The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Tuesday, February 12, 2019 — 5

It’s apparent that the internet 
has shaped our culture in ways 
our grandparents couldn’t have 
imagined. The internet holds 
endless information that will take 
years to even brush the surface 
of, information that lends to the 
shaping of nations, of cultures, of 
racial oppression and destructive 
gender norms. The internet is a 
powerful force that has shaped 
the individual identities of all 
of us, whether or not we realize 
it. Growing up in the age of the 
internet has exposed us young 
people to endless content that 
has impacted the way we live 
and, more specifically, the way 
we create art. Juliana Huxtable, 
an 
American 
artist, 
writer, 
performer, DJ and co-founder 
of the New York-based nightlife 
project Shock Value, seems to 
understand it better than any of 
us. Huxtable’s performance at the 
Lydia Mendelssohn theatre last 
Wednesday invited the audience 
to “contemplate the power and 
powerlessness of the body as well 
as its dispossession in relation 
to 
technology, 
violence 
and 
blackness.” 
As soon as Huxtable began 
to speak, I immediately thought 
of a quote from the popular 
film, “Juno”: “You’re the coolest 
person I’ve ever met, and you 
don’t even try.” On days when I’m 
particularly lucky, I meet someone 
and think exactly this. There are 
people in this world that are so 
effortlessly cool that it seems to be 
a genetic trait they’ve inherited, 
like hair color or height. Huxtable 

is a perfect example of this 
effortless coolness. The energy of 
the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre 
that night was that of a New York 
City nightclub. Huxtable and her 
entourage seemed to illuminate a 
swanky, “relax, enjoy and let me 
take you on a journey” vibe that I 
was excited to experience.
I had previously been exposed 
to Huxtable’s work in an art 
installation 
at 
the 
UMMA’s 
exhibit, “Art in the Age of the 
Internet, 1989 to Today.” After 
the exhibit, I was impressed by 
her understanding of the history 
of the internet and its impact on 
culture and art. I expected her 
performance to touch on similar 
themes. During this concert, it 
was apparent that these themes 
seemed to be a driving force in 
her work.
Huxtable 
has 
complex 
thoughts about the internet and 
the way it influences various — but 
particularly Black — identities. 
Rather than a performance, I’d go 
so far as to label this event as a live 
art installation. The evening was 
filled with mixed media, including 
lighting, projections, music and 
spoken word poetry that brought 
to light Huxtable’s thoughts on 
the perception and presentation 
of identity, history and online 
communities. I was immediately 
impressed by the lighting design 
created by Michael Potvin that 
was 
exploding 
throughout 
the theatre. Potvin’s lighting 
techniques were as complex as 
the words being spoken on the 
stage. With each different shade 
and varying projection, I was 
reminded of the brilliance that lay 
behind the lighting board.

In addition to the lighting, I was 
enchanted by the music of both 
Joe Heffernan and Ahya Simone. 
It was constructed in such a way 
that instead of overpowering 
Huxtable’s 
spoken 
word, 
it 
complimented 
it. 
Her 
words 
were an additional instrument to 
the music that was moving and 
reshaping the members of the 
audience. Huxtable’s rhythmic 
speaking voice over the equally 
rhythmic tunes allowed the music 
to be more than easy listening. 
It pushed audience members to 
question and analyze what they 
were hearing on stage, rather 
than accept the role of a simple 
bystander.
Yes, 
Huxtable 
and 
the 
rest of her entourage have a 
sort of untouchable coolness 
surrounding their art, but they 
also 
have 
a 
very 
accessible 
message that audience members 
need to hear. While the constant 
shaping and reshaping of our 
world 
by 
the 
internet 
and 
technology can be a very beautiful 
thing, there are also some dangers 
that lie within it. Remaining 
overly aware of every act you 
take on the internet, of your own 
privilege and of your art that the 
internet influences is immensely 
important. In times when the 
pursuit of truthful media is dire, 
it’s important that the media we 
contribute to is honest. There 
is no time to sit idly as forces of 
unknowable danger are forever 
shifting 
the 
information 
we 
consume. Huxtable is a great 
example of an artist that uses 
her talents and knowledge to 
not simply promote, but directly 
partake in positive social change.

Juliana Huxtable explores 
crossroads of race, culture

EVENT REVIEW

NIKI WILLIAMS

ALIX CURNOW
Daily Arts Writer

Tim Johnston opens his book 
with a Hemingway quote: “He 
whispered this last so low that it 
was inaudible to anyone who did 
not love you.” It’s short. Poignant. 
Tinged with melancholy. The 
book is the same way. Slow and 
sure. If you mouth the quote, you 
almost want to elongate each 
vowel, to taste each word. Each 
word is like a snowflake, intricate. 
Each word you want to inspect.
The cover of “The Current” 
features 
big, 
blocky 
letters, 
encompassing a third of the 
space of the dark background 
and cracked with ice. It 
gives off the impression that 
“The Current” is an eerie 
book. Even the title itself 
has a shadow of something 
malignant — The Current. 
The simplicity has ominous 
connotations. The novel itself, 
however, never delivers on the 
cover’s implications. It moves at 
a snail’s pace for over half of the 
book.
The book is told in five parts, 
but it feels more like three. The 
first part reads like a chapter in 
its brevity (just over 20 pages). 
It concludes with the mysterious 
death of a girl in the river, an 
event then used as a springboard 
to investigate an eerily similar 
death of another girl ten years 
back. We’re offered a glimpse 
of Caroline’s perspective, the 
more recent of the two young 
women to plunge into the icy, 

black river. We’re able to watch 
her relationship blossom with 
Audrey, 
an 
ex-roommate, 
through relatable college scenes 
and rich prose. It culminates with 
an infraction between a Caroline 
and a professor that rings heavy 
under 
the 
recent 
#MeToo 
movement. 
The 
first 
part, 
exactly 23 pages, of Caroline and 
Audrey’s impromptu decision 
to visit Audrey’s father in small-
town Minnesota deceptively sets 
up the novel to be a fast-paced 
thriller that never delivers. I 
kept waiting — 100, 200 pages in 
— to return to that initial heart-
elevating rush.

Instead, in part two, I’m 
yanked out of my exhilaration, 
the gnawing curiosity of the 
young woman’s death — was it 
murder? — and sped back into the 
past. The second part is the story 
of the small Minnesota town. Its 
structure is confusing. A quarter 
of the way through, I realized the 
plot was alternating between past 
and present. The recent death 
of one of the aforementioned 
college girls revives memories of 
another girl’s mysterious death 
10 years earlier. The continual 
change in perspective, both in 
time and characters, makes it 

hard to immerse into the book 
completely. It’s a chore to pick 
the “The Current” up again after 
I’ve set it down, knowing that I 
have to acquaint myself with new 
characters and a new mystery.
The story is redeemed with 
lovely 
writing 
like, 
“I 
was 
underwater looking up at them 
from below. Like everyone was 
upside down. The sky, the water. 
Everything.” 
The 
repetition 
and sparse sentences have a 
rhythmic 
quality, 
mirroring 
the Hemingway quote in the 
opening. The lyrical prose makes 
it hard not to get attached to each 
character, to the small town — 
their stories and their lives and 
the difference that ten years 
make.
The third part attempts to 
tie the two deaths together. 
Despite the jarring difference 
between them, there’s a thread 
of coalescence that makes for a 
satisfying ending. It acts as an 
award for the readers that paid 
close attention from the start.
The book does not stand on 
its own as a thriller — the pacing 
is too slow, and the novel is 
stretched out unnecessarily to 
ever binge. Still, “The Current” 
differentiates itself from other 
suspenseful 
thrillers 
exactly 
because of that. Each character, 
however minor, plays a pivotal 
role in the small town. You can’t 
help but mourn the tragedy 
of another young girl 10 years 
before. You can’t help but cheer 
the characters on, reading the 
last few lines and wishing that 
everything will be OK.

‘The Current’ meanders 
with clear, certain beauty

BOOK REVIEW

SARAH SALMAN
For The Daily

‘The Current’

Tim Johnston

Workman

Jan. 22, 2019

Before 10 minutes passed, 
“The Kid Who Would Be King” 
lets you know what it stands for. 
Dictators and strongmen have 
risen to power. People are more 
divided than they have ever 
been. The world is in danger 
not just from without but from 
within. The words “Brexit” and 
“Trump” are never spoken — the 
better for director Joe Cornish 
(“Attack the Block”) to ensure the 
timelessness of his film — but the 
ways in which the film mirrors 
the present couldn’t be more clear. 
It’s an unempathetic world, 
getting more so by the 
second and it would be easy 
for anyone, perhaps most of 
all children, to surrender to 
that cynicism and give up 
all hope for the future.
But 
that’s 
not 
what 
Cornish does with “The 
Kid Who Would Be King,” and 
it’s because of the optimism his 
film wields like Excalibur that, 
whatever its flaws, I believe it to 
be an important story — one that 
not only deserves to be told but 
needs to be told. The world can be 
unfeeling and cruel, but “The Kid 
Who Would Be King” explains to 
its young audience that they don’t 
have to be, and in its sincerity, it 
may remind adults of the same 
thing.
The movie follows young Alex 
Elliott (Louis Ashbourne Serkis, 
“Taboo”), a boy living in England 

who finds himself attacked every 
day by bullies while he does his 
best to just make it through the 
day. Everything changes when 
Alex finds and draws a sword 
from a stone, only to learn that 
it’s Excalibur — “The Kid Who 
Would Be King” plays it forgivably 
fast and loose with Arthurian 
mythology — and that he’s the 
descendant of King Arthur. No 
sooner has he discovered his 
heritage than he learns that he 
only has four days to prepare 
himself and his friends for the 
arrival of Morgana (Rebecca 
Ferguson, “Mission: Impossible – 
Fallout”), an evil sorceress bent on 

subjecting the world to her will.
Even setting aside the bracing 
optimism 
at 
its 
core, 
“The 
Kid Who Would Be King” is 
admirable for how it encourages 
its adolescent viewers to identify 
with its characters even at the 
darkest moments of their quest. 
No one on screen is portrayed as 
perfect and each of them wrestle 
with demons of their own, yet this 
doesn’t stop them from becoming 
heroes. It would have been all too 
easy to make Alex’s schoolyard 
tormentors into one-dimensional 
villains, but despite feints in that 

direction, Cornish keeps the 
humanity of each of his characters 
front and center.
This goes for the battle scenes 
as well; multiple times throughout 
the film, Alex and co. feel like 
they’re in real danger, thanks 
mostly to the superb design work 
on Morgana and her minions. 
The action suffers in other areas, 
particularly in its disappointingly 
mundane depiction of magic — a 
half-baked series of snaps and 
claps that actively drains the 
stakes the more it shows up — but 
it’s doubtful kids in the audience 
will pay these weaker parts much 
mind afforded the opportunity 
to see young people like 
themselves actually treated 
as heroes in their own right.
And as if the message 
couldn’t be any clearer, an 
elderly Merlin (a delightful 
Sir 
Patrick 
Stewart, 
“Logan”) all but says it 
outright: “It will eventually 
fall to today’s children to push 
society forward, and to do so, 
they’ll need to work together and 
to actively forge empathy where 
there otherwise is none.” So, 
would I argue that “The Kid Who 
Would Be King” could use maybe 
another pass or two on its script, 
that one of the characters exists 
solely to recount what’s already 
happened and that it’s about 15 
minutes too long? Yes, but that’s 
almost beside the point. If the next 
generation will be learning from 
films like this, then maybe there’s 
a reason to be optimistic.

‘The Kid Who Would Be 
King’ is imperfect, needed

FILM REVIEW

20TH CENTURY FOX

JEREMIAH VANDERHELM
Daily Arts Writer

‘The Kid Who 
Would be King’

20th Century Fox

I’ve got an idea for television’s 
next comedy sensation: Quirky, 
attractive, 
primarily 
white 
singles kind of struggling — 
but more often drinking — in 
New York (read: Manhattan 
or Brooklyn, NOT the Bronx). 
Now, if this sounds like every 
sitcom 
or 
comedy-
drama ever made, that’s 
because it is. The image 
of the college-educated, 
20-something trying to 
“make it” in New York 
is so ingrained in the 
American psyche that 
it has basically become 
the definition of what 
it means to be in your 
20s. This relationship 
between New York and 
the comedy genre has 
birthed so many nearly-
identical offspring that 
any show with these 
characteristics must be 
exceptionally special to 
pique my interest. “Will 
and Grace,” currently 
midway through the second 
season of its series reboot, is not 
proving to be interesting enough 
to distinguish itself from the 
pack 
of 
New 
York-centric 
content.
“Will and Grace” is like the 
middle child of the New York 
comedy — respected enough, 
but clearly holding onto the past 

in the hopes of one day being 
discussed in the same breath as 
the “golden child” of the New 
York comedies, “Friends.”
It would be unfair to make 
the claim that “Will and Grace” 
does 
not 
depart 
from 
the 
formulaic cliche of the “straight 
attractive singles” comedy, as 
two of the central characters are 
gay men. Sadly, the freshness 
stops there. Watching this show 

feels like watching off-brand 
“Friends” or “Sex and the City,” 
or the millions of other shows 
like it. There’s the proverbial 
laugh track for lines that can 
be funny, depending on who 
you ask. The environment looks 
flat because you know they’re 
shooting it in a studio, and worst 
of all, the characters are almost 

completely unrecognizable.
That’s the thing about New 
York comedies: The person they 
are trying to portray doesn’t 
really exist, and if they do they 
certainly don’t have nearly as 
much free time as the characters 
in these shows do. The honest 
truth is that being young and 
single in New York, or any big 
city, does not guarantee that you 
will live a quirky, romanticized, 
socially active life. It’s 
more mundane, sleep-
deprived 
and 
lonely 
than the media portrays. 
Yet, 
comedy 
can 
be 
found in this bleakness 
and real genuine humor 
can be made from these 
realities. However, in 
shows like “Will and 
Grace,” this humor is 
nowhere to be found. 
“Will and Grace” instead 
clings to a fantasy where 
studio 
apartments 
in 
Manhattan 
grow 
on 
trees. 
The 
relationship 
between New York and 
comedy isn’t a bad thing. 
There is a sliver of truth 
to the fantasy, but I just wish the 
content wasn’t so misleading. 
As I progress through college, 
imagining my life after school 
is becoming more and more 
pertinent. It’s not an easy 
transition for anybody, and right 
now, televised comedy is only 
building expectations that I 
know will let me down.

‘Will and Grace,’ comedy 
and the ghost of New York

TV NOTEBOOK

ELI LUSTIG
Daily Arts Writer

The relationship between 
New York and comedy isn’t a 
bad thing. There is a sliver of 
truth to the fantasy, but I just 
wish the content wasn’t so 
misleading.

