1. Ember Friday of the Third Week of Advent. Enjoy your fast and penance before Christmas!

2. It’s been a pretty good week for me; I maintained my intended schedule, for the most part (I tend to fall off toward late afternoon, but I’m likening that to being out-of-shape and will trust that I’ll get better as I work). I’m actually writing regularly again, which is a relief. Though my substack lies sadly neglected still. One thing at a time.

3. Prepping for next semester I’m reading The Virginian by Owen Wister. That’s gonna be a challenge for the kids, as it’s considerably longer and denser than anything we’ve read so far, not to mention older. It was, of course, one of the first classic westerns. I’m only about half-way through so far, but it’s given me a good deal to think about regarding the figure of the cowboy and the American character.

4. It seems to me that what is called being ‘broad minded’ usually amounts to strategically decide on certain questions or to follow out certain lines of logic. What is called being ‘narrow minded’ amounts to deciding those questions and following those forbidden lines.

To put it another way, most so-called broad minded people are not actually open to more ideas than so-called narrow minded ones; they’re simply open to different ideas.

5. Incidentally, it struck me recently that if you’re teaching a literature class, you should be clear up front what you’re trying to do: are you trying to give a historical survey of how literature has developed or illustrated the surrounding culture? Or are you trying to instill an appreciation for literature in the students? Because these are not the same thing.

It seems to me that, in the latter case, the most sensible approach is to start with the most recent works first and work your way backwards, so that students can get used to dealing with advanced prose without also having to twist their brains into an alien mindset. So an American Literature course would start with, say, Ray Bradbury or Louis L’Amour, or maybe even Dean Koontz or Stephen King, then work backwards through Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.P. Lovecraft, Zora Neal Hurston, Longfellow, Poe, Hawthorne, and so on.

6. Aquaman 2 looks to be flopping like a dying fish, from what I hear. Again, not surprising, though word of mouth is “mostly harmless dumb fun” rather than “the people who made this hated both the material and you.” I will still raise a bit of a defense of the first one, not because it’s a good movie (it isn’t) but because it serves as a smarter counterpart to Black Panther. The two films have very similar plots and premises (ultra-advanced hidden kingdom, royal heir raised on the outside returns, outsider challenges the local king to a ritual battle, an evil monarch plots to break the kingdom’s isolation to conquer the world).

Except that in Aquaman the locals don’t immediately accept the outsider as a potential king. Not only that, but even their recognized king can’t simply order them to drop centuries of tradition to feed his own ambition but has to spend most of the film gathering support for his plan of conquest. And the scrappy outsider working in unfamiliar conditions loses the ritual battle against the experienced warrior in his own element. Aquaman‘s story is also a lot more streamline and well-structured, the central crisis is not due to the hero’s own incompetence, and the villains’ personalities are actually consistent. I also appreciate that neither villain in Aquaman gets offed, allowing both to return for the sequel (one of them apparently as an ally, which was about the only thing I thought looked interesting about it). There really was no need to kill a la kill Killmonger, and they could easily have saved him for a sequel (I actually did a re-write summary way back around the time the film came out where I tried correct my issues with it, among them keeping the villain alive). Heck, Black Manta was a fairly similar, though more consistent character to Killmonger, and he was the best part of Aquaman!

Aquaman‘s still a really dumb film, don’t get me wrong, and it’s got a ton of problems. It’s precisely because it is so dumb that I find it hilarious that it does so much of Best Picture Nominee Black Panther‘s story better. And I think, looking back, that it’s probably my favorite film of the DCEU. Though that bar is pretty much lying on the floor, so it isn’t saying much.

7. And we’ll end with a bit of Bollywood