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  • Trixie Mattel and Katya’s Commentary on Falling For Christmas Is Infinitely More Watchable Than the Movie Itself

    Trixie Mattel and Katya’s Commentary on Falling For Christmas Is Infinitely More Watchable Than the Movie Itself

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    Just when you thought there was nothing that might make Falling For Christmas redeemable, along come Katya and Trixie Mattel to weigh in with their “expert” commentary via their show, I Like to Watch. And, most important of all, a frank account of all the ways in which the movie blows through their tongue-in-cheek way of dissecting it. Better still, they tore it apart in spite of Lindsay Lohan herself making a cameo at the beginning with a pre-taped video as she urges them to enjoy her new movie because, “Who doesn’t love a cozy Christmas?” Well, Falling For Christmas doesn’t exactly make one feel “cozy” so much as incredibly uncomfortable, therefore in search of any excuse to get up from the couch and not watch.  

    After Lohan’s little message, Trixie notes, “It’s gonna make it really hard to make fun of this movie, but not impossible.” Katya confirms, “Oh no, no, no—we’re gonna tear this movie apart.” And all one can say to that is: thank fucking god/fucking finally. Because, for whatever reason, the majority of reviews have heralded it as “charming” and “a true comeback” for Lohan. Who has “come back” so many times at this point, she might want to ask herself if she ever truly left… has, in fact, been here all along and mostly met with a lukewarm reaction post-Mean Girls (a movie Trixie and Katya watched on their show just before this because, well, it will always be Lohan’s apex). In any case, it doesn’t take long for Trixie to stop one of the first few scenes and comment on Sierra Belmont’s (Lohan) boyfriend, Tad Fairchild (George Young), prattling on in what he seems to think is relevant social media lingo. Trixie accordingly lambasts, “This is like a boomer sat down to write, ‘Things I don’t like about the kids and their phones.’”

    The queens flash us forward to Jake Russell (Chord Overstreet) walking around the corner and crashing into Sierra at the Belmont Hotel after trying to beg her father, Beauregard (Jack Wagner), for some capital to keep his more “mom and pop” North Star Lodge going. Causing her to spill her drink on her “Valenyagi” (presumably a way important made-up designer), Trixie and Katya burst out laughing at how upset Tad is by the stain, with Katya asking, “Is he a gay f-word?” Trixie replies, “He’s taking loads at The Abbey.” Letting some more of Tad’s dialogue play, Katya adds, “This is giving, like, John Early does Sesame Street on acid so far.” But really, that is still too kind an assessment.

    Katya opens the floodgate to show some random scenes (not that all of them aren’t) of particular schmaltz by declaring, “We’re crossing the Tropen Zee Bridge to get into Trope Town to observe a few cliches.” Among them, Sierra having a dead mom, the North Star Lodge being the Little Shop Around the Corner to Belmont’s Fox Books, needing a Christmas miracle and giving sentimental meaning to trite objects like a snow globe or tree topper in the form of a giant angel.

    Trixie and Katya then skip to the scene before Sierra is about to fall of the cliff and get her required amnesia for the movie to continue (even though Jake should already recognize her since he literally just saw her in the hotel). All Trixie can really comment on, however, is Lohan’s hot-pink ski suit, describing, “She looks like one of the Housewives… in Salt Lake City.”

    More arbitrary cuts ensue, this time to the L.A.-ified Santa (you know, looks like he got plastic surgery and veneers) in the movie who thinks he’s passing as mere “seller” at one of the holiday market stalls. A scene of him making the shushing gesture in what he imagines is a “playful” way prompts Katya to scream, “Oh! That was so scary.” Trixie agrees, “It’s a little creepy.”

    Not as creepy, perhaps, as Tad bursting into a stranger’s ice fishing hut and shouting, “Sanctuary.” To which Katya asks, “What is he doing? Gay Frankenstein?” Naturally, this is just the tip…of gay shade directed at Tad, who is clearly the scene stealer for them in Falling For Christmas (further proving that Lindsay has lost her touch, even with the gays).

    Trixie observes him talking to Ralph (Sean J. Dillingham)—no longer a stranger—in the ice fishing hut and decides, “He looks like a go-go boy talking to a bartender at The Eagle.” Katya confirms, “This is the gayest man I’ve ever seen in my life… Ralph would dick his little f-word ass down.”

    Occasionally getting back to the theoretical star of the movie, we’re shown Sierra screaming at the sight of a raccoon in her window. Trixie remarks, “I will say city people are funny. They think every animal is out to get them.” But it doesn’t take long for the drag duo to get back to the far greater sexual tension between Ralph and Tad, the former of whom winks and assures, “I got big feet” after dragging Tad through the treacherous snow pass. To that, Katya says, “Merry Fist-mas.”

    Forcing themselves to look once more at the so-called hetero plotline, they have to make a comment on the angel again (since this movie really beats the viewer over the head with its sentimental importance to Jake). As we see a scene of Jake removing it from the drawer, Trixie offers, “I would love for them to pull out the angel and maybe he did like DMT or something and he pulls out the angel and the angel goes, ‘Hey, who’s the wise guy?’ I would love for that to happen. Like some kind of cartoony voice like that.” To be sure, going in a more balls out camp direction might have been the only thing that could have redeemed Falling For Christmas. But, again, that’s apparently what Trixie and Katya are here to do with their commentary.

    Continuing to talk about this goddamned angel, Jake explains to Sierra, “Carla and I bought it together, and the she got sick…” Trixie finishes, “…of me and she moved to Tucson.”

    The fixation on the homoerotic sublot of Ralph and Tad persists anew when Trixie and Katya cut to Ralph handing Tad some beans after lighting a fire for them to sit in front of for the night. Of this, Trixie notes, “So I guess we know who’s bottoming tonight.”

    Fast forwarding us along (because, truly, not much is missed with all the scenes glossed over), we get to the moment where Beauregard finally realizes his daughter has been missing. Taken to her room to look for some sign of what might have happened, he sees her luggage is still in her closet and informs his employee, “My daughter never goes anywhere without her luggage.” Trixie translates, “Hmm, she left her drag.”

    Another scene of Tad prompts Katya to wonder, “Is he gay or annoying?” But no, as far as Trixie and Katya are concerned, they gay connection between Ralph and Tad remains to the end, with Katya announcing, “I hope they have sex. That would be so fierce.”

    Edging us ever closer to the merciful conclusion, Trixie and Katya get to the scene of Sierra pulling a Laney Boggs by walking down the stairs in a red dress ostensibly just so she can be ogled by the guy who has been bottling his feelings for her all this time. As Jake’s daughter, Avy (Olivia Perez), oohs and ahhs over it, Trixie says what we’re all thinking by declaring, “It’s a little Plain Jane.” Katya tries to offer a compliment when Sierra dons an accompanying blazer in shimmering silver, “I love the blazer though. She looks like Dorothy Zbornak.”

    Another cut to Tad in his Christmas attire and slicked-back hair prompts Katya to reiterate, “King of the F-words.” Trixie elaborates, “We can’t say it on YouTube. But let’s just say, I fuh-got what his sexuality was.” Katya shrugs, “He’s homo for the holidays that’s for sure.”

    Trixie breaks down this same look at the press conference he’s at with Sierra after her memory is “recovered” by stating, “He looks like a toy soldier.” Katya then impersonates Tad saying, “She’s gonna watch me have sex with men.”

    But no, ultimately, Sierra won’t stick around for some rich queen. She’s gone “slum mountain man” and she won’t go back. Thus, as Katya tells it, “And finally Tad goes full f-word. He gets his ruby slippers and sashays down that yellow brick road towards the glory hole.”

    Of Sierra’s sudden lack of interest in being a rich bitch, Katya shrugs, “I love a four-day complete personality shift.” Even up until the end, however, it’s Tad that neither one can get over, with Katya saying, “The real Christmas miracle is him not knowing that he’s gay” and (after Tad asks one of the hotel staff, Terry [Chase Ramsey], out for New Year’s), “Well I’m gonna say this: it has more queer representation than Bros did.”

    So it is that the duo decides to succumb to Falling For Christmas like freezing to death by playing nice and giving it credit for what it does “have.” For Trixie, “It had surprise gay/bisexual innuendos.” For Katya, “Amnesia.” For Trixie (again), “It had snow.” For Katya (again), “Ice fishing.”

    There you have it, even Falling For Christmas gets a piece of the Christmas crown, as though Cady Heron herself was doling it out.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Britney: The Pop Star Barbie America Turned Into Its Fucked-Up Voodoo Doll

    Britney: The Pop Star Barbie America Turned Into Its Fucked-Up Voodoo Doll

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    Britney Spears was never given much of a chance in the way of being “taken seriously.” From the beginning, she was written off as another cookie-cutter pop star from the Jive Records factory, including Spears’ boy band contemporaries, Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC. And, despite her massive success from the beginning, there was little interest from those with a “refined ear” for music in opening their arms to her (just their zippers).

    Hence, a 2000 review (that barely made mention of the actual songs’ content) of Britney’s sophomore album on The A.V. Club was sure to lambast her for being “a true cipher, a dress-up doll programmed to satisfy as many different fans and fantasies as possible.” Harsh indeed. And yet, there is something to that idea. The one where Spears, in the early years of her career was this moldable Pop Star Barbie that fulfilled the Aryan ideal (long before Taylor Swift) of “the girl next door” who would also pull her skirt up if you asked. That was for the fulfillment of the Nabokovian male fantasy, of course. For the girls who looked up to Spears, it would be stated by polite marketing tactics that it was because she could be seen as someone you wanted to be “best friends” with. A greater truth was that all the guys wanted to bang her so all the girls wanted to be her.

    Then came her inevitable “fall.” The one that conveniently coincided with her no longer being in her teen years, therefore “virginal.” Which meant it was time to paint her into the outright “slut” everyone always thought she was merely because she dressed provocatively for her stage performances and music videos. Enter the rumors of cheating on Justin Timberlake with Wade Robson. Then Justin’s almost immediate retaliation with the song and video, “Cry Me A River”—which, in case anyone was confused as to whether it was about Britney, included a very on-the-nose lookalike targeted by her jilted ex (played by, who else, Justin). From that moment forward, Britney was damned to be branded a “good girl gone bad.” One of the American media’s favorite tropes.

    The systematic dismantling of Britney as “teen dream” to “cautionary tale” was further solidified in January of 2004, when she married her childhood friend, Jason Alexander, at a Las Vegas wedding chapel. It took no time for her mother and her manager to swoop in and convince her to petition for an annulment. One that provided language with eerie foreshadowing with regard to her conservatorship: “Spears lacked understanding of her actions.” It was obvious with that abrupt maneuver that Britney was in desperate search of someone to love. Particularly after the earth-shattering breakup with Justin. And if someone like Alexander could worm his way in, it was certainly no challenge for Kevin Federline, the catalyst for the eventual downward spiral America would see documented so fully in 2007. Just two years after TMZ was born, and being stalked by the paparazzi took on a decidedly British ferocity. In fact, perhaps only Princess Diana could know how Britney felt in those peak years of being endlessly pursued—thanks to the often million-dollar price tag that a photo of Britney could fetch.

    And so, it all provided even more “reason” (read: motive) to make a spectacle of her, prove she was some “out of control” (that was the phrase actually used to describe her marrying Jason Alexander on an Us Weekly cover) party girl unfit to be a mother. Unfit even compared to Kevin fucking Federline. Who was given carte blanche to do what he wanted throughout his short-lived marriage to Britney, even though Britney assumed she’d have an actual partner around to help raise her children (and yes, almost every photo of Britney from that period is with just her and her kids, with no sign of K-Fed anywhere). This paired with her unaddressed postpartum depression brewed the recipe for Britney’s own addiction to form as a coping mechanism. The headlines making such damning declarations with Spears’ image attached as, “Time Bomb,” “Sick!” and “Hollywood’s Drug Problem.”

    Even as a married woman (for the second time in the same year) to K-Fed, Britney couldn’t be deemed “tame” enough, stoking the outrage of “child advocates” when she was photographed with her son, Sean, in her lap while driving. Undeniably, members of the press were always waiting to catch the perfect shot of her “failing” as a mother—and if anyone had as many photos taken in rapid-fire succession as Britney, that sort of “proof” would be bound to materialize. Just as it did when Britney was caught almost dropping Sean on a New York sidewalk in May of ’06.

    2006 was very stressful indeed for Britney’s motherhood role, as she gave birth to her second son in September. Just two months later, she filed for divorce from Federline in November of ’06. One that wouldn’t be finalized until July 2007, with K-Fed likely trying to hold out for a better settlement. With nothing left to lose (or so she thought), Britney took being single and in her twenties to heart again as she hit the Hollywood nightclub scene (most famously with Paris Hilton). Through it all, America feasted on her reckless decline (sometimes just called: being in your twenties), then pretended to act shocked when she got 5150’d. Anyone would be if they were put in a situation like that.

    Then came the journalists’ endless splooge-fest over assessing what led to the “breakdown” (a.k.a. a woman simply wanting to have more time holding her son and locking herself in the bathroom to get it). Most harshly, Vanessa Griogoriadis in a Rolling Stone cover story called “The Tragedy of Britney Spears.” Among other descriptions of her time spent observing the pop star (no one seems to know how this story was approved), Griogoriadis states, “If there is one thing that has become clear in the past year of Britney’s collapse—the most public downfall of any star in history—it’s that she doesn’t want anything to do with the person the world thought she was. She is not a good girl. She is not America’s sweetheart. She is an inbred swamp thing who chain-smokes, doesn’t do her nails, tells reporters to ‘eat it, snort it, lick it, fuck it’ and screams at people who want pictures for their little sisters.” So there it is: the Pop Star Barbie America turned into its fucked-up voodoo doll.

    Even now. Just take one look at the comments on what she posts. For example, “Can we actually have this page banned? I mean I think it’s in the best interest of the occupant that it gets completely logged out and deleted. Please, this isn’t what anyone was thinking Brittany would be free to do… it’s causing severe 2ndhand embarrassment and making ppl question their childhood lol” or “Literally do anything else please” or “She is filming this herself and it’s gross, have some dignity and think of your poor boys” or “This woman is definitely off her meds. There’s no one to keep her in check. Seem as though she is surrounded by ‘yes’ people, including her husband. ‘Let her be, she’s not harming anyone.’ YES SHE IS!!!! She has CHILDREN!! She is spiraling out of control. This will not end well.”

    Who knows how it will really “end” for Britney, but it’s clear that something within her died quite some time ago when it was stamped out repeatedly by dissection to the nth degree. This includes, above all else, in photo and video format. Some would like to believe she’s gotten a happy “end” in her current husband, who, to be honest, seems like he was planted in her life. And, talking of him, he once had the gall to caption a photo of them together with the back-handed advice, “Women are the most powerful humans on this 🌎 fellas listen up: what they don’t teach you in school is that your ability to listen and agree with your woman 👩 even if you don’t agree is the 🔑 to a happy life 😎 What do they say? Oh… Happy wife, happy life.” It’s the kind of yuk-yuk-yuk misogyny that speaks to a man who isn’t really listening to a word “his” girl is saying, just nods along to get along—all the while thinking what a crazy little ninny she is. But, hey, ain’t she cute? In short, Spears is just recreating the relationship she’s had with America since the beginning.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Britney Saying She’s Turning 12 Instead of 41 Has Everything to Do With Retreating to a “Safety” Age

    Britney Saying She’s Turning 12 Instead of 41 Has Everything to Do With Retreating to a “Safety” Age

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    Being that tabloid-type publications still enjoy the parading of a headline that makes a celebrity come across as unhinged, OK! Magazine frequently weighs in on Britney Spears’ various Instagram posts (which, as most should know by now, usually include dancing and twirling—and also plenty of shade) with more than a hint of judgment. One such headline referred to a post she put up on Thanksgiving wherein she referred to her erstwhile conservatorship by mentioning, “I know most didn’t get them in the past but I hope you’re all being served with my handwritten letters now.” She then added, in anticipation of her December 2nd birthday, “I hear the new thing to do is to have slumber parties and dance in the kitchen 😜😜😜 !!! I’m not turning 41 … I’m turning 12.”

    Even though it was a light-hearted way to “brush off” her self-infantilization, OK! chose to bill that as “Britney Spears Bizarrely Jokes She’s ‘Not Turning 41’ But 12 Years Old Ahead Of Birthday.” But many might either empathize or at least be able to clearly understand that her allusion to that particular age is her “safe place.”

    Granted, being on The Mickey Mouse Club wasn’t exactly a time of “innocence”—what with Justin Timberlake kissing her during a game of spin the bottle (Ryan Gosling claimed the same, but Britney insisted she only ever kissed Justin). Timberlake, among many other sources of pervert-oriented pride about Britney, would be sure to later announce that he was her first kiss. In addition to shaming her for lying to the media about being a virgin while dating Timberlake. Something he would keep doing well after their breakup, finding a way to incorporate Britney into a 2009 SNL sketch called “Immigrant Tale.” Playing the part of Cornelius Timberlake, he tells his fellow immigrants on the boat bound for Ellis Island of the exploits his great-great-grandson will have, including dating a “popular female singer… Publicly, they’ll claim to be virgins but privately… he hit it.”

    Britney’s sudden lack of “credibility” in the wake of their breakup was further spurred by Justin, who did everything in his media blitzkrieg power to insinuate or outright declare that 1) Britney cheated on him and 2) they had sex throughout their relationship. One such announcement being made on a radio show when Timberlake was asked point-blank, “Did you fuck Britney Spears?” Without hesitating, he responded, “Okay yeah, I did it!”

    All of this is to say that, while many people turning a so-called “icky” age would prefer to return to their twenties, that decade, for Britney, was her most traumatic, commencing with the Timberlake breakup that sealed the media’s sudden dismantling of her image as America’s sweetheart and culminating in her conservatorship. Placed under it at the beginning of 2008, Spears was just twenty-seven years old and would spend the theoretical prime of her life in this form of captivity.

    And it’s only natural for her to feel as though time was robbed from her. Time from what is seen as the last dalliance with precious youth before full-tilt middle age. Now thrust into her forties, Britney’s bifurcated personality/identity crisis isn’t just about being caught up in the curse of an obsession with youth because she founded her image on a Lolita one, but because the safest place right now probably does feel like twelve.

    Regardless of the fact that her parents were pimping her out already at that time, it was still her own life. And the work she did at twelve would end up providing the launching point to total freedom and agency with a solo career. What’s more to be that age and concerned only with frivolous, frothy things is likely all Britney wants at this juncture. For she’s spent so much of her life worrying about pleasing people, making one wrong step or, worse still, being threatened with loss of access to her children (who, tragically, don’t want to see her anyway) that it’s understandable for her to want slumber parties and dancing in the kitchen. Along with other “trifles” like makeup, dessert, planetary destruction through fashion and talking about hot guys (since the quote unquote hot guy she’s married to appears so often to be missing, when he’s not trying to get her to go Instagram Live against her will).

    So yes, Britney can say she’s turning twelve if she wants to. If that’s the age that makes her feel best, why not? Plus, that old saying is true: you’re as young as you feel. And based on Britney’s posts, she’s feeling like the deranged twelve-year-old within.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Tanya/Victoria: Jennifer Coolidge’s Pattern of Walking In On People She’s Not Supposed to See Having Sex

    Tanya/Victoria: Jennifer Coolidge’s Pattern of Walking In On People She’s Not Supposed to See Having Sex

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    The line should no longer be, “A guy walks into a bar…” so much as, “Jennifer Coolidge’s character walks in on someone having better sex than she ever has or will.” While it takes three times to really constitute a “pattern,” surely two infers more than mere “coincidence.” This seemed to be the case during the fifth episode of The White Lotus’ second season, when Tanya’s voyeuristic-leaning curiosity got the better of her in the middle of the night. For, were it not for that “morbid interest” in confirming—while already knowing full well what such grunts would entail—certain suspicions, both Tanya and a similar character forebear, Victoria, would have been spared any additional “trauma.”

    Of course, “trauma” is a very subjective word for both Victoria and Tanya, with the former being a rich Upper East Sider (as all that orbit Carrie Bradshaw’s world tend to be) who invites the starring quartet of Sex and the City over for a so-called purse party in the sixth season’s third episode, “The Perfect Present.” To the dismay of Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha, however, they’re blindsided by the “theme,” only told by Victoria as they walk through the door to the sight of racks upon racks of horrendous-looking purses all clearly made with some very DIY methods and materials in the aftermath of Victoria’s breakup. Which is why Samantha turns to Charlotte as she holds up one of the bags and says, “Someone should tell Crazy that owning a hot glue gun does not make you a hot purse designer.” And yes, Charlotte was already “woke-ified” before @everyoutfitonsatc came along to meme her as Woke Charlotte, for she appears to clap back at Samantha’s “ableist slur” by responding, “Don’t call her crazy.”

    Though surely everyone, even in 2022, would still like to use that word on Tanya—especially her husband, Greg (Jon Gries). While being married to her felt manageable when he thought he was going to die of cancer, it no longer does now that he’s carrying on just fine. His abrupt departure from their Sicilian vacation for “work” leaves Tanya in the hands of a gaggle of gay men helmed by Quentin (Tom Hollander), who purports to admire her “fabulousness,” but is clearly not at all as he seems. Tanya, being ultimately extremely narcissistic, takes the bait of his flattery and drags her assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), along for the ride. One that eventually leads them away from the White Lotus and to Palermo so that Tanya can see Quentin’s villa in all its glory… in addition to a performance of Madama Butterfly at Teatro Massimo. This being among many none-too-subtle hints that have prompted viewers to theorize about Tanya’s potential suicide. Or perhaps a plan to make it look as though she did kill herself. Even though it should be hard to believe (for any reasonable being) that a person so self-involved could do so—as Portia would probably corroborate of her perpetually-in-a-fugue-state boss.

    Having been so distracted the last few days by Quentin’s “goodwill” toward her in Greg’s absence, it’s as though Tanya’s practically said the same thing about him that Victoria did at the purse party of her ex: “Who needs a balding thirty-eight-year-old with erectile dysfunction when you can have a new career and cute cater waiters?” And Portia is likely to encourage such a sentiment as she benefits from getting the sex and adventure she wanted out of the trip all along. All thanks to the presence of Quentin’s straight (or is he?) nephew (or is he?), Jack (Leo Woodall). While it was already enough of a slight sting to see Portia getting some (enough so that Tanya actually says to her with a pointing finger, “I’m jealous”), Tanya is much more stunned into silence than Victoria upon walking in on a duo she should not be seeing in flagrante delicto at the end of “That’s Amore.”

    For yes, both characters are perennially unlucky in love and seemingly even in sex. What’s more, like Tanya, the self-delusion that allows Victoria to briefly be in a good mood (this time because she’s convinced herself she’s “Fendi”) is prone to taking swift dips at the drop of a hat (or purse). For, after seeing someone older than her a.k.a. Samantha (who looks younger despite having far less plastic surgery) get dicked down by one of those aforementioned cater waiters (Smith Jerrod, formerly Jerry Jerrod), the revelation of being saddled with her own cobwebbed vagina is too much to bear as she runs back upstairs and snaps at a partygoer who asks, “Victoria, does this come in any other colors?” Victoria replies, “Do I look like a fuckin’ department store? Get the fuck out of my apartment!” She knocks over a rack in an uncontrollable burst of emotionalism that falls under the Tayna McQuoid-Hunt School of Performance as well. Complete with Victoria’s line at the sight of seeing Samantha and Smith, “I’m way too fucking fragile to see this!”

    But what’s really to be so fragile about on both character’s parts? After all, they both come from big city backgrounds where “sexual shenanigans” are supposed to be par for the course—along with debauchery in general. Particularly in the world of the affluent, the “fine” purveyors of all things “dark triad shit” (as Daphne [Meghann Fahy] would call it). At the same time, it’s being insulated from reality that allows one to indulge in yet another luxury of the rich: “being fragile.” Coolidge’s gravitation to this type of role accordingly leaves her character easily “scandalized.” An overt guise for the contempt that miserable people have when they see anyone else enjoying themselves. Especially orgasmically.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Madonna Takes A Bigger Risk on Dredging Up the Sex Book in the Present

    Madonna Takes A Bigger Risk on Dredging Up the Sex Book in the Present

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    While it’s nice to see #JusticeForErotica happening after thirty years, Madonna’s decision to dredge up her accompanying project of the day, Sex, proves, perhaps more than anything else, that she might truly believe herself immune to cancel culture. Presumably because of the “carte blanche” that is imagined to come with being amid the last of the living legends. But as a film like Tár recently proved, it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve contributed to society—there’s always an occasion to be cancelled.

    As something of the “companion” to the Erotica album, Sex was originally published in October of 1992 by Madonna’s then-new company, Maverick, in collaboration with Warner Bros. and Callaway. And the images and excerpts pulled from it caused even more of a stir than Madonna getting her drag on in the “Erotica” video as a riding crop-toting dominatrix named Dita (an alter ego inspired by actress Dita Parlo). Although her publisher was concerned about unleashing the content—afraid that they had possibly given Madonna too much “free rein” (no riding crop pun intended)—the coffee table book was an immediate success.

    In mere days, it sold over a million copies worldwide (no small feat considering its cumbersome design) and topped The New York Times Best Seller list for three weeks. It all seemed to prove what Madonna wanted to hold up as a funhouse mirror to conservative America (itself the biggest “undercover” batch of pervs) worked like a charm. She would go on to assert in a 1998 episode of Behind the Music (complete with a talking head segment from Harvey Weinstein), “I was really being explicit about my own sexual fantasies, turning my nose up at the whole idea that, you know, women aren’t allowed to be sexual and erotic and provocative and intelligent and thoughtful at the same time.” Yet, that was a bit of a “smokescreen” for a more authentic underlying motive. As for the “fantasies,” Madonna has appeared to execute one of them throughout most of her real life—this being a strong penchant for younger, non-white men. Which she’s displayed with every boy toy since her divorce from Guy Ritchie, from Jesus Luz to Brahim Zaibat to Timor Steffens to Ahlamalik Williams.

    Within the pages of the Sex book itself, this is where she continues to take the greatest risk in the present in terms of having her words used against her in a more crescendoing way than before. Specifically, such assertions as, “One of the best experiences I ever had was with a teenage boy… He was Puerto Rican.” The specification of his ethnicity adding to the notion that this isn’t really “just” a fantasy. For Madonna was known for prowling the Lower East Side in the 80s to pick up underage Puerto Rican boys with her then go-to cohort, Erica Bell.

    In 1998, when Madonna was still in the process of perfecting her “softer” side in the wake of all that bond-age rage, she positioned the Sex book in the same Behind the Music interview as being less a political statement and more an act of rebellion, noting, “It was an act of rage on my part. In the beginning, everyone agreed that I was sexy, but no one agreed that I had any talent. And that really irritated me. And the Sex book was sort of the pinnacle of me challenging people and saying, ‘You know what? I’m gonna be sexually provocative and I’m gonna be ironic and I’m gonna prove that I can get everybody’s attention and that everybody’s gonna be interested in it and still be freaked out by it.” Yet, hadn’t she already done that many times over by 1992? From “Like A Virgin” to “Like A Prayer” to “Justify My Love,” her visuals had consistently been sexually provocative while incorporating an ironic tone. Which is why the excuse she gives for doing it doesn’t quite track. Complete with her assessment, “And it was sort of like my way of saying, ‘See? The world is hypocritical.” But who among any of us is truly immune to a little hypocrisy? Which Madonna engaged in a lot during the early 90s when she grafted much of her work from other, far less famous people (usually BIPOC and/or queer).

    Enter another reason the book is a sore/risky subject to bring into the light again so flagrantly: the salt in wound it might add to someone like Judith Reagan. An editor at Simon & Schuster in 1991, it was Reagan who approached Madonna with the idea for the book. Madonna likely thought what she had in mind was too “staid” and decided to take the bare bones of the project and go to another publisher: Callaway. The entity that would also go on to publish Madonna during her children’s book phase in the 00s. Reagan would later state in one of the few comprehensive biographies of Madonna (written by J. Randy Taraborrelli), “She had obviously taken my concept, my photos and ideas and used it as a proposal to secure a deal with another publisher. I never heard from her, not a word of gratitude, or an apology, or anything. Frankly, I thought it was in poor taste.” But, as is no secret by now, Madonna has never given much of a fuck about “good” taste when it comes to advancing her career.

    Indeed, by essentially admitting, beneath all the posturing about making a political statement, that she wanted the attention, Madonna played right into her long-standing psychological analysis. The one that dictates when a child loses a parent too early, they’re destined to spend the rest of their lives testing boundaries, seeking approval and wanting to be lavished with an amount of adoration that only fame can vaguely fulfill. You know, interminable void-wise.  

    With the reissuing of Sex in conjunction with Yves Saint Laurent curating an exhibit for it at Art Basel, Madonna, once again, appears to be courting the attention she can’t resist, even at such a dangerous time in the history of U.S. witch-hunting. To be sure, the book does continue to push the envelope, even to this day. Unfortunately, its “reboot” comes at a time when the Gatekeepers That Be would prefer that envelope to remain firm in its place—ironically, even more so than in 1992, at a theoretical height of oppression. However, with only eight hundred copies reprinted at a price of almost three thousand dollars, maybe Madonna is actually playing it safe. Re-releasing Body of Evidence, on the other hand… that would be bold.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Tár Sets a Trap for Proponents of Cancel Culture to Fall Right Into

    Tár Sets a Trap for Proponents of Cancel Culture to Fall Right Into

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    It’s a familiar narrative in the headlines by now. “Genius” gets accused of abuse/sexual impropriety, “genius” is exiled after a snowballing of bad press and more accusers coming out of the woodwork to corroborate claims. What we haven’t seen so much documented in pop culture is when a woman is accused of such (for no biopic has yet been released of Asia Argento). That conductor/composer Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) happens to be a lesbian is perhaps writer-director Todd Field’s way of making a woman more “believably” predatory. Then again, look at Demi Moore as Meredith Johnson in the ahead-of-its-time movie, Disclosure. In it, Moore plays the new head of the CD-ROM division (it was 1994) at a tech company. She immediately uses her newfound power to force herself on the employee everyone thought would be promoted, Tom Sanders (Michael Douglas). Based on a book by Michael Crichton, screenwriter Paul Attanasio is sure to play up just how diabolical a woman in power can be. Feminism, after all, technically means a woman can (and should) be as ruthless as a man in her bid to climb the proverbial ladder.  

    With Tár, Field’s intent is less about that and more about the witch-hunting nature of the present era. Shit, Arthur Miller could have made a new version of The Crucible based on the #MeToo movement. What’s more, Field himself knows all about working with formerly celebrated and now “exiled” artists, having collaborated with Woody Allen after being cast in 1987’s Radio Days. And then, of course, there was the fact that Stanley Kubrick, notoriously assholish on set, mentored him as a director. So, undoubtedly, Field knows more than “a bit” about the artistic genius temperament beyond just his own (even if this is only his third feature film to be released over the course of twenty-one years, with 2001’s In the Bedroom marking his debut).

    Trying to get “inside the mind” of such a person during roughly the first twenty minutes of Tár is The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik—this element lending an added sense of authenticity to the movie that more than occasionally makes it come across as a biopic-meets-documentary. So it is that Lydia proceeds to talk about, among other things, conducting and recording Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic, this being the other city where she splits her time. Creating the perfect scenario for her to enact any “misdeeds” as her wife/concertmaster, Sharon Goodnow (Nina Hoss), and adopted daughter, Petra (Mila Bogojevic), live in Berlin full-time.

    Indeed, during her talk for The New Yorker Festival, Lydia is quick to foreshadow her own demise when she refers to what Mahler did “after the professional bottom dropped out.” But, at this moment in time, her own professional nadir feels inconceivable. Revered and sought after, her next order of business while in New York involves guest lecturing at a Juilliard class and scheduling appearances for an upcoming book release. Before she makes it to Juilliard, she indulges in receiving a little flattery from one of the many admiring female acolytes that appear to constantly surround her, this girl introducing herself as Whitney Reese (Sydney Lemmon). And as Whitney sucks her clit, so to speak, Lydia’s annoyed assistant and mentee, Francesca Lentini (Noémie Merlant), glances over in disgust. She seems rather accustomed to this sort of thing, yet can’t help but continue to be repelled by such displays of obsequiousness.

    As Whitney then compliments her on a performance she conducted at the Met for Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Lydia replies, “It’s the eleven pistol shots—it’s a prime number—that strike you as both victim and perpetrator.” This line, too, providing a double meaning for what is to be Lydia’s own fate. Though, of course, the majority watching it all unfold in real time will see her as a perpetrator, including those outside the narrative: the viewers of the film. To be sure, Field’s point seems to be that one’s own predictable judgment of Lydia as an abuser and predator (despite mostly vague information to support it) is a reflection of how “lynch mob”-oriented they themselves are.

    To tie into this cultural “trend” (more “way of life” at this juncture), Helena Bonham Carter gave a recent interview for The Sunday Times that addresses such disgraced famous people as Johnny Depp and J. K. Rowling being prime examples of unjustly maligned figures in the arts. More controversially still, Bonham Carter stated, when asked if the pendulum was swinging back on the #MeToo movement, “My view is that [Heard] got on that pendulum. That’s the problem with these things—that people will jump on the bandwagon because it’s the trend and to be the poster girl for it.” Ostensibly like Lydia’s accuser, Krista Taylor. Bonham Carter went on to comment about how out of hand cancel culture has gotten by adding, “Do you ban a genius for their sexual practices? There would be millions of people who if you looked closely enough at their personal life you would disqualify them. You can’t ban people. I hate cancel culture. It has become quite hysterical and there’s a kind of witch hunt and a lack of understanding.”

    These are the fundamental questions and themes being explored in Field’s two-hour-plus opus (no symphonic pun intended). Yet there are, unquestionably, many viewers who would take what is presented at face value—as “hard proof” of Lydia’s guilt. For yes, there is some obvious impropriety on her part, but we never see anything with our own eyes that fully crosses the line. Furthermore, to defend someone once they’re accused is a form of attracting one’s own career suicide. As Bonham Carter might have done by remarking of the transphobia Rowling is accused of, “It’s been taken to the extreme, the judgmentalism of people. She’s allowed her opinion, particularly if she’s suffered abuse. Everybody carries their own history of trauma and forms their opinions from that trauma and you have to respect where people come from and their pain. You don’t all have to agree on everything—that would be insane and boring. She’s not meaning it aggressively, she’s just saying something out of her own experience.”

    One that, apparently, isn’t limited to a straight white woman, as another more critically-celebrated author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, has spoken her own views on such matters. Back in 2021, Ngozi Adichie encountered something of a similar scenario to Lydia’s in that a former student and fellow Nigerian writer, Akwaeke Emezi, sounded the alarm bell on a reason to cancel her: for transphobia. Using much the same logic as Rowling, who Ngozi Adichie specifically named with a defensive tone, she said of trans women, “My feeling is that trans women are trans women. I think if you’ve lived in the world as a man, with the privileges the world accords to men, and then change gender, it’s difficult for me to accept that then we can equate your experience with the experience of a woman who has lived from the beginning in the world as a woman, and who has not been accorded those privileges that men are.”

    The feud escalated when Ngozi Adichie then published an essay called “It Is Obscene,” detailing her past issues with both Emezi and another student (a troika permutation that mirrors what’s happening in Tár with Lydia, Francesca and Krista). Much the same way Lydia lashes out at these millennial and Gen Z fuckos, Ngozi Adichie wrote in her essay, “We have a generation of young people on social media so terrified of having the wrong opinions that they have robbed themselves of the opportunity to think and to learn and to grow. I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified to tweet anything, that they read and re-read their tweets because they fear they will be attacked by their own.”

    In that aforementioned scene of Lydia talking to Whitney, it is also in this instance that we get our first glimpse of what a “toucher” Lydia is, putting her hands on Whitney’s arms as she says her goodbye (at Francesca’s urging). One then gets the continued sense that she is not hemmed in by the limitations and unspoken rules of living in a cancel culture climate while teaching the class at Juilliard. Where she “dares” to get into it with a student named Max (Zethphan Smith-Gneist) about his aversion to Bach based on identity politics. Max explains his “allergy” (as Lydia calls it) as follows: “As a BIPOC pangender person, I would say Bach’s misogynistic life makes it kind of impossible for me to take his music seriously.” In disbelief, Lydia, replies, “That’s your choice. I mean, after all, ‘a soul selects her own society.’ But remember, the flipside of that closes the valves of one’s attention.” This entire exchange very much akin to the beef between Ngozi Adichie and Emezi that sparked “It Is Obscene.” But before Lydia is willing to give up entirely on this generation, she urges Max to sit with her at the piano and play some Bach.

    Alas, a mind that was born into the matrix like that simply can’t be convinced of separating the artist from the work. When he tells her that he still can’t be convinced, she pulls one of her grabbing maneuvers on him (proving, yet again, that she really is one of those “touchy-feely” people) and derides, “Don’t be so eager to be offended. The narcissism of small differences leads to the most boring conformity.”

    The entire time, Francesca has been sitting in the back of the room, and, as we later assume, filming Lydia to edit her worst soundbites in such a manner as to lead to a crescendo calling for her “cancellation” on the wave of Krista’s suicide. For, in the background of Lydia’s chaotic schedule, Krista has been sending “desperate” emails to Francesca, which she reports on to Lydia, who continues to instruct her to ignore them, insisting that “hope dies last” for people like her. Until it does die altogether, ergo suicide. But not before sending her a pointed gift in the form of Vita Sackville-West’s Challenge. One of the few, shall we say, free-spirited lesbians of the early twentieth century (with Virginia Woolf being her most famous “companion”), Sackville-West began the work with an ex-lover and fellow writer named Violet Keppel. It’s an overt dig at Lydia about how Krista feels they began a work together that she nipped in the bud before it could flourish. From Lydia’s point of view, though, it all seems to be a case of erotomania as she advises every orchestra conductor against hiring her.

    To emphasize his point about Lydia’s ignoring of cancel culture, Field even includes a voiceover of Alec “I Shot Someone” Baldwin interviewing her as an unseen person edits Lydia’s Wikipedia page. While, sure, it could be Max in a fit of rage after the Juilliard class, the more likely culprit is Krista, whose figure we then see lurking outside of Lydia’s bourgeois apartment.

    This brings us back to Francesca chatting live (as she has been since the beginning) with someone else on her phone. Sometimes, we think it’s Krista, sometimes a new cellist in the Berlin Philharmonic named Olga Metkina (Sophie Kauer). In one such moment, Francesca sends a picture of Lydia’s piano room and texts, “See what I see.” The person on the other side messages back, “Plácido Domingo’s room.” “She thinks she is being ironic.” The plot to take Lydia down, on Francesca’s part, is contingent, ultimately, on whether or not Lydia will switch out her assistant conductor, Sebastian Brix (Allan Corduner), for Francesca, who has clearly only been so willing to act as Lydia’s bitch for this very incentive.

    As for details about Krista, the most important one comes out during a lunch that Lydia has with Eliot Kaplan (Mark Strong), an amateur conductor and, more consequentially, the investment banker responsible for managing her fellowship program, Accordion. After informing him that she wants to open it up beyond being a resource for female conductors only, she explains, “It feels quaint to keep things single-gender,” adding, “And honestly, we’ve had no real trouble successfully placing any of them.” Eliot reminds, “Except one.” This being the first allusion to the unhinged Krista, this invisible antagonist in Lydia’s life throughout the film. She tells Eliot, “Oh, well. She had issues.” “So I’ve heard. The topic comes up in every Citibank meeting with her father.” Thus, we’re made aware that Krista’s sense of privilege and entitlement might have a lot to do with how she handles Lydia’s rebuffing of her as both a performer and a lover.

    As Lydia’s fall from grace becomes an avalanche overpowering any former recognition of her talent and brilliance, we’re reminded of what she said to Max earlier in the movie: “If Bach’s talent can be reduced to his gender, birth country, religion, sexuality and so on, then so can yours.” Which means that those who were eager to tar and feather her might one day receive their own unexpected comeuppance.

    Field’s decision to drop in clues that could support both perspectives on Lydia’s guilt or innocence alludes more to the former when we learn her real name is Linda Tarr. Granted, many famous people adopt a stage name, but it appears to be a way to suggest to audiences that Lydia has long been applying self-delusion daily. Perhaps not wanting to ever see or consider that her pattern of grooming younger women has been untoward. At the same time, it’s Whitney who asks for Lydia’s number, Francesca who drops none-too-subtle hints about wanting to stay over instead of meeting up with friends, Krista who becomes obsessive to the point of stalking.

    When someone with power and talent rejects a younger admirer in the same field, it can be a cause of extreme fear in the climate of now. Take, for instance, Henry Cavill setting “strict boundaries” for his friendship with Enola Holmes’ leading lady, Millie Bobby Brown (also starring alongside the previously discussed Bonham Carter). Knowing full well of what it could cost his career to be deemed in any way “inappropriate” with someone so much younger. Because no matter how beloved a star might be one day, there’s nothing to protect them from being reviled the next. And, speaking of protecting, that’s exactly what Lydia does for Petra when she returns to Berlin and approaches a school bully named Johanna (Alma Löhr). It’s here that Lydia also leans into making a threat that pertains to a she said, she said phenomenon by warning, “If you tell any grown-up what I just said, they won’t believe you, because I’m a grown-up.” Perhaps she felt the same about someone like Krista, seeing her as nothing more than a “little girl” to be toyed with for her own machinations. Maybe she does get off on her power, but that’s not really a secret characteristic of people who end up in such positions.

    The real issue people have, in the end, arrives when someone is “too good,” has “too much” success. For it’s coded in the DNA of human nature to want to knock an idol off a pedestal. Destroy, destroy, destroy. And, in the present, it’s all in service of ensuring that mediocrity continues to reign supreme over genuine talent. For the only talent that matters now is the “gift” of being able to politick “correctly.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Mother of the Misery Chicks: Wednesday Addams As the Forebear for Emily the Strange and Daria

    Mother of the Misery Chicks: Wednesday Addams As the Forebear for Emily the Strange and Daria

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    There’s an episode in season one of Daria called “The Misery Chick.” In it, a former quarterback/golden boy who attended Lawndale High, Tommy Sherman, is welcomed to the school anew so that he might commemorate a goal post named in his honor on the football field (it all has to do with his legendary “technique” of accidentally running into the goal post every time he scored a touchdown while waving at the crowd). As is to be expected, Daria and Jane are less than impressed with his sudden infection of every corner in the school as he skulks around “propositioning or insulting” whoever he comes across.

    When Daria is forced to give him a piece of her mind upon seeing him obstructing access to her locker, Tommy insults her back with the assessment, “You’re one of those misery chicks. Always moping about what a cruel world it is. Making a big deal about it so people won’t notice you’re a loser.” This is the crux of what a “grim girl” a.k.a. “misery chick” must contend with: easily scandalized normies lashing out at the slightest shattering of their worldview. And it was a prototype that Wednesday Addams laid the groundwork for.

    It seems no coincidence that with the advent of grunge in the 90s, the commodification of misery would play into not only the revival of Wednesday through Christina Ricci in The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, but also in the brand-new 90s icons of Daria herself and Emily the Strange. The latter first appeared in her germinal form even before Daria’s on Beavis and Butt-head. That’s right, Emily in her genesis materialized on a skateboard in 1991. From Santa Cruz Skateboards, Emily was eventually sold to San Francisco-based company Cosmic Debris, by which time comics and merchandise starring the Wednesday-esque cartoon were ramping up.

    Even so, Daria Morgendorffer was likely the more recognizable between the two in the late 90s. After all, she had her own animated MTV series complete with non-stop sarcastic lines, often courtesy of Glenn Eichler. Emily’s lines were instead more one-dimensional, the stuff of t-shirts and bumper stickers—including, “I Want You…To Leave Me Alone,” “Strange is not a crime” and “Emily isn’t lazy. She’s just happy doing nothing.” So is Daria, usually—her favorite pastime being to sit on the couch (whether alone or with her only friend, Jane) and watch Sick, Sad World. That is, when she isn’t in her padded room reading. Wednesday, too, prefers solitude, generally repulsed by her parents’ displays of affection and/or annoyed by her brother’s stupidity. This being part of what compels her to torture him on a constant basis.

    Daria’s own sense of schadenfreude is more limited to the verbal. Case in point, in the aforementioned episode, “The Misery Chick,” Jane consoles Daria, “Maybe he won’t live that long.” Daria responds, “Come on, you know wishes don’t come true.” At that moment, the sound of the goal post crashing down on Tommy’s body can be heard offscreen. The “beloved” (though generally hated) quarterback’s death prompts many of the show’s characters to approach Daria for “advice.” Mainly about how to deal with being sad. As Kevin, the current quarterback at Lawndale, puts it, “I figure you think about depressing stuff a lot. You’re that type, you know.” His girlfriend/the head cheerleader, Brittany adds separately, “You’re used to being all gloomy and depressed and thinking about bad stuff.” Her English teacher, Mr. O’Neill, puts it even more bluntly with, “That’s your thing, right? Facing the void.”

    Daria is anything but “flattered” by this sudden form of popularity. For it only feeds into what Tommy had accused her of being. At the same time, Jane points out that what it all really amounts to is that they’re not accustomed to thinking at all, and want advice on how to do so before they can all return to their regularly-scheduled vegetative state.

    Wednesday suffers from a similar plight, but is far less bothered by it than Daria (at least in her Christina Ricci rendering). And Emily, too, would likely be more unbothered than Ms. Morgendorffer, for she is the admitted direct descendant of Wednesday. This much was made clear during a lawsuit that occurred over the character’s origins. For Cosmic Debris was sued by the creators of a 1978 children’s book called Nate the Great Goes Undercover, featuring an Emily-like character named Rosamond. With the same dark hair, dress style and Mary Janes—along with the accompaniment of some cats—Rosamond’s similarity to Emily might have been written off as pure coincidence were it not for the additional presence of a very familiar line next to Emily’s image: “Emily did not look tired or happy. She looked like she always looks. Strange.” The line next to Rosamond was, almost identically, “Rosamond did not look hungry or sleepy. She looked like she always looks. Strange.”

    So it was that Cosmic Debris had to establish that such a “misery chick” trope was long ago established by the likes of Vampira and Wednesday Addams. Maila Nurmi’s Vampira, however, was actually a concoction inspired by Morticia Addams (at that time, still unnamed) in the Charles Addams cartoons showcased in The New Yorker. So, by that logic, the Addams women truly are the progenitors of all so-called misery chicks—with Vampira then effectively creating Elvira, Mistress of the Dark through her channeling of Morticia.

    The most noticeable difference between Morticia and her daughter, however, is that Wednesday is decidedly asexual (except in the Tim Burton world of Wednesday). Whether or not that’s because she’s still “too young” seems irrelevant. For girls start to unveil interest in “crushes” fairly early on. Wednesday, on the other hand, has far more pressing torture methods to explore. Daria is also pretty much avoidant when it comes to sex, preferring to admire Jane’s brother, Trent, from afar. What’s more, the series’ writers didn’t see fit to display Daria so much as even kissing a boy until the finale of season four. Perhaps the universe imploded so much as a result that there was only one more season after that.  

    Asexual or not, Wednesday forged a path for “misery chicks” everywhere to be themselves, even if it came with constant mockery. Especially since most misery chicks are presented as middle-class white girls—but hey, don’t discount that unique form of misery unto itself.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Softcore Gloom: The Gentrification of Wednesday Addams Includes Nods to Charmed, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Gilmore Girls and Harry Potter

    Softcore Gloom: The Gentrification of Wednesday Addams Includes Nods to Charmed, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Gilmore Girls and Harry Potter

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    Maybe it seems ironic to say that the character of Wednesday Addams has been “gentrified,” considering she’s no longer white. And sure, in Jenna Ortega’s hands (whether that includes Thing or not), Wednesday is perfectly “passable” as a macabre dark mistress. To those who examine the presentation of the character more deeply, however, it’s clear to see that she’s been sanitized for the sake of making her more “likable” (read: watchable) to normies and outcasts alike. Except that the true outcasts of this world will not be encouraged to find that Wednesday’s so-called black heart is as penetrable as the Grinch’s.

    It all starts promisingly enough when Wednesday reveals her lust for exacting revenge to be uncompromising in the first episode, “Wednesday’s Child Is Full of Woe.” This is where we’re introduced to her at Nancy Reagan High—the school’s namesake being a pointed dig at any preppy, pastel-wearing git that Wednesday might be likely to encounter. Except for the fact that, in the present, with the greater commodification of “weird” as normal, one would be less likely to see such 80s-era “queen bees” of a Republican persuasion “running” the school. Nonetheless, one is willing to go along (at first) on this journey helmed by Tim Burton and writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (all three being white men serves as something of a “behind-the-scenes” case in point of the aforementioned gentrification).

    Suspending disbelief that “normies” still reign supreme in the era of their disfavor (with normies themselves having adopted the “trends” embodied by “freakdom”), we watch as Wednesday vindicates her brother Pugsley’s (Isaac Ordonez) bullying by the jocks of the water polo team, their ringleader being the fittingly-named Dalton (Max Pemberton). To secure justice for Pugsley, she thusly targets the team at their most vulnerable: half-naked in the pool during practice. Unleashing two bags’ worth of piranhas (as Edith Piaf’s “Non, je ne regrette rien” plays) into the water, we learn afterward that Dalton ends up losing a testicle. But Wednesday maintains, “I did the world a favor. People like Dalton shouldn’t procreate.” For yes, she does hold fast to her “savagery” for all of episode one, complete with her declaration, “I don’t have a phone. I refuse to be a slave to technology.” Her Luddite ways, of course, will be thrown out the window by the eighth and final episode, “A Murder of Woes,” after fellow student and semi-“love” interest, Xavier Thorpe (Percy Hynes White), gives her one as a parting gift at the premature end of the school year.

    Xavier is sort of like the Tristan Dugray (Chad Michael Murray) to townie Tyler Galpin’s (Hunter Doohan) version of Dean Forester (Jared Padalecki). Which brings us to Wednesday’s Rory Gilmore-esque (Alexis Bledel) nature in this edition. Complete with both girls being bookish introverts with writerly aspirations, each starting out at public school (in Rory’s case, Stars Hollow High) before being presented with the opportunity (fine, obligation for Wednesday) to attend a private. Wednesday’s is called Nevermore Academy, not just a private school like Rory’s Chilton, but a private boarding school. Which is where the Hogwarts Academy element comes in. But more on the Harry Potter similarities later. As for those well-versed in poetry ought to detect, “Nevermore” is a direct reference to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.”

    Poe being the “mascot,” of sorts, for darkness and lovers of the grim and grotesque, it’s only natural that the writers should see fit to make him a former alumnus of the academy. There’s even a Poe Cup competition in episode two, “Woe Is the Loneliest Number,” during which Wednesday’s blooming friendship with her roommate and would-be werewolf, Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers), is further solidified by Wednesday’s desire to help her beat the long-reigning winner, Bianca Barclay (Joy Sunday). It is she who embodies the school’s proverbial “most popular girl” role—though no one can say for sure if that’s because she’s a siren with a very persuasive voice.

    The character of Bianca harkens back to yet another Netflix series, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. A show that, who would have predicted, turned out to be much less afraid of full-stop darkness than Wednesday. In it, Sabrina Spellman’s (Kiernan Shipka) own rival at The Academy of Unseen Arts, Prudence Blackwood (Tati Gabrielle), serves as the locks shorn, Black mean girl of the equation. And, like Wednesday and Bianca, Sabrina and Prudence eventually seem to develop a mutual respect for one another after Bianca and Prudence get over the fact that the chosen boy of her affection prefers Sabrina and Wednesday, respectively, to her.

    The magical facet of Wednesday’s Burton-ified persona doesn’t just relate to Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, either. Even more than that, it echoes Charmed. Most overtly via Wednesday’s powers of premonition mirroring Phoebe Halliwell’s (Alyssa Milano). Charmed in general also seems to cast a towering shadow over the series. At one point, Wednesday tells Thing as she touches a book of spells in “Friend or Woe, “Codex Umbarum—that’s Latin for Book of Shadows.” This being the name of the book the Halliwell sisters use as well for their spellcasting. Then there is Rowan Laslow (Calum Ross), a fellow student at Nevermore with the power of telekinesis… just like Phoebe’s oldest sister, Prue (Shannen Doherty). But yes, more obviously connected to Charmed is Wednesday getting premonitions the same way Phoebe does. The latter, too, can’t control when or where the premonitions will arrive, triggered by touching something seemingly arbitrary that leads to a vision that will ultimately offer a bigger clue.

    This is the component that suddenly makes Wednesday a teen detective who actually gives a shit about saving her school from an unknown and sinister antagonist. That Wednesday and Pugsley had to be forced to go to school in general during the first series run of The Addams Family should be an indication, however, that Wednesday would never care enough about any “institution” of learning to stick around and save it. Indeed, there are glimmers of Wednesday’s contempt for the entire construct of school at the beginning, when she notes of Nancy Reagan High, “I’m not sure whose twisted idea it was to put hundreds of adolescents in underfunded schools run by people whose dreams were crushed years ago, but I admire the sadism.”

    Other callbacks to Wednesdays of the past show up in moments both big and small, from Wednesday telling Tyler she used to decapitate her dolls with a guillotine as a child (this being mentioned in the 60s sitcom version of the show) to her particular way of dancing to her having an ancestor who was a witch to her utter contempt for whitewashed pilgrim history just the same as Christina Ricci’s Wednesday in Addams Family Values. And, speaking of, Ricci’s own presence in the show goes largely wasted and underused. Except when she has the gumption to say to Wednesday, “Never lose that, Wednesday. The ability to not let others define you.”

    Alas, Wednesday is gradually being conditioned, molded and defined by norms and conventions as the series goes on. This includes her cringeworthy romance plotlines with both Tyler and Xavier. If anything, Wednesday would be more prone to asexual tendencies, the antithesis of Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Worse still, they actually have Wednesday kissing a boy already in season one. Goddamn, at least work up to that kind of thing. All “sexual” interactions when it comes to Wednesday Addams, after all, should be strictly Bollywood.

    Even more unnatural is that Tyler, who writes her off as “Grim Reaper Barbie” (that “Barbie” can be associated with Wednesday at all in this series should tell one everything), has the gall to actually take some kind of “ownership” over Wednesday. Doing so when she confesses to him that she is deigning to attend the Rave’n dance (Nevermore’s version of a prom) with Xavier in episode four, “Woe What A Night.” He then bitches out, Dean-style in Gilmore Girls, and berates her, “I mean, call me crazy, Wednesday, but you keep giving me these signals.”

    Of course, the “real” Wednesday would never give any signals to a boy apart from a death stare. Regardless, she lets him continue to whine, “I thought we liked each other, but then you pull something like this and I have no idea where I stand. Am I in the ‘more-than-friend’ zone or just a pawn in some game you’re playing?” Wednesday, genuinely looking guilty, therefore emotional, about what he’s saying, becomes cliché enough to reply, “I’m just dealing with a lot right now.” No outright ignoring or horrification over how some guy would try to make her apologize in any way for her behavior.  

    But herein lies the rub with the true essence of the character. No normie actually has the stomach to watch how a misanthrope would realistically behave without some “light” sugar-coating to it. Some glimmer, through plot device, that all the character really needs is to be “drawn out.” That their defenses are only up because they’re just protecting themselves, but secretly want to be an active participant in “society.”

    Maybe that’s why something about Wednesday feels tantamount to “dark and weird” Billie Eilish going blonde pin-up and then dating an older white male that fronts an “indie” band. In both scenarios, the lack of faith in audiences to want to stick with such a bleak character/persona—an “anti-hero” (and not in the chirpy, Taylor way), if you will—is part of the capitulation to “Disney-fication.” But oh, let’s not forget about the Harry Potter-fication as well. For, not only does the headmaster, Principal Weems (Gwendoline Christie), end up dead, but the “Voldemort” of the narrative also ends up inexplicably brought back to life in the last episode. A dash of Pretty Little Liars even gets thrown in when Wednesday receives a stalker-y text (because, lest one forget, she has an iPhone now) in the vein of “A.” By this juncture, the only on-the-nose “quirky” aspect missing is some background music from Lana Del Rey (“Ultraviolence” would be a good choice).

    Hence, whatever season two holds, it’s sure to provide more of Wednesday “gradually” opening up to people as she feigns cold-bloodedness through her barbing dialogue. Yet, to borrow from a meme that gained traction during the Trump presidency (“I know this isn’t the USA Miley was talking about partying in”), “I know this is isn’t the dark and macabre Wednesday that Christina Ricci’s version would have grown up to be.”

    Angela Chase once told Jordan Catalano, “Admit it… That you have emotions.” That appears to be what Tim Burton, et al. is saying to Wednesday with this “modernized” rendering of her. And yet, to quote another character from a teen drama, Blair Waldorf, “You have to be cold to be queen.” In this instance, queen of misanthropy. Which Wednesday no longer really is, leaving that, ostensibly, to the descendants she inspired in the animated personages of Daria and Emily the Strange.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Sabrina Carpenter’s “nonsense” and Ariana Grande’s “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored”: A Study in Two Types of Alter Ego-Based Narcissism

    Sabrina Carpenter’s “nonsense” and Ariana Grande’s “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored”: A Study in Two Types of Alter Ego-Based Narcissism

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    To further prove that every celebrity is ultimately just in love with themselves, Sabrina Carpenter has released a video for her new single from emails i can’t send, “nonsense.” Which is sure to get a playlist boost from her recent photo appearance—the one at the American Music Awards where she was pictured sandwiched between two very tall, FUPA-parading women—Taylor Swift and GAYLE (who will open for Swift during select dates of the already controversial Eras Tour). But even without their help, “nonsense” was a “pop hit’ (as Carpenter refers to it in the song) already.

    A large part of that has to do with something of an Ariana Grande-esque formula (and the way Carpenter “hits the octave”). The one she implemented so well during her thank u, next cycle. An album that was better-promoted with the release of a video for “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored” the same day as the record came out. Showing off her sense of humor at a time when she had just ended her engagement with Pete “Rebound” Davidson, maybe there was a jocular tone to the idea that Grande would try lesbianism next (she is, after all, into dabbling—if her blackfishing is an indication).

    So it is that the big “plot twist” of the video is that she’s been more interested in her pony-tailed lookalike, played by Ariel Yasmine, the entire time. The dalliance commences at a club (how very 2000s) wherein Yasmine and her boyfriend, played by Riverdale’s Charles Melton, invite Grande (sporting a blonde coif that’s more in keeping with her Sweetener era) to join them in their dance. This being Los Angeles, Grande isn’t averse to a one-night throuple scenario. And yet, maybe it isn’t just one night. For how else would a blonde-haired Ariana have had time to pull a single white (yes, white) female by emulating Yasmine’s look (itself emulating Ariana’s during that period)? Maybe she was invited to a party at their house on another night after meeting them at the club… or did she go home and dye her hair before showing up at the party—who knows? But the timeline doesn’t feel linear. The point is, Ari has become narcissistically attracted to someone who looks just like her. Her doppelgänger, if you will (a word that often doubles for “alter ego”—usually embodying a darker [or at least slightly more irreverent] persona).

    Carpenter decides to take that concept one step further in the Danica Kleinknecht-directed video for “nonsense” by enlisting none other than herself (as opposed to a “mere” lookalike) to play the alter ego. She goes further still by making that alter ego male instead of female. And then there is the context of this duo’s encounter. Despite being twenty-three (as Olivia Rodrigo was so fond of pointing out her “older” age in “drivers license”), there is a more teenaged (or college, at the latest) sensibility to the concept of the setting in lieu of Grande’s more “adult” nightclub backdrop, followed by a lavish house in the Hills. Conversely, in the opening scenes of “nonsense,” we see Carpenter preparing for a house party (seemingly one that she’s throwing) that the boy version of herself, outfitted with a trucker hat that says “Dipshit” on it, also attends. Because, yes, like Ari before her, Carpenter only really has eyes for, well, herself. Something Lady Gaga additionally proved when she showcased her own male alter ego, Jo Calderone.

    Whether Carpenter named her “drag king” is unknown, but it’s quite apparent she’s very attracted to him. Even though he comes off like an even worse version of Amanda Bynes doing drag in She’s The Man. Yet somehow, he has the appearance of someone much younger than Carpenter, who he spots from across the room as he exhales a cloud of smoke from his vape.

    It doesn’t take long for the two to find a “quiet corner” amid the red Solo cups and impromptu karaoke sessions. Because, really, who hasn’t been attracted to a male or female version of themselves (see: Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow in the late 90s)? As the two get increasingly drunk, interspersed scenes of Carpenter dancing around and looking at herself in the mirror add to the overall narcissistic motif that Grande also showed us with just as little subtlety in Hannah Lux Davis’ visuals for “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored.”

    Carpenter even sounds like Grande in general—and then very specifically… closing “nonsense” with some spoken dialogue that reminds one of Ari’s back-and-forth with Victoria Monét at the end of “monopoly.” Both moments feature gigglingly-stated lines. In Carpenter’s case, it’s the brush-off that this song will never make the cut for the album, laughing, “That one’s not gonna make it.”

    Luckily for Carpenter’s fans (and even Grande’s), it did. For it’s just the sort of gushing love song that might prompt one to make out with their reflection in the vanity. Self-love (and sologamy), after all, has never been chicer. Even if shown in the self-deprecating way that Taylor Swift does it with her alter ego in the video for “Anti-Hero.” In which she “sarcastically” remarks, incidentally, on her self-obsession via the lyrics, “Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism?” In contrast to Grande and Carpenter, Swift appears to more openly admit to it with her take on this ostensible “doppelgänger” trend in music videos (regardless of whether that double is a male or female version of oneself).

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • With A Callback to Addams Family Values, Wednesday Prompts Thanksgiving Revelers to Remember That It’s Still “Pilgrim World”

    With A Callback to Addams Family Values, Wednesday Prompts Thanksgiving Revelers to Remember That It’s Still “Pilgrim World”

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    Being that Wednesday has arrived to Netflix just in time to capture the “Thanksgiving spirit,” it’s clearly no coincidence that, in episode three of the mostly Tim Burton-directed series, screenwriter Kayla Alpert should offer a callback to one of the most memorable plotlines of 1993’s Addams Family Values. In it, Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) are forced to go to a horrendous normie summer camp called Camp Chippewa. Worse than that, Wednesday is enlisted to play the part of Pocahontas in a Thanksgiving-themed play (yes, in the summer) put on by their ghoulishly white-bread camp managers/counselors, Gary (Peter MacNicol) and Becky Granger (Christine Baranski).

    After the Grangers attempt to brainwash Wednesday, Pugsley and a fellow outcast named Joel Glicker (David Krumholtz) with a marathon of Disney movies, Wednesday emerges from the isolated cabin pretending that the “immersion therapy” has worked. Even going so far as to smile at the awaiting crowd of normies, including the odious Amanda Buckman (Mercedes McNab)—the Aryan ideal in every way. But the Grangers should have known better than to believe Wednesday could be so easily cajoled into “normalcy” by visions of The Brady Bunch and Annie. Instead her performance was all designed to lure them into a false sense of security before she changes tack on the script’s dialogue at the last minute.

    So it is that, rather than “sweetly” agreeing to break bread with the pilgrims, Wednesday as “Pocahontas” (who wasn’t even alive anymore during the “first Thanksgiving”) suddenly declines the invitation and declares, “You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now, my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations, your people will wear cardigans and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the roadsides, you will play golf and enjoy hot hors d’oeuvres. My people will have pain and degradation, your people will have stick shifts.”

    Barring the part about the stick shifts, the monologue has remained fairly timeless. Nonetheless, with the world of Wednesday being set in a Salem-esque town called Jericho featuring a theme park billed as Pilgrim World, it was ripe for throwing more shade at the white forebears who came to the “colonies” to claim the land as their own. What’s more, both Wednesday and Jericho’s “founding father,” Joseph Crackstone (William Houston), appear to be at the center of some ominous prophecy unveiled by Rowan (Calum Ross), a fellow student at Nevermore Academy (the school for outcasts where Wednesday is exiled after unleashing some piranhas on the water polo players at Nancy Reagan High). Wanting to understand more about why a pilgrim would be in the mix, Wednesday asks at the beginning of “Friend or Woe,” “If I’m going to be responsible for Nevermore’s demise, the question is: why am I sharing this apocalypse with a pilgrim?”

    The answer starts to slowly unravel as Wednesday continues her search for Rowan’s murderer while Nevermore gears up for its “Outreach Day”—meaning the students from the school are “allowed” to enter Jericho freely under the pretense of volunteer work that enables them to “commingle” with the town’s normies. Wednesday does her best to get through the torture, complete with being subjected to seeing more signage that urges people to “Visit Pilgrim World: Where History Comes to Life.”

    Initial mention of the theme park is made in episode one, “Wednesday’s Child Is Full of Woe,” when Wednesday encounters a trio of meatheads, including Lucas Walker (Iman Marson), the son of Pilgrim World’s owner. Approaching Wednesday sitting at a table at local coffee shop the Weathervane, Lucas and his henchmen are all dressed in pilgrim garb while on their break from working at one of the only sources of “industry” in town. Mocking them and the park itself, Wednesday ribs, “Why are you three dressed like religious fanatics?” “We’re pilgrims.” She returns, “Po-tay-toh, po-tah-to.” They shove an advertisement her way and announce, “We work at Pilgrim World.” Briefly studying it, Wednesday bites back, “It takes a special kind of stupid to devote an entire theme park to zealots responsible for mass genocide.”

    For yes, like her Christina Ricci foremother playing Wednesday, this is one character who will not suffer the bullshit of such Republican holidays as Thanksgiving. And, fittingly, in Addams Family Values, the “outcasts” were viewed by the Grangers as those that white society has long “othered.” Which is why Becky (truly the perfect name) casts only “the ethnic ones” as Native Americans (further insulting the “misfits” of the camp by appointing a white girl their leader). During her “Native American” casting announcements, Becky uncertainly lists out all of the “ethnic” names, grudgingly stating, “Mordecai, Yang, Esther, um, Consuela, Irwin and, um, I’m still not sure just how to pronounce this…Jam-ahl, Jay-mul? Whatever.”

    The self-superior sentiments of white people like her are crystallized all the more in the dialogue of the so-called play, with Amanda in the part of lead pilgrim Sarah Miller. Trying to make the slaughter of innocent people come across as “palatable,” “Sarah” says things like, “You are civilized as we—except we wear shoes and have last names.”

    Meanwhile in “Friend or Woe,” Wednesday swaps her volunteer assignment at Uriah’s Heap with her roommate, Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers), so that she can infiltrate Pilgrim World and try to find out more about this dastardly “founding father.” Upon entering, it’s plain to see that the “enterprise” is like a monetized version of The Crucible as one man shouts, “Welcome to Pilgrim World! Witch trials every day! Two o’clock, four o’clock!”

    Soon, the outcasts are given an introduction by Arlene (Lisa O’Hare), who greets, “I am Mistress Arlene. A real OC.” The Nevermore kids stare at her, dreading what they seem to know she’s going to tell them regarding what that play on “OG” stands for: original colonist. Wednesday’s nightmares continue when she’s instructed that her assignment will be to pass out samples of fudge in the fudge “shoppe” that inexplicably exists at Pilgrim World. Wednesday not only informs German tourists that fudge didn’t exist in this time period, but also that, “All proceeds go to upholding this pathetic whitewashing of American history.”

    Christina Ricci’s Wednesday would be proud. And yes, Ricci herself has given her blessing to the project by appearing as a teacher at Nevermore named Marilyn Thornhill, who gets introduced to Mayor Noble (Tommie Earl Jenkins) by Principal Weems (Gwendoline Christie) as follows: “In the spirit of outreach, she’s Nevermore’s first normie teacher.” What that will mean for “normie-outcast” relations (this being a foil for white-“other” relations) remains unclear.

    The fact that Wednesday is this time around portrayed by a Mexican-descended actress like Jenna Ortega lends further meaning to her railing against the normies that would support an operation like Pilgrim World (especially its Black owner, Mayor Noble). To boot, her psychic vision of the past unearths the torment of her ancestor, Goody Addams (also played by Ortega), a fellow “outcast” who gets to have an Arthur Miller-esque moment of dialogue when she derides Crackstone (before being sentenced to burning for witchery), “It is you, Joseph Crackstone, that should be tried. We were here before you. Living in harmony with the nature and the native folk. But you have stolen the land. You have slaughtered the innocent. You have robbed us of our peaceful spirit. You are the true monster! All of you!” This extends to those who still presently celebrate Thanksgiving like it’s not one of the most obscene holidays ever foisted upon the American public.

    Wednesday’s reminder of this dark period in Jericho’s (and the U.S.’) history leads her to seethe over the fact that the entire purpose of Outreach Day is centered around the celebration of a new bronze statue in the town square. One that immortalizes Crackstone. So obviously, she enlists Thing to blow it up with the simple tools of some gasoline in the fountain and a match. And, honestly, it doesn’t feel like such a monument’s “erection” could even be possible in the present climate, with long-standing statues of white supremacists already being political battlegrounds, let alone brand-new ones.

    In the wake of the explosion, during which time Wednesday happily plays Vivaldi’s “Winter” (from The Four Seasons concerto) on her cello, Principal Weems automatically accuses Wednesday of the “crime.” By now notorious for being an outcast among the outcasts, Weems chastises her, “You’re a trouble magnet.” Wednesday replies, “If trouble means standing up to lies. Decades of discrimination, centuries of treating outcasts like second-class citizens or worse.”

    The idea of labeling Native Americans as “outcasts” might be a bit of a whitewashing, slightly offensive move unto itself, and yet, was that not how all “minorities” were made out to be by the white European settlers of the 1600s (and beyond)? Wednesday adds to her ardent condemnation of, among other things, Pilgrim World and the white supremacy it promotes, “Why be complicit in this cover-up? Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.” And maybe that’s why Americans continue to engage in the “act” of Thanksgiving every year, all while wondering how racism can remain be the dominant “tenet” of the nation.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Diana Is Saintly No More After Some Pronounced Charles Ass-Licking in The Crown Season 5

    Diana Is Saintly No More After Some Pronounced Charles Ass-Licking in The Crown Season 5

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    The unspoken norm, especially when it involves the martyrdom that comes with being dead, is that no one should speak ill of Princess Diana. Who later became just “plain” Lady Diana in the wake of her very public and very tumultuous divorce with Prince Charles. The Crown’s fifth season explores the final breakdown of the doomed-from-the-start marriage, this time with Elizabeth Debicki in the role. Admittedly, her forebear, Emma Corrin, was slightly more likable—and, to be frank, Debicki looks better suited to play Paris Hilton than Diana Spencer. But that’s nothing compared to the physical upgrade Prince Charles gets in the form of Dominic West (whose real-life son, Senan West, plays Prince William). This being just one of many initial telltale signs that the series’ creator, Peter Morgan (who wrote every episode of this season), is determined to present Charles in a more favorable light than he’s ever been accustomed to.

    But before Morgan paints his pretty picture of a rather hideous man, the requisite “metaphor” is established for the season. Specifically, the four-thousand-ton yacht created for Queen Elizabeth (shown as Claire Foy in the flashback scenes). Appearing at the launch of the yacht, dubbed Britannia, in 1953, the queen declared to a public in Scotland that was still under the trance of worshipping her, “I hope that this brand-new vessel, like your brand-new queen, will prove to be dependable and constant.” If by that she meant “stoic and rigid,” she fulfilled her promise.  

    A pan over from the young queen of yore to the queen of the present-day (set in 1991)—played by Imelda Staunton—as she gets a check-up from her doctor finds her being asked a “personal” question. That being: is Balmoral her favorite home? The queen coyly answers, “There is another that’s even more special to me.” Obviously, it’s the royal yacht, the only “dwelling” ever created expressly for her tastes, whereas everyplace else she inhabits is haunted by the tastes of other rulers. Just another case of the laughable amount of sympathy we’re supposed to feel for her when this is expressed. “Oh you poor thing, the various castles you live in don’t suit your personality? How badly we should feel for you!” But anyway, Morgan does his best to evoke “empathy” not only for the monarchy as an institution, but for Charles in particular. Not just because he’s so “full of potential” and such an educated man (as anyone given his education could be) who can never make his mark in any real way while he waits for the role he was “destined” for. But also because he’s been “saddled with” Diana. She with her “middle-class” interests like shopping and pop culture. This divide is drilled further into the viewer’s mind as the episode, called “Queen Victoria Syndrome,” shows Charles and Diana on their “second honeymoon” in Italy. Namely, off the coast near Naples, where Charles’ own yacht, the Alexandra is enlisted.

    As Charles’ sole motive for agreeing to the so-called second honeymoon is to benefit from the goodwill of a new poll that posits most would be in favor of the queen abdicating early to give up her crown to someone younger and more “modern,” Diana is once again led down the primrose path of believing her marriage might have a chance. Moreover, when she expresses an interest in beaches and water sports and shopping as Charles goes over a historical value-oriented itinerary, Morgan makes his message clear: neither he nor Charles saw Diana as an intellectual equal. Coming to her defense on the shopping desire is William (Timothée Sambor) and Harry (Teddy Hawley), the latter barely seen in this season (perhaps some kind of undercutting shade at his current overall absence). And yet, he being the first to raise his hand to defend Diana in her desire to shop feels like a poignant moment for showing their deeper affinity.

    The continued displays of their lack of similar interests are further made manifest by Diana riding away on a boat with William and Harry to the mainland as she blasts “Emotions” by Mariah Carey and calls out, “Bye Charles! We’ll miss you while we’re having all the fun!” Unable to handle his “petulant” wife any longer, Charles exits the friend-filled “honeymoon” early under a pretense, then angles for favor with Prime Minister John Major (Johnny Lee Miller) by using the poll as a launching point to poison him against his mother—the first of many instances in this season. Which, no, doesn’t make Charles come across as noble, so much as a backstabbing little twat who can’t handle a woman in power. Even a superfluous one who does repeatedly show herself to be out of touch. And, after telling Major she welcomes any comparison to the long-reigning Queen Victoria intended to be an insult, she then requests the funds necessary to refit her royal yacht—again, the “grand metaphor” of the season meant to hit us over the head with the analogy that she, like it, has become a liability that few people have use for. Least of all “common” people. “We’re in the middle of a global recession,” Major has to remind her before suggesting the royal family bears the cost of repairing the yacht themselves. Needless to say, the queen is scandalized by such a response.

    The next episode, “The System,” veers away from the queen and Charles to give us a requisite glimpse into the goings-on of Prince Philip’s (Jonathan Pryce) life at the time. It was comprised mainly of carriage driving and forming a close bond with Penny Knatchbull (Natascha McElhone), the wife of Lord Romsey a.k.a. Philip’s godson, Norton Knatchbull (Elliot Cowan). When Penny is brought closer to Philip in the wake of her daughter Leonora’s death at the age of five, it gives him more clout in terms of suggesting she take up his same invigorating hobby of carriage driving.

    But while the senior royals are having their fun and frivolity, Diana’s resentment is gathering—prompting her to take up an offer presented by her close friend, Dr. James Colthurst (Oliver Chris), in being interviewed secretly by journalist Andrew Morton (Andrew Steele). The eventual biography that results, Diana: Her True Story, is released in 1992—the queen’s self-declared “annus horribilis” (also the title of episode four, in which Princess Margaret [Lesley Manville] is given her biggest storyline of the season with the reemergence of her one true love, Peter Townsend [Timothy Dalton]). Notably, the illustriously terrible (mainly for Diana) Christmas of ’91 is only glossed over (even in the finale of season four), with primary emphasis on Penny being seen publicly with the queen (per Philip’s request, lest the media “get the wrong idea” about his increasingly close relationship with her) in episode six, “Ipatiev House.” Perhaps because Kristen Stewart in Spencer already got to cover that ground from Diana’s perspective so thoroughly.

    In any case, the Andrew Morton biography of ’92 would be nothing compared to the bomb set off by her infamous Panorama interview for the BBC in 1995, which episodes seven through nine, “No Woman’s Land,” “Gunpowder” and “Couple 31” all address in a three-act format. “Couple 31” serving to show the “fallout” of what Diana “hath wrought,” even though many responded favorably to the interview (regardless of it being obtained via extremely nefarious methods). Especially with regard to her frank discussion of her eating disorder, exhibiting a candor that undoubtedly gave many others the courage to come forward about their own.

    Alas, that wouldn’t be in keeping with season five’s overall determination to portray Diana as a very insecure and unstable woman. And Charles as an intelligent man dealt an unfortunate hand for wanting to actually use that intelligence. Enter a flashback to 1989 in the most pandering-to-Charles episode, “The Way Ahead.” Opening on a scene during Christmas as Charles sits at a table of close friends, he complains, “Previous princes of Wales have been happy to spend their life in idle dissipation, but my problem is, I can’t bear idleness… In any other professional sphere, I’d be at the peak of my powers. Instead, what am I? I’m just a useless ornament stuck in a waiting room, gathering dust.” Here, too, the amount of “empathy” we’re supposed to feel for this person is perhaps overshot by Morgan.

    Morgan’s subsequent attempt at making Charles seem “with it”—of the people and among the people—isn’t very successful either. This occurring in the final scene of “The Way Ahead” that features him attempting to breakdance with non-white youths to the tune of Eric B. & Rakin’s “Don’t Sweat the Technique.” A moment meant to spotlight his triumph in overcoming the scandal of his Tampongate conversation with Camilla being released to the public (thankfully, for there was a moment there when one was led to believe The Crown might never bring it up).

    Almost as though fearing Charles in his new current role as King of England, this midpoint episode is also the only one to offer the kowtowing written-out epilogue, “Prince Charles founded the Prince’s Trust in 1976 to improve the lives of disadvantaged young people. Since then, the Prince’s Trust has assisted one million young people to fulfill their potential.” That last phrase sounding vague enough to make the prince seem very charitable indeed. The last title card concludes, “And returned nearly £1.4 billion in value to society.” If Morgan says so…

    With the finale, “Decommissioned,” we’re brought back to the most unique episode of the season, “Mou Mou,” in which it is gradually revealed how Diana came to be in Dodi Fayed’s (Khalid Abdalla) orbit. The answer being, according to Morgan, a result of Dodi’s father, Mohamed “Mou Mou” Al-Fayed (Salim Daw), being some sort of sycophantic Anglophile. This prompting him to do everything in his financial power to get the queen to notice him—even buying Harrods. Unfortunately, the queen’s inherent racism and elitism appears to have made her averse to sitting next to Mou Mou at the Harrods Cup Polo Match. Per The Crown, this led the queen to send Diana in her place while she sat with Margaret.

    In “Decommissioned,” it is Mou Mou who suggests that Diana bring William and Harry to St. Tropez for the summer on his new yacht, the Jonikal. This being yet another symbolic moment in which, as the queen’s own Britannia is put into retirement, Diana appears to be getting a shot of life via this new yacht. As we all know, that life would be cut tragically short after her vacation, the one that featured the iconic telephoto lens-procured image of Diana in a blue bathing suit perched at the edge of a diving board—so much about that being a type of foreshadowing and a summation of her entire life. Something Morgan wants to stretch out into a final season that will focus on her death and its aftermath.

    Hence, the anticlimactic ending of the season… even if meant to be a cliffhanger, of sorts, as it offers scenes of Diana as she gets ready for her summer in the South of France with the boys and Dodi as he proposes to model Kelly Fisher (Erin Richards). The last scene then shows Diana and the queen looking in a mirror, as the latter says goodbye to her precious royal yacht (invoking nothing except the reaction of “oh boo-hoo, you don’t get a massive boat paid for by the British people anymore”).

    Charles, meanwhile, is given another moment of “grace” and “sagacity” when he forewarns his mother, “If we continue to hold on to these Victorian notions of how the monarchy should look, how it should feel, then the world will move on. And those who come after you will be…left with nothing.” A.k.a. he will be left with nothing. And it remains to be seen if Charles truly will practice what he once preached when it comes to “rallying” for a more “progressive” monarchy.

    Incidentally, “A house divided” is the tagline for the season. And yet, it applies not only (even now) to the House of Windsor, but to those who can see the monarchy for what it is—parasitic and long outmoded—and those who would cling to it as the crux of British identity.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Eras Tour and the Obvious Connection Between Presales and Selling Would-Be Elitism

    The Eras Tour and the Obvious Connection Between Presales and Selling Would-Be Elitism

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    As Taylor Swift reckons yet again with having the kind of clout that could invoke the swarming of various attorneys general onto Live Nation and Ticketmaster, another deeper issue has come to the surface in the wake of The Eras Tour presale. That issue being, well, presales are founded on the very principle that has wrought so much havoc in this society: elitism. The idea that if you assert yourself as being some kind of “VIP” by spending the money to be as such (whether it’s through paying to exist within a fan club or having an American Express), you can get whatever you want. Money buys everything. That’s the “benefit” of capitalism. Especially for pop stars who know the power of their worth to fans in a parasocial relationship with them. No one knows that worth better than Swift.

    Maybe that’s why she included in her statement on the matter in the aftermath, “It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.” Nonetheless, Swift and other performers are left with little choice but to rely on Ticketmaster for their concert ticket sales. After all, the “entity” and its parent company, Live Nation, control roughly seventy percent of the live ticketing marketplace. Something that might have been prevented twelve years ago upon the sealing of the merger, but that no one appeared too bothered by at the time. Nor has the notion of “presales” seemed to vex any ticket buyers over the years. Instead, music enthusiasts ostensibly relish the opportunity to jump ahead in the proverbial queue. It gives them a delight to know that they’re “beating” other fans to some worshipping-in-person punch.

    As Ticketmaster “politely” describes the concept of a presale, they’re “usually sold from a separate allocation of seats, which may not be the same as the tickets being released to the general public.” This implies, of course, that a bulk of objectively “better” tickets are made available to those “elite” ones. Or, at least, the ones who believe in the American concept that class can be bought (something the British are only slowly coming around to). In the case of Swift’s presale, it’s not about having an AmEx card, but a Capital One card. For Swift, like any adept capitalist, is obliged to cross-promote her endorsement deal with said credit card company. And it was this demographic of Capital One cardholders for whom the second wave of presale tickets catered to as Ticketmaster tried again to lead more casual fans down a primrose path to “hell.” Hell to “First World” ilk inferring that they have to stare at a screen and watch the clock count down the minutes as they “wait in line” for their turn to buy.

    Considering the second presale was meant to commence on Tuesday, November 15th, but was pushed back to Wednesday, it’s clear Ticketmaster persisted in its ill-preparedness and incompetence… once again. So much, in fact, that the ticket sale intended for the general public had to be cancelled. Who needs “average” buyers anyway, when one can sell millions of tickets to “special” people without them? And yet, perhaps there wouldn’t be false ideas of “specialness” if presales were abolished altogether. If everyone was “allowed” the same opportunity to purchase concert tickets at the same time, surely the initial bum-rush wouldn’t be so intense as a result of everyone viewing these lots of tickets as inherently better by sheer virtue of being able to choose from them “first.”

    To this end, juggernauts like Ticketmaster are possibly only feeding into what the people “want.” Or rather, what they want to believe about themselves. That they are somehow more superior to others—a more “diehard” fan, etc.—and should be given the divine right to access the best seats before the hoi polloi. By this logic, one could ask if Ticketmaster can fully be blamed for driving the bloodlust for presales. The answer is, if you don’t build it, they will not come. In short, permitting 3.5 million customers to register for the presale hardly makes anyone feel “special” regarding their preliminary access to tickets. And, the way the presale went, it only served to remind that it is forever people with “real” influence who can actually get what they want easily.

    What’s more, Swift is no stranger to invoking political imbroglios, which began when she finally decided to grow a political voice and speak out against the election of Marsha Blackburn in October of 2018, when the U.S. was faced with yet another extremely close midterm election. Evidencing her power to make website usage surge, in the two days after Swift posted about the importance of registering to vote, vote.org saw a spike of 102,000 new voters registering (seventy percent of whom were under the age of twenty-five). And yes, they knew it was attributable to Swift telling her hundreds of millions of followers, “So many intelligent, thoughtful, self-possessed people have turned eighteen in the past two years and now have the right and privilege to make their vote count. But first you need to register, which is quick and easy to do. October 9th is the LAST DAY to register to vote in the state of TN. Go to vote.org and you can find all the info. Happy Voting!” Cue the onslaught of registering voters. But hundreds of thousands are nothing compared to millions, which, evidently, even the strongest of interfaces can’t withstand.

    With Swift’s popularity manifested anew amid The Eras Tour presale, a fresh spotlight was placed on something political. She being the catalyst for politicians to weigh in on a pop cultural matter (even though government and pop culture have been enmeshed for quite some time—*cough cough* Marilyn and JFK). Specifically, the inability of customers to go elsewhere for their tickets making it all the more apparent in this particular scenario that Ticketmaster’s 2010 merger with Live Nation constitutes a monopoly in violation of antitrust laws. The insanity of trying to secure a presale seat prompted Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar to remark, “When there is no competition to incentivize better services and fair prices, we all suffer the consequences.” And yes, what a “tragic” consequence—not being able to attend a little stadium concert.

    Even the presidential level of government weighed in via a quote that Joe Biden said earlier this year. One dredged up by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who reminded, “Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism; it’s exploitation.” Does anyone have the heart to tell Biden that capitalism is full-stop exploitation no matter what? Oh well. There’s no stopping this system until it implodes anyway—and Swift’s presale tickets were yet another harbinger of that inevitable implosion. The patent unsustainability of “everyone” (read: a lotta white folks who listen to Swift) wanting to be “elite.”

    This largely due to the American dream still being peddled—the one that insists each person can have a piece of the “pie.” Just not the Taylor pie. Or any other, for that matter. Because the greatest lie ever sold is that “everyone” can be “elite” when the entire reason the “genuine” elite (a.k.a. those with generational wealth) relish being such is because no one else will actually be “let in.” Ergo making the Ticketmaster fiasco a prime example of middle-class aims turning out to be too relatively lofty.

    Swift might do her best to shirk any blame (what with having a song called “Don’t Blame Me” and only admitting to being “the problem” in “Anti-Hero”), but surely she must have some say in kiboshing such Ticketmaster disclaimers as, “Ticket prices may fluctuate, based on demand, at any time.” For this is the woman who can bring down (or at least bring into question) entire institutions with a single post. Even so, Swift herself isn’t immune to the temptations of “more money,” with Forbes commenting of the ticket sale setup, “Swift could have put Swifties’ names on the concert tickets, set a fair price and turned off the resale market… she did not do this because it would not ‘have been as profitable.’”

    Thus, perhaps as her on-again off-again foil, Billie Eilish, is known for touting, maybe Swift truly believes that, regarding some “catering-to-the-little-people-pretending-to-be-VIP” matters, it’s “not my responsibility.” For music, whether “art” or not, remains a cold, hard commodity in the undiscerning eyes of the “free” market.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Millie Bobby Brown and Lindsay Lohan: A Teen Star Correlation

    Millie Bobby Brown and Lindsay Lohan: A Teen Star Correlation

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    Being that Lindsay Lohan was the same age as Millie Bobby Brown when her career was reaching a zenith, it seems somewhat fitting (or at least cyclical) that both should have a movie out on Netflix at the same time. While the former’s “film” (a schlock-y Hallmark wannabe) is further proof that she made a career out of simply being “teenaged,” the latter’s proves that she has more enduring staying power. And, to be frank, more talent and acting range. Both qualities have been shown in the short length of her career, which is starting to expand more heavily into film with the end of Stranger Things on the horizon—Enola Holmes and Enola Holmes 2 being part of that steady segue.

    And yes, Brown, like Lohan, seems to understand the value of clinging to the Netflix tit for work, even amid cries of the online film and TV giant “not being what it once was.” Sort of like Lohan herself, whose steady stream of hits only flowed when she was a youth, mainly as a result of sucking on Disney’s tit instead of Netflix’s (then still mailing out DVDs to subscribers). This included a succession of “feel-good” movies that started with The Parent Trap in 1998 and continued at the dawn of the 00s with Life-Size, Get A Clue, Freaky Friday and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. All, of course, Disney-backed endeavors that complicated things when Lohan opted to embark upon the requisite Disney teen star “gone bad” route. Right around the time she decided to reteam with the juggernaut for the production of Herbie: Fully Loaded (after Paramount released Mean Girls in ’04).

    A title that, obviously, left plenty of room for the tabloids to jestingly riff off of as Lohan was hospitalized for “exhaustion” and, oh yeah, an infected kidney. At the same time filming was going on, her partying (a.k.a. going out to clubs back when they were still bankable due to people actually being sentient, sexual creatures) was coming under more scrutiny. After all, she had just turned eighteen and was far more prone to wanting to sow the oats that being a highly-paid actress permitted (see: her being on the cover of a May ’04 Us Weekly with the headline, “Teens Gone Wild: Older men, all-night partying, extreme PDA…”). Plus, just as Britney and the Olsen twins before her, the obsession with Lohan “being legal” was part of the Nabokovian bread and butter that sold magazines in the late 90s and 00s. Lohan even appeared on an issue of Rolling Stone the year she turned eighteen with the headline, “Lindsay Lohan: Hot, Ready and Legal!”

    In the decade when Millie Bobby Brown would come of age in her fame, the nascent #MeToo movement bubbled to the surface in 2017, when Brown was thirteen years old and one year into her stint as Eleven on Stranger Things. By 2020, the year of her sixteenth birthday (in addition to Miss Rona’s havoc), Brown had had enough of the overt sexualization of her body despite being a child. Something that Billie Eilish avoided full-stop by covering her own in baggy clothing that spoke to her being the twenty-first century ideal of a sexless pop star. Brown wasn’t exactly “flashing it” either, least of all à la Britney or even Lindsay—usually while they were out drinking and drugging to the tabloids’ (and TMZ’s) delight.

    Brown did none of these things, and was not nearly as ridiculed or hounded as someone such as Lohan. Yet Brown grew up in an era where so much less is “tolerated.” Including the acceptance of men fetishizing underage girls in this way no longer being so “welcomed” by the media. Hence, the freedom of Brown being able to declare on her Instagram (a tool that 00s teen stars didn’t have the luxury to access), “There are moments I get frustrated from the inaccuracy, inappropriate comments, sexualization, and unnecessary insults that ultimately have resulted in pain and insecurity for me.”

    On one level, somebody like Lohan would probably want to say, “Bitch, you don’t know from inaccuracy, inappropriate comments, sexualization or unnecessary insults.” On another, maybe Lohan can take comfort in having paved the way for subsequent teen stars to have far less of a hard time (all while narcissistically assuming it’s still “so hard”). Brown, too, wants to offer that courtesy to subsequent generations of famous teen girls, as made clear when she added to her sixteenth birthday comment, “I feel like change needs to happen for not only this generation but the next. Our world needs kindness and support in order for us children to grow and succeed.”

    Alas, it appears as though the bullying nature of tabloid journalism (parading as newsworthy events) has only transferred with more unmitigated vengeance to the online landscape. The germinal example of this being Perez Hilton’s illustrious blog (that was, let’s be honest, far more deliciously cunty in the 00s). An entity that came full-circle when both Perez and Lindsay, at one of her many nadirs in 2012, decided to use one another to their respective advantage by cameo’ing on an episode of Glee called “Nationals.” And, speaking of gays, Brown’s closest brush with intense online bullying was when a series of memes attributing her with homophobic quotes that she never said bombarded her Twitter account. Then just fourteen, Brown decided to quit the medium (long before it was chic to do so in 2022). Lohan, simultaneously loving and hating celebrity, likely wouldn’t have “quit” being present in magazines had it even been an option.

    Brown and Lohan’s divergence when it comes to romantic prudence is also markedly different. For while Lohan was dating Wilmer Valderrama—undoubtedly before she turned eighteen—a notorious player with a penchant for courting women with age gaps (though not to the same extent as Leonardo DiCaprio or Jake Gyllenhaal), Brown has kept it decidedly staid and age-appropriate with her current boyfriend, Jake Bongiovi (the spelling of which is somehow supposed to make us forget he’s Jon Bon Jovi’s son). Lohan’s mistake with her first high-profile romance at the apex of her career didn’t account for how Valderrama would, just a year after the breakup, describe, among other details to Howard Stern, that Lindsay was “a big fan of waxing.” So yeah, exactly the type of sleaze someone should be dating when they’re tabloid fodder already. That Brown is taken more seriously as an actress than Lohan ever was has also contributed to the “safe space” form of her celebrity. Less laughingstock, more tissue box stock (that’s a tear reference, not a cum one).

    However, going back to the similarities between Lohan and Brown, the ages at which each actress was when they got their first major start also eerily align, for Brown was twelve when Stranger Things debuted, and so was Lohan when The Parent Trap arrived in theaters. What’s more, when Lohan was seventeen and eighteen, her two biggest movies came out—Freaky Friday (2003) and Mean Girls (2004), respectively. Brown has also released her two biggest movies (so far) around the same age, being sixteen when Enola Holmes came out and eighteen upon the arrival of Enola Holmes 2.

    In noticeable contrast to Lohan, Brown’s future beyond teen stardom seems far brighter (more like Emma Watson’s post-Harry Potter…at least Serious Roles-wise). Not just because she has that arcane aura of “British dignity” (ironic considering how undignified that country is), but because she’s grown up in a generation that has proven itself to be the antithesis of millennial youth values: drinking and clubbing. To boot, Brown also has the advantage of “setting the record straight” on social media that no millennial star ever had.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Anti-Capitalist Undercurrent of Enola Holmes 2

    The Anti-Capitalist Undercurrent of Enola Holmes 2

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    When last we left Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown) in 2020, she had been effectively abandoned by her mother, Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter). Yet it was hard to begrudge this freedom fighter the “abandonment” of her child when it was all in the name of the feminist cause. Even if that cause required a bit of explosive violence to get the job done. For, as Eudoria declared to Enola in a letter she left behind with some cash, “Our future is up to us.” Would that the same could be said for women of the working class, which is the demographic that Jack Thorne’s script (Thorne also penned the one for Enola Holmes) focuses on the most. Indeed, it’s the match girls who work in horrific factory conditions that drive the majority of the plot.

    One match girl in particular, Bessie (Serrana Su-Ling Bliss), is the force that manages to prevent Enola from hanging up her detective’s hat entirely. For that’s just what she’s about to do when Bessie timidly walks into Enola’s erstwhile office. Which she can no longer afford as there are no clients willing to hire her, either because of misogyny (“Am I addressing the secretary?”) or ageism. As to the latter, she suffers the same kind of commentary as Doogie Howser might endure, with comments like, “You’re how old?” and “Stone the crows, you’re young.” In effect, no one trusts her or takes her seriously the way they do her overburdened-with-cases brother, Sherlock (Henry Cavill). Just another bane to living in 1800s-era London. Not to mention being in the thick of the Industrial Revolution’s after-effects. This including treating the worker like shit in the name of profit. Something the match girls know all about, as we see them subject themselves to the “new fever” called typhus in service to the work. Basically what happened during the onset of COVID-19, when some people got to stay at home and others didn’t have the same luxury of “staying safe” due to their class station.

    Enola, who feels it must be kismet that Bessie found a months-old ad of hers floating around on the street, agrees to assist in the search for her “sister,” Sarah Chapman (Hannah Dodd), a seasoned match girl that’s taken Bessie in as though she’s family at the ramshackle where she also lives with another factory employee named Mae (Abbie Hern). Upon seeing Enola in her abode, Mae snaps, “We don’t need help from people like you,” alluding to the overt signs of Enola’s class. Despite the lack of a warm reception to her presence, Enola goes even deeper into the case by infiltrating the factory as a match girl. Working next to Bessie, she creates a diversion to get into the manager’s office whereupon she discovers missing pages ripped from a ledger. Enola is also quick to notice that Lyon’s matches have only recently turned from red tips to white ones. Surely not a coincidence. And while she feels she’s close to grasping at something, like Sherlock with his own current case, the puzzle pieces simply haven’t come together.

    It doesn’t help matters that Enola still finds herself preoccupied with Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge), who was at the center of the caper in the first film. The two continue to awkwardly flirt and semi-court, but it’s clear Enola is the one holding things back in the relationship thanks to the echoes of and flashbacks to the “independent woman”-oriented aphorisms her mother instilled within her.

    Regarding the Tewkesbury romance, although some of the movie posters make Enola Holmes 2 come across as just another Jane Austen or Bridgerton knockoff, the majority of the movie speaks to the oppression of the worker. And yes, Sarah Chapman was a real person, even if not quite so model-esque as Hannah Dodd. Much like the Reform Bill featured in Enola Holmes was based on a real bill called the Third Reform Act. Director Harry Bradbeer (who also worked on the first film) and screenwriter Thorne are sure to use revisionist history to their advantage (though not so freely as someone like Ryan Murphy) in this edition of the Enola Holmes saga as well, with Chapman being at the center of a class war made all the more complex by the fact that she has secretly been dating William Lyon (Gabriel Tierney), the son of Lyon’s owner, Henry (David Westhead). But the web of deceit will turn out to be even more convoluted when Sherlock’s adversary in a battle of wits, Moriarty, enters into the equation.

    Meanwhile, in the midst of her investigation, Enola has managed to get herself caught red-handed in the very manner from which the phrase originated: with blood all over her hands. This resulting in an arrest from the extremely smarmy Superintendent Grail (David Thewlis), who has no qualms choking Enola to attempt extracting the location of Sarah. When Enola insists she doesn’t know where Sarah is, Grail threatens, “Well if I can’t find it out from you, I’ll find it out from someone else. Like her sister, little Bessie.” Taking his meaning for the threat that it is, Enola replies, “She’s just a little girl.” Grail screams, “Oh, but that’s how it starts, Enola Holmes! With little girls like her, and you, and Sarah Chapman. Asking questions. Doubting those in charge, not seeing their protection for what it is, trying to tear it down.” Enola appears as though she might cry, but maintains a stiff upper lip (what all women must do if they want to “play by the rules” in a “man’s game”) as Grail continues, “Well it only takes one little flame to start a fire and my job is to keep crushing those bloody flames out.” Spoken like a beacon of upper management. And also a demagogue/dictator in the vein of Trump or Putin.

    The question is later asked by a certain woman (who shall go unnamed to prevent from unveiling the mystery), “Why shouldn’t I be rewarded for what I can do? Where is my place in this…society?” Many women are still asking that question. Particularly those who must slave away as both a mother and a “paid employee” (as though the slog of motherhood isn’t worth something far more than the type of labor capitalism values). It is this dual role that catches the match girls of Enola Holmes 2 afraid to take a stand against their abuse in the final minutes of the film. An abuse so grotesque that they should automatically walk out without needing any convincing from Sarah.

    But they do. Not just because the manager, a mouthpiece for the “seduction” of regular weekly earnings, shouts, “Think of your families, don’t do it girls. It’s not worth the risk.” And “the risk” he doesn’t want them to take is marching right out of the factory when Sarah urges them to protest with her against the dire conditions she’s unearthed. Informing them, as someone who has finally seen the light about the power of the worker, “It’s time for us to use the only thing we have: ourselves. It’s time for us to refuse to work. It’s time for us to tell ‘em no… I know you’re scared. I am too, but it’s the only power we have!” So here the viewer is given the expected, uplifting Act Three visualization of how “it only takes one little flame to start a fire” (to use that aforementioned match girl pun).

    These, of course, are very pleasant thoughts to console oneself with as Iran arrests and/or puts to death the female protesters who have been called to action in the wake of Mahsa Amini’s own death at the hands of Iran’s “morality police” back in September. Suffice it to say, Enola Holmes 2 won’t be much welcomed in that country. Or really, any other. For they’re all mostly patriarchies that prefer to treat women and the worker like caged animals.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • It’s The End of the World As We Know It, And White Liberals Feel Like Shit: Armageddon Time

    It’s The End of the World As We Know It, And White Liberals Feel Like Shit: Armageddon Time

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    When one is a child, the world is seen at its clearest—its most straightforward. Because of their innocence and a lack of understanding the “need” to cater to artifice, it is the child who, so often, sees things as they are and for what they are. Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), the sixth-grader at the center of James Gray’s autobiographical coming-of-age story, Armageddon Time, is just such a kid. And what he sees all around him at his Queens public school in 1980 is discrimination. Specifically against a Black classmate he befriends named Johnny Davis (Jaylin Webb). Because Johnny’s already been held back a year, their teacher, Mr. Turkeltaub (Andrew Polk)—a last name that gets plenty of comedic mileage—is even more blatantly prone to not caring about his academic growth. Plus, he’s Black, so what does his education really matter, right? Paul himself is Jewish, susceptible to racial discrimination in his own right (cough, cough—Ye), but still somewhat relishes the perk of having white skin.

    This is why, when Paul draws a picture of Turkeltaub’s face atop a turkey’s body and is forced to confess to it, he doesn’t really get in all that much trouble. Yet when Johnny is forced to join in the same punishment of wiping the blackboard in front of the class while Turkeltaub continues to teach, he’s the one automatically blamed for making the other students laugh behind Turkeltaub’s back when it is, in fact, Paul who does a whimsical, mocking dance to make them do so. It is subtle “nuances” like these (what are known as “microaggressions” in the present), building up slowly and cringingly, that all add up to one big racist shitshow throughout the film (and, of course, in life).

    In the backdrop of it all, the presidential election is imminent, with Ronald Reagan campaigning openly as an “evangelical Christian”—at least, per the interview he gives to Jim Bakker, one that Gray opts to include at a moment when Paul’s family is watching TV. During it, Reagan ominously warns of how ceding leadership in the 80s to Democrats a.k.a. “non-Christians” will result in all hell breaking loose. Thus, his wielding of a favorite keyword when he tells Bakker, “If we let this be another Sodom and Gomorrah… we might be the generation that sees Armageddon.” Bakker couldn’t be more in agreement when he adds, “This is the most important election ever to face the United States.”

    And, at that time, it was. For it would change the entire trajectory of American values for good. Where there might have been a chance to decelerate the coveting of all things material, the unabashed worship of capitalism. As Jimmy Carter tried to do in his famed “Crisis of Confidence” speech in July of 1979. Months before what he said was apparently too much for White America to hear when it opted to shift toward the other side of the political spectrum entirely.

    All because Carter “dared” to say, “It’s clear that the true problems of our nation are much deeper, deeper, than gasoline lines or energy shortages. Deeper even than inflation or recession… Some people have wasted energy, but others haven’t had anything to waste.” This referring to the phenomenon so overtly presented in Armageddon Time—that those without privileges to begin with never notice much difference when it all goes to shit for “the elite” (which, obviously, it never really can—what’s losing a few hundred thousand to a millionaire, or a couple million to a billionaire?). Carter went on to gently chastise the nation for what it was solidifying into as he favored the “no candy for you” approach to speech-giving by declaring, “Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning.”

    Evidently, though, owning and consuming things was satisfactory enough for Reagan supporters who then vindictively took America into what would become known as the Decade of Excess. At least for white yuppies. For average Americans, most especially the Black population, the system patently working against them would only worsen. Yet simultaneously be all the more accepted, especially by people like Paul’s family, who condemn it amid finding their own ways to profit from it.

    As Carter concluded the speech that would be too much for Americans who loved sugar-coating, it was plain to see that, like the Republicans and the evangelists they courted in the 1980 election, Carter believed, “We are at a turning point in our history.” An “Armageddon time,” if you will. Unlike the conservatives, however, Carter believed it was because “the path it leads to [is] fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom. It is a certain route to failure.” And here America is some forty-three years later fulfilling Carter’s all too real prophecy. One that Gray himself is highly aware of, and is certain to make his viewers comprehend that part of why the nation is where it’s at today is because of the past. Appropriately, Paul’s beloved grandfather, Aaron (Anthony Hopkins), is the one to remind him that you should never forget your past, because it always ends up haunting you in the present. Which is precisely what has happened to the United States politically. Paying for the sins of the Reagan Era as it continues to embrace them. Including the election of Donald Trump in 2016.

    On that note, while the Trump family is not as central to the story as certain reviews might lead one to believe, Fred Trump’s (John Diehl) peripheral presence at the private school where Paul ends up is a key aspect to absorbing the hypocrisy of an institution that calls its attendees future “leaders” because of all the “hard work” they’re doing and the ambition they have. Ambition that wouldn’t mean anything without the very privilege of their backgrounds. And clearly, Fred’s looming presence over the school had a pronounced effect on Gray, who incorporates a scene of Paul’s first day of school being vaguely tainted by Fred homing in on him in the hallway. As Gray recalled, “Fred was on the board of trustees of the school, and he would sort of stand in the halls, his arms folded. I walked in with my attaché case and he saw me as weird immediately. He had prospective parents to show the school to, and here was the little Jew with the suitcase.”

    The private school in Armageddon Time is called Forest Manor, while the real-life one is Kew-Forest School. Where, needless to say, Donald Trump was also an attendee (until his father put him in a military academy at thirteen after he threw a desk in the middle of Jackie Robinson Parkway, called Interboro Parkway when Donald decided to tamper with it). So was his older sister, Maryanne Trump (portrayed briefly but effectively by Jessica Chastain). The alumna who shows up to give a speech about success to the current students, an event that Gray can confirm actually transpired while he was attending the school (basing Chastain’s monologue off of memory). And while Gray might not have fully grasped what was happening around him as a child, he did confirm, “I’ll tell you what was obvious to me at the time. When Maryanne Trump came to give a speech at school, I remember very clearly being like, ‘What the fuck? What is she talking about?’ Because I was like, ‘You’re really rich, lady. What’s the problem?’ I remember thinking that. The [old] joke, ‘born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.’”

    Paul’s reluctance to attend the same private school as his brother, Ted (Ryan Sell), is, in large part, because of how much he values his friendship with Johnny. Yet, at the same time, he doesn’t value it enough to stick up for Johnny when he’s flagrantly treated “lesser than.” Even by people of his own race. An instance that occurs when Paul and Johnny are on the subway together and the latter talks of going to Florida to become an astronaut as he looks at the space-oriented collectibles he received from his stepbrother who lives there. Overhearing the conversation, a Black passenger leaving the train feels the need to inform Johnny of his NASA ambitions, “The won’t even your Black ass in through the back door.” But maybe he was only trying to spare Johnny the later pain of indulging in a dream. Dreams that only white kids get to have. This extending to Paul’s desire to become an artist.

    Although “discouraged” by his parents, Esther (Anne Hathaway) and Irving (Jeremy Strong), Paul’s grandfather urges him to follow through with that dream, even buying him a professional paint set. By the same token, the burden of knowing that Paul’s still just another “Jew boy,” likely to be excluded once a certain “quota” is met, prompts Aaron to contradictorily advocate for Paul’s enrollment at Forest Manor. Especially after being caught smoking weed in the bathroom with Johnny, of whom Esther regards with ostensibly racist sentiments. Something Paul calls her out for. She, in turn, incites Irving to beat the shit out of him as punishment for his illegal activity.

    At the core of the “unpleasantness” of it all is the fact that white liberals are as guilty as any conservative for allowing systemic racism to thrive. Benefitting from the “getting ahead” advantages of that system themselves. As Gray puts it, “…you can be both the oppressor and oppressed at the same time.” Paul becomes more than just “faintly” cognizant of that when he’s put in a position that finds him facing the ultimate moral dilemma by the end of the movie. And maybe, in his mind, he wouldn’t have been faced with that dilemma if he had evaded the clutches of Forest Manor. The first day he’s made to attend, he seethes to his father, “You just want me to be like you.” Irving responds, “No, I don’t want you to be like me. I want you to be so much better.” This is the very type of parental thinking that only perpetuates the system’s flourishment. For every generation of white liberals ends up succumbing to its seduction. The promise of, “Your kids can have what you never did. But you have to play the game.” And now, so do their children—permitting the cycle to persist.

    Somewhere between The Squid and the Whale and Triangle of Sadness, Armageddon Time is in the middle of the Venn diagram. With the former still being among the greatest New York-based coming-of-age films and the latter being a scathing diatribe on privilege. With Armageddon Time’s integration of race and the varying strata of whiteness that allows for “success,” it can readily be classified as a unique and vital addition to the coming-of-age canon.

    Moreover, it isn’t just Paul that comes of age (via a jaded comprehension of “how the world works”) by the end of the movie, but so does the America we know today. The one where “racism doesn’t exist” and “everyone is equal,” but the masses are tacitly attuned to the reality that it’s still a matter of working a broken and, yes, highly inequitable system if one wants to get that coveted “leg up.”

    Encapsulating the commingling of Paul’s coming of age with that of neoliberal capitalism’s in 1980s America, Gray noted, “You can’t monetize integrity, and it’s become a catastrophe, because you find that someone like Donald Trump is completely transactional, right? ‘What can you do for me? If you do this for me, I’ll do it for you.’ Everything’s about the brutality of the exchange of goods and services. At some point, life is more than that. And I saw this story as being representative of something bigger.” That it is, dear viewer, that it is.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Rihanna, Johnny Depp and Savage X Fenty Vol. 4

    Rihanna, Johnny Depp and Savage X Fenty Vol. 4

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    Although Rihanna has seemingly side-stepped attempts at cancelling her existence after reports revealed that Johnny Depp would be in the Vol. 4 edition of the Savage X Fenty fashion show, some will still find it difficult to stomach Depp’s appearance. Which is somewhat ironic considering how much the public relished the schadenfreude of lambasting Amber Heard for being a “liar and a fraud” during the Depp v. Heard defamation trial that concluded back in June of this year. When, suddenly, Depp looked all shiny and new (read: employable) again upon winning the trial. It didn’t take long, however, for many to understand that vilifying Heard was largely to the benefit of misogynists (which, sadly, also includes many women).

    Ones who continue to wield this case as a key example of women being “cunts” not to be trusted or believed. And, to be clear, those touting Depp v. Heard as a “much-needed” beacon of light for men who are abused by women, one ought to consider that a five-foot-eight, one hundred sixty(-plus)-pound man can’t really get all that “hurt” (at least not without weaponry) by someone of Heard’s stature. This isn’t to say women aren’t capable of kicking an ass when necessary, it’s just that one gets the impression Heard was engaging in the same type of maneuvers as Katie (Soleil Moon Frye) in that Friends episode, “The One with the Girl Who Hits Joey”—wherein Joey (Matt LeBlanc) keeps insisting Katie punches him too hard when doing it “playfully.” A claim that, what a surprise, gets validated in Joey’s favor.

    In any event, let’s rewind to 2009, when Rihanna herself was the victim of an abusive relationship (and yes, regardless of what people say, Depp was abusive toward Heard, even if “only” verbally…since the physical abuse revealed wasn’t deemed “enough”). Her then-boyfriend, Chris Brown, smacked the shit out of her to such a degree that she couldn’t even pretend to carry on for a scheduled appearance at the Grammys. Cut to 2012-2013, when Rihanna decided to give Brown another chance (resulting in a very uncomfortable musical collaboration on Unapologetic called “Nobody’s Business”). In many ways, that’s what putting Depp in Savage X Fenty Vol. 4 feels like. Another conduit through which to “forgive.” Though, of course, Rihanna apologists would like to say that being a “true” survivor of domestic abuse, she can recognize who has actually been an abuser versus who has suffered abuse. With some (okay, many) saying Depp is the real victim in the scenario. In other words, whatever one needs to tell themselves in order to “comfortably” watch Depp participating in new projects.

    Brief though this particular appearance from Depp may be, perhaps the most disturbing element about it is the fact that Rihanna opted to soundtrack his arrival to Outkast’s “So Fresh, So Clean.” For those who might have forgotten the arrogant, “dapper” lyrics, they boast, “Ain’t nobody dope as me/I’m just so fresh and clean/Don’t you think I’m so sexy?/I’m just so fresh and clean.” Obviously, Depp is anything but these two descriptors, which is why Rihanna trying to help “rebrand” him as such feels so cringe. The placement of his “cameo” also seems tailored in such a way as to make viewers largely gloss over it, as it comes neither too close to the beginning nor near the end. Instead, Rihanna wastes no time in announcing that she’s the star of the show as she makes her grand entrance to the very problematic ASAP Rocky song, “D.M.B.” (in case you couldn’t guess, the abbreviation stands for “dats my bitch” or, if you must, “DAT$ MAH B!*$H”). In addition to such gross (and, yes, misogynistic) lyrics as, “Roll my blunt, fill my cup, be my bitch, rub my gut/Rub yo’ butt, be my slut, be my cunt, yeah, so what?,” ASAP also declares, “Bad girls wanna have fun.” This being repeated in remix form as Rihanna does her “dance”/strut against the forest tableau that takes up most of the show. Through this not-so-subtle act of including the theoretically “Bonnie and Clyde”-oriented tone from the outset, Rihanna makes it clear, once again, what her taste in men tends to favor (extending toward none other than Depp).

    With that performance out of the way, Rihanna allows room for Precious Lee, who models one of many patterns to the tune of “Lick It N Split” by Zebra Katz and Shygirl. Upon Precious being thrust up against a tree, the song then transitions to the chaotic “Crazy” by Doechii. Men running through the forest with women slung under over their backs seems, evidently, the best way to match this track’s energy. And yet, it also offers more symbolism about what appears to be Rihanna’s own internalized sense of misogyny as women come across as being utterly disposable playthings in such a scene. The pendulum of that sentiment, however, shifts when Missy Elliott’s “Hot Boyz” starts to play—or rather, the sentiment would shift if Damson Idris didn’t materialize in purple pajamas at the center of a group of harem-like women. For “Hot Boyz,” the inverse permutation would be required, with a woman at the center of multiple men instead.

    The intent to make every scene of the spectacle present itself as visceral and exotic persists with Anitta. And it only takes about six minutes for the sex-positive Brazilian pop singer to offer her ass to the camera as she sings “Practice” (usually featuring another ASAP, Ferg). The song in question undeniably includes the ideal lyrics for promoting lingerie: “We don’t make babies, but we practice.” She then segues into “Envolver” before more animation (complete with a woman being “enfolded” into a tree) appears to transition us into the next batch of designs to parade. This time, with Cara Delevingne at the center of it all as Nas’ “Oochie Wally” fades into 50 Cent’s “Just A Lil Bit.” It’s here that Taraji P. Henson then leads a line of cavorting women with interconnecting braids (it’s all very elaborate).

    Don Toliver subsequently enters into the “majestic forest” with a performance of “Take Your Time,” another lingerie-appropriate track that urges, “Let’s do it baby/Let’s do it tonight/Take me to your crib and we can party all night.” Like Anitta, Toliver also gets to promote two songs, opting for “Way Bigger” as the second one, during which he provides more salacious lyrics tailored to shilling bras and panties. Case in point, “With a bad bitch through the whole pandemic/Lemme hit the hole through the whole ninth inning/Eatin’ and beatin’ the whole night swimmin’.” And this, unfortunately, is what takes us to the Depp part of the show. Which comes at a strategic moment in that Rihanna has already stacked the “fashion parade” with plenty of other cameos, including Taylour Paige, who offers a very memorable monologue before sauntering in “bad bitch mode” to Dave featuring Stormzy’s “Clash.”

    Following that, at the twenty-minute mark (halfway through it all), Depp is “blessed” with his screen time. As previously mentioned, Rihanna ill-advisedly opted to soundtrack Depp’s entrance with Outkast’s “So Fresh So Clean”—and yes, even Depp has a look on his face that seems to say, “What am I doing here?” After he does a reluctant “catwalk” through the forest and concludes with hugging a tree (perhaps dendrophilia is his latest flame), another animation sequence arrives. One that fittingly displays some kind of rupture in the universe—this being precisely what has happened with the verdict of the Depp v. Heard trial. After we’re shown the formation of some crystals in cartoon form that become the real-life backdrop of the next set, the scene gives way to a portion of Vol. 4 that does a better job of accenting bombastic maquillage than it does lingerie.

    The mood shifts thanks to more animation that provides a cartoon version of Maxwell underwater trying to get his hands on a yellow ball that bursts as he’s then sucked from one hole into another (interpret that metaphor how you will). He then emerges from the next water realm inside that very yellow ball now scaled to a far more massive size. It then shoots up into the sky like a comet so that the real Maxwell can serve as the penultimate performer (of “Whenever, Wherever, Whatever”) amid a backdrop of some very phallic cacti.

    The seductive, “drop them panties” attitude continues with Janet Jackson’s “Would You Mind” as a dancer very orgasmically quivers right when Janet utters that very word (“quiver”). Afterward, Jackson’s “Throb” leads us into one of the most flagrantly suggestive animation sequences involving rocket ships and explosions. The wildin’ out choreography continues almost as a means to distract from how this season’s collection isn’t quite as impressive as the one in Vol. 3 (replete with Busta Rhymes songs, to boot). Nonetheless, the choreography is admittedly fire—and continues to be as DJ Blue’s “Look Like You,” Konshens and J Capri’s “Pull Up to Mi Bumper” and Oxlade’s “Ku Lo Sa” play before Burna Boy rounds out the show with, what else, “Last Last” (and “It’s Plenty”).  

    The “yellow” segment comprises the finale, featuring Lilly Singh as the initial “centerpiece” of the motif. Yellow, incidentally, representing the color of cowardice—let the viewer be the judge of whether or not Rihanna is either “brave” or cowardly for certain casting decisions in this edition…

    For the conclusion, Rihanna opts to close the show with SOPHIE’s “Not Okay” (interpolated with Omarion’s “Touch”). Almost like a subconscious admission of the fact that what she’s done is, well, not okay. And while she might consider herself a champion of artistic freedom or some such, it’s rather a shame that what is actually a very beautifully-presented show should be besmirched with the mark of Depp’s presence. Providing another open invitation for abusers to reemerge once they’re either 1) able to flip the switch on the woman that “falsely accused” them or 2) enough time passes for the public memory to be “just hazy enough” to forget. Though it would take a lot of weed to create the haze necessary to forget about Depp declaring to Heard, “I pushed you” or “I headbutted you in the fucking forehead. That doesn’t break a nose.” Which, honestly, is the last image one wants to have in their head during “sexy time” (not to mention the automatic correlation with Depp to a shit on the bed).

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • (Not) Falling For Shitmas

    (Not) Falling For Shitmas

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    There’s a famous line from Sunset Boulevard said by Joe Gillis (William Holden) that goes, “Sometimes it’s interesting to see just how bad bad writing can be. This promised to go the limit.” Needless to say, that’s the only clear motivation for watching the utterly uninspired in title (in addition to content) Falling For Christmas. And while most Netflix movies (imitating Hallmark ones) of this nature would fly under the radar, Falling For Christmas is meant to be some “special,” “big deal” event (even though Christmas With You starring Freddie Prinze Jr. probably should have gotten more publicity instead). All because none other than Lindsay Lohan is starring in it for what is meant to be her umpteenth comeback. And, just like every other “comeback” she’s attempted (Labor Pains, a 2012 SNL hosting gig, the Oprah-backed docuseries, Lindsay, an ill-advised MTV reality show called Lindsay Lohan’s Beach Club, etc.), this one also seeks to prove why some people should just keep “living their best life” in Dubai.

    Alas, Lindsay clearly needs the money to keep affording those nips and tucks, those fillers and drillers. And so, she engaged in a little something called Lies We Tell Ourselves. Namely, when it comes to shaking our ass for the cash. Maybe that’s how she managed to attempt billing the movie as follows: “I feel like what we don’t have enough of right now is romantic comedies. And that’s exactly what it is. It’s a really fun, uplifting romantic comedy. And it’s actually really funny.” Notice how insistent she is with these repetitive lines, in what amounts to one of those “the lady doth protest too much, methinks” instances. She then added, “When I read the script and when we started to film it, I didn’t realize how physically funny we were going to be. There’s a lot of physical comedy in it, which I really liked doing—it’s one of my favorite things to do, which I haven’t got to in a while.” But no, just because she has red hair does not mean she’s got the Lucille Ball knack for comedy, slapstick or otherwise.

    One could say the first “act” of physical “comedy” is set against a horrible CGI-generated backdrop on a snowy mountain where Lohan’s character, Sierra Belmont, is taken by her “influencer” boyfriend (who looks, to be frank, a bit too old to influence much in an ageist society like ours), Tad Fairchild (George Young). According to him, this is the place to be because “one of the top off-trail skiers in the country geotagged this secluded spot.” Such a line being part of Tad’s “persona,” one that makes us wonder how anybody, even a vapid rich puta, could stand to be around him, let alone agree to an engagement proposal. Then again, maybe Tad reminded Lindsay in some way of one of her many douche-y exes (whether “steady” or fling), from Harry Morton to Stavros Niarchos to Egor Tarabasov, and she just ran with the inspiration for getting into the mindset of a character that would stay with someone so insufferable.

    But before all of this, Falling For Christmas already opens in a manner both totally random and generic, for the first scene is a brief few seconds of some ski lifts soundtracked by cornball music before we see an overhead shot of Sierra in a sleep mask. It’s the quintessential “You’re Seeing A Pampered Rich Girl” shot. Or, at least, someone who wants to be perceived that way (see also: Holly Golightly and Jenna Rink). We’re soon informed that Sierra is at a hotel when the phone rings and she gets a wake-up call from the concierge. To further give “insight” into her rich bitch personality (that Lohan doesn’t play up nearly enough) she hangs up the phone while the woman is still talking to her. We soon learn that Sierra spends a lot of her life in hotels—specifically, Belmont hotels. For she’s the heiress to that name. And yes, if you’re thinking it sounds like shade at Paris Hilton, one wouldn’t be surprised… for that feud is, as Katy Perry would say, never really over.

    More snapshots of the hotel’s “poshness” (shown via the low budget’s rather unglamorous people getting out of expensive cars) are meant to give us a glimpse into Sierra’s “good life,” even though it looks like a communistic (exterior-wise) Holiday Inn-styled “summit resort”—not even a Hilton. And maybe the only real reason Lohan agreed to sign on to this script was to recreate the relationship she actually wanted with her own troubled, absentee father. To that point, Sierra exhibits the Electra complex-oriented dynamic that rich girls have with their rich fathers (see also: Donald and Ivanka). Which is why Sierra can’t be candid with him about not wanting to become the “Vice President of Atmosphere” for the hotel, lest she disappoints Daddy.

    What’s more, Sierra complains to Tad, “He flew me all the way up here in his private jet for Christmas. I don’t wanna hurt his feelings.” At the same time, she laments, “When people look at me, all they see is the spoiled daughter of Beauregard Belmont, the hotel magnate. And I’m not spoiled!” This timed so that she can be spoon-fed caviar and given champagne to sip on before being asked, “Dress or slacks?” by her temporary stylist, Bianca (played by Lohan’s sister, Aliana—which proves she’s taken up the mantle for Britney back when she used to try to make Jamie Lynn’s “career” happen).

    All of this is leading up to the most insane moment of the movie, in that it entirely negates the plot even being necessary to continue on past the discovery of Sierra unconscious near a tree. That moment being when the movie’s true romantic leading man, Jake Russell (Chord Overstreet, whose already existing tie to Lohan is that she cameo’d on Glee in 2012), appears at the Belmont Resort. On a side note, if Jake is so beloved and famous in that town, surely Sierra would have encountered him at some point, even despite her sheltered existence. In any case, after presenting Beauregard (Jack Wagner) with a proposal for upgrading his “lesser” a.ka. humbler North Star Lodge and asking if he might consider financing it (“making an investment,” if you will), then being promptly rejected, he runs quite literally into Sierra with a cup of hot chocolate in hand. Regardless of the fact that she’s wearing sunglasses and a big hat, it would be fairly difficult to not make the connection that it’s the same woman he discovers unconscious next to a tree soon after. Especially since he’s supposed to be so attentive and astute.

    To viewers’ dismay, that isn’t really true. For after staring at her for a few minutes with the daub of bird shit-like whipped cream he’s spilled onto her “Valenyagi” suit, he seems to have some amnesia of his own later on. But sure, the audience can buy that he’s so blacked out in general over his North Star Lodge woes that maybe he just wasn’t paying attention to fairly obvious physical details. Plus, as a widower/single dad, his general pain could be fairly all-consuming.

    His daughter, Avy (Olivia Perez), sees that pain, which is why she makes a “Christmas wish” near a holiday market vendor who “just so happens” to look like Santa (and yes, he’ll reappear many times throughout as a “guardian angel,” of sorts). This being only one of the infinite schlocky moments that Lohan chooses to omit in her mainstream promotion of the movie on outlets like Good Morning America and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Where the interviewers in question mostly preferred to bring up Mean Girls and talk of a Freaky Friday sequel because these are what remain Lohan’s sole claims to cinematic glory apart from The Parent Trap.

    Other bids at promotion laughably centered on Lindsay looking back at some of her most “iconic” movie roles, which, due to scraping the bottom of the barrel, included her parts in ensemble cast movies such as A Prairie Home Companion, Bobby and Chapter 27. And yes, most would be hard-pressed to remember 1) what her character’s name is (the basic mark of a truly iconic movie character) and 2) what actually happens in any of these movies. Unfortunately for Lohan, gone are the days of her being “bankable” enough to star in features with actors like Meryl Streep or even Jared Leto. So here we are at Falling For Christmas.

    A movie that demands of its audience, at every turn, not to stab their eyes and eardrums out, in addition to accepting that Sierra and Jake have fallen in love in four days and the former’s personality has improved just by learning to make a bed, do laundry and cook breakfast. And yet, this is something we can find more believable in Overboard, the film plot Falling For Christmas clearly wants to emulate. At least in that movie, however, screenwriter Leslie Dixon (who, funnily enough, previously worked with Lohan in that she wrote the script for Freaky Friday) had the decency to treat her viewer with some respect by showing the gradual development of the relationship between heiress-turned-amnesiac housewife Joanna Stayton (Goldie Hawn) and Dean Proffitt (Kurt Russell). The carpenter who takes advantage of Joanna’s memory lapse after she treats him like shit and doesn’t pay for the work he did on her closet because she wanted it crafted of cedar, not oak. Thus, when he sees her story on the news, he decides to do something that smacks of what Rand Gauthier might attempt (instead, Rand took revenge on an unpaid carpentry bill by stealing Pam and Tommy’s giant safe, containing their sex tape—proving that you should always pay the help what they’re owed).

    Perhaps in a different genre tone, one not meant to be so Hallmark-y meets a dash of Lifetime, the movie could have actually been comedic, as opposed to desperately playing at being that way. Even so, the fact remains that Lohan’s one-note acting range—not her “legal troubles” related to drinking and drugging—are what have ultimately set her back all these years. Talking of that one-note acting range, let no one forget (including Lohan herself) that she “acted” in one of the worst movies ever made in history, Among the Shadows, which she conveniently does not mention in any of her “flashing back” to film roles past.

    Yet, for whatever reason, Lohan persists in making a “comeback” every few years. One she’s allowed to attempt perhaps because no one can quite remember what the last thing she did was anyway. And to help people forget/excuse how bad Falling For Christmas is, someone clearly must have paid a writer off at Indiewire to create the title, “Lindsay Lohan’s ‘Falling for Christmas’ Is the ‘Citizen Kane’ of Netflix Christmas Movies.” While Lindsay decided to take that at face value and repost it as the only positive review of the movie, anyone who reads further will see that the sole correlation made between these two movies is that both have a snow globe and a sled in them (though it’s really a sleigh, not a sled in Falling For Christmas).

    For those accustomed to the factory conveyor belt style of churned-out Netflix Christmas movies (again, stealing the Hallmark formula), Falling For Christmas is par for the course. But as yet another shitty movie in Lohan’s choppy filmography, it begs the question, why keep trying to return? Perhaps because, as Lindsay once self-referentially asked during the cameo she made in Glee’s third season, “Is there anything better than someone making a comeback?” The answer is yes, and that’s when someone makes a worthwhile comeback.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Lolahol’s “Cuntradiction” Video: A Familiar Equine Scene

    Lolahol’s “Cuntradiction” Video: A Familiar Equine Scene

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    Seeming to no longer have any qualms about following in her mother’s footsteps, Lolahol—still better known as Lourdes Leon—has not only stepped up behind the microphone to record an album (okay, an EP) called Go, but she’s also shown that she takes no issue with emulating Madonna’s visuals either. And we’re not just talking about the “Like A Virgin”-esque writhing and general hyper-sexual image. No, Lolahol has gone into Madonna’s aesthetic vault to bring us a video concept centered on horses.

    To those who regularly see Madonna on Instagram, it doesn’t take long to realize that the video for the second single (after “Lock&Key”), “Cuntradiction,” makes optimal use of Madonna’s Bridgehampton realm. One in which we frequently see her feeding and riding horses in the various photos and videos she posts. But hey, why shouldn’t Lolahol make good use of that property? It is likely part of her inevitable inheritance, after all. However, more than just Madonna riding horses in her day-to-day life (even after falling off of one in 2005), she also long ago incorporated them into her work (the most current example being “Medellín”). This transpired rather notably in a Steven Klein (a fellow Bridgehampton resident) video and photoshoot that served as backdrops during Madonna’s 2006 Confessions Tour (specifically for the opening, “I Feel Love/Future Lovers”). As is to be expected, Madonna, at times, gets very suggestive in her interactions with the horse (tranquilized or not), with one image featuring her lying on top of its side smoking a cigarette. Lolahol furnishes us with a similar pose (minus the cigarette) via direction from Anna Pollack.

    A bed in the corner of the hay-filled stable lends added kink to the très Equus-oriented motif. Interspersed “disturbing” shots of horses filmed in black-and-white or nightshot mode are meant to lend perhaps a tinge of “horror” to the bestial flavor. And, speaking of, as Lolahol sensually sings, “I want it to last/But I want it to end,” she leans back while mounted atop a horse in “bondage”-y lingerie that Rihanna would surely approve of (and yes, Lola already made her debut as a Fenty model in the Savage X Fenty Vol. 3 show). And also, of course, her mother, who, like, invented such provocative scenes and maneuvers (see: Sex).

    While some children might have run in the other direction away from “that life” (kind of like Rocco Ritchie running into the arms of Madonna’s ex-husband back in 2015), Lola has very much decided to embrace it. Dare one even say, “carry the torch.” The very “fire” Madonna tried to symbolically pass on to Britney and Xtina at that 2003 VMAs performance… yet neither pop star has been able to fully embrace it in the long-run (Britney for obvious reasons). And, incidentally, since Lourdes “played” a flower girl at the beginning of the aforementioned performance and then graduated to full-on “Like A Virgin” bride regalia for the 2009 “Celebration” video, maybe all the writhing and gyrating she’s employing in the present was foreshadowed.

    More of which comes after the first round of “stable scenes,” when things start to get “impressionistic” as we’re shown images of Lolahol eating an apple (yes, how “profound” on the symbolism front) and other assorted fruits before we see her lounging sideways on a banquet table and then smashing some grapes… and, predictably, crawling/writhing (again, very Madonna) across it.

    Another tableau presents itself when Lola and a suspended rope appear in an empty barn as she proceeds to “do sexy shit” with it. This leads into another dirt-filled barn where horses run around amid mirrors that reflect their image back to them in a manner that, one would think, might cause an inevitable snafu. But anyway, that’s not the real standout of this portion, so much as Lola vaguely recreating the pouring of sand on her body the way Madonna does in the “Don’t Tell Me” video (the moment, it could be said, that M’s own fascination with horses first began). Implementing the dance moves she studied in school (as her mother did before dropping out), Lolahol does everything to give the most while pretending to do the least.

    In the final scenes, Pollack captures footage of a butterfly on Lola’s hand (cue Lana Del Rey’s “Happiness Is A Butterfly”), followed by the image of crushed grapes that remind one of what Caroline Polachek’s vibe was in “Billions.” It’s all concluded with a black-and-white image of a horse running away through the field. Likely back to Madonna’s crotch.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Lolahol Seeks to Take Up the Mantle of Madonna’s “Weird Art Kid” Persona on Go EP

    Lolahol Seeks to Take Up the Mantle of Madonna’s “Weird Art Kid” Persona on Go EP

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    Inching her way ever forward into the spotlight, Lolahol, which media outlets are certain to remind is “Madonna’s daughter” (just in case the music itself isn’t enough), has released a five-track EP on the heels of her debut solo single, “Lock&Key.” The latter obviously appears on the album, called Go. A title, in fact, that feels apropos considering the 90s-oriented sound of it all tying into that iconic, yet still-too-underrated 1999 rave movie. Except that, rather than providing a dance-y, ntsss ntsss ntssss vibe, Lolahol is more “classic trip hop,” as it is pretentiously billed.

    And, talking of pretension, even the cover itself offers some of that in terms of its blatant “homage” to Marilyn Minter’s work (recently featured in Madonna’s stage backdrops during her performance at Terminal 5 for Pride). This image, however, was shot by the elusive indiana420bitch (who has, of late, been responsible for Kim Kardashian’s “scum aesthetic” photos). Yet, despite the patent derivativeness, it gives us some kind of glimpse into what to expect sonically. Lips pressed against glass and smeared, glittery bluish-purple eye makeup being visually tantamount to what we hear as the EP opens on the faux provocatively-titled “Cuntradiction” (for which Lolahol has also created a video with very familiar aesthetics). Her initially trilling, high-pitched vocals give way to a general languor that remains for the rest of the album. In fact, if Lolahol’s overall sound could be described in one word it would be: languor.

    Touching on familiar themes of toxic and inequitable love that her own mother has addressed in many a song (particularly “Frozen”), Lolahol accuses, “I am nothing in your eyes/‘Til you don’t have me by your side.” Maybe that’s why she’s inclined to confess, “I want a version of you, not the whole thing”—her own so-called partner likely feeling the same way. Indeed, that’s how most people feel in the present epoch, with social media being a key contributor to why so many expect a “version” of someone, as though they’re a two-dimensional being. This being essentially what we’ve all been reduced to with our various “platforms” on which to present ourselves. Or rather, the “best” version of ourselves. Something Lolahol a.k.a. Lourdes herself is wont to project as well, thanks to the arsenal of resources at her disposal. Including NYC favorite Eartheater, who executive produced the album via her Chemical X imprint… though one wonders if, in another time and place, Lolahol might have been a Maverick artist.

    And, talking (yet again) of Madonna-related things, after the Madame X Tour was released, one fan pointed out, “I get it now. Madonna’s a weird art kid.” Art and its correlating “weirdness” being an aspect of life that she’s consistently imparted to her own children, adopted or otherwise. That much is clear in what Lourdes’ approach has been to most of her “career”—primarily modeling up until this point. All while playing into that fashionable (no pun intended) idea that a model should be more than just a body—she needs to be a unique “personality.” A “performance artist,” of sorts.

    As an unapologetic art bitch, Madonna also undeniably imparted a love of James Baldwin onto her kids, hence the title of the second track on Go, “Giovanni’s Room.” With an ambient yet industrial sound, Lolahol paints the picture, “He locked the door behind him…/we simply stared at each other.” The uneventful nature of life in the twenty-first century, characterized primarily by being in rooms (thanks to the internet) and other “non-places,” is thusly captured in this sentence—perhaps giving Billie Eilish a run for her Gen Z money. And yes, both Billie and Lolahol seem to relish offering up ersatz Gen X themes of disaffection from their Gen Z bodies.

    A generation that, through Lolahol, admits, “I was trembling/I am lost.” In other uneventful news, Lolahol further delineates, “He pulled me against him/Pulled myself into his arms as I gave him me (or is it weed?) to carry.” And, in contrast to what we were told by Madonna in the 00s about her children’s upbringing, Lolahol describes, “Spend my days watching the TV screen/My mom says I look lost.” Maybe that’s why Lola finally decided to “get some direction” as a singer, since modeling as a profession expires far sooner. And obviously, Madonna won’t stand for anything other than “excellence” in her products a.k.a. children, they being just another reflection of herself.

    And Lola reflects M quite well, candor-wise, on “Not Pussy” when she commences, “I don’t give a fuck about you/It’s your choice, I’m not gonna make the first move.” At the same time, the Madonna we’ve come to know would never play into such gender-specific limitations. Regardless of being a woman, she always made the first move if it suited her whims or purposes. Especially in the pre-fame New York days, when she would home in on the men (and women) she thought might be useful to her career (an element of her ambitious personality that Weird Al decided to hyper-caricaturize in Weird). Lolahol, in contrast, had a built-in career from day one of being born out of Madonna’s pussy. So she can’t tell anyone that “Not Pussy” has to do with her success, for it absolutely does.

    Maybe that’s why she has no shame in declaring, “I’m lazy.” An admission that could very well be part of her warning, “You want me/You know I’m no good for you”—this being a lyric that smacks of Amy Winehouse (“I told you I was trouble/You know I’m no good”) and Lana Del Rey (“We both know/That it’s not fashionable to love me”). She finally delves more fully into the “WAP”-oriented titled by chanting, “Pussy, pussy, pussy,” then suggestively adding, “Jump in, jump out of my…” She subsequently throws a curveball by saying, “…spirit” in lieu of the expected “pussy,” then randomly incorporates the flex, “Every dream I have is lucid.” The sonic tone of the song, like most of them, once more mirrors a sound that can best be categorized as Unreleased Ray of Light Demos, which makes sense considering Lola’s predilection for 90s styles and rhythms. Continuing to goad the boy in question, Lolahol demands, “Are you in or are you not/Pussy, pussy, pussy.” This sentence structure becoming an overt play on words with regard to the pursuer himself being a pussy for waffling in his so-called pursuit.

    The following song, “Purple Apple,” is slightly more slowed down (though all of the songs manage to come off that way when delivered in Lolahol’s manner) and also veers toward sounding like it could be on the Stranger Things Soundtrack. The track is somewhat alluded to in the video for “Cuntradiction,” when the overwrought image of biting viscerally and seductively into an apple is wielded by Lolahol (as if Lana Del Rey didn’t already do that recently enough in the short film, Tropico).

    The demanding side Lola must get from her mother shines through as she orders, “Roll me a spliff”—this weed imagery relating to the song’s name, for, in addition to a “purple apple” referring to a girl giving a bite on a guy’s Adam’s apple while she grabs his balls, it’s also worth noting that one can smoke out of an apple as well. And while Lolahol smokes her blunt (a habit she seemed to inspire M with), she likely thinks of the person she’s wasting time on as she announces, “I’m takin’ all the risks/And you’re not doin’ shit.” Of course, all celebrity children think they’re taking a risk when it comes to inviting an outsider into “their world.” That’s likely part of why Lola offers the telling lines, “Melt me down/Lay me down/I’m your fruit/Feed off me/Spit me out/Leave me.”

    But Lolahol is the one to leave us with the conclusion of Go, “Lock&Key,” which almost seems like the weakest of her “oeuvre” now that we’ve heard “more of it” (read: a mere four additional songs). Plus, it has the backstabbing element of quoting from a Lady Gaga interview via the chorus, “No sleep, next plane, no sleep, make up, next club, next car, next plane, no sleep, no fear.”

    Evidently, however, Lourdes Leon must have some fear if she feels obliged to perform under a “conceptual” stage name. One with the same manufactured attempt at “being real and raw” as the songs themselves, with their overarching inauthenticity. Though clearly wanting to reveal “who she is” to listeners, the generic and recycled content of it all makes it difficult for her to stand apart, least of all from her mother’s towering shadow. At the same time, M herself was once given a similar critique re: superficiality for her early work… not that “Lolahol” will ever be capable of “falling out of the industry” in the same way that Madonna once was at the start of her own musical journey.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • F Is For Fascism, Not Freedom: Amsterdam Shows That, When It Comes to the Many Incongruities of U.S. Politics, History Repeats

    F Is For Fascism, Not Freedom: Amsterdam Shows That, When It Comes to the Many Incongruities of U.S. Politics, History Repeats

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    Considering David O. Russell is the type of person who would write his college thesis on the United States intervention in Chile, his commitment to “being political” (when he’s not being philosophical) in the majority of his films is par for the course. What annoyed conservatives would call the usual “Hollywood liberal bullshit.” But Amsterdam is by far Russell’s most grandiose statement on American politics. Particularly as it pertains to the recent attempt at a coup on January 6, 2021. And this could likely be part of the reason why Americans seemed so averse to watching it, as the film has now notoriously bombed at the box office (costing the studio roughly one hundred million dollars in losses—but it’s not like they’re not good for it, right?).

    With a fresh release in Europe, however, perhaps the movie will have slightly better odds at attracting a more open and understanding audience. An ilk that can see the U.S. and its government objectively for what it is: positively villainous. And yes, for a movie called Amsterdam, very little of the plot actually takes place there. Most of the stage, in fact, is set in New York, where Russell opens the timeline in 1933—better known as: the height of the Great Depression. An economic circumstance that provided plenty of opportunity for demagogues around the world to take power (including, obviously, Hitler). As well as the rich financial backers who would want such a thing to occur in order to influence and control that power.

    Ah, but before all that, there was “the war to end all wars.” A real laugh of a tagline for World War I. But nonetheless, simps who trusted in their government went to battle without question for that war. Men like Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) and Harold Woodsman (John David Washington). The former is a doctor essentially forced to use his skills overseas by his Park Avenue parents-in-law who think this is what will make him respectable in the eyes of their peers. The latter is among the many Black men forced to wear French uniforms while fighting against the enemy because the white men don’t want to be seen sharing the same fatigues, as they represent the “real” America. And oh, how they do with that “logic.” This blatant form of racism that the white soldiers still find time to employ despite being, you know, up against death every day is something that upsets General Bill Meekins (Ed Begley Jr.) greatly. And it’s part of why he asks Burt to step in as the doctor for the Black soldiers, being that he doesn’t seem too prone to discrimination a.k.a. just leaving them to bleed out because they’re Black.

    So it is that an unbreakable bond is formed between Burt and Harold. One that transmogrifies into a triangular bond with a nurse named Valerie (Margot Robbie), who takes care of both of them when they end up shrapnel-filled in her hospital. Shrapnel that, as she eventually shows them, she turns into art (one of the most charming and Wes Anderson meets Jean-Pierre Jeunet details of Amsterdam). This comes after also revealing that she’s not actually French, though she has been speaking it the entire time (for it’s easy to fool non-French speaking Americans of one’s “authenticity”). But that’s just one of the many “kooky quirks” of Valerie, in addition to her knowing a man who can help Burt pin down a decent glass eye—having lost his while “fighting for democracy,” or something.

    The British Paul Canterbury (Mike Meyers, who likes to play characters with “eye things,” if View From the Top is an indication) knows all about the nuances of the eye. Accordingly, he offers Burt a quality glass one for his trouble of coming all the way to Amsterdam, where Valerie has ferried him and Harold. In Paul’s company is an American named Henry Norcross (Michael Shannon), another man using glass eye manufacturing as a front for intelligence gathering. Valerie has done some of her own for them in the past, and knows that things work quid pro quo. That, one day, they’ll call upon the trio for something in return.

    But, for now, this period in Amsterdam is what Valerie calls “the dream.” Whatever comes after will be horrible, which is why she’s adamant to Burt that they shouldn’t break up their Bande à Part ways (not that she uses that term—since said movie wouldn’t come out until the 60s) just so he can go back home to his wife, Beatrice (Andrea Riseborough). A wife that so obviously doesn’t give a shit about him, especially not now that he’s “mangled.” Cast out of Park Avenue, Burt goes rogue on practicing medicine, specializing solely in the specific pains of veterans. Those who, in addition to the presence of his own constant physical pain, have inspired him to cook up various chemical compounds commonly referred to as “drugs.” Ones he says need to be created because what’s out there ain’t cuttin’ the mustard in terms of catering to the level of agony veterans have.

    This is back in the New York of 1933, when fifteen years have passed since that glorious Amsterdam blip that allowed Valerie and Harold to love each other freely, without the tarring and feathering of U.S. racism. Once Burt breaks up the triad, however, it all dismantles. For Valerie is asked by Harold to pull some strings with her mysterious, but powerful family—the one she ran away from—to get Burt out of jail. Because of course that’s where he would find himself for his ribald, experimental ways upon returning to the Land of the Subjugated and Repressed. Alas, once Valerie does that, it means her family will know where she is, and demand her return. So it is that she pulls the “I’ll leave you before you leave me” maneuver on Harold, departing from Amsterdam soon after she calls in the favor without forewarning him.

    With all of this packed into the first hour, Russell has already woven a complicated web to land us in “present-day” 1933, where we first encountered Burt, and where Bill Meekins’ daughter, Elizabeth (Taylor Swift), has enlisted the services of Harold and Burt to perform an autopsy on her father. Incidentally, that autopsy leads to a budding romance for Burt when he meets the attending medical examiner, Irma St. Clair (Zoe Saldaña). In any case, Liz doesn’t believe her dad simply “died”—she’s convinced he was murdered on his way back from Europe. On a side note, Swift herself might be deemed part of the box office bombing of Amsterdam, being that she’s somewhat illustrious for only acting in doomed projects (ahem, Cats). Indeed, it’s surprising that Swift agreed to be in the movie at all when taking into account her fixation with being “aboveboard” vis-à-vis her squeaky-clean persona. This includes not working with people who have been accused of sexual harassment or violence—a.k.a. David O. Russell and Christian Bale.

    Those critical of certain people’s continued ability to “separate the artist from the work” would likely accuse Swift and co. of “following the wrong god”—a phrase used throughout Amsterdam to refer to how Burt followed the wrong god home from the war. The god of false love. Other men, powerful men, continued to follow the god of power. Stopping at nothing to get more of it, sort of like Prescott Bush. But the Business Plot that Amsterdam centers its events around is not the core of the film. Ultimately, the crux of it is a simple message that has been repeated to deaf ears though the ages: love is more potent than hate. The latter always being the “wrong god.” Something that General Gil Dillenbeck (Robert De Niro) is particularly aware of with his vast experience in war.

    Of all the characters—and there are a great many—in Amsterdam, Dillenbeck is the only one based on a real person, specifically Smedley Butler. The man tapped by a cabal of rich businessmen to influence veterans to stage a coup against the “cripple” president, Franklin Roosevelt. Indeed, the eugenics “philosophy” that was very in vogue at the time (leading to the most extreme version of it in the form of concentration camps) also features prominently in Amsterdam.

    As for the statement Russell is making on the nefarious machinations of the “elite” (only deemed as such because of their endlessly deep pockets and not their character), it’s a resonant theme that has only become more pronounced in the twenty-first century. To boot, it seems no coincidence that one of Sinclair Lewis’ most famed novels, It Can’t Happen Here, was released in 1935—just two years after the Business Plot. Regardless of many still believing that Butler was either a quack or blowing the “plot” out of proportion, the fact remains that even a casual conversation among the rich about wanting to manufacture a government like one of their products is not to be taken lightly.

    Regarding the coterie of unique and memorable characters Russell came up with to weave a tapestry around this historical event, he described it best when he said, “For me as I think of this guy [that Bale plays], I always like outsiders. I always like people on the edges, on the fringes.” Thanks to Amsterdam, Russell might fully become that person in Hollywood. But maybe he’s not too bent out of shape about it, so long as the same Santa Monica diners where he thought up the script for Amsterdam with Bale allow him to keep coming. And dreaming. Those diners being almost like what Amsterdam was to the thick-as-thieves trio in the film. For it was only outside the diner, when the film was made and released, that the dream got crushed.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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