Ladies and Gentleman,
Ms. Rubin, M.A. (Journ) is back...
Showing posts with label Nadine Rubin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nadine Rubin. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Girl, Interrupted
Please refer all complaints for the thinning out of blog postings until May 2009 to Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism where I'm completing my MA in Arts and Culture Journalism.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Answer To A Foodie's Prayer...
My first travel piece runs in the Travel section of the New York Times today.
"Yay!" would be a massive understatement:
http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/travel/30surfacing.html?ref=travel
I also have a feature in Page Six Magazine in the New York Post, but I can't post that here as they're not digital (weird, I know). Feels good though, to have knocked both in one Sunday.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Inside the Media Echo Chamber
When I look back on the year that was, there is something I wish I hadn’t been party to. April 16 2007 was the day that Seung-Hui Cho, 23, killed 32 students and professors at Virginia Tech and then turned his gun on himself. I had just begun a freelance project for a news website. I was there to create original content, but first there was a period of training so that I could learn how to post my stories and visual packages online.
On that day, at about 5pm, I was asked to work late. At 7pm my editor called to tell me to expect a slide show of images. “As soon as you get them, post them live and then go back and write captions for each image,” he instructed. The images were stills taken from the video that Cho had sent to NBC before he opened fire at his college — a video that NBC had aired. On the website it was business as usual to report on this event and in “just following orders”, I became responsible for spreading those poisonous images across the Internet.
Certainly I was not alone. A writer on salon.com called news organisations like the one I was working at “the media echo chamber”, to describe how they “dutifully printed and broadcast everything straight from the mouths of high-profile violent offenders and felons alike, calling it ‘news’”. That night, when I went through image after image of an obviously disturbed and now already dead young man, scowling and pointing his gun into my face, I felt extremely uneasy, but I didn’t stop. I was doing my job.
I couldn’t sleep when I got home, not least of all because the assignment had left me with a mild dose of post-traumatic stress. Each time I closed my eyes I saw the black barrel of Cho’s gun and heard his gruff, strangled threats.
By the time I got to my desk the next day, pale and a little shaky, the news organisation had handed the mouthpiece over to its resident psychologist, who was quickly saving the day by saying how harmful it was for the national psyche (international, really, considering that it’s the “World Wide Web”) to have to stare at Cho’s violent diary of death. Of course, by this time the entire media echo chamber had cut down its coverage to just the tamest photograph of Cho, finally understanding that for a sociopath, anonymity is worse than death.
But the damage was done. As the essay on salon.com says, the media had collectively convinced “other disenfranchised citizens that the best way to get your voice heard is by doing something ‘newsworthy’ in the fine tradition of John Hinkley jnr, Ted “Unabomber” Kaczynski, Mohammed Atta and other celebrated sociopaths, terrorists and misfits”.
A few hours later, when one of my senior editors asked me to go down to Korea Town (a neighbourhood in Manhattan that’s bordered by 31st and 36th Streets and Fifth and Sixth Avenues) and ask Koreans and Korean-Americans how they felt about being Korean in light of Cho’s disastrous deed, I finally found my voice and declined. I can’t say that taking this stand served me particularly well at work — I was viewed after that as a little prickly and criticised by more hardcore news types as “not a real journalist” — but I was glad I turned it down.
I have since moved on from the news organisation — I eventually lost my mojo entirely when, during the civil war in Gaza, our features meetings were all about Paris Hilton’s sojourn in jail — but the small role I played in spreading Cho’s hate-filled message has stuck with me.
Last week, in the Associated Press’s annual vote, the Virginia Tech killings were chosen as the top story of 2007 by US editors and news directors. The mortgage crisis, which unsettled the US housing market, was second; the war in Iraq, third.
Virginia Tech was the worst mass shooting in modern US history and news coverage has prompted colleges to reassess their emergency response systems, but voting it in at number one when the US is still in Iraq and more journalists have been killed trying to cover that war than ever before seems to smack of industry self-congratulation.
But after a year like this, I guess we should all be grateful that the triumvirate of tarts — Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears or Paris Hilton — didn’t make the top three.
This column first appeared in the Sunday Times, South Africa in the Made in Manhattan column
On that day, at about 5pm, I was asked to work late. At 7pm my editor called to tell me to expect a slide show of images. “As soon as you get them, post them live and then go back and write captions for each image,” he instructed. The images were stills taken from the video that Cho had sent to NBC before he opened fire at his college — a video that NBC had aired. On the website it was business as usual to report on this event and in “just following orders”, I became responsible for spreading those poisonous images across the Internet.
Certainly I was not alone. A writer on salon.com called news organisations like the one I was working at “the media echo chamber”, to describe how they “dutifully printed and broadcast everything straight from the mouths of high-profile violent offenders and felons alike, calling it ‘news’”. That night, when I went through image after image of an obviously disturbed and now already dead young man, scowling and pointing his gun into my face, I felt extremely uneasy, but I didn’t stop. I was doing my job.
I couldn’t sleep when I got home, not least of all because the assignment had left me with a mild dose of post-traumatic stress. Each time I closed my eyes I saw the black barrel of Cho’s gun and heard his gruff, strangled threats.
By the time I got to my desk the next day, pale and a little shaky, the news organisation had handed the mouthpiece over to its resident psychologist, who was quickly saving the day by saying how harmful it was for the national psyche (international, really, considering that it’s the “World Wide Web”) to have to stare at Cho’s violent diary of death. Of course, by this time the entire media echo chamber had cut down its coverage to just the tamest photograph of Cho, finally understanding that for a sociopath, anonymity is worse than death.
But the damage was done. As the essay on salon.com says, the media had collectively convinced “other disenfranchised citizens that the best way to get your voice heard is by doing something ‘newsworthy’ in the fine tradition of John Hinkley jnr, Ted “Unabomber” Kaczynski, Mohammed Atta and other celebrated sociopaths, terrorists and misfits”.
A few hours later, when one of my senior editors asked me to go down to Korea Town (a neighbourhood in Manhattan that’s bordered by 31st and 36th Streets and Fifth and Sixth Avenues) and ask Koreans and Korean-Americans how they felt about being Korean in light of Cho’s disastrous deed, I finally found my voice and declined. I can’t say that taking this stand served me particularly well at work — I was viewed after that as a little prickly and criticised by more hardcore news types as “not a real journalist” — but I was glad I turned it down.
I have since moved on from the news organisation — I eventually lost my mojo entirely when, during the civil war in Gaza, our features meetings were all about Paris Hilton’s sojourn in jail — but the small role I played in spreading Cho’s hate-filled message has stuck with me.
Last week, in the Associated Press’s annual vote, the Virginia Tech killings were chosen as the top story of 2007 by US editors and news directors. The mortgage crisis, which unsettled the US housing market, was second; the war in Iraq, third.
Virginia Tech was the worst mass shooting in modern US history and news coverage has prompted colleges to reassess their emergency response systems, but voting it in at number one when the US is still in Iraq and more journalists have been killed trying to cover that war than ever before seems to smack of industry self-congratulation.
But after a year like this, I guess we should all be grateful that the triumvirate of tarts — Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears or Paris Hilton — didn’t make the top three.
This column first appeared in the Sunday Times, South Africa in the Made in Manhattan column
Monday, November 26, 2007
One More Time With Feeling
I don’t own a television. This has been an idiosyncrasy of mine for five years and, bar the odd drama series like Six Feet Under or comedy like Curb Your Enthusiasm, I don’t think I’ve missed much.
So it always amazes me when I meet people who love their box so much it not only has pride of place in their bedroom, they have memorised lines from their favorite show. You say, ’Hello Jerry,’ and they answer, ’Hello, Newman’ without missing a beat.)
With Hollywood TV writers picketing for a larger piece of the expanding corporate-profits pie, TV schedules have been riddled with reruns. Striking actorwriters, including Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos) and Tina Fey (30 Rock), gathered on Wall Street to make their demands.
One picket sign said, "We can’t BEAR studio BULL", objecting to studios telling writers there was no more revenue to be had from new media, despite selling advertising on those mediums. Apparently writer-producers like John Wells of ER, Marc Cherry of Desperate Housewives, and Larry David of Seinfeld and now Curb have sidestepped the skirmish; they are considered superstars and paid handsomely for their efforts.
And so it was with more than a small dose of curiosity that I joined my Seinfeld-obsessed friend Adam Shapiro on the ultimate rerun: The Seinfeld Tour, run by Kenny Kramer, the man Larry David based his Cosmo Kramer character on. The real Kramer, it turns out, lived across the hall from David in Manhattan Plaza, a midtown building that used to provide subsidised housing for artists.
Today, he makes his living peddling this tour. He calls it "art imitating life imitating art imitating life".
Shapiro, who was visiting New York from Durban, is now the proud owner of a "Yada Yada Yada" bumper sticker. Thankfully, he didn’t purchase the "Assman" car licence plate.
Before his Seinfeld hit, David was paying $67 for an apartment worth $1 500 (other famous Manhattan Plaza residents include Tennessee Williams, Angela Lansbury and Terence Howard). He was struggling to get booked at local comedy clubs, thanks to his reputation for throwing on-stage tantrums.
David’s dream at the time, says Kramer, was to earn $70 000 a year as a stand-up comedian. His mother told him he’d never make a penny doing comedy. Jerry Seinfeld, meanwhile, was making tens of thousands of dollars thanks to his "Did ya ever notice . . ." routine - jokes that David derisively called scraping the bottom of the barrel, right alongside dick jokes. But it was David that Seinfeld turned to when he was offered a show on TV. And it was the real Kramer and David who brainstormed a show based on the real Seinfeld (David used himself as the inspiration for George Costanza).
Kramer, while involved in getting Seinfeld off the ground and often inspiring entire episodes with his real-life antics, was not cast as himself - David said he’d found a far more interesting actor in Michael Richards. And certainly there is something sad about watching Kenny Kramer scrape up the commercial crumbs with the tour that he’s been running for 12 years.
Kramer, dark, but cheerful, claims that David has given him a blank cheque that he’s never had the occasion to cash. "I talk to Larry all the time," he told us. "He’s very happy because his wife dumped him. Until now, he’s never had the money, the house and the fame all at the same time. He’s loving it."
IF you’re a fan, the Seinfeld tour comes highly recommended for such notable landmarks as Roosevelt Hospital (where George went to get actress Marisa Tomei’s number), the West Side YMCA (where Kramer went to take notes on men’s shower techniques), the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Centre (where Elaine went on a date with the gay guy that she thought she could turn straight), and the façade of Tom’s Restaurant, where the foursome took their daily brunch (the interior is a studio on the Seinfeld lot in LA). Of course, no Seinfeld tour would be complete without a visit to where the Soup Nazi once struck terror in the hearts and bellies of the lunch crowd. While the place was closed two years ago, the store front of Al’s Soup Kitchen International still exists. A video that Kramer made preshutdown has Al (who was originally named by a writer from The David Letterman Show) saying: "Seinfeld was great for my business but it ruined my life. Now my store is filled with immature idiots who watch Seinfeld."
At the time of writing, the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers had agreed to return to the negotiating table. But then again, what do I care? I don’t own a TV.
This first appeared as a column in The Sunday Times Newspaper, South Africa
So it always amazes me when I meet people who love their box so much it not only has pride of place in their bedroom, they have memorised lines from their favorite show. You say, ’Hello Jerry,’ and they answer, ’Hello, Newman’ without missing a beat.)
With Hollywood TV writers picketing for a larger piece of the expanding corporate-profits pie, TV schedules have been riddled with reruns. Striking actorwriters, including Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos) and Tina Fey (30 Rock), gathered on Wall Street to make their demands.
One picket sign said, "We can’t BEAR studio BULL", objecting to studios telling writers there was no more revenue to be had from new media, despite selling advertising on those mediums. Apparently writer-producers like John Wells of ER, Marc Cherry of Desperate Housewives, and Larry David of Seinfeld and now Curb have sidestepped the skirmish; they are considered superstars and paid handsomely for their efforts.
And so it was with more than a small dose of curiosity that I joined my Seinfeld-obsessed friend Adam Shapiro on the ultimate rerun: The Seinfeld Tour, run by Kenny Kramer, the man Larry David based his Cosmo Kramer character on. The real Kramer, it turns out, lived across the hall from David in Manhattan Plaza, a midtown building that used to provide subsidised housing for artists.
Today, he makes his living peddling this tour. He calls it "art imitating life imitating art imitating life".
Shapiro, who was visiting New York from Durban, is now the proud owner of a "Yada Yada Yada" bumper sticker. Thankfully, he didn’t purchase the "Assman" car licence plate.
Before his Seinfeld hit, David was paying $67 for an apartment worth $1 500 (other famous Manhattan Plaza residents include Tennessee Williams, Angela Lansbury and Terence Howard). He was struggling to get booked at local comedy clubs, thanks to his reputation for throwing on-stage tantrums.
David’s dream at the time, says Kramer, was to earn $70 000 a year as a stand-up comedian. His mother told him he’d never make a penny doing comedy. Jerry Seinfeld, meanwhile, was making tens of thousands of dollars thanks to his "Did ya ever notice . . ." routine - jokes that David derisively called scraping the bottom of the barrel, right alongside dick jokes. But it was David that Seinfeld turned to when he was offered a show on TV. And it was the real Kramer and David who brainstormed a show based on the real Seinfeld (David used himself as the inspiration for George Costanza).
Kramer, while involved in getting Seinfeld off the ground and often inspiring entire episodes with his real-life antics, was not cast as himself - David said he’d found a far more interesting actor in Michael Richards. And certainly there is something sad about watching Kenny Kramer scrape up the commercial crumbs with the tour that he’s been running for 12 years.
Kramer, dark, but cheerful, claims that David has given him a blank cheque that he’s never had the occasion to cash. "I talk to Larry all the time," he told us. "He’s very happy because his wife dumped him. Until now, he’s never had the money, the house and the fame all at the same time. He’s loving it."
IF you’re a fan, the Seinfeld tour comes highly recommended for such notable landmarks as Roosevelt Hospital (where George went to get actress Marisa Tomei’s number), the West Side YMCA (where Kramer went to take notes on men’s shower techniques), the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Centre (where Elaine went on a date with the gay guy that she thought she could turn straight), and the façade of Tom’s Restaurant, where the foursome took their daily brunch (the interior is a studio on the Seinfeld lot in LA). Of course, no Seinfeld tour would be complete without a visit to where the Soup Nazi once struck terror in the hearts and bellies of the lunch crowd. While the place was closed two years ago, the store front of Al’s Soup Kitchen International still exists. A video that Kramer made preshutdown has Al (who was originally named by a writer from The David Letterman Show) saying: "Seinfeld was great for my business but it ruined my life. Now my store is filled with immature idiots who watch Seinfeld."
At the time of writing, the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers had agreed to return to the negotiating table. But then again, what do I care? I don’t own a TV.
This first appeared as a column in The Sunday Times Newspaper, South Africa
Monday, September 17, 2007
One Smart Cookie
I guess it’s still tough being a woman with an opinion
THE author and activist Naomi Klein sees recent history collectively: “At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly outsources the running of the ‘War on Terror’ to Halliburton and Blackwater. After a powerful tsunami devastates the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts. New Orleans’s residents, still scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened.”
In the seven years since Klein wrote the anti-globalisation bible No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, she has found a much more sinister enemy to expose: disaster capitalists. John le Carre calls Klein’s new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, “scary as hell”.
I went to the New York Society for Ethical Culture to hear Klein talk about how governments use disasters to spread the American version of “free market” capitalism. She’s not accusing them of creating the disasters, but rather of pushing through agendas that the public would never usually allow were they not reeling from post-disaster shock. Shock, she says, reduces us to a childlike state.
The idea for a book came after Klein spent time in Iraq in 2000, researching how the invasion was supposed to have laid the psychological groundwork for (Bush’s Iraq envoy) Paul Bremer’s extreme country makeover.
“By shock therapy I’m referring to the economic policies that were really seen by many Iraqis as a continuation of the war, like the huge layoffs in the public sector, the dismantling of the army, the opening up of the country to unrestricted free trade,” she said. “It was an extraordinarily unfair way for Iraqis to enter the free market.”
Klein told Time magazine that she first used the phrase “disaster capitalism” when she saw something very similar to Iraq happening in Sri Lanka. “Just days after the tsunami hit, the government started pushing a very unpopular agenda of water and electricity privatisation.”
What I found most fascinating was Klein’s recounting of her hostile reception from the international press (Klein hails from Canada). A German journalist kicked off the interviews thus: “I explained your thesis to my wife and she said: ‘Has Naomi Klein lost her mind?’” The publicity tour, Klein said, turned into “one big therapy session”. Another journalist ventured: “Your book made me depressed. The forces you describe are so strong and we are so weak.”
To which Klein gave this excellent answer: “If your job is to report on how to change the grim and horrific things that exist in the world and you simultaneously believe that this is undoable, and you use your power and platform to spread futility and powerlessness, then, yeah, when confronted by the need for immense change, I would get depressed too.”
Worth checking out online is the short film about The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which Klein made with Children of Men director Alfonso Cuaron. Google it.
By Nadine Rubin. A version of this appeared as my Made in Manhattan column in the South African Sunday Times
THE author and activist Naomi Klein sees recent history collectively: “At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly outsources the running of the ‘War on Terror’ to Halliburton and Blackwater. After a powerful tsunami devastates the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts. New Orleans’s residents, still scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened.”
In the seven years since Klein wrote the anti-globalisation bible No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, she has found a much more sinister enemy to expose: disaster capitalists. John le Carre calls Klein’s new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, “scary as hell”.
I went to the New York Society for Ethical Culture to hear Klein talk about how governments use disasters to spread the American version of “free market” capitalism. She’s not accusing them of creating the disasters, but rather of pushing through agendas that the public would never usually allow were they not reeling from post-disaster shock. Shock, she says, reduces us to a childlike state.
The idea for a book came after Klein spent time in Iraq in 2000, researching how the invasion was supposed to have laid the psychological groundwork for (Bush’s Iraq envoy) Paul Bremer’s extreme country makeover.
“By shock therapy I’m referring to the economic policies that were really seen by many Iraqis as a continuation of the war, like the huge layoffs in the public sector, the dismantling of the army, the opening up of the country to unrestricted free trade,” she said. “It was an extraordinarily unfair way for Iraqis to enter the free market.”
Klein told Time magazine that she first used the phrase “disaster capitalism” when she saw something very similar to Iraq happening in Sri Lanka. “Just days after the tsunami hit, the government started pushing a very unpopular agenda of water and electricity privatisation.”
What I found most fascinating was Klein’s recounting of her hostile reception from the international press (Klein hails from Canada). A German journalist kicked off the interviews thus: “I explained your thesis to my wife and she said: ‘Has Naomi Klein lost her mind?’” The publicity tour, Klein said, turned into “one big therapy session”. Another journalist ventured: “Your book made me depressed. The forces you describe are so strong and we are so weak.”
To which Klein gave this excellent answer: “If your job is to report on how to change the grim and horrific things that exist in the world and you simultaneously believe that this is undoable, and you use your power and platform to spread futility and powerlessness, then, yeah, when confronted by the need for immense change, I would get depressed too.”
Worth checking out online is the short film about The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which Klein made with Children of Men director Alfonso Cuaron. Google it.
By Nadine Rubin. A version of this appeared as my Made in Manhattan column in the South African Sunday Times
Sunday, September 16, 2007
The Brooklyn Book Festival
I went to hear Dave Eggars, the editor of the literary journal McSweeney's Quarterly Concern in conversation with the Nigerian-born author, Chris Abani. Eggars most recently wrote What is the What, a novel based on the life story of a Sudanese Lost Boy, Valentino Achak Deng. All author proceeds to the Lost Boys of Sudan.
Achak Deng, 26, wasn’t at this talk – he’s studying international diplomacy at a college in Pennsylvania. “It’s strange for him,” said Eggars. “One day he’s a sophmore, but next week he’ll come to New York to speak at the Clinton’s Global Initiative.”
Eager to take any money made from the book to Marial Bai in Sudan to build a primary school, Achak Deng waited patiently for four years for Eggars to finish the book. Now he has started the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation in Sudan. He’ll take it over once he has completed his studies.
Eggars’ slide show showed the village of Marial Bai, razed to the ground during the war, now rebuilt as a returnee camp. “We went to see what could be done,” explained Eggars. “It was a listening tour.”
Achak Deng is particularly concerned with assisting young women in getting a secondary education. “Eventhough attitudes in Sudan are changing, it is still the tradition to marry off 13 and 14 year olds.”
One slide showed Achak Deng talking to two fourteen year old girls. One wanted to be a doctor; the second, a nurse. “Valentino who is usually very optimistic, told me that they will not reach their goals, not in this generation, but in the next,” said Eggars. “The men are becoming open to change and to women’s empowerment. The returnees like Val have brought with them a more progressive attitude from their time in the West.”
After taking in the needs of Marial Bai, Achak Deng has changed his original plan. “We realised that there are enough primary schools. So everything was adjusted according to the community’s needs,” explained Eggars. “Now he’ll set up a teacher training college, a secondary school, and a micro loan program for single mothers who are entrepreneurs.”
Eggars and Achak Deng are also working on another book that will form part of the McSweeney’s Oral Histories collection. They are telling the stories of women who survived the war. While listening to the stories, Eggars said that many times he and Achak Deng had to stop and ask the women if they were OK to continue. “They would say, ‘I’m not afraid. Let’s keep going’,” says Eggars. Many Sudanese girls were kidnapped and sold into slavery or to men who they would be forced to marry. They often endured horrific beatings and rape.
By Nadine Rubin. A version of this appeared as my Made in Manhattan column in the South African Sunday Times.
Achak Deng, 26, wasn’t at this talk – he’s studying international diplomacy at a college in Pennsylvania. “It’s strange for him,” said Eggars. “One day he’s a sophmore, but next week he’ll come to New York to speak at the Clinton’s Global Initiative.”
Eager to take any money made from the book to Marial Bai in Sudan to build a primary school, Achak Deng waited patiently for four years for Eggars to finish the book. Now he has started the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation in Sudan. He’ll take it over once he has completed his studies.
Eggars’ slide show showed the village of Marial Bai, razed to the ground during the war, now rebuilt as a returnee camp. “We went to see what could be done,” explained Eggars. “It was a listening tour.”
Achak Deng is particularly concerned with assisting young women in getting a secondary education. “Eventhough attitudes in Sudan are changing, it is still the tradition to marry off 13 and 14 year olds.”
One slide showed Achak Deng talking to two fourteen year old girls. One wanted to be a doctor; the second, a nurse. “Valentino who is usually very optimistic, told me that they will not reach their goals, not in this generation, but in the next,” said Eggars. “The men are becoming open to change and to women’s empowerment. The returnees like Val have brought with them a more progressive attitude from their time in the West.”
After taking in the needs of Marial Bai, Achak Deng has changed his original plan. “We realised that there are enough primary schools. So everything was adjusted according to the community’s needs,” explained Eggars. “Now he’ll set up a teacher training college, a secondary school, and a micro loan program for single mothers who are entrepreneurs.”
Eggars and Achak Deng are also working on another book that will form part of the McSweeney’s Oral Histories collection. They are telling the stories of women who survived the war. While listening to the stories, Eggars said that many times he and Achak Deng had to stop and ask the women if they were OK to continue. “They would say, ‘I’m not afraid. Let’s keep going’,” says Eggars. Many Sudanese girls were kidnapped and sold into slavery or to men who they would be forced to marry. They often endured horrific beatings and rape.
By Nadine Rubin. A version of this appeared as my Made in Manhattan column in the South African Sunday Times.
Friday, September 14, 2007
On The Box
A review in The New York Times this past February described The Box thus: "A pedigreed crew is behind this surrealistic dinner-theater on the Lower East Side. Owners include Simon Hammerstein, the 28-year-old grandson of Oscar;
Randy Weiner, the “Donkey Show’’ writer; and Serge Becker, the night life impresario. The actors Jude Law and Rachel Weisz sit on the board of the opera house-cum-concert saloon. The entertainment will be eccentric: Thai fighters one night and opera singers in Mexican wrestling masks the next."
Dinner and a table from which to watch the nightly show that begins at 1am costs $125, or you can stand for a more affordable $25.
Currently on at the Box, however, is the rather uninspired and cliched show called Pandora. It’s hosted by a former Cirque Du Soleil star, MC Raven O, and boasts variety acts that are billed to be in the spirit of Ziegfeld and Busby Berkley. All that translated into rather average burlesque interspersed with a magician, a lasso champion, and a fire eater. And then there was this: overly raunchy, S&M-style acts thrown in, I would imagine, to shock. I’m no prude, so trust me when I say that they were simply not sexy even though they featured full male and female nudity. One saw MC Raven O, wearing nothing but a pig’s snout and a white blood-smeared butcher’s apron, masturbate (yes, really) and snort like a pig as a trapeze artist did the splits above his head. In another, a large woman in a leather waist-corset -- and nothing else -- pulled out a butcher's knife and ran it through her lips, spattering fake blood onto her fetish-sized breasts. The rowdy and rather drunk crowd roared their approval leaving me to wonder about the American psyche.
When it comes to sexual violence or humiliation – even if it’s make-believe – I’ve discovered I’m a Mother Grundy. If instead of Dita von Teese spinning about in a cocktail glass there’s going to be a bloody Marilyn Manson-style scene, shouldn’t there be some sort of disclaimer?
By Nadine Rubin. A version of this appeared as my Made in Manhattan column in the South African Sunday Times.
Randy Weiner, the “Donkey Show’’ writer; and Serge Becker, the night life impresario. The actors Jude Law and Rachel Weisz sit on the board of the opera house-cum-concert saloon. The entertainment will be eccentric: Thai fighters one night and opera singers in Mexican wrestling masks the next."
Dinner and a table from which to watch the nightly show that begins at 1am costs $125, or you can stand for a more affordable $25.
Currently on at the Box, however, is the rather uninspired and cliched show called Pandora. It’s hosted by a former Cirque Du Soleil star, MC Raven O, and boasts variety acts that are billed to be in the spirit of Ziegfeld and Busby Berkley. All that translated into rather average burlesque interspersed with a magician, a lasso champion, and a fire eater. And then there was this: overly raunchy, S&M-style acts thrown in, I would imagine, to shock. I’m no prude, so trust me when I say that they were simply not sexy even though they featured full male and female nudity. One saw MC Raven O, wearing nothing but a pig’s snout and a white blood-smeared butcher’s apron, masturbate (yes, really) and snort like a pig as a trapeze artist did the splits above his head. In another, a large woman in a leather waist-corset -- and nothing else -- pulled out a butcher's knife and ran it through her lips, spattering fake blood onto her fetish-sized breasts. The rowdy and rather drunk crowd roared their approval leaving me to wonder about the American psyche.
When it comes to sexual violence or humiliation – even if it’s make-believe – I’ve discovered I’m a Mother Grundy. If instead of Dita von Teese spinning about in a cocktail glass there’s going to be a bloody Marilyn Manson-style scene, shouldn’t there be some sort of disclaimer?
By Nadine Rubin. A version of this appeared as my Made in Manhattan column in the South African Sunday Times.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The Inimitable Norman Mailer
Watching Norman Mailer shuffle slowly across a stage at age 84, hunched forward and clutching two canes, is as good a reminder as any to "Dance, dance, dance" while you still can as Dougy (Lawrence Tierney) says in Tough Guys Don't Dance.
I went to one of the evenings of The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer, a retrospective taking place during the next two weeks at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Paley Center for Media and Anthology Film Archives. Sandwiched in between a screening of the adaptation of his 1984 novel Tough Guys Don’t Dance and Maidstone, a film shot in the Hamptons in the summer of 1968 and released in 1971, was Mailer himself.
Maidstone is one of Mailer's earlier films -- improvisatory semifictional cinéma vérité. They're worth seeing, writes A.O. Scott in the New York Times "for the insight they provide into the ideas and ambitions that fueled Mr. Mailer’s writing in the 1960s and ’70s, the wildest, most productive and most contentious period in a career that has never been especially calm or easy to comprehend." With all due respect to Mr Scott, what's not to comprehend? The man liked to fight and he liked to fuck. He also liked to watch others fuck. And of course there were drinks and drugs. But more than that, he liked to share what he liked to do with others. Or, as they say, he liked to live large. In Maidstone his sexual energy is palpable, almost visible emanating off his person. His chest hair, like his sexual appetite, borders on primitive.
"Fame was not only his burden, but also his subject and his method," wrote Mr. Scott.
I watched Mr. Mailer tonight as he strained to hear the questions (he's very deaf now) and worked hard to keep his feet, clad in black sheepskin Ugg boots despite the heat, from shaking. He coughed as he spoke and told the audience that he has respiratory troubles, yet his voice held such enthusiasm as he proudly announced that he'd been married six times, fathered nine children, served time in jail, gotten into fights. This is a man who took his own life by the jugular and got lock jaw as he bit down hard. I picture him, as he was in the final scene in Maidstone bloodied and crazy-eyed, almost tearing off Rip Torn's ear with his teeth [Torn had attempted to assasinate Norman T. Knigsley (Mailer) and Mailer was outraged that he'd dare. Torn's response: “When — when is an assassination ever planned? It’s done, it’s done.” ]
Here, a couple of classic comments that Mr Mailer made this evening:
On why he made Tough Guys Don't Dance: "I made the move to convince other directors and producers to let me make more movies."
On writing scripts: "Movies are more spooky [than novels] because you're taking reality and distorting it. It's very intense."
On directing: "Sometimes when an actor improvises a line [like Lawrence Tierney did with the line "I coulda told him never to call an Italian small potatoes" in Tough Guys] you almost want to say 'no' even though you know it's good. Your authority when directing a film is so tenuous. To those of you out there who want to be directors I say Godspeed. It was certainly one of the most interesting activities I ever undertook."
On terrorism: "America is essentially a Christian country. Americans find it hard to work six days a week and knock over the next guy to get ahead and then go to church on Sunday....We needed to create a villian large enough for the essential spiritual crime of capitalism. For a long time that was communism. Now it's terrorism and none of our politicians have the wit, the grace, or the courage to attack it for what it is. It's bullshit mountain."
On space travel: "Now that I'm 84-years-old I couldn't give a God damn if we ever get to Mars."
On criticism: "If you didn't like the movie, you can find friends."
I went to one of the evenings of The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer, a retrospective taking place during the next two weeks at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Paley Center for Media and Anthology Film Archives. Sandwiched in between a screening of the adaptation of his 1984 novel Tough Guys Don’t Dance and Maidstone, a film shot in the Hamptons in the summer of 1968 and released in 1971, was Mailer himself.
Maidstone is one of Mailer's earlier films -- improvisatory semifictional cinéma vérité. They're worth seeing, writes A.O. Scott in the New York Times "for the insight they provide into the ideas and ambitions that fueled Mr. Mailer’s writing in the 1960s and ’70s, the wildest, most productive and most contentious period in a career that has never been especially calm or easy to comprehend." With all due respect to Mr Scott, what's not to comprehend? The man liked to fight and he liked to fuck. He also liked to watch others fuck. And of course there were drinks and drugs. But more than that, he liked to share what he liked to do with others. Or, as they say, he liked to live large. In Maidstone his sexual energy is palpable, almost visible emanating off his person. His chest hair, like his sexual appetite, borders on primitive.
"Fame was not only his burden, but also his subject and his method," wrote Mr. Scott.
I watched Mr. Mailer tonight as he strained to hear the questions (he's very deaf now) and worked hard to keep his feet, clad in black sheepskin Ugg boots despite the heat, from shaking. He coughed as he spoke and told the audience that he has respiratory troubles, yet his voice held such enthusiasm as he proudly announced that he'd been married six times, fathered nine children, served time in jail, gotten into fights. This is a man who took his own life by the jugular and got lock jaw as he bit down hard. I picture him, as he was in the final scene in Maidstone bloodied and crazy-eyed, almost tearing off Rip Torn's ear with his teeth [Torn had attempted to assasinate Norman T. Knigsley (Mailer) and Mailer was outraged that he'd dare. Torn's response: “When — when is an assassination ever planned? It’s done, it’s done.” ]
Here, a couple of classic comments that Mr Mailer made this evening:
On why he made Tough Guys Don't Dance: "I made the move to convince other directors and producers to let me make more movies."
On writing scripts: "Movies are more spooky [than novels] because you're taking reality and distorting it. It's very intense."
On directing: "Sometimes when an actor improvises a line [like Lawrence Tierney did with the line "I coulda told him never to call an Italian small potatoes" in Tough Guys] you almost want to say 'no' even though you know it's good. Your authority when directing a film is so tenuous. To those of you out there who want to be directors I say Godspeed. It was certainly one of the most interesting activities I ever undertook."
On terrorism: "America is essentially a Christian country. Americans find it hard to work six days a week and knock over the next guy to get ahead and then go to church on Sunday....We needed to create a villian large enough for the essential spiritual crime of capitalism. For a long time that was communism. Now it's terrorism and none of our politicians have the wit, the grace, or the courage to attack it for what it is. It's bullshit mountain."
On space travel: "Now that I'm 84-years-old I couldn't give a God damn if we ever get to Mars."
On criticism: "If you didn't like the movie, you can find friends."
Sunday, March 25, 2007
A Maiden Voyage
For your reading pleasure, I present the first newspaper piece that I've had published in the United States -- a profile on Paul Auster in The New York Sun. I doubt that anyone reading this blog would have stumbled upon it. Who reads the The New York Sun anyway, right? ~Enjoy!
http://www.nysun.com/article/50799
Auster's wife, the author Siri Hustvedt, shared an incredibly grounding piece of wisdom when I interviewed her last year for Harper's Bazaar. I asked what advice she has for their daughter Sophie, 19, who stands on the brink of stardom. Hustvedt, who found fame later in life than her daughter (at 35), said:
"If she can remember that the work and the response to the work are two different things, she'll be fine."
http://www.nysun.com/article/50799
Auster's wife, the author Siri Hustvedt, shared an incredibly grounding piece of wisdom when I interviewed her last year for Harper's Bazaar. I asked what advice she has for their daughter Sophie, 19, who stands on the brink of stardom. Hustvedt, who found fame later in life than her daughter (at 35), said:
"If she can remember that the work and the response to the work are two different things, she'll be fine."
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