My Personal Canon
The idea of literary canon has been around for hundreds of years. Authors and historians have tried to tackle what makes a novel or a work of art essential in our history, and various organizations and publishing houses have attempted to collect works to embody what’s most vital to Western culture.
“Canon,” in this instance, can be boiled down to little more than a list. What compositions, novels, and pieces of visual art best embody what makes us “us?” What artists, above all others, deserve to have their names etched in history as the ones who created the most beloved and important works?
This is a rabbit hole that many have fallen down and will continue to explore. For many different mediums there are awards for creative excellence and those ceremonies themselves often become lightning rods for discussion and debate about what pieces deserve to be in the discussion versus others. For the modern audience, places such as Letterboxd embody this spirit. It’s a community for film lovers and is a place with thousands of lists, capturing what its users, film historians, and other artists consider to be the best.
It was through Letterboxd that I discovered the concept of the “personal canon.” This Github template for a personal canon website describes it as “the most important, influential, formative texts and media in your life.” So it is with that in mind that I share my personal canon with you. This isn’t a “Top 10” of each medium, but rather a snapshot of the kind of art that means something to me.
🎞️Film🎞️
Modern Times (1936) Ugetsu (1953) Godzilla (1954) F for Fake (1973) Star Wars (1977) RoboCop (1987) They Live (1988) Magnolia (1999) The Babadook (2014) Phantom Thread (2017)
🎮Video Games🎮
OutRun (1986) Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988) Tetris (1989) Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992) DOOM (1993) Final Fantasy VII (1997) Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001) Fallout: New Vegas (2010) Yakuza 0 (2015) Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023)
đź“–Booksđź“–
Paradise Lost by John Milton (1667) Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818) Moby Dick by Herman Melville (1851) Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945) 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke (1968) All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein (1974) Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller (1986) Watchmen by Alan Moore (1988) Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain (2000) Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin (2005)
🎧Music🎧
Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys (1966) Songs of Leonard Cohen by Leonard Cohen (1967) What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye (1971) Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen (1982) It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Public Enemy (1988) Grace by Jeff Buckley (1994) Kid A by Radiohead (2000) Discovery by Daft Punk (2001) good kid, m.A.A.d city by Kendrick Lamar (2012) Carrie & Lowell by Sufjan Stevens (2015)