Cutting off a finger for stealing has been considered just punishment for a lot of human history, and in some places, it still is. And is it really the storyteller's place to judge? It'll almost certainly make him a worse storyteller, and who cares about his judgment anyway?
Thanks for posting this at lunchtime so I could join the thread, heebie!
Ogged, I thought that was a good angle of this critique: Is it journalism or is it storytelling? The man who invited the reporter to the town in the first place certainly wanted investigative journalism to take place, and the critique is pretty cutting in saying that the reporter accepted police responses at face value and didn't dig deeper on the original alleged crime.
Curious to hear whether people who have actually listened to the podcast think this is a fair critique....
Is that too feisty? I know nothing about the podcast, and haven't clicked through, but I hate everything about the author of that excerpt. Go fuck yourself, you posturing cow fart.
Ha. Sorry, missed your response. I feel better now, and I'll stand aside for more informed responses.
Delete all the podcasts. God will know His own.
the critique is pretty cutting
Ba dum bum.
I thought you were supposed to cut off a hand. Cutting of a finger just encourages theft.
7: If you cut off a finger, they won't be able to properly wield a sword anymore. That seriously reduces future employment opportunities in the wandering ronin sector.
Also when they add 5+5 they get 11.
I listened to part of the first episode but my take was if I wanted to hear a self-absorbed southern gay guy spin out overdramatized paranoid fantasies, I could do that much close to home and pay someone to make me drinks during. Reading a bunch of spoilers hadn't moved me from this take.
I listened to the podcast, and I wouldn't consider it a fair critique at all.
SPOILER ALERT
The whole narrative arc of the story is that you're initially presented with Tyler as this put-upon rascally if lovable victim, and as the story unfolds, you begin to realize that it's not an accurate portrayal, and that Tyler is not the man you think he might be (in fact, no one is really the person you might think they are). The journalist doesn't have to overtly pass judgment, because, well, it speaks for itself that cutting off someone's fingers is wrong and horrifying. He also doesn't apologize for or downplay the statement either. No one comes away listening from the whole thing thinking Tyler is a good guy.
"The way that Reed says "man" in that moment--the "man" that one man says to another man to remind them both that they are men, together"
This is totally how I use the word man and how the word man is always spoken around me. Who can forget the way The Big Lebowski used this connotation for great effect.
Thanks, Buttercup. Did you read the whole critique? If so, just curious what you thought about the Confederate flag point. It sounded awfully manipulative (by the journalist) to me but again I have strong biases here.
When I teach thesis writing, I tell students to avoid overtly evaluative statements because it takes away from the impact of simply presenting material. Letting things speak for themselves is generally more powerful and persuasive.
See, that's a really interesting point (14) that I have extremely mixed emotions about. I've repeatedly had academically-trained people say exactly that to me, but as an advocate my experience is that in many cases that is emphatically not true.
I've done literally hundreds of presentations to a huge variety of audiences (firefighters, social workers, librarians, teachers, journalists, legislators) and I often find that if I just leave people to draw their own conclusions, they go wildly off-base. Often this is because people aren't very numerate, but even in cases where I'm not talking about statistical facts, but simply human stories, they draw conclusions that aren't just opposite to what I'm advocating for (which would be fine) but are bizarrely implausible or far-fetched.
It may be that I'm too immersed in my own experience and extrapolating inappropriately here, but even outside the advocacy realm when I see (say) Nikole Hannah-Jones try to talk about her This American Life project on Twitter, apparently educated people seem to be drawing sweepingly wrong conclusions from her journalism.
During the Hundred Years War, the French would cut off the middle finger of captured longbow men so that they could no longer use their bows made of yew. To show defiance, the English archers would show their middle fingers to the French while shouting "Pluck Yew."
I often find that if I just leave people to draw their own conclusions, they go wildly off-base
This is the truest thing ever.
Shorter me: "Letting things speak for themselves" seems to presume that people have a bedrock of critical thinking skills. My experience is that many do not.
Is anybody ever letting things speak for themselves? The author is always making choices about what to reveal and how much ink to spill on it, and what to keep hidden.
I assume "let things speak for themselves" means "deliberately leave the conclusion ambiguous" in practice.
Even people with all their fingers are generally shitheads.
13
I just skimmed it, and reading it made me wonder if we were really listening to the same podcast. It was abundantly clear that the white people in S-Town were racist neo-Confederates, including to some extent John. There was a whole scene where the writer talked about his immense discomfort in the tattoo parlor because everyone had racist tattoos and was saying racist stuff, and his own dilemma over what to say, and worrying about calling attention to himself as a Jew with a black wife. In fact, one of the underlying threads of the podcast was the discomfort of being a Jewish Yankee in a place where Jews and Yankees probably weren't too welcome, and the reporter's alternating fear and relief around how he's interpreted by the locals.
One of the main points I got out of the podcast, one which doesn't paint anyone in the town too well, is that people have a culture of complaining about any and everything, with no seeming distinction or understanding that some things are actual injustices and some are of people's own making, and that painting oneself as a constant victim of life allows one to avoid responsibility for choices and impedes actively making one's life better. Tyler is presented as a prime example of someone who was dealt a shitty hand and preceded to make that hand shittier through constant terrible life choices. Because the author is from a different place, it took him awhile to realize that, and we're given the story from the author's POV, so his realization is our realization.
I could see how, if you're familiar with that dynamic, the first few episodes would feel naive and indulgent, but if you listen to the whole thing, I think you are able to retrospectively recognize the naivite and indulgence in the first episodes.
19
No, and that's the art of writing a persuasive academic paper. You have to present material in a way that tells a story that allows the reader to come to the conclusion that you want them to come to. Being too clunky or too subtle ruins it. With undergrads, the clunkiness is more of a problem, so I have to tell them to tone it down.
18
It's more than likely other people didn't listen to S-Town like I did, but I thought it was pretty explicit in its negative portrayal of Tyler and even John. I mean, one of the conclusions was that John had probably given himself mercury poisoning, which explained most of his personality.
Explicitness didn't work for me at all.
Maybe a better way of framing it is show not tell. Like, instead of telling you that X is racist and providing no evidence, I present material and then an interpretation so that you can see, given the material, how X is racist. I feel like the reporter did a good job presenting material to show that Tyler was a shitty person. (E.g. fact checking Tyler's statements and noting that they were pretty much 100% false, investigating crimes Tyler is charged with and showing that he did indeed do some shady stuff, and interviewing sympathetic characters who are being screwed over by Tyler). By the time Tyler talks about cutting off fingers, it's presented as the climax of our realization that Tyler is an asshole. I suppose the reporter could have connected the dots more clearly, but the way he chose to present the information was presented was pretty clear in telling that story.
I guess what I think is that the reporter's decision in how to construct the story leads us to conclude that Tyler is an asshole, and so he doesn't need to overtly say it, because he's already so much as said it in how he lays out the material.
The journalist doesn't have to overtly pass judgment
Brian Reed, along with his TAL buddies, edited the podcasts. They included certain parts of interviews and left other parts on the cutting-room floor. They structured and shaped the narrative. Is that covert? I don't think so, but maybe.
Looks like Syed's new trial starts next month.
Who can forget the way The Big Lebowski used this connotation for great effect.
"This week on Serial, new shit has come to light, man."
I added S-Town to my subs list shortly after it was released, but I still haven't listened to it (other than the constant trails on TAL and related podcasts). Mainly for the reasons Thorn describes.
I was wondering when an S-town thread would appear.
I don't have time to write the comment I want to right now; I listened to the whole thing fairly soon after release and then was stuck with a bunch of processing I wanted to talk to somebody about and had no-one handy to share with.
The very short version is that I found it good listening in a mostly forgettable way until the 2nd-to-last episode where there was a lot of time spent on what being a gay guy John's age in the south can feel like, and being a gay guy from the south not too far from John's age, I found it incredibly moving and all I could think about for days afterwards. There was a little bit of my own experience that I've never before heard so truly recounted by someone else.
And then I read some dumbass Slate piece about how supposedly it got The Gay all wrong and was too pissed off to read any more criticism of S-town. So, probably, fuck that guy/gal who wrote the one linked in the OP.
Huh, 28 is interesting because one reason I didn't continue was an assumption it would turn into what the slate piece said. I'm technically southern but don't identify that way, though a whole lot of my gay friends are and do.
I was wondering when an S-town thread would appear.
Me too!
I just finished S-town the other day, and I'm still processing my reaction. I also found chapter 6 (next-to-last episode) very moving, and heartbreaking, in its exploration of what it was like for John to be a gay man in a small town in Alabama. But I was troubled by Brian Reed's decision to reveal details of a conversation (concerning John's romantic history) that he had promised to keep off the record. And also troubled, if I'm being honest, by my own decision to keep listening, even though that violation of a confidence made me feel a bit squeamish.
I'm technically southern but don't identify that way
Me toooooooo.
I think Witt and Buttercup can both be right. I distantly know a (successful) defense attorney who told me his strategy in a jury trial is this. He wants to make the argument that A implies B implies C implies D, so his client is innocent. The argument he actually makes is A implies B implies C, and he lets the jury come to D on their own. An argument is more effective if it feels like it's your own conclusion, but there has to be enough momentum behind it so that you come to the pre-ordained conclusion and not go wildly off-base. The art is knowing the size of gap for your audience.
32:
This is really difficult to do well. But so effective.
I try to sell a similar concept to my clients. If you try to explicitly oversell yourself, the judge will be moving away from you.
You have to judge yourself slightly more than the judge will.
Also, if you pee on the judge's leg, don't tell her it is raining.
32 I'm not actually sure what you mean here. In your closing argument, you have to tell the jury that you think the evidence points to not guilty as the correct verdict, just as in a civil case, you have to tell them what your clients wants as the proper result. And you have to tell them how the evidence should lead them to that conclusion.
In your opening, you've told the jury what you think the evidence is going to be, and why it's important, and what result you're looking for.
As the evidence comes in, you don't really get to comment on it directly -- this is where it's different from an undergrad writing a paper -- but the jury has to already have a context for why this that or the other detail matters, or they may not notice or remember that evidence.
If your argument is A implies C implied C implied D, I think you have to say that, and say that ABCD are true and show your work, while maybe leaving the trail between B and C vague enough for them to fill in. Also unlike an undergraduate paper, you have someone explicitly making the argument that A does not imply B does not imply C does not imply D immediately before or after you get to make your presentation.
NPR listeners absolutely love the shit out of people who look like rednecks but are progressive
Beautiful.
Just listened to this Monday on a long drive home. I don't really have too many thoughts other than my ongoing vague discomfort about the choices made in books/podcasts/documentaries of this sort. (It did keep reminding me of Making a Murderer.)
Interesting to look up the property and maze.
Quit teaching math and become a reviewer. The August update was more incisive and revealing that the excerpt from the review sent by Witt.
An argument is more effective if it feels like it's your own conclusion, but there has to be enough momentum behind it so that you come to the pre-ordained conclusion and not go wildly off-base. The art is knowing the size of gap for your audience called inception.
I turned on S-Town in a big way. I loved the first couple of episodes and then started really hating the narrator for
1) the little sob at the end of his every sentence
2) his earnest 20-something straight boy thing which I realize sounds dickish but it's like this podcast thing...it has put me off Longform, too, especially after listening to the episode where the one guy says about four thousand times in this "I'm trying really hard!" voice to Ariel Levy "I guess I'm trying to figure out what I want to ask you" and she finally says "I can't really help you there!"
3) the way he calls people that knew McLemore and tells them of his death despite the fact that he is just this guy looking for a story. I get that he liked the guy, but he is really not a part of the story no matter how earnestly he cries when he tells people about the suicide
4) what Heebie said. It's all because the guy is a ready-made character. A friend of ours who is married to a guy from Tennessee actually said she thought McLemore is exaggerating his accent which, ok, maybe.
I felt strongly enough about this that it brought me back from the blog-dead. There.
I listened to part of the first episode but my take was if I wanted to hear a self-absorbed southern gay guy spin out overdramatized paranoid fantasies, I could do that much close to home and pay someone to make me drinks during.
HA HA HA is how I laughed at this. Yeah.
I don't know if I'm technically southern anymore. Does it wear off? I know I spend a lot of time arguing with people about things related to that region, to the point that I feel I've become a parody of myself when it comes up, but I can't drop it because people are such smug shitbags about it.
Smearcase -- did you listen to the Maggie Haberman episode of Longform? I found it absolutely fascinating (not withstanding that I find her type of access/megaphone-to-the-powerful journalism really unappealing and I think she has a major blind spot on Trump's nepotism with his kids due to her own experience as a beneficiary of a famous dad).
But it was really revealing to hear her arguments for why she thinks her approach is right. It was also a really tense, jumpy, un-Longform-like interview that to me screamed burnout/unacknowledged trauma* from her end. I think the interviewer (Max??) did a remarkably good job of trying to get stuff from her given her absolute unyieldingness on several issues.
*n.b. I am not a clinician and am not making a diagnosis here, just an observation based on having seen the shape of this river before.
Also, heebie, thank you for re-upping the thread. I really appreciate everybody's reflections on this podcast (that I am still never going to listen to).
Hi!
I did listen to that, and it was weird and uncomfortable and I did not find myself liking her a lot.
I tried listening to an interview with Haberman on Trumpcast, but she was such a defensive Trump children apologist I had to stop.
She did the thing where she was like, well, Eric* Trump was personally nice to me, therefore he's probably a good person. It was surprising to me that a journalist could be so ignorant in the that way.
*I think it was Eric, but could have been Don Jr.
Is S town true then? I listened to it all and couldn't decide, assumed mostly made up I guess, but couldn't be bothered to actually find out. That would explain the lack of end to the story. I enjoyed it, but I enjoy most of the other stuff I listen to more.
Señor Esmirqueso!! I should probably pick up your southern baton and I will and do argue limited versions. But I still don't feel southern and can't imagine living without a pin/pen distinction. And I stand by my S-Town response.
49: It's nonfiction. I'm not sure if that's what you were asking.
50: I thought you came from the right (which is to say, Left) bank of the river, though you don't live there anymore?
The left (which is to say, Right).
I am from and on the south side. Definitely better to be technically southern than to live in Ohio.
Southerners are always so antagonistic.
Good thing there's a river between you and that sick burn.
60: I don't think the rivers in Ohio burn these days.
61: We're behind a floodwall and Ohio isn't, so I win again. And I'm sure I'd be perfectly happy in Ohio excerpt the part where it's a life goal never to move again and maybe even to get unpacked fully soon now that we've been here a year.
But that river doesn't separate us. I meant the river behind our house, although technically it doesn't separate us either.
I think we're maybe closer to the unwalled north-flowing Licking River, but it's only a few blocks' difference either way. Lee's building, though not her apartment, would flood first. That's not really consolation enough for me to want it.
I feel no one has addressed the salient issue.
66: The gold is clearly on the Nazi gold train concealed in a tunnel somewhere in Lower Silesia. (There was a TAL episode on this recently.)
I will also belatedly note that despite the standard NPR/TAL/confidentiality/regional stereotyping concerns noted above, I found it to be a compelling and interesting bit of work.