This year, I saw both Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow and Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest. I highly recommend watching both of these films. If you want to go in fresh, stop reading here.

If you're unfamiliar with I Saw the TV Glow, I would describe it as being a sort of "coming-of-age" horror movie. Owen (played by Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) are high schoolers in 1990's America who bond over their favorite television show, The Pink Opaque. Their shared interest involves into something strange and exciting, with Maddy believing she and Owen are the show's protagonists, Isabel and Tara. Owen is uncertain. Maddy heeds the call. Owen does not. In an interview with Juan Barquin at Reverse Shot, Schoenbrun describes her film as being "deeply trans."

If you're unfamiliar with The Zone of Interest, it is a historical drama that details the life of Rudolf Höss and his family as they live in the "zone of interest" directly outside of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The focus is on the domestic lives of Rudolf, his wife Hedwig, and their five children. The horrors of the holocaust loudly unfold on the other side of their pristine compound's walls. In The Hollywood Reporter, Glazer describes his intent with the film:

“The more I read about these people, the Höss family, the more they became demystified to me,” says Glazer. “So much cinema, particularly to do with the Holocaust, shows the perpetrators as almost mythologically evil. I realized I wanted to make a film about these people and their ordinariness. I didn’t want to glorify or fetishize them by accident.”

I think both of these films do an excellent job of illustrating how families facilitate social reproduction.

Social reproduction in Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow

Owen's father, Frank (played by Fred Durst), permits him to attend a sleepover at his friend's house. Frank says he's a good kid, so why not.

When a teenage Owen asks his father if he can stay up to watch The Pink Opaque, his father asks him in turn, "isn't that show for girls?" The discussion ends.

Owen's mother, Brenda (played by Danielle Deadwyler), gently reassures Owen he's "on the right path."

Later on, Brenda passes. It's just Owen and Frank at home.

Typically, whenever we see Frank at home, he's sitting on the couch watching television.

We see Frank at his most intense when he discovers his son sticking halfway inside the television. He pulls Owen out, forces him under the sink. Owen screams "This isn't my home! You're not my father!"

The film centers on Owen, and the viewer sees the hidden world of The Pink Opaque that Owen is alienated from. We see how deeply Owen stifles and represses himself. So when Owen is physically held back from leaving "the midnight realm" by his father, it can be understood that he is also metaphorically being held back.

But, if we look at the same scene from Frank's perspective, I think it's understandable that Frank believes he is helping Owen. Owen is screaming, halfway stuck in a TV. Frank pulls Owen out. Owen is in distress. Owen vomits into the sink.

I think it's important to note that we never see Frank yelling or screaming or beating or displaying any of the other hallmarks of a television abusive father. Owen is still explicitly terrified of Frank. It's a soft, subdued power. It might even look like love from the outside. Maybe it is love? Hard to say what's in Frank's heart. He says Owen is a good kid. Owen is on the right path.

Owen grows up to be similar to his father. Frank is successful in his social reproduction. Frank is reproduced. Owen watches television, Owen has a family. At least, he states he has a family. The viewer doesn't see the family. Some viewers interpret this as Owen lying about having a family.

I interpret it as Owen having a family, but the family is not important to who Owen is. Similar to how Frank's family was not important to who he was. It was just "the right path." Everybody grows up and has to be a man. That means having a family. That means having a career. Boys watch boy shows, girls watch girl shows.

So Owen grows up to be like his father Frank. Owen outwardly displays the same values as Frank. Owen represses himself to be more like Frank.

You never see Frank happy.

There's a scene towards the end of the film, when Owen works at the arcade. There's a little fat kid in a money booth. He's grabbing dollar bills and everybody is cheering him on. "Money money money!"

Social reproduction in Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest

There is a scene where the older Höss son locks his younger brother in the family greenhouse. The younger boy pounds on the door, begs to be released. It resembles the typical intra-family sibling bullying that many of us grew up with. Then, however, the older boy begins to hiss and hiss.

He's playing gas chamber. Just like his old pop.

The film ends with Rudolf Höss attending a Schutzstaffel social function. The next day he retches in the stairwell of his office, alone. The viewer is presented with footage of the present-day Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

In the real world outside of the film, the war is won. Höss is hanged at Auschwitz in 1947. Before his execution, he writes farewell to his family.

To his wife:

Based on my present knowledge I can see today clearly, severely and bitterly for me, that the entire ideology about the world in which I believed so firmly and unswervingly was based on completely wrong premises and had to absolutely collapse one day. And so my actions in the service of this ideology were completely wrong, even though I faithfully believed the idea was correct. Now it was very logical that strong doubts grew within me, and whether my turning away from my belief in God was based on completely wrong premises. It was a hard struggle. But I have again found my faith in my God.

To his eldest son, the one we see in the film pretending to gas his younger brother:

Keep your good heart. Become a person who lets himself be guided primarily by warmth and humanity. Learn to think and judge for yourself, responsibly. Don't accept everything without criticism and as absolutely true... The biggest mistake of my life was that I believed everything faithfully which came from the top, and I didn't dare to have the least bit of doubt about the truth of that which was presented to me. ... In all your undertakings, don't just let your mind speak, but listen above all to the voice in your heart.

None of that is in the film, however. What we see in the film is a man who, by the standards of Nazi Germany, is a successful family man. He has a wife, children, a government career, power, prestige. His children look up to him and want to emulate him.

By the standards of Nazi Germany, this is the right path.

It would seem that he was able to carry out his orders without issue. Höss shows regret for his actions only while he awaits execution. He hints at a "voice in his heart" in his letter to his son. A voice we can presume he stifled and repressed, in a fashion only metaphorically similar to the way he physically repressed the prisoners under his command.

Glazer won an Oscar for The Zone of Interest. He used his acceptance speech to denounce dehumanization.

Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people

Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?

All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present. Not to say, ‘Look what they did then,’ rather, ‘Look what we do now.’ Our film shows where dehumanization leads, at its worst.

social reproduction from high up above

When I walk downtown, I see stickers stating "If you've ever wondered what you would be doing during the Holocaust, it's what you're doing right now."

I live in Seattle. Previously, I wrote about Amazon and Google's role in supporting the Israeli Department of Defense. When I tell people about Project Nimbus, it's usually news to them. Amazon doesn't like talking about it, and it's easy to imagine why. Israel-Palestine is a touchy subject. Bad optics.

So, it seems like some people still have that little voice in their heart. Some people are able to recognize when somebody else is trying to get them to reproduce values that aren't their own. Ethno-nationalist values, Christian values, imperialist values, capitalist values, all sorts of values out there. They enter your enter in overt and covert ways.

social reproduction closer to the ground

It's not just the big powerful people who want you to reproduce their values. Mom and dad want to impart their values too.

Sometimes mom and dad are right, e.g. "you should eat more vegetables." Sometimes mom and dad are wrong, e.g. "you should follow in my footsteps."

Pamela Paul over at the New York Times recently published an op-ed: Why Is the U.S. Still Pretending We Know Gender-Affirming Care Works?. Paul's work has previously been cited in legal filings in support of bans on gender-affirming care for trans children.

It seems to me that a lot of the controversy over gender-affirming care for trans children comes down to parents asserting they have the right to control their children's medical care. "Parents want what they think is best for their children." This line of thinking is how social reproduction operates within the family structure. Everyone working towards the best interests of themselves and their loved ones.

What do those "best interests" look like if you're a white American man like Frank, whose son is mixed-race and is showing interest in feminine things?

What do those "best interests" look like if you're a Nazi like Rudolf Höss, whose position as the commander of Auschwitz affords him prestige and a picturesque "Aryan" family?

What do those "best interests" look like for you, in your position?

I have plenty more to say about social reproduction and societal values, but I think I'll end this post here for now. This has been sitting in my drafts long enough.

a link

From KUOW: ‘I share your disgust.’ Texts show Seattle Mayor Harrell, rich neighbor discussing Denny Blaine

The day has been saved, as far as Denny Blaine Beach is concerned. Now for the cherry on top: the texts between Mayor Harrell and Mr. Sloan.

I recommend reading it. It's funny to see how slimy Sloan is, and how much a groveling wimp the mayor is. That's life at the top.

With the continued bizarre behavior and progressively getting worse, that fundamentally, enforced rules MUST be established and enforced. What is happening because there aren’t enforced rules, Denny Blaine Park is an attraction for a subgroup of people from all over, not just Seattle, that have very different morals than most of the people in Seattle, you and me included.

You may be a part of this immoral sub-group that the waterfront socialite crowd disdains. Something to consider.