We're living in 'The Substance'

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Welcome back to Spitfire News!

This week’s newsletter topics have a lot to do with celebrities and pop culture and internet memes, which feels like a surreal juxtaposition with the other news going on, like the U.S. federal government being looted and destroyed by an unelected billionaire who has seized control of the White House. 

But last night, like every year, I curled up on my best friend’s couch with a themed cocktail and a plate of appetizers (the “Cornclave” esquites were a big hit) to watch the Oscars.

I’m always interested to see how major liberal establishments like the Academy Awards respond to the political, moral, and human crises of the moment. Their unwillingness to address what’s happening now is unsurprising, but it’s also reflective of the weakness and culpability in the centers of liberal power that got us where we are. 

We shouldn’t have to rely on the Oscars or the people there to resist violent patriarchal authoritarianism, but we clearly don’t have a lot of options among people in power to thwart corruption and discrimination. Elite Democrats have more in common with and are sometimes among the guests of honor at the Dolby Theatre each year, where the closest host Conan O’Brien came to acknowledging the horrors was to say award shows feel “superfluous” during a time of “terrible wildfires and divisive politics.” 

Still, he said, the Oscars will always be here for an annual moment of respite from it all. It’s a promise that sounds more like a plea as the ceremony’s viewership plunges year over year, movie theaters shutter, and films that aren’t big-budget sequels—the kind that tend to have artistic merit and something important to say—are smothered by the entertainment industry.

O’Brien and the other people in the room didn’t mention that 100,000 U.S. federal workers may be laid off in Elon Musk’s first hundred days as fake president. They did mention that within just the past two months, fire has ravaged neighborhoods in both directions down Hollywood Boulevard. Musk and his Twitter mutuals have used natural disasters, climate change, and civic structural failure as the setup to discriminate against Black people, women, LGBTQ people, and all other kinds of marginalized groups. During the Oscars, the liberal establishment brought out a beaming and diverse group of fire officials to read scripted jokes onstage.

There were also moments I found meaningful during the ceremony, like Best Supporting Actress Zoe Saldaña honoring her family and her immigrant grandmother from the Dominican Republic, Paul Tazewell becoming the first Black man to win Best Costume Design, and Palestinian filmmaker Basel Adra calling for an end to ethnic cleansing in Gaza during his award speech for Best Documentary Feature. His film, “No Other Land,” was self-distributed in the U.S. in an extremely limited fashion. The industry gave him a shiny statue but it won’t show his documentary of a genocide in full.

Below the paywall I’ll share my thoughts on one of my favorite Oscar-winning movies this year. The Substance is a grotesque sci-fi study of gender, beauty, and capitalism. The story it tells is eerily similar to the one that happened onstage in Los Angeles last night. I also want to talk about Emilia Pérez, but not in the way you think.

Finally, I’ll share what happened when I saw the world premiere of The Pyramid: A Dance Moms Parody Musical at The Green Room 42 in New York City on Friday, where I was seated next to the real-life reality star and ruthless former dance coach Abby Lee Miller. 

But first, I’ll share a few things I’m reading:

• A man who worked with RuPaul’s Drag Race star Shangela (whose real name is Darius Pierce) in 2017 accused the celebrity drag performer of sexual assault in a civil lawsuit filed against him in New York. This Rolling Stone report from Ben Shimkus follows his previous investigation into allegations against Pierce, which inspired the plaintiff in this case to come forward. Shimkus reports that seven men have now accused Pierce, who denies the allegations.

• Lindsey Boylan, the first of many women to publicly accuse former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo of workplace sexual harassment, has penned a powerful op-ed outlining his use of millions in taxpayer money to further abuse victims through the courts. At the same time, he’s running for mayor of New York City. 

• Steven Asarch reports another workplace safety violation allegation against the most popular YouTuber, MrBeast (real name Jimmy Donaldson), for Business Insider. This time, on the set of Donaldson’s Amazon show Beast Games, a piece of a tower fell on a 24-year-old crew member. He was in the hospital for eight days and was left immunocompromised without the full use of his left arm. An executive producer gave him $1,000 in Uber and DoorDash gift cards to make up for it.

• Kelsey Weekman has a delightful story about the fandom for the movie Conclave, which won Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars. It’s a movie about Catholic cardinals sequestering themselves to elect the next pope, and the fandom it has spawned is young and queer and creative and raised $50,000 for charity with a fan zine. That makes a lot of sense to me and I’m thrilled to hear about it.

• Award-winning journalist Alia Dastagir has a new book out, To Those Who Have Confused You to Be a Person, about gender and online harassment. I was interviewed for it! You can read it now! 

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