Entry tags:
"I sought foolishness and considered myself a fool."
Battleship ate my reading time, so other than rereading HCA's "The Little Mermaid," I didn't finish anything this week. And when I made the mistake of checking my network page on Reading Wednesday, I came across two obnoxiously wrong book opinions and got mad and had to go away. bah I should not care! Why do I care.
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Two pieces that consider, to greater and lesser extents, the predominance of the 'trauma plot' in contemporary television. I think they work very well together, particularly in drawing attention to how the trauma plot can individualize/personalize stories to such an extent that institutional critique or systemic analysis becomes impossible. Further, these ideas apply to literature and how it is structured every bit as much as TV.
* The Past Is Never Dead: On TV’s Backstory Problem (LARB)
* ‘The Bear’ Misses What’s Truly Toxic About Fine Dining (Defector; archive link)
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![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
muccamukk linked this: "The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction is looking for everyone's Five Favourite Fiction Books of the 21st Century by Women and Non-binary Writers in Canada and the United States. (Link goes to google form.)" But then the form says works that were published in the US and Canada, so are writers from other countries eligible? I can't tell. Anyway, my mind has been tying itself in knots trying to come up with a shortlist. So far I have I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home, Lorrie Moore
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler
Luster, Raven Leilani
No One Is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood
Libertie, Kaitlyn Greenidge
Manhunt, Gretchen Felker-Martin
What We All Long For, Dionne Brand
What I Loved, Siri Hustvedt
The Child, Sarah Schulman
The Winged Histories, Sofia Samatar
All Over Creation, Ruth Ozeki
The Annual Migration of Clouds, Premee Mohamed
The Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold
...and I know I am forgetting so many.
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It's the second "boss battle" round of![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
battleshipex and, just as with the first, something about this means that I am creatively paralyzed and unlikely to come up with anything. I really don't like my brain sometimes. /o\
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Two pieces that consider, to greater and lesser extents, the predominance of the 'trauma plot' in contemporary television. I think they work very well together, particularly in drawing attention to how the trauma plot can individualize/personalize stories to such an extent that institutional critique or systemic analysis becomes impossible. Further, these ideas apply to literature and how it is structured every bit as much as TV.
* The Past Is Never Dead: On TV’s Backstory Problem (LARB)
* ‘The Bear’ Misses What’s Truly Toxic About Fine Dining (Defector; archive link)
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muccamukk linked this: "The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction is looking for everyone's Five Favourite Fiction Books of the 21st Century by Women and Non-binary Writers in Canada and the United States. (Link goes to google form.)" But then the form says works that were published in the US and Canada, so are writers from other countries eligible? I can't tell. Anyway, my mind has been tying itself in knots trying to come up with a shortlist. So far I have I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home, Lorrie MooreWe Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler
Luster, Raven Leilani
No One Is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood
Libertie, Kaitlyn Greenidge
Manhunt, Gretchen Felker-Martin
What We All Long For, Dionne Brand
What I Loved, Siri Hustvedt
The Child, Sarah Schulman
The Winged Histories, Sofia Samatar
All Over Creation, Ruth Ozeki
The Annual Migration of Clouds, Premee Mohamed
The Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold
...and I know I am forgetting so many.
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It's the second "boss battle" round of
battleshipex and, just as with the first, something about this means that I am creatively paralyzed and unlikely to come up with anything. I really don't like my brain sometimes. /o\
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So much of what I read is 19th century. I could populate this list with 19th century writers in a snap. LOL
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I mean, the 19th century is never going to let you down in terms of good stuff to read. I think you chose your discipline very well.
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The 19th century never lets me down! I love what I do so much, and I'm so glad. I know so many academics who just aren't into their subject matter anymore, and I'm so grateful I've retained my love for it.
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I also like that it addressed the fact that current audiences feel more entitled to be spoonfed information instead of figuring things out/piecing them together as the story goes along - I think certain types of internet critique and the Netflix bingeing model are also to blame.
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IDK, maybe I liked it too much to be objective, but I'm raising my eyebrows A Lot. I don't disagree with the piece generally but also this makes me question if we watched the same Night Country. And, like, maybe we didn't! I'm not at all sure Alsop clocked Night Country as horror! Which would. Explain some things. But I'm still >:| about it. But even then ... focussing exclusively on Danvers' dead kid as The trauma backstory when Navarro's 'my mother died before she gave me my name and it has fucked up my ability to connect with my community' present-and-history is just as in focus is a particularly, hm, interesting choice too imo.
It occurs to me I don't even know if you watched Night Country, sorry for the rant lmao this is a disjointed mess.
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But idk, those two shows were also Made For Me, lol, so I just love them.
But it's worth pointing out the female author in the LARB *is* using a recent buzzy show by and about women as her centerpiece when Picard S2 is actually a much much better candidate for what she's talking about.
"the inclusion of explanatory backstory has become uniquely valorized—understood, at least since Lost (2004–10) and The Sopranos (1999–2007), as a mark of televisual prestige"
This is just kind of Wrong, and what annoys me most about current cultural criticism in terms of using "prestige tv" as a whipping boy AND thinking "prestige tv" started on HBO lol, but I've gone on long enough already (and I hope not rudely, to gloss!). The idea of a traumatic hidden backstory reveal being the key to a current day puzzle is as old as Oedipus.