Asawin Suebsaeng

Interactive Writing Fellow

Asawin Suebsaeng is the interactive writing fellow at the Washington, DC, bureau of Mother Jones. He has also written for The American Prospect, the Bangkok Post, and Shoecomics.com.

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A graduate of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Penn., Asawin came back to DC with hopes of putting his flimsy Creative Writing major, student newspaper tenure, and interest in human rights and political chicanery to some use. He started cutting his teeth at F&M's student-run weekly, The College Reporter, serving as editor in chief. He has interned at The American Prospect, been a reporter for the Bangkok Post, and scribbled for ShoeComics.com. His favorite movie is either Apocalypse Now or Pirahna 3D, depending on the day or mood.

"Hysteria": Very Feminist, Very Socialist, Mildly Funny

For those looking for a left-wing romantic comedy that dramatizes the invention of a lady's sex toy in Victorian-era London.

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri May. 25, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

NSFW.

Hysteria
Sony Pictures Classics
95 minutes

Allow me to be straight with you: Half of this movie is just watching physicians in 19th-century England getting rich old ladies off.

Now for a quick history lesson: Hysteria is set in London in the late 1800s—a time when the word "horny" had not yet entered the women's medical lexicon. Whenever a housewife or a mistress got into a sexually-repressed fidgety funk, medical professionals of the time—men who knew less about female sexuality than a Pomeranian puppy does—would simply diagnose them as suffering from the "disease" of female hysteria, a term used to cover emotional instability and jittery behavior. (This diagnosis remained on the books at the American Psychiatric Association up until the early 1950s.)

And what, you ask, did these Victorian doctors prescribe to calm their women patients? Why, a physician-administered volcanic orgasm, of course!

That's where Dr. Mortimer Granville (played by the versatile Brit actor Hugh Dancy) comes in, to apply his professional turbo-fingering to the cause of mental health. As a rising star at Dr. Robert Dalrymple's (the always worthwhile Jonathan Pryce) premier clinic, Mortimer gets paid top dollar to devote his talents exclusively to masturbating the hell out of the era's 1 percent. It's a lucrative business, bringing dozens of women to full-blown "paroxysm," as he repeatedly labels the sensation, day in and day out. That is, until he develops carpal tunnel syndrome from kneading too many Englishwomen down south.

[Read the full article]

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Congress Talk Pretty One Day

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Tue May. 22, 2012 10:24 AM PDT

Congress lost theirs.

A recent study by the Sunlight Foundation found that Congress is a lot like Benjamin Button. But instead of reverse-aging, members of Congress are regressing in their ability to form complex sentences.

According to the analysis, members of the House and Senate currently speak at roughly a 10th grade level—almost a full grade lower than in 2005. Republicans come in at a 10.4 grade level average, while Democrats perform slightly better at a 10.8. (The study was based on algorithmic analysis—similar to methods used to chart Congressional buzzwords—of floor speeches delivered through April 25, 2012.)

Politico has a rundown:

The study also revealed that only 10 members of Congress have used at least 20 of Kaplan's 100 most common SAT words so far in the current session of Congress, while just 92 members have used at least 10 of those words...[T]he U.S. Constitution is written at a 17.8 grade level, the Federalist Papers at a 17.1 level, and the Declaration of Independence at a 15.1 level (an analysis by the University of Minnesota showed that President Barack Obama's State of the Union this year had an 8th grade comprehension level – the third lowest score of any SOTU address since 1934).

Here's are a couple of charts from the study:

Sunlight Foundation

On its surface, this will probably read like yet another cue to bash the stupidity of our much-derided Congress. But determining the substance or effectiveness of something based on its "grade level" isn't an exact science. People might want to keep this fact in mind:

All journos mocking Congress for speaking at a 10th grade level shud remember that newspaper writers aim for 8th grade. (6th is better)
— Jim Tankersley (@jimtankersley) May 21, 2012

You could plausibly argue that our nation's rhetoric has been somewhat dumbed down over the past few years. But great politicians have always tried to speak in populist terms. It shouldn't shock anyone to learn that elected officials don't often channel Aaron Sorkin. If you want to mock the 112th Congress, you run the risk of looking silly if you chuckle at politicians' word choices or the length of their speeches.

Instead, simply highlight their ideas.

They Finally (!!) Made a Movie Based On Battleship...

...and it just so happens to be the most glowingly patriotic thing in theaters right now.

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri May. 18, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

A production still.

Battleship
Universal Pictures
131 minutes

At first glance, Battleship seems like the most inexcusable, wretched pile of flabby urethra to crawl out of the movie industry in decades.

For starters, the film has been attracting a year-long volley of unfiltered rage for being such a blatant, self-satirizing model of product placement and cross promotion: The movie is openly advertised as an adaptation of the Milton Bradley board game of the same title. The board game. As in, the thing you and your childhood buddies played on the floor of your parents' living room, in the days before you knew what paintball or a spliff was.

This thing, right here:

And unlike games like Clue or even Space Hulk, the sea-battle guessing game never bore any tangible plot. It was just you and your prepubescent cohorts shouting out combinations of letters and numbers. It's not a toy that in any way begs to be whored out to Hollywood script-doctors eager to capitalize on nostalgia and commercial familiarity. As sage-wisdom doler Rob Delaney opined earlier this month, "It isn't okay that there's a movie 'based on' Battleship starring Rihanna. That is a thing that is not okay."

Everything seemed to be teed up for king-sized failure—disposable escapism that amounted to little more than Battle: Los Angeles, but with 80% less dry land. Or Transformers, absent the irrepressible charms and sly wit of actress Megan Fox.

But here's the dirty little secret about Battleship: It's actually a ragingly dumb good time, that also happens to be the most enjoyably patriotic thing in theaters today.

[Read the full article]

"The Dictator": A Qaddafi-Inspired Rom-Com Filled With Pubic-Hair Jokes

Sacha Baron Cohen's uneven comedy still confirms his status as a master satirist.

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Wed May. 16, 2012 12:01 AM PDT

The Dictator
Paramount Pictures
83 minutes

If The Dictator were a dictator, it would probably be Chiang Kai-shek: good in spurts, but excessive and, in the end, unpardonably flawed.

The film (directed by Larry Charles) chronicles the politically incorrect misadventures of Adm. General Haffaz Aladeen, the jolly autocrat of the fictional North African republic of Wadiya. The character—actor/satirist Sacha Baron Cohen's latest creation—is a comic pastiche of democracy-killing icons: Aladeen enjoys a flamboyant, sybaritic, rape-abundant lifestyle à la Uday Hussein. He possesses the megalomania and the "Amazonian Guard" of a Moammar Qaddafi. And his regime's nuke-happy, Jew-baiting tendencies are a caricature of today's Iranian hardliners.

Mix together those three ingredients, add a dash of Elmer J. Fudd, and you've got yourself one tall, mad Haffaz Aladeen.

[Read the full article]

"Dark Shadows" May Imperil Tim Burton's AC/DC Status

The director's patented formula gets another workout, featuring Johnny Depp as a goofy-ass '70s vampire.

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri May. 11, 2012 3:25 AM PDT

Dark Shadows
Warner Bros. Pictures
113 minutes

In March 2010, CollegeHumor.com debuted a sketch titled "Tim Burton's Secret Formula." The Burton character brainstorms with his team of "weavers of shadowy fantasms" to come up with his next big project. Burton rejects the idea for an original screenplay and declares that they will stick to taking "an old story that was already creepy and make it shitload creepier!" From there, the other elements and usual suspects fall into place: Johnny Depp, Tim Burton's domestic partner, buckets of white make-up, black set design and wardrobe, Danny Elfman score, and haunted everything.

Even if you admire, as I do, Burton's directorial output since 1999—which has indeed leaned heavily on rebooting famous old tales—it's hard to argue that this was an unwarranted lampooning. Sleepy Hollow, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd, and Alice in Wonderland can be damn-near aesthetically interchangeable. The same goes for Burton's latest, Dark Shadows, a star-studded adaptation of the influential 1960s daytime soap that threw together black magic, werewolves, and vampires—"Satan's favorite TV show," as it was labeled by boycott-happy Christian groups at the time.

To his credit, Burton has achieved what I like to call the AC/DC standard: Once popular artists really nail a good formula, they reach a point where it is permissible to abandon the pursuit of originality or innovation. Listening to the albums High Voltage and Highway to Hell back-to-back is much like watching Burton's glut of remakes in rapid succession—the formula feels more like signature style, and you learn to forgive and often embrace the predictability.

But the fatal snag with Dark Shadows isn't its lack of originality. It's that halfway through, the film forgets to bring the fun. The result is a thoroughly uneven black comedy that builds to a thunderously unsatisfying conclusion.

[Read the full article]