Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Who Run The World?
By Jacob Clifton | Season 2 | Episode 22 | Aired on 02.27.2012
It is a force, engineered since the beginning of humanity and continually fine-tuned, and it pushes down on all of us equally, just like bullying. And just like with bullying, the differences between us in this system come in the form of the privileges or the tools we're given to negotiate with that force: White men have some, white women have others; gay men have some, straight women have others. The patriarchy is terrible, actively working against you -- and that's true right up until you're able to use that network to accomplish your needs... say, by getting your military father to pull rank on a Greyhound station employee. And so on.
Another word for privilege is power, and it's something you can master -- Alison lived for that fight -- but the force itself is the same on everybody, like gravity or the pressures of high school and you get no traction or mileage out of comparing them because of the number of variables and expectations and hidden parts of lives it encompasses. Because the second you get yourself buying into an Us vs. Them, you are very close to a Me vs. The World, and that's not how things are designed. That's about you talking about how you would like the world to be for you, instead of meeting and understanding the world on its own terms before you try to change it. Which is a great way of having no power at all, and once you make that decision, whatever happens next is on you.
Alison knew that better than anybody: Anything can be a weapon if you hold it right.
Sexuality, dads, pain, shame, the infinite and endless economy between men and women. But you have to know what you're holding and you can't be afraid. When in doubt, just ask yourself what they're trying to bully out of you because that's where your power is. If they weren't scared of your body, your voice, your anger, they wouldn't need you to hate those things so much. How much more powerful would Aria be if she weren't so scared all the time? How much easier would life be for Emily, if she realized just how radically her sexuality exempts her from all of this shit? How much better would Hanna's life be, if she stopped being ashamed of the power her beauty gives her? How much saner would Spencer be, if she realized how much power she truly has. If any of them knew who really runs the world.
MONA'S PLAN
Hanna: "Ashley is hot on the A trail."
Mona: "Meaning?"
Liars: "She found that thing you gave Hanna, because you dolts left it on the kitchen island, and now she's given it to Wilden."
Spencer: "The fuck?"
Hanna: "Um, it was a threat toward our family and Mona's?"
Spencer: "No, I mean why Wilden? He still thinks we killed Ali, for Pete's sake."
Liars: "If they don't stop pushing on this A stuff, they're both going to end up like..."