Maybe a little obsessive
September 15, 2017 2:10 PM   Subscribe

Max Landis, known for writing Chronicle, American Ultra, and Victor Frankenstein (as well as being John Landis' son), has written a 150 page living document detailing his Carly Rae Jepsen conspiracy theory. Click here to take a long, deep dive into the world of the Jepsen Pattern.

You can also just read the entire document here if that's easier for you!
posted by gucci mane (42 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
It's a fucking saxophone max
posted by The Whelk at 2:14 PM on September 15, 2017 [19 favorites]


It's been fascinating to watch Max Landis evolve from the awkward nerd introducing the occasional Trailers From Hell segment on YouTube into the cringiest turbodouche who ever drew breath
posted by Merzbau at 2:20 PM on September 15, 2017 [30 favorites]


I mean...I thought I was maybe a little bit fixated on "Emotion", because I listened to it, like, a lot. A lot. And as a middle aged person, I'm not sure I'm really in CRJ's target demographic, so it's easy to feel self-conscious about that.

But I didn't write 150 pages about my feelings concerning the music. And I like to think that, even if I'd been seized by the urge to do so, some inner voice would have stopped me. Because I fundamentally think that what Landis has done here is a little skeevy.
posted by Ipsifendus at 2:25 PM on September 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


Yeah, I saw this and thought "Hey, isn't Max Landis known for being kind of an asshole?", and then started Googling, and yes, yes he is. Sadly there's no good overview of his douchiness from a single source, but there's plenty of pretention, white male privilege, semi-MRAish anti-feminist whining, and whatnot. It's a shame, because he seems like he knows how to write. Chronicle was pretty good, I thought, and American Ultra at least had a fun concept. With Bright, he's paired with similarly humorless macho bumbler David Ayer (whose work I've occasionally enjoyed, but who really seems to succeed by accident a lot), so I think I'm done with him.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:25 PM on September 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


And I should add: that's a feeling I have without having read any of it, except a few paragraphs excerpted on Twitter. It's not the particular execution that feels gross, it's the very idea.
posted by Ipsifendus at 2:27 PM on September 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Hmm.
posted by orange ball at 2:31 PM on September 15, 2017


I speed-read this over lunch. The idea doesn't feel gross to me at all. Why are people saying that?
posted by radicalawyer at 2:32 PM on September 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Yeah, all you need to know about Max Landis is that he incoherently attacked The Force Awakens for being a "Mary Sue" story (a term with a long, storied misogynist history) while somehow forgetting that he wrote American Ultra, surely one of the finest examples of an author ineptly writing himself into a glorified heroic role. If an Axe body spray bottle could have babies with all Gamergaters at once, the child of this unholy union would be Max Landis.
posted by Frobenius Twist at 2:36 PM on September 15, 2017 [26 favorites]


This is why the thesis statement was invented. GET TO THE DAMN POINT (I couldn't actually make it to the end, what is his point, that sometimes artists favor certain themes? Astounding!)
posted by crosley at 2:37 PM on September 15, 2017


I'm sure I've told this anecdote in previous Max Landis threads, but I saw his father John Landis speak, and by speak I mean throw shade on everyone in holywood from the past 4 decades. But once Max was brought up he could say no wrong, Max's screenplays were the most perfect things he had ever read, only to have small minded producers and directors cut and hack at them until the perfection had been purged from them.

I know parents want to celebrate their children, but it sounded like Max being a special, unstoppable, perfect little genius who can do no wrong goes back to his beginnings.

The screenplay John Landis was lauding as the best he had ever read - Victor Frankenstein.
posted by thecjm at 2:46 PM on September 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


How upset do you think Max was deep down inside that he wasn't the studio's first/only choice to write the screenplay for Ready Player One?
posted by thecjm at 2:48 PM on September 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


OK I haven't read this but the Jepsen Theory is that Carly is secretly, desperately in love with Max Landis, right?
posted by acidic at 2:50 PM on September 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


I haven't read this yet, but it looks like one of those things that I blame the internet for facilitating: the turning of what once would've been a half-funny joke shared among dormmates into a 150 page manifesto.
posted by octobersurprise at 2:58 PM on September 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


Serious CRJ superfan bias here, and I can't tell if this author is being sincere, but . . . isn't it quite common for artists to make an album centered on a narrow theme relating to whatever events in their life motivated them to write those songs? How is this weird?
posted by materialgirl at 3:24 PM on September 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


I read this whole thing before checking the comments and learning I'm supposed to hate this guy. Anyway I'm here to report that he's probably not wrong about the theme but nothing in what he wrote really blew my mind either. Like, yeah, the songs are about what the words say, there's nothing deep here.

Carry on.
posted by Space Coyote at 3:27 PM on September 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


I speed-read this over lunch. The idea doesn't feel gross to me at all. Why are people saying that?

I had to google both Max Landis and Carly Rae Jepsen but the framing as a warning from the future from some obsessed dude just makes him come off as a stalker. Or as dude who's using stalking as a punch line. This did not make me feel that Max Landis is less likely to stab someone than the average person.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 3:50 PM on September 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


you might know Max Landis as the guy who managed to ruin both Dirk Gently and Candle Cove in the span of about one month
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:10 PM on September 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


If I were Carly Rae I would be taking out a restraining order right now.
posted by pxe2000 at 4:39 PM on September 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


I'm not reading this without a sufficiently comprehensive tl;dr that convinces me it's worth reading. Because taking it at face value it's some obsessive ranting of little consequence to anyone other than the obsessed and the target of his obsession. The latter of whom could consider forwarding a copy to the FBI.
posted by ardgedee at 5:12 PM on September 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's been fascinating to watch Max Landis evolve from the awkward nerd introducing the occasional Trailers From Hell segment on YouTube into the cringiest turbodouche who ever drew breath

My wife went to college with Max and is still friends with him on his personal facebook...this is 1000% accurate.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:32 PM on September 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


Oh no, is the Candle Cove thing bad? I've been wanting to check it out.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 5:52 PM on September 15, 2017


Click here to take a long, deep dive into the world of the Jepsen Pattern.

No, Sir, I will not.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:00 PM on September 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


See, when people think cocaine will make them more productive writers, they're sort of overlooking the potential for stuff like this.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 7:26 PM on September 15, 2017 [13 favorites]


Or, you all are convinced he is serious here.

Not like there isn't a history of WAY overblown internet pranks at all.
posted by Samizdata at 7:41 PM on September 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Or, you all are convinced he is serious here.
It's probably some sort of elaborate anti-joke, but it's just so exhaustingly irritating that no reading can really redeem it.
posted by crosley at 9:18 PM on September 15, 2017 [10 favorites]


guys

hey guys

got this crazy theory

hear me out

so OK

springsteen

you know, bruce springsteen

i have done an exhaustive review of his songs

written it up in a 1701 page thesis with a 47 page summary somewhere in the middle because that's just how i roll

dig it

he likes cars

yeah i know

just sit and absorb it for a few minutes

oh and also new jersey
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:55 PM on September 15, 2017 [15 favorites]


It's a fascinating read, creepy, but in a way similar to a lot fan speculation about pop culture, here though tracking one singers entire career for a narrow set of themes, almost a single narrative Landis holds as repeating throughout the entirety of it in a way that is, or would be uncommon. It's made creepy by the songs potential connections to the singer, Jepsen, in a way that gives a undeniable stalker vibe due to their seemingly personal attachment to that potentially "real" story. That the songs are public and available for any to have made this kind of examination adds to the strangeness of it all, since any pattern is then out in plain sight should one choose to look.

At the same time though Landis' own manner of examination, filled with hyberbolic exclamations and odd deflections, denials, and occasional autobiographical elements adds a disquieting feeling to the obsessive seeming perusal of the recordings. His writing anticipates strong emotions from his readers, filled with doubt and awe, but recognizes too the likelihood of criticism of Landis himself for the excesses.

Add to that, the themes/narrative he sees in Jepsen's music are/is unsettling itself, with the "story" as Landis has it is: "A young girl falls for an older man already in a relationship who doesn't share her affections, but remains in touch with her. She obsesses about him in unhealthy ways and will not let the relationship go", which he then breaks down into a number of frequently reoccurring subthemes or motifs. And making it even more uncomfortable is Landis' own obsessive recounting of the themes has some echo in those he sees in Jepsen's music.

Which isn't to say he's necessarily wrong about the themes he sees, his recounting is reasonably convincing on a lyric level to someone generally unfamiliar with Jepsen's work, it's just that the doubling of the obsessiveness increases the feeling of unease the whole project creates while reminding one of the commonality of fan writing in general and how it so often seems only a slightly toned down version of the same thing.

Beyond that, there is some side interest in his some of his digressions about music lyrics and in thinking about how one might interpret lyrics as understood through the music better perhaps to get a more unified understanding of the song as a whole than Landis might be getting with his focus. By which I mean if the lyrics are telling a sad story, but the music a happy one, how does that "read" to the listener overall. It's something Landis doesn't directly address, but its something that could be wondered about from reading him.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:12 PM on September 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


um idk whether this guy is a dick or not (no, I believe you, he definitely is) but I read the whole thing word for word, and I also read the lyrics of every single carly rae jepsen song he references before I read his interpretations of them, because I wanted to see if I read them the same way as he did, or if he was making things up/reaching. I thought after a song or two his reads would be so off that I'd give up and get bored. But...they're not. And I didn't.

And I'm sorry because I can sense the disdain that's about to land on me, but...this is awesome.

No, but it is. I started down the rabbit hole and then I resurfaced 3 hours later in a fever dream feeling like I'd been on some kind of exhausting immersive ride. It's like conspiracy-thinking is a contagion and I caught it. Even knowing that it's absurd and that the absurdity and isolation and weirdness of conspiracy-thinking was the point, it worked. It's like trying on some VR glasses and the person telling you, "When you put on these glasses, it's going to seem like there's a hole in the floor, but there isn't a hole in the floor, so just step onto it," and yet you can't, because the hole seems so real. I knew the whole time this was a weird made up internet prank thing about conspiracy theories and I followed it step by step and now I am in the hole.

So, from down here in the hole, I have a few things to say:

1. The conspiracy is not that Carly Rae Jepsen has a few recurring themes or created a concept album in Emotion. It's not "Carly Rae Jepsen sings about broken hearts the way Bruce Springsteen sings about cars." The conspiracy is that literally every single song she's ever released is about a very specific (non)relationship, a brief fling with an older musician who left to go on tour and broke up with her because he had a girlfriend. It combs a bunch of songs released over a decade for details that paint a picture of a particular scene. It's not "oh here are some sad love songs" - it's apophenia, staring at a bunch of random elements until a pattern emerges, and once you see the pattern, you can't not see it. Even though you know that, objectively, the pattern isn't there.

2. I don't know what he's actually saying about this on Twitter or whatever, but the idea that this is some kind of offense against Carly Rae Jepsen, the person, strikes me as pretty misguided. The whole point is that he doesn't know anything about Carly Rae Jepsen, the person, and he notes that even after he'd studied her albums obsessively for months he still didn't know what she looked like, because everything he was saying came purely from this obsessive close reading of her (publicly released) music.

If I were going to be ambitious about it, I'd say the project is kind of about that, about how we co-create stories by interpreting them, and then over-interpreting them, seizing control of them from their authors and dragging them in these utterly different and absurd directions. At the very end, he quotes a friend asking him what he'd do if Carly Rae Jepsen, the person, showed up and told him he was wrong, and he's like it wouldn't matter, she has no authority, the pattern is there in the work whether she wants it to be or not. And look, I don't want to brag//make my profession look any worse than it already does, but I have a PhD in English and I had versions of that conversation a dozen times in seminar, so reading it in this context made me laugh out loud. That's what going off the deep end of interpretation does; it kills the author. Maybe that's all critical interpretation is: constructing a conspiracy theory, building a web of apophenia around a work until it belongs to you, instead of to them.

I think I need to go lie down.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 11:17 PM on September 15, 2017 [22 favorites]


Or, you all are convinced he is serious here.

It's probably some sort of elaborate anti-joke, but it's just so exhaustingly irritating that no reading can really redeem it.


Yeah, I tried. The layout annoyed me a bit too.

But, given his theorem, I keep thinking of Celine Dion. Her songs are always about enduring, and how hard and how much work love is, and all that. One wonders why she keeps trying if she can't just be happy.
posted by Samizdata at 11:25 PM on September 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


I am so glad that I never listened to Carly Rae Jepsen before now (aside from call me maybe, of course, which was 100% unavoidable for a time). Because listening to her albums for the first time while reading his analysis was really engaging and engrossing. It's too bad this guy apparently has some baggage because that's going to temper my enthusiasm for sharing this... work.
posted by dbx at 11:31 PM on September 15, 2017


I used to almost feel a bit sorry for him... but then in an interview he managed to turn that thing were his dad killed those people that one time to be about him and it was 'yeah, fuck that guy' from then on.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:02 AM on September 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


At the very end, he quotes a friend asking him what he'd do if Carly Rae Jepsen, the person, showed up and told him he was wrong, and he's like it wouldn't matter, she has no authority, the pattern is there in the work whether she wants it to be or not.

As pretentious illiterate notes, this is pretty basic lit-crit stuff, and it's true that, as an entertainer, Jepsen counts on her audience building strong emotional ties with their own fiction of her, but... this is also textbook men-objectifying-women and the dismissal that Jepsen's own opinions could carry weight against Landis's might edifice of fantasy is... its own huge reek of privilege and male self-absorption.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:34 AM on September 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


Jesus, I don't mind an obsessive conspiracy theory, but there should be some kind of cookie at the end of it.

What is this guy saying? Does he think she killed John Lennon or something? Or is he just saying he's listened to all her songs over and over and over again and they all seem kind of thematically similar? Because that doesn't strike me as some kind of epiphany that would make it worth all this work.
posted by Naberius at 6:55 AM on September 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


this is also textbook men-objectifying-women and the dismissal that Jepsen's own opinions could carry weight against Landis's might edifice of fantasy is... its own huge reek of privilege and male self-absorption.

You know, I don't want to start a fight or poke at a sore spot if this is genuinely upsetting to anyone, but I am both a woman and a creative writer in addition to being a persistent and passionate over-interpreter, and I respectfully disagree.

What I see here is someone who obsessively close read literally every word of an artist's oeuvre, and then painstakingly assembled an elaborate argument about an overarching theory of her work. He never, except at the very very end, makes any kind of direct reference to her personal life, comments about her appearance, or does any of the usual kind of gross equation of the way a female artist looks with her art. To me, 'textbook men objectifying women' in criticism usually comes down to some guy being like, "This artist gives me a boner (or doesn't give me a boner) and I'm going to spend 5,000 words talking about why." But that's not what he's doing here, at all. He did the work and put in the time. He read and thought hard about the lyrics to every single one of her songs. That's not self-absorption; that's absorption in someone else's work. Privilege is reading one or two songs by a female artist and thinking that qualifies you to write a 10,000 word thinkpiece about gender. This is something else.

And while I don't want to get all weird about it and tip over into Camille Paglia territory, especially since, again, I believe you all that this guy is a dick in other contexts, there's something in me that feels passionately that arguing that something like this isn't fair to Carly Rae Jepsen is just...wrong. It strikes me as condescending in a way that is hard for me to articulate, but feels of a piece of the way the internet has allowed us to conflate the personal identity of the artist with the merit of the work in a way that actually keeps us from giving art by female artists (and other artists from marginalized identities) the respect it deserves. Work we truly respect, we want to take ownership of. Artists we truly admire, we want to dethrone.

If I ever write a novel and release it out into the world, I'll be pissed off the things people write about me all focus on my appearance, or comb TMZ for the details of my personal life, or are all accompanied by giant blow up photos of my face, or are all interpreted as statements about What It Means to Be A Woman. But if someone creates an entire website devoted to close reading every single thing I've ever written, and making claims about it, even if that claim is bananas and the whole thing is actually a way to talk about something else...I mean, I can't think of any better sign that a person has taken my work seriously then for him to have studied it so hard that he thinks he knows it better than I do. YMMV. But that's what I get from this.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 7:21 AM on September 16, 2017 [16 favorites]


Prediction: this guy will be found to have a human head in the freezer.

Get that restraining order, Ms Jepsen.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 10:04 AM on September 16, 2017


Can't wait to read his 10,000-word essay on how "James Bond" is just a codename that's handed down to a new agent every few years...
posted by Ian A.T. at 10:09 AM on September 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


But that's not what he's doing here, at all. He did the work and put in the time. He read and thought hard about the lyrics to every single one of her songs. That's not self-absorption; that's absorption in someone else's work. Privilege is reading one or two songs by a female artist and thinking that qualifies you to write a 10,000 word thinkpiece about gender. This is something else.

At the same time though Landis' own manner of examination, filled with hyberbolic exclamations and odd deflections, denials, and occasional autobiographical elements adds a disquieting feeling to the obsessive seeming perusal of the recordings. His writing anticipates strong emotions from his readers, filled with doubt and awe, but recognizes too the likelihood of criticism of Landis himself for the excesses.


At the very end, he quotes a friend asking him what he'd do if Carly Rae Jepsen, the person, showed up and told him he was wrong, and he's like it wouldn't matter, she has no authority, the pattern is there in the work whether she wants it to be or not... That's what going off the deep end of interpretation does; it kills the author. Maybe that's all critical interpretation is: constructing a conspiracy theory, building a web of apophenia around a work until it belongs to you, instead of to them.


He sounds like exactly the kind of guy that CRJ writes about. Who believes he is the rightful owner of a thing solely because he wants it, and discards it without thought when the wanting passes. She cuts him by writing about him from the view of his target(s), not a thing but as a recognizable person driven to achieve a very specific kind of high, one he knows well, but approached from the other side. Could he fill the role of CRJ's "You" or would he be one of "all the other boys"? Dare he find out? Killing him softly with her songs, a scar no one else can see. He ends with Joni Mitchell's Clouds because of the vertigo of looking at (his) life from both sides now.
posted by otherchaz at 11:20 AM on September 16, 2017


I read the whole thing last night without knowing that the author was well known, or anything about Max Landis at all.

In that context, I thought it was a charming and well written piece of internet conspiracy craziness - which I love. It was like Ted the Caver or some other engrossing creepypasta, for lack of a better term, just remarkably well written.

I did assume the author was gay by the way he talked about gay men, and simply thought he was bi when he talked about wanting to sleep with the woman he met at a party. It never occurred to me otherwise, because it would be pretty unacceptable to talk about gay men like he did without being one.

I was very surprised to read about Max Landis, and honestly don't know how to feel knowing he's a famous straight man who is kind of terrible instead of a funny gay man with time on his hands and an internet connection but apparently no knowledge of adding margins to your text elements to make them more legible.
posted by moons in june at 1:31 PM on September 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


I mean, I can't think of any better sign that a person has taken my work seriously then for him to have studied it so hard that he thinks he knows it better than I do. YMMV.

I dunno. I agree that there's no reason to fight, and I think there is plenty of room for respectful disagreement (and also you are more the expert here than I in English Lit and its techniques), but...

While the author is not the final arbiter of their own work, and, once a work is released into the world it has to survive on its own merits and not the author's intentions, I think there is a difference between identifying core themes that the author might not have noticed and asserting that the author's work is held together by a grand unity that the author could reasonably say "well, no, that never happened." The first is criticism, the second is... kind of weird.

And, when you add to this the long history of men projecting their weird obsessions on women, the creep factor really outweighs the "awesome deep dive" factor. In my book, and YMMV, as the kids say.

This might be because of my discomfort with "conspiracy thinking." I used to really love historical conspiracy theories, because they were so much fun. Then I realized that they were pretty much the result of disordered thinking, fraud, and antisemitism, and the fun kind of died. Maybe that's unfair to Landis, but it's part of how I feel.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:25 PM on September 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


What I see here is someone who obsessively close read literally every word of an artist's oeuvre, and then painstakingly assembled an elaborate argument about an overarching theory of her work.

I mostly agree with you, pretentious illiterate, on the analysis portion of the text, where Landis is performing close readings of the lyrics and connecting them into sets of themes and defining an overall pattern to her music. That part would be fine for most people in itself and in a pared down version could have found a home on any number of pop culture sites. But even as that is the case, the very need to dramatically pare down this document into a much shorter version to get published points towards something that is more troubling.

The majority of Landis' doc may be about Jepsen's lyrics, but a lot of the framing of that analysis is through Landis' focus on how we will perceive it and him. Even setting aside the formatting oddness, there seems to be nearly as much written about Landis' thoughts and worries over how this document will come across, mostly revolving around notions of mental health, his own or that of those friends as mentioned in autobiographical seeming digressions. Landis doesn't just give a somewhat spiced up accounting of his efforts, he indulges in a mix of hyperbole and minor paranoia over the effect of this knowledge on him and the reader, while entreating the reader to not think this is crazy. The frequent boldings, font size changes, and underlining, doesn't lend any added sense of stability to the project overall either.

Just as one example out of many, this explanation of his efforts doesn't give me a strong feeling of being entirely genuine, especially when he is also claiming not to remember what Jepsen looks like or know anything much about her biography, though he clearly knows they both live in Vancouver. It isn't to say he's lying exactly, but that there is a strong element of this not being any sort of normal artistic analysis or critical examination of an artist's work.

“Yes, but like what is the point of this? I understand that it’s real, it’s a real pattern,” My
friend said to me, this acknowledgment of my Jepsession meant to buttress me from what was
coming next, “But like…Do you want her to read it and like…Give you a prize? Be like, ‘oop,
you caught me!’ Is this supposed to make her fall in love with you? Do you want to date Carly
Rae Jepsen?”

The question confused the hell out of me. It was like someone had asked Michelangelo
if he’d painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel because he wanted to “date God.”

Carly Rae Jepsen as a human being who I might bump into in Vancouver, who I had in
fact met, very briefly, at one of those meet and greet things and seen perform live, felt
completely separate from the ever-growing document on my laptop.


If we stripped out all the personalized elements from Landis' piece, it could be easily made into a interesting critical look at Jepsen's work, but in the same fashion, if we took all the writing not directly pertaining to the criticism and looked at it, I think it'd be a tale of someone who worries they're not entirely stable.
posted by gusottertrout at 4:28 PM on September 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Didn't know anything about Max Landis before I read it. I read the whole thing, while simultaneously listening to all the songs mentioned. I tend to agree with pretentious illiterate 's comments - and... maybe people should read the whole thing, and listen to all the music being critiqued, before making snarky comments. He doesn't just reference her most recent album - he went through 3 albums and 2 EPs, and bothered to listen to the stuff she wrote when she was 16 or 17.

It's not concise, it's not especially high-level music analysis etc, but I thought it was an enjoyable read - and perhaps enjoyable partly because of those traits (not in spite of them). Was a bit surprised he didn't mention or pick up on her lyrics' relevance to the trans community (and how "Your Type" was written from the perspective of liking someone gay etc) after 150 pages though.
posted by aielen at 9:22 PM on September 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


The Donald Trump of screenwriters
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:59 AM on September 17, 2017


« Older "They are the Walter White of Middle Earth."   |   Wiffle ball is serious. Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments