YOU WILL BE SEEING UNUSUAL ACCOMPLISHMENT
Host of the BISTRO CALIFORNIUM podcast
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Jun 24 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It seems like people have a real problem with being made to feel multiple emotions simultaneously in the course of watching a movie or TV show, where, for example, the actions of a character might be both self-destructive yet also poignant, or cruel yet sympathetic- they feel that they need to choose one and elevate it to the 'point' of the scene
There's this need to adjudicate a 'final word' or a 'last judgement' of the character as if this is consequential- when the discreet existence of the text itself makes such judgements totally superfluous, because it already presents an enclosed, unified world that comes to us already finished
Jun 22 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Not 'breaking the 4th wall' per se- I just don't find the 'drama of complicity' interesting or worthy of respect- it's akin to the author going 'now see what you made me do' to the reader- I didn't make you 'do' anything
My job is to be the reader, not the author's conscience- if the author wants to engage me in a moral dialogue then that's ok, but it should involve a level of good faith on his part and not condescend to me that 'actually being in the mafia is bad'
Jun 22 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
The Sopranos and/ or Breaking Bad may well be examples of 'pulling you in to make you root for the bad guy' but to the extent that is true of either, it's a vulgarity that flaws either show, and which they succeed in spite of
Walt and Tony become the focus of the audience's sympathy and attention because they are charismatic creations of talented actors, writing and direction, and because our sympathy and interest is inherent in the premise of the show- not because the audience is 'morally mislead' in some way
Jun 22 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Ok I've learned that Fight Club is a satire? Now what? Is that it?
It's funny that people have this midwitted assumption that the surface of a work is always some kind of misdirection or false front, as if the correct way to watch a movie like Fight Club is to 'fail to watch it', to willingly 'fail to see' what is directly before you
Apr 25 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
It's not tragic at all- why should I give a damn about a random TV background character? He's a design feature, not a real person
Obviously the Simpsons is done regardless so it doesn't really matter but tv is so full of these youtube essay-tier millennial emotion stunts- 'oh this background character had a rich emotional life actually'
Mar 22 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
As I've been observing recently, leftism as a subcultural force is really sustained by these shared truisms, these very simple narrative patterns- the authority figure is always wrong, the rebel is always in the right
These truisms are used as a timeless shorthand- you identify the nearest analogue to Bart Simpson or Principal Skinner and judge accordingly- if you know a bit of culture, then your Bart Simpson might be Dada or situationism- in The Wicker Man, the Principal Skinner is Howie
Mar 20 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
It's 'beyond depressing' to me that the influence of a book like Watchmen that is really a meditation on heroism and on the superhero as a cultural icon reduces over the decades to this pathetic, meaningless repetition of a platitude
It occurs to me that the idea of 'literacy' promoted here is fundamentally a literacy of 'tropes'- it's about teaching people to locate themselves within the appropriate self-consciousness necessary to enjoy a particular phase within a cycle of nostalgia
Mar 15 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Ok but are we supposed to be infinitely entertained by that or are we allowed to expect something better and more interesting now?
Wow, a mechanism for making people mad but you can't criticise it because then you're mad- very cool- when can we have something that is entertaining, interesting or beautiful on its own terms again?
Sep 19, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Media events like this one are preparations for behavioural reform campaigns- you are supposed to feel that your 'proximity' to Brand within the public imagination implicates you in his transgressions
Behavioural reform begins with creation of a kind of communal script by which random members of the public can 'testify' to their supposed culpability, and commit themselves to 'soul-searching' and 'self-reflection'
You did, by insisting that 'gender' refers to a tangible reality, rather than an artificial and incoherent construction of the relationship between sex and social identity
Reminder that the structure of all contemporary popular delusions is a strict demarcation of responsibility between promotion and understanding along the lines of an epistemic caste system
Q: Why do these people never seek to verify their most fundamental beliefs? A: Because their position within the economy of ideological reproduction is that of a 'promoter', not an 'understander'- it's not their job to check
The reason I get so indignant about 'non-toxic masculinity' gurus or activists for child transition is not only that they are insulated from the negative externalities of the views they promote- it's that it doesn't even occur to them to consider
You tell some young, well-meaning teenage boy that 'true strength is in weakness and humiliation'- are you going to be around as he struggles to put that into practice in a way that makes sense? No!
May 26, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Actually I don't think it's 'normalised' at all- I think it's simply convenient for you to invoke the spectre of 'socialisation' to dismiss the particular of an extreme example of anti-social behaviour
You would rather 'arrest' (with vague disapproval) teenage boys as a class than acknowledge that one individual's behaviour warrants a response from the law
Mar 16, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
No- the idea that anyone has ever believed in a formal, doctrinaire 'colourblindness' is a myth promulgated through stereotypes of the 'clueless white woman who doesn't see race' or the 'evil meritocratic businessman'
People identify with these stereotypes *retroactively* as part of a narrative of 'learning' and self-overcoming, in order to dramatize the relative 'sophistication' of CRT, and to conceal that they were coerced into this perspective through psychological abuse
Mar 15, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Search Party is amazing
It just gets better and better
Mar 15, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
lol
'sad boy' who is 'too weak to express his emotions'
Mar 14, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
People talk such shit about Bloom but whether or not you ultimately agree with his theory of literature, the stereotype that he was a 'defender of dead white males' makes a travesty of his taste, which was eclectic and and above all alert to sublime encounters in unlikely places
Bloom championed John Crowley and Ursula K. LeGuin, he wrote a sequel to an obscure gnostic fantasy novel, David Lindsey's A Voyage to Arcturus- he described the black American poet Jay Wright as the greatest living American poet after the death of John Ashbery
Mar 14, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
People misreading a description of an aesthetic response as someone experiencing a 'moral panic' happens surprisingly often on here- it's happened to me at least three times
It goes to show the degree of vigilance and self-policing that goes on- the careful delineation and negotiation of unspoken boundaries as to what kinds of feelings you're allowed to express
Mar 11, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I'm so right about Mark E. Smith guys being a leftist archetype lol
Btw Law students are not proles- they engage in recreational obscenity because it's undignified, and they enjoy inflicting second-hand embarrassment on their behalf
Mar 10, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
It's the solemn duty of the lib to inform you that 'unfortunately' so-and-so has retweeted someone-or-other, as a little advance warning signal that he is 'now unsafe'- specifically, and unspokenly, unsafe from their own massed disapproval
This is why it's a little 'yiiikes oof' tragic moment for them, because they are now actually obligated to participate in this massed disapproval regardless of their personal feelings- but they're allowed a little moment of public grief to ease the cognitive dissonance
Mar 9, 2023 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
If you ever want to see someone in the throes of a kind of insane, manic denial, this thread is a really great example
The basis for the Crucible analogy is apparently just that Wang is referring to 'anonymous sources'- this is known as 'whistle-blowing' and is typically done to protect sources from reprisals
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