My List For The Worst Media of 2022
Photo by Diego González on Unsplash
While not every piece of media produced this year can shine, some content was just plain terrible. These are the pieces that caused me to truly regret my time watching them. I am talking about the clunkers, the disappointments, and the ones that caused my blood to boil.
Below you will find my list of some of the worst pieces this year (see my best-of list here). And because I am the definitive person with opinions, this list is 100% objective and unimpeachable.
The Gilded Age
The Gilded Age is about several upper-class families in Manhattan. We have the ingenue Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson), who has just moved in with her aunts from Pennsylvania after losing everything in the wake of her father’s death; Peggy Scott (Denée Benton), a young, ambitious Black woman trying to build her own way in the world of writing, and lastly, the up-and-coming Russell family who is New Money that has just moved to an upscale Manhattan mansion on Fifth Avenue. What follows is a dramatic story of three “outsiders” trying to succeed in a world of High Society.
“In the end, we are not criticizing the rich as a class as much as a particular type of rich. The stodgy old money that creates a subculture based on exclusion are out, and the meritocratic rich such as the Russells and Peggy Scott, are in.
This perspective relies on a meritocratic myth about how capitalism, for all its faults, really does let those who work hard enough get to the top. George Russell was able to earn his wealth. Bertha was able to break into High Society. Peggy found herself working for a newspaper that respected her talent. Anyone can make it to the top. “Maybe we will be [invited] one day,” a servant says of possibly getting an invite to Russell’s party in the hazy future. “After all, this is America.”
Yet this fantasy is and has never been true. Those with money often get it by taking advantage of deep inequities. Something that was true with Vanderbilt in the 1800s and is true of men like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos today. The good “philanthropy” they end up doing with that money often serves to justify their own position in the hierarchy and, in some cases, can solidify or even worsen existing inequities (see Winners Take All).
We don’t need tone-deaf narratives reveling in the horrors of the Gilded Age and portraying them as cute fun. We need to see works that portray the rich of this time through the lens of the horrifying, regressive things they did to the poor. Or otherwise, we are just getting capitalist fan fiction that is all aesthetic and no substance.”
The Batman
Director Matt Reeves’s gritty The Batman involves a newish Bruce Wayne, AKA Batman (played by Robert Pattinson), battling against the criminal elements of Gotham City while simultaneously trying to stop a serial killer named the Riddler (Paul Dano). This Batman is a darker, arguably mentally unwell person, saying lines like “I am vengeance” to random street thugs and criminals. The trauma of his parent’s death is still fresh in his mind, and he has not had the years of training to smooth over the rage bubbling below his black, military-grade spandex.
Recently the YouTuber Kay and Skittles, in their video The Batman: Critiquing Power Fantasy, described this film as a “liberal power fantasy” — one where just getting the right people to lead the system will result in change.
Despite the aesthetic of change, this narrative is conservative in that it doesn’t want anything to change. Although Batman intends to abandon his gritty Punisher-style aesthetic at the end of the film, he’s still clinging to a worldview of stopping criminals and looters. One that ultimately values preserving property rights over people’s lives — and that’s not changing the system. It’s merely the same status quo with a nicer finish.
Matt Reeves came in wanting to tell a story that departed from the conventions of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, but he ended up making a narrative that changed the aesthetic of the Batman while keeping everything else in place. He may want Batman to be a symbol of hope, but he continues to be a guardian of the status quo.
The Pentaverate
What if a secret organization of five men ruled the world? And what if they were nice? Such is the premise of Mike Myer’s new comedy Netflix series, The Pentaverate (2022) — the show that makes fun of some of pop culture’s most popular conspiracy theories.
The series follows sweet-talking journalist Ken Scarborough (Mike Myers) as he tries to infiltrate The Pentaverate to get his old job back at CACA News Toronto. Ken works with colleague Reilly Clayton (Lydia West) and conspiracy theorist Anthony Lansdowne (also played by Myers) to complete this mission. Along the way, he realizes that this all-powerful organization isn’t so bad and works to stop nefarious forces from attempting to destroy it.
“Ultimately, the Pentaverate feels like a wasted opportunity. The idea of taking conspiracy theories seriously is a fun concept (see People of Earth for a show that has done this better), but we needed it to be less messy. The Pentaverate had to approach its story of a secretive organization thoughtfully, even if it was only doing that for laughs.
I appreciate where this show was trying to take us. Most organizations in the US suffer from a lack of diversity, and championing more diversity in the workplace is something I unequivocally support. It’s the idea that we make the world better by diversifying those on top that I object to.
Some organizations out there don’t need more diversity. They simply need to die — and that includes everything from business-backed trade associations to secretive conspiracies trying to rule the world.”
What Is A Woman?
“What is a Woman? is a documentary produced by a conservative commentator attempting to tackle gender, but just ends up perpetuating conspiracy theories. The “documentary” (a word I use loosely) is from the mind of conservative transphobe Matt Welsh, a man who has made a history of trolling LGBTQ+ people. The documentary is not very good, and its points have been debunked thoroughly. It was also made in a very duplicitous manner, where a fake trans organization was set up to lure activists and medical professionals into interviews.
“This documentary only has niche merit in the sociological sense of trying to understand how a hate movement thinks. It should not be thought of as meaningfully trying to deconstruct the concept of gender. Learning gender from What is a Woman? is akin to learning about geopolitics from a QAnon adherent or consent from the Catholic Church. It’s just not a good idea.
If you genuinely want to learn about gender, consider reading bell hooks’ Feminism is for Everybody, Sara Ahmed’s Living a Feminist Life, or Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist. I also highly recommend YouTuber Lily Alexandre’s What Are Women? if you want to watch something instead. All of these put more effort into understanding this concept than Matt Welshnic has in this documentary.
At the end of the day, that’s what Matt Welsh wants — for you to be triggered. He wants you to give him an angry reaction that he can mine for content and possibly even use to feed into his persecution complex. I am asking you not to give him all of that power. He’s not worth it.”
West World Season 4
The HBO reboot of the 1973 movie Westworld about a group of robots in a theme park rising up against their human oppressors, has always touted itself as a tale about consciousness, but this is not the entire truth. It has also been about power. Specifically, it’s about a battle between two viewpoints: that of Dolores, whose programming asks her to “choose the beauty in everything,” and Ed Harris’ the Man In Black, who believes that people are irredeemably caught in a Hobbesian struggle of all against all. We either naively embrace the goodness in life or misanthropically burn it all down.
“In Westworld, we have a group of beings enslaved by humanity who rebel only to become no better than the humans they once served. It is yet another example of how white imagination cannot comprehend oppressed people freeing themselves and not replicating the same systems of abuse as their predecessors.
Ultimately, this stuntedness is because moving beyond this trope would involve reflecting on how white supremacy is a moral failure. If you prescribe this to a cyclical aspect of human nature — or as Westworld arrogantly does, of sentience in general — you don’t have to assess how your individual society needs to change. Societal faults are framed as immutable aspects of human nature rather than the result of very changeable conditions.”
She-Hulk: Attorney At Law
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is about a lawyer who just so happens to have the powers of a Hulk, representing super-powered clients. It reminds me (loosely) of the meta show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend where showrunner Rachel Bloom comments directly on how patriarchy hurts women with mental health issues. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is the same but with women in a professional setting, and just as importantly, with how the MCU has framed its women characters.
“She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is struggling to be multiple things at once: a piece about misogyny amongst the professional-managerial class, a meta-commentary about women in the MCU, a treatise on rage, and so much more. It would have been fine if it had just presented itself as a quirky feminist comedy, using its superhero setting to make fun bits. Who doesn’t love a good skewering of misogyny?
Yet because it also has the MCU’s baggage of how vigilantism must work within our corrupt system rather than oppose or even overthrow it, its message is severely limited. It’s hard to feel like Jennifer Walters is a source of justice when she’s working on behalf of some terrible institutions. Vigilantes doing direct actions don’t give statements to the cops, not because of some abstract moral code, but because they will suffer violence and imprisonment for doing so, even if they are doing the right thing. Jen’s entire worldview comes off as naive, and it’s not clear that the show disagrees with her.
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law makes feints to this conversation by bringing up all the points I mentioned, but it’s not seriously willing to entertain it. I am not sure the Disney company wants us to start talking about how powerful entities manipulate the law to take advantage of people because that conversation ultimately ends with us despising them (see the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act as one example of how they have f@cked us).
But it’s a conversation we need to have because if anything ought to be smashed, it’s our inequitable legal system and the men and businesses who not only abuse it, but hold it into place.”
Conclusion
And now you objectively know the worst content of 2022, and not just a list of content I arbitrarily strung together at the last minute for SEO purposes. I put some data into a computer, and it spat these out. It’s science.
If you want to stay in the loop with other excellent media takes, you know where to find me.