![\"\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/165686/2026/theacolyte-poster.jpg\")
Buddy cop movie, The Mandolorian and Grogu hit theaters this weekend. The film is expected to gross about $102 million dollars over the Memorial Day holiday weekend. A sizable chunk of change. It’s probably fair to say those box office receipts, more than any other factor, drive the direction of the series.
\nLest we ever forget that Star Wars is a product promotion vehicle as much as it is a film franchise, there’s Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs character Yogurt reminding us with his phrase, “merchandising, merchandising, merchandising,” as he hawks various Spaceballs products like breakfast cereals. It’s probably near incalculable how many units of toys the Star Wars franchise has moved over the years.
\nSo it’s interesting that so many think Star Wars really owes nothing to its fans.
\n\nRian Johnson already made one of the best SW movies. If they brought him back to make a whodunit where all the characters are Old Republic Jedi, it would (A) make a bazillion dollars and (B) kill off all the chuds in the SW fanbase by giving them all rage-induced heart attacks. Everyone wins!
— Kevin McLenithan ([@mclengthyname.bsky.social](http://mclengthyname.bsky.social)) May 22, 2026 at 8:08 PM
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I still see comments like that one above about Rian Johnson’s entry in the Star Wars universe, The Last Jedi. The theory being that most male fans of the series couldn’t handle a film where all the women were perfect and all the men were deeply flawed. I guess those guys are called chuds. They are also in large part responsible for the historic and ongoing success of the franchise.
\nIt’s said that no one hates Star Wars like Star Wars fans. While that may be true, it can also be said that, at least at certain times, few fan-driven properties have creators that seem to care less what the fans think. I often see comments from critics who enjoyed the lowest rated Star Wars episodic TV series, The Acolyte blaming the fans for its lack of success. One article I read claimed what Star Wars needed was to be sexier and this was a step in the right direction. Was that what the majority of devotees have been asking of the new spin offs? That they sex it up?
\nI bring up the angle of Star Wars as product because, in producing consumer entertainment, just as in producing consumer goods, one has to keep the audience in mind. I develop software, and in that business, we have to anticipate the customers wants and needs. We can’t be didactic about it, either. We don’t instruct them in what they should want and then blame them when they don’t like what we offer them. It seems to me to be a bit like post-journalism, where the journalist offers up a guiding narrative of how the consumer should feel about the facts they are providing. The creators of certain Star Wars properties want to offer the fans what they believe the fans should want, if they are to be enlightened. It comes off as patronizing, and, unsurprisingly, turns the fans off.
\nI respect the creators for wanting to take risks. It’s nice to think of Star Wars as art sometimes, that even through the sci-fi necessities of laser swords and planet destroying disco balls, it can offer stories that speak to our human condition. One can never get too far from the commercial aspects, though.
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![\"Image](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/165686/2026/duckett-corn-meal.jpg\")
\nEvery time I finish a novel in which I have invested a lot of time and emotion, I feel a bit unmoored. What other worlds are out there now that this one is gone? It’s like the characters in that world died and will be grieved. Some even after entering a new story.
\nAfter I wrapped up reading Demon Copperhead last weekend, I had these feelings. I almost shed tears at the end of the book. There are no novels piling up in a stack for me to read, so I was bereft. I was almost present in Lee County, that little corner of Appalachia where most of the book takes place, for some period. My own trip to Appalachia recently only reinforced that feeling.
\nI won’t deny that Barbara Kingsolver’s latest was a tough read. When the drug use started getting heavy, I had to put it down for a bit. My mom showed interest in reading it, and I steered her away. The extended time it took me to get through the proceedings somehow only integrated it more into my mind’s eye.
\nI’ve never lived in Appalachia, and certainly never had the foster care experience, but I do know someone in both those categories. My dad grew up in rural Eastern, NC, and would remind me of how he had to pick tobacco or shovel chicken sh*t if he ever thought I was trying to get out of doing work. In my lifetime, I saw a degradation in the neighborhood where my grandparents used to live. The last time we visited the area (after their passing), it was scary to walk down the street. This past week, 3 people were shot on that same street.
\nI’m not entirely unfamiliar with youth drug culture, either. The high school I went to has a crazy story about an LSD ring you can read about on Wikipedia. I talked with the guy who, while high on LSD and dancing naked in a field, shot a police officer with his own gun just a week before the incident while skateboarding at an outdoor mall.
\nKingsolver was masterful in crafting the voice of the protagonist of Demon Copperhead, Damon. Even if I had no experience with the challenges represented in the book, I still would have felt myself traveling in that world, painted so effortlessly as it was by the narrative voice of Damon.
\nIf you can stomach a tough read, I strongly recommend Demon Copperhead. What’s next?
", "date_published": "2026-04-03T20:56:22-04:00", "url": "https://www.canneddragons.net/2026/04/03/the-novel-cure.html", "tags": ["Culture"] }, { "id": "http://canneddragons.micro.blog/2025/08/14/of-human-bondage.html", "title": "Of Human Bondage", "content_html": "The third edition of John Brady’s This & That. zine reached my mailbox this week. As I read through it, I thought about the slower pace of communication from the past. In the book Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham, the residents of a small British town at the turn of the 20th century share a newspaper, each taking shifts throughout the day.
\n\n\nSoon after breakfast Mary Ann brought in the Times. Mr. Carey shared it with two neighbours. He had it from ten till one, when the gardener took it over to Mr. Ellis at the Limes, with whom it remained till seven; then it was taken to Miss Brooks at the Manor House, who, since she got it late, had the advantage of keeping it.
\n
There’s something quaint and romantic about having such little and proscribed access to information. It’s almost the exact opposite of what we have today, with the glut of news and entertainment that we can barely hold off.
\nI came across Of Human Bondage by way of the original film adaption of the novel (which is in the public domain). It looked interesting when I was browsing through Tubi. Tubi autoplays movies when you click on the title, even if you only intended to get more details. Once the film started, I was quickly drawn in. I like Leslie Howard and this was the film that is widely regarded as having made Bette Davis a star. You get a sense as to why in the infamous scene in which Davis chews through the scenery like only she can after Howard’s character, Philip, tells her she disgusts him.
\n\nOf Human Bondage - “Wipe my mouth” (YouTube)
\nMy wife was distracted by Davis’ intermittent cockney accent in the scene, but as The Radio Times Guide To Film puts it, “Bette Davis proves her credentials in this latter role, offering a nuanced portrayal that rises above her cockney accent.”1
\nIt’s trite to say the book is better than the movie, but in this case, you could argue that is objectively the case. The events depicted in the movie don’t even begin until a full 40% of the book is complete. The emotions that are either unexplored or inexplicable on the screen come through more fully realized on the page.
\nDavis hired a nanny with a cockney accent to prep for the role. ↩︎
\nCulture: An Owner’s Manual has an edition focused on the significance of Rocky IV as a cultural artifact.
\n\n\nBut unlike most bad films made in 1985, Rocky IV remains fascinating nearly forty years later. It has great value to us in 2024 as a relic — an artwork that embodies the unique stylistic choices of a particular point in time. Rocky IV is a time-traveling passport to 1985: the Manichaean Reaganite politics, the sassy robot maid, the soundtrack of power ballads and cold digital synths, the artless action-film editing and over-use of freeze-frame fade-outs, the casual lack of verisimilitude in using Wyoming as a stand-in for the Russian countryside.
\n
My wife was arguing tonight that much of indie music in the 90s still sounds fresh and timeless today. I can see that in some ways, but overall I think the 90s was the last decade to have a real distinctiveness to its culture. You couldn’t make Empire Records or Belly’s “Feed The Tree” today. They just wouldn’t feel right in the current context.
\n", "date_published": "2025-05-16T18:52:23-04:00", "url": "https://www.canneddragons.net/2025/05/16/culture-an-owners-manual-has.html", "tags": ["Culture"] }, { "id": "http://canneddragons.micro.blog/2025/04/02/moondrop-displacement-entry.html", "title": "Moondrop Displacement Entry", "content_html": "W. David Marx writes on his blog Culture about 10,000 Maniacs and the earnest progressivism of the early alternative music culture.
\n\n\nCertainly 10,000 Maniacs were a bit over-the-top, but they fit seamlessly in the general aesthetic of “alternative” culture. Progressivism was cool in the 1980s. Merchant worked at a health food store, and before joining the band, considered a career in special-needs education. She was the one who pushed REM’s Michael Stipe to lurch towards more political content. These were the Reagan-Bush years, and artists resisted by drawing attention to the social ills that conservatives didn’t care about.
\n
He contrasts that sort of authentic hope for change with today’s music, which has a very cynical live for the moment ethos. “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
\n\n\nDespite society still considering child abuse, adult illiteracy, and alcoholism to be bad things, the 10,000 Maniacs’ songs now feel quite incongruent with the last three decades of pop music. In an age of “Turn Down for What” and “California Gurls [sic],” 10,000 Maniacs’ lyrics are definitely not “fun,” which has become the singular criteria for valuing culture.
\n
Of course, the 10,000 Maniacs were successful for what they were and the niche they occupied, but they shouldn’t be compared with mass market music, which was certainly present in the late 80s and early nineties. Still, even among the mainstream artists of that period, it was an insult to your craft to be called out for the single-minded pursuit of money or market success. That has changed in the last couple of decades (and is particularly correlated with the rise in hip hop and poptimism).
\n\n\nCapital accumulation is somehow the most transgressive act possible. “I just might be a Black Bill Gates in the making,” proclaims Beyoncé in her political anthem “Formation.”
\n
We’ve reached a point where even the snobbiest of music critics won’t chastise an artist for crass commercialism. Have you ever read a negative review of a Beyoncé record in a mainstream publication?
", "date_published": "2025-04-02T21:58:19-04:00", "url": "https://www.canneddragons.net/2025/04/02/moondrop-displacement-entry.html", "tags": ["Culture"] }, { "id": "http://canneddragons.micro.blog/2025/03/22/uncle-crizzle-resurfaces.html", "title": "Uncle Crizzle Resurfaces", "content_html": "Back when our local newspaper, The News & Observer, was more of a going concern, I used to dig following the columns from Craig D. Lindsey. Lindsey, AKA Uncle Crizzle, had a keen eye for culture and finding overlooked treasures. When the paper let him go as part of broader cutbacks, I considered it a real setback to their coverage of the arts.1
\nI remember reading on Lindsey’s Tumblr around the time of this dismissal from the newspaper that he was going through a time of real struggle. This was right around the time that the nation was facing a particularly strong sense of outrage about the treatment of minorites by the authorities. He felt a lack of self-worth. The demand for those in his profession was abating (at least in the sense that they could find paying work). Frankly, I was worried about the guy.
\nAbout a month ago, I did some searches to see if Lindsey was actively publishing in some capacity. I wasn’t able to turn up much and I wondered where he ended up. Then, yesterday, when I was going through items I had starred in my feed reader, I came across a post in Paste Magazine from Lindsey about cult classic film The Last Dragon. I hadn’t previously heard of the film, but the piece was able to draw in my interest. Coming on the heels of the golden age of blaxploitation and the popularity of kung-fu and shameless in its use of an 80s pop tune from DeBarge, its hard not to appreciate its over-the-top celebration of now faded fascinations.2
\n\nThe Last Dragon - Official Trailer (YouTube)
\nI’ve added The Last Dragon to my movie queue and I’m pleased to see Uncle Crizzle back in action.
\nSome may take issue with my use of the phrase “the arts” here, because we tend to think that portains to disciplines like ballet or opera, but I don’t like to make distinctions between “pop culture” and just plain “culture.” These are all artifacts that make up our experiences. ↩︎
\nFull disclosure, completely independently of this piece, I had listened to DeBarge’s “Rhythm Of The Night” earlier in the day, so perhap I was primed for this. ↩︎
\n![\"\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/165686/2024/manwouldking.jpg\")
\nOne of my all-time favorite films is John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King. I was first introduced to the movie adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling short story from 1888 by my English teacher in my senior year of high school. Kipling’s novel encapsulates some of the folly and hubris of the British adventures in Afghanistan in the 19th century by infusing its characters with the attitudes of empire. In the film, Michael Caine and Sean Connery play British ex-military who dream much and doubt their abilities little. They set their sites on bringing the martial prowess learned in their earlier days to a remote area of Afghanistan known as Kafiristan to form their own kingdom.
\nAfter crossing treacherous and unforgiving mountains, the film’s two main characters do, little by little, one tribe at a time, find themselves ruling over the natives of the area. Their success owes itself to the guns the men bring with them and their tactical skill in using them to subdue their enemies. They also bring knowledge of governance borrowed broadly from the British Empire, particularly the Dutch East India Trading Company. As their success grows, Connery’s character succumbs to the force of his own internal narrative that he is, as the natives proclaim him to be, the descendent of Alexander the Great. This gives him a god-like status that he comes to embrace, against the protestations of Caine’s character.
\nInevitably, the illusion is dispelled and the British adventurers are discovered to be mortal. Their downfall is as swift as it is brutal as the Kafiris drive them out. Their hasty departure mirrors the initial British exit under pressure in Kabul in 1842, which saw only one British soldier survive to reach their destination in Jalalabad. His compatriots at the base there asked him where the army was, to which he famously replied, I am the army.
\nOnly a few short years after the story was published by Kipling, Kafiristan was conquered by Abdur Rahman Khan, who converted the pagan Kafiris to Islam. The area was renamed Nuristan (“land of light”). Nuristan continued to be fairly autonomous, even after the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban in the 1990s.
\nAzam Ahmed tells the tale of how the Americans came to Nuristan after 9/11 and turned an area that was suspicious of the Taliban into a stronghold for the group (NYT gift article). The Americans brought their tactical superiority and advanced weaponry to the area and, over a few years, managed to turn even their initial allies against them by virtually indiscriminate killings and misunderstanding the culture of the area. Even after the American military was essentially driven out by Taliban-backed local militias, they returned simply to bomb the area, murdering civilians and ensuring the populace would never forgive them.
\nI will be pondering Ahmed’s article for a long time, and I can’t help but think of the parallels to the Kipling story. The analogy isn’t perfect, of course, but it maintains the thread of a more advanced civilization underestimating the power of a more primitive one. Kipling isn’t the only creator to have explored this concept. Even George Lucas mined the idea for his third Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi. Lucas has spoken specifically about the desire to show a simple culture (the Ewoks) defeating a technologically modern military. Many fans have debated the wisdom of making the Ewoks so childish, but the point was made.
\nThe Man Who Would Be King is currently available to stream for free on Tubi.
", "date_published": "2024-12-14T11:48:00-04:00", "url": "https://www.canneddragons.net/2024/12/14/the-man-who.html", "tags": ["Culture"] } ] }