Slouching Towards Oblivion

Showing posts with label new stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new stuff. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 28, 2022

Something I Learned Today

While reading about the 10 year anniversary of "Pitch Perfect", I learned there's a thing called The Bechdel Test.


And the Reverse Bechdel is:
Two men
talk to each other about
nothing but women

BTW, Pitch Perfect is a personal fave for me - something special about a cappella, and something extra special about lady voices singing a cappella.

This one makes me cry.


Here's Millie Mae Healy's piece in yesterday's Harvard Crimson:

‘Pitch Perfect’ at 10: ‘Not Like Other Girls’

“Pitch Perfect” has a difficult legacy. It’s a wonderful, hilarious, and empowering film that by all accounts should have been an offensive fail. Ten years on, its flaws are more obvious than ever, but it also stands out as a triumph of late-2000s comedies.

The biggest weakness in “Pitch Perfect” is its laziness. There’s a misogynistic radio host, and that’s the entire joke. Consistently, there is a reliance on harmful stereotypes in constructing characters who are racial minorities or queer. All in all, this should culminate in a really redundant, stale, and derivative rom-com, but somehow it gets two things really, really right.

First, “Pitch Perfect” is not a musical. All of the music is diegetic; it’s actually happening in real time for the characters. They don’t wail and dance about their feelings; they yell at each other like contemporary people in the real world. But in addition to the great vocal performances and iconic cover choices, the music is a great vehicle for the plot. The a cappella group the Barden Bellas sound discordant when they are struggling to mesh as a group. Their use of “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” and “S&M” in the Riff Off are iconic even today, and deftly establish the world and community of a cappella in the film. The audition scene is particularly spectacular for this: The rendition of Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” holds up today while also doing an incredible amount of legwork to establish all of the minor characters and the role of a cappella on this college campus. The music adds another dimension to what would otherwise be a college comedy, creatively providing an avenue to express the characters’ feelings and growth, as well as being engaging in its own right.

Secondly, “Pitch Perfect” successfully utilizes an unlikeable protagonist to create a story about female solidarity and kinship. The protagonist Beca, played by Anna Kendrick, sucks. She’s obnoxious, self-centered and judgemental. She’s sullen about getting a free college education because she’s mad at her dad for not funding her real dream, which is to head to L.A. by herself with no plans. She looks down on other characters for having interests and caring about things, and only deigns to join the Barden Bellas because her dad makes her. Because she’s the super special protagonist, co-head of the Bellas, Chloe (Brittany Snow), desperately wants her to join. Though she has some valid criticisms of Bella traditions, her refusal to participate and engage means she can’t have a positive impact on the group.

Yet, after self-destructing all of her relationships, Beca is made to reckon with her attitude and also her actions. She admits that she cares about something and that she wants to be a part of this group. And after everything, the revelation is simple: She’s just like other girls. Once Beca gets over herself and respects her friends and the institution she wants to belong to, she’s able to positively contribute and help lead the Bellas into the future.

But more than that, despite the toxicity that makes their relationships so compelling, the female characters care about each other as people. Yes, unfortunately this is a notable bar. It passes the Bechdel test with flying colors — and passes the reverse Bechdel test too. Despite having a romantic subplot, the focus is still on the dysfunctional, fun, and complex relationships between these women who love to sing. Thanks to the music, and the unapologetic focus on a group of young women engaging in an off-beat niche that they happen to love, there is a substance to this film that is just lacking in a lot of comedies. It has something to say, and it does so in an imaginative way that is joyful to watch.

“Pitch Perfect” remains extremely watchable today, and is genuinely hilarious for most of its runtime, so it’s a shame that it has some glaring flaws. And it’s a shame the sequels course-corrected in the wrong direction.

Sunday, January 26, 2020

New Shit

So this is more than a little weird. Two of my least favorite genres come together to make something that I like.

GangstaGrass.


And now my brain hurts.

Tuesday, February 09, 2016

Gotta Go Back To Cable

TBS premiered Samantha Bee's new show - Full Frontal - last night and, of course, I'd forgotten all about it.

Here's a great clip that's great just for including the line describing Donald Trump as "an oddly tinted collection of psychiatric symptoms".  You can't not like that shit.


Wednesday, November 18, 2015

New Concept

New to me anyway - Coercive Engineered Migration: The use of internal upheaval in one country to force the populations to move to another country in an attempt to destabilize that other country's economy and/or government.

This is Russia Today, so grains of salt are in order.  That said, differing perspectives are generally a plus when trying to figure out just what the fuck is actually going on here.


hat tip = Facebook pal DR

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

A New One

Just a good place to go once in a while to get a little bleach splashed on your soul.

Atheist Overdose

 

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

New Journalism

Andrea Seabrook left NPR a little while ago and has (finally) put up her first episode of DecodeDC.


You can go to Mule Radio and subscribe via iTunes or RSS for free.

And this is the tune playing in the background at the end of the piece:





Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Pi vs Tau

I'm OK for the first 90 seconds, but then it's just hopeless. But what really chaps my ass is that there's a couple of middle-schoolers living in my house right now who'll have a handle on this in a year or two, while I just get deeper into the fog.