Culture

This article is in The Spectator’s inaugural US edition. Subscribe here to get yours. Once upon a time in the Seventies, rock ’n’ roll was a man’s game. Then Blondie happened –– or ‘Blondie’ herself, Debbie Harry, platinum bombshell and queen of punk. Actually, before Blondie there was the Runaways, an exploitation act from which the singer, Joan Jett, ran away. There was Patti Smith, who moved to New York City, fell in love with Robert Mapplethorpe and wrote poetry. There was Chrissie Hynde, who moved to London, passed through the rehearsals that generated the Sex Pistols and the Clash, and then, after Blondie had charted in Britain, formed the Pretenders.

Sad times for emotionally stunted millennials – which is to say, all of us – as Bam Margera, star of the cult classic stunt comedy show Jackass, has continued his disastrous middle age with a desperate plea to sentient mustache and self-help guru Dr Phil to help him with his alcoholism. Naturally, I wish Mr Margera the best. Addiction is a terrible burden to bear. Still, it got me thinking about Jackass, which, incredibly, was developed about 20 years ago.Think about what this means. There are thirty-somethings and forty-somethings who, when asked by their innocent children what they watched when they were young, have had to lie or else explain their youthful enthusiasm for watching people set themselves on fire, publicly defecate and eat raw eggs and vomit them into a pan.

This article is in The Spectator’s inaugural US edition. Subscribe here to get yours. It’s a muggy afternoon in Los Angeles as I sit down to write this — in my bathroom; the AC’s broken everywhere else. My vanity is dusty, cluttered with books, storyboards, shot lists and Post-It notes scrawled in ALL CAPS with a frenzied thick black Sharpie: ‘LOCK PICTURE!!’ ‘BEAR!’, ‘BORN FREE!’, ‘DOG’, ‘STATE DINNER’, ‘DOCUMENTARY!’, ‘GRATITUDE’. It’s a bizarre medley, as is my life in general. I’m married to a Republican politician but I’m extremely liberal. I cannot say that I’m a Democrat either. These terms are binary and weaponized.

This article is in The Spectator’s inaugural US edition. Subscribe here to get yours. Tina Turner believed that she and Ike were the reincarnation of god-kings from ancient Egypt. That, she reasoned, was why they’d been reincarnated in Memphis, Tenn.; their souls would feel at home in a city that, like Memphis in ancient Egypt, was sited on a big river and noted for its artisanry. In a perversion of Buddhism by celebrity culture, people select past lives that are more interesting than their present ones. Plenty of people believe they used to be Napoleon Bonaparte, but when was the last time you met someone who boasts of having been an illiterate Corsican goat-herder who married his cousin?

Late night host James Corden had a viral moment over the weekend when he clapped back at Bill Maher for his comments about fatness. 'If making fun of fat people made them lose weight, there’d be no fat kids in schools,’ Corden said. 'And I’d have a six-pack right now.’ Well James, I’m here to tell you you're wrong. Fat-shaming can work. And I know. Because I was once mistaken for you. I was leaving an extremely busy pool hall in Manhattan's West Village with some friends one Saturday in early December last year. It was the kind of place where you had to collect a ticket from the bar in order to wait your turn for a table — and we had been waiting for over an hour.

And the Oscar for Best Actress goes to...Felicity Huffman in College Admissions Scandal! In this family drama that nauseated audiences everywhere, Huffman plays a desperate housewife with a dark secret. She might present herself like a Lala-leftie, denouncing Donald Trump and telling the dumb masses what to think about the environment, but she’s actually a perfectly sensible parent who knows the college application system is a corrupt farce. Huffman’s real-life husband William H. Macy, fresh from a deeply convincing performance in the dysfunctional family dramedy Shameless, plays the husband who claims he’s closely involved in parenting and the admissions process, but then claims not to know anything about it when his wife is arrested.

Oh, dear. Joe Biden is being dinged, or needled, as it were, about his stray remark last night that every American household should boast a record player to help educate young children in the evening. But seldom has there been a bummer rap. It would be hard to think of a more salutary suggestion.It’s no secret that black gold, as it is known among its aficionados, has made a comeback over the past decade or so, even outselling CDs. The Beatles sold more than 300,000 albums in 2018. Once you start buying LPs, it’s hard to stop. Just this morning I myself was tidying up my basement lair, restocking a few Tchaikovsky as well as a wonderful Oscar Peterson LP.

If you haven’t heard, there’s a movie out about a demonic force in clown make-up that targets children. No, it’s not drag queen storytime, but It Chapter Two, based on the Stephen King book. And unfortunately, during the 27-year gaps between his mass murders of children, Pennywise the Dancing Clown never logged onto Vox to brush up on the social justice grievances du jour. The film is under heavy attack by the LGBTQQAAI2S++ community with accusations of homophobia. True to the original 1986 book, the film opens with a gay couple being attacked by a gang of men when Pennywise shows up to literally eat one of the gays alive. Minus the clown, the scene was inspired by a real anti-gay murder in Bangor, Maine in 1984.

Only in retrospect does 1999 appear to be the last imaginative year of mainstream American cinema. From Cruel Intentions to Being John Malkovich, American Beauty to American Pie, The Sixth Sense to Eyes Wide Shut, Election to Magnolia, and Fight Club to The Matrix, it was, as Esquire magazine put it, 'the last great year in movies.' In the year 2039, if anybody is able to tear themselves away from insect burgers and the lurid projections of VR pleasuredomes long enough to reflect on the movies of 2019, what will they have to rhapsodize about? They will look back and see a cultural landscape monopolized by one company: Disney.

'You Can Definitely Skip Dave Chappelle's New Netflix Special,' says VICE. And if that's not recommendation enough, here's one from me: Sticks & Stones is the most, offensive, foul-mouthed, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic comedy set you're likely to see on TV this year. Chappelle, I must confess, was new to me. Yes, I know, I know, all you American readers: he's a comedy institution, ranked no. 9 in Rolling Stone's '50 Best Stand Up Comics of All Time' with numerous awards and a career going right back to his 1993 movie debut in Mel Brooks's Robin Hood: Men In Tights. But when you're English and you get to a certain age, you find yourself taking a certain perverse pride in not knowing anything whatsoever about icons who are really huge in the US.

Peter Schjeldahl’s essay 'Renoir’s Problem Nudes' in The New Yorker has already attracted some portion of the contempt and ridicule it deserves. Here is my modest contribution to that task. According to Schjeldahl, Renoir 'sparks a sense of crisis.' 'Who doesn’t have a problem with Pierre-Auguste Renoir?' he asks in his opening gambit. Can we have a show of hands on that? Pace Schjeldahl, Renoir is such an immensely popular because his painting is essentially celebratory; he looked upon the world with an oeil bienveillant, glorying in its sumptuousness. There is great intensity in some of Renoir’s portraits, but very little melancholy. The dominant mood is festive: a happy, sociable sensuousness.

The woke have spoken: fat is fab. This is great news for Lizzo, an American singer and rapper whose rise to fame and celebrity has been rapid and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Lizzo, or Melissa Jefferson as she was once known, is unquestionably rotund. In the days of yore, Lizzo’s excessive layers would have been considered optimal, a marker of wealth and status coveted by women and adored by men. In theory, we’ve grown and evolved since those days, and now enjoy unprecedented levels of knowledge and education about medicine, diet, and exercise. This wealth of information should produce an especially healthy populace; instead, Americans continue to stuff ourselves with everything we know we shouldn’t eat: too much red meat, too much fried food, too many carbs.

The Boys (Amazon Prime) is a superhero series for people who hate superheroes. That's me all over, which is probably why I've loved every moment of four episodes I've seen so far. It's based on a comic book by Garth Ennis (Preacher; Punisher) who also hates superheroes. 'Personally, not having grown up with superheroes, I find them completely moronic,' he said in a recent interview I could only access by having to use a VPN hider to pretend I wasn't in the EU (seriously we can't leave that overregulated dump soon enough). And: 'The notion that the medium I work in is dominated (and, sadly, defined) by such a stupid genre is not one that feeds my sense of idealism.' Ennis claims to object to superheroes on moral grounds: they are glibly escapist and ignore the world's real problems.

Cancel culture claimed another victim this week. This time it was The Hunt, a Universal Studios thriller in which a group of — presumably liberal — elites go around hunting and killing ‘deplorables' for sport. The premise is awful, and it does nothing to encourage the kind of spiritual healing Marianne Williamson correctly believes our nation so badly needs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8IifEu67yU But consider some other cinematographic successes. ABC’s Designated Survivor tells the story of a terror attack that wiped out the entire American government, leaving a lowly Secretary of Housing with the job of Commander in Chief.

There are over 2,000 shows at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, but only one that is really worth seeing. Titania McGrath’s Mxnifesto is a tour de force of political oratory that is unlikely to be surpassed in my lifetime. I have seen every single performance, except for the nights I’ve had off (usually when my self-diagnosed PTSD has flared up), and its cultural significance is indisputable. I’d go so far as to suggest that the Edinburgh Fringe should cease after this current year, given that its purpose has now surely been fulfilled. I was warned against writing this piece. Apparently, it is frowned upon to write a review for your own show. I consider this yet another attempt to silence women’s voices by the forces of heteronormative patriarchy.

Unsurprisingly, David Berman hated his dad. When he broke up his band, the Silver Jews, in 2009 he released a statement which announced: 'My father is a despicable man. My father is a sort of human molestor [sic].  'An exploiter. A scoundrel. A world historical motherfucking son of a bitch. (sorry grandma)' Obviously, Berman felt as if the sins of the father had tainted the son. 'This winter,' he wrote, 'I decided that the [Silver Jews] were too small of a force to ever come close to undoing a millionth of all the harm he has caused.' He swore to seek justice by other means. Apparently, this involved writing a book but it never materialized and Berman all but disappeared for about a decade. Berman reappeared in 2019, with a gorgeous album, Purple Mountains, and plans to tour.

The man of distinction who longs to be acclaimed for something else is a recurring and quite endearing figure. A few years ago, I wrote a small book about the fraught relationship of Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini. The escapologist was driven by shame about his lack of formal education. He had dropped out of school at the age of 12 to support himself as a shoeshine boy before embarking on a career as an acrobat and magician. For Conan Doyle, the attainment of influence and wealth as the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories apparently never dispelled the vulnerability that dwelled inside the alcoholic’s son from a slum household in Edinburgh.

I hear the sound of chanting in the distance, grim and ominous. ‘Boom, boom, boom, boom ba boom, boom, boom...' Suddenly, voices cry out: ‘Je-sus walks!’ A white-robed Kanye West is surveying the geodesic dome structures that he has built across his lands. A MAGA hat is pulled over his brow and the sun glints off his oversized sneakers. Kim Kardashian stands beside him in a bodysuit that strains against her preternaturally tumid curves. Kanye announced that he was building the housing complex for the homeless in 2019.

Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood is Quentin Tarantino’s most pleasurable film since the first installment of Kill Bill. It’s delightful pop esoterica, blending the sensational disposability of a pulp novel with an antique edition of Playboy filled with crackling cigarette ads you can practically inhale off the page. The film is a visual banquet with a daft machismo that puts Tarantino out of step with the marketing plans of today's priggish e-cigarette smoking snoots. Ultimately, Once Upon a Time... is a stylish fairytale where the two anti-heroes are a neurotic leather-clad TV cowboy named Rick Dalton (Leonardo Di Caprio in his funniest performance) and Cliff Booth, a sadistic and square-jawed drunk who feeds his dog canned slop, played by Brad Pitt.

Let it never be said that Hollywood is cowardly. When there is a cause to go to the wall for, when there are monstrous dragons to be slain, when the ethical balance of our times tiptoes along the edge of calamity, is it not Hollywood – that steadfast, sensible battery of dream-makers – that rises to the challenge, earning the sighing respect and tearful admiration of us all? Weren’t we all thrilled, shocked and relieved in January when Robert De Niro – riskily breaking with precedent and the hidebound convention that A-listers should never opine about current events – said: ‘Trump is a real racist.’ Finally someone had the courage to say it!

The nation waits with bated breath for news of one of its favorite and most delicate sons, the ‘rap artist’ A$AP Rocky. Mr Rocky is held hostage by the military of the barbaric regime of an anti-Western failed state called Sweden. The Scandinavian rogue nation is widely suspected of having colluded with the military of another barbaric regime of another anti-Western failed state, Iran, which last week kidnapped an entire oil tanker under similar circumstances. Mr Rocky claims to have been minding his own business with two of his minders when they felt it necessary to kick an Afghan asylum seeker in the body and head while taking an early evening stroll in the rubble of Sweden’s Mogadishu-like capital, Stockholm.

In the middle of the 20th century, the Central Intelligence Agency executed a commendable troll against the American left. Long rumored to be a joke, documents released in the 1990s revealed that during the Cold War the CIA secretly funded and promoted some of America’s biggest contemporary artists without the knowledge of the artists themselves. It was art as weapon. The US aimed to showcase the intellectual freedom and creative superiority of Western, capitalist societies against the drab, inhibited propagandist art of the Soviet Union by broadcasting this wildly inventive style in vogue at the time. The CIA propped up artists like Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko.

In these erratic times, political comedy is hard, OK? It's tough to dream up jokes more ridiculous than the reality of the reign of Trump: no wonder many of the writers are struggling. But is that cause enough to be cruel? Comedienne Samantha Bee directly addresses author and presidential candidate Marianne Williamson in a promo for her TBS show Full Frontal, and invites her to be a guest...if Williamson will drop out. https://twitter.com/FullFrontalSamB/status/1153328212509962241 'Hi Marianne Williamson, it's me, Sam Bee! I am so loving your vibe, so I wanted to invite you over to my show for a very chill, very serious campaign dropout party,' the host says. 'We can have tea, throat lozenges, agave, and whatever else you use to make your voice sound so angelic.

Despite his slender frame and greater affinity with high-end fashion brands than street gangsterism, 30-year-old American rapper A$AP Rocky has never been one to avoid confrontation. Videos on YouTube show him threatening to ‘snuff’ a giant English man, who promptly tells him to ‘do one, bruv’. Thank God some people have kept the spirit of the duel alive.Last month, however, words ended and fists flew. Rocky was arrested during a tour of Sweden, and video emerged of him swinging a young man through the air and into the pavement. Frankly, it was an impressive, if acutely dangerous, display of physicality. This, and he and his colleagues’ subsequent kicking and stomping of the young man and his friend, made this look like an open and shut case.

Truly I think there is no hope for youth. Watching a couple of episodes of the new Stranger Things with my son confirmed this. Though I raved about the first season — an inspired mash-up of classic early-1980s TV and movie tropes with a great soundtrack, charming characters and lots of spine-tingling creepiness and horror — this latest one (we’re now on season three) appears to have settled for self-indulgence and tweeness. Where season one had the creeping menace of Alien, the mood here is closer to Scooby-Doo, only instead of solving mysteries the pesky kids spend half their time padding out the drama by having cute, winsome relationships with girls (one of whom is Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown but now with added hair).