The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Thursday, January 11, 2018 — 5

Across our many backgrounds, 
identities, opinions and values, 
there is one thing that every 
single college student can agree 
on: Freshman year is an absolute 
shitshow. You’ve never had 
this much freedom in your life, 
and at the tender age of 18, you 
really aren’t quite sure what to 
do with it. Sometimes the urge 
to do something undeniably 
stupid is so strong that it takes 
a few minutes to stop and think, 
“Hey, maybe I shouldn’t have a 
drunken, six-hour long Cards 
Against Humanity marathon on 
a Wednesday afternoon.” (Side 
note: If you do, please invite me). 
But alongside all of the stupid 
mistakes and lifelong memories 
of freshman year, there is a 
level of personal growth that is 
unmatched by any other time in 
your life. This is the time to make 
decisions and relationships that 
will define the rest of your time 
in college, and it’s as incredibly 
exciting as it is excruciatingly 
nerve-wracking.
Nothing else on television 
right now truly captures this 
moral mess that is the first year 
of college better than “Grown-
ish.” A spin-off of the popular 
ABC show “Black-ish,” “Grown-
ish” follows Zoey Johnson (Yara 
Shahidi, “The First Family”) as 
she gets started at university. 
Her stories are told from the 
future looking back, and the 
series 
premiere 
takes 
place 

mostly in a single classroom, 
with each main character telling 
their new classmates how they 
ended up there in a “Breakfast 
Club” style confessionary.
For badass Jewish feminist 
Nomi 
(Emily 
Arlook, 
“The 
Good Place”), it was because 
she missed registration while 
hooking up with a girl in the 
bathroom. Drug-dealing Vevek 
(Jordan Buhat) was too busy 
closing a sale with frat boys to 
register for classes. And Zoey? 
Well, Zoey ran away from 
registration after seeing her first 
college friend, who she had left 
in a pool of her own vomit at a 
“day party,” standing in line. 
Despite the questionable morals 

of the rest of the characters, 
Zoey’s response is the only 
one that draws any backlash, 
immediately signaling to both 
Zoey and the audience that 
this transition into college isn’t 
necessarily going to be a smooth 
one.
Despite the glaring plot hole 
that for some reason, in the 
21st century, these kids are 
registering for classes at some 
kind of office rather than at home 
on their computers, “Grown-
ish” is almost uncomfortably 

close to reality. As a freshman 
myself, watching the show felt 
like watching a professionally 
filmed recap of my first semester 
set to hip hop and synthesizers. 
The water-themed frat parties, 
the late-night pizza runs and, 
most importantly, the nagging 
realization that every decision 
you’re faced with is now yours 
and yours alone to make are 
pivotal aspects of the freshman 
experience. And Zoey, like the 
rest of us, is far from perfect 
when she deals with them.
It is this that makes “Grown-
ish” such an important show, 
especially 
for 
the 
younger 
audience that it targets. So many 
teenagers have an idealized 
version of college that they 
comb through over and over 
again in their minds before 
finally saying that last good bye 
to their parents and stepping 
foot on campus. More often than 
not, that picture-perfect fantasy 
world is shattered within the 
first week, and all that’s left is a 
scared kid who isn’t sure of who 
they really are, and certainly 
doesn’t know who they want to 
be.
“Grown-ish” shows us that 
it’s okay to not have everything 
figured out, and it’s okay to 
be 
lost, 
because 
even 
life 
on a television screen isn’t 
perfect. For the next four 
years, life is going to be a series 
of wrong choices and huge 
embarrassments, but through 
it all there will be someone 
coming out of every disappoint 
just a little bit more grown.

I recently participated in the 
University Jazz Lab Ensemble 
winter 
concert. 
While 
we 
mostly performed traditional 
big band charts on this concert, 
we also performed the vocal 
piece “Too Close For Comfort” 
from the 1956 musical “Mr. 
Wonderful.”
For about a month leading 
up to the concert, we rehearsed 
the piece without the vocalist. 
Though the name of the song 
seemed a little strange to me, 
I will admit that I gave it little 
thought.
The day before the concert, 
we had a dress rehearsal with 
the vocalist (and with proper 
amplification) 
at 
Rackham 
Auditorium. 
As 
the 
words 
to the piece began to be 
distinguishable, I was shocked 
at what I was hearing. With 
lyrics such as, “Be soft, be 
sweet, but be discreet / Don’t go 
off your beat,” and, “Be firm, be 
fair, be sure, beware / On your 
guard, take care, while there’s 
such temptation,” I began to 
question what exactly we were 
condoning in our performance 
of this piece. Was it about a 
non-consensual 
relationship? 
Was this song something that 
I was comfortable with? What 
did this song mean?
We had begun rehearsing this 
piece in mid-Oct., only weeks 
after The New York Times 
published their investigation of 
Harvey Weinstein. Al Franken 
announced 
his 
planned 
resignation from the Senate 
just hours before we rehearsed. 
It 
seemed 
impossible 
to 
understand this piece without 
thinking about the #MeToo 
movement. I could not help 
but 
consider 
the 
cultural 
implications of this piece; the 
deeper meaning behind the 
song.
To other members of the 
ensemble, however, this song 
was neither uncomfortable nor 
upsetting. At the ending of the 
song, the narrator continues 
to narrate thoughts about the 
woman without ever acting on 
them. “She’s much too close for 
comfort now / Too close, much 
too close / She’s much too close 
for comfort now,” and it ends. 
The fact that we had a female 
vocalist also seemed to make 
the song more appropriate 
to 
some 
members 
of 
the 
ensemble. To some, it was a 
relic of a bygone era — it had 
been premiered in 1956, and 
it thus represented the beliefs 
of that time period. While by 
our standards it may be wrong, 
they argued, it was permissible 
in that time period.
In Nov., I wrote a piece on 
William 
Bolcom’s 
“Dinner 
at Eight” and experienced a 
similar phenomenon — while 
trying to discuss the opera 
and the director’s thoughts 
about approaching the opera, 
our 
conversation 
almost 
inevitably turned to politics. 
This opera depicted upper 
class 
Manhattan 
socialites 
during the Great Depression. 
It emphasized the disconnect 
between this upper class and 
the lower and middle classes 
during this tumultuous time 

in American history. The opera 
was composed in 2008 in the 
midst of the Great Recession; 
it could not have been more 
relevant to modern events.
As I interviewed various 
members of this production, 
one thing was clear: Everyone 
had an idea of what this 
production 
meant. 
While 
they all agreed that the piece 
was about this upper class 
disconnect, every member of 
the 
production 
interpreted 

and 
applied 
this 
meaning 
differently. To some, it was 
a 
veiled 
criticism 
at 
the 
elitism of the upper classes, 
particularly 
the 
modern 
upper class opera audiences. 
To 
others, 
it 
emphasized 
the failures inherent to the 
human condition that occur 
irrespective of class. To still 
others, it exposed the attempts 
by the upper classes to hide 
their failings from the lower 
classes.
In 
our 
modern 
cultural 
environment, it seems as if 
all performance art is riddled 
with 
cultural, 
social 
and 
political implications. We are 
a country defined by red and 
blue, and it seems impossible 
for performance art to have 
no overt connections to one 
side of this divisive cultural 
landscape.
For performers, this can 
lead 
to 
over-analysis. 
If 
performance 
art 
cannot 
lack a worldly relevance, if 
performance 
art 
must 
be 
immediately relevant to one’s 
beliefs, then relevance must 
be found even where relevance 
doesn’t exist. The controversy 
over this summer’s “Julius 
Caesar” at New York City’s 
Shakespeare In The Park, for 
example, generated unexpected 
interest in the production. 
While the production itself 
was 
incredibly 
thought-
provoking, the references to 
the current political climate 
were 
successful, 
although 
slightly predictable, means of 
generating modern political 
controversy around an old 
classic as a means of garnering 
interest and attention.
For creators, this cultural 
divide has contributed to a 
modern art culture almost 
oppressively 
saturated 
in 
political subtexts. Art with 
political 
meaning 
is 
being 
created at an alarming rate, 
easily overshadowing almost 
all 
non-political 
art. 
The 
Golden 
Globes 
this 
past 
weekend, for example, were 
equally as focused on politics 
as they were on art. Almost all 
non-political statements at the 
award ceremony were ignored 
in favor of the many political 

statements made throughout. 
And 
while 
these 
political 
statements may be warranted, 
and they change that they 
are provoking may be viewed 
(by most people) as good, 
this glorification of political 
resistance slowly eats away at 
the core values shared by those 
on both sides of this cultural 
divide.
Performance art can and 
should be used to challenge 
beliefs and provoke thought 
— not merely to confirm one’s 
beliefs. 
Performance 
art 
can and should be used as a 
means of protest, not a means 
of glorifying the concept of 
protest 
and 
the 
rejection 
of commonality with one’s 
ideological enemies. Art is 
the vehicle that moves culture 
forward, 
that 
challenges 
unconscious 
biases 
within 
culture. Art is the means by 
which culture is forced to 
improve. Art is always a step 
ahead 
of 
culture, 
pulling 
culture towards this next step, 
towards a shared vision of a 
utopic future that both possess.
If anything, I fear that the 
current political climate is 
overwhelming 
art’s 
ability 
to provoke positive change. 
With so many disagreements 
between the political left and 
the political right, with so 
many fundamental differences 
between blue and red, with 
fundamental 
differences 
developing between liberals 
and conservatives over the very 
meaning of truth — art is being 
overwhelmed by the desire 
for political protest. With so 
many differing beliefs for both 
sides to challenge, art is being 
used to glorify the idea of 
challenging the other side, not 
the positive changes brought 
about by these challenges.
Performance art must avoid 
becoming obsessed with the 
elephant in the concert hall. 
This elephant can become all-
consuming 
and 
repressive. 
Just like members of the Jazz 
Lab Ensemble, I struggled to 
either condemn or condone 
“Too 
Close 
for 
Comfort.” 
Many concert-goers must now 
analyze the performance art 
they are viewing against this 
elephant in the concert hall, 
determining whether or not 
they support or denounce the 
art they are viewing.
Art should make one think. 
Whether it conforms to or 
challenges one’s understanding 
of the world, art should force 
a 
reevaluation 
of 
position; 
one’s inherent biases and one’s 
hidden beliefs. Art should be 
provocative, not reactionary. 
Art should challenge one’s 
own beliefs not the beliefs 
of the elephant in the room. 
Art should be used to bring 
people together, not divide 
them. The response to this 
elephant in the room should 
not be glorification of the 
criticism of others. As Leonard 
Bernstein said, the response 
to this elephant in the concert 
hall 
should 
be, 
“to 
make 
music more intensely, more 
beautifully, 
more 
devotedly 
than ever before.”

The elephant in the 
concert hall

Netflix’s ‘Bright’ is an 
off-balanced fantasy

“Bright” is a film directed by 
David Ayer (“Suicide Squad”) 
and written by Max Landis 
(“American 
Ultra”). 
Anyone 
who has seen the work of either 
of the two will surely have an 
idea of what they will get with 
“Bright.” “Suicide Squad” was 
one of the ugliest and worst 
shot movies of 2015. “Bright” 
easily takes the cake for 2017. 
Subtlety is neither the writer 
nor the director’s strong suit. 
A Netflix release, “Bright” hits 
the audience over the head so 
hard with its message that some 
might actually feel concussed 
after the watching the film. 
Thank heavens no one will 
ever have to see this on the big 
screen.
Will Smith (“Suicide Squad”) 
and Joel Edgerton (“Loving”) 
are two cops butting heads, but 
with a twist. Edgerton is an 
Orc. In the world of “Bright,” 
humans and elves fought side by 
side millennia ago against The 
Dark Lord and his army of Orcs. 
Ever since the humans won 
the final battle, Orcs have been 
seen as second-class citizens. 
“Bright” makes sure that the 
parallel between human/Orc 
tensions and racial tensions in 
the real world are as clear as 
possible, even if the analogy 
doesn’t hold up upon much 

thought. It’s a strange thing 
to compare racism in America 
to divisions between a fantasy 
society wherein the different 
citizenry groups are literally 
different species, leaving the 

movie filled with ambiguous 
metaphor that is at times clever 
and at other times horribly 
tone deaf (one example is an 
off handed mention that Orcs 
have terrible verticals, and thus 
are terrible at basketball). The 
social commentary is misguided 
and mishandled. 
The world set up in “Bright” 
is 
one 
that 
actually 
has 
potential, albeit for a different 
movie. A world where fantasy 
elements such as Orcs, elves and 
magic wands are treated with 
complete seriousness, and “The 
Lord of the Rings” is basically 
ancient history, is an interesting 
concept that is totally wasted 
on a generic buddy cop story. 
The way magic wands are 
treated like nuclear weapons, 
and the idea of a United States 
Magic Bureau are fun ideas, but 
nothing interesting is done with 
them.
To that end, “Bright” feels 
more like an extended TV pilot 
than it does a feature film. 
There are a multitude of side 
characters, 
shadowy 
figures 

and 
organizations 
that 
are 
given only lip service here, with 
the clear implication being that 
they will get more development 
in a sequel or sequels down the 
line. One wonders if it would’ve 
been more interesting to take 
this idea and turn it into a 
Netflix miniseries à la “Stranger 
Things” rather than a Netflix 
movie. “Bright” has gotten a 
lot of flack on the internet and 
has been labeled by some critics 
as the worst movie of the year. 
That’s hyperbole for what, at 
the end of the day, is really just a 
generic action movie with some 
fantasy elements thrown in, but 
it speaks to the growing critical 
internet subculture that either 
aggressively praises or skewers 
films completely, giving almost 
no room for middle ground.
“Bright” is bad. It is not 
abhorrently bad. It is not an 
affront to viewer’s intelligence 
or an insult to cinema. It is just 
a bad movie. The kind of bad 
movie that, given time, could 
find a future as some kind of cult 
classic. It’s weird, and it has got 
some interesting ideas floating 
around in it. The execution is 
pretty much a disaster across 
the board, but it is hard not to 
feel like there was something 
cool in there somewhere. If 
you look at “Bright” and squint 
really hard, you can almost 
see the blockbuster fantasy 
franchise Netflix is hoping to 
create. Almost.

IAN HARRIS
Managing Video Editor

‘Grown-ish’ premiere 
mirrors college experience

SAMANTHA DELLA FERA
Daily Arts Writer

NETFLIX

“Bright”

Netflix

COMMUNITY CULTURE COLUMNIST

“Grown-ish”

Series Premiere

Freeform

Wednesdays @ 
8 p.m.

FREEFRORM

SAMMY 
SUSSMAN

TV REVIEW

FILM REVIEW

