The February 2021 Rabbit Hole
Fake news, our relationship with truth, and films that nourished me.
Hello, friends. This is my first issue for 2021, and woof, did this year start out crazy.
In the wake of last month’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, which was incited by a sitting president, what sat with me most is how tribal we have become. We view ‘truth’ in exceedingly different ways and the proliferation of misinformation seems to travel frighteningly fast in this increasingly digital world.
In a TED Talk by Sinan Aral (author of Inside the Hype Machine), he unpacks this age of misinformation, and talks about how fake news can sway elections and spur conspiracy theories and movements. In his study of fake news, his team discovered that false news diffused further, faster and more broadly than the truth. In fact, false news is 70% more likely to be retweeted than the truth. Human attention is ultimately drawn to novelty, and we seem most attracted to theories and ideas that make us feel privy to something that is illicit or secret.
On their podcast Armchair Expert, Dax Shepard & Monica Padman interviewed journalist and documentary filmmaker David Farrier about conspiracy theories, from QAnon and Flat Earthers (if you haven’t seen Farrier’s documentary Tickled, it’s wild). The whole interview is a great listen, but here’s the part I found most fascinating: secret knowledge makes us feel special. For those who have felt unheard or like an outsider, conspiracies can make us feel like we belong to something, and that belonging feels good.
Farrier, during the pod, recommended a documentary that I promptly watched that night (this is the Rabbit Hole, after all) called Feels Good Man, and it was so damn good. The documentary, which won a Special Jury Award at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, is how the comic character Pepe the Frog, created by artist Matt Furie, was eventually appropriated and hijacked to become a symbol for the alt-right. Crazy, right?
The documentary chronicles the journey of Pepe, from trippy laid back comic character to a meme/flag bearer of the 4chan online community, an anonymous platform for people who saw themselves as social rejects, to eventually a dark symbol used by the right wing - white nationalists, Trump supporters, and Infowars’ Alex Jones. In an Atlantic piece, “It’s Not Easy Being Meme,” Adam Serwer interviewed Pepe creator Matt Furie back in 2016, and here’s what is interesting: four years ago, Furie seemed largely unbothered by the fact that his beloved character had been hijacked:
I think that’s it’s just a phase, and come November, it’s just gonna go on to the next phase, obviously that political agenda is exactly the opposite of my own personal feelings, but in terms of meme culture, it’s people reappropriating things for their own agenda. That’s just a product of the internet. And I think people in whatever dark corners of the internet are just trying to one up each other on how shocking they can make Pepe appear.
Obviously, it wasn’t just a phase, because in November 2016, Trump was elected President, and Pepe became the cemented symbol of his movement. As the documentary uncovers, Furie’s disinterest flipped, which led to attempts to ‘reclaim’ Pepe, but his early efforts were thwarted and left many questioning, “Can you ever put the genie back in the bottle?” I won’t ruin the ending for you, but eventually Furie has a happy(ish) ending. It’s a brilliant film, a thought-provoking commentary on meme culture, the proliferation of information, and also a great conversation on artistic license and ownership.
We are nearly a year into the pandemic, and going to the movies has been one of the things I have missed the most. I have loved movie going for nearly as long as I’ve loved movies. I was always enthralled by the smell of buttered popcorn; the crunching, laughter & crying that accompanied every movie I saw. As I got older, watching great films in a theater of strangers has been one of my deepest joys - I love the experience of the collective, the feeling of community that is both finite and tethering. I watched Get Out in a packed theater in Chinatown in DC with my little cousin, where the theater erupted in choruses of cheers and shouts and screams. I’ve cried next to complete strangers, whose own tears felt strangely comforting. When I saw Call Me by Your Name (for the second time) with my dear friend Yayo, he turned to me at the climatic moment in the film and said, “How did you know?” Apparently the story we were witnessing on screen mirrored his own experience. Great films are ultimately great stories, and often the ones we find most profound are the ones that remind us about ourselves or the people around us.
Like everyone else, I’m streaming films at home instead of watching them in a theater, and there are two that moved me to tears for being real, raw, and true. I had been waiting for months to see Minari, and finally got to see a virtual screening via A24 last weekend, which also included a Q&A with the cast and director. Minari stars Steven Yeun (who I have loved since he played Glen on The Walking Dead, please read this great NYT Magazine feature on him too), and it’s the story about a Korean American family who moves to Arkansas to farm; to bring life to land they own. It’s the archetypal story of the American Dream, and yet it’s not formulaic in its telling or portrayal of an immigrant family. In a review by The Ringer, the critic writes, “Minari engages a different kind of thought experiment—one that turns away from thinking about everyone else in order to try to imagine what it’s like to think about oneself.” The film is both universal in its storytelling and also very specific in its telling of this family’s experience (which is filmmaker Isaac Chung’s autobiographical story). It’s not melodramatic, but, to me, it was hauntingly beautiful and moving. Minari is out in select theaters right now, but is also available on VOD on February 26th.
Another film that moved me to tears was Nomadland, starring Frances McDormand. Nomadland is like Minari in that it is also a subtle and nuanced demonstration of storytelling. It’s slow-moving (so may not be for everyone), but there is so much beauty in the many quiet moments in the film. Directed by Chloe Zhao, the film follows a loose collection of nomads who are mostly older, with rich stories of life and loss. It’s a story of America, “an exploration of tattered safety nets, stubborn individualism, and economic decay in the heartland,” noted a Vulture piece. Zhao purposefully hires many “real people” (i.e., non-actors) in her films, and the casting of these real people gives this movie an almost documentary-style feel. McDormand is one of my favorite actors, and she embues Fern with so much complexity: kindnesss, ferocity, loneliness, grief, humor. The movie is currently streaming on Hulu, and I’m fairly sure it’s going to get some Oscar nominations (Minari too), so be ahead of the crowd and watch it now.
Here’s to always finding the things that move us.
Until next time, friends.