Issue #293: What if Kaiji was your next prestige TV obsession?
Issue #293: What if Kaiji was your next prestige TV obsession?
I have given myself a pretty demanding writing schedule to finish a certain writing project. It’s been going well so far. That’s about all I got by way of introduction. My mom broke her shoulder today, so prayers up for her.
Slices of the Silver Screen
Over the past few weeks, I’ve seen some very buzzed about movies. Are Talk to Me (2023), Bottoms (2023), and Theater Camp (2023) as good as the critical consensus? The answer is no, maybe, and yes.
Talk to Me didn’t speak to me
I was a little late to Talk to Me, but I can’t help feeling like the movie was very pretty and not much else. I think these A24 “elevated horror” flicks are really barking up the wrong tree. The Philippous film, apparently, has something to do with trauma and loss. I can’t really tell you what it is — I don’t think there’s textual evidence in the film to support any more precise reading. The “emotional core” of the movie is vague and ill-formed.
Perhaps, in a sentence, one could say that Talk to Me shows how tragedy can lead to poor decision making. Mia (Sophie Wilde) becomes seemingly addicted to the party trick of temporary possession through an embalmed hand. If the paranormal engagement as drug wasn’t an obvious metaphor, it might be because it felt so purposeless. Is Talk to Me an anti-drug film?
When I critique movies for being all style and no substance, I tend to come around to them later. So maybe rewatches, if they happen, will be kind to Talk to Me. Even still, I end up taking the rave reviews of movies like this a little personally. Is this movie even close to as good to The Andy Baker Tape (2021), Unseen (2023), Last Shift (2014), or even Kolobos (1999)? And those are just the horror movies I watched last month. Sure, Talk to Me looks a hell of a lot better than all those movies. And some of the visuals are downright inspired. “Elevated horror” is never “elevated” just because of the brilliance of a few frames. It has something to say. Or, does it? If something was said, perhaps I needed to assent to the film’s speaking.
Not Another Not Another Teen Movie
Bottoms (2023) is more deserving of the praise heaped upon it, but I’m more interested in where this movie fits in a broader cinematic landscape. I wouldn’t be the first to note similarities to Not Another Teen Movie (2001). The similarities might be to a fault. A hysterical script and inventive bits can’t save Bottoms from telling a tale as old as time: to succeed in high school, simply gain the approval of those who revile you by any means necessary. It’s a smart movie. The narrative arc it expropriates from the collective history of teen movies is played for a laughs and it is hardly earnest in promoting the message it shares with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023).
Instead, Bottoms might be the second in a new golden era of over the top film satire. It was only a few months ago I was having a similar thought about The Blackening (2023), a Tim Story film that picks up right where Scary Movie 2 (2001) left off. Not for nothing, Scary Movie (2000), directed by the legendary Keenen Ivory Wayans, was the highest-grossing movie directed by a Black American at the time. Wayans also directed Scary Movie 2, but none of the subsequent sequels, so he’s responsible for the only good ones. And it was Tim Story, helming the Fantastic Four (2005), who would take Scary Movie’s highest-grossing title five years later.
All of this is to say that the antecedents of Bottoms and The Blackening respectively are fascinating when read as part of the cultural history of queer and Black film. I’m not sure the relationship between Not Another Teen Movie and Bottoms is as extra-textually rich as Scary Movie 2 and The Blackening, but the acclaimed satire of today can enrich our understanding of even the most critically reviled satirical works of the past.
I wrote this like Rebecca-Diane wrote the finale to Joan, Still
Theater Camp is my favorite of movies I’ve seen over the past couple of weeks. Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman’s film is obviously indebted to Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries like Waiting for Guffman (1996) and Best in Show (2000). Like Bottoms and The Blackening, Theater Camp is a very savvy retread of its many influences. It is also extremely funny. Ayo Edebiri, who plays the small supporting role of Janet, provides more laughs per second than her leading role in Bottoms.
This one will definitely be topping some end of the year lists.
Kaiji Weekly
In Kaiji’s (1996) second volume, the ideas of the manga move further and further away from gambling as an act leading toward self-destruction. There are certain conventions author Nobuyuki Fukumoto follows. Despite Kaiji being a disinterested social misfit, Fukumoto wants to turn him into a hero.
One of the elements of the character that emerges as the volume continues is his control of a situation. The second volume begins resolving a cliffhanger from the first, with Kaiji facing down Kitami, the leader of the group that outsmarted his speculation ploy. Kaiji wins, of course, through superior intelligence. He repeatedly outsmarts opponents and ignores what he deems irrelevant about the ongoing game.
After Kitami is defeated, Kaiji once again buys cards — this time paper — in order to guarantee victories over either a surplus of scissors or the remaining rocks. He’s unconcerned with a group that cheats to rack up wins, using eliminated contestants as lookouts to spy on opponents’ cards.
It’s not that Kaiji doesn’t care about the plight of other debtors. He is empathetic, more so than nearly every other character presented thus far. But this is a testament to the “steam” that Kaiji has transformed into, the relative diamond he’s become under pressure. He repeatedly returns to that same realization from the first volume, that he no longer wants to live his life the same way.
His empathy, in fact, comes from this realization and his ability to achieve it. Because of the conventions of shounen manga that Fukumoto is beholden to, Kaiji struggles to escape the confines of its medium. It can, at times, appear as ideological as any other manga. Kaiji has to be self-reliant. He should have watched his spending. Now, through his determination and quick thinking, he’ll change his fate through his own effort. His principles will see him through.
As familiar as this ideological framework may seem, there’s something intriguing about this narrative’s relationship to the ideas of productivity and capital. We have already well worn the notion of productivity in Kaiji last week. Kaiji, in essence, makes something from nothing improving his life through the process of gambling — an act of expenditure — and, indeed, increasing the debt he owes to the mysterious loan sharks.
His attitude, and the manga’s overall relation to the notion of profit, is at least moderately subversive. He ultimately gives up all of his winnings trusting that his teammates, Ando and Furuhata, will spend theirs to redeem him from the indentured servitude to which he will otherwise be consigned. Beforehand, he is branded.
This brand, meant to be a mark of his abject failure, is resignified because he ultimately escapes. Instead of designating him property of the loan sharks (I’m going to bracket the potency of the brand symbol in the U.S. context, for now), it represents his exceptionality within the system of the ship.
Though Ando and Furuhata do ultimately betray Kaiji, he is once again able to escape by the power of his wits.
When he’s finally returned from beyond the looking glass, he doesn’t accumulate profit like Ando and Furuhata, but throws it away with the goal of saving yet another person.
Heroic, empathetic principles aren’t uncommon for a manga protagonist. But Kaiji aligns the aversion to profit that comes from a principled, self-reliant existence with the act of gambling itself. A base and contemptible anti-social act is equated with the common positive traits of the manga hero. Even as gambling drives Kaiji to ruin, heroism has the same stakes. For Kaiji to be heroic, he must give up the idea of productivity, profit-making, and self-enrichment. He is a gambler through and through.
Weekly Reading List
https://www.animenostalgiabomb.com/yoshiyuki-tomino-interview-sailor-moon-fushigi-yugi-articles-animerica-february-2000/ — I’m strongly opposed to creative visionaries saying too much about their work. But, for the most part, that applies to the modern era of social media direct interaction — though David Lynch made his share of stupid comments about Mulholland Drive (2001) doing press for its home video release. If Yoshiyuki Tomino were only going to give one interview in his entire life, it should have been this one.
There are so many gems here. He says “it’s safe to say that… the kind of force … movies should have behind them” is that of a postal worker flipping out and going on a shooting spree. He has some harsh words for Neon Genesis Evangelion (1997) and even harsher ones for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968): “I just think it’s a bad movie.”
Be advised, the link above is actually for scans of the whole magazine in which the interview appeared. You’ll have to do some scrolling. But it’s worth it.
Tomino, I hate anime too.
Until next time.