12/16/2020 - A Chaotic Taxonomy
Hi! Some funny/interesting discourse is brewing online, and I’d love to tell you about it. Welcome to the newsletter!
This morning started like any other. I was avoiding work by clicking on a whole bunch of twitter links, looking for one that would distract me for an enjoyable 20 minutes. You may be aware that it is currently Nancy Meyers Week over on Vulture - one very ambitious writer (Rachel Handler) is doing a full week of interviews and deep dives into the Nancy Meyers cinematic universe. If you aren’t familiar with Meyer’s work, she’s the writer/director/producer/misc. behind the set of cozy, trope-y movies that include Something’s Gotta Give, It’s Complicated, The Parent Trap, The Holiday, etc., among others. The week began with this interview, in which Nancy comes off as aloof at best and defensive at worst when Rachel asks her about the meme-ification of her style and the lack of diversity in any of her work.
Which then leads us to today’s discourse, sparked by the impressive article, “A Chaotic Taxonomy of the Nancy Meyers Cinematic Universe,” which I read this morning and really adored. Obviously Rachel Handler is a huge fan, bordering on scholar, of the Nancy Meyers oeuvre. And what do you do when you love something? You catalog it. You break it into its pieces, you find patterns, and you talk about it with anyone who will listen to you.
In the article, she ranks each Nancy Meyers movie on a scale of how Nancy Meyers-y they are. The movies are awarded (or detracted) glasses of white wine for each instantly recognizable plot line, character trait, and costume decision they include.
Protagonist is a neurotic, well-off career woman (+1 white wine glass)
Protagonist appears in a bathtub (+2 white wine glasses)
… but gets electrocuted there (-3 white wine glasses)Furious typewriting as romantic revenge (+1 white wine glass)
A woman who has no therapist (-1 white wine glass)
It’s exactly the type of internet writing I like to read! Extremely thorough, funny, sweet, points-based. My favorite part was seeing a trope listed under one movie and knowing it would come up again later in another one (“Someone falls into a pool” and “Lake Bell plays a massive bitch” are great examples).
Okay but THEN. Nancy’s daughter Hallie (yes, the namesake of one Hallie Parker of Napa, California) read the article and…...hated it? Like very much hated it. And went on a long and indignant notes app rant about it on instagram.
The comments are a stream of yas queen emojis from a variety of celebs from Mindy Kaling, to Reese Witherspoon, to…Audrey Gelman lmaooooo. The girlbosses are truly all here. It is entirely unclear if any of them read the article or not. Tavi Gevinson, a perpetual fav, then jumped in with what I think is the exact right take.
Here are a few other takes I agree with:
And lastly:
Rachel is currently handling (no pun intended) it like a champ, and I’ll be rooting for her as she rolls out the rest of her content this week. It also all makes me want to watch The Holiday real bad, so I’d say everyone’s missions have been accomplished.
If this topic was not interesting to you, I’m honestly really sorry! I just love a night of discourse. Since this was more like a niche blog post than a recommendations newsletter, here’s a quick list of some other things I liked this week/recently:
“The Renegade DIYers Demanding Dolls as Diverse as They Are,” an article created in a lab just for me and the rest of the American Girl hive.
Snowglobe, a really awful ABC Family original movie starring Christina Millian as a woman who gets trapped inside a snow globe and…sort of wants to stay there?
This twitter thread which made me laugh out loud multiple times. Other people’s inside jokes are so funny and so human. I’ve honestly been thinking about this one for days.
My Recommendation for the Road is this must-watch video that has brought me joy every single winter for a few years now. Please watch with sound.
Stay safe out there,
Ali