Wednesday Cafe: Magic Powers Edition!
In which we protec but we also attac.
Hey inbox pals! This week we’re talking about magical stage shows, anachronistic fashions, and radical self-love.
Gallery of 2020 // Devin Elle Kurtz
What We’re Watching
It feels like a million years ago that I last saw a stage show, and so my main feeling when watching the Netflix special In And Of Itself is “I wish I could go back in time and be there in the audience”. It’s one thing to watch it at home, where you have a vague idea that it’s about a guy who does card tricks only to discover it’s actually about a guy who does card tricks WHILE engineering a series of bizarre and meaningful experiences that employ art, storytelling, and other trickery. This show made me think about my own identity, and how powerful the concept of identity is in understanding others. It also alerted me to the fact that I haven’t been keeping an eye on the magician community lately, and they’ve probably been getting up to all sorts of hijinks we need to watch out for. ~ Tracy
Don’t Watch Bridgerton
What is something that everyone likes, but you hate? For me, that’s Bridgerton. I hate almost everything about the popular Netflix show: I hate Daphne’s insipid bangs, I hate the incongruous and anachronistic costumes, I hate how the corsets are completely inappropriate to the era, and I hate how the show plays into bad faith misconceptions that “corsets bad.” I hate the lack of chemistry between Daphne and Simon. I hate the Bridgerton brothers. The only thing about the show I don’t hate is Lady Danbury, because that woman is a queen, even more than the actual queen (just hand your crown over, Charlotte)!
Maybe I’d like Bridgerton more if the show focused more on Lady Featherington, who I found more compelling than any other character—the story of a woman in a bad marriage to a man who’d gambled away their fortune and their daughters’ dowries and trying to do well by her daughters even if her daughters couldn’t appreciate her efforts. She was basically Mrs. Bennet of Pride and Prejudice, but given a sympathetic voice.
Instead of watching Bridgerton, you should instead watch Pirates of the Caribbean, which has a “I can’t breathe in this corset” scene, but doesn’t vilify all corsets as automatically bad. Also, Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom have good chemistry, despite sharing very little screen time with each other. If you have the DVD, the audio commentary with Keira Knightley and Jack Davenport is absolutely delightful.
You can also watch Pride and Prejudice, either the BBC version or the Joe Wright 2005 adaptation. Both are valid adaptations with different goals. Enjoy some accurate Regency costumes, storylines that carry actual stakes for the characters (loss of pride is not a real stake, Daphne), and characters that have palpable chemistry.
Or you can watch the masterpiece that is Disney’s 1997 adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. Its racially diverse and star-studded cast includes Brandy as the titular heroine, as well as Whitney Houston as the fairy godmother, Bernadette Peters as the stepmother, Whoopi Goldberg and Victor Garber as the prince’s hapless parents, and Jason Alexander as the prince’s overly eager valet. This is basically what I wanted Bridgerton to be, a color-blind fantasy setting in which a black woman and a white man can have an Asian son.
Or if you want some steamy sex scenes, just go ahead and watch some porn, because honestly the sex scenes in Bridgerton are anxiety-inducing to me. Maybe it’s just me, but I just felt bad for Simon’s servants, who just wanted to do their jobs and not have to clean up bodily fluids in the library of all places. ~ Stacy
Falling Again // Simone Ferriero
What We’re Reading
The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor
Do you want a short, thought-provoking read? Recently, I got onto the Brene Brown bandwagon and listened to her interview with Sonya Renee Taylor. Taylor is an activist and a poet, and her book was like having a tough love, pep talk from a fierce friend (aka your resident Stacy).
Although there are facts and studies thrown in, it's more in the vein of this woman's personal journey from apologizing for herself (her body, her skin color, her loud voice) to championing the message that there is enough room in the world for all bodies and everybody.
While I have my self-help tendencies, I am not a radical. I am a professional dilettante who picks up and puts down projects and ideas. So I approached radical self-love suspiciously and raised an eyebrow at provocative words like body terrorism, but after reading it I'm fully onboard.
Taylor points out that as babies, we love our bodies, and we only learn to not like our bodies as we grow up. We are taught which bodies are good and all other bodies are compared to that ideal, which means that some bodies are bad. Comparison is the thief of joy but it’s also a tool of oppression.
"Body terrorism is a hideous tower whose primary support beam is the belief that there is a hierarchy of bodies. We uphold the system by internalizing this hierarchy and using it to situate our own value and worth in the world. When our personal value is dependent on the lesser value of other bodies, radical self-love is unachievable.”
I started getting white hair in my mid-twenties, and the past year those three hairs have multiplied to more than I can pluck. And it's not a cool Claire Saffitz streak either. I have put on corona pounds. I have never had the best relationship with my body, and this book was a welcome wake up call that I am enough and my body is wonderful.
This was one of my bedtime reading books so I absorbed only the broadest, bluntest strokes. I'm sure she made many more nuanced points. But yea, you should read this book. ~ Natalie
Thanks for reading! For our final trick, click a button, any button. If you see something that’s not a button don’t click it or the trick won’t work.