great(ish) pt 10: millennial women, Disobedience, more music
Hello! Today, an article about millennial women in art, a rainy London film, two excellent books about growing up in Nazi Germany, and rediscovering Aimee Mann.
Article: The Making of the Millennial Woman by Rebecca Liu, published by Another Gaze in June 2019
I don't have much to say about this one: Rebecca Liu's essay is quite simply one of the cleverest pieces I've read on millennial women and art. She dissects recent successful books and tv shows (Fleabag, Girls, Normal People, Cat Person) about the “archetypical Young Millennial Woman – pretty, white, cisgender, and tortured enough to be interesting but not enough to be repulsive” and ends up asking some pretty pertinent question about the lives we actually life (as opposed to what is portrayed on screen or in print).
Film: Disobedience (2017), directed by Sebastián Lelio
Ronit’s father, a London rabbi, dies. She returns to the Orthodox Jewish community she grew up in after a long absence. Her childhood friends Dovid and Esti are now married. As Ronit struggles against the strict rules and expectations that made her leave in the first place, she also falls back into a love affair with Esti.
Great performances by Rachel Weisz, Rachel McAdams and Alessandro Nivola; brilliant score; good dialogue. My one criticism is that men shouldn’t direct lesbian sex scenes (or perhaps any sex scenes featuring women, who's to say!).
Note: Disobedience is streaming on Netflix.
Book: Reunion by Fred Uhlmann (1971) and Das zerbrochene Haus by Horst Krüger (1966; available in English as A Crack in the Wall, tr Ruth Hein, 1982)
This double recommendation is brought to you by my mum, who read Reunion this week and loved it as much as I did. Two books about growing up in Germany in the 1930s.
In Reunion, narrator Hans Schwartz remembers his youth in Stuttgart, his friendship with Konradin, the heir of an old aristocratic family and the rise of Nazism. Hans is Jewish; Konradin's family becomes more and more enamoured with Nazism. Like Hans, Uhlmann eventually emigrated to the United States. This very short novella is a perfect gem; I watched the film adaptation by myself at the BFI a couple of years ago and immediately ordered the DVD (in French) because it feels like one of those cultural items that will stick with me forever. I'd recommend not looking up the plot.
Equally impressive is a book I read earlier this year which has just been re-released in German after being out of print for several years (the English translation is hard to track down which is a real shame). Das zerbrochene Haus / A Crack in the Wall is journalist Horst Krüger's memoir of being a teenager in a Berlin suburb in the 1930s, semi-accidentally joining a resistance group, surviving as a soldier at the end of the war and observing the Auschwitz trial. It's one of the most memorable and impressive books I've read about the war, and in general. Krüger's observations about the stifling dullness of the petit bourgeoise ("locks out of its narrow rooms not only the state, but also love"), his disgust for German self-mythology and his painful, illuminating description of the trial are astonishingly good. This book was published in the 1960s and has aged like a fine wine. If you read German or have access to a translation, put this on your to read-list.
Note: If you're in the UK: a map of indie bookshops that deliver right now.
Other: Aimee Mann (or re-discovering old favourites)
I used to listen to Aimee Mann in the early 2000s and then forgot about her as my taste in music changed. I went through various phases, including an incredibly ill-advised one where I only listened to music while working and otherwise mostly listened to podcasts. A terrible idea. Recently I've been rediscovering very old favourites and Aimee Mann is the one that has really stuck, possibly because I find her voice completely mesmerising. As I'm sure is common among people whose second language is English, I learned a bunch of stuff from music and books and often have bits of a song stuck in my head when I use an everyday expression. Phrases from Mann's lyrics stuck with me from young adulthood; some of these songs have featured heavily in my brain rotation even when I wasn't actively listening to the music, among them It's Not and Save Me. My favourite album is the classic Lost in Space, but I've basically been cycling through her entire oeuvre the past few months.
Note: This NPR Tiny Desk Concert from 2017 is a pretty good introduction.
And that's it! Tell me what you loved and take care!