We Are the Best! - Lukas Moodysson

We Are the Best! is very much like finding a new type of comfort food. It's nothing that challenges you (too much), but you instantly love it. It doesn't aim to start a revolution, but it does aim to be satisfying.

"Je suis Charlie": The Artistic Value of Charlie Hebdo

Source 1: NSFW. Captions read "Mohammed: A star is born!" "The film which shook the Muslim World". Mohammed's speech bubble reads"And my ass? You like my ass?"

Before we start, let's get one thing out of the way. France is not the final bastion of free speech: Charlie Hebdo's predecessor was shut down due to a joke about Charles de Gaulle's death (that kind of thing would be legal today, in case you were wondering, though I don't know if the French would be as quick to play that card).

Source 2: Text reads "Tragic dance in Colombey. One Dead."

"I don't know if I should take a husband or a wife": Krazy Kat and Gender

I received Fantagraphics' first collection of Krazy Kat recently and, flipping through it, I was struck by how modern the notions of gender are. At one point, Krazy complains that they "don't know if I should take a husband or a wife" (October 1915). Despite the heteronormative ideals clearly present in that statement, it strikes me as similar to the new genderfluid movement - a movement that aims to free people from the gender binary.

Medium Snobs! & Other Musings Too Unpolished To Put Into A Seperate Blogpost

We all know that there is a contingent among those who consider themselves cultured who believe that certain styles, genres, mediums and the like are somehow 'less worthy' of being literary (I'm talking specifically about the narrative form right now-I have even less expertise in the fine arts than I do in the narrative form!). There has, however, been a kickback recently against this snobbery, to the point that Slate's Music Club declared "bragging about omnivorousness has become its own kind of snobbery". Honestly, I find this snobbery (if it can even be called that) far preferable to the old kind of snobbery, which I feel was based in classist assumptions of low and high culture.

I forgot to mention this at the time, but my New Year's Resolution is to post 100 blogposts this year, which is both over 5x more than I did last year, and me posting every 3.65 days. So expect far more posts this year!

Does anyone else find the rapey-ness of Alan Moor's work disturbing? I actually had to abort my reading of Watchmen due to finding it too problematic - not that I was overly enjoying it anyway-I was finding it a slog and, essentially, un-fun. I know it's important and such, but good god To Kill A Mockingbird was much more culturally important and  fun. In case anyone doesn't like my criteria of media having to be fun, I find enjoyment is critical to my enjoyment of media.

And now, I leave you with the immortal words of Kermit the Frog, "write your own ending".

Superheroes' Superpesonality

The title of my post is a lie. Superheroes do not have well-defined personalities, and that's part, or most, of their appeal. Their blankness allows them to be placed in any sort of situation-like how a Wonder Woman comic can be anything from a myth-themed epic to a "hip" '60s adventure set in Greenwich Village. They adapt. Wonder Woman's a particularly good example for this, because she isn't static (not even her origin story, unlike Batman or Spiderman).

God Help the Girl - Stuart Murdoch

God Help the Girl aims to be a complex reflection on the creation of music, mental illness and eating disorders. For the most part, I felt it succeeded. It's a twee little thing, but it works well (I do seem to have a fondness for twee, so take your tolerance for it into account).

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian - Sherman Alexie

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is ostensibly a book about one kid, born on the reservation, but now leaving it to go to a better school. However, it is also about how Indians fit into the wider world (in his school, "the only other Indian is the school mascot"), and life on the rez (alcoholism, casinos, education, pretty much anything). This was the first book I read where one story is in the middle of another, larger story, and it's probably the one that's done it best so far.