Number 012: Poorly Things
This is March
We're back. I apologize for the long gap, but I wanted to do some planning before I jumped back into this. I'm now planning on this being (mostly) a monthly newsletter, with some additional issues every once in a while. Thanks for reading, good to be back.
Sorry, sorry, I'm trying to delete it
Regrettably, I would like to write something brief about Poor Things. If you haven't seen it, the movie is about Bella Baxter, a (physically) 30s-ish woman with the rapidly developing brain of a baby, constructed as an experiment by Willem Defoe (who among us?) who found her moments after suicide - while she was pregnant. Defoe replaces her brain (dead) with the brain of her baby (not yet dead). The joke for the first third of the movie is that, to men of 19th century pseudo-London, a grown woman with the brain of a baby is the perfect sexual object. Sure. Unfortunately, to make this point, the life of Bella Baxter is immediately violent. Filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos relies on Mark Ruffalo's admittedly charming goofiness to take some of the edge off of the fact that he is, ultimately, repeatedly sexually assaulting someone incapable of consent (sorry to be a buzzkill but she literally has the brain of a child). Defoe's arc, which ends sympathetically because ultimately he's so warm an actor that it feels impossible to go another direction, begins with manipulating the corpse of a woman who decided to end her life - as is her right.
But let's be honest, this is a movie about being a Good Guy: feminist, socialist, fan of Emma Stone the person. Not like other guys: not feminist, fiscally conservative, fan of Emma Stone the hottie. I am not convinced he is these things. Bella's socialism is entirely superficial, which would not matter as much if the movie were not - at least, at some level - concerned with her political engagement with the world. Is the biggest character trial in this movie not when she witnesses suffering for the first time (nameless, faceless, sufferers by the way)? She goes to "meetings" (?) that we do not see, engaging in a politics that seems to be built around consideration and inaction (more like semi-politics, in fact; more like liberalism: "its métier is bearing witness, demonstrating solidarity, and the event or the gesture."). Her individual politics - the discovery of her body and autonomy - is limited literally to walking and sex. She discovers little (or nothing) about what it is to feel pain or longing or period cramps or the other necessities of having a body -- her conspicuously hairless armpits and legs ensure that she is a perfect sexual object not only to the men in her world but the men in ours. She, to the viewer's knowledge, liberates, educates, and enriches no other: She learns that the world is what it is, and that she is but a passenger. She has agency over her body, and that's pretty much it. It might startle the filmmaker to learn that most radical feminism is actually specifically political, specifically about the pursuit of liberation for all people rather than the self-obsessed pursuit of gratifying sex (a noble pursuit, to be sure).
We are shown a world with no possibility for change - again, staggering for a movie so hell-bent on showing you how quirky it is! Most importantly, Bella's childlike wonder that the film centers around showcasing essentially begins and ends with herself - not only wholly inaccurate from a child development perspective (shout out to her one (1) friend who is queer and Black, because Bella Baxter is complex) but deeply disturbing as the worldview of a protagonist discovering the world for the first time. I'm sorry, but this is not what a liberatory world even begins to look like. The imagination of this movie — so assuredly uncommon, represented by the tilt-shifted and technicolor set designs — creates a smaller world than the one that you or I actually live in. What a shame! Yorgos's skill as a filmmaker is usually playing around in some sort of uncanny place, close to our own world but different enough to make the strangeness of us all a bit clearer. Bella’s world is not full of possibility and wonder, it’s small and stark. The differences between people are huge and nearly unnavigable, the possibilities for solidarity or connection are limited. If Bella Baxter must have been created at all, I would have loved to see her experience and embrace a truly complicated world, as we all do every day.
Other Things
"Conviction does not exist to the American. To be willing to die in a selfless act for what they believe in only exists for those outside America's sphere of influence. Many will recall reporting on those who self-immolated in protest in Iran and in Russia for instance where this sort of approach, unwilling to engage with the root of its cause, would not even be entertained, let alone written and published with sincerity. The Arab Spring began with a self-immolation. The self-immolation of Buddhist monks in protest of South Vietnam’s persecution became defining images of the war and its corruption. Within America’s walls however, there is a belief, unspoken and ingrained from birth, that democracy allows for everyone’s voices to be heard and that its representatives are inherently inclined to respond to the people and their widespread wishes." Seamus Malekafzali, 2024
Rest easy, Aaron Bushnell.
"The retired Pentagon officer, who maintains close ties to the Pentagon, told me that the issue with Austin “is not that he went AWOL, but that nobody asked and nobody missed him in the Pentagon or the White House. Nobody asked where he was. No alarm bells go off that the secretary is missing. No one cares where he goes. How can you disappear for a week if you’re doing something? The secretary of defense is the most important member of the Cabinet—the one who the president, and the nation, depend upon for national security. You don’t depend on the secretary of state for that,” the retired officer said." Seymour Hersh, 2023
Lloyd Austin is up to something absolutely crazy — weird vibes — however… must I respect it? Must I respect his disinterest in doing his job? The answer is no but it is funny to have the Secretary of Defense just like not speaking to the President. If they did speak it would probably just be mumbles about how kids don’t play jacks anymore or something, I suppose.
"Shamrock Holdings Inc., the Roy E. Disney family’s Burbank-based investment arm, and First Israel Mezzanine Investors Ltd. bought defense contractor Tadiran Communications Ltd. from Koor Industries Ltd. for $155 million. Tadiran makes military communications systems that enable pilots to be in contact with ground forces." LA Times, 1999
“Tadiran Communications Profits Handsomely From Post 9/11 World” Haaretz, 2003
“Shamrock holds a controlling stake in Tadiran Communications, an Israeli defense contractor whose wireless gear helps the Israel Defense Forces keep watch on the Palestinians… Shamrock in 1999 invested $14 million for a 60% stake. After cashing out $42 million in gains, the now-37% stake is valued at $100 million.” Forbes, 2004
Roy Disney’s (yeah that Disney) family fund buying an entire defense contractor in partnership with an Israeli private equity firm in 1999.
Nikki Haley says her husband is serving "in Africa," "where conflict is the norm, where terrorists hide among the innocent, where Iran’s terrorist proxies are now attacking American troops."
He’s actually a health services administrator stationed at cushy Camp Lemonnier. Seth Harp, 2024
The battle between shadowy big-money figures and regular people who Hate Politicians for the soul of the Republican party continues apace, despite the fact that Donald Trump won that battle in 2016 and has only been doing victory laps ever since.
Nikki Haley has now dropped out. Bless her. What a sociopath.
I obviously loved Soul because I’m not a heartless monster, but was particularly amazed by the homage to Picasso’s light paintings. Seth Rogen, 2021
Soul is a movie about how the answer to the greatest mystery in life - who are we, what are we made of, what's on the other side - is a bumbling bureaucracy. The conflict of the movie is that a recognizable white woman's voice, Tina Fey, doesn't want to give back the body of a Black man, which her soul now occupies. There is a gag about a soul accidentally jumping into the body of another Black man, sending him into an underworld that looks conspicuously like the sunken place.
I, regrettably, think about this tweet all the time, which is embarrassing for me because it's three years old. However! It is also embarrassing for him: Guy who wants you to know he knows art flexes his knowledge of perhaps the most on-the-nose reference in the entire movie. What happened to shame?
The Morning News is a newsletter I like a lot, so imagine my surprise when an edition from a few weeks ago starts with six horrible narratives. Let me rephrase how I read each of these headlines:
Russia, India, and China are scary and bad
Ukraine is very good :)
Genocide aside, Biden is not so bad!
Africans aren’t doing enough solar power, we should hop over there and do it for them. Nothing like this has ever happened before.
Security = safety
The Saudi soccer league that everyone hates is actually awesome and the Saudis definitely did not do 9/11
This sucks man, stop reading the New York Times.
I’m the happiest when I’m here
ur always maximizing shareholder value in my dreams babe