Bildungsroman Blitz: January 2021

The January media log is a little heavy on the trigger warnings. Also, Pokémon.

Feb 01, 2021

Welcome to Bildungsroman Blitz, a newsletter dedicated to one storytelling enthusiast’s media recs and occasional hot takes. Each month I will compile a brief list of what I consider to be the most compelling/thought-provoking/downright fun storytelling media I encountered in the previous few weeks. These could be plays, films, books, television, podcasts, video games, extended roleplaying campaigns: you name it. It won’t necessarily be what’s new in pop culture - it just means that I am new to the material.

That being said, this month the list is fairly current. It also skews more towards the “thought-provoking” end of the scale than “downright fun” this time around. Any of my friends will tell you that I am an angsty ex-Catholic who turns to the storytelling well for visceral reactions, emotional catharsis, and a good cry, so….probably won’t be the last time.

Promising Young Woman (film, 2020)

Trigger Warning: This film, and consequently my writing about it, may be triggering for survivors of sexual or gendered violence.

Written and directed by Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman is a film that had been on my radar ever since I first saw a trailer for it a year ago, back when the COVID-19 pandemic was just a glimmer in our eyes. (Or a very real possibility, if you were my scientist boyfriend). My impression from the trailer was that this was going to be a revenge thriller, with a subversive feminist twist. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2020, and was set to be released theatrically in April 2020. A limited theatrical release was pushed back to Christmas 2020, and now it has been released on video on demand, which is how I watched it.

I wanted to start my mini-review off by saying that I was glad I didn’t actually remember much of the trailer, because this is a film that rewards going in fresh. But then I realized what a privileged perspective that was. I am not a survivor of sexual assault, and I can’t know which of my readers are, so I can’t in good conscience recommend everyone watch it. What I can do is tell you what I got out of it, as relates to my own personal experience. I’m going to include a link round-up at the end with lots of other perspectives on the film, including different survivors’ perspectives. But first, let’s talk about David Foster Wallace Bros.

Carey Mulligan and Christopher Mintz-Plasse in the movie — Carey Mulligan and Christopher Mintz-Plasse in "Promising Young Woman." (MERIE WEISMILLER WALLACE/FOCUS FEATURES)

The casting in Promising Young Woman is probably the best thing about it. Cassie (Carey Mulligan) is constantly interacting with men played by a Who’s Who of Dorks of Christmas Past: Adam Brody, Bo Burnham, and in the scene that had me howling and cringeing at the same time, Christopher Mintz-Plasse. McLovin himself.

The scene literally starts with his character recommending David Foster Wallace to Cassie, a phenomenon most famously dissected in Deirdre Coyle’s aptly-titled essay, “Men Recommend David Foster Wallace to Me”. It’s enough of a meme that I wrote an entire short play about about the complicated relationship between women and David Foster Wallace. The play starts with a first date gone wrong, where the man—think a typical startup bro—can’t help but talk over and dismiss the woman—a professional writer—when it comes to her area of expertise. Cassie’s first date with Neal, Mintz-Plasse’s character, goes wrong in an entirely different way, but it shares one thing in common with the scene I wrote: a man’s lack of interest in getting to know a woman beyond superficial details, of developing real empathy for her outside of her potential as a sex object for him. In my scene, the woman describes the ripple effects of society prioritizing stories from the male perspective:

“And because we [men] hold this up as the ultimate representation of the human experience, you [women] will remain adrift from the shores of our empathy…”

Cassie’s mission in Promising Young Woman is, in part, to show guys like Neal just how adrift women are from the shores of a Nice Guy’s empathy. In doing so, she exposes the rot at the core of socialized male behavior when it comes to pursuing romantic and sexual relationships with women. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time:

Maddie Gaw (she/her) @Maddieturg

Because the line between negging and sexually explicit DMs and rape is LESS LONG THAN YOU THINK

Cathartic is not the word I’d use to describe Promising Young Woman. Captivating is. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this movie since I saw it. The music, the visuals, the performances. The way it squeezed my heart and pumped my adrenaline up before sinking me back down into my couch again, into reality. It’s a reality where I have to write “the late Daisy Coleman”, and it’s also a reality where I can look at Chanel Miller’s artwork in my own backyard. I bring up Coleman and Miller because their experiences, if not consciously threaded through Promising Young Woman, were certainly in the film for me.

Link Roundup (spoilers abound)

Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon (animated series, 2016-2017)

And now for something completely different.

When I was still very young, my mother was somewhat restrictive when it came to my media intake. Just for context, this is a woman who had no problem letting me watch numerous R-rated movies by the time I was in middle school (if the R-rating was just because of language). She was wary of anime, but did not outright forbid it. However, video games Did Not Exist in our household. This meant I missed out on Pokémon as a general concept, because a) I couldn’t play the video games, b) had to be sparing in my anime consumption (Sailor Moon all the way, baby), and c) was too cripplingly shy to want to acquire or trade Pokémon cards with other children.

I am giving you all this preamble because there wasn’t a lot to suggest to me that I could get much value out of a long-running animated series created to support a set of games I never played, aimed at the child I no longer was. But if anything, this lack of familiarity made me ripe for exploring the Pokémon universe with a curious mind.

Examples of questions I have asked my boyfriend while watching this show:

Is this a capitalist or socialist economy? Do the humans have universal healthcare, or is it just the Pokémon?
What are the requirements to be a Pokémon? Must you just be able to utter a word that is your name? Do all Pokémon have to fight? What do Pokémon think of domesticated animals? Are there domesticated animals in this universe?
What is the job market like? What are the non-Pokémon-based professions, and is there any formal schooling required?

And perhaps the most important question I asked was:

Why do you always skip the Team Rocket scenes?

The reason this is so important is because historically, Team Rocket (or specifically, Jessie, James and Meowth) had been utilized as comic relief villains who posed no real threat to Ash Ketchum, and whose appearences were strictly formulaic. When you’re an adult streaming this show, and not a kid watching one episode a week, the formula is beyond grating.

But what if I told you that the major selling point of Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon is that Team Rocket has the best storyline?

Team Rocket (Jessie, James, Meowth, Bewear, Mareanie, and Mimikyu) — One big happy family in “Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon.” (THE POKÈMON COMPANY INTERNATIONAL)

Something I noticed immediately when watching Pokémon was that everyone respects one another. Sure, characters will butt heads and have rivalries with other trainers, but no one was belittling anyone else’s skills. Maybe it’s the result of going through 2020—a year of intense isolation from other people and acrimonious discourse in all areas of life—but I found this genuinely moving and refreshing. In Sun & Moon, the 20th-22nd seasons of the anime, the caring and kind nature of this universe ramps up even more. And it comes, of all places, from Team Rocket.

I’m a sucker for a Found Family storyline, and Team Rocket gets one, thanks to the MVP of these episodes, a momma bear named Bewear. While things get off to a rocky start (technically Bewear kidnaps Team Rocket? And force feeds them honey? Don’t ask), it soon becomes evident that Bewear really cares for the well-being of Jessie, James, and their Pokémon—far more than Giovanni and the other higher-ups at Team Rocket do. This triggers an existential crisis for Jessie and James; they acknowledge that they are a lot more successful at running a malasada stand than they ever have been at doing their actual jobs. And they take time to really care for their new Alolan Pokémon companions, Mimikyu and Mareanie.

But it’s not just that the Team Rocket family all care about each other. Their empathy extends to Pokémon outside their circle, even when there’s nothing in it for them. Meowth in particular plays a significant role in the life of a young Litten who eventually becomes Ash’s Pokémon. Even though the Litten is now technically “The Enemy”, Meowth keeps tabs on it as it evolves into a Torracat, and later an Incineroar. Ash’s bond with Litten? Tired. Meowth’s bond with Litten? Inspired.

(Just kidding Ash, you’re doing amazing sweetie)

One Night in Miami (film, 2020; play, 2013)

With a quick sidebar about Soul (film, 2020)

Written by Kemp Powers and directed by Regina King, One Night in Miami is an adaptation of Powers’ play of the same name, a play that I have been thinking about ever since I first read it in 2014. What I really liked about One Night in Miami at the time I read it was that it mostly overcame the dramatic pitfalls of the docudrama. And it largely did so on the strength of its portrayal of these icons as men, not myths. Cassius Clay (not yet Muhammad Ali), Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown are all in the same room, and while the play can’t entirely avoid exposition-laden dialogue about how famous these men all are, it’s mostly about their friendship.

The film adaptation keeps all of the play’s strengths, but also does an amazing job of opening up the world of the play to make it feel like a real film. So often when you adapt a play for film, what works to a play’s advantage—being locked in one room with the same people—becomes static up on the big screen. One Night in Miami expertly adds prologues for each character, taking us to the boxing ring and the Copacabana and an old Georgia plantation. It also manages to (in my opinion) improve the emotional climax, which involves Sam Cooke sharing “A Change is Gonna Come” for the first time. It’s a moment that’s stuck with me ever since I read the play, and it got me again this time around in a brand new way.

L to R: Leslie Odom Jr., Eli Goree, Kingsley Ben-Adir, and Aldis Hodge in "One Night in Miami." (PATTI PERRET/AMAZON)

If the name Kemp Powers is ringing a bell for anyone, it might be because he co-wrote and co-directed Pixar’s Soul. Soul was…contentious, to say the least, and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it as a pure expression of Powers as a storyteller, since that film seems equally driven by Pete Docter, best known for helming previous Pixar tearjerkers Up and Inside Out. That being said, I recommend reading criticism—positive and negative—of Soul from Black writers. My one note about Soul is that this line said by a particular character—

“I’m just afraid that if I died today, then my life would have amounted to nothing.”

—followed by a cut to that character’s mother looking absolutely devestated left me a wreck. I don’t know if Powers or Docter is responsible, but I absolutely did not need to be attacked like that.

I sincerely hope that we get more movies, and plays, from Kemp Powers. What I love most about his writing and the worlds he inhabits is how he recontextualizes Black history for the present. Besides One Night in Miami, his play Little Black Shadows is inspired by slave narratives gathered by the Works Progress Adminstration (narratives that, primarily gathered by White writers, reflected a more sanitized view of slavery) and the horrors hiding between the lines. One of his bleaker plays, Christa McAullife’s Eyes Were Blue, takes on the 1980s by looking at the insidious ways Black students in a magnet program are subtly and not-so-subtly shaped and shafted by situations where teachers try to treat these gifted students like they live in a vacuum, untouched by the outside world of racism—refusing to acknowledge that the racism is coming from inside the classroom.