learnedfoot

I've been in a bit of a reading slump lately, hence the sudden surge of more movies in a few weeks than I think I watched the whole of last year. But, feeling unable to commit to any new novel, I've been picking away at some interesting nonfiction:

Millennial Love by Olivia Petter is a collection of musings on love, sex and dating in the digital age. It is of absolutely no relevance to me personally, as a millennial who met her husband young, before either online dating or the concept of mobile phone apps in general had quite penetrated the mainstream, but reading it made me wonder how anyone manages to find a partner anymore now that Tinder et all have taken over the market. It sounds absolutely fucking nightmarish out there. The etiquette around read receipts and double texting and Instagram stories is positively Byzantine; I thought I knew how to use social media, but apparently, I really do not. And I think I might be happier that way. Still, this was a very heartfelt, emotionally open book that gave me some insight into what my younger/singler friends and family have been dealing with.

I did roll my eyes extremely hard at this bit:

I've heard the 'I'm shit with my phone' line so many times. Not just from Fuck Boys (see previous chapter) but from friends, too. It's only recently that I've realised it has absolutely nothing to do with being good or bad with your phone. In fact, this phrase is about arrogance. Sheer unadulterated arrogance that leads a person to believe their time is more valuable than someone else's.

Really, Olivia Petter? People not texting you back on your preferred schedule is "sheer unadulterated arrogance"? Come on. Phones are there to help us communicate when we want to, not to force us into a state of mandatory round-the-clock availability. No one thinks we should all be barging into each other's houses uninvited whenever we feel like asking a question or sharing a joke; how does owning a smartphone entitle you to a degree of control over your friends' social schedules that you wouldn't dream of demanding face to face? I plan to continue restricting my use of the device to when it bloody well suits me, and I give all my loved ones my full-throated blessing to do the same; if that puts the damper on friendships with people who see digital unavailability as "arrogance", so much the better for both of us.

I think, though, this is probably a good example of why the whole online dating world described in the book sounds so unbearable to me. I seem to have missed the cutoff for a generational shift that has embraced technology as core to our social lives rather than incidental. I can't imagine getting worked up about somebody texting me twice in a row or taking their time to respond to a non-urgent message, any more than I can imagine getting offended by a salesperson telling me "no problem" instead of "you're welcome"; my older friends would probably be equally baffled by the automatic pang of anxiety and hurt I feel when they end a short text with a period. Etiquette is always so culturally specific; impossible to grasp intuitively from the outside, and almost as hard to recognise as subjective from within.

Murder Under the Microscope by James Fraser is the memoir of a forensic scientist and a selection of the major UK criminal cases he worked on in his career. I've read books in this genre before that seemed to be largely about self-aggrandisement: look at all these important cases I've worked on, and how clever and brave I was in solving them. This is not one of those. Fraser is intensely critical of the whole criminal justice system, and especially of the police; he is less interested in recounting personal triumphs (in most of his case studies, the forensic work he did ended up being irrelevant, inconclusive or intractably problematic) than in debunking myths about the power of forensic evidence. He depicts a field rife with human error at every level, and so poorly understood by the related fields that employ it (ie the police and the courts) that even the highest-stakes investigations are vulnerable to being derailed by misunderstandings and power struggles. In places the writing dragged a bit (the Damilola Taylor case in particular was such a mess of different organisations interfering with each other's work that I kept losing track of who was who) and in other places it seemed at risk of devolving into a hit piece against the Met (Fraser really did not enjoy working with the Met) but overall I found it an interesting, enlightening examination of how what we see as "objective science" is still beholden both to the limits of human skill and accuracy, and to the foibles of the institutions producing it.

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I've also recently read a couple of books about the historical Jesus and the Bible's contradictory positions on sex and marriage. They're both fact-based, not faith-based, but I'm popping them under a cut anyway for those who've already heard more than they care to about Christianity today.

( First Century AD spoilers under the cut )

The Ring (2002) was a reckless stretching of my "no child-related horror" boundary that fortunately did not backfire, mostly because I spoiled myself very thoroughly for the entire plot of the movie before watching a single minute. But with ample forewarning for the bad bits, not only did it not backfire but I actually enjoyed it more than I can remember enjoying a movie in years. This is phenomenally sad and scary paranormal horror about a cursed VHS tape that kills you seven days after you watch it, and a journalist fighting to solve the mystery of the tape before she and her young son succumb to its murderous power. Aesthetically it was exquisite: everything is wretchedly grey and rainy and minimalist, but somehow never dull. The visual horror was like the distilled essence of what the word "horror" means inside my head. The suspense and fear were great, but really the heart of this story is about motherhood, and the beautiful, terrible power mothers have to save or destroy their children.

( Spoilers )

I haven't decided yet if I will watch the sequel, but I almost definitely will watch the original Japanese film that spawned this adaptation.

Hit Man (2023): Philosophy teacher Gary loves his cats, his pot plants, his job, and birdwatching. He is amicably divorced from his ex-wife, who left him because she found him too steady and yearned for a more passionate lover. Good with tech, he works part time for the New Orleans police in a surveillance van attached to undercover missions. One day, the undercover cop he works with gets pulled off duty right before a planned sting, and Gary reluctantly takes over his role as a fake "hit man" whom their would-be murderer target is attempting to hire. He surprises everyone (himself included) by putting on such a stellar performance that he's asked to become the team's permanent undercover guy. He falls into a highly successful routine: drawing on his longstanding interest in human psychology, he researches his targets and creates a tailored persona to cater to each individual's fantasy of what a mythical hit man should be. But when Gary catches feelings for one of his intended targets - Madison, a beautiful housewife who in desperation to escape is considering having her abusive husband killed - his professionalism starts to slip, and his immersion in the tough, suave persona he designed for her starts to escape the bounds of his mission in ways that change his life forever.

This was fun! I don't have a huge amount to say beyond that. It was fun, gleefully silly, and well acted on Gary/Glen Powell's side. (Madison was played by Adria Arjona from Andor, and I can't tell if she genuinely can't act or has just been typecast as a flat, misogyny-tinged "sexy vulnerable girlfriend" whose roles give her nothing to work with.) They took the John Wick approach of making the victims such repulsive humans that you don't feel bad when they bite it. (Note, that is this film's only overlap with John Wick. Despite the title, it is not a murderfest!) It didn't have much by way of substance but was a very enjoyable way to pass two hours.

Crazy Rich Asians (2018) was also fun and also has not inspired me with many deep thoughts. Chinese-American economics professor Rachel Chu accompanies her boyfriend Nick Young on a trip home to Singapore to meet his family, about whom he has thus far in their relationship told her nothing. It turns out that the Young family are Singapore's foremost developers and property owners, a family of obscenely wealthy celebrities; Nick is the presumed heir to the family business and fortune, and his relatives are not impressed by his choice to involve himself with an Americanised nobody. Romcom tropes and high-stakes familial (melo)drama ensue.

Parts of the film felt like a travel ad for Singapore. One very gratuitous hawker centre scene in particular made me ravenous for Singaporean street food; there is also much ooh-ing and aah-ing over the city's architecture, and lavish displays of traditional culture in the family matriarch's mansion. The portrayal of the Young family's wealth played hopscotch along the border between lifestyle porn and existential horror; it's honestly kind of ghastly how rich they are. Like, unthinkably rich. Like, suck-all-the-joy-out-of-life rich. There's a very sad subplot where ( spoilers ) After all the luxury, I also really enjoyed the final scene where ( more spoilers ) Michelle Yeoh was also amazing as the disapproving mother - plot-wise she is firmly the antagonist striving to keep the happy couple apart, but she brought so much heart and nuance to the role that I was honestly half-cheering for her even as I hoped that Nick and Rachel would work things out.

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

~ Mad Girl's Love Song, 1953

This verse was quoted in an unrelated book I was reading; poetry only very rarely grips me as viscerally and immediately as these few lines did. I had to look up the full text online because it wasn't even included in my collected Plath edition. (It was worth looking up. Holy fuck, I love this poem!)

But then I had the collected Plath down from the bookshelf, so I figured I might as well keep reading. Here are some excerpts from a few favourites.

( Soliloquy of the Solipsist )

( Frog Autumn )

( April 18 )

( Dirge for a Joker )

I didn't read cover to cover, but one thing that stood out to me was how many more poems I liked from among the juvenilia than from her published volumes. That could be due to how they were collected - only 50, from a few hundred - but there's also a raw emotionality to these early efforts that connects with me more than some of her more sophisticated, "mature" work.

Also, Mad Girl's Love Song is still my favourite of them all. <3