The Friday Article Roundup
...or half a dozen great pop culture reads from around the web.
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Thanks to Bridgett and Miller for blinding us with their beautiful contributions this week. Send articles throughout the next week to ploughmanplods [at] gmail, post articles from the past week below for discussion, and Have a Happy Friday!
In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Nic Cavell reviews Maria Zoccola’s poetry collection, “Helen of Troy, 1993”:
Evolving into an unabashed vision of the interiority of the discounted woman at the center of the epic’s bloodletting, the poems embrace a feminist lens much like [Emily] Wilson’s translation. While loosely retaining the Iliad’s formal structure, Zoccola radically reimagines Helen’s persona in free verse, merging the classic heroine with the time and context of the poet’s own youth. At the same time, in her telling, Zoccola relates in her afterword, “there is no war brewing in Sparta, Tennessee, no ‘vast armada gathered, moored at Aulis, / freighted with slaughter bound for Priam’s Troy.’” Helen of Troy, 1993 asks us to examine the stakes of Helen’s position and decision outside the context of war: “Instead, this Tennessee town holds nothing more than an abandoned, powerless husband with no oath to call in, no army to revenge his humiliation.” This is a poem about the plight and power of being an American woman.
For Pitchfork, Nina Corcoran examines the rage and context of Prostitute’s new album Attempted Martyr:
Attempted Martyr was written and recorded “under duress of a world in turmoil,” the band states, and is “dedicated to Lebanon, from Dearborn with love.” In recent months, Prostitute have performed at benefits for Palestine, Lebanon, and Sudan. No wonder, then, that Moe screams about a suzerain’s tightening grip, apostles turned into pimps, and humans traded like slaves. “True glory’s claimed through gore,” he snarls on “All Hail,” “Just watch me push the button and make history repeat.” The song samples the Japanese experimental rock band Ground Zero’s 1997 epic “Consume Red,” looping a passage played on hojok until, much like in the original song, the instrument’s nasally calls take on an air of liberation by way of desecration. Both artists make a point of using repetition to overwhelm until it reaches a breaking point; in the silence that follows, a weight is lifted.
Zach Vasquez writes about the comforting cons of Diggstown in The Guardian:
All of this combines to make Diggstown the perfect feelgood movie: a breezy but exciting genre mashup with enough of a hangout vibe that you can have it on in the background, but also enough stakes that you will inevitably end up giving it your full attention. …And while I’m not suggesting we look to Diggstown for any actual political or moral insight, it does make me wonder if perhaps what we really need right now is not someone who speaks truth to power, but simply a better class of conman to out-cheat all the other bastards.
At The A.V. Club, Jess Hassenger talks about Jamie Foxx’s collaborations with Michael Mann, and how the projects marked a transition for the director:
Foxx’s particular version of this charisma also makes him weirdly more elusive in a seemingly straightforward hero-cop role like Miami Vice than he is as a more intentionally skittish and less active part like Max in Collateral. It’s not a simple question of Foxx being one of those stars who’s secretly better suited to character parts, or Mann requiring someone as forceful as Pacino or Cruise to slam the material home. It’s more like Foxx caught Mann just as the latter started to zoom further in on his masculine obsessions, trading some of his epic canvas for pixelated anxiety. In Collateral, at least, Foxx is able to play that for all it’s worth.
And at her substack, McMansion Hell writer Kate Wagner unloads on the death spiral of social media and the destruction of the writing life:
I have a contrarian’s compulsion to write about this in a way that tries to capture this terrifying sentiment without conceding to a kind of winsome, perhaps melancholy lyricism in service to how things are or were, one that plays exceedingly to the ‘end of letters’ industrial complex whose substance is all-too predicated on the fact that we writers continue to have one foot in the shit and are still too afraid to take it out and that’s just the way things are. It’s understandable really; after all, it’s how we — including myself — got work and made our money and put our names out there ten to twenty years ago even though all it’s doing now is pitting us against each other in a fight for scraps, destroying our souls, stationing cops in our heads that ruin writing out of fear and making even an ambient, personal sense of peace impossible.
In news not unrelated, beautiful thoughts by Brian Spears on the value of art without shortcuts:
The thing the makers of [AI] tools are trying to sell is the idea that you can be creative without working at it, that you can ascend to genius level without any sweat. It’s the “one simple trick” sales pitch to be an artist, but there’s never “one simple trick” to succeeding at something. There’s just work, whether you’re crocheting a sweater or writing a song or running the expo window on a Friday night when a third of your wait staff called in sick and there are two new people on the line. Yes, doing that last bit well is an art too.[…] But the people who are selling this software are doing it by suggesting that if you use their tools, you too can be living like a king in Patagonia after just a little effort. If that sounds like a get rich quick scheme, that’s because it is. I don’t know if the people running these companies are good at running the schemes. We’ll see how much money they walk away with when it all collapses and be able to judge then. But if they succeed, you can bet that it won’t have been because they used one simple trick. It’ll be because they worked at it long enough to get good at separating other people from their money.
About the writer
C. D. Ploughman
The weary Ploughman is a writer and filmmaker, focusing these days on documentary and educational projects. He obsesses over movies with his very patient wife and children.
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What did we watch?
Abbott Elementary, “Testing”
Hmm… kind of a strange episode, for two reasons. One is that the two main plots just… kind of end?
Janine is worried because her students did poorly on a practice run of a standardized test, despite her past success there, so she asks for a second practice test from Ava and changes the conditions to improve performance… and the kids do worse. Of course, none of this can be Janine’s fault, so she continues to struggle for answers, until the older teachers make her realize– hey, sometimes things change and what worked for one group of kids doesn’t for another. So she mixes up her methods and they seem to be working, but Ava refuses to give her any more practice tests, so I guess we won’t know if it worked.
Meanwhile, Jacob is dealing with a disinterested kid and trying to get him re-engaged with school, but his attempts mostly involve dragging him to after-school clubs he’s not really interested in, when he’d rather be at home. After bringing him to Ava’s step class, Jacob talks to Ava and she brings up that… oh, he never asked the kid what he wanted to do. The kid ends up seeming like a natural for Gregory’s garden club, but he’s still pretty disengaged. But, uh… maybe we’ll figure it out eventually, the end!
The other reason is that, well, Janine and Jacob are both pretty obnoxious this episode, being socially clueless to the point of being flat-out rude. Jacob has been a teacher long enough that he should have had the sense to ask the kid what he liked to do, but it’s even more evident when he’s non-stop pestering the bus driver and can’t take the hint the first time the driver kicks him off four blocks before his stop. Janine dismisses everyone’s advice until it comes from Barbara, and then is pretty rude to Gregory about it later. (Also, I’d be annoyed as hell with Janine’s insecurity if I was Gregory. Janine butts into the call after Gregory gets a Facetime from Jacob, then sees “Oh, Gregory’s got a new email. ‘Angela from GNC’? Who is she? Who are you talking to?”) I dunno, I feel like there are episodes where Janine is Flanderized to be more oblivious to how she treats others than she was even at the start of the series. It feels off that these characters should be growing up and yet they’re moving backward.
But on the bright side, we get an incredibly funny Mr. Johnson story, where he’s assigned to train a new janitor (Eric Andre, who really doesn’t get to do any Eric Andre things this episode) and, of course, immediately sniffs out that the district wants him to train his replacement. He isn’t so much openly hostile, though, as he is dropping pearls of wisdom about his hard-earned experience that’s given him the magic touch for the role. I quite enjoyed him here.
Also, Ava’s continuing crush on O’Shon the IT guy (and her attempts to address it) are still funny, if brief.
Shoresy, “Veteran Presence”
This popped back up near the top of our watch list on Hulu because I was looking for something earlier in the week to get some of the facts on my article correct, and my wife picked out the second episode. This is the one that introduces us to the new players Shoresy brings in, who are all characters in their own way. Also, pretty funny, although I probably would’ve enjoyed it more if I wasn’t distracted.
The Shield, “Mum” and “Posse Up”
Be careful with your bongs, kids. Also, one thing I’ll give Vic credit for being right on: It’s better to dispose of all the evidence, not just clean it.
“We don’t know if your CI’s information is correct. His info may not jive with Aceveda’s expectation.” I love when the Strike Team has to have a phone call over their dirty shit while one of the parties can’t talk openly. But Shane on the street might be even funnier, especially with Trish and the guys razzing him.
One fun, albeit slightly annoying, part of these rewatches is remembering all the scenes I used for my The Shield / It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia mashup blog back in 2018. The slightly annoying part is how many of these episodes resume from the point where I used a screengrab to make a post, which largely serves to remind me it’s been too long since I watched the show all the way through. (In this case, it was post #38.) The fun part is remembering how much I enjoyed this project, and the rewatch has even given me a couple of ideas for new posts, so I might revive the thing for a bit. (I mean, I’d keep it going as long as I had ideas, but I feel like I really pumped that well the first time around.)
Vic lying on the phone is always so funny to me. He does it so naturally, especially compared to Walter White. I also like that Shane manages to catch on to what he’s saying very quickly.
Babylon 5, Season One, Episode Sixteen, “Grail”
This show is very lore-heavy, but it marries that lore with story. This is actually largely two guys we’ve never seen before with our protagonists becoming witnesses to their story; the main dude is a working class schlub who explains the history of the Babylon stations to us in that the first three were sabotaged and the fourth disappeared, because he happened to leave the station each time it happened and thus gained a reputation as a jinx. His story ends up being one of a working class guy discovering a mystical goal, which replicates the story of his mentor. Very fun.
There’s a great bit at the start of the episode where Delenn needs the mythical nature of the Holy Grail explained to her, and it feels like a neat reversal of the usual ‘alien expositing their culture to humans’ scene with a very different tone to it, where her alien perspective gives a different view of nutballs.
May December
A vile movie, I loved it. About ten minutes in, I thought “An American seventh-grader is about sixteen, seventeen, right? I should look this up – OH JESUS CHRIST”. The fulcrum of the movie turns to be neither Gracie nor Elizabeth, but Joe – I think I’ve seen people say this before, but Charles Melton really sells a thirteen year old trapped in a thirty-six year old man’s body and the way the person he’s supposed to be keeps threatening to break out (“I can’t tell if we’re connecting or if I’m just making a bad memory for you in real time,” all at once the most beautiful line in the movie, the most honest line in the movie, and something my Mum would say). I like to think it’s meeting someone exactly the same age as him that causes him to really think about it.
By comparison, Gracie and Elizabeth’s stories are a little less interesting; Portman herself has done far more interesting stories about creatives getting in too deep, and Gracie’s story is solely interesting when it’s suggested (then taken back) that she had her own trauma that’s driving her. I suppose the story is largely about Elizbeth’s inability to understand her, but I don’t find that theme particularly compelling, at least until her story’s funny punchline.
I was shocked May December didn’t get more Oscar love in the acting categories, and somebody pointed out how they were probably turned off by what a poison letter it is to the craft. I didn’t think actors were that discerning when it came to getting attention, so maybe I should give them more credit as group in their text interpretation skills.
Love May/December and credit to Portman for producing such a nasty movie about acting and how it’s fundamentally kind of a fucked-up thing to do.
The Straight Story – I am not a Lynchian. What little I have from him tends to be too weird for me. But I had long wanted to watch this strange outlier, a G-rated movie from a generally R-rated director, based on a true story. And wow, I think it get it. This is a movie of beauty. Of gorgeous vistas and storms and human faces, and of human emotions and motion. Somewhere out there, there is a version of this with Paul Newman that is perfectly entertaining and not very profound (“Mow-body’s Perfect”?). There’s probably even a Hallmark version where the pregnant teen becomes Alvin’s new best bud. But we live in a world gifted with this subtle, slow, charming, bittersweet journey. Richard Farnsworth, dying and in pain, gives a perfect performance, surrounded by unknowns who embody their characters just as well. This movie is, above all, about human dignity as one faces the world and the final curtain. I can only hope that Lynch, suffering from emphysema and forced to flee the wildfires, was able to grasp at least a bit of dignity in his final weeks.
Kojak, “Wall Street Gunslinger” – A confused story involving the theft of physical securities from one Wall Street wheeler dealer by another. (Do they still issue paper securities?) But the theft itself unfolds in the streets of Lower Manhattan and is filmed quite well under the direction of young Richard Donner. Also, in the course the crime an old Hasidic man is killed, and upon seeing the body but no hat, Kojak is savvy enough about his city to know that someone must have taken the hat since no Hasidic man goes without. Little details like that help plant the show’s feet in NYC.
Absolutely perfect movie to watch in tribute. That final shot is the most beautiful, hopeful moment you could conceive for the recently departed director working with an actor in his final role. I’m sure his in memoriam segment will end with one of his better known films and maybe it should, but this is what I would put last.
What a lovely write-up of The Straight Story, I’m hoping to revisit that this weekend. I really like the point about how this could be a fine Paul Newman flick, it’s no shade on Newman and very easy to see this existing, but what Lynch made is so much more powerful. I think this same dynamic applies to The Elephant Man, which I would strongly recommend if you have not seen it — it’s not as restrained but definitely not as violent or depraved as Lynch could depict. “This movie is, above all, about human dignity as one faces the world and the final curtain” would describe The Elephant Man as well and it’s very easy to see the heartwarming movie it could have been, but it too is Lynchian and more complex and mysterious and also damning — Anthony Hopkins’ realization at the end is haunting and that doesn’t come from a person who sees with normal, well-meaning blinkers.
Elephant Man is on my list. It was on Hoopla and isn’t now. But a friend said that while it’s her favorite Lynch, she was already feeling sad enough as it was.
Lost Highway (1997) – RIP David Lynch. I don’t think I’ve seen this one since college, so it was like watching it for the first time. I was struck by the way that Lynch uses standard cinematic techniques against us. His editing is so important. Lynch isn’t the first director to edit specifically to counter continuity, but his use is designed to unsettle us on an emotional level. A shot of Robert Blake. A cut to Bill Pullman’s reverse shot. A cut back, and Blake is gone. A cut to the cabin where Blake is standing. There is no attempt at showing movement, and that allows the editing to become disorienting and frightening. It’s so basic, but so underused in modern cinema.
The empty reverse shot is something he uses in Eraserhead as well. Lots of focus (understandably) on the things he put within the frame, but the guy knew how to work with empty space as well.
Eraserhead – I too, took some time to pay tribute. I did a lot of Lynch watching this past year, including my annual watch of Mulholland Drive, so I went with one of the few I hadn’t seen in a long while. And what a debut – imagine, he didn’t even have David Lynch movies to watch for inspiration, how is this possible. Lynch is (was, sob) a purposefully comic figure but his movies anre often funnier than it’s given credit, none funnier than this one.
Like much of his humor, it’s tempting to call it pitch black, but it really isn’t – give or take a grotesque monster infanticide. It’s almost goofy, broad humor in an unsettling context. The dinner sequence is a sitcom-ready comedy of manners refracted through a burnt piece of glass. Jack Nance’s reactions, especially playing off Allen Joseph as the father, provides a warped straight man’s view, one that panics over the faux pax of setting off a roasted chicken orgasm but plays the situation at face value. Oh no, this is embarrassing, not Oh no, this is weird.
I know he had a run of art shorts prior to this, but as far as first features, it’s amazing to see somebody so utterly themselves right out of the gate, with little by way of precedent to guide them. Thank god Dune failed and gave us the unfiltered genius this world could embrace. RIP, may the mysteries you see unraveled now rival the ones you shared with us.
Twin Peaks, episode 1 and 2 – I rewatched the pilot fairly recently so this felt like a suitable way to immerse myself in some tribute Lynch. Much as I love the whole show, it’s amazing how much you can tell when he’s actually on directorial duties – episode 1 is fine but 2 is magic. Nothing much new to say about the show. It’s the best.
NYPD Blue — an early SVU influence? A teen girl is murdered and some of the evidence involves a foot fetish video of her stepping on worms, this is shown onscreen and while Gordon Clapp’s Medavoy has a great reaction it is hard not to imagine Ice-T here. And it turns out the evil boyfriend who put her up to this and then stabbed her to death with a screwdriver is none other than a young Danny Masterson. In lighter news, the main story revolves around Sipowicz and Simone investigating a uniformed cop from their precinct in a suspicious killing while he was bodyguarding a guy, this pisses off the other uniforms and the cops angrily copping at each other is absolutely hilarious and all the better for being played with zero irony — this is the attitude and turning it on itself just shows how dopey it is.
Juror #2 – Solid classically directed picture. Nothing flashy it’s all very light and minimal to the point of almost being an anachronism in this Tik-Tok age of short attention spans and fast editing. But it’s informed with some strong performances. What a cliffhanger ending. Major star, major director.
I think the look of Juror #2 can sometimes be a bit flat, it is not as bad as a lot of streaming-era stuff from people who should be better but it isn’t at Million Dollar Baby levels. But Yves Bélanger absolutely nails that amazing garage scene with Hoult in darkness except those eyes, great shit.
As I said online, his eyes are so powerful that the movie’s lighting feels governed by what they’re doing and suggesting. (Same thing with Hoult’s scenes in the castle in Nosferatu where he feels truly TERRIFIED of this creature where Reeves mostly plays impatient petulance.)
Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude)
Episode 6. “Coronel Aureliano Buendía”. First time.
As has been the case with the last few episodes, this one picks exactly two parallel threads and moves them forward to the next stage, covering each in detail. A smart strategy for a story as abundant in incident as this one.
The first one is the return of José Arcadio hijo to the household, older, more grizzled and covered with mysterious tattoos and piercings. This and Ursula cyring non-stop at the lunch table are too examples of the show taking Márquez’ descriptions with the novel and being emboldened by them, not running away from them. José Arcadio and his (not quite) sister Rebeca then fall in love and marry, prompting Ursula to quick them out of the house, which they are happy to do, moving away to a sex shack just outside the cementery in a great realization of one my favorite passages from the book. It’s also not lost on the show that this only happened because fate and Amaranta continually sabotaged Rebeca’s engagement to poor Pietro Crespi, who gets his heart broken in this episode, but who now might be free from love. Unless he and Amaranta become an item again, as is hinted here. He would do well that love and tragedy are never too far apart, specially not in Macondo and specially with the Buendías.
Which brings me to the titular, recently-widowed Aureliano. The other thread in this episode is his gradual change from supportive of his conservative father in law Moscote, while his younger brother (actually his nephew*) Arcadio joins the local liberals in their revolutionary plot ahead of the first elections in Macondo.
*Arcadio becomes a key link between the two threads this episode, indeed the two Buendía brothers. He never knew that José Arcadio was his father, but Pilar Ternera is never too far away to let us forget.
Aureliano is never comfortable in either side, seeing Moscote rig the elections and learning the liberals plan to butcher Moscote’s family, but as the war draws closer the Colombian military comes down hard on Macondo and he decides not to join the liberals but to lead them. It leads to an impressive action sequence, with Aureliano leading a massacre of the military garrison but sparing the terrified Moscote, fully becoming the Coronel Aureliano Buendía in front of our eyes. He leaves Arcadio in charge of Macondo, says his goodbyes to the family and heads out towards war, and towards the fate foretold in the novel’s famous opening lines.
Like Vomas, my Lynch memorial was the Twin Peaks pilot, which I haven’t seen since it originally aired. It’s even better than I remember it; a cinematic soap opera with all of the genre elements in place but emboldened with emlodramatic excess and a haunting musical score. It’s both ironic but played with painful sincerity.
Hey Friends, What’s Up?
Our weekend in ATL at a filk convention was very much fun. Saw a whole bunch of folks I haven’t seen in a while, including my wife’s BFF, who doesn’t live that far away but it’s not easy to get together with her. This con, being one where there is a lot of singing and also a lot of fans over 60, still has a masking rule, so we felt reasonably comfortable as well. At least among friends.
During travel is a different story, since the airports are so crowded. And in fact, I have something of a bug today, but as it doesn’t feel like it did when I had COVID, I think it’s just a cold from all the exhaustion. (Takes longer to get my energy back than it used to after a trip.) We also skirted the snow/ice/sleet/rain storm in ATL, so that by the time we flew home, the delays were just the usual sort. Our flight was close to an hour late leaving, something the airline should have expected as that plane was late all day, but the notification that the flight would be late came only after we got to the airport. We would have happily stayed at the hotel another hour if we had known. Sometimes I wonder if they don’t tell you about the delays so that you are stuck the extra hour and buy more food.
My time as substitute exec asst is supposed to end with the month, but no word to anyone yet about when the real asst is coming back. I have decided that if she leaves and they ask me to stay on, I still want my other job back. But first she needs to let us know her plans.
If one wanted a good gateway to filk where would one begin?
I would suggest either Ookla the Mok – “rock music for nerds” – or Heather Dale, who leans towards a Celtic folk sound. You can of course find them on YouTube or Spotify.
Kids final had their first full week of school in a month, so of course it’s time for a three-day weekend. Looking around at service opportunities for MLK Day, important to be on the lookout for these kinds of things and the kids have goofed around enough days, dammit. Made it out to the movies with a friend for the first time in a while, that’s always an enjoyable time. His kid is getting into the activities age so we’ll take the opportunities when we can.
Two friends have had a big falling out and I’m trying to take both of their grievances on board and stay friends with everyone without taking sides. Tricky tightrope. Excited to get back into some live music starting tonight but the very first band I’m going to see is the one that they were in together, and now one of them is not.
Yikes, was it a band falling out or a fallout that affected the band? Either way, that sucks, good luck dealing with it.
Bassist was perceived to be showing a lack of commitment to the band (which seems accurate, although there are mitigating circumstances), and dodged conversations about this until they felt they had to ask her to leave the band, which she didn’t seem to expect despite the building tensions and has not reacted well to. Seems like a tricky situation on both sides but I hope they don’t fall out about it forever because they’re good people.