The people at Robinhood made IPO history this past week when they reserved an unheard-of chunk of its initial public offering, around 35 percent, for the trading app’s small-investor clients.
And if you’ve been listening to company honchos and its soon-to-be mega-rich CEO Vlad Tenev, this is what “democratizing” Wall Street is all about — letting its clients, the littlest of the little-guy investors, cash in on a hot IPO like those big, nasty hedge funds have been doing for decades.
Power to the people, right? I’m not so sure. In fact, there’s a strong counternarrative bouncing around Wall Street circles that Vlad’s supposed noblesse oblige is anything but — and yet another example of when something looks too good to be true, it usually is.
Tenev positions himself as a fellow following in the footsteps of his company’s namesake, stealing from those rich Wall Street-types, and giving stuff to us poors, even as he’s setting himself up to be the latest 30-something billionaire tapping into the high-finance wealth machine.
He created Robinhood eight years ago as a way for average people to trade easily and seamlessly just like the big guys on Wall Street, and with no commission. The company became a cultural touchstone during the pandemic lockdowns, when many people had nothing better to do with their time than trade stocks.
What his loyal customers might not fully appreciate is that they trade for free only because the firm sells client trades to brokers who then match the buyers and sellers, a practice known as “payment for order flow.”
Nothing illegal about that (at least not yet), nor immoral, in my opinion. But let’s drop the sanctimonious BS: This “empowering the little guy” is doing a lot to enrich Wall Street’s ruling class.
Once you get past the myth of Robinhood’s eleemosynary foundations, you can see that the IPO stunt is hardly the stuff that democratization is made of.
Most IPOs want shares to be placed with large institutional investors that hold them for the long haul. They are diversified mutual funds, and asset managers that can withstand the vicissitudes of any nascent company’s fortunes that play out in hopefully rising share prices over a period of time, usually years.
But Robinhood isn’t getting a lot of interest from those investors, I hear. The big asset-management firms are not Robinhood’s customers, and have no allegiance to the product. They’re looking hard at potential user growth during market downturns, and regulatory risks.
While the Robinhood trading-app exponentially grew from thousands of “little guys” playing around with meme stocks like GameStop, its business model is not sustainable at all.Christopher Sadowski
And I am told they didn’t like what they saw. Many were so skeptical about the business model that they decided they wouldn’t participate in the offering and might just short shares, betting they can make money when the shares fall in price as they did Thursday, dipping below the $38 IPO point.
As one large institutional investor told me, “Robinhood’s business model is mezzo morto.” (Translation: Half dead.)
So Tenev makes a good show of giving his shares to the “little guy,” when the little guy probably didn’t have much of a choice.
To become profitable, Robinhood needs retail trading to grow exponentially like it did during pandemic lockdowns. Its competitors, discount brokers like Charles Schwab, E*Trade, etc., are extremely profitable. A big reason why is they have commercial banks and other lines of business that allow them to make money under more adverse market conditions.
Something simple like the Fed having to start raising interest rates because of non-transitory inflation will hurt Robinhood’s growth. The minute the Fed moves rates higher, it’s likely you can kiss goodbye to much of the meme-stock and crypto trading that is behind Robinhood’s amazing 200 percent surge in user growth in just the past several years (18 million customers at last count compared to just 6 million at the end of 2018).
To be fair, during the company’s road show, executives furtively conceded (in between a fair amount of chest pounding about customer growth, etc.) that they are open to making changes as soon as the IPO is complete. They seemed to acknowledge that they need to rely less on payment for order flow, which accounts for around 75 percent of the company’s revenues, because, after all, Gary Gensler, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, isn’t a big fan of the practice.
So maybe Robinhood will at some point diversify its way into profitability and into large investors’ good graces. Robinhood executives have strongly hinted that they, too, could get into the payment-for-order-flow business by matching their own orders and skimming the difference in the bid-ask spread on stocks the way other market makers do.
Robinhood could also use some of that $2 billion in IPO cash to buy a bank, a business that generally makes money when interest rates rise (and markets tumble) because banks charge more when they lend and are slow to raise rates on savings and checking accounts.
Lots of maybes for a company pushing the narrative that it’s poised for tremendous overnight growth while democratizing Wall Street.
Latynina did not remember the Soviet gymnastics team turning to psychologists or other formal tools to improve concentration and mental performance.
But that was a different era, when athletes may have relied on encouragement and accolades from coaches and teammates. To soothe her nerves, she would stand on her tiptoes, close her eyes and remain still.
"My coach would always say it doesn't matter in which position you finish," Latynina said. "The most important thing is doing what you can."
Latynina said Soviet Olympic gymnasts competing at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics lived in military barracks with communal bathrooms, striking a sharp contrast with the hotel rooms used by the U.S. gymnastics team.
In Latynina's era there was pressure, of course, to win medals for the Soviet Union, which used elite sports as a tool to boost its international prestige.
But Latynina said Soviet authorities' desire for the country's athletes to top medal tables was not perceived as coercion.
"We were trying ourselves not to let our country, our people down," she said. "We would cry when our flag was raised and national anthem played."
Scott Simon speaks with Claire Luchette about their debut novel, "Agatha of Little Neon." It's the story of four young nuns who are reassigned to a half-way house in Rhode Island.
O, let's get to what would it cost to cut C.J. Beathard loose. And if the Jags were to cut left tackle Cam Robinson and left guard Andrew Norwell next year and slide Walker Little in at left tackle – if he isn't already there – would the savings be enough to sign a good right tackle through free agency and slide Jawaan Taylor to guard and maybe sign another offensive lineman early in next year's draft?
We may be in the weeds here – and we're certainly a bit ahead of ourselves. Mostly, there are too many hypotheticals here to answer with accuracy. Jaguars quarterback C.J. Beathard has $2.75 million guaranteed in the two-year contract he signed in March, so releasing him would cost the Jaguars that much – and there's no guarantee yet the Jaguars want to release Beathard. Decisions regarding Norwell and Robinson will be made next offseason. What will happen to the rest of the offensive line? There are 17 regular-season games to be played between now and next offseason. What happens in those games will dramatically influence those moves. But make no mistake: the Jaguars will have ample salary-cap room next offseason to address areas of need. Whether there are free agents that make sense to address those areas remains to be seen, but they will have the space.
Travis from Dallas, TX
Would you happen to remember you and local Jag reporters "Final Analysis" record predictions before the 2017 season? That year we all figured the defense would be solid, bringing on cornerback A.J. Bouye and others … but I can't remember if it was a hesitant year to predict over .500 because of quarterback Blake Bortles, a rookie offensive tackle and the rest of the offense.
We didn't do "Final Analysis" before the 2017 season, and I don't know that many of the Jaguars' "experts" included in the series predicted specific records before that season. But it's safe to say few – if any – analysts were predicting the Jaguars to finish over .500 before that season. They had had six consecutive losing seasons at that point and finished 2-14 the season before. There were some signs they could be improved – particularly the presence of cornerback Jalen Ramsey and the addition of defensive end Calais Campbell – but not enough to predict what happened that season.
Chris from Mandarin
Yet "Mike from Reality" is still commenting on a sports website. Good job dude, you played yourself. You're still a fan and you can't hide that fact. Just by being on this website, it's obvious you're not being truthful with yourself.
That's not nice.
Daniel from Johnston, IA
I just wanted to say thanks for being an open neutral place for fans to voice their question/comments about the vaccine on both ways. I love that you haven't shut down questions on it and that you see both sides. I feel the same. I'm vaccinated but many of my friends are not. I wish they were, but I also understand that it's a very big thing to ask some to inject themselves with something they may not be comfortable with. It's a conversation that is happening at every level in society and the NFL is no different.
Richard from Jacksonville
O'Man, Laviska Shenault Jr. lined up at tight end about 20 snaps last season. Do you take the over or under on that number this season? Is this strictly a gadget play or does he have the size and skill set to block at tight end in addition to pass catching from the position?
I suppose I'll take the over in this sense: I expect second-year wide receiver Laviska Shenault Jr. to line up at multiple spots around the offense – as a running back and a wide receiver. I expect the Jaguars to use him creatively enough that sometimes he will be next to the line of scrimmage and perceived as a "tight end." He probably won't be blocking much from there. I would expect he would be running routes as he would from the backfield or wide receiver or perhaps after lining up behind center. I'm not trying to be vague here. I just expect the Jaguars to be creative and dynamic enough before the snap to make it difficult to identify exactly what position players such as Travis Etienne Jr. or Shenault are playing on some particular plays.
Gary from Suffolk, VA
Not really a question, more of a statement. I have never been a person to hold it against someone who wanted to be paid their worth and respected while doing so. Respect to me is earned as an individual and usually given to a position regardless of the occupant. With that said, I am super happy for Jalen Ramsey. Did I want him to leave? Nope. Was I happy how he left? Nope. But I am glad he did what was in his best interest. I find it striking that I have not heard any teammate of his speak negatively about him as a player or a person. Yet some fans want to crucify him to this day. I ride with Jalen and want him to continue to be the best in the league. Yep, and I am still DTWD
You go, girl.
Jen from Jacksonville
Is there ANY chance of there being a 10 percent chance of the Jaguars scooping up Aaron Rodgers? Second, if O had the choice to bring Rodgers on, what would it be?
The Jaguars selected quarterback Trevor Lawrence No. 1 overall in the 2021 NFL Draft. I would not pursue Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers if it was my decision considering the Jaguars' current circumstance. I can't imagine a scenario in which the Jaguars would do so.
Roger from Houston
All of a sudden, everyone is an expert on HIPAA?
Apparently.
Steve from Nashville, TN
Would it not be difficult for receivers to adjust to catching balls from Trevor and then from Gardner Minshew II in the same practice?
It's almost certainly tricky. Lawrence threw a pass Friday, for example, that reached the receiver quickly and the receiver couldn't get his hands up in time to make the reception. It's possible that the receiver could have reacted in time had another quarterback thrown the pass.
UnHIPAAcat from Carlsbad, CA
Hi John. There are 3,006 counties in the Unites States and 67 in Florida. The New York Times reports that Duval, with 96 reported cases per 100,000 residents, ranks 28thand third, respectively, with a 200 percent increase (that's three - not two - times as many) in the number of cases reported over the last two weeks. So, I did a little research and learned that Derrick Henry (2,027 yards last season, btw) has played 10 games against the Jags, in which he's rushed for 1,013 yards (100/game). To be honest, I thought it would be closer to 200 and was going to predict this year he'd total against the Jags what he averaged. Holding him to 50 yards a game would be difficult, but at least I think we won't have to sit through any 99-yard TD, 250-yard, or four touchdown games this year. Based on nothing but speculation and hope, how do you think Joe Cullen's defense will do against him this year? (p.s., have any O-Zone questions violated your HIPAA rights?)
I'm so tired.
Jim from Middleburg, FL
Who will be the O line utilitarian replacement after Tyler Shatley gets promoted due to starter injuries?
Good question. I expect rookie tackle Walker Little to be the swing tackle. I don't yet have a feel for if Little could play guard, though likely he could if needed. Who would be the interior swing lineman? It ideally would be second-year guard Ben Bartch. The next month or so should determine if he is ready to play. It's unlikely the Jaguars will find someone this year to do it as well as Shatley. He's very versatile and very reliable, which is how he has carved out a long career.
John from Jacksonville
Hi KOAGF - Why do you always try to appear to be unbiased with your answers about non-football topics (such as Covid-19) when you subtly show your biased opinion in the end? When there has always been a cure that politicians and the media don't want to talk about, it's not by definition a pandemic. When there is an injection that hasn't been formally approved yet, it's not a vaccine. When there is "group think" pushing to vilify those who do as they're told versus those who think for themselves, it isn't a free country.
I answer questions as I do because it's my column.
Daniel from Jersey City, NJ
O-Man, do you think Trevor is ripping cigs down at Pete's?
I'm answering this question at 7:30 in the morning. Therefore, I hope not – though I would have to admit at least some level of respect if he were.
KALYANINO, Russia, July 30 (Reuters) - Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina was filled with a mixed sense of awe and trepidation as she watched the gravity-defying - and at times treacherous - routines of Simone Biles as the American set out to break her Olympic gold-medal record.
The 86-year-old, the most decorated Olympic gymnast in history with 18 medals, could not have fathomed the complexity of modern gymnasts' routines, acknowledging that gymnastics had become even more physically and psychologically gruelling than in her day.
"What we did is not comparable to what modern gymnasts do," she told Reuters at her home two hours outside Moscow on Friday.
"Looking at what gymnasts today do, I'm a little afraid. Would I have started gymnastics or not?"
Like much of the world, Latynina was stunned to see Biles, a four-time Olympic champion, withdraw from events that could have seen her challenge her record of nine Olympic gold medals for a gymnast and perhaps break her record of 32 combined Olympic and world championship medals.
The 24-year-old American completed one vault at the start of the women's team final before abruptly withdrawing, citing mental health concerns. She also withdrew from the all-around, the vault and uneven bar finals.
"In our day that would have been unacceptable," Latynina said. "I can't imagine how that's possible."
Biles' move, inconceivable in the Soviet era or even a few years ago, has brought mental health into focus at Tokyo 2020, where the U.S. gymnast has generally received an outpouring of support.
Latynina did not remember the Soviet gymnastics team turning to psychologists or other formal tools to improve concentration and mental performance.
She relied on encouragement and accolades from coaches and team mates. To soothe her nerves, she would stand on her tiptoes, close her eyes and remain still.
"My coach would always say it doesn't matter in which position you finish," Latynina said. "The most important thing is doing what you can."
Latynina said Soviet Olympic gymnasts competing at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics lived in military barracks with communal bathrooms, striking a sharp contrast with the hotel rooms used by the U.S. gymnastics team.
In Latynina's era there was pressure, of course, to win medals for the Soviet Union, which used elite sport as a tool to boost its international prestige.
But Latynina said Soviet authorities' desire for the country's athletes to top medal tables was not perceived as coercion.
"We were trying ourselves not to let our country, our people down," she said. "We would cry when our flag was raised and national anthem played."
Additional reporting by Evgenia Novozhenina, Alexander Reshetnikov and Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by Christian Radnedge and Stephen Coates
BOISE, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — Governor Brad Little released a statement Thursday announcing his decision to sign onto a briefing in support of a Mississippi case, Dobbs V. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, headed to the Supreme Court that is attempting to overturn Roe V. Wade.
“Protecting the lives of preborn babies has always been and will continue to be a priority of mine. I am also a defender of state sovereignty,” Gov. Little said in a statement. “My decision to join this lawsuit to protect lives and states’ rights reflects my conservative approach to constitutional interpretation. "
Planned Parenthood of Idaho released a response to the Governor’s action, saying the move is political and out of touch.
“Once again, Idaho GOP is on the wrong side here,” said Mistie DelliCarpini-Tolman of Planned Parenthood. “They’re out of touch with the healthcare needs and the priorities of their own constituents and interpreting the constitution the way they want to interpret it to amass their own political power.”
Idaho Representative Ilana Rubel, who has a background in law, says she believes this attempt to overturn the nearly 50-year-old law may have a chance.
“I think the court has been stacked in recent years to precisely this end,” Rep. Rubel said. “Focused, I think, single-mindedly in stacking the court so that there would be a majority on it that would overturn Roe V. Wade.”
Rubel also tells KMVT she believes most Americans do believe in safe access to abortions, which makes the Supreme Court’s potential decision a risky one.
“I think the Supreme Court understands if they were to do something that was incredibly antithetical to the will of the people of America,” said Rep. Rubel, “I think they could find the principle of judicial review in real jeopardy.”
The next step for the case against Roe V. Wade could come this fall when the Supreme Court takes on the case.
“The threat to abortion access is very real,” DelliCarpini-Tolman said. “We can’t predict, obviously, how the Supreme Court is going to decide, but regardless of the outcome, we’re not going to stop fighting.”
SAN BERNARDINO – This is shaping up to be quite the summer for Nevada’s Summerlin Little League.
Led by star pitcher Ava Koenig, Nevada’s 11- and 12-year-old softball champions are their state’s first representative to advance to the Little League Softball World Series, and the first to win a West Region championship game at Al Houghton Stadium after a dominant 10-0 competition-rule shortened five-inning victory over Arizona on Friday.
“It’s really exciting because I’ve never had an experience like this before,” Koenig said. “I think we might be able to get far in the World Series.”
Koenig struck out 11 and walked two in tossing a two-hitter for Nevada, which went unbeaten in San Bernardino after allowing only two runs and scoring 43 over four games at the week-long tournament.
“We’re getting better and I don’t think we’ve peaked yet, but we are getting better each game, each time out,” said Summerlin LL manager Jim Lenahan, whose team is the first from Nevada to win more than one game at the West Region tournament.
Summerlin LL moves on to play at the Little League Softball World Series, held this year in Greenville, N.C., starting Aug. 11.
“It means the world for Summerlin Little League and the community, and both the baseball and softball programs just continue to get better,” Lenahan said.
In another first, Summerlin Little League also will represent Nevada at the West Region baseball tournament starting Aug. 8. It’s the first time the same Little League has represented Nevada in San Bernardino.
“We’re excited. Our boys are coming and they’ll be (in San Bernardino) in two weeks and it’s amazing,” Lenahan said.
Koenig dominated from the outset on Friday, striking out the first two batters of the game in a 77-pitch effort. She faced just four batters above the minimum.
“We don’t want to say we have an MVP but she runs the show. She took the mound and took command and said we’re going to ride her back to the World Series,” Lenahan said.
Nevada’s No. 2 batter, Koenig was hit by a pitch and came around to score her team’s first run on an RBI single from Jovani Corneil as Summerlin tacked three on the scoreboard in the first inning.
Gia Christmas came off the bench and provided a spark with a pair of RBI singles as Nevada grabbed a 6-0 lead in the third, and a 7-0 lead in the fourth.
“Gia’s a sub and she’s always been a sub for us, but she had two hits today and I couldn’t be happier,” Lenahan said. “We’re the only team that brought 14 players and we’re not here without each of those 14 girls contributing.”
Koenig singled and scored again in the fifth as Nevada took a 10-0 lead, then posted strikeouts10 and 11 in a 1-2-3 fifth to finish the game. She pitched complete games to win the final two games.
“She never shows it, but she had a little extra adrenaline today and a little more juice on her fastball,” Lenahan said. “Her rise ball was phenomenal and her changeup kept them off balance all the way through. Her changeup was filthy.”
Corniel and Julianna Phee both singled twice and scored twice for Nevada, which totaled 12 hits.
SHREVEPORT, La. (KSLA) - The Caddo Parish Coroner’s Office has revealed how Shamia Little, 17, died.
The teen’s body was found Monday, July 12 after she went missing on July 6 at Doug Williams Park. On Friday, July 30, the coroner’s office said she died from a gunshot wound.
In its opening titles, in cheeky medieval lettering, The Green Knight proclaims itself “A filmed adaptation of the chivalric romance by Anonymous.” That romance is commonly known as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, one of the most famous and important works of English literature, a 14th-century Arthurian tale penned in Middle English that’s inspired centuries of study, contemplation, and scholarly bickering.
The film is a curious and gloriously risky effort. There’s no effort to modernize the story, no attempt to make it easily legible to the audience. Starring Dev Patel, The Green Knight is a swashbuckling tale of adventure, to be sure — but it feels dragged out of the mists of time, uncanny spirits and a touch of the rude and bawdy still clinging to the edges. Director David Lowery took a story that many people struggled their way through in high school English, cast Patel as its uneasy hero, and used it to examine how myths get made.
So while you couldn’t call The Green Knight a “faithful” adaptation of the poem, it might be a more faithful adaptation of the bigger legend around Gawain’s adventure than a line-by-line recreation ever could have been. Understanding some key places where the film deviates from the poem helps make sense of The Green Knight’s loftier goals — and its weirder mysteries.
The Green Knight isn’t David Lowery’s first dip into mythical realms. The director and screenwriter’s subjects have come from all over the place, but he often circles the same goal: reexamining myths and legends and imagining what their aftermath might be. Among his films are Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013), about the consequences for a Bonnie and Clyde-style couple; A Ghost Story (2017), about the long, long arm of a tragic romance; and The Old Man and the Gun (2018), about the waning days of a celebrity thief. (Lowery is also completing work on Peter Pan & Wendy, which could slot comfortably into this list.)
The Green Knight takes the same approach to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, with some tweaks, expansions, and twists that adapt an epic poem into a lush, meditative, eerie film. Patel plays Gawain, the nephew of King Arthur, who in this rendering aspires to be a storied and legendary knight of his uncle’s Round Table. One Christmas, after a night of merriment, Gawain confronts a mysterious, magical knight, and that encounter sets him on an epic quest to face his fate.
Generous spoilers follow for The Green Knight. Proceed on your journey with caution.
It only occurred to me after seeing The Green Knight that the film’s title, which diverges from the poem’s title, might have two meanings — and point to some of the biggest differences between the movie and its source material. The “green knight” of the traditional title refers to the knight with whom Gawain tangles, whose skin is described as green.
In the poem, Gawain is already a beloved and respected member of the Round Table, noted for his chivalry. In Lowery’s film, Gawain is young, impetuous, prone to carousing, and ashamed of how little of his life has been spent on bold and brave exploits. He’s new to manhood. In other words, he’s also “green,” and that’s an important part of the story.
In the film, unlike the poem, Gawain has a love interest named Essel, a young woman (played by Alicia Vikander) who is a sex worker, and dreams of spending her life with him. Gawain’s uncle and aunt, King Arthur (Sean Harris) and Queen Guinevere (Kate Dickie) are getting older, and wish to see their nephew — who, in the film, stands to inherit the throne — gain nobility and stature, and quit being such a dissipated doofus.
Onscreen, as the knights and nobility celebrate Christmas in the castle (though it’s New Year’s Eve in the poem), Gawain’s mother (Sarita Choudhury) refuses to join in. Instead, with a group of women, she seemingly casts a spell that might have something to do with the Green Knight. Those steeped in Arthurian legends may suspect Gawain’s mother is none other than the enchantress Morgan Le Fay, who learned the dark arts from the powerful wizard Merlin.
In the poem, Gawain is indeed the nephew of Arthur; Morgan Le Fay is Arthur’s half-sister, and emerges later in the poem, but Gawain is not her son. But let’s leave Le Fay here for now.
The sequence in the film in which the mysterious Green Knight appears is plenty spooky, and follows the general contours of the traditional story. The Knight issues a challenge for one of Arthur’s knights to strike him with his ax, then to find him in a year’s time to receive the same blow himself. (This kind of exercise is what passed for a “game” in Arthurian times.)
Gawain accepts. He cuts off the Knight’s head, which the headless Knight then lifts so that it can address the company gathered. Gawain must find the Green Knight in the faraway Green Chapel after a year has passed.
If you’ve seen the film and are wondering why the Green Knight isn’t literally green, it’s a valid question. (In the poem, his skin is green and he rides a green horse; in the film, he looks like a tree.) There were all kinds of reasons someone might write of a “green” person in the 14th century, and some scholars have wondered if the word actually referred to a range of colors — gray, green, blue, brown — that showed up near the sea.
Importantly, one way to read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is to view the Green Knight as representative of the natural world — the wildness of creation and even a more pagan spirituality, full of witchcraft and unseen creatures — impeding on the deeply Christianized and slowly modernizing world of Camelot. That interpretation is visible in the movie’s design, with the Round Table and the castle rendered in dull, almost industrial grays and harsh lighting, and there are ways to read the film as an environmental parable, too.
Because Patel’s Gawain is “green” himself, the film frames his acceptance of the challenge as a way to have a noble adventure and inscribe his name in the annals of history. It works — soon, the locals are learning the story of brave Gawain and the Green Knight from puppet shows. The legend has been spun.
Gawain in the woods!Eric Zachanowich/A24
In the film, the legend the villagers start telling of Gawain’s exploits exaggerates the bravery of Gawain himself, who is still kind of immature, unable to really understand what it would mean to be a man of bravery, with youthful ideas and dreams of grandeur that his lady love challenges. Still, after taking up the Green Knight’s challenge, he’s intent on having his grand adventure, so Gawain does eventually set out for the Green Chapel, nearly a year hence. He’s wearing the green and gold belt his mother made — or “girdle,” as the poem calls it — which will protect him from harm.
In the poem, the journey is described as arduous, but Gawain’s adventures are only hinted at. In the film, two main adventures are shown.
First, Gawain encounters a scavenger (Barry Keoghan), who gives Gawain directions to the Chapel but then sets upon him in the woods with a couple of friends, ties him up, and steals his stuff — including the protective green girdle from his mother. Without that girdle, Gawain is vulnerable.
Bound and helpless, Gawain lies stranded in the forest. Then the camera slowly turns in a full circle, revealing the rotted corpse of Gawain. I gasped at this shot — it felt like a reference to Lowery’s movie A Ghost Story, with its theme of time passing and mortality looming — but then it rotates back to show a living Gawain once again, who frees himself from the bonds and continues his trek.
Why include this odd interlude? One possible explanation is both funny and bleak: that Gawain actually died there in the woods, and those back home invented legends and stories to explain what happened to him, lauding his bravery even though he never made it to the Green Chapel to find the Knight once again. Another is that we’ve slipped into Gawain’s headspace, imagining himself as a corpse, and that’s what motivates him to keep going.
In any case, in the film, he does keep going. In the next section of the story, labeled on screen as “A Meeting With Saint Winifred,” Gawain meets a mysterious, ethereal woman (Erin Kellyman) who appears to him by night as he sleeps in an abandoned house — Winifred. Despite appearing to have her head firmly attached to her body, she asks Gawain to retrieve her head from the spring outside. When he enters the water, the light begins to turn different colors, and he falls into what feels like a trance. How he gets out of the spring is not entirely clear.
There are some scholarly roots for this strange sequence. Winifred isn’t mentioned in the poem. But some researchers, working from geographic clues in the poem, believe that Gawain’s journey took him through Holywell, a town in Wales. Holywell’s name is derived from a well that sits in the middle of the town, named for Saint Winifred and designated as sacred. Winifred (or Winefride, in Welsh), as the story goes, was beheaded by her suitor Caradog; in some versions she refused his sexual advances, and in others she decided to become a nun, but in all versions, he was enraged. When he cut off her head, it fell to the ground, and a healing spring opened there. Then her uncle, who was also a saint, put her head back on her body, and she came back to life.
If the spring Gawain wades into in the film is the well of Saint Winifred, with healing properties, then perhaps Gawain truly did die in the forest, and the spring brought him back to life. Or perhaps something else is going on. Regardless, at the time the poem was written, Winifred’s legend had spread — and since the spreading of legends is at the core of The Green Knight, as are acts of beheading, her thematic connection to the film makes sense.
Gawain’s subsequent arrival at a grand, unexpected castle is much like what happens in the poem. He meets the castle’s lord (Joel Edgerton) and lady, whom he is shocked to discover bears exact resemblance to his love interest Essel, left behind in Camelot. (She is also played by Alicia Vikander.) There’s also a mysterious silent woman who sits at tables and in drawing rooms with the lord and lady, wrapped entirely in bandages.
A gift from the lady.Eric Zachanowich/A24
This is where the two stories, poem and film, really begin to diverge. So it’s worth knowing first how things turn out in the poem.
After he arrives at the castle in the poem, Gawain undergoes a kind of testing of his chivalry and his virtue. He makes a deal — another “game” — with his host, the lord of the castle. The lord is headed out to hunt each day, and he promises to return with a gift for Gawain; in turn, Gawain must give him whatever gift he’s received from the lady of the house that day. Meanwhile, the lady makes three attempts on three successive days to seduce Gawain. His knightly code of chivalry says he cannot refuse what a lady requests, but he also wishes to avoid sacrificing his virtue and potentially losing his life by sleeping with his host’s wife. He manages to convince her to simply give him kisses, which he in turn gives to his host “in the kindliest way he could.”
But then, in the poem, he dodges her advances and gives half-truths to the lord. One of the gifts the lady gives to him is her green girdle — in the poem, that’s the first time he’s encountered a green girdle — and he keeps it for himself, not passing it along to the lord as he promised. In the end, when Gawain finally goes to meet the Green Knight, he discovers as he kneels for the blow, thinking his life will end, that the Green Knight is actually the lord of the castle.
The poet explains that the lord was transformed by the magic of Morgan Le Fay — who turns out to be the mysterious bandage-wrapped woman — into someone who could challenge the knights of the Round Table with a test of courage and honor and perhaps frighten Queen Guinevere. (Morgan Le Fay is not a big fan of the queen.) But the lord forgives Gawain and he returns to Camelot with the girdle around his waist, as a reminder of his failure to keep his promises.
At this point, the film starts to go its own way. To be sure, the bandage-wrapped woman is Morgan Le Fay; in the film she’s also Gawain’s mother, and watching his temptations up close. (Kind of creepy, honestly.)
In the movie, the lady’s temptations of Gawain don’t go as long as they do in the poem, but they’re more graphically rendered and even more explicitly sexual. Gawain, after all, is green, a young man, and when a beautiful lady who looks exactly like his girl back home comes on to him, refusal is, uh, sticky business.
She gives him an exact replica of the girdle from his mother that the scavenger stole in the woods, to his mystification and wonder, and promises it will keep him safe. Gawain, in a bit of a panic, leaves the castle — and runs into the lord.
Something mysterious happens next: The lord kisses him full on the lips, in a way that is definitely not merely polite. Among scholars, there’s been a fair amount of speculation about the kisses the poem names and the manner in which they might have been delivered, as well as whether there are queer undertones to the poem. That speculation is likely what the film is drawing on.
After the kiss, Gawain makes it to the Green Chapel and waits for the Green Knight to wake up and deal him his blow. But while in the poem, the always brave and bold Gawain kneels to accept what he’s promised to accept — and receives only a small wound to learn a lesson — the movie spins off in another direction.
Gawain runs away from the Green Knight, having left his promise unfulfilled, head firmly attached, girdle from the lady wrapped around his waist. He heads back to Camelot. He arrives to make love to and impregnate Essel, but he doesn’t marry her; the child that Essel bears is taken from her at birth. Gawain instead marries a royal woman who rather precisely resembles Saint Winifred, and when Arthur dies, they ascend to the throne and have another child.
Gawain is now King, a legend, a great one. But the glories of his uncle’s Camelot are fading. Gawain’s son dies in battle. Gawain catches sight of Essel in a crowd, hardened by a difficult life, a vision of his inability to keep his word. Not long afterward, Camelot is under siege. As opposing armies pound down the doors of the castle, Gawain quietly removes his girdle, and his head falls off.
Knights must seek their fate.Eric Zachanowich/A24
Then, mysteriously — just as in the forest — time seems to reverse itself, and Gawain finds himself back in the Green Chapel, about to take his blow.
What just happened? I can imagine a few ways to explain this magic, some more pedestrian than others. But the best way I know to describe the end of The Green Knight is that it feels like a conscious attempt to recall The Last Temptation of Christ.
Now come spoilers for that other, much older movie!
Does that mean Gawain is a Christ figure? Not exactly.
At the end of Martin Scorsese’s 1988 film (based on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis), Jesus is hanging on the cross, having lived a life of some confusion and conflict over his divine and human natures. (The Last Temptation of Christwas very, very controversial upon release.) There are ways in which the Jesus of that film and Gawain of The Green Knight bear similarities to one another. They’re both less serene, confident, and virtuous than the traditions that tell their stories have made them out to be. Both movies portray heroic figures through lenses that are not always heroic, struggling with desires and temptations that are a little startling to watch.
As Jesus hangs on the cross in The Last Temptation of Christ, he is tempted by a little girl (or so he thinks she is) to leave the cross and go live a normal human life. And ... he does. He climbs down off the cross. He finds Mary Magdalene — also, in the film, a sex worker — and marries her. They live a happy life together. After she dies, he finds Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, and they become his wives. They have children.
One day, Jesus encounters the apostle Paul telling stories about the death and resurrection of Jesus, and tries to stop him, explaining that you can’t save people with a story based on lies. But Paul says that even if the story isn’t true, it’s what the people need to hear, and there’s nothing Jesus can do about it.
By the end of The Last Temptation of Christ, Jesus is old, and Jerusalem — like Camelot — is under siege. Jesus begs God to let him fulfill his role as the Messiah, and suddenly finds himself back on the cross, where he dies for the sins of mankind.
The Last Temptation of Christ goes, shall we say, off book.Universal Pictures
The Last Temptation of Christ doesn’t perfectly map onto The Green Knight, but the story structure is strikingly similar. I don’t think Lowery is trying to say that Gawain is Jesus, although many scholars over many centuries have compared the characters, situations, and symbols of the Gawain myth to elements of Christian theology, and not without merit. To the medieval Christian mind, every story was highly symbolic of some deeper truth. Gawain’s three temptations at the hands of the lady of the castle he visits could be the three temptations Jesus experienced in the wilderness. Some have seen parallels to Christ in the Green Knight, or considered how the soul’s salvation is an element of the story. In a straightforward way, it shows the pagan and the Christian worlds in confrontation, the way they were in the time of the legend.
But that’s really not the gist of The Green Knight. Instead, the movie is a tale of how legends often get spun without strict adherence to the truth beneath them. It’s a story about a knight who wants to be remembered as great, and sees how his life might turn out if he decides to pursue that status as a mighty king, rather than adhering to goodness, virtue, and the keeping of one’s word. The Gawain of The Green Knight is a “Christ figure” in that he resembles the Christ of The Last Temptation of Christ, a man who can’t quite own up to who he is expected to be.
In a way, The Last Temptation’s Jesus gives up a good life to attain greatness, and The Green Knight’s Gawain does just the opposite. One of them saves mankind; the other saves his own soul.
This contrast helps point to what The Green Knight — and maybe even the poem it’s based on — has been about all along. Lowery’s predilection for examining the aftermath of myths and legends rises to the surface once again with the film, and reminds us that behind every epic is just a guy who has to keep living after the great deed is done. Stories of brave exploits remain appealing to us because they tell us that big moments of greatness are what make history, while goodness is rarely recorded.
Read some ways, the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight turns that presumptive path to legend on its head: For Gawain, to be good and loving and wise is what’s most important; he feels shame when he fails, but his goodness is what makes him worthy of an epic poem. The Green Knight lets Gawain game out the greatness path and realize that only goodness is worth living for. By digging into the story with dirtied nails and a new take on the tale, it could be that The Green Knight is the most faithful adaptation of them all.
SEOUL — One day, she was an ordinary working woman in South Korea, married with a son and designing ads for one of the country’s largest convenience store chains. The next day, she was branded a man-hating feminist on web forums popular with men, a “cancer-like creature” among an “anti-social group” of “feminazis.”
The hostility centered on an ad the woman had designed for camping products. It depicted a tent, a forest, a campfire and a large hand about to grasp a sausage. With its thumb and index finger pursed, the hand image is much like the pinching-hand emoji, a symbol often suggesting something is small.
Many men were furious, convinced it ridiculed the size of their genitals.
They threatened to boycott the multibillion-dollar company, called GS25. The woman, whose identity has been withheld by the company for her safety, desperately tried to defuse the situation. “I do not support any ideology,” she said in an online statement in May. She denied that her design was a veiled “expression of hate for men.”
What happened to the woman was the latest salvo in South Korea’s war against feminists. It seems that men here need merely to express an affront to their male sensibilities, and businesses will bend over backward to soothe them. In recent months, the mob has dredged up all sorts of unrelated ads and howled “misandry!” In each instance, the ad has contained a depiction of fingers pinching some innocuous item — a credit card, a can of Starbucksespresso, even a Covid-19 vaccine. In many cases, the accused — including the national police agency and the defense ministry — removed the offending image and expressed regret for hurtingmen’sfeelings.
There is precedent for the men’s interpretation, which they refer to in their accusations, but zero evidence of any political plot now: In 2015, a now disbanded Korean feminist group intentionally used pinching fingers as its logo. The symbol was meant, indeed mockingly, to mirror the objectification Korean women endure.
The animosity has intensified recently as Korean men grapple with a new wave of feminism that since about 2015 has achieved hard-won gains against a deeply entrenched patriarchy. The backlash, coupled with the ascension of a conservative political party angling to knock out its incumbent opponents, presents a serious danger to women’s rights and gender equality.
This ad for a popular convenience store chain in South Korea has enraged many men in the country, who claim the hand-and-sausage illustration was a feminist attempt to mock the size of their genitals.Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters
South Korea may be internationally regarded as an economic, technological and cultural powerhouse, but that reputation obscures what little power it cedes to women. The gender pay gap is the widest among advanced economies, at 35 percent, and sexist job recruitment abounds. More than 65 percent of companies listed on the Korean Exchange have no female executives. And the country is consistently ranked by The Economist as having the worst environment for working women among O.E.C.D. countries.
Women have pushed back, mounting what could be considered Asia’s most successful MeToo movement. But the reckoning has thrust society into a state of high tension: South Korea ranked first among 28 countries surveyed by Ipsos this year on conflict between the sexes.
Now, in the run-up to the March 2022 presidential election, the country’s conservative opposition party seems to be engineering a revival by exploiting the division. Last month, Lee Jun-seok, a men’s-rights crusader who amplified the charge of man hatred against GS25, was elected leader of the right-wing People Power Party. Arguing that today’s young men are targets of “reverse discrimination,” Mr. Lee is expected to wield considerable influence in the party and drum up huge support for its candidate. (Mr. Lee is 36; contenders must be at least 40.)
Mr. Lee has tapped a deep well of resentment among young men who say they’re victims of the zeitgeist. His signature claim is that gender disparity is exaggerated and women get too much special treatment. He has dismissed young women who’ve protested discrimination as having a “groundless victim mentality,” and he wants to abolish the gender equality ministry. The toxic political climate he has created could jeopardize many women-friendly policies, such as hiring more women to senior positions and combating gender violence, regardless of whether President Moon Jae-in’s incumbent Democratic Party is dethroned.
But Mr. Lee has reason to be confident: In the bellwether Seoul mayoral election in April, about 70 percent of men in their 20s and younger voted for the conservative candidate — almost equal to the conservative votes cast by men 60 and older.
As the anti-women pushback intensifies, the excitement felt by feminist millennials powering the recent movement has been replaced by dread and despair. Women have told me they feel suffocated, anxious not to enrage the online masses. Another commercial designer, in a tragicomic attempt to avoid the pinching gesture, told me she was considering using chopsticks to point at products. A freelance writer said she removed all work related to feminism from her portfolio.
Though many of the women I spoke to feel besieged and isolated, they’re determined to push ahead.
This month, a group of feminists denounced “the misogynists who attack innocent citizens” in a petition and drew more than 1,000 cosignatories. Their wish list includes stricter monitoring of the male-dominated online forums that are “breeding grounds” for threats of violence against feminists. They also want measures to curb misogyny on social media and YouTube.
There’s even a beleaguered bill that would outlaw discrimination based on gender, sexual identity or ethnicity, among other things, though its passage is far from ensured, given the opposition to feminist activism.
Many South Korean women refuse to return to antiquated ideals of unquestioning, uncomplaining mothers and caregivers. Our feminist awakening has given us the language to redefine our lives and name the resentment we couldn’t describe before. “We can’t go back to the past now,” said Lee Hyo-rin, who began fighting spycam-porn crimes after discovering feminism in 2016. “We will ride it out — no matter how high the tide is and no matter what these pathetic sexists say.”
Hawon Jung (@allyjung) is the author of a forthcoming book on South Korea’s MeToo movement, “Flowers of Fire,” and a former reporter for Agence France-Presse’s Seoul bureau.
The Times is committed to publishinga diversity of lettersto the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are sometips. And here’s our email:letters@nytimes.com.
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/D4V3KEU2JFLGHFS634DAKPTHNA.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/O2OCQ7BTVFASPIX6QSXDNBC5FQ.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/LGI6PHVWV5ASRBCCHL7VREGS7U.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8565937/spoilers_below.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22733916/GK_01000.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22733919/GK_05999_R.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22733925/GK_00138_R.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22733931/lasttemptation.jpeg)
