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solarpunkcast · 3 years

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I've heard a lot about how not reading theory is a sh*tty idea, but I don't actually know what "theory" to be reading. I can't exactly buy myself a copy of The Communist Manifesto right now, and I don't know where to find anything free, online, and actually understandable by somebody who hasn't got, like, a degree in this kind of stuff. Do you have any suggestions?

hey that’s perfectly fine! here’s the Manifesto http://www.slp.org/pdf/marx/comm_man.pdf

first up: we’re leftists. any theory you ever want to read is online FOR FREE. because that’s the point yea?

you’ve got marxists.org and theanarchistlibrary.org for basically any theory you’d ever want to read. libgen also has a lot if you can’t find it on those two.

if audio can be easier for you, I highly recommend LunaOi who has great intro videos to theory. I’d actually watch that linked video before diving in, to get an explainer about some of the core ideas.

there’s also Hakim who even did a list of intro works if you really want to get into it. both of these creators are non-Western communists and both provide insight into how simple or difficult their recommendations are to read. Luna is even in the process of translating Vietnam’s dialectical materialism textbook into English for us!

(if you want anything more specific please let me know, the final thoughts part is specific recommendations on the assumption you’re American.)

second up: DO NOT EXPECT TO UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING THE FIRST READ. no matter the flavor, theory does require study. some things will make sense first read, a bunch of others won’t click until you’ve researched around more. if something doesn’t make sense on your first pass, it’s perfectly fine! did you understand physics or trigonometry the first class you had it? no.

third up: you don’t need a hyperspecific label, and you will go much farther by reading/understanding a wide range of leftist history. this point could be its own entire rant so I’ll keep it to a personal example: I call myself a communist because my end goal is a stateless, classless society where everyone is taken care of (like anarchism's) but I believe we need a transitory proletarian state to make sure that goal isn't overtaken by corporatists and fascists. that’s it. my politics are influenced by my desire to make people’s lives safer and better.

final thoughts: don’t stop at European leftists. Frantz Fanon can be difficult to get through, but his Wretched of the Earth is a dissection of colonialism and a proof that the colonized have every right to resist their oppressors by any means necessary.

Fanon is an absolute must-read for anyone who considers themself to be anti-imperialist or anti-colonial. Any leftist from anarchist to socialist should at least know and understand who Fanon is. here’s an intro vid. and a link to the Concerning Violence documentary.

Angela Davis gets tapped for Are Prisons Obsolete, along with numerous other interviews and writings throughout her time with the CPUSA and beyond it.

Unironically read and listen to MLK’s full speeches to see why he’s been sanitized to the American Public.

Study the Black Panther Party and the methods they employed through their 10 Point Program & leaders like Chairman Fred Hampton. Their history intersects with other liberation groups like Yellow Peril and the American Indian Movement during the wider Civil Rights Movement.

Hammer and Hoe is a great book about the black Alabama Communist Party’s fight against white supremacy in the South, and the international socialism that supported black radicalism.

**IF YOU DO NOT LIVE IN THE US: apply this to your own history. find out what the liberation movements in your country were, find out who the sanitized radicals are, find out how your history intersects with colonialism/imperialism.**

#answered #anon #leftist recs #intro to leftism #theory resources #p/s

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pinelife3 · 3 years

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What’s this Pizzagate in the heart of nature?

The big tech story in Australia last month was Facebook’s decision to restrict people and organisations in Australia from sharing or viewing news content on Facebook. This was in response to the Morrison government’s proposed Media Bargaining legislation which is basically a Murdoch-serving law to try to get tech companies to pay media organisations for news content hosted/linked/displayed on their sites and, most galling of all, share details of their algorithms with Australian media orgs. The idea that Facebook would have to notify NewsCorp every time they want to tweak their algorithm is patently insane. So I admire Facebook’s petty, dramatic manoeuvre: “if the way we share news on the site is such a problem then fine, no more news for you”. After all the fuss, the Australian government agreed to amend the Media Bargaining legislation - evidently with terms more agreeable to Facebook, meaning news has been restored to Facebook down under.

One of the key responses I saw expressed in relation to Facebook’s initial news eradication was concern that disinformation would be able to spread more easily on the site - and that people wouldn’t be able to rebut disinformation with factual news articles.

So far as I can tell, the proliferation of disinformation online wouldn’t matter if people didn’t believe it. And most especially, if people didn’t want to believe it. After all, the web is full of persuasive writing and people who want to convince you of things - for whatever reason, conspiracy theories just seem to be very alluring. So rather than trying to protect people from their own stupidity by hiding disinformation... maybe we could look at why people are so credulous in the first place. Deep state? Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams? CIA Contra cocaine trafficking? The great replacement? Pizzagate?

I’m going to class conspiracy theorists into three categories of my own making:

I believe: well meaning, uninformed people who have been fooled or duped. The fraudulent 1998 Lancet paper by Andrew Wakefield which started the vaccines cause autism conspiracy was actually written to support a class action lawsuit. Wakefield knew the results in his paper were not true: in addition to his conflicts of interest, he had falsified data. The paper was eventually debunked and retracted but the conspiracy had its roots and has continued to grow. I think a lot of the people who believe that vaccines are dangerous are parents who are just worried about their kids - and also want to protect other kids from a threat they believe to be real. Why is one debunked article more persuasive to people than a million proving the efficacy of vaccines? It is literally beyond reason.

It suits me to believe: people motivated by self-interest who adopt a conspiracy theory to support their larger world view. Their self-interest could be anything from their own ego to gun rights. The conspiracies around the Sandy Hook Primary School shooting are interesting because you can see a clear motivation for people to subscribe to that theory rather than the truth. If you’re a keen gun-owner, arguining that the shooting was a hoax to generate anti-gun sentiment and thereby allow the Democrats to pass harsher gun restrictions is neat and comforting. No one could argue that the events of Sandy Hook weren’t inhumanly terrible - so the only option is to argue that they didn’t happen at all. Plus, in this worldview, no kids are getting hurt so you can sleep easy knowing you have seven semi-automatic weapons in the house.

I need to believe: the world is disorganised, scary, unknowable. Ocean deep, sky vast, dark impenetrable - and meanwhile our skin is so thin and delicate. So. Wouldn’t it be comforting to think that there’s a race of reptilian overlords that control the planet by whipping their tails against a complicated system of levers and pullies? That would explain a lot of the chaos in our world. Or maybe the problem is an elite coterie of Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles? If only we could defeat those accursed pedophiles then life would be peaceful. Luckily, Q and a septuagenarian reality TV host are here to save us.

Across these categories, there are two unifying features:

Rejection of widely accepted truth

Investment in the conspiracy

As a comparison with the conspiracists above, here’s my take on a conspiracy: I think it’s quite probable that Epstein didn’t kill himself. I think that some powerful, shadowy entity took him out to protect itself. But I’m not obsessed by this idea. It would not surprise or upset me if this was officially confirmed - similarly crazy shit happens all the time. I haven’t devoted my life to revealing this truth. I guess I fit into the “I Believe” category: all official information says that Epstein took his own life but my scepticism of the unusual circumstances around his death and Epstein’s powerful connections leads me to doubt the official information. The difference is I don’t do anything about it. I don’t really care if I’m right or not - I’m not that invested in the conspiracy.

And that’s why it seems ludicrous to me that Facebook should be tasked with combatting the conspiracy theories spiralling across our culture. Simply being exposed to bad information does not radicalise you, does not conjure an investment in the conspiracy. If a normal person reads something creatively wrong or misleading they discard it from their mind. If it hits a chord with them, they may adopt that opinion themselves - see: astrology, Armie Hammer as cannibal, tarot cards, essential oils as serious medical treatment, etc. But the evolution from agreeing with a thought to militaristically insisting that the rest of society also agree with it is an abnormal progression. That strange impulse runs deeper in people than their Facebook timeline.

Most people have fears for the planet or believe there are major issues plaguing humanity - and we never do anything about it because it would be mildly inconvenient or because it’s too hard to care about every issue under late capitalism:

"But sorting my recycling is boring”

“Yeah yeah fast fashion is problematic but H&M is just so affordable"

"Of course I hate R.Kelly! But ��Ignition (Remix)’ is my jam”

“At least they have suicide nets in the Foxconn factories now”

“I only buy free range chicken thighs because I care about animal welfare”

“I retweeted that thing about anti-Black racism. Yay racism solved!”

There are probably lots of people who believe in conspiracy theories but are ultimately apathetic about doing anything: they can’t be bothered talking about vaccines and politics all the time, can’t be bothered going to a protest, can’t summon the interest to care much. So what’s interesting then is that across the three categories of conspiracy theory belief (I believe > It suits me to believe > I need to believe), what a person believes in, and perhaps even the reason for the belief, doesn’t create any impetus to enact real world change. On both the left and the right, the impulse to do something about an issue is rare. Do you think conspiracy theorists, like the left, have a problem with performative activism?

Imagine that you agree that Sandy Hook was a false flag, that ‘they’ hired crisis actors to publicly grieve as if their pretend children had been murdered... do you then get in your car and drive overnight to Sandy Hook and start harassing those crisis actors at the pretend funerals? What do you call someone like that? The hero of their own story.

Just wait!

In their worldview, QAnon are unironically trying to save us from pedophile cannibals. Given what conspiracists believe to be true, they are acting in good faith and doing the right thing. If you believed this shit, you’d be upset too. The fact that they’re doing something about it is kind of admirable: they don’t want our babies to get autism from the measles vaccine, they don’t want a deep state to manipulate our democratic governments. It’s existential for all of us - we just don’t agree on the threat.

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Can you imagine how electric the riot at the Capitol Building must have felt for the people who led it. Brave, romantic, a grand gesture: it was like their Storming of Tuileries. Remember this day forever!

Modern conspiracists are actually similar to the sans-culottes in terms of being avid consumers of propaganda and inflammatory reporting. Disinformation and stirring rhetoric are not new - but shouldn’t people today be less clueless than 18th century peasants?

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Why are there are so many people who believe things which are untrue? They exist on this planet with us but interpret it so differently. These questions really are existential: an ancient, echoing maw pointing to the heart of human nature. The struggle for a more perfect world, whispers about where the danger comes from at night, arguments about how to protect ourselves.

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Has there ever been a society where people didn’t have differing views on how best to shape the world? It’s the central conflict of human existence: epic, older than language - and now we want Facebook to fix it?

#qanon #epstein #trump #anti-vaxxers #facebook #auspol #media bargaining code #pizzagate #sandy hook

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into-september · 5 years

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Watching NO. 6, episode 5

Episode starts with Safu's grandma to remind us all why Safu has to go back to NO. 6. Did I ever mention how badly it annoys me that she gives Safu one of her knitting needles, but continues carrying around the basket of yarn that she apparently cannot knit because she's somehow knitted an entire wardrobe on a single pair of straight needles.

The point isn't the apt symbolism, the point is "couldn't you have found ONE PERSON who has knitted something more advanced than a scarf and just ask them".

I’m giving the writers the benefit of the doubt that knitting needles don’t carry the same symbolic value in Japan as they do the in the west, here.

Safu can't humanities, but has allegedly "changed" considerably by her time in NO. 5 (which I'm 80% is meant to be Oceania, going by the Sidney Opera House-y background arcitechture and the summer-while-it's-winter-in-Japan). This “change” in Safu is not apparent from how she acts, nor does it ever come across later in the series. Unless the big change is that she’s learning to appreciate art? I can think of a few reasons why someone raised and brainwashed by a technocracy would adress the topic of god so thoroughly as Safu does in her poem, but fact remains that it makes little sense except as foreshadowing of her part in the Rat-Elyurias story. Which I adore, on all levels, in ALL WAYS, but I'm not buying that NO. 6 has maintained as much as a incence stick's worth of spirituality.

Rat gets emotional when Shion wants to see him at work, like "not showing his eyes only his suddenly angry mouth" emotional, because Shion is "clueless" and the audience are "monsters". I think it was about this point in the novels where it was mentioned that Shion had lived with him for WEEKS before the first time he took him out and nearly let him be killed. Anyway, Rat refusing Shion the theatre is an interesting conflict to Safu learning about poetry and art history. This entire scene started with Shion reading Wilde to the girl with Safu’s grandma’s sweater that she got from Rat, who got it from Shion, who got it from Safu.

Dogkeeper does not share Rat's hate of NO. 6. This also appears to be Rikiga and Dogkeeper's first meeting, though Rikiga at least knew who Dogkeeper is. While he doesn't flinch at being surrounded by sneering dogs, 1 (one) mouse sure freaks him out. The trio discusses the rumours about the killer bees; Shion shares his history with them, and is suddenly REALLY INSISTENT HE HAS TO TELL RAT ABOUT THE RETURN OF THE BEES RIGHT THE NOW even as Dogkeeper points out that Rat would probably crow in joy.

This is actually a pretty clever cut from Safu's museum to Rat's theatre. When I mentioned that I love the Safu-Elyrias-Rat connection, I meant it A LOT and the cross-cut scene between them here is my favourite part of the entire anime, no lie.

There went the "NO. 5 is Oceania" theory: It's daytime in NO. 5, but night in the NO. 6. Sooooooo.... South Africa? But it's like 85% white, so unless there was some awful return of apartheid, I'm thinking it has more to do with poignant contrasts between Safu and Rat and the worlds in which they live.

Shion is approptiately nervous about seeing Rat outside of their normal banter. "Is this a side of him I'm not supposed to see?" Interesting question for fanfic. Rikiga thinks this hesitation is the "complete opposit of Karan".

Weird flow of time here. Shion and Rikiga are queing to get into the theatre while the manager is shouting for the people to "form a line", all twenty of them. By the time they get in, we're at the beginning of Act III. That was either the slowest moving queue in history, or tonight's show is "The Abridged Hamlet". It might be the second, because by the time Shion and Rikiga have moved from the door to their seats two metres away, Hamlet's solilqui is already over and Ophelia is on.

Safu's stained glass window has got to be in the postmodern section, becaues I refuse to believe anyone ever made an unironic stained glass window with bees on it.

Gotta wonder why Shakespeare connoseurs would be so horrible in the West Block. Anyway, I vastly prefer how this scene goes in the anime to how it went in the manga/novels. Even if we never did get to know how Shion got Rat from the theatre and back to their secret lair.

Anyway, Safu: "I heard some kind of song... and then... Rat. (who's Rat? Shion...)", the implication seems to be that she shared his dream/vision/whatever, given that she knows he's a person and she knows he's connected to Shion, who he calls out to.

Like half of Rat's note sheet wallpaper are arrangements for 3 or more instruments, not piano sheet music. The Dancing Scene is my second favourite moment in this anime. It's super mawkish. I still love it. The scene right after is unexpectedly great: there is a lot of tension built in both the music and the camera angles, and it's great becaues it's SO EMOTIONAL but from two completely different angles: Shion sincerely tells Rat that "nothing scares me more than the thought of losing you". Rat hears nothing of what he’s saying because he's freaking out about how didn't notice Shion reaching out to touch him.

A+ preview: Safu: She's so cold... why is so cold? Dogkeeper: WHEN YOU'RE DEAD YOU STINK.

#no. 6 #let's watch cartoons

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junker-town · 5 years

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The Timberwolves should trade for Russell Westbrook, like, right now

We have that and more in Tuesday’s NBA newsletter.

This talk about Russell Westbrook being the worst contract in the league is wild. He’s due $170 million over the next four seasons. Do you mean to tell me that if Westbrook had been a free agent this summer some team wouldn’t have paid him $170 million over four years, if they could have? I don’t buy it.

Of course, that doesn’t disprove the point that Westbrook’s contract is onerous. I’m just skeptical of the scope here, as I expressed in my weekend column on Russell’s future. There is no way, for example, that Westbrook’s contract is worse than that of Andrew Wiggins, who is now due $122 million over four years. And I wonder (as others on the internet have this week) whether there’s a deal to be made there.

Wiggins is young and still has potential to grow. He’s been in a wildly instable situation in Minnesota all of his career. That’s not meant as an excuse -- he’s been a disappointment, full stop. But he hasn’t exactly been groomed to meet his considerable potential. He’s wildly inconsistent night to night. You never know quite what you’re getting with Wig.

Westbrook has realized every bit of his potential to the tune of eight All-NBA teams and an NBA MVP at age 30. You know what you’re getting. It’s not all good (lots of misses, lots of turnovers), but it’s pretty good.

Why wouldn’t the Timberwolves try to get Westbrook for Wiggins? Don’t tell me Westbrook would damage Karl-Anthony Towns’ growth -- Kevin Durant won an MVP next to Russ, and Paul George just finished third. Towns needs help getting back to the playoffs, and Minnesota stands a much better chance with Westbrook than Wiggins. The back end of Westbrook’s deal will likely be painful. Every minute of Wiggins’ deal is painful because he’s not helping Minnesota win games.

Why would OKC do it? The salary differential is major (roughly $12 million per year) and the Thunder need to slice down luxury tax bills. Let’s be honest: Wiggins, though he has potential that could theoretically be unlocked by Billy Donovan, helps the Thunder chase lottery balls better than Westbrook. Moving Wiggins in the future would be easier than moving Westbrook because of the salary difference. It opens up a little flexibility the Thunder don’t have now.

We deserve this, NBA. Give us Russell Westbrook in the great white north with a great center and those amazing Purple Reign jerseys.

Necesito Más Monta

Chris Haynes shared some spectacular news on Monday: a dozen NBA teams attended a workout in Vegas featuring none other than Monta Ellis and Amar’e Stoudemire.

Stoudemire has been playing in Israel, but Monta -- as far as I can tell -- hasn’t played competitive basketball since the Pacers waived him two years ago. Ellis is just 33 years old and doesn’t have that many miles on him. He could absolutely contribute to one of these thin teams looking at him like the Lakers or Warriors. (What a dream for all the real heads in the Bay Area to be able to wear their Monta Ellis jerseys unironically to the new arena in San Francisco next season!)

I wrote wistfully of Monta two years ago when he went unsigned into training camp, and I can’t believe we’re still here. This world is a knotty mess. Let Monta help us make sense of it.

(This newsletter has now asked for a Russell Westbrook trade to Minnesota and an NBA return for Monta Ellis. This is not lost on me.)

Links

I ranked what I consider to be the top seven NBA title contenders. I could see a case to include a couple more West teams and maybe the Nets (if Kevin Durant heals miraculously fast) or Celtics (if Danny Ainge can pull off a surprise midseason trade).

Good trade for the Nuggets, getting Jerami Grant for a draft pick. The type of incremental move that could make them a higher ranked contender!

A good timeline of the Brooklyn Nets’ rise from rock bottom to model franchise.

LeBron will officially be the Lakers’ point guard this year, apparently, which really just means that neither Quinn Cook or Rajon Rondo will start.

Zach Lowe’s free agency winners and losers.

Chris Herring on trading Westbrook.

Are Kawhi, Durant, and LeBron too powerful?

Are you a basketball fan who, like me, found so much to love in the World Cup over the last month? Here’s your NWSL starter kit courtesy of the wonderful Kim McCauley. No teams in California? Hello, Thorns FC! BTW, all hail Ashlyn Harris’ celebratory Instagram story.

Seerat Sohi on how Kawhi understands and wields power. Much respect to Uncle Dennis.

There’s a theory -- a rumor? -- that Kawhi sabotaged the Lakers by waiting until late on July 5 to decide his destination. I don’t buy it. I think it took that long for him to decide and for the Thunder to work out a Paul George deal with the Clippers.

You’re welcome for this content. Be excellent to each other.

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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The Best Geek TV Deep Dives on YouTube

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

From the heyday of Television Without Pity to niche podcasts that cover every small screen angle you can think of, TV show deep dives have always thrived online, and popular platforms like YouTube and Vimeo provide opportunities for talented creators to add a visual angle that can often make a well-edited analysis of your favorite series even more compelling.

YouTube is positively teeming with potential rabbit holes for TV obsessives to fall down. Sometimes at 3 a.m. Sometimes after a few beers. Sometimes when you should be working (couldn’t be us) but whether you’re drawn in by a near-obligatory shocked reaction thumbnail or you accidentally stumble across an interesting take on something you’re passionate about, there’s usually a rabbit hole waiting that feels like it could have been made just for you.

With any luck, falling down one of those rabbit holes ends with you landing far away from the world of destructive opinions, of which there are many, and not just on YouTube. Most of us have probably seen a clip floating around of someone spouting the most harmful, misinformed nonsense at one time or another, and asked ourselves whether giving that person a platform was really the best idea.

Well, this isn’t that. Instead, we’ve pulled together some weighty YouTube-accessible examples of what happens when someone loves a TV series or franchise so much, they can’t stop talking about it – even decades later. Most of these deep dives are a labor of love, which is not to say that they always have a happy ending.

The Retrospective

Ian Martin, who runs the YouTube channel Passion of the Nerd, says his journey began rather accidentally in his early 30s when he found himself feeling a little lost in life. He admits he tried a variety of ways to rid himself of the sensation, including “too much alcohol,” but after deciding on a career change and fruitlessly looking for ways into the voiceover industry, he decided the best course of action was to go ahead and just …make stuff. After all, this course of action didn’t require anyone else to give him a break, and made him the master of his own destiny.

“I sat down and wrote a script about a show I’d become consumed by and edited it into a video called Why You Should Watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” he wrote. “In that video, I mentioned that Buffy’s first season was a little rough and, for people who just wanted to get into the show, I would create a short little episode guide just to get them through the first season.”

Six years later, Martin is still at it, and his audience has grown into a supportive community that includes over sixty thousand subscribers, propped up by funding from Patreon. Not only is he still covering Joss Whedon’s first series in depth, episode-by-episode, he’s now delving into spin-off show Angel and Firefly.

Martin’s videos don’t pore over every aspect of these shows, and rarely does an instalment hit the 30-minute mark. Rather, they tend to examine the philosophy behind their themes, citing absurdist and existentialist influences. The host himself doesn’t push these ideas on his audience, but if you don’t end up buying a copy of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea by the time you get to the end of Season 3, it may be that you’ve missed out on a pretty essential element of Buffy’s enduring appeal.

“It took me a long time to figure out what Passion of the Nerd was but I started to find its shape through the journey it was taking ME on,” he explained. “On any average day it’s a chance to make someone laugh over our shared interests. But my favorite experience of art is the one in which we find ourselves. That movie, piece of music, performance, or show that makes us feel like its creator opened up our heart to take a picture of its inner depths. And I love talking about why media MATTERS and finding those moments in popular culture. Sometimes I get to distil those moments for other people and when I do, I hope it does for them what the channel has done for me.”

Martin’s coverage of the very first episode of Buffy lies below. If you continue watching his series of videos after that, it’s unlikely you’ll want that time back. They’re incredibly thoughtful and, frankly, an absolute joy.

The Deconstruction

Ah, Twin Peaks. The show that changed television forever, and one that has been hard to forget ever since. You’ve not been able to throw a golden shovel without hitting a Twin Peaks deep dive online in the last three decades, but occasionally one arrives and threatens to pull apart the backbone of its dreamscape for good.

Twin Perfect’s Rosseter turned in a Twin Peaks deep dive last October with a running time not for the faint of heart. His deconstruction of David Lynch’s endlessly puzzling mystery, supported by myriad quotes from its beloved co-creator, is over four-and-a-half hours long, but its length certainly hasn’t put off curious viewers – over a million people have already chosen to hear what Rosseter has to say about the real meaning behind Twin Peaks.

“Garmonbozia, the Black and White Lodges, Mike, Bob and the Little Man, Judy, Audrey and Charlie, Season 3’s ending… The mystery of Twin Peaks has survived for nearly 30 years… until now,” the video promises, which is a tease that even casual fans of the series can’t possibly resist. Their mileage may vary with the host’s loud impression of Lynch throughout the video, however, even as he produces what feels like a fairly accurate interpretation of Twin Peaks’ initial intentions, its ongoing message in the prequel film Fire Walk with Me, and a gut-punching look at 2017’s The Return.

Rosseter starts out by warning his audience that if they haven’t consumed all three Twin Peaks seasons and the film, they should consider stepping back until they have, which stands to reason: he’s about to spoil most of their various twists and turns. But he then goes on to say that die-hard Twin Peaks junkies should also reconsider watching the video, because after they’ve heard him out, they might never be able to look at Twin Peaks the same way again.

For many, the temptation to potentially peek behind the red curtain has been too great to ignore, and the comment section is filled with people who sat through the whole thing, having felt truly changed by the experience.

“David Lynch didn’t even know what this show was about until he saw this video,” someone joked, while another added more solemnly “I just feel regret. I appreciate the show on a whole other level but the haunting magic that it had for me is gone.”

One viewer thought that Rosseter’s comprehensive offering “may legitimately and unironically be one of the most intelligent and well-constructed videos ever put on YouTube,” but others hit the nail on the head when they realised that unwrapping Twin Peaks’ clues over the years had only led to one significant discovery: “we were controlling Twin Peaks the entire time.”

So, what’s at the heart of Rosseter’s theory? You may want to find out for yourself, and he certainly makes an incredibly detailed case for it. In this event, a brief explanation in the next paragraph will be a SPOILER.

While it’s common knowledge that David Lynch didn’t want to reveal who was responsible for killing Twin Peaks’ central victim, Laura Palmer, and that he was forced by TV bigwigs to wrap up the storyline and the investigation into her murder during Season 2 in late 1990, Rosseter posits that the reason we were never supposed to uncover the mystery of who ended her life and get closure on her death is because Lynch fundamentally believes that consumable TV violence is rotting our brains, and that’s why he created the series in the first place.

Still intrigued? Take a look…

The Discussion

Two-time Shorty Award winner Kristen Maldonado launched her YouTube channel in 2014 as a place where pop culture meets community, and she has the kind of drive, ambition and fast turnaround skills that make other creators look like they’re napping on the job, frankly.

While working as a social media manager for MTV, she’s used her YouTube platform to support women, diversity, and LGBTQ+ representation, discussing everything from the acknowledgement of Kat’s identity on The Bold Type, to the highs and lows of TV’s YA-skewed failures, emphasising the importance of why representation matters “on screen, behind the scenes, and critically.”

Along the way, she’s become a notable queen of deep dives, and not just where TV or movies are concerned – at one point she was even documenting her own musical journey on Spotify, where she was keen to bring attention to emerging artists. Discussing TV still feels like Maldonado’s reigning passion, though, and she usually explores her favorite shows in bite-sized segments that add up to a comprehensive look at their subjects.

One show she’s been extremely passionate about is the Charmed reboot, which she was beyond excited to see come to fruition on The CW. The fantasy drama series originally ran for eight seasons between 1998 and 2006, and CBS had tried and failed to reboot it before, but this time The CW intended to get the job done, bringing the story of magic and sisterhood back to TV and hoping to entice both fans of the old series and a new, younger audience.

The reboot was initially touted across industry trades as a project that would star three Latinx actresses, and that casting choice meant a lot to Maldonado. When news later emerged that only one of the new Charmed sisters would be played by a Latina actress, she posted a video addressing her feelings of confusion about how the show was originally announced, her disappointment that the roles wouldn’t be filled by three Latinx performers, and why series creators need to start using valuable representation opportunities properly.

Maldonado has covered the Charmed reboot comprehensively since it began in 2018, and this year has moved into livestreaming her reviews, switching from shorter videos to longer discussions about the episodes. If you’re a fan of Charmed, or any of the other series she covers (and there are quite a few) you might well find her channel to be an insightful addition to your subscription list.

The Takedown

Chances are, a TV show has pissed you off or upset you before. That Game of Thrones ending? Probably. Bobby Ewing stepping out of the shower? Sure. Quantum Leap? We’re not over it. Only a few of us take the time to make a video detailing just how upset we are about a show and upload it to YouTube, though.

Mike Stoklasa is likely to be a pretty familiar face to some of the Very Online movie and TV addicts reading these words. He’s the founder of production company RedLetterMedia, through which he’s been creating content and offering his desert-dry opinion on various facets of pop culture for well over a decade.

On YouTube, Stoklasa is regularly accompanied by cohorts Jay Bauman and Rich Evans as they take a hard look at some of their favorite films from the past, some of the worst straight-to-video movies of all time, and some of the bigger releases, too. He also voices a character called Mr. Plinkett, and when he does, viewers know that they’re about to peer screaming into the void, because ‘Mr. Plinkett’ does not hold back, especially when it comes to Star Wars or Star Trek.

Stoklasa is one of the most vocal Star Trek fans alive, and is known to consistently derail otherwise unconnected discussions with his Trek references, often explaining how Star Trek may have influenced the subject’s storytelling, and how it might have been – or should have been – a positive lesson from TV past.

To say that he’s not a fan of Star Trek’s fairly recent resurgence under the eye of executive producer Alex Kurtzman is probably an understatement. He covered CBS All-Access’ Star Trek: Discovery, a series that has, for the most part, chosen to abandon Trek’s previous lean towards standalone stories and episodes in favor of season-long arcs, and he seemed interested but trepidatious ahead of Star Trek: Picard’s arrival on the streaming service. But after the show had run its course, he uploaded a 94-minute takedown called ‘Mr. Plinkett’s Star Trek Picard Review’.

The broader world of YouTube takedowns is, objectively, a cesspool – misogyny, racism and homophobia have often run rampant – but Stoklasa has been in the business of keeping more of a constructive balance going for a long time, so when ‘Mr Plinkett’s’ review of Picard appeared online towards the end of May, anyone with even a little backstory on his recent problems with Trek’s TV universe suspected that the fresh adventures of the aging ex-Enterprise captain had finally pushed him over the edge …but they weren’t quite prepared for the ‘Dear John’ letter that ultimately arrived.

Whether you enjoyed Picard or not, Stoklasa makes some constructive points in his video review, and his breakup with the current Star Trek TV world is one for the ages.

The Art of More

If it’s the visual element of a TV show deep dive you’re into, YouTube has plenty to offer.

Art meets skill as Skip Intro takes a fascinating look at the editing behind David E. Kelley’s Big Little Lies, Ladyknightthebrave spends the best part of an hour pondering how Fleabag’s gimmick of breaking the fourth wall serves the show’s characters and story, and balancing ‘point of view’ vs ‘the big picture’ becomes the focus of Lost Thoughts’ It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Island.

Here, Thomas Flight explores how HBO’s award-guzzling Chernobyl became a masterclass in perspective…

We hope you found something worth your time in this piece, and writing it up wasn’t really an excuse to discover more of them, but it also wasn’t NOT an excuse to discover more of them. So, if you’ve found any notable examples to keep us busy, please direct our attention to them in the comments, thank you.

The post The Best Geek TV Deep Dives on YouTube appeared first on Den of Geek.

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geekade · 7 years

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Time and Relative Dimension in Spoilers 10-02: Smile

With Bill’s introduction out of the way, we can get into the real Allons-y of the season. “Smile” was a pretty good episode, though not without its problems. It had an interesting plot that was well-resolved, with some good laughs along the way. It also raised some questions, for the episode and for the season in general.

Let me start by saying that I do like Bill, and I understand that, for her to fit the Young Woman of Modern Earth companion mold, she was always going to have to be a Millennial. But she is walking a very fine line with it and sometimes she stumbles onto the stereotypical side of it, which I believe is down to the writing more than her performance. She’s psyched about emojis of the future, the first thing she does in the first human space colony is snap a selfie. If she’d used the word hashtag unironically, I probably would have punched my TV. To me, it smells like middle-aged, white, male writers saying “We gotta make her one of the cool kids. What is that word my granddaughter’s always using incorrectly? Oh yeah, thirsty! Let’s make her that!” Settle down boys. You can make her real without making her a caricature.

Still, as I said, I like Bill. She’s practical about the TARDIS (I’ve always wondered why the seats are so far from the controls). She’s the first companion in a while not to be completely pumped to race off after the Doctor into danger, addressing the sensible alternative theory many of us might have, that perhaps there’s someone we might call to deal with these things? I liked her hot take on why he does what he does. She got his number awfully quick and her logic of why to follow him back into the colony made a lot of sense. I also enjoy her appreciation for every new experience. It’s a nice take on a role that can often get too jaded too quickly.

Overall, I liked this plot. The Doctor’s explanation about why the colonists left Earth was a little too much science and not enough fiction, entirely too believable for my tastes, given the state of the world these days. The emoji-bots were the perfect blend of cute and creepy and struck a good balance between villain and misunderstood emergent species. And when we finally got around to the reasoning for grief as plague, I felt that was pretty brilliant. As enjoyable as the story was, there were some problems with its execution.

As clever as it is to use robots to set up a space colony prior your arrival, I didn’t totally buy that explanation as soon as it was given. Now, of course, this is because I’ve seen TV before and it can be frustrating to watch shows where characters act as if they haven’t, but this is the Doctor. He has absolutely seen TV before, he’s likely seen all the TV there is. His assumption was a glaring oversight that quickly almost blew up an entire city. I have an even harder time with the idea that he didn’t scan for life before plotting to blow up the colony, especially considering we later learn the robots are considered life forms. Likewise, I began to wonder when he was going to get around to reprogramming the robots far before it occurred to him to do so. I expect this lack of consideration for life is down to the absence of a caring companion in his life for so long, but that connection could have been drawn for me a little better. A scene back at the university with Nardole, scolding about “how he gets without a human” would have been nice. Meanwhile, Capaldi’s performance remains spot on. The way he delivered the line about blowing up a “big smiley abbatoir” is at once something that could be said by any of the doctors and could only have been said by him. And thumbs up to the coordination between what was shown on the Doctor’s emoji badge and what was shown on his face. For me, those were the biggest laughs of the episode.

The Doctor’s self-imposed exile is intriguing. The most famous Earth exile in Doctor Who history is when the Time Lords banished him there in his 3rd incarnation (when adventures with UNIT and the Brigadier were the order of the day and a good way to keep the budget under control). With the Time Lords not around to slap his hand, it seems that the Doctor has done this to himself (he says he took an oath, but not for whom). But of course, he doesn’t really want to follow through with it and having a time machine gives him a pretty good loophole. The vault they’re meant to be guarding has my attention. Clearly it’s important, but not so important that he can’t run off to play, leaving Nardole in charge, under the pretense of returning before he left. He well knows he can’t actually cross his own time stream like that, nor does he always have the precise control of the TARDIS to return exactly when he means to. The faster he talks, the more sure I am something else is going on. If I were a betting woman, I’d say the vault is going to be a season-long mystery leading up to the finale. (Again: I’ve seen TV before.) I’m really enjoying Nardole, and Matt Lucas’ comic relief leaves me hoping that the Doctor won’t keep his off-planetary excursions secret from him for long. However, if you piece together the Doctor’s secrecy and the fact that the closing moments seem to thrust our heroes straight into their next adventure, it looks like we might not be getting back to Nardole as soon as I’d hope. Still, a trip into the past with Bill and the Doctor looks like a lot of fun. See you next week!

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