special culture

All posts by addictu

Believe Republicans’ Actions—not Their Words—on IVF

Last month, former president and 2024 Republican nominee Donald Trump surprised many by calling for universal coverage of IVF treatment, albeit with no specific plan. The move was likely part of an attempt to win over undecided voters who had been put off by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

You might be taken aback to see Trump even vaguely associating himself with the push to help families struggling to conceive. (Trump has proudly claimed credit for installing the Supreme Court justices who formed the majority in the decision that overturned Roe—a move that has had numerous ramifications, not just for abortion but also for fertility treatments like IVF.) Let me assure you that his priority was not, and never has been, the health, safety, or reproductive agency of women. “We want more babies, to put it nicely,” Trump said at an August event in Michigan.

If you need more tangible evidence of the GOP’s stance on reproductive freedoms, look no further than the Senate, where Republicans blocked a Democratic bill to provide a nationwide right to IVF treatments on Tuesday. This marks Senate Democrats’ second attempt at passing the bill, which is known as the Right to IVF Act and was sponsored by Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth (who used the fertility treatment to conceive her children). Republican senators used their own cynical spin to justify their position: “This is simply an attempt by Democrats to try and create a political issue where there isn’t one,” South Dakota senator John Thune told reporters on Tuesday.

Try telling that to the many people whose hope for a child through IVF has been stymied by the chilling effect of the overturning of Roe. Watching Republicans try to score points off IVF discourse while increasingly passing legislation that creates medical obstacles makes me think of that Maya Angelou quote: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Maybe it’s time for all of us to believe who GOP leaders like Trump have shown us that they are—and focus our energy on electing politicians who actually support IVF as the crucial part of full-scale reproductive autonomy that it objectively is.

The Hair Tinsel in Anora Has Surprising Roots
Hold On to Me Darling, Reviewed: So Lonesome He Could Cry

A hunky country star, weary of fame and longing for the simple life, chucks it all to open a farm store in his hometown; there, romance, rippling pecs, and existential wrangling ensue. Though this could be the landing-page synopsis of the latest Hallmark Channel offering (a 2015 film called A Country Wedding comes pretty close), it is actually the plot of Hold On to Me Darling, a 2016 play by Kenneth Lonergan. A new revival of it is now playing off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, starring Adam Driver as Strings McCrane, a troubled crooner. (Neil Pepe directs.) Despite the schmaltzy setup, it is a thoughtful rumination on the hazards of celebrity with rich performances—including a wonderful one from Driver.

We first meet McCrane in a Kansas City hotel suite, where he is grappling with the recent death of his mother, a formidable woman he could never quite please. Enter Nancy, a local masseuse he engages for some stress relief, who quickly sees McCrane as her ticket out—and who could blame her? (For interested parties, a muscly Driver is in boxer briefs within 10 minutes of curtain.)

Heather Burns (as Nancy) and Driver in Hold On to Me Darling

Photo: Julieta Cervantes

Here’s Everything Coming to Netflix in December 2024

Burlesque

Rosé and Bruno Mars’s New Single ‘Apt.’ Is a Pop-Punk Delight

It’s been three long years since the world last heard from Rosé. In 2021, the Blackpink member embarked on her first-ever solo project, R, featuring the singles “On the Ground” and “Gone.” An instant hit, it thrived not only on Rosé’s K-pop fame, but also the strength and versaility of her honied vocals, here applied to indie-rock and electro-pop sounds.

Now, the singer is gearing up to release her first full-length studio album, Rosie, on December 6—and to give her fans a taste of what’s to come, she’s dropped its first single, “Apt.,” featuring pop icon Bruno Mars. Unlike her vibier debut singles, “Apt.” is a full-fledged pop song that will have fans chanting along as it plays on the radio. (Just think Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl,” with that infectious bridge—“B-A-N-A-N-A-S!”—but swap in the words “Apartment! Apartment!”)

But what does its title actually mean? Rosé explains exclusively to Vogue that the song was inspired by her favorite Korean drinking game, Apartment. “I remember going home [from the studio] kind of freaked out. Is this OK, that I’ve written a song about a drinking game?” she says. Conflicted, she asked her team to delete the song from their phones—only to realize that they were already obsessed with it. (To honor Rosé’s Korean roots, throughout the song both she and Mars stick to the Korean pronunciation of apartment, apateu, or 아파트.)

Rosé and Bruno Mars.

Photo: John V. Esparza/ Courtesy of Atlantic Records

Nearly 30 Years After Her Death, a Bay Area Great Gets a Towering Solo Show in New York

The late Bay Area artist Bernice Bing was 25 years old when she had her first solo show, at San Francisco’s edgy but short-lived Batman Gallery, in 1961. Her abstract paintings were a hit; San Francisco Chronicle critic Alfred Frankenstein said Bing had a “remarkable gift for fluid line,” among other bits of praise. Not bad for a recent MFA grad. “People were somewhat surprised at my work because I hadn’t made a lot of noise at school,” Bing once reflected. “So, when I had that exhibition, people were rather taken aback by it. I liked that; I like surprises!”

Sixty-three years later, Bing is the subject of another astonishing debut: her first-ever solo show in New York. “Bernice Bing: BINGO,” on view at Berry Campbell gallery through October 12, brings together more than 30 works spanning from 1961 until 1998, the year Bing died of cancer at age 62. It’s a long-overdue moment for an artist whose ferocious paintings rank right up there with the other greats of mid-century American art.

In her lifetime, Bing had a whole lot stacked against her: She was gay, Chinese American, orphaned, abused, a woman. And she was an Abstract Expressionist living some 2,500 miles away from the center of that scene. But she persisted, plumbing art history, the lush California landscape, and her own complex history in her searing paintings.

While she was well-known in Bay Area artistic circles, wider acknowledgement of her work was limited—as was the case for so many non-white, non-male artists of that era. “She was this incredible artist who’s been hidden because people were too afraid to go there with her,” says Martha Campbell, who, along with Christine Berry, founded Berry Campbell in 2013.

Bernice Bing, Velasquez Family No. II, 1961. Oil on canvas, 71 x 68 in.

© Estate of Bernice Bing. Courtesy Berry Campbell, New York.

Am I the Only One Who Finds Taylor and Travis’s PDA Quite Sweet?

Well, it’s official: the world hates love. It’s something I’ve long suspected—not just because the modern dating scene feels so broken, but also because of the response whenever a happy, famous couple is photographed in public together. Typically, what follows is a set of memes, hyper-critical analysis, and tweets that will rip into the couple’s style and body language. And, of course, the severity of the reaction tends to be multiplied by 13,000 if Taylor Swift makes up one half of the duo in question.

In case you missed it, the musician spent Sunday afternoon at the US Open with her boyfriend, Travis Kelce. They were all over each other. I’m talking cuddles: his 6’5 athlete’s body looming behind hers, arms wrapped around her waist. I’m talking kisses: cute, giggly ones. And then there was the singing. Oh, and the dancing, and the air guitar-playing to The Darkness’s “I Believe in a Thing Called Love.” Cue a viral video that has sparked so much online derision and mockery you’d think they’d started having sex in their box before falling onto the tennis court completely naked. (They didn’t!)

“Incredibly cringe,” wrote one person in response to the video. “Someone should tell her she doesnt have to over act so happy on camera and that it’s actually a sign of terribly deep and incureable sadness,” another (excellent speller!) chimed. Other keyboard warriors with too much time on their hands decided to label the relationship “nauseating,” with the word “showmance” thrown about with abandon.

You get the picture. All of this is a grave shame for many reasons. The first is that Swift and Kelce are obviously very in love—you can tell by the way they look at each other. If you can’t, perhaps you’ve never been looked at like that. It’s obvious that this is a real relationship, which is exactly why they’re able to be so deeply cringey with one another. It’s the antithesis of most celebrity couples, who take themselves far too seriously to ever be seen so much as holding hands in public, let alone being as goofy and giddy as these two.

Frankly, it’s refreshing, particularly when you consider that Swift is inarguably one of the most famous people on the planet right now. Not only that, but she has a long history of being subjected to a relentless campaign of online misogyny and slut-shaming with regards to her love life. Her dating choices have been scrutinised to the point of parody, something she’s addressed in her songwriting more than once. With all this in mind, few would blame Swift for wanting to hide her relationship with Kelce from the media. That’s certainly what she did with her ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn. But now, here she is, proudly showing her love off to the world.

The 7 Best Moments From the 2024 Emmy Awards

The relative success or failure of the Emmy Awards can often be traced back to their host, and a high note was set early on at the 2024 Emmys with the father-son duo of Eugene and Dan Levy treating us to a show that was well-paced and studded with genuinely funny moments—from Martin Short and Steve Martin joking about Nicole Kidman’s small-screen omnipresence (Martin: “When I see an actor I don’t know, I just say, ‘I loved your scene with Nicole Kidman,’ and 9 times out of 10, I’m right!”) to Jean Smart poking fun at HBO while accepting her sixth Emmy. Below, find seven of the very best moments from this year’s Emmys ceremony:

The Saturday Night Live-alum tribute (of sorts) to Lorne Michaels

Photo: Getty Images

We’re always happy to see any combination of Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, Bowen Yang, and Seth Meyers, and their joking tribute to Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels’s many Emmy losses (and, as Meyers pointed out, not-insubstantial number of wins) had the stage-confident, quippy energy of a really good SNL sketch. I love even the suggestion that Yang thinks Michaels’s name is “Lauren.”

John Oliver’s sweet, impromptu tribute to his dog

The Wicked Press Tour Was…a Lot. I Miss It Already

I don’t need to tell you that we live in very cynical times. The cynic in all of us watched, mouth agog, as the two Wicked leads first started gushing over each other in front of the world’s media. These days, we’re used to seeing staunchly media-trained actresses dole out polite platitudes about their acting roles, nothing-burgers that fans gobble up as the rest of our eyes roll. We’re so inured to this glamorous pantomime, this Hollywood-colleague politesse, that watching Grande and Erivo gently caressing hands and openly weeping because of, well, their parts in a film felt unsettlingly unreal. We saw these high-emotional-intensity interviews, this deep intimacy, before we saw the film and the yellow brick road that led to their closeness. While these two witches weren’t in Kansas anymore, the rest of us were still firmly rooted to the ground.

Outwardly Proper, Inwardly Twisted: Hugh Grant on Going Mad for Heretic

Grant’s newest film, Heretic, extends the actor’s passion for the strange or off-kilter into new realms of horror. The stylized chamber piece is set in a Mountain West suburb, where Grant’s charming milquetoast Mr. Reed (no first name given) has summoned a pair of young Mormon missionaries, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East), to his unassuming doorstep to hear out their conversion pitch. Wary, at first, of his invitation inside, the sisters are assured by Reed that his wife will soon make an appearance with freshly baked blueberry pie. But Reed’s nerdy mannerisms and goggle-eyed ebullience slowly give way to discomfiting questions about faith that disturb the more experienced Sister Barnes. By then, however, the two women are already trapped inside his domestic labyrinth of intellectual, spiritual, and physical booby traps.