The Centre Cannot Hold
And we are back (but barely).
The last week or so my output and writing has taken a hit due to minor whiplash in my left shoulder and neck. But, this week, I’m healing up and I’m feeling a lot better and getting some mobility back.
My downtime did mean I finally got around to watching some films I’d failed to catch the first time around, but I’m still missing a bunch that were released last year (Parasite, Bliss, Fast Color to name a few).
So, according to Letterboxd, my top 10 films released in 2019 were:
1) Knives Out
2) Us
3) John Wick 3
4) Ready Or Not
5) The Irishman
6) Harpoon
7) Crawl
8) Deadwood
9) High Flying Bird
10) Atlantics
Ad Astra was also on that list but I’m still going back and forth about how I feel about that movie. If we include movies not released in 2019 my Top 10 looks vastly different including stuff such as Thief, Into the Spider Verse, Widows, One Cut of the Dead, The Witch in the Window and Peeping Tom.
TLDR: I’m always playing catch up.
This week I’ve finally been breaking ground on a new short story with the (snappy) working title of Late Stage Capitalism: A Horror Story.
My plan this year for the newsletter is to continue with the link half down below but add a bit more personal commentary on the things I’m consuming up top. All of my non-fiction output a few years back was centered around analysis of film, comics, games, etc. and it’s something I do miss writing about. So you’re all going to have to suffer it here I’m afraid.
Links of Interest
Under the Weather via Believer Mag
This one is a look into the psychological effects of climate change, something often considered but not talked about too deeply.
“According to a 2017 report by the American Psychological Association, merely acknowledging the reality of climate change and its consequences can trigger chronic fear, fatalism, anger, and exhaustion—a condition that psychologists are increasingly referring to as eco-anxiety.”
There’s an interesting (albeit quietly terrifying) part about a psychiatrist who is intruded upon by images of the potential coming apocalypse. The piece then goes on to discuss some of the new words that come along with this new phase of human existence:
“Other words include ennuipocalypse: the idea that the end of the world might not be a Hollywood Armageddon, but mundane and almost normal; and NonnaPaura, the desire to have children or grandchildren, mixed with a fear about the world they’ll inherit.”
And Unto Dust We Shall Return: On Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Irishman’ via Cinephilia and Beyond
Staying on the same subject of mortality and nothingness staring us in the face is a deep dive/review into Scorcese’s latest by one of the best movie sites around.
How Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II Made The Force Interesting via Fanbyte
KOTOR 2, Star Wars and Focault.
“The Light and Dark sides of the Force are, in the Star Wars movies, framed as easily-identified ideological positions. The Light side argues that people should act selflessly with compassion and temperance. The Dark side argues that people should act for themselves, driven by their passion and desire. This isn’t how the Force functions in KOTOR 2 though. Instead, KOTOR 2 presents a much more interesting argument. The Force can be best understood through Foucault’s definition of power, which I’ll simplify a lot because that shit is dense: Power is a complex web of overlapping forces that drive someone or something to act. Power is not a thing someone has, it is something someone does and has done to them.”
He Never Intended To Become A Political Dissident, But Then He Started Beating Up Tai Chi Masters via Deadspin
Tai Chi has recently been ‘hijacked’ and used by the administration in China as a way of spreading national pride. Xu Xiadong (an over the hill MMA fighter) has his own YouTube channel where he spouts off about things that rile him up, including an influx of what he calls ‘fake’ Tai Chi masters.
Before long this results in Xu travelling around the country (often by train as he couldn’t fly as his ‘social score’ was so low) having unsanctioned fights with the self proclaimed masters. Wackiness ensues.
The Center Blows Itself Up: Care and Spite in the ‘Brexit Election’ via NYRB
David Graeber on Centrism, Brexit and the state of UK politics.
“This simultaneous embrace of markets, and of rules and regulations, represents the soul of what’s sometimes called “centrism.” It’s a decidedly unlovely combination. Nobody truly likes it. But the talking classes had reached an absolute consensus that no politicians who departed significantly from it could possibly win elections.”
DUE DILIGENCE: THAT TIME I WATCHED A NINE-YEAR-OLD PLAY FORTNITE FOR A WEEK via Haywire Mag
Sometimes video games are a joy.
“The more he played, the better Gedas got. As the week progressed he’d regularly get down to the last handful of players, and then inevitably whif while distracted smashing something up or failing to aim properly. But he was having fun. So much fun. He loved landing on that farm’s roof and hitting it until he fell through. He loved collecting guns and the excitement of hunting down a new chest: “oh my God! Oh my God! That’s it!” He loved the thrill of exploring and just existing in the game’s world. His cries of “shit, shit, shit!” were real and beautiful: he felt it; he lived it. His was an enjoyment of the simple experience of playing, not the overarching goals or the player-on-player competition. He wanted to win, obviously, but even in failure he had a good time. I haven’t enjoyed a game in that most base and innocent way in over a decade.”
Slate has recently published ‘The Evil List’, which is exactly what it sounds like. Facebook, Amazon, Google (and others) predictably feature.
The Baffler remembers a better time and a better internet
“The reason the tech literati don’t wring their hands more is obvious: the artifacts of internet life are personal—that is, not professionally or historically notable—and therefore worthless. The persistent erasure of what are essentially frozen experiences, snapshots of our lives, nakedly demonstrates how tech monopolies value the human commonality and user experience so loftily promoted in their branding—they don’t. And this is especially true in an era where involuntary data mining, as opposed to voluntary participation, is king.”
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I’m off to throw myself in a Lazarus Pit in an effort to fix my broken husk of a body. See you in two!