June Update: Research Hole

Hey team!

A Video In July

Happy July! As I hinted in the last update, the next video will come out this month. It is shaping up to be a big ol' longo, so I'm taking my time with it.

Since last we spoke I have done a crapton of research into action cinema and how feminist/race/queer theory relate to it. I keep joking with my friends that the video's taking as long as it is because I'm having so much fun researching it! This work is extremely my jam, and after months of talking politics, it's been exactly the breath of air I need.

Right now, I have a partially finished script and some preliminary editing on the video. A confession: my hope was to have the script done by the end of June, but I jumped into a deep well of academic papers towards the end of the month that have greatly enriched the project, but have pushed back the scriptwriting somewhat. Now instead of spending all of July editing, I'm going to be going back and forth between editing and writing, which can kind of feel like laying the train tracks while you ride them. But I'm very glad I did that reading, because it's making the video better!

Fruits Of My Labor

Part of my research has been studying action movies, which means I've seen a lot of films I'd never watched before. And a few have been fascinating (and, in some cases, long overdue) discoveries for me, so let's take a moment to discuss them.

Here are some noteworthy movies I've watched in preparation for the next video:

Thelma & Louise - For all the film history classes I've taken, the feminist theory classes, the film production classes, I'd still never actually watched Thelma & Louise. So what shocked me, having read so many allusions to the movie, was just how joyful it was. It starts out mundane, even kind of boring, but as it goes on the material being engaged with gets darker while the tone gets more boisterous. It's like every time something terrible happens the movie responds by getting more fun. If you've had Thelma & Louise in the back of your mind as something you should really get around to someday, get around to it. It's wonderful.

The Villainess - Recommended by a patron - thanks, Ryan! - this was a gonzo Korean action movie that... I don't even really know how to describe it? A lot of the action scenes are built around these long, unbroken takes that aren't even trying to hide the fact that they are actually many separate takes stitched together. There's this thread of high artificiality mixed with ridiculous spectacle. And the plot is extreme melodrama that is about as wild as the action. I haven't seen anything quite so go-for-broke in a while, so I would highly recommend it if you can handle the levels of gore involved.

Point Break - Another major oversight: I had never seen Point Break before. (Not the remake.) In fact, outside of The Hurt Locker, I'd never seen any Kathryn Bigelow before, either, and now I need to immediately see everything else she's done. It was wild to discover that Bigelow, more than any other action director of the pre-Bay era, seems like a direct inspiration to Michael Bay himself. She employs that same epic scale to everything that Bay does, with the same penchant for low-angled tight shots. But, unlike Bay, her frames aren't as cluttered, her action is readable, her pacing allows for quiet time, and she has an eye not just for spectacle but for actual beauty. I know nothing else has the critical pedigree of Point Break and The Hurt Locker, but I'm going to be devouring her work now.

G.I. Jane - I would love for someone to remake G.I. Jane who actually understands how institutional sexism works. Because this movie brushes up against several issues and even makes some astute observations about them, but never commits to having an opinion on them, goes out of its way to reassure men in the audience that they're not bad guys, and rests the whole affair on the idea that all women have to do to be treated as equals in male spaces is excel. I've spent enough time in men's spaces to know that excellence from women will always been downplayed, discounted, or simply ignored, and that sexism isn't a simple hearts and minds issue. But when G.I. Jane starts to say something, here and there, what it almost says is often wise. It's not a good movie, but it could have been.

That's it for now.

Channel Traffic

The last video did very well for itself at launch, to a degree I wasn't quite expecting. It is the first video to do This Is Phil Fish numbers at launch. I've spent my entire career assuming nothing I produce will ever be as popular as TIPF and making my piece with that. It hasn't had remotely near the longevity of TIPF - that big launch was followed by a sharper drop-off than the video before it - but still. It was something else.

Another landmark is, just this past week, I broke 100,000 subscribers! Apparently this means YouTube is going to mail me one of those silver plaques, which... I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but cool! I also think this is one of the hurdles to getting verified on YouTube, though I'm not sure what getting verified does for me...

And, finally, it appears that though the Smash video is going to overtake This Is Phil Fish as the most popular thing I've ever done later today. At last count, it was behind by only 54 views, and right now it gets about 10x as many views per day as TIPF. Also, I did the math, and it seems likely that both videos are going to break 1 million views this year, which is another ridiculous landmark.

I guess now is as good a time as any to say thank you. You folks have been wonderful, and I know some of you have been watching the channel since my first essay, just over 4 years ago. Doing this work makes me very happy, even when it's kind of stressful, and I wouldn't trade it for any other job. I get to do this work thanks to you awesome folks, so, in case I don't say it enough: thank you again. :D

I'll touch base with y'all soon with a new video!

-I