Mimetic Monday: August 16, 2021

Ted Lasso, the Widening Gyre, Mimetic Politics

The good, the bad, and the mimetically quotable.

Positive Mimesis 

Ted Lasso. If you haven't seen the Apple TV show yet, I strongly encourage you to take it for a spin. Ted Lasso, an American football coach who has been hired to coach a European soccer team, is a positively anti-mimetic character who changes everyone around him —but what really amazes me is that anyone in Hollywood would think to make this show at all in the present climate. The making of this show is an example of what I call someone who had a "transcendent desire"—you don't write for the market that exists, you write for the market you want. You have a desire that transcends the existing demand...or at least the demand that has been signaled in the marketplace. Someone at Apple TV did that. They created, or maybe simply exposed, demand from people who want to have their hearts warmed rather than wrenched in the darkness that has become Netflix.

Here's some more easy positive mimesis: tag a friend you think would enjoy …