Somebody Somewhere Bids A Kind Farewell to Us

 

It’s clear to me as it airs its third and (why?) last season that Somebody Somewhere has two very different but distinct places in television history. The first, as anyone who has seen the show knows, is that is one of the full-blown comic masterpieces of the 2020s, along with Reservation Dogs, Hacks and Abbott Elementary. (It remains to be seen if Only Murders in the Building can maintain its momentum and people have expressed doubts about the overall quality of the most recent season of The Bear.)

The second is far more exceptional: it is arguably the most un-HBO comedy series that has ever aired on HBO since it began its run of leading the revolution. And as anyone who loves those comedies (and I’ve been a fan of my share) the overall tone of almost all of them could be summed up as: cruel. It was assuredly true of the (finally) departed Curb Your Enthusiasm; definitely so of Emmy winners Entourage, Veep and Silicon Valley and while it was far closer to being darker than unpleasant, it’s hard to argue that Barry was gentle in how it treated anybody in the cast.  There’s little sympathy in any of the comedies in even the best HBO comedies I’ve seen for any of its characters, major or minor and its been the de facto trend for even the ones that didn’t work Avenue 5 is the most recent and I’ve avoided watching The Franchise because I have, frankly, gotten tired of this unpleasantness over the last few years – and in truth, I was getting sick of it long before Donald Trump entered the political scene.

I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised: the de facto trend for comedy over the first twenty years of this century has been constantly heading towards meanness and contempt in almost every comedy show on cable I’ve seen. It was essentially what you got from every single comedy on Showtime, from Weeds to Black Monday, with the sole exception of Kidding and until relatively recently FX has been most treating its comedies with a similar tone. (The one brilliant exception was Better Things.) It’s mostly been true for streaming overall, particularly in the work of Ricky Gervais on Netflix  the overall unpleasantness of so much of Transparent on Amazon, and I found The Great unwatchable. The tone’s gradually been lifting on the streaming services overall and Apple has been setting the pace, not just with the exceptional Ted Lasso but also such masterpieces as Shrinking and the very satiric Palm Royale in which every character is cruel but Maxine who is in dead sincerity.

Because the arc of the comedy universe now seems to be bending towards kindness on TV, not just streaming but also network and cable TV, I can mourn the departure of Somebody Somewhere not as the end of an era but rather as the end of a comedy that was part of a trend. Comedies across all platforms are becoming nicer and we laugh with the characters when they suffer rather than at them. What’s made Somebody Somewhere different as well as wonderful is not just the majesty of all of the talent of the characters led by Bridget Everett but by the fact this show takes place in the heartland  - small town Kansas – goes out of its way to focus on members of the LGBTQ+ community, who have found their outlets from society with each other and shows that their acceptance and battles are just as identifiable as the ones we see at Abbott Elementary and the Arconia.

In the third season Sam, once again played by the wonderful Everett, is facing the fact that the people she cares for the most are moving on with their lives and frankly becoming happier. Her younger sister Tricia (played by the wonderful Mary Catherine Garrison) has recovered from her divorce and now a single woman for the first time. Tricia is dealing with many changes, including that she is now a successful businesswoman (she sells gag pillows with a term so unprintable I’m not going to even hint at what it is), dealing with her son going to college and trying to move onward and upward. Joel (the always sublime Jeff Hiller) has found love with Brad (the always wonderful Tim Bagley) the singer he met in church and is now moving in with.  Fred is now happily married. Sam knows she should be happy. But it’s clearly getting harder for her to find happiness when so many of her friends are moving forward and as we’ve learned constantly over the past two seasons, she hates changes.

It's clear that in the interim between Season 2 and 3 Ed has passed away (a necessity when Mike Haggerty died during 2022) and the house where Sam and Tricia grew up in has been sold to a new tenant who Tricia doesn’t like interacting with and Sam is awkward around. (We’re not even a hundred percent sure of his name yet). This is another big loss for Sam and she’s clearly been trying to find a way to fill the gap in her life. We saw her spend much of the season premiere trying to find a way to adopt a rescue dog and after filling out the paperwork she went to the shelter, only to find another family had adopted it. Sam, who is stoic in public, broke down slightly in the car in the last minute.

And because Sam has clearly been working on other parts of her life, its very clear she’s having issues holding her tongues when it comes to the happiness in her friends. Fred told them at their annual brunch that he was going to stop coming, out of loyalty to his new bride who wants him to be on a health food kick. Sam and Joel were clearly hurt by this but it became even clearer how personal it was in last night’s episode when Fred’s wife came to see the gang and made it clear she was unhappy Sam had brought French Toast because she didn’t want her husband to be tempted by that. More to the point she said that Sam ‘brought Fred down’ which is remarkably cruel considering that Sam sang at their wedding. Sam was still dealing with this when the time came to pack up Joel’s house and she learned what Joel was giving up to move in with the man he loved.

Frankly I’m beginning to have doubts myself. There is no question that Brad loves Joel unconditionally. In that episode Sam went to give lessons to teach Brad to sing a love song to Joel that he had written but was terrified of performing, outside his oeuvre of opera. It’s clear that the way Joel looks at him shows how gone he is for him and the scene where he found the courage – after struggling – to sing the critical lyrics of the song were among the most moving the series have ever done. The two should be soul mates.

The problem is it’s clear that Brad has some issues that involve territory. We saw when Joel was trying to bring stuff over, he had problems letting appliances that Joel owned be part of this. And it’s one thing for Joel not to want to bring his piano over. But when we learned that Joel has given up the idea of having kids – something he’s wanted since we met him – we were as stunned as Sam was when she heard it. Perhaps it might have something to do with how the women in Brad’s church – which Joel left but Brad is still a part of – have a bizarre relationship with the two of them. Do they view the two as their token gay couple as Sam suggested? I suspect the show will deal with in the final episodes.

Sam, at the moment, has other problems, not the least of which is the state of her finances. The last scene of the episode showed her bank balance and it’s the kind of thing that really makes you realize how close to the poverty she is. The viewer has other concerns for Sam in the final season. Will she find love herself? Will she find happiness? Will the people around her find those things? These may seem to be minor concerns compared with the struggles we’ve seen at the Arconia or whether Deb gets the job in Late Night but Somebody Somewhere has always been the kind of show where the stakes have always been very low. That’s part of the reason fans like me have loved it the way we have for the past three years: we’re not worried about some ridiculous power struggle or the success of Pied Piper but the smaller, more realistic struggles that most of us have to deal with in our lives. For people like Sam and Joel, the small stuff is what they have to sweat and we laugh with them as they find their ways around it.

Somebody Somewhere has always had a tone that been closer to wistful than anything else with the kind of gentleness that are considered the hallmark of middle-America but which the far left looks down on and the far right tends to exploit for political gain. Everett and her cast have shown that, despite what some people say, there’s nothing really the matter with Kansas.

I will be sad to say goodbye to this show but I have one last hope. When Reservation Dogs ended its run last year the Emmys rewarded it by nominating it for Best Comedy and four other nominations after two years of ignoring it, despite the fact that they had been nominated for multiple awards, including the Peabody. Similarly the Emmys have basically ignored Somebody Somewhere for the past two years, while other awards show have shown in love – including the Peabody. Both of these shows, coincidentally, were set in Middle America. Perhaps the Emmys could bestow some laurels on Sam and her crew in Kansas. That would be…nice.

My score: 5 stars.

Saturday Night Live, 50 Years of Groundbreaking Political Satire, Introduction

 

 

Almost from the moment it debuted in 1975 Saturday Night Live has been breaking ground in political comedy. And for nearly as long it has been subject to immense attack from commentators from both sides of the aisle.

With the rise of Fox News and partisan politics it has been mostly a target of Republicans and the right wing, particularly since Donald Trump has become the de facto mouthpiece of the GOP. What might come as a shock to younger viewers is that for far longer, it has been a target of critique from the most strident left-wingers who frequently hold it to the standard that it somehow is not going hard enough in its approach to Republicans. I found examples of this in a book on comedy written in 1983 which argued that Saturday Night Live was not merely overrated but a failure in part because, in the author’s opinion, it had not gone hard enough after then President Reagan.

Not only is denying SNL’s approach to Reagan – in a later article I intend to show just how hard the show went after Reagan almost from the start of his Presidency to the end  - but it shows a problem the left frequently sees in regards to society. It seems to be arguing that the right portrayal of Reagan on a late-night sketch comedy show had greater political influence than journalism, Congress or the voter. And this view is reflecting currently when it comes to how current progressive publications look at SNL’s approach to Donald Trump today. It is a bizarre amalgam of the argument that their approach to satirizing Trump has failed because it either normalizes him in the public eye or hasn’t done enough to make it clear what a danger he is to the entire world. This is an immense burden to put on anybody, and it’s a ludicrous one to put on a late-night comedy show even one that’s been on the air as long as SNL has.

There is a huge disconnect between both sides as to the purpose of SNL’s political parodies of which it remains superbly gifted after fifty years: it is essentially to satirize those in power by point out their flaws for the purpose of humor first and only after that to make a larger statement. That statement is to be left in the mind of the viewer to realize. Saturday Night Live has never had any power, either now or at its inception, to influence the electorate. And those who want to point out the occasions it has – Chevy Chase’s impersonation of Gerald Ford, Tina Fey’s of Sarah Palin – give too much credit to SNL for that and not nearly enough to numerous outside factors. Entertainment’s job is to reflect the mood of the public and there is no evidence that it can do anything to shift the electorate’s opinion. If that was the case after Will Ferrell did his humiliating impression of W in 2000, Al Gore would have won in a landslide and we know that didn’t happen.

What Saturday Night Live has done – extensively and frequently brilliantly – is point out the flaws in our political discourse and political figures well enough to make us laugh hysterically. At the process, at the people and ourselves for voting them in. Its approach to political humor has changed slightly with the times but, when one looks it over the course of its run, not really that much. What has changed is how America views politics, the role of the 24 hour news network and the increasingly ridiculous nature of so much of our politics. And in the last decade there has also been increasing pressure from both sides that political comedy is doing America a disservice, with one side arguing it’s not treating politicians with any respect and the other arguing, just as loudly, that’s its not doing nearly enough to tell America how much danger its in from the other side.  Lorne Michaels himself has acknowledged that its much harder to be funny these days, particularly when so many people on either side truly seem to argue that politics is too important to be mocked.

That is, for the record, exactly why SNL is important today as it was when it debuted not that long after Watergate. No matter how dark the times are we have to be able to laugh at ourselves and the world around us. Some would argue that it’s a luxury we can’t afford; I’d argue it’s a necessity that we can’t reject. One of the tenets of America is the right to free speech and that includes the ability to mock those in power. If people have a problem with that I’d argue that the problem is with them.

I have spent the better part of a quarter of a century watching Saturday Night Live. And as I’ve mentioned in previous articles I have also watched an immense amount of SNL in syndication from the 1980s up until the 1990s when I began more or less watching it constantly. Given that, as well as my extensive knowledge on American history I believe that I have a better qualification to talk about the kind of political humor that SNL has done over the last half-century.

What this series will do is look at how, over the years, many of the greatest comedians on SNL have caricatured and parodies the political figures that have dominated the last fifty years. These include not only the Presidents who have served during that period but also many of the major political figures, some of whom ran for President, some of whom were in the background. It will also look at how the approached changed over the course of time, including in regard to many of those major figures. And it will look at how the show approached Donald Trump – though in this case I intend to focus on the period before he entered politics and not after, mainly because that part has already been extensively covered.

I hope to show that Saturday Night Live hasn’t changed in 50 years in its approach to politics: it’s still doing variations on what it did from the moment Chevy Chase started tripping when he portrayed Gerald Ford. However, I don’t think it has a moral obligation to change its approach at all; if anything it has  a far greater one to do exactly what its been doing for fifty years: keep pissing off the people in authority by making them look like idiots. And I actually think a good way to start show this is to show something that has been a constant throughout its entire run: showing that the political figures (with one glaring exception) have been good sports about it.

 

In the cold open of one first season episode we saw a performance of ‘The Dead String Quartet’. Four cast members were shown propped up at their instruments. Slowly but surely they began to fall over, producing a random chord. The final person to be knocked over was Chevy Chase, who fell off the stage. Just as he opened his mouth, the show cut to footage of Gerald Ford who said: “Live from New York, its Saturday Night!”

This might have been the first real indication of SNL’s place in the cultural Zeitgeist: the President that the show had been mocking since its premiere appeared on film to open it. More importantly it began a trend that SNL has continued ever since: major political figures showing up on the show not so much to entertain (they’ve only been sporadically good at it) but to show they’re fine with being mocked.

As George W. Bush has said recently he never took any of the impersonations that Will Ferrell or his successors did personally. “When you’re in public office, you have to accept that being laughed at comes with the territory.” That’s part and parcel with campaign even before television became part of it; you have to show you’re a human being and there are few better ways to do so then to show you can take a joke.

This happened sporadically during the first few years after Lorne Michaels left the show in 1980. Some elected officials began to host the show. Ed Koch famously did so in 1983 (his monologue where he compares Ronald Reagan to himself is one of the show’s highlights from the decade) and George McGovern and Jesse Jackson did in the lead up to the 1984 election. Jackson came off the best, mainly because he didn’t try to be funny and let the writers do it for him. This may have been clearest after his opening monologue when he left the stage and headed into the broadcast booth. Just before he got there, a warning signal went out, all of the technical people left – and were replaced by African-Americans. The audience laughed and applauded because even in 1984 it was very clear that you didn’t want to get Jesse Jackson upset about racial disparity anywhere.

It's not clear what Reagan thought of the satires on him but his son clearly enjoyed it. One of the highlights in the shows history came when Ron Reagan, Jr. hosted the show. In one of the best cold opens of all time, Ron talks to his parents who are away at Camp David and want to make sure everything goes well at the White House while their son is there. The segment then cuts to Ron Junior, decked out like Tom Cruise in Risky Business and cavorting around the White House to ‘That Old Time Rock and Roll.”

Political cameos were rare in the next decade, though there was a priceless one when Paul Simon, a regular host of the show since its founding came back, appeared on the show In December of 1987. He came out – and there was Paul Simon of Illinois, who at the time was campaigning for President. Simon the Senator was known for his stiffness on the campaign trail, so the two men’s interaction showed both at a comic highlight as the two explained how frequently they got mistaken for each other. “That explains why so many people were disappointed when I showed up at Ames last winter,” Simon the entertainer said.

It’s telling that during the 1990s both of the major Republican nominees for President, George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole, not only seemed fine with the mockery they were undergoing on SNL but were more than willing to play along. When Dana Carvey came back to the host the show in 1995, George Bush Senior showed up in a filmed segment. “Now there’s a lot of things I could say about Dana Carvey. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent,” he said openly mocking Carvey’s constant catch phrases -which Bush never used. Dole took a step further appearing on SNL after losing the Presidency in 1996 and talking with Norm MacDonald the man who’d impersonated him for nearly two years. “I have to tell you, I never go around saying: “Bob Doles this’ or Bob Dole that,” he told MacDonald. “It’s not just something Bob Dole does.” After that laughter died down, he took a step further. “The thing is Norm; you’re just doing a poorer version of Dan Aykroyd’s impersonation of me. I know it, you know it, and the American people,” echoing Aykroyd’s catchphrase over the better part of years of cameos. Both of these, it should be said, went over far better than the decision to let Steve Forbes host in 1996, where he truly bombed.

 A highpoint came when Al Gore hosted in 2002. Gore, known for his stiffness on the campaign trail, was hysterical from beginning to end. There were two highlights: Gore in a filmed segment on the set of The West Wing with much of the cast, perching himself on the set of the Oval Office and refusing to leave when the shooting was done. “Well, he did win the popular vote,” Bradley Whitford said. Just as funny was Al Franken returning as Stuart Smalley (he had not yet entered politics) and having a session with ‘Al and Tipper G. John McCain actually hosted the show the following year and was willing to parody John Ashcroft on Hardball. “We’re investigating Shaquille O’Neal,” he told Darrell Hammond as Chris Matthews. “We understand he played a genie in Kazaam!” It’s telling that even after Tina Fey’s torching of Sarah Palin in 2008, he was willing to appear on the episode just prior to election day, preparing to move into his second career in home shopping. (One of the products he was offering: ‘McCain’s Fine Gold!”)

By that time, of course, both Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama had made cameos on SNL during the 2008 Democratic primary. Other politicians showed up to mock themselves (David Patterson showed up to taunt Fred Armisen’s parody of him) and just before the New Hampshire primary in 2012 Jon Huntsman showed up on Weekend Update to talk about his campaign and asked Seth if he was registered in New Hampshire. All of which is to say that when Donald Trump was invited to host in the early fall of 2015, a decision that has been criticized at the time and that the cast members regret now, the show was doing nothing it hadn’t done over the past forty years. Saturday Night Live had a long and glorious history of invited actors and figures they had spent years mocking and as anyone who’d watched the show knows Trump had been mocked by the show for decades even before he’d started hosting The Apprentice. There was nothing radical or wrong about their action and they certainly did nothing to ‘normalize’ him in the minds of the public. (As I shall relate in a later article while the show found it hard to satirize Trump, they were accurate in many critical facets of his personality long before he got into politics.) The only difference was, of course, that Trump had no sense of humor and couldn’t take a joke.

What was likely more significant was that, after Trump hosted the show real-life elected Republicans have refused to cameo on SNL. Democratic candidates have been more than willing to do so  -Bernie Sanders showed up to appear alongside Larry David, Elizabeth Warren showed up alongside Kate McKinnon’s portrayal of her, and Joe Biden gave a recording cameo. There’s an argument a major sea change occurred in February of this year when Ayo Edebiri hosted the show.

The cold open featured Trump giving a town hall to women voters – and Nikki Haley was there questioning ‘Trump’. Haley was loose but willing to satirize herself and when Edebiri showed up to call her on her question about the cause of the Civil War, she gave an honest answer. The left excoriated SNL for giving Haley an audience. I’d argue it was the best thing not only for Haley but for future political discourse. For eight years the GOP has steadfastly refused to allow itself even the opportunity to be mocked on television. That Haley was willing to do so  - and took it in the spirit of those like Dole and Bush senior – actually gave me a glimmer of hope during what was increasingly a long and grim election year.

For obvious reasons the right is up in arms when last night Kamala Harris made a ‘surprise’ cameo on SNL alongside Maya Rudolph who has been impersonating her for five years. In my opinion the more interesting cameo came later that episode in one of the most on-point satiric political sketches SNL has done in years.

John Mulaney, who was hosting for the sixth time and who was a writer on the show for years previous, has always been one of the great talents to appear on the show during the last decade. I can’t say how much he participates in the writing process each time he returns but I suspect given the patterns that occur with his hosting (last night we saw what was the fifth Broadway satire of a quintessential New York Institution that comes with each Mulaney appearance) I expect he is welcome. Which makes me sure he wrote the sketch that I’m talking about.

In what his second guest host appearance in 2018 there was a brilliant sketch called ‘What’s Their Name?” in which Mulaney played a contestant who couldn’t recognize people he knew at work or had met on multiple occasions. Last night we saw ‘What’s My Name: Election Edition” Mulaney was again a contestant and Michael Longfellow took over the job of hosting. (I don’t know why Bill Hader wasn’t there but the show didn’t need him.”

Mulaney was playing the role of a white progressive who identified major political figures including Jack Smith. “You sound passionate about this,” Longfellow said. “This is the most important election in my lifetime,” Mulaney said with the solemnity of a progressive. “Democracy is on the line.”

Longfellow then said: “For $300,000, let’s her it from the man himself.” And out came Tim Kaine. “I was Hilary’s running mate in 2016.” Kaine said. “You know, in the most important election in my lifetime when democracy was on the line. What’s my name?” Mulaney’s face quivered with indecision. “Um, Tim Walz,” Buzzer. “Come on, it was eight years ago. That’s less than one Zootopia.” Kaine said. “Not only does he look like Tim Walz but his first name is Tim,” Longfellow said. “We’ll give you three choices. Tim Clinton, Tim Tim or Tim Scott.” Mulaney: “The first two sound  don’t real. Tim Tim!” “No, it’s Tim Scott.”

Kaine erupted. “I’m Tim Kaine.” “Sure you are.” Longfellow said. “I’m a Senator for Virginia. “Good for you,” Longfellow said as Kaine walked off in a huff.

The entire sketch is an instant classic but the part that drove it home was that when offered ten million dollars Kaine came back out – and Mulaney still couldn’t remember his name.

I don’t think this sketch will receive nearly the attention that Harris’s appearance will, regardless of the result of the election. But I’d argue it’s by far the most on-brand and accurate sketch SNL has done about the election. It skewers so many of the targets that are vital, the far left’s Trump derangement syndrome – particularly white progressives – their selective outrage and most importantly, their short memories particularly in regard to their causes. And most importantly, in the appearance of Kaine’s mocking everything that the Democrats have been holding dear for the last eight years – including his role in it -  shows a sign of self-awareness that viewers and indeed the rest of the political media and all around it might do well to keep in mind when they discuss how disastrous the results will be for the election regardless of who wins. The fact that I know that both sides are going to focus on the cold open rather than Mulaney’s sketch won’t surprise me in the least – anymore than it will anyone on SNL.

How Great Directors Have Left Their Mark on Batman, Introduction

 

Over the years my readers know that I’ve never truly liked the majority of comic book films I’ve seen. There are many reasons for this, some of which are personal to me but there’s one that as a critic that has only recently occurred to me.

When Martin Scorsese stated that Marvel Cinematic Universe isn’t filmmaking he was excoriating by comic books fans. There are some who actually blame the decline of films since the last Avengers film on that which is ludicrous in many ways, not the least of which is I just can’t believe that there’s much overlap between the audiences of The Irishman and Ant-Man Quantumania.

The thing is Scorsese was right in what he considers the element of cinema and it’s not even something that dozens of other critics or indeed even fans of the movies haven’t said over the years. And it’s not the argument that these movies are formulaic: anyone who seen the last two films in Mad Max knows that there’s much to be seen in formula if its executed well. No the problem Scorsese has – and I doubt even the most sympathetic fan of comic book movies can argue – is that for every single movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they could just as easily have been directed by anyone for all the imprint they left on them.

Frankly no one should have been shocked that Chloe Zhao was not able to make any impression of the work she’d done in Nomadland on Shang-Chi. There was nothing of the man who’d directed so many Shakespearean masterpieces in Kenneth Branagh’s direction of Thor and none of the nuance he showed in Belfast. Ryan Coogler is a brilliant director and I don’t deny the significance of Black Panther but there was nothing of the subtlety of Fruitvale Station or the emotional intensity of Creed. And whatever imprint Joss Whedon made on The Avengers was solely because of the writing; when it came to directing I saw neither the subtlety in Much Ado About Nothing or the splashy fun of Cabin in the Woods.

And this has been true of comic book characters that are directly connected to the MCU, at least not yet. Sam Raimi’s three Spider-Man movies are all brilliant exercises in styles but they are tonal outliers compared to every other film he did before and since. Indeed, there’s an argument that in his low-budget movie Darkman (a film, in hindsight, that was nearly a quarter-century ahead of its time) is not only far more a Sam Raimi film than any of the Spiderman films but honestly a better superhero film in principle and execution. (It did inspire two straight to video sequels in the 1990s.) Marc Webb is a brilliant comic director and writer but was there anything of the person who gave us 500 Days of Summer in either Amazing Spider-Man film?

This happens less frequently in DC movies over the years. Richard Donner was able to leave his mark on the first two Superman films and even I can’t deny Zach Snyder does have a talent for this even if I don’t agree with his results. But for all the success of Wonder Woman if you didn’t know Patty Jenkins directed it, would you have known? I’ll grant you the majority of Jenkins’s work, aside from Monster has been in television but I’ve seen some of her work, particularly the undervalued limited series I Am The Night which in her two episode has more subtlety and flair than either of her movies for DC.  As for the other movies in the DC Universe, tell me seriously if I’d told you the same man who directed The Conjuring and Insidious also directed Aquaman and you didn’t already know that, would you have known? I didn’t until just now.

This is not, for the record, something that happens with other movies in other franchises. Denis Villeneuve left an imprint in Blade Runner:2049 which I did recognize while it was similar to Ridley Scott’s original. Scott has a different version for Alien then James Cameron did and both worked to a different extent and the most recent trilogy of Halloween films – especially the first – did allow for styles that I recognized of David Gordon Green that was both different from and similar to John Carpenter’s original. It’s even true for directors who take on completely different franchises and have worked in the MCU: Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot mysteries are Branagh films in a way Thor isn’t even though he directed them. Even the most recent James Bond films have allowed for some great directorial creativity -  Skyfall is considered one of the greatest Bond films ever made and that’s in large because Sam Mendes, who is a visionary director of the form was allowed free reign.

Only the comic book is so formulaic in not only its basic structure but what it can reliably tell in its plots that there is no room for any vision at all on the part of the director. This was, as I’ve said before, particularly true in the Marvel Cinematic Universe when the only real job of almost every film that wasn’t an Avengers movie, was to go in a set path with no real variation. Consequently the films might as well have been directed by anybody at all. And this has been the biggest problem with almost every single comic book franchise in history.

With one critical exception.

From the moment that Tim Burton unleashed the first Batman film on us thirty-five years ago directors have been able to do let their vision be freed on the big screen regardless of the formula of the comic book. It doesn’t make them all masterpieces by any means, quite a few of the films then and now have failed critically and financially.

But the difference between, say, the failure of Batman & Robin and Shazam: Fury of the Gods is radically different. Batman & Robin is no doubt the worst movie not just in the history of comic books (though I’m not convinced it’s as horrible as so many believe) but there’s imagination and fun in it. There’s a director who is devoted to a vision, however ludicrous or deeply flawed it may be, and is willing to let it fail on that merits. You can say many things about this film (and even the people who starred in it have). But it’s bad because it’s a horrible idea and badly executed. Fury of the Gods is a bad film because its unoriginal, formulaic and not even bothering to be that interesting. It’s dull, which is the worst thing you can call any film. Batman & Robin might no doubt fall into the so bad its almost good category, no one will say that of Eternals.

I think there are two reasons that, in my opinion, the Batman franchise has allowed filmmakers for more creativity in the majority of the films I’ve seen over the year. The first is probably how Batman, of course, isn’t a superhero the way other comic book characters are and that makes his problems different in the way that the rest of the characters in the world of comics, DC, Marvel or what have you. It may have strained credulity to many that Lois Lande never realized Clark Kent was Superman because he was wearing glasses, but each time he came back after mysteriously disappeared, he didn’t have a black eye or mysterious bruises to explain along with his absence.

Bruce Wayne is, as was actually said in one film, just a man in a cape. He has immense resources, great physical ability and though it’s rarely seen in the films so far, a great deductive mind. What he doesn’t have is the ability for bullets to bounce off his skin, magic bracelets or super-healing powers. If you cut him, he will bleed. The reason for the raspy voice and the mask is not just to disguise his identity but because it makes him seem inhuman when as we all know he isn’t.

There’s also the fact that while Batman has a rogue’s gallery of villains to face, they are all human. They may have the appearance of grotesqueries but they are costumed freaks the same way he is. Most comic books often argue the villains are variation on the heroes but considering that all of the villains are insane and Batman is fundamentally judged by the populace a different kind of threat, there is a presence of a morally gray area that you just don’t get in almost every other comic book. The best Batman films – like the best films overall – have us questioning how we see the world and there’s an ambiguity that we just can’t get with Captain America or Superman.

And that leads to the second reason for creativity that other franchises can’t or won’t allow: Batman is the darkest comic book franchise. I don’t mean in terms of lighting or camera work or even the nature of the villains: I mean that Batman, more than any other comic book character, is engaged in a war that everyone – save for himself -  knows is futile. The common enemy in every Batman film is an existential threat rather than a single man: crime. And well before Bob Kane even created the series our society knows that it is a war that can’t be won. The people around the Batman know this and its actually been said by numerous characters in individual movies. Usually Alfred is the one to say it but it’s been said by Selina Kyle and many of the villains themselves. Bruce Wayne is the only character in the movies who won’t admit it – and the best films not only show the personal cost to him but actually argue that he is himself is as crazy as the villains he chases because he won’t acknowledge it.

This can lead to the movies almost always being relentlessly grim but it also allows them to ask probing questions that few films, certainly not franchises of any kind, are inclined to ask. For that reason while several characters in comic books are increasingly archaic Batman has actually become more relevant as the years go by, not less. Almost every filmmaker who has helmed one or multiple Batman films is telling stories that are not merely about Batman against the villains he faced but about what it actually takes to wage these battles in the first place. The events of the 21^st century have, increasingly, been leading us to consider the questions that Batman has been facing indirectly for decades: how far are we willing to go to defeat our enemies? What is the point of morality when so many of the forces against us will not play by the same rules – or worse, use our own rules against us to their ends? Have we, in fact, been fighting the wrong kind of battles when it comes fighting crime in our cities? Batman, by even the most generous definition, is a vigilante who does his work outside the boundaries of the law, which means he predates the antihero theme that has dominated so much of the best of our popular culture in recent years. (There’s an argument that Joel Schumacher’s entries are the biggest failures not just because they don’t take Batman seriously but that they don’t take the battles he’s fighting seriously either.)

And over the years Batman himself has actually grown in the perception of filmmakers. In the first decade of films made about him Bruce Wayne was more or less secondary to the villains he fought and even Batman seemed like a ghost compared to them. As the 21^st century began, filmmakers like Christopher Nolan and Matt Reeves have done much to make Bruce Wayne as significant as Batman and try to explain why he does what he does – something he is often loathe to explore. Interestingly the film that may have gotten closest to understanding Bruce Wayne’s psychology was the Lego version which while it is both a family movie and a satire, has a far more accurate interpretation as to the real reason why Batman is so devoted to saving Gotham – and why he’s ignoring the way he could move on.

I’ve found something of value in every Batman movie which is not something I find in most films in a franchise. Much of it is cinematic but far more of it is creative and intellectually. And I truly believe that it has to be because of the work of the directors who have, for better and (occasionally) worse are allowing to leave an imprint on Gotham in a way that directors just can’t in nearly any other comic book franchise.

In this series I intend to look in detail at all of the films to date that have taken place in the Batman universe. This will include both of Todd Philips Joker films as well as The Lego Batman Movie. Because this will be a chronology of films this series will not include the numerous TV series that take place in this world, either animated or live-action. I will likely be looking at Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond in my series on animated classics later on and there is a possibility that I will eventually include the recent HBO series The Penguin because it is directly tied to the Batman cinematic universe in a way that shows like Gotham aren’t.

My approach will be chronological but there will be certain limitations. Batman Vs. Superman will appear in the list but Justice League will not. And indeed the former will almost entirely be used to show not only Zack Snyder’s view of Batman is important but how his dealing with Superman shows how he views threats that are beyond the scope of what he is capable of. Similarly I don’t intend to look at any version of Harley Quinn (to my regret) but very well might look at Folie A Deux down the line because both Joker  films look at the world of Gotham and see Arthur Fleck’s struggle as a parallel of the one that Bruce Wayne faces – and perhaps more accurately shows how Wayne could have ended up in Arkham himself. Besides, there’s no better way to look an auteur than a musical version of Gotham.

Some of this, no doubt, has been covered before by writers on this very site. My version, as I mentioned, will look more at the role of the director and writer of the perception of Batman rather whether it is canon or even in terms of quality. Stephen King once had one of his characters say: “It is the tale, not he who tells it.” This is true for most franchise films. The Batman films are more likely standouts because more often then not, the latter is allowed to be true and we the viewer are the richer for it.

 

 

 

 

 

You Know Who Doesn't Have The Yalues Of New York? Other New Yorkers: A Cautionary Anecdote Before Election Day

 

Author’s Note: I was reluctant to write this article because it is more personal than many of the ones I tend to write for this column. Nevertheless, it is so on point with the divide that exists between the left and the rest of America that I feel compelled to include it. I have changed the names and even the genders of the people who are involved the incident in question as well as the location it took place in. Everything else is true.

 

As my long-time readers know I’ve lived in New York State all of my adult life and all of it in Queens. Because much of my social circle and my employment is tied to Manhattan, I believe I’ve spent somewhere between a quarter and a third of my life in New York State in New York City proper. And during that time my opinion of the city that never sleeps has pretty much been a constant: it’s a nice place to visit, but even if I could afford to live there, I wouldn’t.

Having spent so much of my life either in Manhattan or Manhattan adjacent I can say with all sincerity New York City might be called ‘the number one city in America” if not on the entire planet but the only thing it is number one is its opinion of itself. I acknowledge and appreciate all of the great cultural landmarks of this city, all of its architecture, all of its history but New York hasn’t been the center of anything for a very long time.

We’ve long since dropped in population behind California, Texas and Florida. We’ve never been the center of entertainment since television took up residence in Hollywood in the 1960s as well as film. We may be the center of finance in America but that pales compared to other nations in Europe and Asia. And it’s telling that so many of the institution that are quintessentially New York – the ballet, the opera, Broadway – have long since passed the point that the average New Yorker – had they any interest – would be able to afford them. New York’s apartments are among the most expensive in the country and most people who live here can’t afford to rent them, much less own them. And needless to say our teams in almost every major league sport haven’t won championships in a very long time.

The only think that New York City  is number one at is it’s disproportionate sense of its place in not only America, but the world. Such is our attitude that while anyone who has lived in New York for even a year knows just how obvious its flaws are, the only people allowed to talk about are themselves New Yorkers. Nothing more sums up our sense of entitlement when Middle America calls us the representation of all that is entitled and elite. “F--- you!” we react. “Only we’re allowed to say what a shithole we are.”

Perhaps that’s why I’ve never judged the people at Fox News for raging against New York in all its forms. I don’t think they’re qualified to talk about anything else but as native New Yorkers they know of what they speak there. Frankly the fact that Democrats tend to call this hypocrisy shows that they don’t understand New York: that particular double standard is part of being a New Yorker.

Indeed the only greater insincerity I find in my native state is that so many progressives choose to call this state their home and from that perch, judge the rest of the country for being backwards, bigoted and elitist. This is a joke that is something that I’d be shocked that has never come up on SNL or any of the late night comics who broadcast from Manhattan. In this way when  conservatives rail against comics like them for not understanding ‘Real America’ they’re not entirely wrong.

New York is, by almost any standard, a city of elitism and culture. The fact that is become the groundswell for so many ‘progressive movements’ over the last decade strikes me as laughable when it comes to the divide. Occupy Wall Street was, for all intents and purposes, a lot of privileged children playing poor and no doubt they actually stepped over homeless people to do so and never saw the dissonance. So many of the major so-called ‘Justice Democrats’ have tried to run campaigns that by any reasonable nature would be considered out of touch: nothing strikes me as more absurd that Cynthia Nixon campaigning for governor  and trying to get the representation of the ‘Working Families Party’ – a party that is no doubt there only to make Democrats feel good about themselves when they choose to vote for the Democratic candidate who’s invariably listed there. And very little could speaks of entitlement than a bunch of students at Columbia – Columbia! – were not only completely qualified to understand the situation in Middle East but could bring about a peaceful resolution with a student protest. The only thing that was more entitled was their request for amnesty as part of demands: I could hear the chants: “What do we want?”  “Change – and for this march not to appear on our permanent record!”

There’s always been a certain level of elitism in so much of New York, but I never really thought this was reflected in bigotry  - until today.

The last several months I have been engaged in a part-time paid internship at an office job in New York. While I was busy working this afternoon an individual came into the office who I knew vaguely and started having a conversation with the new department head. One of these people was white, one was African-American. Both of them live in New York.

The two were having a jovial conversation and I wasn’t paying any real attention to it. Then one of them said: “You know if it wasn’t for New York City…” The next sentence caught by attention. “Honestly places like Westchester, they’re basically the South.”

I started sweating hearing this as well as the laughing in agreement. The other person said: “If I had the choice I wouldn’t live” well, you don’t need to know but it was a suburb on Long Island. Then the other person chuckled and said about when that individual was in college in Buffalo he experienced something bigoted. (The person transferred to Howard, so I assume they felt safer then.) They then said essentially Long Island might as well be Jim Crow South. Well those weren’t the exact words:   they said Mayberry but that’s the implication. One of them said: “New York City was the only thing holding this state together.”  And at that point I left the room.

Reader it took me nearly five minutes to calm down from that exchange. I had to wait another three for that conversation to end and another three to find the inner strength to restrain myself from not knocking on the door and engaging in an angry exchange. I had little to lose by doing so: my internship will be over in a month and I find it unlikely I will be working in that particular office setting again. But I am civil in public as I usually am in my own writing for this column. (The comments section is a different story but I’ve come to accept that’s the id for this site.)

Now I’ve heard more bigoted things said in my life, not merely on television but in my presence. But few things have ever made me more infuriated – not the stuff I hear on the right wing or the left and very little even on this site. And the reason it did, I now realize, is because it encapsulate in a very real sense the divide that our country faces is not solely on the far right.

Just as a reminder this was said in New York City, a state that has been Democratic so long no Republican presidential candidate in their right mind would campaign here with the hope of carrying the state. (I know what happened Sunday night; few would argue the inaccuracy of my statement.) This is a state that is among the most deep blue in America. The two people speaking no doubt hate Trump with justifiable contempt, voted for Hilary in 2016, Biden in 2020 and will no doubt vote for Harris in 2024. But there are few conversations that could best encapsulate the progressive mindset towards so much of the country that in their opinion if you lived even twenty minutes away from Manhattan you might as well live in Tuscaloosa.

Now I have no doubt that both these people, in their heart of hearts, don’t believe they’re bigots. One of them, as I stated, was African-American and one I should mention was female. Both of them are, no doubt, donors to liberal causes, will contribute to Democratic campaigns and are no doubt convinced that the entire Republican party is an existential threat to the country comparable to climate change. I’m relatively sure that in their heart of hearts they didn’t think they were really being offensive. I know if I’d gone up to them and told them that what they were saying made me uncomfortable, they would apologize. However I’m also aware that they would be sorry for making me feel uncomfortable and not anything that actually said.

It's the laughter that bothers me, the knowing self-aware tone of it that fundamentally troubles me and that I have little doubt will keep me up at night no matter how much I try not to think about it. It will linger past election day, will be there no matter who ends up winning. And why I find at the end of the day,  perhaps as big a symbol of the divide that our nation faces that is far greater than just Republican versus Democrat.

I know these people. Not well, but I’ve had multiple conversations with them. They’re nice, they’re charming, they’re intelligent, they’re clearly educated. They live in a state that has gone Democratic for the last two elections and will definitely keep doing so for the foreseeable future. And they talk about the people who they live with – in  a place they call home not thirty miles from where I was speaking – with the same visceral contempt that I hear from Republicans about immigrants  - or progressives about Trump voters. They’re in the bastion of liberalism, not far from where Hakeem Jeffries and AOC represent Congress, where other Democrats like Mondaire Jones may soon represent. And they think the towns they live in, their neighborhoods are, compared to Manhattan, racist, backwards, conservative. And if they can’t find commonalities with the people who live in the same state as them, if they find them morally lacking, if they find them untrustworthy…well, what hope is there for anyone who lives in any of the other forty-nine states?

I know my state; I know we look down on anyone who doesn’t come from ‘around here’. That’s as true if you’re from Pennsylvania or Michigan; hell it’s true if you’re from New Jersey. Maybe all of this is just a New York thing. Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe.

Still I can’t help but wonder. What if I’d gone up to them and said, not angrily but calmly that I grew up in the suburbs and still live there? That many of my friends live in the neighborhoods that they just mocked? That I found their remarks not only deeply insulting but offensive to so many people?

Would they have apologized to me and forgotten it the moment I left? Would they have realized the error their ways? Or would they have told me to get a thicker skin?

I want to believe that they’d honor the better angels of their nature. After all, they’re from a blue state. They’re on the right side of history. They’re the good guys.

Right?

 

Stand: Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf and A Virtually Unknown Sports Activist

 

When the World Series took place in 1918 it did so under multiple clouds. The first was that World War I was going and that baseball had been forced – reluctantly – to have its greatest stars shoulder guns and fight. The owners believed that the 1919 season might very well be wiped out – no one knew that the war would be over by November – and had already shortened their season to end in September. The World Series was going to take place over a short period of time and very likely be the last baseball anyone saw for a while.

Attendance had dropped immensely as a result which dismayed the two teams: the Red Sox and the Cubs. In the era of the reserve clause the World Series share was a major source of income. Upsetting them more was the fact that for the first time baseball was going to diminish the money having made the decision to divide ticket sales for teams that finished anywhere from second to fourth in both leagues. Before the series began, both teams considered staging a strike, demanding more money or they wouldn’t play. The president of the American League Ban Johnson met with the strike leaders and put their strike in the shadow of patriotism with which The National pastime was now connected with. How could they think of letting down the public, especially in a time of war?

The players, led by Harry Hooper of the Red Sox, knew that they couldn’t win this fight. Baseball was always the master of public relations when it came to its image as the national game and to think of money in comparison to that – well, it was practically un-American. The players came out looking like ingrates even though they were in the right.

I mention all of this because during the seventh inning stretch at what was then known as Cubs Field the on-field band chose to use the opportunity to strike up The Star-Spangled Banner. The song, I should mention, wasn’t the national anthem yet: it wouldn’t be adopted as such until 1931. But when it began to play, the spectators began to sing, first only a few, then more and more until by the final note, the entire crowd was singing. And when the final note was played the entire crowd burst into thunderous cheers and applause, no doubt inspired by the national mood. The song was played at every game of the World Series, which the Red Sox won four games to 2 over Chicago. Famously the Red Sox didn’t win another World Series until 2004 and the Cubs, though they would contend frequently over the next quarter of a century, wouldn’t win a World Series until 2016.

Because baseball was associated with the national game – and because the owners never liked to mess with anything that made them sound like that they weren’t an institution rather than a business – the Star Spangled Banner became associated with baseball pretty much from that point forward. And because baseball was the American sport every other league and sport, from football to I suspect high school lacrosse, has been imitated it ever since. That is the deeper story of the connection between the Star-Spangled Banner and professional sports.

I seriously doubt that any of the so-called patriots who condemn any action involving the national anthem as ‘unamerican’  in professional sports know anything about and I seriously doubt that even if they did know, their opinion would change one bit. I also have incredible suspicion that the song was written in the one American war we got our asses kicked in, that it has four verses besides the first one, that it’s set to an English drinking song, or that they even know the words to the anthem. And I’ll be honest during the post-season and World Series year after year I tend not to listen the national anthem. It’s not just that it’s almost inevitably badly sung, no matter which Billboard singer they get to mangle it; it’s that even as patriotic songs go, it’s not a particularly good one. ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ is a wartime song and sounds like it. Compared to God Bless America or My Country, This of Thee, which are more peaceful and more tuneful, it sounds like – well, like it was written by an attorney rather than a poet or a songwriter. And this is coming from someone for whom it would doesn’t necessarily have the relationship with America that Chris Rock once described in his ‘Never Scared’ special. “For black people America is like the uncle who paid your way through college – but molested you.”

The kindest thing you can say about the national anthem and professional sports – and this is the rare occasion I am loathe to be objective – is that it came during a time when separate but equal was the law of the land, where black people were getting lynched and race riots were considered the faults of the uppity black people. Integration in professional sports was something that was considered unthinkable and probably un-American even by those who went off to fight fascism abroad in World War II.

Jackie Robinson learned that lesson the hard way while serving in the military. He got on a bus and ignored the instructions to move to the back. Transportation had been integrated by the military. The driver either didn’t know or didn’t care. When Robinson refused to do so, he was court-martialed. The jury would acquit him but Robinson never forgot the realization that he was fighting two wars: “one abroad and one against racism at home.” In his autobiography which ended up being published posthumously (he died days before it was published) in his last lines, he made it clear. “When I hear the national anthem, I can not salute the flag. I know that I am a black man in white America. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919 I know I never had it made.”

This last statement is true of every African-American athlete half a century later. And while things have improved immensely for athletes in many ways, particularly in the last twenty years all of them are very aware of the precarious position they are in with white ownership. This case has been made repeatedly but one that I was unfamiliar with both when it happened and until fairly recently was the story of Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. It’s unlikely I still would be were it not for the work of the sports documentaries on Showtime.

Until fairly recently Showtime was at least as good as HBO when it came to showing documentary series and they were superior, in my opinion, when it came to those on professional athletes. I saw many fascinating ones over the past few years on sports that don’t normally interest me and people I would have paid no attention to otherwise. I learned the tragic story of Sonny Liston, one of the greatest and most controversial boxers of all time. I saw The Kings the stories of the intertwined fates of Sugar Ray Leonard, Marv Hagler, Roberto Duran and Thomas Hearns, interplayed with the history of 1970s and 1980s America. I saw Goliath the story of Wilt Chamberlain, the athlete before he was everything else. And last year came Stand the story of a man who overcame obstacles to become one of the greatest athletes in 1990s basketball – and then was destroyed because of racism and faux outrage twenty years before Colin Kaepernick lived through a similar experience. The difference was, for him, the consequences were far more severe personally and it is only until recently that we’ve begun to realize just how poorly we’ve treated him.

Unlike many of the documentaries involving sports that I’ve watched over the years the events in Stand took place during my lifetime or at least my childhood. I have no memory of them no doubt because I never followed professional basketball seriously then or now and I certainly wouldn’t have known anything about the  saga of a point guard for the Denver Nuggets. The Nuggets themselves were a relatively new team in basketball: they’d been part of the ABA (American Basketball Association) and had joined the NBA when the two leagues merged in 1976. Relatively speaking they’ve enjoyed some success in their history. During the 1980s they were one of the highest scoring teams in basketball, perennially contending for the playoffs but only winning two division titles in the 1980s and never making it to the conference finals. (They didn’t win their first championship until 2023.) They had gone through a period of decline during 1989 and 1991, but that allowed them to make high draft choices. One of them came in 1990.

Chris Jackson was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, one of three sons in a single parent household. He lived in poverty and constantly had poor nutrition. He missed fourth grade, was later placed in special education classes and it wasn’t until 17 that he was diagnosed with a moderate form of Tourette’s. Somehow he became a basketball prodigy at Gulfport High School. He was named Mississippi Mr. Basketball in 1987 and 1988. He was signed by LSU. He set the scoring record for a freshman, then broke it the same year, setting records for most points  by a freshman. The following year he produced similar numbers and tied his career high for three-pointers. Before his junior year he declared for the draft and was selected third. He was a teammate his second year with Shaquille O’Neal and later he took it personally when O’Neal broke the records he set as LSU, something O’Neal remarks on with ruefulness in the documentary

He was named to the all-rookie second team in 1991, then struggled the following year due to issues with a medication he’d been wrongly prescribed to treat his Tourette’s. The next year he got back into shape and was named Most Improved Player. Listening to his contemporaries and his peers, he is described in awe as this relatively small man who was suffering from Tourette’s absolutely destroying guys twice his size as a point guard. One observer says he was “Steph Curry before he was Steph Curry” and Curry himself says he could not have done what Jackson did.

During the 1993 season Jackson had converted to Islam, something that puzzled more people than it upset. No one in Denver cared who he worshiped as long as he performed on the court – something that he was doing with incredible skill. In the 1993-1994 season the Nuggets had their first winning season in five years, managed to come from a two game to nothing deficit to upset the first place Supersonics and nearly did the same thing against the Utah Jazz before the lost in the second round. The next year they finished .500 but still qualified for the playoffs. (They were swept by the Spurs.) The 1995-1996 season was a rebuilding year but the highpoint came when they played the 1995-96 Bulls who were on their way to a 72-10 season. One of those ten losses came against the Nuggets when Abdul-Rauf scored 32 points against the Bulls. Steve Kerr tried to guard him that night and freely tells the camera had no chance against him that night.

Around that time, however, Abdul-Rauf began to undergo the wrong kind of scrutiny for what was a private decision that got turned into something that led to him being ‘cheated out of his career’. Abdul-Rauf makes it clear that he’d begun to read the writings of such leftist thinkers as Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn and learned about ‘American exceptionalism.” My readers know I have issues with both these men as scholars but Abdul-Rauf makes it very clear in Stand that his interpretation is milder than most current day progressives and even most African-Americans. And when you consider the American flag, as I mentioned, has a different implication for African-Americans then white ones his actions are understandable.

During the 1995-96 season when everyone was saluting the flag, Abdul-Rauf was sitting on the sidelines. That’s all he was doing, not doing a Black Power salute or taking a knee. He did so for somewhere between four to six months to the indifference of his teammates, the attendees both in Denver and on the road, and most importantly the NBA. His teammates and coach said that he told them what was he doing and that they were fine with it – ‘it was no big deal’. And it very likely would have remained one were it not for the interference and bullying of a Denver talk radio host.

A broadcaster for Denver’s KBPI radio station is shown saying simply: “I don’t like him.”  The broadcaster (whose name is mentioned but who no one in the documentary mentions by name) says he went to a game and noticed Abdul-Rauf not standing for the National Anthem. He evokes the usual patriotic cliches “my father fought in World War II” and basically decided to broadcast this fact to his audience. His continued discussion of it on talk radio led to it being picked up by cable and national news (a big deal because partisan networks like Fox News and MSNBC didn’t exist yet). Eventually they went to interview him about why Abdul-Rauf refused to stand for the national anthem.

In the interview we see, which goes Abdul-Rauf says went on for twenty minutes, he speaks in a completely calm tone, lucidly and intellectually. He gives a full and measured response. But in what was clearly a hack job done by the entire national media, the only clips that ended up playing were ones where he said the flag was a symbol of oppression and that the United States had a long history of tyranny. This is a position, for the record, that a black man in white America would have a hard time disagreeing with and considering Jackson/Abdul-Rauf’s upbringing, it’s an understandable one. But nuance has never been the strong suit of network news and eventually Abdul-Rauf became a polarizing figure.

We see a series of talking heads and it should come as no surprise that all of the people who express the greatest vehemence are white fans (male) and that African-American superstars, among them Charles Barkley and Mike Tyson, offer complete support. Shaquille O’Neal is shown in the present wishing that he’d gone out of his way to support his former teammate because he has two sisters who practice Islam.

Abdul-Rauf described what happened next. He showed up on March 12, 1996 for a home game and was called in by his coach who was clearly upset – at the league, not him. He told him about what had happened, that he was indefinitely suspended until he agreed to stand for the anthem and that the team wanted him to leave the stadium immediately, without dressing for the game or even talking to his teammates. Abdul-Rauf was stunned. When his agent was sent the reasons for the suspension, he knew it was bullshit because the code of conduct he’d supposedly broken was so archaic the union never even negotiated it.

Abdul-Rauf is very clear about the racism involved in this decision, though he does so subtly. He points out that the league never liked the fact that his agent, who was a close friend of his, was also African-American. He points out the hypocrisy of the fact that African-Americans, despite being a majority of the talent in the NBA, have almost no representation in management or the front office. This was under scrutiny at the time as well. Famously in 1987 Al Campanis had come on Ted Koppel to mark the fortieth anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s debut and had said that he thought “black people didn’t have the necessities” to have positions in management. The NBA no doubt didn’t want those questions asked either.

And the racism, which the broadcaster denies, was very clear at the time. Four employees of KBI went to a Colorado mosque and were charged with misdemeanors for playing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ on bugle and trumpet. (One wonders if they even checked to see if this was even a mosque Abdul-Rauf frequented or whether they thought they all looked alike.) It’s worth remembering that in the 1990s Colorado was essentially as deeply conservative as its neighbors Wyoming and Utah. With the exception of LBJ’s landslide in 1964 and Clinton’s victory in 1992, it had been solidly Republican for almost the entire twentieth century, even going for Republican for the last two of FDR’s electoral landslides. (Indeed it went for Bob Dole in 1996 and didn’t become solidly Democratic until Obama’s win in 2008.) Much of Colorado’s politics and fan base was heavily white, even in Denver and as we see in footage later on, Abdul-Rauf is seen being heavily booed at home when the suspension was lifted. Eventually he worked out a compromise with the league where he would stand during the playing of the anthem but could close his eyes, look downward and silently recited prayer. For the fans, it changed nothing and from that moment on he was a marked man.

The following season after having had one of the biggest seasons of his career so far, Abdul Rauf was traded to Sacramento Kings for basically nothing. He played 75 games the next year and averaged 28.4 points a game  but the next year he didn’t start a single game. and one of the greatest players in the league was for all intents and purposes blacklisted. The NBA denies to this day that is what they did but the players and his friends know that it was happened. He ended up signing with a Turkish basketball league but left before finishing the season. He didn’t play for the 1999-2000 season and then signed with the Vancouver Grizzlies in August of 2000. He managed to get through the season intact but then September 11^th put the final nail in his coffin.

In December of 2001, he was interviewed on HBO’s Real Sports. I have no doubt the only reason he was talked too was because they wanted to talk to both a Muslim athlete and a controversial figure. In his interview, where he was unaccompanied he stated that he thought the attacks on the Twin Towers were an inside job and that Israel might have been responsible. It’s telling that there are now many people – including professional athletes like Aaron Rodgers – who spout conspiracy theories on cable news and are treated not only justly but with authority and Abdul-Rauf’s career in the NBA was torpedoed after that broadcast.

And it is worth noting he faced far worse consequences then just being professionally blackballed. He bought a mansion with his earnings for his family in Necaise, Mississippi in 1992. In 2001, it was burned to the ground. Investigators determined there was arson and the FBI investigated. The KKK and white nationalists have always had a heavy presence in Mississippi to this day and some were suspected but no one was charged. A teammate of Abdul-Rauf points out the hypocrisy: “Mahmud never said to burn down the house but the Klan did burn his house down.” Abdul-Rauf moved to Florida.

Abdul-Rauf played with many international teams for the rest of his career, including in Russia and Japan. And he is still very gifted as an athlete in his fifties. He currently plays for the BIG3 basketball league, a league founded by Ice Cube in 2017 and he still plays today and pretty well: at age 49, he was among the leaders in field goal percentage.

Abdul-Rauf has every right to be enraged by what happened to him: the parallels between him and Colin Kaepernick are unmistakable. But I consider what happened to him more outrageous because his actions were not only private but unnoticed by the league for much of the initial period it was happening. Abdul-Rauf was never outspoken the way many of todays professional athletes are and he never spoke with the militancy of other Black Muslims, not just Louis Farrakhan or Muhammed Ali but other polarizing racial figures of the time such as Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. Abdul-Rauf had opinions but they were his own and he makes it clear, even now, that they are solely his own and he never tried to preach to anyone at the time.

The racism is, if anything, more blatant then it was in the days of Fox News and talk radio not only because it’s very clear this was the white administration coming down on a Black Islam athlete who they considered ‘uppity’ though compared to his contemporaries like Barkley and Dennis Rodman, he wasn’t even close to their level of outrageousness. It’s equally clear that economics were involved: Denver was never as a big market team as New York or Chicago and it’s likely the league felt freer to stomp on Abdul-Rauf with impunity because he wasn’t Jordan or Ewing even though he was clearly as good as them at his profession. Had his career been even ten years later,  when social media was in full swing, it’s likely he could have survived this; had it happened today, he’d probably be a bigger celebrity for what he said off the court then on. But the perfect storm of events torpedoed his career and did far more damage to his life than any athlete today.

I’m impressed by Abdul-Rauf the way that I am by the measure of other athletes such as Jackie Robinson or Ali and infinitely more than some of the so-called ‘activists’ today. Abdul-Rauf didn’t know he was doing anything controversial at the time but when the going got tough he stood firm to his principles. And it’s clear even today that he still has them. One of the last images of Abdul-Rauf is him in attendance of an NBA game while the National Anthem is being played. While everyone else is standing and singing, he's looking downward with his eyes closed and chanting silently. He does so the same way he did when the whole controversy started – with no one in the stadium seeming angry or even noticing. He has made peace with what has happened to him and he has never compromised. He continues to make his stand.

Lioness Returns For An Action-Packed - And Thought-Provoking - Second Season

 

 

You might well have seen the teaser for Season 2 of Lioness Taylor Sheridan’s exceptional CIA drama that airs on Paramount Plus and Showtime and where the first two episodes dropping of how streaming and cable nearly simultaneously. The major highlight is Zoe Saldana’s Jo looking at a potential new recruit and asking over and over: “Do you love your country?” When the recruit responds: “I’m serving my country right now!” Jo says simply “Your country needs more.”

At this point I suspect Jo has made a similar pitch to every recruit she’s had for the Lioness program, one that we learned is trained for the sole purpose of using female soldiers in long term espionage programs with the sole purpose of killing Islamic terrorists. We saw what that entailed when things went badly in the teaser of Season 1 and we saw a ‘good’ outcome at the end of the season. Looking at that I’m beginning to wonder if Jo is making the pitch as much to her new recruit but to herself.

Saldana was exceptional in Season 1 playing the head of a CIA-Military covert ops training program, not just for her exceptional power but because we see a woman who has learned to turn her humanity off and become a soldier every time she goes to work. Her husband  Neal (well played by the subtle Dave Annable) has been more understanding of it then he should, her children, particularly her oldest less so. And she clearly has convinced herself that her purpose for all the sacrifices she has made for serving her country are being done purely for her family. The problem is, and it’s increasingly clear in Season 2, is that Jo is having increasing trouble accepting that while she loves her country, it is at best going to be a one-sided love and that at the end of the day, the people who represent in elected office are going to give nothing in return.

This is the clear in the opening episode when Jo is called into the Situation Room along with two of her superiors, Kaitlyn (Nicole Kidman) and their superior Bryon Westfield (Michael Kelly, now promoted to series regular) A Congresswoman from Texas has been abducted  by a Mexican cartel. The agency knows they can find her and get her out clean. They are told in so uncertain terms by the Secretary of State (played by an unusually cold and unemotional Morgan Freeman) that they want it to be messy. They believe that China is behind this and that geo-political forces are in play and after its over, they want to send a message. The President (who is as of yet unseen) in an election year and the last thing he wants is to be seen as soft on terror. Speaking as though they don’t even see Joe; an undersecretary says casually: “Put a lioness on the ground.” Joe barely holds it together telling them , correctly, that a lioness is training for assassination. The Secretary of State, who is also African-American, doesn’t even look at her when he says: “Well, when you kill him could you possibly grab his f---ing phone?” Jo asks for three months and is told she can have three weeks.  Kaitlyn and Westfield are political enough to make it clear that it can be done and all but haul Joe out of the room. Joe can barely raise objections before she’s told that she has to lead a mission to rescue the Congresswoman and that she doesn’t even have the benefit of her team to do it. It’s telling that Joe, who spent much of Season 1 projecting authority in the face of any objections from her team, basically just nods and gets her kit.

She’s understandably pissed that she finds she has to work with Kyle, the cowboy agent who basically spent all of Season 1 pissing on the authority that Joe clearly represented. Thad Luckinbill (also promoted to regular) is just as loathsome as ever but I’m beginning to think that he may be more attuned to reality than Joe is willing to be. I believe there’s a chance that long ago he realized the kind of master he’s serving and that he knows that the longer he does his job, the more likely it is he’ll end up in an unmarked grave with no record of him in the files and a star on the front of the CIA as the only representation of everything he’s done in ‘service of his country’. Much of Season 1 is an extended action sequence with the Mexican cartel in hot pursuit, firing on them non-stop and he’s trying as calmly as possible to find a way to escape. That escape route turns out to be driving the car into a riverbank where the drop isn’t clear to their eyes in the sky and neither is the depth of the river. They’re basically being forced to hope they can avoid being blown apart by the cartel in the hope they don’t die in an explosion or drown as an escape route. When Joe shouts out to him during this: “If we survive like this, remind me to kick your ass,” Kyle says in something very close to seriousness: “I hope we live long enough for you to get the chance.”

And if that’s the typical day at the office, it’s understandable why Kyle can barely work up the energy to go through the motions coming to a federal crime scene or treat anyone around him, including Joe, with respect. Why bother with all the trappings of civilization when you know very well you might drown in a car as happens to one of the soldiers at the end of the episode? Kyle knows this and has accepted that when compared to the mission his life is meaningless. So when Joe tries to take a swing at him after they survive, there is a certain hypocrisy considering we know in the second episode she’s going to basically ask another soldier to do the exact same thing and just as likely not come back alive.

Joe shouts that: “I have a family”, and Kyle’s response is very telling: “I think should call them.” By this point Joe has managed to survive the mission, has debriefed the Congresswoman (who now knows that her family was killed when she was abducted) has promised her revenge, consoled one of the soldiers who went into battle with her about the loss of comrade (Sheridan himself) and then gotten into an argument and fight with Kyle. Only then does she remember she hasn’t called her family and she turns her humanity back on, assuring them that everything is fine. The problem is Neal has been watching the news and even though his wife’s face was blurred out he saw the aftermath – and so did Joe’s daughter. Joe knows that she’s not going to be home that long and will no doubt soon be training another woman to sacrifice her humanity and possibly her life on a mission that is on an accelerated timetable and is beyond the parameters of what the team can do. Yet there’s no question in her mind what master she’s going to serve.

Though she has yet to appear on the show in the first two episodes Layla De Olivera, who played Cruz in the first season, is still listed as a series regular. How she’ll end up back in the storyline is hard to say: at the end of the mission she resigned from the Lioness program in no uncertain terms and made it very clear that she considered not only Jo but everything she’d made her do as a monster. As I’ve written previous articles about Lioness there are parallels to Homeland in the characters of both Joe and Kaitlyn to the relationship between Carrie and Saul throughout the latter series. Having watched the brilliant work of De Olivera, it’s clear her parallel can be found in Peter Quinn, the agent who had the clearest moral quandaries about the horrible things he had to do in the name of the agency. Repeatedly during his first two seasons as a regular Quinn made it very clear that he wanted out of the agency and that he had no use for the kinds of actions Carrie and his superiors were willing to do. “Is there no line you won’t cross?” he actually shouted at her at one point. Cruz is clearly the conscience of this series as we saw in her relationship with Aaliyah and how Joe had to play on her love of country to get her to do something horrible. It says a lot for the show that while Cruz’s innocence was forever lost in the first season of Lioness her soul remained intact and her final exchange with Joe when the mission was ‘successfully completed’ made it very clear that she had no use for the kind of narrow view of the world that Joe did. She walked away with the integrity that none of the other characters on the show have and I can’t wait to see how the two meet up again. Cruz will not fall for the same speech that Jo gives the new recruit.

Lioness is, as I mentioned in an article I wrote last week, a surprisingly subtle and nuanced show about the War On Terror then we’ve gotten in twenty-two years.  The action sequences may remind you of Jack Bauer, but this is not 24 and while the comparison to Homeland is a viable one, it looks at politics in a more radical way than the Showtime series. With Joe as it lead character, it shows a team leader who in a world that is all gray, increasingly preaches a narrative of black and white not because she believes but because it’s the only thing holding her nebulous grip on work together. It shows an incredible group of actors, not only as the soldiers and agents but as the superiors, people like Kaitlyn and Westfield who have more of the picture then their agents do but never enough to know if they’re doing the right thing. It shows politicians who have less regard for the people who do the horrible things in their name and how the solders pick up on this an act accordingly. And it shows in its character of Errol, Kaitlyn’s husband, a man who may very well know the entire picture better than anyone in Lioness and is at the end of the day, as controlled by events as anyone else. (I look forward to see of Martin Donovan.)

The question asked in the teaser by Joe: “Do you love your country?” is no doubt the theme of Season of Lioness. Just as important is another question that Neil asks his wife: “Are you okay?” Joe was asked that repeatedly by both her husband and Kaitlyn over and over Season 1 and she kept saying neutrally “I’m fine,” when we know she’s anything but. We saw the consequences of it on not only Joe but her family and yet she refused to take a desk job she was offered by Kaitlyn even though it might be the best thing for her family and herself. We know Joe’s answer to the first question is always going to trump honestly answering the second but she never bothered to ask the second to Cruz last season and there’s no sign she asks the question of anyone else on her team. At some point Joe is going to take a look at the mirror. And when she does, she may finally have to give a different answer to the question she keeps asking.

My score: 4.5 stars.