This platter showcases actual paragraphing — something you won't find in Big Media!
- From the world of "Why can't they both (or all) lose?" comes a pair of related stories. First, Apple's purported privacy focus (and sniping at Faceplant) is — as should be thoroughly expected by anyone who can spell "unlawful tying" or remembers United States v. Apple and recognizes that most of the same executives remain in place — less than credible (cf. also id. at 703 n.66). This is not much of a surprise; that Apple itself doesn't own the advertising referral network, like Google does, doesn't mean it doesn't use user data for its own financial benefit.
Then there's the BFF of a carefully cultivated KGB/FSB source, who thinks social media is helping his opposition. Let's leave aside for the moment that said opposition is a lesser evil sort of "alternative leader" being opposed by a Bond supervillain, shall we? Let's also ignore that Putin's own minions have enthusiastically used [anti]social media for the same inimical purposes, and using the same methods, to which he's objecting, shall we?
- Carey Mulligan gave Variety exactly what it deserves, but was perhaps too nice about it… quite possibly because she lacks the egotism to proclaim exactly how right she was. The Variety reviewer has quite obviously never known any medical students, or premedical undergraduates, who weren't "from" LA: The hotness is in their minds, moreso than anywhere else, and their bright inquisitiveness and strength of personality don't come through well on the screen in the first place. Indeed, one of the laboratory guidelines in organic chemistry — a subject required for premedical students that I doubt more than half-a-dozen H'wood figures have even read the course-catalog description for; now that I think of it, one of those few is known for other things, but that's for another time — is "no contact lenses, no/almost no makeup, no flammable hair products, and remove or tape over your jewelry" which in the impaired vision of H'wood denizens puts all the hotness in the Bunsen burners and not the people.
Even more than just "misogyny" — which is bad enough — is the overt ignorance and antiintellectualism. Which all too often expresses itself as misogyny, in that the "hot chick" (white, almost-always Northern European Christian and occasionally Hispanic but almost never Eastern or Southern European let alone from anywhere else) almost always is closer to the H'wood story center than any other female character… and on the incredibly rare occasions that she isn't, it's either a romcom or all-eye-candy anyway, and thus focused on surfaces (in H'wood) even more than usual. Perhaps it's because the schlubs in the back rooms can imagine that they're just one more round of plastic surgery away from being "hot," but even their narcissism recognizes that no plastic surgeon just off Rodeo Drive can elevate them from shallow or stupid. That takes years of work. In libraries and in laboratories and doing fieldwork, where nobody will see their hotness. Unless, perhaps, they imagine themselves as Charles Gordon without going through being on the blacklist, and that doesn't exactly turn out well.
I haven't seen the subject film yet. I've seen enough of Mulligan's other work to be intrigued… and even before this became publicly controversial (nearly a year after a review based on a "beautiful-people-only" premiere), I had read that particular reviewer's review and decided that his (warped) judgment made it more interesting, not less. His outraged, self-centered reaction at being called out — his attempt to make this about him and his hurt feelings, not about the actor let alone the film — just reinforces that. It's sort of like classic Siskel and Ebert: for non-speculative-fiction films, many interesting and most worthwhile films were those that Gene loved and Roger was lukewarm about. (Gene's instincts about speculative fiction were unreliable, I'm afraid.) More disturbingly, though, it demonstrates that the reviewer knows not a damned thing about major aspects of sexual assault: It's about expressing power far more than about physical attraction (or any other kind of attraction), especially since sometimes — maybe even most of the time — there's a question of being "not my type," which is exactly the subtext implied here. His failure to recognize that in himself or his writing just reinforces the conclusion of misogyny.
So congratulations, Variety: By thoroughly exposing one of your lead reviewers' blind spots, you've just made yourself even more relevant… in an obviously unintended way. (And we won't mention "media consolidation" here. At least not very loudly.) That an editor chose to run the review anyway itself speaks volumes; if it was so bad that it "required" a disclaimer, why print it in the first place? Somehow, though, I doubt that you're ever going to print a disclaimer for just being antiintellectual…
- OK, I guess we will mention media consolidation. Obsessive focus on soto voce targets isn't exactly new in media; Sauron's media empire, for example, isn't really about "profit" as much as it is about "influence" and "suppression of opposing views by restricting venue and shouting louder." When even the Authors' Guild wakes up (two months late… which is unusually quick for that misguided circus) and opposes the merger, it's time to ponder.
It's time to ponder even when the Authors' Guild just can't stop itself from waving the "Amazon Is the Source of All Evil!" flag again. That this exposes the Upper West Side class bias in the Authors' Guild is neither unusual nor surprising; but then, I doubt that any senior official at the AG has been to a bookstore more than 100km from the Flatiron Building just to shop for his or her own books in more than a decade, so their idea of what a "bookstore" really looks like — especially in, say, a Big Ten town of 150,000 or so (it's a B&N), or serving the half-million or so between San Francisco and Palo Alto (ditto), or 100km north of Amazon's headquarters (ditto, although there is one alternative that's about one-third the size with an even larger proportion of non-book merchandise than a B&N, notwithstanding its unjustly lauded status as an "indie paradise") — leaves a lot to be desired. The AG just refuses to accept that its cramped membership criteria — and overt hostility to those who write for courses not found in the 1968 Fordham or NYU undergraduate course catalogs — has reinforced a cramped worldview that is itself the product of a century of "consolidation," given that almost no one who isn't the beneficiary of a trust fund or rich relative has been able to afford to be part of that lifestyle within 100km of the Flatiron Building since Sputnik. For all its faults, Amazon at present (even leaving aside COVID precautions; it really pisses me off that churches and auto repair stores are "essential," but bookstores and libraries aren't) manages to serve both those who already know something and want to expand it and those seeking to learn for the first time, whether through "fiction" or "poetry" or "nonfiction." (The less said about exactly how much nonreligious "poetry" even the best nonspecialist brick-and-mortar bookstores stock, the better… and how long it remains on the shelf instead of being returned for the newest hot (usually young) poet…)
So welcome to the party, two months late. I don't call that "fashionably late," but then my experience with wine-and-cheese parties was limited to St. Louis and London and DC, not the self-annointed "greatest city in the world." The AG (and its allies, and looking at who is not on that list is itself revealing) has yet again demonstrated that civilization really does end at the Hudson — but the barbarians are on the eastern bank.