Works in progress: Lane J. Lubell, "Three Thoughts on the Oscars"

     This week's guest writer is someone special. I have known Lane Lubell his entire life — his parents, Larry and Ilene, are longtime family friends; my wife went to high school with Larry. I've watched Lane, a little younger than my older son, grow into that rarest of individuals: someone you can have an intelligent conversation with. We talk about books. I recently read a fascinating Harlem renaissance detective novel, Rudolph Fisher's 1932 "The Conjure-Man Dies," based on his recommendation. We talk about the arts, particularly movies. He studied film at Northwestern, knows of what he speaks, and as a teacher, also knows how to convey it. With the Academy Awards Sunday, I invited him to write something to share here, and he did not disappoint. Take it away, Lane:

     Thanks for the invite, Neil. I’m honored to contribute. For clarity’s sake, I have decided to split my thoughts into three sections.

Part I: Predicting the Oscars   

     I love predicting the Oscars, but that doesn’t mean I care about them. I couldn’t care less about what designer Ana de Armas may be wearing or whether some talented hunk brings his mom as his date. I have never paid any attention to the red carpet and I never will. Similarly, every ceremony has been disappointing since Seth MacFarlane’s controversial hosting duty. Moreover, I regularly disagree with two-thirds of the Academy’s decisions. And that’s okay. 

     For me, predicting the Academy awards has the appeal of tracking on-base averages. Like baseball stats or March Madness brackets, the fun is in predicting — looking at results from the cavalcade of previous local awards & fests and their respective correlation percentages to prior ceremonies, tracking Academy membership, averaging the predictions of others (GoldDerby serving wonderfully to this end), and determining the impact of box office numbers and a movies’ mass appeal. It’s a nearly scientific endeavor. Last year, I managed a rare perfect score at the ceremony, (a victory overshadowed by ”The Slap”).

     However, I’m not going to talk about my predictions. (If Neil is feeling generous, he’ll link you to them here). Instead, I’m going to tell you the good news. 

Part II: The Academy Sells Out…in a Good Way 

     Back in August and September, Sarah Polley’s "Women Talking" was the mathematical front runner for the top prize. I hadn’t seen it yet, so I went along with the stats. Now, I have.

     For those of you who haven’t seen it (which you probably haven’t because Orion, the film’s distributor, is clearly at a loss as to its promotion), the film is effectively a Socratic dialogue in a barn with sad Mennonite women debating whether they should or should not leave their sexually-assaultive community; Polley puts theme and message before character in this “should-have-been-play” tale. However, I know why people believed it would win. It’s “important.”

     For the past 25 years or so, the Academy has been … pretentious. Movies that fill seats get passed over like they have lamb’s blood above their doors. Anything without systemic social injustice and grit get hidden under the bed before mom comes in to check on you. Sometimes, you need to put your toys away, but other times, you want to see the toys on the floor; it means your kid is having fun. Instead, they’re reading with Dostoevsky and Ta-Nehisi Coates. I don’t mean to downplay the importance of the work, but we go to the movies to have fun. 

     Oscar viewership is down significantly. Many blamed the rise of the cable-cutters and media diversification for these woes; others point the finger at a generation less interested in the pomp of celebrity, while some argue that they just haven’t had the right hosts. While I agree that all of those factors could affect tune-ins (certainly, Kimmel’s return will not help), these pundits miss King Kong in the room. People aren’t watching the ceremony because they don’t have a vested interest. They have had little to root for. There was a time, not long ago, when nominated films were widely seen. Look at ‘94. "The Shawshank Redemption,"  "Forrest Gump," "Quiz Show," "Four Weddings and a Funeral," and "Pulp Fiction." Now, we have Andrea Riseborough (an actress you’ve seen many times but can’t quite place) nominated for "To Leslie," a film with a box office gross less than a private school tuition. How can you root for or against Riseborough? You haven’t seen her performance. No one has!    

     By only calling self-serious indies the industry’s best, voters alienate their viewers. Only a select few try to see all the nominees. “You love Marvel movies. Is it Black Panther related? No? Then it’s crap that we will never give a major nomination.” (To date, "Joker" and "Black Panther" are the only superhero films nominated for best picture, while "Joker" and "Logan" are the only two to receive writing nominations (which "Logan" should have won). Last year’s humiliating attempt to let Twitter choose the film of the year (the four hour reedited garbage fire, Zack Snyder’s "Justice League") to pacify these criticisms only made matters worse. 

     But here’s the good news. This year, things have changed. For once, the front runner is a box office success, making over $100 million. "Everything Everywhere All at Once' is one of the most imaginative and inventive films ever made, but it’s also a lot of fun. If it wins, it will be the first ever action comedy to do so, despite it being the most popular genre of the 21st century. It would also become only the third ever fantasy film to claim the title following "Lord of the Rings Return of King' (2003) and the hybrid period romance, "The Shape of Water" (2017). 

     Moreover, in what is likely the 3rd spot flies "Top Gun: Maverick," 2022’s highest grosser and arguably the best straight action movie since "Mad Max: Fury Road." Even James Cameron’s just fine "Avatar" sequel (which somehow grossed $2 billion) made it in. This year, it seems the Academy is starting to remember why people love movies in the first place. 

Part III: Screw you, F#¢% 

    

    Finally, I want to congratulate the Academy for saying “screw you” to F#¢%. And yes, the grawlix (the use of non-alphabetical characters in place of letters in profanity) have a purpose. 

     For the first time in a decade, the majority of the best picture nominees are not rated R. Only "All Quiet on the Western Front," "Everything Everywhere All at Once," "The Banshees of Inisherin," and "Triangle of Sadness" have R ratings. And best of all, each of them deserve their ratings. "Banshees" desperately needs its profanity, "Triangle" needs its nudity, "All Quiet" needs its brutality, and "Everything "needs its … I’m a middle school teacher so let’s just say, paraphernalia. Meanwhile, Polley and Tár’s Todd Field have been able to tell difficult stories of sexual misconduct with PG-13s, proving that you don’t need to pack your movie with graphic violence or frontal nudity to be taken seriously or tackle difficult subjects. 

     Indeed, over the past five years, 64% of best picture nominees were rated R, with 36% receiving a lower rating. Moreover, an R rated film won every year between 2006-2017 save 2011’s pick, "The Artist." This year, 60% are rated PG-13. These numbers represent a marked improvement that I hope to see continue. But, let’s add some G and PG to that list.  

     Thanks, Neil. Back to you!

Offices may vanish like men’s hats

.           John F. Kennedy leaves the White House after visiting on Jan. 19, 1961.

     Twenty years ago, I wrote a book about the death of men’s hats. A strange subject, yes. But I was curious. You’d see these photos of, say, men at a baseball game in the 1920s. A sea of identical straw hats. That uniformity vanished. Why?
     I spent several years researching the topic — and no, it wasn’t John F. Kennedy. He was following the trend, not leading it. The Kennedy era is when people started to really notice the change.
     What happened was this. There were two practical reasons for men to wear a hat: first, to keep warm; second, and most importantly, as a sign of social status. Hats were expensive, and a well-maintained hat showed its wearer as a man of means. Or not. “You get a couple of spots on your hat and you’re finished,” Willy Loman observes in the 1947 tragedy, “Death of a Salesman.”
     That changed. Men weren’t waiting for streetcars and buses as much. They were in automobiles. Which had heaters. A fancy hat wasn’t needed to impress that clerk. Your credit card did the talking. After the practical uses eased, the social necessity followed. The bottom line: men wore hats because they had to, and once they didn’t have to, they stopped. For decades there was talk about hats coming back, but they never did and never will. They became superfluous, an occasional luxury.
     Jump to 2023. This dynamic came tumbling back as I watched the latest round of businesses and government leaders vowing that their workers were coming back to the office. Any moment now. Three days a week. Or two. Or one. Starting soon. To enjoy that magic synchronicity that comes from being at the office. Lured by foosball and cocktail hours.
     When the truth is, people went to the office because they had to. And now they don’t.
     COVID, like Kennedy, drove home the new reality. Many people can do their jobs without ever setting foot in the office. Thanks to technology, smartphones and laptops, we can sit in our pajamas and process claims or design bridges or write columns.
     Now look at going into an office. The average commute in Chicago is 32 minutes. An hour lost right there. Add in office chatterboxes, treks to Starbucks, restaurant lunches. You get more work done at home. Bosses tend to overvalue being in the office and under their watchful eye.

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Stamp of approval

       The United States Postal Service unveiled its new Toni Morrison stamp on Tuesday. I read about it in the Sun-times Wednesday, and gazed at the image, set against an orange background. It isn't bad, as far as U.S. postage stamps go, and honestly, last month I wouldn't have thought twice about the image.
    But I was in Washington, D.C. a couple weeks ago for a book dinner. And while I didn't have much free time, I made a point to pop into the National Portrait Gallery, one of the nations under-appreciated treasures. There I contemplated the official portrait of Donald Trump, a stain on our history that will never wash out, hanging among the other presidents, and not in a separate traitor's wing, perhaps accessed through an airlock, where he belongs. But that deserves a separate post.
     I was impressed by how effectively the National Portrait Gallery conveyed the diverse splendor of our nation, and paused to admire Robert McCurdy's 2006 portrait of Toni Morrison. Take a look at it below. Her expression is ... what? Angry? Focused? Fierce? Determined? There was a serenity, a power. That scowl ... the painting made the author live, for me. Gotta read her books, I thought. I'd be more ashamed to admit I haven't if I didn't suspect I'm not alone in that. Blame the era I went to school. We read "Great Expectations" instead. Still, that's no excuse. No time like the present.

      Now look again at the postage stamp. She seems ... annoyed? Impatient? Hunched? Waiting for the picture to be taken? Her smile flirting with a grimace. Her hands lightly folded in front of her. It would have been too much to expect the notoriously inept postal service to nail Morrison's portrait. But it doesn't mean we can't remind ourselves how far from the mark their shot fell.

     

Needy Jews exist; The Ark helps them

Danny Weber

     These columns are news stories, in theory. So I should put the most incredible part first, where you can notice it before you shrug and move on to the rest of the paper.
     But deciding what is the most incredible part can be a challenge.
     Would it be that The Ark, the 50-year-old Jewish social service organization, exists? That it provides food and counseling, medical aid and employment guidance to needy Jews?
     Or is the incredible part that the needy Jews themselves exist? Don’t Jews run the world? Are there really Jewish people right here in Chicago who would fill out paperwork and be assigned a case manager in order to get a cardboard box of tomato sauce and pasta and peanut butter?
     There are.
     Or is the incredible part that The Ark runs a food pantry in upscale Northbrook, 10 minutes from my house?
     Jews are an odd kind of minority group — both successful and oppressed, envied and hated. People believe the slurs. If the college Hillel club shows up at the big campus Oppressed Minority Jubilee, they get hard looks because, being Jews, they’re personally responsible for the wrongs of Israel. Aren’t they?
     I still haven’t gotten to the incredible part that prompted today’s effort: The Ark’s “Dinner-Less Dinner” fundraiser. At least incredible to me, because I once was the charities, foundations and private social services reporter. Wandering around the vast Hilton ballroom, eyeballing the big baskets of swag at the silent auction, entertaining the eternal puzzle: Why throw a big party? Why drain away desperately needed money to pay for indifferent chicken almondine, huge floral displays and a 35-minute set by Chaka Khan? Why not put all the money into good works, and as an added bonus, we get to stay home?
     That’s what The Ark does. It sends out invitations to a non-event, collects money, but:
     “No big gala, no big party,” said Cheryl Wittenstein, director of marketing at The Ark. “Instead, let’s directly affect the clients.”
     The Dinner-Less Dinner is an echo of a dramatic moment in the history of Chicago charity. In 1921, Jewish benefactors gathered at the new Drake Hotel for what became known as “The Food-less Banquet” to relieve Jews suffering in post-World War I Europe. Guests actually arrived at a ballroom containing long, empty tables. Serving food would be an “unwarranted extravagance, and in the face of starving Europe, a wasteful crime,” Jacob K. Loeb announced. “For you, the disappointment is temporary and passing. For them it is permanent and lasting.”

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Flashback 2010: It's time for 'retard' to go

Porgy at the Lyric Opera

     Sunday's Chicago Polar Plunge had a record haul — some $2 million — for the Special Olympics. As someone with an eye on language, I find myself idly wondering whether "special," which can veer toward an insult on junior high school playgrounds, will someday be dropped in favor of a more positive word. I weighed in on the subject 13 years ago, when the Special Olympics took aim at "retarded," a word that, sadly, is still very much in use.

     Last season, when the Lyric Opera put on "Porgy and Bess," two aspects fascinated me.
     The first aspect was racial. Great music composed by a white Jewish guy, sung by an all-black cast. Art, but filled with odious stereotypes.
     The second involves disability. Porgy is "a cripple." Originally, he pushed himself around on stage in a goat cart. But times change — now he hobbles on a crutch.
     When lyricist Ira Gershwin updated the opera in 1952, a certain derogatory term for blacks was cut. "Cripple" could stay. In a column, I tried to specify which racial slur got axed, and an editor expunged it.
     Which bothered me — I differentiate between a word hurled on a playground or from a stage and explaining exactly which term has been cut. But I also understand that such matters are highly sensitive. We used hyphens instead.
     Which brings up the word "retarded." The Special Olympics is pushing on to scrub "retarded" from the language. As if on cue, the cartoon "Family Guy" featured Ellen, a character with Down syndrome, provoking Sarah Palin's well-exercised sense of victimization.
     While I differentiate between art and life — I don't believe children live in a better world if we bowdlerize Huck Finn — there is also crossover between the two realms. If "Family Guy" has fun with Down syndrome, then certain viewers might feel entitled to do the same.

REMEMBER 'FEEBLE-MINDED'?

     I don't like to equivocate. My gut instinct is against sanitizing culture — it can be counterproductive, even laughable. Will it really be progress when Bess sings, "He's a disabled indee-vidual an' he needs mah love"? I don't see it.
     The actress who plays Ellen on "Family Guy" is Andrea Fay Friedman. She has Down syndrome and she thinks her role is funny. Isn't it the worst kind of paternalism to, in effect, try to get her fired because Sarah Palin is uncomfortable with seeing the subject she milks for sympathy being treated as a source of humor? People are either full adults out in the real world, or they're a special victim class who need coddling, and it's disingenuous to push for one and then, when they do something you don't like, invoke the other.
     And yet. Were developmentally disabled people secure in the mainstream alongside the Irish and accountants, we could happily debate the cultural desirability of mocking them. But given that recognizing their full humanity is a fairly recent development, it seems that we should at least acknowledge that ridicule, though funny in entertainment, is destructive on a personal level.
     The issue here is not what Sacha Baron Cohen says in "Borat," but what people say in their own lives, and here, while racial taunts and religious slurs have generally been sent to the woodshed, "retarded" hasn't, and it is time to put that term out to pasture.
     Words change their meaning. When The Association for Retarded Citizens was founded in 1950, it was aiding people who were still called "feeble-minded," not as insults, but officially, as in the "Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Youth."
     "Retarded" was a neutral, modern term, then. It isn't anymore, having been twisted into a taunt over 50 years.
     Yes, whatever term replaces it will be equally corrupted eventually — notice the tone of grinning mockery that a junior high school student can invest in the word "special" and you realize this is a footrace between those whose experience makes them sensitive and those fortunate enough not to care, between those who would have an inclusive society and those who would chuckle at its most vulnerable members.
     Sometimes — often — that is the same person. I laughed when Borat mistook "retard" with "retired," and would no sooner see it cut from the movie than I'd rewrite "The Merchant of Venice" to remove the religious references.
     But that doesn't mean we have to cling to our present attitudes. Times change, and so does what is considered funny. In 1950, a child with Down syndrome was a humiliating family stigma. You'd dump that child in an institution and never speak of her again. Progress for people with disabilities paralleled advances in civil rights and feminism — heretofore marginalized groups struggling to reach their full potentials. Humor changed too. "Amos & Andy" isn't funny anymore; maybe someday "Borat" won't be funny, either.
     In 1953, Dale Evans, wife of cowboy star Roy Rogers, penned a book, Angel Unaware, about their daughter Robin, who was born with Down syndrome. Doctors told her to have Robin institutionalized. Instead Evans, inspired by her deep Christian faith, posed the little girl in family publicity photos. The book sold 400,000 copies in the mid-1950s, and parents who otherwise never let their children out of the house felt comfortable bringing them to Roy Rogers rodeos, because of his wife's book.
     They felt safe there.
     I believe that any person with a heart, facing this complex issue, would rather err on the side of those children, would want them, not merely to get out of the house to see a cowboy show, but to also go to school with other kids and work at a job, if they could, still safe and accepted, without their lives being made a hell by would-be wits looking for someone to abuse.
     That's what it boils down to. "Porgy and Bess" is still great, without the offending word. Alas, we lose a convenient butt of jokes — a concern to us satirists. The pool of potential victims does shrink alarmingly. But don't despair — there's always Canadians.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 22, 2010

Purim duty.

          "Esther before Ahasuerus," by Artemisia Gentileschi (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Religious observance was never my strong suit. Usually I'm being prodded by someone else. My parents, for the first decade and a half of life. My wife for the past, gee, four decades. Otherwise, I tend to let things slide.
     With the exception of a few small gestures that I've absorbed and will perform unbidden. Leaving a Jewish home with a mezuzah on the door, I will reflexively touch it and then kiss my fingertips, which, now that I think of it, can't be hygienic in this COVID era. I never thought of mezuzahs as fomites (sigh, physical objects that transmit disease). Though I bet someone has. Sure enough, Israel's chief rabbi, David Lau, encouraged Jews not to touch mezuzahs, because COVID. Given our dwindling numbers, it makes sense for the faith to skew toward self-protection. 
     Speaking of danger, Purim, which begins Monday night, along with Passover and Hanukkah, are what I consider a they-tried-to-kill-us-but-couldn't holidays. Instead of the Egyptians or Greeks, we have Persian King Ahasuerus. While the Passover story is told by reading the Haggadah at a Seder meal, and Hanukkah gets conveyed in really bad songs, the Book of Esther is often acted out in a synagogue — my mother still talks about the turn I did as a teenager as Haman, the evil adviser to the king who tried to do the Jews in.
     I imagine the Purim story is far less familiar to non-Jews than the Exodus. Without going into too much detail, bad guy Haman wants the Jews dead. Scaffolds are erected, but Ahasuerus's hot new wife, Esther, a secret Jew, intercedes on their behalf and saves them.
     This story actually has a fleeting recent relevance to American politics, When Donald Trump took office, the more sentient Jews worried that, despite his continual lip service to the State of Israel, having a stone bigot in office might not ultimately be good for the tribe. Stephen Miller — or sometimes Steve Bannon — seemed a nearly Haman-like figure. 
    Which led worried Jews (or is that redundant? Judaism and worry being tightly twinned) to invoke Trump's daughter Ivanka, who converted to Judaism in order to marry Jared Kushner. 
      "Can Ivanka Trump become our Queen Esther?" is how the Forward, the venerable New York Jewish newspaper, put it in a headline. She would intercede with King Trump and keep him from whatever edicts he would lay down against us, forgetting that a) the objects of bigots are fungible, and once hatred is tolerated it gets around to everybody who is considered fair game and b) Ivanka wouldn't go out a limb for anybody.
      There was something truly pathetic in the "she will be our Esther" trope and it didn't take long for Jews to give up the notion.
      "Ivanka Trump Fails the Queen Esther Test," the Israeli daily Haaretz headlined in 2017, describing a situation that should have been no surprise.
     "During the first two weeks of the Trump administration, Ivanka hasn’t been seen fighting for anything" the newspaper wrote. "Rather disastrously, Ivanka appeared callous and out-of-touch when she uploaded a photograph of herself and her husband onto Instagram dressed elegantly for a night on the town, as protests over immigration ban were erupting. Unflattering comparisons were made to a different queen — Marie Antoinette."

     Turns out indifference toward suffering is hereditary.
     "Ivanka and Jared’s silence has been deafening, as hate crimes against Jews skyrocket along with other forms of racist violence including three waves of bomb threats to Jewish community centers across the country," Haaretz wrote.

    Where was I? Oh yes. Sunday morning found me driving, at my wife's direction, to Tel Aviv Bakery on Devon Avenue, early, for the ritual buying of the hamantaschen, in honor of Purim. Some demands of faith are easier to comply with than others.

Welcome to the club

Door knocker, Barcelona 2022

  
     Last week Everygoddamnday.com received several hundred new subscribers, thanks to the good offices of Eric Zorn and Charlie Meyerson. Since some of those newcomers seem to be taking a trust drop into the unknown, based on their complete faith in the two aforementioned journalists, I thought I would take a moment today to explain what they've signed up for.

     For the past 36 years, I've been on staff at the Chicago Sun-Times. For 26 of those years, I've written a news column. This blog was created almost a decade ago, after I mouthed off to the publisher and got myself suspended. If you are interested in the details of that episode, you can find them here, along with a test drive in a 2013 Bentley.

     The suspension only lasted a week, but the blog has been published every day since, without fail. More than 3,000 posts. Because I still have a job, I've never been much interested in monetizing the blog. It does run cheesecake ads, literally, from Eli's Cheesecake. But I don't charge for subscriptions, or accept donations, and only started blasting out a daily email because Charlie convinced me it was stupid not to. The email itself is not a newsletter, though I try to tuck some interesting detail of the day ahead, if there is one. Its sole purpose is to wave that day's link under your nose, as a convenience.

     My column runs in the newspaper Monday, Wednesday and Friday, usually, and on those days I post the first six paragraphs or so of the column, and then link to the paper for the rest, because they pay for it. The paper does not charge for subscriptions, now that we were taken under the wing of Chicago Public Media, a 501(c)3 charity. But to read the full column, they do require you register once by giving your email. If this violates your sense of propriety, then by all means, don't do it. But with Alden Capital gutting the Tribune, the Sun-Times is now the preeminent newspaper in Chicago, and being an informed citizen means taking time to read it. Given that our forefathers stormed Normandy Beach in part to protect our freedom of the press, it doesn't seem too great a sacrifice to ask that you share your email. 

     On Saturdays, I invite friends to pinch hit, and I suppose any reader who wanted to take a swing, since I consider you friends, or at least friends-in-the-making. The other three days I either write new material, or haul out something germane from the archive.

     Readers are invited to comment, but comments are posted at my discretion. If you made a comment and it wasn't posted, ask yourself: did I suggest the proprietor is an idiot? Did I wax at length about something I read on Q-Anon? Was I being insufferable? That might explain it. 

     I truly appreciate corrections, with a few caveats. There is no need to apologize, or be concerned with nitpicking. To write is to err, particularly here, where I have no copy editor. Try not to glory in the act of correction. No need to muse whether I mean 'hte," the acronym for high terpene extract, or merely mistyped "the." It's the latter. 

     There is a search bar on the upper left corner, and if there is a topic of particular interest to you — grapefruit, concrete, heart transplants — I encourage you to explore. Odds are I've written something about it. You might enjoy the first post, explaining what I'm trying to do here.

    That's about it. Feel free to ask questions. I almost always respond, because I'm grateful for every reader. Well, almost every reader. The blog is intended for people who like this kind of thing. If you no longer want to receive email notifications, simply ask to be removed, pay the $200 removal fee*, and your name will be taken off the list. For the rest, welcome aboard, and I hope you enjoy reading Every goddamn day.

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