There's a thing where you can look up your primal astrological sign, and mine is a salmon. Which means, essentially, that you are devoted to one thing, and you swim upstream for your whole life. You get shredded, take a beating, reach fruition, and then you die. I'm a salmon.
heated rivalry 1.01
sorry but I actually do love that pluribus is “slow” I love that it lingers a bit too long and makes you watch characters walk all the way across rooms and load things into their cars and listen to entire voicemails I love that a 50 minute episode might have a few dozen lines of dialogue I love that it’s nearly impossible for it to be a “second screen” show maybe I love slow!!!!!!!
As I understand it (thanks to my big-brained friend sam notedchampagne ily sam) one of the main things this show is trying to communicate is the real cost that everything we see done has. Work, time, effort, coordination - when the hive is getting Carol her 'pirate lady', we see her walk to the platform, we are made to consider the expertise it takes to make a plane work by seeing every turbine turn on; we see the plane take off, we see her arrive at the airport, we see her take a shower, we see the multiple people preparing her outfit and hair, we see her get dressed. When Carol asks for her supermarket back, we see the trucks, we see the dozen or so people putting it back together, we see the clock tick up an hour or so. Pluribus is slow specifically because it wants to make you sit with that, and thus understand what it means you see the characters engaging with the hive and asking it for things.
To Carol, the other humans, and the viewer, it may seem like the hive are miracle-workers. But they're not. Every single thing they do requires tangible effort and resources. And all of it has a cost.
like... who is clamouring for more shows and movies about LA? who is desperate to see another romantic comedy about a struggling actress? what happened to like... working at a bank and living outside Des Moines? i fucking guarantee you more Americans can relate to living near a small city and working a dead-end job than like interning on the NBC lot or whatever the fuck Rachel Sennot is doing
I see people commenting about Girls and... surprise! I also hate shows about New York, but not as much, and not for the same reason
Media set in NYC very often fundamentally centers around a quintessential 'New York-ness' where the relatable experience is largely just existing in NYC (the city is a character in and of itself). There can be a similar issue with navel-gazing, where they like to position the main character as this sort of 'everyman', or, with the emphasis on locationality, 'every-New-Yorker' (ex. Lena Dunham Girls, Carrie SATC, Sienfield, ect). This, of course, can lead to issues of representation as the 'average New Yorker' they are trying to portray is too rich and/or too white.
But... honestly, I think media set in New York often comes from a fundamentally less self-important worldview than media set in LA. A worldview befitting someone who lives in a dense city- one that understands we may not all have the same privileges, job, etc., but that most New Yorkers have taken a cab during rush hour, eaten in a diner with friends, or ridden the bus from time to time. And in addition to enjoying the spectacle of the novel, non-New Yorkers can certainly generalize those experiences to their own lives + cities, as well.
The problem I see with media from LA is that it's written largely for an LA-based audience. This is why an LA version of Girls could never work- nothing is generalizable for someone not from LA. Experiences they treat as universal, like aspiring to fame and fortune, are completely unrelatable to the average person, and we're meant to feel empathy for an otherwise-privileged-white-failson because they don't achieve or haven't yet achieved every aspect of their dream.
Not only that, it treats the non-LA audience as this kind of stupid judge- they need to please us, but they hate us, and we have no taste (this might even be a named conflict in the film). I can practically hear the writing room giggling at all the in-jokes and niche industry references they expect to go right past those of us from the 'Fly-Over states', while jokes attempting to satirize LA culture feel heavy-handed and forced. It feels like such an obvious example of privileged culture-machers picking which parts of the culture are okay to critique. As if the writer is staring you directly in the eye, saying, 'Okay, I'm giving you permission to laugh at us. Now laugh.'
Basically im one of the “cool” queers… im not like those bluey adults, antis, who like roblox and don’t have sex, bluesky pureteens…
I smoke weeed. I smoke drugs. I like hyperpop and moster energy. Im a freak, a weirdo in your DNI. And im dark too… ive read homoerotic middle aged man yaoi that would put kafka to shame, i have orobelmarics kinks and fucksex. Sooo ya. Be afraid
Listen/purchase: A thousand lies by Smerz
