Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 922

David Letterman Is Staying Put

In a year of late night shakeups one thing is staying the same: David Letterman will be behind the Late Show desk for at least another two years. And he's showing no signs that he plans to retire. CBS announced today that Letterman will host The Late Show through 2015, and according to Bill Carter, the New York Times dean of late night reporting, there is "no mention in Letterman's deal that this will be his last. Succession talk quieted." 

That means that while NBC is ousting Jay Leno (again) for the younger meat of Jimmy Fallon, and ABC is banking on sorta-outsider Jimmy Kimmel at the 11:35 hour, the 66-year-old Letterman is holding court over at CBS. At this point, Letterman is the longest-running late night talk show host in history, having started in 1982 with Late Night on NBC, and now beating the 30-year run of Johnny Carson.  CBS—a network with a reputation for skewing older—feels no pressure apparently to oust the legend in the face of the changing scene.

 

       

'Runner Runner' and the Problem of Justin Timberlake

Though he's currently being raked over the coals for his latest album, Justin Timberlake is a talented musician. He oozes sex appeal without being sleazy, he trickles up into a fluttery falsetto without losing any of his swagger. He's also been a game and chipper — if a bit overused — host on Saturday Night Live, drawing from his old Mickey Mouse Club sketch days to hold his own against professional comedians. He also, y'know, seems like a nice guy. This is all to say that Justin Timberlake has many things going for him! So it would probably be okay if he quietly gave up this whole acting thing. Because, folks, he's just not good at it.

What's maybe worse, and what's proven in his new gambling thriller Runner Runner, is that he doesn't have that crucial movie star je ne sais quoi that demands attention, and respect. The breezy confidence and magnetism he buzzes with when he performs his music just doesn't survive the translation to film. In the handful of movies he's done so far, he seems almost embarrassingly out of his depth, giving shallow line readings with a schoolboy's earnestness. It's awkward, this 32-year-old cool guy suddenly becoming a goofy teenager. We saw it in his oddly lauded turn in The Social Network, in the gangly romantic comedy Friends with Benefits, and in the dreary sci-fi thriller In Time. But Runner Runner puts his faults on particularly garish display, being that it's a cocky male fantasy yarn about online gambling and Ponzi schemes and slick dudes out to get rich, with Timberlake at the center.

In the film, he plays a numbers whiz who gets sucked out of his reasonably low-key Princeton grad student existence and into a web of deceit and danger in Costa Rica. If you're rolling your eyes or guffawing at the idea of Justin Timberlake playing some kind of statistics genius who goes to Princeton, you're not wrong to. But it's the other side of the character that really does the poor guy in. His character, Richie Furst, was supposed to be on Wall Street making the big bucks, but then the crash happened, he lost his money, and now he's stuck in graduate school paying tuition like a chump. (I gathered that we were supposed to feel bad for this guy, who had the simple aw-shucks dream of making a ton of money in one of America's more cynical, corrupt industries, but then couldn't because the industry's cynicism and corruption led to its temporary collapse. But that's just not the most sympathetic tale, not for me anyway. I'm sure there will be guys who see Runner Runner and think that Richie got a real raw deal, but to me he's better off living a more honest existence at Princeton.) So he leaps at the chance to get back in the fast lane when a shady online gambling mogul named Ivan Block (an icy Ben Affleck) offers him a job in Costa Rica.

Richie excels at the work, and it's here that Timberlake's real limits as an actor start to show themselves in squirm-inducing ways. To play all this wheeler-dealer strutting, you'd think that Timberlake would be able to channel if not his own arrogance certainly that of the myriad music types around him who command a room the minute they walk into it. But instead all that comes across is a silly sense of "Oh, Justin Timberlake is trying to be cool right now." The whole movie is like watching a kid who misguidedly got his ear pierced over the summer walk down the hall on the first day of school.

Timberlake has exactly zero chemistry with his love interest, a bland nothing of a character played with sad eyes by the perpetually sidelined Gemma Arterton, and only a little more with his main sparring partner Mr. Affleck. Playing a cold, calculating crook with a mean streak, Affleck is pretty fun. He's menacing in the affable way that many scary guys from his native Boston can be; pulling you in close with pleasantries and then knifing you when you least expect it. It's obvious from his first frame that he's up to no good, but Affleck still plays the character with something of an arc. He could have just phoned-in this post-Argo tropical vacation, but he actually tried. Good for him.

The same can be said of the film's director, The Lincoln Lawyer's Brad Furman. There are moments in Runner Runner that feel thoughtfully constructed, like a throbbing EDM dance party at a carnival that swirls with light and a haze of danger. The film's script, by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, is overloaded with snappy gambling speak and hurries along at a too-abbreviated clip, but there are glimmers of a smarter movie in there that Furman is sharp enough to tease out. There's a Princeton vs. Rutgers joke in the movie that comes out of nowhere; it earned easily the biggest laugh from the audience I was in. (That's region-specific, of course.) Despite its lame masters of the universe posturing, its dismissal of women as nothing more than sex things or victims, and its hastily resolved intrigue, Runner Runner isn't terrible. You might even enjoy it when it pops up on FX some hungover Sunday afternoon.

But hopefully by then Timberlake will have quit the movies. What began as a curious novelty has swiftly become an annoyance that's continually foisted upon us by oblivious studio executives. I know it's blunt, and probably mean, to say, but Justin Timberlake is not a good actor. He's not a movie star. Let's end the charade now and send him back to the recording studio where he belongs. I say this out of love. Really.

       

Five Best Friday Columns

Kimberly A. Strassel at The Wall Street Journal on the GOP "defunding way of fundraising." Strassel argues, "To understand the depths of the anger many good Washington conservatives are feeling for the ringleaders of the defund ObamaCare movement, follow the money." Jim DeMint, a former Senator from South Carolina and now the president of the Heritage Foundation, has figured out that defunding Obamacare is something that he can sell to the public, or at least his donors. Strassel explains that DeMint and Tea Party conservatives succeed by "ginning up a militant defund strategy, beating up conservatives opposed to the tactic as sellouts, and cashing in on the grass-roots fury." Strassel says the money conservative voters send to groups like Heritage and the Senate Conservatives Fund "sometimes go for the Washington trappings these groups decry. SCF, a small operation, in recent months has spent $26,000 on an interior decorator." Andrew Exum, a Middle East scholar and fellow at the Center for a New American Security, tweets, "800,000 public servants are going without a paycheck so Ted Cruz & Jim DeMint can raise a little more cash." Sen. John McCain calls it a "must-read." 

Greg Sargent at The Washington Post on the White House's debt limit fears. President Obama's senior officials are worried that the House GOP doesn't realize how damaging it would be to Obama's presidency if Obama conceded anything in exchange for GOP support of a debt limit hike, Sargent explains. "Perhaps GOP leaders still think the President will fold in the end, and ... as a result, they still don’t grasp just how much pressure there is on them to resolve internal party differences that are making it impossible for Boehner to agree to raise the debt limit without extracting concessions Tea Partyers would view as a victory." Further, "this is a defining moment" of the future balance between Presidents and Congresses. Brendan Nyhan, a political science professor at Dartmouth and a media critic at the Columbia Journalism Review, tweets, "Obama faces classic problem in game theory of bargaining — convincing other side of the costs to you of backing down." But Charles C. W. Cooke, a writer for the conservative National Review, is outraged at White House thinking: "This first paragraph has to be read to be believed. Which branch of government does the president think he runs?" 

Kurt Eichenwald at Newsweek on why Iran's nuclear threat is exaggerated. Eichenwald calls Iran "the phantom menace": Iran doomsaying is "in many ways, a repeat of the supposed threat from Iraq that led to war — except this time, the intelligence world knows there are no weapons of mass destruction." Eichenwald notes that Obama's recent phone chat with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani enraged hardliners, especially Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But Netanyahu has been predicting a threat for decades. Bottom line? "More than 30 years of warnings about Iran’s impending nuclear capabilities have yet to pan out." Ali Gharib, who covers Middle East issues for The Daily Beast, tweets, "Netanyahu demanded that the U.S. take action against Iran [because] it would soon develop [nuclear] weapons 18 years ago."

Matthew Duss at The American Prospect  on Netanyahu's role in U.S.-Iran diplomacy. Duss, a national security policy analyst for the Center for American Progress, writes, "The Israeli Prime Minister seems determined to spoil the latest negotiations before they've begun." He continues, "Israel clearly has legitimate concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, but in failing to even acknowledge the possibility that the shift in Iran’s could augur something real, Netanyahu gave off the petulant air of a man who refuses to take yes for an answer." Some analysts argue, "Netanyahu wants to see the other side on their knees. Not only Iran, but the Palestinians too." But to be fair, Duss explains, it's not clear how seriously Iranian leaders take Bibi's comments. Haroon Moghul, a columnist at Al Arabiya English, repeats Duss's question: "Can Bibi take yes for an answer?" 

Joe Pompeo at Capital New York explains the new Newsweek. In a post recommended by senior Huffington Post media reporter Michael Calderone, Pompeo suggests that what new editor Jim Impoco "says he wants to make ... seems less like the sometimes bizarre version of the magazine that was helmed by Tina Brown for the past two years, and more like one of the many versions produced under the ownership of the Washington Post Company's Graham family." But Pompeo points out, "This is Newsweek's fourth overhaul, at the most conservative possible count, since 2009," and the publication "will no doubt be met with skepticism inside of Midtown, given how far the title has fallen from its glory days." 

       

Meet the Woman Who Says She's Siri

Susan Bennett, a woman living in suburban Atlanta, has come out and claimed what some consider to be the most frustrating and irritating voices on the planet: that is, she claims she is the voice of Apple's serial neg-artist Siri. Apple won't confirm or deny that Bennett is Siri, but CNN's forensic audio expert (science) and our eyes say that Bennett is telling the truth.

And when you consider that no one genuinely loves Siri, you kinda have to believe when someone actually wants to claim ownership over a voice that's constantly pegged to technological frustration. "Yes, I worry about how many times I get cursed every day," Bennett told CNN, which pulled aside the Apple curtain on Friday. 

Bennett is coming clean because there are new Siri voices on the way with Apple's new operating system and because a Verge post on Siri accidentally and incorrectly led readers to a woman named Allison Dufty.

Bennett revealed that she laid Siri's vocal tracks back in 2005—around six years before the iPhone 4s, the first Apple phone to feature Siri went on the market. CNN's Jessica Ravitz explains that she found Siri/Bennett by accident and actually: 

In the course of our phone conversation, I asked her to rattle off some jobs she's had over the years. She gave me a quick and general rundown and then added that she's done a lot of IVR work.

"IVR?" I asked.

"Interactive voice response," she answered. "The sort of thing you hear on a company's phone system."

For reasons I can't explain -- I was still struggling to understand my first iPhone -- I blurted out, "Hey, are you Siri?"

She gasped. And then I gasped.

"Oh my God," I said. "You're totally Siri, aren't you?"

Because I can't show you Bennett's voice over text, here's Bennett and Siri, so you can compare:

       

The Winners and Losers of the Fall TV Season So Far

We're now about two (or three, if you're Fox) weeks into the fall television season, which means we can now start to evaluate who's winning and losing, and can prepare ourselves for the inevitable cancellations coming our way. It's certainly been a mixed bag this year, with some surprising successes (Sleepy Hollow) and some major crashes and burns (Ironside). 

[image error]Winner: Sleepy Hollow. Fox's nutty Ichabod Crane/witches/Revolutionary War/apocalypse show has been keeping up its ratings and has the honor of being the first new show of the season to be renewed.

Loser: Marvel's Agents of SHIELD. Okay, so the ratings for its second week were still good, but they dropped 34 percent from the premiere, despite a teased appearance from Samuel L. Jackson. The sort-of superhero show's second outing also took a beating from critics. Scott Meslow at Vulture called it a "fairly bland, disappointingly safe hour of television; cut the references to Tony Stark and Thor, and '0-8-4' could easily pass as a lost episode of Burn Notice without anyone noticing." 

Winner: The Blacklist. NBC's criminal mastermind thriller held strong in its second week, only dropping 5 percent in the core 18-49 demographic, and scoring 12.1 million viewers. 

Loser: Lucky 7. This ABC drama about lottery winners is—wait for it—not so lucky. The second episode garnered just a 0.7 rating in the key 18-49 demographic, down 46 percent from the premiere, which wasn't that stellar either. The terrible ratings are provoking many to wonder if Lucky 7 will have the ignominious distinction of being the first show cancelled this season. (Another possibility? Another ABC show: Betrayal, which could not stand up to the tough competition on Sunday.) Update 3:02 p.m.: Well, so much for Lucky 7. Just a short while after we published this piece ABC gave it the axe, making it the first show canceled this season. R.I.P. Lucky 7. It's being replaced by Scandal repeats. 

Winner[s]: CBS Thursday night comedies. Thanks to The Big Bang Theory, CBS comedies are going strong. While The Crazy Ones's second episode didn't do quite as well as its premiere—it didn't have the Big Bang Theory lead in—its 11.8 million viewers is good enough, even when compared to the 15.6 million it pulled in last week. Hey, at least it's not on NBC. Bringing us to...

[image error]Loser[s]: NBC's Thursday night comedies. The ratings for Sean Saves the World, Welcome to the Family, and The Michael J. Fox show all likely made NBC rethink their "let's load our deck with family comedies" strategy. None of these shows rated above a 2.0 last night, according to James Hibberd of Entertainment Weekly, which is pretty bad. How bad? So bad that it may have to worry about the CW. "CW beat NBC in 8 p.m. hour among adults under 35, and came within two-tenths of NBC at 9," Vulture's Joe Adalian wrote on Twitter. 

Winner: Super Fun Night. Rebel Wilson should be super happy—for now. Her ABC comedy debuted Wednesday night with solid ratings following a Modern Family lead in. Whether viewers stay after the lackluster premiere is the test. 

Loser: Ironside. Oh Ironside, who on Earth thought you were a good idea? The drama—a remake of a '60s-'70s show—premiered Wednesday night as NBC's lowest drama premiere ever. Shed a tear for Blair Underwood. 

       

Here's Proof the Voting Rights Act Helped Boost Black Political Representation

When the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in June, it eliminated a long-standing distinction that certain states and communities—due to their deep histories of discrimination—warranted extra scrutiny under the law. Those places, identified in Section 4, were required to "pre-clear" any changes to voting laws or procedures with the federal government (a requirement outlined in Section 5). Now that is no longer the case.

Nearly half a century after the VRA's passage, critics had begun to argue that the law had successfully served its purpose (see: America's first black president, and these demographics that elected him), and that states like Texas and Alabama no longer deserved to be tarred by their past intolerance.

A very interesting new study to be published in The Journal of Politics makes clear, however, that Section 5 of the VRA—which is now effectively irrelevant—played a major role in boosting black political representation, and that its impact was ongoing. The study's authors, Paru R. Shah of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Melissa J. Marschall of Rice University, and Anirudh V. S. Ruhil of Ohio University, examined the racial makeup of city councils across the country between 1981 and 2006.

In that time, blacks made the largest gains on city councils in those areas covered by Section 5.

For example, in 1981, 552 towns and cities covered by Section 5 had at least one African American serving on the city council. By 2001, that number had risen to 1,004, an increase of 82 percent. In the rest of the country, by contrast, the share of cities with at least one black councilman inched up by just 3.3 percent (from 732 to 756). (The data in this study comes from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and the International City/County Manager Association.)

Section 5 appears to have worked just as intended, enabling the greatest gains in minority representation in precisely those places where blacks had the most ground to make up. The question now—and the one raised by the Supreme Court decision—is whether those gains have been complete. Or, as the authors pose it in the title of their paper, "Are we there yet?"

Their conclusion:

Our findings suggest that the VRA has been and continues to be an important tool in ensuring black descriptive representation, particularly in places with a legacy of racial intimidation and discrimination, and that it creates a context that intensifies the effects of voter strength, electoral structures, and council size. Thus, in response to the question, ‘‘Are we there yet,’’ our study would say no, but that with the help of the VRA, we are getting closer.

It should be noted that in the slow world of academic publishing, the authors wrote those words before the latest Supreme Court ruling.

Graphically, these charts from the study illustrate two vastly different trajectories over the past generation: Blacks experienced slow (and sometimes declining) gains on city councils in places not covered by Section 5, but they experienced tremendous gains in those places that were:

To be more specific, though, where did blacks experience the greatest gains? In small towns? In places that already had large black populations? The authors also spliced their data looking at the percentage of a city's black voting-age population. The result:

In places with majority black populations, coverage provides the least assistance. On the other hand, we find the steepest gains in covered cities where the black population is less than 20%, suggesting the VRA may be most important in places where black population size cannot, by itself, ensure black representation.

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All of this, the authors write, suggests that Section 5 of the VRA "has paid dividends to racial minorities that otherwise might not have resulted." And now that the law has been hobbled, minorities risk those gains.

In fact, the list of obstacles that can curtail minority political power is today longer, subtler and sometimes more insidious than it was a generation ago. And it includes policies—like the disenfranchisement of felons—that were never envisioned in 1965.

Some of the greatest evidence of the impact of the VRA has been seen in the months since June, as states formerly scrutinized under Section 5 have rushed to implement changes to voting laws that had been blocked under the VRA. This study now adds yet more evidence in the indisputable form of data.

       

Yale Students Are Living in Fear of a 'Poopetrator'

Yale students are officially living in fecal fear. An unknown suspect has been defecating on unattended laundry for the past few weeks, terrorizing the Ivy League campus. And with another, more public incident this morning, the "poopetrator" shows no signs of stopping.

The Yale Daily News reported that the "poopetrator," as he has been dubbed, has been desecrating students' laundry with feces, pee, and food waste at Yale's Saybrook residential college since early September. As the number of reported soilings increased, campus officials last week asked the local police to finally get to the bottom of the (fecal) matter. “We have asked our students not to leave their laundry unattended, the affected machines have been thoroughly disinfected, and we are actively seeking information about who the perpetrator might be,” Saybrook's Master Paul Hudak told the Yale Daily News.

Despite that police and administration presence, the poopetrator (or someone posing as one) apparently struck again early this morning. Students received an anonymous email at 3:35 a.m. alerting them to a clothesline of soiled clothing at the Berkeley residential college. The Yale Daily News compiled some unpleasant pictures of the stunt, which looks like more it would need more than one person to pull off.

[image error]

Stained shirts strung up on clotheslines have appeared outside Berkeley College. pic.twitter.com/O4sdErVtWz

— Yale Daily News (@yaledailynews) October 4, 2013

The Yale Poopetrator is an actual thing... http://t.co/o6Rm2VMjUU #wtf pic.twitter.com/l4leExOurc

— Laura Londoño (@LondonoLaura) October 4, 2013

This morning at 10:35 a.m., the same anonymous email account sent a message to the Yale Daily News saying “It’s still a good morning!” along with this picture of the clothesline in sunlight.

[image error]

There's no telling when this bizarre story will be flushed away, but in the meantime, students have been deeply affected by the crappy crisis. The Yale Daily News quoted students legitimately holding guard near laundry rooms, and one student said the poopetrator was “ruining people’s quality of life.” Another female student whose clothes had been desecrated spoke anonymously to the student tabloid Rumpus about her reaction to discovering the soiled clothing: "To be honest it was mostly pure unadulterated incredulity of the are-you-fucking-kidding-me variety," she said.

       

Let Us Now Pity Congress, Which Must Go Without Ice Cream in the Shutdown

Earlier this week, we shared our map of the government shutdown's effects by state, replete with curtailed food programs and cuts to Head Start programs. Now, a more harrowing tale: How the shutdown is affecting members of Congress.

The White House is serving turkey chili every day.

The New York Times reports that the government shutdown has reduced the staff at the executive mansion from more than 1,700 to fewer than 500. And many of those furloughed (or, in the parlance, not "excepted" from the shutdown) are service employees.

Which means that lunches aren't quite the affairs that they once were. "No more soup of the day, according to those still working in the kitchen," the paper notes. "To simplify, it will be turkey chili as long as the shutdown lasts."

Congressmembers have to eat boxed lunches — without ice cream!

The White House isn't the only place suffering from more limited lunch options. From Politico:

Another difference lawmakers might notice? Their lunches have been scaled back as well. The usually buffet-style lunches with ice cream were instead box lunches for the Senate GOP on Tuesday. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia said Senate Democrats had boxed lunches as well.

There are only two cafeterias still open on the Hill! But it gets worse.

Interns are in charge of vacuuming.

That story goes on to note that maintenance staff is also stretched thin, having to expand their duties substantially (even as they work without pay). Which has meant that the tasks get picked up by others.

During an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Thursday ostensibly about the shooting on Capitol Hill, Rep. Blake Farenthold of Texas told a story about what happened in his office.

My daughter was having lunch with my communications director, Meaghan Cronin, and we would send an intern to get a vacuum cleaner because there's no janitorial services during the government shutdown.

Yes, Farenthold's intern is now in charge of the sweeping. And if you weren't convinced that's scary, he went on.

I was immediately worried about where the rest of the staff was. Just about then, my daughter and Meaghan came bursting in the door. They were the second-to-last people who got let into the Cannon Building before the lockdown. They ran and came in. About 30 seconds later, somebody pounded on the door [Ed. – Gasp!] and it was our intern with a vacuum cleaner. [Ed. – Oh.] We let him in.

Senators are answering their own phones.

From a different Politico story about Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

"By God, I said the hell with it. We’re going to answer the phones," Manchin told a POLITICO reporter who dialed into his main office line. "When those meetings are over I grab the phones."

The story is accompanied by a photo of Manchin sitting at a desk talking on the phone.

Some Senators had to furlough staff.

It is largely up to individual departments and offices to determine when and if staff should be excepted from shutdown furloughs. Many Senate offices determined that much of their staff count was expendable for the time being. Others, like Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk, decided they weren't. From another Politico article:

Kirk said Thursday that he is keeping his entire staff in place in order to provide services to World War II veterans visiting Washington during the shutdown.

"It's because there are World War II guys that are coming in," Kirk said.

You may have heard about those guys.

Democrat Mark Levin of Michigan agreed. "His entire staff is essential, he said. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be working for him." A lot of Senate staffers who were furloughed probably feel pretty bad right now.

Not everyone gets drink discounts.

meanwhile Dino in DC offers 2-for-1 drinks to every fed employee except GOP House members http://t.co/WvoLLpUzMN pic.twitter.com/ixcYJQKeAx

— E McMorris-Santoro (@EvanMcSan) October 4, 2013

Photo: Other great moments in Congressional cafeteria history. (AP)

       

Now We Have Proof Reading Literary Fiction Makes You a Better Person

English teachers have long claimed reading books makes you a better person, maybe because their livelihoods have long depended on it. Now they've got proof, courtesy of the science wing.

But not just any books. Like the National Endowment for the Arts' recent survey, this study distinguishes, somewhat snobbishly, between literary fiction and—ahem—popular fiction. In other words, between what you read in college (DeLillo, Woolf, all the rest) and what you read in the waiting room (E. L. James and such). It's reading the former category, even for as little time as a few minutes, that makes you do better on psychology tests that measure empathy, social perception and emotional intelligence.

Put much more succinctly, reading good fiction makes you a better person than reading trashy books.

Here's how it works. The study, "Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind," was carried out at New York's New School for Social Research, where researchers paid participants to read excerpts for only a few minutes before taking computerized empathy tests, reports The New York Times. Some read literary fiction. Some read bestsellers (selections by Rosamunde Pilcher, Robert Heinlein, and Gillian Flynn). Some read nonfiction, taken from Smithsonian Magazine. Some read nothing. This was accompanied by four other experiments.

According to the study, the results clearly show that "reading literary fiction temporarily enhances [Theory of Mind]. More broadly, they suggest that ToM may be influenced by engagement with works of art." That's a big deal, in no small because of the remarkably small amount of time participants spent with these reading samples. And the explanation for it, if the researchers are correct, has much to do with what good writers say—and what they leave unsaid:

 Our contention is that literary fiction, which we consider to be both writerly and polyphonic, uniquely engages the psychological processes needed to gain access to characters’ subjective experiences. [ . . . ] Readers of literary fiction must draw on more flexible interpretive resources to infer the feelings and thoughts of characters. That is, they must engage ToM processes. Contrary to literary fiction, popular fiction, which is more readerly, tends to portray the world and characters as internally consistent and predictable. Therefore, it may reaffirm readers' expectations and so not promote ToM.

In other words, by forcing you to think, empathize, and assume instead of handing you prototype characters whose actions and personalities can be squarely understood, literary fiction is literally making you a more caring and emotionally intelligent person. 

Unfortunately, it might also be making you more of a snob. At press time, researchers have not quite indicated where literary elitism falls on the emotional intelligence spectrum. 

Photo by Stokkete via Shutterstock.

       

The Problem With 'The Avengers' Casting Scarlet Witch as a Blonde

The Scarlet Witch, a.k.a. Wanda Maximoff, is the latest addition to The Avengers sequel. In the comics, Wanda is Roma and Jewish, and fans are having some trouble accepting that the role went to the talented but very blonde actress Elizabeth Olsen. Samuel L. Jackson (accidentally?) spilled the beans on the casting decision in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. Fans of the comics, for the most part, have nothing against Olsen and are impressed by her acting ability. What they aren't impressed by is that Marvel has no apparent regard for keeping her character true to her comic origins. 

"So basically we're slapping the name on a character that bares no resemblance to her comic book self ... She's not Roma. She's not Jewish. She's not a mutant. She's another [Joss] Whedon OC [original character]," a commenter on The Mary Sue blog wrote this past August when Olsen was rumored to be in contention. "Considering that the Marvel has had zero women of color, and a very limited number of men of color, in their movies, I find it pretty terrible that they took a character who in canon is Roma and whitewashed her," another added.

And here's another who believes that this casting has ruined the character:

Casting a white blonde woman for the part of Wanda, who is half Romani, half Jewish and whose history as a Romani person and as part of a family of holocaust survivors is an important part of her character. Well done Hollywood, you've completely ruined another character minorities look up to.

Olsen's casting also affects another Avengers's character, Quicksilver. They're twins, and it could mean that another blonde-haired, blue-eyed actor is playing a Jewish, Roma character. 

The unavoidable question with Olsen's casting then becomes: did Marvel miss out on an opportunity to bring diversity into its all-white male-dominated franchise or is this a more troubling indication that Marvel just isn't open to the stories of minorities?

In the comics, a lot of time was spent establishing Maximoff's ethnic identity. According to canon, she is Magento's daughter, and is raised by a Roma family in Transia, a fictional European country flanked by the real-life countries Macedonia, Romania and Serbia. "An ethnic group that can trace its origins back to ancient migrations from India, the Roma live primarily in Eastern and Central Europe and are sometimes known pejoratively as  'gypsies'" Time explains.

And because of her parents' Roma ancestry, they are often persecuted and treated unfairly— a problem that remains today. The first displays of Maximoff's powers occurred when she was fleeing a couple of racist, prejudiced mobs. In that sense, she's one of Marvel's characters who was hated for something she couldn't control—her heritage. 

The driving force in comic books is that these heroes are essentially minorities themselves, and they provided an alternative contrast to kids who didn't see themselves in mainstream pop culture. It's why you have characters like the Scarlet Witch battling against Roma prejudice, Storm, who was a black superhero at a time when black heroes were scarce, and Dust, a relatively new X-Woman, who battles bad guys in niqāb. Staying true to these heroes' identities is important, not only to comics, but to the culture at large.