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framecaught · 3 years

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[S] Cascade After the Death of Flash

Most of us familiar with Homestuck are familiar with [S] Cascade. This seminal flash animation concludes Homestuck’s fifth act and is still considered by many fans the most important, climactic animation in the comic (even ahead of its successors [S] GAME OVER and [S] Collide).

Many of us may also be familiar with the extraordinary circumstances of the animation’s release. A user called Vivi on the now-defunct MSPA Forums made a commemorative comic documenting the occasion, which, to my view, really captures the essence of the release-mythos. In short: On October 25th, 2011, Homestuck updated after a year-long hiatus with a thirteen-minute flash called [S] Cascade. As fans raced to watch it, the influx of pageviews crashed Newgrounds, the site where the flash was hosted. Hussie temporarily uploaded the flash to megaupload.com. Megaupload.com crashed. The Homestuck website crashed; the Homestuck forum crashed; livestream.com crashed as fans who had “gotten in” tried to stream the video; and, finally, the Homestuck fandom crashed Twitter. [1]

Today, it is hard to imagine Homestuck fans crashing Twitter. Back in 2011, Twitter was a lot smaller, and Homestuck was a lot bigger. But it wasn’t just the long year of building anticipation and the mad scramble to watch the flash which cemented [S] Cascade as one of Homestuck’s most iconic pages. The Flash itself is aesthetically ambitious beyond any previous flash in the comic [2]. Not only does it combine detailed illustrations contributed by fan collaborators with an absolutely fire soundtrack; it manipulates the traditional Homestuck “panel” in a completely unique way.

Among the various stunning moments in the flash, I find Bec Noir’s dramatic release of the red miles one of the most memorable. The YouTuber Precision F-Strike captures my same reaction when I watched [S] Cascade for the first time in this video around 1:20, exclaiming: “My screen is getting bigger! My screen is getting bigger!!” What made this “expanding panel” trick so dazzling upon my first watch? The release of the red miles marks the first instance in which [S] Cascade modifies the traditional size of the Homestuck panel. By no means does it mark the first time the comic as a whole has deviated from its own standard panel size; elongated panels, multiple panels, and links-to-panels have all been regular features of the comic up to this point. However, [S] Cascade is the first page to modify the panel size during a Flash sequence, changing in motion. This novelty, combined with the surprise of the effect, sets the reader up to expect a flash of epic proportions—and [S] Cascade delivers.

After expanding for the red miles, the panel never quite shrinks down to its original size. For the rest of the animation, the plot unfolds within an extended panel-space ripe for dramatic exploitation. At 2:53 the panel shrinks back down to show Bec Noir’s journey to post-reckoning earth, then grows again to get back into the action. At 4:22 it shrinks and breaks into multiple panels to illustrate Bec Noir wreaking destruction in the troll’s session. The proliferation of these moving rectangles mimics a film reel, reminding us that we have technically already seen these events, but underscoring their importance as a conglomeration of memories for the trolls.

Transitioning to the human sessions’ Derse at 4:38, the panel blows up again to its traditional size and adopts an exterior “wallpaper.” This “wallpaper”, as I’ll call it, shifts with the content of the Flash for the next few minutes. It shows the exterior of Derse as Rose and Dave fly through, then it takes on the red and yellow colors of the quest beds; the black and white colors of The Tumor; the red and blue colors of the “mass of two universes” device; and finally the fleur-de-lis pattern of the Felt mansion. During the sequence between Sn0wman and Slick, at 6:08 Slick’s bullet actually pushes out the corner of the traditional frame, extending it back into the full extended-panel space. Then again, during the climactic moment at 10:02, panels grow and shrink and replace others, flashing in time with the soundtrack, drawing the plotlines together and anticipating the finger-frame with which Jade creates the Fenestrated Plane. The animation finishes with John and Jade busting through the Fenestrated Plane, which cycles through the comic’s own panels, culminating the meta-referential panel distortion with this final act of “escaping” from and through the Homestuck panels themselves.

As a result of the extended panel-space established at the release of the red miles, we get to experience the majority of [S] Cascade’s action (and gorgeous artwork) on an enlarged canvas. Just as we go to the cinema to see movies on the “big screen,” Homestuck deploys its own big screen at the start of the flash. Then, all the growing and shrinking between segments contributes to the narrative flow of the flash. The “shrunk” portions leave room for the panel to blow up again once the next climax comes. I think the “wallpaper” effect employed mid-flash is especially effective, as it allows Hussie to continue utilizing the extended panel-space while keeping the frame small in advance of the Sn0wman’s death, at which point it expands again. It’s also important to note how Hussie manipulates our other preconceived expectations, aside from panel size, to enhance the animation’s drama. The website itself gets a special [S] Cascade color scheme and header. In the unfamiliar layout of this Cascade-ified website, readers prepare themselves for the best and the worst—then their expectations are thrown off balance again, for good measure, with the expansion of the panel and the big-screen execution of the flash. With all of this in mind, it’s easy to see how [S] Cascade generated such a massive response.

As you may be aware, as of January 2021 Adobe has discontinued its support for Flash Player, with all major web browsers following suit. This means it’s near impossible to run flash content on any normal computer, and it won’t be long before flash only exists in archival projects. Luckily, the new denizens of the Homestuck website have worked to keep all of the story intact despite the changing media landscape, with some interactive flash pages broken down into videos or screencaps and animations converted to embedded YouTube videos [3]. If you are interested in experiencing Homestuck’s flash content as originally released, a fantastic project called the Unofficial Homestuck Collection has worked to archive the entire comic in a custom browser which natively runs Flash (all you need is 4GB of space on your computer and some time for the assets to download). This archive has been invaluable for my art historical investigation into the comic [4].

As it stands, though—unless forced by a concerned friend to download The Unofficial Homestuck Collection browser—new readers to Homestuck can’t experience the Flash games and animations in their original format. The same goes for folks rereading the comic. In the case of [S] Cascade, significant losses must be mourned. The effect set off by the red miles (the surprise and novelty of your “screen getting bigger”) is hampered by the embedded YouTube format. When you open the [S] Cascade page, now, it presents you with a mid-flash thumbnail, a YouTube play button, and YouTube framing elements such as a watermark and title (pictured above). You can’t avoid already seeing the extended panel-space of the flash page with this new format. Even though the panels within the embed begin in their “shrunk” state and grow to fill out the video frame, the expansion can never be a surprise to the same degree it was in the original Flash format. Flash animations were unornamented by watermarks, titles, and scrubber bars. They were so indistinguishable from regular static panels and gifs in terms of size, image quality, and framing that this gag (pictured below) actually worked. The indistinguishable quality of flash animations from regular gif panels created the necessary environment for [S] Cascade to surprise us by suddenly growing and filling the screen. That drama is inevitably lost in the flash’s new format.

On the other hand, the YouTube format presents some obvious benefits for readers. For one thing, you can now scrub back and forth in the animation, pause it, and even see its timestamps. This is beneficial to any reader who wants to revisit key moments and enormously helpful for someone like me analyzing the animation in detail. I would argue that the inability to pause the animation in its original format contributed to its monumental quality—readers couldn’t pause to breathe, and the comic took merciless control over the pacing—but of course the inability to pause something is also terribly inconvenient. Furthermore, the video format solves an issue that plagued Homestuck readers (including myself) throughout the comic’s lifetime: it’s inaccessibility on mobile devices. Adobe Flash famously failed to transition into the world of mobile touch-screens after Steve Jobs decided not to support it on the iPhone, writing a letter denouncing the software for its errors [5]. With Flash no longer functioning, the reformatted pages in Homestuck are all compatible with mobile devices, meaning readers can now enjoy the comic while lying sideways in bed like we always dreamed. Among other considerations, Adobe Flash was a complete pain to work with [6] for many large-scale projects, and its technical limitations cannot be ignored. On the whole, the death of Flash speaks to a greater evolution in our 21st century media sphere—the growing importance of mobile browsing, the shift from web-hosted games to apps and game launchers, and the increasing “convergence” of platforms into all-purpose devices. While much of Homestuck’s impact and charm resulted from its innovative use of Flash, like the example I’ve given in [S] Cascade, the unique bubble of history in which Flash existed should be fondly remembered and effectively preserved as we continue to navigate the comic’s legacy.

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Happy 4/13! If you liked this post, you can follow the blog on tumblr for updates or, if you don’t frequent tumblr, sign up for the mailing list to receive an email whenever I publish a new mini-essay!

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[1] I unfortunately can’t say I was around for the original [S] Cascade release (I started reading the comic about two years too late). However, even during the Gigapause, what I’ve called its “release mythos” was still widely retold. The events themselves are documented here: https://fanlore.org/wiki/Cascade_(Homestuck). Thank you to @imploder for having saved Vivi’s comic on tumblr!

[2] Hussie wrote about the making of [S] Cascade on his tumblr, now archived here: https://wheals.github.io/tumblr/tumblr.html#about-eoa5-part-1. This gives some insight into the massive undertaking. Previously, the longest animation in Homestuck was [S] Descend, an animation which Hussie calls “Cascade Lite” in his author commentary in Homestuck Book 3. [S] Descend was the first animation to significantly incorporate multiple plotlines moving along at once. Hussie describes this narrative style as an “action-collage” (also in the Book 3 commentary). [S] Descend was also (to my recollection) the first time Hussie significantly incorporated assets from contributing artists into an animation, which he explained was partially to keep the production moving faster. Ironically, during the production of [S] Cascade, organizing contributors turned out to be much more of a hassle—but ultimately Hussie deems the myriad of captivating art styles “a big plus” in his post.

[3] Although some are completely broken, now :(. RIP silly flute refrain.

[4] I seriously cannot overstate how grateful I am for this project.

[5] This article does a great job of explaining the history of Adobe Flash and its eventual demise.

[6] Hussie goes over some of the issues he had with the software in the post referenced at [2]

#essay post #homestuck analysis #media studies #adobe flash #homestuck cascade

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offworldcolony · 3 years

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Zack Snyder's Justice League, 2021 - ★★★

Daddy Issues: The Movie.

I'm conflicted about the existence of this film; as an exercise in studio interference it's fascinating, as a parable of what can happen when fans rise up, it's a cautionary tale, and as the shape of things to come, it's questionable. I don't think fans should get to decide anything; hiring the correct filmmakers and giving them creative freedom would be the ideal option because you give the people what they need and never what they want. What they want, as evidenced by everything, almost always sucks and they're left unhappy anyway. And this film might be the exception that proves the rule.

And although Zack Snyder's Justice League was a film worth creating from the butchered remains of the original incarnation, it shouldn't have come at the behest of how much vitriol was cast out there in the process, and it shouldn't be a signal that a rabid and butthurt community of internet trolls that believe they deserve whatever they want, exactly as they want it, should ever influence the film industry ever again.

This should instead be a reminder to Studios that they know about as much as Marketing departments or gamblers or stock market traders: they're just pissing in the wind and when it lands in the toilet they claim it's by some kind of design of their own making and brilliance. Hire somebody good and get the fuck out of their way. At least if it's shit (like this film basically is) it is the fault of one person's vision and I'd rather have a noble and coherent failure than a luke-warm, mediocre carcass of a Frankenstein's monster made up of opinionated Suits, en-vogue and focus group-driven decisions acting only as a commercial for toys like 2017's Justice League was.

So the film itself? It's incredibly enjoyable, I had an absolute blast with my family round watching it like an old-school movie night. Is it a better movie? Yes, 100% in practically every way. Is it a good movie? Nope! But it's one person's coherent vision, I just hate that vision and I don't think he pulls it off.

Snyder constantly undercuts his own good ideas by his own execution, stumbling into his own sandcastles; some sequences have some really fantastic starts and then they're shot and edited in a way that makes me crawl inside out with cringe; singing a Nordic-style Aquaman song: great, having someone really close up sniff his jumper and sing right at us: horrific. And there's legion of these terrible choices by Snyder, usually things that don't make logical sense but mean he can do something because it's simply cool. (Martha Manhunter anyone?) But we already know by now that cool on its own isn't enough. Snyder doesn't. Having Batman say "fuck" isn't cool, it's dumb. Having Superman say a cocky (rubbish) one-liner when he saves someone from Steppenwolf is out of character, it's dumb. More than once I was able to predict what a character was going to say before they even said it. Come on, this isn't Trey Parker and Matt Stone's Team Justice League.

On the undeniable positives are the colour grading, score, the reels of added and altered material and more. Most of the added scenes are way, way better, more coherent and the film looks great actually. It does look Olympian and classic as I imagine he wanted it to, like the cave murals Diana sees. The extra character and coherence allow the jokes and interactions to breathe; Wayne is a little funnier, Diana, sadder, Cyborg, actually here for a change with something to do, and seemingly powerful, and Flash (thank god) not annoying. Even Irons' Alfred gets basically the best material and comes out of it my favourite character. Truly the Alfred of the group.

What doesn't work with this is that there's so much slow-mo that it becomes laugh-out-loud funny and goofy rather than impressive and dynamic, and in a 4-hour long film, you'd better be damn sure that amount of slow-mo is necessary, even in the slow-mo shots you can palpably feel they drag on for a few seconds too long each time.

And my god let's talk about the soundtrack. So Snyder has now consistently proven himself to be awkwardly tone-deaf to good music in all of his films. He can't pick an appropriate track, he can't pick an ironic track. Every time he does one of his patented slow-mo, nothing sequences over a full track of music (it feels like) it's so awkward I almost got up and left my own fucking house. There's like five of these.

But the action here (apart from being blasted in the eyeballs by insane amounts of bright lights) was all really genuinely good here, he's got it down, the dynamism didn't feel stodgy and CGI-ified, wasn't just a big invulnerable guy bashing someone aside for ten minutes, they fought as a team, it looked and felt fun, and at times, really tense and involving. It's a huge step up from whatever they did for the theatrical. The Amazonian stuff was motivated, gripping and grand. Anything with Steppenwolf felt imposing and had heft and tactics to it. Bravo.

Speaking of Steppenwolf, his Middle Managers and Head Office in the form of marble liquid Henchman, Darkseid and CGI Anette Benning(??!!) felt like strange meaningless additions, as did the anti-life equation shit (this is what Marvel doesn't do, they're expert-level at exposition for newcomers and easter eggs for fans combined). Darkseid looked like a troll, neither imposing nor unique or cool, and I'm not talking an ordinary troll, I mean one of those shit ones that gets turned to stone in the sun, not even a proper fighting troll. He looked like the first mini-boss encounter in a Lord of the Rings videogame. But...

But Steppenwolf looked awesome and I actually liked him here and his Simp for Daddy schtick. I laughed at him a lot, but like Synder I had a lot of endearment for him and his cute, sad, hopeful eyes. Daddy please love me! I promise I'll do better! I can't explain why he worked this time but he did. Maybe it's because the story felt interesting (dumb but at least it all made sense internally) and it felt grand in scale and scope and had stakes and whole added motivations for everybody.

Speaking of what else worked, yes I enjoyed the 4:3 aspect ratio, I thought it would just be Zack Snyder wanking himself off again (see: Justice League: Dark or whatever they'll call his upcoming Black and White version) but I kind of loved it, it was almost euphoric and actually did replicate some of what going to the IMAX felt like. I liked feeling like these colossi of comic books were towering above like statues.

What didn't work was that the chapter headings had nothing to do with the chapters at all or anything that happened in them which felt strange. Also, characters over-egg their lines as if we're dumb and keep stating the obvious in such a first draft way that I felt myself getting stupider.

One of my main gripes is if you keep trying to one-up yourself, these character do not feel understandably epic and powerful. They're all kind of idiotic and silly and po-faced and posture so much and say snappy one-liners and prance around like Chads. Snyder thinking he’s some kind of subversive genius and all that is sweet, but most of time I'm laughing at his cloying fan-service. He's the kid that keeps telling you how great he is and you don't mind because you can see he's got no friends and he's been bullied. Snyder isn't as aggressively dumb and bullish like Michael Bay is, for example, and Snyder's movies are largely coherent. But he's trying too hard and I just don't like his vision. As little elseworld graphic novels this kind of shit between Batman and Joker works, or in films like Joker you can do some out-there things, rather than in this, a mainline, flagship series.

Zack Synder is a little like a first-time Dungeons and Dragons DM trying to impress his table with all his edgelord grittiness and "vision"; He is a child that has two figurines and is smashing them together and yelling "Look! Look what I'm doing! Superman is beating everyone up! LOOK!" Zack Snyder's Justice League is simply, more than anything, endearing. That's the best way I can describe it.

Endearing.

And this film being endearing means I can't hate it, even though I think it's rubbish; because if a child builds a fortress of Lego, it's not exactly the Taj Mahal, but it is impressive. But when he knocks it all down I'm right there yelling for him to pick up all the destroyed pieces now because it can't always be playtime. A film can't just be spectacle and chaos and whatever-the-fuck-you-want. It has to be about something.

Justice League is about nothing. The Dark Knight was about Chaos in a system used to Order even if there was chaos inherent in the order. And it asked you to look at that chaos vs unbridled chaos. With both Dent and Joker as two sides of the same coin; chaos and order, and it put that paradox or that choice to the people of Gotham. It was about surveillance states, money, and sacrifice. And so much more. The Dark Knight subsequently became timely and timeless.

Justice League is about nothing and it will fade into nothing because of it. The euphoria will pass. It's OK it exists. It OK that we move past it now.

source https://letterboxd.com/offworldcolony/film/zack-snyders-justice-league/

#letterboxd #review #film #film review #diary #film diary #letterboxd diary #letterboxd film review

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hotelconcierge · 7 years

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THE GENDER NULLARY

Trigger warning for everything that follows: the coddled, over-sensitive, “triggered” millennial crybaby does not exist. Hold your applause—the COSTMC is an oxymoron because coddling does not sensitize, it scleroses. Have you met these people? They can’t feel an emotion without an audience and a week to rehearse. The performative offense of this group results from high emotional tolerance, not low; sad-rage is heroin to everything else’s Motrin, and no matter how vast the safe space, some kids are gonna hang at the outskirts hoping to score.

Of course, even the phoniest opportunist has a few real triggers—the type that precludes rage because you’re numb in the fetal position. And of course, there are many uncoddled e.g. traumatized people who are genuinely vulnerable to the many, many instances of genuine cruelty and callousness.

Every community with a code of conduct is a safe space to some extent. My lawyer advises no comment on whether safe spaces are good or bad in principle, because it depends: who is being included, who is being excluded, where will they go, and who is enforcing the rules.

My concern is the way these debates are settled. And when the excluded protest against political correctness—that human resources plot to merge all safe spaces under one state capitalist thumb—they ditch culture war bushido and strike at whomever can be hurt the most.

What you have to understand is that the PC debate is a farce. When the public demands a witch for the stake, the NYTimes selects David Brooks,

perhaps the most balding, white, sanctimonious chump at a newspaper full of balding, white, sanctimonious chumps. Here are four critiques; don’t read any of them unless you still find it exciting to watch a strawman burn.

What’s more interesting is that while Brooks criticizes upper-middle-class culture for being “laced with cultural signifiers that are completely illegible unless you happen to have grown up in this class,” his article is nothing but illegible cultural signifiers. Which, duh, he’s writing for the Times. Brooks thus renders himself irrelevant (which was the point): his critics focus on his blunder of political correctness (the high school grad intimidated by a chicken pomodoro) and dismiss him as classist accordingly.

Lesson: Anyone who opposes political correctness from within will lose and be humiliated. Even without the unforced error, Brooks could have been dismissed as rich and white. His archives could have been mined for hypocrisy. Even a charged non sequitur would have crushed his argument: “So it’s no big deal that it’s legal to murder transpeople in all fifty states? No, I’m David Brooks, better focus on political correctness!” Of course, plenty of non-bourgeois oppose PC, but you’ll never hear that point of view in the Times because, yikes—internalized racism.

The result is that the anti-PC viewpoint is only taken seriously when it refuses the framework of PC. I don’t mean “taken seriously” like there is a meaningful debate. But when an internet troll calls you, say, “a fucking spic faggot,” you can’t reply “hah, well that just shows your heteronormative, colonialist assumptions!” without looking like a wimp. You have to reply with equal bile, which smells of hatred, maybe fear. And it’s no fun to be on the receiving end of hatred, but it’s better than being treated—like Mr. Brooks—with contempt.

Trolls, like catcallers, flashers, and school shooters, are men who ran the numbers and found: being hated > being invisible > being humiliated in the official channels. The first two go back to chimps, the third variable is society-dependent, and wowza does ours fuck it up. Men want to become masculine, citation needed, and when society shit-talks the honest path to manhood then it is inevitable that those foolish enough to listen will turn to the black market. And once that’s your game...

This blog is far from politically correct, but I try to mock only the deserving— bureaucrats, demagogues, cowards, and conformists—and for behavior, for the things people can change rather than those they can’t. But people tend to be insecure about the things they can’t change, and it just so happens that in America insecurity is always wound up in sex. Every debate about safe spaces thus devolves into a debate about gender: a catalog of body dysmorphisms, a who’s who of racial castrations, cuckold, bitch, cunt, whore, freak. You’d think everyone would be against this level of discourse, but gun control means one thing on Park Avenue and another thing entirely in Wichita. The law, in its majestic equality, forbids both the popular and unpopular from being unpopular. Calls for PC go nowhere because cruelty is the best weapon some people have.

Idiot [unemployed, probably no friends]: “So you’re sympathizing with racist, misogynist trolls. Wow. Just—I can’t even.” I didn’t say anything about sympathy. I said that a society gets what it pays for. IMHO, most shock-value trolling is both ineffective—it strengthens the case for Big Brother—and morally disgusting. But it’s a symptom, not the disease. Like oxycodone, trolling is recourse for people with nothing better to do, and like The Opioid Epidemic, the hand-wringing has less to do with fixing the problem than with making it so consumers don’t have to look at something ugly.

The content of trolling is thus extremely not the issue, but even so, I’ll take the bait. To accuse someone of failing at gender is the worst sort of punching-down. It’s not just hateful, it’s lazy, it’s bullying the foreign kid to make up for getting your ass beat at home. And it’s dumb. Forget about the moral argument—my critique is that the gender police are not even wrong.

Judith Butler (Gender Trouble), who coined the term “performative gender,” the antecedent to “sexuality is a spectrum,” has reached Antichrist status in some circles and in fact received a personal diss from Pope Benedict XVI. She’s good, and if you wanna throw down you gotta throw down with the best. So: Does Butler write like a pedant getting paid by the syllable? Does she open each topic with a chain of passive-aggressive rhetorical questions? Does she have the worst fanbase this side of Harris and Klebold? Does she have a point?

Hemlock time. How do you define gender? “Gender is a set of behaviors and attributes that correlate with sex.” Okay—what’s sex? “Aren’t you a doctor or something? XY and XX.” I’m flattered by the appeal to authority, but weren’t you the guy complaining when the CDC lowered the normal testosterone range? How do you feel about androgen insensitivity syndrome?

You can deny your eyes and insist that having an SRY gene makes Eden Atwood male, but from a medical perspective Eden is estrogenized, at risk for osteoporosis, and going down in the chart as an F.

“Look, fella, I know a dime-piece when I see one.” So modify your definition: hormone levels, fertility, waist-hip ratio, empathizing over systematizing, long bathroom lines, 10 Things I Hate About You...The first problem is that all of these traits exist on, sorry, a spectrum, from menopausal women to full-figured men. The choice of which traits to include—and where to draw the cut-offs—and if the division is binary or quaternary or nullary—is just like, your opinion, man (woman/they/them). The bigger problem is that now you’re defining sex as gender.

This reduces your original statement to, “Gender is a set of behaviors and attributes that correlate.” Which is true. And as far as stereotypes go, gendered ones ain’t bad, maybe even necessary to function, the guy wearing a V-neck probably does like shaving his pubes. But they are still stereotypes, man-made, imperfect, and punishing to those who do not conform. I’m no cultural relativist, some people suck and deserve cold and swift judgment, but is the presence or absence of armpit hair really the hill you want to die on?

There’s a practical argument to be made against fractalized gender: it’s confusing. With 3^^^3 possible sex-gender-orientation combos, how are kids supposed to know how to grow up? Aren’t imperfect gender roles better than 24-year-old otherkin? I hear you, guy wearing a Harley-Davidson jacket and listening to Mötley Crüe, but Tumblr semantics are a consequence of twenty-teen spirit, not the cause. If we weren’t arguing about the gender binary (and before we were) we’d be arguing about the range of femininity or masculinity; the crusade would be for pixie cuts and stick-and-poke tattoos to be considered as feminine as Brazilian butt lifts. Don’t be fooled by words—do you really want society to have one idealized template per gender? How would that ideal be decided? Majority rule?

There’s a hilarious overlap between the people who get mad about preferred pronouns and those who call for a return to “traditional masculinity.” The idealization of some Hollywood-ified tradition isn’t the problem; if you want to roleplay a fursona, go ahead. No, what’s pathetic is the begging. Rather than be a man, in spite of the system, you demand validation from the system for aspiring to be a man. Being against identity politics is the new identity politics. That’s why right-wing culture warriors are so into the idea of crybaby millennials—it’s comforting to believe that you’re actually strong (since you don’t drink from plastic water bottles) and that anyone getting laid is actually xeno-estrogenized. Even if this was true, obsessing over it, masturbating to it, using it as an excuse for self-pity and inaction—that makes you a _ _ _ _. Four-letters. Multiple choice. Maybe hangman will teach you something.

The foundationalist reasoning of identity politics tends to assume that an identity must first be in place in order for political interests to be elaborated and, subsequently, political action to be taken. (Gender Trouble)

My beliefs are no doubt way south of Ms. Butler’s on the political compass, but we agree about one thing: that ain’t a nice way to go out.

But this is precisely the way in which the laundry-is-a-social-construct movement has failed. I have held off on criticizing them because it’s too easy, when you mock Rachel Dolezal for being “transracial” you get to pretend your own self-image is meaningful, but no, all identities are power poses in front of the bedroom mirror, meaningful only insofar as they help you with the rest of the day. “Well, SCIENCE says that—” You sure you want to play that game? Again, I respect anyone who has the courage to defy their assigned caste. I have no purity objections to a transhumanist society where the tap water runs ecstasy and you can get augmented genitals at Starbucks. I don’t even mind Bushwick. The problem with the mad libs youth isn’t the slew of labels—intersectional, nonbinary, pansexual, curious kinkster, ethically polyamorous, empath, casual baby witch (mostly crystals, auras/energy)—the problem is, what are you going to do with them? And there’s a patriarchy-approved answer: buy shit and beg for validation.

If gender is performative, if identity is not necessary for political action to be taken, if the possibilities are infinite once freed from the bounds of phallogocentrism, then why is it that so many cultural subversives sound exactly the same? You know the stereotype. Bondage. Anxiety. Smoking when drunk. Circlejerks of praise for completing the most basic of tasks. Very, very bad poetry. Expensive fashion draped across waif-like models. Guilty pleasures: junk food, liquor, and problematic TV. Hated roommates. Emoji marxism. Twitter. “today i feel cute enough for a selfie, might delete it later.” “didn’t get out of bed until 2 i’m trash lol” “wow, some casual racism at work today. i’ll just laugh and someday burst because i hate confrontation. but whatever.” I’m not saying these traits describe anyone real, although they might. I’m saying: why is this the stereotype?

Discussion questions: When people type in lower case, what emotion do they hope to convey to the reader? The alt-right often asks if “liking feminine traps” is “gay”—is there anything more heterosexual than wishing you had a weaker male friend to validate your penis? Would trans rights even be an issue if the majority were FtM? How many modern protests can be summarized as “consumers demand product”? Who would win, every chafed masculinist and joyless academic or one flamboyant 19th century playwright? As Oscar Wilde put it: “Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.”

Choose:

HYPOCRISY’S BAD, BUT YOU’RE WORSE

THE FALSE NEGATIVES

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sleepykittypaws · 6 years

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Best and Worst of 2017

The 2017 holiday viewing season, which started before Halloween, has finally found its way to a cold and snowy end. That, combined with a bleak political outlook, made the feel-good, made-for-TV Christmas movie more relevant than ever this season, at least according to a host of think pieces on the subject. But were the offerings any better for being so ubiquitous? Here’s my quick take on the Best and Worst 2017 holiday viewing had to offer …

Best Made-for-TV Movie of 2017

This year started out fairly dismally, with painfully early and almost entirely disappointing entries from Hallmark, with other purveyors like UP and ION, also failing to impress. By mid-November I’d begun to worry that, despite the glut of original holiday programming, we’d be left with nothing but bland, boring fare that had me tuning out before the second commercial break. Even Candace Cameron-Bure, once Hallmark's queen of top-notch made-for-TV Christmas fare, struck out with her bad and boring, Switched at Christmas, which showed that three times the Bure (two Camerons + her daughter, Natasha), equalled six times the snooze-fest. (I was told there would be no math, Hallmark.)

Then, Thanksgiving came and Lifetime, which sat out last year’s made-for-TV Christmas movie season, raced back into the mix with a series of strong showings, including Wrapped Up in Christmas and A Very Merry Toy Store which finally brought the fun and festive back into the genre. They capped it with my favorite of the season, Snowed Inn Christmas, which wasn’t at all ground-breaking, but just the right mix of cozy Christmas and magical fun designed for enjoying bundled up with a cup of cocoa or a glass of wine, earning it a place not only at the top of this list, but also at #22 in my all-time favorites.

Honorable mention goes to a newcomer to the genre, Netflix, who made their first entry, A Christmas Prince, into something of an online phenomena. Oh and, ION eventually offered a fun, slightly zany entry (I sooo miss the days of crazy pants plots like Holiday Switch or Holiday in Handcuffs), Snowmance; Which may or may not have been about a woman falling in love with a snowman come to life. If they’d committed harder to that wacky premise, it easily could have been my seasonal favorite.

Hallmark did, eventually, manage a couple not-terrible offerings — notably, Christmas in Evergreen and Christmas in Angel Falls — but even those worked not based on their dull, lifeless and utterly generic Christmas-by-comittee plots, but thanks solely to their respective leads' charm. They may be the king of Christmas, but Hallmark is clearly suffering from a quantity over quality issue. Something I fear will most definitely continue, as their ratings rise, despite mediocre, at best, offerings.

My 2017 top-10 made-for-TV Christmas Movies …

Snowed Inn Christmas, Lifetime

Wrapped Up In Christmas, Lifetime

Snowmance, ION

Christmas in Evergreen, Hallmark

A Christmas Prince, Netflix

Christmas in Angel Falls, HMM

A Very Merry Toy Store, Lifetime

Angry Angel, Freeform

Miss Christmas, Hallmark

A Gift to Remember, Hallmark

Best Holiday TV Special of 2017

While 2016 saw so many high quality entries, it was legitimately hard to choose, the pickings in this category were slim this season, making Olaf’s Frozen Adventure the winner, basically by default. While it earned derision as a big-screen lead in, it was a whole-family charmer as the seasonal TV special it was originally made to be.

Best Holiday Discovery of 2017

This is the place where I tout the holiday fare that’s not new, but new-to-me this season.

It’s a bit of a cheat, since it is new to home viewing this year, but 2016′s big screen, Office Christmas Party, starring Jason Bateman and Jennifer Aniston, marked not only the first (and probably last, given current events) time I could ever stand watching TJ Miller onscreen, but also make it one of the few truly successful R-rated Christmas comedies, managing to garner both laughs and holiday spirit. I feel it will be imminently re-watchable, earning it a spot in my all-time favorites list.

I also really enjoyed the 2007 theatrical rom-com, The Perfect Holiday, pairing Morris Chestnut and Gabrielle Union. Both Chestnut and Union are, of course, independently awesome, and also have been in several other strong Christmas movies (e.g. Best Man Holiday for him, Almost Christmas for her). Paired here, they offer a double dose of charm that, combined with the cheeky addition of Terrance Howard and Queen Latifah as magical mischief makers, gave this one a special dash of holiday charm.

Well, that’s the good news, now for the …

Worst Made-for-TV movie of 2017

There were so many this season that I simply turned off, but only fare I actually finished is eligible in this category. Yeah, I sit through them so you don’t have to.

Even with that caveat, there’s still plenty to chose from, like the dull, half-hearted Alicia Witt offering, The Mistletoe Inn, which I had the misfortune to sit down and watch with my in-laws, who now must surely think less of me.

But my absolute least-favorite, made-for-TV offering in 2017 was Hallmark's stupid and senseless, The Christmas Train. Wherein Hallmark continues to diminish its Hall of Fame brand, as well as waste good actors (Danny Glover! Dermot Mulroney! Joan Freakin’ Cusack!) in mawkish, nonsensical, borderline insulting stories. Ugh. Simply awful and if you want more details as to why, you can read my full spoiler review/rant, here. In short, no one should be forced to ride this train.

Worst Holiday Special of 2017

Here it’s a tie between two offerings so stupid and senseless, I just couldn’t decide which I loathed less, or more, as the case may be.

The dumb, non-festive Trolls Holiday was not only annoying, but also personally obnoxious since my kids purchased it on iTunes, which I allowed, thinking even if it was mediocre, they’d watch it again, which now seems like a threat. Today, I can not-so-proudly say that Troll’s Holiday has claimed both 30 minutes of my life and $9.99, neither of which I’ll ever get back.

At least my viewing of Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas was free (sorta) via Amazon Prime, but it was also three times as long as Trolls Holiday, sucking up even more of my time and en-dumb-ifying my children in the process. The animal cruelty and terrible values in this so-called children’s movie, made this even more painful to watch than an actual Mariah Carey performance.

Ugh, both of these were simply dreadful continuations of Hollywood’s cheap, cash grab, “kids will watch anything” mentality. When you’re insulting the intelligence of my three-year-old then, yeah ...

Worst Holiday Discovery of 2017

There was nothing old I truly hate-watched this holiday season, unless you count discovering Crocodile Dundee, a film I for some reason enjoyed as a child, is not only racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic, but — bonus! — also super boring.

But, in terms of holiday-centric missteps from the past, the beloved-by-some Ryan Reynolds-Amy Smart “comedy,” Just Friends (2005), just didn’t sit well with me. While not truly terrible, it careened from unfunny slapstick to sentimental romance, succeeding at neither. This is basically Deadpool, without the superpowers, heart, well-written puns and strong supporting cast. So, you know, basically just Ryan Reynolds being a smarmy jerk, with Smart as his unsympathetic and strangely charmless, long-time crush, who, despite all the movie’s claims to the contrary, clearly really does only like him now because he’s good looking (vs high school fat) and rich, while she’s a waitress coasting on her high school popularity. Making her, yeah, a little hard to root for. Not sure which felt most festive, the casual cruelty, or the surfeit of fat jokes. Either way, this one was a big Ho, Ho, Oh-No for me.

...So long, 2017. See you all again in 2018!

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