THE IRISHMAN is a truly exceptional film, in no small part thanks to Robert De Niro's carefully modulated performance. But let's remember that films get made in the real world, and real people have to deal with this kind of behavior from De Niro. As the film deservingly earns more and more acclaim, I feel it's important to remember that it's still very much a product of the male-dominated film world, and that, while Scorsese uses the film to reflexively comment on the consequences of unchecked masculinity, his own inner circle is responsible for some of the abuses safely abstracted into film art. It's all well and good to lament the flaws of a passing generation, but we're the ones who have to do the work of fixing the world they've left us. So while I cherish THE IRISHMAN, I'd like to at least make space here for critiques that will only grow more urgent with time.
In other Scorsese news...I just got around to reading this widely-approved essay defending cinema against corporate art. There's not much I can say that he hasn't, other than voicing my confusion about the prominent Ari Aster shout-out (presumably he needed a representative of the new generation, but was that really the name that stood out above all the rest?). Cinema has an X factor that commercial entertainment is missing, and it's felt everywhere from the MCU to TV in all its many interchangeable forms. The gulf between THE IRISHMAN and just about anything else you could watch this year -- or, indeed, the last several years, maybe since Scorsese's own SILENCE -- is wide enough to fit any number of propositions about what makes cinema cinema.
Richard Brody offers up his own interrogations: classical Hollywood vs. current Hollywood, fantasy vs. superheroics, public domain vs. private property, the open-ended potential of streaming vs. corporate curation, home viewing vs. the big-screen's unequally-provided pleasures, vertical integration pre-1948 and its functional equivalent in streaming's emergent model (Netflix, Disney+, etc.). As Nick Pinkerton said before in an essay of similar intent, cinema has survived like a rose in concrete through plenty of inhospitable conditions, but it's hard not to feel like something's gone fatally, fundamentally wrong this time around.
Here's a really good interview of Adam Kotsko by Patrick Blanchfield on the former's book The Prince of This World. These two guys are among my favorite Twitter presences, perhaps because their training in theology gives their antagonistic relationship to the US social order a moral clarity that others only fumble toward. While the interview I've linked helps elucidate the concepts and discoveries of Kotsko's book (which I highly recommend, just to be clear), one tangent of thought that came to me while reading this came from considering Kotsko's also-great Why We Love Sociopaths. Kotsko speculates that the anti-hero trend in narrative art is a way of reinvesting belief in individual power to meaningfully succeed in this world. I think this is dead-on, but I also think there may something specific about the Trump phenomenon that went unexplored in his claim. I wonder if maybe Trump represents a perversely hyperbolic form of triumph, an against-the-odds victory that 'proved' you don't have to abide by political correctness to access the spoils of white men past. From this angle, Trump functions as a rejection of meaningful sociality, acting instead as a kind of anti-social symbol of individualist dominance freed from cultural or political constraints. Total freedom to do as you please, indulging your worst tendencies without punishment -- in fact, being rewarded for that very disregard of other people and their pesky demands for respect. A fantasy to be sure, but perhaps a compelling one for people who correctly deduce the system is rigged but incorrectly attribute the imperilment of their status to women, minorities, LGBT individuals, etc.
Short but affecting piece on the parallels between domestic violence and the abuse of state power. Ukraine seems to be on everyone's mind, and if Natalia Antonova is right, the US might find itself becoming Ukraine before long.
I liked PARASITE well enough, but I've found that it's left a frustrating blank in my mind, revealing neither flaws nor virtues over time. Though Kelley Dong's critique is perhaps stronger than mine would be (I usually accept despair, hopelessness, and resignation as meaningful engagements with the present world), I agree with much of their criticisms. One of the critiques I like best is also one of the most succinct, courtesy of Neil Bahadur: for all its supposed anti-capitalist fury, PARASITE's indictment is a fairly standard liberal one. It's all just a little too safe, and that's the last thing I really want from a project like this.
Finally some good news for Maryland: Mike Miller, a not-so-secret conservative Democrat who's been Senate president for over three decades, will be succeeded by a more progressive president. It appears other progressives are cheered by this, but from my point of view, the struggle over the Kirwan Commission seems the most telling. Although Ferguson will most likely back the funding increases, Maryland's wings are still clipped by our inexplicably popular Republican Governor, who will fight back just as hard, if not harder. A leftward shift in Maryland's Senate is good; getting Hogan out of office for someone who can implement progressive policies is even better. 2022 feels like a long way away.
Lots to consider in this impassioned overview of the anti-TV movement, with which I have more than a few sympathies, but for now let me offer some slight pushback by highlighting the special disgust reserved for women in this line of thought, from Fahrenheit 451's Mildred Sontag to Public Enemy's She Watch Channel Zero?! up to Pulitzer-winning TV critic Emily Nussbaum, with her approving citations of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Tina Fey. I suspect there's a long established dichotomy at play here, the passively feminine mainstream vs. the rebelliously masculine underground, which maps itself particularly well onto the questions of agency and pacification raised by TV skeptics. While there are, of course, plenty of men responsible for television's hegemonic rise (many of whom are also mentioned in the Baffler essay), I'm feeling wary of the ways that sexism might get laundered through an argument I generally find convincing.
Nice interview here of Francis Ford Coppola by Adam Nayman, the occasion being Coppola's then-new TETRO, which I just watched and quite liked (with certain reservations).
Short but affecting piece on the parallels between domestic violence and the abuse of state power. Ukraine seems to be on everyone's mind, and if Natalia Antonova is right, the US might find itself becoming Ukraine before long.
I liked PARASITE well enough, but I've found that it's left a frustrating blank in my mind, revealing neither flaws nor virtues over time. Though Kelley Dong's critique is perhaps stronger than mine would be (I usually accept despair, hopelessness, and resignation as meaningful engagements with the present world), I agree with much of their criticisms. One of the critiques I like best is also one of the most succinct, courtesy of Neil Bahadur: for all its supposed anti-capitalist fury, PARASITE's indictment is a fairly standard liberal one. It's all just a little too safe, and that's the last thing I really want from a project like this.
Finally some good news for Maryland: Mike Miller, a not-so-secret conservative Democrat who's been Senate president for over three decades, will be succeeded by a more progressive president. It appears other progressives are cheered by this, but from my point of view, the struggle over the Kirwan Commission seems the most telling. Although Ferguson will most likely back the funding increases, Maryland's wings are still clipped by our inexplicably popular Republican Governor, who will fight back just as hard, if not harder. A leftward shift in Maryland's Senate is good; getting Hogan out of office for someone who can implement progressive policies is even better. 2022 feels like a long way away.
Lots to consider in this impassioned overview of the anti-TV movement, with which I have more than a few sympathies, but for now let me offer some slight pushback by highlighting the special disgust reserved for women in this line of thought, from Fahrenheit 451's Mildred Sontag to Public Enemy's She Watch Channel Zero?! up to Pulitzer-winning TV critic Emily Nussbaum, with her approving citations of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Tina Fey. I suspect there's a long established dichotomy at play here, the passively feminine mainstream vs. the rebelliously masculine underground, which maps itself particularly well onto the questions of agency and pacification raised by TV skeptics. While there are, of course, plenty of men responsible for television's hegemonic rise (many of whom are also mentioned in the Baffler essay), I'm feeling wary of the ways that sexism might get laundered through an argument I generally find convincing.
Nice interview here of Francis Ford Coppola by Adam Nayman, the occasion being Coppola's then-new TETRO, which I just watched and quite liked (with certain reservations).
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