I Promise This is about K-pop Demon Hunters if You Read All the Way.

Yesterday, I was reading analysis of a beloved movie, where a main character is acting badly, that seemed to entirely miss the message, theme, and tone of the movie. I was pretty shocked that someone could spend so much time watching this movie and thinking about it to miss the obvious surface level ironies, but well the internet has many voices and these things happen.

Then it happened again, same day.

The first was "Buffalo '66." I don't blame you for not having seen it or even heard of it, but it was actually a big deal back in the day and certainly has spent enough time under scrutiny. The tone and cinematography of the movie are of a perfect sort of misery to capture upstate New York.

The movie is written and directed by, and the main character is played by, auteur Vincent Gallo. Gallo plays what can only be described as the Biggest Loser in the Universe. He has just gotten out of jail for assaulting someone over a football bet, and his only plan now is to assault them again. He is a whiny, bitter, violent manboy who does not have the skill to accomplish anything at all. He looks like shit and his vocal ticks all scream insecurity. His only other plan, before probably dying in a foolish assault, is to kidnap a girl, and take her to his parents house, so he can lie that he has a girlfriend to make his parents proud of him. I was watching this review: https://youtu.be/wyTVj7RD7fM?si=0_IyghAqmzMfeHDh

 The "girl" in this case is played by a 17 year old Christina Ricci. And from the above review at least, it sounds like the set was made into Hell for her. This was her first time away from home, cut off from her support system, under a director who didn't have any line between "her boss" and "the actor playing her abusive boyfriend." Other actors would do things like spontaneously hug her breasts tightly without telling her. She was under age. And again, this was Buffalo in the winter. (That's not even a joke - she had to wear a revealingly short skirt, in this weather.)

That's only one perspective on a 27 year old set, but it's easy to agree this was a toxic. (And Giallo seems incapable of not being an asshole in his many interviews.) This movie should not have been made, under any ethical system that takes into account the abuse of employees.

But then people use that immoral set behavior to conclude... this movie is just a male fantasy, specifically Giallo's, about a manic pixie dream girl. It's nothing more than an incredibly hot and vulnerable woman falling for a dude who treats her badly.

WHAT MOVIE WERE YOU SEEING? Giallo's character is a pathetic, self-loathing, piece of shit who is not capable of earning anything, be it money or basic human respect. What sort of macho bro would say *this* is his fantasy?

The movie is not about some dude getting what he wants. It's about a man who has been completely starved of affection growing up, and as a result turns out to become a nothingburger of a human being. (A really popular theme about bros, I know.) And yet somehow, through divine grace, comes across a person who gives him back all of that affection, unearned, in one afternoon. And he can't even respond to her love, because a) he doesn't know how to and b) he's frankly terrified. 

While it looks miserable to be the *character* Ricci plays in this scene, and probably the actress was actually miserable here, it's Giallo that is the punchline of this joke.

The theme of the movie is unconditional love triumphing in even the worst of conditions. You can take it or leave it (it's kinda slow, and the sexualization of the 17 year old actress is uncomfortable) but you can't see this movie and think the theme is "Giallo gassing himself up."

 ***

So later that evening I watched "K-pop Demon Hunters", finally. I've encountered at least a dozen people telling me I need to see it - including the bride and groom at a wedding I crashed. Neither K-pop nor anime are really my thing, but when something is so culturally popular, I gotta see it to understand what the fuss is about. It's usually a worthwhile experience.

I was utterly surprised and bewildered. The best word I have for it would be "incomplete." Not in the sense that the movie was bad, or the morals were bad. It was a perfectly fine narrative and cinematic experience - just the last 15 minutes of the movie are missing, and without that the film is either incoherent or satirical.

You better believe this is going to contain spoilers. 

KDH is about a band that fights demons and sings musical rituals, who are trying to finish the ritual of generations and seal away all demons forever. Unfortunately their leader is secretly half-demon, AND there's a demon boy band standing in their way. I knew how it would end from the first five minutes.

This is THE modern myth we see in popular fantasy trying to send a message. We saw it in "EEAOO." And "How to Train a Dragon." "Ne Zha 2" for more dragon examples. "Starship Troopers." "Attack on Titan." Every single Guillermo del Toro movie. Zootopia. Oblivion. Damsel. The Legend of Ochi. It goes back to Frankenstein, for crying out loud. The story is secretly fascists vs monsters, and the "monsters" turn out to be the oppressed class. Our heroes figure this out, just in time to stop their former-bosses from wiping out the monsters. 

This narrative becomes so obvious over the course of the movie that I thought the writers were overdoing it. The "demons" turn out to be individual, warped souls with sad backstories. They're really just serving their tyrannical despot, who really is evil. And the "good guy" characters keep emphasizing how all demons should die and none of them have ever done anything good to deserve existing. The mentor of the good guys keeps emphasizing the ethnic demon cleansing side of this ritual.

  I'm not exaggerating. Here are the lyrics of a song they wrote:

 

And the leader of the band (sadly there are only two real characters in this movie - the two frontsingers - and her other bandmates are static reflections of her different sides) is struggling with her demon heritage. She has hidden it from everyone, and made uncomfortable by all this demon genocide talk. She's afraid to tell anyone, and her surrogate mother tells her the only solution is to repress that side until the climactic ritual - the Golden Honmou - will wipe away her "bad" part. The demon army, and her internal angst, are one and the same thing - currently being repressed.

We're told the tyrannical leader of the demons can only be defeated with "love, not hate."

She starts falling for the leader of the demon boy band. He has a tragic backstory.

The demons have fantastic, adorable pets.

The leader starts losing her voice. And without her voice she thinks she has no value.

Characters mention frequently how much suffering the Golden Honmou will be for the demons.

The main character sings a very dramatic song about no longer hiding her demon self.

Her own friends try to kill her when they find out she's half-demon.  

The girls only care about their fans as a resource to collect and hoard, and not as individuals to serve and to respect their needs. 

There is a song that is particularly violent, that the half-demon leader is uncomfortable about. 

The demon boy band turns out to be kinder and more considerate than the girl band. 

The best song in the movie is about the demon boy band being able to love bad people.

(This is somewhat even more heavy-handed for anyone who has read this blog. It is a fight between a harmonious community that would never have any problems at all ... against a monstrous Other, that must be eliminated. In that conflict, in art, you should always choose the side of the Other. The harmony is a lie.)
 

Okay, okay, I get it. The kpop band will realize the spell was oppressing the demons, and they will defeat both their mentor AND the tyrannical demon king, and the demons will join the humans in peaceful co-existence.

So let's just get to it already.

Only twenty minutes till the end of this runtime people, you better start revealing the twist soon.

It's a climactic battle. I guess the turn will be here.

Well, there's still 15 min of runtime left, they still have time to spur of the moment realize demons are people too.

Victory, but I sense a coda coming. 

WHAT! THE CREDITS ARE 14 MIN LONG????

That's just... it? 

Our heroes just... beat all the demons down, and conducted the sealing ritual? The leader's demonic patterns are barely visible, in accord with her mentor's promise long ago. The sympathetic leader of the demon boy band sacrifices himself... and the other four members of the boy band are just slaughtered by the good guys, and don't matter ever again.

The girls who were about to kill their leader for being half demon, don't get any comeuppance for putting demon-fear over friendship? All the ominous lines about KILL EVERY DEMON were just about being unfair to HER, and not all demonkind? 

It's genuinely unclear whether the girls performed their final rituals - the spell they do at the climax is successful, but we don't actually see gold in the ubiquitous magic prison field - and no one talks about the spell afterwards.

So I don't get it. This is not me saying "a movie about showing solidarity with the oppressed is better than this movie that is about FRIENDS coming together and maybe talk about your problems instead of hiding them." I'm saying the solidarity-movie is what this movie was being! How could you litter "our heroes are pretty flawed" and "it sucks to be a demon" moments, if it was going to be a manichean ending?

If anything, this movie looks like "Starship Troopers," where the forces of "good" are triumphant and the underclass is kept down, and no one talks about the moral contradictions at all. But that's a satire! Is this movie a satire? If it is, it's an incredibly tone-accurate one.

What would it mean if they didn't mean the movie to be satire? This isn't "wow they were lazy or dumb", it's "their work shows a lot of intelligence and craft and effort -- put into the other side of the narrative."

I've seen there are a lot of ideas online about this dissonance between the tone and the ending. People say it was supposed to be a THREE HOUR movie, or there will be a SEASON 2!

I think that's way too long. You just needs 20 extra minutes, that are the same as the 20 minutes at the end of Damsel, or How to Train Your Dragon. I have to presume they made *that* movie, and then focus groups caused them to change the ending around, and they just cut and re-drew the climax/denouement scenes for time. I don't see why there was a bad reaction, bad enough to make the creators do THIS hackjob, but who knows.

Schemes of the Phoenicians

The heart of film is visual style, and Wes Anderson is one of the most stylized directors working today. He is certainly the most popular of the great formalists. And I haven’t given much analysis of his films before - their class commentary is usually too obvious. But the Venetian scheme is a good starting place. As always spoilers below the cut. 

Andor Neoliberals

Of course you should watch Season 2 of Andor. I'm not even going to waste text trying to convince you. There are none so blind as those that refuse to see.

Tuesday night's set of three episodes - 2.7 thru 2.9 - were bonus amazing and in many ways the climax of what this season and all of Andor had been moving towards. They have ignited a huge explosion of praise online, especially from the sort of left-wing popular-culture obsessives we know so well. 

I find that... confusing, or maybe willfully blind. Spoilers below the cut.

I Resent that I Have to do Severance Plot Analysis

There, I said it. I enjoy the Apple streaming mammoth "Severance" for its individual episodes. It has a strong directorial style, extremely fitting actors for their characters, and very thought out set design. Any 45 minutes of it is worth watching.

But the metaplot is an extremely cliche "mystery box" with "the large corporation has a conspiracy that is *even more evil than you thought* and for extremely vague and unrealistic motives." I don't care what is going to happen to Lumon in the end. I'm sad that seems to be the only sort of analysis I can find on reddit or any other place discussing the shows.

... but I'm even more frustrated that everyone analyzing the plot is missing the central point. Spoilers for the finale below.

Jinx is Innocent

 

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.

 Genesis 3:7

Jun Jong-Seo Trilogy

Jun Jong-Seo is a Korean actress whose star is rising very rapidly, and I think her three most American movies make an excellent, impromptu trilogy.

She barely has any filmography so far, only 7 movies (and at least started her acting career on break from college.)

But my favorite films of hers make a trilogy, where she is a central figure of concern, and we see thematic progress in her arcs.

Movie 1 is "Burning," which was a critical darling about perspective and the hero-narratives we make for ourselves and never really knowing someone. I consider this the "Death" or "Non-existence" arc.

 

Movie 2 is "Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon," a psychedelic neon dream on the streets of New Orleans, with house-mix soundtrack to boot. I consider this the "Freedom" or "Actualization" arc.

Movie 3 is "Ballerina," a Netflix paint-by-numbers revenge flick. But it's executed really well with gorgeous action scenes and a classic lesbian-tragic series of flashbacks that's so popular these days. I consider this the "Responsibility" or "Power Trip" arc.

Double Feature: Dune 2 (2024) and Dune (1984)

Yes, you should go see Dune 2 and form your own reading of it. It's a magnificent film that during its entire 2 hour 45 minute run I did not want to miss a single scene. So I am going to write this post as if you are fully spoiled, if spoilers mean anything with an adaptation. If that's an issue for you, please go see it.

Additionally, this quality creates a dearth of discourse. If the movie is simply objectively "very good" and it's 9 months till Oscar contention, what hot takes can we have?

The immediate answer to fill that vacuum was "compare this Dune movie to other forms", especially the novel and the 1984 movie by auteur David Lynch (with only a few geeks bringing up the Sci-Fi channel series or Jodorowsky's ill fated project.) Which is difficult because comparison invites judgment, and this movie is both a) obviously good and b) extremely different than those two versions at some fundamental levels.

Instead, I think we are discussing history.

Before I continue dissecting these two movies, I invite you to read this insanely long and insanely good essay by historian Ada Palmer about historicity generally, and in particular comparing two television adaptations of the Borgias. https://www.exurbe.com/the-borgias-vs-borgia-faith-and-fear/ I've linked this essay before, but it's especially applicable now.

For me, though, I have learned to relax and let it go. I remember the turning point moment.  I was watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my roommates, and it went into a backstory flashback set in high medieval Germany.  “Why are you sighing?” one asked, noticing that I’d laid back and deflated rather gloomily.  I answered: “She’s not of sufficiently high social status to have domesticated rabbits in Northern Europe in that century.  But I guess it’s not fair to press a point since the research on that hasn’t been published yet.”  It made me laugh, also made me think about how much I don’t know, since I hadn’t known that a week before.  For all the visible mistakes in these shows, there are even more invisible mistakes that I make myself because of infinite details historians haven’t figured out yet, and possibly never will.  

...

Now, historians aren’t certain of Cesare’s birth date.  He may be the eldest of his full siblings, or second.

The difference between Cesare as elder brother and Cesare as younger brother in the shows is fascinating.  Showtime’s Big Brother Cesare is grim, disillusioned, making hard decisions to further the family’s interests even if the rest of the family isn’t yet ready to embrace such means.  B:F&F‘s Little Brother Cesare is starved for affection, uncertain about his path, torn about his religion, and slowly growing up in a baby-snake-that-hasn’t-yet-found-its-venom kind of way.

Both are fascinating, utterly unrelated characters, and all the subsequent character dynamics are completely different too.  Giovanni/Juan is utterly different in each, since Big Brother Cesare requires a playful and endearing younger brother, whose death is already being foreshadowed in episode 1 with lines like “It’s the elder brother’s duty to protect the younger,” while Little Brother Cesare requires a conceited, bullying Giovanni/Juan undeserving of the affection which Rodrigo ought to be giving to smarter, better Cesare.  Elder Brother Cesare also requires different close friends, giving him natural close relationships with figures like the Borgias’ famous family assassin Michelotto Corella, who can empathize with him about using dark means in a world that isn’t quite OK with it.

Dune is a story so big, so poured over by analysts already, that these movies don't feel like artistic adaptations so much as differing historical interpretations. Both 1984 and the 2020's movies feel like they are actually trying to be about the same events, but have very different understanding and evidence. They're groping in the dark for monocausal patterns when the real truth was probably messy, contradictory, and inexplicable.

What is Dune 21/24 about?

Sometimes on Twitter people argue about whether Dune is appropriationist and centers a white savior, and other people say "no the entire point is that this is exploitative and a disaster waiting to that happens." Well if anyone has missed that nuance, Villeneuve hammers it home relentlessly.

For the first time we are introduced to political splits among the Fremen, with the Northerners being more worldly, civilized, and practical and the Southerners - who live in an uninhabitable sandstorm - being backwards and more fundamentalist. And this split is mirrored in the characters - Chani, her friends, Gurney Halleck, and Paul-before-he-drinks-Water-of-Life are all very firm on messiah-hood being a bad ending, and would only be the result of manipulation by the Bene Gesserit. Whereas Jessica, Alia, and Stilgar are arguing for messiah-hood against others, and not above using manipulation to achieve this. 

Paul, in the most recent movie, is doing everything he can to stay secular, but feels historical currents pushing him towards taking the religious mantel. Until his hand is forced - he can either "go to the South" and follow his mother, or he can stay behind to be slaughtered (the inclusion of the scene where Feyd-Rutha kills one lone last-standing Freman is meant to show "what would have happened to Paul if he stayed.")

We get this same theme with the quotidian shots of the Emperor and his daughter in their garden, discussing politics. The currents of the great houses and the Bene Gesserit are forcing their hand, so they must play into Paul's hand even though they know it will spell the end of their imperial dynasty. Fate is cold and relentless, and about large forces not magic powers.

Paul most of all does not want to become messiah, and most of his point of view is speaking against it. But then he's maneuvered into drinking the Water of Life and... at that point he basically disappears as a viewpoint character. We don't have access to his internality anymore, he's just a machine for holy war. It was a very disturbing transition.

Lady Jessica is a villain almost as much as any Harkonnen, who tells herself she is doing all this just to keep her son safe, but by the end is just trying to spite the Bene Gesserit. 

The biggest change from the novel is where Lynch's Dune swerves into all the "weird fantasy shit", this Dune avoids it as much as possible. That's right: there's no CHOAM representatives, no voice cannons, no special powers for the Fremen troops at all, Alia isn't even born during this movie (no "my brother is coming" creeper 4 year old harbinger), no mentats, no ghoula, no rain, no weirding way. Both Paul and Feyd come across as normal ass knife fighters who can defeat one other normal human in 1-on-1 combat, but not much better than that.

And... I still love the 1984 Dune. I suspect its memes will even surpass the Villeneuve version. It's not just cheesy but it buys fully into the cheese. Paul's messiah-hood is fully righteous and victorious! He's got a creepy blue-eyed 2 year old sister with sorceress powers! He summons the rain and the storms! And he's fighting not just against other humans, but monsters-in-fish-tanks controlling the throne.

To Lynch, the world of Dune is one where individuals matter - because they've got super weird powers, or just the sheer complexity of entities. But in the recent movie, there is merely a cold hand of history, more Marx than Tolkien.

And neither really makes sense alone. Even though the 2024 Dune "feels" more realistic, it simplifies the forces involved (no CHOAM presence, nor the other small organizations), and is so smooth in its progression there's no time skip. Which means less than 9 months of lower Spice production has toppled the imperial throne, instead of the 4 or so years in the book. Weak ass emperor.

And entire people have been removed from the Villeneuve narrative - like Leto, Paul and Chani's first son - because they would complicate the Paul/Chani antagonistic narrative that Villeneuve wanted to end with.

***

If you like this reading, I'd suggest you read the (much smaller) book "Elder Race", telling the same historical events from different ontologies.