I liked Mickey 17! I thought the love story was super sweet. Appreciate the love for Ishmael Reed. I'm reading Mumbo Jumbo right now. Gotta check out his critique of Hamilton. I feel like in 50 years we're gonna find out that Lin Manuel Miranda was actually financed by the CIA whole time.
Love love love! Appreciate where your words took me. I’ve been thinking a lot about what satire might look like now, in this current political climate. Like what if we actually invited comedians to roast politicians, not as spectacle but as a real test of their self-awareness and accountability? I’m thinking of that racist chap at the RNC rally at Madison Square Garden and his joke about Puerto Rico. What would it mean if that kind of critique were the rule, not the exception—but if comedians turned their lens towards candidates? It could make for an interesting exercise. I guess The Onion kind of occupies that lane…
Satire can be rendered toothless in a lot of ways. Sometimes it's simply not sharp enough, in a horrific age. Other times, as noted in the article, it's not deft enough, or it properly slashes but lacks vision and alternatives. Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" works so well because it is adequately horrific, while also offering an explicit alternate human and political vision and understanding.
As Ishmael Reed says, "Writin' Is Fightin'" and it's also about "establishing [the] new."
I want to push back a little on Triangle of Sadness (and please take me to task if I’m seeing this wrong!). There’s something in the collapse—the ship sinking, the inversion of power structures—that feels like more than just another cynical loop. The woman who knows how to fish, who suddenly holds the tools for survival, becomes the person in power. And maybe, yes, that could be read as a flat recapitulation of capitalism: control the means, hold the power. But I also wonder if there’s a kind of forward vision embedded in that shift, even if it’s a bit murky.
Maybe the film is saying something about our shared vulnerability to capital—not just as an economic structure, but as an emotional one. Maybe it’s not that we lack something as humans, but that anxiety and fear push us toward control, toward hierarchy, toward safety in the form of domination. Is that inherent? I don’t know. But it feels like a real question—the kind satire can pose without pretending to solve.
I actually liked Triangle of Sadness! It was fun but I feel like the characters were still a bit flat and you know the Somali pirate thing turned of me off 😭.
I liked Mickey 17! I thought the love story was super sweet. Appreciate the love for Ishmael Reed. I'm reading Mumbo Jumbo right now. Gotta check out his critique of Hamilton. I feel like in 50 years we're gonna find out that Lin Manuel Miranda was actually financed by the CIA whole time.
Love love love! Appreciate where your words took me. I’ve been thinking a lot about what satire might look like now, in this current political climate. Like what if we actually invited comedians to roast politicians, not as spectacle but as a real test of their self-awareness and accountability? I’m thinking of that racist chap at the RNC rally at Madison Square Garden and his joke about Puerto Rico. What would it mean if that kind of critique were the rule, not the exception—but if comedians turned their lens towards candidates? It could make for an interesting exercise. I guess The Onion kind of occupies that lane…
Satire can be rendered toothless in a lot of ways. Sometimes it's simply not sharp enough, in a horrific age. Other times, as noted in the article, it's not deft enough, or it properly slashes but lacks vision and alternatives. Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" works so well because it is adequately horrific, while also offering an explicit alternate human and political vision and understanding.
As Ishmael Reed says, "Writin' Is Fightin'" and it's also about "establishing [the] new."
I want to push back a little on Triangle of Sadness (and please take me to task if I’m seeing this wrong!). There’s something in the collapse—the ship sinking, the inversion of power structures—that feels like more than just another cynical loop. The woman who knows how to fish, who suddenly holds the tools for survival, becomes the person in power. And maybe, yes, that could be read as a flat recapitulation of capitalism: control the means, hold the power. But I also wonder if there’s a kind of forward vision embedded in that shift, even if it’s a bit murky.
Maybe the film is saying something about our shared vulnerability to capital—not just as an economic structure, but as an emotional one. Maybe it’s not that we lack something as humans, but that anxiety and fear push us toward control, toward hierarchy, toward safety in the form of domination. Is that inherent? I don’t know. But it feels like a real question—the kind satire can pose without pretending to solve.
I actually liked Triangle of Sadness! It was fun but I feel like the characters were still a bit flat and you know the Somali pirate thing turned of me off 😭.
True re Somali pirates! Forgot about that 😩