Welcome to the Weekend Snack - a quick roundup of my favorite bites from the past weekend.
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Happy Sunday! I’m just home from a lovely Easter meal, and I’m feeling full and grateful to have friends who feel more like family than friends. Alternatively, I might just be happy because they shared this video with me of two New Zealand men dancing to Celine Dion with the exact right level of commitment and reverence required for a Celine song. Realistically, I’m grateful for all of the above. And with that moment of gratitude, let’s dive in!
🎭 Teeth. As mentioned earlier in the week, I was very excited to see Teeth, and I’m happy to report that it exceeded all expectations! The new Off-Broadway musical by Anna K. Jacobs and Michael R. Jackson (Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winning writer of A Strange Loop) is an adaptation of the indie body horror movie of the same name. It tells the story of a high school-aged purity group leader named Dawn who discovers she has vagina dentata (a condition described in folk myths as a vagina with teeth). For Dawn, the teeth reveal themselves when sexual violence is committed against her, and her body bites back. Unfortunately, she’s surrounded by archetypal figures of exploitative men with God complexes and unacknowledged shame who take advantage of her trusting disposition - ultimately to a chomping demise. I don’t want to spoil anything more, but what transpires is a gory, campy blend of Jennifer’s Body, Promising Young Woman, Spring Awakening, and something all its own. There’s a heavy dose of well-placed female rage and many moments where the audience (myself included) audibly cheered for Dawn’s metamorphosis. While I don’t think the ending lands the plane quite yet (rumor is they were testing different endings in previews), the elevated and exaggerated comic book-style violence at the hands of a protagonist seeking revenge for sexual assault was incredibly cathartic. I left the theater feeling like I’d seen a Marvel superhero’s thrilling origin story. Honestly, I might go again. If this sounds like your thing, it closes on April 28th - get your tickets before it’s gone.
🎧 COWBOY CARTER. Beyoncé’s highly anticipated Cowboy Carter is here! As Harry Styles would probably say, my favorite thing about Beyoncé’s sprawling, genre-bending new album is that it feels like an album. It’s a real, sit down, listen from start to finish, experience the totality of the artist's vision ALBUM. Days before it was released, Beyoncé took to Instagram to share that despite all our speculation, it’s not a country album; it’s a Beyoncé album. This is made clear in the opening lines of “SPAGHETII” when Linda Martell (the first commercially successful Black female country artist) says: “Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they? Yes they are..In theory, they have a simple definition that’s easy to understand, but in practice, well, some may feel confined.” In the background, there’s an instrumental in the style of a Western movie shootout, and then Beyoncé and Shaboozey break into a Southern trap track. The song’s title refers to spaghetti Westerns, a subgenre of Western films produced in Europe (primarily Italy - hence spaghetti). Despite being criticized as inauthentic for not being made in America or by American filmmakers, many spaghetti Westerns were hugely commercially successful and critically lauded - the most notable being The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, directed by Sergio Leone. With this unsubtle reference, Beyoncé looks us all in the eye and says, what does it even mean to fit into a genre anyway? And what good does it do the genre to gatekeep? A theme she explores throughout COWBOY CARTER.
The album is a sprawling survey of American music, with countless references to classic country, folk, trap, and rock combined with an all-star slate of household names, including Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Miley Cyrus, and Post Malone. The commanding opening track, “AMERIICAN REQUIEM,” draws upon Buffalo Springfrields’ folk rock protest song “For What It’s Worth,” calling out traditionalists from the jump: “Nothin’ really ends/For things to stay the same, they have to change again/Hello, my old friend/You change your name, but not the ways you play pretend.” Another standout is the genre-spanning dance tune “YA YA,” sampling Nancy Sinatra’s iconic feminist anthem “These Boots Are Made For Walkin” and the Beach Boys' psychedelic “Good Vibrations.” In “RIIVERDANCE,” Beyoncé pays homage to Dolly Parton by using her nails as percussion (just as Dolly did in “9 to 5”). And in another acknowledgment of country music history, Beyoncé sings a few lines of Patsy Cline’s iconic “I Fall To Pieces” at the start of “SWEET HONEY BUCKIIN.” But a personal favorite moment is her gorgeous rendition of the Beatles’ “BLACKBIIRD.” She stays relatively true to the original but invites a quartet of Black female country singers to join her for stunning harmonies. Paul McCartney previously shared that the song was inspired by the Little Rock Nine and Black women in the civil rights movement. That added history makes the choice to include it all the more powerful.
In the end, it’s simply undeniable that COWBOY CARTER is a masterful American album in a genre of its own. A brief tangent: During the pandemic, I spent several months in my home state, Utah. My parent’s house was a welcome change from the 800-square-foot apartment my husband and I were both working out of, and we were very lucky to use the extended visit as an opportunity to explore all five of Utah’s national parks and stave off the growing uneasiness of being stuck on pause. Growing up, I had a complicated relationship with Utah for myriad reasons, but traveling through the towering red rock and expansive western wilderness gave me pride in the beauty of a state I’d often overlooked. But, as we also visited Native American monuments and learned more about surrounding reservations, that pride was mixed with the reminder of the bloody origins of the region. I distinctly remember writing in my journal: “To be American is to be confused,” because I didn’t know how else to describe my newfound appreciation for my Western heritage and the sadness around the violence in how much of the land came to be American. So I sat (and continue to sit) in the confusion. Beyoncé much more profoundly sits in the confusion. She recognizes the layered history of the country genre and its intertwined origins with a complex American past (“whole lotta red in that white and blue”). Still, she builds from fraught history and creates something entirely her own. And if that’s not an American story, I don’t know what is. As she tells us from the jump, it’s not a country album - it’s a Beyoncé album. To close it out, some words from Rhiannon Giddens:
Nobody owns an art form. Everyone is allowed to enjoy and make country music, especially when done with respect, understanding and integrity. But let’s stop pretending that the outrage surrounding this latest single is about anything other than people trying to protect their nostalgia for a pure ethnically white tradition that never was. The fact is, we’ve all been lied to; poor people of all backgrounds came together to make the music that the industry named country, and its birthright is one of the best things about being American.
And I thought I’d leave you with something a little different today—a question! If you could own any physical object or memorabilia from a movie, what would it be? I'll leave my answer in the comments!
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This is probably cheating, but I made up the question so what's cheating anyway? I have three:
1. Dennis Quaid's California vineyard in Parent Trap (I guess that's technically many physical objects)
2. All of Grace Kelly's wardrobe in To Catch a Thief (https://www.instagram.com/p/C4L3bZKMTFw/)
3. Elle Woods' orange Macbook laptop (are those still functional? If so, must purchase immediately)
Ok, I’m not the biggest music person but reading what you wrote about the Beyoncé album COMPLETELY sold me on listening! I love the 9-5 nails tidbit, and also thanks for explaining why they’re called Spaghetti Westerns! Also THAT CELINE DION VIDEO gave me the laugh I needed today!
As for your question…..
1…”Dorothy Michael’s” glasses from the movie Tootsie…I’d love SOMETHING from that movie and they’re SO Dorothy!
2…There’s a green coat with leopard trim that Anne Hathaway wears in a montage in The Devil Wears Prada that I never forgot. If that were the only item of clothing I owned and I had to wear it every day, I don’t think I’d get sick of it! *sigh*