Promising Young Woman

Many parts of writer/director Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman are howlingly funny but then they collide into moments of wrenching sobriety and pain, not unlike the brutally cockeyed psychodrama/love story Killing Eve, for which Fennell wrote.

In Promising Young Woman, Carrie Mulligan plays Cassie, a former medical school standout whose life was derailed by a sexual assault -- not hers, but that of a friend and classmate who never recovered. Cassie works at a coffee shop run by a supportive friend (Laverne Cox) and spends her evenings hunting down and entrapping men by pretending to be falling down drunk in bars. When they make their move she unleashes her ferocious malice on them.

A chance meeting with an amiable pediatrician (a charming Bo Burnham) gives the audience reason for hope for this woman who is being consumed by spite and regret right before our eyes. In this way, the film echoes the message in Michaela Coel's brilliant BBC series I May Destroy You.

Mulligan is wonderful as Cassie, an avenging angel whose cause is just but who is so prickly and barbed that the caring world can't get close to her.

Carousel

Seeking some solace from the rancor of contested counts and a constipated candidate who can't seem to get off the can, I settled in the other night to reacquaint myself with Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel, the New York Philharmonic's 2013 staged concert production. 

It had been years (decades?) since I'd spent time with romantic wallflower Julie Jordan (Kelli O'Hara) and her rough carousel barker beau Billy Bigelow (Nathan Gunn) [yes, the names, cutesy] and the lusty, musty denizens of a New England fishing village. Julie is poor and in love with burly Billy, who makes woo, loses his job, shacks up with Julie, who he knocks up and then knocks about, falls in with a bad-sort schemer, gets caught during a robbery, and kills himself to avoid prison. He's given a chance by angelic gatekeepers to complete unfinished business  before being admitted to heaven, which he does and everybody sings "You'll Never Walk Alone," tears flow and the audience cheers. 

Yes, it's pretty dark, and, I think, problematic for a modern audience. We see Billy is a charming baritone brute and could shake Julie (poor choice of words) for sticking with him, even after she tells best buddy Carrie Pipperidge (Jessie Mueller) that he hit her. But Julie, being a soprano, goes high and endures, births a daughter, Louise, and keeps the home fires burning for Billy, because this is a lusty bunch. (I don't think it's really the seafood all these folks are crowing about during Act II's opening number.)

Near the end of the show, Billy visits young Louise to urge her to walk the right path and respect herself and while doing so whacks her one and disappears. (Old habits, etc.) Louise asks her mother if it's possible to be hit "hard" and it not hurt. Julie says, “It is possible, dear, for someone to hit you — hit you hard — and not hurt at all.” 

Now, if one were inclined to be forgiving, one might argue that Julie is speaking metaphorically.  "Hit," as in "ton of bricks," not "hit," as in "balled up fist." But, in doing so, what are we telling young women about love, guarding their own safety, the dangers of co-dependency? Sure, setting the production squarely in the time of its composition (mid-40s) might help and saying Billy does indeed pay for his sins might take some of the sting out of the message but, somehow, it doesn't feel like quite enough. As wonderful as the music is -- and it's truly heavenly -- I worry the show is asking women to suffer long and silently for the sake of love. 

Sophia Loren is 86 years old, and in her latest film, Netflix's The Life Ahead, she shares the screen with 12-year-old Ibrahima Gueye in a story that affirmed for this viewer our capacity for goodness and grace, despite our superficial differences and individual traumas. What a welcome message!

Loren plays Madame Rosa, an aged prostitute and Auschwitz survivor living in a city on the coast of Italy, where she cares for the abandoned children of local hookers. Gueye, in his first feature film, plays Momo, the drug-dealing son of a murdered Senegalese streetwalker who ends up in Rosa's care after a kindly neighborhood physician (Renato Carpentieri) asks her to tend to the angry and defiant boy for a short time. His hope is she will be able to salvage what cruelty and abandonment have left.

While the arc of the story is familiar, director Edoardo Ponti (Loren's son) takes a fresh turn at guiding his endearing collection of characters to the film's inevitable conclusion. Most important are a transwoman hooker (Abril Zamora), who is the surrogate mother to another abandoned child, and a generous Muslim shopkeeper (Babak Karimi), who, at Rosa's request, helps Momo mend his faith in God and people.

The film, which is in Italian, is enormously affecting, the scenes between a still radiant Loren and Gueye, who possesses untouched youthful beauty, are moving and memorable.

Small Axes / Mangrove

Director Steve McQueen is deliberate and patient. He slowly unfolds his stories and enwinds the viewer in the fates of his characters. We are invited to read the lines that aren't written -- those in the brows of the characters: anger, resolution, defiance, indignation, resignation, hope.

In the first film of his Amazon/BBC anthology Small Axes, titled Mangrove, McQueen tells the story of nine Black Britishers who were tried in 1968 for rioting after a demonstration in the Notting Hill / West Indian community against police intimidation and brutality turned violent. This is a challenging film; the depiction of the residents' distress and the raw racism of the police and the courts are tough going but it's also an important film and the performances are riveting.

Particularly noteworthy is the work of Letitia Wright (Black Panther) as Altheia Jones-LeCointe, a Black Panther Movement organizer, and Malachi Kirby (Roots), as Darcus Howe, a resistance leader. McQueen and co-writer Alastair Siddons have crafted powerful, bracing scenes for both characters that not only propel the narrative forward but also reveal McQueen's intention for making the film -- to hold England accountable.

Happiest Season

 

Writer/Director Clea DuVall's holiday rom-com Happiest Season (Hulu) is delivered beautifully wrapped in chintz and tinsel but the usual epigrams about the magic of Christmas and love and family have been replaced with sermonettes about good and bad choices -- and I'm down with the change.

DuVall has not completely scrubbed romance out of the rom-com; she's written a pretty hot pairing with Kristen Stewart's Abby and Aubrey Plaza's Riley, chemistry that is more intense than that between Stewart's Abby and her lover Harper (Mackenzie Davis). I think that's deliberate. It seems DuVall has more on her mind than heat.

Harper, who hides her sexuality from her family, brings "roommate" Abby home with her from Pittsburgh for the holidays. She has asked Abby, who is openly lesbian, to keep their secret until she can tell her parents about them after the holidays. Dad is running for mayor, Mom is a control freak, older sister is a disapproving bitch, younger sister is a flake, and on and on. Harper has chosen the path around all of this stress and gets Abby to agree to play along, which she does, reluctantly, and almost immediately regrets it.

What gives the film its freshness and weight is DuVall's commitment to this idea of choices. Our lives are a succession of them. Some get buried, some we outrun and some catch up with us. We choose to pursue. We choose to conceal. We choose to compete. We choose to deceive. And it seems DuVall is saying we choose to love. Which brings us back to Abby and Riley, the "couple" many in the audience might wish would be because Riley is lovely, grounded, out and proud. But Abby has made her choice, and it is not for this woman who seems to get her. She's chosen someone who will take more time. That's new and is as far from the squishiness of "You had me at hello" as one can get.

In the end, after all of the shouting and tussling and accusations and denials and tears we see a frightened family that has chosen to live in fear of one another for forever and they promise to stop. Now that's one hell of a Christmas message.

I don't know him

The first of many wounds Normal People's young Irish couple inflicted on each other during the course of the limited series on Hulu was studly Connell's refusal to declare to his friends he fancied and was sexually involved with the lovely but acerbic Marianne, whom his scruffy pals seemed to disdain. He had too much self-regard, and she, by consenting to the boy's mistreatment, valued herself too little. Gradually, beautifully, in my estimation, it is revealed that theirs were different but equally pitiful motives -- they'd each suffered emotional abandonment.

What makes this story of four tumultuous years in the lives of two damaged and damaging people so compelling is how honest, ironically enough in this instance, their actions seemed to be, that is, how true to the world as it exists off of the page of novels or off of the screen of streaming series.

We failed and failing people -- often with ironclad, clear-eyed reasoning -- will do the most hurtful things to one another -- none more painful than what might be called Simon Peter's sin, refusing to admit affiliation or support, to deny, to say "I don't know him!"

Race and privilege make for a pernicious pair in this regard. They undermine our attempts to build cross-racial alliances because we fear losing favor of those who, frankly, don't deserve it. Black and white folks of my generation, members of that first post-desegregation wave, may have memories of being denied by other-race friends with whom they'd thought to have had a mutual friendship. "I DON'T know him."

As time progressed, the denials have become less stark -- "We're teammates." "We're co-workers." -- but delivered the same message. "I don't KNOW him." And when Facebook made "friendship" a tool for commerce or stealth, it became "I don't know HIM (he knows me.)" And the age of BLM is sorely testing alliances. "I KNOW him but ... "

A friend once shared, with what I felt were the most charitable of intentions, that I was not very open and that puts others off. I accepted the observation as it was intended, without defense or explanation, knowing it was true. "Yeah, I need to work on that," said I. My work has been to try to accept that people will be what their formations have created -- much like what life experiences created in Connell and Marianne -- and, understanding that, own those who own me and deliver the rest to the universe without bitterness. As the Buddha says, disappointment comes not from the actions of others but from our expectations.

In the end, the young Irish couple owned their failure to be friends. They owned the harm they had done to and invited from each other. In short, they owned each another but were prepared to move forward, separately or together, having grown and become wiser.

Watchmen

HBO's Watchmen is conceptually thoroughgoing -- as well constructed as the best among pay television's offerings. Its narrative is complex and its visual aspects spectacular. It also features an unsettling undercurrent of distrust that probably reflects the view many people of color have of law enforcement and elected officials, especially in the South but not exclusively. Skepticism is not solely the province of graphic novels and speculative fiction but here it runs especially deep, etched in the face of Sister Knight (Regina King) and her mysterious grandfather (Louis Gossett Jr.). Her husband Cal / Dr. Manhattan (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) offers placating embraces that run as counterpoint to Knight's battering instinctive rhythms, but then he stands to be destroyed by his passivity. Message? Fight or get beat.

Below is the Peabody committee's citation for the series' award. It refers to the series' depiction of how Americans understand their place in the world. To some, the series reflects uncertainty more than anything definitive or enduring.

"...Watchmen provides new answers to classic genre questions such as what it means to mask one’s identity and who gets to be a superhero, but more than that, it offers a frank and provocative reflection on contemporary racialized violence, on the role of police, and on the consequences of a large-scale disaster on the way Americans understand their place in the world. For world-building and storytelling that fuses speculative fiction with historical and contemporary realities, Watchmen deserves a Peabody."

Lee and Scorsese

Spike Lee may actually be a better documentarian than he is a feature filmmaker -- at least, to me, his non-fictional works are routinely superb. Especially noteworthy is his filming of stage productions -- his recording of the final performance of the relatively little-seen Broadway show Passing Strange (2009) is a favorite of mine. That is why I'm so eagerly awaiting his film of the David Byrne concert / performance piece American Utopia.

Lee, born in Atlanta but reared in Brooklyn, is friends with fellow New Yorker Martin Scorsese, whom he clearly admires. Both Lee and Scorsese are tireless and prolific, projects continuously rolling out of their studios. One of Scorsese's early triumph's was 1978's The Last Waltz, the final concert by The Band, which last year was added to the National Film Registry.

The Last Waltz has been mentioned in previews of Lee's upcoming film, no doubt because they are both about music and iconic figures. Those of us who know The Last Waltz no doubt have favorite performances. This is mine -- The Weight -- where we go to church. Stick around for Mavis's benediction right at the end. "Beautiful!"

The Weight from The Last Waltz

Woke

 

Hulu's new original series Woke puts a bit of Atlanta's struggling millennials wrestling with race and class consciousness and blackAF's plain-spoken irreverence to work in the story of an accommodating Black San Francisco cartoonist, Keef, who is just about to break into syndication with his popular series Toast 'n' Butter when an encounter with profiling police derails his plans, and his self-concept, and he begins the hard work of finding himself and his creative voice. Yes, it's a comedy. And, yes, it's wonderfully insightful. It's not as glib as some other trendy streaming series and has the added value of inanimate objects speaking truth to Lamorne Morris's Keef and the world. Morris gets hilarious assists from T. Murph and Blake Anderson as his woke and wasted roommates Clovis and Gunther, respectively, and from Sasheer Zamata as the editor of an alternative publication who pushes Keef's buttons.

Narratives and Static Images

As you closely read the two photographs above -- Sally Mann's "Candy Cigarette"(top) and Diane Arbus's "Identical Twins" -- think about the narratives these photographs suggest. How do the two worlds differ? What stories do they evoke in your mind as a viewer of these static images?  

Project Power

Jamie Foxx's lastest film, Project Power, is high-concept and derivative but not lacking in entertainment value. The story is about an international cartel peddling regime change in the form of glowing yellow pills that really pack a wallop. The movie's action sequences usually involve characters taking a capsule that will genetically modify them into super humans for about five minutes. That's clearly where the film's substantial Netflix budget was invested and not to A-class narrative scripting. The film has the feel of a series pilot -- just that many unanswered questions remain after the last epochal explosion. Still Foxx, who plays a murky ex-commando on a righteous mission, is always watchable, and he gets decent support from Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a good but sketchy New Orleans undercover cop with a power obsession and Dominique Fishback as a spunky but pouty low-level "power" dealer doing the wrong things for the right reasons.

Chadwick Boseman

I think what has pushed the outpouring of grief for Chadwick Boseman's passing into another realm for me was the South Carolina governor's order to lower the flags for Sunday, and perhaps my knee-jerk skepticism that the gesture was meant to mollify critics among the state's black population. I cannot recall the last time such an order was made at the death of a native son who was an entertainer.

It seems to me that Boseman's death comes at the intersection of several national crises -- conflict, violence, distrust, disease, uncertainty. We were raw, and losing one so suddenly, at least to the public eye, was deeply wounding.

Though Boseman had been a television actor for years before celebrated roles as Jackie Robinson ('13), James Brown ('14) and Thurgood Marshall ('17), those films rode a crest of public interest in stories of great black men (no doubt buoyed by the Obama presidency). His performance as T'Challa in Black Panther (2018) was actually the second time moviegoers had seen the character as he was introduced in the Captain America film two years before. But the world Black Panther the film explored was so different from that promoted by pervasive racist narratives that it sparked a sort of spiritual black nationalism that was not unlike the posture of Black Lives Matter, which was founded several years before, and other movements trying to counter not only anti-black violence but to inspire a spiritual awakening reminiscent of the Black Power movement of the '60s.

The Wakanda salute -- crossed forearms (right over left) pulled against the chest created by Black Panther director Ryan Coogler -- seemed to echo the power salute of earlier black protest but, interestingly, combined ancient African pharaonic poses and the American Sign Language's symbol for "hug" into an affirming resolution.

The Krofft Brothers

The Krofft Brothers drove their psychedelic dune buggy right up to the edge of freaky with The Bugaloos in 1970, after toying with televised weirdness with H.R. Pufnstuf the year before. The Kroffts would shift the strangeness into high gear with Land of the Lost four years later. It was almost like my intellectual and creative evolution was being reflected in the shows by these Canadian puppeteers. The Bugs were a mixed band of cheery and playful British human insects who sang tuneful but forgettable songs and battled a whacked out bush named Benita Bizarre -- played by Martha Raye, who never met a scene she couldn't chew to bits. It was all outrageous enough to delight a 12-year-old who had not learned to be annoyed. "Land" was entertaining to a 16-year-old who was constantly finding the everyday world just too "daily" to bear. What was needed was time-travel and parallel universes and nonsensical storylines that replicated an acid trip without the pharmaceuticals. "Land" delivered and negotiated the tight rope well -- neither falling into complete farce nor taking itself too seriously -- at first. It was inevitable that the ridiculousness would spin out of control -- or maybe I just finally grew up.

Lia Kim and cultural appropriation

Questions of cultural appropriation lurk in the wings when Lia Kim does her thing. I think Kim is amazing, and I don't think she's harming Beyonce by choreographing to her music, but some might ask, reasonably, how Beyonce's message about her parentage -- "Negro" and "Creole" -- and some other African American references translates into movement for the Korean choreographer.

Lia Kim choreography to Beyonce's Formation

Da 5 Bloods

Spike Lee might be the most exasperating movie master in Hollywood. His films are important. His vision is distinctively individual. But, while always beautifully shot, his pictures are often excessive, their narratives sprawling. Lee has always staged wonderful set pieces and directs ensembles like few others of his generation, with the exception of Tarantino. I love how characters in Lee's films talk to one another. He delivers exposition through dialogue masterfully. Although he is a true craftsman, perhaps even an auteur, he seems blind (or indifferent) to his indulgences. He clearly loves his work and the work of other great directors, and he loves the messages he wants to convey, but his films, including the new Netflix feature Da 5 Bloods, feel a bit too self-referential and focused on their own cleverness and craft, and that detracts from the work.

In Da 5 Bloods, four black Vietnam vets, with the flinty and troubled Paul (a tremendous performance by Delroy Lindo) in charge, return to the country to recover the remains of a fallen comrade (played in flashback by Chadwick Boseman) and a cache of gold (reparations) they left buried there. The four squadmates (Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and Norm Lewis) are joined by Paul's estranged son David (Jonathan Majors) on the excursion. It is here that the narrative gets choppy, implausibilities creep in, and secondary characters and side issues crowd out what should have been more attention to the rudiments of this expedition. Much is glossed over to make room for the interpersonal entanglements and declamations about Lee's most reliable bette noir -- American perfidy and racism.
That is not to say exploring America's mistreatment of blacks has been overdone; in fact, the opposite is true. It's not been done enough, in my view. And that might be why Lee's films feel so overstuffed. He's trying to cover so much ground in a single work that the end result is interesting -- there is no other filmmaker whose work is always worth seeing -- but too often not as enduring or impactful as it might be.

Hoodoo Economics

I don't get economics. I bought this issue when it was first published back in the mid-60s and paid the listed 12 cents. I probably bought a second comic and gave the clerk a quarter for both. In the 50 years since, the price of comics has increased 3,000 percent. Even with the books being really nice and glossy and more substantial how does that price difference make sense? They're not pharmaceuticals! Is it possible that there is no upper limit for the cost of things and at some point in the future we could be paying 40 bucks for a comic book, 15 dollars for a dozen eggs and 75 for a six of domestic beer?

Six Feet Under Again

Re-discovering Alan Ball's life-and-death melodrama Six Feet Under during a deadly pandemic might seem macabre to some. I think this is a perfect time to consider its weighty existential themes.

To me, Ball's addictively provocative series, which ran for five seasons on HBO (2001-2005), had a bristling approach to our most worrisome fixations -- family, sexuality, sanity, aging, parenthood, careers, relationships, and, yes, death. Though each episode opened with a death, some of which were spectacular, and pondered the afterlife, judgment, recompense, etc., the show was about the lives of the Fishers and the characters who were, for good and ill, in orbits around them.

As with most of HBO's longer-running series, the episodes were not all strong. Ball was especially challenged in writing for his Black characters, relying on easy tropes and shallow characterizations -- but he certainly wasn't alone in that regard.

Viewers will have their favorites of the continuing players -- Nate, David, Claire, Ruth, Keith, Rico -- but I would argue that Brenda Chenowith was the series' most compelling character because of the depth of the emotional and psychological wounds that rendered her nearly sociopathic in Season 1 but led her back to the Fishers, to Nate, time after time for healing (which is ironic considering what a holy mess the Fishers were) until by the end of the series she was the character whose development had been the most dramatic and, frankly, inspiring.

Rights and Wrongs

I once asked a newspaper co-worker, a well-intentioned guy with conventional liberal ideals, what white folks got out of the Civil Rights Movement, hoping to challenge the assumption that Blacks were the only beneficiaries. I said a nation that opposes discrimination serves everyone better because no one's talents or contributions are stifled.

"I don't think I would have ever heard The Temptations or Four Tops, " he said.

If I had it to do over, I would not have challenged his response as naive. Rather I would have asked him to explain what he meant. Maybe he had a story about how music helped him lower boundaries between him and black classmates or how his father's music collection laid the groundwork for a conversation about race in his home. Sure, his thinking might have been as simplistic as it seemed but I would have given him space to speak his truth rather than assume I knew his truth.

I can't live that moment over but often I wish I could.

Ramy Season 2

Now in its second season and renewed for a third, comedian Ramy Youseff's superb self-titled sitcom on Hulu combines familiar American millennial disaffection with Muslim identity codes and conflicts to create a bracingly provocative and funny series about Ramy's search for happiness and God, praying they won't be mutually exclusive. He seems perplexed by humanity and devotion, qualities he seems to possess in abundance, and wonders, often aloud, why actual goodness seems so elusive. He's a guileless hero whom we're rooting for even when he falls short of perfection, as he often does.

Purlie

Fifty years ago, a small but spunky musical about "race relations" in the South ran on Broadway for about 700 performances. The musical was based on a play by the celebrated actor and dean of black theater and motion picture performers Ossie Davis -- Purlie Victorious. The play had earlier been adapted into a motion picture starring Davis and his wife, Ruby Dee, Godfrey Cambridge, a young Alan Alda and Sorrel Booke, whom many would come to know as Boss Hogg on The Dukes of Hazzard. (A link to the full motion picture is below.) The play has long been included in published anthologies of outstanding theatrical work as an example of satirical social commentary.

The 1970 musical, whose title was shortened to Purlie, told the same story as the stage play -- a con-man preacher returns to the Georgia plantation of his birth to try to pull one over on the Ol' Cap'n, win ownership of a cherished old church and "free" the plantation workers from their lives of picking cotton. The show starred new faces Melba Moore (Cousin Lutiebelle) and Cleavon Little (the title character), both of whom won Tonys for their performances. Five years later, Little would go on to international fame as the sheriff in Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles. Troubled with chronic stomach and intestinal problems, Little died in 1992, at 54. Moore will be 80 in October.

Purlie is a small show but has several rousing musical numbers -- "I Got Love," "Newfangled Preacher Man," "Walk Him Up the Stairs," among them -- and has seen a few revivals and restagings over the years, with the most familiar likely being the television special in 1981 that starred Moore, Robert Guillaume (Benson) and Sherman Helmsley (George Jefferson of The Jeffersons), who like Moore was an original cast member.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj6dH82LXQE

Les Miz

Thirty years before Hamilton took Broadway by storm and rewrote the modern musical, another epic production with historical roots was taking over the world. Les Miserables ran on Broadway from 1987 to 2003, for nearly 7,000 performances. It has been staged in London and Toronto, touring companies have traversed the globe numerous times and we all know the award-winning 2012 film adaptation with Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway.

Though not as richly layered and constructed as Hamilton, Les Miz is a bigger and more conventionally musical show. It is a sung-through production, that is, it contains no actual spoken dialogue. On that score, Hamilton contains very little, and most of its dialogue is in verse.

Les Miz brims with classical melodrama and sumptuous songs for solo artists, small ensembles and large choruses. In this way, it is more like opera than musical theater. And like the best of French or Italian opera, Les Miz has great songs for the tenor hero.

This song -- Bring Him Home -- comes mid-way through Act II. Jean Valjean prays for the safety of the young liberator Marius, whom Valjean has grown fond of. The opening of the song is pitched quite high and the piece has a wide dynamic range so it's a true vocal workout. Nick Cartell starred in the show's recent national tour and he pours it on in this cabaret performance of the showstopper.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzKUNASAeSM&fbclid=IwAR0ui1SpKMV0YlR3J76-xn7Y3MqPDYGft8QNhtLVxjUynmtXR81KNzuYWgs

Darlie toothpaste

This Chinese toothpaste was the unequivocally blackface Darkie for more than 50 years. Half of the company was bought by Colgate-Palmolive in 1983 and in '89 changed the name and image to "Darlie," which is inoffensively nonsensical. Let's hear it for not being racist!

Hamilton (streaming)

I've been familiar with Hamilton's score for some time but watching it brings home how much of a stunner it is; it bridges worlds, combining traditional and contemporary musical performance and expression to serve a story that is both conventional (boy overcomes odds to attain what he wants and nearly loses what he needs) and strikingly modern, while also being both historical and revisionist. The machinery of the production -- all of that wordplay and bodies in motion -- is nearly overwhelming. It is a singularly brilliant vision, a fully realized social and political statement with towering musicality AND street cred.

The Hamilton original Broadway cast recording has been out for nearly five years. It has sold more than 6 million copies and is the best-selling cast recording ever. Those five years have given aspirers plenty of time to load their covers of favorite numbers onto YouTube. I've watched my share. Some are valiant attempts. Others are just plain awful. Some are those inexplicably popular Reacts videos (people taping themselves responding to performances) and then there are the occasional legitimate renditions by someone with skills.

I would wager no number from the show is more popular than "You'll Be Back," King George's mincing scolding of the ungrateful colonists as performed by Pennsylvania native Jonathan Groff (Mindhunter). Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose net worth is estimated at between $40 and $50 million thanks to Hamilton, has said the addition of King George's character was fairly late in the musical's creation. And his winning line? That was offered by actor Hugh Laurie (House), who when Miranda described the scene he was imagining sneered in King George's voice "You'll be back." Score!

The show's theatrical complexity becomes clearer on repeated viewings. And, for me, that means gathering more evidence of Lin-Manuel Miranda's generosity as the composer. He has written so many wonderful songs for the large cast. Several of them are true, Broadway-caliber vocal workouts no doubt written to silence those tempted to set the show aside as a lightweight, hip-hop experiment. Miranda really lets these talented players shine. Two of the best examples from Act 1 run nearly back-to-back -- Angelica Schuyler's "Satisfied"(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InupuylYdcY) and Aaron Burr's "Wait For It" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulsLI029rH0). Both are masterful, challenging numbers, melodic lines overflowing with narrative content and character revelation. Renée Elise Goldsberry (Angelica) and Leslie Odom Jr. (Burr) won Tonys for their work, as did Daveed Diggs for the dual roles of Lafayette and Jefferson.

Seal

It's been nearly 30 years since Seal (Henry Olusegun Adeola Samuel) released his first self-titled recording and now iconic videos on the world. Almost immediately the stories about his facial scarring took off. Because of his complexion, his clipped British accent and punk-rock fashions, the propulsive beats of his most popular songs and his beaded dreads, he must have been some African prince and the markings part of an exotic ritual. It was actually years before I heard that the scars were left by a form of lupus. Looking back, it seems to be in defiance of something that would inhibit someone less self-possessed that Seal's face is never hidden. His gaze is steady and assured. He won't avert his eyes before you do. That, of course, only adds to his attractiveness.
Lately, I have been revisiting Seal's early catalog -- his first three albums -- Seal I, Seal II and Human Being. He has a distinctive way with a musical phrase that makes his songs eminently singable, even when the message might be a little cloudy. I think I might like this song best -- Newborn Friend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQOmKZCUAy8I wash my faith in dirty water
'Cause it gives my mind a little order
And I play that game, just like I should do
But my whole world, slips away
I live my life, I live it slowly
And I take my time, I'm in no hurry, yeah I'm livin'
And when I go then I would surely
I would dance with a total stranger
And hold them in my arms
Hell, there could be no danger if I open up
'Cause when the cryin' starts so
If I chant for happiness
Maybe that will make me feel better?
I can't change my ideals, I can't lose my desire
Oh, if I chant for happiness
Maybe that will make me feel better?
I'd be your newborn friend for the world

Highwaters

The Village of Sandhills had been struggling with abandoned storefronts and empty "apartment homes" for years before 'Rona came callin'. World Market closed its location there earlier this year. And, of course, Penney's is bankrupt. Sad.

I was sort of ambivalent about World Market, frankly. While it has cool stuff in it, and they price their wines pretty competitively, thematically I feel the "world" aspect is hype. They do have an eclectic collection of packaged food stuff but nothing I would keep as a staple in the cupboard (if I had a cupboard). And I don't know what global crockery looks like.All of Sandhills looks beset and highwater now. I mean it looks like it's strapped and making due. That was the real shame of wearing "highwater britches" -- it meant your people were too broke to keep you in clothes that fit properly.

At the village, busted "apartment home" windows are boarded, "available for lease" signs are beginning to sag in retail windows, the grass outside the Regal is wild and thatchy, and movie posters for little-seen features are faded from overexposure to the Carolina sun. It's pretty depressing.

Maybe the village will be re-imagined by some really creative types and see a new life, repurposed and popular, like what Steve Urkel and Dolce and Gabbana did for highwater pants.

Where there is life ...

Officer Friendly

I remember the Officer Friendly campaign from when I was a youngster, but I don't remember street cops from my childhood, and I certainly don't recognize the idealized world father and son illustrators Hy Hintermeisters depict in their series from the '50s. It appears to be a suburban enclave where avuncular police officers help little white children get to and from school. Yes, Rockwellesque but I think the Hintermeisters were not as clear-eyed about America as Norman was.

This illustration is going for approachable but serious. I'm not sure that's the message 

that was needed.

It's not clear what's going on here but it's a bit disturbing.

Yes, entitled princess crossing.

I'm not personally familiar with the world the Hintermeister's set this series in 

but it's not unlike the one on popular television of the time.

The series seemed to be committed to displaying good behavior 

and interactions between the officer and the children.

I love this shot from the '70s. I don't really care if it's staged; it has a great vibe to it.

Uncle Natchel

The Hy Hintermeisters were also known for their character Uncle Natchel (Natural), who was the brand image for Chilean Natural Soda, a soil additive mined in Chile. I do not get the connection but the character appeared on Chilean Natural Soda calendars for decades. I only recently discovered Uncle Natchel, as the character, which was introduced in 1935, was retired in the '60s.

The Hintermeisters created a world where this kindly old black man was a companion to, apparently, lonely white children. Absent, of course, is any hint of Uncle Natchel's own family or children.



The Hintermeisters often featured young boys and girls together in manners that didn't seem quite age-appropriate. The freakish bow-tied Buster looks like Howdy Doody.

I'm not sure if this is supposed to be the same couple from the previous slide but the dogs are nearly identical.

This might be my favorite of the series, if one is allowed to favor an image so steeped in racial stereotypes and societal fictions. The banjo, of course, came with enslaved Africans and became a staple of American roots music. The Hintermeisters were from New York, so it's understandable if their knowledge of southern life owed a debt to Harriet Beecher Stowe.