The disenchantment of the movie-watching experience
Recall, for a minute, a night out at the movies in the late 20th century, maybe the early 21st. After you’d arrive at a cinema, you’d stand in a maze-like queue, where you’d be able to analyze the available films and times. When you finally reached the box office, you’d order a ticket from a smug high schooler. Then you’d walk inside to find the chosen theater, the magical place where, once the lights dimmed, you’d enter an entirely new world.
On a recent trip to the movies, my cinematic experience was quite different. I walked up to an automated…
In 1903, an American writer by the name of James Duff Law introduced a new word into the English lexicon: Usonia.
His rationale for creating the term “Usonia” and its related demonym, “Usonian,” was to create an alternative to calling the US and its citizens “Americans.” This was because the term “American” shortchanged all the citizens of other nations part of the two American continents.
Law’s Usonia was actually an acronym, representing the “United States of Northern Independent America.” Mr. …
A conversation with literary scholar David Ting
I wanted to write about the Snyder Cut, but I realized I didn’t have the necessary level of DC Comics expertise. So I reached out to David Ting, a literary scholar and avid reader of DC Comics. We talked about how Zack Snyder’s Justice League (ZSJL) points to the wider DC comics mythology constructed by influential comics creator Jack Kirby in the 1970s. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
HARRISON BLACKMAN: It’s been a couple of weeks since Zack Snyder’s Justice League (ZSJL) came out on HBO Max. How do you compare it with the 2017 version…
‘The Best American Travel Writing 2019' and the schisms currently upending travel journalism
On Amazon, The Best American Travel Writing 2019 holds a 4.3-out-of-5-star-rating, its acclaim ever-so-slightly dragged down by a vocal minority of negative reviews. As this book ostensibly showcased the best travel writing on offer, I wondered about the root of such gripes. One particularly polemical two-star review stated:
I enjoy food and travel writing that makes you think. . . However, this years [sic] compilation has a definite agenda. Which is. [sic] “We hate Trump and his policies.” Whether you agree or not it gets old less than halfway through the book. Anyone who doesn’t agree will not read much…
The divergent trajectories of San Antonio and Austin
Everything is bigger in Texas. Except for the Alamo, that is. Perhaps it is telling the state’s most iconic landmark is smaller than you’d think. Perhaps it’s telling that, across the street from the historic mission chapel and battle site, is a “Tomb Rider 3D Adventure Ride and Arcade” and Ripley’s Believe it or Not.
The Alamo may be the most famous landmark in Texas, but it’s also indicative of the nature of San Antonio, a sprawling urban area that somehow doesn’t feel crowded. The city’s old-world, touristy vibe contrasts mightily with the burgeoning, gleaming city just 79.5 …
The cavalier storytelling attitude of Star Wars Episode IX
(Spoilers throughout, so be warned).
Toward the beginning of Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, a bunch of Resistance fighters learn that Emperor Palpatine survived falling into a bottomless pit three movies earlier. The camera pans around the group, and a rebel played by three-time hobbit Dominic Monaghan offers a few possible explanations for Palpatine’s return — “Dark science. Cloning. Secrets only the Sith knew.” Even Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) uses the artful term “somehow” to describe Palpatine’s improbable resurrection.
Evidently director J. J. Abrams doesn’t really want to answer such pesky questions of narrative coherence. Rather, he…
Biden forcefully rebuts Trump’s Ukraine accusations, ignores Warren’s momentum
RENO, NV — “I’m not surprised Donald Trump asked a foreign government for help to beat me,” Joe Biden declared at an October 2, 2019 campaign event held in the student center of Truckee Meadows Community College.
“I’m not surprised that the head of the NRA met with Trump to prop him up,” Biden added, in reference to Wayne LaPierre’s recently-scrutinized visit to the White House. “I’m not surprised that the president’s allegations of wrongdoing against me have been debunked across the board by every major publication.”
As expected, the former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate was forceful in…
Though Buttigieg electrified a Nevada audience, the electric grid had other plans
On September 28, 2019, the day Pete Buttigieg visited Northern Nevada, the temperature dropped from 64º to 41º F in a matter of hours. Dark clouds loomed over the lip of the Sierras. Winds blustered around this edge of the Great Basin, signaling that Northern Nevada’s brief autumn was in fact over — winter, rather, was already here. If the climate was any indication, then Nevada’s caucus — February 22, 2020, the third Democratic primary contest — felt just around the corner.
Sparks, a city neighboring and bleeding into Reno, is probably not the Northern Nevada locale you’d expect the…
Bernie Sanders’ post-debate campaign stop at UNR
On Friday the 13th, a day after the third 2019 Democratic debate, and hours after he shared an unexpected hug with a Trump supporter in Carson City, Senator Bernie Sanders arrived at the University of Nevada-Reno to speak on the subject of “College for All.”
The stage was suitably set: A cool evening breeze filtered through the quad wedged in between the mammoth “Knowledge Center” (library) and its accompanying parking garage. A crowd of about 350 people, young and old, had gathered to see the iconic Democratic socialist from Vermont.
Senator Sanders had visited UNR before — most recently, last…
Why do we go to the movies? Often it’s to escape — to let the lights go down and get lost in a story. Sometimes we watch a movie up for awards, usually so that we can talk about why we thought the awards were wrong. Other times — perhaps less often than we should — we watch films about social issues, to empathize with people with vastly different experiences.
Last year, I saw a movie that checked none of these boxes. It was too confusing and poorly-written to function as an escape; it certainly wouldn’t be up for any…
Harrison Blackman
Essays on film, politics, and storytelling. Learn more at www.harrisonblackman.com/ and https://harrisonblackman.substack.com/.
