emily wilson's blistering review of christopher nolan's the odyssey, "an uncomplicated man", immediately rocked the internet and upset men everywhere. newspapers were quick to label this an "attack" on the film, but-- i would strongly disagree with this phrasing and i think this sort of phrasing is actively harmful to the already harmed-and-hurting world of critics. is it an absolutely scathing takedown? oh, undoubtedly. but an attack? not particularly. wilson methodically takes apart the ways that the film didn't work for her and explains them across four thousand and change words. and as a current academic (god that makes me sound so far up my own arse) and enjoyer of literary analysis, i think there's a necessary place in the world for these kinds of reviews and critical pieces (where would we be without andrea long chu's pulitzer-prize winning takedown of a little life? i'd be nowhere, that's for sure). with art comes the reaction to art, the analysis of it, the turning it over and shaking it up and down and seeing what tumbles out. we all benefit from probing art for the messages and ideas it contains. that may be the literature student in me, but in my opinion, that's what being a literature student has taught me.
p.s. anybody saying that wilson "clearly isn't a film scholar" or isn't the right person to talk about an adaptation of the odyssey, despite being a classicist who spent many years translating the odyssey, can fuck right off.
though she disagrees with wilson's review (and proves that the existence of such blistering takedowns doesn't mean we have to throw away the whole odyssey), chanda prescod-weinstein put out a good analysis of Annoying Men on the Internet trashing wilson in an odyssey through testimonial injustice
nick hilton for the i paper also took a look at how steven bartlett (my personal nemesis) took over the world. annoying men on the internet part 2: electric boogaloo
topography of terror by charles mudede for the stranger. found this on tumblr, what a strange and sad story of a place
'it's a peptide wild west': how rfk jr is clearing the way for a market of untested drugs by katie thornton for the guardian
and now for two reddit writeups: we have a whole unsolved mysteries write-up about the paula abdul plane crash that nobody can seem to verify, and this fascinating hobbydrama write-up about the 'clock man', a haunting episode of children's television that sounds like the candle cove creepypasta. it's the second lost media writeup i've read this year, and i'm always hooked on those stories. i suppose that the reason that candle cove is so effective and so creepy is because many of us as children did see something on children's television that we found scary and frightening, and sometimes these are things that we can't track down again and can't verify and so become some fragmented nightmare-like memory. i can't always distinguish between real and imaginary in my memories of childhood. (luckily for me, i DO remember what scared me as a child: a certain movie about a boy wizard in a certain tournament with a certain batman actor in it, spirited away, and the rock bottom episode of spongebob.)
the REAL horror in colleen hoover's ghost story is a cheating, gaslighting man. Layla you better run by withcindy; the title speaks for itself, and as ever, colleen hoover's treatment of people with mental illness is absolutely absymal
this was big on tumblr for a while and i kept seeing fanart of it there, but i never knew what the game was about, so this pushinguproses video finally explained the game mouthwashing to me... and now i'm intrigued and want to learn more
i've said before that spiritualists are always at the scene, but who else is always at the scene? victorians. (and who gave us spiritualism? the victorians. it's all connected!!!) anyway, here's kaz rowe correcting misconceptions about medieval torture
vulture culture: creating afterlives, a documentary by strange aeons
why don't we have a surgeon general? by maintenance phase, though by "we", they mean "americans"
jared leto is a predator who was enabled by the people around him, and hollywood doesn't care about dangerous men when they make money (see: how many a-listers are domestic abusers). i can't stop thinking about how the bbc documentary found 120 separate online allegations against leto. one hundred and twenty, reaching as far back as 25 years ago. everyone knew and nothing happened. i also can't stop thinking about the women who he assaulted and how they had to watch his stratospheric career and watch as he received no consequences; as one of them said in the documentary, he got away with it.