In Which We Were A Credit To The Human Race

Praise Him

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Master of None is Aziz Ansari's new Netflix series about his life in New York City. The big takeaways from his life as an actor and comedian are the following:

There is a lot of racism directed at Southeast Asian people.

Aziz Ansari is one hell of a guy. 

Women aren't always nice to him. 

He spends a lot of time texting, perhaps more than is healthy. 

Isn't he wonderful?

There is hagiography, which is what they did to Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was the most implausible movie in recent memory, and could not even be salvaged by Michael Fassbender's penis, which never made so much as a floppy appearance. Steve Jobs made an asshole seem not so bad, but Master of None makes a normal guy into the world's biggest martyr. 

Ansari ostensibly plays up-and-coming actor Dev on Master of None, but it is basically himself, except he never says so much as one word wrong. Dev is generous to his friends and kind to his family. He even sets up his dad's iPad, and is so sweet to his co-stars on a movie called The Sickening. We have moved beyond hagiography into simple worship of Mr. Ansari. 

Women are the only creatures placed on a higher pedestal. Dev worships them, in turn, like princesses. He wants to know all about their jobs and lives, in hopes of generating some kind of magic that will lead him into the type of relationship his parents enjoyed. When he rediscovers the pleasures of a Jewish girl with whom he had sloppy sex a few months back, he's elated until she confirms she is trying to work things out with an ex-boyfriend. Even though he did not call her after the sex, he is crushed by her rejection. 

Dev's friend Denise (Dear White People's Lena Waithe) is a lesbian who hangs out with Dev and his male friends. They have many similar interests, including their passion for sharing strategies about getting laid. Dev's other buddies are Brian (Kelvin Yu), a handsome Taiwanese-American, and Arnold (Eric Wareheim dressed as a post-prison Jared Fogle). He talks to them about what he should do to make these women like and respect him. While his friends genuinely care for him, Ansari's paramours seem about as concerned with him as a chef is with the feelings of an egg. 

His hopeless travails finding love represent the only flaw Aziz has. Ansari dedicates one whole episode to letting us know how much he appreciates everything his parents did for him. A lengthy flashback reviews the struggles his parents endured to make a better life for him in the United States. He is enriched by their sacrifice. 

In another episode, Ansari takes a waitress named Alice to a secret Father John Misty concert. She ends up stealing someone's jacket and getting kicked out of the venue. This is what he gets for doing something nice, and he is enriched by her sacrifice. 

It is a credit to Aziz that he never accuses women of harboring any racism towards him. Amazingly this never comes up in his massive, wikipedia-level book about love, Modern Romance. As much as the book was a terrible chore interspersed with the funniest parts of his stand-up act, Master of None is completely charming. 

The reason for the disparity in quality is that Ansari is not much of a prose writer; instead he is a captivating performer. The rest of the cast seems carefully selected not to show him up in any way, and their lessening works — Ansari's charisma makes every scene compelling, no matter how slight. He revisits the boredom and humor of a career in acting in a much more entertaining way than was found during the entire run of Ricky Gervais' Extras. 

Perhaps most refreshing is that Ansari never relies on sight gags, one-liners, profanity or gross-outs to create his comedy, even though some of those things were obviously a part of the fun in his stand-up act. Every single laugh here is because of an extensed investment in who Dev is, a magnificent creature who should be celebrated by humanity, possibly with a statue?

Ansari's adopted hometown of New York does not come across nearly as well. (The comedian was born and raised in South Carolina.) In the most accurate depiction of the place to date, New York is a city in decline. Indoor scenes are depressing and dark, the daytime jaunts are overexposed and painfully bright. Not one single place is suitable for hiding. There is no counter-culture left in the entirety of New York City, a situation analogous to Rome before the fall. There is only a bourgeois way of living that Aziz correctly analyzes as neither masculine or feminine, progressive or regressive. It is just slow-motion.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording.

"Writing's On The Wall" - Sam Smith (mp3)

In Which We Are Always Thinking About Displaying Them

Magic Carpet Ride

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Sense8
creators Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski & J. Michael Straczynski

There is a scene in the Netflix series Sense8 where each of the show's eight main characters visualizes the moment they were born. We see babies emerging from cervixes, an utterly astonishing visual sequence from two of the finest cinematographers working today. No one makes better looking movies than Lana and Andy Wachowski — Sense8 is a feast for the eyes, if not so much the ears.

Even a moment as simple as a Mexican man walking into a bar is lit so stupendously it almost feels like being on psychotropic drugs just imbibing these visions. More prevalent than babies popping out of massive craters within human beings in Sense8 is penises. Much like in the real world, men are always thinking about penises or displaying them prominently. It is a considerable relief to dispense with a prohibition that obscures them, and the rest of Sense8 follows along similar taboo-breaking lines.

Wolfgang (the super charismatic Max Riemelt), a diamond thief, has a lot of downtime in his job. Being a sensate allows him to display his thick, variegated cock in a number of different countries. The men and women of the eight person coterie can access each other's abilities at any time, and appear to each other in living flesh at a moment's notice. The group is advised by a character from Lost named Sayid (Naveen Andrews), and emerges after the suicide of Daryl Hannah, in an odd cameo at the beginning of the show.

Most of Sense8 consists of the group being hunted by a grey-haired man they call Whispers. When they are not running from his or his minions, they use the abilities of the others in their coterie to not only survive their particular situations, but to thrive in them. Capheus (Aml Ameen) runs a private bus service in Kenya. When crooks rob his bus, he uses the fighting skills of a Korean woman, Sun (Bae Doona) to put them down and save his mother's precious AIDS medication.

The show's production costs, filmed as it is in eight different locations, prohibited a large budget for the cast. Smartly, the Wachowskis opted for actors who are largely unknowns. The most recognizable is the show's ostensible lead, a trans woman named Nomi (Jamie Clayton). Sense8 spends several episodes establishing the particulars of Nomi's journey from frustrated man to lesbian woman, and despite several gag-worthy voiceovers, it is refreshing to experience a narrative arc that doesn't feel like the same old story.

Clayton herself is stupendous in the role, even though she is not very believable as a hacker. The actual science and technology behind Sense8 is like all of the Wachowskis forays into the genre: aesthetically pleasing bullshit. The directing team's last film, the bizarre Jupiter Ascending, took this to even more of an extreme, creating a campy futuristic world reminiscent of The Fifth Element. The tone was all over the map, and Mila Kunis' gee-golly performance torpedoed the already wretched script.

Still, Jupiter Ascending showed off so much visual creativity it would have been a terrific silent film. It was almost impossible to hear anything Eddie Redmayne even said in the movie, but who cares? They had the nerve to dress Channing Tatum up as a half dog, half man. It is only in very few, well-chosen moments where Sense8 becomes as completely silly as that.

In one scene, Kala (Tina Desai) is about to be married in Mumbai to a man she is not super interested in. As a manifestation of her doubt, Wolfgang appears and displays his engorged penis to her. She faints dead away. Later, they have sensate sex together, precipating a six way orgy between all the members of the group. There is a lot of sex overall in Sense8, and it is great fun watching the intercourse. In the hands of the Wachowskis, it is the opposite of pornography — we actually get a serious attempt at a visual insight into the phenomenon of love-making.

In between the gorgeous cinematography is a patchwork narrative about public and private acceptance of racism, homophobia and difference in all its forms. It is surprising how much of these dilemmas feels fresh and unexplored — Sense8 takes the time to really unpack the intricacies behind the terminology, never leaving it abstract or morally ambiguous. That's for another medium: this show you either just have to take as it is or leave.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording.

"Harsh Light" - Nate Ruess (mp3)

"Brightside" - Nate Ruess (mp3")

In Which We Have Eradicated All Blindness Jokes From Our Memory

Claire

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Daredevil
creator Drew Goddard

Matthew Murdock (Charlie Cox) has a long list of things he is not. He is not funny. He is not tall. He is not particularly eloquent, he is not brusque. He is not overly angry. He does not fly. He can't shoot lasers from his eyes. He's not strong. He can't see.

The actor playing him, who famously ended up in a box on Boardwalk Empire, is some of these things. The one element he most certainly possesses is the ability to see. About half the conversations in Netflix's adaptation of the Daredevil story concern Murdock's blindness, as if the lady doth protest too much. Before the first episode is even over we are sick of it. OK, you are blind, Matt. Why accentuate it with a mask that covers your eyes, so as to alert your enemies of your handicap? Why talk about it all day?

Wilson Fisk (a spirited Vincent D'Onofrio) first learns of Murdock's existence when he frees some women Fisk was planning on selling into slavery of some kind. He immediately admires Murdock, and for the vast majority of Daredevil, he never tries to kill his opposite number, preferring to set Matt against his own adversaries. Despite being extremely large, Fisk never sweats.

D'Onofrio is a little small to play Kingpin, but he throws himself into this most thankless of roles with aplomb. Drew Goddard has the good sense to give him a spirited love story, since as a proper villain he is relatively dull. This is a theme in the cast of Daredevil, until Rosario Dawson singlehandedly saves the entire series by exuding a sexuality so divine it is profane. Murdock is the only one who can even talk to her, by virtue of not knowing exactly what she looks like.

The other major female on the show is Murdock's secretary Karen Paige (Deborah Ann Woll). The show is a bit hampered by the fact that Woll is at her best playing opposite alpha males who try (and fail) to dominate her. Murdock is too fey for this, and his partner Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) comes across as borderline gay. Woll runs all over them both, along with her reporter friend Ben Urich (Vondie Curtis Hall). Ultimately Woll is miscast as Karen, since she struggles to convincingly convey humor or fear together. She can only focus on one at a time.

Murdock looks absolutely tiny in his lengthy fight sequences, a fact Daredevil attempts to obscure by amping up the violence to an impregnable level. Matt never uses any guns, and like his caricature of a father, he is known for his ability to take a beating. Daredevil can't decide whether to be overly broad or completely serious, a recurring challenge for the character. Going dead serious produced dreck like Elektra, whereas Affleck's turn as the blind martial artist was meant to be tongue-in-cheek.

Netflix's Daredevil is a lot better when it takes itself seriously, but this results in very long scenes. Some conversations in Daredevil can last six minutes or more, even when the information involved barely advances the story in any way. There is a lot of talk about how these people can save Hell's Kitchen, although what exactly is wrong with the place remains unclear. I guess between the amazing number of lawyers and crooks in the area, we should have some idea.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording.

"The Book Of Dorothy" - Paula Cole (mp3)

"New York City" - Paula Cole (mp3)