On HU
Featured Archive Post: Jaime Green on how Clybourne Park is lying to you.
Chris Gavaler with a bibliography of superman before Superman.
Ng Suat Tong on why Jessica Jones is a poorly thought out mess.
Me on how Rogue Nation makes sense if you just hate Tom Cruise.
Me on Wonder Woman, the stranger in the new Batman vs. Superman trailer.
Robert Stanley Martin with on sale dates of comics from fall 1950—lots of EC, plus Gasoline Alley.
Utilitarians Everyhwere
For Slates’ annual overlooked book list I got to recommend Kathleen Gilles Seidel’s Again.
At Quartz I wrote about
—Jessica Jones vs. the patriarchy.
—how conservatives police speech by don’t get called out for political correctness.
At Playboy I wrote about white paranoia and fear of crime.
At the Guardian I wrote about the Hunger Games’s dislike of femininity.
At the Establishment, I wrote about
—prejudice against young male Syrian refugees.
—the anti-gun control movement and apocalyptic fantasies of violence.
At Splice Today I wrote about
—free speech and my experiences with the editors at the Atlantic.
—why Project Runway is better than quality television.
Other Links
Joanna Angel describes her abusive relationship with porn star and accused rapist James Deen.
From a bit back, Alyssa Rosenberg on The Voice and LGBT contestants.
Lee Drutman with an excellent article on why gun control is so hard to past (and no, it’s not because the NRA bribes Congress.)
What did you write about for the Guardian?
Ack; sorry. It’s fixed.
Your piece on Project Runway got me thinking about comics continuity. And then I realized that all the things you praise Project Runway for are the things that I think would make comics continuity/storytelling better, mainly the willingness to leave loose ends and stories that don’t easily collapse into a single narrative arc.
I think without being willing to do that, comics continuity fails (often catastrophically) as a storytelling form. Especially (and obviously) on the front of diversity.
That’s interesting. It would be hard to imagine superhero comics being willing to just wander away from the marquee hero, I think.
I haven’t watched reality tv much, but watching Project Runway it’s just really interesting how many ways the story pushes against narrative cliches from other genres. I haven’t seen that much talked about…I think because in general there’s not much think piece-like coverage of reality tv.
“It would be hard to imagine superhero comics being willing to just wander away from the marquee hero”
I agree, but it would be hard to imagine them doing anything they haven’t done, frankly. I just think trying to force the standard narrative structure into a continuous loop, like most superhero comics do, is just a colossal ongoing failure of imagination. And it seems, from a lot of your writing, that if they borrowed from “low-brow” stuff, their writing would be more cohesive, intelligent, and interesting. Not to say that is likely, but I think they really have to to stay thematically relevant (regardless of how much broader cultural appeal they still have), instead of just recapitulating the same icky, Reaganite ejaculations they normally spew from the page.
Perhaps the problem is just that you have a massive, perpetual calcification of a community that has no imagination, and no desire for it (in publishing circles, and less so, but still quite a bit, in fandom).
Doesn’t Project Runway run into its own rote dramas and cliches after a while? The diversity issue, for example, doesn’t exactly make it quality television anywhere outside America/former British colonies. Outside of that, it has to be judged on its own merits as a reality show-competition. You might like Tim Gunn but might not like the bitchiness/quality of the contestants that season. And how much does it really tell you about fashion/fashion industry.
I think there are definitely reality show cliches too. It’s still holding my interest so far. I think there are a number of interesting things about it. Watching the creative process, and seeing the dresses, is pretty consistently entertaining…and I think it’s interesting to have a show in which art criticism is important/a cause of entertainment in itself.
Tim Gunn is great, too.
I’m sorry to hear about you and the Atlantic. It really does sound petty, what they did.
They did say I can pitch now, so that was nice.