winedark
8mo ago
Check the critical rankings of the classic JCVD movies. I don't begrudge anyone enjoying a piece of entertainment, but critics are supposed to be more discerning in their evaluations. There was a time when I trusted a critic score more than an audience score. Film and TV criticism now seem like mostly extended marketing efforts than honest takes on the quality of writing, acting, direction. Only technical aspects (sound, cinematography) receive regular scrutiny.
My sense is that critics are less willing to honestly critique the merits of certain shows and films that send the right cultural/political messages, or shows and films written, directed by, or starring women and minorities. Maybe they're afraid of being called out as racist or misogynist, or maybe they're just consciously or unconsciously defending their side against the other side, as they perceive the battlelines to be drawn.
The culture wars is have made everything that I once enjoyed so unbearably dumb.
winedark
9mo ago
How many of the predictions made about the first Trump presidency were correct if we limit the scope to policy/governance?
How many were cartoonishly wrong?
How does that suggest we weight predictions for a possible second first term?
winedark
10mo ago
I mean, this post is literally about how white southerners are the root of all America's problems.
winedark
1yr ago
My parents divorced when I was four and both remarried wonderful people who've been in my lives for over 40 years. I am, and have always been, especially close to my stepmother. So close in fact that we still visit and speak regularly, even though she and my dad divorced amicably five years ago. She's told me I'll be her sole beneficiary when she dies, though I hope she lives to be 100. I'd gladly move her into my own home to care for her in her decline. I love her more than I can articulate, even though her boomer liberal politics have aged poorly, and we no longer discuss current events for the sake of comity. She is one of the most important people in my life.
That said, she is not my mother. Nor has she ever aspired to be. Nor does she have any illusions where she stands in relation to my mother in my heart.
Many people, including myself, have tremendous sympathy for the startlingly small number of truly dismorphic people in the world. How perpetually disorienting and disturbing must that be? I bare no feelings of disgust or resentment toward them. And there is room in the world for women and dismorphic men. But I won't be bullied into LARPing that the two are eqivalent and accepting as true all the accompanying logical and societal absurdities.
A broader but related observation: our current age reflects a culture utterly consumed by its leisure. Nowhere is this more evident than the gamification of personal identity--endless optimization, zero constraints. Don't like your character? Choose from an array of popular prebuilts, or create your own custom build from scratch! What's the overlap of gamers and silf identified queer folk? 100%?
It might even be a harmless quirk of the marginalized weirdos and atypicals whom I once counted as my tribe, did they not insist, quite uncompromisingly, that everyone else must play. For verisimilitude. For an immersive experience.
winedark
1yr ago
Everything you described rang false to me too. Nothing in the show suggests Carmy is toxic. He's painted as a complex but broadly sympathetic character up until that one amazing episode where he basically just had a shitty day.
If anything the show is about family dysfunction and fallout. The weird implied racial stuff is jarring, like a sidebar for a separate audience.
One of my favorite shows of the last 20 years. Slight but powerful.
Freddie's not wrong that Season 1 had its share of bad lines and eyerolling moments, but it also had tension, and stakes, and an interesting structure, and terrific characters. The episode where Rust goes back undercover is one of my favorite episodes of TV.
I'm not blind to its flaws, but relative to Season 4 it might as well be The Sopranos.
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