6 — Friday, December 6, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

What makes a good documentary? And why watch a 
documentary in the first place? By my own measure, if I 
can come out of watching one feeling a mixture of touched 
and hopeful, yet hopelessly enraged, I’d consider it pretty 
successful. Lynn Novick’s PBS documentary series 
“College Behind Bars” (produced by the legendary Ken 
Burns) is one of the few I’ve seen that accomplishes all of 
them. 
Through four one-hour episodes, Novick gives viewers 
a look into the Bard Prison Initiative, a program run 
by Bard College in a few prisons in New York state that 
allows a select few inmates those institutions to pursue 
associates and/or Bachelors degrees, identical to those 
given to students at Bard’s main campus in Annandale-
on-Hudson, New York. Through interviews with several 
of the students enrolled in the BPI program as well as its 
administrators and other officials, Novick fully captures 
the sanctuary that the program provides amid the chaos 
of the prison yards, as well as the efforts made to disrupt 
and prevent the spread of those sanctuaries. 
Much has been written, unfortunately, for decades 
now, about the disgraces of our civil justice system (i.e. 
Michelle Alexander’s excellent “The New Jim Crow”), 
a conversation that is intimately tied into the failings 
of the American prison system. While not necessarily 
unique on a global scale, yet repulsively backwards for a 
“developed” country, the cruelly punitive streak of our 
country’s prison system is a point reiterated by many of 
the interviewed students. They emphasize how while the 
idea of incarceration involves an obvious denial of liberty, 
the prisons they live in add insult to injury in a variety of 
dehumanizing ways, one of which is the constant artificial 
disruptions such as mandatory headcounts that make 
pursuing any form of education that much more difficult. 
 
 
 
Novick also makes the audience look inward, and truly 
examine where this punitive streak derives from. One 
of the more surprising revelations is that programs such 
as Bard are nearly entirely privately funded. Why not 

publicly? She shows evidence of a (quite bipartisan, mind 
you) concerted effort by politicians to whip up public 
resentment against those “evil felons” and deny them any 
sort of benefit while they are incarcerated. Who cares if 
that money is being spent instead to lock more people up 
in the first place (perhaps to do hard labor) and harass 
minorities? It’s not hard to blame the students when they 
rightly ridicule the idea that the time they serve is meant 
for “rehabilitation.” 
Another common thread that runs through all 
the interviews with the students, professors and 
administrators of the BPI program is just how beneficial it 
is to every single person involved. I’d be surprised if even 
the most ardent supporter of extra-punitive punishment 
would not waver a bit on their views after watching 
“College Behind Bars,” and the best outcome of the series 
would be more public support for programs like BPI that 
let the multitudes of incarcerated people in the country 
gain an opportunity for a better life.

Ken Burns strikes again: ‘Bars’

TV REVIEW

SAYAN GHOSH
Daily Arts Writer

The holidays aren’t always twinkle lights and chestnuts roasting over 
open fires. For some, it’s a hard reminder of things lost. For others, it’s a 
difficult warning of what’s still around. Some of us are lucky enough to 
call someplace “home” when the snow falls and the bells come jingling. 
But even for the lucky ones, being home can be stressful.
Boyfriend 
Matt 
(Brent Morin, “How 
to Be Single”) and 
girlfriend 
Emmy 
Quinn 
(Bridgit 
Mendler, “Good Luck 
Charlie”) travel from 
L.A. to Emmy’s native 
Philadelphia to spend 
the holidays with her 
family. There, Matt 
intends to make a 
good impression on 
the rest of the Quinns, 
but his plans get 
snuffed out early by 
Emmy’s patriarchal 
father Don (Dennis 
Quaid, “A Dog’s Journey”), a sheriff whose jurisdiction covers not just 
Philadelphia, but his entire family, too. Don’s a traditionalist, to say the 
least. He lives by a set of rules that he ensures his family follows to a tee. 

No drinking, Mass on Sundays and Christmas lights up for no more than 
10 days “because it isn’t Las Vegas.” Naturally, there are complications 
this Christmas. Emmy’s sister Kayla (Ashley Tisdale, “The Suite Life 
of Zack and Cody”) is getting a divorce. Her other sister Patsy (Siobhan 
Murphy, “Schitts Creek”) is having 
trouble conceiving. Her brother Sean 
(Hayes MacArthur, “Super Troopers 
2”) lost his job, and Don refuses to 
give Matt a chance. Just another 
Christmas as far as most 
of us are concerned.
If the plot sounds 
like it could border on 
the generic — perhaps 
even the conservative 
— you would be only 
half-right. There are moments in the first episode, and 
even the rest of the season, that champion traditionalism. 
These plaid-and-Carhartt-clad Quinns mean business. 
Men are men and ladies decorate the tree. Sure, it is a fish-
out-of-water family plot. Yes, some of the jokes encroach 
on outdatedness. But I don’t think that “Merry Happy 
Whatever” gets at anything other than what it’s like to live 
in a traditional, blue-collar family. And that includes the 
bonds that ultimately come with this kind of family.
The first episode is not representative of the entire show. 
The traditions established early on quickly get ruptured, 
and not even by the newly arrived boyfriend. Being a family is difficult, 
and there are natural fissures that erupt in between traditions. Some 
family members struggle with trying to recognize their sexuality, others 

with new-fangled ideas of equality. Even Don, the center of their steady, 
cautious universe, is having difficulty pursuing a new romance after 
being widowed for the better part of his adult life.
Even the in-laws struggle. Expressing themselves and their opinions 
is 
a 
constant 
balancing 
act 
with managing 
to 
stay 
under 
Don’s radar. The 
best of them is 
absolutely 
Joy 
(Elizabeth 
Ho, 
“Disjointed”), 
whose 
wit 
and 
charm 
effectively even 
out the rest of the cast’s frantic attempts to restabilize their continually-
swaying boat. An early interaction with an elderly lady that at first seems 
to be endearing quickly takes a sharp turn, but she handles it with a kind 
of confident, yet self-deprecating grace.
Some may be turned off by “Merry Happy Whatever,” and I 
understand that. A laugh-track was an interesting choice. In the end, it 
doesn’t really offer any answers or solutions. But there aren’t ever any 
satisfying conclusions to family trouble. We bumble our way through it. 
We say some things we probably shouldn’t say. In the end, those who 
love us forgive us, accept us and wake us up on Christmas Day by playing 
“Jingle Bell Rock” as loud as they can at 5 a.m. “Merry Happy Whatever” 
is about neither the “merry” nor the “happy.” It’s all about the “whatever” 
that we ultimately managed to get caught up in. It’s gross. It’s sweet. It’s 
just another Christmas, Hanukkah or December at home. It’s family.

‘Merry Happy Whatever’ is more jolly than it lets on

TV REVIEW

MAXWELL SCHWARZ
Daily Arts Writer

Merry Happy Whatever

Netflix

Streaming Now

As of right now, I am writing this with my iPod Nano stowed away 
in the bottom drawer of my bedroom dresser. I could sift through it 
the way I would sift through that drawer and revisit just as much 
of my 11-year-old interests. I trace my world back to 2010 with my 
parents’ references to the deaths of the CD and the radio. Somehow, 
2020 seems like a return to form with digital sales of music all but 
entombed. I cannot fathom a music world untethered from the 
streaming world. My interests are far too deep, shamelessly imposed 
by the algorithms of a streaming service. I lived through a time 
where MTV and award shows had the same influence as Spotify’s 
“Today’s Top Hits” playlist, but the transition between the two is 
as fuzzy as fiction to me. The 
span between Frank Ocean’s 2013 
Grammy win and 2017 Grammy 
protest measures a history I have 
yet to understand. Either way, the 
inception of Apple Music was the 
beginning of my appreciation for 
Ocean, too. 
The 
modern 
magic 
of 
music streaming services are 
comfortably contemporary, but 
their ancestry can be traced back 
to the era of Britney Spears’s 
...Baby One More Time. Napster was envisioned by two teenagers in 
1999. “Napster” flowered from co-founder Shawn Fanning’s online 
username into the world’s first music streaming platform. His 
partner Sean Parker took an interest after Fanning shared the idea 
of a software powerful enough to stream shared MP3 files. With the 
combined efforts of Fanning’s programming and Parker’s investment 
strategies, Napster was launched in May 1999. By October of 1999 it 
had over four million songs in circulation. By March of 2000, the 
Napster community had over 20 million members. 
This registered a new millennium with the first-ever dip in global 
record sales. Major record labels went into a frenzy and subsequently 
called for a summit among their various executives. Litigation for 
Napster crossed every angle as companies and acts from Metallica 

to Dr. Dre pelted them with breach of copyright lawsuits. Napster 
was effectively shut down with 50 million members in 2001 as a 
result.
Napster lingers by virtue of its liquidation and obvious influence 
on streaming services like Soundcloud, Apple Music and Spotify. 
Parker and Fanning actually attempted to alter Napster into such 
a platform in its last breath before bankruptcy, but couldn’t secure 
the licensing. Regardless, the idea of a subscription plan turned 
many listeners off from the brand — mail-in money orders simply 
didn’t have the same efficiency as digital, paperless billing. With 
the looming risk of lawsuits still in the air and the technological 
restrictions of 2001, a replacement for Napster never took its place. 
Perhaps it was the plug-in nature of technology at the time or the 
greater value attributed to physical possessions, but the status quo 
for music consumption stuck around. CD sales and airplay were 
still the primary factors for music 
exposure and success. 
The same goes for music genre 
popularity: alternative rock and 
pop music reigned. This trend 
carried on into the early 2010s, 
even with the EDM trend that 
gripped the pop sector. Teen pop 
made a resurgence with popular 
Disney and Nickelodeon shows 
like “Wizards of Waverly Place” 
and “Big Time Rush.” But as the 
world took a turn toward music 
streaming, hip-hop quickly eclipsed other music genres. Rock 
music’s position as the most consumed music genre for over 50 years 
was usurped by hip-hop. 
Despite the rise of music streaming in the mid-2010s, Spotify 
and Soundcloud were established in 2006 and 2007 respectively. 
Their rise and expansion, sans the teen success story, mirrors that 
of Napster. Both centered in Stockholm, they paved their way to 
popularity in Europe before becoming international mammoths. 
This was the very beginning of streaming’s influence; in 2010, 
Spotify was making more money for record labels in Sweden than 
any other brand. By the end of 2011, its subscriber base doubled to 
two million. It doubled yet again by the end of 2012 with over four 
million paid users and a whopping 15 million active users in general. 

As of 2019, Spotify has 26 million paid subscribers and 191 million 
total active users worldwide. Apple Music’s global 28 million paid 
subscribers also comprises a huge chunk of the streaming market.
But how exactly does this tie into the rise of hip-hop? According to 
a 2017 report by Nielsen, hip-hop’s surging popularity was powered 
by a 72 percent increase in on-demand audio streaming. None of this 
is to suggest streaming media did all the work on its own. Hip-hop’s 
artists, producers and labels did the heavy lifting in terms of making 
the genre what it is. Between the rise of massive artists like Drake 
and Kendrick Lamar and the influence of hip-hop labels like Cash 
Money Records and Top Dawg Entertainment, hip-hop built itself 
as force worth reckoning. 
The dynamic of streaming really comes down to its radar of 
exposure. With over 50 million songs under their grip, Apple 
Music and Spotify have the power to expose listeners to music they 
otherwise wouldn’t have discovered with their algorithms. With 
this, the roles of award shows, airplay and television broadcasting 
carry less weight. Listeners now have more autonomy to curate 
more unique and expansive tastes in music without popular bias 
and money enforcing as many constraints. Despite record labels 
adjusting seamlessly to the sway of streaming, they no longer 
prevail as primary determinants of success for an artist. Artists 
can distribute their work directly to listeners without sacrificing 
their style to appeal to labels. This specifically boosts hip-hop in 
two senses: one, more mainstream means of exposure never gave 
the genre the recognition it deserved, and two, hip-hop has more 
of an experimental element to it than other music genres. Whereas 
pop leans more on a label to produce for an artist, hip-hop is more 
fixated on an individual’s skills with production.
The effect is two-fold with streaming and music simultaneously 
shaping one another. Hip-hop specifically grooves with these shifts 
as it takes to more experimental routes. Subgenres like emo-rap 
and trap especially gain benefits as they thrive on platforms like 
Soundcloud. Music and production bounce off one another with 
more ease and individual control now than they have in the past. 
Streaming works to further this relationship through the platform’s 
individualized attention to the tastes of listeners. The platform takes 
into account factors of music the listeners themselves wouldn’t have 
considered to tailor music interests with more unique turns. There 
is less conformity to any particular genre, leading to more exposure 
and collaboration we haven’t seen popular in the past. 

From your Nano: A brief history of streaming services

MUSIC NOTEBOOK

DIANA YASSIN
Daily Arts Writer

I trace my world back to 2010 
with my parents’ references to 
the deaths of the CD and the 
radio.

By Jeffrey Wechsler
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
12/06/19

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

12/06/19

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Friday, December 6, 2019

ACROSS
1 Skip
7 Say good things 
about
11 Umami source, 
briefly
14 City grid feature
15 Detective’s need
16 “So there it is!”
17 Street stand with 
full permits?
19 Filch
20 Tee preceder
21 Sufferer cleansed 
by Jesus
22 See 35-Down
23 “Who wants 
to visit Muscle 
Beach?”?
26 AFC South 
athletes
29 Sen. Warren, e.g.
30 “... for none of 
woman __ / Shall 
harm Macbeth”
31 Receipt
37 Got ready to 
binge-watch ... or 
a hint to phonetic 
changes in four 
puzzle answers
40 Shutterbug who 
bugs
41 Brewer’s kiln
42 VW Golf model
43 Considered to be
45 Dumps litter in 
the woods, e.g.?
51 Stout choices
52 Violate a truce
53 Onetime part of 
Portuguese India
56 Drug injector
57 King’s pulse, BP, 
etc.?
60 Tokyo-born artist
61 Group with 
pledges
62 “Quit it!”
63 Was the boss of
64 Numbers game
65 Pinball wizard’s 
reward

DOWN
1 Farm storage unit
2 First name in 
couture
3 Categorizes
4 Carrier with 
Tokyo HQ
5 In a dark mood
6 Winning slot 
machine line

7 Where to claim 
a W-4 head-
of-household 
allowance
8 Author Gide
9 Airborne mystery
10 Palme __: film 
award
11 Super __
12 Cut off
13 Gothic 
architecture 
feature
18 56-Across prefix
22 Fitness training 
apparel
23 Superior 
positions
24 Port SSE of 
Sana’a
25 Source of tweets
26 Culinary meas.
27 “Field of Dreams” 
locale
28 Vacation option
31 “__ who?”
32 Hatchet relative
33 John in Albert 
Hall
34 Steakhouse 
order
35 With 22-Across, 
proud parent’s 
cry

36 Low mil. ranks
38 Old PC 
monitors
39 ’60s musical
43 Sommelier, 
e.g.
44 White weasel
45 Steam, for one
46 John Paul’s 
successor
47 Element from 
the Greek for 
“strange”

48 Indo-__ 
languages
49 “Peachy!”
50 128 fl. oz.
53 Conquest for 
Caesar
54 Lingerie brand
55 Grayish
57 ’60s A.G.
58 Natural 
resource
59 Word with dollar 
or dog

Classifieds

Call: #734-418-4115
Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com

TECHNICAL MANAGER
Ann Arbor, MI (TM‑MI) Manage 
the eng’g team members & their 
career dvlpmnt. Collabrte w/ eng’g, 
QA, product mgmt, & support the 
technical progress of S/W. Req BS+2/
MS+0. Send resume: Barracuda 
Networks, Inc., 3175 S. Winchester 
Blvd., Campbell, CA 95008 Attn: 
MKonnick/TM‑MI.

HELP WANTED

I, VIKRANT Yadav, hereby notify 
that my son Aarav born on 1st March 
2014 has changed his name to Aarav 
Yadav. Henceforth, his surname on 
the passport be Yadav and given 
name by Aarav.

ANNOUNCEMENT

Question: 

What goes 
great with your 
morning coffee?

Answer: 

michigandaily.com

College Behind Bars

PBS

Miniseries

NETFLIX

