little less ritual & a lot more fun

I saw Superman! I liked it a lot!

Positive stuff:

+ Finally, a superhero movie that cares about every single life! I did not think we would ever see such a thing--superhero movies use "collateral damage" to raise stakes while not actually caring about the people who die. But this movie cares because Superman cares. And I love that so very very very much. Even if it hadn't done anything else, I would have thought it a success for that.

+ Honestly, Superman is my favorite superhero because he's so ridiculously good and decent, and this movie gets that. It's earnest and sincere and isn't winking at you but it also isn't saccharine--it knows that it can be HARD to be good, and intentions aren't everything.

+ Top tier casting. Everyone is doing a fantastic job. Corsenswet, Brosnahan, and Hoult ARE their characters. They were just as good as I hoped, but I was not expecting how much I would love Edi Gathegi as Mister Terrific.

+ This movie loves the relationship between Clark and Lois, which means that this movie has good taste. Their chemistry is lovely and the scene where they're doing the interview is probably my favorite scene in the whole thing.

+ Lex is realistically evil in a way that many of our real billionaires are, which I appreciated a lot. His motivations are completely foreign to me, but I only have to look at the real world to see that there are really people who are like that.

+ The twist involving Superman's backstory was so ridiculously good and meaty. A really bold writing choice, but a great one.

+ I thought the pacing was really good! It never felt like it lagged!

+ Everything was bright! You could see what was going on even in the dark scenes!

+ Lots and lots of fun details that made it feel like the people who were making the movie were having fun making it.

+ Krypto!

Mixed stuff:

+ Being a rabid John Williams fan, I was delighted that they adapted his Superman theme for the film, but I really wish we had gotten just one scene where they used the full-throated original. None of the music was that level of thrilling.

+ I could have done with a lot more Clark at the Daily Planet, living his normal life, letting us get to know the Daily Planet people. The action scenes were very good action scenes, but as always in an action movie, I want way more of characters interacting. Imagine how much more Clark & Lois we could have had! However, I understand that the masses do not share my taste so I get why there wasn't more of that, and there was enough that I'm not angry about it.

+ The plot could have been better. It wasn't bad, and it provided a fine backdrop and set piece for the characters to show who they are, but I didn't love it, you know?

+ #teamsomebodyloveeve

+ I wish we'd had a smidge more showing us how Lex inspires loyalty in other people. I mean, yes, in real life, there are a bunch of people who will follow a billionaire that they think is smart without thinking about his morality at all. It's very realistic! but I want to know about this specific dynamic. Is he paying them obscene amounts of money? What is his view of the world that he could convince the engineer to do what she did to her own body?

Negative stuff:

+ Okay, what was the Kents' accents???? If the movie had been set in Alabama, sure, that would be reasonable, but I do not believe that people in Kansas talk like that? Nobody Iw've ever known from Kansas talks like that? It’s so weird how media uses "very southern accent" as stand-in for "country" even when the country the people are from is the Midwest.

If you are from Kansas and I am wrong about how people talk there, please tell me so I can stop being annoyed about this.

[as an aside, Mister Terrific's accent was so lovely that I immediately looked to see where Gathegi grew up, and to my shock found he grew up in California! I would never have guessed it! His southern accent was so realistic! Well done, sir!]

Me trying to work out the geography of these made up countries: ??????? The one is clearly Russia, the other is inspired by Pakistan, Afghanistan, or possibly a province of India, yet we're told this is all happening in Europe. Which makes no sense. Russia is half in Asia, it would have made so much more sense to just say Asia instead????

But my complaints are small.

So yeah! A fun movie! I recommend it even if, like me, you're not such a big superhero person and are exhausted by too many superheroes.

Now can we pretty please have a prequel movie about how Clark and Lois met and how she found out he's Superman???????

Catching up for two weeks! I've read a lot of fanfic lately, so I've been reading fewer books than usual.

What I finished:

+ The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis. My Narnia reread is complete!

I'd been dreading this one and kind of putting it off, but on reread it's not actually all that bad? To me anyway--I totally get why other people hate it. I am not saying that it's good, but it's also not unreadable.

The problem is that Lewis has created this story entirely to serve the needs of his theological assertions, which makes for bad storytelling and worse worldbuilding. Preaching through fiction is always a bad idea because a story that exists to moralize is not going to be a good story. When, in previous books, Lewis sprinkled his theology throughout the stories, it was more or less fine--the story of a king who dies for the good of his people is a universal story, etc. You could always read the books literally as well as as analogy. Here, though, the theology takes over the narrative completely--there is no way to read this book on a literal level because just about every choice is made from the perspective not of a storyteller but of a preacher.

Plus, if you disagree with his theology, you're just going to be pissed off. I disagree with some of his theology myself, but I am much less pissed off than most because of my background. His particular brand of Christianity is very different than the white American evangelical kind I was raised in, for all those people have co-opted him. You have to understand how much gentler this view of soteriology is than the one I was surrounded with--Lewis embraces the idea of the virtuous pagan, for one thing, which is NOT a given in evangelical world. And perhaps more important, those who don't make it to heaven just cease to exist instead of being tortured for eternity. I realize this is probably hard for people who didn't grow up like I did to understand, but these ideas are significantly gentler than the evangelical view of hell. So when I encountered them as a kid, they felt freeing in a way I can't articulate. Between Lewis and Madeleine L'Engle, I had two Anglican fiction and nonfiction writers who had a more expansive view of God and life than I had been presented with, and they were lifelines to me.

So yeah, I don't hate this book, I just find it annoying and Not Good. I do like that we get more Eustace and Jill since they are my favorite of the characters from our world. I think it's kind of cool that we get to see Narnia from its first day to its last. Shift is a really good villain--not as good as Uncle Andrew, maybe, but Lewis knows how to write someone who is inherently selfish, and the early chapters with Shift and Puzzle are actually a fantastic depiction of an abusive friend dynamic. Lewis is really good at human foibles, the narratives we use to justify ourselves, etc.

I do not feel the need to ever read this one again but I'm glad I reacquainted myself with it as an adult so that I could decide how I feel about it.

+ Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water by Peter H. Gleick. This book is quite dated in statistics and things--I think it came out in 2010--but the central problem is, of course, still with us. This is a book that confirmed my belief that bottled water is problem: it is, of course, a lifeline for people in areas that don't have potable public water, and I am glad it exists. But it's ubiquity is indefensible in places that do, particularly in the US (places like Flint aside).

You can probably imagine the contents of this book: bottled water in the US is much less regulated than public water, therefore we don't know whether it's safe or not; it is not necessary in places that have clean public water; bottled water companies steal water from communities, destroying ecosystems; they prey on our fears; there's an industry (which I am 1000% confident has grown substantially since the time the book was published) of woo-y health grifters who sell special super waters, and these people are almost never stopped by authorities; and then there's the plastic. It's nice to see it all laid out clearly, though. And I also appreciate a book that is, really, a reminder that regulations are Good Actually.

So yeah, a worthwhile read.

+ Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert.

YIKES!!!!!! Gilbert deep-dives in pop culture depictions of and messages to and about women from, roughly, the late 90s to the mid-2010s, visiting topics like the way the powerful female musical artists of the 1990s were replaced by girls who couldn't stand up for themselves; the way the same thing happened in fashion with the powerful supermodels of the 1980s and early 1990s being replaced by, again, girls who couldn't stand up for themselves; depictions of women and femininity in reality TV; the way movies shifted from romcoms that centered female stories to bro comedies that hated and/or erased women; the era of Us Weekly, TMZ, and Perez Hilton and the way it ate female celebrities alive; and the #girlboss and Lean In eras. She keeps a Susan Faludi "backlash comes in waves" perspective on the whole thing.

There's also a lot about the pornification of culture--I really appreciated the nuance with which Gilbert handled this topic because I agree with her. Pornography, in the sense of art that exists to titillate and turn-on, is not a bad thing in itself and there are plenty of people who are out there creating and enjoying it in completely unobjectionable ways. But they're a minority: porn culture is hugely misogynistic, and the vast majority of porn that exists (often free of charge and disturbingly easy for children to stumble on) is hateful, violent, cruel, and racist. Gilbert worries, as do I, about how boys (and some girls) are getting their entire sexual education from these sources; porn provides a narrative of how to relate to sex and to women that is frankly terrifying. I think this is a huge problem that is very difficult to talk about, because most people who are talking about porn in negative ways are doing it from an anti-sex pov, often religious, and I think their criticisms are wrong. Again, I really appreciated how Gilbert talked all of this.

Overall, Gilbert is insightful, compassionate, clear-eyed, and accessible. This is a very well-written book by a very good writer, and I recommend it, whether as a book or, as I read it, an audiobook read by the author. It depressed the hell out of me, but it also reminded me of how resilient and strong and creative women are.

What I'm reading now:

A Lonely Death, the next Ian Rutledge mystery by Charles Todd.

I am once again asking for audiobook recs! I'm looking for nonfiction, read by the author, preferably not too dense. Audiobooks are not my normal medium, so I'm picky. As for what kind of nonfiction, I like history, cultural criticism, psychology, etc.

Audiobooks I've actually enjoyed listening to:

The Anthropocene Reviewed and Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green
Girl On Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert
How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur
Unruly by David Mitchell
Roctogenarians: Late in Life Debuts, Comebacks, and Triumphs by Mo Rocca



I think all of these people except Gilbert have experience on TV/podcasts, which probably contributes to them being good at reading their own stuff.