Arts
Wednesday, October 14, 2020 — 13 
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

“extremely online” to my friends, 
they usually agree — they too 
love memes and spend hours on 
Twitter.

gets messy. It usually turns into 
some form of me reciting my own 
version of Bane’s quote from “The 
Dark Knight Rises”: “You merely 
adopted the internet; I was born in 
it, molded by it.”

In the world of “South Park,” 

the only cardinal sin is self-
righteousness — the attitude that 
personal beliefs and convictions 
are 
completely 
unassailable. 

Whether it’s religion or race, 
politics or personality, Trey 
Parker and Matt Stone (“The 
Book 
of 
Mormon”) 
always 

manage to blur the lines between 
sacred and immoral, showing 
that both sides of any debate are 
odious.

As 
Donald 
Trump 

skyrocketed 
to 
national 

attention and eventually the 
presidency in 2016, the creators 
of “South Park” were wary 
of being too critical of one 
figurehead. For “South Park,” 
the self-righteousness of Trump 
fanatics is just as bad as the self-
righteousness of liberals. But 
as a cartoon version of Trump 
literally blows torches at a 
scientist with a potential cure for 
the coronavirus, the new “South 
Park” sends a clear message: 
They are done straddling the 
fence, they are done poking fun 
at “both sides,” they are calling 
it for what it is and they are not 
pulling any more punches. 

Satire in the Trump era is 

a difficult endeavor. It’s hard 
to poke fun at both sides when 
the stupidity is so one-sided. 
Despite this, the Season 24 

premiere of “South Park” still 
manages to shed criticism on 
both Trump and his opponents 
with 
limited 
success. 
The 

premiere 
especially 
focuses 

on the “abusive relationship” 
between 
Trump 
supporters, 

Democrat 
politicians 
and 

Trump himself. Before 2020, 
this seemed like a successful 
formula. However, in 2020, be 
it police brutality, the pandemic 
or economic implosion, doom-
scrolling is a fact of life and 
Donald Trump is the cause of 
roughly 90% of it. Responding to 
the changing times, South Park 
has done something it has never 
done before: It has picked a side.

In the first few moments of the 

pandemic special, it is clear that 
things are going pretty poorly 
for the residents of “South Park.” 
The entire town is at each other’s 
throats as businesses close and 
social isolation slowly drains the 
town of its sanity. In this special, 
Donald Trump is (tellingly) 
absent, save for two scenes. 
In the first scene, Stan Marsh 
(voiced by Parker) tries to call 
the President for help in dealing 
with the crises in “South Park.” 
He responds that the chaos is 
his plan. Creating a villain so 
purely silly and evil is definitely 
unorthodox for “South Park,” but 
in this political environment, it’s 
extremely fitting. Considering 
the importance of our current 
events, “South Park” chooses to 
be extremely explicit. 

The “South Park” pandemic 

special is the first episode in 
what might be a new era for the 
long-running animated series. 
Instead of endlessly critiquing 
“both sides,” the show is actually 
standing on a set of principles and 
giving the audience a clear and 
specific message. 2020 is a year 
that has already changed many 
aspects of our society. In light 
of the horrific consequences of 
Trump’s action and inaction, the 
time for criticizing both sides 
equally is over. The new “South 
Park” makes that clear, and does 
not hold back at all.

Daily Arts Writer Joshua Thomas 

can be reached at realjt@umich.edu. 

Why you should revisit 
‘The Birds’ this Halloween

Halloween is a month-long 

celebration that spans decades 
of movie history, from Southern 
Gothic to psychothriller. The 
film beat embraces this history, 
dedicating each week of October 
to a different time period of 
horror. This series celebrates 
every nightmare you had when 
you were ten, every creak in 
the floorboards of an old house, 
every piece of candy stuck to the 
inside of your pillowcase and 
everything that keeps you up 
at night. For this week, we’re 
sticking to the beginnings of 
modern 
horror: 
Hitchcock’s 

reign of the ’60s. 

—Mary Elizabeth Johnson, 

For The Daily

When I was seven or eight, I 

went trick-or-treating dressed 
as a bird. A golden eagle, to be 
exact. My costume had broad 
wings, a tawny, beak-bearing 
hood, a feathered tunic — the 
whole shebang. Many a caw and 
shrill shriek were uttered that 
night as I glided from house to 
house sinking my papier-mâché 
talons into wads of Swedish 
Fish and gummy worms. 

I hadn’t asked to be a bird 

that Halloween. I believe I 
wanted to be a chimera — a 
three-headed 
beast 
from 

Greek myths that combines 
the likenesses of a lion, goat 
and serpent. The year before 
I had been a griffin — another 
chimeric creature smooshing 
together the features of a lion 

and an eagle. My sweet mother, 
not really knowing what a 
griffin or a chimera was but 
armed with Google Images 
and a sewing machine, obliged 
my desires by hand-crafting 
my costumes. I guess chimera 
was a head too far, because that 
year she scissored the leonine 
bits off my griffin costume of 
yesteryear to produce an eagle 
and that was that. 

Thankfully, in addition to 

being a mythology kid, I was 
a bit of a bird nerd, so this 
alternative went off without a 
hitch.

A baker’s dozen years later 

and I think my sweet mother 
may have been onto something, 
as has been made clear to me 
by Hitchcock’s 1963 “Psycho” 
follow-up “The Birds.” Yes, 
another 
Hitchcock 
in 
our 

Halloween 
series, 
but 
this 

time it’s a technicolor terror 
— one of the OG “daylight 
horrors,” a genre that reached 
horrific heights with “Texas 
Chainsaw Massacre” and “The 
Wickerman” in the ’70s, went 
dormant for a few decades 
of drafty, dark houses and 
woebegone woods, only to be 
reinjected into the popular 
consciousness again with last 
year’s “Midsommar.” 

“The Birds” takes place in 

the isolated seaside town of 
Bodega 
Bay, 
California. 
In 

Tippi Hedren’s (“The Ghost in 
the Whale”) debut, Melanie 
Daniels, 
a 
devil-may-care 

socialite with way too much 
time on her hands, arrives in 
Bodega Bay to deliver lovebird 
parrots to her own prospective 

lovebird Mitch Brenner (Rod 
Taylor, “Inglourious Basterds”) 
as an elaborate practical joke. 
In fact, for the first half of this 
movie that’s really all it is — a 
’60s romcom with an inordinate 
fondness for birds.

“The Birds” doesn’t feature 

any murderous dolls or body-
hopping 
aliens 
or 
undead 

shades that just really love to 
hang around Victorian homes 
and imitate the sounds of doors 
closing for some reason. Rather, 
when shit hits the fan — and it 
does — it’s a bunch of birds. Not 
birds from hell or birds made 
giant or birds under the sway 
of some mysterious birdman 
— just a bunch of seagulls and 
sparrows. 

“Jaws” would do something 

similar almost two decades 
later, as after all, the shark in 
“Jaws” is nothing more than a 
shark with a particular palette, 
but at least that shark was a 
shark. The birds are just birds. 

I 
need 
not 
waste 
time 

explaining 
Hitchcock’s 

expertise in crafting a tense, 
thrilling scene. He’s got a 
whole adjective named after 
him that gets thrown around 
at any modern thriller some 
filmbro with a blog thinks 
is neat. But damn it if “The 
Birds” isn’t Hitchcockian. As 
alluded to earlier, the film 
largely takes place in broad 
daylight. The film is not scary 
— it’s hard for old movies to 
be scary; even “The Exorcist,” 
which reportedly induced a 
rash of vomiting when seen in 
theaters back in the ’70s, while 
still excellent, is hardly puke-

worthy by today’s standards. 
So, while “The Birds” isn’t the 
movie to get your scream out 
during on Halloween night, the 
careful use of sound (the pitter 
patter of wings takes on a whole 
new color), score and blocking 
make its tension palpable even 
60 years later.

The 
film 
demonstrates 

that even the oh so mundane 
can be oh so horrific. In a 
special teaser trailer, Alfred 
Hitchcock 
himself 
cheekily 

expounds on the “conspicuous 
part” humanity has played in 
our feathered friends’ “noble 
history”: “Thousands of years 
ago, man was satisfied merely to 
steal an egg from a nest and use 
it for food. Now he has perfected 
this process by imprisoning 
each hen in a cage, and by 
scientifically manipulating the 
lights so that she doesn’t fall 
into the rut of the old 24-hour 
day. Thus, he can induce the 
bird to reach fantastic heights 
of egg production.” 

After 
the 
first 
bird 

attacks, a skeptical armchair 
ornithologist 
explains 
that 

there are over five billion 
birds in the United States, and 
over 100 billion across the five 
continents of the world (not 
sure what happened to the 
other two).

We can all do the math at this 

point. Birds are scary. 

Where does this leave “The 

Birds”? A horror-thriller eco-
fable? Maybe so. The opening 
credits are accompanied by a 
cacophony of bird noises that 
begin to uncannily resemble the 
sound of gunfire and general 
warfare. Does this suggest the 
film is actually an allegory for 
wartime uneasiness? Likewise, 
maybe so. This was only a 
few years after the second 
Red Scare, and the ubiquity 
and utter banality of birds 
marries well with the notion 
of a ubiquitous and undercover 
cadre 
of 
communists. 
The 

gender roles also get a bit wonky 
— it has a robust female cast 
that loses some of its glamor 

as you realize each woman has 
an unhealthy obsession with 
our 
strapping 
Mitch. 
Does 

this make “The Birds” an anti-
feminist screed against the 
independent, counter-cultural 
woman? 
Disappointingly, 

maybe so. An argument can 
be made that the film is self-
reflective, 
but 
Hitchcock 

doesn’t exactly have a sterling 
reputation in this respect.

All 
that 
being 
said, 

Halloween 2020 is going to be 
a whole other kind of scary. 
Trick-or-treating and costume 
parties, with either handmade 
bird 
costumes 
or 
more 

traditional fare, is ill-advised. 
Snuggling at home with a heap 
of candy is the move, and with 
spooky season taking over all 
four seasons this year, the tense 
but toothless old-timey scary 
“The Birds” might be just the 
right way to keep the spirit alive 
on a Halloween that has already 
got the scary in spades.

Daily Arts Writer Jacob Lusk can 

be reached at luskja@umich.edu.

JACOB LUSK
Daily Arts Writer

DESIGN BY SHUCHEN WEI

Live music’s last stand: 
the carillon bells at UM

When we think of live music, 

we often think of dancing 
bodies with all eyes focused on 
the musicians. The experience 
is an immersive one, an event 
that demands attention and 
proximity. While COVID renders 
many incarnations of live music 
dangerous, there’s an unlikely 
source of live music that remains 
standing at the University of 
Michigan and that’s the carillon 
bells.

Carillon bells are a set of 

bronze 
bells 
that 
one 
can 

play through a keyboard and 
pedalboard. There are two sets at 
the University: the Charles Baird 
Carillon in Burton Memorial 
Tower, and the Robert and Ann 
Lurie Carillon on North Campus. 
At first glance, carillons don’t 
seem to be the most accessible 
form of music. Few know how 
to play them; they are rare and 
expensive, sit high above your 
head and are hardly something 
you can dance to. And yet, they’re 
revealing themselves to be one 
of the most accessible forms of 
music. No tickets, no special 
knowledge required — if you 
happen to be walking in their 
vicinity, you are in automatic 
attendance of the show.

“It’s 
a 
really 
powerful 

instrument 
... 
in 
terms 
of 

shaping the whole landscape 

of a place,” first-year Civil and 
Environmental 
Engineering 

PhD student Eva Abalgalhiti 
recently told The Daily. “You play 
something, and everybody has to 
listen to that.” The audience is 
everywhere.

The 
carillon 
world, 

Abalgalhiti explained, is really 
small. Everyone knows everyone 
— she’s met the composers 
of pieces she plays that can 
correct her mistakes and help 
her further interpret the music. 
From the outside looking in, one 
might assume it to be an elitist 
community. Carillons obviously 
aren’t 
available 
everywhere. 

They 
most 
often 
make 
an 

appearance at prestigious and 
expensive 
institutions. 
But, 

Abalgalhiti explained, “that’s not 
necessarily the case. It’s more a 
matter of we need more people 
who play carillon to be excited 
about sharing that.” Of course, 
carillons are not easy to gain 
access to, but once you are part of 
an institution that has a set, it is 
surprisingly easy to get involved. 
Abalgalhiti did so with very little 
musical training beforehand.

Performing for an audience so 

far away, often including people 
busy in transit, seems like an 
odd experience. One doesn’t 
get to feed off the energy of the 
crowd, like many musicians do 
in concert. Instead the artist sits 
alone in their tower. The isolation 
— something not often found in 
music — may seem extreme, but 

Abalgalhiti offered a touching 
story to combat this impression. 
During the recent GEO strike, 
she watched the picket lines 
from above and played a few 
well-known union songs for her 
concert, to hearten the crowd. 

“Everybody on the ground, 

apparently, 
was 
like, 
‘Look 

what’s happening!,’” Abalgalhiti 
said. “I think people take more 
notice now, of what’s going on 
with the carillon ... It can be 
an opportunity to inject your 
personal beliefs, or whatever, 
into 
the 
campus 
scene.” 

Demonstrations like this can 
provide a strange sort of heavenly 
support for campus actions like 
the strike.

Having just arrived at the 

university, Abalgalhiti is still 
getting to know the carillon 
program, but has enjoyed it thus 
far. The community is filled with 
passionate 
individuals. 
They 

are innovative in finding ways 
to drive the craft forward. She 
advises anyone interested in 
carillon or any collaborations to 
come forward and seek out a way 
to get involved. There are lots of 
ways to participate.

“What I think about a lot is 

how can you use carillon to kind 
of project something about what 
you believe, or send out a message 
of sympathy or welcoming or 
care?” Abalgalhiti said.

Daily Arts Writer Fia Kaminski 

can be reached at fiakamin@
umich.edu.

ROSA SOFIA KAMINSKI

Daily Arts Writer

VIRGINIA LOZANO/DAILY

COMEDY CENTRAL

‘South Park’ done pulling 
punches on Donald Trump

JOSHUA THOMAS

Daily Arts Writer

Satire in the 

Trump era is a 

difficult endeavor. 
It’s hard to poke 

fun at both 

sides when the 
stupidity is so 

one-sided. 

