Uncategorized – The Hopeless Academic

Why is the webhead so lucrative? An answer to The Daily Wire

The content below may contain spoilers for the new movie, Spider-Man: No Way Home. Do with this information what you will.

I am a fan of the web-head. I have been a fan of the classic Peter Parker since I was in middle school. And as such, I have consumed a lot of Spider-Man content over the years, from television shows, to comics, to live action movies (yes, all eight of them.) I very much enjoyed the latest installment: Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Apparently, I’m not alone. According to The Daily Wire, Spider-Man pulled in $253 million dollars domestically on opening weekend alone. Which, thanks to Covid, hasn’t happened in a long time.

In my perusing the internet after watching the movie (mostly to validate my own feelings towards it), I came across an article by The Daily Wire (yes, that same article that I referred not two sentences ago) that made me pause. It suggested that the reason the webhead made so much money was because it wasn’t woke—no LGBTQ+ stuff, no racial politics, etc. While I don’t tend to watch “woke” movies, I did find this assertion odd. I think it displays a remarkable misunderstanding of the webhead, the MCU, and the fanbase, so, in true “me” fashion, I decided, “Hey, why not pick this article into oblivion?”

So, let’s take a walk through this article, refuting it point by point. I will be taking quotes from the article: “‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Suggests Movie Fans Are Fed Up With Woke Propoganda.”

I’ll start with the premise of the article, which cites Breitbart as its source: ““Newsflash: If you make a decent movie that seeks to entertain and move — instead of lecture and shame — we will show up,” John Nolte wrote. “‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ does precisely that. You will not only have a great time at the movies again, but there’s no gay, transsexual, or racial nonsense. This movie is about only one thing: Delivering the goods.””

Premise: This movie is “good” because there is no “transsexual, gay, or racial nonsense.” Okay, fine. Let’s see how they back this claim up.

Their first point: “Black Widow bombed because of overtly feminist themes that superseded the central narrative. Eternals had a similar issue because audiences saw the extraordinarily politically correct agenda and rebelled against it.”

I’d like to disagree with the claims made about these movies, and I will briefly point out this article seems to make a logic flaw. If these movies “bombed,” it does not necessarily mean that if you do the opposite of what these films do, i.e. “be woke,” that you will end up with a successful movie. But given that this is the point the article makes, let’s look at why these two movies in particular didn’t do well. Given the fact that all of these movies (Black Widow, Eternals, and Spidey) were released at differing stages of the pandemic, it’s good to take a quick look and see how Covid was doing for each of these.

Black Widow was released on July 9, 2021. This was around the time life was “getting back to normal.” Which theoretically means that if people really were excited about this movie, they could have gone to the theater maskless and watched Black Widow as if it were an entirely normal experience, and the movie should have been a smashing success. Assuming “bombed” means “did poorly at the box office,” then the article would be correct: Black Widow made $80.4 million on opening weekend—less than half the revenue Spidey cashed in at the end of his debut, which seems to indicate that fans weren’t willing to spend their money to watch this movie in theaters.

But this movie wasn’t just released in theaters. This movie was released on Premier Access with Disney+, which meant that if you wanted, you could pay $30 for a month to watch the movie as many times as you liked. Disney didn’t delay the release of Widow on Disney+, either—both the streaming service and the theatrical release were simultaneous. Typically, if fans want to watch a movie multiple times before the DVD or streaming service release, they have to go to the theater, paying the ticket price over and over again rather than a one-time fee, and this spending adds to the overall gross of the film (though in all likelihood would not affect the bottom line on opening day). With the streaming service, as everyone knows, you pay a one-time flat fee and the movie is yours forever (well, yours on the “cloud,” whatever that is). My guess? People mooched off the one person they knew who had a Disney+ account and was willing to splurge for the $30 Premier Access streaming fee. The streaming release affected the film’s box office performance to the point that Scarlett Johansson, the title actress, sued Disney over the fact that she wasn’t able to get the bonuses associated with said box office. (And that situation is a whole different can of worms.)

Now, to the actual point they’re making about feminism: I actually don’t really know what they’re talking about. I watched this movie—while it is a “girl power” movie, meaning there is a fair amount of women handing out unrealistic beatings to men, I didn’t necessarily think anything was “overtly feminist.” Honestly? I thought it was kinda cute. So we could safely say that Widow didn’t bomb because it was feminist, it most likely bombed because of the circumstances of the release.

Eternals faired even worse at the box office: $71.3 million on opening weekend domestically. Why the poor turnout? Well, there could be several reasons for this one—one could be that the film was released November 5, 2021. It is during cold and flu season, so the more cautious among us may have felt the desire to stay indoors. The reason The Daily Wire is implying it did poorly? Eternals features a gay couple kissing.

While it’s entirely possible that some people boycotted this movie for that reason alone, the more likely reason is they have no desire to watch yet another Marvel movie for characters they know nothing about. If we’re honest, absolutely no one knows who the Eternals are. They are a very niche group of heroes, and most casual comic-book fans (which is currently the majority of the MCU’s audience) would know them only tangentially at best. Marvel has turned some obscure superhero groups into box-office hits (Guardians of the Galaxy and Big Hero 6), but those were marketed as fun summer blockbusters with goofy jokes. No one knew who the Eternals were, no one cared to know, and they don’t affect the main MCU storyline we’ve already invested one-and-a-half decades working on.

Also, this might just be me living under a rock, but I saw zero ads for this movie. I didn’t know it had come out until after the conservatives were freaking out about gay characters onscreen. Marketing left something to be desired for this one, if you ask me.

Last, the article makes this point: “No Way Home has Peter Parker (Tom Holland) visit Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) with the request that everyone forgets he’s a superhero. But our leading man quickly learns that actions have consequences. Peter Parker makes mistakes, but the movie also includes a place for second chances and redemption. Plus, there are nods to American pride in the film, which is virtually nonexistent in the rest of Hollywood.”

The point I assume the article attempts to make is that because there are brief moments of American pride, and Peter Parker doesn’t treat himself as a victim, this movie did well at the box office. I’m not entirely sure what “nods to American pride” the article is referencing. There is a fight on the Statue of Liberty, which has been recently renovated to hold Cap’s shield (in honor of his sacrifice? I didn’t know and didn’t care). I’m assuming that’s what this means. Oddly enough, while this article praises the “American pride,” I actually found it startlingly lacking—for a Spider-Man movie.

Spider-Man movies typically have heavy American imagery. In most movies (including ones with Holland, the MCU’s pick for Spidey), he’s seen posing with a flag in the background. This might appear to be an odd choice, considering Captain America would be considered a more appropriate character for American pride, but it was a very deliberate decision made in the first live-action Spider-Man starring Tobey Maguire.

You see, Spider-Man was released in May of 2002. Nine months prior to the release of the Raimi movie, America experienced 9/11. Two planes deliberately crashed into the World Trade Center, murdering thousands and shattering the illusion that America was untouchable. In the months following that attack, national American pride was at an all-time high, and countries all over the world were showing solidarity. Spider-Man also found a way to support the U.S.A.—there flags everywhere, yes, but some of the most iconic shots feature the webhead clinging to a flagpole flying the American flag. He’s from NYC, after all. Ever since then, American flags dot Spidey’s background. The movie has “nods to American pride,” because at this point, they’re basically required; it’s not because the webslinger is responding to woke Hollywood.

So, to recap, The Daily Wire basically says that No Way Home did well because it wasn’t woke like Widow or Eternals, and has a few American moments in it.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Pitting Spider-Man against any hero is unfair—box-office wise, at least. Spider-Man is the most popular superhero globally, which is an impressive feat considering his competition is Superman, Batman, and Wonder-Woman, three iconic characters from Detective Comics created decades before the web-slinger. The U.S.A. crowns Spidey as its favorite hero—above Captain America, Iron Man, and Batman. Spider-merch sells—you really think a child is going to want an Eternals happy meal toy when he could have a pair of cheap webshooters? (Fun fact— we did get a cheap pair of webshooters in a happy meal once, and I also got an Eternals toy much more recently. The webshooters were cooler.) A fairer comparison would be pitting Spider-Man against the Nolan Batman trilogy—perhaps they aren’t on the same cinematic playing field, but The Dark Knight did end up making $1 billion dollars in the box-office worldwide (not on opening weekend, but still an impressive number.)

What makes Spider-Man such a beloved character is Peter Parker, his alter ego. He has been such a massive success as a character because his personal life is a complete mess, but he still tries to do the right thing and use his gifts to the best of his ability. The Spider-Man costume is one of the few in the MCU that hasn’t completely succumbed to the “battle-chic” aesthetic, which makes him bright and interesting to watch. Even if there was an entire cast with a diversity quota and a gay romance subplot, I would be willing to bet Spidey would still get quite the showing on opening night. Obviously, there would be people who boycott it, but most people just love Spider-Man and would be willing to forgive quite a bit just to watch him swing across the city.

Oh, and one more thing: this movie has had rumors flying around it for months. With the release of shows like WandaVision, rumors had started that this movie, perhaps, was going to attempt to introduce a “multiverse”—all three Spider-Men in one movie working together. The trailers only amped up the excitement for fans, who haven’t seen Molina on the screen as Doc Ock in over a decade. No one wanted this movie spoiled, so they tried their damndest to see this movie the night it opened.

And to be fair, it was worth going to see on opening night. Watching Andrew Garfield walk through that portal—I haven’t had that much fun in a theater in a very, very long time. The cheers that came out of everyone when Tobey waved made me smile.

Spider-Man didn’t get views because he’s not woke. Spidey got views because he’s Spidey. Stan Lee created an icon, and he’s not going to be going away any time soon. Does it help that there wasn’t a bunch of propaganda in this film? Of course, but I guarantee that’s not why he’s rolling in dough.

The best part about Spider-Man is that anyone could wear the mask. It’s just that Peter Parker wears it very, very well.

Veteran’s Day 2021

Hello friends.

Today is Veteran’s Day. Today, we honor all the men and women who served their country in the armed forces and have since retired.

I have one grandfather who is a veteran. The other grandfather I celebrate on Memorial Day. The son of that man — my uncle — followed in his father’s footsteps and served his country in the United States Air Force.

Needless to say, while I am not personally tied to the military, I have great respect for those who have served their country. They have sacrificed their time, health, and in some cases, even their lives for the good of the flag.

It is a sobering fact that US Veterans commit suicide at astronomically high rates. A lot of them have been through hell, and they come back to a country that is ungrateful and entitled, a country that doesn’t care one iota about their sacrifice.

Even though our country may not acknowledge you the way we should, even though there is a very vocal presence that does not appreciate you, all I can say is thank you. There are so many other things I want to say, but they’ll sound hollow and disingenuous. It’s not enough, but I’ll say it again.

Thank you for your courage, your sacrifice, and your honor.

Why I hate English

I once had a teacher who gave the excellent advice: Seldom affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish. This advice works well in most circumstances, especially in debates where both sides have a lot of nuance. But there are two places where this doesn’t work particularly well: YouTube thumbnail titles and headlines. So, apologies for the unnecessarily dramatic headline. But if it got you reading, it worked.

And actually, to be perfectly fair, the title of this post isn’t entirely untrue. I do hate English–at least, I hate the conventional way English and literature is taught in schools. I abhor the kind of English that kids complain about in high school. That kind of English has become an internet joke:

Book: “The curtains were blue.”

English Teacher: “The blue is meant to symbolize Thomas’ deep inner sadness and desperation.” (Or insert something else completely made up here)

What the author meant: “The curtains were blue.”

Yeah. That English. The kind where a high school kid can pick up a copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (a medieval poem that cannot be read by modern English speakers without a translation), see the word “gay,” and assume it means homosexual. (I mentioned translation, right? And…medieval?) We live in a world where students can make up whatever they like, and teachers absolutely eat it up. Which is why today we’re going to be talking about the pitfalls of a school of thought called “New Criticism.” Before we do that, though, we’re going to talk about target audience.

First, we have the idea of an “Ideal/Implied Reader.” (For those who care, this is terminology pulled from reader-response criticism.) The words sound esoteric, (and they are, welcome to academia) but it’s basically a person who shares roughly the same assumptions as the author. In laymen’s terms, it’s the target audience. The Ideal Reader of a Shakespeare play is the person watching it in Shakespeare’s day; they have roughly the same cultural mindset, and the audience member would understand all his jokes without needing footnotes. Even YouTubers have “Implied Viewers.” If you follow one YouTuber for any length of time, you’ll notice that their videos start to become more niche, and they might even have inside jokes with their audience that new viewers might not understand. That YouTuber knows who his Ideal Viewers are, and he caters to them and their expectations.

The second (and related) concept is the “Informed Reader.” The Informed Reader is the person who is not a part of the target audience, but someone who can do the leg work and figure out what’s going on. That typically means doing a little bit of research–for example, to be able to judge a Shakespeare play, sometimes you need to read the footnote that explains a joke. (It’s probably sexual, by the way. Basically half of Shakespeare is sex.) The Ideal Viewer of one of those sappy Christian movies is a Christian, but that doesn’t mean an atheist can’t watch one and critique it. If the atheist were an Informed Viewer, he’d do a bit of hunting around to see why Christians thought that way.

Do those two concepts make sense? Good. Forget about them for now; we’ll come back to them later. We’re going to be talking about New Criticism. Obviously, I can’t cover everything in one blog post, but I’m going to do my best to boil down the Most Important Idea. Today, I’m going to be pulling from an essay called “Criticism as Pure Spectulation” by John Crowe Ransom, one of the most influential New Critics.

The most basic part of New Critics is this equation: Literature=fact+”x”. This may sound strange, but the equation actually works very well. The “fact” is the subject matter. For example, the “fact” in Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” is that there is a man standing in his doorway, a raven flies into his study and keeps saying “Nevermore,” and the raven freaks him out. The “x” is all the fancy stuff–the meter that makes the poem sound all creepy, the word choice, and the repetition that simply doesn’t work in outside of poetry. A teacher once told me that the “x” is what’s lost in translation; try as you might, if you translated this poem into Spanish or German, you’d lose part of what makes this poem this poem. No matter how good the translator is, there is no way he can capture the essence of a poem in its native language. They can get the “fact” part across all right, but the “x” eludes them. This is what distinguishes literature from things like science and essays. (This blog post, for example, could be translated into another language with very few problems, but poems are a different ball game entirely.) Because literature is so distinct, (it’s the only discipline that has an “x,” after all) usually New Critics analyze only the text itself.

This is the way most people are trained to “do English,” whether they realize it or not. English teachers have their students identify the “fact” (What is this story/poem about? What happens?) and then, they have students analyze the “x” (What type of meter is this, and how does it contribute to the poem? Do the color of the curtains add to the story, and if so, how? What is the tone of this poem, and what words indicate this?).

Obviously, this is an oversimplification of New Criticism, but this idea is one of their core tenants. And their equation is actually very useful, as far as it goes. Applied correctly, New Criticism works pretty well for modern people reading modern things–Americans can read and understand things written in the colonial era and beyond with very little explanation. As an American, the ideas of freedom and liberty just make sense to me. I don’t really need any context for Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.” I can read poems written in modern English and separate the “fact” from the “x” to write a poetry analysis, and that’s a skill I have thanks to New Criticism. And it works really well for literature where I already have a basic understanding of the history.

The problem is that this system easily lends itself to abuse. Remember our Ideal and Informed Readers? New Critics can very easily fall into the trap of assuming that they are always the Ideal Reader, no matter what. After all, if you take the text all by itself, you’re allowed to assume the book means whatever you’d like it to mean. You don’t have to do any research into why or how the book came about. This is why that teacher is able to say those curtain symbolize Thomas’ inward depression spiral. She doesn’t have to figure out why the book is that way; she can make the book however she wants.

Obviously, no one should judge a system only by the abuse of that system. Most people don’t judge playgrounds for being dangerous if one child climbs to the highest point and then jumps off of it. But if multiple kids start to climb up and jump off, the question is eventually asked: What is it about this playground that makes children want to jump off of it? Why is this playground easily abused? Maybe it’s because it’s too easy to get to the top, or maybe it’s because the playground is too boring and kids want to make it more exciting. New Criticism doesn’t exactly encourage people to get whatever they like out of the text, but there don’t appear to be any barriers either. They don’t force a reader to take history into account, nor should they, but gentle encouragement might be helpful.

To illustrate, in the beginning of the movie “Hitch,” Hitch explains that 60% of human communication is body language, 30% is tone, and 10% is words. Imagine if all you ever got was the words. While Hitch is probably exaggerating, the point stands: Text matters, but context is everything.

Welcome to my new blog!

Why hello there, my fellow procrastinator! If you have stumbled onto this blog so early on, my only assumption is that you are either family, a close friend, or someone who meant to type in the words “hopeless romantic” and accidentally misspelled something. I am willing to overlook your simply atrocious spelling skills and welcome you with open arms and a somewhat judgmental smile. Don’t worry. You will get to judge me in time.

Who am I, you ask? Well, as you asked nicely, I am a recent college graduate and therefore ex-English major who has realized that the academic schedule, while demanding as hell, definitely had its perks–such as a two week long Christmas break and a whole summer to fritter away on nonsense. (Nonsense like acquiring skills vital to entering the workforce, but I digress.) While I am decidedly not missing midterms and ten-page papers on hopelessly boring things, I do miss learning and interacting with material. I now work an 8-5 desk job, which doesn’t fulfill much of my learning quota. Yes, the experience and skills I’m learning should help me in the workforce later on. But I miss writing papers.

Well, I suppose I should be more precise. Not “writing papers,” per se. I believe the constant stress of picking out a topic and making sure everything was worded just so before I printed it out and inevitably finding an obnoxious typo–that is not what I miss. I miss researching things and putting together pieces of a puzzle–finding out what scholars thought and then ripping them to shreds. Because to be honest, I found a lot of people with graduate degrees out there saying the most ridiculous things known to man. Did you know that there’s a vein of academia that doesn’t want you to brush your teeth because, according to people who follow this logic, brushing one’s teeth is a social construct and if one brushes one’s teeth then it means one buys into the oppressive system?

All I can say to that is: your dentist must freaking love you.

And that, folks, is why you don’t believe everything you read, even if the guy has an alphabet of degrees after his name.

With that out of the way, I suppose it is now time to explain what this blog is to be about. As my forte in school was literature and philosophy, most of the content on this blog is probably going to revolve around that. (Making it accessible, of course–no one likes a stuffy philosopher.) I do not, however, feel like locking myself into that genre specifically, because I am young and frivolous. I like to read and watch movies, so thoughts on books and videos will probably crop up here from time to time. I might even write a story or two, depending on whether I can actually come up with an inspired idea. Who knows?

As is made abundantly clear by the rambling blocks of text above, I have no idea what I’m doing.

Let’s rock ‘n roll, folks.