Saturday, July 21, 2018

How White of You

Movies: Sorry to Bother You

Ok, first of all, if you haven't seen Sorry to Bother You yet, stop reading this and go see it. It's better going in knowing NOTHING. For once in my dumb life I *didn't* read a billion reviews before seeing the movie and I was very happy I got to have the full experience.

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Ok, now that you saw it--- HOLY SHIT, RIGHT?

Lakeith Stanfield, best known for his role as Darius in Atlanta and also that black dude at the party who flips out when Daniel Kaluuya takes his picture in Get Out, plays Cassius Green--a man barely scraping by in Oakland, CA and living in his uncle's (played by Terry Crews, with hair!) garage. He takes a job as a telemarketer in a soul-crushing cubicle farm and a coworker (Danny Glover) encourages him to use his "white voice" to do better at his job. Cassius' white voice isn't his own voice but "whiter", it's REALLY fucking white--David Cross supplies the voice and you know how white David Cross sounds.

Cassius' success gets the attention of management who promote him to "Power Caller", which comes with a pay raise so huge he can't refuse, as well as a private golden elevator to a penthouse at the top of the building, filled with beautiful people selling...well....they're not exactly selling discount cruise vacations to elderly people up there.

Right as Cassius' star is rising, his coworkers, lead by Squeeze (Steven Yeun), are staging a strike in order to get paid better and receive benefits. Cassius' artist girlfriend, Detroit (the always wonderful Tessa Thompson) joins their ranks while also enjoying the benefits of Cassius' newfound wealth--but their relationship is hanging by a thread because Cassius is changing by hanging out with all those power callers and using his white voice all the time. MONEY MAKES PEOPLE WORSE. I'm not being sarcastic. It just does. How many kind and authentic rich people do you know? The only rich people I know are entitled dipshits who don't believe white privilege exists.

(Yes, I know. Wealth is relative. I'm probably in the top 1% if you compare me to the rest of the entire world. I, too, am an entitled dipshit).

So anyway, the shiz really hits the fan when Cassius is invited to a party at the home of a guy named Steve Lift (played PERFECTLY by Armie Hammer) who created a company called "Worry Free" where workers sign lifetime contracts to live, work, and eat in the same building without being paid because their living expenses are covered. Yes, it's literally slave labor--though, notably, all the ads and commercials for "Worry Free" feature white people.

So Cassius goes to Steve's mansion and is forced to perform a rap song for a group of drunk and high white people ("boring cunts" as Steve refers to them) but since Cassius can't rap, he just repeats the phrase "n*gger shit n*gger shit n*gger shit" over and over to a beat and it's a hit. The white people yell it right back to him.

The whole party scene was absolutely bonkers and hilarious--reminded me of Django Unchained where they go to that debauched party at Calvin Candy's house in New Orleans.

But then, right as Steve requests a private meeting with Cassius to talk about a project that he'd be a fool to turn down, Cassius accidentally discovers what Steve is REALLY up to and...man. To say the movie takes a sharp left turn isn't accurate--the movie launches into a different plane of existence.

And that's where I'll stop with the plot synopsis. If you read all this and haven't seen the movie--GO SEE IT.

Sorry to Bother You, which is directed by rapper Boots Riley, reminded me of a lot of films that touch on similar issues. The one movie it really felt kin to is Spike Lee's Bamboozled about a black man (Damon Wayans) who creates a TV show that incorporates blackface and minstrelsy as a "fuck you" to his white boss, but it backfires and becomes a hit--netting him power and money even though he created an insanely racist product. Similarly, STBY is about what happens when a black individual achieves success by fitting in to white culture and in that process ends up fucking over other black people (and poorer people).

It also reminded me of Django Unchained with its moments of crazed debauchery and pitch black humor and, of course, Get Out, especially in the last third. Despite all these comparisons, STBY never felt derivative--it is fully its own weird and wonderful thing. Even if all the ideas didn't come together seamlessly, it is so unique and bizarre that its minor flaws are 100% forgiven.

Sorry to Bother You is many things: an Oakland fantasia, a pro-union comedy, a perverse exploration of white privilege. But it is also one thing: a movie that must be seen to be believed.

Grade: A






Sunday, July 1, 2018

Frozen in Terror

TV shows, books: The Terror

Welcome to another book/show twofer review! Today I'll be reviewing Dan Simmons' epic work of historical horror The Terror as well as the AMC television show based on that book.

I first read The Terror in graduate school and though it took about 2 months to read (the novel is 700 or 900 pages depending on whether you're reading a trade or mass-market paperback) I was enraptured by it. The novel blends historical reality with fictional horror. It takes a real-life event: the John Franklin expedition of 1845 to find the Northwest Passage, which ended in the deaths of all the men from starvation and scurvy and adds a supernatural element: a monster hunting the men on the ice.
The novel has multiple perspectives: John Franklin himself, a man of great hubris who ignores the advice of his fellow Captains and Lieutenants to modify their course when it becomes clear that the ships on the expedition, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, will soon be stuck in pack ice. Additionally, we see the perspectives of Francis Crozier, Franklin's second in command and the protagonist of the story, Dr. Harry Goodsir, and various men on the ships.

What truly makes this story unique is how seamlessly Simmons weaves together the real life horrors of starvation, severe illness, the unforgiving landscape of hellish cold, cannibalism, and murder with the supernatural horrors of the mysterious "Thing on the ice" that is introduced in the first 20 pages and is not fully explained until the final 50 pages, yet keeps the reader in suspense the entire time.

The book was adapted into a ten episode series for AMC starring Ciaran Hinds as Franklin, Jared Harris (best known as one of my favorite characters from Mad Men, Lane Pryce) as Crozier, and Tobias Menzies (whom Outlander aficionados will recognize as Frank Randall/Black Jack Randall) as the third in command, James Fitzjames.

The order in which I watched/read the show/book is this:
Read The Terror in grad school
Watched the show a few months ago
Re-read the book
Re-watched the show (with closed captions)

And I'm glad I read the book and watched the show twice because the show is damned hard to follow unless you have closed captions, already know the story, or both. Think: dozens of British actors who all look the same when bundled up, have similar character names (sooooo many Johns, James, and Thomases), and all have thick accents (the first time I watched the show, I thought they were all saying "left-tenant" instead of "Lieutenant"). By re-reading the book and then immediately re-watching the show, I picked up on many things I missed in the first viewing.

This might sound like a lot of work to you so if you're at all curious, my recommendation is to watch the TV show with closed captions so you can at least follow who's who. If you're looking for a spooky good time though, the book delivers more tension and creepiness than the show does.

The show's strength lies in strong performances by Jared Harris, Tobias Menzies, and Adam Nagaitis who plays Cornelius Hickey, a scheming man who tries to undermine his superiors. Additionally, Nive Nielsen, a singer-songwriter and budding actress who is Inuk, plays Lady Silence, an "Esquimaux" woman who has a spiritual connection to the monster on the ice. Appropriately, they cast a Native person to play a Native character and she does an amazing job elevating the character above any kind of "noble savage" stereotype. In fact, Lady Silence has the power to both save and kill the white men aboard the ships. Although she is one of the few female characters on the show (which makes sense, given the time and place it is set), she is fully fleshed out and three-dimensional. The story wouldn't make sense without her.

The book and tv show are pretty niche. If you love sea-faring stories, you'll love it. If you like historical fiction and/or horror, you'll love it. Otherwise, you might find both the book and show long and tedious. Given the fact that the novel is one of the few books I've ever re-read, you can see where I land.

Grades:
The Terror, the book: A+
The Terror, the show: A