Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology
These are posts on film from the blog Base and Superstructure. Mostly these are just about films I found interesting, but I tend to focus on the intersections between film and politics.
It’s probably not at the top of our minds, but coronavirus and COVID-19 have delayed lots of movies. It doesn’t make much sense to release a film to theaters when no one is going to theaters. For people like myself who frequently visit movie theaters, it’s something we’re missing about now. I was looking forward to seeing lots of movies this spring and summer.
Here are 7 movies I was looking forward to.
It’s the two year anniversary of the Black Panther film, and much remains the same. If you talk to ten people about Erik Killmonger, the (alleged) villain, you’ll walk away with a dozen opinions. Killmonger elicits from us what we’re already thinking about identity, race, and society. He does so whether these views inhabit the surface or the depths of our thoughts. In other words, Killmonger is a Rorschach Test!
I’m assuming readers have already seen Black Panther. And I’ll note right away that I’m discussing only the film, not the comics or any associated stories or media. If you haven’t seen the film, go watch it! If you have seen it, read on.
And Star Wars is…finished? I watched the very first showing of The Rise of Skywalker in Iowa City. On the heels of my post earlier this week on Holdo and Poe Dameron in The Last Jedi, here are a few thoughts on the big ending.
In case any readers are hermits, let me start with a reminder that The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters this week. The end of the Star Wars story, and so on. But I’m interested here in one of the plot lines of The Last Jedi. Vice Admiral Holdo and Poe Dameron went at it several times, from a minor skirmish to a mutiny. I think the conflict reveals deeper ones about gender and politics. It also shares a feature with the Killmonger character from the Black Panther film, namely it’s a Rorschach test! Whichever issues Holdo and Dameron reveal to you probably says as much about your views on gender and politics as the film itself says.
So here are some thoughts about it. Maybe it reveals my own views in some Rorschach-like manner. Or maybe not. We’ll see.
In DJ Shadow’s 2016 Classic Nobody Speak, El-P from the hip-hop duo Run the Jewels starts off the song as follows:
Picture this
I’m a bag of dicks
Put me to your lips
I am sick
I will punch a baby bear in his shit
Two 2019 coming-of-age films feature this charming tune. First, we have Booksmart, which I wrote about a bit earlier as one of the best films of the year so far. And second, we have Good Boys. Good Boys is…something different. This might say something about gender, film, and childhood in the US.
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