he tries to win Achilles' armor to take home as a trophy for his city. When that doesn't work, Ajax slowly spirals into violence and then suicide. Some of the clear symptoms of PTSD that Ajax exhibits include: obsessive thought patterns and behavior, inexplicable mood swings, paranoia, a psychotic break, self-loathing and suicidal ideation.  Now, Sophocles was writing this story centuries later: during the Peloponnesian war. Clearly, he was arguing against going to war, by bringing up it's consequences. Athena is the goddess of strategy and a warrior goddess: she is simply a metaphor for the war itself. In Ancient Greek theology however, it is typically Apollo or Dionysus who causes madness, not Athena. Sophocles' audience would have immediately been intrigued by this choice. He knew he was writing for discerning theatergoers: the only thing the citizens of ancient Athens liked more than watching a play, was arguing about it. To portray Ajax's disorder with such clarity, Sophocles must have either suffered it himself or known someone who did.

That should not be a surprise either: all citizens of Athens were required to fight whenever the city voted to go to war. This was a measure to ensure that men did not go to war too eagerly: there was no getting out of fighting it. But, this was a warrior culture: this measure in no way prevented people from voting for wars that were in the city's interest. Athens had recently fought a very long drawn-out and costly war, with the Achaemenid Empire. Now, conflict brewed between them and their erstwhile allies-the Spartans- over trade matters. The machinations of Pericles' adoptive son Alcybiades were putting the city on edge. That is the context that framed the actor who played Ajax for the first time in the great amphitheater in Athens.

We do not know if this was the first, second or third of the tragedies that Sophocles presented that day, alongside a comic play.  But we can imagine his audience, with gyros in one hand and wine in the other, watching with growing horror as this terrible drama unfolds. We can imagine men crying, seeing their own pain or that of their loved ones played out on the stage. Perhaps we could even imagine them shouting at Ajax to stop his behavior, even though they know how the story ends. We can imagine women setting aside their meals, as the horror of this story unfolds: not wanting to eat or drink while Ajax suffers. It isn't a tragedy in the conventional or Aristotelian sense: where the hero's flaws inevitably lead him into darkness no matter how mightily he struggles against his fate. Here, Ajax does not struggle. He is lead to his death by his own desires, like a cow to the slaughter. We would perhaps call it horror, if it were written today. Ajax is not a hero, he is the protagonist of a story that is set up to critique his behavior. The message of the story is "don't be like Ajax".

But it is not an individually directed message: Greek society was fundamentally one that valued the community over the individual. This is a message directed at the community, the polis, as a whole. Ajax is the inevitable product of war: his madness is caused by Athena, a representation of war as a concept. He, like all of the Homeric heroes, is a representation of his city. It is the responsibility of the community, not of the individual, to prevent this kind of disaster. Ajax cannot prevent his madness, it was caused by a goddess. But the war could never have happened. This is an anti-war story.

There was no medicine available in the ancient world for PTSD, no professional therapy. The only responses available were acceptance, and prevention. War drives men mad, vote no on the war. The message would have been very clear to Sophocles' original audience. But the genius of this play, is that it speaks to the warrior experience. It's not an outsider scolding the military for their actions while they enjoy the benefits of those actions. It's a war story told by a veteran that speaks to a warrior's heart. Every man in that audience had probably seen a friend or relative go into this destructive spiral: some of them had probably seen a suicide similar to that portrayed in this play  before. Now they're having to decide whether to go into the mouth of the beast again, and maybe whether to send their sons into it. Sophocles wants them to go to the vote knowing exactly what they are signing up for. His prediction is chillingly accurate. The Peloponnesian War slowly destroyed Athens, as it compromised more and more of it's democratic values for the sake of short-term money-making. By the time the Spartans showed up at their doorstep, Athens was a hollow shell of it's former self.

Agent Hotchner: the Leader of Leaders

When your main cast are all cops, no matter of what description, you have a problem you need to solve. Law Enforcement attracts natural leaders, and if you are a woman or other type of minority you have to be a dominant personality to make it. Most cops are natural leaders, independent people who don't like those that interfere with them but try to interfere with others. Often they have deep-seated issues with authority. How do you keep a cast full of these people together? how do they cooperate effectively if none of them want to follow each others' instructions? how can they work together if they are constantly meddling in each others' affairs? There are a few ways of course. One is to have them all be recognized experts in a skill, and establish those boundaries firmly early on. This can set the story up for a devastating twist if one of the team members is lost. But, there's another route to take as well: one that allows the team to survive even if it's composition changes. A super-leader. A character who is inspirational enough that otherwise aggressively dominant people look to them for guidance and discipline.

Like Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner, from Criminal Minds. yeah yeah, that show again. I binge just like the rest of you ok. Hotchner, or "Hotch" as he is known is not the type of character you expect on this type of show. In fact, he's more like the typical hero of a Noir film or a Western: a man with a dark past seeking personal redemption. Hotch used to be a Federal Prosecutor, with the unsettling stare to prove it. It's never quite said: but it's clear what happened. Hotch hated putting people to death whom he believed had a chance to change. As an FBI agent he has both the ability to stop people from getting so far that they have to be killed, and the ability to offer plea deals so that they won't face that possibility. But there is one important respect in which Hotch is not like a typical Noir or Western film hero: he's not a loner. In fact, he was the one who assembled the BAU team: before him, BAU detectives worked alone as simple consultants for local police. What's particularly intriguing about him as a character, is that despite his position of authority he is not an aggressive man. Rather, he is a natural defender. He never threatens someone unless it's to protect someone else, nor does he ever shoot except to defend someone else. In the whole series, Hotch never attacks with a gun or even shoots to defend his own person: it is always to defend either a victim, a team member, or some other ally. Pretty surprising when you consider that just about every episode has a gunshot in it somewhere. Nor is Hotch ever aggressive towards his colleagues, even when he's angry. If he does get snappy, it's because pressure is being placed on him from outside. He is however, stubborn. Challenging him head on is an exercise in futility, he just digs his heels in deeper and deeper. He simply does not give up. This is a flaw, and sometimes it certainly drives the other characters nuts or even leads the team into danger. But it's also why he can do his job. Hotch can go toe to toe with the worst scum of humanity and not become like them himself because he is stubbornly committed to goodness.

That is not to say however that he cannot empathize with the killers. In fact, he does. Hotch's best quality is that he is unwilling to look away from them, no matter how horrific their actions. Hotch refuses to shy away from walking the tightrope between empathizing with the very real pain that many of these people feel, and condoning their actions. In fact, he is often the first person to confront them with the question of why they believe that their actions logically follow from their emotional experiences. Many are genuinely surprised to learn that others feel the same emotions they do, but don't feel the need to kill or hurt others because of it. That is, when the villain of the week isn't a good old fashioned psychopath. There are plenty of those on Criminal Minds too: for the non-dramatic filler episodes that they don't expect the audience to remember. Or for the multi-episode arcs where the killer attacks one of the team members personally. These, Hotch doesn't bother trying to empathize with because he knows it won't do any good. The only thing to do with them is to put them in the slammer.  But, a killer need not be a psychopath: and indeed the most common type of villain presented on the show is not. The most common type is the sexual sadist. Hotch is the perfect foil to this type of killer: because he represents everything they think they are (if they are also narcissists), or wish they could be. They fantasize about being dominant, and perceive themselves as underappreciated: but Hotch actually is dominant. He is in fact given genuine and undisguised fealty by other dominant personalities. Yet he has gained that place by doing exactly the opposite of what the killers think that dominant people do. These killers fail to elude him, no matter how smart they are, because they've been misled. It's a deconstruction of toxic masculinity, which is not what we expect from a cop show.

Yes, I did just say "fealty".  It's a word that Americans don't like and for good reason. But, it's warranted here. Several times, the tech analyst Garcia outright calls Hotch "my liege". Although she has a flair for the dramatic, it is very clear in this context that she isn't really joking. When Agent Jareau gets what is obviously a better job, Hotch actually has to twist her arm to get her to take it: and she comes back after only a few episodes. Now, Agent Jareau is one of these dominant personalities that Hotch nevertheless is able to command. Like I said before, in order to make it as a woman in law enforcement you have to be a dominant personality. In fact the show goes out of it's way to highlight how much of a dominant she is in the episode "Jones". In this episode the local NOPD detective, William LaMontagne Jr. a clearly submissive man trying and failing to fill his father's big shoes, falls for her while the team is working on a case there.  In the next season he reappears at Agent Gideon's resignation party where he and Jareau have a heartfelt conversation. This conversation ends with an astonishing twist: he commits to giving up his career as a cop in order to move halfway across the country, marry her and be a stay-at-home dad. She didn't ask him to do this, and it isn't presented as a sacrifice. It's clear that he actually wanted to get out of that job, and away from the gender expectations of the Cajun culture he was raised in. French-influenced Cajun culture does tend to place a lot of pressure on men to take leadership positions, as well as to be domineering in their personal interactions. When confronted with a naturally dominant woman he instantly throws all of that to the wind: showing maturity and unusual self-acceptance. Rather than seeing himself as cowardly or weak, he revels in playing a supportive role alongside an aggressive and tough leader.

Agent Jareau's aggression is emotional rather than physical, because she is female and fighting with larger stronger opponents wouldn't be very smart. But she is unafraid to attack a killers' delusions head on or hit them where it hurts in order to flush them out, even if it paints a target on her head. However, as a member of the BAU, she never actually has to make herself a target. Hotch always has her engineer the statements made to the press so that he will be the target of the killer's rage. And this is the primary reason why Agent Jareau feels the way she does towards Hotch. She knows he sacrifices his own safety to protect her on a regular basis.

Secondarily, despite being in a position of official authority, Hotch has no trouble letting Jareau be something of the team mom. She has the authority to decide which cases the team works on, and he allows her quite a bit of freedom in doing her job. He does not feel threatened even when she needs to be handed more authority. Once he even outright asks her to take on more authority for a case where her particular talent for communications is critical to getting a favorable outcome. He lets her handle meddling reporters, and his orders to her are deliberately vague. In other words, he does not question her loyalty to the team.

This is one of his most interesting traits. Although he is in a position of official authority, Agent Hotchner has never demanded personal loyalty from any of the team. This is precisely why he can do what he does: he demands loyalty to the team, but has no concern for whether people are loyal to him. This is of course because he isn't in this position for the purpose of having power: he's here on a personal mission. People are loyal to Hotch precisely because he doesn't demand it. In particular, Agent Morgan is fanatically loyal to Hotch, but he would never choose to follow a man who demanded loyalty. At one point, Hotch needs to give up his leadership position for the benefit of the team. Morgan is the one who takes over. But when Agent Rossi voices concern that Morgan might not be willing to give up his position, not only is Hotch unfazed he's actually dismissive. He is completely correct to be: Morgan hands over power without any question or trouble, as soon as Hotch is allowed to be back in charge. Now, Morgan is another natural leader: and also falls into the category of "could only have made it by being aggressively dominant" because Morgan is black. He's been willing to grab power for his own advancement before. But he is genuinely troubled when Hotch asks him to take over power, not because he believes that he's incapable of doing the job, but because it goes against what he views as the natural order of the world. This is why I used the word "fealty". Morgan isn't simply loyal to Hotch, he isn't simply willing to put his life on the line for Hotch. He believes that it's a violation of the world's natural order if Hotch isn't in charge of the team.

Now, not everyone on the team believes in the idea of a natural world order: Morgan is somewhat unusual in that regard. But there's nothing unusual about his feelings towards Hotch: when Agent Strauss (who is Hotch's boss) is attempting to remove him from power, the team members all speak up for him vociferously. They all not only believe he should be on the team, but that he should be it's leader: again, despite most of them being naturally dominant personalities.  These are not people who usually feel like they need a leader, they're more likely to resent authority figures than to feel like they need one. They can operate independently, and they are unafraid to question anyone claiming authority including Hotch. But, they become almost desperately afraid at the idea that Hotch could be taken away from them. Those team members who aren't naturally dominant, express their fealty in a more overt way. Garcia outright calls Hotch "my liege" more than once, and Dr. Reid shows him filial piety. Reid has issues trusting people, though with good reason: his mother is schizophrenic. But he trusts Hotch beyond what would be normal for a friend or battle comrade: not just with his life and his darkest secrets. No, Reid is willing to let Hotch hurt him for the greater good. He once comes up with a plan to outwit a killer that involves Hotch kicking him (so that he can steal Hotch's second gun and use it to incapacitate the heavily armed criminal). He is later genuinely surprised that Hotch was gentle with him. 

Now, yes, Reid is in need of a father figure. But why does he show this level of devotion to Hotch and not to Agent Gideon or Agent Rossi? Because Hotch with worthy. Because Hotch reacts to this love appropriately, by mirroring it back. When Reid is in trouble, Hotch goes on the warpath. The thing is, Hotch finds Reid annoying. They don't like each other, if they didn't work together they would probably never be friends. But because Reid expects Hotch to look out for his welfare, Hotch does an impeccable job of doing just that: without any expectation of reward. In fact, he faces punishment for doing that and doesn't care. And it is this which finally explains why he has the position that he has, why he deserves to be the leader of this team. Why, if there is such a thing as a natural order for the world, then part of that is Hotch being in charge. He goes all out for people he doesn't even like, even when facing punishment from superiors, without any expectation of reward. He can lead people who are natural leaders because he is selfless. When he decides what to do, the question he asks himself is "what does this person need?" not "what do I feel like doing?"

This is even true when he's dealing with the killers. He's not thinking about what they want, after all he knows what they want. He's thinking about what they need in order to grow as people, and be productive members of society. Many of them have compulsions or addictions, either to the killing itself or to torture. Jail and therapy could very well lead to them actually kicking their habit. An addiction to hurting people is not fundamentally different from an addiction to alcohol or drugs, in terms of brain chemistry.  Others, especially the younger ones, could simply outgrow their problems in jail. Many young terrorists do grow up to regret their actions, their youthful disaffection wearing off as they fully mature and their life situation changes.

Criminal Minds: Focus on the Heroes, not the Villains

Serial Killers often get romanticized. They are often handsome, charming, charismatic or perhaps just daredevils. Their twisted minds are fascinating to us neurotypical schmucks, their lives are full of danger and adventure appealing to the animal instincts in all of us. Their behavior satisfies our desires for deviance and rebellion: we start to see the victims as they do, as symbols of society's corruption. We forget that they were human beings just like us.  Sometimes the cops who catch them are even demonized or blamed for causing more problems, although the most loved ones commit suicide before they can be caught. The line between freedom fighter or soldier of God, and serial killer can get hazy. Some would say there is no line at all. Too often, Hollywood plays into this narrative about killers. This narrative that tells our boys that the way to solve their problems is with a gun or a knife.  Noirs are often full of gray morality, with the detective often being little better than the criminal.  Even worse: stories of murderous duos are made into romance stories or buddy stories. Like the classic Noir, Criminal Minds satisfies the audience's desire to examine the mind of a serial killer. Unlike a classic Noir, Criminal Minds does not glamorize the killer. It glamorizes the agents who take down the killer.
Now, the FBI that exists on the show is highly idealized even if still imperfect. It's response to racism, sexism and homophobia is what we would like to see from a governmental organization, but not what we actually see. What we actually have is an FBI that spends more time investigating the sex lives of kids who went to a nightclub rather than the life of the man who gunned them down. An agency that prefers to act as the morality police, while perpetrators get away thanks to corruption and local police incompetence or unpreparedness. The Behavioral Analysis Unit is real, but they're more likely to be reading this blog for signs of anarchist sympathies, than catching a terrorist or a murderer. The government we have is so far from understanding how real humans behave that they would seriously consider the possibility that terrorists used the general chat of a video game to communicate. A chat log that millions of people worldwide are reading in real time. In the age of Onion routers that seems highly implausible to say the least. Nevermind that reading these chat logs meant snooping on thousands of peoples'  sexual lives, as well as other private business. All of that however is unimportant for the show. After all, the purpose of fiction is to imagine what is possible: what could be but isn't.
What could be, is an FBI who truly tries their hardest to protect the citizens of this nation. What could be, is a BAU that turns their brilliant minds to catching the sickest criminals in the world. What could be, is a government that leverages every resource to keep it's citizens safe and help them live better lives. What could be, is a team of heroic agents who put their lives on the line for each other and the potential victims of killers every day. If they were soldiers, they would be the most decorated in the world after what they've been through during the series. They've sacrificed other careers, marriage, and sometimes their physical or mental health. Although they live in America among all the comforts of ordinary society, they have more in common with people living in war zones. They are five people with totally different personalities, all motivated by a common purpose: to deliver justice. They all know that despite their impressive talents, they cannot always succeed. They are all complicated people who make mistakes: but there is no question that they are heroes. When push comes to shove, they choose good over evil every time. That is what separates them definitively from the people they hunt: whether those people are troubled kids, vengeful victims, or remorseless psychos. But the show is not about the killers or about their kills. It's not about the victims like Law & Order SVU, or the crime scenes like CSI. It's about the BAU agents themselves. The villains and victims are foils for the agents, designed to bring out their character traits: to challenge them and make them grow.
This is not a reality show, nor is it designed to feel like one. Of course all the science is researched and at least plausible if not 100% agreed upon. All the theories that the agents use to profile the suspects are regarded as at least plausible by scientists, and the forensics is beyond controversy. But, the suspects are carefully thought out. They are not for the most part actual killers, although all the episodes are likely based on actual cases. But both the killers and the agents are based on literary tropes, and the structure of the episodes is literary.
The show has a standard villain-of-the-week structure: with the killer generally being apprehended at the end of each episode, even if he is going to appear again later. This structure is used to drive home the show's point: the killers are actually less interesting than the people who catch them. The most common types of killer are presented as actually being common: the sexual sadist, the pure psychopath, the home invader, the vigilante. This makes them, for the audience, routine: a filler episode. The audience knows to expect that the bulk of the episode will be spent on interpersonal relationships, not on the daring escapades or gory details of the villain. There won't be anything particularly interesting about the villain: instead we'll likely be introduced to a great side character, and/or treated to some team drama. There are of course the memorable villains: the serial murderers with huge body counts, the avengers, stalkers, terrorists, psychotics with lurid delusions, the mentally ill or impaired who accidentally kill, the teams, the weird cults etc. Here, the viewer knows, the villain(s) will be chosen as a foil to one of the team's members or for the team as a whole. These episodes might take some twists and turns, and even become half-season story arcs. But at no time is there ever a season-long villain. This has to be done on purpose, in the era when television is straying more and more towards long arcs and away from it's episodic roots. The purpose is to keep the focus squarely on the heroes. It is to reinforce the idea that the purpose of the killers is to test the heroes, to make them grow. There are season-long arcs, and it is important to watch the episodes in order: but they are focused solely on the heroes, whether it's about one team member's personal growth or the growth of a relationship between two of the team members. This is a meditation on the darkest parts of humanity, and the evil at the heart of our society: it only masquerades as a detective thriller.

Marco Polo: Criticism versus Demonization.

Imperialism is bad. However, it is important to remember why imperialism is bad. Concentrating power in the hands of one person is bad. But it's easy to forget why it is bad. The 2014-2016 TV show Marco Polo deftly reminds the audience of why imperialism and concentrating power in the hands of one person is bad. It does so without resorting to exaggeration, dehumanization or demonization. Indeed, it shows how demonization, exaggeration and dehumanization are the tools of Imperialism: not the tools to break it down. Kublai Khan and Prime Minister Jia are nemeses: long-time foes, in some ways so similar but also in fundamental ways so different. And both are sympathetic. These are both people who have, at various times in history, been called both heroes and demons. But this show feels no need to choose one as it's hero and the other as it's villain. Indeed, one of the best things about TV shows is that, due to their episodic nature, they do not need to pick heroes and villains: a character can be an antagonist in one episode and the protagonist in the next one.

Jia is not the villain, and his actions are both patently cruel and entirely sympathetic. [Side note: he is frequently referred to in the show as "Sidao", but this is his given name. Like all Chinese people, he puts his family name first: so his full name is Jia Sidao, but he would be addressed as "Mr. Jia"] The show gives the audience a true appreciation of the impossible situation that Jia finds himself in: a virtual prisoner within his walled city, taking care of a boy Emperor who doesn't even know what being Emperor means yet.  He is a mouse sitting inside a trap, and he knows it. Or as he himself might have said: a grasshopper in a cage, being stroked with a brush. That is Jia's favorite pastime, provoking grasshoppers to fight: so much so, that he is called the "cricket minister" by his enemies. But it isn't simply for amusement. Like everything Prime Minister Jia does, it has a purpose. He observes the grasshoppers, learning how they move. This is, by the way, a real thing that Chinese scholars did and they developed something called "grasshopper kung fu", which was based on the movements of grasshoppers and which was extremely hard for the uninitiated to combat. Mostly due to how few people knew about it. But in a metaphorical sense, Kublai Khan is holding a brush over Jia and making him twitch. He knows he cannot win the physical battle against the Khan.

However, he can win the political battle. He can inspire the people of southern China to believe in the Song Dynasty as they never did when it was at it's height. [side note: the name of the dynasty is not a translation. Their name was "Song" also written as "Tsung" or "Tsong".]  He can make the Khan regret taking the city, make him pay for victory with blood and tears. Jia is a commoner, who worked alongside his sister Mei Lin to become Prime Minister. He's clearly also a child prodigy, he can't be more than 30. In many ways he's similar to Kublai Khan: practical, willing to make sacrifices for the greater good, calm under pressure, a good long-term planner.  And like Kublai, Jia is willing to take power by any means necessary. However, unlike Kublai, Jia overestimates how much power he truly has. He believes too strongly in the ritual words of flattery and in the power inherent in his office as Prime Minister, too much in the loyalties of people who have no reason to love him or his cause. Kublai Khan knows that in order to keep someone's loyalty, you have to give them something that they want. Jia ultimately fails because he tried to shunt aside the Empress Dowager, he tried to make himself regent for the new Emperor. Because of this, the Mongols have enough loyalists in the South that they can hold onto it: even as revolutionaries fight fiercely. Jia's machinations give Kublai just enough leverage to destroy the Song and their legacy.

Of course, Kublai Khan is no conquering hero. He's a man who stole the throne, and has never sat easily on it. He must generate goodwill from his people by expanding the Empire, and even that doesn't completely stave off rebellion. After all, not every Mongol sees the Empire as completely beneficial. They worry about losing their traditional way of life, especially when they look at Kublai's half-Chinese son Jingim. In order to control Northern China, the Mongols had to take on some traditions and to move their administrative center to China. They gave the city a Mongol name, Cambulak, but there isn't really any escaping the fact that it's China. Nor is there any escaping the fact that Kublai is both Khan and Emperor. He has to wear that golden robe with the five-toed dragon: otherwise the Chinese will revolt. But to the Mongols, it looks like he's selling out. Things are hardly that cut and dry of course: Katie Jones gave both the characters costumes that delicately balance Chinese and Mongol aesthetics. Kublai keeps his clan's traditional hairstyle, but tends to wear Chinese style slippers: the obvious reason being comfort.  Jingim wears his hair in a Chinese fashion, not that the girls are complaining, but also wears the traditional Mongol boots and his robes are cut in a decidedly more Mongol fashion: at the knee, rather than the ankle length that would be typical of Chinese civilian clothing. Although made from silk, they are also considerably more tailored: he knows he has a great figure, whereas his father uses the Chinese cut of his robe to disguise his beer gut.

The show also feels no need to demonize Arik or Kaidu: the two rebellious chieftains who challenged Kublai Khan's rule. In particular, the show treats Kaidu very sympathetically: and does an excellent job of showing off how complicated he was. While Arik was mainly just a straw-man conservative: Kaidu is something entirely different. Yes, he's a skeptic of the Empire: but he isn't simply afraid of change. Indeed, Kaidu is an agent of change, just as much as Kublai or Jingim. His vision is for a more egalitarian Mongol society: with female leaders, and an elected ruler who is not put above his people. Kaidu is a man in a family of strong women, who genuinely respects them and sternly teaches his son to do the same. His vision of the Mongols'  future is based on a romanticized notion of the distant past: but it is very much a vision of the future that takes into account the political realities of the present day. In other words, he's a feminist several hundred years before that word was even invented: and he's committed enough to start a war. The only thing he hasn't banked on, is Marco's bizarre willingness to protect people who have hurt him. He would have succeeded in killing Kublai to take the throne if not for Marco's last-minute and unexpected intervention. Marco Polo, the son of a disgraced merchant, decided the fate of half the world by stabbing Kaidu in the back. It's almost a tragedy, because Kaidu is a genuinely noble man.

Yet Kaidu's death makes room for another noble man to succeed. Jingim Khan is not known in the West, for a good reason. He was not an expansionist. Having been elected fairly, Jingim had no need for aggressive foreign policy. He was forced into an isolationist stance by the Catholic church's racism, despite them having a common interest in defeating the Ottoman Caliphate. He chose to neither aid nor fight them, which probably led to their ultimate victory in the Holy Land. Jingim isn't simply pretty. The tragedy of his life is that he can't have a child. Chabi makes the hard choice to sanction the rape of his wife, so that he will have heirs and she tries to do it without his knowledge. But he surely knows what really happened, and surely it's painful for him to know even if nobody else does. But Jingim knows that he must make peace with who he is, he learned that from his father.  Kublai is under no illusions about who he is: he is aware of both his virtues and his vices, and never wants to avoid the consequences of his choices. He knows that he carries the fate of half the world's people on his shoulders, and that he cannot always control his impulses.  He knows he stole the throne, even if he has earned the right to sit there through his actions. He knows when he meets men who are better than he is.  Men like Yousef, Hundred Eyes, and Jingim. Far from feeling threatened by these men, Kublai appreciates them and knows that they make him a better person. Indeed, Jingim's virtue is a source of hope for Kublai: an antidote to the cynical world of politics that he so often has to live in. Despite all his faults and struggles and crises, Kublai Khan raised a son who could be a better man and a better ruler than he could. Since Kublai Khan is remembered as a great ruler, that's saying something.

If this show has a hero, then surely it is Yousef. At first blush, it seems like he is the stock Evil Vizier character. But like I said before, the best thing about TV is it's episodic nature. Yousef is first presented as an antagonist because Marco is working for Ahmad, who is Yousef's rival. It basically boils down to Yousef having zero tolerance for bullshit, and Ahmad being a walking pile of it.  But, then the perspective shifts when Marco finds Yousef's house. Yousef is the Khan's lieutenant, his right hand man: and when Jingim was younger, the designated regent. It's expected for a man in his position to use that position as a way to enrich himself. Yousef has not done so, his house is bare and he wears his shift (underwear) at home. His court clothes, it turns out, are his only clothes. For a man in his position this is beyond restrained: it's ascetic. But in the end, we can see that Yousef is not doing this simply for himself. His interest is in influencing other people to good behavior: and it works. He knows that everyone around him, including Kublai Khan, views him with awe. Then he manages to upstage himself. Marco reported false information to the Khan, which got men killed at the first siege of Chongqing: the city that Jia Sidao controls. Marco didn't know the information was false, but the people are demanding vengeance: so Marco is condemned. At the last moment, he thinks of a way to earn his redemption: giving the Khan schematics for a wall-destroying siege engine called a trebuchet. A normal catapult can't destroy a wall: it can't throw the stones hard enough or far enough. But a trebuchet uses spin to throw heavy objects faster and farther: so far out that it can't be hit reliably by archers, or even by a typical ballista. They're harder to make, more finicky to use, and crucially in this scenario: useless against personnel. They are not accurate enough to target even large groups of soldiers with any reliability, so they are useless for defense unless the attackers have built structures.  Still, someone must pay for the lives of the soldiers. Yousef sent Marco on the mission, but the Khan doesn't want to punish him. However, Yousef forces his hand by writing his own confession. This act of sacrifice is a message both to Kublai and to Marco. Yousef says to Kublai, that he should never let anyone avoid the consequences of their actions no matter how great they are or how dire the consequences. Yousef says to Marco, that no one is going to abandon him as long as he sticks with the Khan. You see, that's the thing about Marco that Kaidu and Ahmad and Jingim didn't understand: but which Kublai and Yousef did. Marco doesn't care whether people like him or whether they are good: he only cares that they don't abandon him. He's willing to protect, serve and care for people who have hurt him: so long as they don't abandon him.

Marco demonstrates this further by saving Jingim's life at the second Siege of Chongqing, without having been asked to. Jingim and Marco didn't exactly hit it off. Marco's honesty hurt Jingim's pride: and the Prince had it out for him for a while. But then, as he lay with arrows in his body among his men, Jingim heard an accented voice cry "Get to the Prince!" He was surrounded by shields, and lifted up while Marco and Byamba led some men in pushing the defenders back.  They were outnumbered, but the fight was personal to Marco in a way it hadn't been before. He'd only been fighting the Chinese before because he was told to, he couldn't care less about them. But now, he was fighting for his life: because if this siege of Chongqing failed then he would surely be executed. Better to die on the field. A man with nothing to lose is the most lethal kind of man: as military commanders, detectives and terrorists have always known. Marco Polo, at the second Siege of Chongqing, was a man with nothing to lose. Marco and Byamba push the attackers all the way back to the palace, with the rest of the Khan's men streaming in behind them. The Chinese fight well, but they're no match for the enraged Mongols. Finally, Jia Sidao is cornered but he too fights to the bitter end. The show gives Jia his well earned poetic justice, by having Hundred Eyes beat him at Grasshopper kung fu. Hundred Eyes being the ironically named blind Shaolin monk, whom the Khan keeps enslaved by threatening to destroy all of the Shaolin manuscripts if he leaves or disobeys.  The show is pretty unashamed of it's love for kung fu choreography, although it keeps the physics-defying stunts to a minimum.
The Siege was successful, and Marco doesn't just earn back his place as the Khan's agent. He gains the friendship of Prince Jingim as well. But most importantly he demonstrates his best quality: his willingness to help people who have hurt him. Marco is no saint, and does not think he is: but he does have this particular Christian virtue, even if there was a mundane reason why he has it.  This is something Kublai and the Mongols have never seen before, it's not something their culture encourages or teaches: but they understand that it's something to admire and try to replicate.
Ahmad is the perfect foil to Marco, because Ahmad parodies this trait. Ahmad appears to be gracious, easily helping people who have hurt him and being kind to people who have tried to be mean to him. But underneath the controlled exterior which has fooled everyone, Ahmad is seething. He's furious, so much so that he has dissociated: until the day when his real identity and the one that the Khan constructed for him collide. It happens when he unwittingly has sex with his mother. She has become a prostitute, the only way for a woman alone to support herself in those days, and he happens to encounter her in a brothel. The realization that he slept with his mother is too horrific, he goes into a psychotic rage and kills all the women including her. And then the rage calms, but the psychosis doesn't.

Yet, Ahmad has a good heart: he doesn't like the violence he is now capable of, the killer he has become. It's the ultimate recipe for making a killing machine: take a boy and strip him from his family, pamper him like a pet but never treat him as an equal. It's what the Ottomans did to the Janissaries, and before them the Persians did to the Immortals. Only Kublai Khan accidentally pointed the weapon he'd created at his own heart. Ahmad's internal conflict fuels his fetish: he wants to be tied up so he can be sure he won't hurt anyone, he wants to be dominated so as to be reassured that there isn't anything wrong with his dark desires. His masochism only enables his ruse, indeed it's the only way such a thing could work. When the Khan compliments him and gives him gifts, Ahmad reacts with genuine happiness. But the problem with reactions is that you can't actually tell what the person is reacting too: just whether or not it's genuine. Ahmad isn't lying, he is truly happy: he's just taking perverse pleasure in being humiliated and dominated rather than reacting out of true love. Ahmad can be patient in conditions that would have broken other peoples' resolve, because he isn't in constant pain. But he is furious and vengeful. The one thing Kublai does not understand about himself is that his love for Ahmad is born out of guilt for what he did to the people he conquered. Raising Ahmad is a way for Kublai to rationalize his Imperial ambitions in a paternalistic way, to see himself as bringing the light of civilization to other lands.

There is a lot to be said for the hybrid Mongol-Chinese culture that has grown up at the court in Cambulak: but the merits of this culture do not inherently justify imperialism. People should choose to take it on, not have it forced upon them. Kublai does genuinely love Ahmad, but his failure is in understanding that Ahmad can never reciprocate his love. Ahmad nearly tears apart the society that Kublai has worked so hard to build up. He made one simple mistake, and that was enough. He believed Mei Lin loyal to him, he believed she hated the Khan and was loyal to the Song Emperor. She wasn't. She only wanted her daughter. Mei Lin ended up helping to kill Ahmad: ah, excuse me, Jia Meilin, sister of Jia Sidao.

The show doesn't need to demonize Ahmad in order to tell this story, nor does it need to demonize the Jias. It doesn't even need to demonize Prince Nyan: the reformed pedophile brother of Kublai.  Prince Nyan and Ahmad are good men who have desires they don't like: they deal with these things in different ways. In many ways Nyan illustrates precisely what is wrong with Ahmad: he does not have any way to release his true feelings. Nyan's method is gruesome, but on both a physical and emotional level highly effective: he stabs his own hands, mimicking the Stigmata or wounds of Christ. Yep, he's Christian: having converted after being confronted with the damage his behavior was causing. His self-torture would in fact be effective at restraining his desires, and perhaps even works as a kind of Pavlovian conditioning (although this type of conditioning has only limited effectiveness in organisms of human-level intelligence). When you experience pain the brain releases cortisol, which counteracts any dopamine that might happen to be in your system. This stimulates the fight or flight response, which shuts down the sexual response really quickly. Because Nyan does this every time he feels the desire to molest a child, his brain would soon begin to associate the pain with the desire. This would be effective at restraining him from acting on the desire, and indeed he would probably react violently to the suggestion that he should act on it. But, the desire is only repressed, not vanished. Dogs can't repress their desires: they're incapable of lying about how they feel. But humans can repress their desires: they can act in a way that opposes how they feel sometimes without anyone being able to realize that.

Which brings me (I know, finally) back to Marco. When Marco kills the wolf that is about to rip Kublai's throat out, he's doing something he has every reason not to do. When he stabs Kaidu, Marco is doing something he has every reason not to do. When Marco saves Jingim, he's doing something he has ever reason not to do. But Marco knows that in each case he's doing the right thing. Or, as Kublai says, "the hard thing". This is Kublai's greatest strength as a ruler.  He's willing to do whatever is the right thing, regardless of how personally painful for him in might be. But for him, this is something learned: a duty that he is bound to because he is the Khan. For Marco, it's natural: Marco doesn't care if the people around him are morally good, he doesn't care if those people even like him. All he cares about is that they won't abandon him: because that's the one thing he can't stand the thought of. Marco needs a society, a community, and he'll do anything or overlook anything to get it. He'll brand his own father, stand by as his friend is hacked to pieces, fight to protect a man he doesn't like, betray a woman he loves, build a machine to destroy a city, rat out his mentor, etc. Kublai just by being Khan offers Marco what he needs: a supportive authority figure, a father figure. There's a reason we call kings "Sire", and it's because they're supposed to act this way towards their country.

Of course, it doesn't always happen that way: and that's the key problem with monarchy as a system of governance. It's not because all kings are bad but because nobody has the power to stop a bad one. Empire isn't bad because all Emperors are bad: but because Empire-building destroys people's lives and puts cultures at risk. The most benevolent and enlightened rulers in the world can't change that. There is no need to spin a false narrative that all absolute rulers are evil in order to criticize the idea of monarchy. There is no need to demonize every conqueror in order to criticize the idea of conquest, every emperor in order to criticize the idea of Empire.

The Dragon Prince Season 1: A trio of Trios

Three. For some reason, it's an extremely compelling number to us humans. It is embedded in religions across the world: from the trinity of gods at the heart of Hinduism, to the Holy Trinity of Christianity. Perhaps it is because our own consciousness has three parts. At least, so thought Sigmund Freud. In a way he was wrong, but also in a way he was right. He was wrong in thinking that the sections were quite distinct, and also about how unrelentingly dark the Id was. Freud was a Spencerian in his view of humans: He felt that humans were essentially evil, and that the Id was our most essential part. Therefore, any evil desires would necessarily belong to the Id. However, most philosophers now disagree: having seen first hand over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries how logic and reason can be twisted to produce horrific evil. Humans, it turns out, are neither essentially good nor essentially bad. Our Ids are just as complicated. But the way in which Freud was correct, was in thinking that this is our most essential part: the part that comes first. Now, typically the Freudian trio is used for comedic effect: with the id character's impulsiveness instigating the series of misadventures, while the ego character tries to stop things at every turn, and the superego character tries to mediate between the two. This is the heart and soul of the classic movie Ferris Bueller's Day Out: where Ferris represents the id, Janet represents the ego, and the principal represents the superego. Of course, it can be used for drama: as was excellently done in Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean and in The Hunger Games.

All of these stories have one thing in common: the female member of the trio-whether she represents the ego (like Hermione) or the superego (like Elizabeth Swan) or the id (like Katniss)-must choose between the two boys. The two boys, in addition to representing one of the three parts of consciousness also represent childhood and adulthood. Hermione's choice of Ron rather than Harry, represents her maturity: diplomatic, emotionally open Ron represents the superego, so choosing him represents a desire for ascension. For Katniss, choosing cool-headed Peeta who represents the ego over fiery Gale who represents the superego represents a desire for stability. For Elizabeth Swan, choosing Will over Jack represents a desire for authentic maturity rather than blustering swagger.

But in The Dragon Prince, all of that is thrown out of the window. Ezran represents the id, Callum the superego, and Rayla the ego. However, the two boys are children. Rayla doesn't need to choose one of them: in fact, she needs to protect them both. In fact, if any character is going to be choosing romantic partners in the coming seasons it will be Callum: he is getting to be old enough and isn't an outcast in his society. But he wouldn't be choosing between the two members of the trio, since Ezran is his adopted brother. He would be choosing between Rayla, and Claudia the villainous seductress (whom the first episode sets up as being his crush). It also wouldn't be a multi-episode arc (or three book/movie arc). 

This is unusual: a trio of characters who aren't a love triangle. It has become a signature of Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond, creators of this show and the beloved Avatar: the Last Airbender. There, because Sokka and Katara are brother and sister and Aang is a child: the usually tightly closed group of heroes is left slightly open.  Other recurring characters can form relationships with the heroes more easily. This allows more chances for character development and solo arcs.

 Like many other classic trios: Ezran, Callum and Rayla fulfill another trope. Big, Thin, and Short. This is a staple of comedy: but here it is used both for comic relief and for drama. Ezran is indeed grumpy, as the short guy tends to be: and being the youngest of the trio, he is also short. However, his age recasts his grumpiness as childishness: rather than being grating or curmudgeonly.  His pet toad Bait is also annoying, but again: the behavior is recast as the antics of a not-so-intelligent animal. Rayla, just like the classic Thin guy, is both genuinely kind and grumpy by turns. Her grumpiness however is clearly a defense mechanism: a way to keep herself from getting hurt in a society that isn't as compassionate as she is. Rayla, unlike the two boys, is selfless. She's ready to lose a body part, rather than kill Ezran. But the viewer can't hold the boys' selfishness against them: because they're children.

They are also Land, Sea and Sky. Rayla represents the Land, the shade of the forest canopy and a connection to nature. She fears water, which represents the way in which water can wear away landscapes. Callum represents sky: he carries the primal storm, has the most affinity for air and lightning magic, and he has mercurial moods which only Ezran can temper. Ezran represents the water: he has a fascination with it, has formed a close bond with an amphibian, and is emotionally sensitive. Like the classic Big guy, Callum is the consistently good-natured one in the party. Here though, this overlaps with the pure-hearted hero trope: Callum is unerringly and inherently virtuous, and even at such a young age he is able to persuade others to do the right thing. Which means, what we have here is another Jason and the Argonauts story: the story of a man becoming a king. The title of the show after all, has a certain unavoidable (and probably intentional) association. Sure, yes, it's clear from the first episode that it's there because the Dragon Prince egg is the McGuffin. So, like the Maltese Falcon, the show is named after the object that the characters all care about a great deal. But this egg means nothing to the audience.

The title however is meaningful to the audience because of it's association with the myth of King Arthur. And that is what we have here: we have an Arthurian legend, but quite a modern one. Pendragon, that's the surname associated with Arthur in the legends: and it roughly translates from Welsh as Dragon Prince (the word "pen" can have many different meanings, but one of them is "chief" which seems the most likely given that this is a person's name).  Here it isn't so much associated with the actual dragon egg, as with Callum: the prince with power of lightning and air. At the end of the season there is also an intrinsic association between Callum and the newly hatched dragon: because it was Callum's quick thinking and quick action which saved the baby dragon's life. Mages and dragons are also inherently connected: as magic requires using draconic words. Thus Callum is in many ways much more deeply connected to the dragon prince than any of the other characters.  But the first thing that the trio need to do is get the dragon prince back to his mother: the dragon Queen. This has incredible significance for their world, because it is the killing of the dragon King, and the loss of his only son that drives the war between the humans and the elves. Or at least, it was. Now, can three children correct centuries of racism and bitter blood feuds? can a single baby dragon make up for the thousands who were lost? Season 2 certainly isn't going to be boring.