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bluedalahorse) wrote2024-03-03 12:06 pm
bluedalahorse) wrote2024-03-03 12:06 pm
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why the Simon-August chemistry in S1E3 slaps so hard
Here’s a less stream-of-consciousness thought about YR S1E3:
Something I know from the private school world is that a parents’ weekend (or an event like it) isn’t just for visiting your kid and seeing some of the activities they do and maybe taking them out to dinner or home for the weekend. Yes, the rhetoric of these events will always focus on the great education and experiences at the school, and how these will shape your kid into a responsible adult who will make you proud and carry on your legacy. Dig into the subtext a bit, however, and the school principal’s polite cough at the end of her speech is a reminder to dig out your credit card. Events like these are ultimately fundraisers—even though they may not be called that in a direct way—and focused on getting donations from wealthy stakeholders.
What’s interesting about this fundraiser atmosphere is it puts both Simon and August in an outsider position, one where they feel threatened and act in ways that are erratic and dramatic.
With Simon, it’s more obvious as to why he feels that threat—he’s a working class, POC kid with an immigrant mom, and he doesn’t live on campus. The car his family pulls up in sticks out right away, and it’s clear that when Linda sits down with the Ehrencronas for lunch that they’re all used to different social cues as dictated by their class background. Simon, according to the Hillerska code of values, however, has “earned his place” there through merit and hard work in the choir, on the rowing team, during classes, etc. While this hard work is very real on Simon’s part, we also know that he isn’t 100% pure moral diligence. He’s been reaching out to the math teacher for tutoring (a system highlighted as corrupt in earlier episodes) and not telling his mom about it, for instance. He also secretly helped August to acquire alcohol for Wille’s welcome party by reaching out to his estranged father. If I remember correctly, August names Simon’s place on the rowing team as payment for the alcohol, which also makes Simon’s role on the team a troubled one regardless of how diligent he is about showing up to practice. Simon does work hard and takes pride in that, and the barriers he has to overcome are real ones, but we can see Hillerska grinding him down and forcing him to betray his values behind the scenes. Rosh and Ayub even bring this up to him.
August, meanwhile, has his position at school threatened by his family’s financial situation—they’ve run out of money and August may have to leave Hillerska because he can’t pay his boarding fees. August’s nobility and closeness to the royal family still gives him a lot of social power, which he gleefully abuses, but ultimately when it comes down to dollar signs (or in this case, kronor) the school doesn’t care if he can’t pay what he owes. And what better event than a fundraiser for throwing that reality in August’s face and causing him to panic? What’s also interesting is that the episode also puts August’s own hard work on display, however problematic (in the academic sense) it may be in its depiction. As a prefect he’s working to advise the school staff on seating arrangements for the parents’ weekend lunch, and when he’s at lunch, he’s talking very animatedly about his plans to modernize Årnäs and make it run well again. August does seem to enjoy organizing people and places, and I find myself wondering what that could look like in a different context, and not our current one of him being the heir to Årnäs and getting caught up in power games. Could he be successful—or perhaps even happier—as an event planner, or a museum director? As it is, though, we can also think about how the show is sort of like… making August’s work visible in a way that almost feels like a faux pas to people of his class. You aren’t supposed to think about how the tables ended up in the right place, they should just be in the right place when you arrive for lunch. Årnäs isn’t supposed to need repairs or modernizing or maintenance because the point is preserving a timeless legacy that never changes. The visibility of the tasks needed to maintain the class hierarchy calls attention to the class hierarchy as a social construct, and therefore something that can be deconstructed, too. Blah blah blah Blue stop being a Marxist.
There’s a commentary worth exploring here on the nature of work itself. How to some extent the type of work you do feeds into your social class, but then the social class you’re in dictates what work is “acceptable” for you to pursue or be seen doing by others. And I’m just going to leave this here to see if anyone else has thoughts on it, because I’m distracting myself.
ANYWAY. When it comes to the showdowns between Simon and August in this episode, I’m struck by what these scenes reveal. They show us how Simon has already become messily entangled with the quid pro quo of Hillerska culture, even if he doesn’t always do so 100% willingly, and how he’s starting to lie to his family to cover it up. Meanwhile, August gatekeeps Simon and lashes out at him not from a place where he feels secure in his status, but from a place where he’s feeling insecure about it and will do anything to feel some sense of stability. And both of them are desperate, scrambling boys who run into one another at the worst possible moment, leading to their fight. It’s a beautiful fusion of character arc and pacing that makes me so excited to watch them every time.
In conclusion: this is part of why the chemistry between Simon and August slaps so hard in this episode.
But also: get a job, August. Preferably one at that horse farm where Adam Groff worked in Sex Education. You can bring Rousseau.
Something I know from the private school world is that a parents’ weekend (or an event like it) isn’t just for visiting your kid and seeing some of the activities they do and maybe taking them out to dinner or home for the weekend. Yes, the rhetoric of these events will always focus on the great education and experiences at the school, and how these will shape your kid into a responsible adult who will make you proud and carry on your legacy. Dig into the subtext a bit, however, and the school principal’s polite cough at the end of her speech is a reminder to dig out your credit card. Events like these are ultimately fundraisers—even though they may not be called that in a direct way—and focused on getting donations from wealthy stakeholders.
What’s interesting about this fundraiser atmosphere is it puts both Simon and August in an outsider position, one where they feel threatened and act in ways that are erratic and dramatic.
With Simon, it’s more obvious as to why he feels that threat—he’s a working class, POC kid with an immigrant mom, and he doesn’t live on campus. The car his family pulls up in sticks out right away, and it’s clear that when Linda sits down with the Ehrencronas for lunch that they’re all used to different social cues as dictated by their class background. Simon, according to the Hillerska code of values, however, has “earned his place” there through merit and hard work in the choir, on the rowing team, during classes, etc. While this hard work is very real on Simon’s part, we also know that he isn’t 100% pure moral diligence. He’s been reaching out to the math teacher for tutoring (a system highlighted as corrupt in earlier episodes) and not telling his mom about it, for instance. He also secretly helped August to acquire alcohol for Wille’s welcome party by reaching out to his estranged father. If I remember correctly, August names Simon’s place on the rowing team as payment for the alcohol, which also makes Simon’s role on the team a troubled one regardless of how diligent he is about showing up to practice. Simon does work hard and takes pride in that, and the barriers he has to overcome are real ones, but we can see Hillerska grinding him down and forcing him to betray his values behind the scenes. Rosh and Ayub even bring this up to him.
August, meanwhile, has his position at school threatened by his family’s financial situation—they’ve run out of money and August may have to leave Hillerska because he can’t pay his boarding fees. August’s nobility and closeness to the royal family still gives him a lot of social power, which he gleefully abuses, but ultimately when it comes down to dollar signs (or in this case, kronor) the school doesn’t care if he can’t pay what he owes. And what better event than a fundraiser for throwing that reality in August’s face and causing him to panic? What’s also interesting is that the episode also puts August’s own hard work on display, however problematic (in the academic sense) it may be in its depiction. As a prefect he’s working to advise the school staff on seating arrangements for the parents’ weekend lunch, and when he’s at lunch, he’s talking very animatedly about his plans to modernize Årnäs and make it run well again. August does seem to enjoy organizing people and places, and I find myself wondering what that could look like in a different context, and not our current one of him being the heir to Årnäs and getting caught up in power games. Could he be successful—or perhaps even happier—as an event planner, or a museum director? As it is, though, we can also think about how the show is sort of like… making August’s work visible in a way that almost feels like a faux pas to people of his class. You aren’t supposed to think about how the tables ended up in the right place, they should just be in the right place when you arrive for lunch. Årnäs isn’t supposed to need repairs or modernizing or maintenance because the point is preserving a timeless legacy that never changes. The visibility of the tasks needed to maintain the class hierarchy calls attention to the class hierarchy as a social construct, and therefore something that can be deconstructed, too. Blah blah blah Blue stop being a Marxist.
There’s a commentary worth exploring here on the nature of work itself. How to some extent the type of work you do feeds into your social class, but then the social class you’re in dictates what work is “acceptable” for you to pursue or be seen doing by others. And I’m just going to leave this here to see if anyone else has thoughts on it, because I’m distracting myself.
ANYWAY. When it comes to the showdowns between Simon and August in this episode, I’m struck by what these scenes reveal. They show us how Simon has already become messily entangled with the quid pro quo of Hillerska culture, even if he doesn’t always do so 100% willingly, and how he’s starting to lie to his family to cover it up. Meanwhile, August gatekeeps Simon and lashes out at him not from a place where he feels secure in his status, but from a place where he’s feeling insecure about it and will do anything to feel some sense of stability. And both of them are desperate, scrambling boys who run into one another at the worst possible moment, leading to their fight. It’s a beautiful fusion of character arc and pacing that makes me so excited to watch them every time.
In conclusion: this is part of why the chemistry between Simon and August slaps so hard in this episode.
But also: get a job, August. Preferably one at that horse farm where Adam Groff worked in Sex Education. You can bring Rousseau.
museum director august
I had never thought about this!! Mostly because I hadn't thought about parents' day being essentially a fundraiser, so thank you for pointing that out!
"making August’s work visible in a way that almost feels like a faux pas to people of his class. You aren’t supposed to think about how the tables ended up in the right place, they should just be in the right place when you arrive for lunch. Årnäs isn’t supposed to need repairs or modernizing or maintenance because the point is preserving a timeless legacy that never changes."
This is also really fascinating, because 1) I remember the tension in that lunch scene when August is talking about Årnäs, I do feel like the adults in that scene are kind of looking down their noses at the idea of him idk... caring so much about working on the estate in this way? Will be interesting on my rewatch to pay attention to this. And 2) because August is not someone I think of as doing the dirty work! But it actually really does track with his character, of pushing himself so hard doing extra workouts before practice for example. He's not just in it for the aesthetic or clout of being on the rowing team, he's doing the hard work to excel at it. It also makes me think of him pushing back in S2 when Vincent yells at Simon after they lose the rowing competition - in a rare show of kindness(??) August says the whole event is about building camaraderie, not winning. Which yeah I think speaks to a desire in August for genuineness.... which also I think contributes to him being so attracted to Sara, who is very straightforward with him, and doesn't hide behind fake politeness when she interacts with him, like almost everyone else in his life must.
Anyway wow thank you for inspiring some interesting August Thoughts!! Hopefully something in this stream of consciousness made sense.
Re: museum director august
Re: museum director august
I’m very “capitalism and Protestant work ethic won’t save you and companies need to stop exploiting people” but I also do think that many people find meaning in work or career or a specific passion, and part of the reason that capitalist exploitation is wrong is because it exploits people’s desires to do good things in their community or make things or whatever else. So I think it’s very clever of the show to show how much August needs community, and how much working in a community could be beneficial to his mental health, but also shows how the whole framing of “you do these things because they are part of your Status” is hindering any healing he could actually find. Something something something about excess.
Also also, there are some scenes they cut from 2.3 and one of them may have involved a little more Simon-August interaction, which could potentially have set up the moment where he defends Simon. I wanna know moreeeee.
Re: museum director august
This is also really fascinating, because 1) I remember the tension in that lunch scene when August is talking about Årnäs, I do feel like the adults in that scene are kind of looking down their noses at the idea of him idk... caring so much about working on the estate in this way? Will be interesting on my rewatch to pay attention to this.
Ooh, let me know what you think when you watch it! And now that I’m thinking about that scene again, I also remember that the other family they’re eating with turns to Rickard and says, “You must be so proud of your son” or something similar, and August is suddenly very taken aback like “NOPE, HE IS NOT MY REAL DAD.” Which feels significant because Rickard is upper middle class + new money + has earned his keep through lawyering and not hereditary land ownership and maintenance, and August wants to differentiate himself from someone with a nouveau riche background.
It’s interesting, also, because I think this idea of signaling “effortlessness” to people and wanting to hide certain types of effort is usually something we think about in the context of female characters, especially Felice. Felice worries about her hair looking curly, because she spends so long straightening it and doesn’t want people to think about the amount of time she’s put in. In the earliest episodes, she wants to attract Wilhelm’s attention, but won’t make a move because looking too “eager” is going to give her a bad reputation/make her look like a gold digger. When she does make a move on Wilhelm in this episode, and realizes he doesn’t reciprocate, she feels very ashamed of how she made the move in the first place. And then we see the people in Felice’s life who reinforce this for her—Felice’s mom expecting certain things of her appearance and Felice’s dad expecting certain things of her grades, with neither of them being sympathetic about Rousseau.
Felice and August’s disastrous relationship is sort of made more disastrous by this pressure on both of them to look “effortless” and we see the direct fallout of that in 4 and 5. It makes sense that things kick off between them in 3 when all these themes are on display.
August and Årnäs
This is a good point re: the visibility of effort and the preservation of timelessness. I've recently read this chonk of a book about the gentry as a social class in the UK, and I feel like August's relationship with his family estate is very similar to a lot of the upper-end of the gentry spectrum portrayed in that book, in the sense that he wants to feed into Årnäs; he wants the place to thrive, to be respected, to be protected and preserved for future generations. Which is understandable, especially if you were born into that kind of mindset.
Fixing the estate up isn't necessarily a bad thing. Being seen to care for your ancestral home isn't exactly frowned upon but as you've pointed out, there's a hypocrisy when it comes to work versus the perception of work. August's problem is that he's so cash-poor that he can't fix up Årnäs like he needs to without selling the paintings or whatever he owns--and that's the real downside of his situation. He's trading in his social cachet (paintings, etc) for something as 'demeaning' as cash, which he should already have in spades.
Anyway, the way I'm so sympathetic to August's plight is. A bit insane, actually.
Re: August and Årnäs
If it makes you feel better, I am entirely too sympathetic to August. It’s my fannish fatal flaw.
Re: August and Årnäs