18: Alone, Kipo
CW: Animal murder
We watch Alone sometimes:
a U.S. survival reality show where contestants are placed miles apart in a wilderness. The prize is half a million dollars. Each person is allowed to bring some items to help them live; for example, a crossbow, a fire starter, a tarp. We watch them break down trees to make camp, string hooks onto fishing lines, build snares to catch hares and squirrels. The competitors must film themselves throughout all this, and share a weird layer of YouTube vlogger affectations, the direct address. As the days pass, people get desperate, shed fat, cry. It’s fucking strange to witness a woman thank a rabbit she has murdered, then harvest the hide to stitch a puppet, stick her hand into the body and move its head and open and close its mouth, in a way that feels viscerally not right. It’s not a vegan show. There are mice flattened by rocks; fish thrash; grouse are speared. When snow and ice locks in, and traps are no longer working, one person harvests moss. Another strips bark.
So many people drop out — are forced to drop out by medics who check their vitals and BMI ratios weekly. I think about the people on this show: usually white, typically lower-to-middle class. Some seem like they want this experience as a testament to their strength, a marathon certification, a blessing from the universe. But some break when they realize they can’t stay. They don’t want to embarrass their family, and worst, they need this money, this transformative sum that could sustain and elevate the lives of their loved ones. As they halt before the medics, they are sobbing. They grieve.
It’s there that I feel most complicit as a consumer of a capitalist product. The Hunger Games with a cash prize. No battle royale needed. Just starve them, and watch.
Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts is an antidote.
There are two seasons on Netflix. It’s animated and YA and is warm, effervescent, and full of visual comedy — Mandu the pig gleefully eating her way through towers of Cheetos puffs, for one. Much of the cast is Black, East Asian, POC. Some are queer. And while I can’t understand Kipo, emphatically an Aries, her invincible cheer and compassion, the arcs make sense, with complex layers. Kindness is bright. I recommend it if you like kawaii cats, animals, and sci-fi post-apocalypses.
Black lives matter.
All cops are bastards. Fuck the police. White supremacy takes so many forms, but it’s especially insidious when it’s completely invisible.
That’s why Baited with Ziwe is great. She surfaces those threads and asks you to confront your discomfort and your complicity.
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