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taylorswifthongkong · 4 years ago

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Taylor Swift broke all her rules with Folklore — and gave herself a much-needed escape The pop star, one of EW's 2020 Entertainers of the Year, delves deep into her surprise eighth album, Rebekah Harkness, and a Joe Biden presidency. By Alex Suskind

“He is my co-writer on ‛Betty’ and ‛Exile,’” replies Taylor Swift with deadpan precision. The question Who is William Bowery? was, at the time we spoke, one of 2020’s great mysteries, right up there with the existence of Joe Exotic and the sudden arrival of murder hornets. An unknown writer credited on the year’s biggest album? It must be an alias.

Is he your brother?

“He’s William Bowery,” says Swift with a smile.

It's early November, after Election Day but before Swift eventually revealed Bowery's true identity to the world (the leading theory, that he was boyfriend Joe Alwyn, proved prescient). But, like all Swiftian riddles, it was fun to puzzle over for months, particularly in this hot mess of a year, when brief distractions are as comforting as a well-worn cardigan. Thankfully, the Bowery... erhm, Alwyn-assisted Folklore — a Swift project filled with muted pianos and whisper-quiet snares, recorded in secret with Jack Antonoff and the National’s Aaron Dessner — delivered.

“The only people who knew were the people I was making it with, my boyfriend, my family, and a small management team,” Swift, 30, tells EW of the album's hush-hush recording sessions. That gave the intimate Folklore a mystique all its own: the first surprise Taylor Swift album, one that prioritized fantastical tales over personal confessions.

“Early in quarantine, I started watching lots of films,” she explains. “Consuming other people’s storytelling opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines?” That’s how she ended up with three songs about an imagined love triangle (“Cardigan,” “Betty,” “August”), one about a clandestine romance (“Illicit Affairs”), and another chronicling a doomed relationship (“Exile”). Others tell of sumptuous real-life figures like Rebekah Harkness, a divorcee who married the heir to Standard Oil — and whose home Swift purchased 31 years after her death. The result, “The Last Great American Dynasty,” hones in on Harkness’ story, until Swift cleverly injects herself.

And yet, it wouldn’t be a Swift album without a few barbed postmortems over her own history. Notably, “My Tears Ricochet” and “Mad Woman," which touch on her former label head Scott Borchetta selling the masters to Swift’s catalog to her known nemesis Scooter Braun. Mere hours after our interview, the lyrics’ real-life origins took a surprising twist, when news broke that Swift’s music had once again been sold, to another private equity firm, for a reported $300 million. Though Swift ignored repeated requests for comment on the transaction, she did tweet a statement, hitting back at Braun while noting that she had begun re-recording her old albums — something she first promised in 2019 as a way of retaining agency over her creative legacy. (Later, she would tease a snippet of that reimagined work, with a new version of her hit 2008 single "Love Story.")

Like surprise-dropping Folklore, like pissing off the president by endorsing his opponents, like shooing away haters, Swift does what suits her. “I don’t think we often hear about women who did whatever the hell they wanted,” she says of Harkness — something Swift is clearly intent on changing. For her, that means basking in the world of, and favorable response to, Folklore. As she says in our interview, “I have this weird thing where, in order to create the next thing, I attack the previous thing. I don’t love that I do that, but it is the thing that has kept me pivoting to another world every time I make an album. But with this one, I still love it.”

TAYLOR SWIFT: I was. I wasn't expecting to make an album. Early on in quarantine, I started watching lots of films. We would watch a different movie every night. I'm ashamed to say I hadn't seen Pan's Labyrinth before. One night I'd watch that, then I'd watch L.A. Confidential, then we'd watch Rear Window, then we'd watch Jane Eyre. I feel like consuming other people's art and storytelling sort of opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, "Well, why have I never done this before? Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines? And why haven't I ever sort of freed myself up to do that from a narrative standpoint?" There is something a little heavy about knowing when you put out an album, people are going to take it so literally that everything you say could be clickbait. It was really, really freeing to be able to just be inspired by worlds created by the films you watch or books you've read or places you've dreamed of or people that you've wondered about, not just being inspired by your own experience.

In that vain, what's it like to sit down and write something like “Betty,” which is told from the perspective of a 17-year-old boy?

That was huge for me. And I think it came from the fact that my co-writer, William Bowery [Joe Alwyn], is male — and he was the one who originally thought of the chorus melody. And hearing him sing it, I thought, "That sounds really cool." Obviously, I don't have a male voice, but I thought, "I could have a male perspective." Patty Griffin wrote this song, “Top of the World.” It's one of my favorite songs of all time, and it's from the perspective of this older man who has lived a life full of regret, and he's kind of taking stock of that regret. So, I thought, "This is something that people I am a huge fan of have done. This would be fun to kind of take this for a spin."

What are your favorite William Bowery conspiracies?

I love them all individually and equally. I love all the conspiracy theories around this album. [With] "Betty," Jack Antonoff would text me these articles and think pieces and in-depth Tumblr posts on what this love triangle meant to the person who had listened to it. And that's exactly what I was hoping would happen with this album. I wrote these stories for a specific reason and from a specific place about specific people that I imagined, but I wanted that to all change given who was listening to it. And I wanted it to start out as mine and become other people's. It's been really fun to watch.

I didn't think about any of that for the very first time. And a lot of this album was kind of distilled down to the purest version of what the story is. Songwriting on this album is exactly the way that I would write if I considered nothing else other than, "What words do I want to write? What stories do I want to tell? What melodies do I want to sing? What production is essential to tell those stories?" It was a very do-it-yourself experience. My management team, we created absolutely everything in advance — every lyric video, every individual album package. And then we called our label a week in advance and said, "Here's what we have.” The photo shoot was me and the photographer walking out into a field. I'd done my hair and makeup and brought some nightgowns. These experiences I was used to having with 100 people on set, commanding alongside other people in a very committee fashion — all of a sudden it was me and a photographer, or me and my DP. It was a new challenge, because I love collaboration. But there's something really fun about knowing what you can do if it's just you doing it.

Did you find it freeing?

I did. Every project involves different levels of collaboration, because on other albums there are things that my stylist will think of that I never would've thought of. But if I had all those people on the photo shoot, I would've had to have them quarantine away from their families for weeks on end, and I would've had to ask things of them that I didn't think were fair if I could figure out a way to do it [myself]. I had this idea for the [Folklore album cover] that it would be this girl sleepwalking through the forest in a nightgown in 1830 [laughs]. Very specific. A pioneer woman sleepwalking at night. I made a moodboard and sent it to Beth [Garrabrant], who I had never worked with before, who shoots only on film. We were just carrying bags across a field and putting the bags of film down, and then taking pictures. It was a blast.

Well, Aaron is one of the most effortlessly prolific creators I've ever worked with. It's really mind-blowing. And every time I've spoken to an artist since this whole process [began], I said, "You need to work with him. It'll change the way you create." He would send me these — he calls them sketches, but it's basically an instrumental track. the second day — the day after I texted him and said, "Hey, would you ever want to work together?" — he sent me this file of probably 30 of these instrumentals and every single one of them was one of the most interesting, exciting things I had ever heard. Music can be beautiful, but it can be lacking that evocative nature. There was something about everything he created that is an immediate image in my head or melody that I came up with. So much so that I'd start writing as soon as I heard a new one. And oftentimes what I would send back would inspire him to make more instrumentals and then send me that one. And then I wrote the song and it started to shape the project, form-fitted and customized to what we wanted to do.

It was weird because I had never made an album and not played it for my girlfriends or told my friends. The only people who knew were the people that I was making it with, my boyfriend, my family, and then my management team. So that's the smallest number of people I've ever had know about something. I'm usually playing it for everyone that I'm friends with. So I had a lot of friends texting me things like, "Why didn't you say on our everyday FaceTimes you were making a record?"

Was it nice to be able to keep it a secret?

Well, it felt like it was only my thing. It felt like such an inner world I was escaping to every day that it almost didn't feel like an album. Because I wasn't making a song and finishing it and going, "Oh my God, that is catchy.” I wasn't making these things with any purpose in mind. And so it was almost like having it just be mine was this really sweet, nice, pure part of the world as everything else in the world was burning and crashing and feeling this sickness and sadness. I almost didn't process it as an album. This was just my daydream space.

Does it still feel like that?

Yeah, because I love it so much. I have this weird thing that I do when I create something where in order to create the next thing I kind of, in my head, attack the previous thing. I don't love that I do that but it is the thing that has kept me pivoting to another world every time I make an album. But with this one, I just still love it. I'm so proud of it. And so that feels very foreign to me. That doesn't feel like a normal experience that I've had with releasing albums.

When did you first learn about Rebekah Harkness?

Oh, I learned about her as soon as I was being walked through [her former Rhode Island] home. I got the house when I was in my early twenties as a place for my family to congregate and be together. I was told about her, I think, by the real estate agent who was walking us through the property. And as soon as I found out about her, I wanted to know everything I could. So I started reading. I found her so interesting. And then as more parallels began to develop between our two lives — being the lady that lives in that house on the hill that everybody gets to gossip about — I was always looking for an opportunity to write about her. And I finally found it.

I love that you break the fourth wall in the song. Did you go in thinking you’d include yourself in the story?

I think that in my head, I always wanted to do a country music, standard narrative device, which is: the first verse you sing about someone else, the second verse you sing about someone else who's even closer to you, and then in the third verse, you go, "Surprise! It was me.” You bring it personal for the last verse. And I'd always thought that if I were to tell that story, I would want to include the similarities — our lives or our reputations or our scandals.

How often did you regale friends about the history of Rebekah and Holiday House while hanging out at Holiday House?

Anyone who's been there before knows that I do “The Tour,” in quotes, where I show everyone through the house. And I tell them different anecdotes about each room, because I've done that much research on this house and this woman. So in every single room, there's a different anecdote about Rebekah Harkness. If you have a mixed group of people who've been there before and people who haven't, [the people who’ve been there] are like, "Oh, she's going to do the tour. She's got to tell you the story about how the ballerinas used to practice on the lawn.” And they'll go get a drink and skip it because it's the same every time. But for me, I'm telling the story with the same electric enthusiasm, because it's just endlessly entertaining to me that this fabulous woman lived there. She just did whatever she wanted.

I found myself being very triggered by any stories, movies, or narratives revolving around divorce, which felt weird because I haven't experienced it directly. There’s no reason it should cause me so much pain, but all of a sudden it felt like something I had been through. I think that happens any time you've been in a 15-year relationship and it ends in a messy, upsetting way. So I wrote “My Tears Ricochet” and I was using a lot of imagery that I had conjured up while comparing a relationship ending to when people end an actual marriage. All of a sudden this person that you trusted more than anyone in the world is the person that can hurt you the worst. Then all of a sudden the things that you have been through together, hurt. All of a sudden, the person who was your best friend is now your biggest nemesis, etc. etc. etc. I think I wrote some of the first lyrics to that song after watching Marriage Story and hearing about when marriages go wrong and end in such a catastrophic way. So these songs are in some ways imaginary, in some ways not, and in some ways both.

How did it feel to drop an F-bomb on "Mad Woman"?

F---ing fantastic.

And that’s the first time you ever recorded one on a record, right?

Yeah. Every rule book was thrown out. I always had these rules in my head and one of them was, You haven't done this before, so you can't ever do this. “Well, you've never had an explicit sticker, so you can't ever have an explicit sticker.” But that was one of the times where I felt like you need to follow the language and you need to follow the storyline. And if the storyline and the language match up and you end up saying the F-word, just go for it. I wasn't adhering to any of the guidelines that I had placed on myself. I decided to just make what I wanted to make. And I'm really happy that the fans were stoked about that because I think they could feel that. I'm not blaming anyone else for me restricting myself in the past. That was all, I guess, making what I want to make. I think my fans could feel that I opened the gate and ran out of the pasture for the first time, which I'm glad they picked up on because they're very intuitive.

Let’s talk about “Epiphany.” The first verse is a nod to your grandfather, Dean, who fought in World War II. What does his story mean to you personally?

I wanted to write about him for awhile. He died when I was very young, but my dad would always tell this story that the only thing that his dad would ever say about the war was when somebody would ask him, "Why do you have such a positive outlook on life?" My grandfather would reply, "Well, I'm not supposed to be here. I shouldn't be here." My dad and his brothers always kind of imagined that what he had experienced was really awful and traumatic and that he'd seen a lot of terrible things. So when they did research, they learned that he had fought at the Battles of Guadalcanal, at Cape Gloucester, at Talasea, at Okinawa. He had seen a lot of heavy fire and casualties — all of the things that nightmares are made of. He was one of the first people to sign up for the war. But you know, these are things that you can only imagine that a lot of people in that generation didn't speak about because, a) they didn't want people that they came home to to worry about them, and b) it just was so bad that it was the actual definition of unspeakable.

I mean, you just immediately think of the health workers who are putting their lives on the line — and oftentimes losing their lives. If they make it out of this, if they see the other side of it, there's going to be a lot of trauma that comes with that; there's going to be things that they witnessed that they will never be able to un-see. And that was the connection that I drew. I did a lot of research on my grandfather in the beginning of quarantine, and it hit me very quickly that we've got a version of that trauma happening right now in our hospitals. God, you hope people would respect it and would understand that going out for a night isn't worth the ripple effect that it causes. But obviously we're seeing that a lot of people don't seem to have their eyes open to that — or if they do, a lot of people don't care, which is upsetting.

You had the Lover Fest East and West scheduled this year. How hard has it been to both not perform for your fans this year, and see the music industry at large go through such a brutal change?

It's confusing. It's hard to watch. I think that maybe me wanting to make as much music as possible during this time was a way for me to feel like I could reach out my hand and touch my fans, even if I couldn't physically reach out or take a picture with them. We've had a lot of different, amazing, fun, sort of underground traditions we've built over the years that involve a lot of human interaction, and so I have no idea what's going to happen with touring; none of us do. And that's a scary thing. You can't look to somebody in the music industry who's been around a long time, or an expert touring manager or promoter and [ask] what's going to happen and have them give you an answer. I think we're all just trying to keep our eyes on the horizon and see what it looks like. So we're just kind of sitting tight and trying to take care of whatever creative spark might exist and trying to figure out how to reach our fans in other ways, because we just can't do that right now.

When you are able to perform again, do you have plans on resurfacing a Lover Fest-type event?

I don't know what incarnation it'll take and I really would need to sit down and think about it for a good solid couple of months before I figured out the answer. Because whatever we do, I want it to be something that is thoughtful and will make the fans happy and I hope I can achieve that. I'm going to try really hard to.

In addition to recording an album, you spent this year supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the election. Where were you when it was called in their favor?

Well, when the results were coming in, I was actually at the property where we shot the Entertainment Weekly cover. I was hanging out with my photographer friend, Beth, and the wonderful couple that owned the farm where we [were]. And we realized really early into the night that we weren't going to get an accurate picture of the results. Then, a couple of days later, I was on a video shoot, but I was directing, and I was standing there with my face shield and mask on next to my director of photography, Rodrigo Prieto. And I just remember a news alert coming up on my phone that said, "Biden is our next president. He's won the election." And I showed it to Rodrigo and he said, "I'm always going to remember the moment that we learned this." And I looked around, and people's face shields were starting to fog up because a lot of people were really misty-eyed and emotional, and it was not loud. It wasn't popping bottles of champagne. It was this moment of quiet, cautious elation and relief.

Do you ever think about what Folklore would have sounded like if you, Aaron, and Jack had been in the same room?

I think about it all the time. I think that a lot of what has happened with the album has to do with us all being in a collective emotional place. Obviously everybody's lives have different complexities and whatnot, but I think most of us were feeling really shaken up and really out of place and confused and in need of something comforting all at the same time. And for me, that thing that was comforting was making music that felt sort of like I was trying to hug my fans through the speakers. That was truly my intent. Just trying to hug them when I can't hug them.

I was really excited about "August slipped away into a moment of time/August sipped away like a bottle of wine." That was a song where Jack sent me the instrumental and I wrote the song pretty much on the spot; it just was an intuitive thing. And that was actually the first song that I wrote of the "Betty" triangle. So the Betty songs are "August," "Cardigan," and "Betty." "August" was actually the first one, which is strange because it's the song from the other girl's perspective.

Yeah, I assumed you wrote "Cardigan" first.

It would be safe to assume that "Cardigan" would be first, but it wasn't. It was very strange how it happened, but it kind of pieced together one song at a time, starting with "August," where I kind of wanted to explore the element of This is from the perspective of a girl who was having her first brush with love. And then all of a sudden she's treated like she's the other girl, because there was another situation that had already been in place, but "August" girl thought she was really falling in love. It kind of explores the idea of the undefined relationship. As humans, we're all encouraged to just be cool and just let it happen, and don't ask what the relationship is — Are we exclusive? But if you are chill about it, especially when you're young, you learn the very hard lesson that if you don't define something, oftentimes they can gaslight you into thinking it was nothing at all, and that it never happened. And how do you mourn the loss of something once it ends, if you're being made to believe that it never happened at all?

"I almost didn't process it as an album," says Taylor Swift of making Folklore. "And it's still hard for me to process as an entity or a commodity, because [it] was just my daydream space."

I'm really proud of that one too. I heard the track immediately. Aaron sent it to me, and it had this immediate sense of serenity running through it. The first word that popped into my head was peace, but I thought that it would be too on-the-nose to sing about being calm, or to sing about serenity, or to sing about finding peace with someone. Because you have this very conflicted, very dramatic conflict-written lyric paired with this very, very calming sound of the instrumental. But, "The devil's in the details," is one of those phrases that I've written down over the years. That's a common phrase that is used in the English language every day. And I just thought it sounded really cool because of the D, D sound. And I thought, "I'll hang onto those in a list, and then, I'll finally find the right place for them in a story." I think that's how a lot of people feel where it's like, "Yeah, the devil's in the details. Everybody's complex when you look under the hood of the car." But basically saying, "I'm there for you if you want that, if this complexity is what you want."

There's another clever turn-of-phrase on "This is Me Trying." "I didn't know if you'd care if I came back/I have a lot of regrets about that." That feels like a nod toward your fans, and some of the feelings you had about retreating from the public sphere.

Absolutely. I think I was writing from three different characters' perspectives, one who's going through that; I was channeling the emotions I was feeling in 2016, 2017, where I just felt like I was worth absolutely nothing. And then, the second verse is about dealing with addiction and issues with struggling every day. And every second of the day, you're trying not to fall into old patterns, and nobody around you can see that, and no one gives you credit for it. And then, the third verse, I was thinking, what would the National do? What lyric would Matt Berninger write? What chords would the National play? And it's funny because I've since played this song for Aaron, and he's like, "That's not what we would've done at all." He's like, "I love that song, but that's totally different than what we would've done with it."

Yeah, I was at the show where they were playing through I Am Easy to Find. What I loved about [that album] was they had female vocalists singing from female perspectives, and that triggered and fired something in me where I thought, "I've got to play with different perspectives because that is so intriguing when you hear a female perspective come in from a band where you're used to only hearing a male perspective." It just sparked something in me. And obviously, you mentioning the National is the reason why Folklore came to be. So, thank you for that, Alex.

I'm here for all of your songwriting muse needs in the future.

I can't wait to see what comes out of this interview.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

For more on our Entertainers of the Year and Best & Worst of 2020, order the January issue of Entertainment Weekly or find it on newsstands beginning Dec. 18. (You can also pick up the full set of six covers here.) Don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.

#ew #entertainment weekly #article #interview #folklore promo #folklore interview #quote #aaron dessner #jack antonoff #joe alwyn

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path-of-my-childhood · 4 years ago

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Taylor Swift Broke All Her Rules With Folklore - And Gave Herself A Much-Needed Escape

By: Alex Suskind for Entertainment Weekly Date: December 8th 2020 (EW's 2020 Entertainers of the Year cover)

The pop star, one of EW's 2020 Entertainers of the Year, delves deep into her surprise eighth album, Rebekah Harkness, and a Joe Biden presidency.

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Is he your brother?

“He’s William Bowery,” says Swift with a smile.

It's early November, after Election Day but before Swift eventually revealed Bowery's true identity to the world (the leading theory, that he was boyfriend Joe Alwyn, proved prescient). But, like all Swiftian riddles, it was fun to puzzle over for months, particularly in this hot mess of a year, when brief distractions are as comforting as a well-worn cardigan. Thankfully, the Bowery... erhm, Alwyn-assisted Folklore - a Swift project filled with muted pianos and whisper-quiet snares, recorded in secret with Jack Antonoff and the National’s Aaron Dessner - delivered.

“Early in quarantine, I started watching lots of films,” she explains. “Consuming other people’s storytelling opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines?” That’s how she ended up with three songs about an imagined love triangle (“Cardigan,” “Betty,” “August”), one about a clandestine romance (“Illicit Affairs”), and another chronicling a doomed relationship (“Exile”). Others tell of sumptuous real-life figures like Rebekah Harkness, a divorcee who married the heir to Standard Oil - and whose home Swift purchased 31 years after her death. The result, “The Last Great American Dynasty,” hones in on Harkness’ story, until Swift cleverly injects herself.

And yet, it wouldn’t be a Swift album without a few barbed postmortems over her own history. Notably, “My Tears Ricochet” and “Mad Woman," which touch on her former label head Scott Borchetta selling the masters to Swift’s catalog to her known nemesis Scooter Braun. Mere hours after our interview, the lyrics’ real-life origins took a surprising twist, when news broke that Swift’s music had once again been sold, to another private equity firm, for a reported $300 million. Though Swift ignored repeated requests for comment on the transaction, she did tweet a statement, hitting back at Braun while noting that she had begun re-recording her old albums - something she first promised in 2019 as a way of retaining agency over her creative legacy. (Later, she would tease a snippet of that reimagined work, with a new version of her hit 2008 single "Love Story.")

Like surprise-dropping Folklore, like pissing off the president by endorsing his opponents, like shooing away haters, Swift does what suits her. “I don’t think we often hear about women who did whatever the hell they wanted,” she says of Harkness - something Swift is clearly intent on changing. For her, that means basking in the world of, and favorable response to, Folklore. As she says in our interview, “I have this weird thing where, in order to create the next thing, I attack the previous thing. I don’t love that I do that, but it is the thing that has kept me pivoting to another world every time I make an album. But with this one, I still love it.”

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: We’ve spent the year quarantined in our houses, trying to stay healthy and avoiding friends and family. Were you surprised by your ability to create and release a full album in the middle of a pandemic? TAYLOR SWIFT: I was. I wasn't expecting to make an album. Early on in quarantine, I started watching lots of films. We would watch a different movie every night. I'm ashamed to say I hadn't seen Pan's Labyrinth before. One night I'd watch that, then I'd watch L.A. Confidential, then we'd watch Rear Window, then we'd watch Jane Eyre. I feel like consuming other people's art and storytelling sort of opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, "Well, why have I never done this before? Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines? And why haven't I ever sort of freed myself up to do that from a narrative standpoint?" There is something a little heavy about knowing when you put out an album, people are going to take it so literally that everything you say could be clickbait. It was really, really freeing to be able to just be inspired by worlds created by the films you watch or books you've read or places you've dreamed of or people that you've wondered about, not just being inspired by your own experience.

In that vein, what's it like to sit down and write something like “Betty,” which is told from the perspective of a 17-year-old boy? That was huge for me. And I think it came from the fact that my co-writer, William Bowery [Joe Alwyn], is male — and he was the one who originally thought of the chorus melody. And hearing him sing it, I thought, "That sounds really cool." Obviously, I don't have a male voice, but I thought, "I could have a male perspective." Patty Griffin wrote this song, “Top of the World.” It's one of my favorite songs of all time, and it's from the perspective of this older man who has lived a life full of regret, and he's kind of taking stock of that regret. So, I thought, "This is something that people I am a huge fan of have done. This would be fun to kind of take this for a spin."

What are your favorite William Bowery conspiracies? I love them all individually and equally. I love all the conspiracy theories around this album. [With] "Betty," Jack Antonoff would text me these articles and think pieces and in-depth Tumblr posts on what this love triangle meant to the person who had listened to it. And that's exactly what I was hoping would happen with this album. I wrote these stories for a specific reason and from a specific place about specific people that I imagined, but I wanted that to all change given who was listening to it. And I wanted it to start out as mine and become other people's. It's been really fun to watch.

One of the other unique things about Folklore — the parameters around it were completely different from anything you'd done. There was no long roll out, no stadium-sized pop anthems, no aiming for the radio-friendly single. How fearful were you in avoiding what had worked in the past? I didn't think about any of that for the very first time. And a lot of this album was kind of distilled down to the purest version of what the story is. Songwriting on this album is exactly the way that I would write if I considered nothing else other than, "What words do I want to write? What stories do I want to tell? What melodies do I want to sing? What production is essential to tell those stories?" It was a very do-it-yourself experience. My management team, we created absolutely everything in advance — every lyric video, every individual album package. And then we called our label a week in advance and said, "Here's what we have.” The photo shoot was me and the photographer walking out into a field. I'd done my hair and makeup and brought some nightgowns. These experiences I was used to having with 100 people on set, commanding alongside other people in a very committee fashion — all of a sudden it was me and a photographer, or me and my DP. It was a new challenge, because I love collaboration. But there's something really fun about knowing what you can do if it's just you doing it.

Did you find it freeing? I did. Every project involves different levels of collaboration, because on other albums there are things that my stylist will think of that I never would've thought of. But if I had all those people on the photo shoot, I would've had to have them quarantine away from their families for weeks on end, and I would've had to ask things of them that I didn't think were fair if I could figure out a way to do it [myself]. I had this idea for the [Folklore album cover] that it would be this girl sleepwalking through the forest in a nightgown in 1830 [laughs]. Very specific. A pioneer woman sleepwalking at night. I made a moodboard and sent it to Beth [Garrabrant], who I had never worked with before, who shoots only on film. We were just carrying bags across a field and putting the bags of film down, and then taking pictures. It was a blast.

Folklore includes plenty of intimate acoustic echoes to what you've done in the past. But there are also a lot of new sonics here, too — these quiet, powerful, intricately layered harmonics. What was it like to receive the music from Aaron and try to write lyrics on top of it? Well, Aaron is one of the most effortlessly prolific creators I've ever worked with. It's really mind-blowing. And every time I've spoken to an artist since this whole process [began], I said, "You need to work with him. It'll change the way you create." He would send me these — he calls them sketches, but it's basically an instrumental track. the second day — the day after I texted him and said, "Hey, would you ever want to work together?" — he sent me this file of probably 30 of these instrumentals and every single one of them was one of the most interesting, exciting things I had ever heard. Music can be beautiful, but it can be lacking that evocative nature. There was something about everything he created that is an immediate image in my head or melody that I came up with. So much so that I'd start writing as soon as I heard a new one. And oftentimes what I would send back would inspire him to make more instrumentals and then send me that one. And then I wrote the song and it started to shape the project, form-fitted and customized to what we wanted to do.

Was it nice to be able to keep it a secret? Well, it felt like it was only my thing. It felt like such an inner world I was escaping to every day that it almost didn't feel like an album. Because I wasn't making a song and finishing it and going, "Oh my God, that is catchy.” I wasn't making these things with any purpose in mind. And so it was almost like having it just be mine was this really sweet, nice, pure part of the world as everything else in the world was burning and crashing and feeling this sickness and sadness. I almost didn't process it as an album. This was just my daydream space.

Does it still feel like that? Yeah, because I love it so much. I have this weird thing that I do when I create something where in order to create the next thing I kind of, in my head, attack the previous thing. I don't love that I do that but it is the thing that has kept me pivoting to another world every time I make an album. But with this one, I just still love it. I'm so proud of it. And so that feels very foreign to me. That doesn't feel like a normal experience that I've had with releasing albums.

When did you first learn about Rebekah Harkness? Oh, I learned about her as soon as I was being walked through [her former Rhode Island] home. I got the house when I was in my early twenties as a place for my family to congregate and be together. I was told about her, I think, by the real estate agent who was walking us through the property. And as soon as I found out about her, I wanted to know everything I could. So I started reading. I found her so interesting. And then as more parallels began to develop between our two lives — being the lady that lives in that house on the hill that everybody gets to gossip about — I was always looking for an opportunity to write about her. And I finally found it.

I love that you break the fourth wall in the song. Did you go in thinking you’d include yourself in the story? I think that in my head, I always wanted to do a country music, standard narrative device, which is: the first verse you sing about someone else, the second verse you sing about someone else who's even closer to you, and then in the third verse, you go, "Surprise! It was me.” You bring it personal for the last verse. And I'd always thought that if I were to tell that story, I would want to include the similarities — our lives or our reputations or our scandals.

How often did you regale friends about the history of Rebekah and Holiday House while hanging out at Holiday House? Anyone who's been there before knows that I do “The Tour,” in quotes, where I show everyone through the house. And I tell them different anecdotes about each room, because I've done that much research on this house and this woman. So in every single room, there's a different anecdote about Rebekah Harkness. If you have a mixed group of people who've been there before and people who haven't, [the people who’ve been there] are like, "Oh, she's going to do the tour. She's got to tell you the story about how the ballerinas used to practice on the lawn.” And they'll go get a drink and skip it because it's the same every time. But for me, I'm telling the story with the same electric enthusiasm, because it's just endlessly entertaining to me that this fabulous woman lived there. She just did whatever she wanted.

There are a handful of songs on Folklore that feel like pretty clear nods to your personal life over the last year, including your relationships with Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun. How long did it take to crystallize the feelings you had around both of them into “My Tears Ricochet” or “Mad Woman”? I found myself being very triggered by any stories, movies, or narratives revolving around divorce, which felt weird because I haven't experienced it directly. There’s no reason it should cause me so much pain, but all of a sudden it felt like something I had been through. I think that happens any time you've been in a 15-year relationship and it ends in a messy, upsetting way. So I wrote “My Tears Ricochet” and I was using a lot of imagery that I had conjured up while comparing a relationship ending to when people end an actual marriage. All of a sudden this person that you trusted more than anyone in the world is the person that can hurt you the worst. Then all of a sudden the things that you have been through together, hurt. All of a sudden, the person who was your best friend is now your biggest nemesis, etc. etc. etc. I think I wrote some of the first lyrics to that song after watching Marriage Story and hearing about when marriages go wrong and end in such a catastrophic way. So these songs are in some ways imaginary, in some ways not, and in some ways both.

How did it feel to drop an F-bomb on "Mad Woman"? F---ing fantastic.

And that’s the first time you ever recorded one on a record, right? Yeah. Every rule book was thrown out. I always had these rules in my head and one of them was, You haven't done this before, so you can't ever do this. “Well, you've never had an explicit sticker, so you can't ever have an explicit sticker.” But that was one of the times where I felt like you need to follow the language and you need to follow the storyline. And if the storyline and the language match up and you end up saying the F-word, just go for it. I wasn't adhering to any of the guidelines that I had placed on myself. I decided to just make what I wanted to make. And I'm really happy that the fans were stoked about that because I think they could feel that. I'm not blaming anyone else for me restricting myself in the past. That was all, I guess, making what I want to make. I think my fans could feel that I opened the gate and ran out of the pasture for the first time, which I'm glad they picked up on because they're very intuitive.

Let’s talk about “Epiphany.” The first verse is a nod to your grandfather, Dean, who fought in World War II. What does his story mean to you personally? I wanted to write about him for awhile. He died when I was very young, but my dad would always tell this story that the only thing that his dad would ever say about the war was when somebody would ask him, "Why do you have such a positive outlook on life?" My grandfather would reply, "Well, I'm not supposed to be here. I shouldn't be here." My dad and his brothers always kind of imagined that what he had experienced was really awful and traumatic and that he'd seen a lot of terrible things. So when they did research, they learned that he had fought at the Battles of Guadalcanal, at Cape Gloucester, at Talasea, at Okinawa. He had seen a lot of heavy fire and casualties — all of the things that nightmares are made of. He was one of the first people to sign up for the war. But you know, these are things that you can only imagine that a lot of people in that generation didn't speak about because, a) they didn't want people that they came home to to worry about them, and b) it just was so bad that it was the actual definition of unspeakable.

That theme continues in the next verse, which is a pretty overt nod to what’s been happening during COVID. As someone who lives in Nashville, how difficult has it been to see folks on Lower Broadway crowding the bars without masks? I mean, you just immediately think of the health workers who are putting their lives on the line — and oftentimes losing their lives. If they make it out of this, if they see the other side of it, there's going to be a lot of trauma that comes with that; there's going to be things that they witnessed that they will never be able to un-see. And that was the connection that I drew. I did a lot of research on my grandfather in the beginning of quarantine, and it hit me very quickly that we've got a version of that trauma happening right now in our hospitals. God, you hope people would respect it and would understand that going out for a night isn't worth the ripple effect that it causes. But obviously we're seeing that a lot of people don't seem to have their eyes open to that — or if they do, a lot of people don't care, which is upsetting.

You had the Lover Fest East and West scheduled this year. How hard has it been to both not perform for your fans this year, and see the music industry at large go through such a brutal change? It's confusing. It's hard to watch. I think that maybe me wanting to make as much music as possible during this time was a way for me to feel like I could reach out my hand and touch my fans, even if I couldn't physically reach out or take a picture with them. We've had a lot of different, amazing, fun, sort of underground traditions we've built over the years that involve a lot of human interaction, and so I have no idea what's going to happen with touring; none of us do. And that's a scary thing. You can't look to somebody in the music industry who's been around a long time, or an expert touring manager or promoter and [ask] what's going to happen and have them give you an answer. I think we're all just trying to keep our eyes on the horizon and see what it looks like. So we're just kind of sitting tight and trying to take care of whatever creative spark might exist and trying to figure out how to reach our fans in other ways, because we just can't do that right now.

When you are able to perform again, do you have plans on resurfacing a Lover Fest-type event? I don't know what incarnation it'll take and I really would need to sit down and think about it for a good solid couple of months before I figured out the answer. Because whatever we do, I want it to be something that is thoughtful and will make the fans happy and I hope I can achieve that. I'm going to try really hard to.

In addition to recording an album, you spent this year supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the election. Where were you when it was called in their favor? Well, when the results were coming in, I was actually at the property where we shot the Entertainment Weekly cover. I was hanging out with my photographer friend, Beth, and the wonderful couple that owned the farm where we [were]. And we realized really early into the night that we weren't going to get an accurate picture of the results. Then, a couple of days later, I was on a video shoot, but I was directing, and I was standing there with my face shield and mask on next to my director of photography, Rodrigo Prieto. And I just remember a news alert coming up on my phone that said, "Biden is our next president. He's won the election." And I showed it to Rodrigo and he said, "I'm always going to remember the moment that we learned this." And I looked around, and people's face shields were starting to fog up because a lot of people were really misty-eyed and emotional, and it was not loud. It wasn't popping bottles of champagne. It was this moment of quiet, cautious elation and relief.

Do you ever think about what Folklore would have sounded like if you, Aaron, and Jack had been in the same room? I think about it all the time. I think that a lot of what has happened with the album has to do with us all being in a collective emotional place. Obviously everybody's lives have different complexities and whatnot, but I think most of us were feeling really shaken up and really out of place and confused and in need of something comforting all at the same time. And for me, that thing that was comforting was making music that felt sort of like I was trying to hug my fans through the speakers. That was truly my intent. Just trying to hug them when I can't hug them.

I wanted to talk about some of the lyrics on Folklore. One of my favorite pieces of wordplay is in “August”: that flip of "sipped away like a bottle of wine/slipped away like a moment in time.” Was there an "aha moment" for you while writing that? I was really excited about "August slipped away into a moment of time/August sipped away like a bottle of wine." That was a song where Jack sent me the instrumental and I wrote the song pretty much on the spot; it just was an intuitive thing. And that was actually the first song that I wrote of the "Betty" triangle. So the Betty songs are "August," "Cardigan," and "Betty." "August" was actually the first one, which is strange because it's the song from the other girl's perspective.

Yeah, I assumed you wrote "Cardigan" first. It would be safe to assume that "Cardigan" would be first, but it wasn't. It was very strange how it happened, but it kind of pieced together one song at a time, starting with "August," where I kind of wanted to explore the element of This is from the perspective of a girl who was having her first brush with love. And then all of a sudden she's treated like she's the other girl, because there was another situation that had already been in place, but "August" girl thought she was really falling in love. It kind of explores the idea of the undefined relationship. As humans, we're all encouraged to just be cool and just let it happen, and don't ask what the relationship is — Are we exclusive? But if you are chill about it, especially when you're young, you learn the very hard lesson that if you don't define something, oftentimes they can gaslight you into thinking it was nothing at all, and that it never happened. And how do you mourn the loss of something once it ends, if you're being made to believe that it never happened at all?

On the flip side, "Peace" is bit more defined in terms of how one approaches a relationship. There's this really striking line, "The devil's in the details, but you got a friend in me/Would it be enough if I can never give you peace?" How did that line come to you? I'm really proud of that one too. I heard the track immediately. Aaron sent it to me, and it had this immediate sense of serenity running through it. The first word that popped into my head was peace, but I thought that it would be too on-the-nose to sing about being calm, or to sing about serenity, or to sing about finding peace with someone. Because you have this very conflicted, very dramatic conflict-written lyric paired with this very, very calming sound of the instrumental. But, "The devil's in the details," is one of those phrases that I've written down over the years. That's a common phrase that is used in the English language every day. And I just thought it sounded really cool because of the D, D sound. And I thought, "I'll hang onto those in a list, and then, I'll finally find the right place for them in a story." I think that's how a lot of people feel where it's like, "Yeah, the devil's in the details. Everybody's complex when you look under the hood of the car." But basically saying, "I'm there for you if you want that, if this complexity is what you want."

There's another clever turn of phrase on "This is Me Trying." "I didn't know if you'd care if I came back/I have a lot of regrets about that." That feels like a nod toward your fans, and some of the feelings you had about retreating from the public sphere. Absolutely. I think I was writing from three different characters' perspectives, one who's going through that; I was channeling the emotions I was feeling in 2016, 2017, where I just felt like I was worth absolutely nothing. And then, the second verse is about dealing with addiction and issues with struggling every day. And every second of the day, you're trying not to fall into old patterns, and nobody around you can see that, and no one gives you credit for it. And then, the third verse, I was thinking, what would the National do? What lyric would Matt Berninger write? What chords would the National play? And it's funny because I've since played this song for Aaron, and he's like, "That's not what we would've done at all." He's like, "I love that song, but that's totally different than what we would've done with it."

When we last spoke, in April 2019, we were talking about albums we were listening to at the time and you professed your love for the National and I Am Easy to Find. Two months later, you met up with Aaron at their concert, and now, we're here talking about the National again. Yeah, I was at the show where they were playing through I Am Easy to Find. What I loved about [that album] was they had female vocalists singing from female perspectives, and that triggered and fired something in me where I thought, "I've got to play with different perspectives because that is so intriguing when you hear a female perspective come in from a band where you're used to only hearing a male perspective." It just sparked something in me. And obviously, you mentioning the National is the reason why Folklore came to be. So, thank you for that, Alex.

I'm here for all of your songwriting muse needs in the future. I can't wait to see what comes out of this interview.

*** For more on our Entertainers of the Year and Best & Worst of 2020, order the January issue of Entertainment Weekly or find it on newsstands beginning Dec. 18. (You can also pick up the full set of six covers here.) Don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.

#taylor swift #interview #entertainment weekly #folklore album #folklore era #video

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zigtheeortega · 4 years ago

Audio

ride or die playlist

by @pixeljazzy and @zigtheeortega

so after pj made this post, and was encouraged by @choicesarehard to make a playlist for rodaw, i reached out to her and we decided to collab! this is a comprehensive playlist, with explanations for each song. some being the lyrics fit really well, but others are because the vibe fits the characters (in our opinion), not necessarily the song meaning.

putting the song explanations under the cut, since it’ll be long! songs picked by pj have [p] next to it and mine have [j] next to it! hope you enjoy it!

Logan

What You Know Bout Love, Pop Smoke [p]

I had to apply the pressure, ‘cause you my hidden treasure / I think I’m falling in love

Are we surprised this song is first? C’mon now. Anyway, literally when I heard it for the first time, I was like this is the love song that I could see someone just vibing to in a car with their partner, at a house party in the corner serenading their boo, etc. and then BOOM a vision of Hieron and Logan in a car appeared because I could totally see this as their vibe. Just the thought of Logan rapping this line to Hieron clears my skin.

[p.s. pj wrote a fic based on this song and it’s perfect you should read it]

The Way, Trippie Redd ft. Russ [p]

We’re lost but, babe, we found the way

Because Logan and MC are two teens are a mess lowkey and don’t know what they want from life quite yet but they know they got it together.

Think About Me, dvsn [p]

This song is just radiating Logan and MC parting ways vibes

FIND MY WAY, DaBaby [p]

I feel like as Logan is driving away from MC to god knows where, this is something he’d definitely drive to

Seasons, 6lack ft. Khalid [p]

You’re lucky the greatest thing I can do is marry you / ‘cause if I could, I’d spill my blood

I absolutely adore this slow, chill song, and feel like this is something MC and Logan would be listening to as they unwind in their loft, and with the favorite line, I think it encapsulates how much Logan truly loves and would do anything for MC

Idfc, blackbear [p]

This is giving me Logan vibes after the reveal where MC leaves the shop and he’s just reeling in his emotions and feelings and is just purely in his bag thinking about everything

Hide, Juice WRLD ft. Seezyn [p]

Really think I found my home, shorty made me feel at home

Think I met my soulmate, yeah, I know it

Dusk Till Dawn, ZAYN ft. Sia [p]

But you’ll never be alone / I’ll be with you from dusk till dawn / I’ll be with you from dusk till dawn / Baby, I’m right here

This song hurts me so so much but it’s giving me MC sleeping on Logan’s chest type of vibes while he’s up because he can’t sleep and he’ . Also reminds me of Logan because we all know that infamous line “I was just a rock in space lucky enough to burn up in your atmosphere for a moment,” and I feel like this was an unspoken if you look to the stars you’ll know I’m always with you type beat.

Fool In Love, Rihanna [p]

Mama, I found a man / who loves me and understands / papa, he’s quite a man / he adores me, he’s my biggest fan

Okay so y’all remember how MC was having a mini identity crisis and didn’t know which version of herself she was? And Logan was listening and understanding and processing everything she was ranting about but in the end was just like no matter which one you decide, I like all of you? Yeah, that. Along with him just supporting her whenever he can, even though sometimes it can be overbearing, and him just loving watching her change and grow before his eyes (even though we not gonna mention the part of him that doesn’t love that change, feeling guilty for the person she’s becoming and how it could change her life, and the initial intentions he had although how he feels now is genuine) is literally what I think about with these lines

And don’t get me wrong, I know he’s not perfect in your eyes / but somehow he’s flawless in mine

Papa, did I let you down? / Are you ashamed of how your little girl turned out?

This is the lyric that really gets me because one of the things I loved about Ride or Die was the complicated relationship MC had with her father as it was something that resonated so strongly with me. So this one right here really just encapsulates an aspect of that because when MC’s on her this is who I am now and I know you resent that because he genuinely is so hurt and in shock of how his girl changed before his eyes, beyond the reigns of control that he once had, and he can’t do anything else but process and accept that his little girl isn’t so little anymore, rolling around with the people he tried so hard to keep her away from.

Roll Dice, Roddy Rich [j]

I seen the Reap’ come / Live my life I had to roll dice / Been through strife, my heart is cold as ice

I’m a star, I’m just hidden in the low light

Pretty explanatory, considering Logan’s been through a considerable amount of situations that put him in harm’s way and he’s come out stronger (and considerably more detached) each time.

Story Of Us, Tinashe [j]

Yeah, you’re the prince of my heart / And now there ain’t no way they can keep us apart, keep us apart

This song reminds me of Logan and MC a lot because it’s an optimistic take on their relationship as a whole and the sad ending.

You Know That I Love You, Donnell Jones [j]

You know that I love you / And that ain’t gon’ change / And though you’re not here with me now / My love for you stays the same

I think Logan would listen to R&B, specifically sappy 90’s R&B, and this line reminds me of them perfectly. I mean just listen to it, it’s perfect.

My Favorite Part, Mac Miller & Ariana Grande [j]

Said, you just don’t know how beautiful you are / And baby that’s my favorite part / You walk around so clueless to it all / Like nobody gonna break your heart

Said, the universe couldn’t keep us apart / Why would it even try?

Before things come together, they have to fall apart

Logan says from the get go that he thinks it’s wild that MC is modest and that he’s surprised she hadn’t gotten a lot of attention from guys. The other song lyrics I mentioned remind me a lot of their separation.

Colt

Me And My Girlfriend, Tupac Shakur [j]

Lost in the whirlwind, ninety-six, Bonnie and Clyde / Me and my girlfriend, do one-eighty-five when we ride

All I need in this life of sin, is me and my girlfriend / Down to ride to the bloody end, just me and my girlfriend

So it’s canon that Colt likes West Coast rap – and this song absolutely embodies Colt’s musical interests and his relationship with MC. He wouldn’t admit it out loud but he definitely heard this song and thought of MC.

Something Special, Pop Smoke [p]

I think you’re something special / I’ll take you on a shopping spree

We all know Colt is the king of LA and can definitely buy him and MC anything they want, also the “her father the police” verse quite literally hit the nail on the head

Martin & Gina, Polo G [p]

He was playing games / Got you dancing in the middle of the club

At first, saw this as a Logan and MC song to listen to in the car, but if you’re like me and was romancing Logan but danced in the club with Colt because Logan was being distant, the lyrics just do it for me

Hit ‘Em Up, Tupac Shakur [p]

You couldn’t tell us Colt wouldn’t love this song, we’re not accepting criticism at this time

Pulling Me Back, Chingy ft. Tyrese [j]

Every time I try to leave / Something keeps pulling me back, me back / Telling me I need you in my life / It was meant to be / You were meant for me / So that means we gotta make it work

This song reminds me a lot of Colt’s feelings towards MC, because in the lyrics they’re not mentioning they necessarily love her, they’re just gravitating towards her, realizing they need her. And that’s exactly how Colt works through his feelings.

Loveeeeeee Song, Rihanna ft. Future [j]

Boy lately, you been stingy with your time / Got me wondering, I’m wondering if I’m on your mind / Boy I just wanna be in your possession / You say I’m the one you want so come express it

Yeah, we all know Colt wasn’t straightforward with his feelings but is more prone to expressing himself physically, and I think this song feels like a confession of her own qualms with him but recognizing that she’s alright with him being physical over verbal. Honestly it’s probably not that deep but this song reminds me of Colt x MC so much.

Complicated, Rihanna [j]

Why is everything with you so complicated / Why do you make it hard to love you / Oh I hate it / ‘Cause if you really wanna be alone / I, will throw my hands up ‘Cause baby I tried

God this whole song is Colt and MC all over because he’s so wishy washy and doesn’t express himself properly.

90210, Travis Scott [j]

I think Colt and Logan would bump this and that’s my only reasoning.

Changed Up, Rae Sremmurd [j]

I think Logan and Colt both alike would bump this in their car and maybe relate to the lyrics and the general vibe of it.

Demons and Angels, A Boogie With a Hoodie ft. Juice WRLD [p]

I’m from the West Side, know not to play with us, yeah

I think I’m addicted to this lifestyle, I swear

Colt is quite literally from the West Side, and the ‘I think I’m addicted to this lifestyle’ line is what really stood out to me because Colt wanted nothing than to be a part of his father’s life and legacy, and Kaneko wanted to keep that separate from him because he knew Colt would be all in.

Run This Town, Jay-Z ft. Rihanna [p]

Does this need an explanation because you already know Colt is running the fuck outta LA thank you for tuning in

Mona

Ungodly Hour, Chloe x Halle [j]

You know that I’ve, I heard it all before / You’re hesitant, wish you could give me more

I don’t have the time / To teach you how to love all over again / Now let me ask you this / Are you giving all that you could give?

This is Mona and MC all over. She was clear about being hurt by an ex, and that it was hard for her to open up to MC in the first place, let alone fall for her. So this is like a confessional from MC to Mona.

Te Amo, Rihanna [j]

Then she said Te amo, then she put her hand around my waist / I told her no, she cried Te amo / I told her I’m not gonna run away, but let me go / My soul is awry and without asking why / I said Te amo

The lyrics are sad but this reminds me of Mona and MC, too. There’s a lot of push and pull with Mona, so I think this describes their back and forth so well.

Scared of Love, Juice WRLD [p]

Not scared to love, just scared of love

I initially put this in the Logan section, but I think it’s more fitting for Mona because she put up these walls to avoid putting herself at risk in the process of giving someone her all after the last girl played her, but underneath it all, she’s still capable to love even though she may think she’s undeserving of it from MC or that love in itself is a scam.

ball w/o you, 21 Savage [p] [and j bc our minds are linked]

I’d rather have loyalty than love / ‘Cause love don’t really mean jack / See love is just a feeling / You can love somebody and still stab them in they back

This is giving me Mona and her ex vibes, and just how Mona is a very everyone for themselves type of person so she has no problem balling by herself because that’s what she expects in the end.

Escape, Akon and Wizkid [p]

We can run away / so far away, escape

Oh, my baby, oh, baby / I would never let you go

Okay I know our songs for Mona have been sad lately, but this reminds me of them because Mona said MC would be hard asf to forget and I already know MC is scrambling to find a solution, a possibility, where Mona didn’t have to go to jail and they’d be able to be together, hence ‘escape’.

Escape, Kehlani [p]

Strange for me to wanna love someone / Who’s better by themselves

‘Cause I can’t let you lose yourself, looking for me / And I can’t let you make me your, your everything

I know you see this escape theme I’m on here LMFAOO but I think this is in Mona’s perspective about MC because she’s like MC is a goody two shoes, new to this life, etc. just overall someone with a better future than me and I don’t wanna mess that up for them (hence the I’m dangerous and pushing her away in the beginning and all the warnings).

Acquainted, The Weeknd [p]

Baby, you’re no good / Cause they warned me ‘bout your type girl, I’ve been ducking left and right

To say that we’re in love is dangerous / But girl I’m so glad we’re acquainted

Can’t Remember to Forget You, Shakira ft. Rihanna [p and j]

I can’t remember to forget you / I keep forgetting I should let you go

“You’re gonna be damn hard to forget.”

This is so Mona because it’s both flexible in meaning with her ex and MC.

Don’t Make It Harder On Me, Chloe x Halle [j]

If you keep acting so sweet / I might just wake up and leave / This boy that I pinky swore / We’d be together for sure / I can’t be thinking of you / When I’m alone with my boo / If you smile at me again / I may do something stupid

Gives me Logan/Colt/Mona love triangle type vibes!

Who Can I Run To, Xscape [j]

Who can I run to, to share this empty space? / Who can I run to, When I need love? / Who can I run to, to fill this empty space with laughter?

After her li’s leave this def gives me those bittersweet vibes like when they all leave L.A., including MC for college.

Aston Martin Music, Rick Ross [j]

Bobbin’ to the music / This is how we do it, all night / Breezin’ down the freeway / Just me and my baby

Would’ve came back for you / I just needed time to do what I had to do / Caught in the life / I can’t let it go / Whether that’s right I won’t ever know

This reminds me of another bittersweet moment like MC is reflecting on her favorite times with her LI, but also acknowledging that her LI can’t be 100% loyal to her because of her lifestyle

Love Without Tragedy / Mother Mary, Rihanna [j]

Brown eyes, tuxedo, fast cars / A James Dean on the low, Dean on the low

Who knew the course of this one drive / Injured us fatally

Let’s live in the moment / As long as we got each other / Die in the moment / I’m prepared to die in the moment / ‘Cause even forever ain’t forever

This entire song fits for all the LI’s (despite the lyrics saying “boy” it works for all of them perfectly. I just picked a couple lyrics to prove it!

Question Existing, Rihanna [j]

Who am I living for?/ Is this my limit?/ Can I endure some more?/ Chances I’m given, question existing

Reminds me of when MC was torn between loyalty to her father and Jason Shaw and MPC at the same time.

Bed of Lies, Nicki Minaj ft. Skylar Grey [p]

This is 100% MC after the reveal.

Change Your Life, Kehlani ft. Jhene Aiko [p and j]

I heard that you a gangsta / Not one to try to save her / Always focus on your paper / Don't got time to wager with your heart

You deserve someone that'll take you to another level

The lyrics to this song fit so well with all of the LI’s. Definitely addresses all of the LI’s reluctance to be with MC and MC’s pursuit of them.

Serial Lover, Kehlani [p and j]

Lord knows / My intentions are pure and my heart full of gold, oh

This song fits MC’s relationship with all of the LI’s, especially when there’s conflict between them. MC is miles more transparent with her feelings than Logan, Colt, and Mona.

She’s So Gone, Naomi Scott [p]

So it looks like the joke’s on you / ‘cause the girl that you thought you knew / She’s so gone

You can look but you won’t see the girl I used to be, ‘cause she / she’s so gone, away / like history

Yes this is from Lemonade Mouth and yes I feel like this embodies MC perfectly!

Misc.

(this includes Ximena, Toby, side characters, the overall vibe of ROD, etc.)

Tints, Anderson .Paak ft. Kendrick Lamar [j]

Ridin’, ridin’, round that open street / I need tints / I need my windows tinted / I can’t be flying down that 110 with a bad bitch in my whip / I need tints

This reminds me a lot of Ximena and Toby because they’re so chill and carefree compared to the rest of the crew, and this song embodies that.

Nascar, Roddy Ricch [p]

Honestly, heard this song and thought I’d be perfect for another side show, or a racing song

We Don’t Luv Em, HoodRich Pablo Juan [p]

Another side show/racing song

DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love, Usher [p]

I feel like this could’ve played at the club depending on the vibe they were going for, and even if they weren’t, I feel like the club was a very romantically charged event so the DJ had errbody falling in love (MC and whoever, Toby and the guy he went off to dance with, etc.)

break da law, 21 Savage [p]

Me and my dawgs break laws

This is Kaneko and the crew, even though Kaneko would never call them his dawgs, but you get the gist.

Trust Nobody, Lil Wayne ft. Adam Levine [p]

I don’t trust nobody, not my lovers, not my friends / I don’t make no promises ‘cause I know just how they’ll end / I don’t trust nobody, I don’t need nobody else / And as messed up as it sounds, I don’t even trust myself, yeah

This hurts me because the song talks about not being able to trust people in general so I feel like this has been Logan all his life, Mona after she was betrayed, and Colt after the death of his father (minus the don’t trust my lover part because obviously they are whipped for MC and you can’t change my mind).

Undercover, Kehlani [p]

You know they don’t wanna see us together / But it don’t matter, no, ‘cause I got you

Baby, they don’t wanna see me be happy / ‘Cause they ain’t happy, no -- they don’t got you

So this is MC with all the LI’s because everybody (Riya, Darius, her dad, etc.) thinks everyone in the crew is bad news but no matter who MC is with, they’re happy with them regardless of what everyone thinks.

Party Monster, The Weeknd [p]

Okay, this might seem really weird, but I feel like this is a song that would play in the background as the crew would plan or orchestrate a heist you know like the camera panning to different people just really focused on that they’re doing like there’s some camera work going on in my head that I wish I could properly articulate but I hope you guys see the vision.

Shut Up and Drive, Rihanna [p and j]

This is self explanatory.

#playchoices #rod logan #rod mona #colt kaneko #choices playlist #rodaw #playlist

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criticalintellect · 4 years ago

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UGH alright let's try this, hopefully I'll be coherent. So I've had my twitter account for about a year now(?) and every month or so, for about a week, just outta nowhere people suddenly feel like shitting on Lovecraft. The last two times it makes sense how it came about since we had gotten news that a new Call of Cthulhu "sequel" was getting made. The premise we were given was goddamn horrendous, but it's popped up again because it's creator felt like being a cunt on Twitter for some reason: Call of Cthulhu: Death May Die. Shelving the fact that sounds like a Devil May Cry parody, I won't focus too much on the game, though I will say it's NOTHING like the Terminator ripoff we were told it was gonna be (I could be mistaking DMD with another boardgame abortion using H.P.'s work) and the wording in the game synopsis I found is completely contrary to cosmic horror; talking about fighting the Old Ones and "shoot[ing] it in the face". Eric Lang is the man of the hour; he's had quite a bit of experience in boardgames and even video games, working on Duelyst (which I really did like). So to see this man in search of a personality put on his most psychotic stare, trim his pubic hair wig, and stand in front of a cardboard cutout of H.P. Lovecraft and give it the finger, all to post it on twitter and say he hates this man and his work...while at the same time profiting from his work DIRECTLY. I'm a little...perturbed. These retard fests always come in at least 3 flavors: Lovecraft was a racist, dO yOu KnOw WhAt He NaMeD hIs CaT?!?!?!, and Lovecraft didn't contribute anything and all his fans are racist. No to all 3.

Now maybe I'm hanging on semantics, but from my reckoning I would say HPL was more xenophobic than racist. He didn't hate other people or races. Yes he did believe that certain people had "superior" genetics, but never in his notes have I seen him go on tirades about how those of "lesser" genes need to be culled or anything. He literally just wanted them to leave him and his neighborhood alone. He wanted them to live, just not near him. Again, maybe semantics, I leave the distinction to greater intellects. But of greater importance, something these Lovecraft detractors refuse to comprehend, was that we have written proof that HPL RENOUNCED his xenophobic views towards the end of his life. Thanks to the friends he made, his moving to New York, and being exposed to other people he saw the error of his ways. And he recanted. And the people shitting on his grave do not care, saying that it didn't matter. It's cancel culture at it's finest, but since they can't cancel a dead man all they can do is destroy his works. Or at least attempt to, fruitlessly. The plus side of having 100 year old works of fiction is that they've been in circulation for so long is that plenty of people know the fiction and know when someone has made a shit interpretation of it.

Now, about that cat. See it wasn't Howard that named that cat, but rather his father. The cat was adopted by and named by him. And then his father was committed to an asylum and the cat passed into his son's and wife's care. And yes, the cat was called Niggerman, shocker. It was the 1880s.

"Lovecraft had no impact on anything". Stephen King, Gullermo del Toro, Ridley Scott, Neil Gaiman, Junji Ito, Kentaro Miura, Clive Barker, John Carpenter, Mike Mignola and H.R. Giger. All of these artists were influenced by Lovecraft and his horror. But sometimes his touch was a little less obvious, as he was friends with Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian and Solomon Cane. He was a man who would very openly share ideas he had for his own work, but not having a great opinion of said work would pass it onto authors he believed could better implement his ideas. He was never a man to jealously protect his property and openly allowed ANYONE to add onto the mythos he unwittingly created. And that's a major reason how his mythos has engrossed so much of our culture over the last century, even when the property wasn't directly connected to the Cthulhu mythos. As to the assertion that we're all racists: even if I agreed Howard Philips Lovecraft was racist and even if it wasn't public knowledge that he became a better person late in life, I am capable of separating a creator from his work. I can read Shadow Over Innsmouth and Call of Cthulhu and The Dunwich Horror and agree that if you look deep enough there's some skeevy themes, but if you put that aside there's some damn good suspense and horror. For as fucked up as K-Pop is I don't see any of their stans calling out the industry while admitting they still like the music, it's just blanket denial. Yet shitheads with that kinda mindset wanna come after a man's legacy like he enslaved all of Africa all on his lonesome?

At the end of it all, Lovecraft's works will endure all of this mind numbing clout chasing. Eric Lang can do cringey, performative wokeness while being a massive hypocrite all he wants, Lovecraft will endure. But it will always bother me the amount of frothing, myopic hatred HPL gets. The fans have told these people how he reformed, how he shared his works with people of all walks of life, how he MARRIED A JEWISH WOMAN (and yes he had distasteful opinions of Jews too), but it's never enough. If Daryl Davis can change the minds of 200+ KKK members, then why can't we give people from the past the benefit of the doubt. Then again these are also the type of people that called Davis a racist and other assorted idiocy so...I dunno. Lovecraft was a flawed man, plagued by nightmares, coddled by a mother who slowly lost her mind over time and ended up in the same asylum as her husband (the one he died in too). And even through all of that he found a way to be a better man. He shared his works, he found a way to intimately connect with a woman (even though it sounds like it was very difficult for both of them), and towards the end of his life he admitted his ideas of genetic superiority were downright abhorrent. If we can't give even this man the benefit of the doubt, then your only hope of being accepted by the hate mob is if you're born a literal son of God.

And if you dont like HPL then fuck right off out of my fandom because we do not care about your lukewarm take about him being a racist and we need to rewrite his works. Piss off

Edit: Hoo boy this has gotten around and about, further than I thought it would've. I know it's a bit strange, but thank you to everyone for showing support. Didn't think anyone would read one of my long-winded rants, let alone think it worth of sharing. At first I was just a casual fan of Lovecraft like most people; Cthulhu here, "hey I get that"; a shoggoth there, "ah neato." But after seeing him get so much hatred it started to feel wrong. Then learning what a tragic man he was and seeing Twitter attempt to eviscerate this man...I had to put my thoughts somewhere and this was the only place I had a chance to get it out there and people actually see it. So thank ye kindly strange sea of friends

#long goddamn post #H.P. Lovecraft #fuckin rant

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ufonaut · 4 years ago

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Ok same anon as before: so what did alan do after he was forced into retirement as green lantern? Was he just stuck then as normal alan scott for however many decades? I assumed at first that alan’s company failed because he sucked at being green lantern and as a ceo- but was he solely just alan at that point when his company was dying? I really gotta read the older comics man- can you get me some JSA comics recommendations to read over break? I just love the old JSA history

alright, i feel like there’s a couple misunderstandings here when comes to the jsa/alan so before i get into this i wanna make sure we all know that:

1) the jsa’s history is both closely tied to and obviously informed by real life history. before the presidential decree that mystery men fighting in the war would be bad for morale became canon (somewhat recently), the vast majority of the jsa’s members were actively pictured in the war in their civilian identities (as per forties comics). the most recent example of that is one of the early 2000s christmas specials which has a hollywood canteen (club ran by celebs, open to all allied servicemen. look it up!) type event where ted grant gets tremendously drunk ‘cause he’s shipping out in the morning. i can’t remember the exact issue rn but i’ll edit if i find it

2) huac (house un-american activities committee) targeting mystery men is an obvious nod to the hollywood blacklist and steeped so firmly in the red scare & mccarthyism that it literally cannot be removed from that context. understanding the far-reaching effects of huac and how it ruined the jsa’s lives requires a working knowledge of how that played out in real life. again, the jsa is much more closely related to irl history than literally any other superhero team

now that we’ve got that covered, it should be obvious that alan was affected by huac the most out of everyone in the jsa. while james robinson’s the golden age (1993) is ostensibly elseworlds, the beginning of it is actually identical to canon and i’d definitely recommend it for the simple fact that it’s the singular comic to analyse exactly how alan is dealing with everything. he’s affected in his personal life for the obvious reasons (though he’d only been gaycoded at the time, the fact that it’s now canon adds to it), in his professional life since he works in media & more than half of the gbc writers end up being blacklisted and in his life as green lantern. that brings us to the fact that gbc actually goes bankrupt 2-3 times with alan as its ceo but the first time is specifically because of huac

(the golden age #3)

the second time is during paul levitz’s run on all-star comics (#58-#74), which is a personal favourite of mine actually, and it’s the one where alan’s solution is to hold up an airport:

(all-star comics #64-#65)

the third time is in infinity inc #8-#9 when he declares himself the communications czar:

as you can see his reactions get progressively worse and it’s only sometimes related to his own terrible sense of business but the period you’re referring to is definitely specifically because of huac tearing down everything he’s built. it’s canon that for the entirety of the fifties the jsa did not exist:

(adventure comics #466, technically part of the aforementioned levitz run and the first mention of huac in relation to the jsa)

so yes, alan was not green lantern for the majority of that time. og canon states that superheroes returned in the sixties (when the second volume of green lantern started, with hal jordan this time) and while that’s not been updated to keep up with the current timeline, i’d still keep their return somewhere around the late sixties, say with the emergence of the younger members of the all-star squadron like amazing man during the detroit riot in ‘67

i hope that gives you a rough timeline of what went on with alan and definitely feel free to take everything i mentioned above as a wholehearted recommendation! i also have an alan scott rec list here and to that i’d add the alan story in the green lantern 80th special, dc universe: legacies #2 (outsider pov on the huac situation), pretty much the entirety of jsa (1999) if u wanna do a whole run, the justice society of america (1991) and justice society of america (1992) miniseries, all the jsa returns one shots but especially jsa returns: all-american comics (1999) #1 for a focus on alan and dc first: green lantern/green lantern #1 to start u off. half the fun is the search though so if you’re genuinely interested in this, i’d say the next step is taking a look at comicvine and various dc wikis and see what looks interesting to u personally!!

#alan scott #jsa #justice society of america #green lantern #recs #WELL HOPE THIS ANSWERED SOME STUFF #anon #ask

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ahouseoflies · 7 years ago

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Best Films of 2017, Part V

This is the last entry of the series. I hope you’ve enjoyed this year’s rundown. Thanks for reading. GREAT MOVIES 22. Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello)- The first half painstakingly observes a terrorist attack--one so vaguely expressed that, until you see a gun twenty minutes in, you can't even be positive that's the coordination you're seeing. As gripping as that is, however, the second half is better. To hide out after their attack, all of the kids lock themselves in a mall overnight, and of course they can't resist goofing off in there. The juxtaposition of (presumably--again, their motivation isn't explained) anti-capitalist ideals with capitalist dressing is what makes the movie. Sometimes it's obvious: a gold lamp shaped like an assault rifle. Sometimes it's artful: One of the kids is arranged in a hot tub to look like David's The Death of Marat, as if to suggest that this tragic sort of disaffection is inherently European. Always it's effective: "Whip Your Hair" blaring across the electronics section and silencing news reports might be the music moment of the year. That song is another intentional choice. Inspired or not, Willow Smith is too young to mean what she says she does, and she's forever trapped in a space that cannot be owned by her. She can't eclipse the legacy set for her. How French. 21. Alien: Covenant (Ridley Scott)- (Weyland-Yutani needs to step its game up on the signal for their communication devices.) The Alien series has always been about smuggling. (In fact, Alien: Resurrection is literally about smugglers.) Alien takes a sci-fi framework and smuggles in slasher tropes; Aliens slips a war film into the spaceships; Alien 3 is a prison movie. All of them take the established boundaries and disrupt them with another genre. Now Ridley Scott is taking the blueprint of an Alien movie itself and using it to meditate on the limits of reason. It's still an Alien movie, slow like the others, and the orgiastic gore of the alien scenes still pops. But it's way better when robots are talking to each other about why they don't dream. Early on, Billy Crudup's Oram admits to his wife that he was passed over for the captain job because Weyland-Yutani didn't trust a "man of faith" to make rational decisions in stressful situations. (Good casting: To me, Crudup has always looked like a youth minister who thinks you're a really interesting kid and wishes he could get to know you better.) So what Scott interprets for the rest of the movie is: Could a man of faith achieve true rationality, or is his faith so foundational that it could be an impediment to the logic that makes us human? That is, if your belief in the guiding hand of God supersedes even proof to the contrary, there are clear limits to your reasoning. I suspect that Ridley Scott, as an atheist, lacks respect for that type of person, but he also sort of admires the idealism. Oram's logical limit is what Weyland was trying to overcome when he created the synthetic David. If a being knew its creator (and, more importantly, knew that creator was not worth praying to), would that make him transcendent or would it expose a fundamental emptiness? A synthetic basically lives forever, so it has more in common with the "engineer" gods of Prometheus than the humans do. But halfway through Covenant--the title itself referring to a negotiation between God and man--we find out how uncomfortable mankind was with such a creation. Updates to David have squelched his creativity and brought him down to humans' level, since the flawless nature of such a creation illuminates the creator's flaws. Our blurry line to our own creator is a source of strength and a source of weakness.Looking back on Alien 1, the idea to make space travel tedious and blue collar seems quaint now. Of course the future isn't shiny and evolved; on a superficial level, we'll probably share a lot with the people that come after us. As far as the yearning in our souls goes, we'll definitely share a lot with the people that come after us. An Alien movie is an Alien movie is an Alien movie. 20. All the Money in the World (Ridley Scott)- If Ridley Scott's other 2017 film is about how hell is other people, then All the Money in the World is about how hell is yourself. At the perfect time for his audience to be pissed about petty rapacity, Ridley Scott has made his own large-scale commercial adaptation of "Ozymandias." I'm in the bag for late-period Ridley auterism, but it was fascinating for me to watch a logically escalating crowd pleaser about the emptiness of money from a person who probably knows that emptiness very well.The performances are all over the map. Wahlberg sucks--he's miscast, but at this point I don't know what he wouldn't be miscast in. National Treasure Michelle Williams overdoes it, but that might be the right calculation in something approximating reality this broadly. Her presence can't be denied. And then there's Christopher Plummer, the heart of the film, who is in way more of it than I expected. In a way I think Kevin Spacey's misdeeds would have helped the movie: The audience would be reflexively booing a person they're supposed to be booing in the context of the piece. But I suspect Plummer's approach to the role is more broken and lonely than what Spacey would have turned in. He's more believable as someone who is staring unrepentantly at the end of his life, and his speech about how "things" never disappoint him is what brought it home for me.

19. After the Storm (Hirokazu Koreada)- "That's complex." "No, it's simple. Life is very simple...I just said something really deep, didn't I?" That sort of exchange, getting at the heart of the human condition through the most everyday, straightforward, intimate circumstances, is Koreada's bread-and-butter. The first ninety minutes are not without their charms, but they're sort of fatty and obligatory. They're really there to set up the emotional wallop of the final thirty minutes, and the gamble pays off. 18. The Beguiled (Sofia Coppola)- There's a scene about halfway through in which Farrell's McBurney is a captive audience for the ladies' evening prayers. The women surround him, sharing a chair, sitting on the floor, and the taffeta of their dresses in front of him pools into a multi-colored body. Their femininity is soft and inviting, but it's an obstacle as tangled as it is unified. It's that type of image that classes up cattiness into something more tragic and elegant. The 1971 version of The Beguiled is pulpy, so it might be helpful to describe this one as juicy. It's strained of anything that makes the original seem dime-store or exploitative, but it keeps the quality of satisfying sensationalism. Coppola does this by crafting a compelling composite character and, in large part, by excising the slave character. It's a slightly cowardly move, but ol' Hallie might have been a distracting bridge too far in 2017. Luckily, Coppola is able to nail the hypocrisy of the Confederate South through religion instead. To me, the pacing of a Sofia Coppola work is often what makes or breaks it. The slice-of-life detours in Lost in Translation, the poetic rhythm of day-to-day moments, feels like dilatory stalling in Somewhere. So The Beguiled is a new direction in the sense that it's a potboiler--every scene contributes to the next in a lean straight line. It would have been nice to see Harris Savides, her late collaborator, take a stab at all of this natural light, but other than that, I didn't miss the old her. 17. Song to Song (Terrence Malick)- If you don't already like what David Ehrlich calls Malick's "twirling horndog" era--I prefer "metropolitan trilogy of self-absorption"--I won't be able to convert you by now. Especially when Rooney Mara is fingering meats in a Costco, this feels like a film made just for me. I do think that, compared to To the Wonder and Knight of Cups, this film's journey of mercy is fairly direct for Malick. (As far as that group of films goes, there might be a loose progression of detachment, wandering, and return/restore.) Fassbender's devilish Cook waves at his possessions early in the film and says, "None of this exists," and his empty promises pervert innocence at every turn, sometimes tragically. For a hedonist, he isn't being-in-the-world in the way that Malick would prefer. It's telling that, by the "end" of the film--and I say that hesitantly since the events seem to loop back on themselves--Faye inverts Cook in her narration. She says: "This. Only this," referring to love. Or at least, like, authentic experience. That's why Weightless was such a better title for this: As an insult for "having no mooring," it describes Cook; as a compliment for "free," it describes Faye and BV. How Malick is this, besides that interpretation of planes of existence? Very Malick. There's a sequence in which Gosling's BV returns home to console his bereaved family, and his brother says something like, "After being so hung-up on Dad for so long, he finally dies and--" Malick cuts to something else, so wary of something that feels like a treacly Movie Moment. And in avoiding those cliches, he creates his own. Characters still fall out of relationships and drift toward other thin, unnamed beautiful girls with hair in their faces, and it has become such a pet trope for him that a woman even gets in on the trend this time. But how many filmmakers have enough style in the first place for you to be able to make fun of their style? If it all adds up to a moment as alive as Gosling sliding in his sock-feet, then make fun of it all you want. When Malick the classicist first started making films that take place in present-day, it was jarring to spot, say, a Target in the background of a shot. But now that I've adjusted to it, that topicality means...very little at all really, and that's why it's foolish to get hung up on why Mara has blonde hair in this scene or why Gosling is driving a different car in that scene. Austin City Limits or a Longhorns game are specific events, but the relationships are so elemental that they might as well be revealing themselves in a Middle Ages castle or a prehistoric cave. In fact, sign me up for Rooney Mara fingering meats in a prehistoric cave. 16. John Wick: Chapter 2 (Chad Stahelski)- It's lit. When I reviewed the first entry, I spent a lot of time on John Wick "transgressing realms" and stuff. (And that's there--the final setpiece takes place at a modern art museum, ever eager to mix the high and the low.) But let's be real: It's embarrassingly fun to watch Keanu Reeves shoot people in the head. Chapter 2 ups the ante on the mythology of the setting without spoon-feeding, and it's all in the service of a giddy two hours that is as lightning quick as it is painstakingly choreographed.

15. The Lost of City Z (James Gray)- Knowing that I would see this movie, I avoided reviews, but I have no doubt they employed the word "sweeping." To me though, that word implies a shorthand of emotion sacrificed at the altar of grandeur, a "they fall in love yada yada" that you have to exchange for scope. The Lost City of Z is not sweeping in that case because every minute of its running time seems essential, and the passage of twenty years only enhances the emotional acuity. It's lean and Lean. "Atmosphere": That's another word that people use for a vague visual texture. James Gray and Darius Khondji extend their collaboration to create visual layers--planes of smoke or fog that makes the images heavy in a literal sense. By the time they shoot the dappled sunlight and the faded green of the jungle, the screen already has a lather of sweat. On a more specific note, I appreciated that Gray found the through-line of such a complicated historical tale, and that through-line is his pet theme of obsession. Driven by the deficit of his ancestry, Percy Fawcett is motivated by risk down to his bones. On some level the film is something that we've seen before--though Robert Pattinson has never been better than he is as the obligatory shrewd guide. But the film taps into such a primal call to adventure that it feels as if it has always existed, as if it's The Story, and that's a compliment even if "sweeping" and "atmospheric" aren't. 14. Baby Driver (Edgar Wright)- If someone wants to know what a director does, and Casino is too long for him, then this is my new go-to example. Edgar Wright is a Tarantino follower, and like Tarantino before him, he started with fealty to different genres until he ended up with a type of movie to call his very own. I don't have much to add to the plentiful discourse about the chases or the music, ("Every Little Bit Hurts" is my killer track.) but I appreciated that every scene was as propulsive and direct as the chases. The film is broad, both in its characterization and its morals, but it would be a mistake to think of the characters as archetypes. Despite placeholder names, each character has a nuanced backstory, from Doc's nephew to Buddy's telling real name. Jamie Foxx is terrifying as the unpredictable Begbie figure of the crew, and the narrative gives him the latitude to do literally anything he wants. 13. Ingrid Goes West (Matt Spicer)- I could tell you about the breakneck beginning: Somebody gets maced in the first minute, and we, refreshingly, have to fill in a lot of backstory for ourselves. I could point out the tight, organic escalation of the second act, informed by all the details that I liked, especially Taylor's tendency to float an "If you can..." onto her sentences to soften herself. But let me talk about the ending (in an unspecific way). This movie can end in only one way, and it does. It offers closure for the theme it has established, knowing full well not to fill us with a false sense of security or pretend that it's tidier than it is. When the film falters, it's because it's trying to declare itself as a Movie of the Moment, but its ending is as humble as it is logical. 12. Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas)- A film way more about the language it's told in than the end result of what it's telling. [initiate conceit] These most recent Assayas films feel like fancy cocktails with different levels of separation. There's the base, which is a woman who is stalled and unhappy. One of the sweet liqueurs on top of that is her job--meaningless for her taste--as a shopper for a celebrity, a go-between for someone too famous to interact in public. The Kahlua to balance that is her status as a spiritual medium, a go-between for someone too dead to interact in public. She has a heart condition that tethers her emotions, she has a boyfriend who is absent yet present through Skype, she has Youtube videos as conduits for the past, she has a person who has emerged as a literal replacement for her dead brother's widow. Maybe you just want a beer, but I don't mind paying a little extra to see a real bartender get all of those pretty colors together. [close conceit] The film's elliptical final third provides closure in one sense but not another; it verges on cop-out. Maybe more importantly, the film is a step backwards for Kristen Stewart, who is still magnetic but has slipped back into being mannered. There's a scene with a police officer in which the stammering is out of control. She has earned such goodwill, however, that I'm willing to evaluate anything the character does as a productive choice. Why does she take one sip out of drinks and leave them to make a ring on the table? Why does she type a space before a question mark? Why does she use default ringers and not turn off the clicky-type setting? She always gives me something to do.

11. Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve)- Late in the movie--and by that I mean "after Harrison Ford appears"--the villainous Luv is about to smash a cartridge that powers Joi, our hero's holographic girlfriend, and Joi lunges forward as she croaks out "I love y--" before being shorted out. She's professing love as part of the motion forward to save herself, so I began to wonder which expression was more instinctive: self-preservation or love? Which one is more human, especially if the figure involved is only approximating humanity? It's a tiny moment isolated from some of the more intent questioning that Blade Runner 2049 is doing, but the film is still thick with those ideas. Thank God Villeneuve takes his time asking those questions too. Whenever the film shifts into plot gear, it gets silly, but when it's providing purely visual storytelling, there's no setting I would rather engage with. If Roger Deakins doesn't win an Oscar, then those awards really mean nothing. Together he and Villeneuve have made the most expensive art film of all time. At one point Jared Leto, who seems to be in a different movie from everyone else, plays a conversation from the November 2019 of the original movie, and it was a little thought bubble of everything that a re-quel should be: The present was the past was the future. 10. Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig)- The best coming-of-age movies, like The 400 Blows or Rushmore (a mini-poster of which is on Lady Bird's wall if you squint), are not afraid to make their characters look small. The Lady Bird character isn't necessarily dumb or naive--though sometimes she is. She's selfish and martyred in the way that teenagers always are. The type of person who would lie about where she lives because she's ashamed of her class, who knows she shouldn't raise her hand at the assembly but does anyway. The genre buys a size up in pettiness, knowing that its characters are going to grow. Lady Bird's piggishness manifests itself most clearly when she's with her mother, to the extent that the relationship, the most important one in the film, is almost grating. That's the point, of course: They butt heads because they're so alike in their inexplicable principles. The first time we see them, they're silently crying at the conclusion of an audio book, connected by a feeling they share but can't articulate. Lady Bird is broader and tidier than I expected, but its details kind of sang to me, both in the tangible cell phones and 9/11-themed bulletin boards and the more abstract notion of a world threatening you and inviting itself to you at the same time. The success of a movie like this comes from how much you didn't want it to end, and I would have eaten up another two hours of L.B. cutting it up in New York. 9. Graduation (Cristian Mungiu)- I have to start including Cristian Mungiu among my favorite directors because every time out he crafts something naturalistic, piercing, and profound. This time Mungiu is working through moral compromise, but as always, he's using the protagonist's predicament to turn the lens on the corruption of the crumbling Romanian spirit. Graduation is probably his most thematically overt work yet--in fact, some of the scenes feel as if they're in italics--but it doesn't suffer from that directness. There's still a lot to grapple with, from the tone of the final shot to Aldea's penchant for cutting fruit, a symbol I haven't worked out yet. Demanding the same patience that it exhibits, Graduation slowly widens its circle of characters as Dr. Aldea gets in over his head, as if to suggest that, even when we think our sin is personal, it always taints others. Especially in the second half, the film is also an austere meditation on parenting--specifically the limits of its influence and sacrifice. It doesn't reach the heights of the last two Mungiu movies, but what does?

8. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (Noah Baumbach)- For me, Noah Baumbach is the filmmaker laureate of divorce. I knew this during The Squid & the Whale, when I recognized my broken home kin in the negotiation of "This is your house too" or the acid behind sentences that start with "Well, your mother..." Now that he's a sufferer of divorce in his own adult life, Baumbach shows a different understanding of blended families and their often imagined slights in The Meyerowitz Stories. Any discussion of the film would get personal for me because I got chills from saying almost the exact, prickish things that the characters say to their father. It helps that the father, Harold, is played by Dustin Hoffman in his best performance in twenty years. As written, the character is already a specific brand of pompous, jealous, New York septugenarian ass, but Hoffman combines what's on the page with a short-strided run and a conversational delay and the ability to make me laugh by just the way he says "shark." I'm not sure the film's structural gambit works--I could have accepted a fractured story with being told that it's a fractured story--but I think Baumbach, particularly as a writer, is on an amazing roll right now. 7. The Shape of Water (Guillermo Del Toro)- The Richard Jenkins character in this film comments on whatever is showing on his television, from Bojangles to Alice Faye but, tellingly for a fable, not the Civil Rights struggle. It occurred to me that, if a man were in his late '50s in 1962 like him, he could be conversant with all of 20th century pop culture. I'm not sure I would want that--I've watched all of the Mr. Ed that I care to--but it's something that is impossible now that media has splintered into so many different directions. Then I thought, if anyone comes close to that sort of knowledge, it's Guillermo Del Toro. The Shape of Water, his best, is the perfect distillation of his influences and an elegiac time in American history. He mixes together the Cold War, restaurant franchising, Hollywood musicals, New Advertising, and more. You may not immediately know what the deal is with those match cuts and candy, but they end up being sturdy bricks for an organically soulful whole. This is a director who has frustrated me with his tendency to get lost in the sauce, but his monster finally adds up to something beautiful here. The film goes too far, spelling things out for Jenkins especially, but it knows exactly where it goes too far and refuses to look back. Michael Shannon stands out as 2017's worst nightmare, but every character's arc gives him or her a fair, well-rounded shake. The script feels buffed to shine, the type they teach in school. And if Alexandre Desplat's score wasn’t the best of the year, then I can't wait to listen to whatever was better. 6. A Ghost Story (David Lowery)- This doesn't sound like the compliment that it is, but I can't remember a successful movie for which dialogue mattered less. In fact, the one piece that didn't work for me, the Will Oldham monologue, rings false because it's the only time that the "what" is more important than the "how." It's why the music is so effective, why there can be a whole sequence in Spanish without subtitles, why the movie doesn't have to make literal sense: It's about the heart, not the head. A Ghost Story is one of the grandest stories possible told in the most intimate way possible. It's the type of elegy for which any viewer could have a different spot to cry. (For me, it was the cross-cutting of the headphones between the expectant past and the grieving present.) The degree of difficulty was enormous--if you laugh the first time the ghost stands up and slinks around the hospital, then nothing else will work--and that's why the final product matters so much. 5. The Salesman (Asghar Farhadi)- I hope that college screenwriting classes are giving Farhadi his due since all of his films are marvels of incident and escalation. The thing that I admire most about his work is that no one is a villain: People are doing their best to survive with their dignity intact, and the conflict occurs because one person fails, honestly and realistically, in that regard. For most of The Salesman, we get a piercingly faithful depiction of the aftermath of a violent attack. Rana's fear is mixed with shame, and neither emotion gels with her natural need for privacy. But it's really through her husband Emad that we get something new. He tries to please her however he can, ignoring his own logic in an attempt to understand, and he gets frustrated when he can't accommodate her. Of course, both of them are actors, so their grief has layers: Their feelings are genuine, but they're performing for each other too. They're self-conscious to a fault, and especially when it comes to the police, they're more worried about how things will look to an outsider than what the actual right thing to do is.The play they're performing is Death of a Salesman, and, at first, it feels like nothing more than a concession to Farhadi's growing international audience. But there's common ground in Emad and Arthur Miller's trapped, tragic everymen. Emad conducts himself with the honor that his society instilled in him, even when it isn't a good fit. (For example, he patiently teaches literature even though he seems awful at it and his passion is the theater.) When he starts to break that mold--say, using his influence to ID a license plate--he actually does get what he wants for a while. But that fueling of his pride only increases his fall in the deliberate final section. He and Willy Loman were born to be victims. 4. Last Men in Aleppo (Feras Fayyad)- It's a bit undignified and short-sighted to lament a certain year in history--I doubt my grandfather ever tweeted "Ugh--1942 amirite." But 2017 was tough for me because the entire notion of having heroes to admire seemed to erode. Enter Last Men in Aleppo, which documents men who, despite the odds that they won't save anyone, despite the temptation to move somewhere else, knowingly enter bombed areas of Syria to try to rescue people trapped under rubble. The documentary isn't easy to watch in the sense that no one wants to see a lifeless baby lifted out of wreckage. But watching it from the safety of my home is the least I can do, not only to remind myself of the sanctity of my physical safety but to remind myself that human beings are inherently good. These guys are my heroes. INSTANT CLASSICS

3. Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson)- Reynolds Woodcock watches from the top of the stairs as each of his employees reports to work. They defer to him with a head-down greeting, and he then goes to breakfast. There's control there in an obvious sense: the imperious way that he clocks them in. But he shows power over them in other ways too. He lives at the House of Woodcock, so there will never be a situation in which anyone else can get there earlier than he can--no one can ever appear more devoted. And presumably they had to eat before they came, whereas he can luxuriate with his tea in his privileged silence until he deigns to inspect their work. In just that one example of characterization, there's more unsaid than there is said, and the whole film has that sort of explorable depth. Phantom Thread, lifted by a lush Jonny Greenwood score, is a spellbinding puzzle that will require multiple viewings, but I don't mean that it's ever unclear about what happens. You can explain its events clearly, just as you can explain the major events of your life clearly, but that doesn't mean you understand every reason for what happened to you, now or ever. At the same time, Paul Thomas Anderson is able to access minute, direct emotions. I'm reminded of the painful clarity on Daniel Day-Lewis's face as Reynolds's new wife chews loudly, and he knows that he's stuck with that sound forever. That expression elicited some laughs from me and the other assorted men by themselves in the theater, but it was one of the several moments pitched at such an acute and strange angle that we weren't sure how to react. Was it okay that this gothic romance, as chaste as it is nasty, was also silly? That's the magic of the best filmmaker in the world: After all this time, he's still giving us things we don't even know how to watch.

2. Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan)- Just when we thought we were done with cinematic experiences, Christopher Nolan proves that we aren't. For me at least, Nolan has always been caught between his cold tactician side and his sentimental populist side. When he has faltered for me, it's because he ventured too deeply into the latter, and Dunkirk is his most objective, observant, dispassionate work yet. Can't hear the dialogue from the sound mix? Well, there isn't much dialogue. Think that he can't write women? Well, there aren't any women. This feels like the film that he has been waiting to make in order to silence any critics who might be left. Auterism aside, what we're left with is a sincere heart-stopper powered by a downright experimental score and precise editing. How much faith do you have to have in yourself and your audience to cut away from someone in the act of drowning? There are three macro stories here--land, sea, and air--but the true empathy comes from the micro. A man walks into the sea to a certain death, a boy might or might not lock a door, one soldier accuses another of being a German spy. It adds up to something that elicits emotion from us without begging for it.

1. The Florida Project (Sean Baker)- In the office of Willem Dafoe's Bobby, there's an upside-down remote control sitting in a cup. Affixed onto that remote is a piece of masking tape labeled "NEEDS BATT." My eyes were wandering during the scene--I don't think I was supposed to notice the prop--but it's the type of lived-in detail that proves a) Sean Baker knows this world, and b) this location is totally real. In many ways the characters of the film are like that remote: Sometimes they work, but mostly they sit in their container, hoping for the inspiration that could power them to their potential. Often Baker's presentation of the action is like a remote control too. He switches over two or three times to Moonee playing in the bathtub, but it takes a while for us to orient ourselves to the tragic reason why that's going on. He often flips us to something, then expects us to catch up to its significance. Willem Dafoe is, as far as I know, the only professional actor in the cast, but he is as free of artifice as the children are. Bobby's a mediator, protector, and administrator, but the film doesn't let him off the hook just because he's male/White/adult/employed: He doesn't have his shit together either. It's one of the film's best tricks, painting him as the one in control when his son has lost patience with him and he still hasn't fixed the ice machine. Is he a good man, or is he just the smartest kid in a remedial class? Some people will gripe about the ending, but, as I squinted through tears, I thought it captured the spirit of the rest of the movie well. As harrowing as some moments are, as pitiful as some of the characters' struggles can be, daily life provides so much room for joy. I thought Baker's Tangerine showed promise, but I was hesitant to declare him the next important auteur, as many people were doing. I'm ready to do that now.

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aion-rsa · 5 years ago

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The Legacy of Batman: Tom King, Kevin Conroy, and Scott Snyder on the Dark Knight

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This year, we talked to Tom King, Kevin Conroy, Bruce Timm, Scott Snyder, Jock, and Pete Tomasi about why Batman still matters.

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It all began with two shots in the dark, pearls spilling onto the blood-soaked cement. No, it all started when the bat crashed through the window. Actually, it was when the boy fell into the cave. Maybe it was that hostile takeover at Apex Chemicals? Dozens of stories have shaped the legend of the Batman over his 80-year history, tales that have made the Caped Crusader arguably the most iconic character in comic book history, rivaled only by Superman.

When Bill Finger and Bob Kane put pen and pencil to paper for 1939's Detective Comics #27, they had no way of knowing that they were creating a new American myth that would captivate readers and movie audiences for decades to come. They certainly didn't expect their first Batman adventure, "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate," to spawn 973 more issues of Detective Comics, let alone become a blockbuster franchise featuring movies, TV series, video games, and McDonald's Happy Meals.

But what bigger testament to the long-lasting appeal of Batman than March’s Detective Comics #1000, written and drawn by some of the best creators in the business? The giant-sized, 96-page issue featured stories by legends such as as Dennis O'Neil, Neal Adams, Steve Epting, Christopher Priest, Jim Lee, Kelley Jones, Paul Dini, Brian Michael Bendis, Warren Ellis, and Geoff Johns as well as the current custodians of the Bat-mythos -- Tom King, Tony S. Daniel, Peter J. Tomasi, Doug Mahnke, Joelle Jones, Scott Snyder, and Greg Capullo. And that's not even including the excellent covers by Jim Steranko, Bernie Wrightson, Bruce Timm, Frank Miller, Jock, Tim Sale, and more.

Batman is only the second DC superhero to reach such a massive milestone, the other being the Man of Steel. What is it about this character hellbent on avenging the death of his parents night after night that has kept him at the forefront of our pop culture?

“I think what makes him deeply enduring is that it’s a really primal folk tale,” Scott Snyder, who’s been writing Batman stories since 2011, says. “It’s a story about a boy who loses everything and turns that loss into fuel to make sure that what happened to him never happens to anybody else.”

While most of us aren't billionaire playboys with the resources to fight crime on a global (and sometimes cosmic) level, we understand pain, both emotional and physical, and a need to rise above it, even if we can't always do that. We sympathize with Bruce's biggest regret -- if only he hadn't made his parents take him to see that Zorro movie; if only he hadn't been frightened by the opera; if only he'd been braver and faster as the thug pulled the trigger. For Bruce, his crusade to stop evildoers comes down to replaying that single fateful moment over and over again and making possible a different outcome.

Yet, Batman perseveres despite all of this pain, which is why people flock to the character, according to Snyder.

"It's a story of triumph over your worst fears, worst tragedy, and about taking your loss and turning it into a win," the writer says. "There's just this kind of power to him that speaks to our own potential, the human potential, even when we're challenged by things that seem insurmountably horrible."

Snyder has spent the better part of a decade showcasing Batman as a symbol of hope for the citizens of Gotham, putting him through the ringer, reopening old wounds while also making new ones -- the writer even killed the hero off at one point -- just so that he can pick himself up again and keep fighting.

But the character isn't driven solely by tragedy. Who could hang with a downer like that for 80 years?

"There are the fun elements, of course, that are similar to James Bond, like the gadgets, and the cars, and the planes, and just the cool factor of his costume."

Tom King, who recently wrapped up an 85-issue run on Batman and currently has a Batman/Catwoman miniseries in the works, looks back to the character's real-life point of origin as the reason he has stood the test of time.

"You have to go back to the moment of creation with him. You've got [Bob Kane and Bill Finger], the children of immigrants, so we're like, what, 1938, '39, we're in Manhattan. And at that time, I mean, go back and look at the pictures, Batman was created like 20 blocks from Madison Square Garden where they had a Nazi rally that attracted a hundred thousand people. They were marching in the streets."

These tumultuous times shaped the fabric of Batman, according to King.

"[Kane and Finger] were living here and their literal cousins and grandparents were getting killed in Europe, right? And they created something uniquely American. Batman succeeds because there's something genuinely beautifully American about it."

According to Batman: The Animated Series voice actor Kevin Conroy, Batman’s continued popularity goes back to something primal. To the classically trained actor who was immortalized as the voice of Batman in the ‘90s cartoon, the Caped Crusader is a modern retelling of myths and stories humans have been passing down for thousands of years.

“He’s such a theatrical character,” Conroy says, admitting he was at first hesitant to audition for the role. At the time, he was a theater actor who'd never done an animated role. But when he read the script, the character clicked. Conroy recognized this story. “They were absolutely right to cast a theater actor, especially one with a classical background, because this is Shakespeare. They’re doing high drama. Batman is Achilles. He’s Orestes. He’s Hamlet.”

The tragic Greek character Orestes, in particular, was on Conroy’s mind when playing Batman. By that point, he’d performed several plays as Orestes, a son who avenges his father’s murder and goes mad because of it. By the end of the story, Orestes has gone through hell and back because of his thirst for vengeance. Naturally, Conroy brought that familiarity with Orestes to his portrayal of Batman.

“He’s a Homeric hero,” Conroy says of the Caped Crusader. “I think of it often when I’m doing Batman because Orestes is haunted by the Furies. He descends into hell. He comes back. He’s resurrected at the end, and I think so often, this is a very Orestial-like journey that Bruce Wayne goes on. His Furies are the memory of his parents’ murder. It haunts him through his life. It’s transformed him."

Conroy calls Batman a “classic character.” Like Orestes before him, Batman has become the protagonist of our very own mythology.

“He’s come out of such a fire and instead of letting life crush him, he turns that metamorphosis into something even greater than himself,” Conroy says. “They’ve been telling that story for thousands of years in different cultures, and this is our culture’s way of telling those stories, and I think they’re just as valid.”

Bruce Timm, who co-created Batman: The Animated Series and designed the show's iconic Art Deco aesthetic, is unsurprisingly most taken by Batman's look.

"I just think Batman looks great," Timm says during our chat at NYCC in 2018. "He's got the best costume motif in comics. Nothing comes close. He's dark, sexy, and broody. It's really intoxicating and compelling in a way that almost no other in comics can come close to it."

He also admires the durability of the character through the different eras of comics, from the Golden Age, to the sillier '50s and '60s stories of the Comics Code era, to the darker takes we're more accustomed to today.

"It is amazing to me how flexible he is as a character. That you could have something as silly as the Adam West show or the old '50s comics, and then you have stuff like Neal Adams and Frank Miller and what we did. And you know, even more extreme, [Grant Morrison and Dave McKean's graphic novel] Arkham Asylum and things like that. And yet their all kind of the same character. It's like that character can encompass all of those different things. He can do space aliens and serial killers, you know? Yet, it kind of works."

This flexibility has allowed plenty of writers and artists to experiment with the Dark Knight, creating different versions of the character over the years. There really isn't a definitive take on Batman. You can love the Batusi, Bat-Mite, or Mr. Freeze's cool party and still be right on the money about the Caped Crusader. You'd be remiss to call the character stale. The guy has done it all.

"It's almost like he's a force of nature, in which stories can happen around him, and there's something primordial, maybe, about the character and the way he looks, as well," says veteran Batman artist Jock, who most recently worked on a seven-part miniseries with Snyder called The Batman Who Laughs. "You could put Batman in a new pose, and he'd still flourish, and I think those kinds of characters are very rare."

Peter J. Tomasi, who is currently writing Detective Comics, puts it best:

"He's a character who can work across all genres. Somehow, someway, he can simply fit into every story, be it a war story, a western, a love story, a comedic angle, sci-fi, horror, fantasy, you name it, and of course any detective story you can possibly imagine."

Superheroes won't always be at the top of our pop culture food chain. It's inevitable that many of the characters we love today will fade with future generations, just as the Shadow, Doc Savage, Zorro, and the Scarlet Pimpernel did. Will we still be talking about Batman in another 80 years? We may eventually embrace new forms of familiar myths, becoming obsessed with new idols. But only a fool would bet against a character who's survived as long as Batman has. Remember, the Batman always wins.

John Saavedra is an associate editor at Den of Geek. Read more of his work here. Follow him on Twitter @johnsjr9 and make sure to check him out on Twitch.

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renaramblesaboutcomics · 7 years ago

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Wednesday Roundup 4.10.2017

This week ended up being a relatively light reading week for yours truly, but that doesn’t lessen the quality of my enjoyment whatsoever. In fact, I had enough love to share that I wanted to go over all of the available Marvel Legacy Primers for this week as well, even if they’re just short blurbs!

So without further ado let’s jump into it.

Marvel’s America, Marvel’s Black Panther, Marvel’s Incredible Hulk, Marvel’s Invincible Iron Man, Marvel’s Jean Grey, Marvel’s Monsters Unleashed, Dark Horse’s Usagi Yojimbo, Lion Forge’s Voltron Legendary Defender, Viz’s Yona of the Dawn

Marvel’s America - Marvel Legacy Primer Pages (2017-present) Robbie Thompson, David Lopez

As interested as I am in America, I haven’t had the opportunity to really follow her outside of the Young Avengers run she is in. So I think, oddly enough, for me this is one of the most necessary “Primers” of any of the ones I’ve read so far, and the information was very good to have. It really helped to frame her history, her relationship with her mothers, and her confidence in herself in a new light that is really appreciated. And the art from David Lopez is as beautiful as any of his issues on All-New Wolverine.

Marvel’s Black Panther - Marvel Legacy Primer Pages (2016-present) Robbie Thompson, Wilfredo Torres

There’s honestly not going to be that much more to say on most of these Primer pages. They’re fun, quick run throughs of relevant histories of the characters and teams that they showcase and depending on your interest and engagement may influence whether or not you want to hop in on the next storyline that they’re promoting.

I do like the sense of unity and legacy that is built into the Black Panther title already, having it be a responsibility tied to kingship that T’Challa knows and the all-important bond it has between him and the memory of his father.

It really puts a spin on the importance of Legacy that this event seems intent on hammering home.

Marvel’s Captain Marvel - Marvel Legacy Primer Pages (2016-present) Robbie Thompson, Brent Schoonover

Carol Danvers is one of those characters I desperately want to lie on every feasible surface level, but whose books have never quite got me on board and whose guest appearances always leave me a bit more confused about her than I had been before her said appearance. And yet there was still not a whole lot added here. I appreciate it, and young Carol is adorable, but there was nothing here that didn’t make me feel like... well, like she’s Hal Jordan. And ‘m not a fan of Hal Jordan.

Marvel’s Incredible Hulk - Marvel Legacy Primer Pages (2017-present) Robbie Thompson, Joe Bennett

Everything I have read so far with Amadeus Cho, both in Totally Awesome Hulk and in his guest appearances or team-ups in Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur to Champions has really connected to me on a level that Bruce Banner hadn’t exactly managed over the years. So it was nice to see a little blurb that went over their mutual histories and explored what was there.

It almost makes people forget that Marvel unnecessarily killed Bruce Banner for... no reason. Almost. Not quite. Though he might be alive by now. I am obviously not current.

Marvel’s Invincible Iron Man - Marvel Legacy Primer Pages (2016-present) Robbie Thompson, Valerio Schiti

Gah, reading this overview of Tony and Riri’s history really reminded me how much I really loved reading Invincible Iron Man when it first came out and just how much I positively adored Riri’s character and her banter with Tony. You know. Before they completely undid the relationship within the first storyline and then Bendis went all Bendis on us and it became obvious that Tony was coming back sooner than later and then Secret Empire destroyed the world... somewhat literally.

I’d love to read a Riri-centric book in better circumstances. Or at least once the next trade is out. We’ll see.

Marvel’s Jean Grey - Marvel Legacy Primer Pages (2017-present) Robbie Thompson, Mark Bagley

I was actually just recently talking to my good friend @shobogan about how much more interested I would be in Young Jean Grey if only Marvel had the guts to either give us a romantic relationship with her and Laura (or her, Laura, and Scott OT3 hullo) or have Older Jean Grey return to mentor her younger self and others at the school since she’s the only X-Man kept dead for this long who was considered a Top Tier X-Man. And since we’re finally getting the latter, it seems, now I have to look at what we know of Young Jean and consider my feelings all over again. And this primer gave me the opportunity to do just that!

While I’m not following Jean’s book at the moment, I’m obviously a pretty big X-fan so I have a general sense of where all the moving pieces are at the moment. And I have to say, with Older Jean returning it’s going to be a pretty awesome time for comparing and contrasting their characters and relationships. After all, this younger Jean is far, far less experienced than her counterpart, but has a peripheral knowledge of her own fate, and as much as she tries to not be defined by it, it’s been defining her in the opposite direction in a sense. And more than that, she’s a Jean who sees the Phoenix Force not as an asset or a tool, but sees it as an honest to god enemy, which I’m not sure how that will work. And I’m even more interested in Jean’s return now because of the possibilities of their interactions with the Force together.

Guess we’ll wait and see!

Marvel’s Monsters Unleashed - Marvel Legacy Primer Pages (2017-present) Robbie Thompson, David Baldeón

I have actually been planning for a little while now to pick up the trade of Monsters Unleashed because I had fun with the miniseries earlier this year and I have been craving more Elsa Bloodstone (as well as the entirety of the Nextwave crew) and this seems like one of the more interesting powers to come from the Inhuman collision.

.... Actually it’s completely stolen from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic and later adapted TV episode dedicated to Jack Kirby who had the power of creativity to draw and create anything he drew and also had a a penchant for creating monsters and different worlds and so on. So I mean. There’s that unavoidable fact. But Kei’s cute so I’d be willing to overlook it for the sake of seeing what Marvel plans on doing with this very wild and unruly power.

Dark Horse’s Usagi Yojimbo (1984-present) #162 Stan Sakai, Tom Luth

The conclusion of Usagi and Inspector Ishida’s investigation about the doctors’ murders has come and the hilarity of Kitsune and Kiyoko bumbling along with them and incidentally becoming crucial to the entire investigation does not lose its edge either.

Story: The conclusion of this particular caper is interesting mostly in how the framing by coincidence is not ultimately a linchpin to the story, having been solved almost immediately in the story’s first issue. The inventiveness of Sakai’s work, overall, is simple subterfuge which continues to make each new adventure feel unique and uncertain. In this instance, it would be in the assistance that Kitsune and Kiyoko end up providing by revealing the true murderer almost by accident.

That being said, as simple as individual stories are for Usagi Yojimbo, the complexity really rests in the margins for long time fans, and that shows most clearly in the way a quiet buildup of several arcs seem to flow together for coming to a head. Perhaps the most famous and arguably best all around example of this would be in “Grasscutter” and how years of storytelling and slow vignettes linking together culminated in one of the greatest comic storylines of all time. We seem to be getting something similar in the backgrounds of more recent adventures with this guild of assassins which Usagi has unknowingly crossed the path of and caused ire to several times at this point.

I’m excited to see where that story is taking us, and likewise interested in how little details, like Kiyoko successfully pickpocketing Inspector Ishida, will pay off down the road.

Lion Forge’s Voltron Legendary Defender Vol. 2 (2017) #1 Tim Hendrick, Mitch Iverson, Jung Gwan Yoo, Ji-in Choi

Egghhhhh. Are you ever really rooting for something against your own common sense and get bit in the butt regardless? I feel like that happens to me on an inconceivably high average and almost all of it can be blamed on the fact that for some reason I am still expecting comics to play fairly with me. If anything my standards should be lower by now. But, well, let’s see if I’m being a bit too harsh on Lion Forge’s second effort in making a Voltron comic.

Story: I would argue that one of the reasons that I had unreasonably high expectations for this comic is in part because the first comic produced by Lion Forge had actuallymanaged to not only be a fairly solid effort as a comic but managed to capture the spirit of the current Dreamworks Netflix series in a wa that was welcoming to fans new and old, and importantly of all ages. So I was hoping for more of the same with this comic project.

In more or less words... I did not exactly receive that. Where there was a solid read of the characterizations in the last comic, this issue showed a severely flattened to the point of parody version of the paladins, especially poor Hunk here who had the already obnoxious and unnecessary fat jokes and food jokes from the series amped up to the point of being his only characteristic in this comic. To the point that at one point he doesn’t even form a full sentence, just grabs a pie successfully from a training maze and says “Hunk win”. Which... I guess is somewhat better faring than the other paladins who didn’t even have dialogue that really fit them. Save for Pidge who was likewise flattened to “the smart one.”

The storyline itself of a new planet where Voltron is needed but the species they end up helping... they actually fail initially, I won’t lie, is a pretty solid premise for Voltron overall, and would be something I’d love to see the show tackle similarly, but the fairly generic wolf-furry aliens didn’t receive a whole lot of depth in this first issue.

Depth trended on being the biggest problem for this issue overall. There wasn’t an examination of the characters and their interactions, how they treated each other and how they tackled problems differently. The sort of things you’d want from an ensemble cast like Voltron. Which is surprising since again the first series by Lion Forge managed all that and was written on a much younger reading level at the same time. Each issue tackled exactly those very things -- individual characters, how they functioned in the group, and how they tackled obstacles differently to find a solution together. I would expect the same here but it didn’t seem to be on the menu.

Hopefully all of this will be addressed and fixed as the comic progresses, but as for now I’m apprehensively putting this series on my three issue trial run.

Art: The art was not a great improvement on the previous comic but it also wasn’t bad in the least. In fact I think the art popped very well, adjusting colors and textures about as well as you’d expect from a television show adaptation for kids. I do wish that the face models for the paladins would keep more consistent and overall there was a rushed feeling to the comic that seemed fairly unnecessary considering it’s the first issue.

Viz’s Yona of the Dawn (2009-present) Vol. 8 Mizuho Kusanagi

You know, I keep hearing over and over again from friends and trusted sources that Yona of the Dawn is a series that will continuously subvert my every expectation and make me continue guessing and yet every volume I really do manage to be caught off guard by something which the story chooses to do which is shockingly poignant and new even to its fairy tale epic adventure structure.

Story: So the Yellow Dragon joining the group was hilariously and purposefully anti-climactic but what we got as a result of that choice is the new direction for the series that ties directly into Yona’s own self-realization. She doesn’t simply want to rule and she doesn’t simply want to conquer. What she wants is to know her people and to save them from the crises that were overlooked by her father before her and by Su-Won now. She wants to take up arms to protect the entire country not just with the power of the loyal followers she has gained but with her own hands. She is something that neither of the kings -- her father or her cousin -- could have ever dreamed of being.

And then my expectations were really taken for a loop by us then in turn following Su-Won as he travels to the Earth Tribe and earns the respect and allegiance of the chieftan general there through a series of manipulations, tactical conceits, and ultimately quiet and subtle intimidation mostly by the fleeting moments in which he dropped his ditzy and well-meaning act to show his true intentions. But as fascinating as it was and as surprising as it was, for me at least, that this complete shift of POV for a few chapters actually managed to keep me on board when I’m not one to often fully appreciate the “villain’s side of things”, probably the most interesting part of any and all of this is actually how much tension is underlying Su-Won’s leadership. HIs appeal to the Fire and Earth Tribes is less in the leadership that he promotes and more in this current of possible warmongering that appeases the more warlike fractions of Kohka.

It’s all fascinating and offers a sense of danger in Yona’s new quest to help the people of fher country feel a new sense of danger, knowing that our group is ultimately pretty unprepared for helping parts of the country which would not be as receptive to their quest or the offer of Yona’s leadership.

That being said... the final chapter driving home Yona’s relationship with Hak and everyone’s strange obsession with protecting Yona but rejecting her attempts to grow her own strength and independence. Lik eI guess we’re just all going to overlook the way she killed the slave trader mob boss in teh previous volume. But beyond all of that, my real concern is just... I cannot stand the way Hak’s character is portrayed in his “over protectiveness” of Yona. It’s far from romantic to me to continuously have a character obsess over someone to the point of “jokingly” considering locking them away for the world to see.

It’s not the best issue of the series by far, but it has some great moments, especially for Yona.

Art: I actually do think that the further we’ve come in this comic, the more consistent and confident the at has gotten. There are still lots of soft tones and all the markings of a usual shoujo, but the real stand out this time around is that we’re beginning to see more and more the variation in ethnicities in the people of the country, which is honestly relieving even if for now the Earth Tribe, which drives that point home, consists mostly of Su-Won’s supporters and may carry with them some more unfortunate stereotypes being fed that I might not be aware of as a non-native to Japan.

So far as single issues this week are concerned there’s really no competition for Usagi Yojimbo in a regular week but especially not in a fairly light week. Yona is still a fantastic book and if there were other trades to compare it to I’d probably lavish on it more, but since we’re on singles I have to give this one to the unending quality that is Stan Sakai’s anthromorphic feudal epic.

And, once more, I am in a bit of a financial crunch for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which being the medical bills I’m paying for my dog, Eve, who experienced a catastrophic dog fight and underwent surgery recently. On top of that, I have exactly a month and a half to pack up everything I own and move halfway across the country again which is not helping those financial crunches I mentioned before either.

As such, I really would appreciate if you enjoy my content or are interested in helping me out, please check out either my Patreon or PayPal. Every bit helps and I couldn’t thank you enough for enjoying and supporting my content.

You could also support me by going to my main blog, @renaroo, where I’ll soon be listing prices and more for art and writing commissions.

RenaRoo Ko-Fi

RenaRoo Patreon

RenaRoo PayPal

#Rena Roundups #Wednesday Spoilers #SPOILERS #Usagi Yojimbo (1984 )#America (2017 )#Black Panther (2016 )#Captain Marvel (2016 )#Incredible Hulk (2017 )#Invincible Iron Man (2016 )#Jean Grey (2017 )#Monsters Unleashed (2017 )#Voltron Legendary Defender Vol. 2 #Yona of the Dawn (2009 )

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princeescaluswords · 4 years ago

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How To Be a Better Alpha

One of the most ridiculous things that I’ve ever heard the Teen Wolf fandom argue is that Scott’s True Alpha arc “came out of nowhere.” It requires a viewer to believe so many contradictory things at once and to top it off with a nice layer of smooth, soothing racism.

You can observe it clearly when the fandom turns to the camera and says “<Insert Murderous Emotionally-Damaged Pretty White Man Here> was a better alpha than Scott.” I’ve seen it done with Peter, with Derek, and even with Deucalion. (Though strangely enough, I’ve never seen it done with Satomi or Talia. It’s like there’s something different about them that makes them ineligible to be superior. Weird.)

The truth is that Peter, Derek, and Deucalion were terrible alpha leaders, and that wasn’t a coincidence. With foresight, the production decided not to be subtle and said “here are the examples Scott has to work with, see how he does better.” As the seasons progressed, Scott’s way of doing things was compared to each one of them, demonstrating his growth and improvement from frightened teen victim to True Alpha. One might have thought that they should have been more subtle, but given their audience’s stubborn insistence that anyone else should be the alpha, their foresight was correct.

People wonder why ‘everything is Derek’s fault.’ Did they ever consider that the production said “We want to make Derek sympathetic, but we can’t let the audience believe he’s a legitimate alpha. Pile it on.” In that, the production failed to convince the fandom. But I truly believe that to this fandom, if you have a sympathetic backstory and you’re white, you could eat babies and still be seen as a superior werewolf.

Peter was a terrible alpha, that should be a given, but what the audience should also pay attention to was why he was a terrible alpha. He allowed rage at what happened to his family to consume everything, to give him such a bloody and aggrieved sense of entitlement that no action was beyond the pale for him. There’s a reason that the production connected Peter to the spiral and to the element of fire, that which consumes and leaves nothing left but ash. In the end, he got his revenge, even though he wasn’t satisfied, and all it cost him was the blood of his own kin on his hands, permanent estrangement from his first beta, and permanent distrust from his remaining relatives. Did a single drop of blood from any of the people he slaughtered magically return the Hales to the legacy he cared for so deeply? Did it make him or Derek or Cora content or happy?

From Peter, Scott learned that an alpha can’t let what was done to him control his responses. Once he became alpha, Scott didn’t use his alpha status to hurt the twins, even though they had plagued him and his friends. (People forget that it was the merged twins who gave him the wound that he almost died from in Frayed (3x05)). He didn’t focus on Sean Walcott, who had tried to eat his mother, on that hospital roof, instead going after Liam dangling from the roof’s edge. He swallowed any emotion he had against Stiles, Liam, Deucalion, and Theo in season 5 in order to stop the Beast and the Doctors. Scott can be angry -- he was furious with his father, with Gerard, with Peter, and with Derek. But he didn’t let that rage consume him like Peter did.

Derek was a terrible alpha. This wonderful post by @thehollowprince demonstrates all the ways he was. But where Peter was consumed by rage, Derek was inhibited by fear. It was fear of failing the memory of his family, fear of repeating the same mistakes, fear of not being strong enough to do what was necessary that motivated every single bad decision he made as alpha. He refused to trust those he couldn’t control. He refused to share the whole truth with those whose trust he needed in return. He couldn’t hope; he had to act, so he was ready to execute an innocent girl, ready to murder his own beta and his own sister out of expediency, ready to do terrible things in order to never make the same mistakes again. His fear of his own ability to fail drove him to push away those who could help him, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

From Derek, Scott learned he had to trust, even after he had been burned, especially after he had been burned. After he became alpha, he worked with Chris Argent without hesitation. He worked with Derek without hesitation. He went to Peter for information. A demon with Stiles’s face tortured him and killed Allison, and (contrary to the depraved wishes of the fandom) he didn’t need time apart from Stiles or ever, ever blamed him. Which is why he called Chris to stand with him against the Doctors, worked with Deucalion to prevent Theo from gaining the Beast’s power, and even worked with Theo to save Mason. His optimism, backed up with action, was an antidote for Derek’s catastrophic fear.

Deucalion became a terrible alpha, and his story was even more tragic because he clearly didn’t used to be. Dovetailing from Derek’s example, Deucalion failed because he became focused oh his own power and philosophy, with his own self, as a reaction to treachery. (”I took the individual parts and became a greater individual whole.”) Deucalion, as powerful, as insightful, and as intelligent as he was, couldn’t imagine that he wouldn’t have all the answers, which is why he ended up “[piling] up bodies in a narcissistically psychotic effort to form [his] perfect pack” when perfection is unattainable. Why, even though he was aware of the eclipse, he still got caught in it. He had to be right, damn everything else.

From Deucalion, Scott learned he could be wrong, that the people he trusted and listened to could be wrong, that it was okay to be wrong and admit you were wrong, and that using his power to make himself right was not a productive way to lead. This is why, when every knowledgeable adult was telling him he had to kill Stiles, he found another way. This is why he called Stiles when he botched Liam’s Bite. This is why he didn’t let his fuckup with Garrett’s money stop him from doing the right thing. This is why he literally begged Stiles, the best friend who had lied to him, betrayed him, assaulted him, to let him help save Noah.

Imagine that scene in The Last Chimera (5x11) where Stiles jumped in that Toyota monstrosity and tried to drive over Scott. Stiles was being a pissy baby, so filled with self-loathing and wracked by guilt, that he was going to try to track down an unstable chimera who was being pursued by the Dread Doctors by himself rather than accept Scott’s help. Would Peter have humiliated himself the way Scott did? Would Derek have argued that they could move past their mistakes as they had in the past? Would Deucalion have put himself in that vulnerable position to protect a person who had literally assaulted him and dehumanized him two days in a row? If you tell me they would, I won’t believe you.

Rejecting rage, overcoming fear, acknowledging his capacity for failure, embracing compassion, and fighting for principle, this is exactly what made Scott the True Alpha. It didn’t come out of nowhere. It was telegraphed from the first episode, the notes hit again and again and again.

The only way someone watching this show couldn’t see it is because they didn’t want to see it. And there are only so many motivations for that.

#teen wolf meta #teen wolf racism #scott mccall defense squad #scott mccall #true alpha

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moonbittern · 8 years ago

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hi im here to talk to you about how sinister totally meant for scott to end up with charles

first of all, to lay some groundwork – we know that sinister was pretty much 100% in control of everything happening at the orphanage

(x-men legacy #215)

sinister was obviously concerned with keeping scott away from too many outside influences - the only significant relationships scott built with people away from sinister’s influence (that we know of) were robyn hanover and the bogarts, all of whom were, in the end, either manipulated or killed by sinister in order to further convince scott that building relationships with other people just wasn’t worth it. he wanted scott to be dependent, malleable, and entirely within his sphere of influence.

another point i’d like to bring up before getting into the meat of this post is that we can safely assume that sinister knew quite a bit about scott’s mutation before scott ever left. some accounts of the plane crash state that he actually manifested during the plane crash; x-factor states that he at least first became aware of his mutation while in the hospital; whenever you want to place it, it’s clear that scott manifested well before his supposed manifestation in new york as a teenager.

so! with that said, let’s talk about what happened when scott ran away from the orphanage

(there’s going to be a lot of silver age talk here, and yes i know a lot of the silver age is kind of dubiously canon at this point and yes i know sinister didn’t exist yet but it’s really all we have for this period of scott’s life)

we know that scott was in new york with the orphanage’s supervisor for an optometrist visit.

(x-men v1 #39)

so...sinister already knows about scott’s mutation, and he’s going to know better than anyone what’s going on with his eyes (or at least that’s how he would see it, but at this point given how much time he’s been studying scott it’s probably true). even if, for some reason, he felt the need to legitimize something about scott’s “eye condition”, he could’ve just pretended to be an optometrist and been like, yep, you definitely need these custom-made ruby quartz glasses that i just happen to have in my pocket here. it’s not like anyone’s going to question him.

and even IF there was a real need to bring scott to new york for any reason, i am fairly certain that mr. lamb and/or the optometrist were probably sinister (both were at least under his control) bc as we established above, sinister was very concerned with how scott interacted with the outside world. (there’s a reason the orphanage is set in a tiny fictional town in classic x-men rather than in omaha.) he’s not going to let this kid, his genetic prize, go wandering around one of the most populated cities in the country unsupervised.

before we even get to scott running away, there’s another panel i want to bring out here:

(x-men v1 #39)

ah yes, the, ahem, totally legitimate not-mind-controlled optometrist. that one.

(also, hi charles)

again, even if sinister did actually have scott go see an optometrist, there is no way he wasn’t at the very least meddling with his memories of scott. either sinister just straight-up sent a letter to the fbi about the kid or he wanted the optometrist to do it - it just doesn’t make sense that he would have let this happen if he didn’t want it to. i can’t stress enough that scott is the result of a lifetime of work on sinister’s part (well, more than a lifetime, but you know) and the key to creating the mutant weapon who would be able to defeat apocalypse - sinister has literally been working towards this goal for almost a century. he is an incredibly powerful telepath who is able to keep scott in situations he has complete control over and he is absolutely not going to allow his prize to get away from him.

unless, of course, he wants scott to get away.

consider: you’re an immortal geneticist under the thumb of a being you can’t hope to overcome on your own, and you’ve been following (and likely manipulating) two bloodlines for decades in the hopes that they will produce someone who can beat apocalypse. both of these bloodlines have just produced powerful mutant children of about the same age. one of them is in your care, but you’re getting frustrated with making his mutation work the way you want it to. the other is being taught by an old subject of yours.

you already have both of their dna and (probably) the ability to combine them if you want. there’s no reason for you to keep the one you have; you’ve considered killing him, but what if you were to throw him in the path of your old subject?

you never know what might happen.

(it’s creepy as fuck, but this is sinister we’re talking about here) (also, homebaked is always better than storebought)

so, a couple things happen here - scott’s powers “manifest” suddenly while in new york, and he takes off. which wouldn’t be that surprising if not for all of the above - we know that scott had manifested previously, and we know that he was being conditioned by sinister to keep his glasses on (though it’s not clear if his beams were actually coming out of his eyes before this point or if sinister was just making preparations):

(x-factor v1 #35)

we can also assume that sinister wouldn’t have let scott run away when a lot of his manipulations had been focused on making scott dependent on him. and even if all of this was somehow just some giant oversight, he should have been able to track scott down and take him back before charles got to him - after all, sinister already had his hooks pretty deep in scott.

jack may or may not have been an accident; personally i prefer thinking that sinister had kind of let scott off the leash just to see what would happen (although im sure he would have been able to snatch him back if need be), and also knowing that charles had the scent and would have been more than capable of taking on someone like jack. he probably just didn’t worry about it too much, content to see how his lab rats behaved in the wild.

to wrap this up, i mostly made this post because i was thinking about the bit from x-factor where sinister is talking about how charles “stole” scott from him so he had to make madelyne to lure scott away from the x-men and also make a baby with him, and how none of that really makes sense. (i don’t have an explanation for sinister saying that other than “0% of this post was simonson’s intention”; maybe sinister just likes playing the victim, or he was trying to downplay his power or something.) i’d already put a lot of this together but i wanted to write it all out and see if it still made sense to me, which it does. in the end this is really just me trying to make sense of bits of canon that don’t necessarily fit well together at first glance, but i think it pulls together into a pretty convincing (if largely accidental) narrative.

#this took so long to write omg #i probably got some details wrong and my excuse is that im tired #scott summers #nathaniel essex #abuse //sdf

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canvaswolfdoll · 6 years ago

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CanvasWatches: Avengers: Endgame

Well, I have to admit: the new trailer finally sold me on Detective Pikachu! Yes, the first trailer showed off uncanny valley designs with a suspicious genwunner undercurrent, but the trailer played before Avengers: Endgame showcased more designs that were from later generations and more aesthetically pleasing, and hinted at clever writing from a sincere love of Pokemon. It did the job trailers are meant to do: sold me on seeing it.

Sonic the Hedgehog will be a fun mess. Just need to decide if it’s worth a theater ticket, or just a rent.

Okay, I’ll talk about the MCU now.[1] There have been a couple more films since I last discussed the franchise, so I’ll play catch up, then talk Endgame and update my ranking list.

I have been rewatching the films sporadically in pieces, because my current job is essentially babysitting teenagers at varying emotional stages, so they’re on the TV sometimes. Oddly, haven’t seen anything before The Rift mentioned in the last review. Might try to rectify that, but I also need to catch up on Pixar films.

So, the new MCU films!

(Spoilers for all the MCU films follows)

Ant-Man and the Wasp

It’s good! Ant-Man and his cast are the only Earthbound characters I continue to care about. (Which I’ll get into more later). They did a very tidy job of elevating Hope van Dyne to a title character and advancing her character without being obnoxious about it. I am super in favor of female leads, but not a big fan of neon signs saying “Girl Power!”

The films do a good job of playing with scale, adding a third “Giant Man” stage to the options, and I care about the Lang/Pym/vanDyne family and their struggles. The villain(s) are also fun, playing with a Tracer-esque time displacement element that allows phasing, and making the motives of the bad guys completely sympathetic.

And they didn’t kill anyone. Gold star. I like people not dying.

Comedy’s still strong, and the callbacks to Ant-man were tasteful. I want more.

Captain Marvel

Okay, I know I risks boos here, but…

Good world building, character revelations for Nick Fury, and moving in and out of the cosmic stage and the earth stage (which carry different aesthetics and tones) but…

I’m not big on Captain Marvel as a character. She’s a rash, confident, quippy hero person, which is fine, except we have so many rash, confident, quippy hero people already. She didn’t distinguish herself as a distinct person to me, and it doesn’t help I’m also unclear about what her power set is.

The twist with the Skrulls was nice. I’m familiar with the general Skrull concept, so the twist worked even on those who know about the bad guys already. The 90s were a fun time to see, and I enjoyed everything around Carol Danvers.

It’s just… Captain Marvel felt generic to me.

There’s a chance for development later, but for now… it’s a’ight.

Avengers: Endgame

This one had the actual war in it. They should’ve called this one Infinity Wars. Maybe call the last one Infinity Gauntlet or Thanos Rising or something.

So, Thanos won in the last movie. How to fix that? Find Thanos and take the gems and fix things? Well, Thanos destroyed the Infinity Stones a week ago. That’s lame. Thor beheads him and stomps off.

There’s also a good comic nod when they show his armor hung up as a scarecrow.

So, how long do we all mope?

Five years.

And they don’t reverse this time jump, which is going to make the timeline of the films an even larger headache!

And, worse still, we lost Abby Ryder Fortson. Sure, Cassie Lang survives, but she also aged a decade in five years and there’s no comfortable way to tell a story with young Cassie anymore. Which is tragic, because that actress was super on point in both Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp. She nailed being an adorable little mirror of her father, and it was a great dynamic to give a superhero.

But, nah, Scott Lang was in the Quantum zone for five years, but perceived by him to be five hours, so there’s not even an opening to fit in a film within the five year jump and depict that father daughter dynamic.

I want to like the commitment. Making bold decisions and not reverting to the status quo is something I’m here for. But Ant-Man is owed one more film, and Cassie was important to me. And an older teenager just wouldn’t be able to play the dynamic the same way as a precocious preteen.

But I guess I shouldn’t dwell on the past.

Plot continues, some characters attempt to move on, Black Widow clings to hope, Tony Stark starts a family.

Then Scott comes in to say “Hey, how about time travel?”

And everyone else says “That’s dumb.”

And Tony Stark says “That’s dumb.” But it naggles him, and he figures out how to traverse the quantum realm.

So time travel is solved! Time to get the Infinity Stones from backwards in time.

So we get some nostalgic walks to the past films, including validating The Dark World. Because that was the only time the Reality stone was in play.

Also, they fridge Black Widow.

That’s been a regular problem with the sole female presence of the original Avengers. She was there to support other characters. The buddy-buddy of Hawkeye, Hulk’s confusing love interest (because Betty Ross was… lost in a drawer somewhere between Incredible Hulk and The Avengers, and they’re too embarrassed to admit it), and assisting Cap in Winter Soldier. Besides angst about being an assassin and not being able to have children[2] she never had the space to be a character outside of what she was to others.

And she literally gave up her life for a man.

Maybe I missed something in the dull SHIELD-era stuff, but Black Widow never resonated with me.

So the stones are gathered, placed on an Iron Man gauntlet, and Hulk (now at peace with himself, he’s a half-step between Banner and Hulk) does the reversal snap.

But past Thanos comes in for one last fight.

We get a fun scene where Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor all try to fight him, which even gets to the point where Cap uses Mjolnir,[4] and it’s very good.

But Thanos gets sick of it, and calls down his army.

Which looks bad.

So Dr. Strange teleports in with those who were on Titan.

Then, other mages teleport in with everyone.[5]

And I believe I felt what most people felt during the first The Avengers. Because it was going to be an epic, all-hands fight, but this time there’s a good number of good guys I care about, the antagonistic force has context now, and there’s a clear goal: keep the Gauntlet away from Thanos.

A giant, crowded fight scene, and it was easy to follow the action.

Plus everyone gets a moment sign.

Though, that does bring me to a nitpick: Spider-man asks Captain Marvel, whose arrival destroyed a giant space war ship, who’s going to help her during her turn with the Infinity football. Dumb question, Peter.

But then all the named female characters show up to be like “We’re here to help! Girl Power!”

And it kind of undermined Captain Marvel? Like, she’s massively powerful, but the narrative implying all the women need to band together to help her when the last couple of football passes were men going solo seems demeaning.

But I’m a white guy writing about nerd movies, so whatever.

During this battle I realized something important: the costumes (except Thor and Spider-Man, who had plot reasons) were on point. Everyone looked like their iconic selves. Iron man had a good Red/Gold balance, and the suit was mechanical. Captain America looked like Captain America. Rocket had his jumpsuit and goggles. Captain Marvel had the right jumpsuit and short hair.

They all looked correct. It was great.

I have one last nitpick: Tony Stark did not deserve the Thanos kill.

Yes, they’ve been trying to play up his fear and paranoia of Thanos since the nuke scene from The Avengers.

But Thanos didn’t do anything directly to Stark. They barely knew each other. Stark got a family, an amount of stability. He’s a playboy, billionaire, philanthropist. Tony Stark was fine.

Nebula was maimed. Turned machine in both body and mind. She suffered a lot under Thanos and by Thanos. She had an arc through this movie. Nebula should’ve killed Thanos.[6]

I would’ve also accepted Gamora, if they wanted a big name character.

But, nah, got to give the big finish to the man who started the franchise off. Sure.

Tony dies, and it’s a good death because his death achieved a big victory. Which is what you should do when you kill a character: have their death be their moment of awesome and a good narrative closure to the degree of their importance. No-name backgrounds characters can be comfortably killed off with a backhand, but to kill off an Iron Man, who has been relevant since the start of the franchise and started an era, his death needs to be worth twenty plus movies of set up and close an Era. Which Endgame did.

Black Widow, meanwhile, had been around for almost as long, had been poorly served by the narrative, and her death brought her arc no closure. Her story just stopped, and it’s unsatisfying.

Which is the main point of Endgame: bringing closure. Iron Man dies, and has earned his rest. Captain America, given access to time travel, retires and (importantly) passes on the mantle.

Actually, that’s an interesting question: who’s taking over Cap’s battle commander role? Because Iron Man has his replacements in Spider-Man (for tech and science upstarty-ness) and the Pyms (for big concept sci-fi) and Pepper Potts can still provide funding and infrastructure backing. Captain America makes Sam Wilson the new Captain America, but Sam hasn’t taken a leading role yet, so making him the new Avengers Leader might be an awkward transition.

The point is, the original six Avengers got their closures (of varying quality). Brash adventurer Thor continues his adventures in space, Tony Stark died but left a positive legacy to override his war profiteer history, Captain America get his lost time back, Hulk found peace with himself (which happened off screen, but eh, he was fun). Hawkeye and Black Widow… well, they started out as “they’re here, too!” characters, and they ended as “and they’re done, too!” characters.

Now, it’s time for the next generation, and it’ll be fun to watch.

Ranking and Overview

Well, the big narrative is finished, and it got better as it went along. The first phase was marred by the trend of “Super heroes, but in our grim and gritty world” that the Nolan Batman Films inspired. Thor began to loosen the tone, and Captain America was hint towards more grandiose elements, but it wasn’t really until Guardians of the Galaxy that the creative team looked around and said “This is inherently silly, right? Can we just… have fun?”

And from there, every new franchise had fun, while the originals had to keep their serious faces on.

Anyways, I’m going to rank them now from worst to best:

The Incredible Hulk

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Thor: The Dark World

Iron Man 2

Iron Man 3

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

The Avengers

Iron Man 1

Thor

Captain America: Civil War

Doctor Strange

Captain Marvel

Black Panther

Captain America: the First Avenger

Thor: Ragnarok

Avengers: Endgame

Avengers: Infinity Wars

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Spider-Man Homecoming

Ant-Man

Ant-Man and the Wasp

Guardians of the Galaxy

Despite being two parts of a full story, I ultimately decided Infinity Wars and Endgame were different enough to split them for rankings.

And I enjoyed Infinity Wars a little more.

And I think this confirms my self-assessment from last time: I enjoy fun, strong characters, and bold choices over trying to be real or attempt drama. I like to escape with my escapism!

Now, where do I think the movies go from here?

Honestly, I feel they’ll be able to do three more phases (for six total). In that time frame, Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man will get third films, while Black Panther, Doctor Strange, and Captain Marvel each get two additional films. Complete trilogies before their cast become part of team-ups to bolster other films. There may be a few other franchises introduced, but besides Fantastic Four, I feel like Marvel is starting to need to dig too deep (especially since they burned the Defenders on Netflix shows. Daredevil could’ve been a film character).

The X-Men work better, narratively, away from the rest of the Marvel Universe, so hopefully they keep to their own, separate franchise.

So, complete trilogies, grind towards two or three more Phases,[7] then it’s time for reboots.

As for overarching plots, I feel like we’re not going to get another multiphase big bad. Doctor Doom would be a great next step, as he represents political hand wringing, technology, and magic in a single megalomaniac, and I feel like we’ve gotten to the tonal point where Doctor Doom can be properly hammy. But it’ll be a single phase. Then one or two more big bads, possibly ending with some sort of villain team-up and time travel shenanigans to bring everyone (everyone) back for one, finally grand finale.

Then Reboot.

Maybe start with Captain America next time. Or the Fantastic Four. We’ll have to wait and see.

For now… I’ve got a Digimon project I keep hyping, and I have been meaning to rewatch Star Wars.

Maybe check out my Patreon or Ko-Fi if you enjoyed this essay.

Kataal kataal.

[1] I will note I stepped out for the Star Wars trailer. I’m gonna see it, so I want as little spoiled as possible. But the title and JJ Abrams being back at the helm has me concerned. [2] Which I think gets an unfair rap. I always felt that detail was just a pin in the life Widow was built for. She submitted to invasive surgery and cut off options to be what she was. It’s a symbol, not just poor writing.[3] [3] Age of Ultron still sucks, though. [4] For the record, I believe he’s known he could use it since Ultron, but he was being polite to Thor. [5] Except Black Widow. [6] Plus, comic accuracy points! [7] Amazon has two box sets for the phases with art based around an infinity stone each, so completing the set with six total phases makes sense.

#CanvasWatches #avengers #ant-man #captain marvel #mcu #CanvasReviews

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escaperail1 · 7 years ago

Text

How one Southern theater won a culture battle but lost the culture wars.

Twenty-five years ago, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America premiered on Broadway, swept the Tony Awards, won the Pulitzer Prize, and changed the way gay lives were represented in pop culture. For a 2016 Slate cover story, Isaac Butler and Dan Kois assembled an oral history of Angels. Now Butler and Kois have expanded that story into a book, The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America, out Tuesday. Through more than 250 interviews with actors, directors, playwrights, and critics, the book tells the story of Angels’ turbulent rise into the pantheon of great American storytelling—and explores the legacy of a play that feels, in an era when freedom and civil rights still feel under siege, as crucial as ever.

Much of Angels’ impact was in scores of ambitious productions across the country, far away from the bright lights of Broadway. Putting on the epic two-part drama has become a rite of passage for theaters in cities large and small across America and around the world. In this exclusive excerpt from The World Only Spins Forward, actors, administrators, and journalists tell the story of one such theater that went to court to fight a local government that wanted to shut the play down—and won.

Keith Martin (producing and managing director, Charlotte Repertory Theatre, 1990–2001): We got the rights to Angels in America in 1994, but we produced it in 1996.

Tom Viertel (producer of the Angels in America national tour, 1994–95): We intended to tour in Charlotte and the Charlotte Rep begged us not to come, to let them do it themselves.

Steve Umberger (director of Angels in America at Charlotte Rep, 1996): We were growing. We had done some challenging work, we had just started doing collaborations with the Charlotte Symphony: Midsummer, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, full text, with orchestra, working on a big canvas. Expanding our audiences.

Perry Tannenbaum (founder and editor, Creative Loafing Charlotte): There were only six theaters in the United States that were being allowed to do the show that near to the Broadway production. It was a big deal.

Viertel: They were so passionate about this that we agreed to let them do it. And they did it, and they were all fired. They literally dissolved Charlotte Rep.

Doug Wager (artistic director, Arena Stage, Washington, 1991–98): The 1990s were the peak of the culture wars that broke out with the assault on the National Endowment for the Arts.

Brian Herrera (assistant professor of theater, Princeton University): The culture wars were a tipping point. Up until then, even though there was contestation with the NEA, there wasn’t a sense that it was going to go away.

Wager: The NEA imprimatur is the thing that gives the foundations their incentive. So the absence of that imprimatur gave funders some really good reasons to avoid anything too sticky or controversial, in general.

Herrera: Queer people and people of color became poster children for what conservative America doesn’t represent, like Robert Mapplethorpe and Piss Christ. It was a way of using particular artists to mark a line in the sand and say we therefore do not support the arts. And using the shock of the artists and their work and their identities as proof that they were corrupt and thus unworthy of funding and, by extension, not good Americans.

Wager: All of that was giving politicians—putting them into a cold sweat, and giving them a justification for suppressing, diverting, or cutting federal funding for the arts.

Greg Reiner (director, theater and musical theater, National Endowment for the Arts): In 1992 we had $172 million. And then in ’96 that’s when we lost 40 percent of our funding. This year our funding is $150 million, which is close to what it was in pure dollars, not counting inflation, in the mid-’90s.

Umberger: We didn’t do Angels to create any sort of political sensation. I think Tony Kushner felt … we were the smallest of the companies, and I think he had some sympathy for that. He was also certainly aware of the political climate, and Jesse Helms.

Kevin R. Free (Belize at Charlotte Rep, 1996): There were all these discussions about the New South versus the Old South. Charlotte was supposed to be the New South. The New South was supposedly progressive, more inclusive of gay inhabitants, people of color. The attitudes were supposed to have changed.

Umberger: Charlotte is the largest city in either Carolina. So you have this strange tension between an aspiration to be a “world-class place,” a phrase that’s been thrown around a lot in Charlotte, and a very small-town way of thinking that’s always been at the core: a Southern, conservative, churchgoing sensibility.

Lawrence Toppman (arts reporter, Charlotte Observer, 1980–2017): The boosterish talk about “a world-class city” didn’t reflect reality then or now. Even more than Atlanta, a city Charlotte leaders alternately mocked and emulated, Charlotte was an odd conglomeration of Northern transplants seeking warmer climates, workers imported by banks from other cities, and natives who still thought of it as an overgrown small town.

Martin: It was our due diligence that got us into trouble.

Tannenbaum: Part of what had been recommended was this sort of community outreach.

Martin: We created a series of communitywide education and outreach activities in hopes of shedding light on the difficult issues of the play, rather than heat.

Umberger: All of the events happened so quickly, a week or less.

Martin: The Charlotte Observer went Page A1 with the following headline: “Theater Aims to Avert Storm Over ‘Angels’ Drama.”

Tony Kushner’s seven-hour epic, which Charlotte Repertory Theatre opens March 20 in the North Carolina Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, has been hailed as the play of the decade, the winner of one Pulitzer Prize and two Tony Awards as best drama.

It also contains nudity, a simulated homosexual act and adult language—elements that have caused trouble for Charlotte’s cultural organizations in the past.

In one scene, a young man with AIDS takes off his shirt so a nurse can check his lesions. “Only six. That’s good,” she pronounces. “Pants.” The young man drops his trousers so she can continue. He is as naked as the day he was born.

—Tony Brown, “Theater Aims to Avert Storm Over ‘Angels’ Drama,” Charlotte Observer, March 6, 1996

Tannenbaum: The head of the so-called Concerned Charlotteans, the Rev. Joe Chambers, sent a fax to City Council asking for a roll call about who supported this homosexual event and who didn’t.

Tony Kushner: Rev. Chambers was nuts. He had declared Barney the Dinosaur an agent of the devil. I mean, he was a hideous person.

The popular PBS kids’ show character is “straight out of the New Age and the world of demons and devils,” warns Rev. Joseph Chambers, who runs a four-state radio ministry based in North Carolina.

Barney, adored by millions of toddlers and preschoolers, is yet another sign that “America is under siege from the powers of darkness,” adds the politically active Chambers.

And for a donation to his 25-year-old Paw Creek Ministries in Charlotte, Chambers will send you a booklet explaining it all: “Barney the New Age Demon,” recently retitled “Barney the Purple Messiah.”

—Cox News Service, Nov. 25, 1993

Tannenbaum: After the fax was sent out, the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, the City Council, the local attorney general, all enjoined the Rep from opening.

Scott Belford (director of public relations, Arts and Science Council, Charlotte, 1995–2000): It became a rallying point to question freedom in the arts.

Martin: Their lawyers tried to shut us down using the North Carolina obscenity law. But they couldn’t. Works of “intrinsic artistic and literary merit” were excluded from the law. The only legal option they had was North Carolina’s indecent exposure statute, because of the roughly eight seconds of full frontal male nudity.

The cease-and-desist order constituted prior restraint, because we had yet to break any laws. It also constituted an imminent threat, because I was named personally. That allowed me to seek judicial relief from the court in the form of a restraining order, which later was made into a permanent injunction. In six hours I had to find a lawyer, file a formal request, find precedent, a sympathetic judge, request a court hearing, deal with my staff, my board, the cast, the crew, the media, and get process servers.

Umberger: We all knew there was a chance the show wouldn’t open. There we were, at 5 in the green room before first preview, wondering, “What’s going to happen next?” We had worked for a year—were we going to be able to do the play?

Martin: At 4:58 p.m., two minutes before the clerk’s office closed, the judge’s order was signed and filed with the clerk, and process servers fanned out across the county to serve notice.

Umberger: At 5:15 or something, we found out we were doing it. The show was at 7:30, I think. So it was close!

Martin: We served the Performing Arts Center board and senior staff, the police chief, city police department, the county sheriff, the sheriff’s department, the DA and all of his magistrates, even the local and state alcohol and beverage control board, because we had a full bar at the theater and you can’t serve alcohol at a premises with full nudity. Anyone who had the legal authority to shut us down, we got an order against them. We were painting with a shotgun, not a rifle.

Angus MacLachlan (Louis at Charlotte Rep, 1996): We were warned there might be bomb threats, or that during the nude scene people might try to stop the show.

Tannenbaum: It turns out that the Concerned Charlotteans showing up en masse to protest the opening numbered 15 or thereabouts. And the number of people picketing in favor of Angels numbered between 150 and 200!

MacLachlan: It felt like two different factions, like what’s happening now in America. What Trump is doing, what the conservatives in America are doing, but most people didn’t vote for him. We had tremendous support from the community.

Kushner: They tried this direct assault, actually stopping it, and ran right into the First Amendment. I mean, it didn’t work, and in fact made it a huge thing, and everybody with a conscience in Charlotte felt they had to go and see it.

Martin: Opening night, I said, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Angels in America,” and there was a standing ovation. We hadn’t even done the show yet!

Be splendid tonight, be focused, have fun, make theater: That’s our way of repudiating the bullies, the killjoys, the busybodies and blowhards. We know the secret of making art, while they only know the minor secret of making mischief. We proceed from joy; they only have their misery.

—fax from Tony Kushner to Charlotte Rep, March 20, 1996

MacLachlan: That night was so electric, and so supportive, it was really about what you wanted it to be about: Kushner’s words, the events onstage. The feeling, the connection from the audience, was everything you want in a theater. That’s what was happening, not the little noises from outside.

Martin: The headline in the papers the next day was “Judge: Let ‘Angels’ Play.” It was a bigger typeface than Kennedy’s assassination.

A last-minute court order Wednesday secured opening night for the tense cast and crew of the Pulitzer Prize-winning epic, which played without protest in city after city until it reached Charlotte. A group of Christian conservatives tried blocking the show over scenes of nudity, profanity and simulated sex.

Even after the legal victory, some expected an outburst during the nude scene, but when Charlotte actor Alan Poindexter dropped his blue slacks and for seven seconds faced the audience naked, no one said or did a thing.

—Tony Brown, Gary L. Wright, and Paige Williams, “Judge: Let ‘Angels’ Play,” Charlotte Observer, March 21, 1996

Belford: The show sold out and extended because it was in the headlines every day and there was so much discussion around it. A lot of people felt they had to see it to see what the fuss was all about.

Toppman: Charlotte Repertory Theatre never did a more accomplished show.

MacLachlan: Tony Kushner came down and saw it. I remember him saying this play has been done all over the world, in very conservative countries, and nothing like this had ever happened.

Kushner: They stopped the plane on the runway and suddenly all these policemen came on, and the stewardess asked me if I was me, and they helped me off the plane because they were worried about a death threat or something. It was nonsense, but it was exciting.

Martin: They picketed every one of the play’s 30 performances. They even showed up Monday nights. The first time that happened, they told the media they had successfully stopped the show. The police had to tell them we were dark on Mondays.

Tannenbaum: We were all very euphoric at the time. It remained, until the company folded, the most staggering hit they had. Eleven thousand people saw that show in Charlotte.

Umberger: The next season, we had a 20 percent increase in subscriptions, and when we polled people, they said it was because of Angels.

Tannenbaum: There was a tremendous feeling that this was a huge opportunity for Charlotte theater to expand. This is [laughs] obviously not the scenario that played out.

Free: I can’t talk about Angels without talking about Six Degrees.

Umberger: We had chosen [John Guare’s] Six Degrees of Separation for the next season. Joe Chambers or someone seized upon that as proof that we were continuing to violate standards, that it was bigger than Angels. We tried to defuse that, say that wasn’t what the play was about.

Free: It wasn’t nearly as good, but it became “Why is Charlotte Rep doing all these gay plays?” Six Degrees isn’t even really a gay play.

Martin: It’s available in the comedy section at Blockbuster.

Kushner: They did what these people always do: The next year they realized a full-frontal assault on civil liberties and freedom of speech wasn’t gonna work, so they defunded the Rep.

Martin: In November of 1996, the Mecklenburg County Commission became dominated by Republicans who had a stealth mission to defund the arts. The “Gang of Five,” led by Hoyle Martin.

Umberger: I think it was on April first. April Fools’ Day. It was a vote to defund the $2.5 million Arts and Science Council. It was funny, because they wanted to defund us because of Angels. But they wouldn’t say, “Well, we can’t give money to organizations that do gay material,” so they had to defund the whole thing, the 30-odd groups that got money from the council. That meeting started at 6 in the afternoon and went until 2 in the morning. There was an overflow crowd. It was a very tense and raucous seven or eight hours that had many speakers for and against. The head of the commission was not part of the Gang of Five. He voted against. Right before the vote he said, “Watch us, and forgive us.”

Belford: It was a 5–4 vote.

Umberger: That was 2½ million out the door.

Belford: The Arts Council funded programs for kids. The symphony. The opera. Just because this one group funded by the council did one play with a gay character in it.

Martin: Hoyle Martin went so far as saying we should ban all works that include the word homosexual, works created by artists who were homosexual. One minister railed from the pulpit about the works of Leonard Bernstein. One said they should ban The Nutcracker because Tchaikovsky was gay. I was “outed” myself, by Republican County Commissioner Bill James, the only one of the Gang of Five who is still in office. This was a surprise to my wife and teenage daughter.

Belford: It was a real wake-up call to the community. A black eye to Charlotte. We’re trying to be a very progressive, forward-thinking city.

Martin: Four of the Gang did not survive the next election cycle.

Belford: After the elections, the funding was returned and increased.

Tannenbaum: There was a dampening effect. It ushered in an era of extreme caution. They actually convened—the Arts and Sciences Council—convened a task force where all sides would be represented and would issue guidelines for arts events in Charlotte. And of course any compromise would preclude events like Angels in America.

Umberger: I was on the task force. Also on that task force was Joe Chambers. Everyone had been invited to the table. All sides.

Tannenbaum: The appeasement from beginning to end of these wackos is really just startling.

Toppman: Charlotte Rep fomented controversy, wittingly or unwittingly, by responding clumsily to the negative comments. Self-righteousness, even when one is righteous, doesn’t convert or engage enraged people. Cowardly, confused politicians didn’t help.

Tannenbaum: It pretty much reaffirms what we’re seeing today in Charlotte. Some little thing, like a bathroom and who is supposed to go in it, stirs up a national furor.

Umberger: A lot of people assume that Angels is the reason Charlotte Rep closed. That wasn’t the reason. It was a supporting factor. People were tired. The theater staff was tired. The city was tired from all of the fighting. I was gone in 2002, and it lasted until 2005, but it happened when the economy was beginning to fail. Charlotte Rep needed another million bucks to keep healthy, but that money was nowhere to be found.

Toppman: No one came out of this mess covered with glory, except the actors and technicians.

Martin: I have almost one and a half file drawers from Angels. Of the thousands of articles, there’s one that’s my favorite, an editorial from March 24, 1996, in the Charlotte Observer. The headline is “Bravo Charlotte Rep.” “In this conservative city, on this matter, that took guts. Bravo.”

Excerpted from The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America by Isaac Butler and Dan Kois. Published by Bloomsbury USA. Portions of the book first appeared in Slate.

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