user image

this is the former site of good consumer:: my weekly update on what i'm reading, watching, and listening to.

goodconsumer now lives on substack. click the link below to go there and subscribe.

i am a writer/editor chick. i watch a lot of TV.

bookmarks:
listography IMPORTANT NOTICES
NEWS
TERMS
GIVE MEMORIES
CONTACT

Slowly returning to planet Earth for ...... Installment 7.

In text:

  • I edited AIR CONDITIONING by Hsuan L. Hsu, perhaps my favorite edit of the summer, and am in process with PENCIL by Carol Beggy. I can't stop gaining random knowledge from all of these books, knowledge which has very few places to go when I spend all day in my house on my couch. Alas.
  • I am a recommendation taker through and through, and so for the past two weeks it's been Cesar Aira's ARTFORUM, translated from Spanish. It's a short book, short enough that two weeks to read it is too long, but my hope was that by taking my time I might retain some grander knowledge from it. I don't know if I did; it's a book about a narrator who is obsessed with ARTFORUM but never quite gets it on time or when/how he expects, as he's in South America and the magazine is sent from the US. I love that the book makes ARTFORUM an all-consuming object (much like BARBIE in the past months, though that feels against my will), to the point that the narrator is at the behest of it, not the other way around. Still, I think I'll reread it sometime in the near future; my moving brain is fried like an egg from all the lifting and shifting and breaking down of boxes.

In video:

  • I saw BARBIE before leaving Flagstaff, so, two weeks ago, but it didn't digest, and now (I'm warning you) I have practically nothing new or interesting to say about it. It is a bad movie--maybe not on its face, or on exclusively its own merits (though I'd argue that, too, what with the smallpox blanket throwaway line, the tumblr-esque climactic monologue about women having more than one dimension (gasp) and the implication that Simu Li is extremely hot. I digress)--but certainly because of its context not only as a franchise object, as a longform advertisement for toy-Barbie's revival, but as a movie that falls (again, again, again) into the trappings of the multiverse, we-can-have-it-all-at-the-same-time legacy of, like, THE fucking LEGO MOVIE. I feel pretty consistently babied by mega-budget movies lately, and that reaction is only natural; when asked about the film's intended audience in an interview that later became marketing material for the movie, which I scrolled past on TikTok, Margot Robbie says, "It was literally crafted to be for everyone." Everyone feels like a stretch to me. It seems actually transparently crafted to be for millennials with arrested development, race- and class-related insecurities, and rigid understandings of gender dynamics. (I might even argue that this list bears out a more specific target audience--white, upper-middle class, women millennials--but it would be a little on the nose, no?) Either way, the options are either that I'm being talked at by the film either as a member of the Everyone, or as a member of the Target Audience (a rock; a hard place). I could go on like this, but to no real end. So I'll just add: I've never felt more like I could see the future of movies than sitting in the theater and watching BARBIE, quietly noting every time another Chevy drove into a shot or a piece of pop music was just loud enough to drown out half of the dialogue, overstimulated to the point I couldn't even laugh or cry or anything, mind a blank, sitting and eating my popcorn like the bitch I am.
  • Broey Deschanel released a BARBIE video, too, "Feeling Cynical About Barbie," which I tried not to let inspire too much of my own critique of the film, though it clearly did. Hers is a considerably more driven, pointed critique, inspired largely by the comments she receive after an off-handed post announcing she was going to release about the movie, with the word "ugh" in it. I think she does this mostly with the goal of caution: the reactions she got on a five word post are so unfavorable, and were left entirely by her own subscriber base. I can imagine some nerves about posting what would be seen as a "contrarian" take--but her point is that to frame a dislike or questioning of the film as "contrarian" is itself a bad take, or at least one that nullifies actual critique. It's a mega-budget film being produced at the crux of two of the industry's most defining strikes. And it's, as Maia says, for the girls, which apparently makes it beyond all criticism. I really love this video, as I do most of Maia's videos, because of the strike connection; it seems that the potential for blowback made Maia's reading of the film and its larger context even savvier than usual, and she hits on the consequences of a movie like BARBIE without the wishy-washy "capitalism bad" takes that I and others are frequently guilty of. How are we meant to talk about media that's written to be airtight to the typical words we use? There's enough mentions of capitalism, fascism, and patriarchy in BARBIE to make you forget those are systems we live in and with, not just things coming out of Ken's mouth after seeing the Real World once. That most people I know feel at least semi-uncomfortable saying their real opinion on the movie outright is distressing to me!
  • In my quest to be forever overstimulated, I finally got to the hour plus long Christmas episode of THE BEAR, which also basically functions as a multiverse-style piece of media except for people who watch TV or like actors. Bob Odenkirk! Sarah Paulson! John Mulaney! Jamie Lee Curtis! Am I--and I really mean it this time--going insane? The episode was fine; I was stressed out and frankly a little confused the whole time, which I think was the point. But I couldn't help but think it existed solely for budget reasons, e.g., they had the money so they made the thing with all the people in it. To be determined, I guess, by the end of the season, which I hope to finish somewhat soon.
  • Yesterday I watched the first three episodes of the latest season of NEVER HAVE I EVER with Riley, our favorite Netflix Original to binge. The show, like BARBIE (am I BARBIE-brained??), is feminist in the way only a millennial can be, is written by Mindy Kaling, and follows a teenage girl through her high school years where she mostly obsesses about how she's going to lose her virginity and get a boyfriend, not necessarily in that order. In addition to the liberal posturing all of the characters are doing all of the time (almost the entire cast is "diverse" e.g. nonwhite, and the school is simultaneously bully- and drama-free, except when our main character starts a fight), each scene requires at least one pop culture reference ("As Dua Lipa said..." one character begins her brief monologue in episode two.. or three). I think the intended audience here is much younger than Riley and I, but then again, I know a handful of people who watch the show with regularity when it comes out. What is all of this? Is the next wave of feminism posed to be capitalist in its slant, all pop culture references and toy commercials?

Otherwise:

  • I've had a mild gum infection for the past week in some corner of my mouth which was not mild when I was freaking out the most about it. Since I turned 26 I lost my parent's health insurance, and thus started panic googling what would happen to me if I let this infection get out of hand. I got a range of exciting answers, from "go into credit card debt to get it handled" to "fly to Turkey and have work done--it's cheaper even with the flights and hotels." I know I'm playing all the hits here--feminism! capitalism! healthcare!--but, really and truly, what the fuck. Fortunately I am a champion saltwater gargler and will not be traveling to eastern Europe for dental work anytime soon.
jul 26 2023 ∞
aug 18 2023 +