#something about 'child raised in a convent' and 'child raised in a brothel' that just

[the-tenth-arcanum]

and he was raised in a brothel? immediately I'm obsessed

[peerless-soshi]

Hi! If you're still accepting requests, may I request a 75 and 60 Xiyao? If requests are closed I understand. Thanks!

Rules: Send me two (2) tropes from this list + a ship and I’ll describe how I’d combine them in the same story.   

Bed Sharing +  Poorly Timed Confession  

Jin Guangyao was sure he would sound a little paranoid if he tried to explain the complex trap of drinking wine to anyone, even Lan Xichen – especially Lan Xichen – because other clan leaders wouldn’t be kicked over a bottle. He sighed loud. It never rains but it pours, and so on. But well, there were bigger problems than a dinner with a friend-abstainer.

He eyed the small guest room. The bottle stood in the middle of the table, smiling sneeringly at him. Lan Xichen was sitting at the other end of the table, smiling brightly for a change. To close the triangle, Jin Guangyao smiled apologetically.

“Second brother, this wine is not necessary,” he said, his voice courteous and low and all smooth, as though it sprouted among dew. “Isn’t drinking alcohol forbidden in the Cloud Recess? I don’t want to cause you troubles with my presence.”

Lan Xichen shook his head slightly, an evening spark of candles wavering on his face. His white skin seemed shades lighter by contrast to sleepy shadows of the guest room, and this small change took some formal dignity away. “It’s not a problem, brother,” he said, “I am the clan leader and so I will follow our rules, but tonight you are also my guest. What master would I be if I didn’t welcome you properly?”

If he was less generous, sometimes things would be easier.

“In my humble opinion, still better than anyone,” Jin Guangyao answered and decided to risk another tactic. “Your good intentions make me happy, I will forever remember how well you treat me, so please, take the wine. If anyone saw me drinking in this place, your intent could be misunderstood. I don’t want people to gossip about you.”

Even though they would blame it on me, like always.

The real problem was that Lan Xichen was too nice to understand it: he never accused anyone, never looked down at anyone, never waited for a mistake. And this weird, clear goodness was singing in him with every gesture. Jin Guangyao doubted that words would change his ways, but he also couldn’t pretend it was fine. It would rather be the opposite, like letting Lan Xichen to treat him in the same way as other leaders would only drag Jin Guangyao more into focus. Someone was going to take advantage of his tiniest slipup sooner or later.

He pulled the cup away the same moment Lan Xichen moved closer his own cup.

“What are you doing, brother?” Jin Guangyao asked, calm outside and panicking inside. “I am not going to drink alone. It’s not proper.”

He didn’t know if Lan Xichen burst out laughing because he found this whole situation amusing or because he wanted Jin Guangyao to feel comfortable. “Who talks about lonely drinking?”

“You can’t drink,” Jin Guangyao pointed out and immediately felt his mistake. No one would remind the Lan Leader the rules of his own sect.

But Lan Xichen only looked at him and reached out for the bottle. “You’re worried that drinking in the Cloud Recess would be perceived as an insult,” he said, “In that case, I am going to drink together with you. Isn’t that the best form of permission?”

As proof of his words, Lan Xichen poured himself profusely. A small wine stain next to his hand revealed that he didn’t have much experience, however his commitment couldn’t be denied. There was the Zewu-jun Jin Guangyao knew. He always got the intention right and the actions wrong. Jin Guangyao would be ready to bring up memorable laundry if the situation wasn’t as acute.

“No!” he shouted and stood up. The table wobbled and some more drops of wine dripped, sweet and intense amid the incense and paper scents of Gusu.

“What is going on?” Lan Xichen asked him while leaning to wipe up the spilled wine.

Jin Guangyao was speechless. Forget manners, forget conventions! Drinking alcohol under the eye of a friend-abstainer was one thing, but drinking together with him was something else. He sat back down slowly, as if unsure if this was a good idea, but Lan Xichen’s smile didn’t waver. Jin Guangyao could only imagine what it must have looked like: a bottle, a dirty table, a blush on his cheeks. The whispers reducing him to a brothel child sharpened: it wasn’t surprising he had a thing for alcohol.

In a tone both respectful and dire, he said, “I’m sorry, but it has gone too far. If not for your sake, you should stop for the sake of me.”  

Lan Xichen looked like he might laugh it off, but all of sudden he straightened up. The half-filled cup froze in his hand. Also, he was no longer smiling.

“Tonight, only you and me are here,” he said, and his voice had changed. It was sadder, more complex – a smooth and sweet melody covering other tones. “Once Xichen could drink with A-Yao. Why Zewu-jun can’t celebrate with Lianfang-zun?”

It was the smallest and the biggest question, and Jin Guangyao could answer in many ways: because they were different now; because Jin Guangyao was in a different place now; because he didn’t mean to lose everything on a whim. It was too much, so he stayed silent. What Lan Xichen didn’t understand was that sometimes silence was better than someone speaking. That was how lies slipped out.

“Let me rest for a while, A-Yao.” He sounded so disappointed. “Don’t be so official with me. I know it’s selfish, but…” A pause. “I miss old A-Yao.”

At that moment, he had changed, too; Lan Xichen looked tired, undoubtedly, and the candle burning out near the window highlighted dark circles under his eyes, like gentle brush strokes on the whitest yet oldest canvas. It was a strange sense of understanding that Jin Guangyao felt. He was tired as well; he was tired of looking at others, of looking over his own shoulder and wondering what was right and what could kill him.  

It took minutes, but he raised his cup in a toast. “We have never drunk alcohol together, brother,” he added.

Forgetting was freeing.

Jin Guangyao couldn’t believe he was doing it, but why not? Zewu-jun’s friendship was an important piece of the puzzle; it was true that such moments of intimacy kept Lan Xichen on his side. The risk wasn’t high. Jin Guangyao’s gaze focused in on the door when his sworn brother emptied the cup, cheerful, allowing himself a brief moment of relax. Luxury beyond their reach. Jin Guangyao heard nothing; in the main corridor silence twirled with wind blows, and the ringing bottle accompanied them like bianzhong.

Lan Xichen let out a little laughed, his voice like tuneful music. And it was too loud, Jin Guangyao realized.

It wasn’t that Lan Xichen never laughed. But he didn’t laugh out loud; even outside the walls of his sect, he always stayed dignified and restrained like a Lan should be. And now he jumped to his feet, ran to the window and looked at the yard. Jin Guangyao’s heart stopped, a sheen of sweat on his brown.

“What happened?” he asked. “Did you hear someone? Is somebody there?”

“Yes.” Lan Xichen paused. “The moon.”

“What?”

“The moon is beautiful! Really beautiful. Why are we sitting here?! Hahahaha!”

Gasping in shock, Jin Guangyao turned his head and gazed, lost for words, at him. Lan Xichen staggered, half-falling and half-dancing, and used both hands to hold on to the wall. As if surprised, he stepped back and looked up again. Satisfied, he smiled at Jin Guangyao.

As he waved his hand, the long sleeves flutterd like crane wings in silvering glare of the night. “A-Yao, I want to go hunting. The night is so bright, did you see? Too bright to waste it! Where is my sword?” he asked, touching its hilt. “And where is A-Yao?” he added, looking at him. Maybe a little bit above.

Jin Guangyao should tell him to calm down, or – he didn’t know – to drink some tea and rest. He didn’t. “Brother… are you drunk?”

It was impossible. No one could get drunk with just one cup of wine, no matter how weak his head was. Lan Xichen seemed to agree; he chuckled and the darkest blush crept up his pale neck. It was a bad combination.

“Heavens,” Jin Guangyao whispered, “You are completely drunk.”

“No!” Lan Xichen corrected him, “I’m happy!”

They had never drunk together and Jin Guangyao wasn’t sure if it was good or bad. If someone had warned him about it, at least he would know what to expect. And now? Drinking alcohol under the eye of a friend-abstainer was one thing, but getting him drunk was something else! If word gets out that the Jin Leader forced into a respected man whole barrels of wine – because that was the picture they would see – their reputation could be dead. A disaster.

But Jin Guangyao recovered quickly when the drunk Lan leader ceased his searches of the door and decided to jump through the window.

“You can’t do it, Xichen!” he shouted, ignoring manners.

Lan Xichen hesitated, hair all over his wet face, surprised to hear him screaming. “Why?”

“Because it’s a window,” Jin Guangyao replied, trying to sound convincing. It wasn’t easy. “And I’m very tired, brother,” he added, chin sinking in hand, eyes half-closed. “See? I can’t stay any longer. I must go to bed now.”

Not waiting for an answer, Jin Guangyao hurried to the door at the back of the room and opened it, revealing a small though cozy bedroom coated in white and sandalwood. He impulse-yawned in the hopes of emphasizing the earlier words.

Fine. It was going to be fine. He wouldn’t let anyone see Lan Xichen.

The black leader hat landed on the shelf, exposing dark hair tied in an elegant bun. “I’m getting ready to sleep, see, so I’ll walk you to your room now. It’s late, I think everyone in your sect is already resting? Aren’t you tired too?” Jin Guangyao asked, and when Lan Xichen didn’t answer, he pulled his gaze up from the hat.

Lan Xichen’s relaxed look was replaced by concern. “I see,” he said, his head nodding in compassion. “You want to sleep. I am sorry, A-Yao. We should do it together.”

“Yes!” Jin Guangyao almost clapped his hands. “If you understand…”

“I’ll hold it for you.” Lan Xichen said as he grabbed his hand and led him to the bed.

No way.

Jin Guangyao froze, so before he noticed it the ground escaped from his feet and he bounced off the mattress. Lan Xichen was right next to him. He picked up the hat and blown off some non-existent dust before putting it down. Then he squinted at Jin Guangyao as if he could determinate his level of fatigue – or comfort – by cleaning clothes.

He laughed a little to himself, probably proud of his work. “Do you feel better now?”

Jin Guangyao would honestly be rather caught drinking. The only thing that could make it worse was if someone walked here at a time like this. Getting a friend-abstainer drunk was one thing, but dragging him to bed was the whole new universe! The whispers were clearer than ever: what to expect from a prostitute’s son?

He would never allow it.

“Stop it, brother. It’s just not done in a polite…”

“You can stay,” Lan Xichen interrupted, his arms crossed on his chest, “but your clothes have to go.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s not polite,” Lan Xichen repeated after him, and said, “to sleep in your clothes!”

Jin Guangyao tried to say something, but his tongue was hulking in this mouth. In turn, Lan Xichen nodded and reached for his own belt, but his hands were all over the place, like a child learning to tie a knot for the first time. Stop. Lan Xichen had had to do it more efficiently even as a child.

Jin Guangyao sat up abruptly. “What are you doing now?” he mumbled.

“What? I’m going to sleep?” Lan Xichen said. “You said that we can sleep together.”

“No, I said we should both go to sleep. Separately.”

“It’s one and the same.”

“You can’t stay here, Xichen!” Jin Guangyao cried in a silent scream. “What if somebody sees you now? What will happen then?”

Lan Xichen winced and opened his mouth, offended. “I miss good old times with A-Yao. Stop it, you’re worrying too much! Ha! Smile!”

“We didn’t sleep together!” Jin Guangyao forgot to mid his voice. “What are you exactly missing?!”

He desperately wanted to put his hands on a Lan instrument and play some melody that would tell Lan Xichen to withdraw, go to his room and forget it all in the morning. He would bet they had something for mind control in their books! Mind control wasn’t, however, one of  Jin Guangyao’s natural abilities as Lan Xichen completely ignored his nonverbal equivalent of yelling.

“A-Yao, do you sleep on your stomach?” he asked.

“No… Why?”

Lan Xichen bent down with a smile that had been know to leave all unmarried female cultivators mute. And then he looked at Jin Guangyao. “Perfect!”

Without saying more, he rested his head on the other leader’s chest and breathed a sigh of relief. Apparently he forgot about taking his clothes off; he grinned from ear to ear and made himself comfortable like on a pillow.

Jin Guangyao’s face was on fire. Who needs spells summoning flames when you have drunk Zewu-jun around? He tried to move away quietly to protect his honor, but Lan Xichen’s embrace turned out to be made of steel. Then Jin Guangyao spoke – careful and pleasant, a golden morning bathing in the earliest sun. Lianfang-zun.

“Brother. Brother, you have your own room. You don’t feel well so let me…”

Wearing an expression of sudden realization, Lan Xichen tipped back his head. “A-Yao, we should talk.”

“It’s not…”

Again, Jin Guangyao couldn’t finish; this time the Lan Leader’s hand ended up on his lips. “Don’t interrupt or I’ll forget. It’s very important. I always forget. Why didn’t I say it earlier, haha?”

The silence was painful and awkward. It was endless, too.

“Brother?”

“Xichen?”

“Xichen,” Jin Guangyao agreed, his annoyance hidden. “What…”

“I like you,” Lan Xichen declared, pointing at him. “And I’ll stay here because you are prettier than the moon.”

It felt surreal, strange and somehow incredible.

For the first time ever Jin Guangyao had no idea what to say. All he knew was, he would lie to anyone else but Lan Xichen. And he was so used to lying that now he was left dumbstruck, mouth open and muscles rigid, watching disheveled and blushing Lan Xichen. It seemed the Lan Leader was spinning around the idea of making an eye contact before keeping his gaze to the shelf.

“I always liked your hat. It makes you look taller.”

“It doesn’t matter now. Oh.” Jin Guangyao’s mouth was dry. His eyes found Lan Xichen’s face again. “This is not the best moment for those words, brother. Xichen,” he said before Lan Xichen corrected him. “You are tired, drunk and…”

“In love.”

Half-naked.

“Gods, help me.”

Maybe there was a god of embarrassing situations? Someone to pray to while feeling awkward? The heaven was full of gods, there must be someone who could help them now.

But their god was rather luring disasters. Jin Guangyao couldn’t tell if his heartbeat was too fast or if it stopped completely when he heard footsteps in the hallway. He barely looked up from his bed before the door opened with a bang.

“What happened? I heard noises…”

Lan Wangji.

He entered the room quickly and stopped as his eyes, watchful in the night glow, met Jin Guangyao. Then he spotted Lan Xichen, too, and though his expression didn’t change, he looked paler than a moment ago.

Jin Guangyao sat up and started his explanation. He could do it; he had been in worse situations. “You’re here, Younger Brother! How good. Look, your older brother is sick, I tried to help him…”

But Lan Wangji didn’t listen; he just nodded, slowly, to Lan Xichen and showed him thumb up.

Maybe it wasn’t the impression that Lan Xichen smiled back.

[teddystrap]

Drama CD: [黒吉原メランコリア] The First Night: Agumo Hibari - Part 2

[Disc 2]

[Prologue] A sober Hibari apologises for his drunken behaviour and waxes poetic about the sweetness of your lips. Since that night, you have exceeded his expectations and made a name for yourself in Yoshiwara - mastering all the basic skills from tea ceremony to literacy..

He regrets his own myopia in using you as a chesspiece in his game. As the #1 male oiran, he thought that he could resist the charms of any girl. But the human heart is unpredictable, and he has developed real feelings for you...

⋆

Hibari visits your room and informs you to get ready to make your debut. You're all like (ಠ_ಠ) ,... but before that, he has an important announcement to make:

Once you take your first client, the Game would officially begin. He confesses the whole setup and rules of the game to you, as well as the rumours that led to its conception.

Legend has it that a race of mermaids with the blood of the Happyaku-bikuni [link] possess superhuman life force, and their tears can bring eternal life and prevent death. However, the mermaid saviour has to pay the price of losing her voice forever. (Now where have I heard this idea before⁇ *cough*TheLittleMermaid*cough*)

During the Normanton Incident [link], a merchant vessel capsized near Kishuu-oki (present-day Wakayama). All the foreign passengers were saved but the Japanese passengers perished. This was chalked up to racial discrimination, but insiders claim that the ship was overturned by mermaids plotting to rescue *one of their own* who was aboard the ship.

After you floated ashore to the fishing village where you grew up, rumours spread among the locals that *you* are the passenger mermaid who caused the shipwreck. Out of fear of further angering the mermaids, they avoided publicly discussing the subject.

A local fisherman, your step-father, noticed that you are a good-looking child. He took you in and raised you, planning to sell you off to some brothel once you reach a suitable age and fetch a good price. This is where Hibari comes in: he found your step-father after much investigation and sent a pimp his way to acquire you.

Hibari planned and joined in his own game for the purpose of raising Yoshiwara's profile in the public eye and bringing in more business. His efforts have attracted five other participants from wealthy and powerful backgrounds. Hence, he himself has no interest in the veracity of the legend nor in eternal life. His only aim is for the other players to fight over you and create a tabloid-worthy sensation.

As such, your best bet now is to end the game a.s.a.p. and find one of the participants (excluding him) to marry yourself off to - in this sense both of you have a common goal, and he's willing to do whatever it takes to help you.

...After hearing all this, you are visibly shaken and can't even concentrate on your flower arranging lesson anymore. Hibari is all like 'SON I AM DISAPPOINT' and sends you off to bed. He's all confused because he thought you would be happy to be leaving Yoshiwara soon...?

*

Next day, he gives you a pretty dress and sends you to some steak restaurant to learn how to use a knife and fork... with Sakurai Takahiro('s character). Meanwhile he stays behind to see a client. Having to part with him for a day makes you a #sadpanda, so he decides to come and cheer you up when you get back.

You come home late, and he feigns cheerfulness when he hears that you got along well with Ta-kun. 'Everything is going according to plan... but why does it make me angry when I imagine her smiling at some other dude?' *punches wall RAWR*

*

The time has finally come, he announces that you will receive your first client: Sakurai Takahiro('s character). BUT... his announcement gets hijacked by a gang invasion - it's the shady characters from an earlier episode, here for the mermaid tears. Hibari beckons you to run and tell the guards, while he stays behind and buys time for your escape.

He trash-talks the bad guys, and they slash him with their katana and flee. (I imagine their thought process was something like: 'OMG does this guy EVER shut up??? *stab stab*) As he lay dying, he mocks himself: for giving up his own life to save you, yet not being able to confess his feelings to you directly. 'And so it is. My mad skillz are useless when faced with the woman I truly love.'

Later, you come back and tell him that the gang have been captured by the guards. With his last breath, he confesses that he's always loved you. He's glad to have protected you and confident that you will do just fine on your own. With trembling lips, you grant him one final kiss... and your tears touch his mouth. In that instant, he became... THE HULK!!!!

...No srsly. After a month-long sleep, he wakes from a dream where his body is getting dissolved by the waves of the ocean. To his great shock, you've lost the ability to speak. He becomes emotional and laments why you made such a huge sacrifice and chose a scumbag like him, instead of the other more eligible game participants.

He confesses his love for you and says that he can't imagine continuing his job as oiran and embracing other women ever again. He proposes that the two of you to escape from Yoshiwara and start a new life somewhere far away. Of course, you agree, and he makes a pinky promise to spend the rest of his life making you happy.

(He also takes your virginity,... but never mind about that XD.)

And thus, with his life savings as Top Host, the two of you begin a semi-nomadic life, skipping town every time rumours/scandals of the Yoshiwara escape start to spread. At the end, Hibari says that the day you saved his life was a rebirth for him. 'While I may not have a hometown, I will always have a home - which is wherever you are.'

*

‘Mermaid’ by Toriumi. Hot dayum.

[Thoughts] Let’s be real here, Hibari is kind of a dick. I mean, I would’ve accepted if he had believed the legend and sought Nanami out in order to obtain eternal life. That would have been a more excusable reason than ‘creating a scandal to attract business’. He almost forfeited Nanami’s future and *whole life* purely for his little publicity stunt. In that sense it’s not too much to ask that he almost sacrificed his life for her.

That said, the scene where he was dying and asking for a last kiss really got me. Toriumi sounded like he was really dying XDDD. (Noooo Sensei pls don’t die T_T) His emotional outburst after waking up and finding out that Nanami has lost her voice is also really touching and almost made me forget that IT’S ALL HIS FAULT.

On another note, I took the time to research a bit into the historical accuracy of the story, because (1) Nanami seemed a bit old to be a trainee, and (2) she was allowed to stay in Yoshiwara for many months without receiving any clients or making any money. Fwiw, trainees had a wide age range, although after the Edo period they were generally expected to serve clients during their training period. So... thanks Rejet for protecting your chastity, I guess?

Although there’s still the question of convention - a male oiran taking on a female shinzou - and the way Hibari talks: referring to himself as 「俺」 and using informal speech (あんなもんじゃねぇ, etc.), which does not seem to match the high-class etiquette and prestige of the oiran.

(To be fair, ‘high-class’ isn’t exactly a concept that I would associate with Toriumi’s characters - they usually give off the impression of being dignified cool on the surface and perverted wild at heart, kind of a 「裏腐設定」 if you will XDD.)

All things considered, this is still one of if not the best story I’ve come across of recent note. I will definitely be looking into the other discs of this series - esp. Guy #4 voiced by Shimono Hiro, the (psycho?) dollmaker who wants to make a lifelike replica of the heroine.

*fingers crossed* Please let him be yandere, pleaseee let him be yandere...

[aion-rsa]

The Best Movies of 2020

https://ift.tt/34YpJ4d

Thank goodness that’s over, right?

To say 2020 was a challenging year is like announcing the Hindenburg had a rough landing. In a period that’s transformed how billions live their lives, there isn’t one person, family, business, or industry that wasn’t impacted significantly by upheaval. And that includes going to the movies.

Just 12 months ago, moviegoers were turning out by the millions to see their favorite space adventures in theaters. Now they’re watching them, and everything else, on streaming. It’s an astonishing journey we’ve detailed further here, but even if our relationship to how we experience films is changing, the fact remains cinema is as vital a form of escape and inspiration as ever. And even in 2020, as Hollywood studios largely abandoned multiplexes to fend for themselves, there also remained excellent motion pictures. Some were released on Netflix, some experimented with premium video on demand, and a rarified few still entered theaters.

Here’s 25 of them.

25. Host

This Zoom horror movie, completed from start to finish in 12 weeks during the middle of a pandemic, might be the movie that sums up 2020 better than any other. But it should also be noted that it’s genuinely very good. The feature debut of Rob Savage runs at just 57 minutes (how very 2020, as in any other year its halfway house runtime might have hurt the movie’s chances), and in that time it sees a group of friends attempt to carry out a séance over Zoom. However, something goes wrong (or is that right?) and a malign entity enters the call.

Performed by a group of women, and one man, who already know each other really well, it’s the easy shorthand of their friendship that elevates this and helps the audience to instantly care. Meanwhile it’s the ambition and inventiveness of Savage and writers Jed Shepherd and Gemma Hurley which increases the scale of this beyond a lockdown found footage movie and into territory where complicated stunt work was involved. First and foremost though, it’s scary. Like really scary. How very 2020. – Rosie Fletcher 

24. Minari

There is currently a bit of controversy over the Golden Globes categorizing Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari as a “foreign language film.” If that stands, it will be a genuine shame, and a greater slight, for this is an all-American story. A semi-autobiographical reverie for its writer-director, Minari depicts a family of Korean-Americans who immigrated to the United States in the 1970s and are now trying to make it as farmers in rural Arkansas in the 1980s.

A beautiful ode to childhood, and both the hardships and joys of the immigrant experience, what’s most rewarding about Chung’s film is its quiet intelligence at working from first the perception of a child named David (Alan S. Kim), and then also from the vantage of his parents and their increasingly frayed marriage (a mutually raw Steven Yeun and Yeri Han). It even has a deep reservoir of understanding for the more complex sorrows of grandmother Soonja (Youn Yuh-jung). Minari is a sophisticated multigenerational snapshot of a distinct group of American lives, and it’s among the best films of the year, however you categorize it. – David Crow

23. Kajillionaire

Miranda July’s ethereal scammer dramedy carries the con-artist torch from Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 masterpiece, Parasite, and once again allows audiences to live vicariously through a scrappy family surviving on society’s margins. But unlike Bong’s Kims, Kajillionaire’s Dynes (Robert Jenkins and Debra Winger) are far from sympathetic; they’re poisoned by their warped take on the American Dream.

Evan Rachel Wood turns in one of 2020’s most stunning performances as their strange daughter, Old Dolio: fierce yet naïve, raised to regard all relationships as transactional and so utterly at a loss as to how to navigate her attraction to their new co-conspirator Melanie (Gina Rodriguez). Old Dolio’s roughness contrasts beautifully with the surreal wonder of July’s dreamy motifs—here, soap bubbles representing the fragility of a life that could change with one puncture.

No one could have predicted that this year would implode worse than a scam gone wrong, nor that even the most well-adjusted families would have to grapple with setting uncomfortable but life-saving boundaries with loved ones. Yet here we are, and somehow July’s hopeful story came to us at exactly the right time: We can delight in Old Dolio breaking toxic patterns, and the elder Dynes learning that letting go of something valuable can be more beneficial than squeezing the life out of it. – Natalie Zutter

22. The Assistant

One of the year’s most unassuming but devastating films is writer-director Kitty Green’s seamless foray from documentary (Casting JonBenet, Ukraine is Not a Brothel) into a classic “inspired by true events” feature. Those true events are the Harvey Weinstein scandal, as the film follows a day in the life of a low-level assistant (Julia Garner) in a prominent Hollywood executive’s New York City office. The Weinstein-like character is never directly seen, and Jane is one of many peons who sketch out the space around his considerable form, as they arrange his midday hotel reservations and restock his private stash of erectile dysfunction medication. 

Read more

TV

The Best TV Shows of 2020

By Alec Bojalad and 9 others

Games

The Best Games of 2020

By Matthew Byrd and 3 others

Yet out of the whole office, Jane is both the most valuable and the least valued: first one in, last one out, she has devoted all of her waking hours to streamlining this powerful man’s day—which includes covering over his gravest sins with regard to the pretty, impressionable young women she ushers into his office.

Every phone conversation or behind-closed-doors meeting is intentionally muffled so that Jane herself can hardly hear it, let alone the audience. These murmuring pockets invite the viewer to fill in the blanks, imagining the worst possible scenario. The film never gets explicit, but Jane’s dawning realization and horror at her complicity is unsettling enough. Even more so when her attempts to flag this unimaginably inappropriate behavior get undermined by the self-protecting hierarchy of the company. The Assistant is more character portrait than anything else, and it treats its archetypal figure with more sympathy than her real-life counterparts might have earned, but its depiction of seemingly harmless eccentricities snowballing into an unconscionable abuse of power is a must-watch. – NZ

21. His House

This Netflix original horror movie took people by surprise when it landed on the service. The feature debut from Remi Weekes, His House is a clever, nuanced political movie that leans hard into horror tropes, working both as a commentary on the treatment of refugees in Britain and as a seriously frightening ghost story. Wunmi Mosaku (Lovecraft Country) and Sope Dirisu (Gangs of London) play a Sudanese couple who escape the violence of their own country only to find themselves hemmed in by the bureaucracy and judgement of the UK. Placed in a decrepit home that they can’t leave, they are haunted by spirits they brought with them while facing the nightmare of a country that pretends to care but barely sees them as people.

Read more

Movies

His House and the Horror of “Otherness”

By Rosie Fletcher

Movies

The Best Horror Movies of 2020

By Rosie Fletcher and 4 others

The performances across the board, including a supporting role from Matt Smith, soar, and the production design is unique, haunting, and at times very beautiful. This is a powerful first film from an exciting new voice, a must-watch for genre lovers, and a showcase for a strong, if not often told, social message that talks about culture, society, and gender. It’s about the demons we see and the ones we do not. – RF

20. Emma.

Jane Austen’s fourth novel, and the last published in her lifetime, has been filmed many times. But director Autumn de Wilde’s version is the best one, perhaps because she is the first woman to helm a straightforward adaptation. Leaning into Austen’s own designs for the book, where the author mused she would “take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like,” Emma. embraces the mischievous and sardonic side of Austen’s wit, and her heroine who was gifted with being “handsome, clever, and rich” from the word go.

Filmed with supreme confidence and a sumptuous color palette of bright pastels in brighter natural lighting, Emma. is vibrant and often veers cheerfully near screwball comedy. This approach is only buoyed by Anya Taylor-Joy, who began a strong year of work with this multifaceted and exceedingly rich portrait of Ms. Woodhouse, in the most magnanimous sense. She and her director searched for “questionable intent” in the material while still crafting a warm film that bubbles with life. It also enjoys a wonderful soundtrack thanks to a collection of actual 18th and 17th century English folk songs, and a puckish score by David Schweitzer and Isobel Waller-Bridge. – DC

19. The Father

Director and screenwriter Florian Zeller’s adaptation of his own stage play stars Anthony Hopkins as Anthony, an elderly English man suffering from the onset of dementia. Olivia Colman is his daughter Anne, who is planning a move to Paris to live with her partner, and is desperately trying to find a new caregiver for her father. People drift in and out of the narrative under different names, Anthony’s spacious apartment seems to change around him and time itself seems to bend before we realize we are seeing almost all the events from Anthony’s point of view—which means that none of what we see can truly be trusted.

Read more

TV

The Best TV Episodes of 2020

By Alec Bojalad and 8 others

Books

The Best Books of 2020

By Kayti Burt and 6 others

This makes what could have been a conventional drama about illness and memory into something brilliant and terribly heartbreaking, with Hopkins and Colman giving performances that are nothing short of titanic and Zeller’s cool, controlled direction making the emotional cost even more profound. The final scenes of this nearly perfect film will leave you devastated, even if this awful disease has never impacted your life personally. – Don Kaye

18. Sound of Metal

Sound of Metal gives us an up-close, immersive look at what it feels like to suddenly go deaf, and to realize that massive life changes don’t have to portend the end of what it means to live. Riz Ahmed is excellent as Ruben, a recovering drug addict who drums in a heavy metal duo alongside his girlfriend, singer/guitarist Lou (Olivia Cooke). The two tour the indie rock circuit in a beat-up but cozy RV that also serves as their home, but their gypsy lifestyle is upended when Ruben abruptly loses his hearing.

Director Darius Marder (who co-wrote the script with Abraham Marder) does not give into sentimentality even as Ruben moves through grief, loss, denial, anger, and self-pity, all the while clinging to the possibility that he may find a surgical way to restore his hearing. His journey also takes him to a home for deaf people in recovery (headed up by the marvelous Paul Raci, whose own real-life story involving deafness is remarkable), and eventually opens his heart and mind. The excellent sound design is the final touch on a captivating and highly original story. – DK

17. The Personal History of David Copperfield

After exposing the sheer absurdity of modern politics in films and series like In The Loop, The Death of Stalin, and Veep, Armando Iannucci found solace this year in creating this earnest, light, charming adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic novel, David Copperfield. The film still tackles Dickens’ persistent themes of class, privilege, poverty, and human rights, although in far less scathing fashion than Iannucci is known for. Casting his project in colorblind fashion has also allowed the director to subtly modernize the piece while grounding it firmly in 1850s England.

Some of us may get a bit lost in the onrush of characters and events in this fast-paced film, as Iannucci breezes through a lot of the book’s events. But the story itself, and the multitude of vivid, colorful, oddball characters who are led by an enthusiastic Dev Patel as David, are so timeless and relevant to the human condition that only diehard loyalists to the original text may find something to grumble about. The rest of us can enjoy a delightful adaptation that we might not even know we needed. – DK

16. Bad Education

For his whole career, Hugh Jackman has been celebrated for his consummate showmanship. Whether it is as ambassador for a major superhero franchise or the song and dance man who can win Tonys at the same ceremony he’s hosting, his charm is irresistible. So imagine his delight when director Cory Finely presented him with Bad Education: the movie where his ability to ingratiate turns into something sinister and perfectly apt for the year it was released in.

Based on a 2004 New York Magazine article about the largest school embezzlement scandal in history, Bad Education plays like a dark comedy about American greed, as well as prologue for the 21st century hucksterism that was to come. Filmed with the same clinical nihilism found in Finley’s Thoroughbreds, this film is so much larger in its landscape of apathy of self-delusion. And at the center of it is Jackman’s affable Long Island school superintendent, a man who hides dark secrets and a bottomless pit of narcissism, both of which allow him to tell any lie that keeps him on top. Hence why watching his house of cards fall is pretty satisfying, especially these days. – DC

15. Small Axe

Steve McQueen’s latest effort, an anthology of short films set around Black communities in 1970s and ’80s Britain has been the source of some debate. Should these be looked at as individual films or can the work only be considered as a whole? We don’t have a satisfactory answer either, but Small Axe is as thoroughly compelling as the rest of McQueen’s work, and two films in particular, Mangrove and Lovers Rock are standouts.

Mangrove is the longest, most traditionally “feature length” entry in Small Axe. Gifted with urgent, authentic performances to tell the story of the Mangrove Nine, it’s also (like the rest of the films in the anthology) an effortlessly immersive recreation of its era, even as its subject matter resonates uncomfortably with today’s headlines. But while the other movies that comprise Small Axe are shorter than many features, they’re no less powerful. The immensely beautiful Lovers Rock, with its haunting reggae soundtrack and beautifully filmed party scenes, serves as a reminder of so much of what we’ve lost and taken for granted in this pandemic year, and the intimacy that can be found in crowds. It’s essential viewing, and both a snapshot of a moment in time and a reminder of something else we’ve lost to this pandemic year. – Mike Cecchini

14. Tenet (READERS’ CHOICE)

In a tumultuous year, no blockbuster has had quite as much controversy surrounding it as Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. The director was notoriously adamant that his film should be the one to lead moviegoers back to cinemas worldwide, a quixotic (some might say selfish) endeavor that might’ve undercut the ambition of a movie that blends the action and spectacle of the wildest James Bond movies with elements of time travel, quantum physics, and Nolan’s famed attention to detail.

But lost in all that controversy—and perhaps in its nigh-incomprehensible plot—is the fact that maybe, were the world not in the midst of a deadly pandemic, Nolan was right.

Perhaps more than any other blockbuster of the last year or more, Tenet was clearly designed with the cinematic experience in mind. Action set pieces, filmed in gorgeous locations that would be spectacular on their own, take on the quality of magic tricks as events and performances are “inverted” by the film’s central, mysterious technology.

Read more

Movies

Tenet Ending Explained

By Chris Farnell

Movies

Tenet’s ‘Inversion’ Logic Explained

By Chris Farnell

Even Nolan’s notorious penchant for emotionally distant main characters is undercut by performances from John David Washington and Robert Pattinson that bring this about as close to a buddy action movie two-hander as you’re ever likely to see from the director. Whether you ultimately view Tenet as a smarter-than-your-average thrill ride or a puzzle that can only be unlocked via repeated viewings, it still deserves, even demands, your full attention. – MC

13. One Night in Miami

Regina King has been in the business of making movies for nearly three decades. Who knew she could also be such an astonishing director? Yet with her first theatrical feature, she announces undiscovered talent in this sweltering, jubilant film that interrogates what life is like at the intersection of Black art and Black commerce in America.

With screenwriter Kemp Powers adapting his own stage play, One Night in Miami imagines a fictional account of an evening where Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), and the man who would soon be Muhammad Ali (Eli Goree) walk into a 1964 motel room. Their conversations about the challenges of Black celebrity in a world that pulls them both toward the desperate need of social equity and the more comfortable appeal of white-friendly affability, is one that is still going on to this day. But it’s told here with bombastic performances and a visual flair that is so kinetic it overcomes the admittedly stagebound limitations of the film’s conceit. – DC 

12. Soul

What does it mean to have soul? How do you feed it? Joe Gardner, the Jamie Foxx-voiced protagonist of Soul, thinks he has the answer in the keys of his music, but the beauty of this latest Pixar film is it lives within the ambiguous places that aren’t be so easily defined. As yet another sophisticated offering from co-director Pete Docter, who previously co-helmed Inside Out, Soul pushes Pixar back toward its ambitious best, finding a way to convey complex ideas in an adventure with universal appeal.

With dazzling animation that leans into abstract concepts about life, death, and a weird transient state between the two, the film asks big questions in a way a child can appreciate, if not fully understand. To be sure, it’s the rare kids’ movie that gingerly suggests there is happiness in the seeming pointlessness of existence. It also benefits from ascendant music by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Jon Batiste on the piano. In fact, realizing Nine Inch Nails penned one of the great Disney scores might be 2020’s most pleasant surprise. – DC

11. Saint Maud

The directorial debut of Rose Glass did the festival circuit in 2019 and was due to land in cinemas in the spring. Instead it was pushed back to October in the UK, mid-pandemic. So perhaps it didn’t get the fanfare it would have garnered in a normal year. Set in a rundown seaside town, the movie sees young palliative care nurse Maud (Morfydd Clark) become obsessed with her patient Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), who is dying of cancer. After a highly traumatic incident, Maud has found God—a God she believes talks directly to her and has made it Maud’s mission to save Amanda’s soul.

Read more

Movies

A24 Horror Movies Ranked From Worst to Best

By David Crow and 3 others

Movies

Saint Maud and the True Horror of Broken Minds and Bodies

By Rosie Fletcher

A nightmarish horror of shifting perception, where bodies and minds are in conflict, this is a movie packed with indelible imagery, not least the devastating final scene. Ehle is excellent as the former dancer whose body is letting her down, but Clark is a revelation as the tiny, fierce Maud, all self-flagellation and buttoned up piety until she’s not. – RF

10. Nomadland

Utilizing both actors and real people, director Chloé Zhao (The Rider and Marvel’s upcoming Eternals) chronicles the lives of America’s “forgotten people” as they travel the West, searching for work, companionship, and community in the years following the Great Recession. A brilliant Frances McDormand stars as Fern, a woman in her mid-60s who lost her husband, her house, and her entire previous existence when the town she lived in—Empire, Nevada—vanished off the map following the closure of its sole factory.

Zhao’s film quietly flows from despair to optimism and back to despair again, all while the hardscrabble lives of its itinerant cast (many of them actual nomads) is foregrounded against stunning, if lonely, vistas from the American countryside. Nomadland shows us both the best and worst of America at once: the cruelty of a nation that refuses more and more to take care of its own, juxtaposed with the decency and compassion one can find on an individual basis. Whether the latter is enough to overcome the former is one of Nomadland’s haunting, unanswered questions.  – DK

9. Wonder Woman 1984

A movie about flying and lying (even to one’s self), Wonder Woman 1984 came onto the pop culture scene at the very end of a very bad year. For many, the film’s muddled superhero logic and lackluster third act action scenes were enough to ruin the experience. For others, including many of us, the big budget earnestness of Diana Prince won the day. The film’s delights include charismatic performances from Pedro Pascal and Kristen Wiig as complex antagonists Maxwell Lord and Cheetah; a breathtaking Themyscira sequence; and Chris Pine pretending to ride an escalator for the first time.

Ultimately, however, Wonder Woman 1984 warrants a spot on this list due to its unexpected thematic priority. While many storytellers use a 1980s setting as an excuse to blast Blondie (fair enough), give the costume department free rein on shoulder pads (yes, please), or to harken back to an imagined simpler time (sure, whatever), director and co-writer Patty Jenkins uses it as a way to rewrite American history.

Read more

Movies

Wonder Woman 1984: DC Comics Easter Eggs and Reference Guide

By Delia Harrington

Comics

The Best Comics of 2020

By Jim Dandy and 2 others

If the 1980s was an era that saw economic policies shifting the power from government to Wall Street, then here is a superhero flick that goes back in time to imagine a different path forward, one in which America is able to avoid the path that prioritizes the few over the many. It’s a fantasy, sure—and one that is understandably too porous for some to enjoy—but it’s a particularly cathartic one for 2020. – Kayti Burt

8. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Adapted from August Wilson’s play by director George C. Wolfe (and not quite able to escape its stage origins), Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is set during a heated recording session by the title artist–one of the pioneering blues singers of the 1920s–and her touring band. As tensions rise between Ma (Viola Davis) and certain band members, plus Ma and the white men, who of course own the record label, the band members find themselves at odds over the music they’re making and much more.

Read more

Culture

Ma Rainey’s Life and Reign as the Mother of the Blues

By Tony Sokol

Movies

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Ending Explained

By Tony Sokol

While Ma and the events of the story may be fictionalized, the issues that come up—race, religion, money, and art—are not just universal but as relevant as ever in terms of the Black experience in America. Davis is a supernova as Ma, and the rest of the supporting cast is just as terrific. Yet the spotlight undeniably belongs to the late Chadwick Boseman in his final screen appearance. As Levee, the trumpeter who wants to go solo, Boseman radiates rage, pain, and frustration in a performance as incendiary as it is tragic. – DK 

7. Birds of Prey

Harley Quinn’s fabulous emancipation was just that—fabulous. As a fierce, funny, feminist ensemble piece with a quality cast that flipped on its head Harley’s dubious treatment at the hands of Mr. J in Suicide Squad, Harley herself, Margot Robbie, pitched the movie back in 2015. Birds of Prey shows a different side to Gotham City where a grubby underworld of people are trying to scratch together a living, and the only thing objectified in this female team-up is a bacon and egg sandwich (and what a sandwich it is). 

Read more

Movies

How Birds of Prey Subverts the Male Gaze

By Kayti Burt

Movies

Birds of Prey’s Marilyn Monroe Musical Scene Explained

By David Crow

Working from a script by Christina Hodson, director Cathy Yan’s film has a totally different flavor from anything that had come before from the DCEU. R-Rated, rude, and colorful, the movie sees the whole of Gotham out to get Harley now that she’s no longer under the Joker’s protection. But a young pickpocket, a stolen diamond, and Ewan McGregor’s gangster bring together a mismatched bunch in a joyful slice of anarchy that hits exactly the right notes. Superhero movies don’t get much more fun than this. – RF

6. Mank

The authorship of Citizen Kane has divided critics and film scholars for generations. So you can almost sense the glee boiling up in David Fincher as Mank wades right into the middle of it with a stylized and exquisitely crafted love letter to Herman J. Mankiewicz—and proverbial middle finger toward Orson Welles. One sympathizes, as Mankiewicz (or “Mank”) has been an unsung figure in film history: a member of New York’s 1920s generation of literary writers and journalists who bought into the allure of easy money in Hollywood but never got the credit he deserved for selling his soul.

Well, Mank attempts to return it with interest. A film that basks in demolishing Old Hollywood nostalgia, even with its black and white photography and heightened melodramatic score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Mank recalls the ugly side of yesteryear, and the greed that slaughtered talent, be it for money as embodied by Louis B. Mayer, or ego as personified by the film’s vision of Welles.

Yet its elegy for Mankiewicz—portrayed with delicious self-loathing by Gary Oldman—and his generation of forgotten writers is what makes the film unexpectedly warm for a Fincher joint. As does Mank’s relationship with Marion Davies, an also overlooked movie star given spirited reconsideration by Amanda Seyfried in one of the year’s best performances. – DC 

5. Palm Springs

There must be something hypnotic about the banality of time loops, because to date the concept hasn’t produced a bad movie. Harold Ramis and Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day remains the paterfamilias, and prime original day, for the form. Yet that film’s many imitators have still pushed other filmmakers toward genuine inspiration. And that may have never been truer than for Palm Springs, a millennial reimagining of Groundhog’s exploration of a romance stuck on repeat—but with an ingenious added wrinkle.

Instead of one half a potential couple being oblivious to her role in a cyclical love story, both Nyles (Andy Samberg) and Sarah (Cristin Milioti) are keenly aware of their shared Sisyphean hell. Worse still, they’re also trapped at a lame wedding. The small addition has massive creative repercussions, with director Max Barbakow and company lightly critiquing the implicit ickiness in Ramis’ film, as well as providing an opportunity for a true two-hander film between Samberg and Milioti. It’s Samberg’s best work to date, but Milioti is the real revelation as the woman who is our eyes and ears into a circular existence that is both horrifying and pleasant, romantic and exhausting. Like the film as a whole, this is a delightful nightmare. – DC

4. Da 5 Bloods

Hollywood’s great reckoning with America’s involvement in the Vietnam War may never truly end. But few films have gotten to the human cost of the war that lingers long after soldiers came home quite as emotionally as Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods.

Alternately a heartfelt tale of friendship and identity amidst shared hardship and a raucous action movie, effortlessly connecting the dots between the racial politics of the Civil Rights era during the Vietnam War and the Black Lives Matter movement of today, Da 5 Bloods may be the most clear-sighted movie about the conflict ever made. The film’s emotional power is bolstered even further by a rousing Terence Blanchard score, as well as a significant chunk of Marvin Gaye’s era-defining masterpiece album, What’s Going On.   

Even at 156 minutes, Da 5 Bloods never overstays its welcome. Despite an action heavy third act that may seem incongruous with some of the film’s weightier themes, its characters are so powerful, and the performances so unforgettable, that nothing is ever lost. And while each of the film’s five leads (not to mention Chadwick Boseman’s almost ethereal “Stormin’” Norman Holloway, seen only in flashback) are terrific, none are more haunting than Delroy Lindo’s manic, tortured turn as Paul, a soldier still bearing the scars of war, both foreign and domestic. – MC

3. Promising Young Woman

Carey Mulligan plays against type in this candy colored fable of an avenging angel who goes to nightclubs and pretends to be wasted in order to shame the men who try to take her home and take advantage. It’s an ultra modern take on the rape-revenge subgenre with a very female gaze. Mulligan’s Cassie is a delicate clothes horse with multicolored nails who works in a coffee shop and lives with her parents—her brand of revenge is specific, personal, and highly female.

Despite the dark subject matter, this is an unashamedly fun film (um, until it’s not) with a killer soundtrack. It’s the directorial debut of actor Emerald Fennell (most recently seen playing Camilla in The Crown), who also wrote the picture, and she reveals an extremely distinctive style. A starry supporting cast also deliver uniformly excellent performances, including Bo Burnham, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Adam Brodie, and Alfred Molina, which makes this feel big budget glossy.

Read more

Movies

Da 5 Bloods Opening History Montage Explained

By David Crow

Movies

What the Mank Ending Leaves Out About Orson Welles and Citizen Kane

By David Crow

But it’s Mulligan’s movie. It’s impossible to take your eyes off her, and she owns the screen as a powerful warrior, a vulnerable soul, and a heroine for our times. – RF

2. The Invisible Man

A Blumhouse redo of a Universal classic from the bloke who wrote Saw, on paper this wouldn’t be an obvious contender for a year-end best list. But then The Invisible Man isn’t an obvious movie. As the last film many saw at the cinema before lockdown landed, The Invisible Man is an incredibly smart take on the H.G. Wells story, which focuses not on the scientist who creates the suit that makes him invisible, but the woman he uses it to terrorize.  

He may be “the guy who wrote Saw,” but writer-director Leigh Whannell has proved himself incredibly adept at a certain kind of action/horror with this and Upgrade—both include thrilling sequences of people who aren’t in control of their own bodies. Here it’s Elisabeth Moss who is being stalked by her abusive ex-boyfriend. Whannell uses the conceit to great effect: It’s a movie about gaslighting, which has the audience scanning the peripheries of the scene at all times, keeping us on edge, just like Cece, and wrong footing us all the same.

Top notch performances and serious subject matter handled with panache make this a scary standout for any year. We can’t wait to see what Whannell does with The Wolfman… – RF

1. The Trial of the Chicago 7

“The whole world is watching.” That is the chant shouted throughout Aaron Sorkin’s second directorial effort, The Trial of the Chicago 7, and it echoes in our 2020 ears like the Ghost of Christmas Past. A little more than 50 years ago, the United States government put eight men on trial for protesting the Democratic National Convention—and the Vietnam War its presumptive nominee supported. This legal circus occurred even though the riot that broke out during the protests was started by the police. It would be understatement to note it all plays as eerily prescient today.

Beyond the loaded political subtexts though, the movie’s placement on this list reflects what happens when Sorkin’s screenplays achieve their greatest alchemy: With words being deployed in a courtroom as ruthlessly as batons were on a summer night in Chicago, each dialogue exchange in Chicago 7 is kinetic. The film defies the seemingly stagey quality of its legal setting, and not by just inserting flashbacks to a recreation of the 1968 riots (though they’re here too), but by turning verbose monologues into thrilling set pieces. Defense attorneys duel prosecutors; defendants defy a shockingly biased and corrupt judge; and believers in the system, like Sorkin himself, stare into the abyss of what happens when it fails.

All of these elements amplify the film’s vision of protestors from “the far left” running into the hard wall of mainstream resistance to change. It’s a showcase for Sorkin, his editor Alan Baumgarten, and the whole ensemble, particularly in one grueling sequence between Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Bobby Seale and Frank Langella as Judge Julius Hoffman. The Trial of the Chicago 7 can be horrifying in places, and yet always engrossing. And most miraculously of all, it’s never cynical. That might be why it electrifies most at this moment. – DC

Other movies receiving balloted votes (in descending order): Relic, The News of the World, Uncle Frank, Never Always Sometimes, Class Action Park, Freaky, The Way Back, The Old Guard, Synchronic, The Devil All the Time, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Enola Holmes, Shirley, Unpregnant, Wolfwalkers, Rebecca, On the Rocks, MLK/FBI, Scare Me, The Lodge, Happiest Season, I’m Your Woman, Bill & Ted 3, The Platform, Monsoon, Possessor, Ordinary Love, Miss Juneteenth, Athlete A, How to Build a Girl, The Vast of Night, What the Constitution Means to Me, Muscle, Calm the Horses, Color Out of Space, Eurovision, Another Round, Misbehaviour, The Boys in the Band, Borat 2, Extraction, Midnight Sky, Zappa, The Half of It, Greenland, 7500, Onward, The Wolf of Snow Hollow, The Nest, Bad Hair, Capone, Project Power, New Order, The Gentlemen, Lost Girls, The 40 Year-Old-Version.

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[libertariantaoist]

Although the public choice school of political economy has been demonized in a new work of putatively progressive fiction masquerading as intellectual history, good-faith leftists (if they don’t already regard themselves as libertarians) may be surprised by how their cause could benefit from the insights of James Buchanan et al. (For reviews of the book I’m referring to, see among others this, this, and this. To keep up with the daily sightings of misquotations, fabrications, and smears, read Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek.)

Full disclosure: despite its many valuable insights, I find less to like in public choice theory, at least its most common variant, than many (nonlibertarian) leftists would. For one thing, I (like Murray Rothbard) don’t share the view that the state is just another way (along with the market) in which we assert our personal preferences and obtain goods and services. The state is a predator and an exploiter, not a cooperative venture for the production of “public goods.” I don’t see how a hypothetical social contract or constitutional convention changes that. And I’m underwhelmed by the constitutional contractarian argument that, while the state indeed coerces, we in effect have consented to be subject to the state’s threats of violence.

On the other hand, I like the methodological and moral egalitarian individualism at the base of public choice — and so should all leftists of good faith. Everyone has the right to be free of aggression; no one is naturally endowed with authority over others. But I am uneasy about the fact that that the consequent unanimity principle in practice becomes something far less than literal unanimity. For me it’s not enough that the decrees of legislatures are passed under constitutional rules everyone perhaps would agree to were they gathered at a convention. As Rothbard pointed out, such hypothetical unanimity can easily become a device to legitimize almost anything the government does. I realize that concern about the production of important “public goods,” such as security and dispute resolution, underlies much of this, but perhaps this concern betrays an underappreciation for the power of entrepreneurship, technology, and cooperation through nonstate channels. For a long time some heavy thinkers thought lighthouses couldn’t be produced on the market. As for the market production of security, a voluminous interdisciplinary literature has become available to show how feasible that would be. (Start here. By the way, it’s wrong to think that a stateless society would lack a constitution.)

Elements on the left should also be delighted by public choice scholars’ development of the theory of privilege-seeking (or “rent-seeking”). It’s an old observation, really: when the state’s personnel have favors to dispense, people in the private sector will invest resources to obtain them. Such favors are by nature impositions on third parties. They may take the form of cash subsidies, taxes and regulations that hamper or quash competition and raise incomes in a nonmarket manner, and other devices. But the principle is the same: private- and government-sector individuals collude to use the state’s coercive power to obtain what they could not obtain through voluntary exchange for mutual benefit. It’s a theory of exploitation the good-faith left should embrace.

By the same token, the state’s personnel, seeing opportunities to sell favors, are just as likely to initiate the privilege-seeking process. In this sense, public choice scholars are right when they see the political arena as a series of exchanges. The big difference with the marketplace, however, is that in the political arena the largest group of people is forced to participate.

The bottom line on privilege-seeking, which should interest the left, is this: the people with the greatest access to power will not be those the left cares most about, but those who run Boeing and ExxonMobil and GE and Lockheed Martin. Wealth transfers will tend overwhelmingly to be upward.

This raises a point that is most closely identified with Public Choice, namely, that people are people whether they are acting in the marketplace or in the political arena: the behavior of government personnel and voters must be analyzed according to the logic of human action, accounting for the different institutional incentives in the two contexts. In other words, if it is safe to assume that people are in some sense self-regarding (not necessarily “selfish”) in the marketplace, then we have no reason to assume they are otherwise when they take government jobs or step into the voting booth. If you think that people in the private sector are kept from doing the right thing by personal considerations, then you have no grounds for thinking political actors and voters will be different. (As an Aristotelian, I don’t think that — outside the political arena — doing the right thing and pursuing one’s own interests differ in principle.)

Stepping beyond the public choice premise, however: I embrace Robert Higgs’s (and F. A. Hayek’s) important point that while people are certainly people no matter where they are, different sorts of people are attracted to power over others. “Decent people, virtually by definition,” Higgs says, “do not seek to exercise political power over their fellows.” He continues:

Honorable people, taking a wrong turn and blundering into positions of political leadership, would last no longer than a nun in a brothel. If ruthless rivals did not displace them at the earliest opportunity, the scrupulous people would soon remove themselves in disgust. People who lack pugnacity do not succeed as prize fighters; people who lack a talent for lying, stealing and, if need be, abetting homicide do not succeed in modern politics.

Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt,” but it also tends to attract the already corrupt. The left stands to gain by taking this insight seriously.

Good-faith leftists, those who really care about people handicapped by corporatism, should find many public choice insights amenable to their cause. If they care about the economically disfranchised, they should be suspicious of welfare programs and health care plans concocted and run by the very perpetrators of that disfranchisement. And they should take to heart the analyses of leftists such as Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, who have shown that the U.S government’s apparent beneficence (like Bismarck’s pioneering German welfare state) works by design to tamp down thoughts about radical change.

Progress is the child of liberation from, not subordination to, the state.