I wanted a place to collect my already published and original writing (read: needed a form of accountability) and couldn’t think of a better place to do that than this newsletter, which I’m calling “Dark Optimism”.
The name comes from academic Robert Gerard Pietrusko, who coined the term in a lecture he gave at the 2022 Viennale. In his presentation, which is more of a essay film than anything else, he argues that there is little methodological distinction between the paranoid conspiracy theories held by those on the reactionary right, those that you and I might consider illogical at best, dangerous at worst; and those systems of understanding that we do know breed inequality and oppression. Given this, Pietrusko argues that progressive movements, and the progressive people leading them, should start adopting a mindset of dark optimism, a form of conspiratorial thinking that doesn’t shy away from, and reiterates, the interconnectedness of global systems that are destroying the environment, oppressing the working class, and dismantling democracy.
I hope to transpose this thinking onto my interaction with cinema, particularly with contemporary American independent cinema. I don’t have a solid definition for what my version of dark optimism represents, but ideas about interconnectedness are at the core. I’m interested in the the vast economic and industrial systems that shape the film landscape today, those that relegate artists to the margins and complicate their means of distributing their work; and in themes of interconnectedness within the works themselves. Tyler Taormina’s films, in my eyes some of the most vital made in America in the last five years, represent this idea of Dark Optimism. He and I have spoken about the notion of collective narration, and of the possibilities created when no one perspective is prized above others. In his latest film, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, the shared narration among a sprawling family at Christmas reveals a sickly sweet, almost rotten, core of nostalgia that stifles and wrenches them apart from each other. It’s a nostalgia of retro video games, mid-century Pop music, and memories of childhood. The saving grace, of the film, the family, the world, are the young people, rebellious and naive, who sneak out late at night to think about the future they hope to, but likely won’t, share with each other, and finish the night in a collective make-out session, car windows steaming up like every cliche we’ve seen since people first kissed in cars on camera. Taormina knows it’s a cliche. The moment wouldn’t work the way it does if he didn’t also know we know it’s one too.
Taormina’s films are darkly optimistic. Miller’s Point is the apotheosis (so far) of his body of work. Part of this newsletter will be to explore other cinema that searches in the same way his does.
The other part of this newsletter will be irregular musings on things I’m watching, darkly optimistic or not. I’m working my way through a huge box-set of John Ford’s films at Fox, so that will likely result in something. Things of this nature.
I hope you will join me.