(5) Roxane Gay's piece in the NY Times. I haven't read a good deal of Gay's writing, though what I have seen has sometimes seemed facile and lazy. (I'm thinking of her puff piece about Nicki Minaj, in the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/t-magazine/nicki-minaj.html).
Gay may be right about "Why To Kill a Mockingbird Matters," the book she reviewed in the NYT this summer. I'm not sure. But here's why I think the piece is secretly a bit mean-spirited and questionable. She goes after the writer, Santopietro, for quoting Sondheim in reference to Harper Lee. She calls these quotations "jarring and bewildering."
I was surprised that Gay would find it bewildering for a theater producer to quote Sondheim, a theater writer and major American cultural touchstone, in reference to Harper Lee, another major American cultural touchstone. (People sometimes allude to a literary work to explain a facet of another literary work. Ms. Gay might have encountered this phenomenon at Yale.)
Maybe Santopietro made his allusions in a clumsy way? This was my thought. So I went to a bookstore and looked up both allusions. One: Lee's characters provoke a feeling of ambivalence in the reader, like the feeling described in Sondheim's song "Sorry/Grateful." Two: Lee's child characters absorb lessons from watching adult behavior, not from listening to adult sermons, a phenomenon described in Sondheim's song "Children Will Listen." Not so bewildering! I could explain each allusion in one sentence.
What really annoys me is the knee-jerk tendency to canonize Gay and worship Gay's thinking; I see this over and over in reader posts on-line. That's not Gay's fault. It's also not a service to Gay's writing. It needs to stop.
(4) Lily James in "Mamma Mia 2." I hated, hated, hated this performance. I also thought critics were far too kind to the performance. She's cute and she's really trying! Viewers who approve of James in this movie are mistaking effort for excellence. It's the Amy Schumer Strategy: If I whoop a great deal and make a point of exerting big bucket-loads of energy, people will think I am acting.
None of the characters in "Mamma Mia 2" showed a plausible human reaction to Ms. James's irritating, incessant whoops and shrieks, which would be to smile kindly and walk away. And the entire movie suffered for this.
(3) A Coke commercial. There's a commercial that runs before movies now, and it's a smirky, Isla Fisher-esque young woman offering us unsolicited advice. She has just purchased her Coke. "Life is short," she informs us, sagely. "If you want to live in a yurt, yurt it up. If you want to run a marathon, I mean, that seems super-hard, but, you know, you do you. And if you want a Coke? Drink a Coke. Coke! Because I can."
Every time I see this ad, I feel enraged that this presumptuous twenty-one-year-old is lecturing me. Who invited her?
Also, I can't help but note that she is selling poison, and her rationale is: "Heroin! Because I can."
(3a) Starbucks. Everything about Starbucks infuriates me, always. The pretentious language. The "butter croissant." "The cinnamon spice latte." The "double chocolate frappuccino." All that excess verbiage.
"Flavor like no other." "Keeps you going." "Blended drinks." Recently, a slight change to various frappuccino recipes was attempted, and it was billed as such: "A stunning new take on beloved classics."
Really? "Stunning"? "Beloved"? "Classic"? I hate, hate, hate this language. And Americans simply eat it up.
By contrast, I walked into a Dunkin Donuts the other day, and the CEOs had taken some light blue sprinkles and scattered them across a vanilla donut. And they called that donut "The Shark Bite." Simple and delightful. I'll take DD over Starbucks any day.
(2) The ad copy for "Jell-O Girls." This is a new memoir, and the ad writers take great pains to inform us it's a "feminist work." But shouldn't the assumption be that all writers worth their salt in 2018 are feminists? If so, why use the adjective? It's half-assed and it doesn't accomplish anything, while seeming to accomplish something. I'd rather hear about the quality of the writing.
(1) Debra Granik's "Leave No Trace." I continue to hate this movie--along with all of the critical buzz surrounding it. There's a trend in our culture where we assume something is of value if it's brutal to watch. Then no one is willing to say, "I was bored to tears," because no one wants to seem like a philistine. ("Seinfeld" spoofed this, memorably, in the "English Patient" episode.)
Let me say something here: "Leave No Trace" is a leaden, lifeless movie. The pacing is on-par with something you would submit as an undergrad. The character development is shallow. The script has less wit than a late-career Tom Wolfe novel. You are free to say the same. I have liberated you. If you wish. Skip this movie.
Gay may be right about "Why To Kill a Mockingbird Matters," the book she reviewed in the NYT this summer. I'm not sure. But here's why I think the piece is secretly a bit mean-spirited and questionable. She goes after the writer, Santopietro, for quoting Sondheim in reference to Harper Lee. She calls these quotations "jarring and bewildering."
I was surprised that Gay would find it bewildering for a theater producer to quote Sondheim, a theater writer and major American cultural touchstone, in reference to Harper Lee, another major American cultural touchstone. (People sometimes allude to a literary work to explain a facet of another literary work. Ms. Gay might have encountered this phenomenon at Yale.)
Maybe Santopietro made his allusions in a clumsy way? This was my thought. So I went to a bookstore and looked up both allusions. One: Lee's characters provoke a feeling of ambivalence in the reader, like the feeling described in Sondheim's song "Sorry/Grateful." Two: Lee's child characters absorb lessons from watching adult behavior, not from listening to adult sermons, a phenomenon described in Sondheim's song "Children Will Listen." Not so bewildering! I could explain each allusion in one sentence.
What really annoys me is the knee-jerk tendency to canonize Gay and worship Gay's thinking; I see this over and over in reader posts on-line. That's not Gay's fault. It's also not a service to Gay's writing. It needs to stop.
(4) Lily James in "Mamma Mia 2." I hated, hated, hated this performance. I also thought critics were far too kind to the performance. She's cute and she's really trying! Viewers who approve of James in this movie are mistaking effort for excellence. It's the Amy Schumer Strategy: If I whoop a great deal and make a point of exerting big bucket-loads of energy, people will think I am acting.
None of the characters in "Mamma Mia 2" showed a plausible human reaction to Ms. James's irritating, incessant whoops and shrieks, which would be to smile kindly and walk away. And the entire movie suffered for this.
(3) A Coke commercial. There's a commercial that runs before movies now, and it's a smirky, Isla Fisher-esque young woman offering us unsolicited advice. She has just purchased her Coke. "Life is short," she informs us, sagely. "If you want to live in a yurt, yurt it up. If you want to run a marathon, I mean, that seems super-hard, but, you know, you do you. And if you want a Coke? Drink a Coke. Coke! Because I can."
Every time I see this ad, I feel enraged that this presumptuous twenty-one-year-old is lecturing me. Who invited her?
Also, I can't help but note that she is selling poison, and her rationale is: "Heroin! Because I can."
(3a) Starbucks. Everything about Starbucks infuriates me, always. The pretentious language. The "butter croissant." "The cinnamon spice latte." The "double chocolate frappuccino." All that excess verbiage.
"Flavor like no other." "Keeps you going." "Blended drinks." Recently, a slight change to various frappuccino recipes was attempted, and it was billed as such: "A stunning new take on beloved classics."
Really? "Stunning"? "Beloved"? "Classic"? I hate, hate, hate this language. And Americans simply eat it up.
By contrast, I walked into a Dunkin Donuts the other day, and the CEOs had taken some light blue sprinkles and scattered them across a vanilla donut. And they called that donut "The Shark Bite." Simple and delightful. I'll take DD over Starbucks any day.
(2) The ad copy for "Jell-O Girls." This is a new memoir, and the ad writers take great pains to inform us it's a "feminist work." But shouldn't the assumption be that all writers worth their salt in 2018 are feminists? If so, why use the adjective? It's half-assed and it doesn't accomplish anything, while seeming to accomplish something. I'd rather hear about the quality of the writing.
(1) Debra Granik's "Leave No Trace." I continue to hate this movie--along with all of the critical buzz surrounding it. There's a trend in our culture where we assume something is of value if it's brutal to watch. Then no one is willing to say, "I was bored to tears," because no one wants to seem like a philistine. ("Seinfeld" spoofed this, memorably, in the "English Patient" episode.)
Let me say something here: "Leave No Trace" is a leaden, lifeless movie. The pacing is on-par with something you would submit as an undergrad. The character development is shallow. The script has less wit than a late-career Tom Wolfe novel. You are free to say the same. I have liberated you. If you wish. Skip this movie.
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