The 2024 Film Guiding My New Year
and how you too can have a #TrapDad2025
In 2024, my movie consumption was down 59%. I had merely 27 viewings of 25 movies1 in 2024 versus 61 viewings/movies in 2023. The Google Sheet where I track all my movie viewing tells me that this is my lowest annual movie consumption rate this decade, lower than 2022 (40 viewings), 2021 (51 viewings) and 2020 (45 viewings). But despite the record low quantity, I saw some true gems.
I find it difficult to evaluate art. Rather than assessment, usually I see my primary goal as appreciation — that is, finding the angle of observation that unlocks its intended beauty or effect. Making movies is challenging and important work, and it’s pretty low cost for me to offer up praise; further, disliking things is emotionally burdensome so I generally avoid it where I can. However, people often people want to hear a more critical perspective, so I have developed a more objective framework to “pass as normal” when people ask me what I think of a movie.
The system is simple. There are five stars up for grabs:
Laughter Star: Did the movie make me laugh? (1 star)
Crying Star: Did the movie make me cry? (1 star)
Thinking Star: Did the movie make me think about it later? (1 star)
Message Star: Did the movie say anything original / new to me? (1 star)
Style Star: Did the movie use unique / notable film techniques? (1 star)
Some people seem to know how many stars a movie has without walking through a process like this. Maybe you too have an internal sense of a film’s quality, sort of like proprioception (the sense of where your body parts are at a given moment) or chronoception (the sense of the passing of time). Or perhaps you are film-rating-star-blind like me, in which case you can use my nifty trick to fake around it. When people ask you what you think of a film, you can pause, silently run through the list, and provide a number. Nobody will be able to tell. People will think you are a film-rating savant.
A few new movie viewings hit the “five star” mark this year -- Problemista, Poor Things and Godzilla Minus One -- all of which I would recommend to those who have not seen them. The stars aren’t really attributed to the films themselves but more to the viewing -- a matching between the movie and myself at a particular moment in time. If I were to watch every film ever made, the scores would be dependent on the sequence the films were viewed in; it goes without saying, then, that this objective methodology produces subjective scores.
A gold standard in film evaluation is the Rotten Tomatoes score; here, my “viewing of the year” film has only a 57% compared to my aforementioned five star picks with 86%, 93% and 99%. A 57% seems low to me. While no film is perfect, my “viewing of the year” quickly hit four major star groups — Laughing, Thinking, Message and Style — and in reflecting on it, I’ve teared up enough to unlock the Crying Star. And as I’ve been planning out 2025, I’ve found myself spending most of New Year’s Eve and the first few days of the year reflecting on the film Trap and how I can bring its wisdom to tomorrow and beyond.
Plotting the Works of M. Night Shyamalan
The Shyamalaniverse is an odd place. In an industry that increasingly plays it safe with releases, MNS takes serious swings and doesn’t seem to fear an occasional miss. His auteur quirks, like the directness of both how characters speak and are filmed, infuriate some. The dialogue can be unconventional, giving the aesthetic of a puppeteer who has perplexingly dyed their puppet’s strings to exaggerate the artifice. His stories require us to connect emotionally across metaphysical barriers with challenging protagonists -- spooky children, tourists stuck on the-island-that-makes-you-old, Mel Gibson. Taken together, these choices are disorienting, and many people whose taste I respect reject his filmmaking. (Viscerally.)
Their loss! Because, idiosyncrasies aside, MNS has two superb storytelling style specialties that combine to make deeply original and effective films: thrillers and fables. MNS films can be charted on a fable-thriller biplot2; that is, the unique Shyamalannishnous is a factor of how well the film succeeds as each. This is impressive because these two genres are largely incompatible with each other -- thrillers are driven by a gritty seriousness that clashes with the didactic optimism of fables.
If your favorite films of MNS are The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable and Split, you are a “pure thriller” MNS fan. If your favorite film is The Happening, you are a “pure fable” MNS fan.3 And if, like me, your favorite MNS films include Signs and Old, you are a “special blend” MNS fan. Very few other directors make films that fit in this “special blend” quadrant!
So how should we classify Trap?
As a thriller, it works extremely well, with its “howcatchem” premise reminiscent of Hitchcock’s Rope or of an episode of Columbo; we know the crime and perpetrator, but what is uncertain is how precisely he will be caught. Josh Hartnett plays Cooper, the awkward OCD4 dad whose double-life as serial killer “The Butcher” complicates his father-daughter concert outing; his performance conveys unhingedness at varying levels of subtlety, with his character navigating obstacle after obstacle with such poise you can’t help but root for him. The cinematography uses tight framing to create a persistent feeling of claustrophobia that keeps ones pulse up. It just works. As such, from me, it would get full marks on the thriller axis.
As a fable, it’s less obvious. On first glance, it lacks the clear parable takeaway that is at the heart of MNS’s best films. The narrative is truly “a ride”, but we don’t really see any characters learn or grow like we do in thriller-fables Signs or Old. As such, it may be classified as more of a “pure thriller”. Many MNS fans actually prefer this quadrant, but my hope is always that we get that special Shyamalan blend. Is there more to the film that might be missing?
In fact, there are several hints within Trap that it wants us to take a step back when examining it. First, the nature of a show-within-a-show “fake concert movie” meta-concept invites a distanced viewing. Further, the trailer (itself a work of art) sets and subverts expectations in a gripping twist that had the internet abuzz -- a twist that viewers are surprised to find is not actually in the movie.5 This switcheroo is noticeable, resulting in a reverse subversion outside the film’s traditional narrative. Here it’s useful to draw from the work of literary theorist Gérard Genette, who uses the term “paratext” to describe how these non-film elements influence our perception of a work.
He states, "More than a boundary or a sealed border, the paratext is, rather, a threshold." It is "a zone between text and off-text, a zone not only of transition but also of transaction: a privileged place of pragmatics and a strategy, of an influence on the public, an influence that ... is at the service of a better reception for the text and a more pertinent reading of it".
~ Wikipedia quoting Genette’s Paratexts: thresholds of interpretation
Can “a more pertinent reading”, inclusive of paratext, can show us where MNS has stashed away a fable?
Indeed, we find the meta-trailer anti-twist is just the tip of the iceberg in a potential paratextual reading of Trap.
Parentage & Paratext: a Hidden Moral in Trap
The most elaborate paratextual wink within the film is a casting choice. Dr. Josephine Grant, the “serial killer profiler” pursuing our dadtagonist, is played by Hayley Mills, famous for playing the twins in the original The Parent Trap. That is, the same actress playing the architect of the eponymous The Parent Trap parent trap is now playing the architect of the eponymous Trap trap -- also for a parent. So she’s being sort of typecast as a parent-trapper? Does this film exists in the The Parent Trap universe?6 Is this just a sort of abstract dad joke? I’d argue that it is another choice that brings us to reflect on parenting as a theme.
There is a great deal of parenting-relevant paratext beyond this though. Most prominently, the entire setting for most of the movie is a concert for Lady Raven, who is played by M. Night Shyamalan’s eldest daughter, Saleka Shyamalan. We hear 14 -- 14! -- songs that she wrote and performed for the film. There is also a billboard for The Watchers, a film written and directed by his middle daughter, Ishana Shyamalan. Like thriller icon Hitchcock, MNS takes a cameo in each of his films, and in this case he plays the uncle of Lady Raven. The choice of playing an “uncle”7 is maybe a play on “nepotism”, which derives from the latin word “nepos” for nephew; it’s both playing up the fact that real-life MNS is using his status to elevate the career of his daughter, and it’s also a inversion because in the story-world it is the niece (Lady Raven) who has provided sinecure to her uncle. Ultimately, these all serve as ways to remind us that work-and-family is a central theme.
I would argue the main twist of Trap, though, builds on how this particular casting paratext framed the film.
(Warning: Spoilers in the next two paragraphs.)
How It Was Framed: The very-online info-soaked cinemagoers of today likely knew that the film would feature music from M. Night Shyamalan’s daughter. For those who have been following Shyamalan, this isn’t surprising -- there was a Saleka8 song in Old and to have her perform diegetic music is really only a slight tweak. The first hour plays in some ways like an Eras-esque concert film, and SNS is clearly central in the setting and context of the narrative, but in a way that is largely ornamental -- like the billboard. It seemed like a simple play to boost his daughter’s music career, which is a little tacky, but within reason.
What Was Delivered: As the film nears its third act, Lady Raven becomes entangled in the narrative as she becomes a key component of The Butcher’s escape plot; Saleka Shyamalan and Josh Hartnett have a two-minute scene of intense dialogue where she becomes the only person to learn The Butcher’s identity. Suddenly, rather than a mere background musician, she is front and center as co-star and supersleuth, the main counterforce against the central character. If we see The Butcher as the villain, then SNS has been rapidly promoted to the film’s hero. The premise set us up to expect album-promoting stunt-cameo nepotism, but we received acting-career-launching featured-actress nepotism instead! A twist indeed!
(End of spoilers.)
Like most people, I feel uneasy about nepotism, and I needed time to process how I even felt about this twist. Entertainment is an industry that is notoriously difficult to crack into, and a world where all roles are distributed based on non-professional relations or blood ties would clearly be horrible. Yet there’s something that felt sweet and purposeful about the father-daughter directing-acting dynamic.
Perhaps it feels different because so often casting is exploitative and shadowy, and this decision is so conspicuous and purposeful?
Is there a way to work with friends and family that isn’t inherently problematic?
Nepo Baby Best Practices
I think there are four principles that explain why Shyamalan’s decision to Trojan Horse his daughter into a leading actress role in Trap doesn’t upset me and -- further yet -- is even kind of beautiful.
If you too are trying to trick me into watching your daughter act extensively in a movie, these are some guidelines so you can follow in M. Night Shyamalan’s footsteps.
1.) Do Be Transparent: Shadow Nepotism is Most Common and Most Dangerous.
With nepotism so commonplace, I was surprised how rare it was to find examples of a director casting his or her own child as a key actor of a film. The closest example I found was John Huston casting his daughter Angelica Huston in a supporting role in Prizzi’s Honor (1985), for which she won an Academy Award. But still, this was a supporting role, and I couldn’t find something more major. Why aren’t there more examples? Is nepotism actually less prevalent than we are led to believe?
Of course it’s still rampant. In entertainment and elsewhere, most nepotism actually is practiced through a more discrete web of incentives and exchanges. Because preferential hiring is unseemingly, powerful people are savvy about how they manage the optics. People hire the children of people they want to build relationships with. Mutual connections also create a sense of trust, which is nearly impossible to screen for in traditional interview settings. Just because nepotism is not directly observable doesn’t mean it’s not present.
But naked nepotism, as we find in Trap, promotes mindfulness in the recipient. Those who benefit from a nebulous network of nepotism may not even recognize the role those networks play in their successes. Conspicuous nepotism requires confrontation with privilege, and makes it apparent to the recipient that critical aspects of one’s accomplishments were aspects of luck. Of a couple dozen interns I’ve worked with in organizations, there were both the children of employees and the children of clients. The children of employees are more easily identifiable due to shared last names or likeness, and I’ve found them to generally be more self-aware and conscientious.
That said, if you aren’t a director famous for tricking audiences with twists, you should let me know beforehand if your daughter has lots of lines in your movie.
2.) Don’t Be Exploitative: Power, Responsibility, Etc.
The wholesomeness of watching a surprise Shyamalan family movie comes in part from the joy of seeing a father supporting his daughter, particularly in the context of a movie where “family” is a deep theme. It comes across as a genuine act of kindness in an industry famous for bad behavior.
It is, after all, somewhat normal for famous directors to use status to get closer to actresses their daughters’ ages; it’s just quite rare for those actresses to actually be their daughters.
The trope is probably familiar to most who follow cinema, but I do think it’s useful to provide examples on how power can play out in confusing and troubling ways in the movie production process. So here’s a rundown of some older-director/younger-star relationship stories at varying levels of complexity. (Potentially triggering if you’ve been subjected to exploitation by someone in power, so feel free to skip this part if that’s you.)
While filming The Birds (1963), Alfred Hitchcock (64) reportedly became obsessed with his star Tippi Hedren (33), isolating her from the rest of the cast and crew, subjecting her to abusive behavior, and making an unwanted advance toward her.
One can watch a full trilogy of Roman Polanski films covering each of his three marriages. At 26, he cast his wife Barbara Lass (19) in his short film When Angels Fall (1959). Later at 34, he dated and married Sharon Tate (24) who he met on the set of The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967). Decades later at the age of 55, the set of Frantic (1988) was where he would meet Emmanuelle Seigner (22), to whom he remains married after over 35 years.9
On the set of The Fifth Element (1997), director Luc Besson (36) met Milla Jovovich (19) who he would later marry. (Jovovich was somehow older than Besson’s previous wife Maïwenn Le Besco, so… he at least transitioned to someone closer to his own age?)
mother! (2017), Darren Aronofsky’s eco-parable about how intensely creative men depend on and ultimately exploit and consume their romantic partners, was were Aronofsky (48) and his star actress Jennifer Lawrence (27) began dating; Lawrence eventually ended things, attributing the end to finding her partnership with an intensely creative man too consuming -- parallelism!10
Among the various tabloid dramas haunting Don’t Worry Darling (2022) was director Olivia Wilde (38) dating her star actor Harry Styles (28). (Styles is of course not quite young enough to be Wilde’s son, so this glass ceiling has yet to be shattered, but it felt worth noting that this milestone is within reach!)
I obviously do not consider all of those examples equivalent, but I simply want to note that this stereotypical mixing of “business and pleasure” can be dangerous. When favoritism is balanced and consensual, it might be okay; otherwise, it is highly inadvisable.
With Trap, there is something about a parent’s preferential treatment of their child that is obviously pure and well-meaning. Other kinds of partiality can draw unwanted skepticism. Be cautious and conscientious.
3.) Do Be Competent: Try Not To Ruin Your Art.
Though it should go without saying, placing someone obviously incompetent in a role is bad. Don’t do this.
Just as it would not have been okay for SNS to write and perform music in the film if she could not write and perform good music, it would not be okay for SNS to act if she could not act well.
SNS’s soundscape in Trap has the challenge of both needing to sound suitable to the pop concert of a major star while also managing to avoid the kind of earworm hook connection that would distract from the dramatic foreground. Consequently, it ends up a little more ambient and score-like than would be found in a genuine star’s setlist. The choreography is similar -- it should be theatrical enough to seem real, but not so much that it draws attention from the core narrative. It is “stage makeup”, a practiced strategic inauthenticity with the aim of achieving the illusion of authenticity. SNS had a difficult multi-hyphenate assignment, but the concert performance was believable and she delivered.
Similarly, having as one’s first acting role be an MNS-written character is a particular challenge. The MNS dialogue style (which, again, I love!) makes for stylized odd performances that are difficult to objectively assess. I do think I would have been skeptical if I were told upfront that she would be playing a large acting role, but perhaps in part because the character is designed to reflect her by a parent who knows her well, SNS seems very natural in handling the human-ish dialogue in this funhouse maze of a movie.
Trap works in part because SNS works. There is a more sensitive threshold for failure when engaging in public acts of favoritism; more so than usual, be thoughtful about who you put where.
4.) Don’t Overdo It: Employ a Healthy Mix of Talent Strategies.
Nepotism is an ingredient to use sparingly. It shouldn’t be in every decision in every piece of art you create.
There are different levels of acceptability for different categories of favoritism. Friends that grew out of professional relationships don’t have a cap on them. One shouldn’t exclusively work with old schoolmates. Blood relatives require special caution; they can either play large roles in a few select projects, or you can more consistently involve them in more subtle ways.
M. Night Shyamalan, if you are reading this11, this was okay just this once as a meta-bit, but I would prefer you don’t pull this in every movie.
I believe observing these principles allows a moderate degree of conspicuous yet well-meaning nepotism in creative works. And because Trap is compliant with this framework, it is excepted from criticism I might have for a film where talent decisions were so clearly biased. Which is a relief, because I think this MNS’s selection of SNS in a critical role is key to the film’s effectiveness as a fable.
The Good Life According to Trap: Work & Relationships
So how does the paratextual nepotism help us find the fable and meaning in Trap?
Put simply, we find a stark contrast12:
Textually, we see a strategy of balance. Our protagonist Cooper Abbott attempts to prioritize both his work as The Butcher and his relationship with his daughter Riley, reciting a mantra of “never let the two lives touch”. He is constantly struggling, and he ultimately fails to preserve both his family and his toxic consuming calling to kill.
Paratextually, we see a strategy of integration. Our director M. Night Shyamalan combines work and family by creating a film with his daughter Saleka, living out a holistic work-life philosophy. He created a movie that has divided critics and audiences but has united him with the people he cares about most.
Taking text and paratext together, the message comes through clearly. When we pursue work and relationships, we have a choice between Cooper’s “balance” or Shyamalan’s “integration”. And while integration is imperfect, we see how balance has greater challenges, often requiring deceit and constant effort with true harmony potentially impossible to achieve. MNS is still trying to create a movie that people will enjoy, it’s just that it’s not his sole objective; he’s also trying to spend time with someone he cares about. Meanwhile in the story universe, it is the very paradigm of work-life balance that our psychopathic patriarch finds to be… a “trap”.
A friend of mine13 shared a quote from Orson Welles that I initially struggled with, but Trap has helped me come to appreciate.
When asked if Welles had ever cast a friend instead of the right person for a part, he responds “frequently”. And when asked if he’s regretted it, he also responds “frequently”. But when asked if he’ll do it again, he says he will because he doesn’t “regard art of prime importance” and “prefer[s] every other loyalty in life to arts”.
This clip was bristling the first time I watched it. Shouldn’t our contributions to the world be of prime importance? I now see that pro-human work and art is pro-human in both impact and construction. As media theorist Marshall McLuhan says, “the medium is the message”; if you want your contributions to be pro-human, how you create is as important as what you create.
While The Butcher / Cooper is pro-human in neither aim nor approach, the challenge that he has in Trap is deeply relatable to me. I too want to excel in my field while also investing in the relationships that matter to me. Both those activities require time, and many of us struggle to do both. In the paratext, Shyamalan responds to this challenge echoing Welles: integrate the work that is meaningful with the relationships that are meaningful.
And there’s also a kind of genius to sneaking fable qualities through in the paratext, since the fable aspect of his films can be divisive; “pure thriller” fans that dislike MNS’s occasional corny moralizing can simply enjoy the text in isolation, while “special blend” fans like myself can consider it in broader context. Though initial reception was mixed, I think the film’s campiness along with the inherent repeatability of music-heavy films will make it a sort of cult classic among MNS fans.
So in the end, accounting for paratextuality, I deem Trap as a highly effective fable. And because it’s also effective as a thriller, that’s enough to make this one of my top Shyamalan films and to earn it the honor of being named my “viewing of 2024”.
Resolutions: Looking Backward / Looking Ahead
We’ve now entered January, named for “Janus” the double-faced god who looked both forward and backward. And so in thinking back about my movie of the year, it helps me think through what I want out of the year to come.
The guidance in Shyamalan’s paratextual parable’s is consistent with the concept of “shoulder-to-shoulder bonding”. It’s become trendier to discuss as men have been deemed to be in a particularly acute loneliness epidemic. The claim is that while women are (in general) more inclined to build relationships face-to-face through direct conversation, men are (in general) more likely to casually build relationships doing pseudo-work -- things like fishing or golfing or even playing video games. I have indeed found that there is something about co-creation that makes relationships deeper and richer.
My closest friends are people who I’ve labored and created with -- in schools, in bands, in workplaces, in family. You, dear reader, if you are receiving this email, are almost certainly in one of those categories. Perhaps one day there will be strangers on this mailing list, but for now I quite like how this is a space where I can create for and with my favorite people. To share labor is to share objectives, which is to share values and purpose. As I write more this year, I will find ways to engage and be “shoulder-to-shoulder” with you all in my subscriber community. With the counterexamples of each “Trap dad” (both the text’s Cooper & the paratext’s M. Night), I think I can move toward integration and spend the time on this newsletter I’ve hoped to do for some time while deepening connections with those of you open to it. There will be more specifics on this in the next week.
A closing note: I was very lucky to work “shoulder-to-shoulder” a bit with my own dad over the past ten years. My work with him was minor -- just managing data systems a few hours a week for his business brokerage -- but the time we spent on work projects was the closest I ever felt to him. He passed in July, around two weeks before my brother and I watched Trap. There’s a scene in the movie that has Saleka Shyamalan in a solo14 acting scene for around four minutes; I imagine the shooting of this scene was a mostly one-on-one collaboration of her acting with her father’s directing, and, to me, that feels very beautiful and wholesome. Time together sharing a purpose like this with a father can be hard at times, but it is also truly precious. I like that scene.
My dad was very much a workaholic, and so to maintain a connection with him as an adult largely meant interacting with him on his turf -- his office or a company-hosted Zoom chat. Workaholics are often shamed, but I don’t believe my father’s workaholism was a flaw. Prioritization of work is often misrepresented in cultural depictions showing work and relationships as in conflict, as we see in Cooper’s struggle for balance. A better known example is Scrooge traveling with the Ghost of Christmas Future to see a future with nobody at his funeral, nobody mourning his loss and nobody sharing kind words. But my dad, who also enjoyed work more than he enjoyed Christmas, absolutely packed his funeral hall. There was a strong family contingency, of course, but the vast majority of those present were in fact his colleagues. The reception was loud and laden with coworkers, collaborators and comrades15. It was clear that his deepest relationships in his later years were forged in labor, and this was in part because of his fanatical commitment both to teamwork and to a job well done.
For those with the opportunity, I cannot say that doing a work project with your father is easy, but I can say that it is rewarding. And as I work to keep his memory alive, I will do my best to forge bonds in service as he did, and to follow the model of camaraderie he lived out.
And so in this new year, may we all find ways to unite the people we love with the work we love. Let’s all have a #TrapDad2025.
I look forward to working together.
Happy Old Year,
Happy New Year,
Much Love,
Harry
The descrepancy is because two movies were repeated: Bullet Train and Wicked. Only 18 movies watched in 2024 were watched within 12 months of release, an essential criteria for “viewing of the year”; while the field was admittedly a bit thin, but I still feel strongly about my selection.
One of my old poetry textbooks was Sound & Sense, and while I don’t remember much specific content, the title has stayed with me. The thriller-fable axis is an adapted application of this framing -- that artistic work must balance the independent systems of (1) creating something that is stylistically compelling (sound for poems, thrill for MNS films) while also (2) delivering rich meaning (sense for poems, fable/message for MNS films). A passage from this book, which discusses plotting art this way, is mentioned in Dead Poets Society. Specifically, it is discussed on the pages that Mr. Keating (played memorably by Robin Williams) instructs his students to rip out of their textbook, so it’s… divisive. I’d argue that the rejection of an analytical approach to art is downstream of the CIA’s various documented plots to make art more abstract/individualistic and thereby reduce its revolutionary potential. Art that is pure sound/style/feeling is less dangerous to systems of power. “But Mr. Keating couldn’t be a fascist, he was so charismatic… it was in the kids interest that he wanted to destroy all those books… and it’s so sweet at the end when the kids finally stand up straight and satisfy his desire to be called captain…” Stay woke and graph art.
While “pure fable” MNS fans theoretically exist in my framework, I have never met one.
As someone who has been diagnosed with OCD, I do feel a bit odd about the use of this diagnosis, but I feel like OCD at least gets a good batch of hero representation too, so I’m okay with it. While I don’t think the depiction of OCD is here (or ever?) actually grounded in the experience of OCD symptoms, not every piece of art needs to accomplish every possible objective.
The trailer sets up first that there is a sting operation to trap the serial killer and then reveals (twist!) that the serial killer is our concert dad; the movie shows us that the concert dad is a serial killer and then we find out about the sting operation afterwards, which is less a twist than just standard plot development.
To be clear, it would exist in the 1961 film’s universe, not the 1998 film starring Lindsey Lohan that my generation tends to be more familiar with.
The full line is classic MNS dialogue: “I’m actually her uncle, her mother’s brother.” (1) He’s supposed to be working, not explaining what an uncle is. (2) Does he not think Cooper knows what an uncle is? (3) Is the fact that he’s her maternal uncle relevant somehow? I researched practices of nepotism in the 17th century catholic church, but found nothing -- though I did learn that church elites would pass off their illegitimate children as nephews to avoid admitting to violating vows of celibacy. (4) The most favorable interpretation of this line is that he was just trying to pack as many family relation words into a single sentence to highlight the family theme and/or just really play up that his significance is relational rather than in-itself.
I use her first name because as a musical artist she refers to herself as a mononym, like Prince or Elvis or Ye. But I’ll refer to her as SNS or by her full name when referring to her as an actor/person. I have read the discourse on gender and first names.
My personal preference, though, would be to program Frantic alongside Seven Samurai (1954) and Aquaman (2018) to create a trilogy of films with intellectual property referenced in “One Week” by the Barenaked Ladies.
mother! received an F CinemaScore and prompted many moviegoers to leave theatres while it was playing, but it is one of my favorite movies, and perhaps not coincidentally it is a rare other example where the paratext is additive to the interpretation of the movie.
He is not.
Back when I did competitive literary criticism in high school (got a varsity jacket letter and everything), I would have called this an “ironic juxtaposition between text and paratext”, but that level of jargon salad is saved for those who read footnotes.
Rob writes about policy and wellbeing here: https://www.sciotoanalysis.com/news. Hey look! I’m involving people I care about in my labor!
She has a phone with another actor on it occasionally, but I expect the in-phone content wasn’t live.
My dad would hate the use of the word “comrade” here, but I think it’s unequivocally the best word to describe the brokers-in-arms he worked alongside who shared words of deep praise with me at his memorial service. He was one of my first subscribers and now he will never unsubscribe -- no matter how political I get. Miss you and love you always, Dad.