The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Friday, October 4, 2019 — 5A
When I was around 10 or 11, I begged my
mom over and over again for a copy of Tiger
Beat magazine. You know the type — they’re
hard to miss, with a neon cover, an obtrusive
face of a teenage heartthrob and headlines
like “Take a quiz to find out what color your
birthday cake will be” plastered across their
glossy surfaces. Tiger Beat and other teen
magazines like it were more than just sugar-
drenched literary beginnings for preteen
girls and boys. For me the full-size poster
of Zac Efron that hung on the back of my
door was a constant companion, keeping me
company from the moment I pulled him out of
a magazine until a friend who slept over said it
was creepy. May he rest in peace.
There’s nothing wrong with a shrine to your
celebrity crush, especially in that hormonal
hell we affectionately call tweenagehood.
But in the modern age, the flashy quizzes and
posters and kissing tips that don’t actually
work are no longer relegated to the pages of
magazines like Tiger Beat and Seventeen —
instead, they’re very, very online. Somehow,
in the last 10 years the tabloid media and its
tried-and-true tropes of sensationalism have
merged with teen media to create something
of an amorphous monster, constantly hungry
for bits of personal information left by careful
(or not-so-careful) celebrities. It’s invasive, but
not in the cute way it used to be. We all had our
Zac Efrons at age 13, but should we really still
care about the girlfriend of a famous young
man? His favorite food? Colors he likes girls
to wear?
I woke up one day during the summer, rolled
over and found on my Twitter feed the same
Seventeen Magazine article posted seven
times in a row. The headline read “Everything
You Need to Know About Tom Holland’s
Girlfriend Olivia Bolton.” Tom Holland of
“Spider-Man” fame apparently had a new
girlfriend. But the comments left alongside the
article expressed outrage. “Do we really need
to know this much about a normal woman?”
one asked. “Leave her alone,” another echoed.
I hesitated, then clicked on the link, which
took me to a pretty standard list of web-
sleuthed information about poor Olivia. I
can’t even imagine the lengths to which the
reporter searched for some of the facts noted,
which dive deeply into her education, age and
everywhere she had been seen with Holland
in the past few months. “Tomdaya stans
everywhere thoroughly freaked out, horrified
at the fact that Tom and Zendaya may not
actually be an item,” the author wrote. I rolled
my eyes.
Seventeen Magazine isn’t just for 17-year-
olds anymore. Really, nothing is. The loss of
those neon covers and the glossy pages in our
hands has made it easier to fall into a clickbait
trap. No tween is going to beg her mother for a
copy of Tiger Beat because all she has to do is
look up her questions, her quizzes, her deepest
darkest loves on Google. The tween mentality
is no longer just for tweens; it’s for everyone
and their mothers, literally. And for people like
Olivia Bolton, that is a big problem. We don’t
need to know everything about her. No self-
respecting adult person does. The teen media
industry used to sugarcoat it, to wonder where
her clothes were from and where to get them.
Now, people on the internet send her nasty
messages trying to find out more, mixing the
worlds of fiction, media and reality beyond
recognition. Our hunger for information isn’t
surface-level, isn’t cute, isn’t a phase anymore.
That’s what it used to be, a phase. But as the
Tom Hollands and Olivia Boltons of the world
continue to proliferate in celebrity gossip, it’s
clearer and clearer to see how this aspect of
our culture has changed. The introduction
of the internet into the equation has spun
it out of control, allowing everyone to go
deeper than the pages of a poppy magazine.
There are no limits or ethics. There is only
opportunity to go deeper, and sometimes too
deep. No, we don’t need to know everything
about Tom Holland’s new girlfriend. As adults,
with our own interests and relationships and
responsibilities, do we really need to know the
personal lives of celebrities at all?
You don’t need to know
CLARA SCOTT
Daily Gender & Media Columnist
GENDER & MEDIA COLUMN
How long must Travis Miller wait for the recognition he
deserves? Will he ever receive it?
Travis Miller has made music under numerous stage
names, but his most impactful work has come under the
pseudonym Lil Ugly Mane. Despite his lack of recognition
outside of the underground scene (as well as certain
corners of the internet), Lil Ugly Mane is responsible for
the best Memphis rap by anyone not named Three 6 Mafia.
His most well-known work, Mista Thug Isolation, is a
hazy homage to early Memphis rap, but it’s far from a rote
reproduction: Miller imbues the album with a dreamlike
and colorful flavor that marks the project as distinctly his
own.
His final album under the Lil Ugly Mane moniker,
Oblivion Access, is a bolder and experimental, if less
accessible, project. Not as directly influenced by the
Memphis style, Oblivion Access is much more frustrated
and toxic. At times he can get a little preachy, especially
on “Columns,” but overall he pulls off his progression to a
more industrial, noisy sound quite well.
However, his best work is not to be found on this, or any,
album, but instead on two of his singles: “On Doing An Evil
Deed Blues” and “Uneven Compromise.”
The former is a plunderphonic collage of old-school East
Coast hip hop, which segues into a beautiful cloud-rap
reflection on the creative process and Travis’s relationship
to his own output. The beat itself, produced by Travis, is
gorgeous and kaleidoscopic.
During the bridge, Travis states plainly one of the main
points he makes in “On Doing An Evil Deed Blues”: “The
blues weren’t born in a bunker.” This line has two points
of significance: the first is that the emotional resonance
behind blues music (and,
by implication, all music) is
inseparable from the artist’s
actual life — no one can
write the blues if they’ve
never had them. The second
and
more
interesting
point is that creativity is a
dialectic process; that is, all
creative works are borne
out of an artist’s reaction to
and engagement with the
artistic expression and ideas that they have encountered
before. The intro is an overt expression of this idea, a sonic
collage assembled out of fragments of older works that
creates a coherent and new statement. “Art is imitation,
creation is forever,” he claims.
The other thematic aspect of the track is Travis’s
relationship to rap, and how it has changed over time. “I
used to like to rhyme when it was all about linguistics /
When Big L verses was like decoding hieroglyphics,” he
says; rap, for Travis, was always about his love for music,
and, as he reveals elsewhere in the song, while he once
dreamed of fame, he realizes that that was never his true
goal. These two themes are connected. In recalling his
early influences, Lil Ugly Mane comes to the broader
conclusion that no artist escapes the shadow of those who
initially turned on their passion.
Lil Ugly Mane’s other magnum opus is the 2014
track “Uneven Compromise.” The first few minutes are
dissonant, a near-satanic depiction of violence and misery.
Just when the darkness feels like it’s about to overwhelm
you, when the sickness is creeping in at the borders of
the listener’s mind, the floor falls out into a short-lived,
oddly-pastoral interlude. About five minutes in, the track
launches into one of the best examples of boom-bap
storytelling ever put on wax, a story of an old friend who
is hopelessly and permanently lost to drug addiction and
mental deterioration.
“Your homeboys change sometimes / The thoughts
rearrange in their brains sometimes / It’s too hard dealing
with the pain sometimes / But you gotta let go, you can’t
save their lives.” Lil Ugly Mane’s nihilism here is convincing
and painful. There is an overabundance of dark hip hop,
but there are very few songs that manage to make darkness
feel like such a powerful and all-encompassing force (as
opposed to a cheap trick designed to provoke, or lend the
artist a sense of gravitas).
Lil Ugly Mane’s ability to challenge the listener while
integrating such disparate
influences into a raw yet
cohesive work is that of a
creative master. His lack
of mainstream recognition
accentuates the themes of
his music — he is a forgotten
legend who never was,
living in the dark and damp
trenches of hip hop. He
wouldn’t want it any other
way.
Lil Ugly Mane: Almost legend
JONAH MENDELSON
Daily Arts Writer
MUSIC NOTEBOOK
As I read “The Testaments,” Margaret
Atwood’s latest Booker Prize-nominated novel, I
was reminded of a case study of Darwin’s finches I
learned about in an anthropology class I took last
year. Throughout the 1970s, biologists Peter and
Rosemary Grant observed the finch population
of the Galápogos Islands. As a result of a severe
drought that radically changed the food supply
available to the finches, natural selection worked
to alter the makeup of the population in response
to the demands of this new environment, resulting
in the production of a completely different species
of bird. The Grants disproved Darwin’s belief
that evolution needed hundreds or thousands of
years to significantly change a population — in
some cases, it only needs a few years to create
astounding change.
When it comes to Atwood’s “The Testaments,”
it’s arguable that things line up with the Grants’s
story quite well — only the novel’s characters are
the finches, and Gilead is the drought. In “The
Testaments,” we learn that Gilead, the apocalyptic
and theocratic dystopia of Atwood’s modern
classic “The Handmaid’s Tale,” has continued
its reign of terror well after the events of the
latter novel. However, while “The Handmaid’s
Tale” chronicled the very first years of Gilead,
readers of “The Testaments” get to witness what
has become of this regime — how it has evolved
in its cruelty and, more poignantly, how the
women who have grown up inside it hardly even
resemble the women who lived before them just
decades ago. The young girls who have grown
up inside Gilead might as well be a different
species — feminism is a foreign concept to them,
heinous crimes like murder and sexual assault are
everyday occurrences and they don’t even know
how to read.
Just as Darwin’s finches were products of a
drought that reshaped their environment, the
women of “The Testaments” are products of
Gilead and its culture of hate and shame and
oppression. The prospect of centuries upon
centuries of human advancement crumbling
within just a few decades is genuinely terrifying
and truly fascinating to read about, and Atwood’s
talent for visualizing this creatively is without a
doubt the novel’s greatest asset.
The haunting and frightening world of Gilead
introduced in “The Handmaid’s Tale” has made
its mark on our culture, spawning its own Emmy-
winning Hulu adaptation. There are many
reasons why “The Handmaid’s Tale” has had the
cultural impact it’s had — the parallels Atwood
draws between her fictional Gilead and our own
society’s internalized patriarchy are biting, deeply
disturbing and impossible to forget. Aside from
any political and social resonance the book might
have, though, “The Handmaid’s Tale” is simply a
great work of literature, a beautifully written and
fully realized account of one woman’s journey as
she’s forced to go through a living hell.
Given all of this, it’s clear that “The Testaments”
has a lot to live up to. You could say that the book
should be read as its own entity, independent
from its predecessor, but I don’t think this is
what Atwood wants from her readers at all — she
refers back to “The Handmaid’s Tale” constantly.
And although “The Testaments” is written from
the perspective of a different narrator (three
narrators, in fact), all three of the women it gives
voice to are intricately and permanently bonded
to Offred, and this bond is a central catalyst for
the decisions they end up making.
So, I’m going to compare “The Testaments”
to “The Handmaid’s Tale.” I think I have to.
And, as I contemplate their differences, I’m
more and more aware of the inferiority of “The
Testaments” in nearly every respect. For one, its
prose, in relation to “The Handmaid’s Tale” at
least, is unrefined and often unconvincing. One
narrator in particular utters lines so unnatural, so
cringeworthy I could hardly stomach them (“I am
fucking sorry, but we are in a hot mess emergency
here!”). At certain points it reads like a young
adult novel, which certainly isn’t detrimental in
and of itself but feels completely out of place in the
context of its predecessor.
Simply put, this kind of writing belongs
nowhere near a Booker Prize, and it certainly
wouldn’t be in the running for the award if it
weren’t the brainchild of Margaret Atwood. A
more glaring and upsetting criticism, though,
and what may just be the book’s fatal flaw, is the
superficial and stereotypical characterization of
its narrators Atwood opts for. All three narrators
are two-dimensional, archetypal embodiments
of the cultures they come from, and there simply
aren’t enough pages in this plot-heavy novel to
flesh them out further. These women deserve
more. They each deserve a novel of their own.
I don’t want to sound like I despise this book.
I don’t in the slightest. “The Testaments” is an
addictive read with an uplifting (albeit slightly
unearned) resolution. I admire its ambition, its
aspiration to give voice to as many women as
possible. Most importantly, it doesn’t make me
love “The Handmaid’s Tale” any less. Ultimately,
though, if I do decide to return to Gilead, it won’t
be by way of “The Testaments.”
‘Testaments’ disappoints
ELISE GODFRYD
Daily Arts Writer
MUSIC NOTEBOOK
I was as prepared as I could be going into the series
premiere of Chuck Lorre’s new series “Bob Hearts
Abishola” to cringe as much as humanly possible.
After all, the premise begs it. Middle-aged white man
courts Nigerian immigrant nurse? Nope, nothing
good can come of this. Yet I was pleasantly surprised
at the end to discover
that while the show isn’t
particularly
funny,
it
handles its subjects with a
surprising amount of grace
and nuance.
Bob (Billy Gardell, “Mike
and Molly”) is a successful
Detroit-based
workaholic
sock
salesman
who
is
introduced in the midst of
having a heart attack. In
his overnight stay at the
hospital, he is taken care
of a Nigerian nurse named
Abishola (Folake Olowofoyeku, “Transparent”) to
whom he takes an immediate liking. When she sings
him a Yoruba lullaby while he tries to relieve himself,
he’s a goner.
There was a lot of potential here to make the fact that
Abishola is Nigerian the butt of the joke. Likely due to
the influence of one of the show’s creators, British-
Nigerian comedian Gina Yashere, the day-to-day
aspects of the Nigerian immigrant experience are at
the forefront and are the most interesting parts of the
show. Abishola lives with her young son and relatives
Olu (Shola Adewusi, “Family Affairs”) and Tunde
(Barry Shabaka Henley, “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”)
in a cramped apartment and lives a life worlds
away from Bob. Yashere herself shows up as Kemi,
another Nigerian woman who is good friends with
Abishola, and notably, their conversations are entirely
in subtitled Yoruba.
The conversations between the various Nigerian
characters are also illuminating about the West
African and also broader immigrant experience.
Examples include a contentious conversation between
Abishola and her son in which she discourages him
from joining the track team in order to further
encourage him to study to become a doctor. While
cliché to an extent, these sentiments are familiar
to many other immigrant children. In addition to
these
more
substantive
discussions,
the
small
discussions
about
food
and other cultural tidbits
are equally important and
informative.
Even more thankfully,
Bob’s interest in Abishola
is sweet (if a bit sad) and
respectful and doesn’t ever
veer into creepy, fetishizing
stalker
territory.
While
Abishola
isn’t
quite
as
interested (and much more
focused
on
establishing
herself in the country), she is certainly slightly
charmed by the incredibly Midwestern Bob.
All things being said, the unfortunate part of the
show is that it’s just not particularly funny. The
first five minutes themselves include some yawn-
inducing fat and fart jokes, and it doesn’t get much
better at all. The few bright spots are the interactions
between Abishola and her relatives, with the latter’s
melodrama contrasting with the steelier pragmatism
of the former.
“Bob Hearts Abishola” is ultimately a mildly
funny yet quite sweet story of a courtship between
two different, equally lonely people. It treats its
immigrant subjects with much more nuance than
I imagined, and that in and of itself might make it
worth a watch.
‘Bob Hearts Abishola’ is well
intentioned but lacks laughs
SAYAN GHOSH
Daily Arts Writer
MUSIC NOTEBOOK
CBS
Bob Hearts
Abishola
Series Premiere
CBS
Mondays @ 8:30 p.m.
The
Testaments
Margaret Atwood
Sept. 10, 2019
Nan A. Talese
“Art is imitation,
creation is forever,” he
claims.