Since abusing Georgia Lucas has become a habit of mine almost as common as abusing George R.R. Martin (what is it with Georges?), occasionally I take the time to look at his non-Star Wars filmography. This is easy, as there are only two other films he’s directed, both before Star Wars froze his auteur vision… Read More The Original Member Berries: American Graffiti
TrueFansTM always find reasons to retain their devotion: I almost never comment on YouTube videos, but I did on this one, because the assertion that the Prequels merit critical rehabilitation, as a consequence of the audience having the Wrong Expectations, needs to be smashed with a hammer. When people are Fans of a thing, they… Read More The Prequel Effect Is Just Fandom Coping
This will be the last time I write about this hack until he delivers another book. And even then, I might not bother. The ending of Game of Thrones was so bad I’m pretty well done with the whole universe. There’s no shortage of fantasy literature out there, if you’re into that sort of thing,… Read More George R.R. Martin Doesn’t Get Why Everyone’s Mad, and Other Statements Written by Marketing Reps
I’m gonna be crystal-clear on this: being a fan is a market-induced mentality. The word is derived from “fanatic“, which is an early-Modern Latin derivative referring to religious zealotry. Late Modernity, having removed religion from the public square, substitutes devotion to entertainments as simulacra to the epics and sagas of old. That’s why they’re using… Read More Destroy all Fandoms
I deserve to be whipped for writing about this, as it’s fairly reeks of 2014, but I’ve seen it pop up on Twitter, and recently. Most of the time this is discussed in typical internet gibberish, but within it is an attempt to analyze human behavior, so there’s something worth commenting on. If you’re not… Read More Star Wars and the Social-Sexual Hierarchy
Somewhere on I-81 in Virginia, there’s a billboard for Cracker Barrel, because of course there is. If you find yourself on the interstate and there isn’t a Cracker Barrel within 30 miles of you, then start taking pictures of the alien plants and the non-Euclidean geometry, because you’ve slipped into an alternate dimension. Anyway, this… Read More The Reproducibility Trap, Or Why Everything Original and Curated Becomes Re-Heated Crap
A long essay, but worth your time, which dovetails nicely with other things I’ve written on the subject. Our Cranky Professor lays out three “approaches” to aesthetics/beauty: The Psychological Approach – In which one experiences beauty as an individuated response to the appearance of a thing. A Flower is Beautiful. The Rational Approach – An… Read More The Three Tiers of Aesthetics
The best part of doing this podcast is the way the scrum of conversation keeps bringing up new ideas. Episode 5 gave us the General Theory of Creative Bloat (successful franchise = abandonment of editorial control), which gets mentioned again here. But this time we came up with what I call the Pie Theory of… Read More Shallow & Pedantic 7: A Fistful of Samurai Pies
Every now and again I like to indulge in the temptation to rail against the mindless repetition of uninteresting facts. I know it will accomplish nothing, and indeed is probably counterproductive, but I cannot help myself. This is stupid and I’m going to tell you why. Cry about it in the comments, nerds. I could… Read More Why in the Hell Does Anyone Care That It’s Carrie Fisher’s Birthday?
Never meet your heroes. I’ve mentioned Red Letter Media before. They’re a YouTube channel that discusses film in a serious way, but with lots of jokes – spoonfuls of sugar to make the medicine go down. They’re different from most cinema nerds on YouTube in that they’ve actually undergone the process of making movies themselves… Read More William Shatner, Red Letter Media, and What Everyone Gets Wrong About Fandom
Content Blues 