What's the Next Video Essay? You Decide!

Hello, patrons! If you're kind enough to think my work is worth a dollar a month, then you get to help choose my next project!

As with the last poll, I plan on doing all of these ideas eventually - this poll is just to decide what I'll do next. If something isn't picked this round, it will (likely) still be on the docket for the next poll once this project is done.

The Top 20 Comic Book Movies OF ALL TIME

Hell yeah, comics can be cinema! From the page to the screen, these are my TOP 20 COMIC BOOK MOVIES OF ALL TIME! There will be costumed punch-em-ups! There will be intimate slice of life dramas! There will be a webseries ambitious enough in its scope to be considered cinema! There will be one (1) MCU entry! There will be a film praised by Martin Scorsese! There will be at least one silent film! I might include Robert Altman's Popeye! WHO KNOWS!?! (spoiler - Honorable Mentions: The Dark Knight, Blue is The Warmest Color, It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!)

Network: Thoughts On Being Mad As Hell

Sidney Lumet's timeless masterpiece re-examined as a precursor to the age of the streaming Debate Bro and performative anger. What being Mad As Hell means when, in the age of the internet, everyone not only has the chance to become Howard Beale, but is encouraged to be.

Bisexual Lighting REDUX

It's been four years since I did a video about so-called Bisexual Lighting. Revisiting the concept after years and after the fad has since become standardized, what that color scheme has come to mean in cinema, and in bisexual culture. The blue-and-pink mixture doesn't always mean "bisexuality" in cinema - but it does often mean "liminality."

Trash Humpers and New New Queer Cinema

This would be another "Redux" video - going back to an old thing that I mocked and reexamining it through a new lens. And Harmony Korine's, er, mid-period work could be reexamined through the lens of, of all things: Queer Theory. Hear me out. We'll be talking John Waters, the Kuchar brothers, Jack Smith, Barbara Hammer, and TikTok.

William Shakespeare's The Avengers

A while back I was given a review copy of Ian Doescher's latest in his iambic pentameter pop culture adaptations: a compilation of all four Avengers movies: The Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame, rewritten as an Elizabethan drama. I suppose I should review it? I'll end up talking a lot about dramaturgy, story structure, and the difference between screenplay dialogue and verse drama. Fair warning: I'm on Martin Scorsese's side.

We’re All Going to The World’s Fair and Online Cinema

I don't often talk about such recent releases, but Jane Schoenbrun's debut feature has left me so speechless that I have to write about it (yes I'm aware of the inherent contradiction in that sentence). An ambiguous horror/tragedy/coming of age tale about an isolated teen that gets sucked into a creepypasta subculture, We're All Going to The World's Fair explores late 2010's cyberspace with an ingenuity worth celebrating. It depicts the online mind in a revolutionary way, showing the dreaminess of the internet, its crushing loneliness, and its constant pressure to create ever more daring, damaging content. A must-see for the terminally online, like me, and like us all.

Mary Harron’s American Psychos

Note the title is "Psychos" - plural. Sure, Patrick Bateman is a meme, an icon of "sigma males" or whatever the hell they call themselves, but Christian Bale's iconic performance wouldn't have taken off without the nuanced direction of Mary Harron. Let's look at Bateman's character through the lens of two of Harron's other, non-fictional, homicidal subjects: Valerie Solanas (I Shot Andy Warhol) and Charles Manson (Charlie Says).

Performance (1970 dir. Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg) of Masculinity

Not enough people on YouTube talk about this counterculture classic starring Mick Jagger playing a version of himself sending a London gangster on a bad trip that messes with his entire identity. Chas, you see, is a "performer" for the London crime scene. That is, he performs the dirty deeds that demonstrate the mob's power. On the run after killing the wrong man, Turner (Jagger) takes him in and through the power of rock n' roll, gender identity, and psychedelic mushrooms, makes him question the roles he "performs." A classic that I've been aching to write about for years.

Mr. Burns: A Post Electric Play and the Future of Storytelling

Matt Groening's "The Simpsons" is one of the longest running television shows in history. Jokes about how its longevity and ubiquity have irrevocably shaped popular culture are everywhere. You could probably think of about five memes derived from The Simpsons in the span of reading this sentence. In 2012, playwright Anne Washburn imagined something few writers would dare to give The Simpsons: their afterlives. Her play begins with a group of urban refugees, without electricity after a series of unexplained disasters, struggle to recall one of their favorite episodes. Over the course of the play, we see how one episode of The Simpsons transforms over time into a story that tells the most necessary truths of the day. I've never done an episode about an individual work of theatre, but I love the post-apocalyptic pop culture of "Mr. Burns: A Post Electric Play" so much I ache to write about it. I just think it's neat.

God is a Woman: mother! And Theology

Darren Aronofsky's universally reviled face stomp of a movie about Jennifer Lawrence's relationship with Javier Bardem's "Oops, All Allegory" is often summarized to "an environmentalist retelling of The Bible," with a baby being eaten like a Thanksgiving turkey thrown in for good measure. In Aronofsky's previous work he's shown a very unique take on the Abrahamic religions (see also: Pi, Noah) so how could lowercase "m" other exclamation point be viewed as a work of comparative religion? To be discussed: medieval mystery plays, the Goddess movement, and the theology of "mansplaining."

Polling will last a week, multiple options can be selected, and the winner will be announced at next week's livestream on my YouTube Channel.

Can't wait to see the results! DTF stands for Death To Fascism,

- K