Filed under: Book reviews | Tags: books, humor, humour, hypocrisy, Kurt Vonnegut, modern life, Nazi, propaganda, satire, self conscious, society, success, World War II
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. Kurt Vonnegut
I’ve been re reading Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” and “Mother Night” to contend with the global absurdity of the world and the need for humour…just ordered his book “A Man Without Country,” which I’ve never read before…
As is expected with Vonnegut, “Mother Night” is an acute observation of the spectacle and hypocrisy of human behavior and society…it’s darkly humorous and irreverent.
A few quotes from “Mother Night” that I’ve found especially interesting/resonant:
“All people are insane,” he said. They will do anything at any time, and God help anybody who looks for reasons.”
“The people she saw as succeeding in a brave new world were, after all, being rewarded as specialists in slavery, destruction, and death. I don’t consider people who work in those fields successful.”
(Regarding how Armistice Day changed to Veteran’s Day in the USA) “oh, it’s just so damn cheap, so damn typical,” I said. “This used to be a day in honor of the dead of World War One, but the living couldn’t keep their grubby hands off of it, wanted the glory of the dead for themselves. So typical, so typical. Any time anything of real dignity appears in this country, it’s torn to shreds and thrown to the mob.”
“I had hoped, as a broadcaster, to be merely ludicrous, but this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate.”
If there is another life after this one, I would like very much, in the next one, to be the sort of person of whom it could truly be said, “Forgive him – he knows not what he does.”
This cannot be said of me now.
The only advantage to me of knowing the difference between right and wrong, as nearly as I can tell, is that I can sometimes laugh when the Eichmanns can see nothing funny.
Filed under: TV reviews | Tags: Arrested Development, comedy, Covid-19, David Cross, George Michael, Henry Winkler, humor, humour, hypocrisy, Jason Bateman, Jeffrey Tambor, Jessica Walter, Laura Linney, Michael Cera, Ozark, Portia de Rossi, repression, Ron Howard, satire, Self absorption, series, Television, TV, Will Arnett, Wit
The third season of Netflix’s series Ozark was recently released and everyone is talking about it and whether a fourth season will be greenlit. I’m keen because Jason Bateman executive produced it, is directing and starring in the series, and he’s fantastic and talented. An extra boon is that the brilliant and wry Laura Linney co-stars. I always liked Bateman, but he won my admiration through the TV series Arrested Development, so I thought to revisit this work of genius in case you’ve already binge watched season three of Ozark.
Arrested Development is based on the radically dysfunctional family Bluth (fictional of course). It’s more subversive than Modern Family (btw, I like Modern Family very much). Each season of this brilliant sit-com was always in danger of cancellation despite numerous awards, including several Emmy’s. But this didn’t stop creator Mitchell Hurwitz and the rest of the team (inclusive of Ron Howard, who is its narrator) from defying the usual crowd-pleasing antics of the genre. It made them more satirical and absurd as though they had nothing to lose. The show flouts political correctness as it takes clever and humorous swipes at everything in contemporary society: the comfort of family; the general incompetence of businessmen, inclusive of the television and movie industries (the narrator critiques the art of narration during an episode); war, via “mama’s boy” Buster Bluth’s progression in the US army; and the flawed things we all do to get through our day. One of my favorite episodes includes the montaged intervention for alcoholic mother Lucille Bluth, which turns into “one of the Bluth family’s better parties.” There are running gags about self-absorption, repressed sexually, physical shame, fecklessness, and naiveté. At the center of it all is Michael Bluth, played by Jason Bateman, whose dry, self-effacing wit and deadpan comic delivery, are ideally displayed here.
Watching Arrested Development is time well spent any way you look at it, but especially during our period of confinement.
Filed under: Book reviews | Tags: author, book, book review, books, Culture, global affairs, humor, Jonas Jonasson, Kim Jong-un, Merkel, North Korea, Politics, Putin, Russia, satire, society, Sweden, Swedish, Trump, USA
The sequel to The One-Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson is another deft satire about the flaws of modern society. Using Allan and Julius’s latest adventures, with its madcap twists and turns, Jonasson creates a thought-provoking portrait of the current state of the world.
After climbing out the window of his retirement home on his 100th birthday and accidentally entangling himself in an epic adventure involving a suitcase full of cash and a gang of ruffians, the spry Allan and his best-and-only-friend Julius, settle into luxury on Bali. Most people wouldn’t grow bored of sipping cocktails beachside, but Allan and Julius aren’t like most people so their decadent life has become a bore and they’re restless. Julius decides to liven things up with a hot air balloon ride in honor of Allan’s one-hundred-and-first birthday. When the operator jumps out of the balloon to take a bite out of Allan’s birthday cake, Allan and Julius accidentally snap the lever that sets the balloon in motion and they go sailing up into the sky. But they’re not hot balloon experts, of course, and end up having a crash landing at sea before being rescued by a North Korean ship carrying smuggled uranium on board. Soon, Allan and Julius are swept up into an international diplomatic crisis that involves various global players such as Putin, Trump, Merkel, and Kim Jong-un.
I found myself looking forward to going to bed each night in order to continue reading this book in peace. Allan is an incredibly endearing character leading us through twists and turns galore in an intricately plotted book. All the while, Jonasson makes thoughtful and relevant points about power, truth, morality, and the role of perception in current affairs, and not in an ideological or pedantic way, but with nuance, wit, and warmth.
A highly amusing and intelligent book that I absolutely recommend!
Filed under: TV reviews | Tags: Jason Bateman, Jeffrey Tambor, Jessica Walter, Michael Cera, Mitchell Hurwitz, Modern Family, Portia de Rossi, Ron Howard, satire, Tony Hale, Will Arnett
The upcoming Netflix series Ozark is on the horizon. I’m excited for it ‘cause Jason Bateman executive produced it, and is directing and starring in the series. An extra boon is that the talented and wry Laura Linney will co-star. I always liked Bateman, but he won my admiration through the TV series Arrested Development, so I thought to revisit this work of genius as we wait for Ozark to be released (2017).
Arrested Development is based on the radically dysfunctional family Bluth (fictional of course). It’s more subversive than Modern Family (btw, I like Modern Family very much). Each season of this brilliant sit-com was always in danger of cancellation despite numerous awards, including several Emmy’s. But this didn’t stop creator Mitchell Hurwitz and the rest of the team (inclusive of Ron Howard, who is its narrator) from defying the usual crowd-pleasing antics of the genre. It made them more satirical and absurd as though they had nothing to lose. The show flouts political correctness as it takes clever and humorous swipes at everything in contemporary society: the comfort of family; the general incompetence of businessmen, inclusive of the television and movie industries (the narrator critiques the art of narration during an episode); war, via “mama’s boy” Buster Bluth’s progression in the US army; and the flawed things we all do to get through our day. One of my favorite episodes includes the montaged intervention for alcoholic mother Lucille Bluth, which turns into “one of the Bluth family’s better parties.” There are running gags about self-absorption, repressed sexually, physical shame, fecklessness, and naiveté. At the center of it all is Michael Bluth, played by Jason Bateman, whose dry, self-effacing wit and deadpan comic delivery, are ideally displayed here.
Watching Arrested Development is time well spent as we wait for Jason Bateman’s new series Ozark, which also promises to be based in the darkness of modern reality.
Filed under: Book reviews | Tags: 18th century, Big Endians, classic novels, Colonialism, English colonialism, French colonialism, Gulliver's Travels, Jack Black, Jonathan Swift, Lilliputians, parody, satire, satirical literature, Small Endians
Author Jonathan Swift wrote that the purpose of his writing, “is to vex the world rather than divert it.” Throughout Gulliver’s Travels, Swift satirizes scientists, academics, snobs, politicians, lawyers, doctors, and – unfairly – women. Swift further parodies travel writers’ preoccupation with appearing to be “experts” in everything they write.
Lemuel Gulliver, a sea-loving surgeon and “everyman” travels to four lands and has numerous adventures. The imaginary worlds, fantastic characters, and exaggerated stories of Gulliver’s strange and exotic adventures, draw the reader into the narrative (and inspire film adaptations). Gulliver begins the journey larger than life in the land of the tiny Lilliputians, and after observing mankind’s tendency toward greed and selfishness, he finds himself most contented in a land of horses governed by reason. The moral of the novel suggests that the only ideal world is one in which humans do not rule.
“Satire,” Swift wrote, “is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.” The staying power of Gulliver’s Travels lies in the fact that the more things seem to change, they really don’t: mankind has been, and continues to be, motivated by avarice and folly. The practice of economically exploiting other countries was the policy of English and French colonial governments during Swift’s time, just as modern world powers go into underdeveloped cultures and consume their resources. Conflicts of religious ideology, as observed in the battle of the “Big Endians” and the “Small Endians,” are still apparent, as evidenced by the discord throughout the Middle East. Even the feuds between the “High Heels” and the “Low Heels” in the novel continue between and among current political parties.
Despite Swift’s critique of humanity and its institutions, however, he seems to have felt passionately enough about mankind to hope that those who read the book would reconsider themselves and the world around them in order to help make it a better place – “vex” readers into thinking, rather than “diverting” them into switching their thoughtfulness off.
Victoria Jelinek 