Kitanya Responds to Comments — 21
I purposely made it a light week. I needed a bit of a mental health break. I realized that I’ve been going pretty steadily for five months and started writing more in-depth pieces along the way. I’m trying to pace myself properly so I can be consistent. Taking my foot off the gas was good for me. Please do the same if you need to!
I wrote about some of the struggles I’m having in my piece, Writing About America’s Collapse is Taking an Emotional Toll. This Brett Kavanaugh thing is really bringing me down. It’s not just the dominoes that will fall if a staunch conservative majority becomes entrenched on the Supreme Court, though. It’s the brazenness of it all. There are plenty of other conservative judges who would carry out the Republican agenda, but their insistence on it being Kavanaugh in spite of all the red flags shows that it’s about more than that.
As Adam Serwer wrote in The Atlantic this week: “The cruelty is the point.”
How to reckon with this cruelty is the question. The possibility no one wants to imagine is that it may take even greater brutality to beat it back. Pondering what that might look like is particularly unsettling.
Feeling this way can be isolating, so thanks to Ezinne Ukoha, Rico Ross, Sherry Kappel, Maria, and Duncan Forster for the words of support.
Iany shared this:
I have the same with Climate Change. Anger and powerlessness turned inwards.
I haven’t written about this much (at all?), but knowing that America must lead on climate change is part of the reason the direction the country is taking is so distressing to me. So much precious time has been and continues to be wasted. Thankfully some states are taking the initiative, but dealing with climate change will take international cooperation the likes of which has never been seen before, and it simply won’t come together without America taking part.
It always makes me happy when my film recommendations get some love. This week I recommended the World War II drama, Fury. While I definitely enjoyed the film, I wasn’t quite sold on Brad Pitt as the lead.
Lakitha Tolbert shared some of my misgivings.
I think Nick Nolte, in his heyday, would have been a good fit for Wardaddy. Nicholas Cage probably could do it. (I’m having trouble coming up with an actor for that role whose name isn’t Nick.) I do remember starting watching the movie, but I never finished it, so now I have to go back and pay closer attention. I think perhaps it was the presence of Brad Pitt that I found less than compelling.
I can definitely see Thin Red Line Nick Nolte doing something really interesting with the part. Fury is really well made, and sometimes that’s enough to keep me immersed in a film. I also think you have to be in a certain mood to watch it. It’s not for a light evening when you want to kick back. I don’t want to trash Brad Pitt’s performance — I thought he was fine (that’s damning faint praise…), but maybe Lakitha is right, and the movie can’t quite hold up without a stronger central performance.
I’m still baffled about people’s recent antagonism towards Shia Lebouf though, since that started just after his role in that last Indiana Jones movie. I’m calling that suspect since I’ve always found him to be a perfectly adequate actor, and he was one of the more enjoyable things about that movie.
Shia LeBoeuf was really good in Fury, I thought. But he’s a weird dude who has done a lot of weird, obnoxious things in real life, and he wore out his welcome with some moviegoers. I think the backlash against him was pretty harsh, too. He’s really talented, though. With the right role and properly-managed press run, I think he’ll be back in most people’s good graces.
That’s it for this week. I’m starting work on a another longform piece that will take some research, so my posting might remain a bit slower than usual. Thanks for reading!
