5A — Friday, September 6, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
By Bruce Haight
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/06/19
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
09/06/19
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Friday, September 6, 2019
ACROSS
1 Source of
seasonal color
5 Like bubble
baths
10 Golfer at Royal
Troon, often
14 “I’m buying!”
15 “America” soloist
in “West Side
Story”
16 It parallels a
radius
17 Hot spot
18 Philanthropic
football player?
20 Varieties
22 “Diana” singer
23 Stooge Howard
24 Football player
who’s PR-savvy?
27 Head for the hills
28 Spots
29 Groovy cousin
30 Usher
32 No different from,
with “the”
35 “One more
thing ... ”
36 Football player
with a line?
40 Work out ahead
of time
41 Appropriate
42 Targets
45 Fjord kin
46 Book jacket info
49 Goal feature
50 Football player
with management
skills?
54 Hubbub
55 Fictional
hunchbacked
helper
56 Like many
windows
57 Football player at
the beach?
61 It’s abuzz with
activity
62 Cover for an ear
63 Ending with poly-
64 Chills
65 “At Last” singer
James
66 Monopoly stack
67 Friend of Mary
Poppins
DOWN
1 Start of a kid’s
show-offy cry
2 Painfully wished
one had
3 Changes, as a
law
4 Luxury handbag
brand
5 Give somewhat
6 Start to cycle?
7 Backless sofa
8 Period of work
9 “Sandman” or
“Joltin’ Joe”
10 Long sandwich
11 Seafood
sandwich
12 Headed the right
way
13 Fallen for
19 Long-nosed fish
21 Joe’s 2008
election
counterpart
25 Lingerie item,
briefly
26 Blissful settings
31 Like dried mud
32 Govt. IDs
33 Time of one’s
life?
34 Harsh
36 Hit one that was
caught on the
warning track,
say
37 Acknowledgment
of being sunk?
38 Parisian friend
39 Hold tight
40 Pizazz
43 Barely more than
not at all
44 Pulled
46 “No fighting,
now”
47 “The nerve!”
48 Weird to the
max
51 Drunkard
52 Ticked off
53 Indian title of
respect
58 Reggae
relative
59 Wine choice
60 No and J
What I’ve Been Listening To:
Rostam’s shining ‘Half-Light’
Sometime in early 2017, when
re-shelving
scores
at
the
music
library (my job at the time) I found a
“21st-century songbook,” about the
same size and shape as the copies of
the “Great American Songbook” that
were a few shelves away. It had piano
reductions, chords and the fully noted
melodies for pop songs from 2000-2011.
It was odd to see these songs
represented this way. Like many other
people my age, I experienced these
songs as sound first, and I didn’t have
to seek them out — I heard them on
tinny school bus speakers, on phone
speakers, in the background at grocery
stores. They seemed too ubiquitous to
be boiled down into notes on a page.
Is it even possible to reduce most
music in the 21st century to notation?
Increasingly, the role of the producer
isn’t to realize a composition or even
to create something from nothing, but
to act like a sort of sonic beachcomber,
collecting bits and pieces of sound from
everywhere, layering and warping
them like a collage artist. With the
dissolution of rigid genre boundaries
comes a heady, ceiling-less world of
sonic possibility.
The producer and singer-songwriter
Rostam Batmanglij (who performs
and records under his first name) is a
producer who leaves the seams from
this process audible, and the result is
disarming and totally unique. His 2017
album “Half-Light” has this oddly
half-finished quality to it, like all the
screws haven’t been tightened and the
levels haven’t been quite adjusted all
the way. Most of these songs are about
a minute too long but it doesn’t bother
me a bit, because the soundworld of this
album is so wonderfully luminous that
I feel like I could live in it. Orchestral
strings, burbling digital synthesizers
and Middle Eastern instruments drift
through a sonic landscape that seems
to hover over the main current of
musical history. He sings quietly but
forcefully, and is equally capable of a
fluttery falsetto as he is of a no-holds-
barred yell (“Rudy” has both in quick
succession). There are gestures of
outright anachronism, like the Baroque
accompaniment figures in “Sumer”
and “Don’t Let It Get To You” that
could have been shaken from the
pages of an introductory music theory
text, and almost bizarrely futuristic
moments, like the almost unintelligibly
distorted spoken word bit at the end of
“When.” The album consistently defies
expectations, even within songs. The
songs dissolve into anarchic tangles
of sound or just stop entirely before
resuming.
Several writers and interviewers
have pointed out the specific queer
energy of Rostam’s music — he has
said that he wants to make music that
everyone can relate to, and of course his
songwriting is generally vague enough
that it could let in a multiplicity of
meanings. Certainly, it’s irresponsible
to read someone’s work as if it’s only an
expression of one particular identity,
but it’s equally irresponsible to ignore
it in favor of the “universal” (which
always ends up skewing normative
despite our best efforts).
The queerness of his music is probably
more apparent sonically than lyrically.
The album simply does not sound like
very much else that exists, thoroughly
repurposing anything it inherits. The
lyrics are vague, suggestions rather
than statements. There’s a lot in this
album about liminality paired with
vastness, suggesting the morning and
the ocean. He alludes to desires that
sometimes lack a referent, the simple
desire for something unnameable. On
“Rudy”: “Rudy said ‘what do you want
that nobody else has thought about?’ /
Rudy said ‘I want it now / But I don’t
know how to say it / Anyway I thought
it was.’” On “Don’t Let It Get To You”:
“I want to, even when it don’t make
sense, even when it don’t make sense
/ Actually I want to more when you
don’t make sense.” The album seems
to suggest a better world that doesn’t
quite exist yet, one that we can catch
snatches of in moments of tenderness —
on the title track, he sings “somewhere,
in the half-light, I could feel it coming
true.”
EMILY YANG
Daily Arts Writer
MUSIC NOTEBOOK
Maybe ‘Archer’ should
get a psychotherapist
For the past year, one of my good friends
has been begging me to watch a show called
“Archer,” claiming that its dark humor and
witty running jokes would suit my tastes
perfectly. I resisted, using school as an
excuse, until the University of Michigan’s
long summer break rolled around and I had
no reason not to tackle the 10 season (and
counting) series.
From the pilot, I was mistakenly led to
believe that this was a brainless — albeit
humorous — adult cartoon about a spy
agency, but the show quickly showed its
stripes. The protagonist, Sterling Archer
(H. Jon Benjamin, “Bob’s Burgers”) is an
obvious jerk, treats others as lesser and
can never stay focused on the mission at
hand. As the episodes go by, the audience is
given more reasons to despise his existence
as a deeply flawed character, and at times,
I found myself wondering how the show
could go on with such high ratings with
a character that has minimal redeeming
qualities.
Then, I noticed something interesting.
This ‘something’ was the flashbacks to
Archer’s childhood. The flashbacks revealed
how his mother, Malory Archer, (Jessica
Walter, “Arrested Development”) raised
him, although she was mostly absent and
extremely harsh when she was present.
All this time, I’ve been judging Archer’s
character based off the actions in his
adulthood, but these flashbacks made me
realize that like any of us, Archer was a
product of his childhood.
Earlier on in the series, we find out
that Archer was shipped off to boarding
school, and in “Job Offer,” (Season One,
Episode Nine) we learn that at some point
in his childhood, his mother moved without
telling his school. Archer tries to get home
by himself, and he eventually ends up in
a police station. In present day, Malory
defends herself, saying “He couldn’t pick up
a phone book?” Terrible right? It gets worse.
“Jeu Monegasque” (Season Two, Episode
11), flashes back to a Halloween night in
Archer’s childhood, when he loses a game
of cards to Malory and later vomits all the
alcohol she made him drink, even though
he was a child. She scolds him for losing the
card game, then for not handling his alcohol,
and in the present, he carries with him a
severe gambling and alcohol addiction. This
episode reveals one of the most obvious
reasons why Archer has these addictions,
and it makes me wonder whether we as an
audience can blame him for them. If we look
at him as an adult, then yes, he’s maybe one
of the biggest jerks on network television.
But if we factor in the crucial context of
his childhood misery, then we can see that
he’s essentially a child in a man’s body. He’s
stunted, and can we blame him?
In
Kohlberg’s
stages
of
moral
development, the preconventional stage
consists of children behaving in ways they
see fit to avoid punishment. As time goes
on, people start to develop their own moral
compass and become fully-formed humans.
Archer is constantly trying to cover up his
mistakes to avoid the wrath of his mother,
which is an action we can all resonate with
from our own childhoods. There are few
instances where Archer acts upon what’s
right simply because he thinks it is, so it’s
clear that he’s stunted in one way or another.
So,
the
final
question:
Should
we
determine people as good or bad based on
their actions, or is it important to recognize
the context from which these actions
developed? In a world where cancel culture
can pull up old tweets from a decade ago
and take down a career in an instant, isn’t
it important to realize that everyone comes
from their own blocked out pains and
traumas that cause them to act in ways that
are socially frowned upon? Archer says yes,
but right now, the world begs to differ.
There is a 10,000-kilometer-long concrete
wall surrounding the entirety of the United
Kingdom. The world has been shredded by
The Change, a climatic disaster that has caused
oceans worldwide to swell. The remains of the
UK are governed by groomed politicians who
are showered in special privileges. In waves,
“Others” come desperately to the Wall’s edge to
be turned away or killed. “The Wall” is just as
ominous and politically drenched — if not more
so — as its title suggests.
Longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, John
Lanchester’s fifth novel unabashedly turns
up the use of metaphor to craft his dystopian
world. It’s clear from the starting gun that he’s
out to deliver a message on immigration and the
dangers of environmental ignorance. A weakly-
veiled future United Kingdom established in the
first pages, the story surrounds Kavanagh — or
Chewy, as his company calls him — who has been
recruited for his mandatory two-year service as
a Defender on the Wall. Lanchester bolts into a
second-person opening here: “It’s cold on the
Wall. That’s the first thing that everyone tells
you…” which seems to suggest that the previous
Booker winner is out to produce more than just a
regurgitated, sloppy dystopian piece, but rather
something evocative, brave and literarily fresh.
Readers are introduced to Kavanagh as he is
introduced to the ill-omened, danger-nipped
blankness of the Wall. Although this second-
person foray is washed away after a few pages,
the effect remains. Effortlessly and quickly,
Lanchester achieves the intrigue of young
adult fiction while developing a style capable of
moving a reader with prose.
Unfortunately, only the former facet is
maintained. Spending twelve hour shifts each
day on the Wall facing the sea, Kavanagh falls
in love with a woman in his company. He trains
and encounters Others. He visits his distant and
guilt-ridden parents on his time off. And then the
worst happens: Following an attack on the Wall
in which Others are unintentionally allowed
through, Kavanagh and his and associates are
forced to leave their protected home country.
They are forced out to sea to become Others.
To his credit, Lanchester crafts a fantastic
pushing-your-bedtime-to-read
novel.
“The
Wall” never sees a dull passage — even in sections
describing Kavanagh merely watching the sea
from his post, Lanchester creates an aura of
oncoming danger (even when there is none) that
makes the work impossible to quit. But while
these moments of unyielding suspense make
“The Wall” as fun as YA Fiction, the remainder of
the novel unfortunately mismanages this style.
Lanchester does not allow his story to breach
the wall of this Suzanne Collins-like brevity and
three-quarters character development. As in
fellow Booker longlister, “My Sister, the Serial
Killer,” Lanchester’s writing never jumps above
average.
But it’s also clear that in developing a
dystopian landscape Lanchester has set out to
do more than merely write something literarily
impressive. From its inception, the environment
of “The Wall” is metaphorically-charged enough
that its clear what Lanchester wants to say. A
message sympathetic to both immigration and
climate activists boils beneath the book’s surface.
But does Lanchester succeed in cultivating it?
The short answer is no.
In her poem on the experience of a refugee
and immigrant, poet Warsan Shire ends her
work with a sharp tone: “I’ll see you on the other
side.” It is a suggestion that stings with the reality
of a displaced person — how easily it can happen
to anyone. Do not neglect me, Shire seems to
warn. It could be you. To an extent, “The Wall,”
with a relative success, reflects this approach
to
imagining
immigration.
Very
quickly,
characters in “The Wall” go from those keeping
migrants out to desperate migrants themselves.
Lanchester repeats this mantra of “what I once
had” throughout the novel. From the start,
Kavanagh has nearly everything he could want;
he manages to complain listlessly about the cold
air outside. By the end of the novel, he is left
speechless at the mere sight of an oil lamp. Long-
term transitions like this do a sufficient job of
entering the story into the political conversation,
and dare to force empathy for migrants a country
would dare to keep out.
Though beyond this one trend, Lanchester
never manages to deliver the blow that other
science fiction novels (say, “The Handmaid’s
Tale” or “Cat’s Cradle”) achieve. This is primarily
due to a lack of strong characterization for
Kavanagh. Prepared to shoot desperate refugees
on sight, the main character in “The Wall” never
has much thought about the society he protects.
This indifference is not the stinging type that
acts as a magnet to force readers to acknowledge
the scenario themselves. Readers simply don’t
care. Without this acknowledgement and
without many humanizing glimpses of The
Others outside of the Wall, it is too easy to forget
about the political implications established from
the start.
‘The Wall’ is almost significant
BOOK REVIEW
JOHN DECKER
Daily Book Review Editor
SOPHIA YOON
Daily Arts Writer
TV NOTEBOOK
FXX
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
The Wall
John Lanchester
W.W. Norton & Company
Jan. 17, 2019
Most of these songs are about a minute
too long but it doesn’t bother me a bit,
because the soundworld of this album is
so wonderfully luminous that I feel like
I could live in it
Like any of us,
Archer was a
product of his
childhood