Sweet, sweet validation

I have been carrying a (relatively) lonesome burden in the past six weeks regarding how much I disliked one of the year's bigger word-of-mouth hits, Oz Perkins' Longlegs.

I wrote about it here, but my snide remarks were part of a bigger consideration of the bait-and-switch it shared with its partner for a double feature I saw that week, MaXXXine, both of which purport to be horror movies but are really more serial killer movies.

But at that time, I hadn't even published my 1/10 review of it on ReelGood. I can now point you to that review if you want to dig deeper into the choice words I had about it. 

There were a few others who joined in my distaste for the movie. My oldest friend, who used to comment here as Don Handsome but has (rightfully) put blogs in his rearview mirror, greeted the mere news that I had seen the movie -- I wasn't going to tell him my thoughts in case he hadn't seen it -- with the single comment "Boo," and we went from there. His partner disliked it equally. And then there's the estimable but slightly risible critic Rex Reed, whose 0 rating on Metacritic stood in stark contrast to the next lowest one they saw it fit to feature on the film's main page, a 63. The others were 75, 80, 80, 90 and 100. 

Those scores of 75, 80, 80, 90 and 100 were the things that made me secretly worry that Rex and Don and I might be idiots. We knew how terrible the thing we saw was, but if you hate something that everyone else loves, maybe it's you, right?

Well this was a good week in the journey of my dislike for Longlegs. 

It started with one of the other ReelGood critics finally seeing it -- a horror aficionado at that. Here was what he thought:

"Wouldn't go as low as 1, but it wasn't great."

Now you get a SPOILER ALERT for the rest of his comments:

"Just crazy how many different elements he threw in there. Psychic detective, haunted dolls, Satanism.

"Not sure if it was meant to be a bit ridiculous or he just had no idea what he was doing."

Bingo!

That gave me some comfort, but it did not quite give me the sweet, sweet validation I spoke of in the subject of this post.

I had seen that a discussion of Longlegs was coming up on The Slate Culture Gabfest, catching up as I have been from many months behind, now to only about a month behind. I was a bit worried about the prospective positive tenor of this podcast, though, given the episode title: "Longlegs has legs."

As it turned out, this title was nothing more than a statement of fact: The movie had become a word-of-mouth phenomenon and was making far more money than most movies of its basic components make, effectively burrowing into the zeitgeist.

It was not a statement about their appreciation of the film.

In fact, I am not sure if I have ever heard these three people -- who have discussed hundreds of movies in the ten years I have been listening to them on this podcast -- so lambast a film.

The two women, Dana Stevens and Julia Turner, were a bit measured in their albeit clear disappointment with the film. Perhaps it was their "feminine sense of empathy" that compelled them to point out things they thought were good; in one case, quite wrongly, the performance of Nicolas Cage.

Stephen Metcalf? He was howling with how preposterous the whole thing was. 

A grin split my face in two as I was walking home from the train station, listening to an increasingly giddy takedown of the movie. Steve's sheer delight with how bad the movie was quickly won the other two over.

But wait there's more.

I don't know if you are a Slate Plus member, dear reader, but if you are not, it might be worth signing up just to hear the BONUS EPISODE they recorded in which they could continue to trash the movie, only with spoilers. Especially if you are a Longlegs hater like I am. 

We're not talking about a full hour of content, but rather, each regular episode of the Gabfest includes a bonus fourth segment, after their weekly endorsements, that is only for Slate Plus subscribers. It runs about 17 minutes, or did in this case anyway.

And those 17 minutes were devoted to tearing the movie to shreds with the freedom not to censor themselves to avoid spoilers.

It's exquisitely entertaining listening, and it has put a spring in my step for the 48 hours since I listened to it.

So look, you might have come to this post because it's about Longlegs and you liked Longlegs. I'm sorry that you had this clearly incorrect experience with the movie, but at least you are in the majority. Maybe it's me.

Or maybe it's me, my friend Don, Don's partner, Rex Reed, my ReelGood critic, and Dana, Julia and Steve. 

One day, maybe everyone will realize what a turd this movie is. 

My funeral film festival

NOTE: I do not have a terminal illness, am not contemplating my own death, and do not expect to die in the near future. The following is a thought experiment only.

Dana Stevens doesn't like lists, except when she does.

The Slate film critic and co-host of the Slate Culture Gabfest tells us that she doesn't like ranking her top ten films of each year. She will reluctantly produce a list of her ten favorites, but she will not order them. She won't fit herself into that mold even when she's a guest on the Filmspotting year-end podcast, in which the ranking of films from ten to one provides a crucial part of the episode's structure. While the other three hosts ranked their 2021 top tens from favorite to least favorite, she boldly stuck with her own convictions and just offered ten titles without further assessment of their respective worth.

But I stand by my argument -- maybe never explicitly stated as such -- that a person doesn't go into film criticism without having some sort of mental framework for expressing their appreciation of film. I suspect there are few critics out there who are in it only for the purity of the written word, without being driven on some level by a tendency to rank, to assign star ratings, to produce letter grades or to make lists. 

Well I've just discovered how that manifests itself in Dana, how she demonstrates that little bit of obsessiveness that lets me relate to her just a bit more than I already did.

On their recent year-end "call-in" show of the Gabfest -- which I caught up with only very belatedly, and which features emails and voicemails from their listening audience, not actual live interaction -- Dana and her co-hosts (Stephen Metcalf and Julia Turner) answered the following listener question: "What one song would you want played at your funeral?" Naturally this led to a bit of riffing, with each providing more than one song and Dana even taking the opportunity to talk about movies, though without mentioning specific titles. 

It was revealed that Dana has a Spotify playlist of songs to play at her funeral, a comment that took her co-hosts aback. I assume it shocked them because they thought it flew in the face of Dana's free-spirited ways -- both in her stated dislike of lists, and in terms of the optimism she unfailingly projects. Dana clarified that she is not specifically planning out her funeral or anything so morbid as that, but more than anything, these are songs she wants to be forever associated with her, to the extent that they might live on after her on the internet. She also explained that she frequently adds songs to this list, so at this point it obviously far exceeds the number that could be played at a funeral, and complicates the task of anyone trying to interpret the list as practical posthumous funeral-planning advice from the departed.

It was also revealed that Dana has a wild fantasy about an entire weekend devoted to remembering her, though not in a somber way of course -- just a hope that she could live the sort of life that would encourage family and friends to devote extra time to honoring her, in the form of a three-day party that would be a direct benefit to them, not just a tribute to her. Part of that, she revealed, was that it might take place all at one house and there would be a room devoted to showing a funeral film festival.

She has that list of titles as well, but "that's a topic for another podcast."

I see you, Dana. You like lists. 

(I know, I know. It was never lists she didn't like, it was ranked lists.)

Funeral film festival. Huh. 

It obviously got me thinking: What would I curate for my own funeral film festival?

I was originally going to call this post "Your funeral film festival" rather than "My funeral film festival," because a) I didn't want to give anyone a heart attack who thinks I'm announcing some sort of fatal illness, b) I didn't want to give the impression I am depressed or gloomily contemplating the end of my own life, and c) the idea of planning my own funeral gives me the heebee jeebees. But the reality is, the rest of this post is what I'd consider showing at my own funeral film festival, were such a thing to occur, and were I in a position to help plan it beforehand. (And hey, if you're reading this at some point in the future after I have already died, but before I've already been buried, see if this sort of thing might be practical! I might not be kidding! Or it can be months later as a memorial! I don't care! I'll be dead anyway!)

One thing I should say is that whatever I write about here is bound to change between now and whenever I die. I'd say I hope it changes a lot because I hope that is 40 years from now, but then again, it might not change a lot even if it is 40 years from now. There's a good argument to be made that when you are nearing 50, you have already seen the movies that are going to seem the most important to you on your deathbed.

I figure ten titles is a good number to consider. You show two on Friday night after everyone arrives, five scattered throughout the day on Saturday and another three on Sunday, letting everyone leave to get back to their lives by mid-afternoon. 

The key, though, is that this is not just another variation on "What are your ten favorite films of all time?" Pulp Fiction is currently my #3 on Flickchart, but no way is that making an appearance at a film festival in celebration of my life. 

So the following ten titles I've chosen are also titles that deal in some way with the bittersweetness of life, that have the heart and earnestness to be about something bigger while also, usually, not taking themselves too seriously. I want my mourners to enjoy these movies, not be hit over the head with how final and irrevocable death is.

For the purposes of maximum possible enjoyment for the widest range of people, I'm also considering only titles that aren't known for being divisive. For example, I think a movie like Vanilla Sky is excellent at contemplating themes of the fragility of what we have, but I know some people loathe that movie (even if they are wrong). I don't need a movie that some people hate -- plus a polarizing figure like Tom Cruise -- ruining the celebration of my life. 

Finally I thought it was wise to limit my pool of candidates to my top 500 films on Flickchart, as I want these to be films I really cherish. I want at least the people who know me well to think of me when they think of these films. It turned out I didn't get even that far, as the shortlist of 18 candidates included no movies ranked lower than #394 on my chart. 

So without any further preamble, here are the ten films I've chosen in the year 2022 for this festival. In honor of Dana, I'm not ranking them, though that wouldn't make sense anyway. It makes more sense to provide approximate time slots for them, so that is what I have done.

And then I decided to go from ten to 14. 

Here's what I figured. No one is going to watch all of the films. It takes someone insane -- like me -- to watch 14 movies over three days, something I've done on several occasions. But I'm already dead in this scenario. I expect an average mourner to watch three, maybe four films in total, either ones they haven't seen before or special favorites. Hopefully there will be enough mourners that each screening will seem suitably well attended. 

There will be movies that some people just don't like, despite my trying to avoid that as stated above. Depending on where it's held, maybe they want to go play an hour of tennis as a little change of pace, assuming I don't die in winter. Maybe they've booked themselves into the spa. Maybe they want to join the bongo circle, where my more musically inclined friends are banging out a tribute to me on the drums. Maybe they want to participate in the cooking class and learn to make authentic Mediterranean cuisine in my honor. Hey, I don't know what new interests I'll have by then.

So it seems that I can schedule this thing chockablock, with only short breaks between each movie (though you will see I've allocated meal breaks on Saturday and Sunday). Since it's my special weekend -- even though I won't be there to appreciate it -- might as well pack in the goodness as tightly as I can.

The only time restrictions I insisted on obeying were to start the movies late enough on Friday that people didn't have to leave work too early, depending on how far they had to travel, and to get them out of there by late afternoon/early evening on Sunday, so they have some chill out time when they get home before they have to go to bed. One last chance to reflect on me and my greatness.

Oh, and no movies during the hours when people are typically sleeping. I can see a marathon like that working and I know people will have some long, dark nights of the soul contemplating how empty the world will feel after my death, but I want them to be fresh for the next day's slate of films. 

So -- now without any further preamble -- here's the schedule for the weekend. Get there early if you can. 

Friday

Arrival/check-in from 3 p.m.

6 p.m. - Defending Your Life
(1991, dir. Albert Brooks) 111 minutes
Flickchart: #25

(Program note: Dinner to be consumed during film, available at buffet in adjoining room)

Why this film? I want to kick off the weekend on a lighter note, and this film's opener lets us know right away what we're in for, as Brooks' Daniel Miller is killed in a head-on car collision listening to Barbra Streisand in his brand new Porsche convertible, distracted from the road while trying to pick up some compact discs that have spilled into the passenger side footwell. He is then immediately pushed in a wheelchair through the hospital-like corridors of the afterlife, freshly deceased and none too pleased about it, though he's very tired so he can only muster a hangdog half-frown. Before long Meryl Streep shows up to add a total splash of delight to Daniel's trip through the afterlife, where he'll defend in a court of law a dozen key life decisions to determine if he gets to move on to the next plane of existence, or is instead forced to return to earth to give it another shot. In among the hilarity there's some real profundity in Brooks' best film, and I think this gets the audience laughing while never losing sight of the core questions of how we try to move past the fears in life that hold us back.

8:15 p.m. - Cinema Paradiso 
(1988, dir. Giuseppe Tornatore) 155 minutes
Flickchart: #116

Why this film? The main course of night 1, as it were, is also the longest film that will play, and one of the least to do directly with death. As you would know if you've seen it, this is really a love letter to the movies and to people whose childhoods had a love of cinema as wallpaper. As it follows the main character from that young age to adulthood, when he has left his hometown in the distant rearview mirror, it does contemplate life and loss and the things that live on only in our memories. And of course when (spoiler alert!) the loveable old projectionist Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), who is earlier blinded in a fire at the cinema, does die, it's the occasion for our main character, Salvatore (played by different actors at different ages), to reminisce on his formative years, and finally return home. The climactic piece of film he views -- this I won't spoil if you haven't seen it -- creates just the sort of emotional release my mourners may be needing. 

11 p.m. - Wild Strawberries
(1957, dir. Ingmar Bergman) 91 minutes
Flickchart: #394

Why this film? As the lowest ranked film on my Flickchart that will play, it might also not surprise you that this is among the least familiar to me of the movies I've chosen. I've seen it twice, but the most recent viewing was more than ten years ago now. I'm choosing it, though, for a couple reasons. One is that the themes of looking back on life near its end stick with me, even if the specifics of the story don't. Another is that it would sort of honor my (still living, but probably not at this point) dad, whose favorite film is Bergman's The Seventh Seal -- and even though the chess with death bit is certainly the kind of thing you might gladly feature in a funeral film festival, that film didn't connect with me to the extent it did my dad. But the biggest reason that I've chosen it for this late-night slot is that it has an ethereal, existential quality that befits late-night contemplation, though I'm sorry I'm making you read subtitles after midnight on what has already been an emotionally draining day.

                                                        *************

Saturday

8 a.m. - Breakfast - Pastries, bagels and some hot foods available

9 a.m. - The Iron Giant
(1999, dir. Brad Bird) 87 minutes
Flickchart: #10

Why this film? So what does my first animated film of the festival, a lovely little story about a boy and his robot, have to do with ... oh wait a minute. Death is all over this thing, as one of the most miraculous feats The Iron Giant pulls off is to make young viewers consider the preciousness of life without it totally bumming them out. The giant's first contemplation of mortality, when he gently nudges the lifeless body of the deer, is a tonal masterstroke, enhanced exponentially by Vin Diesel's childlike line readings of the giant's curiosity about death. Then near the end -- again spoiler if you haven't seen the movie -- everyone must contemplate the near certainty of their own impending death when a nuclear missile is headed directly for their small Maine town, with only a heroic metal martyr standing in its way. (Plus the setting is a nice way to honor my New England upbringing, and my dad actually lives in Maine.) The Iron Giant still makes me cry after like seven viewings, so yeah, this one is making the cut.

11 a.m. - A Matter of Life and Death
(1946, dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger) 104 minutes
Flickchart: #327

Why this film? This is the only film in the festival that I've seen only once -- I saw it only a year ago for the first time -- but hopefully that will change before I shuffle off this mortal coil. It'll keep the mostly light vibe going during the daytime hours (yes, Iron Giant is mostly light despite the threat of nuclear holocaust). The story is about a World War II British fighter pilot (David Niven) who is going down over the English Channel, and in his last moments before certain death, he falls in love with the American radio operator (Kim Hunter) whom he sends a distress signal. Except he doesn't die, rather, awakening on the banks of the water within range of this woman and his fellow British soldiers. This may all be a state of limbo, though, as he can't explain his failure to die, and starts seeing visions of envoys from the afterlife, who will eventually have him in a trial that's sort of similar to what happens in Defending Your Life. This movie's delightful spirit, ahead-of-its-time philosophizing (especially for a mainstream film) and yes, even special effects, simply knocked my socks off. This is joyous in its ruminations on that thin membrane between life and death that we all find ourselves in on a daily basis. And maybe it will convince some of my mourners that I'm not actually dead.

1 p.m. - Lunch - Sandwiches

2 p.m. - Four Weddings and a Funeral
(1994, dir. Mike Newell) 117 minutes
Flickchart: #39

Why this film? If A Matter of Life and Death didn't keep the light afternoon vibe going, then this fellow British film definitely will, as only one-fifth of it is dour, if you are going by the math in the title. This is the movie whose inclusion I am most justifying on the basis of "I just love it," with the excuse of the title explicitly referencing a funeral to further strengthen my choice. I do think the portion related to Gareth's death is handled quite well, especially as it does, indeed, change the tone of the film for about 15 minutes. If someone read a poem at my funeral that was as beautiful as W.H. Auden's "Funeral Blues," it'd probably bring a tear to my own eye as I'm lying in the casket listening to it. And then the rest of this film is just such a delight to be in the presence of for two hours. The traveling party of friends, going from one wedding to the next (with a funeral inserted in there for good measure), is the sort of feeling I'd like my mourners to have, dropping absurd witticisms and catty remarks if the mood strikes them. Hey, it's a funeral but it doesn't have to be depressing. 

4:15 p.m. - Truly, Madly, Deeply
(1990, dir. Anthony Minghella) 106 minutes
Flickchart: #150

Why this film? British much? I didn't realize until typing this out that this makes my third straight film from Jolly Old. You'd think I were an Anglophile or something. And I realized I lied earlier -- I've only seen this film once as well, probably due more to its scarcity than anything else. (I think I looked for it a while back and determined you basically can't get it, but I'll kick the can down the road on that problem and leave it for whoever's curating this festival.) There's some real lovely melancholy in this film, as a woman (Juliet Stevenson) is visited by her recently deceased boyfriend (Alan Rickman), who basically takes up residence in their house and even brings some of his deceased musician buddies with him on occasion. (This would go well with the aforementioned bongo circle.) This is definitely a comedy of sorts in that Nina ultimately gets a bit irritated by Jamie, a necessary part in the healing process that allows her to move on. And if I remember correctly, we ultimately realize that was all part of Jamie's plan -- to allow her to say goodbye and to appreciate her loved one a last time, but then to pave the path for a happy rest of her life. 

6:15 p.m. - Rabbit Hole
(2010, dir. John Cameron Mitchell) 91 minutes
Flickchart: #121

Why this film? I haven't wanted so far to put people in direct touch with their anguish, but if anyone wants to just have it out with their emotions, this is the film for them. I don't suppose a movie about the death of a child is ever going to be light in any respect. But the film that was my #3 for the last decade (meaning its Flickchart ranking should increase once it gets the right duels) is just such a powerhouse emotional experience that I couldn't leave it on the sidelines. It doesn't only deal with the emotions, but rather, how they eat away at your relationships and steadily drive you to disassociate with your own life. If that were where it ended, though, it would be a big downer, and not worthy of inclusion here. Nicole Kidman's and Aaron Eckhart's grieving parents reach a place where they can go forward, with that rock in their pocket -- that's how Dianne Wiest's character describes it -- still there, but maybe a little lighter every day. This is another film that leaves me as an absolute wreck every time, but it's not the child's getting hit by a car -- which occurs before the start of the narrative -- that does it. It's the way family and friends surround them at the end, in a showing of love I'd like this particular weekend gathering to emulate.

8 p.m. - Dinner - Selection of surf and turf

9 p.m. - Harold and Maude
(1971, dir. Hal Ashby) 91 minutes
Flickchart: #203

Why this film? If Wild Strawberries honored my father, who is still living, then Harold and Maude honors my mother, who is no longer with us. This was her favorite film and it quickly became a favorite of mine as well, especially after watching it again the night she died in 2020. I love the mixture of tones in this film, as Harold puts on increasingly elaborate fake suicide attempts, which get a blase reaction from his own mother and are clearly played for comedy, and Ruth Gordon's dialogue is almost exclusively naughty and devil may care, as her paradoxical joie de vivre comes shining through. Of course, this movie ends in a very sad place for Harold, who might actually be suicidal -- though what he chooses to do with those instincts speaks volumes of hope. If everything else the film does right were not enough, I'm loving the idea of hearing some Cat Sevens at my funeral film festival -- even if I won't actually be "hearing" it. (But who knows, don't rule out me manifesting as a ghost and watching from the back row.)

11 p.m. - A Ghost Story
(2017, dir. David Lowery) 92 minutes
Flickchart: #157

Why this film? Now that we're closing in on the witching hour, I want to get back into that existential, midnight movie headspace I tried to create on the first night with Wild Strawberries. This one flirts more with the actual horror genre, as there are things in this film that feel very unnerving -- even though we're seeing everything that's happening with a recently deceased man who walks around draped in a bedsheet with two eerily sightless eye holes, so there are no jump scares or the like. (That's Casey Affleck, and let's hope the world has forgiven him a bit more before I die.) (And wait, there is one jump scare, involving a piece of construction equipment of all things.) There are parts of this movie that go purposefully slowly, and there are parts that speed past us before we even notice -- which I think must be sort of how eternity actually feels. This film doesn't only travel forward in time, it travels backward, never ceasing to be completely and utterly profound at any moment. But I mightn't include it if it didn't end up someplace hopeful, or at least someplace immensely emotionally satisfying. I still remember sobbing in the theater after the last shot, though your mileage may vary.  

                                                         *************

Sunday

8 a.m. - Breakfast - Eggs benedict, huevos rancheros, raspberry waffles with mascarpone cheese, four-egg omelette with truffle drizzle, Belgian crepes with a glazed apricot reduction, Wheaties

9 a.m. - My Neighbor Totoro
(1988, dir. Hayao Miyazaki) 87 minutes
Flickchart: #70

Why this film? You've had a hard past two days, with ten films that have put you through the ringer, in toto if not individually. Nothing to freshen you on Sunday morning like a little palette cleanser like this. If you think "Hey Vance, what the hell does My Neighbor Totoro have to do with death?" I would respond first and foremost "Shut up, it's my funeral film festival, I do what I want!" in my best Cartman voice. In reality, though, this wondrous little life-affirming miracle with incredibly low stakes does indeed have death lurking in the background. There's something ever so slightly melancholy to the adventures of young Satsuki and Mei, which is that their mother is in the hospital, and because they are children rarely told the unvarnished truth, they have no idea how bad it is. Is their mother possibly on the verge of dying? I mean, they actually moved house to be closer to her, which doesn't sound promising. Because Miyazaki would rather teach children about life while keeping their innocence firmly intact, it all resolves well for Mrs. Kusakabe, you'll be glad to hear -- with no small help from a cat bus, a Totoro, a couple Totoro helpers and a whole attic full of dust bunnies. And maybe, nearing this end of the weekend, you'll be glad to know it will all resolve well for you, even if I'm not still around to help you with that. 

11 a.m. - Tanna
(2016, dir. Bentley Dean & Martin Butler) 87 minutes
Flickchart: #98

Why this film? Tanna wasn't actually on my original shortlist, but I kept coming back to it in my head, and when I expanded the field to 14, it was easy to find a spot for it. We go from one lush Pacific Ocean setting to another, as the film is a sort of Romeo & Juliet story among the indigenous people of the title island, located in Vanuatu. Because I'm name-checking Shakespeare's most famous depiction of star-crossed lovers, you know that there's got to be death involved here somewhere -- hate to give that spoiler since I know a lot of you reading this right now won't have seen my #5 of the last decade. But I might be including this as much for the idyllic paradise in which it takes place -- as close to a vision of heaven as a religious skeptic like me can get -- as for what ultimately transpires between the central lovers. The way one child in this film expresses her grief, like no non-professional actor of that age I've ever seen, and the way the film ends with a sort of communal celebration, are both things I want to bring to you as you near the end of this epic journey in my honor.

1 p.m. - Lunch - Taco bar

2 p.m. - Away From Her
(2006, dir. Sarah Polley) 110 minutes
Flickchart: #346

Why this film? Depending on how I die, this could be the most topical film in the festival. It's the only film dealing with the thing that could very well be my own cause of death: dementia, or the complications that arise from it. That's what got my mother and her mother before that, as well as my grandfather on my father's side. (The jury is still out on my own father, who is as mentally sharp as ever at age 82.) I'm not including the film so much for its subject matter, though I can't deny that's a factor. (A film like The Father might actually be more powerful to me, but it's a bit too intense.) No, the film impresses as much as it does because of Sarah Polley's grace in depicting the illness that affects Julie Christie's character, while her long-time husband, Gordon Pinsent, can only look on helplessly. No way at age 27 Polley should have been this astute about the frailty of the mental faculties of the older set, and from having watched her documentary about her own family (Stories We Tell), I don't even think it was from her own personal experience. What I find so lovely about this film is not Christie's performance, which is very good, but she's playing a character who basically no longer has any agency over her choices. Rather, it's the man who can choose, her husband, who grows to implicitly understand all the best things for her, even when she turns her attention to another man in the home where she now lives. That's an act of the purest love on his part, and I only hope my wife could give me the same "gift" under those circumstances. As a little change of pace, the character does not actually die in the end -- fancy that. 

4 p.m. - Raising Arizona
(1987, dir. Joel Coen) 94 minutes
Flickchart: #1

Why this film? And we save the best for last. Breathe a sigh of relief, people -- you got there. And your reward is my #1 movie of all time, plus a chance to really relax and have a good time. Aside from it being my #1, and that seeming like a good choice to send me off in its own right, there are indeed other reasons I've chosen to include this in my funeral film festival. (Don't make me pull out my Cartman voice again.) Although it is not always in the text, mortality hangs over this film. It's there in Ed's desire to produce a child and extend herself onward past her own finite lifespan. It's there in HI's dreams of a man in black on a motorcycle coming to kill him. It's there in Gale and Evelle's attempts to liberate themselves from prison, and their panicked screams when they think they might have killed the baby while driving off with his car seat on top of their car. But -- you'll be surprised to learn, or maybe you won't because it's my favorite movie -- this movie makes me emotional too. It's all about HI's new dream that ends the movie, where he imagines himself off into the future, with real kids that really belong to him, and the moment when he's sitting at a large dinner table full of hypothetical future family members, his back to the camera, and a hypothetical grown daughter smiles and touches him on the cheek, and says one word:

"Dad."

(Plus I love the idea of the last thing in the festival, to send people off, being Carter Burwell's incredible score over the closing credits, and all the joyous ululating it entails.)

                                                       *************

I think I've got a good representation of tones, genres, time periods and parts of the world. There may be something I haven't covered but hey, even in death, I'm not perfect.

There were a few films I considered that involved suicide, but in a poignant way, like Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry. And though I'd love to include an Iranian film, I can't have any mixed messaging out there if the cause of my death is the slightest bit ambiguous. (Besides, Harold and Maude covers suicide pretty well without seeming like a cinematic suicide note.) 

Other honorable mentions from my top 500:

Ghost (1990, Jerry Zucker)
Flickchart: #31
Obviously I love it, but it's too earnest and cheesy for some people, plus maybe it's more about love than death.

Coco (2017, Lee Unkrich)
Flickchart: #139
Appropriate themes and light tone with a powerhouse ending, but I didn't need a third animated film.

Henry Poole is Here (2009, Mark Pellington)
Flickchart: #168
Thematically it works and I obviously really like it, but I think most people don't like it and it's a bit too religious for what I want to convey in this context.  

Dreams (1990, Akira Kurosawa)
Some beautiful themes and possible landscapes of the afterlife, but I decided to let My Neighbor Totoro be my sole representative for the cinema of Japan. 

I'm sure there are great choices for the theme beyond my top 500. Maybe I'll save them for if I come back to life and die a second time.

It occurs to me that this might make more sense as a lineup -- or might make more sense as a film festival at all -- if I'm taken before my time. Nobody's going to film festivals honoring 93-year-old senior citizens, because most of the people who would go would also be 93, if they're even still alive. The existence of the festival implies a sort of melancholy and wistfulness over how much the person still had to give. At 93, you ain't giving much if you're giving anything at all. 

However, if I have died young and you remember this post, tell my wife, because it might not be too late for her to start planning! 

I might be kidding! But I might not be!

Journalistic propriety, or mark of the patriarchy?

In the year 2020, I am constantly checking myself to see if what I put out into the world -- through this blog, through my reviews, through my podcast, even in my emails and social media posts and conversations with friends -- is sufficiently apologetic for the fact that I'm a privileged white male.

Oh, this is not some kind of sob story about what I can or cannot say or how the world no longer has room for me. Please do not mistake this for that.

What I mean is that as a person who engages with culture on a daily basis, I used to move through the world with a sort of blitheness of knowing that my essential demographic and sociopolitical perspective would not be challenged. I don't think I said much I'd be sorry for, because I think I've always been sensitive to how I present myself and who I give a fair shake. But now I worry about it juuust a bit more.

I want to neuter myself, just a bit, but it's a willing neutering. It's an attempt to be in conversation with people who have not traditionally had the advantages I have, rather than, as some shameful white men have done, being threatened by them. It's a desire to shift the tone and the tools of my discussion so they come out right to begin with, and don't have to be clarified or apologized for later. I want to move to their playing field, after they spent so many years on mine.

It's toward that end that I am examining a new trend -- probably not actually new -- that I have recently noticed that bothers me, though I'm not sure that it should.

Now, I should start by saying that most of these methods I have for engaging with the world are still governed by basic journalist principals. I have never liked the idea of finishing anything, even a text, without a period -- or a full stop, as it is called here in Australia. I don't like to begin sentences without capital letters. I don't like to string multiple sentences or thoughts together without distributing periods, commas, semi-colons, question marks or exclamation points at all the correct junctures. I think similar thoughts should be contained together in the same paragraphs and different ones should be segregated into separate paragraphs. I believe in beginnings, middles and ends. I do concede to certain "newer" styles of writing -- for example, as you will see right now, I love separating parenthetical expressions with dashes -- and one of those is starting sentences with conjunctions. I love starting a sentence with a good "But" or "And." But in most respects, I am a stodgy grammarian, which until now I have not found inconsistent with having an open mind toward new paradigms of critical discussion.

That last paragraph may have been a bit of a diversion, but it lays the groundwork for the annoyance I'm about to talk about.

One basically sacrosanct rule in journalism is that you refer to the person you are talking about by their last name on second reference. If I'm talking about Tom Cruise in a piece I'm writing, I will call him "Tom Cruise" on first reference and "Cruise" every time after that. I might throw in a "Tom Cruise" again if I am trying to make a sort of semantic flourish in my argument, and there was one newspaper I used to work for where the style was to refer to him as "Mr. Cruise" on subsequent references. I guess that newspaper wanted to be the New York Times or something.

Never, though, would I refer to him as "Tom."

I am wondering if this is one of the old-fashioned parts of me that puts me at odds with the people I am hoping to relate to on an even playing field. And unfortunately, in this case, that seems disproportionately to be women.

I have now gotten to the thing I am actually going to talk about.

I was listening this past weekend to The Slate Spoiler Special, a sort-of spinoff of The Slate Culture Gabfest, probably because it is hosted by Gabfest host Dana Stevens. This podcast has been the repository for a number of my complaints in the past, and so, it must be again today.

The episode in question was about Little Women -- a few weeks late, but I'm still trying to catch up with my podcasts after falling behind over the holidays. On this episode Dana was joined by a freelance journalist named Rachel Syme, with whom I don't believe I was familiar before this podcast, though she's been on this podcast before so maybe I just missed those episodes.

Syme launched the discussing of specifics about the movie, and I noticed something straight away. She didn't refer to Greta Gerwig as "Gerwig" on second reference, but as "Greta."

And then Florence Pugh as "Florence." And then Saoirse Ronan as "Saoirse." And then Meryl Streep as "Meryl."

No.

Just, no.

Do you know these people, Rachel? Are they your friends?

I can't remember if it's Dana's default position to do the same thing, but she definitely played along, even if only because Rachel set the standard. I'll use this moment to make an aside about another thing that Dana does do, however, that annoys me, which is to slavishly pronounce the names of French people correctly, due to her own background with the language. She refers to Timothee Chalamet as "Teem-o-tay," which, just, grrr.

I don't want to say I've never heard this casual usage of first names before, because I have. Slate writer Aisha Harris is also guilty of it.

But I do think I've never heard it from a man.

Now, there is not anything inherently "wrong" with calling an artist, or a musician, or a filmmaker, or an actor, by their first name. The only reason it's "wrong" is that we have developed a convention of treating these people with a certain professional distance, which we demonstrate by choosing an impersonal rather than personal way of talking about them. Which, you could argue, is a major part of retaining our impartiality as journalists.

It's the convention that I'm wondering about. Is this a convention established by, and perpetrated by, white men? And therefore, should it continue?

If I step entirely outside myself and all my preconceived notions, I can see the benefits of referring to Greta Gerwig by her first name. It's certainly a way of humanizing the person, of indicating that he or she is not some kind of remote, monolithic figure. For some artists, their very humanity is part and parcel to what their art is trying to accomplish. Some artists would hug you and immediately invite you to start calling them by the nickname that only their closest friends use for them.

Where this feels like a problem to me is that it prevents you from really criticizing the artist. Dana and Rachel -- I call podcasters by their first names -- were fulsome in their praise of Little Women, and rightly so. It was my #4 movie of 2019. I gave it five stars. It's great.

But what if they had not liked Little Women? Do you then shift to calling the artist by her last name? It's easy to imagine them saying "I love how Greta presented the events of the novel out of sequence," because I don't have to imagine it. It's not so easy to imagine them saying "Greta really screwed the pooch with that whole non-chronological narrative thing."

I really would be interested to know if they would change the way they refer to her -- consciously or subconsciously -- if their huzzahs curdled into guffaws. And I could certainly make the argument that any critical practice that invites you to alter its fundamental elements, depending on whether the scenario involves praise or scorn, is flawed indeed.

But then I think: Is there something inherently gendered about this paradigm that I am failing to connect with?

Or more generally, do I just have to take the pole out of my butt?

It's a pretty shitty and regressive type of stereotyping to say that women are more capable of intimacy and sensitivity than men, though in this case I feel like it's a fairly complimentary form of stereotyping. And if I'm talking about new critical paradigms introduced by critical voices that weren't once heard, I have no choice but to identify the defining traits of those paradigms. I mean, less than a decade ago you mightn't have been able to listen to a movie podcast featuring one female voice, let alone two.

If women podcasters want to refer to artists and musicians and filmmakers and actors by their first names, is it my role to begrudge them that?

And yet while I can ask myself this question with the best of intentions and the most hopeful senses of optimism, I still can't get past it. I still say YOU DON'T KNOW THESE PEOPLE. THEY ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS.

I guess the thing I worry about most is coming down on something, and having others determine that it is a practice unique to a particular minority, be it racial or gender or related to sexuality, and then having them decide that I'm carrying a bias against that racial or gender or sexuality minority. And maybe not even telling me about it so I can't even do anything to address it.

It's a complicated age we live in.

It occurs to me that it's appropriate that Little Women is the film, quite coincidentally I think, prompting these thoughts. This very argument is addressed very literally in the text of the film, as it features a number of tete-a-tetes between a representative of the establishment (the publisher played by Tracy Letts, a man) and an up-and-coming, new and very different voice (Jo March, played by "Saoirse," a woman). These scenes state the themes Greta Gerwig is grappling with in unusually straightforward terms, in part because they are played as comedy. The publisher wants one thing because it's what he's always done and because he believes it's what the world expects and wants. The author presents another way of looking at things, and says, with an unkillable moral certainty, "What if this, instead?"

I'm with Jo -- I can also call literary characters by their first names -- in the argument she is making. But I just can't side with Dana and Rachel in their own implicit argument.

Over the course of this post I’ve listed two scenarios where I would refer to someone by their first name, albeit being a bit cheeky. But maybe it’s context dependent for Dana and Rachel as well. I have to consider that the medium of a podcast is inherently conversational, as opposed to writing, which is more formal. I don’t read a lot of Dana’s writing (something I should do more), but I can say with almost total certainty that she would not say “Greta” in a piece of writing, if only because until recently, she had a stodgy representative of old-world journalism editing her pieces. Julia Turner, late the editor of Slate but now with the LA Times, and still a member of her Slate podcast, would not stand for such a thing. (And ha, she’s a woman.) Maybe it’s podcasting itself that is the new paradigm, not the voices I’m hearing on it. Now granted, I’d never refer to her as “Greta” on my podcast, but I think maybe one of my (male) podcasting co-hosts has done such a thing in the past. And they’re 15 years younger than I am, so age may also be a factor here (though Dana is older than I am).

The majority of this post was written when I was halfway through the podcast on Little Women. I rarely get to listen to a whole podcast in one sitting, or in this case, one session of putting away the laundry. But two other noteworthy things happened before I ultimately finished it the next day: 1) Rachel adjusted her pronunciation of Timothee Chalamet’s first name from “Timothy” to “Timothay,” perhaps as a compromise between her own preferred pronunciation and Dana’s; 2) they both said “Gerwig” on second reference at least once (though never Pugh, Ronan or Streep, that I heard). And then another noteworthy thing a few days later, when I was listening to the male-hosted podcast Filmspotting, in which Adam Kempenaar (a male) referred to Spike Lee as "Spike."

I think it just goes to show that we are all feeling our way through formerly rock-solid ways of doing things into newer, murkier, more flexible alternatives. There’s a “When in Rome” quality to much of this. All communication is a kind of give and take, a meeting your fellow conversant on common grounds, a learning of something new.

An actress is a person, an actor is an aspiration

I have never been a big fan of female-specific variations on common words. One of the dumbest words in the English language has got to be aviatrix, which is a female aviator. No. Just no.

But there are some I don’t mind, some where the gendering of the word gives an additional qualitative meaning to it. For some reason, I think of “actress” as one of those words.

It’s not that there’s a huge difference in the day-to-day job description for men and women who make their living acting. There’s usually a gender performative aspect to their job, but not always, as men sometimes play women, women sometimes play men, and both sometimes play transgender people. But I do think there is something of historical interest in the term “actress,” as I assume it was once created to immediately clarify that it’s a woman doing the job rather than a man, which had historically been the case regardless of the gender of the character being portrayed.

“What makes that different than aviatrix, Vance?”

I don’t know. Just shut up.

It could just be that the history of giving awards to people who act has made the term useful. It’s much easier to say that Meryl Streep was nominated for “best actress,” for example, than “best female actor.” Whether all actors should be judged in a single category is a discussion for another time.

Anyway, I find myself bristling a little whenever someone is too particular about calling an actress an actor. I don’t have a problem with calling a woman an actor, but I have a problem with the viewpoint that it is in some way demeaning to use the term “actress.” It’s so nothing like aviatrix, which is a blatantly complicated change to make. Actress flows naturally and nicely. It is entrenched via common usage.

I’m to my point now.

I know I’ve been picking on Slate podcaster Dana Stevens a bit lately, which is not my intent, as I’m a big fan and actually got my picture taken with her when The Slate Culture Gabfest toured Australia. And in this case, it’s something anyone could have said, and seems to be illustrative of a larger point.

I was listening to an episode of the Culture Gabfest yesterday that actually posted back in February. I dug it back out because I had skipped their spoiler-filled discussion of Abducted in Plain Sight, which I obviously have now seen as I wrote about it yesterday on this blog. I figured, having aired some fairly strong opinions about the movie, I thought I’d see how their opinions matched up with mine.

In the segment at the end of the show where they endorse something they are enjoying in the pop culture world, Dana endorsed a YouTube series in which a woman who functions as a speech coach critiques acting performances for how well they nailed the accents. In the course of this endorsement, Dana said something like this: “The series is run by this actress who gets a lot of work, and it interested me because my daughter aspires to be an actor.”

As you can see, Dana used both the terms “actress” and “actor” in the very same breath, and both when referring to a woman: this professional running this series, and her daughter. It was likely just a slip of the tongue and not something she intended, but that may make it all the more telling.

If we are to parse what Dana said, it suggests that “actress” is what you call a woman when she already has a job, and that job is acting. However, it’s not something you aspire to. You aspire to be an actor.

If these are the subconscious meanings some people are carrying around with them, I can see why female thespians find it a bit demeaning to be referred to as an actress, whether they “should” or not.

It could also be that Dana recognized she used a term she didn’t intend to use and corrected herself mid-thought, something she is particularly good at doing, as her thoughts on the podcast tend to be extremely well articulated yet also seem spontaneous. If I asked Dana whether she preferred the term actor or actress, she’d probably say the former. Or it could be that she unconsciously observes a distinction between someone she doesn’t know, who can get the more “dismissive” term actress, and her own daughter, who deserves to complete equally in the world by virtue of a non-gender-specific term.

But I think it’s also incorrect to assume that “actor” is most commonly perceived as non-gender-specific. Most people, I would argue, think of an actor as a man. Instead of striving for a certain gender equality, then, the opposite result might be achieved in using the word “actor” for a woman. It might make it look like that woman wants to be recognized via a bit of male terminology, which makes it seem like she wants to be like a man, rather than just being like herself.

I don’t know what any of this means, nor is it very likely to change how I use the word. If I had a daughter and she was into acting, I’d probably say she wants to be an actress.

However, if Dana Stevens’ daughter wants to be an actor, more power to her.

Real love and spoiling what can't be spoiled

If you started reading this for a substantive analysis of the themes or filmmaking techniques of Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I haven’t seen it yet. It doesn’t come out for another couple weeks in Australia.

But even without having seen it, I can tell you that it doesn’t seem like the type of movie that would be discussed on something referred to as a “spoiler special.”

That would be The Slate Spoiler Special, a recurring Slate podcast in which a roundtable of hosts (often featuring film critic Dana Stevens) goes through a recent film or TV show without worrying about keeping its secrets. I hate-listen to this podcast. Every once in a while it yields something I find genuinely useful, but more often than not, it inspires snark in me.

I won’t dredge all that up now because I’ve written about it before, but I often think the show is more appropriately referred to as Slate Plot Synopsis. That’s because the roundtable usually passes around the conch in a kind of tag team recitation of the plot, blow by blow, rarely providing what I would consider to be true analysis.

But the thing that’s annoying me in this case is that rarely does it actually involve spoilers. Oh, they tell you what happens in the plot, but more often than not, the plot is not particularly “spoilery.”

As in, it would seem, Booksmart. Now I understand that they have chosen to call the show this and they aren’t going to adjust the name of the show based on what movie they’re talking about, but I might suggest that it’s not that interesting to talk about a film on this show if it does NOT contain what we would traditionally think of as spoilers. As in, it would seem, Booksmart.

It just makes me laugh when they have this dramatic intro with lines of dialogue from the spoileriffic films The Sixth Sense, Soylent Green, Chinatown, Citizen Kane and Seven, then someone straightforwardly tells you that they’re going to be spoiling a teen romantic comedy that I understand has queer elements to it. (Maybe that’s the spoiler?)

If you’re wondering about the second half of my subject line, well, I’ll get to that now.

I didn’t listen to the Spoiler Special episode on Booksmart because I of course have not seen it yet. I did, however, listen to the segment they did on it on The Slate Culture Gabfest, on which Dana Stevens also serves as a co-host. And in a true case of the two shows cannibalizing each other, making the choice to cover it on Spoiler Special all the more ridiculous, Dana started by saying she thought she was all talked out on the movie after talking about it on the other show.

Dana did say she “really loved” the movie … which is not the same as loving it. (She went on to admit multiple problems with it.)

It made me realize that “really loving” something is kind of a ridiculous phrase.

When you say you “really love” a movie, that should be an instance of amplifying the degree to which you love it. But in reality, it’s a kind of backpedalling. If you really “really love” a movie, you just say you love it.

Which of these statements is stronger?

“I love Booksmart.”

“I really love Booksmart.”

Well, I guess the tone of voice factors in as well. And in Dana’s tone of voice, you could tell that “really loving” it meant being defensive about your affection for it and simultaneously acknowledging the reasons you might need to be defensive.

Love is love, someone wise once said.

Representation positivity gone wild

It's useful every once in a while to realize that your enemies are not entirely crazy, and you have the capacity to think like them if you're not careful.

No, this is not some piece about whether Thanos or Eric Killmonger were not entirely wrong in their thinking. It's about those internet trolls who have problems with female Ghostbusters and Asian Star Wars heroines.

If I say an ounce of their thinking has crept into my own, please read on to understand what I mean and how I'm fighting against it.

I don't for a moment think that the straight white male is an endangered species. That's ridiculous. However, I can't help but notice that when something entirely excludes the straight white male from the way it does business, it rankles me a little bit.

One of the podcasts I listen to is the Slate Spoiler Special. This is one of many offshoots of the Slate Culture Gabfest, and I mightn't have gone out of my way to listen to it except that they plop it in the same feed. Besides, I'm interested in hearing people gab about and spoil movies I've seen.

When the show first started -- or, I should say, when it was resurrected maybe a year ago, as it was something they used to do and then stopped -- it was hosted by the Slate film critic, Dana Stevens. Dana was joined by two other Slate staffers, possibly two men, possibly a man and a woman, usually not two other women but probably a couple times. After all, they practiced the typical aspiration of representing both genders on the show, and beyond that, looked for people who were qualified to discuss the material in one way or another.

After maybe six or seven episodes, Dana slowly receded from her hosting duties -- which shouldn't be much of a surprise given that she's writing a book and certainly has plenty of other things to occupy her. The hosting now seems to shift to any number of other people, many of whose names I don't actually know. They're part of the Slate family, whoever they are.

Another thing happened around this time. The show stopped featuring straight white males.

Entirely.

By far the show's most common configuration of three (sometimes four) was three (sometimes four) women. In fact, I think I listened to something like five or six episodes in a row in which not a single male voice was heard. I noted also, because they told me, that some of them were lesbians, and others were of Asian or African-American heritage.

When they let a man back on the show eventually, he was gay. I noted this, because he told me. In fact, as far as I can tell, they have a rotating series of several gay men potentially appearing on the show.

This is fine. Nay, this is good. Way too many podcasts (including my own, for most of its existence) are two or three white men. Representation is a serious problem on these shows and it needs to be addressed.

But I have to admit it rankled me a bit that every straight white male Slate staffer who had appeared or could potentially appear on this show seems to have been permanently disinvited.

Some of these shows certainly warranted their all-female composition, or their homosexual component, based on a perceived relevance of the movie or TV show being discussed to either women or gay men (or gay women). In fact, it kind of seems like they are actually choosing movies to spoil not because they are The Sixth Sense and require that their secrets be kept, but because they are relevant to some kind of representational minority. Much as I love it, is anyone really worried about Crazy Rich Asians being "spoiled"? How many different ways could that movie actually end?

I've joked with some friends that this show should actually be called Slate Plot Synopsis, as the structure of the show usually involves going through the plot, point-by-point, as though describing what happens in the movie is more the ambition of the show than talking about what happens and whether it's good. They have this hilarious enslavement to making sure they remember the correct sequence of scenes, as people will hand each other the baton in continuing through the synopsis, then ask for help from others to remember if they are getting the order correct. They do comment as they're going, but it feels a bit more surface level. Maybe it should be called Slate Movie Live Tweeting. So the actual format of the show is a bit disappointing.

The composition of the hosts shouldn't be. But I have to admit I have gotten to the point where I am almost hate-listening to the show, just so each new time I can note that there is no person like me giving his thoughts.

This is bad. But here I am, telling you about it, so I can attack the tendency in myself to be annoyed by it.

I suppose the difference between me and some internet cretin is not that I have these feelings, but what I do with them. That other guy goes on to a chat about Star Wars and says racist things about Rose Tico. I write what I hope is a thoughtful blog post examining these feelings.

There's no doubt that events of recent years have given straight white men their share of guilt. Even if you personally did not sexually harass women, or deny opportunities to minorities, or march on Charlottesville about hating black people, you feel a certain responsibility that a person superficially like you did. And you feel that other people could think you're capable of doing that.

As a straight white male film critic, I feel like I've had specifically tailored accusations pointed at me and those in my profession. There's a growing conversation about whether white male film critics can really give a fair criticism of films that are not aimed at their demographic, and whether we should actively seek to reduce their input into the film conversation. Of course I agree that minority critics of one gender or race or another should have the same platform, and that they should naturally have to take some of the same spots occupied by white men, seeing as how there are a finite number of those spots. I just don't want it to be me. Also, I don't want to have to say I liked one of these other demographic movies more than I actually did just to prove my subjectivity does not enter into my judgment. I hated that I didn't love Black Panther, believe me. (And it was a huge relief to love Crazy Rich Asians.)

Partially to help with diversity issues on my podcast, and partially just because she's qualified and knows what she's talking about, we introduced a woman onto my own podcast. We were three straight white men, but for a while we had a straight white woman as well. Hey, baby steps. There were never more than three of us on the podcast at a time, with one exception, but one person would take the week off each week in order to accommodate our new four-person size. Unfortunately, she left the country for a year, reducing us back to three straight white males. And since then we've all been so busy, in some cases with our own international travel, that we've only recorded a handful of episodes anyway.

On my own podcast I had conflicting thoughts about this. For one, she was a great addition and I was glad to have her. She's great on film and she helped make our podcast a better representation of the way the world looks. On the other hand, it made me recognize that my own white maleness was part of the problem we were trying to address, and unfortunately, it was something I couldn't do anything about. I was stuck with it.

So I guess listening to the Slate Spoiler Special again raises this problem for me, reminds me of my own podcast. I am the very person that Slate, by taking this stand, has decided it needs to scrub from the process.

What I need to remember is that this is just one of many Slate podcasts. Many if not most others have white males on them. White males are not actually losing ground to anybody, or if they are, it's the right amount of ground. It's the ground they should be ceding because they never should have had it in the first place, if we lived in a better world that had better representation from the start. In fact, good on them for taking this stand on at least one podcast.

Which is why I write a blog post like this. So I can address my thoughts in an attempt to expunge them. So I can get them down in words instead of leaving them stinking up my head. So I can one day permanently banish them.

However ... I wouldn't mind if at some point, any point, in the future history of this podcast, I do hear another non-gay male voice again.

Until then, I'll try just to listen, and not hate listen.

Star Wars, or something

I just listened to the Slate Spoiler Special podcast on Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and even though they obviously included spoilers in that, I don't need to spoil anything here today. (Or, only very, very minor spoilers.)

Instead, I want to talk about how they talked about it.

The panel was composed of Slate Culture Gabfest host and Slate film critic Dana Stevens, and two other Slate writers, Forrest Wickman and Sam Adams. I don't know those two apart from each other so I will refer to them interchangeably in this post. "Samrest" seems like as good a portmanteau as any.

Dana Stevens, bless her heart, is not a Star Wars fan. She's a wonderful personality and a great film critic, but when it comes to basic Star Wars terminology, she's hopeless. When one of the guys talked about how the training of Rey by Luke on Ahch-to (that's not a spoiler) was this film's version of Dagobah, poor Dana thought that Dagobah was a method of training Jedi, not the planet Yoda lived on.

Dana has to be on every show because she's the film critic and the host of this series. The other two, though, were on the show specifically because they were thought to have substantive thoughts and opinions on Star Wars from knowing something about it.

Well, it's questionable.

Actually, I won't say they don't know anything. I'll say that they undercut the things they know by having a strangely dismissive attitude toward the conventions that define the world's most popular entertainment property.

Instead of projecting confidence in the things they know, they would undermine it by saying "or something" after every plot development they discussed. "The rebels are trying to use their bombers to take out the dreadnaught, or whatever it's called." You know it's called a "dreadnaught," Samrest, if not because you just saw the movie and loved it, then because you're a dutiful journalist and looked it up if you were planning to talk about it. But we know it's really the first option.

What I felt as I listened to it was a reluctance to take Star Wars seriously. If a planet is called "Cantonica" in the newest Star Wars movie, you don't have to make a Hannukah joke, which Samrest did, saying that today was the third day of Cantonica. If the movie chooses to call one of its planets Ahch-To, just call it Ahch-To, don't say it's called "Ahch-To, or something."

I could see that dismissive attitude if they hadn't liked the movie, but both professed to love it, despite not being able to rein in their snark. Maybe it's kind of what I discussed in yesterday's post, how loving Star Wars and hating it are strangely intermingled emotions. You love it so much that you can't help but hate aspects of it. But the names of the aliens or the planets or the spaceships are no goofier in this movie than in any other movie, and to say "or something" after you produce the perfectly accurate name for that thing is just disingenuous.

Then there were the times that Samrest just got something wrong. Samrest raised an objection to how these new movies killed the "happily ever after" of Return of the Jedi, saying something along the lines of "You defeated the empire, and then ten years later, here they come again." Isn't the passage of time between Jedi and The Force Awakens thought to be about 30 years? Being wrong by two decades on that time estimate was either a careless mistake, or an intentional case of getting it wrong, which brings us back to the unaccountable dismissiveness.

And as much as I am in the bag for Dana Stevens -- I attended a live recording of The Slate Culture Gabfest in Melbourne back in May, and had my picture taken with her -- she didn't help matters by introducing every new plot point with kind of a giggle about the unfathomable absurdity of it all. So both the people who like Star Wars and the people who like it but have purposefully learned nothing about it let me down in this episode.

I am reminded of the words of my seventh grade English teacher, Mr. Murray, who had a theatrical way of making points about not only the English language, but the world. I considered him a great teacher, but the fact that he had already forgotten me like two years later dimmed his star a bit. Anyway, Mr. Murray was once talking about the right level of enthusiasm to have for something, and gave a person's reading of the beginning of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address as his example. The first person was a turnoff by being too invested in it. "Four score ..." he boomed in a way that was frighteningly earnest and intense. Indeed, it was a turn off. But then the person who thought he was too cool for school and barely spat out the iconic opening words in disinterested fashion was equally problematic. The right way to do it was to read the words with seriousness of purpose and with feeling, but not too much or too little of either.

I don't really know what point he was trying to make, but his words stuck with me, and they feel instructive here. If you start getting into the nerdy details of what Star Wars canon says to be the case and what creatures came from what homeworld and whether anything they did would be realistic in the scope of the Star Wars universe, you turn people off. But it's equally a turnoff to pretend that those details don't matter. It's best to discuss Star Wars with seriousness of purpose and with feeling, but not too much or too little of either.

At this point I think we all must accept the fact that Star Wars is serious business. You can laugh it off as a lark, and indeed, sometimes the movies themselves invite you to laugh at them, either because they robotically try to insert laugh lines (see the prequels) or are genuinely funny (see these recent films). But if you don't take them seriously you fail to meet them not only on their own terms, but on the terms that legions of fans have come to view them.

So get over the fact that these things have "silly names." A porg is a porg, and it would be no more or less silly if it were called a flerg, a fur-penguin, or a space bunny.

When you laugh at Star Wars, you laugh at the people who have devoted their lives to it. Laugh with them, but not at them.