I had the pleasure of seeing a photo of mine get the Ken Burns treatment on CBS Sunday Morning’s story this weekend about Tom Hanks, his new book, and his love of typewriters:
One of my colleagues got an advance copy of Hanks’ book at a library conference back in June specifically because she knew I’d love it—and I did, enough to write my first typecast review. For the accompanying image I thought pairing the book’s beautiful blue cover with my Olympia SM7 (acquired at the splendid Retro-Revolution in Madison, WI) of almost the same shade made sense and looked great:
Since I posted it far enough ahead of the book’s publication date, the photo (along with the images of my typewritten review) had time to climb up the ranks of Google Images under searches for “Uncommon Type”, which no doubt is how the CBS producer found it.
I knew Hanks’ book would give typewriters A Moment; I didn’t realize I’d be part of it! But I am happy to be. The book is out Tuesday: go get it and then get a typewriter of your own.
Frinkiac, a searchable archive of seventeen seasons worth of Simpsons screengrabs, ought to be in the Internet Hall of Fame. After using it to look up some old favorites, I searched for anything typewriter-related, and here’s what came up:
And of course Wiggam with his invisible typewriter:
The fourth episode of the John Adams miniseries (“Reunion”) contains two of the best scenes in the show. The first is John hanging with Abigail and Thomas Jefferson in Paris. It’s fun to consider now how these titans of American history would have interacted in their time, before they achieved titan status:
The second is when John Adams meets with King George III as the first American ambassador to Great Britain. Giamatti perfectly portrays the range of emotions Adams must have felt serving this role: pride above all, I imagine, in every sense of the word. To represent his new country in such a prestigious role also carried with it the custom of bowing deeply not once, not twice, but thrice, to the monarch he had so vociferously criticized:
Still delighted HBO chose to dedicate a series to the Founding Father who would not land on Mount Rushmore but had an undeniable influence in making it possible one day.
Not long after we subscribed to Amazon Prime did I check out the pilot of The Man in the High Castle. I’d heard some good regard for the show, but didn’t think to seek it out until it was suddenly available to me. Boy am I glad I did.
Set in 1962, the show exists in a world where fifteen years previous the Allies lost World War II, the U.S. was atom-bombed, occupied, and divided between Germany and Japan into the Greater German Reich (east of the Rockies) and Japanese Pacific States (west of the Rockies). Times Square is blanketed with swastikas (but no ads), Judaism has been outlawed, and with Hitler close to death the Japanese and German empires are bracing for war. Amidst the political and societal intrigue, the stories of the characters we follow orbit around the pursuit of mysterious film newsreels that show alternate histories of the war and its aftermath. The source of the reels, the unseen Man in the High Castle, seems to be head of a guerrilla resistance force trying to undermine the authoritarian states — for all we know.
In addition to having one of the more haunting title sequences I’ve ever seen (above), the show blends three of my interests—historical counterfactuals, dystopia, and World War II—seamlessly into the background of a narrative arc that lets us see the inner workings of a tenuous alliance between the two Axis powers. The show is ingenious at working in small world-building details, either through dialogue or in the background—like when a Nazi police officer mentions offhand how the elderly are regularly euthanized and exterminated so as not to be a “burden on the State.”
To me, the most interesting character of season one—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—is the Nazi. Rufus Sewell plays Obergruppenführer John Smith, a high-ranking SS officer charged with tracking down the remaining film reels and quelling the Resistance. Sewell’s icy, devilish demeanor, mixed with his character’s white-picket-fence, all-American (or rather all-German) lifestyle, provides ample ground for a fascinating character study. Frank (Rupert Evans) is another intriguing character: a downtrodden laborer concealing his Jewish identity who gets tangled up with the newsreels and has to make some brutal decisions after being imprisoned by the Japanese military police.
What I love about counterfactuals is pondering the questions they conjure. Is there anything better about this show’s reality than ours? What does ours share in common with it, and how it is vastly different? It also made me better sympathize with societies that have been occupied, subjugated, and made to accept a new culture. Americans have never experienced that; in fact, throughout history we’ve always been the occupiers and the subjugators, imposing our values and military might in other lands under the banner of liberty. Optimists will say our actions were justified for the sake of spreading democracy, but realists know otherwise. Of course, I’m not equating U.S. foreign policy to the Nazi and Japanese empires in The Man in the High Castle. But I am inspired to decide how and why America is different.
It’s a dark show, no doubt about it. But after some key points in the first few episodes, the gears propel toward a climax and the next season’s continuation that I’m really looking forward to.
(Also, I had no idea how much of the show was CGI-generated, which this video illustrates; I really couldn’t tell while watching it, and even wondered how they got away with displaying so much Nazi paraphernalia.)
My wife and I just finished bingeing Parks & Recreation. It was her first time seeing the show and my second, but the first since watching it live. We started with season 2 as, like The Office, it’s where it finally gets going and I didn’t want her to lose interest in the sluggish first block of episodes.
We flew through the final batch of episodes last night. Just like the first time around I felt some light dread about finishing the show, knowing the journey with these characters would end. This is the problem with rewatching great TV: during the long journey through it, you dredge up all the love you had for the show, and when you’re back at peak love it just straight-up ends. Again. In the same place it ended last time.
There were little recurrent bits I appreciated even more this heartbreaking/-warming time around. Andy’s elaborate non-sequitur digressions, usually involving Burt Macklin’s misadventures. Leslie’s penchant for dictating long, punny headlines to Shauna the reporter. Ron’s unexpected, giggling delight for intricate scavenger hunts. The guy at the public forums (whose name apparently is Chance Frenlm) always starting nonsensical chants.
Knowing a show’s full scope and context after the first run, during the rewatch you can see how it evolves from its nascent, awkward beginnings to the well-run machine it would become. The turning point for Parks & Rec, I think, is “Greg Pikitis”, the seventh episode of season two. It’s the first appearance of Burt Macklin, which helped usher Andy away from being Ann’s lazy, kinda-creep ex and toward the hapless goofball he’d become. It’s also when Tom-as-wannabe-playboy emerges. Leslie hasn’t quite turned into the ubercompetent lovable maniac she would be later on, but the blend of her tenderness toward Dave and her animus toward Pikitis was an early sign of future Leslie — especially the one who’d end up with Ben.
In a show that’s ridiculously funny throughout, I cherished seeing a few key moments the second time through not for their humor necessarily, but for their unexpected and soulful sentiment:
Leslie decides to run for city council and the Parks & Rec gang surprise her with a gingerbread city hall and an offer to be her campaign staff. “Guys, it’s so much work. I can’t ask you to put your lives on hold,” she says, to which Ron replies: “Find one person here who you haven’t helped by putting your life on hold.”
Leslie fulfills a lifelong dream of voting for herself in an election. The brief, teary moment to herself in the booth, though quickly interrupted by Andy, grounded the show’s antics in something real and slaying.
Ben drops a surprise proposal after a spell of long-distance dating. I guess I should have seen it coming as it happened in an episode called “Halloween Surprise”, but I didn’t, and it was great.
Ben and Leslie’s actual, non-crashed wedding. I’m a sucker for retrospective montages playing beneath heartfelt dialogue.
Ann leaves. It felt like the finale of another TV show, but instead it was just another pause, a breath in the middle of the action to take stock of the humanity that seeps through the show’s humor.
The whole of season 7’s fourth episode (“Leslie and Ron”), when Leslie and Ron are forced to hash it out over Morningstar. The entire last season is built using the flash-forward conceit, and it pays off here when we can contrast Ron and Leslie’s 2017, post-Morningstar acrimony with their tender reconciliation. They both needed humbling, but Leslie’s a-ha moment, triggered by Ron’s telling of his side of the story, was beautifully rendered.
Series finale moment #1: April doesn’t want to have kids but Andy does, so she asks Leslie for advice. It’s not really a sentimental moment, but I like her perspective on how having kids isn’t about perfecting your life but about adding new members to your team.
Series finale moment #2: Ben and Leslie can’t decide which of them should run for governor of Indiana and are going to flip a coin for it; instead, with the Parks & Rec gang gathered one last time, Ben decides for them: “Leslie’s running for governor of Indiana.” Similar to when Leslie decided to run for city council, Leslie’s face does the talking for her. The entire “Pie-mary” episode focused on the gender dynamics of political candidates and Ben & Leslie’s dedication to upending them, so this governor moment was the perfect vessel for acting it out in their typically loving way.
The through-line for all of these is Amy Poehler. Every moment I’ve highlighted here involves her and the wide range of talent she deploys. Whether in comedy or drama, accuracy is key. Making just the right choice for any given line or scene is hard enough once, but in Parks and Rec she does it accurately and beautifully to a stunning degree.
Even though we can rewatch it whenever we want, I’m really gonna miss this show (again). Having a show end is like an emotional death in the family, and having it happen repeatedly and inevitably is a definite downside of great TV. But like playing “5000 Candles In The Wind” one more time for Lil Sebastian, being able to resurrect it on-demand and laugh with its stories and people again is a modern privilege I’m grateful to have.
Bye bye, Parks & Recreation. Miss you in the saddest fashion.
As we approach Sunday’s season finale of The Leftovers, HBO’s new series about a Rapture-like occurrence and its aftermath in a small New York town, let’s consider a Gospel story:
Jesus said to his disciples, “Compare me to something and tell me what I am like.” Thomas said to him, “Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like.” And Jesus took him, and withdrew, and spoke three sayings to him. When Thomas came back to his friends they asked him, “What did Jesus say to you?” Thomas said to them, “If I tell you one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come from the rocks and devour you.”
Reverend Jamison (Christopher Eccleston) recites this passage to Kevin (Justin Theroux), the town’s troubled police chief, to illustrate how it’s easier to stay silent than to speak hard truths. If this passage is unfamiliar, there’s a likely reason: it’s from the Gospel of Thomas, a collection of “secret sayings” attributed to Jesus but not one of the four canonical Gospels.
In the wake of The Leftovers’ “Sudden Departure,” during which two percent of the world’s population vanished instantly, Jamison’s invocation of this unorthodox source seems entirely fitting. The world of this new hard reality, seen through the eyes of the grieving citizens of Mapleton, N.Y., no longer seems canonical or accepted. The rules seemed to have changed, and what once was considered out of bounds is suddenly in play. Thus, what better place for a pastor, who’s struggling along with his parishioners to make sense of the insensible, to seek wisdom?
Indeed, every character we’ve come to know in The Leftovers is seeking something—anything—that offers meaning for what appears to be a meaningless tragedy. This meaning comes in many ways, and sometimes not at all. Some in Mapleton proclaim a radical certainty by joining the “Guilty Remnant,” an eerie organization of religious activists formed in response to the Departure. They dress in white and silently haunt the town to proclaim their faith in God and deny the “Old World Order” that ended with the Departure. The leader of Mapleton’s chapter fervently proselytizes their vision to a new member, echoing the Gospel of Thomas: “There can’t be doubt, because doubt is fire. And fire’s gonna burn you up until you are but ash.”
This zealous certitude contrasts greatly with the experience of other townspeople, who fluctuate between abject grief and resigned agnosticism. People still mourning their losses order life-like replicas of vanished loved ones (at $40,000 a piece) to be used in traditional burials. Others seek out the mysterious power of Wayne (Paterson Joseph), a messianic drifter who has attracted a cult-like following for his ability to remove people’s grief simply by hugging them (after collecting a hefty fee). But mostly what these seekers find are facsimiles, imitations of authenticity that may offer solace but rarely provide true relief from the underpinning dissonance pervading humanity since the Departure.
The series, based on Tom Perrotta’s novel, is produced by Damon Lindelof, best known for his equally enigmatic show Lost. Both series share a comfort with mystery, with asking big questions and sitting in the empty space after the asking, even if answers don’t come or don’t feel good. But I wonder if The Leftovers was misnamed. More than a show about being left behind, The Leftovers is about people who are lost, who wander through the fog of fear and anguish toward whatever can restore normalcy—however incomplete it might be—and relieve their burden of despair.
For this, Paul’s encouragement to the Corinthians is apt: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.” He doesn’t offer a cure-all for suffering, nor a reason for it—only the motivation to persevere. When the sorrow is strongest, perhaps that’s all anyone can do.
I was heartened by the exceedingly successful Kickstarter campaign to resurrect Reading Rainbow, which will help bring a new version of the early-literacy television program back to solvency and into classrooms to foster a love of reading in today’s children.
But this article from Caitlin Dewey at the Washington Post gave me pause:
“Crowdfunding is theoretically supposed to bolster charities, start-ups, independent artists, small-business owners and other projects that actually need the financial support of the masses to succeed. It’s not supposed to be co-opted by companies with profit motives and private investors of their own … which, despite Burton’s charisma, is exactly what the Rainbow reboot is.
But if you’re donating to Reading Rainbow because of the grandiose charity rhetoric Burton’s employing on Kickstarter, you might want to look elsewhere — maybe the nonprofit Children’s Literacy Initiative or the Washington, D.C.-based First Book, both of which get high grades from Charity Navigator. They might not have LeVar [Burton]’s nostalgia appeal, but there’s no doubt who those charities serve.”
Rainbow was cancelled in 2009 and had been existing as an app since then, so though its name already has a pedigree I think it still deserved a chance to ask its fans for money like any other cause, charitable or otherwise.
In this light, let’s also consider the impending arrival of Girl Meets World, the sort-of sequel to that ’90s TGIF mainstay (and personal TV favorite) Boy Meets World. The title character is the daughter of Cory and Topanga, adorkable teen sweethearts and stars of BMW. When word of the show’s development hit the internet in late 2012, I’ll admit I got excited. Boy Meets World was a seminal show in my adolescence. I saw in Cory and Topanga’s relationship a healthy model for friendship and romance: Cory was silly and Topanga was rational, but both were strong, self-sufficient people who loved the other despite their foibles and occasional conflicts. And the people around them were just as well-rounded: Shawn broody yet loyal, Feeny upright yet playful, Eric clownish yet sincere.
Like Reading Rainbow, the BMW brand—much-loved yet dated—has received new life thanks to the groundswell support of its fans. Though this new show will be its own story with a new protagonist and surrounding cast, but with Cory and Topanga back in the mix, and the original BMW producer at the helm, it might as well be considered a continuation of the story. But for whom?
It’s common, I know, for entertainment meant for kids to have something their parents can enjoy too. Whether it’s Sesame Street or the latest Pixar movie, the best filmmakers and producers find a way to appeal to many age groups. And perhaps that is why Girl Meets World is being made: to give Millennials with young kids something they already have an attachment to that they will (theoretically) be able to enjoy watching with their kids. But the Disney Channel audience of Girl Meets World either hasn’t seen the original series or hasn’t even heard of it. They will have as much emotional investment in the characters as they would for any new show they encounter. So why do we need Girl Meets World?
It’s not as if kids today lack any source of entertainment whatsoever; what BMW was to me and my Millennial ilk, they have today (I’m guessing here) in the variety of television shows, movies, apps, and YA novels being made specifically for them right now. Don’t they deserve to have their own Boy Meets World, a show or thing they discovered in their youth and will feel special kinship toward into adulthood? Boy Meets World was my generation’s thing; shouldn’t they have their own that didn’t descend from their parents’ cultural experience and sensibility?
Perhaps I’m just being possessive. Who am I to cling to a TV show that many, many others cherish as much as I do. I suppose this gets at another question relating to pop culture and our interaction with it: Do we own the culture we embrace or are we mere stewards of it? In our produce/reuse/recycle media culture, do we lose the right to claim something as our own? I don’t think so. Once a work of art is created and sent out into the world, it is the artist’s no longer. It becomes a public entity of which we can all buy shares and claim partial if ardent ownership, but we can never own it outright. My Green Bay Packers stock is tangible evidence of my intangible ownership and love of the team, but it’s not real stock. There will always be more Packers fans, and Boy Meets World fans, and Reading Rainbow students, no matter the form those things take.
So here’s to hoping that everybody wins: that Girl Meets World and the new iteration of Reading Rainbow will enchant young viewers and delight older ones, and that we’ll finally find out what happened to Mr. Turner.
As the second season of House of Cards begins Friday, it’s worth remembering that the Netflix political drama last left us with a prayer.
In last season’s finale, Frank Underwood, the politician who has schemed his way through a twisted plan of revenge, enters a church, gets on his knees and looks skyward. “Every time I’ve spoken to you, you’ve never spoken back,” he says. “Although, given our mutual disdain, I can’t blame you for the silent treatment. Perhaps I’m speaking to the wrong audience.” He then looks to the ground. “Can you hear me?” he implores. “Are you even capable of language or do you only understand depravity?”
Finally, Underwood concludes to the camera: “There is no solace above or below. Only us. Small. Solitary. Striving. Battling one another. I pray to myself, for myself.” As he exits the church he lights a votive candle in an array of lights. Then he blows them all out.
Underwood, played by Kevin Spacey, doesn’t just inhabit the darkness; he creates it. And it’s darkness, along with the dirty deeds done in it, that haunts House of Cards. Set in Washington, D.C., the show follows the devious dealings of this veteran Democratic congressman, who feels betrayed by the newly elected president’s failure to appoint him Secretary of State. Embittered by the rejection, Underwood and his wife (Robin Wright) set the course for a new destination: the president’s cabinet.
“Through sardonic fourth wall-breaking asides to the audience, Underwood gives a play-by-play of his master plan as it takes shape, turning viewers into co-conspirators of his Machiavellian machinations. His ambitious plot soon ensnares Zoe (Kate Mara), a young and roguish reporter, and Peter (Corey Stoll), a freshman congressman with a sordid past.
The show’s pilot established D.C. as a place where the high-minded ideals of politicians and journalists belie a shadowy, noir-like underworld. Compromise — both political and moral — will come, like it or not. Underwood is a key player in this world, using his persuasive prowess to bend people his way in his insatiable quest for power.
But every one of Underworld’s power plays has a cost. Taking a step toward his sinister goals often means trampling whichever friend or foe is in his way. Peter was the most tragic victim of Underwood’s unchecked ambition in the first season. It was Zoe, Underwood’s former obsequious bedfellow, who by the end of the season broke free from his stranglehold and began, however unknowingly, to shine a light onto the darkness.
The teaser trailer for the second season shows Underwood taking the oath of office as the new Vice President, but he clearly learned nothing on his climb to the top. “One heartbeat away from the presidency and not a single vote cast in my name,” he says. “Democracy is so overrated.” Underwood mocked heaven and hell back in that season one finale. Yet if he had opened the book next to him then, he would have found a passage in Isaiah 14 that served as a word of warning to the king of Babylon, a ruler whose pride and arrogance would lead to his downfall:
How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, “I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” But you are brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit.
Frank Underwood is his own conquering hero, but he now has much more to lose. House of Cards looks to continue the ongoing story of darkness versus light. Will Zoe expose Underwood’s deceit? Or will he climb even higher up the ladder? If pride, as they say, comes before the fall, then we’re in for quite a ride.
[Update: the video with show footage was removed, so this one just has the music. Doesn’t have the same effect but it’ll have to do…]
This might be one of my all-time favorite things. It’s the older version of the American Experience opening and theme (composed by Charles Kuskin) that so beautifully juxtaposes things I love dearly: film, American history, and music.
One reason I love reading about American history is this country’s ability to make music out of dissonance. The diversity of stories and characters in this video’s parade of images is but a dip into the great lake of trial and triumph this country and its people have swam in since the beginning. We’ve been at war with ourselves in a million little ways since before we were even a country. The producers of American Experience got that, and illustrated that in this montage.
A buffalo stampede and a Native American, followed by a white pioneer. A nineteenth-century African-American couple, followed by footage of Jackie Robinson. Theodore Roosevelt’s kiddish grin dissolving into the Sierra Nevada, followed by footage of the Dust Bowl, a factory, and a steam engine. Abraham Lincoln split-screened with Martin Luther King. A triumphant General Eisenhower fading to troops in Vietnam.
But the most poignant moment for me is toward the end (at :36 in the video). After a few soaring orchestral lines, the piano takes over the plaintive melody that underscores footage of kids chasing and waving goodbye to a passing vehicle, and then a swooping shot of the Statue of Liberty, America’s long-serving Greeter-in-Chief.
Goodbye and hello. Division and duty. Dissonance and harmony. In documenting this nation’s formative moments and movements, this wonderful PBS program (along with its celebrity brother Ken Burns) has captured the spirit of America. Likewise, this beautiful theme has captured the spirit of the show it represents, and I’m happier for it.
If you click the link from John August’s above tweet, you’ll learn, as I did recently, that Disney World used to have a wildlife attraction on their massive property called Discovery Island, which was abandoned in 1999 and left to be overrun by wilderness. Shane Perez, a self-described “urban explorer” and photographer, apparently snuck onto the island in 2009 and took some photos of the deserted exhibits and infrastructure.
The place looks eerily beautiful and, as John August suggested, the absolutely perfect place for Disney to install a Lost-themed attraction in the style of the Dharma Initiative’s digs. They would have to do very little; just install a few hatches, ferry over a VW bus or two, and slap a Dharma logo on everything and it’s set. I’d make a trip to Disney just to see that.
Rod Dreher recently wrote about Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson’s comments about, essentially, how happy he believed Black Southerners were in the 1950s before the civil rights movement. To Dreher, Robertson’s comments demonstrate the power of narrative, of the stories we tell ourselves and how they affect how we see the “truth” of our own situations, even when we don’t see the whole truth:
You can tell a lot about who has the power in a particular culture by what you are not allowed to talk about without drawing harsh censure. And in turn, the thoughts you are not allowed to have become internalized, such that you train yourself not to see things that violate those taboos. In the 1950s rural South, a white man was not allowed to speak out against the injustices inflicted on blacks; is it any wonder that he wouldn’t “see” them?
This is a very insightful way at contextualizing Robertson’s ignorant and hurtful comments. Dreher spotlights Alan Ehrenhalt’s (excellent) book The Lost City to add further context to Robertson’s remarks, but I’m finding just as much relevant background and insight in my current read: The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff.
This amazing book takes an angle I’d never considered before when thinking about and studying the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s: that of the journalists, publishers, and other press figures who were instrumental in wrestling the civil rights struggle to the front page as the movement simmered after World War II to its boiling point in the ’60s.
In newsreels and history books we’ve seen a great deal of the figures directly involved in the decades-long civil rights fight: Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, the Little Rock Nine, Bull Connor, George Wallace, and many others. But what of the people behind the cameras, the ones braving the fire hoses of Birmingham and angry mobs in Greensboro right along with activists to capture the moment for print, radio, or the nascent television news?
For a thesis statement of sorts, Roberts and Klibanoff go back to what they view as the foundational work from which all academic and journalistic interpretations of the postwar civil rights movement emerged: An American Dilemma, a comprehensive study of race in America underwritten by the Carnegie Foundation and spearheaded by Gunnar Myrdal, a Swedish economist and sociologist.
The study found the central problem to be an overwhelming ignorance among Whites (in the North and South alike) about the lives and living conditions of Black Americans. It was easy for Whites to ignore the discrimination Blacks faced every day because they didn’t see it. White newspapers completely ignored the Black community and the Black press along with it. Myrdal believed that to overcome “the opportunistic desire of the whites for ignorance,” the Black community needed one thing: publicity. “There is no doubt,” he wrote, “that a great majority of white people in America would be prepared to give the Negro a substantially better deal if they knew the facts.”
Facts, they say, are stubborn things. But so were the segregationists. And the thought of high-minded out-of-towners coming into the South to tell good Christian people what’s wrong with them and upend generations of tradition didn’t sit well with angry sheriffs and townspeople, who would have every judge and jury (all white, of course) on their side should they decide to teach someone a lesson, or worse.
As a Mississippi attorney put it to Freedom Summer volunteers venturing into the South: “a dark highway at midnight was no place to lecture a Mississippi deputy sheriff with a second-grade education on the niceties of constitutional law.”
Still, the whole point of the civil rights movement, and one that Martin Luther King understood deeply, was to shine a light into the dark places. To walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and bring reporters along for the walk. King knew, as did the other movement leaders in SNCC, CORE, and NAACP, what Myrdal knew: publicity meant power. The more White America would be exposed to the everyday injustices Black Americans faced, the more likely they would be to sympathize and inspire positive action.
The Emmett Till trial was the catalyst. That gruesome murder and clear miscarriage of justice coupled with the earth-shattering Brown v. Board of Education decision to start the movement snowballing toward bus boycotts and Little Rock, through the Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-ins and Ole Miss, each encounter seeming to attract more attention than the last.
While the Freedom Riders and marchers were enduring fire hoses and batons and angry mobs, journalists were close by to report on it. They understood as much as their subjects the power of the pen and camera, and had to wield that power in unexpected ways.
Peter Kihss, a New York Times reporter who was reporting the Autherine Lucy saga at the University of Alabama, decided to abandon traditional journalistic remove and intervene when an elderly Black man became surrounded by an unruly mob. “If anybody wants to start something, let’s go,” he told the crowd. “I’m a reporter for The New York Times and I have gotten a wonderful impression of the University of Alabama. Now I’ll be glad to take on the whole student body, two at a time.”
A similar situation involved John Chancellor, newspaperman turned NBC broadcaster, in the infancy of television news. Chancellor was gathering reactions in Mississippi after the Till trial when “a flying wedge of white toughs” descended on him and a Black woman he was interviewing:
Chancellor squared off against them and held up the only object he could find to defend himself, an object whose power he had not, until that moment, truly fathomed. Thrusting his tiny microphone toward the men, Chancellor blurted out, “I don’t care what you’re going to do to me, but the whole world is going to know it.”
He later called his microphone “the technological equivalent of a crucifix.” The microphone and the newspaper and the camera collectively became a tool and a weapon. They performed the basic service of documenting reality, ugly and unvarnished as it was, while also fighting back against the South’s deeply entrenched culture of silence and racial hegemony.
Their power seemed to coalesce in the fall of 1963 when they broadcasted Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech and then the news of the Birmingham church bombing that killed four Black children. Having the nation witness events like those up close, according to Jack Gould of the New York Times, was a major hurdle overcome for the Negro race as a whole, because until then its biggest challenge had been “communicating and dramatizing” its struggle: “Not to the integrationists, not to the unyieldingly prejudiced, but to the indifferent white millions for whom integration or segregation was of scant personal concern.”
In other words, to the Phil Robertsons of the day. The story White Southerners like him had been telling themselves (and anyone else who had dared to disrupt the narrative) about race and their culture disagreed with the reality of being Black in America. It took over a decade of protests and violence and struggle and political hand-wringing, but finally, Myrdal’s prescription for publicity was working. It wasn’t a panacea, but it was progress.
However, when hit with the reality of someone else’s story, some, like Gov. George Wallace, ignored the cognitive dissonance and dug in their heels. While Phil Robertson is no George Wallace, their shared inability to see beyond the stories they told themselves left them blind to what the cameras were showing in bright lights.
It’s easy to judge from afar in situations like this without thinking about the blind spots we’ve self-imposed today. Racism isn’t over, nor discrimination writ large. The press is different today, as is its power. We’re not so enthralled by television or newspaper editorials anymore. Publicity itself seems an inadequate solution for dealing with the problems we face today when all people do in our selfie-obsessed world is publicize. Simply getting a hashtag trending on Twitter won’t solve homelessness or end abortion.
In that way, our problem is the same as that of generations before us: we need the courage to hear new stories, to not wait for tragedy to spur us to action, and to follow the Atticus Finch model of walking (or marching?) a mile in someone else’s shoes.
The Race Beat goes into great detail about the individuals and institutions involved in this decade-long story. Courage, cowardice, and great copy abound on every side of the tales told that, all together, paint a lush picture of how the movement and its press worked together to change the country forever.
If what happened to Maziar Bahari is the trend in Iran, the country just hasn’t figured it out yet. Bahari, an Iranian journalist, was imprisoned and tortured in Iran during the “Green Revolution” in Iran, which was the reformist response to the 2009 reelection of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. His memoir Then They Came For Me details his 118-day stint in one of Iran’s most feared prisons and sheds light on the controversial country’s tumultuous history (and will soon be a movie directed by Jon Stewart).
A big takeaway from Bahari’s experience, and something he writes about a lot in the book, is this: petty dictators + stringent fundamentalist religious dogma = bad, bad news. Bahari’s interrogator, whom he dubbed Rosewater due to his distinct smell, was a cruel mix of ignorant, dogmatic, pompous, and sadistic, but he was in charge of Bahari’s life. So Bahari had to stifle any hint of his anger, confusion, and religious irreverence simply to survive Rosewater’s erratic treatment and foolish reasons for falsely imprisoning innocent people. The true reason Bahari and his many of his jailed compatriots were behind bars wasn’t because they were criminals; while some were indeed drug dealers or something like that, most were merely critics of Khamenei’s regime and hadn’t been afraid to hide it.
Making the situation worse was the fact that Khamenei’s current regime, like other despotic governments, has no sense of humor. One of the pieces of “evidence” brought against Bahari during his imprisonment was a Daily Show piece he filmed a few weeks before he was arrested in which the correspondent Jason Jones pretended to be a spy and Bahari criticized Iran and Ahmadinejad. Rosewater thought Bahari was talking to an actual spy. In a cafe. On TV. As Jon Stewart said in an interview with Bahari, “we hear so much about the banality of evil, but so little about the stupidity of evil.”
Though this clearly was an experience that shouldn’t have happened, I look forward to seeing Bahari’s memoir come to life on screen, if only to understand what life is like for other prisoners who weren’t as lucky and well-connected as Bahari. The warmongering sabre-rattlers in both Iran and the U.S. will continue their campaigns for war or worse, but I believe what Bahari said in the Daily Show segment: that the two sides don’t understand each other. Here’s hoping that changes for the better.
After years of hype and speculation, Arrested Development is back thanks to the tireless work of Mitch Hurwitz and the show’s writers. Watching these characters again has been surreal. I had the same feeling when I saw Toy Story 3 and The Hobbit: I’d watched the previous installments (the LOTR trilogy in the case of The Hobbit) so many times that seeing the same characters in new situations was delightful yet a bit disorienting. Which is how I can best describe the new fourth season of Arrested. The narrative Hurwitz and his writers have created is so labyrinthine and arcane that it will certainly require repeated viewings to fully grasp, just like the show’s first three seasons.
After one run through the season, my main critique is that unlike the original run, the new season lacks a core. Instead of focusing on the family unit throughout the narrative, each episode centers on one main character, with the others coming and going while engaged in their own overlapping story. It’s hard to fall back in love with the family when we only see them in bits and pieces over fifteen episodes. When the story falters, it’s because it upended the show’s tried-and-true structure of Michael being the reliable straight-man, the eye of the Bluth storm. He held the show together — sometimes only barely — so that the rest of the ensemble could wig out. However, with this new season’s decentralized narrative and Michael’s uncharacteristic recklessness, there is no reliable foundation; the inmates are now running the asylum. Whenever we’re following a new wacky non-Bluth character (and there are many of them this season) instead of the family we’ve come to love (or at least be amused by), the show almost always lags. This, combined with the fact that episodes are now 30-35 minutes long instead of their network TV-sanctioned 22, makes for an Arrested Development that doesn’t quite feel like the Arrested Development of yore.
I realize this (lack of) structure was largely a logistical one; they had to film it in discrete pieces simply because it was so hard to get the full cast together at one time. But that challenge turned into a net positive for the show. Its brand of postmodern meta-comedy is perfectly equipped to handle the structureless vacuum season four has created, as NPR’s interactive guide of the show’s running gags illustrates. When so much of the show’s humor is derived from its interconnected meta-jokes, allusions (or illusions), and sight gags, the central storyline — if there even is one this season — is often irrelevant.
In fact, I sometimes found myself disengaging with the main story of each episode with the hope of catching the many in-jokes, callbacks, and other background tidbits that zoom by. One critic found this meta-humor distracting, saying the season “trades far too easily on callbacks to the early seasons, a sort of unpleasant fan service that is depressing to watch.” Indeed, there are a lot of callbacks, but that’s nothing unique to this season. As the aforementioned guide points out, even season one was making callbacks and allusions to itself on dozens of jokes. I’m sure the in-jokes this season felt like a fan service because the fans are essentially why this season exists at all, but they have been the show’s lifeblood since its infancy and almost always impress rather than depress.
And that’s why you always leave a note I’ve attested to the new season development and give a hearty Huzzah! to Mitch Hurwitz & Co. for giving in to the Internet’s collective conch call to bring the gang back together and for going all-out on it. Often I stared at Netflix in wonder, wanting to slow-clap the writers for what they have attempted with this season. While it might have a slightly lower batting average than in the first three, it was a swing for the fences. And like Maeby this season, I think they made it home.
About two years ago I stopped watching cable news all together. Regardless of the channel, there is rarely anything on worth the time and energy it takes getting frustrated by the mostly non-news news stories being covered like Access Hollywood fluff pieces. But late last night as I was channel-surfing before turning in, I was chagrined to see this on Fox News.
I am loath to respond to anything Fox News does because it simply plays into their game, but consider this bait taken. To sum up, commentator Bob Beckel is upset that in last Sunday’s episode set in Vietnam, The Amazing Race had a clue marker at the site of the B-52 Memorial that contains the wreckage of an American bomber plane that was shot down during the Vietnam War. Additionally, the racers’ task for that leg’s Roadblock was to watch a performance of a socialist Vietnamese anthem and remember key lyrics that would be used for another task.
The B-52 Memorial in Hanoi, Vietnam.
The things the panel of commentators say in the video about this non-troversy are so unbelievably asinine and uninformed. Their main point, as far as it can be ascertained, is that the Amazing Race producers are anti-American for showing a socialist song and insensitive toward Vietnam veterans and civilians for acknowledging the existence of a downed American plane.
Beckel is so indignant that CBS hasn’t apologized, promising to “go after” CBS until they do. Dana Perino, former press secretary to George W. Bush, claims “of all the things people apologize for today, you would think this would be an obvious one, but they’re just being stubborn I guess.” Greg Gutfield adds with a supercilious smirk: “It’s called Fox News Syndrome. It’s that Fox News is covering it and no one else is.”
Fox News has some kind of syndrome, all right. Just not one that makes its latest ginned-up rage piece an actual story.
I’m about 98 percent certain none of these commentators have ever seen The Amazing Race, let alone this specific episode, because if they had they would know that the show has been all over the world, using hundreds of locations as backdrops for tasks and challenges that employ local customs, trades, and people of all kinds. They would also know that the show honors the cultural heritage of the locations they use, regardless of its nature. Using the socialist anthem in the show wasn’t an endorsement of socialism any more than using Stalin and Lenin impersonators in Russia on last season’s 8th leg was an endorsement of Bolshevism. The Race shows the host country’s history and culture for what it is, not for what the Greg Gutfields or Bob Beckels wish it would be.
As Lester at DryedMangoez points out, the show has been to Vietnam before: in season 3, when a Vietnam vet racer poignantly returned to the country for the first time; and in season 10, when the racers stopped by the Hanoi Hilton, where John McCain was held as a POW. They have also been to Auschwitz, the Berlin Wall, the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor, and the “House of Slaves” in Senegal, the embarkment of the Atlantic slave trade.
As much as the show seeks to respect its more serious stops, they plow through every task and location so quickly (it’s a race after all) that any attempt to honor the fallen comes off as rushed and ham-handed. But they still go to these places not to give in-depth history lessons, to make a political point, or to propagate Fox News’ brand of flag-waving American exceptionalism abroad, but because these places are interesting and so contestants can win money. I accept the superficial, TV-drama aspect of the show because it allows contestants and viewers like me to experience and enjoy faraway lands we wouldn’t be able to otherwise. I didn’t even know of the existence of the B-52 Memorial in Vietnam until I saw it on the Race, and I wouldn’t be surprised if these Fox commentators hadn’t either – at least until some producer looking to grease Fox’s manufactured-outrage machine alerted them.
The Amazing Race might be just a profit-driven reality show, but it does more to illuminate and celebrate world cultures, exotic locales, and peculiar customs than any other reality show does or than Fox News ever cares to. I hope CBS continues to refuse to apologize, because it has done nothing wrong.
There’s been some debate recently about whether binge-watching a TV show on DVD or online is good or bad. While I must confess I have gone on a few TV benders, usually with the intention of catching up on a series before its most recent season premiered, there’s something about watching a show live on TV, weekly wait and all, that is simultaneously frustrating and exciting.
For instance, watching the fifth season of Mad Men as it unfolded during this summer allowed me to engage in the speculative water cooler talk with my fellow Mad Hatters after each episode and during the following week that makes watching live television communal and fun. This approach fit conveniently with the series slow-burning style itself, so I didn’t feel like I needed to rush through it (even though that’s exactly what I did with seasons one through three on DVD two years ago).
Conversely, I plowed through all five seasons of The Wire in about three weeks on DVD – a common occurrence, I’d bet, given the series’ relative unpopularity during its run (and HBO’s prices). I couldn’t just watch one episode at a time, which is why watching TV on DVD can be so hazardous: find a gripping, well-written show like The Wire on DVD and then say goodbye to sleep, exercise, and any semblance of productivity. In high school the first two seasons of Lost consumed my nights so thoroughly it’s a wonder I passed classes that semester (good thing I was a second-semester senior).
So, I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter how I consume television as long as the show itself is good. James Poniewozik of Time magazine says as much in his pro-binge post:
[A good story is] resilient. It will take whatever viewing (or reading, or listening) conditions you throw at it. And if its effect depends on ‘maintaining a timeline,’ or waiting a year to find out how Jack and Kate go back, or even reading morning-after reviews by idiots like me—it was probably never worth bingeing on to begin with.
So if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go rent Deadwood on DVD and then watch the season premiere of Breaking Bad on TV.
Last night, Saturday Night Live bade farewell to Kristen Wiig, one of the show’s most talented and versatile performers in its history. I wrote about her back in 2008, and those sentiments hold today.
It’s fitting they sent her off to the Rolling Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow” given the spectrum of colorful characters she brought to the show: The way she could smoothly swing from an absurd wacko to high-strung neurotic to singing Santa girlfriend within the span of one show was remarkable, as was the fact that all of her characters – even the afro-ed psychopath Gilly – were lovable despite their hyper-idiosyncrasy.
Add to this her performance in Bridesmaids, which showed off her dramatic chops and ability to carry a movie – a skill that will come in handy for her inevitable post-SNL movie career.
I’m sad to see her go. She has brought great joy to me and a joyful energy to the show. But I know that, like every other time a major star left SNL, the show will be able to move on as it always has.
Watching Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop made me realize something I’ve suspected for a long time: I don’t ever want to be famous.
There’s a scene in this documentary about the “Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television” stage tour Conan created immediately after his inauspicious exit from The Tonight Show in 2010 where Conan does a meet-and-greet after one of the New York City shows outside of the venue. Before this moment we’ve seen Conan, despite his insatiable need to perform, get slowly and painfully worn down by the unending demands of life on the road as a folk-hero celebrity, the meet-and-greets being an especially draining post-show ritual the erstwhile talk-show host openly bemoaned to his staff. And yet, out he goes into the alley packed with euphoric fans cordoned off behind a barrier that Conan nearly straddles in his earnest attempt to sign anything and everything his acolytes present to him.
He does his duty as the accommodating star, making chit-chat and signing posters, t-shirts, beer cans, and even someone’s back (“so I can get a tattoo of it,” she says). But after awhile he’s had enough, bids farewell to the fawning phalanx, and retreats to a waiting car. He hops in, clearly agitated, and waits for someone to close the door. “Someone close the f***ing door,” he says to no one in particular. The attention he had just received, willingly or otherwise, was his life-blood, and the reason he did the tour in the first place, but he still can’t help being completely obliterated by it night after night, only to jump on stage and fulfill the “buffoon” role he readily affixes to himself.
That whole sequence to me illustrated the paradox of celebrity, and why I hope never to experience it. To be so in need of something, like Conan is of the act of performing for an audience, yet to be rendered nearly incapacitated by it after a certain point is a tough way to live life. To be sure, we all have this something in our lives we feel we need yet drags us down – the approval of our peers, alcohol, crappy reality shows, you name it – but seeing it play out on camera in the life of a public figure like Conan (one whom I greatly admire and enjoy as a performer) shows me specifically the perils of doing what you want even when it’s killing you.
Kevin Costner said in his tribute to the late Whitney Houston that the singer’s immense talents were at once “the burden that made her great and the part that caused her to stumble.” While Conan does not (hopefully) struggle with the same drug problems that led to Houston’s sad death, the principles between them are the same: it doesn’t have to be drugs that kill you. Whatever our own That Thing is, it may prop us up for a time, but it can also kill us if we let it. Conan probably won’t be killed by his fame, but if for example he continues, as he says caustically in the film, to “give away part of [his] soul” through the meet-and-greets for the sake of That Thing, he’ll soon discover than physical death and pneumatic death aren’t all that dissimilar.
I don’t mean to portray Coco or this documentary as quite so sullen – in fact, they are the opposite. Sure, we bear witness to Conan’s biting, often vindictive jabs at NBC for their treatment of him during the late-night debacle and to his sardonic teasing of his assistants and staff. But Conan is a funny guy and gives a damn about others, if in his own way, and the film shows this dichotomy well.
But Conan’s “luck”—and this brings me back to my initial thought—is that the moments he’s most unlikeable and fallible (read: human) are recorded by a camera and spliced together into a wide-release documentary. While that was the point of this project, I’m sure glad I get to make my mistakes when only the people around me I know and love know about them. And that’s why I never have nor ever will desire the fame Conan and so many other public figures receive, willingly or otherwise.
So this is me giving thanks for the ability to go grocery shopping, read in a bookstore uninterrupted, take an evening walk alone, make dumb mistakes, and be human without flashing cameras and obsessive eyes finding me, or even wanting to. I’m sure Conan would like that too once in a while, but something keeps pulling him back into the fray that only he and God can understand.
All that said, watch the movie. It’s a gripping portrait of a curious man in transition. Also, I miss his beard.
Looks like Mad Men is getting the LOST treatment, and I couldn’t be happier about it. The deal between Mad Men showrunner Matthew Weiner and AMC will end the series after the sixth season premieres. Like the deal that gave LOST a definitive end-date a few years ago, this new deal for Mad Men will be very beneficial, I think, to the show and the fans.
Though, Mad Men isn’t floundering in its storytelling at this point as LOST was at the end of season three. It’s only getting better.
He’ll be the first and only talk show host to rock a full beard on air. And a red one no less.
His classy Tonight Show farewell speech.
His inherent nerdiness. He jokes a lot about the archetypal nerds out there, but deep down he’s a nerd himself as a student of history, comedy, and pop culture.
The “Small Talk Moment” sketches from Late Night. By far the best.
His extreme self-deprecation. As a fellow tall, lanky, near-translucently-skinned redhead, I can relate.
He’s back on TV! Finally. 11/10c on TBS. Be there.
