Hope-y Change-y

It is rare that I embody an aesthetic —I prefer to remain entrenched in the vibe of "resentful Gen Xer waiting for the rest of you to realize how cool we've been all along"—but apparently I am in sync with the current 'Obamacore' trend. For reasons I can't explain, I'm rewatching Will & Grace and Friday Night Lights and thoroughly enjoying reminders of the beginning of the 21st century.

Spurred by the renewed optimism of the Harris-Walz campaign, Obamacore is made up of joy, hope, earnest positivity, and a general reminder that, no we have not always been swimming in a toilet-water pool of fear and desperation. For a brief period in the mid-2000s, we thought we'd defeated racism (HA) and behaved accordingly. If you have some time today, I recommend diving into that Vulture article above for a stroll down memory lane. I guarantee you'll exclaim, "I forgot about that!" at least a few times.

🎥 His House (Netflix)
This starts out as a horror movie and a pretty scary one at that. The ghosts are frightening and the sounds they make - egad. But if you stick with it, you'll be rewarded with a pretty remarkable look at what it means to be a refugee and the scars that remain after leaving your homeland behind. The metaphor is obvious but that doesn't mean it's not effective.

🎥 The Match Factory Girl (Criterion)
Oh man, is this a treat. And by treat, I mean a depiction of the bleakest, most Finnish existence possible. But wait! It's only an hour and nine minutes and features a protagonist you're going to root for from minute one. A lonely factory girl is desperate to find love and ends up knocked up by a man who doesn't care. How she reacts is weirdly delightful.

📖 Hi Honey, I'm Homo!
If you talk to me regularly in real life, I have probably mentioned this book to you in the last month. An examination of how queer identity has been explored in television, each chapter looks at one significant show of its era, set against the political climate of that time. It is damn fascinating and I learned something new in each chapter. (It's also why I'm rewatching Will & Grace.)

One more note before I go: I know that hope seems a dangerous thing to have right now, but I encourage us all to keep at it. I keep re-reading this lovely sentiment from Nick Cave, who was responding to a fan letter about the concept:

"Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like, Valerio, such as reading to your little boy, or showing him a thing you love, or singing him a song, or putting on his shoes, keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we come to find that it is so."

xoxo,
Carla