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The open-for-inspection half-way home for my writing…
I wrote today’s review of King Richard before Will Smith had his sad and embarrassing Academy Award moment. What was worse? The slap? His tears in apologizing to everyone but Chris Rock? Or the standing ovation he received when he won?
Art, it is said, holds a mirror to life. Hollywood holds a mirror to our culture’s fundamental characteristic: our adolescent self-centeredness.
But boy was he good in King Richard!
King Richard
Release date: Nov. 19, 2021
Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green
Starring Will Smith, Aunjanue Ellis, John Bernthal, and Saniyya Sidney
Currently available to rent or buy on various streaming services, including Amazon Prime
Before I saw the film, all I knew of Richard Williams was the character the media portrayed him to be: fanatical, egotistical, and abusive. The story told here, which was approved by Venus and Serena, showed evidence of the former two traits but none of the last. On the contrary, the Richard we see is a loving and devoted father, doing his best to raise five healthy, successful daughters.
I haven’t done any research to determine the veracity of this portrayal. If it’s good enough for Serena and Venus, it’s good enough for me. What’s impressive is the enormous drive Williams showed in overcoming the obstacles that stood in his (and his daughters’) way.
What I Liked About King Richard
* The acting. Will Smith above all, but a great performance by Aunjanue Ellis as Oracene Williams, and Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton as Venus and Serena. I also liked Jon Berthal as Rick Macci. And Tony Goldwyn as Paul Cohen. Heck, the entire cast was very good.
* The treatment of racism. Kudos to everyone involved for resisting the cheap, anti-White-Man cliches. The scenes where racism came into play were mostly played out in Richard’s mind. The actual mean stuff is Black-on-Black.
* It’s a feel-good movie, pure and simple.
Critical Reception
* “This is a dream role for Will Smith and he attacks it with gusto. Williams is a larger-than-life-character who just happens to be real, and Smith embodies his underdog, combative, indefatigable spirit to perfection.” (Max Weiss, Baltimore Magazine)
* “It is one of those crowd-pleasing movies that doesn’t make you feel embarrassed to be part of the crowd – you feel buoyed rather than talked down to.” (Stephanie Zacharek, TIME Magazine)
* “There is a tension between the film King Richard wants to be and the film it actually is. The film it wants to be is a tribute to a boot-strapping sports dad who had a plan for his daughters and executed it…. The film it actually is casts Richard in a less flattering light than the filmmakers seem to intend.” (Scott Tobias, The New York Times)
* “The movie’s brightest burning idea, and it is sincerely moving, is that Richard, for all his flaws, does what he does on behalf of the young Black women he’s raising. This rings true in real life and fiction.” (K. Austin Collins, Rolling Stone)
You can watch the trailer here.
How to Do Nothing
By Jenny Odell
256 pages
Published April 9, 2019 by Melville House
I’m not sure how I came to read this. It was on my audiobook file. I turned it on accidentally, and then was intrigued by the subtitle. So, I gave it a shot.
I’m about halfway through it now. And I have a theory about how it got onto my audiobook file. It is the sort of book, like The Maid (reviewed here on Feb. 25), that is destined for success. Topically interesting. Politically correct. And lush with complex sentences.
In fact, it was one of President Obama’s “Favorite Books of 2019.”
Unfortunately, the complexity is mostly in its literary style. The thought content is wide, but not deep. The analysis is superficial. The fundamental perspective is anti-capitalist, in the most unexamined way. And the solution it offers – dropping out while still caring (by staying anti-capitalist) – well, it’s only helpful for people who, like the author, make their living as entertainers or educators.
What I Like About How to Do Nothing
* Odell admits that she is speaking from a privileged position and that “not everyone” can get paid good money to do the sort of thing she’s doing.
* She is right in saying that we can and should “refuse calls for our attention that do not serve us and reclaim our attention, directing it towards people and places and activities that we personally value.”
What I Don’t Like
As I said, I haven’t finished the book. I don’t know if I will. That’s because my “don’t likes” outweigh my “likes.”
* Her analysis of the “problem” – capitalism – is inexcusably naïve, even for a university teacher. Her view of what’s wrong with the world today? “The colonization of the self by capitalist ideas of productivity and efficiency” and this idea that “we should all be entrepreneurs.”
* Her remedy to the problem: Refuse to do any sort of work that you don’t want to do. Find a job, such as teaching performance art, in a good university or become a writer.
Two examples from the book on how to refuse the demands of attention economy and “do nothing”: (1) Diogenes, whose contribution to philosophy consisted of walking backwards and other exhibits of performance art. And (2) Bartleby the scrivener, Melville’s lovable dope who, whenever asked to do a simple job, replied, “Thank you, but I prefer not to.”
Critical Reception
How to Do Nothing was named one of the best books of the year by many critics, including those from Time, The New Yorker, NPR, GQ, Elle, and Fortune.
* “A complex, smart and ambitious book that at first reads like a self-help manual, then blossoms into a wide-ranging political manifesto.” (Jonah Engel Bromwich, The New York Times Book Review)
* “Approachable and incisive…. The book is clearly the work of a socially conscious artist and writer who considers careful attention to the rich variety of the world an antidote to the addictive products and platforms that technology provides…. [Odell] sails with capable ease between the Scylla and Charybdis of subjectivity and arid theory with the relatable humanity of her vision.” (Nicholas Cannariato, The Washington Post)
* “An erudite and thoughtful narrative about the importance of interiority and taking time to pay close attention to the spaces around us.” (Annie Vainshtein, San Francisco Chronicle)
About Jenny Odell
Jenny Odell is an artist, writer, and educator based in Oakland, CA. In 2015, she started an organization she called The Bureau of Suspended Objects. She was then “artist-in-residence” at Recology SF, a.k.a. the San Francisco dump. Her “work” there, which consisted of scavenging, photographing, and detailing the histories of objects that had been thrown out, culminated in an exhibition and archive intended to bring attention to the resources involved in the objects’ production and consumption.
Click here to watch Odell discussing How to Do Nothing.
Wu Wei: the Chinese Philosophy of Doing Nothing
Wu wei , a core concept of Daoism, is older and more subtle than Jenny Odell’s philosophy, but they are connected.
From The School of Life website:
“Wu wei means – in Chinese – non-doing or ‘doing nothing.’ It sounds like a pleasant invitation to relax or worse, fall into laziness or apathy. Yet this concept is key to the noblest kind of action according to the philosophy of Daoism – and is at the heart of what it means to follow Dao or The Way. According to the central text of Daoism, the Dao De Jing: ‘The Way never acts yet nothing is left undone.’ This is the paradox of wu wei. It doesn’t mean not acting, it means ‘effortless action’ or ‘actionless action.’ It means being at peace while engaged in the most frenetic tasks so that one can carry these out with maximum skill and efficiency. Something of the meaning of wu wei is captured when we talk of being ‘in the zone’ – at one with what we are doing, in a state of profound concentration and flow.
“Wu wei involves letting go of ideals that we may otherwise try to force too violently onto things; it invites us instead to respond to the true demands of situations, which tend only to be noticed when we put our own ego-driven plans aside. What can follow is a loss of self-consciousness, a new unity between the self and its environment, which releases an energy that is normally held back by an overly aggressive, willful style of thinking.”
“From the beginning, what I was connecting with in the gym was a universal energy source. I would just feel it flowing. Even when I was 20 years old, I called the gym my church. When I was there, it wasn’t about being social; it was about doing my practice. I was in it. I was in the zone.” – Shawn Phillips
Bioregionalism is an environmentalist movement based on the belief that political, cultural, and economic systems are more sustainable and just if they are organized by naturally defined boundaries (e.g., mountain ranges and rivers) instead of the artificially drawn boundaries that divide states and countries. According to Judith Plant, a leader of the movement: “Simply put, it means learning to become native to a place, fitting ourselves to a particular place, not fitting a place to our pre-determined tastes. It is living within the limits and the gifts provided by a place, creating a way of life that can be passed on to future generations.”
Re the video in Monday’s P.S. – “Is this woman stupid or just crazy?”:
“Since [the woman’s actions] seemed so, so extreme, I checked up comments and saw people mentioning that he first sideswiped her and then she hit him. It still doesn’t justify what she did, but indeed she does talk about hitting her first at the red light, which perhaps the guy didn’t notice and therefore thought she was crazy.
“I found this article in this not-so-trustable site, but which shows extra footage and it indeed seems there’s more to it.” – BP
Click here to read the article and watch the footage that BP attached.
My response: So, she gets sideswiped and responds by crashing into the back of the car that sideswiped her. (He says that if he did sideswipe her it was so minor he didn’t notice it.) In any case, after crashing into the back of his car on purpose (she admits it), she approaches him and starts yelling.
Does that change the verdict? I don’t think so. It’s not illegal to sideswipe a car unintentionally. But it is illegal to purposely ram into someone’s car. I’d say the verdict is even clearer now. She is both dumb and stupid. Him? He sounds stoned.
Re the essay about my humiliating experience at the Pan Am IBJJF Jiu Jitsu Competition:
“Great lesson. Thanks for the tip for complete preparation for different outcomes.” – ME
“Sometimes it doesn’t matter how well you prepare, you are just out of your depth.” – JG
“Thanks for this piece today…. mental preparedness is tough. Tougher than physical readiness at times. I appreciated you sharing your experience…. your phrase ‘So, here I am, mentally climbing, inch by inch, out of this well I dug of disappointment and self-recrimination’ resonated with me.” – EN
“I can’t tell you how much I am able to commiserate with you about that feeling of losing. I would tell you, ‘It builds character,’ but I know your life well enough to say, ‘You’ve already built enough character. You don’t need any more.’” – AS
“You are a great winner and a truthful loser! Which in my world is the sign of an Absolute winner! Thanks for the sharing.” – LG