Last Week's New Yorker Review: June 16
Last Week’s New Yorker, week of June 16
“she flacked Sanka decaffeinated coffee”
Not listed as a theme issue, but seems to be one; call it “A Woman Who Cares” and you’ll encompass every piece save the Gopnik. Watch for punctuation, though.
I had a respiratory illness all week, hence the lateness. In case you notice my writerly voice sounding froggy.
Must-Reads:
“Mother of the Sitcom” (American Chronicles) - Emily Nussbaum wonders if, when it comes to Gertrude Berg, anybody’s. I knew of The Goldbergs, but mostly just as a slide from History of Media and/or Jewish Representation in Media. An historical footnote, but exactly the kind of story that turns kaleidoscopic if you look at it long enough, refracting back the entirety of culture in strange, distorted segments – with commercial breaks in-between. In Nussbaum’s capable hands, the story is also casually poetic; listen to the consonants crackle as she describes Berg’s “world of Jewish immigrants—rag-trade workers, bighearted housewives, crowds of cousins and assimilated children crammed into tenement kitchens, with kreplach sizzling on the skillet.” There is something knowingly hacky about the format Nussbaum chooses – literally starting with an episode of What’s My Line, like a biopic going for the easiest possible in medias res setup (second, maybe, to the competition). Because Nussbaum’s project is complicating the “just-so story” of early American T.V, it’s fitting to lean on the era’s shows. Her tribute to Berg, who shared her character’s brassy, “do-everything” style, despite differing in most every cultural respect, is heartfelt, but doesn’t stop at sappiness: Nussbaum chronicles Berg’s pro-worker, liberatory themes, which were explicit (though almost never foregrounded above minor family travails) in her show – preceding Norman Lear, the usually cited progenitor of that style. This is a suitable fable for our current era, given that it ends with the blacklisting of Berg’s costar, his descent into depression and death by suicide, and Berg’s subsequent sidelining – her show whitewashed then cancelled, relegated to a footnote, and her politics calcifying into something that fit their era more neatly. “Hard times don’t make easy history”, Nussbaum concludes. But histories – thoughtful and true rediscoveries of the past – can point the way forward through them.
“Without Borders” (Letter from Israel) - Eyal Press is stuck between الصخرة المشرفة and a hard place. Makes excruciatingly clear that the desired end result of the Israeli state can only be as an apartheid state in which Arabs are dehumanized second-class citizens. Press gets there slowly, choosing what must be the most sympathetic Palestinian in the whole of North Israel, a doctor who insists on tending to elderly Israelis even as she is bombarded with threats. In an unlikely addendum which makes Press’ point far more powerful, the small town where Qasem Hassan lives happens to be the same town where an Iranian missile strike recently killed four Arabs; the town had no bomb shelters and videos have surfaced of Israeli citizens cheering and chanting while watching the strike. Qasem Hassan sits at the center of a number of adjacent repressed spheres: the academic repression of medical ethics forced her out of a class for that most dangerous of crimes, presenting the truth as reported by a journalist; her family’s house was nearly demolished by the government (something I genuinely thought only happened in the West Bank and Golan Heights); the budget of the organization she works for may get slashed by overt Knesset cruelty. Press ensures the piece doesn’t feel overstuffed or repetitive; the balance between personal testimonial and broader history is just right, and the piece assumes intelligence on the part of its readers: Press doesn’t need to say what all the forces acting on Qasem Hassan have in common for it to be painfully clear. Israel’s effective banning of journalism in Gaza is, at this point, more an indicator of the genocide they’re hiding than a crime on the scale of that genocide itself; still, Press works to present the stories he can in ways that point toward the stories he can’t. Perhaps a few readers, hooked by a story that may look at first like a sappy reiteration of how much all lives matter, will come away with their eyes more open.
Window-Shop:
“Toxic” (Books) - Dayna Tortorici says Girl on Girl, so not confusing. A thoughtful takedown of an annoying-sounding book by Sophie Gilbert which sloppily conflates cultural cataloguing for cultural commentary, and largely blames porn for the ills wrought by structural misogyny. Do I need the three starting paragraphs on the importance of close-reading media to consciousness-raising groups? No, though some readers might. Did I want to hear more about the Colette Shade book? Yes, though only because she’s from Baltimore and friends-of-friends, proving the strength of weak ties. Did I get a bit tired with the long second section, which gives Gilbert more than enough quote-space to say little-to-nothing in a notably impersonal manner? Definitely, though I did like the paragraph that listed “not uncommon” experiences of the lived brutality of girlhood (as a way of pointing out that Gilbert doesn’t mention these things). The last two sections are what you’re really here for, the careful dismantling of the “anti-porn tradition”, especially because Gilbert is too afraid to even claim writers like Dworkin and their arguments, even as she regurgitates their logical thread. And Tortorici rightly points out that “politics” is really what drives “retrenchment”, and what must drive any escape from it: Not just representations of people, but actual people, moving through space: “Organizing, taking over institutions, seizing power to make lasting changes in policy and law.” Representation matters, but porn isn’t the only place where it’s a poor substitute for the genuine article.
“Action!” (Annals of Hollywood) - Jennifer Wilson will intimate without communicating directly. Proving once again the strength of weak ties, I am also needlessly ride-or-die for intimacy cöordinator nonpareil Chelsea Pace, who taught at my undergrad alma mater while I was there, even though I never took a class with her (and didn’t like most of the people I did interact with in the theatre department.)1 Proving me right about everything as usual, this piece really picks up in its second half, when Pace enters the picture, and the topic shifts from the prior history of intimacy coördination, which is about what you’d expect, and mostly interesting as a lead-in to a conversation about professionalization and its merits and flaws. Wilson, very funny throughout, gets funnier when she cans the pretense toward a #MeToo piece and covers what she’s clearly more interested in; namely, how do these people “augment erotic tension” without spoiling the moment? Well, focus on the “details”, which edge close to intangibles, which are inherently ambiguous, which worries the lawyers all over again. No wonder these workers get “‘shoved into a corner’” – an artist is not a good substitute for an H.R. team. Still, inadvertantly and predictably, the needs of the system advance art at the margins. If nobody wants to film sex, perhaps it’s not that audiences are afraid of fucking, they’re afraid of the unknown – and the unknowable. Who knows what lurks in the holes of men? The Coördinator knows.
“Match Me If You Can” (The Current Cinema) - Justin Chang won’t go for a Song. Even before Chang starts lodging his criticisms, this sounds pretty dire, despite its decent pedigree. Who wants a screwball comedy thrown with no spin? Who wants a ginger snap that doesn’t snap? Who wants, yeesh, caveman-joke bookends? I suppose it’s better use of an Oscar nomination than a Marvel movie might be, but Kraven the Hunter is a mighty low bear, er, bar. The references to other franchises these actors have been in are pretty hacky, but once Chang focuses on the film at hand, he chops fine: It’s “a story that insists on showing Lucy the error of her money-conscious ways. I don’t buy it, Jane Austen wouldn’t buy it, and deep down I don’t think Song buys it.” Cue the twelve-bar blues.
“A Nattering of Naomis” (Talk of the Town) - Jane Bua is seeing double here: approximately forty Naomis! Decides to be charming instead of meaningful, and, to its credit, succeeds!
“Whiz Kid” (Books) - Adam Gopnik knows Hollywood is built to Last Tycoon. Scattered and hookless but still entertaining. Gopnik pins the whole piece on readers still being generally familiar with Irving Thalberg; I sort of am, but I’m still not sure it’s a wise presumption. (He inspired a Fitzgerald novel, but it’s by far the least famous Fitzgerald novel; less Citizen Kane and more Other Side of the Wind.) The article thumps along anecdotally, only ever as compelling as the sum of its parts. Great parts: The resurrection-by-reinvention of the Ben-Hur project, and the importance of “sublimated sexual perversity” to Thalberg’s projects despite their seeming prestige-formulaity. Less needed: Gopnik waxing repetitious about the “sublimations” key to narrative film; he’s mining the same ground as David Bordwell’s life’s work on the subject, but he hasn’t done the reading so he tries to invent from first principles some really fundamental ideas in film theory. Or he has done the reading and is just… plagiarizing. Either way, Bordwell did it backward and in black New Balances.
“Space Odyssey” (Talk of the Town) - Michael Schulman does astronaut, does tell. Totally heartbreaking. Handle with care; it’s the rare Talk that might make you choke (up) on your coffee.
Garten on Tomkins (Takes) - I don’t think anyone expects to be blown away by the beauty of Ina Garten’s prose styling. (Ghostwritten is fine.) Still, this is a perfectly nice appreciation of the wonderful Child, who is clearly Garten’s role model in many respects. (Including but not limited to: connections in the State Department.) Sure, she’s buttering Child up, but that’s only appropriate.
Skip Without Guilt:
“Bodies, Bodies, Bodies” (Profiles) - Rebecca Mead starts a Saville row. So unbelievably laudatory it tips into self-parody. Saville’s work is “fearless in its ambition”, “a bracing challenge to normative standards of feminine beauty and behavior” (yet not “didactic”), her “early command of the medium has matured into a self-assured mastery.” Those examples are all from the first two sections and the piece continues in this vein throughout. This makes the one piece of critique which is not overtly misogynist all the more striking, especially because Mead brushes past it without addressing it. Saville painted the intersex artist Del LaGrace Volcano in the nude, a choice that Mead asserts is “not voyeuristic” (but also not a “pious celebration… of a marginalized identity.”) Volcano, whose “reached by email” comment is included in a parenthetical, responds that the piece is part of “‘the pathologization of intersex and non-binary bodies by focusing on the “discovery” of mixed sex characteristics by doctors. Regardless of Jenny’s good intentions, “Matrix” reproduces the intersex body as a public spectacle and thereby reinforces the status quo.’” This is a fascinating critique, especially followed by Saville’s Go-West-ish comments about “‘searching for a body that was between genders’”, yet Mead, perhaps scared of drawing any complicated conclusions about Saville’s artistic pursuit, quickly moves to formal matters then slams the section shut. Mead’s reluctance here is a reluctance to engage fully with the work she’s writing about; it’s embarrassing for her. In contrast, she spends nine lengthy paragraphs on the role of motherhood in Saville’s work, making it clear which roles Mead thinks are worth really unpacking. The rest of the piece is less troubling but, unfortunately, not much better; whatever you think of Saville’s work (my take: the early, Neal-ish stuff is compelling; most of what comes after, especially the heads, is slick and inert) I doubt you’ll find much value in her inch-deep musings on creativity. (“‘When you are making a portrait, you have to make sure everything joins together, even though we’ve socially named these parts of the head separately, like eyebrows, for example.’” Or: “‘Because we are on screens all the time, it’s quite an enriching thing to do to stop and hold that memory. It’s almost like an experience is not complete now unless you take a photograph of it. And I told myself, “Maybe there’s something missing in that.”’”) This is certainly not Saville’s fault; most everyone talks idly like this, but presenting these quotes as deep wisdom is insulting to subject and reader. Mead could have gone in so many directions with this very long piece (here’s one: What is the legacy of the Young British Artist, now grown up? Has the world out-nastied them?) but chooses instead to take a stance I can only describe as fannish. The piece falls flat? Figures.
Letters:
Michael O has been skipping the magazine due to “both the arrival of a second child and the never-ending litany of atrocities of varying severity from Trump” – fair! – but says the June 9 edition was “pretty delightful.” Agreed. The Collins piece reminded him of an acquaintance’s quote that “‘The New Yorker is the best writing about nothing anywhere’”, adding, “Here it was essentially a story about nothing that became about everything.”
soap
They antagonized extracurricular theatre clubs, then gaslit us about it. I suppose the practical lesson of undergrad is about the two-faced nature of authority. ↩