Bullshit jobs

The Ballad of Buster Scuggs (d. Coen Brothers)

Support the Girls (d. Andrew Bujalski)

Take a look at what the Coen Brothers did with Buster Scruggs. They’re reworking the western by providing unexpected characterizations and endings. But are they really going far enough when they are still using the same painfully tired stereotypes for Native Americans that continues to persist in the last hundred and dozen years of the genre and cinema? They really can’t see their limitations and in these time of increasing mainstream representations of minorities, they’ve been painfully tone deaf. This limitation is what keeps them in business, churning out film after film annually. Who else has that kind of privilege? Woody Allen? He’s gone. They’re the only auteurs in a major studio backlot that can do this yearly. The film is such a masterclass in acting, especially for character actors, and filmmaking, however if the content and tricks are same year after year what, seriously, is the point? It would even seem that they’re conscious of their status with the deaths in the film. The opening story talks about a legendary singer and gunslinger who’s time is finally up. A gold pan handler hits the mother load only to be scooped by another prospector. Is their time up too? Meanwhile Bujalski whose been mining the mumble core (sub?)genre appears to be more aware of the world around him by having a Black woman as a lead. Didn’t expect that from him where mumblecore films have been effectively a whites-only genre. Bujalski is careful at the characterizations of his other black figures too, like the depressed husband, which kinda harks back protagonist in Killer of Sheep. In fact, are they the updated couple from that film? Perhaps an objection could be that the film is set in a Hooters-like place with scantily-clad women and that some of the high jinks are corny. The film is also about class as one of them says, “there’s plenty of bullshit jobs out there”. For folks who’ve been there and who still are in low paid bullshit jobs, it’s nice to see such an acknowledgment on screen. It’s not the best of films, but one can sense that here’s a filmmaker who has tried to use his patented style to include those on the other side of the freeway. Or am I keeping the bar low since it’s coming from a white filmmaker?

#2019 #17 #19