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Monday, November 21, 2016 — 5A

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ACROSS
1 Correct
6 Dr.’s visit
10 “No __”: “Piece of
cake”
14 Farewell that’s bid
15 Societal woes
16 Weapon in Clue
17 It’s “down at the
end of Lonely
Street,” in an
Elvis hit
20 Horse hair
21 Online
marketplace
22 City in upstate
New York
23 Business baron
25 Liver secretion
27 Practice boxing
28 Oil well output, in
slang
33 Hindu teacher
34 Fútbol fan’s cry
35 Fencing weapon
36 Malleable metal
37 Historic events at
Gettysburg and
Vicksburg
41 Sister of Zsa Zsa
42 Ye __ Shoppe
44 Spoil
45 Word with circle
or tube
47 Miracle-Gro, e.g.
50 Flower usually
sold by the
dozen
51 Ivory source
52 Upper crust
54 NFL Hall of
Famer Bart
57 Dreaded high
school spots?
59 Baker’s amts.
62 Part of an Aretha
Franklin refrain
about fools ...
and a hint to the
ends of 17-, 28-
and 47-Across
65 Swiss river
66 Congressional
confidante
67 Florida city on the
Gulf Coast
68 Waitstaff rewards
69 Post-combat
affliction, briefly
70 Sharply inclined

DOWN
1 Chicago mayor
Emanuel

2 Thought
3 Big bamboo
muncher
4 “Peekaboo!”
5 Boy king
6 Online service for
booking rooms
with local hosts
7 Guilty, for one
8 Ump’s cry before
the first pitch
9 “For shame!”
10 Mentored person
11 Roast, in Dijon
12 Oil cartel
acronym
13 Actor Lugosi
18 Arthur of
“Maude”
19 “Incredible”
superhero
24 Chicago daily,
familiarly
26 Frozen drink
brand
27 Sty supper
29 Keno kin
30 Ali Baba’s magic
words
31 “Drove my Chevy
to the __”:
“American Pie”
lyric
32 Luv
33 “Knock it off!”

38 Kennel
cacophony
39 Suffered
financially
40 iPhone’s voice-
activated app
43 Postings in
ledgers
46 “Please, anything
else!”
48 Right or left,
while driving
49 Didn’t admit

53 Sportscaster
Berman
54 Ella’s expertise
55 Spicy Asian
cuisine
56 Boomers’
lobbying group
58 Scoundrels
60 Water carrier
61 “Just like that!”
fingers sound
63 Put a limit on
64 Dol.’s 100

By Agnes Davidson and C.C. Burnikel
©2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
11/21/16

11/21/16

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Monday, November 21, 2016

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

xwordeditor@aol.com

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Good thing she loves herself!

 “The Edge of Seventeen” 

is not a movie we deserve, but 
a movie we need. The film 
is the directorial debut for 
screenwriter 
Kelly 
Fremon 

Craig (“Post Grad”). The idea of 
a movie about a 
girl that’s written 
and directed by a 
woman (a former 
girl) 
is 
already 

(unfortunately) 
refreshing, 
but 

Craig also fills her 
film with enough 
humor and heart to 
feel new even in a 
jam-packed genre. 

For a long time, 

the halls of high school have 
preferred the small screen, with 
shows like “The O.C.” and “Gossip 
Girl” taking the place of “Clueless” 
and “10 Things I Hate About You.” 
“The Edge of Seventeen” feels like 
the rare instance when you run 
into someone you used to know 
and it isn’t awful — it’s actually 
weirdly wonderful.

Nadine, played brilliantly by 

Hailee Steinfeld (“Pitch Perfect 
2”), is nervous and awkward. Her 
sanity hinges on her relationship 
with her only friend Krista (Haley 
Lu Richardon, “The Bronze”), so 
naturally all hell breaks loose 
inside Nadine’s almost-seventeen-
year-old brain when Krista starts 
dating her older brother Darien 
(Blake Jenner, “Everybody Wants 

Some!!”).

Steinfeld is back, giving the 

kind of performance we haven’t 
seen from her since her breakout 
role in the Coen brothers’ “True 
Grit” remake. The Nadine she 
creates is at any moment both 
heartbreakingly 
relatable 
and 

wholly 
unlikable.What 
“The 

Edge of Seventeen” captures 

so 
masterfully 

is 
the 
intensity 

of 
emotions 
at 

that age and the 
loneliness 
that 

comes from feeling 
them. 
Nadine 

feels, like many 
teenagers 
do, 

completely alone 
in her suffering. 
Craig treats the 
absurdity of these 

feelings with exquisite empathy 
and gentleness.

Sure, 
it’s 
familiar. 
Major 

plot points of teen movies are 
hit — fight with a friend, close 
relationship 
with 
a 
teacher, 

awkward sexual encounter with 
the wrong boy before ending up 
with the right one. The movie 
walks the line of cliché, but its 
familiarity works in its favor, 
conveying a sense of universality 
and breathing originality into 
stock scenes. The song Nick 
(Alexander Calvert, “Arrow”), 
Nadine’s bad boy crush, plays 
in the car for Nadine — Angus 
& Julia Stone’s “Big Jet Plane” 
— is exactly the sort of song a 
boy would have played for me in 
high school. It knows its world 

and stays true to it. The attention 
to detail from the soundtrack 
to Nadine’s costuming creates 
a world that is both intricately 
singular 
and 
emotionally 

universal.

That treatment gets extended 

to all of the characters. There 
are no villains in “The Edge of 
Seventeen.” Even Krista, whose 
transgression could have easily 
been spun as betrayal, is a good 
person who cares deeply about 
Nadine. No one is a stereotype 
and no one — not even Nick, who 
has very limited screen time — is 
one-dimensional. It’s refreshingly 
realistic and the strongest force 
keeping “Seventeen” away from 
the forgettable teen movie abyss.

The biggest issue with “The 

Edge of Seventeen” has nothing 
to do with the movie itself, but 
rather with the fact that the 
Motion 
Picture 
Association 

of America gave the film an R 
rating. That’s absurd. So, okay, 
it fails the one “fuck” test, 
there’s underage drinking and 
some bra-on almost-sex. In the 
age of the internet, where any 
thirteen-year-old can, with very 
few clicks, find as many nipples 
and swear words as they want, 
it seems naïve to think that no 
one under the age of seventeen 
is fit to see a movie like “The 
Edge of Seventeen.” It’s also 
disappointing 
because 
this 

is exactly the sort of movie I 
needed at fifteen or sixteen and 
also exactly the sort of movie I 
would never, at that age, want to 
see with my parents.

‘Seventeen’ captures teen 
loneliness with nuance

MADELEINE GAUDIN

Daily Arts Writer

Director Kelly Fremon Craig debuts with new young adult classic

I

n the past two weeks since 
Donald Trump was elected the 
next president of the United 

States, my weekly TV schedule has 
seemed less important than ever. 
Sure, TV is good for escapism, but 
in the face of such horrific things 
happening in the real world, 
whether I’ll catch up on “How to Get 
Away with Murder” or make time to 
binge “Transparent” 
suddenly 
seems 

trivial.

Of 
course, 
I 

quickly remembered 
that 
in 
times 
of 

political turmoil, art 
is more important 
than ever. A wealth 
of 
smart 
pieces 

have been written 
about this already. 
Genevieve 
Koski 

recently quoted Roger Ebert’s 
famous speech in which he claims, 
“the movies are like a machine that 
generates empathy,” arguing that 
by setting out to engage with every 
piece of pop culture we encounter, 
we become more understanding 
people. The Michigan Daily’s own 
Dayton Hare suggested that artists 
are obligated to “bring people 
together into the oneness of human 
existence.”

As I caught up on my shows 

recently, I realized that part of the 
reason I assumed Hillary Clinton 
would become president is that I 
watch an overwhelming amount 
of progressive, liberal-minded TV. 
Most of my favorite new fall shows 
have female leads — “Fleabag” and 
“The Good Place,” for example. 
Most of my favorite returning 
shows have predominantly female 
casts with a wealth of roles for 
women of color, like “Jane the 
Virgin” and “Orange is the New 
Black.” Hollywood most definitely 
still has a long way to go in terms 
of bringing marginalized groups to 
the screen — just look at last year’s 
Oscars controversy — but we’re in a 
period of unprecedented onscreen 
diversity. Being so used to that 
diversity, so used to the feminist 
beliefs I see regularly espoused 
on my favorite shows, has only 
emphasized how much of a bubble 
I live in.

Living in a bubble can have 

negative 
consequences 
if 
you 

assume the rest of the world is the 
same as yours, but I don’t mean to 

say that these progressive shows 
got Trump elected. With the 
impending Trump presidency, it’s 
crucial that we continue to work 
to populate the TV landscape with 
people of all races, sexualities, 
gender identities and ages. Still, 
though — in this time of darkness, 
I remember how far TV and movies 
have come, and it gives me hope.

Take the recent 

trend 
of 
casual 

abortions on TV. In 
the past few weeks, 
three shows have 
featured 
women 

who 
make 
the 

decision to terminate 
their 
pregnancies 

without fanfare or 
excessive agonizing. 
Too often, abortion 
is portrayed as an 

absolute last resort, a tragic decision 
that women should only make in the 
case of rape or some particularly 
vulgar circumstance. Lindsay from 
“You’re the Worst” may be a terrible 
partner and a terrible person, but 
ultimately her choice to get an 
abortion is the sanest choice she’s 
made this season. Lindsay knows 
it would be irresponsible to raise a 
child with a man who frequently 
revolts her, and it would be cruel 
to use a child to force herself into 
staying in a marriage she doesn’t 
really want.

Meanwhile, what’s revolutionary 

about seeing Lindsay or Paula 
from “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” or 
Xiomara from “Jane the Virgin” 
get an abortion is that these women 
aren’t rape survivors, or teens who 
accidentally get pregnant and have 
to “pay the consequences.” These 
are 
middle-aged 
women 
who 

emphatically don’t want to have 
more children, so they choose not 
to. It’s that simple.

I 
also 
recently 
watched 

“Moonlight,” a film that’s so 
personal, layered and subversive 
that I don’t even know how to 
begin to explain its radicalness. 
“Moonlight” isn’t exactly a feel-
good movie, but I left the theater in 
awe, convinced that writer-director 
Barry Jenkins was capable of really 
changing the way people think 
about race and sexuality.

Of all the art I’ve taken in since 

Nov. 8, though, nothing provoked so 
visceral and immediate a reaction 
in me as the season finale of “Better 

Things.” 
“Better 
Things” 
has 

brought tears to my eyes in more 
than half its episodes, but I was still 
shocked at my own reaction when I 
watched the last scene. As Sam and 
her daughters sing along to “Only 
Women Bleed” by Alice Cooper, 
the camera cuts to a wide shot of 
their minivan barreling down the 
highway, a single line of text below 
closing out the season: “dedicated to 
my daughters.”

There was something about that 

line that made me tear up every 
time I even remembered it for the 
rest of the day — something about 
the simplicity of it, the way it felt so 
quiet and elegant yet so enormously 
important. At the end of the day, 
we want our daughters to feel like 
they’re understood and respected 
and loved — not just because they’re 
our daughters, but because they’re 
people.

As 
an 
upper-middle 
class, 

straight, 
white 
male, 
I 
am 

the apotheosis of privilege. If 
“Moonlight” profoundly affected 
me, I can’t imagine how it must 
feel to be a gay Black boy watching 
his own identity — an identity 
rarely 
acknowledged, 
onscreen 

or otherwise — come to life. And 
as emotional as it made me, the 
dedication in “Better Things” must 
mean more to the women who 
see it, women who are regularly 
denigrated 
with 
cumulative 

microaggressions and explicitly 
hateful acts of violence.

Of course, we can’t let inclusive 

TV trick us into thinking the whole 
world is this open-minded. More 
importantly, we can’t let ourselves 
subside into complacency just 
because watching a show with 
an all-Black cast gives us the 
superficial appearance of social 
activists. I’m not advocating for 
ignoring reality and being blindly 
optimistic about the state of our 
country just because “Atlanta” and 
“Insecure” have been renewed for 
second seasons. I just think that in a 
time when it can be so hard to even 
log onto Twitter without seeing 
some heinous news pointing toward 
massive societal regression, the 
increasingly progressive state of TV 
is a small, hopeful sign. Sometimes, 
all you need to regain your faith in 
humanity is a little sign: a shot of a 
Black boy drenched in moonlight, or 
a four-word dedication. Sometimes, 
little signs are all we have.

Searching for hope on a TV screen

‘Better Things’ and ‘Moonlight’ offer glimmer of positivity in the void

A

“The Edge of 
Seventeen”

Rave & Quality 16

STX Entertainment

At the beginning of her memoir, 

Laura Jane Grace writes, “It was 
put to me bluntly that ‘little boys 
don’t play with Barbie dolls like 
little girls do,’ and that was that.” 
This moment was 
one of many that 
marked 
Grace’s 

earliest 
memories 

of battling gender 
dysphoria 
as 
a 

child, a battle that 
would 
continue 

throughout most of 
her life until 2012, 
when Grace came 
out as transgender. Her coming 
out reconciled her inner desire for 
femininity, internalized for years 
through sex, drugs and her own 
music — and was all detailed in her 
writings as any work of great rock 
‘n’ roll literature should.

Grace started her journey of 

dealing with gender dysphoria 
at a young age, and tackled it by 
starting one of the most widely 
celebrated punk bands in recent 
memory, Against Me! In her latest 
work, Grace has taken her first 
dive into the world of literature 
with a memoir that explicitly 
captures her war with gender 
dysphoria, placed beside journal 
excerpts specifying the struggles 
and rewards of life as a touring 
musician. Her journey is called 
“Tranny: Confessions of Punk 
Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist 
Sellout.”

“Privately 
I’ve 
always 
had 

aspirations to be a writer. It’s 
something I’ve always wanted to 
do,” Grace said in an interview 
with The Michigan Daily. “I’ve 

always been a songwriter and a 
lyricist, but I’ve always been a fan 
of literature and an avid reader.”

In reflecting on deciding to 

write the memoir, Grace said, “It 
seemed like reconciling with the 
past, which is kind of the first step 
to take in going forward.”

In her book, Grace recognizes 

the importance of 
self-forgiveness 
and cleaning the 
skeletons out of 
her 
closet. 
This 

is another reason 
the 
book 
is 
so 

incredibly human 
— it’s a beautiful 
tribute to her past 
difficulties.

“It got to the point about four 

years ago where I kind of just 
realized that the physical and the 
metaphysical weight of everything 
was too much,” she said. “You 
know, like, the sheer amount of 
boxes of journals that were in my 
closet, I felt like we ought to do 
something with them, and that 
there had to be a book in it.”

So Grace, along with her friend, 

editor and co-writer Dan Ozzi, 
condensed a million and a half 
words of her journal entries into 
an eighty-thousand word story, 
detailing her rise from starting 
a small band in Gainesville, Fla. 
to becoming an icon not only in 
punk rock, but also in the LGBTQ 
community. For years, Grace has 
been fighting for her community 
through her punk ethos, and it 
only becomes more inspiring as it 
resounds throughout “Tranny.”

“Punk 
rock 
does 
mean 

something to me you know, and 
like I’m thankful for the influence 
it’s had on my life and I still think 
with a punk mentality,” she said.

In the memoir, we see Grace 

embody punk rock, using it as her 
armor, shield and weapon in her 
outward battle with society and 
inward battle with dysphoria. It’s 
an ideology she’s employed since 
she was thirteen, and one that has 
taken even greater precedence 
in the increasingly hostile social 
environment of modern America.

With 
recent 
political 
and 

social upheavals, Grace’s story of 
transition is more relevant than 
ever. Grace realizes this, and 
realizes 2017 will be daunting, 
delivering 
words 
of 
fierce 

encouragement — “the punk in me 
is saying, ‘fight back.’ ”

It’s a universal notion: hold on 

tight to whatever is important 
to you and use it to stand tall and 
fight back. It’s a crucial mentality 
to have in a world where not all 
identities are respected equally.

“The system is full of shit, and 

that’s why resistance movements 
need to be there, and that’s why 
protest music needs to be there 
and that’s why politically minded 
music needs to be there,” she said.

Grace is just as ready to destroy 

barriers with her art today as she 
was as a an anarchist teenager, and 
it’s a notion perfectly encapsulated 
by her journey in “Tranny.” The 
memoir is a testament to creating 
a better tomorrow by fighting both 
inner demons and those around 
you.

This coming Monday at 7 p.m., 

Grace will be in Ann Arbor at 
Circus Bar in support of the new 
book, and a ticket to the event 
includes a copy of the powerful 
memoir. Attendees will see Grace 
recount not only the rise of the 
iconic Against Me!, but also a story 
of self-discovery and finding inner 
clarity.

DOMINIC POLSINELLI

Daily Arts Writer

Laura Jane Grace promotes memoir

Lead singer of Against Me! talks transgender identity, life on road

COMMUNITY CULTURE PREVIEW

Laura Jane 
Grace reads 

“Tranny”

Today at 7 p.m. 

Circus Bar

$30

TV COLUMN

BEN 

ROSENSTOCK

FILM REVIEW

