what we expect from art

some thoughts on 'one battle after another'

LA, Sept 2025

This morning (or at least, the morning I started writing this) I got a voice note from a friend of mine asking me to “come on in, while the water’s hot” with regards to the new Paul Thomas Anderson film, “One Battle After Another.” I’ve recently come into some wellness — I credit lots of rest and a weekend of satisfying art-making — and had the time and energy to share some thoughts below.

Just FYI: There are (probably) spoilers below, if you care about that kind of thing!

A few days before that message, I was uptown at a break fast, sitting on a couch filled with some of the smartest cultural thinkers I know, mostly Black women, btw, when the film came up — as it tends to do these days. We’d all seen it. We all had the same critiques of it. And most of us still loved it. It seemed like everyone in the group had been starved for actual filmmaking that hews closer to art than chaos, and this was particularly well shot and directed. It felt like a capital M movie, which is rarer and rarer these days.

It’s funny, I made a wholeass career out of analyzing culture and movies like this, but I can’t seem to muster the juice to talk about this one for more than a few minutes. Maybe I’m too weathered. (Per Christina Sharpe: “The weather is the total climate; and that climate is antiblackness.”) Maybe I’ve stopped expecting the old institutions to save us. It’s also possible that my expectations have become too low. Or that I’m just conserving my energy right now.

It’s not like I don’t agree with the commentary. I respect Zeba’s indecision. Mary is right that it makes fascism and the pursuit of power look as ridiculous as it is, which she speculates should be an actual political strategy and tactic for the left to consider. And so is Brooke’s observation that PTA turns Perfidia into a harmful fetish, and Pat/Bob’s fumbling ineptitude is made possible by the array of non-white characters around him. I, too, was deeply uncomfortable with Perfidia’s hypersexualization, and the way “we” watch through the leering gaze of the (imo) dangerously cartoonish portrayal of a military general who is obsessed with her. I can believe that PTA and the movie knew what it was doing in that moment, but I don’t trust the majority of audiences to know, or even care about the centuries of harm that lascivious eye has done to us. Context matters, more and more these days. For example, I was delighted by a note left by Perfidia a key moment in the film that reads “this pussy don’t pop for you,” which is the sign that the rapper Junglepussy (she is also in the movie, and shares her stage name with her character) would hold up at her early shows. I loved it so much we put it in our book “Black Futures.” But this isn’t a concert, it’s a film, and most people will only see it one of the few insights we get into who Perfidia is.

I would have loved to see more on the curdling of Black idealism, how disillusionment and the toll of being a radical wears on women differently. That’s its own movie, and one I’d pay good money to see, but probably written and directed by someone else entirely. I recognize a lot of the consternation — which is also a genre of grief — comes from this exact dynamic. There’s a rich movie to be made about a woman like Perfidia, but it’s unlikely to ever happen. Black women and other sidelined folks rarely get to tell their stories and histories — or even participate in them on their own terms.

OBAA corrodes the vision of possibility it serves up about a Black woman-run radical movement by insisting its magnetic leader is a horndog. It undermines the bits of the movie that are so tonally spot-on, but I’m more likely to re-watch “Eyes of the Rainbow” or re-read “Assata” than take my cues or notes on liberation from Hollywood. But there’s no denying that the timing of Ms. Shakur’s passing made the film’s weaker elements feel especially bittersweet.

To me, it tracks that Charlene/Willa, the daughter of Pat/Bob and Perfidia, is the most cohesive Black character in the film. PTA, after all, is the middle-aged father of a mixed teenaged girl, coming into her own social and political consciousnesses during an extremely fucked up time. Donovan points out brilliantly that she represents the faulty inheritance we are handing down to our children — chaos, fatigue, failed utopias and unsustainable practices, esp our political ones. The parts of the movie that resonated deepest for me were the ones that took place in her world. The school dance, esp her exchanges with Deandra. Electric.

The chilling mundanity of children playing in cages and the casual references to the “Latino Underground Railroad,” shepherded by Sergio, played by Benicio del Toro. That moment of him dancing in front of the police officers, holding his own personal rebellion. Charlene/Willa’s friends, and their righteous insolence. The scene with Perfida’s matriarchs (who I would love to know more about — but again, that’s another movie) watching as Pat/Bob packed the baby into a laundry basket and rushed out into the night — effectively losing their connection to two future generations of their lineage in a single moment.

🌞

It feels relevant that the week before I saw the movie, I spent some time in Los Angeles. LA has always been a city that will replenish me if I’m smart about how I engage with it, but also tends to be revealing, too, usually about how we currently live in a chaotic dystopian reality, and how bleak and irrepereable it all feels.

When we landed at LAX, I realized the car rental spot had automatically assigned me a Tesla. Intrigued, we gave it a shot — and it was a total disaster. We couldn’t figure out how to do anything — and I do mean anything — without watching a YouTube instructional video. That’s just not the energy you want for a car you’re only using for a few days. We ended up taking it back and the counter person was completely unsurprised. He said it happens all the time, and congratulated us on making a good decision, ha.

Then, midway through the trip, I decided I needed new shoes for a premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and went to a number of big retailers to shop. I rarely browse in-person anymore and it felt exhilarating, at first, until I realized that no one…had anything. Stores weren’t just devoid of shoppers and employees — they didn’t have anything in stock, either. One place in particular — a big, beautiful, glassy store — kept telling me that I could find what I needed online and showing me a phone with their website loaded on it. The sidewalks were clogged with Coco delivery robots, driven around by unseen people, in who knows what parts of the world, and we saw countless Waymo driverless taxis (did you know they’re Jags?!) zipping around with no one in them. It all felt so vivid, so present, so obscene. The costs of convenience are many, but most damaging, perhaps, includes our ability to organize and strategize across geographies, because of the fast creep of invasive technology that dissociates people from their environments. The Etymology Nerd recently wrote about the disappearance of the hashtag, which, as corny as they were, allowed people to find each other, organize around shared ideas, collate information online and occasionally hold the powers that be accountable.

“One Battle After Another,” at least, did seem to understand that, and how so much of our total lack of resistance to technology has led to addiction and the totalitarian levels of surveillance that now troubles our lives, leading to many of the horrors that compress our world. Yes, it’s rare to see a well-made movie these days, but even rarer to see one at this scale that attempts to quantify the times we’re struggling through, and get a lot of it right.

I’ll stop there for now, but OBAA raised more questions than outrage for me, and that feels like a ratio I can live with, for now.

some housekeeping

The lovely Tembe had me on her stack for an interview. We talked grocery store lit and how “Beloved” is a book that grows up with you - you read it over and over again as you mature, finding new meaning and depth each time.

And! I gave The Pleasure Lists the rundown on my personal favorite delights, which includes lingering in bed, good group chats, perfect bites of food.

The good folks at the Rabkin Prize interviewed me about my writing process (lots of spiraling and sweet treats), my fascination with the land art movement and trying to become a funnier/goofier/freer/freakier writer.

some personal plugs

Two of my brilliant filmmaker colleagues from my Doc X film program earlier this year have major news: First! Emily Mkrtichian’s poetic film “There Was, There Was Not,” a tribute to a country that no longer exists, is opening a limited theatrical run starting Oct 10, and is an absolute must-see in-person, while you can. Second! Arielle Knight is raising money for “And Counting…” about her sweet cousin and the aftermath of incarceration. Both of these women astound me with their keen eyes and observations of the world. Supporting them means supporting independent art and its makers, those who process the world through film and help us understand the fragile ecosystems that knit our lives together.

I’ve been supporting QNCC (pronounced kink), a new community center dedicated to New York City’s nightlife scene. I may not be out and about like I used to be, but serving queer, trans creative life is close to my heart. They’ve started hosting events — keep your eyes on this space for updates!

I’m also on the board for PowrPlnt, which offers free and low-cost digital arts workshops for young people and artists. They’re hosting a small fundraiser in Herbert Von King Park in Bed-Stuy on Oct 11 to try and replenish their coffers to replace what they lost when their federal funding was pulled. Pull up if you can!

And I’m so proud to have contributed to ‘We Are Each Other’s Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities” — their NYC book party is soon, October 20 — and not to be missed!