Death of the Author 

I can't get over how the author was like "The boys of this book are not horrible horny beasts. They are sensitive romantics" and he wrote them stealing used tampons. I'm fully convinced the author should not be anywhere near a young woman or girl ever.

The icky way teenage girls are sexualized kinda makes me happy I was mostly a non-entity to my peers during that time.

Imagine being so perverted and disgusting that it turns back to being brilliant because it explains exactly the kind of hellish lives women goes through because men like these.

It almost feels like the inverse situation of Nabokov's "Lolita". Both are stories about objectified and sexualized underage girls, and focused through the lens of the abusers, who romanticize the events with heaps of selfishness and zero introspection. Except, where Nabokov's story was meant to be an unconfortable look through the eyes of a monster, Eugenides seems to have a simultaneous fascination and contempt for sexuality, while romanicizing the abuse and death of these children.

I could never get through The Virgin Suicides because even though it was advertised to me as a satire, I couldn't stand being in those boys heads. I couldn't stand listening to them. However, one thought that always nagged at me was that I really loved how the girls loved each other. Usually sister relationships are portrayed as catty or not really expanded on at all, but all of these girls loved each other. Seeing the baby of their family (not their mother or father's family, *their* family) die in such a horrific way, and constantly being watched by the boys next door--as if those boys were doing them good by "being in love" with them--it's no wonder they took such a macabre way out. I took the house suicide to be them saying "hey, you wanted to see us, right? You wanted to watch our private moments? Well here, here's some moments with us you'll never forget". Almost like a prank, only with the aim of emotionally devastating their neighborhood the way they have been. I always got the vibe that, when the boys were kids, they just expected that the girls would fall in love with them and they'd eventually all end up together with their respective girl. They didn't want to put in the work of the relationship, they just wanted it to fall into their lap. Like you said, its a Rapunzel fetish--they wanted to be the saviors of the girls trapped in the tower, but they also wanted them to remain in their tower. They love the sadness of their separation, their "star-crossed romance" that can't be. You can see that fetishization continue when they're adult men.

Going from growing up as a girl to an adult man I have to say the staggering number of grown men who will nod sagely and start to talk about “how women are” to me now is jarring. These are the same men who stared and hooted and hollered when I was 11 and hit puberty too early and now they view me as some sort of peer. Jeff seems to fundamentally misunderstand poetry and “romantic” writing, but my god what a brilliant video!

“I didn’t feel seen, I felt watched.” Wow.

I don't think the author is a monster, but I really, really don't get him at all. How does a man delude himself into thinking that this level of animalistic lust and pornographic imagery is "romantic" in any sense of the word?

that Jeff dude really said in way more words that the kids reasoning for suicide was not whimsical enough for him?? what kind of twisted reasoning?!

I remember trying to read this book as a teenager and thinking it was too much to take. If anything that book made young me feel a sheer disgust at her own body, the same that I feel now when guys say they can "turn me straight" or "cure my depression", this misplaced sexualisation barely disguised as romantic affection. It's gross and it sticks to you long after you've read it.

Ah. This was a rollercoaster for me. I'm old enough to have watched this movie when it was still relatively new and understanding it was disturbing, but not old enough to understand why, exactly. Seeing the book unpacked through the lens of being satire felt almost like relief. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to explain to men how much my mental health has suffered from feeling.. Overly observed by men, but never truly seen. And Jeff got it! Amazing! But Jeff in fact did not get it. I think the most disappointing part is that women can read this and see themselves in their youth, in each of the girls, with the way we were overlooked, dismissed, romanticized, whatever, in such a blatant way, only to have the flippin' dude who wrote it be like "yeah? What's the problem?" GAH. Beautifully done as always, Mert.

Just when you think “Oh finally, a man aware of the shit women have to deal with”, you realise it wasn’t satire at all - that the man in question is a satire of himself 💀

The mention of Lux sleeping with guys in their 30s is by far one of the worst things in this book. Jeff could’ve just said that some guys in the school were bragging about having sex with Lux in a closet or the bathroom or something. Both of those things happened at my school. And it’s more believable than her sneaking out, finding some 30 year old dude that’s willing to fuck a 14 year old, and sneaking the 30 year old to the roof of her house. How did she even find so many guys who wanted to have sex with a 14 year old in the first place, anyway? There isn’t even a state where the age of consent is 14 (or under) without there being some kind of stipulation in regards to age.

We need a word that describes works of art that so thoroughly roast and highlights the flaws the self-insert protagonist that the art has to be interpreted as satirical until you become informed of the artist outside of the context of their art.

I think my main take away from the video is that worship is another form of dehumanization. What you paint in your mind prevents you from seeing the actual person(s). Good video. I relearned something that is important to not forget.

lux's last interaction with the boys not being her possibly only act of defiance but instead her genuinely wanting to blow them then remembering shes supposed to be killing herself is such bad writing

I was so worried at the start when you were talking about liking the book XD I had a similar journey, about half way through I found out it wasn't satire and it broke my enjoyment of it. I think unintentionally Jeff created a book with several unreliable narrators telling a story that was never theirs to tell with all the emotional maturity of a gnat. The fact the girls can't speak for themselves, that the guys are disgustingly treating these women as public property works if you can separate the authors intent. I always thought the image of Cecilia on that fence post was a perfect example of the blunt gory fascination we as humans have with disaster alongside the romanticisation of lost youth that was wielded more like a hammer than a paintbrush

Holy shit learming this wasnt satire (in the way that would have made it good actually) turned my head around. I spent the first part of this story genuinely terrified of these narrators. They reminded me of how I felt about many of the male characters in LISA, in a world where some men went crazy because of a world without women (and heterosexual sex). The sexual horror always gave me the most ick, it is one of the more horrifying indie horror rpgs I remember watching playthroughs of. One of the main characters is a young girl who is the only female human left in the world. The way some of the male characters spoke about her gave me the same creepy vibes as the narrators. And then learning that those aspects of the story was played completely straight? The horror was amplified. Like, men obsessing over young girls to the point of claiming ownership over their belongings and bodies even after death. Respecting them so little they can barely remember their faces and only remember their bodies. Truly horrifying.

There are very few feelings as suddenly uncomfortable to read as realizing what you *thought* was a self-aware portrayal of male teenage horniness meant to communicate the everyday horrors that women go through is, in fact, completely straight and unintentional and just confirms all your worst fears as unavoidable truth that men really think there's nothing fucking wrong with it.

How tragic that even in their suicides their agency is pulled away from them and written off so callously in a quasi cover up.

This is the first time I cant stomach one of your videos to the end. I've never heard of this story/movie and my God it's so disturbing. As a teenager, I remember older men gazing at me when I used to go out in the streets. And younger boys making very derogatory comments about my body. As a 13 year old i sorta looked 16 or 17 and I was so disgusted with the way that i looked because i was getting that much attention. Even now as in my late 20s, I find it very difficult to accept being approached by men, even when I want to.

I was ten years old the first time I said I wished I was dead. I think about that little girl sometimes, now that I’m 23. She feels like Cecilia.

This book is an insult to women AND men. They way he writes the boys themselves is basically ancient athenian men if they were stupid too and girls...well they might as well be Galatea from that one greek myth. Something not someone. And knowing this isn't satire is genuinely horrifying.

I never really connected with the story because I felt it was super dehumanizing towards the girls... then you said it was satire and it clicked to me in an inmense way, of course it's a big ugly mirror, pointed straight at the male gaze and the horrible way we see women... then you said it's not satire and my heart broke forever, this is my 13th reason

I haven't read the book, nor have i seem the movie (though, now i intend to do both), but just hearing you talk about this, and listening as a trans woman, this book feels like it strikes at the heart of fetishization (even if it is in a awkward, clumsy and unintentional way). I just really relate to the girls, being that as a trans woman, i'm constantly over the watchful eye of men who want me dead as much as they want to have sex with. They romanticize my trauma and lived experience, while also pouring over every detail of my anatomy like i'm a animal they're dissecting. Even in death, i cannot escape their lustful looks or blinding rage, as people other than me examine my body to know "who i really was", even as i lie dead, i have no ownership over my body or even my name, how i'll be remembered. There's something infuriating, about having this glimpse into the minds of the people who so often would see my simple existence as a "enticing, tempting sin". something rage inducing about hearing the quiet part out loud.

Hey, there's a lot of media I love that wouldn't exist without Lovecraft. But, like, fuck that guy, you know?

I remember I first read the book like 10 years ago for a college assignment, and being a 18-19 year old guy taking his first media analysis class, there’s a lot that I didn’t pick up on but I remember hating the book a lot because I felt like it was romanticizing suicide

I didn't know anything about this property before watching this. It was such an experience, going from "Wow, this is such an amazing piece of feminist media. This author is so cool that he understands and cares about the pain of young women this deeply" to "Maybe the radfems are right and we should kill all men??? Starting with this author" lmao. Really interesting analysis, I really enjoyed this video.

I am adding this to my "Well informed and funny RU-vidrs speaking about death of the author." playlist.

I'm just about to hit 24 minutes and due to the title this entire time I'm like "Oh no, is she really gonna tell me this WASN'T a satire and was genuinely written as a legit story he stands behind?" I feel like I'm just about there and I don't know if I want to burst my own ignorant bubble. I like her take that it's a satire. It makes the book sound really interesting. But we can't live in ignorance. Okay, here go. Pop that bubble, Kay

I think death to the author is a right: if you read something in it that helped you even if it was the opposite of what the author meant. I'll give one of mine that I know is wrong. I thought the first time I read the comic The Killing Joke that there was a feminist comment in it...Yes, one of the greatest examples of woman in the fridge looked feminist for and here's why: Because Barbara had stopped being Batgirl because, supposedly, it was too dangerous for her, according to some. Barbara never even broke a fingernail during her time as Batgirl. But when she's a civilian again, working as a librarian, staying with her father, a policeman, she ends up paralyzed by something that has nothing to do with her. The Joker has no idea she was Batgirl, and it still happens. It was the cruelest joke in the story for me. Everyone wanted her to leave because she might get hurt and it's when she's having a quiet life that the worst happens to her, indirectly because of the men who wanted to protect her. For me it was a take that to the comment: if you stay quietly at home nothing will happen to you. No, the worst can still happen even where you're safest, for no reason at all. So telling women not to take risks is stupid at best, and a way of blaming them for everything that happens to them at worst. I know it was never meant to be, but I think I'm allowed to read it that way. Especially with her becoming Oracle afterwards.

How did you know I was just creeping your old videos to get my amazing MertKayKay fix? Always adore your humor and viewpoints on everything 😊

The amount of Outer Wilds songs used in this video is great. More people have got to play that game.

I'm so happy I subscribed to you, your content is top notch. You have subtitles ready from the batch and you usually cover games and movies that aren't usually talked about and it's really refreshing!

A book that kind of makes me feel this way is El Túnel by ernesto sabato. The narrator is obviously portrayed as unhinged but I can't tell if Sábato is on his side or not. Considering this was in mid1900s latin america I'm inclined to believe the author was actually sympathizing with an unhinged murderer

I am so glad more people are talking about this movie. The dark tones behind it really just stick to me in an unnerving and yet heartbreaking way.

This movie and book made me feel the same way when I watched Malena. Like eating a mouthful of flies. Monica Bellucci was beautiful and graceful in that movie but it was told from the perspective of a teenage boy, so naturally everything she does has been sexualized to an unreasonable amount, not even her sufferings as a beautiful woman in a small town has been looked in a serious way. The narrator did and wanted to do nothing to remotely help her although he was supposed to be in love with her. And the ending of him reminiscing her beauty was similar to the Virgin Suicides too, that no matter how many women he said that he loved he has only thought of Malena. Poor woman. Not only did she not receive a shred of kindness from people of the town, suffered through loss and war, but her story has been told through an unreliable, lustful teenager who only wanted to have sex with her.

One of my favorite channels. It feels like I keep rediscovering it.

Great analysis! I feel like there's a slightly niche phenomenon of men creating weird and disturbed portrayals of women that end up providing comfort and a feeling of being seen for a lot of women. It's a really weird thing to try and figure out how you feel about it, because on the one hand you know the author didn't create this for you and created it with extremely iffy intentions, but on the other hand, if it makes you feel understood and seen, you kind of want to keep it at least a little? I can't count the amount of problematic portrayals of women by men I still feel somewhat attached to, it's a weird situation imo. I'll forever be curious as to how Jeff, despite his weird energy towards women, wrote the one line that resonated with so many troubled girls though. P.S: Your art is so cute 🥺🥺!! You captured their energy so well!

Being 14, even though I'm very isolated from "The boys", I can confidently say that none of them view view girls in such an objectifying manner. It makes it really weird when stories portray teenage boys around my age to be exclusively sex-obsessed with nothing to the contrary. A specific example of this would be the 2008 movie Deadgirl, where a group of teenage boys immediately go to 4uck a corpse of a girl around their age, and the only one in the group who doesn't just wants to look like a hero by saving the girl once he realizes she's still alive in some kind of weird zombie form (Mista GG covered it in one of his Disturbing Movies videos.)

Really liked this video, it's right up there with the Rachel Foster one. Feels like the perfect replacement recommendation for someone you'd recommend The Virgin Suicides to were it not for the author. The video really reminds me of a fore/afterword in a book who's name I've forgotten. The author states he didn't write the book I read, he wrote a book, but the book any reader reads is a collaborative wholly unique work produced by the reader and author together. That really seems to apply here. Side note: The title made me 100% sure this would be a video about Rowling's terrible views, though it makes sense given what you mentioned in the FAQ.

I've never read this book or watched this film, but I appreciate your review. I don't have an interest in stories about women told only from the male character's perspective, even if it is to illustrate a point. So I enjoyed this thorough analysis of a story I haven't read myself, but I always see referenced.

This is one of those things I never get sick of hearing discussed. DotA is something I feel passionately about as an artist.

I had a similar experience reading Snowcrash, I'd heard it was an amazing book, top tier cyberpunk fiction, and for most of it it was, but not only did the author decide to constantly sexuallize a minor, he made sure to make it explicit that the girl enjoyed and wanted the harassment, going as far as writing an explicit scene from her point of view where we are constantly told how good she feels, i couldn't stomach it and dropped the book altogether

i've only watched the movie & a couple times at that, the first time i was around the age of one of the girls ( don't remember which ) i really remember wanting to be these girls in the ways the boys saw them b/c i was an ugly little thing that was ignored by her parents & her classmates. i had very few friends & nothing seemed as beautiful as being a tragic, budding flower. the way the boys went on about how perfect the girls all were, even when they were messing up or just living their lives somehow got my wires crossed in my head & i wanted to be watched like them, to be obsessed over b/c it meant someone thought i was important enough to devote all their free time to. a couple years later i watched it & had more of my focus on sofia coppola's view. i was in film school & really admired her vision & how her view of what it is like to be a woman in front of a camera was an important aspect of the visual language for me. i was caught up in the dreamy quality of her filming that before i knew it it was over & i hadn't really even noticed how quickly the time went. only a few years ago i watched it again, as ab adult w/ kids & i came to realize how misdirected i was as a kid & how horrible it was for these parents to try & save their daughters from a world that was going to use & commodify them, even to extreme lengths. their parents were misguided, obviously, but it was out of some form of love & no matter how hard they tried, they lost all their daughters due to their own actions. it was as much a warning to me as a parent now as it was an ethereal dream that i could never reach as a kid. eventually i will read the book, even knowing jeff's uh... questionable takes. i have found as i've gotten older i appreciate the ugliness of humanity leaking into art. i like romance that includes things like sweat & unshaved legs & mistakes, i just hope he didn't swing so far to the other end that it ends up being criticism about these young girls not being what they should be for the boys & men that lusted for them.

Not going to lie, media like this makes me wanna write a book on the insight of those suffering from mental illness in highly vulnerable stages of their life. At least I know what I would want to communicate the most to the reader when reflecting and romanticizing the trauma and visceral emotions teenage anything would be dealing with as a story or character study. Thank you for bringing awareness to this, I had never heard of it before surprisingly enough. Always a pleasure hearing the rise and fall of a favorite series by an eloquent individual xD

as someone who started therapy recently 1000% agree with you on therapy it and medication has helped me massively.

Some men get so close to getting it... And then they miss the point, and it hurts so badly.

They didn't run away because what would it gain? If they are nothing but toys for men and even their own mother wouldn't embrace them, how were they to know that the world could be anything more than that? And after Cecelia died, it must have looked SO enticing. They must have felt like she was at peace, especially as the boys in the town doubled down on sexualizing them

I am a huge believer in death of the author. Writing is one of the few places where the laws of physics can be broken, where you can get out more than is put in. Even if the author didn't intend to write a satire of romance, to show how dehumanizing the male gaze is, if reading it made you think that you learned something from the book. Like Majora's Mask- the remakes showed that the people who made it didn't know exactly what they put in to make people love it, but that doesn't stop it from being a good game. You just have to choose what to take away from media, even if it's not what the author intended.

Haven't heard about this book (or movie, really) prior to this video. I've gotta say, the level of discomfort I've felt stood out to me and I don't quite know how to describe it. I'm slightly fascinated and majorly creeped the hell out. Satire or not, this made me very uncomfortable. I don't know if I'm entirely fair to it, after all I am experiencing it second-hand, in a very condensed way, but jesus fuck, man. I don't know how to feel about it or what to make of this. That being said, thank you for your work as always, Mert! I love your thorough breakdowns. Also you are a comforting presence in videos that discuss and focus on heavier topics.

For anyone interested in the death of the author i really recommend Lindsay Ellis video on the topic, I think it's one of the most in depth analysis of the concept I've seen

Mert: every game is someone's favorite game, even something like Limbo, God forbid. Me, who really likes Limbo: 😅 I've never heard of this book/film before, I'm glad you covered it, it's very unfortunate that the author seems rather lacking in self awareness, to say the least. As someone who has struggled to get my anxiety and ADHD diagnosed since I was a teenager, I can relate to Cecilia when it comes to having people not taking a child's concerns about their own mental health seriously. Had my first psychiatrist look me dead in the eye and tell me I was "just shy"

This was a very insightful & interesting deep dive into this story. I beleive some of my classmates may have studied this book at one point, but my side of the school was doing Lord of The Flies & honestly i avoid tragedies but i enjoyed youre review on this one. The part where the author described therapy as "paychobabble" is concerings because if that is indeed how HE feels then that is upsetting. Therapy can be very helpful for those who need it :( (Also as a man i can confirm that even the sweetest teen boys are lustful in their own way, its called puberty & we are not as romantic as we may delude ourself to beleive 😅) Also if im being honest if i was a father & boys were sneaking into my home, spyingon/stealing from my daughter(s) i would lose my sh*#. I would pride myself on not just being a loveing & caring parent to my children, but also a protective one who will teach people to fear crossing my home if they have any untoward intent to my children (that goes for my son(s) too). Keep up the great work im always happy to see a notification from youre channel pop up, means im about to have a blast 😁👍🏻

Love how diverse your content is. Movies, games, books love it.. Haven't read this book before but always enjoy your commentary. Death of author as a concept has always been interesting, having our own interpretation of any given medium can add a new perspective that creator may have never intended and any interpretation that is then remade with said reinterpreration can make for a more engaging experience. That said the original authors intent can definitely sour the experience because at the end of the day the original is the most direct explanation of their work

Hell yes, I love this movie and love any analysis of it. Thank you!

Fantastic video! Seeing women as... a romanticised angelic projection... is something I remember experiencing all too vividly from my teens and early twenties as the quintessential "nice guy". It wasn't until a really bad relationship when I kind of "woke up". Even now, 10 years later, that awakening is still eerily painful, because it didn't so much signal the death of that relationship and the woman I fawned over but the illusion I'd been adhering too for years and years. The perfect woman never existed - only the idea did. And the woman I dated for a year never really existed at all. Which is creepy to think about. I overthought the breakup for about a year. "Maybe she was raped. Her Dad had died recently, so maybe she was pre-occupied. Maybe she watched too much TV." It wasn't until my own sister came to me and said, "Maybe it ended because you were a dick," did I snap to reality. Yeah, I wasn't bright. Up until I was 15 I thought the G-Spot was that place where all the cool kids hung out after school. As a ex-Wedding Videographer for well over a decade now (500+ Weddings), I've lost track of how many couples (even those in their 30s and 40s) I've witnessed that have romanticised that ultimate commitment to each other, and having somewhat been there, it's very cringeworthy. And then I did a Masters of Education, and that put me off having children - the kids were fine, but it was the other grown-ups who were terrifying. Lol. It's ultimately not surprising this still happens to men in their 30s nowadays. I was puzzled by this at first. And now that I'm working in the Mining Industry as a Statistician (and oddly stimulating job in a monotonous sector), the amount of men I meet who spend 11+ hours every day hundreds of meters underground who haven't seen a living, breathing woman in months, let alone years suddenly explains a lot. I want to laugh at these men, as many barely know how to operate Microsoft Word (let alone how to write an email), but I can barely change a tyre or aim correctly when I pee, so go figure. One thing I noticed while studying my Masters Degree was that while the internet has shed more light on conditions like ADHD or Autism (and I was diagnosed at 8) and many more are being diagnosed than every before... but just as many are being misdiagnosed. And the reason for this happening isn't so much that more children have the gene or are being recognised, but rather more parents are missing the point of parenting, treating their children as pets and then blaming their kids when they don't magically turn out the way they want them to be. Recently, a meta-analytic study on Depression that sent shock-waves through Linkedin was the finding that Depression is a symptom of environmental circumstances, not because of it, and that anti-depressants cause very little improvement in the way of altering brain chemistry. Which means biology and blaming it isn't necessarily the answer. I think it's very difficult for children and teens yesterday to recognise without the proper tools or education that authority figures like parents, teachers and other leaders are just as flawed and stupid as they are. I don't know if I'd go as far as to say The Virgin Suicides is a satire. This is... the reality for a lot of people. I knew many, many boys growing up who were like this, such as the ones in this novel. I was practically one of them. But in all, it's a fantastic book that deserves more discussion. "Feeling overly seen but not truly seen," as you put it is hammering the nail on the head. As is the line, "The more the boys talk, the weirder we feel about them," which is possibly what you're feeling as you read this long and probably convoluted series of ramblings you're reading that I wrote at 8 in the morning while this Adobe Premiere Pro video I'm exporting renders for the next 90 minutes.

That'a a good call from your book club.

Always love your deep dives and I’m ready to see another!

Was the "old enough to play someones mother in a Marvel movie" a burn about how they turned Aunt May into a Milf? Because I guess nobody would want to look at an actually old woman, even if she was the better character.. But I should stop myself before I start rambling about how much better the old Spiderman movies were, not related to the subject xD

i’ve never read the book or scene the movie. damn this video had be on the edge of my seat. your videos are always top tier

This was great timing cause I just finished most of the backlog of your channel, which has easily become a new fave. I absolutely love your writing style and you often bring an thoughtful and unique perspective to the media you analyze. Glad RU-vid recommended me some quality for a change. Also, big fan of your artistic depictions of these characters.

unrelated to the video but I love your art! it’s so cute.

Loved watching the early version on Patreon and will definitely delisted to this at work tonight. Love your unique insights and humor. I work very long hours with people who are about as bright as a broken lightbulb in a basement at midnight.. your content really helps keep me sane sometimes and I’m so grateful.

I love how in depth you get with whatever topic you're talking about. You really take the time to know the media, and you always churn out great and entertaining long videos. It's also nice background noise to actually listen to instead of using as white noise.

This is my new favourite video from you. The writing is top notch

New Merty video after i finished the short game reviews for the second time! I love your videos Mert, keep doing what you're doing 💜💜💜

The Virgin Suicides is set in the 1970s in an upper middle class suburb of Detroit and a Catholic high school. I think his commentary on the resources available at the time is pretty fair given that the field of psychotherapy was still young. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as we know it today was being refined in the 1960s and 1970s and became more widely accepted in the 1980s and 1990s. Even in the early 2000s, my predominantly Catholic upper middle class community had inadequate mental health options. So much of the book is commentary on class and whiteness and religion. There's even a debutante ball at the end. I think the book points out how the culture of moneyed, white, pious respectability ends up making it really hard to function as a young person going through puberty and becoming aware of sex. Basically every character struggles with sex in some way. And when you don't have healthy conversations about sex because of social pressure, your view of what acceptable behavior is can be warped. The fascinating part of the book to me is how it captures the essence of the socially enforced non-communication that happens in such homogenous communities. Anything dirty or vulnerable is not to be discussed. And I think that contributes to the way the characters behave. The boys should have just walked up to the Lisbon girls and had actual human conversations with them, but instead they fetishized them and romanticized them from afar without actually knowing them at all.

Ty as always for the amazing commentary.❤

so happy to be so early, i love your videos so much

Ooh! I was just watching your 5 minute reviews when this popped up! Been really enjoying your reviews and running through all of them. Kee up the great work

Oooo I love the lil corner chibis, the colour use is inspo core 💯

Wonderful video as always!

The chibis you drew are so cute! You really get a sense of their personalities from their expressions and outfits!

When I was listening to this (I listen to your videos while working) I was thinking these guys are deranged. Like before I got to the part about how this wasn’t satire in that way I’m just thinking this author is heavy handed af. “Let me spell it out for you. These guys are yikes” but then goes to say in interviews they aren’t yikes they are romantic and poetic. Anyway keep up the quality content. Pretty much all the vids of urs I have listened to have been well thought out and articulated. It’s good stuff.

Very excited for this video, I haven't read or watched the film of The Virgin suicides but interested in your thoughts regardless

This looks like another good one... cant wait to watch it after work! Hope ur doing well, girl! CHEERS ❤

Thank you for doing this incredibly well done essay.

In an odd way, it sort of reminds me of The Path, if you pretend the author wasn't sincere and he purposefully wrote caricatures to highlight the tragedies unique to adolescent girls, told through the eyes of the boys who are too self-absorbed to see them. I was introduced to the movie first, and while I only saw it once, I remember it making a big impact on me. I felt like the director of the movie made a lot of smart decisions and recentered the story on the sisters somewhat more than the books. I remember coming away with it feeling like the girls, the director, and even we the audience were in "the know" and meant to see the boys in the story as a microcosm of the dismissive, objectifying world which ultimately led to their deaths but were too stupid to see it themselves. I feel like I got from the movie what you originally saw in the book, and I'm kind of glad I had that experience first.

I likely will never read this book/watch the movie myself due to personal triggers within its pages. I've been aware of it for some time and this feels like such a fair estimation of a flawed piece of literature. Great writing and analysis, tackling important questions about how we read and interact with a text! I feel like this is also a low-key great endorsement of why book clubs/reading with others is such a rewarding endeavor!

Quite the interesting perspective. Thanks for making this video and sharing your views. It reminds me of a book I read around the same developmental stage. I mostly only remember it having quite the formative impact but do not want to reread it, in case the actual text is less than what I remember it's impact by. For now, I will stay actively ignorant of it. (German book, translated roughly to "When he comes we run away.") Anyway, keep up the good work!

Ahhhhhh. And I saw that twist coming. That it wasn't satire. I have read enough absolute garbage books in school that nobody would ever read if not forced to to recognise someone just writing with one hand, calling himself so clever and poetic and tragic underrated genius till the finnish. Of course, I also only got your description made from the perspective of hindsight, so that probably showed through. Reminds me of the one book we were supposed to read in school. About some Teenage guy, where it is a major plotpoint that he cheats on his GF with his best friends mother before she (the mother) kills herself. Then he and his best friend with the dead mom fly to Turkey to find some random guy who abandoned his kid in another country like 20 years ago. Neither of the women ever get any character, they are always just seen as objects by the Narrator. And his supposed best friend is only called that, while every feeling the Narrator describes towards him is annoyance and jealousy at the literal Orphan. It didn't feel like satire, and at the end I burned the book and cheated through the test by asking some classmates about how it went. Never got any better, mot of the book was just the Narrator being annoyed or just wanting to use someone for sex. At first his best friends mother, and later straight up breaking up with his GF after she refuses sex to him once. It just felt disgusting, exploitative and senseless. There was no moral of the story, nothing really to satirise, the book just sucked. Who makes people read this?? I can only guess in hindsight that our teacher was a sadist, or actually saw some meaning in this half-softcore bs. God knows what. I got a C+ on the final essay summarising the book, and my teacher made a note what an interesting take I had on the narrative. Like... what narrative??? Guy goes on vacation to Turkey after his side hoe offs herself, the friend then gets sick and doesn't play a role for half the time in Turkey either. There is no narrative! I literally made that shit up on the spot xD The little bits of the book you showed in the video reminded me of how the women, or the woman and the 17 year old girl, were described in the one I knew (tiny bits and pieces of, I got so sick of it very fast. Sick as in, actually felt like vomiting, that's how badly the book was written, how much it just felt like someones fetish material for some reason sold on the open market). I have read descriptions about literal objects that felt less objectifying.

Hey just your friendly reminder that your amazing, and the effort you put into your work shows!💚 Stay amazing!

That was really interesting. I would definitely watch more book analysis like that if you ever put more up in the future. You have a nice attention to detail and rhetoric.

this channel is so underrated.

Excellent piece. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

35:20 ahead of your time with the man vs bear comparison

To me the fact that the author is unapologetically LIKE his protags makes it an even more authentic commentary on men who are Like That. It gives a glimpse into the ability of men to erase women’s personhood. But it only reads this way for people who can acknowledge women’s personhood.

this was my friend's favourite book, which is why I read it. I thought it was satire and yet it still felt weird to me - I haven't thought much of it till this video showed up on my feed!!

First of all, I found this video super interesting, despite never having read the book or seen the movie. You make a lot of great points, but I think you make the most important one in the last minute. If we follow Barthe's theory, the author is dead on arrival of his book, he becomes just another interpreter of his work. I think that theory has enormous value, because it is the only reasonable way of looking at art without condemning everything that's older than thirty years for the society-induced racism, sexism, homophobia etc of the author that wrote it. Of course it is helpful to look at the time period it was written to see whether it was trying to advertise change and make things better or not. And under that light, "The Virgin Suicides" sounds like a great satire, that manages to portray the struggles that society puts on young women. What Jeff says about it doesn't really matter. And honestly, I don't think it's problematic that he made the story of the real girls who attempted suicide about himself. I feel like the guy let his guard down, offered a view into his darkest version of "romantic nostalgia" and added a lot of fucked up poesy, which is simply how a lot of modern authors write. I could even imagine he's being protective of the characters he's written, trying to make readers understand how he sees them. Obviously that doesn't excuse his weird interpretations of his own work, but it might be a way to understand them.

Coming back here to say that I'm so surprised that this video hasn't got more views. It's one of my favourite video essays ever!!

While I never read The Virgin Suicides, I did read a different book from Eugenides titled Middlesex. It's a book detailing the life and family of an intersex man from his perspective, and as a teen just starting to question my gender it had really resonated with me at the time. Back then I probably would have recommended the book to anyone, but now that I'm older the book feels very narrow minded and it's much easier to pick out it's flaws. It doesn't fully take away from what it did for me and I still remember parts of it (particularly the opening line) fondly, but it does leave a bit of a sour taste in my mouth almost a decade after reading it. And this only happened for me when I began seeing other people talk about this book and their interpretations of it. My metaphorical bubble was popped and the book now lives in my memories in a bittersweet way rather than in its initial positivity. After watching this video it seems like that is a trend with this author's works. He hits the nail on the head in some aspects and completely fumbles in others. It's sad that his intentions and/or morals tend to lie with the negative aspects rather than the positive ones.

Ive never heard of the book or movie before(i definitely dont plan on looking at either, not my cup of tea), but you covered this incredibly, but just hearing this story even if it is mostly fictional, not only breaks my heart, but fills it with righteous indignation, because absolutely nobody should have to deal with anything like this, and it scarily and tragically makes sense now of why women are so afraid of men sometimes, because I'd definitely want anybody who behaved like those freaks who i refuse to believe are people, to be locked away forever and kept away from anyone, especially women. It even just feels hard to put into words how I feel after learning about it, I'm just glad I didn't behave like that as a teenager

Every time you upload, you make my day. And if it's a long video like this one, my week. Thanks Kay.

One of my favorite books and movies!!

the limbo slander was unexpected

The author's feelings on therapy can be easily explained and understood by the fact that this book was published in . . . 1993. Therapy was NOT like it is now. What most people were exposed to as "therapy" was nothing like it is now. And also this book focuses on events from the 70s, when it was even worse.

It breaks my heart to come here and say this, but I imagine why that is: your video about Elden Ring needing an easy mode is a bloody masterpiece. As a ux enthusiast, I agree with basically everything! That should be taught in design courses.

reading this book ruined my life, glad i got to do it hand in hand with y'all!

It’s so strange you came out w this video right as I started the book with no context. I was super confused to see the condescending tone used towards the sisters and had to put it down because I thought it wouldn’t be so male-gazey. It’s almost like we had opposite paths of thought for this book!