Weekend Reads (Sep 10): Tolkien, The 2022 Hugo Awards, Binge-Watching, MAGA Rap
Recommended weekend reading for September 10, 2022.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
In light of the recent releases of Amazon’s The Rings of Power and HBO’s House of the Dragon, David French — who has enjoyed both series so far — compares and contrasts the worldviews of J.R.R. Tolkien and George R.R. Martin.
Why does America need to remember Tolkien again? Because we’re mired in Westeros, playing the game of thrones. When you hear words like “fight fire with fire,” or “make them play by their own rules,” or “punch back twice as hard,” or “wield power to reward friends and punish enemies,” you’re hearing an ethos that declares, “win or die.”
Tolkien wasn’t naive. He knew that world. He’d confronted it directly. That’s why characters like Boromir or Fëanor resonate so strongly. In the quest to confront the enemy, you become the enemy. Yet faithful people understand, in Faramir’s words, that they “do not wish for such triumphs.” Instead, they fix their eyes on the “high beauty” that is forever beyond the shadow’s reach.
The 2022 Hugo Awards, which honor the year’s best in sci-fi/fantasy literature, were announced this week. The winners include Arkady Martine’s A Desolation Called Peace for “Best Novel,” Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild-Built (which I really enjoyed, FWIW) for “Best Novella,” the Dune screenplay for “Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form,” and Shelley Parker-Chan for “Best New Writer.”
One of the reasons I love Sam Greenspan’s The Retro is that it lets me know that I’m not alone whenever I remember some obscure pop culture artifact from my childhood. Case in point: Small Wonder, a syndicated sitcom about a family and their adopted android daughter.
[D]espite its reputation for maximum weirdness and minimum quality, the show was on to something.
Not about robots. No, it whiffed pretty hard on that. (Just like all the other robot shows and movies from the robot-crazed ‘80s.) We don’t have humanoid robots in our homes here in the 2020s. The best we’ve got are “smart” household appliances, Roombas, and somewhat-reliable voice assistant speakers.
But Small Wonder was prescient about the shifting realities of the TV landscape — and, ultimately, that a shakeup was coming. A shakeup where TV networks would be desperate for programming — the cheaper the better — and make a drastic change in strategy.
If you’re too young to have seen Small Wonder, or somehow forgot all about it, then enjoy the opening theme and credits in all of their ‘80s glory.
Speaking of obscure pop culture artifacts, it took internet sleuths six years to figure out the origins of a bizarre cartoon seen in a family photo.
It turns out the image is from an animated TV-movie titled The Soulmates: The Gift of Light and aired in 1991. Why did it take so long to figure out? It looks like the movie only played on TV once in the 1990s, and only in Canada, before it was released on VHS. And the videocassette release was, again, likely exclusive to Canada.
The original photo from Sloan was a snapshot where the TV and whatever it was playing is clearly not the subject. But that’s what made the mystery even more interesting. This piece of media was somehow both familiar but completely forgettable. It’s not like anyone was intentionally photographing the TV like it was showing viewers an exclusive glimpse at Elvis or something.
Netflix has become synonymous with binge-watching, as the streamer has typically dropped all of a show’s episodes on the same day. However, that could be changing in the not-too-distant future.
There have long been calls for Netflix to begin releasing episodes weekly. It gives audiences an easier way to experience the show without worrying about seeing spoilers for how Cobra Kai season 5 ends on the day all 10 episodes are released. It also aids word of mouth on great shows to allow the viewership to grow as the season progresses. Meanwhile, Netflix would benefit from having audiences return to the service weekly for new episodes and seeing their shows start brand-new conversations and theorizing that the binge model does not allow for.
The “binge” model sounds fun, but it doesn’t really fit the changing dynamics of our family: we simply have too many people jockeying for the TV. As a result, it’s difficult to reserve the TV for a period of time that’s long enough to binge watch, well, anything. (And yes, I know could still binge on my phone or laptop, but call me old-fashioned: I still prefer the TV.)
Several countries, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have asked Netflix to remove videos containing LGBTQ content that conflicts with “Islamic and societal values and principles.”
While the statement didn’t elaborate, Saudi state television also aired video of an interview it conducted with a woman identified as a “behavioral consultant” who described Netflix as being an “official sponsor of homosexuality.” It aired footage at the same time of a cartoon, Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, in which two women kissed, though the footage was blurred out.
Via 1440.
Drew Millard delves into the world of MAGA rap and musicians like Bezz Believe and Forgiato Blow, the self-styled “Donald Trump of rap.”
After switching almost fully to pro-Trump subject matter, he found that his audience largely consisted of people who hadn’t listened to rap music before they found him. “It’s usually played by people way older than me,” he said. In time, he began viewing himself as a news commentator who happens to communicate through rap.“One thing about MAGA music, there’s not much replay value,” he explained in a later conversation. “Something about Monkeypox or Hunter Biden’s laptop, [my fans] aren’t going to continue to play that every week,” he told me. The trick, it turned out, was to turn preaching to the converted into a volume game. Drop a track called “Build That Wall!” one day, a diss song to Disney the next, then follow up with odes to Kyle Rittenhouse and Matt Gaetz. On June 1, he released a song titled “Monkeypox.” On June 2, he released one called “Moneypox.”
One of the most toxic online communities is one you may not have heard of: Kiwi Farms has become notorious for harassing women, LGBTQ individuals, and others. Casey Newton covers the controversies surrounding Kiwi Farms, the steps taken to limit their toxic and damaging actions, and what that means for the broader internet.
In its blog post, Cloudflare compares itself to a fire department that puts out fires no matter how bad a person the resident of the house may be. In response, Usatyuk writes: “CloudFlare is a fire department that prides itself on putting out fires at any house regardless of the individual that lives there. What they forget to mention is they are actively lighting these fires and making money by putting them out!”
Again, none of this is to say that there aren’t good reasons for Cloudflare to stay out of most moderation debates. There are! And yet it does matter to whom the company decides to deploy its security guards — a service it often provides for free, incidentally — enabling harassment and worse for a small but committed group of the worst people on the internet.
Related: NBC’s Ben Collins and Kat Tenbarge chronicle Kiwi Farms’ harassment and victims. At least three people have committed suicide after being targeted by Kiwi Farms’ members. Collins posted more info in this Twitter thread.
Alan Noble explains why grocery-shopping is dehumanizing, and why that’s actually a symptom of a larger problem.
This whole experience is predicated on the idea that we are each our own, that we are ultimately only responsible for ourselves and to ourselves. And that means that we don’t owe anyone anything unless it’s contractually or legally defined. The store’s only obligations to you are legal. Their only responsibilities are to profit. When treating customers, employees, or producers as human beings leads to greater efficiency, then they will do so, but only then.
But it’s not just the store or the economy, it’s me. Because if I am my own, I don’t have to treat the store employees as my neighbor, even if they literally live next door to me. Once they put on their nametag, they are an avatar of the company. I don’t have to treat the farm worker who grew and harvested my produce as a real person; they merely serve a function.
From the Blog
As movies and TV series, particularly those in the sci-fi and fantasy genres, grow more inclusive and diverse in their casts and storylines, they’re inevitably criticized for being “woke” — which is unfortunate for several reasons.
Accusations of “wokeness,” as evidenced in the comments on this Facebook post and Reddit threads like this one, are fascinating, not because I agree with them, but because of the semblance of legitimacy that can surround them. Such accusations may be couched in reasonable-sounding language about authorial intent, textual respect, and fan expectations — all things that adaptations should take into consideration, especially adaptations of properties as well-known and beloved as J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium.
But they’re also frustrating, and not just because of the toxic racism and sexism that always seems to be lurking just beneath their surface. They pollute legitimate discussions concerning the nature and process of adaptations. They cast, as suspect, regular nerds and fans who are passionate about their favorite properties and want them to be treated with care and respect. And finally, they seek to control the property in question, determining the “proper” ways of understanding and interpreting it while gatekeeping and excluding those they deem “unworthy” or “ignorant.”
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