37. Taco Shell Theory
A humble theory with applications in art, literature, film, and more.
I’m always a fan of eccentric personal theories about art and life, so here’s a comic from a few years ago which has come to mind as I’ve been working on some illustrated novels, trying to find the balance between (hopefully) entertaining form and meaningful content. Let’s call this Taco Shell Theory.
To my mind, it provides a helpful rule of thumb for avoiding the relentless dreariness and self-flagellation of certain art films and literary fiction, while also sidestepping the shallow excess of so many popular entertainments, whether the insipid excess of Hollywood movies (and don’t get me wrong, I do love a summer spectacle) or the innate disposability of page-turner airport thrillers (you know the kind: books like fat little bricks of nutritionally deficient prose).
Summer Movie-Going as a Glimpse Into the Roman Colosseum
Have you ever, when sitting in a cineplex watching the trailers before a film, felt as if you were suddenly afforded a glimpse into this moment of history, as if you zoomed out and were given a perspective from outside your own culture?
A month or so ago, in the dark of the theater with strangers around me, trailers unspooling before me, it seemed as if I were viewing the rotten, heavy fruit of a collapsing culture, one locked not merely in moral decline (see, amongst other symptoms, simulated violence played for laughs), but also decadence in terms of sheer creative impotence. The films felt so cheap, like the garish come-ons of carnival hawkers, despite also feeling like an obscene amount of money had been thrown at them. Bread and circuses.
Some dark entertainments feel seductive — titillation and violence wrapped in aesthetically enticing packaging — but this recent crop of trailers felt like a clown inviting me to jump into a pool of motor oil. No thanks, bud.
Human beings are capable of so, so much better. Of entertaining and filling. Of tacos that satisfy.
If you like this newsletter, please do tell a friend. And if you want more, may I humbly recommend to you my first novel, The Forest Museum.
