UBC professor Naomi Klein: reveredacademic, author, social activist and filmmaker in a wide-ranging conversation, talks with PoliticsJoe’s Oli Dugmore about her 2023 book Doppelganger, A Trip Into the Mirror World, diving into the industry of conspiracy theory & right-wing propaganda in the digital age.
In the video above, University of British Columbia Associate Professor Naomi Klein — whose work within the university’s Department of Geography focuses on the intersection of crisis and political transformation, and the large-scale shocks which follow — sits down with Oli Dugmore, PoliticsJoe’s Head of Politics and News for a wide-ranging, insightful and subtly exploratory conversation on “truth” in politics.
In large measure, moreso than in Klein’s well-received previous books — 1990’s No Logo, 2007’s The Shock Doctrine, and 2017’s This Changes Everything, to name just three — Doppelganger, A Trip Into the Mirror World offers more of a first-person memoir, the book an in-depth critique and analysis of late-stage capitalism.
Down the Rabbit Hole Equation, How The Right Has Gained a Foothold Among So Many of Our Friends
Narcissism [grandiosity] x social media addiction + mid-life crisis ÷ public shaming = right wing meltdown.
Don’t be put off by the high falutin’ words above. Naomi Klein is a wonderfully engaging and entirely human scale — and dare we say, vulnerable — interview subject, whose life is not too dissimilar to yours or mine, believe it or not. Ms. Klein puts on no airs as she helps us understand where we stand as a society in the early part of the 21st century, what bedevils us, the lies which have taken in too many among us, and the threat of the far right to our increasingly fragile democracy.
For VanRamblings, the most distressing aspect of the first half of the interview above arises from the discussion Mr. Dugmore and Ms. Klein have on the attacks, the unrelenting casual cruelty to which Ms. Klein is subject — and has been subject for a very long time — from those on the right, as well as the left, as if offering an opinion, and verifiable truths, somehow translates into committing a crime, leaving Ms. Klein open to death threats and other challenges to her personal safety.
Call us naïve, but VanRamblings has never understood the motivation of those who choose cruelty over kindness as a way of bringing themselves to the world, who choose to attack over finding common cause, and acknowledging our common humanity, and our innate oneness. We find the cruelty to which Ms. Klein is subject to be disturbing, abhorrent and utterly unbecoming in a civil society.
As Angela Y. Davis, author of Freedom Is a Constant Struggle writes “Doppelgangerswirls through the bewildering ideas of the ultra-right that often appear as a distorted mirror of left struggle and strategy,” as Klein’s book sets about to distill the political economies of corruption, crisis in our time, and necessary remediation.
Why Doppelganger? You’ll have to listen to the interview, or buy the book for the answer to that pungent, provocative, easily answered and heartrending question.
Porché Brinker plays violin in The Last Repair Shop, which tells the story of technicians who repair public school musical instruments in Los Angeles free of charge, and the kids who play them.
Only one documentary short nominee this year has the full balance of human interest, social relevance and aesthetic appeal that tends to make a winner.
It’s the Oscar-nominated The Last Repair Shop, directed by Halifax filmmaker Ben Proudfoot, who won two years ago for The Queen of Basketball, a New York Times Opinion production, and the composer Kris Bowers, who was nominated with Proudfoot for A Concerto Is a Conversation, another Times Opinion documentary.
This time, both have made their documentary with The Los Angeles Times.
“In a warehouse in the heart of Los Angeles, a dwindling handful of devoted craftspeople maintain more than 80,000 student musical instruments, the largest remaining workshop in America of its kind. In the film, you’ll meet four unforgettable characters whose broken-and-repaired lives have been dedicated to bringing so much more than music to schoolchildren in Los Angeles.”
The Last Repair Shop is a great film, a moving, elegiac and engaging must-watch if you’re a family, a teacher or are dedicated to public education.
The entirety of the film is available on YouTube, or on Disney+. If you have a Smart TV, you’ll absolutely want to watch the film on the bigger screen.
Steve Bagmanyan is the supervisor of the L.A. Unified School District’s Musical Instrument Repair Shop
In The Last Repair Shop, the repair shop of the title fixes instruments for the city’s school district, the film relating the story of the L.A. Unified School District’s Musical Instrument Repair Shop — the last public school district in the U.S. to service musical instruments free of charge — where 11 technicians service about 6,000 instruments each year for more than 1,300 schools across the city.
Steve Bagmanyan, supervisor of the repair shop: “Music can do wonderful things. Music can change lives. Music can take you off the streets. Music can fill you up with joy, with happiness.”
The opening text says the service has been offered to students for decades.
The Last Repair Shop presents the recollections of four specialists (in strings, brass, woodwinds and piano), who share their experiences of immigration, of coming to terms with being gay and even of opening for Elvis in a bluegrass band, a long-term payoff of buying a $20 fiddle at a swap meet.
Porché Brinker in Ben Proudfoot’s Oscar-nominated documentary short film, The Last Repair Shop.
Schoolchildren further testify to how music affects their lives. The contrast gives The Last Repair Shop a gentle inter-generational poignance, as it makes an uninflected case for the importance of financing public school music education.
It’s not just the students whose lives have been changed by music.
The people who repair the instruments all have their own stories to tell — whether it’s about travelling the country with a $20 fiddle from a flea market, leaving home to chase the American dream, growing up gay in the ’70s, or even surviving ethnic cleansing.
And at the centre of each story is music, and a desire to repair — and to heal.
“We all have broken relationships, broken promises. The world is, in many ways, broken. And I think what these people stand for is an optimism that sometimes you can make things whole again with enough effort and care and patience,” Ben Proudfoot says.
“You can’t fix everything that’s broken. But sometimes you can. And for that one time out of 10 where you can, it’s worth doing. And I think there’s not too many lessons better than that.”
The Last Repair Shop is a love letter to the role of music in public education, a testament to seeing how broken something may be — and fixing it anyway.
And it’s a tribute to those who toil away, largely without recognition, in service of the important task of helping the next generation realize their dreams.
Every three decades, or roughly once a generation, Hollywood experiences a seismic shift. The transition from silent films to talkies in the 1920s. The rise of broadcast television in the 1950s. The raucous cable boom of the 1980s.
It’s been happening again, for some while now, as most folks have observed.
The long-promised streaming revolution — the next great leap in how the world gets its entertainment — is finally here in all its glory.
Warner Bros. Discovery studio in Burbank, Califoria, one of the oldest and largest Hollywood studios
In the 115-year history of the American film industry, never has so much upheaval arrived so fast and on so many fronts, leaving many writers, directors, studio executives, agents and other movie workers disoriented and demoralized. These are melodramatic people by nature, but talk to enough of them and you will get the strong sense that their fear is real this time.
“The last four years have shaken the movie business to its bones,” Jason Blum, the powerhouse producer whose credits range from The Purge series to Get Out and the BlacKkKlansman.” recently told Los Angeles Times film writer, Justin Chang.
Streaming, of course, has been disrupting the entertainment business for some time. Netflix started delivering movies and TV shows via the internet in 2007.
In 2024, however, the shift towards streaming has greatly accelerated, with Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV, Crave/HBO, Prime Video, YouTube Premium, CBC Gem and Kanopy, among other streaming platforms, competing for your movie attention.
Adding to Hollywood’s misery is the abrupt changing of the guard in Hollywood’s highest ranks. Nine of the top 20 most powerful people in show business have left their jobs, including Universal’s Ron Meyer, whose 25-year Universal career ended in 2021. David Zaslav is now in firm control of Warner Bros. Discovery, with Kevin Tsujihara exiting his role as chairman and CEO of Warner Bros.Entertainment, a job he held for six years. Paramount Global CEO Jim Gianopulos was removed, in favour of Bob Bakish, also now on the way out, with the company up for sale.
“It’s not clear that full normal will return even well into the fourth quarter of 2024,” Warner Bros. Discovery Chairman David Zaslav, told Chang in an interview on how Hollywood is faring against the streaming wars, and the slow recovery from the pandemic.
An empty cinema with no patrons. Is this picture an indication of what presages cinema in the future?
Will young people — trained during the pandemic to expect instant access to new movies — get into the habit of going to the movies like their parents and grandparents did? Generation Z forms a crucial audience: About 33% all moviegoers in 2023 were under the age of 24, according to the Motion Picture Association.
“Cinema as an art form is not going to die,” Michael Shamberg, the producing force behind films like Erin Brockovich and The Big Chill” told the New York Times’ Manohla Dargis in a recent interview. “But the tradition of cinema that we all grew up on, falling in love with movies in a theatre, is over.”
In other words, the art may live on, but the myth of big screens as the be-all and end-all is being dismantled in a fundamental and perhaps irreversible manner.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming a game-changer in the film industry. From script writing and casting to special effects and distribution, AI is transforming the way movies are made and seen.
While there are many benefits to using AI in filmmaking, there are also potential downsides that need to be considered.
What impact will AI (artificial intelligence) have on Hollywood?
Who better to answer that question than ChatGPT, a thrilling but scary chatbot developed by OpenAI.
When VanRamblings asked ChatGPT about AI‘s potential impact on the film industry, it made the following points (note: only the single, numbered paragraphs represent the ChatGPT input):
1. Scriptwriting: AI can be used to analyze existing screenplays and create new ones, potentially leading to more efficient and cost-effective screenwriting.
In addition, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos recently told Business Insider’s tech reporter, Stephanie Palazzolo.
“Employing AI to create new scripts will help filmmakers deal with this task more efficiently. Being fed with large amounts of data in the form of movie scripts, machine learning algorithms analyze the data, learn from them, and come up with unique scripts. This makes the process much faster, saving significant time and resources for filmmakers.”
Sarandos went on to state, “Artificial Intelligence will also be used for analyzing scripts that will be made into a film. AI algorithms can study the script storyline, bring forward possible questions, uncertainties, and suggestions, thus making the process of script analysis much easier and faster.”
2. Pre-production: AI can be used to streamline the pre-production process, saving time and resources, including casting, location scouting and storyboarding.
“AI has great potential to simplify the pre-production process by helping to plan schedules, find locations that best fit the storylines and support in other preparatory processes,” says Disney chief, Bob Iger. “Implementing AI will automate the planning of shooting schedules according to the availability of actors that will save time, and increase efficiency.”
In addition, AI systems can analyze the locations described in screenplays and recommend sites for shooting the scene, saving resources in location scouting.
Even now, AI is being used to improve the accuracy and efficiency of casting decisions. AI-powered platforms can analyze a vast amount of data, including past performance data and social media activity, to predict which actors are most likely to be successful in a given role. This can help casting directors make more informed decisions and save time and resources.
3. Special effects: AI can be used to create more realistic and immersive special effects, potentially reducing the need for practical effects and saving time and money in post-production.
AI is currently being used to enhance visual effects (VFX) in Marvel films. Machine learning algorithms have been trained to recognize and classify different objects in a scene, making it easier and faster to add VFX elements, saving time and money for VFX studios, as well as enhance the overall quality of the film.
4. Audience analysis: AI can be used to analyze audience data and preferences, helping studios make more informed decisions about which films to greenlight and how to market them.
Monica Landers, founder and CEO of StoryFit, acknowledges the peculiarity of using AI to evaluate audience connections with narratives or characters.
Says Landers, “Warner Bros. has turned to Cinelytic AI-based platform to predict the success of its movies and box office receipts. 20th Century Fox has integrated the Merlin system that uses AI and machine learning to match movies to particular genres and audiences, as well as provide complete demographics for any movie.”
5. Distribution: AI can be used to personalize movie recommendations for viewers and optimize distribution strategies, potentially leading to higher ticket sales and revenue.
University of Southern California film professor Siranush Andriasyan, in a recently published research paper, writes …
“Film studios have been using AI for effective advertising and promotion. Analyzing different factors such as audience base, actors’ popularity across the globe, film studios may plan their campaigns according to certain locations where they expect the highest interest from the audience. For example, 20th Century Fox has developed the Merlin Video neural network to predict the success of promotional videos.”
There are, however, potential downsides to the use of AI in the film industry, says retired USC Berkeley film studies professor, Eric Ironside.
One major concern, he states, is the potential for AI to replace human jobs. As algorithms become more advanced, there’s a risk they could replace human casting directors, screenwriters, and VFX artists, leading to film industry job losses.
Responseto deal | SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher and Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, Chief Negotiator
“If you want to get hired, you have to be ready to consent to be replicated, so there are people who are out there saying that consent at the time of engagement is coercion because they won’t hire you unless you give them those rights,” Shaan Sharma, an alternate member of the Screen Actors Guild negotiating committee told Rolling Stone.
AI cloning set to impact the film industry, and jobs in Hollywood
“And it’s only those with considerable leverage that will have the ability to say no to the replication, but still be hired. That really concerns me because most members don’t have the leverage to say no at the time of engagement.”
Another potential downside is the loss of human creativity and personal touch. While AI algorithms can generate new stories and make accurate predictions, they may lack the unique perspective and emotional depth that comes from human creativity. This could lead to a homogenization of storytelling and a decrease in the overall quality of films.
For years, the idea that computers and data could play a role in filmmaking was considered anathema in Hollywood, where personal taste, charisma and talent were viewed as key to success.
In recent years, film industry skepticism about AI has lessened, suggests Largo.ai founder Sami Arpa, in part because streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon have thrived by using technology to guide decision making. Both use complex, jealously guarded algorithms to recommend content for their audiences, and analyze audience data to underpin their commissioning and acquisition decisions.
Make no mistake: AI is set to change the film industry in profound ways, from data analysis to virtual production.
While there are concerns about the impact of AI on the industry, it is clear that AI is here to stay, and it will continue to transform the way films are produced, distributed and consumed by moviegoers.
Those who are willing to embrace AI and learn to work with it will be at the forefront of this transformation, shaping the future of the film industry.
