Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 89

The Crazy Edit: The Colorful Cruelties of Bachelor in Paradise

Mild spoilers ahead.

Early on in Monday’s episode of Bachelor in Paradise, Ashley Iaconetti gave one of the show’s many, many confessional interviews. There wasn’t much for her to confess, though, since Ashley is not big on hiding her feelings: For her, she said, being in Mexico with her ex and his new girlfriend has been extremely un-fun. “This has actually turned into my greatest nightmare,” Ashley told the show’s camera, “and every day, the nightmare gets darker and darker. I’m getting to the point where I’m looking at the undertow over there, and thinking how desirable it would be to just let myself go into it.”

Casual talk of suicide: This is standard-issue stuff for a show that toys with big themes—violence, villainy, the perpetual mysteries of Love—and then, for the most part, brushes them aside so as to depict its contestants making out in its “rose palapa.” The glibness is also typical, however, for a show that treats its contestants as “tropes” as often as it treats them as “people”: Ashley is, per the longstanding convention of reality TV, “the crazy one.” Of course she’d blithely imply ending it all in the undertow.

Bachelor in Paradise, even more than its fellow shows in the Bachelor franchise, has perfected a style you might call deus-ex-camera: It bestows upon its production staff—producers and editors—a kind of narrative omnipotence. Editors in particular serve, within the show’s universe, as godlike arbiters of contestants’ fates via their assignments of recognizable identities. There’s the clown edit (Hayley and Emily, whose occupations the show lists, unironically, as “Twin,” and who enjoy swapping outfits to fool their fellow contestants). There’s the nerd edit (Evan—occupation: Erectile Dysfunction Specialist—eating a banana). There is, of course, the villain edit. But there is also a sub-category of villain in the show’s tropic taxonomy. Bachelor in Paradise, recently, has emphasized, via Lace but particularly via Ashley … the crazy edit.

Bachelor in Paradise has perfected a deus-ex-camera style: It’s the editors who, in its universe, wield the power.

The crazy edit is at this point the stuff of reality-TV cliché: It emphasizes overreactions. And dramatic reversals of emotion. It involves tears, a lot of them, often wiped away from under the eyes so as not to disrupt the tear-haver’s eye makeup. It invokes, at its peak, protestations of “I swear I’m not crazy.”

It hardly needs saying, but the crazy edit will almost always be given to a woman.

Ashley has been, throughout her many appearances on the shows of the Bachelor franchise, particularly ripe for that particular edit. As a character, she’s repeatedly and reliably served as a tearful agent of chaos—a gif just waiting to be made. There Ashley was, crying and chaos-ing, on Chris’s season of The Bachelor. There she was, doing the same thing, on the first season of Bachelor in Paradise. (“This is not paradise, I’m having an awful time right now,” was Ashley’s confession in that case, her declaration of non-fun managing at once to echo and to foreshadow the other appearances she’d make in the franchise.)

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Monday’s Bachelor in Paradise, though, took things a step further. The episode didn’t stop merely at making Ashley seem over-emotional and under-stable; it also went ahead and mocked her for all of that. The show the crazy edit it had bestowed on Ashley ... and made fun of it.

And so, directly after Ashley hinted at suicide? She changed the subject of her “confession.” Tearing up anew, Ashley admitted, “A couple months ago, my dog died, and she’s like my best friend.” She continued, through her tears: “But I know she went to heaven, because all dogs do, and even though Lucy’s ashes are in a jar in my house, I know that the spirit of my dog Lucy is going to help me on this journey.”

Yes. The whole thing had the feel of that Office episode in which Pam gets drunk and admits that “I feel God in this Chili’s tonight”: It was absurd in its very pretense toward seriousness.

It hardly needs saying, but the crazy edit will almost always be given to a woman.

The absurdity was increased when Ashley capped off her tearful remembrance of Lucy, the departed canine, by raising her hands to her chest in a gesture of prayer. “Lucy,” Ashley prayed, as vaguely church-like music swelled around her, “please let some guy that I actually will have some sort of instant chemistry and connection with walk in that door, because I’m really scared that I am going to completely lose my mind.”

With that, the episode cut away from Ashley to show a montage of the dogs of “Paradise”: strays lounging on the beach, frolicking in the water, running on a dock. And then: The episode’s editors superimposed over a sun-streaked cloud an image of “Lucy,” hovering in doggy divinity above the ocean.

So that happened. (ABC)

This is the kind of nothing-is-sacred ridiculousness you’d expect from a show that has been referred to, by its own host, as “truly a train wreck.” The Bachelor franchise is infamous for the way it encourages its various dramas and melodramas to transpire—with the help of, among other things, lots of boredom and lots of booze. (That is precisely the thing that UnREAL, one of whose original showrunners was previously a producer on The Bachelor, so darkly satirizes in its plot lines.) Monday’s Ashley-praying-to-her-jarred-dog moment served, or attempted to serve, as a gesture of determined lightheartedness on the part of the show’s powers that be: Yes, the show insisted, one of our characters implied that she was thinking about suicide and also said she was scared of losing her mind. But really, don’t worry about her! She’s fine! This is fake! It’s all just a big joke!

And of course it is, in part, just a big joke; Bachelor in Paradise is, like any reality show will be, a hall of mirrors. And Ashley, certainly, is the one giving these interviews in the first place; she is the one who is praying to her deceased dog on national television. She is complicit in her own performative “crazy.”

Even more complicit, though, are the invisible production staff—themselves agents of chaos—who saw fit to make “Ashley” synonymous with “crazy.” The crazy edit, for all its quirky Photoshopping, is pernicious precisely because it is the kind of thing you wouldn’t see applied to a man: It taps into longstanding, highly gendered ideas about women and emotion and mental health. The crazy edit takes the threat of violence posed by male villains (see: the Meat Chad menace) and turns it into a different kind of threat—of “hysteria,” of the social destruction that can be wrought when women reject their historical mandates toward complacency and compromise. Bachelor in Paradise, with its fake lashes and off-the-shoulder tops and poolside Chuck Taylors, is very much the product of mid-2016; in this broader sense, though, there is also something extremely Victorian about it. Here is a show that is in its way equating “having feelings” with “being crazy.”

How Ashley’s story will resolve itself in all this remains to be seen; soon after her tearful prayer to her dog, Wells—“a guy that I actually will have some sort of instant chemistry and connection with”—was introduced to Paradise by the show’s god-producers. Wells immediately asked Ashley out; they had a good date. Perhaps, the show is suggesting, even finding oneself the subject of a crazy edit has its rewards. Still, as Ashley put it of the “nightmare” she’d been living before the show’s producers saw fit to save her from herself: “I mean, I feel like it’s, like, demoralizing.”

The Beginning of the End for Private Migrant-Detention Centers?

NEWS BRIEF The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it will look into whether it should end its relationship with the private companies that run migrant-detentions centers, a move that would signal a major shift in policy and likely appease immigrant-rights advocates.

DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson made the announcement Monday, and said the review should be finished by the end of November. The U.S. government has depended heavily on private contractors to run its migrant-detention centers, and it’s not clear what it would use as an alternative. These centers house undocumented migrants who’ve committed a deportable crime, migrants fighting deportation orders, and those caught crossing the border illegally and who are waiting for their immigration court dates. Private detention centers house 62 percent of all detained migrants, which is up 13 percent from 2009.

If it were to end its contracts with private detention centers, the government would either need to build new facilities, drastically reduce the number of migrants in detention, or lean upon other forms of monitoring migrants while they await court dates or deportation.

Johnson said in his statement he asked for a subcommittee of the Homeland Security Advisory Council to be established that would review:

“ … our current policy and practices concerning the use of private immigration detention and evaluate whether this practice should be eliminated.  I asked that the Subcommittee consider all factors concerning ICE’s detention policy and practice, including fiscal considerations.”

The U.S. has contracts with these companies to detain about 34,000 migrants every day, which at $160 per migrant, costs taxpayers $5 million per day, or $2 billion each year. One of the peculiar aspects of these contracts is that the companies make money whether or not those allotted slots are filled. But more than money, immigrant-rights groups complain private companies have little oversight, keep migrants in poor conditions, and offer inadequate medical services. These were nearly the same complaints against private prisons, which the U.S. Department of Justice announced this month would no longer house federal inmates.

The review of private prisons, done by the Office of the Inspector General, looked at 14 facilities and found they had worse safety records and did not save taxpayers a significant amount of money. For the companies that operate detention centers, it’s more bad news, because they’re mostly the same companies that run private prisons. The two largest private prison operators, Corrections Corp. of America and GEO Group, also run nine of the 10 largest detention facilities, which include centers that house women and children. Both companies had traded on the New York Stock Exchange at about $30, sometimes climbing to $40.

But after the announcement they’d lose private prison contracts, and faced with the loss of their contracts to run detention centers, on Tuesday GEO Group dropped to $20, and Corrections Corp. of America slid to $16 per share.

The U.S. Accepts 10,000th Syrian Refugee This Year

The United States has now accepted 10,000 Syrian refugees into the country in the last year, the White House said.

National Security Advisor Susan Rice said in a statement the 10,000th refugee touched down Monday afternoon. The arrival marks the completion of the Obama administration’s pledge, made last September, to accept that number of refugees from the war-torn country by the end of next month.

Over the last year, the U.S. government has resettled Syrian refugees in dozens of states; Michigan and California have taken the most, with 570 and 500, respectively, according to Time. On Monday, Rice thanked the “generous communities throughout our country that have continued to open their arms to these new neighbors, demonstrating the values that have made our nation great.”

Rice said the U.S. will admit at least 85,000 refugees from various countries this year. In the 2015 fiscal year, the U.S. admitted 70,000 refugees.

The Obama administration announced last fall it would accept 10,000 Syrian refugees by the end of fiscal year 2016, which is September 30, in response to Europe’s migrant crisis, the worst of its kind since World War II. It also allocated $4 billion to humanitarian groups working with refugees. In fiscal year 2015, the U.S. accepted 1,500 Syrian refugees.

Last fall, Europe’s refugee crisis prompted many countries to evaluate their asylum-seeking policies, particularly regarding Syrians, who make up the bulk of those applying for asylum in the European Union. Germany, the favored destination for many people fleeing the Middle East and Africa, instituted an open-door policy. The country accepted about half a million Syrian refugees in 2015, and expects to accept about 300,000 in 2016. Britain committed to taking in 20,000 Syrians over the next five years, and France pledged to admit more than 30,000 Syrians over the next two years. Canada has resettled more than 30,000 Syrians since last November. Australia, which is known for its strict immigration policies, vowed to accept 12,000 refugees from Syria and Iraq in addition to the 13,750 humanitarian visas it already grants annually.

Other European countries have instead attempted to shut out refugees and migrants. Hungary last year constructed a razor-wire fence along its borders with Serbia and Croatia, and now plans to build a more permanent wall. Sweden and other Scandinavian countries that initially welcomed refugees have been trying for months to stem migration by rejecting asylum claims and deporting refugees. In January, The Guardian wrote:

[Sweden’s] interior ministry has called on police and migration authorities to prepare for a sharp increase in deportations, and to arrange charter flights to expel refused asylum seekers to their country of origin. Sweden is also approaching other EU countries, including Germany, to discuss cooperation to increase efficiency and make sure flights are filled to capacity, it said.

Obama’s program to resettle Syrian refugees received significant support when it was announced last September; 51 percent of Americans backed the plan, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center. Back then, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton called the program “a good start,” and said the U.S. should accept 65,000 refugees. A month later, after the ISIS attacks in Paris, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said allowing Syrian refugees into the country could be a “Trojan horse” that would grant terrorists entry to the U.S. Last December, Trump called for a blanket ban on Muslims entering the U.S.

Americans’ opinions on accepting refugees shifted after the Paris attacks, according to polling from Bloomberg. Following the assault, 53 percent of Americans said they believed the U.S. should stop accepting refugees altogether.

Remembering Gene Wilder

Gene Wilder was the greatest kind of comic actor: one who not only knew how to read a joke, but also how to inhabit it. In his hands, a line reading could be suffused with menace, or compassion, or demented delight, and no matter what, it would be deeply funny to behold. Wilder, who died at age 83 on Monday due to complications from Alzheimer’s disease, was a consummate performer who made every project he worked on better, from Mel Brooks’ masterpieces of the 1970s to his collaborations with Richard Pryor. He was a screen presence who always seemed to possess an otherworldly energy, making him the obvious (and best) choice to play Willy Wonka, Roald Dahl’s avatar of sheer wonder. His footprint as a comic actor was immense, with his best work showing the depth of craft that went into building a memorable performance.

Wilder, born Jerome Silberman in 1933, was transfixed by acting from a young age and was classically trained in Britain and New York, rising through the theater world as a devotee of Lee Strasberg’s legendary method-acting teachings. He took his stage name from the protagonist of Look Homeward, Angel and the playwright Thornton Wilder. He found success on and off Broadway before playing a small, pivotal role as a hostage in Arthur Penn’s 1967 smash hit Bonnie & Clyde. But his breakout moment came when he was cast in 1968’s The Producers as the nervous accountant Leo Bloom, after being noticed on Broadway by a young Brooks. Wilder’s performance launched his film career and netted him an Academy Award nomination for only his second on-screen appearance.

In 1971, Wilder was chosen to star in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, an adaptation of Dahl’s children’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. When he accepted the role, he detailed to producers how he imagined his on-screen entrance might look, walking with a cane and a heavy limp before discarding both and rolling into an acrobatic somersault. Wilder’s fine grasp on comic acting came partly through his delight in leading audiences astray and wrong-footing their every expectation. His Wonka is at times bedeviling, threatening, distant, even unkind; but Wilder never lets go of his core humanity, making him at once an outsized cartoon and a person.

“He simply couldn’t bear the idea of one less smile in the world.”

Over time, Willy Wonka became a children’s classic, but it was tepidly received upon release and barely grossed its $3 million budget back. Wilder then appeared in Woody Allen’s bawdy 1972 comedy Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, but it was 1974 that really cemented him as an A-list icon, with Brooks’s two greatest films, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, coming out within months of each other. In the first, Wilder was “The Waco Kid,” a sharp-shooting hero (he was flown in as a last minute replacement when Brooks’s first choice, Gig Young, collapsed on set).

In the second, which Wilder co-wrote with Brooks (they were Oscar-nominated for the screenplay), he plays the grandson of the mad scientist Frankenstein as a ridiculous, preening fool who is both ashamed of and drawn to his heritage. There might be no scene funnier in Hollywood history than the one where Wilder dramatically intones his intention to rescue his monstrous creation by locking himself in a cell with it. “No matter how terribly I may scream, do not open this door or it will undo everything I’ve worked for,” he lectures. Seconds later, as the monster roars at him, he drops the act and hammers on the door in terror, yelling, “What’s the matter with you people, I was joking! Don’t you know a joke when you hear one! Jesus Christ, get me out of here!” It’s a simple turn, but in Wilder’s hands, it’s a hysterically rapid transformation; the only thing better than his skill for faux gravitas was his sheer delight in subverting it.

In 1976, Wilder made Silver Streak, the first of four pairings with the stand-up comedian Richard Pryor. The deadpan Wilder and manic Pryor proved a magical box-office combination, with their last film, 1991’s Another You, serving as the last time either took a lead role in a movie. Wilder also directed several comedies, including 1984’s The Woman in Red, which co-starred Saturday Night Live’s Gilda Radner; the two met on the set of 1981’s Hanky Panky and married three years later. Radner, one of comedy’s most luminous talents, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1986 and died on May 1989. Wilder was, by his own admission, so devastated that he largely withdrew from acting, spending his later years painting watercolors and pursuing charitable efforts largely geared toward ovarian-cancer awareness.

In 1991, Wilder married Karen Webb, a clinical supervisor in lip reading who consulted with him on the film See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and the two were together until his death. He won an Emmy in 2003 for a guest-star role on the sitcom Will & Grace, but mostly stayed retired; in his later years, he apparently battled Alzheimer’s, although a statement from his family has said it was a milder form, and that he held on to his personality and could still recognize his close relatives. “The decision to wait until this time to disclose his condition wasn’t vanity, but more so that the countless young children that would smile or call out to him ‘there’s Willy Wonka,’ would not have to be then exposed to an adult referencing illness or trouble and causing delight to travel to worry, disappointment or confusion,” his nephew, Jordan Walker-Pearlman, said. “He simply couldn’t bear the idea of one less smile in the world.”

India's Tourism Minister to Women: Don't Wear Skirts Here

NEWS BRIEF India’s tourism minister said female tourists traveling to the country should not wear skirts “for their own safety,” prompting criticism that such advice fuels a culture that blames sexual assault on women’s dress and behavior.

Mahesh Sharma made the comments during a press conference Sunday in response to a question about security in Agra, home to the Taj Mahal. The day before, three men had kidnapped a 15-year-old girl who was walking on the street and raped her for two hours while they drove around in a van. It was the 33rd rape of a minor in the last five months, according to The Times of India.

Here’s Sharma’s full quote, as reported in The Indian Express. The “kits” he mentions include informational pamphlets the Indian government began offering last year that include safety tips for women:

We give welcome kits to tourists when they land at the airport. The kit includes a card with do’s and don’ts such as, do not venture out alone at night in small towns, do not wear skirts; take a picture of the registration number of the vehicle you use and send it to a friend ...

CNN reports the tourism advice in the kit does not mention skirts. In the section on clothing, it reads: “Some parts of India, particularly the smaller towns and villages, still have traditional styles of dressing.” The pamphlet also mentions some religious places ask travelers to cover their heads or remove their shoes, and encourages tourists to learn about local customs where they plan to travel.

Sharma has previously made controversial remarks about how women in India should behave; last year, he said going out at night might be acceptable for women elsewhere, “but it is not part of Indian culture.” Later on Sunday, Sharma tried to walk back his comments, saying he meant them as a precautionary recommendation, and wasn’t inferring a dress code for female tourists. But critics jumped on Sharma’s words, saying that telling women to change their dress in this way puts the onus on preventing sexual assault on the victims of the crime, and not the perpetrators. Rape cases in India have increasingly drawn international attention after the 2012 fatal gang rape of a woman in Delhi. The assault led to massive protests around the country and reforms of sexual-assault laws that made it easier to convict perpetrators.

Foreign tourism dropped 25 percent the year following the Delhi rape. Since then, India has tried to reform its image as a safe travel destination for women.  

Could More NFL Players Join Colin Kaepernick's Protest?

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the national anthem before games as a protest against recent high-profile incidents of police brutality and racial injustice have been met with criticism and protests, but is an important step for a league where professional athletes rarely speak out on such issues.

Kaepernick was noticed sitting down during the playing of “The Star Spangled Banner” in a preseason game Friday. When asked by a reporter about his actions, he said:

I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.

The NFL does not require its athletes stand for the national anthem, and, indeed, the 49ers said it was within Kaepernick’s right to not participate. But some coaches say they expect members of their team to stand, regardless of their personal feelings. It’s a delicate line that Rex Ryan, the Buffalo Bills head coach, addressed in a Sunday news conference:

Anytime I talk to my team about that, if there’s personal beliefs or whatever that keep you from doing it, I understand. But at the same time, you know, you’ve got to look at the gifts that we have, the opportunity that we have to play a great game is through the men and women that serve our country. I think that’s an opportunity right there just to show respect, and I think that’s why when you see our team, every one of us are on that line and that’s kind of our way of giving thanks.

Reaction to Kaepernick’s actions were largely negative and included people burning his jerseys. Pro athletes in other leagues have expressed solidarity with the Black Lives Matters movement. NBA stars famously protested the killings of unarmed black men by white officers, as did their counterparts in the WNBA; even Michael Jordan, who was notoriously taciturn about politics during his playing days, has weighed in. But this is an important moment for professional football: one of the league’s stars is speaking out on social-justice issues, something that is rare in the NFL.

Earlier this month, Aaron Rodgers, the Green Bay Packers quarterback, said more athletes should speak out on critical issues. But stopping them is the NFL’s culture, he said. He told ESPN:

I think some guys in the NFL are probably worried about repercussions on speaking their mind from the league … I think if more guys maybe did in our league, it would create a domino effect possibly.

But could more athletes join Kaepernick’s protest?

Philadelphia Eagles rookie linebacker Myke Tavarres said Monday he plans to sit during the national anthem in a preseason game later this week. Racial injustice is too important to ignore, he told ESPN.

We’ve got an issue in this country in this day and age, and I feel like somebody needs to step up and we all need to step up. We’ve got that right. There’s just a lot going on that people don’t want to talk about, and I feel like us as athletes, we’re looked at as role models.

This is a risky move by Tavarres, who is fighting for one of the limited spots of the team. But as he put to ESPN, he’s “got nothing to lose,” since he hasn’t signed any major contract or endorsement deal. Kaepernick, on the other hand, has a six-year, $114 million contract. What is at stake, Tavarres says, is his pride as a black man.

While Tavarres is the only football player to come out and join Kaepernick in protest, more athletes could join.

Athletes have the ability to bring important issues to the national stage. Kaepernick’s actions have even brought on a debate surrounding “The Star Spangled Banner,” as well, with several authors bringing up the song’s ties to slavery. It shows how powerful a moment it is when professional athletes speak up and take political stands.

The Uzbek President Is Hospitalized for a Stroke

NEWS BRIEF Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov has been hospitalized after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke over the weekend, the leader’s daughter said Monday.

“His condition is considered stable,” Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva, Karimov’s daughter and an Uzbek diplomat, wrote in an Instagram post. “At the moment it is too early to make any predictions about his future health. My only request to everyone is to refrain from any speculations, and show respect to our family's right to privacy.”

Reports of Karimov’s poor health were first announced Sunday by the country’s Cabinet of Ministers, the Associated Press reports. The government statement on Karimov’s health did not elaborate on the specifics of his condition, saying only that Karimov, who is 78, is “receiving inpatient treatment” that “will require a certain amount of time.” The statement was fairly unprecedented; Uzbekistan is rated among the “worst of the worst” countries in terms of repression by Freedom House, a U.S. non-governmental organization tracking democracy, political freedom, and human rights. The country is known for discouraging expression that may be considered threatening to the stability of government.

“It’s been important for all authoritarian rulers to project strength at all times,” Steve Swerdlow of Human Rights Watch told the BBC Monday. “Certainly any vocalization that Karimov’s power is not absolute has been seen as a threat to the entire system.”

The announcement comes days before the country’s 25th independence day celebrations Thursday, in which Karimov has traditionally performed a dance.

Karimov’s health has long been the subject of speculation. His limited public appearances during the country’s 2015 presidential election fueled rumors about his ailing condition, though the government had never publicly commented on the subject until Sunday’s announcement.

Monday’s announcement has prompted questions over who would succeed Karimov in the event of a transition of power, as well what such a transition would mean for the country. Foreign Policy has more:

But Karimov’s hospitalization, and the increased likelihood of political succession in Uzbekistan, comes as the country, and Central Asia as a whole, faces some of the greatest economic and security challenges in post-Soviet history.



“There will be losers from Karimov’s demise no matter how smoothly succession takes place,” Erica Marat, an assistant professor at the National Defense University, told Foreign Policy. “With no pre-set procedures of succession and a complete lack of experience in holding open elections, anyone who comes to power will continue the same level of political repression or engage in even harsher methods.”

Karimov has led the country since he was first appointed the former Soviet republic’s Communist party chief by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989. After Uzbekistan achieved independence in 1991, he was elected its first president.

Don’t Breathe and the Box-Office Reign of Scary Films

Three weeks after its release, Warner Bros.’ mega-budgeted superhero movie Suicide Squad is set to gross over $300 million at the domestic box office—a healthy take that will nonetheless make the movie barely profitable because of the sheer expense of making and marketing it. Last Friday, a horror film called Don’t Breathe hit theaters with a chillingly simple premise: Thieves break into a blind man’s house, then find that he’s more than they bargained for when he fights back. It made a profit within one day of its release.

As Hollywood’s superhero arms race has continued, with every studio bankrolling multi-film franchises, humbler, smaller-budget hits have largely fallen by the wayside. But this summer, low-cost, virally marketed horror movies have proven a far safer bet than tentpole action extravaganzas. Don’t Breathe is a well-made piece of schlock that’s set in one dilapidated house, has a cast of five, and wrings its tension from its characters having to keep as quiet as possible. It cost less than $10 million to make, and opened to $26 million; it will clear at least a 500 percent profit by the end of its run. This model is how Hollywood used to make most of its money—so why is it only being applied to horror films?

Last year, with his career hobbled by multiple expensive flops like The Last Airbender and After Earth, the director M. Night Shyamalan put up his own money to make The Visit. The $5 million found-footage horror film drew his strongest reviews in more than a decade and grossed almost $100 million worldwide. He produced that film with Jason Blum, the founder of the micro-budget genre-film company Blumhouse, which made a killing on the Paranormal Activity series and produces several films a year at low prices, hoping that a few will hit big with audiences seeking cheap thrills at the theater.

You might not even remember a movie like 2014’s Ouija, but it made 20 times what it cost to produce. Meanwhile, franchises like The Purge or Insidious have become consistent sellers, better situated to pop than the latest caped crusader. This year, Hollywood has weathered giant flops like Independence Day: Resurgence, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Alice Through the Looking Glass, and The Huntsman: Winter’s War, all of them expensive attempts to wring sequels out of films that viewers simply weren’t asking to see again.

But a horror sequel is practically as consistent a draw as an original concept like Don’t Breathe, promising a predictable but fun series of shocks. It also offers an experience that’s tough to recreate at home (where you can pause the movie, or at least turn the lights on). The Conjuring 2 made $319 million worldwide on a $40 million budget; The Purge: Election Year took $105 million on a $10 million budget; Lights Out made $125 million on $4.9 million. These films generally need a smaller “traditional” marketing campaign (involving print and television) because of the younger audiences they attract. Don’t Breathe was pushed out on social media, including a special partnership with Snapchat. Its studio, Sony, has had similar success in 2016 with two other small-budget films (Sausage Party and The Shallows) that were also pitched at millennial viewers.

So why can’t this model be replicated outside of horror? Cheaper genres that used to flood the release market, like biopics, romantic comedies, and teen-focused dramas, have mostly been pushed to specific seasons (like close to Valentine’s Day or the final weeks of Oscar eligibility in November and December). As Brent Lang of Variety pointed out when discussing Don’t Breathe’s success, the healthy profit margins guaranteed by lower-budget hits might be huge to an indie producer like Jason Blum, but they’re less vital to a publicly traded company like Time Warner, the owner of Warner Bros., which has invested billions in a DC superhero universe.

Three films in, the exploits of Warner’s new Batman, Superman, and Joker have been largely derided by critics. Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Suicide Squad haven’t hit the desired $1 billion mark worldwide, which the rival Marvel films are now doing with relative ease. But they’re still part of a years-long exploit that promises many more superhero films to come, including the long-awaited debut of Wonder Woman. That, coupled with all the bells and whistles of a big action movie (merchandise, fast-food tie-ins, etc.), can “move the needle” on the stock market, as Lang put it. Don’t Breathe may clear a tidy profit, but only in theaters: No one’s making any action figures out of it.

Studios need more than a solid small-budget hit to impress their stockholders. But that’s why producers like Blum have kept to the indie route, steering clear of the circuses that accompany tentpole releases. “The reason people don't make low-budget movies is that it's completely not sexy — we’re not the cool guys on the block,” Blum told LA Weekly in 2015. With films like a Blair Witch sequel on the release schedule, it’s clear some sectors of Hollywood have finally stopped caring about being cool—and it’s paying off.

Iran's Own Internet

NEWS BRIEF The World Wide Web is nearing its end in Iran.

The country announced Sunday it had completed the first of three stages that will eventually set up a “national internet”—an intranet, really—controlled by the government, with all of its servers in the country. Iranians will only have access to content, services, and applications that are based in Iran.

Iran already blocks access to some overseas-based social media, news outlets, and online stores. A national internet would tighten the government’s grip on online content even more. The BBC adds:

The government says the goal is to create an isolated domestic intranet that can be used to promote Islamic content and raise digital awareness among the public.

It intends to replace the current system, in which officials seek to limit which parts of the existing internet people have access to via filters—an effort [Iranian Communications and Information Technology minister Mahmoud] Vaezi described as being “inefficient.”

Officials say a national internet would reduce cyber security risks. But human-rights activists say it would further isolate the country from the outside world and quash freedom of speech online.

Iran’s national internet project has been in the works since 2006. It was scheduled to be completed in two years but has been plagued with delays and rising costs. The second phase, which introduces video services, is expected in February. The final stage, which will add further services, including for companies involved in international business, is expected in March.

Norway's Mysterious Reindeer Deaths

NEWS BRIEF Norway officials have released some gruesome images from a remote region of the country: more than 300 reindeer lay motionless in piles on a barren hillside, seemingly killed in an instant.

The Norwegian Environmental Agency is still investigating, but officials believe the animals, 323 in total, died in a lightning storm, according to a statement released Sunday. A hunting warden first found the herd Friday, during an inspection of the area, which is in the country’s central region. Reindeer are known to crowd together during storms, which could explain why so many died at once.

Here is a picture taken by Norwegian officials:

Norwegian Environmental Agency

Some 10,000 reindeer migrate over the barren and rocky Hardangervidda plateau. Hunting season began last week, which means some of those herds are in constant movement. As herds move, they’re left exposed to the weather and to violent storms. Lightning strikes that kill herds of animals are not uncommon, and often hit livestock left outside in flat areas during thunderstorms.

As for humans, about 24,000 die each year from lightning strikes all over the world. In the U.S., that number is relatively small, with about 30 deaths in the country every year. Wealthier countries tend to experience few lightning deaths, because lightning disproportionately kills the poor. In countries with large indigent populations, like India, an average about 2,000 die each year from lightning strikes.