There’s an unusual scene early in the fourth season of The Boys, Amazon’s show about fascist superheroes and the underground cell working to bring them down. The episode follows characters as they attend a Qanon-esque convention (“TruthCon”) filled with peddlers of racist conspiracy theories and paranoid delusions. Unlike much of The Boys, which focuses on sadistic super-powered narcissists, the TruthCon attendees are run-of-the-mill peons. They share their heroes’ ignorance, but not their strength.

It’s a small — not minor — expansion of the show. A typical episode limits our view to the “supes,” a wickedly corrupt group of powerful superhumans who can only be held in check by the threat of low ratings and lost licensing deals. (Although in one case, a supe is killed by a rectally-implanted bomb.) They are “heroes” only to a massively deceived public that has been more present in this most recent season, rioting in a January 6th-like insurrection and being brutally murdered by their god-like idols. It’s moments like these that have led right-wing fans to suddenly sit up and realize that The Boys is, in fact, talking about them. And they don’t like it.

“It was such a good show in the beginning,” writes one Twitter user, taking a break from his usual posts crusading against inclusivity in video games. But now it’s “leftist drivel.” Another review on Amazon calls the latest season “openly hostile toward Christianity.”

It’s easy to celebrate the upset right-wing fans who realize, too late, that The Boys was a critique of fascists all along. A recent promo poster for the show highlights the negative reviews as they rain down on a celebrating supe like confetti. “The fools!” the poster triumphantly implies, “What did they think they were watching this whole time?”

But as fun as mockery is, we could learn a lot by answering that question. Given that these fans returned for the first three seasons, the answer seems to be that, up till now, they found nothing in The Boys that offended their ideology. That’s saying something. Over those first three seasons, supes went on racist killing sprees, raped women, and covered up their crimes. When Homelander (a sociopathic Superman) murders an adversarial politician and his child in the series premiere, right-wing bullies apparently shrugged and thought, “That’s what you get for messing with someone more powerful than you.”

This is the challenge of depicting fascists on screen: for the amoral fascist audience, there is no portrayal that can be considered immoral. Whether the fictional fascist takes the form of a grizzled vigilante bashing in anyone he deems criminal (Watchmen, Batman, Judge Dredd), a lion-hearted hero protecting the Earth from aliens (Iron Man), or literally-Adolf-Hitler-but-he’s-a-silly-goose (Jojo Rabbit) makes absolutely no difference to a fascist audience, so long as he has power.

It’s a risk that filmmakers should know well by now, because audiences have found monstrous characters compelling for decades. Scarface is a nearly three-hour takedown of greed and the American dream, but Tony Montana remains an icon for get-rich-quick hustlers. Nihilistic finance bros literally cheered for the scummy Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street. And for years, Michael Douglas has denounced his fans in investment banking, who idolize his villainous portrayal of Gordon Gecko. “It was all very seductive I guess,” Douglas mused. High-minded art lovers will complain that those audiences, like right-wingers watching The Boys, are missing the point. Perhaps that’s true, or perhaps they simply don’t care. The result is the same: A portrayal of a powerful figure, meant as critique, is misconstrued by philistine power worshippers as fantasy. (It’s a condition so widespread that writer Adam Serwer recently named it “Tony Soprano Syndrome.”) If ostensibly critical filmmakers keep creating seductive villains who inspire fascist adoration, then who’s really missing the point?

It’s often suggested that laughing at fascists is the best way to solve this problem. “Humourists [have] created a vanguard against tyranny,” one writer declared in 2016, citing the usual constellation of liberal late night comics, SNL, and Daily Show alumni. “A lot of my comedy heroes who were Jewish used humor to mock this very thing,”Jojo Rabbit’s Stephen Merchant said of Nazism. Merchant plays a Gestapo officer in the film, alternately ridiculous and imposing. But pronouncements of comedy’s effectiveness ignore one crucial fact: Fascists don’t care about being laughed at, so long as they have power. On the subject of Jojo’s goofy Hitler, writer Noah Berlatsky reminds us that, “Ironic, aestheticized, anti-establishment Hitler is in many respects congruent with the original irreverent, anti-establishment aesthetic of the Nazi Party. That’s an aesthetic that the alt-right has consciously tried to recapture today.” In a since-deleted thread on 4chan, the primordial goo of the irreverent alt-right, one user admires that Merchant’s character “looked like the perfect Aryan supersoldier.”

Our mistake is in thinking that fascists crave to be taken seriously. That’s projection. Those who value the fair administration of justice, neutral institutions, and impartial expertise strive to be taken seriously, for obvious reasons: their system cannot function if everyone thinks they’re a joke. But that’s not the goal of the fascists, who seek power without consent of the governed. In fact, as fascists gain power, they seem to revel in just how unserious they can be: messaging their hate in silly frog cartoons, wearing objectively hideous hats, naming their government initiatives after childish memes, spreading outlandish conspiracy theories that they may not even believe themselves. Liberal comedians have spent countless hours lampooning and mocking the obvious ridiculousness of it all, but their barbs seem to be as effective as the political cabarets of 1930s Berlin, which, in the sarcastic words of comedian Peter Cook, “did so much to prevent the rise of Adolf Hitler.”

#Resistance comedy and cinematic tragedies have tried, over and over, to embarrass the fascists. But Trump has shown just as often that a fascist will never express — perhaps cannot feel — shame. Filmmakers can depict a fascist as a tragic failure or a laughingstock all they want; it will do nothing to produce self-reflection in his real-life counterpart.

How, then, should fascists be depicted? The answer can be found in 2020’s Promising Young Woman, a movie about a woman taking revenge on the men who sexually assaulted her friend. While the men of PYW aren’t outright fascists — we don’t learn enough about their politics to apply the label — they share fascism’s most defining characteristic: a will to power, or in this case, a will for sexual power over the bodies of young women. PYW’s men are unique in cinema. To understand why, let’s first look at the standard way we see abusers on screen.

2000’s Unbreakable gives a textbook example: a monstrous man, a dark room, a vulnerable woman, a degrading act of dehumanization. The framing makes sense, in that it squares well with the social values that most of us share. But, crucially, sexual predators don’t share those values. When they see Unbreakable’s abuser dominate a woman, it’s possible that they don’t see an act worth condemning; perhaps they merely see power working as it should.

Promising Young Woman solves this problem by depicting would-be assailants not as outright monsters, but as powerless losers. Early in the film, the heroine repels an assault by a geeky Christopher Mintz-Plasse, still recognizable as one of cinema’s biggest dorks, McLovin. The abusers don’t get any cooler from there. Throughout PYW, horrible men are cast as twerps who prey on women out of weakness, not strength. This is not a nuanced portrayal. The film never asks that we understand or forgive the men for their weakness.

It’s a brilliant choice, and not because these men aren’t monsters: they are. But framing them solely as monsters does nothing to disturb the self-image of a real-life assailant. Casting them as powerless moon-faced dweebs? There’s nothing there for the power-hungry fascist to idolize.

We’ve already seen this approach work against real-world fascists. In the headier days of the Harris campaign, an official press release described Trump as “old and quite weird?” That same week, internet memesters circulated rumors that JD Vance admitted to having sex with a couch. The rumors were baseless, the memes a knowing parody of online misinformation. But the Harris campaign kept beating the “weird” drum, and it stuck. “Weird” isn’t incompatible with “cool,” but leveled against Trump and Vance, it might as well have been “virgins.” Emphasizing Trump’s weirdness over his monstrosity clearly riled him. For once, Trump found himself on the defensive. “They’re the weird ones,” he told a radio host, implicitly acknowledging “weird” as a cutting line. He added, pathetically, “Nobody’s ever called me weird. I’m a lot of things, but weird I’m not.” The denial continued in private fundraisers, where Trump told donors that the jab was, “Not about me. They’re saying that about JD.” The New York Times called that period of the summer “the worst three weeks of [his] campaign.”

In the end, of course, the Harris campaign dropped the “weird” attack (on the advice of pollster Geoff Garin, now 0–3 on presidential campaigns) and instead amplified the voices of former generals who warned that Trump idolized Hitler. Trump is a power-hungry monster, they implored, which, while true, is an accusation that plays into Trump’s self-image and that of his followers. (It’s also not particularly new: articles about Trump’s fascination with Hitler ran in 2017, and those cited earlier reports from as far back as 1990.) Trump denied the reporting and attacked the press. His followers shrugged. To fascists, “monster” is not a slur.

But “loser” is. There is nothing seductive about losers, nothing enviable. Losers can be pitiable, but the abusers of Promising Young Woman are not the lovable nerds of Freaks & Geeks or Stranger Things. They’re scumbags with no redeeming qualities. PYW doesn’t ask that we psychoanalyze them like they’re Tony Soprano or Travis Bickle. It refuses to engage with their delusions, their sense of entitlement. It places them at the lowest tier of social standing, one devoid of power and masculinity, and moves on. It’s a brutally effective way to depict fascists, and one that The Boys has found perhaps too late.

Can a show about super-powered fascists ever avoid becoming a power fantasy for fascists? Maybe not. But if it can give us more scenes of those pathetic followers — the powerless rubes who will die meaningless, ignoble deaths — then it just might manage to detonate a bomb that fascists didn’t realize was inside them. Maybe even one inserted rectally.

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Evan Engel produces non-fiction videos and podcasts and writes fiction screenplays.

When Amazon recently reversed course and announced that it would not open a new office in Queens, New Yorkers rejoiced. For the first time in memory, an impassioned, organized group defeated a tech giant headed by the world’s wealthiest man.

But Slate’s Mike Pesca wasn’t among those celebrating. Instead, Pesca wrote that he was “very upset” by Amazon’s decision and the enthusiasm of his fellow New Yorkers, claiming that while Amazon “was supposed to get $3 billion in subsidies… New York state was to get $27 billion flowing into its coffers.” It’s an unlikely claim, but I’ll unpack that in a minute, because Pesca follows it up with something truly laughable.

Suggesting that organizers foolishly rejected a vast contribution to their own wealth because they didn’t want to see Jeff Bezos get a tiny bit richer, Pesca makes the following analogy:

I’m sure within Amazon they tell employees, “Guys, we had a great quarter, and you’re all going to get a raise,” and some socially conscious employees say, “Wait a minute, if we had a great quarter, and I’m getting a raise, does Jeff Bezos also benefit?” Indeed, he does. “Then I reject my raise.” Yeah, right.

One has to wonder if Pesca knows anything about Amazon besides the fact that it’s very very rich, because his vision of it as a generous workplace that shares the spoils of its corporate growth with its employees (on a quarterly basis, no less!) doesn’t resemble any Amazon that exists on this planet.

While Bezos’ company finally instituted a minimum wage of $15 for employees last year (in a move that Pesca’s colleague Jordan Weissman credited to Bernie Sanders), it’s been notoriously abusive towards workers for over a decade, from the people manning its warehouses all the way up to its executives. Just this week, a reporter uncovered a trove of 911 calls from suicidal Amazon employees. This is not the kind of company anyone should welcome with open arms, for reasons of both solidarity and strategy. A company that treats its own employees with such callous abandon is unlikely to show much responsibility towards its host city, either. (Case in point: Amazon worked hard to defeat a small Seattle tax that would have helped the city’s homeless.)

But for the sake of argument, let’s pretend that we’re talking not about the real Amazon, but the Amazon of Pesca’s fantasy, where workers are treated well and compensated with quarterly profits. (I’m sorry, I can’t stop laughing at this.) Would it then be OK for them to set up shop in Queens? The answer is still no, or at least not under the plan we heard about.

Even if Amazon produced this $27 billion over 25 years (and that’s a HUGE if, considering that Amazon paid zero federal taxes on its $11 billion profits last year) the arrangement would still instantiate a system whereby public good is reliant on our city’s collective kowtowing to mega corporations. That’s not a sustainable way of building a community, because corporations by design will always seek to cut costs by eliminating jobs, investments, or by externalizing costs to someone else (say, a local government). We’ve seen the negative effects of over-reliance on corporate giants across America, from Detroit to Pittsburgh to my native Rochester, NY, where the former film giant Kodak once employed 120,000 people. At its peak, Rochester’s dependence on Kodak led to perverse accommodations of the yellow giant, including a blasé attitude towards environmental waste that allegedly made Rochester the top American city for carcinogenic chemicals. Today, fewer than 10,000 people work for Kodak, and its decline has devastated the economy of Rochester and the region.

New York City, being a financial center that profits from nearly every industry on the planet, would likely never rely on Amazon to the degree that Detroit depended on cars or Rochester on Kodak. But a roll-out-the-red-carpet subsidy to Amazon still positions for-profit corporations as the chief beneficiaries of public policy. Those corporations by law prioritize short-term gains to their shareholders over anyone else, and so any policy centered on them is really only “public” policy in the sense that the public gets stuck with the bill.

It’s not hard to imagine a better use of tax dollars. Rather than paying Bezos in the hopes he’ll improve our fortunes, we could invest directly in our communities. We could put $3 billion toward retrofitting buildings and homes to make them energy efficient or even sustainable. What would the long-term savings be to a city that generated energy, instead of just using it? Probably a great deal more than $27 billion. How many jobs would we create in that process, and when it was completed, how many more small businesses would be able to set up in Queens, Detroit, Pittsburgh, or Rochester? What if instead of using our political capital to fight for handouts to the wealthiest companies, we used it to implement taxes on empty apartments in New York City? How much better would life in the five boroughs be if people could afford to live here? That’s an improvement in quality of life that’s good for its own sake and doesn’t impose the housing burden that even Pesca admits would result from Amazon’s arrival (though he strangely suggests that housing woes would end at Long Island City’s border, as though New Yorkers exclusively live in the neighborhoods where they work). And fine, if we want to be capitalists about it, it’s good for “productivity” too, because now workers can afford to, you know, live.

Pesca’s tears for the Amazon we’ll never have aren’t just misguided; they’re dangerously ignorant. After everything the country has been through in the last 40 years — the decline of manufacturing, the hollowing out of American cities, the increase in the wealth gap to the detriment of democracy — it’s shocking to see a public figure say, “Hey, let’s build our community on the back of an international corporation. What could go wrong?” The answer is plenty, and if Mike Pesca had been paying attention, he’d know that creating a society that’s free from corporate welfare is nothing to get upset over.

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If you’re interested in ways that technological change is impacting society — particularly around the idea of future shock — then please check out my bi-monthly conversation with Alex Fitzpatrick and Matt Silverman at The Future Will Not Be Podcast.

Yesterday I left Vocativ, the news site where I’ve worked since August of last year. I’ve included the text of my resignation letter below, though it may help to first read the story that led to this. It’s here, thanks to Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Here’s the resignation letter I sent to management:

As you well know, I was arrested earlier this year while covering Inauguration Day protests for Vocativ. During my time in jail, I witnessed police mistreat their prisoners in ways that raised significant concerns for me. Since my release, I’ve worked with Vocativ’s editorial leadership and management to bring this story to light. Vocativ has not only declined to pursue this story, but has taken the unusual step of banning me from speaking about it publicly.

Make no mistake: What I witnessed was textbook abuse of power, and I have neither the ability nor the will to excuse, dismiss, or forget such behavior. In Vocativ’s judgement, the abuse I witnessed — which, by all appearances, was premeditated — does not merit discussion on our site. While I strenuously disagree with this judgement, I acknowledge that it is Vocativ’s to make.

However, I cannot accept and will not agree to any arrangement that precludes me from speaking about this issue, and I am personally and professionally insulted that this organization — ostensibly a news publisher — expects anything less from me.

As a journalist, I have a professional obligation to seek the truth and report it, and to speak that truth to power. I would be remiss in my duties if I did not report on the suffering that I witnessed, which came at the hands of law enforcement officers. I cannot remain silent on these events, and I am embarrassed that this organization would make such a demand of me.

Vocativ has the potential to be a great newsroom. It is staffed with promising, intelligent reporters producing important, insightful work. I’m grateful to the organization for providing for my legal defense, and for speaking out on my behalf during the brief time in which I was charged with a crime. I only wish that its concern for justice extended beyond its own payroll.

The letter doesn’t describe what its recipients already knew: that for months, management encouraged me to forget these events. In various meetings, my account was challenged, questioned, and belittled. “We view this as an example of the justice system working,” one manager told me.

Another asked, “You don’t think people know that police abuse prisoners?” (They do, of course, because journalists report it.)

In nearly every meeting, it was stressed to me that Vocativ had spent a great deal of money on my legal defense, as if large expenditures should trump journalistic principles.

I’m left with questions. Most importantly: Why was Vocativ so insistent that this story stay buried? Was the wrongdoing not egregious enough? Admittedly, it was (for better or worse) not on par with the headline-capturing police behavior we’ve read about in recent years. But then why ban me from speaking about it? What did Vocativ find so objectionable about a journalist telling the truth about police abuse?

I wish I had answers, but for all the conversations I had with managers, that point was never made clear.

I understand, of course, that the abuses I witnessed are not the most heinous, the most jaw-dropping, the most repugnant that audiences have ever read. But to limit reporting of police misconduct to only those cases is unethical: it permits police to engage in whatever level of mistreatment they please, so long as it falls below headline-making level.

Today, I’m grateful to Freedom of the Press Foundation for publishing the piece, and to my friends and colleagues who helped me work through these last few months. And while I’m saddened by the outcome, I’m grateful that my conversations with Vocativ’s management were civil and mostly respectful. Vocativ has produced good work in the past; indeed, it’s why I took the job in the first place. My former colleagues will produce good work in the future. I hope that their managers have the courage to support them.

But Black Mirror is an anthology show, and the quality of its critique varies from episode to episode. Ranking the show’s installments has become something of an internet past time (or an easy way to farm clicks) with everyone from BuzzFeed to The Verge to Metro weighing in with a clear favorite: “The Entire History of You.”

“Entire History” posits a future in which humans have perfect memory that can be reviewed and shared, though not without consequences. It’s a life-like premise and execution, with powerful performances and a great script. It is, undoubtedly, a solid episode of television. But Black Mirror’s strengths aren’t solely its writing or performances; it’s its deep critiques of technological change and influence. And though “Entire History” offers some tantalizing questions (like, “Is the act of forgetting a necessary part of the human experience?”), only one episode truly serves as a dark reflection of our own society, and it’s “15 Million Merits.”

Every episode of Black Mirror is to some extent a parable, and as such, it’s tempting to view them as a kind of inoculation against a future technological dystopia. Many episodes imagine the world in disturbing, but harmless, what-ifs; what if we had perfect shared memories? What if we had a bot that could mimic dead lovers? Even while the show embeds those queries in a world where technology exacerbates our human flaws, the audience can derive pride from (and hope in) humanity’s foresight. By watching Black Mirror and recoiling at the horrors it depicts, we can convince ourselves we’ll never fall victim to them.

It’s interesting that “Entire History”, like other fan favorites “Be Right Back” (the one about a posthumous recreation of a loved one) or the Christmas special (which features tales about digital copies of our consciousness and ocular implants) focus their gaze on elective technologies that characters don’t necessarily need to adopt. “Entire History” even gives the audience a luddite character as an avatar: A woman in a dinner party remarks that, unlike all the other guests, she’s chosen to forego the destructive piece of technology for a simpler life. See? It’s possible to escape dystopia after all!

But “15 Million Merits” robs us of such illusions. Unlike most other episodes, it is not a world of what-ifs, not a single, well-defined premise grafted onto our own reality. “15 Million Merits” offers a complete world in which an advanced slave state utilizes mass media to subdue its labor population, who toil away on electricity-generating bikes. Under the glow of televisions, alienated slaves are simultaneously inspired, distracted, entertained, and enlisted in a depressingly-familiar class war. While some of “15 Million Merits”’s characters bring a level of skepticism to their world, none are immune from its pressures and confines. The protagonist sells out, his love interest is tricked, and the rest are reduced to the hapless poser, who gleefully clings onto every trend with nary a thought. It’s that character’s presence — the mindless poser – which cuts so deep. Unlike “Entire History” with its noble luddite, “15 Million Merits” shows us a world from which we cannot escape, and it’s too close to home. Other episodes offers us plausible deniability; they’re not so much a mirror as they are a Snapchat filter that we can delete if we are displeased. Not so “15 Million Merits.”

The same is true of two universally-disliked Black Mirror episodes, “The Waldo Moment” (about a comedian who parodies political candidates until he becomes one) and “National Anthem” (where the British prime minister… well, it’s the one with the pig). Sure, neither packs the rich performances or ambitious scripts of “15 Million Merits” or “Be Right Back.” But it’s telling that both are stories of the horrors that mass media can inflict at the social and political level, rather than personal tales of ruination. In “National Anthem,” it’s the act of looking — the same act that audiences are engaged in at the moment they watch Black Mirror — that enables the antagonist’s actions. “Waldo,” similarly, offers no escape from the seductive, nihilstic ideology into which its world descends. Could these be the reasons audiences hate them?

It’s tempting to imagine that if we don’t like the image presented in Black Mirror, we don’t have to partake in it, but the last 20 years have shown that notion to be a farce. Increasingly, participation in civic society is predicated on the ability to manipulate technology. We use social media to impress employers and (potentially) cross international borders. We receive emergency alerts about the safety of our community by phone. In Florida, a public transit initiative operated by Uber requires users to have a smartphone and credit card. These faculties — traveling around a city, being an informed citizen, getting a job — aren’t frivolities; they’re basic functions necessary to a working democracy. The fact that these roles now require us to use technology is part of the reason why internet has gone from being an amenity to a human right.

“All technology has the Midas touch,” wrote Marshall McLuhan in 1964. “When a community develops some extension of itself, it tends to allow all other functions to be altered to accommodate that form.” Too often, Black Mirror fails to envision those alterations. In one of the show’s most head-scratching choices, it introduces an android in “Be Right Back” which serves exclusively as a dead lover-replacement. In actuality, such technology would find wide application in every facet of society. It probably would have prevented the car crash that killed the lover in the first place. (It would also replace the burly delivery men who bring the package to the protagonist’s door, but let’s not devolve into nitpicking.) The world of the Christmas special — with its cookies and visual blockers– would be altered to the point of being unrecognizable. The changes wrought by technology don’t fit neatly into a writer’s hypotheticals. They ripple through all parts of our lives.

“15 Million Merits,” “National Anthem,” and “Waldo” understand this notion and embrace it as a starting point. Other episodes give us hope that we may never reach it. But, twist ending, we’re already there, and when Black Mirror is at its best, it helps us reflect on that.

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Update: Since writing this, I’ve started a Black Mirror recap/discussion podcast with Alex Fitzpatrick. You can find episodes here.

A Garbage Plate, for those who don’t know, is a hearty dish invented at Nick Tahou’s, a greasy diner in Rochester, New York. In its most popular form, a Garbage Plate consists of two cheeseburger patties with sides of home fries and mac salad, topped with “meat sauce.” (Some diners go with other meats and sides, but the principle is the same.) Traditionally, the contents are stirred together until they look like garbage and are consumed with a hefty portion of bread. Many diners eat a Garbage Plate around 2 AM and report not eating again for another day or two.

Now, I’m sure that the idea of Hillary Clinton downing some greasy patties covered in heart attack-sauce might strike some folks as an odd proposal, and they will allege that my status as a Rochester native is coloring my views. But Hillary’s own statistics prove the validity of this idea:

Others will say that New York state reliably goes to the Democrats, and that campaigning in upstate New York is a waste of time for Hillary, but that’s not exactly right.

While New York state’s cities reliably go blue, huge swathes of the state still go to Republicans. And these voters are, demographically, fired up about Trump: They’re high school graduates, white, and my cousins. It’s likely that Trump knows this; he’s already vowed to put New York state in play this year. And while his chances may look slim, so did his chances of becoming the GOP nominee. If Hillary looks even close to losing the state where she c̶a̶r̶p̶e̶t̶b̶a̶g̶g̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶q̶u̶i̶t̶ ̶m̶i̶d̶t̶e̶r̶m̶ served as senator for 8 years, it will become a yuge talking point for Trump. “Hillary says she’s done all this great stuff, but even in New York they don’t like her. They love me in New York. I have the best yorks,” he’ll say, and Hillary’s standing as the experienced candidate will suffer.

Clearly, Hillary needs to win back the working class voters of New York state. Completely obliterating a Garbage Plate and soaking its sloppy juices in some stale bread may be the only effective way to do so. Attending a NASCAR race in Watkins Glen? Too transparent. Eating a plate of buffalo wings? Too spicy. Touring the Saranac brewery? That could work, but Hillary probably won’t drink out of a can, and that’s a liability. No, if Hillary wants to woo upstate New York voters, there’s only one option: She must slam a Garbage Plate. And wash it down with a Genesee.

Once Hillary announces her intention to eat a Garbage Plate, the cable news talking heads will undoubtedly fret over what meat/sides combo she should order. Burgers, mac salad, home fries? Hot dogs, baked beans, potato salad? They’ll bring on experts who will pour over the implications of every combination (FYI, I’m available). But in the end, those sorts of intricacies will be irrelevant. All voters need to know is that Hillary Clinton demolished a heaping plate of meat, starch, and mayonnaise while some RIT students chanted “I’M WITH HER! I’M WITH HER!” after last call.

This will be no easy feat. Many Garbage Plates are never finished. But if Clinton truly wants the presidency, she’ll have to win over New Yorkers by absolutely housing what is essentially the entire spread of a 4th of July barbecue plated in a dirty Rochester, NY diner. If she can pull this off, then millions of New Yorkers and, presumably, competitive eaters will stand with her. If she doesn’t, it’s a certainty that Donald Trump will promise to eat one. And never do so.

It’s not the escape that makes this scene great, however. It’s the rare (and brief) camaraderie between Bond and Trevelyan. As any 007 fan can tell you, it’s uncommon to see James Bond with another double-0 agent; rarer still that we see him with anything resembling a friend. Bond, we’re often told, is without equal in all his roles, be it assassin, stunt driver, or wine connoisseur. That he could have a peer — even, perhaps, a personally meaningful one — is a revelation. But, like a pristine Bond car, the friendship is too good to last. Trevelyan turns out to be a traitor, and in the end Bond defeats him to become, once more, the best.

Perhaps it’s this elite status that gets people excited over long-standing rumors that the next Bond will be played by Idris Elba, a talented actor who is, notably, black, or this week’s news that Gillian Anderson is interested in the role. There’s great symbolic virtue to casting a woman and/or an actor of color in a historically exclusionary role, especially this one, with its connotations of sophistication and prestige. If we’re to continue to make James Bond films, then I — and, it seems, many other Bond fans — would love to see Elba or Anderson play the part. But if we truly want to see progress on the big screen, better roles for women and actors of color, and a more inclusive cinema, then the better choice is to abolish the character of James Bond altogether.

Let’s make one thing clear: James Bond — as a character, an idea, and a film — is racist. Whether he’s throwing money at an Indian man and telling him, “That should keep you in curry,” (Octopussy) or wearing fake eyelids and a spray tan to disguise himself as Asian (You Only Live Twice), Bond’s take on non-white races is decidedly pejorative. It’s an outlook that dates all the way back to the first Bond film, Dr. No, in which the spy off-handedly bosses around a Jamaican CIA agent. And by “bosses around,” I don’t mean that he says, “Follow my lead while we break into this place.” He literally says “Fetch my shoes.” And, this being Bond, the black agent obediently fetches.

Dr. No debuted in 1962, the year that Jamaica achieved independence from Britain. It could be mere coincidence that Bond’s first adventure finds him asserting his superiority over a post-colonial citizen just as the state was freeing itself from European rule. But over the ensuing 50 years, Bond’s missions routinely find him lording it over the residents in former European colonies: India, Bolivia, Morocco, Cuba, Vietnam, and more. All told, over 23 films, Bond visits former colonies 17 times, and that’s not including a couple fictional ones whose regional settings (the Caribbean and South America) suggest they fit the bill. Bond, it’s assumed (or sometimes explicitly stated), works without the knowledge or approval of these nations, but for their benefit. It’s a particularly charitable depiction of Western power; it’s no exaggeration to say that in the James Bond universe, the end of colonialism isn’t an event to be celebrated. It’s an error to be reversed.

And it’s not just James Bond, the man. The films themselves are unapologetically Orientalist. In Octopussy’s India, we’re asked to gawk at snake charmers and sword-swallowers. In The Living Daylights’ Afghanistan, we’re suspicious (though ultimately supportive) of turban-clad mujahideen. (Just like real life!) In The Man With The Golden Gun’s Harlem, we take in a litany of cultural and racial stereotypes (a literal “pimpmobile” is the least of the film’s problems). Inevitably, the Orientalism of Bond films gives way to outright racism, as in a dinner scene in 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. In an already cringingly-bad premise, women of various ethnicity eat a meal from their home country. The scene quickly cycles through the races: the Asian woman eats rice, the Indian woman eats curry. Then we see the lone African woman. She eats a banana. At least we can take a quantum of solace in knowing that that joke’s never been funny.

Given his long history of racism, it’s worth asking why any actor would want to play James Bond. It’s tempting to think that casting a black actor could set right a historically racist role, but James Bond, as a character, is structurally problematic. By design, James Bond is a wish-fulfillment of embarrassed imperialists pining for their glory days. Bond is not primarily an action hero in the mold of Jackie Chan. His effortless coolness doesn’t come from his ability to pull off amazing stunts; it’s his ability to walk into a casino (or bar, or secret lair) and instantly get respect. Bond’s greatest strength is his ability to project that he is of a higher class than we are. He is the apex capitalist, a man of means who, through his ability to project his class standing, is able to subjugate anyone or anything to his will. As we might expect from a white male capitalist fantasy, that often means women and people of color.

There’s another reason to think that replacing a white actor won’t fix the structural racism of the narrative: it’s been tried before. In the 1970s, gangster films that had once featured white actors in prominent roles were re-cast with largely black casts, ostensibly in the spirit of equality. But the resulting films weren’t any less racist. The now-black roles took on cartoonish depictions of black criminality, some even worse than their predecessors. They were so bad, the NAACP invented a term to denounce them: “blaxploitation.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, the racism of the blaxploitation genre didn’t keep it from commercial success. By 1974, blaxploitation films had gotten so big that even James Bond had to cash in with The Man with the Golden Gun, in which Bond goes to Harlem:

There’s no reason to think that a black or female Bond wouldn’t encounter equally stereotypical and one-dimensional characters.

There’s also the uncomfortable fact that James Bond is a serial rapist. I really wish there was another way to say it; there isn’t. In film after film, Bond brutally initiates sex with women who have shown little to no interest in him and who, in early films, actively resist his sexual advances. In the Bond world, sex is something men force on reluctant women, who inevitably come around after seeing the man’s persistence. This is, of course, the definition of rape culture. It’s worth pointing out that while the outright racism of the older films has been tempered as of late, Bond’s habit of taking sexual consent for granted hasn’t changed a bit. Skyfall finds him creeping into a shower, where a woman previously unaware of his presence instantly consents to sex.

Bond’s philandering may not be inherently sexist in the age of Tinder, but women in the Bond universe don’t get the same benefit: Unlike Bond, women with multiple sexual partners in Bond films are punished for their sexuality, to the point that half the time they wind up dead. That’s not an exaggeration. Of the 67 women who dot Bond films (up to Skyfall), 19 are shown or implied to have multiple partners. 10 of those women — or 52%– die. And women with only 1 sexual partner? They only die at a rate of 13%. That’s a double-0-standard.

Not to be overlooked, Bond films are predictably homophobic, from the gay, BDSM-loving assassins of Diamonds are Forever to the inexplicably gay villain of Skyfall, who hits on a captive and restrained Bond. It’s unclear what purpose, exactly, Javier Bardem’s character’s homosexuality served to the plot. Should we have felt Bond was in greater danger by this perceived threat to his sexuality? Dismal attitudes towards homosexuality have a long history in the Bond franchise; few will recall that the most famous Bond girl of all, Pussy Galore, was a lesbian. (“You can turn off the charm,” she informs him upon their meeting, “I’m immune.” Hint, hint.) Of course, by the end of Goldfinger, Bond successfully “turns” Pussy because when you’re an irresistible racist sexist asshole nothing is impossible.

So what do we do with James Bond? Well, one answer is kill him. Let him die a painful death, alone, without any women to comfort him, nor black agents to boss around. Let Idris Elba or Gillian Anderson play a new secret agent, one unencumbered by all the cultural baggage that Bond carries with him. Hell, maybe it’s Elba/Anderson’s secret agent who defeats Bond. And if you really want, they can take his name.

If we absolutely must keep Bond, let’s imagine him in a new role at MI6, perhaps as a surly ex-field agent now confined to a desk, loudly passing judgement on all the young new talent. Let’s stop romanticizing Bond and show him for what he really is: The sad drunk at the hotel bar, the pushy date who doesn’t know when to stop, the red-nosed business traveler embarrassingly hitting on the flight attendant. He’s the coworker who gets too loaded at the party, pulls you in close, and lets you know what he really thinks about all these Affirmative Action-types taking over the office. Elba or Anderson could look uncomfortable and excuse themselves.

“What’s his problem?” their date will ask in low tones.

“He’s old,” the new 007 will reply, looking back at him with sad eyes, “And he doesn’t have any friends.”

And so what did The Force Awakens add to the most important story in cinema?

Almost nothing.

The Force Awakens isn’t a bad film. Indeed, it’s the first good Star Wars film since 1983. It’s decently paced, well-written, and returns the saga to the frontiers of space where it belongs. It also prominently features a diverse cast, a welcome change to both Star Wars and Hollywood action fare. Its plot works very hard at offering nothing new, but if we’re ever going to care about Star Wars again it first has to be fun and watchable, and Abrams has certainly succeeded in that regard.

But from its very first moments, TFA seems afraid to fulfill its potential as successor to a beloved myth. The opening scene finds Poe Dameron facing possible execution at the hands of Kylo Ren, surely as tense and dreary a situation as that faced by the poor sap Vader choked out at the start of A New Hope.

But rather than legitimize Ren as an intimidating villain, the film chooses to undercut him: Poe mocks the gravity of the situation in the cheeky, Avengers-esque humor that’s become all the rage. “Who speaks first? Do you speak first? Do I speak first?” he queries. It’s cute, no doubt, but it’s a strange choice: Rather than situate us inside the world of epic conflict we’ve missed for so long, it mocks it.

And it continues. When Finn appeals to Poe’s moral sensibilities during their escape, Poe responds with the deadpan observation, “You need a pilot.” Finn, with timing that could have been ripped right out of The Office, admits, “I need a pilot.” It’s funny, but it’s a joke at the expense of an actual moral awakening — which is exactly what an epic space opera might need.

There’s nothing wrong with humor in Star Wars. Comic relief has always been a part of the series. But the humor of the original trilogy — a wry dig from Han Solo, a hypochondriacal comment from C-3PO, a surprising new gadget in R2’s arsenal — never undermined the reality of the Star Wars universe, or the drama that unfolded inside it. Star Wars humor is classic; the kind of jokes that a storyteller might convey to an audience in the oral tradition. (Appropriately, it’s the droids, whom Lucas has always considered the storytellers, who often serve up comic relief in the original trilogy.) TFA’s jokes, by comparison, feel trendy and performative. Will we still laugh in 30 years when Finn gets so excited taunting Captain Phasma that he has to be checked by Han Solo? Or will we say, “Eh, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler did it better?”

Again, this isn’t to say that the jokes weren’t funny – they were. But their presence in the place of actual epic drama, and the way they needle at the dramatic world of Star Wars itself, should give us pause. Have we used up our suspension of disbelief? Has our approach to escapist cinema changed so much in 30 years that a straight space opera is no longer possible? Or, asked another way, can we still take Star Wars seriously?

What gives Star Wars its lasting power, its enduring hold on the American imagination, may well be its perfect distillation of our national psyche. Its central story – that of a young dreamer coming of age, seeking freedom from a world of authority, finding companionship among a band of friends – is as American as they come. Coupled with a vision of a technologically–enhanced future in which Manifest Destiny extends into the far reaches of space, it’s no wonder that Lucas’s tale has become a de facto religion in the U.S. and beyond.

But each of those narrative elements is inherently political, and if the story of Star Wars can proceed no further, if TFA is forced to reboot and joke about the universe it inhabits rather than believe in its ability to grow, then it may stem from the fact that the political struggles that once made Star Wars resonate so strongly remain largely and frustratingly unsolved in our own modern world. We can’t tell a story about what happens after you defeat an evil Empire because we don’t know what happens and we can’t imagine it.

For the generation that grew up watching Star Wars in basements and living rooms around the world, Empire analogs abound: Capitalism. Neoliberalism. The military-industrial complex. But in the nearly 40 years since Star Wars premiered, those global systems have only gained in strength, not weakened. For those viewers who saw in Star Wars a veiled statement about American imperialism and the Vietnam War (among them, George Lucas), the Star Wars myth must have seemed cruelly impotent as the U.S. once again entered into wars of choice.

Or perhaps it’s something more personal than a Galactic Empire: Perhaps it’s the tale of Luke, the young romantic who finds friendship and success while bucking the system. That tale, too, must ring hollow today, now that Millennials — the generation of kids who grew up believing the Star Wars myth— earn less money than their parents and are more stressed. For that generation, the dream of up-ending the established order has been smashed on the rocks of high rent, student loans, non-existent pensions, and a political system increasingly viewed as corrupt. Today, if a child of promise and intelligence wanted to emulate Luke (or Rey) and overthrow the establishment, we wouldn’t tell them to rebel. We’d tell them to join a startup.

Even fascism, the easiest Empire allegory of all and one long-thought discredited in the U.S., came galloping back into America last year with the rise of a presidential candidate who, perhaps not coincidentally, launched his campaign with the statement, “The American Dream is dead.”

Now that we know what happens to the heroes we grew up with — and now that we’ve found that it’s more of the same, that the world of Star Wars is, like our own, stuck in a loop of the same political and spiritual problems, of indistinguishable battles and wars without end — can anyone really care about their outcome? Star Wars should move forward, and in the best parts of The Force Awakens, it does just that. But Han Solo can only die once, and if that’s the only interesting thing left to do in the Star Wars universe, then perhaps it’s time to move on.

Star Wars can’t be blamed for the intractable political problems of our own world, of course. But even as a vessel for escapism, the world of Star Wars seems to be running dry. Can its story move forward? Can our own? Let’s hope so, because if not, next December will find us in a world full of Star Wars makeup and Ubers and window displays, and no Star Wars.

‘The Force Awakens’ Means We Don’t Have to Care About Star Wars Anymore was originally published in Movie Time Guru on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

1) How great this phone is, and

2) That no one else seems aware of its existence.

Sony could be a solid performer in the American smartphone marketplace, but instead it focuses on Japan and Europe, leaving its U.S. division — like its Android rivals — to get swamped by Apple, with the California giant taking a full 92% of smartphone profits in the first quarter. It’s easy for Americans to write-off Sony phones as boring, but they’ve already proven their appeal elsewhere: In Japan, for instance, Sony already has 12.3% of the market. Now, no one’s suggesting that Sony could capture Apple-level profits here in the U.S., but they could at least be a Samsung-level player (at 15% of smartphone profits and about 29% of U.S. market share) if they made a few very affordable changes. Here’s my take on what those are:

1) Marketing

Sony phones pack a ton of great features, from magnetic charging to waterproof design, but there’s one that stands out above all: Battery life. Ask any iPhone user for their number one complaint, and you’ll hear it: Their battery is dead by lunch. They WISH someone made a phone with a battery that could last all day. And here’s what’s crazy: That phone exists. The Sony Xperia Z1 Compact, for instance, has a battery that can last a full 2 days, but Sony seems downright opposed to telling U.S. customers. This should be their all-out, banner claim: Our phone’s battery is mindblowingly awesome.

Another great feature to which the world is oblivious: Hi-res audio. Sony phones can play damn-fine audio that makes other phones sound like crap. Given that users dish out top dollar for headphones and streaming services that (claim to) provide top-notch audio, it’s insane that Sony doesn’t talk this feature up. Their best bet? Pay will.i.am to mix a song on an Xperia device and put him on every damn channel talking up how great the sound is. “But you just have to hear it on a Sony,” he’ll implore.

2) Content

Video content delivery is wildly valuable, as evidenced by the studios and streaming services frantically trying to cut each other out and profit more. Netflix and Amazon are making their own content. Fox and Disney created their own streaming service, Hulu. And Sony? Sony has Crackle.

You could be forgiven for forgetting that Crackle exists. Hell, even Sony forgot it existed last year. Maybe it’s poor marketing, or maybe it’s because the viewing experience on Crackle is a hellish nightmare of yesteryear: Movies are repeatedly interrupted by ads. It’s a nauseating practice that should be unthinkable in 2015, but hey, the world is a terrible place. You know what’s not terrible? The movies and TV shows available on Crackle, with titles including Bruno, Ghostbusters, and Seinfeld. That’s right: Seinfeld, the show that Hulu just paid upwards of $700,000 per episode to obtain. Crackle has had it for YEARS, and the fact that you don’t know this is proof that someone should be fired today.

So how could Sony use this content to leverage its smartphone business? By making content-viewing on Crackle ad-free if you’re watching on a Sony device. (This could help out some of its other hardware as well. Its troubled TV business? Sure. Tablets? Why not. But smartphones? Definitely.)

Sony is the only player who could control content from its production all the way through to its display on an audience’s screen. Just imagine what Netflix or Amazon would do with that power. Augmented reality? Social TV? Offline viewing? Sony’s ownership of production, delivery, and hardware should make it wildly powerful, but it squanders its strength.

3. More Carriers

This one’s obvious. Currently T-Mobile and Verizon are the only U.S. carriers offering Sony phones, though Sony is reportedly working to change that.

Bottom Line

Sony makes great phones which could do well in the U.S. without any major hardware changes, save for the those demanded by new carriers. Its domination of the content production and delivery process should give it superpowers, but it could capture a larger share of the U.S. market based on its current offerings alone. Until it does, we’re all doomed to a life without free streaming Ghostbusters.

What I didn’t know was that I’d find a hidden spoiler in the exhibit. It was a shocking discovery, given Matthew Weiner’s obsession with preserving his show’s secrecy. (A prescient one, as we’re reminded by today’s Game of Throne leaks.)

It wasn’t terribly difficult to find, either. One of the first photographs visitors encounter shows Weiner and his staff assembled in the writer’s room, picture-perfect smiles flashing around the table. (Forgive the quality of these images. I had to sneak these pictures when the museum’s staff wasn’t looking.) A normal photo, perhaps, except for one detail: the exposed whiteboard to the left of the group. For anyone who’s ever filmed or photographed inside an office (I’ve done more of that than I care to admit) this is a bright red flag. Whiteboards are where all the great ideas (and the shitty ones, to be honest) are laid out. Nobody wants that work revealed prematurely, especially not the writers of a suspenseful drama.

And these were some revealing notes. “PLANE HIJACKINGS” reads one, which could lend credence to theories that Don will become famed criminal D.B. Cooper. Then a bland note about Thanksgiving: “CHESTNUT STUFFING.” But then, a return to the sensational: “SAL RETURNS,” and incredibly, “HARRY’S FUNERAL.” I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Was it possible that Weiner had let such important secrets slip? Had he finally screwed up?

I read on through pupils the size of silver dollars:

“LISA’S AT THE BOARD SHE’S NEVER AT THE BOARD SO YOU KNOW THIS IS FAKE!”

Ah. Damn it.

The “Lisa” referred to is undoubtedly Lisa Albert, a producer/writer standing beside the board. She’s also a comedian, apparently.

Jokes aside, the exhibit is a treat for any Mad Men fan. If you’re in NYC — or, hell, the tristate area — make the trip.

Just don’t waste your time looking for spoilers.

The new teaser for Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a moody, intriguing preview of J.J. Abrams’ vision for the Star Wars universe. At 88 seconds, it gets a couple things right and some things very, very wrong.

First, let’s give Abrams some credit: If nothing else, this sounds like a Star Wars film. The familiar shriek of X-wing engines and landspeeders, the hum of a lightsaber, and that final whir of the Millennium Falcon as it soars across the sands of (what is almost certainly) Tatooine. This matters; the sounds of Star Wars are as iconic as its sights, and yet these don’t appear to be samples. Abrams and his sound team seem to have revamped the Star Wars soundscape without falling into mimicry or scuttling the legacy of previous films.

The voice-over — dark, foreboding, cryptic — is on-point as well. There’s plenty of speculation as to its source, and the name Benedict Cumberbatch is being thrown around a bit too much for my liking. When the Star Trek-directing Abrams was announced as director, Star Wars fans were already a bit incensed. (A good friend told me “It’s like cousins kissing.”) If Abrams brings over a Star Trek villain, he might as well put Luke aboard the Enterprise.

If the teaser’s sounds are dead-on, its visuals fall short. I’m not saying these shots aren’t pretty, fun, or exhilarating. They are. But they don’t look like Star Wars. From its opening shot of an endless desert, suddenly interrupted by a sweaty man in stormtrooper armor, the trailer plants us firmly in the realm of subjective experience. It continues: a tracking shot of a soccer ball-like droid. A shaky close-up on a stormtrooper ready for battle. From close behind, we follow a dark-hooded figure through a snowy forest. These are engaging shots, but they’re the stuff of sci-fi action-adventure films. And, though it’s easy to forget, that’s not what Star Wars is.

It’s a space opera, as much about epic mythology and galactic-scale adventures as it is about any one of its main characters. Like the heroes of ancient mythology, the characters of Star Wars have always inhabited a narrative bigger than themselves, and as such the details of their human suffering go unreported. Cut by a lightsaber? They don’t bleed. Tortured on some weird electro-table thing? They don’t scar. Lost in the desert? They don’t sweat. You’ll never see a close-up on Luke Skywalker’s pores, or a POV from Han’s blaster. Interesting as these shots may be, they make the epic tale of Star Wars into a subjective, personal experience, and that’s just not the scale at which the drama of Star Wars occurs.

“Wouldn’t it be cool to see things at that level, though?” you might ask. Well yes, it would. And Disney has already realized that, which is why we’ll see spin-off films every other summer from now until we die. Those are the perfect vehicles for exploring the Star Wars universe through a less-grandiose lens. But this is Episode VII, the continuation of the monumental narrative that made us love this unlikely universe in the first place. This isn’t a sandbox for J.J. Abrams to play in.

And, speaking of vehicles and play, I have to talk about that final shot of the Millennium Falcon. Did my heart soar with the majestic bucket of bolts? Yes. But is the inverted perspective warranted? For a film whose aerial battles are based on World War II films, the sweeping, upside-down shot just read too modern. It felt like — and I can say this from experience — a kid playing with his Star Wars toys. (It’s also VERY reminiscent of Abrams’ first Star Trek film. Is your cousin a good kisser, J.J?)

In fact, the teaser basically gets all its ships wrong. Whether we’re seeing X-wings cruise over lakes or TIE fighters zip around the dunes of Tatooine, we’re not seeing any space battles, which is kinda odd considering the film is called Star Wars. Taken by itself, this isn’t particularly worrisome. It’s just a teaser, after all. But it gets a bit more alarming when you realize that Disney is making similar mistakes in its animated series, Star Wars Rebels, which will likely tie-in to the new film as part of Disney’s “make Star Wars into another Avengers universe” strategy. In Rebels, we’re seeing a LOT of TIE fighters serving as in-atmosphere patrol vehicles, with fighter pilots doubling as some kind of Imperial police force. Pilots regularly exit their craft to hassle civilians, despite the fact that the only door on their ship is 10 feet off the ground, with nary a ladder in sight. (The show conspicuously cuts away every time someone has to get in or out of a TIE fighter.) In fact, some of the now-discarded literature claims that TIE fighters aren’t even designed to land on their wings, though they do so regularly in Rebels. This begs the question: does Disney understand, or even care, about putting space ships in space?

Lastly, I’m not going to get into the controversy over this new lightsaber, but I’ll say this: If we’re forced to continue the prequel-created tradition of re-inventing the lightsaber every film, then eventually we’ll end up with this:

Lest I leave you thinking I’m an implacable curmudgeon, let me mention a few good things about this teaser:

• As Alex Fitzpatrick has already written, the choice to open with a POC is a good one. Maybe not “this totally makes up for the near-total lack of POC in the original trilogy” good, but good nonetheless.
• There were a couple shots that most definitely belonged in a Star Wars film. They’re below.

I’ll have more to say, I’m sure, as we see more from Star Wars: The Force Awakens.