The Good News, #7
Hello True Believers!
Welcome back to The Good News! Our show at the Black Buzzard is rapidly approaching! If you'd like to pre-purchase tickets, you can do so right here:
A nice thing to listen to this week:
Paul Robeson - Ballad for Americans
Paul Robeson is one of America's biggest and best badasses that I fear will one day be forgotten. He fought for basically everyone's equal rights, betting black listed in Hollywood by McCarthy during his old witch hunt for basically saying that Communists are human beings, and just generally didn't put up with people's bullshit. He was in a good position to do so, and he knew it, and he used that privilege to the benefit of everyone. He was a huge mentor to other human rights activists, namely Harry Belafonte (who was so much more than the musician behind "Day-O" (though his whole catalogue I would also recommend revisiting if you 1) haven't, or 2) have written him off as a novelty musician)). Robeson understood what America was better than I probably ever will, and he still held out hope for a better world. If you can't track down the whole collect, at least check out the main track. This won't be the last Robeson thing I recommend.
Terrific thing to watch:
Zootopia 2
Okay, admittedly this is not a terrific thing, but I watched it with my daughter, who loved it for the record, and I have a great deal of thoughts on the matter. Zootopia, for all its cringeworthy Pleasantville-ian attempts to talk about racism (but never really landing on a coherent conclusion), largely works as a narrative. The main difference between why it works so much better than 2ootopia (Zoo2pia?) is because the main conflict of the film is directly mirrored by the conflict between the primary protagonists. In #1, the conversation surrounding the dichotomy of predator and prey is central to every aspect of the film. Not so much with 2oo2pia. I’m not saying this same theme should have been central to film 2, I think that that well was tapped as thoroughly as it was going to be, but that, maybe, the second film should have had a central theme that was reflected (you see where I’m going with this) in the relationship between the two primary protagonists. The more you try to link the disparate elements of 22pia together, the more you can see what they were maybe Trying to accomplish, but fell horribly short of. I think instead of dancing around it, I'll just cut to the quick: I think the writers of Zootopia 2 wrote a story that unintentionally mirrored the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, and they didn't realize until too late into production, so they softened or eliminated elements so it didn't match up quite as well. That's a completely unfounded theory, but when you look at the main tentpoles of the film (a white-coded species with a history of colonizing and genociding a desert species is trying to colonize another BIPOC-coded species/civilization, using political favors and the language of cleanliness to hide their misdeeds) and imagine how one might form a story around it, it feels completely spineless that to not play it straight and, one way or another, end up telling a story about colonization and genocide. Hey, if just telling a story about how genocide is bad reminds people of Israel, that's not a problem with the story. And I think it's an easy story to tell ... and when you realize halfway through that you're telling that story, and have to tweak it so that it isn't immmmmmmediately compared to the genocide of Palestinians, then I think you end up with something like Zootopia 2. Again, I may be super far off with this, but that's just what it all felt like to me. All this said, our family's gone out for whatever kids movie is in theaters at Thanksgiving for years now, and we've now seen this neutering of a story, from Disney, every year for like 4 years now. Moana 2, Elio, Wish, all of them had at least a modicum of potential ... and I was never surprised to read after watching them that they were more progressive early into production, and then hobbled by cowardly producers later. Anyway, if you wanna see the shell of potential and bear witness to a spineless film production company, please do check out Zootopia 2. I can't be the only person who is thinking this about this kids movie hahah
A good read:
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid Book - Douglas Hofstadter
Okay this one's a bit of a stretch. Cards on the table I've never finished it, and I've taken maybe 15 good runs at it over the last 20 years. But the experience of reading it while it wasn't pushing my head in the dirt was exhilarating. You feel like the smartest person in the world for a while. Then, likely, it will buck you off and send you flying down the cliff of stupidness (see how unclever that is? ;)). But it's not about the destination, it's about the journey, a sentiment that would make Hofstadter spin in his grave if he were dead. You can probably find a very cheap copy at your local thrift store, because they printed a million copies back in the 70's, but it's also likely easily found elsewhere. To be clear: I'm intentionally being vague about the content of this book. You just have to experience it for yourself.
And finally, our weekly pic of the pup, Apollo:
Be nice to each other, and we'll see you next week!
Best,
Luke