I’m drunk, so I’m going to rant about something VERY against the media narrative. I’m annoyed that we’ve reached a point where gratuitous gay sex is great, but we can’t have just regular old heteronormative T&A without it being a Big Deal.
I find this very fucked up.
I’m not opposed to depictions of gay sex in pop culture — my novel sure does have enough of it — it’s just why can’t we have the heteronormative sexxy time of the 1980s in movies and TV in modern times?
It’s a very strange situation.
I have my doubts that this quirk of modern culture will change anytime soon. I think we probably have a solid 20 years before people think, “Hey, maybe it’s not so radical to have some traditional T&A in mainstream entertainment.”
It has come to my attention that there is a lot of uhhhh, sexxy time in Emma Stone’s latest Oscar bait Poor Things. Something about that really gets my juices flowing for some intangible reason.
I think some of it has to do with how she’s steered clear of T&A in her career to date. And I think it’s a testament to two things. One is having a great personality is hot — and helps a great deal when it comes to being an actress. That’s why Emrata, who is demonstrably better looking than Stone, neither has the acting chops nor the twinkle that Stone has.
Something about Stone doing showing some skin in Poor Things seems like forbidden fruit, which only adds to the allure. It could be that I’m just turning into a dirty old man, but, lulz.
Another thing — that Stone would show some skin later in her career is a reminder that the dynamic for actresses doing such stuff changes the older they get. When they’re just starting out, it can come across as exploitive. But later in their career, they often serve as producers in the movies they are in, so they have some skin — no pun intended — in the game.
But, I dunno. I think a lot of this idle musing on my part is just being older. When you’re older, the context of such things changes. It is very curious to me how skittish we’ve become when it comes to heteronormative monoculture and the use of T&A in mainstream movies.
We’re so busy having gratuitous gay sex scenes, that we seem to miss that straight sex can be pretty hot, too. Whatever. No one listens to me.
Star Wars holds a special place in Western Culture and, yet, the whole thing is so fucked up because of bad storytelling on the part of Disney that it’s time to do a hard reboot.
You go back to the beginning and fix all these organic problems with the Star Wars saga that have been rationalized out of existence over the years. You actually give the saga some thought.
To fit the expectations of the audience, you would have to start from the very beginning and reboot The Phantom Menace. Now, of course, all of this would cause the fan base to scream bloody murder, but it has to be done for the long-term life of the franchse.
So, you spend about a year thinking up how you can make the new Star Wars universe actually make sense and entertain people as much as possible. Once that’s done, you go through the entirety of the franchise and reboot ALL the movies, even Episode 4, 5 and 6.
But you would have to be methodical and logical about such a dramatic move. Otherwise, you’re just going to piss everyone off and waste a lot of money. But the issue is — too much of modern pop culture is coasting off of what was done several generations ago.
We need to reboot pop culture to give new generations new lore.
I have a great idea for a movie, but, alas, I’m too old and too fixated on my first novel to get around to try to write its screenplay. The story goes like this — it’s 10,000 years ago and a bunch of humans are struggling to survive.
A very fey guy who isn’t strong enough to go on the hunt — but has a family to feed — comes up to the leader of the tribe, begging for food. The leader of the tribe scoffs at him and says why do you deserve any food, you didn’t do anything to help.
So this scrawny little guy proposes that in exchange for a good story, he and his family get some food. So, our Hero proceeds to tell a tale about a young woman who pretends to be a man so she can go on the hunt. The movie shows the tale as imagined by the storyteller on the screen, interspersed with him telling the story.
At the midpoint of the movie, our Storytelling Hero makes some sort of goof in the story because he’s never been on the hunt. He has to invoke the gods to keep the story going. Maybe have him make up a One True God on the fly or something.
The story continues. At the end of the third act, something happens to interrupt the story telling and it seems as though All Is Lost for our Hero and his attempt to get food for his family.
The third act begins when him going back to his starving family. He has to tell them there will be no food for the time being. He gets into a fight with his wife who says she should have listened to her mother and never had sex with him.
Then a surprise happens — the leader of the tribe again wants to hear the story. He’s so excited, he wants to know what happens next. So, again, our Hero storyteller continues to tell the story of the young woman who pretends to be a man to go on the hunt.
At the climax of the story, she is somehow saved in a due ex machina kind of situation, and the tribal leaders roar their approval because this is the first time anyone has every done such a trite ending. The joke is, everyone thinks this otherwise hackney ending is so original because it’s the first time anyone has thought it up.
The rest of the movie deals with the surreal situation that our Hero is involved in. He gives his wife and child some food, and then goes into the darkness of the cave to also give his male lover some food, too.
It’s possible that the issue of the entertainment business shifting into streaming could be looked back upon as rather quaint. The issue is — some spunky start-up is going to come out with an AI generated movie within 18 months and, well, there you go.
When that happens, it’s just a quick jaunt to AI digital assistants churning out personalized movies and TV shows out of whole cloth without any humans being involved in the process. This is probably going to happen REALLY FAST to the point that virtually overnight all the hand wringing over the transition to streaming will just fade away.
But for the moment, I’m at a loss as to what to do about streaming. It’s such a structural shift in how entertainment is distributed that….I dunno. There definitely seems to be a chance that number of movie theatres may grow smaller and smaller.
And, yet, as I mentioned, if AI takes over, there is likely going to be a real demand for live theatre again. So, maybe some number of movie theatres will be turned into live theatre venues? That certainly would be a strange future. But I suppose I’m something of an optimist when it comes to “human generated art.”
At some point, people are going to grow tired of an endless array of AI generated TV shows and movies and they’re going to want something created by humans — and that will lead to the potential return of live theatre being the center of the artistic world.
Carol is just the type of movie I *should* want to watch. I started it, but stopped because, I dunno, something about it turned me off. But I think I’m going to try — TRY — to watch it again.
Cate Blanchet stars in “Carol.”
I think some of it comes from the vibe is shoots off. Something about the over-serious nature of the relationship turns me off. And, yet, I can tell it’s also just the type of Serious Storytelling that I should enjoy.
Ugh. I’m so torn.
And all of this happens in the context of me feeling more and more guilty about how little content I actually *consume*. I really just read my own stuff over and over again and that’s not good. I need to expose myself to other people’s work. These thoughts are happening in the context of preparing to query my novel at some point in 2024.
I’m going to have to have something to “comp” it to other than Stieg Larsson’s work which is, at this point, nearly 20 years old. Ugh. It’s times like these when I realize leaving the extended delusional state I’ve been when developing and writing this novel is going to be extremely jarring.
They say a sign of intelligence is the ability to hold to diametrically opposite things in one’s mind. Well, while I love, love, love Hollywood I also know that *human* Hollywood’s goose is probably cooked within, say, 18 months, if the fucking Fourth Turning doesn’t delay things.
Of course, I mentioned this on Twitter and some rando piece of shit started spouting off Qanon bullshit. Ugh. Twitter never ceases to remind me why I fucking hate it so much. The point is not that it will be a *good* thing that human Hollywood will be dramatically “disrupted” by generative AI, it’s just that it definitely seems possible.
And it’s not like all the humans that AI displaces are going to work at fast-food. There will always be a need for the “human touch” in art. And, as such, I bet live theatre may see a huge resurgence. So all the people that Qanon fucktards hate will simply do the same thing in front of a live audience.
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