In Which It Does Not Matter If We Make It Or Not

Small World

by ETHAN PETERSON

Black Mirror
creator Charlie Brooker
Netflix

The third season of Black Mirror begins with Bryce Dallas Howard jogging down the street, furiously swiping right on her phone. It is the inevitable curse of any satire of the near future that it becomes the present more quickly than the people involved can imagine. Howard's running is very compromised by the fact that she has to constantly rate all the social media posts she can in hopes of reciprocity. This desire to be liked is Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker's deepest feeling.

Brooker has resisted the urge to farm out most of the writing of his near-future series to outsiders, preferring to develop most from his own concepts. When we last joined him, the Black Mirror Christmas Special featured a fantastic performance by Jon Hamm. While somewhat sexist at times during its consideration of an overly demanding woman, it was wacky enough to be serious fun. It was by far the best thing the show has done, but it was also a fitting dead end to Brooker's visions.

This third series, available worldwide on Netflix, finds Brooker running out of ideas, and fast. Bryce Dallas Howard is truly a vision in the air, but she is given very little to do. She lives in a whorl where every human is a Yelp reviewer of every other, so that other people's life status simply depends on how well they are succeeding in social settings and online. "Dangerous social media!" isn't exactly a world view. It's more like a bleat someone would post on Twitter, which will probably not exist in ten years given the current direction of the company.

"The dangers of technology" is the lamest form of futurism, since not only is it completely reductive, but technology has never really shown itself to be dangerous to anyone except those who don't bother to take the minuscule time it requires to understand its function. Our main problem is that the people who could be conduits to explaining technology are themselves aging and becoming obsolete: the media.

In the season's second episode, an American tourist in London is frightened by an overly visceral virtual reality simulation, while in the third episode the sublime Alex Lawther plays a teenager who is being blackmailed after he is recorded masturbating. The subtext of these jaunts is that it is not really the technology that is at fault – in fact even malevolent computer viruses serve the public good by apprehending criminals and torturing them. But this is just a way of complicating the basic point – we can't handle these devices that surround us, even though they're essentially just computers.

The season's most popular episode, "San Junipero", finds Mackenzie Davis (Halt and Catch Fire) portraying a woman in a virtual world called San Junipero. There she meets Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who is such an astonishing performer that it takes about thirty minutes into this supposed tour-de-force to realize the whole thing is dull, rehashed garbage. Mbatha-Raw and Davis consummate their relationship in one night of hot sex – it is Davis' first time, and then decide to spend the rest of their lives together. But oh no – both have a dark past. When "Heaven is a Place On Earth" pumps through the episode's last scenes, you actually feel complicit in this bullshit, as if the phenomenon of feeling something for fictional characters was only a product of hearing a song you had heard before.

Black Mirror has fantastic production values and casting is genuinely great. Unfortunately it is about as intellectually inspired as the social media it so rigidly fears. The concept of sharing something publicly is not so complex and world-changing. When enough people are broadcasting, the result is simply noise: not variegated enough to have a distinct effect. I understand that when you are Charlie Brooker the fact that tons of people react to what you say on makes you feel powerful, but extending this emotion, properly known as megalomania, to the world at large is a stretch.

In the fifth episode of the series, Brooker takes on war, casting the amazing Malachi Kirby as a soldier sent out to kill human roaches. Kirby's character has a brain implant so he thinks that the disease-carrying segment of the population – those with genes for cancer, M.S., multiple sclerosis, various syndromes – looks like unintelligible human-insect monsters. As his therapist, Michael Kelly (Doug Stamper on House of Cards) saves the entire episode. Brooker repeats the questionable statistic that 75 percent of soldiers in the second World War never fired or if they did, aimed above the enemy's heads. I don't know about the idea that killing other humans is so outside of our experience we need to be tricked into doing it, but I do know that it is coarse even for this fiction of absolutes.

The series finale is its most disappointing jaunt. A detective (Kelly Macdonald) is investigating the murders of people who said gross stuff on social media. At an unbelievably long 90 minutes, this should properly spell the end of a show that should have wrapped up with Jon Hamm's death – just like Mad Men. It isn't that Brooker never has good ideas – his dialogue can be quite moving when it isn't trying too hard, and some of his concepts are genuinely inventive.

The problem with Black Mirror is its dreary, overlong format. In the 1950s and 1960s, a group of writers essentially formed a concept of the science fiction short story and it has really not changed much to today, except for how many less people read them. Any invented universe depends on the graciousness of its audience, and in order to earn that attention, it must never outstay its welcome. Some of the worlds Brooker imagines are so wonderfully constructed we feel like we leave too soon – the best short stories accomplish exactly this, and succeed because they do not have to fill a predetermined running time. Mostly, Brooker is confined to a fixed length even when his subject matter is only good for a solid ten minutes.

What is the future of futurism? When the technological age began, it was not difficult to see the promise that larger hard drives and faster processing speeds would eventually bring. Although we are in stagnate period for that, some development will no doubt fuel the engines again. The creation of another world other than our own is the only possible result of this move forward, since our fear of artificial intelligence is largely due to James Cameron. Once we have this other place besides Earth, it will be hard to write convincing satire about it, given that its moral content will be only what we make it.

Ethan Peterson is the reviews editor of This Recording.

In Which No One Took This News Better Than Billy Bob

Ally McShame

by ETHAN PETERSON

Goliath
creators David E. Kelley & Jonathan Shapiro
Amazon Studios

Crisis in Six Scenes
creator Woody Allen
Amazon Studios

Were you wondering how white people were handling this difficult and emotional period in American history? I was, so I watched a lot of Chris Wallace and sobbed briefly during Blackish. Those queries were not answered satisfactorily, but at some point when Billy McBride (Billy Bob Thornton) is hammering his blonde client missionary-style as he pursues a wrongful death case against a conglomerate called Borns Technology, I felt the merest inkling of a familiar phenomenon: white guilt.

Thornton can't even enjoy the golden haze that surrounds the immediate aftermath of intimacy with a woman twenty years his junior. He hops on his computer and researches his enemies. He has to do something, anything, but he does not know what. When he finds out his latest conquest has googled him, he is embarrassed, ashamed and a little excited.

Thornton is a magnificent and subtle actor, and he is a lot less believably crotchety than usual in Goliath. White hair and a shit goatee has turned him into this vague version of a decent human being. There are only so many actors who can switch from light/hearted to emotionally serious in a single moment, and this elasticity tends to overwhelm its most charismatic proponents: (Cruise, Hanks, Gosling). Thornton's timing in contrast is completely impeccable — no one is better than he at playing utter basics.

The rest of the cast of Goliath is just as exquisite. William Hurt is in god-tier mode as Donald Cooperman, the legal titan behind McBride's former firm. Mario Bello always deserved more from this industry and as McBride's ex-wife you get the idea of an entire history that can't be unpacked in just one episode. Olivia Thirlby and Molly Parker are equally amusing as high-powered corporate attorneys.

David E. Kelley's typical chatty dialogue is everpresent here, but what's missing is the extensive backstory he always felt forced to attach to every single character. Goliath never tiptoes around or struggles – it proceeds forward like a bullet-train, never letting a single joke outstay its welcome. It is the best thing Amazon has ever done, and thankfully no one wants to go more than a season. There is nothing to hold off on — this is so clearly a one-shot that Kelley can afford to pace things more like film than television. His efforts at movies were always underappreciated. Buried among a spate of mediocre offerings, it would be a shame if the superb Goliath meets a similar fate.

In contrast, Woody Allen's Crisis in Six Scenes has a far better concept with substantially lesser results. Allen's projects are always hit-or-miss depending on what side of the bed he woke up that day. Crisis in Six Scenes has a lot in it that you would think can't go wrong: Elaine May as Woody's good-natured therapist wife, Miley Cyrus as their houseguest. Every performance in Crisis in Six Scenes is just on the verge of being amusing without ever getting there.

Set at the end of the turbulent 1960s, Allen actually has a lot to say about how white people react to events in the world around us. Crisis in Six Scenes feels like an incisive cultural essay penned by a fourteen year old. Seen in retrospect, Allen's humorous jokes about the Vietnam War and his view of arts and culture seem far more mean-spirited than usual. It is like he is trying to show off a certain edge in a new medium and doesn't realize he is working with a blunt knife.

Amazon has struggled to compete with the original programming efforts of Netflix, but they have substantial advantages over their competition going forward. Netflix has a ten billion dollar debt just based around the money they owe on licenses for television series they don't own. Almost half of that is due next year, which means the size of the Netflix library is about to rapidly decline; it is already down substantially from what it once was.

Amazon has a lot more money with which to fight this battle. The direction they are taking now: avoiding niche shows in favor of projects that are more likely to appeal to the wealthy, white clientele that orders other products from them through the Amazon Prime service. Both Goliath and Crisis in Six Scenes fit this new bourgeois aesthetic, which makes it somewhat humorous that both shows are about underdogs. 

Ethan Peterson is the reviews editor of This Recording. He is a writer living in Manhattan.

In Which Tim Burton Never Gave Us A Chance

I Know Why The Caged Bird

by ETHAN PETERSON

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children
dir. Tim Burton
127 minutes

When asked why all of the children in his new film Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children were white, Tim Burton answered that he finds it more insulting when diversity is needlessly shoehorned in. After all, the main villain here is Mr. Barron (Samuel L. Jackson), although he is a shapeshifter. Given that time travel is possible here through "loops" which are locations that enable passage to a specific time in the 20th century, it is likely Mr. Barron just found out about Samuel L. Jackson and wanted to look like him. So no worries – no actual individuals of color had to be inserted into this pale ménage.

Joseph Epstein had a essay earlier this year about the lunatic of one idea – how some people see the world through one lense which distinguishes everything they do. These simple-minded folk are led by Tim Burton, who is the lunatic of one aesthetic. Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children builds to a climactic battle at a carnival, where monsters called Hollows attack the white children. To defend themselves, a boy named Enoch (Finley MacMillan), animates a group of skeletons to battle them. It looked almost exactly like a scene from The Nightmare Before Christmas, which Burton did not even direct. Everything else in the production design of this movie seems remarkably familiar.

Earlier, Jacob Portman (Asa Butterfield), or as he is referred to about 700 times in the movie by the gentile children, "Jake", finds his grandfather (Terence Stamp) dead, his eyes torn out. Instead of being horrified or even mildly disturbed by what he has found, Jake decides to solve the murder. About twenty minutes of flashbacks follows with young Jake learning about his grandfather's adventures during World War II. When he presents this information to his class at school, everyone laughs in his face and his parents tell him that his grandfather is a liar. He feels very alone.

Jake and his father Franklin (Chris O'Dowd) journey to Wales so that the boy can prove to himself that his grandfather's stories were hot bullshit. Despite the fact that this movie cost $110 million, none of it was actually shot in Wales. You can tell, because this part of the movie looks far from glorious; more like a depressing beach town in the Tampa area.

When Jake meets all of these children, they each demonstrate their powers for him. Leading this white menagerie is Miss Peregrine herself (Eva Green). Disappointingly, Miss Peregrine declines the opportunity to become a romantic option for Jake, and turns into a falcon at times. Despite being a magnificent bird of prey, she only uses this form to hide.

Jake seems vaguely upset about the rejection, and sets his sights on a woman more his own age. Emma Bloom (Ella Purnell) most recently dated Jake's grandfather which is pretty screwed up if you ask me. Perhaps understandably, she is very reluctant to kiss him.

Emma's powers are massive: not only is her lithe body lighter than air, but she can also swim for hours just by manipulating air bubbles. The rest of the group feature powers of differing utility. One is strong, another likes bees, another is invisible. Another girl can start fires (hint: anyone can), while two of the children are Gorgons who wear masks to prevent turning everyone to stone. The moment when they take them off still makes me want to cry.

Burton is great at this kind of casual horror. Thank God for that, since he seems terribly bored with every other aspect of this script by Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass). All of the children are kept pre-adolescent with no more agency than five year-olds. Miss Peregrine has had no adults in the vicinity for the half-century she has been reliving the same day, waiting for Jake to arrive. I suppose she is asexual, but maybe in her bird form she meets other falcons. I chose not to input the words "how do falcons have sex?" into google, but it is good to know it is there.

In many ways, Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children feels woefully dated. Its character development is sub-Avatar level, and boy does it take its sweet time. Ultimately, in a film that should contain a lot of mystery and wonder for its magical world, everything about the fantasy aspects of the film seems woefully normal.

The most wild elements are actually the moments when the narrative interacts with historical truth. Burton specifically doesn't want to go there — the Nazis bomb the home into oblivion, which is why Miss Peregrine keeps reliving that one day before the violence. But unlike in Pan's Labyrinth, for example, no one talks about the war, or the world around them in the movie. It is all just background noise for magic tricks.

Ethan Peterson is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in Manhattan. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.