Don't let the trailer fool you

Searching for something strange and new

Do you read reviews of stuff you want to listen to, watch, or read? Or, do you wait until after you’ve consumed it to see how your impressions match up with the critics?

I realized not too long ago that I do very little of either, which has prompted some soul searching. If I spend so little time reading reviews, why do I spend so much time writing them?

The more I want to see a movie or read a book, the less likely I am to read about it ahead of time. If I think something is for me, I don’t want someone else’s editorializing to distort my experience.

Hereditary is a great example of this. The trailer (spoiler alert) ruined the movie for me. It created the impression that the movie was about one thing (a disturbed young girl and her impact on her family) when it was really about something else (a disturbed old woman and her impact on her family).

Because I was expecting one type of movie, when the disturbed young girl is, um, clipped, and the film becomes something else, I interpreted that as a weakness, as the film changing gears, as it being unsure of itself. After I read the screenplay, I realized that wasn’t the case at all. Hereditary is a meticulously crafted piece of filmmaking and rewards rewatching.

But was there any way around this? Hereditary was Ari Aster’s debut as a director. He was an unknown. In order to attract interest in the film and get people in the theater, the trailer needed to generate some buzz. The selling of the story got in the way of my enjoyment of it. I hate that.

When I watched the trailer again, I saw things I didn’t see the first time, especially in the first half, but some of the comments confirm my initial impression. Here’s one that has over 1.1K likes:

God the trailer is so misleading but in a brilliant way. It comes across as another bland horror film, but the editing is hiding a WHOLE different story, like holy shit. Best horror film of 2018, don't let the trailer fool you. It is NOT what it seems

Thank you, @eremikahaven4796.

Now when I go to a theater and see a trailer for a film I already know I want to see, I try to distract myself. I much prefer knowing nothing about it—other than I want to see it.

But how do you do that exactly? How do you find out about stuff you’re interested in without hearing too much about it?

Obviously, it’s easier to avoid written reviews—just don’t read them. But how do we navigate a world that’s constantly shoving stuff down our throats? Then when there’s something we actually want it’s like being blasted with a firehose of information.

Recently, my friend Andrés recommended the short novel Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin and translated by Megan McDowell. I knew that he had read several of McDowell’s translations of Schweblin’s books and Fever Dream was his favorite.

That was enough for me. I didn’t want to know anything more about it.

I listened to the audio book while driving around San Diego last week and it was a deliciously disorienting experience. There were moments when I had no idea what was going on and moments when I didn’t want to get out of the car.

Was that the best way to experience the book? I don’t know, but that was my experience. Would it have been better to read the words or watch the adaption, which the author co-wrote and is currently on Netflix?

This is not a caption.

Again, I don’t know. I will leave that to you. I don’t want to review the work here because even describing the genre to which it may or may not belong with any degree of specificity could ruin your enjoyment of it. Had I known, I’m pretty sure it would have ruined mine. Our desire to label things and put them in super specific boxes spoils so much of the fun of being immersed in something strange and new.

I think that’s all I’m looking for from art—something strange and new—but one of the problems of being a 21st century consumer is that you have to sift through so much information that when you actually experience it much of the strangeness and/or newness has eroded.

(I will say one thing. Fever Dream is not a direct translation of the original title in Spanish—Distancia de recate—and it’s not an improvement.)

So maybe I’m not a reviewer after all. I know I’m not a critic. Maybe I’m more of a recommender. In any case, I highly recommend Fever Dream—no matter how you choose to consume it.

Another reason I’ve been thinking about reviewing, er, recommending, is the recent layoffs at the Los Angeles Times. The layoffs impacted me indirectly in that most of the people I’ve worked with in various departments, i.e. books and music, over the last few years are no longer there. What does this mean for the paper going forward?

I don’t know. As much as I’m personally disappointed by this development and upset for those who have lost their livelihoods, it goes much deeper. The week before the layoffs at the Los Angeles Times there were layoffs at Pitchfork and the week before that an announcement that Bandcamp was shrinking its editorial output.

These are just three examples, a narrow sliver of my interests, of a much bigger problem. The way I see it, there are two way of looking at this: 1) We’re in the midst of a cultural shift where books, movies, music, and art in general aren’t as relevant as they used to be. Or, 2) Greedy corporate fucksticks are gutting cultural resources that matter more than ever for the sake of lining their pockets.

I think there’s some truth in both, but the question that matters most to me is this: What am I going to do about it?

I don’t think the answer is to read and review more books and music (and occasionally movies). I do a fair amount of that as it is. Message from the Underworld is driven by my interests and preoccupations and not by a mandate of what I think my interests and preoccupations ought to be.

One thing I can do is dig a little deeper into those interests and preoccupations and share the results with you. In that spirit I’m going to introduce a new feature to the newsletter called Quiztunes: short interviews with the makers of art I find arresting. The title comes from a pun that appears in Finnegans Wake. If I’ve ever asked you a question via email you’re already encountered this construction.

What I’m not going to do is turn Message from the Underworld into a portal for book or music promotion. I like being able to help artists, especially indie artists, promote their projects when they come out because that’s such an important time in its life cycle. But I’m not going to limit these interviews to that. Art is art and a book or a record or a movie can make just as strong an impact a year (or two or ten years) after its release.

So far I’ve got two interviews lined up: Sarah Coolidge, editor of Through the Night Like a Snake: Latin American Horror Stories from Two Lines Press and Paul Tremblay a righteous punk guitarist and author of your favorite horror novels.

I know these short interviews won’t replace the coverage and content of hundreds of journalists, but hopefully it will bring a bit more strangeness and newness to the newsletter and get us all a bit more excited about the art that moves us.

As for the Los Angeles Times, if all goes as planned, I’m going to write a few more pieces that I was assigned before the layoffs. I interviewed an author while I was in LA last weekend for a profile that will run next month and I have plans to interview a titan of crime fiction soon. After that, your guess is as good as mine.

Maybe it’s a sign to ramp up my research on a punk rock project that’s been simmering on the back burner for a while. In any case, if you’ve been thinking about upgrading to a paid subscription, now is an excellent time to do that. Oh look, there’s a link right here…

Lastly, I want to thank your notes and feedback about my sobriety, Wayne Kramer, and Dave Grohl. It’s always great to hear from you and I appreciate it when you take the time to send a note. I’ll leave you with this video from Idles, which is strange and new but also not.

If you’re new to Message from the Underworld and you enjoyed this newsletter you might also like my latest novel Make It Stop, or the paperback edition of Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records, or my book with Bad Religion, or my book with Keith Morris. Message from the Underworld comes out every Wednesday and is always available for free, but paid subscribers also get Orca Alert! on most Sundays. It’s a weekly round-up of links about art, culture, and science you may have missed while trying to avoid the shitty news of the day.