Borkowski Weekly Media Trends 22-10-21
Vienna, OnlyFans & high art | John Wick's Mel Gibson misfire | Literary Catfish in Spain | Facebook's latest Zuck up
Stuntwatch presents: Vienna Tourist board takes baroque to OnlyFans
The Vienna Tourist Board this week has protested the increasingly Puritanical algorithmic moderation of the Old Masters in a humorous stunt in which they uploaded great works by Modligiani, Egon Schiele, and even Rubens to their profile on OnlyFans, a website known for allowing users to subscribe directly to creators of adult content, their apparent last refuge in a world where Facebook increasingly outlaws the depiction of nudity however fictional.
The decision comes after previous attempts to feature works from Vienna’s various collections to traditional social media platforms—including Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok—were continually blocked for promoting “potentially pornographic” content. Consequently, the Venus of Willendorf—the 30,000 year old figurine which Facebook censored—now shares the platform with the likes of Cardi B, Bella Thorne and a bevy of amateur ‘content creators’.
Algorithms are notoriously bad at dileneating the boundary between art and pornography. (Although we might also remind readers that this boundary is not an automatic one neatly following the boundary between photography and the plastic arts; indeed many found Rubens’ paintings to be pornographic at the time of their making…) However few however averse to butts and thongs on childrens’ screens would dispute that Egon Schiele’s canvases are of great artistic worth, and no one—literally no one—thinks that Les Demoiselles d’Avignon will pollute young minds.
Moralists have always sought to shield young eyes from religious art (how many 19th century novels begin with an implied sexual awakening at the young girl protagonists’s stolen glimpse of a medeival Torso), and let us not forget that certain quarters of the Archeaological Museum of Naples (those featuring racy Pompeiian fare) still require a teacher or guardian’s supervision. Arguably, it is this misplaced hypervigiliance that projects its own prurience back on to the works which are quite innocent. As Dr. Johnson, the encyclopaedist, retorted to a concerned mom outraged at the presence of dirty words in his Dictionary of the English Language, ‘you must have been looking for them, Madam.’
John Wick TV spin-off kicked into touch by Mel Gibson
In a twist that has stunned fans, the acclaimed movie franchise John Wick has recently announced controversial Mel Gibson to star in the upcoming TV spinoff.
For those unfamiliar with the neo-noir action film John Wick, critics and movie nerds have praised the franchise for its racially diverse cast and featuring the first non-binary character in a blockbuster-type film. Plus meme-extraordinaire and beloved Hollywood legend Keanu Reeves plays the lead role exceptionally well.
So the decision to cast the antisemitic, violent and sexist Gibson is a head-scratcher to everyone bar the casting crew of The Continental. For many, the recent announcement will have been the first time most fans will have heard of the new TV spinoff. To surreptitiously drop Mel Gibson's name in the news release is an extraordinary decision as if the producers expected fans to embrace this kooky decision as a maverick play.
It hasn't worked out. The Continental's latest announcement has been hijacked by Mel Gibson and his terrible track record on and off film sets. Commercially he's a complete disaster. Gibson hasn't found success in an action series since 2014 in The Expendables 3, playing a minor role.
The producers and creators will hope that Keanu Reeve's groundwork on the previous three John Wick films will be enough to draw in a crowd large enough to eclipse bad press surrounding Mel Gibson.
Plot Twist: Catfish at the Planeta Literary Awards
As the old axiom goes, behind every successful woman… is three men pretending to be her. After masquerading as a solo female writer for years, an incognito triumvirate of Spanish male writers have been tempted into the limelight by the €1 million Planeta literary prize.
The trio published strikingly graphic horror novels that many described as Spain's answer to Elena Ferrante, but the greatest fiction of all was the pseudonym 'Carmen Mola' that they used to pen their writing. Through interviews and press releases, they constructed Mola's identity as a professor and single mother of three who authored these ultra-violent pieces in her spare time. The three men explain that it wasn't an attempt to opportune the female voice in a canon saturated with men but an effort to preserve anonymity: 'we didn't hide behind a women, we hid behind a name.'
But why choose a woman then? From the Brontë Sisters to Louisa May Alcott, the English-speaking canon is studded with women reliant on male pseudonyms for privacy or gender equity at times when the craft was largely inhospitable to female authors. Many predecessors like George Eliot ('I wish always to be quoted as George Eliot') maintained their pen names even upon revelation, militating against the divulgence of her personal life to the public. So, if privacy is the modus operandi, then why choose a female smokescreen when male identities are the time-honoured convention for pseudonymous publication? And why let such a highly-wrought, long-maintained cover slip upon the success of their first major award?
The year prior, 'Mola' had appeared alongside writers like Margaret Atwood in the Women's Institute's most important list of female writers to 'help us understand the reality and the experiences of women'. Yet, given that the coverage on this has exclusively titled the trio as 'three middle-aged men' or 'three men in their 40s and 50s', what could have been intended as a critical commentary on gender dynamics and authorial self-construction in today's literary landscape has instead been received as a creepy and contrived stunt (or, rather, catfish) to exploit the feminist movement for sales. Opening up to the notion that they felt like female writers had more capital in today's social climate would have at least been a more compelling, albeit still shameless, response than thought-terminating cliches on fame and privacy that weaken upon the slightest hint of commercial recognition. I'd turn incognito mode back on if I were you.
Facebook’s latest Zuck Up
Big news from Zuckerberg Towers this week. In what has been dubbed Facebook’s ‘worst PR crisis’ since Cambridge Analytica, former employee Frances Haugen has appeared before US Senators with tens of thousands of leaked documents, claiming that Facebook has repeatedly put “astronomical profits before people”.
After almost two decades of running the biggest social media companies in the world, perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Facebook Inc. has announced it will be completely rebranding. The various accusations that have been levied at the tech behemoth over the years (including, but certainly not limited to, the proliferation of fake news, enabling of extremism, promotion of unrealistic beauty standards, destruction of teens’ mental health, failure protect employees, failure to protect customer data…) have been difficult to shake – mostly because they are all, to a degree, true. Faced with a defensive Nick Clegg (Deputy Prime Minister turned Facebook Inc.’s Vice President of Global Affairs) this week, one CNN presenter quipped “a part of me feels like I’m interviewing the head of a tobacco company right now.”
For Zuckerberg, a change in direction for Facebook (and for almost all internet users) must feel like a temptingly clean slate. The direction he has chosen is, of course, the Metaverse – the AR and VR innovations that will see the digital world even more seamlessly integrating with the real one. In a blog post by Clegg (he’s had a busy week), it was announced that Facebook will create 10,000 jobs across Europe for its new Metaverse projects.
Just like this promise of jobs, there’s no doubt that Facebook’s upcoming rebrand will paint a utopian gloss over its plans. But many are rightly skeptical. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey posted a powerful sub-tweet on Wednesday, highlighting how the term ‘metaverse’ was originally coined in Sci-Fi novel Snowcrash to describe ‘a virtual world owned by corporations, where end users were treated as citizens in a dystopian corporate dictatorship’. The similarities to Haugen’s testimony against Facebook ring grimly true. It all feels a bit meta.