#and also were grasping at any criticism other than 'a black woman is the protagonist and i dont like that waah'

[skimblyshanks]

I saw ppl were throwing a hissy fit over the uniforms in st disco and its color coding and pip styles back when it started but I'm on episode 3 or 4 of tos and spock is in command yellow it's almost like toxic boys club fans take shit a little too seriously

[dweemeister]

Shoes (1916)

During the 1890s and 1900s, the earliest American movie studios were dispersed across major cities east of the Mississippi River. But by the early 1910s, the stable weather, tax-friendly environment, and natural beauty of Southern California brought these studios westward. The Golden Age of Hollywood was born in the Golden State. Women directors, producers, and writers were essential to Hollywood’s creation. One of the early pioneers from Hollywood’s rough-and-tumble beginnings was Lois Weber – at her career’s peak, she was as famous, innovative, and as crucial to the development of cinematic vocabulary as D.W. Griffith (1915’s The Birth of a Nation, 1916’s Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages). Yet in the writing of American cinematic history, Weber has been largely sidelined, if not outright omitted.

Many of Lois Weber’s films are lost, like those of her countless silent era contemporaries across the world. What remains of Weber’s filmography for modern public consumption is a body of work filled with artistic assuredness. Shoes, released by an infant studio named Universal, is a fascinating film – unafraid to depict issues that would have been tossed out by Hollywood censors twenty years later. It serves as an ideal gateway to Weber’s work, a demonstration of her political and artistic auteurism.

Eva Meyer (Mary MacLaren, a Weber regular) is a young woman who serves as her family’s principal breadwinner. Her mother (Mattie Witting) tends to their dilapidated apartment and Eva’s two younger sisters while making a few cents as a laundress. Eva’s father (Harry Griffith) lies in bed and reads books all day – this is a rare instance of a movie where you want a character to read less. The hours Eva works at the five-and-dime store are draining. She drifts, numbly, between home and work – there is no time for leisure, at least for anyone who isn’t Eva’s father. One day, she has torn through the soles of her shoes – she wants to purchase a replacement, but she cannot afford a new pair. As she walks to and from work every day, a pair of boots propped up at a different store’s display window beckon. Eva looks longingly at these boots, as well as those adorning the feet of the women she encounters on her lonesome commute.

The cinematic techniques that Weber employs might seem well-worn today, but in 1916 her vision was groundbreaking. There are a few instances of superimposed images appearing in the left-hand corner of the screen to show the audience what a character is daydreaming about. That may be more prominent in modern animated film, the effect provides plot development more expeditiously than a silent film intertitle. A superimposed dream probably would not be as effective in a contemporary live-action film – unless it was a comedy – but it works here. Shoes’ several dissolves also emphasize Eva’s longing for her new shoes, as she imagines how vivified her life could be with those new pair of boots on display in the window. Along with cinematographers Stephen S. Norton (1916’s Where Are My Children?; 1923’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame), King D. Gray (1915’s The College Orphan; second cameraman on 1934’s The Black Cat), and Allen G. Siegler (1915 serial The Broken Coin; 1916’s The Dumb Girl of Portici), Weber also utilizes dissolves to close in on Eva’s regretful disposition – this opposed to a zoom or a dolly shot (neither would be largely adopted among filmmakers for some time). The gradual dissolve is completed in respect to the modest pace of Shoes, and deepens the gravitational pull of Eva’s desolation. Dissolves in 1910s films were rarities; to see them used as artistically as this signifies a director and cinematographers tinkering with techniques well ahead of their time.

Numerous early silent filmmakers of the mid-1910s constructed glaringly cheap sets that can easily take modern viewers out of a film. In these films, a room might appear poorly painted and appear to have paper-thin doors and walls; exteriors may consist of materials haphazardly assembled on a movie studio lot. Not here. Weber uses Los Angeles for her exteriors rather than a soundstage; Eva could easily be imagined as an Angeleno rather than the resident of some artificial town. Eva passes through a teeming, bird-flocked Pershing Square on her way to and from work every day. Pershing Square is a lonely place for her, and the passing couples wearing fashionable shoes underline her psychological distance from all that surrounds her. A nearby Woolworth’s at 719 South Broadway Avenue stood in as the windowed storefront that Eva stops by during her commute, further imbuing Shoes with emotional interest.

During Shoes’ fifty-two minutes, Weber invites the viewer to adopt Eva’s viewpoint. A lesser director might stray from this focus in favor of her parents or a random lout like the character of “Cabaret” Charlie (William V. Mong), but Weber stays the course and the film – in no small part thanks to sixteen-year-old Mary MacLaren’s sufficient performance as the protagonist – is emotionally rewarded for that concentration in its final scenes. Eva’s gloom and constant embarrassment regarding her penury suffuses every scene, magnified by Weber’s silent film-era arsenal of techniques, grasp of narrative structure*, and location shooting. Amid the United States’ Progressive Era, Weber’s socially conscious films resonated with an American public gaining greater awareness of industrialization’s and unregulated capitalism’s ill effects. Shoes, based on a story closely adapted from Jane Addams’ A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil, is a byproduct of the debates that Progressive Era activists engaged in. Weber’s film depicts an implied lack of employee protections/benefits and the presence of a nefarious sexual economy – unaddressed legacies of the social upheaval caused by industrialization.

Shoes itself does not contain any explicit political diatribes, but Weber’s sympathies could not be clearer. Before her film career, Weber – born to a devout Pennsylvanian Christian family – lived in poverty herself and engaged in missionary work to help improve the lives of young women. By her own admission, Weber based certain incidents in her films on the experiences she saw, vicariously, through those women she worked for in her youth. For Shoes, the segments in between home and work existed outside the text of Addams’ novel, and were informed by the poor women the Weber interacted with. Without those scenes, Shoes’ pathos is less powerful. Universal, believing in Weber’s approach to Shoes, launched an advertising campaign trumpeting the film’s social realism – an expression of confidence in a gifted and thoughtful director who made some of the most interesting films of the silent era. Weber’s early life experiences made that craftwork possible.

Let me dispel any myths I may have previously perpetuated via other reviews on this blog: women directors were not novelties at the dawn of Hollywood. By the end of the 1910s, Universal Studios in particular boasted a talented corps of women directors and writers – in 1916, Weber became Universal’s highest-paid director (such a distinction is almost impossible to fathom even in 2020). Hollywood’s early studios had numerous women who worked behind the cameras in critical creative positions. In the 1920s, Wall Street titans took notice of the burgeoning film industry flourishing in Southern California. The incoming consolidation of Hollywood’s movie studios resulted in a marked decrease of women involved in filmmaking. These New York-based financiers, all men, held dim views of women in business and motion pictures where feminism fuels the work. The fact that seventy-five percent of all silent films are now lost forever, in addition to uninformed perceptions about silent films themselves, has further complicated studies of women filmmakers during Hollywood’s earliest years. The history of American filmmaking written since then has been sexist and racist by omission. In the years to come, let us hope that this history can be more inclusive – not for the sake of inclusivity, but to accurately reflect the reality that female filmmakers were pivotal to the development of American cinema in the silent era.

Shoes is an ideal starting point for those wishing to learn more about the early women directors in Hollywood. A product of the era’s politics and Lois Weber’s dedication to gendered and economic justice, it is a measured, intriguing film serving as a lasting testament to its director’s acuity.

My rating: 8/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

*As film technology became more affordable and as it advanced in America, the average Hollywood film became longer in the mid-1910s. In this environment, directors experimented – and frequently failed – with how to extend their narratives from rather simple short films. At fifty-two minutes, Shoes was much longer than the typical film released in 1916 (within a decade that would no longer be the case).

[just-slide]

Rise of Skywalker - Finn is the Light Side

ALRIGHT buckle up here’s meta literally none of y’all asked for. Spoilers under the cut.

Precis: I don’t think Finn was as hard done by as some do (but still deserved better).  Cards on the table of my various opinions, because this is Tumblr and people need to know my biases so they can skip out if they don’t approve: I liked the movie, I always adored Rey and Finn as a duo in any form, and I always appreciated Kylo Ren as a villain.

So let’s get some shit out the way: I did not care for That Kiss. I did not care for TLJ deciding that 90% of Rey’s arc was her suddenly trying to redeem sad white boy Kylo Ren. The fact that Finn and Rey’s stories had been heavily intertwined in TFA only for them to be dropped as a Main Duo always vexed me. I felt TROS tried to recapture some of that but the die had already been cast that the trilogy was now about Rey and Kylo, and no longer Rey and Finn vs Evil. Thanks to Rian Johnson for benching his black male lead.

However, I’ve read criticisms saying all Finn did in TROS was run around, yell Rey’s name, and remain sidelined as a supporting character. Did he deserve more than that? Yes. Was I disappointed that, while his Force Sensitivity was proven, it didn’t really culminate in anything? Yes.

But the guy walked around all movie as the physical representation of the Light Side, especially for Rey and her conflict - which was the movie’s conflict of Light vs Dark. So I have opinions on why Finn wasn’t quite as screwed over as people think and the internet needs to know them.

Let’s break this down: Rey only ever spoke about her visions of temptation to him, where he issued repeated assurances of her strength and goodness (and yes, she was Emo in response about ‘nobody knowing her’ but let’s not forget that the narrative of the story held out that 1: Finn was right about her and 2: Ergo Finn did know her).

It becomes more overtly symbolic in all 3 of her confrontations with Kylo. When they’re fighting over Chewie’s transport, Rey is physically positioned between Kylo and Finn, one driving her to the Dark, one calling her back to the Light (could Finn have not, like, shot Kylo? I feel he should have at least tried. It would have made me feel better). On the Star Destroyer above Kijimi, when Kylo offers her his hand the second time and she refuses him, she leaps to the Falcon, away from the offer of the Dark Side and literally into Finn’s waiting grasp. And on Endor, even when Finn chasing her onto the Death Star is plot-wise completely meaningless. Its meaning comes in when Rey, in her fury, Force Pushes him back. Because he’s the bloody representation of the Light Side, her Light, and she didn’t want any of that getting in the way of her vengeful lashing out.

I agree the movie should have done a better job of demonstrating Rey’s reciprocated affection for Finn, in that he chased her a lot and she didn’t much respond to these efforts. For Finn, we get his spoken affection - for Rey, we have to go to the subtext. That he was the only one she voiced her fears and visions to. All of my above points, which are deliberate film-making choices and position Finn as more than just ‘one of her friends’ among the found family Palpatine confirms she’s made. The final Trio Hug was, yes, a Trio, but the framing emphasised Rey and Finn more. It felt like the movie really wanted them to be a majorly important dynamic but couldn’t quite stick the landing. An actual scene between just the two of them at the end, even if it had been them getting their own hug before Poe showed up (Trio Hug very important), considering they hadn’t seen each other since Rey rejected Finn on Endor (not Poe), would have gone a long way to resolving their somewhat aborted arc. This didn’t need to be romantic, so much as if they had Finn being this champion of Rey’s Light Side that she pushed away, we really needed something of them coming back together. Especially after he sensed her death. That was the bare minimum the movie should have done if they weren’t going to take further steps to develop their dynamic as less one-sided.

And who am I kidding; it was outright racism that Finn was sidelined after TFA and Finnrey was never canon. Many people of my acquaintance keep lamenting how Stormpilot never happened, and that is a crying shame. But Stormpilot arose out of excellent chemistry and acting from Boyega and Isaac. The Force Awakens, on the other hand, pretty much explicitly set up the romantic beats between Rey and Finn, and while we’ll never know for sure, I would bet my house that if Finn were white, we’d have got that. But they refused to deliver an interracial romance in Star Wars between a male black major character and a white female lead (much better for it to be between two white people even when one of them’s a mass murderer, huh?). Stormpilot was a grassroots effort which never took off because Disney are cowards. Finnrey was specifically set up in their own movies and never paid off also because Disney are cowards. I hate making it seem like I’m competing these two issues, but people can be mad about two things and should be mad about the racism as well as the homophobia that impacted these choices by Disney.

I guess I never thought Disney would ever make two of their major characters gay on screen. I thought first that they would, then that they could, keep centering a black man in Star Wars in an interracial romance with a white woman (which is, for many reasons, more subversive and challenging than white men in romances with black women in media). Oh look, I was unable to get through this screed about Light and Dark and how much I liked a particular element of this movie without descending into ‘fuck you and your racism, Disney.’ I still liked this movie, and despite having just gone on a rant supporting Finn’s role in TROS, it is unavoidable that the way the trilogy has treated Finn and John Boyega since TFA has been utterly shameful. TROS should have done a better job of fixing the damage of TLJ.

But Finn still got the be the Light Side made Manifest for our protagonist in her internal conflict between good and evil, and that’s not nothing.

[lligkv]

In a scene early in Susan Choi's novel My Education,* two grad students are talking about a protest against an elderly male professor for the racism in his latest book.

"They were chanting 'Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad!' I evoked, splashing beer as I mimed a hand waving a sign. 'Because, you know, of Conrad's Colonialist Agenda. So we're going to have an emergency meeting to decide if we should boycott his class, or stay and try to subvert it somehow from within."

"Can I ask a really idiotic question?" Dutra said, in a tone that suggested his question would reveal that all idiocy lay elsewhere. "With these people, is that name, Joseph Conrad, supposed to be an insult?"

"Well, yes!--obviously... I don't think they're talking about his writing so much as his politics. And the way his discourse perpetuates the status quo. The inequities in power between whites, who control the discourse, and nonwhites, who are controlled by it--"

"Who cares about his politics?" said Dutra, swinging out of the hammock... "Do you like his books or don't you?"

"Whose?"

"Joseph Conrad's."

Here was a question I hadn't expected. "I've only read Heart of Darkness but...I liked it," I acceded at last...

"Do you like the other guy's books?"

"Whose? My professor's?"

"Exactly."

"I've never read them." Strike three.

Dutra burst out hysterically laughing. "No wonder you're confused!" he exclaimed, in the exaggeratedly bemused, tenderly condescending manner I'd already learned was his method of shifting the mood... "You don't have any empirical evidence..."

It reminded me of something I'd read about a recent controversy in the Romance Writers of America over the novel At Love's Command. accused of glorifying a protagonist who participated in the massacre of Sioux people at Wounded Knee. Specifically, comments by the president of PEN America, Suzanne Nossel, about proportionality: "When the accountability is driven by a firestorm on social media, the notion of proportionality goes out the window because nothing short of a complete repudiation is going to satisfy an audience from afar that's really not immersed in the facts and can't really assess motives. It can mean a default to the most draconian outcome."

The facts of a situation and the motives of an artist being criticized are key ways to distinguish what harm may have been done and what restitution may be necessary. They're not the sum total of the case--but they do sometimes fall by the wayside in these sorts of controversies, at least in the way they're most often covered by outlets like the New York Times. The primary focus is so often trained on the other relevant aspect of these cases, which is the harm that can be done by representations of atrocity and those who are allied with atrocity--which so often isn't quantified as clearly as it could be. (In the case of At Love's Command, for instance, the harm that could be said to have been done is: 1) the book attempts to empathize with someone who participated in a racist atrocity, and 2) it does this in a cultural context in which authors of color are systemically disadvantaged--not given as many opportunities to publish or considered in equal proportion to White peers as having the merit granted their White peers--with representation for their stories reduced as a result, so 3) it should not be celebrated; it's taking an award that could have gone to an author of color, and perhaps should have, given the fact that the award it received was named for Vivian Stephens, a Black woman who cofounded the Romance Writers of America.) Add to this virality--how easy it is to see these conflicts as they emerge and weigh in--and particular facts of a situation and evaluations of potential motives of the participants become even more distant...

I've often thought of the controversies around representation in, say, romance or young adult literature as live looks at a cultural pendulum as it swings--which is something we ought to be patient with. A landscape of what we're willing to endorse and permit is changing, in tectonic ways. We ought to give the new earth some time to settle before we begin to walk it. And many of the onlookers who deride "cancel culture" don't seem to have the patience to understand in good faith why the people who are upset at a book like At Love's Command receiving awards or honors are reacting this way. But the arguable over-the-topness that the complaints can take on when the nature of the harm that's alleged isn't spelled out--and the facts of a situation aren't widely known by all who amplify the complaint, and the motives of an artist aren't always done justice in the complaint--isn't any more helpful... To represent the interiority of a person who commits an atrocity isn't to endorse what that person does; a character's actions or opinions aren't an author's: these are truisms basic to the creation and appreciation of art. And the seeming refusal to acknowledge them in cases like the At Love's Command--so that we can focus on the practical argument about representation and artistic honors and who's getting them that, to my mind, has the most merit--gives the hostile and the ignorant all the ammunition they need to shoot all such complaints down, as "hysteria," before they've even had any impact.

In the meantime, I appreciate the measured response of the author of At Love's Command, Karen Witemeyer, who "said in an email that she did not agree with the group’s decision to rescind the award but said, 'I understand why they felt compelled to take such action, and I harbor no resentment toward them.'" The statement's a bit crisp, and you could read some passive aggression in it. But taking it charitably, Witemeyer seems to grasp what so often falls by the wayside for people injured by accusations they've caused harm, which they cannot understand or bring themselves to agree with: there is a gap between the artist's intention and the art's effect; no artist can be in perfect control of the ways their work will be received, and no artist is immune from the social spirit of the times in which they're producing their work. Sometimes you've just got to accept what happens to that work. All the paratextual stuff--how it's received, how you're thought of as a result--is secondary to it, and much of it is beyond your control.

This is all pretty "basic." But the way these conversations happen online, it's hard to approach anything resembling a first principle. Every so often I want to sit down and figure out something that might interrupt the endless cycle of this same conflict bubbling up and fizzing out before we move to its next instantiation.

A little bit of patience is called for, from everyone involved, and a little bit of grace. And an expansion of the landscape of literature, where outcry over a book like At Love's Command seems to me to encode a belief that this landscape is zero sum--that any depiction of a participant in a racist system will take away literary territory that ought to belong to the victims of that system. Those who participate in atrocious systems, even gleefully, are also part of the human fabric, and it's not always glorifying them to depict their consciousnesses at work, or to celebrate such a depiction for what it reveals about our collective condition. What's more, how much does an award matter anyway? Granted awards say something about what the culture values--but they're snapshots of the values of a moment; for every celebrated text that stays in a "canon," there are tens or more that are discarded... And there are other ways to make a case for literary value than protesting a particular moment it isn't given. Just find more ways to talk about the books you love. As someone who works in publishing, I can say publishers are listening. (Though, you know, grain of salt here: publishing's desires to capitalize on trends are (obviously) cynical; if you want to be taken up by that establishment, you'll likely find it's not what you wanted it to be.) And beyond what publishers or literary establishments do or don't do, the love you have for a book in its moment is really all you've got. No future's guaranteed for any text.

I also think, there has to be some better way of adjudicating this than "give an award" -> "experience outcry by constituents" -> "rescind the honor given." The mechanics of popularity or brand management are at work there, rather than an organization's sincere engagement with the complaint being made, the elaboration of a principled stance for its response and the taking of action according to that stance, or the desire for true resolution or restitution on either side.

*It's somewhat ironic that I'm using My Education as my decorative lead-in for this little post about ethics in artistic representation. The stories of both the male protagonists in that novel--including Dutra--involve unproven allegations of sexual harassment, in a way that probably wouldn't fly in a novel published today as opposed to 2013. I'll admit I was expecting Choi to do more with the accusations than treat them, essentially, as ways to give those characters a bit of spice, a frisson of danger. And a barrier to loving them that only a woman like her protagonist, Regina, is brave enough to surmount.

[splinterend]

Movie Minutiae: Notes on Top 10 Films

I revisit my top 5 and 10 films periodically, and sometimes I write notes like the following.

04 January 2019, 12:16PM PST

The top 5 didn’t shuffle too much from the last time I wrote some thoughts on film, with only a minor shuffle between “Paprika” and “The Tale of Princess Kaguya” from 3rd to 2nd and 2nd to 3rd, respectively.

“Mad Max: Fury Road” and “Inglourious Basterds” fell off the list because ultimately, I favored these movies for their editing as opposed to the overall effect. They both stand on my “Top 10 for Film Editing Inspiration” (maybe I’ll make a list later, if my psyche irks me enough) but they did not stand the test of time as films that really, truly reverberate with me.

There was definitely an interesting kerfuffle as to what would be in places 6-10 (these standings change the most at each assessment) and while “Minority Report,” “In the Kingdom of Dreams and Madness” and “Ratatouille” ultimately kept their places, there was ample room for ordering and re-ordering and re-re-ordering and re-re-re-ordering (and so forth...) ‘til there was some semblance of a (non)sensical list.

“The Host” and “Rashōmon” join the ranks as films that seem to resonate the most with me at this point in time.

The special mentions list – “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse”, “Black Panther”, and “Get Out” are unapologetically black films. It took awhile to parse down the special mentions list, and I found it interesting the all three films are centered around Black protagonists who, to a certain extent (some more than others) grapple with their own relationship to American racial politics and/or the post-19th to 20th century slavery and colonization African diaspora legacy. Special mentions are films that I considered very closely to be in top 10 but, for reasons I may not be able to articulate at the moment, did not quite but I still felt warranted a mention. This special mentions list is actually the most interesting I’ve had in a long while.

I am sad and disappointed that, out of my favorite films, only one is directed by a woman (Mami Sunada, who also directed my favorite documentary – maybe another list for “Favorite Documentaries” for another day is waiting).

I am also disappointed that most of these films are from 2002 and onwards, with only one film being from before with Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashōmon” from 1950.

Lastly, I am disappointed that my film preferences are still predominantly East Asian (Japanese, Hong Kong, Korean) and American (Hollywood and American Independent).

I hope with time, this will expand. (I am open to recommendations from anyone who is reading this.) As much as I love film, there’s still so much I don’t know much about, and ideally a year from today, my knowledge will have expanded beyond my current limitations that I’m disappointed with.

Notes on Top 10

#1: The Grandmaster [2013] - dir. Wong Kar-wai

Prior to the new year, I saw a number of posts about how 2018 was a terrible year that people were happy to throw away into a burning garbage dump — similar sentiments thrown at 2017.

Despite all of the current and ongoing tumultuousness, I still consider 2013 to be one of the most defining years of my life. It was easily one of my worst years, and easily one of the most important.

Heart break, economic instability, and workplace bullying consolidated into one giant slap in the face, resulting in me physically collapsing and being forced to take a few days off to recover. Additionally, two people I loved died unexpectedly: Roger Ebert, the man who cultivated my love in film and never once doubted me as a writer and filmmaker; and Bà Ngoại, my maternal grandmother who had survived two wars, experienced heart break of every kind, and always supported me throughout my adolescence and beyond.

All of this happened within 6 months.

“The Grandmaster” was the first movie I watched in theaters after my grandmother died. I accompanied Weinstein’s cut with a glass of whiskey, and cried for the first time after a week of feeling numb.

“The Grandmaster,” for whatever flaws it may hold, has continued to not only comfort me during the saddest and darkest of times, but has also helped me navigate times of uncertainty and instability.

It is flawed, grandiose, and arguably Kar-wai’s most commercial work.

I also learn continuously from it, flaws and strengths and all, and it has shaped my understanding and love of film, history, and how fiction can be more truthful than reality. Each character appears, disappears, re-emerges, and disappears again, imitating life as you may have it: the only constant is change.

Each character, with their own philosophy, stands out on their own, each a story waiting to unfold, and in some cases never revealed more than a whip of a blade.

Circumstances beyond each characters’ control shape them more than anything, and it is only through will, choice (some right, some wrong), and primarily luck that some characters persevere, and others return to the past.

While any character has the potential to be a grandmaster, only one emerges as a confluence of their will, the right choices, and unfounded luck.

C’est la vie.

That, among many other minutiae, is why it is highly unlikely that another movie will ever take its place as my #1.

#2: Paprika [2006] - dir. Satoshi Kon

How is it that Satoshi Kon was so prescient about society’s relationship with technology and personas, and by extension our projections of reality and fantasy?

“Paprika” is not a film that easily sits with one viewing. It is audiovisual fest, similar to a fantastical dream that one feels but has difficulty fully grasping without another viewing.

Fortunately, in the advent of records and media, subsequent viewings of “Paprika” are more than possible, and highly recommended.

“Paprika” is like a fervent, feverish dream, a dream that echoes truths about Japan’s sexism, codification of inferences/non-speak, toxic masculinity (figurative and literal), power dynamics, and projected versus actual love and personalities.

Kon has been one of my favorite animators of all time. I miss him still.

#3: The Tale of Princess Kaguya [2013] - dir. Isao Takahata

I was unsurprised to learn about Isao Takahata’s abusive tendencies and work environment upon his passing last year. Anyone familiar with brilliant minds and talent is also familiar with how that brilliance can be leveraged to excuse atrocious and abusive behavior.

Takahata’s rage against Japan very easily spread to those closest to him, and to what degree he justified this rage, perhaps I’ll never know.

What I do know is that in all of his anger, nothing shook me more than the anger he poured into creating “The Tale of Princess Kaguya,” a feat of Buddhism, beauty, joy, and a level of rage and despair that rises to challenge the level of rage and despair of his previous work, “Grave of the Fireflies.”

It is a tough question as to whether or not we can celebrate the work of an artist once it becomes that they were so abusive that their closest colleagues credit them for killing rising talent.

I think that, in a case against binaries, we can both celebrate and critique the work as it pertains to who its driving artist was.

In the case of Takahata, “The Tale of Princess Kaguya” is a perfect encapsulation of who he was: brilliant and brutal. Brutal, more so than brilliant.

#4: The Wind Rises [2013] - dir. Hayao Miyazaki

Did anyone truly believe Hayato Miyazaki would retire after “The Wind Rises?”

I certainly did, and that’s perhaps why I cried even more after finishing his fictional account of Jiro Horikoshi, the creator of the Japanese Zero during WWII.

I’ve been criticized for finding Miyazaki’s “The Wind Rises” moving given the fact that Horikoshi created an effective and efficient war machine — and, for those who know me, the critique weighs in on the hypocrisy given my stance on war and the military.

I understand the critique, and I understand the hypocrisy, if not the outright irony.

I’d like to believe that Miyazaki understands this critique, hypocrisy, and irony as well. (For those who wonder “how would you know Q?”, I invite you to Google his comments as to why he did not attend the 2002 Oscars to accept the Academy Award for Best Animation for “Spirited Away.”)

Was Horikoshi complicit in war? Was his seeming apolitical-ness a gross privilege? Was the Zero an engineering feat? Was this movie, in detailing the fascism of Imperial Japan, implicitly criticizing the current Abe regime’s continued attempt at historical revisionism?

I would like to argue yes, to all of the above. Because to be human is to be critiqued, hypocritical, and fundamentally ironic.

#5: Moonlight [2016] - dir. Barry Jenkins

How on earth are we ever deserving as someone like Barry Jenkins, especially in this day and age?

I ask myself that question every time I even think about Jenkins’ 2016 masterpiece, “Moonlight.”

I’ve only seen it once, and the moment I walked out of the theater, I knew it would be one of my top 5 favorite films.

As one of the quietest films I’ve ever seen, it is also one of the most powerful statements in cinema as it pertains to masculinity, blackness, queerness, and tenderness.

How does one linger on a gaze that says more than words can convey?

How does the omission of sound at a key moment elicit the key disconnect between trauma and bureaucracy?

How does touch transcend sexuality and into a need for love?

How does one reframe Miami as a landscape of poetry within the abandoned and discarded?

And how do you break boys into men without shattering their spirit, psyche, and very being?

These are all questions that “Moonlight” answers, and more.

#6: Minority Report [2002] - dir. Steven Spielberg

If you were already critical of me loving a movie like “The Wind Rises,” then I do hope you’re more than willing to give me hell for liking “Minority Report.”

Spielberg minimizes the more insidious nature of surveillance that is fundamentally flawed by opting out of actual critique acknowledging the power structures that underlie state enforcement. This cop out is further varnished by a slick Neo-noir cinematography that I have always admired, with specks of foreshadowing red indicating a “shit about to hit the fan” moments.

“Minority Report” is a classic Hollywood take on a Philip K. Dick novel that rudimentarily explores implications and then inexplicably ends without actually addressing the insidiousness of state-sponsored surveillance, incorrectly assuming that state surveillance will simply end on the basis of basic human decency, morality, and ethics (spoiler alert: it probably never will, because people are people).

Lastly, the film arguably glorifies the sleekness of said surveillance, what with its touch screens, looking glasses, automated cars that inspired a generation of iPhones, Oculi and Teslas. How does one dress up such a depressing notion, of a black mirror society in which we must gouge out our eyes in order to truly be free?

With all of this pessimistic analysis cultivated and grown for 17 years, I still hold “Minority Report” dearly in my heart because still, whenever I watch it, I find it worthwhile to watch while understanding how problematic the larger issues surrounding it are. It was, after all, the first movie that really got me thinking about what I was watching, and whether or not I should agree with everything said and implied.

This film taught me that things are not mutually exclusive: that you can explore ideas and still be enjoyable; that you watch something and understand how the implicit ideas are troubling; and that Tom Cruise will always be running.

#7: Ratatouille [2007] - dir. Brad Bird

I was an impressionable, nervous, and insecure 18-year-old about to embark into college when Bird’s “Ratatouille” came out.

I was especially unsure about what I wanted to do in life, as I had just had an existential crisis (yes, this is real) after realizing that, even if I became the best clinician possible, that the US healthcare system would force me to turn away patients who were too poor to afford health insurance.

So there I was, a lost 18-year-old, feeling like I had just thrown away 4 years of high school pre-med studying, and torn between continuing down healthcare or having a “oh fuck it all” and switching gears to film school.

Escaping into Pixar, I was engrossed in the Parisian adventures of Remy, an eccentric and misfit rat trying to break free of tradition by becoming a chef (an eccentricness and misfitedness that I heavily related to).

But what really did me in was Anton Ego’s speech at the end. To this day, I think he may have been a bit too hard on himself, but the sentiment still rings true 12 years later:

“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new.”

“The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau’s famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant.”

“Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.”

#8: In the Kingdom of Dreams and Madness [2013] - dir. Mami Sunada

Mami Sunada accomplishes something quite striking in her documentary: she captures the existential pessimism of Hayao Miyazaki that, unless you read his interviews, would have easily eluded you. Because here’s the thing –

Miyazaki is a curmudgeon, a luddite, and a grump.

But most of all, he’s tired.

He’s tired of Abe, he’s tired of anime, he’s tired of consumerism, he’s tired of people trashing the environment, he’s tired of Japan, he’s tired of people, and he’s tired of life in general.

The only thing more tired than Miyazaki is, perhaps, a rotund white cat.

For all of Miyazaki’s curmudgeonry, Sunada manages to capture moments of sincere joy and tranquility, and more strikingly eases Miyazaki into admitting his own thoughts as unfiltered as possible by Japanese standards.

The ending scene, where Sunada holds the camera to capture the dichotomy between Miyazaki’s pessimism in contrast with the joy of pre-school children, is quite something.

#9: The Host [2006] - dir. Bong Joon-ho

Bong Joon-ho’s “The Host” is such an odd film.

I remember initial American reviewers were mixed, often citing that the movie was an inconsistent bag of emotions, and that traditional monsters don’t show the actual monster 10 minutes into the film.

They are correct on all counts, which is why this movie has stood the test of time for me.

What many American reviewers missed is that Joon-ho’s oddball monster movie is fundamentally about Korean-US international relations after the Korean War, especially with regards to American military presence within South Korea.

This evil exists because American scientists poured formaldehyde into the Han River, and through freak science, a monster is born. People are kidnapped and taken by this monster. Families are quarantined while they are grieving lost members. Old family drama inappropriately unfolds during times relegated for despair. The media and politicians lie.

Yet for awhile, the viewer wonders: is this monster truly evil? We have not seen it eat anyone. Perhaps it is not as horrific as it presents itself?

And that is part of the brilliance of Joon-ho’s film, because later he reaffirms that this monster is actually truly evil incarnate. It has already revealed itself to be evil – why was there any room for doubt?

But that is a fundamentally human mentality, because oftentimes evil is insidious and subtle, rarely revealing itself in broad daylight. Evil relishes in mystery before it kills, so it is understandable that we would find reason to doubt the monster actually kills people even though, in retrospect, the red flags were there.

I will reiterate that the media and politicians lie about the existence of the monster despite first person corroboration – a lie that they desperately work to maintain to the point of nearly performing a lobotomy on the protagonist who only wants to save his daughter from the monster.

The lie that the media and politicians stand by is a testament to society’s larger unwillingness to acknowledge evil when it flashes and smirks is grisly existence into our cornea, and the inherent farce and additional casualties caused when we are slow to respond and react for reasons the exclude morals, ethics, and humanity.

“The Host” is an odd monster movie because it exposes us to our own willingness to ignore evil until it unleashes more collateral than if we had simply admitted ourselves that something truly, unapologetically horrible had brazenly stuck its head in our doors.

Perhaps it’s something we can’t quite make eye contact with.

#10: Rashōmon [1950] - dir. Akira Kurosawa

A few weeks ago, a theology student pulled me aside and asked me what was the one question I wished I could ask my respective deity.

I told her:

“Why do people lie to themselves so they can sleep at night?”

“Rashōmon” addresses this same sentiment, and concludes on a profoundly depressing and stark note about the worser aspects of humanity.

For what are we but beings who will lie just enough to maintain our own narratives that may not align in the face of actual truth?

And if there is no narrator for actual truth, does truth matter?

Kurosawa rips apart the underlying aspects of Japanese society – and humanity at large – in which we will do whatever possible to preserve our own reputations, even if it means risking death, so long as we maintain our own dignity without admitting accountability.

Such is the farce of our own conditions sometimes, I suppose.

Special mentions

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse [2018] - dir. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman

What a beautiful, radical film. I honestly can’t believe that last year we were blessed with not one, but two beautifully unapologetically black superhero films that addressed different aspects of the Black/African diaspora as a result of 19th and 20th century colonization and slavery.

“Spider-verse” is what I consider an exemplarily radical film since it looks explicitly focuses on the modern demographic of Brooklyn while decentralizing (fridging) Peter Parker with the fundamental idea that anyone – yes, anyone, no matter what you look like, no matter your abilities are – can be heroic. It is as diverse as it is inclusive.

An extra shout out to the positive and supporting male role models. (I am convinced that Mahershala Ali should be in every film at this point.)

And goodness, what a radical breakthrough in animation. I’m sure Satoshi Kon would be proud of the climax. And what a soundtrack.

Black Panther [2018] - dir. Ryan Coogler

I watched this film nine times in theaters (yes, I am the person who helped run MoviePass into the ground and I don’t care) because it is a film that helped me get through some rough patches early last year primarily because of its female characters.

T’Challa is likeable, but Okoye is a whole different level for me: she has been a role model of sorts for me, in many different iterations. (Also, the rhino likes her more.)

And what a soundtrack to match such a cinematography.

Get Out [2017] - dir. Jordan Peele

Jordan Peele’s breakout horror still shakes me to this day, if not even more. It’s one of those films that, with time and age, only further sinks down into how horrific the circumstances that surround the non-white characters.

(Anyone that thinks that it qualifies as a comedy is, quite frankly, missing the fucking point. For fucks sake, this shit is horrific – why the hell would anyone laugh except for some kind of relief from tension?)

[uccsdramaturg-blog]

“Propaganda” for Theatreworks’s upcoming production of Raisin in the Sun.

A Raisin in the Sun

The Triumphs and Pitfalls of the First

 When Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun debuted on Broadway in 1959, it qualified as a number of firsts in both theatrical and cultural history in the U.S. It was the first play written by a black woman to appear on Broadway. To those who knew Hansberry personally, it was also the first by a black gay woman. Hansberry was the first African American to win the New York Drama Critics Award and the production had Broadway’s first African American director in fifty years, Lloyd Richards. It was not the first play about a black family on Broadway (Hansberry’s play was often compared to Louis Peterson’s 1953 Take a Giant Step, for example), but A Raisin in the Sun was the first to receive such unanimous praise from critics and audiences. Other plays had taken the oppression suffered by African Americans in the U.S. as their central interest, but Hansberry’s play was somehow more direct, while being more heartfelt in its dramatization of the nation’s inequalities and how they affected blacks on an individual and familial level. The play dramatizes the choice by a black family to be the first of their race to move into a white suburb of Chicago and the intense opposition to their arrival. Unique in tone, Hansberry brilliantly mixes the light with the dark, and the comic with the tragic. She is similarly groundbreaking in how she structures her play. She avoids having a clear “main” character, preferring to allow the entire Younger family to serve as the play’s protagonist. The Younger’s desire for a decent home demonstrated to Broadway audiences that the values, dreams, and aspirations of African Americans were, in fact, similar to their own.

 Hansberry’s life was connected to a number of other firsts. Her father won a Supreme Court case in 1940 that enabled the Hansberrys to be the first black family in the Washington Park Subdivision of Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood. Clearly, Hansberry was drawing from personal experience when she wrote Raisin. The Hansberry family, like the Youngers, represented a new, hard won reality in the country. Restrictive Covenants that contractually prohibited home owners from selling their houses to “undesirable” races were struck down as unconstitutional in 1948. In the pursuant decade before Raisin’s debut, demographics across the country were slowly changing.[i] Writing from the heart of the Civil Rights movement, surrounded by trailblazers such as Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Dubois, and Paul Robeson, Hansberry promoted a systematic overhaul of past practices. But, it’s worth noting that she does not dramatize these changes as triumphs. Rather, they are moments in her play of struggle and uncertainty, moments in which the empowerment of marginalized people requires stepping out on the thinnest of ledges. The treacherousness of being the first. The Hansberrys may have won their court case, but they suffered threats and violence from their new neighbors as the price for it.

 In this way, as much as we should rightly celebrate innovation and novelty, there is a danger in too zealously tracking “firsts.” They give the illusion of progress or breakthrough when they rarely signify such. Social and cultural accomplishments, like being the first female African-American playwright on Broadway, are often more anomalies than they are a sign of systematic change. They can lead not to the alleviation of discrimination but its perpetuation. It’s the phenomenon of tokenism (or what social psychologists call “moral licensing”) that allows us to commit a virtuous act of inclusion and then immediately shut the door on such acts. Hansberry was not followed by a flood of African American or female playwrights on the Great White Way; American theatres did not suddenly begin seeking out black stories or black audiences; and, discrimination in housing practices is still by no means a thing of the past.[ii]

 On the more positive end, thinking in firsts also ignores the legacy from which any great work of art stems. Hansberry was undoubtable one of the great playwrights of the twentieth century (one whose life was tragically cut short at the age of thirty-five), but she had predecessors. I hope it is not too reductive to link her with other black women of genius, but please forgive a historian’s fancy. While Hurston was writing, surrounded by the vibrancy of the Harlem Renaissance, she must have been aware of compatriots of the earlier generation (some of whom were still alive). Anna Julia Cooper, one of the first black women to receive a doctorate in the U.S., wrote articles on the qualities of African American literature. Zora Neale Hurston, was an anthropologist, playwright, poet, and novelist whose work on the African roots of black culture and black expression must have resounded with Hansberry. Angelina Weld Grimke was the first female African-American playwright of note, whose heartbreaking play Rachel (1915) confronts some of the same issues as Raisin (and is long overdue for a proper remount).

 Hansberry added to this legacy a close familiarity with authors such as Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg, and O’Casey; all of whom she mentions as influences. There are others. The son in Raisin, Walter Lee, shares much with Willie Lowman of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949). Like Willie, Walter Lee is obsessed with grasping the brass ring and both characters fall victim to the promise of its shine. However, Walter Lee’s disillusionment is specific in that it calls attention to a community so often left out of the national narrative. His disappointment is a cry from the heart of the black community that they too were due their share of the American dream.

 Producing Raisin sixty years after its debut, THEATREWORKS may not qualify for any “firsts,” but it does take part in an important legacy of reflection, one that uses Hansberry’s canonic work to assess the present state of things. We can see how far we’ve come and can consider how far we still have to go. We can look with pride upon our firsts as a nation and community, but recognize that firsts are often met with waves of backlash that undermine advancement. Malcolm X once said “If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress.” What he called for was healing the wound of oppression, but he knew we must first recognize the wound’s existence. Hansberry’s play, in its pain, humor, grace, and bravery, offers us the opportunity to examine that wound. She crafts as its salve and dressing the sacrifices of family, the lessons of the past, and the promise of the future. Let us tend that wound with our presence in the theatre and let our presence serve as a testament to the possibility of remedy.

 - Max Shulman, UCCS

[i] Hansberry’s father’s case also involved a racial covenant, but he won on a technicality rather than a full-blown rejection of the racist practice.

[ii] The passing of the Fair Housing Act did not come until 1968 as part of the Civil Right Act and we still see evidence of racial discrimination in housing across the country today.