The "But Wait, Are You Kidding?" Edition
Dear Readers,
Continued Happy Spring.
Here are some springtime media picks which will make few people buy tickets or hit “play”— but for some reason I’ve seen them and want to tell you about them.
Brooklyn Laundry, written and directed by John Patrick Shanley. When I say “got famous for Danny and The Deep Blue Sea” you probably remember the name but didn’t see the play, right? Maybe you liked “Doubt,” but maybe that was because you didn’t see the play and Meryl Streep was so good in the movie? Anyway Cecily Strong and much of the cast is really good in “Brooklyn Laundry,” a play currently on Broadway, but:
It’s an insensitive treatment of the women in the play, made even worse by Shanley’s insistence that Fran’s happiness lies in Owen, a man she barely knows. Despite having dated for a few months, Fran is ready to invest everything into her newfound relationship. In return, Owen is angry and abrasive, claiming Fran “ghosted” him…after she doesn’t text back after the literal death of her loved one. “You ghosted me. I didn’t hear from you for 10 days,” Owen pouts.
And then that scene (and the play) ends with her saying (glowingly) “you’re a man…” and they appear to live (by his rules) happily ever after. Sigh.
Moving onto the cultural theme of the week: satire. It’s usually erroneously defined (dark comedy is not satire, farce is not satire, sarcasm is not satire), notoriously hard to do, and often unpopular even when it is done well:
The Regime, on HBO. I am really enjoying this Kate Winslett-starrer set in vague Central-to-Eastern European fascist/dictatorial mash-up-land. However i don’t know a single other person who is. But hey, you loved Kate in Mare of Easttown, am I right? Well, in this one she is also tough and yet not so…but it is one weird set-piece of satirical and political and comedic beats. The male hero/villain is a pretty intriguing version of “you’re a man!” and the cast including Andrea Riseborough is superb. But honestly it’s super weird in terms of narrative arc. I didn’t find it as “funny” as this critic but I liked it (but does anyone else?):
The codependence between Elena and Herbert is the dangerous ballet on which “The Regime” turns. Winslet is a dark-comic delight, with a clipped diction, an imperious bearing and hair-trigger anxiety. You’d expect Winslet to nail the drama, but she excels in comic set pieces, vamping her way through Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now” at a state banquet with Nicholas on the keyboard, like a fascist Captain & Tennille.
For some actual fascist/dictatorial real-life-land, and imo an actual piece of art in the form of film-making, go see Do Not Expect Too Much From The End of The World. This art takes the form of a movie which has mind-numbing driving sequences (some of which contains pounding music); a lot of obscenity; a treatise on social media; and it contains an entire other film within this film; and it also has a final scene which appears to be a single ~30-minute long take. Also, just so you are sure it’s not gonna be a super fun time:
Do not be misled, then, by the wryly distended title of “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World.” It’s a quotation from the Polish Jewish poet and aphorist Stanisław Jerzy Lec, a wealthy baron’s son turned Communist writer who survived two world wars, watched his Austro-Hungarian home town pass through German and Soviet control (it’s now the Ukrainian city of Lviv), and famously survived a Nazi labor camp by escaping, in 1943, dressed in German uniform.
Finally, if you haven’t had your fill of Dictators, real or imagined, I am reading the Martin Amis book The Zone of Interest. If you saw and liked/loved the movie which just won the Academy Award, even if you found it incredibly painful to watch and you are still thinking about it, read this book. Where the intensity and/or creeping horror of the film is all implicit, the book is almost the inverse. The action is similarly ultra-prosaic, but somehow graphic without being shocking. Just the act of watching the film, and now reading the book, I feel complicit. These characters are something:
For much of the book, though, Thomsen is largely preoccupied with trying to get the Kommandant’s wife into the sack. Being the nephew of Hitler’s personal secretary gives him a certain license in this arena, a certain leeway for insubordination, though even in the engine-room of the Holocaust, social norms continue to obtain. The notion of sexual misdemeanor seems unspeakably trivial in the context of the book’s setting, an absurdity of which Thomsen seems grimly aware. Early in the book, during a moment alone with Hannah at the entrance to a greenhouse, he wonders whether it would be “so strange, really, to urge her on inside and to lean into her and gather in my dropped hands the white folds of her dress? Would it? Here? Where everything was allowed?”
Another take on “You’re a man,” indeed.
Man and woman alike, here’s what you need to read whether or not you decide to see, watch or read any of the above. All the news of the week — From Politics to Pop Culture, and everything in between.
Take a minute to subscribe, if you don’t already:
Share it with your friends, family, or on your social networks:
And if you have a story you think I may have missed please email me at LZSundayPaper@gmail.com.
HAPPY EASTER and Go, Final 4!
LZ
THE PIC(K) OF THE WEEK:
The Women Who Run Harlem via The Cut
POLITICS:
Will Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum, A Jewish Woman, Blaze A Trail or Follow One? via The New York Times
BUSINESS:
Corporate Leadership By Race and Gender via Investopedia
CAMPUS CLIMATE:
Does Admissions Fairness Make My Campus Look Too Female? via The Washington Post
Why The Entire Country Is Still Talking About A U.C. Berkeley Professor’s Toxic Dating Advice via The San Francisco Chronicle
HEALTH & WELLNESS:
Tackling Long-Haul Diseases via The MIT Technology Review
Women and Minorities Bear The Brunt Of Medical Misdiagnosis via Undark
MEMBERS ONLY:
Garrick Club’s Men-Only Members List Reveals Roll Call of British Establishment via The Guardian
TV, FILM & THE ARTS:
’We Don’t Need More Small Penis Energy’: Sharon Stone on Why She Swapped Acting For Art via The Guardian
Olivia Coleman: ‘I’d Be Paid More If I Was Oliver’ via The BBC
The Most Influential Women In Photography via PetaPixel
OBITUARY:
Shani Mott, Black Studies Scholar Who Examined Power All Around Her, Dies At 47 via The New York Times
Lisa Lane, Chess Champion Whose Reign Was Meteoric, Dies At 90 via The New York Times
AND WHAT’S NOT TO LOVE ABOUT…?:
Before Caitlin Clark Dominated Women’s Basketball, She Dominated These Boys via The Wall Street Journal
