#but what's also funny is how many times David becomes the human embodiment of the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ face | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

a-motivation-to-study · 5 years

Text

Books to Read in 2019

This past year I finished reading MAYBE 2 books. How incredibly disappointing is that? In high school I read ALL THE TIME, and I have a whole wall covered in books, yet I have barely read! I’m really going to force myself to read more this next year. I know for a FACT that my semester next year will hinder my goal, but I’m hoping to follow this plan as closely as I can (although I am darn positive that I probably won’t be able to finish all of these). Most of these books I have selected relate to other personal goals I hope to achieve. The boldened titles are the books I feel are most important in my personal growth (and thus the books I will read first). I’m also hoping my love for reading can be reignited. I know a lot of us can lose the habit of reading, especially with busy college schedules, so I’ve added the descriptions of the books (from the back or from the amazon descriptions) I hope to read in case any of you would also like to read more!

Productivity Books

1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People People, author Stephen R. Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principal-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, honesty, and human dignity- principles that give us the security to adapt to change, and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.

2. Getting Things Done by David Allen

In today’s world, yesterday’s methods just don’t work. Veteran coach and management consultant David Allen shares his his breakthrough methods for stress-free performance that he has introcued to tens of thousands of people across the country. Aleen’s premis is simple: our productivity is directly proportional to our ability to relax. Only when our minds are clear and our thoughts are organized can we achieve effective results and unleash our creative potential. From core principles to proven tricks, Getting Things Dones can transform the way you work an live, showing you how to pick up the pace without wearing yourself down.

Meditation and Buddhist Books (from Wisdom Publications mostly)

3. Zen Vows for Daily Life by Robert Aitken

Zen Vows for Daily Life is a collection of gathas, vows in verse form for daily practice, similar to prayers or affirmations for use at home, at work, and in the meditation hall itself. Reciting these poetic vows can help us be fully present in each moment and each activity of our lives. These gathas serve as gentle reminders to return again and again to our highest aspirations, with acceptance, joy, and compassion—for ourselves and all beings. Zen Vows for Daily Life will be a steadfast companion in keeping the reader inspired and committed on their spiritual path.

4. A Heart Full of Peace by Joseph Goldstein

Love, compassion, and peace—these words are at the heart of all spiritual endeavors. Although we intuitively resonate with their meaning and value, for most of us, the challenge is how to embody what we know: how to transform these words into a vibrant, living practice. In these times of conflict and uncertainty, this transformation is far more than an abstract ideal; it is an urgent necessity. Peace in the world begins with us. This wonderfully appealing offering from one the most trusted elders of Buddhism in the West is a warm and engaging exploration of the ways we can cultivate and manifest peace as wise and skillful action in the world.

This charming book is illuminated throughout with lively, joyous, and sometimes even funny citations from a host of contemporary and ancient sources—from the poetry of W.S. Merwin and Galway Kinnell to the haiku of Issa and the great poet-monk Ryokan, from the luminous aspirations of Saint Francis of Assisi to the sage advice of Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama.

5. Open Mind by B. Allan Wallace

Lerab Lingpa (1856–1926), also known as Tertön Sogyal, was one of the great Dzogchen (Great Perfection) masters of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and a close confidant and guru of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. This volume contains translations by B. Alan Wallace of two works that are representative of the lineage of this great “treasure revealer,” or tertön. This volume will be of great interest for all those interested in the theory and practice of the Great Perfection and the way it relates to the wisdom teachings of Tsongkhapa and others in the new translation schools of Tibetan Buddhism.

6. Interconnected by Ogyen Tinley Dorje

Plucked from a humble nomad family to become the leader of one of Tibet’s oldest Buddhist lineages, the young Seventeenth Karmapa draws on timeless values to create an urgent ethic for today’s global community. The Karmapa shows us how gaining emotional awareness of our connectedness can fundamentally reshape the human race. He then guides us to action, showing step by step how we can change the way we use the earth’s resources and can continue to better our society. In clear language, the Karmapa draws connections between such seemingly far-flung issues as consumer culture, loneliness, animal protection, and self-reliance. In the process, he helps us move beyond theory to practical and positive social and ethical change.

7. I Wanna Be Well by Miguel Chen

A punk rocker’s guide to grow, learn, and appreciate the present moment—in short, to live a life that doesn’t totally suck.

8. Discovering Your Soul Signature by Panache Desai

Your soul signature is your spiritual DNA - it is who you are at your core, the most authentic part of you, and your singular contribution to this world. And yet, we reject our authentic selvs. We allow our soul sigature to become blocked by any number of emotional obstacles that life throws in ou path: anger, fear, guilt, shame, sadness, despair. Any or all of these feelings overtake us and create a density, a heaviness that doesn’t permit us to embrace who we truly are, deep inside. We are energetic beings, Panache Desai reminds us, and emotions are energy in motion. When we are blocked we feel unworthy, less than, unloved, incomplete.

In Discovering Your Soul Signature, Panache Desai invites us on a 33-day path of meditations-- shot passages to be read at morning, noon, and night that are designed to dismantle the emotional burden that holds us back and open us up to changing our lives. Through this distilled, poetic, practical, and inspiring course, he invites us to live a life of authenticity, to rediscover purpose and passion, and to believe from our soul in the possibility of all things.

9. As Man Thinketh by James Allen

This little volume (the result of meditation and experience) is not intended as an exhaustive treatise on the much-written upon subject of the power of thought. It is suggestive rather than explanatory, its object being to stimulate men and women to the discovery and perception of the truth that -

"They themselves are makers of themselves" by virtue of the thoughts which they choose and encourage; that mind is the master weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance, and that, as they may have hitherto woven in ignorance and pain they may now weave in enlightenment and happiness.

Religious Books

10. The Miracle of Forgiveness by Spencer W. Kimball

In The Miracle of Forgiveness, President Spencer W Kimball gives a penetrating explanation of repentance and forgiveness and clarifies their implications for Church members. His in-depth approach shows that the need for forgiveness is universal; portrays the various facets of repentance, and emphasizes some of the more serious errors, particularly sexual ones, which afflict both modern society and Church members. Most important, he illuminates his message with the brightness of hope that even those who have gone grievously astray may find the way back to peace and security. Never before has any book brought this vital and moving subject into so sharp a focus. This classic book is a major work of substance and power.

Science Books

11. God’s Equation by Amir D. Aczel

In God’s Equation, Amir Aczel tells the story of what lies between these events: the history of modern physics and the development of the sciene of cosmology, the study of the nature of the universe.

Other Books

12. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. When the state undertakes to reform Alex—to "redeem" him—the novel asks, "At what cost?"

13. Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

In 1845, Thoreau moved to a cabin that he built with his own hands along the shores of Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Shedding the trivial ties that he felt bound much of humanity, Thoreau reaped from the land both physically and mentally, and pursued truth in the quiet of nature. In Walden, he explains how separating oneself from the world of men can truly awaken the sleeping self. Thoreau holds fast to the notion that you have not truly existed until you adopt such a lifestyle—and only then can you reenter society, as an enlightened being. These simple but profound musings—as well as “Civil Disobedience,” his protest against the government’s interference with civil liberty—have inspired many to embrace his philosophy of individualism and love of nature. More than a century and a half later, his message is more timely than ever.

14. The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Baltasar Gracian

In the Art of Worldly Wisdom Baltasar Gracian gives us pertinent and pithy advice on friendship, leadership, and success. Think of it as Machiavelli with a soul. This book is for those who wish to have an ambitious plan for success without compromising their integrity or losing their way. Audacious and captivating!

15. For One More Day by Mitch Albom

For One More Day is the story of a mother and a son, and a relationship that lasts a lifetime and and beyond. It explores the question: What would you do if you could spend one more day with a lost loved one?

84 notes · View notes

twobitmulder · 5 years

Text

1940′s Batman Fan Cast

If you haven’t read Tom De Haven’s excellent novel It’s Superman you should definitely check it out. It’s a Superman origin story told in the 1930s, the decade of his creation, and lovingly crafted with intricate period detail. It got me thinking how interesting it would be to see Superhero movies get made in an earlier time, and what kind of actors and directors might work on them. So, for my own amusement I’m going to put together some cast lists for hypothetical Superhero movies made in the past, starting with 1941 and Batman.

Now to be fair a lot of these actors probably wouldn’t have been in the same films because of the studio system and most would not have been caught dead in a comic book film back in the 40s, but this is all hypothetical so why not. A lot of the characters I’ll put here also wouldn’t have existed in the 40’s, but Batman just doesn’t feel right without some of these guys and some of the actors of the period feel perfect for these characters so here we go.

The Wayne Household

Batman/Bruce Wayne: Henry Fonda

This was sort of the inspiration for this whole thing back when I was in high school and they showed us Grapes of Wrath. Fonda’s speech at the end felt very Bruce Wayne and I really think he could pull off both the playboy charm and the brooding necessary to play the character.

Alfred Pennyworth: Boris Karloff

As great as it would be to see Karloff play a villain and fight Batman, I think the tall, lankly slightly older Englishman would have been a great Alfred, bringing that sense of propriety and the hint of something tougher underneath.

GCPD and City Government

James Gordon: Humphrey Bogart

Okay, this one feels kind of obvious, but come on. The original film PI as Batman’s friend on the force. He’s not quite old enough to be Gordon, but they had old age makeup down in the 40s. All they’d have to do is age him up a little.

Detective Harvey Bullock: Wallace Ford

While he didn’t have quite the same build as Detective Bullock (though he was kinda stocky) Ford could play the streetwise, book dumb slovenly sidekick with a heroic streak. Just go watch The Mummy’s Hand where he plays essentially the precursor to John Hannah’s character in the Fraiser/Weiss Mummy movies.

Harvey Dent: Lon Chaney Jr.

Chaney actually would have been my second choice for Batman too, given that he’s big and burly and as the Wolf Man shows us can do charming playboy and brooding in equal measure, but I think that skill set would serve him just as well as Harvey Dent. Chaney could play both the charming, pre-scarred DA, and the monstrous Two Face and, as a regular Universal monster, he certainly would have been comfortable with the makeup work.

Villains

The Joker: Dwight Frye

Now certainly Conrad Veidt, who’s makeup in The Man Who Laughs originally inspired the look of the Joker is the obvious choice, but go watch the original Dracula and tell me Frye wouldn’t have been a great Joker. He could be giggly and funny and terrifying and switch on a dime in a single scene. Habitually typecast as cronies and bit villains, Frye never the less was a phenomenal actor and one of Universal’s best horror players.

Edward Nigma/The Riddler: Basil Rathbone

Riddle me this? What traits most embody the Riddler? Smug superiority and a manic obsessiveness (with maybe a hint of humanity). So who do you get? Sherlock Holmes and ther Son of Frankenstein himself, Basil Rathbone. Just picture him doing Sherlock Holmes crossed with one of his many villain roles, bam, Edward Nigma.

Dr. Harlene Quinzel/Harley Quinn: Carole Lombard

Okay, this one admittedly feels a little more morbid than the others as Lombard would die tragically in 1942. However, Lombard was one of the most respected and genuinely funny comedic actresses of the era, both on and off screen, perfect for playing the kooky, ultimately redeemable villain turned anti-hero.

Selina Kyle/Catwoman: Hedy Lamarr

Fine, I’m cheating a little bit because Hedy Lamarr actually has been purported to be the inspiration for Catwoman, but hey if it ain’t broke right?

Gotham City

Doctor Leslie Thompkins: Billie Burke

So, my original choice for Dr. Thompkins was going to be Margaret Hamilton, aka the Wicked Witch, who I had always read was actually a very kind woman and who I thought would perfect to play Thomas Wayne’s colleague and Bruce Wayne’s trusted confidante. Then I did some very simple googling and found out she was only two years older than Fonda. So I switched Witches. Billie Burke played Glinda the Good Witch, meaning that she could definitely have pulled off both kindly do gooder and “don’t F--- with my patients” strength. She is also a full twenty one years older than Fonda.

Barbara Gordon: Olivia de Haviland

Okay, be kind to me. The classic Robin Hood and Captain Blood are on my to-watch list, but from the clips I’ve seen I think de Haviland could pull of a pre-Batgirl Barbara Gordon who slowly comes to become a hero over the course of the movie.

Thomas and Martha Wayne: David Manners and Helen Chandler

They weren’t really making movies at this point, but I think it’d be fun to have John and Mina Harker from the original Universal Dracula playing Bruce Wayne’s parents in flashback.

#batman #1940s #fan cast #joker #riddler #catwoman #harley quinn #batgirl #dc comics #james gordon #dc movies

19 notes · View notes

austenpoppy · 5 years

Text

Mental Torture in the Wizarding World (1)

Warning : Very long post. So long that I had to split it in different parts. I have no idea how to make it under a cut "keep reading". Highly Upsetting topics such as self-loathing, madness, suicide and torture.

This post really means a lot to me. It may be one of the most important. Torture is something which makes my blood boil and that I want to fight until I die. So often overlooked or judged necessary, it destroys people. Literally.

Mental torture is a topic which is unfortunately too often overlooked. People often consider that the level of pain is not the same as physical torture, if they even consider that it causes pain at all. Because there is no scar, no mark, no trace on the body, mental torture is less visible - yet minds can be destroyed.

The wizarding world makes no exception. If torture, embodied by the Cruciatus Curse, is loathed, mental suffering caused by psychological methods are barely, if ever, evoked.

But they exist, and they are not in any way less painful than the Cruciatus curse.

Let's agree upon a definition of torture : "United Nations conventions that bar torture refer to it as "severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental," study author Metin Basoglu of King's College wrote" .(https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSN0535973620070306)

This is the particularity of mental torture : it aims the disintegration of the personality : "We conclude by examining the specific evil of mental torture: the merciless attempt to break down and occupy the personality of the victim." (Mental Torture: A Critique of Erasures in U.S. Law by David Luban and Henry Shue)

And for those of you who might doubt that mental torture and physical torture are on the same level : "Sadly, psychological torture can in fact be counted on to cause harm, which is indeed often severe and prolonged. Even worse, substantial research suggests that psychological torture, as well as some cruel and inhuman treatment that might not qualify as torture at all, can cause more severe long-term damage than some physical torture tends to." (same study)

1. The Dementors

I am utterly awed every time a "good" character in fanfiction threatens somebody of being kissed by a Dementor or expresses regret that the Dementors are no longer guardians of Azkaban after the war.

The Dementors have been created by the author to be a symbol of depression. Indeed, they make revive to their victims the worst moments of their lives and give them the impression that they will never be happy again.

However, I have to notice that they are more than allegories of depression. They act like torturers.

A depression is something self-induced, which means that the brain of the person itself is no longer able to grip on good thoughts, but only on the bad ones. It can be expected in certain circonstances : when a person is in mourning, during a burn-out - even if sometimes the burn-out itself can be considered a depression - after certain traumatic events (especially if the person in question suffers from PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), after having been bullied... Or it can be the consequence of life-long insecurities (especially if the person in question has a crippling low self-esteem) aggravated by small or not so small events in daily life. It is absolutely horrible, a daily drowning, the impression that nothing makes sense anymore... It can be helped with medicines and psychological sessions, but ultimately, it is a struggle that the he or she has to do himself/herself. If he or she is not willing to fight against it, you can't do anything (To be clear, I am not making any judgement, I am just noticing that depression is a daily struggle, and a very hard one - because there is no external enemy, the enemy is in your own head). Not to say that depressed people should be left alone - in the contrary, they have to be backed up, loved, to know that people care about them.

But what the Dementors do, the way they harm human beings and other creatures is definitely not something people self-induce. They are external forces, who can act for themselves. And even if the pain they cause leaves horrible lingering effects - we will come to that later -, it is a pain which affects everybody and not just vulnerable people.

This is the description of a torturer, according to an article I found on the Internet (reference : http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-10/beard-cheney-defends-torture/5957372)/

Specifically, it is defined by an intention to degrade a detainee to a sub-human state in which he or she is morally and psychologically dis-integrated. Torture is an act motivated by a torturous attitude, which means it requires people who are willing - literally - to pull another human being apart."

The worst Dementors can do is to suck the soul out of their victims, which means that they can literally disintegrate their victims'personality, spirit and intelligence and turn them into empty shells (which would be quite a heartwrenching metaphor for people forever broken by torture and mental pain).

This is the description of the Dementors' kiss by Lupin :

"'They call it the Dementors' Kiss,' said Lupin, with a slightly twisted smile. 'It's what Dementors do to those they wish to destroy utterly. I suppose there must be some kind of mouth under there, because they clamp their jaws upon the mouth of the victim and - and suck out his soul.'

Harry accidentally spat out a bit of Butterbeer.

'What - they kill -?'

'Oh, no,' said Lupin. 'Much worse than that. You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working. But you'll have no sense of self any more, no memory, no... anything. You'll just - exist. As an empty shell. And your soul is gone forever...lost.'"

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K.Rowling

But that's not all.

"Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope and hapiness out of the air around them. Even Muggles feel their presence, though they can't see them. Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory, will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself - soulless and evil. You'll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life.

(...)

The fortress is set on a tiny island, way out to sea, but they don't need walls and water to keep the prisoners in, not when they're all trapped inside their own heads, incapable of a single cheerful thought. Most of them go mad within weeks."

The first thing I want to notice is that the victims of Dementors go mad from pain. The only other characters we have been talked about who went mad were the parents of Neville. Funny coincidence, isn't it ?

Moreover, what is obvious here is that the "methods" used by Dementors lead to the disintegration of the personality : victims are even described as "soulless", "trapped in their own heads".

Well, that's exactly what mental torture leads to - and physical torture as well, in terms of psychological consequences, according to the study I have quoted above.

Furthermore, it is important to underline that victims of Dementors are left helpless, unable to be happy or hope. Feelings of permanent helplessness are one of the consequences of mental torture.

And they don't have any control over they suffering. They are just a bundle of fears and terrors, unable to control themselves, unable to distinguish reality from what is in their heads. Their nightmares become the reality and the reality is an eternal nightmare.

To quote once again the study above :

"People also often say that what they fear is not so much death but dying. It is one thing to have gone, it is another to continue to survive but in despair and with no grounds for hope. One of the special terrors of torture is that like dying, as distinguished from death, being tortured is a continuing process, not a single event or a final state. It is a process filled with dread, despair, hopelessness, and the awful awareness that one has absolutely no control over one’s own condition. One can try to end the torture by trying to cooperate, but the torturer may well not be convinced and may well not admit it even if he is. Like the flies to the wanton boys, and like us to the gods, in the words of Shakespeare’s blinded Gloucester quoted at the beginning, the victim is the torturer’s plaything. The vulnerability is absolute, and the mental suffering accompanying that awareness is awful."

"One is of course rarely in full control of one’s fate -- the panic at the recent world financial crisis in part reflected many people’s frightening sense of having lost any firm grip on how their lives would go in future. But the fear of a depleted pension is nothing to the fear that one’s own self will be undermined so that one will not retain even the underlying psychological integrity necessary for having desires and beliefs that are one’s own, much less the psychological capacity (the agency) to act effectively on them -- that one will be returned to the infantile state of being an uncoordinated bundle of desires and fears with no integral self to organize them."

"Psychological torture, in contrast, undermines the structure of the personality -- it literally breaks apart the self, unhinging its parts from each other."

Not all the prisoners become mad. Some, like Hagrid, are released because they were innocent. When Hagrid describes his experience in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, he presents anxiety disorders, a typical reaction of victims of mental torture and torture in general (p. 239-240) : just talking about what he went through makes him shiver and cry, and he would do anything to never go back to Azkaban, even if he has to loose Buckbeak (the same Hagrid who made enter an Acromentula in Hogwarts, and bought a dragon's egg even if it is absolutely illegal and dangerous).

Another study I've read, Les pires cicatrices ne sont pas toujours physiques : la torture psychologique by Hernán Reyes (The worst scars are not always physical : mental torture) backs it : "The victims of mental torture have symptoms associated with anxiety disorders."

Moreover, what he says is striking : in his cell his only will was to die to end his suffering, and he had lost any hope to quit the prison.

"Thought I was goin' mad. Kep' goin' over horrible stuff in me mind...

(...)

'You can' really remember who yeh are after a while. An' yeh can' see the point o' living at all. I used ter hope I'd jus' die in me sleep..."

#torture #madness #mental torture #i hate dementors #dementors are torturers and nothing more

9 notes · View notes

placetobenation · 4 years

Link

The Great Mouse Detective

Release Date: July 2nd, 1986

Inspiration: “Basil of Baker Street” by Eve Titus and Paul Galdone

Budget: $14 million

Domestic Gross: $38.7 million

Worldwide Gross: $50 million

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 79%

IMDB Score: 7.2/10

Storyline (per IMDB): In Victorian London, England, a little mouse girl’s toymaker father is abducted by a peglegged bat. She enlists the aid of Basil of Baker Street, the rodent world’s answer to Sherlock Holmes. The case expands as Basil uncovers the crime’s link to a plot against the Crown itself.

Pre-Watching Thoughts: We continue on through this journey as we get to a film that I can honestly say was perhaps one of, if not my favorite films of all times. I don’t know what it was about this film that drew me to it, but it always resonated with me and still ranks high as one of the those films I loved. This also would begin what many consider one of the greatest stretches in Disney film history though I think this film doesn’t completely get the credit for kicking that period off, and hopefully this film will still remain one of my favorites of all time.

Voice Cast: After a long stretch of films that featured a good mix of returning actors and newcomers, we have one of the first films in a long time where we only have a scattering of returning voices and the film is dominated by brand new voices. In that vein, we only have two returning voices as Candy Candido returns to voice Fidget the bat in what would be his final film appearance, and then we have Wayne Allwine who voices one of Ratigan’s thugs and that is literally all of the returning actors. Now moving onto the newcomers as we start with Barrie Ingham who voices Basil in what would be his lone animated appearance, and then we have the iconic Vincent Price who voices Professor Ratigan as he was reaching the twilight of his legendary career. Next, we have Val Bettin who voices Dr. Dawson as well as one of Ratigan’s thugs in a dual appearance, and speaking of dual appearance we then have Frank Welker who voices both Toby the dog and Felicia the cat in a unique performance. We then have Susanne Pollatschek who voices Olivia Flaversham in what would be her only film appearance, and then we have Alan Young who was best known at this time for voicing Scrooge McDuck and he provides the voice of Hiram Flaversham. Up next, we have Diana Chesney who voices Basil’s housekeeper Mrs. Judson and then we have Eve Brenner who voices Queen Mousetoria, and then we have Tony Anselmo and Walker Edmiston who voice two of Ratigan’s guards and then we have singer Melissa Manchester who voices the mouse singer in the bar. Finally in a cool moment, we have a recording of legendary actor basil Rathborne when he played Sherlock Holmes but because Nigel Bruce had passed away, we have Laurie Main voice Dr. Watson. We have seen a bit of a trend of bringing in big names to take part in these films and we will see if that trend continues or if they revert back to just having those best known as voice actors dominate the casting.

Hero/Prince: Once again, we have a pair of heroes to talk about here as we have the team of Basil of Baker Street and Dr. David Q. Dawson who are the mouse equivalents of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Dawson is first introduced to Basil when he agrees to take Olivia Flaversham to him to help her find her missing father, and they learn that he was kidnapped by Professor Ratigan who is Basil’s main rival. Olivia is then kidnapped by Ratigan’s henchman Fidget and he lays a trap for Basil and Dawson which they fall into, and Basil becomes disenfranchised by being kidnapped as Ratigan informs him of his plan to take control of the British Empire. With some help from Dawson, they manage to escape and foil Ratigan’s plan as Ratigan again takes Olivia and they chase him right into Big Ben, and Ratigan and Basil have a final battle with Ratigan being knocked off the clock and Basil manages to save himself. The duo are honored by the Queen and Dawson is offered a chance to be Basil’s partner which he accepts as they prepare to take on a brand new case. Obviously, those who are familiar with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson will recognize the same characteristics with Basil and Dawson, and the two deserve a spot amongst the other heroes in the Disney canon though I am yet unsure as to where they will rank against the rest of them.

Princess: N/A

Villain: Much like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are the human equivalents of Basil and Dawson, we also have to have someone to embody the spirit of the iconic Professor Moriarty and that is Professor Ratigan. He devises a plan to take over the kingdom from the Queen and kidnaps toymaker Hiram Flaversham to create a robot in the Queen’s likeness, and he has his henchman Fidget steal various items to use in his plan as well as kidnap Hiram’s daughter Olivia as collateral to make him finish the robot. Upon learning Basil is on his trail, he devises a trap for Basil and Dawson and puts them in an elaborate series of death traps before leaving for Buckingham Palace. He captures the Queen and implants the robot in its place as it declares him her new royal consult, but Basil escapes and his plan is foiled though he takes Olivia and escapes. Basil and Dawson chase him as they crash into Big Ben and Basil rescues Olivia, but Ratigan attacks him only for the bell to chime and Ratigan falls to his death though Basil manages to save himself. Ratigan is a classic example of a dashing and suave villain who exhibits this façade though he obviously has a sadistic side, and this is shown as he feeds one of his minions to his pet cat Felicia after he inadvertently call him a rat and he also throws Fidget to his death into the river. But like most villains, his overconfidence leads to his downfall and his real personality comes out as he in essence turns into a rabid rat during his battle with Basil only to then lead to his demise. Ratigan is one of those villains that you don’t think about at first when it comes to great villains in the Disney canon, but he is pretty memorable and it will be interesting comparing him to the more iconic villains. I also must mention Fidget who serves as Ratigan’s henchman and he captures Hiram as well as Olivia along with getting the necessary supplies, but he is nearly fed to Felicia after he lets slip to Ratigan that Basil is on the case. He remains by Ratigan’s side until the very end when he tells Ratigan they should throw Olivia off their ship to lighten the load, but Ratigan turns on him and throws him off the ship into the river. He won’t rank as high as Ratigan because he is just a henchman, but he was worth mentioning since he does play a pivotal role in Ratigan’s plan coming to fruition.

Other Characters: It’s funny because when you watch these films when you are a kid, it seems like there are more characters than there actually are and watching this film back, I realized that as most of the focus was on the main characters with a few other characters being featured. At the top of that list are the toymaker Hiram and his daughter Olivia as he is kidnapped by Ratigan to create his robot, and then Olivia is captured and used as bait to force Hiram to finish it only for Basil and Dawson to foil the plan and reunite Hiram and Olivia in the end. We then have Toby the hound dog that is technically owned by Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, but he is used by Basil and Dawson to find Fidget and then he scares Felicia away to save the Queen. Speaking of which, we then have Felicia the cat that is owned by Ratigan and he feeds his enemies to her though he sometimes sacrifices his allies to them, and they try to feed the Queen to her only for Toby to scare her away and she inadvertently jumps into the pen of the Royal Guard Dogs which supposedly leads to her death. We then have Mrs. Judson who is Basil’s housekeeper and she is at times frustrated with Basil’s experiments, and then we have the Queen of Mousedom who is kidnapped by Ratigan and replaced with his robot replacement though Basil and Dawson save her and she honors them as her way of thanking them. Finally, we have the numerous members of Ratigan’s gang who follow him with stout devotion at the fear of being fed to Felicia, and I guess you can also include the random crowds we see in the bar that Basil and Dawson go to as well as the crowd who appears at the Jubilee and turn on Ratigan. There were definitely not as many characters in this film as I seemed to remember, but that’s fine because those that were in here were important to the story and kept the film moving along.

Songs: So I didn’t mention this in the last review, but we did make history as the Black Cauldron was the first film in the Disney canon to not feature any songs at all and it clearly felt out of place though that film didn’t really need any songs in the end. After a brief respite, we go back to having songs in a film as this film features three songs with the first being the centerpiece song “The World’s Greatest Criminal Mind” that Ratigan and his cohorts sing, and it is a fun song that has some breaks in between including Ratigan feeding one of his goons to Felicia after he called him a rat by mistake and it shows Ratigan’s evil side behind his suave façade. Next we have the song “Let Me Be Good to You” sung by the little mouse in the seedy bar and it is a good song as even the rowdy patrons are entranced by the mouse and her beauty, and finally we have “Goodbye So Soon” that Ratigan records and plays to set up the mechanics that will lead to Basil’s death though it is more of a background song if anything. I thought these songs were just fine for this film and it was the perfect amount to be in this film, and it will be interesting to see as we get to the next wave how those films are treated more as musicals than just regular films.

Plot: As mentioned, these characters are basically just the mouse versions of the Sherlock Holmes stories and those are pretty well-known to everyone, but what I was not aware off was there was a series of children’s book about Basil of Baker Street which this film is based off of. In this story, Olivia Flaversham sees her father kidnapped by a bat and with the assistance of Dr. Dawson, they find Basil of Baker Street to ask for his help which he does after learning that the bat was an associate of Professor Ratigan. They track the bat named Fidget to a toy story where he steals various items and he also kidnaps Olivia, and Ratigan uses her as bait for her father to finish building a robot that he will use to take the Queen’s place so he can rule Mousedom. Basil and Dawson find Ratigan’s lair only for it to be revealed that Ratigan was waiting for them and he leaves them there to die, and he kidnaps the Queen and puts the robot in her place only for Basil and Dawson to escape and foil his plan. He escapes with Olivia and is chased by Basil, Dawson, and Hiram as they crash into Big Ben, and Basil manages to save Olivia only for Ratigan to assault him on the clockface only for the clock to go off and Ratigan falls to his death while Basil saves himself. Basil and Dawson are hailed as heroes by the Queen and Dawson becomes Basil’s partner as they are met by a young lady who needs their help. I wouldn’t be surprised if this same plot was used at some point in a Sherlock Holmes story even with the robot, but the story is a good one and could easily have been passed off as a Sherlock Holmes novel and/or movie.

Random Watching Thoughts: I feel like all these films set in London have to always open with a dreary-looking sky; Again, it’s worth mentioning by having voice actors appear in these films while also appearing in other shows, I wonder how many people hear Hiram talk and realized it was the same actor who plays Scrooge McDuck; I would like to know what happened to Fidget that he can’t fly well anymore and how he lost his leg; Once again, Disney is the true master of the jumpscare as the shot of Fidget coming through the window is legit terrifying; Why would Hiram reveal that he has a daughter to someone trying to kidnap him?; We go back to having the credits at the beginning of the film though it is not the full credits; So I looked it up and if Dawson was stationed in Afghanistan at this time, it was either due to the Tirah Campaign in Pakistan or he was there following the second Anglo-Afghan War which ended in 1880; I always wondered how it would be if humans were to stumble upon these hidden animal worlds where they live just like them; I don’t know if a boot is the best place for Olivia to be; I always wondered if that was actually Sherlock Holmes playing the violin; Dawson saying he doesn’t want to impose yet Olivia has no problem coming in even though Mrs. Judson did invite them in; Basil went so far as to create a machine that can smoke a pipe; Basil’s disguise does not appear to be in good taste watching this in 2020; Dawson didn’t even need to introduce himself as Basil knew all about him just by looking at him; He whispers that to Olivia thinking she would know what he is talking about; I can only imagine how much money Mrs. Judson must spend replacing all the pillows that Basil destroys; The constant theme of this film is Basil never being able to say Olivia’s last name properly; Basil was so close, but alas those bullets couldn’t be the exact same; Basil is completely indifferent to Olivia’s plight until she tells him what took her father and now she has his full attention; The portrait of Ratigan has him smiling in one scene, but then in the next scene he smiles to where we can see his teeth only for it to go back to normal in the next scene; He calls Ratigan the “Napoleon of Evil” which doesn’t make Napoleon sound good; You can tell that this is set in London because when we see the robot being tested, it is shown pouring a cup of tea; It is a bit weird that Ratigan would use a toymaker to make this sophisticated of a robot; Good on Hiram for sticking up for himself though it mattered very little when Ratigan said he was going to go after Olivia; It would’ve helped Fidget if Ratigan actually specified what type of tools to get; I’m surprised Ratigan’s cigarette didn’t burn out quicker given how many of his goons offered to light it; Ratigan’s gang has all mice and yet one lizard; That’s quite the haul that Ratigan has accumulated for himself; That one mouse was so happy when Ratigan started pouring the champagne into the fountain only to get kicked into the fountain; I love how they are able to sing so cheerfully about Ratigan drowning widows and orphans; Of all the instruments Ratigan is able to play, you wouldn’t think it would be the harp; He had a voodoo doll made of Basil but as we saw, it clearly doesn’t work; I feel so bad for the drunken goon as he clearly is not thinking straight when he said that, yet Ratigan feels it necessary to feed him to Felicia; A rat that doesn’t like being called a rat is a clear “pot calling the kettle black” situation; If anything, at least the goon was drunk and his death was in essence quick and painless; It is funny to think that while Ratigan and his goons were having their party that Olivia was telling Basil everything she knows; Olivia goes as far as to copy Basil’s movements as he spins this story around in his head; Jumpscare #2 by Fidget; Did Fidget not realize that Basil lived there and how stupid was he to leave his hat behind?; Olivia had no trouble pocketing all of those crumpets; Basil puts the violin on the chair after he prevented it from hitting the ground, yet he forgets about it when he sits down in the same chair and crushes it; He says that Olivia is not coming with them yet she ends up going with them; Great call to have a scene with Holmes and Watson; Toby is initially cold to Dawson yet he quickly falls in love with Olivia though her giving him a crumpet certainly helps her cause; Did Basil really have to growl along with Toby to get him fired up?; Considering we only see him get the uniforms, are we to assume he had the tools and gears in the bag as well since that didn’t seem like a big bag?; First he loses his hat, now Fidget loses the list; He wouldn’t sit for Basil yet he would for Olivia; Considering Olivia’s father is a toymaker, you’d think she would be more amazed being in this toy store; They are trying to be quiet and yet Olivia can’t help herself from playing one of the music boxes; Dawson reverts back to his army days by standing at attention and Olivia mimics him; How long did Fidget take removing those gears considering he had to be careful not to damage them?; Fidget’s way of causing a diversion is by setting off as many toys as possible; Pretty cool Easter egg of the toy Dumbo firing off the bubbles; Jumpscare #3 by Fidget; I hate to be the owner of that toy store when he comes in the next day and finds gears missing from the toys and the shattered remains of that doll; The obligatory “No Sale” on the cash register; That was quite a nasty fall that Basil took yet he’s lucky that he got tied up on that string; Poor Dawson, he feels so guilty losing Olivia; Basil does some deep thinking yet it is the discovery of the list that is their guide; Ratigan is so great here feigning that he is touched by the reunion of Hiram and Olivia; Ratigan is so proud of Fidget until he finds out Fidget lost the list and Basil was chasing him; I know Fidget screwed up, but feeding him to Felicia was pretty harsh though Ratigan did decide to spare him when he realized he could set a trap for Basil; It is amazing how much Basil was able to deduce from this list and through his convoluted experiment, being able to pinpoint where they could find the entrance to Ratigan’s lair; Of all the disguises they could use, they had to use pirate costumes; If that octopus really wanted to impress the crowd, he would use more than just two tentacles when juggling those balls; Dawson can’t help being a gentleman even when trying to keep up this façade; The piano player with some great foreshadowing because he knew the octopus was in trouble; That frog and lizard never stood a chance with this crowd; Leave it to a tiny female mouse to be the one that the crowd falls in love with; She went from being a singer to a showgirl; Considering Dawson wanted a sherry, he had no trouble chugging that beer even though it was drugged; Of course, Fidget would get his peg leg stuck in a hole in the floor; Can we really blame Dawson for getting on stage, after all he had been away in the army for so long and needed some loving; The obligatory sound of a bowling ball hitting the pins whenever there’s a big crash; The bartender of this bar must get so frustrated whenever fights break out because he loses his profits having to fix the place up; Fidget must’ve moved real fast to get back to the lair, take Olivia out of the bottle, put her clothes on, and get in the bottle himself to fool Basil and Dawson; Considering they had this big plan to prepare for, I’m amazed they had enough time to set up that banner and balloons for Basil’s arrival; The common trope is the villain claiming victory prematurely; Ratigan didn’t know how to kill Basil so he just threw together several methods including a mouse trap, gun, crossbow, axe, and an anvil; Another common trope of villains is them explaining their plan to the hero; I can only imagine what people would’ve thought seeing a cat carrying several mice on her back; Talk about random things, Ratigan goes to the trouble of having a camera set up as well; Basil is so resigned to his fate that he casually comments that the Queen and the Empire are in danger; The Queen should’ve known something was up when Fidget called her “sweetheart”; Even though it is for evil purposes, you do have to give Hiram credit for his work on the robot; How long has this song been playing?; Basil has completely given up on escaping until Dawson makes an offhand comment about setting the trap off now, and then his mind begins spinning and sure enough they manage to escape while also freeing Olivia from the bottle and getting their picture taken in time; Are you telling that not one of those in the audience believed something was amiss when the robot Queen came out and started shaking repeatedly?; Ratigan really spared no expense with that robe; Ratigan says he has a few slight suggestions as he unveils his list and it rolls right out the door; Why was Fidget having to carry the Queen by himself, couldn’t any of the other goons helped him?; Are we really to believe that Ratigan listed off 95 items in that short of time?; Basil really did a number on that robot; The Queen didn’t do a great job in tying Fidget up if he was able to escape that easily; Talk about bad luck for Felicia to narrowly avoid Toby only to land amongst the Royal Guard Dogs; Basil is finally able to say “Flaversham” properly when addressing Hiram; That’s quite the chase going on with Ratigan and Basil; Fidget tells Ratigan to lighten the load thinking he will get rid of Olivia, but instead Ratigan throws him overboard though honestly it didn’t matter since Fidget is so small; How fast was Ratigan going that they were able to break right through the glass of Big Ben?; That was as close as you can get with Basil saving Olivia from being crushed by the gears; This sequence of Ratigan running up the gears while going rabid is not only terrifying, but a great work of cinematography; Unless I’m mistaken, I don’t think Professor Moriarty ever went this rabid on Sherlock Holmes as Ratigan is going here on Basil; A fitting way for Ratigan to meet his end; That was a bit of luck there for Basil that he had the pedals to use to work the propeller; Basil still can’t pronounce Olivia’s last name correctly even though he did it for Hiram; Dawson was ready to walk away from everything until Basil pretty much declared him his associate to the lady that came to the door; I wonder when Dawson was narrating this since this film was in essence a flashback for him.

Overall Thoughts: Overall, this is a pretty fun film and still remains one of my all-time favorites though it is not quite up to the level of some of the other films in this canon. It is a vast improvement from the previous film and showed that the animation studio was still a very viable entity, and little did anyone know that this film would set the stage for what would go down in history as the Disney Renaissance. The 1980s have been a trying time for Disney as they saw an upheaval in their staff and the first films of the decade have not delivered as expected, but they now have to be feeling a bit more optimistic of the future though they still have a ways to go. As for this film, it is a solid film and while it may not be considered amongst the classics in the Disney canon, it is still a fun film and will always be one of my favorites.

Final Grade: 7.5/10

#IFTTT #Place to Be Nation

0 notes

lodelss · 4 years

Link

Samuel Ashworth| Longreads | September 2019 | 13 minutes (3,389 words)

Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) are nestled in one another’s arms, sweat glistening on their muscled chests. They kiss softly and tenderly. It’s the middle of the night in a hotel somewhere on the campaign trail, and they are in love.

“So, if you were an animal, which would you be?” asks Ted.

“Let me think,” says Marco. “A manatee.”

Welcome, friends, to the glorious world of congressional fan fiction. If you’ve always associated fan fiction with the kind of people who hand-sew their own Star Trek jumpsuits, think again. Since going online in the late ’90s, fan fiction — a fan-created spinoff (sometimes way, way off) of an already-existing pop culture presence — has exploded. Its protagonists range from fictional, like Han Solo, to real, like Ariana Grande or members of the British Parliament. Published stories, which can range from a few hundred words to a few hundred thousand, number in the tens of millions, and boast an immense readership. The genre also remains one of the few resolutely not-for-profit corners of the internet: Since the work often involves trademarked intellectual property, fair use rules forbid fanfic authors from making money off their writing, unless they change all recognizable details, as E.L. James did with her BDSM Twilight fanfic story, Fifty Shades of Grey. Stories about congress fall under the penumbra of “Real-person fiction,” which isn’t bound by copyright laws in the same way.

For as long as people have been telling stories, people have been telling stories about those stories. It’s a basic human impulse: The Greeks wrote fan fiction about the Trojan War; the Chinese wrote it during the Ming Dynasty; the Spaniards wrote it about Don Quixote; the Victorians about Sherlock Holmes. Typically, we date its modern iteration from the late ’60s, when Star Trek fans began to circulate mimeographed zines full of their own adventures aboard the USS Enterprise. It was the punctuating backslash in “Spock/Kirk” that created the genre for stories which literalize unspoken sexual tension between same-sex characters: slashfic.

While not all fan fiction is erotic or romantic, a lot of it is. Pop culture mega-properties like Harry Potter or the TV show Supernatural have the biggest constituencies, but niche fandoms abound (for example, there is even one — mercifully chaste — story devoted to my favorite podcast, NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour). One growing niche is political fan fiction; the influential fanfic site Archive of Our Own (AO3), with more than 2 million users, has a thousand stories dealing with 21st-century American politicians alone.

Fanfic is inherently delightfully goofy, but it’s also worth taking seriously. Fandom has become one of the driving forces of American pop culture. When provoked, fans can rescue a TV show like Brooklyn 99 or One Day at a Time from cancellation, or they can kill a project in its infancy, as numerous young adult novelists have found. Even though fan fiction is necessarily noncommercial, the world of fandom is an economic behemoth, and with economic power, inevitably, comes political power — whether it’s wanted or not.

Most political fanfic features world leaders: AO3 features dozens of erotic romances between Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau, or David Cameron and a rotating harem of male British MPs, while the past two years have seen a proliferation of meme-ready “Trump/Shrek” slashfic. Sample line: “Donald Trump was building a wall. No, not to keep out the Mexicans. He built it around his heart, to keep anyone from getting there and breaking it like Shrek did.”

But since the 2016 election, as American political engagement has boomed — the 2018 midterms had the highest voter turnout percentage for any midterm in 104 years — fan fiction scholars have noted a spike in stories featuring the U.S. Congress. What makes this boomlet strange is that at its core, fan fiction “is about genuinely liking a person,” says Dr. Amber Davisson, coauthor of Politics for the Love of Fandom: Fan-Based Citizenship in a Digital World. And historically, well, not many people like Congress. As of August of this year, the institution’s average Gallup approval rating was 17 percent — somehow an improvement over the first half of this decade.

And yet, the more I spoke to authors, the more congressional fan fiction began to make perfect sense as a response to our high-strung political moment. To Ehren Hatten, a prolific fanfic author living in Austin, Texas, people gravitate to fanfic because it’s “writing something you want to see.” During the Obama administration, Hatten wrote a series of stories modeled on the “Hetalia” universe — a Japanese webcomic turned manga and anime series featuring nations personified as broadly stereotypical characters (France, for instance, hits on every woman who crosses his path). In her tale, the embodiment of America storms onto the floor of Congress and delivers a scorching tirade against the Affordable Care Act, which he calls an unconstitutional attack on the “will of the people.” The law, he warns direly, will bring about another Civil War — and a justified one at that.

Even though fan fiction is necessarily noncommercial, the world of fandom is an economic behemoth, and with economic power, inevitably, comes political power — whether it’s wanted or not.

“I was trying to point out how wrong and out of touch Congress has been for years,” Hatten told me. What she wrote was mostly “a way for me to get ideas out of my head,” but at the same time, she was annoyed by other Hetalia-based fan works “that would portray things like America being a superfan of Obama.” In the climax of her story, America triumphantly punches Obama in the face.

Similarly, Amanda Savitt, an ACA supporter, said writing fan fiction “made me feel like I had a little bit of control.” In her story, Steve Rogers is divorced from his role as Captain America’s alter ego and is now a young diabetic art student. (This is typical of the “alternate universe” genre of fanfic, which takes characters from one world and reimagines them in another, often with completely different characteristics. One such story features Rand Paul as a high school goth tormented by/in love with rich bully Donald Trump.) Afraid the Republican Party will kill the ACA and take away his access to health care, Steve and his best friend Bucky Barnes decide to marry so Steve can secure health insurance. Eventually, Steve and Bucky attend a town hall led by a Paul Ryan–esque figure. Steve delivers a scorching tirade against the repeal of the ACA. In the climax of her story, Steve triumphantly punches the Paul Ryan–esque figure in the face.

For many political fanfic writers, this catharsis is the main point of the exercise — to blow off steam. While William Wordsworth defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of emotion recollected in tranquility,” fan fiction omits the tranquility part, which may explain the sheer ferocity of a lot of the eroticism. One author in Alaska who wrote a story about Mitch McConnell (R-KY) having intense and almost feral sex with Paul Ryan (R-WI 1) after failing to repeal Obamacare told me they banged the whole thing in an hour when they were feeling ground-down and angry.

***

Somewhere in Washington, rain is pouring outside as a young person curls up under a blanket with their girlfriend, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY 14). Suddenly, a blackout ripples across the city, plunging them into darkness.

“Don’t be afraid,” she whispers. “I’m here.”

Yet for all the rage that has soaked into our political rhetoric lately, stories wherein characters physically attack politicians are rarer than you might think. Instead, most congressional fan fiction, even the really out-there stuff, is all about the romance. In one story, Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA 12) get intimate after a spirited game of one-on-one basketball. In another, Paul Ryan and former Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL 18) long for each other from across the House floor. The exception to this rule is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose stories, so far, are loving but pointedly nonsexual. This has much to do with the fact that fanfic authors are overwhelmingly female, making sites like AO3 something of a refuge from the male gaze. “When the media reports on AOC and ‘girlifies her,’” Davisson explains, “they’re diminishing her. … [Her fans] care about her as a person.”

All of which brings us to Rubio and Cruz nuzzling, flushed with the thrill of new love and discussing their spirit animals. There are no fewer than 24 separate stories under the “Crubio” tag on AO3, but one of the first, “Fifty Shades of Red,” was written in 2016 by two high schoolers, who asked, not unreasonably, to remain anonymous in this article.

“Fifty Shades of Red” runs over 15,000 words long and chronicles a sweet but relentlessly raunchy (a phrase that could capture fan fiction at its core) senatorial affair, culminating in the two men admitting their love on a debate stage. They then exit stage right to apologize to their wives — who, in a classically Shakespearean twist, have also fallen in love with each other. “Our first taste of politics was Trump,” said one of the young writers, who collectively published the story under the nom de fan MikeRotch. “So it was kind of fun to turn the shitshow that was that election and make it into something more funny, and try to imagine that there’s something else inside these men aside from terrible policies and homophobia.”

Kickstart your weekend reading by getting the week’s best Longreads delivered to your inbox every Friday afternoon.

Both writers describe themselves as left-leaning and queer, and their story began as a dare during a sleepover. “We were just spiteful,” they said, but as they kept going, something unexpected happened. They became profoundly attached to their characters — Cruz as the gruff, masculine daddy, and Rubio as the besotted, timid younger man. A narrative which began as pure raunch turned into Cruz tenderly reading his favorite W.S. Merwin poem to Rubio, and Rubio confessing that “every day, I wake up questioning everything. Who I am. Who I want to be. Who I should be.” Their farce evolved into a real romance, fueled by an empathy that the authors never expected to feel for two men representing everything they loathed. That empathy stayed with them even after the story was written, and many of the other writers who wrote their own Crubio slashfic preserved it in their stories, too. On March 15, 2016, when Marco Rubio dropped out of the race for the GOP nomination, one of the MikeRotch authors called the other, crying.

Fan fiction is no different from any other kind of fiction: Empathy is its fuel, its AllSpark, its galvanic jolt. Without the writer’s willingness to probe the motivations of each character, good or evil, the story will not go. The plot will sit there, limp as wet cereal, and convince no one. This is why so much overtly political fiction is lousy: Instead of empathizing, the writer sets out to convince and condemn. The story groans under its own seriousness. But resonating fan fiction revels in humanizing its villains — there are 33,995 works on AO3 wherein Harry Potter hooks up with his nemesis Draco Malfoy. “I think there are a few reasons for that,” Savitt told me, “one of which is the fact that in popular media, unfortunately, villains tend to be queer-coded.” Just look at Disney: Ursula from The Little Mermaid was deliberately patterned on the immortal drag queen Divine. In Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent’s magical powers are just an outlet for her overflowing top energy. Male villains from Jafar to Hades to Scar (the Jeremy Irons version, not Chiwetel Ejiofor’s butch performance) are heavy-lidded, louche, effete. In fan fiction, authors have the power to overwrite that coding, to rethink the knee-jerk contempt we’re supposed to feel for these characters and depict them instead with an empathy the source material rarely affords.

This empathy makes congressional fan fiction remarkable in a political reality so divided that empathy isn’t just rare, it’s almost impossible. According to “The Perception Gap,” a 2019 study from the nonprofit group More In Common, the more politically engaged an American citizen is, the more likely they are to be wildly misinformed about the other side. Democrats flail around trying to divine the humors of the Trump voters, and Republicans believe that half of all Democrats are ashamed to be American.

Fan fiction is no different from any other kind of fiction: Empathy is its fuel, its AllSpark, its galvanic jolt.

Fanfic authors, on the other hand, tend to delve into objective research about characters and their worlds. Most stories about congresspeople feature direct quotes from speeches (in “Fifty Shades of Red” Cruz makes Rubio read one of his speeches while they have sex — something the authors spent “an embarrassing amount of time” researching), nuanced conversations about policy, and often, strikingly honest presentations of the villains’ arguments. In Ehren Hatten’s stories, Democrats assail America’s embodiment with real talking points (uninsured people “drain the system when they end up in the emergency room”). America has his answers ready, of course, but Hatten’s congresspeople are far from straw men. “I’ve been called a bigot and a racist more times than I really thought possible,” Hatten told me. “However, I still feel humans in general want to remember that the people they disagree with are still human and not some creature from the black lagoon. At least that’s my hope.”

That hope — the hope that maybe some of it isn’t fictional — is what drives people to write stories about Congress. Authors who write humanizing stories about politicians “are hoping in some sense that they are that human,” says Anne Jamison, an assistant professor of English at the University of Utah. If you can imagine a world where all Mitch McConnell needs is the love of a good man, or one where Susan Collins has a backbone, then you can convince yourself that maybe, just maybe, it could be true.

***

On the senate floor, senators are voting on whether or not to end the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. Dean Heller (R-NV) weeps in the strong embrace of Mark Warner (D-VA), torn between his desire for moderation and his fear of a primary challenge.

“Be brave!” Warner urges him. Heller sniffles into a handkerchief.

Ten years ago, it might have seemed ludicrous to think that people would be penning heroic epics about members of the U.S. Congress. But troubled times are fertile soil for heroes. In Bertolt Brecht’s play The Life of Galileo, Galileo says, “Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.” Judging by our recent cultural diet, we live in an unhappy land. In the movies, heroes flourish: The Avengers, Star Wars, The Fast and the Furious. These blockbusting franchises depend upon the absolute, indisputable goodness of the hero’s quest (and, in the case of The Fast and the Furious franchise, the limitless redeemability of villains). Meanwhile, we’re living in the new golden age of television, which derives its popular and intellectual voltage from daring us to fall in love with charismatic antiheroes: Game of Thrones, Fleabag, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Succession. The West Wing is dead, long live Veep.

In our fiercely divided time, the politicians we agree with aren’t just leaders, they’re held up as saviors. It’s not enough to just support them; we want to love them. We’re fans of them. This distinction is crucial: “Fandom is perverse,” says Davisson. “I mean that in the best possible way. Fandom is about love, and love is seldom a rational thing.” Rather, love is blind, jealous, obsessive. What it really wants is more — more access, more story, more flesh, more time. More content.

As Davisson points out, “we’re very aware that everything we’re seeing is being produced. A lot of [fan fiction] is about wanting to see behind the curtain. [People] want to see that these politicians that they see on TV have real passion — something genuine.” It is this perceived sense of genuineness which gives us permission to trust — and therefore permission to love. And increasingly, the savviest politicians — like movie studios and TV networks — are learning how to operate the levers of that love.

Much of Donald Trump’s appeal as a politician is the way he offers completely transparent, un-stage-managed access to his inner thoughts. Being a fan of Trump is probably delightful, even addictive. At all hours of the day — or in the dead of night — his fans have access to his unfiltered inner monologue, stripped not only of the political calculus with which virtually every other politician speaks, but of any inhibition or caution whatsoever. In essence, Trump is a fountain of glittering content; he is pure fan service. He is the triumph of quantity over quality. And his fans are hammered drunk with love.

Few politicians have understood popular love better than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose Instagram feed offers fans an unprecedented level of access to a politician’s personal life. From her first days in Washington, she has created a self-produced reality show. She brings followers (that word is significant here) into the madcap world of a freshman congresswoman. She takes them on trips up to her roof garden where she asks for advice on how to harvest her spinach plants, and she offers long, thoughtful reflections about shifting from a bartender’s salary to a congresswoman’s (she can now afford oat milk). She is perhaps the most relatable politician in the country. In addition to the tender, puppy-love-like stories about her on AO3, there is also a comic book, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Freshman Force. The cover features her in a gleaming suffragette-white pantsuit, standing astride the prone form of a red elephant, holding her phone in one hand and beckoning the reader to join her with the other. “New party,” she says, “who dis?”

The politicians we agree with aren’t just leaders, they’re held up as saviors. It’s not enough to just support them; we want to love them. We’re fans of them.

Drawing an equivalence between AOC and Trump is common to the point of cliché, and to do so ignores a crucial distinction between them: the nature of their fandoms. Fandom, at its best, is what patriotism should look like — loyal, welcoming, but not infinitely forgiving. Good fandom, according to Ashley Hinck, an assistant professor at Xavier University, “will hold you accountable.” But at its worst, fandom looks like patriotism at its most toxic: hostile to outsiders, utterly entitled, deaf to criticism. And increasingly, it’s getting harder to tell the difference.

On any given day in America, the president might signal-boost a doctored video of Nancy Pelosi. Theories floated on Fox News find their way into White House policy. Tweets intended as parody are accepted as legitimate. An echo chamber of commentators swiftly warp political developments whose audience does not care if they are accurate, so long as they are angry. In this world, the fear that fictional narratives — even those meant as jokes — can overwhelm the actual facts is well-founded. But for better or for worse, we are in an age of political fandom, and there’s no going back.

“We’ve entered a world in which fan identities matter,” says Hinck. “And if we underestimate fandom — and the importance of fan identities — it’s dangerous.” According to Hinck, the old demographics are outdated. The political world populated by easily targeted union members and soccer moms and Rockefeller Republicans is gone, and it is not coming back. The internet has broken the old molds of identity, and now we are gluing the shards back together into shapes that fit us better. “People are looking for new sources of belonging,” says Hinck. “People are members of these fan communities in the millions. These are huge voting blocs.”

“That’s true,” agrees Amber Davisson, but she points out that “the day you organize fandom, you destroy it. Creative work exists at the margins because they’re exploring the thing we don’t want to talk about. Fans need to exist at the margin because they need to push the rest of us. There will always be people pushing at the edges. And sometimes people pushing at the edges win.”

* * *

Samuel Ashworth is a regular contributor to the Washington Post Magazine, and his fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in Hazlitt, Eater, NYLON, Barrelhouse, Catapult, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Rumpus. He is currently working on a novel about the life and death of a chef, told through his autopsy.

Editor: Katie Kosma Fact-Checker: Samantha Schuyler Copyeditor: Jacob Z. Gross

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes

itsfinancethings · 4 years

Link

List season has hit particularly hard this year, as the end of our first full decade of social media immersion has culminated in a multi-month spree of ranking and revisiting the likes of which humanity has probably never seen before. So I feel compelled to open by thanking you, the reader, for giving yet another highly subjective hit parade your attention.

My hope is that along with a few of the zeitgeisty critical darlings (Fleabag, Watchmen, Succession) you’re sure to find in every other top 10 of 2019, this list will point you in the direction of some equally wonderful series (Vida, David Makes Man, Back to Life) that haven’t gotten the shine they deserve. What you won’t find here, incidentally, is anything from the initial slate of shows on brand-new streaming services Apple TV+ or Disney+. Whether that disappointment turns out to be a pattern or a fluke, only time will tell.

10. Back to Life (Showtime)

Few characters have embodied the saying “you can’t go home again” as fully as Back to Life creator Daisy Haggard’s Miri Matteson. Out on parole after spending half her life in jail for a crime she committed at age 18, Miri returns to her small English hometown—not because she’s missed the place, but because she has nowhere to go but her parents’ house. While enduring harassment at the hands of neighbors who will never forget what she did, she struggles to find work, companionship and peace. From the producers of Fleabag, this quieter, gentler traumedy weighs Miri’s crime against the less extreme but more malicious transgressions of her family and friends. It poses the question of whether anyone who pays their debt to society really gets a fair chance to start over—and it suggests that you can tell a lot about a community by getting to know its scapegoats.

9. When They See Us (Netflix)

Ava DuVernay is the rare popular artist fueled by an irrepressible optimism about building a better future as well as righteous anger about the past and present. She brought both of these defining traits to bear on this four-part drama about the Central Park Five—whom her miniseries rechristened the Exonerated Five. Along with exposing how and suggesting why a broken New York City criminal justice system was so eager to vilify blameless children of color in the aftermath of a monstrous act of sexual violence, DuVernay and her stellar young cast worked with the real Five to create multifaceted portraits of regular kids with hopes, ambitions and communities that suffered as a result of their incarceration. And she found echoes of their story in the current movement against mass incarceration and in the presidency of Donald Trump, who stoked public fury at the boys. When They See Us celebrates the righting of a grievous wrong while acknowledging that no vindication, or remuneration, could fully heal such deep wounds.

8. Watchmen (HBO)

For those of us who haven’t enjoyed our culture’s never-ending superhero craze so much as endured it, the news that the most prestigious of all prestige cable outlets was adapting a DC Comics book sounded kind of like a betrayal. Et tu, HBO? But we should never have doubted The Leftovers creator Damon Lindelof’s ability to make Alan Moore’s brilliant, subversive 1980s classic resonate more than three decades later. Instead of revisiting the Cold War, Lindelof set his Watchmen in an alternate 2019 where the events of the comic are canon, Robert Redford (yes, that one) has been President for decades and a white supremacist group called the Seventh Kavalry is slaughtering police who are loyal to the liberal administration. Into this mess rides masked vigilante Sister Night (Regina King, in the would-be hero role she’s long deserved), a cop who is supposed to have retired from crime-fighting. There is (or should be) enough carryover from Moore’s original to appease its cult fandom, but the show is at its best when contending with our confused, misinformed, politically polarized current reality. And in that respect, it’s every bit as intelligent, provocative and mysterious as it is entertaining.

7. Undone (Amazon)

Fans worried that BoJack Horseman mastermind Raphael Bob-Waksberg would turn out to be a one-hit wonder could take comfort in this wildly imaginative sci-fi dramedy that he co-created with Kate Purdy, about a disaffected young woman (Rosa Salazar’s Alma) who narrowly survives a catastrophic car crash. In hospital-bed visions tied to her sudden physical trauma and preexisting mental illness, Alma reunites with her long-dead father (Bob Odenkirk), learns that he was murdered and allows him to guide her on a time-travel mission to prevent the crime from happening. Yet Undone is more than just a high-concept mystery; it’s a journey into human consciousness, a beautiful example of Rotoscoped animation and a subtle meditation on family, identity and spirituality.

6. David Makes Man (OWN)

The success of Moonlight sent ripples through Hollywood, elevating writer-director Barry Jenkins and a cast including Mahershala Ali, Jharrel Jerome and Janelle Monáe to the highest echelon of their art form. It also opened industry doors for MacArthur honoree Tarell Alvin McCraney, who wrote the play on which the film was based. This year he unveiled David Makes Man, a lyrical drama about a smart, troubled 14-year-old (Akili McDowell, astonishing in his first lead role) in the Florida projects who’s struggling to get into a prestigious high school and avoid being drafted into a gang, while mourning a mentor. Though it shares a lush aesthetic and many themes—black boyhood, complicated role models, queer identity—with Moonlight, the expanded format allows McCraney to explore the people around David. His privileged best friend (Nathaniel McIntyre) suffers abuse at home. His gender-queer neighbor (Travis Coles) takes in runaway LGBT teens and plays a delicate role in the local ecosystem. And his single mother (Alana Arenas), an addict in recovery, holds down a degrading job to keep the bills paid. This isn’t just the old story of excellence and poverty battling for the soul of one extraordinary child; it’s the story of a community where both qualities must coexist.

5. Lodge 49 (AMC)

At least once a year, a series too smart for prime-time gets canned even as network execs re-up long-running bores like NCIS for 24 more functionally identical episodes. In 2019, it was Lodge 49 that ended up on the wrong side of the equation. A loose, semi-stoned account of a young man (Wyatt Russell’s Sean “Dud” Dudley) treading water in the wake of his beloved father’s death, the show expanded over the course of its first season into an allegory for the isolation of contemporary life. The Southern California landscape around Dud, an affable dreamer, and his self-destructive twin sister (Sonya Cassidy) had been scarred by pawn shops, breastaurants, temp agencies, abandoned office parks. Refuge came in the form of the titular cash-strapped fraternal organization, where Dud found two precious things late capitalism couldn’t provide: a sense of community and a mysterious, all-consuming quest. Both propelled him and his cohorts to Mexico in this year’s funny, bittersweet second season; perhaps sensing the end was near, creator Jim Gavin’s finale provided something like closure. Still, the show—which is currently being shopped to streaming services—has plenty left to say. Here’s hoping the producers find a way to, as the fans on Twitter put it, #SaveLodge49.

4. Vida (Starz)

In its short first season, creator Tanya Saracho’s Vida assembled all the elements of a great half-hour drama. Mishel Prada and Melissa Berrera shined as Mexican-American sisters who come home to LA after the death of their inscrutable mom, Vida—only to learn that the building and bar she owned are on the verge of foreclosure. It also turns out that Vida, whose homophobia destroyed her relationship with Prada’s sexually fluid Emma, had married a woman. Meanwhile, their angry teenage neighbor Mari (Chelsea Rendon) raged against gentrification. These storylines coalesced to electrifying effect in this year’s second season, testing the sisters’ tense bond as they found themselves in the crosshairs of activists who saw their desperate efforts to save the family business as acts of treachery from two stuck-up “whitinas.” Thanks largely to the talented Latinx writers and directors Saracho enlisted for the project, Vida brings lived-in nuance to issues like class, colorism and desire—yielding one of TV’s smartest and sexiest shows.

3. Succession (HBO)

Right-wing tycoons and their adult children have gotten plenty of attention in the past few years—most of it negative. So why would anyone voluntarily watch a show in which the nightmare offspring of a Mudoch-like media titan (Brian Cox) compete to become his successor? A rational argument for all the goodwill around Succession might point out the crude poetry of its dialogue (from creator Jesse Armstrong, a longtime Armando Iannucci collaborator), the fearlessness of its cast (give Jeremy Strong an Emmy just for Kendall’s rap) and the knife-twisting accuracy of this season’s digital-media satire (R.I.P. Vaulter). But on a more primal level, one informed by the increasingly rare experience of watching episodes set Twitter ablaze as they aired, I think we’re also getting a collective thrill out of a series that confirms our darkest assumptions about people who thirst for money and power. It’s a catharsis we may well deserve.

2. Russian Doll (Netflix)

To observe that there was a built-in audience for a show created by Natasha Lyonne, Amy Poehler and Leslye Headland in which Lyonne starred as a hard-partying New York City cynic might’ve been the understatement of the year. But even those of us who bought into Russian Doll from the beginning could never have predicted such a resounding triumph. In a story built like the titular nesting doll, Lyonne’s Nadia Vulvokov dies in a freak accident on the night of her 36th birthday. The twist is, instead of moving on to the afterlife or the grave, she finds herself back where she started the evening, at a party in her honor. Nadia is condemned to repeat this cycle of death and rebirth until she levels up in self-knowledge—a process that entails many cigarettes, lots of vintage East Village grit and a not-so-chance encounter with a fellow traveler. Stir in a warm, wry tone and a message of mutual aid, and you’ve got the best new TV show of 2019.

1. Fleabag (Amazon)

Fleabag began its run, in 2016, as a six-episode black comedy about a scornful, neurotic, hypersexual young woman caught in a self-destructive holding pattern of her own making. The premise didn’t immediately distinguish creator and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge as all that different from peers like Lena Dunham, Aziz Ansari and Donald Glover. But the British show’s execution was sharp, funny and daring enough to make it a cult hit on both sides of the Atlantic—and to anoint Waller-Bridge as TV’s next big thing. She went on to helm the exhilarating first season of Killing Eve, giving this year’s second and final season of Fleabag time to percolate. It returned as a more mature but, thankfully, no less audacious show, matching Waller-Bridge’s somewhat reformed Fleabag with an impossible love interest known to fans as the Hot Priest (Andrew Scott). The relationship offered a path to forgiveness for the kind of character most millennial cris de coeur have been content to leave hanging. By allowing Fleabag a measure of grace without sacrificing her life-giving vulgarity, Waller-Bridge conjured the realistic vision of redemption that has so far eluded her contemporaries—and closed out the 2010s with the decade’s single greatest season of comedy.

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes

sensedill1-blog · 5 years

Text

Yelp Elite Are Becoming Obsolete

“I was thinking of giving this place five stars, but I’m kind of teetering on five stars or one star,” says South Park’s Eric Cartman, surrounded by half-eaten plates of food in a 2015 episode. Visibly concerned about an impending online review, a manager asks what he can do to help. “I mean, I can probably be persuaded with free desserts,” Cartman replies.

Titled “You’re Not Yelping,” the episode centers on Cartman using his status as an “Elite” Yelper to extort free food from restaurants. One of the top user-generated review sites, particularly in the U.S., Yelp hosts recommendations for everything from plumbers to tattoo shops, but it’s arguably most well-known for its restaurant reviews. In order to be considered a Yelp “Elite,” a subgroup launched in 2005, users must be recognized by the Yelp mothership for “well-written reviews, high quality tips, a detailed personal profile, an active voting and complimenting record, and a history of playing well with others.” Yelp’s website says it considers its Elite members “the true heart of the Yelp community, both on and offline.”

Many restaurant owners and others in the hospitality industry see it otherwise. The late Anthony Bourdain said in a 2017 interview, “There’s really no worse, or lower human being than an Elite Yelper,” declaring them “universally loathed by chefs everywhere.” For years, restaurateurs and chefs have waged war against petty reviewers who hit them with one-star reviews for offenses ranging from refusing to serve them any more alcohol to not offering takeout, and numerous internet complaints suggest that pay-for-play ploys like Cartman’s were a semi-frequent IRL occurrence at restaurants across the country.

Where the media was once obsessed with Yelpers, that attention has largely shifted to Instagram influencers.

And it’s a well-established fact that, like it or not, Yelp ratings can have an outsized impact on a restaurant’s business. During (arguably) Yelp’s cultural peak in 2011, one study showed that independent restaurants who see a one-star bump in their Yelp rating also see a significant jump in revenue, and in 2012, a study emerged indicating that even just a half-star increase means a restaurant is much more likely to be full at peak dining hours.

But over the past few years, a new, even-thirstier-for-attention internet archetype has emerged: the Instagram influencer. Where the media was once obsessed with the sometimes-bad behavior of Yelpers, that attention has now largely shifted to Instagram influencers. The power of said influencers is undeniable: Restaurants often partner directly with them to get more butts in seats, giving rise to the marketing strategy of simply “going viral” — or at least attempting to — with stunt-y foods like birthday cake croissants and obnoxiously over-garnished milkshakes. And just like Elite Yelpers, Instagram influencers are facing similar backlash: Using the same language that once defined restaurants’ relationships with Yelp, some have proclaimed influencers the newest blight on the industry.

So does the rise of the Instagram influencer — both in their inescapable allure to marketers, and the inevitable resentment that goes along with that surge in popularity — signal that Yelp Elite is going obsolete?

Restaurants and Yelpers haven’t always been at odds. Based on the concept of asking friends for recommendations, Yelp was founded in 2004, and by 2006, it was attracting one million users a month and had a database of more than 100,000 user-generated reviews. The site (and the app, which launched in 2008) would forever change the way business owners and customers interacted with one another, giving diners the ability to give restaurants the kind of honest, specific feedback that had previously been relegated to comment cards — except now in a very public forum.

In that sense, Yelp was initially something of a populist victory, giving regular people the perceived ability to wield, to a certain extent, the power formerly only held by professional critics and other press. In 2008, the New York Times wrote about how Yelp’s surging popularity was helping small businesses draw in customers by turbocharging the speed and reach of peer-to-peer recommendations. The story also noted how, two years in, the relationship between users and business owners was already turning transactional: After a moving company damaged a customer’s furniture, its owner told the Times, “[The customer] wrote a one-star review. I called her. We fully replaced it. And then she upgraded me from a one star to a five-star.”

Within the Yelp community, the Yelp Elite Squad is a particularly enthusiastic and active group. Many Elite users have thousands of reviews under their belts: A 2014 analysis by Stanford University students found that Elite members, on average, wrote nearly eight times as many reviews as regular Yelp users. “Elite are role-model Yelpers who embody the spirit of Yelp — both online and off — and write useful, funny and cool reviews,” says Yelp PR manager Brenae Leary. According to the company, decisions about who ultimately gains the title are made by a group of Yelp staffers mysteriously referred to as the Elite Council.

For Elite Yelpers, perks include invitations to events ranging from yoga classes and ice-skating to VR gaming and concerts, but frequently include free lunches, dinners, or happy hours at both new and established restaurants. There’s also a less tangible benefit in the form of “Elite badges,” which appear next to users’ names on the site, and, like the blue “verified” checkmark on Twitter, grant a certain amount of authority. For some, the appeal of producing free content for a $3 billion company was the belief that they could help shape the narrative of a business; that their opinions mattered and were influential; that after writing hundreds of reviews and weighing those experiences against each other, their authority was indeed earned.

And that influence wasn’t all in their heads: A 2011 Bloomberg Businessweek story called Yelp Elites “a motley crew of tastemakers” bearing “the power to build up businesses — and take them down.” It noted that a select few Elite members were able to parlay their reviewer status into real jobs, including a travel writing gig at a San Francisco newspaper and a guest-judging appearance on Gordon Ramsay’s cooking competition show Hell’s Kitchen.

But a problem emerged in how some Yelpers wield their perceived sense of clout. Reports surfaced of Elites cutting in line at events and writing reviews laced with a heavy sense of entitlement. Businesses grew frustrated at the perceived lack of accountability, or expertise, by the people judging them: In 2014, Momofuku head honcho David Chang vented his Yelp frustrations to FiveThirtyEight, saying that, “For the most part, no chef is going to take a Yelper’s review seriously” because “most of the Yelp reviews are wrong.” In 2011, a Yelp community manager in NYC penned a lengthy letter to local Elites, scolding them for degenerate feeding frenzies at restaurants and offering a stern etiquette reminder. “Occasionally some members of the Elite Squad at meals can be likened to an Animal Planet feeding frenzy, as certain people descend on appetizers as though they have not eaten in weeks,” the letter read, before continuing, “(We know you’ve eaten lately, as in all likelihood, it was your stellar review of your last dining experience that finally got you into the Elite Squad.)”

But the true nadir of entitled Yelper behavior may have come in 2013, when a short-lived, unaffiliated startup called ReviewerCard offered Yelp and TripAdvisor reviewers fancy black cards to identify themselves to business owners as reviewers. The card’s purported purpose was to ensure holders better service by telling business owners up front, “I write reviews.” Many were outraged by the concept, pointing to ReviewerCard as “what happens when Yelp goes to your head” and positing it as simply a way for Yelpers to extort restaurants even more aggressively. As its founder Brad Newman told the LA Times, writing Yelp reviews could be leveraged into VIP treatment: “If that French waiter had known at the beginning that I write a lot of reviews, he’d have treated me like Brad Pitt.”

Instagram launched in 2010; by 2013, had 100 million monthly active users. And like Yelp, its stratospheric rise was reliant on a certain type of content creator with self-bestowed authority: the influencer. Influencers cultivate their clout differently: Unlike Yelp, where diners typically search for a particular restaurant or type of cuisine and then read reviews to pick a restaurant, on Instagram, users choose to follow the people they deem as authorities on a given topic.

For some restaurant owners, users curating influencers into their feeds came to represent a system with more accountability: Influencers amass large followings by establishing credibility with their audience, who come to rely on them for high-quality content, including bright, eye-catching food photos, accompanied by captions that might offer recommendations. Where Yelp Elite users are rewarded by the site simply for the quantity (and, to a lesser extent, the “quality”) of their reviews, the Instagram influencer needs to constantly hustle to promote their own content, usually to the restaurant’s benefit.

“Yelp is such a negative platform — it’s like Twitter, a negative, vile place where everyone argues,” says Chris Coombs, chef-owner of Boston steakhouse Boston Chops. Yelp, of course, tends to open up restaurants to more criticism, as users are actually writing “reviews” of their dining experience; on Instagram, coverage is usually in the form of a single moment, captured in a snapshot. “Instagram is a positive place,” Coombs says.

Indeed, restaurants are going to great lengths to market themselves to Instagram users. The newest Boston Chops location that opened last May is home to a so-called “Instagram table.” Outfitted with a customizable lighting system that’s controlled by an iPhone, it gives diners the ability to perfectly light their shots in a restaurant that’s severely lacking in natural light.

According to some professionals, focusing on Instagrammers is a much better investment for restaurants. In 2016, NYC restaurant Springbone Kitchen estimated that posts by Instagram influencers were responsible for five percent of its new customers each day, on average. A recent study shows that influencer marketing is the fastest-growing online method of acquiring new customers, beating out organic search (e.g. Googling something), paid search (the ads that show up in said Google results), and email marketing (the reason you’re constantly clicking “unsubscribe” links).

Jenna Ramirez, influencer marketing manager for PR firm Bread + Butter, says she doesn’t typically encourage her clients to host Yelp Elite events as part of their influencer marketing strategy unless the business owner suggests it themselves. “For a restaurant that provides high-ticket food items, giving out all that free food [at a Yelp Elite event] is something they may be more hesitant about,” Ramirez says, pointing out that Yelpers are not permitted to leave reviews on a restaurant’s main Yelp page based on an experience they had at a free Yelp Elite event; that would violate Yelp’s official policy against users leaving reviews in exchange for free goods or services. Instead, reviews from Yelp Elite events go on a separate private event page that typically can’t be found unless someone specifically looks for it. Put simply, hosting a Yelp Elite event does nothing to directly boost a restaurant’s star rating, that all-important metric that can have a significant impact on revenue and traffic.

“Yelp is such a negative platform. Instagram is a positive place.”

That’s playing out accordingly when it comes to where restaurants spend their marketing dollars. According to a 2015 survey of marketing professionals, businesses were on average making $6.50 for every dollar they spent on influencer marketing, a number that’s certainly only increased in the years since — making it a very attractive place for restaurants and PR firms to thrust free food (and, in many cases, wads of cold-hard cash). Creating a welcoming environment for influencers, in theory, allows restaurant owners to better control the end result. “[Yelp is] still a great place to learn about how people perceive your restaurant and their dining experience, but the issue it is really anyone can go on there and write anything they want about any place at any time, whether they’ve been there or not,” says Coombs. “With Instagram, if you’re posting about your dinner, you’re showing you were actually at that restaurant… [and] if an influencer has a bad meal somewhere, they typically just won’t post about it.”

Nonetheless, some successful and established brands do still host Yelp Elite events: In mid-2017, several months after David Chang’s then-10-year-old Momofuku Ssam Bar closed for a brief revamp and reopened with a new menu and updated interior, it hosted a dinner for Yelp Elites, clear evidence that Chang’s formerly adversarial relationship with the site had shifted dramatically. When Cereal Milk purveyor Milk Bar expanded to LA last year, the bakery threw an Elite event where Christina Tosi showed Yelpers how to make cake truffles. (Momofuku does not comment on its marketing strategies.)

Jinya Ramen Bar, which originated in Tokyo and now has 20-plus locations across the U.S., hosted two Yelp Elite events last year with mixed results. According to Jinya’s VP of marketing Ingrid Martinez, a Yelp Elite happy hour for an 8-year-old spinoff restaurant, the more upscale Robata Jinya, did result in a noticeable increase in customers, but a Yelp Elite dinner hosted at one of its new fast-casual Jinya locations didn’t make much of an impact.

Jinya also works with Instagram influencers, but Martinez notes there are potential pitfalls there, too. “Anyone can be an influencer nowadays,” she points out. “For [Jinya] to consider working with you, you have to have a certain amount of followers, but it’s not just the number of followers — it’s the interaction you have with your followers. A lot of people buy followers, so you don’t necessarily know if they’re paying for them or if it’s real engagement.” Indeed, buying fake followers is a common practice in the influencer world (even amongst bona fide celebrities), and some brands have begun cracking down on the practice. Conversely (and strangely), wannabe influencers posting fake sponsored content to boost their street cred has also emerged in the Instagram sphere, pointing to influencer culture’s tight grasp on society.

Over time, many restaurateurs came to resent Yelpers even as they still begrudgingly recognized their influence; now, it seems some business owners (and the general public) are beginning to sour on Instagram influencers even as they continue to rely on them. Media outlets that used to cover Yelp’s big impact on the restaurant industry and later, the resulting backlash to said impact, pivoted to writing about the rise of Instagram influencer culture — and now, how they’re ruining everything from luxury hotels and restaurants to, more broadly, travel and food in general.

It’s unclear whether the actual number of Yelp Elite members or frequency of Elite events has waned in recent years, as Yelp does not disclose such information. Sarah S., a Yelp user from Chicago who has maintained Elite status for 10 years straight, says she hasn’t noticed a decline in user interest in the Elite program or in the number of Elite events in recent years. “I think positive reviews on Yelp have a much greater long-term effect for local businesses,” she says. “Instagram is fleeting with a photo being ‘popular’ for a day, then it’s gone from the feed.”

Though she also has an Instagram account where she posts pictures of food, Sarah says she continues to use Yelp because she finds the format is more conducive to writing comprehensive reviews, versus just a photo and a quick caption.

Instagram may provide users more opportunity to wield real influence (and earn cold-hard cash), but building a following requires a considerable amount of time and know-how. “I didn’t know Yelp Elite was still a thing,” says @foodbitch, an anonymous Instagram influencer with 32,000 followers who also works in marketing and brand strategy. They note that while just about anyone can write a lot of Yelp reviews, becoming an Instagram influencer is considerably more difficult. “On Instagram, people have to notice you, people have to like you and follow you and share your stuff for you to stand out enough to get noticed and invited to restaurants [for free meals]. So it’s a much slower process for people to become Instagram-famous.”

What’s less clear is just how long businesses (and consumers) will look to digital influencers — be they Yelpers, Instagrammers, bloggers, or occupants of some other yet-to-emerge platform — for advice on where to eat, when those recommendations are so often accompanied by entitled behavior and just maybe, informed by a meal they didn’t even pay for.

Whitney Filloon is Eater’s senior associate editor. Zoë van Dijk is a freelance illustrator living and working in Brooklyn. Editor: Erin DeJesus

Eater.com

The freshest news from the food world every day

By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and European users agree to the data transfer policy.

Source: https://www.eater.com/2019/2/7/18214520/instagram-influencers-yelp-elite-online-restaurant-reviews

0 notes

poetryofchrist · 5 years

Text

Biblical Studies Carnival 156 February 2019

Welcome to the 156th Biblical Studies Carnival February 2019 - The Lego Edition

TNK/OT

Posts this month heralded a new English translation of the Old Testament announced by the Jewish Telegraphic Society some months ago and in Carnival 153.

Deane Galbraith of Remnants of Giants notes Two New Misprinted Bibles.

when the authorities became aware of the error, most copies of the Wicked Bible were destroyed. Only a few copies survived, and these have become valuable collectors’ items.

Several reviewers from the Jewish Review of Books held a symposium on the Alter translation.

Alter’s Hebrew Bible is the only single-author translation by someone who has spent a lifetime studying literary artistry in both Hebrew and English. This is not to say that it is, or could be, beyond criticism.

Robert Alter wrote a short introduction in Ancient Near East Today.

The first might be described as strictly literary, which is to say, an attempt to find workable English equivalents for the cadences, the expressive syntax, the sound play, the thematic shaping of narrative through strategic word choice, and much else in the Hebrew. The other impetus is an effort to render faithfully the semantic force of the Hebrew words.

The apogee of classical form, all of them with shield and helmet (Ezekiel 38:5)

Bob MacDonald (your host) reviewed the reviewers in a series of posts: Has translation of the Bible into English reached its apogee?

Discussion of Alter's translations are not new in the blogosphere. Here is an early mention in the archives of the NY Times from 1996.

Also a post estimating how long it takes to translate the First Testament.

Goldingay reports that translating the First Testament consumed an hour of his time daily for five years. (7 days a week?) That would be 7*50*5 = 1750 hours. ... My estimate of what pace I could keep by the end of the project was 10 verses per hour. That would be 2,320 hours. From June 2015, I scheduled 4 hours a day 5 days a week 45 weeks of the year = 900 hours a year or about 3150 hours to November 2018.

James Davila posts about an article and responses on Alter's Bible.

To call it the best solo English Bible is, given the competition, not saying much. But one is also tempted to call it the best modern English Bible, period—a judgment with which Alter appears to agree.

Goldingay's First Testament is reviewed here.

The section titles in the FT are fantastic and funny, creative and clever. For example, “How David acquired his grandfather” for Ruth 4:11-22; “How to be the bad guy” for 2 Kings 21:1-12; “Let me tell you a story” for Proverbs 7:1-20. ...the FT forces me to think creatively about how to communicate biblical terms in ways people can more easily comprehend.

Sarah O'Connor via Marg Mowczko on Numbers 5:11ff.

In a world dominated by men, where a man’s honor was often valued above a woman’s life, the Bible stands out in its protection of women. Remember that the next time you read Numbers. If you ever do, I mean.

Marg Mowczko on the household codes.

The so-called household codes in Ephesians chapters 5-6 and Colossians chapters 3-4 are often used to support the idea of “gender roles.” These gender roles usually boil down to “the submission of all women to male-only authority.” But these codes were not primarily about gender roles or even gender. They were about power.

Rachel Barenblatt ponders the light of the world on parashah tetzaveh.

אמּת suitable for ages 4+ includes tool set and box

The Hasidic master known as the Sfat Emet reads this verse in a beautiful way. First he notes the verse from Proverbs, "The candle of God is the soul of a human being." When we are in dark places, we light a candle to help us see.

James McGrath ponders what is in the Bible (or not) considering translation or paraphrase.

“If you oppress poor people, you insult the God who made them; but kindness shown to the poor is an act of worship.”

Via James Davila, a usage history of Goy.

... a careful tracing of “the genealogy of the goy, from the Hebrew Bible [where “Israel is one goy among many”] to the rabbis and church fathers of the second and third centuries” of the Common Era ...

And again on Ethnic and Cultural Identities in the Rabbinic Goy Discourse.

...the authors offer a most insightful analysis of Paul’s motivations, arguing that the creation of a new model of equal membership of Jews and others within the ekklesia required a new binary language, which would obliterate any particular ethnic identities, and at the same time maintain the separate identity of the gentile qua gentile in the messianic age.

And moving on to Ki Tissa, a question raised about the legitimacy of sacrifice on Mt Carmel.

Clearly, in Elijah’s perception, Yahwistic altars such as the one that he repaired on Mount Carmel were not only legitimate, but their destruction represented an affront to YHWH, indeed a tangible expression of the people’s abandonment of their covenant with YHWH. The contrast between such a perception and the Deuteronomic law reflected in the Book of Kings itself that proscribes sacrificial worship outside of the Jerusalem temple could hardly be greater!

Rachel Adelman writes on atoning for the golden calf with the Kapporet.

Atop the kappōret, the ark’s cover, sat the golden cherubim, which framed the empty space (tokh) where God would speak with Moses. Drawing on the connection between the word kappōret and the root כ.פ.ר (“atone”), and noting how the golden calf episode interrupts the Tabernacle account, the rabbis suggest that the ark cover served as a means of atoning for the Israelites’ collective sin.

Henry Neufeld considers Hezekiah's horrible prayer.

... in 2 Kings 21 we see Manasseh, generally considered the worst king of Judah, took the throne at 12 years of age on the death of his father. His birth would have occurred in those 15 years added to Hezekiah’s life.

and follows up with a counter interpretation from Brevard Childs.

Ackroyd (“An Interpretation of the Babylonian Exile,” Studies, 157ff.) has mounted a persuasive case against interpreting it as a smug response that the judgment will not personally affect him. Rather, it is an acceptance of the divine will in which Isaiah’s form of the response (39:8) emphasizes the certainty of divine blessing at least in his lifetime.

Andrew Perriman rethinks the identity of the servant.

Philip proclaims the crucified and resurrected Jesus as Israel’s Lord and Christ, no doubt drawing out the theological significance of the extraordinary turn of events through the analogy with—but not identification with—Isaiah’s portrayal of Israel as a suffering servant.

And he has a follow-up here.

as things stand, we have to reckon, both historically and canonically, with its current location. It’s an integral part of the story of the exile and the return from exile.

Deane Galbraith argues against the class prejudice of scholars about Tobit.

The class characteristics of the Tobit family are frequently missed by commentators, despite many indications of their wealth and status.

New and Old together

NT Julia Blum relates issues about Sabbath observance in Matthew.

The gospels are the only first century source that we have, where healing is permitted and performed on Shabbat. Jesus advocates – perhaps even establishes – the same approach that later, slightly modified, will become normative in Rabbinic Judaism.

Also on the parables.

For instance, we find a parable similar to Jesus’ Parable of the Lost Coin in a Jewish commentary on the Song of Songs—Song of Songs Rabbah. Remarkably, here the parable itself is likened to the Lost Coin. “The matter is like a king who lost a coin or a precious pearl in his house. He will find it by the light of a penny-worth wick. Likewise, do not let the parable appear of little worth to you: through the parable, a man can stand on the words of Torah.

Via Brian Small on FB, Report of a symposium on Hays Echos. Response by Rafael Rodriquez, and reply from Richard Hays (more to come in March).

[T]his is a book that offers an account of the narrative representation of Israel, Jesus, and the church in the canonical Gospels, with particular attention to the ways in which the four Evangelists reread Israel’s Scripture—as well as the ways in which Israel’s Scripture prefigures and illuminates the central character in the Gospel stories.

Second response by Eric Barreto and reply from Hays.

...the significance of the New Testament is not to be found on a single literary or historical layer; instead, the Gospels and Paul alike are palimpsests of interpretive activity.

Who will go up for us?

... the chief point of coherence that lies at the center of my [Hays] argument: namely, the christological coherence of the Gospel narratives, all four of which in their distinctive ways proclaim the identity of Jesus as the definitive embodiment of Israel’s God. This was a deeply scandalous claim within the world of ancient Judaism, and it is a point on which the four Gospels converge and agree.

The third tangential response is also available, the fourth still to come in April. A technical note on pre-existence from Larry Hurtado.

final things are first things ... it was a short (but remarkable) step from belief in Jesus’ eschatological significance to belief in his pre-existence, and likely required very little time to make that step.

He also examines the Christological idea that Jesus was considered angelic noting much detail on the last 120 years of thinking on this subject.

The simple fact is that earliest Jesus-followers had a rich body of angel-speculations available to them and were convinced of the reality of angels, but they never referred to Jesus as an angel (to judge from the NT texts).

Ian Paul asks about sexual boundaries and gospel freedom.

Instead of questioning the meaning of scriptural passages, the bishop appeals to ‘other sources of authority such as reason, scientific evidence and in serious dialogue with other disciplines’. This is not crude rationalistic liberalism, however, as an important step in his argument is that he sets out a biblical justification as to why scripture itself mandates us to go beyond it.

Ian also writes on the miraculous catch of fish (lectionary for February 5th).

We will see the metaphorical boat of the early church filled almost to sinking throughout Acts, as on several occasions thousands come to faith in Jesus at a time, and the structural nets of leadership need expanding and reconsidering, not least when the ‘gentile mission’ takes off under Paul’s ministry.

Bosco Peters has an opinion on these fishy tales too.

In last Sunday’s Gospel reading (Luke 5:1-11), fish were perfectly happy, swimming their happy fishy life, and then they are caught in half-cleaned nets, dragged to the shore and left, dead and dying, on abandoned boats in the late afternoon heat. And Jesus seems to say: “follow me – what we did to those fish, that’s what we are going to do to people”!

Airtonyo points to a chapter of Class Struggle in the New Testament available online.

It is not uncommon to find unchecked entrepreneurial assumptions influencing the interpretation of the New Testament world, not only in the popular press but even within the discourse of biblical studies. ... the retrojection of entrepreneurialism demonstrates just how totalizing neoliberal capitalism has become as an implicit hermeneutical frame—a way of seeing and structuring the entire world—in every field and period of human knowledge.

Phillip Long continues his posts on the New Testament, with daily sequential posts on The Acts of the Apostles, e.g. Gamaliel:

Gamaliel urges careful deliberation before acting. ... Why does Gamaliel give this advice to the Council? Is this, as Dunn says, simply “shrewd politics”? Or is there more to this story?

What were they praying for when Peter appeared?

... if they were praying for his release, then their response to Peter’s escape from prison is unusual.

and Herod Agrippa (I)

Agrippa is therefore demonstrating his piousness by pursuing the leaders of the Christian community.

Via FB, James McGrath points out a Zondervan online course with an introduction to Who wrote the Book of Acts.

Together with the Gospel of Luke and the Letter to the Hebrews, the book of Acts contains some of the most cultured Greek writing in the New Testament. On the other hand, roughness of Greek style turns up where Luke appears to be following Semitic sources or imitating the Septuagint.

Wayne Coppins ponders Angelika Reichert pondering the I in Romans 7.

Consequently, it appears sensible to modify how the question is posed, i.e. instead of the question of the meaning of the positive statements about the “I”, to place the question of their function in the flow of vv. 14-23 in the foreground.

James Tabor has a two part post on the 6 greatest ideas in the writings of Paul.

Helmet, repaired in the very place of its failure in its classical form

/from part 1/... putting “justification by faith” at the center of Paul’s thought throws everything off balance. ... the New Testament gospels are essentially Pauline documents, with underlying elements of the earlier Jesus tradition. .../from part 2/ he, as a Suffering Servant, along with Christ, would also pour out his blood as an offering, and thus “fill up what is lacking in Christ’s suffering”

Ken Schenck has posted a 10 part series on Leadership beginning with Corinth.

At some point around AD49, a Christian couple arrived at the city of Corinth named Priscilla and Aquila. I put the wife's name first because the New Testament typically puts her name first when it is referring to their ministry together. This fact suggests that she generally took the lead in ministry between the two.

Christopher Scott explores soteriology.

For an entire semester we talked about elements of salvation, biblical views on what it means to be saved, historical interpretations of salvation, as well as people that have tried to make salvation something other than what the Bible describes it as.

Airtonyo quotes Moltmann on fundamentalism

O documento divino da revelação não pode estar sujeito à interpretação humana mas, ao contrário, a interpretação humana deve estar sujeita ao documento divino da revelação.

Claude Mariottini posts his fifth study on the explore God Chicago 2019 series. "Is Jesus really God?"

... the writers of the New Testament, as they tried to identify the one who died on the cross and the one who overcame the grave, concluded that the one whom they called “the Christ,” was fully human and fully God.

Larry Hurtado notes the usage of the phrase son of God in early Christian writings.

So, it’s clear that the NT authors vary in their use of the expression “son of God”, with no clear pattern readily apparent to me. The authors of GJohn and 1 John easily out-distance other NT texts in usage of the phrase, and in the confessional significance attached to it.

James McGrath posts on the doctrine of personal infallibility citing Lars Cade.

Many Christians think something like this: “The Bible is True. I believe the Bible. Therefore, everything I believe is true.” This also applies to the morality of actions they may take or motives they may have (see: defending the separation of families by quoting Romans 13). With such a mentality, it simply does not occur to people that they may be wrong.

Peter Gurry examines the textual problems with Hebrews 11:11.

Thus, in one single verse, we must judge between ‘longer’ and ‘shorter’ texts, and not make a fetish of either. There is no royal road or short cut in these matters.

Other notes Via ETC via Paleojudaica among a clutch of debunkings, Is codex sinaiticus a fake? Short answer, No.

Obviously, the two sets of images were not taken to the level of precision that Daniels’ theory needs. If they were, we would see no difference in colour at all, because those two versions of yellow that you see in this image are the exact same colour in real life.

Also via James Davila, Dating Biblical Texts to the Persian Period.

By grappling with these questions, the essays in this volume evince a greater degree of precision vis-a-vis dating and historical context.

James McGrath interviews Pete Enns about his book How the Bible actually works. Larry Hurtado points out two new books from Jörg Frey,

One of the most productive NT scholars today is Professor Jörg Frey (University of Zurich), and so it is very good news to have a couple of his major works now available in English.

and on the marginalia review of books, has a review of Paula Fredriksen’s When Christians were Jews.

I have attempted to reimagine the stages by which the earliest Jesus-community would have first come together again, after the crucifixion. To understand how and why, despite the difficulties, these first followers of Jesus would have resettled in Jerusalem. To reconstruct the steps by which they became in some sense the center of a movement that was already fracturing bitterly within two decades of its founder’s death. To see how the seriatim waves of expectation, disappointment, and fresh interpretation would have sustained this astonishing assembly in the long decades framed by Pilate’s troops in 30 and Titus’s in 70.

Phillip Long reviews Douglas Mangum and Josh Westbury, eds. Linguistics & Biblical Exegesis

The second volume of the Lexham Methods series surveys the often difficult field of linguistics. Since the essays in this volume are all aimed at students who are doing exegesis of the whole Bible, examples are given for both the Old and New Testaments.

Amy Erikson reviews the five scrolls. Table of Contents and list of authors is here.

... there are contributions from six scholars working in South Africa, several from the United States, two from scholars based in China, and two based in Australia. ... The volume also contains essays by scholars from Israel, Argentina, and the Netherlands. The result is an eclectic collection of fresh readings that explores not only how a reader’s context might influence one’s reading of the text but also how the Bible might enrich a reader’s understanding of his or her context.

James Pate reviews George MacDonald in the Age of Miracles.

"Imagine Sheldon Cooper in the pulpit, only with the desire to be a poet."

James Davila points to a review by Yitz Landes of The Origins of Midrash.

for much of antiquity, including during the early rabbinic period, the Semitic root d.r.sh referred to teaching—textual or otherwise. Mandel thus overturns the consensus understanding that early uses of the root d.r.sh refer to textual interpretation, and that only later was the root expanded to encompass teaching more generally.

James Hanson reviews According to the Scriptures.

If all you know is the New Testament, you do not know the New Testament” - so the late New Testament scholar Martin Hengel is reputed to have said... Allen has done a great service by compiling a truly comprehensive bibliography on the question of the Jewish Scriptures in the New Testament, both in general and specifically in relation to Jesus’s death.

April DeConick speaks about silenced voices in religion. Kings of Israel - Todd Bolen links to a board game.

If the players are able to build enough altars before the game ends, they win. If the game ends by either the team running out of sin cubes or idols, or by Assyria destroying Israel, the prophets lose.

A conversation from Michael Langlois: Campus Protestant m’a demandé comment l’archéologie éclaire la Bible. A note on the Hebrew language from Autumn Light.

So next time you hear Murphy’s Law— If anything can go wrong—it will. remember Goldberg’s Corollary: If anything can go wrong—God forbid—it won’t.

Also from Jonathan Orr-Stav, an answer to a question about ס and פ as parashot markers.

The division into parashot is usually to indicate a contextual change, so there isn’t a consistency in the size or number of verses involved. In the case of the Ten Commandments, for example, each commandment is a parashah in its own right—presumably to underline its importance.

Jim Davila and Drew Longacre both note a new book: The Masora on Scripture and its Methods.

The ancient manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible contain thousands of Masora comments of two types: Masora Magna and Masora Prava. How does this complex defense mechanism, which contains counting of words and combinations from the Bible, work?

Again via Jim Davila, a new trilingual inscription found near the tomb of Darius the Great.

the most famous trilingual inscription from Iran is the Behistun inscription, which (rather like the Rosetta Stone for Egyptian) was key to the decipherment of Akkadian.

Via Ekaterini G. Tsalampouni an article on the pomegranate from ASOR.

The pomegranate is attested in ancient Elam during the 4th millennium BCE, and then spread to the rest of the Near East, with the original shrub (Punica protopunica L.) reaching Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Syria, and Palestine by the end of the 3rd millennium. Sumerians appear to have been involved in domestication of the pomegranate (Punica granatum L.), and the fruit quickly became an important symbol.

Call for papers for Medicine in the Bible, Warsaw 2019.

Contributors should aim at offering a comparative perspective by keeping an eye on the embeddedness of medical discourses in their surrounding cultures( ancient Babylonian, Near Eastern, Graeco-Roman, Persian, Byzantine/Syriac or early Islamicate traditions). Such a perspective will allow for assessing Jewish and Talmudic medical knowledge within a broader history of ancient knowledge cultures and helps to determine their distinct epistemologies or particular Jewishness.

Conference announcement on the New Song

the meaning of the Bible's poetry as Jewish and Christian scripture in the 21st century - the difficulties (ambiguity, genre blending/bending, figurative language), the dynamics (poetry as experience relayed and as experience relived, theological explorations of form and content, prosody and parallelism), and the effects and demands on hearers and reading communities.

Liturgy redefines liturgy. Take your pick of three definitions,

[Liturgy] was in ancient Greece a public service established by the city-state whereby its richest members (whether citizens or resident aliens), more or less voluntarily, financed the State with their personal wealth.

Kurk Gayle announces a posthumous book by Suzanne McCarthy Valiant or Virtuous? Gender Bias in Bible Translation. Ian Paul remembers Michael Green. Vimoth Ramachandra reflects on grief. Jim Gordon speaks of loss. Future carnivals Please contact Phillip Long @plong42 to volunteer for a carnival. Note that June is currently open.

March 2019 (Due April 1) - Spencer Robinson, @spoiledmilks

April 2019 (Due May 1) - Christopher Scott

May 2019 (Due June 1) - Claude Mariottini, @DrMariottini

June 2019 (Due July 1) -

July 2019 (Due August 1) - Lindsay Kennedy, @digitalseminary

August 2019 (Due September 1) - Amateur Exegete, @amateurexegete

The dreaded bin of everlasting stor-age.

from Blogger https://ift.tt/2tIvfF9 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes

funnythingshere0-blog · 6 years

Text

The 100 Best Comedies of All Time

New Post has been published on https://funnythingshere.xyz/the-100-best-comedies-of-all-time/

The 100 Best Comedies of All Time

Of all Paste’s curated Best 100 lists, this one has probably been the toughest to put together. It’s not because there’s any shortage of great comedies out there—as a category, the film comedy has existed from pretty much the beginning. But while all lists, no matter how objective a scale one tries to apply, have some degree of subjectivity to them, few things are as subjective as humor. For some, slapstick and farce hit the spot while more cerebral fare falls flat. For others, deft character studies that find the humor in our all-too-human foibles are the only comedies worth watching. There are as many flavors of culturally specific comedy as there are cultural sensibilities (and, of course, there are plenty of folks capable of enjoying more than one type). Faced with this challenge, we’ve decided to approach this particular list in a manner that seeks to guarantee laughter and amusement for the people most likely to look to it when seeking something that will bring some joy to the daily grind. These films have been chosen (and ranked) based on how many laughs we think they are likely to generate for the modern audience. That, in turn, means a couple of things for what might otherwise be the usual suspects on a Best Comedies list.

First, it means some great films that are also comedies may appear lower on the list than they would if we were weighing technical execution of those non-comic elements equally with humor present. In some cases, that may mean just a spot or two lower on the list. More often, it’ll mean a more precipitous drop. Second, there are some films—and some comedic actors—whose importance to the development of the genre is unquestioned even as their appeal to modern audiences has waned due to changing times and tastes. Or perhaps, as with Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges, the type of humor they pioneered has been adopted and developed in iterations that have the end result of bumping them down or off the list. Finally, and related to the previous point, since this list does not weigh factors such as “cultural impact” or “pioneering importance” as heavily as it could, it inevitably skews more modern. This should not be seen as a slight (intended or unintended) against any director or movie. We appreciate those pioneers, but there are plenty of lists out there giving them their due.

Ultimately, it’s all about the laughs. Every film on this list should be a dependable source of grins, chuckles and guffaws. After all, life is hard, people can suck, misfortune may indeed lurk around every corner, and we all know how it ends. Let the films on this list—and the laughter they elicit—help balance the scales.

(Note: Because so much of the impact of foreign comedies relies on language, we’ve only included English language films on this list.)

Here are the 100 best (English language) comedies of all time:

100. Clerks (1994) Director: Kevin Smith

Sometimes a labor of love becomes something much bigger. When Kevin Smith spent $27,575 to film a black-and-white film about a slacker working at a Quick Stop, no one could imagine how much it would resonate. Filled with philosophical discussions on relationships, purpose and the relative innocence of construction workers on the Death Star, it established Smith as a unique voice for at least a corner of the slacker generation. Smith would return to the world of Dante, Randal, Jay and Silent Bob many times (and with modestly larger budgets), but it would never feel quite as a perfect as the original. —Josh Jackson

99. Waking Ned Devine (1998) Director: Kirk Jones

Waking Ned Devine may be the most feel-good heist flick ever made. Ned is an old-timer in a small Irish village who wins the lottery and dies from the shock of it. Two of his old-timer buddies, Jackie (Ian Bannen) and Michael (Fawlty Towers’ David Kelly), decide to scam the big-city lotto agent into thinking that one of them is Ned, alive and well. What ensues is not so much a con-artist caper but more an Irish celebration of community, camaraderie and the spirit of human generosity. Other Irish themes championed: whiskey, lush landscapes, poetry, naked old dudes riding motorcycles, whiskey and the fiddle. Did we mention whiskey? —Ryan Carey

98. This Is the End (2013) Directors: Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen

Too often, Hollywood comedies aimed at a male audience skew more towards the single-digit side of the age scale. Yet there’s a pretty potent distinction between puerile and “late-juvenile” humor. The former—all fart, poop and pratfall—is the stuff that the eye rolls of girlfriends and wives is made of (not to mention a good portion of Adam Sandler and Kevin James’ careers). But the latter, done right, is an equal opportunity amuser. (Oh, eyes may still roll, but they do so while laughing.) Fueled by a mercilessly self-skewering ensemble effort from its principles (Craig Robinson, Danny McBride and Jonah Hill round out the core cast), the humor of This Is the End goes turbo as soon as the End is near, providing scene after scene that is dependably funny and frequently riotous. In comedies especially, the “actors starring as themselves” approach is so often more painful than funny, especially when a brand-conscious star betrays an ego-tinged reluctance to make fun of oneself. The stars and bit players of This Is the End show no such inhibitions. (In fact, Michael Cera seems intent on presenting the worst—though still hilarious—version of himself possible.) If anything, this willingness to mock themselves makes the characters all the more endearing, especially as the initial bro-mance between principles Jay Baruchel and Seth Rogen reasserts itself amid flames, desperation and demon cocks. As over the top as many of its scenes are, it’s hard not to credit the apocalypse itself for This Is the End’s sustained hilarity. Though plenty of the film’s scenes possess an honed improv feel much like the extemporaneous riffing of Anchorman, they are also usually more focused—in terms of plotting, there’s so little time to waste when the end is nigh. —Michael Burgin

97. Elf (2003) Director: Jon Favreau

In a sense, making Christmas “funny” can be as easy as responding to something meant to be sincere and joyful with cynicism and darkness. Is there any comedic Christmas character that embodies a genuine love of Christmas? Thankfully, we have Will Ferrell’s fearlessly committed performance as the titular elf to answer this question with a resounding yes. Nothing represents Christmas cheer better than Will Ferrell in yellow tights, a green parka and cone-shaped cap. He wrings a ton of comedy out of responding to everything with wide-eyed, childlike wonder. Arguably our generation’s classic Christmas movie, watching Buddy the Elf makes you laugh, makes you smile and, to paraphrase from the Grinch, makes your heart grow three sizes bigger. Even if the movie devolves into a formulaic, race-against-the-clock flick in the last 30 minutes, its myriad gifts outweigh its problems. From endlessly quotable nuggets like “cotton-headed ninnymuggins”; the hysterical fruit spray scene; Zooey Deschanel showcasing her pre-She & Him singing chops; Mr. Narhwal and the arctic puppets (a band name if I ever heard one); to, finally, Ferrell’s infectious enthusiasm, Elf is instant holiday merriment. —Greg Smith & Jeremy Medina

96. 21 Jump Street (2012) Directors: Phil Lord, Chris Miller

Against all odds, 21 Jump Street—a movie based on a Fox television series remembered mainly for helping launch the career of Johnny Depp and briefly reminding the world that Dom DeLuise had a son—is an immensely enjoyable, frequently hilarious film. The premise is unchanged. Two youthful-looking (and since this is a comedy, spectacularly incompetent) police officers are assigned to a special division that places undercover agents in schools in an attempt to stop illegal activity. For officers Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum), fresh out of the academy, this is not so much an opportunity as a richly deserved exile. Their mission, as delivered by a purposefully prototypical Angry Black Police Captain (Ice Cube): Contain the spread of a dangerous new drug that has shown up at a local high school. For Jenko, the return to high school represents a return to his glory days. For Schmidt, it’s more of a return to the scene of a crime where the body outlined in chalk looks suspiciously like his own. Unlike so many comic remakes, reboots and long-delayed sequels, 21 Jump Street doesn’t overly rely on nostalgia to generate its laughs. Hill isn’t doing anything he hasn’t done before, but that doesn’t make his deadpan-acerbic delivery any less funny, especially alongside the earnest doofus-ness of his partner. Hill and Tatum are supported by a strong ensemble of recognizable faces, including Rob Riggle, Ellie Kemper and Chris Parnell. But though “ensemble piece” usually refers to cast and crew, 21 Jump Street is even more impressive when viewed as an ensemble of comedic approaches. There are laughs to suit all tastes—from sarcastic jibes to pratfalls, from pokes at film conventions (“I really thought that was going to explode.”) to exuberant, undeniably infectious, juvenile displays. And each is conveyed in a measure appropriate to its form. As a result, there’s just not much time spent watching 21 Jump Street without at least a smile on one’s face. —Michael Burgin

95. In the Loop (2009) Director: Armando Iannucci

If clever verbal humor were easy, we’d have more comedies like In the Loop from Veep and The Thick of It creator Armando Iannucci. But it’s not, and this one stands in a class of its own. It’s the most quotable film of the 2000s—by miles—and the cynical potty mouths on screen are so articulate and creative that, after the avalanche of witticisms, you’re left with the lingering sense that you’ve seen not just a funny movie but also a wicked political satire of the highest order, the kind where the absurdity speaks for itself. —Robert Davis

94. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) Director: Adam McKay

Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly go together like reconciliation and getting thrown out of Applebee’s. In one of the finest films directed by Adam McKay, the duo play race-car drivers in a loving send-up of NASCAR culture. Sacha Baron Cohen is perfect as Ferrell’s European foil Jean Girard, and the film is jam-packed with both sight gags (the live cougar in the race car) and brilliant dialogue (the prayer to eight-pound-six-ounce-newborn-infant Jesus). His sons Walker and Texas Ranger, the random appearance of Elvis Costello and Mos Def in Girard’s back yard, and Amy Adams recreating the Whitesnake video in the bar all provide Hall of Fame moments from the Judd Apatow canon. —Josh Jackson

93. What’s Up, Doc (1972) Director: Peter Bogdanovich

Half the pleasure of Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? is its velocity. The other half, of course, is its treasure trove of punchlines, but those punchlines aren’t merely delivered to us at rapid speed: They’re enhanced by it. A slower version of this film doesn’t work as well. The humor is predicated on overwhelming the audience with too much laughter, keeping us in fits of giggles without a chance to regain composure. The effect is additive, best exemplified in a scene where mischievous Judy (Barbra Streisand) accidentally orchestrates the combustion of Howard’s (Ryan O’Neal) hotel room. Rube Goldberg couldn’t invent a more roundabout means of setting a space on fire, much as the Coen brothers, or even Alfred Hitchcock, couldn’t come up with a “mistaken identity” plot this convoluted. What’s Up, Doc?’s habit of tying itself in knots is perhaps its greatest claim to fame, more so than its pronounced irreverence and fundamental bedlam. Comedies need not be straightforward. When occasion calls, they can be utterly labyrinthine. Bogdanovich effortlessly leads us through the maze, even as its many moving parts close in on each other and the story grows ever more madcap, culminating in a car chase that ends with everyone in court and Liam Dunn passed out on his desk. By the time the credits roll, you may be so out of breath that you’ll join him soon after. —Andy Crump

92. Girls Trip (2017) Director: Malcolm D. Lee

While it’s great to experience movies that are powerful and groundbreaking and devastating—we all love to weep at the theater or in our homes, wiping away tears as the credits roll on movies like Call Me By Your Name—but some of the best movies can be both well-written and unapologetically fun. And I’m not sure anybody had more fun this year than those of us who experienced Girls Trip. You go in likely expecting a solid, heartwarming tale about a group of friends who reconnect on a trip to New Orleans, but you leave wondering how you’d gone your whole life without experiencing this sort of black, female-centered version of The Hangover. It’s not just that Girls Trip, is so reminiscent of those raunchy, absurd (and kind of disgusting) comedies, it’s that the shocking, laugh-out-loud moments are so earned and so excellently delivered that it’s easy to forget there’s some kind of message wrapped up in it all. That’s a good thing, because it makes those final confrontations and confessions at the end of the film all the more compelling. Of course, what really made this movie one of the most beautiful and hilarious movies of the year was its cast, featuring performances from an incredible group of women with the kind of chemistry you dream of seeing on screen: Regina Hall, Tiffany Haddish, Jada Pinkett Smith and Queen Latifah all turned in phenomenal work. Haddish has been (rightfully) celebrated as the breakout star, but her comedic prowess could have been lost on a lesser script. Luckily, writers Tracy Oliver, Kenya Barris and Erica Rivinoja laid an impeccable foundation for director Malcolm D. Lee, and the result was one of the biggest blasts—among any genre—of the year. —Shannon M. Houston

91. The Jerk (1979) Director: Carl Reiner

From the first couple of lines, co-writer/star Steve Martin and director Carl Reiner establish how much they’re willing to sidestep any traditional narrative norm in favor of whatever joke pushes the limits of irreverence and extreme silliness. Here is the pale image of Steve Martin’s face, about to invite us into a melodramatic series of flashbacks concerning his character’s tragic life, and he begins the story with, “I was born a poor black child.” From there, whatever episodic shenanigans that Nevan—Martin’s ode to painfully self-unaware idiots everywhere—finds himself in, these plot points are used only as excuses to string together as many dumb jokes as possible. It’s hard to call The Jerk a parody, since it’s not necessarily lampooning a specific genre or a popular movie (Martin and Reiner left that to Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid and The Man with Two Brains), but its manic addiction to extract as many chuckles out of any random situation, pushing the boundaries of exaggeration and then pushing it some more, places its tone squarely into the Zucker, Abrams, Zucker camp, who were on their way to perfect that approach with Airplane at the time of The Jerk’s release. Just look at the scene where Nevan storms out of his house, taking random belongings out of spite. It reaches an extreme point of comedic exaggeration, and then pushes it even further, finding a spot beyond mere parody. —Oktay Ege Kozak

90. Napoleon Dynamite (2004) Director: Jared Hess

Napoleon Dynamite was never really intended to become a pop-cultural touchstone of the mid-2000s. Made for a shoestring budget of $400,000 (star Jon Heder was originally paid just $1,000 for his performance), this was just meant to be a quirky, indie awards show novelty, not a generator of countless memes and catchphrases that would persist in the high school lexicon for years to come. But as we all know, the film took on a life of its own and became a huge sleeper hit. This had the effect of making it far better known to general audiences, yes, but it simultaneously obscured a bit of the film’s brilliance in terms of its critical appraisal. Because with success and overexposure, came some level of derision. Napoleon Dynamite, its title character and its quotes were thrown around as shorthand for “dumb comedy,” but the truth of the film is a rather cutting satire of American unexceptionalism. Napoleon and the residents of his Idaho town are a uniquely pathetic lot, and Napoleon Dynamite is a comedy that dares to present an entire universe of ugly personalities, fragile egos and social ineptitude. The character of Uncle Rico alone, best captured in his endless, masturbatory, self-shot football videos, is someone who you might typically expect to appear in a tragedy rather than a comedy, so crushing is his characterization. Hell, the most popular kid in Napoleon’s school looks like a young Jake Busey, for God’s sake. The film’s unusual sense of Midwestern ennui may have been lost on some audiences, but it’s the element that makes Napoleon Dynamite more than just a Comedy Central weekend afternoon feature. —Jim Vorel

89. Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) Director: Robert Hamer

There’s nothing kind about familicide, but Robert Hamer improbably takes the subject of offing one’s family for revenge and personal gain and turns it into giddy black comedy bordering on the absurd. It helps that the victims of our spurned hero, Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price), are each played by Alec Guinness, wearing the guises of dukes, bishops, and suffragettes alike and posing in increasingly ridiculous scenarios, from boating mishaps to balloon accidents, as Louis exacts his vengeance on the family that ruined his life. His mother, you see, was the youngest daughter of the 7th Duke of Chalfont, until she married an opera singer and was promptly booted out of the clan for daring to find love from outside of her social strata; this single act of cruelty is the sole source of Louis’ misery in life, and so he finds reparation in death. You may, at first, balk at the notion of murder as comedy, but Kind Hearts and Coronets carries out its grim duties with such cheer that you surrender morality to Hamer’s comedy and guffaw at the film’s dry British wit and gallows humor. —Andy Crump

88. Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985) Director: Tim Burton

Tim Burton’s full-length directorial debut is also one of his best. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure brings us into the bizarro world of Pee-wee Herman, the excitable, ageless protagonist that’s hopelessly attached to his bike. After it’s stolen in broad daylight, we see Herman travel across the U.S. to reclaim his baby. And through the adventure and its ongoing discoveries (who knew the Alamo didn’t have a basement?) we’re introduced to unforgettable characters like Herman; his (sort-of) love interest, Dottie; the horrifying trucker ghost Large Marge; the snotty, rich Francis; and Herman’s dog, Speck. Herman’s wacky world is fully realized through the eye of Burton, and this one stands alone as a film that kids and adults can both get a kick out of. —Tyler Kane

87. Deadpool (2016) Director: Tim Miller

Amidst the deluge of Marvel-related movies that have flooded movie theaters in the last decade, it might be easy to overlook Deadpool’s importance as a genre milestone. Amidst those early signs of viewer interest (Blade), franchise launches (X-Men), moments of director/source material synergy (Raimi’s Spider-Man) and 18 or so MCU films, Deadpool is recognizable as a triumph of perseverance and (baby) hand-in-glove casting, as well as proof that R-rated superheroing is viable at the box office (which in turn smoothed the way for more serious takes like Logan). There’s also the fact that, fueled by the character’s signature irreverence and meta commentary, Tim Miller’s take on the Merc with a Mouth is easily the funniest comic book movie out there. This itself can be seen as a sign of the genre’s growth—just as Airplane produced a relentless stream of verbal and visual gags mined from the serious tropes of big event disaster movies, Deadpool shows how so-called “genre fatigue” can actually translate as “comedy goldmine.” While humor has always been an ingredient in the MCU and elsewhere, Deadpool lifts a leg and lets loose its own deluge of wall-to-wall humor, proving itself the franchise with the most ammo (and biggest bladder?) when it comes to laughs in the Marvel Universe. —Michael Burgin

86. Being John Malkovich (1999) Director: Spike Jonze

The feature film debut from director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman is a long, absurd joke whose punchline is its final shot: the view of a man who whimpers as he’s forced to watch his loved ones forget he’s ever existed. Being John Malkovich admits, with sad clarity, that our lives are totally out of our control. In the film, we follow street puppeteer Craig (John Cusack, looking like a small, humming pile of hair) as he confronts the economic viability of his chosen occupation by getting an admin job on the 7½ floor of a building that also happens to hide a tiny door which leads, if one crawls through cobwebs and puddles, to the inside of John Malkovich’s head, wherein for 15 minutes the brain tourist can vicariously live through famous actor John Malkovich’s eyes before getting spit up into a ditch off the New Jersey Turnpike. Having had his way with marionettes for years, Craig slowly understands how to control Malkovich while inside his head, crouching in the man’s sewer of an unconscious to hide away from the requisite 15-minute limit, but not before falling in love with a coworker (Catherine Keener) who seems to be falling in love with Craig’s wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz), but only via various liaisons through John Malkovich’s manipulable corpus. Throughout, Jonze and Kaufman only afford as much logic as is needed to movie the story from one weird scenario to another, but never letting the bleak heart of the film’s happenings overtake how goofily the plot unfolds. Visual detritus litters Jonze’s shots: A chucked can from a speeding car bounces off Malkovich’s head, the culprit recognizing Malkovich in time enough to call him out by name, though why John Malkovich poorly disguised in a ball cap and covered in ectoplasm would be on the side of the road in Jersey is anyone’s guess; a documentary features Brad Pitt briefly only to ignore him; an alternate universe Charlie Sheen embraces his receding hairline. Ideas pile atop more ideas, until the whole thing collapses in on itself, the film’s centerpiece basically John Malkovich singing his own name to another John Malkovich over and over, attempting to seduce the actor into liking himself. —Dom Sinacola

85. I Heart Huckabees (2004) Director: David O. Russell

By the very nature of how we approached this list (mentioned in that intro you might not have read), the laugh riot ensues immediately, the humor being less “acquired taste” and more “in your face.” Still, there are a few films whose second or third viewing is as likely to “set the hook” as the first, and David O. Russell’s 2004 existential screwball comedy is one of them. I Heart Huckabees features an amazing cast either at the top of their respective game (Jude Law, Naomi Watts, Dustin Hoffman, Lily Tomlin), in a game they aren’t typically thought of as playing (Isabelle Huppert), or, well, Mark Wahlberg in the best role he’s ever had. On first viewing, the jargon can overwhelm viewers less philosophically inclined, but in his efforts to find meaning in a series of coincidences, Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) is engaged in the same comedy as the film’s viewers—desperately trying find order and meaning in a chaotic world. Whether you deem that particular comedy of the human condition dark, breezy, inscrutable or just “what it is,” will depend on you state of mind. I Heart Huckabees just knows it’s pretty damn funny, regardless. —Michael Burgin

84. Superbad (2007) Director: Greg Mottola

Every generation of teens has its generation of teen movies, and Greg Mottola’s Superbad is the epitome of mine. In Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera), my friends and I had a mirror for our own insecurity and awkwardness—they were our modern-day Anthony Michael Halls. In Fogell/McLovin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), we had an icon of weird who somehow ended up a winner, a sort of photonegative of Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick). And in Superbad’s constant dick jokes (care of a script by namesakes Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg), we had an accurate representation of the way we all talked, maturity be damned. The film helped create a white-adolescent-boy language made up entirely of lewd, absurd references. It’s a rom-com in many respects, but unlike its predecessors, Superbad is a romance between two buddies, a story wherein the ostensible sex drive is secondary to Platonic need. In the film’s denouement, with the two leads snuggled up close in sleeping bags, Seth literally says, “I just wanna go to the rooftops and scream, ‘I love my best friend, Evan.’” For teenage boys struggling with anxiety over the seeming hopelessness of losing their virginity, Superbad provides a welcome respite, an acknowledgement that focusing your entire life upon your dick is pointless when there’s fulfillment to be had by your side the entire time. —Zach Blumenfeld

83. National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) Director: Jon Landis

John Belushi created an entire character archetype in his too-short career, but it’s best vehicle is quite possibly in John Landis’ party romp as the intoxicated slob, Bluto. Written by the late Harold Raimis, Animal House captures all of the excessive, mindless fun of college in a memento that never becomes any less funny or nostalgic, no matter how many times you rewatch it. —Sean Edgar

82. Dazed and Confused (1993) Director: Richard Linklater

Set in 1976 Texas, Dazed and Confused flows from one group of high-school and middle-school students over the course of one night—the traditional cinematic one-night-that-changes-everything.— Richard Linklater’s follow-up to Slacker shows a variety of vantage points on a number of issues, philosophical, political and otherwise. The camera lingers, offering multiple perspectives, and allowing you to take your time and consider all sides of these various excursions. Ultimately, these digressions circle back on one another, and Linklater forms them into a coherent narrative that resembles an updated American Graffiti for a new generation. As the day begins, there is a very rose-tinted-glasses style outlook on the whole scene, one that is, layer by layer, peeled away over the course of the ensuing evening. For all the seeming importance placed on things like playing football, chasing romantic partners and finding some good old-fashioned visceral experiences, there isn’t much in the way of consequences. You may get your ass kicked a little bit, but there isn’t a lot at stake. Whatever happens, you’ll be fine. This is never more apparent than as Dazed and Confused draws to a close and the film takes a dark turn towards what can only be described as adulthood. —Brent McKnight

81. The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) Director: Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson’s trademark ironic eccentricity and Roald Dahl’s vaguely menacing but entirely lighthearted surrealism combine to form Fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson’s first animated effort, which uses the same maddeningly traditional stop-motion techniques as Isle of Dogs. It’s ostensibly a children’s film (Mr. Fox and his family and friends try to outrun the mean farmers), but rather transparently aimed at their parents, who likely read Dahl’s books in grade school, remember stop-motion when it didn’t feel vintage, and have followed Anderson’s work for years. But Fantastic Mr. Fox is broader and more straightforward than any of Anderson’s other films. The tale has been greatly expanded from the Dahl original to cover familiar Anderson themes of family, rivalry, and feeling different. And with its lush autumnal palette and hijinks worthy of Max Fischer or Dignan, the result is a film that only Wes Anderson could have made. —Alissa Wilkinson

80. A Shot in the Dark Director: Blake Edwards

Amazing to think that when the first film in the Pink Panther series was made, it was intended as a vehicle for its top-billed star David Niven. Wisely, director Blake Edwards realized the true star of the show was the bumbling French policeman Inspector Clouseau, as embodied by the brilliant Peter Sellers. So, they rushed another film into production (it was released in the States a mere three months after The Pink Panther) and comedy greatness was born. Ever the sport, Sellers quite literally threw himself into the part, crashing and stumbling through his investigation of murder and mangling the English language each step of the way. Try as they might to recapture the fire of this first sequel, nothing quite matched the freewheeling spirit of A Shot in the Dark. —Robert Ham

79. Step Brothers (2008) Director: Adam McKay

If we’re judging in terms of pure quotability, the only comedy film of the last 20 years to even exist in the same solar system as Step Brothers is Anchorman. What does this say of us as viewers? That we’re all still schoolyard kids who chuckle at fart jokes, perhaps, but that doesn’t make the fart jokes any less funny. Step Brothers is perhaps the finest distillation of the post-2000s man-child comedy subset, taken to the illogical extreme. Its two central characters are each in their 40s, and equally incapable of taking the barest shred of responsibility for their lives outside of the protective cocoon of home. Brennan (Will Ferrell) doesn’t understand where a person might go in order to obtain toilet paper when they run out. Dale (John C. Reilly) erroneously believes he can inherit his father’s “family business” of being a medical doctor. The characters are so exaggeratedly helpless that the film somehow manages to achieve hilarious punchlines toward the end simply by showing them forced to adapt to the mundanity of normal life—what other film could turn “taking baby Aspirin to reduce my risk for heart attack” into a genuinely laugh-out-loud moment? But more than anything, Step Brothers is what happens when you simply let two of the finest comic actors of a generation play off each other and improvise to their heart’s content, with a rare form of chemistry that would be impossible to fake. The brilliant supporting work from the likes of Richard Jenkins and Adam Scott are simply bonuses. —Jim Vorel

78. Coming to America (1988) Director: John Landis

If this movie consisted of the barbershop scenes inside of My-T-Sharp and nothing else, it would still be one of the greatest comedies of all time. Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall teamed up with director John Landis (Blues Brothers) and created a classic. As Prince Akeem from the fictional African country of Zamunda, Murphy travels to the great United States of America to evade his arranged marriage and find true love (in Queens, obviously). Akeem encounters all of the wonders of black America, but the satirical twist is genius—the black preacher (via Hall as the incomparable Reverend Brown), the club scene, the barbershop, hip-hop culture, and Soul Glo—it’s all here. Cameos from actors like Cuba Gooding Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Louie Anderson, and Murphy’s Trading Places co-stars Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy take the Coming to America experience to a whole new level. An excellent comedy and a great tribute to New York City, this story of a prince just looking to be loved is a must-see for everyone—including those of us who’ve already seen it. —Shannon Houston

77. Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) Director: John Hughes

Anyone who’s ever endured holiday traffic on their way home for Thanksgiving can relate to this John Hughes tale—although hopefully you’ve never had to endure the sheer number of transportation mishaps (not to mention some accidental spooning) Neal Page and Del Griffith go through. Planes, Trains and Automobiles pits a petulant Steve Martin (Neal) against the usually mirthful John Candy (Del) as they travel home for the holidays. Weather and time are stacked up against them, so they end up traveling together with some disastrous results. Of course, nothing goes according to plan as Thanksgiving gets closer and closer. —Bonnie Stiernberg and Pete Mercer

76. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) Director: Jake Kasdan

Although Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story claims to be a spoof of biopics and their extreme depictions of artists—especially musicians—biopics’ exaggerations are a reflection of the frailties and eccentricities of the artists which they profile, so it’s hard to distinguish a satire about biopics from a satire about musicians. Regardless of what category the film falls into, Walk Hard does not really tow the fine line of being clever so much as it provides a fun and absurd romp with heaps of laughs. John C. Reilly, who plays rising and troubled music star Dewey Cox, skillfully presents a dopey-yet-conniving and shallow-but-sincere character with a heart of fool’s gold. Looking something like Johnny Cash crossed with Tom Waits, Cox has multiple addictions, wives and musical phases. Aspiring to a level beyond greatness after he accidentally kills his brother by splitting him in half with a machete when they are young boys growing up in Alabama, Cox is compelled to compensate for the loss of his brother, leading to a life of excess and indulgence. But Reilly isn’t the only star of the film. Kristen Wiig shines as Cox’s frustrated wife and the mother of their seemingly infinite amount of children; as Cox’s other frustrated wife and duet partner, Jenna Fischer is superb. Tim Meadows is hysterical with a stand out performance as Cox’s bandmate who can’t seem to stop doing or introducing Cox to increasingly heavy drugs. Additionally, cameos from Jack White (Elvis Presley), Jack Black (Paul McCartney), Paul Rudd (John Lennon), Jason Schwartzman (Ringo Starr), Justin Long (George Harrison), Eddie Vedder, Jackson Browne and Lyle Lovett make the film even more ridiculous. Like most films of its ilk, Walk Hard may go too over-the-top to prove itself, but there is something charming about it, underscored by its genuine love of music and affinity for musicians. It is also obvious from one of the first lines in the film (“Guys, I need Cox!”) that this project neither takes itself too seriously nor asks the same of its viewers. —Pamela Chelin

0 notes

vileart · 7 years

Text

Unmarried Dramaturgy: Lauren Gauge @ Edfringe 2017

The Unmarried is a truly original production that’s boldly cross-genre. Sharp comedic and poetic writing laced with explosive musical beats. This is theatre you can rave to.

Rhythmically underscored by a live mix of beat boxing 90’s Dance hits and old school UK Garage. Award winning performer-writer Lauren Gauge explores with cutting comedy, the feminist defiance of the legacy of a patriarchal society that nearly succeeded in defining the hopes of a generation.

The story we tell is a raw, feminist, physical, comedy.

Luna is a bold a brass lager lout on the prowl for wild times, putting two fingers up to society's expectations whilst in a 7 year long relationship with a man who is starting to resemble the system.

The Unmarried by Lauren Gauge: World Premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Underbelly, Med Quad) 2nd – 28th August 2017, after sell out previews whilst in development at Lyric Hammersmith and Camden People’s Theatre.

What was the inspiration for this performance?

As a theatre maker I want to create productions that have something positive to contribute and help reconcile struggles I face and I suspect, others face too.

The Unmarried is about being a woman and searching for happiness and acceptance in a capitalist patriarchal world. Luna knows what she wants, but she doesn’t know how to be an adult woman in man’s adult world. It’s also about empowerment, sex, freedom and love.

There are now a whole series of female theatre makers or writer-performers that are emerging and I think from the spirit of the work and the characters you can tell the stories are all being born out of the same dissatisfaction with a patriarchal society conditioning how we should fit in. I wanted to make a show that represented more peoples’ needs more honestly and empower more people to rebel against labels that entrap them.

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?

It’s the mother of all public discussion of ideas. Theatre is community concentrated and real life heightened. Theatre channels public discussion like Craig David channels the 90's: inherently and uncontrollably with buckets of sensory swagger and stimulating sass. Nothing is stronger than live performance at conveying a message and striking a feeling because you don't just have people's attention in the way a screen does, where they can pull their phone out in front of it, you actively have their presence, their whole being in the room with you. How madly exhilarating is all that energy in the room? In The Unmarried we are able to connect with our audience on all levels through the rhythm of language in comedy and poetry and the rhythm dance and explosive anthems. Creating a story with beats created live in that moment with them, for them - a playful shared experience for all of their senses to digest and discuss.

That commitment from an audience to being in the space with other audience members and performers and experiencing a live, visceral human connection is the most singularly powerful tool to create public discussion. In fact it is the very reason I create theatre, to instigate conversation, give voice to the underrepresented and from that spark positive change.

How did you become interested in making performance?

I got cast as a Julie Walters-esque comedy tea lady role in Year 6, then left school with (a terrible haircut, a sense of some small worth and) the award for 'Most Likely to become a Comedienne'. I guess I felt the peer pressure quite acutely to live up to expectations and idols.

But I got bored of auditioning for women I had very little in common with or very little connection to years ago and started creating theatre in collaboration with other artists. Women are incredible and complex beings (in exactly the same way men are) and yet we don’t get to explore our sexuality, our intelligence, our emotional complexity in the same way that male characters get to on stage.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

I’m always searching for collaborators who want to create theatre through a very organic process using all our creative tools and languages to create a story that is nuanced and visceral. Using our brains to write and our bodies to play and discover the same story and finding ways of communicating through words, poetry, comedy, music and dance. I feel everything (dogs, pain, awkward silences) quite personally. So I write compulsively: poems, Christmas lists, love letters, lyrics, lies sometimes - the usual. Words are a good starting point for many a creation as is music. It's a beautiful freeing state getting things out of your head and then an even more special process of distilling that feeling of the 'actual words' on the actual back of the fag packet into a 4D production, that sings, and moves and tells that story. Once you’ve written a narrative you have to figure out what is completely necessary to an audience; what truths people struggle with, or get fascinated by. This may be just a handful of points, but you can inflate the fun and mine the meaning until you have a story that an audience can relate to and that can offer them something positive.

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

Usual isn’t a concept I like or find helpful because so much interest in a story comes from the unusual and the unexplored. But often words are never enough. All the productions I have made have been a messy affair of language, music and dance. Equally they've been laced with an experiential playful nature be it in the ensemble creation or the generosity of the final production in offering something unique to an audience. So yeah, The Unmarried is full of feeling, conveying ideas through live music and physicality – business as usual in its slightly non-conformist predictably unpredictable nature.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

The show. There are a heap tonne of shows going to Edinburgh for the 70th year and British Council year Fringe. So frankly I just hope the audience will experience our show at all in amongst the mayhem! The Unmarried is my debut play and it has a lot to say about how equality helps everyone, patriarchy helps no one, asserting a balance between freedom and anarchy to shake things up when they’re not right so we can all be happier, freer and truer to ourselves and towards others.

In return we promise a hell of a start to their night... 22:35 is a great slot for our fierce feminist comedy and Garage anthems to let rip and we hope to give a nice platform for thought that acts as a launch pad into a cracking night! We promise to challenge the hangover from the patriarchy but can’t be responsible for the hangover of the night!

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

The story is the main thing, the road to marriage, the labels, the judgment the expectations - the total dissatisfaction I had with the patriarchy - how it wasn't helping anyone, least of all men; certainly not women. The experience is political and personal, a rave and a riot. I love music and Garage music felt intrinsic to Luna’s uninhibited desires, drive and identity growing up; that nostalgic nod to a time when identity seemed to be more conducive with freedom of expression.

I am a lover of anarchy for a good cause, which in some senses is the club scene because of the collective energy, the sense of freedom and possibility. So what better score to set the love and curious spirit that Luna embodies to, than 90's and 00's anthems, when club culture was uproarious?

This play is for everyone who is willing to challenge the status quo, fall in love and go for broke with integrity. Luna is fierce, sexy, awkward (as sh*t) and funny (as f*ck), and I am always fascinated by the power of cutting comedy and visceral music to propel important truths into audiences' hearts.

So that is the strategy: make, play, laugh, dance and be generous. But keep it raw and real so that even in Luna’s very personal story: The Unmarried, and it’s beating heart can have wider reaching responses.

from the vileblog http://ift.tt/2tlu5AP

#Theatre #Blogger #visual art #Edinburgh Fringe #Experimental Critique

0 notes

itsfinancethings · 4 years

Link

November 29, 2019 at 07:00AM

10. Back to Life (Showtime)

9. When They See Us (Netflix)

8. Watchmen (HBO)

7. Undone (Amazon)

6. David Makes Man (OWN)

5. Lodge 49 (AMC)

4. Vida (Starz)

3. Succession (HBO)

2. Russian Doll (Netflix)

1. Fleabag (Amazon)

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes