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.

