Tynan's Anger

Arts & Culture Commentary from a Loving Digital Skeptic

Racebaiting And Ignorance In The Media’s Coverage Of Martin McDonagh’s A Behanding In Spokane

Posted on | March 16, 2010 | 4 Comments

By now I wonder how
Some people never know
The enemy could be their friend guardian
I’m not a hooligan
I rock the party and
Clear all the madness, I’m not a racist
Preach to teach to all
‘Cause some they never had this

-Chuck D. “Don’t Believe The Hype.” (1988)

public enemy don't believe the hype

A while back, when discussing with friends the general lack of value of post-show talk-backs in theater, a friend mentioned having seen William H. Macy in such a discussion after the screening of Edmund. He talked about how uncomfortable he was with using the N-word, and then he talked with Martin Lawrence, who he was filming a movie with at the time (later revealed to be Wild Hogs) about how the word is used. Macy was shocked to learn that black people use the N-word as a term for empowerment, as the one word they can use in regular discourse that white people cannot.

The joke was that Macy said this with utmost sincerity, as if the discussions that have been occurring for nearly 30 years with the rise of hip-hop had existed in an alternate universe.

Recently, Hilton Als started this debate yet again with his review of Martin McDonagh’s A Behanding in Spokane (more on my take on that play later). I like to be careful when I accuse someone of race-baiting, but I have little qualms with categorizing the following passage as such:

While Carmichael’s “nigger” talk could be put down to an attempt of McDonagh’s to expose the nastiness of a segment of the population—many writers have used ugly language to paint an honest portrait of racism in this country—the caricature he presents in Toby, the young black male as shucking, jiving thief, can’t be excused on those grounds, or by the slick professionalism that coats the play’s intellectual decay. McDonagh adds gag after gag to the show, as if he believed that comedy could cover up the real horror at its core: the fact that blackness is, for him, a Broadway prop, an easy way of establishing a hierarchy.

The British press, who has loved to peg McDonagh as a bad boy no matter how contrived (the contrived nature of which was noted in 2006 by Als’ New Yorker): went ga ga over the discussion. But before I even heard back from the Brits, I heard my father and various figures of the adult world say “I heard that play is racist” (my father had seen the play, so he was able to make judgments for himself, other “smart” people weren’t as lucky.)

Maybe Hilton Als should have spoken to his colleagues Sasha Frere-Jones or Kelefa Sennah about the history of the use of the N-word in pop music in the the ascension of hip-hop, which started right around the time I was still in diapers. Maybe he could have spoken to Nancy Franklin about the use of the N-word by white writers of The Wire, The Sopranos, and with the depictions of casual racism on 30 Rock, The Office, and Family Guy. He could have talked to Anthony Lane about Scorsese using an almost identical use of empowered white racism by Jack Nicholson in The Departed (and by a character played by Scorsese himself in Taxi Driver), not to mention Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Sam Fuller, Roman Polanski…

Suffice to say, this was one of the few moments in the past few years where I thought the attitudes in the pop music world were more mature, both in intellect, emotions, and attitudes, than in the theater world. It’s the same kind of blind naivete of the high culture-minded, ignorant  discussions that had long been going on in “low culture” circles, that were seen 25 years ago, and it still produces the same kind of narrow-minded dismissals, false accusations, and hypemongering that come from any hack-job music review.

The difference in this case is that the people involved are all supposed to be smarter, better educated, more ethically-minded, and restrained (another hangover of the high culture/low culture wars of the ’80s). And yet, the entire controversy stems from a single spurious review that just happens to come from one of the few bully pulpits left in well-versed critical coverage of theater. In reality, this is the same old story of snobbish ignorance of people without the same kind of intellectual access, which ends up dominating the ground-level discussions of theater, even by those young/learned enough to see right through it, through a devotion to the critical chain of command.

I think I know just the man to opine on this:

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Sunday Under The Covers – Her Mama Said No…

Posted on | March 14, 2010 | No Comments

Jack White live in 2005

Image via Wikipedia

This week has been dominated by the White Stripes in my music life—the overload of fantastic new releases this week caused me to shield myself in my comfort music of the past 5-10 years, and the fact that I could review a live album of the modern-day Led Zeppelin was a relief (That’s a position I’ll defend to my grave).

One great thing about the White Stripes was how their live show would be just as valuable to the experience of the band as their recorded work—both were top notch. My favorite live track from the band still has to be their cover of “Tennessee Border,” an iTunes-exclusive addition to Icky Thump, which truth be told, is my least favorite White Stripes album. If you haven’t heard the highlight of Jack White’s Nashville tracks, you’re in for a treat.

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The Hurt Locker, Reviewed by Plato

Posted on | March 8, 2010 | No Comments

Plato“And now we may fairly take him and place him by the side of the painter, for he is like him in two ways: first, inasmuch as his creations have an inferior degree of truth –in this, I say, he is like him; and he is also like him in being concerned with an inferior part of the soul; and therefore we shall be right in refusing to admit him into a well-ordered State, because he awakens and nourishes and strengthens the feelings and impairs the reason. As in a city when the evil are permitted to have authority and the good are put out of the way, so in the soul of man, as we maintain, the imitative poet implants an evil constitution, for he indulges the irrational nature which has no discernment of greater and less, but thinks the same thing at one time great and at another small-he is a manufacturer of images and is very far removed from the truth.

But at least Avatar didn’t win.”

-Book X of The Republic, loosely translated

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“Common sense should prevail”

Posted on | March 6, 2010 | No Comments

Up The Down Staircase

Kudos to Bob Herbert for exposing a long-running problem in the New York City public school system: the wanton abuse of power by school safety officials. The horrific chronicles of the misbehavior of safety officials he describes are not surprising to anyone who has attended or worked at a public school in New York City—even Bronx Science, the one full of smart and occasionally rich white kids that I attended.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly’s quote about the decision of when to apply handcuffs is true; He knows better than to believe it’s the reality. It’s difficult to expect kids not to behave like criminals when they’re essentially being treated like criminals from the age of 5 on. I’d be interested in a study on the dynamic between the effects of teachers and safety officials in inner city schools; I suspect the latter group has a much bigger role than most people would like to believe.

Previously:

http://www.tynansanger.com/2008/08/theater-review-no-child-by-nilaja-sun

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Why I quit being an arts and entertainment blogger

Posted on | March 5, 2010 | 1 Comment

gang of four entertainment coverAnd why I became an A & E writer

B5media’s controversial firing of entertainment bloggers last month had the blogosphere nuts (here, here, and here) but it didn’t surprise me in the slightest. I knew some bloggers who worked and helped create b5 media, and many of them left the company right before this bombshell. They may not say so, but it was a rather wise business move to quiety dip out of the picture.

The fact of the matter is this: entertainment blogs aren’t profitable. Never have been, and unless there’s a worldwide lockdown on the internet, it never will be. The problem quite simply, is this: very few blogs make any money at all, and ones that have the market flooded with free, unsolicited content almost never do.

There’s only two kinds of entertainment blogs that make money: remarkably niche blogs that appeal to people that have money (i.e. Plasma TV blogs, Laser gun blogs, x ray holographjic specs blogs), or gigantic traffic celebrity gossip blogs like TMZ. The rest of the entertainment blog “success stories” mostly involve book deals. And I don’t need to mention how the publishing industry is doing.

That’s the dirty truth of it, and it took me over a year out of college and a near-meltdown to realize it.

But I’ve not given up hope of making my living involving consuming entertainment, reading about it and writing about it. I’ve just realized that for my chosen field of interest and expertise, a pure blog is not going to forge a living, no matter how good it is.

In the past 5 years, seeing the ups and downs of new media, what people were smart about, and what they weren’t, here’s the basic conclusions.

Things the bloggers were right about:

  • The print media industry had gotten far too corrupt, stodgy, and cynical to properly address its own problems by 2006
  • Blogging could provide an outlet to a new variety of and interaction between content.
  • Too much information, overall, is better than too little information.

Things the old guard was right about:

  • Expertise, professionalism, and discretion are still a major key to success in the media industry
  • The dreams of a complete breakdown of the industry circa 2006, were wildly naive and immature
  • That blogs don’t really make any money.

The middle ground? Being an entertainment writer, which at this stage in history, most likely means some combination of temping, freelancing, and going back to school.  So it goes.

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We’re Back Baby

Posted on | March 2, 2010 | No Comments

And I’ve made those upgrades you’ve all been suing me about.

In all honesty, much love must go to Ana Becker, for getting this whole thing running on Wordpress. If you encounter any broken links to past posts, or (worse) posts still in Blogger, let me know pronto. No real blogging habits will change, but the addition of a functional blog layout will certainly help with the motivation.

Peace Out, Y’all!

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Theater Review (NYC): Re-Entry by Emily Ackerman and KJ Sanchez (Urban Stages)

Posted on | February 12, 2010 | No Comments

The problem with all movie, television, video game, and other media views of war, as Re-Entry’s Joseph Harrell asserts from the start, is that it inevitably provides, at best, a two-dimensional detached view of a world that is very much real for those who experience it. Like those other arts, theater cannot simulate the battlefield, but what it can do is provide a generally human link to events that can easily be otherwise be dehumanized when viewed through a screen.

KJ Sanchez and Emily Ackerman, who co-wrote the play, have the kind of respect for armed servicemen that can only come out of a familial bond. Both playwrights have siblings currently in the Marines, and both have clearly had it up to here with the war being talked about by playwrights, patrons, and New York friends who have a difficult time attaching actual human faces. They have cast a former Marine in Joseph Harrell to give a presentation to the families of armed servicemen about how they prepare soldiers, and then they show the crude, awkward, and in many cases devastating effects this all has on soldiers at home.

Re-Entry is the product of taped conversations with actual soldiers, and while partially autobiographical, employs the kind of discipline rarely seen in the New York stage (no doubt the play’s ties to actual military personally made that discipline seem slightly less grueling.). In fact, the play’s authenticity is crucial, and while it accounts for the variation of the responses of war veterans to civilian life, it does tackle some running themes: that being deployed is a lot more natural for a soldier than being at home, that families of soldiers are often damaged more than the soldiers themselves, and, most of all, that once you cross the line into armed services, the particulars of a war become less and less vital. And with all of this, it still finds time to assemble a cast of characters that audience members can identify with and embrace, even while actors sweep quickly from character to character.

Re-Entry sacrifices a highly intellectualized view of the nature of war, though all soldiers express an admiration for military history and the Spartan world, where the divide between soldier and cilivian was clear. In reality, this line is more complicated than that, and while it would have been nice to see a more thorough approach to the broader ranges of combat experiences; most exceptionally, the play does not include the perspective of a family member of any deceased soldiers (though one is alluded to). For a play that takes so much time to point out just how much the family is affected by a soldier being deployed, it would have been crucial to see the perspective of the family of a soldier who did not return home.

That complaint underlies the fact that Re-Entry may be the best depiction of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan I have yet to see in any medium. In comparison, when I saw The Hurt Locker, the consensus best film on the subject among movie critics, I received nothing out of the film but a sense of empty depression. Making things worse, I was surrounded by stereotypical New York movie patrons, down to a professorial type in a tweed jacket and red scarf who brought a book of John Donne poetry to the screening (that’s not an exaggeration). While Re-Entry caters to the exact same audience, it does not leave them with a sense of how things are over there. Instead, it shows just how much more absurd things can be when dealing with the war right here.

Re-Entry is an exceptional work of documentary theater, in the same league as I Am My Own Wife, The Laramie Project, and, I would venture, the classic works of Studs Terkel, Anna Deveare Smith. The play achieves its drama through conversation, engagement, and simpatico, and provides a New York theater audience all it possibly can in how it handles our current military operations: when you meet a former soldier in your daily life, ask, don’t tell.

Re-Entry by Emily Ackerman and KJ Sanchez; directed by Sanchez; set and costume design by Marion Williams; lighting design by Thom Weaver; sound design by Zach Williamson; video design by Alex Koch.

Starring Joseph Harrell, Sameerah Luqmaan-Harris, Bobby Moreno, PJ Sosko, and Sheila Tapia

Photos by Michael Portanteire

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One Of Those Bands Got Paid – The Auctioneers [New Feature]

Posted on | February 8, 2010 | 2 Comments

Wordle Cloud of the Internet Marketing Blog - ...

At 3 p.m last Tuesday, I had no idea who the Auctioneers were, but I was trying to finalize my plans for the evening. I then got an email from a rep at Shore Fire Media, who had told me that he had just signed the Auctioneers today. He directed me to two songs on their MySpace page, which I dug, and then said that drinks were on him at their Mercury Lounge show tonight. Out of many emails I get like this daily, it was ultimately three factors–new band with two good songs, free drinks, and tonight–that got me to the show.

Sure enough, I was there with a friend at 10 p.m., and though I’ve seen shows with Jon Spencer and the XX at the Mercury Lounge in the past, the Auctioneers set was the most packed I’ve ever seen the already tiny venue for an opening band. The only difference was the music, which, as my friend Pat said within the first two songs, sounded like a Counting Crows cover band. I did not disagree.

Nonetheless, by the end of the set, I heard the two songs I liked, one (“Young Man’s Blues”) I still liked by the end of the night. A more impressionable young scab might have stayed loyal to the Auctioneers for much longer, mainly to save the cred they had with the Auctioneers until it was embarrassing (no doubt the Counting Crows were a small local band who only 6 people saw at some point). Nor did I have anything against the Shore Fire rep who sent me the email and paid for my beer; he had done his job exceptionally well, in the same O.J. Simpson’s defense team had done their jobs well.

When I spoke to the rep after I got my beer back, he said that the band had already had finished an EP (later confirmed over emai), and that they’d spend the next 6 months shopping to a label while touring. That way they’d keep contol over the actual artistc product, a noble goal indeed. The only problems were a) the ambiguous group of people referred to as “they,” and b) the artistic product itself.

In reality, this kind of story is pretty commonplace now; Shore Fire Media is basically one big publicity firm with a handful of A & R functions for new bands, founded in 1990. Their clients, who include Norah Jones, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello and Wynston Marsalis, won 9 Grammys on Sunday, and were nominated for 28. Shore Fire happens to be particularly good at what they do; their strategy to get me to the Auctioneers show on Tuesday night was a textbook example of an effective email marketing campaign. (Don’t get me wrong, I love music and beer in any form, even if it sucks, and especially when it’s free.)

My main concern is what exactly Shore Fire’s rep meant when he said they had just signed the Auctioneers today. Even though no major label was involved, my hunch is that the contract was negotiated in the same way major labels use to negotiate contracts; Shore Fire has a lot of industry veterans on board, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the contract resembles the kind that Steve Albini infamously blew the whistle on in his 1993 article, “The Problem With Music”. I also know that, for all intensive purposes, the Auctioneers should treat this day with the same enthusiasm bands use to receive when handed major label contracts in the ’90s, no matter how dangerous that excitement may be. The gleam in the band’s eyes when performing on signing day was certainly the same.

I don’t mean to pick on Shore Fire or the Auctioneers in any significant way, but this particular exchange is crucial because of the particulars of the situation. Overall, Shore Fire clients are much more commercially successful and Grammy-winning than clients of similar companies who engage in identical tactics. Some of those other companies, however aim less for commercial success than critical plaudits for many bands, a good review on Pitchfork can be more valuable than a major label deal once a marketing firm is on board. The marketing tactics are the same independent of anything related to art. In many cases, critics will give well-marketed bands plaudits that are not independent of art, but based on the marketing campaigns that are. Most critics that do this are probably unaware that they are doing so.

It’s important to note that in all these cases, the success rate of rock stardom is significantly lower than 100%, and always has been. If the Auctioneers are successful, I wish them all the best, and glad I was able to see them last week.

But it’s these kind of confounded online scenarios that are often responsible for a band’s success, and these scenarios never get covered by editorial media–the arm of the media world that still claims to be charged with defending artistic integrity, not good marketing.

I’ve seen a real failure on this front of late, and the development is understandable. Why should a bitter, impoverished group of music journalists avoid a free drink for passing plaudits? After all, it’s just music, surely there are bigger injustices to call out, even in the music world. The Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger is a lot more evil and destructive to good music than a successfully deceptive marketing campaign by an independent marketing group for an independent band, right?

My problem is, I’m not sure; I’m not sure if the butterfly of a clever little marketing deception doesn’t lead to a massively deceptive music conglomerate tsunami. And this is what this new feature, named in honor of the song “Collagen Rock”, by Mclusky, aims to find out:

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The 2000s of movies in idealized Oscar form

Posted on | February 1, 2010 | No Comments

Cover of "Hot Fuzz (Ultimate Edition) [Bl...Cover of Hot Fuzz (Ultimate Edition) [Blu-ray]

In lieu of a decade in review type-piece about movies in February (the last decade was, like, a whole month ago!), I’ll take the Oscar’s newfound embracing of the top-10 format to do an all-decade Oscar list. Keeping in mind that I have my own standards in place, which I will defend if so asked. My all-Oscar nominees of the 2000s (winners in bold) is as follows:

Best Picture:

Dark Knight
Children of Men
Happy-Go-Lucky
Hot Fuzz
Memento
Million Dollar Baby
No Country For Old Men
Ratatouille
The Squid And The Whale
Synechdoche, NY

Best Foreign Language Film:

2046
Barbarian Invasions
Counterfeiters
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Katyn
I Served The King Of England
Osama
Pan’s Labyrinth
Volver
The White Ribbon

Best Actor:

George Clooney – Up in The Air
Daniel Day-Lewis – There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp – Sweeney Todd
Paul Giamatti – Sideways
Ethan Hawke – Before Sunset
Philip Seymour Hoffman – Capote
Richard Jenkins – The Visitor
Frank Langella – Frost/Nixon
Clive Owen – Children of Men
Tom Wilkinson – In The Bedroom

Best Actress:

Penelope Cruz – Volver
Rebecca Hall – Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Anne Hathaway – Rachel Getting Married
Sally Hawkins – Happy Go Lucky
Angelina Jolie – A Might Heart
Laura Linney – You Can Count On Me
Ellen Page – Juno
Meryl Streep – Doubt
Naomi Watts – Mulholland Drive
Kate Winslet – Little Children

Best Supporting Actor:

Javier Bardem – No Country For Old Men
Michael Caine – Children of Men
Steve Coogan – Coffee and Cigarettes
Timothy Dalton/Jim Broadbent – Hot Fuzz
Paul Dano – There Will Be Blood
Morgan Freeman – Million Dollar Baby
Jackie Earle Haley – Little Children
Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight
Jack Nicholson – The Departed
Michael Shannon – Revolutionary Road

Best Supporting Actress:

Cate Blanchett – Coffee and Cigarettes
Penelope Cruz – Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Zooey Deschanel – Almost Famous
Eva Green – Dreamers
Kate Hudson – Almost Famous
Leslie Mann – Knocked Up
Meryl Streep – Adaptation
Marisa Thomei – In The Bedroom
Michelle Williams – Brokeback Mountain
Ziyi Zhang – Crouching Tiger

Best Direction:

Coen Brothers – No Country For Old Men
Alfonso Cuaron – Children of Men
Gullermo del Toro – Pan’s Labyrinth
Clint Eastwood – Million Dollar Baby
David Fincher – Zodiac
Ang Lee – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Chris Nolan – The Dark Knight
Martin Scorsese – The Departed
Steven Soderberg – Ocean’s 11
Edgar Wright – Hot Fuzz

Best Original Screenplay:

Kelly Masterson – Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead
Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright – Hot Fuzz
Diablo Cody – Juno
Sophia Coppola – Lost In Translation
Woody Allen – Matchpoint
Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan – Memento
Brad Bird – Ratatouille
Noah Baumbach – The Squid and The Whale
Seth Rogan & Evan Goldberg- Superbad
Charlie Kaufman – Synechdoche, New York

Best Adapted Screenplay:

Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman- Adaptation
Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke – Before Sunset
Larry McMurty – Brokeback Mountain
Alfonso Cuaron and Timothy J. Sexton – Children of Men
William Monahan – The Departed
John Patrick Shanley – Doubt
Michael Hanecke – Funny Games
Todd Field and Tom Perotta – Little Children
Brian Helgeland - Mystic River
Coen Brothers – No Country For Old Men

Best Special Effects:

Avatar
28 Days Later
The Dark Knight
Hot Fuzz
The Hurt Locker
Iron Man
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
The Lord of the Rings: Return Of The King
Pan’s Labyrinth
Spider-Man 2

Best Documentary:

The Aristocrats
Bowling For Columbine
The Fog of War
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
Kill Your Idols
Rize
Sicko
Spellbound
Sugar
Super Size Me

Best Use of Music (Soundtrack/Score)

24 Hour Party People
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The Departed
Hot Fuzz
High Fidelity
Lost In Translation
Observe and Report
Ocean’s 11
Slumdog Millionaire
There Will Be Blood

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My favorite rock scene in movie history – The Yardbirds in The Blow-Up

Posted on | January 31, 2010 | 1 Comment

This pretty much sums up my feeling about the hipster “I was there” phenomenon: if you’re with it enough, shit will eventually happen. In this case, that involves being at an early Yardbirds show with a then-unknown Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, coming away with Beck’s smashed guitar that would now be worth thousands, only to throw it away as the piece of junk it otherwise would be.

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