6A — Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
By CHRISTIAN KENNEDY
Daily Music Editor
I was lying in bed last night
trolling through my phone’s
songs on shuffle. My clock
doesn’t move because it’s bro-
ken, but track by track, my
phone reminded me it was 2
a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m., and, now, 5
a.m., when the roughly 1/5924
chance of the unmistakeable
banjo strums of “FourFiveSec-
onds” came through the speaker,
filling my apartment.
The word “throwback” came
to mind, but it stuck there with a
tinge of bitterness. Throwback.
“FourFiveSeconds,”
the
lead
single for Rihanna’s forthcom-
ing album Anti was released on
Jan. 24, 2015. Next Friday’s date
is Jan. 22, 2016 (more on this
later…).
Two months after “FourFi-
veSeconds,” we were blessed
with “Bitch Better Have My
Money,” and then came lacklus-
ter-at-best “American Oxygen.”
Spring of last year, it felt like
the world was Rihanna’s oyster.
With three singles and rumors
of a joint tour with Kanye West,
it felt like it was going to be rain-
ing RihRih all summer long.
Nonetheless, it has been a (his-
torically un)cold, long, Rihanna-
less winter.
She hasn’t left her fans all the
way behind: a faint trail of videos
alluding to a concept album have
been laced throughout an online
“AntiDiary.”
Underwhelming
in content, the site offers exclu-
sive tidbits for Samsung users
and other videos, clues, etc. for
the general public. I have yet to
meet someone who knew about
this before I told them. (Read:
It’s going well. Everyone is on
the edge of their seats.)
The rooms of the site are
labeled “R1” through the “R8
Bedroom,” the latter of which
just so happens to be the only
one left locked. That, combined
with the excessive hashtagging
of #R8 for the past year as a ref-
erence to Rih’s eighth album,
leads to the conclusion that once
the R8 Bedroom is unveiled, as
will Anti.
Flashback to 5:21 a.m. on Sat-
urday Jan. 16, 2015.
Rihanna won’t be releasing
her album tonight for its sur-
prise drop. The Sun feels too
close, ya know? Next week, Jan.
22, seems like the most viable
option. Unreality UK added
some backbone to the notion —
however, it was also supposed to
drop on Nov. 6, and then maybe
again on Dec. 24.
On Jan. 29, Sia, writer of
Rihanna’s
“Diamonds,”
and
transcendent
songstress
of
would’ve-been Anti track “Reap-
er,” releases her album This Is
Acting. Rihanna won’t release
hers the same week — that’d be
a dick move.
There’s nothing inherently
unlikely about Feb. 5 other than
the fact that I want the release
to be Jan. 22. The next week we
will see Yeezy’s Swish, so that’s
out. And if we get to Feb. 19,
a mere 7 days before Rihanna
embarks on her 69-show Anti
World Tour, so help me God.
Rihanna
wants
her
next
album to be “timeless.” Do the
singles feel timeless? Is Travi$
Scott to blame? Are they dat-
ing? Does this article read like a
lot of fluff without much payoff?
You now feel what it’s like to be
a Rihanna fan on Jan. 16 at 5:35
a.m.
On Nov. 23, 2014 a Michi-
gan Daily headline read, “Dear
Rihanna, where are you?”
On Jan. 17, 2016, it reads:
“What the hell, Rihanna?”
UPDATE: Rihanna shared a
CBS promo on Jan. 16 for “Three
Big Events” in which she and the
NFL flip a coin (one side with the
Super Bowl 50 logo, the other
with a Grammy) to see who
will go first on Feb. 7; she loses
and says “I’m worth the wait.”
Super Bowl 50 will be immedi-
ately followed by a live edition of
“The Late Show” with Stephen
Colbert. The 58th Grammys air
Feb. 15. Will Rihanna release her
album on Colbert? Possibly at the
end of the show à la Miley Cyrus
& Her Dead Petz at the VMAs?
With Rihanna 8.0, one thing
is for sure: without an album
release prior to her seems-to-
be appearance at the Grammys
(considering she isn’t nominated
for a Grammy this year), it may
just feel like another door open-
ing with nothing behind it.
When will Rihanna
actually drop ‘Anti?’
ROC NATION
Hey Mr. DJ, song Pon de Release your album already.
NO FILTER
“
Children don’t know the
meaning of yesterday, of
the day before yesterday, or
even of tomorrow, everything is
this, now: the street is this, the
doorway
is this, the
stairs are
this, this is
Mamma,
this is
Papa, this
is the day,
this the
night.”
Elena
Fer-
rante, an
acclaimed Italian author who
writes under that pseudonym,
intoned these words in “My
Brilliant Friend,” the first story
in her series the “Neapolitan
Novels.” The series follows two
girls, Lila and Elena, growing
up in an impoverished neigh-
borhood of Naples, as they
struggle for an education, are
daunted and then intrigued by
boys and yearn for a life outside
of their community — really,
as they come to grips with the
complex truths of growing up
as a girl.
I’m only on the second book,
but what I’ve read has been lumi-
nous, quietly potent as Ferrante
meanders through complicated
lives — as a review in the Guard-
ian stated, “Nothing quite like it
has ever been published.”
As important as I find these
stories, I would have to disagree
that they are the first of their kind.
I was a freshman in high
school when I first learned the
term “Bildungsroman,” coming
from the mouth of an English
teacher I idolized. A German
word, clunky and unromantic,
it’s used to describe a story sur-
rounding a character’s coming-
of-age. A story in which the
greatest plot point is the main
character changing and growing
over the course of time. I was
disappointed that such an unin-
spiring, sticky word described
what was the most important
genre to me when I was growing
up, and to this day.
These were the books that
had always captivated me: ones
of slow growth and rich details,
ones that allowed readers to
dive into a character’s mind and
watch as they changed and grew
up. I had my favorites, the classic
novels listed in the Bildungsro-
man Wikipedia entry: “Catcher
in the Rye,” John Knowles’ “A
Separate Peace,” even “Harry
Potter.” Stories about boys, and
about boyhood.
But two Bildungsromans in
particular had entranced me
from fifth grade on. I felt I was
their girl protagonists, as they
grew into women I dreamed of
becoming. Both published in the
early 1900s, neither “Anne of
Green Gables” nor “A Tree Grows
in Brooklyn” were lauded at the
time of their release, but they
sold well, and they still sell today.
Stories of smart, sincere young
girls growing up and navigating
two distinct worlds. Both struck
a chord with readers. Almost a
century later, they struck a chord
with me. I connected intimately
with Anne and Francie, despite
living very different lives from
them — I saw shades of myself
and the women I loved in them as
they grew up.
So despite the Guardian’s
pronouncement, Ferrante’s
stories are not the only in their
class, though the group is small.
Anne from small town Canada,
who over the course of 11 novels
finds a family, a vocation, falls
in and out of love, has children
and loses one, is very different
from “Brooklyn” ’s Francie — a
girl growing up in impover-
ished Williamsburg, who has
to face the dichotomy of honor-
ing her heritage and leaving
the pain and poverty behind.
Like Ferrante’s Lila and Elena,
“Brooklyn” relays rarely repre-
sented expressions of girlhood
as it makes its jumbled way into
womanhood.
Books (or Bildungsromans)
like “Gables” and “Brooklyn,”
like the “Neapolitan Novels,”
find ways to get inside the minds
of young girls — laying anew the
aching insecurities, the unwin-
nable competitions we are placed
in, the sad importance men and
boys have in shaping our self-
esteem. However, these stories
go farther than just the univer-
salities of girlhood, using pains-
taking details to create fully
developed lives. In the scope of
great literature they may seem
small, or irrelevant — relegated
to the category of young adult lit,
or worse, “women’s,” whatever
that means. But their stories
are inherently unique in how
they create fully realized female
characters rather than general-
ized tropes or bit parts. And
unlike much of great literature,
they are not focused on the cli-
maxes, on great acts of valor, on
powerful figures, on sweeping
virtuosos. They are about the
daily walk to school, the boy
met on a beach and then never
seen again, the fight with a best
friend, the small, unimpressive
stories that fill the lives of girls
and that are rarely given value.
The little moments that create a
life that make a person.
I haven’t finished Ferrante’s
books yet, but I can’t wait to see
what happens to Lila and Elena.
That’s really all that great books
are supposed to do to you.
Gadbois is inspired but skeeved
by the term “Bildungsroman.”
To suggest alternatives, email
gadbnat@umich.edu.
GENDER AND MEDIA COLUMN
The coming-of-age
power of Ferrante
NATALIE
GADBOIS
In campus talk, prof.
defends narcissism
By MARIA ROBINS-SOMER-
VILLE
Daily Arts Writer
Laura Kipnis, Northwestern
University Communications Prof.,
told a crowd at the University
today that she’s unafraid to ven-
ture into dialogue about touchy
subjects — from pornography to
what she has coined as “sexual
paranoia,” which she says has
washed over college campuses
across the country.
Kipnis has published six books
that mostly focus on discourse
about gender/sexuality politics,
love, sex, American popular cul-
ture and aesthetics through essays
and anecdotes on her extensive
experience and research as a
video artist and cultural critic.
Her recent essay “Sexual Para-
noia Strikes Academe” garnered
uproar among the student body at
Northwestern, resulting in a Title
IX claim filed against her.
Kipnis spoke at Rackham Tues-
day to an audience composed
partially of past and present
members of the Michigan Soci-
ety of Fellows, a group that grants
individuals who have demon-
strated excellence in various aca-
demic disciplines with three-year
fellowships. During the event,
she read from an excerpt of her
upcoming book about narcissism.
“There is a rampant level of
accusation about other people’s
narcissism, and I guess it irks me
in a certain way,” Kipnis said in
an interview with The Michigan
Daily. “I often find myself writing
about things that irk me.”
She added that narcissism had
persistently come up in her travels
and conversations, prompting her
to write about it.
“At a certain point I just started
thinking that everywhere I went
and lots of conversations I was
having and cultural criticism I was
reading had to do with accusations
about other people’s narcissism,”
Kipnis said. “It’s always someone
else who is a narcissist, not you.”
In the lecture, Kipnis excavated
the rich history of narcissism in a
way that touched on the evolution
of the concept throughout history.
She asked questions that would
provoke the audience to revisit
their attitudes toward the phrase
and any aversion to identifying
with it. She spoke about classifica-
tion of a narcissist in terms of self-
love; some say narcissists have an
excess of self-esteem, where oth-
ers have argued that the narcis-
sist emerges from having too little
self-esteem.
“There’s this really interesting
history of who first gets diagnosed
as a narcissist, who the term first
gets invented about, which ends
up interestingly being indepen-
dent women,” said Kipnis.
She explored the work of
cultural historian Christopher
Lasch, who wrote extensively
on the ways in which American
culture has the tendency to nor-
malize narcissistic behaviors. He
saw himself as exempt from his
own critique of narcissism, which
was characterized by the blame
of individuals for collective faults
and bottomless repressed rage.
Kipnis also lectured on Sig-
mund
Freud,
unpacking
his
idea of primary narcissism —
the innate self-involvement of
infants that turns into secondary
narcissism, an infatuation with
the ego—now coined a narcis-
sistic personality. Kipnis posed
the question of whether this
increased self-love has devalued
the ability to love others.
She additionally dove into dis-
cussion of the Narcissism Per-
sonality Inventory (NPI) — a test
meant to measure quantity of
narcissism in one’s personality.
She suggested that the test was
controversial as in what it truly
measures, unclear, hard to agree
upon and overused. Kipnis said the
varying types of narcissism clas-
sifications she encountered in her
research, from the “aggressive” to
the “paranoid” to the “craving”, to
the “phallic” to the “exhibitionist,”
supported her claim that narcis-
sism in our world takes a myriad of
forms and functions that encom-
pass more of our cultural identity
than we’d like to admit.
Kipnis asked her audience to
consider whether rampant narcis-
sism was a problem of competition
for limited resources or simply the
way we construct our character,
summing up her points when she
asked, “What are we entitled to?”
“Everyone’s ex is a consum-
mate narcissist,” she joked when
exploring narcissism in the con-
text of romantic relationships.
In the Q&A portion Kipnis was
questioned on the notion of “enti-
tlement” which she referred to as
“demand on steroids” and a term
that the right side of the political
spectrum liked to throw around
to describe those who expected
different forms of government aid.
Kipnis’s tricky past of express-
ing discontent with the sexual
politics
on
college
campuses
resurfaced when she responded
to a question that asked whether
entitlement came as an expecta-
tion to be protected from harm.
“I have to think more about
that,” she said.
Kipnis
raised
interest-
ing points and with thorough
research, broadened the scope of
the ways in which our culture has
given in to self-interest.
“Rather than just point fingers
at every one else, just take a look in
the mirror,” she said on Tuesday.
Her statement, albeit jaded,
held some truth yet left me hoping
for a further investigation of the
empathy, justice and compassion
that any definition of narcissism
fails to encompass.
COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK
Stunning visuals and
tense plot in ‘Theeb’
By JOE WAGNER
For The Daily
Theeb. Wolf. “(In Bedouin cul-
ture,) if someone calls you a wolf,
you have earned their respect as
a man of daring
and cunning, a
person who can
achieve impos-
sible feats,” Naji
Abu
Nowar,
director of the
Jordanian film
“Theeb,” wrote
in his statement
for Minnesota St. Paul Film Soci-
ety. “The wolf is an ambiguous
creature both revered and feared,
it is both a pack animal, loyal to
its tribe, and a strong individual
capable of existing by itself.”
Nowar’s directorial debut is a
compelling, sometimes confusing
reinterpretation of the western
genre, interlaced with a Bildung-
sroman narrative. The cast is
composed entirely of nonprofes-
sional actors with the exception
of Jack Fox (“Blood Moon”). The
film, set in 1916, takes place in the
beautiful Arabian landscape of
the Wadi Rum desert, which at
times seems to evoke the classic
Western location of Monument
Valley.
Theeb (Jacir Eid Al-Hwietat),
the protagonist of the film, is
given his name at birth, which
means that greatness is expected
of him. At its core, “Theeb” is a
story of boy who must live up to
these high expectations. A boy
who must become a man.
Theeb and his brother Hus-
sein (Hussein Salameh Al-Swei-
lhiyeen) have recently lost their
father, the leader of their tribe.
When Edward (Jack Fox), an
Englishman, and Marji (Marji
Audeh), an Arab, visit Theeb
and
Hussein’s
encampment
seeking refuge and guidance
through the desert, the brothers
accept the request out of honor
for their deceased father. Hus-
sein, an expert navigator of the
area, is asked to guide them to a
well along a pilgrims’ trail near
the Ottoman railroad. The trail
is rumored to have more raiders
than pilgrims.
Despite the complaints of
Edward and Marji, Theeb joins
the group, eager for adventure
and wanting to spend time with
his brother. The rumor of dan-
ger comes to fruition when they
arrive at the well, where they
are ambushed. During an intense
Western-style shoot-out, lives
are lost and Theeb must work
together with one of the murder-
ous raiders to survive the treach-
erous Wadi Rum desert.
“Theeb,” with its stunning
landscape shots and anxiety-pro-
voking story, is an adventure film
that is, at the least, entertaining.
The skeleton survival tale of the
plot is easily accessible with its
primal urgency. However, the
details, which make films real-
ly come alive, lack clarity. For
example, why does the English-
man travel alone? Why is he visit-
ing different wells? Perhaps, with
greater knowledge of the Middle
Eastern theatre of World War I
or a better understanding of Bed-
ouin culture, the film’s subtleties
would be more comprehensible.
Yet for the lay-viewer, these ques-
tions are left unanswered.
Still, the story of a boy becom-
ing a man is timeless and relat-
able. In a year riddled with
survival films (like “The Rev-
enant,” “The Martian” and “Mad
Max: Fury Road”), “Theeb” man-
ages to hold its own by playing
with genre and telling a story
from a people whose views are
rarely depicted on the screen.
FILM REVIEW
B+
Theeb
State Theatre
MAD Solutions
An adventure
film that is,
at the least,
entertaining.