#and ran into people discussing the nuance of social issues without a hint a nuance

[evelhak]

"Everything is complex" or "Things are not black and white" should not be used as shortcuts to avoid a problem, they should be used as the basis for a discussion. They're not conclusions, they're the beginning to finding understanding and solutions. These statements should inspire openness to learn more, not give a free pass to deflect everything you don't like hearing.

[cinemameta]

3 Tales of Disappointment

Disappointments. (Sigh)

The Twilight Zone

The promise of a contemporary revival of the sci-fi classic The Twilight Zone was met with open embrace especially when it was announced that Jordan Peele would helm the title. Peele’s foray into filmmaking with Get Out and Us, which all but cemented him as a maestro of social horrors, made him the perfect fit for the role of this generation’s Rod Serling. On paper, the project was a match made in heaven but only time could have known the output was far from the success everyone hoped it to be.

Issues at first were deemed minor with the bulk of criticism against the first two episodes directed at its overlong running time. The original series ran for only half an hour per episode with the exception of the fourth season which clocked at one hour every episode while the ongoing revival reaches up to an hour without commercial. It doesn’t even help that earlier episodes borrowed heavily from some of the original’s plotlines such as in the case of The Comedian and Nightmare at 30,000 Feet which added a level of predictability to the viewing experience. Although some bits were tweaked to frame the storylines in a more up-to-date context, the problem lies in the fact that in the original version of the episodes, everything was founded on novelty and to repeat such novelty robs the viewer of impact and meaningful experience.

Fortunately, the revival understands that relying on the past glory days of the original is a fruitless endeavor as the audience desire for stories culled from the current political climate and cultural patterns is one it needs to capitalize on. Unfortunately, as the show rolled from one episode to the next, the more it became obvious that the problem runs deeper than running time and bad adaptation; one that has to do with lack of subtlety. The writing on the show, especially on chapters which seek to leave grand social statements, has this tendency of spoon-feeding its narrative not before sidelining the sci-fi/supernatural element as an added measure to avoid the message getting lost in the gimmick. The recently aired episode titled “Not All Men” serves as a great example to how writers of the show love to oversimplify plotlines based on nuanced topics. As if the title isn’t already obvious enough, wait till you get to the part of the episode where a character repeatedly exclaims “It’s not all men” in attempt to highlight that toxic masculinity isn’t borne out of external forces, it’s borne from within. Subtle, indeed.

Game of Thrones

A disastrous case of plot over character. For a show that has amassed intense international following and morphed into a global cultural phenomenon, you’d hope writers of the show would owe it to its audience to deliver, if not satisfying, a logical ending to almost a decade of political machinations, medieval warfare and characters we’ve grown emotionally invested in. Instead, for its last season, Game of Thrones retcons most of established character developments and rushes the plot into one chaotic, unearned endgame.

Perhaps the biggest victim of character arc assassination is Cersei Lannister. Yes, Dany’s heel turn may seem sudden but throughout the run of the series, her madness and cruelty have been hinted ever since her ascent to power, it’s only in the handling of her story arc where she gets wronged. Writers allotted little development for a smiling Dany suddenly become an unhinged warlord in a span of only 2 episodes.  For Cersei, not only is her writing poorly executed but also painfully out of character. At the end of season 6, she exercised her tactical prowess by blowing up the Sept along with most of House Tyrell and The High Sparrow thereby eradicating her immediate enemies all in one move. In the penultimate episode of the final season, she was reduced to a blubbering mess whose strategy of winning the war is basically watching everything unfold from her tower. Even her death lacks any payoff which is surprising given the track record of the show when it comes to delivering satisfying deaths of its villains.

I could have honestly forgone with the criticism of plot over character given the limited number of episodes and the fact that the season started off with two major plot arcs still yet to be resolved (Night King and Cersei) and yet even when the focus is on the plot, they still managed to fuck it up. The abrupt resolution to the Night King/White Walker arc is frustrating considering how since the very pilot episode, their threat has been emphasized and to eliminate such threat all in one battle, in one night is anti-climactic as hell. Even anywhere else you could see symptoms of bad writing from Brienne’s scorned lover b-plot to Euron’s fleet weaponry becoming a dragon killer, for the sake of advancing the plot, to utterly useless piles of wood during battle, for the sake of advancing the plot.

I could go on listing all my other grievances about the final season but something tells me with writers no longer give a fuck. Perhaps I should too.

Halalan 2019

I’d be lying if I said the current outcome of the senatorial election came as a shock to me. Although the votes are still at 96% completion as of writing, one could have seen the writing on the wall even before the start of the election if one were paying attention. It’s truly disappointing to see, if not most, all of the senatorial seats get filled with less-than-qualified administration lapdogs with zero opposition scoring a win but to say any of this is surprising is a stretch.

In the lead up to the midterm polls, collegiate mock up elections demonstrated that opposition candidates are greatly preferred by college students, mostly from prestigious universities which partly explains why liberal elites are quick to weaponized this against the working class and blame them for the outcome of the senatorial race when the ballots pointed to another reality. This line of thinking exposes a fault on the middle class specifically on how they’ve viewed the election through naïve lenses. No one could accuse candidates from opposition slate Otso Diretso of lacking noble principles but what they boasted in virtue they greatly lacked in strategy. While the opposition’s campaign did a great job of maintaining a solid core base of voters which comprised mostly of members of the middle class, they did nothing in winning over some swing voters which mainly came from the working class. Much of their campaign ads targeted the same audience and was made to arouse the same discussion on honor and values which at some point veered towards sounding holier-than-thou-ish.

From then on within the Otso Diretso supporters, it was all echo chambers; repeating the same old sentiments to the same group with the same political interest with little regards to anything else. Even when conversations were made about outside opinion, they were done to mock and in effect alienate what could have been more votes for the party. The total disconnect of the liberal elite from the realities of the majority of the people restricts them within the stubborn walls of the minority vote. The failure to recognize on the part of the opposition how extremely popular the administration is, with all its populist and strongman personality, shows how uninformed the candidates are to the desires of the public, which basically is the foundation of politics and governance. After all, before becoming a government of principle, you must first be a government of the people, no matter how dumb the people are.