I always thought that the violence inflicted on animals in Miranda July movies was a self-aware indictment of the delusional, narcissistic dingbats who populate her LA granola hell dioramas, but I recognize how it might just be cheap emotional manipulation. Anyway, she should direct a gender-swap reboot of American Beauty. 🤩
I think that we have a lot of rites and rituals around other dramatic changes in life and bodies— coming of age rituals like quinceaneras and bar mitzvahs and sweet 16s. The weddings and baby showers. Then there are retirement parties, social security distributions, senior citizen status, etc. What do we do for the hormonal shifts and status shifts that occur in midlife? Nothing. I’m surprised that in our hyper capitalist society there isn’t some kind of celebration after 47.2 when people reach peak unhappiness in developed countries. I don’t want to defend July at all as this book sounds super unappealing along with the adjacent non fiction genre but I think this lack of societal acknowledgment of this age explains this series of books trying to unpack this time.
oh sure, I get what you are saying, but also our culture has turned every ritual into a spectacle of consumption, so I don't really trust that what we come up with would be much different from Miranda July's vision of herself as cult leader or like Emily Ratajkowski's "buy a diamond ring for your divorce" business. ( https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/28/style/divorce-ring-wedding-emrata.html ) we are a nation with zero interiority and also a culture that defies and prevents any capacity for introspection, so I'm sure whatever we come up with will be bad. like how we ruined pregnancy with gender reveal parties that kill guests and increased maternal death rates for the poor and luxury birthing suites for everyone else.
“I do think the tide of opinion is turning on this.”
It is, but not among the cultural arbiters that exclusively decide what gets made. If this were any other era in mass media, things would be changing by now.
It's a little striking how completely this midlife-sexual-awakening genre (and the closely-related state-of-sex-and-dating niche) has gone from mostly-male to mostly (maybe entirely?) female. I've been reading a few of these books (Nona Aronowitz's _Bad Sex_, Emily Witt's _Future Sex_, and most recently Tamara Tenenbaum's _The End of Love_ which I think is actually very good) and there is basically no concept of male interiority in any of them. Which, fair enough, these writers are all women. But are men not writing about these subjects anymore? Maybe people feels like everything has already been said about the male midlife crisis. But there are plenty of other over-examined phenomena that nobody seems to have any problem re-examining anyway.
Ugh. So true. The last thing we need is one more person telling us how to be. Five years ago, I was working with a literary agent who was excited to sell my memoir. The rejections from the big publishers were around my unwillingness to embrace a dictatorial approach. As if my experience could be a torch for other women with cancer, twins, and a cheating husband. Ridiculous.
I always thought that the violence inflicted on animals in Miranda July movies was a self-aware indictment of the delusional, narcissistic dingbats who populate her LA granola hell dioramas, but I recognize how it might just be cheap emotional manipulation. Anyway, she should direct a gender-swap reboot of American Beauty. 🤩
I think that we have a lot of rites and rituals around other dramatic changes in life and bodies— coming of age rituals like quinceaneras and bar mitzvahs and sweet 16s. The weddings and baby showers. Then there are retirement parties, social security distributions, senior citizen status, etc. What do we do for the hormonal shifts and status shifts that occur in midlife? Nothing. I’m surprised that in our hyper capitalist society there isn’t some kind of celebration after 47.2 when people reach peak unhappiness in developed countries. I don’t want to defend July at all as this book sounds super unappealing along with the adjacent non fiction genre but I think this lack of societal acknowledgment of this age explains this series of books trying to unpack this time.
oh sure, I get what you are saying, but also our culture has turned every ritual into a spectacle of consumption, so I don't really trust that what we come up with would be much different from Miranda July's vision of herself as cult leader or like Emily Ratajkowski's "buy a diamond ring for your divorce" business. ( https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/28/style/divorce-ring-wedding-emrata.html ) we are a nation with zero interiority and also a culture that defies and prevents any capacity for introspection, so I'm sure whatever we come up with will be bad. like how we ruined pregnancy with gender reveal parties that kill guests and increased maternal death rates for the poor and luxury birthing suites for everyone else.
“I do think the tide of opinion is turning on this.”
It is, but not among the cultural arbiters that exclusively decide what gets made. If this were any other era in mass media, things would be changing by now.
It's a little striking how completely this midlife-sexual-awakening genre (and the closely-related state-of-sex-and-dating niche) has gone from mostly-male to mostly (maybe entirely?) female. I've been reading a few of these books (Nona Aronowitz's _Bad Sex_, Emily Witt's _Future Sex_, and most recently Tamara Tenenbaum's _The End of Love_ which I think is actually very good) and there is basically no concept of male interiority in any of them. Which, fair enough, these writers are all women. But are men not writing about these subjects anymore? Maybe people feels like everything has already been said about the male midlife crisis. But there are plenty of other over-examined phenomena that nobody seems to have any problem re-examining anyway.
Ugh. So true. The last thing we need is one more person telling us how to be. Five years ago, I was working with a literary agent who was excited to sell my memoir. The rejections from the big publishers were around my unwillingness to embrace a dictatorial approach. As if my experience could be a torch for other women with cancer, twins, and a cheating husband. Ridiculous.
I tried polyamory and the biggest kink is scheduling. Definitely anecdotal, but I was shocked how boring and square the whole thing was.