Category Archives: Culture

Bucking the Genre: Promising Young Woman

 

After the dissolution of the studio system and the abandonment of the Production code the 1970s witnessed an explosion of subgenres of film that had previous been forbidden more graphic sexuality, violence, and nudity changed cinema from studio productions to exploitive independent movies. Perhaps the most exploitive subgenre to emerge from this cinematic chaos was the rape-revenge movie.

In this subgenre a woman after surviving a sexual assault discovers hidden reserves of strength and becomes a force for vengeance, sometimes solely against her assailant and sometimes against men in general. The movies often ended with final showdowns where she triumphs, often lethally, against her original attacker. Rape-revenge movie is different from movies that utilized a woman’s sexual assault to motivate the protagonist to finally act against the story villain by centering the woman, or sometimes women, experience instead of using her trauma as mere motivation for someone else. Often these movies are very exploitive, using social commentary and feminism as excuses for onscreen explicit violence and nudity.

Promising Young Woman is without a doubt a rape revenge film, the trailers made that much clear, but unlike the vast majority of the genre PYM doesn’t promote the trope that trauma instills growth but rather unflinching it depicts trauma as it is so often in reality, something that shatters lives and personality leaving the person broken and incomplete.

At the film’s opening Cassie, the protagonist, spends her weekend nights playing at being too drunk to stand and when some man takes her to his home to, let’s be blunt, rape her, she drops the sham intoxication and confronts him. Cassie’s life is devoid of friends and joy, she is already broken by the experiences of her backstory. Everything changes after a chance encounter with a former classmate who brings the knowledge that the assailant that escaped any form of justice has returned to town. Cassie switches from random revenge to precise, calculated vengeance against the people that enabled the assault. However, in the course of her revenge Cassie discovers new information that set her on a much darker much more violent path.

In most rape-revenge movies the filmmakers are caught between two terrible paths when forced to depict the sexual violence at the heart of their story. They can depict the terrible events more faithfully and risk traumatizing and repelling their audience or, and this is the case is the exploitive side of the genre, they can titillate with the violence, playing to dark male fantasies. Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman‘s writer and director did neither. Rather than show us she restricted our experience to hearing the attack. A brilliant move that sidestepped and exploitive titillation and provided the audience with the horror of what we are capable of imagining. Fennell kept her film and script grounded with a reality we can believe in rather than one of glorified and improbable violence. The ending, fitting with her approach of the subject matter, is dark and with only a glimmer of catharsis. The film’s second act is perhaps is greatest magic trick, inducing in Cassie and the audience a false sense of security that so perfectly mirror the real-life experiences of far too many.

Cary Mulligan’s portrayal of Cassie is nuanced and even when Cassie’s life seems happier with a new dawn possibly breaking her performance contains the tragedy that always exist just under her skin. Like her namesake Cassandra, Cassie is living a tragedy with an inescapable fate that bears down on her like a freight train.

Promising Young Woman is currently playing on HBO.

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Let Us Not Rejoice in Death

 

There is no doubt, no confusion, no mistaking noise amongst the data, at this time in the United States Covid-19 is killing more ‘conservatives’ than ‘liberals.’ At both the state and county level vaccination rates track with election results, the more a region voted with the Democrats the more vaccinated its population and the more vaccinated the population the more protected that are. Where Trump won larger votes shares more people are dying of Covid. The cause and effects are stark, clear, and lethal. Rejection of vaccines and mitigation measures such as masks are the cause of the pandemic continued lethality among ‘conservative’ populations.

To those basking in schadenfreude at this misfortune, at the suffering and death of your political opponents I say, stop! For practical and moral reasons, we should not, at all, take any sort of pleasure or preen with and sense of superiority over these human tragedies.

Many, if not most, of the people suffering, dying, and losing loved ones are pawns, used and manipulated by cynical sinister and anti-democratic forces. They are victims of the greedy, venal, and evil people that control ‘conservative’ thought in America. Yes, they placed those people into power and now those in power are sacrificing them as they have so many others before. ‘Spiking the ball’ will not open eyes, it will shut them, but perhaps, maybe, a little compassion will save some of these misguided souls.

This terrible tragedy is killing more than just those who have been led into suicidal behavior. Hospitals in these regions, already underfunded, are stressed to. and some areas, beyond the breaking point and people in need of critical care are dying because there is no care left for anyone else. If you are taking joy in these prevented covid deaths, you are also taking joy in the collateral damage it spreads. There cannot be one without the other.

Abuse, individual and cultural, is a cycle and the abused becoming the abuser. Only when the abused can find their way out and not visit upon other what has been done to them can the cycle shatter. Many of these ‘conservatives’ have indulged in their own schadenfreude over others suffering from disease and addiction and while it is hard, very hard, now is the time for the formerly abused to break the cycle and not continue it.

None of this is to say that the political fight ends with compassion and welcoming arms. There is a proto-fascist movement seeking to end democracy in the United States. It’s aims are to subvert and discredit elections while stealing them with discriminatory laws and regulations. For that enemy there is no compassion, no forgiveness, but for the pawns that use, abuse, and discard we can be the better people. When they said, ‘hate the sin not the sinner,’ they lied, we do not have to lie. We can be the moral people and we can be the righteous people without becoming the cruel people taking joy in death.

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We Are the GOPs Enemy

 

In the long before time of the Cold War it was easy to see who the enemy was in the eyes of nearly every Republican, The USSR its satellite states and its desire to spread the glorious revolution globally. The enemy allowed the diverse GOP a point of unification. Northern ‘Rockefeller’, rambunctious Libertarians, evangelical pro-lifers, and southern social conservatives set aside their vast and deep differences to unit in the fight against global communism.

Then they won.

The USSR dissolved, the Eastern Bloc shattered, and the only Communist nations left in the world was Cuba and North Korea.

The division that had been suppressed within the GOP became meaningful. Rockefeller Republicans were run out of the party labeled as RINOs and the remaining cliques fixed their eye on a new enemy to unify their ranks and stoke anger and fear to motivate their base into the frenzy required to separate them from their cash and win their vote and that enemy were their fellow Americans. But the calculus that stoked the anger failed to recognize that anger can be self-generating and the energized base is easily transformed into the murderous mob. Now, with the murderous mob in their party no one has the spine to confront their creation and the list of enemies grows and the list of actions ‘beyond the pale’ to acquire power shrinks to nothing.

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Repulsed Republicans

 

The attempted recall of California Governor Gavin Newsom failed by a staggering 28 points. Wasting time and nearly a quarter of a billion dollars the sane citizens of the Golden State resoundingly rejected the GOP’s desperate do-over and its mad scheme to place the control of nation’s most populous state in the hands of a conservative celebrity.

Hopefully I wish for the national Democrats to learn this valuable lesson, tie every last Republican to the leader of their Turd Reich. From dog catcher to Senator every single motherforking one of them to their orange man-baby, endless sound bites of them praising the Manhattan Mussolini and at every debate pushing them into corners forcing them to either denounce the madness or own it. Rick Wilson, former Republican election strategist wrote a book Everything Trump Touches Dies, make every damned GOP candidate touch him. This must be the North star for Democrat for countless election to come.

But California needs to reform its recall system. This is madness. I’d say go ahead and leave the signature requirements and such the same. We should not make it too difficult to remove a person who needs to be removed but the actual replacement should simply be the Lieutenant Governor. That’s why the office is there, to become Governor when there is a vacancy. Given that the GOP has proved it cannot win statewide offices anymore that post is almost certain to be a Democrat and there would be little fire to exchange one Democratic for another.

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20 Years On

 

Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and flight 93 that is generally assumed to have its target the capital but was thwarted by its passengers at the cost of their own lives.

I remember clearly where I was how I heard about the attacks. At the time I was working an overnight shift at a laboratory that performed drug testing for commercial clients. I loaded and ran a large machine that processed the samples. I was far from a scientist but a worker with basic skills and to help pass the hours I listened to radio during the night. Every night as the dawn came atmospheric changes began interfering with reception and usually, I had to shut off the radio for the last hour or so of my shift. On Sep 11th, 2001, just as the signal was degrading beyond usability, I hear the first reports that a plane has collided with one of the towers at the WTC. I assumed it was probably some light civilian aircraft and heard no more as noise swamped the signal.

At the time I used mass transit to get home and at the bus stop a random person was trying to tell me that a tower had collapsed. At this point I still had no confirmed information that it had been a massive airliner and assumed this person was passing on rumor or speculation. (Even before the Internet, Facebook, and Twitter there was plenty of bad and fake information out there.) When I reached the 7-11 just blocks from my apartment, I saw the video playing on their television and understood that the world had changed.

 

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My Latest YouTube Fascinations

 

There are lots of crappy YouTube channels pouring poison and lies into a public discourse but there are also loads of content that is educational and fun and belonging to the latter category are some of the channels I’ve discovered doing ‘reaction’ videos. These are people who are watching movies and television, usually for the first time, and reacting to the unfolding story. I’ve discovered three channels that for quite different reasons I find fun and relaxing to watch. These are presented in no particular order.

Natalie Gold A young women who works in the film industry Natalie’s videos provide the most reaction of my three favorite channels. She screams, laughs, and cries very easily but also given her vocation she has a sharp eye for performance, and artistic choices.

Millennial Movie Mondays Ashleigh Burton is a millennial whose life has zigged and zagged her past may cultural movie markers and is now experiencing many of these films for the first time. She is funny with a sarcastic sense of humor and willing to take unpopular stands on popular movies. Watching her channel can make someone feel older especially when something that used to be as culturally all-consuming as a Rambo reference is answered with a ‘Huh? What does that refer to?’

Fictionaldarling This young woman doesn’t overtly display her name and approaches her watches and they are often re-watches not first-time viewings, from a decidedly fannish perspective invested in the characters and their relationships.

 

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Remington — Sadistic Assholes

 

I hadn’t planned on two political posts back-to-back, but a bit of news sent my blood boiling and made this morning’s essay inevitable.

First off let me state that I do think the second amendment as written was intended as an individual right but like all rights that is not absolute. It can certainly be met with restrictions and regulation. So, my anger does not spring from a well of hatred towards guns or their owners.

Nearly nine years ago an evil man strode into Sandy Hook elementary school and slaughtered children and teachers.

Federal law, rightfully or wrongfully, protects gun manufactures from liability in how their products are used but parents or the gun-down children filed a suit in court not focused on the use but on the advertising used to sell the guns and a lead defendant is the arms company Remington. I do not know if their case has merit or not, I have not studied the law in the matter and that is something for the courts to determine. Remington as much as any person has a right to their day in court and to their defense.

When you sue or are sued you have a right to force the other side to retain and produce documents and evidence. IN this case the plaintiffs are demanding internal documents and such pertaining to Remington’s advertising campaigns. That’s fair, that the crux of the matter in the lawsuit.

Remington on the other hand is demand the attendance, grades, and disciplinarily records of murdered children.

How the actual fuck does any of that pertain to defending themselves over their advertising choices? I can’t see any conceivable way this at all bears upon the question before the court.

To me this stinks of nothing more than mental torture, of harassment, perhaps to cause enough metal trauma and anguish to force the parents to leave the suit.

Everyone has a right to a full and vigorous defense, everyone. Everyone also gets to reap the whirlwind of being a vicious, cruel, asshole which Remington and their lawyers seem intent on reaping.

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Texan Stasi

 

The Stasi were the Secret Police of Communist East Germany tasked, among other things, with watching the population for signs of disloyalty. Recruiting people to spy upon their friends, neighbors, and family near the end of the brutal murderous regime the Stasi had informants that comprised over 2% of the nation’s population. Turning neighbor against neighbor particularly with payments and profits is a lessoned well learned by the Republicans of Texas.

This week a new Texan lawn, one that is blatantly unconstitutional, went into effect after the conservative Supreme Court of the United States of American declined to issue a stay to put the novel legal tactic on hold. Texas made illegal all abortions, save that to explicitly prevent the death of the mother, after six weeks of pregnancy, in direct contradiction to nearly 50 years of constitutional precedent. But rather than making the enforcement of the law a matter for the state of Texas the law places enforced in the hands of the public by way of civil action creating standing for anyone who wishes it to sue any and all person involved in performing, assisting, or in any way aiding the abortion of its procurement. The law also creates a floor of ‘damages’ with this standing of $10,000, allows for the plaintiff to recover their legal expensive should they prove victorious in court while also disallowing the defend to recovery their legal costs should they prevail. By removing the state as the enforcement the Texan GOP hopes, and so far, has been correct in their plot, to make this difficult to review, halt, or reverse in the courts. Resolving this by way of the courts could take years and lots of money and contrary to Conservative propaganda most abortion services providers are far from rich.

Never create a political power you aren’t willing to give to your political opponents.

There are already rumblings, though I fear it will never come to more than talk, of ‘Blue’ states retaliating in kind. Pass blatantly unconstitutional gun control laws and put enforcement into the hand of the public with ruinous ‘damages’ and expensive court fess.  Frankly I wish this would happen. Not because I am an avid supporter of gun control, I have dear friends that are gun collectors, enthusiasts, and merchants, but I also have dear friends and family that are women and whose right are being trampled for utter bullshit and if this is the sort of pain that must be inflicted to protect them, then so be it.

 

 

 

My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references,

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I’ll Take The Earthquakes

 

My family in Florida often comments that they could never live in California, terrified of the earth suddenly moving under their feet. I’ve ridden out a few earthquakes including one that sent waves rippling along the wall of a Denny’s I was sitting in and they are frightening but not as scary as the governor of Florida and willingness to slaughter the people in his quest to become the next leader of the Turd Reich.

Last year, at the very start of the year, I was planning a trip to Florida to see my family and celebrate the release of my first novel, Vulcan’s Forge. The pandemic killed those plans, my sales, and north of 600,000 Americans. Despite this Florida’s governor not only will not implement the simplest anti-covid measure but actually threatens those who do. California may have vast wildfires and earthquakes but do not elect our deadly disasters.

Yes, my current governor is subject to a specious recall and may be a Nexus 5 Replicant but he is not actively acting to slaughter me and my family.

 

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Odds and Ends

 

Here’s a potpourri of thoughts for this Wednesday morning.

1) I’m Bummed: I had been so looking forward to attending in person 2021’s Horrible Imaginings Film Festival but with Orange County’s COVID-19 positivity rate above 20%, the theater instituting a quite reasonable mask mandate, and my own somewhat compromised immune system due to arthritis medications it just doesn’t make sense to go in person. So just like last year I will be watching the films virtually.

2) The Face-Eating-Leopards that in the GOP Base is beyond control. It is both ironic and terrifying that the former guy himself, the Turd that stained our democracy and attempted to overthrow a fair and free election, was booed by his own crowd for suggesting that people get vaccinated. I am horrified that things are going to get worse before they get better.

3) I am now experimenting with greater post processing of the pictures I am taking with my DSLR. Here’s a color pushed and modified photo of a trip to the shore I took last year.

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