The Monthly - October 31, 2019

November 2019

You Better Work

All About Eve

Bruce McCoy discusses transition from RuPaul fan to member of the Drag Race empire p.5

Kathryn Hahn talks taking the lead in HBO’s “Mrs. Fletcher” p.8

Aca Believe It

Chain Reaction

How Ogi Ifediora rode a wave of a cappella to a career in music p.10

NU sophomore Noah Cohen talks time on YouTube series “Teens React” p.14

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CONTENTS Staff of The Monthly

You Better Work

4

All About Eve

8

Aca Believe It

10

Open Tab

12

Reel Thoughts

13

Chain Reaction

14

Issue 23

Maddie Burakoff Catherine Kim Alex Schwartz Monthly Editors Jacob Fulton Kacee Haslett Siying Luo Roxanne Panas Joshua Perry Designers Joshua Irvine Ally Mauch Owen Stidman Charlotte Walsh Janea Wilson Writers Cover photo: Source: Bruce McCoy

Editors:

When it was announced in May that Jane Fonda would receive the 2019 Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts , it wasn’t most people’s first thought that the accomplished actress would accept the award while in the midst of being arrested by Washington, D.C. police. But that’s exactly what happened Friday afternoon. The star of hits like “Monster-in-Law” and “Grace and Frankie” shouted, “BAFTA, thank you!” and “I’m very honored!” while being led to a patrol car in zip-tie handcuffs.

To some, it may appear rude not to accept such a high honor in person, but Fonda made it clear that she has other priorities.

“I’m sorry that I’m not there, but as you may have heard I’ve been getting arrested … but it’s for a good cause,” she said in a prerecorded video. That “good cause” is the climate movement, which picked up steam late this summer as historic youth-led climate strikes rippled across our rapidly heating planet. Inspired by young activists like Greta Thunberg, Fonda announced she would be moving to D.C. for four months to be arrested every Friday (with some occasional special guests) in protest of government inaction on carbon emissions.

Fonda is no stranger to law enforcement. One of her most iconic photographs is a mugshot taken after her arrest at the Cleveland airport in 1970, her fist held up in defiance of state violence and in solidarity with Vietnam War protestors. And she’s been vocal on a number of issues, attending a #MeToo rally last year.

The New York Times called Fonda’s first climate arrest “a high-profile act of civil disobedience.” “High-profile” is the operative phrase here — it matters that someone as famous as Fonda is devoting her time, resources and criminal record to a social movement.

In other celebrity activism news, Chance the Rapper repped a Chicago Teachers Union sweatshirt during his hosting-performing gig on “Saturday Night Live” last weekend. He spoke out in solidarity with the tens of thousands of teachers and staffers on strike in the city, telling teachers, “I fully support you. I just wish that when I was in school, my teachers had gone on a strike.” Chance, who himself grew up in Chicago Public Schools, has for years spoken up in support of the system. He’s also put his money where his mouth is — in 2017, he pledged $1 million of his personal funds to CPS, and later that year donated another $2.2 million raised through his nonprofit.

It’s easy to dismiss celebrities’ activism as performative, especially when their privilege makes them less vulnerable to the policing system that targets low-income folks and people of color. And it can be dangerous when we mistake visibility for expertise. Famous people who don’t use their platforms carefully can spread misinformation — see Jenny McCarthy becoming the public face of the anti-vax movement.

But telling celebrities to “stick to acting” (or whatever it is that made them famous in the first place) is not realistic.

Whether we like it or not, fame is a capital –– and it can drastically change public opinion. And if a celebrity has proven to continuously invest their capital for the sake of benefiting society, why not celebrate them for being an ally? Their privilege is, in a sense, the most valuable thing they can offer to a movement. They can afford the bail and hostile interactions with police officers –– a luxury not granted to marginalized activists.

Lady Gaga might believe that “fame is prison” — and it’s true that it might get some people in handcuffs. But fame can also be a powerful tool for liberation.

4

YOU

BETTER

Bruce McCoy discusses his transition from RuPaul fan to a member of the Drag Race empire

WORK

By Wilson Chapman

B

ruce McCoy (Communication ’92) was a senior at Northwestern when he was first introduced to RuPaul. The drag queen and New York nightclub personality had just released his breakout single, “Supermodel (You Better Work),” which would go on to peak at No. 45 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 2 on the Dance charts.

Growing up during the ’80s AIDS epidemic, McCoy had been surrounded by negative stereotypes and messaging about gay people and was still working out his own identity. At a time where there were very few out queer stars, it was rare to find a celebrity who embraced gayness as unabashedly and as joyfully as RuPaul did.

McCoy said from then on, RuPaul became one of his biggest role models.

“RuPaul was the first celebrity I had ever seen, growing up as a repressed gay kid in the ’80s, who was like ‘Wow being gay is fun. I am who I am and I’m proud of who I am and love me or don’t, but I’m fabulous,’” McCoy said. “And that’s still his message today, mind you.”

Now, over 20 years later, McCoy helps to spread his former role model and current friend’s message through the reality TV franchise and global phenomenon, “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

After joining the franchise in 2010 and serving in a variety of producing roles, McCoy currently serves as executive producer and showrunner of the franchise’s British expansion, “RuPaul’s Drag Race UK,” which premiered this October.

McCoy said he is proud of “Drag Race UK, and Britain’s reaction to the show made him realize the

Miley

representation “Drag Race” provides has been taken for granted in America.

Since he was a kid, McCoy knew he wanted to work in the entertainment business, specifically in comedy. Growing up, he was a huge fan of “Saturday Night Live” and “SCTV,” and his dream job was to work on a sketch series where he could make fun of pop culture.

At Northwestern, he studied theater and invested much of his time into the Mee-Ow Show, where he fell into “the group of people that made fun of everybody else.” He met many of his lifetime friends through Mee-Ow, and he would go on to work with many of them in comedy groups when he moved to Los Angeles after graduation.

During his time in Evanston, he also took a performance studies class where they watched “Paris is Burning,” a seminal 1990 documentary about the drag ball culture of New York. This sparked his interest in drag queens that would eventually lead to his career on “Drag Race.”

After graduation, McCoy spent a few years as a struggling actor. Eventually, in 1995, a friend helped him get a job as an assistant to the director for the late night sketch comedy show, “MADtv.” His career took off when he was promoted to writer and producer in 1999, and he stayed on the show until 2007.

At “MADtv,” McCoy mainly wrote skits satirizing current trends, such as parodies of music videos and commercials. During the 12 years he worked there, he grew as a sketch comedy writer and dropped acting to commit to writing and producing.

Daniele Gaither (Communication ’93) met McCoy during callbacks for the Mee-Ow show as a sophomore and would later work with him at “MADtv.” Gaither said

Th e V iv ie n n e

LaTo ya McCoy was always “a laugh riot” and constantly came up with jokes and sketch ideas.

“He was always the person, walking into the room, you could tell he was funny,” Gaither said.

“The way you could read his face, you could see that the gears were grinding.”

According to Gaither, McCoy had always been obsessed with the singer and Jackson family member La Toya Jackson. The two bonded over their shared love of her first album and attended a book signing together in college when she released her autobiography.

It’s this love for La Toya Jackson that helped McCoy connect with RuPaul, who shared the same admiration for the pop diva. During the late ’90s, McCoy –– on a whim –– sent RuPaul’s manager an email with edited clips of Jackson on late-night talk shows. The manager showed RuPaul the video, and the queen found it so funny that he called McCoy to hang out. From there, history was made. The two struck a friendship, and RuPaul later hired McCoy as a writer for “Drag Race.”

“That’s sort of one of those weirdo stories that, early in my career, I wouldn’t have told people,” McCoy said. “But to be honest, that weirdness is great. And it’s why me and RuPaul are friends, because I was willing to let him see my weirdness and laugh.”

After leaving “MADtv” in 2007, McCoy joined the Drag Race franchise in 2010 as consulting producer for the short-lived spinoff “RuPaul’s Drag U,” which featured queens giving normal women makeovers.

During “Drag U,” McCoy made one of his greatest contributions to the franchise: making a typo in a script and inadvertently coining the phrase “Condragulations.”

“It’ll be in the Oxford dictionary before you

know it,” McCoy said, laughing.

The next year, McCoy joined the mainline “Drag Race” franchise as a consulting producer, and was eventually promoted to co-executive producer in 2017. McCoy had worked for reality TV before –– he had a three-month job writing jokes for the iconic Paris Hilton vehicle “The Simple Life.” But his involvement in that show was very hands off, whereas with Drag Race, he got a chance to work very closely with the queens he wrote sketches for.

McCoy said his objective while working on “Drag Race” is to do his best to help every queen shine as much as possible because he knows the show is a huge opportunity for every contestant.

Although he has his favorite queens, McCoy said every single one is incredibly talented and brings great energy to the show.

“Honest to God, I love them all and respect them all so much,” McCoy said. “They’re very stressed out, and making a TV show can be stressful, but we have a lot of fun and try to make the filming of the show as much of a joy as we can, so what you watch on your TV is fun.”

Last year, the production company of “Drag Race,” World of Wonder, struck a deal with the BBC to co-produce a British version of the show. McCoy, who had moved to London five years ago with his husband and had been splitting time between the city and Los Angeles, was chosen to executive produce and showrun the new iteration of the franchise.

McCoy said “Drag Race UK” has been the biggest achievement of his professional career. Although he was nervous to take on the responsibility of showrunning, he was able to hire great people to help out thanks to the brand’s popularity.

Sally Miles, who is the other executive producer of “Drag Race UK,” said McCoy is one of the best people she has ever worked with and he does a great job helping both the production crew and stars shine.

The two are a great pair: Miles said she handles the business side of the show while McCoy handles the artistic side.

“10s, 10s, 10s across the board for Bruce McCoy,” Miles said. “It’s very rare to find someone with Bruce’s creative and producing talent and experience that doesn’t have an ego.

And Bruce genuinely doesn’t have an ego. He is the nicest man.”

McCoy said although “Drag Race UK” maintains the format of the original show, the different style of drag in Britain helps Source: Bruce McCoy

distinguish it and makes it worth watching for American viewers. Although the looks are just as polished as in the U.S., drag in the U.K. gets its roots from acts in pubs and is more rooted in comedy than the pageantry of American drag.

Because of this, the U.K. version focuses more on comedy and skits.

McCoy also said the cultural differences between the two countries are very apparent.

The queens frequently use British slang words and references, such as old quotes from the U.K “XFactor,” that are iconic to British queer culture.

Next year, “Drag Race” will expand further with “Canada’s Drag Race.” McCoy said he thinks the show is so easily translatable to other cultures because every country has some history with drag. The format and message of self-expression and acceptance can resonate with anyone, he said.

“Drag has been around forever, it’s been around for centuries, and it’s a reflection of culture,” McCoy said. “It’s holding up a mirror to society at a given moment.”

When reflecting on what he learned from his career, McCoy said he now understands the importance of staying true to your values and your interests, regardless of how unconventional

H o p p y P ot t y or weird they might be.

“Stay weird and don’t suppress how weird you are. Go with your what your passions are,” McCoy said. “It’s better to be a niche hit than a mainstream flop.” ◊

ALL ABOUT EVE

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Kathryn Hahn talk s taking the lead i n HBO’s “ Mrs. Fletc her”

by Joshua Irvine

I

t may seem like false modesty when on major roles in Kathryn Hahn (Communication ’95) critically acclaimed calls the new HBO series “Mrs. Fletcher” dramedies “I Love an ensemble piece.

Dick” and “Private After all, she is Eve Fletcher, a divorced Life.” middle-aged mom who finds herself in the “It’s finally finding the middle of a sexual awakening when her only people that work with me son sets off for college. And even when the and that I want to work with. It’s show digresses to follow the fumbling of her getting older and it’s getting braver and son or a small crowd of supporting characters, it’s getting more confident,” Hahn said. “I’m it’s really all about Eve. just an actor, and this chapter I’m in right now Nonetheless, Hahn dishes out plenty of has been incredibly fulfilling.” credit. First goes to Tom Perrotta, the novelist Much of Hahn’s recent success has come behind “Election” and “Little Children” and from production teams that buck Hollywood’s now a first-time showrunner for his most plethora of straight men: Soloway is nonrecent novel on domestic life in “Ms. Fletcher.” binary and gender-nonconforming while As a fan of “Little Children,” Hahn picked up “I Love Dick” showrunner Sarah Gubbins Perrotta’s latest book immediately after getting (Communication ’97, ’08) is a gay woman. the script for the show and was sold on its That distinction extends to “Mrs. Fletcher.” setting and central character.

Most of the writers and producers are women, “It feels like there’s this deep subject matter as are all of the directors. beneath this gentle veneer (of satire),” Hahn “It’s very exciting to look around and see all said. the work that women are doing, and not just Hahn said she identified with Eve’s women –– diversity of all kinds,” Hahn said. loneliness, drawing a comparison “It’s a very exciting time for art. between Eve’s empty nest and her I’m a very excited audience own children’s forthcoming (as well).” departure.

Even as a leading “It’s so encompassing, lady, getting on and you feel like your HBO was still whole world is (your a big deal for children),” Hahn said.

Hahn, who grew Hahn has played up watching a lot of moms the network’s enduring var ying pedigree degrees of distress, in — Kathryn Hahn, productions.

(Communication ’95) situations ranging from She called the ludicrous (“Step Brothers”) opportunity to play to melancholic (“Afternoon Eve “a bucket list item.”

Delight”). The latter introduced her Eve would probably see to producer Jill Soloway, who’d go on to cast it differently. The series protagonist Hahn in “Transparent.” Hahn received her first is locked in a purgatory of late motherhood, Emmy nomination in 2017 for her role as the dealing with an apathetic son, an infuriating central family’s sympathetic rabbi. ex-husband and a grating job as a nursing The two roles marked a seismic shift for home administrator. Seeking release, Eve finds the actor from consistent bit player to serious a decidedly NSFW solution: internet porn. star: “Kathryn Hahn is Nobody’s Sidekick,” Replete with actual adult videos, it’s an iceVulture proclaimed in 2017. She soon took water shock for character and audience that

“I was lucky enough to go to a college that is a place of incredible awareness.”

transitions into a recurring cold-open gag as Eve sets her sights on taking her living-room experimentation into reallife satisfaction. That mission becomes manifest in a female coworker as well as a community college peer who last shared a classroom with Eve’s son.

“It’s a brave new world for her,” Hahn said.

It’s also a frustrating one. Dates end prematurely, passes don’t land and hookups go in all the wrong directions for Eve. Hahn injects relatable awkwardness and more than a little exasperation.

Eve’s journey is paralleled by her son Brendan, a high-school lacrosse star out of place at his social justice-conscious state college. And while there’s no porn playing in the margins of Brendan’s doomed courtship with a woke classmate, both critics and Hahn point to the “Pandora’s box” of adult videos informing Brendan’s “asshole-bro” behavior.

“I don’t think he’s a bad person. I just think he’s lost, and he clearly didn’t have good male examples in his life,” Hahn said. “He doesn’t have anyone to talk to except his phone.”

She praised costar Jackson White for imbuing sympathy into a largely unlikable character.

In contrast to her onscreen son, Hahn speaks positively about Northwestern and credits the university with exposing her to a broader world.

“I was lucky enough to go to a college that is a place of incredible awareness,” Hahn said.

“It’s a microcosm of what I hope the planet can be.”

A frequent presence in School of Communication productions during her time at NU, Hahn credits her time here with informing her perspective on performing.

To Hahn, acting is just one part of a group effort — even when it’s just her name on the billboard. ◊

Sources: Sarah Shatz/HBO, Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times/TNS, Jordan Schlesinger

9

ca Believe It

How Ogi Ifediora rode a wave of a cappel

T

he summer before her senior year of college, Ogi Ifediora (Weinberg ‘19) found herself bored and needing something to do. After deciding not to take the LSAT, she had over a month of free time before school started. So she made an Instagram account, where she began posting mostly a cappella singing videos and has since gained nearly four thousand followers.

Posts on @ogi._.i are typically collages of Ifediora singing every part of a song, the videos stitched together using the app “Acapella.” At Northwestern, Ifediora was a member of THUNK A Cappella and was one of the group’s music directors for three years, which gave her experience singing without a backing track. “ The way I would verify if my arrangements sounded alright was through me recording my voice on GarageBand,” she said.

“Learning how to do that was really important in my development as a musician. It helped me

10

Source: Ogi Ifediora

understand how to make harmonies work.”

Ifediora originally made the account as a way for her to keep her love for music and arranging alive after graduating and starting a job. Her initial plan was to put her degrees in political science and legal studies to use instead of singing full-time — as a Nigerian, she said she was expected to find a career in law, medicine or engineering.

But this summer, she discovered how far her voice could take her.

One of her videos was shared with the head of the non-profit Project Everyone, which works to accelerate the United Nations’ global sustainable development goals. They host an event in New York City called Goalkeepers to celebrate those goals, which aim to make the world a more equitable place. The conference, held in conjunction with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, had a list of influential speakers from around the globe — but they needed an artist.

After browsing Ifediora’s Instagram videos and learning of her prior work with AIESEC, an organization that also focuses on the UN sustainable development goals, the head of Project Everyone selected her as an artist in residence for the event. She said they liked that she did a cappella because they wanted to hold an a cappella workshop with some grassroots leaders at the event.

“They wanted to have to make sure that I had everything that I needed,” Ifediora said. “They asked me ‘Oh, do you have any friends who like do a cappella and live in the New York area?’”

Thankfully, Ifediora was able to bring three THUNK alumni along with her to lead the workshop. She arranged a medley of songs for them to teach a group of conference attendees. The group was sectioned into voice parts, each person led by one of the four alumni. The next day, they performed the song for a live audience.

Before the group’s performance, Ifediora performed a live, solo a cappella mashup of Beyoncé’s “Freedom” and Pharrell Williams’s “Freedom,” backed up by screens of herself singing its intricate background harmonies. Her friend Steven Layne (McCormick ’17), who taught the bass section, said he was taken aback by the song even though he’d heard her sing many times before in THUNK. “I was just kind of listening to her and how beautiful her voice is,” Layne said.

“She just has this knack for music.”

Ryder Chasin (Medill ‘18), who was also in THUNK, said his favorite part of the event was seeing Ifediora in her element.

Chasin said the two of them had

appella to a career in music

By Janea Wilson

worked together making arrangements for THUNK and creating original songs, and added Ifediora always turns music into a next-level experience.

“It’s hard to articulate that she’s a genius without making it as simple as that,” Chasin said. “She understands things in music and can create and move things in music that other people can’t even see or register as being there. It’s a rare special talent.”

Despite her gift for music, Chasin said Ifediora is the “most gracious and humble person,” and it’s hard not to root for her because of that. Her humility may come from the fact that, for a while, she didn’t even think she was a good singer.

Ifediora remembers hearing a harmony for the first time when she was 4 years old at her mom’s prayer group. When she heard someone deviate from the notes everyone else was singing, she wanted to do it, too. She started singing a lot after that, to the point where it would annoy people.

“I wasn’t super great,” she said. “I remember one day my sister said to me, ‘You’re not that good that you should be singing all the time.’ Because her word meant everything to me, I stopped singing from the end of fifth grade until junior year of high school.”

Ifediora started singing again by auditioning for her high school’s jazz choir, but music didn’t become a part of who she was until Northwestern. Her freshman year, she auditioned for a cappella groups, and THUNK was the only group that called her back.

The first arrangement she did was “Georgia on My Mind” by Ray Charles, as a parting gift for THUNK’s president, using the software MuseScore. She said she got

lost in the music and worked on the piece until 4 a.m. one night.

“I thought it was so cool to...put together this puzzle,” Ifediora said. “It's cool to try to simplify a song to seven or so parts. You have to take the essence of the song and put a song to its basics and still allow it to be recognizable.”

Ifediora doesn’t have any traditional music training, so arranging songs was how she learned scales and chords. Thinking of music in individual parts has been really valuable for her, and she said producers have told her they’ve never seen anyone approach music the way she does.

When working on her own music, Ifediora said she tends to draw from older musicians from the ’70s like Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson.

She said she enjoys performing jazz the most.

“My voice is pretty good for jazz,” she said. “ What most people like about it is my tone and vocal

control which you need. You need both of those things to do well as a jazz singer.”

Currently, Ifediora lives in Los Angeles where she’s writing and recording original music. She plans on releasing a new song next month, and she said she’s in talks with producers and record labels. She said it’s surreal to think about all the places she’s been invited to and the people she’s met.

“A producer that has been really involved in a lot of people’s careers has been a friend to me,” she said. “It’s crazy the connections I’ve been able to get.” ◊

Head to Kombucha Brava for feel-good fermentation

K

ombucha — a fizzy, fermented tea to make their whiskey barrel kombucha, which beverage praised for its probiotic they ferment for several weeks and then age in benefits — is often considered the the old whiskey repositories to create a mildly niche drink of yoga mat-toting, smoky and surprisingly clean-tasting drink. gentrifying hippies, despite its origins in Asia. The whiskey barrel is one of many interesting Nowadays, you can find it everywhere: from flavor profiles you’ll find at Kombucha Brava. specialty grocers to Walmart to Evanston’s own Combined with some of their unique brewing Kombucha Brava. processes, their flavors sets them apart from what Kombucha Brava, at 717 Custer Ave., is a feel- you’ll find on the shelf at a nearby supermarket. good establishment, and not just because their Kombucha is traditionally made by product is supposedly good for your gut. The introducing a SCOBY (symbiotic colony of taproom occupies a small space on a residential bacteria and yeast) to brewed tea and sugar. The street and is honestly not much to look at from living mixture then ferments for several weeks the outside. Past the bright yellow door, however, before brewers introduce other flavors. The end you’ll find a warm, welcoming world of locally- product is a combination of fizzy, sweet and brewed booch. tangy. Kombucha Brava adds their own special Evanston couple Regina Sant’Anna and touches to this process, like aging the drink Douglas Skites opened Kombucha Brava’s following fermentation or using a smoked tea taproom in July 2018 after finding success at as a base (for the smoky cherry flavor). the Evanston Farmers’ Market. They greet each On my most recent visit, they had orange customer like an old friend, inquiring about jobs cardamom, apple ginger carrot, cucumber mint and classes while serving up samples of whatever and smoky cherry in addition to the whiskey kombucha is on tap that week. barrel variety. Apple ginger carrot is a more Behind the wooden counter, visitors can see traditional — though not unwelcome — flavor, the inner workings of kombucha production: but the orange cardamom stood out. It’s slightly piles of fruit, buckets of tea, and the large metal tart from the citrus containers and oak barrels where the drink and the natural ferments and ages. The equipment is also a acidity of testament to Sant’Anna and Skites’ commitment kombucha, to buying local. The fruit in the back comes — but whenever possible — from the farmers market, and FEW Evan Robinson-Johnson/ Daily Senior Staffer Spirits, an Evanstonbased gin and whiskey distillery, provided some of the barrels.

Kombucha Brava uses the FEW barrels

— by Ally Mauch balanced with a hefty kick of the warm, fragrant cardamom spice. In short, it tastes like fall.

A quick disclaimer: Kombucha Brava brews an exceptional kombucha, but if you don’t already like the vinegary drink, it likely won’t become your next go-to spot. However, if you’ve been on the fence in the past, you should absolutely try it out.

Because they often change their offerings, Kombucha Brava may not always carry your favorite flavor, but that’s a good thing. Take the trip to Custer Avenue and give yourself some time to sit, taste whatever’s on tap and chat with the owners and Evanston residents in the taproom. Once you fill your mason jars with kombucha and tuck them safely in your tote bag, I promise you’ll walk away feeling better than when you came in. ◊

Reel Thoughts “Joker” is a unique but imperfect comic book movie

n

by Owe

n

Stidma

os. Pictures/TNS Source: Warner Br

This piece includes spoilers for the movie “Joker.”

TW: murder, mental illness

O

scar-worthy or overrated? “Taxi Driver” for a new generation or just a self-serious comic book movie? Biting social commentary or dark for no reason?

Tragedy or comedy? All of the above? A killer clown’s origin story might be 2019’s most controversial film. I’m talking, of course, about Todd Phillips’ “Joker.” It’s a well-made and intriguing movie, but is the controversy justified? Probably not.

“Joker” follows Arthur Fleck ( Joaquin Phoenix), a mentally ill party clown and aspiring comedian, as he descends into madness and transforms into the film’s eponymous villain. Fleck and his mother live in a downtrodden neighborhood of Gotham City. After city budget cuts cause Fleck to lose access to his psychiatric medication, he kills three investment bankers on a subway. Empowered by this incident, Fleck commits more murders.

Police eventually arrest Fleck and take him to Arkham Asylum, where he laughs at what he’s done.

Phoenix’s performance as Fleck is one of the best of the year and arguably some of the best work of his career. His acting

is nuanced and chillingly believable as he embodies Fleck’s every eccentricity and fully becomes the character. Regardless of whether you enjoy the film overall, it’s almost impossible to deny that Phoenix’s performance is breathtaking. It’s the heart of the film — “Joker” wouldn’t work without it.

Composer Hildur Guðnadóttir is the other star of the movie. Her score, which features melancholic cello lines and haunting percussion parts, perfectly parallels Fleck’s story arc and enhances the film’s unsettling tone.

And that bleak tone is, in a way, a pleasant surprise. “Joker” is a welcome change of pace in a world dominated by the colorful, lighthearted Marvel Cinematic Universe — even though MCU films are great in their own right. Where films like “Avengers: Endgame” feature snappy dialogue and exhilarating battle sequences of cosmic proportions, “Joker” presents a gritty, Scorsese-esque insight into one man’s psyche. What makes “Joker” unique is that it would work just as well as a disturbing character study without taking place in the Batman universe.

But for all it does right, “Joker” does a lot wrong. While Phoenix’s performance is sublime, writer/director Todd Phillips’ treatment of his lead character is problematic.

Fleck becomes the murderous Joker primarily

because he’s mentally ill -- a depiction that is remarkably insensitive to those with mental health issues. Additionally, Phillips portrays Fleck — a white, presumably straight man — as a victim of the society in which he lives.

Straight, white men are not oppressed in the U.S., and it’s harmful to portray them as such.

Furthermore, while the film’s tone may be a welcome shift from the comic book movies we’ve been bombarded with over the years, there are moments when “Joker” is grim for the sake of being grim. A scene in which Fleck crawls into his refrigerator during a breakdown contributes virtually nothing to the story, and a gruesome murder near the end of the film serves no purpose but to shock the audience. The films that “Joker” attempts to emulate, namely “Taxi Driver” and “The King of Comedy,” are certainly disturbing, but their disturbing elements all serve purposes. The same can’t be said of “Joker.”

So, “Joker” is a complicated movie, and the online discourse surrounding it reflects that. But that doesn’t mean the film warranted more than a month of pre-release controversy. On the one hand, it’s not the best film of 2019, and on the other hand, it hasn’t caused clown-masked protesters to riot in the streets. In other words, “Joker” didn’t live up to the hype. That’s both a letdown and a relief. ◊

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Scan this QR code with Snapchat or your phone camera to view an accompanying video on Noah Cohen watching himself in Youtube videos!

Chain Reaction

Q&A: NU sophomore Noah Cohen talks about his time on popular YouTube series “Teens React” D

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By Charlotte Walsh

Throughout middle and high school, Communication sophomore Noah Cohen loved watching the Fine Brothers’ reaction videos on YouTube, but he never dreamed he would take part in them himself. Now after 2-and-a-half years and over 60 videos, Cohen has reacted to artists, gaming software and viral videos alike for the channel. A mainstay on the “Teens React” series, Cohen sat down with The Daily to talk about his involvement with the show and how it’s affected his life (besides the hate DMs he’s received from upset Billie Eilish fans).

The Daily: How did you become involved with “Teens React?”

Cohen: I used to watch “React” all the time, and I used to watch before they started only doing reacts — they had scripted shows and other stuff. I used to watch it all the time and I loved it. And I saw they posted on Instagram that they were looking for people in the L.A. area — I’m from L.A. I just sent them an email, tried to be funny, then months passed, and I went to Photo: Source: Noah Cohen

an audition. I had never auditioned for anything before, and it worked out.

The Daily: What is the process like when you go in for an episode?

Cohen: We really don’t know what we’re going to be doing until the camera’s on. Honestly they do not say anything — they just go, “Hey, are you free to come in today at this time?” and you go in, you get to the studio and they turn on the camera. I think it’s better this way because you get way more accurate reaction and it’s very authentic. I learned to put my trust in them, because they’re very good at picking what I would be interesting in and what videos I would really do well in.

The Daily: Is anything faked?

Cohen: It’s completely honest. The brothers have never once told me to react a certain way.

They’ve never tried to manipulate me. Personally, I think that means it’s up to us as people on-camera to try to be as authentic as possible.

I mean obviously, most likely most people’s

reactions to watching videos are just sitting there staring at the screen. So when you have a camera in front of you, you’ve got to try to play it up a little bit and try to at least express what you’re thinking in some type of interesting way, but that’s always been the way that I’ve thought about it — it’s never been something that they told me to do.

The Daily: What did you get out of the experience overall?

Cohen: It definitely pulled me out of my comfort zone, just because I’m not an actor or anything. I had never done anything on-camera, and I was more behind the camera before this, so I just did this to try and push myself. I was like, “Obviously, this isn’t gonna happen, but I’m just gonna try to be on this show and we’ll see if it works out.” And it did work out, and I’ve been doing it for a long time. It’s really crazy looking back at how much I loved this channel before I was on it, and then being a part of it — I mean that’s just unbelievable. ◊

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