Tangerine (1997)

Ages back, I did a Top Five post on my favorite childhood rereads, and this youth novel made the list.  I picked it up as a kid all but sight unseen and wound up absolutely loving it.  I’ve revisited it multiple times over the years.  My latest reading of the book was the first since I started blogging about stuff I like, so it was only natural that it’d end up here.

12-year-old Paul Fisher is used to living in the shadow of his older brother and the Erik Fisher Football Dream.  Erik’s achievements have always mattered more than Paul’s, and now that his family has moved from Texas to Tangerine, Florida, he expects more of the same.  But even though Paul is legally blind due to an early childhood incident he can’t remember, he sees what his parents can’t:  he sees the real Erik, who fools everyone with his smiling all-American act but gets off on cruelty and manipulation in his free time.  While the rest of his family settles into their new development, where the football uniforms are crisp and neat and the houses are perfectly symmetrical, Paul winds up gravitating more to the real Tangerine outside the development, the rural town populated by citrus growers.  There, he chases his own dreams of glory on the soccer field and works on gaining the fortitude needed to hold his own against Erik.

That was a lengthy summary, but it still feels lacking in terms of explaining what this book is really like.  There’s so much going on here.  I love the characterization of both Tangerine and Lake Windsor Downs (the housing development,) both Paul’s gradual recognition of the class disparities between the two and the ongoing theme of the way nature “fights back” against the development itself, ie, numerous houses having termite problems because groves were mowed down and chipped to build up the land, or lightning repeatedly striking the house where the tallest trees used to stand.  Everyone in Paul’s family is also really well done.  There’s Erik, whose psychopathy is portrayed in a really chilling way, as well as Paul’s dad, who’s been consumed by his dreams of Erik’s football stardom, and Paul’s mom, who’s just trying to hold everything together in a new town that seems to be actively resisting human habitation.

But for me, things really get cooking when Paul starts getting more involved with Tangerine than Lake Windsor Downs.  I like the theme of Paul not fitting in there and yet still feeling so much more at home among the Tangerine kids than he’s ever been.  I love the soccer stuff, the games that play out more like war and Paul’s vividly-written teammates (Victor is my favorite, for obvious reasons.)  I also like Paul’s introduction to the world of tangerine growers; it’s cool, because it’s so much about class and race, but it’s handled in a pretty understated way, with Paul’s realizations rising slowly like a tide instead of washing over him.

One thing, though:  this is the first time I’ve read the book since becoming an interpreter in a public school, and the IEP stuff is ridiculous.  Paul’s mom mentions to the principal a few days before school starts that Paul is legally blind, the guidance counselor asks her to “fill out an IEP,” and less than a week later, Paul starts school with all sorts of accommodations he doesn’t want?  Ridiculous.

Warnings

Strong thematic elements, language, and a few scenes of violence.

Relationship Spotlight: Mariah Dillard & Cornell Stokes a.k.a. Cottonmouth (Luke Cage)

There a number of different adages you could probably apply to Cottonmouth and Mariah if you wanted to.  “Blood is thicker than water.”  “You can’t choose your family.”  Even stuff along the lines of tigers not changing their stripes and apples falling within reach of their trees.  But though the relationship obviously has its roots in these different ideas, it doesn’t feel clichéd or tropey.  Instead, it’s a fascinating, fraught connection that keeps both characters entangled in one another (a few spoilers for Cottonmouth-Mariah.)

At first glance, these cousins appear to be positioned as polar opposites – the crime boss and the councilwoman.  Really, though, they have much more in common.  Having grown up surrounded by the family business, both carry it on in their own way, and both have identities that are not what they seem.  Mariah, although she presents herself as the respectable politician, plays a shell game with official funds to help bankroll Cottonmouth’s criminal ventures.  Her illegal activities are much more of a secret than her cousin’s; Cottonmouth is the sort of man who’s widely known to be a crime boss, and his front as a legitimate businessman/club owner is more cover-by-rote than anything else.

They play the same game with the actual illegal activities they conduct and their respective attitudes toward the family business/desire for power.  Cottonmouth’s is much more out in the open.  He’s the one sending his lieutenants out to “deliver messages” or bring gun deals to fruition, while Mariah is eager to say that she’s “just” the money, that she doesn’t even fully want to know what Cottonmouth is up to as long as he takes care of it quickly and discreetly.  But when push comes to shove, Mariah has a much greater capacity for crime and power plays than she lets on.  When she takes over partway through the season, even as she insists that she’s just tying up loose ends so they can never come back to bite her, there’s also that little piece of her that takes pride in improving on Cottonmouth’s – by her estimation – sloppy operation.

It’s such a messed-up relationship.  Mariah wants nothing to do with Cottonmouth (even though, deep down so far that it takes her a good chunk of the season to admit it to herself, she kind of does,) but she still can’t turn him down when he needs something from her.  She knows how her dealings with him could mess with her career if they come out, but she does it anyway.  Cottonmouth is beholden to Mariah for the money she’s given him, and yet (maybe because he’s seen how she can’t tell him no?), he still acts like he has all the power. 

Both went through very different iterations of the same trauma, and both kind of blame the other for it, especially now that the actual people who traumatized them are dead and can no longer be confronted about it.  Cottonmouth resents Mariah because, while she was sent away to school and put on the path to her current highly-respected career, he was forced to join the family business as a teenager.  As he was made to commit horrific acts at Mama Mabel’s behest, his impression of events is that Mariah abandoned him by allowing herself to be sent away.  Meanwhile, Mariah loathes the way Cottonmouth remembers their Uncle Pete as the one person who tried to look out for him and wanted to nurture his musical talent instead of pushing him toward crime, because Uncle Pete’s abuse of her was the real reason she was sent away.  Hate and love and need and anger get all jumbled up between them, and it’s only a matter of time before all those fomenting emotions bring them to a crisis point.

Atlanta (2016-Present)

Despite a slow start, Donald Glover’s new sitcom wound up really winning me over.  By the time the Golden Globes came around, I was thrilled with its awards and ready for season 2 (even though it sounds like that won’t happen until 2018 – ah, the double-edged sword of your in-demand star/creator being in a Star Wars movie.)

Earn is a guy who doesn’t quite have it together, though he’d like to.  He feels stuck in a dead-end job that earns him little-to-nil and crashes with Van, his baby mama ex with whom he has a complicated relationship.  When he finds out his cousin Alfred has gone viral as “Paper Boi” with a rap single he released online, Earn sees a chance to fulfill his dream of getting into music management – a gig that, as it happens comes with no guarantee of success, a steep learning curve, and almost no money upfront.  Amid learning the ins and outs of the rap world and getting tangled up in some truly outrageous situations, Earn struggles to balance what he wants to do with what he needs to do.

This show is weird in the best way.  It starts out a bit deceptively for how wild it ends up being – the first couple episodes are a bit more meandering, not exactly slice-of-life but not especially out there.  As it goes on, however, the humor gets a lot bolder and plots get a lot crazier.  There’s some outright fantastical stuff, like casting a young Black actor as Justin Bieber or rumors about a rich rapper with a pimped-out invisible car.  There are satirical situations that get ramped up to an insane level, like a pretentious Black talk show’s interview with a “transracial” kid who identifies as a middle-aged white man or a super-bourgey Juneteenth party, wherein the white host won’t shut up about his “pilgrimage” to Africa.  And there’s just fun off-the-wall stuff, like a club owner with a talent for vanishing into thin air when Earn approaches him about payment or (hilarious) supporting character Darius getting into an argument about why it’s wrong to bring a poster of a dog to the shooting range when everyone else is shooting at posters of humans.

It has a nice way of approaching issues like racism, stereotypes (Alfred is “cast” as the “thug rapper” very early on and feels pressure to stay in the box that’s been made for him,) poverty, social advancement, and feeling like you’re still floundering when you know you’re supposed to be getting it together.  These subjects – even heavy ones like police violence – are looked at through such a smart, sadrdonic lens that the show is able to make really strong points hit home without ever feeling soapboxy.

For me, the characters also start out feeling a little remote but quickly settle into themselves and become really watchable.  While my instinct is always to think Troy when I see Glover, he does an excellent job of separating from that and showing me how different Earn is.  This is my first time seeing Brian Tyree Henry and Zazie Beetz, who are both terrific as Alfred and Van, respectively.  Pound for pound, though, my favorite is the offbeat, nutty Darius, played to deadpan perfection by Lakeith Stanfield.

Warnings

Swearing (including the N-word,) violence, drugs/drinking/smoking, sexual content, some gross-out humor, and thematic elements.

The Buster Keaton Show: Unknown Episode Title 2 (1951)

Another episode of The Buster Keaton Show.  This one is quite a bit heavier on the physical comedy, with the sets and central premise both acting mostly as excuses for Buster to clown around.  It also borrows a fair amount from Battling Butler – as these things usually are, the original is funnier/cooler, but there’s still something delightful and a little heartwarming about seeing Buster still up to his old tricks, years later.

Buster’s friends have hired a trainer to help get him in better shape (I think for insurance reasons?  Like I said, whatever plot there is is just an excuse for Buster to do a lot of slapstick with gym equipment.)  Things go about as well as you expect, with Buster excelling athletically only when no one’s in the room to see it and failing spectacularly whenever anyone’s watching.  Also, as it happens, he’s due for a boxing lesson just after he’s inadvertently made his boxing instructor think he’s made a pass at his (the instructor’s) wife.  Because, come on – if it can go wrong, it’ll happen to Buster.

Some fun stuff here.  There’s a good sight gag with a rowing machine, Buster’s scene with the boxing instructor’s wife gets more and more hapless, and I really like an extended bit he does with a basketball.  With the latter, I just love Buster’s lamentable dribbling and overall form juxtaposed with the casual, almost dismissive way he makes increasingly-impossible shots, and the clincher (involving the trainer and a medicine ball) is terrific.  Even better is the studio’s audience’s reaction to this scene.  Years of single-camera sitcoms have made me wary of laugh tracks in general, but I enjoy hearing how completely they’re eating this up.

And yeah, I like the boxing sequence.  It makes me wonder if Battling Butler was a film audiences might have potentially seen in those days, or if it was still hiding in a stack of forgotten film cans somewhere.  Because for me, I view these gags as a fond echo from one of his silent films – even if it was middle-of-the-pack for that era of Buster’s work, it still has some fine comedy in it, and a lot of its best laughs are repeated here, albeit in a somewhat less impeccable fashion.  Regardless, that may be how the scene felt to people old enough to remember seeing the film in theaters.  But if Battling Butler hadn’t surfaced yet and been shown on TV, then that means this episode served as most viewers’ introduction to these gags.  Even though they’re not quite as impressive here as they were in the ‘20s, the sharp eye and quick wit behind them is just as good, and if this was the first most people had seen of them, it becomes more than just recycling; it’s Buster resurrecting pieces of his classic comedy, recreating them to give people a chance to see them in any way he can.

Still middling, but definitely better than the jungle episode.  While it’s certainly only for big fans of Buster, this episode is a pretty decent way to pass a bit of time.

Character Highlight: Melanie Bush (Doctor Who)

Mel probably doesn’t top too many people’s best companion lists, and she’s not one of my favorites, either, but really, I don’t think she’s bad at all.  More than anything, I think she’s a little like Victoria in that the sheer decibel level of her screams can give off the impression that that’s all she does.  When you really look at her, though, that’s not all there is to see – or rather, hear (a few spoilers for “The Trial of a Time Lord.”)

One of the most curious things about Mel is the fact that we never actually see the Doctor meet her.  After the Valeyard uses Matrix recordings of the Doctor’s past as evidence against him in “The Trial of a Time Lord,” the Doctor uses his future for his defense, and it’s in these latter recordings that we see Mel already established as his next companion after Peri.  Mel is then plucked out of that future and brought in to testify, and when the Master shows up and the trial goes to hell, Mel jumps in to help the Doctor and, it would seem, just continues on with him after that.  Now, it holds nothing to the timey-wimeyness of the new series, but for classic Who, that’s pretty recursive.

At times, Mel can feel a bit “generic companion,” which can make it hard to get a read on her.  Her main hooks that people tend to mention (other than the ear-splitting screams) are her fitness kick and her incredible memory.  Our first image of Mel involves watching her, bright and peppy, harangue the Doctor on an exercise bike while pushing carrot juice on him, and there are a few times on their adventures when she seeks out some physical activity as recreation.  Meanwhile, her gift of total recall, although it doesn’t get a ton of play, is brought up now and again and, in one instance, clues the Doctor in to something major.

Personality-wise, she’s very high-energy (probably another reason she’s so often associated with her interest in physical fitness – she never stops moving,) cheerful and just a touch precocious.  She makes for an interesting contrast with Six, who can be awfully full of himself and not the most considerate.  While Peri tended to clash more with Six, Mel doesn’t really seem all that bothered by his moods.  She approaches most things optimistically and usually irks Six more than the other way around.  Seven, in his first season, is still sort of coalescing into the Doctor he eventually settles into more with Ace, but his 1.0 personality seems to mesh nicely with Mel’s.  She’s curious, clever, and brave (the ole companion trifecta,) and she’s always gung-ho to dive in and investigate.

Where I think Mel’s characterization stumbles a bit is in the occasional sense of her being a “points for effort” companion.  She generally has good instincts and the initiative to follow up on them, but the results she yields are usually small.  Not that she doesn’t contribute – she frequently plays a part in the ultimate solution, and she has a fine head for Excellent Questions.  Rather, she doesn’t just get a lot of big “save the day” moments, or even “save the situation” moments.  She gets more assists than scores of her own, and that, I think, can make it easier to discount her value as a companion.

Favorite Characters: The Blind Swordsman (Ashes of Time)

Prior to starting my A Little TLC(w) reviews, I’d already done write-ups of most of the Tony Leung Chiu-wai films I’d seen, including all but one of his (many) Wong Kar-wai films.  I’m not going to re-review Ashes of Time or any other film fom A Little TLC(w) perspective – although, for what it’s worth, “Recommend?  In General – Yes, yes, yes!, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai – Oh my, yes!”  But when it comes to singing Leung’s praises, I can’t just not include these movies, so I’ve decided to do Favorite Characters or Character Highlight posts for them instead, with a bit more actor-focus than I typically do for characters (Blind Swordsman-related spoilers.)

I’ve mentioned before that Leung has played several blind characters, and from my admittedly-limited exposure to Chinese cinema, it seems to be kind of a popular character point for them (enough that I was surprised to learn that Donnie Yen had never played a blind character before Chirrut in Rogue One.)  Now, it’s obviously better from a representation standpoint to have disabled characters played by disabled actors, but this is something you still see happening constantly, particularly when it comes to badass blind warriors (see the aforementioned Chirrut,) so I’m hardly surprised that a movie from 1994 cast a sighted actor to play the Blind Swordsman.

Given the fact that he has no name, it might be tempting to think of the Blind Swordsman as just that:  a type, not a character, a visually-interesting trope and nothing more.  And to be sure, his fight scene with the bandits is super cool, but the Blind Swordsman is so much more than just a hook.  He’s presented very carefully/gently as a person – like most everyone in Ashes of Time, a person with some more-than-passing angst issues, but still someone grounded and specific.  This is clearly someone with a life, even though we only see glimpses of it.

That’s something that really intrigues me about the Blind Swordsman’s story, how much of it goes unsaid.  You put it together between the lines.  He leaves home after his wife and his friend fall for each other, and though he vows to kill Huang Yaoshi the next time he sees him, he doesn’t go through with it (because “the next time [they] met, [he] could no longer see.”)  Instead, he wanders, working/fighting his way through the wilderness, like he’s in purgatory for someone else’s sins.  When he realizes he needs to return home, he can’t afford it and turns to Ouyang Feng to find swordsman work, but by this point, his vision is deteriorating more rapidly.  I love his refrain of wanting to get home in time to see the peach blossoms one more time, and Ouyang Feng’s revelation later in the film – that there are no peach blossoms in the Blind Swordsman’s town, that Peach Blossom is his wife – is just a beautiful gutpunch.

Despite being an itinerant swordsman, much of his story is so still, so quiet.  It’s about being away and stuck, unable to get back.  It’s about waiting, about fighting time by existing through it and enduring, not by openly combatting it.  He’s waiting for the bandits to arrive so he can fight them and earn the money he needs to go home, and all the while, he can see less and less but nothing he can do will make the bandits show up when he wants them there.

To me, Leung just shines so much in this role.  That stillness is electric; the Blind Swordsman doesn’t appear restless or anxious, but he feels poised on the edge of something.  The quiet draws you in, makes you lean forward so you don’t miss anything.  Everything – the regret, the betrayal, the fear, the determination – is painted on such a subtle canvas.  “Soulful” is a word that comes up time and again when I describe Leung’s work, but in this case, I think it’s the only word I can really use to try and capture it.

When we do finally get to the fight, I appreciate that Wong Kar-wai resists the urge to go whole-hog with the “legendary blind warrior whose loss of one sense makes the other four superhuman, and the mere mortals have only to watch in awe!” thing.  We’ve seen that plenty of times (sometimes with the added bonus of superpowers, a la Daredevil, or Force sensitivity, a la Chirrut Îmwe,) and again, it makes for a cool visual, but it can sometimes distance these characters from a sense of humanity.  Not so with the Blind Swordsman.  He’s clearly framed as an excellent swordsman, and he obviously must be relying a great deal on his other senses, but the camera doesn’t linger over it.  Part of this is because this is a character who’s going blind – he’s not there yet, which oddly puts more focus on his inability to see.  With a totally sightless character, vision isn’t even a factor, but while his skills are unquestionably great, the Blind Swordsman still prays for a clear day.  By the time the bandits finally come, he can only see in very bright light, and the scene takes its artful visuals from the flashing sun and the ominous roll of the clouds.

Again, this makes him feel like more of a person.  He’s not unstoppable.  In fact, he’s almost surely doomed to failure, to death.  When he faces off against the bandits, he does it because he has no other recourse, not because he’s sure he’ll win.  And somehow, that just makes him even more impressive to me.

News Satire Roundup: March 12th-March 16th

Sunday, March 12 – John commemorated International Women’s Day with several clips of men putting their feet in their mouth talking about women, from Putin literally talking about women smiling more to a co-anchor-less local news host segueing into “bikini bods.”  Next up was the CIA stuff on WikiLeaks, sharing some silly secret-project code names and picking apart leading news coverage that made the intel seem a lot more shocking than it actually is.  The main story circled back around to healthcare again, this time covering some of the content of the American HealthCare Act.  Even though it was a bit of a retread, it was still an excellent story.  Much was made of the fact that the bill has been getting harsh criticism on both sides, John mocked the pages spent on disenrolling previously-low-income lottery winners by imaging a “Freaky Friday proviso,” and Paul Ryan creeped us out with his palpable joy at taking money from poor people.

Monday, March 13 – Trevor opened on a hilarious gaffe from a news piece on the impeachment of South Korea’s president:  a man whose home broadcast for the BBC was interrupted first by his toddler, then his baby bursting into his study, with his wife racing in to extract the kids.  I could’ve died laughing at that, and I loved Trevor’s admiration for the wife’s kid-wrangling skills.  Next up was Trump’s wiretapping accusations and the zero evidence provided to support them.  Good stuff on the White House staff forced to defend the crap Trump spouts, especially Sean Spicer’s insistence that “illegal wiretapping” was clearly a metaphor for a broad range of general surveillance.  Roy and Hasan introduced this year’s “Third Month Mania,” pitting Trump tweets against each other.  Lee Daniels was the guest; I was interested in his comments about what it’s like being a gay man in close contact with the hip-hop world (due to Empire.)

Wednesday, March 15 – After a brief snow-day hiatus, the show was back, opening on a couple highlights from Rachel Maddow’s less-than-bombshell “reveal” of two pages of Trump’s tax returns from twelve years ago and Trump’s own people admitting there’s no evidence for his wiretapping claims.  Then, it was back to healthcare, this time challenging Trump’s support of the GOP bill given that it doesn’t do virtually anything he promised it would.  I especially liked Paul Ryan’s attempt to pull Trump “under the bus” and Trevor’s mirth at the thought of Trump helping to write legislation.  Ronny did a piece on snazzy new technology; I enjoyed how unimpressed he was with the current craze to make everything “smart.”  Nice interview with Jesse Williams.  He discussed his community outreach work, and he and Trevor bonded over their tendency to be constantly mistaken for other light-skinned PoC, including each other.

Thursday, March 16 – I liked Trevor’s prediction that Trump’s Muslim bans will forever be undone by his insistence on announcing his motives.  Nice story on the Netherlands’ election, more notable for Geert Wilders’s loss than Mark Rutte’s victory.  Some good angles here, especially America’s position as a cautionary tale and Trevor’s theory that xenophobic populist politicians are actually being mind-controlled by aliens that look like bad hair.  The centrist prime minister acquiescing to some populist/nativist notes was disturbing.  New correspondent Gina had a good first story on Brexit.  Her explanation of what’s happened to the pound post-Brexit was really good, and I liked her pointing out that Idris Elba isn’t the only Black person in the U.K.  Mixed feelings on the guest, former DNC chair Donna Brazile.  Her responses seemed slippery to me, and even as she was getting at good points, I felt like she was obfuscating.