One of the things I have been thinking about lately is some sort of concept of cultural “junk” food. I have been reflecting on pieces of media that I have on my computer and I have recognized that there is a bunch of stuff that hasn’t done anything for me. If a game was bad, but I learned something and changed myself in the face of that badness, then at least something was learned.
We have more cultural products at our fingertips than ever, but less of them are meaningful. I feel culturally obese.
Thanks for the article, it helped fill in some pieces for me.
Let me focus on one angle. Your argument doesn't include the technology of filmmaking and the effects it had on the movies that were made. You can't discuss "Eraserhead" without including how it was shot on 16mm, a student film medium. Its resonance isn't because of any brilliance in storytelling. 16mm was available to everyone at the time, although you had to be serious about filmmaking to have any desire to use it. What Lynch achieved was something many could understand because none of us could manipulate 16mm to produce what he did. Nowadays, no one shoots on 16mm, or even knows what that involves.
In the past decade most films are shot on digital. Go back and watch an older film and see the difference. For instance, we just watched "Raiders of the Lost Ark". In a close-up of Indy, sweat droplets reflect the light. Nowadays you won't see a shot like that because filmstock requires certain lighting requirements. In order to develop a fast stock in low light, you need those key highlights. The shot is gorgeous. It's meaningful. The constant presence nowadays of digital has changed how movies are shot -- this is why everything is so ridiculously dark -- and the resulting emotional impact. You can't discuss modern movies without including the technological changes. Digital has made directors lazy and diminished the artistry of a great DP.
The technology of this era, when YouTube can give any content creator a chance to succeed and be seen, produces something different but no less entertaining. Anyone with talent can earn a living, which is amazing and encouraging. Streaming allows longer stories to be financed and viewed. We don't all watch together in the same room anymore, but it's so much easier to share an experience with family and friends across distances. The technology of this moment in time, influenced by Covid and other external events, produces its own kind of joy.
I still love older content filmed in a different era. Drop me into a scene from "Singin in the Rain" and I'll be happy. It's important, though, to consider it in context. Gene Kelly could walk around the back lot and talk to artists who actually filmed during the transition to talkies. It's a film very much of a moment in time. It's a historical documentary in the minds of the filmmakers, just one they've padded with stellar performances and a frothy story. Even though we can watch and enjoy it (or not) in our own era, it has a structure suited to an older time. You can't divorce the storytelling from its technology.
The Northman was one of the few movies I’ve seen In recent years that provoked this sort of deeper thought because it’s entirely cultural. I really felt that I had to assimilate into this ancient and barbarous culture to really understand what motivates the protagonist. And though out the movie my reoccurring thought was “I’m glad Christianity ended up winning over these poor people, who are so blinded by insanity and ignorance that they see revenge as a virtue.” Having Germanic heritage made me appreciate the film more because I recognized the cultural barrier between myself and my ancestors and I was actually appreciative that such barbarity was dead and buried.
It was also one of those films where my friends and I went out to eat afterwards and discussed it. What I felt was that you could make this movie about tons of different cultures and it would still feel authentic. I was wondering if perhaps vengeance is a universal pagan virtue. I could see this exact same movie being made about native Americans through the lens of their indigenous beliefs and it being portrayed similarly as both noble and savage simultaneously. I could also see the protagonist as a nomadic Turk or Mongol venerating their sky god, a Zulu, or a Samurai. And for most cultures I can sort of twist it in a way to see that it would create some kind of specimen solely dedicated to a mission of vengeful justice. The only thing I can’t visualize the protagonist as is a Christian. Hamlet, of course, would be the exact Christian version to fill this archetype (as far as I know Hamlet and the Northman draw from the same source material.) However Hamlet is a product of Europe in the early modern period and the intended audience knew that revenge is a diabolical motive. The prince’s quest for vengeance ultimately ends with the country getting taken over by foreigners. Everyone viewing it likely felt that it was cathartic Divine Justice that power had been taken from the knaves and usurpers and given to a just and powerful monarch. I think the Northman had to been ambiguous as to whether or not the protagonist should be considered good or bad. Sure, ending made me feel probably the exact some way you did and it’s where your main point about it lacking a theme comes from. “So, he gets some kind of paradisiacal reward for his heinous rampage?” I think that what it did for me was reinforce the alien nature of heathen Europe. The divide between a culture with such a different view of justice, and therefore justification, and ours, I found provocative.
Not sure I really agree with your point. I don't think "Rocky Horror Picture Show" is somehow a better film because it is engaging with the cultural zeitgeist or something compared to "The Northman". I'm personally a big Robert Eggers fan, the Lighthouse was one of my all time favorite movies. I can't really tell you why, I'm not knowledgeable enough about film to explain to you how it's objectively a good movie or whatever, it could just be pretentious with no real meaning for all I know. Rather just the experience of inviting some of my church friends over and then tryna decipher the movie with smoking tobacco on my back porch made it iconic. I think you were basically right when speaking about the significant of these real moments of ritual making these things meaningful.
I've been going to a lot of concerts lately, going to Beethoven's Sympathy and the I have to say the experience is a lot more profound than listening to a 5 minute recording of one of his pieces on Spotify, laying in your bed in your underwear. This doesn't negate the fact that Beethoven is objectively one of the greatest composers in the world rather to say that culture and art is really about the human experience it involves, it's not just something meant to be consumed in mass. I guess this is the fundamental problem. Nothing nowadays is a experience tied to time and space, instead it is all just detached abstract drivel designed to be consumed on our smart-phones to make our dopamine go up.
I don't think culture has really died, we all have access to the greatest films, music and books in the history of the world at our fingertips. And even if someone decides to make himself a modern renaissance man he isn't going to achieve that by listening to worldclass literature as a audiobook in the subway. Art used to be an experience, back in the day you could pretty much only hear a sympathy once in your life.
Idk where I'm going with this so I'm gonna end it here.
Nov 28, 2023·edited Nov 28, 2023Liked by Dave Greene
Rocky Picture Horror show’s ending has always interested me. Despite the pro sexual revolution themes of the piece, the movie ends with Frank-N-furter dead and Brad and Janet broken and scared. The consequences of defiance and transgression are actually in the text as well, which probably helps the art feel more real.
Have you seen Alexander Payne’s new movie “The Holdovers”? Gosh, I thought it was just wonderful. I even saw it twice and dragged some of my more thoughtful friends along the second time so we engage in the type of post-viewing critical conversation you mention in your article. Beautiful cinematography (it’s on film), gorgeous soundtrack, Oscar-winning acting (all three of the main characters deserve nominations, Giamatti deserves a win), but most importantly—it MEANT SOMETHING. It made me FEEL something. It’s the kind of exploration of boyhood and masculinity that we just don’t get anymore, because who cares about boyhood or masculinity? Everyone I know that’s seen this movie has said it was the first “good” movie they’ve seen in 5 years, and I wholeheartedly agree... now, I guess you might argue that it fits too-firmly into the “nostalgia” category to be taken seriously, and it’s definitely interesting that the first “good” movie since 2017 is explicitly meant to feel like a 70s’ flick in everything from to cinematography to plotline, but I don’t think I care. It was made NOW, and I do think its production reflects a cultural ache for a return to depth. The fact that the film is a nostalgia-play has cultural meaning and reflection in and of itself.
My one consideration is that I worry it’s too “slow” for a modern audience. I enjoy “slow” films because I watch a lot of older movies, but it seems the one widespread comment from the YouTube critics is that some moments were too long and drawn out. In trying to introduce some of my own friends to 70s/80s even 90s cinema, they’ve often thought it boring and too “slow;” they aren’t interested in pausing on a bubbling radiator or watching a huddle of people walk through the snow for more than 3 seconds. Payne reintroduces that style of slow, deliberately atmospheric cinematography into this film, but I don’t think that kind of filmmaking will actually reenter the culture due to the short attention spans that TikTok and other social medias have curated en masse.
Your essay here brought to mind a poem I wrote - ashamed to say, many years ago at this point. I was wrestling with the same thoughts while traveling through Western MD (I seem to recall the city mentioned here to be Hagerstown.)
"We are living vicariously through the life the art embodies to bring new and collective vigor to our own existences because we believe that, whatever other illusion is being employed, there is truth inside the work."
All excellently put, and this line along with "art as ritual" really captures the essence of what non-woke modern art often lacks. A passionate faith from the creator in the underlying reality that makes their artificial world function as it does - not just play figures moving around to the beat of "Save The Cat", but a Greek Tragedy-like destiny/inner-logos that makes the story necessarily play out as it does.
I actually think the rampant managerial/materialistic aspects of our culture smack the magic out of many young creators by insisting there are 'scientistic' formulas that can generate good plots, and as moderns we are all very vulnerable to these messages until we learn of alternative/traditional schools of thought.
Worse still, this scientistic view of art is partly accurate at present, since it is actually adopted by the bugman consumer class who often buy books, shows, etc. based on the "Tropes" the products publicly advertise as hitting - which promise specific story beats and refraining from probing into more challenging or broader themes. I don't mean to sound like too much of a stickler, there is a role for genre, but this hyper-commodification of art as product definitively haunts the tentative creator's mind.
Art must have ritual... I'm so intrigued by this I wonder how I'll sleep.
Speaking of new movies versus old,
I'm reminded of a recent experience watching all the Tom Cruise Mission Impossible movies over a few weeks, to remind me what the stories were before seeing the latest one. I had such a strange sensation when CGI entered the series: the madness, the chaos, the chases left me cold. There was no thrill seeing action that wasn't "real", which is to say seeing magic that wasn't created entirely by clever engineering and stunts and coordinating hundreds of people for a scene. The stories meanwhile got crazier and crazier, trying I suppose to make up for the fact that much of the action wasn't really there. Yet every time Tom Cruise was onscreen, the magic and tension was there again, all through knowing his reputation for real life stunts...So I recommend the first one, but the rest is a lark.
I highly agree with all you say about "Rocky Horror". There's also an element of "Don Giovanni" to it, in that despite being a celebration of a decadent and transgressive lifestlye, justice is finally served on the transgressor. Don Giovanni and Dr. Frank N. Furter refuse to repent of their crimes and are destroyed. The remaining characters are left to pick up the pieces. Richard O'Brien even hits us a bit harder than da Ponte did with the consequences of sin in his final number "Superheroes", where Brad and Janet (and Dr. Scott!) are crawling around in the dirt and fog in their leather harnesses. It's as if, like Balaam, these two subversive writers, da Ponte and O'Brien, tried to utter a curse and it came out as prophecy.
Dave, have you watched Twin Peaks: The Return? For me it's one of the few modern works of media that has stuck with me. It definitely has flaws and dead ends (could I get a Dougie free version?), but is one of the few works of the last 15 years that I still think about. The original Twin Peaks, like Blue Velvet, portrayed an idyllic America with a dark rot lurking underneath, which perfectly portrayed the Reagan and early post-Cold War America. The Return shows that this rot has metastasized and come to the surface, and most of the characters are either consumed by it or resigned to its victory. What better way to portray our modern condition?
I'd also love to hear your general opinions on David Lynch? If I remember I'll send a superchat on the next Livestream.
I agree that there's something missing from the new Dune movie, which can't be addressed just by analyzing all of its parts. But watching it, I did notice that every planet felt like it was in its own universe: The Harkonnens had a real HR Giger vibe. Salusa Secundus had its weird religious ceremonies. Caladan felt like a blend of Japan and Scotland.
Nothing tied any of it together. The missing ingredient is the Spice, which for some reason the movie de-emphasized, IMHO.
The original Lynch movie, meanwhile, was like "The spice is life. Here's a profoundly alien future society with some weird dream-echoes of modern culture. You don't understand it? You're not supposed to, idiot. Om Shai Hulud motherfucker, I'm out."
There has definitely been a shift in entertainment media in our recent generations. Though about the only ones I can comment on is the manga scene.
On an app called Mangatown, I currently have at least touched over 1000 different manhas, manhwas, etc. . I have around 350+ Mangas in a library that I consider "being actively read", but of those, maybe 50% are regularly updated with new translated chapters.
There is a clear shift over time as you read through older and newer titles where the reader starts to understand why the manga was written. In the case of older more classic titles such as Berserk, Dragon Ball or even Bleach (to name the most popular ones), there were about two objectives: either the author wanted to tell a story, or they wanted to write something that will cater to a specific audience. These always have a sameness to them, due to how the characters look vibrant and have initial personality quirks, but are otherwise created to have emotional connections inserted for the convenience of plot.
But as the manga craze continued, these purposes changed. Either the author was using the medium as a means to pose and work through a moral question, or to design a product a publisher will want to sell. Of the latter, a few good examples would be My Hero Academia, Shadow House, or Gachi Akuta. That is not to say that there are no breakaways from this trend. For example, South Korea has had a large uprising as a major competitor to Japan in the manga industry, however it is also starting to fall into the same copy-machine habits (i.e. the success of Solo Leveling, and the consequential uprising of Korean protagonists with short hair, necromancy and daggers).
These days, I find the best gems are in the "trash-bin" of mangas: just stay clear of any AAA publisher and start reading. Most is going to be self-insert nonsense, fetish fanfics, outright smut, and an inevitable horde of Mary-Sues and teen morality-shouting, but there are still interesting reads to be had. Unordinary explores a word of superhumans living under the moral concept of "might makes right" taken to a near literal stance. The Greatest Engineer manages to maintain a sense of actual comedic value within the "man gets isekai'd into a game" trope. Peerless Dad manages to capture the moral dilemmas of a single father in raising his children and realizing he must step up as a leader.
I'd say that if these trends that are diluting the quality of literature and cinema are to be redirected to something more useful or spiritually wealthy, we would need to give up large publishers entirely. Reject the models, stop trying the be the next hit article, and just accept that you story is probably not going to touch everyone's hearts.
One of the things I have been thinking about lately is some sort of concept of cultural “junk” food. I have been reflecting on pieces of media that I have on my computer and I have recognized that there is a bunch of stuff that hasn’t done anything for me. If a game was bad, but I learned something and changed myself in the face of that badness, then at least something was learned.
We have more cultural products at our fingertips than ever, but less of them are meaningful. I feel culturally obese.
Thanks for the article, it helped fill in some pieces for me.
Let me focus on one angle. Your argument doesn't include the technology of filmmaking and the effects it had on the movies that were made. You can't discuss "Eraserhead" without including how it was shot on 16mm, a student film medium. Its resonance isn't because of any brilliance in storytelling. 16mm was available to everyone at the time, although you had to be serious about filmmaking to have any desire to use it. What Lynch achieved was something many could understand because none of us could manipulate 16mm to produce what he did. Nowadays, no one shoots on 16mm, or even knows what that involves.
In the past decade most films are shot on digital. Go back and watch an older film and see the difference. For instance, we just watched "Raiders of the Lost Ark". In a close-up of Indy, sweat droplets reflect the light. Nowadays you won't see a shot like that because filmstock requires certain lighting requirements. In order to develop a fast stock in low light, you need those key highlights. The shot is gorgeous. It's meaningful. The constant presence nowadays of digital has changed how movies are shot -- this is why everything is so ridiculously dark -- and the resulting emotional impact. You can't discuss modern movies without including the technological changes. Digital has made directors lazy and diminished the artistry of a great DP.
The technology of this era, when YouTube can give any content creator a chance to succeed and be seen, produces something different but no less entertaining. Anyone with talent can earn a living, which is amazing and encouraging. Streaming allows longer stories to be financed and viewed. We don't all watch together in the same room anymore, but it's so much easier to share an experience with family and friends across distances. The technology of this moment in time, influenced by Covid and other external events, produces its own kind of joy.
I still love older content filmed in a different era. Drop me into a scene from "Singin in the Rain" and I'll be happy. It's important, though, to consider it in context. Gene Kelly could walk around the back lot and talk to artists who actually filmed during the transition to talkies. It's a film very much of a moment in time. It's a historical documentary in the minds of the filmmakers, just one they've padded with stellar performances and a frothy story. Even though we can watch and enjoy it (or not) in our own era, it has a structure suited to an older time. You can't divorce the storytelling from its technology.
The Northman was one of the few movies I’ve seen In recent years that provoked this sort of deeper thought because it’s entirely cultural. I really felt that I had to assimilate into this ancient and barbarous culture to really understand what motivates the protagonist. And though out the movie my reoccurring thought was “I’m glad Christianity ended up winning over these poor people, who are so blinded by insanity and ignorance that they see revenge as a virtue.” Having Germanic heritage made me appreciate the film more because I recognized the cultural barrier between myself and my ancestors and I was actually appreciative that such barbarity was dead and buried.
It was also one of those films where my friends and I went out to eat afterwards and discussed it. What I felt was that you could make this movie about tons of different cultures and it would still feel authentic. I was wondering if perhaps vengeance is a universal pagan virtue. I could see this exact same movie being made about native Americans through the lens of their indigenous beliefs and it being portrayed similarly as both noble and savage simultaneously. I could also see the protagonist as a nomadic Turk or Mongol venerating their sky god, a Zulu, or a Samurai. And for most cultures I can sort of twist it in a way to see that it would create some kind of specimen solely dedicated to a mission of vengeful justice. The only thing I can’t visualize the protagonist as is a Christian. Hamlet, of course, would be the exact Christian version to fill this archetype (as far as I know Hamlet and the Northman draw from the same source material.) However Hamlet is a product of Europe in the early modern period and the intended audience knew that revenge is a diabolical motive. The prince’s quest for vengeance ultimately ends with the country getting taken over by foreigners. Everyone viewing it likely felt that it was cathartic Divine Justice that power had been taken from the knaves and usurpers and given to a just and powerful monarch. I think the Northman had to been ambiguous as to whether or not the protagonist should be considered good or bad. Sure, ending made me feel probably the exact some way you did and it’s where your main point about it lacking a theme comes from. “So, he gets some kind of paradisiacal reward for his heinous rampage?” I think that what it did for me was reinforce the alien nature of heathen Europe. The divide between a culture with such a different view of justice, and therefore justification, and ours, I found provocative.
Not sure I really agree with your point. I don't think "Rocky Horror Picture Show" is somehow a better film because it is engaging with the cultural zeitgeist or something compared to "The Northman". I'm personally a big Robert Eggers fan, the Lighthouse was one of my all time favorite movies. I can't really tell you why, I'm not knowledgeable enough about film to explain to you how it's objectively a good movie or whatever, it could just be pretentious with no real meaning for all I know. Rather just the experience of inviting some of my church friends over and then tryna decipher the movie with smoking tobacco on my back porch made it iconic. I think you were basically right when speaking about the significant of these real moments of ritual making these things meaningful.
I've been going to a lot of concerts lately, going to Beethoven's Sympathy and the I have to say the experience is a lot more profound than listening to a 5 minute recording of one of his pieces on Spotify, laying in your bed in your underwear. This doesn't negate the fact that Beethoven is objectively one of the greatest composers in the world rather to say that culture and art is really about the human experience it involves, it's not just something meant to be consumed in mass. I guess this is the fundamental problem. Nothing nowadays is a experience tied to time and space, instead it is all just detached abstract drivel designed to be consumed on our smart-phones to make our dopamine go up.
I don't think culture has really died, we all have access to the greatest films, music and books in the history of the world at our fingertips. And even if someone decides to make himself a modern renaissance man he isn't going to achieve that by listening to worldclass literature as a audiobook in the subway. Art used to be an experience, back in the day you could pretty much only hear a sympathy once in your life.
Idk where I'm going with this so I'm gonna end it here.
Rocky Picture Horror show’s ending has always interested me. Despite the pro sexual revolution themes of the piece, the movie ends with Frank-N-furter dead and Brad and Janet broken and scared. The consequences of defiance and transgression are actually in the text as well, which probably helps the art feel more real.
Have you seen Alexander Payne’s new movie “The Holdovers”? Gosh, I thought it was just wonderful. I even saw it twice and dragged some of my more thoughtful friends along the second time so we engage in the type of post-viewing critical conversation you mention in your article. Beautiful cinematography (it’s on film), gorgeous soundtrack, Oscar-winning acting (all three of the main characters deserve nominations, Giamatti deserves a win), but most importantly—it MEANT SOMETHING. It made me FEEL something. It’s the kind of exploration of boyhood and masculinity that we just don’t get anymore, because who cares about boyhood or masculinity? Everyone I know that’s seen this movie has said it was the first “good” movie they’ve seen in 5 years, and I wholeheartedly agree... now, I guess you might argue that it fits too-firmly into the “nostalgia” category to be taken seriously, and it’s definitely interesting that the first “good” movie since 2017 is explicitly meant to feel like a 70s’ flick in everything from to cinematography to plotline, but I don’t think I care. It was made NOW, and I do think its production reflects a cultural ache for a return to depth. The fact that the film is a nostalgia-play has cultural meaning and reflection in and of itself.
My one consideration is that I worry it’s too “slow” for a modern audience. I enjoy “slow” films because I watch a lot of older movies, but it seems the one widespread comment from the YouTube critics is that some moments were too long and drawn out. In trying to introduce some of my own friends to 70s/80s even 90s cinema, they’ve often thought it boring and too “slow;” they aren’t interested in pausing on a bubbling radiator or watching a huddle of people walk through the snow for more than 3 seconds. Payne reintroduces that style of slow, deliberately atmospheric cinematography into this film, but I don’t think that kind of filmmaking will actually reenter the culture due to the short attention spans that TikTok and other social medias have curated en masse.
Your essay here brought to mind a poem I wrote - ashamed to say, many years ago at this point. I was wrestling with the same thoughts while traveling through Western MD (I seem to recall the city mentioned here to be Hagerstown.)
Do we wait, who watch mountains
Passing in the window of a car
Who see the snow fall and melt
Breathe cold as the sun must breathe
In the depths of cold Heaven
Patiently, as the rivers are patient
Carving deep paths across
The tired face of the land;
Frozen and yet, as live as rivulets
That push everything off the hills;
Watching, as the old towns
Who seem all too antique
All too antique for life as we think
Wink at us travelers, subtle
As a colored curtain in a window
Single in a well worn avenue;
As gray as the slate of roofs
That never die but still leak
Did we find in her any proofs
Of our central and certain conceit
Did we find her in the wrong
On the wrong side of history?
Do we wait for the denouement
Do we search for her gestalt
In the tea leaves of old pavement
In the bones of parched boughs
Across the board of her industry
Grown old for our novelties?
Did we think we had seen it
The climax and now resolution
The action falls awaits conclusion
But the snow moves in line
Recoloring the ancient hills
And the old city breathes deep
Into the locked frozen river
And the bridges moan in the cold day
Under the sun in deep Heaven
While we were waiting
While anticipation gnawed us old
And we pined away for hope
We wonder if anyone was told
What was written on the wall
For we have forgotten
What our story is at all.
"We are living vicariously through the life the art embodies to bring new and collective vigor to our own existences because we believe that, whatever other illusion is being employed, there is truth inside the work."
All excellently put, and this line along with "art as ritual" really captures the essence of what non-woke modern art often lacks. A passionate faith from the creator in the underlying reality that makes their artificial world function as it does - not just play figures moving around to the beat of "Save The Cat", but a Greek Tragedy-like destiny/inner-logos that makes the story necessarily play out as it does.
I actually think the rampant managerial/materialistic aspects of our culture smack the magic out of many young creators by insisting there are 'scientistic' formulas that can generate good plots, and as moderns we are all very vulnerable to these messages until we learn of alternative/traditional schools of thought.
Worse still, this scientistic view of art is partly accurate at present, since it is actually adopted by the bugman consumer class who often buy books, shows, etc. based on the "Tropes" the products publicly advertise as hitting - which promise specific story beats and refraining from probing into more challenging or broader themes. I don't mean to sound like too much of a stickler, there is a role for genre, but this hyper-commodification of art as product definitively haunts the tentative creator's mind.
Art must have ritual... I'm so intrigued by this I wonder how I'll sleep.
Speaking of new movies versus old,
I'm reminded of a recent experience watching all the Tom Cruise Mission Impossible movies over a few weeks, to remind me what the stories were before seeing the latest one. I had such a strange sensation when CGI entered the series: the madness, the chaos, the chases left me cold. There was no thrill seeing action that wasn't "real", which is to say seeing magic that wasn't created entirely by clever engineering and stunts and coordinating hundreds of people for a scene. The stories meanwhile got crazier and crazier, trying I suppose to make up for the fact that much of the action wasn't really there. Yet every time Tom Cruise was onscreen, the magic and tension was there again, all through knowing his reputation for real life stunts...So I recommend the first one, but the rest is a lark.
I highly agree with all you say about "Rocky Horror". There's also an element of "Don Giovanni" to it, in that despite being a celebration of a decadent and transgressive lifestlye, justice is finally served on the transgressor. Don Giovanni and Dr. Frank N. Furter refuse to repent of their crimes and are destroyed. The remaining characters are left to pick up the pieces. Richard O'Brien even hits us a bit harder than da Ponte did with the consequences of sin in his final number "Superheroes", where Brad and Janet (and Dr. Scott!) are crawling around in the dirt and fog in their leather harnesses. It's as if, like Balaam, these two subversive writers, da Ponte and O'Brien, tried to utter a curse and it came out as prophecy.
Dave, have you watched Twin Peaks: The Return? For me it's one of the few modern works of media that has stuck with me. It definitely has flaws and dead ends (could I get a Dougie free version?), but is one of the few works of the last 15 years that I still think about. The original Twin Peaks, like Blue Velvet, portrayed an idyllic America with a dark rot lurking underneath, which perfectly portrayed the Reagan and early post-Cold War America. The Return shows that this rot has metastasized and come to the surface, and most of the characters are either consumed by it or resigned to its victory. What better way to portray our modern condition?
I'd also love to hear your general opinions on David Lynch? If I remember I'll send a superchat on the next Livestream.
Thank you!
Hi Dave, I cannot find Basket Weaving on Discord.
It has been a pain.
I agree that there's something missing from the new Dune movie, which can't be addressed just by analyzing all of its parts. But watching it, I did notice that every planet felt like it was in its own universe: The Harkonnens had a real HR Giger vibe. Salusa Secundus had its weird religious ceremonies. Caladan felt like a blend of Japan and Scotland.
Nothing tied any of it together. The missing ingredient is the Spice, which for some reason the movie de-emphasized, IMHO.
The original Lynch movie, meanwhile, was like "The spice is life. Here's a profoundly alien future society with some weird dream-echoes of modern culture. You don't understand it? You're not supposed to, idiot. Om Shai Hulud motherfucker, I'm out."
There has definitely been a shift in entertainment media in our recent generations. Though about the only ones I can comment on is the manga scene.
On an app called Mangatown, I currently have at least touched over 1000 different manhas, manhwas, etc. . I have around 350+ Mangas in a library that I consider "being actively read", but of those, maybe 50% are regularly updated with new translated chapters.
There is a clear shift over time as you read through older and newer titles where the reader starts to understand why the manga was written. In the case of older more classic titles such as Berserk, Dragon Ball or even Bleach (to name the most popular ones), there were about two objectives: either the author wanted to tell a story, or they wanted to write something that will cater to a specific audience. These always have a sameness to them, due to how the characters look vibrant and have initial personality quirks, but are otherwise created to have emotional connections inserted for the convenience of plot.
But as the manga craze continued, these purposes changed. Either the author was using the medium as a means to pose and work through a moral question, or to design a product a publisher will want to sell. Of the latter, a few good examples would be My Hero Academia, Shadow House, or Gachi Akuta. That is not to say that there are no breakaways from this trend. For example, South Korea has had a large uprising as a major competitor to Japan in the manga industry, however it is also starting to fall into the same copy-machine habits (i.e. the success of Solo Leveling, and the consequential uprising of Korean protagonists with short hair, necromancy and daggers).
These days, I find the best gems are in the "trash-bin" of mangas: just stay clear of any AAA publisher and start reading. Most is going to be self-insert nonsense, fetish fanfics, outright smut, and an inevitable horde of Mary-Sues and teen morality-shouting, but there are still interesting reads to be had. Unordinary explores a word of superhumans living under the moral concept of "might makes right" taken to a near literal stance. The Greatest Engineer manages to maintain a sense of actual comedic value within the "man gets isekai'd into a game" trope. Peerless Dad manages to capture the moral dilemmas of a single father in raising his children and realizing he must step up as a leader.
I'd say that if these trends that are diluting the quality of literature and cinema are to be redirected to something more useful or spiritually wealthy, we would need to give up large publishers entirely. Reject the models, stop trying the be the next hit article, and just accept that you story is probably not going to touch everyone's hearts.
And keep writing in spite of it.
I haven't really seen a movie in theaters since 2019, haven't better to watch a movie made past 2020