Bildungsroman Blitz: September 2021
The September media log is about fun plays! Sad plays! And Keanu Reeves.
Folks, we have passed the autumnal equinox! Here in Oakland, California, it finally feels like fall weather. So, it should come as no surprise that the first item on this month’s media log is horror related. More on that in a bit.
September has turned out be surprisingly busy for me, story-consumption-wise. In addition to podcasts, television, and film (my easy-to-binge staples), I’ve been to museums and to live, in person theatre, for the first time in 18 months. Fingers crossed that doing so remains a safe option. In the meantime, here are some things I want to highlight, sans deep dive:
Do you remember when I introduced you all to the podcast Green Eggs…and Man? in the April issue? It is still going strong, and what began as a fun podcast that lightly lampooned intense fandom theory culture is now quite possibly the greatest cosmic horror story of our time. Would you have predicted that a podcast analyzing a Dr. Seuss book would eventually be co-hosted by a cursed ghost girl named Josette? The adventure will wrap up around November 23rd, according to non-ghost girl host Weston Scott, so you have plenty of time to catch up!
I had the pleasure of visiting Mothership: Voyage Into Afrofuturism at the Oakland Museum of California. Local readers, it is on view until February 27, 2022. My favorite discovery in this exhibit was Dark Star Universe, an independent arts & media organization based in Oakland. Through a lens of science fiction and Afrofuturism, Dark Star Universe builds dioramas from upcycled materials, and creates short films based on these models. Watch the film that was featured in the museum, DARK STAR UNIVERSE: Resistance Hangar, below:
Keeping things local, East Bay Yesterday is a phenomenal history podcast that everyone in the Bay Area should know about. Hosted and produced by Liam O'Donoghue, the podcast’s trademark is the “linking of deep historical context to present day East Bay surroundings” (“This East Bay journalist started a podcast to keep himself from trespassing”, Dan Gentile writing for SFGATE). Listening to the podcast is a great storytelling experience on its own, but O'Donoghue also hosts in-person boat tours, and helped promote the Black Liberation Walking Tour of Oakland’s Hoover-Foster neighborhood, which is self-guided.
The Displaced at Crowded Fire Theater (play, 2018; production, 2021)
I meant it when I said we’re keeping things local. The first item of the media log is a theatre production that I saw in person in San Francisco. Not a remarkable sentence to write prior to March 2020, but here we are.
Written by Isaac Gómez and directed by Mina Morita and Karina Gutiérrez, The Displaced is a horror play centering on a young interracial couple, Marísa and Lev, who think that moving in together might salvage a rocky relationship. Unfortunately for them, their new apartment—located in Chicago’s historic Pilsen neighborhood—may be haunted by prior tenants. Marísa and Lev don’t look like your stereotypical gentrifiers, but does that make any difference to those who have been displaced?
Let’s back up a second and talk about horror on stage. It doesn’t happen that often, compared to the voluminous output of horror movies and literature. When you ask about theatre and horror, most people will bring up a very specific precedent: Le Theatre du Grand Guignol (1897-1962). Grand Guignol in modern times is commonly used to mean any work of horror fiction that includes over the top violence with a macabre tone. But Grand Guignol has a very specific theatrical history and lineage and was legendary for stage manager Paul Ratineau’s pioneering lighting, sound, prop, and makeup effects (blood needed to be convincingly spilt), as well as director Max Maurey’s cultivation of a gimmicky atmosphere (hiring a doctor to treat fainting audience members, some of whom were plants).
Why did the Grand Guignol specifically, and horror on stage generally, fade away in the 20th century? There were many factors, but the rise of cinema was probably the most crucial. Movies seemed to pull off violent stunts like a woman getting stabbed to death in the shower or a possessed girl’s head rotating 360 degrees more easily.
However, as a devotee of both horror and theatre, I have always known that theatre’s immediacy with an audience was a great asset to a truly visceral horror experience. While not a horror play per se, a theatrical experience that lives inside my bones to this day is seeing Amy Herzog’s play Belleville. A long, intermission-less thriller with a Chekov’s knife and a married couple on the brink of collapse, I clenched every part of my body for the duration of the show. I even tensed up a little bit just thinking about it now.
Which brings me back to The Displaced. This is another play whose emotional core is a fragile relationship, and all the elements—Gómez’s script, Morita and Gutiérrez’s direction, and Rocket and Don’s performances—come together beautifully to make the audience care about Marísa and Lev as people but also to wince in recognition when they provoke a fight or put each other down. I asked Morita how the directors and actors tapped into the struggles of this relationship, and she had this to say:
“We spent a lot of time calibrating what types of emotional labor/friction these two characters were engaging in—realizing that moving in together can bring so much to the surface…One thing Isaac [the playwright] mentioned is that we do not get to see these nuanced discussions from a BIPOC perspective, especially with an interracial couple. The number of audience members appreciating the depth of the conversation, and feeling recognized, is powerful.”
Lest you think the play is all emotional terror and no thrilling scares, I’m happy to report that this production is fun and visceral and made me jump in my seat! Huge credit for that goes to Special Effects Designer Devon LaBelle. You can hear more from her about her work in this video (spoilers, be warned).
If you’re in the Bay Area and it feels good to go to the theatre, mask on, there are a few more in person performances through October 3! If you’re not sure about going in person, or if you’re in another part of the country, you can purchase a virtual ticket to access a video of the show, which will be available until October 16.
Link Roundup
“‘The Displaced’ Explores Identity, Class”, Charles Lewis III writing for SFWeekly
“‘Displaced’ an intriguing gentrification horror story”, Jean Schiffman writing for the San Francisco Examiner
“Stage Screams: The Horror Genre in Theater”, Neena Arndt writing for the Goodman Theatre
Hardball (film, 2001)
Why is a somewhat-obscure Keanu Reeves movie that can best be described as The Bad News Bears meets Uncut Gems on this month’s media log?
Hardball is a sports dramedy that is loosely based on a 1993 book about well-meaning white collar white guys coaching Little League teams comprised of black kids from the Cabrini-Green housing project in Chicago. The Goodreads reviews for the original book highlight how White Saviory the foundational text is. While the film certainly doesn’t escape the specter of White Savior tropes, I would argue that it unintentionally subverts those tropes in a fascinating way.
Honestly, the casting of Keanu Reeves is the first subversion. Not because Keanu Reeves isn’t white—he’s playing the very Irish American Conor O'Neill—but because Reeves exudes such non-patronizing empathy. Critics argued that he was miscast as a degenerate gambling addict, but the combo of Keanu’s natural presence with the kid actors and the character’s low-status lack of pretension was what kept me from feeling like this was a white liberal’s do-gooder fantasy.
Other ways that Hardball unintentionally subverts White Savior Movies:
Conor is not actually good at baseball. The kids are better than him and didn’t need him to help them become a good team.
Conor is not a good coach for 90% of the film’s runtime. He starts caring about the kids and the team at some point (the film is inconsistent about this), but we still never actually see him do much coaching.
Conor’s presence has zero effect on the lives of the kids. As previously stated, the kids basically coach themselves, and (spoiler) the tragic death of one of the players would have happened whether Conor was the coach or not.
I know this sounds like I’m clowning on the movie, but I don’t view the above points as things the movie does poorly, per se. I liked watching this flawed protagonist reckon with what a scumbag he is. I liked watching these kids give the protagonist shit, knowing full well they could never rely on him. I liked watching all these very talented child actors (including Michael B. Jordan!) play off each other and Keanu. The kids are the standout of the movie, and it’s no surprise since the director, Brian Robbins, is best known for his work with talented child actors at Nickelodeon (All That, Kenan & Kel, Good Burger).
But as I alluded to before, whose coming-of-age story is this, anyway? It’s Conor’s. While Conor might not have been a traditional White Savior, the movie still ends up being about how his work with the kids encouraged him to improve his material circumstances. Did we learn anything about improving the material circumstances for all under a white supremacist economy? Sadly, no.
Still, I would 100% recommend this movie if you enjoy any of the following: Keanu Reeves, baseball movies, underdog sports movies, 90s Nickelodeon fare, “Big Poppa” by The Notorious B.I.G.
Link Roundup:
“Keanu Reeves’s Coaching Clinic”, Shea Serrano writing for The Ringer
“A Conversation About Great White Saviors in Movies”, Shea Serrano and Steven Hyden for Grantland
“Playing the Field: Keanu Reeves loosens up for 'Hardball'”, Ron Weiskind writing for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Michael B. Jordan Reminisces About Screen Debut in 2001’s ‘Hardball’”, Seth Abramovitch writing for The Hollywood Reporter
Anatomy of a Suicide (play, 2017)
Trigger Warning: This play, and my writing about it, discusses suicide and suicidal ideation and may be triggering.
Written by Alice Birch, Anatomy of a Suicide initially came to my attention when I was working on another Alice Birch play, Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again (with the lovely humans at Crowded Fire Theater, who I discussed above). The first thing you need to know about Alice Birch and her approach to theatre is that she is radical and inventive when it comes to form and structure. Revolt—a ferocious manifesto about how the world is set up to beat down women in every aspect of life and what revolution against that might look like—has four distinct acts. Except for Act Two, there are no characters. There is just dialogue. Creative teams who produce the play have the freedom to cast whoever they like to say whatever they like.
The characters in Act Two—three generations of damaged women—hint at the idea of generational trauma. Birch picks up this premise and explores it more fully in Anatomy of a Suicide. The play follows Carol, Anna (Carol’s daughter), and Bonnie (Anna’s daughter) in three concurrent timelines. The play is constructed as a triptych: a set of three associated images, usually a piece of art, intended to be appreciated together. In this theatrical triptych, three scenes—Carol’s, Anna’s, and Bonnie’s—play out simultaneously onstage, with overlapping dialogue that certainly can’t always be heard by the audience (some words need to line up; I can only imagine the meticulous rehearsal required to make it work). On a technical level alone, Birch’s work knocks me out.
If it was not already apparent from the title, the generational trauma that haunts this play is Carol’s suicide and the effect it has on her daughter and the grandaughter she never met. In her review of the 2020 Atlantic Theater Company production for The New York Times, Alexis Soloski has this to say:
“Cleareyed & dazzling, like sun on ice, Anatomy of a Suicide has the feel of a summoning. The tone throughout is cool, reminiscent of Caryl Churchill. It is a drama like the blue heart of a flame; it looks like winter even as it scorches you.”
The “like sun on ice” descriptor is what I find to be the most apt. This play is blinding in its unsentimental portrait of suicidal ideation. There’s no cathartic understanding or rationales to soothe the mind. Some other reviews felt that the play being a technical marvel invited the audience to approach the story at a distance, and thus it was an analytical experience and not an emotional one. I have only read the play and not watched it, but I would have to disagree. There are moments and lines that catch my breath and make me sob.
Something I struggle with is my reaction to stories that depict suicide. I am not someone who has ever experienced suicidal ideation, but I do think a part of me is fascinated with suicide as a concept. David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest is one of my favorite novels, and a big reason why is the text’s examination of the psyche of the suicidal (it’s something I’ve been thinking and writing about since 2015). Sometimes I wonder if I can parse out the difference between a work of fiction being triggering in a willfully harmful way and just being good at what it’s doing. I don’t have a good answer to that, but I’ve included some articles in the Link Roundup that are food for thought.
Link Roundup:
“‘I’m interested in whether trauma can be passed on through DNA’”, Liz Hoggard interviewing Alice Birch for The Guardian
“Review: In ‘Anatomy of a Suicide’, Pain in Triplicate”, Alexis Soloski writing for The New York Times
“Review: Anatomy of a Suicide at Atlantic Theater Company”, Loren Noveck writing for Exeunt New York City
“Doing No Harm: A Look at Writing Suicide and Self-Harm in Fiction”, Alice Nuttall writing for BookRiot
“Looking to Fiction for Insights on Suicide”, Michelle Falkoff writing for Pacific Standard
“Suicide in Fiction, Reconsidered”, Morgan Thomas writing for The Yale Review