The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Tuesday, January 10, 2017 — 5

‘Fences’ hopes to break 
away from theatre roots

Despite Viola Davis’ s strong performance, film adaptation 
of classic August Wilson play falls short of expectations 

Someone give Viola Davis 

an Oscar right now. Right 
now. Don’t even wait until 
February.

The actress, made famous 

by 
her 
role 
as 
Annalise 

Keating on “How to Get Away 
With Murder,” is the shining 
light of the film 
adaptation 
of 

“Fences.” 
The 

power and grit of 
her performance 
as Rose, a 1950s 
Pittsburgh 
housewife, 
is 

unmatched, 
not only in the 
film 
itself, 
but 

in 
this 
entire 

awards 
season. 

She’s 
up 
for 

best 
supporting 

actress at the Golden Globes 
and likely will be for the 
Oscars 
as 
well. 
I 
really 

can’t say enough about her 
performance. She’s perfect. 
We do not deserve Viola Davis.

Denzel Washington (“The 

Magnificent Seven”), who also 
directed the film, has a hard 
time keeping up with Davis. 
He plays Troy Maxom, Rose’s 
husband 
and 
the 
central 

figure in the film. He’s also in 
a uniquely difficult position. 
“Fences” first premiered as a 
play with the same name by 
August Wilson in which Davis 
and Washington previously 
starred. 
The 
most 
iconic 

portrayal of Troy is that by 
James Earl Jones (famous 
for his roles as Darth Vader 
and Michigan hype video 
narrator) 
in 
the 
original 

production of the play. Jones 
won a Tony for the role and set 
the bar impossibly high — at 
least too high for Washington 

to clear.

The plot of the film follows 

Troy as he tries to reconcile 
his past failures and deal with 
his son’s desire to play college 
football 
(played 
by 
Jovan 

Adepo of “The Leftovers”). 
Troy was once a great baseball 
player, but never made it to 
the major leagues, a failure 
he blames on his race. He 
worries the same will happen 
to his son if he tries to make 

it to the NFL, 
so Troy pushes 
him 
away 

from 
sports. 

The 
tension 

and 
conflict 

between 
the 

two 
men 
is 

underdeveloped 
and 
largely 

unexplored, 
which 
is 

disappointing, 
as 
for 
the 

majority of the 

film it is the central source of 
conflict.

But, “Fences” is stuck in 

its theatrical roots. Almost 
all of the action takes place 
in and around the Maxom 
family house. For an almost 
two and a half hour movie, 
visually, it’s boring. Most the 
time, the characters appear in 
medium or long shot, the type 
of view one would have of an 
actor on the stage. The actors, 
most noticeably Washington, 
feel like they’re giving a 
performance for the person in 
the back row who might not be 
able to see or hear — something 
that’s unnecessary in a film. It 
feels, ultimately, like you’re 
watching a recording of a play, 
instead of a film.

As a play, it works. As a 

movie, it’s disappointing in 
its 
unwillingness 
to 
take 

advantage 
of 
its 
medium. 

There’s 
a 
reason 
Denzel 

Washington 
didn’t 
build 

his career on his directorial 
abilities. There are moments in 
“Fences” of real visual beauty, 
but many of the shots are lazy 
— tracking shots lose their 
subjects, the camera switches 
from 
stable 
to 
handheld 

in jarring transitions. The 
editorial and cinematic seams 
are on full display.

The story Washington has 

to work with is incredibly 
rich. August Wilson is a poet 
of the everyday, spinning 
vernacular 
into 
lyrical 

dialogue. He weaves the lives 
of the Maxom family together 
with 
exquisite 
intricacy. 

The transition from stage to 
screen seems to be one of the 
most difficult to make (unless 
you’re Shakespeare, I guess). 
“August: Osage County” is a 
great example of a work that 
excelled as a play and fell 
flat as a film. Unlike literary 
adaptations, with plays there 

is already a visual record of 
the work, so films adapted 
from plays tend to feel more 
like remakes than adaptations. 
“Fences” 
is 
the 
perfect 

example of a stage to screen 
adaptation that falls victim to 
its transition. Unfortunately, 
“Fences” cannot escape its 
origins.

DO YOU LIE TO YOURSELF TO 

FILL THE EMPTY SPACES IN YOUR 
HEART JUST LIKE WE USE DEAD 
ADS TO FILL UP EMPTY SPACES IN 

OUR PAPER?

If you’re in as deep an abyss as we are, apply to Daily Arts! Contact Anay Katyal at 

anay@umich.edu and Natalie Zak at npzak@umich.edu for an application and our favor-

ite piece of existential dietary advice.

As a movie, it’s 
disappointing 

in its 

unwillingness 

to take 

advantage of 
its medium 

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

What makes you ugly cry? Submit responses to cnsnider@umich.edu

MADELEINE GAUDIN

Senior Arts Editor

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

If this shows up on my Facebook feed one more time I’m going to lose it
How ‘Bee’ turned meme

FILM NOTEBOOK

Memes 
are 
the 
most 

inexplicable “cultural” products 
of today. What becomes a meme 
is so unpredictable, and it’s that 
randomness which makes them 
so hilarious 
— of course, only if it 

isn’t a “stale” meme. The amount 
of time a meme is relevant ranges 
anywhere from one week to 
nearly three months or longer. 
And, when a meme is deemed old, 
it loses all credibility; it falls to the 
dark depths of meme purgatory. 
In the Fall of 2016, DreamWorks’ 
“Bee Movie” was introduced to 
the honorable ranks of meme-
stardom. Although the meme 
itself has died, its legacy will live 
on forever, inspiring memes for 
months (or weeks) to come.

Memes are not limited to a 

picture captioned with white 
block text in Impact font. In fact, 
this meme style is rather archaic. 
Today, memes can be anything 
from short videos on Vine and 
Instagram to a picture of a 
clenched fist from the childhood 
cartoon “Arthur.” Comic Sans is 
generally the font of choice for 
meme creators. Strangely enough, 
the “Bee Movie” memes tend 

to be edits and mashups of the 
movie itself, like the aptly titled 
YouTube video “The entire bee 
movie but every time they say bee 
it gets faster,” that received an 
astonishing 15 million views — a 
meme miracle.

The 
origins 
of 
the 
“Bee 

Movie” meme are ambiguous. 
By November 2016, it gained 
significant 
momentum 
and 

eventually 
became 
the 
most 

popular 
meme 
on 
the 
web. 

Discovering a meme ahead of the 
curve is like discovering a band 
before they get big. There’s a sense 
of disappointment due to the 
meme, or band, feeling less special 
once everyone knows about it — 
but also pride. “I found this first, 
therefore I’m cool!”

Other similar mashups and 

edits 
of 
“Bee 
Movie” 
have 

been shared on Facebook and 
Instagram. 
According 
to 
the 

meme expert Anthony Fantano 
— more famously known as The 
Needle Drop — the “Bee Movie” 
meme 
is 
“disoriented, 
mind 

altering and almost psychedelic, 
in a way.” Despite there being no 
original content, some amount of 
creativity is still needed to produce 
these mashups. Someone had to 
watch “Bee Movie” and actively 
think about making a meme out of 
it. For this, I applaud the creator, 

whoever this individual may be.

Memes are a godsend for weird, 

awkward internet-forum dwellers 
across the world. That creepy kid 
from high school who sat in the 
back of every classroom drawing 
questionable pictures is now 
probably a virtual star.

Although it’s impossible to tell 

what will become a meme, the 
“Bee Movie” is an ideal candidate. 
It’s not a great movie, but also not 
a terrible movie. It’s not new, but 
old enough to have some amount 
of nostalgic value. To top it all off, 
Jerry Seinfeld (“Seinfeld”) voices 
Barry, the loveable bee who falls 
in love with a human voiced by 
Renée Zellweger (“Bridget Jones’s 
Baby”). Meme culture loves ’90s 
nostalgia, so it only makes sense 
that a movie written by and 
starring Jerry Seinfeld would 
transcend into the meme world.

The mashup style and the 

edited format of the “Bee Movie” 
meme have already impacted 
others. In December, an influx 
of “Star Wars” meme-videos of 
lightsaber fights dubbed with 
random dialogue every time a 
lightsaber collides invaded the 
Internet. Nonetheless, a similar 
meme as popular as the “Bee 
Movie” meme has yet to come, 
and it will be nearly impossible to 
do so. 

WILL STEWART

Daily Arts Writer

The Cult of Girlhood

As we grow into ourselves, 

our minds become instruments 
for 
categorization. 
Everything 

becomes 
relational, 
easily 

compared to something else. We 
obsessively classify what we see, 
identifying the people and things 
around us as “this,” but not “that.” 
It helps us make 
sense of a potently 
dynamic world, but 
categorization 
is 

dangerous. It leads 
to pigeonholing and 
expectations of what 
people can and can’t 
be.

Characters 
in 

literature often evade 
these anticipations. 
But the trend of 
disintegrating 
the 
boundaries 

constructed around identity is, for 
me, most openly apparent in books 
that examine girls crossing the 
threshold into womanhood, and 
the causalities that so often occur 
during that in-between state.

Teenage girls are written as 

adrift, beautifully damaged and 
desperately looking for love. The 
difference between typical high 
school romance novels and heart 
wrenching literature is where 
they find this love.

In “The Girls,” the debut novel 

by Emma Cline, protagonist Evie 
Boyd retrospectively reflects on 
her time in a cult in the late 1960s. 
Inspired by the gruesome Manson 
murders, fourteen year old Evie is 
quickly inducted into the swirling, 
dreamy world created by cult 
leader Russell. A charismatic 
narcissist, 
Russell 
surrounds 

himself with runaway teenage 
girls who are mesmerized by his 
nonchalant power.

And yet, the novel barely 

focuses on what the collective 
culture has remained fascinated 
with — the new incarnation 
of Manson in Russell and the 
violence that he was able to incite. 
Cline is much more preoccupied 
with the girls who join him and 
their reasoning, their struggles 
and their dreams.

The reason that Evie enlists 

in the group at all is her instant 
attraction to Suzanne, one of 
the older girls in the cult. Evie 
tolerates Russell, but she is 
instantly and deeply in love with 
Suzanne. Evie explains, in the 
astral prose that surges through 

the novel, “girls are the 
only ones who can really 
give each other close 
attention, the kind we 
equate with being loved. 
They noticed what we 
want noticed.” Russell 
creates 
the 
toxicity 

of 
the 
hallucinatory, 

kaleidoscopic commune 
— none of the members 
have any money, but 
the girls are forced into 
a sexual and emotional 
barter 
system 
when 

interacting with the men who 
frequent the commune. Only 
the girls have any interest in 
constructing a home out of 
the 
commune, 
attempting 
to 

create a semblance of a domestic 
atmosphere. The girls all “share” 
Russell, emotionally and sexually, 
and some have children who 
live with them as well. Though 
the girls are still close to being 
children themselves, they act with 
the weight of adulthood on their 
shoulders. Evie, Suzanne and 
the other girls must constantly 
balance 
their 
burgeoning 

sexuality 
with 
the 
imposed 

humiliation of their desire; they 
must cope with their uneasy 
feelings about their supposedly 
harmonious, 
unconventional 

living situation.

While I read “The Girls,” I 

couldn’t help but think of another 
book in which a band of sisters 
gathered to be more than what 
anyone thought they possibly 
could be. In Jeffrey Eugenides’ 
“The 
Virgin 
Suicides,” 
the 

Lisbon sisters, beautiful, blonde, 
and 
perpetually 
unattainable, 

personify teenage angst. Another 
retrospective novel told from 
the perspective of the currently 
middle aged male worshippers 
of the Lisbon sisters, “The Virgin 

Suicides” allows the men to 
indulge their nostalgia and try to 
figure out what went wrong. Why 
did these hauntingly beautiful 
girls, bored in their pastel suburbia 
of Grosse Point, Michigan, kill 
themselves?

In “The Virgin Suicides,” the 

boys eventually steal the diaries of 
one of the sisters, in an attempt to 
get in their minds. The boys never 
actually speak to the girls — all 
communication is done through 
music played over a telephone or 
notes left around town.

The boys begin to realize how 

much they don’t understand about 
the Lisbon sisters, explaining, “we 
felt the imprisonment of being a 
girl, the way it made your mind 
active and dreamy, and how you 
ended up knowing which colors 
went together. We knew that 
the girls were our twins, that we 
all existed in space like animals 
with identical skins, and that they 
knew everything about us though 
we couldn’t fathom them at all. 
We knew, finally, that the girls 
were really women in disguise, 
that they understood love and 
even death, and that our job was 
merely to create the noise that 
seemed to fascinate them.” These 
teenagers only have ideas of each 
other, but also only have ideas of 
themselves. It takes reading the 
novel as an adult to see how much 
is a purported, assumed identity; 
none of them actually understand 
themselves or the world around 
them, but being a teenager makes 
you good at faking it.

So what does it mean to 

be a teenager, in print and in 
life? Is it the blatant defiance 
of 
categorization, 
the 
ability 

to 
contain 
multiplicities 
and 

contradictions 
without 
being 

concerned about an identity that 
makes sense? I don’t know. I 
think it’s the way that everything 
becomes saturated with meaning, 
how people and places and words 
and colors ring through your brain 
without a purpose. I wonder if we 
would continue this concentrated 
significance to adulthood if we 
could. But it might hurt too much.

The challenge of defining adolescence in print and real life

REBECCA 
LERNER

Managing Editor

B-

“Fences”

Paramount 

Pictures

Rave, Quality 16

LITERATURE COLUMN
FILM REVIEW

