Salty Parabolas, Summer Jobs, and Steven Moffat
In what is as close to a hot take as Oi! Spaceman is ever likely to get, this week we actually covered a still-in-theaters f
ilm, rather than a sixty-five year old piece of film noir history. Shana was still out of town (but she’ll be back next week), so I was joined by friend of the show Jessica from The Web of Queer (which is a show more people should know about, so go click that link) to discuss the Paul Feig re-imagining of Ghostbusters. The film is largely just a pleasing bit of comedy and eye candy, so Jessica and I mostly just had a fun conversation about the things the film does regarding representation of women, queer characters, and queer characters who happen to be women. Also, I make a firm anti-Nazi stance and swoon over Kate McKinnon.
Over on They Must Be Destroyed on Sight, we’re still doing sex comedies for another couple of weeks. This time we looked at one of the worst films of the genre, Summer Job (1989) and Bikini Drive-In (1995), which is one of Lee’s favorites. I also happened to do a bit of research on one of the films we covered last week, and explore some information about the song we went out on in that episode.
And in case you missed it Friday, Jane and I had a casual conversation about Steven Moffat, Series Six, and feminism that is already one of our most-listened-to episodes. Jack described it as “the audio equivalent of relaxing into a huge comfy armchair with a steaming mug of cocoa,” which I think is a compliment. Hopefully Jane will come back and school us all on our rabid Moffat hate sometime in the near future.
July 24, 2016 @ 7:00 pm
Okay, now I have to go see Ghostbusters.
July 24, 2016 @ 7:47 pm
It was a compliment, yes.
July 25, 2016 @ 11:47 am
OK. Finally listening to the Moffatt chat…
AT LAST! Someone else who doesn’t like Blink. As a character drama, it’s just… dramatically inert. As a puzzle box it’s just simple and dumb. To paraphrase Lawrence Miles on Stephen Fry, it’s a stupid person’s idea of what a clever piece of television is. Coupling is politically abhorrent, but its plotting was often infinitely more complex and interesting than Blink’s. And, depressingly, the character drama was too. I adore a lot of Moffatt’s writing, especially post 2010- Wedding, Name, Day, Time, Listen, Heaven Sent, Hell Bent are all utterly brilliant. But Blink? Perhaps it was a brave attempt to reclaim the territory of City of Death and the like at the time. But, if that came out today, it would would be derided as a basically incompetent attempt to do something clever. The idea that people cling to that fluff as a masterpiece when so much that is infinitely more interesting has come since, much of it from the same pen, really baffles me.
July 25, 2016 @ 11:58 am
Ugh, that sounds like such an awful rant. What I’m trying to get at is, I’m sick of Moffatt haters who praise Blink. I’m a reformed Moffatt hater, as I’ve said here before. So I guess, with all the stuff I’ve found to love in Moffatt’s writing (through the murk of gender essentialism, incidental homophobia etc), it’s particularly frustrating that people point to that as some sort of ideal of Moffatt’s talents and abilities.
What won me over to Moffatt (specifically as a Who writer, I’ll always have respect for his work on Press Gang), eventually, was “time travel has always been possible in dreams.” In isolation, an utterly twee line. In the context of a science fiction series with a contingent of lizard brain fans, it seemed weirdly defiant, and gave me a new perspective on all of his work. Blink still feels like one for the lizards in its neat, tidy, puzzle box nature. Moffatt’s talent shines through most in the mess, the magic and the loose ends. Heaven Sent could have been an awful, direct analog for grief, but he left just enough room there for it to be about everything.
July 25, 2016 @ 12:02 pm
Also, the Moffatt chat is a great podcast. As with Moffatt’s best work, the brilliance here is in the loose ends. It’s refreshing to hear you both not checking yourselves or second guessing things (I’ll listen to the other podcasts later).
July 25, 2016 @ 10:42 pm
Ghostbusters Kevin is the Second Best Kevin!
July 26, 2016 @ 8:29 pm
What is it with the left and their love for big corporations that exploit them to shill for their cashgrabs this year?