#2 // We lack the analogies.
#2 // We lack the analogies.
I’ve been thinking a lot about magic this week for two reasons. The first reason is that my friend and Dear TV writing partner Lili Loofbourow wrote a really amazing essay over at The Week about the way that Game of Thrones is being ruined by magic. Despite the fact that this is, at heart, a work of the fantasy genre, its magical plot points and perididdles end up representing elements of the show where the creativity stalls out, where an otherwise thrillingly byzantine plot structure is short-cut, and where the series goes to side-step its natural inclination toward—preposterous and fascinating—family drama. This is my favorite part of Lili’s piece:
As any journalist covering climate change can confirm, processes we don't understand will bore us into denial if they don't first make us credulous and fond of conspiracies. (The comparison between White Walkers and climate change is apt.) Take Meera and Bran's storyline. Forced out of a magic tree because Bran violated a rule no one mentioned, they're chased by wights and rescued by a resurrected relative (who despite undergoing the very process that created White Walkers somehow did not become one) while angry skeletons belch and shatter. "Magic" does nothing to explain this sequence of events. It's narrative nonsense.
Anyway, I won’t to jump too far down this hole. Reasonable people may disagree, and unreasonable people will definitely disagree. I don’t want to re-litigate Lili’s fantastic argument (you should read it), but it got me thinking about my own issues with magic on Game of Thrones. Specifically: those stupid zombies. I have always been struck, just like everybody else, by the narrative’s acrobatic ruthlessness and by the richness and specificity of the world, but the wights have always been underwhelming. Or, to put it differently, Game of Thrones is a show that’s extraordinary in a lot of ways, but super duper ordinary in a couple of really frustrating ways. (See also: gender politics and the show's directors' repeated befuddlement about how editing works, etc.) The wights are zombies. Regular zombies. They behave the way you’d expect, they summon the same existential dread you’re used to, and they look, shockingly, the way zombies look. This is important because Game of Thrones is not a show about zombies, nor is it even a True Blood-style show that works by accumulating new and different creatures and conjurations. It’s a faux-medieval fantasy series about political intrigue and dragons and terrifying ice men that’s occasionally, jarringly, invaded by the supporting cast of The Walking Dead. Maybe it’s because I’m not a reader of the books—please, don’t @ me—but these particular walking dead have always felt a little, uh, pedestrian, in context of all the other innovations of the show, from its production design to its storytelling architecture.
Right now, I’m close to finishing Jeff VanderMeer’s wonderful “Southern Reach” trilogy of novels. Without going too far into it, it’s a series about a mysterious, malicious, and seemingly invasive (un)natural environment called Area X. The titular Southern Reach is the government organization designed to study and control it. In one sector of this bureaucracy, there is a team of linguists tasked with describing the baffling phenomena and wildlife within Area X, and, at one point in the final novel, Acceptance, we learn that this team of linguists has concluded simply that, “We lack the analogies.” In other words, what exists within Area X is so bizarre, so uncanny, so unlike the world we occupy, that it cannot be adequately described by way of what we already know. Not necessarily that it’s indescribable, but that description makes no sense.
This is what makes the books so unsettling. It’s not that VanderMeer has thrown a bunch of monsters we basically recognize into a forest. And we see them, and we recognize them, and they're scary, so we're scared. It’s that he elaborately describes a bunch of monsters (and flora and fauna) we don’t recognize. Or, instead, monsters we think we recognize until we don’t. This is a tall order, considering that it risks filling the story with nonsense of a different sort. But these novels are so great because they miraculously cantilever description. There is a thing in Area X, called the "topographical anomaly," and no one who sees it can agree on whether it's a tower or a tunnel. There is a creature called “The Crawler” that is both an amorphous blob and a humanoid figure, maybe even a specific person. There are dolphins with human expressions. It’s nuts.
In conjunction with Lili’s piece, that line made me think about how often films and TV series reach for analogy instead of running away from it—and whether that's a short cut or a savvy pivot. Wights, as a concept, share a lot of characteristics with zombies. But on Game of Thrones, they simply are zombies. And that's a little disappointing, right? Another recent example is Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (aping a similar move by Robert Zemeckis’ Contact). The big MacGuffin in that film is the black hole. We don’t know what it looks like inside a black hole. What might it look like? We lack the analogies. And yet, instead of running away from analogy, Nolan hurtles toward it. In a film full of inventive visuals, uncanny landscapes, the black hole is jarringly ordinary. The inside of the black hole, it turns out, looks like the bookshelves in Matthew McConaughey’s daughter’s room. It’s no longer a space indescribable by way of analogy. It’s a machine run on analogy.
Anyway, winter is coming, and maybe it should be weirder.
Finally Started // Lady Dynamite (Netflix)
Flagging // Lady Dynamite (Netflix)
It’s not that I’m out on Maria Bamford’s Lady Dynamite, it’s that I'm not sure how to be into it! So maybe “flagging” isn’t the right word. I think I’m gonna play this one slow. As different as they are in almost every way, I feel like my impulse toward Lady Dynamite is similar to my impulse toward The Americans, a show I love that I have a hard time bringing myself to watch. You haven't seen the last of me, Lady Dynamite.
Finally Finished // Catastrophe (Amazon Prime)
We finished this, like, eight nanoseconds after I sent out the last newsletter. You know how I feel about this show. Maybe binge-watching is alive after all.
Recommendations //
Well, obviously, you should read Jeff VanderMeer’s “Southern Reach” trilogy. I lack the analogies.
And, also obviously, you should read Lili Loofbourow on why magic sucks.
Jamil Smith’s piece on why there needs to be a new Roots is great and moving even if you haven’t watched either yet.
Slate’s “Black Film Canon” is both a fantastic resource and a fun interactive.
I really like K. Austin Collins’ take on the problem of Adam Sandler for The Ringer site.
Kathryn VanArendonk figured out how to write a think-piece about this guy on Bachelorette who aggressively eats lunch meat, and, maybe I'm wrong, but I think this article is enjoyable even if you haven't ever seen the show.
And here's this week's pork chop tip, via the great Zuni Cafe Cookbook: brine.
Abracadabra,
Phil.