Content Consumed: Ben Affleck’s Nike flick, Cara Delevingne’s Planet Sex, and more
Hellooooo! Happy Thursday. Kind of wish I could just speed through today and get to the wonderful weekend ahead. Alas…
In today’s edition of Content Consumed:
🎥 Ben Affleck’s “AIR” looks so good
💌 Elizabeth Chambers breaks her Armie Hammer-induced silence
💦 Will Cara Delevingne’s Planet Sex disappoint?
👁 Read of the week: Our self-induced surveillance state
P.S. On Monday I’ll be ranking my favorite commercials from this year’s Super Bowl. See y’all then!
Ben Affleck’s “AIR” looks really, really good
Oooo, baby I’m fired up! This trailer has me going! I didn’t know shit about this movie until today and I’m so psyched for it.
Directed by and starring Ben Affleck, the movie primarily follows Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), a shoe salesman at Nike, as he works to sign Michael Jordan to a deal to wear Nike shoes in the ‘80s.
Let’s review the supreme ensemble cast real quick: Affleck as Nike founder Phil Knight (sco Ducks), Damon as Vaccaro, Viola Davis as Jordan’s mom, Jason Bateman, Marlon Wayans, Chris Tucker, and more.
The trailer dropped today but Amazon is spending $7 million on an ad to air during the Super Bowl LVII too. It’ll be in theaters in April and likely on Amazon shortly after.
If there’s one thing I love, it’s a sports melodrama. Ben Affleck has proved himself as a director and filmmaker time and time again, and his buddy movies with Damon are always a hit. This’ll be good. My hopes are high. Let’s gooooooooo.
Elizabeth Chambers’ first post-Armie interview
If there is a single person I truly do not envy in this world, it’s Elizabeth Chambers.
She’s gorgeous, has a great career, lives full-time in the Cayman Islands, etc. But she also has “this darkness that’s basically tagging along and tapping her on the shoulder every once in a while”—her ex-husband Armie Hammer.
Chambers gave her first interview about Armie to ELLE this week since all of that happened.
Notable bits from the piece:
- Don’t refer to her as Armie’s ex. Chambers is a bakery founder and CEO, writing a cookbook, and working on a TV show, as well as the primary caregiver to their children.
- While Chambers doesn’t say much about her own sex life with Armie, she says “boundaries are everything” and “[over time] your partner is learning things about themselves. They’re growing, you’re growing; you hope that you’re growing together.” Which, evidently, they did not.
- Weird analogy alert! For most of their marriage, the couple saw ‘relationship specialist’ and podcast host Esther Perel, who told Chambers that “heartbreak is literally worse than a heroin addiction,” which cannot possibly be true.
- She’s dating a 26-year-old European physical therapist in the Caymans right now, who is helping heal “my body, my heart, and my mind.” Good for you, girlie.
- I believe the more profound moment of the interview comes at the end, when Chambers discusses how she’s dealing with all of this with her two children, and says, “One day, I want them to be able to say, ‘I am independent of whatever has happened in generations before. I’m aware of it, but I am the person I am, not because of where I came from.’”
Good for you, Elizabeth Chambers. Keep on keepin’ on.
Will you watch ‘Planet Sex with Cara Delevingne’?
The trailer interested me. Then I read the reviews, which were less than positive.
Model and actress Cara Delevingne isn’t too shy. She’s openly dated men and women and spoken rather freely about her sex life, her gender fluidity, and her preferences.
The premise of Hulu’s Planet Sex with Cara Delevingne:
On this immersive journey, Cara puts her mind and body on the line in search of answers regarding human sexuality, its joys, mysteries, and constantly changing nature. In every episode, she shares her own personal experiences. Uniquely unfiltered and authentic, there’s no limit on how far Cara’s willing to go to explore what makes us all human.
In the trailer, I enjoyed seeing more representation than I usually do in my day-to-day life, like intersex people, global celebrations of identity, and how family plays a role. My heart broke a little seeing Cara speak about her posh, well-known British family and their lack of understanding: “Nothing against them, they love me, but…”
But the reviews are sticky. Because there are some big things missing in this series about modern sex.
Rolling Stone, for example, writes: “Planet Sex features little discussion of sex workers, for instance, despite such topics as social media censorship, the omnipresence of Pornhub, and the rise of subscription-based platforms like OnlyFans making headlines on a daily basis.”
Furthermore, Cara could do so much more as the host. “The tension between Delevingne’s self-presentation as a conventionally beautiful cisgender white woman and her own struggles with gender expression is a genuinely fascinating one,” the Rolling Stone reviewer writes, “yet Planet Sex fails to probe too deeply into questions of Delevingne’s relationship to her own sexuality or gender presentation or its significance to popular culture at large.”
I think I’ll tune in for an episode or two. It premieres in full on Hulu this Valentine’s Day.
Read of the week: Our self-induced surveillance state
What happens when you become viral content without your consent?
“In an age where camera phones are ubiquitous and the lure of internet popularity is a chronic condition, everything — and everyone — is content,” Buzzfeed reporter Clarissa-Jam Lin writes.
This is the age of “panopticontent”, Lin deems, when everything is content for the creating, and everyone is simply a character in the world. The seduction of social media fame is obviously a driver for this, but it goes beyond that.
“It’s also been used as a powerful social tool,” Lin writes. Ordinary citizens documenting police interactions or acts of discrimination has enabled us to hold people and institutions in power accountable, including if laws fail to do so.
That’s all for today! Thanks for reading. Follow this column if you’re not already for more content every weekday.
Cheers,
Casey
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👉🏼 Find out what else I’m reading at my Goodreads profile.
