I’ll be quite honest here and say that when I first saw Fight Club, I was really into that film, though I definitely followed along with the film which in the end condemns Tyler Durden’s actions as the spiteful atrocities that they are. Thankfully I did not stop short like so many other audience members appear to have, who lionize Durden. Though I could understand that reading as well, I always felt that while the movie makes Tylers actions entertaining, they were also always grotesque to a degree.
A couple of years ago at the height of GamerGate Dan Olson, a.k.a. FoldableHuman, did a great analysis video of Fight Club. One thing that he emphasizes which I could never pinpoint before is how Project Mayhem rebuilds in miniature the corporate structures that the narrator is supposedly trying to rid himself of.
Now today I watched an even stronger analysis by Maggie Mae Fish which goes into even deeper and even bigger meta context, including Fincher’s editing style and how it kind of predicted (and with the above mentioned audience members also kind of “caused”) the resurgence in fascism. The strongest thing about this video is the central thesis with which it opens: That the film isn’t told from Jack’s perspective, but from Tyler’s, and that Jack is just a rhetorical device by Tyler to make Tyler more symphatetic.
Jaimetud is a YouTuber I’ve been watching for years. He finally brought back his popular series From Pages to Pictures after a hiatus spanning nearly two years. In this new episode, he compares A Christmas Story to Jean Shepherd’s books that inspired it.
Nash Bozard (the Radio Dead Air guy) finally uploads some new scripted content, which he hasn’t done since 2017. He revives his series The Musical Chair with a retrospective on the history and importance of the 1959 Fender Bassman, and he also makes a custom build of his own.
Never dug into Sinatra’s work much, but after this video might have to give this album a shot. I feel like I wish I’d heard it at certain times in the past.
Erin Mills is an entertaining YouTuber I’ve been watching for years, and he’s currently doing a retrospective on Superman’s history in the cinema. His latest episode talks about the Superman serials of the late 1940s, and he brings up an interesting case that Clark and Lois constantly violate the rules of ethical reporting. I brought up this episode since the line between accurate journalism and sensational clickbait has gotten increasingly blurred in today’s climate and we certainly need every reminder we have.
A few weeks ago, Snoman Gaming (he’s a lot like Mark Brown where he talks about game design, but he’s much more upbeat and optimistic) made a video on how “clicker” games are examples of bland, manipulative game design.
Fast-forward to a couple of days ago. ingeniousclown posted a response video defending the genre and showing examples of how the genre evolved beyond “watch the numbers grow.” (Snoman even left a comment agreeing and thanking him for introducing him to these games.)
Cookie Clicker was funny when you can simply write a simple script for your mouse and let it click at an obscene rate while off at work. You break the game very quickly.
After a hiatus of nearly three years, Rerez has revived its popular series Positives, where he takes a critically panned game and finds four positives of its design. It also has a new format.