News Satire Roundup: June 5th

Sunday, June 5 – Trump’s enterprises have been sued 3,500 times.  As John pointed out, TV doesn’t have enough legal drama to cover that.  After adding up every episode of every Law & Order variation, he added other lawyer shows until he ran out, a great way to show how insane that is.  He also looked at Trump University, including tidbits from its skeevy “playbook” and a little on the judge who’s hearing the case, who Trump thinks should recuse himself because he has Mexican heritage (yeah.)  The main story on debt buyers continued the “slimeball” theme.  They buy old debts for pennies on the dollar and rake people over the coals to pay them, even if they’ve passed the statute of limitations, declared bankruptcy, or passed away.  Luckily, John is spectacular; he not only started a debt buying company to prove how disturbingly easy it is, he bought a bunch of debt and had nearly $15,000,000 officially forgiven at the end of the episode.

No Daily Show again this week.  One thing that I want to mention is that I really like how the show has covered bathroom bills and the issue of trans rights over the past couple of months.  I remember when the subject first came up on the show, I was a bit apprehensive; I hadn’t been overly impressed with what little LGBTQ-related stories they’d previously done (or with standup pieces I’d seen from Trevor dealing with LGBTQ people, honestly,) and while this was the first time I’d seen the show and/or Trevor talk about trans stuff in particular, I wasn’t sure how thoughtful the commentary or the jokes would be.

But really, I think they’ve hit it out of the park.  I love that they did an entire episode centered around trans folk, and their continuing coverage of the North Carolina situation, bathroom bills in general, and the Obama administration’s response has been excellent.  Every story they’ve done on this topic, for me, has been funny, informative, hard-hitting, and most importantly, very earnest.  The show is really standing with trans people here, and I’m glad to see that.

A lot of what’s sprung out of this continuing story is crazy and ripe for satire.  North Carolina suing the federal government when the DOJ tells them their law is unconstitutional?  And willing to lose billions of dollars of federal education funding over it?  A man who supports a law to discriminate against people appears on TV comparing himself to Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, and Jesus?  That’s insane, and perfectly ridiculous.

But the show has made serious points as well, both with and without humor.  Trevor has addressed (and ripped to shreds) each of the various hyperbolic, fearmongering arguments against allowing trans people to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity.  “But how’s it supposed to work?!  It’s unnatural!!!”  (Progress is often uncomfortable at first, but it’s still the right thing to do.)  “So any man can say he feels like a woman and go into the bathroom to molest my daughter?!”  (There’s no correlation between being trans and being a pervert, and it’s not like perverts have been sitting on their hands waiting for a legal loophole they can use to their advantage – also, there’s never been a reported case of someone being molested by a trans woman in a public restroom.)  “But it’s absurd; why would anyone think this is something we should be doing?!”  (People once said the same thing about interracial bathrooms, and looking back on it now, you’d call that sort of forced segregation absurd.  Again, progress.)  He’s also brought up trans men – specifically, the fact that no one’s bringing them up in all their panicked, exclusionary rhetoric and the gross double standard therein.

Notes on “That Scene” in Black Swan

If you’ve seen Black Swan, you know what I’m talking about.  If you haven’t, 1) there’s a good chance you’ve still heard of the scene, and 2) this is your official spoiler warning.  I myself had heard of it before I saw the film, and it in fact added to my interest in seeing it, but afterwards, while I thought the scene itself was cool and well-done, I found it problematic within the greater context of the film.

The scene in question, with a little added backdrop, is this.  Nina has been working herself ragged trying to portray the thrilling, seductive Black Swan character in Swan Lake, and her director takes every opportunity to remind her that, in order to dance the part, she needs to tap into her darker impulses, and as is, she’s too “pure” and “fragile” to embody the character.  Trying to take that advice, she defies her obsessively-controlling mother to spend a night on the town with fellow dancer Lily, who’s everything Nina thinks she needs to be as the Black Swan.  Under Lily’s influence, Nina finally lets loose, drinking, getting high, and dancing in a club instead of in a rehearsal studio.  When they head back to Nina’s apartment, they lock themselves in Nina’s bedroom.  With an aggressively hungry look, Nina approaches Lily and they begin to make out.  Lily pushes Nina onto the bed and goes down on her, and Nina is sexually gratified for almost certainly the first time in her life.

Like I said, the scene is well-shot and effective.  Prior to Orange is the New Black and Game of Thrones, I’d noted multiple times how sterile and off-camera virtually every female/female sex scene I’d ever seen seemed to be, and this was a definite exception: steamy, non-coy, and, due to Nina’s increasingly-intrusive hallucinations, kind of trippy.  (Side note – generally speaking, I’d rate Orange is the New Black’s female/female sex scenes much higher than Game of Thrones’s, since the latter’s tend to feel much more exploitative and male-gaze-focused.)  However, its implications within the rest of the film give me pause.

First, it takes the already-troubling idea of the Black Swan into even more uncomfortable territory.  The Black Swan is the White Swan’s evil twin, and other than the different color and the scary makeup, literally the only way Nina’s director describes this inherent darkness and danger is through the Black Swan’s seductive sexuality.  In contrast with the gentle, virginal White Swan, it’s the Madonna-whore complex cranked up to eleven.  Equating female sexuality with “evilness” or “darkness” is such an ugly notion, anyway, but when Nina gets in touch with her “dark side” by sleeping with a woman, it mixes in an extra helping of the damaging idea that LGBTQ sexuality is more “sinful” than its heteronormative counterpart.  It reminds me of the very unfortunate period of House in which the bisexual Thirteen has one-night-stands with women when she’s in a self-destructive downward spiral and monogamously dates her (male) coworker Foreman when she’s in a better place emotionally.

The scene is further complicated by the fact that it apparently didn’t happen; when Nina tries to talk to Lily about it the next day, the other dancer is puzzled and ultimately realizes that Nina must have had a “lezzie wet dream” about her.  So sleeping with Lily isn’t just representative of Nina’s “dark side” – it’s also a drug-induced fantasy and/or further evidence of Nina’s actual descent into madness.  This is female/female attraction as a metaphor, and not an encouraging one, rather than simply a trait of the character, and that bothers me.

News Satire Roundup: May 15th-May 19th

Sunday, May 15 – Quick round of Trump stories, including an invitation for John Miller, the fake publicist Trump posed as in the early ‘90s, to come on the show (in a later bit, Trump also took credit for Budweiser temporarily renaming itself “America.”)  The story on the queen’s criticism of Chinese officials allowed John to make a pithy, accurate summation of Britain’s entire colonial history.  We were also treated to a montage of racist/vulgar statements made by the governor of Maine.  The main story, on 9-1-1 centers, did not mess around.  It’s mind-boggling that the technology in so many 9-1-1 facilities doesn’t allow dispatchers to accurate pinpoint locations from cellphone calls, especially since, as John pointed out, the Domino’s app knows exactly where you are.  I wouldn’t say I find it hardto believe that a number of states place so little import on maintaining 9-1-1 centers, but it’s certainly depressing to believe.

Monday, May 16 – Like Last Week Tonight, things kicked off with a Trump story catch-all.  I liked Trevor’s comment that “John Miller” is such a good publicist, he’s completely distracted people from Trump’s tax returns.  More tales of Trump’s misogyny was gross but expected, and the description of the RNC chairman tasked with talking up Trump as “a hostage victim trying to get Stockholm Syndrome” was perfect.  New contributor Eliza did a piece on Trump’s obviously deplorable rapport with Latin@s and the GOP’s desperation to fix that.  I enjoyed the crack about Trump being a telenovela character come to life, although the resulting sketch was iffy.  Anthony Anderson was the guest, talking about Black-ish, and he was great.  I’m so used to watching him play Dre that it was jarring (but nice) to hear him talk as himself – his story about his mom and Obama rocked.

Tuesday, March 17 – Iran thinking Kim Kardashian is a spy is silly, but I loved Trevor’s riff on the US government deciding Iran might be right when they can’t explain why she’s famous.  The latest Supreme Court non-decision prompted a new story on Congress stonewalling Merrick Garland’s nomination hearing; my favorite part was the “one-act play” depicting a recent brunch between Garland and Senate Judiciary chairman Chuck Grassley.  We saw the first of a two-part field report by Hasan on Canada’s reception of Syrian refugees.  I hadn’t known that private citizens in Canada can raise money to sponsor a family’s resettlement themselves, but it’s very cool and I loved the panel Hasan talked to.  The guest was Dahlia Lithwick, who reports on the Supreme Court for Slate.  Naturally, she had plenty to say about Garland and the hole the Senate has dug itself into now that the next president will presumably be either Clinton or Trump.

Wednesday, May 18 – Opened on a few easy jokes about a politician who accidentally revealed a few of his porn tastes to the public.  Don’t you hate it when that happens?  I liked the coverage of Megyn Kelly’s interview with Trump, both the ridiculous pre-show hype and the completely toothless interview itself.  Hasan’s second piece on Canada’s acceptance of refugees featured a great interview with Prime Minister Trudeau, who had an excellent sense of when to joke and when to be serious.  The continued rumination of America as a nation of immigrants that loves hating new immigrants was great.  Jason Sudeikis was the guest, and while "”alking super-serious about the Angry Birds movie” is a blindingly obvious joke to pull, both he and Trevor did it so well.  Sudeikis blathering about his “process” was terrific, and I lost it when he started comparing the movie to Braveheart.

Thursday, May 19 – Opening blurb on protests in China.  I liked Trevor’s comment that the government spends its money gluing down bricks instead of addressing the concerns that make people want to throw them.  Trevor had a great monologue on the continuing issue of trans bathroom rights.  In my favorite bit, he compared it to past bathroom debates (against gay people and Black people,) demonstrating how absurd those arguments feel today and asserting that arguments against trans folk will feel just as absurd in days to come.  Roy and Eliza tag-teamed a piece as a pair of Sanders supporters with differing levels of zealotry, looking at violence and threatening remarks coming from some supporters; I laughed at Roy shutting down Eliza’s repeated attempts to give a Black Power salute.  Guest Arianna Huffingtontalked about her new book on sleep and the counterproductive myth that success can only be made by sacrificing it.

Forms of Love in the Delirium Trilogy

Since love is at the center of the battle in the Deliriumseries, it’s no surprise that relationships are of the utmost importance.  In this world, love has been given a new name, amor deliria nervosa, and it’s been branded a disease, a putrefaction, a subversion.  Those who refuse the cure for the disease are driven out of society and forced to survive in brutal, spartan conditions if they’re lucky, locked away to rot or executed for dissidence if they’re not.  It stands to reason that, in order to risk so much and defy everything one has ever known, it requires a force like love urging them forward.  (Some spoilers.)

As such, we know it’s only a matter of time before Lena, who’s been obsessively counting the days until her cure, falls in love with a boy and realizes the agony and ecstasy for which the uncured throw everything away.  It’s no surprise that meeting Alex is her awakening to what life can truly be, as well as how broken and festering her society is, and she breaks faith with all she’s ever been taught in order to cast her lot with him.  However, the series doesn’t leave love as clearcut as that.  Lena’s relationship with Alex isn’t her salvation, and it’s threatened by the people who fear it.  After the first book, the story becomes about carrying on despite the loss of love, about standing for the right to love in and of itself, rather than just the right to love a specific person.  It edges toward the possibility of loving again after love lost, opening your heart to someone new even as you’re still blinded by the dazzle of that first love.  I’m not crazy about how things shake out on this front in the third book, but I still appreciate the way the series as a whole explores love in a more complex way; for a young adult series, that’s pretty laudable.

But what I really appreciate is that this fight isn’t only for romantic love.  While romance gets the most dedicated focus, other forms of love are just as forbidden, and people who find themselves struck by them will give up just as much for their right to feel it.  I like Lena’s repeated remembrances of her mother, who endured several failed procedures and was lost to Lena in childhood.  There are some great notes about how Lena’s mother is regarded suspiciously by other parents for the way she behaves with her other children.  Other mothers don’t sing, Lena realizes in retrospect, and when young Lena scrapes her knee and the sidewalk and her mother holds and comforts her, she’s practically committing a public indecency.  In this world, a woman’s love for her daughters is called a disease.  Similarly, I love the story of how young Raven winds up running away to the Wilds.  Happening upon an infant Blue, abandoned and near death, Raven gives herself over to this baby so fully and so immediately that she leaves her entire life behind her.  If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.

I’m grateful for that.  As an aromantic, I don’t experience romantic love, and if that was the only kind of love explored in the book, I would have felt pretty left out.  I mean, don’t get me wrong – romantic love is all over stories in every medium, and I’m used to seeing plenty of it.  But when the obvious thesis of the story is “love is right and healthy, and those who try to take it away are the ones who are sick and wrong,” I’d be a little uncomfortable if I felt I had more in common with the “non-love” side.  Not that I’d run around advocating the cure, but if it was only for romantic love, I wouldn’t see getting cured as any great loss for me personally.  By including more all-encompassing forms of love, like familial love and friendship, the book includes stakes that would apply to me as well, and I like that.

Beautiful Boxer (2004)

This is a flawed but interesting film about an even more interesting true story.  Beautiful Boxer chronicles the early life and fame of Nong Toom, a transgender teenager in Thailand who pays for her transition surgery by joining the world of professional Muay Thai kickboxing.  (Note:  the main character’s name is given as both Nong Toom and Parinya Charoenphol.  However, she uses a variety of names in and out of the ring, and for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to use “Toom.”  That would normally give me pause, since it’s her birth name, but even the real boxer’s Wikipedia page regularly uses it, so I think it’s probably okay?  No offense intended.)

From a very young age, Nong Toom realizes she isn’t a boy like everyone thinks.  Due to her family’s poverty, she thinks that having gender reassignment and “becoming a real woman” is just a pipe dream, until she discovers an unlikely talent:  Muay Thai.  She’s by no means a naturally violent person, but the promise of quick money through competitive kickboxing draws her in and she joins a training camp in the hopes of providing for her parents and funding her transition.  Along the way, she becomes hugely famous for her “gimmick” of wearing makeup in the ring.

It’s that last part that intrigues me the most.  Toom’s trainer is anxious to discover a boxer with a “hook,” and Toom’s secret love of makeup and female clothes seems to provide just that.  She’s a sensation, gaining instant notoriety and sparking debate over whether it’s just an act for publicity or if she’s a real “transvestite” (that’s the word the movie continually uses, although I’m not sure if that’s the actual concept they mean or if it’s just what they picked for the English subtitles.)  At first, it looks like it means Toom gets to be herself in the ring, but it’s a very limited, exaggerated “version” of herself, one that spurs scandal and mockery.  Not to mention, obviously, it’s motivated by someone else’s need for a gimmick and thus ripe for exploitation.

The toxic masculinity on display is both potent and ugly.  The more stereotypically-feminine Toom looks or acts in the ring, the harder her opponents kick her.  They shout transphobic insults at her and constantly try to tear her down, try to make her afraid of them, but these actions reflect their fears, not hers.  Yes, part of it is the self-assurance that they won’t be beaten by a “transvestite” coupled with the paradoxical terror that they will, just as part of it is a more general fear and hatred of what they don’t understand.  It’s so interesting that this brusque, hyper-masculine road is the one Toom takes to facilitate her transition.

While the themes are really neat (if, at times, conveyed a little heavy-handedly) and the Muay Thai is pretty cool, I’d say the overall quality of the film is a bit middling.  This is the first Thai movie I’ve ever seen, so I can’t say how it holds up comparably from a production standpoint, but it feels a little chintzy to me.  It’s like they have a good story but not quite the means to tell it properly, and that mutes its effect somewhat.

Warnings

Sexual references, boxing violence, language, drinking, and thematic elements.

A Few Notes on “Ruby Slippers” (Once Upon a Time)

This past week’s episode of Once Upon a Time, in terms of a plotline long promised by the showrunners, was a mixed bag for me.  Some aspects of it felt really annoying and cop-out-ish, while I felt others were executed well.  Spoilers ahead.

So, in the first half of the season, when Mulan and Red suddenly appeared back on the show in the fairyback for a random, non-arc-related episode, I know I’m not the only one who thought I knew where they were going with it.  At this point, The Powers That Be had already gone on record promising an upcoming LGBTQ relationship, and the return of Mulan – who disappeared from the show immediately after outing herself to the audience over two seasons ago – obviously seemed relevant.  It’s true that I still wonder about what might-have-been with her and Aurora, and that Red (who’d also been absent for a long time) had never given any indication that she might be queer, but 1) with Phillip as her True Love, the ship has definitely sailed re:  Aurora, and 2) the first meeting between Mulan and Red felt pretty charged to me, so I was open to it.

Fast-forward to this week, with Mulan and Red surfacing again after an additional half-season absence.  We find out they’ve been traveling together all this time and have landed in Oz (How?  Goodness knows anymore with this show,) and the promised LGBTQ romance does indeed happen… but Mulan isn’t a part of it.  Instead, it’s Red and Dorothy, who Red meets, falls in love with, and has a curse-breaking True Love’s Kiss with in the course of one episode.  The storyline has its good points, but overall, I feel like I got a bait-and-switch.

To be fair, the show may have felt it disingenuous to pair up the only two queer women, and so kept Mulan and Red as friends and brought in Dorothy for the latter.  I can also buy that they may have a classic “fairytale romance” for the couple, complete with insta-love.  For me, though, neither reason is worth going this route instead of Mulan/Red.  True, we only see Mulan and Red interacting in one previous episode, but we do see them working/fighting alongside each other and seeming to make a connection.  Beyond that, we know both Red and Mulan individually from seasons past, so we can go much further in connecting dots between them because we’re already invested in them.  Dorothy, however, joins the story in her second appearance on the show.  We don’t know her or why Red would be drawn to her (and frankly, she’s so abrasive in their early scenes together that I reallydon’t know why Red is into her.)  Not to mention, Dorothy’s guest-star status makes the already-slim chance of repeat appearances from the couple even slimmer.  And finally, while I’m ultimately happy that Red found her True Love, when will it be frickin’ Mulan’s turn?  She’s so great, and I’d really like to see someone love her.

What I did like is how the characters react overall in the storyline.  Upon realizing how deeply she cares for Dorothy, Red is surprised but not bewildered/ashamed/etc.  She’s afraid to tell Dorothy how she feels, but mainly because she thinks Dorothy is freaked about Red being a werewolf.  The fact that they’re both women is never brought up as a concern or hindrance.  Similarly, Snow easily recognizes Red’s love for Dorothy and is nothing but happy for her friend, speaking poignantly about taking a chance on love.  I also like that it’s clear Mulan and Red are just friends; though I still would have preferred Mulan, at least her poor heart isn’t getting broken again.  And of course, props from the show for not holding back, either from the initial True Love’s Kiss or the ladies’ making out post-love-declaration.

News Satire Roundup: April 3rd-April 7th

Sunday, April 3 – I loved the description of the nuclear summit as the one place you want to see Putin, and Obama’s remarks about Trump’s grasp of foreign policy were terrific.  Good piece on the Yankees as well, with their snobbish aversion to fans reselling tickets, lest people in the premium seats be forced to sit with the proles – keep it classy, Yankees!  The main story was on congressional fundraising, i.e., what our representatives spend 50-60% of their time doing.  Some of the statistics were insane (the ideal schedule for a representative includes four hours of cold calls a day?!), and I loved the stuff about all the fundraisers at Taylor Swift concerts.  What’s really wild, though, is how much people on both sides of the aisle absolutely hate this part of the job, but neither side seems willing to change it.  The Cold War analogy was apt, as was John’s point that we at least got a moon landing and the third-best Rocky villain out of that!

Monday, April 4 – So-so opening on the growing friction between Clinton and Sanders.  My favorite part was the bit on Sanders bringing up the Clinton black marks he “wasn’t” mentioning.  Interesting to have the guest, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, on in the second segment – wonder if we’ll be seeing that more often?  I liked her comments on her counterpart at the RNC, but she leaned too hard on using the Republican race to distract from DNC issues.  Love the story on South African president Jacob Zuma, especially the crack about missing Zuma’s corruption red flags because South Africans try not to “see color” post-apartheid and so they “only saw flags.”  This led nicely to an overview of the Panama Papers.  I enjoyed Trevor’s utter non-shock at Putin being corrupt and his despair at Jackie Chan being implicated.  “Remember, approach Jackie Chan as a group, but then fight him one at a time.”  Ha!

Tuesday, April 5 – Really enjoyed tonight’s show.  Great commentary on wage inequality between the US men and women’s soccer teams.  $.25 on the dollar is such a staggering disparity, and Trevor shut down every possible argument against paying the much-more successful women’s team equally.  The second story was another piece from the “Trump archives,” an old interview clip in which he objectified his 1-year-old daughter – I know.  Obviously, the clip itself was horrendous (the show had to cleanse our mental palates afterwards with shots of puppies and flowers,) but I really like the deeper point Trevor made with it: Trump’s misogyny is so automatic that he doesn’t even think about reducing his own infant daughter to a collection of body parts.  Nice interview with Jerrod Carmichael of The Carmichael Show. I’ve never seen it, but he may have convinced me to check it out; I’m intrigued.

Wednesday, April 6 – Fantastic show.  Other than a quick piece on the Wisconsin primary (as a thank-you for not voting for Trump, Trevor made it rain with cheese,) the episode focused on the trans community.  Trevor lambasted bathroom bills as being insane, hateful, and impractical; I loved his remarks on the Kansas bill (that thing is so crazy,) and the bigotry-Ebola comparison was perfect.  Jessica did a field piece on a trans woman who was arrested for checking into a hotel (yeah,) and she also spoke to a panel talking about the “trans panic” at the heart of this discrimination.  It was especially effective when they bombarded Jessica with common intrusive questions, from “Do you have a dick?” to “What's your realname?”  The guest, Angelica Ross, runs a tech organization for trans people.  It serves as both a safe space for Internet access and a training center to boost tech skills and increase employability.  In short, she was awesome.

Thursday, April 7 – We opened on a gun that looks like a smartphone, featuring Trevor’s many ways to accidentally shoot yourself.  Next was Cruz campaigning in New York, a.ka. getting insulted by New Yorkers; who doesn’t enjoy a good “Everybody Hates Cruz” segment?  A piece on Trump’s issues with women broadened into a larger story on politicians using their wives to appeal to female voters, with new correspondent Michelle highlighting the caveman logic of, “You woman.  Me have woman.  You vote me!”  Another Third Month Mania segment, in which Trump supporters were named the most infuriating subject.  I did like Roy and Hasan dragging out Jordan to accept the award since; as the show’s only white male regular, he was the closest thing they had to a Trump supporter.  Guest Juan Williams discussed his book that expands the idea of “founders” to those who have shaped the US, for better or worse, all through its history.

Jughead (2015-Present)

I’m now officially caught up on Chip Zdarsky’s new comic series Jughead, and honestly, I really enjoy it.  I wouldn’t have thought I needed any more reasons to be excited about Jughead being canonically ace, but I found another one – if this hadn’t happened, I can almost guarantee that I would’ve never started reading (or possibly ever even heard of) this exceptionally fun series.

At first glance, Jughead seems like a dangerous character to put in the central role, at least from a fandom standpoint.  His origins in the Archie comics place him squarely as the best friend, the funny sidekick.  Now, characters like this tend to be enormously popular, and for good reason, but there’s also a good reason for keeping them in a supporting position.  Countless sitcoms have run into trouble when they discover – and subsequently overuse – their breakout character.  Push that sort of character to the forefront, and you might wind up with an Erkel.  Sure, Jughead is great when he’s Archie’s sarcastic slacker buddy with a hole in his life that only hamburgers can fill, but if you give him his own comic, do you run the risk of ruining him?

In this case, those concerns are happily unfounded.  Jughead rocks his own comic – honestly, I’m a little surprised at just how well it comes together.  You wouldn’t necessarily think a lazy kid whose chief preoccupation is his appetite would make an engaging protagonist, but Zdarsky’s initial series arc has found a way to incorporate a lot of action while still maintaining Jughead’s core character.  The first issue introduces Mr. Stanger, the new Riverdale principal with rigorous expectations and totally suspect motives, and he becomes an immediate enemy to Jughead by replacing the normal cafeteria food with high-nutrition slop.  Food being Jughead’s first love, this gives him a reason to get off his butt and do something, and also puts him in Stanger’s crosshairs.  From there, we see the escalations of Stanger threatening Jughead’s loafing way of life, Jughead pushing back/becoming a bigger target, and even better, Jughead beginning to realize just how bad news this guy is.  Suddenly, you have the funny, hungry slacker very unexpectedly finding himself in the center of a crusade, with very few allies because, as the funny, hungry slacker, no one takes him seriously.  Plenty of fertile ground for storytelling.

Also, it’s super fun.  The plots are crazy-in-a-good-way, the jokes range from fantastic to just-on-the-right-side-of-corny, and tons of natural humor shines though in the characterizations.  I just love the opening scene of issue #3, in which a dejected Jughead, deprived of his video games, works an imaginary controller while mumbling to himself about the bosses he’s killing, and I get a kick out of Archie’s periodic meta queries on why people aren’t more interested in what he’sup to.  The comic also works in some extra entertainment through regular dream sequences.  Each is set up like a separate mini-comic with the larger issue, with its own title and sensibility.  In his head, Jughead has been a time traveler, a secret agent, a pirate, and a superhero, and he’s also given us a fantastic Westeros parody in Game of Jones (ha!)

On the aro-aceness front, the early issues include little references before the Holy-Crap-They-Just-Used-the-Actual-Word-“Asexual”-in-Casual-Conversation-How-Cool-is-That scene in issue #4.  Jughead comments on his disinterest in dating now and then (again, casually – not making a big thing of it,) and he once bails on a fantasy sequence when a pretty girl in it moves to kiss him.  I like that, while he’s (thankfully!) not Asexual Jughead the Asexual Character, it is still a distinct part of his character that won’t get the mentioned-once and-never-seen-again treatment.

A Few Notes on Thomas (Downton Abbey)

Thomas Barrow has always been a frustrating but compelling Downton character for me.  As despicable as he can be, he still pulls me in.  Now, that’s partly due to Rob James-Collier’s rich performance, which I love.  It’s also partly due to how strongly I identify with him as a queer character – that’s not an automatic “in” for me, but his situation in series 3 aired as I was preparing to come out to my family, and I think it kind of made me imprint on him.  This post tries to sort out this often-contradictory character (Thomas-related spoilers through the series.)

In series 1 and much of series 2, James-Collier’s acting is pretty much the only thing that keeps me from hating Thomas (now that the series is over, it’d be interesting to see how I react to him going back to those early episodes.)  By and large, he’s written as a broad villain, a haughty malcontent who’s constantly scheming to gain the upper hand over other downstairs folk, especially Bates.  I remember it annoyed me to see the one LGBTQ character written so “evilly.”  Under further consideration, though, there’s more going on here than it seems at first glance. 

Being gay in 1912-1925 doesn’t excuse Thomas’s conniving, but I think it helps explain it to an extent.  We see in the pilot how guarded he is.  Even though he seems to genuinely care for the Duke (more, it appears, than the Duke cares for him,) that doesn’t stop his plans of blackmailing the Duke if he needs to.  We quickly see that this is a pretty defining trait for Thomas.  He constantly tries to get one over on someone else before they can do the same to him.  In early episodes, he frequently suspects Bates of talking about/plotting against him, and he’s always on the offensive.  Living in a society where his orientation could get him fired, or even arrested, he’s cultivated a dog-eat-dog existence where he endeavors to always be the one to strike first.

As time goes by, we see more of Thomas’s vulnerabilities.  He makes brief, tenuous connections, like with the blind soldier he helps care for during the war, and he lets his defenses down just long enough to show he’s not as ambivalent as he pretends to be.  He (very occasionally) uses his scheming powers for good, whether intentionally (helping Andy out of a jam) or as a happy accident (playing a big role in ousting the officious nanny who, it turns out, was mistreating Sybbie.)  The Jimmy situation in series 3 is kind of incredible for him.  Thomas, the man whose self-preservation and self-promotion is always at the fore of his mind, takes an enormous risk with huge possible fallout.  He believes O’Brien’s lie that Jimmy is interested in him even though the evidence before his eyes tells him that can’t be true, just because he wants it so badly.  That’s a major shift in Thomas’s standard MO, and it tells a lot about him.

In light of these more sympathetic moments, though, it’s frustrating to see him continually returning to his old ways, putting his back up and plotting against those around him.  On several levels, I can understand why he does it.  After all, old habits are hard to break, even when he’s taking tentative steps toward trying to be better.  Showing any kind of vulnerability is fairly antithetical to his character, so when his kinder efforts don’t bear immediate fruit, he tends to dismiss them as hopeless and retreat into his isolation.  He’s also quite the self-saboteur.  As he observes in series 6, he disappoints himself when he keeps burning bridges even though he knows he shouldn’t and it won’t get him anywhere.  But while I get all that, I still hate to see him falling back on villainy.  I’m not even sure why, since his more admirable scenes are pretty rare, but I just root so hard for him to turn it around and it kills me to watch him blowing his chances.

Allegiant (2016, PG-13)

Okay – so, as someone who read the books, I feel like I knew where this movie was going even less than someone watching it cold would.  Allegiant, adapted from the first half (three quarters?  kind of?) of the final Divergentbook, goes decidedly further afield than either of its predecessors in terms of book faithfulness.  Given the original novel’s unevenness, this isn’t always a bad thing, but it means I have almost no idea what next year’s final installment will involve (premise spoilers, and spoilers for the previous books, especially Insurgent.)

Quick plot stuff:  Tris, her friends, and her entire society have been rocked by the revelation that their City is part of an elaborate experiment conducted by scientists who live in the still-extant world outside the wall.  Our heroine leads a small group into this outside world, where they find a new society divided into the genetically pure and the genetically damaged.  David, head of the experiment, courts Tris with the promise of all the healing her Divergence can bring to the world, but their new surroundings aren’t all they appear to be.

In terms of the adaptation, the movie hits a handful of highlights/important plot points from the book, though even the stuff that gets included is mostly included differently.  But as I said, some of the changes work well for me.  In particular, I think Four comes across much better:  smarter, more proactive, and while the revelations he learns in this film still mess him up, he deals with them more constructively.  I also feel Evelyn is slightly less unsympathetic, and I’m not entirely sure where they’re going with Peter, but Miles Teller gives such good Entertaining Douchebag.  Additionally, I like the increased focus on the relationship between the Bureau and the Fringe.

Unfortunately, many of the changes that don’t work for me concern Tris.  First of all, I didn’t how like the “100% Divergent” thing added to the second film made Tris much more of a Special Snowflake than she was in the books, and that trend continues here.  Also, with the Bureau being more obviously-uncool from the jump, her easy acceptance of what David tells her makes her look way more naïve than she ought to be.  My main issues after that are less with what’s changed than with what’s taken out.  As per usual, the supporting characters have little to do.  Christina is little more than a footnote, Uriah is blink-and-you’ll-miss-him, and neither Amar or George are there at all (if I recall correctly, that means that, in addition to changing Evelyn (PoC – probably Latina) and Four (biracial) to white, the films have removed all mentions of LGBTQ sexuality – Lynn was a minor character in Insurgent, but I believe they took out any references to her feelings for Marlene.  Boo!)  The adults fair a bit better; at least Maggie Q, Octavia Spencer, and Daniel Dae Kim make the most of their incredibly-limited screentime.

As for new cast members, the only character we meet with much focus is David, well played by Jeff Daniels.  However, there is a very brief appearance by Xander Berkeley, Percy from Nikita.  (First all the Nikita alumni on 12 Monkeys, and now this.  I love Nikita reunions, even when the actors in question don’t have any scenes together.  Wonder if Maggie Q helped him get the gig?)

Warnings

Violence, language, sensuality (including sexy decontamination showers – yeah, that happened,) and thematic elements.

Favorite Characters: Yitzhak (Hedwig and the Angry Inch)

Yitzhak is maybe an odd character to feature.  If Tommy Gnosis stands between Hedwig and the fame she wants, then Hedwig stands between Yitzhak and his.  Even with Hedwig’s admittedly piddly spotlight, Yitzhak is always in the shadow.  He’s the eternal backup vocalist, given no opportunities to show off and no outlet to be the beauty he longs to become.  In movie, he probably has less than a dozen lines.  And yet, I kind of love him.  (Note – I’m pulling in both the stage show and the film for today’s post.  Yitzhak-related spoilers.)

At first glance, Yitzhak looks out of place in the Angry Inch.  Hedwig – the high diva in command – is naturally at the center of everything, with audaciously tacky outfits, loud makeup, and wigs that deserve their own stage credit, and the rest of the band is styled in varying shades of punk/glam pastiche.  Next to all that color, glitter, and androgyny, Yitzhak doesn’t seem to fit.  Nothing form-fitting, nothing flamboyant.  Loose T-shirts and baggy jeans, bandanas and leather jackets.  Long, limp rocker hair and a goatee.  One of these things is not like the others.

And yet, right away, there’s more to be seen here.  Yitzhak is a male character, by all accounts a cisgender one, but he’s pretty much always played by a woman.  Miriam Shor, pictured above, originated the role of Yitzhak Off-Broadway and reprised it in the movie.  So we have this very traditionally-masculine-looking guy with kind of sullen impressions, but there’s something soft and feminine in his face.  His singing voice tends to be the same way, surprising the listener with sudden threads of femininity that seem to emerge from nowhere.

The movie keeps Yitzhak’s woes while skipping his backstory, so elements can feel a bit out-of-the-blue, but the stage show reveals that Yitzhak was once one of Croatia’s finest drag queens.  The Jewish Yitzhak needed to get out of the country, and when he met Hedwig, he was willing to do anything to leave with her.  She agreed to take him along, but at a cost.  Hedwig always needs to be the most beautiful person on stage, and if Yitzhak was going to join her, he could never dress in drag again.  “To be free, one must give up a little part of oneself,” she told him, echoing the words that led to her ticket out of Communist East Berlin:  her botched transition surgery.

That’s where Yitzhak’s head is when we meet him.  His own spark is dulled to make another’s brighter by comparison, and it’s not just with the heels or the wigs.  Hedwig is an incurable spotlight hog who feels threatened by Yitzhak’s talent; in the movie, the last moments of “Tear Me Down” tell you everything you need to know about their relationship.  As Hedwig gears up for her big finish, she’s resentful of Yitzhak’s riffing and coolly walks over to yank the cord out of his microphone.  As a sort-of couple (they’re married – might have been a green card thing for Yitzhak?), they’re hugely dysfunctional.  Hedwig constantly belittles and undermines Yitzhak, she takes him utterly for granted, and she’s hidden his passport.  Yitzhak wants to get out from under her thumb but doesn’t know how, and despite everything, he still can’t quite help loving her.  But for Yitzhak, the chief grievances are the first two – that Hedwig denies him his beauty and pushes his talent to the side.  He’s a natural star who can’t let loose, a gorgeous queen who can’t strut.  Shor does such a terrific job in the film bringing these injustices to the fore, packing a lot of emotion into wordless scenes and making you feel how incredibly important both issues are to him.  In a story where the protagonist has such a tangled, colorful history, it’s cool to discover that the taciturn backup singer has hidden dreams and inner turmoil as well.

Deadpool (2016, R)

I’m not very familiar with Deadpool (my first exposure was actually the test footage for this movie,) but I was aware of the excitement surrounding the character and the idea of a movie for him, as well as what was evidently the near-criminal waste of him/Ryan Reynolds in the Wolverine:  Originsmovie.  I also knew going in to expect a funny, high-octane show-the-blood-style comic-book movie a la Mark Millar.  Safe to say the film delivers on that every level.

Wade Wilson, a foul-mouthed mercenary with a don’t-make-a-thing-of-it preference for helping the little guy, has his life thrown off-kilter by a terminal cancer diagnosis.  When a shady guy in a suit promises to both cure his cancer and make him a superhero, Wade is skeptical but decides to try to keep his girlfriend Vanessa from having to watch him waste away.  He sneaks off in the middle of the night to the super-secret experimental lab, but the results aren’t what he bargained for.  He’s left functionally immortal, with an automatically-regenerating body, but the mutation has also made him grotesque, and he doesn’t think he can go home to Vanessa until he finds the scientist/sadist who did this to him and forces him to fix it.

Ryan Reynolds is absolutely perfect to play a vulgar, smartass, superpowered former mercenary on a revenge kick.  He’s funny and profane without (for me) veering too far into d-bag territory, and even with a mask completely covering his face for most of the movie, his screen presence is still charismatic (granted, I don’t know how often Deadpool is CGI’d, but that would still mean Reynolds is making the character come through on voiceover alone, so kudos to him either way.)  In order for wildly graphic, completely unapologetic violence to work for me, it really depends on the character, and Deadpool’s casually-cheerful brand of slaughter just seems to fit.

The plot is fairly formulaic, though it mixes things up by extenstive use of a nonlinear structure.  But what it lacks in storytelling creativity, it makes up in snarky one-liners.  There’s mid-fight banter, cheeky sex jokes, pop culture references, and colorful analogies, not to mention huge amounts of fourth-wall breaking (sometimes explicit, with Deadpool directly addressing the camera, other times just throwaway lines – my favorites include a reference to sewing Deadpool’s mouth shut and a Stewart-or-McAvoy Professor X distinction.)  One place, though, where the movie falls down for me is with Deadpool’s much-vaunted pansexuality.  It’s arguably represented, but there aren’t any non-heteronormative references that couldn’t be explained away as jokes if desired.  Since Deadpool does spend most of the film preoccupied with his monogamous girlfriend, it’s understandable that we mostly get that side of things, but a single line mentioning an ex-boyfriend or zhefriend wouldn’t have broken the bank.

Other than Reynolds, the only actor I’m familiar with is Morena Baccarin (Inara from Firefly) as Vanessa.  She does what she can with a pretty thin girlfriend characterization.  I also enjoy Brianna Hildebrande as an X-Men trainee, the (as Deadpool notes) awesomely-named Negasonic Teenage Warhead.  I mean, how do you get cooler than that?  I wish we’d gotten to see more of her in action, but little we do get of her powers is pretty hardcore.

Warnings

Strong violence, language, sexual content, drinking/smoking, and drug references.

News Satire Roundup: March 6th-March 10th

Sunday, March 8 – We opened on the GOP’s desperate attempts to slow the Trump train before moving onto a pair of small-time politicians in Texas taking a page from the crass demagogue book:  a man who calls himself “Donald Trump on steroids” and a woman who insists that Obama used gay prostitution to fund a drug habit in his youth.  Crazy story about a controversy involving an interview with Gloria Steinem in a Land’s End catalogue.  Pro-life advocates were so adamantly opposed that Land’s End pulled the interview, even though it never mentioned abortion.  What the…?  The main story was on special districts – not as epic as last week’s piece on Trump, naturally, but I always appreciate a thorough Last Week Tonight education on a topic I know little about.  The piece was very informative about special districts’ large influence despite their small size, as well as the limited oversight that allows their power to be abused.

Monday, March 7 – The latest Trump news, naturally, involved him bragging about the size of his penis at Thursday’s debate.  Not to mention, we also got the GOP’s not-so-secret plan to foil him by keeping the field scattered enough that he can’t get a majority of delegates before the convention, where they can then oust him, as well as the insanity of the other candidates going on about what a danger Trump would be as president right before they promise they will support him if he ends up being the Republican nominee.  Ayiyi.  I really enjoyed the story about Carson dropping out of the race.  Sleepy Carson cracks are always fun, and I liked Roy trying to salvage Carson’s previous reputation as surgeon/Black hero, an admittedly tall order.  Nice interview with Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson of Broad City.  Both were fun and down-to-earth, and I liked hearing their perspective on the creation of their show and why people connect with it.

Tuesday, March 8 – Trevor’s amusement over a U.S. airstrike of a terrorist graduation ceremony was weirdly infectious; a nice, darkly funny segment.  The Peanuts story was a lot of fun.  Who knew Charlie Brown and Obama went so well together?  I loved comparing Congress to Lucy with the football.  Jordan’s piece, wondering if white children who grew up on Obama can imagine a white president, was goofy but entertaining.  When they talked politics, I wondered how much was the kids vs. coaching from the show vs. repeating what their parents have said.  We got a “Back in Black” segment from Lewis on papers recovered from Bin Laden’s hideout.  Some good stuff, especially Lewis’s indignation at a jihadist job application and his commentary on Bin Laden’s concerns about climate change.  Ellen Page was the guest, promoting the documentary series Gaycation.  I liked her a lot – she spoke really eloquently about her experiences on the series and the situation of LGBTQ folk around the world.

Wednesday, March 9 –I’m such a sucker for Sanders graphics; I loved the picture of him giving a victory speechdressed like Ebenezer Scrooge after being woken with the news that he’d won.  Great story on the help Flint has received since the Michigan primary, as well as cities with similar water crises that haven’t benefitted from the increased visibility of heavy campaigning by presidential candidates.  I loved the remark about America’s water being browner than the Oscars and Trevor’s plan to have the candidates drink the local water at every town they visit.  At this point, Trump stories always mix some dread with the humor, but I liked the absurdity of his latest victory speech rebutting Romney’s claims about his failed business ventures.  As Trevor and Jordan pointed out, why darethe media to fact-check your assertions when they’re so easy to refute?  Wow.  Not a Sacha Baron Cohen person, so the interview was a bit meh. 

Thursday, March 10 – Trevor’s Sanders-Clinton comparison (he’ll fly to the stars even if the rocket explodes, she just wants to make it to Akron in one piece) was so apt.  Fun story on Justin Trudeau and Trevor’s weakening defenses to the Canadian PM’s charms.  He’s right – cuddling with baby pandas isn’t playing fair.  I wasn’t a fan of Ronny’s field piece on a church, temple, and mosque setting up shop next to each other in Omaha.  Even though I know correspondents are being satirical, it still bothers me when they act demeaningly toward marginalized people, and Ronny’s feigned wariness of the imam made me uncomfortable.  I liked the new segment pulling old gems from the “Trump archives.”  His 1999 comments about the poor (a big chunk of his current base) were of course awful, and I love what Trevor had to say about it.  Guest Padma Lakshmi was terrific.  Her book sounds neat, and I liked her remarks on media and body image.