races, but nobody really wants
to talk about it. As school board
member
Dr.
Jackie
Moore
points out, “If you’re feeling
as though you can’t be honest
or you’re afraid to say what
you’re feeling because there’s a
camera there and we’re talking
about race, what camera’s in
your head when you’re going
through your day?”
While the adults in power
may not be willing to talk
about race or the role it plays
in everyday life, the students
of O.P.R.F. certainly have a
lot to say. The series excels in
showing the parallel between
Black students who deal with
disadvantages related to their
race and the normal, awkward
adolescent experience of going
to high school. In one scene,
sophomore Tiara is shown
talking about the pressures of
living with her sister. Tiara’s
sister has a son at O.P.R.F.
whom the school has essentially
given up on. She says her sister
wants her to succeed more than
anything because she could not
get her son to do the same. Not
soon after this, Tiara is seen
auditioning for the choir, and
then jumping up and down in
the hallway because the boy
she auditioned in front of has
been her crush since seventh
grade.
Little moments like these
are
why
the
documentary
is
so
effective.
It
shows
how although O.P.R.F. isn’t
necessarily
separate:
The
students
are
anything
but
equal. At school, the only thing
white students have to worry
about is a quiz they have coming
up or running into their crush
or what friend to sit with in
class. Black students are faced
with all of this, along with the
added pressure of being treated
differently due to the color of
their skin and what that has
meant for them for years. Race
is ingrained in every aspect of
O.P.R.F., and one teacher points
out that “no space in this school
is race neutral.” Some instances
are more ingrained, such as the
tendencies of kids of the same
race to sit with each other in
the cafeteria. Others appear to
be blatant racism. In one scene,
a school administrator explains
how
the
primarily
Black
cheerleading squad has to
perform on the edge of the field
while the mostly white drill
team does their routine front
and center. As junior Charles
points out with frustration:
“Everything is made for white
kids, because this school was
made for white kids, because
this country was made for
white kids.”
“America to Me” tells the
story
of
a
racist
America
through young voices that are
too often belittled and ignored.
These high schoolers have no
problem telling America that
they feel as if they don’t belong.
O.P.R.F. may just be one high
school, but it is reflective of
something much bigger. Even
integrated, progressive schools
are struggling to provide an
equal
experience
for
their
Black and white students. The
first step to addressing the
problem is talking about it,
something that clearly many
people do not want to do.
“America to Me” is pushing that
conversation forward, forcing
both the people at O.P.R.F. and
the audience watching them
to listen to a discussion about
race and go on to start one
themselves.
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ACROSS
1 Seething
6 Jaguar weapons
11 Half a dance
14 Stinger ingredient
15 Superman player
Cavill
16 “The Last Jedi”
villain Kylo
17 Alpine airs
18 Broken out, in
a way
19 Days gone by, in
days gone by
20 Capital on the
Volga
21 Suppress, as a
story
22 Punching tools
23 Suffix with fruct-
24 Hall of Fame
manager Stengel
25 Sal of “Exodus”
26 Waters down
28 Taiwanese PC
brand
29 Rita awarded
the Presidential
Medal of
Freedom
30 Hankering
32 Depilatory cream
34 Historic span:
Abbr.
35 Impediment
to creativity ...
and each set of
puzzle circles
38 Big letters in
family-owned
supermarkets
40 Troubadour’s
strings
41 Uncle __
42 Codes of conduct
44 Christian with
style
46 Venerated one
50 Adorkable types
51 Lets off steam
52 JFK posting
53 “Psych” finale?
54 Is after
55 Field mice
57 Area 51 craft
58 Singer with
Lawrence
59 Accept, with “for”
60 Greek org.
61 Lyft passenger
62 Difficult tasks
63 Hosp. parts
64 Mideast bigwigs
65 Will Rogers prop
DOWN
1 Work up
2 Risky proposition
3 Turow
biographical title
4 Not working
5 Fleur-de-__:
Quebec flag
image
6 Poolside chair
7 Debate
equipment
8 Get under one’s
skin
9 Small songbird
10 Letters on a
Qantas baggage
tag
11 Like many tees
12 Greek
13 “... et cetera”
14 How some tickets
may be sorted
21 Scented pouch
22 Put on
24 Plant in many
Road Runner
cartoons
25 Dunderhead
27 What Marcie calls
Peppermint Patty
29 Distance runners
31 Cultivates
33 Monastic figures
35 Golden State
team
36 Christ the __: Rio
landmark
37 Crime show with
several spin-offs
38 “You obviously
can’t depend on
me”
39 Fetches
43 Most junk mail
45 Comic book
personnel
47 Change symbols,
in math
48 Opera with
Desdemona
49 Alters with a light
touch?
51 48-Down
composer
54 “__ told”:
“That’s the
rumor”
55 Designer Wang
56 Name in boxy
cars?
58 Higher ed. test
59 Cardinal’s
letters
By Jeffrey Wechsler
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/06/18
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
09/06/18
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Thursday, September 6, 2018
Among the many fans of
Tom
Clancy’s
best-selling
“Jack
Ryan”
novels
was
Ronald Reagan, who called
the first of the spy thriller
series “unputdownable.” “Tom
Clancy’s Jack Ryan,” Amazon
Video’s
new
eight-episode
addition to the franchise is
— sorry, Mr. Reagan — quite
putdownable. That’s not to say it
isn’t occasionally entertaining.
It has its moments. But too
often, “Jack Ryan” lapses into
stale, passé story patterns that
leave it struggling to breathe
life into a tired genre.
In his decades of book and
on-screen
appearances,
the
character Jack Ryan has been
on the receiving end of dozens
of Bond-like reincarnations and
reinventions. Alec Baldwin’s
Jack Ryan was a wide-eyed,
brainy type; Harrison Ford’s
a gruff, seasoned hothead.
He’s been a history professor
and a Wall Street banker and
President of the United States.
But in every iteration he’s the
reluctant hero, the sort who
has greatness thrust upon him.
“I’m just an analyst. I write
reports!” Ryan pleas, usually
before
being
tasked
with
resolving all sorts of absurd,
world-ending
plots
—
like
extremists taking advantage
of a power vacuum in Iraq
or Kremlin interference at
the highest levels of the US
government (OK, maybe not
that absurd).
The
small
screen
Jack
Ryan (John Krasinski, “The
Office”)
keeps
squarely
in
that tradition. He’s a CIA
analyst on a counterterrorism
team
reviewing
suspicious
financial transactions — and
presumably, writing reports —
when he stumbles on a lead that
takes him directly to Mousa bin
Suleiman (Ali Suliman, “The
Looming Tower”), a Syrian
jihadist thought to be the next
bin Laden. Under the guidance
of his new section chief James
Greer (Wendell Pierce, “The
Wire”), Ryan is — as Jack Ryan
is wont to be — hesitantly
dragged into a chase that takes
him from his humble desk at
Langley to field missions in the
slums of Paris and Yemen.
Krasinski’s
Ryan
is
convincing, muscled and stoic,
of course, but with an easiness
and boyish charm that earn him
the
moniker
“self-righteous
Boy
Scout”
in
the
show’s
pilot. Morality, unfortunately,
does not a personality make
— more often than not, Jack
fails to come across as real or
lived-in. At times, he’s saddled
with lines so groan-worthy it
wouldn’t feel particularly out
of place for Krasinski to turn
and flash a stare at the camera
à la Jim Halpert, as if to say,
“You see what I have to deal
with here?”
He’s dealing with a lot.
Pierce’s
pitch-perfect
Greer
aside,
Krasinski
has
little
chemistry with his co-stars,
least of all with Abbie Cornish
(“Three
Billboards
Outside
Ebbing, Missouri”) as Dr. Cathy
Mueller, Ryan’s vanilla love
interest. And the story, though
well-paced, is little more than
another regurgitation of every
spy thriller released in the last
10 years. The extensive focus
on Suleiman and on telling the
story of his upbringing and
radicalization seem designed
to pre-empt any criticism of the
show’s depictions of terrorists.
But it’s still not enough to
provoke thought or add needed
nuance.
And given all the opportunity
for
real
complexity
and
excitement the spy thriller
provides, it’s almost puzzling
that
a
streaming
service
with no shortage of money
could produce such ordinary
television. A far cry from
the twisty, thoughtful cable
dramas that have dealt with
espionage
in
recent
years,
“Jack
Ryan”
more
closely
resembles a mid-aughts CBS
procedural or Fox’s miserable,
jingoistic “24.” There is none
of the rewarding slow burn
or
meticulousness
of
early
“Homeland,” nothing close to
the delicate psychological study
that was “The Americans.”
Even the action sequences feel
straight out of a Michael Bay
(“Transformers”) film, cheap
and gratuitous — to be fair,
Michael Bay is, in fact, one of
the show’s producers.
What’s the use in watching,
anyway? We know how this
ends — neatly black and white.
The bad terrorists lose, the
handsome
good
guys
with
guns win and our exceptional
country lives to see another
day. It’s no wonder Reagan
liked Jack Ryan so much.
Amazon’s ‘Jack Ryan’ is a
not-so-thrilling thriller
“America to Me”
tells the story of
a racist America
through young
voices that are too
often belittled and
ignored
MAITREYI ANANTHRAMAN
Daily Arts Writer
“Tom Clancy’s
Jack Ryan”
Amazon Video
Season 1
America is in the midst
of
an
identity
crisis.
A
nation
supposedly
built
on
a
foundation
of
equality,
acceptance and opportunity is
currently masked
by the ugly light
of hate, bigotry
and hopelessness.
Pop
culture
is
attempting
to
help
Americans
understand what is happening
to their country. Sacha Baron
Cohen tries to expose the ugly
underbelly
of
contemporary
America with his new HBO
series titled “Who is America?,”
in which he disguises himself
to ask politicians, public figures
and
everyday
Americans
about
their
often
insulting
or ridiculous views. Rapper
Childish
Gambino
offers
a
response to Cohen’s titular
question with the song “This
is America,” a song whose
video artfully examines the
problems that Black people face
in America.
“America to Me” offers a
more personalized commentary
than either of these, and it
is not shy in proclaiming its
purpose. At the end of Starz’s
10-part docuseries, “America
to Me,” a short excerpt from a
Langston Hughes
poem
fills
up
the
screen.
“O, yes, I say it
plain,” it begins.
“America
never
was,
America
to me, And yet I swear this
oath — America will be!”
Hughes, a Black writer and
activist who was a leader of the
Harlem Renaissance, is talking
about how he feels as if he is
a stranger living in his own
country. America is supposed
to be a place where anybody
can succeed, yet as a Black man,
Hughes does not feel like he is
enjoying the benefits of living
in America — at least not yet.
It is the perfect sentiment
to end the premiere episode of
“America to Me,” a series that
for one school year followed
students attending Oak Park
and River Forest High School
(O.P.R.F.) in suburban Chicago.
In an area that the series makes
a point of telling viewers is
young and liberal, O.P.R.F.
appears to be a diverse school
succeeding in addressing and
highlighting
that
diversity.
The school is 55-percent white
and
27-percent
Black,
and
through research and meetings
the administration seems to
recognize disparities between
their Black and white students
and want to repair them. None
of the administration will talk
to the filmmakers about that
research, and director Steve
James (“Hoop Dreams”) tells
the audience that the principal
and
superintendent
of
the
school didn’t even want the
film to be made.
This alone shows exactly
why it is so important that
this documentary was made.
People know this country has
institutionalized racism and
blatant
disparities
between
‘America to Me’ catalyzes
conversations about race
SAMANTHA DELLA FERA
Daily Arts Writer
TV REVIEW
STARZ
“America to
Me”
Starz
TV REVIEW
AMAZON
6 — Thursday, September 6, 2018
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com