Off the bat, I recognize that that subtitle could be applied toward my marriage. It’s not. That is one of the few fulfilling things in my life. My relationships, with my wife, my family and my friends, all bring me great fulfillment.
My media consumption, on the other hand, has left me wanting. I haven’t been to a live show in a while. That’s coming to a close in a couple of weeks. I’m going to see Quicksand with Richmond’s Xed Out and Sea of Storms. Great bands all around, probably going to be one of the best shows of the year.
I’m following that up with Pom Pom Squad, Beach Bunny and Pool Kids, Momma, and High Vis with Militarie Gun. I might also squeeze in a Liquid Mike show, but it is in DC and I’m not sure if I’m up for another trip to DC on the heels of Pom Pom Squad.
That said, I did get to dip my toes into a lot of great media this weekend. I am still playing Avowed and one thing that Obsidian gets that a lot of video game makers don’t is Roleplaying in Roleplaying Games. Being able to shape my Envoy is really rewarding. I feel like I get to be a certain character in the story and define who that character is over the course of the story. Make alliances and choices that matter to that character. It’s impressive and fun.
I also watched My Adventures with Superman season 2. If you want an uplifting show that’s appropriate for all ages and doesn’t shy away from difficult topics, this is a slam dunk. Harley Quinn, on the other hand, is hysterical but probably not going to connect as well with younger viewers. There’s adult context that makes the show work as well as it is in its fifth season. We will be enjoying our time with that show still, I think.
I also read The Parable of the Sower and watched Rashomon. I don’t know if I’m doing escapism right.
The Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler’s dystopian autobiography of an emerging religious leader is set in our present, 2024-2027. It reads as journal entries from a young black woman named Lauren Olamina. She lives with her father, her stepmother and her three half-brothers in Robledo, California. The walled off community is kept safe from the libertarian hellscape that the United States has descended into, with regulations stripped away, worker protections eliminated and company towns becoming a new model for society.
Foreign interests have taken control of the US government, marginalized people are unsafe and the rich live lavish lives while everyone else struggles to stay alive. It’s uh, well, it was written in 1993. Oracles still exist, it seems. The book is powerful, gripping and informative. It tells you how to fight back, what steps to take and how to shape your own future.
It also meditates on religion, cults of personality and the malleability of community. I wish I had read it when I was 11, when it first came out. It would have had a more profound impact, I think, seeing the world in a different way. Instead, I read it for the first time in my 40s. Butler still had some things I needed to read, but most of it I had come to on my own life experience and media consumption. If I had been exposed, she might have saved me a lot of grief.
I was engaged in a conversation on Discord with a group of writers dissecting age gaps in romance a month or so ago. Butler features an eighteen-year-old girl with a fifty-seven-year-old man in this story, it didn’t fire my ick factor as much as it could. I can understand how their relationship came to be, even if it felt weird in context. Butler didn’t glorify huge age gaps, but she did gloss over some of the murkier details of that relationship dynamic. Especially in the context of the world she had built.
Maybe my preteen brain would have glomed onto that, especially with my obsession with rock stars, a group notorious for exploitation of young women. Would I have found it compelling or become enamored with their relationship? In 1993, it would have been the most believable part of that story to me. Now, not so much.
Rashomon provided me a different sort of introspection. Perhaps Akira Kurisawa’s most lasting impact on storytelling, it features four versions of a sexual assault and murder told through different perspectives. A woman and her samurai husband are waylaid by a bandit who takes the wife. The husband is killed by the bandit who is later captured by a merchant, the woman flees the scene and a woodcutter viewed the aftermath of the assault and ensuing murder.
In all of their stories, there are gross inaccuracies and a desire to frame themselves in the best possible light. About two-thirds of the way through, Adrianne asked me if the movie felt incredibly misogynistic. I told her I felt that the movie didn’t present misogyny as a positive trait, but more a function of their society. It sent me down a rabbit hole today about feminist critiques of the film.
I uncovered a lot of hand wringing about critiquing art through a modern lens (a tired, to me, argument) and also a lot of nuance. I felt the movie was a criticism of masculinity, of pride and the fallibility of perception. I believe, though I would need to reconfirm, we both enjoyed the film. But, to deny the troubling aspects would be irresponsible. Kurosawa does not lionize any of these characters, but he also does not give any solace to the victim of a terrible crime.
Both Parable and Rashomon are excellent works of art with troubling elements and both weigh heavy on me as I think about them. Art that presents a reality and lets you draw your own conclusions from it is so rewarding. I think about another movie I watched last year, Strange Darling. Every woman I know who has seen it enjoyed it and most of the men I know who saw it were troubled by it.
Because of the way the subtext resonated, what we pulled from the events presented. It’s what make critiquing art so special to me. Not to denigrate or destroy, but to appreciate and understand. When art challenges you, when it forces you as a consumer to think about it, it has value. That sort of argument is used all too regularly to validate things like Birth of a Nation. The artistic merit. I don’t want to trip and stumble down that rabbit hole, art that is used to prop up horrific ideologies does not and will not appeal to me.
But what resonated with me was how humanity’s struggles echo throughout history. Of how much things have progressed, regressed and stayed the same. And how important it remains to have these windows into our past to help us understand our future.