YouTube Obsession

This is a deeply shameful thing for me to admit but I am fully on the Battlefield 6 hype train.

Phew. I said it. No more secrets.

Partly because I want a really good BF game ya know? And partly because I love watching Ravic destroy lobbies in 2042.

Also, watching some BF news channels like Enders get back in the hype swing to post “Top Plays” videos has geared up my anticipation.

Ghost Gaming, my preferred BF news source because he’s chill and not overly emotional, is even getting into it.

Anyway, wish me luck as I try not to pre-order the game after the announcement trailer on July 24th.

Watching

Anyone can step outside and know that something is wrong with society. The greatest achievement of corporate power is that it cannot provide solutions to the dark sense of impending doom we all feel interacting with capital, but it does provide answers. Which answer we ascribe to does not matter, so long as we don’t search for the solutions.

Let me start off by saying Eddington is a comedy. If you go into this movie expecting a serious commentary on 2020 you will be disappointed. If you want another surreal odyssey like Beau is Afraid you will be disappointed. If you want a horror sequel masterpiece like Hereditary¹ you will be disappointed. Watch it like a comedy.

Before I get into spoilers, I should say that while Eddington is Aster’s most grounded movie, it is absolutely essential to see it in theater. Or, with a good pair of headphones. The surround-sound design is essential to my enjoyment of the film.

!!SPOILERS!!

Eddington is a very rich film and will ultimately be divisive because people will take it too seriously. One thing to remember about Aster is that he makes mean movies. His movies are not kind to the audience. In a impish way, very much like Kojima with video games, Aster’s films are very much a litmus test for the audience. They will annoy you. They will also make you laugh, gasp and sigh relief. Films that will take you through all the emotions. How much of poking and prodding can you take? How much of the mirror can you look into?

There is an amazing scene in Beau is Afraid where the title character is given a beautiful dream-like resolution to his story. The scene ends abruptly and there is still a torturous hour left in the film. I find this hilarious. But the scene also evoked the feeling that I’ve had before in real life; That feeling where I awake from a dream where I had just spent the time with a loved one who has passed. There is a moment before I am fully conscious where I believe that person is still alive, ever followed by that gut wrenching sadness that no, they are truly gone. These are the emotions Aster’s films get from me. All the emotions, not just the fun ones.

Eddington is technically a period piece about 2020 at the height of the pandemic but is uncanny for shining a light on how society has never actually left that place. This is the essential COVID movie because it highlights the theatrics of the time, the mass ritual and the soul crushing solitude that destroyed people’s (particularly young adult and boomer) brains. The presence and inundation of social media and phones, and the immense transfer of power and wealth.

I’m sure a lot will be said of the representation of the BLM protests in the film. I have already seen where folks say it is a cynical take on the movement and to that argument, I say yes, you are correct. The guy pretending to be into politics just to get laid is a trope older than Don Quioxte or even Salome. So that’s nothing new but again, it is a mirror. If it makes you uncomfortable then you might be relating to the aimless and flaccid anger of the protests. That’s why it made me uncomfortable!

Eddington is being touted as a western, even by Aster himself, and while it surely burrows and kaleidoscopes those themes, to me, it is most obviously a noir. The protagonist -who is not the hero- gets pulled into a scheme so far over his head and because of ego continues digging himself deeper and in the end, as if fated by a cruel god, cannot win, cannot be happy.

I love reading dissenting opinions about films I like because it often introduces ideas I haven’t thought. I really enjoyed positive reviews of The Substance, a movie I infamously hate, because people were able to get a entirely different experience out of that film. I knew, because of it’s density, Eddington would have a lot of one star reviews. But after reading a lot of 1-star reviews, it just proves to me that media literacy is in a sad state.

Don’t get me started on that last sentence. But “too soon” is such an interesting beef to have with this movie. If they’re referring to the deaths caused by COVID is too sensitive of a subject I would say that there are no COVID deaths in the movie. That the main drive of conflict in the movie are the seemingly unstoppable forces at work in America that caused the COVID deaths of so many.

Also, I need to remind folks that Team America: World Police came out in 2004! Only three years after 9/11 and right in the middle of the Afghan and Iraq wars, all topics the movie was discussing/making fun of² . The idea of “too soon” a scapegoat for actually exploring an uncomfortable topic.

Aster has never made a good date movie omg what the hell.

Don’t understand? Just give up! You can really tell when someone hasn’t engaged with difficult media before.

This take absolutely floors me. To see that ending and think it is setting up a sequel is pure Marvel-brain rot. Did they also think that the ending to No Country for Old Men was setting up a sequel? Flabbergasting.

I would like to read good 1-star takes on Eddington. So if you have any leave them in the comments and follow me on Letterboxd.

To conclude, as I think about Eddingtion, a line from Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator has been itching my brain:

In a world where essentially immortal corporations have legally achieved personhood, what happens to liberty?

Reading

I was going to just post this in the “Other Notables” section but I had such a visceral reaction to this have to get my thoughts out.

LOTS to say about this article but I think one of the most disturbing takeaways is that AI is just seen as a matter of course. No one in the article even suggests that the tech industry is forcing something no one wants. “Sure it has issues but once it’s perfected everyone will buy into AI.” Perfected what!? What exactly will chatGPT even do that will make me want to spend money on it?

Even Lewis, who is obviously using AI to go insane, is presenting a use for AI that is useless to 99% of people. Not exactly a market winner. This is just the new “land grab“ of the markets. No one knows why we want it or who needs it, but we must have it.

The other item that disturbs me as a creative, interesting and outgoing person who champions the power of community, is that people are using chatGPT as surrogate friendships. A quote from the piece really sums this up:

Making friends as an adult can be hard. Between 40+ hour work weeks and an ever growing hum of societal dread it is difficult to embrace hobbies outside the home, let alone meet new people. The other thing about meeting new people is that most of them suck! Even the people we do like can say and do things we don’t like. It’s pretty hard for a human being to compete with a LLM that you have not only taught to tell you exactly what you want to hear but you’ve also taught it how you want to hear it.

I’m convinced that no one actually wants this, at all. There aren’t enough pipe-bombs in the world.

Other Notables

** Butt-Rock is Back baby!

** Boarders are for bribes!

** A nit-picky breakdown that is so granular that I just have to respect its pettiness.

1  Yes. Hereditary is a spiritual sequel to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I will not explain further at this time.

2  I think Team America got away with this because the text is overtly centrist.