Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, October 25, 2021
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64 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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The Washington Post had an article the other day about the Great Resignation, which also included a map of the states where the most people are quitting.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/22/states-labor-quitting-turnvoer-jolts/
Kentucky, Georgia and Idaho top the list with over 4% turnover in August.
The next tier is Indiana, Iowa, Illinois and Nevada, with over 3.5% turnover in August.
Overall, the places with the lowest turnover are in the Northeast and most of the west coast, with the exception of Oregon.
What do we make of this? Probably that the people in the socialist hell holes are not allowed to quit their jobs or something about Freedom and Right To Work states.
Yesterday Gustopher asked: If Trump were found dead on his toilet, would things slide back to normal?
Not before there was an eruption of enraged suspicion on the part of MAGAWorld that he’d been murdered by the Deep State, even if an autopsy proved conclusively that a heart attack or stroke had killed him.
A 19th-Century Law Dismantled The KKK. Now It Could Bring Down A New Generation Of Extremists.
@CSK:
At this point there would almost certainly be a contingent claiming he was still alive and was coming back.
No comment.
@Kylopod:
Oh, of course there would. But if the MAGAs could storm the Capitol because Trump said the election was stolen from him, what might they do if he was “murdered”?
So, to my disappointment, HBO Max in Mexico did not premiere Dune on Friday, nor the rest of the weekend. I thought perhaps it hadn’t premiered in theaters, but it had. So, I suppose I’ll wait.
THE Suicide Squad did premiere on the streaming service along with the theatrical release.
@CSK:
Remember Hugo Chavez? He went public with a cancer diagnosis, and the news reported several times he went to Cuba for treatment. When he expired from cancer, many of his followers cried out he’d been murdered.
No evidence is good enough to a mind that doesn’t deal in evidence.
@Kathy: A couple of months ago a prominent anti-vaxxer in Israel expired from Covid, but not before accusing the Israeli govt of having poisoned him, a story that has since been taken as gospel among his followers.
This sort of thing is not new. The old theory that Salieri killed Mozart may have partially originated with Mozart himself, who claimed on his deathbed that he had been poisoned (though I haven’t seen consistent sources on whether he singled out Salieri as the perpetrator, and the notion that the two were bitter rivals seems to be somewhat of a myth).
@Kathy:
Sure. There were accusations that the United States had poisoned Chavez. But the situation with Trump is different. Who among us could have envisioned what happened on January 6 at the Capitol?
Kathy: if you can hold out until you’re able to see Dune in theaters, I recommend that you do. It’s a gorgeously-shot movie; and needs to be seen on a large screen (IMAX, if possible). I don’t know if Villeneuve is as much a stickler as Christopher Nolan is, in terms of insisting that his work be premiered on a big screen.
@CSK:
I recall commenting in a message board when Chavez died, something like: “Any schmoe can die of cancer. El Presidente is not a nobody and deserves a more remarkable death.”
Given how his cult perceives Benito the Cheeto, they’d assume he’s too “strong” to be felled by illness, terrible physical condition, old age, etc. So any schmoe can die of a stroke or hear attack. El Cheeto Benito was murdered.
@Long Time Listener:
I don’t think the movie will still be in theaters by mid-2022 to mid-2023, which is my current guesstimate of when it will be sensible to attend a movie showing.
As to the rest, as I understand in most of the world, the movie’s been released in theaters and streaming. As I also understand, Villeneuve is not pleased about it.
@Kylopod:
Mozart died at 35, which was too young to die even by the standards of the time. On the other hand, it was a time of poor sanitation and rather ineffective medicine. It wasn’t hard for someone in good health to catch some bug and die from it.
It’s like the death of Pope John Paul I, barely a month after assuming office. He wasn’t old, in his early 60s I think, and seemed in good shape.
The surprising death at an early age of a famous person naturally raises questions. If an obvious answer is not found or disclosed, conspiracies will abound.
@Kathy:
The answer was obvious in Chavez’s case. As for Trump: As I said, even if the autopsy conclusively proved he’d died of a stroke or heart attack, the stone MAGAs wouldn’t believe it. My question is whether there’d be some sort of violent uprising on their art. Granted, most of them are middle-aged or old and fat, but as they’re always saying, they have all the guns.
@Kathy: I don’t know if you followed the death of progressive commentator Michael Brooks last year. He was 36 and seemed perfectly healthy and well when he suddenly dropped dead–a day after having seemed fine on his show, when he apparently didn’t have the slightest awareness of any medical problem. The official explanation is that he had a pulmonary embolism and that it had nothing to do with Covid–though personally, I’m not so sure about the latter. Covid is my conspiracy theory.
@Kathy: It may be an international thing (it was on HBO Max for me, and I watched part of it last night). I can say that seeing on a bigger screen would be better, but since I am almost certainly not going to do that, I am thrilled to be able to watch it at home.
Also: IIRC, you have to have the ad-free version of HBO Max to see it (if that matters).
@Steven L. Taylor:
I don’t know if it matters, but I don’t get ads at all in my HBO Max subscription. I wasn’t even aware of such a thing.
Meantime, I’m streaming season 3 of Young Justice. IMO, the modern take on superheroes is what polytheism and mythology have derived into. There are many similarities, if we leave aside the religious aspects of polytheism. There are even creation, or creation-related/adjacent, myths in some superhero story lines. Also, plenty of origin stories, and plenty of variations on the same superhero.
@CSK:
It depends on what idiotic conspiracy theory his cult latches on to. I suppose it’s likely the Clintons will be accused of the non-existent murder, and some of the tiny cultists might try to assassinate them in turn.
It would be fun if Ivanka were fingered as the murderer, though.
@Long Time Listener:
Someone, in criticizing Dune, said Villeneuve should be a cinematographer, not a director. Said it was beautiful, but he failed to get much out of an impressive cast.
You mention Nolan. I’ve seen Dunkirk big screen, small screen, and IMAX. IMAX is good, but a little disorienting, and I don’t need to see the pores on the pilot’s nose. But definitely people should see it big screen. And with a theatre sound system. And remember it’s not about Dunkirk, it’s about the British mythos around Dunkirk, like Western movies are about the myth of the Old West.
@Kathy:
Oh, hell, some of the Trumpkins think Hillary Clinton had Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer on Alec Baldwin’s movie, murdered.
@Kathy:
From what I’ve seen, the go-to scapegoat among Trumpists is Jared Kushner. In some cases they’re explicitly anti-Semitic about it (David Duke was going in that direction as early as 2017), but most of the time it’s simply that whenever the Trump Admin does something they don’t like, it’s Jared’s doing. If Trump were to keel over tomorrow, I’m sure these folks would be citing Jared as involved, and I don’t mean from giving him one too many hamberders unless it contained cyanide.
Yeah, yeah, big screens are better than my 65 inch TV.
How about the seats? Are they better than your couch? Is the popcorn better? How about the snacks?
What about when you need to take a wee and miss five minutes of the movie when at home you could have paused it? Or the way you can reverse a bit to get a better look at a scene? Or replay a bit of dialog you missed?
How about the company? You’d rather sit next to some stranger munching nachos for two and a half hours? Just how annoying is your family that you’d rather be wedged in next to a talker who likes to point out the obvious every ten seconds?
How do the commuting and parking options compare? Twenty minute drive vs. ten second walk? The scheduling? On the one hand, specific time and place, on the other hand, whenever you feel like watching it.
My guess for the future? Movie theaters are on their way out. Nostalgia won’t save them. Theaters will be more and more the home of blockbusters, spectacles carefully curated to avoid offending the Chinese Communist Party and anyone else likely to be challenged by something original with an actual point of view.
TV is where story lives. TV is where humor lives. TV allows for a degree of free-wheeling creativity. The future of theaters is big budget lowest common denominator, bread-and-circuses stuff with nothing to say about anything but bang, boom and oooh! TV will increasingly be seen as the place for originality and daring. IOW, TV and movies are swapping places, with TV the home for prestige entertainment, variety and originality, and theaters the place for pap. That cycle will become self-reinforcing.
How do things become big issues on the right? We have a fairly well documented example. Yesterday I commented on how CRT became an issue. I’m going to belabor it a bit. I commented from memory, it was, after all, a blog comment. I’ve dug out the primary source, an article by Adam Harris in The Atlantic in May. He talks about the spate of anti-CRT bills and the origin of CRT at Harvard Law in 1981. (Incidentally a genuinely student driven development, unlike the Koch funded Federalist Society.) I commented that one conservative activist largely drove CRT into prominence. His name is Christopher Rufo, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute (Koch). I erred in saying he reacted to corporate diversity training and that a year ago GOP pols had no idea what CRT was. It was City of Seattle training and I should have said fourteen months. It was a year ago September that FOX had Rufo on and started pushing CRT. Trump picked up on an appearance on Carlson’s show and later issued an Executive Order banning CRT in government diversity training and mentioning it in campaigning.
Kevin Drum has a chart on FOX coverage. Out of the blue they hit it a year ago September, then let it lay until this March, when they really started in on it. Drum shows general coverage then following FOX’s lead by about six weeks. Nobody’d heard of CRT until suddenly they’d always been against CRT.
Yesterday Dr. T asked, “is this a case of FNC being the origin story, or is it Trump for amplifying it and making into a GOP thing?” As usual, the answer is, “Both.” There’s always a level of discontent floating around. FOX acts as a filter and amplifier. Their audience hungers for grievance and FOX is eager to provide. They try things out and if something resonates, they elevate it. GOP pols pick it up from FOX and as Scott Lemieux puts it succinctly at LGM, “First you bullshit, then your followers take the bullshit at face value, and then you believe it yourself: the great Republican circle jerk of life.” Individual pols are then constrained by the base voters, but the pols are hardly innocent victims, they collectively did a lot to create the situation.
The “populist” beliefs of the GOP base are usually taken as givens, even in Poly Sci, and that GOP politicians pick up on them and pander to the base. But this elides the role of FOX and other conservative media and the active role of GOP pols. It’s a feedback loop, with the pols, the media, and the voters each driving the other two more extreme. Trump originated the Stolen Election lie, but FOX and the base amplified it. Trump and DeSantis weren’t forced to pretend COVID’s not a problem, they chose to, then exacerbated the issue. The Tea Party may have some trace of grassroots origin, but it became a thing when Americans for Prosperity (Koch) nurtured it. (Where did everybody think the graphic wrapped buses came from?) Even abortion wasn’t a big deal except for Catholics until GOP pols and holy roller preachers picked up on it. In Lemieux’s elegant phrase, it’s a circle jerk. Drum elsewhere makes a good case based on timing that the primary driver, and villain, is FOX. Not social media, not OAN and the conservative blogosphere. FOX.
@gVOR08: Having watched both Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 I feel comfortable saying Villeneuve can be a fine director. I was not impressed with Sicario because it was too over the top for my tastes (which I think was due mostly to the writing, but he took the project on). As far as failing to get much out of an impressive cast, sometimes less is more.
I’ll see it at my first opportunity, but it won’t be on a big screen. The only time I have been in a movie theatre the last 20 or 30 years was when I was waiting for the birth of my first granddaughter, which was enough to remind me that I wasn’t missing much.
My kingdom for an edit function
@Kathy: Among Catholics I know, the verdict on JP I’s death is fairly evenly split among God’s veto of his election (natural) and the Curia’s veto of his election (not natural).
@Michael Reynolds: Home theater has been a thing since I was 30. I’m surprised that you’re only catching up now.
@Michael Reynolds:
Yes, and yes.
I go to rather few movies and I go alone, so I always splurge for the VIP theater. The seats are recliners with foot/leg rests, and are the most comfortable seats in the world. There’s also plenty of space between people.
At home I either watch from my desk chair (it’s ok) or my bed (it doesn’t recline).
@Joe: There was actually a pretty good book written about JP I’s death in which the author came to the conclusion that it had a lot to do with his being thrown into the Lion’s den of the Vatican with no allies or people looking out for his interest and the people that had taken it upon themselves for years to monitor his poor health and make sure he took his medications and didn’t overwork or lose too much sleep were pushed aside and sent home by the Vatican bureaucracy. Murder by neglect and indifference if you will
@CSK:
I’ve heard. I wish I could say I’m surprised.
@Kylopod:
Yeah, but who brought Jared to the party?
@MarkedMan: Don’t bother us with your objective investigation and information. We know what we know.
@gVOR08: Feels apropos: What Conservatives Tell Themselves About “Critical Race Theory”
From this morning’s Weekly Sift.
@gVOR08:
That was me. I turned it off after 30 minutes.
@Joe:
The Poe is strong with this one.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Those two movies are my evidence that he’s not. Arrival was… okay. Blade Runner 2049 was a hodge-podge that didn’t know what to do with itself.
There’s a difference between subtle acting and being cardboard. There was no sense of threat or importance in the Gom Jabbar scence, for instance. It was just “here I am with my hand in a box”. And there’s no way I would believe that Brolin’s Gurney Hallack is a bard (he’s a master musician, who loves drinking songs).
@Long Time Listener:
It was fine on my iPad. If the story and the visuals aren’t enough to create an immersive experience on my iPad, then there’s something wrong with the movie.
It’s the big ipad, if that makes it better.
@Steven L. Taylor: @Kathy: I went with my adult children Saturday afternoon. Theater wasn’t crowded. Seats were wide recliners and spaced. Felt comfortable and safe. Very wide screen. Thoroughly enjoyed. Having read the book many times in my youth, the narrative followed the book pretty closely and hit the important parts pushing the story forward. I was pleased. I tend to dread large complex books/stories turned in to movies because the screenwriters/directors want to change things around too much. This didn’t do that.
BTW, it is only Part I. Ends at a logical break in the story.
@Mu Yixiao: There were a lot of spots where I thought the visuals of the David Lynch movie were just better. Maybe not as crisp, since 1980s special effects were not as technically good as the current day’s, but a lot clearer and more interesting.
The box scene just feels like they left out threat. It’s just bad storytelling.
The old, boxy personal shields were great. The new ones lacked any kind of style or interest. Just bland, and unimaginative. Because the behavior of the shields is pretty unique in sci-fi, a unique visual helps there.
The hunter-seeker thing was lame as a black bug or cat toy or whatever, but at least it didn’t make things less clear.
Also, people mumbling their thoughts just seemed weird. The inspector-lady mumbling “he will know our ways as if he was born to them” was more intrusive than the voice-over whispers.
On the other hand, Timothee Chamalet was some kind of weird alien stick bug, which seems to fit Paul as a weird product of selective breeding.
@Gustopher, et al: I’m probably late to the party, in terms of being able to take in something like wide vistas, on a smaller screen. Large iPad could work; but the idea of watching this stuff on an iPhone just boggles the mind. It’d further wreck my vision.
@Mr Reynolds: I underestimated the ‘wee imperative’. Once the theater sized soda kicked in, the need to go was…distracting…. My at-home viewing is usually the special features extras, on the DVD. I just have to know how the trick was pulled, in order to understand what I just saw. It’s the only way I could understand Inception and Tenet.
@Long Time Listener:
Try an Android phone.
I could watch a tv ep on my Nexus 7 tablet, but I’d rather watch on the TV or the big desktop PC monitor. On the phone from time to time I watch short movie trailers on YouTube. That’s about my limit.
I haven’t seen Dune yet. I probably will.
And I agree with Michael’s assessment of the general trend. TV is a rising star, and where you will see all the risky stuff.
AND, I love being in a big space with other people experiencing the same thing. Often its with a film. Sometimes its sports.
Regarding seeing things in a cinema rather than at home:
I’ve lost my taste for cinema. While the one I used to go to has really comfy recliners for seats, it’s all the rest that I can’t handle. The sound is so loud that it’s sometimes painful*–and the mix is always pushing the base at the expense of the mid-range–which is where the human voice is.
Then there’s the decline in “cinema etiquette”. I get blinded by cell phone screens, there are people talking, etc.
I have a low-end system at home, but… I’m a guy who can listen to music on a transistor radio and enjoy it. I’ll happily sit on my futon, kick up my feet, watch the show on a 32″ screen with $20 speakers.
===
* This coming from a guy who used to work rock concerts for a living.
@Kylopod:
FWIW, Matt Henson, creator of the Muppets, died in what was suspected to be the same way Mozart went. Pneumonia, passed off as the flu until it was too late. Once the lungs are fully involved there isn’t much they can do for ya even today.
Had a music teacher obsessed with Mozart, the one thing she really liked about the movie was the deathbed scene. Not so much because that was the way it happened, we don’t know, but what we do know is that Mozart was creating a stunning piece, perhaps his most brilliant, while sick as a dog and in his own head. Requeim can’t be played on a piano without 3 hands, he wasn’t transposing something we wrote there. And well past 30, the time when most prodigies lose their gift. That didn’t happen to Ludwig and she takes it as proof it wasn’t happening to Mozart either. God know what that guy might have done with 30 more years.
The other thing she mentioned was that while Ludwig was living with Hayden as his pupil, Hayden’s good buddy Wolfgang dropped by, so they they went out and got drunk together. The musical GOAT pub-crawl.
@Mu Yixiao:
What I like most about streaming movies, is that I can pause them at any time and resume when I want to. This comes in handy for movies that have some rather boring stretches* (which is to say, 99.9% of all movies), and in particular with slooooooooooooooow movies like, for instance “Gravity,” where really the action could have taken place, all drama included, in half the time.
I do like going to a theater to see a movie. I only go to the premium/VIP theaters, though. aside from the comfortable seats, they tend to draw a crowd more interested in the movie, and very few children (in particular, no crying infants who aren’t old enough to even see the movie).
the screens are far bigger than my 32″ flat screen, but they seem small compared to the really big screens in the old movie theaters. You know, back in the age of the dinosaurs, or the blue-green algae, when they were huge, screens several stories tall, and showed only one movie per day in one theater.
The visual texture has changed, too. Few movies are distributed on film any more (I wonder if they are still shot on film at all). It’s all digital projection these days. I can’t say I mind much (no issues with balky projectors, or movies that break or burn halfway through). But the look is not the same. Also, there are no intermissions now. I wonder how people manage to down a bucket of popcorn, then a big soda, and not wet their seats by the climax.
@Mu Yixiao:
Uhh… yeah. Now that I’m deaf in one ear and use a fairly sophisticated hearing aid in the other, a car radio or the built-in speakers on my Victrola suitcase phonograph provide all the fidelity I can use.
@Kathy:
The only thing that was worth the full IMAX.
It wasn’t so much the imagery as it was the sound system that made your seat, bolted to a concrete floor, shake. Only with awesome low-freq sound does the raw power of the event come through. This version? You can still hear the calls on the PA. Without protection, being where this camera was would result in permanent hearing damage.
@Gustopher: It’s just math. A 12″ screen 2 feet away is equivalent to a 24″ screen 4 feet away, to a 60″ screen 12 ft away. I’ve never understood people who go to a movie theater and sit in the back. My optimal seat is the closest I can get without cricking my neck
@Kathy:
Villeneuve‘s sci-fi movies are made to be seen in a theater. I saw both Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 in the theater and thoroughly enjoyed them both. Watched BR2049 this weekend and still saw things I missed. I think he’s a great cinematographer and director.
Going to see Dune in IMAX this Thursday
@dazedandconfused:
I’ve seen one movie on IMAX, Fantasia 2000. Not exactly a production that requieres it.
@Arnold Stang:
I think my attention span and impatience threshold are different in theaters than at home. That said, I felt rather bored in many parts of Blade Runner 2049 (less than during the original Blade Runner). So it’s one of those I’m glad I didn’t see in a theater.
@Kathy:
I saw it in the cinema. And fell asleep for a bit in the middle (the “flying over the desert” part”).
@Long Time Listener: I saw Dune (on a huge theater screen) today. A phenomenal movie…
@MarkedMan:
The “significant” horizontal field of vision of the human eye is roughly 120°. We can see things beyond that (up to 180° or more for some people), but we can’t recognize them. It’s just “there’s something there”. The “focused” field of vision is around 60°, and the “focus+recognizable” is about 90°.
Films are shot with this in mind. Most of the action is at the center, with the stuff at the sides being “you need to know it’s there, but it’s not important (e.g., landscape). If you’re sitting so close that the screen takes up more than 90° of view, you’re going to have to move your head back and forth to see what’s happening–and miss what’s happening on the other side of the screen.
Anecdotally, the best place to sit is usually about 60% back. This allows you to see the central 50% of the screen in the “focus” area, with 25% on each side being in the “focus+recognizable” area.
That’s why people sit towards the back.
@Mu Yixiao: “And there’s no way I would believe that Brolin’s Gurney Hallack is a bard (he’s a master musician, who loves drinking songs).”
I’d say that Brolin’s Halleck is not a bard. Herbert’s Halleck was, but that was one thing that didn’t make the transition into the movie. If you’re going to complain that the movie didn’t succeed in things it didn’t try to do, why even bother to watch that first half hour?
Tangent:
I’ve been following a YouTube channel called Corridor Crew. It’s a group of kids (sorry, “young people”–they’re under 40) who are VF/X oriented and make shorts. They also do reaction videos with Hollywood pros.
This is the Star Wars short (with background explanation) they just did where they brought in a fight choreographer to show how light saber fights should look. It’s fun.
Light Saber School.
@Mu Yixiao:
Often, in movies and TV, there are mans of building suspense that contradict well-trod tropes, as well as some older storytelling rules. Like there is one central protagonist, and the story must keep moving forward.
Also, one thing about watching movies on the PC as opposed to streaming them from a phone app to the TV, is that you can slide the mouse pointer over the progress bar, and see stills of what lies ahead.
So, when a main character is imperiled, or fighting for their life, etc., one can kind of peek ahead and see they made it. Other times you know they make it, or the story is going to end prematurely. And of course, other time you know they made it, because you’re seeing a flashback and you already know they inhabit the movie’s present.
Therefore, scenes like Harrison Ford fighting the replicant in the casino are just a waste of my time, because if the latter doesn’t talk to the former, there’s no way for the story to advance. Or seeing the brave heroes in danger traversing a narrow ledge in the 1930s in Jupiter’s Legacy is ridiculous, because you’ve seen them all alive and well in the series’ present
Hm. I wonder if I can write a story where the protagonist dies midway, and another protagonist has to pick up the thread and keep moving the story along…
@Kathy:
That’s what TV Tropes calls Decoy Protagonist. Possibly the most famous example is Psycho. For a TV series, Game of Thrones Season 1 is probably the best-known example.
@Kylopod:
Not quite what I had in mind.
Say a PI is following leads on a case, and finds out who the next murder victim will be. As they get to the victim’s residence to warn them, they get killed somehow.
Now, the victim has no idea who the PI is or what they were doing there. But the victim must somehow pick up the story thread and move things forward.
@Kylopod: My all time favorite example of this is in the movie “executive action“. (Spoiler warning for a decades-old movie) in the movie you think Steven Seagal is going to play a major part and he gets killed a few minutes in. I hate Steven Seagal and would never normally never go to see a movie with him in it but I like Kurt Russel and I knew that Kurt Russel was being billed as it at least the costar is not the star of the movie. I was never so delighted as to win the Steven Seagal character bit the dust.
Uh oh. My comment got caught by the naughty work filter.
I’m going to go watch some Night Court.
Have a good night!
“naughty word”
I’ve been getting the edit button all day, and the one time I need it… !
It’s been a rough day. We’re starting to get the big winds from the bomb cyclone stuff they were talking about on the Weather Channel. There ain’t nothing like a Wyoming wind, if it’s bad in Cali it’s gonna wreck tractor trailers when it gets here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSVStg-JrP4
@Kathy: “Sweet Girl” was kind of like that. I’m not a big fan of Jason Mamoa and didn’t like the movie much, though.