Encanto
Encanto
A Disney musical about intergenerational trauma, healing, and the power of family and community.
The songs are written by Lin-Manuel Miranda which you probably already know means that they are extremely good. If you don’t, please familiarize yourself with Hamilton. I’ve included a video below of my favorite song.
With movies like this coming out from Disney, I can understand why people who explicitly subscribe to the premise of white supremacy believe that they are losing the culture war and need to fight back.
It’s only been five years since Coco came out. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released in 1937, so that’s 85 years of white princesses. It’s exciting to think about what a potential difference that wide-spread releases of films representing diverse cultures in a way that is not completely whitewashed could have for kids growing up now, even if it is long overdue.
Disney isn’t making these films to win brownie points though. Clearly consumer desire for these stories has made it profitable for them, and it’s probably worth celebrating the fact that a diverse set of audiences believe that these stories are important and relevant for them.
The day before we watch this film, I randomly listened to the Top 100 World Charts on Apple Music and this song was in the top ten:
Ozark Season 4 (Part 1)
I spent a lot of my life living in relationship to the Ozark Mountains that give this show its name. The etymology of the name remains ambiguous. We know that it comes from the phrase “aux arcs", but there seems to be some disagreement as to what, exactly, that phrase means. One interpretation on Wikipedia is that “aux arcs is an abbreviation of aux arcs-en-ciel, French for ‘toward the rainbows.’” Wendy and Marty are forever chasing rainbows but end up juggling more and more knives.
I’ve watched a lot of shows about money, power, and corruption recently, and I know that I’m not alone. Sometimes I am baffled by how people can watch House of Cards (not one of the shows that I’ve watched), Succession, Ozark, etc. and then turn around and be baffled by the Q phenomenon.
Interesting and Appropriate Developments in This Season
The FBI is more interested in having an informant who can help them seize cash from the cartels than to actually stop the flow of drugs into the United States… which is a totally rational move given that the latter is probably an unachievable goal.
An opioid magnate makes a generous donation to a foundation in order to facilitate the flow of cartel heroin into their possession with a clean paper trail. I’ve always wondered if there was a connection between Afghanistan and the opioid epidemic.
Wendy appears to be having a Lady MacBeth moment as a result of killing her own brother who was on the verge of betraying them.
The Steal (Matt Bowden + Matthew Teague)
The Steal by Mark Bowden + Matthew Teague
In-depth reporting on very specific stories of local players during the interregnum. These are all stories of Republicans, both those who want to “Stop the Steal” who are portrayed, unfortunately, as one-dimensional lunatic; this probably sells more books because the target audience here would prefer to think of them as lunatics than closely examine their lives. More on this when I write about Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America.
All that being said, I found it to be an interesting look at how people in key decision-making positions in each swing state (Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia) responded to the pressures of Trump and his loyalists.
If you wanted a reason to worry about who is running for local government positions that monitor or otherwise administer elections, then this would not be a bad thing to read.
And if you live in a swing state, please run for these positions or help someone who is already doing so that does not believe the Big Lie.
Anti-Social (Andrew Marantz)
Anti-Social by Andrew Marantz
When this book first came out back in 2019, I remember immediately putting a hold on the library for it. I heard several interviews with Andrew and read several reviews of the book. Before I got to it though, I had one of my periodic fallings-out with a given subject matter (aka Big Tech) and decisions that I needed to diversify my intake.
I was correct in my assumption at that time that this book wouldn’t have anything new to say about Big Tech (it doesn’t and the section where he talks about tech is by far the least interesting section).
What’s amazing about this book is all the scenes in which he interviews, hangs out with, or talks to the families of some of notable figures that constitute parts of the “alt right”, including Mike Cenovich.
What I found myself continually thinking is how easy it would have been for me to have become a story from this book myself. Many of the figures begin on the postmodern counterculture left (reading Adbusters, joining Bernie-mania, etc.), and this book echos Angela Nagel’s ideas about the ways in which the alt-right is a continuation of parts of the 60’s counterculture that people like myself grew up absorbing.
I participated in a lot of early internet troll culture myself since I spent a lot of time in on-line chatrooms and forums which were generally ruled by it during the period between 1998-2011 when I was active in those spaces.
I found it particularly useful though to understand how that culture has been weaponized to push cultural discourse, using “humor” as a way to normalize things that would otherwise be unacceptable to even bring up. I’ve certainly been disturbed by the way I’ve witnessed people wishing death upon each other throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and what that could mean for the future.
King Richard
Every Friday is “Movie Night” in our household, and last Friday at my partner, Jen’s, suggestion we watched King Richard. I can certainly recommend that anyone who has a burgeoning young athlete (as we do) in the house check it out.
The film is generally everything you would expect from a biopic about Venus and Serena Williams starring Will Smith. What’s probably the most intriguing about their story is that he pulls them completely out of the limelight and from any competition for a number of years just as they’re starting to attract attention in the Tennis world, basically to avoid the burn out and destructiveness that fame can have on young people who aren’t prepared for it and what it brings.
The film also pinnacles with Venus Williams losing a match and having to remember how amazing that she was even able to hold her own at all in the match considering she was in her first pro tournament and playing against the number one ranked player in the world.
I did some ratings before, but I think that I won’t do them anymore.
Transient Kingdom (Yaa Gyasi)
A child of Ghanaian immigrants struggles with her faith in the light of her brother’s heroin overdose and her mother’s subsequent depression and withdrawal from the world.
(Listened to as an Audiobook)
A child of Ghanaian immigrants struggles with her faith in the light of her brother’s heroin overdose and her mother’s subsequent depression and withdrawal from the world.
Giftý (the protagonist) works as a neuroscientist studying addiction or (as she refers to it) reward seeking behavior, and the novel is narrated from her perspective in the presence with flashbacks to the past including journal entries that she wrote to God at a young age.
The faith vs. science question comes up a lot, primarily through Giftý’s internal narrative combined with somewhat stilted conversations that as time progresses, she increasingly avoids.
I don’t know that the book had anything to tell me that was news to me, but it was skillfully written and enjoyable to listen to. I’m not sure if I would have finished it as a book or not but listening to a novel is a different experience as my attention sometimes waivers in and out of the narrative (although certainly I have encountered audiobooks where this happens less).
I will also say that the narrator was the same as the narrator for Miss Metropolitan (a superior novel that I listened to previously) which has me starting to wonder if this narrator reads the majority of novels by black women authors who don’t read their own work?
Rating: 🫀🧠🧠🫀🐭🐭
How to Be Drawn (Terrance Hayes)
After I got about halfway through this book of poems, I bought two of Terrance Hayes’ books (including one that I had previously read during a sonnet-craze a few years back, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin) and put a hold on the rest at the library, so there will be more Terrance to come in this space.
After I got about halfway through this book of poems, I bought two of Terrance Hayes’ books (including one that I had previously read during a sonnet-craze a few years back, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin) and put a hold on the rest at the library, so there will be more Terrance to come in this space.
Some unusual forms poems take in this book:
A logic problem.
Five lines in response to each chapter of an 1871 book on the “Right Development of the Moral and Mental Capacities [..] of the Juvenile Mind.”
A crime report.
Instructions for a Seance with Vladmirs
Some Maps to Indicate Pittsburgh
…but much of the book is traditional free verse that occasionally laps into something that is a type of form, including frequent repetition of words like:
Othello. (Was Othello a Negro?) Don’t you lie
about who you are sometimes and then realize
the lie is true? You are blind to your power, Brother
Bastard, like the king who wanders his kingdom
searching for the king. And that’s okay.
No one will tell you you are king.
No one really wants a king anyway.
There’s something also about the line breaks, the momentum and movement of them that speaks to me, and I want to learn from. More on that perhaps when I finish the next book.
Rating: 📢📢📢📢📢📢
DMZ Colony (Don Mee Choi)
DMZ Colony alternately straddles and zig-zags across the line between lyric, journalism, translation, found poetry, and concrete poetry.
I’ve been consistently surprised by how formally experimental some of the recent National Book Award winners have been in the poetry category, including this book.
DMZ Colony alternately straddles and zig-zags across the line between lyric, journalism, translation, found poetry, and concrete poetry. The name pretty well conveys the subject matter, but it’s worth mentioning that this book addresses the brutality of both North and South Korea with an eye particularly on the post war period.
The lack of clarity between what is direct accounts given poetic treatment and the imagination of the author taking off from interviews/found documents is unclear, which IMO, gives this book a lot of its force.
I put a hold on Don Mee Choi’s The Morning News is Exciting at the library, so more to come on her work.
Rating: 🔥🌟☄️🌟☄️🌟🔥