8. Westworld (Season 1) on HBO
The first episode of Westworld I watched was the finale, and I was under the impression that it was the pilot the whole time. The more of Westworld I've watched since then, the more wish I had stopped there. For all the finale wasn't a particularly good show—the HBO house style is ass—it at least presented a potentially compelling world to be fleshed out. Finding out that it was the fleshing out of its world was really disappointing; finding out that Westworld is a show about fleshing out its world in the most plodding, boring way imaginable was even more so.
7. Stranger Things (Season 1) on Netflix
What I mostly remember about Stranger Things now is that it was pretty boring. The kind of thing that did well by most of its aspects, but in a way closer to 'mediocre' than 'great' more often than not. The Upside Down is probably the best example of that, but so is the incorporation of games and the whole aesthetic. I remember enjoying Cameron Kunzelman and Aaron Bady's essays about utopian play in the show, as well as Ethan Robinson's calling bullshit on the Intelligence Community aspects. I also remember making a list of 10 non-80s aesthetic influences, and writing half an essay about how much I thought the D&D sequences in particular were little better than the cryptofascism of the whole show encapsulated. I also said at one point that I had written my Stranger Things thinkpiece four years earlier in a review of Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, and I think that's still probably true. Watch that movie instead it's way better.
6. Infomercials on Adult Swim
Adult Swim's Infomercials block is most famous for being what brought "Too Many Cooks" into the world, and it's not so much a show as a place for short films to be shown. I spent a good amount of time this year watching the entire run of films in this block, usually for something to do while eating breakfast. I'm still not a huge fan of "Too Many Cooks," and the majority of things that get played in it, but there are a handful of very good things hidden there. And, somewhat surprisingly, the shorts aired in this slot this year contain some of the best stuff Adult Swim has put into the block.
Specifically, this year had the pretty solid parody of 90s school/robot films in "M.O.P.Z.," a short film about a lazy janitor in a ludicrously dirty school who builds himself a robot. On TV it ran 11 minutes, sped up to quadruple speed; you can find the re-slowed version on Youtube and it runs about 45. "Live at the Necropolis: The Lords of Synth" pretends to be found footage from a cosmic duel of synthesizer music that parodies some very early pioneers, and for everything it lacks in compelling character or story (beyond the initial joke) it makes up for with impeccable style. Mostly, though, this sneaks onto the list because of Alan Resnick's "This House Has People In It," a security-cam short about a family whose day goes really bad when their teenage daughter is found not to be sulking but actually stuck to the floor, and sinking. The way that "House" nestles itself right into that uncanny point between horror and comedy and actively breathes it is impressive, and the way that the actors really go all out in losing their shit is kind of perfect. It's useful, too, because the scenario doesn't really lend itself to communicating any affect; you don't want to laugh or scream so much as feel an incredible discomfort, and having an actor storm around screaming manages to both amplify that while providing some sort of weird catharsis at the same time.
If it's not exactly a TV show, that's okay; I'm literally listing off everything I watched in this format from this year that I remember. And if some of the other shorts aren't great—things like "Giles Vanderhoot" and "NewsHits" are much too straight-comedy for my taste, and "MulchTown" was interesting but felt way too Dogme '95-lite—that's okay, too. Any real list would definitely have dropped the two before this anyway. So call this a cutting off point, if you'd like, and treat it as a top 5; the rest of these shows are traditional shows and all things that I liked quite a bit.
5. Lady Dynamite (Season 1) on Netflix
After over a decade of actively distancing myself from comedy, I ended up exploring it again for the first time in a long time this year. A handful of stand up specials was most of it, but the best was Maria Bamford's Netflix show Lady Dynamite, even if it was itself kind of a disappointment. Some of that was down to my own expectations that weren't even justified by pre-release stuff or discussion I heard around it while it was out. The rest, though, is that I think it's a pretty decent show, with some aspects that are strong, but it's largely not all that special.
The thing I hoped that Lady Dynamite would do would be to shed light on the material fuckedness of comedy; the way that The Aristocrats did against its own desires all those years ago, and in a way Lady Dynamite did seem poised to do just that. The semi-autobiographical series hinges around Bamford's hospitalization which is explicitly talked about in terms of pressure from the entertainment/comedy business and her return to it; what better setup to talk about the incestuous, gatekept field that so aggressively inculcates any successful participant with ideological claims about things like free speech than someone who was deep in it, blinked in its face, and then returned?
On the other hand, though, that's hardly Bamford's job, and it isn't like what she does do isn't needed in the field. Her show's structural representation of mental health has been pretty widely praised, and she is genuinely one of the better comedians in terms of that kind of stutter-heavy comic timing that I do appreciate quite a bit. Even the show's most ham-handed moments—her episode-long jokes about her own failure to deal in a nuanced way with race or sexuality, especially—can at least be read against the Party Lines of Comedians that boil down to that bogus idea of equal opportunity offenders.
I still do want her—or anyone, really—to tackle what a shitty place comedy is. Someday.
4. Wayward Pines (Season 2) on FOX
The first season of Wayward Pines opened with a pilot episode directed by M. Night Shyamalan and adapted a series of novels that seem, to be frank, really shit. In clear debt to Twin Peaks (although it might be more honest to say that it feels more like the attempts to recapture Twin Peaks immediately after its success, most notably Oliver Stone's cyberpunkish television event Wild Palms) and holds onto that for too long. Wayward Pines, you see, is a little town our protagonist finds himself in after a car crash, and it's already a little too kitschy Americana before he realized that it's surrounded by a massive electric fence. The first season largely concerns the question of what's going on with the town, and the world around it. It ends pretty definitively, and unless my memory is wrong, was meant to finish that way, more event television than an ongoing series.
The second season, which aired in 2016, doesn't exactly hit the ground running because of this. With the protagonist and the town's leadership dead, it needs to figure out how to introduce not only a whole new structure to the town, but a new protagonist at the same time, and to simultaneously establish conflict between the two. It also develops an almost entirely new supporting cast.
But in a year where we got not only The Man in the High Castle on television (which I haven't seen, else this would be a top 9 list, or read) but actual full-on fascism, my gut is that there actually isn't a better show to point to about fascism from this year. It's mostly visual throughout the season, but toward the end it becomes brutally obvious that it is intentional, to the point that it's almost cringeworthy. This is, I think, to its benefit; at one point, for instance, one of the townspeople mocks a soldier for wearing a brown shirt, making the parallel direct. The soldier responds in a kind of brilliant way: he simply informs the townsperson that they have a full file on him, and so know his troublemaking past and that he will not change. I can't think of anything much more full fucking Nazi than that, other than one of the twists at the end which, well. Folks who want to see a neat television show that is messy and not at all prestigious, look away, because there's no way to beat around the bush here. I'd seriously recommend doing so! But here's the spoiler anyway: the show directly and violently defines Nazism as oedipal. Not metaphorically. It's a fucking Thing.
Otherwise, Wayward Pines does a pretty good job (for my taste at least) in managing its chaos (or, more accurately, failing to), and presents a goofy, stupid world that's enjoyable to play around in for a while.fkl;.
3. The Shannara Chronicles (Season 1) on MTV
My full review of The Shannara Chronicles is here.
The secret argument I want to make is that Shannara is a series that is infinitely more crucial to the existence of the Fantasy genre than Tolkien's books. Part of that's contrarianism, sure, but most of it's about the realities of distribution and marketing and how risk-aversion in publishing isn't a consequence of a breakout success but its replication. Some of my love of The Shannara Chronicles is because it lets me keep thinking about that potential piece of writing, but most of it is because it's a fucking weird show about a shitty boy that isn't ostentatious about his shittiness, which does a good job of making fun of itself and of keeping together the things it needs to. That scene in the preserved Prom where Ohmsford finds the collection of D&D dice is so good, man.
2. Scream (Season 2) on MTV
Wes Craven's death during the production of the first season of Scream made me want to see if it was a show worth watching—that and knowing that I would likely be reviewing The Shannara Chronicles when it came out, which meant I wanted to get a sense of MTV's current style—and it sure is. The first season did exactly what it ought to have done: it paid lip service to both the metafiction of the series and to the updating it needed to do (viral videos and cell phones), and then it got to business telling the sort of story that holds up its loose ends for the viewer's pleasure, and that makes excuses to frame neat sequences in exciting ways.
Season two picks up a couple months after the end of the first, and it also does something it needed to: it gets the first kill out of the way, and then spends the bulk of the season just living with the characters. It's hardly flawless and sometimes even a little ugly where it oughtn't be, but it's such a nice way to spend some time, and so in keeping with Craven's body of work (especially Scream) that I can't help but be a fan of it. Not the slow burn as such, but the goofy bullshit of it; the same way that films like Deadly Friend or Music of the Heart make it clear that Craven often wanted to make things that didn't rely on horror, and how Scream 4 and My Soul to Take made it clear that he held things close and was excited about them even when they might not pay off, the second season of Scream feels like a thing to be cherished in all its mess and care. That the season ends with a double-episode "Halloween Special" aired months after the rest, and which is basically a Scooby-Doo movie, is sort of the point: there's a quality of stumbling through capital, real and social, that defines Craven's work (and was thematized in his houses) and this season starts to really feel like that.
1. Gravity Falls (Finale) on Disney XD
Gravity Falls' series finale was the only episode that aired in 2016, and it's good enough to put any list that didn't include it to shame. The series—(animated) Twin Peaks for kids is the usual, and fairly representative, elevator pitch—caught me with its National Treasure parody episode, and kept me with it by being a genuinely pleasant thing to watch. It isn't the mystery that kept me going, or the characters (although the characters are pretty fucking wonderful) but the way that the show has a sense of purpose and joy to it. And, at the risk of repeating myself, it isn't purposive in the sense of things like Establishing Character Arcs or Advancing The Plot, either; just to set up its moments with little stories, and to live in this little town for a moment. I really love it for that.
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Monday, January 9, 2017
Top 5 Rap Songs Over 8 Minutes of 2016
5. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - "White Privilege II"
"White Privilege II" is the worst8 minute rap song of 2016, but it was necessary to put on this list -- even considering there are a couple shitty Mac Miller tracks that didn't make it -- because it's a large part of why this little list exists in the first place. There were plenty of reasons to be pissed at the discourse of 2016, but for whatever reason the shitshows around this monument to Macklemore's ego was a gum under your shoe moment (for me). Even #WeAreTheLeft hasn't been as persistently annoying as this.
But I'm not going to go back and reread all the shitty thinkpieces. I'm generally not about that "the only reason that you could possibly think this is if you hate rap" shit talking, but those takes about how this song was an act of solidarity or a performative calling in put me in that spot. The song itself is enough. My hot take at the time was that it had more in common with Eminem's "Kim" than anything else; in length obviously, but also in tone and goal. It is so clearly a song from the perspective a character that wants desperately to justify to the listener that they are justified in their actions. And there's nothing wrong with that on its own, of course. I'm not the person who wants to rubric all rap by authenticity -- though I realize there are real reasons to take that position -- by any means, including that annoying refrain about how I'd be more into it if Macklemore, say, just admitted that was what he was doing. This song's the worst on its own terms, no matter what terms you gift it. It's the worst because it inspires nothing but timidity and the fear of conscience in its makers and its listeners. It's the worst because it sounds like shit for eight fucking minutes.
4. J. Cole - "4 Your Eyez Only"
The Great J. Cole Debate of 2016 was garbage to begin with, and I'm on team hate, for the most part. Part of that's due to what I prioritize; I think J. Cole raps like he's actively repressing his emotions, and it puts his stuff on that same conscious tip that I've had very little patience for forever. "4 Your Eyez Only" almost gets past that, though, and I appreciate that he's got some range. Also: Better than Macklemore.
3. Tory Lanez - "I Told You / Another One"
This song kind of doesn't count, because it's almost clearly two songs slipped together into one. But then, a later one on here does similar, and I'm not fucking including Mac Miller on any list, so Tory Lanez gets it.
And technicalities aside, Lanez tells a solid story with this track. It has pace and narrative and it hits and, unlike Cole, he is capable of displaying multiple emotions. Look, I didn't say that this year was a banner for specifically 8 minute rap tracks. There was one that was terrible, one that was incredible, and one that was absolutely worth mattering. You've seen the first, and the next two are the third and second, respectively.
2. Kendrick Lamar - "untitled 07 | 2014 - 2016"
I'm not as into Kendrick Lamar's surprise album from the beginning of this year as, I think, most (although I'd have put To Pimp A Butterfly at, or at least near, the top had I done an album list last year). But if there's a standout from untitled. unmastered., it's absolutely "untitled 07 | 2014 - 2016." For as much as Lamar is heralded as bringing experimentation into pop rap, I think he's far more the latter than the former; untitled. unmastered. kind of confirmed that for me. But when he does hit that experimentation on all cylinders, it's about as good as any rapper with his level of technical and pop success has ever gotten. "untitled 07 | 2014 - 2016" might not quite be all cylinders, but it's damn close.
1. P.O.S. - "sleepdrone/superposition"
The reason I noticed that this was a trend at all was because, barely a month after Macklemore's shitshow, P.O.S. dropped a huge track of near-identical length. There were two big differences, which you may be able to guess. Have you? They were: talent and reception.
"sleepdrone/superposition" is not only the most exciting thing P.O.S. has done since his recovery, it's the most exciting thing Doomtree has done since No Kings. More than that, even, P.O.S. is positioning himself as one of the strongest voices in an underground scene that's become hugely stratified between the breakthrough noisy shit that's deeply boring and the more experimental end that keeps threatening to disappear up its own ass by failing even to push forward in a way people don't like. More than that, "sleepdrone/superposition" is probably just straight up the best song of the year, in a year that had some heavy fucking competition.
From the way P.O.S. wheels between personal and political statements to the bars from homies to the oppressive and intense production, "sleepdrone/superposition" is fucking incredible, and absolutely worth 8 minutes of your time.
"White Privilege II" is the worst
But I'm not going to go back and reread all the shitty thinkpieces. I'm generally not about that "the only reason that you could possibly think this is if you hate rap" shit talking, but those takes about how this song was an act of solidarity or a performative calling in put me in that spot. The song itself is enough. My hot take at the time was that it had more in common with Eminem's "Kim" than anything else; in length obviously, but also in tone and goal. It is so clearly a song from the perspective a character that wants desperately to justify to the listener that they are justified in their actions. And there's nothing wrong with that on its own, of course. I'm not the person who wants to rubric all rap by authenticity -- though I realize there are real reasons to take that position -- by any means, including that annoying refrain about how I'd be more into it if Macklemore, say, just admitted that was what he was doing. This song's the worst on its own terms, no matter what terms you gift it. It's the worst because it inspires nothing but timidity and the fear of conscience in its makers and its listeners. It's the worst because it sounds like shit for eight fucking minutes.
4. J. Cole - "4 Your Eyez Only"
The Great J. Cole Debate of 2016 was garbage to begin with, and I'm on team hate, for the most part. Part of that's due to what I prioritize; I think J. Cole raps like he's actively repressing his emotions, and it puts his stuff on that same conscious tip that I've had very little patience for forever. "4 Your Eyez Only" almost gets past that, though, and I appreciate that he's got some range. Also: Better than Macklemore.
3. Tory Lanez - "I Told You / Another One"
This song kind of doesn't count, because it's almost clearly two songs slipped together into one. But then, a later one on here does similar, and I'm not fucking including Mac Miller on any list, so Tory Lanez gets it.
And technicalities aside, Lanez tells a solid story with this track. It has pace and narrative and it hits and, unlike Cole, he is capable of displaying multiple emotions. Look, I didn't say that this year was a banner for specifically 8 minute rap tracks. There was one that was terrible, one that was incredible, and one that was absolutely worth mattering. You've seen the first, and the next two are the third and second, respectively.
2. Kendrick Lamar - "untitled 07 | 2014 - 2016"
I'm not as into Kendrick Lamar's surprise album from the beginning of this year as, I think, most (although I'd have put To Pimp A Butterfly at, or at least near, the top had I done an album list last year). But if there's a standout from untitled. unmastered., it's absolutely "untitled 07 | 2014 - 2016." For as much as Lamar is heralded as bringing experimentation into pop rap, I think he's far more the latter than the former; untitled. unmastered. kind of confirmed that for me. But when he does hit that experimentation on all cylinders, it's about as good as any rapper with his level of technical and pop success has ever gotten. "untitled 07 | 2014 - 2016" might not quite be all cylinders, but it's damn close.
1. P.O.S. - "sleepdrone/superposition"
The reason I noticed that this was a trend at all was because, barely a month after Macklemore's shitshow, P.O.S. dropped a huge track of near-identical length. There were two big differences, which you may be able to guess. Have you? They were: talent and reception.
"sleepdrone/superposition" is not only the most exciting thing P.O.S. has done since his recovery, it's the most exciting thing Doomtree has done since No Kings. More than that, even, P.O.S. is positioning himself as one of the strongest voices in an underground scene that's become hugely stratified between the breakthrough noisy shit that's deeply boring and the more experimental end that keeps threatening to disappear up its own ass by failing even to push forward in a way people don't like. More than that, "sleepdrone/superposition" is probably just straight up the best song of the year, in a year that had some heavy fucking competition.
From the way P.O.S. wheels between personal and political statements to the bars from homies to the oppressive and intense production, "sleepdrone/superposition" is fucking incredible, and absolutely worth 8 minutes of your time.
Thursday, December 22, 2016
The Liar Stephen King
A stomach ache at an old place sent me back to Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, however many years since the last time I read them. I made it through The Gunslinger in just over a night, and one thing in particular stands out. It might be the best known piece of the whole series, and while I can't find the quote, I'm fairly certain even King has talked it up a bunch. It goes like this: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
I spent a good portion of my 2013 in Shit review of King's Joyland talking about how, for me, a lot of what worked about it was how shitty the protagonist was. The novel's frame narrative is of the protagonist all grown up, recalling a spooky coming-of-age story from his past, when he summered as a carnie and some not-quite ghost stuff happened. The protagonist himself, however, couches it in this weird obsession with getting laid and disavowing that he cares about having (not) got laid up to that point. I also talked about how I was relatively unfamiliar with King, having basically only read The Dark Tower prior, and not much has changed in this regard. But then, rereading it now, I realize that it isn't Carrie or The Shining that casts some relief on that character, but that first line of Roland Deschaine's epic.
Because, as those of you who might have read The Dark Tower before might catch, that first line isn't so much a summation of what is to come as a bold lie about what is happening. It doesn't even take very long for Roland to work out what the man in black is doing is anything but flight. And this is notable because King goes to pains to point out that Roland is not particularly quick on the uptake; he's repeatedly compared unfavorably to his classmates in terms of wits and brightness, and even the sort of things that cowboys are expected to do in these sorts of Westerns (like not get surprised by a man resurrected by his enemy while he is eating hamburgers) is pretty much immediately established as beyond his capacity. The things that Roland is good at (shooting, chasing) are explicitly and ostentatiously described in a mechanized fashion. He is, in other words, painted holistically in this light.
So when the man in black finally does appear to Roland and his companion, it is unsurprising that he is, in fact, completely in control of the situation. That the man in black is, in other words, doing the opposite of fleeing. That, in other words, that lauded opening line is a lie.
It seems to me to be entirely sensible that one of King's major tools as a writer would be his capacity to lie. There is the obvious broad version, which is that fiction is a lie, and the narrower one, that horror requires someone willing to lie to the reader in order to maintain the suspense. But Lovecraft was hardly capable of lying -- think of what a shitshow "The Outsider" is in its ending for a perfectly serviceable example, or of how clearly his racism shows through in everything -- and it is well understood the debt King owes him. Having still not read a ton, I don't know that I can say that King's big contribution to the world of letters, genre or otherwise, is in lying, but it seems a small thing worth considering. As (and if) I read through the rest of The Dark Tower, I certainly will be, at least.
I spent a good portion of my 2013 in Shit review of King's Joyland talking about how, for me, a lot of what worked about it was how shitty the protagonist was. The novel's frame narrative is of the protagonist all grown up, recalling a spooky coming-of-age story from his past, when he summered as a carnie and some not-quite ghost stuff happened. The protagonist himself, however, couches it in this weird obsession with getting laid and disavowing that he cares about having (not) got laid up to that point. I also talked about how I was relatively unfamiliar with King, having basically only read The Dark Tower prior, and not much has changed in this regard. But then, rereading it now, I realize that it isn't Carrie or The Shining that casts some relief on that character, but that first line of Roland Deschaine's epic.
Because, as those of you who might have read The Dark Tower before might catch, that first line isn't so much a summation of what is to come as a bold lie about what is happening. It doesn't even take very long for Roland to work out what the man in black is doing is anything but flight. And this is notable because King goes to pains to point out that Roland is not particularly quick on the uptake; he's repeatedly compared unfavorably to his classmates in terms of wits and brightness, and even the sort of things that cowboys are expected to do in these sorts of Westerns (like not get surprised by a man resurrected by his enemy while he is eating hamburgers) is pretty much immediately established as beyond his capacity. The things that Roland is good at (shooting, chasing) are explicitly and ostentatiously described in a mechanized fashion. He is, in other words, painted holistically in this light.
So when the man in black finally does appear to Roland and his companion, it is unsurprising that he is, in fact, completely in control of the situation. That the man in black is, in other words, doing the opposite of fleeing. That, in other words, that lauded opening line is a lie.
It seems to me to be entirely sensible that one of King's major tools as a writer would be his capacity to lie. There is the obvious broad version, which is that fiction is a lie, and the narrower one, that horror requires someone willing to lie to the reader in order to maintain the suspense. But Lovecraft was hardly capable of lying -- think of what a shitshow "The Outsider" is in its ending for a perfectly serviceable example, or of how clearly his racism shows through in everything -- and it is well understood the debt King owes him. Having still not read a ton, I don't know that I can say that King's big contribution to the world of letters, genre or otherwise, is in lying, but it seems a small thing worth considering. As (and if) I read through the rest of The Dark Tower, I certainly will be, at least.
Friday, October 21, 2016
#PerformanceMatters: SAG-AFTRA and Hollywood History
With SAG-AFTRA affiliated voice actors having begun their strike today, I thought a quick look at the history of cinema might be in order. Not to draw broad parallels, as many of these comparisons do -- I'm personally often loathe to make the comparison at all -- but to see what it could mean.
In this case, though, the cinema comparison is more industrial than artistic. Throughout the months of discussion of the possibility of the strike, a number of discussion points have circulated throughout the games enthusiast press. Primary among them, related to the union's demand for residuals, has relied on a thought experiment: would the presence or absence of voice actors be a selling point in a game? Are they stars in the same way that Hollywood produces?
We'll start with a quick rundown of the pre-Hollywood years of the movies, with the history largely taken from Roberta Pearson's essays "Early Cinema" and "Transitional Cinema" from The Oxford History of World Cinema. The former covers the years "from the beginnings up to about 1906," while the latter goes "from 1907 to the mid-1910s," or roughly the First World War (13). Pearson says of the early cinema that it was "concerned ... with the individual shot, preserving the spatial aspects of the pro-filmic event (the scene that takes place in front of the camera). ...The camera was kept stationary ... with viewers more interested in the cinema as visual spectacle than as story-teller." (16-7) This "cinema of attractions" was, in the transitional period, contrasted with a "cinema of narrative integration" which, among other things, "increased [the] use of editing ... decreased [the] distance between camera and actors ... [and] moved the actors closer to the camera. ... The decreased distance between action and camera not only enabled identification of the actors and the development of the star system, but also contributed to the increased emphasis upon individualized characters and facial expression." (29) The whole story is significantly more complicated, of course, involving advances that included the technical (cameras, film, etc), business (distribution practices, filmmaking practices) the artistic (shot-framing, editing, etc) and eventually the geopolitical (national subsidization of film, histories of trade, World War I). Broadly speaking, however, there is a very clear moment in which the seeds for cinema stars are born.
The birth of Hollywood itself can be explained in a relatively uncomplicated manner: Edison and other produces in 1908 banded together to create the Motion Picture Patents Company, whose business model relied on licensing fees for films and equipment for which the members held patents. By attempting to monopolize the showing of films, they created enemies who, only a year later, founded the Independent Moving Picture Company that distributed films to exhibitors who were not licensed by the MPPC. A court ruling MPPC illegal and a failure to stranglehold the market later, the IMPC became Universal and the lack of unions and the climate and abundance of locations around Hollywood made for the beginning of modern cinema history as it still continues today.
And that history is largely the history of the feature film. We're just over a century into it (depending on where you place the origin at, of course) at this point, and only a bit more background is necessary. This bit is largely from Douglas Gomery's "The Hollywood Studio System," also from The Oxford History of World Cinema. Gomery says it more or less right out: "Hollywood centred its promotional efforts on the star system. ... Stars provided an effective means of differentiating feature films ... Mary Pickford saw her salary increase from $100 a week in 1909 to $10,000 per week in 1917, ... the stars were quick to realize that, if they were so important to the studios, they had bargaining power of their own. Although many remained tied to exploitative contracts, some of the most successful broke loose from the system." (46) Pickford joined Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith in founding United Artists, an early alternative to the vertically-integrated Hollywood studio system which had already begun to dominate.
The development of the feature film also caused developments in business models; "as the demand for narrative films increased, speacialists were trained to assist the director," including painters for scenery and writers for plot and fashion designers, and eventually continuity editors and scriptwriters. Gomery is careful to note that "The Hollywood production system was not invented, but evolved in response to a number of felt imperatives, of which the most important was the need for regular and consistent profit." (48) That evolution did not take place solely on the side of production. Hollywood also ran distribution and, eventually, exhibition of films, cutting out any third parties possible. It didn't even take decades for the only real holdouts to be anemic governmental responses (think the Canadian Broadcasting rules that still apply today) or consequences of geopolitics (Japan's being closed to trade, the Soviet Union, etc).
There are some obvious potential parallels between this history and that of the videogames industry; the early lack of a defined division of labor (from MIT laboratories through, lets say, the NES), proceeding from novelty to narrative (Pong to Space Invaders to Wizardry to Final Fantasy), and the consolidation of industrial and marketing practices near-simultaneously (Console Wars with Mario and Sonic, studio association with directors or intellectual properties, etc). Zooming in on any one aspect involves a multiplication of discontinuities, of course, because the material conditions of a century ago are different in any number of ways from where they are now.
What's instructive here, though, isn't the parallels: it's the possibilities. Looking at early cinema makes it very clear that the century of history we have under the Hollywood system may have been the winner, and was certainly compelled by the profit motive most successfully, but that it came about due to a huge confluence of factors. Many of these are cloaked in a quasi-objectivity; scientific advancements in film production and audience interest in particular kinds of films especially. But the Hollywood takeover of exhibition was an intentional move, especially designed to move cinema into the world of the middle class rather than the proletarians it had been popular with initially. The star system was very much in line with that: once technical and artistic decisions had been made to centralize the actor/character, the humanist impulses of the middle class could be exploited by making celebrities of the actors who in turn would expend more of their income to continue seeing them.
And, even more than that, the cinema itself was not somehow objectively a place for stars. It took decades of industrial production to get to the point that individual actors were even of interest to producers or audiences. And it wasn't some coordinated effort on the parts of audiences to make that foundational to how we learned to watch movies, but a huge confluence of factors that included the mechanical, the artistic, and the economic, some intentional, some not.
SAG-AFTRA's reasons for striking are hardly even a quarter of a step towards making something like a move toward the development of a proper star system in videogames. Minor residuals certainly change the story significantly, in certain ways -- especially for those for whom the other aspects, like vocal strain and MoCap oversight, go less well -- and have the potential to open the door for themselves and others. That this is a union action, rather than the decree of executives responding to (and shaping) market forces, puts an emphasis on the "and others" there, as well.
More than anything, though, the outcome of this strike necessarily shifts the direction of the video game industry in one way or the other. Even with the possibilities of doors opening aside, it casts relief onto the particular decisions that have been made, and in so doing highlights those that will be. Whether your concerns are related to the construction of the gamer demographic or the production costs of high-budget titles, the potential of lost history or the representation of historically underrepresented groups in the creation or text of games -- or just about anything else -- this strike will shape the future history of those concerns. Because no matter how focused cinema seems now to necessarily be on the strength of individuals, especially in performance, it didn't have to be that way. And the same goes for games.
In this case, though, the cinema comparison is more industrial than artistic. Throughout the months of discussion of the possibility of the strike, a number of discussion points have circulated throughout the games enthusiast press. Primary among them, related to the union's demand for residuals, has relied on a thought experiment: would the presence or absence of voice actors be a selling point in a game? Are they stars in the same way that Hollywood produces?
We'll start with a quick rundown of the pre-Hollywood years of the movies, with the history largely taken from Roberta Pearson's essays "Early Cinema" and "Transitional Cinema" from The Oxford History of World Cinema. The former covers the years "from the beginnings up to about 1906," while the latter goes "from 1907 to the mid-1910s," or roughly the First World War (13). Pearson says of the early cinema that it was "concerned ... with the individual shot, preserving the spatial aspects of the pro-filmic event (the scene that takes place in front of the camera). ...The camera was kept stationary ... with viewers more interested in the cinema as visual spectacle than as story-teller." (16-7) This "cinema of attractions" was, in the transitional period, contrasted with a "cinema of narrative integration" which, among other things, "increased [the] use of editing ... decreased [the] distance between camera and actors ... [and] moved the actors closer to the camera. ... The decreased distance between action and camera not only enabled identification of the actors and the development of the star system, but also contributed to the increased emphasis upon individualized characters and facial expression." (29) The whole story is significantly more complicated, of course, involving advances that included the technical (cameras, film, etc), business (distribution practices, filmmaking practices) the artistic (shot-framing, editing, etc) and eventually the geopolitical (national subsidization of film, histories of trade, World War I). Broadly speaking, however, there is a very clear moment in which the seeds for cinema stars are born.
The birth of Hollywood itself can be explained in a relatively uncomplicated manner: Edison and other produces in 1908 banded together to create the Motion Picture Patents Company, whose business model relied on licensing fees for films and equipment for which the members held patents. By attempting to monopolize the showing of films, they created enemies who, only a year later, founded the Independent Moving Picture Company that distributed films to exhibitors who were not licensed by the MPPC. A court ruling MPPC illegal and a failure to stranglehold the market later, the IMPC became Universal and the lack of unions and the climate and abundance of locations around Hollywood made for the beginning of modern cinema history as it still continues today.
And that history is largely the history of the feature film. We're just over a century into it (depending on where you place the origin at, of course) at this point, and only a bit more background is necessary. This bit is largely from Douglas Gomery's "The Hollywood Studio System," also from The Oxford History of World Cinema. Gomery says it more or less right out: "Hollywood centred its promotional efforts on the star system. ... Stars provided an effective means of differentiating feature films ... Mary Pickford saw her salary increase from $100 a week in 1909 to $10,000 per week in 1917, ... the stars were quick to realize that, if they were so important to the studios, they had bargaining power of their own. Although many remained tied to exploitative contracts, some of the most successful broke loose from the system." (46) Pickford joined Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith in founding United Artists, an early alternative to the vertically-integrated Hollywood studio system which had already begun to dominate.
The development of the feature film also caused developments in business models; "as the demand for narrative films increased, speacialists were trained to assist the director," including painters for scenery and writers for plot and fashion designers, and eventually continuity editors and scriptwriters. Gomery is careful to note that "The Hollywood production system was not invented, but evolved in response to a number of felt imperatives, of which the most important was the need for regular and consistent profit." (48) That evolution did not take place solely on the side of production. Hollywood also ran distribution and, eventually, exhibition of films, cutting out any third parties possible. It didn't even take decades for the only real holdouts to be anemic governmental responses (think the Canadian Broadcasting rules that still apply today) or consequences of geopolitics (Japan's being closed to trade, the Soviet Union, etc).
There are some obvious potential parallels between this history and that of the videogames industry; the early lack of a defined division of labor (from MIT laboratories through, lets say, the NES), proceeding from novelty to narrative (Pong to Space Invaders to Wizardry to Final Fantasy), and the consolidation of industrial and marketing practices near-simultaneously (Console Wars with Mario and Sonic, studio association with directors or intellectual properties, etc). Zooming in on any one aspect involves a multiplication of discontinuities, of course, because the material conditions of a century ago are different in any number of ways from where they are now.
What's instructive here, though, isn't the parallels: it's the possibilities. Looking at early cinema makes it very clear that the century of history we have under the Hollywood system may have been the winner, and was certainly compelled by the profit motive most successfully, but that it came about due to a huge confluence of factors. Many of these are cloaked in a quasi-objectivity; scientific advancements in film production and audience interest in particular kinds of films especially. But the Hollywood takeover of exhibition was an intentional move, especially designed to move cinema into the world of the middle class rather than the proletarians it had been popular with initially. The star system was very much in line with that: once technical and artistic decisions had been made to centralize the actor/character, the humanist impulses of the middle class could be exploited by making celebrities of the actors who in turn would expend more of their income to continue seeing them.
And, even more than that, the cinema itself was not somehow objectively a place for stars. It took decades of industrial production to get to the point that individual actors were even of interest to producers or audiences. And it wasn't some coordinated effort on the parts of audiences to make that foundational to how we learned to watch movies, but a huge confluence of factors that included the mechanical, the artistic, and the economic, some intentional, some not.
SAG-AFTRA's reasons for striking are hardly even a quarter of a step towards making something like a move toward the development of a proper star system in videogames. Minor residuals certainly change the story significantly, in certain ways -- especially for those for whom the other aspects, like vocal strain and MoCap oversight, go less well -- and have the potential to open the door for themselves and others. That this is a union action, rather than the decree of executives responding to (and shaping) market forces, puts an emphasis on the "and others" there, as well.
More than anything, though, the outcome of this strike necessarily shifts the direction of the video game industry in one way or the other. Even with the possibilities of doors opening aside, it casts relief onto the particular decisions that have been made, and in so doing highlights those that will be. Whether your concerns are related to the construction of the gamer demographic or the production costs of high-budget titles, the potential of lost history or the representation of historically underrepresented groups in the creation or text of games -- or just about anything else -- this strike will shape the future history of those concerns. Because no matter how focused cinema seems now to necessarily be on the strength of individuals, especially in performance, it didn't have to be that way. And the same goes for games.
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Reading ARGs
I've been thinking about how to read games for a while now, and so I figured I would write up a little thing that moves again in that direction. ARGs seem to me to exist very prominently among the many under-theorized types of games, so maybe setting some provisional rules down might help.
1) The ARG as text can only be read through whatever the most-final version of the most prominent, collective fan theory exists, in a relatively concluded state.
This comes in a variety of forms: the archived/mostly dead message board, the mostly dead subreddit or reddit.com/r/ARG or 4chan's /x/ (or whatever) thread, or, most commonly at this point, the locked Google Docs file. Any attempt at reading an ARG should, of course, attempt as much of a playthrough as is possible/feasible. Using the playthrough as a basis of reading is not enough, however. What remains of the ARG is the combination of its viewable/playable artifacts and its active interpretive community over the course of its creation.
2) Any estimation of an ARG must read it through its capacity to engage with the paranoid reading.
With The Lost Experience ARG as the genre's only canonical example, the interpretive standards of the ARG community were set nearly a decade ago. This has had some consequences. Most obvious among these are that 'viral' marketing ARGs, like The Lost Experience or Halo 2's "I Love Bees" campaign, are aesthetically indistinguishable from non-marketing ARGs like the Jadusable/BEN DROWNED/Haunted Cartridge ARG. On a technical level this is fairly obvious: all forms use a mixture of the same tools, such as websites and accounts on established platforms like email or social media. Many use similar techniques as well, such as burying pertinent information in non-UI aspects of these accounts. This includes password-protection of pages that need to be derived from, say, accompanying video as well as parsing the page's code for clues. The more important aspect is that it has defined the shape of interpretive possibility.
Every, or nearly every, ARG that I have experienced (mostly second hand) has produced one of two (or, more often, both) interpretations, both of which I would classify under Sedgwick's idea of paranoid reading. These are:
This mixture of history and technique have lead to these two being what I would consider the baseline of work for ARGs interpretive communities. Any reading of an ARG would therefore be required to explain not that these exist, but in what way they manifest or are explored beyond the most basic versions. A successful ARG might undermine these readings in exciting ways, or it might develop them perfectly.
This proposal, to be clear, is in the same spirit of suggesting that we might judge a novel by the believability of the motivations of its characters, or a film by the clarity of its story. There isn't an answer here, or a demand that things must be made in certain ways; it is obvious to me that this sort of proposal is immediately meant to be undermined. The difference, of course, is that ARGs don't have, as yet, any sort of explicit set of rules for reading, which means instead of breaking them they simply abide by those implicit.
3) ARGs should be read alongside creepypasta, fantheory/fanfiction, New Media projects, and alternative games as well as alongside marketing rhetoric.
Some crossover in these categories is already obvious; I Love Bees and The Lost Experience are explicitly creations of marketing departments, while Jadusable is an ARG that spawned out of one of the most popular creepypasta. Many ARGs make use of New Media/alternative games ideas and creators to develop their properties, and, if we allow for (1), any ARG is incomplete without the explicit involvement of something like fantheorists. The point in making this explicit is to say that not only do they share material linkages, but aesthetic techniques that can be explored by a reader.
In addition to sharing real, material labor (as in, people who have sold their labor time and expertise to (become the) creator of the piece in question), all of these forms are in some sense beholden to the labor of valorizing the internet as a medium. Creepypasta is already colloquially understood as "campfire stories for the internet," fantheories produce engaged affective communities around (mostly) corporate owned intellectual property on (mostly) corporate owned platforms, New Media is ideologically bound to the understanding that artistic practices are advanced using (mostly proprietary) technologies, alternative games are fundamentally tied to distribution platforms that develop through the internet. Marketing is the beating heart of the internet, from AdSense to Adblockers.
Those who want to read ARGs, either in this capacity, or as potential creators or simply as interested consumers, need to know at least a little bit about how the internet's campfire stories are constructed to teeter on the edge of realism, which is as reliant on platforms as on aesthetic techniques. They need to think also about how platforms and distribution models differ within the context of the internet, and about how production around intellectual property is navigated within fan spaces. And, of course, they need to think about how all of this is made, and funded; at least I think they do.
1) The ARG as text can only be read through whatever the most-final version of the most prominent, collective fan theory exists, in a relatively concluded state.
This comes in a variety of forms: the archived/mostly dead message board, the mostly dead subreddit or reddit.com/r/ARG or 4chan's /x/ (or whatever) thread, or, most commonly at this point, the locked Google Docs file. Any attempt at reading an ARG should, of course, attempt as much of a playthrough as is possible/feasible. Using the playthrough as a basis of reading is not enough, however. What remains of the ARG is the combination of its viewable/playable artifacts and its active interpretive community over the course of its creation.
2) Any estimation of an ARG must read it through its capacity to engage with the paranoid reading.
With The Lost Experience ARG as the genre's only canonical example, the interpretive standards of the ARG community were set nearly a decade ago. This has had some consequences. Most obvious among these are that 'viral' marketing ARGs, like The Lost Experience or Halo 2's "I Love Bees" campaign, are aesthetically indistinguishable from non-marketing ARGs like the Jadusable/BEN DROWNED/Haunted Cartridge ARG. On a technical level this is fairly obvious: all forms use a mixture of the same tools, such as websites and accounts on established platforms like email or social media. Many use similar techniques as well, such as burying pertinent information in non-UI aspects of these accounts. This includes password-protection of pages that need to be derived from, say, accompanying video as well as parsing the page's code for clues. The more important aspect is that it has defined the shape of interpretive possibility.
Every, or nearly every, ARG that I have experienced (mostly second hand) has produced one of two (or, more often, both) interpretations, both of which I would classify under Sedgwick's idea of paranoid reading. These are:
a) Conspiratorial Interpretation: the ARG is best explained by reference to some set of conditions in the world -- usually assumed to be some sort of secondary world -- that are predicated on conspiracy. Whether explained through apocalyptic change, an abnormal acting of time (travel, split, &c), or the sudden empirical demonstration of the supernatural, these theories develop an interpretation of the gathered evidence that relies on some sort of potent, shadowy force (often something within the government or an especially shadowy, powerful private corporation) that is causing events to unfold as they are.
b) Psychological Interpretation: the ARG is best explained by reference to some (set of) psychological conditions experienced by the characters portrayed within it. These interpretations are -- in addition to being (near?) universally ableist as fuck -- premised on an understanding of the 'unreliable narrator' that still assumes the existence of objective information within the text. These are primarily non-secondary world theories, though not exclusively, and are often used to explain apparently supernatural or inexplicable behavior or phenomena through colloquial understandings of non-neurotypical experiences.
This mixture of history and technique have lead to these two being what I would consider the baseline of work for ARGs interpretive communities. Any reading of an ARG would therefore be required to explain not that these exist, but in what way they manifest or are explored beyond the most basic versions. A successful ARG might undermine these readings in exciting ways, or it might develop them perfectly.
This proposal, to be clear, is in the same spirit of suggesting that we might judge a novel by the believability of the motivations of its characters, or a film by the clarity of its story. There isn't an answer here, or a demand that things must be made in certain ways; it is obvious to me that this sort of proposal is immediately meant to be undermined. The difference, of course, is that ARGs don't have, as yet, any sort of explicit set of rules for reading, which means instead of breaking them they simply abide by those implicit.
3) ARGs should be read alongside creepypasta, fantheory/fanfiction, New Media projects, and alternative games as well as alongside marketing rhetoric.
Some crossover in these categories is already obvious; I Love Bees and The Lost Experience are explicitly creations of marketing departments, while Jadusable is an ARG that spawned out of one of the most popular creepypasta. Many ARGs make use of New Media/alternative games ideas and creators to develop their properties, and, if we allow for (1), any ARG is incomplete without the explicit involvement of something like fantheorists. The point in making this explicit is to say that not only do they share material linkages, but aesthetic techniques that can be explored by a reader.
In addition to sharing real, material labor (as in, people who have sold their labor time and expertise to (become the) creator of the piece in question), all of these forms are in some sense beholden to the labor of valorizing the internet as a medium. Creepypasta is already colloquially understood as "campfire stories for the internet," fantheories produce engaged affective communities around (mostly) corporate owned intellectual property on (mostly) corporate owned platforms, New Media is ideologically bound to the understanding that artistic practices are advanced using (mostly proprietary) technologies, alternative games are fundamentally tied to distribution platforms that develop through the internet. Marketing is the beating heart of the internet, from AdSense to Adblockers.
Those who want to read ARGs, either in this capacity, or as potential creators or simply as interested consumers, need to know at least a little bit about how the internet's campfire stories are constructed to teeter on the edge of realism, which is as reliant on platforms as on aesthetic techniques. They need to think also about how platforms and distribution models differ within the context of the internet, and about how production around intellectual property is navigated within fan spaces. And, of course, they need to think about how all of this is made, and funded; at least I think they do.
Thursday, June 2, 2016
Reading Games: One Personal Look at Games Crit's (Mostly) Recent History on Storify
I spent a few days going through games writing that has been super important to me, and then I put it together into a single place, with some elaboration. Take a look!
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
4 Books that will Inspire You to Fight Fascists in the Streets
We all feel it right now: the news carousel revolves between articles about Trump's ascendancy and the developing organizations of the alt right/white nationalist movement. It's a deep freeze kind of moment in the realm of political action. But somewhere in the back of your mind, Howard Zinn's accounts of the workers soviet of St. Louis in The People's History of the United States, or of Assata Shakur's life in the underground in Assata: An Autobiography hold a spark.
And who knows: maybe you'll be needing to kindle that spark in the near future. There are a lot of theories about how to best combat fascism, but the only one that's truly time tested is a good old fashioned street fight. From the British Battle of Cable Street to present day Olympia, Washington, nothing stops the goons like letting them know they aren't welcome.
The books in this list aren't guides or even all triumphant. Sometimes you just need some images to bounce around in your head. So join us in closing that carousel for a little while, and gathering some kindling for that spark.
1. Botchan by Natsume Sōseki
Sōseki's turn of the century novel about a schoolmaster might seem like a strange pick, as it basically reads like a YA Catcher in the Rye with a schoolteacher for a narrator. As long as you don't identify with the narrator, though, it's a brilliant look at the kind of rebellions that will be necessary, if not sufficient, in the coming years. And, as a bonus, it doesn't shy away from how these moments will be explosive, impulsive, and co-opted.
The climactic scene of Botchan sees the students brawling in the street, and the titular asshole Math teacher gets involved. It only takes a few thrown rocks to rout him. If you take it as a lesson, it's about street fights being effective but also easily co-opted; if you take it for literature, it's a fun scene about an asshole getting his due. Either way, it's good preparation.
2. 2 Henry VI by Shakespeare
The fourth act of Henry VI, Part 2 is all kinds of messy. Suffolk, who just had Gloster murdered in the previous scene, gets beheaded right off. Then enters Jack Cade, who makes up the story that he is the son of a lost twin of the Earl of March and makes proclamations like "And henceforward all things shall be in common" and that "there shall not a maid be married but she shall pay to me her maidenhead ere they have it." He's, well, a character.
A rapidfire series of scenes later, Cade and his army are in London, murdering anyone who can read or write or who call him the wrong name and burning all legal records. Just as he seems to be winning the city, two envoys of the king offer pardons to all who abandon Cade. Everyone takes them.
Shakespeare's political plays offer themselves up for complex readings of politics; they were largely produced for royalty, but it's not hard to see that they embed strong criticisms of the ruling class in their characters. Cade's rebellion might not be something to be directly emulated, or about opposing modern fascists, but it's a good reminder of the varieties of power that come to play in the streets, and just how fickle the lynchpin moments can seem.
3. The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
The novel that (lamentably) brought us the Steampunk genre gets credit for that, a very weird ending, and little else. What people seem to forget is that it has a second act villain of a 19th century analogue for Guy Debord in Captain Swing. With London in the grips of the Stink, our villain does what he must: propagandizes and foments revolution. And then, of course, he dies.
If Steampunk's the rosy revisionist counterpart to cyberpunk, then at least it has old Captain Swing in its DNA. Plenty of aesthetic cogs mask little more than a desire for an uncomplicated politics that couples well with the Good Old Days of the proper fash. Don't let them have that, though: know that for every picture they paint with sepia, there's an antifa ready to smash a camera.
4. Toppamono by Manabu Miyazaki
With a full title of Toppamono: Outlaw. Radical. Suspect. My Life in Japan's Underworld, this autobiography by Manabu Miyazaki has plenty of fighting to offer. From his childhood on the periphery of the Yakuza because of family ties to his construction company to his being charged in a massive corporate kidnapping case, Miyazaki paints himself as a scrappy dude. It's his time spent in the Japanese New Left that gets his book on this list, though.
In a chapter straight up called "Street Fights and Das Kapital," Miyazaki delves into the development of his own political education. It's the most basic lesson, in some ways: theory and praxis go hand in hand, and sometimes that praxis is as simple as fighting tooth and nail in the streets.
There's even something aspirational about Toppamono: strong factionalism lead a number of New Left organizations to end up fighting not just fascists, but other kinds of socialists on the street. Maybe once the coming fights are won, that luxury of the fabled Leftist Infighting can get a little space to stretch its legs.
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