6A — Monday, February 19, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
I recently got hooked on
“You,”
Netflix’s
late-2018
thriller drama about a bookstore
manager named Joe Goldberg
(Penn Badgley, “Gossip Girl”)
and his girlfriend, Guinevere
Beck (Elizabeth Lail, “Once
Upon a Time”). Joe seems like
the perfect boyfriend, but is
actually an obsessive stalker
who murders those close to
Beck in an effort to “protect”
her from the chaos of her own
life. Joe’s micromanaging and
fake feminism are carefully
realized
by
Badgley
and
the
show’s
creators,
and
delightfully
infuriating
to
watch — but strangely, the
character who often annoyed
me the most in the moment was
Beck herself.
Beck is a student in NYU’s
MFA program, the avid reader
and aspiring writer to Joe’s
bookstore
manager.
Their
shared versedness in literature
is the pedestal from which
they constantly judge other
people, whether explicitly or
inadvertently, starting from the
very first scene when they meet.
Beck approaches Joe, and he
wonders via voice-over whether
the book she’s looking for will
essentially deem her worthy
of further attention; when she
asks after the Paula Fox novel
“Desperate
Characters,”
he
is impressed, and the viewer
registers an early victory for
Beck in the eyes of Joe. Maybe
this is the problem: Beck’s
character is introduced largely
through Joe’s eyes. No wonder
a misogynist would see her
as ideal: She reads “obscure”
old literature, secretly hates
her vapid friends and can’t
concentrate on her own writing
worth anything unless Joe is
around.
The
thing
that
annoyed
me
about
Beck’s
portrayal
in “You” is her approach to
the world of writing. I am an
aspiring writer myself, and
I know a lot of other people
in those same shoes, many of
whom have wildly different
approaches to creating and
consuming literature. I have
never met anyone in real life
whose approach is like Beck’s.
That’s not a compliment. Beck
skates by in her MFA program
in a way that artists of any type
are often conditioned early
against doing; she’s the type of
writer who sits around waiting
for inspiration to strike. Any
writer who is good enough to
get into NYU’s MFA program
ought to also be serious enough
to be able to crank out a story
for a workshop, inspiration
or no, and yet when Beck is
told to write one, she acts as
if she’s never done this before
and simply decides not to do it.
The professor accepts this and
says they can reschedule Beck’s
workshop for a different day.
Moreover, historical writers
and works are romanticized,
while
modern
writers
are
brushed
off.
For
instance,
Beck’s
classmate
Blythe
(Hari
Nef,
“Assassination
Nation”), perhaps one of the
best characters in the show,
is praised constantly, but her
impressiveness
seems
tied
more to the strange concepts
behind her stories and her
superficially
interesting,
“worldly”
background
(in
contrast to Beck’s own New
England childhood), than to
the depth of her thought. This
ties into a problem that “You”
has with the image of “writers”
and “readers,” exemplified in
a different moment when Joe
texts Beck to asks what she’s
currently reading. She sends
back a picture of a book resting
on her bare legs, post-shower.
“You”’s approach seems to
me like, and hopefully is, a
commentary upon this way of
looking at reading and writing,
holding Joe and Beck alike
under criticism. Yet it is still off-
putting, because the portrayal
of the literary world in “You”
is so instantly recognizable as
the dreamy world of reading
and writing that many people
often incorrectly picture. The
classicist view of literature
is so often confined to the
sorts of masterpieces Joe and
Beck so often reference, like
“Wuthering Heights.” When
many people picture curling
up with a book for fun, they
picture the same leatherbound,
beautiful, carefully maintained
hardbacks
that
Joe
keeps
stored up in the glass prison
below his bookstore. These
— Joe preaches repeatedly to
Beck and to the audience —
are classics; they are works by
the masters, some of the best
pieces of art humanity has ever
produced. There’s a reason
the image of the Mooney’s
bookstore resonates with us:
We’ve seen it before, time and
time again.
But the show skims past
some of the problems with this
romantic view of literature.
The “classics” don’t include
everybody; in fact, they have
traditionally been extremely
exclusive. I would argue that
some of the most exciting,
dynamic and interesting things
that have ever happened in
the world of literature are
happening right now. We’re
so lucky to live in an era when
so many literary boundaries
are being pushed in terms of
subject matter, genre and style.
We’re lucky to live in a time
when the exclusive past of the
literary canon is finally being
recognized with, and the voices
of queer writers, writers of color,
female
writers,
indigenous
writers and more writers from
traditionally
marginalized
communities are starting to be
amplified. “You”’s treatment
of the literary community —
via, again, the purposefully
distasteful characters of Joe
and Beck — makes no mention
of this, choosing instead to
elevate the names of long-dead
writers
whose
voices
have
been glorified plenty enough
anyway.
The fetishization of reading
is dangerous because, at the
risk of sounding extreme, it
makes reading mean nothing;
it strips the things that make
reading what it is — its precision
and sensitivity, its union of
the past and the future and its
feeling of a continued tradition,
its overwhelming capacity for
empathy-building—
of
their
weight, swapping them out in
favor of nostalgic and flowery
images. The hot guy in a New
York
City
bookstore
who’s
impressed that you’ve heard of
Hemingway. The hot girl in a
huge city apartment who calls
herself a writer, but can’t seem
to work past her own lack of
ideas.
I realize a single person
like me hardly has the right
to
personally
measure
the
perimeter of the literary world
and proclaim my own vision
of it the correct one. I only
wish that in a world where,
on the whole, reading is only
superficially fashionable (if I
had more time here, I might
delve into the whole Rupi Kaur
conversation), representations
of the literary world were
less often romanticized and
idealized,
and
more
often
reflective of the real vibrancy
that
characterizes
that
community from the inside out.
DAILY LITERATURE COLUMN
The dangers of idolatry
in books and Netflix’s
new original series ‘You’
There’s an episode of “Mad
Men” where Don Draper and
his colleagues are tasked with
writing a TV commercial for
a brand of a diet soda. The
clients make it easy — they’re
looking for a frame-for-frame
remake
of
Ann-Margret’s
opening performance in “Bye
Bye Birdie.” But when the
agency delivers on that request,
complete with a coquettish
Ann-Margret
look-alike,
the
soda reps recoil and reject the
ad.
“I don’t think there’s any
ambiguity about this being
exactly — and I mean exactly —
what you asked for,” Don says
in disbelief. Yes, it is what they
asked for, the clients concede,
but something about it isn’t
right. It’s Don’s boss Roger who
finally identifies the problem:
“It’s not Ann-Margret.”
I wanted so badly to like
“Miracle Workers,” TBS’s new
limited-series comedy about the
inner workings of Heaven. It
promised to be a high-concept
“The Office” meets “The Good
Place.” It stars Steve Buscemi
(“Boardwalk Empire”) as a
slovenly, addled God, an off-
kilter Daniel Radcliffe (“Harry
Potter”) and the wonderful
“Blockers” breakout Geraldine
Viswanathan. This is exactly
— and I mean exactly — what I
asked for.
Still, it’s not Ann-Margret.
Despite everything it has going
for it, “Miracle Workers” is
not nearly as good as it should
be. And it isn’t immediately
clear why that’s true. It’s some
combination
of
half-baked
humor,
murky
exposition,
contrived
stakes
and
the
fact that the eschatological
absurdism genre has been done
before to much better success.
“The Good Place” comparisons
are probably unfair, but they
can’t be helped.
Eliza (Viswanathan), a young,
dutiful employee of Heaven,
Inc., is granted a reassignment
from the Department of Dirt to
the understaffed Department of
Answered Prayers, where the
manic, lonely Craig (Radcliffe)
deals
with
the
billions
of
prayers
sent
upstairs
from
Earth. Given the metaphysical
limitations of Heaven’s prayer-
granting abilities (employees
can
only
alter
the
world
through
“discrete
natural
phenomena”),
the
three
or
four prayers Craig chooses to
answer each day are low-stakes
— like finding lost gloves and
car keys. The rest of the prayers
are stamped “Impossible” and
vaulted up to God (Buscemi),
who has absolutely no interest
in handling any of them.
Buscemi’s God is juvenile,
moody and makes everyone
around
him
miserable.
He
longs for the days when people
on Earth sacrificed rams in
his honor and laments that
the world is now too complex,
too broken for him to handle.
It’s a bit of a shift from “The
Good
Place,”
where
the
immortal universe operates like
clockwork, with bright pastels
and
breezy
sound
effects.
Sufficiently disgruntled, God
decides to absolve himself of
his responsibilities by blowing
up Earth, a plan he’ll execute in
two weeks … until Eliza steps in.
Eliza is the real heart of
“Miracle Workers,” and it seems
like she’s the best chance the
show has to stay compelling
and worth investing in moving
forward.
Viswanathan
is
surrounded by exceptionally
talented actors — Buscemi’s bit
can get old fast but he’s still a
joy to watch, Radcliffe boasts
an impressive range and the
kooky side characters who color
in the rest of the world are all
plenty endearing. It’s in rough
shape now, but it won’t take
any miracles to save this show
— only some faith that this cast
can turn it into something more
worthwhile.
‘Miracle Workers’: divine
cast, needs intervention
TV REVIEW
TBS
MAITREYI ANANTHARAMAN
Daily Arts Wrtier
LAURA DZUBAY
Daily Literature Columnist
Dr. Macfarlane is missing a
finger. At the beginning of Yangsze
Choo’s second novel, “The Night
Tiger,” that’s essentially all readers
know. We’re not sure how the
doctor lost it or where it is now, let
alone why he so desperately wants
his houseboy, Ren, to get it back for
him. With hardly any explanation,
Dr. Macfarlane begs Ren from
his deathbed to find the finger
and return it to his grave within
49 days of his death. Ren agrees
to do his bidding, and soon finds
there is much more to the mystery
surrounding Dr. Macfarlane and
his missing finger than there had
first appeared.
The story, which is set in
Malya (an older name for what
is now modern-day Malaysia),
alternates between Ren’s point of
view and that of the novel’s other
protagonist, Ji Lin. Ji Lin is a
strong-minded and independent
girl who has sacrificed her dream
of continuing her education and
becoming a nurse in order to help
keep her family afloat. She has a
day job as a seamstress and works
at a dancing hall on the side to
earn enough money to pay off
her mother’s Mahjong gambling
debts. Ji Lin is a refreshingly
determined
and
strong-willed
female protagonist who frequently
outsmarts the men around her. Her
clever and humorous demeanor
makes it easy for readers to root
for her and makes the novel more
entertaining as a whole.
There’s also Ji Lin’s stepbrother,
Shin, who she grew up with but
hasn’t seen in months. Shin, who
has a somewhat guarded and stoic
personality from living in fear of
becoming like his abusive father,
is training in Singapore to become
a doctor. All of Ji Lin’s friends find
him utterly irresistible, but Ji Lin
has definitely, most certainly never
been interested in him (until now,
maybe).
Despite Ji Lin’s worries of
her stepfather discovering her
mother’s debts and her job in the
dance hall, everything appears to
be normal. But then, the deaths
begin. A salesman is discovered
dead on the side of the road. Dogs
disappear without any explanation,
never to be seen again. A woman is
found half-eaten on a plantation,
by what locals suspect was a
weretiger, a mythical creature that
shapeshifts between human and
tiger. And when Ji Lin pickpockets
a vial with a single finger in it from
a customer at the dance hall, it’s
clear that she and Ren are destined
to come together to unravel the
mystery surrounding the deaths
and weretigers side-by-side.
Choo (whose debut novel “The
Ghost Bride” is being adapted into
a TV show by Netflix) was born in
Malaysia and has imparted much
of her Malaysian and Chinese
culture into the story, a visual
highlight of the novel. From the
food the characters eat to the
clothes they wear and the places
they live, readers are exposed to
a part of the world and way of life
they may not be familiar with.
The idea of weretigers, which is at
the heart of the novel, also stems
from traditional tales and beliefs
that originated in Malaysia and
other parts of Asia, as Choo details
in a “notes” section in the back of
the novel. The motif of chinese
homonyms (words that sound or
are spelled alike but have different
meanings) is also heavily present
in “The Night Tiger,” as well as
themes of colonialism and tensions
between foreigners and locals in
villages.
The resulting novel is a blend
of culture, history and mythical
tales. Choo has crafted an exciting
and enjoyable story that bridges
the genres of mystery and fantasy
and has just the right amount of
thriller to keep readers on the edge
of their seats. Choo’s characters
are well-developed and intriguing,
and she unites them through a
complex plot she has expertly
weaved together. Even without
such strong characterization and
plot, the cultural road trip the novel
provides is reason enough to read
“The Night Tiger.”
‘The Night Tiger’ moves
with tribute to Malaysia
SOPHIE WASLOWSKI
Daily Arts Writer
BOOK REVIEW
NETFLIX
The fetishization
of reading is
dangerous
because, at the
risk of sounding
extreme, it makes
reading mean
nothing; it strips
the things that
make reading
what it is — its
precision and
sensitivity, its
union of the past
and the future
and its feeling of a
continue tradition.
‘The Night
Tiger’
Yangze Choo
Flatiron Books
Feb. 12, 2019
‘Miracle
Workers’
Pilot
TBS
Tuesday, 10:30 p.m.