I Care a Lot, It's a Sin, and #throwbackTUMBLR
Girlbosses and gays, plus suddenly it's 2014 again
Hello!
On this week’s episode of Criticism Is Dead, we discuss I Care a Lot, a polarizing and deeply cynical(?) film, and It's a Sin, a limited series that's as tender as it is devastating.
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04:42 I Care a Lot, streaming on Netflix, is ostensibly about a toxic white girlboss, but the extent to which the film is in on the joke is kinda hard to parse.
It’s a black comedy crime caper thriller that, I’m sure, is meant to be ironic, but the question is if the layers of irony are all working at the right levels. All the characters are morally awful by design: she abuses elders! he discards lives to smuggle drugs! they’re a match made in ruthless capitalism and exploitation heaven! It’s fine if there’s no one to root for, but it’s difficult to figure out whether or not this is on purpose, meant to create an uncomfortable kind of cognitive/moral dissonance whenever you do start to feel aligned with any of the characters. As Pelin points out, if your audience can’t really tell, then is your storytelling sharp enough to be successful?
The film is entertaining, for sure, but it basically only works if you accept it as just cynical beyond belief. Again, this is fine, but it might leave you feeling pretty hollow.
Meanwhile, the real horror is the system that allows and rewards this kind of legal guardianship/conservatorship abuse. (Here’s the New Yorker feature on the topic that I mention.) Protect your parents and grandparents, get them to grant a trusted loved one power of attorney before a Marla Grayson comes along!
19:47 It's a Sin, out on HBO Max, is about coming of age in 1980s London, amid the AIDS crisis.
This 5-episode series is is classic Russell T. Davies: speeding through plot points, letting the endearing characters guide us through their lives, and then slowly letting the AIDS crisis drip in until it sweeps away everything in its path, much like how a disease like this can wreak havoc on a community.
As Pelin says, one of the best things about this show is how bright and young it feels, especially towards the beginning. So much of queer TV is intentionally so: depicting the joy of queerness, the beauty in chosen family and community, the way sex is a taste of freedom and unbound pleasure. That makes it feel all the more devastating when things take a turn for the worse, when effervescence is poisoned by tragedy and cruelty that kill.
There are some ways that this show could have been improved, we think, including by fleshing out some of the supporting characters a bit more. Overall, though, It’s a Sin is absolutely worth a watch — but be warned, between the subject matter and any resonances you may feel with our current pandemic, you’re probably going to cry!!!
32:06 Plus, culture notes about the ways in which Tumblr has resurfaced in internet culture lately.
For one, there’s a recent “you just had to be there” meme(?) that is pure nostalgia(?) idk I would look through a keyword search but it’s been taken over by K-pop stans, so allow me to just share some of Pelin’s favorite examples:
But even more significantly, the creator of the popular Tumblr blog Your Fave Is Problematic has finally come forward — and it’s someone who was just a grieving teenager at the time.
Bonus links
Minari is finally available on demand!
In this house we love Seth Rogen :’)
Also Jason Sudeikis:
An interview with Cord Jefferson, the journalist-turned-TV writer we all aspire to be.
I wrote this about the anti-Asian attacks a couple weeks ago and I don’t know if it can fully encapsulate all the conflicted thoughts and ways I’m trying to mentally, emotionally sort through this. (Well, duh, I had to write it through the lens of food, which is always a bit of a stretch whenever I just want to write something.) But anyway, I don’t know if it still stands, if you’ve read something that is helping you get through this, please send it my way.
Okay bye!
— Jenny
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Some credits:
Music: REEKAH
Artwork and design: Sara Macias and Andrew Liu