June 9th, 2011
Hmmmm. How do you open an NYT piece about X-Men and civil rights in a way that doesn’t make it sound like a paint-by-numbers exercise? That’s hard. I know–open with a reference to the box-office gross!
Last weekend, like seemingly half the country, I took my son to see “X-Men: First Class,” the latest, and best, big-screen incarnation of the popular comic book franchise.
The “seemingly” is the big giveaway as to how off-the-shelf this lede is–the idea being to assert that we’re reading this piece because X-Men: First Class became a runaway hit and not because, well, someone has a pre-conceived hobbyhorse that they want to ride. The problem is, X-Men: First Class didn’t get seen by anything like half the country. In fact, its box-office take was kind of disappointing. If you’re going to lede with a reference to X-Men’s BO take, then you should really be talking about how few people plunked down their $9 to see it. (That is, if you care at all about coherent writing that doesn’t look like pre-fab construction.)
So X-Men opened to $55M. That makes it the smallest opening for the entire X-Men franchise. How does it compare to other openings this season? Not well at all:
That makes X-Men: First Class the least-seen of the summer tent-pole movies (on opening weekend) this year. But, you know, we wouldn’t want Ta-Nehisi to pull a muscle trying to figure out a lede for his X-Men piece. No, he has Big Ideas about race and the X-Men that no one else has ever thought of before. Just drop the “seemingly” into the opening graph and let him move on to the important stuff.
Hey, it’s not like he’s going to just quote his family members for half the piece.
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You know, like other liberals (Ezra Klein, Matt Y.) who everyone is always talking about, I try to read him because other decent writers seem to read him and like him but every time; every single time, I’m disappointed. It’s not just the writing, but the tired liberal cliched thinking…does he ever have anything original to say? Ever?
And the irony of complaining about how tough it was back in the early 60s for blacks when he has a cushy gig at “The Atlantic”. I looked into his eyes and said, “the power to think clearly and write well” so I can grow up and teach you a thing or two…
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Fake Herzog: well put. I will go one step further: lots of people, especially white liberals, like TNC because he is black. That isn’t to say TNC is where he is because he’s black. He’s no better or worse than 99% of the liberal pundits out there, regardless of race. Still, many white people love TNC because he’s black and he validates their world view.
I will say this about his Atlantic blog: it has the best comments section on the internet. If you’re looking for thoughtful urban commentary, white/black/hispanic, you can usually find it in his comments section. Yes it’s liberal, but it’s thoughtful and based on actual experiences. Plus, there is a collective urban pop-culture knowledge in that group that is unparalleled.
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More great moments, Friedman edition:
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[…] don’t read Ta-Nehisi Coates enough to understand whether or not this is satirical: I finished up Middlemarch two days ago, and had a […]
vaildog June 10, 2011 at 9:37 am
Caotes is a peice of work. I’ve never seen him honestly engage an opposing viewpoint. His whole schtick is how his whole worldview was informed growing up in a rough neighborhood without a father. That’s fine, but he has never entertained the thought that someone growing up with a different experience, say a white middle class suburb, could honestly come by a different worldview than his.