Writing

The Village Idiot

The Village Idiot
By Daniel Radosh

Earlier this month, the Village Voice celebrated its 40th anniversary with an enthusiastic tribute to itself. That's hardly surprising -- the New York weekly has always been one of the most self-obsessed publications going. What was almost surprising was the reminder -- in the form of dusted- off essays by Norman Mailer, Joe Flaherty, Stanley Crouch, and other old Voice hands -- that there was a time when it was actually worth reading.
I'm too young to remember those days, but the legend of the Village Voice is one of New York's most enduring ones: the newspaper of the counterculture back when counterculture was a dirty word the first time around; the writer's newspaper, where anything that could happen in print did; the muckraker, scooping the city and national dailies; the leftist gadfly that was secretly respected even by those who most hated it. Whether this reputation was ever wholly deserved is a matter for reasonable debate. What is inarguable is that the Village Voice today is less a living legend than an embarrassing joke.

What's the Point of Best Actress

What’s The Point Of Best Actress?
By Daniel Radosh

It is not exactly incendiary to contend that the Academy Awards are more about spectacle and hype than the legitimate recognition of talent. That’s been clear at least since Wings beat out Sunrise in 1928. But here’s another piece of evidence you might not have considered: the best actress category. Not this year’s front-runners or past winners but the category itself. There is simply no valid reason to divide an acting competition into male and female divisions.

Acting is not like sports, where physical differences between men and women make direct comparison meaningless. Marion Jones won’t outrun Maurice Greene, but tell me Sissy Spacek can’t go toe to toe with Will Smith. Lead and supporting role is a reasonable distinction. Dramatic performance and best comedic performance — separate categories in the Golden Globes — also makes sense. What Reese Witherspoon does in Legally Blonde is qualitatively different from what Judi Dench does in Iris; certainly more than Dench’s performance is from Russell Crowe’s in A Beautiful Mind. So why, under the Oscar rules, would Witherspoon have to go up against Dench, while Dench is protected from competing against Crowe (and vice versa)?

No Strings Attached

No Strings Attached: A Survivor’s Memoir
By Daniel Radosh

“Howdy was so successful that Mr. Smith commissioned a stand-in, whom he called Double Doody, and a third puppet with no strings attached who posed for photos. He was called Photo Doody.” — From the New York Times obituary of Howdy Doody creator “Buffalo Bob” Smith

There are some stories you can’t tell at the time. Too many reputations are at stake. But now I’m the only one left. Me? You’ve probably never heard my name. You’d know my face in a second, though. I was called Photo Doody.

Howdy was my big brother, and whatever happened, I never forgot that. Between us was Double Doody—or Double Trouble, as they called him in the tabloids. Both were strong personalities, so I played the role of peacemaker—messaging egos, negotiating truces and always, always putting on a happy front for the public.

We all worked for Mr. Smith. (We never called him Bob or Buffalo Bob off camera. It was always Mr. Smith, and it couldn’t hurt to follow up with a “sir.”) But Howdy was the star. People loved him, and on TV he was lovable. What didn’t come across on the screen was his complexity. Howdy Doody was, I believe, the most complicated puppet who ever lived—and yes, I’m including Alf. Howdy was a visionary whose ideas couldn’t always be shoehorned into easy entertainment. I still recall his reaction when Mr. Smith nixed his modern dance interpretation of Eugene Onegin in favor of another “Iggly Wiggly Spaghetti” sing-a-long. “They’re always jerking my strings!” he cried. And it was true.

Eminem Vs. America

Eminem makes Steve Earle look like Toby Keith
Why hasn’t anyone noticed?
By Daniel Radosh

Eminem can’t catch a break. No sooner does he crown himself “king of controversy” than the culture warriors decide to give him a pass. The rehabilitation of Eminem — “onetime bad boy of rap” is how he’s now described — is partly the result of the hit film 8 Mile, a wholesome, old-fashioned movie in which the rapper plays a less frightening (and less interesting) character than the ones on his albums. But even before 8 Mile, the rabid right had dropped Eminem as its whipping boy. One explanation: Since 9/11, they’ve had bigger fish to fry. “Now Republicans and conservatives aren't concerned about rap music,” wrote John Podhoretz in The New York Post. “They're interested in national security, in terrorism prevention, the war against al Qaida and the war with Iraq. Are kids learning dirty words from Eminem? Big deal. Eminem won't kill them. Militant Islam will.”

Sure, this raises the question of whether there weren’t other important — even deadly — issues that Lynne Cheney et al might have been tackling before 9/11, when conservatives (and some liberals) couldn’t spend enough energy hammering Eminem. But Podhoretz’s claim isn’t entirely accurate. In at least one respect, the “war on terror” has actually made the culture wars even more important to conservatives: now their bugaboo is not sex or violence, but treason.

Best Christmas Movies

The Ultimate Movie Collection: Christmas Edition
By Daniel Radosh

It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
Wholesome, cheerful, sweet… somewhere along the line this movie picked up a bad reputation. But watch it again with a fresh eye and It’s A Wonderful Life will kick your punk ass. The story of a “warped, frustrated young man” — played with stunning subtlety by Jimmy Stewart, such a brilliant actor that people still tend to think he was just being himself — Frank Capra’s film was a whip-smart tragicomedy (and a box office flop) long before it sank to the status of beloved family classic. Other movies made Capra’s name is synonymous with shmaltz (we really can’t take You Can’t Take It With You) but It’s A Wonderful Life deserves no such derision. The script, with its un-credited contributions from Dorothy Parker, Clifford Odets and Dalton Trumbo, is a masterpiece of crackling dialogue, mordant humor and heart-wrenching existential despair. In context, the ending isn’t the eggnog-drenched sap-fest it’s usually recalled as, but a genuinely cathartic release of redemptive joy. The black and white cinematography is as gorgeous as any film noir. If you’ve only ever seen It’s A Wonderful Life chopped up on TV or fuzzed up on VHS, seek out the THX-certified DVD and it really will be like seeing it for the first time.

Metropolitan (1990)

Ironic

Ironic
By Daniel Radosh

Like many people, I'm worried about what the kids are learning from MTV. Unlike many people, what worries me is not that kids will be enticed to tote guns, engage in premarital sex or use the word "sucks"as punctuation. Rather, I’m concerned that impressionable youngsters are being grossly misled in the use of rhetorical devices. Specifically, irony.

For those of you who don't watch MTV, the number one video for the past five weeks has been Alanis Morissette's "Ironic". That may not sound impressive, but in MTV time five weeks is a generation. Eight weeks after a song is first released, the artist is eligible for a "where are they now"segment.

"Ironic" is perhaps the first hit pop song devoted entirely to explicating a foundational element of Classical Greek drama. Given the usual tawdry subject matter of pop songs, this should be cause for rejoicing. Yet strangely—ironically, if you will—Ms. Morissette has almost no idea what the word "ironic" means.

Her opening lyric isn’t terrible. "An old man turned 98/He won the lottery and died the next day/...Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?" Well, sure it is. It’s a remarkably cheap irony that would get you laughed out of Freshman Comp, but it is irony. All too soon, though, problems arise.

Translating Harry Potter

Why American Kids Don't Consider Harry Potter an Insufferable Prig
by Daniel Radosh

The PowerPoint Anthology of Literature

Too busy for Cliff's Notes? Welcome to The PowerPoint Anthology of Literature: Great books distilled to their essence and presented in the most efficient form of communication ever devised.
 
 
Hamlet
Hope Is the Thing with Feathers
Lolita
Goodnight Moon
Maxim
You Shall Know Our Velocity

Shakespeare Porn

Bone Up Your Shakespeare
A Study Guide to the Complete Porno Films of the Bard of Avon

 

 By Daniel Radosh
 

Considering that William Shakespeare coined the phrase, “making the beast with two backs” (Othello, I, i), it should be no surprise that there are numerous X-rated movies based on his plays. Amherst Professor Richard Burt has devoted a good chunk of his career to "bardcore" films. But are any of them worth watching? Ay, there’s the… rub.
 

The Play: A Midsummer Night’s Cream
How Much Bard: 70%
Cliff Notes: Certain subplots have been trimmed, the rest have had trim added, but the story and spirit of the original are intact. While there are benefits to this — double entendres like “I could munch your good dry oats” really come alive — there are also drawbacks — when it comes to porn, a guy with the head (and bray) of a donkey is more nightmare than dream. The acting isn’t exactly RSC-worthy either. But then you wouldn’t want to see Dame Judi Dench in this particular production.

 

The Trendspotting Generation

The Trendspotting Generation
The word is out: God is back, lesbians are cool, memoirs are hot, and biting is in. Trends are all the rage
By Daniel Radosh

IT WASN’T SO long ago that big news meant Great Men and Major Events. IKE INVADES NORMANDY. DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN. Big news was concrete. It was dramatic. It involved action and information—who? what? where? etc.—and if the reporting was wrong or incomplete, as it sometimes clearly was, the story remained moored to events. Big news, in other words, did not entertain or indulge our modern concept of social "trends." There was simply no room or imagination for exposition along the lines of, Lately there is a vague sense that more and more people seem to be doing or thinking or buying something or other that might possibly reflect the mood or psyche or spirit of the nation as a whole. That wasn't news; it was small talk.

Now consider some more recent headlines from the nation's premier periodicals. "Lesbian Chic" (New York). "Religion Makes A Comeback" (The New York Times Magazine). "Growing Pains at 40: Baby Boomers Struggle to Have it All" (Time). "The Simple Life: Goodbye to Having it All" (Time). No longer is news a matter of who did what? These days it's what are we doing? What are we smoking? (Cigars!) What are we eating? (Soup!) Where are we moving to? (Small towns!) What spiritual pap are we embracing? (Angels and kabbalah!) And, most importantly, what does it all mean?

HOW TO BE AN X-PHILE WITHOUT BEING A GEEK

HOW TO BE AN X-PHILE WITHOUT BEING A GEEK
BY DANIEL RADOSH

The truth is out there. And over there. And look, there it is. Heck, the truth is everywhere these days. It's splattered across the Internet like so much alien goo. It's stacked up in bookstores like top-secret files in a government warehouse. It shines forth from newsstands like beams from high-powered flashlights pointed at the camera. When it comes to The X-Files, the truth is all over the gosh-darned place.

When the Fox network launched the science fiction/horror/detective hybrid in September 1993, few people — including David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, who play FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully — believed it would still be around five years later. Today it is more popular than ever. New episodes draw up to 16 million viewers each week, not counting growing audiences in countries from Japan to Switzerland to Croatia. It has racked up more than 25 industry awards, including a best actress Emmy for Anderson and Golden Globes for both leads and for the series. An ambitious big-screen version is on the way. But The X-Files phenomenon is larger than the show itself. X-philes wanting to look beyond the tube can turn to books with titles like The X-Files Declassified, to Internet sites and newsgroups like alt.tv.x-files, to magazines and even CD-ROMs, and to the touring ''X-Files Expo,'' coming next weekend to the Coconut Grove Convention Center. There has never been a better time to be an X-Files fan.

But there is a better way to be an X-Files fan. Do you own more than one of those books? Do you regularly check the Web sites? Have you ever actually identified yourself as an X-phile? If so — how can one put this gently? — do you have any friends? Meaning real-world friends, not ScullyGuy@aol.com.

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