I read a lot of stuff, and not all of it makes it to my social media feed. “Click Bait” is my weekly roundup of links pertaining to movies, politics, culture and anything else I found generally interesting this week.
Alec Baldwin: “Good Bye, Public Life”
I’m quickly coming to realize that siding with Alec Baldwin is an unpopular opinion, but I found a lot of his essay smart and insightful about the way our media and our culture operate today. A few poor choices of words about him being a homophobe fail to paint the full picture of the man. The verbs thrown at him are the same once used against Michael Richards and Mel Gibson, to name a few, he seems to be fighting a losing battle with the press, and everything that’s being said reflects of this choice line from his piece: “In the New Media culture, anything good you do is tossed in a pit, and you are measured by who you are on your worst day.”
So no, I don’t think Alec Baldwin is a douche.
The common fear this Oscar season is that people increasingly don’t care about awards shows, about the Oscars or about movies. I’ve written as much in suggesting that TV is the new medium of choice, while film is only passionately admired by those in an ever shrinking niche. This fear is explored interestingly in this NY Times piece, and it may be corroborated by a recent poll suggesting that two thirds of Americans have not seen any of the Best Picture nominees.
That puzzling stat though doesn’t seem to ask who all did pay for those tickets to see “Gravity,” i.e. the fifth highest grossing movie of the year.
The Dark Power of Fraternities
First off, this is not another piece bashing bros; it’s a scathing, investigative look at fraternities, particularly their national chapters, the policies put in place and the systemic tragedies and complications that surround them, as an institution, one that’s broken, dangerous and built-in if not corrupt, evil and irreparable. The article is targeted at parents, and one imagines that anyone who reads this will think twice about ever letting their son or daughter enter into the Greek system in college, if not completely ban them from setting foot near a house.
The author probably isn’t crazy about “Animal House” either.
A freshman at Duke University was recently outed (by a frat guy, not surprisingly) as a porn star. She’s received not surprising amounts of ridicule in the process. She gives a convincing defense of why she enjoys doing porn and how it can even be empowering (not for everyone, I’m guessing), but she goes above and beyond when she says, “Women’s ability to be moral actors is wholly dependent on their sexuality. It is, honestly, insane.” Feminism and other forms of intellectual debate on the web has become so polarizing and torn along so many fine lines, and they may find issue with porn in general, her choice to participate or the message her actions send to other women, but that’s superseded by this point about ending slut-shaming and other ways of making women only objects of pent-up sexuality. It stands to reason that a male porn star in this same situation could be a hero rather than vilified, and that double standard needs to change.
The Worst Reviews of the 2014 Best Picture Nominees
One would think with movies this strong this Oscar season, there would be some consensus, but this gathering of quotes for all the nominees shows how even this continues to make film criticism appear as awfully divided and polarizing as this country’s political system. Thankfully, these aren’t just nonsensical, trolling pans but thoughtful pull quotes that raise interesting questions and concerns about all the films (not that I agree with most of them).