We grow up terribly fast (on television)

And now I’m nostalgic for the ’00s, which — as anyone who has lived through a decade will tell you — is not something I believed would be remotely possible, when the actual decade in question was being lived through.

The Aughts seemed like such a nothing while they were happening, in a way that is different from now. (Say what you will about whether we’ll look back on the Twenties with anything but horror, but, they sure as shit ain’t a “nothing.”) Like the decade in which we currently sit, the Aughts began, at least in the west, with a startling moment of trans-national trauma; and tracking how that trauma manifested in art, in political action, in cultural mores, was probably the most dynamic and foregrounded thing about that decade while it was happening.

From our perspective up here in Canada^*, we watched our lunkheaded big brother down south become a 350-million-person-strong incarnation of the yet-to-be-invented “Men would rather” meme, as they contorted every aspect of their national identity into an assertion that no, they were not hurt or scared, just angry and ready to kick some ass!!!! after 9/11. One of my prevailing image-memories of the decade came in 2007, when I was down south with Price on one of our semi-regular American road trips. Philly, I think. We’d just seen Michael Bay’s first Transformers movie, and we were driving back to our motel as the sun went down, and a big fuckin’ Apache helicopter roared over the highway just above and ahead of us, like that was just a normal fucking thing that happens in a normal fucking place, across a horizon littered with flags larger than most restaurants, and cars with bumper stickers threatening beheadings upon anyone with skin a shade darker than “talc,” and the roided-up “OOH-RAH!!” of it all will stay with me for the rest of my natural life.

^{*Obligatory reminder: Canada is just America five years behind; we didn’t even get hit in 9/11, but we took the opportunity to act like it anyway. Complicit, and far from exempt, as always.}

On my nominal beat, movies and popular culture, the new world was being born, not even struggling much in doing so. I keep reflecting back on how normal I thought everything that was going on was, how unremarkable, when it was all anything but. Any decade in which LOST and The Wire are happening simultaneously — to say nothing of the Platonic ideal best-television-show-of-all-time, Deadwood — is a milestone of profound, exponential change for an entire art form. (I often chuckle at how befuddled I was by LOST as it was airing; less so in mystery-diving, in which I certainly engaged, than in the larger, “what the hell even is this show?” sense of epochal change, the only prior with which I had any personal experience was likely The X-Files, a decade before.)

And on the big screen, we had Hollywood’s final thesis on the premise of the movie franchise — the tentpoliest, the most lavish, the most creatively idiosyncratic it would ever get — before the next premise, the cinematic universe (which I initially referred to as “mega-franchises”) took over. The decade was birthed on the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy and the Lord of the Rings trilogy; but I think more often of the Pirates of the Caribbean films by Gore Verbinski, of which there were three, and the Dark Knight trilogy by Christopher Nolan, even though its final installment came in the Teens, as the real valedictory on the era when successful movies became strings of movies with roman numerals in the title, even if that particular naming convention had fallen out of fashion years before.

Splitting the difference between the big and small screens — because here’s a part of the entertainment industry that sure wouldn’t know which screen to aim for, nowadays — was the work of George Clooney, yes that George Clooney, who finally solved the problem of his moviestar application in 1998 with Out of Sight, and went on to become as emblematic a (male) representative of America’s idea of the “middle picture” in the Aughts as anyone else alive. My guy made O Brother, Solaris, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Good Night and Good Luck, Syriana, Michael Clayton, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Men Who Stare At Goats, and a trilogy of Ocean’s movies in the years with two zeroes in them, and in so doing, carved out a pretty lasting definition of the boundary line between artistic and political inquiry, and sunglasses-wearing populism, at which Hollywood had excelled for (generously) four decades.

And look, unrelated to the ooh-rah, bent-psyche nationalism mentioned above, maybe the Aughts were also the last decade that the American entertainment industry, for all its sins and excesses, felt like it made generally American entertainment; and maybe that’s why I look fondly upon it, having been raised on such, for all my sins and excesses. The Teens through now across all forms of the commercial moving image have been the final swoop of globalization and corporatization — the shitshow in post-Netflix, pre-Warnermount Hollywood gives the vibe — and it feels akin to the neighbourhood in which I grew up having been bulldozed and turned into condos.

There’s something to be said for Generation X’s sense of nostalgia, at least in modern popular culture, having been coded so specifically to the 1980s, another decade of writ-large American exceptionalism, of Reaganomics (the poison pill which birthed nearly every structural fault in their country, forty years later), of space shuttles exploding and kids on bikes. It’s a flavour I like; but it’s IP now, and having it packaged and sold back to me feels nauseating, even if it works (nearly) every time.

The Aughts had IP too, but no one really called it that yet. It feels, now, like the last decade before the algorithm took over. The last time the American entertainment industry trusted — or was at least aware of — the idea that sometimes things broke through because they were new and weird and distinct, rather than just Leo-pointing-meme recognizable. It still happens. It still happens all the time! But it sure feels more like a miracle when it happens now, and less like unremarkable.

My old name is like a weed

Lookit, I don’t have a deadname. I do have a new styling of my preferred name (it’s easy: it’s “Matthew,” or you can call me “L” if you prefer) and a degree of dissonance between the person I’m trying to be lately, and the oft-shouted mononym (“MATTBROWN!”) that followed me around since… uh, jeez… the Aughts? That’s a weird coinkydink.

It’s been so gratifying stepping back into an office where I used to work and finding a lot of support for this change from people who have no reason to give it, other than it’s the respectful thing to do. One quickly forgets, out in the “real world,” how different it feels to be and move in a place where there’s so much less resistance and misunderstanding.

But boy, that gracious acceptance is sure dwarfed by the sheer quantity of ways in which the fucking internet wants to regurgitate “MATTBROWN!” back at me pretty much everywhere! Holy cow. Every time I think I’ve whacked that mole in every possible online place it could ever appear, it turns up in twelve more.

I’m fighting the tide, I know. But fuck that tide!!

Earthquake (1998?)

For no reason whatsoever, I was stocking up my cloud copies of various films and videos I’ve either made or been involved with over the years. There are over a hundred of them, which startled me. And of those hundred, only two seem to be gone gone, both due to decisions for which I’m directly responsible.

Here’s one that’s only half-gone, an absolutely adorable classroom exercise from my third (?) year at film school, which has no audio, for reasons too elaborate to get into here. But I am so baby in it.

Some more things with which to occupy your time

• IT’S FINALLY HAPPENING: Tansy Gardam is doing The Rise of Skywalker. Five episodes!!! I am more excited for this, by powers of ten, than I am for The Mandalorian & Grogu. (Going Rogue)
• Hey, speaking of The Mandalorian & Grogu: this Onion headline has been living rent-free in my head for weeks. Muppet Baby Star Wars, I tells ya! (The Onion)
• Hey, speaking of the Onion: Brian Phillips on why the InfoWars/Onion takeover is the most inspiring media story of the year. We deserve good news too! (The Ringer)

Oh, and speaking of speaking of: I betcha next week’s newsletter is going to be paid-subscribers-only. Feel free to upgrade (just $6 a year!) if you don’t want to be left out.