Cinemorphosis

Tag: film

  • Black Mirror’s “Joan Is Awful” and the Algorithmic Pact with the Devil

    Black Mirror’s “Joan Is Awful” and the Algorithmic Pact with the Devil

    If The Truman Show warned us about the dangers of involuntary surveillance masquerading as entertainment, Black Mirror’s “Joan Is Awful” updates the nightmare for the age of algorithmic narcissism and digital convenience. Where Truman was trapped in a fake world constructed for him, Joan willingly signs away her soul in the fine print of a Terms of Service agreement—an agreement she didn’t read, because who reads those when there’s AI-generated content to binge and oat milk lattes to sip?

    “Joan Is Awful” isn’t just a satire about streaming culture or artificial intelligence gone rogue. It’s a scalpel-sharp metaphor for Ozempification—our cultural surrender to the gods of optimization, where being frictionless is the highest virtue and being real is a liability. Ozempification isn’t just about weight loss. It’s about trimming down everything that makes us inconveniently human: messiness, contradictions, privacy, shame, even joy. We trade all of it for a pre-chewed, camera-ready version of ourselves that fits neatly into an algorithmic feed.

    Joan becomes the star of her own life not by choice, but by being optimized—flattened into a content-producing puppet who behaves like a mashup of the worst moments from her day. It’s not just that her life is turned into a reality show; it’s that the version of her that streams every evening is algorithmically engineered for maximum watch time and outrage. The real Joan is rendered irrelevant—just source material for a soap opera she has no control over.

    This isn’t dystopia, by the way. It’s Tuesday on Instagram.

    We live in a Truman Show remix where we’re both performer and voyeur, curating a persona for a crowd we cannot see and will never know. Like Joan, we sign away our likeness every time we click “Accept All Cookies.” Our deepest thoughts are mined, our image is harvested, our data is commodified, all in exchange for a life so smooth, so seamless, it might as well be a corporate press release.

    The chilling genius of “Joan Is Awful” lies in how no one seems particularly surprised by any of this. Her boyfriend leaves her not because he doubts her, but because the show made her look like a monster—and worse, a boring one. Her boss isn’t shocked; she’s just annoyed that Joan’s AI doppelgänger is bad for brand synergy. Even the therapist is part of the machine. Everyone has already accepted the premise: you don’t own your life anymore—Streamberry does.

    This is Ozempification in its final form. Not a sleeker body, but a sanitized self, scrubbed of complexity, repackaged for virality. Like reality TV contestants, Joan is hypervisible and utterly dehumanized, the protagonist of a story she didn’t write. And like so many of those contestants—remember the ones who cracked on camera only to be mocked in GIFs and memes—her breakdown is part of the entertainment. Joan’s humiliation isn’t a glitch; it’s the product. We want the breakdown. We crave the trainwreck. Because in a world that rewards optimized personas, the real human underneath is just noise to be edited out.

    In the end, Joan fights back, but only after enduring the full crucifixion of parasocial fame. It’s a cathartic moment, but also a reminder: she had to become completely unrecognizable—to herself and to others—before she could reclaim a shred of agency.

    The tragedy isn’t just that Joan’s life is broadcast without her consent. It’s that she ever believed she was still the protagonist in her own story. That’s the Ozempic Lie: that you can control the process while outsourcing the self. But once the machine gets hold of your image, your data, your likeness, it doesn’t need you anymore. Just a version of you that performs well.

    So yes, “Joan Is Awful” is awful. And Joan is all of us.

  • ANDREW SCHULZ IS NOSTALGIC FOR A BYGONE ERA OF STREETWISE AMERICANA

    ANDREW SCHULZ IS NOSTALGIC FOR A BYGONE ERA OF STREETWISE AMERICANA

    Andrew Schulz’s Netflix comedy special Life is a raw, ribald, and unfiltered chronicle of his and his wife’s grueling journey to have a child. It’s a ride that careens between lewd confessionals, streetwise swagger, and sentimental catharsis. For an hour, Schulz prowls the stage like a wisecracking, mustachioed throwback to an old-school gangster film, his booming presence equal parts stand-up comic and mob enforcer. At six-foot-two, broad-shouldered, and built like a guy who settles arguments with a left hook, he radiates a menace rarely seen in stand-up. This is not a comedian you heckle. You laugh, or you keep quiet.

    I had never seen Schulz’s stand-up before, but I knew him as a popular podcaster, so I figured I’d see what all the fuss was about. It didn’t take long to realize that the hype is well-earned. He’s a master wordsmith, a virtuoso of sarcasm, persona, and hyperbole, wielding his sharp tongue like a switchblade. But what really sets him apart is his ability to straddle two opposing forces: he is both a blistering satirist of the old-school street tough guy and a full-throated champion of it. Watching him, you feel like you’ve been dropped into a smoky Brooklyn steakhouse circa 1975, where the grizzled patriarch of a blue-collar family is holding court at the dinner table, explaining—with obscene embellishments—how the world really works.

    His comedy plays like a high-stakes game of verbal poker. As he launches into brutally unfiltered takes on relationships, sex, and masculinity, he flashes an ambiguous grin, as if daring you to figure out whether he’s mocking the persona or reveling in it. The joke is always half on him, half on you, and entirely in his control. But beneath all the bravado and shock humor, Schulz betrays a sentimental streak. He adores his wife. He’s obsessed with his newborn daughter. By the end, he ditches the swagger for a moment of sincerity, showing a video montage of his family and telling his audience that for all the struggles, the reward is worth it.

    Schulz isn’t just nostalgic for a bygone era of streetwise, no-nonsense Americana—he’s built his entire persona around it. And somehow, in a world of algorithm-driven, sanitized comedy, it works.

  • ROAD HOUSE IS A 2-HOUR INFOMERCIAL FOR TESTOSTERONE

    ROAD HOUSE IS A 2-HOUR INFOMERCIAL FOR TESTOSTERONE

    My pride as a lifelong bodybuilder took a glorious nosedive one recent evening when, sprawled on the couch like a man who had long abandoned ambition, I decided to indulge in the cinematic opus that is Road House. This film—if we must use that term generously—stars a Jake Gyllenhaal so sculpted he looks like Michelangelo, midway through carving David, got bored and said, Screw it, let’s make him a UFC fighter instead.

    Gyllenhaal plays a brooding, sinewy bouncer in Key West, grinding out a living by doing what all action heroes must—protecting a bar and its stunning owner, played by Jessica Williams, from the looming threat of corrupt mob bosses. Naturally, this leads to an inevitable showdown with their number-one enforcer: Conor McGregor, sporting the physique of a shaved grizzly bear on clenbuterol, his veins bulging like he’s one flex away from detonating. His performance lands somewhere between rabid pit bull and man who hasn’t blinked since 2019, and frankly, it’s magnificent.

    The plot? Barely there—thinner than a gas station receipt and about as consequential. It’s the classic Western trope: a stranger rides into town, cleans up the mess, and leaves behind a trail of broken bones and smoldering stares. But let’s not kid ourselves—the storyline exists solely as an excuse to showcase glistening, heaving slabs of muscle in slow motion. The camera caresses each bicep, each rippling lat, with the kind of reverence usually reserved for Renaissance art. It’s not an action movie so much as a two-hour infomercial for pre-workout supplements, high-intensity interval training, and whatever unregulated substance has been making its way through underground fight gyms.

    Somewhere between Gyllenhaal’s 47th shirtless moment and McGregor snarling like a man whose only source of hydration is pure testosterone, I found myself reaching for my phone—not to check the time, but to Google Conor McGregor’s diet plan. Because Road House isn’t just a film—it’s a flashing neon sign reminding you that you are, at best, a sentient pudding cup compared to these granite-hewn demigods. This isn’t entertainment; it’s an intervention. And the message is clear: drop the remote, pick up a kettlebell, and try to reclaim your dignity before it’s too late.

    When the credits finally rolled and I peeled myself off the couch, I had a revelation—if I wanted my memoir, Cinemorphosis: How I Become the Hero of Every Show I’ve Ever Watched, to thrive in today’s ruthless marketplace, it too needed a marketing tie-in. Just as Road House is a Trojan horse for fitness supplements and gym memberships, my book needed its own branded merchandise. But considering my subject matter—living vicariously through TV characters—the only viable promotional tie-in would be a chain of Self-Flagellation Chambers™, where disillusioned TV addicts could atone for their wasted lives. Or perhaps a TV Watcher’s Repentance Kit, complete with a burlap sack, an artisanal cilice, and a deluxe “discipline” whip for those long, dark nights of the soul.