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White Hot: The Boys in the Waistband

There's a fascinating word missing from White Hot, Netflix's new documentary about the Abercrombie and Fitch years: the word is Aryan. And it dovetails with a similar elision in examining Bruce Weber's visual aesthetic - which the documentary rightly centers much of its grim fascination and derision upon - as the film also elides comparing Weber to Leni Riefenstahl.

And yeah, I get it: "Nazis? Can't you see why that might be a problem?" The point is, yes I do, and frankly I am neither the first, nor the last, to have brought up those comparisons. The other point is, the very reluctance of this doc to follow its own through line to some logical, difficult and obviously uncomfortable ends is why the film, which dances adroitly around the hard questions, never really lands a solid indictment of what was, and is, most deeply problematic about the whole moment when A&F dominated our popular culture.

And boy (cute boy), did it ever. I can tell you because I was there: The whole Abercrombie and Fitch thing was a little nuts. The cadre of topless boys outside their flagship stores! They literally sold a softcore porn catalog 4 times a year! They ran an ad of a naked man on a horse! (BTW - bareback? Get it?)

The first 30 minutes or so of White Hot get at, mostly well, but somewhat imperfectly, what it was to live through the madness. How desirable the bran was at its height. The weird, oversexed vibe of the stores. The even weirder, even more oversexed vibe of the advertising. After that the documentary delves, more deeply, into the underpinnings of how the venerated brand was reshaped by owner Mike Jeffries, and the role, especially, played by Bruce Weber, in creating the brand's visual identity.

Left surprisingly unspoken, really, is the role of the changing culture around the brand, and specifically, the sudden, newfound openness of the American culture to explicitly gay iconography. A&F spoke, as a brand, to teens and college kids... but even more obviously, it spoke to a generation of young, often recently out, gay men in their twenties and thirties, newly positioned in urban enclaves and white collar work. Largely white, heavily professional and service working, these gay men knew Weber, knew what he was doing, and knew it was aimed at them. And they, in turn, helped propel "A&F style" into a cultural watchword.

That the documentary misses, or at least sits quietly, around these dynamics is part of the major hole in its presentation. Because it's the very white, very oblivious nature of this gay community to its own internal racism, that helped create the problems the documentary points to: a culture within A&F focused on lookism and frankly racist definitions of attractiveness that affected hiring, store staffing, as well as advertising and marketing. It's partly why all of this was a merry little game   part of which was merrily avoiding asking why images weren't just overwhelmingly white, but so very male. Or asking why "Fierce" the store's signature fragrance, was a men's cologne. Or asking, eventually, whether straight frat boys understood how gay all of this really was?

The film unpacks, cleanly and effectively, the unravelings of the brand as lawsuits over representation, hiring policies and the like came home to roost. It helps, but also hurts, that key players like Jeffries and Weber don't participate in the documentary, thus making convenient, easily blamed bad guys.

But questions linger: why does the film absolve virtually every staffer in the film of any role in perpetuating just this kind of racist iconography? What does it say about a top to bottom corporate culture that hid, minimized and mistreated its minority work force? What does it say about our culture that the brand was so dominant, so revered, so damn hot? And can we not, at the very least,, take a moment and unpack that difficult and uncomfortable role of Aryan ideals luring in Weber's work?

No, by the end of White Hot, everything has vanished: the images from the bad years, the voices of the minority workers, the omnipresent, overly easy moralizing of folks like Robin Givhan.... in favor of corporate branding that literally tries to paper over the past. It's okay, the film says, because A&F now runs ads with a wide mix of body types and skin colors and... blah blah blah... world peace. That the film soft pedals its own outrage and runs away from the hard questions is, unfortunately indicative of how this mess came to be in the first place: if we don't examine our idealized views of these perfect fit bodies and sexualization of youth, we really aren't trying to sort out how this all worked to sell the brand to begin with. And that's the real problem we need to solve. not run from. Or at least, not continue, in our dirtiest secrets, to ogle them while claiming pious purpose. Cause boy, you still look hot in dem jeans.

You Can't Do That!

Like many a Gen Xer, let me just say up front: I'm quite relieved they didn't have Twitter in my youth, because... well, God knows what I'd have to be apologizing for now. As it is, I know all too well that hiding in this blog alone are words and pieces I'm not necessarily sure I want repeated or blown out of context.

Still, that said... I'm comfortable with saying generally, nothing I've written went there without a lot of thought beforehand.

But let's back out to 30,000 feet for a moment: In a rather odd week, I've been fascinated with the confluence of a small string of events - the dreadful murder spree in Georgia resulting in the deaths of multiple workers and clients in massage parlors, the discussion it has engendered about attacks on Asians in America, Fox News struggling to not cover this, and the fall of Alexi McCammond.

Bear with me... because I think this all has a central point.

First of all, Fox: it's remarkable, really, how the entire network has been fully flummoxed by the unfolding story in Georgia. It was clearly one thing that, early on, the combination of a young white male shooter and the fact that he killed mostly Asian women working in the massage parlors wasn't, let's say, a good look for them. But a dramatic set of murders, gun play and Southern law enforcement really couldn't somehow get reworked to their purposes? Since January - if not earlier - Fox has been falling quietly apart: a massive reworking on the dayside schedule has resulted in largely sagging ratings, lack of Trump has robbed them of their centrality to each days's new drama, and what's been left in his wake  (yes, we all know about the Dr. Seuss thing), well, just isn't much to build an hour broadcast around. And 5 more minutes of Candace Owen trashing WAP? That just sells Cardi B's next single.

It's one thing for Fox to try and flog its own right wing version of a "main story"; it's another problem entirely when the thing leading every other news broadcast on cable or network - or anywhere really - for more than 36 hours is seemingly invisible to Fox. The murders were graphic and public and provided such a high body count in such a short period of time that the story was simply unavoidable. Add in the clearly troubled young man with the guns and his, by his own admission, complex notions of sexuality and deviance... and it's no surprise how this captured the zeitgeist. And when Fox, or any news claiming network really, refuses to acknowledge the zeitgeist happening right in front of them (and what is Fox, but The Voice of What Happened in The South)... well, that's just a failure.

Which isn't to say this is a story where news organizations are particularly distinguishing themselves; from over emphasizing the violence to trying to explore the stories of the victims to getting a bit lost in a tangle of sex work, misogyny and yes, anti-Asian bigotry... this story is a mess and few reporters or news organizations seem to be getting the story right or well. We barely know who the victims are. We certainly don't know much about the shooter's choices or even if he knew any of them. And from his stated reasoning about sexual activity to killing women to the specific choice of establishments with Asian workers... there's a lot to unpack, and mostly, Americans have spent not just years, but generations, trying to avoid just about every aspect this story raises. 

Whatever one thinks about just how these events particularly illuminate, or even intersect with a larger conversation about a rise in anti-Asian bigotry arising out of shallow thinking around the pandemic... myself, I'd say there are no accidents. We are here because we were bound to get here, one day, in one way or another. Objectification and sexualization of Asian women, indeed all women of color, is just one piece of the large conversation around race America desperately needs to unpack, examine, and thrash out. It's not an easy or simple discussion. And while it may not be central to the "Kung Flu" type insults of the pandemic... this is where the point is not some round of picking or choosing which insult is worst. Whatever this sad, murderous kid thought, whatever the world taught him to think about others not like him... it's long past time to have a reckoning about yet another way in which our culture fails a minority group and we all need to do more and better to fix it.

So... here's the thing about Alexi McCammond. McCammond's hiring as Editor in Chief at Teen Vogue, announced weeks ago, got hung up on a revived conversation about a group of tweets she'd written in college, mostly using "Asian" in some derogatory way (but others, as well, that casually engage in hawking "gay" or "homo" as pejoratives). Since college, McCammond has worked her way through journalism and publishing, widely respected, and quite successful. When the issue of the tweets came up in 2019, she apologized at length. Yet and still, staffers at Teen Vogue asked why it was still considered ok or appropriate for McCammond to assume the top spot. In the wake of this week's events - and I'd argue, obviously influenced by the developments - Conde Nast gave up and McCammond withdrew her name.

And who pounced on McCammond's unhiring as their latest example of their mythical "Cancel Culture" morality play? Why, Fox, of course.

To her credit, McCammond, at least, isn't playing along; she's offered no hysterical "cancel culture" defense, and while other journalists are at least lightly bemoaning the state of affairs, the "Cancel Culture" narrative remains largely its own peculiar Fox invention. As it should; as I started, I don't doubt McCammond's sincerity and let those of us whose youth is not widely available online show a bit of pause - there but for Twitter in high school go many of us. But the questions raised do linger - is a 27 year old apologizing away her words at 19 really the point? When did you realize that "gay" and "Asian" and "homo" and who knows what all probably shouldn't be used that way? Who needed to tell you? And why, really, did you need to be told?

And therein lies the thread that I gently pick up and use to tie things together: maybe, in a week of extreme anti-Asian violence and bigotry, we can see why Alexi McCamond was wrong for Teen Vogue in a way that (still) flummoxes Fox. We shouldn't have to say "don't kill Asian women working in massage parlors as some sick response to your sexual issues" just as we shouldn't have to say "don't say that" when using racial and homophobic slurs in casual speech. Just as we shouldn't have to explain to Fox why you can't cherry pick the news when it goes against your narrative. You can't do that. Maybe, in some past time, as a culture we let this stuff slide. And yes, that's on us, and that reckoning was, and is, somewhat overdue. But still.  When Teen Vogue takes on a tough piece about Asian women, sex work, and the myth of the "Exotic Oriental" - one that Fox will probably say is inappropriate for its audience of teen girl readers - this will all make sense. Doesn't it?

 

Coming 2 America: Give The People What They Want

The thing about Eddie Murphy is that the bar he set really was of his own making. You kinda had to be there, but as a culture we went from zero to Eddie so quickly it almost seems like a quaint fairy tale now. Saturday Night Live to 48 HRS to Beverly Hills Cop with what, an HBO special in there for good measure? The man really was comedy gold. And all by just being, well, Eddie.

Movie stardom is its own specialized, particular thing. It's acting, sure, but it's also being, that instant quality you have in front of the camera where the audience expects you and you just deliver you... as a young moviegoer I didn't entirely understand watching the process as it was happening to newcomers I liked. I get it now. I can see the way that stardom arrives, how it happens... how it's really not new or different, it's just the right person in the right place, at a certain time. And Eddie, well... that happened.

But the bar is high and Eddie, while there have been brilliant hits, there's been plenty of misses, and a lot of... well, just okays. It's easy to blame "expectations" and that bar... but I think it's probably that usual thing about writing and directing. Get great writing in front of Eddie, get him a great director... and he shines. I mean, really shines. Dreamgirls. His last appearance on SNL. Good Eddie is fine. Great Eddie is... well, kids, you kind of had to be there for those opening weeks of Beverly Hills Cop.

Of all his initial stardom projects - before the first trough of 91-96 - Coming to America always seemed like a promise not quite fulfilled. For all that it was - a big budget, pretty much all African American driven project that succeeded tremendously - it also was a bit hit or miss. What works (seriously, go back, it's a satisfying watch, in spite of itself) really works, what doesn't... well, they can't all be Beverly Hills Cop.

And here's where looking at Coming 2 America is frustrating: on the one hand, the bar is maybe too high, on the other, it has been more than 30 years, and you think we might have learned, well, something. But what we have, well, is kind of what we get when you get good, but not great, Eddie. Coming 2 America, while funny in starts and fits, never quite gels into the kind of "second swing at what still feels really promising and just out of reach" that the first film has long represented. While his core audience will get a lot of what feels familiar... what's missing is the kind of sharp attack and insightful power of Eddie's best work.

Like it's predecessor, Coming 2 America leaps over Paramount's mountain to return us to that magical, fictional nation of Zamunda (and the movie more or less fails to land the obvious joke about Wakanda being nearby) where Eddie's Prince Akeem is moments away from becoming King. Without a male heir, the country's future seems vulnerable... until we discover (conveniently) that Akeem may have, well, also fathered a child while he was in America with another woman - and here, in one of the film's brightest moves, it inserts Leslie Jones not just into the sequel, but also the original film. In short order Akeem and Semmi (a somewhat wan reprise from Arsenio) wing their way back to Queens, pick up the son and his Moms and head back to Wakanda... I mean, Zamunda, to ...

Well, to be honest, nothing makes a lot of sense once Lavelle (the son, ably played by Jermaine Fowler) comes on the scene, and the film meanders between a young man's quest to become prince, some tepid family drama, and Eddie learning to be the Lion King or the Black Panther... or something. Fundamentally, the problem is that much of this isn't nearly as funny as it wants to be, and the familiar dilemma of many an Eddie film - all the dick jokes and gross outs - is as present as ever. Is clever too much to hope for? I don't see why - and I mean that literally: this thing has a dream, cross generational cast of African American talent, almost all of it semi-wasted.

Because part of what's always separated Coming to America - and, indeed, Coming 2 America makes even more explicit - is how it put black America in a film in front of white America.  Eddie's movie stardom has always been about confronting our racial divide in ways that shake white cultural complacency, and celebrating African American heritage. The original film made a point of telling a story aimed at black America to show white America would watch... and they did. Coming 2 America just doubles down on that promise. The thing is, that promise should feel more, well, promising... shouldn't it?

More pointedly, the film literally dances uneasily around what was, in the original film, already a dubious stew of racial, ethnic, cultural and wildly sexist tropes. Yes, women fare better here, but barely. Partly that's because of Jones, who's apparently incapable of phoning it in, as well as the serene presence of Shari Headley, reprising her role as Queen Lisa, and reminding us that Hollywood can let women age gracefully.  But lots of sexist nonsense abounds. I don't even know where to begin with the dicey aspects of what passes for "African" here. At best, the film skates by what's obviously problematic with a nervous laugh and a "well, we are a comedy" ... but there's a field day to be had unpacking it all.

The film quickly and neatly wraps everything up, largely by importing what seems like the tone and approach of another film all together... and even that's fine, if a bit Tyler Perry, by which I mean a lot of feel good moments black people like and a hearty dose of sentimentality. For what it is, Coming 2 America wraps things up as well as can be expected. It's fair, though, to ask why no one tried to do more.

Director Craig Brewer did Dolemite with Eddie (after helping produce and direct Empire, and writing Hustle and Flow), but I'd call this more akin to his directing the remake of Footloose - he's capable and he gets the sensibility of the source material... but he's not exactly visionary (and he's no John Landis, for better and worse). As for the script, it definitely feels assembled by the committee credited with writing it: no real point of view, full of pedestrian dialogue and a bit of a mess. What's best, I suspect, is the music - how can you miss with cameos from Gladys Knight and En Vogue and Salt and Pepa? - and some pretty tasty (Ruth Carter of course) costumes (including Eddie's, natch). Which isn't everything... but like much of this project, hints at what could have been, well, great, rather than just okay.

The younger cast are lovely but colorless, including Fowler. But who knows what could have been, with a better, smarter script and more of a point of view? Coming 2 America isn't Bad Eddie - not Norbit bad, or Pluto Nash bad - it's just that "somewhere in the middle" Eddie which reminds you (still) that he can open a picture, but feels a little disappointing. Like I said... that bar is high for a reason, and that reason isn't entirely fair. The trouble is, really, that we all know that Eddie is entirely capable of "fuck that bar." And that's the Coming 2 America I was hoping to see. It's in there, somewhere, still fighting with a crowd pleaser to get the fuck out.

The Trials Of Nixon

Let's just get this out of the way up front: I think Cynthia Nixon is immensely talented. She has had an amazing career. I'm sorry I missed her and Laura Linney - who I also admire - trading roles in The Little Foxes. Hers is the most wondrous role of Sex and the City, from the very first minutes of the pilot, to the brilliant Models and Mortals, and on and on - even if she couldn't salvage the misbegotten sequel feature film.

None of that, nor her moves into political activism I'm afraid, makes her a necessarily great choice to be the next Governor of New York.

Just how formidable an opponent she might or might not be to Andrew Cuomo isn't entirely clear, and likely never will be. Since she announced her intention to run, backed by the array of allies who backed Zephyr Teachout's more left field challenge to Cuomo that unleashed a torrent of bad feeling for our current Governor, Cuomo has responded with the kind of machine gun to kill a mouse approach that seems to suggest that he's at least looking to not repeat the last debacle. What's less clear is whether Nixon really poses a threat even on par with Teachout, never mind beyond that.

Cuomo's side started early and hard, with Christine Quinn coming out before Nixon even officially entered the race to term Nixon an "unqualified lesbian" who'd been especially unhelpful in Quinn's run for Mayor (as the "qualified lesbian"). Quinn's score settling was so heavy handed that she had to back away from the implications that she was knocking Nixon's later life coming out for fear of ruining her political ties to gay activism (God knows, she's never going to run again in New York for anything, ever). But that episode wasn't helped by a slow-footed response from Nixon and her team that spoke to her challenges as a campaign neophyte... underlining the very things Quinn raised.

New York politics - especially in the city, but really, across the state - is not a nice or pleasant business. Set aside the sense of general sleaze in Albany - which animates the dissatisfaction with Cuomo - and there's still the everyday unpleasantness of a statewide web of political clubs and organizations who use arcane rules and complex procedure to handicap all but the most dogged of political ambitions. It is not for the faint of heart, the delicate of sensibilities or the naive. And Nixon isn't the first, or last, New Yorker with a name to get tossed into a maelstrom of political storms based on a well meaning attempt to ride fame and recognition to glory.

And so it was that Nixon found herself this week managing to get the endorsement of the Working Families Party - a key endorsement for lefties unhappy with traditional Democratic Party machine politics - in a battle that may well have undone the whole party's existence. Before dropping out of the contest entirely, Cuomo used his weight as their chief negotiator to...well, who can say, exactly, but let's try "encourage" WFP's main union backers - SEIU and the downstate local of the CWA - to walk away from their support. Thus Nixon now has a party endorsement from a party that, without it's basic coalition of  activists and union groups, doesn't quite have a reason to exist at all.

The existence of the WFP, and a number of similar small parties not familiar to many outside the state, is just one of our interesting wrinkles. It's why, for instance, the well meaning insurgents on Team Sanders found themselves blindsided by not gearing up early or actively enough in 2016, when the state's arcane rules left them without lines on the small party ballots and voters who hadn't known early enough to switch their party allegiances had no way to vote in the state's primary (that 10 month window - which has passed this year as well - will also hurt Nixon). "Reformers" talk a good game of attacking the interconnected web of New York rules (don't get me started on petitioning, our time honored extra hurdle), but the fact is, the people who benefit from those rules are the ones who'd have to vote to change them. And that, as we say, ain't happening.

There's no reason to fault Nixon for not knowing what many newcomers don't know... but that doesn't excuse a savvy operator like Teachout, who is Nixon's treasurer, from having some insight into the potential messes long before now (like the way, for instance, Cuomo started a "Women's Party" to help stall her chances, and headed it up with... Christine Quinn). And it is a point that Nixon's fame and name recognition is also her Achilles heel - because she's more visible, her name likely to attract readers to New York's splashy but struggling tabloids, every shudder and misstep plays out very publicly. That's the problem of a celebrity neophyte - and a New Yorker doesn't need to look much farther than Donald Trump to see how bad that can be. Sure Trump, more or less steamrolled his way into office... but his campaign was marked, repeatedly, by dumb, unforced errors played out in splashy fashion because of his name recognition (and just as splashily, are stlll likely to get him remove from office sooner rather than later).

Worse still is the fact that Andrew Cuomo's lumpish, disliked presence as Governor is ripe for a strong, thoughtful challenge; it beggars belief that Teachout herself, coming off a surprisingly strong finish against him last time, didn't just re-up herself, even with her more painful loss in an upstate Congressional race in 2016. Teachout's laserlike focus on a platform of combined governmental reform and pledge to focus on the needs of everyday New Yorkers played especially well. Nixon, by contrast, has embraced a set of proposals that seem tailored to both the narrow swath of Sanders stye lefties and a city specific audience happy to hear about lowering apartment rents and tackling the MTA. Missing from that is the basic core of Democratic party success - threading the needs of economically challenged upstate communities with the appeal to minority interests needed to prevail across the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. So far, Nixon is shaping up to be Teachout lite: an amiable protest vote that will never pose much threat to Cuomo, and that he can easily co-opt by adapting her more attractive proposals to his placating whims. Which is exactly what he did to her this week on recreational marijuana.

The simpler fact is that Nixon, for many, doesn't cross the threshold to be Governor; this is a state of active, thoughtful voters (especially in primaries) with a high bar and serious criteria. Nothing in Nixon's fine resume as a performer suggests the skills needed in a Governor, and nothing in the early days of her run suggests the kind of nerve and political savvy needed in a state as complex and diverse as New York. If she'd started small, if she'd started earlier... who can say? But sadly - and cynically - her run seems to be exactly, well, what it seems: plucking a name brand celebrity with some lefty cred and throwing her out there in the hopes that she can thrown Cuomo off balance enough to pose a real threat. Sure it's deeply unfair to voters to play them like that... but ultimately I'm a little more sad for Nixon herself - she didn't, and doesn't, deserve this.

And so, we'll get what we'll always get: more time with a connected guy from a political family who long ago ceded his integrity for power and some limited prestige. Cuomo is so badly damaged - if nothing else, he's an ethical disaster - that he has no chance on the national stage, yet he commands the levers of a well oiled political machine so skillfully that no ordinary opponent can stop him in state. Zephyr Teachout was the kind of wild card that threw a wrench into that machine. Nixon, quite simply, isn't. And knowing that now, with so much yet to unfurl, is the real trial we all face, here in the Empire State.

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What in the World, Matt Lauer?

Lest we get too carried to near tears as Savannah Guthrie was this morning, let's try to remember that there's a reasonable case to be made that firing Matt Lauer from the Today show could also be presented as overdue, and necessary.

Lauer, the highest paid anchor on NBC, at $25 million a year was the longstanding face of a cash cow, but beyond that... well, discussions of his role there were often kind to say the least. His immediate predecessors went on to host the NIghtly News (Brokaw) or be the face of NBC Sports (Gumbel), but no one ever suggested Lauer was good for any of that Indeed, it's hard to say, even now, just what he was good at. His interviews were never called "must see" or memorable, he wasn't the go-to person for major "gets," as they say. He wasn't especially insightful and did little in the way of political moderation (and when he did push his way into the format, last election season, his inartful pestering of HIllary Clinton was widely panned).

Lauer sat with several cohosts - Katie Couric's star power was undeniable, Meredith Vieira's quietly assured, Savannah Guthrie's enthusiasm widely admired. Lauer was none of these, and worse, really, in helping to wreck Ann Curry. Lauer was the face of endless self satisfaction, of having nailed the catbird seat on a money train no one was prepared to stop. He was the nonthreatening, disinterested, slightly sarcastic face of a show that gave up on hard news and settled comfortably into puff pieces and cross promotion, soldiering on through Olympic mornings and Macy's parades without ever rising above expectations. No wonder, on his watch, Today fell from first to third (briefly) in morning shows, the subject of endless backstage gossip and production team shakeups, full of senior executives too nervous of change or too scared of anger to point out that the thing most in need of a revamp was sitting at the main desk.

He started blandly handsome and never especially developed into anything more, and arguably helped immeasurably in making morning television exponentially worse. Weddings on beaches, travelogues from across the globe... and of course another day of diets and that book everybody's reading and that movie that opens at $150 million or more. Lauer's tenure turned Today into People and people into marketing ploys. Hard news? Why even bother?

And for all of this he was known and seen all over New York as one of those guys who had it all and expected more. The ever growing absurd salary. The helicopter to the Hamptons just to go to work. That house and the perfect wife and those puffy articles in magazines you never read at the doctor's office (like, erm, People, the print equivalent of Today). He was never especially loved - tabloids were all too happy to attribute internal strife at Today to his ever growing ego - but post enough publicists on the project and from a certain light, not examined too closely, he was just an ordinary guy doing another day's work. Or something. And hey, check out that mansion!

It took less than 3 hours for Guthrie's "we had no idea" innocence (and hey, how better to elicit that reaction than to tell her an hour or so before going on air) to be subsumed by reports that both Variety and the New York Times had been working, for some time, on reports of complaints against Lauer - and that NBC knew of those allegations. That's gonna sting, and gives some indication, still, of how on air female talent is treated next to male costars. I'm thinking less of Gayle King and Norah O'Donnell than I am of Kelly Ripa, who finally put her foot down after repeated attempts to be written off while carrying ABC's syndicated "Live!" NBC has wasted years perpetuating this TV "husband and wife" silliness of Today cohosts, despite a storied history of women - Barbara Walters and Jane Pauley through now - perfectly able to carry the show alone.

But more than that, more than the way Lauer's story dovetails so neatly with all the "we're shocked, shocked" responses to power male misbehavior, the real test it seems to me is if someone takes note of the way Lauer's endless mediocrity warped and degraded the very fabric of the Today show itself, into the fluffy, pointless, four hour monstrosity he leaves behind. It's that glossy, false fun patina of endless morning cheer that really deserves to die, sacrificed on the alter of the sacred monsters allowed to thrive in its fake living rooms and rope line courtyards. No more Matt Lauers. Is that really too much to hope?

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Knowing

By no means a Hollywood insider, I have to say, I am just a lover of film. Have been since I was at least 13. That's the summer - I remember it well - that I spent in the dark of the Walters Art Gallery auditorium getting my introduction to the classics of film. Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn... I fell in love with Hollywood's Golden Age. It led me to The Oscars, and histories of The Academy, and to taking film seriously, and to the criticism of Pauline Kael (along with Steinem, the writer I aspire to be).

I don't care a lot about celebrity, but I like getting the "inside scoop" on Hollywood, how films are made, who's doing what, what it takes to get to the top.  Over the years, I've learned about producers, and studios and the work of directors... just to keep up, to be "in the know."

The point of all of this, and why I bring it up now is that... I'm no insider, and even I can't say I had no idea what was going on with Harvey Weinstein.

In the midst of his stunning downfall, the claims of "I had no idea" or "if I had known" are spreading far and wide. And I get it. No one, really, had a handle on the specifics and the scope of Weinstein's activities until near simultaneous reporting from The New York Times and The New Yorker (I'll get to Ronan Farrow in a minute), and there's an enormity to the revelations in total that matters. But at the same time... this thing about "knowing," and what it means, sticks with me, and I suspect, it will haunt us in film and pop culture in the months to come.

My point about knowing, and saying that I knew... something, is that Harvey Weinstein's very public lifestyle and professional behavior were pretty much impossible to hide. He was proclaimed legendarily difficult, temperamental, and damned everywhere with faint praise when directors and stars of his productions were interviewed. Stories abounded of his crass acts, bad moods and public unpleasantness. They were joined - and here's what people tended to focus on - by tales of his passionate concern for the quality of the finished product, his commitment to the talent, and his hucksterish skills promoting the work he cared about. 

And herein lie a number of the problems his actual behavior have revealed. First, there's the unmitigated power he held over individuals and careers. The success of Miramax, and subsequently The Weinstein Company, lay in cornering the market of "Art House" or "Classy" productions, the stuff we call "Oscar bait" and "small films" which imply both Too Good for the Mass Audience and a sort of labor of love that may never make back its cost. In fact, Weinstein was very good at turning a profit on these productions, both by keeping them relatively cheap and promoting the hell out of the ones that he thought would catch on. But outside of Weinstein, that kind of success has been increasingly rare. And because of it Weinstien had a power over one segment of the film industry (at his height) that was fairly unmatched going back perhaps as far as the days of the great moguls. That power, in turn, made it easy for him to corner aspiring starlets and other neophytes, and behave in spectacularly inappropriate ways with no fear of consequence.

Second, Weinstein benefitted from the casual ways of doing business in Hollywood, where there is a formal casting process for most roles and another, less formal approach to star parts and star making ones. This story isn't new, and the rumors have abounded, forever, that the route to stardom for many, if not most, is littered with agreeing to do things one wouldn't necessarily want to do... and the winners are the ones who did. The revelations of Weinstein, literally "go down on this and I'll make you a star," are little more than... well, the fantasy made flesh, and a reminder that the reality is way worse than any fantasy would ever imply.

Weinstein's fall, some have suggested, is actually an indication that he hasn't actually been powerful for some time, and I tend to agree. Primacy has a short shelf life in Hollywood, and we're long past the days of high Merchant Ivory and Shakespeare in Love. The Weinstein Company is important, but plenty of avenues exist to go independent, and Moonlight is merely the latest in a string of examples of how the Awards givers are aching to challenge the public to see more and better. Weinstein can be taken down now because, in part, his hand doesn't control all the levers like it used to - remember when he launched Tina Brown into Talk? And while this week's events may have hastened his breakup with Georgina Chapman, how long was that marriage going to last if Marchesa's dominance of the gown market was sliding away from lack of celebrity stylist use?

The thing about Weinstein in Hollywood is that there's always a Weinstein. Someone with too much power (hey Mike Ovitz), too much control (hey Mike Eisner), too much bad behavior (hey Simpson and Bruckheimer). The question is, do we plan to take the next woman - or man - seriously when charges of sexual misconduct come up? Is Hollywood planning to rule some behavior ethically unacceptable, no matter how powerful? Or, as we did this time, are we going to sit there and pretend, with straight faces, that we would have done something... if only we had known. Because we knew. People knew. And people did, in essence, nothing.

In the aftermath, as we do in America, there's a fervent search for someone to blame. It makes things easier, and absolves us from the harder conversations that a) lots of people have some responsibility here and b) that blaming isn't really the point. Blame Hillary Clinton for not responding fast enough. Blame NBC for not feeling that Ronan Farrow's story was strong enough last March or last August... or whenever. Blame Cyrus Vance Jr. for not prosecuting Weinstein in 2015. Blame Bob Weinstein, because surely "brother's keeper" ought to mean something. Blaming is useless (and with Clinton, among a list of politicians and other celebrities, especially ridiculous), and misses the point. If this behavior troubles you deeply - and God knows, shouldn't it? - then the problems we have are about preventing it, and taking it seriously when its reported. And I, for one, have heard precious little about fixing that.

I hate the idea that good people knew and did nothing. It saddens me to think that women who could have saved one another from predatory behavior were too scared or felt too powerless to intervene. It angers me that someone like Vance, or members of the TWC board, can sit there and make excuses for not doing enough, or anything, soon enough. Mostly I just hate knowing that as bad as I ever thought Harvey Weinstein was, he was something far, far worse. The problem is.. that's not all we know. But I think we'll pretend not to know, again, next time.

 

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What Will We Tell The Children?

Within moments of the election results sinking in, a plaintive - and very beguiling - cry went up in the school pickup lines and Trader Joe parking lots of coastal suburbs... "What will we tell the children?"

When I started this blog some - eek - ten years ago, I was the Uncle of a lively 5 year old, and shortly after, an adorable newborn. Today, I am the uncle of a moody 14 year old, a rambunctious 9 year old, and an inquisitive 3 year old. And not until we landed in Israel (where the nephews now live) the week after the Access Hollywood tape, did it occur to me that talking about this election with kids was a dicey, uncomfortable affair.

These are the days of Mom Blogs and Helicopter parenting, and child rearing is never very far from the discussion of lefty politics these days. Generations X and Y have both moved into the marriage and family phase, and it's hardly surprising that, on white people, it's like thirtysomething brought to life. Sensitive dads trying to forge a new role for men as parents; modern moms balancing work and life interests of their own with raising thinking, active, aware kids. The campaign of Donald Trump was bound to roil these wholesome waters. It's uncomfortable, and surely, uncharted territory. Quick, find me a child rearing expert with a PhD to offer professional advice!

The notion of a protected, sacred childhood comes largely out of the Victorian era, a response to some of the horrors of the Industrial Age, and a companion to the enshrining of women's roles as keepers of the home and caretakers of the domestic sphere. It's primarily an upper middle class notion, aimed at women with successful, financially secure husbands, and quite possibly domestic help. And, naturally, it's these "traditional" notions that still haunt how we see children, and women, even as times, and cultural notions, shift. Feminism brought women into the workforce, up-ended the traditional family through divorce and sexual freedom, and led to the economic reality of 2 career couples. Through it all, we continue to carry notions of the protected childhood forward.

We do this even though we know that children see, hear and are exposed to all kinds of ideas and notions and images. We do this knowing that children are not, often, safe or protected. We do it knowing that children often chafe over it. And we wonder, these days, why children seem to struggle so with understanding when it's time to grow up.

It was my mother who pointed out to me that these notions of protecting children are probably not all that useful, that it's better probably to make sure they do understand how the world works, that it can be harsh or unpleasant, and help them to find the maturity they'll need to face it. Ata time when we are all so polarized and politically divided, it's children who may be insulated and isolated most from seeing, or hearing, others who are not like them, with parents who think differently, have different beliefs. At a time when we need greater understanding and more communication across our divides, our children are the reason we build the walls and look inward. That can't be good.

And given Donald Trump's candidacy and its success, it's worth remembering that not everyone is teaching kids diversity. Or tolerance. Or notions of consent. What do you tell children about how men talk about women and joke about taking women without consent? Well, God knows, that's as good a moment as any to teach boys that girls are not objects and girls that it's important to speak up and say no, and no one has a right to force themselves upon you.

This election did not "rob kids of their childhood." "Childhood" is a created construct, an often unrealistic fantasy and creates an unrealistic expectation parents can't ever meet. Wanting kids to have nurturing environments, to feel safe, to have room to grow and explore... these are great things to strive for. But kids, especially the children of wealth and privilege, also need to see and understand the world, and to go out into it. And know that it will not always be safe or welcoming. And, I would hope, that children of privilege realize that seeing beyond privilege is crucial and necessary - that we have a responsibility to our communities, to each other.

"What do we tell the children?" isn't ultimately a question about kids. It's a question that deflects the hard things we need to tell ourselves, the work we have to do, the ways we all let each other down. Donald Trump's foul language and hateful notions weren't an assault on children; they were an affront to us all. As I looked at my nephews, wondering what to say, and how to say it... i did wonder what I was trying to shield them from. And today, I think it's largely that I didn't want them to know, as I did, how horrible people can be. But they are. And if we're going to deal with that, we probably all need to grow up. At least a little. 

 

Captain Underpants

I wrote this post back in August when Amthony Weiner's new round of "sexting" came forth and Huma Abedin formally separated from her husband. A lot, of course, has happened in the interim - not least of which was an FBI investigation of Weiner's communications with a minor girl that led to the discovery of a cache of e-mails Abedin, possibly inadvertently, loaded onto Weiner's computer that were from her day tp day communications with Hillary Clinton. That revelation came out when I was overseas, but as I suspected within hours, nothing new or shocking turned up. In time, we may get a fuller picture of what happened and why. But like many, I thought, "this just underlines why she really needed to leave him."

As I just happened upon the piece, I realized it was still timely, and so I'm going ahead and posting it. 

 

I wish Nora Ephron were here to put Anthony Weiner in, well, his place.

Ephron's feminist approach to cultural issues was always bracing - don't believe me; go watch Good Girls Revolt on Amazon - but rarely more so than on the level of interpersonal dynamics. The obvious example is Heartburn, Ephron's lightly fictionalized account of the breakup and dissolution of her marriage to Carl Bernstein.

Like others, I thought specifically of Heartburn in relation to Weiner and Huma Abedin because Ephron made her book so pointedly about being a Jewish New Yorker. I also thought of the line about her son "being caught in some dopey conscriptive way" as part of the affair when Ephron discovers a children's book with an inscription from the woman having the affair with her husband, and the parallels, altogether unfortunate, to Weiner tweeting a picture of his son sleeping next to his dad's shorts.

Lots of people want to psychoanalyze Weiner - it's the times, and our nature to want to label conclusively - but I wish we had Ephron to remind us that the important thing here is not why he did it or how he feels. Perhaps, a better, more human focus is on the woman whose life just fell apart, and the things she counted on most - a supportive spouse, a caregiver to her young child while she pursued her work - were all taken away. News reports focused on "Abedin's absence from the campaign" and all I could think to myself was... "how's she gonna find the kind of childcare she needs to remain as Clinton's closest advisor?"

And yet... as much as this feels like a sudden, final straw, the timing also feels curious. It's a slow news week; Clinton is largely offstage going to fundraisers and keeping out of the public eye, and Abedin was in the Hamptons, largely taking a break. "Friends of Abedin" appeared out of the blue in news reports to indicate that this separation had been in the works for weeks if not months, that they'd grown apart, and she was disillusioned with him. How convenient, then, that evidence appeared, as if on cue, to justify a clean final break.

Conspiracy theory aside, I highly doubt it's the case that Abedin wanted more humiliation for herself or her child this public or this upsetting. But it seems clear that Abedin was also more prepared than one might otherwise be to end things quickly the minute bad news surfaced. It's the readiness that says, I think she was onto him. It's about time; and in some ways, it felt overdue.'

People trying to speculate on parallels to the Clinton marriage miss the point that make these comparisons useless: every marriage is different, every couple makes their own set of compromises, some deal about what you live with, and what you can't. Nothing Bill Clinton has ever done suggests an instinct for publicly compromising images as Weiner has done; but that's really not the point. Give Abedin credit for trying to see the best in the man she married; and fault Weiner, as we all should, for not being that man.

In a presidential campaign season full of sideshows being portrayed as the Main Event, Abedin's breakup will surely seem beside the point in less than a week. Labor Day has a way of clearing the air, insisting that it's "time to get serious," and put away summer's colorful distractions. Hillary Clinton's campaign doesn't hinge on the state of the marriage between Weiner and Abedin, certainly now that it's over. And if the lasting resonance to the campaign is that even here, Donald Trump needed to opine on other's private business... well, if he doesn't want that rep, you know, he could stop.

As for Captain Underpants himself, what can be said? Weiner's triumph, and tragedy, is somehow making his flaws and bad behavior not just his own problem, but everyone's. Some people - we're looking at you, Kanye West - seem to have this instinctive need to be public and messy and somehow "larger than life." Being involved with these people, surely, is tiring (eh, Melania?). It's the mistake of equating notoriety with fame, and fame with being liked. There's a lot of that going around, these days. What a wonder it would be if Abedin can, like Ephron, transform her bad experience into something better, and be herself from a real place of living through experiences, both good and bad. At the very least, I hope she, like Ephron, finds the place where you look back on all this and laugh. Because you gotta admit... he's ridiculous.

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Curiel and Curiouser

By the middle of last week, the polls were tied and nervous lefties were losing the will to live; by the end of last week, we were all reminded that Donald Trump's worst opponent may well be himself.

(And before we feel too good about that, let's remember that Hillary Clinton, too, may be her own worst enemy.)

Last week, though, Trump pretty much held all the cards: a solidified nomination process that was pretty much unstoppable, the evaporation of all but the barest wisps of resistance (largely because Republicans think dissent is vulgar, and thus for liberals), and even forcing the party's highest profile and brightest hope to bow down and kiss his ring. And how do you top that?

By going after the judge in your high profile federal fraud case. Naturally.

Going after Judge Gonzalo Curiel may well be the new definition of "fool's errand" but before we savor Mr. Trump's still smoking gun aimed at his own foot, let's consider that what Trump has done, as much as anything, is remind us of how we got to this terrible moment in Republican politics.

For years, conservatives have fought everything around diversity - indeed, it's been the hallmark of the transition of the South from Democrat to Republican - fighting Affirmative Action, efforts at integration, gay rights, the women's movement and so much more. Underlying all of this has been an argument that to try to diversify hurts "merit" - that the best educated, most qualified, experienced people will suffer. And by extension, they are probably white, and male.

Virtually nothing about this is borne out by evidence; if anything, years of efforts to make diversity happen have shown the opposite, over and over. Women take more seats in top classes and schools. Asian Americans test better than everyone else. Creativity thrives, ideas bloom, communities strengthen when diversity is embraced. The case for diversity is really rather obvious, and where diversity isn't, really, is where we continue to have problems.

Unless you look at this from the right.

I've watched - and felt - the befuddlement other lefties have when Trump trotted out his "Mexican heritage" argument against Curiel. It's a bizarre allegation, the idea that one's ethnic heritage or family's nations of origins, would drive one's worldview. It's led to both the defense of Curiel's citizenship (he was born in Indiana) and the expression of pride of those who share the identity - the latter being further proof that Trump's single mindedness in pushing Hispanics to oppose him as a matter of ethnic pride may both prove his point and be his undoing.

The thing is, conservatives do really see people as biased for "their people." They are simply waiting for that moment when they can say "aha!" when a black person identifies with the black experience, when gay people stand up for one another, when a woman supports another woman's point of view. It is, they suggest, embedded in our DNA - our tribe, our sense of belonging somewhere, to something.

And layered on top of this is the fallacy that impartiality and objectivity come with being white. 

At heart, this is the American dilemma, a nation of immigrants where every group is its own, but we are all American. It's inherent biases around race and class and assumptions about people and their motives that are really kind of sad and ugly and small. We are all prejudiced. We will all defend our own. This logic is also internally incoherent - if blacks, gays, women, hispanics revert to defending their own... then so do whites.  The Irish, the Italians, the Scots, the Swedes... are we not all from a clan? Do we not all, then, come home to our own?

The argument Trump is making against Curiel is one that's been used repeatedly in court appointments - against naming a "jewish seat" to the Supreme Court. Against Thurgood Marshall. Against Sonia Sotomayor. The fear of "prejudice to one's own" is a handy mask for the real prejudice here: the fear of difference, and the loss of white privilege.

In reality, conservatives can't have it both ways: you can't simultaneously argue that "properly impartial" judging is what you're after and, as Trump is doing here, complain that judges carry around biases based simply on their heritage and who they are. We can't, in fact, really have a society at all under those assumptions. What we have, at best, is trust. Trust that people will try their best to be impartial, to judge fairly, to see beyond themselves and their own range of life experience. Trump's case against "Mexican heritage" is the underlying truth behind years of conservative lip service to "faithful interpretation of the Constitution."  That's not what you're really concerned about if the only "faithful interpreters" are white. And most likely, male.

It's nice to see that Trump's appeal to these base prejudices is being seen mostly for what it is; I'd feel better if many lefty defenders moved past the "but he's from Indiana" defense of Curiel if only because we often pretend that papering over our histories and our different heritages and experiences makes us all the same. It doesn't. I rather like the sum of my Swedish and German ancestors, and my African American roots because that's pretty darn unique. And I celebrate the different perspectives that come from others as well. I am not afraid of people who don't have the same background as me - because that's mostly everyone else.

Of course Trump's vitriol and grab bag defensiveness has to be rejected - it's not who we are as Americans, and it's giving into the worst bullying impulses of a man who really fears going before a judge because almost any judge, no matter of what background, can see his guilt. But let's also admire the gift that Trump has given us and make a moment of it - a moment to reject, once and for all, the myth of superior white impartiality. That would make this trip down the rabbit hole something to actually feel better about, in the end.

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Friday Favorite: Trainwreck

If there's an indication of Amy Schumer's intelligence throughout Trainwreck, it's actually apparent in the first shot: Colin Quinn - when did Quinn ever get a shot like this! - as the dad, riffing for his daughters on how mom and dad are divorcing over dad's interest in, well, other dolls. The doll metaphor puts near perfect uncomfortable childishness on the whole enterprise ("how about a slightly overweight cocktail waitress doll?"), while underlining the womanizing and how bad of a parent he can be. But the joy of it is Quinn, tearing into the bit with a relish only a smart comic can. How many comics put the tour de force moments in the hands of others?

Schumer's trust in the talents of others - of wanting, not just being willing, to join an ensemble - enriches Trainwreck on every level. Anybody could put a female protagonist into a bad job at a men's lad book (still around? Yes), but putting Tilda Swinton in as your nightmare editor, with coworkers like Vanessa Bayer, lifts the whole thing to amazing levels of insight - about women in the workplace, the hell of magazine writing, and a world bent on reinforcing the worst sexist roles and tendencies. (And Swinton, all spray tan and blonde extensions and East End accent, vanishes yet again into the magical depths of her near boundless talent, as if her next role was stepping into The Only Way Is Essex.)

All of that, and the real genius of Trainwreck is that Schumer, as a writer, is willing to lay all this insight into what could be, but really isn't, a standard romantic comedy. The romantic comedy has had a rough time of it until recently - distorted and tortured into the "rom com" "chick flick" where all women want is Prince Charming, and all men want to do is watch something else. There was a time when these tales of two improbable people finding love and each other had actual depth - complex characters, emotionally resonant stories, some insights into the human condition. Trainwreck can't do it alone, but it does suggest that the worst may be somewhat behind us.

Director Judd Apatow has done a lot of work, much of it very good, in this regard; he's helped redefine the roles for both men and women in these types of films, not losing sight of romance, while allowing modern, more aggressive comedy to find its place. A lot of this, still, comes from the SNL world of sketch humor - Trainwreck is loaded with performers from recent seasons - but mostly we're just living through a transition where comedy, and the world it makes fun of, have changed. And Schumer's voice has become one of the essential elements.

It's a woman's voice, and a woman's voice that's not bound by convention or traditional notions of any sort. Amy, the main character, is wonderfully her own woman, in ways both positive and negative. She's brash, independent... but stuck in a lousy job, with family issues, personal problems and a bit of chemical dependency. Her bad relationship with a lunky boyfriend falls apart over her one nights stands. Her dad is ill, And by chance she starts working on a story about a sports doctor - she hates sports - who might be a good guy.

Here too is more great casting - Bill Hader's in that wonderful underrated position (Steve Carrell is about the only other one I can think of) where he's both slyly funny and genuinely likable, an everyman who always makes it work without calling a lot of attention to himself. It's a role that has to sell sincerity without feeling stale, and Hader makes it just quirky enough to keep it out of the realm of utterly unbelievable.

But this is Schumer's first chance to shine on the big screen and she tears into it with such gusto it's hard not to be amazed. Sure, she's been offering variations on this gal in her standup and on her remarkable TV show all along, but here she takes the various pieces, and fashions the whole person, a not entirely likable young woman who nonetheless earns audience sympathy; and manages to make points about all the bullshit thrown at young single women, while reminding us that things defined as feminine - softness, tenderness, vulnerability - are essential and valuable for us all.

Arguably, Trainwreck, loses its way in the final 15 minutes, when the need for tidy endings overwhelms what's come before - oh look, another Hollywood "drinking problem" solved by cleaning your apartment of half empty bottles - though the sentiment works and you won't figure these characters simply go gently into that good night. Rarely do films tap into both the ecstatic laughs of comic genius and the real pain of love and loss so thoroughly. And almost never has film shown the kind of respect for women as their own agents, in ways both good and bad. Trainwreck marks an assured debut, and unlocks some real possibilities for women's roles and stories on film. And that, surely, is some very good news.

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