Midweek Update: Making Room for the Sad Stuff

I took last week off from doing Substacks, and given my mental state right now, I considered taking off another one too. But sometimes I feel like the best way to feel better is to simply write about what I’m doing and what’s on my mind.

Lately, I feel like I need to give some space to the more mentally and emotionally taxing art out there. It would be incredibly easy to fill my time with Disney movies and video games, and that stuff certainly has its place. But as someone who doesn’t particularly like going out in the world without a plan (the notion of airdropping in someplace and talking to strangers is incomprehensible to me), I feel like the best way I can try to understand history and culture is through art, specifically books and movies. And history and culture is not all sunshine and rainbows. It is not all stuff to restore your faith in humanity.

But I feel like we’re not entitled to only art that makes us feel good. I don’t begrudge anyone who sees art as a means of escape, and certainly if you’ve had a hard day, it’s a tall order to ask you to watch some serious documentary or hard-hitting piece of nonfiction. For me, I feel like I need to make room for that stuff if only so I can broaden my scope of understanding. However, no one said it would be easy, and it certainly hasn’t been.

This past week, I read Kate Beaton’s Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands and have started making my way through Elie Wiesel’s Night as well as the 9.5-hour Holocaust documentary Shoah. Beaton’s book was simply because I love her work, and this is her first book in seven years. As she recounts her time working in the oil sands in the mid-2000s so she could pay off her student loans, you get a glimpse of how people who have less are thrown into machinery that chews up their humanity and decency. This isn’t new information, but Beaton renders it with powerful detail and nuance.

As for the Holocaust material, that’s a bit trickier. Holocaust Remembrance Day is on the 27th, and I’ve typically kept my distance from Holocaust material. I devoured a lot of it in middle school and high school, but started to recoil as it left its imprint on Jewish identity as “People Who Were Not Completely Exterminated by the Nazis.” Avoiding genocide is a cultural foundation built on sand, but I feel like I’ve swung too much to the opposite end of the spectrum where I refuse to look at any Holocaust stuff, and that doesn’t feel right either. So I’ve plunged back in again, and it’s obviously difficult to hear story after story about man’s inhumanity to man.

I wish I had some kind of profound realization at the end of this, but I don’t think I will. However, I think it’s important to not run from the hard stuff. Still, don’t be surprised if after this week I fill up on action B-movies with the dumbest plots imaginable.

What I’m Watching

I wasn’t kidding when I said I was loading up on misery. I started off the year with Chernobyl because I wanted to prep for showrunner Craig Mazin’s new show, The Last of Us, an adaptation of the PlayStation game about trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland. But I have to say this: Mazin is very good at horror. Chernobyl chronicles a real event, but make no mistake—it’s a horror series. Too often we require some kind of supernatural or unprecedented angle to call something “horror”, but Mazin understands the human frailty and barbarity at the core of a horror story.

But it’s not all sad stuff! We’re also making our way through Abbott Elementary, which is hilarious and infuriating in equal turns (creator, showrunner, and star Quinta Brunson knows how to find humor in the frustration of a country that continue to underfund its schools). We’re also watching the “Superfan” episodes of The Office on Peacock, which really are for die-hards only. For first-timers, these episodes would feel sluggish and overstuffed; for those like my wife and I who have made our way through the series numerous times, these Superfan episodes provide an interesting change of pace.

What I’m Reading

In addition to the aforementioned Ducks and Night, I read the first volume of The Dark Tower, and I’m eager to pick up its next volume, The Drawing of the Three. I also read To Kill a Mockingbird, which was assigned reading in 7th grade, but I didn’t really recall it beyond the 1962 film. Next up on my list is Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino.

Substack Recommendation

I’ve been a fan of Nathan Rabin’s writing since his AV Club days, specifically his great series My World of Flops. You won’t find a sharper and more thoughtful writer on the vast world of pop culture. His new Substack is a must.

What I’m Hearing

I’m currently around #430 (note that the playlist above starts at 500; Rolling Stone did not declare “Stronger” the best song of all time), so slowly making my way through. If I have one note, it seems like there’s a bit of a recency bias, but then again, we’re in the 400s, so perhaps that’s the best place to put those hits.