newyorker--2020-01-31--Would You Have Said Anything? The Chilling Power of “The Assistant”

Saying what a film is “ about ” is a marker of critical authoritarianism ; when it doesn ’ t pin thoughts about a movie into the narrow confines of the film ’ s ostensible action , it does something more insidious—it gaslights readers into considering the movie to be something other than what they ’ ve seen .
That ’ s why it ’ s essential to discuss , and to determine , what “ The Assistant , ” Kitty Green ’ s emotionally devastating , conceptually powerful new movie , is about .
The constraint of thought to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the way a character is manipulated to disbelieve what she perceives , are the very premises of the action .
“ The Assistant ” is a story modelled on what has been widely reported to have gone on at the Weinstein Company , at a time when Harvey Weinstein relied on his business to supply himself with young women to pursue for sex .
( Just yesterday , Alyssa Rosenberg published a reminder , in the Washington Post , that such reports appeared as early as 2004 . )
The main @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who is on camera for nearly the entire film , is played by Julia Garner ; according to IMDb , the character ’ s name is Jane , though I don ’ t recall the name being spoken in the course of the film ( and , if it was , it was said only in passing ) .
Jane is the assistant to the head of a film-production company , whose offices occupy two buildings on a Tribeca block , a busy company that , as one employee says , has thirty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her work , and its effect on her life over all , is ominous from the start of the movie , which opens like a horror film , with Jane leaving her Astoria apartment building in the early morning , in the dark before dawn , getting into a black car , and then entering , alone , the Tribeca building in which she works .
She ’ s the first person in the office , and as she moves through the shadows of the modified industrial space , turning on lights and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with menace and foreboding .
As in a horror film , Jane seems likely to encounter a flesh-and-blood predator , evil spirits , or ghosts—and , in the course of the action , she meets some version of all three .
Alone at her desk , she ’ s surrounded by binders—a word indissociable from Mitt Romney ’ s revealing debate gaffe about his “ binders full of women , ” and which turns out to be an apt association in “ The Assistant.
” Jane turns on her computer , prints out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it on the desk of her ( still absent ) boss , and finds an earring on the floor of his office .
She eats a bowl of Froot Loops ( “ Get Out ” -style ) , and she hears voices—she ’ s not alone .
A terrifying chill suffuses the mundane details of “ The Assistant ” : even her banal rounds of printing and xeroxing scripts , making travel arrangements by phone , and preparing glasses of water for visiting clients have an air of robotic alienation and impending doom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is soon revealed .
Jane , a recent college graduate , shares the front office with two young men , white and fratty , who seem to be in their mid- to late twenties , one nerdy and one slick .
One of them asks Jane to handle a phone call ; it ’ s the boss ’ s wife , who is furiously demanding to speak with her husband about her credit cards being blocked .
Jane does her best to stay calm and take a message , but it isn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the boss buzzes Jane and berates her loudly ( “ They told me you were smart .
.
.
.
You ’ re good at ordering salads ” ) within earshot of her two male colleagues .
The world of “ The Assistant ” is an ordinary one , but , as in a horror-fantasy of alternate realities , its details are out of whack—and many of the ominous perturbations of Jane ’ s experience have to do with sex .
A Ukrainian woman , conventionally model-like , comes to the office , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; she dumps her coat on Jane ’ s desk and delivers her passport for Jane to scan .
Jane receives boxes from a mail carrier ; do they contain DVDs ?
No , syringes of alprostadil ( used to treat erectile dysfunction ) , several of which , later on , she ’ ll collect from her boss ’ s garbage can and place in a biohazard bag .
Jane prepares checks for her boss to sign—schools , extracurriculars , babysitters , etc.—and two of the checks , made out for thousands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s name left blank .
The crux of the movie is a doubling of the title : another young woman shows up in the office , claiming to have been hired as an assistant .
She seems to be about eighteen and has little apparent background for the work ; she ’ s a woman whom the boss met in Sun Valley and invited to come for the job .
He ’ s putting her up in the luxurious Mark Hotel and , soon after she gets there , he also heads to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ joke about .
It would be a cruel spoiler to say what happens next ; suffice it to say that , when Jane conveys her suspicions that the young woman is being exploited , she is menaced with a velvet glove of corporate coercion .
“ The Assistant ” is a drama of moral epistemology , in which the details that Jane perceives have an obvious meaning that is being overlooked , denied , or ignored by the people who work in her office , and that Jane is being harshly and rigorously @ @ @ @ @ @ @ movie ’ s subject , in effect , is : everyone knew , and everyone recognized that their interests depended on pretending not to know or not caring about what they knew , and making sure that others in their orbit would do the same .
It ’ s significant that the office is dominated by men—and also that there are women , senior to Jane , who work there in positions of some authority , who are in on the coverup .
The key is “ pretending ” : if there ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the evidence that presents itself , then , no less than the boss would rely on it if accused , the employees can rely on it to exonerate themselves for inaction .
If they can ’ t intellectually squeeze themselves into that margin , then they can concoct a hand-wavingly immoral justification for what they know .
( One employee tells Jane , “ Don ’ t worry , she ’ ll get more out of it than he will.
” ) And , if they can ’ t bend their sense of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actions , they can—in the final step—merely keep their mouths shut in the name of loyalty , self-interest , and fear .
That third step , the ultimate safety net that the boss has woven for himself , is at the heart of the movie : the conditioning that Jane , a new employee ( only a few months into the job ) , is receiving in order to make her what might be called a team player .
In addition to the plethora of details suggesting to Jane that her boss is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ services of the women he ’ s hiring , the movie is filled with a profusion of details that show how her personality , her very identity , is broken down by the demands of the job and by her boss ’ s own conduct , how she ’ s being alienated from herself and subordinated to her boss ’ s authority .

Saying what a film is “about” is a marker of critical authoritarianism; when it doesn’t pin thoughts about a movie into the narrow confines of the film’s ostensible action, it does something more insidious—it gaslights readers into considering the movie to be something other than what they’ve seen. That’s why it’s essential to discuss, and to determine, what “The Assistant,” Kitty Green’s emotionally devastating, conceptually powerful new movie, is about. The constraint of thought to exactly and only what’s seen, and the way a character is manipulated to disbelieve what she perceives, are the very premises of the action.
“The Assistant” is a story modelled on what has been widely reported to have gone on at the Weinstein Company, at a time when Harvey Weinstein relied on his business to supply himself with young women to pursue for sex. (Just yesterday, Alyssa Rosenberg published a reminder, in the Washington Post, that such reports appeared as early as 2004.) The main character of “The Assistant,” who is on camera for nearly the entire film, is played by Julia Garner; according to IMDb, the character’s name is Jane, though I don’t recall the name being spoken in the course of the film (and, if it was, it was said only in passing). Jane is the assistant to the head of a film-production company, whose offices occupy two buildings on a Tribeca block, a busy company that, as one employee says, has thirty projects in development.
The tone of her work, and its effect on her life over all, is ominous from the start of the movie, which opens like a horror film, with Jane leaving her Astoria apartment building in the early morning, in the dark before dawn, getting into a black car, and then entering, alone, the Tribeca building in which she works. She’s the first person in the office, and as she moves through the shadows of the modified industrial space, turning on lights and looking around, the mood is thick with menace and foreboding. As in a horror film, Jane seems likely to encounter a flesh-and-blood predator, evil spirits, or ghosts—and, in the course of the action, she meets some version of all three.
Alone at her desk, she’s surrounded by binders—a word indissociable from Mitt Romney’s revealing debate gaffe about his “binders full of women,” and which turns out to be an apt association in “The Assistant.” Jane turns on her computer, prints out the day’s business, places it on the desk of her (still absent) boss, and finds an earring on the floor of his office. She eats a bowl of Froot Loops (“Get Out”-style), and she hears voices—she’s not alone. A terrifying chill suffuses the mundane details of “The Assistant”: even her banal rounds of printing and xeroxing scripts, making travel arrangements by phone, and preparing glasses of water for visiting clients have an air of robotic alienation and impending doom.
The nature of that looming terror is soon revealed. Jane, a recent college graduate, shares the front office with two young men, white and fratty, who seem to be in their mid- to late twenties, one nerdy and one slick. One of them asks Jane to handle a phone call; it’s the boss’s wife, who is furiously demanding to speak with her husband about her credit cards being blocked. Jane does her best to stay calm and take a message, but it isn’t good enough: soon thereafter, the boss buzzes Jane and berates her loudly (“They told me you were smart. . . . You’re good at ordering salads”) within earshot of her two male colleagues.
The world of “The Assistant” is an ordinary one, but, as in a horror-fantasy of alternate realities, its details are out of whack—and many of the ominous perturbations of Jane’s experience have to do with sex. A Ukrainian woman, conventionally model-like, comes to the office, summoned to a meeting with the boss; she dumps her coat on Jane’s desk and delivers her passport for Jane to scan. Jane receives boxes from a mail carrier; do they contain DVDs? No, syringes of alprostadil (used to treat erectile dysfunction), several of which, later on, she’ll collect from her boss’s garbage can and place in a biohazard bag. Jane prepares checks for her boss to sign—schools, extracurriculars, babysitters, etc.—and two of the checks, made out for thousands of dollars, have the recipient’s name left blank.
The crux of the movie is a doubling of the title: another young woman shows up in the office, claiming to have been hired as an assistant. She seems to be about eighteen and has little apparent background for the work; she’s a woman whom the boss met in Sun Valley and invited to come for the job. He’s putting her up in the luxurious Mark Hotel and, soon after she gets there, he also heads to the hotel—as other colleagues know and even joke about. It would be a cruel spoiler to say what happens next; suffice it to say that, when Jane conveys her suspicions that the young woman is being exploited, she is menaced with a velvet glove of corporate coercion.
“The Assistant” is a drama of moral epistemology, in which the details that Jane perceives have an obvious meaning that is being overlooked, denied, or ignored by the people who work in her office, and that Jane is being harshly and rigorously trained to dismiss, too. The movie’s subject, in effect, is: everyone knew, and everyone recognized that their interests depended on pretending not to know or not caring about what they knew, and making sure that others in their orbit would do the same. It’s significant that the office is dominated by men—and also that there are women, senior to Jane, who work there in positions of some authority, who are in on the coverup.
The key is “pretending”: if there’s a margin of plausible deniability to the evidence that presents itself, then, no less than the boss would rely on it if accused, the employees can rely on it to exonerate themselves for inaction. If they can’t intellectually squeeze themselves into that margin, then they can concoct a hand-wavingly immoral justification for what they know. (One employee tells Jane, “Don’t worry, she’ll get more out of it than he will.”) And, if they can’t bend their sense of morality to justify the boss’s actions, they can—in the final step—merely keep their mouths shut in the name of loyalty, self-interest, and fear.
That third step, the ultimate safety net that the boss has woven for himself, is at the heart of the movie: the conditioning that Jane, a new employee (only a few months into the job), is receiving in order to make her what might be called a team player. In addition to the plethora of details suggesting to Jane that her boss is using his business to procure the sexual services of the women he’s hiring, the movie is filled with a profusion of details that show how her personality, her very identity, is broken down by the demands of the job and by her boss’s own conduct, how she’s being alienated from herself and subordinated to her boss’s authority.


newyorker--2020-01-31--N. K. Jemisin on H. P. Lovecraft, and a Tumultuous Week in Impeachment

Our Washington correspondent Susan B. Glasser talks with Representative Zoe Lofgren , one of the House managers in the impeachment @ @ @ @ @ The historian Jill Lepore looks to the nineteen-thirties—the last time democracy in America seemed so @ @ @ @ @ moment .
And N. K. Jemisin , one of science fiction ’ s most celebrated @ @ @ @ @ deep legacy of racism at the foundation of the genre and in the work of @ @ @ @ @ View of Impeachment from the Capitol A Washington correspondent assesses the impact of John Bolton @ @ @ @ @ impeachment process and the President ’ s success at stonewalling .
Jill Lepore on Democracy @ @ @ @ @ Now A historian looks to the nineteen-thirties—the last time democracy in America seemed so fraught—for @ @ @ @ @ A celebrated science-fiction author grapples with the genre ’ s deep legacy of racism .

Illustration by Golden Cosmos; Source Photograph by Rochelle Brock
Our Washington correspondent Susan B. Glasser talks with Representative Zoe Lofgren, one of the House managers in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. The historian Jill Lepore looks to the nineteen-thirties—the last time democracy in America seemed so fraught—to glean lessons for our moment. And N. K. Jemisin, one of science fiction’s most celebrated authors, grapples with the deep legacy of racism at the foundation of the genre and in the work of H. P. Lovecraft.
A View of Impeachment from the Capitol
A Washington correspondent assesses the impact of John Bolton’s manuscript on the impeachment process and the President’s success at stonewalling.
Jill Lepore on Democracy in Peril, Then and Now
A historian looks to the nineteen-thirties—the last time democracy in America seemed so fraught—for insights into our moment.
N. K. Jemisin on H. P. Lovecraft
A celebrated science-fiction author grapples with the genre’s deep legacy of racism.


newyorker--2020-01-31--Watch Live: Day 10 of Donald Trump’s Impeachment Trial in the Senate

On Thursday , during the second and final day of the question-and-answer period in Donald Trump ’ s Senate impeachment trial , Elizabeth Warren , who ’ s in the top flight of Democratic Presidential candidates , aimed her only question of the two-day session directly at Chief Justice John Roberts , who is presiding over the trial .
“ At a time when large majorities of Americans have lost faith in government , ” she asked , “ does the fact that the Chief Justice is presiding over an impeachment trial in which Republican senators have thus far refused @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the loss of legitimacy of the Chief Justice , the Supreme Court , and the Constitution ?
” Roberts , reading Warren ’ s question aloud , as he did with all that were submitted , was expressionless .
The lead House manager , Adam Schiff , stood up and said , in response , “ I don ’ t think a trial without witnesses reflects adversely on the Chief Justice .
I do think it reflects adversely on us.
” During the two weeks of the trial , the Chief Justice has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when he was admonishing the House managers and the President ’ s lawyers .
But , on Friday , when the senators will vote on whether to call witnesses , potentially including Trump ’ s former national-security adviser John Bolton , Roberts could become a central figure of the trial .
Democrats need four Republican senators to cross the party line in order to introduce witnesses into the proceedings , and the four moderate Republicans who were seen as potential swing votes are Susan Collins , of Maine ; Lisa Murkowski , of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; and Lamar Alexander , of Tennessee .
But , late Thursday night , Alexander announced that he would not vote in favor of calling witnesses .
His decision , he said , was influenced in part by the fact that the Democrats had proved their case .
“ The question then is not whether the President did it , but whether the United States Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did , ” he said in a statement .
“ I believe that the Constitution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decision in the Presidential election that begins in Iowa on Monday.
” Should the other three votes go in favor of witnesses , the Senate would be locked fifty-fifty on the issue , setting up Roberts as a tiebreaker—and , as Susan B. Glasser wrote , “ pretty much no one believed ” on Thursday night that Roberts “ would be willing to cast the deciding vote.
” Collins and Romney , for their parts , have both indicated that they will vote in favor of witnesses .
All eyes will be on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ loaded , and perhaps telling , question .
She asked Trump ’ s defense team , “ Why should this body not call Ambassador Bolton ?
” She said that “ the reporting on Ambassador Bolton ’ s book suggests the President told Bolton directly that the aid would not be released until Ukraine announced the investigations the President desired , ” contradicting public statements from Trump allies .
“ This dispute about material facts weighs in favor of calling additional witnesses with direct knowledge , ” Murkowski wrote .
Patrick Philbin , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a procedural reply , saying that the House already had its chance to hear from Bolton and should have subpoenaed him during its inquiry , a oft-repeated Republican stance .
Even if Murkowski sides with Democrats , the most likely outcome is that “ sometime on Friday or early Saturday , ” as Glasser wrote , “ the third Presidential-impeachment trial in American history is virtually certain to reach its preordained conclusion : a partisan acquittal by the Republican-controlled Senate , following a partisan impeachment by the Democratic-controlled House.
” You can follow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ above .

Senators are expected to vote on whether to call witnesses, potentially including Trump’s former national-security adviser John Bolton, in the President’s impeachment trial.
On Thursday, during the second and final day of the question-and-answer period in Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, Elizabeth Warren, who’s in the top flight of Democratic Presidential candidates, aimed her only question of the two-day session directly at Chief Justice John Roberts, who is presiding over the trial. “At a time when large majorities of Americans have lost faith in government,” she asked, “does the fact that the Chief Justice is presiding over an impeachment trial in which Republican senators have thus far refused to allow witnesses or evidence contribute to the loss of legitimacy of the Chief Justice, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution?” Roberts, reading Warren’s question aloud, as he did with all that were submitted, was expressionless. The lead House manager, Adam Schiff, stood up and said, in response, “I don’t think a trial without witnesses reflects adversely on the Chief Justice. I do think it reflects adversely on us.”
During the two weeks of the trial, the Chief Justice has provided little more than procedural window dressing—even when he was admonishing the House managers and the President’s lawyers. But, on Friday, when the senators will vote on whether to call witnesses, potentially including Trump’s former national-security adviser John Bolton, Roberts could become a central figure of the trial. Democrats need four Republican senators to cross the party line in order to introduce witnesses into the proceedings, and the four moderate Republicans who were seen as potential swing votes are Susan Collins, of Maine; Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska; Mitt Romney, of Utah; and Lamar Alexander, of Tennessee. But, late Thursday night, Alexander announced that he would not vote in favor of calling witnesses. His decision, he said, was influenced in part by the fact that the Democrats had proved their case. “The question then is not whether the President did it, but whether the United States Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did,” he said in a statement. “I believe that the Constitution provides that the people should make that decision in the Presidential election that begins in Iowa on Monday.”
Should the other three votes go in favor of witnesses, the Senate would be locked fifty-fifty on the issue, setting up Roberts as a tiebreaker—and, as Susan B. Glasser wrote, “pretty much no one believed” on Thursday night that Roberts “would be willing to cast the deciding vote.” Collins and Romney, for their parts, have both indicated that they will vote in favor of witnesses. All eyes will be on Murkowski, who on Thursday submitted a loaded, and perhaps telling, question. She asked Trump’s defense team, “Why should this body not call Ambassador Bolton?” She said that “the reporting on Ambassador Bolton’s book suggests the President told Bolton directly that the aid would not be released until Ukraine announced the investigations the President desired,” contradicting public statements from Trump allies. “This dispute about material facts weighs in favor of calling additional witnesses with direct knowledge,” Murkowski wrote. Patrick Philbin, the deputy White House counsel, offered a procedural reply, saying that the House already had its chance to hear from Bolton and should have subpoenaed him during its inquiry, a oft-repeated Republican stance.
Even if Murkowski sides with Democrats, the most likely outcome is that “sometime on Friday or early Saturday,” as Glasser wrote, “the third Presidential-impeachment trial in American history is virtually certain to reach its preordained conclusion: a partisan acquittal by the Republican-controlled Senate, following a partisan impeachment by the Democratic-controlled House.”
You can follow all the developments on the live stream above.


newyorker--2020-01-31--Trump Impeachment Trial: The Senate Can Stop Pretending Now

Just like that , at precisely 11 p.m. on Thursday , minutes after the end of the ninth day of the Senate trial of Donald John Trump , Senator Lamar Alexander ended it .
In a statement tweeted out by his office , the Tennessee Republican said that the President was guilty of “ inappropriate ” pressure on Ukraine in the service of his own reëlection .
The House Democrats managing the case had “ proven ” it , but that was not enough to impeach and remove Trump from office .
Nor was it enough to continue the trial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ support calling witnesses .
He would not support any effort to obtain further evidence .
He did not want to hear even from John Bolton , the former Trump national-security adviser who is prepared to testify that the President directly admitted to the central allegation in the impeachment case .
Without Alexander ’ s support , the trial almost certainly can not continue .
Democrats do not have the fifty-one votes they need to call witnesses , and so , sometime in the coming days , the third Presidential-impeachment trial in American history @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conclusion : a partisan acquittal by the Republican-controlled Senate , following a partisan impeachment by the Democrat-controlled House .
In the end , it ’ s no small irony that Trump was saved from embarrassing public testimony against him by one of the last representatives of the Republican establishment that so recently scorned him—and for which the President himself has nothing but scorn .
Alexander declined to endorse Trump in 2016 , and had previously bucked the President on trade , health care , and his much vaunted border wall .
But as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after decades of service once characterized by bipartisanship , his most decisive final act will have been to do Trump an enormous favor .
Alexander ’ s mentor in politics , Senator Howard Baker , is remembered as the Republican leader who pursued the facts about Richard Nixon during Watergate and demanded answers to the key question of what Nixon knew and when he knew it .
Lamar Alexander will not have such an honor .
He will go down in history as the Republican senator whose choice at a pivotal moment confirmed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ G.O.P .
to the crass New York interloper in the White House .
Alexander ’ s late-night statement was no real surprise .
The “ closest friend ” to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—as McConnell made sure to point out to the Times , earlier this week—Alexander ended up where most Senate Republicans were always expected to end up .
He criticized Trump but refused to vote to remove him from office .
After making that decision , Alexander went a step further and said that there was no real need to hear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so far successfully ordered his Administration not to provide .
Even the last-minute revelation , on Sunday night , in the Times , of Bolton ’ s unpublished manuscript , could not sway Alexander ; he knew enough .
Right up until that oh-so-predictable end , though , Alexander played it coy .
Perhaps he was loving his final moment in the spotlight .
Perhaps he really was undecided .
As Thursday ’ s proceedings began , virtually all of the other senators had declared their positions , and only four Republicans appeared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Senators Mitt Romney and Susan Collins were likely to vote yes , which left Lisa Murkowski and Lamar Alexander .
Even if Murkowski , who pronounced herself Bolton- “ curious ” earlier in the week , would vote yes , Democrats needed both Murkowski and Alexander to get to fifty-one ; three Republican yeses would only yield a 50–50 tie .
And , as night fell on the capital , pretty much no one believed that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts , presiding over the trial , would be willing to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dinner break on Thursday ’ s long session of questions from the senators to the duelling legal teams , it was clear that it would all come down to Alexander .
Until this point , Alexander had been a complete “ cipher , ” as Chris Coons , the Delaware senator who talks with his Republican colleagues more than most Democrats , told me .
But just before dinner Alexander began to tip his hand , as he submitted his first question of the trial alongside two staunch defenders of Trump : Ted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Daines , of Montana .
The group asked the House managers to address the partisanship of Trump ’ s impeachment and contrast it with that of the Nixon and Clinton impeachment processes .
Alexander and Cruz together ?
You didn ’ t have to be a Senate veteran to have a sense of where things were headed .
During the recess that followed , Alexander spoke to reporters and promised that he would announce his vote in a few hours , when the question time was over .
Then he met privately with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long after the Senate reconvened , a reporter tweeted that Alexander had sent a Senate page to McConnell ’ s desk with a note , which McConnell then read and put in the pocket of his suit jacket—without ever looking at Alexander .
Soon after that , Murkowski sent a question to Chief Justice Roberts to read .
It seemed to reveal where she was leaning , at least : “ This dispute about material facts weighs in favor of calling additional witnesses with direct knowledge .
Why should this body not call @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Alexander , who probably had not received this much national media attention since 1996 , when his brief Presidential candidacy gained notice largely because of his distinctive flannel shirts and a campaign logo that consisted only of his first name and an exclamation point .
Reporters up in the Senate press gallery trained their eyes on Alexander and reported that he chatted amiably at various points with the Ohio Republican Rob Portman , the Washington State Democrat Maria Cantwell , and the President ’ s lawyers .
Alexander was observed reading a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ History , ” an account of the three previous Presidential impeachment proceedings in U.S. history .
( My husband , Peter Baker , wrote the chapter on the Clinton impeachment and trial ; I agree with Alexander ’ s endorsement that it is “ a very good book.
” ) After reading for a while , Alexander then turned to his seatmate , Mike Lee , of Utah , and shared a passage with him .
What did it all mean ?
Around 10 p.m. , Alexander and Murkowski joined with another fervent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Lindsey Graham , to pose a question to Trump ’ s defense team .
“ Isn ’ t it true , ” they asked , that , even if Bolton testified and everything he said was accurate , it “ still would not rise to the level of an impeachable offense , and that therefore his testimony would add nothing to the case ?
” Sensing where this was going , Trump ’ s lawyer Patrick Philbin hastened to agree .
“ It ’ s over , ” one Democratic senator said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the gallery .
And , indeed , it was .
The question offered a preview of the Alexander statement to follow .
A few minutes later , Jerry Nadler , the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee , gave a truncated closing statement that suggested that he , too , knew what was about to happen .
“ They are afraid of the witnesses , ” Nadler said .
“ They know Mr. Bolton and others will only strengthen the case.
” On that note , the trial adjourned at 10:41 p.m. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ office tweeted out his statement .
Murkowski did not join in , at least not yet .
“ I am going to reflect on what I ’ ve heard , reread my notes , and decide whether I need to hear more , ” she told reporters ; her office said she would announce her decision on Friday morning .
Her colleague Susan Collins , meanwhile , announced that she would vote yes for the witnesses .
Mitt Romney followed suit first thing Friday morning .
But how much did it matter ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. Senate , including the two previous Presidential-impeachment trials , had witnesses .
But Lamar Alexander has spoken .
Donald Trump ’ s stonewalling will succeed where Nixon ’ s failed .
Perhaps Alexander has done us all a favor : the trial that wasn ’ t really a trial will be over , and we will no longer have to listen to it .
The Senate can stop pretending .

Just like that, at precisely 11 p.m. on Thursday, minutes after the end of the ninth day of the Senate trial of Donald John Trump, Senator Lamar Alexander ended it. In a statement tweeted out by his office, the Tennessee Republican said that the President was guilty of “inappropriate” pressure on Ukraine in the service of his own reëlection. The House Democrats managing the case had “proven” it, but that was not enough to impeach and remove Trump from office. Nor was it enough to continue the trial, Alexander said. He would not support calling witnesses. He would not support any effort to obtain further evidence. He did not want to hear even from John Bolton, the former Trump national-security adviser who is prepared to testify that the President directly admitted to the central allegation in the impeachment case. Without Alexander’s support, the trial almost certainly cannot continue. Democrats do not have the fifty-one votes they need to call witnesses, and so, sometime in the coming days, the third Presidential-impeachment trial in American history is virtually certain to reach its preordained conclusion: a partisan acquittal by the Republican-controlled Senate, following a partisan impeachment by the Democrat-controlled House.
In the end, it’s no small irony that Trump was saved from embarrassing public testimony against him by one of the last representatives of the Republican establishment that so recently scorned him—and for which the President himself has nothing but scorn. Alexander declined to endorse Trump in 2016, and had previously bucked the President on trade, health care, and his much vaunted border wall. But as Alexander retires, later this year, after decades of service once characterized by bipartisanship, his most decisive final act will have been to do Trump an enormous favor. Alexander’s mentor in politics, Senator Howard Baker, is remembered as the Republican leader who pursued the facts about Richard Nixon during Watergate and demanded answers to the key question of what Nixon knew and when he knew it. Lamar Alexander will not have such an honor. He will go down in history as the Republican senator whose choice at a pivotal moment confirmed the complete and final capitulation of the G.O.P. to the crass New York interloper in the White House.
Alexander’s late-night statement was no real surprise. The “closest friend” to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—as McConnell made sure to point out to the Times, earlier this week—Alexander ended up where most Senate Republicans were always expected to end up. He criticized Trump but refused to vote to remove him from office. After making that decision, Alexander went a step further and said that there was no real need to hear any of the evidence that Trump has so far successfully ordered his Administration not to provide. Even the last-minute revelation, on Sunday night, in the Times, of Bolton’s unpublished manuscript, could not sway Alexander; he knew enough.
Right up until that oh-so-predictable end, though, Alexander played it coy. Perhaps he was loving his final moment in the spotlight. Perhaps he really was undecided. As Thursday’s proceedings began, virtually all of the other senators had declared their positions, and only four Republicans appeared to be genuinely considering voting for witnesses. Senators Mitt Romney and Susan Collins were likely to vote yes, which left Lisa Murkowski and Lamar Alexander. Even if Murkowski, who pronounced herself Bolton-“curious” earlier in the week, would vote yes, Democrats needed both Murkowski and Alexander to get to fifty-one; three Republican yeses would only yield a 50–50 tie. And, as night fell on the capital, pretty much no one believed that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, presiding over the trial, would be willing to cast the deciding vote.
By the dinner break on Thursday’s long session of questions from the senators to the duelling legal teams, it was clear that it would all come down to Alexander. Until this point, Alexander had been a complete “cipher,” as Chris Coons, the Delaware senator who talks with his Republican colleagues more than most Democrats, told me. But just before dinner Alexander began to tip his hand, as he submitted his first question of the trial alongside two staunch defenders of Trump: Ted Cruz, of Texas, and Steve Daines, of Montana. The group asked the House managers to address the partisanship of Trump’s impeachment and contrast it with that of the Nixon and Clinton impeachment processes. Alexander and Cruz together? You didn’t have to be a Senate veteran to have a sense of where things were headed.
During the recess that followed, Alexander spoke to reporters and promised that he would announce his vote in a few hours, when the question time was over. Then he met privately with Murkowski. Speculation grew feverish. Not long after the Senate reconvened, a reporter tweeted that Alexander had sent a Senate page to McConnell’s desk with a note, which McConnell then read and put in the pocket of his suit jacket—without ever looking at Alexander. Soon after that, Murkowski sent a question to Chief Justice Roberts to read. It seemed to reveal where she was leaning, at least: “This dispute about material facts weighs in favor of calling additional witnesses with direct knowledge. Why should this body not call Ambassador Bolton?”
The spotlight returned to Alexander, who probably had not received this much national media attention since 1996, when his brief Presidential candidacy gained notice largely because of his distinctive flannel shirts and a campaign logo that consisted only of his first name and an exclamation point. Reporters up in the Senate press gallery trained their eyes on Alexander and reported that he chatted amiably at various points with the Ohio Republican Rob Portman, the Washington State Democrat Maria Cantwell, and the President’s lawyers. Alexander was observed reading a book, “Impeachment: An American History,” an account of the three previous Presidential impeachment proceedings in U.S. history. (My husband, Peter Baker, wrote the chapter on the Clinton impeachment and trial; I agree with Alexander’s endorsement that it is “a very good book.”) After reading for a while, Alexander then turned to his seatmate, Mike Lee, of Utah, and shared a passage with him. What did it all mean?
Around 10 p.m., Alexander and Murkowski joined with another fervent Trump critic turned defender in the Senate, Lindsey Graham, to pose a question to Trump’s defense team. “Isn’t it true,” they asked, that, even if Bolton testified and everything he said was accurate, it “still would not rise to the level of an impeachable offense, and that therefore his testimony would add nothing to the case?” Sensing where this was going, Trump’s lawyer Patrick Philbin hastened to agree.
“It’s over,” one Democratic senator said to another, according to a reporter in the gallery. And, indeed, it was. The question offered a preview of the Alexander statement to follow. A few minutes later, Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, gave a truncated closing statement that suggested that he, too, knew what was about to happen. “They are afraid of the witnesses,” Nadler said. “They know Mr. Bolton and others will only strengthen the case.” On that note, the trial adjourned at 10:41 p.m. Nineteen minutes later, Alexander’s office tweeted out his statement. Murkowski did not join in, at least not yet. “I am going to reflect on what I’ve heard, reread my notes, and decide whether I need to hear more,” she told reporters; her office said she would announce her decision on Friday morning. Her colleague Susan Collins, meanwhile, announced that she would vote yes for the witnesses. Mitt Romney followed suit first thing Friday morning. But how much did it matter?
All fifteen previous impeachment trials in the U.S. Senate, including the two previous Presidential-impeachment trials, had witnesses. But Lamar Alexander has spoken. Donald Trump’s stonewalling will succeed where Nixon’s failed. Perhaps Alexander has done us all a favor: the trial that wasn’t really a trial will be over, and we will no longer have to listen to it. The Senate can stop pretending.


newyorker--2020-01-31--More Senate Rules Regarding Milk

More Senate Rules Regarding Milk

Senate rules do not prohibit a senator from sipping milk during his speech .
Senate rules do not prohibit a senator from chugging , slurping , guzzling , or lapping milk , either .
Water and milk are the only beverages permitted on the Senate floor .
Water may be mixed with milk in the event that a senator prefers two per cent over regular .
Milk may be mixed with water in the event that a senator likes his water “ murky.
” Senators must provide their own milk .
Sharing milk is encouraged , to help fellow-senators grow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ limit to the amount of milk a senator may consume on the Senate floor .
Senators can request a refill in the following manner : “ Please , page , fetch me another glass of milk.
” If a senator requires a large quantity of milk , he or someone on his staff should loosen his necktie first .
If a senator incurs a tummy ache , he is permitted one teaspoon of honey in his glass of warm milk .
Any unattended milk shall be poured down the sink of the nearest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the discarding of excess milk is permitted to drink it to avoid government waste .
The official temperature of milk in the United States Senate is “ chilled ” because George Washington once told Thomas Jefferson that the Senate “ cools the hot passions of the House , ” or something like that .
Milk on the Senate floor must be fresh .
Spoiled milk is considered to be cheese , a forbidden treat .
Senatorial milk may be derived from all ruminants , not just cows .
Senators can request non-bovine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Please , page , fetch me a glass of antelope milk.
” The Presiding Officer may determine that flavored milk , such as strawberry , is in order—but only for very special occasions , like Valentine ’ s Day or a senator ’ s birthday party .
Senators are encouraged to milk their filibusters for all they ’ re worth .
Senators are discouraged from crying over spilled milk .
During impeachment proceedings , Senate rules do not prohibit a senator from sporting a milk mustache , smiling , and waving goodbye to @ @ @

As Democrats and Republicans bitterly fought over the rules that would govern the impeachment trial of President Trump, word escaped that just two beverages would be allowed during the marathon chamber sessions: water and milk. —NPR
Shortly before Tuesday’s trial session got underway, Sen. Mitt Romney (R., Utah) got busted by the Senate floor staff for bringing a bottle of chocolate milk into the chamber. —Wall Street Journal
Senate rules do not prohibit a senator from sipping milk during his speech.
Senate rules do not prohibit a senator from chugging, slurping, guzzling, or lapping milk, either.
Water and milk are the only beverages permitted on the Senate floor.
Water may be mixed with milk in the event that a senator prefers two per cent over regular.
Milk may be mixed with water in the event that a senator likes his water “murky.”
Senators must provide their own milk.
Sharing milk is encouraged, to help fellow-senators grow big and strong.
There is no limit to the amount of milk a senator may consume on the Senate floor.
Senators can request a refill in the following manner: “Please, page, fetch me another glass of milk.”
If a senator requires a large quantity of milk, he or someone on his staff should loosen his necktie first.
If a senator incurs a tummy ache, he is permitted one teaspoon of honey in his glass of warm milk.
Well-behaved senators may request a colorful bendy straw.
Any unattended milk shall be poured down the sink of the nearest Senate restroom.
The Senate page responsible for the discarding of excess milk is permitted to drink it to avoid government waste.
The official temperature of milk in the United States Senate is “chilled” because George Washington once told Thomas Jefferson that the Senate “cools the hot passions of the House,” or something like that.
Milk on the Senate floor must be fresh. Spoiled milk is considered to be cheese, a forbidden treat.
Senatorial milk may be derived from all ruminants, not just cows.
Senators can request non-bovine refreshments in the following manner: “Please, page, fetch me a glass of antelope milk.”
The Presiding Officer may determine that flavored milk, such as strawberry, is in order—but only for very special occasions, like Valentine’s Day or a senator’s birthday party.
Plant-based milk alternatives are juice.
Senators are encouraged to milk their filibusters for all they’re worth.
Senators are discouraged from crying over spilled milk.
During impeachment proceedings, Senate rules do not prohibit a senator from sporting a milk mustache, smiling, and waving goodbye to the President.


newyorker--2020-02-03--Brexit’s Passport to Nowhere

Brexit’s Passport to Nowhere

My British passport , which was issued in 2011 , has on its burgundy cover an image of the coat of arms of the United Kingdom , incorporating a lion and a unicorn , along with these words lettered in gold : “ European Union/United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
” My son ’ s British passport , which was issued last September , is the same color and bears the same crest but has different lettering .
On his , the words “ European Union ” have vanished , the severing of ties to Europe having begun @ @ @ @ @ @ @ E.U.
, as it did at 11 p.m. on Friday , January 31st .
Last August , Nigel Farage , the leader of the Brexit Party , tweeted an image of himself holding aloft his new , non-E.U.-marked passport , along with the triumphal words “ We got our passports back !
” By the time I apply for my passport to be renewed , next year , another design change will have been made .
My new passport will be blue , as British passports were until 1988 , when the burgundy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of almost every other member country of the E.U .
The reintroduction of the blue passport , which was announced in 2017 but has only recently come into effect , has been greeted by Brexiteers as a welcome restoration and a powerful symbol .
The Sun newspaper , a right-wing tabloid , had joined with others to champion its return by campaigning outside Westminster with a blue passport the size of a billboard .
Theresa May , then Prime Minister , tweeted that the “ iconic ” color would return , calling the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ independence and sovereignty—symbolizing our citizenship of a proud , great nation.
” Never mind that the royal crest on the passport bears two French phrases— “ honi soit qui mal y pense ” ( “ shamed be he who thinks evil of it ” ) and “ Dieu et mon droit ” ( “ God and my right ” ) —relics of a time when the King of England also laid claim to the French crown , and evidence of the mutable character of sovereignty .
For those Britons who opposed the Brexit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ passport is somewhat different : it ’ s a stark reminder that they and their children have been deprived of European citizenship .
Britons no longer have the right to live , work , and study in any of the countries of the European Union .
Nor will Britain be so easily enriched by the many hopeful Europeans who made their homes in what they believed was a welcoming country .
On Friday evening , only a few hours before the 11 p.m. deadline , I used my passport to leave the U.K. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the last time .
Gatwick Airport , with its bustle and commerce , hardly offers the most elevated environment for what felt like such a momentous transition : with travellers navigating between newsagents and Pret-A-Manger outlets while scanning the departures board for gate information , the place has only slightly more glamour and resonance than the Port Authority Bus Terminal .
Still , that ’ s its virtue : principally serving continental Europe , Gatwick is both an international airport and a regional one , filled with travellers who are accustomed—whether through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regard not just their native country but all of Europe as their rightful home .
Standing in line to hand my passport over to the flight attendant before boarding my flight , I noticed that most of my fellow-travellers held burgundy passports—though whether they were British , Spanish , French , or Dutch , I couldn ’ t have determined without snooping .
For now , nothing much will change , practically speaking , for British passport holders coming in and out of the E.U .
; until the end of an eleven-month @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , burgundy or blue , will continue to join the E.U .
line at passport control .
Still , the change has happened , whether it ’ s palpable or not .
On Friday night , for the last time , we were all just Europeans .
In the thousand three hundred and seventeen days that passed between the Brexit referendum and Friday the 31st of January , more than three hundred and fifty thousand Britons sought to confirm their identities as Europeans in the most practical way : by applying for citizenship @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remain in the E.U.
, on grounds of either residency or descent .
The number of Britons applying for an Irish passport for the first time ballooned from just over seven thousand in 2015 , before the referendum , to almost fifty-five thousand in 2019 .
It ’ s sometimes argued that because Britain is an island nation , decisively separated from continental Europe by the English Channel , its attachment to the European project must always have been fatally compromised .
This argument ignores the fact that Ireland manages to fully embrace @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nation decisively separated from continental Europe by the Irish Sea , the landmass of Britain , and the English Channel .
Brexit is Britain ’ s choice , but it was not necessarily Britain ’ s destiny .
With the withdrawal from the E.U .
finally enacted , the many social and economic consequences of the Brexit vote will now begin to unfold as reality rather than promise or threat .
One early casualty of the Brexit decision has been De La Rue , a specialist printing company established almost two hundred years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ founder , Thomas de la Rue , a printer originally from Guernsey , in the Channel Islands—has printed British passports for decades .
In 2018 , however , the company lost out on a contract to print the new blue passports , worth six hundred and thirty-six million dollars .
Rather than being printed in Britain , the blue passports are being manufactured by Gemalto , a Franco-Dutch company .
De La Rue ’ s profits have collapsed ; its C.E.O .
has resigned , and the company has warned that it may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it turns out , are not quite symbols of British sovereignty or of Britain ’ s status as a proud , great nation .
Rather , they are evidence of the pragmatic and sometimes harsh realities of conducting business in a global marketplace .
They are also a reminder of the necessary humility with which Britain as a nation—no less than its citizens as individuals—must find a new , post-Brexit identity .

My British passport, which was issued in 2011, has on its burgundy cover an image of the coat of arms of the United Kingdom, incorporating a lion and a unicorn, along with these words lettered in gold: “European Union/United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.” My son’s British passport, which was issued last September, is the same color and bears the same crest but has different lettering. On his, the words “European Union” have vanished, the severing of ties to Europe having begun even before the U.K. officially departed the E.U., as it did at 11 p.m. on Friday, January 31st. Last August, Nigel Farage, the leader of the Brexit Party, tweeted an image of himself holding aloft his new, non-E.U.-marked passport, along with the triumphal words “We got our passports back!” By the time I apply for my passport to be renewed, next year, another design change will have been made. My new passport will be blue, as British passports were until 1988, when the burgundy cover was introduced to conform with those of almost every other member country of the E.U.
The reintroduction of the blue passport, which was announced in 2017 but has only recently come into effect, has been greeted by Brexiteers as a welcome restoration and a powerful symbol. The Sun newspaper, a right-wing tabloid, had joined with others to champion its return by campaigning outside Westminster with a blue passport the size of a billboard. Theresa May, then Prime Minister, tweeted that the “iconic” color would return, calling the U.K. passport “an expression of our independence and sovereignty—symbolizing our citizenship of a proud, great nation.” Never mind that the royal crest on the passport bears two French phrases—“honi soit qui mal y pense” (“shamed be he who thinks evil of it”) and “Dieu et mon droit” (“God and my right”)—relics of a time when the King of England also laid claim to the French crown, and evidence of the mutable character of sovereignty. For those Britons who opposed the Brexit vote, the symbolism of the blue passport is somewhat different: it’s a stark reminder that they and their children have been deprived of European citizenship. Britons no longer have the right to live, work, and study in any of the countries of the European Union. Nor will Britain be so easily enriched by the many hopeful Europeans who made their homes in what they believed was a welcoming country.
On Friday evening, only a few hours before the 11 p.m. deadline, I used my passport to leave the U.K. as a citizen of the E.U. for the last time. Gatwick Airport, with its bustle and commerce, hardly offers the most elevated environment for what felt like such a momentous transition: with travellers navigating between newsagents and Pret-A-Manger outlets while scanning the departures board for gate information, the place has only slightly more glamour and resonance than the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Still, that’s its virtue: principally serving continental Europe, Gatwick is both an international airport and a regional one, filled with travellers who are accustomed—whether through work, education, or leisure pursuits—to regard not just their native country but all of Europe as their rightful home. Standing in line to hand my passport over to the flight attendant before boarding my flight, I noticed that most of my fellow-travellers held burgundy passports—though whether they were British, Spanish, French, or Dutch, I couldn’t have determined without snooping. For now, nothing much will change, practically speaking, for British passport holders coming in and out of the E.U.; until the end of an eleven-month transition period, holders of U.K. passports, burgundy or blue, will continue to join the E.U. line at passport control. Still, the change has happened, whether it’s palpable or not. On Friday night, for the last time, we were all just Europeans.
In the thousand three hundred and seventeen days that passed between the Brexit referendum and Friday the 31st of January, more than three hundred and fifty thousand Britons sought to confirm their identities as Europeans in the most practical way: by applying for citizenship in one of the twenty-seven countries that remain in the E.U., on grounds of either residency or descent. The number of Britons applying for an Irish passport for the first time ballooned from just over seven thousand in 2015, before the referendum, to almost fifty-five thousand in 2019. It’s sometimes argued that because Britain is an island nation, decisively separated from continental Europe by the English Channel, its attachment to the European project must always have been fatally compromised. This argument ignores the fact that Ireland manages to fully embrace its European identity despite being an island nation decisively separated from continental Europe by the Irish Sea, the landmass of Britain, and the English Channel. Brexit is Britain’s choice, but it was not necessarily Britain’s destiny.
With the withdrawal from the E.U. finally enacted, the many social and economic consequences of the Brexit vote will now begin to unfold as reality rather than promise or threat. One early casualty of the Brexit decision has been De La Rue, a specialist printing company established almost two hundred years ago. De La Rue—named for its founder, Thomas de la Rue, a printer originally from Guernsey, in the Channel Islands—has printed British passports for decades. In 2018, however, the company lost out on a contract to print the new blue passports, worth six hundred and thirty-six million dollars. Rather than being printed in Britain, the blue passports are being manufactured by Gemalto, a Franco-Dutch company. De La Rue’s profits have collapsed; its C.E.O. has resigned, and the company has warned that it may not survive. Our new blue passports, it turns out, are not quite symbols of British sovereignty or of Britain’s status as a proud, great nation. Rather, they are evidence of the pragmatic and sometimes harsh realities of conducting business in a global marketplace. They are also a reminder of the necessary humility with which Britain as a nation—no less than its citizens as individuals—must find a new, post-Brexit identity.


newyorker--2020-02-03--Jill Lepore on Democracy in Peril, Then and Now

In the nineteen-thirties , authoritarian regimes were on the rise around the world—as they are again today—and democratic governments that @ @ @ @ @ First World War were toppling .
“ American democracy , too , staggered , ” @ @ @ @ @ New Yorker , “ weakened by corruption , monopoly , apathy , inequality , political @ @ @ @ @ injustice , unemployment , even starvation.
” Lepore talks with David Remnick about how Americans @ @ @ @ @ and how we might apply those lessons in a new era that poses similar problems @

Photograph from Bettmann / Getty
In the nineteen-thirties, authoritarian regimes were on the rise around the world—as they are again today—and democratic governments that came into existence after the First World War were toppling. “American democracy, too, staggered,” Jill Lepore writes in The New Yorker, “weakened by corruption, monopoly, apathy, inequality, political violence, hucksterism, racial injustice, unemployment, even starvation.” Lepore talks with David Remnick about how Americans rallied to save democracy, and how we might apply those lessons in a new era that poses similar problems.


newyorker--2020-02-03--Iowa Primary Election 2020: Live Results, Maps, and Analysis

© Do Not Sell My Personal Information may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our @ @ @ @ @ Affiliate Partnerships with retailers .
The material on this site may not be reproduced , @ @ @ @ @ or otherwise used , except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast .

The state’s Presidential caucus is February 3rd. The congressional primary is June 2nd. Follow the latest results ahead of the 2020 Presidential election.


newyorker--2020-02-03--The Neuroscience of Picking a Presidential Candidate

In the lab , a broad picture window that ’ s actually a one-way mirror looks into the testing room , where subjects are wired up to sensors as they watch videos .
The perimeter of the testing room itself is lined with small carrels , each with its own computer workstation .
A Webcam is perched atop each monitor .
I had already gone through a demonstration of SPARK Neuro ’ s system myself , watching a couple of old Super Bowl ads and a grainy clip of the movie “ Crash , ” and had seen , precisely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attention .
“ According to what I ’ ve seen so far , ” Gerrol said , “ it seems like you feel empathy and emotion in strong ways , but you do not seem like someone who has massive highs and lows.
” It was an anodyne analysis that didn ’ t tell me anything I didn ’ t know , but it wasn ’ t supposed to .
The more interesting test would happen when the dozen volunteers began to react to the candidates onstage in Des Moines .
To read @ @ @ @ @ @ @ plastic cap outfitted with an array of highly conductive metal electrodes was placed over the participants ’ heads as they concentrated—or not—on a relaxing , intentionally monotonous beach scene playing on the screen in front of them .
They could watch waves forming in the middle distance and hear surf lap the shore .
Once the electrodes were in place , the electroencephalogram ( EEG ) cap began to broadcast electrical signals—brain waves—every four milliseconds , establishing each participant ’ s baseline : essentially , the brain at rest .
This would give @ @ @ @ @ @ @ intensity of a participant ’ s reactions once that tranquil scene was replaced by the rough-and-tumble of the debate .
“ Our brains share a lot in common with how we process information , but we ’ re not all coming into it at the same starting point , ” Gerrol explained .
“ Maybe you ’ re having a good day .
Maybe you ’ re having a bad day .
Maybe you just had way too much coffee .
And so it ’ s really important to understand each person ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the difference from that baseline becomes much more meaningful than some absolute scale.
” The researchers also clipped a heart-rate monitor to each person ’ s left earlobe to keep track of vascular changes and attached a galvanic-skin-response ( GSR ) sensor to their middle and index fingers to measure sweat production , the way a lie detector does .
( Sweaty hands typically occur when someone is anxious .
Sweat conducts electricity ; the greater the signal coming from the GSR , the greater the arousal . )
As the participants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ researchers used an eye tracker to see , instantly , exactly where on the screen they were looking , while a Webcam observed tiny , nearly imperceptible changes in their facial expressions .
According to Gerrol , “ EEG makes up the majority of the signal , GSR contributes to converging evidence around emotional arousal , and facial expressions occasionally help.
” How SPARK Neuro ’ s proprietary algorithm weights all of this data , Gerrol said , is the “ secret sauce.
” “ It ’ s the way that we combine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ peripheral-nervous-system activity , which can provide insights about the nature of emotions , ” he told me .
“ Sometimes that is clear joy or clear fear or clear anger .
However , keep in mind we are measuring emotions , not like versus dislike .
Sometimes a politician will purposefully evoke fear as part of their strategy , perhaps scaring people , for example , about war and its consequences or about terrorism .
Or they will use anger as a strategic rhetorical device , perhaps evoking anger at a lack of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ words , even if we read anger , that does not mean that the person is angry at the candidate ; it very well may mean that the candidate did a good job of riling them up on a topic they care about.
” Around midnight , when the debate was over , a couple of the volunteers stayed behind to talk with Gerrol and me .
We had already seen a graph of the participants ’ reactions ; they had not .
Michael Bradley Cohen , a thirty-three-year-old actor and licensed New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ white , had snapped to attention when Bernie Sanders spoke and flatlined when it was Biden ’ s turn .
“ I came here trying to hold my top three candidates—Buttigieg , Sanders , and Warren , in that order—in the same place in my head , ” Cohen told us .
But the data appeared to show something else .
His strongest reactions were to Warren , Sanders , and then Buttigieg .
When Warren , in an advertisement , spoke about a wealth tax , she really got Cohen ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had been more attuned to a Buttigieg ad that , comparatively , had not elicited much of an emotional response .
During the debate , Cohen ’ s reaction to Warren ’ s answer to a question about her fitness to serve as Commander-in-Chief showed a sustained set of spikes , each one climbing higher as she continued to talk , like notes moving up a musical staff .
When Gerrol pointed this out , Cohen was , as Gerrol predicted , suddenly introspective .
“ I think it was actually really poignant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s voice on the stage .
I know she spoke after Senator Klobuchar , but to hear her speak about this in a way that I trusted felt really good at the time .
Yeah , it showed up .
That ’ s what it was .
And probably what we ’ re also witnessing is that I had a bit of a glow , like , ‘ Oh , there ’ s the girl in class that I like , ’ and that might also be what was picked up on.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ black , recently finished a master ’ s degree in public health .
She arrived that evening already a Warren supporter , and it showed in the data .
When Warren spoke , Kernizan ’ s attention moved from her baseline of two all the way up to eight and a half , a jump that Gerrol found especially telling .
“ I mean , that ’ s what I might expect to see if you were watching a horror movie , ” he said , “ not something like a debate , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ didn ’ t find it dry at all .
“ This is our future , ” she said .
“ I mean , this is all so exciting .
We ’ re at a point where , I mean , hopefully , things will change and maybe we get a different leader , and I think we ’ re at a point where we can get somebody that we really believe in.
” She was paying special attention to Warren ’ s views on foreign policy , she said , so she would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and family members she hoped to convince to vote for Warren .
But Kernizan was also attuned to some of the other candidates as well , like Biden , since there was a chance that he would be the nominee , and Sanders , whom she supported in 2016 .
That Cohen and Kernizan were not especially moved by the political ads didn ’ t surprise Gerrol .
“ My impression , having studied thousands and thousands of ads , is that political ads are especially boring.
” The Bloomberg ad , Cohen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for President in 1988 .
As Cohen watched it , his attention dropped to his baseline .
A few days after we had gone through this exercise , I got an e-mail from Gerrol telling me about a third participant , whose attention graph looked similar to Cohen ’ s and Kernizan ’ s , with significant surges of attention when Sanders and Warren were speaking .
The difference was that , unlike Cohen and Kernizan , that participant ’ s attention was an expression of his antipathy : Sanders and Warren were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a perfect illustration of the danger of conflating attention with affection .
We had seen something similar , too , when Cohen ’ s graph showed his attention picking up every time one of the candidates mentioned Trump .
“ Yeah , when we hear the name Voldemort , ” Cohen said , “ we all have a response .
”

During the 2016 Presidential primary, SPARK Neuro, a company that uses brain waves and other physiological signals to delve into the subliminal mind, decided to assess people’s reactions to the Democratic candidates. The company had not yet launched, but its C.E.O., Spencer Gerrol, was eager to refine its technology. In a test designed to uncover how people are actually feeling, as opposed to how they say they are feeling, SPARK Neuro observed, among other things, that the cadence of Bernie Sanders’s voice grabbed people’s attention, while Hillary Clinton’s measured tones were a bore. A few months later, Katz Media Group, a radio-and-television-ad representative firm, hired Gerrol’s group to study a cohort of undecided voters in Florida and Pennsylvania. The company’s chief marketing officer, Stacey Schulman, picked SPARK Neuro because its algorithm took into account an array of neurological and physiological signals. “Subconscious emotion underlies conscious decision-making, which is interesting for the marketing world but critically important in the political realm,” Schulman told me. “This measures how the body is responding, and it happens before you articulate it.”
Neuromarketing—gauging consumers’ feelings and beliefs by observing and measuring spontaneous, unmediated physiological responses to an ad or a sales pitch—is not new. “For a while, using neuroscience to do marketing was something of a fad, but it has been applied to commerce for a good ten years now,” Schulman said. Nielsen, the storied media-insight company, has a neuromarketing division. Google has been promoting what it calls “emotion analytics” to advertisers. A company called Realeyes claims to have trained artificial intelligence to “read emotions” through Webcams; another called Affectiva says that it “provides deep insight into unfiltered and unbiased consumer emotional response to brand content” through what it calls “facial coding.” Similarly, ZimGo Polling, a South Korean company that operates in the United States, has paired facial-recognition technology with “automated emotion understanding” and natural language processing to give “insights into how people feel about real-time issues,” and “thereby enables a virtual 24/7 town hall meeting with citizens.” This is crucial, according to the C.E.O. of ZimGo’s parent company, because “people vote on emotion.”
SPARK Neuro’s study of swing-state voters was held two weeks before the 2016 Presidential election. “We would scan people’s brains as they were watching different kinds of media and watch their emotion and attention responses as interpreted by our algorithms being read straight from their brain,” Gerrol said. Not only did SPARK’s research find that a number of people who self-identified as undecided were actually connecting with Donald Trump on an emotional level; it also indicated that many others who claimed to be undecided were just too embarrassed or uncomfortable making their pro-Trump feelings known. “Some of these undecided voters would see that they had a strong emotional reaction to, let’s say, Trump talking about building the wall,” Gerrol said, “and they would suddenly become much more introspective.” If SPARK Neuro’s algorithm was accurate—which Gerrol doubted at the time—then Clinton’s chances to win were far less likely than had been widely predicted.
In January, 2017, two months after Clinton’s loss—which was a win, of sorts, for SPARK Neuro’s math—Gerrol launched the company, with the backing of a number of deep-pocket investors, including Peter Thiel, Michael Eisner, and Will Smith. Gerrol’s clients, for the most part, are major consumer brands. SPARK Neuro, for example, tested Nike’s controversial Colin Kaepernick ad, with its “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything” tag, and found that it played well with the buying public. (The advertisement won an Emmy Award.) The company also works with film companies, testing movie trailers to understand where they elicit strong emotion and where attention flags, since trailers can make or break box-office sales.) “To be a blockbuster hit, what we’re looking for is actually commonalities across groups where there’s what we call high degree of neural synchrony,” Gerrol told me. “In other words, my brain waves and your brain waves are in synch.”
So far, SPARK Neuro has never worked for a particular candidate, though Gerrol told me that he’s interested in the “potential application of our work in the political domain.” Last June, SPARK Neuro put together a small group of likely Democratic voters to watch an abridged video reel of the primary season’s first round of debates. The number of Presidential contenders had swelled to twenty, and Gerrol and his team were curious if SPARK Neuro’s approach could tell them something that the polls—which at the time had Joe Biden at the top—were missing. They were unsurprised that a majority of participants, when asked who they were likely to vote for, said Biden. But the data showed something else: Elizabeth Warren, who at the time was a distant second or third, had engaged participants more than the other candidates, and Pete Buttigieg, who respondents ranked as their sixth choice, was right behind her. Three months later, Warren briefly eclipsed Biden in a number of national polls, and, two months after that, Buttigieg emerged as a top-tier candidate.
Traditional political polls, which are a small part of the three-billion-dollar public-opinion-research industry, are often widely divergent and, as we saw in 2016, unreliable. One reason for this, according to Gerrol, is that people tend to say what they think others want to hear—Gerrol called this the “social desirability bias, the innate desire to be liked”—or they are susceptible to “groupthink,” or they say nothing because they don’t want to be judged for their beliefs. “This is especially problematic in politics,” he said, “hence all the errors in polling and all of the mistakes in campaign decisions.” Subconscious feelings—what SPARK Neuro is after—are considered more reliable, because they can’t be easily gamed or swayed by outside forces. “We’re not really conscious of our emotions in real time,” Gerrol said. “Our algorithm is not reading minds. It’s understanding if you are paying more attention or less attention, and if you’re having stronger or weaker emotions, and to some degree what the nature of those emotions are.”
SPARK Neuro’s headquarters, in an aged Art Deco building on the West Side of Manhattan, has the spare, mildly transient look of other startups: an open industrial space broken up by playful yellow, red, and teal stanchions, a comfy sofa, piles of snacks, and long tables that serve as desks for the company’s forty employees. My visit had been timed to correspond to the night of the most recent Democratic debate, in Iowa, so I could observe the marriage of neuroscience and politics in real time. A few minutes before the nine o’clock start, twelve volunteers, all of whom Gerrol had recruited for this demonstration from the company’s Facebook page, began to appear. They were all likely Democratic voters, between the ages of twenty-six and seventy-four, from Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. They were going to watch the first twenty minutes of the debate, and then view campaign ads from Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, and Michael Bloomberg. “It’s worth me reiterating that emotion is just one of the metrics we care about,” Gerrol told me. “Attention is our other critical metric.”
In the lab, a broad picture window that’s actually a one-way mirror looks into the testing room, where subjects are wired up to sensors as they watch videos. The perimeter of the testing room itself is lined with small carrels, each with its own computer workstation. A Webcam is perched atop each monitor. I had already gone through a demonstration of SPARK Neuro’s system myself, watching a couple of old Super Bowl ads and a grainy clip of the movie “Crash,” and had seen, precisely, the peaks and valleys of my attention. “According to what I’ve seen so far,” Gerrol said, “it seems like you feel empathy and emotion in strong ways, but you do not seem like someone who has massive highs and lows.” It was an anodyne analysis that didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know, but it wasn’t supposed to. The more interesting test would happen when the dozen volunteers began to react to the candidates onstage in Des Moines.
To read emotions and gauge attention, a tight plastic cap outfitted with an array of highly conductive metal electrodes was placed over the participants’ heads as they concentrated—or not—on a relaxing, intentionally monotonous beach scene playing on the screen in front of them. They could watch waves forming in the middle distance and hear surf lap the shore. Once the electrodes were in place, the electroencephalogram (EEG) cap began to broadcast electrical signals—brain waves—every four milliseconds, establishing each participant’s baseline: essentially, the brain at rest. This would give the researchers a way to measure the intensity of a participant’s reactions once that tranquil scene was replaced by the rough-and-tumble of the debate. “Our brains share a lot in common with how we process information, but we’re not all coming into it at the same starting point,” Gerrol explained. “Maybe you’re having a good day. Maybe you’re having a bad day. Maybe you just had way too much coffee. And so it’s really important to understand each person’s starting point, so the change in the difference from that baseline becomes much more meaningful than some absolute scale.”
The researchers also clipped a heart-rate monitor to each person’s left earlobe to keep track of vascular changes and attached a galvanic-skin-response (GSR) sensor to their middle and index fingers to measure sweat production, the way a lie detector does. (Sweaty hands typically occur when someone is anxious. Sweat conducts electricity; the greater the signal coming from the GSR, the greater the arousal.) As the participants looked at the computer monitor, the researchers used an eye tracker to see, instantly, exactly where on the screen they were looking, while a Webcam observed tiny, nearly imperceptible changes in their facial expressions. According to Gerrol, “EEG makes up the majority of the signal, GSR contributes to converging evidence around emotional arousal, and facial expressions occasionally help.”
How SPARK Neuro’s proprietary algorithm weights all of this data, Gerrol said, is the “secret sauce.” “It’s the way that we combine different sensors, from brain activity to peripheral-nervous-system activity, which can provide insights about the nature of emotions,” he told me. “Sometimes that is clear joy or clear fear or clear anger. However, keep in mind we are measuring emotions, not like versus dislike. Sometimes a politician will purposefully evoke fear as part of their strategy, perhaps scaring people, for example, about war and its consequences or about terrorism. Or they will use anger as a strategic rhetorical device, perhaps evoking anger at a lack of action on climate change. In other words, even if we read anger, that does not mean that the person is angry at the candidate; it very well may mean that the candidate did a good job of riling them up on a topic they care about.”
Around midnight, when the debate was over, a couple of the volunteers stayed behind to talk with Gerrol and me. We had already seen a graph of the participants’ reactions; they had not. Michael Bradley Cohen, a thirty-three-year-old actor and licensed New York City tour guide, who is white, had snapped to attention when Bernie Sanders spoke and flatlined when it was Biden’s turn. “I came here trying to hold my top three candidates—Buttigieg, Sanders, and Warren, in that order—in the same place in my head,” Cohen told us. But the data appeared to show something else. His strongest reactions were to Warren, Sanders, and then Buttigieg. When Warren, in an advertisement, spoke about a wealth tax, she really got Cohen’s attention, even though he thought he had been more attuned to a Buttigieg ad that, comparatively, had not elicited much of an emotional response. During the debate, Cohen’s reaction to Warren’s answer to a question about her fitness to serve as Commander-in-Chief showed a sustained set of spikes, each one climbing higher as she continued to talk, like notes moving up a musical staff. When Gerrol pointed this out, Cohen was, as Gerrol predicted, suddenly introspective. “I think it was actually really poignant to me, hearing a woman’s voice on the stage. I know she spoke after Senator Klobuchar, but to hear her speak about this in a way that I trusted felt really good at the time. Yeah, it showed up. That’s what it was. And probably what we’re also witnessing is that I had a bit of a glow, like, ‘Oh, there’s the girl in class that I like,’ and that might also be what was picked up on.”


newyorker--2020-02-03--Oscars 2020 Spotlight: The Best Actress Nominees

Before we discuss this year ’ s Oscar-nominated actresses , let ’ s take a moment to remember those whom Julie Andrews might call the “ egregiously overlooked.
” This year ’ s biggest snub ( a word to be used advisedly ) was Jennifer Lopez , who brought star power and cunning to “ Hustlers.
” Why didn ’ t she land in the best-supporting-actress race , after months of being hyped as a front-runner ?
It ’ s possible that Academy members dismissed “ Hustlers ” as a trashy stripper movie , when in fact it has less @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with “ GoodFellas , ” a film that also portrays the thrill of the outlaw life and the betrayals that come when the jig is up .
The difference , crucially , is the type of people doing the glamorous lawbreaking , and at whose expense .
A ring of pole dancers scamming Wall Street guys out of their wealth may not seem like prestige fare , but that ’ s what was dispiriting about this year ’ s nominations : a lack of imagination about what an “ Oscar movie ” looks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nyong ’ o ( “ Us ” ) , Awkwafina ( “ The Farewell ” ) , and the cast of “ Parasite , ” leaving Cynthia Erivo , of “ Harriet , ” as the sole performer of color in any acting category .
The fact that she plays Harriet Tubman , an unimpeachable historical figure , harks back to the days when Sidney Poitier was garlanded for playing “ exceptional ” black men , the kind that white Hollywood felt comfortable embracing .
The Academy has radically changed since the sixties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of policing for acceptability , the end result of which is sameness .
Just look at “ Judy , ” for which Renée Zellweger appears to have the best-actress prize in the bag .
It ’ s the kind of performance that attracts trophies like moths : a bewigged impersonation of a legendary show-biz figure , with extra points for singing and self-destruction .
( See : Rami Malek in “ Bohemian Rhapsody.
” ) Oscar prognosticators will tell you that the acting categories are all locked up for Zellweger , Laura Dern @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
That may be so .
But remember that , at this time last year , Glenn Close was on a smooth sail to victory , and the last person to expect Olivia Colman onstage was Olivia Colman .
Can anyone cause an upset this year ?
Since her breakout role , in the 2015 Broadway revival of “ The Color Purple , ” Erivo has been on an ascent .
Her casting in Kasi Lemmons ’ s bio-pic initially received some backlash : Should a British actress be the one to embody @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Erivo ’ s portrayal of Harriet Tubman has all the strength and gravity you ’ d expect .
The film rarely strays from the familiar beats of historical drama , and it can feel more like a monument than a movie .
Similar to “ The Imitation Game ” and “ The Danish Girl , ” “ Harriet ” falls into a subcategory of bio-pics that seem to exist to do justice to a historical pioneer—and the world-changing bravery of the subjects tends to give an Oscar sheen to the actors playing them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but Tubman deserves more than what a film can give her .
She deserves the twenty-dollar bill .
Johansson is a polarizing performer , even aside from the controversies that often attend her interviews .
Her mahogany-voiced sensuousness comes hand in hand with a stilted quality that can make her seem remote .
Both qualities are at work in Noah Baumbach ’ s gutting film , in which she plays Nicole , an actress trying to restart her life amid an ugly divorce from Charlie ( Adam Driver ) .
In the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gives Johansson a stunner of a monologue , in which Nicole tells her divorce lawyer ( Laura Dern ) the story of her marriage and her compromised selfhood .
But , as the film goes on , its bravura moments go increasingly to Driver : while Nicole finds stability , Charlie falls apart ( and sings a Sondheim showstopper ) .
This is good news for her character , but it ’ s an anti-climax for Johansson .
Still , her performance is full of lovely grace notes , like the single tear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lies in bed .
At twenty-five , Ronan is on her fourth Oscar nomination , putting her ahead of Kirk Douglas , who in his hundred and three years has managed only three nods .
In Greta Gerwig ’ s film , Ronan plays Jo March , Louisa May Alcott ’ s beloved , strong-willed heroine .
Gerwig ’ s adaptation gives Jo a challenging assignment : she must keep pace with her unpredictable heart , but she ’ s also a shrewd and forward-thinking author , trapped in an era incapable of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Women , they have minds and they have souls as well as just hearts , ” she says in one scene .
“ And they ’ ve got ambition , and they ’ ve got talent as well as just beauty.
” Ronan makes these pronouncements feel lived-in and almost modern in their neurosis , without betraying the trappings of the period .

Before we discuss this year’s Oscar-nominated actresses, let’s take a moment to remember those whom Julie Andrews might call the “egregiously overlooked.” This year’s biggest snub (a word to be used advisedly) was Jennifer Lopez, who brought star power and cunning to “Hustlers.” Why didn’t she land in the best-supporting-actress race, after months of being hyped as a front-runner? It’s possible that Academy members dismissed “Hustlers” as a trashy stripper movie, when in fact it has less in common with “Showgirls” than with “GoodFellas,” a film that also portrays the thrill of the outlaw life and the betrayals that come when the jig is up. The difference, crucially, is the type of people doing the glamorous lawbreaking, and at whose expense. A ring of pole dancers scamming Wall Street guys out of their wealth may not seem like prestige fare, but that’s what was dispiriting about this year’s nominations: a lack of imagination about what an “Oscar movie” looks like.
Also left out were Lupita Nyong’o (“Us”), Awkwafina (“The Farewell”), and the cast of “Parasite,” leaving Cynthia Erivo, of “Harriet,” as the sole performer of color in any acting category. The fact that she plays Harriet Tubman, an unimpeachable historical figure, harks back to the days when Sidney Poitier was garlanded for playing “exceptional” black men, the kind that white Hollywood felt comfortable embracing. The Academy has radically changed since the sixties, but there is still an undercurrent of policing for acceptability, the end result of which is sameness. Just look at “Judy,” for which Renée Zellweger appears to have the best-actress prize in the bag. It’s the kind of performance that attracts trophies like moths: a bewigged impersonation of a legendary show-biz figure, with extra points for singing and self-destruction. (See: Rami Malek in “Bohemian Rhapsody.”)
Oscar prognosticators will tell you that the acting categories are all locked up for Zellweger, Laura Dern, Joaquin Phoenix, and Brad Pitt. That may be so. But remember that, at this time last year, Glenn Close was on a smooth sail to victory, and the last person to expect Olivia Colman onstage was Olivia Colman. Can anyone cause an upset this year?
Best Actress
Cynthia Erivo, “Harriet”
Photograph by Glen Wilson / Focus Features
Since her breakout role, in the 2015 Broadway revival of “The Color Purple,” Erivo has been on an ascent. Her casting in Kasi Lemmons’s bio-pic initially received some backlash: Should a British actress be the one to embody the African-American slave experience? Nevertheless, Erivo’s portrayal of Harriet Tubman has all the strength and gravity you’d expect. The film rarely strays from the familiar beats of historical drama, and it can feel more like a monument than a movie. Similar to “The Imitation Game” and “The Danish Girl,” “Harriet” falls into a subcategory of bio-pics that seem to exist to do justice to a historical pioneer—and the world-changing bravery of the subjects tends to give an Oscar sheen to the actors playing them. Erivo is impressive, as always, but Tubman deserves more than what a film can give her. She deserves the twenty-dollar bill.
Scarlett Johansson, “Marriage Story”
Johansson is a polarizing performer, even aside from the controversies that often attend her interviews. Her mahogany-voiced sensuousness comes hand in hand with a stilted quality that can make her seem remote. Both qualities are at work in Noah Baumbach’s gutting film, in which she plays Nicole, an actress trying to restart her life amid an ugly divorce from Charlie (Adam Driver). In the first half of the movie, Baumbach gives Johansson a stunner of a monologue, in which Nicole tells her divorce lawyer (Laura Dern) the story of her marriage and her compromised selfhood. But, as the film goes on, its bravura moments go increasingly to Driver: while Nicole finds stability, Charlie falls apart (and sings a Sondheim showstopper). This is good news for her character, but it’s an anti-climax for Johansson. Still, her performance is full of lovely grace notes, like the single tear that rolls down her face as she lies in bed.
Saoirse Ronan, “Little Women”
At twenty-five, Ronan is on her fourth Oscar nomination, putting her ahead of Kirk Douglas, who in his hundred and three years has managed only three nods. In Greta Gerwig’s film, Ronan plays Jo March, Louisa May Alcott’s beloved, strong-willed heroine. Gerwig’s adaptation gives Jo a challenging assignment: she must keep pace with her unpredictable heart, but she’s also a shrewd and forward-thinking author, trapped in an era incapable of making space for her desires. “Women, they have minds and they have souls as well as just hearts,” she says in one scene. “And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent as well as just beauty.” Ronan makes these pronouncements feel lived-in and almost modern in their neurosis, without betraying the trappings of the period.
Charlize Theron, “Bombshell”
Photograph by Hilary Bronwyn Gayle
Theron won the 2004 best-actress prize for “Monster,” in which she stripped herself of all glamour and polish. In Jay Roach’s “Bombshell,” she transforms again, this time with the help of prosthetics, into the telegenic form of Megyn Kelly. The likeness, as well as the voice, is unnervingly accurate—Kelly herself revealed that her six-year-old son was confounded at the sight of the movie poster. In “Bombshell,” Kelly is a conflicted central player in the sexual-harassment scandal that brought down Roger Ailes, at Fox News. Theron gives a convincing portrait of corporate rebellion, though the film never quite reconciles Kelly’s courage with her complicity in a venal media machine. She’s a hard character to root for, despite the film’s insistence that we do so—and despite Theron’s magnetism.
Renée Zellweger, “Judy”
How can anyone match Judy Garland’s monumental talent, her rattling fragility, her voice? Rupert Goold’s film portrays Garland at the fraying finale of her life, in which she stumbles through a series of concert dates in London. There’s something salacious about this portrait of Garland at her frailest, but Zellweger’s task is so Olympian that her triumph is having done it at all. If she wins, as predicted, her performance will be only part of the reason. In flashbacks to Garland’s teen-age dealings with a handsy Louis B. Mayer, “Judy” attempts to atone for Hollywood’s oldest sins. And Zellweger’s comeback, at fifty, also gives Hollywood a chance to make up for her relative absence for most of the past decade. An Oscar would signify some pain-free penance for the way Hollywood shuns women after their ingénue years, whether Garland or Zellweger.