👠↩️ Inneresting #156 - Not Totally Heroic
Heel-Face Turns, Anti-Heroes, and Do-Gooders doing the wrong thing.
Heroes usually have some line they won’t cross, or some ideal they’re trying to live up to. But what about the times when they fall short? Who’s the real villain? Who are we supposed to cheer for?
Daniel Dockery looks back at the strangeness of Batman Returns, and how it features a Bruce Wayne a little more unhinged and gleeful about his violent one-man crusade against costumed criminals. Jacoby Bancroft and Nicholas Twohig discuss how Tony Stark created many of the MCU’s villains and larger problems, and the way these unintended consequences are baked into the character.
Tying both superhero universes together, Julian Sanchez suggests there’s a pattern to comic book CEOs—heroic CEOs inherit their position, and villainous CEOs appear to be self-made:
The logic of this, as I apprehend it, is that the hero must wield enormous power in order to effectively perform the superheroic function, but cannot seem to seek it too eagerly, even for admirable ends—perhaps particularly when we consider that they typically make use of their great economic power by translating it into a superhuman capacity for physical violence.
In episode 314 of Scriptnotes, John and Craig dissect the film Unforgiven, looking at William Munny as a character that interrogates what Western film heroes are built on, and showing a man who succumbs to the inner demon he tried to repress. Is the ending about justice, vengeance, or just a violent man who’s the best there is at what he does (and what he does isn’t very nice)?
Susannah McCullough and Debra Minoff examine how we look at Cady in Mean Girls, and how her drive to fit in pushes her to suppress her individuality and emulate the toxic qualities of Regina George:
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This week’s Featured Friday in Weekend Read 2
Aline Brush McKenna presents a set of scripts from the series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend for your enjoyment and education! They’re available now inside the app’s Discovery tab.
Whether you unlocked the Pro version or downloaded it for free, you can check out these pilot scripts and add them to your library.
Weekend Read 2 fits screenplays perfectly on your iPhone or iPad. No more squint, pinch & zoom when trying to read on the go.
This new update to Weekend Read also makes it easy to add and share notes on a script while on-the-go, and the Read-Aloud feature lets you go eyes-free and listen to your scripts narrated in a range of high-quality voices.
See for yourself—Download Weekend Read 2 from the App Store!
The WGA Strike Continues — Get Involved!
We want to remind you of ways you can participate and support the effort to create a fair contract protecting the future of writing as a profession!
If you are interested and able, join a picket line and show your support. The Writers Guild also has a list of other ways to help.
You either write sprint as a hero, or procrastinate long enough to become the villain.
Each week we post a comment thread for writers to meet up, cheer each other on, and put some words on the page with a Write Sprint.
What’s a Write Sprint?
John wrote up an explanation, but here’s the short version: Set a timer for 60 minutes, close down all distractions, and do nothing but write until that timer goes off.
Shout out to last week’s Sprinters Brian Matusz, Mark Leiren-Young, Elyse Moretti Forbes, Heather Kennedy, John Harvey, and Aimee Link!
Previously on Inneresting…
In case you missed it, in last issue’s most clicked link Filippo Ulieveri obsesses over the frequent, blink-and-you-miss-them glances Jack Torrence makes directly into the camera throughout The Shining, highlighting why these moments are so unsettling.
Other Inneresting Things
Since economic analysis lags behind the pace of academic planning, the notion of what’s good to study vs. what’s frivolous to study puts the blame for larger economic factors about the job market on individuals instead of looking at the bigger picture. Freddie deBoer takes on the flawed notion of a “practical major.”
Amanda Montei on the relationship between time as an economic measure and how time spent working inside the home is seen as less valuable because it is done without payment. Montei digs into the gendered notions attached to how we label “productive” time.
Reading the room
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from readers like you and the entire Quote-Unquote team.
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🗣 Have ideas for future topics (or just want to say hello)? Reach out to Chris via email at inneresting@johnaugust.com or Mastodon @ccsont@mastodon.art