Texture

The Future Is Like Pie #44

Author

Lisa Maria Marquis
July 03, 2024

For the past two years, I’ve been watching bad movies. Really bad movies. The Room. Roger Moore’s Bond. David Carradine’s entire oeuvre. Old kaiju flicks. Grindhouse and made-for-TV movies and poorly dubbed Italian dystopias. B-movies and Z-movies. And it’s funny to me, not just because I’m enjoying objectively terrible films, but because I’ve never been much of a movie person at all, before this.

There are many reasons as to why bad-movie-viewing (celebrating, really) has become my new hobby, and I don’t have the space to unpack all of them here. But there is one factor I want to discuss, which is: texture.

Texture, as I think of it*, is a kind of experiential friction that’s absent from prestige television—from all modern** media, really, especially those productions driven by big budgets and streaming algorithms. The current aesthetic for movies, television, websites, and even physical spaces is, above all else, smooth. Clean. Shiny. Automated and seamless. Focus-grouped to within an inch of its life. Every experience seems to be striving for the same bright neutrality—palatable, inoffensive, sanitized.

It’s not that I dislike modern aesthetics! There’s so much good stuff to watch, truly.*** But the dominant vibe is still trying to replicate the Apple store, as though this is the only way to make number go up. Anything different, it seems, could make number go down, so there’s no room for mistakes.

I am so hungry for mistakes. I want to watch actors flub their lines. I want stilted dialogue and choppy editing and sour audio. I want a premise that no producer thought about for longer than their shower. I want boom mics that keep falling into the frame, and cameras that keep rolling long after someone should have yelled “cut.”

A bad movie is bad. It’s not a good viewing experience; it’s not good cinema. It’s cringe and it’s messy and it’s incoherent—but at least it’s something. At least it’s trying and failing. At least it’s a feeling, a take, a way to be in the world, and not just another polished calculation.

There’s more to say here—not just about film theory (probably), but also about capitalism, about cynicism, about what all that polish is covering up, about bread and circuses. But I’m running out of space, so in the spirit of the bad movies I love so, I’ll just end abruptly. Roll credits.

The “Are you tired of being nice” meme starring Nintendo’s Princess Daisy and Princess Peach, which says, “Are you tired of prestige television? Don’t you just want to go ape shitt?”

*There are probably better terms for what I mean, found in decades of film criticism that I’ve never read. Apologies for awkwardly describing my first beer critical concepts that have probably been exhaustively explored by smarter folks.

**I want to be clear that “texture” is not solely a feature of bad movies; I think what I’m describing is a feature of most media of the twentieth century, before algorithms ate our lives. Bad movies are just how I happened to get here.

***Like The Brothers Sun (starring our queen Michelle Yeoh) on Netflix, one of the best things I’ve watched in ages.

“I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again”

You’ve probably already seen this perfect essay, but I’m legally mandated to include it here because it’s both the most sensible and the most tonally appropriate piece of writing on AI, ever:

How about you remain competitive by fixing your shit? I've met a lead data scientist with access to hundreds of thousands of sensitive customer records who is allowed to keep their password in a text file on their desktop, and you're worried that customers are best served by using AI to improve security through some mechanism that you haven't even come up with yet? You sound like an asshole and I'm going to kick you in the jaw until, to the relief of everyone, a doctor will have to wire it shut, giving us ten seconds of blessed silence where we can solve actual problems.

Lightning round

Throwback read

“The Algorithmic Colonization of Africa” by Abeba Birhane in Real Life: This essay, prompted by observations from the CyFyAfrica 2019 technology conference, reflects on the relationship between African and western tech industries—and the lessons that we all (still) need to learn about ethics and humanity:

But in the race to build the latest hiring app or state-of-the-art mobile banking system, startups and companies lose sight of the people behind each data point. “Data” is treated as something that is up for grabs, something that uncontestedly belongs to tech companies and governments, completely erasing individuals. This makes it easy to “manipulate behavior” or “nudge” people, often toward profitable outcomes for the companies and not the individuals. […] The rights of the individual, the long-term social impacts of these systems, and their consequences, intended or unintended, on the most vulnerable are pushed aside—if they ever enter the discussion at all.

July’s causes

Let’s send money to the Sudanese American Physicians Association, to get emergency aid, healthcare, water, and food to genocide-ravaged Sudan, and to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, to get medical and humanitarian aid to Palestinian children.

Buy my (cheaper!) book

You may have heard that my (now former) publisher is shuttering (and without paying their authors months of overdue royalties! Such a good look). The silver lining? I’m now the sole owner of Everyday Information Architecture, and proceeds (after the printer/distributor takes their cut) will support me directly. To celebrate this new freedom/horrifying responsibility, I’m making the print version available to newsletter subscribers for just $22—get a copy now!