Make money doing the work you believe in

There is a technique that is encountered time and again in films and theatre. If a character does something once, that is "plot progression". If they do it twice, the purpose is to "plant" the fact in the audience's mind (a good example is in The Godfather, when Fabrizio says, not once but twice, that Michael has been "struck by a bolt of lightning" when he sees and falls in love with Apollonia, so that, when his father back in New York tells the mob bosses that all bets are off if anything happens to Michael ("such as him being struck by a bolt of lightning") the audience wryly thinks "Well, it seems that that has already happened...").

If the character then does this thing three times, the conclusion in the audience's mind is, "They do it all the time." Once is plot progression, twice establishes a coincidence, three times means they do it constantly.

Now, ICE has killed more than Ms Good and Mr Pretti. But Good and Pretti are of a category. They were both 37, and that's an interesting coincidence (or would be if this were a stage play). The idiotic thing is that these two victims of unwarranted violence are only a coincidence, because there's only two of them. The non-white victims of ICE are horrendous cases as well, but the audience doesn't really know their names. Isn't that a strange thing?

So, there will be a third victim. White. Mid to late 30s. And when there is, all hell will break loose. That death will establish in the audience's mind that this is something ICE does "all the time." And that will be their undoing. At last.

Intolerable Things
Jan 25
at
11:23 PM
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