Substack combining Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s account of Robert F. Scott’s disastrous Terra Nova Expedition to the South Pole - which, despite his many virtues, Cherry-Garrard basically bought his way onto - with Scott’s actual diary.
Scott’s diary spans Nov through March, so the emails will come out “in real time”, just like Dracula Daily.
wrt lrb; tho i did truly like most of those pieces & thought they were interesting, i do also agree w it kinda being a movie thats picking up more crit in part bc of having a woman director / “having” to be “feminist” iygm? –> all this is a long way to say that i wish there was maybe a few more positive takes on it there, bc the piece there that was positive was really lacking
I’ve walked past the Barbie branded selfie booth, sat through the reel of old commercials that precede the previews, and watched Margot Robbie learn to cry, and I’m still not sure what “doing the thing and subverting the thing,” which Greta Gerwig claimed as the achievement of Barbie in a recent New York Times Magazine profile, could possibly mean. This was the second Gerwig profile the magazine has run. I wrote the first one, in 2017, which in hindsight appears like a warning shot in a publicity campaign that has cemented Gerwig’s reputation as so charming and pure of heart that any choice (we used to call them compromises) she makes is justified, a priori, by her innocence. This is a strange position for an adult to occupy, especially when the two-hour piece of branded content she is currently promoting hinges on a character who discovers that her own innocence is the false product of a fallen world. But—spoiler alert!—the point of Barbie’s “hero’s journey” is less to reconcile Barbie to death than to reconcile the viewer to culture in the age of IP.
“Doing the thing and subverting the thing”: I haven’t finished working out the details, but I think the rough translation would be Getting rich and not feeling feel bad about it.(Or, for the viewer: Having a good time and not feeling bad about it.) One must labor under a rather reduced sense of the word “subvert” to be impressed with poking loving fun at product misfires such as Midge (the pregnant Barbie), Tanner (the dog who poops), and the Ken with the earring, especially given that the value of all these collectors’ items has, presumably, not decreased since the film opened. Barbie may feature a sassy tween sternly informing Robbie’s Stereotypical Barbie that the tiny-waisted top-heavy billion-dollar business she represents has made girls “feel bad” about themselves, but if anyone uttered the word “anorexia,” I missed it. (There was a reason Todd Haynes told the story of Karen Carpenter’s life and death with Barbies, and it wasn’t because an uncanny piece of molded plastic has the magical power to resolve the contradictions of girlhood and global capitalism.) There’s a bit about Robbie going back into a box in the Mattel boardroom, but Barbies aren’t made in an executive suite; they come from factories in China. On the one hand, it’s weird for a film about a real-world commodity to unfold wholly in the realm of ideas and feelings, but then again, that’s pretty much the definition of branding. Mattel doesn’t care if we buy Barbie dolls—they’re happy to put the word “Barbie” on sunglasses and T-shirts, or license clips from the movie for an ad for Google. OK, here’s my review: When Gerwig first visited Mattel HQ in October 2019, the company’s stock was trading at less than twelve dollars a share. Today the price is $21.40.
the whole “every piece of media is abt love” nonsense falls into a category of lacking media anaylsis that i like to call “escapism theorying”. people will often attribute themes like love or escapism to a work if it has themes that make them uncomfortable or challenge them – and, in an ironic twist, use the idea of love or escapism as a universal theme to avoid thinking about those other, more challenging themes. often times you’ll get a super surface level reading of a work that skyrockets in online popularity because of this sort of thing and it lends to this extremely watered down textureless analysis
“it’s either about love or the absense of love” is so silly also. i could just as easily say that everything is about violence or the absense of violence. everything is about hate or the absense of hate. everything is about life or the absense of life. nothing means anything.
“okay but everything IS about ___” no it isn’t! there are no universal themes! i’m trying to say that there are no universal themes! even the ones you like. even the ones i like.
You wanna know what I’m good at? I’m good at killing people. Yeah, when I got back from Afghanistan I uh, was really depressed, you know? Like, I didn’t leave my house for months, and uh… This friend of my dad’s, he’s like an uncle to me, he uh, he helped me out, and he gave me a purpose. He told me that what I was good at over there could be useful here. And uh… it’s a job, you know? Like, the money is good. And uh, these people I take out, like, they’re bad people, you know? They’re pieces of shit. But lately, you know, I’ve– Like, I’m not sleeping and, uh… That depressed feeling is back, you know? Like, I know there’s more to me… than that. But maybe, I don’t know, maybe there’s not. Maybe this is all I’m good at, I don’t know…
Barry (2018). Episode 1, “Chapter One: Make Your Mark”. Directed by Bill Hader, written by Alec Berg and Bill Hader.
god i need to draw alex at least once for the garfield tell my school i died shirt…it was made for him…
man who i do not respect
[id: a digital drawing of alex summers. he is smiling at the viewer and half holding up a “hang ten” sign. he is wearing a shirt that says: “Call my school- tell them i died!” with a picture of garfield and a surfboard on it./end id]
W-w-welcome to 106.9 FTM FM, PNW Testosterone Radio. The only radio station that teaches YOU how to build a pipebomb. I’m your DJ-and-host-who-enjoys-a-spitroast, Strap Wrangler, coming to you LIVE from Cascadia, every Monday through Friday.
fun fact: if you pirated six full length albums from your favourite band, listened to them all back to back 5 times, and then sent them $20 on ko-fi or whatever, on average they would have earned slightly more money per play than they’d get from you streaming the same shit with ads on spotify.
invariably when I talk about media piracy people are like “but what!!! about creators!!! they need to make a living!!!” my homey in romey if you’re that worried about it send your favourite artist $5 right now. do it. shut the fuck up.
I want to support artists but I can ONLY do it if I’m being drip fed shittier and shittier versions of the content a tech executive thinks I want. I have no choice in the matter because uhhhhhh other people won’t pay for things if they’re free. yeah that’s right. other people are the problem.
here’s the piracy secret big media don’t want you to know: you can always give artists money if you want to.
