Weekend Reads (Aug 12): Spotify, Poptimism, Taylor Swift, William Friedkin (RIP), GIFs
Recommended weekend reading material for August 12, 2023.
In case you missed it, I recently announced several giveaways that I’m doing for Opus subscribers to celebrate the site crossing the 7,000 post milestone. There are giveaways for both paid and free subscribers with some really cool prizes, including some lovely artwork and one of my favorite books that I read this year.
The winners will be selected on September 1, 2023, so you have all of August to subscribe and enter if you haven’t already.
Now, on to this week’s links…
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
Spotify’s stock and financial well-being aren’t doing too well these days, and they only have themselves to blame, writes Ted Gioia.
There’s a risk that fickle consumers will cancel their subscriptions rather than pay the increase. But if I was running Spotify I would take the risk. Music shouldn’t be cheap, and it certainly shouldn’t be free.
Companies like Spotify send the wrong message when they sell it for the price of popcorn at the movie theater (ticket not included).
But the real problem at Spotify isn’t just convincing people to pay more. It runs much deeper. Spotify finds itself in the awkward position of asking people to pay more for a lousy interface that degrades the entire user experience.
As examples, Gioia refers to Spotify’s “bland mood-oriented playing lists,” the lack of information about artists and albums, its poor search functionality, and overall encouragement of listener passivity. (Shameless plug: Every month, I provide carefully, purposefully curated Spotify playlists for my paid subscribers.)
Via Canned Dragons.
Freddie deBoer is sick and tired of poptimism — i.e., the belief that pop music isn’t just disposable fluff, but rather, ought to be taken as seriously as any other music genre — and finds it surprisingly elitist.
Yes, there existed and exist dudes that didn’t take pop music seriously. But pick any genre out there, and you’ll find lots of people who don’t take it seriously! Do you think if I went to the parking lot after a Beyonce concert and started blaring Napalm Death from my car stereo, the people walking by would bop their heads and say “Oh man, I respect you so much”? Of course not; they’d tell me to shut off that noise, and there isn’t a professional music critic alive who would judge them for doing so. But if you reverse that scenario, and a grindcore fan judged Beyonce fans for their taste in music, suddenly they’ve committed some sort of horrible crime against taste, a moral and political crime. And this is the truly aggravating element of all of the populist posturing we get in pop culture these days, the lack of solidarity across difference. I’ve said before that I could respect (say) the angst of resentful Marvel comics fans, convinced that they get no respect, if their feelings of marginalization inspired them to express support for the ballet and orchestral music and experimental theater fans whose beloved artforms are dying out. But they never do; they just whine about being oppressed while supporting the biggest entertainment juggernaut of our generation. It’s the same way with poptimists. They could look at metal fans crowding into shitty small venues and cheering for bands that will make a total of $700 on a ten-city tour and see something to admire. But they just want other people to say their tastes are the right tastes.
This was interesting to read because I feel so far removed from mainstream pop music in general. True confession time: I think I only know 3-4 Taylor Swift songs, I can’t remember the last time I listened to Beyoncé, and I’m vaguely aware of Dua Lipa because my daughter loves “Levitating” — and I say all of that without any snobbery whatsoever. I appreciate and respect that people find much to value in Swift et al. (artistically, technically, socially, etc.), and I enjoy reading the occasional think piece, but the actual music just doesn’t captivate me like it does for others.
I used to be the snobbiest music snob that ever snobbed — I once dressed down a high school kid for liking Bright Eyes — but now I adhere to a “like what you like as much as you want to like it” approach. I have a social media acquaintance who posts about Taylor Swift non-stop, and even if I don’t care for Swift’s music all that much, I’m glad she’s found some art that she’s really passionate about. And I think it’s possible to say that without any malice, snark, or condescension.
Related: DeBoer might find some consolation in this anti-poptimism piece in the New York Times from 2014. “Poptimism has become a cudgel with which to selectively club music that aims for something other than the whoosh of an indelibly catchy riff.”
Speaking of Taylor Swift, Clare Trainor and Dea Bankova used Spotify data to try and explain why Swift’s music is such a phenomenon. For instance, there’s her music’s emotional appeal.
Swift’s confessional storytelling built her a loyal kingdom of fans. Here, Spotify ranks the emotions of a song. Emotionally negative songs score low while happy tracks float to the top.
Taylor’s diaristic songs attract myriad people. From the teenager facing heartbreak in high school (“Fifteen”) to the person moving to a new city (“Welcome to New York”). Many of these songs touch on fountain pen lyrics, which Taylor describes as “modern, personal stories written like poetry. Those moments you remember all too well where you can see, hear and feel everything in screaming detail.”
Via 1440.
Sarah Welch-Larson on the joys of animation, from the Spider-Verse films to anime titles like Cowboy Bebop and Paprika.
It's been gratifying to see other American animation studios take their cues from 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as well. This year’s Across the Spider-Verse leans into its predecessor’s anarchic approach to art styles. Nimona (streaming on Netflix) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (in theaters now) each owe a lot to the Spider-Verse movies, as well as the 2021 movie The Mitchell vs. The Machines and, to a lesser extent, the LEGO movie franchise. Part of that legacy is thanks to the rapid-fire scripting and creative input of Chris Miller and Phil Lord, but a lot of it also comes from the fresh approach to animation. Each of these movies wants you to know that they’re animated. They show off their techniques instead of smoothing them over or trying to make them more realistic. And again, Pixar’s house style isn’t bad. The animation techniques behind Elemental were far and away the best parts about that movie. But it’s refreshing to see movies that are giddy about being animated, rather than trying to hide the fact that they were animated in the first place. I know I’m having fun with them again.
Much has been written about how Hollywood’s visual effects artists are overworked — exploited, some might even say — in this day and age of effects-heavy superhero movies. But in a sign that things could be changing, visual effects artists are starting to unionize.
On the heels of more than a year’s worth of damning disclosures around Marvel Studios’ systematic overworking and underpayment of visual-effects workers on its blockbuster movies and streaming series, VFX crews at Marvel have finally petitioned to demand union recognition from the studio. On Monday, a group of more than 50 on-set employees filed a petition for an election to be represented by the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) with the National Labor Relations Board. The workers are asking for the election to be held as early as August 21.
This marks the first time visual-effects professionals have banded together to demand the same rights, wage protections, and professional watchdog oversight enjoyed by workers in almost every other segment of the entertainment industry.
Related: The director and producers of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem were insistent that the film’s animators maintained a healthy work-life balance. “I never want the team to be suffering more than I am. And I also hopefully am suffering more than the team because I’m the captain and I’m paid to absorb that, and they’re not. It’s important to preserve that. People just do better work when they’re rested and have home lives.”
Robbie Collin counts the ways that Hollywood has conceded to Chinese censorship (or the threat of it, anyway).
For a while, studios could get away with submitting a specific “Chinese cut” for Chinese audiences, with adjustments that ranged from drastic to entertainingly petty. Skyfall (2012) cut a scene in which a Chinese security guard was shot and killed (and therefore seen to have failed at his job). Mission: Impossible III (2006) lost shots of washing lines in central Shanghai, presumably because they made the city look backward. Passengers (2016) dropped a glimpse of Chris Pratt’s bottom. Harry Potter’s gifts were described in dubbed dialogue as superhuman in origin, rather than occult. Somehow, in the tame-to-begin-with Bohemian Rhapsody (2018), three minutes of homosexual behaviour were found, and promptly excised. Most darkly amusing of all was the total removal of the neuralyzer — a memory-erasing gadget — from Men in Black 3 (2012). Why entertain the possibility that a state agency might want to wipe the historical record?
There was fury, however, when it came to light that Marvel Studios — a major beneficiary of the Chinese box office, at least until 2020 — had clipped a scene from the everywhere-else-version of Iron Man 3 (2013) in which a wounded Robert Downey Jr is restored to health in China, partly by acupuncture. After that, a new stipulation came in: the Chinese cut had to be the cut.
William Friedkin, director of The French Connection and The Exorcist, died earlier this week at the age of 87.
Friedkin’s sensational 1971 The French Connection earned five Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture. Friedkin’s 1973 The Exorcist changed the game for horror, earning Best Picture and Director nominations.
Friedkin was a maverick of the New Hollywood school of filmmakers alongside the likes of Peter Bogdanovich and Francis Ford Coppola. His other features include his breakout The Birthday Party, The Boys in the Band, Sorcerer, Cruising, To Live and Die in L.A, Bug, and most recently Killer Joe — all films that courted controversy in one way or another.
The anti-sex trafficking film Sound of Freedom has led to an increase in volunteers for anti-trafficking organizations, which has subsequently led to an increase in misunderstanding and harassment of trafficking survivors and advocates.
The film has awakened the passions of a broad swath of the right-wing and conspiratorial world. Religious influencers, QAnon fans, and a huge group of people who defy easy categorization have all thrown their support behind the movie. And while fans of the film have insisted that it’s “raising awareness” of a global problem, experts in trafficking, including people who have experienced it themselves, are finding that it’s contributing to serious and harmful misinformation about what trafficking looks like and what survivors need to recover. Since its release, survivors who have criticized the film have been frequently accused of being “pedophiles” or “groomers” — the kinds of people by whom they themselves were once victimized.
[…]
“If I share anything publicly that’s opposing the film I get a lot of name-calling, a lot of lashing back,” Jose Lewis Alfaro, a sex and labor trafficking survivor who now works as a consultant and lived experience expert on trafficking issues, said. “It’s just really interesting to me how people are more than willing to hear a wealthy rich man’s superhero story, and aren’t willing to trust and listen to those who have actually lived through it.”
Related: Back in July, I wrote about the doubts and skepticism swirling around the purportedly true story on which Sound of Freedom is based.
Justin Chang addresses the criticism that, by not showing us the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer ignores and effectively erases the suffering the Japanese people.
Because they seldom achieve the narrative penetration and richness of detail of, say, a 700-page biography, movies, especially those about history, often are hailed as achievements of breadth over depth, emotion over intellect. They are assumed to be fundamentally shallow experiences, distillations of real life rather than sharply angled explorations of it, propelled by broad brushstrokes and easy expository shortcuts, and beholden to the audience’s presumably voracious appetite for thrilling, traumatizing spectacle. And because movies offer a visual immediacy and narrative immersion that books don’t, they are expected to be sweeping if not omniscient in their narrative scope, to reach for a comprehensive, even definitive vantage.
Movies that attempt something different, that recognize that less can indeed be more, are thus easily taken to task. “It’s so subjective!” and “It omits a crucial P.O.V.!” are assumed to be substantive criticisms rather than essentially value-neutral statements. We are sometimes told, in matters of art and storytelling, that depiction is not endorsement; we are not reminded nearly as often that omission is not erasure. But because viewers of course cannot be trusted to know any history or muster any empathy on their own — and if anything unites those who criticize Oppenheimer on representational grounds, it’s their reflexive assumption of the audience’s stupidity — anything that isn’t explicitly shown onscreen is denigrated as a dodge or an oversight, rather than a carefully considered decision.
The humble GIF — however you choose to pronounce it — is the focus of a new art exhibit currently located in New York’s Museum of the Moving Image. (Or more specifically, in its elevator.)
This exhibit titled Refreshing the Loop currently features work by multidisciplinary artists Pastiche Lumumba and Katherina Jesek, who goes by Kate the Cursed online. The former’s piece includes GIFs of the artist scrolling forever on both phone and mouse. Another GIF displays various renditions of the famed Girl With the Pearl Earring flashing by. Jesek’s piece is explicitly influenced by the kind of retro low-fi sci-fi aesthetic seen in movies like Alien, with wireframe mannequins and monitor control panels for various monitors designed with the help of real, obsolete oscilloscopes.
As for Lumumba, their work at the exhibit is centered on a kind of parody of a modern, digital life. That constant repetition fascinated him, and for the artist, the message of the art is intrinsically tied to the format it’s presented in.
I love the fact that the GIF, one of the web’s oldest image formats — it’s nearly 40(!) years old — continues to live on… and on… and on… and on… and on…
If you’re a developer or programmer, then chances are, you — or someone you know — has used the Vim code editor. (I’ve known developers who swore by Vim and refused to use anything else.) Vim’s developer, Bram Moolenaar, passed away this week at the age of 62.
Vim, an acronym for “Vi IMproved,” is a powerful, versatile, and free open-source text editor that has been at the forefront of many software developments since its introduction in 1991. This modal editor, boasting both command-line and graphical user interface forms, has been a boon to countless developers across the globe, offering an efficient and sophisticated platform for coding.
Beyond the incredible utility of Vim, Moolenaar’s remarkable legacy is cemented in the nature of the software itself — open-source and community-driven. He was a man who cared deeply about the software he created and the community that grew around it.
Truth Social, aka, Donald Trump’s social media platform, is not a hit with its users.
“Over time, the low-quality ads on Truth Social have irritated its own users, who have complained to Mr. Trump after repeatedly seeing the same disturbing images or after falling for misleading gimmicks,” the Times is reporting before adding an example of one user complaining directly to Trump, “Can you not vet the ads on Truth? I’ve been scammed more than once.”
This should come as no surprise to anyone who was paying to attention to Truth Social’s beleaguered development.
Author Jane Friedman discovered that several AI-generated books had been published under her name, but it took Amazon awhile to respond to her takedown requests.
Amazon has removed half a dozen AI-generated books published under a living author’s name without her consent following a social media backlash. Though the misleading content was finally removed on Tuesday, the author, veteran publishing industry writer Jane Friedman, worries that a lack of clear, coherent policies at Amazon and other companies leaves the door open for other authors to face similar disputes in the future.
“I anticipated that Amazon would not take them down by me simply asking, I knew it would take a publicity nightmare,” Friedman said in an interview with Gizmodo. “Happily for me, that occurred. But it goes to show the larger issue is this could happen to anyone.”
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