We have over a hundred humorous greetings you can choose from if you want to make the birthday boy or girl laugh this special day. That's true of any art, but particularly so here.If you’re looking for funny birthday memes for your friends and loved ones, you’re in the right place. Therefore, it's just as likely that the ending of Bly Manor can be perceived as harmful or inspiring depending on the viewer's own personal experiences. Writer Eve Sedgwick argues (in Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire) that our understanding of the Gothic genre and its relationship with queerness depends largely on the reader's own identity. Gothic narratives are characterised by transgression, breaking down the barriers between worlds, be it class, sexuality, or the natural vs the supernatural. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Others suggest that the monsters who inhabit these tales symbolise homosexuality, a monstrous affliction that must be expunged and destroyed (according to society at the time). Some critics argue that writers reshaped their forbidden desires into supernatural narratives which could reflect their feelings of isolation and otherness (see Elaine Showalter's Dr Jekyll's Closet). Gothic literature shares a complicated relationship with queerness. Why Bly Manor includes fewer ghosts in second half Or does this ending simply honour the Gothic tradition? In comparison, The Haunting of Hill House ends on a more positive note for Theo, another queer character who enjoys a happy ending of sorts with her lover, Trish.
True, Jamie's character lives on, and Dani's story therefore lives on through her, but it's still hard to reconcile the beautiful relationship they shared with the awful way it ends. They too are consumed by the pain that societal norms inflict in combination with discrimination and isolation. Instead, this battle ends up taking Dani's life, much like the disproportionate number of queer people who die by suicide. If Dani had been able to overcome Viola, or at the very least, accept her, then this could have been a touching rumination on the internal struggles queer people face. Queer people who have been forced to hide their true selves can relate to this kind of duality, often resenting their queerness to the point of suppression and "othering". But then Dani is later haunted by a female spirit, one she describes as a monstrous beast that hides deep inside her. It's a beautiful, touching scene which explores the pressures queer people faced then (and now), filtered through a gorgeous, Gothic lens.
It's telling that he vanishes for good once Dani finally gives into her impulses and kisses Jamie, living her true authentic self as a queer woman. Throughout the first half of the season, she's haunted by the ghost of her dead fiancé, a man who she never truly loved in the way she wanted. So is this true of Bly Manor? Does Dani's death perpetuate harmful, outdated tropes like this? Well, it's easy to read Dani's arc as one of queer repression. There's nothing wrong with killing queer characters in theory, they should be treated like everyone else, but when they're the only ones representing queerness on a show, their deaths also remove the only positive representation within that narrative. While discussions around LGBTQ+ representation have progressed a great deal in recent years, there's still much work to be done, especially when it comes to harmful tropes like 'Bury Your Gays'.Įssentially, this term gives voice to the the idea that queer characters are more expendable than their straight counterparts, something which is particularly harmful given that stories in general are still weighted towards heterosexual protagonists. This might not have come as a surprise to queer viewers long used to seeing plots of this nature end in pain and suffering.
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