newyorker--2020-08-12--“Selling Sunset” and the Promise and Cruelty of Los Angeles

On the third season of the reality show “ Selling Sunset , ” now streaming on Netflix , Christine , an agent at the Oppenheim Group , a high-end West Hollywood-based real-estate firm , is planning her wedding to Christian , a wealthy tech entrepreneur .
Sleek and Amazonian , with a foot-long platinum ponytail and a taste for severe corsetry , Christine is what has come to be known as a “ boss bitch ” : a successful agent with a killer instinct .
She has always seen herself as something of a “ gothic Barbie , ” she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should match this attitude .
“ It makes sense , the two of us doing over-the-top everything , ” the chatty Karamo Brown , of “ Queer Eye , ” tells Christine , when he cameos in one episode and the two discuss their upcoming weddings .
“ Right ?
So extra , ” she agrees , as she walks her fellow Netflix asset through a four-bedroom , three-bath Richard Neutra house that Brown is purportedly considering buying .
( The property ’ s price , 2,999,000 dollars , and the commission that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , flash on the screen . )
Christine ’ s wedding cake , it emerges , will be black with a white filling dappled with strawberries , to mimic blood— “ Till-death-do-us-part vibes , ” she tells a wedding planner , as her slightly dazed-looking fiancé looks on .
Her two couture wedding gowns , too , will be black— “ Maleficent vibes , ” she informs a bridal-shop attendant .
All of this comes together at a ceremony meant to resemble a “ gothic winter wonderland , ” filmed for the eighth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As Christine walks down the aisle , friends and family are showered with a flurry of snow .
“ Oh , it ’ s actually cold , ” one guest yelps , flinching as the flakes continue to come down .
“ This is a little aggressive , ” another agrees .
In the world of “ Selling Sunset , ” Christine is a limit case , and her over-the-top power-ditz act appears , at times , nearly parodic .
( On an early episode this season , she throws a “ burgers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at which , in a grotesque tableau , some guests receive injections to smooth out their furrowed brows as others scarf down patties mere paces away . )
Apart from these shenanigans , the show is a tamer thing : one part real-estate porn and one part office drama , portraying the mild conflicts and even milder friendships among the female employees of the Oppenheim Group , an agency run by the natty , impossible-to-tell-apart twins Jason and Brett Oppenheim .
It borrows freely from many previous shows , including Robin Leach ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Rich and Famous , ” Bravo ’ s “ Real Housewives ” franchise , and real-estate shows like “ Property Brothers , ” “ Flipping Out , ” and “ Million Dollar Listing.
” The plot is slow going , and often seems scripted .
Christine shit-talks an agent named Mary behind her back , and Mary , predictably , finds out .
Chrishell , a Southern beauty whose focus is on properties in the San Fernando Valley , is blindsided when her TV-actor husband files for divorce .
The women become @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s prize listings , purportedly because she used to date Jason .
These minor dramas are interspersed with corporate-brochure-like real-estate scenes in a series of Los Angeles luxury properties , which always have a pool and sometimes a screening room , a home gym , or a tennis court .
Alongside frankly gorgeous aerial shots of the city , in the manner of the mid-two-thousands MTV reality show “ The Hills ” ( with which “ Selling Sunset ” shares a creator ) , these home tours are a visual Xanax , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ soothing dissociation .
And yet , beneath this seeming tranquillity strums another kind of energy .
In the popular imagination , Los Angeles is the city of dreams , but its utopian promise—of eternal sunshine and blissful deliverance from life ’ s indignities—is often pulsing with the nightmare opposite .
In Joan Didion ’ s “ The White Album , ” from 1979 , her famous recollection of the Manson murders includes a bit of real-estate data : “ On August 9 , 1969 , I was sitting in the shallow end of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Beverly Hills when she received a telephone call from a friend who had just heard about the murders at Sharon Tate Polanski ’ s house on Cielo Drive.
” She notes that “ no one was surprised , ” which speaks not just to the particular period of late-sixties upheaval she writes of , but , more generally , to a current of violence in L.A. , which persists to this day and arises in large part from an ever-widening gap between haves and have-nots .
In Nathanael West ’ s novel “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the protagonist , a Hollywood set designer and artist , is working on “ The Burning of Los Angeles , ” a painting in which he imagines the city going up in flames .
The conflagration is “ a great bonfire of architectural styles , ranging from Egyptian to Cape Cod colonial , ” fuelled by the rage of “ all those poor devils who can only be stirred by the promise of miracles and then only to violence , ” and who “ come to California to die.
” There is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the luxury real-estate market in a city that is currently experiencing a gutting homelessness crisis—one that is getting progressively worse in the wake of the coronavirus .
“ Selling Sunset , ” which finished filming before the pandemic began , attempts a brief nod to this issue in an episode that finds Chrishell organizing a charity auction for the homeless , albeit one doubling as an open house for a 4.4-million-dollar property that she is trying to sell in Studio City .
But the cruelty of the city—its ruthlessness and egocentrism—emerges on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It surfaces , for one , in the story of Amanza , a biracial single mom , and the one “ Selling Sunset ” agent whose problems feel real .
At one point , Mary reminisces about her own days as a young single mother working “ brutal jobs , ” and concludes that this has made her appreciate “ the value of a dollar ’ —now “ I want to make sure I have a lot of them in my account , ” she says .
Amanza ’ s struggle to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a sense , part of the show ’ s push to indicate that the system works : fortitude coupled with sharp elbows can buy you success , security , luxury .
And yet the path is precarious .
At a staff meeting , Jason announces that the firm has gone more than twenty million dollars into escrow that week , though this is no thanks to Amanza , who , he suggests , is using her kids as an excuse for her lack of commitment to the agency .
“ I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ day having sold nothing , and I feel like a misfit , ” Amanza tells the camera later in the episode , distraught .
She also makes an enemy of Christine , and rails , at one point , that the other agent “ prances in in her fancy outfits and she makes a joke and she thinks it ’ s okay , and it ’ s not—it ’ s bullshit !
” Perhaps inadvertently , she then lands on the heart of the matter : “ If I had all that money @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , too , shit !
” In “ Selling Sunset , ” winning is everything .
The struggle to achieve the most and the best is heard in the near-tuneless , near-identical thrum of the E.D.M .
songs that punctuate almost every scene on the show , and which give voice , in their barely sense-making way , to a kind of neoliberal Stockholm syndrome .
The examples are numerous : “ I love my money and my money loves me / Cha-ching cha-ching , ” a woman sings to a monotonous beat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Gon na show you what I ’ m all about now / Gon na show you all the things I do / ’ Cause I can ’ t stop the rhythm when it ’ s flowing through me and you / I ’ m a money money money money maker , ” another chants .
“ I ’ m a boss / Tell ’ em not today / Swerving on these chickens cluck out my lane / I ’ m a boss / Out my way / Or just do every little thing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ croons .
The contrast between the music ’ s blandness and its zealous declarations of fealty to the market economy is stunning .
Occasionally , however , the songs hint at the darkness beneath : “ Living like kings / Comes with a price / You ’ re rollin ’ in riches then you ’ re rollin ’ the dice / Nothing ’ s ever free , no nothing ’ s ever free / Is it ?
Is it ?
” one track asks .
“ These streets , they ’ re mean @ @ @ @ @ @ @ want to eat , ” another warns .
At Christine ’ s wedding , while waiting for their co-worker to walk down the aisle , the Oppenheim Group officemates notice that , as part of the décor , a number of white swans are floating in a corner of the venue .
“ Dude , those swans are so well-behaved , ” Brett Oppenheim marvels .
“ They ’ re not trying to go anywhere.
” As I watched the scene , it occurred to me that this statement was a bit moot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the swans had found themselves as props in downtown Los Angeles , in the gothic-winter-wonderland wedding of a luxury-real-estate agent .
Where exactly could they go , even if they wanted to ?
After the ceremony , “ they ’ ll cook them for dinner , ” an agent named Maya laughs .
“ What did you order ?
” Jason jokes .
“ Did you get the fish or the swan ?
” Brett rejoins .
On “ Selling Sunset , ” you got ta fight if you want to eat .

On the third season of the reality show “Selling Sunset,” now streaming on Netflix, Christine, an agent at the Oppenheim Group, a high-end West Hollywood-based real-estate firm, is planning her wedding to Christian, a wealthy tech entrepreneur. Sleek and Amazonian, with a foot-long platinum ponytail and a taste for severe corsetry, Christine is what has come to be known as a “boss bitch”: a successful agent with a killer instinct. She has always seen herself as something of a “gothic Barbie,” she tells the camera, and her nuptials should match this attitude. “It makes sense, the two of us doing over-the-top everything,” the chatty Karamo Brown, of “Queer Eye,” tells Christine, when he cameos in one episode and the two discuss their upcoming weddings. “Right? So extra,” she agrees, as she walks her fellow Netflix asset through a four-bedroom, three-bath Richard Neutra house that Brown is purportedly considering buying. (The property’s price, 2,999,000 dollars, and the commission that Christine stands to make, 89,970 dollars, flash on the screen.) Christine’s wedding cake, it emerges, will be black with a white filling dappled with strawberries, to mimic blood—“Till-death-do-us-part vibes,” she tells a wedding planner, as her slightly dazed-looking fiancé looks on. Her two couture wedding gowns, too, will be black—“Maleficent vibes,” she informs a bridal-shop attendant. All of this comes together at a ceremony meant to resemble a “gothic winter wonderland,” filmed for the eighth and final episode of the season. As Christine walks down the aisle, friends and family are showered with a flurry of snow. “Oh, it’s actually cold,” one guest yelps, flinching as the flakes continue to come down. “This is a little aggressive,” another agrees.
In the world of “Selling Sunset,” Christine is a limit case, and her over-the-top power-ditz act appears, at times, nearly parodic. (On an early episode this season, she throws a “burgers and Botox”-themed open house, at which, in a grotesque tableau, some guests receive injections to smooth out their furrowed brows as others scarf down patties mere paces away.) Apart from these shenanigans, the show is a tamer thing: one part real-estate porn and one part office drama, portraying the mild conflicts and even milder friendships among the female employees of the Oppenheim Group, an agency run by the natty, impossible-to-tell-apart twins Jason and Brett Oppenheim. It borrows freely from many previous shows, including Robin Leach’s voyeuristic nineteen-eighties gambol “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” Bravo’s “Real Housewives” franchise, and real-estate shows like “Property Brothers,” “Flipping Out,” and “Million Dollar Listing.” The plot is slow going, and often seems scripted. Christine shit-talks an agent named Mary behind her back, and Mary, predictably, finds out. Chrishell, a Southern beauty whose focus is on properties in the San Fernando Valley, is blindsided when her TV-actor husband files for divorce. The women become upset that Mary is given the office’s prize listings, purportedly because she used to date Jason. These minor dramas are interspersed with corporate-brochure-like real-estate scenes in a series of Los Angeles luxury properties, which always have a pool and sometimes a screening room, a home gym, or a tennis court. Alongside frankly gorgeous aerial shots of the city, in the manner of the mid-two-thousands MTV reality show “The Hills” (with which “Selling Sunset” shares a creator), these home tours are a visual Xanax, sending the viewer into a state of soothing dissociation.
And yet, beneath this seeming tranquillity strums another kind of energy. In the popular imagination, Los Angeles is the city of dreams, but its utopian promise—of eternal sunshine and blissful deliverance from life’s indignities—is often pulsing with the nightmare opposite. In Joan Didion’s “The White Album,” from 1979, her famous recollection of the Manson murders includes a bit of real-estate data: “On August 9, 1969, I was sitting in the shallow end of my sister-in-law’s swimming pool in Beverly Hills when she received a telephone call from a friend who had just heard about the murders at Sharon Tate Polanski’s house on Cielo Drive.” She notes that “no one was surprised,” which speaks not just to the particular period of late-sixties upheaval she writes of, but, more generally, to a current of violence in L.A., which persists to this day and arises in large part from an ever-widening gap between haves and have-nots. In Nathanael West’s novel “The Day of the Locust,” the protagonist, a Hollywood set designer and artist, is working on “The Burning of Los Angeles,” a painting in which he imagines the city going up in flames. The conflagration is “a great bonfire of architectural styles, ranging from Egyptian to Cape Cod colonial,” fuelled by the rage of “all those poor devils who can only be stirred by the promise of miracles and then only to violence,” and who “come to California to die.”
There is a certain morbidity to making a show about the luxury real-estate market in a city that is currently experiencing a gutting homelessness crisis—one that is getting progressively worse in the wake of the coronavirus. “Selling Sunset,” which finished filming before the pandemic began, attempts a brief nod to this issue in an episode that finds Chrishell organizing a charity auction for the homeless, albeit one doubling as an open house for a 4.4-million-dollar property that she is trying to sell in Studio City. But the cruelty of the city—its ruthlessness and egocentrism—emerges on the show in deeper, less intentional ways. It surfaces, for one, in the story of Amanza, a biracial single mom, and the one “Selling Sunset” agent whose problems feel real. At one point, Mary reminisces about her own days as a young single mother working “brutal jobs,” and concludes that this has made her appreciate “the value of a dollar’—now “I want to make sure I have a lot of them in my account,” she says. Amanza’s struggle to gain footing at the agency is, in a sense, part of the show’s push to indicate that the system works: fortitude coupled with sharp elbows can buy you success, security, luxury. And yet the path is precarious. At a staff meeting, Jason announces that the firm has gone more than twenty million dollars into escrow that week, though this is no thanks to Amanza, who, he suggests, is using her kids as an excuse for her lack of commitment to the agency. “I’m sitting at a desk here every day having sold nothing, and I feel like a misfit,” Amanza tells the camera later in the episode, distraught. She also makes an enemy of Christine, and rails, at one point, that the other agent “prances in in her fancy outfits and she makes a joke and she thinks it’s okay, and it’s not—it’s bullshit!” Perhaps inadvertently, she then lands on the heart of the matter: “If I had all that money I’d be dressed like that, too, shit!”
In “Selling Sunset,” winning is everything. The struggle to achieve the most and the best is heard in the near-tuneless, near-identical thrum of the E.D.M. songs that punctuate almost every scene on the show, and which give voice, in their barely sense-making way, to a kind of neoliberal Stockholm syndrome. The examples are numerous: “I love my money and my money loves me / Cha-ching cha-ching,” a woman sings to a monotonous beat; “Let’s go / Gonna show you what I’m all about now / Gonna show you all the things I do / ’Cause I can’t stop the rhythm when it’s flowing through me and you / I’m a money money money money maker,” another chants. “I’m a boss / Tell ’em not today / Swerving on these chickens cluck out my lane / I’m a boss / Out my way / Or just do every little thing that I say,” yet another croons. The contrast between the music’s blandness and its zealous declarations of fealty to the market economy is stunning. Occasionally, however, the songs hint at the darkness beneath: “Living like kings / Comes with a price / You’re rollin’ in riches then you’re rollin’ the dice / Nothing’s ever free, no nothing’s ever free / Is it? Is it?” one track asks. “These streets, they’re mean / You gotta fight if you want to eat,” another warns.
At Christine’s wedding, while waiting for their co-worker to walk down the aisle, the Oppenheim Group officemates notice that, as part of the décor, a number of white swans are floating in a corner of the venue. “Dude, those swans are so well-behaved,” Brett Oppenheim marvels. “They’re not trying to go anywhere.” As I watched the scene, it occurred to me that this statement was a bit moot, and perhaps a little sad: the swans had found themselves as props in downtown Los Angeles, in the gothic-winter-wonderland wedding of a luxury-real-estate agent. Where exactly could they go, even if they wanted to? After the ceremony, “they’ll cook them for dinner,” an agent named Maya laughs. “What did you order?” Jason jokes. “Did you get the fish or the swan?” Brett rejoins. On “Selling Sunset,” you gotta fight if you want to eat.


newyorker--2020-08-13--“An Easy Girl,” Reviewed: Rebecca Zlotowski’s Brilliant Portrayal of a Teen-ager’s Brush with Glitz

“ An Easy Girl ” ( “ Une Fille Facile ” ) , the new film by the French director Rebecca Zlotowski , borrows tropes , tones , and even a lead actress from reality TV .
But it also looks behind the genre ’ s vulgar appeal—and the appeal of vulgarity—to locate the authentic substance that such spectacles demand and conceal .
The film , which comes to Netflix on Thursday , reimagines the genre of a teen-age girl ’ s coming of age in the form of a tightly framed social experiment : she follows her much worldlier @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a rich older man and his yacht , and then she returns to her regular life .
Moreover , Zlotowski crafts a distinctive style to distill and heighten the drama ’ s psychological complexities and societal analyses .
No less than its young protagonists , the film dangerously brushes against the edge of modernity ’ s enticingly destructive glitz .
The film ’ s protagonist , Naïma ( Mina Farid ) , is a high-school student , in Cannes , who lives with her mother ( Loubna Abidar ) , a chambermaid at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ modest apartment complex not far from the waterfront .
She turns sixteen on the last day of school .
When she gets home , she has a surprise : a visit from her twenty-two-year-old cousin , Sofia ( Zahia Dehar ) , who has been living in Paris .
Sofia is sexually candid and dripping with bling : she has jewelry , fancy clothing , and a Chanel handbag—and brings one for Naïma , too .
In the evening , on the waterfront , Sofia and Naïma walk by a yacht that ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two middle-aged yachtsmen follow them to a nearby night club and invite them on board the boat .
Naïma is scheduled for a summer internship , in the kitchen of the hotel where her mother works ; she also has plans , with her best friend , Dodo ( “ Riley ” Lakdhar Dridi ) , a classmate , to audition for acting school .
Yet her pursuit of glamorous adventure threatens all of those plans .
Over the next ten days , Naïma both consciously and naïvely follows Sofia into the high-finance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ power and gets a heady apprenticeship in the ways of that cozy and cruel world—one that , for all its dangers , helps Naïma to see where she stands in relation to it , to see her path in life .
Dehar is one of France ’ s most prominent celebrities .
She first came to public view in notoriety , in 2010—with a sex scandal involving some of France ’ s leading soccer players , who were accused of paying her for sex when she was seventeen .
( The age of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is fluid—but prostitution is legal only at eighteen ; the players were acquitted on the grounds that Dehar had claimed to be eighteen . )
She then appeared on TV , became a model , and—with the help of Karl Lagerfeld and other fashion notables—launched , at the age of twenty , a line of designer lingerie .
The casting of Dehar , in her first major acting role , is a coup de cinéma .
Zlotowski grafts Dehar ’ s real-life energy , knowledge , and power into the film—and they ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her limpid , frank , and graceful performance .
With her blend of worldliness and otherworldliness , bluntly practical candor and ethereal majesty , Dehar pairs tensely with the rough-edged modesty and shy sincerity of Farid , a nonprofessional actress , who plays Naïma pensively and brusquely , with an inescapable adolescent awkwardness , carrying the film ahead on a rush of newly concentrated and unleashed energy .
Zlotowski , who wrote the script with Teddy Lussi-Modeste , presents the story from the perspective of Naïma ( she ’ s onscreen most of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lucidly punctuates the story with her insights and recollections .
“ An Easy Girl ” is a tale of observation giving rise to action , of the spectator becoming a participant , which , in Zlotowski ’ s view , is the definition of a coming of age .
What Naïma participates in— the workings of the world of business and money—is sketched with a scathing clarity .
The yachtsmen whom the young women join are Andres ( Nuno Lopes ) , a suavely bearded , guitar-playing , mightily wealthy Brazilian stock-market investor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Benoît Magimel ) , his art adviser , a sort of freelance cultural counsel who also functions as Andres ’ s paid companion and unofficial factotum ( and whom Andres calls by the part-admiring , part-demeaning nickname of Socrates ) .
Their yacht , when it ’ s docked , becomes a sort of theatre of luxury that local passersby watch , to Philippe ’ s embarrassment and Andres ’ s haughty contentment .
When the two men meet up with Sofia and Naïma , the pairing off is obvious and automatic : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relationship , whereas Philippe becomes Naïma ’ s sort-of friend and sort-of mentor , even as more intimate possibilities loom .
Sofia has schooled Naïma to dismiss the idea of love in favor of “ sensations , adventure ” and advises her to take the initiative in pursuit of them .
After Naïma sees Sofia having sex with Andres—and Sofia , noticing her , keeps Naïma locked in her gaze , not erotically but didactically—Sofia tells her , “ For me , nothing happened last night.
” What Sofia expects , instead , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in her wallet , expecting that men will pay for everything , and she schools Naïma in the art of cashing in .
Yet there ’ s far more to Sofia ’ s methods than the mere transaction ; she ’ s a personality , a sharply expressive and insightful conversationalist , who carefully calibrates her remarks and her behavior in keeping with her keen awareness of the company she keeps .
In a brief , remarkable scene , she explains to Naïma that she eats at home before going to dinner in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there isn ’ t to eat but to “ pay attention to the people around you.
” Naïma takes her advice .
In observing the relationship between Andres and Philippe , she learns that , for all of Philippe ’ s knowledge , he remains an employee in a constantly subordinate and occasionally humiliating position .
Naïma also observes , in the reflection of other gazes , the strangeness of her own position : at a lavish dinner with Sofia , the two men , and their friends , at the hotel where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sees the staff , her friends , looking with wonder at her presence in that company and notices their stoic and silently judgmental immobility , at the sidelines , as the frivolous party stretches deep into the night and keeps them on duty , waiting to clean up .
( She also gleans much from the silent gazes of the yacht ’ s uniformed waitstaff—and from the drama that ensues when that silence is broken . )
These scenes depict extraordinary moments of which-side-are-you-on , with characters ’ gazes conveying distance or solidarity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with high stakes in the balance , sharp perceptions , and enduring bewilderments .
Naïma ’ s carefully parsed perspective reflects her strange new world back onto the mental landscape of her regular life .
With cinematography by Georges Lechaptois , “ An Easy Girl ” is filled with calm , luminous , dynamic images ; it ’ s a wonderful film for watching people walk , for observing casual gestures and fleeting exchanges through seaside cityscapes and domestic spaces .
The movie captures the passing of time both in the potentially terrifying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weight of recollection , weighty calculation , and tremulous anticipation—and its contemplative moments move just as fast , filled as they are with physical detail and mental energy , all conveyed in the reserved intricacy of the onscreen compositions .

“An Easy Girl” (“Une Fille Facile”), the new film by the French director Rebecca Zlotowski, borrows tropes, tones, and even a lead actress from reality TV. But it also looks behind the genre’s vulgar appeal—and the appeal of vulgarity—to locate the authentic substance that such spectacles demand and conceal. The film, which comes to Netflix on Thursday, reimagines the genre of a teen-age girl’s coming of age in the form of a tightly framed social experiment: she follows her much worldlier adult cousin into the social orbit of a rich older man and his yacht, and then she returns to her regular life. Moreover, Zlotowski crafts a distinctive style to distill and heighten the drama’s psychological complexities and societal analyses. No less than its young protagonists, the film dangerously brushes against the edge of modernity’s enticingly destructive glitz.
The film’s protagonist, Naïma (Mina Farid), is a high-school student, in Cannes, who lives with her mother (Loubna Abidar), a chambermaid at a nearby luxury hotel, in a modest apartment complex not far from the waterfront. She turns sixteen on the last day of school. When she gets home, she has a surprise: a visit from her twenty-two-year-old cousin, Sofia (Zahia Dehar), who has been living in Paris. Sofia is sexually candid and dripping with bling: she has jewelry, fancy clothing, and a Chanel handbag—and brings one for Naïma, too. In the evening, on the waterfront, Sofia and Naïma walk by a yacht that’s docked at the marina, and two middle-aged yachtsmen follow them to a nearby night club and invite them on board the boat. Naïma is scheduled for a summer internship, in the kitchen of the hotel where her mother works; she also has plans, with her best friend, Dodo (“Riley” Lakdhar Dridi), a classmate, to audition for acting school. Yet her pursuit of glamorous adventure threatens all of those plans. Over the next ten days, Naïma both consciously and naïvely follows Sofia into the high-finance, high-society whirl of brazen wealth and power and gets a heady apprenticeship in the ways of that cozy and cruel world—one that, for all its dangers, helps Naïma to see where she stands in relation to it, to see her path in life.
Dehar is one of France’s most prominent celebrities. She first came to public view in notoriety, in 2010—with a sex scandal involving some of France’s leading soccer players, who were accused of paying her for sex when she was seventeen. (The age of consent in France is fifteen—and even that is fluid—but prostitution is legal only at eighteen; the players were acquitted on the grounds that Dehar had claimed to be eighteen.) She then appeared on TV, became a model, and—with the help of Karl Lagerfeld and other fashion notables—launched, at the age of twenty, a line of designer lingerie. The casting of Dehar, in her first major acting role, is a coup de cinéma. Zlotowski grafts Dehar’s real-life energy, knowledge, and power into the film—and they’re embodied all the more movingly in her limpid, frank, and graceful performance. With her blend of worldliness and otherworldliness, bluntly practical candor and ethereal majesty, Dehar pairs tensely with the rough-edged modesty and shy sincerity of Farid, a nonprofessional actress, who plays Naïma pensively and brusquely, with an inescapable adolescent awkwardness, carrying the film ahead on a rush of newly concentrated and unleashed energy.
Zlotowski, who wrote the script with Teddy Lussi-Modeste, presents the story from the perspective of Naïma (she’s onscreen most of the time), whose voice-over narration lucidly punctuates the story with her insights and recollections. “An Easy Girl” is a tale of observation giving rise to action, of the spectator becoming a participant, which, in Zlotowski’s view, is the definition of a coming of age. What Naïma participates in—the workings of the world of business and money—is sketched with a scathing clarity. The yachtsmen whom the young women join are Andres (Nuno Lopes), a suavely bearded, guitar-playing, mightily wealthy Brazilian stock-market investor and art collector, and Philippe (Benoît Magimel), his art adviser, a sort of freelance cultural counsel who also functions as Andres’s paid companion and unofficial factotum (and whom Andres calls by the part-admiring, part-demeaning nickname of Socrates). Their yacht, when it’s docked, becomes a sort of theatre of luxury that local passersby watch, to Philippe’s embarrassment and Andres’s haughty contentment. When the two men meet up with Sofia and Naïma, the pairing off is obvious and automatic: Andres is pursuing Sofia for a sexual relationship, whereas Philippe becomes Naïma’s sort-of friend and sort-of mentor, even as more intimate possibilities loom.
Sofia has schooled Naïma to dismiss the idea of love in favor of “sensations, adventure,” and advises her to take the initiative in pursuit of them. After Naïma sees Sofia having sex with Andres—and Sofia, noticing her, keeps Naïma locked in her gaze, not erotically but didactically—Sofia tells her, “For me, nothing happened last night.” What Sofia expects, instead, is money; she keeps literally none in her wallet, expecting that men will pay for everything, and she schools Naïma in the art of cashing in. Yet there’s far more to Sofia’s methods than the mere transaction; she’s a personality, a sharply expressive and insightful conversationalist, who carefully calibrates her remarks and her behavior in keeping with her keen awareness of the company she keeps. In a brief, remarkable scene, she explains to Naïma that she eats at home before going to dinner in society, because the point of being there isn’t to eat but to “pay attention to the people around you.”
Naïma takes her advice. In observing the relationship between Andres and Philippe, she learns that, for all of Philippe’s knowledge, he remains an employee in a constantly subordinate and occasionally humiliating position. Naïma also observes, in the reflection of other gazes, the strangeness of her own position: at a lavish dinner with Sofia, the two men, and their friends, at the hotel where Naïma’s mother works, she sees the staff, her friends, looking with wonder at her presence in that company and notices their stoic and silently judgmental immobility, at the sidelines, as the frivolous party stretches deep into the night and keeps them on duty, waiting to clean up. (She also gleans much from the silent gazes of the yacht’s uniformed waitstaff—and from the drama that ensues when that silence is broken.)
These scenes depict extraordinary moments of which-side-are-you-on, with characters’ gazes conveying distance or solidarity, incipient stock-taking or bold decision-making, with high stakes in the balance, sharp perceptions, and enduring bewilderments. Naïma’s carefully parsed perspective reflects her strange new world back onto the mental landscape of her regular life. With cinematography by Georges Lechaptois, “An Easy Girl” is filled with calm, luminous, dynamic images; it’s a wonderful film for watching people walk, for observing casual gestures and fleeting exchanges through seaside cityscapes and domestic spaces. The movie captures the passing of time both in the potentially terrifying rapidity of impulsive decisions and the stretched-out weight of recollection, weighty calculation, and tremulous anticipation—and its contemplative moments move just as fast, filled as they are with physical detail and mental energy, all conveyed in the reserved intricacy of the onscreen compositions.
The spirit of two movies looms over “An Easy Girl.” The first is “La Collectionneuse,” Éric Rohmer’s second feature, from 1967. Its first scene is virtually quoted here, in a sequence showing Sofia, in a bathing suit, on the beach, and zeroing in on parts of her body, in closeup, as Rohmer does with Haydée Politoff, an actress in his film. That movie tells the story of two men who, during a seaside summer vacation, find their romantic and erotic destinies tangled up with that of a young woman of seventeen, whose overt sexual freedom both shocks and entices them. Zlotowski offers a potent corrective to Rohmer’s film, which leaves the woman a cipher. The other film is “Blue Jeans,” a short from 1958, directed by Jacques Rozier, who’s now ninety-three. Rozier is perhaps the most secretly influential (and secretly great) director in the modern French cinema; the short, filmed in Cannes, is the story of two young men, pickup artists who cruise the seaside and the town, on their motor scooters and on foot, in the hope of meeting young women. (Money plays a role there, too.) Zlotowski alludes to it in a scene in which both Sofia and Naïma wear striped shirts akin to the one that Rozier’s film rendered iconic, even before Jean Seberg’s in “Breathless.” Here, too, though, Zlotowski depicts women’s power alongside that of men, while ultimately defining power itself in terms that aren’t solely or strictly gendered.
Power is the very subject of “An Easy Girl,” and Naïma’s first conscious encounter with it in its varied forms—sexual, economic, cultural, and sheerly, mysteriously interpersonal, starting with Sofia’s own hypnotic, seemingly telepathic ability to find and lure a likely man. Yet another aspect of power is sublimated: Naïma and Sofia are people of color, likely of North African descent (Dehar was born in Algeria), and the film converts matters of ethnicity and culture, which aren’t directly addressed, into terms of class and economics, access (or lack of it) to power and presence (or absence) of privilege. Looking from a lofty height and a stringent proximity at the ways of the world, Zlotowski offers a story of personality and allure, of the endowment of natural authority and what people who don’t have it must do to make their way through life.


newyorker--2020-08-12--The World Has Reached Decision Time on the Climate Crisis

Subscribers to The Climate Crisis newsletter received this piece in their in-boxes .
Sign up to receive future installments .
This , it now seems clear , is the year when karma stops playing nice and gets down to brass tacks .
Either we acknowledge science and put on a mask , or we are going to kill people and cripple our economy .
Either white Americans acknowledge our racist history and get to work on repairing its effects , or the country will be further divided into fearful and angry camps .
These aren ’ t situations where we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as this week demonstrated , either we seize the suddenly vivid possibilities for a rapid energy transformation , or we watch the world disintegrate .
On Ellesmere Island , in the Arctic , Canada ’ s largest remaining ice shelf ( an area significantly larger than Manhattan ) collapsed over the course of two days .
“ Above normal air temperatures , offshore winds and open water in front of the ice shelf are all part of the recipe for ice shelf break up , ” the Canadian Ice Service tweeted .
Meanwhile @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may have already infected half of the people living in the city ’ s vast slums , record rainfall produced misery almost impossible to imagine .
An “ astonishing ” eighty-two inches of rain fell on the city between July 10th and August 7th ; the monsoon often produces flooding , but not like this .
One of the city ’ s English language newspapers ran a front page that simply said “ SPIRIT OF MUMBAI : TIRED AND BEATEN.
” At the same moment , we had some of the clearest signs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ August 4th , BP became the first oil supermajor to begin abandoning its business model : it announced that it would cut oil and gas production by forty per cent over the next decade , and dramatically increase its investments in low-carbon technology .
There are plenty of caveats in the pledge , but , essentially , BP capitulated to years of activist protest ; to the challenge of cheap , clean renewable energy ; and to the destruction of demand that came with coronavirus .
The American giants—Exxon and Chevron—still have political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even they are grappling with reality .
On August 5th , Exxon conceded that it might have to wipe a fifth of its reserves off its books by year ’ s end—investments in places like Canada ’ s tar sands that are too expensive to be profitable at today ’ s prices .
There ’ s clearly no growth coming : Exxon ’ s share price now depends on it paying a reliable dividend .
To keep doing so , the company is taking extreme measures , like ending the match it pays @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) s. The fire sale is under way .
We know the path forward .
Dave Roberts , the ever-reliable energy analyst for Vox , laid it out beautifully in an interview with Saul Griffith of Rewiring America .
The rapid adoption of the technologies that are discussed again and again in this column—like air-source heat pumps and electric motors—show that it ’ s possible to cut America ’ s emissions by seventy to eighty per cent by 2035 .
In other words , there ’ s nothing quixotic about the Green New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shelf , waiting to be taken down .
Waiting , in fact , to be financed : the key role of the federal government here is not to pay for rebuilding people ’ s houses and buildings but to prime the pump so that private capital can do the job , allowing most of us to reap real savings from radically reduced energy bills .
That still requires government leaders to take the initiative .
Obviously , we have to elect Joe Biden .
( Our decompensating President said last week that Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in context , is a strong endorsement . )
But electing Biden is insufficient .
If he wins , Biden must be pressured to use the climate crisis to heal our economic woes .
Environmentalists are increasingly maneuvering to make sure that the advisers in a potential Biden Administration understand both the peril and the promise of the moment : we either go big or we go under .
Moses reminded the Israelites of the paths God had set before them : “ life and prosperity , and death and disaster.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and now physics are making the same call .
Sarah Lunnon served as a county councillor in Gloucestershire , England , as a member of the Green Party ; she ’ s now a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion , the climate-protest movement that sprang up in response to the 2018 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change .
The group is supporting a Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill , which , if passed by the British Parliament , would result in , among other things , the convening of a “ citizens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the gatherings that the French leader Priscillia Ludosky described to me in a recent column .
( In Washington State , similar plans are also under way ) .
My interview with Lunnon has been edited for length and clarity .
How will the citizens ’ assembly work , logistically ?
Citizens ’ assemblies are being used around the world .
Different countries are running them in slightly different ways , but the basic design is the same : a body of people are chosen so that they reflect the population of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , by age , ethnicity , education , gender , etc .
The aim is to bring together a cross-section of society .
This group , with independent support , hears from a range of expert advisers and stakeholders , asks questions and uniquely deliberates , discusses , and reflects on what they have heard .
They then give their recommendations regarding a set of issues that shape government policy .
Citizens ’ assemblies are a form of deliberative democracy , a process in which ordinary people make political decisions .
Public hearings @ @ @ @ @ @ @ less than twenty people to citizens ’ summits of more than seven hundred , can transform policymaking .
This was seen in Ireland , where a citizens ’ assembly considered changes to the country ’ s abortion law , which received widespread public support in a following referendum .
Is the idea that it might show lawmakers that they ’ ve been working with too narrow a range of possible solutions—that they can and should think more broadly ?
Rebecca Willis , an expert lead for the Climate Assembly UK , has studied @ @ @ @ @ @ @ climate change .
She concludes—and this is probably true of most democracies—that politicians are almost embarrassed to campaign on climate change , scared to be seen as zealots , and find it difficult to relate action on climate , and probably wildlife and ecological loss , as improving the well-being of those who vote for them .
Voters seeing life carry on as normal , seeing climate and wildlife as unimportant in the national conversation , conclude that it ’ s not actually an emergency and don ’ t press politicians for change @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we recognize as our peers to be educated on the full nature of the emergency and then make recommendations , legitimizing the required radical response to the crisis .
It not only broadens the possible responses but it justifies politicians in acting , as they are doing what has been requested by the people .
A citizens ’ assembly would provide our politicians with the plan , the justification , and the shield ( against political pushback ) .

Subscribers to The Climate Crisis newsletter received this piece in their in-boxes. Sign up to receive future installments.
This, it now seems clear, is the year when karma stops playing nice and gets down to brass tacks. Either we acknowledge science and put on a mask, or we are going to kill people and cripple our economy. Either white Americans acknowledge our racist history and get to work on repairing its effects, or the country will be further divided into fearful and angry camps. These aren’t situations where we get a second chance.
And, as this week demonstrated, either we seize the suddenly vivid possibilities for a rapid energy transformation, or we watch the world disintegrate. On Ellesmere Island, in the Arctic, Canada’s largest remaining ice shelf (an area significantly larger than Manhattan) collapsed over the course of two days. “Above normal air temperatures, offshore winds and open water in front of the ice shelf are all part of the recipe for ice shelf break up,” the Canadian Ice Service tweeted. Meanwhile, in Mumbai, where the coronavirus may have already infected half of the people living in the city’s vast slums, record rainfall produced misery almost impossible to imagine. An “astonishing” eighty-two inches of rain fell on the city between July 10th and August 7th; the monsoon often produces flooding, but not like this. One of the city’s English language newspapers ran a front page that simply said “SPIRIT OF MUMBAI: TIRED AND BEATEN.”
At the same moment, we had some of the clearest signs of the climate battle turning. On August 4th, BP became the first oil supermajor to begin abandoning its business model: it announced that it would cut oil and gas production by forty per cent over the next decade, and dramatically increase its investments in low-carbon technology. There are plenty of caveats in the pledge, but, essentially, BP capitulated to years of activist protest; to the challenge of cheap, clean renewable energy; and to the destruction of demand that came with coronavirus. The American giants—Exxon and Chevron—still have political cover from the Trump Administration, but even they are grappling with reality. On August 5th, Exxon conceded that it might have to wipe a fifth of its reserves off its books by year’s end—investments in places like Canada’s tar sands that are too expensive to be profitable at today’s prices. There’s clearly no growth coming: Exxon’s share price now depends on it paying a reliable dividend. To keep doing so, the company is taking extreme measures, like ending the match it pays its employees for their 401(k)s. The fire sale is under way.
We know the path forward. Dave Roberts, the ever-reliable energy analyst for Vox, laid it out beautifully in an interview with Saul Griffith of Rewiring America. The rapid adoption of the technologies that are discussed again and again in this column—like air-source heat pumps and electric motors—show that it’s possible to cut America’s emissions by seventy to eighty per cent by 2035. In other words, there’s nothing quixotic about the Green New Deal. It’s on the shelf, waiting to be taken down. Waiting, in fact, to be financed: the key role of the federal government here is not to pay for rebuilding people’s houses and buildings but to prime the pump so that private capital can do the job, allowing most of us to reap real savings from radically reduced energy bills.
That still requires government leaders to take the initiative. Obviously, we have to elect Joe Biden. (Our decompensating President said last week that Biden is “against energy,” which, in context, is a strong endorsement.) But electing Biden is insufficient. If he wins, Biden must be pressured to use the climate crisis to heal our economic woes. Environmentalists are increasingly maneuvering to make sure that the advisers in a potential Biden Administration understand both the peril and the promise of the moment: we either go big or we go under. Moses reminded the Israelites of the paths God had set before them: “life and prosperity, and death and disaster.” In 2020, biology, history, and now physics are making the same call.
Passing the Mic
Sarah Lunnon served as a county councillor in Gloucestershire, England, as a member of the Green Party; she’s now a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, the climate-protest movement that sprang up in response to the 2018 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The group is supporting a Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill, which, if passed by the British Parliament, would result in, among other things, the convening of a “citizens’ assembly” on climate, similar to the gatherings that the French leader Priscillia Ludosky described to me in a recent column. (In Washington State, similar plans are also under way). My interview with Lunnon has been edited for length and clarity.
How will the citizens’ assembly work, logistically?
Citizens’ assemblies are being used around the world. Different countries are running them in slightly different ways, but the basic design is the same: a body of people are chosen so that they reflect the population of a country, state, or county, by age, ethnicity, education, gender, etc. The aim is to bring together a cross-section of society. This group, with independent support, hears from a range of expert advisers and stakeholders, asks questions and uniquely deliberates, discusses, and reflects on what they have heard. They then give their recommendations regarding a set of issues that shape government policy.
Citizens’ assemblies are a form of deliberative democracy, a process in which ordinary people make political decisions. Public hearings, ranging from citizens’ juries with less than twenty people to citizens’ summits of more than seven hundred, can transform policymaking. This was seen in Ireland, where a citizens’ assembly considered changes to the country’s abortion law, which received widespread public support in a following referendum.
Is the idea that it might show lawmakers that they’ve been working with too narrow a range of possible solutions—that they can and should think more broadly?
Rebecca Willis, an expert lead for the Climate Assembly UK, has studied how U.K. politicians think and talk about climate change. She concludes—and this is probably true of most democracies—that politicians are almost embarrassed to campaign on climate change, scared to be seen as zealots, and find it difficult to relate action on climate, and probably wildlife and ecological loss, as improving the well-being of those who vote for them. Voters seeing life carry on as normal, seeing climate and wildlife as unimportant in the national conversation, conclude that it’s not actually an emergency and don’t press politicians for change.


newyorker--2020-08-12--After a Rigged Election, Belarus Crushes Protests Amid an Information Blackout

The streets of Minsk and other Belarusian cities have been battlegrounds since Sunday evening , when authorities announced that eighty per cent of voters had chosen to reëlect Alexander Lukashenka , who has been President for twenty-six years .
His electoral opponent , Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya , has fled the country .
At least three thousand people have been arrested , one protester has died , and an unknown number have been injured .
A lot is unknown , because authorities have tried to impose a blockade on information .
On Sunday morning , as Belarusians started going to the polls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Viačorka , a thirty-two-year-old freelance journalist in Minsk , told me over the phone that a recently enacted law compels all Belarusian sites to be hosted on servers located in Belarus , which enables the government to disappear a site from the Web .
Next , Viačorka said , foreign media outlets such as the Belarusian-language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty became inaccessible in Belarus .
Finally , Belarus lost access to Facebook , Twitter , YouTube , and messenger services such as Viber and WhatsApp .
“ It was this terrible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Viačorka said .
“ Nothing was ringing , nothing was beeping , there were no responses or notifications.
” Tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of people , including many journalists , were out in the streets and public squares of Minsk and other Belarusian cities , but they could not transmit information .
Since Lukashenka first became President in 1994 , he has presided over five so-called elections .
None of them have been considered free and fair by international observers , and each has been accompanied by protests and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 2001 election , four of Lukashenka ’ s opponents disappeared .
The United States refused to recognize Belarus ’ s results in 2001 and imposed sanctions following the rigged 2006 election .
In 2010 , the authorities arrested Andrei Sannikov , a leading dissident who had tried to run against Lukashenka .
The police beat him brutally and held him in an undisclosed location , with no communication , for two months .
Sannikov was ultimately charged with inciting protests and sentenced to five years in prison .
After sixteen months behind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for agreeing to emigrate .
He now lives in the U.K. By Belarusian standards , this year ’ s process of renewing Lukashenka ’ s Presidency proceeded as usual .
Three men—the popular blogger Siarhey Tsikhanouski , the banker Viktar Babaryka , and the diplomat turned entrepreneur Valery Tsepkalo—tried to run against the President .
Tsikhanouski and Babaryka were arrested , and Tsepkalo was denied a place on the ballot .
Then something unexpected happened : three women—Tshikanouski ’ s and Tsepkalo ’ s wives and Babaryka ’ s campaign manager—joined forces , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a campaign of their own .
Tsikhanouskaya , who is married to the blogger , became their candidate .
The authorities allowed her to be registered as a candidate , perhaps because Lukashenka thought that a thirty-seven-year-old housewife would make a convenient opponent .
We may never know exactly how many ballots were cast for which candidate on Sunday , but it appears likely that , if they were actually counted , Tsikhanouskaya would prove the winner .
Some observers see her as the ultimate not-Lukashenka candidate and her possible victory solely as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see a spontaneous but sophisticated political campaign that spoke to Belarusians and has spurred them to unprecedented action .
“ In the last days of July tens of thousands of people gathered for Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya ’ s campaign rallies not only in large cities but in small towns—something that hasn ’ t happened in Belarus in decades , ” Elena Gapova , a Belarusian sociologist at Western Michigan University , wrote in an article published last week .
For the first time in a quarter century , it seemed , the Belarusian election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made it clear that she did not want to govern , though : she said that her objective was to win the election , free all political prisoners , and organize a free and fair Presidential election within six months of taking office .
The movement inspired by United Headquarters seemed to be different in scale and spirit from earlier Belarusian protests against rigged elections .
A group of software engineers that called itself Honest People created an alternative vote-tallying platform called Golos , or “ voice ” : they asked voters to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ precinct information , in the hope of making it impossible for precincts to widely underreport the number of ballots cast for Tsikhanouskaya .
Opposition to Lukashenka seemed to be everywhere .
“ Before , whenever they announced falsified results of elections , claiming seventy or eighty per cent for Lukashenka , my generation always thought , ‘ Maybe someone somewhere really does support him , ’ ” Tatsiana Zamirovskaya , a forty-year-old music journalist who writes for independent Belarusian publications but has lived in New York for the last five years , told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ felt like I was in the minority .
But this time everyone signed up to be election observers .
Even my parents became socially engaged.
” Two days before the vote , Tsikhanouskaya ’ s supporters hijacked a government-sponsored outdoor concert in Minsk .
The d.j.s put on a song called “ We Expect Changes ” by the late Russian singer Viktor Tsoi .
In 1989 , when the Soviet Union was undergoing its own unlikely transformation , the song was an anthem of hope .
Now , the two d.j.s and many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a victory sign ; many wore white bracelets that have served as symbols of United Headquarters .
Officials turned off the sound before the song was over .
The d.j.s , Kirill Galanov and Vladislav Sokolouski , were arrested a few hours later and sentenced to ten days ’ administrative arrest for “ hooliganism.
” On the eve of the election , Tsikhanouskaya announced that she had gone into hiding after her campaign manager , Maria Moroz , was detained .
Two weeks earlier , Tsikhanouskaya had said that she had sent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because of threats against the family .
Tsoi ’ s song now became the anthem of Belarusian resistance .
On election day , the Nobel laureate writer Svetlana Alexievich , who lives in Minsk , texted a friend in Berlin , “ Internet is dying already .
The last thing we saw was military vehicles , driving through the town all night .
The city is also surrounded by troops… Hundreds of cars moving through the city are blaring Tsoi ’ s ‘ We Expect Changes !
’ I am falling in love @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sunday evening , Viačorka told me , Belarus ’ s Internet silence was finally broken .
Journalists , activists , and savvy tech users had been scrambling to find and install software that would allow them to bypass the channels blocked by the government .
Psiphon , a Canadian app originally developed to help users in China get around censorship , proved effective , but few people had it installed on their phones or computers , and the government had blocked access to the Apple and Google app stores .
“ People were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Viačorka said .
One after another , journalists and activists started uploading content to Telegram , an app , popular in the post-Soviet space , that allows people to create “ channels ” for multimedia content as well as exchange encrypted messages .
“ From this absolute emptiness , I was transported to photos of carnage , ” Viačorka said .
Police and the military in Minsk and other cities were brutally crushing the protests .

The streets of Minsk and other Belarusian cities have been battlegrounds since Sunday evening, when authorities announced that eighty per cent of voters had chosen to reëlect Alexander Lukashenka, who has been President for twenty-six years. His electoral opponent, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, has fled the country. At least three thousand people have been arrested, one protester has died, and an unknown number have been injured.
A lot is unknown, because authorities have tried to impose a blockade on information. On Sunday morning, as Belarusians started going to the polls, independent news sites vanished. Franak Viačorka, a thirty-two-year-old freelance journalist in Minsk, told me over the phone that a recently enacted law compels all Belarusian sites to be hosted on servers located in Belarus, which enables the government to disappear a site from the Web. Next, Viačorka said, foreign media outlets such as the Belarusian-language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty became inaccessible in Belarus. Finally, Belarus lost access to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and messenger services such as Viber and WhatsApp. “It was this terrible feeling of a city that had died,” Viačorka said. “Nothing was ringing, nothing was beeping, there were no responses or notifications.” Tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of people, including many journalists, were out in the streets and public squares of Minsk and other Belarusian cities, but they could not transmit information.
Since Lukashenka first became President in 1994, he has presided over five so-called elections. None of them have been considered free and fair by international observers, and each has been accompanied by protests and mass arrests. In the lead-up to the 2001 election, four of Lukashenka’s opponents disappeared. The United States refused to recognize Belarus’s results in 2001 and imposed sanctions following the rigged 2006 election. In 2010, the authorities arrested Andrei Sannikov, a leading dissident who had tried to run against Lukashenka. The police beat him brutally and held him in an undisclosed location, with no communication, for two months. Sannikov was ultimately charged with inciting protests and sentenced to five years in prison. After sixteen months behind bars, he was amnestied in exchange for agreeing to emigrate. He now lives in the U.K.
By Belarusian standards, this year’s process of renewing Lukashenka’s Presidency proceeded as usual. Three men—the popular blogger Siarhey Tsikhanouski, the banker Viktar Babaryka, and the diplomat turned entrepreneur Valery Tsepkalo—tried to run against the President. Tsikhanouski and Babaryka were arrested, and Tsepkalo was denied a place on the ballot. Then something unexpected happened: three women—Tshikanouski’s and Tsepkalo’s wives and Babaryka’s campaign manager—joined forces, calling themselves United Headquarters, and launched a campaign of their own. Tsikhanouskaya, who is married to the blogger, became their candidate. The authorities allowed her to be registered as a candidate, perhaps because Lukashenka thought that a thirty-seven-year-old housewife would make a convenient opponent.
We may never know exactly how many ballots were cast for which candidate on Sunday, but it appears likely that, if they were actually counted, Tsikhanouskaya would prove the winner. Some observers see her as the ultimate not-Lukashenka candidate and her possible victory solely as a rejection of the dictator. Others see a spontaneous but sophisticated political campaign that spoke to Belarusians and has spurred them to unprecedented action.
“In the last days of July tens of thousands of people gathered for Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s campaign rallies not only in large cities but in small towns—something that hasn’t happened in Belarus in decades,” Elena Gapova, a Belarusian sociologist at Western Michigan University, wrote in an article published last week. For the first time in a quarter century, it seemed, the Belarusian election had somehow become a contest. Tsikhanouskaya made it clear that she did not want to govern, though: she said that her objective was to win the election, free all political prisoners, and organize a free and fair Presidential election within six months of taking office.
The movement inspired by United Headquarters seemed to be different in scale and spirit from earlier Belarusian protests against rigged elections. A group of software engineers that called itself Honest People created an alternative vote-tallying platform called Golos, or “voice”: they asked voters to send in photographs of their ballots with precinct information, in the hope of making it impossible for precincts to widely underreport the number of ballots cast for Tsikhanouskaya.
Opposition to Lukashenka seemed to be everywhere. “Before, whenever they announced falsified results of elections, claiming seventy or eighty per cent for Lukashenka, my generation always thought, ‘Maybe someone somewhere really does support him,’ ” Tatsiana Zamirovskaya, a forty-year-old music journalist who writes for independent Belarusian publications but has lived in New York for the last five years, told me via Zoom. “I always felt like I was in the minority. But this time everyone signed up to be election observers. Even my parents became socially engaged.”
Two days before the vote, Tsikhanouskaya’s supporters hijacked a government-sponsored outdoor concert in Minsk. The d.j.s put on a song called “We Expect Changes” by the late Russian singer Viktor Tsoi. In 1989, when the Soviet Union was undergoing its own unlikely transformation, the song was an anthem of hope. Now, the two d.j.s and many people in the audience raised their hands in a victory sign; many wore white bracelets that have served as symbols of United Headquarters. Officials turned off the sound before the song was over. The d.j.s, Kirill Galanov and Vladislav Sokolouski, were arrested a few hours later and sentenced to ten days’ administrative arrest for “hooliganism.”
On the eve of the election, Tsikhanouskaya announced that she had gone into hiding after her campaign manager, Maria Moroz, was detained. Two weeks earlier, Tsikhanouskaya had said that she had sent her two children out of the country because of threats against the family.
Tsoi’s song now became the anthem of Belarusian resistance. On election day, the Nobel laureate writer Svetlana Alexievich, who lives in Minsk, texted a friend in Berlin, “Internet is dying already. The last thing we saw was military vehicles, driving through the town all night. The city is also surrounded by troops… Hundreds of cars moving through the city are blaring Tsoi’s ‘We Expect Changes!’ I am falling in love with my people…”
Around ten on Sunday evening, Viačorka told me, Belarus’s Internet silence was finally broken. Journalists, activists, and savvy tech users had been scrambling to find and install software that would allow them to bypass the channels blocked by the government. Psiphon, a Canadian app originally developed to help users in China get around censorship, proved effective, but few people had it installed on their phones or computers, and the government had blocked access to the Apple and Google app stores. “People were passing it around on thumb drives,” Viačorka said. One after another, journalists and activists started uploading content to Telegram, an app, popular in the post-Soviet space, that allows people to create “channels” for multimedia content as well as exchange encrypted messages. “From this absolute emptiness, I was transported to photos of carnage,” Viačorka said. Police and the military in Minsk and other cities were brutally crushing the protests.
Viačorka decided to start checking the information he was seeing and, if he could confirm that it came from a real person reporting from a real place, start posting it on Twitter in English, to let the world know what was happening. It turned into the longest work shift in his life. By the time we spoke—around four in the morning, Minsk time, on Tuesday—Viačorka had been working for thirty-eight hours. At first, he said, he thought that people were protesting in a dozen cities and towns, but by Monday morning he realized that number was over thirty.
Most people in Belarus, including those who were in the streets, had no access to the news. Zamirovskaya told me that she had spent Sunday and Monday calling friends and family in Belarus to tell them what she could gather from reading protest Telegram channels in New York. “For example, my friends were protesting nearing Pushkinskaya Metro Station, and I told them, ‘Don’t go to Sportivnaya, they’ve already started using stun grenades there,’ ” she told me. Otherwise, she said, “It’s a black fog, and no one knows what’s happening in it.”
Tanya Lokshina, associate director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia Division, travelled to Minsk from Moscow on Monday. A taxi driver who picked her up on the Belarusian side of the border asked her if she knew anything about the outcome of the election, she said. He explained that he could not get any information online and had heard nothing on the radio. By this time, the government had announced that Lukashenka had won with more than eighty per cent of the vote. Golos, the alternative vote-counting system, became inaccessible in the afternoon on election day.
“It’s unbearably hard to work without Internet,” Lokshina told me over the phone from Minsk. “You just end up running around town, not knowing what’s going on.” She said that the city had felt normal during the day: it was hot, cafés were open, people were out strolling or shopping. Around seven in the evening, she said, Minsk turned into a city of very young people: “Someone over thirty would stand out.” More and more young people emerged, she said, “in pairs and in clumps, drifting together, drifting apart, like in a movie.” At some point, there were about a thousand young people assembled in the center of town. They had only three slogans they chanted: “Leave!,” “Liberty!,” and “Long live Belarus!” They were not merely peaceful, she said, but observant of all the normal rules of this overly orderly city: even where traffic was blocked off, they crossed the streets on the crosswalks and on a green light, and they took no shortcuts that would have involved trampling grass.
Police employed “kettling,” a technique that has become familiar to Americans during recent protests: police alternately squeeze the crowd into smaller spaces and cut between protesters, creating smaller and tighter groups. “Once they got them down to groups of fifteen or twenty people, they would give chase after them through courtyards,” Lokshina said. Some people were able to run away; others were detained. The chasing went on until the wee hours, she said. All the while, the police made ample use of stun grenades: “They use them so much it’s almost like they are trying out a new weapon.” She said she also heard rubber bullets being fired. Farther from the center of town, Lokshina said, protesters tried building barricades, which were repeatedly demolished by police, and some protesters threw Molotov cocktails.
I spoke to a twenty-five-year-old software engineer who spent Monday evening and night out in the streets in Minsk. Boris (not his real name) told me that he had not been actively engaged withpolitics before this summer; he went to his first demonstration in June. On Monday, he went all over the city: He saw thirty or forty heavily armed troops chase a couple of hundred protesters into a store; he saw people building barricades and heard screaming from courtyards and the sound of one stun grenade exploding after another. “I wouldn’t call this protest,” he said. “I’d call this being beaten up.”
Some have compared the situation in Minsk to the beginning of Euromaidan, the protests that toppled the Ukrainian government in 2014, But Zamirovskaya says the parallel doesn’t hold up: a revolution from below happened in Ukraine, she said, whereas in Belarus, “Lukashenka lost the vote and is now staging a military coup.”
Lokshina said that she had not seen military force in use yet; from what she had been able to observe, the current crackdown is being carried out by police. It is beyond doubt, however, that police are using excessive force and arresting people at random. The police appear to be targeting journalists specifically. Maxim Solopov, a correspondent for the Russian publication Meduza, was detained for three days before being located and freed on Wednesday; on Tuesday, a video emerged in which police in riot gear hit Solopov with nightsticks as he shouts repeatedly, “I’m a journalist!” Another voice is heard asking, “What do I care?” A Belarusian journalist was wounded with a rubber bullet. Several dozen more have been detained. The military is everywhere, Lokshina said: there are water cannons and armored trucks parked all over the city, and trucks full of soldiers in camouflage. “I fear that he may impose a state of emergency or martial law,” she said.


newyorker--2020-08-12--How Natasha Trethewey Remembers Her Mother

You said in an interview that a professor once told you to “ unburden yourself of being black.
” Can you talk about that experience and how much your decision to focus on these subjects was discouraged ?
The full thing that that professor said to me was , “ Unburden yourself of being black .
Unburden yourself of the death of your mother , and write about the situation in Northern Ireland , ” which was something that he thought was more universal or more interesting to write about .
Black writers have been told for a long time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , that they should write about subjects that white people think of as more universal , which , of course , is a very racist thing to say—that somehow the humanity of African-Americans is not universal in the way that the stories of white people would be universal .
I think about James Baldwin , who said that the history of the Negro in America is the history of America .
I knew that that professor of mine was wrong .
I knew it .
I could even go and talk to my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who said , “ You have to write about what you have to write about , ” or Philip Levine , who said , “ I write what is given me to write.
” I write what is given me to write .
I do think that we are in a moment where people are starting to recognize that those stories , those perspectives , are so important .
And then you think about the renaissance of poetry in America being driven so much by the wonderful Black poets in America .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you saw as the complexity about what should happen to these monuments and statues , even if we have much less complex views about what the Confederacy was .
Do you want to expand on that ?
I think that a lot of them belong in cemeteries or where the dead are buried .
That is where we place such kinds of memorials .
I think that they belong in museums .
I think for ones that we might not be able to take down , such as the giant one on Stone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to sandblast it , but we need to tell a fuller version .
It ought to be a way to enter into telling a fuller version of our shared American history , because for years what they ’ ve done is erased part of history or only told a very certain version of it , and a misapprehension of it .
The way to think about that is to think about the nearly two hundred thousand African-American soldiers who fought in the Civil War , who fought for their own freedom , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ destroy the Union , to whom there are very few monuments erected .
Just think how different the landscape of the South would be , and how differently we would learn about our Southern history , our shared American history , if we had monuments to those soldiers who won the war—who didn ’ t lose the war but won the war to save the Union .
Those are the monuments we need to have .
What have you made of the conversation around these issues in the past two months , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these conversations about these issues that have been so central to your work for a long time ?
Well , it ’ s been a long time coming , but a change gone come , right ?
It ’ s been amazing because I never thought I would see , in my lifetime , that Mississippi would let go of that flag , for example .
Even when South Carolina got rid of their Confederate flag , I thought that Mississippi would hold out forever .
There were politicians in recent years running @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forever .
A friend of mine in Decatur , Georgia , where I used to live , sent me a video of the Confederate monument coming down in Decatur .
And , again , it was something I never thought that I would see .
I think it ’ s important because it really represents a fuller conversation about the history of race and racism in America that we are now having .
I think the white people who are engaged in this conversation with us are coming to a reckoning about what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our landscape , what stories we ’ ve been telling ourselves for years .
I think many of them are beginning to see that lies and misapprehensions and half-truths disfigure their souls , and if they want to save themselves it starts with truth .
I want to return to the book and to your mom .
How do you remember her now ?
When you think about her , what comes to mind ?
You know , I should just do a little check mark every time , because I think about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s varied .
I think about her if I go to write the menu for dinner on the chalkboard I have in the kitchen , because that ’ s a thing she used to do , and I think about her doing that .
Sometimes I catch her face in the mirror when I walk by it , a certain gesture or a certain look .
And I think about her .
My desk in my study is surrounded by photographs of her and some of the three of us—my mother , father @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It ’ s a kind of shrine , I suppose , and so I see it constantly as I work , the two of them looking over me , mostly her .
So I see her face .
My mother ’ s mom committed suicide when my mom was eleven , actually .
I think it took me so long to understand how much my mom thought about her every day .
Right .
I mean , it ’ s been thirty-five years and yet it doesn ’ t go away .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ personal artistic form , and obviously you ’ re writing prose , but in a very personal way .
What was the experience like for you , compared with writing poetry ?
How much did you enjoy it ?
I do find it harder , because I am used to density and compression , and trying to put as much as possible into the smallest space that I can , and I had much more space to move around in , which I think allows for a different kind of meditation .
Even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ throughout the prose as if I were writing a long poem , or sort of a long poem in sections or sequence , like the way I would put together an entire book .
Similar to writing “ Native Guard ” or “ Bellocq ’ s Ophelia , ” in particular , I made use of documentary evidence— letters , diaries , and photographs—and they ’ re placed in a certain order so that the story is told and then they circle back , so it ’ s nonlinear .
Even though I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lyricism of a poem .
In addition to having a certain lyricism , the book is structured in an interesting way—not only not chronologically but , also , you include things like a transcript of your mom talking .
Do you want to say how that came about and your decision to include it ?
So the files that the man who had been the first police officer on the scene gave me , in 2005 , included a statement to the police my mother had made on February 14th of 1984 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her .
It included a document that she was writing herself on a yellow legal pad that was found in her briefcase the morning she was murdered .
It included her autopsy , statements that the police took from witnesses , and it included transcripts of the phone calls for two days leading up to her death that were being recorded in order for the judge to issue an arrest warrant for him , because he was making threats .
I include some of this documentary evidence in the book .
In particular @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a hard decision to make , but I ultimately decided that rather than me trying to write about them or describe them , which might come off as me telling you how resilient and calm and smart and strong my mother was , I wanted you to see it for yourself , to be able to read her and just hear her voice .

In 1985, when the poet Natasha Trethewey was nineteen, her mother, Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough, was murdered on Memorial Drive, in Atlanta. The murderer was Turnbough’s ex-husband, who had abused her and Trethewey, her daughter from a previous marriage, for more than a decade. Now Trethewey has written “Memorial Drive,” a memoir of her early life and the life and death of her mother, drawing not only on her own recollections but also on court documents that she obtained in recent years, including a diary that her mother kept in the weeks before her murder.
Trethewey, a former U.S. Poet Laureate and a professor of English at Northwestern, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for her poetry collection “Native Guard,” which tells the story of a Black Louisiana regiment that watched over captured Confederates during the Civil War. In 2012, The New Yorker said of her work, “Trethewey’s writing mines the cavernous isolation, brutality, and resilience of African-American history, tracing its subterranean echoes to today.” “Memorial Drive” attempts something similar, in prose form: to trace the life of her mother and its intersections with the history of African-Americans in the South.
I recently spoke with Trethewey, by phone, about “Memorial Drive.” During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed her decision to tell her mother’s story in prose, her feelings about the destruction of Confederate monuments, and what she remembers most from her mother’s life.
In the book, you write, about visiting the apartment complex where your mother was killed, “The young woman I’d become, walking out of that apartment hours later, was not the same one who went into it. It’s as if she’s still there, that girl I was, behind the closed door, locked in the footage where it ends. Often, I have seen that doorway in my dreams. Only now is it a threshold I can cross.” What do you think it was that made you able to reach that threshold thirty-five years later?
I think that I had to. I never had an intention of writing this book, but after getting a lot of attention after winning the Pulitzer and being appointed Poet Laureate, I was written about a lot in newspapers and magazines. Whenever I was written about, my backstory became part of the story. When my backstory was written, my mother entered it only as a footnote, or an afterthought—as this victim or murdered woman. It really hurt me, because her role in my life and me becoming a writer was being diminished or erased. I just decided that if she was going to get mentioned then I was going to be the one to tell her story, and to put the important role she played in my making in its proper context.
That’s interesting. I know one of your books of poetry is dedicated to her, but do you think that if you hadn’t been in the public eye in some way that your need to grapple with this would have been different?
I think that the way I grappled with it might have been different, because in the poems—even, for example, in “Native Guard”—there’s just maybe a shadow of that story. Those poems are not about how she died or our lives. They were elegy. They were about my grief. They were about me living with a loss, and not how it came to be. I might have continued to write about it like that.
But it’s two-pronged, that thing I first said to you. I think it’s also about physical geography, and having gone back to Atlanta, because I really intended never to return. My grandmother said she would never set foot in Atlanta again, and Hurricane Katrina hit, and she had to come to Atlanta when her home was destroyed. And so she lived out her last couple of years in Atlanta, the place she vowed never to return to. I went there because I got a good job, and as an academic you have to go where you get a really good job. And so I ended up back in this place I said I would never go to, thinking that I could avoid the past by never going to certain places, but it kept finding me in strange coincidences and chance meetings.
What was the chance meeting that stood out most?
It’s a moment in 2005, twenty years after her death. I was walking into town with my husband, to go to a restaurant that we frequented, and a man approached us at the restaurant, and it turned out that he was the first police officer on the scene the morning of her murder, and he recognized me. He told me that after twenty years the files of a case are purged, and so he rescued them for me and gave them to me.
This is one of the final scenes in the book, and it’s also an example of how much importance you put on place and geography in your own life story. Can you tell people about where you are from?
I was born on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and I was born on Confederate Memorial Day, exactly a hundred years since the establishment of that holiday in the Deep South. I was born into the geography of Mississippi—a place in which my parents’ interracial marriage was illegal. I was a daughter of miscegenation and there were anti-miscegenation laws that also rendered me illegitimate in the eyes of the law, kind of persona non grata.
The odd irony of ending up in Atlanta was that we moved there in 1972, my mother and I, which was the year that Stone Mountain, the memorial to the Confederacy, was completed. They started working on it back in 1915 but completed it many years later. My mother died on Memorial Drive, which is the road that runs from downtown Atlanta to the base of Stone Mountain, so she died in the shadow of that Confederate monument. It seems to me that I was born into the particular historical time and place, and that the through line of that geography has everything to do with the Confederacy and ideas about white supremacy and black subordination that I’ve been fighting against my whole life.
You alluded to your mother not being one of the main focusses of your poetry. But one of those major focusses has been American history, and the history of the Confederacy. How much did your mother’s life explain your decision to focus on these subjects in your work?
I think that I have two existential wounds that make me a writer, and one of them is that great loss. I think that’s my deepest wound, losing my mother, but the other one is the wound of history that has everything to do with being born Black and biracial in a place that would render me illegitimate in the eyes of the law, a place that has tried to remind Black people for centuries of our second-class status with Confederate monuments, with the Confederate flag, with Jim Crow laws, with all sorts of things that are part of our shared history as Americans. And so those two wounds are deep and linked for me.


newyorker--2020-08-12--A Life with Art at the Center, in “Yves & Variation”

In the classical composer ’ s quest for audience attention , variation , which sees a single theme transformed into a parade of different forms , is one of the flashier and more satisfying tricks .
Variation can be a counter to boredom— “ Twinkle , Twinkle , Little Star ” makes us yawn , but Mozart gets it to scurry and flirt—and , through the deconstruction and re-creation of melody , it can provide a window on the sublime .
Lydia Cornett ’ s fifteen-minute documentary film “ Yves & Variation ” shows its subject , the extraordinary Yves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ musician , a doorman , an art dealer , a philanthropist , a father .
By resisting narrative and going without interviews , Cornett allows the motifs of Deshommes ’ s life to emerge amid its varied strands .
Cornett , who planned to become a violinist before turning to film , met Deshommes when they sat next to each other on the subway .
He ’ s pictured there partway through the film , travelling between worlds and reading “ Recollections of a Picture-Dealer , ” by Ambroise Vollard , but we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a midtown office building , where he works as a concierge .
In the opening shots , he ’ s preparing to practice the violin , as he does every day before the morning rush .
Standing behind the front desk in a suit and tie , he rubs resin on his bow , tunes his strings , plays a few bars of Mozart ’ s G Major violin concerto—functional rituals familiar to any string player who has progressed beyond a beginner ’ s caterwauls—while answering the phone and manning the elevator .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ buses glide by .
It ’ s a startling scene : practice is normally solitary and sequestered , but for Deshommes it becomes a public performance .
Passersby stop to listen , or to ask him what he ’ s working on .
At one point , he tells a curious passerby that he ’ s practicing Bach ’ s D-Minor Partita , and they sing the tune together .
Deshommes , who grew up in Haiti , came to New York on a student visa in 1985 .
He was seventeen years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he became undocumented .
He lived with an older brother and took classes day and night and through the summer in order to finish high school in two years .
“ I became a man the moment I set foot on U.S. soil , full of responsibility , ” he told me .
He started playing the violin a few years later , with teachers at the Harlem School of the Arts .
He was soon practicing several hours a day and working long shifts at Pizza Hut .
He felt that he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ professional , but his practice had become central to his life : “ Music was the escape , music was the goal .
Music was what made me achieve great things , ” he said .
“ The violin gives me a discipline where I feel I can conquer anything.
” In 2010 , an earthquake devastated Haiti , which then became the site of a series of humanitarian interventions , many of them botched and halfhearted .
Deshommes , who is now a U.S. citizen , helped to establish a school in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ earthquake ’ s epicenter , and then another one in Belle Anse , a remote town on the south coast .
To fund the projects , he began to import paintings by Haitian artists and sell them in New York .
In one scene , shot in his home , in Brooklyn , Deshommes pulls enormous canvases from a closet , Mary Poppins-style , and hands them to his eight-year-old daughter , Saraï , whom they dwarf .
A few seconds later , he ’ s overseeing her own violin practice while he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Throughout the film , Deshommes slides smoothly between English , French , Spanish , and Creole , and Cornett and her cinematographers , Kervin Marseille and Katie Sheridan , show a similar fluent versatility .
Conversations between Deshommes and Saraï are framed intimately , with the camera looking up at Deshommes from the child ’ s point of view ; shots in the midtown lobby maintain an architectural distance .
During a visit to Jean Pierre Jacques Phillipe , a Haitian artist who signs his work Bouboul , the camera lingers on a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Green and lush , it shows a flower-fringed road winding through wooded hills .
“ Sometimes , people tell me that my landscapes are too pristine .
Too beautiful .
That Haiti isn ’ t like that , ” Bouboul says , in Creole .
Deshommes laughs .
“ Haïti comme ça , ” he says .
“ Haiti is like that.
” Footage of Belle Anse , where Deshommes teeters across a beach of susurrating pebbles and , and then , in a tree-rimmed classroom , discusses the school ’ s precarious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the need .
The scene is the one moment when Deshommes looks uncomfortable .
The value of accomplishment , and the sense that art is as worthy a pursuit as work , runs as a theme through all of Deshommes ’ s activities .
“ Art can simultaneously shape the narrative and portrayal of a place , be sold as an aesthetic commodity , and funnel philanthropic efforts , ” Cornett told an interviewer in February .
Deshommes told me that , for him , “ art is everything.
” But people are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ composers .
Unlike in art , or music , the meaning of Yves ’ s life is defined by his many roles , and not the reverse—the essence derives from the experiences .
“ These seemingly disjointed variations and scenes compose the life of one person , ” Cornett said .
Like any good portraitist , she knows what she captures is subject to change .

In the classical composer’s quest for audience attention, variation, which sees a single theme transformed into a parade of different forms, is one of the flashier and more satisfying tricks. Variation can be a counter to boredom—“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” makes us yawn, but Mozart gets it to scurry and flirt—and, through the deconstruction and re-creation of melody, it can provide a window on the sublime. Lydia Cornett’s fifteen-minute documentary film “Yves & Variation” shows its subject, the extraordinary Yves Deshommes, in various guises: a musician, a doorman, an art dealer, a philanthropist, a father. By resisting narrative and going without interviews, Cornett allows the motifs of Deshommes’s life to emerge amid its varied strands.
Cornett, who planned to become a violinist before turning to film, met Deshommes when they sat next to each other on the subway. He’s pictured there partway through the film, travelling between worlds and reading “Recollections of a Picture-Dealer,” by Ambroise Vollard, but we first see him in the lobby of a midtown office building, where he works as a concierge. In the opening shots, he’s preparing to practice the violin, as he does every day before the morning rush. Standing behind the front desk in a suit and tie, he rubs resin on his bow, tunes his strings, plays a few bars of Mozart’s G Major violin concerto—functional rituals familiar to any string player who has progressed beyond a beginner’s caterwauls—while answering the phone and manning the elevator. In the mirror behind him, crosstown buses glide by. It’s a startling scene: practice is normally solitary and sequestered, but for Deshommes it becomes a public performance. Passersby stop to listen, or to ask him what he’s working on. At one point, he tells a curious passerby that he’s practicing Bach’s D-Minor Partita, and they sing the tune together.
Deshommes, who grew up in Haiti, came to New York on a student visa in 1985. He was seventeen years old, and when his visa expired he became undocumented. He lived with an older brother and took classes day and night and through the summer in order to finish high school in two years. “I became a man the moment I set foot on U.S. soil, full of responsibility,” he told me. He started playing the violin a few years later, with teachers at the Harlem School of the Arts. He was soon practicing several hours a day and working long shifts at Pizza Hut. He felt that he was too old to train as a professional, but his practice had become central to his life: “Music was the escape, music was the goal. Music was what made me achieve great things,” he said. “The violin gives me a discipline where I feel I can conquer anything.”
In 2010, an earthquake devastated Haiti, which then became the site of a series of humanitarian interventions, many of them botched and halfhearted. Deshommes, who is now a U.S. citizen, helped to establish a school in the area of Bas-Citronniers, near the earthquake’s epicenter, and then another one in Belle Anse, a remote town on the south coast. To fund the projects, he began to import paintings by Haitian artists and sell them in New York. In one scene, shot in his home, in Brooklyn, Deshommes pulls enormous canvases from a closet, Mary Poppins-style, and hands them to his eight-year-old daughter, Saraï, whom they dwarf. A few seconds later, he’s overseeing her own violin practice while he brokers a deal on the phone.
Throughout the film, Deshommes slides smoothly between English, French, Spanish, and Creole, and Cornett and her cinematographers, Kervin Marseille and Katie Sheridan, show a similar fluent versatility. Conversations between Deshommes and Saraï are framed intimately, with the camera looking up at Deshommes from the child’s point of view; shots in the midtown lobby maintain an architectural distance. During a visit to Jean Pierre Jacques Phillipe, a Haitian artist who signs his work Bouboul, the camera lingers on a painting that Deshommes wants to buy. Green and lush, it shows a flower-fringed road winding through wooded hills. “Sometimes, people tell me that my landscapes are too pristine. Too beautiful. That Haiti isn’t like that,” Bouboul says, in Creole. Deshommes laughs. “Haïti comme ça,” he says. “Haiti is like that.” Footage of Belle Anse, where Deshommes teeters across a beach of susurrating pebbles and, and then, in a tree-rimmed classroom, discusses the school’s precarious finances, confirms both the beauty and the need. The scene is the one moment when Deshommes looks uncomfortable.
The value of accomplishment, and the sense that art is as worthy a pursuit as work, runs as a theme through all of Deshommes’s activities. “Art can simultaneously shape the narrative and portrayal of a place, be sold as an aesthetic commodity, and funnel philanthropic efforts,” Cornett told an interviewer in February. Deshommes told me that, for him, “art is everything.” But people are not themes, and documentarians are not composers. Unlike in art, or music, the meaning of Yves’s life is defined by his many roles, and not the reverse—the essence derives from the experiences. “These seemingly disjointed variations and scenes compose the life of one person,” Cornett said. Like any good portraitist, she knows what she captures is subject to change.


newyorker--2020-08-12--Kamala Harris’s Approval Rating Soars After Trump Reminds Nation How “Nasty” She Was to Kavanaugh

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —Senator Kamala Harris saw her approval rating soar on Tuesday after Donald J. Trump reminded the American people that she had been “ nasty ” to Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings .
In interviews across the country , voters expressed gratitude to Trump for reminding them that Harris had been responsible for one of their favorite televised moments in recent history .
“ When Trump said that she had been ‘ nasty ’ to Kavanaugh , I had to go to YouTube and relive that glorious event , ” Carol Foyler , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ It really holds up.
” Harland Dorrinson , who lives in Wichita , Kansas , agreed .
“ Watching Kamala Harris own Kavanaugh made me happy for weeks , ” he said .
“ I have to thank Trump for making that happy memory come flooding back.
” Canter Lisson , who lives in Portland , Maine , also appreciated being reminded of Harris ’ s demolition of Kavanaugh , but he sounded a wistful note .
“ It ’ s too bad that , if she ’ s elected Vice-President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ opportunities to be ‘ nasty ’ to Brett Kavanaugh , ” he said .
“ Still , I ’ ll always be grateful for the one time I saw her be ‘ nasty ’ to him .
It gave me a reason to live .
”

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Senator Kamala Harris saw her approval rating soar on Tuesday after Donald J. Trump reminded the American people that she had been “nasty” to Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings.
In interviews across the country, voters expressed gratitude to Trump for reminding them that Harris had been responsible for one of their favorite televised moments in recent history.
“When Trump said that she had been ‘nasty’ to Kavanaugh, I had to go to YouTube and relive that glorious event,” Carol Foyler, who lives in Springfield, Missouri, said. “It really holds up.”
Harland Dorrinson, who lives in Wichita, Kansas, agreed. “Watching Kamala Harris own Kavanaugh made me happy for weeks,” he said. “I have to thank Trump for making that happy memory come flooding back.”
Canter Lisson, who lives in Portland, Maine, also appreciated being reminded of Harris’s demolition of Kavanaugh, but he sounded a wistful note.
“It’s too bad that, if she’s elected Vice-President, she won’t have many opportunities to be ‘nasty’ to Brett Kavanaugh,” he said. “Still, I’ll always be grateful for the one time I saw her be ‘nasty’ to him. It gave me a reason to live.”
Read More Satire from the Borowitz Report