A thoughtless week

I failed either to edit or to write as much as I would have liked this week, though I watched several films, read Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate, and began James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State which, so far, is great. It reminds me of Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years in scope, novelty, and some of its view of history.

On the plane to Phoenix I watched—and wrote about—the 1954 and 2018 versions of A Star Is Born, but I may have left it too long to motivate me to write it, to want to type up my views. Maybe I’ll try to see the 1937 and 1976 ones and then write a comprehensive post. The Cukor (1954) version is less earnest and more self-aware, it feels like, about the extent to which both the industry and the audience are culpable in such cases.

Tonight we‘ll watch Brazil, which I‘ve not seen in a decade. I‘m looking forward to it.

I'm Bryan Kam. I'm thinking about complexity and selfhood. Please sign up to my newsletter, follow me on Mastodon, or see more here.