Weekend Reads (September 14): Prince, James Earl Jones, Reality TV, MAGA, Nachos
Recommended weekend reading for September 14, 2024.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
After winning a “Best Documentary Feature” Oscar for 2016’s O.J.: Made in America, Ezra Edelman produced a nine-hour documentary about Prince for Netflix. Now, after years of work, including interviews with some of those who were closest to the musician, Edelman’s documentary may never be seen due to changes in power at both Netflix and the Prince estate.
The film took Edelman almost five years to finish, and it nearly broke him. Whenever he makes a documentary, he told me, “It’s like willingly walking into the jail or locking myself up into a box like Houdini and being like, ‘Can I get out?’” But he had been locked in for a long time, often working nights and weekends, chasing down recalcitrant subjects who seemed haunted by their friendships with Prince and researching in Prince’s personal archive, which was filled with gaps and elisions. Prince kept slipping away from him. “How can you tell the truth about someone who, when you’re talking to people, they all had different things to say?” Edelman told me. “How can you tell the truth about someone who never told the truth about himself?”
Over a year and a half, I had observed as Edelman continued to perfect his film, working to capture the essence of Prince, even as it became slowly, painfully clear that it would most likely never air. The Prince estate had changed hands, and the new executors objected to the project. Last spring, they saw a cut and, claiming that it misrepresented Prince, entered into a protracted battle with Netflix, which owns the rights to the film, to prevent its release. As of today, there is no indication that the film will ever come out. It has been like watching a monument being swallowed by the sea.
James Earl Jones, whose unmistakable voice terrified the galaxy as Darth Vader, died this past week at age of 93.
After overcoming a profound stutter as a child, Jones established himself as one of the pioneering Black actors of his generation, amassing a bountiful and versatile career spanning over 60 years, from his debut on Broadway in 1958 at the Cort Theatre — renamed the James Earl Jones Theatre in 2022 — to his most recent performance in 2021’s Coming 2 America. For that film, Jones reprised his role as King Jaffe Joffer from the 1988 Eddie Murphy comedy Coming to America — one of several roles, along with Darth Vader, that Jones revisited, including the voice of King Mufasa in Disney’s animated feature The Lion King in 1994, the 1998 direct-to-video sequel and the 2019 remake, and CIA deputy director Vice Admiral James Greer in three Jack Ryan movies, 1990’s The Hunt for Red October, 1992’s Patriot Games and 1994’s Clear and Present Danger.
Tributes have come in from the likes of Mark Hamill, LeVar Burton, Barry Jenkins, Yvette Nicole Brown, and many more. Denzel Washington has also penned a moving tribute: “He was everything to me as a budding actor. He was who I wanted to be.”
Dylan Scott watched the season finale of The Bachelorette, and found it both “riveting” and “unfathomably cruel.”
For the production team, making good TV was surely all that mattered. The Bachelor franchise has been struggling with middling ratings for a while now. Jenn’s season was dogged by bad buzz (unfairly, in my opinion, but that was the prevailing sentiment). They needed a grand finale, and Jenn’s emotional devastation provided it. There’s no denying ABC concocted a memorable climax — we can only hope they did not permanently damage a real person’s psyche in the process.
Because that is the real risk. There has been much discussion about whether reality TV participants deserve union representation and stronger legal protections. I think the argument against those measures is usually that these people know what they’re signing up for. But that does not mean they are not vulnerable to emotional trauma as part of the experience. Jenn’s final appearance, quickly shunted to the side so that Palmer could introduce the new lead for the franchise’s next season, is a painful reminder of that.
I’ve never made any effort to hide my antipathy for reality TV, be it relationship shows (The Bachelor, The Bachelorette), real estate shows (House Hunters, Selling Sunset), home improvement shows (Good Bones, Trading Spaces), fashion shows (Making the Cut, Project Runway), talent shows (American Idol, The Voice), or whatever it is those Real Housewives series might be.
At their core, even the least problematic reality TV series — like the beloved Great British Baking Show — still encourage us to indulge in voyeurism as they parade around real human beings and maximize and manipulate their drama for our entertainment (and the producers’ considerable profit).
An interview with Kazuo Oga, the master artist behind the beautiful backgrounds of Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro.
I was delighted that the subject matter I was painting was the suburbs of the 1950s. It was also my first time working with a director who made demands about the [background] art, such as, “I want you to paint things like rural landscapes, trees and flowers, while paying close attention to them.” I did that myself and, from around the halfway point, I began to consider flowers and trees as the equals of Totoro [the character]. I painted them with that in mind.
Interestingly, Oga wanted to work on Totoro because his previous project had been Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s Wicked City. If you’ve seen Wicked City, with its stomach-churning violence and lurid sexuality, then it’s easy to understand why Oga would’ve wanted a change of pace.
Related: My review of My Neighbor Totoro. “I find it very easy to get caught up in Miyazaki’s films, mainly because his films often resemble how I remember seeing the world as a child.”
Speaking with Pitchfork’s Jazz Monroe, celebrated composer Max Richter reflects on the music that has shaped and influenced him over the years, such as Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense.
From 15 to 20, it was the Mahler years for me, but the album from that time would be Stop Making Sense. That was a national anthem record. I loved Remain in Light, that experimental, studio-as-laboratory process, the abstract lyric writing and the whole culture of the band, and I’d become aware of Brian Eno’s work via Discreet Music, which was a record I played endlessly. The ’80s was a very normalized, vanilla decade. The mainstream felt a bit dull, but the Talking Heads were so peculiar that it became a way of expressing a certain identity.
Related: My reviews of Max Richter.
In light of Oasis’ impending return, now’s a good time to consider the most essential Britpop albums of all time. For example, Supergrass’ I Should Coco from 1995:
Very much Britpop’s whippersnappers — contrary to his mutton-chopped appearance, frontman Gaz Coombes was still in his teens when I Should Coco hit the shelves — Supergrass provided a much-needed boyish vigor to a scene that often pandered to the middle-aged. The Buzzcocks-aping punk of “Caught by the Fuzz,” Chipmunks-meets-the Beatles pop of “We’re Not Supposed To,” and “Teenage Kicks”-esque signature hit “Alright” are all about the follies of youth. At the same time, Steven Spielberg was so enamored with the latter’s cheeky-chappy video, he offered them their own Monkees-style TV show. The Oxford trio wisely turned the filmmaker down, allowing them to outgrow their cartoonish persona as their songwriting matured. Nevertheless, nearly 30 years on and this coming-of-age classic still possesses the power to thrill.
Spotify’s founder seeks to disrupt the medical industry like he disrupted the music industry.
“You read about all the horrible stuff that’s happening around the world and the reality is, most things are becoming better, but there are a few glaring areas where that’s not true,” Ek says, in the American-inflected English he learnt from MTV. “Healthcare is one of the worst. For a long time we were getting rapidly improving life expectancy. But if you look at it in the last few years, it’s going in totally the wrong direction. And there’s no obvious fix because all the current system tries to do is basically pile on even more people, even more costs, even more drugs.”
While these thoughts were swirling in his head, people would often tell him they thought Spotify was amazing. “And I kept responding with the same thing — ‘Yeah, it’s really great, but it’s not like we’re saving lives.’ And lo and behold, I started thinking, well, why am I not saving lives?”
Make no mistake, there’s certainly room for improvement in healthcare, especially here in the States. However, it’s hard to not be skeptical of Ek’s ambitions. On paper, they sound cool, but so does Spotify. History, however, is littered with instances where “tech disruption” of an industry has led to bad things.
David French considers why MAGA folks are so prone to crazy, obviously false conspiracy theories (e.g., Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets in Ohio).
The problem, then, isn’t just with right-wing villainization, it’s with who the right elevates as its champions. Every movement elevates heroes and leaders, but in the age of Trump, the right’s heroes are created almost entirely through pugilism and confrontation, not through inspiration or elevation.
It’s easy to roll your eyes at the idea that politics should be elevated (or when people start talking about elevation and inspiration), but this is the consequence when inspiration isn’t even an option. The first rule of the right is simple: You must fight. In their minds, McCain didn’t fight, so he lost. Romney didn’t fight, so he lost. Trump fought, so he won.
And if your chief combatant is also a gullible conspiracy theorist, then it orients the entire community toward the most lurid of tales.
Finally, a brief history of nachos, that oh-so-delicious mix of tortilla chips, melted cheese, and countless other toppings. (I usually opt for ground beef and salsa, myself.)
Nachos are, in a way, a culinary microcosm of America. They’re the product of traditional ingredients and cross-cultural exchange; they combine scientific achievement and commerce to create something that now extends throughout the world. And they may just be one of history’s most successful examples of fusion cuisine.
From the Blog
Spooky movie season is right around the corner, and I’m excited to see that Lincoln’s local arthouse theater is bringing back their “Fright Fest” horror movie festival for the month of October. This year’s lineup is another killer one that includes cult classics, foreign gems, and even some family-friendly titles. I’m particularly excited about Perfect Blue, The Host, The Pit and the Pendulum, and of course, Bubba Ho-Tep.
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