Eastlyn Frankel

Watched Sorry Baby today, and I think I need some time to sit with it. To be honest, I struggle a lot with the type of dialogue Eva uses - it feels a bit twee and overly earnest, and at times, it's awkward in a way that undercuts some of the more hard-hitting moments of the film for me. It also at times didn’t seem to make sense in the world of a movie - it was like Wes Anderson style dialogue. However, I think this did a great job of exploring a difficult topic through nuanced characters and perspectives. The symbolism was really interesting - one moment in particular that comes to mind is when Eva had to kill a mouse that her cat had dragged in, after she and her best friend discussed the fact that her best friend’s baby was probably the size of a mouse at that point. There’s this idea of breaking one’s innocence, which also comes up at the end of the film when she is apologizing to her best friend’s baby for the bad things that might happen to her. Honestly, I could see this being a truly incredible book, which is something I’ve noticed in many indie titles these days that seem to possess a literary quality. Another random thing that kept coming up for me was hair. The free-flowing nature of the character's hair when she is a grad student, to when she cuts it off after getting assaulted, was really interesting to me, and something I kept noticing.

• I feel like this is so interesting because my whole life Ive wanted to be perceived as a reader or as someone who is well read and yet my recall for reading is very poor. Its very difficult for me to summarize things, I feel like I forget something the second I close the book, and forget what I liked about it. Annotating my books takes me away from the flow of the story itself. And as someone with ADHD its so easy for my attention to be diverted. I also struggle with reading when I don’t have someone to talk about the books with. But at the same time, I feel like I can’t be a purist, and also can’t be cutting down the ways that this could potentially make harder texts more accessible. I have seen the ways AI has been so helpful in my life for cutting down on decision paralysis which is something I struggle with having ADHD but what am I giving up. 

• Also in terms of being well read, the article states that will no longer be a signal that someone is intelligent which I find interesting. The way this article portrays it - is very seemingly objective, neither truly vilifying AI or praising it but instead reflecting on the ways that it is bound to change our experience of interacting with texts. but as someone with ADHD I know that I take more stuff in when I read it then when I listen to it. But is that even true? I always think about when people say they listened to the audiobook for something and if that counts. I always wanted to be a faster reader and now I maybe can be, but if I can’t recall any of the information what’s the point. Also how are the blindspots in AI, at least racially or gender-wise etc. or how they are being trained going to affect the kinds of information it gives us.