june: judging a book by its cover [IS FUN]
plus: art that spoon-feeds you; organic paths to new music; and revisiting classic 80s films
It’s June! It’s summer (well, not technically, but basically)! And this month I’m talking about Tattoos - Shellac; Slip It in - Black Flag; Gun - Scout Niblett; Back to the Future (1985); Do the Right Thing (1989); Certified Copy (2010); Nobody Knows (2004); My Brilliant Friend and The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante; and Amy Bravo’s artwork at Swivel Gallery.
Music
I lost my headphones for three weeks last month, and I didn’t do anything to fix it. When I realized they were missing, I decided to just forgo listening to music. I dunno why. The only times I heard music were when a friend put something on, when I was at a bar or a cafe, and when I went to a show (I saw Mannequin Pussy and Gustaf). Here’s what I managed to come across while living like that…
Tattoos - Shellac
Point blank, I did not know who Steve Albini was until he died and my entire Instagram blew up with posts about him. But it turns out he worked with a bunch of artists I do care about—Slint, Scout Niblett, The Breeders, etc. I hadn’t listened to any of Albini’s own projects, but in the wake of his death, my friends urged me to listen to The Model by Big Black (I enjoyed this), and one evening while I was out, the bartender put on Shellac’s new album To All Trains. It’s nice to encounter new music organically, and it makes me think I need to go back to listening to college radio… I don’t know that Tattoos is my favorite off of To All Trains, but I included it because I like this line a lot:
You say time waits for no one, you couldn’t be more wrong
Time is patient like a hunter, waiting for you to come along!
I like this characterization of time…not a passive background operating factor; not an unthinkingly hurried force, unaware of and unresponsive to your existence…but rather, a calculated, preternatural predator. When one thing piles on top of another on top of another on top of another, I tend to think maybe this would be more bearable if it were instead happening when…but it’s always just happening when it’s happening.
Slip It In - Black Flag
My first memory of Black Flag is that a guy I went to high school with, Beck, wore a Black Flag t-shirt all the time. My second, third, and fourth memories of Black Flag are: Rise Above playing in Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland; Rise Above playing in my favorite TV show, Freaks and Geeks; and Nervous Breakdown playing in the movie 20th Century Women.
In both Freaks and Geeks and 20th Century Women, the protagonist listens to a Black Flag record in an attempt to understand the appeal, the meaning, the impact that it has on other people, that it could potentially have on themselves. While Daniel in Freaks and Geeks finds comfort and possibility in this experiment, Dorothea in 20th Century Women asks, “What is he saying?” and, when answered, follows up, “Is that interesting?” to which her friend responds, “I think we’re maybe overthinking this.”
Even though most of the music I seriously enjoy is derived of punk, I don’t do my homework, I’m lazy, I borrowed my friend’s book Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk a year ago and never got around to it. But, during my headphoneless phase, I drank coffee and did the crossword while my friend blared Minor Threat and Black Flag at 9 am, and that was great, and revived my interest in learning…
I chose to put Slip It In in this newsletter because I’ve been thinking about how every genre approaches writing songs about sex (from Josh Turner’s country crooning, “Baby lock them doors and turn the lights down low” in Your Man to Ludacris’ no-frills rapping, “I wanna li-li-li-lick you from your head to your toes” in What’s Your Fantasy), and in the summertime—in the sunshine, the heat, the feral reawakening of the city—I like the freneticism of Slip It In from Black Flag, or Orgasm Addict by Buzzcocks, or New Face by Model/Actriz.
Gun - Scout Niblett
Okay, back to Steve Albini. Er, sort of. He didn’t produce the record Gun is on, but he did produce another Scout Niblett album, I Am. Whatever, I’m talking about Gun instead! I first heard this song in college. I love how hollow it sounds, how sparse and sharp and brooding it is. Normally, when I think of ‘brooding’ songs I think of fuzzy guitars and whispery, lingering vocals, everything sort of stretched and demolished…but I get the same feeling from this song despite its severity. I love when she says (and it’s really more of a ‘says’ than a ‘sings’): “You took your love away from me, and I am thankful everyday,” I love the idea of her being grateful for being deeply wronged. This song makes me hope I get cheated on just so I can listen to it and feel its full intended effect.
Films
Back to the Future (1985)
Rife with cursing and containing an implied rape scene, HOW IS THIS MOVIE RATED PG?! And how come every time-travel-story-writer has brainrot from incest porn that causes them to write storylines where the male protagonist’s present-day female family members come onto him when he travels back to the past (Marty’s mom in Back to the Future, Mike’s daughter in 17 Again, etc.)???
My confusion doesn’t end there: I was running late to the theater, so I missed the first ten minutes of the film, and as I settled into it I thought to myself, “I must have missed the part where they explained how this 17-year-old and this mad weirdo became acquainted to begin with.” But then I remembered John Mulaney’s bit about Back to the Future and realized everyone is confused about how they became friends, because they never explain it!
Alright: the movie is—obviously—about time travel. Marty (the 17-year-old protagonist) travels back in time, to when his present-day parents are teenagers in high school. He’s not there to do anything specific (what a waste); it was by accident that he even ended up in the past, and he just wants to get back to the present day. But blah blah blah, space-time continuum and whatnot, he fucks up the natural course of events, and now, if he wants to save his own existence, he has to get his high-school parents to fall in love with each other once again. Most of the movie is him effortfully instilling confidence in his father to ask out his mother, and showing his mother what a genuinely appealing guy his father is.
What struck me the most was the very ending of the film. In the beginning of the movie, it’s clear that his mom is a disgruntled alcoholic, his siblings are useless losers, and his father is a cowering wimp. The consequence of him interfering with the past, and instilling all this confidence and affection in his parents, is that when he arrives back in the present day, his parents are deeply in love, affluent, confident people, and his siblings are successful, assertive people, and oh yeah, he apparently has the girlfriend of his dreams. This is…depressing!
The only thing that could convince me it’s not depressing is being reminded that it’s a movie for kids—the entire theatre was packed with families—AKA, a kid could conceivably watch this movie and think to herself, “Wow, it’s like magic, he went back in the past and fixed everything, and now he has this well-off family and this gorgeous girlfriend, this guy has the best life in the world,” but I just thought to myself, “Well, he really did himself in: now every single one of his interpersonal relationships is dead to him, and these people he once loved and knew are complete strangers, and his connection to them will never be what is once was, and his place in the world will never again feel familiar to him.”
Maybe I would have found it less depressing if his family had gone from being truly abhorrent to charming, but there wasn’t really anything wrong with his family in the first place, apart from being a little underwhelming and dorky. So what, now they play golf and own a sportscar and that makes Marty’s life better? I guess!!!!!
Do the Right Thing (1989)
Seeing Back to the Future and Do the Right Thing in the span of a couple days made me wonder: why am I always watching new films that could turn out to be terrible?! I should just be focused on catching up on all the tried-and-true classics. I was running late to the theater for this screening too (oops). I thought I’d go pee during the opening credits, but it turns out Do the Right Thing has one of the best opening credit sequences I’ve ever seen:
The movie is about rising tensions between Italian and Black neighbors in a Brooklyn neighborhood on a scorching day. Before seeing it, I had been thinking about how, for better or for worse, a lot of movies these days feel too on-the-nose and moralizing. Even when there’s a valuable point to be made—about the environment, about sexual assault, anything—it’s often heavy-handed and made uninteresting to anyone who doesn’t already agree with the lesson. Watching Do the Right Thing while feeling this way was cathartic, because never for a second did I feel that paternal hand on my shoulder, steering me towards this or that opinion.
I watched it with my friend who put it well, saying that the best way to make content about charged subjects was to make the characters real, believable, and sympathetic—not predictable tropes, not all or nothing. And even Spike Lee (who directs and also stars in the film) himself seems to be aware of this, as the end credits include both a quote from MLK Jr. encouraging nonviolent solutions to racism and crimes of the state, and a quote from Malcolm X encouraging whatever means are necessary to escape intolerable situations. Duality, choice, gray areas! Pushing an audience to think for themselves and arrive somewhere, to exercise some agency and defend their takes! YEAH!
Certified Copy (2010)
It took me three-fourths of the film to figure out what was going on, and even once I figured out what was going on, I wasn’t sure how exciting it was. This movie begins with a woman (she is literally not given a name in the movie, so I’ll just all her ‘she’) going to see a presentation by an author she likes, James Miller. They spend the afternoon together, and immediately James launches into pedantic, try-hard monologues about heady things that end in trite, uninteresting conclusions. It feels unbearable, but nobody treats James like he’s unbearable, so I figured whoever wrote the movie just sucked. I thought to myself: I really cannot do another hour of this.
Once this nonsense abates a bit, there is a more congenial, romantic tension between James and the woman, and I began thinking to myself, “Oh. It’s more of a rom-com, and I should take this lightly, and relax.” But this flirting is short-lived, and the conversation grows heavy and bizarre, and finally I piece together—after seventy minutes of distasteful pretension and stilted mating—that actually they are morphing into stand-ins for other people. And actually, this film isn’t about what an obnoxious intellectual James is, or about the woman’s interest in pursuing him as a real romantic partner—it’s a surreal roleplay, and they’ve become surrogates for other people/concepts/experiences in each other’s lives.
They act as though they have been married for fifteen years, have the same memories of times shared together, kids, old habits…and they don’t crack either, it’s not meant to be a fun game, they really quarrel and cut deep! This suddenly-intense relationship isn’t predicated anything other than an implicit agreement to be freaks together for a couple hours… This is the sort of thing I could really lean into and enjoy, if it were executed differently. But they use the first half of the film to bore you to tears, so you’re not primed to feel invested by the time the (interesting) twist comes around.
Nobody Knows (2004)
Nobody Knows is a Japanese film based on a true story of a mother who abandons her four children for long periods of time again and again until completely leaving them to fend for themselves. I went to see this film because I wanted it to make me cry, but it didn’t. It could have, had it not been so heavy-handed on the symbolism (shot after shot after shot of the estranged mother’s favorite nail polish, now being used, now spilling on the carpet, now staining fingers, etc, we get it, IT WAS HER NAIL POLISH!).
Despite feeling spoon-fed once in a while, I mostly enjoyed it and its careful handling of errant parents. It’s clear from the beginning that the mother doesn’t have the emotional availability or sense of responsibility necessary to be a parent, and that she makes up for this lack by being spontaneous and “fun.” There are four children, and this allows us to see a wide range of responses one can have towards unfit parents. The two youngest children don’t seem capable of perceiving her behavior as inappropriate—they merely clap and laugh when she returns home with gifts for them, happy to be in her presence again, forgetting how long it’s been.
The oldest daughter holds onto time spent with her mom, feels that those moments are precious and indicative of a more committed mother to come, hangs onto hope that she can eventually have the kind of mother she pines for, bestows a foolish sacredness on all her mother touches (one of the most heart-wrenching scenes to me is when the oldest son proclaims he will sell his mother’s clothing for rent money since she’s never coming back this time, and the oldest daughter quarrels with him, fights to save her mother’s clothing, locks herself in the closet with it all).
The oldest son can barely crack a smile at his mother when she returns from God-knows-where, leaving him to make dinner and bathe the others. He attempts only twice to understand where she is, and only because he needs money for rent. He calls the place she ostensibly works, and they tell her she has quit. He calls a house where he believes she is staying, she picks up and identifies herself with a new name, and he silently hangs up the phone. He never fights this loss, he never wishes or mourns, he moves on.
But enough about the kids’ thoughts about their mother, because again: most of this movie is about the children’s rapid dissent into destitution. It’s hard to watch, especially as you see the children and the apartment become dirtier, less functional, less alive. Sometimes, seeing the oldest son take care of bills and three other human beings makes you lose sight of the fact that he’s a child. But when you see him sitting on a park bench, hugging his knees to his chest, sitting the way a child sits, you’re confronted with his true nature, devastated by all he’s lost in forced parentification.
Misc.
Amy Bravo at Swivel Gallery
I went to Swivel Gallery to see work by an artist I love, Amy Bravo. On display, as part of the THE SUM OF OUR PARTS exhibit, was her piece Automaton 1.0 (Arachnid), 2024:
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F97d7dc82-cfec-4c1c-8c81-f7cc3e303da6_1170x1057.heic)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8c4fbf93-548a-4443-8759-23f37c55f643_1170x1054.heic)
Some other works of hers that I love:
Books
My Brilliant Friend and The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante
This series is about two best friends, Lila and Elena, coming of age in poverty in Naples, constantly competing with each other (in academics, in romance, you name it). I didn’t realize everyone in the world had already read this series. My coworkers, my friends—even my server at lunch caught a glimpse of My Brilliant Friend on the table and remarked what a great read it was. But fear not (I say to myself) because I am catching up rapidly: I’ve finished two of the four books in the series in the past month.
I want to finish the whole series before I give thoughts and opinions on it. So for now, I’m copping out by commenting on the form, not the content: what the hell is going on with the cover art for these books?? They are sophisticated, thoughtful, moving books, but the covers make them look like lame beachy romance novels. Not to spoil it, but it’s not even clear who the three kids are on My Brilliant Friend’s cover. Those children do NOT correspond to any plot point in the story. It’s as if they already had that cover designed for a different book, and recycled it for this one, saying “eh, close enough.” Disaster. I’ll have more to share once I’m done reading the final 900 pages of the quartet—and this will happen! I’m diligent, I’m disciplined!
As always, thanks for reading (or skimming and scrolling).
xoxo,
makayla