Media

Fackham Hall: Learn From The Stupid

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

So I recently saw Fackham Hall. It’s a movie that was advertised as sort of “Naked Gun But For Stuffy British Stuff.” I am pleased to report I enjoyed it, it was also very stupid, and there’s actually something to learn from it. Enough that I want to share.

So first of all, if you wonder “will I like it,” I’d say that Fackham Hall is actually in the vein of the 2025 Deathstalker film that was an homage to old direct-to video fantasy. There is an intended audience, and if you are in that audience, you will enjoy it. If you are not, don’t bother. This is a film for people who’ve watched a lot of Stuffy British Stuff and have a sense of humor about it.

Now when it comes to a comedy the question is are the jokes any good? Fackham Hall has a lot of jokes in it, of extremely varied quality, but you won’t be lacking jokes. Not all of them are good, I’d say that the overall humor is “OK,” there’s plenty of laughs. There’s an over-reliance on crudity for the most part that I found offputting, but there are plenty of actually good jokes.

Two things stand out from the humor. The first is that there are jokes where the setup is actually part of the humor, where you realize how far the movie went for a joke or a sudden case where one thing suddenly becomes funny due to one tiny action. The second is there are a few scenes that authentically stand out, most notable an extended dialogue joke in the vein of “Who’s on first” that had me in tears. There is effort here, albeit it makes some of the low-effort jokes more obvious.

Fackham Hall does have two larger lessons, a minor one and a major one I want to explore. These are enough that they provide lessons for other comedies.

The minor lesson is that Fackham Hall actually has a plot that drives the story forward, if erratically. The Davenport family risks losing their beloved estate unless their daughter marries the cousin due to inherit it – and the disruption of a roguish young visitor and an eventual murder add chaos to the countdown. Some characters have their own concerns and sidestories. There’s enough here to power a general movie, and that gives the film plenty of energy, even if the actual plot could have been used more in the jokes.

The major lesson is the cast and the acting. For all it’s silliness the cast acts as seriously as if they were in a dramatic film. It’s not deadpan, it’s a talented lot of actors acting as if this is a film of drama and danger and intrigue and love. Watching people do the stupidest things with great sincerity and gravitas takes the film farther and makes even lame jokes actually funnier.

Thomasin McKenzie and Ben Radcliffe take on the role of inevitable lovers, and show actual chemistry and charm together. Emma Laird, who’s character’s marriage shenanigans drive the early part of the film has a scene of emotional breakdown where she is crying and screaming while also upending the common tropes of said scene. Tim McMullan plays Cyril, the family butler with absolute seriousness while also being the butt of a movie-long joke he leans into and keeps going.

The absolute standout is Damian Lewis as the Davenport family patriarch, Humphrey. Lewis invests this somewhat befuddled and inbred character with charm and sensitivity, making him actually likeable. There’s even a scene where he expresses his fatherly love to one of his daughters that is touching. Jokes be damned, Lewis was acting and nothing stopped him, not even the script.

What made Fackham Hall work was – ironically – what makes a good movie. Give it a plot and get actors who will act. It can even elevate some poor jokes or missed opportunities. I enjoyed this enough that I actually got curious to see the actors in other works, especially Mr. Lewis.

It’s not every day you can take lessons in comedy from a film that includes J.R.R. Tolkien farting, but here you go. My kudos to the cast.

Steven Savage

Alternate Steves: The Lost Empire

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I continue my series imagining different cultural, technical, and economic trends using myself as a lens. We’ve met a Steve who was in on the work-from-home craze of the early 90s, a Steve that watched Ohio’s high-speed rail boom of a similar era. Now let’s meet a very divergent Steve, in a world where big media empires crumbled – for the most part.

TRANSCRIPT FROM SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY RADIO: Professor Steven Savage on “TeachMeet”

Hello everyone out there! It’s your favorite lecturer on media history and the law, and by favorite I of course mean the only one. And that’s even my entire job!

So let’s get to my big announcement, one that’ll appeal to all twelve of you that took my “Media Turning Points” two-hundred level course. Can all you dozen please tell your friends?

My friend Serdar Yegulalp – yes, the guy you see in Rolling Stone – is coming to campus to speak on his new book “The Empire Of Media.” It’s his latest novel, a noir-deco tale of an alternate history where five giant corporations control world media. There’s murder, mayhem, skulduggery, and rich people doing awful things to each other. Now as much as we enjoy a good alternate history that involves annoying people killing each other, there’s even more!

You may ask why you haven’t heard of this novel yet. Well, that’s because it got released on the East Coast by Penguin. It hasn’t made it’s way here yet because, well, we all know how that works. But it also lets me speak with him on my next book – because we wrote ours together. Plus I get to ride his coattails.

Yes, some of you heard because I can’t shut up, but my next non-fiction book (with less murder) is coming out via Omnipress. It’s “The Lost Empire of Culture” and it’s going to explore how we got here in the world of media, communications, and ownership. Not interesting you say? More rich people being horrible? Well stay tuned.

Serdar and I wrote our books together because one thing that people forget – besides you specific twelve students, thanks again – is that we nearly had a world where only a few oversized corporations owned most of the media. Yes, you may have heard it, but he asks what happens if that was real, and I explore how we dodged not so much a bullet but an atomic bomb.

Imagine Disney as a dominant economic and cultural force, instead of a cautionary tale and favorite political target of politicians before you were born. Not many people remember the Berne Convention walkout of 1993. Or perhaps you’d like to get back to skullduggery as I dissect how several media companies, while pretending to cooperate, ended up backstabbing each other.

As you’ve heard me say, we dodged a world where ownership of works was basically eternal and creativity at best optional.

Imagine a world without your regional publisher. Imagine a world where Kinko’s isn’t sued over a price-fixing scandal for books! Imagine Diamond being worse than they were! Yes, I’ll even go into the famous Paper Scandal of 2015 for anyone who cares about it – which honestly isn’t me, I just like to be complete.

Serdar will cover what could have happened in a world of megacorporations putting out cartoons. I’ll cover why Publishers and Copyhouses got so big and why lawyers got into fistfights in Sweden. Hopefully it also means our books sell on both coasts.

See you there! Look for details soon! And for everyone attending my “Zines in action class” tomorrow, please bring your homework!

This was a fun one. I didn’t want to spell out the world too much, but more explore it from someone’s point of view. What’s media like when big media powerhouses wore down and in some ways destroyed themselves? What’s it like when publishers and distributors gain much more power but are also regional?

Steven Savage

Dada And Empty Media

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Though i don’t discuss it as much here, I have an interest in the art movement of Surrealism and its origins. Surrealism is fascinating in its many manifestations, it intersects with politics and culture movements, and the many personalities and people are compelling. As I continue to learn about it, I keep finding new lessons, one of which I want to share here.

Surrealism’s origins are rooted in Dada, an art movement that appeared post World War I that was mistrustful of the supposed age of reason and the horrors of the time. Dada appeared to be art, in form of paintings or performances and such, but was intentionally nonsensical. Today it may seem amusing, but at the time people found it infuriating – imagine giving a speech made of nonsense words and angry folk rioting.

Dada laid the groundwork for Surrealism, something else I may discuss, but what fascinated me most about Dada beyond that was that it used the framework of existing media and filled it with nonsense. What an idea that the container of art can be abstracted from any meaningful content! Perhaps its easy to understand people angered by Dada, confronted with a play or a song or a painting that had the form of work but was filled with nothing

You can remove the art from art but still have a form we associate with art.

That idea has sat with me for some time since I had it, but I hadn’t done much with it – as my interests were in Surrealism and how the artistic framework was a vehicle for unconscious, almost spiritual expression. But lately I thought about Dada using a framework of art filled with nonsense and internet content and what we learn from it.

It’s hard to find anyone who won’t complain about nonsense, slop, propaganda, and low-effort content on the internet. I certainly do as any of my regular readers knows, and to my gratitude, tolerate. I’m sure you’re also used to encountering and complaining of such things.

We wonder how people can take such things seriously. How they can fall for propaganda or low-info listicles and the like? Well that’s because, beyond our vulnerabilities or ability to enjoy trash, it comes in the form of information. Internet dross has the shape of information or art or spiritual insight even if it’s filled with B.S.

No different than how Dada took the form of art and blew people’s minds by delivering rampant nonsense.

Think about how easily technology lets us have the form of something useful. It’s easy to spin up a website or a book or a video, pour anything into premade patterns, even go to technology or freelancers to pour something into whatever information container we chose. We have the tools to make nothing look like something, to make form so good we easily mistake it for solid value.

And, sometimes, it rubs us the wrong way. We know it looks like information but it’s not. Maybe it’s easier to understand people enraged over Dada, tricked by form. We’re in the Uncanny Valley of Communication just like they were.

This is why the history of art and media matter and why I treasure these rabbit holes I go down. The past has many lessons for the present. Come to think of it, maybe if we pay more attention to the past we’ll have a better present . . . one with not just form but form delivering real meaning and valuable information.

Steven Savage