EPISODE 705: NOT NOW, APPLE SCREEN TIME REPORT
Ugh, I am loving that!
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
I was realizing yesterday that I have not been paying the attention to the Ukraine story that I should be, and for a very specific reason: given the way of the world in recent years, I had just assumed it was all doomed to failure. Right now the fascists roll over everyone.
What a happy shock to see that Ukrainians did not get that memo. We have stories of hackers thrashing various aspects of Russia’s internet (including local radio stations); Russian soldiers begging for food, disparaging the war or crying for their parents; tanks breaking down because they’re out of gas; the world community basically shutting out Russia out of its bank accounts; and the Ukrainian president President Volodymyr Zelensky refusing either to back down or hide away.
Digital civil liberties specialist Whitney Merrill did a great thread yesterday about the many ways in which the internet has been mobilized to help the cause.
But for me the bigger story is the way in which the country’s own refusal to back down has itself caught the attention of the world. And I think there’s a certain (and to some degree very uncomfortable) pop culture element to it all. The world needed a story; they needed a hero and unexpected twists and a bad guy who gets egg on his face. That is, they needed their attention to be grabbed in a way similar to how the newest big show or movie does. The growing world interest and involvement in the last few days has seemed very similar to the kind of word of mouth buzz that causes a Ozark or This is Us to go from niche story to cultural phenomenon. It’s not just that the Ukrainians have been able to do so well/the Russians so poorly so far, it’s that people are talking and memeing about that.
This was from Ukraine’s own twitter account last week:
We can bemoan these trends. Aja Romano at Vox has a lot to say about it, and the connection between memes and safety or privilege.
I’m certainly not happy to realize how far my own head has buried in the sand. And I think that one of the people that comes out really well in this regard no matter what is Biden, who was denouncing this action and supporting Ukraine long before there was “a hook.”
But I also think beyond any judgment it’s just worth noting that this is how a lot of us seem to work right now. Whether it’s because we’ve been so beaten down by the events of the last 6 years, most especially a federal administration that was corrupt and in your face about it and still got away with it, or there’s just too much happening all the time, or it’s just who we are today, a lot of us need a compelling storyline in order to get really invested in world events. And while just responding with memes or tweets is totally inadequate, I wonder if it’s not possible that for some it is a step toward greater personal involvement.
Will any of it make any difference in the final result? I don’t know. I guess we’ll see.
After I wrote this piece I saw this tweet of a writing teacher announced she would be using a clip of a man in Berdyansk removing a landmine as an example of writing with high stakes going forward. (You have to click on this tweet to see it, because Substack…)
This is clearly the dark side of our social media reactions. It’s not a real thing that’s happening, it’s just something I can use to teach my students to write fiction better.
If you follow me at all here or elsewhere, you may have noticed that I was um, not completely onboard with The Book of Boba Fett. I actually think there’s a pretty interesting-for-Star-Wars problem in the execution of the series. It’s a show where really the main character really should go DARK at the end: my own head canon for the series was that he calls out the Tusken Raiders, who he has been secretly uniting all along, and they go through Tatooine killing everyone connected to the Pykes, the three warlords, the Mayor or the Hutts. Basically, it should have ended with horseheads in beds.
And that really goes against the grain of Star Wars as a concept. You think of the Fallen to the Dark Side stories of the saga, and none of them quite work. Prequel Anakin isn’t believable; Kylo’s path is more conceivable but confused by the Snoke of it all. How did Kylo ever get hooked up with that guy? Or think that he was worth trusting?
I just think that the Star Wars universe resists those kinds of stories, even as the Dark Side plays such a central role in them. And so in a sense Boba Fett couldn’t go where it really needed to.
Meanwhile the great cartoonist ND Stevenson watched the show and found an opportunity to create something really beautiful, a truly great Star Wars story about Fett, Fennec, Young Boba, Boba’s dad Jango and Zam—that’s the assassin from the start of Attack of the Clones who is working with Jango. I don’t want to say anymore because it will ruin it. But suffice to say, if you read one thing today (or start one thing—this is definitely a story you can enjoy over a long period of time)—make it this.
If you want to read more things today from me, I wrote a piece about this new show The Sister Boniface Mysteries, which I think is pretty great; and I had FEELINGS about the Oscars’ decision to cut eight categories from its broadcast.
Basically I think the Academy’s decision ignores everything that’s wrong with the Oscars. No one is complaining that we spend 7 minutes honoring composers; the problem is celebrities who are unprepared, or insist on talking endlessly (and mostly thanking people whom none of us know), or use the moment to issue harangues. I think if you’ve already won an Oscar, you get no more than a minute to thank people for your second or third or whatever. You want to petition for special circumstances, go ahead. Good luck. But don’t expect it. Especially if you’re winning year after year.
Generally, the Oscars shouldn’t be about letting the same people do the same things again and again. It’s a time to welcome new people into this community, and I would say above all to honor the people none of us know about that actually make the magic. They’re literally the only people at those events whose lives at all resemble our own. They’re also the ones where you’re most likely to find people of color, queer people or women in positions of leadership. And the categories being cut are often the only ones that genre movies ever have a chance of winning, too.
If the Academy wanted to cut the three categories of shorts I’d get it; they basically get lost in the award ceremony anyway. They deserve some sort of other event of their own. But cutting people like hair and make-up or production designers is just offensive. It’s basically Hollywood’s version of the powerful taking up more and more of the landscape.
I’ll be honest, writing that piece was also a chance for me to talk/rant (tant?) a bit about something else that drives me bonkers, namely how crazy it is that the Catholic Church continues to privilege the voices of clergy over everyone else when we represent like 4 one hundreds of one percentage of Catholics in the world.
For a long time now I’ve felt that the term “lay people” is enormously insulting, a linguistic way in which we reinforce the strata that privilege clerics. 99% of the expertise needed to run the church comes from people who are not ordained. Okay, 91%. Either way, in some many spheres of life that are essential to the working of the church we the priests are the inexperienced, the “lay people.”
We could definitely use some new terms, is what I’m saying.
I had one other kind of crazy writing thing happen since last we met. New York Times columnist Frank Bruni does a regular feature “For the Love of Sentences,” where he recognizes writers who have written a really good sentence. And on February 17th, he included me!
I don’t know Diane Dugan, who recommended me, but if you’re out there thank you, because I was deeply honored. (And for anyone who has read me here you’ll know just how thrilled I was that the sentence that was honored included a reference to The Lord of the Rings.)
THREE TWEETS
The things the kindergarten teachers of 2024 are going to have to contend with is pretty amazing.
I would also suggest Being Squeezed Too Hard.
I would like to see his hair in each one and then write a think piece for Vulture about the multidimensional timeline of Conan’s hair and career.
That’s it for me this week. Enjoy Mardi Gras!
And the start of Lent!
For various reasons I don't have easy access to live TV at the moment, which means I'm encountering news about the Ukraine war almost entirely online. I really wonder how that's skewing my perception of the event, particularly how meme-heavy this conflict has been.