Few would deny the armor of narcissism worn by those who live in New York. An ilk that, for whatever reason, imagines themselves to be superior “hot shit” in comparison to the rest of the world (and especially the rest of the United States). It’s why Lena Dunham as Hannah Horvath had the gall to wield a line like, “You are from New York, therefore you are just naturally interesting.” And even those who weren’t born there certainly feel the same, like Ben Manalowitz (B. J. Novak). As the “anti-hero” (though that word feels outmoded at this point to describe “protagonists” of the twenty-first century) of Vengeance, the first feature directorial effort from Novak, we find that the establishing scenes of his life in New York, including a cringeworthy dialogue exchange with John Mayer (who is not parodying himself at all, so don’t be fooled) at a party, is ultimately meant to set up his inevitable “fish out of water” scenario.
Indeed, there is an entire genre devoted to the “major event” of someone who lives in New York actually leaving it (often because they “have to” in order to “lay low” for a while—because why would one “dare” to leave the city otherwise?). This includes such fare as Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Funny Farm, Baby Boom, City Slickers, For Richer or Poorer, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Did You Hear About the Morgans? Similarly, there’s even an inverse genre about the people who visit New York from out of town and “can’t deal” with how “hardcore” it is (e.g., both versions of The Out-of-Towners, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York). Of course, the Texans featured in Vengeance likely wouldn’t feel that way, as Ben comes to learn that their own ways are far more savage than the New Yorker who can only offer some light “mental sparring.” Though the mental capacity of this particular New Yorker isn’t sharp enough to immediately realize that the Texans didn’t win at the Alamo. As Ben is informed by Abilene Shaw’s (Lio Tipton) grandmother… a history lesson that leads him to assert that vengeance (“that’s the title!”)—what the Texans sought after their loss—is the one aspect of the human experience that focuses itself entirely on an event of the past rather than advancement into the future.
And, naturally, the only reason Ben finds himself in Bumblefuck, West Texas anyway is because of his past… hookup. Leading him to be strong-armed over the phone into attending the funeral of this girl he only had sex with a handful of times. With her brother, Ty (Boyd Holbrook), essentially refusing to accept any reality in which Ben is not actually Abilene’s serious boyfriend, the movie spotlights one of the initial concepts meant to shade the modern-day U.S. norm: “a new American reality where people invent these conspiracies because the truth is too hard to accept.” This is the pitch Ben gives to Eloise (Issa Rae), the producer of a podcast at American Radio Collective, after Ty confesses to him that he wants to kill the son of a bitch who really did this to Abilene. Because, in his opinion, it wasn’t a drug overdose (“She never touched so much as an Advil,” the townsfolk insist). Abilene was murdered.
Part of the cachet of the story, obviously, is that it involves the “holy grail of podcasts”: a dead white girl. Dead White Girl, in turn, becomes the working title of the story (because hey, if Only Murders in the Building can be a title, why not?). Abilene herself does start to become a more central character in the story, and embodies the sort of aspiring singer-songwriter trope that Lana Del Rey appeared as when she was still Lizzy Grant showing up at open mic night venues in Williamsburg. In fact, Del Rey herself served an instrumental (pun intended) role in the film by advocating for Novak to get the rights to use her song, “American,” from the 2012 Paradise EP. Commenting of that song’s presence during a very key scene, Novak stated, “I do think of her as an actual voice that has something to say… the line at the beginning about Lana and ‘I love America and not in that faded Lana Del Rey way’—I think I grapple with: is America a ghost of itself?” Answer: it was never the “alive” beacon people thought it was, at least not for anyone who wasn’t white. From what blancos call the start, it was a “failed European project,” at best. In any case, Novak continues, “A ghost of itself that is really a sentimental value, an ironic sort of faded glory. Which I hate to think it might be, and that is sort of what is beautiful about Lana Del Rey’s music.” In other words, Lana’s music that constantly melds the “Golden Age” element of America with the decay belying it.
While we’re still with Ben in New York, the backdrop of the cityscape serves as the very emblem of that LDR songwriting style. For while New York remains automatically associated with “glory” and being an “architectural apex,” its landscape of concrete and skyscrapers is so obsolete for our climate change-driven future, with high-rises possessing a much more pronounced carbon impact. And yet, Ben, who gets off on twentieth century America as much as any white man, insists to Eloise, “As dorky as it sounds, I care about America. And not in that faded Lana Del Rey way.” But if he did really care, maybe he wouldn’t live in a city that so patently represents every defunct twentieth century value.
Nonetheless, there are brief glimmers of defending the “hillbilly sect” (i.e., anyone who lives outside of New York) that appear here and there. Like when Quinten (Ashton Kutcher, reteaming with Novak after their Punk’d days together) informs Ben, “The problem isn’t that people aren’t smart. The problem is that they are. If the landscape is like this and people were just boring, you wouldn’t have this problem. The problem is, you get all these bright, creative lights and nowhere to plug in their energy.” Some would say that’s where the internet serves as a conduit, but those who still remember life before the internet would argue there’s no substitute for the tactility of having an actual place to be creative in. And the “sense of community” that theoretically comes with that place.
But in the present, it’s perhaps irrelevant anyway since, as Ben theorizes, “We’re all living in our own individualized times, that’s why we’re living in divided times.” Tellingly, like most narcissist New Yorkers/Americans, he doesn’t include the rest of the world in his assessment, even though, yes, it has access to the same resources (the internet) to experience time relatively. Yet the “purpose of time” is now the same everywhere. Mainly because the “American disease” of wanting to be famous for nothing has spread worldwide—just another effect of the globalization virus the U.S. wanted so badly to infect Earth with after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
“It’s all that’s left of us. The recordings,” Quinten muses. Whether this means just audio or video is irrelevant—the point is that it’s Novak’s way of trying to explain the collective obsession with constantly “documenting” every moment, even the most inane, for something like social media posterity. Through the mouthpiece of Quinten, Novak also gives us the aphorism, “Everybody posting photos of every part of their day, we trade in our entire lives for the tiny pieces that get recorded of us.”
At the same time, no one cares about anyone but themselves (especially among the current generation), so who’s really going to see it? As Mabel (Selena Gomez) in Only Murders in the Building is told by Detective Kreps (Michael Rapaport), “Your parents told you you could be anything you want, and your teachers reinforced that bullshit, so you come out with your little TikToks and your fuckin’ podcasts like everybody wants to hear what you have to say. Nobody gives a fuck about what you have to say.” This being a “Gen X and boomer” sentiment that plays into Quinten philosophizing on why he won’t be the villain in Abilene’s story, “At first, everyone’s gonna think you got your bad guy. Nobody’s gonna let it be that simple. Everyone’s gonna have to have their take. ‘Cause that’s how it works now. Everyone has a take. See, if you don’t have a take, you don’t have a voice. If you don’t have a voice, you don’t exist.”
It’s why an article like this must even exist (meta, right?). So it is that with everyone having their “take,” Quinten reveals the “great truth of our time”: “Everything means everything, so nothing means anything.” This is where the “mind blown” moment is supposed to happen for the audience, save for those who had already read American Psycho and knew that the founding tenet of that aphorism is: everyone is everyone.
When Ben tries to rebuff Quinten’s nihilistic take by saying that Abilene mattered, Quinten reminds him that he never cared about her when she was alive, that instead he romanticizes the videos he’s been watching and the songs he’s been listening to of hers. So it is that Quinten delivers the coup de grâce: “That’s what you care for: a recording. Not a person,” adding, “We are all just inspirations for the record of ourselves” as a way to iterate that Ben is only concerned with Abilene to make a name for himself. A record of himself.
What Quinten has to say doesn’t sit right with Ben’s ego (not, as Novak would like us to believe, his conscience). And yes, it’s a fragile one, as so many New Yorkers in the media’s are. Which is the only reason it might be believable that a little nebbish Brooklyner would suddenly grow the cojones to actually shoot someone—because his vision of himself was so shattered that he had to obliterate the person that shattered it. A scene soundtracked to, what else, “American” by Lana Del Rey. And as Ben walks out of the tent’s doorway (an American flag, obvi), he further “breaks character” by deleting all the files he recorded for Eloise from the server. Proof that he—America—is not what Quentin claimed. He and America (read: New York) are better than that. They can be better than that. And that’s the sense of “possibility” Novak wants to leave us with. Even though it’s quite convenient he never shows Eloise’s reaction to the deletion of the files or the fact that she probably saved copies of them somewhere because she’s a competent producer who doesn’t rely on a shared server alone.
As Abilene’s mother drives Ben to the airport, he remarks, “Guess I have to find a new story.” Incredulously, she asks, “After all that?” He “sagaciously” replies, “I think that story’s just for us.” In effect, Novak has made the anti-Nope by sending a message about not commodifying every tragedy porn story. A shot of Ben on the subway then confirms what most movies about the New Yorker leaving his “natural” environment do: they glean what they can get from somewhere else and apply that “higher knowledge” to their existence in the “big city.” In this case, the higher knowledge turns out to be: “That’s life. It’s all regrets.” Especially for the New Yorker who would ever deign to leave his own version of reality on a permanent basis.
