2B — Thursday, March 31, 2016
the real-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
EPISODE REVIEW
On the heels of “Batman v
Superman: Dawn of Justice,”
CBS’s “Supergirl” is surging
ahead in ratings with its
own take on the superhero
crossover
genre.
Breaking
through
network
walls, The
CW teams up
with CBS to
bring Barry
Allen (Grant
Gustin,
“Glee”) into
National City
with a running start. Over
the past season, “Supergirl”
and “The Flash” have been
relatively successful among
the millennial fanbase. The
newest episode of “Supergirl,”
“World’s Finest,” earned a
21-percent overall rise in
viewers, though the fate
of “Supergirl” is yet to be
revealed.
Over the two-season run
of “The Flash,” we’ve been
privy to two crossover events
with The CW’s prodigal
son, “Arrow.” These team-
ups, much like “Batman v
Superman,” brought the
violence, while “World’s
Finest” is all lollipops and
rainbows — a well-overdue
break from the violence
surrounding the DC Comics
community as of late. The
episode explores the “theory
of the multiverse,” one of
DC’s most popular and
attentive elements that has
only recently been touched
on in “The Flash.” Although
they (literally) come from
different universes, Barry
and Kara (Melissa Benoist,
“Glee”) easily find a rhythm,
eventually working together,
as opposed to the usual hero-
sidekick dynamic, even if
Barry does unintentionally
play wingman for a while.
The transformation of
Siobhan Smythe (Italia Ricci,
“Chasing Life”) into the Silver
Banshee, a moment that might
have been epic, is slightly
undermined by the Flash’s
unexpected arrival, and it may
have been more effective in
a later episode. But you can’t
argue with the offbeat humor
that accompanies Barry to this
Earth. Along with the fact that
he brought ice cream.
Looking at the episode as
a whole, “World’s Finest”
is an exposé of everything
that separates the worlds of
“Supergirl” and “The Flash”
from DC’s darker corners.
Adding in the wonderfully
adorable and singular
chemistry between Gustin
and Benoist, this episode has
bumped “Batman v Superman”
and “Flash vs. Arrow” straight
to the curbs of Gotham.
- MEGAN MITCHELL
A-
Supergirl
Season 1,
Episode 18
Mondays
at 8 p.m.
CBS
By REBECCA LERNER
Daily Film Editor
In the exclusive circles of the
art world, Peggy Guggenheim is
infamous.
A patron
for some of
the most
accom-
plished art-
ists of the
20th centu-
ry, today she
is known
for her
adventurous
sex life and
her lifelong
devotion to
modern art before it was cool.
But “Peggy Guggenheim: Art
Addict” describes, in no uncer-
tain terms, the person behind
the heiress to the Guggenheim
fortune. Director Lisa Immordino
Vreeland, granddaughter-in-law
of Diana Vreeland, dives as deep
as she can into the intricacies and
eccentricities of Guggenheim’s
life. However, when dealing with
a subject as insecure and, frankly,
strange as Guggenheim, it is
impossible to get what feels like
the full story.
Framed around the audio
recordings of an interview with
Guggenheim herself during the
last year of her life in 1979, the film
allows her to speak for herself. But
I couldn’t imagine a woman like
Guggenheim would let anyone
else talk for her. Describing her-
self as both a nymphomaniac and
an art addict, she name drops her
various cliques of lovers and art-
ists with casual ease and humor.
The talking heads, including
surprising figures such as Robert
De Niro and art critic John Rich-
ardson, only add to this carefully
drawn portrait of Guggenheim.
Told in chronological order
and divided into the different
emotional passages of her life, the
film describes how Guggenheim
has always been “the wayward
Guggenheim” — the black sheep of
a prestigious family that was the
equivalent of American nobility.
After her father died going down
in the Titanic, she was left with
450,000 dollars. While this may
seem substantial for a teenager, it
was a meager allowance for a Gug-
genheim.
She moved to Paris and opened
her first gallery on a whim, decid-
ing that a gallery would be less
expensive than a publishing
company. In the very nonchalant
way to which the viewer must
very quickly adjust, Guggenheim
affirms that she couldn’t have
opened the gallery if her (mother)
hadn’t died. Though Guggenheim
routinely discusses incredibly sad
topics in the film, including the
suicide of her daughter, her multi-
ple divorces and the botched nose
job that led to her lifelong insecu-
rity in her appearance, she never
quite varies from the same posh
voice with which she addresses
everything.
Guggenheim was revolutionary
in so many ways. After opening
her gallery in Paris right before
World War II broke out and Hitler
invaded France, she waited until
the last second to move back to
America to continue her work.
There’s a fantastic line when
her interviewer asks her, “You
realize you could have been sent
to a concentration camp?” and
she responds, “Of course!” in
her offhand and erratic manner.
Guggenheim is all at once naïve
and sophisticated, intimidatingly
smart and alarmingly foolish.
She’s described as not particularly
beautiful, but incredibly charis-
matic and sexual. We see this in
every portrait of her and every
word that she says — she’s an
alluring compilation of contradic-
tions, impossible to tear our ears
and eyes from.
After the Nazi invasion, she
opened a gallery in New York
called Art of This Century. It was
here that she became truly known
in the U.S. for her avant-garde
lifestyle and artistic choices. She
opened the exhibit 31 Women,
one of the only spaces for female
expression in the patriarchal art
world. After tiring of New York,
she moved to Venice, and her
home-turned-art-museum has
since become one of the world’s
most popular spaces for modern
art.
Watching the film feels like
opening a scrapbook. The lively
colors of the b-roll under the audio
of Guggenheim’s interview are
reminiscent of the art that she
worked so hard to present. The
opening titles are splattered with
Pollack-esque paint, and the rest
of the film seems like a collage
pasted together by a modern artist
that we should know, but don’t.
The film inspired so many
questions in me. It made me want
to learn about the artists that Gug-
genheim loved and was loved by;
it made me want to ask about the
types of art that people are mak-
ing right now, the kind that would
excite the artists I’d just learned
about. But one question really
stuck with me as I walked out
of the theater: am I in love with
Peggy Guggenheim?
Peggy: Art addict
MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW
By DANIELLE YACOBSON
Daily Arts Writer
Numb and raw, a single
thought consumed me as Thurs-
day night’s premiere of “Sisters
in Law” came
to an end: I
just wasted
45 minutes of
my life that I
would never
get back.
The premise
of the show
has some
potential; it
documents the
careers of five
Black, female attorneys in Hous-
ton as they navigate through their
professional field. A look into the
lives of high-powered, minority
women kicking ass in a well-
respected profession would be a
welcome addition to television,
a positive change of pace from
the usual mudslinging. Instead,
WE TV created a series follow-
ing the “Sisters” as they “juggle
their families, busy careers, and
even more demanding social cal-
endars.” It becomes clear that the
central struggle of the episode
is how much food to order for a
socialite fundraiser — and with
that, it’s obvious that the show
will make no real attempt to
explore the world’s injustices.
The series’ attempt at a clever
title is the only true reference to
the law at all. Perhaps it’s because
disclosing confidential attorney-
client information is illegal. Still,
instead of discussing their legal
practices or firms, the women
spend the majority of their screen
time dissecting their love-hate
relationships with each other.
However successful these women
might be in their off-camera lives,
their portrayal on screen is that
of little intelligence, egotism and
insincerity, completely eradicat-
ing any hope of a feminist por-
trayal of working professionals.
Since the premiere has virtu-
ally no insight into the legal sys-
tem, the episode instead revolves
around the backstabbing and
finger-pointing that seems to
be the foundation of all reality
television. In fact, the series was
filmed, produced and packaged
exactly like an episode of “The
Real Housewives.” It even has
that awkward intro when each
women smiles seductively at the
camera as she shifts her weight
from one stiletto to the other
beside a block-letter projection
of her name. From the artificial
elevator music added to footage
of individual interviews to the
heavy hand of the producers’
editing, piecing together seg-
ments of conversations for dra-
matic effect, “Sister in Law” is
significantly less entertaining and
more depressing than most real-
ity TV. Which is saying a lot.
At the episode’s climactic fun-
draiser, the group explodes into
an emotionally assaulting debate
on whether Abraham Lincoln
was a Republican. One of the
“Sisters” astutely noted, “It’s get-
ting really ratchet.” Yes. Yes it is.
Enough with the catfighting,
people! I don’t care if Jolanda
is living proof that, “You can
take the girl out of the hood,
but you can’t take the hood out
of the girl.” It’s about time that
women stop ripping each other
apart for entertaining television
and stepping on each others’
backs to get ahead. Women who
break through the glass ceiling
shouldn’t be stabbing each other
with the fallout of glass shards.
Watching “Sisters in Law”
was a life-changing experience.
I might have enjoyed the occa-
sional episode of “Dance Moms”
or “Keeping Up With the Kar-
dashians,” relishing in the escap-
ism of a world filled with drama
that I will never actually get to
see. But on the Thursday night
that I watched “Sisters in Law,” I
made a vow to never watch real-
ity television again. I’ve wasted
too much time already.
Worst ‘Sisters’ ever
TV REVIEW
By SHAYAN SHAFII
Daily Arts Writer
Last Friday night at the Popu-
lux in Detroit, I waited in line
behind Yung Lean to order pizza.
Just like in his videos, he ordered
iced tea in a thick Swedish accent,
yet no one identified him besides
a handful of kids in obviously
fake Japanese streetwear. You’d
think the turquoise hair would be
a dead giveaway. He was under-
standably brief with everyone,
but I managed to sneak in a quick
dap and told him I looked for-
ward to the show. The whole “Sad
Boys” label is particularly hilari-
ous after seeing them quietly
avoid eye contact while eating
pizza in Detroit.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget
that Yung Lean is only 19 years
old. He’s been in the public eye
for so long, and undergone so
many bizarre phases, that he’s
now expected to communicate
some sort of adulthood. When he
burst onto the scene, it was his
Nordic interpretation of West-
ern hip-hop culture that caught
everyone’s attention. His videos
featured all of the choreography
and movement of Chicago drill
rap, but with white kids in Nike
tech fleece. I can’t help but feel
that their early obsession with
Arizona Iced Tea had as much to
do with the word “Arizona” as
the vaporwave color palette on
the cans.
Aging well was always going to
be a test for him, though — how
would he transition from kitschy
nostalgia to making music that
was actually about him? At what
point would the N64 references
go away? What does he actually
have to say, anyway? I entered
the show almost certain that
Yung Lean himself had basically
expired.
Before his set, fans were
treated to an hour of indiscern-
ible wailing from Thaiboy Goon.
While the performance was
largely forgettable, I admired his
willingness to keep going when
not a single person in the audi-
ence knew the words. One of my
favorite parts of the entire show
was when Thaiboy brought out
Bladee, who wore an oversized
Chucky shirt that went down
to his knees. He kept doing this
thing where he put his hands up
to his temples and his eyes would
roll into the back of his head. He
might’ve been singing in Swed-
ish for most of his set and no one
would’ve known. I don’t know
how much of this is for show, and
how much is for real; they might
actually just be this weird.
After the official Sad Boys
Weed Carriers™ finished their
set, Yung Lean himself stormed
the stage performing “Hoover.”
All hell broke loose. I’ve been to
some rowdy shows, but never
have I been shoved into a sub-
woofer that the actual artist was
performing on top of. There was
a ten-minute period where my
sole focus was just finding a way
to stand upright. With my palms
pushing back on the stage, and
the force of ten dudes in Thrasher
hoodies pressed against my back,
I couldn’t help but wonder what
GG Allin shows might have been
like. People were being dragged
out of the crowd left and right;
there were actual screams of pain
flying around the stage. Lean
chuckled and said, “This is one of
the craziest shows we’ve had. I
love Detroit.”
The front row was a circus
act about as entertaining as the
show itself. A guy in a tie-dye
hoodie turned to me and said in
a deadpan drawl, “I’m on 12 hits
of acid right now,” and he wasn’t
smiling. A girl in a t-shirt covered
in frownie faces reached as far
as possible, yelling “Please Yung
Lean! Just one touch!” There was
a guy in a Windows ’95 sweater.
I couldn’t make this shit up if I
tried.
I noticed that Lean had a more
noticeably punk sound when
performing his newest album,
Warlord. He’s definitely trying
to transition into some sort of
Scandinavian rockstar, but as a
teenager who still watches Chief
Keef videos. Like child actors
who often get typecast into roles
before they establish an identity,
Lean’s fans have come to expect
more of his early meme-rap.
With that said, the crowd was
obviously more excited to hear
Lean’s older and more playful
work. Less than four years old,
“Ginseng Strip 2002” already
feels like an Internet-rap staple.
Everyone in the audience prob-
ably remembered where they
were when they heard it for the
first time. “Kyoto” had the entire
crowd jumping and rapping in
unison, though you could tell
Lean has largely moved on from
the faux-Japanese influence on
his music.
When it was all over, the
crowd slowly dispersed out of
the Populux, mostly limping. As I
reached the exit, a tattered can of
Arizona Iced Tea caught my eye.
A small crowd quickly assembled
around it to take pictures of the
symbolic remnants, probably to
post on Tumblr or something.
Lean likes pizza, too
CONCERT REVIEW
SUBMARINE ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCTION
Let’s do it, ride it, my pony.
FILM REVIEW
MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW
If living in a world where YG
makes a diss track about (serious)
presidential candidate Donald
Trump is
wrong, I
don’t want
to be right.
Nothing
about any of
this would
seem realistic
in any ratio-
nal realm of
the imagination, yet here we are,
on March 30, 2016, and this is a
thing that happened.
It’s a thing that doesn’t totally
suck. Both YG and fellow Los
Angeles rapper Nipsey Hussle
come in hot after an opening
snippet from black Valdosta State
University students who were
removed from a Trump rally Feb.
29, and drop F bombs galore on
Trump. They ridicule his plan
to build a Mexican-funded wall
separating Mexico and the U.S.,
with Nip pleading “It wouldn’t
be the U.S.A without Mexicans
/ And if it’s time to team up, shit,
let’s begin / Black love, brown
pride in the sets again / White
people feel the same as my next
to kin.” They find a way to reach
their audience, whether the audi-
ence wants to take them seri-
ously or not.
The only major perplexity of
the song is due to its production.
The beat is eerily similar to that
of “Twist My Fingaz,” a July
2015 single teasing his second
studio album, in addition to a lot
of YG’s other work. The funky
bass, the playful drum machine,
even the hints of piano—they’re
all there. YG’s sound is super
West Coast, but it seems lazy to
rely on nearly the exact same
sound for two distinctively dif-
ferent songs.
It still goes, though; YG con-
tinues to be one of the easiest
rappers to listen to, and more
importantly, beyond the generic
production are eloquently stated
pleas campaigning for the good
of this country (“I’m from a place
where you prolly can’t go / Spea-
kin’ for some people that you
prolly ain’t know”).
The rappers aren’t alone in
hoping what they describe as
a “Comedy Central-ass n---a”
doesn’t lead the country. Their
attempt to make sure everybody
knows this is a valiant one, if
anything, and they manage to
entertain using relevant flow. It’s
essentially rap lobbying, and they
do a damn good job of it.
- JOEY SCHUMAN
“NO,” Meghan Trainor’s
ultra-catchy, tell-em-how-it-is
dance floor
jam had me
thinking I
could like
Trainor.
The track’s
accom-
panying
music video
reminds me why I don’t.
Nothing seems to add up
and everything feels off, at
best. The static that opens
the video isn’t in tune with
the song’s vibe and the open-
ing lyrics play as Trainor’s
black boots walk across a
dark sidewalk, leading to the
drop of the chorus as Trainor
and dancers come together to
pump out their routine.
Set in an urban basement,
Trainor’s club vibes are lost
in the emptiness. The exclu-
sion of male dancers / extras
is understandable; “NO” is for
the girls. However, in cutting
the dance floor along with its
male-counterparts, the video
only leaves viewers wondering
why Trainor and Co. are alone
in this basement — a stark con-
trast to the song’s infectious
energy.
Fresh off a Best New Art-
ist Grammy win, Trainor has
released a single that’s, well,
actually good. The same can-
not be said for the video. Poor
dance skills aside, the few
moments of magic occur when
the song and Trainor’s person-
ality are favored over the idea
of a tightly choreographed
pop video. The video finds
its groove in a series of shots
featuring Trainor in a black
mesh top, sitting around with
her friends serving up some
serious sass to the camera, but
other than that it feels like
rehearsal for a better video.
P.S. Keep the red hair. Burn
that silver coat.
- CHRISTIAN KENNEDY
C-
NO
Meghan
Trainor
B
Love as a
Weapon
Little Scream
F
Sisters
in Law
WE TV
Thursdays
at 10 p.m.
B+
Peggy
Guggenheim:
Art Addict
Submarine
Entertainment
Production
Michigan Theater