The Friday Article Roundup
Pop culture articles from the past week for the rebellious mind.
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Jason Diamond’s substack The Melt revisits the 1964 children’s book The Pushcart War and sees some relevance in its message of little guys fighting the powers that be:
It might not look like it at first, but The Pushcart War is a near future dystopia for kids. Merrill set it a decade ahead of when it was published, and the New York City of the 1970s she envisioned was a place out of a nightmare Jane Jacobs’ must have had while she was working on The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Not surprisingly, the two books came out three years apart, and Jacobs was still fighting Robert Moses and his idea to build an expressway that would have gone right through where Washington Square Park sits. The NYC of The Pushcart War, meanwhile, feels very much like it’s set in a time and place that saw Moses not only winning the fight to put in a Lower Manhattan Expressway, but a possible future where big business and the government work hand in hand, screwing over the locals and small businesses. Doesn’t that sound absolutely terrifying? Could you imagine that sort of thing being regular practice?
Tom Breihan’s The Number Ones column at Stereogum reaches the only (to date) qualifying song by Billie Eilish:
Like “Old Town Road,” “Bad Guy” was recorded in a bedroom, on a computer, by two very young people who were raised on YouTube and SoundCloud and who seemed hostile to the very idea of genre. Billie Eilish was even younger than Lil Nas X. Like him, she had a sharp digital marketing strategy in place before she ever signed a major-label deal. Eilish wasn’t an outsider in the same way that Lil Nas X was. She grew up in Los Angeles, and her whole family was deeply involved with the arts; nobody was trying to convince her to go to college when she really just wanted to make music. She played the music-business game, but she and her brother and collaborator Finneas O’Connell had musical ideas that pushed so hard against conventional wisdom that they inadvertently revealed how unwise that conventional wisdom always was. They played around in the margins so cannily that the margins became the main text.
At ReverseShot, Ryan Swen talks about the latest feature by Yoko Yamanaka, a purveyor of “formal gambits and tonal shifts that one might expect from a significantly more experience filmmaker”:
Yamanaka does not aim for pat, simplistic psychological explanations for her heroine’s choices. Desert of Namibia thrums with energy, carefully observing Kana and her companions in intimate, handheld medium shots before suddenly bursting forth with a barrage of electronic music, an unexpected character interaction, or a simple expression of motion. Gradually, as Kana and Hayashi’s interactions grow more volatile, usually at her instigation, the viewer’s involvement with her only increases our desire to understand an unknowable person. This is helped in no small part by Kawai’s abundance of diffident charisma, a pleasure to watch in even the most relatively pensive of moments, and the accumulation of time makes it difficult to reject her.
And Polygon‘s Tasha Robinson calls for a revamping of long-forgotten 80s fantasy animated series Blackstar:
While so much of 1980s animation was about the clear line between good and evil, there’s a sense throughout Blackstar that most of the world of Sagar isn’t aspected in such a black-and-white way. It’s just a chaotic ruin, where hungry monsters, prim but weary civilizations, and barbaric enclaves all exist side by side, divided by lethal geography. Every scattered outpost and wandering monster is equally dangerous to Blackstar and the Overlord, but ripe for either of them to exploit for an advantage in their ongoing war. There are even hints at a nuanced system for magic, where the mental power of sorcery and the elemental power of nature magic are different things that work in different ways.
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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The Friday Article Roundup
An assembly line of this week's pop culture writing from around the Internet.
Lunch Links
State of the art special effects, little attention paid to plot - what's changed over the past 120 years?
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The Friday Article Roundup
A catty roundup of great pop culture writing from the past week.
Department of
Conversation
Sorry! Once again set the posting time 5PM and this time Tristan didn’t bail me out. Don’t know where my head’s at this month.
Hmm, from the clues provided I think maybe your head is in… Moscow?
Gumshoe! You’re right on his tail! Now a local shop owner overheard his thoughts talking about Samba lessons and exporting avacados…
Sorry, I was too busy making out with someone hot (this is definitely true).
Well let’s make sure that doesn’t happen again.
I don’t know what the time setup looks like or if this makes sense, but — could it be put to military time? Easiest way I know of avoiding am/pm mixups.
What Did We Watch?
MST3K,”Mitchell” – You know the drill. Joel’s last go-round in the 90s (and who could have ever guessed he’d return to riffing in the next millennium?), a solid set of scenes to get Joel off the Satellite of Love and to introduce Mike, and one of the most consistently funny (if rarely uproarious) episodes of the show. I think there was a concerted effort to have as many references to things from the 70s as possible to match a very 70s movie. Joel went out on a high note. Or at least a Hoyt Axton theme song.
The film itself (minus the death of John Saxon, which was probably as forgettable as anything else anyway) isn’t the worst movie ever riffed by a long shot. But it’s definitely got very few redeeming qualities. Some MST3K movies flounder on low budgets, others on bad acting, but many are at least labors of love by “outsider artists.” This is just a run of the mill 70s cop show but bizarrely made to be released to the big screen, and starring a poorly conceived main character who we really do want to see get beat up. This feels not so much bad as both lazy and mean. That Joe Don Baker dials up the good ol’ boy charm without being charming makes it worse. And dear lord, how he treats Linda Evans is risible. But hey, at least Martin Balsam puts some effort into it. Not much, but some.
Kojak, “Another (Slur for Romani) Queen” – Yeah, Kojak has another run-in with a group of stereotypical Romani, but not the same ones as in a previous episode. There is an interesting idea here of members of an outsider community being able to find out things far better than the cops, but otherwise the story is something of a mess, about both a member of the Romani group seeking vengeance on an innocent man and the “queen” trying to prevent this, and a serial killer going after women in fur coats. (Fur really is murder!) The only really interesting things here are the queen running circles around Kojak, and scenes filmed at the Central Park Children’s Zoo. So ends season four. I think this will be it for extensive shoots in the Big Apple.
Babylon 5, Season Two, Episode Eleven, “All Alone In The Night”
I’m starting to think I like the idea of this show much more than the execution. This has a few amazing reveals, including that Sinclair is actually a spy for Earth determining the loyalties of the crew, but it’s also kind of a chore to watch; this definitely benefits from me stretching it out this way for the opposite reason Justified does, where I can mostly focus for the forty minutes of watching. The reveals are incredible! Please speed them up!
Lennier rules. His simple loyalty is so much fun to watch, and I love that Delenn appreciates the origins and results of that loyalty, making them a genuinely symbiotic relationship. He gets to feed off her grandeur, and she has someone doing the grunt work. All the alien characters are more interesting than most of the humans because their behaviours are more extreme. Dr Franklin is an exception, with his more extreme ideals.
The characters argue over football teams operating in different atmospheres, which feels like a step too far in scifi versions of things. I cannot imagine football leagues not standardising their gravities for exactly the reason the characters lay out here.
Parasite
Rewatch, because my partner was going to show me Nope, but we couldn’t find it so I decided to show them this. This time I caught the early line where Park complains that his housemaid’s only flaw is that she eats enough for two. I also picked up that there’s not a singel conventional setup in this entire film – whatever shot-reverse-shot sequences exist are in the most insane of contexts, and Bong otherwise either moves the camera around in unpredictable but smooth ways or simply has conversations too short to bother cutting between. It certainly makes the whole movie very memorable.
We are at the same point in Babylon 5! And yes, Lennier rules, Billy Mumy has huge “that little guy is gonna do something cool!” vibes and his just-the-right-side-of-obsequious Smithersing has ominous undertones — I thought he was going to be the new SPOILER, which really would’ve thrown a monkey wrench into things. But yes, team aliens over team humans, every time the Narn are not on the screen we are asking “where are the Narn?”
I really hope Lennier is exactly what he claims to be – just a boring little guy who never did anything – and he just does cool stuff later rather than reveals some big mythic origin or something.
Oh I definitely don’t want him to have a mythic origin, but Lennier has already shown he’s a very tough fighter, I think he is capable of a lot and he has the quiet zealotry to go very far if he chooses.
Babylon 5 — perhaps in the future they will have invented a jerk-off motion big enough to express how I feel about THE COUNCIL OF THE GREYS, good christ is this shit annoying. Fuck off with your pajama party black box theater group secret society! The rest of the episode is ported-in Captain Kirk Vs. The Aliens stuff, ehhh. The big reveal is interesting but it’s taken half a damn season to get here, lot of time wasted.
Den Of Thieves: Pantera — “These streets are different,” voiceover intones as the first image of the movie is an airport runway. The stupidest franchise in town is back! And the “franchise” aspect is the biggest problem here, that voiceover is a one-and-done moment from a character who is important but not one of our leads and presumably will have more to do in the *sigh* third movie that is coming after this *sighhhhhhhhhhh* middle chapter. The heist shit is great (the subsequent action surprisingly mediocre) and Christian Gudegast, moreso than 95 percent of people today, makes movies that look and feel like movies — slick but well-lit, angles beyond shot/reverse shot, no dead air — but he’s a fucking dumbo with story and motivation and the fun of deadbeat bozo Gerard Butler is turned into mournful divorced dad stuff and a real chickenshit betrayal. That is then reversed! Gotta have a sequel! Not bad but not good and the worse the more you think about it.
Hacks up to S3 premiere, pretty terrific. It’s funny how much this mirrors the dynamic in Damages – female famous mentor and eager protege – except (1) it’s very good rather than cookie-cutter prestige, (2) Ava isn’t eager as much as sucked into Deborah’s life, which is probably how it actually feels working for a famous rich and charismatic celebrity, and (3) bless Rose Byrne, but Ava isn’t a wallflower, she’s a strong, self-destructive personality who, as the S3 premiere suggests, will tell Deborah that her dress sucks (“giving off real Big Bird energy” is accurate) without hesitation. The episode implies Deborah is, a year after firing Ava with the best of intentions (for Deborah), seeing the downside of having no one around to say no or that she can be wrong.
The Stage 4 payoff is some savage pitch-black humor and whoever came up with it may be a genius. Whole new meaning to “You’re gonna make it!” Of course Ava will note that leading man culture is toxic and then eat Tom Cruise’s coconut cake. Just be shitty, Ava! It’s okay! You’re in a shitty industry! (Carl Hiaasen’s line in Native Tongue comes to mind: “Bud was a crook, but at least he was at peace with himself.”)
What Did We Read?
Started Little Constructions by Anna Burns. She’s as hilariously, maddeningly playful as in Milkman, a selection a few years ago for The Solute Book Club which I sorta shrugged off in the moment and the more we discussed and the more I though about it realized what a great book it really was. I don’t think I’m going get to “great” this time, but I’m much better positioned to appreciate the discursive style of narration out of the gate. Which is good because it’s even loopier with tons of digressions by an omniscient third person that refers to itself with “I” every now and then. Really reminds me of my mother and aunts telling a story that follows numerous distractions along the way to something like a point. Near impossible to keep the characters straight (in addition to a crime family named Doe that includes several people who “aren’t of the family” but take the name, the book opens on a scene with two characters named Tom) but she knows this and uses the time to go back over the who’s-who to add another skin of detail on them. Fun, but I need to finish before I’m too exhausted.
I read this a while back! And yes, it makes Milkman, a pretty dense book itself, read like Dr. Seuss in retrospect — even beyond the Doe insanity, Middle Sister is an unreliable and digressive narrator but she’s still yoked to her perspective, the narrator here goes everywhere and with a tone that is both funnier and far, far more furious. You are right to power through because it is an exhausting (and worthwhile) read and I think that is very much by design, this gets at even more unsavory aspects of clamped-down and closed-in life and what that does to people, mainly women and “weak” men. It’s a novel about trauma! But traumatically told in a way that embodies the theme instead of elegantly structuring it. I still need to read Burns’ debut, to me this feels like a classic ambitious second novel but the ambition is bracing and Burns is a hell of a writer.
Einstein’s War: How Relativity Triumphed Amid the Vicious Nationalism of World War I by Matthew Stanley – A somewhat overblown title – aren’t they all these days? – but generally accurate. Stanley focuses on how Einstein, a dedicated pacifist at the time in a nation and a world driven made by war fever, plowed ahead with refining relativity,. and how Arthur Eddington, a British Quaker and therefore also opposed to the Great War, became the strongest voice to spread the word of relativity despite a near-total ban on German science in the UK. Stanley does a good job balancing the stories of Einstein and Eddington and balancing the science with the war. (Every time I read about WWI, I am perplexed at how everyone thought endless and fruitless war was a good idea, and also appalled at the behavior of both sides.) Stanley, a scientist turned historian of science, stumbles a bit at the end when he tries to offer lessons to learn from Einstein and Eddington’s struggles, and his explanations of relativity are not very good. but overall this is a solid work.
The Deer Hunter, EM Corder
This is, as you might expect, a novelisation of the film of the same name. People often complain that movie adaptations are much weaker than their source material, but it’s easy to forget that can go the other way, and for the same reason; things that work excellently in one medium can at best struggle in another. This has very simple dialogue that works perfectly in a film, with actors able to breathe life into every word, but is borderline incomprehensible in a prose book, and the characterisation comes off like a B level student essay on the film. Presumably, a lot of its problems came from the fact that it had to be written in time to come out with the movie; a good writer with enough time could have fleshed everything out and made it work as prose as opposed to advertisement.
That said, parts of it still work. The middle section especially – and the hard cut from the guys dicking about to the brutality – is gangbusters.
”Pickman’s Model”, HP Lovecraft
Solid Lovecraft, though much stronger than I remembered. This is Lovecraft getting self-reflexive again; it’s essentially an expansion on “The Unnameable” in being a meditation on the art he likes, through the medium of the art he likes. It even has the same structure, with the story presented as a monologue that climaxes in a trip underground to meet monsters.
It’s stronger in every single way, though. The central idea isn’t just self parody, it’s a genuine argument for Weird Fiction, or at least Weird Art, with the narrator defending his interest in Pickman’s horror-based paintings and differentiating them from cheap hackery. Lovecraft argues that good horror strikes at a certain part of the human soul, and through the increasing horror, argues that good horror is heavily rooted in realism and plausibility for it’s effect.
He does this through his convincingly awestruck description of Pickman’s paintings, conveying their nature in such a way that you can precisely picture exactly what he’s talking about. It brings a sharp exotic thrill into life, deeply affecting the narrator forever and shaking him out of placidity. I suspect if Lovecraft has lived at least another ten years, his writing would have taken a very unusual, sensualist turn.
The delivery is also one of his best. The writing is downright casual for Lovecraft, and as a result the turn to weirdness becomes much more effective; I’m gripped by the descent into the subway and the description of the ghouls. The final punchline is also as funny as it is horrifying as it is inevitable.
Tehanu, Ursula K Le Guin
Kind of reminds me of the third season of Deadwood in how this has the strongest elements of the series right next to the weakest. I don’t give two shits about the fantasy elements, but not only do I enjoy the reflections of a woman who has hit middle age, it’s all the more meaningful because it’s happening in a fantasy story. Here is a woman who went through some mystical shit at an early age, and now she’s here taking care of a kid and realising men got to go off and have exciting adventures. It feels like Le Guin at her most reflective and honest.
This is the end of the Tales From Earthsea collection I have, and now I can reflect on Le Guin as she fits into the fantasy genre, at least As I’ve read through it. I would definitely put her above Tolkein and Lewis; I criticise her heavily, but from a position of enormous respect for a clear-eyed thinker who I happen to disagree with. When she’s diving deep into a straightforward plot – which is really only A Wizard of Earthsea – she’s great, and usually she doesn’t want to do that.
I think what I appreciate is that she’s someone with something specific to say, even if I disagree, and her world is built around that (and, as in this last book, reshaped when she changes her mind). It’s a step above even her contemporaries; Lewis lectured the audience, Tolkien was havnig fun with escapism. Philip K Dick and Michael Moorcock are more my speed, both aesthetically and politically, but she’s definitely on their level, particularly in terms of thoughtfulness, and I’m glad to have read her at least.
Point of odor: There are two more Earthsea books! Tales From Earthsea is an actual collection of short stories and novellas from various time periods and other characters in Earthsea, not sure what your compendium is about, and The Other Wind is the last book in what a no-doubt increasingly frustrated by additions publisher finally called the Earthsea Cycle. TFE is good and has some Magician’s Nephew type backstory, and it leads into a very Le Guinian version of The Last Battle, if Lewis’ book ends in revelation and destruction to bring everyone together under heaven, Le Guin is about a less apocalyptic but no less powerful rejection of borders. (And certain fantasy elements in Tehanu get more elaboration here.)
Anyway! Tehanu really is powerful, it pays off something Le Guin didn’t even realize she was setting up with Tenar and “reflective and honest” is very accurate, not a lot of writers would be as willing to interrogate their past work (while not rejecting or denying it) the way she does here. What makes it so compelling is that Tenar has already had that realization about life and her place in it and exists in counterpoint to Ged, who has no idea how to exist as he is now. But that is not an excuse or an opportunity for pity, and the long journey out of this personally has large implications for the larger systems in play here. I think this is how Le Guin approaches a lot of her fiction, the ramifications of the person on the political, and it is difficult but natural — people have made these institutions, so changes in people can reverberate in institutions — without being optimistic and prescriptive.
About halfway through By the Pricking of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie. I was curious to check out one of her Tommy & Tuppence novels but this is a bit of an odd one to start with perhaps, written towards the end of her career and with the protagonists looking back on their earlier adventures. Also Tommy heads off and leaves Tuppence to investigate a case that is more of a weird hunch than anything else, and I miss the vaguely Thin-Man-esque chemistry between the pair. It’s still a fun read though so far and revolves around a big secret in a small town which is always a good way to hook me in.
Parable of the Sower – 60 percent through. Truly heavy stuff that also has a sense of resilience, character, and isn’t without hope or humanity. I can see where 2000’s/2010’s YA is coming from similar dystopic directions except Butler is a damn good writer, and she knows that teenagers are self-righteous and this isn’t always going to produce stronger results. Lauren’s dad correctly suggests it’s better to teach people, not frighten them, about the future and what is necessary, and even his slow and steady approach is deeply flawed. Still, best not to stare into the abyss all the time either.
I’m about halfway through Talents, but I stalled out at a particularly upsetting bit. She had planned on writing a more utopian third volume but never pulled it together. Which probably means something.
I read it was supposed to be six books — in any case, obviously there was much more to come, and the narrative change in Talents is a big indicator of how this scope was widening. And looking back at the Seed to Harvest books, she had already done fascinating and excellent work in the realm of longterm scope and changing belief systems, so I can only imagine where she would’ve taken the Parable books. But yeah, I am pretty sure I know where you stalled out and it is brutal, brutal stuff, to the point where I sort of have the Red Wedding reaction to people dealing with the already-brutal Sower — you don’t know how bad it’s going to get. But push through when you’re ready, I think Butler complicates a lot of stuff greatly in the second half (which again, you’ve already gotten a sense of through that new narrative angle) and it is thorny stuff worth engaging with.
Lauren’s voice (via Butler) is so strong that sometimes it is hard to remember she is a teen, with all the blinkered perspective and self-righteousness that comes with the territory. And yet she is right more than she is wrong! It’s a dangerous mix, and part of what makes her ultimately a powerful voice is that her belief system is capable of working with these contradictions and adapting. How much of her adaptation is self-interest … well, you have some more reading to do.
Hey Friends, What’s Up?
It’s officially summer here! The kids are home and complaining. The anthropomorphized Mr. Sun I’ve drawn at the top of the chore chart is really selling the value of domestic labor, but for some reason they aren’t buying. There is some weird math in a kid’s head that exchanging 7+ hours of school for <1 hour of chores is a raw deal. I should start a coal mine, that’d show them.
And I should know about ruined summer breaks! Gearing up for two and a half months of preparing for the new job and cramming the classes to make me qualified to actually do that job. Plus I’ve picked up some freelance work for the summer, which isn’t bad except that I have not been granted extra time by the universe. I may have an insight into why I’m botching the FAR launch of late.
Dear lord, the stressors this week! Real world stuff piling up. (Any hopes my bosses put in a NJ Republican who used to support PBS were forlorn, but that doesn’t surprise me.) The Knicks losing in the most Metsian way possible making it so that I couldn’t even go to the sports pages for relief from the real world. (At least I wasn’t watching that.) A blood test showing that my A1C is up despite the metformin. And a co-worker losing her spouse when his single passenger plane crashed. I need a break.
But on the good side, my wife and I went to meet a new friend of hers from one of her internet games and Discord, and saw the friend’s graduate thesis in the annual student design show at Pratt College. I hit it off well with the friend – who is a big fan of MASH and cites among her influences Bill Sienkiewicz so we have things in common – and go to see a lot of really interesting student projects. (There is a ton of talent out there but how many of these folks will make a career of it?) And we also went for ice cream.
Also saw my wife’s sister’s family. In addition to my niece-in-law being due next month, my niece is expecting in the fall. And my 11 year old nephew asked us about quantum physics. Smart kid.
Lastly, we had an encounter with a very small kitten who we think had been left behind by his mother. We left it were it was – put in back into a box someone else had left with a blanket and some tuna – and as the box was gone the next morning I think either the kitten was rescued or mama came back. But before that, it crawled to my wife and she naturally held it for a little while. Tiny little thing that she practically cupped in her hands. I hope it’s okay and with its mother.
I probably mentioned last week that I’d engaged the services of some roofers after they’d come to the door offering their work, and then experienced Roofer’s Remorse as I realised I didn’t really know anything about their credentials etc. Well, the work is done and they seem to have done a decent job – there was an upsell in the middle of it, “we need to do this too or we can’t guarantee any of it”, but it seemed to be legit based on the info I had on the roof from the survey when I bought the house, so I bought in. Now – hopefully – I shouldn’t need anything else done up there for a long while. I guess I can’t be ENTIRELY sure of the quality of the work until it rains, which hasn’t actually happened here this MONTH, crazily. But my neighbour (who seems Wise), complimented their work to me so that’s a good sign. Anyway, now I need to aim for a frugal summer, try to recoup some savings.
Managed to catch yet another cough / cold – as ever I am baffled by quite how feeble my immune system seems to be these days. Hoping I can shake it off quickly as we’ve got another long weekend coming up and I should be out at the local multi-venue music festival on Sunday, if I’ve kicked out the germs by then.
Oh and also my cats turned SEVEN YEARS OLD yesterday. An important age, because some of the cat food comes in “1-6 years” and “7+” varieties.
Congratulations on your cats’ transition into Senior cats with special food needs for their little livers!
Right now
Right now it’s time
Right now it’s time to
KICK OUT THE GERMS, MOTHER FUCKERS!
*massive coughing instead of riff*
Year of the Month update!
This June, we’ll be moving on to 1983, including all these movies, albums, books, et al!
Jun. 23rd: Sam Scott: El Sur
Jun. 24th: John Bruni: Legendary Hearts
Jun. 30th: Tristan Nankervis: The Big Chill
And there’s still time to sign up towrite about any of these movies, albums, books, et al!
May 23rd: Gillian Rose Nelson: Almost Angels
May 30th: Gillian Rose Nelson: In Search of the Castaways