getting high on my own supply - 11. "won't you be in a cage with me"
episode 11 - "won't you be in a cage with me" (sept 2007)
we're finally caught up on new episodes of from, a show where people are stuck in a purgatory (if not [lena dunham voice] the purgatory), which is a bummer, because while there were still more unwatched episodes in the cache we could reliably put ourselves inside that familiar blanket of an evening, and also fine, because in some ways, the show has become a purgatory we are stuck in! from is clearly deeply influenced by lost (has writers and directors who worked on that, is built around an actor who was on that, includes many "mysteries") and lost is the first show i remember binge watching in the modern sense, which i did during the summer when i recorded some of these songs you've heard so far, downloading low bitrate rips with hardcoded subs in various languages from whichever file sharing sites with ads i could figure out how to "outsmart" (there is no outsmarting ads).
with respect to max read, i have decided that from is the gas leak version of lost. it's not like the characters on lost were geniuses or that there wasn't stuff on lost that didn't make sense or add up but from has gotten to the point halfway through season 3 where basically every scene watching the characters i ostensibly care about (and who spend the show tortured both by demonic monsters and also man, the greatest monster of all!), i am just like "you are the dumbest fucking people in the world WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU". in this respect while lost is the reference point it feels closer in quality to the walking dead, but at least that show had a constant stream of high concept action movie setpieces to keep things moving.
lost held me through not just setpieces but a narrative strategy of dazzle camouflage—the writers were constantly throwing out an embarrassment of riches, layering on new implications and possibilities for fans to then read even more into, creating a universe constantly expanding with potential meaning (even if none of it really could add up). to periodize (i am reading/loving this book), i think from's lacks are in many ways not individual artistic flaws but a reflection of the shift to the current post-prestige era streaming mode of production. deborah pointed out how many of the scenes are two-handers and how they always go on so much longer than they need to (every episode as a series of bottle episodes) and i think that goes hand in hand with at the macro scale how slowly the show parcels out morsels of new story and lore across the episodes. it does feel like what lost would be if it were made now, which is to say lost without the money (lost was at the time the most expensive TV pilot ever filmed; the walking dead could also afford its setpieces because a network depended on it), the removals of formal constraints (the rhythms imposed by ad breaks) providing no real artistic freedom and instead just drawing more attention to the emptiness inside the mystery box.
as though i have any real critical distance: we'll be back next week for more of that emptiness. today's song is called "won't you be in a cage with me". it is a kind of romance inspired by big brother, which i would have been watching with my parents late that summer after i moved home (the previous year, the summer after my junior year, we had showtime for a while and i was doing absolutely nothing so every night between midnight and three AM i would watch "big brother after dark", which was unedited live feeds from the house). the metaphor at the core of the song is a bit rotten (abolish the carceral state!) and this is unfortunately going to be a topic that we are going to be exploring a lot, but i think the song typifies how i had an almost religious belief in the power of other people's attention, this sense that if i could just become famous, like someone on tv, that would unlock life and love and happiness for me. i believed so much in images then (as if i have any real critical distance).
