Insomnia III

The insomnia continues. Like any overcooked trilogy, here's hoping it's the final installment. At least for now. That's the thing about trilogies these days - you don't know how many are to follow the first. Star Wars has got to have crossed the three trilogy dividing line. Lord of the Rings, too. It's rumoured Scorsese has started filming The Godfather IV. What is it about films that inspire this kind of compulsive manufacturing of material? Obviously there's the fact that it pays, right? If audiences are willing to fork over that cold hard cash to sit through the ninth episode of Fast & Furious, why shouldn't the studio give them what they want? In truth, we deserve the cinema that we get. Imagine if modern audiences actually craved films full of deep exploration of the human psyche, philosophically profound pictures that stirred something contemplative and forgotten inside of them? Then we'd have more Tarkovsky and far fewer Marvel movies. It's probably passé to bash superhero movies at this point. It's likely almost everyone has hit their saturation point by now. Almost is the key word here because there are plenty of people who have demonstrated an insatiable appetite for this style of movie. It should be noted that I don't intend to come across as snobbish. Hell, there are a bunch of fun superhero movies I've seen throughout my lifetime. Some of them even had decent emotional depth and asked meaningful questions about the nature of good and evil, the importance of perseverance, courage, how to deal with failure, or the virtue of sacrifice. By and large though, many of these movies are bad. They seem to serve primarily as propaganda outlets for the American military industrial complex. The formula is simple: paint the heroes and villains in stark contrast to one another in clear and well-defined strokes, add a liberal portion of dazzling spectacle in the form of explosions, high-tech weapons and CGI superpowers, then preserve and reinforce traditional gender roles and stereotypes while trotting out the trope of the valiant protector-hero saving the day and getting the girl; rinse and repeat.

People in America wonder why they have such a problem with gun violence and domestic terrorism. This isn't an attempt to point a reductive, accusatory finger at their cultural mythology, but rather to note that cultural mythology is one of many forces coming together to create this phenomenon. When the narrative takes the above shape and a bulk of the white male population internalises this story, a heavy sense of alienation sets in on this group when they fail to reap the promised rewards, creating simultaneously the feeling of disenfranchisement and a dangerous entitlement. A great cinematic case study of this type of thing can be seen even before the big superhero bang of the past 20 years, in the film Falling Down from 1993. We follow the story's protagonist (and arguably villain), played by Michael Douglas, who after encountering a seemingly mundane set of challenges such as sitting in traffic or having to endure a hot summer heatwave, begins his descent into gun-totting, rocket-launcher-wielding, don't-tread-on-me radicalism as a kind of prototype for the modern day incel. If you haven't seen it, the film is worth a watch. It does a great job at providing targeted satire which takes aim at the failings of governmental institutions, toxic masculinity and xenophobia, mental health and the absence of proper support mechanisms, exploitative economic models and decadent late-stage capitalism all set in the backdrop of a racially charged Los Angeles with the Rodney King riots fresh on the viewer's mind. While the character is despicable, he does tell us something dark and uncomfortable about ourselves. Who hasn't had the kind of day where they feel like that illustrious camel scanning madly for the final piece of straw? All of us know that uniquely wobbly, unhinged house-of-cards feeling that accompanies the modern life of the lower and working classes. The film takes this and weaponizes it, transforming it into a potent revenge movie for the impotent. 

Because it's Saturday, I didn't set a timer this morning. This resulted in me looking up movies on wikipedia, casually browsing Reddit, and checking my phone for incoming notifications. It's probably best to keep the limit enforced, even on weekends.

I wanted to write a bit more about sleep - or the lack thereof - but I've lost interest in doing so. The sun is shining outside for the first time in days. In fact, the weather here was so violent yesterday that I actually feared going outside. Wild lashes of rain whipped against the windows and roaring winds jostled the giant trees so forcefully it seemed they'd come crashing in through the house. A weather advisory warning alert appeared on my phone cautioning the danger of the winds. Friends texted me asking if I was in Berlin or Poland because the weather in Berlin was so intense. The stillness this morning is oddly distracting by comparison. Small, yellow-breasted birds with bright blue heads are singing and darting from the tips of thin branches. A gentle cream-coloured light spills out over the face of the building tattooed by the shadows of trees. 

Time to go.