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I was grooming myself for oblivion and I made it
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.
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.
no subject
AHAHAHAHAH HI THERE no.
I said it above, and I know I've said it to you before, but this really is something I struggle with. I can describe characters in a basic way, sure. But I can't do the thing you do, where the description becomes insight -- in brief flashes once in a blue moon, maybe, but you do it consistently. I don't know how much if any of my fiction you would like, and I know you don't have much spare time, but if you want a vivid illustration of the difference, pick up something I wrote: I promise I will not be offended when you notice that compared to your writing, my descriptions are frequently as flat as pancakes.
no subject
I don't know if I should read your fiction for the express purpose of making you feel weird about a skill you are working on, but I take your point.
(I thought "The Şiret Mask" was fantastic.)
no subject
Nah, it would be for the express purpose of helping you see more clearly what it is that you do and not everybody does. I mean, what you said about "anybody can do this" -- that's exactly the logic that gets up my nose when people talk about how someday they're going to write a book, as if there's no skill or practice required. I think they think of "writing a book" as being about using words and typing, and hey, they use words and type every day! They can write books, too! They don't see the expertise that goes into making those words interesting. You're approaching it from the other side, the one where the expertise is so ingrained that it's invisible to you. And much like how sometimes it's easier to deconstruct a thing that doesn't quite fit together right in the first place, it might be easier to see your own skill if you look at something else for comparison.
I don't feel weird about not being as good at this as you are. I just feel like it's a thing I can work on improving.
(I thought "The Şiret Mask" was fantastic.)
Thank you! And thank you, once again, for linking to that post about Fillibus. I, er, may be working on something related to that right now . . . <shifty look>
no subject
*suppressed yay*