On the current Roseanne fiasco.

By now you've probably heard the American Broadcasting Company has axed their reboot of Roseanne after less than one season after Roseanne Barr Tweeted a racist joke about former Obama staffer Valerie Jarrett. Having read it myself I concur with the backlash and her network's decision (despite its ramifications for all her colleagues), but it's proven quite thought-provoking for me.

I know Barr's always been a comedian, and comedy is meant to push buttons, plus she is entitled to hold and express her opinions. But having a provocative sense of humour as I also do, even I concede there are lines you should be very careful about crossing. Nonetheless, I think very many of us need to remember that offensiveness is very subjective, whether due to culture, personal experiences and beliefs or even just taste. And come to think of it, had she stated outright that it was just a joke she might've dodged this bullet. But she brazenly posted the joke in what appeared a sincere manner, and then added insult to injury by claiming she did so while under the influence of Ambien, which she'd taken for insomnia. (Ambien's makers replied with a priceless claim that racism isn't a side-effect of their drug.)

Also, would this have been such a scandal had her show not recently been revived? It surely would've made some waves, but none that would've washed ashore so heavily, I don't think. Anyway, I also don't think it's exactly surprising as Barr had been an open Trump supporter. I feel sorry for all her co-stars and crew (many of whom have subsequently condemned her joke and views on Twitter themselves), and I hope their careers survive this. But I conclude with reiterating the reminders to society overall which I just issued.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #89: On the Road (1957).

It was the 1957 novel that defined and epitomised the Beat Generation before inspiring the Baby Boomers and Gen-X on. Not to mention the (main) novel that taught me, as an Arts university student, that being in a syllabus isn't always the kiss of death for a book. Jack Kerouac's seminal and exhilarating semi-autobiographical tale of uptight writer Sal Paradise's trek across the American landscape, infused with sex, drugs and jazz alongside his live-wire wingman Dean Moriarty (based on Kerouac's mate Neal Cassady), encountering many even more eccentric and hedonistic types en route.

Call me lazy, but after covering so many films in this series, along with two bands and two TV series, I thought it was time to discuss a book, and as well as this being one of my absolute favourites there, I consider On the Road a cult novel. The original teletype paper scroll Kerouac wrote it on even toured American in 2007 for the novel's 50th anniversary and still attracts fan visits, which I think qualifies it for cult status. Anyway, love or hate it (and Kerouac's writing style, which he called "Spontaneous prose," definitely isn't for everybody), this is a very hard novel to shake once you've read it. The content must've ruffled many feathers in its day but that's partly why it was an instant sensation, and considering its era as you read it today helps it retain that original daring. But it really caught on because it resonated profoundly with the postwar generation who largely felt trapped in lives of wholesomeness and domestic safety, and I think most generations since have experienced some of that also. It's just timeless, at least in that respect, and for a free spirit like me (albeit one who has and will never touch illicit drugs), it offers an intense rush each time.

The two heroes are often intentionally unlikable (Sal is very downbeat and Dean fucks practically anything in sight), but they consistently feel realistic, and their platonic brotherly connection is explored ultimately with gratitude and a lack of judgment. And Kerouac very observantly uses the landscape as an imposing metaphor for what they get from each other, and a celebration of liberty and friendship. Ignore the 2012 film; it's okay, but it falls far short of the poignancy and proud subversion Kerouac delivered here. On the Road is one of the 20th century's most esteemed novels for a reason. It is true magic.

YEAH, YEAH, YELLOW!

Ever since roughly high school, my favourite colour has unquestionably been yellow. I imagine "Why is ___ your favourite colour?" is a pretty tough question for most of us, and I'm no exception. If I really ponder my answer, I guess it would be that yellow just consistently speaks most to me of all the colours in the rainbow, and I have always been a visual type. Of course, it also has associations with many other things I adore: my footy team the Brisbane Broncos have it among their colours, my favourite fruit is bananas, and the Beatles all lived in such a submarine.

But I savour life despite all its challenges, and yellow is the colour of the sun, which is the giver of life on Earth. That's surely the most inseparable association any colour has, aside from blue and the ocean. And come to think of it, as you might've already sensed I have quite a soft spot for Asian action and anime films, and Asians are yellow themselves. Yellow is more than a colour to me. It's a widespread and ongoing source of escapism and inspiration. But just for the record, I am not at all into letting the mellow yellow. ;)

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #88: Dead Ball (2011).

One day in rural Japan, young Jubeh is playing baseball with his father and younger brother Musashi when, by some tragic miracle, he performs a super-powered fireball pitch that kills his father. After then vowing to never play baseball, Jubeh grows up (Tak Sakaguchi) into a career criminal. When he's then captured and sent to a juvenile reformatory he falls under the supervision of Principal Ishihara (Miho Ninagawa), whose grandfather's Nazi allegiance is something she wears as a badge of honour. Naturally, she's not much kinder. When she forces him to join the centre's baseball team or face witnessing the execution of fellow prisoner Four Eyes (Mari Hoshino), Jubeh must rally the ragtag team against the sexy but merciless Psycho Butcher Girls of the St. Black Dahlia High School. Now he's not just having to win the game, but save his and his team's lives.

Let me offer this warning again, after giving it for numerous Japanese films I've reviewed here: Dead Ball is intentionally ridiculous and tacky throughout. If you've hated any of the other such movies I've covered here, obviously pass on it. But if you welcome deliberate (albeit good-humoured) artistic and tonal mockery, dig in. There is, however, quite a knowing commentary here on modern-day Japanese culture and sport under all the unhinged and warped blood-splattering. Writer-director Yudai Yamaguchi turns Japan's perhaps unlikely obsession with this most Western of sports into a subversive metaphor for the internal culture clash it (like most countries) has now: the old and the new. The rural setting inevitably enhances this, along with providing some very lush locations. He also manages to objectify and yet empower women simultaneously here, with the ever-kind and increasingly strong and resourceful Four Eyes as a counter to Ishihara and the Psycho Butcher Girls. But of course, the real point of this is the shamelessly over-the-top and excessive action, which he and his cast and crew stage with aplomb. There's also a relentlessly energetic and exotic score from Nobuhiko Morino. I wouldn't be caught dead watching a baseball game even were it popular Down Under, but I'll happily go in to bat for Dead Ball.

The dress now has its auditory equivalent.

I'm sure you remember in 2015 when the photo of that dress went viral worldwide. It colour scheme divided viewers like politics does: was it black and blue or white and gold? Personally, I think it was just fucking ugly but regardless, now there's another viral meme provoking a similar reception.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/juliareinstein/yanny-or-laurel?utm_source=dynamic&utm_campaign=bffbbuzzfeedoz&ref=bffbbuzzfeedoz&utm_term=.sxoJvVV9r#.ebkbJqq14

For some it says "Yanny," for others it says "Laurel." Just for the record I'm in the latter camp, and these phenomena shouldn't distract from more newsworthy ones like topical events, but they do actually say something quite deep and scientific about humanity. They emphasise just how subjective our individual neurology and perception can be.

I think taste plays into it. If you heard on the radio some song you hated simply because of its genre you might consider it superficial or manipulative, but somebody else whose fancy it did tickle would naturally find it enormously meaningful. Alternatively, if you ran through it with a fine-tooth comb, you miss the point for that different reason or discover in it something unintentional (for better or worse). And sometimes, most of us see and hear simply what we want to.

Anyhow, I don't want to stretch this out and be pretentious or claim to know what I'm talking about as I don't. Nor do I particularly intend to get something out of this because it's trending. I like being a nonconformist. Its underlying questions just simulated me because of my neurological conditions - and I hope my answers have stimulated you.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #87: Boyz N the Hood (1991).

It's South-Central LA after the 1984 Summer Olympics. Tre (Desi Arnez Hines II) and brothers Ricky (Donovan McCrary) and Doughboy (Baha Jackson) are ten-year-old African-American friends belonging to single-parent households, who've grown up amidst police brutality, gang violence and poverty. When Tre's temper gives his mother Reva (Angela Bassett) no alternative, she leaves him in the care of his working father Jason "Furious" Styles (Laurence Fishburne), who teaches Tre everything he knows about being a responsible, upstanding young man. Now jump forward to 1991. Tre (Cuba Gooding, Jr. in his breakthrough role) is now a high school senior who's working and applying to college while wooing Brandi (Nia Long). Eager to escape the 'hood, Tre nonetheless still associates with his friends there. Doughboy (an unexpectedly moving Ice Cube) is a horny couch potato who thus now tests his own mother's patience, while Ricky (Morris Chestnut), the apple of her eye, is establishing himself as a successful college football draft. Tre does forge a life beyond the hood he grew up in, but not before a serious of tragedies befall him and his mates.

Boyz N the Hood made John Singleton, at 24, the youngest person ever nominated for a Best Director Academy Award, the first African-American to be nominated and the first director to be nominated for their feature debut (he was even also nominated for his screenplay). Do you feel insubordinate yet? Well, he richly deserved both nods. Obviously drawn from his own adolescent experiences and the conscience they informed, Boyz N the Hood pulls no punches as it lifts the veil on late-20th-century black life and particularly the intraracial violence of that which sadly continues 27 years later. Singleton makes his message very pointed but never preaches it because, maybe given his age when he made it, he infuses his film visually with a pulsating energy and equally emphasises the more intimate moments which I think are universal (I mean, who hasn't had these sort of lifelong friends?). His characters are all utterly realistic because unlike the common black stereotypes, they don't talk purely in hip hop language or like they're trying to be white. They just talk, and connect.

And they are all played outstandingly. Furious remains one of Fishburne's best roles and he gives him all the stern warmth you'd expect in a devoted father, Ice Cube (who, of course, was then in the rap group N.W.A.) is actually even better as he gives Doughboy a great deal of buried lacking confidence to explain his lifestyle, and Gooding, Jr. holds his own against both. But stealing the whole show for me is Bassett, with probably the most cliched character (a feisty black mum). Where a less-experienced actress might've made Reva diva-ish, Bassett keeps the assertiveness dignified for more class and sympathy. She's just a joy to watch.

The soundtrack by Stanley Clarke and Ice Cube also helps to maintain the sense of danger mixed with camaraderie throughout. Singleton's subsequent career hasn't quite reached the heights he did here, but cinema this good is no fluke, and in accepting the torch from predecessors like Spike Lee with Boyz N the Hood he sparked a wave of a successful African-American coming-of-age and hood movies that has continued right through to this decade, with ones like Hustle & Flow (2005) and the Oscar-winning Moonlight (2016).

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #86: Daydream Nation (2010).

Caroline Wexler (Kat Dennings) is living every popular teenager's nightmare: moving with her widowed father (Ted Whittall) from the big smoke to the sleepy rural Canadian town of Hargrove, where a serial killer is currently on the loose. As all her classmates appear to be on perpetual benders, Caroline's frustration about her relocation is compounded. However, sparking some interest in her is her young teacher Mr. Anderson (Josh Lucas), whose own personal life is complicated and lonely. She also bonds with kind but tormented classmate Thurston (Reece Thompson), whose three best mates are practically drug dealers. Now Caroline must choose between her two potential suitors while adjusting to her new surroundings and managing both her father's needs and her very acerbic attitude.

Daydream Nation, whose title comes from an album by Sonic Youth (whose frontman is another Thurston, Moore), is an utterly strange but beguiling coming-of-age movie. Writer-director Mike Goldbach takes the regular arch of a cynical teenage girl's sexual and emotional reawakening and warps it with an infusion of existential motifs, arthouse cinema references (including to Atom Egoyan and Roman Polanski, most explicitly), rich dream and flashback sequences and brief but surprisingly graphic scenes of violence. He thankfully keeps it unpretentious despite this thanks to familiar but accurate character tropes and dynamics, and a largely A-list cast who all shine. Dennings gets every beat right in how she depicts Caroline's trajectory, Lucas and Thompson both make their rivals for her affections into pathetic but sympathetic guys, and Andie MacDowell brings delicateness and glamour to Thurston's single mum Enid, who hooks up with Caroline's dad.

Daydream Nation is not for everybody, but if you're after a very much left-of-centre bildungsroman, like a female The Perks of Being a Wallflower, it will quite easily sit with you as it does with me.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #85: British India.

Another band this week, mainly because admittedly I lacked the time this week to rewatch a suitable movie. However, I think these guys deserve all the international exposure they can get. Indie/garage rockers British India formed as classmates at St. Bede's College in Melbourne in 2004, misfits who united through a shared devotion to rock music. Singer-guitarist Declan Melia (right), guitarist Nic Wilson (left), bassist Will Drumond (second right) and drummer Matt O'Gorman (second left) quickly starting composing their own songs and after sending an EP to Australia's youth radio station Triple J, in 2006 as British India they inked a Shock Records deal with soon-to-be manager Glenn Goldsmith and Aussie rock royalty, former Easybeat Harry Vanda. 

In '07 they debuted with the LP Guillotine, a punchy introduction with solid tracks like Russian Roullette and Tie Up My Hands. 2008's Thieves was all that and more, with the boys really coming into their own as a quite distinctive addition to the garage rock revival with plenty more uptempo rock numbers but also some really lush and haunting balladry, namely Funeral for a Trend. The opener, God Is Dead (Meet the Kids), was even featured in the 2009 movie The Loved Ones, which I've reviewed here. 2010's Avalanche was a decent but uneven third effort but they well and truly rebounded in 2013 with their masterpiece so far, Controller. 40 minutes of consistent and wise arrangements, articulate and blunt lyrics, lucid production and insatiable energy, it could prove to be my top Aussie album of the 2010s. Next came 2015's Nothing Touches Me, again a buzzkill but by no means a bad disc, and 2017's Forgetting the Future which I've actually yet to hear still.

I've also seen them twice in one the local pubs and even for gigs of that nature, both times they worked the house through song after song. Overall, I would describe British India as INXS fused with any shoegazing band, but with a Millennial outlook applied to both. They are, collectively of course, one of a kind.