Wandavision is hitting me in the feels because being stuck inside trying to be happy and "normal" whilst the world falls apart and trying to process loss through fiction has basically been my life.

I think a lot of EngLit critique 101 emphasises the importance of neatness for allegories. That things should be 1:1 in order to "work". So you have people arguing that Dorothy is America and the yellow brick road is the New Deal and the wizard is the president or whatever.

And increasingly I just don't think that's how my emotions are wired. Blunt obvious palette swap versions of real world events or simple 1:1 allegories just don't punch me in my feels in the same way as something a little bit more... refracted and abstract.

And perhaps it's that I don't want to look at and examine certain experiences front on. I don't want to hold them to the light. So this sort of indirect theming, where certain emotions briefly align and are evocative at the same time it is just about a whole list of other things.

Wandavision is also drawing on all sorts of cultural touchstones, offering commentary on idealisation and mythology about suburban life as told through sitcoms. It's also about a robot and a witch being in love. It's also about this Big Philosophical Ideas of self and memory.

But that's the thing? There's all this other stuff to distract me (and that stuff is good and interesting), even whilst these hooks get under my skin. That feeling of, well, being cheerful and normal whilst things are deep down not entirely cheerful and normal.

That fiction is a balm, a drug, an illusion, a cure, a disease. All at the same time. That mythology and mirrors are that. It's an intoxicating mix. But I can't look at it too long. Back to the oh yes, commentary on the artificiality of American suburbs, excellent.

This isn't to say allegories are always bad? More that I think I've often approached critiquing them in this 1:1 CODEBREAKING sort of way. And often we talk about deficiencies in them because they fall short on being exactly right.

Eg. X-men's mutations are not a good allegory for being gay because powers usually hurt other people and gay people are themselves more likely to be vulnerable to being hurt by their families. Etc.

And it's not that I think all of this genre of critique is invalid, I stress. But I sort of feel it can miss the point that it's not the totality of an experience or identity that is being transposed & incorporated into a story. As a single ingredient of a complex stew of feels.

So returning to the point I started with, I can point out numerous ways in which Wanda's experience is completely different to my last year. Duh. She's a reality-bending witch in love with a dead robot living in a dreamscape made of stitched together sitcoms. I am not.

But it's that moment of, oh, yes this hits that same note. This tune. Somehow the instruments are all different but you've played the same note and I recognise it.