[A Pleasurable Headache] AOC; Dark Souls, X-Men: The Animated Series; Boomers on the internet
This week’s links:
- AOC on the Democratic Party post-election
- Dark Souls & Capitalism
- BEN is drowned
- X-Men Animated Series Picks
- Haunted Radio
- Boomers Brain’s and the internet
===
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Biden’s Win, House Losses, and What’s Next for the Left
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/07/us/politics/aoc-biden-progressives.html
AOC here talking to the New York Times and offering a pretty sobering view of the Democratic Party in the run up, during and post election. Spoilers: it’s a bit of a shit show.
“There’s a reason Barack Obama built an entire national campaign apparatus outside of the Democratic National Committee. And there’s a reason that when he didn’t activate or continue that, we lost House majorities. Because the party — in and of itself — does not have the core competencies, and no amount of money is going to fix that.
If I lost my election, and I went out and I said: “This is moderates’ fault. This is because you didn’t let us have a floor vote on Medicare for all.” And they opened the hood on my campaign, and they found that I only spent $5,000 on TV ads the week before the election? They would laugh. And that’s what they look like right now trying to blame the Movement for Black Lives for their loss.”
It’s somewhat similar here in the UK with the Labour Party. The online/digital game of the party has fallen woefully by the roadside post-Corbyn.
The saddest part of the interview comes when AOC is asked about her future plans, which leads to this exchange:
“Is there a universe in which they’re hostile enough that we’re talking about a Senate run in a couple years?
I genuinely don’t know. I don’t even know if I want to be in politics. You know, for real, in the first six months of my term, I didn’t even know if I was going to run for re-election this year.
Really? Why?
It’s the incoming. It’s the stress. It’s the violence. It’s the lack of support from your own party. It’s your own party thinking you’re the enemy. When your own colleagues talk anonymously in the press and then turn around and say you’re bad because you actually append your name to your opinion”
Additional reading: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/11/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-democrats-aoc-biden-trump/
===
‘Dark Souls’ Is A Game About Living Under Capitalism In 2020
https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3gz9m/dark-souls-is-a-game-about-living-under-capitalism-in-2020
It’s been a minute since there was a new Dark Souls hot take, but with remasters on the way the flame is reignited (pun definitely intended). Janus Rose for Vice draws a striking parallel between the power systems at play in the trilogy (spoilers abound in the article) and those in our own world.
“Until recently, the Souls games’ themes of sacrifice would have been more metaphorical than literal, but reality has overtaken allegory. Millions of low-paid service workers were forced to return to work during the peak of a pandemic with little protection or reassurance, once again sacrificing their well-being to the altar of capital so that the Dow can go up a few points. In the midst of a public health crisis, our government tells us that universal healthcare is impossible while creating trillions of dollars out of thin air to bail out Wall Street. Millions of workers—disproportionately people of color—continue to lose their jobs and face mass-evictions as the world richest billionaires exploit the pandemic to grow even more astronomically wealthy. And yet, the working class is expected to labor on all the same, creating wealth and shareholder value for a system that ultimately doesn’t serve them.”
===
You’ve Met a Terrible Fate: How BEN Drowned’s Return Has Reignited Horror
https://uppercutcrit.com/youve-met-a-terrible-fate-how-ben-drowneds-return-reignited-horror/
An absolute barnstormer of an article on the infamous CreepyPasta BEN is drowned and how the story used tropes and expectation within the framework of an already established video game (Mask of Majora) to toy with its audience and execute some terrific scares.
The story got its start back in 2010 on 4chan and recently a new arc of the story began to unfold.
===
The creators of X-Men: the Animated Series pick their favorite episodes
Absolute nostalgia pick, but there are some classics in this list, including snippets of behind the scenes info. FOr instance I had no idea that Age of Apocalypse sprang out of a Season 4 episode of this show.
===
Haunted radio
http://interconnected.org/home/2020/11/09/haunted_radio
A short, but informative, post on the notion of the mystery of broadcast radio, including the perennial sleeping aid that is Radio 4’s Shipping Forecast.
===
What Is The Internet Doing To Boomers’ Brains?
HuffPost asks the question we’ve all been wondering.
===
A short digression, here at the end, whilst I espouse the merits of recent Netflix addition, His House directed by Remi Weekes (who also claims a writer’s credit along with Toby Venables and Felicity Evans). No spoilers as such, just plot details that you’d pick up in watching the trailer.
His House is a horror movie through and through and (impressively) Weekes’ feature film debut. Whilst the staple of ‘a haunting’ is nothing new in the genre, His House tweaks it slightly by using it as a metaphor for trauma. Again, nothing new. For instance, consider The Confession by Algernon Blackwood written in 1921. This tale follows O’Reilly, a Canadian passing through London as he recovers from a past trauma. It is heavily implied that O’Reilly, a WW1 veteran, is a victim of ‘shell shock’. A Dr. Henry is also mentioned throughout the text and the treatment he has given to O’Reilly.
O’Reilly’s plan is to change trains in London and travel on to Brighton. However, his condition, and the London weather, conspire against him. As a fog descends O’Reilly becomes hopelessly lost, wandering an ever constricting and changing landscape. If this wasn’t bad enough, he begins to see figures drifting in the mist. His already fragile mind begins to question whether these figures are real or imagined. Given that Dr. Henry has already told him to approach these figures as a way of dealing with them, one gets the impression this isn’t the first time O’Reilly has questioned his own reality.
But perhaps the biggest factor in triggering O’Reilly’s uncertainty are his surroundings and the city itself. During the narrative, Blackwood makes a number of references to O’Reilly’s homeland, Canada. There’s a sense of homesickness to O’Reilly’s thoughts as he describes with reverence the bright, open spaces of his home country. This, of course, is contrasted with the oppressive nature of London itself, buildings and streets pressing together, even before a thick fog makes things even more claustrophobic.
This same sense of being uprooted, of familiarity being cast asunder, is also front and centre in His House. The film follows Bol and Rial as they flee from war-torn Sudan to seek asylum in Britain. They are given a ramshackle house on a dismal looking estate in an unnamed British city. Both have suffered a tremendous loss during their journey as we see in harrowing flashbacks interspersed throughout. It isn’t long before the viewer realises that something has followed them on their trip, something that begins to haunt them in their new abode.
As soon as they are in Britain, both characters are subject to a kind of performative expectation. They are reminded several times that their new house is much larger than where their support workers live. It’s abysmal conditions are by the by it seems. They are constantly having to reassure their workers they are one of “the good ones”. Adapt, adapt, adapt is the mantra drilled into them.
Rial is still haunted by the pair’s trip, holding on to physical artefacts and mementos. Bol, on the other hand, deals with their experience in an entirely different manner. Instead, he tries to fully embrace what he thinks is expected of him. He encourages Rial to eat British food, eat like a British person and even models his wardrobe on the model from an advert in a high street shop he walks into.
As the haunting of the pair becomes more pronounced, the conflict between the couple escalates. Both have very different approaches in how to deal with what the haunting means and the trauma attached to it. Rial journeys inward and backwards, wanting to meet the trauma and what it means head on. This echoes Dr Henry’s advice to O’Reilly about the figures in The Confession, to talk to them, approach them. They may not be real, but they represent something that is.
Bol, on the other hand, goes the other way, embracing this new way of life, refusing to acknowledge the haunting, the growing chasm between him and his wife and the very concept of ‘home’. Rial, more than Bol, is shown to really miss what they have left behind. Her connections, her community and friends have all been swept away. She grieves for this. Bol pushes himself to adapt and integrate, to remake ‘home’, at one point entering a pub and joining in with the patrons shouting and chanting along to a football game. He is desperate to remould himself as someone else.
Jo Willems (cinematographer) drapes the house in pools of darkness and shafts of light. Chasms of shadow exist all over. What light is present only shows the crumbling and rotting structure of the house itself. There is something in the walls of the house, something in both Bol and Rial that is clawing to get free.
It’s telling that when we see the true horrors Bol and Rial endured to arrive in Britain that they are shot without effect, no detail obscured. The horror humans are capable of doesn’t wait for nightfall. The nature of ‘home’ and what that means looms large in His House.
This is a shared and personal haunting, with the conflict manifesting due to how both react to it as their sense of self shifts and buckles. In that sense it is a classic haunting story, but infused with something fresh in showing the experiences of asylum seekers. In the powerful and emotional closing moments of the film, everything is dragged into the light and for the first time we are able to see all Bol and Rial left behind.
If you hadn’t guessed already, I heartily recommend His House, streaming on Netflix now.
===
See you in two!