A few Friday thoughts on things I've watched and read this week.

Barbie

Barbie was good in the way that any movie that’s ultimately going to serve as the starting point for a massive company’s IP cinematic universe is good. I like Gerwig as a director and think she’s making some really interesting movies dissecting womanhood and gender and the like small things that go into loving someone. But, it’s hard to divorce all the good stuff about Barbie from the fact that it’s a Mattel property that, based on its success, is going to lead to a massive investment by Mattel into similar movies that never quite hit the mark.

That’s all to say I would watch Barbie again. Honestly, I wish I could watch it as a like college student in a film appreciation class with a really knowledgeable professor who can break down each scene for me visually. I think there’s a lot going on with what objects are real VS which objects aren’t and what that means symbolically. I also think there’s probably a really deep trans reading of this that you could tease apart with someone who knows a lot about queer theory.

I’m also probably a bit jaded about it as it took Zach and I three tries to see Barbie as accidents kept happening to us only on the days we wanted to go see the movie. By the time we actually got to see it we were a bit exhausted just wondering “are we actually going to see this movie or not.”

Huffpost’s bit on Richard Hanania

Look, I’m not going to pretend to know the full history of this dude, you can read that for yourself. All I’ll say is that we are living in a unique time where massive mainstream news organizations have convinced themselves that these right-wing racist grifters are actually capable of presenting an intellectually challenging argument or opinion. They’re not, but our obsession with legitimizing and sanitizing right-wing viewpoints so we can remain, objective defenders of the political order, is causing organization after organization (pundit after pundit) of oops accidentally platforming a dude who believes in debunked race science.

Heartstopper season 2

When talking about Heartstopper I try and remember that this piece of media isn’t really meant for me. It’s a teen romance and the target audience is…other teens who likely find the twee expression of bubbly romance between two gay guys charming and inspiring.

I don’t hate it, I think it accomplishes what it sets out to do. There are of course parts I don’t buy about it. As if two gay teens would never get further in their relationship than a kiss boggles my mind. Then there is the sanitizing of queerness, which I assume is the sort of charm of the show: this is something normal not abnormal.

Young me would have been OBSESSED with this though, I would have made it my whole personality at 15. I told Zach that I would have absolutely fallen for Nick as a highschooler (I did have a crush on a ginger sports guy so) and his sarcastic response was:

“Oh, you would have fallen for a twunky red head that won’t claim you publicly”

Which is probably the most devastatingly true thing anyone has ever said about me.

A young mother disappeared 13 years ago. What did it mean?

I think this piece is particularly good at picking apart the weird way our society has become obsessed with true crime and murder mysteries. I’ll admit that I used to listen to My Favorite Murder back in the day and was only forced out of it after reading a really good piece about the ways true crime exploits victims in favor of content.

This article isn’t a 1:1 of that, just made me sort of think about how more and more people are coming around to the novel idea that missing people and murder stories might be intriguing but they have a real human behind them. Ultimately in this piece, the author breaks down their initial obsession with a missing person’s case and how, years later, it becomes pretty clear this isn’t some strange mystery just another all too common story: a man got jealous and murdered the woman he was seeing.

Ultimately, the thing that bugs me so much about our current true crime obsession is it force-feeds the public (primarily women) a manipulative narrative about what’s out to get them. You get average women obsessed with the idea that a serial killer is all around them (they’re not) or that crime is up everywhere (it’s not) or that sex traffickers are waiting for them in parking lots (they’re not). When, in reality, the truth is that the most dangerous threat to women (all people really) is the close personal relationships in their lives. Domestic abuse and violence and murder often come at the hands of someone a woman knows well, not some random stranger.

U.S. lab says it repeated fusion energy feat — with higher yield

I’ve been obsessed with this idea that those obsessed with discrediting climate change always have a rebuttal like “someday science will solve this issue,” and how ridiculous of a notion that is. One, because science has created a solution for climate change, it’s literally what scientists are telling us to do. Two, it highlights how our obsession is always on some new bigger piece of technology or human ingenuity that will save us from our impending doom.

That being said, this is a cool breakthrough. The cynical part of me knows though that given our current climate we could clearly show how to cheaply and effectively mass produce clean energy and Republicans would still find a way to claim that’s gay so we shouldn’t do it.

Clarence Thomas’ 38 Vacations: The Other Billionaires Who Have Treated the Supreme Court Justice to Luxury Travel

Look, who among us doesn’t hold one of the highest positions of power in the nation and also has a bunch of rich billionaire friends who take them on vacation? Feels like Thomas’ argument is essentially going to be: sorry that y’all are a bunch of losers, but I actually have friends.

Blame it on Barbie and Furby’s Revenge

I started listening to American Hysteria after Chelsey Weber-Smith appeared on the You’re Wrong About podcast a number of times. I’ve become a bigger fan of the sort of extended universe of You’re Wrong About (the flagship podcast, Maintenance Phase, If Books Could Kill) mainly because I find stories about our cultural misconceptions appealing. Really what I’ve been primarily interested in is what feels like a new string of cultural critiques (done particularly well in Maintenance Phase and If Books Could Kill) which starts by asking the basic question of “wait did any of this really happen?”

It’s sort of fascinating how many cultural panics or assumed theories fall apart when you start pulling at any of the threads they cite. It’s not just a data thing either, but more of a general, “Wait are we sure this was a 1:1 correlation” attitude that highlights how we’re all seemingly jumping to conclusions about everything all the time.

Case and point, the Furby’s Revenge episode talks about how kids really didn’t even want Furbys, that parents were just fascinated with the idea of some self-aware toy and fell victim to the media hype and bought us all furbies. Then, when kids thought they were creepy parents did the whole “Oh so you don’t appreciate your toys” routine.

Both of the toy podcasts break down some interesting facts about Furbies (which I had and hated) and Barbies (which I didn’t have and am neutral about). I thought the whole “furbies are possessed” bit they talked through was really interesting too because I definitely remember feeling that as a kid. Being creeped out about how my Furby could respond and subsequently tossing it down the stairs. The Barbie episode tries to grapple with the concerns people had of Barbie as an anti-feminist toy by highlighting that it was neither feminist or anti-feminist. I’m still (even after the Barbie movie) not sure I buy the theory that Barbie was completely harmless to female image, but I’m willing to concede that it’s probably a bit more complicated than good or bad.

A bit from a story about friendsAfter Daniel stormed out, I stopped going to our favorite spots. Each one felt tainted by some intoxicating combination of grief and dangerous hope. I traced the room each time I went: eyes darting from table to table, attempting to find someone I knew would never arrive. I learned through trial and error the special type of grief that comes with losing a friend. Sure, there were an endless number of books and movies, and poems written about the tragedy of lost love, but few I found about the platonic side. There I would sit sipping coffee, consumed by the anxious thoughts of him arriving or us meeting again.In the before-time, we made a routine of the places we went. A bar on Thursdays. Getting high in his cramped apartment. The neighborhood pool when it got hot and neither of us had concrete plans. We would talk about whatever was on our minds. He would share stories from his childhood and I would talk about my toxic job, my dreams for the future, the men I was sleeping with who never wanted to bottom. 

He could return at any moment and the idea of our reunion caused me so much anxiety that I moved south of the river, letting the geography of our lives spread out and eliminate any chance of our reunion.

But, now I craved that feeling. I was dazed, retracing our old haunts, hopeful we would bump into each other. Certain that we never would. It terrified me. How one day you could know someone’s whole life and the next they could disappear, the memory of their voice or walk or smile haunting you like a ghost. In a city this big, it was easy to hide, letting your distance build an insurmountable wall of separation.

In seven years, I only caught a glimpse of him. I wondered if he had the same experience. Did I ever walk by oblivious to his presence? Shopping for groceries? Drinking at a bar? Biking back from work, coated in sweat? There was no way to tell. Maybe he had thoughts too about rekindling our friendship. Maybe he had hoped to say more but the moment went too fast. Stopped from asking about my job by a mass of dancing bodies at a concert. A hello, how have you been unnoticed by me, seeing double at a dive bar? A glimpse of my frame smeared by his speeding car. Missed chance after missed chance building up to a decade of no contact, and by then, were we even friends anyways?