Lily Salter's Blog, page 990
October 6, 2015
Dating while depressed: Awkward hook-ups, one-night stands and sketchy family boundaries paint a messed-up portrait of “Casual”
In the first episode of Hulu’s new original series “Casual,” debuting Wednesday, a man stumbles out of bed in the middle of the night, trying to shake off a bizarre dream. He leaves his companion in bed—a woman he picked up the evening before, who will disappear as soon as she wakes up, though she doesn’t know that yet—and leaves the bedroom, perhaps to get a glass of water. He doesn’t make it far, though. His somewhat incredible Los Angeles house—one of those brilliantly designed structures that seem to be built in the hopes they will make it into a movie—has several plate-glass windows at the back, overlooking the backyard, which includes a hot tub. A teenage couple is having sex in the hot tub—his hot tub. As he watches, they switch positions. The girl has long hair and a nude bra. He considers this for a moment, and then returns to his bedroom. It takes a few minutes to become clear, but the man—Alex (Tommy Dewey) is in fact the girl’s uncle, and her recently divorced mother is asleep just down the hall from Alex and his one-night-stand. Sixteen-year-old Laura (Tara Lynne Barr) is not too bothered by her uncle spotting her; after all, the next morning, she teases him for the exploits of his previous night, as the one-night stand in question slips out the door. And though her mother, Valerie (Michaela Watkins) might be a little less aware of Laura’s sex life, she’s got plans for the evening that are just as strangely intimate: She and her brother Alex have both made first dates, online, for the same restaurant on the same night. Alex makes a point of telling Valerie how excited he is about tonight before she and Laura leave for work/school. You’d be forgiven for being a bit confused about the family dynamics. I spent the first few episodes wondering why it looked like the endgame of “Casual” was for Valerie and Alex to fall in love with each other. The show’s defining element—that of a very intimate family trying to get their lives together, mostly by being very open about their sex lives—is also its most confusing. “Casual” gets that, at least a little bit. Later in the episode, as Laura initiates sex with her boyfriend Emile again, he stops her, protesting the proximity of her family: “It’s just weird, you all living in this house together.” “It’s not weird,” she retorts. “He and my mom are best friends. And he’s really depressed.” “He seems alright,” Emile responds. “Exactly,” she says, before pulling her shirt over her head. “Look, do you want to have sex or not?” Literally seconds later, her mother and uncle walk in. Emile is, naturally, a little put out. He is just the first person to feel a bit violated by the Val/Alex/Laura trinity; he is far from the last. “Casual” is a weird show, and at first, it’s not entirely easy to go with its erratic flow. It’s a half-hour comedy that borrows the aesthetics of indie film to tell a story that’s kind of about dating, kind of about depression, and necessarily about family—like HBO’s “Togetherness,” FX’s “You’re The Worst,” and Amazon’s “Transparent,” all set in Los Angeles. It doesn’t quite have the craft, the comedy, or the driving plot of these three, though; in Hulu's part-network, part-digital model, the series will drop one episode at a time on Wednesdays for the rest of the fall, meaning binge-watching will only be possible in 2016. A half-hour every week might make it hard to understand "Casual." What saves the show—really, what makes the show matter at all, in the first few episodes—is Watkins’ Valerie, who is the only member of this odd three-person family that at first seems at all relatable. When we meet her, she is sitting stiffly on a borrowed bed, her feet so carefully planted on the floor that it seems like her posture is all that’s keeping her from falling to pieces. Next to her is neatly bound stack of legal documents—her divorce papers. And though she does manage to get up, change, and go to work—that day, and every day—she embodies the devastation of her life in every movement. Watkins is typically a comedian—in “Trophy Wife,” she was the scene-stealing second wife, Jackie, and she’s had smaller parts in “Wet Hot American Summer: First Day Of Camp,” “Enlightened,” “Veep,” “New Girl,” and “Transparent.” In “Casual,” she gets a chance to be a lead in a show that is not exactly dramatic, but not exactly comic, either. It’s a revelation. As strange as “Casual”’s premise is, at first, it becomes clearer and clearer that it’s supposed to be strange, because these are three people who have washed up on the shore of normal relationships. The boundaries between Val, Alex, and Laura are messed up because a lot of things about them are messed up. Executive producer Jason Reitman has built a career on subtle character dramas that explore sociopolitical issues—“Up In The Air” was not-so-secretly about the recession, “Thank You For Smoking,” about corporatism and greed, and “Young Adult,” about the destructive fantasies of an addict. (It’s best not to speak of “Labor Day.”) His style is evident in “Casual,” but the real vision here is that of Zander Lehmann, an almost total newcomer (he did apparently have a small acting role in the seminal film “Airheads”). Reitman’s “Men, Women & Children” was notoriously awful—our own Andrew O’Hehir called it “dire, heavy-handed, self-congratulatory and overwrought”—and that was because it engaged in a lot of hand-wringing about what technology is doing to human relationships. Lehmann is similarly interested—and occasionally, similarly horrified—but thankfully, steers clear of most of the moralizing. It still makes mistakes. “Casual” flirts with being intolerable, as any show that fixates on the emotional disconnection and poorly defined purpose of the upper-middle class would. I recognized a bit too quickly the story beats where Alex dreams about flooding, Valerie doesn’t know how to text, and Laura develops a crush on a teacher. This type of show relies on storytelling about the inessential, inescapable hiccups of being a person, which backfires when you don’t like the person. Though Laura and Valerie eventually become emotional cornerstones of the story, by mid-season, Alex is still a perplexing character that hasn’t earned his interiority. It seems we must zero in on the emotional stuntedness of an extremely handsome, independently wealthy, multitalented white man, just to keep the universe in balance; it doesn’t help that off the three leads, it’s Dewey as Alex that is the unfortunate weakest. But—in the manner of these subtle, emotionally aware dramas—“Casual” draws you in. The show is perplexing, but as evidenced by the care it shows for Laura’s fragile relationship with her father, or the siblings’ devotion to each other in the face of their egotistical, manipulative mother (Frances Conroy)—it has a poetry to it, too.
October 5, 2015
11 of “Saturday Night Live’s” most hilarious election-year sketches
Presidential elections are always gold mines of comedy riches for the writers of "Saturday Night Live," but this year’s Trump-led pack must be like a dream. "SNL" has a long history of making politicians into recognizable caricatures whose foibles and follies are played up for laughs. This election season, the heavy comedic lifting has already been done by the candidates themselves. To welcome the show's 41st season, here’s a look at some of the best political sketches featured in its more than four decades on air. There are plenty more where these came from, but among the list that follows are 11 moments both classic and overlooked, chosen from both the early days of "SNL" and more recent seasons. 1. Palin-Hillary Press Conference, 2008. The instant Sarah Palin appeared on the political scene, with her "Aw, shucks" style and word salad interview answers, she was destined for comedic roasting. Tina Fey had already departed "SNL" for "30 Rock," but she so thoroughly looked the part that it only made sense for her to return and take on the role. Though she only appeared as Palin in a handful of skits, they remain among the most memorable — and widely watched — political sketches in the show’s history, and researchers claim a little thing called “The Fey Effect” may have helped keep McCain out of the White House. While this sketch mocking Palin’s famously poor showing during an interview with Katie Couric is equally hilarious, the skit below edged it out thanks to the presence of the now iconic misquote, “I can see Russia from my house." 2. Ronald Reagan: Mastermind, 1986. As the real-life Reagan feigned ignorance of the Iran-Contra affair and kept up his grandfatherly public image, "SNL" offered this alternate take on the president as a ruthless political puppet master behind the scenes. Phil Hartman, one of the show’s most prolific talents, is pitch-perfect as a Jekyll-and-Hyde Reagan who, depending on who’s in the room, switches between the kindly Gipper to a hotheaded genius mastermind. It’s very nearly impossible not to laugh when Hartman’s Reagan, his evil scheming interrupted by a photo op with a Girl Scout, shouts, “This is the part of the job I hate!” 3. A Message from President Gerald Ford, 1976. Chevy Chase — an "SNL" cast member only for its inaugural season — portrayed Gerald Ford as a bumbling klutz who spent most of his time falling down and being confused by relatively easy concepts. In this sketch, Chase’s Ford mucks up a call between Kissinger and Anwar Sadat, mistakes a cup of water for a telephone and effectively ends up, as always, in a heap on the floor. 4. George H.W. Bush Gives Debate Advice to George W. Bush, 2000. Two of "SNL’s" most iconic Bushes — Dana Carvey as George Sr. and Will Ferrell as George Jr. — appear in this sketch in which a short-tempered 41 attempts to educate his son on how to handle himself in a presidential debate. Even by 2000, Ferrell had perfected the image of Bush he would go on popularize — a goofy, earnest, dimwitted frat boy oblivious to how far in over his head he is. 5. Undecided Voter, 2012. Every four years, in the weeks before the general election, the media and pollsters spend an inordinate amount of time talking with “undecided voters.” You know who I'm talking about: those who claim they haven’t yet made up their minds despite vast amounts of available information explaining the polar opposite platforms of the two candidates. In late September 2012, "SNL" parodied these holdouts, highlighting the kind of questions that might remain for someone who could possibly still be on the fence so late in the game. Questions like "When is the election?" "What are the names of the two people running?" and "Who is the president right now?" 6. Ask President Carter, 1977. Jimmy Carter: A man so of-the-people that "SNL" depicted him as prepared to talk a postal worker through the steps required to use an automated letter-sorting machine and able to help a teenager mellow out during a bad acid trip. “You did some ‘orange sunshine,’ Peter,” Carter, played as unflappably cool by a very young Dan Aykroyd, tells the young caller. “Relax, stay inside and listen to some music, OK? Do you have any Allman Brothers?” Bill Murray as Walter Cronkite also features prominently. 7. James Carville on the Tea Party, 2010. Bill Hader’s most popular character may have been Stefon, but he is an astounding impressionist — the kind of guy who morphs into every new persona, leaving barely a trace of himself behind. Among these was Democratic political operative James Carville, who became a recurring character on "Weekend Update." Hader managed to make the Ragin’ Cajun more colorful than ever, and full of pretty awesome zingers. “Tell me something,” he asks rhetorically of Tea Partyers. “Which Founding Father wore the tri-color hat with an Orlando Magic jersey?” 8. 2012 Town Hall Debate: Obama vs. Romney. Barack Obama (Jay Pharoah) and Mitt Romney (Jason Sudeikis) duke it out — figuratively and, at moments, very nearly literally — in "SNL’s" take on the contentious 2012 second presidential debate. The show also took a few comedic jabs at the town hall’s audience of “82 undecided voters from the Long Island area,” with Candy Crowley (Aidy Bryant) suggesting questions were “selected based on the severity of their accents.” Tom Hanks shows up in a cameo that provides one of the skit’s biggest laughs. 9. Clinton Visits McDonald’s, 1992. In a 1992 piece on the eating habits of Bill Clinton, the New York Times wrote that the president-elect was engaged in a “battle of the bulge” largely resulting from a love of fast food and visits to his hometown “fat factories.” In this classic "SNL" sketch, Phil Hartman's Clinton explains foreign policy through mouthfuls of other people’s McDonald’s. (At one point, Hartman has so much food in his mouth he nearly breaks into a fit of laughter.) Chris Rock, a cast member for three seasons, appears briefly at the start of the sketch. 10. Dad and Son Go Hunting, 2000. Another skit pairing Dana Carvey and Will Ferrell as junior and senior Bush. This time, the two are on a hunting trip in the woods, where Bush 41 tries to have a serious conversation with his son about the enormity of the task before him. Predictably, it does not work out well. 11. Al Gore Visits The West Wing, 2002. One of my favorite "SNL" skits of all time, political or otherwise. Al Gore, on a tour of the set of "The West Wing," gets a little too comfortable sitting at the president’s desk and pretending to be the Commander-in-Chief. The writing here is brilliant, the cameos (Martin Sheen, Allison Janney, John Spencer, Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff all appear) are great and the acting is fantastic. Extra kudos to Al Gore for so gamely playing along with the whole thing.
Presidential elections are always gold mines of comedy riches for the writers of "Saturday Night Live," but this year’s Trump-led pack must be like a dream. "SNL" has a long history of making politicians into recognizable caricatures whose foibles and follies are played up for laughs. This election season, the heavy comedic lifting has already been done by the candidates themselves. To welcome the show's 41st season, here’s a look at some of the best political sketches featured in its more than four decades on air. There are plenty more where these came from, but among the list that follows are 11 moments both classic and overlooked, chosen from both the early days of "SNL" and more recent seasons. 1. Palin-Hillary Press Conference, 2008. The instant Sarah Palin appeared on the political scene, with her "Aw, shucks" style and word salad interview answers, she was destined for comedic roasting. Tina Fey had already departed "SNL" for "30 Rock," but she so thoroughly looked the part that it only made sense for her to return and take on the role. Though she only appeared as Palin in a handful of skits, they remain among the most memorable — and widely watched — political sketches in the show’s history, and researchers claim a little thing called “The Fey Effect” may have helped keep McCain out of the White House. While this sketch mocking Palin’s famously poor showing during an interview with Katie Couric is equally hilarious, the skit below edged it out thanks to the presence of the now iconic misquote, “I can see Russia from my house." 2. Ronald Reagan: Mastermind, 1986. As the real-life Reagan feigned ignorance of the Iran-Contra affair and kept up his grandfatherly public image, "SNL" offered this alternate take on the president as a ruthless political puppet master behind the scenes. Phil Hartman, one of the show’s most prolific talents, is pitch-perfect as a Jekyll-and-Hyde Reagan who, depending on who’s in the room, switches between the kindly Gipper to a hotheaded genius mastermind. It’s very nearly impossible not to laugh when Hartman’s Reagan, his evil scheming interrupted by a photo op with a Girl Scout, shouts, “This is the part of the job I hate!” 3. A Message from President Gerald Ford, 1976. Chevy Chase — an "SNL" cast member only for its inaugural season — portrayed Gerald Ford as a bumbling klutz who spent most of his time falling down and being confused by relatively easy concepts. In this sketch, Chase’s Ford mucks up a call between Kissinger and Anwar Sadat, mistakes a cup of water for a telephone and effectively ends up, as always, in a heap on the floor. 4. George H.W. Bush Gives Debate Advice to George W. Bush, 2000. Two of "SNL’s" most iconic Bushes — Dana Carvey as George Sr. and Will Ferrell as George Jr. — appear in this sketch in which a short-tempered 41 attempts to educate his son on how to handle himself in a presidential debate. Even by 2000, Ferrell had perfected the image of Bush he would go on popularize — a goofy, earnest, dimwitted frat boy oblivious to how far in over his head he is. 5. Undecided Voter, 2012. Every four years, in the weeks before the general election, the media and pollsters spend an inordinate amount of time talking with “undecided voters.” You know who I'm talking about: those who claim they haven’t yet made up their minds despite vast amounts of available information explaining the polar opposite platforms of the two candidates. In late September 2012, "SNL" parodied these holdouts, highlighting the kind of questions that might remain for someone who could possibly still be on the fence so late in the game. Questions like "When is the election?" "What are the names of the two people running?" and "Who is the president right now?" 6. Ask President Carter, 1977. Jimmy Carter: A man so of-the-people that "SNL" depicted him as prepared to talk a postal worker through the steps required to use an automated letter-sorting machine and able to help a teenager mellow out during a bad acid trip. “You did some ‘orange sunshine,’ Peter,” Carter, played as unflappably cool by a very young Dan Aykroyd, tells the young caller. “Relax, stay inside and listen to some music, OK? Do you have any Allman Brothers?” Bill Murray as Walter Cronkite also features prominently. 7. James Carville on the Tea Party, 2010. Bill Hader’s most popular character may have been Stefon, but he is an astounding impressionist — the kind of guy who morphs into every new persona, leaving barely a trace of himself behind. Among these was Democratic political operative James Carville, who became a recurring character on "Weekend Update." Hader managed to make the Ragin’ Cajun more colorful than ever, and full of pretty awesome zingers. “Tell me something,” he asks rhetorically of Tea Partyers. “Which Founding Father wore the tri-color hat with an Orlando Magic jersey?” 8. 2012 Town Hall Debate: Obama vs. Romney. Barack Obama (Jay Pharoah) and Mitt Romney (Jason Sudeikis) duke it out — figuratively and, at moments, very nearly literally — in "SNL’s" take on the contentious 2012 second presidential debate. The show also took a few comedic jabs at the town hall’s audience of “82 undecided voters from the Long Island area,” with Candy Crowley (Aidy Bryant) suggesting questions were “selected based on the severity of their accents.” Tom Hanks shows up in a cameo that provides one of the skit’s biggest laughs. 9. Clinton Visits McDonald’s, 1992. In a 1992 piece on the eating habits of Bill Clinton, the New York Times wrote that the president-elect was engaged in a “battle of the bulge” largely resulting from a love of fast food and visits to his hometown “fat factories.” In this classic "SNL" sketch, Phil Hartman's Clinton explains foreign policy through mouthfuls of other people’s McDonald’s. (At one point, Hartman has so much food in his mouth he nearly breaks into a fit of laughter.) Chris Rock, a cast member for three seasons, appears briefly at the start of the sketch. 10. Dad and Son Go Hunting, 2000. Another skit pairing Dana Carvey and Will Ferrell as junior and senior Bush. This time, the two are on a hunting trip in the woods, where Bush 41 tries to have a serious conversation with his son about the enormity of the task before him. Predictably, it does not work out well. 11. Al Gore Visits The West Wing, 2002. One of my favorite "SNL" skits of all time, political or otherwise. Al Gore, on a tour of the set of "The West Wing," gets a little too comfortable sitting at the president’s desk and pretending to be the Commander-in-Chief. The writing here is brilliant, the cameos (Martin Sheen, Allison Janney, John Spencer, Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff all appear) are great and the acting is fantastic. Extra kudos to Al Gore for so gamely playing along with the whole thing. 
Racist Facebook users relentlessly mocked a 3-year-old black child — then the internet struck back
Internet trolls rarely make sense but they are usually tucked away to the dark corners of comment sections or pass themselves off as eggs on Twitter. But now we've reached the juncture when racist internet trolls are so shameless that they freely use their Facebook profiles and full names to spout their disgusting nonsense. That was the case when a defenseless and rather adorable three-year-old boy became the center of racist and abusive Facebook comments after a white Georgia man decided to sneak a selfie with the child and post it to his page for all his trollish friends to lampoon, implying that the child was a slave and referring to him as “sambo.” Zellie Imani of the Atlanta Black Star first reported on the Facebook post by Geris Hilton -- real name Gerod Roth -- and the ensuing backlash: “I’ll feed you, but first let me take a selfie,” wrote one of Hilton's Facebook friends. “I didn’t know you were a slave owner,” wrote a commenter named Emily Irene Red. "Send him back dude those f--kers are expensive," another Facebook user, by the name of Dylan Kleeman, reportedly wrote. Commenter Tim Zheng described the young child as "feral." But before long, Black Twitter (it's a thing -- the LA Times has even dedicated a reporter to it) got a hold of Hilton's post and proceeded with swift social media justice: https://twitter.com/DavidGrapeJuice/s...
help me find out their facebook addresses or any info at all...THIS is why I am what I am... Posted by G Devan Smith on Thursday, October 1, 2015The boys mother,
My iPhone is ruining my life: I’m guilty of “phubbing” my partner, and I can’t unplug
If my boyfriend and I ever break up, it will probably be because of my cellphone. My incessant staring at my iPhone has caused more fights between us than any other topic. Yes, I admit it, I’m a phubber, a phone snubber. According to a study in the journal Computers in Human Behavior this is a major problem. “Partner phubbing (Pphubbing) can be best understood as the extent to which an individual uses or is distracted by his/her cell phone while in the company of his/her relationship partner.” As summarized by the Huffington Post, the study found, “The results found 46 percent of respondents reported feeling phone snubbed by their partner and nearly 23 percent said it caused an issue in their relationship. More than 36 percent of participants reported feeling depressed at least some of the time.” I took a quiz at Health.com to find out whether phubbing is ruining my life, and got a resounding yes. I answered in the affirmative to most of their statements, such as “During a typical mealtime that my partner and I spend together, my partner pulls out and checks his/her cell phone,” “My partner keeps his or her cell phone in their hand when he or she is with me” and “My partner glances at his/her cell phone when talking to me”—but I’m the partner in this case. The latter is an accusation my boyfriend told me just last week was hurtful to him—yet it’s hard for me to stop. I could blame my job, but that wouldn’t tell the whole story. As a freelance writer who pitches story ideas to my editors, part of my workload involves researching what’s happening this very second, and trying to be among the first to come up with a unique idea around it, the oft-maligned “hot take.” But in addition to that responsibility, scrolling through my inbox and Facebook updates makes me feel connected to the world around me. When I don’t check my phone for a few hours at a time (which I admit rarely happens, save for when I’m sleeping), I start to wonder what’s happening in those spaces when I’m not looking. Perhaps it’s a type of scarcity mentality—if I’m not available to respond, or at least, absorb, the latest emails or status updates, I fear that I will never be in the loop, or that friends and editors will stop contacting me if I don’t get back to them immediately. My need to know has only increased since I moved away from most of my closest friends, trading Brooklyn for New Jersey in 2013. Whereas I at least used to see my friends in person occasionally, and might run into them, and got social engagement by my daily coffee shop visits, I now spend 90 percent of my weekdays home alone, which I admit is often lonely. Being connected online helps. I now find out what my friends are up to primarily through social media, rather than chatting with them in person. So yes, I’m snubbing my boyfriend who’s sitting on the coach with me, but I’m not actually trying to be anti-social. I’m attempting to be a good friend by checking out baby photos and seeing what everyone else is eating/thinking/doing. My boyfriend asked me recently how long I could give up my cell phone for. Rather than give him any quantifiable amount of time, I sat there thinking, Why would I want to do that? While I do understand the impulse to temporarily unplug, the idea of doing so on a regular or extended basis unnerves me. It’s not just that I fear I’d miss out on writing jobs; it’s that I fear I’d miss out on life. I realize as I type those words that “life” does extend beyond the internet, but it can easily feel like it doesn’t, especially when there’s always one more thing I want to see or read or check online. I even used my phone during a recent weeknight movie date. I allowed myself that taboo activity by telling myself I just wanted to briefly check my email, but the truth is, there’s nothing that couldn’t have waited two hours. This isn’t a new social phenomenon. In 2013, a “Stop Phubbing” campaign by Australian graduate student Alex Haigh gained traction. According to Time, “Though the movement’s website is decorated with faux statistics–like ‘92% of repeat phubbers go on to be politicians’–his message addresses people’s real tendency to stare at phones like they’re going to produce winning lottery numbers.” The same article highlighted a University of Essex study on mobile phones’ influence on face-to-face conversation quality in which researches found that phones “may inhibit relationship formation by reducing individuals’ engagement and attention for their partners, and discouraging partners’ perceptions that any self-disclosure had been met with care and empathy.” Ouch. Just this week in The New York Times, "Reclaiming Conversation" author Shelly Turkle urged readers to engage in “whole person conversation,” the kind that involves you and another person or people, not you, a device, and human beings. “[I[f things go quiet for a while you look deeper, you don’t text another friend. You take the moment to read your friend more closely or look at something you haven’t attended to before. Perhaps you look into her face or pay attention to her body language. Or you simply allow the silence,” she advised. In an earlier Times piece titled starkly “Stop Googling. Let’s Talk.,” Turkle summarized the status quo as “These days, we feel less of a need to hide the fact that we are dividing our attention.” I agree that not only is phone use rampant, we aren’t trying to hide it. Why would we, when almost everyone around us is doing the same thing? Another trick I’ve conned myself into believing is that I wasn’t being rude because I read interesting tidbits to my boyfriend while I’m perusing my phone. While this is sometimes true, I know, because he’s told me, he’d rather have my undivided attention than know about whatever story du jour I’m sharing with him. I admit that I sometimes welcome hanging out with friends where we both feel comfortable whipping out our phones should the need arise—and I’m using a very loose definition of “need.” We are able to simultaneously have conversations and use our phones without either party feeling snubbed, because we’re engaging in an act of seamless multitasking. I truly believe that kids growing up now are going to find ways to incorporate their technology use into their daily conversations and other tasks in ways that aren’t socially awkward. I admit I do have a problem, and plan to try my best to wean myself away from being glued to my phone beyond the workday. Yes, it provides plenty of conversational fodder, but at the expense of making my partner feel neglected, which is too high of a price. If I don’t respond to your email or Tweet for a few hours—or ever—you’ll know why.If my boyfriend and I ever break up, it will probably be because of my cellphone. My incessant staring at my iPhone has caused more fights between us than any other topic. Yes, I admit it, I’m a phubber, a phone snubber. According to a study in the journal Computers in Human Behavior this is a major problem. “Partner phubbing (Pphubbing) can be best understood as the extent to which an individual uses or is distracted by his/her cell phone while in the company of his/her relationship partner.” As summarized by the Huffington Post, the study found, “The results found 46 percent of respondents reported feeling phone snubbed by their partner and nearly 23 percent said it caused an issue in their relationship. More than 36 percent of participants reported feeling depressed at least some of the time.” I took a quiz at Health.com to find out whether phubbing is ruining my life, and got a resounding yes. I answered in the affirmative to most of their statements, such as “During a typical mealtime that my partner and I spend together, my partner pulls out and checks his/her cell phone,” “My partner keeps his or her cell phone in their hand when he or she is with me” and “My partner glances at his/her cell phone when talking to me”—but I’m the partner in this case. The latter is an accusation my boyfriend told me just last week was hurtful to him—yet it’s hard for me to stop. I could blame my job, but that wouldn’t tell the whole story. As a freelance writer who pitches story ideas to my editors, part of my workload involves researching what’s happening this very second, and trying to be among the first to come up with a unique idea around it, the oft-maligned “hot take.” But in addition to that responsibility, scrolling through my inbox and Facebook updates makes me feel connected to the world around me. When I don’t check my phone for a few hours at a time (which I admit rarely happens, save for when I’m sleeping), I start to wonder what’s happening in those spaces when I’m not looking. Perhaps it’s a type of scarcity mentality—if I’m not available to respond, or at least, absorb, the latest emails or status updates, I fear that I will never be in the loop, or that friends and editors will stop contacting me if I don’t get back to them immediately. My need to know has only increased since I moved away from most of my closest friends, trading Brooklyn for New Jersey in 2013. Whereas I at least used to see my friends in person occasionally, and might run into them, and got social engagement by my daily coffee shop visits, I now spend 90 percent of my weekdays home alone, which I admit is often lonely. Being connected online helps. I now find out what my friends are up to primarily through social media, rather than chatting with them in person. So yes, I’m snubbing my boyfriend who’s sitting on the coach with me, but I’m not actually trying to be anti-social. I’m attempting to be a good friend by checking out baby photos and seeing what everyone else is eating/thinking/doing. My boyfriend asked me recently how long I could give up my cell phone for. Rather than give him any quantifiable amount of time, I sat there thinking, Why would I want to do that? While I do understand the impulse to temporarily unplug, the idea of doing so on a regular or extended basis unnerves me. It’s not just that I fear I’d miss out on writing jobs; it’s that I fear I’d miss out on life. I realize as I type those words that “life” does extend beyond the internet, but it can easily feel like it doesn’t, especially when there’s always one more thing I want to see or read or check online. I even used my phone during a recent weeknight movie date. I allowed myself that taboo activity by telling myself I just wanted to briefly check my email, but the truth is, there’s nothing that couldn’t have waited two hours. This isn’t a new social phenomenon. In 2013, a “Stop Phubbing” campaign by Australian graduate student Alex Haigh gained traction. According to Time, “Though the movement’s website is decorated with faux statistics–like ‘92% of repeat phubbers go on to be politicians’–his message addresses people’s real tendency to stare at phones like they’re going to produce winning lottery numbers.” The same article highlighted a University of Essex study on mobile phones’ influence on face-to-face conversation quality in which researches found that phones “may inhibit relationship formation by reducing individuals’ engagement and attention for their partners, and discouraging partners’ perceptions that any self-disclosure had been met with care and empathy.” Ouch. Just this week in The New York Times, "Reclaiming Conversation" author Shelly Turkle urged readers to engage in “whole person conversation,” the kind that involves you and another person or people, not you, a device, and human beings. “[I[f things go quiet for a while you look deeper, you don’t text another friend. You take the moment to read your friend more closely or look at something you haven’t attended to before. Perhaps you look into her face or pay attention to her body language. Or you simply allow the silence,” she advised. In an earlier Times piece titled starkly “Stop Googling. Let’s Talk.,” Turkle summarized the status quo as “These days, we feel less of a need to hide the fact that we are dividing our attention.” I agree that not only is phone use rampant, we aren’t trying to hide it. Why would we, when almost everyone around us is doing the same thing? Another trick I’ve conned myself into believing is that I wasn’t being rude because I read interesting tidbits to my boyfriend while I’m perusing my phone. While this is sometimes true, I know, because he’s told me, he’d rather have my undivided attention than know about whatever story du jour I’m sharing with him. I admit that I sometimes welcome hanging out with friends where we both feel comfortable whipping out our phones should the need arise—and I’m using a very loose definition of “need.” We are able to simultaneously have conversations and use our phones without either party feeling snubbed, because we’re engaging in an act of seamless multitasking. I truly believe that kids growing up now are going to find ways to incorporate their technology use into their daily conversations and other tasks in ways that aren’t socially awkward. I admit I do have a problem, and plan to try my best to wean myself away from being glued to my phone beyond the workday. Yes, it provides plenty of conversational fodder, but at the expense of making my partner feel neglected, which is too high of a price. If I don’t respond to your email or Tweet for a few hours—or ever—you’ll know why.
Reboots done right: How “The Affair” and “The Leftovers” played to their strengths and wiped out their biggest flaws
Last year, audiences had mixed responses to the season's buzziest Sunday night cable offerings, with Showtime’s “The Affair” and HBO’s “The Leftovers” winning both staunch admirers and vehement detractors over the course of their initial runs. While some praised “The Leftovers” for its inventive storytelling and evocative performances, others found it overly gloomy and cryptic to the point of being inaccessible. Likewise, while “The Affair” wracked up Golden Globes for best drama series and for lead actress Ruth Wilson, many critics seemed to grow tired of the self-indulgent central romance. I was on the fence about both: intrigued and cautiously optimistic, yet not entirely invested in the stories the creators were trying to tell. But tuning in to the second season premieres of both shows last night offered pleasant surprises. Both shows have expanded their narrative scope — new perspectives in “The Affair,” new characters and a new location in “The Leftovers" — in ways that seem to respond directly to some of the criticisms of their first seasons. While reboots on TV shows are common (“Homeland,” another returning drama, seems to be trying to wipe the chalkboard clean pretty much every season), both of these shows seem unusually cued in to what it was that made them special -- and, subsequently, what they can afford to leave behind. Let’s start with “The Leftovers.” In season two, the show trades Mapleton, New York, for Jarden, Texas (aka Miracle), a town that miraculously didn’t lose any of its inhabitants in The Sudden Departure. It also introduces a new central family, the Murphys (the Garveys end up moving in next door, but not until much later in the episode). From the beginning, the difference in tone from last season is striking. Gone are season one's gloomy credits, which depicted figures, in the style of a Renaissance painting, being ripped from one another’s arms to the strains of a mournful violin backdrop. This season, Iris DeMent’s folksy, buoyant track “Let the Mystery Be" soundtracks a series of candid snapshots of friends and families: typical scenes of daily life, but for the fact that in each image, figures are missing, rendered only as translucent silhouettes. (The song’s title, meanwhile, seems like a wink and nod to Damon Lindelof’s repeated insistence that he’s not looking to “solve” the Departure.) In a recent Vulture interview, Lindelof explains that he changed the title sequence partly in response to online backlash (as the “Lost” creator points out, he is no stranger to being pilloried online for his narrative choices) but also because it is more self-aware, as well as “tonally more in line with what I want the show to be.” As Lindelof explains, the new title sequence “can express seriousness and loss. But it can also express other ideas. It can have smiling faces, as opposed to anguished faces. It can have real faces, as opposed to painted faces.” This openness to new ideas is evident throughout the episode. While Mapleton was a living mausoleum, a town whose inhabitants walked around sunken from the weight of their grief, there is a lightness to the early scenes in Miracle. Evie Murphy frolics with friends in a lake. Buses of tourists come to revel in the town’s optimism. There is laughter, singing, electronic music. Season one of “The Leftovers” was not just about loss but also its flip-side — finding a way to start over — and season two appears much more concerned with exploring that latter element, at least to start with. Of course, it’s not all rainbows and sunshine. The premiere ends with a tragedy, while an ambitious, wordless, nine-minute opening sequence set in the caveman era will certainly irk those who found the first season a little too Terrence Malicky for their liking. But the most interesting aspect of “The Leftovers” is how the high-concept premise can be brought down to a human level, and how the global cataclysm of the Sudden Departure serves as a springboard to explore personal stories of loss, as well as to interrogate how human beings adapt and find meaning in the wake of tragedy. In broadening the show's world and introducing new characters with new outlooks, the show’s innovative premise stands to be built out in an even more creative and compelling way. “The Affair” has also undergone an expansion in scope. While season one told the stories of an affair from the perspective of its two participants, Noah (Dominic West) and Alison (Ruth Wilson), season two expands to include the perspective of the jilted exes Helen (Maura Tierney) and Cole (Joshua Jackson). Season one was at its best when it used the "Rashomon" effect to explore the nuances of memory and perception that shape our interactions with others, and at its worse when it devolved into cheap shock-and-awe melodrama. The whole murder business still has to play out, but the premiere was much more focused on the psychological ripple effects of Alison and Noah’s affair than last season’s tedious game of Who Killed Scotty Lockhart. What's more, by bringing Helen and Cole into the fold, the show seems committed to the nuanced human drama that made the show so compelling at its start. As creator Sarah Treem told THR, “the whole idea of the first season is that [Noah and Alison] could be together, so they were always on opposite sides of a field looking into the middle trying to understand each other. But now the characters that are actually estranged from each other are no longer Noah and Alison, they are Helen and Noah. Then it became clear that a lot of the storytelling — the paradox that is the engine of the show — was going to lie in the relationships between the estranged characters, which are now the ex-spouses.” While it's still early, the season premiere adeptly broadened the scope of the show and refocused itself by putting these complex relationship dynamics at the forefront. Bringing Helen in as a narrator was a particularly smart choice, partly because Maura Tierney is such an appealing actress (indeed, both Helen and Cole are arguably more likable than their exes), but also because the character feels so realistic, and her grief and bitterness so compellingly rendered, in a way that Noah and Alison often weren’t in season one. In particular, the mediation scene, the only scene that we saw play out twice in the premiere, showed how effective the doubled perspective can be when complex emotions are at stake. Many of Noah and Alison’s POV scenes in season one diverged from each other so much that they felt either ludicrous, or else they seemed unnecessarily obvious, serving more to bolster the characters' own rose-tinted views of themselves than to say anything meaningful about their relationship. Seeing how Noah and Helen perceive each other is much more interesting because of their deep shared history. Across the mediation table, we see their marriage as a power struggle, a complexly calibrated performance rooted in years spent playing off one another. They have each built roles for themselves in opposition to their partners, roles that have codified and warped over time: The entitled princess vs. the principled idealist; the stable provider vs. the selfish deadbeat. While it was interesting, at times, watching Alison and Noah get to know each other, it’s even more interesting to watch characters who thought they knew each other so well -- characters who built a life together -- be confronted by the crumbling of the facade they built together. Or, as Helen puts it, leaving the session: “You're so selfish. How did I not see that, all these years?” If “The Leftovers'” new season is about the possibility of moving on in the wake of tragedy, “The Affair” is about the wounds that remain open even when a chapter closes. Whether these ambitious narrative changes will build to a satisfying conclusion is an open question, but it's worth sticking around to find out.
“It’s like if ‘When Harry Met Sally’ ended with everybody getting hit by a truck”: Inside the “Year of Lear” and the terrorist plot that changed Shakespeare
Terrorist attacks are not unique to our age. Near the end of 1605, a group of radical, disenchanted Catholics plotted to overthrow the British government by blowing up the House of Lords, killing King James I, and wiping out the nation’s religious leadership, which had in recent generations become Protestant. Due to an intercepted letter, the 36 barrels of gunpowder were discovered, and the plotters, including Guy Fawkes, arrested, tried, and grotesquely executed. It was more than just one of the more colorful chapters in British history: The Gunpowder Plot helped shape the work of the most celebrated playwright in the English language. In the “The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606,” scholar James Shapiro describes the way the plot and other events of the day influenced the three important tragedies the Bard completed that year – “King Lear,” “Macbeth,” and “Antony and Cleopatra.” We spoke to Shapiro -- a Columbia University English professor who is also the author of “Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare” – from New York City. The interview has been edited slightly for clarity. Lets’s start with 1606 – what was happening in Britain at that point, and what was happening in the life and work of William Shakespeare? There’s a way in which I face an obstacle talking about this stuff because people think of Shakespeare as a dead white guy, and that his plays don’t matter to us unless we want to cozy up to someone at a cocktail party. And that’s just not my Shakespeare, and that’s not why I spent 10 years of my life working on a book about 1606 and before that, 15 years on 1599. If so, it was a wasted life. So what’s happening in 1606? What’s happening is England has just confronted a massive – luckily, stopped in time – terrorist attack that, if it had succeeded, would have cut off the head of the government, the king, [his] family, religious and political leadership, rolled back religion 70 years, would have probably killed one out of seven Londoners in the explosion. This is really the first time, in the Anglo-American world that I study and live in, that you’re dealing with how to make sense of violence of this kind: Where does it come from, is it the Devil? Is it from hearts of men? Does it come from people who harbor religious views that are radically different? How do you spot those people? Is the danger over? So that’s what’s happening to England at this time. Throw in another outbreak of plague. Throw in King James opening up a national identity crisis by saying, You’re all Brits now; people had thought they were either Scottish or English. So it turned out to be a really bad year for England. But as a result of that, a really good one for Shakespeare. Shakespeare was in a different phase of his career than he was during the Elizabethan years, I think… Yeah – we imagine Shakespeare turning out his two plays a year, going home to the wife and kids, being steadily productive… I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met an artist who is [that] steady. I was watching “Amy” on a flight home from London last night, and was riveted by the way she had inspired bursts. And 1606 was an inspired burst that followed about four or five lean years for Shakespeare. I’m not suggesting that he had a coke and heroin problem that kept him from his plays the way Amy Winehouse was interrupted from her songs, but he was already the oldest major playwright working in England at this point. I’m sure the young guys were saying, “He’s Neil Simon, he just is a guy who wrote for the Elizabethan age… We’re young, edgy playwrights.” We know he felt that pressure, because he started teaming up with playwrights who were 15 years younger. He knew he had to find his footing in this new regime. Let’s talk specifically about the Gunpowder Plot. What motivated it, what were the instigators like, and what impact did it have on Britain? It’s funny – the legacy of that now is you go to a protest, and you see people wearing these anonymous Guy Fawkes masks. I laugh when I see that – 400 years later, he’s still the symbol of speaking truth to power, trying to overthrow the established order. Back then, he was part of a group of disaffected Catholic gentlemen, who thought that with King James coming to the throne – a man who was married to a Catholic, whose mother was a Catholic – he would take the boot off the head of Catholics in England and let them practice more openly, and without fear. James didn’t do that, and they figured: He’s going to live a long time – let’s act. They didn’t get authority from the pope or Rome to go ahead with it; they claimed authority on their own. And they came pretty damn close to succeeding. They also had a Plan B that no one is really aware of: Ride 100 miles north, to Shakespeare country, where they suspected there were a lot of people who still had the old faith in their hearts. So Shakespeare was at the center of both the almost-attack in London, and then the armed insurrection that petered out: His next door neighbor was the bag man with Catholic relics, who was caught and sent to jail. This is like someone who lived in New York who knows people on both sides of the 9/11 attack. Shakespeare was connected through his mother's line with a number of the conspirators, and he’s connected in Stratford with those who suppressed the uprising. How widespread was that level of frustration among English Catholics at the time? To ask that question is akin to asking, How disappointed are Americans today with their political leadership? Everyone knows they are, but will they go with a Donald Trump? Nobody knew the answer to that question. The government was nervous enough about it to mobilize an army to crush that short-lived uprising. And the conspirators thought: Everybody’s grandparent was a Catholic. So why not? And they were shocked when they’d ride into a town and servants would say, “We’re for the country, but we’re also for the King.” It was disheartening to them. But nobody knew when you put together a rally in New York against business interests whether you’ll get a million people, or a hundred people. The uprising didn’t get a lot of followers. It’s like the Occupy movement: Those who are behind the movement think the world is about the change. Those who are against it are nervous: Hey it might be these forces that are going to threaten us. Those are the forces of drama. And Shakespeare started infusing plays like “King Lear” and “Macbeth,” even “Antony and Cleopatra,” three pretty amazing tragedies he rattled off this year. What was the effect of the Gunpowder Plot on Shakespeare’s work – both in specific ways and in broader thematic ways? Shakespeare figured out that there was a new buzzword in the air – it was the word “equivocation.” It was the word associated with a how-to book about teaching Catholics how to lie. It was written by the religious mentor – his name was Henry Garnet – to the plotters. And Shakespeare writes a play in which [Macbeth] keeps talking about equivocation, and a drunken porter goes on again and again about equivocation. And everybody swears, and lies – which is what equivocation is. Good people and bad. So “Macbeth” is the great Gunpowder Plot play – it captures just how… there are no clean answers. How these kinds of shocks change a culture, and erode the kind of trust that exists and needs to exist between people. “King Lear”… half of it was written before the plot, half of it after. It’s a play that begins with characters talking about division of the kingdoms – at a time when King James is eager to unite the kingdoms. And the Gunpowder Plotters were trying to send the Scots home – they were playing into nationalism and anti-immigration [sentiments] – that play speaks powerfully to a political leadership reduced to ashes and a family destroyed. I can’t imagine what it was like for King James, at Christmas, to sit through a production of ["King Lear"], the grimmest play imaginable. [Because “Lear” was based on an earlier play, “King Leir,”] it had always had a happy ending. It’s like if “When Harry Met Sally” ended with everybody getting hit by a truck.Terrorist attacks are not unique to our age. Near the end of 1605, a group of radical, disenchanted Catholics plotted to overthrow the British government by blowing up the House of Lords, killing King James I, and wiping out the nation’s religious leadership, which had in recent generations become Protestant. Due to an intercepted letter, the 36 barrels of gunpowder were discovered, and the plotters, including Guy Fawkes, arrested, tried, and grotesquely executed. It was more than just one of the more colorful chapters in British history: The Gunpowder Plot helped shape the work of the most celebrated playwright in the English language. In the “The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606,” scholar James Shapiro describes the way the plot and other events of the day influenced the three important tragedies the Bard completed that year – “King Lear,” “Macbeth,” and “Antony and Cleopatra.” We spoke to Shapiro -- a Columbia University English professor who is also the author of “Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare” – from New York City. The interview has been edited slightly for clarity. Lets’s start with 1606 – what was happening in Britain at that point, and what was happening in the life and work of William Shakespeare? There’s a way in which I face an obstacle talking about this stuff because people think of Shakespeare as a dead white guy, and that his plays don’t matter to us unless we want to cozy up to someone at a cocktail party. And that’s just not my Shakespeare, and that’s not why I spent 10 years of my life working on a book about 1606 and before that, 15 years on 1599. If so, it was a wasted life. So what’s happening in 1606? What’s happening is England has just confronted a massive – luckily, stopped in time – terrorist attack that, if it had succeeded, would have cut off the head of the government, the king, [his] family, religious and political leadership, rolled back religion 70 years, would have probably killed one out of seven Londoners in the explosion. This is really the first time, in the Anglo-American world that I study and live in, that you’re dealing with how to make sense of violence of this kind: Where does it come from, is it the Devil? Is it from hearts of men? Does it come from people who harbor religious views that are radically different? How do you spot those people? Is the danger over? So that’s what’s happening to England at this time. Throw in another outbreak of plague. Throw in King James opening up a national identity crisis by saying, You’re all Brits now; people had thought they were either Scottish or English. So it turned out to be a really bad year for England. But as a result of that, a really good one for Shakespeare. Shakespeare was in a different phase of his career than he was during the Elizabethan years, I think… Yeah – we imagine Shakespeare turning out his two plays a year, going home to the wife and kids, being steadily productive… I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met an artist who is [that] steady. I was watching “Amy” on a flight home from London last night, and was riveted by the way she had inspired bursts. And 1606 was an inspired burst that followed about four or five lean years for Shakespeare. I’m not suggesting that he had a coke and heroin problem that kept him from his plays the way Amy Winehouse was interrupted from her songs, but he was already the oldest major playwright working in England at this point. I’m sure the young guys were saying, “He’s Neil Simon, he just is a guy who wrote for the Elizabethan age… We’re young, edgy playwrights.” We know he felt that pressure, because he started teaming up with playwrights who were 15 years younger. He knew he had to find his footing in this new regime. Let’s talk specifically about the Gunpowder Plot. What motivated it, what were the instigators like, and what impact did it have on Britain? It’s funny – the legacy of that now is you go to a protest, and you see people wearing these anonymous Guy Fawkes masks. I laugh when I see that – 400 years later, he’s still the symbol of speaking truth to power, trying to overthrow the established order. Back then, he was part of a group of disaffected Catholic gentlemen, who thought that with King James coming to the throne – a man who was married to a Catholic, whose mother was a Catholic – he would take the boot off the head of Catholics in England and let them practice more openly, and without fear. James didn’t do that, and they figured: He’s going to live a long time – let’s act. They didn’t get authority from the pope or Rome to go ahead with it; they claimed authority on their own. And they came pretty damn close to succeeding. They also had a Plan B that no one is really aware of: Ride 100 miles north, to Shakespeare country, where they suspected there were a lot of people who still had the old faith in their hearts. So Shakespeare was at the center of both the almost-attack in London, and then the armed insurrection that petered out: His next door neighbor was the bag man with Catholic relics, who was caught and sent to jail. This is like someone who lived in New York who knows people on both sides of the 9/11 attack. Shakespeare was connected through his mother's line with a number of the conspirators, and he’s connected in Stratford with those who suppressed the uprising. How widespread was that level of frustration among English Catholics at the time? To ask that question is akin to asking, How disappointed are Americans today with their political leadership? Everyone knows they are, but will they go with a Donald Trump? Nobody knew the answer to that question. The government was nervous enough about it to mobilize an army to crush that short-lived uprising. And the conspirators thought: Everybody’s grandparent was a Catholic. So why not? And they were shocked when they’d ride into a town and servants would say, “We’re for the country, but we’re also for the King.” It was disheartening to them. But nobody knew when you put together a rally in New York against business interests whether you’ll get a million people, or a hundred people. The uprising didn’t get a lot of followers. It’s like the Occupy movement: Those who are behind the movement think the world is about the change. Those who are against it are nervous: Hey it might be these forces that are going to threaten us. Those are the forces of drama. And Shakespeare started infusing plays like “King Lear” and “Macbeth,” even “Antony and Cleopatra,” three pretty amazing tragedies he rattled off this year. What was the effect of the Gunpowder Plot on Shakespeare’s work – both in specific ways and in broader thematic ways? Shakespeare figured out that there was a new buzzword in the air – it was the word “equivocation.” It was the word associated with a how-to book about teaching Catholics how to lie. It was written by the religious mentor – his name was Henry Garnet – to the plotters. And Shakespeare writes a play in which [Macbeth] keeps talking about equivocation, and a drunken porter goes on again and again about equivocation. And everybody swears, and lies – which is what equivocation is. Good people and bad. So “Macbeth” is the great Gunpowder Plot play – it captures just how… there are no clean answers. How these kinds of shocks change a culture, and erode the kind of trust that exists and needs to exist between people. “King Lear”… half of it was written before the plot, half of it after. It’s a play that begins with characters talking about division of the kingdoms – at a time when King James is eager to unite the kingdoms. And the Gunpowder Plotters were trying to send the Scots home – they were playing into nationalism and anti-immigration [sentiments] – that play speaks powerfully to a political leadership reduced to ashes and a family destroyed. I can’t imagine what it was like for King James, at Christmas, to sit through a production of ["King Lear"], the grimmest play imaginable. [Because “Lear” was based on an earlier play, “King Leir,”] it had always had a happy ending. It’s like if “When Harry Met Sally” ended with everybody getting hit by a truck.Terrorist attacks are not unique to our age. Near the end of 1605, a group of radical, disenchanted Catholics plotted to overthrow the British government by blowing up the House of Lords, killing King James I, and wiping out the nation’s religious leadership, which had in recent generations become Protestant. Due to an intercepted letter, the 36 barrels of gunpowder were discovered, and the plotters, including Guy Fawkes, arrested, tried, and grotesquely executed. It was more than just one of the more colorful chapters in British history: The Gunpowder Plot helped shape the work of the most celebrated playwright in the English language. In the “The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606,” scholar James Shapiro describes the way the plot and other events of the day influenced the three important tragedies the Bard completed that year – “King Lear,” “Macbeth,” and “Antony and Cleopatra.” We spoke to Shapiro -- a Columbia University English professor who is also the author of “Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare” – from New York City. The interview has been edited slightly for clarity. Lets’s start with 1606 – what was happening in Britain at that point, and what was happening in the life and work of William Shakespeare? There’s a way in which I face an obstacle talking about this stuff because people think of Shakespeare as a dead white guy, and that his plays don’t matter to us unless we want to cozy up to someone at a cocktail party. And that’s just not my Shakespeare, and that’s not why I spent 10 years of my life working on a book about 1606 and before that, 15 years on 1599. If so, it was a wasted life. So what’s happening in 1606? What’s happening is England has just confronted a massive – luckily, stopped in time – terrorist attack that, if it had succeeded, would have cut off the head of the government, the king, [his] family, religious and political leadership, rolled back religion 70 years, would have probably killed one out of seven Londoners in the explosion. This is really the first time, in the Anglo-American world that I study and live in, that you’re dealing with how to make sense of violence of this kind: Where does it come from, is it the Devil? Is it from hearts of men? Does it come from people who harbor religious views that are radically different? How do you spot those people? Is the danger over? So that’s what’s happening to England at this time. Throw in another outbreak of plague. Throw in King James opening up a national identity crisis by saying, You’re all Brits now; people had thought they were either Scottish or English. So it turned out to be a really bad year for England. But as a result of that, a really good one for Shakespeare. Shakespeare was in a different phase of his career than he was during the Elizabethan years, I think… Yeah – we imagine Shakespeare turning out his two plays a year, going home to the wife and kids, being steadily productive… I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met an artist who is [that] steady. I was watching “Amy” on a flight home from London last night, and was riveted by the way she had inspired bursts. And 1606 was an inspired burst that followed about four or five lean years for Shakespeare. I’m not suggesting that he had a coke and heroin problem that kept him from his plays the way Amy Winehouse was interrupted from her songs, but he was already the oldest major playwright working in England at this point. I’m sure the young guys were saying, “He’s Neil Simon, he just is a guy who wrote for the Elizabethan age… We’re young, edgy playwrights.” We know he felt that pressure, because he started teaming up with playwrights who were 15 years younger. He knew he had to find his footing in this new regime. Let’s talk specifically about the Gunpowder Plot. What motivated it, what were the instigators like, and what impact did it have on Britain? It’s funny – the legacy of that now is you go to a protest, and you see people wearing these anonymous Guy Fawkes masks. I laugh when I see that – 400 years later, he’s still the symbol of speaking truth to power, trying to overthrow the established order. Back then, he was part of a group of disaffected Catholic gentlemen, who thought that with King James coming to the throne – a man who was married to a Catholic, whose mother was a Catholic – he would take the boot off the head of Catholics in England and let them practice more openly, and without fear. James didn’t do that, and they figured: He’s going to live a long time – let’s act. They didn’t get authority from the pope or Rome to go ahead with it; they claimed authority on their own. And they came pretty damn close to succeeding. They also had a Plan B that no one is really aware of: Ride 100 miles north, to Shakespeare country, where they suspected there were a lot of people who still had the old faith in their hearts. So Shakespeare was at the center of both the almost-attack in London, and then the armed insurrection that petered out: His next door neighbor was the bag man with Catholic relics, who was caught and sent to jail. This is like someone who lived in New York who knows people on both sides of the 9/11 attack. Shakespeare was connected through his mother's line with a number of the conspirators, and he’s connected in Stratford with those who suppressed the uprising. How widespread was that level of frustration among English Catholics at the time? To ask that question is akin to asking, How disappointed are Americans today with their political leadership? Everyone knows they are, but will they go with a Donald Trump? Nobody knew the answer to that question. The government was nervous enough about it to mobilize an army to crush that short-lived uprising. And the conspirators thought: Everybody’s grandparent was a Catholic. So why not? And they were shocked when they’d ride into a town and servants would say, “We’re for the country, but we’re also for the King.” It was disheartening to them. But nobody knew when you put together a rally in New York against business interests whether you’ll get a million people, or a hundred people. The uprising didn’t get a lot of followers. It’s like the Occupy movement: Those who are behind the movement think the world is about the change. Those who are against it are nervous: Hey it might be these forces that are going to threaten us. Those are the forces of drama. And Shakespeare started infusing plays like “King Lear” and “Macbeth,” even “Antony and Cleopatra,” three pretty amazing tragedies he rattled off this year. What was the effect of the Gunpowder Plot on Shakespeare’s work – both in specific ways and in broader thematic ways? Shakespeare figured out that there was a new buzzword in the air – it was the word “equivocation.” It was the word associated with a how-to book about teaching Catholics how to lie. It was written by the religious mentor – his name was Henry Garnet – to the plotters. And Shakespeare writes a play in which [Macbeth] keeps talking about equivocation, and a drunken porter goes on again and again about equivocation. And everybody swears, and lies – which is what equivocation is. Good people and bad. So “Macbeth” is the great Gunpowder Plot play – it captures just how… there are no clean answers. How these kinds of shocks change a culture, and erode the kind of trust that exists and needs to exist between people. “King Lear”… half of it was written before the plot, half of it after. It’s a play that begins with characters talking about division of the kingdoms – at a time when King James is eager to unite the kingdoms. And the Gunpowder Plotters were trying to send the Scots home – they were playing into nationalism and anti-immigration [sentiments] – that play speaks powerfully to a political leadership reduced to ashes and a family destroyed. I can’t imagine what it was like for King James, at Christmas, to sit through a production of ["King Lear"], the grimmest play imaginable. [Because “Lear” was based on an earlier play, “King Leir,”] it had always had a happy ending. It’s like if “When Harry Met Sally” ended with everybody getting hit by a truck.
“Damn, Meryl”: Streep facing harsh criticism over T-shirt declaring “I’d rather be a rebel than a slave”
In today’s edition of Bad Hollywood Liberals, Meryl Streep and her “Suffragette” costars made the baffling decision to wear shirts that say “I’d rather be a rebel than a slave” on the cover of Time Out London. https://twitter.com/i_D/status/651079... Here’s the full line, which is a quote from Emmeline Pankhurst, the British women’s right activist Streep plays in the forthcoming film:
"Know that women, once convinced that they are doing what is right, that their rebellion is just, will go on, no matter what the difficulties, no matter what the dangers, so long as there is a woman alive to hold up the flag of rebellion. I would rather be a rebel than a slave.”Source material aside, it’s pretty poor optics to be wearing a shirt that not only ignores the historical context of the term "slave," but, to quote Charline Jao over at The Mary Sue, "seems to reproduce the same lack of intersectionality that was present in Pankhurst’s time." It certainly seems like something the film's PR team should have picked up on given that the movie is already been criticized for its lack of diversity (not to mention Streep’s refusal to label as a feminist in an interview last week). Read some of the online backlash below: https://twitter.com/iSmashFizzle/stat... https://twitter.com/TheChangeU12C/sta... https://twitter.com/SaintHeron/status... https://twitter.com/mynameisjro/statu... https://twitter.com/TyreeBP/status/65... https://twitter.com/deray/status/6510... https://twitter.com/theferocity/statu... today’s edition of Bad Hollywood Liberals, Meryl Streep and her “Suffragette” costars made the baffling decision to wear shirts that say “I’d rather be a rebel than a slave” on the cover of Time Out London. https://twitter.com/i_D/status/651079... Here’s the full line, which is a quote from Emmeline Pankhurst, the British women’s right activist Streep plays in the forthcoming film:
"Know that women, once convinced that they are doing what is right, that their rebellion is just, will go on, no matter what the difficulties, no matter what the dangers, so long as there is a woman alive to hold up the flag of rebellion. I would rather be a rebel than a slave.”Source material aside, it’s pretty poor optics to be wearing a shirt that not only ignores the historical context of the term "slave," but, to quote Charline Jao over at The Mary Sue, "seems to reproduce the same lack of intersectionality that was present in Pankhurst’s time." It certainly seems like something the film's PR team should have picked up on given that the movie is already been criticized for its lack of diversity (not to mention Streep’s refusal to label as a feminist in an interview last week). Read some of the online backlash below: https://twitter.com/iSmashFizzle/stat... https://twitter.com/TheChangeU12C/sta... https://twitter.com/SaintHeron/status... https://twitter.com/mynameisjro/statu... https://twitter.com/TyreeBP/status/65... https://twitter.com/deray/status/6510... https://twitter.com/theferocity/statu... today’s edition of Bad Hollywood Liberals, Meryl Streep and her “Suffragette” costars made the baffling decision to wear shirts that say “I’d rather be a rebel than a slave” on the cover of Time Out London. https://twitter.com/i_D/status/651079... Here’s the full line, which is a quote from Emmeline Pankhurst, the British women’s right activist Streep plays in the forthcoming film:
"Know that women, once convinced that they are doing what is right, that their rebellion is just, will go on, no matter what the difficulties, no matter what the dangers, so long as there is a woman alive to hold up the flag of rebellion. I would rather be a rebel than a slave.”Source material aside, it’s pretty poor optics to be wearing a shirt that not only ignores the historical context of the term "slave," but, to quote Charline Jao over at The Mary Sue, "seems to reproduce the same lack of intersectionality that was present in Pankhurst’s time." It certainly seems like something the film's PR team should have picked up on given that the movie is already been criticized for its lack of diversity (not to mention Streep’s refusal to label as a feminist in an interview last week). Read some of the online backlash below: https://twitter.com/iSmashFizzle/stat... https://twitter.com/TheChangeU12C/sta... https://twitter.com/SaintHeron/status... https://twitter.com/mynameisjro/statu... https://twitter.com/TyreeBP/status/65... https://twitter.com/deray/status/6510... https://twitter.com/theferocity/statu...
We have to say their names: It’s not “glorifying” mass murder to report on it — and refusing to won’t help
Chris Harper-Mercer. John Russell Houser. Vester L. Flanagan II. Dylann Roof. Elliot Rodger. Adam Lanza. Seung-Hui Cho. James Holmes. I could go on, unfortunately, like this for a very long time, listing the men who in just the past few years have committed some of America's deadliest mass shootings. And I wouldn't be glorifying them. I wouldn't be giving them fame. I wouldn't be giving them what they wanted. I would be stating facts. Because we now live in a country in which we need to have regular conversations about how we talk about it whenever some unhinged man with ammunition goes into a school or a church or a movie theater and starts murdering people, there has been of late a push to not put their names and faces all over the media, for fear of inspiring copycats. And indeed Mercer was allegedly enamored of Vester Flanagan, who killed two former television news colleagues live on the air this past summer. On MySpace, Mercer reportedly wrote, "I have noticed that so many people like him are all alone and unknown, yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who they are. A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. Seems the more people you kill, the more you're in the limelight." After Mercer's deadly spree in Oregon last week, Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin refused to give him the attention in death that he sought in life. "
We have committed a war crime: “Patients were burning in their beds”
Doctors Without Borders says it is under "the clear presumption that a war crime has been committed" after a U.S.-led NATO coalition bombed its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The aid organization, referred to internationally in French as Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF), asserted that it "condemn[s] this attack, which constitutes a grave violation of International Humanitarian Law." The U.S. military's version of the story behind the bombing is full of holes, and constantly changing. After launching airstrikes on Kunduz, which has recently seen an insurgency by the Taliban, on Saturday morning, NATO said its bombing "may have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility." At least 23 people people were killed in the airstrikes, including 13 staff members and 10 patients, three of whom were children. A minimum of 37 more were wounded. A hospital nurse said there "are no words for how terrible it was," noting "patients were burning in their beds." Uncertainty dominated Washington's earliest account of the attack. The media echoed this ambiguity, but MSF insisted all "indications currently point to the bombing being carried out by international Coalition forces" led by the U.S. The humanitarian organization stressed that it had "communicated the precise locations of its facilities to all parties on multiple occasions over the past months" and yet, despite this, the NATO bombing of the hospital continued for over 30 minutes, even after MSF "frantically phoned" Washington. Subsequently, the U.S. and Afghan governments moved away from describing the attack as an accident, a tragic instance of "collateral damage," and proceeded to imply the bombing was intentional. Afghan officials claimed the hospital was being used as a "base" for the Taliban. "The hospital has a vast garden, and the Taliban were there," insisted Kunduz acting Governor Hamdullah Danishi. MSF was not buying it. The aid organization called the "Taliban base" claims "spurious" and said it is "disgusted by the recent statements coming from some Afghanistan government authorities justifying the attack." The organization flatly denied that the Taliban was ever fighting from its hospital. "Not a single member of our staff reported any fighting inside the MSF hospital compound prior to the U.S. airstrike," MSF recalled. "These statements imply that Afghan and US forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital with more than 180 staff and patients inside because they claim that members of the Taliban were present," MSF stated. "This amounts to an admission of a war crime. This utterly contradicts the initial attempts of the US government to minimize the attack as 'collateral damage.'" On Monday morning, the U.S. officially confirmed that it carried out the airstrikes on the hospital. Yet its story has changed once again. Now the U.S. says the Afghan military asked it for air support. Gen. John Campbell, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told reporters NATO airstrikes, requested by Afghan forces, "were called to eliminate the Taliban threat, and several innocent civilians were accidentally struck." Twenty-three clearly constitutes more than "several," but this is not the primary problem with Gen. Campbell's claim. The three accounts of the incident promulgated by U.S. military cannot all be true; they contradict each other. MSF expressed frustration with the mercurial U.S. position. The government's "description of the attack keeps changing," MSF remarked, and Washington is "now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government." "The reality is the US dropped those bombs. The US hit a huge hospital full of wounded patients and MSF staff," the humanitarian organization added. "The US military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition. There can be no justification for this horrible attack." Other international organizations have condemned the U.S. for the attack. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein stated that, if "established as deliberate in a court of law, an airstrike on a hospital may amount to a war crime." "This event is utterly tragic, inexcusable, and possibly even criminal," the U.N. chief added. He called for an independent and transparent inquiry into the bombing. Like the U.N., MSF is also requesting that "an independent international body" conduct an investigation into the attack on its hospital. The organization maintained that the U.S. investigating its own bombing "would be wholly insufficient." Just days before the bombing, MSF said it was "overwhelmed with wounded patients" amid heavy fighting between the Taliban and the Afghan government. In just two days, it had treated 252 people, including 53 children. The aid group noted its medical teams were "working nonstop to provide the best possible care." The Kunduz hospital was the only medical "facility of its kind in the whole northeastern region of Afghanistan, providing free life- and limb-saving trauma care," MSF emphasized. The closest large hospital is hours away. Now, Doctors Without Borders, after losing a dozen staff members, is withdrawing from Afghanistan, leaving behind a city full of besieged civilians who will no longer have access to desperately needed medical care.
Bernie Sanders admits he initially mishandled Black Lives Matter: “I plead guilty — I should have been more sensitive”
The New Yorker is out with a new in-depth profile of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, featuring interviews with the senator, his wife, his former chief of staff, and numerous close friends in an effort to examine his rapid rise in the polls. In "The Populist Prophet," Margaret Talbot goes on the campaign trail with Sanders and speaks with supporters to understand his appeal. What she discovered can best be summarized by this passage:
Sanders’s message is particularly potent for young people who are struggling financially. Several weeks after the rally, I wrote to Dawn York, and she said that she had been thinking about “how refreshing it was to have someone point out to us that, as hardworking Americans, some things aren’t a privilege, they are a right. . . . I’m self-employed, I started my own business three and a half years ago, and my husband works full-time for Whole Foods—and we barely get by. We own a home, we both graduated from college, and we work more than forty hours a week, and we can barely put oil in our heating tanks in the winter. We have no savings and no way to financially handle any hiccups that may come our way. And I had to be reminded that it shouldn’t be that way.”Here are four other notable nuggets from the New Yorker profile: Sanders can do a selfie but he can't do small talk Describing the "counterintuitive Sanders charm," Talbot wrote of Sanders's mastery of the selfie while on the campaign trail while forgoing niceties and small talk:
He also understands the necessity of the selfie dance, maneuvering quickly into place and smiling briefly. Sanders does not excel, however, at the middle ground of casual, friendly conversation. He has no gift for anecdote. When talking to voters, Hillary Clinton has perfected the head-cocked semblance of keen interest; it’s clear when Sanders becomes bored.But close friend and University of Vermont political scientist Garrison Nelson described a Sanders who was always keen to stop and speak to any Vermonter who stopped him in the streets of Burlington -- even critics. On his initial handling of Black Lives Matter and racial injustice Talbot spoke with Sanders in his Senate office about his much-publicized encounters with some Black Lives Matter activists earlier this summer and about how his campaign has adjusted to the critique that it overlooked specific racial inequities in favor of a focus on broader economic inequality. "I plead guilty -- I should have been more sensitive at the beginning of this campaign to talk about this issue," Sanders admitted. “The issues these young people raised are enormously important,” he said. He then went on to recount watching the arrest video of Sandra Bland, the young African-American woman who mysteriously and suddenly died in a Texas jail cell, as a pivotal moment of recognition for him. “It impacted my night’s sleep,” he said. “I don’t sleep that great, and it made it even worse.” "It's hard to imagine if Sandra Bland were white she would have been thrown to the ground and assaulted and insulted," Sanders argued. His old roommate says Sanders has always had a "prophetic sensibility" Richard Sugarman, a housemate of Sanders in the 1970s recalls that the longtime activist always had a "devotion to the ethical part of public life in Judaism, the moral part." Sanders, he observed, although hardly an observant Jew, felt endowed with "a prophetic sensibility,” rooted in the religion:
Sugarman says that his friend would often greet him in the morning by saying, "We're not crazy you know," referring to the anger they felt about social injustices. Sugarman would respond, "Could you say good morning first?"Sanders credits his high school cross country experience with instilling in him lifelong stamina Altough Sanders has notably shied away from relying on his personal biography to cast himself as more relatable to voters, opting instead to stay focused on policy issues, he did reveal to Talbot that his experience on James Madison High School's cross country team "accounts for some of his formidable stamina today." Sanders's Brooklyn high school is the same one attended by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and New York Senator Chuck Schumer.
