The Friday Article Roundup
A grim future to fight in the best pop culture writing of the week.
This week, you will feel furious about:
Send your own submissions throughout the next week to magpiesfar [at] gmail, post articles from the past week in the comments for discussion, and have a Happy Friday!
Jacob Oller limns the difference between prior exploitation filmmaking and AI “slopycats” for The AV Club:
The former aim, to capitalize on someone else’s hard work for some of their financial crumbs (also known as “drafting”), is annoying, but historically ubiquitous. Alien Discovery Day is trying to fool grandmothers typing “Disclosure Day” into their Roku in 2026 just like Angels Revenge tried to fool fans of Charlie’s Angels back in the ’70s. But even in these kinds of plagiaristic B movies, there’s room for creativity. Sure, Blacula is Black Dracula, but it isn’t just Black Dracula. Francis Ford Coppola’s Dementia 13 is more than a Psycho copy, even if it was commissioned as such by Roger Corman. Even if it’s a dishonest day’s work, filming a knock-off means making choices, which means creating something. The incursion of generative AI robs even the most rapacious industry leech of the ability to accidentally stumble into something interesting. Robbery and deception at least used to take a little bit of work.
The editors of Bona Books describe how they were nearly taken in by AI work when putting together an anthology, and how they investigated the “authors” to determine fraudulence:
Bella’s answers would be simplistic, or circle back to those easier discussion points about ideas and themes. As far as we could encourage her to speak about her creative process, she gave a flattened account of ‘having an idea’, followed by ‘writing’. When pressed on matters like character design or structure, she regurgitated the anthology brief back at us. When we specifically asked how she approached revisions, Bella began vaguely, saying she looked for bits where she “did not do very well”, before “changing” them. When pushed on what sort of changes, she claimed her biggest revision to the story had been adding the genre elements, because the first draft hadn’t been speculative at all. The Editors would like to emphasise the absolute absurdity of claiming this for a dystopian sci-fi story about a protagonist who builds a giant angry robot.
Musician Jaime Brooks makes the case for using AI and overthrowing old models of narrative emphasis around music:
So what if Zane Lowe can’t interview fictional artists? So what if prestige indie rock artists can’t squeeze a sustainable middle-class income out of streaming services? So what if science invents a more efficient way of meeting the emotional need that pop music exists to satisfy? The majority of people will be happy with the new thing, because the new thing will be optimized for that specific purpose. Not because the latest technology is an aberration that has corrupted an otherwise perfect endeavor, but because optimization has been the whole point of all of this for a century. The narratively compelling bits that pleased critics and enthusiasts were the product of inefficiency that was always going to get streamlined out of the process once the tech got good enough. Rather than get bent out of shape about it, I’m just trying to enjoy the ride.
For PhillyMag, Owen Lyman-Schmidt details how AI bots stole his band’s music and made more money than he did:
In our case, they’d skipped the step of making the music by taking our recordings, altering them the bare minimum to avoid easy detection by services like Gracenote’s MusicID (which uses track length as an easy digital fingerprint), and repackaging them with lazy near-miss titles and AI imagery before cranking out the automated listens. The songs on Blue Road have, by now, collectively passed 650,000 listens. Online royalty estimators suggest that number of listens would pay out around $1,600 to $2,600. Not a huge heist, but rinse and repeat over a few hundred low-profile bands and you have a living wage, without the 10-hour drives between gigs and venue merch cuts faced by actual musicians.
And at Step One Of A Plan, Miranda Reinert considers the real-world appeal of the emo she grew up with:
Maybe it’s a matter of taste that I like the petty and socially convoluted stuff better, but I also think emo needs to be rooted in some aspect of locality to work and almost everything I really loved had that. I want to hear names of streets that practice spaces are on and public transit station namedrops and the feeling that comes from being in living rooms with people you hate. A lot of the very current internet native emo I think loses all of that in a way that hurts the specificity of the emotion.
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The Friday Article Roundup
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Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Babylon 5, Season Five, Episode Four, “A View From the Galley”
This one is actually kind of notoriously bad, but I thought it merely slightly bad. The central problems are, in order, the exact same one that Straczinsky has had from the start (beating an idea into the ground, especially in dialogue), one that’s become worse and worse as the show has gone on (hero worship of his own invented characters) and the new problem season five has introduced (absolutely no forward momentum). Realistically, the premise should be Mac and Beau actually dealing with a plot, but it’s more like a pageant of the series’s main characters that they move through; this means Mac and Beau themselves are curiously weightless and tedious.
The most effective scene in the episode is, oddly, their one scene with Byron, where for once his moody bullshit comes off as sincerely mysterious and dangerous, particularly Mac and Beau take him the exact correct amount of seriously; confused and amused by his style and uncertain about his capacity for violence, and his proclamations are kind of funny but also kind of spooky. I do also enjoy the G’Kar/Londo scene, as well as Mac’s commentary on it.
“Realistically, the premise should be Mac and Beau actually dealing with a plot, but it’s more like a pageant of the series’s main characters that they move through; this means Mac and Beau themselves are curiously weightless and tedious” — bingo. I hated this, it’s a solid idea for an episode destroyed by bad execution, Straczinsky jerking himself off (since when would Franklin bother talking to these guys?). Londo and G’Kar rule as always but this is very poorly done.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan – How many times have I seen this one? Five since I got a Letterboxd account in 2011. At least twice that in the preceding 29 years. Is this the best movie ever made? Of course not. It is my go to for cinematic comfort food, my favorite Trek film, the movie I can quote verbatim the most? Absolutely. Obviously it has flaws, with the occasionally hammy performances and odd line reads, with continuity errors and plot holes, but it also is just fun, has a lot of heart, has a great score, and is the best performance Leonard Nimoy ever gives as Spock. And dammit, I still cry at Spock’s death and the funeral.
Elementary, “A Stitch in Time” – Eric Bogosian guest stars as a disgraced broker turned real estate man whose get richer quick scheme involves a transatlantic data cable and costs a professional debunker his life. The plot is very clever, but from the second we see Bogosian, we know this must adhere to the “famous guest star is the bad guy” rules. And he is a good bad guy, the sort that would have been at home on Columbo. Meanwhile, Joan helps Grergson’s cop daughter but regrets it when the daughter chooses personal acclaim over using the info they found together for a deep investigation. Which is made more interesting by the ending, where Gregson has to accept that his kid will never be that good a cop.
Something annoying happened at work this week and I almost said “it tasks me” to a colleague. But I realized she wouldn’t know what the hell I was talking about, so I just said “that’s annoying.”
The Hunt For Red October — RIP Sam Neill. Twice, I suppose! And he plays that last scene so well, the line is famous but he doesn’t give it any extra oomph, he just says it and goes, it hurts. Still great, still interesting how comparatively little Baldwin’s Ryan is in it, but the movie covers for this with the greatest collection of Dudes outside of Mr. Burns’ softball team. Courtney B. Vance killing it, Richard Jordan and Jurgen Prochnow wonderful at saying things that are not what they are talking about, Scott Glenn as the epitome of “hardass who grudgingly supports our hero,” Tim Curry as a true believer who is a dipshit but also somewhat wholesome in his naivete, the list goes on. Hilarious scene with Baldwin’s dumb wife at the beginning to establish a lingering thread of heterosexuality because otherwise this movie passes the Bronson Test with flying colors, no chicks allowed.
Working Girls — chicks allowed! A movie not only starring but written by and directed by a woman, this must be from the woke year of *checks notes* 1932. Dorothy Arzner does some interesting work in the classic genre of “opening up a play for the cinema,” there’s a nice scene of our heroines talking while climbing the staircase to their fourth-floor walk-up, visualizing their social climbing and the work it entails. Judith Wood and Dorothy Hall are on the make and the movie is not shy about this (the use of “family in New Jersey” as a reason to leave the lodging house and fuck a boyfriend is a great running gag) or its consequences, while this is ultimately a comedy of marriage there is a pregnancy bump along the way. The resolution with the dudes is expected but either tossed off (Wood’s hook-up has no real build to it and if anything it’s carried by Stuart Erwin’s delightful Baxter work) or side-eye worthy, as Hall weds the cad who knocked her up. Better is watching them navigate a world that doesn’t give them anything so they, especially Wood, have to take it. A fun ride.
But surely what red blooded man doesn’t want Gates McFadden?
Ha, holy shit! Did not clock it was her, her one line is to nag Baldwin for being late.
I suspect she was not considered for a second to actually play the role in the Ford movies. But as a devoted Trekkie, I always wanted to see her get more work. But she didn’t even do Gargoyles!
Working Girls instantly goes on my list.
And I’m due for a rewatch on The Hunt for Red October.
The Long Walk – a friend watched this recently and loved it, which made me bump it up my watchlist from “eh, maybe one day” to “heh, quite soon”. I wasn’t quite as entranced by it but it’s a solid bit of dystopian (non?) fun. I amused myself by being surprised by quite how Hunger Games-esque it felt, only to look up who directed and realise that it was the Hunger Games guy. Managed to get yourself quite a niche there, Francis!
Some of the dialogue felt like it could have used a rewrite, classic Stephen King chatter that looks good on the page but sounds bizarre coming out of an actual character’s mouth. But the two leads (Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson) are both excellent and elevate things considerably. It’s been too long since I read the book to say whether this is a worthy adaptation really, but on its own merits I thought it was pretty decent.
I have not and probably won’t see the Hunger Games movies. But I have seen Constantine and I Am Legend and the episodes of Kings that Lawrence directed, and he’s pretty good.
I’ve seen the original four and enjoyed them quite a bit more than expected, although perhaps not quite enough to ever watch the prequels. There’s a definite step up in quality after the first once when Lawrence took the helm. I feel like he’s a similar director to Matt Reeves, he can handle a blockbuster and isn’t afraid of leaning into the bleakness while still knowing how to please a crowd. But Reeves’ movies have more apes in them so he probably has the edge.
I always enjoy when Klassic King dialogue makes it from the page onto the screen, sometimes it is just goofy but it can create the tone necessary for the work and I believe that is mostly the case here. And overall Lawrence does really good work in how he limits the scope of the action, we are all in on our boys and that makes their reduction more painful. I think this has some flaws, the ending in particular, but it’s easily the best King adaptation of last year, more here: https://www.mediamagpies.com/try-not-to-lose-yourself/
I generally enjoy King dialogue, I’m not sure if it was the dystopian setting or the all-youthful cast but it kept taking me out of things a little here.
It definitely doesn’t quite stick the landing, which is a shame. I agree with Lauren’s comment on your article there, it should have ended with McVries asking for the gun.
Reilly: Ace of Spies (s1e1&2) – Based on the real life of Sidney Reilly, a Russian-born spy operating for the British at the start of the Edwardian era. Apparently, he was a big influence on Fleming’s James Bond. Sam Neill portrays Reilly with a subtle charisma but who is also an “unscrupulous bastard!” and a bit of a rake. He’s upper class charm mixed with street-level survival instincts. It is heavy on political and historical events of the time and less on action-spying but still manages to make the exposition engrossing. The first episode has Reilly already spying on the Russians where he obtains Russian oil surveys in the Persian Basin. The second episode has Reilly assisting the Japanese at the start of the Russo-Japanese War. It has the usual British attention to historical detail in the production values creating a sense of realism, immersion and great world-building in authentic locations. Solid supporting cast highlighted by Jonathan Rhys Davies in the first episode blowing like a whale around the time of the first Indiana Jones film. I had only ever caught bits and pieces on PBS but the opening Thames Television chime brings back some nostalgia for this and other shows I saw growing up.
The Invite
It’s a minor miracle that a movie could open with someone announcing to her husband that she planned a party a couple minutes before it starts and still make me side with her, because that’s one of her worst nightmares, but by minute ten Seth Rogen had thrown up so many red flags I almost forgot Wilde entered waving one. I’m glad I knew where this was going from the beginning so I could recognize just how much of the opening conversation is Rogen and Wilde talking around her attempt to sleep with the neighbors. I’m glad Wilde got out of director jail, because after this I’m convinced Don’t Worry Darling was a one-off fluke , because this new project’s incredible — sexy (Salma Hayek MVP!), funny, and sad. It’s also tense in a way thrillers rarely pull off: I love the motif of shooting the house from the window outside, because it really does feel like we’re eavesdropping on something we shouldn’t see. I feel the Wilde character’s tightly wound anxiety so deeply, I have to wonder how many of their problems would be solved if Rogen just let her have one of his joints.
What did we read?
Hawks and Doves, Neil Young
Pretty good country with pretty good rock. Some of this sounds very similar to his older work with one of the songs sounding a lot like “Heart of Gold”; presumably a product of being composed partly of leftover recordings. But Young goes a little weirder, which is in my tastes.
Eastside Story, Squeeze
Still some good, solid, genre tripping pop. I always throw songs I like on one big playlist, and I threw pretty much every song on my playlist, and I expect they’ll all grow on me even more with time
I like this move to redefine how we think of reading, which was certainly not just a case of you putting a Tuesday comment in a Friday thread.
We’ve all heard of audiobooks. But what about writtensongs?
Who says we need to read with our eyes; maaaan?
God. Damn it.
About 3/4ths of the way through Trust Me on This by Donald Westlake, a book long out of print but available digitally. I think this one is somewhere in the middle of the pack in terms of how well known it is – and I think there is a sequel – and it’s also kind of middle of the road in terms of quality. Westlake has the balancing act of making fun of tabloid journalism while trying to make our main characters – a recent college grad who is losing her soul by working for the n0t-legally-The National Enquirer and her editor/lover who is finding his own soul – likeable. There are two main problems here: tabloid journalism is both too easy to make fun of and not very interesting; the usual cynicism of a Westlake book is eating everything else. Fortunately, there is a murder mystery here, waiting to come into play before it’s all over. Hopefully soon. Oh, and Westlake is doing reasonably well with a female protagonist but the energy isn’t fully there.
Westlake’s male protagonists, at least the one-offs, usually have a nervy horniness to them that manifests in greater or lesser ways but is part of their basic makeup* and I think that is lacking in our lead here, she’s a solid character but a bit of an ingenue in this regard. But on the job she’s ferocious. I love this one, it’s in Westlake’s 80s period of branching out subject-wise and he is both intrigued and appalled by tabloid activity — yes it is scuzzy but it fits right in his semi-libertarian ethos of ignoring authority and finding cracks to exploit. His great idea is to conceive of scoops as heists — how do I get this photo? How do I make this story work even as it’s fallen apart? — and this leads to wonderful action as the tabloid environment provides a great opportunity for the weirdo side characters Westlake is so good at (the Aussies are a clear riff on Murdochian folks but they’re still a hoot). He’s also in certain ways drawing from His Girl Friday here in terms of a couple of questionable ethics coming together over a scoop, but with a more cynical edge. Anyway, I can see this not being for everyone but I think it’s a gas. The sequel is a rare misfire though, sour and misconceived.
*It is pretty interesting how his main guys do not have this at all though — Parker fucks but on his terms, it only drives him when he lets it, and while presumably Dortmunder and May have a happy sex life we never see it, there are more descriptions of Dortmunder eating cereal than having any erotic thoughts (and this is for the best)
A Mask of Flies – Pretty good crime turned cosmic horror thriller with a strong, scary monster and an interesting queer protagonist, a lifelong crook on the run after a job gone wrong who encounters her childhood nightmare. My major beef is that it really needed a good edit compared to Matthew Lyons’ previous crime-horror thriller A Black and Endless Sky; lots of “She/he knew his or her type” sentences (which feels like a sin of telling, not showing) and some bits where Lyons clumsily shoves the political opinions I might agree with into the mouths of hardened crooks who would never, in a million years, talk this way. Lyons is a talented writer and I still wanna see where he goes next.
The October Film Haunt by Michael Wehunt – Read and seen a lot of “cursed film/horror film” material lately, including Tremblay’s Horror Movie, Cigarette Burns, and Antrum. Hell, I wrote a novelette of one ten years ago. This is intriguing me more than a lot of those titles in part because of the very strong prose and sense of ambiguous dread, which chimes with, of all people, Robert Aickman. More than those, except Cigarette Burns, there’s a feeling already early on of the layers between reality and horror film falling away which naturally intrigues and scares me.
Got The American Way of Death (Revisited) in my audiobook queue but haven’t started it.
Cursed films are a pretty bulletproof concept for me; will have to check this out.
Blanche among the Talented Tenth, by Barbara Neely
The second in a (short, alas) series of mysteries about a Black domestic worker in the ’90s. This is a little weaker than the first book simply because the first felt more about Blanche, whereas this one merely heavily involves Blanche: this is a common problem with mystery series, especially with amateur detectives. They tend to get introduced with a story where they have an obvious, personal, and urgent reason to involve themselves, and then they tend to stay involved in cases in the future for various reason that can’t always quite cover the fact that the real reason is “the author had an advance.” (Professional detectives always have a reason to be doing this and not pinning their emotional lives on it, so that’s smoother.) You can dodge this if you go in knowing it’s going to be a series and not front-loading your protagonist’s emotional arc in the first book, if indeed the protagonist has one at all–Miss Marple does not have her own drama on a significant scale, for example.
But while I find all this interesting from a craft and business POV, I’m fine with spotting Neely and any other authors of amateur detective stories the fundamental hook of their books, because that’s what I’m here to read, after all. And in Neely’s case, Blanche is a particularly terrific character, so I’m even more happy to go along with the ride.
Here, Blanche has put her kids (technically her niece and nephew) in a more exclusive school, thanks to the hush money she picked up in the last book, and their new circle gets them invited to spend the summer at an upper-crust Black resort in Maine. Blanche agrees to spend a few days there herself, including a week looking after her kids and their friends to return the favor, but she’s immersing herself in a kind of poisonous hothouse environment when it comes to the long-running summer guests, who all have secrets … especially when it comes to the recently dead blackmailer in their midst. Notably, everyone at Amber Cove is significantly more light-skinned than the fairly dark Blanche, and also considerably more moneyed than she is, and both of these factors play into pretty much everything in the book–Neely’s a sharp social observer, and Blanche is a good vessel for that (tough and aware and critical and tart, but also inherently social and invested in people, sometimes in a way that only gets her hurt).
This is also something I like about the Easy Rawlins books I’ve read (so far) – the continuity shows Easy using the money from Devil In A Blue Dress to buy an apartment building. That sense of upward mobility but still watching out for yourself seems unique to stories about Black detectives.
Rawlins was who I immediately thought of as well. He overcomes the amateur problem of “why are you still detecting” that Lauren describes because he works as a fixer/go-between in a world that needs this, because it is (kept) separate from the larger world. That kind of person will always be necessary.
Yeah, I’m curious if Blanche will become more specifically sought after and take on an Easy-like role more often in the following books. She does get tagged in here, but–in a brutal twist of the knife–in a way that’s ultimately more of a slight than anything else.
There’s also a nice runner about what that mobility might cost her in another way, too: the niece she’s sent to a “better” school is starting to have a noticeable bias towards lighter skin and straighter hair, and both kids have started being (at least intermittently) little shits to people with fewer advantages.
Persuasion, Jane Austen – I’ve been trying to only comment on books once I’ve finished them but I MUST complain here that this novel has THREE characters named Charles in it and sometimes they’re all referenced on the same page.
I have somehow wound up with Persuasion as my least-favorite Jane Austen book, and I don’t know what that says about me. Should probably revisit the many Charleses at some point.
That’s encouraging for me at least, if I’m going to go for 100% completion on this “best novels” list* then I have three more to get through. I’m finding this one quite hard work but at least the chapters are short so it’s easy to make progress with.
* it has some absolutely massive tomes on it so the jury is EXTREMELY out
The recent Guardian list? I am at a mere 49%, alas. If only I could count the books I own but haven’t read. What an easy way to check off Life and Fate, speaking of “absolutely massive tomes.”
I’d like to get to 100%, though. The ones I have read speak well of the list as a whole, certainly.
I was at a dismal FOUR percent when the list was unveiled, which has given me a bit of an existential crisis about my apparent lifelong failure to engage with The Classics. I’m at 7% now though and cannot be stopped. Apart from possibly by “In Search of Lost Time”.
Arrian Tchiakovsky. Children of Strife — The fourth book in the Children series about the effects of Earth’s terraforming program millions of year later. I like all the books in this series, but it is sort of diminishing returns. The last one for instance was in many ways a mystery of “how did this happen,” which was required for the plot. This one Tchaikovsky introduces a lot of mystery elements about how characters got into the situation which are ultimately unnecessary and just act to confuse you and distance you from the characters’ plight. Once all that stuff is in the rear view, about halfway through the book, it becomes much more compelling.
Antony Johnston, Can You Solve the Murder? — I’m nearly (?) through this choose your own adventure-type murder mystery. It’s just exactly at the right level — mostly cozy in terms of the number of characters involved, but your avatar is an actual cop doing an actual police investigation, and it’s set at a hotel, so it’s not quite as internecine as a lot of cozy mysteries among family retreats and the like. Stuff like that I find hard to credit that anybody would be doing anything but wallowing in shock and grief instead of answering questions in paragraphs of exposition, which is what is required for a murder mystery. (And especially when it’s an also a puzzle.) (The one cozy mystery that I’ve read that actually treats people’s emotional lives appropriately is Stephen Donaldson’s The Man Who Got Away, which is a great book, but it’s not at all a cheerful, diverting read.)
Antony is a friend, and I am very glad I can be honest about his book! Although I haven’t solved the murder yet, so ask me again in a few days.
That is a very cool idea for a book, although if it’s going to be true to the spirit of CYOA then the murderer needs to kill you in surprising ways for most of the endings.
The Illearth War, Stephen Donaldson
This is the second book in the first Thomas Covenant trilogy. It improves on the first by pulling in a second character who was ripped from our world and into the fantasy one; he’s considerably less neurotic than Thomas, and this all ends up drawing out the themes and emotions of the story. He much prefers the fantasy world that gives him a superpower much like sight, and he’s much more focused on protecting his new home. This leads him to both commit actions that lead to consequences he doesn’t like, and to discover his own process of being brought to the world was an evil mistake.
That ends up clarifying that this is a story about despair; the new guy has to kind of weather his way through the emotions related to this, and it puts him on a spectrum with Thomas Covenant. I still don’t fully buy that you needed to tell this story about a rapist, but I admit it functions as one – and I also admit to being kind of delighted at someone pulling off a genuinely edgy story that’s otherwise extremely polished and beautifully written. What I’m less positive about is the characterisation of women; Covenant meets a woman who turns out to be the product of his raping that girl, and she’s the sole person who feels positively about him aside from her (deceased) mother. It’s not that I don’t think that could happen, it’s that I’m not sure it would go this way.
I’ve also come to realise this particular fantasy world isn’t that interesting – the sole interesting aspect is that the Land itself is tied into the health and magic of the people within it. This is a story that applies the minimum amount of imagination into the fantasy aspect of things.
Buried Fire, by Jonathan Stroud — a dragon was cast into the English hillside millennia ago but he’s able to send his abilities to various people and is trying to break free. This is the second Stroud I’ve read, he is well liked by family members, and he is Not For Me. Some of this is just a dislike of his voice and there’s not much to be done there, but I also think he’s just not very good. Stroud writes children’s books/YA and his prose is simplicity stretched, sentence and paragraph structure that would work in a book for fifth graders is given slightly more adult vocabulary and character, and it falls into that YA lack of sophistication that is flat and obnoxious. “Sophistication” is a loaded word but it is not a necessary thing in and of itself, I don’t think Lloyd Alexander’s prose is especially sophisticated but it is clear and direct and complicates his characters and themes on a level that is easy to understand but resonates for anyone. Terry Pratchett uses fantasy and tropes but writes with wit and cleverness and anger, he has style if not sophistication. YA stuff like Stroud has wide-eyed plodding instead of clarity and descriptiveness instead of style, it’s kid stuff playing dress-up. Plus the pacing here really sucks, half the book is build-up where the reader is fifty pages ahead of the characters and the end just happens. Anyway, NOT FOR ME. Palate cleansing with George V. Higgins and there is some ugly stuff here (this is mid-70s Higgins where he is trying to write women more and there are uh interesting results) but it’s adult.
The Annotated Alice by Carroll, Tenniel, and Gardner
This is my first time reading these books since I was a kid myself, and even though I’ve read about it since then, I missed so much back then. I always thought of Alice as a generic reader surrogate whose main personality was her unwillingness to put up with the nonsense around her, but now it’s obvious she’s full of her own brand of authentic little-kid nonsense: “once she remembered having tried to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself,” “I know something interesting is sure to happen, whenever I eat or drink something, so I’ll just see what this bottle does,” all the business in Ch. 2 about wondering if she needs to send letters to her feet when she grown ten feet tall.
Maybe that’s Carroll’s whole thesis: the logics of adults and children are incomprehensible to each other, and we all go a little mad trying to make sense of it. “Alice thought the whole thing was absurd, but they all looked so grave she did not dare to laugh” shoulds be equally relatable for children and their parents. And then there’s the identity crisis — by Alice-logic, if she doesn’t “feel like herself” she must be someone else, and when you combine that with all the literal growing up she does, it maps beautifully onto the horrors of adolescence.
Carrol’s pioneering a new kind of children’s book here, and the annotated version is great for showing off his contempt for the old kind. Previous authors were didactic and nothing else; Carroll’s literally transcribing stories he made up just to keep kids entertained. With that in mind, the song parodies are way funnier when we can see the originals right next to them and understand just how condescendingly insipid they are. The best is the scene at the Duchess’s house, where “Speak gently to the little child!/Its love be sure to gain” becomes “Speak roughly to your little boy/And beat him when he sneezes.” I shouldn’t have to explain why most adaptations skip that part, but the dark humor is essential to the book, and that whole section (with the Duchess throwing her baby around and the cook attacking everyone in sight) is essential slapstick violence.
I’m automatically suspicious anytime someone writes or says that they’re trying to “stop worrying” or “enjoy the ride”, as it screams “I decided to conform but don’t want to phrase it quite that way.”
That piece is very long and I would say worth the read, because Brooks raises some uncomfortable points. But she also elides others (there’s a reason the FAR placed that Philly Mag piece, which is also long and excellent) after hers, and I think she uses the long view as an excuse for justifying certain anti-social tendencies that become clearer in the piece. Nothing wrong with being anti-social! But ignoring others and ignoring their exploitation are not the same thing.
CONFORM CONSUME OBEY
“The narratively compelling bits that pleased critics and enthusiasts were the product of inefficiency that was always going to get streamlined out of the process once the tech got good enough” : I mean, sure, you can think that’s what’s going on.
But you could also call it a case of a mediocre artist up their own ass, believing that a fascist vision of the future will give them a perverse sense of comfort. Just like the Italian futurists did – you can look it up.
Year of the Month update!
And for August, send us your pieces on any of these movies, albums, books, etc. from 2001!
TBD: James Williams: Millennium Actress
Aug. 2nd: Tristan J. Nankervis: Ocean’s Eleven
Aug. 7th: Gillian Nelson: Recess: School’s Out!
Aug. 14th: Gillian Nelson: The Princess Diaries
Aug. 16th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Mulholland Drive
Aug. 21st: Gillian Nelson: Disney’s California Adventure
Aug. 27th: Cori Domschot: The Mummy Returns
Aug. 28th: Gillian Nelson: Walt Disney Treasures
And there’s still time to write about any of these movies, albums, books, etc. from 1979.
TBD: James Williams: Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Jul. 17th: Gillian Nelson: Understanding Alcohol Use and Abuse
Jul. 19th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Guards! Guards!
Jul. 21st: Lauren James: Flowers in the Attic
Jul. 24th: Gillian Nelson: Don Bluth
Jul. 28th: John Bruni: All That Jazz
Jul. 29th: Lauren James: Ghost Story
Jul. 31st: Gillian Nelson: Big Thunder Mountain