The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Tuesday, January 12, 2010 - 5
Opera in the now
Fun fact: Queen Victoria hid from attackers by disguising herself as a pointy tree.
'Young'and restless
Jean-Marc Vallee can't
make Queen Victoria
relevant in latest film
By EMILY BOUDREAU
Daily Arts Writer
People tend to view Queen Victo-
ria as a stately and prim old woman.
But, at least at one
point in her life, she
resembled anything
but this comnionly The Young
held stereotype. .
"The Young
Victoria" focuses At the
primarily on the Michigan
beginnings of Vic- GK
toria's life. Emily
Blunt ("Sunshine
Cleaning") performs capably in her
role as the young queen, but doesn't
quite achieve the commanding pres-
ence of a monarch. The Queen does
not reach maturity in "Young Victo-
ria;" she still displays some naivete
and self-doubt. It would have made
Blunt's character more complete had
she developed Victoria's regal side.
"Young Victoria" explores the
romantic relationship between Vic-
toria and her mousy husband Prince
Albert (Rupert Friend, "The Liber-
tine"). Lord Melbourne (Paul Betta-
ny, "The Da Vinci Code"), the queen's
ambitious advisor and Albert's
romantic rival, is far more enter-
taining than the bland Albert. While
the relationship between Victoria
and Albert is historically intriguing
(she was the first queen to marry for
love rather than politics), the sur-
rounding story collapses into scenes
depicting the pair romping around
as newlyweds. Actually, the political
relationship between Victoria, Lord
Melbourne and the English people
seems to have the greatest depth in
"Young Victoria."
While the love story between
Victoria and Albert is a sweet one,
there are many more aspects of Vic-
toria's younger days worth explor-
ing. Director Jean-Marc Vallee
("C.R.A.Z.Y") tries to incorporate
some of these ideas. For example,
Victoria was so closely guarded that
she was required to hold someone's
hand as she walked down stairs, and
she had to protect her claim to the
throne for the larger part of her life.
In these respects, "The Young
Victoria" is not a dry historical nar-
rative. Vallee puts character and
personality behind these figures. At
times, it's easy to get caught up in the
story and forget it's actually nonfic-
tion. The movie is well focused, inte-
grating both politics and romance.
But there's a lack of social context.
The audience has no way of know-
ing the social turmoil Britain faced
in the wake of the Industrial Revo-
lution and Queen Victoria's role in
these events. The story isolates itself
within the walls of the Queen's pal-
ace - it's not made clear why her
story matters today.
But just because "The Young
Victoria" doesn't explain the sig-
nificance of the young Queen's life
doesn't mean it's not enjoyable. Val-
lee makes an effort to preserve his-
torical accuracy, and it's obvious a
lot of work went into small details
like Victoria's bonnets and the ban-
quet chairs. But despite the heavy
attention paid to historical detail,
"The Young Victoria" is nothing
more than a classic romantic comedy
about a prince and a princess.'
saw my first opera, "Hansel and Gretel," a
few weeks ago at New York City's Metro-
politan Opera House. Instead of ladies with
Viking hats and voices shrill enough to shatter
glassware, there were trees wearingsuits, an
evil witch played by a man
dressed up like a deranged,
flour-spattered Julia Child,
and a gigantic cherry-red
tongue holding a 30-pound
chocolate cake.
Certainly, creative liberties
had been taken with the old -
Grimm fairy tale. The brightly 'WHITNEY
colored stale gingerbread POW
house we remember, heavily
laden with peppermint sticks and gumdrops,
had been replaced with the garish, industrial-
oven-equipped concrete home of the witch.
The scene was littered with lifelike gingerbread
mannequins, all in the forms of children, their
bodies paralyzed in various pantomimes of hor-
ror.
The whole affair was straight out of a night-
mare, but when the actors opened their mouths,
out rushed perfectly honed voices loud enough'
to fill the 3,995-seat theater. This opera was, in
more than one way, surreal, with odd contem-
porary German expressionist imagery placed
alongside music composed more than 100 years
ago. This was before Thomas Edison first pub-
licly displayed the Kinetoscope, the precursor to
the film camera - a time that seems incredibly
distant from now.
Opera goes under the radar as a sort of impen-
etrable genre stuck in a mire of outdated-ness. It
can be assumed in operatic performances that
words, often in another language, are incoher-
ently spilled out in convulsing vibrato, costumes
are of the horned variety and convention is
expected - we enter the theaters thinking we've
known most of these stories since we were chil-
dren, and we dare the story to make itself neces-
sary, wonderinghow exactlysomethingso old
and irrelevant can become relevant once again.
But, as with any type of performance art,
there is potential for adaptation and interpreta-
tion. There are the written words of the script
- the skeleton for the material, which, in "Han-
sel and Gretel," had been written between 1891
and 1892. And then there's the contemporary
performance of the words themselves, or what
breathes life into the bones. With performance,
actors and directors born 100 years or so after
the opera's debut try to engage with a product of
the past and re-interpret it, shape it. It's their job
to take something dated and make it contempo-
rary and immediate, perhaps even uncomfort-
ably so.
In "Hansel and Gretel," the dark fairy tale
had been twisted and contorted, making the
reality of the tale more urgent - "Hansel and
Gretel" is not so much about gluttonous children
and their insatiable desire for refined sugars (a la
"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory") but about
insufficiency and hunger itself.
Every momentspeaks to hunger and need
in this opera. The children traipse through the
"forest," a dark room with leaf-print wallpaper,
and they stealthily empty the pockets of trees
wearing suits to gather the "berries" that will
satiate their empty stomachs, and these corpo-
rate trees later attempt to chase and capture the
children.
Later, when the children enter the witch's
lair, the witch feeds the children and desperately
repeats, "I want you to like me," which speaks
to a sort of loneliness and isolation. When her
needs are spurned by the children, she becomes
angry and forlorn. She forces a tied-up Hansel
onto a steel plate, grinding up Aclairs, cakes,
puddings and pink liquids in a blender and force
feeds Hansel the puree of the food he desires -
now a brown clumpy mess - through a funnel
and a tube.
And all of these new interpretations just
make the traditionally saccharine story more
affecting. When the Sandman comes to put the
children to sleep, Hansel and Gretel dream of,
of all things, food - a 20-foot-long table piled
with dishes served by an inhumanly rotund
rank of chefs wearing bleached-white clothes,
eyes sunk deep into theirskulls. The chefs, the
embodiment of gluttony, serve the children. The
insatiable appetites of those who over-indulge
in food in turn serve the children's similarly
bottomless stomachs, perpetuating this cycle of
need feeding need.
We connect with this composition of the
story. Taking themes that were relevant a cen-
tury ago and making them contemporary is not
a matter of altering the substance of the themes
themselves (hunger, after all, is still hunger,
even years later), butre-packaging these ideas
in ways that are relatable, not in just making
places recognizable - the sugary walls of a gin-
gerbread house turned steel and mortar - but in
presenting desires as relevant and motivations
as contemporary.
Opera is affecting because of simple themes
'Hansel and Gretel'
with corporate trees.
that are twisted and contorted into visuals and
stage sets that pull one's mind to dusty areas
- what if the unfairness of the economy were
pulled into this production by the suit-wearing
trees? What if the need for human affirmation
and the constancy of rejection were pulled into
the grotesque, yet oddly relatable, witch? What
if the ominousness of industry and impersonal
production are criticized in the bleak concrete
house?
Opera and other performance art reflect
life in the past (from decades to centuries ago)
alongside life as we know it. The thread that
binds the past to the present is, in some ways,
tightened during performance, engaging themes
that are, if not timeless, then relevant to us from
decade to decade. Performance twists and turns
old concepts in the light, presenting them in
ways that have never been seen before.
Pow is trying to shatter glass with her
voice. To tell her a hammer would be more
effective, e-mail her at poww@umich.edu.
Nutrition meets derision
By BRIGID KILCOIN
Daily TV/New Media Editor
Having finally wrung every pos-
sible dollar out of the Gosselin clan,
TLC has moved on to exploiting
people with more
pressing problems
than an overabun-
dance of sickening- One Big
ly sweet toddlers.
The six-episode Happy Family
reality show "One Tuesdays
Big Happy Pam- at 9 p.m.
ily" follows the TL
morbidly obese
Cole family (father
Norris, mother Tameka and children
Shayne and Amber) through their
weight-loss journey and the resulting
struggles. After an alarming doctor's
visit during which Norris discov-
ers that his obesity causes his health
problems, Tameka decides to develop
a more healthy and balanced lifestyle
for her brood with the help of doctors
and other medical professionals.
"One Big Happy Family" could be
a relevant and important program
for TLC: a truthful, unflinching look
at the struggle to develop healthier
habits could provide inspiration to
millions of Americans and elevate the
network from the reality-show dredg-
es into which it has sunk.
However, "One Big Happy Fam-
ily" is an utterly typical reality show;
the manufactured conflict of each
episode always neatly resolves by
the episode's end, creating a wholly
artificial experience that doesn't
resemble reality at all. In the sec-
ond episode, for instance, the Coles
lock horns over attempts to make
a healthy dinner after Amber and
Norris refused to eat Tameka's mneal.
After a two-minute chat with a doc-
tor, however, the family somehow
develops an iron-clad will, then pow-
er-walks as a team down the street
while performing an inspirational
rap about their ability to persevere.
While the show's predictability
simply makes it boring, its offensive-
ness makes it downright uncomfort-
able to watch. Members of the Cole
family are presented as caricatures:
Wacky music plays as Norris sits lost
in thought in a doctor's office waiting
to discover the extent of his medical
problems. It's implied that his dis-
tracted nature stems from the appeal-
ing aroma of fast food. Lascivious
close-ups of a funnel cake the family
devours are prominently featured, as
are shots of Norris pouring grease
onto his turkey burger.
While the show will undoubtedly
prominently feature . food and the
family's struggles with it, these issues
are presented in an almost joking
way, turning the Coles' problem into a
source of humor. Even the name "One
Big Happy Family" seems designed to
poke fun at the group.
A healthy lifestyle is central to
Mocking obesity,
sort of on purpose.
the plot of "One Big Happy Family,"
but the program's obsessive focus on
activity dedicated to weight loss and
healthy eating presents a skewed and
uninteresting portrayal of the Coles.
They seem like they would actually
be an engaging bunch if allowed to
discuss or participate in any activity
not directly tied to healthy eating. As
it stands, the program veers between
boringly clinical and bafflingly offen-
sive, making it a chore to watch.
Editors releases a lazy,
outdated '80s throwback
KID CUDI CRASHES THE MICHIGAN THEATER
By KRISTYN ACHO
DailyArts Writer
With an experimental sound,
brooding vocals and a "fuck the
masses" demeanor,JoyDivision
pioneered the
post-punk
movement.
Tragic vocal- Eio
ist Ian Cur-
tis's disregard In This Light
for stereotyp- and On This
ical, superfi- Evening
cial emotions Kitchenware
shifted punk's
emphasis
toward morose and haunting
themes of isolation and depres-
sion. For the first time, a musi-
cian's raw emotion was exposed
through tortured vocals. Sur-
prisingly enough, these sorrows
resonated with listeners. Can
today's punk rock bands claim
to have a remotely comparable
effect on listeners?
Perhaps, but British punk-
rockers Editors cannot.
Though Editors's lead singer
Tom Smith's gruff voice has
invited countless comparisons
to Curtis, the similarities stop
there. Unlike Joy Division's
innovative themes and sounds,
Editors's latest album, In This
Light and On This Evening, is a
lazy, cliche-riddled venture. Its
use of outdated '80s synthesiz-
ers and generic themes of God
and war comes off as a clunky,
overworked experiment in for-
eign new-wave territory.
The band's third effort, In
This Light, marks a new chap-
ter for the group: With its latest
album, Editors loses the main-
stream,hook-heavy approachof
tracks like "Munich" and "Bul-
lets" that propelled the group
to indie-punk stardom. The
album's reliance on pass6 elec-
tro-guitar riffs serves as a back-
drop for the running theme of
chaos and loneliness prevalent
in London, but it comes off as a
mediocre o-fi endeavor.
While bands like Bloc Party
and Interpol have channeled
Joy Division to create a more
admirable dark tension and
moodiness in their records via
electronic synths and a modern
flair, In This Light feels stuck in
a past life that's almost certain-
ly dead on arrival.
Beginning with the title
track, an eerie backdrop of
synths is subdued by Smith's
overpowering, wallowing
vocals. His voice creeps up
through waves of pulsing syn-
thesized sound, creating a tone
so overly dramatic it's almost
laughable. Smith's continu-
ous chants of "I swear to God"
meander as he discusses the
beauty of London over a fuzzy
base of guitars and grating code
beeps. The track, coarsely mud-
dling along for four minutes,
sounds like something on a bad
'80s mixtape. Now would be the
time to start forgetting those
Joy Division similarities.
Single release "Papillion" is
the one shining beacon of light
found on the album - that
is, if you're into self-pitying,
throwback'80s pop outfits. The
track's dark disco vibe comes
with a hefty dance beat. The
trendy, drum machine-infused
sound is in stark contrast to
the rawer, stripped-down noise
found on previous albums The
Back Door and An End has a
Start.
With In This Light and On
This Evening, Editors gives in
to the Io-fi culture dominat-
ing today's indie-punk scene.
On tracks like "Eat Raw Meat
= Blood Drool," Editors tries
to reinvent its sound through
experimental riffs and an
infectious chorus, but it ulti-
mately falls flat with its generic
electro-vibe. If Editors's new
album has taught us anything,
it's that Joy Division's beauti-
fully brooding vocals cannot be
duplicated.
L I
SAM wOLSON/Dail
Renowned rapper Kid Cudi performed to a packed house at the Michigan Theater last night. To read the Daily [7 More Kid Cudi photos
Arts account of the show, check outithe Daily Arts blog, The Filter, at michigandaily.com. at MichiganDaily.com
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