The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Tuesday, November 29, 2016 — 5

J

an. 20, 2009 — The most 
famous people in the world 
are gathered in Washington 

D.C. for what feels like a trans-
formative moment in American 
history. Barack Obama has been 
sworn in as president of the United 
States, and the occasion has been 
celebrated 
with 
performances 

from iconic musicians like U2, 
Bruce Springsteen and Aretha 
Franklin, just to name a few.

The greatest moment, though, 

comes at the first inaugural ball, 
which features the Obamas’ first 
dance as the most powerful couple 
in the free world — the lone figures 
on the center stage as Beyoncé 
sings the Etta James classic, “At 
Last.”

Of course, “At Last” is the 

quintessential first dance song, 
but in this backdrop it turns into 
the kind of unreal moment that 
brings tears to your eyes. Beyoncé, 
Barack and Michelle are all 
dressed stunningly and smiling so 
brightly. I can’t begin to imagine 
what’s going through the Obamas’ 
minds in that moment. Are they 
paralyzingly nervous about what’s 
to come? Are they stunned with 
disbelief? 
Euphoric? 
Relieved? 

Looking at them, looking at each 
other, nothing outside the present 
seems to matter.

At the time, or at least in my 

naïve pubescent mind, this felt 
like a new beginning, like Beyoncé 
was washing away the sins of 
old America with her beautiful 
voice, that we could slowly fade to 
black on the image of the Barack 
and Michelle slow dancing and 
enjoy a happy ending. Now, as 
the country faces an uncertain 
future, 
it’s 
painfully 
obvious 

that this was yet another middle 
chapter — a good time, but still 
a moment undetached from the 
scariest, most painful passages of 
American history. Transformative 
as it might have felt, the Obama 
presidency, unfortunately, did not 
truly put an end to anything.

But regardless of what comes 

next, that breathtaking Beyoncé 
moment set the tone for a 
huge part of the legacy of the 
presidency of Barack Obama: an 
unprecedented relationship with 
artists — especially musicians — 
and a kind of creative credibility 
that no president before him had 
ever earned. Succeeding a leader 
who faced protests from artists 
as diverse as Kanye West and the 
Dixie Chicks, President Obama 
saw and promoted the benefits 
of music in a new way, and his 

administration made connections 
with artists from across all genres.

The 
Obama 
White 
House 

was 
where 
Lin-Manuel 

Miranda debuted the first song 
of his phenomenal juggernaut 
“Hamilton.” Watching the old 
video of Miranda’s performance 
now, it’s amazing how much of a 
novelty it seemed, like he’s a trying-
too-hard history teacher. That first 
drop of “Alexander Hamilton” 
sounds like a punchline. Miranda 
himself looks too young to be 
at such a serious event. But the 
Obama administration put him 
up there and gave the future 
MacArthur Genius and superstar 
a chance.

And Miranda was just one of 

the earliest of the Obama White 
House’s 
immensely 
talented 

musical 
guests. 
President 

Obama 
hosted 
one 
of 
the 

greatest performances of Aretha 
Franklin’s long, storied career. He 
had Prince play a private party. 
He welcomed boundary-pushing, 
revolutionary artists like Kendrick 
Lamar and Janelle Monáe, who 
in presidencies past would likely 
have been dismissed as being 
too “extreme.” He appeared via 
satellite at a Jay-Z festival show, 
and he sang on stage with B.B. 
King and Willie Nelson.

The great thing about President 

Obama was that he approached 
music as a fan, not as a politician. 
He didn’t look for big stars to 
co-opt for votes (see: Reagan and 
Bruce Springsteen); rather, Obama 
truly seems to love and appreciate 
what music can accomplish. He 
organized festivals at the White 
House so he could both see the 
artists he loved and give them 
larger exposure. The dude could 
start singing Al Green at the drop 
of a hat. He was so obsessive that 
he couldn’t narrow down his 
favorites into one summer playlist, 
instead 
releasing 
“Day” 
and 

“Night” versions that, combined, 
would run for over two-and-a-half 
hours.

He even has the passionate 

opinions of a fan. When Kanye 
West 
infamously 
interrupted 

Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs, 
President Obama offered his 
(ostensibly 
off-the-record) 

response: “He’s a jackass.”

As Aziz Ansari said when 

recounting 
his 
own 
Obama 

story, “This dude acts the exact 
same way I would act if I was the 
president.”

As Common remarked after 

being invited to the White House 
to discuss the My Brother’s 
Keeper initiative, “It was myself, 
A$AP Rocky, Rick Ross, J. Cole, 

Chance the Rapper and many 
more in this room, and I’m looking 
at a picture of George Washington 
with the President right there next 
to me, and I’m like, ‘Man, I know 
George Washington never would 
have seen this many brothers in 
the White House!’ ”

As Jay-Z put it, simply and 

triumphantly 
after 
the 
2008 

election, “My President is Black.”

But now, with the impending 

inauguration of President-elect 
Donald Trump, artists for the 
first time in a generation will have 
to deal with a president who is 
not their friend. As a country, we 
have swung from one of the most 
passionate lovers of music ever 
to that guy who says he “likes 
everything” but really just listens 
to The Chainsmokers and Maroon 
5.

Like, seriously, who is even 

going to sing at his inauguration? 
Ted Nugent? Pat Boone? The 
Naked Cowboy? Literally, per 
Wikipedia, those are 30 percent 
of his musical endorsements right 
there. I mean, even Nixon, the 
least cool president in history, still 
got that one weird photo op with 
Elvis. Somehow, despite his recent 
remarks, I don’t see Kanye being 
allowed anywhere near the Oval 
Office.

So everything will be different. 

The festivals will likely cease. The 
Correspondents’ Dinner will be a 
lot less cozy. After an era of good 
feelings, artists will have to fight 
harder to be heard. They will be 
asked to directly challenge the 
Executive Branch for the first time 
in almost a decade. They might 
even provoke direct Twitter fights 
with the most powerful man in the 
free world.

But if I’ve learned anything, 

it seems clear that yet again, 
we’re not at the end of America 
or a new beginning. The Trump 
Presidency, like the presidencies of 
Andrew Jackson, Franklin Pierce, 
Herbert Hoover, Nixon, Carter, 
Reagan, Clinton and Bush, is 
another middle chapter, only with 
a few more pages in front of it.

That’s not to discount the 

very real damage that Trump 
can do, or the lives that are put at 
serious risk due to his election. 
But it’s a reminder that this is a 
continuation, not the end, and we 
don’t have the luxury of stopping 
all that was easier under Obama. 
Artists have seen how good it can 
be, and now, they’re going to have 
to fight to keep that alive.

Theisen was univited from 

Trump’s inauguration. If you are 

Vince Neil, email ajtheis@umich.edu.

LAUREN THEISEN
Daily Music Columnist

The musical legacy 
of Barack Obama

Any movie released after Nov. 

8th — which is consequently a large 
chunk of the Oscar contenders — is 
going to be viewed, 
more so than ever, 
through the lens of 
the modern world, 
especially a period 
piece about the fight 
for civil rights and 
especially a movie 
like “Loving.”

Out of context, 

“Loving” is simply 
a story of power — both political 
and racial — being used to impose 
the ethos of one person or group 
on the lives of an entire nation of 
people. It’s about the roots of that 
ethos being grown in the soil of 
hate and fear. But more than any 
of that, it’s about the people who 
are forced to bend to the will of the 
dominant ideology.

Loving v. Virginia was the 

first Supreme Court case with a 
ruling that implied marriage is a 
fundamental right. The marriage 
in question was an interracial 
marriage 
between 
Mildred 

Loving, a Black woman, and 
Richard Loving, a white man. Jeff 
Nichols’s 
(“Midnight 
Special”) 

fictionalization of the case follows 
Mildred, played brilliantly by 
Ruth Negga (“Warcraft”), and 
Richard (Joel Edgerton “Midnight 
Special”) from their engagement 
until the Supreme Court ruling. 
After marrying in Washington 

D.C. and returning to their home 
in Carolina County, Virginia, the 
couple is arrested and forced to 
leave the state for 25 years.

While living in D.C., Mildred 

writes a letter to Bobby Kennedy, 

and 
the 
couple 

is 
contacted 
by 

an ACLU lawyer, 
surprisingly played 
by comedian Nick 
Kroll (the Douche 
from 
“Parks 
& 

Recreation”). 
While a departure 
from Kroll’s usual 
breed of comedy, 

he’s still funny in “Loving,” 
leaning on earnestness rather than 
crudeness for laughs.

What separates “Loving” from 

other court case period pieces is 
its disregard for the legal side of 
things. There’s only one shot of the 
Lovings in a courtroom, and most 
of the legal dealings are handled 
off screen. The scene in the 
Supreme Court is only two shots: 
one of each lawyer delivering a 
small speech about love and rights 
and slavery laws. What we do 
get is an inside look at the lives 
of Mildred and Richard Loving. 
We take on the role of the Life 
Magazine photographer, sitting 
in the corner while they and their 
children simply live.

The life they live is simple and 

beautiful. Eventually, they move 
to a big home in the Virginia 
countryside. Their three children 
run in the fields. They eat dinner 
together and watch TV. Nothing 

about them is spectacular and that 
seems to be the point. The Lovings 
are just a family, living exactly the 
way you’d expect a family to in 
1967.

And it’s a quiet life, quite 

literally. Few words are spoken 
between any two characters. 
Richard plays the familiar, tight-
lipped countryman. He’s gruff 
with everyone but Mildred and his 
children, and even with them, he 
speaks mostly monosyllabically. 
Mildred 
is 
more 
open 
and 

idealistic — two attributes that 
have never been more wonderfully 
visualized than they are in Negga’s 
big, bright eyes. But even she is shy 
and speaks softly and infrequently.

The film’s hush and its turn 

away from the dramatic, hero-
filled courtrooms falls in line 
with a recent cinematic shift to 
the everyday. With movies like 
“Moonlight” 
and 
“American 

Honey” casting away strict plot 
rules and big climaxes, filmmaking 
seems to be trending towards 
structural realism, and “Loving” 
follows suit.

“Loving” is the sort of story 

that makes you say, “Gosh! Can 
you believe there was a time when 
interracial marriage was illegal?” 
This sentence will be repeated 
by our children when they talk 
about gay marriage and their 
grandchildren when they talk 
about some other civil liberty we 
have not even thought of granting 
yet. That’s perhaps what makes 
the Lovings’ story feel at once so 
distant and so present.

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

He looks like my Finnish cousin’s husband.

MADELEINE GAUDIN

Daily Arts Writer

Drama documents the couple who helped legalize interracial marriage 

‘Loving’ finds humanity 
in a landmark legal case

FILM REVIEW

A-

“Loving”

Universal Pictures

Michigan Theater

TV REVIEW

Thanksgiving is a time of 

overeating, family tension and 
leaving 
your 

childhood bed as 
little as possible. 
“Saturday 
Night 

Live’s 
2016 

Thanksgiving 
Special” reminds 
us of all that, plus 
other sentiments 
that come with 
the 
holiday. 
It 

takes the normal 
Thanksgiving 
problems 
and 
makes 
them 

weirder, more over-the-top and 
much funnier.

The first example of this comes 

about 20 minutes into the special, 
with “Thanksgiving Guest.” Trey 
(Josh Hutcherson, “The Hunger 
Games”) 
returns 
home 
from 

college with his new girlfriend, 
Elyse (Vanessa Bayer, “Saturday 
Night Live”). The family — SNL 
cast members Aidy Bryant, Kyle 
Mooney, Bobby Moynihan and 
Beck Bennett – is excited to meet 
her, but there’s a catch: Elyse is 
a turkey. The blind-sided family 
finds this incredibly awkward 
(rightfully so) given the fact that 
they have prepared Elyse’s next-
door neighbor for the main course. 
The sketch ultimately devolves 
into Elyse breaking up with Trey 
and running out on dinner.

Hopefully 
no 
one’s 

Thanksgiving dinner this year 
actually included their family 
eating his or her new girlfriend’s 
next-door neighbor for dinner. The 
absurdity of the sketch, however, 
highlights 
a 
real 
component 

of the holidays – introducing a 
significant other to the family. It’s 
a scary concept, to bring someone 
new into an established world. 
What if they don’t fit in?

Sometimes, 

the new addition 
to the family fits 
in perfectly. The 
special 
reminds 

viewers of this too, 
with 
“The 
Bird 

Family.” The sketch 
is a visit back to 
what some might 
call the SNL glory 
days 
(late 
’90s/

early 
’00s) 
when 

Will Ferrell, Jimmy Fallon, Ana 
Gasteyer, Molly Shannon, Chris 
Parnell and Rachel Dratch reigned 
supreme.

In “The Bird Family,” Ferrell 

and Gasteyer play the parents of a 
unique family — parents who feed 
their children like baby birds. This 
means exactly what it implies, 
that they chew food up in their 
own mouths and then spit it into 
the mouths of their kids. Add a 
new girlfriend, Karen (Julianna 
Margulies, “The Good Wife”), into 
the mix, and the sketch is a recipe 
for hilarity. Karen ultimately 
embraces 
the 
bird 
feeding 

method and joins the family for a 
uncomfortable, albeit enjoyable, 
Thanksgiving.

Family dynamics can be strange. 

Going home for the holidays can 
be difficult. But it doesn’t have to 
be. In fact, going home can be the 
exact opposite. For some, being at 
the parent’s house is basically the 
same as being a king or a queen.

At least that’s what “Back Home 

Ballers” implies. The best sketch 
of the night is the 2014 digital 

short created and performed by 
the ladies of SNL. Dressed like 
they’re in a stereotypical rap 
video, the ladies (Cecily Strong, 
Kate McKinnon, Sasheer Zamata, 
Cameron Diaz, Vanessa Bayer and 
Leslie Jones) sum up how it feels 
to be home for the holidays. The 
free food, awkward conversations 
with neighbors, childhood art 
projects hung on the wall, PG 
family outings … it’s all there, in a 
delightful rap song.

Arguably the best part of the 

digital short is Leslie Jones’s bit 
about the various bowls which 
can be found at her mom’s house. 
Bowls of potato chips, potpourri, 
M&Ms, seashells, bowls for other 
bowls — being a “back home 
baller” means something different 
to everyone, and for Leslie Jones, it 
means a lot of bowls. 

Ironically, I write this article 

sitting on my couch at home in my 
childhood pajamas, with a giant 
bowl of potato chips while my 
two sports bras tumble gloriously 
in the laundry machine. A “back-
home baller,” indeed.

The 
“Saturday 
Night 
Live 

Thanksgiving 
Special 
2016” 

provides a much welcomed two-
hour laugh during everyone’s 
favorite time of year. Given the 
nature of the episode, it’s not an 
escape from the holidays, but 
rather an excuse to poke fun at and 
satirize every possible aspect of it. 
With over 42 seasons of comedy, 
the annual Thanksgiving special 
takes “Saturday Night Live” ’s 
best, worst and most questionable 
holiday sketches and throws them 
back into the fire.

Didn’t 
get 
enough? 
“SNL 

Christmas 2016” is right around 
the corner. Ho, ho, ho. 

EMILY BICE
Daily Arts Writer

The ladies of ‘SNL’ shine on T-Gives

B+

“Saturday Night 
Live Thanksgiving 

Special”

NBC

Wednesday, Nov. 23

MUSIC COLUMN

ALBUM REVIEW

Brooklyn-based, pop duo Sleigh 

Bells was one of those bands with 
the world at its feet. Songs from 
their 
2010 
debut 

album Treats have 
several 
million 

plays on Spotify to 
this day, with “Rill 
Rill” currently at 
18 million streams. 
They were receiving 
critical acclaim and 
became 
a 
“buzz 

band” — a term synonymous with 
short-lived fame.

However, much has changed 

and now, as the duo enters its 
eighth year as a band and their 
fourth studio album, Sleigh Bells 
keeps a relatively high profile, 
despite waning media interest.

Taking a few years off from 

the 
relentless 
recording 
of 

their first three albums seems 
to have hindered the band on 
its new album, Jessica Rabbit. 
Many 
tracks 
are 
disjointed, 

with overlapping sounds and 
vocals that sit uncomfortably, 
and 
instead 
of 
making 

something complete, it’s all sadly 
unsatisfying.

Album 
opener 
“It’s 
Just 

Us 
Now” 
exemplifies 
this 

discomfort, with a beat that is 
jarringly stop-start and hip-hop 
beats overlaying rough guitar 
riffs. The track doesn’t work as 
well as you’d hope — it’s like two 

individual songs 
were 
written 

and then pasted 
together, 
thus 

failing to capture 
the 
song’s 

potential.

A similar story 

can 
be 
found 

on “Throw Me 

Down the Stairs,” which is an 
angry song with odd interjections 
of ethereal noises and vocalist 
Alexis Krauss’s soft cooing. It 
doesn’t seem to work surrounded 
by the rest of the song and 
ultimately renders it forgettable. 

This is sadly something that 

continues throughout the rest of 
the album. There are moments 
of pure brilliance, often carried 
by Krauss’s amazing vocal range 
and variety. “I Can Only Stare” is 
a definite standout for the album, 
with synths humming in the 
background and the vocals taking 
a forefront, while little in terms of 
guitar appears at all throughout 
the song. The tracks that lean 
toward a more vocally dominant 

sound are the songs that are the 
most likely to stick in the mind.

“Crucible” 
is 
another 

standout. It’s one of the only 
songs that manages to blend 
the experimental sounds and 
Krauss’s voice together, and it 
works brilliantly. It has a chirpy 
sampling that runs throughout, 
perfectly 
blending 
with 
the 

vocals and beats.

“Crucible” seems to be what 

the potential of this band is, 
but it’s only realized in a few 
moments, while a lot of the 
other songs on this album fall 
undeniably into a bland, noisy 
background. Some tracks are 
just shy of the two-minute mark, 
having little impact on the 
listener, and it’s just a confusing 
decision to have them included 
at all. Listening to the album as 
a whole leaves a disappointingly 
unsatisfying feeling of “it could 
have been better.”

There is nothing remotely 

generic 
about 
this 
album, 

which is something to be both 
applauded and considered part of 
the problem. Although definitely 
worth the listen, Jessica Rabbit 
fails to produce anything that 
might draw you back for a second 
listen, with only a few standout 
songs present.

MEGAN WILLIAMS

Daily Arts Writer

‘Jessica Rabbit’ won’t draw you back

It’s not lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with this former buzz band

B-

Jessica Rabbit

Sleigh Bells

Torn Clean

Holiday special highlights universality of Thanksgiving tradition

