Got to finish up watching I'm A Virgo, and I cannot stress enough how far beyond anything else it is. I'm trying to find the words to make more people see it, because there are certain works of art which are important in far reaching ways, and this is one of them.
And the thing is, not every kind of important art is accessible, watchable, easy to engage with and easy to understand, but this one is. It's a show about black experiences which literalizes them into the surreal, giving us a thirteen foot tall protagonist and that's just the start of it. It's a show about social justice, inequality, liberation, unity, and overcoming capitalism - which appears to somehow serve these truths uncompromised by simpering and kowtowing to the system which produced it, which feels miraculous by itself, before even approaching how beautiful and human it is in every regard.
I'm A Virgo doesn't sink to poverty porn, does not dismiss important questions, and doesn't pretend to have easy answers. But what it does do is promise change and improvement and possible, and layers itself thick with luscious metaphors turned into something real and visible.
I'm A Virgo is a story about a thirteen foot tall black man at the heart of a fomenting revolution in a world that sees him as a monster and anyone around him as criminals, which wants to exploit him as much as it wants to objectify him, to do anything but give him his agency while he's pulled in three directions at once by people trying to help.
It's also just about a bunch of teenage friends growing up. It's the large writ huge and the small space of the heart in technicolor symphony. There are many pieces of media trying and failing to do just a tenth of what this one accomplishes with grace and style.
These are just words and are not enough, but I'll go ahead and implore you, make this the next thing you see.
The democrats
Student: “Well, I’m studying because I think the death penalty is a horrific thing, and I wanna do something about it.”
Cootie: “Like what?”
Student: “It’ll be a while until it’s abolished all over.”
Cootie: “Okay.”
Student: “So I’m studying to be an executioner.”
Cootie: “Oh.”
Student: “Capital punishment is such a horrific thing. If I can, as an executioner, change things up a a little bit, making their deaths a little less painful, that’s a victory.”
Cootie: “But they’ll still be…”
Student: “Most executioners use the Harcourt method. The prisoner lays down, they’re strapped in, they wrap the tourniquet, and immediately inject at a 36-degree angle into the vein. The Stavlisi Method is more humane. The prisoner’s strapped in, tourniquet applied, we place our left hand on the heart of the prisoner, so they don’t feel alone, and then we inject at a more awkward for us, but gentler for them, 20-degree angle.”
Cootie: “I don’t… I don’t see how that…
Student: "Some people go for pie in the sky, I just want practical solutions.”
holy shit holy shit holy shit
just watched the first episode of ‘i’m a virgo’ and oh man ok i’m so in
characters in media are not real life humans oh my goooooooooooodddddd narrative matters
the more i’ve been getting into spider-man, the more i keep thinking back to the very first thing i heard about spider-man when i was a kid
this probably would’ve been around when the movie released in 2002, when i was in first grade. i distinctly remember hearing some kid on the bus saying that spider-man shoots his webs by doing sign language for “i love you” because he loves his girlfriend SO MUCH!!
i didn’t know anything about spider-man at the time so it seemed plausible. pretty cool that he loves her so much he basically thinks about her every time he shoots his webs
years and years went by and i didn’t even start getting into spider-man until after high school, and the more i get into it, the more i realize that it literally never comes up that he’s signing “i love you” to shoot webs. out of all the adaptations i’ve seen, and now the original comics, it’s never there. starting to think that was just not true. i guess that kid was either lying or confused. got the sign language part right though apparently? but it’s just a coincidence
but you know what? somewhere out there in the spider-verse, i’m sure there’s a spider person who uses sign language and is intentionally signing “i love you” whenever they shoot webs