Installment 5: Wanna disco? Wanna see me disco?

In text:

• I finally finished BLOOD AND GUTS IN HIGH SCHOOL, which I now consider to be my primary summer read since it took so long. As previously stated, I found this a nearly impossible read for several reasons: a) because it is written in a collage-style stream-of-consciousness-adjacent mishmash, which includes verse and prose and drawings, and is frequently written in the style of a young girl speaking fast; b) because the subject matter is frequently pornographic or violent, usually simultaneously (if it's one, it's likely both); and c) because, wrongly assuming that it was a "normal" novel, I purchased it on Kindle, which is certainly the wrong format to read this book. I suspect this book is enjoyable only when one understands the context of it--how Acker hadn't yet published a book through a major publisher despite being a prolific writer already, how it was passed from publisher to publisher for years, how it was written for even more years, and features a lot of personal details couched in the fictional. Chris Kraus, in an essay on the 2017 new edition of the book for THE PARIS REVIEW wrote that it proves autofiction can't be considered a post-internet invention; I like that take, save for the fact that none of the book would've indicated that on it's face.
• In light of the Jonah Hill bullshit, a piece by Lily Scherlis in PARAPRAXIS floated around my internet, entitled "Boundary Issues". Because I am no Freudian scholar--no scholar of anything, actually, something I realized with sadness earlier today after drinking half a French Press at the vegetarian cafe and feeling self-important--and because this piece appears in a magazine dedicated specifically to psychoanalytic thought, this piece and magazine interest me for their specificity. The piece very closely observes the history of the term "boundaries" as a tool in therapy. A section on how the language of property and ownership is entwined with the language of "personal boundaries" sticks out: "Boundaries do this by teaching us to relate to other people as if they are the one thing social systems are most determined to protect: property. Most boundaries books of the ’90s unselfconsciously steal imagery from land ownership." The Jonah Hill stuff spawned a new discourse about the abuse of "therapy speak" in our real lives, which itself spawned another discourse about whether or not the JH texts could even be considered "therapy speak," as opposed to some Instagrammized version of what people are being taught and told in therapy. This piece seems to argue the former: that boundary language is manifest of very specific types of therapies and self-help-style books beginning as early as the 60s. As someone who is at least dubious of talk therapy, I am prone to taking seriously this psychoanalytic perspective (more on this below), and thusly not the best authority on whether this take is good, evil, or other.

In video format:

• I don't know if I've mentioned that I have Moviepass, but that's why I see a new release almost every week... This week it was ELEMENTAL, Disney-Pixar's latest. (I know. But it was either this or MISSION IMPOSSIBLE which I simply will not see ever in my lifetime.) ELEMENTAL is exciting in that it provides one genuine end point to identity politics/representation/diversity discourse. It functions a little like ZOOTOPIA but for the four elements; we open on a silent montage of the long journey-by-boat two fire-people (?) take to Element City, which we quickly find out is actually an immigration from one home state to the new melting pot. The whole movie is spent belaboring the second generation immigrant's tale as old as time. You know the one: immigrant's daughter has to take over the family business--but she doesn't want to! She wants to be an artist and be in love with someone expressly out of her race/class! The movie somehow features no meaningful villains, and no discernibly pressing conflict, since we can spot from a mile away that our heroes will find love and carve their own path without much strife. Perhaps the single most impressive thing about this movie is its maneuvering around race and class while still doing some weirdly racist posturing: the main character's roots are coded vaguely as Indian, but since they're just fire (not human) they speak a totally made-up language; and she experiences microaggressions presumably to prove to the audience that she's discriminated against, but that experience is never addressed or resolved by anyone. This nonspecific, racialized-but-nonpointed racism is part and parcel of a media landscape responding (obdurately) to a world of obtuse, nonspecific requests for representation and diversity. The movie had practically no PR ahead of release, and that makes sense: we're in a new generation of children's media, where plots and characters are passively unoffensive and inclusive by the standards of homogenous white America, where even the creators know it's kind of shit and thus are choosing to fly under every possible radar. Oh no she spent a lot of words talking about a Pixar movie.
• Belatedly, I started the second season of THE BEAR, of which I was fond enough the first go around, but which I'm much fonder of this time. I really love Ayo Edebiri--she strikes me as extremely normal, maybe because she plays her part so normally, and flatly (if that can be a good thing). I especially liked the episode this season when she traipses around Chicago eating delicious foods and silently questioning her life path... And in general I think the show is at least fun, if not particularly deep. I think the attempts at emotion here land mostly because the viewer is primed for sympathy, e.g., aw, his brother is dead or she is poor so going to culinary school and becoming sous is huge! I don't mean this is a bad thing, but rather a relatively predictable move. Anyway, I see most how the work captures audiences through objects: the plastic quart containers, blue aprons, unique and ever-present designer coats worn on the streets of Chicago by the main characters all make the show naturally memorable to the target audience, millennials who get targeted ads about uniquely expensive cookware (I'm looking at you, Our Place pan). The fact that everyone's kind of hot certainly doesn't hurt, either.
• I fell asleep to WALL-E for the second time this summer, this time in a record 8ish minutes. That movie rocks.

Et cetera:

• I feel I experience coincidences the most in the summer out of any season. I think this is because in the summer I have the most time to pause and think; I can more meaningfully observe when everything goes a little slower due to heat or less work/more play. Example: I was gifted, as part of a thank you note, a copy of Oliver Sacks's GRATITUDE, which I read before starting edits on SWIMMING POOL (a forthcoming Object Lesson), wherein I learned that Oliver Sacks was an avid swimmer. Before any of this I embarked on my own journey to becoming a swimmer which is going fine (swimmingly?), though I don't think I am measurably improving even as I continue to go to the pool twice a week. (I am also about to embark on editing AIR CONDITIONING, as I sit in my 82-ish Farenheit room without AC or much ceasing of the heat in Flagstaff.) All coincidental and without meaning, but noticeable nonetheless.
• I finally and belatedly listened to Rosalia's MOTOMAMI, the hesitation of which came from my distaste for Rosalia's weird Spanish posturing (e.g. being a Spaniard, for which I suppose she shouldn't really be blamed). It's a good album--I think I listened to it at least six times consecutively while angrily crafting, which resulted in a MOTOMAMI themed tiny zine. (You can own the one and only version of that zine for one hundred and fifty American dollars. Art collectors and Anahi fanatics, DM me.) I am particularly tickled by the meme samples on the album (it took a few listens for me to clock the guy singing one, two, three, four, five...), and disturbed by the weirdly good Weeknd feature. And in general I like that the album is so thematic--drag queens, butterflies, my moto bike, so on makes the whole thing feel very driven and clean. I also like that I get to think in Spanish again, something which I rarely afford myself since my Spanish skills are embarrassingly in decline.
• Something about having TikTok, the app which I've stated I treat as a special gift to myself, makes my brain feel like I've consumed a lot, because I have, while simultaneously feeling like I've done nothing at all. I think this is the curse of the short video format. But I returned anyway mostly on account of the new non-playable character/AI behavior livestreams, where people essentially do motions and sounds based on "tips" they receive while on live. These tips come in the form of actual cash for the creator, but onscreen appear as a cartoon balloon, or rose; or a cowboy hat filter, or sunglasses. Gang gang ... Hmm ice cream so good ... Balloon pop pop pop pop .... (If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's a link.) These things disturb me in ways I've yet to fully unpack, but the good news is, no one else seems to know what to do with it either: I haven't seen a single op-ed to date on what the fuck is going on with people pretending to be NPCs online. Mostly what I've noticed in the past few days of scrolling is a proliferation of people--both openly self-aware and earnestly not--doing these lives in an attempt to make money. As it goes, "If you see me doing one of those lives for cash don't say anything..." videos are now going as viral as the weird lives themselves, raising a new question for me about the value of self-awareness at the end of capitalism. Why acknowledge the depraved state of doing weirdly debasing actions at the behest of a few thousand followers watching your TikTok live? Why not just go for it, as the famed creator of the trend, pinkydollreal, seems to--unabashedly, with a straight face and not much behind her eyes?
• While binding my biggest book to date, I listened to several episodes of ORDINARY UNHAPPINESS, a podcast hosted by two academics about psychoanalysis and, as they say, "how we suffer today." I like the gist of this show, and grew to love it once I got to the double episode on the uncanny. I am and have always been weirdly anti-talk therapy, probably because of my Latin American upbringing (which stereotypically produces in people a distrust of medical professionals and also a feeling that if something is wrong internally or otherwise one should earnestly attempt at solving it oneself), but also because of my probably-false belief that naming and labeling leads to a self-talk which is akin to victimization, or at the very least to feeling trapped in one's status as forever-diagnosed. (I think P.E. Moskowitz, who writes the Substack Mental Hellth, has caught a lot of flack for these types of takes online, even though I also think they're frequently right.) Then again, I am certainly someone who would benefit from treatment for my various neuroses, and am thusly interested in the psychoanalytic alternative, though it reeks of pretension, what with the constant and incessant use of German and French and all of long quotes from various texts and mentions of Lacan. The show is accessible enough that I'll certainly keep listening; I'll also keep wrongfully calling everything Freudian because it's fun!!
• Finally: the perfect tweet of the week.