#nihilism goes to optimistic nihilism goes to existentialism

[ad15124]

life is meaningless and it sucks → life is meaningless and it's freeing → life is meaningless so I invent my own meaning pipeline gang rise up

[bam-monsterhospital]

pet peeve #296: "optimistic nihilism"

it's existentialism

words MEAN THINGS. and what you refer to when you say 'optimistic nihilism' is where nihilism actually stops and existentialism ollies in on its skateboard wearing the loudest sunglasses imaginable, sipping koolaide jammers.

[an-unraveling-unknown]

My thoughts on Undertale and philosophy

This short thought barf has so many holes and ramblings and the concept in itself could probably be explained far better by the countless video essays that genuinely had hard work into them and I recommend them no questions asked but I need to gush and further procrastinate on my French or else my brain will eat itself and explode (I’m sorry Ms. L)

Undertale is a game based in Nihilism that wants you to think that it’s based in Existentialism, while simultaneously having elements of both. Oough okay here we go

The basic outline for Nihilism is that nothing matters and we’re all going to perish unceremoniously. In broader terms, everything and anything we do as human beings does not change anything, it doesn’t matter, we are bound to fate and there is no meaning to life - meaning is a social construct per se. 

Existentialism, however, was created in more optimistic direct opposition to Nihilism, saying that we make meaning. We are defined by our existence, in our actions, who we are, people must choose a direction and meaning in life. 

Undertale happens to juggle both of these with humor upon a polka-dotted unicycle with mirth in its eyes.

One of the coolest things about the Undertale is that its game mechanics are a very real part of the world. You die, you can reset, you can reset at any point whatsoever, whether you choose mercy or fight or both has a specified outcome, you have control. A few select characters know this, like Flowey and Sans, but they can’t really do anything to stop you if you’re determined enough because determination is in ALL human souls - the will to keep living and change fate. It is RIGHT THERE is the description, Existentialism, where we make meaning, where we are in control, where we can change fate because we are determined to make meaning. Everything matters because we think it does (which could also tie into trying to decipher the story and make sense of things where they are chaotic and unknowable, like the elusive W.D Gaster. That, and that’s what a lot of the games were striving for at the time - rewarding the player by making sense, for all the puzzle pieces to satisfyingly click together.)*

But no matter how you play the game, Genocide route or Neutral or Pacifist, no matter what you do, you always end up back in the underground. If Chara goes up to the surface and presumably murders everyone she sees or something along those lines, it all resets. If Flowey decimates you and does whatever he does, it all resets. If you die in a fight with a monster, if Asgore defeats you and uses your determination soul to break the surface barrier, if you do the morally correct thing and find a way to break the barrier so the monsters can be free from the underground’s confines, it all has to reset.

The Monsters cannot truly go back up to the surface, and neither can you. 

Everything you did, all that you accomplished to help them, to break the mold, or to betray them and slaughter them all (or just a select few,) as a whole, It did not matter. What’s more, you will likely reset, regardless of any ending. You may reset, again and again and again, perhaps to see what will happen because of human curiosity, mayhaps because its just a really good game, or perhaps to subconsciously get proper closure - but regardless of any of these, you always end up back in the underground. You cannot win, but isn’t that what games are for?

The only way to ‘win’ at this game is to never play it, really.

Undertale game mechanics are a very real part of the world built up around it and is a game that is self-aware in more ways than one - it knows what you do, it judges you for it, and it knows you cannot get out.

HOWEVER, like most things, there are two sides to that coin.

In all of this, you’re allowing yourself to have Determination - Hope. That’s what’s keeping you going as you claw and scrape your way through fights and levels of the story, what’s keeping you kind through the pacifist run (it takes a lot of effort to be kind sometimes, that’s not for nothing), that’s what’s keeping the Monsters going, the hope that they’ll see the surface again, that you can help, that again and again and again is hope. You are all in a perpetual state of hope.

Isn’t that an incredibly human thing to be?

Even better, that’s the games point. That we can come together, respect our differences and get along. Regardless of who we are, we are all bounded together by determination and hope. We can, and should care for each other, and learn and grow.

Heck, in the act of doing all this, we are making meaning, Cos’ we play games and everything feels alright for a bit.

“The human soul can be indomitable” Hell yeah it can.

[glyphsinthefog]

Food - To ask my muse about their favourite dish

To Blue

@little-monsters-entity

"Oh? My favorite dish?" The large worm perks up, antennae leaning forward in curiosity. His first pair of arms fidget together as he thinks.

"It's a little unusual, so don't laugh, I promise it's very good. You start with existential dread, my favorite being scale of the universe, and then you let it ferment into nihilism. It usually goes bad into depression here, but if you wait it out it can become optimistic nihilism, and that's what you want! This is where it gets weird but again, you have to try it. I like to sprinkle it on popcorn with chocolate. It gives a.. oh what do you small things call it... ah yes! A pop rocks effect! All sweet and fizzy!"

[archaic-stranger]

quill, pressed flowers, candles :)

quill: how would you describe your writing style?

ethereal, thoughtful, deliberate. when i write something i’m proud of, i find that it reads as though each word has its place and its purpose within the larger narrative of the story or poem. i try to echo that with my posts on this blog, where each word in an aesthetic adds something to the overarching idea.

candles: favorite quote?

believe me when i say there are many, but one that comes to mind (and one that i don’t think i’ve seen on this site yet) is “seize the moments of happiness, make them love you, fall in love yourself! that is the only real thing in this world – the rest is all nonsense” from Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

this quote really captures what i think of as a kind of optimistic existential nihilism – maybe nothing we do really matters, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make the most of the time we have. fall in love, fall out of love, make others love you – live recklessly for a moment, just to see what it feels like. find personal meaning in the wide and meaningless expanse of the universe.

i don’t always agree with that sentiment, but there are certainly times when it resonates with me and i think it’s important to remember that there doesn’t have to be some deeper meaning behind everything we do. it’s okay just to exist, to be human, to indulge in that humanity.

pressed flowers: have you every fallen in love? out of love?

i’ve always been a hopeless romantic, so it’s difficult to tell the difference between being in love with someone and being in love with the idea of love itself. but as far as this question goes, it’s yes to the first and not yet to the second.

[kristofffaust]

The Growth of Nihilism in the Contemporary United States: a brief essay on a somewhat optimistic take on nihilist ideology.

Pictured: Existentialist anarchist Jean-Paul Sartre and his longtime domestic partner, existentialist feminist Simone de Beauvoir.

***

“Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

“All oppression creates a state of war.” — Simone de Beauvoir

***

Foreward: This is meant to be a polemic against commonly accepted post-modern takes on nihilism. I find the postmodern take on nihilism a somewhat cyclical and tedious affair, and, quite frankly, their professed monopoly on existentialism is nauseating. Question everything, even if it agrees with your accepted worldview, especially if it agrees with your accepted worldview.

This is an observation on why nihilism has seen such a rapid resurgence in the modern and what it could mean if used differently than the historical stereotypes beholden to it. Indeed, if nihilism is a form of reclaimed agency, then blindly following the pre-existing dogma that nihilism is inherently destructive is, in effect, surrendering your agency to an external ideal and, quite frankly, the most anti-existentialist thing one could do.

Conversely, this is not a profession that nihilism is an entirely benign and benevolent philosophy, but that viewing it as strictly one or the other is narrow-minded and lazy. I acknowledge, with tongue-in-cheek humor, that the average nihilist would deny the existence of either category.

I guess one could say this is an attempt to profess that absurdism and nihilism are two sides of the same coin and as reliant as they are antagonistic towards each other.

***

Nihilism is a subcategory of existentialism and sister ideology to absurdism. Existentialism believes if nothing in life holds any intrinsic value, nothing in this reality matters outside of our subjective experience. As a result, our agency is our responsibility and nobody else’s. Pure nihilism, also known as cosmic nihilism, professes if nothing matters, any action we take in this life doesn’t matter in turn, so why bother. Absurdism, often attributed with existential nihilism, affirms that since nothing matters, nothing is telling us that we can’t enjoy life. This article will focus on cosmic nihilism as it stands with existential nihilism and how our current global and political climate has served as the perfect incubator for a resurgence of both. I argue that nihilism isn’t an inherent negative despite the reputation it carries. Unfortunately, I have to start with the negative as it is generally the negative which births nihilism in the first place.

Nihilism is a recurring and pervasive theme in the millennial generation. When the layers peel back, it’s easy to see how this happened. We were born on the mountain of Apocrypha with nowhere to turn. We manifested in the period between Boomer idealism and the total implosion of ‘traditional’ Amerikan ideology. Our elders taught us that the only thing we should want out of life is to get married, have children, go to college, and get a desk job. Life conditioned us to believe that our worth is directly tied to our income. We grew up thinking that we could do and achieve anything as long as we realized a dystopian dream of the perfect little citizen.

Fast forward now that we’re all in our 30’s. Only a handful of us is successful with families. Most of us divorced from our spouses at least once, if we make it to marriage at all. Most of us, who didn’t sell our souls to Uncle Sam, who had gotten college degrees are now up to our necks in debt which we will never be able to repay. Those who pursued labor jobs struggle to make ends meet because the average salary of the most commonplace millennial jobs is insufficient to live comfortably. Most of us realized we inherited the trauma of our parents and their parents and, as a result, are terrified of having children who will inherit our trauma in turn. Mental health is a privilege, even though those in the direst need of mental health come from underprivileged backgrounds. The list goes on. Indeed, there are positives of the millennial generation, but those exposed to the negative see little else. David Bowie and Jimi Hendrix give way to Cannibal Corpse, SlipKnoT, Dying Fetus, and a multitude of other extreme genres which were unheard of before the millennial generation.

Now, we can turn our analysis towards the ironic positives of nihilism. Nihilism serves as a powerful panacea to the torment of daily existence. When an individual recognizes that nothing in the universe matters and holds zero intrinsic value, suddenly, the suffering ceases to be consequential. The pain doesn’t matter. What are emotions but a complex chemical reaction engineered to elicit a specific response from our fleshy meat suits? Our mistakes don’t matter. In the infinite expanse of time, any mistakes we make in this life eventually disperse like so much dust in the wind. The only thing that truly matters is the cognizance of our current existence and the experience we glean from it at the moment. For instance, why do I write these essays which nobody bothers reading anyway? Well, why not. Whether I write them or don’t write them, in the end, holds no intrinsic value. Consequently, to write the essay is equally valid as abstaining from writing.

To be extant is the only accurate declaration we can make. Thus every stimulus we feel, every sight we take in, every smell we experience, if it’s all equally worthless, then by extension, it all holds equal value. Feel nothing if you so choose. That nothing still requires a something to stand in negation to it. Thus your exalted nothing in effect becomes something and back to nothing again [for a more exhaustive explanation of this principle, I recommend Hegel’s admittedly dense read ‘Science of Logic’].

Nihilism does not have to be destructive. I argue that reckless destruction underutilizes the power of nihilism. If we are all imprisoned in this unforgiving reality, why not make the experience less painful for each other. To induce pain upon others means that the individual has placed value in control and, by extension, ceases to be a nihilist. To completely erase the pain from existence is infinitely more nihilist in the act of devaluing something considered critical to life. Of course, the pain never ceases, but this shouldn’t bother the true nihilist. If the nihilist doesn’t matter, then why not devote your life towards devaluing that which attempts to rob agency from others? It can be a lonely and thankless road, which makes it just as good as any road. Nihilism is an expression of existentialism which is the exaltation that the only objective truth that manifests is your subjective reality. If we should destroy, we should destroy the authoritarian act of robbing another of their agency.

Or maybe it doesn’t matter in the end, and the nihilist can exist in their bubble and waste away. Such is your choice in the end.

“Will you perish like a dog, or will you fight?”

Ave Satanas

[brightlotusmoon]

Hello! List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the ask box for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! Learn to know your mutual and followers! :3 (don't need to do it if you don't want to)

1. Neurotransmitters working correctly. I can't make my own so I use store bought, it's fine.

2. Cats. My cats. All cats. Kittens. I need a box of kittens, stat.

3. Fanfiction. Ninja Turtles fanfiction. Mikey fanfiction. Mikey angst fanfiction that gives him ADHD and psychic empathy and real emotional intelligence with epic wisdom. I've been doing this for thirty years don't make me stop now, it's how I cope. I love my sunshine child.

4. Chocolate. Preferably just plain milk or dark. Do you have any?

5. Being loved and loving in return. Hugs, give me hugs. It's dopamine, I crave it. Yes, I'm one of those autistics who loves hugs, big tight hugs that can soothe my ADHD crow brain because I get to focus on the shiny that is you rather than the shiny that is oh shit is that the depression shadow monster lurking back there.

-

I don't know who to tag but they're probably other people in the TMNT fandom. I dunno.

This fandom makes me happy. It's not toxic like some people assume, it never was, not in the thirty years I've been involved. It just occasionally has some folks who get brought in by newer iterations who start bullying thus spreading toxicity a little, usually over headcanons where the characters represent marginalized identities, which doesn't make any sense because these characters aren't even human and are animal based mutants specifically turtles which let's face it will do all sorts of bizarre things and don't need to be compared to humans who naturally fuck up each other just because someone doesn't look or behave certain ways.

I prefer corvids. And felines. And vulpines. My first real online fanfic OC* was a mutated calico cat human with my own disabilities and orientations and I made her into Mikey's best friend and then surprise lover and then surprise polyamory, because my writerbrain is Like That a lot.

I have a new OC who is a fennec fox humanoid mutant again same hat as the other and I wish I could eat strawberries all day and bounce around and nibble a person's hand to show I love them. I nibble my own hand when I'm anxious, but I'm autistic ADHD and that's stimming and it's my hand though. Oh, and a human OC, same hat, for another AU. Which reminds me that AU fics are Alternate Universe headcanons and not canon thus why the heckity hells do people threaten each other anyway, it's fantasy and we don't own it, we just play pretend and share it with each other in the hopes that we're not alone in wanting to commiserate all these nifty ideas and theories and squee when we connect and curl up when we get scolded; and the very fact that we get threatened because we have shared fiction ideas that will never work out in the real world is a sad fact I still can't wrap my head around, you would think after my literal twenty years on internet platforms I would understand everything but nah. Even the various official creators and different creators coming from fandom into franchise had the same thoughts and I remember the conversations where they said how confused they were too at fans trying to hurt each other, nobody took it so seriously. So I guess what makes me happy is seeing fans open up to each other, make creative content that resonates, rising above bullying that comes from the bullies' own fear and revulsion and hatred and conflation of ideas that shouldn't be the same but they're probably sheltered and naive anyway so I don't hate back, I was sheltered too and I'm still naive. And it's funny and weird how I easily lose working memory yet random long term storage memories keep surfacing. What makes me happy is that I still have a whole mind, full of stuff, brain all wrinkly with knowledge which makes me think of Jason from The Good Place talking about how smooth brains don't have much knowledge or information, and there goes my crow brain again, I really think I want to nickname ADHD and change it to Cognitive Attentive Tempo Syndrome, I have CATS in my brain, my brain is a Kinetic Cognitive Style room full of cats and there's toys everywhere.

I'm happy my disabled body is still standing and moving after forty years since my birth at 26 weeks back when nobody knew anything, and in a couple of months it'll be 41, and there will be even more information and education and I want to be a test subject, an example, of living fairly well past the life expectancy that they used to assume for cerebral palsy and for autism and for ADHD all separate so imagine it all at once, and the neoteny that comes with each, plus now EDS, and wow I'm giving myself so much serotonin just thinking all this, because there's also major depressive disorder that hell might be cyclothymia I dunno I'll talk to my doctors, and then there's temporal lobe epilepsy that a lot of people just die from at all ages, and I've become such an advocate and activist and alive and forever pro choice and autonomy, and my parents still adore the hell out of each other and me, and I'm teaching them through my advocacy just as they taught me, and I don't think I could ever do public speaking but maybe in a nursing college, a disability advocate speaker? Because there is always everything to learn and relearn and discover and uncover and it's important to be able to change our minds and our thinking and our habits and our coping strategies and our understanding of how things work because nothing is static everything progresses, even cerebral palsy which is surprisingly a thing that while static and progressive still leads to changing neurobiological and neuromuscular updates via neuroplasticity, my physical therapist calls me unique among all his patients, a Variable when there shouldn't be, and it makes me happy that we are discovering things about my neuropsychology and musculoskeletal system that nobody ever considered, and I want to be around to see medical science make all sorts of conclusions that could help others like me.

What makes me happy is learning, connecting, passing on knowledge, being cautiously optimistic in this nihilistic sense of how everything matters in the nothingness where nothing matters intrinsically but each small thing matters on the surface, extrinsic, how it is seen and felt and considered. People forget what existential nihilism supposed to mean. I may not matter in the totality, but I matter in the little bits that count for others like me, and that makes me happy.

[sagebodisattva]

Epistemological Nihilism

So, next up on our explorative journey through the many forms of nihilism, we encounter epistemological nihilism. What is epistemological nihilism?

Epistemological nihilism is a form of skepticism in which all knowledge is accepted as possibly untrue or unable to be known.

And right away, you can be sure that this form of nihilism, perhaps more then any other, will make people agitated and uncomfortable. Why? Because people like certainty. People don't like the idea of not having their feet planted firmly on the ground. It helps solidify and highlight people's attachments to the known. It's a grounding stake, and a security blanket. A pacifier to help the desperate self sooth in the face of unfathomable universal mystery. It's the urge to seek the feeling of being in control, and to wield power and command by way of authoritative disambiguation, and dogmatic absolutism. This is what happens when knowledge becomes used and abused as a paraphernalia for the indulgences of certainty, safety and security.

Well, sorry Charlie. All the knowledge in the entire world compiled together into one great big expansive eclectic collection of complex intellectual understanding, is all still but a small rickety raft floating adrift, alone in the deep vast ocean of the great unknown, which is even further overshadowed by the profound and ineffable unknowable. Just as long as we keep in mind that any and all knowledge acquired only applies to the context of the little raft in the mighty sea, even, of which, is subject to constant debate, change, and perceptual reframing; then we are being more intellectually honest with ourselves. And even if there are certain truths established that could be called universal, or that have 100% consensus among all sentient life, this too is still only confined to the parameters of the little raft.

And this is why even true knowledge is untrue, because it is only true knowledge relative to the confines of a framework; even if such framework is the only framework that one has a frame of reference in, it is still only a framework nonetheless; and hence, the true knowledge is only applicable to these borders.

And this is also why even true knowledge cannot rightfully be said to be really known to be ultimately true, for one cannot say such for certain until they have made an assessment from the widest frame of reference possible, which may not even be reachable from the an individual perspective.

And also, let us not forget that, on top of all of this, and this is the sweet kicker, even the seemingly certain conclusion of uncertainty is also uncertain.

“But why?! That can't be. We already know everything there is to know about what we are and where we came from! Of course we can be certain!”

Really? C'mon now man. Really? You are looking at phenomenal content through the lens of externalizing colored glasses, and you actually think you stand some kind of chance at coming to some finalized conclusion based on your efforts of sifting through layers of appearances? All of this came from nothing; and you think you know something? This entire universe is just a grain of sand on a vast beach, and you think you have some kind of grasp of what's going on here? Well, the first thing you must come to understand, in order to understand that you really don't understand very much of anything; you are not dealing with things as they really are, but are only dealing with an appearances of things.

“How's that?”

I said, you are not dealing with things as they really are, but are really only dealing with an appearance of things. This is the minimum of what you can say you know with your acquired knowledge, if you have treated knowledge properly and examined the knowledge and the implications of the knowledge from all angles, including metaphysically. Obviously, things are not quite as they appear on the surface. If the insights of material science has shown us anything, it has shown us this. Materials are really just an assemblage of subatomic particles, which, in turn, are really just an assemblage of energy, which, in turn, is really just an assemblage of nothingness. So what knowledge to do you have, beyond a narrow sliver of information that just deals with the surface appearance?

The very senses, what we use to try to comprehend and organize our knowledge, don't even covey an accurate representation of what is actually there. What you supposedly “see”, only becomes a visual object by way of an eyeball converting energetic configurations into an apparent spatial manifestation. Same goes with what you hear, smell, taste, and touch. What you end up with, is merely an appearance of something that has much deeper hidden properties; the bottom, of which, we have not yet fully explored to understand; and yet you believe you are certain about something that is being brought to your attention via the perceptual senses? To believe as such is called naive realism. But don't misconstrue and jump to the conclusion that any of these statements are meaning to say that there is a complete impossibility of any knowledge; that isn't the point being emphasized here, but, rather, that knowledge is possible, but it is always relative, subjective, and contextual. And why is that? Well, let's look into it.

First, why relative? Well, if there would be anything considered an absolute aspect, then obviously it must be an aspect that differs from a relative aspect. If an absolute aspect isn't different then a relative aspect, then it is the same as a relative aspect, and hence relative. But if an absolute aspect is different from a relative aspect, then the absolute aspect must also be relative, for, any aspects that are different must be different in contrast to something else, and to be considered "different", means that the said aspect has to be relative to something. So there's no way around relativity. Simply put, a fact is only a fact relative to a context. And since a context has borders, anything absolute within those borders has no applicability outside the borders. And even if you wanna try and break down those borders and say they don't exist and that absolute aspects exist in infinity, you are gonna run into similar problems, for then where is infinity located? Anything that has no location surely cannot exist as we commonly know and define objectified existence. Facts surely have to have a solid context to be recognized, and to say that facts are absolute, yet have no location, which would seem to be a fundamental requirement for an object to exist, is still indicative of facts and absolutism being relative to infinity, despite its borderless configuration. But even if you chalk that up to an intentional oversight, wherein is this infinity even being recognized as an item of consideration? Ah yes. It is infinity relative to a subject. Which brings us to the second factor to look into: subjectivity.

Why subjective? Well, knowledge is only knowledge as it pertains to a subject, by both meanings of the word subject. By means of both the specific topic, and to the one who is considering the topic of knowledge. Indeed, knowledge cannot even have any meaningful existence without an existential agency to provide a foundation of such. And any such various agencies are full of their own unique perspectives regarding the information, with different degrees of perception and reasoning, which will vary from person to person, culture to culture, psychology to psychology, and position to position. And even when considering facts that subjects agree are facts, opinions and feelings about the implications of the facts can vary. Because subject A is depressed and pessimistic, he concludes that the fact that there is famine and poverty in the world means humanity should just set off a nuclear bomb and put an end to the misery, whereas be used subject B is happy and optimistic, he concludes that the fact that there is famine and poverty in the world means humanity needs to take active steps towards treating and curing these negative states. Who is right and who is wrong? Or are they both right, or both wrong? It depends on who you ask. This is the nature of subjectivity. A fact alone, which cannot be recognized without a subject, does not carry any inherent prescript concerning its handling, that is not also based in subjectivity. Even absolute laws or universal truths, if such a thing were even possible, are only so relative to a subject. So there's no way around subjectivity either. And lastly, of course, all knowledge is contextual.

So why contextual? Well, this is closely related to relativity and subjectivity, in that knowledge, or facts, or laws, or anything else, cannot be featured as such unless they have some kind of framework to sustain them. And just by being contextualized, they are limited to the settings of such contextualizations. So, this being the case, knowledge, at best, is an island. It is not all encompassing. It's utility is facilitated existentially, and not otherwise. And we can use knowledge existentially for communication, creativity and exploration, but there's no reason to try and seek certainty, unless our goals are really to try and pin down reality and control it. To try and pour concrete over an abstract medium. And I know why many of you want to do this, for we see a lot of negativity in our reality and often our impulses motivate us to try and fix it, or clean it up, but understand that messes and broken aspects are originally caused by this very same impulse and motivation: The desire to attach. The desire to attach. The desire to attach. The insatiable craving to want to control circumstances, to be either grasped at and sustained, or to be pushed away and avoided. And this is the primary reason people want certainty. Not really so much because they want knowledge, but because certainty deludes one into thinking they can control circumstances to fulfill their desires. But that's all it is, a delusion.

In all honesty you don't really know jack shit. You cannot be certain of anything. I know this is maddening. I know this is outrageous to the sensibilities of the average modern thinking mind, but it's the raw reality. Yet, this nagging intellectual irritant doesn't necessarily have to be as such. Again, this relates to the default conditioning of the persona, which fosters the tendency to seek familiarity, comfort and stability, aka attachments, which really only weaken and disempower us, for all of this really only fortifies the borders, which, in turn, crystallizes the margins into the towering walls of a self imposed prison. Is this where we really want to be? In the adventure of life, is not our eternal quest to explore, question and observe? And are these activities not the whole point of the trip?

We've often heard it said before, that life is a journey and not a destination, and that the spiritual path is the path itself, and not a matter of reaching anywhere. So the question then becomes: why are you not ok with this? What are your priorities and where did these priorities originate from? Are these inclinations your own, or were they just instilled in you by other people who wanted to shape and mold you to their own instilled standards? If you are here to make the most out of your existential exploration, then stop looking for outside approval, and stop looking externally for power and authority. You are not going to find existential truth in the libraries or in the hierarchies. You don't have to feel the need to emulate and identify with an archetype that you think reflects your self image. You will have not accomplished anything by finding some knowledge, or scripture, or philosophical ideology, and then preaching it atop a soap box, wagging your finger at the uninformed, using guilt as a weapon of conformity.

Take it easy, relax. Let go of the need to bend others to a purpose. Whenever we see an ideologue or a theologian who is adamantly imploring us to accept some kind of knowledge or world narrative as an irrefutable truth, it is always more indicative of a troubled psychology, then of a sound philosophy. You seem to be aware of an experience of phenomena. Beyond that, it's all narrative; of which, is then called knowledge.

[theliterateape]

A Case for Optimism (sans Rose-Colored Glasses)

by Don Hall

David writes:

"It’s all so horrifying and I’m flirting with extreme nihilism at best.

I'm living at the intersection of Rage and Sadness. And it's exhausting. Nihilism seems the only traffic light out of this. Although, there is Fear. Because Fear is no longer for the weak... it seems best used by the sensible. Perhaps this is nihilistic, but fear is all we have left."

Fear was never about weakness. Fear is a rational response to dangerous things. Fear, like anger, is an emotional tool rather than perpetual state of being. Nihilism (and its second cousin Pessimism) is considered by many to be the course of rational thought but it isn't. Skepticism is rational. Nihilism is the sole armor of the irrational; it is the purview of the foolish.

Loosely defined, nihilism is the belief that society and, consequently, life is without purpose or meaning. Pessimism is likewise known to be a lack of hope for the future.

Optimism is a confidence in the positive outcomes of tomorrow.

A Nihilist, a Pessimist, and an Optimist are walking along a sidewalk. They come upon a huge pile of shit. I mean, huge. Like, a wheelbarrow dump of shit right in the middle of the path.

The Nihilist looks at the shit, shrugs, and walks right through it. "Doesn't matter anyway. Life is already shit so who cares?"

The Pessimist sits down. "There'll only be more shit ahead. What's the point?"

The Optimist, always prepared for whatever may come his way, pulls out a shovel and moves the shit in piles around various trees. "These trees needed some fertilizer anyway."

"For mine I am an optimist by nature. My reading of history is that the world has always stepped back from the edge of disaster. Against all odds, here we are, alive and kicking." — Rabbi Laibl Wolf

Optimism isn’t merely hope. It isn’t happiness or a cheery disposition.

Optimism is an act of resilience against the brutal harshness of living the existential crisis.

As optimism is a breeze when things are going your way, despair is the path of least resistance when things turn to dire. Seeing through the mist at a better future takes effort and commitment like a solid marriage or a massive novel you’ve committed to writing. It’s a project to be managed not a feeling to languish within.

The Nihilist is a reactionary. Things not going his way? He gives up, throws his arms in the air, and declares that it doesn't matter anyway. Often, nihilism is just an excuse to behave like an anti-social cunt.

The Pessimist is lazy. Too focused on his unmet expectations to look into the past to provide context for the present and see how that may affect the future. He lacks imagination.

The Optimist is the only true realist. Confronted with a horror of a present, he looks at the past to see how anyone survived previous horrors, takes instruction and inspiration from those examples, comes up with a game plan and moves forward toward a future of which he'd like to be a part.

One cannot truly call himself an optimist who refuses to see the horror. Pretending that people are essentially kind and generous is stuffing the ostrich head in the sand. People are apes with higher brain functions and follow the rules of the jungle. Tribalism, essentialism, war for resources, the history of brutality of all humanity goes far beyond the past 200 years. Taken in whole, we aren’t a very enlightened and forgiving species.

Further, optimism is an individual choice. It’s not something that can be enforced but it is something that can be inspired. The American Experiment, despite its many missteps and flaws, is grounded in a belief that humans can govern themselves justly and effectively. Given the larger picture, belief in democracy is only slightly more delusional than the guy playing slots so he can pay his rent. The odds are astronomically against success and yet the choice to persevere is made.

And so we look hard at the present moment in time.

Republicans vie to elevate the dimmest bulbs in the country to office, pledging loyalty to a corrupt former president who actively sought to overturn an election he lost. In turn, Democrats vie to elevate those who live in fantasy world where things like high gas prices or violent crime aren’t real problems while mystical structural forces and improper language use are keeping Americans in a permanent state of oppression.

There are 393 million guns in America and mass shootings that occur like episodic television. Half the country wants to ban abortions; the other half wants to have them available until the first breath is taken. The economy is in turmoil, anxiety disorders and suicides are at an all-time high. It's getting really effing hot and we aren't really doing much except for that whole river in Egypt thing.

The Nihilist says "Fuck it. The whole thing is meaningless."

The Pessimist says "Figures. Nothing we can do anyway."

The Optimistic says "OK. Humanity has been here in many ways before. Americans have been at least this polarized in the past. The fight for so many of the civil rights recently rolled back is what forged whole movements. Humans are both awful, horrible, violent pieces of greedy, self-interested shit and the generous creators of an enduring future filled with kindness and love. Only the weak give up, only the lazy refuse to imagine better, so help me find my shovel. I have trees to fertilize."

[mindfulwrath]

401(k)

I wrote a real sad nearly-Jeremwood fic for NO REASON so here’s my apology for that. Pure fluff with some existential angst.

Words: 1,046 Warnings: None AO3

“Do you think—” Jeremy begins, and stops.

“Nope,” says Ryan. Jeremy whacks him in the side with an elbow and he winces.

“I wasn’t done.”

“So don’t stop in the middle of your sentences. I’m a busy guy.”

He kicks his feet, out off the edge of the building. The ground is about a thousand feet away. He takes a sip of his diet coke with the side of his mouth, watching the sun as it sets over Chiliad.

“You got nothing to do and neither do I,” says Jeremy. “At least until Gavin gets here.”

Ryan shrugs. “Eh,” he says, and that’s it.

“Like I was saying,” Jeremy says. “Do you think someday we’ll get outta this business? Y’know, like, retire from a life of crime and all.”

“Sure.”

“Wait—really? Do you have, like, plans? An exit strategy?”

“Yeah, a body bag,” Ryan says, and chuckles.

Scowling, Jeremy says, “That’s not funny.”

“Nah, I think it is. Gallows humor? C’mooon, positive nilih...nile—nih. Eh.”

“Nihilism?”

“That! Nili—God dammit, my mouth!” He laughs, frustrated.

“I guess, but ... gah, I dunno,” says Jeremy. He leans back on his hands and kicks his heels against the concrete. “I don’t like that, man. It’s depressing.”

“Only if you think of it like ugh nothing matters, why do anything,” says Ryan. “It’s more like, eyyy, nothing matters, I can do whatever I want!” 

He drains the last of his coke, tipping his head way back. The sunset paints him rose-gold. It’s a good look for him, even with the blood and gunpowder.

“Well ... yeah, I mean, that’s a thing,” says Jeremy. “But, like, there’s nothing else you’d rather be doing? Or like, you don’t wanna ... get old, or anything? Retire?”

Ryan scrunches up his face, thinking about it.

“Ehhhh, seems like kind of a hassle,” he says. He crushes the coke can and drops it off the side of the building.

“That’s gonna—”

“Sure is!”

The wind blowing up the side of the building flings the can back up, all the way up onto the helipad. Ryan chuckles, watching it fly over.

“Hey, you think if you dropped a full one, it could kill somebody when it landed?” he asks.

“Please, please don’t try that right now,” Jeremy says. “Please. Seriously, dude, the last thing we need is more cops coming after us.”

“Hey, what, we already barricaded the door!” He cocks a thumb back at the roof access. It’s very thoroughly blocked.

“Yeah, and if you bust somebody’s head open with a soda, they’re gonna start shooting from the ground!”

“Whatever, I only had one anyways. Maybe next time.”

Jeremy rolls his eyes and leans back on his hands. Sirens wail far off. The sun sinks behind Chiliad. The sky is cloudless, grading from orange to purple. The first stars are winking out overhead.

“If you did retire,” Jeremy says at last. “What would you do?”

Ryan shrugs. “Never really thought about it. Uhhhhh. I don’t know. What would you do?”

He scratches his beard, wrinkling his nose. “I was thinking, like, I’d write a book or something.”

“Yeah? You got a book in you?”

“After all the shit we’ve been through, I could be the next Tom Clancy, dude.”

“Who the fuck is Tom Clancy?”

“The Splinter Cell guy.”

“Ohhhhhh, I gotcha. Real prolif...prolific guy.”

“Yeah,” he says, shrugging. “I dunno, it’s just a thing I think about sometimes. I’m probably not gonna get to do it, anyways. Body bags, y’know.”

“If you wait,” says Ryan. “If you start writing now, maybe you can squeeze on out before you get bipped.”

“No, no,” he sighs. “Then it’d just be all tragic when I died halfway through writing one.”

“It’s gonna be tragic when you die no matter what. So fuck it, write.”

Jeremy fakes a smile and nudges him again. Ryan nudges him back. It’s getting dark around them, the city lighting up below. Gavin’s so late with the extraction chopper, Jeremy’s starting to wonder if he just forgot about them.

“You got any uhhhh ... samples?” says Ryan.

“Any what?”

“Samples. Of your writing,” says Ryan. “I kinda wanna read ‘em, y’know.”

“Oh,” says Jeremy, blushing. “I mean, like, not on me.”

“Ah, excuses,” said Ryan.

“What, you want me to narrate you some shit?”

“Yeah!”

“And then Jeremy pushed Ryan off the building, just to see if he’d kill anybody when he hit the ground,” Jeremy drawls. Ryan laughs.

“See, I’d throw you off, but you’d just fly back up like the coke can,” he says. “Because you’re short.”

“Hey, fuck you.”

“Fuck you! You’re the one who started it!”

“I didn’t start anything!”

“I’m about to start somethin’.”

“Oh, yeah? You wanna piece of this?”

“You bet I do. I’ll take you out any day, short-stack.”

Jeremy grabs him by the lapel and kisses him. Ryan squeaks and goes rigid. His lips are cold and thin and taste like diet coke, his stubble tugging on Jeremy’s beard like velcro. Jeremy shoves him back again, terrified he’s crossed a line, terrified he’s just thrown everything away.

“Uh?” says Ryan, about an octave higher than usual.

“Well, we’re both gonna die, so why the fuck not, right?” says Jeremy, defensive.

“O...okay?” Ryan guesses. “That’s ... fair? Sure?”

The silence that falls is agonizing.

“Uh,” says Jeremy. “S...sorry.”

“Mmmmmno,” says Ryan.

“What?”

“No,” he repeats, and that’s it.

While Jeremy’s floundering for what the hell he’s supposed to say to that, Ryan takes his face in both hands and kisses him again. This time it’s soft, and sweet, and warm. Jeremy braces himself with one hand, just so he won’t tumble over the edge of the building from the way his head is spinning. Ryan pulls back, and kisses his nose, and his forehead.

“Okay,” Jeremy says, glowing. “Yeah, I’m okay with this.”

“Might as well,” says Ryan.

“It’s that uh ... optimistic nihilism, right?”

“Yeah! Optimistic nili—god fucking dammit!”

Jeremy laughs, and in the distance there’s the sound of helicopter blades.

“It’s okay,” he says. “I like your dumb mouth.”

“How dare you call my mouth dumb,” says Ryan, pouting.

Jeremy sneaks in one last kiss just before Gavin comes up around back of the building with a cargobob.

[tinymixtapes]

Feature: Screen Week: Favorite 30 Films of 2016

Just as it’s difficult to pinpoint what truly defined 2016 overall, the same goes for film. In 2013, as we pointed out, shit got real. So, one year later, we escaped. Thus, the social outsider grew. And the social outsider didn’t go away. Shit got real again, but this time, perceptions in reality clashed with another. Citizens escaped into validating takes and talking points. Divisions widened. Murderers, as ever, came with smiles. The social outsider’s definition became elastic. Depending on where you stood, you may have been that social outsider and were judged harshly for it. All the while, tests getting put out for agility, strategy, and luck. If you survived them, if you made the right moves, you were powerful enough to survive anything. And if there’s a common thread through 2016, particularly our own list of 30 films, it’s just that: survival. Unless you’re in a cultural elitist bubble like myself, cinema must be pretty boring. Very few of the films on our list were met with dump trucks full of cash, but let their inclusion serve as a reminder that the mainstream does reward intelligence. There’s a lot of good shit on our own screens at home. People want something different — they’re just not required to get it themselves. So it goes. Luckily, some studios continue to be as reliable as record labels — the A24s and Drafthouses offered dazzling singular experiences that didn’t waste their meager budgets. Amazon could offer you auteurs after you order kitty litter and Ecto Cooler. Even as budgets shrank, the best films of the year knew how to play, often in ways that were flat-out absurd. Be it a nudist awakening and a set of teeth in Toni Erdmann or delusions of an introvert’s lost life scored by farts in Swiss Army Man, the worlds presented were just as unfair as our own. But they were also, in a way, strangely optimistic in how to deal. As though lit up by what was at stake, filmmakers stopped taking it for granted, and the reliable auteurs — Villeneuve, Verhoeven, Refn — brought their A-game. As the mainstream order remained largely conservative and derivative, chaos and confusion prospered. The old guard fought the new wave. In this context, the world was unarguably better for it. One film that didn’t make the cut, Jake Paltrow and Noah Baumbach’s ode De Palma, reminds viewers how vastly different cinema has become in the latter half of its century-long existence. It takes an outsider, for sure, but we learned this year that the approach of the social outsider doesn’t need to be one of nihilism and terror. As you’ll see in our top 5, the notion that the marginalized can prosper, even in the smallest of triumphs, took our collective breath away. Respect was dealt and earned. Hell, even if your nerdy ass never dug jocks, Everybody Wants Some!! made it possible for at least two hours. Women of the year, through different centuries and some of the nasty persuasion, grabbed back. Companionship was found in the most bizarre and wonderful ways. Even if our personal or political narratives didn’t succeed the same way, we could still be fired up; we know plenty of radical-leaning people inspired by something as half-baked as Rogue One. We’ll take what we can get. –Snacks Kyburz --- 30 Paterson Dir. Jim Jarmusch [Amazon Studios] In Jim Jarmusch’s film Paterson, a man named Paterson who drives buses in the city of Paterson, NJ, writes poetry in his spare time and is obliquely inspired by the book-length poem by William Carlos Williams called Paterson. This Patersounds like a very bad Pateridea. At least it might to those unfamiliar with William Carlos Williams’s poem: despite being inspired by Ulysses and Pound’s Cantos, his ode to Paterson, NJ is accessible, ordinary, and nearly prosaic save some lingering moments of illuminated mundanity. Jarmusch’s film, the same. Paterson captures the work of creating poetry, work that is — for many — markedly unpoetic. Adam Driver’s Paterson (his most subtle performance — not like there’s competition) is content, not troubled; we see him observing his own blue-collar work routines and tranquil family life with his affectionate wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), who flits from hobby to hobby, and his dog Marvin (Nellie), who he walks every evening as an excuse to secretly (his wife knows, and he knows she knows) have one beer alone at his neighborhood bar. As a sort of trantricly muted climax, Marvin eats Paterson’s only copy of his work. Then, he starts writing again. The most famous line from Williams’s Paterson is, “No ideas but in things.” Jarmusch’s film is full of such concreteness, using a literal, unadorned filmic language. Presently, this straightforwardness seemed important. Paterson kept going, without a struggle. –Benjamin Pearson --- 29 The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers Dir. Ben Rivers [Artangel] Wherein UK multimedia artist Ben Rivers delivered another obtuse, slow-motion triptych even more expansive and hypnotic than his last obtuse, slow-motion triptych (the 2014 Ben Russell collab A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness). This time, Rivers paid tribute to a vision of Morocco that has historically resided mostly in the mind’s eye of legendary polymath/(relatively) benign colonialist Paul Bowles, even going so far as to dedicate one third of the film to a freewheeling update of the classic Bowles story “A Distant Episode.” Hazy and heavy-loping, it was the sort of film in which one could easily get fully lost, a time-bending jeep ride through unfamiliar terrain. In other words, it was trippy as fuck, but leave the hallucinogens in your mom’s underwear drawer: Rivers had you covered sans controlled substances and managed as much with nary a stock “psychedelic” trope in sight. –Dustin Krcatovich --- 28 The Pearl Button Dir. Patricio Guzmán [Atacama] Since the beginning of the modern state, the relationship between politics and metaphysics has become increasingly contentious. Unanswerable questions are too often seen as suspect. Suspects, meanwhile, are too often seen as guilty. In the end, suspect questions — and people — are silenced, vanished. Virtually every tyranny of the 20th century bore witness to this reality. For example, in 1970, Chileans elected a man who would dare to question the evil of economic imperialism. In the United States, economists and analysts would then ask, “But how, now, might we develop Chile into a malleable state?” The unspeakably painful answer would become the subject of nearly all of Patricio Guzmán’s astounding films. Following Nostalgia for the Light, The Pearl Button continues to call out, like Job, the question of pain — and of reconciliation — into the seemingly infinite. On the one hand, there is no answer. On the other, it is not at all infinite. Along the world’s longest coastline, a remnant was discovered — a button. From a remnant unravelled the story of a people. The present spoke to the past, and the past to the present. In so much space, the disappeared reappeared. Beyond the stripped-down facts of the modern state’s brutality is a glimmer of hope in the water. A question rediscovered. –Max Power --- 27 Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World Dir. Werner Herzog [Magnolia] “Because the internet” is a sort of trembling, isn’t it? We often hide our existential overwhelm about infinite screen permutations of information and mis-information (which now reveals, or informs on, itself with a nihilistic shrug). We dismiss and diminish with pithy appraisals, momentarily reducing the vast phenomenon into a sort of eye-roll-inducing gimmick. With characteristic wanderlust, Herzog considered our increasingly complex, module-based existence with a refreshing disregard for the mundaneness of adaptive ambivalence. Whether a chapter explored people online trying to cure cancer or traumatizing a family with vicious trolling, Lo and Behold was neither damning nor cold nor distant, as the director’s work is often mischaracterized. With his unmatched mix of stoicism and honest, unforced emotional asides, things were allowed to happen outside of the Q&A rhythm, be they awkward or endearing (or both). It’s sprawlingness may’ve been intimidating, but it was a film for grappling, not elucidating, and Herzog’s instincts are still sharp enough for a hearty wander. The ubiquitousness of the internet casts a vast shadow over our dismissive objectification of it, and Lo proved a novel place to reckon with this. –Willcoma --- 26 The Alchemist Cookbook Dir. Joel Potrykus [Oscilloscope Laboratories] A lesson from 2016: Don’t try to predict Michigan (my adopted state). Director Joel Potrykus blew us away with 2014’s Buzzard, a film with such a perfectly idiosyncratic kind of dirtbag comedic sensibility, I thought that I had the grimy genre that Michigander Potrykus had carved out for himself pegged. Then, this year, The Alchemist Cookbook came out: a refined piece of cult horror that observed trailer-dwelling Sean’s (Ty Hickson) isolation (there’s also a cat and one other character) in the Michigan woods as he tries to make gold out of batteries and shit. This film should not really exist (neither should Anti-Birth, the other unclassifiable film set — but not, like this one, also filmed — in Michigan this year). Played for both realism and humor are the Michigan touches we saw in Buzzard — Doritos and pop — but also a pivotal reference to Sleepaway Camp I think and the conjuring of Satan. Despite that thematic matter, though, the look nearly convinced me I was watching Michael Haneke’s follow-up to Caché. Was it a parable about how entrenched American materialism’s tentacles are on our alt-iest of citizens? A dismantling of myths of rugged self-sufficiency? Just terrifying horror done weird? Even Nate Silver doesn’t know, but I heard that he predicts with overwhelming odds that Potrykus will continue to meet our expectation to be defied. –Benjamin Pearson --- 25 Tickled Dir. David Farrier & Dylan Reeve [A Ticklish Tale] Tickled was not an exposé on any sort of large-scale conspiracy. Cheese pizza and the supernatural were not involved. Instead, Tickled revealed a more common form of abuse, what Joe South might have called “The Games People Play.” One man, not the Illuminati, playing games, small games, but big enough to make life difficult for its participants, their innocence exploited, not for profit, not for kink, but for small-scale power, for psychological kicks. It took very little to cause damage. Although it was hard not to laugh, it was torture — harassment, abuse, extortion, tickling — not at the inquisition level, but at the domestic level, behind closed doors and blinds; domestic terror, green alert. Which got us thinking: if the strange yet seemingly innocent world of competitive tickling was not what it seems, what else is not what it seems? What’s actually going down at that skeet competition? Or in the basement of that pizza shop? At that quilt festival? And what about that chili cookoff down in Terlingua? –Weaver --- 24 Knight of Cups Dir. Terrence Malick [Broad Green] Terrence Malick has now released as many films in the past five years as he did in the previous forty, and our relationship with the enigmatic director has shifted. His motifs, often inscrutable but instantly recognizable, are now a yearly occurrence, as present as the litany of car and phone commercials aping his style. With this in mind, Knight of Cups, already a semi-autobiographical piece, comments on itself and its creator. As Christian Bale’s Rick stumbles half-dazed through the beauty and luxury of Los Angeles, of his partners, of pensive moments, the viewer wonders how their version of the protagonist’s journey would be different. What would we feel in his life; could we possibly be so jaded? The tarot card chapter headings invoke fate, though the narration seems to be recalling, as if divining one’s own past. A dreamy state where direction is unclear and rhythm is everything. Malick’s world, and we’re deep into it. Are we being pummeled by navel gazing and gorgeous imagery, or are we boring toward the core of the artist’s vision? With time, we’ll see the shape of this stage in the oeuvre more clearly, but for now, Knight of Cups remains an exploratory work, rich with thoughtfulness and mystery. –Jake Marcks --- 23 Kubo and the Two Strings Dir. Travis Knight [Laika] When you get past Charlize Theron voicing a monkey, you stop acting like the dumb adult you are. When it comes to yearly animation strongholds, Zootopia and Moana made me experience wonderment through an adult lens. Kubo and the Two Strings made me feel like a child watching a memory maker in a special time and place, outside of myself. There is no suspension of belief needed when one-eyed Kubo plays his shamisen, making origami come to life in vivid storytelling. The magical world of Kubo is child logic. It’s pure imagination without the expected Pizza Planet easter egg or pop culture reference or Justin Timberlake dance number. Laika once again proves they are the humbled and inspired underdog. Kubo’s journey is at its core a child looking to be reunited with his family. The animation is so dreamlike and wavy that you feel closer to the action and emotion that Kubo experiences. Kubo may lose out to the mouse when it comes to the gold man, but this is the type of film that truly digs deeper into your heart and psyche. Oh, and Matthew McConaughey voice a beetle. Alright, alright, alright. –Emceegreg --- 22 A Bigger Splash Dir. Luca Guadagnino [Fox Searchlight] A quartet of brave, masterful performances anchored this sumptuous and tense portrait of ennui and rage among the beautiful people. Comparisons to Antonioni were inevitable, but we were also reminded of Paolo Sorrentino’s studies of aging, jealousy, and soulless debauchery. Unlike The Great Beauty and Youth, however, A Bigger Splash didn’t buckle under its pretensions, turn maudlin, or succumb to awkward fits of magical realism — it was also a hell of a lot more fun. Ralph Fiennes stole the show with his spastic Jagger-like dance moves and his leering, predatory gregariousness (the polar opposite of his other great supporting role this year in Hail, Caesar!) and Tilda Swinton perfectly balanced radiance and exhaustion, strength and dependence as a Bowie-esque superstar taking an extended sabbatical following vocal cord surgery. Guadagnino’s direction was smart and nuanced, shifting gears between fluid and jumpy, flashy and restrained, always holding just a little something back. The high wore off in the final act, however, as the real world — the world of death and consequences — finally encroached upon their charmed, cloistered idyll. And unlike the snakes and geckos that trespass upon their impossibly gorgeous Italian villa, those problems cannot be blithely discarded. An unexpectedly affecting and sometimes chilling love square, intelligent and unvarnished while remaining carnal and raw. Beauty has rarely been so ugly, and vice versa. –Christopher Bruno --- 21 Weiner Dir. Josh Kriegman & Elyse Steinberg [Sundance Selects] Despite the rubbernecking quality of this doc of unprecedented access (and it is undeniably a hoot in this regard), what really stunned about this film was how effortlessly engrossing it was as drama. The filmmakers and their subject seemed to be struggling for tone together, and the way that things spun out was palpably tragic, even as Huma’s gameness about the experiment falls away and her side of things becomes harder to know. Our protagonist was eminently watchable: an unpredictably malfunctioning blender of affability, braggadocio, soul-searchingness, hokey humor, and infectious urgency. His libido and the decision making around it was something, even in his open contrition, that remained a confounding mystery. In the end, as we saw him seeing us seeing him, his raw limo outburst felt like a “how’s this for an ending?” answer to that awareness. Having witnessed key moments in the breakup of his family and the disastrous end of his political career, Antony Weiner’s battle-torn narcissism was the last lingering filament of possible redemption. And watching it snap, we couldn’t help but sigh with him. –Willcoma [pagebreak] --- 20 Love & Friendship Dir. Whit Stillman [Amazon Studios] In Whit Stillman’s first film (1990’s Metropolitan), the chronicler of the American urban haute bourgeoisie directly mentioned Jane Austen in such a way to make it readily apparent how much influence the author would have on his career. The cherished British novelist was something of a throughline in the four films that preceded this one, and nearly two decades ago, Stillman expressed an abiding desire to adapt one of Austen’s lesser-known works. This year, we finally got to see what he’d do with source material from one of the most overdone authors in cinematic history. A lofty undertaking to be sure, what really floored us about Love & Friendship (adapted from an epistolary novella of Austen’s called Lady Susan) was its energetic humor, pacing, and irreverence, particularly on display in the gut-busting performance of Tom Bennett as a blithering suitor to both Kate Beckinsale and her daughter. Stillman’s directorial choices and Austen’s witty sensibilities regarding social mores dovetailed so seamlessly that the resulting film felt like neither a period piece nor an adaptation — it captured the joy and playfulness that are usually the very first things to go when production commences on one of the countless adaptations of her work. Who knew Austen could be so fun? –Paul Bower --- 19 The Neon Demon Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn [Amazon Studios] Only one luminous, musically-textured ode to Hollywood warmed my heart in 2016, and Gosling’s piano-acting was nowhere to be found. Call it a perfume commercial à la Argento, a Vogue issue edited by Bret Easton Ellis, whatever — The Neon Demon chomps hard at “fresh off the bus” apocrypha. Although not novel — Elle Fanning, bloodied and glittery like a Nihilisa Frank nightmare, seems doomed from the start — Refn’s candy-flipping slasher actually bothers to flesh out warnings spouted to all showbiz hopefuls. You’ve heard of models being vampiric, of fetishizing ghosts, of chewing up and spitting back out: it’s here, and it doesn’t hold back. Following the visually tasty nihilism of Only God Forgives, Refn only cranks the empathy a smidge. His objective here is sick glee; with its dedicated camp (he’s finally attempting the likeness of Andy Milligan/Paul Morrissey), it’s his funniest film in years. And when mortuary cosmetologist Jena Malone spits on a cadaver’s tongue during a passionate sex scene, I stood up and cheered. –Snacks Kyburz --- 18 Swiss Army Man Dir. Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert [A24] Swiss Army Man was easily misconstrued and dismissed as “that farting corpse movie with Harry Potter.” On the surface, yes there are lots of farts, and boners, and similar “low brow” type elements; however, they were all in service of painting a rich tapestry about finding companionship and revealing our intimate selves to each other. A touching story that straddles the line between the platonic and the romantic, between madness and inspiration, between the juvenile and the profound, the Daniels crafted a film about accepting oneself despite all of the things that make us feel weird or gross or alone. Powerful performances by Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe propelled this story of two souls finding each other in a sea of trouble and loneliness and rediscovering what it means to be human and to be loved. It was easy to neglect the film because of its absurd premise, but viewers who took the plunge were rewarded with an inspired look into the power of creativity, the nature of life, and the emancipating honesty that comes with true friendship. –Neurotic Monkey --- 17 High-Rise Dir. Ben Wheatley [HanWay] Brutalist council estate flats birthed punk rock and dystopian futurism in 1970s Britain, shaping a counterculture whose sensibility Ben Wheatley has drank from. Perhaps the defining document of such breeding grounds, J.G. Ballard’s novel High-Rise has finally made it to the screen thanks to Wheatley’s elegantly decadent and darkly funny take on the material. If the novel’s many complexities meant it failed to be adapted despite several attempts over the decades, Wheatley tackles the problem by streamlining the narrative to its most essential (and contemporarily relevant) elements; namely, violent class struggle. Hence, the director presents the story exclusively through ellipsis, first to emphasize the primary urges that the titular building’s amenities seek to satisfy (the main character, played by Tom Hiddleston, moves into his luxury flat in a montage that’s quasi-advertorial in nature) and later to court the hallucinatory (non-metaphoric class conflict regularly takes place in the complex’s supermarket). The implication being that the building merely triggers some of the lurking, darker impulses of its occupants. While this design might prove harder for audiences to stomach than the depravity or grisly violence on display, Wheatley’s vision is strong enough to grip the viewers through 120 minutes of strange, albeit quite recognizable in their naked proximity — and thus Ballardian — deranged fun, clever social critique, and kitschy retro-futuristic decor. –jrodriguez6 --- 16 Cemetery of Splendor Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul [Kick the Machine] Its opening shots established a contemporary story of the world unearthed by state mechanisms, even as the rest of its running time blended the setting into a world of contemporaneity: jungle floors and ancient kingdoms, hospital bedside and a childhood bomb shelter. Cemetery of Splendor was not an elaboration of events, but a series of enfolding moments, like a field recording, that dwelled on rehabilitation. Weerasethakul centered the little movements of the movie in bodily functions and the motion of simple machines. As always, his direction makes a true and gentle medium of film, translating the affective charge of scenes into an open window, an ambient showing. The camera is almost always fixed at a static eye-level, an inviting witness to the unhurried mystery of the sleeping soldiers at the story’s center. The dialogue between the soldiers and their nurses is hushed and matter-of-fact. At this decibel, small talk sounds profound without meaning to. If you listen closely, from the innermost whisper of the heart to the furthest extension of microbes in the sky, Cemetery of Splendor is a program to honor the quiet confusion of being awake for the dreams of life and the march in place toward the certain smile of death. This is a good place to sleep. –Pat Beane --- 15 Hell or High Water Dir. David Mackenzie [Sidney Kimmel Entertainment] A bona fide barnburner, Hell or High Water never let up. From the initial heist in a dry and desolate town to a staredown between cold-blooded adversaries, nary a minute of our time was wasted. Watching Chris Pine and Ben Foster knock over banks on a mad but noble dash was like watching a pair of manic whirling dervishes with pistols and shotguns. With jolts of violence and gut-ripping humor, the story refused to sit still. Call it an anti-Western, a black comedy, or just a damn fine chase flick, the film insisted on defying categorization and exceeding expectations. Yet as fun as these delinquents were, they had to share the stage with a scene-stealing lawman spitting casual racism and his stoic partner who shoved it right back (Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham). There was love there, but there was reality too. Rules of propriety don’t always apply in West Texas. If you needed proof that an explosive and exhilarating action flick doesn’t need a billion-dollar budget or a complete CGI makeover, Hell or High Water was Exhibit A. –Ryan Patrick Mooney --- 14 Elle Dir. Paul Verhoeven [SBS] In a central moment in Elle, Michèle (masterfully played by Isabelle Huppert) removes her rapist’s ski mask to reveal him as her handsome, mild-mannered neighbor, Patrick. Complicating matters, Michèle spends the first half of the film flirting with him and even masturbates while watching him set up a life-sized nativity scene with his wife (one example of the film’s sly wit). After the revelation, she continues to see him, though her motives for doing so remain troublingly opaque. As she discovers, he is incapable of consensual sex with her. “It has to be like before,” he says. Wearing a mask allows Patrick to play a role he can step out of when it no longer suits him, but Michèle cannot easily separate the man she was attracted to from the man who raped her. Like many of Verhoeven’s films, this one was at risk of being dismissed as exploitative pulp, but it raised some crucial questions about the representation of rape on screen. Elle refused to place people into categories: Victimhood doesn’t always eliminate agency or inspire revenge, and too often, monsters wear the faces of neighbors and friends. We contain multitudes, and we carry our monstrosity within us, just waiting to be unmasked. –Kate Blair --- 13 Embrace of the Serpent Dir. Ciro Guerra [Oscilloscope Laboratories] The “white guy going through an intense, eye-opening journey in the jungle” storyline has been done to death, but no matter how sympathetic or well-intentioned, it’s still usually told from the perspective of said white guy, with natives serving as scenery or, at best, “Noble Savages.” With Embrace of the Serpent, Colombian filmmaker Guerra upended the trope, and unlike his Eurocentric precursors, he did so without denying sympathy to the film’s ostensible antagonists. As the guide Karamakate, both Antonio Bolívar Salvador and Nilbio Torres (as the elderly and young version of the character, respectively) infused the film with resilience and fury in the face of imperialism, making for one of the most intriguing, deeply felt characters in recent memory. The film’s turns from grotesque violence to pervasive stillness were jarring, but resembled shifts of scenery in a dream: as with the two explorers who voyage down the Amazon through the film’s dual timelines, one found themselves too deep into the world of the film to not accept its twists. –Dustin Krcatovich --- 12 American Honey Dir. Andrea Arnold [A24] Where would we be without the promise of the fresh start, the open road? Andrea Arnold’s winding, visually resplendent ode to the American Dream positioned us as witnesses to the reckless journey of Star, an 18-year-old Muskogee runaway who finds a new home for herself on a van full of acne-laden misfits, bumping E-40 as they tear across the country selling bullshit magazines. From the moment the film opened with a passing car bearing the bumper sticker “God Is Coming,” American Honey led us on a mythic trek across the Midwestern United States, with trials and temptations and fleeting moments of love folded in between the suburban desolation and languor. Finding a kindred balance between the desert romance of Badlands and the destructive dreaming of Spring Breakers, American Honey unlocked a rare human sympathy: an understanding of our own common indecency, our basest needs to both be wanted and to be free. As Star slowly finds herself tangled up in the same hustle as the rest of us, a wage slave even in the drift of the endless interstate, American Honey revealed the greater pattern of our lives — always leaping from one trap to the next, caught in a moment just as it begins to fade. –Sam Goldner --- 11 Zootopia Dir. Byron Howard, Rich Moore [Walt Disney] Zootopia’s real clincher is that it isn’t a perfect allegory. It isn’t a parable either. It’s too complex and too incomplete for either of those. Zootopia itself is too big a place. Zootopia’s narrative whirlwind of convoluted, deeply political stories doesn’t remotely represent Zootopia in its entirety, and its creators know this. Zootopia is messy because Zootopia is messy; its characters, its inhabitants (protagonists and antagonists alike) make snap judgments about those who look or act different, create biological narratives that systematically oppress minorities, deviate from norms, and face persecution while taking intersectionality for granted. Zootopia succeeds not because it depicts triumphs, but because it focuses our imaginations on how inequality structures all of our interactions within our REAL communities. That it explores this in so many complex ways is impressive. That it does so while remaining entertaining and hilarious even more so. That its main characters are a talking bunny rabbit cop and a hustling fox couldn’t matter less. –Jackson Scott [pagebreak] --- 10 Toni Erdmann Dir. Maren Ade [Sony Pictures Classics] The cliché is true: watching Toni Erdmann, I laughed and I cried. The tale of an oil industry consultant and the uncomfortable adventure she has with her prankster father during a trip to Bucharest, Maren Ade’s third feature is packed with everything: family melodrama, business intrigue, Whitney Houston karaoke, nudity, Austin Powers fake teeth. At heart, though, this sprawling film is about the simple struggle of communicating with the people you are closest to. Folding together the mundane, the grotesque, the high and the low, Toni Erdmann never loses sight of an almost old-fashioned desire to entertain that keeps the film from slowing down, even as it nears the three-hour mark. It is true magic to see a movie that not only takes seriously adult family relationships, the social gymnastics of being a woman in a male-dominated business, and the cultural displacement of the aging, but also manages to land a great fart gag. You can almost hear a Hollywood remake already being developed for Robert De Niro or whoever, but Ade’s epic family comedy is that rarest of works: indulgent and giving in equal measure, an entire universe of feeling that deserves to be cherished. –Dylan Pasture --- 09 Green Room Dir. Jeremy Saulnier [A24] Jeremy Saulnier’s debut feature Blue Ruin was a year-end-listable beast of a film, but even it couldn’t prepare us for the taut, stately carnage of Green Room. This tense, bloody tale of The Ain’t Rights, a hapless touring band forced to fight their way out of an isolated neo-nazi club, was at once a siege movie to end all siege movies and a love letter to the DIY punk scene. While Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, and Alia Shawkat all delivered standout performances, it was Patrick Stewart who stole the show, playing against type as the sinister Darcy, club-proprietor with a velvet voice and ice-cold blood in his veins. Following the results of the 2016 election, the film has taken on a grim new timeliness. A resurgent white nationalist movement has gained new visibility, bolstered by what they see (correctly or incorrectly) as an ally in the White House. Ideas long thought taboo are gaining fresh currency, threatening to infect right-wing policy as a whole. In 2017, we are all The Ain’t Rights. May we fight as bravely and live to see a brighter morning. –Joe Hemmerling --- 08 Wiener-Dog Dir. Todd Solondz [Amazon Studios/IFC Films] A long trail of dog diarrhea, captured in a long, slow-tracking shot, summarized the ethos of Wiener-Dog, in which Todd Solondz turned the nihilistic rage and bitterness up to 11 for another grimacing comedy of human suffering. Solondz’s career seemed to be in a cul de sac circa Palindromes, but then he roared back to life, experimenting with form and somehow cranking up the contrast even further on his particular point of view. The canine connection between the four segments in Weiner-Dog was nicely abstract and got surreal in the film’s “dog around the world” intermission. Name actors got a chance to play in the darkness: Julie Delpy as a mom who damages her son with spiritual misinformation; Greta Gerwig as a grown-up, utterly self-esteemless Dawn Wiener; Danny DeVito as a stand-in for Solondz, a depessed film professor in a losing battle with soulless students; Ellen Burstyn as a defeated woman who doles out cash and rancor to her codependent granddaughter (Zosia Mamet). Solondz still coats his bitter medicine with a sweet shell of playfulness, but his films have lost the goofy baby fat of Welcome to the Dollhouse, revealing the skeletal souls of his guileless perpetrators and agonized victims. –water --- 07 Certain Women Dir. Kelly Reichardt [IFC Films] Kelly Reichardt has made a career out of mining the subtleties of life on the fringe of society, her characters’ existences marginalized, if not entirely ignored, by corporate America and failed by both private and governmental institutions. With Certain Women, Reichardt returns to the open plains of Montana that she captured so effectively in her feminist Western, Meek’s Cutoff, which are now sparsely populated by chain restaurants and stores serving only to heighten the sense of economic anxiety dominating a community whose way of life has little worth within our current model of late capitalism. Adapting three Maile Meloy short stories for the screen, Reichardt deals explicitly with resolute females whose unflappable tenacity clashes with the various forces aligned to keep them in check. Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, and Kristen Stewart each exceptionally embody a feminine resiliency and fortitude that acts as a corrective to Hollywood’s singularly musclebound vision of female strength. But it is Lily Gladstone’s breakthrough performance, gracefully conveying a quiet dignity in her nascent desire and emotional isolation against Stewart’s icy demeanor in the film’s final segment, that acts as both a unifying coda and a tender, heartbreaking portrait of unrequited love, elevating Certain Women to the level of something truly special. –Derek Smith --- 06 Everybody Wants Some!! Dir. Richard Linklater [Paramount] PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be latched to the centerfield wall and pelted with horsehides, because jesus, freshman, figure it out. It’s the American Dream as sweet-swing college preen, two (!!) exclamations of wisdom and vulgarity matriculating invincible in the lost weekend before classes or life. Is it possible to slice a fastball in half with an axe? Does it matter if it’s not? No plan, no problem; persons attempting to find a moral will be assailed with unrequested advice that only means as much as the meaningfulness you give it (also, I don’t know: too much of this smells like cat piss). Persons looking for a plot just get pop-up as pop song, a frontier fraternity for Mark Twain and John Belushi. There’s self and passion in the tangents between framework, and there’s a real stereo democracy when every voice gets a verse, from the black to the white, the red to the brown, the purple to the yellow. Everybody Wants Some!!, freshman, but maybe nobody gets any if we don’t play this game the right way. Practice is mandatory. Everyone impacts the outcome. Shake your groove thing. Come for a good time, not for a long time. The rest is F-L-Y. –Frank Falisi --- 05 Arrival Dir. Dennis Villeneuve [Paramount] “Abbot is death process.” This four-word sentence alone should be enough for Arrival to earn a place on every critic’s year-end list and at every awards show. It’s amazing on so many levels: (1) screenwriter Eric Heisserer presumably typed that into the script with a straight face; (2) it stayed in the film; (3) in its immediate context, that is, uttered in squid-alien language and translated for us onscreen (in subtitles, if memory serves), its seemingly hokey technicality keeps the film honest to genre, but; (4) it does so while also speaking directly to and illuminating the brainy twist that gives the film its heart and soul. All great sci-fi reveals that the barrier between supposed “high” and “low” art is bullshit; this film arrives at that point with such finesse that you might miss it if you aren’t paying close attention. But then, like the film’s title, this says more about humanity than anything else. “Abbott is death process.” –Samuel Diamond --- 04 The Handmaiden Dir. Chan-wook Park [Magnolia/Amazon Studios] The Handmaiden wasn’t just a daring, prurient thriller. More importantly, this story of two women’s sexual awakening was one of the most tender and moving romances to grace the screen this year or any other. In the beginning, Lady Sideko and Sook-He are separate pawns in a long, twisted con orchestrated by the thief, Count Fujiwara. By the end, the two women have taken control of the narrative and rewritten the ending. The Handmaiden demonstrated the power of stories and imagination, even pornography, to empower and transform our experiences. In one of the film’s central metaphors, an idea gleaned through a pornographic story becomes a catalyst to transformation. Thus, a set of bells, first used as an instrument to abuse the young Lady Sideko, becomes the soundtrack to a joyful erotic coupling. Love, too, performs a kind of magic, allowing inner and outer worlds to collide through the body, in a touch, glance, or embrace. This movie has a lot more to offer than the already slick, glittering veneer it presents. Its undercurrents are far subtler than even most of the positive reviews gave it credit for, and it earned a rightful place in Chan-wook Park’s oeuvre of masterworks. –Kate Blair --- 03 Manchester by the Sea Dir. Kenneth Lonergan [Roadside Attractions/Amazon Studios] Manchester by the Sea imparts a narrative, not so much of family, but of anti-family. Trailers, whispers of the mouth, and other various year-end reviewers could all tell you that the film is a melancholy picture. It has no clear denouement, nor a happy ending, nor is it, of itself, an uplifting experience to be party to. But it is so much more than just a sad story, a simple bildungsroman à clef. A character study of the deeply-wounded men and boys of our past, its immediate shifts in temporality beget a protagonist’s wayward memory and sense of self; it is a detachment and brokenness so profound that it is hard to overcome bearing. It betrays more than its formality, its distinctly New England space-time, and the approaches of its characters, though its mise-en-scène are masterfully clear. Although presenting a rather quaint space, it touches the coward and the stalwart internal and international, beyond the trappings and sentiments of the white working class, beyond those of the outsider. It is a painful portrait, a crying-out of the spirit that never seems to shut off. –S. David --- 02 Moonlight Dir. Barry Jenkins [A24] At this point, is there more to say about Moonlight? In a fractured era, Barry Jenkins’s second feature film received nearly universal acclaim from pretty much everyone who’s seen it (and it’s on this list, which means you should see it). Per some media sources, 2016 was in fact a discordant year that polarized around identity issues of class, race, and sexuality. Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney’s story of a young black boy’s journey into manhood gracefully danced over these topics, as it charged full speed past the obvious labels and stereotypes that might otherwise define Little/Chiron/Black. The destination: a greater understanding of the human threads that not only connect us to other people, but also to ourselves as complex individuals who construct our own identities over the course of our lives. As complete fucking film snobs, we’ve obviously read about the overwhelming reaction viewers had to Francois Truffaut’s classic 1959 coming-of-age film The 400 Blows, but we’ve perhaps never experienced something close or even equivalent to this in our own lifetimes. Thanks for something, 2016. –Jafarkas --- 01 The Witch Dir. Robert Eggers [A24] Plenty of classic films touch upon witches or witchcraft (Häxan, Rosemary’s Baby, Paradise Lost, The Blair Witch Project), but it wasn’t until The Witch hit screens this year that cinema finally had a quintessential film about witchcraft in the early modern period. Writer-director Robert Eggers relied on folklore archetypes and historical documents to craft a film in which a deeply religious family is beset by the dark forces of witchcraft in 17th-century New England. The film was subtitled “A New England Folktale,” but as Eggers repeatedly stated, period contemporaries would see no difference between the fairy tale world and the real world. They would not consider the idea of witches, curses, and possession fanciful, but instead the very real causes of daily tribulations. So when their crop fails and their youngest disappears while in the care of their oldest (newcomer Anya Taylor-Joy), it’s not a huge leap for the film’s characters to go from blaming a wolf to blaming a witch. From here, you can probably guess what happens next: family trust quickly unravels, crises of faith are had, and increasing paranoia plagues the family until they are (literally) at each other’s throats. The Witch placed its faith in the pre-existing particulars of the folklore (a goat, a hare, the forest, sabbats), with the hope that none of their terror has been dulled in the last 500 years. And first-time director Eggers succeeded by not only relying on these aspects, but also reinforcing them. Eggers, a veteran of the theater, demonstrated an impressive command of film technique and aesthetics. This was made especially clear during a sequence in which he attempted to imbue the forest with evil intentions, beginning with a few establishing shots (accompanied by the atonal score) of the woods that evoked a foreboding quality. It was followed by a sequence used during the vanishing of baby Sam that implicated the forest in his kidnapping, establishing a shot-reverse shot pattern between Thomasin and Sam as they played peek-a-boo, with the sequence’s final shot of the blankets where Sam lay moments ago, which then pans up to reveal the woods in the distance. It is the camera move itself that damns and points at the woods. (The sequence is so great that its on full display in the film’s trailer). And of course, these are the same woods in which Caleb, the purest soul in the family, finds the hovel of the maiden witch and later where Thomasin, after everything has fallen apart, looks for salvation. In fact, execution was nearly perfect across the board. The shot composition and framing showed enough to frighten us, but it also left plenty in the shadows so that we had to fill in the blanks with our nightmares. The color palette, aided mostly by natural light, ensured the film looked as bleak as it felt. The performances (and I’m including Black Phillip’s shallow breathing, scene-stealing rearing among them) made us believe it. And director Eggers produced those performances from a young lead in her first credited role, several child actors, and a God-damned goat. Maybe it was because The Witch was confident enough to avoid deliberate ambiguity or retreating behind a Shyamalan twist. Maybe it was because it’s a feminist parable or an allegory about how society, shouting “Guilty until proven innocent!,” turns us into the monsters it accused us of being. Or maybe The Witch was our favorite film of the year for its ability to weave the disparate strands of a historical film and a genre film into a tight tapestry of folklore and terror that never ripped from the strain. The Witch was not just a great genre movie or an exceptional period piece, but also a nearly flawless film. It was the quintessential witchcraft film we didn’t know we were missing. Sign your name in its book. We did. –Jeff Miller http://j.mp/2kbl7lj