New-to-Me: Best of 2024
I’ve always wanted to do one of those end-of-year wrap-up listicle things, but I’ve found that it is so hard to do this without sounding shallow. The writers that do these deserve more credit for being pithy.
Read
Seven Realms Series, Cinda Williams Chima
I’m realizing as I write these that it is hard to remember some of the earlier ones. I read these books in January. I remember them being sort of high fantasy-lite. They are a great starting point for people getting into fantasy because they have all the same tropes but a lot faster pace. The characters and world-building are spectacular.
Five Dialogues, Plato
I was supposed to read this in grad school but didn’t really give it more than a passing glance. I love how Socrates is an asshole that pisses everyone off. I have come back to many ideas from these dialogues throughout the year but the one that has stuck with me the most is that it is easy to avoid death, but difficult to avoid wickedness. This idea comes from “Apology,” but is followed to its conclusion in “Phaedo.” When Socrates agrees to drink the hemlock, he shows us that death is not to be feared by “philosophers”–by people who have spent their life fighting for justice–but rather to be celebrated as an apotheosis of the soul. There is comfort in this idea, especially as we watch hundreds of innocents die at the hands of our government and its proxies every day.
Archie: The Married Life, Vol. 1, Michael E. Uslan, Paul Kupperberg, Norm Breyfogle
Capitalism’s vampiric nature is unleashed on the people of Riverdale. As Marx says, it sucks your life and humanity out of you to replace it with personal wealth. The Married Life has the perfect blend of despair, melodrama, and goofiness that make a perfect Archie comic.
Swan Boy- “Injured List” Arc, Branson Reese
Branson Reese is the best comic in the game right now, and I think this arc is the highlight of his year. It plays to Reese’s strengths as a comic in that it has a lot of fun guys. It ostensibly centers around supporting character Noel, but spends the bulk of its time digging into the lives of his fantasy baseball leaguemates. The bulk of the time is spent with leaguemate Sean, who after succumbing to a vision where he meets Thomas Jefferson, realizes Noel’s transgressions are enough to send him to The Device. It also has one of the best cutaways I’ve seen in a comic strip.
The Comics of @ThisStupidTwink
The subject matter of most of these comics are too lewd to discuss here as someone scared of this blog being found by a higher up in my school district. But I will say that I love a comic that is willing to experiment with form and this is one of those comics.
The Comics of @HOSTAGEKILLER
Not all of these hit for me, but the ones that do really hit. I remember annoying my friends in the groupchat because I could not stop laughing at the robot that quotes Kanye West. Similar to ThisStupidTwink, I love how the art style varies from comic to comic. Especially when they are doing the Calvin & Hobbes thing of mashing more stripped-down traditional comic concepts with high art illustrations.
Watch
Rio Bravo, Howard Hawks
“Let’s hear it for the boy[s]” - Deniece Williams after watching this, presumably. This movie is about being at your worst, your most stubborn, and still having your friends supporting you. It’s about putting the drink back in the bottle and jamming with your boys. It is about the purgatory of existence–about putting your dreams of the future on hold to deal with the nightmares in the present–and surviving the night.
Unstoppable, Tony Scott
A perfect action movie, with every setpiece executed flawlessly by Tony Scott. Any movie where Denzel Washington is hyper-competent at his job is a joy to watch. Most importantly, this is a movie about working class solidarity, where two strangers can come together to do a good job in spite of their evil corporate overlords.
Hundreds of Beavers (2022)
A truly idiosyncratic film. At the time I watched this I was halfway through a playthrough of Inscryption, and I remember thinking how much this movie feels like a video game. The main character slowly levels up his gear and attributes as he kills more beavers. He goes through boss fights and side quests. It’s the funniest movie I’ve seen in a while. If you’re on the fence about watching let me just say: they do not oversell the number of beavers in this thing. There are hundreds of them.
American Psycho (2000)
Years before I saw this movie I saw an animated video on YouTube called “if CHRIS CHAN wrote American Psycho” where instead of business cards the characters traded NSFW fanart of Sonic characters. l cannot express how shocked I was that “the tasteful thickness of it” is actually in the movie. Anyway, the yuppie scum is coming from inside the house!
English Teacher (2024)
Everyone is going to make fun of me for this because I always say I never watch TV but come on, look at the name. Even though I count myself lucky to work in the exact opposite of a wealthy suburban school like the one depicted in this show, I still relate to a lot of Brian Jordan Alvarez’s world. The way the students and teachers talk seems heightened for effect, but I found a lot of it true to life. The teachers in the show–while slightly cartoonish for comedic effect–are flawed and real. And despite the cliquishness that develops there is always that baseline of solidarity that I love so much in the profession.
Edit from 2025: BJA had allegations come out after I watched this.
Most Virtual Player, Kofie from Secret Base
Kofie makes videos that I would make if I worked for a YouTube conglomerate. I, too, grew up with opinions about the Madden vision cone. Kofie’s videos work in a way that no other nostalgia-bait videos do. They are interested in the unique way ours and future generations of sports fans interact with sports. Kofie’s videos are always engaging, with high production values and interesting guests. Edit from 2025: Kofie was just laid off by Vox Media. This tells us all we need to know about the geniuses running Vox Media.
Listen
Pink Flag, Wire
I feel least comfortable writing intelligently about music so I’ll just say that I love an album that has short, incredibly catchy songs. This has been in rotation since listening.
The Modern Lovers, The Modern Lovers
Probably the best album I listened to this year. Richman is an asshole, but in a funny and sincere way.
Play
Resident Evil 4 Remake, CAPCOM
My sister and I have been making our way through the Resident Evil games and this is the clear standout for me. The decision to lean more into action–while still keeping the horror and puzzle mechanics at the heart of all RE games–is a good one. There is nothing more satisfying in the franchise than executing a devastating kick on a stunned enemy. The characters are more fleshed out than most RE games. Probably my favorite in the franchise so far.
Hades, Supergiant Games
When I began playing this I thought I would hate it. I’ve always been drawn to games with cinematic sensibilities. I’m typically more attracted to good plotting, acting and writing than gameplay. When I played Hades I completely forwent the story elements because I was so wrapped up in its gameplay loop. Only when I had beaten the game a few times, and began the journey of unlocking everything, did I start paying attention. I was happy to find the story was as engaging as the gameplay.
Metaphor: ReFantazio, Studio Zero
Takes the social mechanics I love from other Atlus games and improves the combat and better fleshes out the build system. Discovering that you can give Heismay “Knight’s Proclamation” to turn him into a dodge machine was a feeling I haven’t gotten from Persona games. I don’t think the characters here as as charming as Persona–and I definitely prefer the jazzy score from P5– but I think M:RF is a game I see myself replaying often.
“A Fugue for Dead Malls”: My Review
I’m sitting with Alex in a diner in Maplewood, New Jersey. I am on my Seinfeld shit. Alex and I often have metatextual discussions in which we relate our lives and experiences to those of the characters on Seinfeld. This can sometimes be off-putting for people who don’t know us very well; we take pride in being able to give honest, metatextual, readings of ourselves. At this very moment, in the diner, I am taking on the role of George Costanza. I’m sure if you asked Alex, he would say that he was George Costanza (and perhaps he is in most contexts). But when we are together, I strongly believe that he takes on the role of Jerry while I maintain my role as George. Except when our friend Drew is involved, then he takes on the role of Jerry, while George falls to Alex, and Kramer falls to me. I have never told Alex this. Perhaps it is too honest a glance into my perception of our friendship.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, I would say we are about an hour into our dinner when Alex tells me he got a story published in a literary magazine for the first time. This may seem like the kind of news that would be front-loaded in a conversation, but Alex and I had to spend that time discussing random bullshit and non sequiturs that only we find funny. Important life news is typically saved for the end, when we remember that our parents will invariably ask about “how [they] are doing” and we want to ensure we have something to report. I left the diner that night with a promise to read the story and get back to him. Finally, a month later, I got back to him.
* * *
“A Fugue for Dead Malls” is formally very interesting to me. It is a series of pithy sentences punctuated by what I can only describe as old-timey images (see above). The story centers around an unnamed narrator and his friend Jane taking a trip to an open, but decaying, mall. It’s not explicit that our first-person narrator is an insert for the author, but, knowing him like I do, I believe there are some autobiographical elements here. As our characters enter the mall, we see our narrator experience alienation tied to his childhood dislike of malls. In one of my favorite stylistic flourishes, Alex pairs a line about a “gaggle of teens” with a picture of children pointing at some unseen object. What are they pointing at? Are they pointing at him? Or just some toy they see in the shop window? Both scenarios are alienating to our main character.
At the same time, the narrator is experiencing an “eerie feeling” that he believes is something more than childhood anxieties. They stop at a calendar store where the narrator makes a joke that I immediately got but that his companion did not. They then venture into the darkest recesses of the mall, and that uneasy feeling comes over our main character again. He refuses to turn and run. He has come this far, and will conquer the mall once and for all.
What he finds at the end of this hallway is an abandoned Rainforest Cafe. Pressing his face to the glass, he discovers inside a dusty nine-foot-tall gorilla. His childhood memories of this place come rushing back, and he remembers fondly a time before alienation and before the complications that life brings. As we age things we lose our wide-eyed sense of wonder, and struggle to see potential in the minutiae of everyday life. In this dusty gorilla the narrator gains a new appreciation for malls: not in the conventional way of the gaggle of teens–not through nostalgia or the desire to consume–but through utility and potential. He imagines the future of the mall not as a mall, but as a myriad of other possibilities. The mall is dead, but it’s legacy will live on with the apartments, school, or glade that replace it.
* * *
We’re back in the diner. I’m making a joke about how this summer is going to be the “Summer of Tom.” Alex has no idea how proud I am of him because I haven’t said it out loud. George Costanza wouldn’t say something like that to Jerry, I think, George Costanza would say something like this :
“The sea was angry that day my friends…”
The Witcher 4 and the Problem with Lore
The Witcher 3 is a very important game to me; it is a game that revealed to me the potential of video games as an art form. I would be fine if they burned the whole story down.
If you’re normal, unlike me, and have not been paying attention to the latest I Witcher news, allow me to explain. CD Prokjekt Red (CDPR) recently announced a follow-up to the 2015 hit Witcher 3 at the 2024 Game Awards. The teaser trailer revealed that Ciri, the series’ erstwhile backup protagonist, was about to helm her own trilogy. While this feels a little safe, it makes sense that Ciri would be the choice here, with her role in TW3 serving as a trial run for future games. Everything is looking up for fans of The Witcher, except for some fans who can never be happy. There are two main complaints being lodged by the haters, and I will address them in turn.
The first complaint is that Ciri has become “ugly” compared to her appearance in the previous game. The primary reason for this shift is Ciri’s age. The trailer shows Ciri years, if not decades, after the 21-year-old we know from TW3. It is not lost on me that the same fans that adore the century-old former male protagonist, Geralt, prefer the nubile nature of female protagonist Ciri. I think we can write this complaint off as that of incel freaks, but I can’t help but snickering at these people that have been clamoring for better graphics in video games freaking out at the perfectly rendered laugh lines on Ciri’s face. It’s almost like they don’t care about art but rather about seeing their anime ladies in crisp 4k.
The second complaint these philistines have is that the new Witcher trailer defies years of lore. I will attempt to be pithy here in the interest of not boring anyone: to become a “witcher” a person must go through a trial to mutate the body, thereby giving the person superhuman reflexes and other abilities helpful for monster-slaying. According to the lore, only males can survive the Trial of the Grasses (the trial used at the Wolf School, which is where both Geralt and Ciri train). The Witcher 4 trailer revealed that not only was Ciri the protagonist, but that she had also gone through the mutations to become a real witcher. You can see why the incels are pissed about this.
Lore is awesome. If used correctly, it can make for great storytelling. I love how Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn books serve as lore in the Wax & Wayne series. Those characters and events you lived with become history, religion, and fairy tale. I have many happy childhood memories just listening to my great Uncle Ed tell me about the glory days of the Brooklyn Dodgers before they moved to Los Angeles. This is what the pedants who value lore above all else do not understand: lore should be mutable. Eventually, the Dodgers leave for the west coast; eventually, Copernicus comes around and geocentrism fades away.
The idea that lore is an unchangeable force is incredibly reactionary. It is restrictive and poisonous to art. It is no coincidence that the obsession with lore has grown in tandem with the increased commodification of art. This type of lore is a tool in the commodification of art. It is the employee handbook, in the hands of multimedia conglomerates, that tells the artist what is and isn’t allowed to be created. That’s why lore is beloved by conservative fans of art: art is a commodity to be packaged and sold, and lore is especially marketable. We should be fighting against this tide with all our might. Art exists to expand our consciousness, and it should not be confined to so specious a concept as lore.
In Solidarity with Monsters
Two things happened that led to the writing of this blog. The first is that I finally watched China Miéville’s wonderful talk “Marxism and Halloween” (I’ll link it at the bottom), where he makes the point that we should be open to, “a call for solidarity for those who are made monsters.” This, of course, brings to mind Robin Wood’s idea that “normality is threatened by the monster.” Miéville goes on to say that, “the disavowed throughout history…have always had the sneaking sympathy of those suspicious of power.” In other words, it is our duty as Marxists to cheer on the creature from the black lagoon. The second thing that led to this blog is that one of my eighth graders told me their favorite scary movie was Sleepaway Camp, and I promised to watch it over the weekend. I know I am not qualified to write about this but I am going to do it anyway, because my thoughts on it were slightly too long for Letterboxd.
My early impressions of the film were that it was a lame 80’s trans-panic slasher, but as it went on it took on more of a revenge fantasy vibe. The “monster” in Sleepaway Camp is easy to root for. The first victim is a pedophile who attempts to sexually assault our main character, Angela. The victims that follow are equally detestable: a pair of campers that lash out when Angela does not respond to their advances, a female camper who mocks her for being timid and prude, a female counselor further ostracizes Angela from the rest of the female campers. The movie is mostly fun to hangout in. When characters bully or shame Angela, they are systematically eliminated by our killer. The killings in Sleepaway Camp don’t increase the suspense as much as they bring a sense of relief that justice has been served. Those who treat Angela with respect and kindness–her cousin Ricky and the male counselor with huge pecs to name two–are safe from the killer’s wrath.
Eventually, Angela finds friendship in Ricky’s friend Paul. It is clear that Paul fancies a sexual/romantic relationship, but it is clear Angela is unwilling to move any further beyond a few pecks on the cheek. This leads Paul to also lash out at Angela and go running into the arms of another girl. Thus comes the final night of the movie, where the aforementioned female campers meet their end, along with a group of younger campers who threw sand at Angela, and the repulsive manager who beats her cousin within an inch of his life. Finally, we find a nude Angela cradling the severed head of her ex-beau Paul. She stands to reveal her genitalia, one of the counselors who found her says, “she’s a boy,” and Angela releases a blood-curdling scream as credits roll.
The transgender aspect of this film is strange. I don’t know that the filmmakers put it there for anything other than shock value. It leans into the same trope that films like Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs do, that being trans is a form of mental illness. This being true does not preclude us from another reading of the film. Going back to Miéville’s idea about “those who are made monsters”: when is it that Angela is made a monster? Some reviews I’ve read would say it is during that last shot. To quote one of them, “Her humanity is lost when her penis is shown” (Maclay). I would argue that her humanity is lost the second she steps into that camp. The entire camp seems to zero in on her, doing their best to bully and other her. The way Angela is treated, and how she responds, are relatable to the experiences of certain trans people: “shrinking away from people’s touch and freezing at confrontation and feeling monstrous, just like a shrieking hissing nightmarish creature whose gaping mouth can swallow anyone whole” (Esther). This reading, in keeping with Miéville’s theory, paints Angela as more of an anti-hero than monster or victim. Her accident-spree is less a series of killings by an insane murderer, than it is a rigorous piece of praxis.
China Miéville: Marxism and Halloween - Socialism 2013 (youtube.com)
Robin Wood on the Horror Film: Collected... book by Robin Wood (thriftbooks.com)
Read trans writers:
Alice Collins: 'Sleepaway Camp': The Elephant in the Room [Trapped By Gender] - Bloody Disgusting (bloody-disgusting.com)
Willow Maclay: "How Can It Be? She's a boy." Transmisogyny in Sleepaway Camp - cléo (cleojournal.com)
Men, Women, and Phone Calls
I was surprised to see the abortion plot in Black Christmas (1974) before I realized when it was made. My immediate thought was about people in 1974 thinking this was too political. At its most basic level this film is about, like the Takal remake, the mistrust of women’s voices. It also is one of the only slasher films I’ve ever seen where the women are all fully developed characters (a.k.a., real people), and the relationships between them are as important to the film as the violence surrounding it. Black Christmas is a disturbingly great hangout movie. The sorority house actually feels like a home, like a safe space, far away from the “Terrible Place” described by Carol Clover in Men, Women, and Chain Saws (31). Even when the creepy phone calls start coming in and the horror elements come to the surface, it’s still fun to watch Margot Kidder get drunk and yell at men.
The real horror of the movie is the trivial dismissal of women by almost every male character. When they go to the police about Clare, the cop dismisses their worries by saying she probably ran off with her boyfriend, acting only when a male friend steps in to express his worry. Jess’ boyfriend can’t accept her desire to get an abortion; the liberal college student facade drops in favor of a domineering misogynist. On the surface this movie is about abortion rights, but at the core it’s about a very small feminist victory resulting in a tightening of male control. But what’s so horrifying about this, is the film is still a great hangout movie. The sexism faced by the women throughout the film seems so natural that sometimes you don’t even see it, you’re lulled into a trance by it, comforted by it. Normality is integral to the horror genre. Without it there would be nothing to transgress. In Black Christmas, and in real life, “normality” is built upon inequality, privilege, and oppression. In this way the horror of Black Christmas is ubiqitous—it exists beyond the confines of the plot. The best example of this is the conclusion of the film: Jess kills her boyfriend. The police, who dismissed her throughout the movie, show up to say she can rest easy, and the audience can rest easy too. And then the phone rings.
The film is as timeless as the sexism it presents. I think the biggest reason is because, as an early slasher, it’s not so beholden to the typical slasher tropes. In fact, in re-reading Clover’s chapter “Her Body, Himself,” it is almost like Bob Clark knew what the slasher genre would become and decided to subvert every trope. I already mentioned how the safe space represented by the sorority house is a drastic shift from the usual “Terrible Place.” Clover also argues that, “In the slasher film, sexual transgressors of both sexes are scheduled for early destruction” (33). In Black Christmas this couldn’t be further from the truth. Men are allowed sexual transgressions, it is only the women who are punished for “transgressions” in the eyes of men. Most notably, the film subverts the trope of the final girl. Here’s Clover’s description:
The Final Girl is boyish, in a word. Just as the killer is not fully masculine, she is not fully feminine—not, in any case, feminine in the ways of her friends. Her smartness, gravity, competence in mechanical and other practical matters, and sexual reluctance set her apart from the other girls and ally her, ironically, with the very boys she fears or rejects, not to speak of the killer himself (40).
The beauty of the movie is you can imagine a different version of the film for every woman in the house. Jess only becomes the main character because she gets the phone calls; this movie could have just as easily been about Margot Kidder’s Barb, who is equally as developed a character as Jess. There’s also the obvious fact that Jess does not suffer from “sexual reluctance.” Instead, she is punished for wanting an abortion, something misogynists would see as quite the opposite. Compound this with the fact that Jess probably doesn’t survive the end of the movie, and Bob Clark has basically found a way to subvert every trope outlined by Clover. He even does this with names: Clover discusses how most Final Girls have masculine or unisex names, the women in Black Christmas are Jess (not Jesse), Barb, and Clare to name a few. If the original Black Christmas is a subversion of slasher tropes and a subtle exposing of everyday misogyny, Sophia Takal’s remake embraces the tropes and burns down subtlety, while staying true to the political ambitions of the original.
* * *
Remakes are a tricky thing. I scoured my brain for remakes I think are good and had a hard time coming up with many, especially in the horror genre. I do like Zac Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, although it’s clear the only thing Snyder took away from the original is that it would be cool to live in a mall with guns. Remakes are tricky because you somehow need to balance making a movie “in the spirit”—a phrase that is probably meaningless but still important—of the original while making it its own thing as well. I think Sophia Takal’s Black Christmas does this wonderfully.
Like its predecessor, Black Christmas contains copious shots of phallic imagery. My favorite example of this is the first kill. It’s beautiful–one of my favorites from recent slashers– and it immediately lets you know that Takal is making a movie “in the spirit” of Clark’s original. The killer yanks the icicle off the roof and plunges it into Lindsey’s chest, Lindsey then starts waving her arms like she’s making snow angels, until the killer drags her body off-screen. The camera cranes up and we get a clear shot of the giant snow penis left behind by the carnage. Like in the original, the police do nothing but dismiss the women who try to report Lindsey missing. The beginning of the movie hits a lot of the same beats as the 1974 version, but then the anger starts boiling to the surface.
Takal takes all of Bob Clark’s subtlety and throws it out the window. The scene where the friend of Riley’s rapist comes to the coffee shop just to assert himself is the biggest example. As someone who worked with survivors of sexual assault I know that this sort of thing happens regularly, they always come to places (like work or class) where the woman can’t really react in any way without getting in trouble or drawing unwanted attention. Takal takes instances like this that may seem small or insignificant to outsiders and exposes their violent nature. Bob Clark portrays sexism as dangerously quotidian, while Sophia Takal connects the seemingly small microaggressions to a larger rape culture.
I mentioned earlier that Takal is embracing some of the slasher tropes that don’t exist in the original Black Christmas. One example is the names: Riley, Kris, Marty, Jesse (not Jess), Fran, Lindsey. Takal’s characters mirror the names of the slasher heroes outlined by Clover: “Stevie, Marti, Terry, Laurie, Stretch, Will, Joey, Max” (40). This is clearly a conscious choice. In fact, I’d assume Takal read the same Clover article when she studied film at Barnard. The question, then, is why? I think Takal’s goal was to create an army of Final Girls, because there really isn’t one that stands out. Riley is the obvious choice. Due to her traumatic experience she does exhibit some “sexual reluctance,” but more characters survive than most slashers. It’s like Takal is telling us there doesn’t have to be just one: the girls band together, and then they fight back. You can also have, “smartness, gravity, competence in mechanical and other practical matters,” (like Lindsey who immediately knew to run and knock on doors) and still fall to the killer.
Like the phallic symbolism and the slasher tropes, the film’s political vocabulary is very blunt and over-the-top. A lot of critics didn’t like this aspect, which I understand, but I found it to be an honest portrayal of modern feminism. It’s not perfect—I knew a lot of college feminists and none of them talk like the characters in this film—but I think Takal does a great job of incorporating the anger and pain of #MeToo without it feeling too much like bourgeois tee-shirt feminism. If the message of Clark’s film is, “look at the sexism women deal with every day,” Takal’s message is, “women aren’t going to stand for it anymore.”
Viewing Takal’s film in 2024 feels different. Joe Biden ending #MeToo means 2019 feminism has left a bad taste in my mouth. Neither of these things are Takal’s fault; neither is it her fault that the film’s PG-13 rating robs the characters of the gory justice they deserve. While she manages to capture the politics of the time, she does not manage to make a film as scary, funny, cutting, or hopeless as Clark’s original. Conclusions were never really my thing, so I’ll leave anyone who made it this far with this: after directing one of the greatest films of all time Bob Clark went on to direct Baby Geniuses 2 and something called Karate Dog. The people in charge of movies are so stupid.