Browntable

> "Sexual Harassment."
>
>

**Browntable** is a young movie reviewer and video essayist. He makes use of all the video essayist techniques, and his videos regularly feature constant text onscreen, odd editing effects, and emotional music, but his actual arguments often lack depth behind them. However, he was the first to reveal one of the essential, foundational questions of the universe - *What Makes Good Rat?*, a contribution to art discourse that cannot be understated. Despite his occasional tisms, he seems a good-natured young lad, possible support for laser-murder aside.

## History

### On the Greatness of *Spider-Man 3*

> "Something I've noticed as a pattern is a lot of videos that are like, 'oh here's why this movie is actually really good,' they just list the things that the movie is trying to do without telling you whether or not they achieved it."
>
>

> - Jay
>
>

Our trio first encountered Browntable in EFAP 31, where they took a look at his video "Spider-Man 3: SMARTER Than You Think" with Ben and Billy the Fridge from The Drunken Peasants. While he shares the popular opinion that *Spider-Man 1* and *2* are great, Browntable made the bold claim that *Spider-Man 3* is smarter than people think. He started off by claiming that *Batman Begins* was partially to blame for *Spider-Man 3*'s failure as it was darker and grittier, so people wanted that from Spider-Man as well, and that Sam Raimi was to blame for including Venom in the movie to appease fans, even though it was the studio who pushed for Venom's inclusion. Though Browntable did argue that casting Topher Grace to play Eddie Brock, rather than someone who fit Brock's more muscular build, actually works in his favor, as it makes him an evil version of Peter, since they're both awkward skinny photographers. However, he also argued that Brock isn't actually that self-centered and asshole-ish, as he has both a good and bad side like every other character, but the example he has of his good side is that he cheats his way to the top out of desperation. *Spider-Man 3* shows us that other characters have two sides to them as well, as Peter is just a normal guy from Queens, something that was already shown to us in the previous two films, as well as every other Spider-Man story ever, and Sandman is pegged as a monster, but is actually just a man trying to save his daughter, as if that justifies his crimes against innocent people and could not be said about almost any, if not any, other villain. Public image further plays a part in shaping characters' paths, as Spider-Man loses his image when he is slandered in the paper, and Mary Jane becomes no longer famous because her name was taken off a sign.

The main takeaway from this essay seems to be that the is great because it does indeed have themes, like the theme of revenge, as Harry, Venom, and Sandman want revenge on Peter and Peter wants revenge against Sandman. This culminates with all of the characters except for Brock forgiving people, so Brock dies because he held onto revenge (with no mention of the fact that Harry died as well). His overall opinion seemed to be that because there were thematic aspects, the movie was better than people thought, which would mean that every movie is really good as long as it has themes.

This video was filled with odd cropping (which to be fair may have been to avoid copyright issues), leading to an incident where a cropped newspaper headline about Spider-Man showing his true colors led a horrified Billy the Fridge to comment "Ider-Man throws the coloreds? That's fucked up!"

### Slander and Libel (Slibel) Against The Don

> "Spider-Man's about to come out!"
>
>

EFAP next crossed paths with Browntable in the Captain Marvel Arc, where he took on a more villainous role. With Carol's crimes against The Don now made fully public, many people stepped up to the plate to come to her defense, and one of those defenders was Browntable, in an unscripted video titled "We're STILL Arguing About CAPTAIN MARVEL?" He began by questioning why people are even arguing about the movie, since the new Spider-Man movie is coming out, then answering his own question by stating there was a new deleted scene that came out, then began arguing about the movie. He poisoned the well by calling The Don a douche before he actually did anything, and by quoting The Don as doing a sexual tongue flicker, which he never actually did, then when The Don told Carol to smile, he briefly stared and then had only one thing to say - "Sexual harassment."

Browntable let the footage of Carol's brutality play out, then expressed confusion as to how anyone could take issue with it, since he would have done far worse if he had the ability to do so, prompting the gang to worry that he may be a psychopath and Al to hope that Browntable doesn't own any guns, since they would allow him to do that very thing. PSA Sitch also called out his homophobia for having such a violent response to a man hitting on him. He showed Joey Salads criticizing her for almost ripping The Don's arm off, and responded by saying she didn't actually rip his arm off. He then tried to justifiy Captain Marvel's assault by showing other superheros like Rocket Racoon, Tony Stark, Stephen Strange, Thor, and Peter Quill doing morally dubious things as well, but missed the point that these character flaws are shown to be flaws that are not supported by the movie, and the characters face consequences for their actions later in the film and have to learn to better themselves, while the lesson Carol learns is that she was correct all along. He also showed Indiana Jones shooting a man who was threatening to kill him with a sword, and Wolverine brandishing his claws at a man who tried to stab him, and equated them to electrocuting and brutalizing a man for asking for a smile.

He ended his video by inviting the viewer to his next gaming party, noting that not many people showed up to the last one, leading the roster to speculate that this may be because of his psychopathic homophobia. He then sexually harassed his audience more than The Don did Captain Marvel. Rags ended up doing a response to this video on his main channel.

### The Liking of Certain Art

MauLer, Rags, Metal, and JLongbone took a look at a much more lighthearted Browntable video "What Makes Good Art/Film?" in EFAP 48, going from his lowest moment to his highest, where Browntable tackled one of the biggest questions to plague mankind - What makes Good Rat?

Browntable began by establishing that we all like art, and that he himself *does* like certain art, and dislikes other art. Some art might have had same amount of time put on them, but is there such thing as bad art? It's up to us to decide what is good and bad... but how do we know if it's good? If art is subjective, then why are there art schools, that teach us the correct way to draw? Just as a person can dance badly but is still dancing, a movie can be bad and still qualify as a movie, but that doesn't stop it from being bad. This reminded him of Karl Marx.

As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels put it, art cannot be replicated in another era, as art reflects the politics of the time, and so are different in the future, where things have changed. Movies with relevant commentary are held in high regard, and certain filmmaking techniques like *Birdman*'s long take or writing active characters rather than passive are deemed to be great... but what if things were different? What if quick cutting and shaky camerawork were considered good? If we lived in that world, we would be living in a different world.

This video was not without Browntable's trademark visual effects, including text on the screen that never gets read, a photoshopped image of two dudes looking at an Ed Sheeran album in a museum, with their placement in the image making it look like they are having sex, and a clip from a Zootopia fanfiction.

### In Defense of *The Dark Knight Rises*

> "Trilogies, we all love them, there's something special about them"
>
>

On The One-Year Anniversary of Pausing Every Frame, EFAP and a star-studded cast had a gay old time taking a look at a plethora of different video essays, one of which was Browntable's "Defending The Dark Knight Rises | Better Than You Remember." Southpaw questioned why he was talking about this when *Joker* was coming out soon. Browntable began by relating how we all love trilogies, a questionable enough claim on its own made stranger by the inclusion of Shrek, which was a quadrilogy. Trilogies are fun because you can see if they are entirely good, go from good to bad, or go from bad to good, which Jay asked if that could not be said about everything. Before (hopefully) proving the movie was good, Browntable began his ad for Skillshare, leading the roster to wonder why the "sponsored by Skillshare" intro was put separately at the beginning when the actual ad followed so soon after. With the ad done, he went into how The Dark Knight had a huge cultural impact, and Jay used his precognitive powers (he had seen the video before, but had predicted it then too) to predict the argument was going to be people unfairly judged *Rises* against the impossibly high bar *The Dark Knight* set. Jay also disagreed that the film would be viewed more favorably if not for *The Dark Knight*, figuring that if anything people applied good faith *The Dark Knight* had built up to *Rises*. Famously, Browntable put forth that just because *The Dark Knight Rises* was not as good as the previous film does not mean that it is an inferior sequel. Browntable contrasted *Rises* against *The Dark Knight* since they were different types of movies, raising the question of whether or not that could be applied to any two given films. He praised it for showcasing Nolan's biggest strengths, one of which he described as "a plot with a bit of a twist," and MauLer added it also showcased his many weaknesses, namely very thin characters. Browntable conceded that whether those strengths were executed smoothly is up to the viewer... but he was going to prove they were.

Browntable's video was filled with several editing flourishes, including having the script scroll up onto the screen while characters are speaking despite the text not adding much to the clip, and audio of Christopher Nolan explaining how Bruce has trouble letting go to illustrate that Bruce has trouble letting go. The roster actually found the waveform onscreen to be a decent visual, but the same could not be said for the blurry box superimposed over Bruce's face that disappears when he talks to Blake or the film grain added over every shot. Browntable praised Bane for being intimidating due to his resources and being a reflection of Bruce's own righteous crusade, when Bane was picking up Ra's al Ghul's plan to destroy Gotham even though the crime and corruption Ra's was looking to destroy were no longer present in Gotham. Another thing he praised about Bane was his voice being difficult to understand, for some reason, as well as a lack of "it was me all along!" reveal when he is shown to be controlling Daggett, seemingly forgetting that there was a reveal just like that later with Talia. Another editing choice that baffled MauLer and co was two horizontal blurry bars put over the top of the footage sandwiching the caption "THE PIT," which was not vertically centered properly, which they figured was meant to loosely represent prison bars, as evidenced by them disappearing abruptly when Bruce learns how to escape. Browntable further described Batman as "the physical embodiment of the Batman symbol," summarized Catwoman's arc of realizing Bane's "somewhat totalitarian state" was not what she wanted, praised the inclusion of not just a timer, not just a countdown, but also a ticking clock, and of course proudly announcing that "the Dark Knight rises."

Browntable concluded that the theme of rising after a defeat made the movie impactful, to which Jay asked if that was not present in most stories and MauLer added that a second act low point is the standard. Another theme was that of death and rebirth, with one example given being the League of Shadows being reborn with Bane and Talia, even though they were part of it from the beginning. Browntable fully admitted to the film's plot being layered with impossibilities, but considered them nitpicks because they did not impact the plot, which broke Southpaw to the point of shouting at the screen. MauLer likened their coverage towards the end to fed-up moviegoers throwing popcorn at the screen of a bad movie, though they were pleasantly surprised to learn that Browntable's channel was supported by cows.

### Life-Changing at the Hands of Zack Snyder's *Justice* *League*

> "They will be very passionate about it, then like a year passes or whatever and they're like, 'Well... y'know I've grown a lot. I'm a better person now.' And then they'll say that again the next year, and so you just wonder like, are you just constantly in a state of being shit?"
>
>

> - MauLer
>
>

EFAP 134 **"**The Snyder Cut Changed My Life | Zack Snyder's Justice League**"**

### Fake Tweet Screenshot

> "Sweet little Browntable said that?"
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> - Rags
>
>

On EFAP 135, EFAP took a look at a very vitriolic tweet written by a mystery Massive back in January, but fell under EFAP's radar because it was deleted shortly thereafter. The tweet read, "Anyone who actually watches EFAP is a pretentious, devoid-of-enjoyment, low life, racist. These guys are complete jokes, people should be able to like what they like without judgement. Petition to stop tearing down well-made video essays that people worked hard on? Scumbags." MauLer and co spent some time ripping apar the take, before MauLer asked the guests who weren't already aware of the author (Rags, Fringy, and Capital-O Opinions) to guess who had written it, but nobody (not even MauLer when he first saw the Tweet) would have guessed that the author was Browntable, with Rags having said it didn't seem in his character and Evan Monroe saying that he seemed pretty chill. The best guess MauLer could put forward for what would have spurred such a Tweet was their coverage of HiTop's *Wonder Woman 1984* video.

As it would turn out though, Browntable never actually tweeted such a thing, as he confirmed on Twitter. MauLer responded to this Tweet expressing relief at the truth, and Southpaw apologized for having tweeted it out believing it to be true.

### on *The Falcon And The Winter Soldier*

EFAP#136 "Marvel Studios’ Greatest Work? - The Falcon And The Winter Soldier | Analysis"

### on *Spider-Man No Way Home*

EFAP 167 "How Spider-Man: No Way Home FIXED MCU Spider-Man"

## Trivia

> "This reminds me of Karl Marx."
>
>

* He is not invited to Smiler Al's birthday party [EFAP 37]
* He likes certain art, but not certain other art [EFAP 48]
* He loves the people on the Reddit [EFAP 37]
* He is supported by cows, HiTopFilms, and the old man Allen, who hates The Middle [EFAP 50]
* At one point in his *Spider-Man 3* video he zoomed in on Batman's crotch, seemingly in contrast to the homophobia he expressed towards The Don
* He got the picture of Marx from Marxists.org [EFAP 48]
* Best place you can watch Browntable's videos is at the toilet
* It's weird that nobody showed up to his birthday party, even though he called everyone sexist.
* He is happy when Spiderman is sad, loves when people close to Peter die and whats peak Spider-Man to him is when Peter is angry and trying to murder Green Goblin with his own Pumpkin Bomb.
* He plays sad music when he wants people to know that what he is talking about is supposed to be melancholic.

## Quotes

* “People have two sides, a good and evil side.” - EFAP 31
* “*Spider-Man 3* is still pretty awful at times.” - EFAP 31
* “Sometimes people just disagree, y'know, sometimes they just don't like a movie, and y'know sometimes they just don’t like women.” - EFAP 37
* "We're talking about a fictional movie here!" - EFAP 37
* "Why are we still talking about this, Spider-Man is coming out!" - EFAP 37
* "If I could shoot lasers out of my hands, that guy would be toast!" - EFAP 37
* “It's up to our own selves” - EFAP 48
* "This video was sponsored by Skillshare"
* "I have a question. So, Joker is coming out, Joker, and we're still talking about The Dark Knight Rises" - Southpaw, EFAP 50
* "Browntable is now going to tell us what makes Good Bat" - Southpaw, EFAP 50
* "WE ALL LOVE TRILOGIES. My third suicide attempt rounded out the first two very well!" - JLongbone in Chat, EFAP 50
* "and I can prove it [I hope]" - Browntable, and his title card, EFAP 50
* "Skillshare is sponsoring this video and they are providing you chads with two months of Skillshare-"
"I don't get it, I don't get what he meant by that. Oh no wait, wait, hang on, oh, I thought he said it's like, providing you chads"
- Browntable and Jay, EFAP 50
* "He's like a developed Tonald, like one that was taught more things about human society" - MauLer, EFAP 50
* "Just because the film isn't as good as *The Dark Knight* doesn't mean we should brush it aside as an inferior sequel" - EFAP 50
* "A plot with a bit of a twist" - EFAP 50
* "Whether or not he executed this smoothly is up to you, I'm just here to inform you that the movie is a lot better than what everyone's been saying" - EFAP 50
* "This is the Skillshare blurry square technique" - Rags, EFAP 50
* "Do you think he learned to do the grain on Skillshare?"
"Well he did say that, he said make your video look like it was filmed by Christopher Nolan or whatever, maybe this is a Christopher Nolan thing"
"This footage was filmed by Christopher Nolan"
- Jay and MauLer, EFAP 50
* "when Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham - the physical embodiment of the Batman symbol" - EFAP 50
* "and thus... the Dark Knight rises"
"Yeah I got that part"
"Shut uuuup"
"Did you know this movie has a title?"
- Browntable, MauLer, Theo, and Jay, EFAP 50
* "a timer, a countdown, a ticking clock" - EFAP 50
* "I swear to god, if this clip from Christopher Nolan is gonna explain that having a ticking clock gives us tension" - MauLer, EFAP 50
* "The physical embodiment of Batman must be removed for Batman to truly become the representation of heroism" - EFAP 50
* "The film, like a lot of films, is layered with impossibilities like 'How did Bruce heal his back so quickly?', 'How'd he get back to Gotham?', problems like that exist but having no relevance to the plot in any way they shouldn't really be considered plot holes but moreso nitpicking" - EFAP 50
* "How did Batman do it? Because he's the goddamn Batman" -EFAP 50