Moon/Knight
Media Round-Up
The Follow [2001] / I Travelled 9000km to Give This To You [2007] /There's Only One Sun [2007] - I find it so fun how Wong Kar Wai will be doing something as random as an ad for a new DVD player and still make it a phenomenal film. WILD!
Everything Everywhere All At Once [2022] - Aside from my 1 (one) main issue with it, I loved this!!! Had me sobbing and devastated in the theatres!
Jamie Reimagined [2021] - Brittany Howard - This album is such a mixed bag but generally a good one!. Did not like the Childish Gambino song, loved some of the others. Regardless, for this to even exist shows Howard's tremendous talent!
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Oscar Isaac Hernandez Estrada stands in an elevator/lift as the world turns around him/them.
An older lady who just came from Asda/Walmart sees a man clearly in crisis and tries to get herself away as quickly and politely as possible to a flat/apartment to see her mate/buddy who is expecting her.
His flat/apartment building doesn’t seem like something you’d see in City Of/Greater London, but somehow it opens up to a market and we’re minutes away from the British Museum. There is a silliness to the abstractions clearly made to help out an American/international audience but I think there's also something more to it that comes through with this character. Everything about this episode feels unmoored. Even the sound mixing feels wrong/confusing.
“It was all an accident,” his creator, Doug Moench told fellow Moon Knight writer, Charlie Huston. “I didn’t say, ‘I’m going to sit down and create a Jewish character.’”
Moon Knight* is a white* Jewish man, who becomes the vessel for an Ancient Egyptian god, being played by a Guatemalan/Cuban/American man in a show set in London/Egypt/other places around the globe. I think the casting here is also indicative of a thing where Hollywood/America understands the Jewish men they allow through the door as (to put it bluntly) funny-looking white/White guys. It’s something you can see whenever someone talks about 'unconventionally attractive celebrities' and it ends up just being a list of men whose only not-conventionally-attractive features are a bigger nose or slightly different hair texture. This conveniently lines up with how Hollywood/the West understands the few (usually lighter-skinned and thin) Latine men allowed to be anything other than dangerous/violent.
Its ownership of a small percentage of its most famous objects originating in other countries is disputed and remains the subject of international controversy through repatriation claims, most notably in the case of the Elgin Marbles of Greece,[7] and the Rosetta Stone of Egypt.
Significant portions of the first episode even take place at the British Museum. It’s a building that has a…complicated relationship with its objects. On the one hand, it’s a monument/altar to the endless pillaging and colonial/civilised violence which have forcibly moved so much of the beauty/wealth of the imperial periphery into the imperial core for its citizens/children to ogle at. On the other hand, it’s one of the better/less awful museums when it comes to being a mostly free and accessible space, while also providing context/half-apologies about how these items were acquired. I wonder if the irony was lost on the people working on this show, who have also clearly done just enough research on ancient Egyptian mythology and DID to not be completely lambasted by mainstream audiences - but are still very much leaning into using those exotic/strange things for spectacle.
That Marvel Moon Knight is going to upset me, chile lemme mind my business and go read the Lemire run lol
This was meant to be longer/have more to it, but I didn’t continue the show, not because of any moral objection, I just got bored and distracted? Just like how I got distracted and didn’t release this till now. Moon Knight is a character I’ve generally been pretty invested in and the last issue of the Lemire run is my favourite single issue of a comic book that I’ve ever read. Also, I’m generally a big fan of Oscar Isaac and his powerful charisma. So I was expecting this show to give me some big emotional reaction, even if that was a blazing hatred, and it just….didn’t. So I guess I’ll go back to ignoring the MCU and watching my silly little films.
I’m less online lately, but whsiper on the winds and maybe you’ll fine me! Always appreciate your support whether that’s verbal, financial (ko-fi.com/tayowrites) or whatever else.