How to Be Good

Black Swan is Midsommar. Stop talking, Winston.

Hollywood has never seemed more Orwellian in its insistence that it is the repository of everything admirable in culture and that it represents the right side of history. We know Hollywood will hold its own mother down and pull the gold out of her teeth with a pliers, but it prefers to pretend otherwise. And no one wants to dwell on this as long as the entertainment keeps coming. With streaming, the rapaciousness of the entertainment center of the world is even harder to see. Hollywood says it’s your friend. In reality, it’s INGSOC conformity and you’re awful if you disagree.

Streaming technology is as 1984 as it gets.

The tragedy of streaming content is that it never goes away. It’s in your house, up in your perceptual field, at all times. Even when you’re not watching, you’re getting emails reminding you to log back in. Back in the halcyon days of Blockbuster Video, a pretentious, emotionally manipulative stinker might show up on VHS, but there was a bit more personal agency involved in renting and watching it. It wasn’t accessible unless you physically sought it out. It was a tangible thing and you weren’t quite such a passive blob of content consumption—seeing the movie demanded that you get up, at least temporarily, from the couch.

You also didn’t have the same plausible deniability if you found yourself watching a lousy film. At some point, from the rental store to the final credits (if you made it that far), you had to remind yourself that you put down good money for the thing and brought it home. You did it to yourself, friend.

In the worst cases (Tree of Life? Vanilla Sky? The English Patient? Legends of the Fall? Crash? Life as a House?), you may have admitted that you were powerless against the overwhelming pretentious hype-suction and were thereafter drawn into a vortex of melodrama against your will. Then you may have made a searching and fearless moral inventory and resolved never to relapse again. Sometimes, bringing back drippy garbage from Blockbuster could be a cathartic, healing experience, like going out with the guys while on Antabuse. The best lessons are the ones we teach ourselves.

But now, with streaming television and movies, everybody’s on the juice 24/7 and done learning. You can now quietly demean yourself with bullshit Hollywood affectation and faux-political posturing every month for a discreet subscription fee. Nobody has to know. You don’t have to look the Blockbuster cashier in the eye and say, yes, I want to rent The Fountain. You can violate yourself, from beginning to end, with all the pungent streams you desire in the privacy of your home. Draw the curtains. Click on I Am Love. It’s okay.

You might occasionally feel a twinge of self-criticism—why have I watched Babel 15 times and The Maltese Falcon only twice? What does this say about me? But there are certain politically coded stinkers that remain beyond criticism, no matter how fetid and endless their streams may be. Those are the films you are permitted to enjoy without needing to painfully reflect on why you are doing it to yourself. Or if you do happen to wonder, the Party has provided a simple thought-stopping idea: because I am a good person.

The Party tells me I enjoy Magnolia for its drawn out emotional exploration of human meaning and compassion in the San Fernando Valley, a concept which, in itself, is astounding. Thankfully, it’s streaming right now on Netflix. I watch Magnolia because I am good. It provides an emotional release and ultimately represents the best parts of me. I enjoy what is good because I am a good person. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Thank you, Netflix. I feel happy. Let’s watch it again.

What’s going on in my brain? Why is George Orwell haunting my laptop?

Ideally, a movie will go through a production funnel that starts with a compelling idea, and ends with a completed feature. Along the way, there will be setbacks and workarounds, windfalls and compromises. And as Rachel Ziegler, the most likeable actress in Hollywood, has so famously put it, “That’s Hollywood, baby.” * But we do not live in an ideal world, which means the “completed feature” can come into being before its concept. That, too, is Hollywood, baby. In fact, that’s even more Hollywood than Hollywood. **

A film is sometimes made and then the hype apparatus around it tries to make it into something. Is it a trenchant commentary on the state of race relations in inner-city schools? It could be. Is it a masterwork of ironic feminist critique? It could be. Is it a moving historical epic in which unrequited love is cast against a tapestry of chaos and war? It could be. Let’s see. And if we can’t “position” it—

A book publicist once asked me how I’d position my second short story collection, Cruel Stars. I said, “Wut?” She took a deep breath and said, “What are the books on either side of it in the bookstore?” Then I took a deep breath and said, “Well, the one of the left is, of course, my first collection, Gravity. The one on the right is the collection I’m just finishing, Living the Dream.” She nodded slowly at something over my shoulder.

—does it even exist? Art is nothing without the marketing because marketing is what communicates The Message, the values of the Party. It explains why you are good, why certain things should make you feel happy and sad, and why this should matter to modern audiences. And if such an explanation is impossible or requires too much scaffolding, the Party might want to delay the release or even consign it forever to the vault.

But those of us who are not Party members, who are not on board with what passes for the New York Times concept of the right side of history, may object that this seems untoward for everyone concerned—like pushing a baby back in so the birth might be restarted more strategically, in a more profitable and impactful time.

Most unfortunate. When something is created, you can’t uncreate it so it can hit the zeitgeist more advantageously. You can only change it. And generally the more post-hoc changes and delays you make to a creative product, the more it becomes a horrific golem, an accidental parody of a commercial concept, instead of a coherent piece of art. Put differently, one usually does not do a thing and then justify or position it without making a mess. No, no, I’m not criticizing the Party. Don’t look at me like that. I’m merely making a small, harmless observation . . .

This brings us to the example of Black Swan and Midsommar, which is the same horrendously pretentious, emotionally coercive movie.

Black Swan is now available again on Netflix. We might say it’s been raised from the dead one more time thanks to the always-already necromancy of streaming video. It’s definitely a film approved of by the Party: a break-up story, masquerading as feminist folk horror, in which the main character, Nina, is romantically involved with herself and finally decides it’s not working out.

There are certain inchoate feelings loudly expressed. There is a certain amount of weeping and there are various episodes of emotional violence that we are encouraged to think must mean something. Sympathizing with her struggle (even if she would seem repellent and self-involved to non-Party members) means you are good. You get the message. You are indeed on the right side of history.

Midsommar is the same break-up story, masquerading as feminist folk horror, in which the main character is also romantically involved with herself and finally decides it’s not working out. Sympathizing with her struggle (even if she would seem repellent and self-involved to non-Party members) also means you are good. Criticizing this Frankenstein’s monster of highly telegraphed political position statements means you are a counter-revolutionary, a subversive, not of the Party. You are bad.

To be fair, there are some hapless men who travel through the scenes of these movies like runaway spaceships soon disappearing beyond the rings of Saturn, behaving awful or squeamish or unreliable according to the plot-furniture needs of the moment. At least one of them is immolated in a bear suit, which might be interesting if we could bring ourselves to give two shits about him. Instead, we think, well, there he goes. He’s a crispy critter now, kids. Woo.

The reason Black Swan-Midsommar is a good example of Hollywood’s shallow, monosyllabic politics is that these films (or we might say, this film) are actually very overt in their need to seem right and to make you agree that they are. They’re the same yoked-up melodrama we’ve always gotten only now repositioned as edgy and essential, now back in our homes, telling us about politics and social justice, and not going anywhere.

They’re pretending to be one thing (folk horror) as a container for another thing (third-wave feminist critique) and are actually neither. They’re telling us that if we like this, if we watch it many times, if we digest it, if we approve of it, we “get it.” We’re in the know. We’re correct. And so we are good human beings. 2 + 2 = 5. Of course, this is abject bullshit.

Why is Florence Pugh having a hysterical meltdown throughout the movie? Stop talking, Winston. It doesn’t need to make sense. Just go with it and you’ll be safe. There is no need to think critically or make small, troubling observations. All you need to do is accept that she is sad. You may cry with her if you wish. That shows solidarity and that you are loyal. Yes, you are a true believer . . .

Unintentional Orwellian patterns are ubiquitous, especially in the pop-culture mediated by Hollywood, which is most pop-culture. Orwell wasn’t just concerned about totalitarian communism, his deeper project was criticizing thoughtless social conformity in general.

For example, in Keep the Aspidistra Flying, one of his largely forgotten novels (perhaps because it cuts a little too close to middle-class status anxiety and the obsession with money), the protagonist, Gordon Comstock, gives up on art to make a modest living in advertising. What is art without marketing, the novel asks? In the end, when he discards his poems, Comstock concludes it really is nothing.

Ultimately, there is no accounting for taste. There is also no accounting for technology. And when taste and technology coincide, there is no accounting at all. Black Swan and Midsommar would have flashed through the pan with a lot less “positioning” had the big streamers not put them in perpetual rotation—unlike many far superior and less ideological films, which blink out of existence on streaming platforms all the time.

We hope Hollywood goes on a retreat in the mountains and finds itself, comes to terms with its pathological need to always be class president, and decides to stop bullying its audiences. But the aspidistra’s airborne and, let’s be honest, nobody knows how to land.

—

* Interestingly, it’s the same when writing a novel, only you get to create all your own obstacles, betray yourself, meddle with your own story, make all the compromises, and know from the beginning that you’re not going to get paid.

** There is no point in arguing that a particular production “isn’t mainstream” or isn’t influenced by Hollywood in whole or in part. The global movie industry in general and streaming technology in particular has had an enormous centralizing effect on film. “Indie” is now a flavor. It is not a substantial alternative.

Laughter in the Dark

I have been plagued by anxiety and depression my entire life, since before I had words for it. And recognizing that these are highly idiosyncratic inner states—admitting that there is no general cure or perfect treatment that can always be prescribed for how anxiety and depression can link up with each other in the mind—I feel confident that avoiding medication has mostly been right for me, while it may not be right for others. I choose alternatives like exercise, diet, reading, and worst case, staying in bed and just riding it out.

Still, I have moments when I wonder whether it wouldn’t be preferable to take some heavy mind-flattening chemical that lets me shuffle dimly through my days, sleep soundly every night, and never feel upset or afraid. Because, in the end, every life must come to the same conclusion, whether one chooses to suffer or not. As the saying goes, at the end of the game, the pawn and the king go in the same box. But I don’t suffer constantly from anxiety and depression, only sometimes. And that’s what makes the straight-edge option viable.

The capriciousness of my mind keeps me wondering whether any given day might turn horrible without warning or reason. Living in that uncertainty was, for many years, its own kind of torment. It took me a long time to learn how to flow with my inner states, to recognize the onset of certain nasty, petrifying feelings arising seemingly out of nowhere, and say, well, it looks like today is going to be one of those.

Yesterday was one of those. Maybe today will be, too. Maybe being halfway through Blood Meridian made it worse. It certainly didn’t make anything better. McCarthy’s writing seldom does. It’s not something one reads for pleasure. At least, I don’t.

I read him because I have a certain abstract appreciation for phantasmagoria and beautiful sentences. But it’s not like reading The Sun Also Rises or Never Let Me Go. I never feel close to McCarthy’s characters. He doesn’t let the reader identify or care too much about the people in his books. Instead, there’s a cold distance, a stipulation that the reader detach himself from the narrative and view it through a thick pane of glass. And Blood Meridian seems more essentially this than any of McCarthy’s other writings.

This morning, I found myself on page 178 (of my third reading) of the novel. And I was having problems with it. I closed the book and thought, fuck this, trying to recall whether, in 2003 or 2009, I also said fuck this around page 178. I don’t know. But I do know the tendency to tell the book to go fuck itself gets strong at least once a read-through. I never felt like saying that about The Road or Suttree or All the Pretty Horses or No Country for Old Men. Sure, they had the pane of glass, too. But there’s something about BM that gradually makes me feel as though I’m visiting the novel upon myself instead of merely reading it.

So I resolved to return it to the library. That’s it. Boom. Done. I’ve read the damn thing twice. Shouldn’t that be enough to say I’ve done my due diligence on McCarthy’s magnum opus? It should be enough. I have Maupassant’s complete stories waiting in a dual-language edition and by god . . .

But then I felt worse. As Donald-45 might put it: “So much worse. Sad.” And I started to laugh (actually laugh-cough because I’m at the end of the first month of The Cold I Cannot Kick). The ponderous weight of my unfortunate, Kafka-esque gallows humor reasserted itself. And I saw how much more Gregor Samsa I’ve become over this last year of sickness and dread.

I often feel like the world is knocking me around. Obligation is both the cause and the formula: I find myself obligated to do a certain thing and must therefore tolerate a comparable amount of abuse. Mo obligation, mo abuse. It’s that simple. And I’ve never had more obligations than I do at present. Maybe the reason I find Blood Meridian so hard to swallow is that, not unlike Gregor, I’m constantly taking my medicine (straight-edge option no longer available), constantly being force-fed bad-tasting syrupy obligation after obligation, and asking for more.

If I don’t maintain perfect discipline, if I don’t visit an outsized portion of responsibility upon myself and make sure everyone around me is satisfied and at ease, what then? Unlike the unbending, ruthless, willful characters in Blood Meridian, I might be undergoing a certain metamorphosis. None of them turn into giant cockroaches. Various other beasts and demons, maybe, but not into Gregor Samsa.

I am the giant cockroach of the Family and Consumer Sciences Department, sitting in my dark office at 6:15 AM (the lights go off if I’m too still—I have to remember to wave my arms every five minutes), worrying and ruminating, struggling with this novel, but really with myself, asking, “Where did I go wrong?” Because I most certainly did. And here I am, obligated and tolerant, feelers extended.

One imagines that cockroaches don’t read novels. Or, if they do, that they prefer works in the Tumblr-Tik-Tok genre of “dark academia”—Hogwarts without the magic and with double the soapy intrigue. Dark because cockroaches don’t like light. And academia because, well, have you been to college?

Yes, I feel sorry for myself and I probably shouldn’t. Blame the anxiety or the “evening redness in the West.” I feel kicked around by life. I feel anxious and depressed and inappropriately tolerant in the service of my many pressing obligations. But I also know that, in an hour or two, when someone knocks on my office door with an urgent dilemma that only I can fix, I’ll be courteous, friendly, and prompt. And I’ll smile, hoping they don’t look too closely at my face.

I try not to twitch in my ill-fitting mansuit; though, the metamorphosis seems just about complete. I know this because I will continue visiting Blood Meridian upon myself. I will tolerate the book to the end. Perhaps, instead of Maupassant, I’ll read some Donna Tartt next along with my other hive-mates. But, for now, I can console myself with the thought that if I stay very still when I laugh, it won’t turn on the lights.

Vexation of Spirit

Spring semester, 2024, begins tomorrow and I will be teaching another section of “Mindfulness and Skillful Living,” a hybrid class that combines a fairly demanding research and writing component with daily mindfulness meditation and journaling. On paper, it looks like a fluff class and, not surprisingly, the course is always full with a ten-student waitlist. In practice, it’s kind of ferocious. And students can often feel overwhelmed by its level of seriousness.

This time, I’ll be co-teaching it with the chair of the department, who originally created the class. We’ve made guest appearances in each other’s sections and we work closely together on a regular basis. So I mostly know what to expect. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the first day of instruction always gives me pause.

Despite all efforts to the contrary by university bureaucrats and dodgy malingerers coasting through tenure, nothing in academia ever stands still. If you want to be an effective teacher, you have to accept this and learn to move with the interpersonal, departmental, intellectual, and even biorhythmic currents of the semester. At the same time, you have to profess something, which does not mean you have to be agreeable or popular.

It makes me think of spinning plates. Let them start wobbling and you might as well prepare for death. As Martin Amis puts it in Money, “If you so much as loosen your seat belt or drop your ash or pick your nose, then it’s an Alcatraz autopsy with the questions asked later. Any indiscipline, you feel, any variation, and there’s a bullhorn, a set of scope sights, and a coptered pig drawing a bead on your rug. So what can a poor boy do?” Well, you can shut your mouth and get to work, for one. Keep your head down. Keep them plates in motion. Indiscipline was severely chastised in the university’s ancient monastic predecessor institutions. And so it is now. Brother Severus, do hand me the scourge.

Co-teaching is much harder than going it alone. It adds yet another spinning plate, the need to keep an open, deferential space for your colleague, who may (in fact, who should) have different ideas, reactions, and assumptions. As a co-teacher, you’re less like the captain of a ship and more like a highly engaged, small-time politician somewhere in rural Wyoming.

Sometimes, the course will seem like a town council meeting. Other times, like a church bake sale. Yes, we can do it like that, but have you considered this other alternative? Yes, certainly, I understand your concerns and I think we should definitely address that in week three. We’ve accounted for the issue in the workshop component at the end of the semester, but let’s bring it up at the meeting. No, that was not my intention, but I hear you and I like your idea. . . . Everything will be fine.

In my other job, the admin one, I spend a lot of time looking at CVs, syllabuses (let’s avoid the faux-Latin ending just once in our short lives, shall we), and schedules. It gives me double vision. I see what I’m doing as a lecturer and what other faculty are doing, have done, will be attempting in their courses. Often, I am dismayed, mostly at myself and my lack of pedagogical precision. Some professors have pristine, metallically sterile assignment sequences that run identically every semester like some kind of cyborg utopia, while mine are more like serendipitous Rube Goldberg machines that induce a strong belief in miracles.

Meanwhile, I’m a short-story writer, writing another novel, which often (maybe usually) feels like clawing my way up a rock face centimeter by centimeter. It’s the first plate to start wobbling when my multiple jobs, masks, roles, institutional Kabuki performances claw into my creative energy. It’s the central fear I carry every semester—that I won’t be able to keep everything spinning through the air or that the quality of my work will decline in spite of my efforts or that my comforting façades won’t be believable (I masquerade as a human, painfully aware that I’m actually a hideous alien space ghost).

Anyone who has tried to write a novel knows it’s a tremendous gamble. All those small hours need to add up to something more than just lost sleep, frustration, and bad nerves. All the things you’ve sacrificed or left undone to take those hours will eventually need attention. All the relatives and old high school pals on the internet, who resent your attempts, will still need to be kept on mute. The rent will need to be paid again. The neighbor dog will need pets. And you will admit you have human needs and are not actually a hideous space ghost, even if you regularly feel otherwise. But go on.

So it begins. And there is nothing I can do to call a false start or a raincheck or a postponement for bad weather. Spring 2024 will commence, all cyborg systems go, mayoral press conference down at the Bob Smith Agricultural Community Center to begin right on time, Alcatraz autopsy dungeon ready.

Nevertheless, I can’t help think of the ultimate lines from Ecclesiastes, “And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”