Do Not Siege Walled Cities - 214
Hello, all! Here’s a brief video of me talking!
The other day I met a 28-year-old. We discussed bad cover songs. Or, misguided ones at least. I brought up the early 2000s and that moment’s brief commitment to tribute compilations. The results were rarely good and never great. But it was a bit interesting at least. And I used the Never Give In: A Tribute To the Bad Brains comp as an example. The Moby cover of ‘Sailin On’ specifically.
And the 28-year-old had no idea of what I spoke.
That’s understandable, this was a brief fad we’re talking about. But, no, it wasn’t just the tribute compilation mania. He had no idea who Moby is. Never heard the name before.
Now, I’m not here to tell you Moby is important. And, for the purposes of this newsletter, I don’t really care about the merit of his actual music. But we can’t overlook the fact the man sold 20M records.
It just so happens that he sold those before the 28-year-old was engaged with music. And the type of music this 28-year-old enjoys has little overlap with Moby’s catalog.
But, damn, 20M is a lot. And you’d think avoiding Moby would be technically impossible as at least two of his hits play on radio stations across the globe daily.
Here’s the reveal: people under 30 don’t listen to radio. Unless they’re roofers or landscapers or work in retail. There’s a whole generation for whom ‘radio’ and its inherent (fake) randomness is arcane. Their consumption is finely tailored by very specific algorithms.
All this is not to badmouth the 28-year-old. Not knowing Moby may not be any great loss. Rather, it’s to highlight that everything ages poorly in at least one respect: it will not matter. We can bang on about the right side of history and we can scream from the rooftops about what’s “important” in the arts. But there is no actual posterity.
You, and your work, will not be remembered. Maybe for a time. But not for long. Possible exceptions are Jesus and Shakespeare. Everyone else is preemptively in the dustbin of history.
A Marvel show used AI in the creation of the opening credit scene. Artists are displeased.
A lotta people are saying it looks like ass. And it does. But, based on precedent, it’s not hard to imagine that many of the same people saying it looks like ass would be praising it had they not heard it was AI. And while that seems petty to point out, it girds my belief:
We’re not arguing the relevant case.
If we’re gonna save our careers from AI replacement, we’ve gotta come with more convincing arguments. “AI won’t do it as well as we can” is not gonna do it. And that’s because corporations have spent untold billions on creative work that, in fact, AI could do better. Let’s just confront reality. There’s nothing in The Flash, The Idol, or Redfall that even this nascent form of language learning model couldn’t do better.
Young Sheldon can’t be your argument for maintaining the existing paradigm.
Regarding the most popular attack on AI, “it’s wrong to put creatives outta work…”, I gotta ask, who are you talking to? Being a real adult for a moment -one who understands corporations are not governments with tax-sustained social responsibilities- what kind of argument is this? What are the incentives we’re putting in front of the corporations? We’ve gotta recognize we’re offering no upside. Take your morals outta this. They don’t dictate anything and just get in the way. You can’t moralize your way into money.
Ask the real question: what’s in it for them?
I hear people call for legislation. What’s the basis? “Corporations, you MUST keep people employed despite their cost inefficiency?” That argument is typically the role of unions, not lawmaking bodies. People who understand that idea are making demands of the WGA, SAG, and others rather than screaming on Twitter.
But here’s the scary reveal: it will hit a point where the corporations have no reason to bargain. They can dissolve their relationships with these unions and do everything in-house (or in hard drive, as it were). It would not surprise me if the studios capitulated to the WGA for the 3-year-term of the agreement… and then disaffiliate from the guild altogether at the end of those terms. Because by then AI will be ready to assume the role the studios wish it did today.
This is all disheartening stuff and, in case it wasn’t clear, I’m not looking forward to this possibility. I want to consume work created by loving hands. I want to create things with my own loving hands.
But we’re not gonna secure that desire with our current argumentation. It’s weak and emotional and doesn’t acknowledge the other party’s incentives.
Simply put, it will not win.
And, I should mention, we’ve lost allies. The average person does not care. The thing you kill yourself to make perfect goes unrecognized by the vast majority of people. We’ve fed them garbage for so long they’ve become institutionalized. They prefer garbage. When this newsletter started this was my constant drum. “I’m worried we’ve made people incapable of telling good art from bad! Help!” I still march to it occasionally. But now I fear it’s not just my individual sensibilities offended. There’s stakes. The chickens have come home to roost. And it didn’t take a great seer to divine this outcome.
There will always be people who want something meaningful or virtuosic or challenging in the art they consume. But it’s not most. And, now accelerated by AI, the bottom may fall outta many entertainment careers.
Incentives. If you see yourself as a corporate functionary and require the patronage of a massive conglomerate, you will need to justify your existence. And it’ll have to be that in some way you make them money. Period. So let’s figure it out.
Ok. Now onto media I consumed in a van driving across the US this past week. First, here’s a bad movie that’s sorta interesting. Slam Dance is the future director of The Joy Luck Club doing a ‘Hollywood’ movie with white stars. That was intentional as his films up to that point (and after) feature Chinese leads. He wanted to shake that a little or at least show he was capable of different things. So, bring in the kid from Amadeus and the girl who played Princess Irulan and bang out this… movie.
It’s a noir where a cheating husband (a cartoonist) tries to solve the murder of his mistress. And the ‘slam dancing’ part of it is the very briefly stated idea that cartoonist and mistress go to ‘slam dance’ clubs as their steamy thing. I didn’t live in Los Angeles in 1987, but I’ve been involved in music that nominally involves ‘slam dancing’ for a long time. And I’ve never heard of these slam dancing clubs. And the film only expresses the concept as short cuts to the cartoonist bopping around a strangely sparse nightclub.
Whatever. The long and the short of it is this movie is mostly trash, but of a sort I find comforting and I enjoyed my time with it.
On impulse, I ordered a few tabletop RPGs to the final destination of my tour. I never have an opportunity to play games, but I am endlessly fascinated by them. There’s still a real DIY culture to it. Comics have that, but the sensibility that’s consumed that end of the medium is just way outside what I enjoy. In TTRPG, the (varied though it may be) vibe is something I can still latch onto.
One of the books I ordered is White Box. It’s a very basic but rather complete rules set with pleasant enough layout and a clear mandate.
This is for people who wanna play. They aren’t looking for a million modules or endless rules. They wanna get into a game within an afternoon and have a good time. To that goal, I gotta imagine the game is a success. It felt concise and manageable without skimping. There’s enough description to add flesh and bone to the material, though the art is intentionally no-frills (though serviceable).
In contrast, Cairn is essentially a pamphlet that is not interested in adding flesh to anything. It’s very much “just the facts, ma’am.” And it introduced me to a presentation I think subsumes DIY and enters into an aesthetic I can’t relate to. And that’s public domain images. I use them. I hope everyone does. That’s what they’re there for. But to rely on them exclusively? I can’t see it. However, I am seeing it. Here, in Cairn. The choices are fine and they coulda been integrated into a book filled with original art. But something is missing from any art product without original work.
The cover art, I believe, is original. Anyway, this one is for the hardcore and those really interested in the different approaches possible within OSR games (that’s Old School Renaissance, which is exactly what you’d assume).
And finally we’ve got Moral Apocalypse. And, boy, is this up my alley. I saw very few reviews and no buzz around a book with a challenging premise and I said “it’s got to be good.” And I was mostly right. Whereas Cairn gives the impression the writer doesn’t know artists or can’t afford them, Moral Apocalypse is from the mind of someone who just doesn’t think about art. The way this man writes paints a very vivid picture of who he is. Someone who observes systems with much greater aptitude than he observes human behavior. You know people who are too smart for the bullshit, but they lack charisma so they can’t/won’t sell an alternative? That brain is this book. In its simple play-it-forward approach to competing ideologies, it denigrates them all.
The concept is America collapses under the weight of its partisan politics. And you have to live and reproduce in the aftermath.
One of my favorite video games is Neo Scavenger. Moral Apocalypse feels like the tabletop version thereof.
The book is presented with almost zero flair, using some truly swagless stock photos. But there’s something there. I think if it put work into its appearance, much like many maladjusted men, it could do something great.
Oh, on the plane I watched John Wick 2-4. And, wow, there’s a lotta white LED battlegrounds in the world. Wick shoots hundreds of people in spaces that look like lasertag arenas in Dubai. But don’t think I’m badmouthing it. There’s a reason these movies do well, and it’s presentation. The character isn’t one and the story isn’t one. But when the set-pieces hit, they hit. Even 3 and 4, which I thought brought down the whole series with their injection of who-gives-a-shit supporting characters, land big occasionally. The part where men are being thrown into oncoming cars on Place Charles de Gaulle is a real joy. 4 dives straight into reference and it really does not work. We didn’t need The Warriors nods, especially with terrible cover songs. But, again, it’s barely about things working or even making sense (the introduction of bulletproof suit jackets is world-breaking gibberish), because the set-pieces have a 70% hit rate. I wasn’t mad.
My read of BATMAN: LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT continues, and so does my review of the individual arcs. Today, Grant Morrison and Klaus Janson’s ’Gothic’ story.
A Faust-inspired narrative taken to a contemporary and darker space. It’s a horror story, certainly. Well-constructed, fun, with cool set pieces.
This is a Batman story. By nature it can only be so transgressive or enlightened. There’s a corporate-enforced ceiling you simply cannot break through. Editors will ensure that. But, here we are, reading something elevated. And my question is simple: “why can’t we have more of this?”
Morrison is a genius. Janson is a genius. But this arc of LOTDK isn’t genius. It’s just GREAT. And while I think great is no easy thing, I don’t know if it requires genius. Let’s say this story is Morrison at 1/5 his ability and Janson at maybe 1/3 his craft. Neither man is at their peak here. So why don’t I trip over more work of this quality? Are we saying there’s no one in comics that is 1/5 Morrison? No one 1/3 Janson? That’s a depressing revelation.
Batman battles an immortal tryna beat the clock on a deal with the devil. It’s creepy and upsetting and has enough mystery to justify its length. This is Morrison in a traditionalist mode. He’s not overstating themes and there’s (relatively) little pretentiousness. Janson is doing what he does best: using the exact amount of lines for any given panel and not one more.
It’s just really good comic work.
But not so amazing that we couldn’t do it.
So let’s do it.
Alright, I’ve got very early announcements soon. Like, prolly using made-up project names and whatnot. Real announcements are a ways off. But things are cooking. Beautiful things. Intense things.
Hope you’re taking care of yourselves. I’m back home and so happy. Time to catch up on everything. Have a good one. Do for self.
Patrick is the kind of friend I wish I had. Articulate, passionate and well spoken. I Met him once in Toronto, really good conversation.