The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Friday, April 5, 2019 — 5

The 57th Ann Arbor Film 
Festival came to a close on Sunday 
night with a screening of some of 
this year’s award-winning short 
films. While The Daily’s coverage 
of the festival has largely focused 
on feature-length entrants, the 
eight shorts presented on Sunday 
ran the gamut of film-making 
techniques, 
packing 
a 
wide 
spectrum of innovation into 74 
minutes. A few of the films stood 
out as exceptionally engaging.
As an art history major, I 
particularly enjoyed “Running 
in Circles,” a short silent film by 
Ei Toshinari and Duy Nguyen. 
Shot at Robert Smithson’s “Spiral 
Jetty,” a work of land art near 
Rozel Point in Utah, the film 
shows a man running through the 
spiral from multiple perspectives. 
This union of art forms was a 
common theme among a few of 
the shorts. Most notably, Cheri 
Gaulke’s 
short 
documentary 
“Gloria’s 
Call” 
followed 
the 
studies and travels of Gloria 
Orenstein in the 1970s, sharing 
the stories of her friendships 
and encounters with leading 
female artists of the surrealist 
movement. 
“Gloria’s 
Call” 
explores femininity, spirituality 
and surrealism through a feminist 
lens; a refreshing presentation 
of 
surrealism’s 
oft 
forgotten 

heroines. “We Were Hardly More 
Than Children,” a film by Cecelia 
Condit, incorporates the Francis 
Bacon-esque paintings of Diane 
Messinger to explore memory 
and pain. The film’s dream-like 
presentation makes the narrative, 
a story of an illegal abortion in 
1969, even more gut-wrenching.
My clear favorite however 
was “La Via Divina (The Divine 
Way)” by Ilaria di Carlo. A 
parody of “Dante’s Inferno,” the 
approximately 
15-minute 
film 
depicts a woman descending 
an infinite staircase. Beautiful 
staircases are shown one after 
another, each time the same 
woman begins from the top of the 
frame and continues her descent. 
All sorts of architectural forms 
are represented in the staircases: 
industrial, Victorian, neoclassical. 
Most staircases circle infinitely 
downward in spirals, ellipses and 
squares, while some proceed in 
a straight line. This ridiculously 
playful film is cinema at its 
most essential: Beautiful forms 
depicted in motion, vivid color 
and rich texture, a score which 
complements the direction to 
highlight shifts in architectural 
style and mood.
With “La Via Divina,” Ilaria 
di 
Carlo 
won 
the 
Barbara 
Aronofsky Latham Award for an 
emerging 
experimental 
video 
artist. “We Were Hardly More 
Than Children” took the Eileen 

Maitland Award, and “Running 
in 
Circle” 
won 
the 
George 
Manupelli 
Founder’s 
Spirit 
Award, 
while 
“Gloria’s 
Call” 
was awarded Best Documentary 
Film. Other films shown at the 
screening 
ventures 
into 
the 
more avant-garde. For example, 
“Phantom Ride Phantom” by 
Siegfried A. Fruhaul, winner of 
a Jury Award, was a jarring and 
darkly post-modern symphony 
of aggressive audio over flashing 
photographs of railroad tracks. 
“As Above, So Below” by Cooper 
Holoweski used a split screen 
to develop the simultaneously 
endearing and unsettling notion 
that a whole universe may exist 
within every neutron — that our 
whole existence may lie within a 
microscopic particle in a larger, 
super-universe. This film won 
the 
PROCAM 
Best 
Regional 
Filmmaker Award.
The Ann Arbor Film Festival’s 
embrace 
of 
experimentation 
in film is laudable. The award-
winning shorts presented on 
Saturday instilled in me a new 
appreciation 
for 
innovative 
filmmaking by pushing me away 
from a canonical perspective on 
the art of film. While shorts may 
be an occasionally overlooked 
subsection 
of 
cinema, 
they 
contain 
some 
of 
the 
most 
artistic implementation of film’s 
unique qualities as a medium of 
expression.

The final day at the AAFF

ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL COVERAGE

ROSS ORGIEFSKY
Daily Arts Writer

It is only rational to expect 
wonders from Claudia Rankine. 
It would be foolish not to, really, 
especially after her unflinching 
“Citizen: An American Lyric,” 
a masterpiece that received 
uncountable 
awards 
and 
that has already bled — with 
seeming permanence — into 
the University of Michigan’s 
English department. Rankine 
is often lionized for 
her unique capacity 
to address race and 
expose 
its 
biased-
invisibility in poetry. 
Imagine the literary 
world’s 
excitement, 
then, upon the news 
that 
Rankine 
had 
written a play.
“The White Card” 
is Rankine’s newest 
work 
to 
appear 
between stage wings, 
and 
it 
is 
violently 
visceral. The play is 
about a couple of art 
collectors and a Black 
artist, all three placed 
in 
the 
precarious 
aftermath of the entrance of 
the Trump administration. The 
couple, Charles and Virginia 
Spencer, in tandem with their 
art dealer Eric, invite Charlotte 
over in an attempt to woo her 
into selling art to Charles’ 
collection 
and 
foundation. 
It’s an objectively good match 
— 
fantastic 
artist, 
hungry 
art collectors. But it is also a 
precarious match: Charlotte’s 
art 
centers 
on 
the 
Black 
experience and its nuances, 
trying to offer a lens into the 
space where few are allowed. 
Charles and Virginia are white, 
both 
with 
a 
near-obsessive 
desire to do good politically, 
collecting art pieces on the 
experience of Black suffering. By 
the time the Spencers’ activist 
son, Alex, joins 
the 
dinner 
a 
quarter of the 
way 
into 
the 
play, the tension 
is choking.
Much of “The 
White Card,” to 
an extent, feels 
like that scene 
in “Get Out” — 
the one where 
Rose’s 
father, 
to the wince of 
the 
audience, 
goes out of his 
way to tell Chris 
that he “would 
have voted for 
Obama 
for 
a 

third time.” It is an unveiled 
attempt to pander to a Black 
man and to assuage one’s own 
white guilt, to convince oneself 
that they are the opposite of 
racist and to justify it to a person 
of color.
The entirety of “The White 
Card” 
is 
brimming 
with 
experiences like this, though 
Rankine takes things a step 
further. For one, the Spencers’ 
underlying tones are in check 
by their son. Though more 
importantly, the Spencers are 

not deliberate racists. They are 
both white and liberal advocates 
(or they try to be). They work 
outwardly to, in their view, 
combat racism by purchasing 
Black work.
Obviously, the classical white 
liberal in the era of Trump is a 
controversial and complex arc to 
examine. Delightfully, Rankine 
is not deterred.
Rankine’s judicious work on 
character make the two scenes 
of play even more provocative 
for readers. Each member of the 
six-person cast is placed deftly 
in the play, each stuffed full of 
lines almost uncomfortable with 
their specificity and attention to 
detail. It’s a design that makes 
attention crucial for readers, but 
one that pays off — readers pick 

up on tics and shortcomings 
of 
each 
character. 
Subtle, 
inappropriate 
remarks 
from 
the Spencers and Charlotte’s 
reaction to them feel so accurate 
that it’s nearly painful. Rankine 
uses the medium of conversation 
to flip the switch and reveal 
a 
conversation’s 
unbearable 
tensions 
in 
a 
single 
line. 
Characters always feel as though 
they are getting at something — 
each line of conversation seems 
to be a nod to an ideology or 
canned statement we employ 
when we discuss race. 
Rankine uses this cast 
of characters to offer 
a display of the white, 
unsure, mediocre liberal 
at its finest. Then for the 
final, stirring scene, she 
flips this on its head: 
She 
addresses 
such 
shortcomings head on.
Admittedly, 
there 
comes a point in “The 
White 
Card” 
where 
things 
began 
to 
feel 
counterfeit. 
Rankine’s 
commentary on race and 
politics are fantastic, but 
it feels as though that 
was all she had to talk 
about. Virginia Spencer 
speaks an almost unbelievable 
roll of accidentally insensitive 
comments, and Alex cannot go 
a line, it seems, without calling 
out his parents’ shortcomings. 
While 
this 
is 
not 
dry, 
it 
sometimes feels constructed and 
artificial. It appears as though 
Rankine felt the need to check 
off every possible encounter one 
could have with race in the span 
of a single work.
Maybe, though, this is what 
“The White Card” is meant to 
be. In all of its cringe-worthy 
moments, 
awkward 
silences 
and 
unmuted 
realizations, 
“The White Card” is — an all-
encompassing 
conversation 
centered on race for a new 
age of activism and change. 
A conversation in a complex, 
brash 
voice 
that examines 
culpability 
and 
what 
progress 
means. 
It 
is 
time, 
probably, 
that 
we 
listen to this 
conversation. 
And 
“The 
White 
Card” 
offers 
it 
to 
audiences 
from a stage 
where 
veils 
are 
removed 
for 
every 
viewer to see.

Rankine’s latest is gritty

BOOK REVIEW

JOHN DECKER
Daily Arts Writer

The White Card

Claudia Rankine

Graywolf Press

Mar. 29, 2019

Each member of the six-person cast is 
placed deftly in the play, each stuffed 
full of lines almost uncomfortable with 
their specificity and attention to detail

I’m trying to pinpoint the 
moment when I first realized 
FX’s “Better Things” was 
something special. It might 
have been within the first few 
minutes of the show, when 
single mother, Sam (Pamela 
Adlon, “Star vs. the Forces of 
Evil”) is talking to her youngest 
daughter, Duke (Olivia Edward, 
“The Outside Story”) 
in a mall bathroom. 
They’re 
discussing 
the dads in Duke’s 
class, some of whom 
Sam has hooked up 
with in the past.
“What 
about 
Charles’s dad? What 
about 
him?” 
asks 
Duke.
“Is he tall?” Sam 
jokes.
“To 
me,” 
Duke 
says.
Though 
they 
may seem mundane 
or 
simple 
to 
the 
untrained 
eye, 
so 
many little things — 
the location, Duke’s 
response, the matter-
of-factness with which Sam 
approaches her love life — work 
together to elevate “Better 
Things” above any shows it 
might be compared to, though 
it’s difficult to even imagine 
anything similar.
“Better 
Things” 
follows 
Sam Fox, an actress and single 
mother raising three daughters: 
sweet 
Duke, 
testy 
Frankie 
(Hannah 
Alligood, 
“The 
Divergent Series: Allegiant”) 
and 
entitled 
Max 
(Mikey 
Madison, 
“Monster”). 
The 
tone is less “Gilmore Girls” 
and more like that opening 
sequence of “Lady Bird,” when 
Saoirse Ronan throws herself 
out of the moving car. The show 
is an extended inquiry into 
the inventive and inaccurate 
ways that daughters project 
introspection onto the world, 
how mothers must constantly 
decide whether to administer or 
withhold the truth in response.
One 
strength 
of 
“Better 
Things” is that the show’s 
focus 
on 
parenthood 
and 

childhood puts four different 
mother-daughter 
dynamics 
at the forefront. Sam and her 
oldest daughter, Max, alternate 
between 
intense 
love 
and 
deep frustration; one feeling 
often amplifies the other. As a 
senior in high school, Max is 
old enough to think she knows 
her mother as a person outside 
their relationship, but she’s 
also young enough that this 
image of her mother is wildly 

inaccurate. Their tiffs are some 
of the show’s best work: Max 
says 
something 
ridiculous, 
Sam 
takes 
the 
bait. 
Max 
instinctively is open with her 
mother, but Sam prefers that 
she hides things. One of their 
first scenes alone in the pilot 
exemplifies this.
After Max asks Sam to buy 
her good weed, Sam tells her 
daughter not to share quite so 
much.
“Why, you’re my mom, I 
want you to know if I have sex 
or if I want to get high,” Max 
replies.
“Ah! No, hide things from 
me,” Sam says.
Later, Frankie bursts in while 
Sam is trying to watch porn. 
Spread-eagle on her mother’s 
bed, she wonders aloud if she 
should undergo female genital 
mutilation as a protest.
“Get out!” Sam yells in 
response.
The scene is typical of 
“Better Things”: a daughter 
intruding on her mother, a child 

saying something insane with 
complete, deadpan seriousness. 
“Better 
Things” 
treats 
the 
absurd urgency of adolescence 
as real but idiotic, a drive for 
self-expression that endures 
into adulthood. The show is 
unique among family dramas 
in that it never shies away from 
recognizing the never-ending 
push and pull between parents 
and children. Adlon, who both 
writes and stars in the show, 
is 
continuously 
finding 
new 
ways 
to acknowledge the 
complicated net of 
desire and disgust 
that makes a family.
It’s rare that a 
show 
immediately 
creates 
a 
fully-
formed world, but 
this is a feat that 
“Better 
Things” 
manages 
easily. 
The 
characters 
feel real in the best 
way, 
eschewing 
universality 
for 
specificity. 
What’s 
most 
striking 
and 
enjoyably 
familiar 
is the raw friction of 
seeing what happens 
when children and parents need 
radically different things from 
each other. Rather than leaning 
on tropes, “Better Things” 
takes on the hilarity and grief of 
the mundane: a woman giving 
her dogs their ear medicine, a 
daughter storming out of the 
DMV, a child crying over a 
nightmare. Nothing is special, 
so everything is.
Nearly every scene in “Better 
Things” is infused with an 
awareness of how quickly a 
moment can escalate, how 
sometimes every conversation 
between a mother and daughter 
feels like a test: of love, of 
mutual 
understanding, 
of 
how well-versed each is in 
the needs of the other. Now in 
its third season, the show is 
an underappreciated gem in 
both writing and performance 
— 
the 
rare 
comedy-drama 

that 
simultaneously 

embraces 
poignancy 
and 
humor, 
understanding 
the 
impossibility of separating the 
two.

On the ‘Lady Bird’ of TV

TV REVIEW

MIRIAM FRANCISCO
Daily Arts Writer

Better Things

FX

Thursdays @ 10 p.m.

“Lowkey? Show Me the Body 
is for the freaks,” says frontman/
banjoist Julian Cashwan Pratt 
of the experimental hardcore 
band Show Me the Body in an 
interview with Kerrang! last 
week. Upon listening to the 
singles for their new album Dog 
Whistle, this sounds like a bold 
claim. Singles “Camp Orchestra” 
and 
“Madonna 
Rocket,” 
though 
excellent, appear to 
be pretty typical fare 
coming from the New 
York City hardcore 
scene. 
However, 
within the context 
of the album, the 
singles serve a much 
larger purpose: They 
help to tell a story 
that, contrary to the 
singles’s 
political 
tones, is collaborative 
and 
personal, 
conveyed in a way 
that every listener can 
relate to it in someway.
Lead single “Camp 
Orchestra” begins the album 
with a bang, despite its own 
slow start. The first sounds 
of the track are a rumbling 
bass guitar and a twinkling, 
meandering banjo. They are the 
only instruments for the song’s 
first two minutes and 10 seconds 
(the drums don’t even start until 
two minutes and 28 seconds 
into the song!), and that’s when 
the song begins to catch fire. 
Inspired by the Auschwitz-
Birkenau Memorial and their 
own Jewish heritage, Show Me 
the Body crafted a song that 
acutely describes the hardship 
and plight of their predecessors. 
The song is personal to the band 

while still remaining valuable 
and important to all listeners 
even if they have no personal 
connection to the subject matter.
While “Camp Orchestra” is 
more sonically typical of NYC 
hardcore, tracks like “Not for 
Love,” 
“Forks 
and 
Knives” 
and “USA Lullaby” stray far 
from the norm. For someone 
more accustomed to hardcore 
and punk music, these tracks 
will take some getting used to. 
Each song, especially “Not for 

Love,” pulls many of its defining 
elements from noise rock. “Not 
for Love” features a blown-out 
bass guitar reminiscent of an 808 
and punishing vocals ranging 
from guttural grunts to piercing 
shrieks 
and 
everywhere 
in 
between.
No part of Dog Whistle is 
typical. The sounds that Show 
Me the Body explores have 
probably 
never 
used 
before 
on a hardcore record. “Badge 
Grabber” utilizes both muted 
quantized drum loops and live 
drumming for an effect that is 
both a breath of fresh air and 
suffocating. 
“USA 
Lullaby” 
distorts its instrumentals so 

far beyond their limits that you 
can almost hear each artifact 
of sound. This is all makes for a 
very exciting and challenging 
work, but the album’s crowning 
achievement, 
“Madonna 
Rocket,” is also its least daring.
“Madonna Rocket” is one of 
the most beautiful and touching 
hardcore songs ever created. 
That’s a bold claim, but the track 
is wholly worthy of such praise. 
On “Madonna Rocket,” Show Me 
the Body takes the inclusive and 
community-oriented 
lyrics and fast-paced, 
jagged instrumentals 
from 
youth 
crew 
legends like Gorilla 
Biscuits and Youth of 
Today and filters them 
through their twisted 
creative 
collective/ 
think tank known as 
Corpus. The result 
is a triumphant yet 
brutal track. Cashwan 
Pratt’s 
vocals 
take 
center 
stage 
over 
the rest of the band 
as he growls, “(W)
hen I meet someone 
that’s good, I want to 
die with them / Dead 
friends, I still wanna say goodbye 
to them / Aside from me, Aside 
from them / All I have is family, 
I will die with them.”
With 
Dog 
Whistle, 
Show 
Me the Body aimed to create 
a community that the freaks 
could call home, and that they 
did. They also did so much more, 
creating an affecting album that 
is bound to resonate with all 
listeners in some capacity. At 
the very least, Dog Whistle will 
allow new listeners to access a 
world bigger than their own and 
give them a new perspective on 
community. Show Me the Body 
may be for the freaks, but it is 
also for everyone.

‘Dog Whistle’ challenges

ALBUM REVIEW

Dog Whistle

Show Me the Body

Loma Vista Recordings

JIM WILSON
Daily Arts Writer

