Serve, Smash, Scheme, Repeat

The film poster for Marty Supreme. Courtesy of A24.

In “Brave Sperm and Demure Eggs: Fallopian Gender Politics on YouTube,” academic Pamela Nettleton explores the implications of media depicting sperm as subject and egg as object, framing it as a perpetuation of problematic notions of patriarchal power. As I watched a prolonged macro two-shot of Timothée Chalamet’s sperm and Odessa A’zion’s egg inching toward insemination on a 40-foot screen, it all seemed to make sense. But what on earth did this have to do with table tennis?

I soon got an answer: a match cut snapped me from a close-up of an egg to a table tennis ball spinning down the court, its white blur carving the air. The introduction is jarring, hilarious, and unmistakably intentional, a visual sleight of hand that announces the film’s obsession with momentum and surprise above all else. Marty Supreme is always in motion…

Read the full article on The Chicago Maroon