The August 2020 Rabbit Hole
Kim's Convenience, #WakandaForever, The Great Fire, Lovecraft Country.
Hi friends and welcome to the 2nd issue of the Rabbit Hole, my effort to collate & share my favorite reads, watches & listens from the month. (You can read last month’s issue here.)
In a recent podcast episode, Michelle Obama related that she was experiencing “some form of low-grade depression” as a result of what is happening in the world. I can relate, and the term “malaise” may be the best way to name what I am sure so many of us are feeling at this time. There is so much that is sad and awful right now, and so little we can control. As a result, I’ve found myself consuming a lot of light & escapist content as a coping mechanism. A show my husband and I are truly enjoying (and is genuinely laugh out loud funny) is Kim’s Convenience (Netflix), a Canadian television comedy series that centers on a Korean immigrant family in Toronto. From the outset, it comes across as formulaic and superficial - Korean convenience store owners and their first generation immigrant children navigating the world (cue pretty crappy Korean accents, funny cultural differences). However, within a few episodes I was wowed by how nuanced, real, and true the show was. Actor Paul Sun-Hyung Lee aptly noted in this NPR interview that they never attempted to play stereotypes:
They are archetypes. They are three-dimensional characters with wants, with hopes, with needs, with fears. And that's what's so exciting about playing them as an actor of color, because we've been so cut off from playing real people.
Toronto is a hyper-diverse city, and Kim’s Convenience showcases that diversity in such a relaxed way that it does not come across as #diversity, but more as an authentic portrayal of real humans who just happen to be from a certain race or ethnic group. (Fun side note: we discovered this show because we recently finished bingeing Schitt’s Creek and both shows aired on CBC in Canada. Another fun side note: Simu Liu, who plays Jung on the show, was cast as Shang Chi in the upcoming Marvel movie Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which is very exciting to us as Marvel fans.)
Speaking of Marvel, I was heartbroken to hear of the passing of Chadwick Boseman this past weekend, who played a number of iconic characters in his short but brilliant lifetime, from Jackie Robinson to Thurgood Marshall to T’challa, aka Black Panther. Unbeknownst to us, Boseman was battling colon cancer for the past four years, which means he brought to life so many pivotal stories amidst treatments and surgeries. In the Daily Beast, Marlow Stern called Boseman a literal superhero for what he gave the world, noting, “To project such incredible power—and strength—when you are so depleted is almost unfathomable. But Boseman did it. He became a global screen icon, greeting audiences around the world, while privately fighting for his life.”
I spent part of my weekend listening to podcast interviews, revisiting old videos, and watching some of his older films (I posted one of my favorite videos above, in which Boseman surprises some of his biggest fans), and I ruminated on what it means to live a life that is so much bigger than yourself. Boseman was so much more than an actor - his roles inspired a whole generation of black people (of people, period, really). He was measured, graceful, and extremely thoughtful. He lived big, and taught us all through his example that we should be braver with our decisions, that our choices are how we will be remembered. In his commencement speech at Howard University, he said, “I don’t know what your future is…But if you’re willing to take the harder way, the more complicated one, the one with more failures at first than successes . . . then you will not regret it." Rest in Power, Chadwick Boseman.
I also loved this month’s Vanity Fair, entitled, The Great Fire, a special issue guest edited by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It is a formidable body of work, with the cover featuring a painting of Breonna Taylor by artist Amy Sherald (who painted Michelle Obama’s portrait), and the issue contains a number of powerful pieces to pour over - from a feature portfolio entitled, “You Said Hope,” highlighting visionaries like the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, AOC, and Billy Porter, to an interview with scholar and activist Angela Davis by filmmaker Ava Duvernay. If you read one piece from the issue, though, let it be this interview with Breonna Taylor’s mother Tamika Palmer by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It is haunting and heartbreaking. It will enrage you and give you chills, or it at least did for me. Here’s a powerful snippet:
But people want to see me. They want to say they’re sorry. They want to apologize for the police. They want to offer their condolences. They want to apologize for not listening. I can’t believe it. People are begging for forgiveness like, I’m sorry we weren’t listening. I just can’t believe it. I felt like with the whole pandemic, Breonna would be forgotten, and we would just get swept under the rug…And how do I feel then? Like, my God, somebody heard me. Like I finally caught my breath. That’s how I feel. Like I finally caught my breath.
Jacob Blake. Breonna Taylor. George Floyd. Ahmaud Arbery. Elijah McClain. The list is endless and it keeps getting longer. As these names become icons in a movement that is raging across this country, it is also important to learn the stories behind them, to hold space for their humanity. And if you’re not protesting in person right now, the Obama Foundation has a great list of resources for how you can continue to show up as an ally in other ways.
A new television series recently premiered during this time of rage and protest, and it is a fitting commentary for the time we are living in. HBO’s Lovecraft Country is a horror/sci-fi show that fuses the stories of monsters told by H.P. Lovecraft with Jim Crow America. Executive produced by J.J. Abrams and Jordan Peele and based off a 2016 novel by Matt Ruff, this show is interesting for a number of reasons: (1) H.P. Lovecraft was considered a pioneer of horror writing, but he was also a known racist. This show does not seek to “shy away” from the racism in his work, but instead works to “reclaim” it, which to me made the show even more powerful. (2) In the vein of Jordan Peele’s past films Get Out and Us, Lovecraft Country explores a world where the most terrifying monster is racism, and where sometimes the most horror-filled moments lie in the quietly insidious minutes of a scene, just before something more overtly scary happens. In an interview with the New York Times back in 2017, Peele talked about what really scared him, saying, “What people can do in conjunction with other people is exponentially worse than what they can do alone. Society is the scariest monster.”
The show airs on Sundays here in the States, and while I was on the edge of my seat during the first episode, I wasn’t a huge fan of the second, but am committed to keep watching what promises to be a thought-provoking 10-episode season. Don’t watch if you get scared easily, and if you’re a nerd like me, listen to the official companion podcast, which is co-hosted by one of the writers from the show, and they go deep. It makes you appreciate how much detail and symbolism is layered into these episodes. If you don’t want to miss all the easter eggs, I’d highly recommend this podcast as well, which you can find here.
That’s all from me this month. Stay safe, wear a mask, and #WakandaForever.