Although it was my job for a time, making film and TV recommendations for people is a troubling task. The practice is so often dependent on those who ask the question: Anything good coming up? ‘Good’ is an apparently objective word, but everyone knows it’s not. The questioner wants to know what’s on the telly and at the cinema that will align with their tastes or, sometimes, their entire worldview.
What I’ve realised, as I reluctantly approach my 30s, is how much people and audiences wish to stay in their lanes rather than try something new or outside their comfort zones. It’s a superb victory for PR firms everywhere. Maybe it’s the onslaught of projects across different platforms, especially in the inevitably ephemeral world of streaming. Maybe it’s industrial, algorithmic persuasion shoehorned into the collective consciousness. Passions reduced to If You Like A, You’ll Also Like B. It’s a doomed line of thinking that only narrows the imagination, yet it’s one I have empathy for. Most people have proper jobs, worry about feeding their kids, look at the horrors of the world and wonder how they’ll contribute or take advantage. Who has the time to wade through every piece of drama in an oversaturated industry? Much easier to let others decide or stick to the stuff you know and love. That’s the safest option, right?
But despite a regular disdain for humanity, I believe we’re capable of more. For example, I adore weirdness and surrealism – born from David Lynch, Haruki Murakami and René Magritte. Artists who, regardless of their popularity, appear to go against mainstream logic. At the same time, I love The Lord of the Rings and Sarah J Maas and Stephen King and The Traitors (UK). I enjoy horror. I’m riveted by romance. I’m left indifferent by most musicals. True crime feels like a lot of effort. I can watch a nihilistic film after a humanistic film and exit with the same rating. It’s a paradox of taste, which is – in its own small way – like a revolt against what we’re told we should like.
Herd mentality often plunges us into insecure places, even more so when you’re a critic (a job everyone thinks they can do). I worked as a film and TV scribbler for nearly eight years, culminating in a decent gig at Culture Whisper as the TV/Cinema Editor. In this line of work, you’re faced with a stupid list of internal struggles. Hostility toward film and TV opinions can scrunch up foreheads and cast the kind of melodramatic shadows that’d be more suited to politics.
You like the end of Game of Thrones? (I thought it was alright.)
You gave Star Wars: The Last Jedi five stars? (In retrospect, maybe I should’ve given it fewer. Four stars is more accurate.)
You weren’t overawed by Phantom Thread? (Oh, the film that romanticises emotional abuse by a sartorial nightmare of a man-child?)
I’ve previously fought for these opinions, sometimes against several armchair generals at once - maybe you, my reader, have clicked away in disgust. I’m not immune to it either. When I entered criticism, mixing silently and anxiously with professionals in central London screening rooms, I discovered that many of my successful contemporaries hadn’t seen Jaws or Breathless or any Stanley Kubrick film. How could I trust their opinions? Why did I spend three years studying Film Production? Why did I watch so much Antonioni and Bergman and Bunuel and Godard and Kurosawa and Malick when I could’ve just winged it? The equation becomes If You Haven’t Seen A, You’re Not Capable of Writing About B – nonsense logic, of course, especially since my knowledge at the time was restricted mostly to male directors. But I like to think that these extended viewing habits have not been in vain.
The reason for my Substack title, ‘Frank-22’, is to capture my paradoxical dilemmas and remould them into curious strengths. It’s a less euphonic mutilation of Joseph Heller’s novel title (the prose of which I’ve never read) but I’m more inspired by the dead and divisive writer Christopher Hitchens, who tailored the phrase for his memoir Hitch-22. The title outlined his contradiction in coming from the middle class, enjoying various extravagances, while wielding the values of Marxism.
In a less significant way, I feel the same about my cultural tastes. And although I’ve been told that I’m hard to pin down, I believe eclecticism is an objectively good quality to have. Maybe this Substack is a method of contradictory conversion, a church with a bouncy castle instead of an altar and a soprano at the pulpit instead of a toothy vicar. I hope it’s a well-rounded, expansive look at film and TV (and maybe, down the line, literature) without settling for or prioritising a certain genre. Everything’s more or less equal here; only quality matters. Well, ‘quality’ according to my own not-so-humble opinion…
It’s in a critic’s nature to be snobby and arrogant about things they most likely couldn’t achieve themselves, but I’ll try my best not to exaggerate my love or hatred for clicks. I’ll post on Sundays at first: supplying upcoming TV roundups, bullet point news stories and blog entries. If things go well, I’ll post midweek reviews and a Literature & Writing Desk – the latter of which would reveal how much my paradoxes love to fuck and fructify. I want you to enjoy yourself, feel smarter (I hope), and maybe even embrace your own cultural paradoxes while you’re here. Happy reading!