The Friday Article Roundup
Let the pros show you the best pop culture writing of the week.
This week, get professional takes on:
Send (anonymously or not) articles throughout the next week to magpiesmedia [at] gmail, post articles from the past week below for discussion and Have a Happy Friday!
For the New Yorker, Richard Brody considers the history of non-professional actors, and what their presence in Oscar nominees means:
The paradox of this quartet of movies up for the new casting Oscar, all boldly peopled with nonprofessionals, is that this very practice has become professionalized. Maybe the extreme pliability of modern digital editing makes it possible to smooth out the rough edges of untrained performers, and it surely helps that viewers are now so used to watching nonprofessionals act outside of movies. But, whatever the reasons, the nonprofessional performances don’t so much disrupt the films as slot into them. It’s all to the credit of viewers that it takes more to shake them, to the credit of the performers that they learn fast while remaining themselves, and to the credit of directors that their methods are free and capacious enough to blend a disjunctive range of acting styles.
Itzel Luna writes in the LA Times about record store In The Midnight Hour as a locus for community and resistance in California:
The storefront doubles as a concert venue, often for hardcore and pop punk shows. Other days, it’s an art gallery or a pop-up market. When the city is in crisis, the building becomes an activist headquarters. Its business model can be unconventional. The couple don’t charge small vendors to sell at the store during events and doesn’t take a cut of the merchandise that bands sell while playing at the venue. “Everything’s political and everything’s connected,” (co-owner Sergio) Amalfitano said. “We live out of the motto of community over commodity. We want our community to thrive, and the only way that the community can thrive is if we all come up, right?”
Chris Richards is not impressed with Sturgill Simpson’s new album:
Lyrics about the national sex deficit (“Make America fuck again”) rub up against rightful vilifications of the ICE gestapo (“How the hell you gonna protect the peace running round looking like you’re going to war?), and it doesn’t get much better from there. I’m not trying to referee anyone’s horniness while pop music’s sexual imagination slumps toward an all-time low, but if Taylor Swift isn’t allowed to sing “Redwood tree, it ain’t hard to see his love was the key that opened my thighs,” then Simpson isn’t allowed to sing, “Let me be the wood, baby, and you can be the glue.”
At Filmmaker Magazine, Dylan Adamson interviews the creators of The Napa Boys, a “combination of dissertation and shitpost” that is also a fake franchise comedy with real laughs:
It’s difficult to explain how a scene showing Jack Jr. “shitting and cumming” into a barrel of wine after mixing up his psychedelics with laxatives and prophylactics demonstrates a forgotten respect for audiences, but The Napa Boys configures such setups and payoffs, however puerile, as eternal tenets of storytelling. It’s mall-moviemaking not as it is, but as it once was, and as it still could be.
And at Default Blog, Sam Buntz makes the case that access to all culture is stagnating all culture:
Zoomers, you see, live inside the Archive. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they are imprisoned inside the Archive—a Borgesian labyrinth. Everything that has ever happened exists at their fingertips, assigned equal weight (or assigned whatever weight the fickle algorithm happens to be assigning on that particular day). This is also why they are a uniquely anxious generation, paralyzed by an inability to choose. They are confronted with too many options, unstuck in time.
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The Friday Article Roundup
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Double Features
Family heirlooms loom large in Father Mother Sister Brother and Vulcanizadora.
Double Features
Moving in time with One Battle After Another and Caught By The Tides.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Babylon 5, Season Four, Episode Seven, “Epiphanies”
As I understand it, the original plan was five seasons, but the crew were given the impression that the fourth season would be their last, and so two seasons of plot were compressed to one (only to get season five anyway, forcing Straczinsky to improvise). I think you feel that here; the switch from the Vorlon/Shadow war to the Earth/B5 war is much less elegant than, say, the switch between plots in season two of The Shield, but I’m willing to roll with it; the particularly annoying thing is that the episode still feels weirdly slow.
Anyway, Bester rules as a villain and, even aside from Koenig’s performance, I marvel at how well he fits into this world by not fitting into it. In a universe of hard-working and responsible people, he’s entirely self-interested and entirely comfortable with that. He openly uses other people without second-guessing that, he makes token references to loyalty to bigger ideas like the Psy-Corp and will sell them out as soon as they’re inconvenient, and he will comfortably work with enemies like the B5 crew because he doesn’t really see them as enemies anymore than he sees anyone as a friend. He’s truly alone and mostly comfortable with that.
There’s an offhand reference to “Disney Planet”, which I love. I also love the Elvis impersonators that randomly show up.
Scrubs, Season Ten, Episodes One through Three
“Great job doing your food journal, Betsy, just confused at how you have smashburgers on every page.”
“Time of death… you know, I actually can’t see that well without my glasses.”
“At least he can’t call me Newbie anymore.”
“What can I do for you there, Oldie?”
“Damn it!”
“Nice job, Blake. You made that look handsome – easy.”
“Is Hooch still crazy?”
“He’s gotten worse.”
“The Todd really likes to go deep! With consent. Consent-five.”
“Now we leave so he can feel horrible about himself.”
“The Todd has learned that’s not appropriate.”
“Todd, you are showing huge growth.”
“Then you should see my do–”
“Even though they painted him like a serial killer, I’m not gonna let him down.”
“Wow, that is a lot of input from you first thing in the morning.”
“That’s what they said.”
“What did we get?”
“The robot!”
“And what do we do?”
“The robot!”
“Yes, Tosh, your grandma loves threesomes.”
“I don’t know what you guys are talking about, I’m getting nothing but three stars.”
“It’s a five star system.”
“… That changes things.”
“Hey! Stop Charlie Browning me!”
“What is wrong with you?”
“Several things! That’s why they’re not allowed to fire me!”
“You tricked me. I respect that.”
“Put my heart in a backpack! I’ll never die!”
I watched this almost out of obligation, so it was delightful that the show landed with the quality of season four – indeed, I was shocked that it maintained the exact pacing of the show in its prime. The thing about Scrubs is that, yes, it was melodramatic, but it also rooted this in real stakes; they’re playing with people’s lives here and they know it. And I think Bill Lawrence must also just be, like, really good at making television – the show still has a knack for making characters and finding actors to fill those roles. The new interns are great – I particularly like Blake, who is just a fraction more strange and specific than he seems – but even the one or two-scene characters pop the same way the old ones did.
It’s interesting and funny to me that JD is older now than Dr Cox was at the start of the original series (and indeed the same age as at the end). The characters really have levelled up in their responsibilities; dramatically, the most compelling part is that all three of the original trio have responsibilities that were unimaginable to them at the start. We’ve only got glimpses of JD being a mentor to Asher but I’m looking forward to where that’s going, and Turk is successfully mentoring his interns. Fascinatingly, the show is exploring greater social awareness in a way that’s sympathetic to the humanity at the core of it whilst willing to poke fun at how it can be expressed*; Dr Cox gets that great remark that he believes his time has passed and JD, if anything, is perfectly suited to These Times.
*I was a bit skeptical of Vanessa Bayer as Sibby at first, but aside from the offhand joke about her being a hellcat when younger, I enjoyed that she was essentially in the same spirit as Ted, if from a very different angle.
Always Sunny, Season Sixteen, Episodes Seven and Eight
If I’m gonna watch Scrubs, I’m gonna finish this season that I never got around to finishing.
“You know what this means, guys.”
“What?”
“We gotta get our shit together.”
“I don’t think we should be regaling our audience with tales of animal abuse.”
“I was the hunted, he was the hunter.”
“We’ve moved past comedy. We don’t want comedy as a society.”
“We’re already broke.”
“We should keep the claps so we know what they love.”
The Gang arguing offscreen is incredibly funny to me.
The reveal of hairless Charlie killed me.
“YOU WERE GONNA TELL US – you were gonna tell us more about… your day.”
“We just live together.”
“Which is totally normal, for two middle-aged men.”
“Maybe America is ready for us.”
“There is no us!”
“Someone has to be the boss, right?”
“Of dinner?”
“He couldn’t have been more gay! He was in a band called Queen!”
“I’m just doing my natural European accent.”
The crowd actually responding to Dee killed me.
“Where the hell did that come from?”
“Let’s see what you were gonna play!”
Possibly the weirdest example of Dennis getting angry at the Gang for being weird, and then managing to out-weird them – except this time they’re still around.
“Let your boyfriend flip.”
“You’re not getting this! We’re not lovers. […] Two men entwined only by these walls and the passage of time.”
Dennis becoming a Shakespearean villain.
“Three what?”
“The number three.”
“We’ve been doing this for a month.”
“This is the first season in Bachelor history we considered ending the franchise forever.”
“Oh my god, I’m getting a chubby.”
It’s incredible that DeVito has this much energy at his age.
“Are all these whores gonna be this old?”
“Frank, did you not understand the premise?”
“Oh baby, am I boned up.”
“Frank, what are you doing? You can’t do your own plugs.”
“Well that worked. We banged three times that night.”
“I thought it was more of a catchphrase than an actual method.”
“We talked all night, and didn’t even bang. Which was probably good, because my c*ck was chewed to sh*t.”
Dennis’s rage every time he tried to say “Speak of the devil!” killed me.
“You will never get the money, and if you have a baby, we will snuff that thing out like a cigarello.”
“Guys, I believe I have the first line.”
“I am gay, and I believe I may have snapped at Dennis and hit him a little too hard…”
“I don’t approve of this union!”
It’s really weird jumping from one comedy to another with two completely different aesthetics and goals.
“What brings you here?”
“To be a slut! And to marry Frank!”
RIP Lynne Marie Stewart.
The cut to the Gang post-prank killed me.
“Our voices have been affected.”
“You actually thought the woman’s birth name was Cock Chewa?”
The goodbye montage to Stewart made me sad.
The switch in plots here wound up working really well for me — as discussed earlier, the resolution to the Shadow war is a bit gooey in its human-centricism, and what this abrupt switch makes the most of is how humans are absolutely fucking things up despite their alleged adulthood and entry into the broader universe. We’re telling the galaxy what to do and haven’t fixed our problems at home, and the stuff that has been simmering for a long time gets to boil up (although not at the level of a Battlestar perhaps). And the show overall gets an entire grade bump because of Bester — I think he would actually be less effective as a more present enemy, Straczinsky deploys him very well and Koenig is just fantastic every time, as you note flexible in his loyalties but unyielding in his self-centered approach and his ability to hang back mirrors how Straczinsky uses him. He’s a great antagonist who has bridged a lot of stuff on the show.
Mac assuming Freddie Mercury is the most masculine person he could imitate had me dying as did Hairless Charlie with the fake European accent.
Live music — Van Morrison, in the flesh and at a packed theater. Thankfully he did not perform any of his “COVID is fake news” material, but he did play 80 percent blues/soul covers, I got the sense that a guy who has been around as long as he has is trying to find things in material that isn’t his that he hasn’t played a billion times. He had a crack band, the main issue was how most songs chugged at midtempo with little variation. But his pipes are his pipes and the slower numbers really excelled as showcases in that regard, his take on Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That A Shame” was outstanding — it’s a privilege to be in a room with that voice echoing off the walls in real time. And Van has decided that “Green Onions” has words now (words including “green onions”) and that pre-encore closer was a highlight, the band took it up a notch and fucking worked that groove, hypnotic stuff that went places instead of cruising comfortably.
Woo live music with no COVID anti-vax material! Think he’s been covering “Ain’t That A Shame” for a long time. Might be time to put on Too Late To Stop Now again.
I didn’t realize he’s been covering Green Onions for so long! I definitely need Too Late To Stop Now.
Dr. Who and The Daleks – An eccentric (and eccentrically dressed) scientist builds a time machine in his backyard, but when Ian, the new boyfriend of his 20ish granddaughter Barbara, hits the wrong lever, the three of them and Dr. Who’s precocious 11 year old daughter Susie are send to the devastated home of the fearsome Daleks and pacifist Thals. A more or less straightforward retelling of the classic second serial of the Doctor Who TV show, with some obvious changes (though to say in 1965 that the Doctor was human and built the TARDIS himself wsa still an accurate reading of the early scripts). It might seem odd now that the BBC commissioned a movie remake but it’s not like there were reruns back then (and it’s pretty much by accident we have tapes of the original), so this was a way to expand the Doctor’s presence. It’s just not a very good movie. Peter Cushing is oddly disengaged as Dr. Who, and trying to make the story more kid friendly is a mixed bag. But it’s in color and there is a bigger budget than the Beeb would give the show for a long time, and there are more Daleks in some scenes than we’d see on screen until maybe the end of nuWho season one. And the Daleks have more than one color. Fun fact: while obviously not canon, a lot of writers of various spinoff media have tried to find some way to fit this and its sequnel into the lore, including Stephen Moffat himself.
The Practice, “The Good Fight” – Bobby on the edge. Reeling from his successful defense of a child molester, Bobby is having a breakdown and cannot make himself do his job right when defending a cop killer. Only after Helen and the judge kick him in the pants does he manage it, and of course he wins acquittal. After which the judges takes away his trial privileges for a month. Dylan McDermott is much better here than he’s been in a while, and Paul Dooley is excellent as the judge. In the second plot, Jimmy and Ellenor play a prank on Jamie that affects her case, but Jamie rallies as she challenges whether a “check my car” decal actually waives one’s Fourth Amendment rights. This was – and I assume is – an actual thing built around the idea that we should help cops by letting them search our cars and Kelley is clearly protesting it as part of his broader post-9/11 dismay of everyone rushing to waive rights.
Frasier, “Bristle While You Work”/”Rooms with a View” – An odd part of episodes that revolve around Niles needing bypass surgery. In the first, he’s got a toothache that in rare circumstances might indicate a heart problem, and then spends the next week having other very unlikely things happen till he goes to a cardiologist. It feels very 70s for some reason. (There is also a plot involving Marty hiring a new housekeeper over Fraiser’s wishes and it turns out Frasier was right, but it kind of fades fast.) In the latter, Niles has his surgery, and everyone else awaits words, each reacting in their own ways and each having memories of things that happened at this hospital. It’s sentimental but a bit sad and isn’t really trying for laughs. Jane Leeves is at her best when she finally breaks down entirely. But Niles is okay, and Daphne being Daphne does not have a memory but a premonition of her second childbirth. Taken as a whole, these are interesting experiments from a show that probably has run out what to do, and does the only thing left, taking the MASH route to drama and surrealism. I like it but the latter episode is too real for many fans.
Cushing seems like a natural for the role. He called this one of his favorite films, maybe because it is so far removed from Hammer and the villians he played. If he were given a run on television I think he could have made something of it. But he just doesn’t achieve much in two films. It’s like on tv where I think casting has been perfect straight through, it’s not the actor playing the Doctor it’s the writing behind it. Some good set pieces.
There are accounts that say Cushing was offered the role on TV after Hartnell and turned it down, and later regretted it, but I can’t find any proof this is so.
Given that Cushing apparently insisted that Roberta Tovey come back as Susie for the second film, I think maybe he just liked being able to play (and be) a kindly grandfather type (even if he was only around 50).
A Delicate Balance at the Walnut Theatre. This is pretty good though I don’t know if it deserved the Pulitzer where Who’s Afraid? did. Will leave most of my thoughts for my upcoming review. Otherwise, people shouldn’t complain about young people and phones. The crowd was very old and phones kept ringing, plus the two late middle-aged people next to me kept checking theirs. They told you to turn off your devices, how is this so hard?
Old people are absolutely worse with their phones than young people.
Back when I went to movies, I found that old people were worse, but not by a lot. (One reason I don’t miss the theater.)
With live theater too, there is literally a voice on the loudspeaker telling you to turn your devices off, you have no excuse except being annoying/an idiot.
I like A Delicate Balance, and, this version, I think, is fantastic: https://kinolorber.com/film/adelicatebalance?srsltid=AfmBOoridG9GXnp9pNgCBoiF1Rx5o4_Y3695X9aSEComX9dAt9Pixq1d
What did we read?
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
This looks at first like pure sentimentality, and I suspect it largely is; ‘nostalgia’ in the sense of looking back upon one’s life with wistfulness and a desire to go back, and I assume the large part of it is autobiographical in one way or another. The words are suffused with longing and warmth; only occasionally does an actual plot intrude, at which point the tone changes completely (I’m thinking particularly when Pip’s benefactor makes himself known), only to swiftly change back when dealt with. It’s only towards the end that it changes to proper nostalgia, which is to say, pain of an old wound.
It’s about feeling bad about not fully understanding the world when you’re young. I think there’s an extent to which the second half of everyone’s lives are making up for the failures of the first; I know I’m diving deep into creativity after thirty-five years of stumbling through it, enjoying being able to do things I always yearned to do. GE ends right about when Pip has this realisation, before he has the chance to do anything about it (this is an argument for the original ending, where he can’t reconcile with Estella the way he could with Joe).
Earthlings, Sayaka Murata
An autistic power myth. This is a weird book – the first two chapters are the narrator at the ages of ten and eleven, and the incredibly terrible trauma she goes through that combines with her clearly, obviously being autistic. She quickly ascertains that her value to society is based upon her producing and specifically reproducing, despite her indifference to that; she starts referring to this vision of society as The Factory, for producing babies. Once she goes through two traumas – one caused by the other, when being raped by a teacher leads her to attempt sex with her cousin – we jump to her adulthood, in which she’s made a fake relationship to pass as a member of The Factory.
From there it gets really weird, as a way of demonstrating just how bizarre it is to try and fit into society when it shares none of your values, and the way you can be drawn to really taboo things when all you want to do is live your life without judgement or coercion. The fucked up climax strikes me as simply a way to add a full stop to the end of a sentence more than a conclusion, although it also conveys one possible way of ending one’s relationship with society in a position of power.
Symposium, Plato
Decided reading everything by every Western philosopher was too ambitious, so I’m sticking to their Greatest Hits. This is definitely one of the better Plato works, still being a dialogue but closer to a drama – it’s not just Socrates saying paragraph after paragraph with another character going “Yes” and “I suppose” – with the irreducible ambiguities that come with it. The characters discuss love, and I think unintentionally hit upon a good definition through implication – that is to say, to love someone is to know them.
Mrs McGintley’s Dead, Agatha Christie
The last story in this collection. This one is particularly interesting for having an avatar of Christie herself in it – it wasn’t until she started complaining about having her book changed for a play that I specifically caught on, though it was really funny when she started complaining about her Finnish hero getting popular and taking over her life (“Why a Finn when I know nothing about Finland?!”). I also found the mystery infuriatingly compelling.
8 Bit Theater, Strips 0750-0780,
Brian Clevinger
“Maybe you shouldn’t be the one holding the keys to the apocalypse.”
“I’m offended that you think so little of me. Plus I can’t pronounce it.”
“Shut up about this seven of yours! There’s no seven!”
There’s a great moment where Fighter reads the unreadable insanity scroll, says something unpronounceable, and then observed he actually sneezed, to which Black Mage remarks that this isn’t one of his patented piercing insights, after which Fighter genuinely has a piercing insight that concludes with him correctly guessing Ur’s true name. This is the point where the comic is officially eating itself; it’s had self-aware humour the whole time, but this is the first point where it manages to subvert its own sense of humour and expectations.
“Since things can’t possibly get any worse, Red Mage, we turn to you.”
“Prepare to be proved wrong!”
“This would be unfortunate if it were happening to someone else.”
It’s interesting that I don’t think 8 Bit Theater ever succumbs to the urge to be taken seriously; the closest it comes is having more dramatic setup for a stupid punchline.
“Everything is good and it will be that way forever!”
“Arrgh, ordinary fire! The only thing that instantly destroys cypherstones, notes, and my human flesh!”
“Why? Why have you done this to me?”
“You tried to kill me. A lot and often.”
“Clearly, I didn’t kill you enough.”
More of Southern League, the book about the first integrated minor league baseball team in Birmingham. Good history, and good insight into how a minor league team in the 60s was run.
Started Killers of the King, about the tribunal that voted to execute Charles I, and what happened to them. The author seems oddly interested in only these people’s fates and not the fate of a nation that overthrew a king and replaced him with a dictator. My sense is that the author is not a fan of regicide. Yay?
To paraphrase Norm MacDonald, I thought the problem was all the genocide and dictatorship, not the regicide.
One of the things I have started to find in British history is that there is always going to be someone who sides with any given monarch and who goes from there instead of from the facts of the case. (Do not get me started on the Riccardians.)
The Ruins and Pet Sematery on audiobook* and oh my lord. That was a real double whammy of devastation and nihilistic despair. The Ruins is quite good but I could’ve pictured it as a short story or novella while still being effective. I especially liked the character of Jeff and his distinctly American belief that if he tries hard enough, he will survive an increasingly inescapable situation. Pet Sematery for all it’s Kingisms remains a masterpiece with some of his most poetic prose. By the end it feels as if King is writing in a fever, totally compelled by the horror and tragedy of the story. On reread, Victor Pasquale’s status as the rare good ghost in American culture and Louis’ self-righteousness with his father-in-law really struck me; Goldman is obviously not a great guy, yet he is sincere in his apology to the man and gives the best possible advice that Louis, in his grief, couldn’t comprehend (your son is dead but your daughter isn’t) and doesn’t hear until it’s way, way too late.
* FYI for those with crushes, Patrick Wilson does the former and Michael C. Hall narrates the latter. Hall actually kills the Mainer accent and his voice near the end (“You may think you hear voices”) sent chills up my spine, though I always read the very last line differently, more of a growl.
Reading Derek Walcott’s The Prodigal very slowly, an epic poem that is so dense and intelligent that I don’t entirely understand it. I’m mostly letting the beautiful and lush language hit me which is what a lot of great poetry does.
I think The Ruins as a shorter work would still be effective but in a different way — what Smith excels at here and in A Simple Plan is the weight of accumulation, how decisions pile up. Plan is a noir so the decisions play a more active role — you are fucked from the beginning but still have a role in how — while Ruins is horror and there is less choice in the end, but Smith does great work evoking how the characters deny that, and the immersion and pace of a novel makes this hit harder than it does in a movie where the rhythm of people getting got is more obvious.
I think I’m good with it as a novel but would want 50-75 pages cut if I was an editor. Go even leaner and meaner.
Out, by Natsuo Kirino — Lauren talked this up a while back and she wasn’t kidding. Four Japanese women work together on the night shift of a prepacked meal factory, the work sucks and they’re doing it because they have no other options and their home lives suck even more, but they have a loose camaraderie. And then one impulsively murders her abusive husband and calls another to help deal with the body and soon all are involved. This does not end well, there is a ton of noirish bad decision making and as with any crew there’s a dumbass in particular — it is amusing to map Shield people here, the Shane has no Mara and is extremely foolish — and Kirino does excellent crime writing following the work these women are doing to get out from under, which includes extremely grim body disposal with unsubtle parallels to their night jobs. But more interestingly, their efforts rebound on a guy with a minimal but strong connection to the dead man and this guy is a monster, a brutal killer who has kept himself under wraps for years and is now knocked off his moorings and looking to find out who put him in the jackpot.
And what Kirino does most uncomfortably is slowly parallel this guy with Masako, the Vic of the group. Reviews talk about this as a feminist noir and play up the relationships between the women and those relationships are not strong at all, the women exploit each other knowingly and unthinkingly and Masako is not an evil mastermind but she is awakening to possibilities in herself and casting aside others. She has also been cast aside, Kirino makes dismissiveness and diminuation of women the atmosphere of the book, something so prevalent you just experience it, and her willingness to solve the problem of a dead body, to get involved in something dark that she has no reason to, drives the story and drives her to a confrontation with this monster who she is more similar to than pretty much everyone else in her life. This confrontation is pretty harsh and it definitely threw me, stuff happens that I think is supposed to make the reader appalled and upset, but it’s there — what does it mean? What does it mean if it’s true? Like any good crime fiction, you root for the criminal to get away with it and Kirino does not shame you for this but lets Masako pull away from this kind of identification. The language is not the same and the setting of Japan is not exactly a specific link, but after a while I was put in mind of the protagonist of To The White Sea, who is also looking for an out. What he and Masako find is their own.
Calvin and Hobbes — picked up Weirdos From Another Planet! and Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat! as birthday presents for the nephews and of course reread them beforehand, and of course this is still wonderful, in word and art and tone. This was the boys’ first experience with C and H (they are already big Far Side heads) and they were immediately enraptured, feeling pretty good about that.
The last Calvin and Hobbes comic, which I teach in my theories of visual communication courses, is heartbreakingly beautiful.
I’m so glad you liked Out! It definitely sold me on reading more Natsuo Kirino. This is an excellent write-up highlighting the grimness and specific gravitational pull of the book: that link you talk about (“what he and Masako find is their own”) really stands out.
Isn’t it ironic to diagnose a generation of kids as being unstuck in time because they experience all of the history of the human endeavour at once through references that span thousands of years?
Speaking as a millennial, I think the ecocide and fascism seem like a pretty good reason for the anxiety.
Those reasons, and corporations buying the song catalogues of classic rock musicians. If you thought that Wal-Mart ad that used “Who Are You” sucked, just wait. An explainer: https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/the-masters-own-you-woodall
It’s the sentence I was born to write, and someone else got there first.