I feel like I should change the Introductory Post?
Leave it in 2015 where it belongs. Then, create a new one that includes the tags I want to use most this year. Also, does anybody know how to get back the old Livejournal format? :( I'm upset that I can't revert back to it. I realize now that I probably shouldn't have given it up and just asked someone to fix the CSS to remove the background image.
ANYWAY, it's done. We're here. It's a new year.
This week was better and worse somehow. I got a few applications sent, wrote some reviews, worked through some new (and new-to-me) albums, including:
1. Amber Mark - Three Dimensions Deep (2022) I have been waiting for this album since Monsoon. And I'm obsessed and I want to write a whole separate post about just how much I adore her. Fave track: [insert link here for an Amber Mark post]
2. MØ - Motordome (2022) I listen to her every time she releases an album hoping against hope that she'll one day return to No Mythologies form and redevelop that thesis. But alas, it is not with this album. Fave track: Wheelspin, Brad Pitt
3. Samm Henshaw - Untidy Soul (2022) The British John Legend or Chance the Rapper? Favorite track: Chicken Wings, duh.
4. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver (2007) Listening to this album confirmed that my gateway into any piece of artwork is heartbreak. You could literally get me to listen to anything if you tell me it's about someone's heartbreak. And that explains why I prefer This is Happening. Fave track: All my friends
5. Mon Laferte - 1940 Carmen (2021) So, I love Grande Mon. And I wonder if my lukewarm reaction to this album is because Seis literally came out right before it. Which makes 1940 Carmen feel like an afterparty. I love Placer Hollywood though. Fave track: Placer Hollywood (NPR Tiny Desk)
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I'm three anecdotes short of completing my homework for Spanish class. I've been caught up with trying to write down what I thought of A Través de Mi Ventana, a film that I can only describe as a Wattpad movie in Spanish.
Which some people consider reason enough to think que mala. But also, like, there are many reasons a film can suck without dismissing female writers, their audiences, or the conventions and devices they use to express their desires. I want to say all of that in Spanish but es duro, dios mio. Mi vocabulario no tiene el matiz.
Anyway, I tried having that conversation with N last Saturday and she gave me an impassioned speech in Spanish that female audiences deserve better and that we're being conditioned to want useless, emotionally abusive boys like Ares. While I don't deny that, I also think that it's 1) a movie and 2) I think we're taking things way too literally sometimes that it leaves no room for the questions that I think are necessary if we want to have the types of conversation that would de-condition us, so to speak, from "wanting useless, emotionally abusive boys".
Folding Ideas has an hour-long analysis of Fifty Shades of Grey that I watched, like, three years ago. Ever since then I thought of those movies less as a subject of delight and derision and more of a jump-off point for reflecting on female desire, how it is depicted in art, how people respond to it, and how it is transformed in response to that response.
On brand for me.
As for A Través de Mi Ventana: to me, it's a story about trying to beat the game of love and circumnavigating its pitfalls by one-upping the other person, i.e. stealing their wifi password, writing creepy stories about them, stalking them, manipulating them into giving into their desires only to leave them hanging. Which is...par for the course for people who still have a lot of growing up to do.
Both Ares and Raquel have their own reasons - the infidelity of a parent, the death of another, the pressures of family, and so on. They attempt to control each other because they feel at a loss everywhere else. Does the film condone this behavior? I don't think so. Does it romanticize it? Yes. Does that make it a bad movie? I think ATMV has bigger problems in the pacing and writing departments than having the audacity to depict the fantasy of having control over your feelings at that age.
Billie and I often talk about the way we've been engaging art for a while now and how we've been conditioned to consume it in the Information Age. Film Twitter is probably the most accessible place to observe the polarity of that discourse, where Marvel fandom stans/casual viewers reinforce a flattening of media literacy and film critics try to resist it.
Which is...that stuff's been happening for a minute now. It feels like a weird moment now where everyone is an upside down hipster deifying (or demonizing) their entertainment product into something it's not, and where obscure critics are the ones telling everybody to chill, it's not that serious. And I can't help but wonder if media consumption is ever going to feel less - intense? Less exhausting? Less pretentious again?
ANYWAY, it's done. We're here. It's a new year.
This week was better and worse somehow. I got a few applications sent, wrote some reviews, worked through some new (and new-to-me) albums, including:
1. Amber Mark - Three Dimensions Deep (2022) I have been waiting for this album since Monsoon. And I'm obsessed and I want to write a whole separate post about just how much I adore her. Fave track: [insert link here for an Amber Mark post]
2. MØ - Motordome (2022) I listen to her every time she releases an album hoping against hope that she'll one day return to No Mythologies form and redevelop that thesis. But alas, it is not with this album. Fave track: Wheelspin, Brad Pitt
3. Samm Henshaw - Untidy Soul (2022) The British John Legend or Chance the Rapper? Favorite track: Chicken Wings, duh.
4. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver (2007) Listening to this album confirmed that my gateway into any piece of artwork is heartbreak. You could literally get me to listen to anything if you tell me it's about someone's heartbreak. And that explains why I prefer This is Happening. Fave track: All my friends
5. Mon Laferte - 1940 Carmen (2021) So, I love Grande Mon. And I wonder if my lukewarm reaction to this album is because Seis literally came out right before it. Which makes 1940 Carmen feel like an afterparty. I love Placer Hollywood though. Fave track: Placer Hollywood (NPR Tiny Desk)
-
I'm three anecdotes short of completing my homework for Spanish class. I've been caught up with trying to write down what I thought of A Través de Mi Ventana, a film that I can only describe as a Wattpad movie in Spanish.
Click to viewWhich some people consider reason enough to think que mala. But also, like, there are many reasons a film can suck without dismissing female writers, their audiences, or the conventions and devices they use to express their desires. I want to say all of that in Spanish but es duro, dios mio. Mi vocabulario no tiene el matiz.
Anyway, I tried having that conversation with N last Saturday and she gave me an impassioned speech in Spanish that female audiences deserve better and that we're being conditioned to want useless, emotionally abusive boys like Ares. While I don't deny that, I also think that it's 1) a movie and 2) I think we're taking things way too literally sometimes that it leaves no room for the questions that I think are necessary if we want to have the types of conversation that would de-condition us, so to speak, from "wanting useless, emotionally abusive boys".
Folding Ideas has an hour-long analysis of Fifty Shades of Grey that I watched, like, three years ago. Ever since then I thought of those movies less as a subject of delight and derision and more of a jump-off point for reflecting on female desire, how it is depicted in art, how people respond to it, and how it is transformed in response to that response.
On brand for me.
As for A Través de Mi Ventana: to me, it's a story about trying to beat the game of love and circumnavigating its pitfalls by one-upping the other person, i.e. stealing their wifi password, writing creepy stories about them, stalking them, manipulating them into giving into their desires only to leave them hanging. Which is...par for the course for people who still have a lot of growing up to do.
Both Ares and Raquel have their own reasons - the infidelity of a parent, the death of another, the pressures of family, and so on. They attempt to control each other because they feel at a loss everywhere else. Does the film condone this behavior? I don't think so. Does it romanticize it? Yes. Does that make it a bad movie? I think ATMV has bigger problems in the pacing and writing departments than having the audacity to depict the fantasy of having control over your feelings at that age.
Billie and I often talk about the way we've been engaging art for a while now and how we've been conditioned to consume it in the Information Age. Film Twitter is probably the most accessible place to observe the polarity of that discourse, where Marvel fandom stans/casual viewers reinforce a flattening of media literacy and film critics try to resist it.
Which is...that stuff's been happening for a minute now. It feels like a weird moment now where everyone is an upside down hipster deifying (or demonizing) their entertainment product into something it's not, and where obscure critics are the ones telling everybody to chill, it's not that serious. And I can't help but wonder if media consumption is ever going to feel less - intense? Less exhausting? Less pretentious again?