In the 1990s, when religious conservatives waged a war on pornography, PTA depicted adult film actors with humanity and invited us to empathize with the stigmatization they endure. Today, when right-wing authoritarians are waging a war on anti-fascism, PTA has depicted militant leftists with humanity. I'd say both films count as timely political interventions which enriched popular cinema.
I believe "the redemption moment of father and daughter" is better thought of as the passing-of-the-torch letter and her speeding off to a protest in Oakland - not their finally getting smartphones. "To the extent there are any politics here, it is an unreflective centrist conviction that the left is bad and annoying even if, for now, the right is more powerful and dangerous." I suppose Adolph Reed, Norman Finkelstein, Catherine Liu and the Jacobin crew stand guilty of unreflective centrism then. Compared to Ari Aster's 'Eddington', with PTA we're at least given a jolt of revolutionary ardor, as opposed to bleak sardonic 'both sides'-cynicism.
One criticism: the novel Vineland also feared a faceless, computerized form of domination that was still in its infancy - not merely because you can be surveilled and tracked, but because the system may develop a mind all its own - and this is near-totally absent from One Battle After Another. Here the portrait of power is almost exclusively a Skull and Bones-style secret cabal of white supremacists pulling strings behind the scenes.
The phone tree gag arguably exemplifies their critique of performative purity tests - a critique I don't fully endorse but which I also would not level to a kneejerk boring liberalism or no politics at all.
Didn't the rather scary arrest and interrogation of 'Billy Goat' Sommerville engender empathic imagination and exhibit some mourning/genuine regret at the weakness of the contemporary Left? What was an example of a genuine insight into politics you felt Vineland delivered that One Battle After Another did not?
Was reading this and the whole time was thinking 'This is a really interesting read of Pynchon that I haven't seen before, where do you suggest I go for more' and then you answered it. Ordering Vineland and the commentary. Good post otherwise as well. I've seen so many different takes on it and my suspicion is the banal centrism you discuss allows people to impose their own politics on it, which leads to a sort of incoherence of opinion in place of consensus.
A tendentious reading of the film, as far as I can tell. Are Pynchon's mournful insights into the failure of the left (and its subsumption via the Tube and mass culture) largely missing? Yes. But does this mean that PTA doesn't "get" Pynchon? No? For one, you seem to presuppose that OBAA is meant as an adaptation of Vineland, which it isn't. Which is not to say that the tensions between the film and book are not worth reflecting on. I, for one, was missing the ambivalence of Vineland's conclusion and wished that PTA would have done more with Pynchon's attention to the left's (pernicious?) obsession with the camera as a kind of revolutionary weapon. Vineland is ripe for some kind of meta cinematic adaptation. But I don't see how you get from this distance to a claim that the politics of the film display "an unreflective centrist conviction that the left is bad and annoying even if, for now, the right is more powerful and dangerous." What's the evidence for this, exactly, apart from some jabs at the contemporary left? Was Pynchon not also sympathetically criticizing the counter cultural left's obsession with optics? Is the French 75 really presented merely as a kind of adrenaline junkie stunt organization (think Howard Sommerville and the clear DL analogue played by Regina Hall)? Are the jabs at the contemporary left really to be taken unequivocally? Is the bit with the cell phones really a redemption moment? PTA is not Thomas Pynchon, and it seems like you haven't given much thought to the possibility that he might have something different to say.
Okay, non-sarcastically, what do you think PTA has to say here? It would be helpful if you could say what you think about the film instead of just castigating me for not getting it.
I've already pointed to some areas where I think you may be misreading the film, and where more justification is needed. I have my own reading (which I hope to develop at some point), but that's not really the point. It's that it seems as though you haven't made an effort to read the film on its own terms. Kinda sounds like you just already thought PTA was a "Bad Person with Bad Politics" and fashioned an interpretation accordingly.
I had no preexisting opinion on PTA's politics before watching this movie. It simply didn't occur to me. I've liked other previous films of his. I actually managed to watch the movie with no particular preconceptions and formed an opinion about it, which was negative as you saw. I'm saying it's pretty incoherent, which would mean it has no "terms" of its own to be judged by.
"Father’s Day brick biographies" is chef's kissable prose. I'm kinda surprised that "brick biography" isn't an existing term. It has the immediately understandable pithiness of something that should already be in widespread use.
In the 1990s, when religious conservatives waged a war on pornography, PTA depicted adult film actors with humanity and invited us to empathize with the stigmatization they endure. Today, when right-wing authoritarians are waging a war on anti-fascism, PTA has depicted militant leftists with humanity. I'd say both films count as timely political interventions which enriched popular cinema.
I believe "the redemption moment of father and daughter" is better thought of as the passing-of-the-torch letter and her speeding off to a protest in Oakland - not their finally getting smartphones. "To the extent there are any politics here, it is an unreflective centrist conviction that the left is bad and annoying even if, for now, the right is more powerful and dangerous." I suppose Adolph Reed, Norman Finkelstein, Catherine Liu and the Jacobin crew stand guilty of unreflective centrism then. Compared to Ari Aster's 'Eddington', with PTA we're at least given a jolt of revolutionary ardor, as opposed to bleak sardonic 'both sides'-cynicism.
One criticism: the novel Vineland also feared a faceless, computerized form of domination that was still in its infancy - not merely because you can be surveilled and tracked, but because the system may develop a mind all its own - and this is near-totally absent from One Battle After Another. Here the portrait of power is almost exclusively a Skull and Bones-style secret cabal of white supremacists pulling strings behind the scenes.
I did love the skateboarders too though.
> I suppose Adolph Reed, Norman Finkelstein, Catherine Liu and the Jacobin crew stand guilty of unreflective centrism then.
Because they liked the movie?
Because they also complain about annoying 'woke' over-fussiness as a detriment to actionable leftism.
That seems like a really random response to my post.
The phone tree gag arguably exemplifies their critique of performative purity tests - a critique I don't fully endorse but which I also would not level to a kneejerk boring liberalism or no politics at all.
Didn't the rather scary arrest and interrogation of 'Billy Goat' Sommerville engender empathic imagination and exhibit some mourning/genuine regret at the weakness of the contemporary Left? What was an example of a genuine insight into politics you felt Vineland delivered that One Battle After Another did not?
For the last question, I would simply advise you to read the novel.
I have, though I will probably re-read it this year with the movie in mind.
Was reading this and the whole time was thinking 'This is a really interesting read of Pynchon that I haven't seen before, where do you suggest I go for more' and then you answered it. Ordering Vineland and the commentary. Good post otherwise as well. I've seen so many different takes on it and my suspicion is the banal centrism you discuss allows people to impose their own politics on it, which leads to a sort of incoherence of opinion in place of consensus.
A tendentious reading of the film, as far as I can tell. Are Pynchon's mournful insights into the failure of the left (and its subsumption via the Tube and mass culture) largely missing? Yes. But does this mean that PTA doesn't "get" Pynchon? No? For one, you seem to presuppose that OBAA is meant as an adaptation of Vineland, which it isn't. Which is not to say that the tensions between the film and book are not worth reflecting on. I, for one, was missing the ambivalence of Vineland's conclusion and wished that PTA would have done more with Pynchon's attention to the left's (pernicious?) obsession with the camera as a kind of revolutionary weapon. Vineland is ripe for some kind of meta cinematic adaptation. But I don't see how you get from this distance to a claim that the politics of the film display "an unreflective centrist conviction that the left is bad and annoying even if, for now, the right is more powerful and dangerous." What's the evidence for this, exactly, apart from some jabs at the contemporary left? Was Pynchon not also sympathetically criticizing the counter cultural left's obsession with optics? Is the French 75 really presented merely as a kind of adrenaline junkie stunt organization (think Howard Sommerville and the clear DL analogue played by Regina Hall)? Are the jabs at the contemporary left really to be taken unequivocally? Is the bit with the cell phones really a redemption moment? PTA is not Thomas Pynchon, and it seems like you haven't given much thought to the possibility that he might have something different to say.
Gosh, I apologize for totally making up the association between the film and the novel.
Making my point for me. Cheers.
Okay, non-sarcastically, what do you think PTA has to say here? It would be helpful if you could say what you think about the film instead of just castigating me for not getting it.
I've already pointed to some areas where I think you may be misreading the film, and where more justification is needed. I have my own reading (which I hope to develop at some point), but that's not really the point. It's that it seems as though you haven't made an effort to read the film on its own terms. Kinda sounds like you just already thought PTA was a "Bad Person with Bad Politics" and fashioned an interpretation accordingly.
I had no preexisting opinion on PTA's politics before watching this movie. It simply didn't occur to me. I've liked other previous films of his. I actually managed to watch the movie with no particular preconceptions and formed an opinion about it, which was negative as you saw. I'm saying it's pretty incoherent, which would mean it has no "terms" of its own to be judged by.
"Father’s Day brick biographies" is chef's kissable prose. I'm kinda surprised that "brick biography" isn't an existing term. It has the immediately understandable pithiness of something that should already be in widespread use.
In terms of politics I took the image of an actual functioning Sanctuary City as the literal and metaphorical heart of the movie, intended or not.
Yes, that is a good point. (And the first substantive, non-complaining response I've gotten from someone who saw value in the movie!)