The Future We Can't See
On "How To Blow Up A Pipeline" + Writing and Contexts
Hi,
I wrote the “Screenland” column in this past weekend’s New York Times Magazine. It’s on the new thriller movie “How To Blow Up A Pipeline,” which is about a group of young people trying to destroy some oil infrastructure in Texas. I zoomed in on one fascinating feature of the film: the way it seems to be trying to look back on itself from a future it knows it doesn’t have access to. What will this story look like in 10 years? Twenty years? Fifty? It’s natural to ask, and impossible to say. These unanswerable questions are of extra-special relevance to the first-ever mainstream film to treat ecologically-minded sabotage as a possible answer, as opposed to something only undertaken by villains, cult members, or well-intentioned fools.
I’ve been writing these Screenland columns for a few years now. Screenlands can kind of be about anything as long as there’s at least a scrap of footage involved. More than any other “slot” I write for, it’s resolutely a print magazine product. It appears in the same place in the magazine every week, and while the pieces are of course designed to work on their own, they also draw context from the ongoing thread created by whatever else has occupied the slot. This thread is one small part of the relationship of the magazine to its readers. I love stuff like that.
Sometimes, though, I notice people online are clearly coming to these pieces without any understanding of this context. It’s not their fault: it’s kind of how the Internet works. But it can influence how people understand (or don’t) the piece. This is especially the case when I write a Screenland about a new movie or TV show. Some people start reading and assume, quite reasonably, that what they’re reading is a review. And then they start thinking––again, quite reasonably––something like this review is kind of strange. It’s not doing some things I expect a review to do! (For example, in this piece, I don’t talk about the acting at all, and only glancingly about the cinematography. I also never really say how “good” or “bad” the movie is.) Sometimes these people post things online like what a weird review!!!
I don’t have a grand conclusion from all of this. Just observing that it sometimes feels strange to be straddling the print culture that drew me to magazines and the online culture where so much of my work is consumed today. I suspect the most successful digital ventures of the future will be the ones that find a way to create and develop contextual threads for different kinds of writing in the ways print was—and still is!—so good at.
In case you’re wondering: I do think “How To Blow Up A Pipeline” is very much worth seeing. It’s not a perfect movie, but it has fantastic energy, and represents a clever marriage of very contemporary concerns (about climate) with a classic narrative format (the heist film, basically), in a way that really set my mind fizzing.
The movie was loosely adapted from a pro-sabotage climate manifesto published by the Swedish political theorist Andreas Malm in 2020. The best thing I’ve read about the strengths and shortcomings of Malm’s argument is this piece from last year in The Nation by the political scientist Thea Riofrancos. I recommend it to absolutely anyone with any interest in climate politics. It’s a perfect companion to the movie.
—Peter