What is UnTaking?
Put simply, UnTaking is my humble desire to experience art with gladness. By trade, I’m an English professor, so I understand that critique has an important role to play in how we engage with creative works, but we’ve developed a habit of casting the harsh light of judgement on everything now — mercilessly so. An UnTake is an act of resistance against our culture of wielding crass and cynical hot-takes against art.
To me, a movie or a book is like an iceberg floating in the ocean. It’s a frozen image of the water that formed it, and there is much more beneath its surface than one can imagine. Or, maybe better yet, a movie is like a tree growing in a particular forest at a particular time and place. The tree itself is of a certain species, and worth appreciating for its unique beauty. But it’s also part of the ecosystem of its forest. It grows in a specific soil and under the ground, its roots intertwine with the roots of an infinitely diverse collection of other trees. And not to mention the other creatures that depend on this collection of lifeforms. A tree is both one-of-a-kind and it is inseparable from its forest.
I’m uninterested in judging the quality of any given tree based on a set of subjective aesthetic or political criteria. Even knotty trees with peeling bark tell an interesting story. Such is my approach to the creative works of my fellow humans.
I know this effort is futile. Rotten Tomatoes, countless “why this sucks” YouTube channels, and the algorithms of social media have trained us to adopt a hostile attitude toward our entertainment. It all makes for a powerful cultural current, and I’m swimming the wrong direction. Hopefully this newsletter will become a space for other counter-current swimmers.
Who am I?
My name is Danny Anderson and, as I said, I mainly teach English at a small college in Central Pennsylvania. For the past several years, I’ve been writing for various internet publications like PopMatters, Popular Culture and Theology, Film Inquiry, The Curator, and others. If you’d like to look at my previous work, it’s all collected at my Authory page:
https://authory.com/DannyAnderson
I’ve also produced and hosted The Sectarian Review Podcast for the past several years and have had the chance to interview a large number of extremely interesting people about art, politics, and education during that time. It’s been a real honor and I will continue to do that periodically — linking new episodes here along the way. You can find the podcast at:
https://the-sectarian-review.castos.com/
Why Should I Read and Subscribe to UnTaking?
Well, if you’re looking for more of the snark and elitism that makes up 90% of #FilmTwitter, I’d say you shouldn’t sign up. Also, if you are interesting in creating an entire personality out of making fun of Morbius in precocious ways, I would also pass. There are plenty of cynical Hell-holes already out there.
But, if you’re looking for someone else who wants to simply experience a work of art on its own terms and let it affect them (for better or worse, perhaps), this is hopefully a place for you. Also, if you prefer to come out of a movie with new ways to think about your world, I’d like to take that journey with you.
So let’s fall back on the idea of building community as a reason to subscribe.
And on the subject of community…
I have no idea if this will amount to anything, but Substack has a new “Chat” feature, which seems to work like a private Slack or something (or perhaps a micro-version of Twitter?). If you sign on for that, you’ll be able to interact with me and others via the Chat feature on your phone app. I will give this a shot and see what develops.
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