Elsewhere

A gaggle of shorter pieces of writing published elsewhere on the internet over the last couple of days. First, at the magazine ArtReview, I have a short piece about multiverses and how they're used by franchises like the MCU as well as smaller films like Everything Everywhere All at Once:

This kind of appeal to recognition can serve as a pleasant garnish. One of the earliest on-screen multiverse stories, the Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019-2020), took a great deal of pleasure in bringing together previous inhabitants of DC characters from projects old (Burt Ward from the original Batman TV series, 1966-1968), failed (Ashley Scott from the short-lived Birds of Prey, 2002-2003) and wildly successful (Kevin Conroy, the voice of Batman from the beloved animated series, 1992-1995).

At its worst, however, it feels like a kind of anti-story. As Tony Soprano once put it, "remember when" is the lowest form of conversation. When John Krasinski appears in the latest Doctor Strange and is introduced as the scientist Reed Richards (aka the superhero 'Mr Fantastic'), the audience's mind isn’t meant to be on the story. It's meant to be wondering: does this mean Krasinski is the official casting for Reed? Does it mean there’s going to be a Fantastic Four movie? The Marvel Cinematic Universe often feels like a perpetual motion machine, in which every story is important less for itself than for what it promises for the next story. The multiverse might just be a more efficient way of achieving that motion.

Second, I have a post at Lawyers, Guns & Money about the third season of Netflix's animated anthology series Love, Death + Robots. As you may have seen on twitter, I find this show increasingly frustrating, in no small part because the science fiction stories it chooses to adapt are almost invariably by (a rather small group of) white men. I expand on this in the post, as well as suggesting several stories by authors outside that narrow category that could work as episodes of the show.

There have been thirty-five Love, Death + Robots episodes. Something like thirty of them are based on a previously-published short stories. Only one of those stories is by a woman. (Also, only one of those stories—not the same one—is by a person of color.) And frankly, that's not only reprehensible in its own right, but it tells in the final product. There's a certain laddishness to the stories the show chooses to tell, a disinterest in the inner life of anyone but manly, taciturn men. Bug hunt stories abound, and despite the show identifying itself as science fiction, there is no shortage of episodes that are just plain horror, whose appeal seems primarily to be watching a lot of people get torn to bits cinematically ("The Secret War" in season 1; "The Tall Grass", season 2; "Bad Traveling", season 3). Though some episodes have female protagonists, there are also a lot of stories where women exist to be ogled ("The Witness", season 1) or fucked ("Beyond the Aquilla Rift", season 1; "Snow in the Desert", season 2).

Finally, over at my tumblr, I have some thoughts on the fourth season of Stranger Things (or rather, the first part of the fourth season of Stranger Things, as the last two episodes won't be released until July). I've previously categorized this show as disposable fun, and I was surprised by how well the new season worked for me, how the show seemed finally to have worked out how to use its setting and premise in the most effective ways.

So what happened? For starters, the fourth season of Stranger Things is the first where the show's nostalgia feels interesting, and even a little thorny. For the first time, we're addressing not just the pop culture products of the 80s, but the culture itself, and the ways in which it was poisonous. Chiefly, this is through a running thread in which the satanic/D&D panic arrives in Hawkins, and dovetails with the season's menace - a being from the Upside Down who is killing teenagers - to implicate the town burnout and leader of its D&D club, Eddie.

It's a really obvious development given the period and the main characters' geeky pursuits. But not one you'd necessarily expect from a show that has, until this point, treated its setting with what almost felt like studied neutrality. (See, for example, the complete absence of any sense that Robin or Will - the two characters most likely to feel stifled and even threatened in a small Midwestern town in the 80s - are desperate or even interested in getting out.) But by having Hawkins turn on Eddie - and forcing the main characters to take sides for or against him, and to recognize that their parents and teachers aren't capable of distinguishing a harmless hobby from actual monsters - the show creates a sense of menace it never had before. Suddenly, the Upside Down seems like the less scary option.