I was grooming myself for oblivion and I made it

[sovay]

Having read Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key (1931) for the first time this weekend, I went looking for information on some elements of the plot and discovered in the process that everything I noticed about Jeff Hartnett in Johnny Eager (1942) had already been observed by Gaylyn Studlar in "A Gunsel Is Being Beaten: Gangster Masculinity and the Homoerotics of the Crime Film, 1941–1942," published in Lee Grieveson, Esther Sonnet, and Peter Stanfield's Mob Culture: Hidden Histories of the American Gangster Film (2005).

It's a good article. She's looking at queerness in The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Glass Key (1942), and Johnny Eager, which is exactly the sort of thing I enjoy seeing written. It seems to have put me into some kind of crashing anxiety spiral. I recognize that the healthy way to take this news would be to feel validated. I didn't read too much into the movie: I saw exactly what there was to see. (The fact that we cite most of the same lines feels like an argument for intentional barely-sub-text instead of slash goggles.) Instead my current train of thought is running straight into total demoralization: I worry enough about having nothing original or interesting to say. I feel that if I actually read about film the way I write about it, I would have known I wasn't discovering anything with Johnny Eager. I'm wondering now what else I've spent hours trying to articulate properly that someone else has already done the work on and I just haven't found out yet. I am second-guessing my entire resolve to collect my reviews professionally, if they're just going to be ignorant recaps of actual scholarly material.

Basically, this is terrible. The last film criticism I ran into that agreed with me—Carolyn Dinshaw's How Soon Is Now? Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time (2012), which I have been meaning to recommend to several people on this friendlist for obvious reasons as well as the rather more personal one that she writes seriously about Colpeper and A Canterbury Tale (1944) and goes even farther than I do in linking his sexuality to the land—I was delighted. But for whatever reason, this one just feels like proof of all the things I try not to believe are true. And it's been there since I was in grad school, since before I even really cared about film. I just didn't know. I should know these things.

Comments

[thawrecka]

You're just having a bad time and everything makes you feel worse, is all. I always find money worries cause me to have a negative self-worth spiral, too, FWIW.

[sovay]

You're just having a bad time and everything makes you feel worse, is all.

I suspect you are right; I know I'm under long-term unsustainable stress and while I had a good weekend, it was also full of people and timetables and I did not have a chance to do any recovery before plunging back into the work week. It just feels like hey, look, this thing you were so excited to discover, it was already known and named and you did nothing except look really ignorant about it in public and now I have to argue with it. It's just tiring.

I always find money worries cause me to have a negative self-worth spiral, too, FWIW.

It makes sense to me. I don't even believe in the Protestant work ethic, but it does feel like being told I'm not a productive, pulling-my-own-weight enough member of society to keep alive.

[yhlee]

*support support*

[sovay]

*support support*

Thank you.

[justice_turtle]

Please feel free to bop me with a dime novel if this is unhelpful or out of line, but my first reaction is "If you were delighted the last time this happened, then maybe the anxiety feelings are spilling over from the rest of your life because you're under a lot of stress right now and brains are assholes". (Well, my first articulate reaction. My very first reaction is to anyone feeling anxious is to offer hugs, but I seem to recall you don't find that helpful, so I won't.)

For what it's worth, I find all your film writing fascinating and insightful. (I think I originally followed you because Lost_Spook linked your Sapphire & Steel review and I was like "This person words good", because when somebody else's words are too good all of mine go away.) I don't read much about movies other than your blog, or indeed watch many movies, which one could interpret to mean that my opinion is irrelevant because I don't know what the shit I'm talking about, but I prefer to interpret it to mean that you're reaching a wide audience, not all of whom would necessarily run up against these kinds of scholarly opinions if they stayed limited to more scholarly formats like print. ^_^

Um. Did any of that help? :S

[sovay]

(Well, my first articulate reaction. My very first reaction is to anyone feeling anxious is to offer hugs, but I seem to recall you don't find that helpful, so I won't.)

I appreciate it as a gesture; I don't find it insulting. It just doesn't in most cases make me actually feel better.

Um. Did any of that help?

Yes. Reality-checking the anxiety spillover is useful and I take it as a real compliment that someone who is not normally interested in movies reads—enjoys—my reviews. Thank you. Now I just have to get the rest of my brain to believe it.

[thisbluespirit]

*seconds pretty much all of this*

It does sound like the sort of thing brains do when you're in a v bad place, and then everything is negative. :/

Your reviews are well worth reading - and well worth writing.

[genarti]

I don't read much about movies other than your blog, or indeed watch many movies, which one could interpret to mean that my opinion is irrelevant because I don't know what the shit I'm talking about, but I prefer to interpret it to mean that you're reaching a wide audience, not all of whom would necessarily run up against these kinds of scholarly opinions if they stayed limited to more scholarly formats like print.

I cosign and second every word of this!

I don't watch a great many movies (and a large portion of what I do watch is movies for which skygiants says "Hey, I think you might like this, let's watch it" to me specifically.) I also don't go looking for movie reviews or criticism very often. But I am always interested by your movie reviews, and I always read them with great enjoyment even when I don't comment. Even when a movie doesn't seem like something I'd enjoy watching, I'm always fascinated by how you write about them and what you see in them.

[davidgillon]

If you extend your argument, then most film critics are just recapping each other. There's a movie at the core of everyone's criticism, and it's the same movie, with the same plot and characters and themes both conscious and unconscious. A certain intersection of insights is only to be expected.

You write fascinating reviews, I don't particularly care if someone else has made the point elsewhere, because you make that point your own and you make it well.

[sovay]

You write fascinating reviews, I don't particularly care if someone else has made the point elsewhere, because you make that point your own and you make it well.

Thank you. I don't know why this one hit so badly. It may just have been timing.

I need so much less impostor syndrome than I have.

[asakiyume]

This, in spades. Your insights are worthwhile (very!), but what makes your reviews unique, what makes me passionate about them, is the language you use when writing about characters and their feelings. I've said this before, but you make reading about a movie as good as watching a movie--not in a giving-away-the-plot way, but because reading you is by turns tense making, hilarious, enraging, deeply moving, and thought provoking. You can capture an actor--and you can capture a character (and the two are not the same, and you do both)--in such incisive, breathtaking ways. Directors could read your reviews and weep with relief and wave their laptops around going "THIS! THIS is why I make films, because people can feel and see THIS."

... Yeah, no one else does that. Seriously.

[moon_custafer]

To quote Dr. Buckaroo Banzai, “if it was obvious, everybody would be doing it every day.”

You and one other critic hardly constitute “everybody.”

[sovay]

You and one other critic hardly constitute “everybody.”

Thank you.

I have to listen to Dr. Banzai.

[asakiyume]

English accent voice: "She's right, you know."

[selkie]

*sneaks in, grabs Tiny Wittgenstein, chloroforms him with prejudice*

There is nothing new under the sun but that doesn't mean you can't point out eloquently and with delightful, illustrative language when a guy likes dick. Thematic, metaphorical dick.

You do good things. Now I am going to remove your brain and give it a week on Plum Island. It can stay in that abandoned pink weird house and watch the sawgrass sway.

[sovay]

There is nothing new under the sun but that doesn't mean you can't point out eloquently and with delightful, illustrative language when a guy likes dick. Thematic, metaphorical dick.

Hey, in the case of Jeff Hartnett, I'm pretty sure it's not even a metaphor.

You do good things. Now I am going to remove your brain and give it a week on Plum Island. It can stay in that abandoned pink weird house and watch the sawgrass sway.

That sounds lovely. Can I join my brain or will that spoil the point?

Thank you.

*hugs*

[gwynnega]

This sounds like a bad attack of impostor syndrome. Even if you draw some of the same conclusions about films that other writers do, your film writing is elegant and interesting and unique.

[sovay]

Even if you draw some of the same conclusions about films that other writers do, your film writing is elegant and interesting and unique.

Thank you.

I'm not sure why finding this article felt so much like a punch in the head. It doesn't seem proportionate to either the article or the film. But it just went off like a bomb.

[thistleingrey]

*supports*

Dinshaw is very, very smart. I haven't read that book, but I've read a good chunk of her earlier work. That said, there's room for many voices, and you are also very, very smart.

[sovay]

*supports*

Thank you.

Dinshaw is very, very smart. I haven't read that book, but I've read a good chunk of her earlier work.

I'd never read her before; I gathered that she does not work primarily with film, but her analysis of A Canterbury Tale is—barring one place I think she's just wrong, and that happens—the best and closest I've encountered. What else do you recommend?

That said, there's room for many voices, and you are also very, very smart.

I appreciate and strongly prefer the existence of other smart people, even when I am in terrible mental shape. I never want other people not to be intelligent or perceptive; I just want to feel that I am not so totally trailing the pack.

[shewhomust]

As an undergraduate, I suspected I was less clever than my peers because they read criticism and I just wanted to do close reading of the text. Forty years on, I have the certificate to say I'm not dim. And the attitude to say that a personal close reading is always worth doing. And you do it so well.

(That's a steamroller in the icon. I don't hug, I'm British.)

[sovay]

Forty years on, I have the certificate to say I'm not dim. And the attitude to say that a personal close reading is always worth doing. And you do it so well.

Thank you. From inside my head, it feels very hard to tell.

(That's a steamroller in the icon. I don't hug, I'm British.)

Steamrollers are accepted and appreciated.

[cmcmck]

'A Canterbury Tale' is the greatest film of all time! :o)

[sovay]

'A Canterbury Tale' is the greatest film of all time!

It stands a very good chance of being my favorite.

[asakiyume]

As others have said, it's likely the vicious burden of stress that is letting Tiny Wittgenstein get so much airtime in your mind.

But this moment will pass.** I wonder if Gaylyn Studiar has a Tiny Wittgenstein too. I wouldn't be surprised if she does; they're disconcertingly common. You can't see it in a professional bio, of course; in *those*, people are unapproachable gods. Like the person I know who reads a million dead languages and has a Kuiper belt object named after them.

**would pass much sooner if we had universal income and healthcare but that's a conversation for another day....

[sovay]

As others have said, it's likely the vicious burden of stress that is letting Tiny Wittgenstein get so much airtime in your mind.

It was just from a direction I wasn't expecting. And it stopped me from writing about anything yesterday, even after I had finished my work for the day, which I really cannot afford.

Thank you.

Like the person I know who reads a million dead languages and has a Kuiper belt object named after them.

It's only three dead languages! Yiddish isn't dead!

would pass much sooner if we had universal income and healthcare but that's a conversation for another day....

Yes, but I don't disagree! The current status quo is stupid.

[kenjari]

I really like your film writing, and I agree with what everyone else has said about the quality of it and your insights.
As for finding the same observations you have made in another article, that absolutely does not invalidate you as a film critic or the writing you produce. I was just in the Beethoven section of my music library and counted 4 biographies published since 2005 alone (and that was just a very quick, casual count). I am completely certain that were I to read all 4, I would find several of the same points about Beethoven and his work being made. And no one is calling any of those musicologists impostors, derivative, etc.

[sovay]

I really like your film writing, and I agree with what everyone else has said about the quality of it and your insights.

Thank you.

I am completely certain that were I to read all 4, I would find several of the same points about Beethoven and his work being made. And no one is calling any of those musicologists impostors, derivative, etc.

I will try to keep this in mind. It just occurred to me that this particular crash may have been an especially abstruse form of the devaluing of skills one actually has—sure, I can describe characters, but anybody can describe characters, it's just like retelling a story, anybody can do that.

[drwex]

In our household we refer to these things as "brain weasels" and they are a constant concern. I'm sorry that your brain weasels appear to be attacking you and hope you find a good antidote soon.

[sovay]

I'm sorry that your brain weasels appear to be attacking you and hope you find a good antidote soon.

Thank you.

[kore]

Yeah, that sounds like your brain beating you up. I don't know this other person and don't know how well they write (and in fact most academic writing puts me off). I love films and love how you write about them. That counts.

[sovay]

I love films and love how you write about them. That counts.

It does. Thank you.

Your reviews and the badassery thereof

[shelivesdeliciously]

Another long time reader chiming in here to say that your informed, insightful and poetic reviews consistently level bad movies up to fascinating and good movies up to fantastic. Reading about someone else catching the same things you caught in a movie, far from making you look ignorant (which fwiw does not even compute, it's like trying to imagine an orange bluejay), I'm guessing made most of us immediately think "that reviewer must be ridiculously clever to catch the same things as Sovay. Yay for the existence of such people!" Very much hoping things start looking up for you (literally looking up can make you feel better, it's some weird psychological thing, I recommend it).

Re: Your reviews and the badassery thereof

[sovay]

Another long time reader chiming in here to say that your informed, insightful and poetic reviews consistently level bad movies up to fascinating and good movies up to fantastic.

Thank you so much for chiming in. That's a wonderful thing to hear, honestly ideal for the reasons I write about movies (they interest me and I hope to communicate why). I am working on getting my self-esteem more into alignment with reality and I appreciate the encouragement.

Very much hoping things start looking up for you (literally looking up can make you feel better, it's some weird psychological thing, I recommend it).

Thank you. I got out of the house this evening and spent about an hour walking around in the late sunlight, which I think did not hurt.

Like tipping your head back and studying the ceiling helps, or just glancing up from time to time will do it?