Blog #08: OF FILMIC PROPORTIONS
My cult of personality is officially carrying me in my semi-professional life. People who don’t know me think I am cool and want to be my friend because I wore a cool outfit in a public-public place. Fifteen-year-old me is delighted, 26-year-old me is slightly confused. Concerned, even. Guess this is freelancing, idk.
It is Monday aka the day before tax day when I start writing this, though I almost started on Friday but I was too sleepy from the rain. I’d just seen an apartment for fun, that confirmed that I am not moving anytime soon. 3,000 American dollars monthly for a little box (studio) in Fort Greene. In no way could I ever afford that but I was just lookin. When the broker asked me why I was moving I said that I just wanted to be by myself and that my block was getting kinda hot (there was a brouhaha outside the other day with an ambulance and two cop cars, turns out someone was murdered, and two months prior there was a double homicide, at least according to my roommate who chatted with our neighbors amid the commotion). The broker said, and I quote “oh, so you mean your block is like very popular or physically the temperature is hot?” Uh...
When I told her what I meant by my block being hot, she said “oh yeah, well it is Bed-Stuy,” and I realized that not only could I not live around such a dense population of those people (white Fort Greene-flavored) but also that I really didn’t want to pay this particular person a broker’s fee. Jesus.
Apart from that, I’ve been thinking a lot about media, specifically TV, namely because I’ve been watching a lot of it in my unemployment but also because there’s been a lot of it on. There’s Hacks, which I haven’t started yet, but I hear is good. The last season of Yellowjackets just ended, but I haven’t kept up past the first season purely because of the lesbianness (no predjudice, I just hate that TV writer’s rooms try to tell gay stories by incorporating plot lines that feel like poorly conceived gay AU Tumblr fanfics into mainstream cable series as “progress”). And then there’s White Lotus.
Ok, so White Lotus is a really great show concept. It’s formulaic—each season, a group of hyper rich tourists travel to one of the many eponymous resorts stationed in an exotic and luxurious location, and someone dies. The first episode reveals as much, without letting the audience know who or how, and the rest of the season is a kind of sexy, repressed whodunnit speaking to the many types of rich people on vacation, and why they suck. In the three seasons thus far, there have been recurring characters connecting the different crops of vacationers, like Tanya (RIP) from the first and second seasons, Belinda from he first and third seasons, and Gary, who’s been the only recurring character thus far in the show’s narrative. Although, it’s likely we won't be seeing any more of him, unless the conditions for the money he paid Belinda off with comes with more conditions than initially let on, conditions that could make a wonderful subplot next season...just a theory.
This third season was, by all means, a letdown compared to the first two for many reasons. The first one I can think of off top is how damn slow it was, which kind of leads into my other qualms. It wasn’t really until 3/4 done with the season that you actually feel tension build apart from Timothy trying to not kill himself. There were a whole bunch of moments that were given to us as little teases like the robbery, the discovery that the hot Ukranian guys the three white women are lusting after are the robbers, Timothy stealing Gaitok’s gun and Gaitok getting it back. There’s a counterargument that these little tease moment from the writer’s room are in fact part and parcel to the whodunnit which, yes, is based on finding out who kills whom, how, and why, however in a show like White Lotus that is as much a commentary as it is supposed to be a black comedy, these moments felt less like an actual writing technique and more like a series of disjointed, poorly thought out “bet you thought” beats that never really came together until we actually see who dies and how in the last 10 minutes of the season finale. And perhaps this is the cheap part of White Lotus, which is that it kind of survives on an impactful last episode that ties together all the loose threads that fray throughout the season. It just feels as though, in past seasons, the loose threads are actively frayed, and their season finales only clarify certain fractures among the hotel guests by unifying them in a death on a luxury resort. Last season is a perfect example: Tanya dies in an accident after opening fire on like 20 gay guys on a boat because she was paranoid. That seed wasn’t planted in the sixth episode of an eight-episode season, it exists from episode three. The tech bro frenemies didn't all of a sudden have a weird dick measuring competition a la GATTACA (do you remember that scene in the beginning when young Ethan Hawke watches his brother die drown because they were having a swimming race in choppy waters?) in front of their wives, there was swingers-tension and then wife-swap-tension and then group-sex tension built up from the very first episode and nurtured throughout the season that made the vague drown-each-other moment so cathartic. I dunno guys, call me crazy, but using the last episode of an already short season of television to show something happening dear GOD does not sound narrative make.
I feel like there is a counterargument that’s going to be made, or perhaps it was made and I haven’t seen it yet, that this season has some Buddhist philosophy behind its slowness. There are tenets to the Eastern philosophy that prioritize slowness as a means to better understand the natural world and the people populating it without judgement, that slowness allows for emotionality. And while there are some really great moments from season three of White Lotus that I think embody this idea, like when Timothy meets the monk at the monastery who tells him death is like a water droplet sent upwards from the crashing of waves returning down to the ocean to become part of a collective again, and then that same imagery follows as characters near death, this moment happens...in episode...six. There are other Buddhist connections to be made in that same episode, like when Saxon asks Chloe why she didn’t let him smang and she’s like “you’re soulless,” so then he's given a whole bunch of books in episode seven and actually reads them in episode eight...you could say, he’s practicing slowness in trying to build some connection with the soul. And then there are obvious ruptures in Buddhist mindset, like when Gaitok shoots Rick in the back because Amrita instructs him to as vengeance for Rick shooting her man...not only does he kill, he shotos someone with their back turned (pussy) and loses his religion, some may say...I don’t know. If I saw this argument on the internet from someone justifying why this season was so damn slow I’d roll my eyes because it’s a reach, but meh. Definitely got some spiritual subtext in there, it just was paced so poorly I don’t even really know where to start.
This past rainy Saturday I showed my friend Thomas one of my very favorite movie-musicals, Sweet Charity (1969). If you haven’t seen, it’s got everything; camp, Shirley MacLane, Fosse choreography, Edith Head costumes, love, betrayal, loneliness, ladies of the night, Sammy Davis Jr. as Big Daddy (I can’t believe I forgot he was in this but he IS). My favorite moments are the Pompei club scenes where our heroine, Charity Hope Valentine, goes to a swanky nightclub with Italian movie star Vittorio Vidal, and the subsequent “I can’t believe he likes me” numbers that she performs in his palatial apartment later that evening. Among the ilk of young plucky girls just trying to make it in the big city, Charity is different because she’s kind of a loser, but also down on her luck; equally ambitious and ambulatory, in the sense that she aspires for a great love and goofs it all up by way of her personality. She’s desperate for a man, yes, but really she just wants to be understood. You get the sense that she wants a good man with a good job not for vanity, but so one day she can be stable enough to actually figure out what she wants for herself. I relate to her in the “my personality fucks it all up” department. Not the need-a-man-to-hold-it-down department though, Charity was down horrendously from the first song, good god.
So, tonight, or maybe “last night” idk when I'm going to post this yet, I saw Thirteen (2003) at Metrograph on 35 and man, what a rough ass movie. It’s roughly number 10 in my top 10, and honestly I think that's because the last time I saw this movie I was in high school and truly fascinated by self-harm and the general violent tendencies of adolescence, at least, as a well-behaved and outspoken 16-year-old grappling with the ethical conundrum of hating everyone, yet wanting them to like you, as well as marvel at your natural talents all at the same time. And I mean, Catherine Hardwicke directed this joint so the color treatment is based on this very washed out, insanguinated, almost (?) tone that translates into the actual tone of the subject matter. Hardwicke also did Twilight (2008), and a lot of the zeitgeist around that movie apart from the franchise is really about her and her directing. She’s an auteur in many ways, from the specific coloring to her movies, to the recurring cast—one of the couch surfers who lives in young Tracy’s home is Sarah Clarke, who plays Bella’s mom in Twilight. And of course, bad girl Evie Zamora is played by Nikki Reed, who also wrote the film and said it was “loosely” built on experiences from her own life...which like, girl? Your dad is a film industry set designer and your mom was stay-at-home? There’s been some debate over how true to life some of the things Evie and Tracy get into are that I remember finding on reddit when I first saw the film at age 13, but the threads are since deleted...if anyone is intrigued to dig and find more, I encourage it.
Anyways, this movie is insane. I’m really grateful my boy James texted me to notify it was showing because otherwise I would have missed it...he couldn’t attend with me as he had plans he forgot about. As usual, the Metrograph crowd was post-ironically laughing through the whole thing which, like, yes movies were actually made before we started calling things cringe, and it recontextualized many aspects for me as an adult. Firstly, the “Luke sandwich” scene where 13-year-old Evie and Tracy seduce Tracy’s neighbor Luke who’s 20. As a teenager, I was like “damn, get some.” As an adult, my stomach hurt. Watching Tracy now, she’s not just the fucked up girl you’d see in school like “damn she’s so cool but looks like she needs a snack and some electrolytes,” she’s so desperately seeking some sense of control in her life. She was always going to lash out, even if she didn’t meet Evie, Evie just made it look glamorous and manic-pixie-dream-girl. One thing I noticed formally though is that the film gets grayer and grayer until by the end, there’s almost no color left in Tracy’s world. An apt choice for such a movie. I’m actively being vague talking about this one because I genuinely think everyone should see Thirteen. Still in my favorite-movies-of-all-time list but at a soft 17.
Nighttime is very much so not my time, unlike Sky Ferreira. I had a really good idea of something to talk about on Friday but I was too rapt with guilt and despair that comes along with the human condition to remember it let alone write it down on a post-it so I could remember to write about it later. Just know it was good. I’ve decided at 10:39pm that I am going to post this in the morning.
Everyone please practice safe TV watching these last few weird-weather days before it gets warm outside and all of a sudden everyone is friends again.
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