In Which The Only People Concerned Know Nothing

Bad People

by ETHAN PETERSON

The Good Place
creator Michael Schur
NBC

There is a moment in NBC's new sitcom The Good Place where Ted Danson lists a bunch of things which are good and bad, and the numerical positive or negative value he has assigned to each. The first positive thing he shows is "eating a sandwich" and the first negative thing he shows is "buys a trashy magazine." That is the initial troubling sign that the people behind The Good Place have as little idea what it means to be a good person as the show's central character, Eleanor (Kristen Bell).

Kristen Bell is undoubtedly a good person, since you would have to be extremely virtuous to marry or even have sex once with Dax Shepard. (His face looks like the protagonist of Ratatouille.) Then she brought joy to so many young people by voicing that girl in Frozen who was absolutely boy crazy until her sexuality was thawed by leaving the chaste castle in which her parents kept her.

Maybe the creators of The Good Place could have just asked Kristen Bell what it means to be good. Everyone in this version of heaven has dedicated their lives to helping others, except for her soulmate Chidi (William Jackson Harper). Chidi speaks French, although it is translated as English to Eleanor since she does not understand the French language. Chidi was a professor of ethics and moral philosophy, although evidently he was so terrible at academia that he has to remind himself of the basics by reading Kant:

The idea of training Eleanor to be good is repulsive to Chidi, which I suppose also makes him a sort of bad person. Even though Eleanor is the only white person except for a pair of homosexuals who, somewhat inappropriately, enjoy picking up trash (this was not thought out well), she never makes notice of it. Her soulmate is from Senegal, her next-door neighbors are from different parts of Asia and Europe, and Ted Danson is really the only other genuinely white person there. 

The Good Place becomes a weird hymn to white privilege, since Eleanor is transported to these environs without any actual virtue: so it must just be because of her skin color, and maybe her general complexion and appeal. Bell's handsome looks are no longer childlike, and she has become very expressive and soulful as she matures into her thirties. So far, few of her acting opportunities have utilized this new dimension, and The Good Place mainly writes jokes for her that revolve around her not being able to curse.

Sometimes we flash back to Eleanor's live in Phoenix, Arizona. You see, Hollywood writers look down on Arizona because it is nearby and thus an easy target. In Phoenix, Eleanor sold a nasal product that was composed of chalk, even though the FDA would never allow such a thing. This makes Eleanor's real life just as fanciful as her afterlife — it is a clue that you should not think about The Good Place too seriously. Creator Michael Schur emphasizes this when he recently stated in an interview that he started researching religion but gave up because it was too hard and cut into his golf time.

It is not enough that people like Schur not believe in God or any religious concepts: they cannot even be bothered to find out where they come for. Just as valid, they think, is whatever concept for the afterlife that come up with offhand during a pitch meeting. Well, atheists should be allowed their ideas too: what Schur and company have up with is basically hell — an unfunny mess of cliches, jokes stolen from Albert Brooks and physical comedy involving Ted Danson licking the sweat from his armpits. Who would willingly watch such a thing?

The aspect of The Good Place that is most insulting to its viewers is that it has no conception of how racist its ideas even are. The ethnic characters that surround Kristen Bell's Eleanor have no agency or will of their own: they simply exist to make her feel worse or better as the episode demands. The only time these empty shells ever show the slightest bit of agency is when Tahani (Jameela Jamil) decides that she and her Buddhist husband should try to cheer Ted Danson up. Why would he be sad? Danson has more hair now that he did twenty years ago.

Even Bell is afforded nothing but a basic perplexity. She becomes unsympathetic so quickly — she has no other function except to drink and enjoy her time in this new world. She is essentially uncurious and she avoids love or caring as if it these emotions were anathema to her new existence. She and her neighbors cannot be destroyed or harmed by anything in this new place, and yet they run around screaming when they see a group of giraffes stampeding down their streets. The only thing worse than a bad deed is a bad idea.

Ethan Peterson is the senior contributor to This Recording.

In Which We Tire Of Disney's Frozen At A Rapid Pace

I hope antoine de saint exupery's daughter's daughter by a prostitute is getting royalties for this

Icy Hot

by DICK CHENEY

Frozen
dir. Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee
102 minutes

The racism is back and better than ever. I complain, loudly, when Amazon puts an anti-Semitic hack like Agatha Christie on my kindle screensaver, but when it comes to Disney's relationship with bigotry and hate, most turn a blind eye. Every single person in Disney's feature length animated musical Frozen is white except for a Mama Troll who is voiced by a black actress, Maia Wilson.

at least give us a latino troll as well
The white protagonists of Frozen must be distinguished by their hair color. The blonde, Elsa (Idina Menzel), is the evilish one. Both Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa's parents perish in a vicious, parent-killing storm that capsizes their ship, and the next scene shows a group of cagey servants pulling a curtain over their portraits. This makes no sense, because portraits of loved ones who have passed help us remember them. There are a lot of things in Frozen that make a similar kind of sense.

longing for a white guy (she knows no other races).

But hey, you object, pausing a moment to gargle a rabbit's foot in your mouth for good luck, at least animals don't talk in Frozen. You will be half right, since many sociological experts consider trolls to be a different species, and also a snowman named Olaf (Josh Gad) is present for merchandise considerations and because having to hear the voices of Anna and her poor-ish friend Kristoff warble their way through their songs is quite painful, no matter how amusing the lyrics.

kristen bell's sonorous voice should never have been associated in any fashion with this image

Frozen would be much better as a stage musical, since it only uses three sets: an ice castle, a village and the tundra. Without other races and creeds, things are for the most part boring, and the lives of the girls in Frozen are occupied by nothing more than pining for the world outside their castle, waiting for the "gates" to open that will signal their adulthood. (You didn't seriously think this movie wasn't going to be sexist as well? Was there even a woman in The Lion King, and don't say a female lion cub, that doesn't fucking count.) Eventually the metaphorical vaginal gates open and the citizens are tolerably pleased with the shape of the aforementioned items.

Bah! you remand me with. Why can't you just enjoy things that are utter shit, like the rest of us? So what if the main antagonist in Frozen is basically an anti-Semite caricature that has Walt Disney nodding somewhere in the depths of hell?  Who cares if the disturbing racial stereotype of a wacky black troll saying, "Lawddd" is totally inappropriate for children?

this is worse than the quenelle
I have no real response to this other than to quietly post skeptical things about global warming on reddit, but I think you know most of what I'd like to say.

On her seventeenth birthday Anna finally is introduced to the village that surrounds her deceased parents' lonely castle. (They are never mentioned again after they go to their watery graves.) In one day only, she agrees to wed a local prince who she "unexpectedly" meets in this position:

the MPAA should be ashamed of itself, but more for existing at all
This movie was rated G. Think about that, or I mean, don't.

Elsa becomes quite upset when she learns of her sib's engagement, which I understand is typical. (I am not totally unfamiliar with the conflicts sisters have with each other.)  In response to this betrayal, she shoots ice out of her fingers and brings eternal winter to the land. Since it was basically already winter before this, it's hard to quantify what "eternal winter" means, but it involves a new hairstyle and a musical number.

I tire of all this obfuscation. One thing is most definitely not another; we may indeed regard what a thing is as its primary aspect. A mermaid is not a charming young woman; she is a siren who lures young men of two legs to death by true love. A lion is a savage predator, not a friend to warthogs and primates alike, while I have never met a deer who could talk, at least outside of a few sentences like, "Liam Hemsworth is too full of himself" or "Whatever happened to Everything But the Girl?"

you travelled to my ice palace and didn't bring snacks? I've been eating ice ever since the corpses ran out.

Eventually Anna tells Elsa of the harm she has inflicted on the local area, especially the money-driven Jewish landowner. She implores Elsa to end her isolation and the accompanying cold deluge. Elsa's response to her sister goes along these lines, "I have no way to melt ice, only create it. Therefore your complaints are noncupatory." The talking snowman is fairly displeased by this turn of events, but he tries to lend a certain lightness to the proceedings:

Musicals are fairly hit or miss unless they involve Stephen Moyer, in which case they consist of poor singing and acting. Frozen's songs are jaunty and amusing, although they do seem to largely revolve around one key joke: it is cold when it snows. I have always taken this for granted, but I suppose on some level it is worth mentioning, just not at the expense of women and minorities.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording and a writer living in an undisclosed location. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here. He last wrote in these pages about The Hobbit.

I close my eyes when I sing also, so this part was relevant.

"We Made It Through Another Year" - Nerina Pallot (mp3)

"I Wish" - Nerina Pallot (mp3)

foreplay on the ice