Photo by Julia Kadel on Unsplash

I could never understand people who did their laundry with horror movies in the background, until the pandemic. The lack of a commute or a social life gave me the time to watch all those famous movies I hadn’t seen before. But mostly, I ended up watching scary ones.

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Jack Nicholson in THE SHINING

Photo by Luis Villasmil (Unsplash)
There were horror writers before Stephen King, and there will almost certainly be horror writers after Stephen King, but there will never be another writer as able to capture the world's imagination so thoroughly with his ability to terrify in one moment and inspire hope in the next.
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Gaming

Hideo Kojima and the Rise of Video Games as Narrative Art

This week Tribeca Film Festival recognized Hideo Kojima as a true artist—whether he knows it or not.

Photo by: Onur Binay / Unsplash

Once upon a time, acclaimed movie critic Roger Ebert stated definitively that "video games will never be art."

It's the kind of absurd blanket statement that men who feel entitled to universal respect like to make without fear of being ridiculed. It's also the same response that the gate-keepers of aging media say each time a new form comes along.

"Sure, movies are great, but they'll never rise to the level of literature." "I like TV as much as the next guy, but you'll never see a TV show that can compete with The Godfather." "Can you please stop telling everyone that your Internet articles are 'better than Shakespeare?'"

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TV Features

Everything You Need to Know About "The Outsider" Before the Finale

The HBO series, based on a Stephen King novel, covers dark territory with a surprisingly positive worldview.

The Outsider 1x10 "Must/Can't" Promo (HD) Season Finale - Stephen King HBO series

This Sunday at 9:00, HBO will be airing the finale of its sleeper hit, The Outsider.

If you haven't seen the first nine episodes, you must love spoilers, because we're about to dive into the whole mess. Last week's installment, "Tigers and Bears," ended with a terrifying cliffhanger as the secondary antagonist and El Cuco's mind-slave, Jack Hoskins, opened fire on our collected heroes with a sniper rifle. It was previously established that Jack was a talented sharpshooter in his military days—only held back in that career by his psychological instability—and we were first introduced to him while he was hunting a wild boar. There's no doubt that he will hit his target if he really wants to, but we've also seen Jack struggling against the control of the predatory being that has taken hold of him, so the outcome remains to be seen.

The finale, entitled "Can't/Must"—a reference to the tattoo on Claude Bolton's knuckles, commemorating his struggle with addiction—is certain to contain a great deal of tragedy, violence, and drama, but the worldview of The Outsider is actually surprisingly reassuring. Let's review what we've learned so far:

Evil doesn't exist.

As Detective Ralph Anderson discussed in that emergency session with his therapist, there are a lot of ways that people can be broken—bad parenting, bad genes, bad brain chemistry—to make them do horrible things. But none of those issues make them evil. Even a creature that feeds on grief and murder is only driven by its will to survive. El Cuco, from that perspective, is not evil; it's broken, and killing it will not only save any number of families, it will release the creature from a miserable, broken existence in which it's always on the run, living on the edges of our society—always hungry, hated, and feared.

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Not only is the monster in this world something other than evil, its existence means that any number of the worst criminals on Earth are innocent victims in their own story. As Jack noted in his conversation with Holly Gibney, there's a hell of a lot that we don't know about this creature. How long has it been killing? Decades? Centuries? Every 27 days it strikes. Are there others like it: a hidden species living beside humanity, feeding on us? How many murders have been pinned on innocent people? How much kinder might the world seem if we could erase the crimes of these creatures from our record as a species? While people in The Outsider do awful things to one another, those awful things almost always come in the form of revenge in the wake of El Cuco. If Ralph and Holly and the rest manage to defeat this creature, they will be making the world a decidedly better place. But can they?

El Cuco is powerful but vulnerable.

Yes...they probably can. The 27-day cycle definitely suggests that El Cuco—the grief eater, tear drinker, the Fetch, the doppelganger—has to feed to live. It has a lot of tools at its disposal to protect itself, and it's not clear if there's any other way to kill it, but it's clearly afraid of Ralph and Holly pursuing it, so if they find some way to contain it then starvation is at least an option. But what will they have to overcome to do so? The most obvious tool El Cuco has is shape-shifting. It can take on the form of any man or woman that it scratches and use that form to do unspeakable things and to trick even people who know that person well. However, there is always something slightly off about the imitation, and since all the protagonists know that Claude has been scratched, there is limited value in taking on his form.

El Cuco's more powerful weapons are psychological. Physically, as the shape-shifting wears off, the creature becomes weaker, but it can still use its almost hypnotic powers—projecting itself into a dream-like experience (that somehow leaves a residue, even though El Cuco isn't there/is weightless?). While in that hypnotic state, El Cuco can take on the form of loved ones, and characters have proven helpless to fight back, even if they are prepared—as Tamika Collins was with her gun. It can also get in the heads of both the person it scratched and the slave that it controls through the back of the neck and some connection to the pain center of the brain. That power makes Claude a liability and Jack a serious threat. But Jack wants to die—it's his only escape. So if the other characters are able to overcome him, what then?

Will El Cuco be able to take a new slave? Will they be able to kill it by physical means? It has recently fed on meat as it took on Claude's form, but if its time as Terry Maitland is anything to go by, it will quickly begin to deteriorate, and will need grief to feed on. If it doesn't kill a child, will it be able to survive? There are few clues about other possible weaknesses (there was a plastic lamp from Jack that it rejected), but starvation definitely seems like an option. Whatever the case, the heroes are not without a few tricks of their own...

There is other magic in the world.

Holly is the most obvious example. Her powers seem to be purely mental, but they could confer a huge advantage. She knows things that she has no way of knowing—the height of buildings, the lyrics of songs she's never heard. When in the presence of El Cuco that unexplainable knowledge could be the key to everything. She also puts a lot of stock in faith. Her belief in God and the unknowable may turn out to be essential in the finale—or perhaps she will need to inspire Ralph to discover some faith of his own.

Whatever else happens, if the optimism of The Outsider's world holds true, there will be something like a happy ending—justice for the Maitland's? Closure for the Andersons? Love for Holly and Andy?—even if there's a lot of gore and darkness along the way.

American Dirt

American Dirt is one of the most talked-about books of the season.

The novel initially received a great deal of positive press. It sparked a bidding war that ended in a 7-figure deal, garnered a movie deal with Clint Eastwood, was called "extraordinary" by Stephen King, and was picked by Oprah for her book club, guaranteeing its bestseller status.

Then the controversy erupted.

American Dirt tells the story of two Mexican migrants, a mother named Lydia and her child Luca, attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. It was written by a woman named Jeanine Cummins, who identified as white until very recently (she has a Puerto Rican grandmother).

Many reviewers have panned Cummins' book for its lack of empathy, its reliance on stereotypes and trauma, and its apolitical stance that seems intent on "humanizing" migrants but that fails to implicate America or its government.

"The book is riddled with gross misrepresentations of its subjects," writes David Schmidt for the Blue Nib. "Mexico is depicted as a one-dimensional nation, irredeemably corrupt and violent, while the United States of American Dirt is a fantasy land: a country free of gun violence, hate groups and organized crime. While the book ostensibly pushes a progressive message, it drives home a very Trumpist myth: 'crime and violence are Mexican problems.' If English-speaking readers assume that this novel accurately depicts the realities of Mexico and migration, it will only further the cause of disinformation and prejudice."

In addition to the criticism, the debate inspired a Twitter thread about "writing my Latino novel" that lampoons stereotypes about Latinx culture. It's also brought up serious points about the predominantly white state of the media and publishing industry and about who gets to tell what stories.

By most accounts, Cummins' narrative fails to responsibly represent its characters. Realistically, though, many people will see the criticism of American Dirt and will be filled with rage about how political correctness is infringing on freedom of speech. This is missing a deeper point (and no one is saying you can't keep working on your novel about a woman's sexual liberation, Mike).

The question isn't necessarily whether writers should be able to write about what they don't know (they should). The question is: Who gets to decide what voices get to speak? Is it really freedom of speech when certain voices are always louder than others?

American Dirt is, ultimately, the project of people whose voices have always been the loudest. It's the product of a whole lot of white literary establishment power, and ultimately it's a finely crystallized symbol of the colonialist mindset that is alive and well in the literary world.

Telling Others' Stories

"I'm of the persuasion that fiction necessarily, even rather beautifully, requires imagining an 'other' of some kind," writes Parul Sehgal in The New York Times. "As the novelist Hari Kunzru has argued, imagining ourselves into other lives and other subjectives is an act of ethical urgency. The caveat is to do this work of representation responsibly, and well."

According to Myriam Gurba, whose excellent review was one of the first searing takedowns of the book, Cummins' novel does the following:

"1. Appropriating genius works by people of color

2. Slapping a coat of mayonesa on them to make palatable to taste buds estados-unidenses and

3. Repackaging them for mass racially 'colorblind' consumption.

Rather than look us in the eye, many gabachos prefer to look down their noses at us. Rather than face that we are their moral and intellectual equals, they happily pity us. Pity is what inspires their sweet tooth for Mexican pain, a craving many of them hide."

The problem is not only that Jeanine Cummins felt she had the right to tell this story—it's that she told it insensitively, in a way that misrepresents the uniqueness of every migrant experience and instead crushes it into a stereotype and reshapes it for a white audience's eyes. If writing fiction requires a sort of alchemical synthesis of empathy, nuance, and razor-sharp awareness, then Cummins seems to lack all of these things.

Still, it's likely the book would not have been so heavily panned had it not received such extensive praise and hype. "While I have nothing against Jeanine's (or anyone else's) writing a book about the plight of Mexican women and immigrants (especially if they do their homework and don't exoticize our culture), I am deeply bothered that this non-#OwnVoices novel has been anointed the book about the issue for 2020," writes David Bowles for Medium.

The ache and frustration in Latinx critics' responses lies not only in its content, but in the larger cultural context into which it was released. "At a time when Mexico and the Mexican American community are reviled in this country as they haven't been in decades, to elevate this inauthentic book written by someone outside our community is to slap our collective face," Bowles concludes.


"The heart of the problem is that American Dirt is not really a story of Mexican migrants at all. It is the story of American entitlement, one that never questions the brute injustice of geography of birth determining opportunities in life. American Dirt is an accurate depiction of what Americans demand Mexicans and other brown people suffer to be allowed into the country," writes Rafia Zakaria for CNN.

Beyond the Political Correctness and Freedom of Speech Trap

If you look at the state of the publishing industry, it's easy to see why American Dirt slipped through the cracks. "According to the trade magazine Publishers Weekly, white people made up 84 percent of publishing's workforce in 2019. Publishing is staffed almost entirely by white people — and in large part, that fact can be explained by publishing's punishingly low entry-level salaries," writes Constance Grady for Vox. "Such salaries mean that the kind of people who work in publishing tend to be the kind of people who can afford to work in publishing… As a result, publishing is predominantly staffed with well-meaning white people who, when looking for a book about the stories of people of color, can find themselves drawn toward one addressed specifically to white people."

Meanwhile, people of color attempting to break into the industry often have difficulty if they don't fit into the white publishing industry's expectations of them. "We fight in newsrooms, boardrooms, studio meetings, book proposals, and other spaces where white editors hungry for all of our pain and none of our nuance serve as gatekeepers," writes Alex Zargoza for Vice. "If we do break through, we then have to battle editors who want us to create trauma p-rn for white readers to clutch their chest to and lament the savagery of the countries we came from are. We lose out on anything near a seven-figure deal, effectively punished for not wanting to do what Cummins did, which was treat ourselves like the pitiful emblems of pain liberal whites see us as, or bloodthirsty barbarians Donald Trump has made us out to be."

For all the doubts she expressed about writing the novel, Jeanine Cummins' statements following the controversy haven't helped her case. She's not exactly a sympathetic figure (she just earned a million dollars from a book, after all, and received a flood of glowing reviews early on). In the epigraph she wrote about her immigrant husband, Cummins writes about her fear that her husband will be deported. She fails to mention that he's an Irish immigrant, and instead essentially equates his struggles with those of the people she's trying to write about. She's even been banning critical tweets on Twitter, apparently, which is ridiculous.

Instead of shutting down this discussion and trying to paint herself as anyone but an outsider looking in, Cummins should be embracing the critiques. She should, for example, take one for the team and shut down the forthcoming movie deal, which would undeniably win an Oscar, if it were made.

She probably won't do that, though, because it's likely Jeanine Cummins still believes she is helping a cause. She also probably cares about what's going on at the U.S.-Mexico border, which—to her credit—is more than the half of America that voted for Trump can say. She also apparently spent five years doing research, though it clearly wasn't enough, considering all the errors in her book.

Cummins also probably figured that, as a well-connected writer, she had a better shot at getting her book in the hands of millions—which was true, and this speaks more to the issues in the publishing and media industries than to the author herself.

Still, the conversation shouldn't get lost in criticizing Cummins or the book. This can, instead, be a valuable teaching moment, one that should be used as an opportunity for the literary world to learn and change. Without confronting the systemic racism embedded in the media and publishing industries, change will never happen. We have to learn to differentiate between a writer's freedom to write about anything they choose and a writer's (and the literary establishment's) decision to put forth damaging content under the guise of social justice or "resistance" literature.

The publishing company (Flatiron) and agencies that made American Dirt into such a success probably felt they were also working in support of a good cause. But the hurt that the book has caused many Latinx (and many non-white) readers and writers should be a lesson for anyone trying to write about things that are unfamiliar to them, or to anyone deciding whether to promote a book, especially a book by a white writer about a sensitive, very nuanced and political issue that's playing out in real time and that's already being written about by people who are actually experiencing it.

In general, the publishing industry needs to ask itself a lot of questions based on this feedback. These questions could include: Has the book been read and vetted by people who actually lived the experience it describes? Has the author of this book done justice to the nuance of the issue? Does the book play into stereotypes? Does it fetishize trauma? Why is this story being told? Is it helping the issue? Why is the author telling this story? And is there anyone who would be even a little bit offended that a symbol of division and pain—such as, say, barbed wire reminiscent of a certain border—might be used as a centerpiece at a book release party?



Colonialism, Revamped

American Dirt, Sehgal concludes in her delightfully scathing review, "is determinedly apolitical. The deep roots of these forced migrations are never interrogated; the American reader can read without fear of uncomfortable self-reproach. It asks only for us to accept that 'these people are people,' while giving us the saintly to root for and the barbarous to deplore—and then congratulating us for caring."

White sympathy can be dangerous. In truth, a great deal of the migration flows currently stemming from Central America were created by American drug wars and violence that ensued from American-sponsored coups and violence. If American citizens are so desperate to do something for migrants, then it needs to start with uplifting their voices and compensating them for their work on their terms, whatever those terms may be—not telling stories that attempt to "humanize" someone but that actually further reinforce preexisting stereotypes and spread misinformation.

American colonialism has long operated in the tradition of invading and entering another country on the basis of a deluded idea that the Others need to be "saved" and that the invasion is for their own good; and charitable nonprofits often fall into the same trap, air-dropping resources instead of working with communities, thus creating cycles of dependence and collapse. Clearly, entering someone else's territory (or invading their story) is not always an optimal strategy.

Colonization has long been an accepted practice in literature, too; remember that Memoirs of a Geisha was written by a white man named Arthur, and The Help was written by a white womanwhich received similar criticism for its treatment of Black characters, and which was, ironically, published by the same person who published American Dirt.

The question of whether it's possible to write about "the other" through a postcolonial lens is a labyrinthine, almost unanswerable one, but we don't even have to go down that winding road now. Instead, maybe well-meaning allies can start by practicing solidarity and deepening interpersonal relationships with people impacted by issues at hand, by supporting on-the-ground organizations like Cosecha and RAICES (or any of the names on this list), by understanding that there is—to say the absolute least—no one "migrant" or "Latinx" "experience," and by asking questions, and then shutting up and listening for once.

CULTURE

Stephen King's Tweets: Why We Need Fewer White Men Voting for the Oscars

The king of horror doesn't understand his own implicit biases.

Stephen King 'Good Morning America' TV show, NYC

Photo by Mediapunch/Shutterstock

Today, Stephen King—one of the most beloved and prolific authors of all time—joined the ranks of celebrities who have made an ass of themselves on Twitter.

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