For quite some time I have found Boxoffice Pro's comprehensive forecasts of upcoming and recently released films' grosses and their systematic updating of great interest, especially in these times in which so many movies surprise us amid what may be historic changes in the business of film-- big franchise films crashing and burning (like The Flash), or unlikely-seeming movies becoming colossal hits (like Oppenheimer), as Hollywood confronts the possible end of the high concept-dominated post-New Hollywood era.
Alas, for some weeks now the forecasting section of the site has been much reduced, with just a handful of long-range (or even weekend) forecasts appearing this past month. (Thus The Fall Guy forecast I cited has not had a single update.)
I imagine that the impoverishment of the forecasting section is a temporary situation. (After all, Boxoffice Pro is a major film industry trade publication in circulation since 1920, before "movies" became "talkies.") Still, I have no idea when things will get back to normal that way--and can only look forward to when they do so.
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Daniel Bessner's New Article in Harper's
Daniel Bessner's "The Life and Death of Hollywood" is exactly what journalism ought to be but all too rarely is--a deeply informed piece of reporting that goes beyond mentioning some facts or passing on some impressions to putting together a picture of its subject and explaining how things stand to the reader with, in this case, the analysis of Hollywood's development in recent decades, especially as seen from the standpoint of its writers, benefiting greatly from its combination of critical perspective, historical background and attentiveness to contemporary economic fact.* In this piece Bessner quite rightly explains Hollywood as undergoing its own piece of the broader neoliberal turn, affecting it in the same way that it has affected the rest of America's economy and society. Just as has happened elsewhere, the convergence of deregulation (in this case, particularly the collapse of antitrust enforcement under the Reagan administration, and the Telecommunications Act of 1996 under Clinton), combined with creditist monetary policy to produce an extraordinary concentration of ownership, production and market power, and a triumph of speculation and short-termism, that has had catastrophic effects for the workers involved and society at large as the game became one of "winner take all." Thus did the early '00s see a half dozen vertically integrated giants (Disney, Time Warner and the other usual suspects) "raking in more than 85 percent of all film revenue and producing more than 80 percent of American prime-time television," while the ultra-loose monetary policy Ben Bernanke ushered in enabled further concentration as a mere three asset-management companies (BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street) to concentrate in their hands the ownership of, well, nearly everything ("becoming the largest shareholders of 88 percent of the S&P 500"), with the media giants no exception to the pattern. (As of the end of 2023 Vanguard "owned the largest stake in Disney, Netflix, Comcast, Apple, and Warner Bros. Discovery," while also having "substantial share[s] of Amazon and Paramount Global.") Indeed, even the talent agencies supposed to represent the writers to those companies similarly became an oligopoly of a few giants in turned owned by asset management firms.
In the wake of the reduction of film and TV production to an oligopoly owned by a few financial firms, and the inevitable ascent of a pseudo-efficiency-minded short-termist control freak mentality among studio executives, it was no accident that, in line with his cite of Shawna Kidman, the share of "franchise movies" in "studios' wide-release features" surged from 25 percent in 2000 to 64 percent in 2017--the age of "multistep deals" and "spec scripts" increasingly a thing of the past, exemplified by the crassness of Disney, and perhaps especially its Marvel operation, which "pioneered a production apparatus in which writers were often separated from the conception and creation of a movie’s overall story." (Thus did the writers have to generate a whole season of scripts for WandaVision without knowing how the season was supposed to end, because the "executives had not yet decided what other stories they might spin off from the show." Thus did Marvel bring the TV-style "writer's room" into filmmaking--if one calls the result filmmaking--as the TV networks replaced their writer's rooms with "mini-writer's rooms" offering those who work in them still less.) Amid the declining readiness to support the development of many ideas in the hope that one would pay off (thirty scripts to get one which might be made into a movie in the old days), amid the declining creative control and bargaining power of writers ever at a disadvantage in relation to the executives whose media courtiers celebrate them as "geniuses" (as with a Kevin Feige), amid the studios playing the old game of exploiting technological changes to contractually cut writers out of any share in the profits (in this case, streaming and its revenues, as Bessner shows through the case of Dickinson creator Alena Smith), writers lost in just about every way. Moreover, the post-pandemic economic shock has dealt them another blow as media companies that had, however exploitatively, been funding a lot of production retrenched, and all too predictably won the labor battle of 2023--at the end of which they may be said to have imposed an at best thinly veiled Carthaginian peace, with what is to come likely to be worse.
Given all that Bessner naturally declined to end his story on a note of false optimism, instead going from the "Life" to the "Death" part of his title. As he notes one could picture various palliatives helping, like government regulation of asset ownership (or indeed, mere application of antitrust law here), but all this seems unthinkable--precisely because what is happening here is so much of a piece with what is happening in all the rest of the economy, and it is all too clear how that is going. Indeed, one can picture things becoming even worse still in the fairly near term if the Hollywood executive class manages to realize its fantasies of using artificial intelligence to dispense with its workers entirely in even a small degree--or even in spite of the technology's inadequacies, simply tries and fails to do so, but destroys a lot of careers and "disrupts" the industry in all the wrong ways in the process.
* Reading Dr. Bessner's biography I found that he is not a reporter but a professor of International Studies--and cannot help wondering if that did not make all the difference for the quality of the item, especially where the avoidance of the hypocrisy of "objectivity" and the contempt for context that characterizes so much contemporary journalism are concerned.
In the wake of the reduction of film and TV production to an oligopoly owned by a few financial firms, and the inevitable ascent of a pseudo-efficiency-minded short-termist control freak mentality among studio executives, it was no accident that, in line with his cite of Shawna Kidman, the share of "franchise movies" in "studios' wide-release features" surged from 25 percent in 2000 to 64 percent in 2017--the age of "multistep deals" and "spec scripts" increasingly a thing of the past, exemplified by the crassness of Disney, and perhaps especially its Marvel operation, which "pioneered a production apparatus in which writers were often separated from the conception and creation of a movie’s overall story." (Thus did the writers have to generate a whole season of scripts for WandaVision without knowing how the season was supposed to end, because the "executives had not yet decided what other stories they might spin off from the show." Thus did Marvel bring the TV-style "writer's room" into filmmaking--if one calls the result filmmaking--as the TV networks replaced their writer's rooms with "mini-writer's rooms" offering those who work in them still less.) Amid the declining readiness to support the development of many ideas in the hope that one would pay off (thirty scripts to get one which might be made into a movie in the old days), amid the declining creative control and bargaining power of writers ever at a disadvantage in relation to the executives whose media courtiers celebrate them as "geniuses" (as with a Kevin Feige), amid the studios playing the old game of exploiting technological changes to contractually cut writers out of any share in the profits (in this case, streaming and its revenues, as Bessner shows through the case of Dickinson creator Alena Smith), writers lost in just about every way. Moreover, the post-pandemic economic shock has dealt them another blow as media companies that had, however exploitatively, been funding a lot of production retrenched, and all too predictably won the labor battle of 2023--at the end of which they may be said to have imposed an at best thinly veiled Carthaginian peace, with what is to come likely to be worse.
Given all that Bessner naturally declined to end his story on a note of false optimism, instead going from the "Life" to the "Death" part of his title. As he notes one could picture various palliatives helping, like government regulation of asset ownership (or indeed, mere application of antitrust law here), but all this seems unthinkable--precisely because what is happening here is so much of a piece with what is happening in all the rest of the economy, and it is all too clear how that is going. Indeed, one can picture things becoming even worse still in the fairly near term if the Hollywood executive class manages to realize its fantasies of using artificial intelligence to dispense with its workers entirely in even a small degree--or even in spite of the technology's inadequacies, simply tries and fails to do so, but destroys a lot of careers and "disrupts" the industry in all the wrong ways in the process.
* Reading Dr. Bessner's biography I found that he is not a reporter but a professor of International Studies--and cannot help wondering if that did not make all the difference for the quality of the item, especially where the avoidance of the hypocrisy of "objectivity" and the contempt for context that characterizes so much contemporary journalism are concerned.
Upton Sinclair on the Greeks
Discussing the literary legacy of the ancient Greeks in Mammonart Upton Sinclair asks just "how much do we really admire Greek literature and Greek art, and how much do we just pretend to admire it?" Recalling Samuel Johnson's quip about a dog walking on two legs, and how "it is not well done, but we are surprised that it is done at all," he suggested that the conventional exaltation of the Greeks is based not on a clear-headed judgment of the poetry and drama by modern standards, next to which these works are technically crude and representative of a world-view so unacceptable to modern people that as a matter of course we can seem "in denial" about it (far from Greek art being an art "of joy and freedom," their theme was invariably "the helplessness of the human spirit in the grip of fate," and at that, a fate which destroyed them), but rather a matter of "superstition" that has been "maintained by gentlemen who have acquired honorific university degrees, which represent to them a meal ticket," and the snobbery to which they cater (Classicism in itself become so "leisure class" by his time as to make "Homer . . . to the British world of culture what the top-hat is to the British sartorial"). Indeed, in Sinclair's view those who (like a Matthew Arnold or William Gladstone) "write volumes of rhapsody about Homer" testify less to Homer's superlativeness as a poet than his works' accordance with their prejudices--his "ha[ving] the aristocratic point of view, and giv[ing] the aristocratic mind what it craves," namely a vision of life in which aristocrats "unrestrained in their emotions and limitless in their desires" act out and are flattered in their self-importance by seeing the gods themselves take an interest in their personal tales, all as, one might add, they generally sing conservatives' militarist, patriotic, values.
This is not to say that Sinclair contemptuously dismissed it all (let alone was in any way a promoter of the kind of "cancel culture" that today seeks to "cancel" the Classics along with so much else). If Sinclair stresses the Greek pessimism he thinks too much overlooked, he is historically-minded enough to acknowledge, as others of like ideology have done, that to the ancient mind the world easily seemed "a place of blind cruelty, the battle-ground of forces which he did not understand," and out of this "made . . . a philosophy of stern resignation, and an art of beautiful but mournful despair"--and not confuse all this with the "dispensation of official pessimism" in more enlightened modern times (as with the apparent "'Classical' attitude" of "pathetic and heroic" "resignation to the pitiful fate of mankind on earth" of the aforementioned Arnold), which he saw as coming from quite other sources. Indeed, for all the limitations of that ancient mind Sinclair owns to pleasure in being able to see for ourselves "the beginnings of real thinking, of mature attitudes toward life" in in their early writings, and much else besides. If Sinclair finds much in Homer ridiculous and repellent, it seemed to him that one still did find "beautiful emotion"--albeit not the ones that moved lovers of the "heroism" of an Achilles, but "the mothers and fathers, the wives of children of those heroes [who] express for them an affection of which they are unworthy." He finds much to admire in the satire of Euripedes, "jeering at militarism and false patriotism, denouncing slavery and the subjection of women in the home, rebuking religious bigotry, undermining the noble and wealthy classes." Yet, if it seems to Sinclair appropriate to qualify one's criticisms, and that the works have their worthwhile aspects, that exaltation of the Classics in the familiar way as a matter of superstition and snobbery above all else stands.
Reading Sinclair it seems to me that there is an enormous amount of truth in this statement--which, indeed, ought to be evident to anyone who actually tries looking at those writings with clear eyes, as others have done, not all of them inclined to see things his way on most issues. (The critic John Crowe Ransom, who as one of the twelve writers of the Southern Agrarian Manifesto was far, far removed from Sinclair politically, seems to me to have grasped very well, and put even more poetically and succinctly, just how remote the Greek view of life, or at least the early Greek view, was from one of "joy and freedom.") Indeed, present a professor of literature today with the hard facts of just what is in "this stuff" and you are likely to get as their answer a sort of embarrassed agreement that reminds you just how much the Canon, and indeed what we say about the Canon, is the product of timid deference to received judgment, which one is expected to, in the words of Oscar Wilde, "endure . . . as the inevitable." And so the superstition and snobbery of which Sinclair wrote significantly prevail a century on--qualified, of course, by the decreasing extent to which anyone is paying attention to the Classics or to the humanities or to culture at all.
This is not to say that Sinclair contemptuously dismissed it all (let alone was in any way a promoter of the kind of "cancel culture" that today seeks to "cancel" the Classics along with so much else). If Sinclair stresses the Greek pessimism he thinks too much overlooked, he is historically-minded enough to acknowledge, as others of like ideology have done, that to the ancient mind the world easily seemed "a place of blind cruelty, the battle-ground of forces which he did not understand," and out of this "made . . . a philosophy of stern resignation, and an art of beautiful but mournful despair"--and not confuse all this with the "dispensation of official pessimism" in more enlightened modern times (as with the apparent "'Classical' attitude" of "pathetic and heroic" "resignation to the pitiful fate of mankind on earth" of the aforementioned Arnold), which he saw as coming from quite other sources. Indeed, for all the limitations of that ancient mind Sinclair owns to pleasure in being able to see for ourselves "the beginnings of real thinking, of mature attitudes toward life" in in their early writings, and much else besides. If Sinclair finds much in Homer ridiculous and repellent, it seemed to him that one still did find "beautiful emotion"--albeit not the ones that moved lovers of the "heroism" of an Achilles, but "the mothers and fathers, the wives of children of those heroes [who] express for them an affection of which they are unworthy." He finds much to admire in the satire of Euripedes, "jeering at militarism and false patriotism, denouncing slavery and the subjection of women in the home, rebuking religious bigotry, undermining the noble and wealthy classes." Yet, if it seems to Sinclair appropriate to qualify one's criticisms, and that the works have their worthwhile aspects, that exaltation of the Classics in the familiar way as a matter of superstition and snobbery above all else stands.
Alex Garland's Civil War: Some of the Critics' Views
Recently remarking Alex Garland's Civil War the movie theater trade publication Boxoffice Pro characterized the film's promotion as a "bait-and-switch marketing campaign that sold opening weekend audiences on the promise of an action movie" while "delivering a bleak drama that focuses a lot more on journalism instead."
It seems to me that many would regard this as not the only piece of bait-and-switch at work in the film, or even the most important one. As Forbes' Erik Kain remarked, the movie Civil War, in the publicity for which even the "action movie" aspect was arguably less important than the prospect of a drama about American political divisions (there are lots of action movies out there, not so many political dramas with a "high concept" draw like that one), ended up not really being about those divisions, Garland studiously "avoid[ing] the politics of the day in order to tell a more universal story." Kain's view of this approach was favorable, but others have been less impressed (finding in Garland's approach less universalism or "neutrality" than thoughtlessness and evasion and maybe worse in a piece of what one critic has described as a "gutless" cinematic "both sidesism").
However, whatever one makes of it, audiences would seem to have been pulled in by the offer of one thing, and given another. This weekend's gross will likely say something about how the audience's ultimate reaction to that.
It seems to me that many would regard this as not the only piece of bait-and-switch at work in the film, or even the most important one. As Forbes' Erik Kain remarked, the movie Civil War, in the publicity for which even the "action movie" aspect was arguably less important than the prospect of a drama about American political divisions (there are lots of action movies out there, not so many political dramas with a "high concept" draw like that one), ended up not really being about those divisions, Garland studiously "avoid[ing] the politics of the day in order to tell a more universal story." Kain's view of this approach was favorable, but others have been less impressed (finding in Garland's approach less universalism or "neutrality" than thoughtlessness and evasion and maybe worse in a piece of what one critic has described as a "gutless" cinematic "both sidesism").
However, whatever one makes of it, audiences would seem to have been pulled in by the offer of one thing, and given another. This weekend's gross will likely say something about how the audience's ultimate reaction to that.
Sunday, April 21, 2024
The New York Times, Right-Wing Publication
Recently reading the Columbia Journalism Review's analysis of pre-2022 midterm coverage of domestic affairs by the New York Times and Washington Post I was unsurprised (indeed, confirmed in my views) when they quantitatively demonstrated those papers' preference for politics to policy, and the rarity with which anything published in them actually attempted to explain the affairs of the day to the general public.
I was more surprised by the editorial contrast between the Times and its Washington-based counterpart. The Review article found that, if both papers were more prone to attend to the issues that Republicans care most about than those Democratic voters care most about, the Times was significantly more prone to do so than the Post. By the analysts count the Times favored the Republicans' concerns by a margin of over 5 to 1 (37 to 7 pieces, respectively), as against the 4 to 3 margin seen with the Post. It is an astonishing predominance, even in comparison with that other newspaper, that can seem to bespeak the political shift of the newspaper that publishes Ross Douthat, Bret Stephens, Christopher Caldwell (to say nothing of figures like Thomas Friedman).
I was more surprised by the editorial contrast between the Times and its Washington-based counterpart. The Review article found that, if both papers were more prone to attend to the issues that Republicans care most about than those Democratic voters care most about, the Times was significantly more prone to do so than the Post. By the analysts count the Times favored the Republicans' concerns by a margin of over 5 to 1 (37 to 7 pieces, respectively), as against the 4 to 3 margin seen with the Post. It is an astonishing predominance, even in comparison with that other newspaper, that can seem to bespeak the political shift of the newspaper that publishes Ross Douthat, Bret Stephens, Christopher Caldwell (to say nothing of figures like Thomas Friedman).
Media Biases: A Quantitative Analysis from the Columbia Journalism Review
Some time ago I extended my analysis of political centrism to the mainstream news media and argued that much of its conduct--and in particular much of the conduct that many view as problematic--is explicable in terms of centrist ideology. This particularly included the matters of the media's preference for politics to policy, and its declining to attempt to explain complex issues to the public.
As it happens a November 2023 piece in the Columbia Journalism Review setting out the results of a quantitative examination of the pre-2022 midterm coverage of domestic affairs by the New York Times and Washington Post (from September 2022 to Election Day) was consistent with exactly that reading. The analysts found that, apart from their both emphasizing campaign "horse race and . . . palace intrigue," only a very small proportion of the items had any policy content to speak of, particularly of the explicatory type. Of 219 front page stories about domestic politics during this period in the Times, "just ten . . . explained domestic policy in any detail," while of 215 stories in the Post just four "discussed any form of policy"--working out to less than 5 percent in the former case, less than 2 percent in the latter case. Indeed, the Post did not have a single front-page story about "policies that candidates aimed to bring to the fore or legislation they intended to pursue" during that whole critical period, opting instead for speculative pieces about the candidates and "where voter bases were leaning."
Remember, these are the most respected mainstream publications--the "papers of record"--the kind of publications that many of those complaining about "fake news" tell us to attend to instead of the rest of what we are apt to see online. Considering that fact, one can only judge these publications to be themselves a considerable part of the problem with regard to the deficiencies of the public's understanding of current events--with, indeed, the preference for politics over policy and the extreme paucity of explanation just the tip of the iceberg.
As it happens a November 2023 piece in the Columbia Journalism Review setting out the results of a quantitative examination of the pre-2022 midterm coverage of domestic affairs by the New York Times and Washington Post (from September 2022 to Election Day) was consistent with exactly that reading. The analysts found that, apart from their both emphasizing campaign "horse race and . . . palace intrigue," only a very small proportion of the items had any policy content to speak of, particularly of the explicatory type. Of 219 front page stories about domestic politics during this period in the Times, "just ten . . . explained domestic policy in any detail," while of 215 stories in the Post just four "discussed any form of policy"--working out to less than 5 percent in the former case, less than 2 percent in the latter case. Indeed, the Post did not have a single front-page story about "policies that candidates aimed to bring to the fore or legislation they intended to pursue" during that whole critical period, opting instead for speculative pieces about the candidates and "where voter bases were leaning."
Remember, these are the most respected mainstream publications--the "papers of record"--the kind of publications that many of those complaining about "fake news" tell us to attend to instead of the rest of what we are apt to see online. Considering that fact, one can only judge these publications to be themselves a considerable part of the problem with regard to the deficiencies of the public's understanding of current events--with, indeed, the preference for politics over policy and the extreme paucity of explanation just the tip of the iceberg.
What is a Superhero? An Attempt at a Definition
What is a superhero?
It does not seem unreasonable to define the term. Granted, a certain sort of person dismisses such attempts as bound to fail given that exceptions will always exist to any definition--but the existence of ambiguities does not, as such, keep definition from being a useful, in fact essential, tool for making sense of reality. (The map may not be the territory, but that does not make maps useless, no matter how much contrarians addicted to stupid epistemological nihilism natter on.)
A good starting point for such a definition is an examination of those criteria that may seem least dispensable to the conception of the superhero as we know them today--the superhero tradition as established in the comic book medium, especially from the advent of Superman forward.
1. They Must Be Both a Hero--and Super.
A superhero must obviously be a hero--a figure that does something both positive and extraordinary such as is worthy of admiration by others. Where the superhero's sort of heroism is concerned there is an expectation of service to the community of some physical kind, usually entailing courage in the face of physical danger, to save the lives of others because it is the right thing to do rather than a matter of self-interest; with such action a vocation rather than an exceptional incident. Of course, people pursue vocations that have them performing such acts--firefighters are the go-to example--but superheroes are distinguished from them in that they are super, their abilities exceeding the human norm in a way which is quantitative or qualitative or both. (Conventionally the firefighter running into a burning building must make do with "merely" human physical and mental capacities, but a superhero might be able to put out the fire with a blast of icy breath, as Superman can.)
2. They Have a Very Distinct and Very Public Persona, of which Distinct Powers, Codenames and Physical Appearances (Usually but Not Always a Function of Costuming) Tend to be a Part.
The above seems to me mostly self-explanatory. In contrast with, for example, heroes who are secret agents, who are likely to conceal their "heroic" aspect behind cover identities as they set about their work, the superhero's cover identity, their public persona, is itself heroic--and indeed advertised to the world at large, the more in as its elements include the aforementioned matters of a power, or powers, that tend to be very individualized; a similarly unique codename; and a unique appearance, usually but not always derived from a costume. (Barry Allen is a hero made a superhero by his application of "speedster" capabilities such as even other DC superheroes tend not to have to fighting evil; is, appropriately, known as the Flash, after his speed; and wears a red costume with lightning bolt insignia, also evoking that speed. Other figures such as Marvel's The Hulk and the Thing have distinct powers and codenames, and their distinct appearance--albeit less reliant on any costume in their case.)
3. The Superhero's Activity is Highly Individualistic.
As implied by the exceptional character of the hero's capacity, and their conspicuous public persona, the conception of the superhero is individualistic in action. Consider, for example, the firefighter and secret agent both. Both figures are conventionally employees of a public agency, which pays them money to do a job in line with orders--which does not make a sense of duty irrelevant by any means, but still raises the question of the paycheck, career, etc. in ways that unavoidably give their activity a different texture. Both also rely on their organizations for their ability to do their jobs--unlikely to have equipment or other supports necessary to their hero task if they were not so employed. By contrast the superhero is ordinarily alone, answering to no one--taking no orders, and often having a complex and fraught relationship with authority (epitomized by stories in which Batman falls afoul of the law), all as what equipment they need is their own (one reason why superheroes are so often independently wealthy, as Batman or Iron Man is).
Moreover, when we see superheroes "team up," teaming up is exactly what they do--these individuals cooperating in a joint effort rather than relinquishing their identities to be good "organization men" and women. (Iron Man is first and foremost Iron Man, and never "just" an Avenger.)
Of course, much else tends to go with this. The public persona is often a way of concealing a private identity, and at least attempting to protect a private life. And of course there is apt to be the unusual origin story--for superhuman abilities, and the decision to put on a costume and fight a private war against crime or some other such evil are the kinds of things for which most people expect an explanation, which is likely to be extraordinary because of what has to be explained. (Thus is Superman literally from another planet, while Batman has been motivated by childhood trauma and equipped by a lifetime of preparation for his vigilante mission, aided by vast wealth as well as extraordinary talent.) One may add that the superhero almost always faces a supervillain at some point--because any other sort of villain is a less than worthy adversary. (How long would Superman remain interesting just catching small-time purse-snatchers?) However, those three items seem to me to constitute the indispensable minimum--with any character not meeting those three criteria, which I think enable us to distinguish between superheroes and non-superheroes of various kinds, without bounding the category so narrowly as to deprive it of analytical usefulness, and permitting distillation as the following:
It does not seem unreasonable to define the term. Granted, a certain sort of person dismisses such attempts as bound to fail given that exceptions will always exist to any definition--but the existence of ambiguities does not, as such, keep definition from being a useful, in fact essential, tool for making sense of reality. (The map may not be the territory, but that does not make maps useless, no matter how much contrarians addicted to stupid epistemological nihilism natter on.)
A good starting point for such a definition is an examination of those criteria that may seem least dispensable to the conception of the superhero as we know them today--the superhero tradition as established in the comic book medium, especially from the advent of Superman forward.
1. They Must Be Both a Hero--and Super.
A superhero must obviously be a hero--a figure that does something both positive and extraordinary such as is worthy of admiration by others. Where the superhero's sort of heroism is concerned there is an expectation of service to the community of some physical kind, usually entailing courage in the face of physical danger, to save the lives of others because it is the right thing to do rather than a matter of self-interest; with such action a vocation rather than an exceptional incident. Of course, people pursue vocations that have them performing such acts--firefighters are the go-to example--but superheroes are distinguished from them in that they are super, their abilities exceeding the human norm in a way which is quantitative or qualitative or both. (Conventionally the firefighter running into a burning building must make do with "merely" human physical and mental capacities, but a superhero might be able to put out the fire with a blast of icy breath, as Superman can.)
2. They Have a Very Distinct and Very Public Persona, of which Distinct Powers, Codenames and Physical Appearances (Usually but Not Always a Function of Costuming) Tend to be a Part.
The above seems to me mostly self-explanatory. In contrast with, for example, heroes who are secret agents, who are likely to conceal their "heroic" aspect behind cover identities as they set about their work, the superhero's cover identity, their public persona, is itself heroic--and indeed advertised to the world at large, the more in as its elements include the aforementioned matters of a power, or powers, that tend to be very individualized; a similarly unique codename; and a unique appearance, usually but not always derived from a costume. (Barry Allen is a hero made a superhero by his application of "speedster" capabilities such as even other DC superheroes tend not to have to fighting evil; is, appropriately, known as the Flash, after his speed; and wears a red costume with lightning bolt insignia, also evoking that speed. Other figures such as Marvel's The Hulk and the Thing have distinct powers and codenames, and their distinct appearance--albeit less reliant on any costume in their case.)
3. The Superhero's Activity is Highly Individualistic.
As implied by the exceptional character of the hero's capacity, and their conspicuous public persona, the conception of the superhero is individualistic in action. Consider, for example, the firefighter and secret agent both. Both figures are conventionally employees of a public agency, which pays them money to do a job in line with orders--which does not make a sense of duty irrelevant by any means, but still raises the question of the paycheck, career, etc. in ways that unavoidably give their activity a different texture. Both also rely on their organizations for their ability to do their jobs--unlikely to have equipment or other supports necessary to their hero task if they were not so employed. By contrast the superhero is ordinarily alone, answering to no one--taking no orders, and often having a complex and fraught relationship with authority (epitomized by stories in which Batman falls afoul of the law), all as what equipment they need is their own (one reason why superheroes are so often independently wealthy, as Batman or Iron Man is).
Moreover, when we see superheroes "team up," teaming up is exactly what they do--these individuals cooperating in a joint effort rather than relinquishing their identities to be good "organization men" and women. (Iron Man is first and foremost Iron Man, and never "just" an Avenger.)
Of course, much else tends to go with this. The public persona is often a way of concealing a private identity, and at least attempting to protect a private life. And of course there is apt to be the unusual origin story--for superhuman abilities, and the decision to put on a costume and fight a private war against crime or some other such evil are the kinds of things for which most people expect an explanation, which is likely to be extraordinary because of what has to be explained. (Thus is Superman literally from another planet, while Batman has been motivated by childhood trauma and equipped by a lifetime of preparation for his vigilante mission, aided by vast wealth as well as extraordinary talent.) One may add that the superhero almost always faces a supervillain at some point--because any other sort of villain is a less than worthy adversary. (How long would Superman remain interesting just catching small-time purse-snatchers?) However, those three items seem to me to constitute the indispensable minimum--with any character not meeting those three criteria, which I think enable us to distinguish between superheroes and non-superheroes of various kinds, without bounding the category so narrowly as to deprive it of analytical usefulness, and permitting distillation as the following:
A superhero is a figure who, acting on their individual initiative and resources, and through a distinct public persona apt to entail codename and (usually costume-based) appearance, makes a vocation of defending the public from physical dangers such as accident, crime and "supervillainy," usually in a way requiring physical action and courage on their part, and drawing on abilities and/or equipment endowing them with more than ordinary human physical and/or mental capacities.
'90s Nostalgia-Mining and the Scandals of that Era
Amid the exploitation of memories of the '90s by the pop culture industry these past many years some have seized on the scandals of the era for material. Thus did we get a feature film about the Tonya Harding scandal, and FX miniseries' about the Bill Clinton impeachment and the O.J. Simpson trial.
I have no idea how much of a public response they really drew. What I can say is that these scandals absolutely do not make me nostalgic for the '90s. Quite the contrary, unlike, for example, 16-bit-era console gaming, the sci-fi shows of the era, the golden age of The Simpsons, or Baywatch, or any number of other things which really do make me feel nostalgic, what they bring to mind is the horror and disgust I felt when I looked away from the day's more amusing pop cultural products at the state of the real world, and the news media that brought it to us, the vileness of which played its part in the world's going from one catastrophe to the next.
Hiram Lee on O.J. Simpson
In the wake of the media response to O.J. Simpson's arrest back in 2007 Hiram Lee published a piece titled "The Media's Obsession with O.J. Simpson" (emphasis added).
As the title of Lee's item indicates the piece was about how the media, not the public, was obsessed with Simpson, even as with extreme stupidity and sanctimoniousness the media's talking heads relentlessly insisted that it was the public was obsessed, and forced the media against its will to attend to the matter to the neglect of all the rest of what was happening in the world. (As Lee wrote, the "anchors and pundits . . . occasionally pose the question: 'Why are we so interested in O.J. Simpson?' . . . lament the drawn out and salacious" coverage, and "[t]hen, with feigned regret . . . return to the tawdry story at hand.")
As Lee remarked, those in the media who did so "attribute[d] their own shameful behavior to the supposed demands of a coarsened, celebrity-obsessed audience," while totally eliding "their own role in cultivating and directing such attitudes toward celebrity culture."
An obscenity in 1995, their behavior was more obscene still in 2007. If, contrary to the celebration of the era as one of peace and prosperity the actual '90s were very troubled years, and the truth was that anyone of even slight intelligence knew it. (Indeed, as one of Mr. Lee's colleagues put it, "Despite the official triumphalism, America was coming apart at the seams.") However, the situation in 2007 was graver still amid the war in Iraq, and the first signs of a historic financial crisis, in the shadow of both of which we have lived ever since.
Talking about O.J. was a way of diverting public attention away from that, to say nothing of more broadly stultifying the public mind--and if some of the public went along with it that did not change the fact that it was the media, not the public, driving this particular piece of idiocy.
Remember that as the remembrances of the trial in which the media is now awash speak of us all having been "captivated" by the trial.
As the title of Lee's item indicates the piece was about how the media, not the public, was obsessed with Simpson, even as with extreme stupidity and sanctimoniousness the media's talking heads relentlessly insisted that it was the public was obsessed, and forced the media against its will to attend to the matter to the neglect of all the rest of what was happening in the world. (As Lee wrote, the "anchors and pundits . . . occasionally pose the question: 'Why are we so interested in O.J. Simpson?' . . . lament the drawn out and salacious" coverage, and "[t]hen, with feigned regret . . . return to the tawdry story at hand.")
As Lee remarked, those in the media who did so "attribute[d] their own shameful behavior to the supposed demands of a coarsened, celebrity-obsessed audience," while totally eliding "their own role in cultivating and directing such attitudes toward celebrity culture."
An obscenity in 1995, their behavior was more obscene still in 2007. If, contrary to the celebration of the era as one of peace and prosperity the actual '90s were very troubled years, and the truth was that anyone of even slight intelligence knew it. (Indeed, as one of Mr. Lee's colleagues put it, "Despite the official triumphalism, America was coming apart at the seams.") However, the situation in 2007 was graver still amid the war in Iraq, and the first signs of a historic financial crisis, in the shadow of both of which we have lived ever since.
Talking about O.J. was a way of diverting public attention away from that, to say nothing of more broadly stultifying the public mind--and if some of the public went along with it that did not change the fact that it was the media, not the public, driving this particular piece of idiocy.
Remember that as the remembrances of the trial in which the media is now awash speak of us all having been "captivated" by the trial.
Saturday, April 20, 2024
Harry Turtledove's Ruled Britannia: A Few Thoughts
For quite a number of years I was an avid reader of Harry Turtledove's alternate histories--running out and grabbing the latest installment in his Timeline-191 series when it became available year in, year out. I enjoyed his rigorous working out of his scenarios, which, in contrast with so much alternate history, made the basis of his story a genuinely compelling counterfactual, in contrast with the flimsy "What ifs?" on which so many of his colleagues have relied. I also enjoyed the "big picture" emphasis of his narratives, presented through his large but still manageable and strategically arranged casts of viewpoint characters, and the briskness of his narratives, which seemed to have been worked out mathematically but effectually (Turtledove cutting among twenty viewpoint characters, each of whom got six four-page scenes by the end of the volume).
Turtledove's Ruled Britannia was a very differently structured book, less oriented to the big picture, and more narrowly focused on a mere two characters rather than twenty--in this case, William Shakespeare and Spanish Golden Age playwright Lope de Vega, brought face to face by a successful Spanish conquest of Britain in 1588 that had de Vega a soldier of the occupying Spanish army who, because of his predilection for the theater, is tasked with keeping an eye on a Shakespeare who has become drawn into a plot by old Elizabethan loyalists to stage a rebellion which will drive the Spanish out. The comparatively original premise (neither Civil War nor World War II!) intrigued me, as did the promise to depict these actual historical figures in this altered timeline, an approach which has always appealed to me. (Of the Timeline-191 novels my favorite was and remains How Few Remain, precisely because of its stress on actual personages.) Still, I wondered if Turtledove would manage to hold my interest with this approach through the nearly five hundred page narrative.
For my part I thought the book longer than it had to be, and I could have done without a good many bits. (I think we saw more of de Vega the self-satisfied womanizer than we needed to, for instance, and did not care for the usage of Christopher Marlowe either, or for that matter the final confrontation between these two figures, which seemed to me entirely pointless.) Still, in spite of the unnecessary or bothersome patches Turtledove pleasantly surprised me by carrying this more focused narrative. In doing that it helped not only that Turtledove displayed some adroitness in developing the cat and mouse game between Shakespeare and the Spanish occupiers, but that Turtledove presents Shakespeare, and de Vega, as both human beings rather than pedestal-placed literary titans--Shakespeare in particular a man whose talent may have marked him out for greater things but in the here and now a jobbing actor and writer trying to make a living and thrust less than willingly into high intrigue. Particularly commendable was Turtledove's not shying away from the difficult task his own plot presented him--taking seriously Shakespeare's enlistment to produce a propaganda play in aid of the rebellion (about the life of Iceni queen Boudicca), and letting us see just enough of it dramatized at the climax to give the project on which the whole plot rests some solidity. The closing lines of the play ("No epilogue here, unless you make it/If you want freedom go and take it") struck me as a bit more Brecht than Bard, but on the whole the pastiche worked, with that close entirely logical in the circumstances, and all this to the good of a climax, and denouement, that drew all the narrative strands together in very satisfying fashion.
Turtledove's Ruled Britannia was a very differently structured book, less oriented to the big picture, and more narrowly focused on a mere two characters rather than twenty--in this case, William Shakespeare and Spanish Golden Age playwright Lope de Vega, brought face to face by a successful Spanish conquest of Britain in 1588 that had de Vega a soldier of the occupying Spanish army who, because of his predilection for the theater, is tasked with keeping an eye on a Shakespeare who has become drawn into a plot by old Elizabethan loyalists to stage a rebellion which will drive the Spanish out. The comparatively original premise (neither Civil War nor World War II!) intrigued me, as did the promise to depict these actual historical figures in this altered timeline, an approach which has always appealed to me. (Of the Timeline-191 novels my favorite was and remains How Few Remain, precisely because of its stress on actual personages.) Still, I wondered if Turtledove would manage to hold my interest with this approach through the nearly five hundred page narrative.
For my part I thought the book longer than it had to be, and I could have done without a good many bits. (I think we saw more of de Vega the self-satisfied womanizer than we needed to, for instance, and did not care for the usage of Christopher Marlowe either, or for that matter the final confrontation between these two figures, which seemed to me entirely pointless.) Still, in spite of the unnecessary or bothersome patches Turtledove pleasantly surprised me by carrying this more focused narrative. In doing that it helped not only that Turtledove displayed some adroitness in developing the cat and mouse game between Shakespeare and the Spanish occupiers, but that Turtledove presents Shakespeare, and de Vega, as both human beings rather than pedestal-placed literary titans--Shakespeare in particular a man whose talent may have marked him out for greater things but in the here and now a jobbing actor and writer trying to make a living and thrust less than willingly into high intrigue. Particularly commendable was Turtledove's not shying away from the difficult task his own plot presented him--taking seriously Shakespeare's enlistment to produce a propaganda play in aid of the rebellion (about the life of Iceni queen Boudicca), and letting us see just enough of it dramatized at the climax to give the project on which the whole plot rests some solidity. The closing lines of the play ("No epilogue here, unless you make it/If you want freedom go and take it") struck me as a bit more Brecht than Bard, but on the whole the pastiche worked, with that close entirely logical in the circumstances, and all this to the good of a climax, and denouement, that drew all the narrative strands together in very satisfying fashion.
On Cryptohistory, the Paranormal and William Shakespeare
One of the oddities of contemporary culture is how persons who ordinarily find history dull suddenly become attentive when someone mentions "aliens"--in the sense of extraterrestrials having been a part of it.
The explanation of this seems to me to be that those persons' interest is still not in history, but the possibility that the claims for the existence of extraterrestrials visiting Earth has been validated.
But that raises the question of why precisely they should care to prove that such visitations have happened. Why should so many people be invested in this?
About that I am not at all clear, but I have noticed a similar interest in much more down-to-Earth, less world-shaking, subjects, such as the possibility of the authorship of William Shakespeare's plays by someone other than William Shakespeare. It seems that, just as with history, people who are not normally interested in Shakespeare, and not knowledgeable about Shakespeare, get interested when, for example, Edward de Vere or Francis Bacon or Walter Raleigh or somesuch is mentioned as the real author of his works. The result is that if some are quite invested in the controversy and make detailed claims on the basis of Shakespeare's plays (all the evidence is indirect in nature), a significant number of people far from capable of making or appreciating such arguments still find interest in the essential claim--which comes down to people being fascinated by the thought that productions they have not read or seen or cared about that have been attributed to one historical figure of whom they know next to nothing actually being attributable to another figure of whom they likely know even less.
Considering both obsessions it can seem symbolic that Roland Emmerich, who made the aliens-visited-Earth-in-the-past movies Stargate (1994) and Independence Day (1996) later directed a movie dramatizing Edward de Vere's writing the plays and using Shakespeare as a front, Anonymous (2011). Didn't see it? That's okay, pretty much no one did, and it would not seem that you or they or anyone else missed much in not doing so--certainly to go by David Walsh's take on the film some years ago (which, as may be expected of those who have read Walsh at his best, is most certainly attentive toward and insightful into the pseudo-controversy over the authorship of Shakespeare's works, which he went so far as to follow up in a second item on the matter).
The explanation of this seems to me to be that those persons' interest is still not in history, but the possibility that the claims for the existence of extraterrestrials visiting Earth has been validated.
But that raises the question of why precisely they should care to prove that such visitations have happened. Why should so many people be invested in this?
About that I am not at all clear, but I have noticed a similar interest in much more down-to-Earth, less world-shaking, subjects, such as the possibility of the authorship of William Shakespeare's plays by someone other than William Shakespeare. It seems that, just as with history, people who are not normally interested in Shakespeare, and not knowledgeable about Shakespeare, get interested when, for example, Edward de Vere or Francis Bacon or Walter Raleigh or somesuch is mentioned as the real author of his works. The result is that if some are quite invested in the controversy and make detailed claims on the basis of Shakespeare's plays (all the evidence is indirect in nature), a significant number of people far from capable of making or appreciating such arguments still find interest in the essential claim--which comes down to people being fascinated by the thought that productions they have not read or seen or cared about that have been attributed to one historical figure of whom they know next to nothing actually being attributable to another figure of whom they likely know even less.
Considering both obsessions it can seem symbolic that Roland Emmerich, who made the aliens-visited-Earth-in-the-past movies Stargate (1994) and Independence Day (1996) later directed a movie dramatizing Edward de Vere's writing the plays and using Shakespeare as a front, Anonymous (2011). Didn't see it? That's okay, pretty much no one did, and it would not seem that you or they or anyone else missed much in not doing so--certainly to go by David Walsh's take on the film some years ago (which, as may be expected of those who have read Walsh at his best, is most certainly attentive toward and insightful into the pseudo-controversy over the authorship of Shakespeare's works, which he went so far as to follow up in a second item on the matter).
"All Art is Propaganda," Somebody Said, Somewhere
Looking back it seems that many an early twentieth century literary great claimed that "All art is propaganda." George Orwell seems the one most associated with the phrase, which he states in his 1940 essay on Charles Dickens. However, Upton Sinclair said exactly the same thing in exactly those words in his epic 1925 history of art, Mammonart, with which Orwell might have been familiar given Orwell's praises for Sinclair's work.
That far more people seem to associate the phrase with Orwell than with Sinclair, I suppose, reflects the greater respectability of the former than the latter these days. Like Orwell Sinclair shifted away from his earlier political stances, but Sinclair's greatest work, fiction and nonfiction, is generally associated with his time as a committed socialist, whereas Orwell is best known for, and celebrated for, producing a work that, in spite of his much more complex attitudes and intentions, came to be regarded as the supreme piece of Cold Warrior literature, overshadowing all the rest of his work--which has been all the better for his memory given the prejudices of the tastemakers.
That far more people seem to associate the phrase with Orwell than with Sinclair, I suppose, reflects the greater respectability of the former than the latter these days. Like Orwell Sinclair shifted away from his earlier political stances, but Sinclair's greatest work, fiction and nonfiction, is generally associated with his time as a committed socialist, whereas Orwell is best known for, and celebrated for, producing a work that, in spite of his much more complex attitudes and intentions, came to be regarded as the supreme piece of Cold Warrior literature, overshadowing all the rest of his work--which has been all the better for his memory given the prejudices of the tastemakers.
Jane Austen and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
As I remarked once, for me the most worthwhile passage in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is the satirical dialogue about the idea of the "accomplished young lady."
Such accomplishment--if one goes by Thorstein Veblen's theory of the leisure class--merely the leisured showing off their greater resources, and the supposed greater prowess which affords them that leisure, by having their young ladies display costly and time-consuming training in skills of no practical value in her life in a supposedly masterful fashion, and announcing to the world that "This is why we are here and you are there, churls!"
Just as much as ever we are today bombarded with claims of such upper-class accomplishment (not least by way of pop culture). Still, the precise skills in which today's young lady, and gentleman, are expected to display "accomplishment" are different, with one example the martial arts. I do not in the slightest deny the validity of training in those arts for purposes of exercise, sport, self-defense and much else--but if we are to be honest the reason we are so often (falsely and stupidly) given the impression that "everyone" is a black belt holder of some kind (preferably something fashionable at the moment) is because in the United States such training has acquired an association with upper classness, and this because of the sustained commitment of significant disposable time and money required to complete such a training, which working persons are unlikely to have, with this reinforced by the way that unthinking conformists imitate what better-off people do, and of course, many, many, many more lie about doing so, and about their accomplishments and abilities in the course of that. (If "everyone" is a black belt, then who wears all the other belts?)
Otherwise we would not see thriller writers get away with such nonsense as having their heroes fight off a foe with a "judo kick."
Such accomplishment--if one goes by Thorstein Veblen's theory of the leisure class--merely the leisured showing off their greater resources, and the supposed greater prowess which affords them that leisure, by having their young ladies display costly and time-consuming training in skills of no practical value in her life in a supposedly masterful fashion, and announcing to the world that "This is why we are here and you are there, churls!"
Just as much as ever we are today bombarded with claims of such upper-class accomplishment (not least by way of pop culture). Still, the precise skills in which today's young lady, and gentleman, are expected to display "accomplishment" are different, with one example the martial arts. I do not in the slightest deny the validity of training in those arts for purposes of exercise, sport, self-defense and much else--but if we are to be honest the reason we are so often (falsely and stupidly) given the impression that "everyone" is a black belt holder of some kind (preferably something fashionable at the moment) is because in the United States such training has acquired an association with upper classness, and this because of the sustained commitment of significant disposable time and money required to complete such a training, which working persons are unlikely to have, with this reinforced by the way that unthinking conformists imitate what better-off people do, and of course, many, many, many more lie about doing so, and about their accomplishments and abilities in the course of that. (If "everyone" is a black belt, then who wears all the other belts?)
Otherwise we would not see thriller writers get away with such nonsense as having their heroes fight off a foe with a "judo kick."
In What Does Middle Classness Consist?
We hear about middle classness all the time, usually from commentators desirous of dissolving the reality of inequality in an image of generalized middleness. One approach to such dissolution is judging the matter not on the basis of material criteria actually having to do with the terms on which people live, but instead favoring educational levels, or the "values" they purport to espouse, and even self-identification (i.e. "If you think you're middle class, then you are!"). When they do acknowledge material criteria they often equate middle classness not with the income requirements permitting life at a middle class standard demarcated in some fashion (never mind the standard most seem to actually identify with middle classness), but the middle of the range of the income distribution, a very different thing that generally constitutes a far lower bar (depending on the context, one can be mid-income while being much less than middle class in any meaningful sense), in yet another shabby evasion of the sharp edges of social reality.
I tried to do better than that in my working papers on the subject. You can find these here.
I tried to do better than that in my working papers on the subject. You can find these here.
The Obscurantism of "Genius"
I recall encountering a lengthy discussion of the concept of "genius" in a popular news magazine a long time ago (TIME, perhaps).
The author of the piece chalked up the desire to believe in "genius" to a romantic desire for transcendence.
One may well grant an element of that existing within the contemporary cult of genius, but it seems to me far from being the whole of it. More important, I think, is the contradiction between the complexity and scale of modern life, and the prevailing individualistic intellectual and emotional attitudes.
Consider, for instance, scientific life. The scientific endeavor is old, vast, collective in spirit--sociologist Robert Merton, indeed, seeing the collectivist attitude toward scientific knowledge as in fact one of the key elements of the scientific ethos. Scientists build on the work of predecessors in conjunction with their colleagues, such that the individual efforts all flow into a common stream so much larger than any of them that it can seem foolishness to worry too much about whether this or that drop came from that particular tributary of the great river--with the depth and intricacy of the collective, collaborative, aspect getting only the more conspicuous to go by the sheer number of authors on single scientific papers today (a function of just how painfully specialized the work has become). However, a culture accustomed to individualism, indeed vehement about explaining results in terms of individual achievement, individual choice, individual contribution, is more likely to stress single, towering figures who, because so much more is credited to them than any one person ever actually did, or for that matter probably could have done (especially insofar as all the others who helped lead up to them fall by the wayside), can only seem superhuman, magical, in a word, "geniuses." Thus in a common view physics had that Isaac Newton guy who did it all pretty much by himself--and never mind those giants on whose shoulders he supposedly stood. And then not much happened until that Albert Einstein guy, who singlehandedly vaulted us into the relativistic era with a few papers. And so forth.
The tendency obscures rather than illuminates--which is plausibly just fine with those who prefer to see humanity as consisting of a tiny elite of superhumans who accomplish everything and a vast mass of dross who owe that elite everything and should accordingly be groveling before them in the dirt lest Atlas decide they are not worth the trouble, and shrug. Naturally the word is bandied about much in our time--and never more than in the case of persons who, one way or another, seem to amass a lot of money (in a reminder of what, infinitely more than knowledge, is really valued in this society).
Thus was Ken Lay a genius. And Jeffrey Epstein. And Sam Bankman-Fried. And Elizabeth Holmes. And many, many others just like them. In the haste to acclaim such persons such the real reasons for the desperate attachment of persons of conventional mind to the concept become all too apparent.
The author of the piece chalked up the desire to believe in "genius" to a romantic desire for transcendence.
One may well grant an element of that existing within the contemporary cult of genius, but it seems to me far from being the whole of it. More important, I think, is the contradiction between the complexity and scale of modern life, and the prevailing individualistic intellectual and emotional attitudes.
Consider, for instance, scientific life. The scientific endeavor is old, vast, collective in spirit--sociologist Robert Merton, indeed, seeing the collectivist attitude toward scientific knowledge as in fact one of the key elements of the scientific ethos. Scientists build on the work of predecessors in conjunction with their colleagues, such that the individual efforts all flow into a common stream so much larger than any of them that it can seem foolishness to worry too much about whether this or that drop came from that particular tributary of the great river--with the depth and intricacy of the collective, collaborative, aspect getting only the more conspicuous to go by the sheer number of authors on single scientific papers today (a function of just how painfully specialized the work has become). However, a culture accustomed to individualism, indeed vehement about explaining results in terms of individual achievement, individual choice, individual contribution, is more likely to stress single, towering figures who, because so much more is credited to them than any one person ever actually did, or for that matter probably could have done (especially insofar as all the others who helped lead up to them fall by the wayside), can only seem superhuman, magical, in a word, "geniuses." Thus in a common view physics had that Isaac Newton guy who did it all pretty much by himself--and never mind those giants on whose shoulders he supposedly stood. And then not much happened until that Albert Einstein guy, who singlehandedly vaulted us into the relativistic era with a few papers. And so forth.
The tendency obscures rather than illuminates--which is plausibly just fine with those who prefer to see humanity as consisting of a tiny elite of superhumans who accomplish everything and a vast mass of dross who owe that elite everything and should accordingly be groveling before them in the dirt lest Atlas decide they are not worth the trouble, and shrug. Naturally the word is bandied about much in our time--and never more than in the case of persons who, one way or another, seem to amass a lot of money (in a reminder of what, infinitely more than knowledge, is really valued in this society).
Thus was Ken Lay a genius. And Jeffrey Epstein. And Sam Bankman-Fried. And Elizabeth Holmes. And many, many others just like them. In the haste to acclaim such persons such the real reasons for the desperate attachment of persons of conventional mind to the concept become all too apparent.
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