The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Friday, Janurary 5, 2018 — 5

Every winter break, I try
to catch up on all the reading,
writing and music I haven’t
had time for all semester.
Inevitably, over the past few
years, this has extended to
include catching up on all of
the films and TV shows — or
at least episodes — that I’ve
missed out on. So, I finally
watched “San Junipero,” the
Emmy award-winning episode
of “Black Mirror,” (which, as of
a few days ago, I am now over a
year late to) especially because
it’s still making its way onto all
of the year-in-review listicles
about bisexuality in media in
2017.
In
this
episode’s
world,
certain
people
are
alloted
weekly hours in a simulation
that
transports
them
to
San Junipero, a paradise on
Earth where they can live
in the bodies of their youth,
chasing
whatever
party-
town adventures they desire.
Yorkie
(Mackenzie
Davis,
“The Martian”) a reserved,
bespectacled
young
woman
who walks as if constantly
expecting verbal attack, steps
cautiously into a club after
watching Kelly, a charismatic
and compelling woman, enter
it. Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw,
“Belle”) slides into Yorkie’s
booth to enlist her help in
fending off a guy. They’re
successful; they dance; their
chemistry intensifies. Yorkie
pulls back abruptly, despite
her obvious attraction — she
has a fiancé. It’s complicated.
After
eventually
getting
to know each other biblically
(which both thoroughly enjoy),
Kelly starts avoiding Yorkie,
who doggedly looks for her
week after week. Eventually,
they decide to stop ignoring
their attraction and decide to
meet in real life. This is when
we find out that Kelly is an
elderly woman who needs help
getting up and down stairs,
and Yorkie has been comatose
for decades. Both are getting
ready to “pass over.” Yorkie’s
fiancé is an amiable man who
has agreed to marry her solely
so she can have the afterlife
she
desires;
on
a
whim,

Kelly decides to propose to
her instead, and the two get
married in real life before
Yorkie passes over.
The next time they see each
other in the simulation, Yorkie
tries to convince her to stay in
San Junipero forever. Kelly,
in an impassioned speech,
rebukes Yorkie for her naive
self-centeredness; Kelly had
family who died the natural
way, without uploading their
consciousness.
Though
this
rupture is not insignificant,

the ending of the episode is
hopeful — a rarity for “Black
Mirror.” It hints that Kelly
chooses to live in San Junipero
with Yorkie, rather than pass
over completely.
Staring at the credits roll
on my screen, I was more
nonplussed
than
anything
else, at first. Most stories
like this that I know end the
opposite
way:
The
person
who decides that the Great
Unknown would be the better,
more noble choice — and gives
the kind of speech about it
that Kelly does — generally
veers in that direction, like
“Tuck Everlasting.” And often,
stories that do have a character
choose a kind of immortality —
the White Witch in “Narnia,”
Voldemort in “Harry Potter”
— live a kind of tarnished,
sometimes
cursed,
life.
I
think we’ve been conditioned
to expect those elements in
any stories that include some
degree of immortality.
So it took me some time
to figure out how I felt
about “San Junipero.” I had
originally decided to watch it

because I had heard so much
praise for the sensitive and
touching portrayal of the queer
storyline. While I think the
exploration of the trajectory
of their relationship was, for
the most part, well-written
and directed, I don’t think that
it in and of itself is what sets
this episode apart as especially
outstanding.
What I think makes “San
Junipero” stand out is that
the subversion of the usual
choice
protagonists
make
when confronted with any
kind of immortality becomes
radical, in this case, precisely
because of the queer element.
While Kelly had a happy and
full life with her husband — a
relationship that is given the
space and respect it deserves,
another rarity in portrayals
of bisexuality on TV — she
is allowed another shot at a
different kind of happiness
in this simulation; a kind of
happiness that would have
been much more difficult to
pursue while she was growing
up, being a bisexual woman of
color.
What makes “San Junipero”
radical in its ending is the fact
that the possibility of a happy
forever for Kelly and Yorkie
would have been unthinkable
while they were growing up,
a reality hinted at throughout
the episode. The reclamation
of a happiness that wouldn’t
have
been
conceivable,
in
the past, in real life, in real
time, for this queer couple is
what earns “San Junipero”
its ending. A heterosexual
storyline just wouldn’t have
felt so feverishly urgent.
Finding spaces like “San
Junipero” — spaces of at least
partial escape, happiness to
be found on unwatched street
corners, on timeless dance
floors — is still a radical
enough
feeling
for
queer
people. Perhaps that’s why the
main song in the episode also
struck a chord with the show’s
young queer audience (despite
being slightly before their
time) for its impractical hope,
its hint of possibility: “Heaven
is a Place on Earth.”

Queering Everlasting:
thoughts on ‘San Junipero’

GENDER & MEDIA COLUMN

SOPHIA
KAUFMAN

Interview: Harry Dolan on
crime, critcism, comfort

To start off a mysterious crime
novel by directly identifying the
sinister killer is a bold move. Yet
Harry Dolan’s latest book, “The
Man in the Crooked Hat,” thrives
on such twists. Smart, subtle and
subversive, Dolan’s latest lights
a needed fire under a genre that
often falls victim to formulaic,
predictable plots and cardboard-
cutout protagonists. With an
intricate,
unpredictable
plot
layered over a web of complex
characters, events and motives,
“The Man in the Crooked Hat”
cleverly presents its intricacies
and manages to keep the reader
thinking as it burns to a fiery
conclusion. Recently, The Daily
had a chance to sit down with
Mr. Dolan and discuss his newest
novel, his writing career and his
meditations on writing itself.
The Michigan Daily: How
do you avoid falling into the
same holes that most average
crime thrillers are plagued
by?
Harry Dolan: I do a lot of
plotting of the books in advance.
I’m thinking very deliberately
about the plot twists. That’s sort
of my business. It’s all about
misdirection, of course, there
are two things going on in the
book — what the reader thinks
is happening and is going to
happen, and then what’s actually
happening. You need to be
thinking about that all the time,
and that’s what I think about
when I’m planning these books.
I focus on trying to make it
plausible, then create mysteries
that the reader would not even be
expecting. In this book, I reveal
the name of the killer, Michael
Underhill, right at the onset, so
what the reader is expecting is
how the story is going to follow
the detective Jack Pellum finally
finding the man who killed his
wife. So when Pellum goes to
investigate separate, possibly
related murders of high school
students, it turns out that those
expectations of the reader are
overturned.
Obviously,
the
tricky part is figuring out how
to do that. It’s hard to talk about
this without giving too much
away [laughs].
Raymond
Chandler
talked
about this because even in
his time, crime novels were
becoming formulaic and it was
hard to surprise the reader.
His solution was to throw
in a problem that the reader

doesn’t even know about, small
background details or minor
characters that come to the
forefront by the end of the book.
That’s one way to think about
that.
TMD: What do you think
makes your book stand out
from the sea of similar novels
out there?
HD: First of all, there’s the
setting.
Southeast
Michigan
serves as the backdrop for the
story, in and around Detroit and
small towns like Belleville and
Chelsea. I spent a lot of time in
Detroit while I was writing the
book, especially in the Midtown
area around the Detroit Institute
of Arts. I walked around that
neighborhood,
I
sought
an
apartment building where my
protagonist would live, I know
his address and the places he
would go and the sights he
would see.
I think another big thing is the
way “The Man in the Crooked
Hat” deals with the killer. You
know his name from the start,
and there are a lot of scenes
written from his perspective.
All this makes the character
of the villain richer because,
in a lot of mystery novels, the
villain never appears until some
final confrontation at the end,
they’re just this shadowy figure
that acts in the background.
However, there are a handful of
scenes with Michael Underhill;
his parents and childhood are
detailed, he has a romance with
this one woman he’s falling in
love with and building a house so
they can live together. He’s got
goals, but he also has a dark past
he needs to get away from. You
can even sympathize in some
cases with him.
TMD: If authors covered
novels like musicians covered
songs, what novel would you
want to cover? Not necessarily
make it better, but give it your
own personal spin.
HD: The thing that comes to
mind first is a book by Donna
Tartt, “The Secret History,”
which is about this group of
college students who commit
a murder. The whole book is
about the motivations behind it,
the psychology of this group of
characters. I’ve actually thought
about writing a novel at a college
like that, this question is not
entirely hypothetical. I love the
rest of Donna Tartt’s work, but
especially that one. It’s the book
I would want if I was trapped on
a desert island.
TMD: Do you ever read

reviews of your books? How
do you respond to positive and
negative criticism?
HD: I always tell myself I’m
not going to read them, but I
always ended up reading them
[laughs]. I’m lucky in the sense
I’ve got mostly positive reviews
for my books — I still get negative
ones, definitely. I read them, but
I try to forget about it soon after.
I don’t know what good comes
from worrying about it. You like
to have good reviews obviously,
but you can’t let it affect what
you’re writing. I’m not trying
to please some reviewer I don’t
even know, although sometimes
it’s tempting to try.
TMD:
Since
your
last
four novels are all similar
mysterious crime thrillers, do
you ever feel constrained by
the limits of the genre? Any
plans to write outside your
comfort zone?
HD: I like to read a lot of genre
fiction, and when I was a kid, I
was reading a lot of fantasy and
science fiction. When I was
younger and thinking about
becoming a writer, I thought
that’s what I was going to
do. I loved [J.R.R.] Tolkien,
I wanted to write books like
that. I didn’t have the first
idea on how anybody got to be
a writer, though. In college, I
really got into mystery novels.
I was studying philosophy but
reading a lot of crime novels,
basically everything the college
library had. I went to Colgate
University and took a class on
fiction writing with a novelist
named Frederick Busch. He was
very encouraging to me, and he
was the one who told me to keep
on writing, outside of the short
stories I wrote for his class. As
much as anything, that gave me
the hope that I could make it as
a writer; I’m indebted to him.
Anyways, since then, I haven’t
really been tempted to write
anything else, the plan is to keep
on doing this, albeit with some
new differences.
The book that I’m writing
now leans more on thriller than
mystery, so there’s more action.
It’s about an ex-soldier, a veteran
of the Iraq War, who brings
back with him treasure that’s
been looted from the National
Museum in Baghdad. He gets
in trouble with that and there
are some very dangerous people
after him. That’s all I can say
about that now, but it’s in the
early stages now and I’m still
figuring out where it’s going to
go.

ROBERT MANSUETTI
Daily Arts Writer

NETFLIX

Season four of ‘Black
Mirror’ is all girl power

The six bingeable episodes
of
season
four
of
“Black
Mirror” are dominated by
virtual
reality
anxieties,
the
foreboding
presence
of
increased
surveillance
and
most
importantly,
a
kick-ass
ensemble
of
empowered lady
protagonists
who
lead
the
season
with
decisive
clarity
and
confidence.
Often
cast
aside as propaganda for the
technologically weary, “Black
Mirror” provides insight into

the human condition while
addressing
the
qualms
of
pervasive
technology.
The
show has acted as a sort of
prophet for current events and
technological
advancements,
ranging from coincidence to
straight-up creepy. In season
two,
showrunner
Charlie
Brooker predicted the rise
of a flippant and
profane TV star
in
“The
Waldo
Moment,” a piece
of fiction that hits
a little too close to
home.
Similarly,
season three took
social media celebrity to a
whole new level in the episode
“Nosedive,” reminding us of
the power of a “like.” With
a skill for honing in on the

relevant and emphasizing the
relatable, Brooker creates an
alternate reality so close to our
own, it becomes difficult to
differentiate fact from fiction.
In
expert
fashion,
this
season takes on such issues as
helicopter parenting, dating
apps, toxic masculinity and
the
commercialization
and
curation of tragedy. Every
episode tells a new story with
a new set of characters in a
new world with new laws of
nature. The singularity of the
stories makes every movement
succinct, yet necessary; every
conversation
fleeting,
yet
memorable;
every
painful
sequence short, yet powerful.
The first episode of the
fourth season, “USS Callister,”
plays like every nerd’s wet

BECKY PORTMAN
Senior Arts Writer

“Black Mirror”

Season 4

Premiere

Netflix

dream: the possibility to be the
hero in your favorite science
fiction franchise. The appeal
of this episode is the expert
character development. Every
role and persona is crafted
with the utmost care and
attention. The episode is led
by stellar performances from
FX’s “Fargo” alumni Jesse
Plemons (“The Post”) and
Cristin Milioti (“The Mindy
Project”).
By
day,
Robert
Daly (Plemons) is the nebbish
coder at an emerging tech
company, but by night, he is
the charismatic and brilliant
captain of the U.S.S. Callister,
a spaceship reminiscent of
“Star Trek”’s very own U.S.S.
Enterprise. Daly’s fantasy is no
dream; he is an active part of it
through virtual reality. He has
created the characters in his
crew to resemble those of his
co-workers. As Daly rules over

his crew on the U.S.S. Callister
with an iron fist, he cowers
behind his screen at the office.
The episode attacks Internet
trolls, as well as subtle and
overt workplace sexism and
racism. Milioti’s Nanette Cole
combats
Daly’s
misogyny
with confidence, empowering
women everywhere to stand
up and be heard.
“Black Mirror” tapped the
notable
actress,
producer,
director
and
general
rock
star Jodie Foster (“Elysium”)
to direct the ominous and
pertinent
“Arkangel.”
The
episode
follows
a
nervous
single
mother
(Rosemarie
Dewitt, “La La Land”) who,
after a traumatic incident,
decides
to
volunteer
her
young daughter to try an
experimental tracking device.
The device keeps a tab on the
child’s
whereabouts
while

providing a creepy feature of
looking through the child’s
eyes. The device even blurs
and
obscures
potentially
harmful, damaging images and
sounds — working in real-time
to censor reality. The episode
provides a biting commentary
on helicopter parenting and
presents
the
downfalls
of
editing reality for one’s child
in the hopes of protecting
them from the world.
The real star of this season
of
“Black
Mirror”
is
the
dominant
and
unyielding
female-led
cast.
With
incredible
performances
ranging from disturbing and
nuanced (Andrea Riseborough
in “Crocodile”) to poignant
and twisted (Leitia Wright
in
“Black
Museum”),
the
ever-changing
characters
and transitory narratives are
worth dwelling on.

TV REVIEW

NETFLIX