#video essays
Video essays that make me go “oh, so you’re like smartsmart”
- Elon Musk and Grimes: A Retrospective
- Bo Burnham vs. Jeff Bezos
- The Systemic Abuse of Celebrities
- Lana Del Rey: the pitfalls of having a persona
- we need to talk about Call Me By Your Name
- MYTH OF THE AUTEUR: Stanley Kubrick vs David Lynch
- In Search Of A Flat Earth
- Envy
- The Commodification of Black Athletes
- The Lies Of The Lighthouse
- The Green Knight: The Uncanny Horror of Masculinity
- Max Payne, Kane & Lynch, and the Meaning of Ugly Games
- Time Loop Nihilism
- How Bisexuality Changed Video Games
- The Golden Age of Horror Comics - Part 1(Part 2)
- Weighing the Value of Director’s Cuts | Scanline
- The True Horror Of Midsommar
video essays i’ve loved a lot recently!
- the history of dieting is crazier than you think - a history of diet culture, its phases, faces, and diet culture media by mina le
- When Hollywood Speaks Chinese, I Cringe - short essay about the cringey racist way Chinese language is portrayed in Hollywood
- Good LGBT Representation is Boring (and why that’s a problem) - essay that dives into the double edge sword of “unproblematic” lgbt rep
- The Decline of History Channel - a history of the history channel and how it lost almost all credibility.
- The Black Right Wing - fascinating essay on Black Americans who support Donald Trump, right wing politics and why that is.
- Can We Kill the Final Girl Trope Already? - one of my favourite essays ever about the first girl who dies in horror films.
- Exploring The “Gender Critical” Radicalization Pipeline - tw: major transphobia, an essay about how TERF ideology online radicalises people to the right
- A Buffet of Black Food History - do not watch this on an empty stomach! essay about the history of Black American food, culture and the success of Black cooks/chefs
- No, Superhero Movies are NOT Like Westerns - excellent breakdown of all the reasons why the current proliferation of superhero films is not comparable culturally, economically or artistically to Westerns.
- Maybe you should stay in the closet?…Coming Out re-examined - personal vlog/video essay about the history of “coming out” as lgbt and the culture around doing so has changed
- The Matrix Resurrections Is Absolutely Beautiful - an analysis/review of the beautifully executed trans-ness of latest matrix films
- make more characters bi, you cowards: why (not) romance? - analysis on the current state of bisexual representation in pop culture
- Heterofatalism: WHY straight women aren’t okay. - absolutely wild essay on the complex cultural attitudes that encourages straight women to hate themselves for loving men
- The Pandemic Onscreen - How Film & TV Do Covid - analysis of the different ways fictional media is acknowledging the pandemic
not this white man professor from nyu talking about the whitewashing of greek and roman mythology
Assorted recommendations!
I haven’t thoroughly reviewed all of these myself yet but they were recommended by friends and I’m putting them here for both my future reference and just to share.
Video Essayists!
DnD Talk!
A great article!
Who Gave You the Right to Tell That Story?
This one is not directly on the topic of writing, but if you’re working with a character with psychosis this will be very informative!
How TV Tropes Changed The Word “Trope”
Got five minutes for a fun little brain twister?
This is the story of how we’ve all been misusing the word “trope” thanks to TV Tropes, and how that’s completely fine.
(With digressions into Alanis Morissette and “literally.”)
Samus Aran Origins: Metroid’s Influences Beyond Alien | Hardboiled History
My new video is about the origins of one of my favorite video game characters. Everyone knows Metroid was inspired by the movie Alien, but what about its other influences?
Other questions explored include: Who did “Samus Is A Girl” before Samus? Why does Adam call Samus “Lady” in Metroid Dread? Were Metroid and Zelda inspired by Rareware games? Why does Samus fight a Mother Brain? Where does Samus’ first name come from? What does “Metroid” mean? What is a “bailey”? Who was the first character with an arm canon? And why can’t Metroid crawl?
After recommending “Sherlock is garbage and here’s why” by Hbomberguy to my sister, my compulsive ADHD brain forced me to watch the next video on the YT search list: “ADHD vs Sherlock is garbage and here’s why” by Michael Coolwood (who’s been tormented by the first video more than Mariah Carey haunts me) in it’s entirety for balance and for things I’d missed.
I appreciate pedantry. No seriously. BBC Sherlock still bounces around my brain and annoys me at random years later so I viscerally *get* both videos… it’s also why I feel the need to be pedantic about the response video.
Rebuttal to the rebuttal under the cut for long post, actually please skip this brain dump, this is nitpicking at a nitpicky video and a waste of your precious time.
Missing the overarching point for the details:
- H is clearly referring to Sherlock adaptations and how they entertained him in ways that BBC Sherlock does not. This is noticable in the usage of clips of adaptations and similar material not narrated passages as is common in other videos of his.
- The point of talking about Moffat is his disjointed work on other classics notably the most special man trope, how he warped BBC Sherlock to fit that when Sherlocks’s character evolves depending on the novels and often evolves in adaptations (House suffers the same lack of growth). Gattis is also to blame but he’s given so few interviews where he veers off nice talking points and produced far less material so it’s harder to pinpoint his flaws. Moffat has a way of drawing attention to his writing failures *and* providing us with quotes that link mindset A to writing B which is a goldmine: if you felt like a show was treating you like a fool, there’s usually a quote where Moffat talks about the viewers or the source material with contempt to back it up. He really needs PR training.
- My brain also works like the Liberty scene so I can’t laugh at it like some do BUT the point was that that particular scene is the epitomy of visual and audio noise present throught the show for flair regardless of emotional impact. The finger scratch sound is emotionally resonant, the noises in the rest of the scene are generally not. In fact, most of the excess flair in the show wasn’t fully visible or audible unless you rewind and squint at your screen so just registered as clutter. My brain is cluttered like that, it’s a painful experience and I don’t think it makes for good, focused, storytelling about pattern recognition.
- BBC Sherlock fits neither in neither ‘character’ nor ‘whodunnit’ mystery types which is precisely the problem. Death in paradise can draw out character development at a snail’s pace because of the whodunnit element, Sherlock choosing to not be a whodunnit means we need character development which doesnt happen.
- Turning a serialized format into a tv show or film is a problem we’ve been having since people started turning magazine stories or comics into tv and films. Overarching plot can be used to tie in the stories or abused to pretend proper answers will arrive later. I don’t believe it’s bad in itself (see DS9) but it’s something the public is tired of being teased with (see the fallout for Lost, BSG or Avengers Endgame). Within the specific BBC release schedule it’s particularly painful to not end stories. But Sherlock doesn’t work in binge format either. H’s phrasing is too vague, I entirely agree, but refers to a trend in general visual media and in Moffat produced work reaching a crescendo in the end of Jekyll and the last seasons of Sherlock.
- The matrix references were timely but wrong, yes. But that’s missing the point being made: The bullet time shot was jarring as it didn’t represent a particularly moving moment for John and his wife nor did it have details we were supposed to latch on to. It was a wasted shot if it was trying to convey joy so people then expected it to be a set up for details that would be important later. By putting this right next to the boomarang shot, the point is that the show tried to be stylish without providing substance for that style to build upon then not using that stylism when it would have been tonally appropriate.
Misunderstanding the original format, missing tone idicators and contrasting with serious video essays:
- Sherlock is garbage aka tiddlywinks is not a video essay like the “a measured response” which are carefully sourced and scripted. “x is garbage/good actually/genius” are emotional articles on why a piece of media made him feel things, an exorcism of feelings that are not meant to be agreed with. They are heartfelt screeds. The oversimplified statement “x is garbage, x is genius” is hyperbole - playing on classic youtube clickbait titles to tell you that this is subjective. For example, in “Pathological is genius” he makes a point of telling you that playing this ‘genius’ game will be excruciating and probably should not played.
- Tiddlywinks resonated with me and so many others not as a measured takedown of the flaws of the show (though tumblr probably has episode by episode lists) but as a collective primal groan: BBC’s Sherlock was a saturation point of Moffat’s writing (and mystery box clichés also used by american shows) that would have been tolerable in small amounts but netted him multiple culturally important shows. It was a peak piece of media that represents a waste of emotional investment and BBC money along with high value IP. It also suffered from being in a cultural resurgence of Sherlock adaptations that do justice to the essence of the source material if not perfectly faithful adaptations.
video “essays” (not all of them are tbh) list that i have saved in my drafts (it’s mostly cinema, horror and art)
how mitski is carving her own indie pop path
taika waititi: mastering happy sad cinema
howl’s moving castle - an underrated masterpiece
princess mononoke revealed: the real mythology and history explained
the philosophy of kreia: a critical examination of star wars
rogue one vs. the force awakens: the fault in our star wars
why aquaman sucks (the commodification of polynesian bodies)
why the music in the disney live action remakes is worse than you thought
chinese cultural and philosophical inspirations in kung fu panda
why megamind is a subversive masterpiece
whiplash vs. black swan - the anatomy of the obsessed artist
the true color of moonlight (2016)
how tony leung acts with his eyes
trainspotting – why we care after 20 years?
the sinister and surreal work of gregg araki
analyzing the outfits in mean girls
tiktok is kinda bad for fashion
why the costumes in little women did not deserve an oscar
how media scares us: the work of junji ito
the nun: everything wrong with modern horror
“us” and the american dream: what it means
american psycho: a message on consumerism
annihilation: surrendering to creation
a brief history of the dead in art
control, anatomy, and the legacy of the haunted house
who’s afraid of modern art: vandalism, video games and fascism
who we really are… when everything goes wrong
girlhood disrupted: the pseudo maturity of girls in film
beauty in the eyes of the… colonizer?
linguistic discrimination and the pitfall of intelligence
and here are some channels that have multiple great videos that you should check out (some of their videos are listed up there!)
cheyenne lin,khadija mbowe,lessons from the screenplay,mina le,moderngurlz,nerdwriter1,shanspeare,sideways,super eyepatch wolf,xiran jay zhao,yhara zayd
Video essays that make me go “oh, so you’re like smartsmart”
- Elon Musk and Grimes: A Retrospective
- Bo Burnham vs. Jeff Bezos
- The Systemic Abuse of Celebrities
- Lana Del Rey: the pitfalls of having a persona
- we need to talk about Call Me By Your Name
- MYTH OF THE AUTEUR: Stanley Kubrick vs David Lynch
- In Search Of A Flat Earth
- Envy
- The Commodification of Black Athletes
- The Lies Of The Lighthouse
- The Green Knight: The Uncanny Horror of Masculinity
- Max Payne, Kane & Lynch, and the Meaning of Ugly Games
- Time Loop Nihilism
- How Bisexuality Changed Video Games
- The Golden Age of Horror Comics - Part 1(Part 2)
- Weighing the Value of Director’s Cuts | Scanline
- The True Horror Of Midsommar
