Welcome to the Shadow Lands

This is Part 2 of my End of Year post. To read Part 1 click here.

Books

I rarely, even at the best of times, manage to read books the year they’re published. I always feel a year or so behind the curve and tend to read at a snail’s pace. If I’m not enjoying a book, my progress slows to a crawl and my delicately balanced reading habits are quickly derailed.

In 2023, I struggled more so than usual. I let myself fall back into bad habits with screen time in bed and, particularly during Covid August, my brain felt unable to concentrate on any books.

Over the holidays, I found the time to reset a little and find the joy of reading again. I’m trying to balance reading for fun, and reading for research for my next book. Hopefully, blending the two as much as possible. One of those books was:

Doppelganger: A Trip Into The Mirror World by Naomi Klein 

If you were reading this newsletter during October, you’ll probably have some idea of my interest in doppelganger horror and how that can be, and is being, used to unpick our relationship to our online selves. I even linked to an excerpt from Klein’s new book at the time, but I only got to sit down and read it properly over the holidays. It’s an excellent read. I’d go as far to say it’s a must read. One that felt written exclusively for me in just how much it focuses on all the ideas, themes and concepts I’m obsessed with thinking about at the moment. 

Part of that is to do with my next book which is interested in, among other things: shadows selves, public vs private identities, and aspirational identities. But really, I think it’s hard to live in the world right now without thinking a lot about the things Klein is unpacking here.

As Klein herself states in the book, her gift is in pattern recognition. Drawing a line from people confusing her with Naomi Wolf, to Covid conspiracy theories, to the failure of neo-liberal capitalism, to how the far right co-opt, dilute and twist progressive language is a demonstration of the importance of that gift. It names and articulates something I think we’ve all noticed on some level.

With all the talk of “Mirror Worlds”, “Shadow Lands” and “Doppelganger Politics” it really underlined, for me, just how important horror is at giving us the vocabulary to talk about the world around us and, maybe more specifically, the dangers in it. In the same way that Marx and other early socialist thinkers were quick to latch onto the metaphor of vampirism to discuss capitalism.

Definitely recommend.

I’m Glad My Mum Died by Jeanette McCurdy

My next book, or at least the one I’m thinking about a lot, is a horror with an actor as the central protagonist. So I’m currently trying to read as many memoirs and auto-biographies from current/former actors as possible.

Anything written by Carrie Fisher has been my go-to but this really got under my skin too and it almost came out in 2023! 

I’m Glad… is well written, grimly compelling, and incredibly tough to read at times. It has stuck with me. Whenever I see a former child actor on a show/in a film, I find I immediately think about passages of this book. 

The Rest

As I mentioned, most of my reading is just me playing catch up and so I rarely read new releases in the year they’re published. This year, I finally read and fell in love with the work of Claire Keegan including Foster, Small Things Like These, and So Late in the Day (an actual 2023 release but I read it this week so I’m technically still a year behind).

I don’t think it’ll be news to many people but Keegan is really good guys. There’s a seemingly effortless efficiency to her writing that sneaks up on you. 

Some other notable reads for me this year were Lemon by Kwon Yeo-Sun, Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan and The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg. All excellent, none of them released in 2023.

Films

I’m usually a little more up-to-date with film releases but even so, there’s a whole bunch of well regarded films that made the top of lots of critics’ end of year lists that I’ve still yet to see. With that in mind, here are three that I did manage to see, that I loved:

Past Lives (Dir. Celine Song)

I’ve seen some backlash to this film with some people finding it insipid and others arguing that the characters (particularly Teo Yoo’s Hae Sung) were underwritten, with the script largely being saved by charismatic performances. 

The former point is probably a matter of taste. But I find the latter point a particularly uncharitable reading. To expect that a writer/director has to put everything about their understanding of a character in dialogue feels like a fundamental misunderstanding of how a script is written. It also underplays the importance of collaboration in cinema. Working with your actors to discover character nuances that can be teased out through subtle performance choices strikes me as a crucial part of being a good director. 

But I can understand where the criticism comes from. The relationship between Nora, Hae Sung and Arthur is both semi-autobiographical and an allegory for the immigrant experience. As such, the characters can come across as ciphers or stand-ins for ideas rather than living, breathing people. The key word being can. I don’t think they do. And I don’t think the film is uncritical about them either. Past Lives has a quiet, subtle confidence in letting you come to your own conclusions about the characters. As such, you take out what you bring in. If you come away from the film feeling frustrated that it fails to critique or problematise the protagonists, I think we watched different films. A film presenting characters in a non-judgmental way does not equal tacit endorsement of their choices or actions. 

I loved the film and as a fan of Kazuo Ishiguro, I will always be a sucker for a story with quiet, frustrated passion simmering just under the surface, threatening to come to the boil at any moment.

May December (Dir. Todd Haynes)

But I also love a film with unrestrained, unapologetic outbursts of EMOTION. Is May December a melodrama? Camp? A tragic and serious portrait of the long-term trauma of paedophilic grooming? Funny? The answer to all these, I think, is yes.

I think the correct usage of terms like ‘melodrama’ and ‘camp’ in relation to May December has led to Film Twitter discourse. For more on this I’d recommend Broey Deschanel’s video on the topic which delves into the history of the words and uses this as a way to talk about what Todd Haynes is doing in May December. 

It’s at once a satirical swipe at the exploitative prestige dramatisations of traumatic “true crime” events of the nineties, an exploration of delusion, and a heartbreaking dissection of the aftermath of predatory grooming. The playful score, self-conscious zooms and off-kilter humour are carefully deployed to bring attention to the artifice of it all. Without it, the film could fairly be accused of the self-serious ponderousness of the kind of storytelling which it is poking fun at. Haynes, Burch and Mechanik are too smart for that.

Return to Seoul (Dir. Davy Chou)

Loved this. Can’t believe this was the acting debut of Ji-Min Park - who plays the messy, self-destructive protagonist Freddie. It’s a brilliant performance. A whirlwind of conflicting emotions raging across her face in every scene.

The Rest

• Aftersun (Dir. Charlotte Wells) came out in 2022 but I only got to see it streaming in early 2023 so it counts. It was only writing this post that I realised that Wells achieves here what I think Claire Keegan is so good at. The kind of quietly devastating storytelling that creeps up on you. You know that fight scene in anime/samurai films where two characters run at each other, clash, and then turn around to face each other, both seemingly unscathed - only for one of the combatants to suddenly split in half with a look of astonishment on their face, apparently unaware they had been dealt a killing blow? That’s what Wells did to me with Aftersun.
• I really liked The Five Devils (Dir. Léa Mysius). French magical realism about queer romance with time travel via the power of smell? Yes please.
• I just watched Godzilla Minus One (Dir. Takashi Yamazaki) this week and it was great to see a franchise film that delivers genuinely exciting spectacle, loving nods to the lore, and an emotionally satisfying story that examines wartime guilt, the true horrors of destructive force, and the importance of human life.
• My favourite horror of the year was probably a tie between Talk to Me (Dirs. Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou) and Huesera: The Bone Woman (Dir. Michelle Garza Cervera), with honourable mentions to the campy delights of M3gan and the lo-fi audaciousness of Skinamarink (which I admired more than I enjoyed).

Music

I spent a lot of the year listening to these.

Coming Up

The French edition of Suzanne is coming out this Friday (12th January) and I couldn’t be happier with it! Ankama have done a wonderful job with the design and printing. I drew a brand new cover and back cover for it while the FFT (French Federation of Tennis) provided a wonderful back section with additional historical context. There’s a lovely spot UV of the logo on the cover, a fancy ribbon bookmark, plus the whole thing has been printed about 3cms bigger than the English edition. It’s so lovely to finally hold it in my hands and I couldn’t be happier with it. 

A nice touch is they even printed a small brochure with a sample chapter of the book and an interview with me for sending out to bookstores and press. 

To promote the book, I’ll be joining Ankama at Angoulême at the end of January. I even drew a massive 4 metre Suzanne Lenglen for a display at their booth! 

This will be my first time at Angoulême and I can’t wait.

I’ll probably be sending out my next newsletter sometime after Angoulême at the end of January which is when the poem comic I’ve been working on with Chrissy Williams should be back from the printer. Here’s a preview of a test print of one page: