Video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdDsHIdIiUg

​

What is murder:

To start with understanding the dynamic, we first need to take a look at what qualifies as murder. The The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition, defines the noun murder as "the killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the crime of killing a person with malice aforethought or with recklessness manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life", while their definition of the verb murder is "to kill (another human) in an act of murder" and "to put an end to; destroy".

Something important to note is the distinction between murder and killing, and we will take a look at the morality of killing aswell. It's also important to notify that murder is specifically defined as killing of another person and not killing of another human. Person holds a different meaning than human.

What is a person:

This obviously brings forth the question, what is a person contra a human? A human is an organism which shares homosapien DNA. It's a scientific term which doesn't hold any moral value, while person is the other way around. The definition we'll use of persons goes as follows, "beings who are part of our moral community", which can be explained more simply as someone who is worth moral consideration.

We all view ourselves as persons, but what qualifies someone as a person is a very tricky question with many different answers. What makes someone qualify for moral consideration? Some people argue that it's natural given to all human beings, others argue it's naturally given to all living beings. Then we have the other side of the discussion, which argues that there are requirements, that something needs a certain capacity (capacity x), to be considered a person. Now what is this capacity? Examples are the capacity to experience a continuity of identity or possessing self-knowledge; having a sense of time or centiant reactions to one's environment. On top of that, some argue that some traits or capacities disqualifies a being from being counted as a person. Bigots may argue that going against the general norm of society disqualifies someone as a person, while others would argue that a continual and aware possession of authority over other persons disqualifies someone as a person.

Is murder acceptable:

Now having gone through the backbones to build a take on the real question, let's discover it. Is murder ever morally good? The short answer is no, and that is specifically because murder is the killing of a person and not just of a human.

However, this brings forth an even more interesting question, is killing another human being ever morally good? We're no longer limiting ourselves to murder, which means that the discussion becomes a lot more complicated. As morality is subjective, it is very possible to make the killing of another human a morally good action. All that's needed is to disqualify the human in question from being considered a person. We've seen this in action many times, where humans have commited genocides on other humans without feeling a moral dilemma. Take Nazi Germany, United Kingdoms, Sweden, the States, Canada, the KKK or Japan. The list goes on and on and on, but governments and organisations have commited mass murders, genocides, without feeling any moral dilemma.

My take:

We've taken a look on this matter from a non-personal perspective, but before we end this video I'd like to go through my personal take on the question of killing other humans. I would argue that personhood is achieved through having self-knowledge and that personhood is removed by continually and awarely possessing and practising authority over persons. What this means in practice has been explained by one of my favourite bands, Operation, in theri song Militant Kamp. "[...] ibland när nöden kräver det måste man ta livet av en förtryckare för att ge liv och möjligheter till de som förtrycks. Att ta livet av en tyrann i kampen kan inte på något sätt betraktas som mord, det måste ses som en politisk handling."

Translating this to English it means "[...] sometimes when the need is there one must take the life of an oppressor to give possibilities to those who are oppressed. To take the life of a tyrant in the battle can not in any ways be seen as murder, it must be seen as political activism.".

I would most certainly argue that there are occasions where taking the life of another human being is justified. Those occasions are when it's needed for the liberation of the oppressed, specifically in the killing of the oppressors. As long as the harm being done by a political action is less than the harm the current system, the current rulers, are making, the harm is justified. Killing a politician or a bourgeoisie, when no other direct actions bring fruit of change, is most certainly a justifiable action according to me.

Sources:

Definitions of murder, by The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition - https://www.wordnik.com/words/murder

Abortion and Personhood: What the Moral Dilemma Is Really About, by Big Think - https://bigthink.com/videos/glenn-cohen-on-the-ethics-on-abortion/

Personhood: Crash Course Philosophy #21, by CrashCourse - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxM9BZeRrUI

Militant Kamp, by Operation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6GAV9D59qo

I've been getting really into folk and punk, so I did a pop punk cover of one of my favorite folk songs by the great Tom Paxton

https://youtu.be/cRRw\_ZOsa80

Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbo33m5JvW0

Text: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/return-fire-division-of-labour

https://youtu.be/stkPKWEzZR0

Video form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_BhBDDkXB8

​

The video script:

The Backstory:

Estella lived the earliest parts of her life in a semi-rural area of England, where she always stood out from the rest of the local girls her age. She stood up for herself and constantly got in trouble, ending up with her getting expelled and she and her mom moved over to London. However, her mom needs them to go to one of her old contacts first, where Estella manages to get in trouble, lose her mothers family necklace and, from her perspective, kill her mother. This is however her being chased by dogs and her mother talks with her biological mother who then takes the opportunity seeing the dogs running to make them kill Estella's mother (not the biological one).

Estella runs off to London by jumping into a moving truck, where she now was a homeless orphan. When she wakes up she's introduced to two other homeless orphans, who're pickpocketing and stealing the change in fountains. These two children end up becoming her closests friends.

They got closer to each other, creating their own family, where they learnt to steal without getting caught, stealing in more ways than just pickpocketing and fountain diving. Estella designed disguises for them, oh I forgot to say that Estella wanted to be a fashion designer? My bad. Anyway, one of her partners in crime notices how she dreams of being a big fashion designer and pulls some strings to get her into an entry-level position at London's largest fashion company. Liberty of London.

Not to just tell the entire film, so let's summarise the rest. She gets fired from her boot licking boss, gets the interest of the biggest fashion designer of England or something. Starts working there, climes the hierarchy, finds out her new boss, who's later revealed as her biological mother, killed her mother, and stole the necklace, while also stealing her ideas and taking all the credit, Estella takes back Cruella (riiight, forgot to tell you all about Cruella. She's Estella's persona, the name coming from her old nickname to her more mysterious side, who's not afraid to wreak havoc in her way.), Cruella and her boss have a long fight and Cruella wins by framing her boss for murder.

Poverty:

At the beginning of the film we get a picture of how poverty could look like in London during the 60's and 70's, which 27% of UKs population suffered with during the 70's, comparable with 32,4% of UKs population during the first half of the 00's. This is later becoming less and less of a focus in the film, as Estella is getting her financial situation fixed more and more by climbing the hierarchy of the company.

Before Estella is given a job by the Barriness, aka her next boss/mother murderer, she's working an "entry-level" where she's being treated like literal rubbish by her manager. This is something everyone that's worked on the floor can relate to. Having a shitty manager is far from unheard of, and it gives us a view on the everyday life for the regular worker in London. During a night drinking she ends up trying to partially get back at her manager, while also making a statement through art, by a form of workers direct action known as sabotage. Not to speak of all her years living as a criminal to get food on the tables.

Later into the film the aspect of poverty is removed, and Cruella de Vil ends up owning a mansion with her family. A classic ending to a Disney film. Poverty is ignored, thrown in the bin, and everything just solves itself for the main character and they get rich. Such a cliche. A liberal lie, propaganda even, which nullifies the entire storys potential for a greater meaning and makes it suitable for massconsumtion in the eyes of the bourgeoisie.

Punk/Alt:

Throughout the film we see a lot of different punk and alternative looks. Estella have primarily punk and some more widely alt looks, while Cruella is inspired by a more goth, crust and deathrock look. Her friends have more of a crust punk look, and Artie, whom we will get back to, have a lot more glam style.

Although all the alternative fashion, there's very little subcultures in the film. The music is just basic rock, and is sparingly used, and the closest we get to any representation of subcultures is the fashion show disguised as a rock show.

Why am I analysing the subculture representation though? Rather frankly, because a lot of people who speak positively of the film like to point to how it gives a better look to subcultures. Truth be told, the film doesn't show anything about the subcultures people think are being represented. The subcultures which are being represented are the designer subculture and a tiny bit of the pop-rock subculture. Which some people might not think is a big deal, but the film took the attention of many subcultures, and just disappointed us with having nothing more than fashion representation.

The fact that the punk culture has a distinct hate of authority and do not tolerate the way Cruella treated her family throughout a lot of the film, or how she's doing all of this for nothing more than revenge for herself and had no point towards trying to crush authority. The fact that the goth community is being shown as nothing but quirky pop-rockers, despite the very huge distinction between goth-rock and pop-rock, one being well known to just sell out itself and the other being more known to not sell out and have political lyrics.

It's a mainstream idea of the punk and goth communities, being collected into a pile of fashion representation that still goes well in the mainstream's eyes. With other words, an awful representation of subcultures.

Fashion industry/Capitalism:

In the early middle of the film we get to see how Estella is working herself tiredless to climb the social hierarchy in her new workplace. Not taking all of her breaks and despite all her hard work not being given any real credit for her work. We also get to see the classical depiction of the CEO of a company, bashing down on all the workers and middle-men for their interest. All of this is blatantly obvious and not hidden from us at all, but is later not spoken more of and works more as a clarification of who's the villain and as a bait for people who's having issues with the system. It's not spoken more of in the rest of the film though, and rather works as plot than anything, as it does with films made from gigantic film producers.

Consumerism is a gigantic part of the actual fashion industry, and the media. Examples that we see consumerism in fashion is through people arguing that others have no sense of fashion or that they're fashion illiterate. We've all met these people, and Estella, Cruella, her co-workers and her bosses are no exceptions to this. It's a focus on creating new trends which others follow, and never about just expressing oneself.

There's a very clear consumeristic feel to everything happening in the story, where we're shown a lot of different dresses, styles, make-ups and fashion variations, and a never-ending battle with creating new content for the masses to consume. This is clear in the fashion battles between Cruella and her biological mother. Both in all the dresses being made, but also with the media playing a huge role where it's all about making flashy headlines for the masses to consume. It's not very spoken of, but I'd argue that the film gives a great example of how the media of consumerism works through focusing on a lot of drama.

Queer side character + Queer baiting:

We previously named Artie, well, it's finally time to talk about them. Artie is given a very androganous and queer look, with a fair amount of similarities to David Bowie. In the second official trailer there's a short clip with them, which worked great to catch the attention of queers and allies. It's far from hot news that film companies love their queer baiting, and Cruella was no exception. Artie primarily became the queer character that was given no real plot, and only got shown in a few scenes.

Incase some of you aren't fully familiar with what queer baiting is, let me just quickly summarise it. Queer baiting is a marketing ploy made by media companies where they give, for a shorter period of time, an impression that they will have queer representation which they never follow up to. Queer baiting isn't the same as poor queer representation, which is a common missconception, cause in the case of poor queer representation there is still representation, although poor such, while in queer baiting there never comes any actual representation. Rick Hill, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a faculty member of the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing, describes queer baiting as a marketing ploy that nods at queerness but never actually delivers queerness.

My opinions:

On a finishing note I'd like to give my personal opinions on the film. It's not exactly a shock that a Disney film lacks any queer representation, social critique or actual realism to how the workers struggle and how music circled subcultures actually look like. It's delibetry made to catch the attention of queers, allies and people of subcultures, but gives absolutely nothing to them than just another film filled of neo-liberal ideology.

It's a fun show to watch when trying to escape reality, but it's by no means a film unlike others. I can enjoy the film overall, but it's by no means a film that motivates people to move further towards the actions needed to liberate humanity from the shackles of capitalism and statism, from authority all together. If you're interested in a film that's giving a lot more critique towards society, I'd recommend Pride. It's not an anarchist film, but it's certainly a lot more of a leftist film than Cruella or other mainstream films made to feed the consumerism of the capitalist film industry.

Sources:

Cruella (2021) - https://www1.bflix.top/movie/cruella-39603

Cruella (Official Trailer #2) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpZrVxvG3mk

Poverty and wealth across Britain 1968 to 2005, by JRF - https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/poverty-and-wealth-across-britain-1968-2005

What Is Queerbaiting? Here's What the Manipulative Marketing Tactic Looks Like—and Why It's Harmful, by Colleen Murphy - https://www.health.com/mind-body/lgbtq-health/queerbaiting

Consumerism, Pandemic and The Fashion Industry, by Tejaswi Marripudi - https://fashionlawjournal.com/consumerism-pandemic-and-the-fashion-industry/

Cruella (film) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruella_(film)

I didn't write a proper script for this video, so I'll simply leave you with the link to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZR5n6Y7i9s

My longest video so far. Hope you like it!

https://youtu.be/5dPoZtsjqhI

New Song Encouraging Ppl To Let The Roe Decision Radicalize Them

https://youtu.be/em9Fft2zj8A

I've got a Facebook page for progressives in our area which is a very conservative rural place. We don't have very many likes yet and probably won't get that many given there aren't many progressives. But I want to try to keep the page active and engaged. So I'm trying to find someone who would be able to help manage it by sharing progressive news and memes regularly to it.

If you're interested, let me know.

r/communistwriting. go check it out!

https://youtu.be/7x2QNSq3ozg

Hey comrades, we recorded episode where we talked with Julie Klinger about the geography and geopolitics of mining rare earth elements around the globe and beyond, in space!

If this sounds interesting to you then check it out here https://lenesxradio.ro/episodes/024/lenesx-024-julie-klinger-rare-earth-frontiers-EN.html. There's a list of links to all of the podcast platforms where you can check it out if you have any specific preference.

Cheers!

If anyone in this sub happens to be from the region I would appreciate your comments!

https://youtu.be/6bVt6Ctf0lk

I am pretty proud of this video, and I got a bunch of other creators to do voices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE617qHso6k&lc=UgwtMnTIgyuCqFZBHpl4AaABAg

This is just an honest rant about life and society as a queer anarchist. There is no script, no thoughts, just an honest rant. I'll be frankly honest and admit, I don't expect anyone to watch this, but I'm putting it out there anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kPPrw4Qn8I

My first long-form essay style video.

https://youtu.be/SNG1dfp_vqE

https://youtu.be/neYHzfLHSXA

https://youtu.be/8kOaiLXQvF4

https://youtu.be/J6mQbRpCVi4

https://youtu.be/BzYO3hN3AHY

https://youtu.be/QqezEYYBc9E

https://youtu.be/oOSzo4hF-l4

https://youtu.be/SWIdIfW7NFA

https://youtu.be/9Q-YWaHM_r0

https://youtu.be/JiXk5Fiegxw

I mix of the personal the scientific and the political, I hope you like it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8_O1reY3qc

https://youtu.be/BUk4vtNXpM4

https://youtu.be/8qAYfRxUED0