The Ringer: All Posts by Alyssa Bereznak2023-10-18T06:30:00-04:00https://www.theringer.com/authors/alyssa-bereznak/rss2023-10-18T06:30:00-04:002023-10-18T06:30:00-04:00The Subtle Art of the Scorsese Cameo
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<p>From ‘Taxi Driver’ to ‘Hugo,’ the director’s swift appearances on-screen are illustrative of his connection to the emotional stories of his movies</p> <p id="mDSuxE">About 40 minutes into his 1976 grimy neo-noir drama <em>Taxi Driver</em>, Martin Scorsese appears in the back seat of protagonist Travis Bickle’s cab with a series of demands. He orders Bickle (Robert De Niro) to pull over to the curb, put the meter back on, and just sit. “I don’t care what I have to pay,” Scorsese says in a pushy New Yorker’s staccato. “I’m not getting out.” He then directs Bickle’s gaze toward a silhouette of a woman in a second-floor window, explains that it’s his wife in another man’s apartment, and—with an eerie calm—details his plan to kill her. “You must think I’m pretty sick,” he repeats over and over again, egging himself into a fit of laughter. It’s an unnerving moment in the film, one that mirrors Bickle’s own rage toward women, and it deepens the low thump of anxiety that pervades the film.</p>
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<p id="Y1qjEO">Ironically, Scorsese wasn’t supposed to play that part. After the actor Scorsese cast, George Memmoli, was unexpectedly injured, De Niro encouraged the director to take the role himself. “It was a labor of love, a film that was made for us and not a popular film in the sense that we could take chances and see what happened,” Scorsese <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/taxi-driver-oral-history-de-881032/">told</a> <em>The</em> <em>Hollywood Reporter</em> in a 2016 oral history of the film. “If worse comes to worst, we could reshoot with another actor.” In the end, the scene stayed in. What was originally a quick fix became an early blueprint for the many cameos Scorsese would make over the course of his legendary 56-year career. The role of “passenger watching silhouette” is anonymous, more atmospheric than plot-driven in purpose. He’s an everyday Joe, part of the masses. And most importantly: He has a penchant for micromanaging. His character is there to drive forward the themes of the film, to emphasize an everyman’s experience, and to remind us all who, in this particular telling of the story, is boss.</p>
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<p id="OTVsjT">Scorsese by no means invented the directorial cameo. So long as cameras have existed, the people behind them have put their friends, their family, and themselves into their work to quell budgets and egos. (And also: because they could.) But once <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YbaOkiMiRQ&ab_channel=MorganT.Rhys">Alfred Hitchcock</a> turned the practice into a type of visual signature in the 1920s, it became <em>de rigueur</em> for elite filmmakers to enshrine their mythic reputations in their work as a way of winking at superfans. Over the years, the device has been deployed as a <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/959n4w/in_the_original_scream_wes_craven_makes_a_cameo/">self-referential gag</a>, an excuse to offer <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvFZUOn1TCs&ab_channel=J%C3%A9r%C3%B4meLabb%C3%A9">unsolicited hot takes</a>, or a way to simply <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q91q4eJwJx0&ab_channel=TheICONTheMICKing">get weird</a>. But Scorsese’s appearances on screen tend to be swift, subtle, and illustrative of his connection to the emotional story of the movie in question, a reinforcement of his slick style and dedication to constructing authentic worlds within his films.</p>
<p id="v30JhT">Scorsese’s earliest work was inspired by his late-’50s upbringing in the tenements of Little Italy, a Manhattan neighborhood he said was “steeped in a kind of organized crime” and violence that he missed “by chance.” His cameos during this initial period gesture toward his own conflicted relationship with that culture. In his 1967 directorial debut,<em> Who’s That Knocking at My Door</em>, his uncredited blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance as a member of J.R.’s carousing inner circle is less an authorial stamp than it is an insider’s nod to his own lived experience. </p>
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<p id="a0n2h7"><br>His 1973 follow-up, <em>Mean Streets</em>,<em> </em>brought an even stronger perspective on fealties to family and faith and, perhaps uncoincidentally, was bookended by appearances from the director himself. The film opens with a short speech from Scorsese’s disembodied voice, meant as a kind of conscience for protagonist Charlie Cappa (Harvey Keitel): “You don’t make up for your sins in the church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit, and you know it.” In the final scene, Scorsese appears as a gangster who kisses his gun before firing it into the car of the lead characters—a dramatic conclusion that was drawn from real-life experience. “I was with these people in this car,” the director said in an interview <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8szAkDLWp-M&ab_channel=GQ">with <em>GQ</em></a>, referring to his youth in the Lower East Side. “Told my friend—we were in the back seat—‘It’s 2 o’clock in the morning. This is nonsense; let’s go home.’ ‘Yeah yeah, OK, let’s go home.’ Car drove off, and they got shot.” Though Scorsese has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9ZFVLfVXqQ&ab_channel=FilmatLincolnCenter">waved off</a> his decision to play the shooter as just a matter of logistical necessity, the cameo spotlights the nonsensical violence of his upbringing. The person shooting out of a car could just as easily be a person shooting a scene about it—it’s all the luck of the draw.</p>
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<p id="nXGrcJ">Scorsese applied that same everyman philosophy in his slew of ’70s hits that followed. In <em>Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore</em>,<em> </em>he’s a guy in a diner. In <em>Taxi Driver</em>, he’s a man who’s succumbed to the same rageful logic as the film’s antihero. But by the time <em>Raging Bull </em>debuted in 1980, the director’s cameos had shifted to engage less with his upbringing and more with his budding career. In the buildup to the film’s production, Scorsese had been licking his wounds from the <a href="https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/martin-scorsese/new-york-new-york-martin-scorsese">colossal failure</a> that was <em>New York, New York</em>,<em> </em>and he was also in dire medical straits. Shortly after a trip to the Telluride Film Festival, he had collapsed in New York as a result of a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150214083605/https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/03/raging-bull-201003">bad batch of cocaine</a> mixed with his asthma medication and prescription drugs. He was recovering in the hospital after nearly dying when De Niro visited and reminded him of a pitch the actor had pleaded for years earlier, during the making of <em>Alice</em>. Would Scorsese finally direct the story of disgraced middleweight champion Jake LaMotta? Scorsese, now relating to that sense of rock bottom, agreed, later <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jun/21/raging-bull-at-40-scorsese-de-niro">saying</a> that he made the film as if it was the end of his life: “Over. Suicide film. I didn’t care if I made another movie. … Every day on the shoot, ‘This is the last one, and we’re going for it.’” His voice and torso appear briefly in the final scene of the film as he plays a stage manager who checks in on LaMotta (played by De Niro) as LaMotta’s reciting Terry Malloy’s iconic “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBiewQrpBBA&ab_channel=Movieclips">coulda been a contender</a>” speech from <em>On the Waterfront</em>.<em> </em>To the average viewer, it’s a throwaway moment, a brief interruption in De Niro’s stirring performance. But with the context of Scorsese’s professional precarity, the scene could be just as much about the director’s fear of failure as it was about LaMotta’s.</p>
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<p id="92VtDz">Commercial and critical reception to <em>Raging Bull </em>was mixed, but the film was nonetheless nominated for eight Academy Awards in 1980, winning two, and it gave Scorsese a newfound confidence in his identity as a director. That boost ushered in a new type of Scorsese cameo, where the filmmaker began casting himself as meta auteurs: directors, photographers, dispatchers, and behind-the-scenes observers who frame the events of the film in real time. In 1982’s<em> The King of Comedy</em>, he’s a TV director prepping Tony Randall for a guest stint on a talk show, barking at him to “take the tissues out of your collar.” Three years later, he showed up in <em>After Hours</em> as a uniformed spotlight operator in the rafters of the infamous Club Berlin. He plays a photographer in both the 1993 period piece <em>The Age of Innocence</em> and the 2011 family film <em>Hugo.</em> In 1999’s <em>Bringing Out the Dead</em>, Scorsese guides his ambulance-driver protagonists over the dispatch radio. And in 2004’s <em>The Aviator</em>, he’s the voice of the projectionist who buzzes into Howard Hughes’s screening room during <em>Hell’s Angels</em>’<em> </em>postproduction. In practically all of these appearances, Scorsese asserts his authority to guide characters and camera frames—a skill he became more famous for with every new project.</p>
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<p class="c-end-para" id="KQTivW">Scorsese’s prolific career since the 1980s has cemented him as a titan in his industry—the rare talent who can conjure far-off worlds with visual ingenuity and shape narratives with powerful depth. And after years atop that comfortable perch, the director has occasionally allowed himself to venture beyond the roles of “common nobody” and “bossy guy.” He appears in 2002’s <em>Gangs of New York</em>, not as a street urchin, but as the fancy uptown aristocrat whose home Jenny Everdeane (Cameron Diaz) robs. Similarly, in 2016’s <em>Silence</em>, he has a split-second role as a bearded Dutch trader. Given Scorsese’s uncanny ability to pull personal threads from vast, historical epics, these appearances may very well be an acknowledgment of how far he’s come since roaming the blocks of Little Italy. Whatever the case, Scorsese is far too detailed a filmmaker to ever pass up an opportunity for a sly self-referential bit. </p>
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https://www.theringer.com/movies/2023/10/18/23921581/martin-scorsese-movies-cameo-appearances-taxi-driver-robert-de-niroAlyssa Bereznak2023-09-29T08:57:45-04:002023-09-29T08:57:45-04:00‘The Golden Bachelor’ Might Just Make You Believe in Love Again
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<p>No one on the newest iteration of the dating show is trying to become an influencer or launch a tequila brand. It’s just a bunch of earnest boomers looking for a second—or third, or fourth—chance at romance.</p> <p id="e0tQ1R">One of the <em>Bachelor </em>franchise’s favorite things, after monogamous love and promotional teasers, is declaring that something on one of its shows is “historic.” Some of these moments are more <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2020/11/25/21718736/we-finally-got-a-real-conversation-race-on-the-bachelorette-gross-smoothies-lots-of-chris-harrison">earned</a> than <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/11/6/21552185/the-bachelorette-clare-crawley-season-36-dale-moss-takeaways">others</a>. But on Thursday night, the usage of the word was not an exaggeration. In the place of a young, conventionally attractive male lead was an <em>old</em>, conventionally attractive male lead: a 72-year-old widower named Gerry Turner. And there to court him was a class of female contestants no younger than 60. Together, they launched the long-awaited <em>Golden Bachelor</em>,<em> </em>a show for boomers looking for another chance at love.</p>
<p id="sgm76t">Anyone who has spent even a few hours within the extended <em>Bachelor</em> universe knows that this is a huge deal. Not only because the show has always been slow to reflect the racial and sexual diversity of the real-world dating pool, but also because <em>The</em> <em>Bachelor</em>’s appeal has always been coded into the especially young, hot faces and bodies of its leads and contestants. As an institution, <em>The Bachelor</em> is highly allergic to older women: It has never once had a female contestant over 40 on the show, and women in their 30s are rare exceptions. After 27 seasons, countless spinoffs, and a fan base so large that people call it a “nation,” the casting decisions that <em>Bachelor</em> producers make now double as a stamp of approval for what’s acceptable in the dating world. The dawn of <em>The</em> <em>Golden Bachelor</em> is an acknowledgment from the powers that be that, yes, old people fuck. And not only do they fuck, but they also live full, complicated lives that don’t dissolve the second they lose some ab definition or get a wrinkle.</p>
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<p id="5CkhTR">Going gray is the life raft <em>The Bachelor</em> needs. In recent years, the franchise has slipped into especially frivolous territory, plagued by <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/7/9/17547650/bachelorette-casting-controversy">vetting</a> issues, the departure of its <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2021/6/8/22525003/chris-harrison-officially-exits-the-bachelor-franchise">longtime host</a> over racially insensitive comments, and the fact that most of its contestants seem more interested in <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/1/6/21048923/the-bachelor-bachelorette-instagram-influencer">becoming influencers</a> than finding love. Even those who watch the series for the meta-appeal of how producers shape its narrative can sense that something about the well-oiled machine is on autopilot. When the people you’re watching <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2022/3/16/22980846/the-bachelor-season-26-finale-recap-clayton-susie-gabby-rachel-bachelorettes">don’t seem serious</a>, it’s hard to take them, or the stakes of the show, seriously. (I’m looking at you, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2020/3/2/21161443/peter-weber-bad-bachelor-season-24">Peter Weber</a>.) The beauty of <em>The</em> <em>Golden Bachelor</em> is that many of the self-serving interests that have blemished the <em>Bachelor</em> franchise seem to have been solved by a generation of contestants who have 30 years left to live, all the comfortable trappings of a boomer lifestyle, and therefore far less desire to launch a tequila brand.</p>
<p id="Nfg0Mm">Let’s take our Golden Bachelor, Gerry, for example. You know how when Timothée Chalamet is cast in a period piece, and people respond by <a href="https://twitter.com/sthor97/status/1154569980236718082?s=46&t=A0qgrYJjkmHHTnD_chVIwA">saying</a> he has a face that has “definitely seen an iPhone before”? Gerry has whatever the opposite of that is. This is a man with a retirement tan and a gentle Kermit the Frog voice who probably didn’t even touch a smartphone until the age of 57. His go-to adjectives for describing women on the show are not “<a href="https://www.eonline.com/news/912076/yes-arie-luyendyk-jr-is-aware-he-says-amazing-a-lot-on-the-bachelor-i-m-trying-to-change-my-whole-vocabulary">amazing</a>” or “smokeshow” but “poised” and “elegant.” And in true <em>Bachelor</em> fashion, his life story sounds like it was cribbed from the beginning of a Disney movie: He was married for 43 years in Hudson, Indiana, with a big family and a happy life. In the spring of 2017, he and his wife, Toni, closed on their dream house with the intention of living out their later years on a lake. But within a month, she was hospitalized with a bacterial infection and passed away days later. Like all <em>Bachelor</em> intros, Gerry’s telling of this tragic story is succinct and easy to follow. It’s not like a producer didn’t help him with it. But the tears in his eyes, the cracking in his voice, the gulp in his throat were quite clearly genuine. And that kind of expression lends him unusual depth for a lead that no amount of media training, or experience looking into a front-facing phone camera, can fake.</p>
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<p id="SrcNzp"><br>The same goes for most of the 22 women vying to be his bride. They have grandchildren and best friends fighting cancer. They’ve been divorced multiple times and widowed. One of them even claims to have dated Prince and inspired the 1979 song “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/62swKfU8FW7mUMjsYzX7O4?si=f05441d59199416c">Sexy Dancer</a>.” You don’t get the sense that these women are waiting for a proposal to begin their lives; they’ve already lived many. That’s not to say they’re going into this wildly produced process without expectations, anxiety, or knowledge of how the franchise functions. But, at least on night one, cynicism, gimmicks, and insecure feuds seemed to be at an all-time low. An appearance from Jimmy Kimmel’s Aunt Chippy aside, the closest we get to a villain, or shtick, is a 65-year-old therapist named April who makes a joke about having “fresh” eggs, spanks herself, and clucks like a chicken. Given her line of work, I can only assume this will hurt, not help, her business.</p>
<p id="4FBgGJ">Even as these women represent all the imperfect, unpredictable ways to arrive at a late-in-life love, the show can’t help but smooth their edges with some standard romantic devices. The contestants are not gray, they’re <em>golden.</em> And in case we needed a visual reminder of that, the very first woman out of the limo was a white-haired retiree in a gold lamé dress. The official party line, repeated by host Jesse Palmer, Gerry, and a few contestants, is that they’re seeking a “second chance at love.” Though based on what the women have revealed about their dating history, it’s more like a third or fourth. Throughout the episode, there was an optimistic drumbeat about everyone’s physical capabilities. One contestant cited the fact that Gerry likes to play <a href="https://www.theringer.com/sports/2022/12/15/23509701/2022-year-end-pickleball-lebron-james-tom-brady-craze">pickleball</a> as a reason for wanting to meet him. Hearing aids were euphemistically referred to as “ear candy.” Dancing was frequent and joyful, if not always rhythmic. And there were many, many allusions to sex. “Gerry is in great shape,” one particularly charming contestant named Natascha said in an interview. “I’m not gonna need to resuscitate him if we have an intimate moment.”</p>
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<p id="X8wTan"><br>Though the whole thing is dressed up to be very dignified, some of the premiere’s best moments came from self-aware wisecracks like Natascha’s. These old people don’t take themselves too seriously, and they aren’t afraid to laugh at themselves. One contestant told Gerry that her daughter said to tell him he’s “dope,” delivering the word as if it were her first time ever saying it. He replied that his granddaughter told him he has “rizz.” And together, the two of them giggled, delighted in their out-of-touchness. Toward the end of the night, Gerry admitted to his suitors, with a little bit of exasperation in his voice, that “this is the latest I’ve been up in my whole life.”</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="qBDHfP">It’s this kind of devil-may-care energy (or lack thereof) that has brought me out of <em>Bachelor </em>retirement to watch this show. Maybe it’s because the contestants’ brain chemistry wasn’t forever changed by smartphones. Maybe it’s because the cast had its best years before the American middle class shrank. Whatever the reason, it feels like this season of <em>The Bachelor</em> is built differently. Nobody’s gunning for a <em>Bachelor in Paradise</em> stint, or thousands of TikTok followers, or toothpaste sponsorships. Just early bedtimes, a pickleball partner, and someone who won’t die during sex.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/tv/2023/9/29/23895192/the-golden-bachelor-premiere-women-cast-gerry-turner-ageAlyssa Bereznak2023-07-24T21:54:33-04:002023-07-24T21:54:33-04:00Elon Musk Is Rebranding Twitter as X. Let Us X-plain.
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<p>Twitter’s name and blue bird logo are no more. Moving forward, the platform will be called X. What does that mean? What’s behind Musk’s decision? And what does this signify about where the company formerly known as Twitter is heading?</p> <p id="YfdBcb">On Saturday night, Elon Musk took to Twitter to announce that the social media platform would no longer be called Twitter. “And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” he <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1682964919325724673">wrote</a>. He followed up to specify the replacement name: X. </p>
<p id="xCMFIk">Nearly 24 hours later, a full rebrand was underway. On the platform’s website, Twitter’s iconic bubbly sky-blue bird logos were switched out for slick black-and-white Xs. On Monday, a crane was spotted <a href="https://twitter.com/sullyfoto/status/1683557389574995968?s=12&t=zUHf4P_WUjlNWj6kHouocw">removing</a> the Twitter logo from the side of the company’s San Francisco headquarters. And the company’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, <a href="https://twitter.com/lindayacc/status/1683213798386147329?s=20">tweeted</a>—or, uh, xed?—about “a second chance to make another big impression.”</p>
<p id="piORyw">It’s the latest in a <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tech/2022/11/22/23471923/twitter-elon-musk-layoffs-changes-future">series of confounding decisions</a> that Musk has made since purchasing Twitter in October 2022. Considering that the company’s ad sales are <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66217641">down</a> by nearly 50 percent since the billionaire took over, that the platform is suffering from <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/01/twitter-imposes-limits-on-the-number-of-tweets-users-can-read-amid-extended-outage/">serious operational woes</a>, and that Meta’s newest offering, Threads, is gaining momentum as a competitor, strong brand recognition seemed to be one of the last valuable things Twitter had going for it. And now that’s been, well, x-ed out. </p>
<p id="0c0wlV">It’s all very confusing! Which is why I’m here to answer all your questions about the rebrand.</p>
<h4 id="C1GBB9">So, no more blue bird?</h4>
<p id="GNtfKW">No more blue bird. It’s gone away to live on a farm with the <a href="https://allthatsinteresting.com/frito-bandito">Frito Bandito</a>, the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuPTZWhz46M">Quiznos Spongmonkeys</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Camel">Joe Camel</a>.</p>
<h4 id="9NOhVa">Why is this happening?</h4>
<p id="FsEqBv">As with everything involving Musk, that’s an extremely difficult question to answer. But this has been a long time in the making. Back in October 2022, when Musk’s check cleared and Twitter officially became his property, he laid out <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-twitter-super-app-x-2022-10">a vision</a> for turning it into an “everything” or “super” app that allows users to buy stocks, deposit funds, and message people all in one place. A place that Yaccarino <a href="https://twitter.com/lindayacc/status/1683213895463215104?s=20">says</a> will be “the future state of unlimited interactivity—centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking—creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.” In other words, Tom Haverford’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_ul6dXgkSk">Entertainment 720</a> from <em>Parks and Rec. </em></p>
<aside id="ND1VRZ"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Threads? Twitter? What Happens When Everyone Isn’t on the Same App? ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/tech/2023/7/12/23791878/meta-instagram-threads-twitter-killer-elon-musk-mark-zuckerberg"},{"title":"Twitter Blue Checks Are No Longer a “Status Symbol.” They’re a Political One. ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/tech/2023/4/27/23700212/elon-musk-twitter-blue-check-mark-subscription-political-symbol"}]}'></div></aside><p id="acB872">Amid the chaos of running Twitter, Musk has been inching closer to this goal. In April, he <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2023/04/twitter-inc-x-corp-elon-musk-x-nevada.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email">quietly merged</a> Twitter Inc. with an entity called X Corp. That same month, he <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/13/twitter-to-let-users-access-stocks-crypto-via-etoro-in-finance-push.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email">partnered</a> with the crypto trading platform eToro so Twitter users could browse market charts and buy and sell stocks. Even though this so-called super app is still mostly just conceptual, it now appears Musk has decided to fast-forward to the rebranding.</p>
<h4 id="7aPJiE">OK, he’s moving quickly. But why now?</h4>
<p id="yFavkw">There are two schools of thought for why Musk wants to rebrand now. The first is that Twitter has simply become synonymous with dysfunction. It was mismanaged by its leadership before Musk, and it’s certainly mismanaged now. And just as Facebook rebranded to Meta in 2021 to escape all the negative press about its privacy violations and its impact on voter manipulation, Twitter will apparently abruptly rebrand as X. </p>
<p id="bq2M0l">CEO Yaccarino, who is often left to make business sense out of Musk’s decisions after the fact, <a href="https://twitter.com/lindayacc/status/1683213798386147329">put it</a> as diplomatically as possible. “Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate,” she wrote. “Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square.” </p>
<p id="kr2xxh">The second school of thought is that this rebrand is yet another way for Musk to stamp the company formerly known as Twitter with his own personal brand. After Threads debuted as a less-toxic alternative to Twitter, Musk <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1682963255700992000?s=20">wrote</a> the “negative feedback” on his platform was “vastly preferable to some sniffy censorship bureau!” (This, just weeks after Musk <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/01/technology/elon-musk-mark-zuckerberg-cage-match.html">challenged Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg</a> to fight in a “cage match.”) And in encouraging his followers to come up with an X logo, Musk suggested the design <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1682971111699410944?s=20">should</a> “embody the imperfections in us all that make us unique.” So one could interpret the arrival of X as a way to signal the platform is now edgy and dangerous in comparison to a cheery Meta clone. </p>
<p id="eaZgpB">To the second school of thought: It’s worth reiterating that we’re talking about <em>Elon Musk</em>, a guy who was so butthurt that Joe Biden’s Super Bowl tweet outperformed his that he <a href="https://www.platformer.news/p/yes-elon-musk-created-a-special-system?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email">woke up</a> his engineers in the middle of the night and directed them to juice the platform’s algorithm so that his posts would receive more engagement. If he’s willing to rejigger the company’s infrastructure to prop up his ego, what’s stopping him from reshaping the platform’s look and feel to mirror the futuristic bro-y aesthetic that defines Tesla and SpaceX? </p>
<h4 id="7MG8zc">Sure, but still: What does the letter X have to do with Elon Musk?</h4>
<p id="ubMLKL">Musk’s obsession with the letter dates back to 1999, when he founded an online bank called X.com. That company merged with another to become PayPal, which sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002 and created a crew of wealthy tech power brokers known as the “<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-paypal-mafia-the-richest-group-of-men-in-silicon-valley-2014-9">PayPal mafia</a>.” (Which includes Musk.) He was attached enough to the company that he <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2017-07-11-elon-musk-buys-his-old-x-com-domain-from-paypal.html">bought back</a> the X.com domain from PayPal in 2017. </p>
<p id="8XwaSd">Over the years, the letter has popped up in the names of his businesses, products, and personal life. There’s SpaceX, the Tesla Model X, and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/elon-musk-baby-x-ea-a-12-name-meaning-b2381092.html">X Æ A-12</a> (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foajvutDRpU">pronounced</a> Ex-Ash-A-Twelve), one of his children with Grimes. </p>
<h4 id="0rNVwl">What does the X stand for in this case?</h4>
<p id="nVP5IM">Theoretically, it could stand for a lot of things. Grimes once <a href="https://twitter.com/Grimezsz/status/1257836061520101377?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1257836061520101377%7Ctwgr%5Ea03dd9d28e91b72a11eaa94b34720b99af6c1b95%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-23886500352907104087.ampproject.net%2F2307052224000%2Fframe.html">described</a> it as “the unknown variable,” which I suppose we all know from high school math class. It’s also the letter you might see on a bottle of cartoon poison, or some particularly strong moonshine. It marks the spot on a map where treasure is buried. And X is also, inevitably, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foajvutDRpU">gon’ give it to ya</a>.</p>
<p id="C9M294">In reality, though, we don’t know what it stands for here, and perhaps that’s the point. It can stand for anything. Musk may have chosen an enigmatic name because he wants to make Twitter a catchall for whatever pops into his mind at a given moment. X is everything and nothing. It’s a placeholder for an actual idea. And in that way, it’s as much a rebrand of Twitter itself as it is a reframing of how Musk conducts himself at the company.</p>
<h4 id="MVzM3C">So, you’re saying this will make Twitter even worse?</h4>
<p class="c-end-para" id="SXOnLo">Yes. Yes, I am. Godspeed. I’ll see you in the multiverse. (<a href="https://bsky.app/profile/alyssabereznak.bsky.social">Bluesky</a>, <a href="https://www.threads.net/@alyssabereznak">Threads</a>, and <a href="https://journa.host/@alyssabereznak">Mastodon</a>.) </p>
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https://www.theringer.com/tech/2023/7/24/23806453/twitter-x-new-name-elon-musk-logo-explainerAlyssa Bereznak2023-07-21T13:30:33-04:002023-07-21T13:30:33-04:00The Unbearable Hunkness of Being Ken
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<p>Ryan Gosling’s character in ‘Barbie’ brings to life a question that has plagued the doll for more than 60 years: What kind of man can Ken be in the shadow of a woman who’s designed to be larger than life? </p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="oSjaHN">Ken was born an accessory. Not an invention, per se, but a byproduct of consumer demand. He was forged in the mold of a 1960s teenage boyfriend on his last leg of puberty: boyishly slim with a Tony Curtis jawline, ocean blue eyes, and a delicate carpet fuzz of hair, with only a pair of Lilliputian red swim trunks and a tag on his wrist that read “Genuine Ken” to cover him. His role, as determined by Mattel, was male companion to Barbie. They met on the set of his very first <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Duvra95mw6M">commercial</a>, the final frame of which shows the pair dressed as bride and groom while a narrator suggests we “see where the romance will lead.”</p>
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<p id="0kp7Qp">Oh, the places it went. Nearly 62 years later, the two have inspired everything from matching lamé ice-dancer outfits to breathless tabloid coverage. The latest vessel for their joint brand is <em>Barbie</em>,<em> </em>a surreal comedy directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as the most famous toy couple in history. The movie begins in a fantasy doll paradise called Barbie Land, a realm the journalist Willa Paskin <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/11/magazine/greta-gerwig-barbie.html">calls</a> a “multicultural Barbiarchy.” While Barbies (women) run society, the Kens (men) are relegated to the vague occupation of “Beach,” where they compete for glances, greetings, and smiles from their female counterparts. </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="fKcaor"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The Sheer Scale of ‘Oppenheimer’","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2023/7/21/23802231/oppenheimer-review"},{"title":"The Often Wacky, Sometimes Wicked, and Always Wondrous Eras of Barbie","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2023/7/20/23801477/barbie-eras-history-mattel-greta-gerwig-movie"},{"title":"The Complete Guide to Everything Barbenheimer","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2023/7/19/23799356/barbie-oppenheimer-guide-barbenheimer-showdown-which-first"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="8lKlpu">From this unsatisfying environment emerges the most complex Ken to date. Played with an innocence that could only come from the cobwebbed <em>Mickey Mouse Club</em> corners of Gosling’s mind, Ken struggles to find his own self-worth. He ruminates in the shadows, just outside Barbie’s disco spotlight. Always an Instagram boyfriend, never an influencer. After stowing away with Barbie on her quest to the real world, Ken gets a taste of the patriarchy, and his alienation mutates into a childish misogyny. He trades in his pink cotton shorts for a hyper-masculine ninja-slash-biker(?) outfit and a floor-length fur coat; he installs an excessive amount of giant flatscreen TVs all over Barbie’s Dreamhouse, as if it’s a sports bar; he starts singing about wanting to take Barbie “for granted” in an acoustic rendition of Matchbox Twenty’s “Push.” Finally, his tyranny dissipates into self-pity during an elaborate musical soliloquy called “Just Ken,” in which he asks: “Is it my destiny to live and die a life of blond fragility?”</p>
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<p id="QOjPXc">Through Ken’s evolution, Gerwig and her cowriter/partner Noah Baumbach are no doubt gesturing at a yearslong discourse that suggests “men are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/10/christine-emba-masculinity-new-model/">lost</a>” in a society in which it’s increasingly hard to get ahead, and women can surpass them in earning power and professional accomplishment. But as diligent students of the Barbie-verse, Gerwig and Baumbach are also incorporating the cultural conversation that has surrounded Mattel’s Ken doll since his 1961 inception: his obsessed-over introduction, makeover snafus, and Mattel’s shifting strategy in his marketing that add up to his current-day persona as an afterthought. “I think all the dead ends are a reminder that they were just trying stuff out,” Gerwig <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/10/after-barbie-mattel-is-raiding-its-entire-toybox">said</a> of Mattel in a recent <em>New Yorker</em> story. “Dealing with all the strangeness of it is a way of honoring it.” For the character of Ken, that meant engaging with a people’s history of the doll rather than the one you might find in a Mattel press release. The movie alludes to his smooth nether region, that time he inadvertently became a gay icon, and, ultimately, Mattel’s own tendency to think of him as superfluous. Within the context of a decades-long Ken-versation, Gosling’s character brings to life a question that has always plagued the doll: What kind of man can Ken be in the shadow of a woman who’s designed to be larger than life?</p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="ZCZqXf">The tale of Ken’s tortured existence began, as many a toy’s, with a board meeting. Two years after Barbie’s breakout debut, Mattel’s financial advisors <strong> </strong> sought to convince cofounders Ruth and Elliot Handler to expand the brand into the profitable world of product licensing, according to <em>Barbie Bazaar</em>, a<em> </em>1990 series of articles by the doll collector A. Glenn Mandeville. Save for the presence of Ruth, it’s easy to imagine this discussion resembling the roundtable of male executives in suits who represented Mattel’s top brass in the <em>Barbie</em> movie. The Handlers were initially concerned that assigning Barbie a fixed biography might limit children’s imaginations during play. They nevertheless agreed, per Mandeville, that “select firms would be allowed to develop the personality of Barbie, under the watchful eye of management of Mattel.” With that obstacle cleared, the floodgates opened. Out came vinyl record totes, Barbie novels, and, crucially, Ken. </p>
<p id="rlWDEG">From the start, Ken’s identity was intertwined with Barbie’s, quite literally shaped by Mattel’s obligation to preserve her precious image. Yes, he was meant to be Barbie’s boyfriend, but his very presence risked more complaints from mothers about Barbie’s over-sexualization. So Ken’s face and body were molded in the shape of a teenager’s. (In <em>Barbie</em>, the closest equivalent to first-edition Ken is Michael Cera’s Allan, an early “buddy” of Ken’s whose main selling point is that “<a href="https://itgetsbetterproject.tumblr.com/post/713771832816386048/hmm-kens-buddy-who-can-fit-into-kens-clothes">all of Ken’s clothes fit him.</a>”) Though Ken stood a <a href="http://www.barbiemedia.com/ken/fast_facts.html">half-inch</a> taller than Barbie, “Mattel was careful to give him boyish, clean-cut looks, and the overall, non-threatening, asexual appearance of a wimpy little jerk,” according to <em>Children’s Television</em>,<em> </em>a 1987 book written by Cy Schneider, the executive who oversaw Mattel’s account at the Carson/Roberts advertising agency. (Schneider’s unkind description is at least one piece of evidence that widespread anti-Kentiment originated from <em>inside</em> the building.) To put a fine point on it, an early Ken accessory set titled “In Training” included a pair of white cotton briefs, two dumbbells, and a book <a href="https://www.etsy.com/listing/1173866951/vintage-mattel-ken-outfit-in-training?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_ps-a-toys_and_games-toys-dolls_and_action_figures-dolls-other&utm_custom1=_k_Cj0KCQjw8NilBhDOARIsAHzpbLBo9q4sYM_-bqkenkmWSVXaQYH1poxb-kYz0quvpudCb75cGPEUjnMaAuQBEALw_wcB_k_&utm_content=go_12566100364_122491420707_507204208986_pla-316646169271_c__1173866951_12768591&utm_custom2=12566100364&gclid=Cj0KCQjw8NilBhDOARIsAHzpbLBo9q4sYM_-bqkenkmWSVXaQYH1poxb-kYz0quvpudCb75cGPEUjnMaAuQBEALw_wcB">titled</a> “How to Build Muscles.” Compared to Barbie, who carried the busty frame of <a href="https://time.com/3731483/barbie-history/">a German fetish toy</a>, Ken was just a boy in her shadow.</p>
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<p id="5wy81I">Mattel’s hand-wringing over the first Ken culminated in a debate over his nether region. “If his genitalia were included, some mothers would object. If his genitalia were omitted, would he look like some wounded Hemingway hero?” Schneider wrote. After consulting with a child psychologist, Schneider said the company settled on “a permanent set of shorts with a lump in the appropriate spot”—the suggestion of a penis without the commitment of one. But the realities of mass production threw a wrench in the plan when, according to the 1995 book <em>Barbie’s Queer Accessories</em>, a supervising engineer at Mattel’s Japanese manufacturing plant found that removing both the underpants and lump would simplify the production process, therefore cutting a half-cent in manufacturing costs for each Ken doll. Capitalism had the final word: Ken’s “suggestion” was smoothed down to a plastic knob for half a penny. In the film, Kate McKinnon’s character drops a reference to Ken’s legendary knob, calling it a “nude blob.”</p>
<p id="K6Eisb">However careful Mattel was about Ken’s early iterations, the company soon learned it could shape-shift the doll’s hair, body, face, and nether regions to appeal to the culture of the moment. “Normally, he reflects whatever kind of movie star or sports star or singer is popular or famous at the time,” said Joey Jarossi, a content creator who hosts the doll-enthusiast YouTube channel <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@BeautyInsideABox">Beauty Inside a Box</a>. With the 1970s embrace of sideburns, shaggy haircuts, and mustaches came a <a href="https://somethingabouttheboy.com/mod/1973-2/">Mod Hair Ken</a> with rooted auburn locks and stick-on facial hair. When disco swept the nation he was <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/pin/390616967670500973/">given</a> a Robert Redford jawline, bent arms, and articulation in the waist to boogie. And in the 1980s, Ken went full Gordon Gekko with slicked-back hair and a <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/pin/38351034296407517/">power suit</a>. You could argue Mattel was the company first known for dropping a new “type of guy” every few months before it became Twitter’s <a href="https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/best-new-guys-2020">specialty</a>. But each of his looks followed two simple rules: He was there to make Barbie look good, and to move merchandise. “[Mattel] needs people to want to pay the same amount of money that they would pay for a Barbie doll for him,” Jarossi said. “So he can’t be too much of an accessory. He can’t be too plain. He needs to stand, hold his own next to Barbie.” In practice, that has typically meant Ken’s outfits are, more often than not, cut from the same fabrics, in the same style of whatever fabulous frock Barbie’s wearing. “At the end of the day, all the thought and resources and design energy has normally gone into Barbie,” Jarossi said. “So now they’re like, ‘OK, now, we need to make a male version of this.’” Will Ferrell, who plays Mattel’s CEO in <em>Barbie</em>, appropriately sums up the company’s attitude toward the doll when he says: “Ken isn’t something I’m worried about—ever.”</p>
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<p id="CY4dsU"><br>For a long time, Mattel didn’t spend much time thinking about Ken. Then, in 1991, something—presumably the doll’s lagging sales numbers—inspired the company to ask young girls whether Barbie should get a new boyfriend. “The Ken doll has never been as popular and the kind of cash cow that Barbie has been,” Ann duCille, an English professor at Wesleyan University who has studied the cultural impact of Barbie dolls, told me. “And there have been various times when Mattel has tried to address that.” The girls Mattel spoke to thought Ken just needed a new look. “They wanted Barbie to stay with Ken, but wanted Ken to look a little cooler,” Mattel manager of marketing and communications Lisa McKendall <a href="https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/ken-comes-out/">told</a> the <em>Chicago Reader </em>at the time. The company got to work on yet another Ken makeover. </p>
<p id="nMOWO6">Two years later, Mattel showed up to the North American International Toy Fair with Earring Magic Ken, a doll styled in the fashion of a ’90s rave-goer. He sported blond highlighted hair, a lavender mesh shirt, a sleeveless faux-leather Gaultier-style vest, tight black jeans, loafers, and an earring in his left ear. Around his neck hung a large faux-metal ring, which unmistakably looked to many adult consumers like a cock ring. Given the sex toy’s popularity among gay men, chatter about Ken’s sexuality swirled. “The new Ken has gone MTV,” <em>The New York Times</em> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/11/garden/toys-will-be-toys-the-stereotypes-unravel.html">wrote</a>, leaning on “MTV” to do a lot of work. Gay commentator Dan Savage was much more explicit: “The little girls of our great nation wanted a hipper Ken, and Mattel gave them a hip Ken. A queer Ken.” After years of standard step-and-repeat makeovers of Ken, Mattel had accidentally wandered into a snake pit of sexual identity politics—proof that when a company mines real-life culture for commercial profit, it can be tricky to wash away the subversive reasons that made that culture interesting in the first place. (Especially when you accidentally add a cock ring into the mix.) The doll became a cult collector’s item among the gay community, who finally saw their own version of masculinity reflected in a mass-produced idol.</p>
<p id="HHDUZ6">As media coverage of Earring Magic Ken hit a fever pitch, Mattel scrambled to run what it perceived as damage control. After all, Barbie canon dictates that Ken is her romantic partner, not Allan’s or Brad’s or Steven’s. And it’s likely the company saw any hit to his public persona as one to hers, too. The company’s media-relations director told duCille that the claim that Barbie’s boyfriend was gay was “outrageous.” The incident reinforced Mattel’s aversion to anything outside what it considered normal—especially in the realm of sex. “Having long denied there is any sexual subtext to their dolls, Mattel suddenly found itself in the position of having to assert Earring Magic Ken’s heterosexuality: the ring around Ken’s neck might as well have been a noose,” duCille concluded in her 1996 <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Skin-Trade-Ann-DuCille/dp/0674810848">essay</a> “Toy Theory.” He was to be fabulous enough to look good next to Barbie, but not so fabulous as to threaten the intricate maze of limited representation upon which Mattel had built a billion-dollar empire. Earring Magic Ken’s brief cameo in the <em>Barbie </em>film—in which he identifies as a Barbie Land outcast—nods at the controversy, while ultimately letting Mattel off the hook.</p>
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<p id="FfB957">The Earring Magic Ken-fuffle may have forced Mattel into a hetero corner, but it also proved to the company that its dolls’ personal lives could win it free press. As the company moved into an era of stunt-based PR, it decided Ken was more valuable as a punching bag than an accessory. In February 2004, the company announced that Ken and Barbie had broken up. The event was covered in the tabloids with all the rigor of an A-list celebrity breakup, including a VP of marketing at Mattel <a href="https://www.today.com/popculture/barbie-ken-splitting-after-43-years-1c9485747">telling</a> Today.com that Barbie and Ken remained just “friends.” Soon after, the company linked Barbie with a new male doll, an Australian surfer named Blaine. The implication, of course, was that switching out Kens was easy.</p>
<p id="PN8etF">It was not the first time Mattel would exploit Ken’s flailing reputation as a way to make Barbie sparkle. For the 2010 film <em>Toy Story 3</em>, the company allowed Pixar to cast Ken as the movie villain’s evil-ish henchman. Based on an especially showy 1980s yacht-rock edition of the doll, <em>Toy Story 3</em> Ken is both obsessed with his extensive wardrobe, and in denial that he’s a girl’s toy. It’s only after being whipped into shape by an especially woke Barbie—who at one point declares “authority should derive from the consent of the governed, not from the threat of force!”—that he chooses good over evil. Their dynamic boosted Barbie’s image as an independent role model for young girls while digging Ken into a deeper, shameful hole. “There were so many jokes in that film about Ken being a girl’s toy and an accessory for Barbie,” Jarossi told me. “That kind of became the definitive view of Ken.” The way Mattel has spun it, being a vaguely inferior companion is actually the role that Ken was born to do. “I think lots of people joke, myself included, about Ken being an accessory to Barbie,” Jarossi added. “But Ken himself doesn’t seem to care or mind, he’s always smiling.”</p>
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<p id="zhtrS8">Jarossi’s description seems to capture the essence of Ryan Gosling’s very Method press tour for <em>Barbie</em>, during which he has been exceedingly deferential to Barbie and offered himboism after himboism. “Very little is known about Kenergy,” he <a href="https://www.etonline.com/ryan-gosling-teases-barbie-movie-his-kenergy-and-the-gray-man-film-exclusive-187227">told <em>ET</em></a>. “And we don’t have the funding for the research. We know that it’s real. In my case it came on as a rash, and then it turned into a tan. And then suddenly you’re shaving your legs, and you’re bleaching your hair, and you’re wearing bespoke rollerblades.” He <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/noradominick/margot-robbie-ryan-gosling-puppy-interview">admitted to <em>BuzzFeed</em></a> that letting go of the Ken role was<em> </em>“a bit like that Pillsbury dough—go with me on this—Cinnabon mix? Like once you open that canister you’re making Cinnabons. And you’re loving it. You’re loving making Cinnabons.” </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="cGmZsa">Following the emotional denouement of the “Just Ken” musical sequence in <em>Barbie</em>,<em> </em>Gosling’s Ken is finally able to see himself as an individual, someone who can stand alone without Barbie. It’s a radical moment for a doll who’s always been no. 2. And historically, Mattel and its customers have disagreed. But something about Gosling’s mesmerizingly ditzy Ken—combined with the most elaborate <a href="https://adage.com/article/marketing-news-strategy/barbie-represents-new-era-movie-and-entertainment-marketing/2504741">movie marketing campaign</a> in ages—may finally be Kenough to turn that corner for good.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/movies/2023/7/21/23803128/barbie-ken-ryan-gosling-history-evolution-insecurity-movieAlyssa Bereznak2023-06-19T08:37:12-04:002023-06-19T08:37:12-04:00A People’s History of Internet Password Sharing
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<p>With the Netflix crackdown in full effect, users are confronting what the change means for their wallets, their viewing habits, and the surprisingly intimate connections they’ve built upon a shared password</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="50es6q">In the summer of 2014, Sean Maloney lucked into some valuable information. He was home from college, staying with his family in Beloit, Wisconsin, and he had recently installed a new Samsung Smart TV in his family’s basement living room. One night, Maloney’s younger brother’s friend logged into Netflix on the device using his stepmom’s account. For nearly a decade after, Maloney used this login—that is, his little brother’s friend’s stepmom’s login—to stream hit shows like <em>The Office</em>,<em> New Girl</em>, and <em>Stranger Things </em>without paying a dime.</p>
<p id="y4BohU">“Basically once a week, I thought I was getting the boot,” the 29-year-old Maloney said. “All it would’ve taken was a friendship or a marriage ending, and I guess it just never happened.”</p>
<p id="qIbBrC">Then, about two weeks ago, following Netflix’s late-May <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/27/business/media/netflix-streaming-password.html">warning</a> that it would begin cracking down on interlopers, Maloney opened the app and realized he’d been logged out. It was, in his words, a “devastating day.”</p>
<p id="OSH1Lj">“I was legitimately bummed,” Maloney said. “And not just ’cause I lost a login. It was a fun running joke. At the friend’s wedding this year when I gave them their gift, I even left a note saying it was payback for a decade of Netflix mooching.” </p>
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<p id="53j3iE">Maloney and his lost login are early casualties of Netflix’s great piggybacker purge and a sign that the halcyon days of free streaming access are numbered. Just two weeks after Netflix began limiting sharing privileges to people within a single household, a television analytics company called Antenna <a href="https://www.antenna.live/post/a-first-look-at-the-impact-of-netflixs-password-sharing-crackdown">published</a> data showing that the streaming giant experienced its four best days of user sign-ups since Antenna started tracking Netflix’s sign-ups four years ago. Since the new sharing policy went into effect on May 23, Netflix’s stock price has risen about 23 percent.</p>
<p id="L4AS7N">The bump is great news for Netflix, which needed to get creative after it <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-21/why-is-netflix-nflx-losing-subscribers-bloomberg-news-reporters-discuss#xj4y7vzkg">posted</a> its first subscriber loss in a decade last spring. But it’s bad news for the many people who caught a free ride at the dawn of the streaming wars. If Netflix is able to add hundreds of thousands of new subscribers and boost its stock price by cracking down on password sharing, what’s to stop other streaming services—which <a href="https://www.theringer.com/year-in-review/2022/12/22/23521289/streaming-bubble-burst-year-in-review-netflix-hbo-max">face uncertainty</a> amid <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2021/12/16/22838792/binge-watching-weekly-tv-netflix-hbo-max-disney-plus">slowing</a> subscriber growth and the ongoing <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2023/5/8/23714724/writers-strike-2007-friday-night-lights-gossip-girl-heroes">writers strike</a>—from <a href="https://www.vulture.com/article/streaming-service-password-sharing-policies.html">following</a> Netflix’s lead? </p>
<p id="SlVWnR">Considering that these aging tech companies built their customer bases by neglecting their bottom lines, this shift was to be expected. Uber leaned on venture capital to offer huge discounts on rides. Airbnb did the same to keep rental fees low. Netflix and its competitors allowed—even <a href="https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712?s=20">encouraged</a>—widespread password sharing. But as investors have put pressure on tech darlings to finally become profitable, companies have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/technology/farewell-millennial-lifestyle-subsidy.html">upped</a> their rates and slashed their perks. And now it’s the streaming industry’s turn to collect on all the goodwill it has handed out over the years. </p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">I JUST LOST NETFLIX BC OF THIS PASSWORD SHARING BULLSHIT AND NOW SOAP2DAY GONE WHAT AM I USE THIS SUMMER??? TUBI???? PLUTOTV???? <a href="https://t.co/RZvQjHhbGG">pic.twitter.com/RZvQjHhbGG</a></p>— .k (@sqaureone) <a href="https://twitter.com/sqaureone/status/1668577951883952130?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 13, 2023</a>
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<p id="viWwp5">Maybe other services like Hulu, Max, and Disney+ will follow suit in a few months. Maybe in a few years. But make no mistake, the purge is coming. Its earliest victims are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2023/02/03/netflix-anti-password-sharing/">experiencing</a> whiplash, confronting what these changes mean for their wallets, viewing habits, and the connections they’ve built upon a shared password. As Emma Schwartz, a New York–based Netflix subscriber put it: “It’s a reckoning of sorts.”</p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="hkO16d">As long as passwords have been used to gatekeep our digital services, they’ve been traded around like good gossip. Millennials were primed to pick up the habit due to their early access to tech. Most digital natives’ first computers were communal: accessed in college labs, public libraries, or the family living room. In these spaces, they shared hardware and the experiences that the internet unlocked, trawling through AOL chat rooms after school and exploiting the weak passwords and naivete of their elders. “My first dial-up connection at home used credentials cribbed from the public library,” said Ellie, who, like many of the people I spoke to for this story, preferred to remain partially anonymous. “The library normally used the same credentials on a half dozen phone lines concurrently. So, ‘What’s one more?’ I figured.”</p>
<p id="DU1S3A">Eventually, millennials were baptized in the free-flowing content fountains of Napster, imbued with an entitlement to music that enraged an industry and also forced it to transform. When that gravy train came to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2000/07/27/napster-ordered-to-shut-down/c13bde0f-7710-4d85-9fcb-6767ed2f2f84/">an abrupt stop</a>, listeners hopped on the next one and learned how to torrent. By the late aughts, millions of people were <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/heroes-causes-bittorrent-boom-080924/">pirating</a> newly released albums, blockbuster movies, and popular network television shows.</p>
<p id="cpt5Nr">Netflix launched its digital streaming service in 2007 with the aim to reshape the way viewers accessed content. And to a certain extent, it succeeded: Its subscribers now enjoy on-demand access at a relatively affordable price. But old habits die hard, and the quest for free content took on yet another form: widespread password sharing. According to a <a href="http://www.parksassociates.com/blog/article/the-cost-to-streaming-services-of-password-account-sharing-----analyst-insights">survey last year by Parks Associates</a>, 40 percent of U.S. households share passwords or use shared passwords. And a 2016 <a href="https://blog.lastpass.com/2016/02/infographic-keep-your-friends-close-your-passwords-closer-2/">poll</a> by LastPass found that viewers between the ages of 18 and 29 are most likely to swap logins. Young people, in particular, have created a culture of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/us/teenagers-sharing-passwords-as-show-of-affection.html">digital intimacy</a>, though sometimes they gain access to their favorite shows, sports, and movies by more serendipitous means.</p>
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<p id="rGiSrB"><br>“In college my freshman year, I did not have a Netflix account, and neither did my roommate,” Jake Mussman, a 26-year-old financial analyst from Minneapolis, said. “My roommate vowed to fix that. Soon after, he texted me that he ‘needed the room.’” </p>
<p id="WMLwgM">When Mussman returned to his dorm, his roommate presented him with a gift: a Netflix login on Mussman’s Xbox. </p>
<p id="fMdmdM">“I never met the account holder, and, to my knowledge, my roommate never saw them again.”</p>
<p id="KIEXO9">In other cases, knowledge of more illicit login information was traded between friends like the answers to a notoriously hard chemistry exam. Kennelly, a former colleague of mine from New York, began searching for a login for Major League Baseball’s livestreaming service in the fall of 2009. Kennelly wanted to watch the Yankees and inadvertently stumbled into a baseball gold mine.</p>
<p id="7mfgGT">“A friend of a friend says what you should do is type in ‘philadelphia.phillies’ at MLB.TV, and then, for the password, just use ‘philadelphia.phillies,’” Kennelly said.</p>
<p id="yfo4Qo">To their disbelief, it worked. Not only that, but their ability to watch games wasn’t limited by location the way a standard account might be.</p>
<p id="Jy0ySY">“The assumption was these accounts were set up for every team with these default passwords so that scouts could use them while they were on the road,” Kennelly said. “And the Phillies had not changed their default password.” </p>
<p id="f2jGLz">They used the login to watch every remaining Yankees game that season, including the team’s World Series victory over—that’s right—the Phillies. The following year, Kennelly tried to do it again, only to realize the account owner had wised up about their scheme. </p>
<p id="WJTR7v">“So then it became a little game of infosec,” Kennelly said. “Like, what MLB teams had the worst security protocols? Then just guessing the password ‘city.team name’ to see what would work. And the team that took the longest to figure this out and change their default password was the San Diego Padres.”</p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="R52a7f">For those who can afford to pay for a streaming service or three, sharing logins is less an act of intelligence collection and more a standard friend favor, the online equivalent of giving someone a ride to a party. It can function as a vote of confidence in a new relationship or serve as reassurance for a connection that has grown more distant. “It’s a trust thing,” Andrew Marino, a 33-year-old podcast producer who is especially liberal with account sharing, told me. “Like, ‘Oh yeah, I still have this person’s password. They still let me log in to their streaming service without me having to pay them.’ That’s a cool little digital fist bump.” </p>
<p id="BXMxfM">The act of password sharing requires two roles. In the process of reporting this story, I’ve come to think of them as whales and barnacles. Whales carry the weight of the monthly fee required to use a streaming service, and barnacles attach, sometimes in clusters, to hitch a free ride. Given that subscribing to every major streaming service would <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2019-10-10/streaming-wars-per-month-total-shocking-apple-hbo-disney-netflix">cost</a> upward of $400 a month, most people I spoke to embraced both roles for mutual benefit. Jacob, a 32-year-old college administrator based in Brooklyn, says he has a group of around six friends nicknamed “Them Pals” who all function as a single streaming unit, sharing add-on accounts and swapping passwords via group chat.</p>
<p id="INriv1">“We have an entire shadow network within these friends,” Jacob said. “The couple who gives us HBO Max access uses my Netflix, Paramount Plus, and Peacock. I also use their Apple TV and Hulu.”</p>
<p id="j0tEcG">Even if everyone is willing to do their part in a saturated market, different personalities gravitate toward different roles. The whales are fiscally responsible rule followers who either prefer structure or can’t deal with the rigmarole of tracking down a login. One friend from Miami who works in medicine told me that she pays for everything “because my dad always told me I need to be an independent woman.” Classic whale talk. On the flip side, barnacles may or may not be able to afford to pay, but they think of password sharing like a sport. Landing a really obscure login is—to <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/7/16604646/netflix-hbo-hulu-sharing-passwords-whyd-you-push-that-button-podcast">quote</a> the now-defunct podcast <em>Why’d You Push That Button?—</em>like “a badge of honor.” </p>
<p id="v4wlly">“It’s fun to be involved in a little scheme to take money away from corporations,” Jacob, of the “Them Pals” shadow network, told me. Without a doubt, the words of a barnacle. </p>
<p id="jLVUwM">Within the culture of password sharing, barnacles don’t necessarily have a parasitic relationship with whales. Consider the intruder who appeared on my college friend’s Netflix account about a year ago. “I have no idea who they are,” he said. “They created a separate profile called ‘EE’ and seem to like reality television and foreign documentaries.” The squatter doesn’t appear to be doing any harm, so my friend has allowed them to stay. “They took a calculated risk, so I gotta respect that,” he said. “In a strange way, it was really courteous. They have their algorithm; I have mine.”</p>
<div id="cQ3EEM">
<blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@literallyjohngreen/video/7195374736275262762" data-video-id="7195374736275262762" data-embed-from="oembed" style="max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px;"> <section> <a target="_blank" title="@literallyjohngreen" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@literallyjohngreen?refer=embed">@literallyjohngreen</a> <p><a title="stitch" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/stitch?refer=embed">#stitch</a> with @tatehoskins open letter to Omar. </p> <a target="_blank" title="♬ original sound - John Green" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-7195374759515786027?refer=embed">♬ original sound - John Green</a> </section> </blockquote> <script async="" src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script>
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<p id="l97m51">In the best-case scenario, the whale-barnacle relationship is symbiotic: A subscriber shares their password so that they have someone with whom they can talk about their latest obsession. Jacob of “Them Pals” says he feels “sentimental” about how intertwined his streaming habits have become with those of the people he shares his accounts with. Occasionally, his Peacock account has warned him that too many people are using the service at once, which prompted him to discover that more of his friends were getting into soccer—a net positive in his mind.</p>
<p id="DgS7LM">“That’s a fun little marker to know their interest is growing in something that I care about,” he said. “It’s nice to see other people on the profile working through a show you love. It’s a reason to reach out to somebody, an occasion for connection.”</p>
<p id="Y8vOj1">Just as intimate connections can be built from a shared login, they can also be dissolved because of one. People might begin a relationship by Netflix and chilling, only to endure a tug-of-war for password access when things fall apart. Lingering streaming accounts can often prolong the pain of a breakup. A friend of mine in New York recalls lurking on the HBO Max account of an ex-partner so she could watch <em>The Great Pottery Throw Down. </em>Whenever she logged in, she’d see the latest show her ex was watching and would judge his taste accordingly. It went on for about a year, until one day, she tried to log in and realized he’d changed the password. </p>
<p id="BOQeWq">“I did feel like it was the nail in the coffin for us even having a friendship,” she said. “Like, he was such a dick he couldn’t just let me watch <em>Throw Down</em>.”</p>
<p id="dR8mCb">In the case of personal loss, the remaining accounts of those who’ve passed away can be a rude reminder of their absence. Emma Schwartz, a documentary producer based in New York, says that around the time Netflix implemented its new password-sharing policy, her family was asked to authenticate their account with a code that went to her deceased mother’s phone. It was a stinging, unexpected reminder that their lives had forever shifted. </p>
<p id="Zdyjg7">“It was real sobering,” Schwartz said. “Like, Mom’s dead. Time to grow up and get my own Netflix login.”</p>
<p id="ZmOSCf">Schwartz’s experience encapsulates why so many viewers are attached to their shared logins. They’re grooves in our vast online footprint, evidence that we’re not individual “users” so much as members of a constantly shifting community. Amid the Netflix sweep, people are processing the loss of a type of digital intimacy that they may have never even realized existed.</p>
<p id="rFTeiD">“When someone gives me their password, I feel good about that,” Marino, the podcast producer, said. “That’s like a human connection. But if you don’t have that, if you lose that kind of bond with someone, it’s like: <em>Aw man. It’s happened.</em>” </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="drsE6U">Until the next work-around arrives, subscribers will simply be left to Netflix and mourn.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/tv/2023/6/19/23765635/netflix-password-sharing-crackdown-backlash-rules-change-historyAlyssa Bereznak2023-05-18T09:16:55-04:002023-05-18T09:16:55-04:00Chronicler of the Flower Moon
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<p>How David Grann ascended from magazine journalist to the muse of Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, and a myriad of others in Hollywood</p> <p id="GHIUEg"><em>Editor’s note: This story was originally published shortly before </em>Killers of the Flower Moon<em>’s world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. We’re resurfacing it now as the movie begins playing in theaters.</em></p>
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<p id="tqRnvN">David Grann’s latest nonfiction epic,<em> </em><a href="https://www.davidgrann.com/book/the-wager/"><em>The Wager</em></a>,<em> </em>follows a heaving imperial British warship of the same name as it sets out in 1740 on a perilous mission in search of Spanish treasure. Like many of Grann’s stories, it’s a high-stakes quest that unravels in a setting that feels entirely divorced from modern society. After all, this was the Age of Sail, a time when navigating a ship involved a concerning amount of guesswork, and the best solution for a serious injury was often amputation. But ask Grann how he landed on the idea for the book and he’ll say it all began with the headlines of 2017.</p>
<p id="klGjuA">“I was following the news each day,” Grann told me over the phone last month. “These battles over truth and so-called fake news. I suddenly was trying to find a way to get at some of those scenes. And somehow I found myself in the 18th century.”</p>
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<p id="DjIv6G">A fan of both Herman Melville and long-forgotten archives, Grann landed on the journals of a 16-year-old midshipman who was stranded with his crew members on an island off the coast of Patagonia. It was not the document’s descriptions of typhoons, shipwreck, or mutinies, however captivating, that convinced Grann the story of <em>The Wager</em> was worth resurrecting. Rather, it was how the ship’s surviving castaways later described those events to the masses, publishing conflicting accounts of what happened to save themselves from being hanged. </p>
<p id="EA8fSf">“It was disinformation and misinformation,” he said. “There were competing narratives and there were even allegations of fake journals. Then I would come home and I’d be reading about the <a href="https://www.wwaytv3.com/woman-continues-fighting-to-ban-book-brunswick-county/">banning</a> of certain history books. And I was like: <em>This 18th-century story is also a weird parable for our times</em>.”</p>
<p id="Qr0eFo">It’s this extraordinary ability to connect the dots across nearly 300 years of history—to sneak modern-day allegories into intricate adventure tales—that has vaulted Grann’s work from bookshelves to silver screens. The bespectacled 56-year-old dad has long been a “<a href="https://slate.com/culture/2011/04/david-grann-of-the-new-yorker-why-his-storytelling-is-so-irresistible.html">storyteller’s storyteller</a>,” appealing to a subset of readers who cherish the classics and nerd out on bibliographies. In his two-decade-long post as a staff writer at <em>The</em> <em>New Yorker, </em>Grann has tackled <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/08/11/the-chameleon-annals-of-crime-david-grann">incredible</a> deceptions, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/04/04/a-murder-foretold">curious</a> crimes, and <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-white-darkness">grueling</a> voyages with literary aplomb. In his equally impressive run as an author, his books <em>The Lost City of Z</em>, <em>Killers of the Flower Moon</em>, and most recently, <em>The Wager, </em>have risen to the top of the <em>New York Times</em> bestseller list and brought his excellent work to the eyes of the masses. As his stories have grown in detail and scope, so too have the films that have been adapted from them. In recent years, his name has become a buzzword among IP-hungry Hollywood insiders, some of whom even <a href="https://thebaffler.com/salvos/they-made-a-movie-out-of-it-pogue">stay up</a> until midnight on the eve he’s slated to publish a new magazine article.</p>
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<p id="MMNhgQ">Soon, Grann’s stories will meet their most vast audience yet. This weekend, the Cannes Film Festival will premiere <em>Killers of the Flower Moon</em>, an adaptation of his <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/4/25/16041702/david-grann-killers-of-the-flower-moon-lost-city-of-z-interview-98e43e940c81">2017 book</a> about a string of mysterious murders of Native Americans in Osage County, Oklahoma. The highly anticipated project is due out in theaters this October, and comes with an <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/behind-martin-scorseses-killers-flower-moon-apple-deal-1296394/">estimated</a> $200 million budget, Leonardo DiCaprio as its lead, and none other than Martin Scorsese as its director. And—as if this crossover event featuring three men who are legends in their respective fields weren’t already enough to make cinephiles and bookworms lose it—Scorsese and DiCaprio have signed on to <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/leonardo-dicaprio-martin-scorsese-naval-survival-movie-wager-apple-1235189018/">do it all again</a> for <em>The Wager</em>, too.</p>
<p id="033Y8a">The two films will cement Grann among the likes of Jessica Pressler and Michael Lewis—journalists whose stories resonate so deeply with society that they become part of pop culture. It’s a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that Grann’s stories are often sourced not from financial crises or flashy scammers, but from old documents that occasionally require a magnifying glass to read. His work may offer momentary escape in the form of far-flung locales, or the occasional naval cannon battle, but at its core are timeless themes of striving, survival, and the precarity of truth. In an era when so many film and television adaptations simply mimic our modern reality, Grann’s stealthy history lessons have become a powerful, if increasingly rare, force for scale and meaning in Hollywood.</p>
<p id="AysWE6">“When people talk about content today … it all feels kind of indistinct,” said James Gray, who adapted Grann’s book <em>The Lost City of Z</em> into a <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/4/13/16042282/james-gray-the-lost-city-of-z-review-8b5bf16096e5">2016 film</a> starring Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller, and Tom Holland. “You have like 800 choices, but it feels like there’s nothing. The reason for that is corporate ideas have been to reduce the idea of ambition and quest and myth. These shows feel like the vision of reaching is crimped somehow. David’s work is very much the opposite of that.”</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="0QIuBy">
<p id="n4Cn81">Practically every Grann fan can recall the first time they came across his work. For me, it was my senior year of college. I’d picked up an issue of <em>The New Yorker </em>before my shift at the campus library and began reading what I initially thought was <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/07/12/the-mark-of-a-masterpiece">a story</a> about the politics of art authentication. It unfolded like an elegant piece of origami, describing what some say was an elaborate con in which a man allegedly forged the fingerprints of famous painters on so-called newly discovered works of art. When I finished the story, I looked up from the magazine to realize I was 20 minutes late to work. It was years later, when I landed a job at Condé Nast and overheard editors in the elevator discussing Grann’s writing as if it were sport, that I realized I was not alone in my awe of his work.</p>
<p id="H6qcZy">For Edward Zwick, a longtime writer, director, and producer, the first Grann story that really stuck with him was “To Die For,” a 2001 <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/104965/die">piece</a> in <em>The New Republic</em> about 1930s celebrity and murder. Zwick clipped it out of the magazine with the thought that it could one day become a movie. </p>
<p id="cxA3el">“It was just a really great story,” said Zwick, who has worked on dozens of film and television projects and won an Academy Award in 1998 as a producer on <em>Shakespeare in Love</em>. “I think it revealed even then what has been revealed in so many articles and stories since. That he has this uncanny ability to pull the threads of these strong narratives out of these stories.”</p>
<p id="E3w24U">Zwick continued to follow Grann’s career, and finally got the chance to bring his work to the big screen when he directed <em>Trial by Fire. </em>The 2018 drama stars Laura Dern and is based on <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire">an article</a> about the sketchy police evidence used to sentence a man to death for the murder of his three daughters in a house fire. Zwick recalls the ease with which the piece’s deeply researched “narrative thrust” both laid out the structure of the film and allowed him to preserve its core truth. “You’re allowed to compress and to be reductive in certain things and to combine characters,” he said. “But there has to be something in the essence of a story that gives you that kind of narrative shape that is familiar and yet unique unto itself.” </p>
<p id="fRV1jg">Geoffrey Fletcher, who adapted the script, said that Grann’s concise writing makes it a natural fit for film. </p>
<p id="0OqZWu">“David’s stories are richly and efficiently told in a way that is very cinematic,” Fletcher wrote in an email. “To me, his work and style are reminiscent of Hemingway’s.”</p>
<p id="Rz5rK0"><em>Trial by Fire</em> was one of two movies inspired by Grann’s work that came out in 2018. On the very same day and at the same venue as Zwick’s premiere—that is, August 31 at the Telluride Film Festival—David Lowery debuted <em>The Old Man & the Gun</em>. (In that movie, Robert Redford plays a suave septuagenarian stickup-man-slash-escape-artist who was the subject of Grann’s <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/01/27/the-old-man-and-the-gun">2003 article</a> of the same name.) From that moment, Grann was on the map as a narrative powerhouse in Hollywood. Per Gray, his work is now especially sought after by directors who are drawn to ambitious historical dramas. </p>
<aside id="ZNEZCg"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"David Grann Still Believes in the Truth","url":"https://www.theringer.com/2017/4/25/16041702/david-grann-killers-of-the-flower-moon-lost-city-of-z-interview-98e43e940c81"}]}'></div></aside><p id="uK2mQ2">“A lot of us are old enough to remember not just the endeavors of Francis Coppola in the late 1970s, but also David Lean in the ’60s, and what that meant for reigniting a passion for cinema after the advent of television,” Gray said. “David’s stories conjure that aspect or that corner of the movies. They do generate a level of excitement, certainly as potential pictures.”</p>
<p id="DcqIbO">When Gray signed on to adapt <em>The</em> <em>Lost City of Z</em>,<em> </em>he was moved by the wit in Grann’s writing and the tenderness he displayed toward his characters. The director said that, in particular, Grann’s journalistic rigor elevated the adaptation.</p>
<p id="qUpzYR">“I was absolutely thrilled by David’s terror that I would take a risk with the facts,” Gray said. “I loved how important it was that his research never be questioned for its accuracy. And so that is a beautiful thing that spreads throughout the production. You say:<em> I owe it to, not just to the material, but to Grann because of how dedicated he is to being specific and honest, truthful.</em>”</p>
<p id="3JurHc">Even so, Grann understands that for his stories to flourish on-screen, he has to let go of them. </p>
<p id="yDVGfE">“Adaptations are always scary, because there’s this part of you that wants to make it your own, but then there’s also this part of you that feels guilty for making it your own,” said Soo Hugh, who is making <a href="https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/tom-hiddleston-apple-white-darkness-soo-hugh-1235227720/">an Apple+ series</a> based on Grann’s <a href="https://www.davidgrann.com/book/the-white-darkness/">book</a> about the Antarctic explorer Henry Worsley. “From the very first conversation, [Grann] said, ‘I know what this will take, this is no longer mine. I give it to you.’ Which is a very generous thing to do.”</p>
<p id="JS4C8t">For all the excitement Grann’s stories generate in Hollywood, he says he doesn’t “pretend to be a movie person” and has only so much influence. </p>
<p id="iZnOnH">“You know how, on a ship, you got the captain, then you got the lieutenant, and then you’ll have the petty officers, and then you’ll have the able seamen, and then you have the ordinary seamen, and then there’ll be a few landlubbers who are the most pitiful, pathetic creatures on board and are looked down upon?” Grann said. “In the hierarchy of the regiment with a film, the author is somewhere down there.”</p>
<p id="BxXB6N">He’s nevertheless been invited to observe the process, journeying to Cincinnati, Ohio, for the filming of <em>The Old Man & the Gun,</em> into the Colombian jungle for <em>The</em> <em>Lost City of Z</em>, and—most recently—to Oklahoma for Scorsese’s adaptation of <em>Killers of the Flower Moon. </em>For him, the most exciting part of these visits is not his proximity to movie stars or famed directors, but the opportunity to see his research materialize in real life. </p>
<p id="eyUngj">Grann is especially grateful for the level of detail and respect brought to the production of <em>Killers of the Flower Moon</em>. He says Scorsese’s team began communicating early with the Osage chief Standing Bear, who appointed Osage ambassadors for various aspects of the film. Their collaboration ensured the Osage had a part in telling the story, influencing costume design, casting, language coaching, and their decision to film on location. </p>
<p id="qvfOPS">“I will say the one thing about working with Martin Scorsese and his production team and the actors in this project,” Grann said. “One of the most gratifying things to me was just their intense—I don’t want to say <em>ferocious</em>—but just <em>intense </em>commitment to dig into the story.”</p>
<p id="j5ju3T">Last year, when Grann visited the set, he found himself walking down a road he’d spent so many years researching so that he could offer the best possible descriptions in his book. </p>
<p id="AZX5LL">“I had seen these places and photographs and had descriptions of them, but they reconstructed everything into the finest details,” he said. “The walk down the street with all the little towns and thousands of people, buggies going up and down the street, they had very fancy cars at the time …”</p>
<p id="Ld9g55">For a moment on our call, Grann trailed off into a tangent explaining the Osage’s wealthy 1920s lifestyle on their oil-rich territory; he was lost in the vast historical detail that his mind held on the subject. Then he returned to his childlike awe of that moment on set. </p>
<p id="dm8l02">“It was just totally surreal,” he said. “And surreal is not a word I normally use because what does surreal really mean? But in this case, surreal would be the way I felt.”</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="UaUYtT">It’s only a matter of time until the vessel he spent so many years researching appears before his eyes, too. </p>
<aside id="YO0jPA"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"ringer_newsletter"}'></div></aside>
https://www.theringer.com/movies/2023/5/18/23727763/david-grann-killers-of-the-flower-moon-cannes-film-festivalAlyssa Bereznak2023-05-03T06:20:00-04:002023-05-03T06:20:00-04:00Dressing for ‘Succession’
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4x2EHZEbUXRH0T_HaEYvYOivxWw=/79x0:1146x800/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72244524/succesionfashion_hbo_ringer.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>HBO/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>In conversation, costume designer Michelle Matland explains how Kendall Roy’s sartorial journey mimics his corporate evolution, and the specific challenges of styling the series as it approaches its end</p> <p id="nlBc0K">There comes a moment for every good prestige television hit when a show’s characters ascend beyond the confines of their fictional universe. Their emotional arcs <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kelseyweekman/kendall-roy-succession-fans">inspire</a> rabid idolatry, their one-liners become instant <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/03/gregs-dates-ludicrously-capacious-bag-is-the-succession-meme-we-deserve">memes</a>, and their style choices are dutifully <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/succession-morning-show-luxury-baseball-caps-11639583315">chronicled</a> across the internet. Midway through its fourth and final season, <em>Succession </em>is approaching the apex of this phenomenon, more omnipresent in the pop culture conversation than ever. </p>
<p id="XwDO32">That’s especially true when it comes to dissecting the wardrobe of the Roy family and its cohort. The clothing choices on the series have been credited with highlighting the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/succession/2021/11/11/22775852/succession-set-design-costumes-clothes-cinematography">bland misery</a> of the ultrarich while also popularizing the latest “<a href="https://www.glamour.com/story/what-is-stealth-wealth-quiet-luxury-fashion-trend">stealth wealth</a>” fashion trend. </p>
<p id="6bMbJ1">Whether viewers are poring over <em>Succession</em>’s costumes for ridicule or research<em>,</em> the show has undoubtedly brought the 1 percent’s muted palette of navy blues and ecrus under the microscope. We have costume designer Michelle Matland to thank for that. As an industry veteran whose past credits include such titles as <em>The Hours</em> and <em>The Stepford Wives</em>,<em> </em>her shopping strategy is to embody the minds of the characters completely—or, in the case of Kendall Roy, execute the highly specific vision of Jeremy Strong. As she’s worked on the show over the past four seasons, her costume choices have offered a detailed map to the exorbitant shopping habits of the ultrarich. And taken together, they emphasize that those obsessed with pursuing wealth often overlook the creative possibilities it allows for and get stuck in status-driven sartorial prisons of high-priced cashmeres and silks.<em> </em></p>
<p id="96D7iQ">I caught her over Zoom last week to ask her about the style evolution of Shiv, Kendall, and Co., her tricks to stay on budget, and the <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@binge/video/7215757709356928257">capacious bag</a> that launched a million memes.</p>
<p id="2WWf8m"><strong>This fourth and final season has seen a sartorial reset for the characters of </strong><em><strong>Succession</strong></em><strong>, and that’s probably most true of Shiv. How have you approached dressing her this season? To what extent did you want to hint at her pregnancy?</strong></p>
<p id="f2XBV2">As for hinting at a pregnancy, I didn’t know, nor do I think she did when we started the season. By the time I found out, [Sarah Snook] was about three months <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/sarah-snook-pregnant-expecting-first-child-dave-lawson-1235357276/">pregnant</a>—or a bit more maybe, I’m not even sure. We had to reconvene with the writers and Jesse, the directors, et cetera, and Sarah, of course, as to how to proceed: whether we were going to keep the pregnancy as our secret within the show, or if the directors and the writers would choose to add that piece of news, which is obviously what happened. </p>
<p id="IwwqYj">When we decided that it was going to be part of the story line, what it meant was we simply had to adapt Shiv and what that would mean to her. So we simply made it part of the new tale that we were telling about her, and the conflict that she probably would have at that point in time, because she and Tom were sort of a little at each other, not certain what the commitment was going to be. So that would complicate the telling of how she would be affected by it.</p>
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<cite>HBO</cite>
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<p id="s3F5k5"><strong>What about Kendall? He seems to have a bit more self-confidence about him, which was underlined in the opening of this season’s fifth episode, where he did the same commute to the Waystar Royco office as in the pilot. Do his clothes this season reflect a regained sense of self after hitting rock bottom?</strong></p>
<p id="8yuHty">Absolutely. No. 1: He has evolved probably more than anyone from Season 1. He started as a corporate [guy], the son of [Logan], then he went through the bottoming out, so we had to see that. Then he was on the fence about what he wanted to do with his new creation of himself, whether he wanted to stay in the corporation, whether he wanted to become a partner with his brother, whether he wanted to take over after his father. And so now, he is much more whole and more certain of himself and what he wants to do and who he wants to be. I think you see a comfort zone in him.</p>
<aside id="4YLVPZ"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"“We’re Like the Anti-‘Billions’”: How ‘Succession’ Makes Wealth Look Miserable ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/succession/2021/11/11/22775852/succession-set-design-costumes-clothes-cinematography"},{"title":"The Making of Tom Wambsgans ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/succession/2023/3/21/23649030/tom-wambsgans-succession-making-of-season-4"},{"title":"A Conversation With the People Who Outfit ‘Succession’ ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/10/16/20916167/succession-costume-designer-interview"}]}'></div></aside><p id="ZewRxK"><strong>How does that translate to his clothing?</strong></p>
<p id="CKJexK">Well, no. 1, Jeremy [Strong] is very, very knowledgeable about fashion style and labels. And because he is such a committed actor, he brought that part of himself to Kendall, and his clothing is all super high-end, top of the line: Cucinelli’s, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CrtBEzLvAts/">Loro Piana</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CrlgjWhPZR5/">Tom Ford</a>. </p>
<p id="oyjYP3"><em>[Editor’s note: Strong told </em><a href="https://www.gq.com/story/jeremy-strong-march-cover-profile">GQ</a><em> in February that Loro Piana sent him a custom jacket and Richard Mille sent him a watch for </em>Succession<em>’s fourth season.]</em></p>
<p id="D6ahAL">Whatever it costs, Kendall would wear it, because he’s not looking at the money. [Jeremy] brings very strong opinions about fashion and labels to the character. He knows what that wealth looks like, and he incorporates it into his performance. </p>
<p id="T73ynq"><strong>I feel like he’s a little bit more buttoned up than when we saw him in his true emo phase.</strong></p>
<p id="LMkiMk">For sure, but he still listens to Jay-Z and still has his hip, nuanced clothing. It reflects his having become more of himself, stronger in his person.</p>
<p id="hR39dx"><strong>Speaking of, how did you go about designing the custom flight jackets that Kendall has made for the product launch of Living+? From what I understand, that idea began </strong><a href="https://www.vulture.com/article/succession-jeremy-strong-interview-season-4-episode-6.html"><strong>with a text</strong></a><strong> from Jeremy, after he read the script for Episode 6. </strong></p>
<p id="sNrXPZ">We used Tom Cruise’s <a href="https://bamfstyle.com/2018/10/27/top-gun-maverick-g1/">bomber jacket</a> in <em>Top Gun</em> as the direct inspiration for the jackets. We replicated the patches as best we could using Waystar and ATN logos in place of the real thing. The patches were custom-made at a shop in Brooklyn called <a href="http://www.bqsports.com/shop/">BQ Sports</a>.</p>
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<cite>HBO</cite>
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<p id="9j8URB"><strong>Another theme thus far in the season is the handful of women who have found themselves vaulted to positions of power by virtue of their proximity to it. There’s Willa, who graduated from being a sex worker to being the wife of a presidential candidate. There’s Kerry, who learned the hard way how ephemeral Logan’s Midas touch could be. And then there’s even someone like Greg’s date, Bridget, who’s on the lowest rung of that spectrum. Do you see a through line in any of these character styles? </strong></p>
<p id="S1aMdp">For Willa, she has changed in style from Season 1 in terms of hair, makeup and costumes, jewelry, the kinds of boots that she wore, the length of her skirts, the fabrication of the dresses and the patterns from the beginning. She’s transformed into what she feels is the right hand to a Republican, which isn’t really what it would be, but she doesn’t know any better. </p>
<p id="u2VMBp">So <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CrcP1hOvlRO/?hl=en">her</a> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CrKZcsHvRtc/?hl=en">costumes</a> are just this side of maybe a little inappropriate. We wanted to keep the Willa who we know and love, but just make her a little bit more straight. She’s trying to fit into what she believes is the uniform of the wife of a possible president. She’s still got the Willa in her, but she’s just a little bit more refined, and a little less <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CXe7FXjvlZO/?hl=en">hippie wild child</a>.</p>
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<cite>HBO</cite>
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<p id="OufSoR"><strong>What about Kerry? I noticed she was wearing </strong><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CqXp0wSv188/"><strong>a lot of jewel tones</strong></a><strong>, like she was ready to fill in as an anchor on ATN at a moment’s notice.</strong></p>
<p id="nCDYh9">That’s one of my favorite costumes. Yes, she really desires to be this newscaster. She really feels that this is her chance to find herself—now that she and Logan have this relationship, she can utilize it, but obviously even that backfires. So it’s sort of a sad journey for her. Everything that she thought might work out has not.</p>
<p id="znbrAK"><strong>Was there maybe an overconfidence in those power suits she was wearing?</strong> </p>
<p id="y0dwu2">They’re just on the left side of right. They’re not really appropriate for what she’s attempting to become. And the clothes just reflect how she’s not quite in the loop. The silhouettes and the colors are a little bit too much. She’s loud and proud, and it doesn’t quite work. And against the compensation for her delicate position, everyone else has sort of a classic look—simplicity, very clean cuts, minimalist. She is slightly outrageous in comparison.</p>
<p id="M6uWLJ"><strong>What about Greg’s date, Bridget? </strong></p>
<p id="51HSCj">We wanted her to look like she didn’t fit in, whatever was going to make her stand out in the crowd. And in this crowd, anything that was too present, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CqZd-suPJPl/?hl=en">too obvious</a> was going to get her kicked out of this house. </p>
<p id="Co4LbJ"><strong>It must have been so fun for you to find that “gargantuan” bag.</strong></p>
<p id="2shDqD">I had a good time. That’s a wonderful little moment.</p>
<p id="uN4aDg"><strong>Maybe I’m revealing that I’m not a bag expert here, but was that a Burberry bag from a few seasons ago?</strong></p>
<p id="xdccNR">It was new season, but still, yes. But we knew it had to be ostentatious. We knew that it had to define what someone who is, let’s say, middle class, might aspire to help tell their story that they are moving on up. She carries this bag because she thinks it makes her look important and it backfires. We knew it had to have some sort of logo, and we didn’t want the logo to be so rarefied that she wouldn’t be able to buy it. So our goal was to drop it down to her standards of what she thinks is the most glorious and refined—but it isn’t.</p>
<p id="K2QSlY"><strong>Matsson has become more of a central character over the last few seasons</strong>.<strong> I’m curious if you draw from current-day CEOs when you dress him. I know there’s maybe a hint at </strong><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Cra-x38vR7E/"><strong>Scandinavian style</strong></a><strong>, but he also looks like a rich gamer slob.</strong></p>
<p id="x0SVAE">Well, that’s intentional, as well: that he is not interested in impressing anyone, and just a sweatshirt and a tank top is all he needs to put on. It’s Scandinavian-slash-hipster.</p>
<p id="YYWtfL">He probably sends Ebba to the sporting goods store and picks up three <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CrcO7aMPUjH/">sweatshirts</a> and a pair of sweatpants for him, or they’re on order. They come in from the company, which he probably has part ownership in.</p>
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<cite>HBO</cite>
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<p id="hjxK6S"><strong>Which characters do you think have evolved the most in terms of style?</strong></p>
<p id="Ivp2UX">To be honest, all of the characters—because of the writing—have evolved and gone to tremendous places that I never would’ve thought. I was just along for the ride. For example, Gerri started out very straight, very suited, simple Armani suits, and just very tailored, and she <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Crd0loSPRvu/">became modernized</a> as her character developed. And Shiv <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B-AkUItBieG/?hl=en">started out</a> in politics and didn’t want to be associated with her family, and ended up coming all the way back to fighting for the succession of her character. Kendall started in suits and ended up where he is now, which is entirely a different painting, a different palette. </p>
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<p id="531wFd">The only person I think who’s kind of stayed the same is Connor. And that’s because he chose to. He chose to not evolve. But they all, quite honestly, have developed into characters I didn’t foresee until we got to them. The journey is the job, and you just have to travel with the actor and the character to tell the story they want to tell.</p>
<p id="Drjdmf"><strong>When you’re out shopping, how do you approach buying clothes for a character?</strong></p>
<p id="zQQcC1">I do a thing which I call Etch A Sketch Head. I get into, let’s say Saks [Fifth Avenue]. And let’s say Shiv has a story line that’s new. I shake my head—you know how an Etch A Sketch works—and try to get me out of my head and put Shiv into my head. And then I go shopping so that I’m formally outside of myself. I’m no longer looking from Michelle’s point of view, but I’m looking from Shiv’s point of view, or Gerri’s point of view, and hopefully it gives me some inspiration and it clears me of thinking from my own perspective.</p>
<p id="3U7hTF"><strong>Wouldn’t that be dangerous from a budget perspective?</strong></p>
<p id="pElWw8">Well, that’s true. [<em>Laughs</em>.]</p>
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<p id="sdB6yf"><br><strong>Do you have tricks for staying within budget?</strong></p>
<p id="VIdzQe">Yeah. For example, Shiv is wearing a Tom Ford tuxedo in one of the scenes [at Connor’s wedding], but she’s wearing <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq3OnSTP6GR/">a top with a gold chain</a> attached to it, which was like $47. So you mix and you match. In the scene where she’s in <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CqYhBXDvKHW/?hl=en">the browns and the tans</a>, the pants were like, I don’t remember, silk, but the T-shirt came from Zara. So you can find something that equates to the thing that you’re trying to emulate. You can cheat certain corners. Some things you can’t—sometimes it takes a $300 pair of <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CqUBwLyvtYF/">pearl earrings</a> instead of the $10 copy that you find at Macy’s. You have to think it through so that you don’t blow a budget. Certainly on a show like this, it’s hard to consistently put things out there that look like what they need to.</p>
<p id="fys1Ha"><strong>Throughout the years of dressing everyone, is there one outfit or accessory of the whole series that stands out to you as one of your favorites?</strong></p>
<p id="Ez2xlT">It’s really impossible for me to pick a particular look because the costumes are only there as representations of the characters. My job is solely to provide another piece to the puzzle of telling this story, which is Jesse [Armstrong]’s story and the actor’s story when they get onto the set. </p>
<p id="65gB87">So it’s like anything: If you pick the prop, which is for a man, the Cartier watch, let’s say <a href="https://www.cartier.com/en-us/watches/collections/tank/tank-must-watch-CRWSTA0042.html?adlsid=c%7cg%7cID_WSTA0042%7c68306333455&&&gclid=CjwKCAjwuqiiBhBtEiwATgvixCZw2kw7-NxuuR72FKr_qTINTcnV7kAst1dj3_i6WFRS18RV3VwlARoCJcYQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds">Tank Watch</a> or something, it’s just one little pencil sketch of who these people are. But it is nice, I will say, when an actor, like a Jeremy, for example, finds something that he can really sink his teeth into as a piece. A tiny, tiny little nothing of a piece, like the <a href="https://fashionmagazine.com/style/kendall-roy-hat-succession/">cashmere Loro Piana baseball cap</a>.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="mtSlw0">When we can find something that gets that character to the place where they need to go, that’s always a thrill.</p>
<p id="6tD6Mt"><em>This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.</em></p>
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https://www.theringer.com/succession/2023/5/3/23708629/succession-season-4-wardrobe-shiv-kendall-michelle-matlandAlyssa Bereznak2023-04-13T06:20:00-04:002023-04-13T06:20:00-04:00Misery Loves Matrimony: The Beautiful, Bleak Science Behind ‘Succession’ Weddings
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<p>Sunday’s nuptials marked the series’ third ceremony set piece—and the third time the specter of Logan Roy loomed over the proceedings. The people behind those scenes talk about the always lavish—and always dysfunctional—events.</p> <p id="goFShm">Sunday’s episode of <em>Succession</em> was never going to be a traditional celebration of love. There were no castles or villas, just a yacht puttering through New York Harbor. What began with Connor Roy getting down on one knee to ask the woman he pays to be his girlfriend to make him “the happiest man–slash–most bulletproof candidate in the world” was realized as a shameless ploy for media attention. All combined, the scene of a brass band surrounded by patriotic banners and a boat full of journalists headed straight for a wedding altar beneath the Statue of Liberty did not scream romance. And neither did the groom’s father suddenly dying in the bathroom of his private jet. </p>
<p id="xD8x73">But when has a Roy wedding ever really been about a couple’s sacred bond? Though the events of “Connor’s Wedding” were especially explosive, they were also a catalyst for many of the same peaks and troughs we’ve come to expect from high-powered holy matrimony. You had the interloper saddling up to start their new life of wealth-with-an-asterisk. Connor off on his own (in this case, literal) island, feeling insecure. Kendall, Shiv, and Roman holed up in a makeshift office, offering glimmers of kindness to one another between corporate strategizing and anxiety attacks. And every single one of them eclipsed by their father’s inescapable shadow. Whether he was absent or present, alive or not. </p>
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<p id="5chqYx"><em>Succession</em> is about many things: the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/succession/2021/11/11/22775852/succession-set-design-costumes-clothes-cinematography">misery</a> of the rich, our rotting media landscape, delightful <a href="https://www.theringer.com/succession/2023/3/24/23654226/succession-f-words-ranking">uses</a> of the word “fuck.” But strip away all the table dressing, and you get the red meat of a deeply dysfunctional family. Which is why the Roys’ many weddings have become meaningful, if opulent, pillars of the series, used to both anchor its characters and deepen its lore. Whether thrown in a storied castle in England’s West Midlands, at a manicured Tuscan villa, or against the, uh, Jersey City skyline, these ceremonies are the looms on which the show’s makers—the writers, directors, set decorators, and stylists—weave an intricate Roy family tapestry. And just as in real life, they pool an entire clan into one place and shake them up until somebody or something pops. As <em>Succession </em>set decorator Sophie Newman puts it: A wedding encapsulates “all the bad, the good, and ugly” of a family. </p>
<p id="mpCRKY">From its very start, <em>Succession</em> has always existed in the present tense. Part of its appeal revolves around flinging chaotic events at unconscionable rich people and watching them scurry around in boats, cars, helicopters, and <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/8/13/20802562/succession-season-2-premiere-kendall-motorcycle-chaperone">motorbikes</a> to fix them. Schedules rarely overlap enough for the show to linger on family history. “Especially in the first couple of seasons, a lot of times it’s an occasion that brings everyone together,” Susan Soon He Stanton, a writer and supervising producer on the show, said. And even when the Roy family does manage to be in the same room, deep discussions are rare. A wedding is one of the few junctures when a certain sentimentality is baked into the calendar, whether by circumstance or ritual. </p>
<p id="MoYjXY">For that reason, Shiv’s marriage to Waystar Royco up-and-comer Tom Wambsgans—what Stanton considers the “Roy equivalent of a royal wedding”—was an opportunity to both illustrate the Roys’ dynastic wealth and flesh out her and her siblings’ upbringing. “There’s an exciting chance to kind of take a wider view of the family,” said Stanton, who was in Jesse Armstrong’s writers room for and contributed research to Season 1’s “Pre-nuptial” and “Nobody Is Ever Missing.” “Like, how are these children the way that they are, their relationship to their parents, and even how much love are they allowed or doled out?”</p>
<p id="BvFBg5">Central to that perspective is wedding guest MVP Caroline Collingwood, played by the excellent Harriet Walter. As Logan’s second ex-wife and the mother of Kendall, Shiv, and Roman, she’s a conduit to their childhood and a one-woman resurrector of ancient rifts and cutting quips. In the first season’s two-part wedding finale, she airs her resentments with alarming ease, telling the wedding party that Logan “couldn’t be bothered” to show up. At a welcome brunch, she hints at the source of her divorce with Logan by referring to Marcia (wife no. 3) as “the head of his Middle Eastern operations.” During her wedding reception speech, she includes an aside about how Logan has “stolen away” her children “across the Atlantic.” And at her own extravagant Tuscan wedding in Season 3, she casually blames Shiv for choosing Logan over her as they share a smoke. As a viewer, you piece these bits together to establish a larger picture of the Roy siblings’ childhood trauma, without ever being forced to wallow in it.</p>
<p id="YPIris">“It’s those tantalizing glimpses of Logan’s history, his various relationships, and then sort of, like, the kids growing up,” Stanton said. “There’s no definitive, true version. You sort of are presented with different bits of information, but there’s a kind of rationed-out effect in terms of what exactly happened through their lives.”</p>
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<p id="NEsQ3X"><br>Just as far-flung family members fill in the blanks of the Roy progeny’s upbringing, so does the sprawling property chosen for Shiv’s wedding. “The house, Eastnor house, was, in the story line, a special one of the family’s country estates,” said Newman, who decorated the set for “Pre-nuptial” and “Nobody Is Ever Missing.” As Connor recounts to Willa when they arrive, one of the homes became a “thorn in Caroline’s side” because she was screwed out of inheriting it. Elsewhere, Caroline gestures at portraits of all of her “disreputable slave-owning ancestors.” “In Eastnor Castle there’s wonderful bits of art,” Newman said. “Even wallpapers and the furnishing, carpets and rugs and things like this, nothing is new. Everything has a personality, has a history and a provenance. … That’s the key, is that it’s layered.” </p>
<p id="Ep4tOX">Even as Eastnor Castle’s many artifacts emphasize the generational weight of the Collingwood bloodline, its nooks and crannies serve as a reminder that it was also once the Roy siblings’ playground. The night of Shiv’s welcome drinks, she, Kendall, and Roman meet up at an old boat dock they call “the place” in the name of “old times.” They pass around a joint and go in for a group hug, and it’s one of those rare moments when the only motive they have for showing up is because they seem to actually love each other. For any other visitor, it’s an otherwise unremarkable boat dock at a gorgeous, storied landmark. But for the kids who’d spent bored vacations there, it was a special spot, their own secret family hideout.</p>
<p id="Ng7Dn2">“Nobody can possibly understand what it’s like to be one of those kids, and that’s what connects them,” Stanton said. “Even though they’re driven apart by their father or pitted against each other at times. It’s a very isolated world.”</p>
<p id="dac6ca">When tasked with adding a layer of decor to an already lavishly decorated estate, Newman adopted a role as a kind of Roy family wedding planner. (Though thankfully not one that would be berated by Tom after he had to “carry a case” on his “wedding eve.”) “They’re not really of the mind to put a lot of energy into those things,” Newman said. So she aimed for an impressive yet muted palette that wouldn’t distract from the family’s usual political maneuvering. That meant spray-painted ferns weaved into the chandeliers, white rose arrangements, mirrored tables, and a glass marquee for the reception. “I didn’t have many varieties of color in there,” Newman said. “It had to stay quite clean and sophisticated. It’s mainly golds, whites, bronzes. The environment needed to be just elegantly simple but powerful at the same time.” </p>
<p id="4vuZUv">Decorator Letizia Santucci applied a similar logic to Caroline’s Tuscany wedding in Season 3’s “Chiantishire” and “All the Bells Say.” Rather than bear the chilly climes she forced her daughter through, Caroline opted for a garden party with a stunning countryside view to commemorate a new carefree phase of her life. So Santucci chose a refined summer color scheme for the event, accenting it with pale yellows, linen whites, and local olive tree leaves in the reception’s garland centerpieces. (And, just as one might in real life, she spent an inordinate amount of her budget on matching umbrellas for the outdoor dining tables.) Between the two episodes, Santucci estimated that they shot in five different Italian villas. “Among the five villas, for sure you find a nice corner,” she said. “There’s no chance you don’t find a good spot.” </p>
<aside id="OFSNiv"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Anatomy of a Perfect ‘Succession’ Episode: “Connor’s Wedding” in 12 Images ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/succession/2023/4/11/23678627/succession-season-4-episode-3-best-shots"},{"title":"It’s Time to Take Connor Roy Seriously ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/succession/2023/4/12/23679620/connor-roy-wedding-willa-succession-season-4-episode-3"}]}'></div></aside><p id="8ZmuRR">But for all the time and effort she put into ensuring Caroline’s wedding met a certain standard of elegance, the most arresting scene of the project turned out to be one of the least glamorous. In Season 3’s finale, “All the Bells Say,” Shiv and Roman drag Kendall away from the merriment and into a dusty back alley parking lot to discuss Logan’s plot to sell the company. But their strategizing is interrupted when Kendall crumbles to the ground in a nervous breakdown. As Kendall goes deeper into his own self-hate, Shiv and Roman form a sibling triptych with him for comfort (all while Shiv keeps a phone to her ear to stay afloat on Logan’s maneuver). Behind them is a tidy line of trash bins. Per Santucci, this detail was a specific request from director Mark Mylod. “He wanted to describe the rubbish situation that they were living in.” </p>
<p id="UHMtdk">Highlighting these low points while excluding the more classic, intimate moments of a vow exchange or first dance is a deliberate decision, according to Stanton. “Oftentimes we’ll sort of be in a really incredibly beautiful location, and then we’ll have a beautiful mountain or ocean or lake vista, and then we’ll have a scene in the laundry room completely away from the vista. That’s very <em>Succession</em>:<em> </em>being in the most fabulous place, but then somehow being miserable and then hidden away during it.”</p>
<p id="lDA7l3">Of course, the source of that misery, no matter the location or union at hand, is almost always Logan Roy. In Season 1’s “Pre-nuptial,” his last-minute decision to chopper in drives Caroline to suggest that Shiv will “be the second-most important person” at her own wedding. </p>
<p id="r8kXSQ">“It’s like, will he or will he not show up?” Stanton said. “And when he does, it’s by helicopter. It’s the same way of kind of an old man pouting, but he has more tools in his toolbox and his actions have more of a result. [It’s the way] in which he controls his children and everyone else around him. It’s all meant as the power play.”</p>
<p id="7xSf4B">Logan’s presence, or lack thereof, looms over all three of <em>Succession</em>’s weddings. In part because the Roy family patriarch is the planet around which they all orbit. Shiv needs him at her wedding so that she can make a deal that protects her then boss from ATN’s wrath. Caroline wants him in Tuscany to please her ladder-climbing beau and to renegotiate the spoils of their divorce. And Connor is hoping he’ll “pop by” because that’s how he can generate press to maintain his measly single percentage point in the presidential race. Every bride and groom is willing to accommodate the enormity of Logan’s persona in exchange for the fringe benefits it brings—no matter if it means pushing other family members to the side.</p>
<p id="mehxBf">In a way, Logan dying just moments before his eldest son manages to get his vows off is the ultimate power play. One final cannonball to deflate the wind from his children’s sails. But it’s always been the aftermath of these moments—in this case, the twisted Roy siblings’ mourning as they sail toward Ellis Island—that has made them real Roy family weddings.</p>
<p id="eekQ8r">“There’s certain things that happen in all weddings,” Stanton said. “Maybe somebody gives a bad speech or somebody gets too drunk. Things are said, big or small, that are somewhat universal, that brings a family together in odd ways.”</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="9jv1pg">Maybe it’s only fitting that, after nearly five episodes’ worth of nuptials on <em>Succession</em>, the only time we ever get to see a kiss at the altar is with a funeral on the horizon.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="wtezFr"><em>An earlier version of this piece misstated which episode contains the scene where Kendall crumbles to the ground while strategizing with Shiv and Roman; it was “All the Bells Say,” not “Chiantishire.”</em></p>
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https://www.theringer.com/succession/2023/4/13/23680049/succession-bleak-science-behind-the-weddings-set-decorationAlyssa Bereznak2023-03-24T18:40:57-04:002023-03-24T18:40:57-04:00A TikTok Ban Feels Closer Than Ever. Tech Privacy Protection Still Feels Miles Away.
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<p>Thursday brought Congress one step closer to banning the Chinese-owned TikTok in the U.S. It also raised questions about user data and privacy regulation throughout the tech sector as a whole.</p> <p id="HJpj5J">Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The CEO of a popular social media company walks into a congressional hearing, sits down in front of a bunch of cantankerous lawmakers, and gets treated like a political punching bag. The complaints go something like this: The platform violates user privacy. It’s addictive, psychologically damaging, and dangerous for kids. It’s both too “woke” and overflowing with hate speech. It’s vulnerable to disinformation and foreign interference. It works in ways that House members <a href="https://twitter.com/business/status/1638917878324817923">don’t understand</a>, but they know they don’t like it all the same. </p>
<p id="qAkWAF">The CEO meets these grievances with vague promises of reform and an unlimited supply of <em>I’ll get back to yous</em>. By the time the hearing is over, it’s clear that this was primarily an exercise in political theater. The average onlooker doesn’t really believe there will be meaningful reform to how tech companies operate. And usually there isn’t. </p>
<p id="p0zDWE">It’s not a particularly uplifting ritual. But if you’ve paid attention to the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tech/2018/6/7/17436870/apple-amazon-google-facebook-break-up-monopoly-trump">ballooning of big tech</a> over the past two decades, you probably know it by heart. A good congressional paddling has become a rite of passage for nearly every major U.S.-owned social network. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram have all been interrogated on Capitol Hill, scolded for being devil-may-care data vacuums, and then released back to their natural oat-milk-rich Silicon Valley habitats to keep making everyone—including <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/11/17219930/facebook-campaign-contributions-mark-zuckerberg-congress-donations">the lawmakers who questioned them</a>—more money. </p>
<p id="IcDqhB">On Thursday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew went to Washington, D.C., and threw a wrench into this established tradition. Because—despite being an indisputable <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tech/2019/6/27/18760004/tiktok-old-town-road-memes-music-industry">cultural catalyst</a> that has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/tiktok-tell-congress-it-has-150-million-monthly-active-us-users-2023-03-20/">150 million monthly active users in the United States</a>—TikTok is not an American product. The video-sharing app is owned by ByteDance, the privately held Chinese internet giant that is based in Beijing.</p>
<p id="oiTzm4">This detail set a fire under the typical congressional step-and-repeat, inspiring an opening statement that felt unusually aggressive and dismissive: “You are here because the American people need the truth about the threat TikTok poses to our national and personal security,” said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Washington). She underlined concerns that TikTok collects “nearly every data point imaginable,” which the Chinese Communist Party is able to use “as a tool to manipulate America.” She cast doubt that TikTok would ever embrace “American values” for “freedom, human rights, and innovation.” She ridiculed TikTok’s plan (nicknamed “<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/tiktok-tries-sell-project-texas-fights-survival-us-rcna67697">Project Texas</a>”) to store all U.S. user data on American soil as “a marketing scheme.” Finally, she arrived at a conclusion shared by our <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/900019185/trump-signs-executive-order-that-will-effectively-ban-use-of-tiktok-in-the-u-s">two</a> <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tiktok-ban-biden-admin-asks-for-divestment-from-bytedance/">most recent</a> presidents, that TikTok “should be banned.” Her mind had been made up before Chew ever got a word in.</p>
<p id="6AmCq8">The <a href="https://energycommerce.house.gov/events/full-committee-hearing-tik-tok-how-congress-can-safeguard-american-data-privacy-and-protect-children-from-online-harms">hearing</a> as a whole followed a similar script. More than 50 representatives lambasted Chew for virtually every big tech violation under the sun, from encroaching on user privacy to harming the mental health and well-being of teenagers. Many of the reps’ talking points sounded familiar, as if cribbed from previous hearings featuring prominent U.S. tech executives. As Ron Deibert, the director of a University of Toronto laboratory that has analyzed TikTok’s data collection practices, <a href="https://twitter.com/RonDeibert/status/1638739405597704193/photo/1">put it on Twitter</a>: “Concerns with TikTok should serve as a reminder that most social media apps are unacceptably invasive-by-design, treat users as raw material for personal data surveillance, and fall short on transparency about their data sharing practices.” </p>
<p id="9f6m4R">Though a few Democrats in the hearing offered up comparable rationale, the rare bipartisan fervor in the room underlined a clear, unspoken truth: When our companies guzzle data, it’s tolerated. When a Chinese company does it, it’s a national security threat. </p>
<p id="0ZPst4">This conflict has taken center stage in the ongoing geopolitical tension between the U.S. and China. The United States has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-specialreport-china-merger/special-report-the-u-s-and-china-start-an-ma-cold-war-idINTRE73B47V20110412">a</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/16/technology/huawei-ban-president-trump.html">long</a>, if inconsistent, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/us/politics/us-to-blacklist-28-chinese-entities-over-abuses-in-xinjiang.html">history</a> of blocking Chinese business deals while citing national security and human rights concerns (the most previously notable of which involved the Chinese communications company Huawei), and gripes against TikTok in particular stretch back to 2019, when its <a href="https://www.theringer.com/year-in-review/2019/12/9/20998572/tiktok-2019-social-media">rise in popularity</a> stirred bipartisan <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/technology/tiktok-national-security-review.html">grumblings</a> about its potential national security risks. Unlike other Chinese companies doing business in the U.S., TikTok is a social media app with real cultural cache, and has the power to influence the kind of media that Americans consume daily. Not only can it surveil Americans, but it can collect information about what they like, and potentially use that to launch disinformation campaigns as well.</p>
<p id="ey7aSm">At the core of legislators’ concerns both then and now is China’s <a href="https://cs.brown.edu/courses/csci1800/sources/2017_PRC_NationalIntelligenceLaw.pdf">2017 national intelligence law</a>, which broadly states that companies and citizens are required to “support, assist and cooperate” with state intelligence work if asked. The implication here is that if the Chinese government ordered ByteDance to hand over hundreds of millions of Americans’ data, the company would be compelled to do so. Chinese government spokespeople have <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/05/huawei-would-have-to-give-data-to-china-government-if-asked-experts.html#:~:text=China's%20National%20Intelligence%20Law%20from,take%20anything%20out%20of%20context.%E2%80%9D">challenged</a> this interpretation of its law, saying that intelligence work is conducted according to local laws abroad. But given the country’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/briefing/xi-jinping-china-authoritarian.html">authoritarian</a> leadership, sweeping citizen <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/10/10/1060982/china-pandemic-cameras-surveillance-state-book/">surveillance</a>, and record of <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2022/country-chapters/china-and-tibet?gclid=Cj0KCQjwlPWgBhDHARIsAH2xdNf2BR6J9pEODkSR24hn_F_RTJRDOluhzeYnAHT5plnek8lQZ_fKFdsaAowXEALw_wcB">human rights violations</a>, Congress is right to question the validity of that explanation. Having the power to collect detailed data, and use that data to influence what people see and believe, is the next political frontier. And it’s hard to deny that if the Chinese government had access to all the data TikTok collects, it really <em>could </em>use that to its advantage on the global stage. </p>
<p id="ntpevV">Since initial worries about TikTok materialized in 2019, the U.S. government and the platform have been in the throes of a public back-and-forth not unlike the kind of snappy drama that regularly occurs on the app itself. In August 2020, then-president Donald Trump signed an abrupt <a href="https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-addressing-threat-posed-tiktok/">executive order</a> that banned the app. (The move may or may not have been inspired by an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-tulsa.html">incident</a> earlier that year, in which a bunch of K-pop fans on TikTok claimed to sabotage attendance of one of his campaign rallies.) This kicked off negotiations to reach an agreement that would both satisfy the U.S. government’s security interests and allow the app to keep operating on United States soil. Ultimately, the ban didn’t take, and TikTok went on to pursue “Project Texas,” a partnership with Austin-based Oracle that aims to move U.S. users’ information to domestic data centers and restrict access to that data abroad. </p>
<p id="T02sOk">This was the focus of Chew’s retort to questioning on Thursday. He went so far as to question the American exceptionalism at the heart of the hearing: “I don’t think ownership is the issue here,” he said late in the session. “With a lot of respect, American social companies don’t have a good track record with data privacy and user security. Just look at Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, for one example.” </p>
<p id="KtlU6t">The Biden administration has conveniently chosen to ignore this point and doubled down on its opposition to Chinese ownership. It has moved quickly in recent months to protect itself from the possibility of TikTok data breaches. In late February, the White House <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/white-house-gives-agencies-30-days-impose-federal-device-tiktok-ban-2023-02-27/">gave</a> federal agencies 30 days to delete TikTok from government devices. Canada, Britain, the European Union, and New Zealand also recently called for similar measures, and India banned the app entirely in 2020. At the start of March, a House committee <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/01/new-tiktok-ban-bill-passes-key-house-committee-on-a-party-line-vote.html">advanced</a> a bill that would allow Biden to ban the app. (You’ll never guess what it’s <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/two-new-bills-tiktok-and-beyond-data-act-and-restrict-act">called</a>.) Soon after, the Biden administration said that the only way to prevent a TikTok ban would be for ByteDance to sell it to a U.S.-owned company. On Thursday, the Chinese government said it would <a href="https://apnews.com/article/china-us-tiktok-security-technology-social-media-2245e433b5854010ebd99b7987fc78ca">oppose</a> a forced sale.</p>
<p id="3O1o78">What happens next is anyone’s guess. If Biden does the equivalent of saying “<a href="https://twitter.com/succession/status/1521903733126287361?lang=en">Fuck it forever</a>!” and bans TikTok in the U.S., he would likely face legal challenges over free speech violations. (Just as Trump <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/12/07/944039053/u-s-judge-halts-trumps-tiktok-ban-the-2nd-court-to-fully-block-the-action">did</a>.) The administration could nevertheless place TikTok <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-blacklisting-companies-became-a-trade-war-weapon/2022/12/14/562e63a4-7bf9-11ed-bb97-f47d47466b9a_story.html">on a blacklist</a> that would make doing business with the company illegal. This would leave a monumental void in the social media space, one that other tech companies are frothing at the mouth to fill. It’d also leave hundreds of millions of users who’ve adapted to using TikTok as a money-making tool in a state of limbo, and it wouldn’t address the larger user privacy concerns that have long gone unchecked in the tech sector. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="crfpJB">Thursday’s hearing managed to both intensify and conflate two separate conversations. There may very well be legitimate national security interests in preventing a Chinese company from maintaining control of TikTok. But legislators’ concerns for their constituents’ individual privacy ring hollow when the U.S. government has <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/08/04/online-privacy-bill-roadblocks-congress">so far failed</a> to pass anything resembling a comprehensive privacy law that applies to misbehaving American companies and their data brokers. Many representatives may not be willing to take the political risks necessary to confront our tech sector hypocrisy, but they’re certainly game to whip out some <a href="https://www.theverge.com/creators/2023/3/23/23653319/the-tiktok-hearings-first-printed-out-screenshot">flashy poster boards</a> and put on a show. </p>
https://www.theringer.com/tech/2023/3/24/23655685/tiktok-congressional-hearing-united-states-china-conflictAlyssa Bereznak2023-03-10T10:18:41-05:002023-03-10T10:18:41-05:00“Isn’t This the Thing in ‘The Last of Us’?”
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<p>For mushroom superfood sellers, educators, and influencers, watching Cordyceps become an existential villain on the most popular show on TV has been a bit jarring. But it has also been an opportunity. </p> <p id="pHQj0T">Ben Lillibridge is not what he calls “a show guy.” The 30-year-old business owner based in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, considers himself “too busy” for binge-watching. He never even touched <em>Game of Thrones. </em></p>
<p id="90FtEM">But so many friends and customers kept telling him to watch <em>The Last of Us </em>this past January that he was forced to make an exception. And when he started the hit HBO series, he was alarmed by what he saw—just not for the same reasons as everybody else.</p>
<p id="9L6W2q">“I was just watching this zombie attack Pedro Pascal and seeing Cordyceps grow out of dead bodies,” he says with a laugh. “I was like, ‘This is not good PR.’”</p>
<p id="OyHUFD">Lillibridge is the CEO, founder, and self-described “funguy” of a family-run company called <a href="https://www.malamamushrooms.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQiApKagBhC1ARIsAFc7Mc68upbiqpUsq1Jhsc_1VDpEBfun8FRJi2uVm5Kn_PgM4NiArK-6gM0aAn-lEALw_wcB">Malama Mushrooms</a> that sells food cut with a variety of mushroom-based health supplements. And it just so happens that Cordyceps—the Cheeto-like fungus that infects and engulfs humanity in <em>The Last of Us</em>—is the main ingredient in one of his product lines: a handful of mixes, chocolates, and powders meant to boost energy, endurance, and respiratory health. </p>
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<p id="30tYuW">In other words, he’s in the business of convincing people to eat the fruiting body of the very fungus that caused everybody’s new favorite fictional apocalypse. (And when I say everybody, I mean the season’s <a href="https://www.theringer.com/the-last-of-us/2023/3/5/23626403/the-last-of-us-episode-eight-recap-joel-ellie-david">penultimate episode</a>—in which a twist</p>
<p id="4OHpUU">ed preacher waxes poetic about how the Cordyceps fungus “secures its future with violence”—drew <a href="https://deadline.com/2023/03/the-last-of-us-episode-8-8-1-million-viewers-new-series-high-ratings-1235280886/">a series-high</a> 8.1 million viewers.) Though Lillibridge is well-acquainted with the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2023/1/24/23568993/the-last-of-us-hbo-fungus-mycologists-explained">mycological arguments</a> for why the outbreak in the show is unrealistic, he and his employees are navigating the Cordyceps mushroom’s new omnipresence in both their in-person and online customer interactions. “In the past few months, people will either be tongue in cheek, saying, ‘Is this going to turn me into a zombie and make me eat people?’ or seemingly genuinely inquiring, ‘Isn’t this the thing in <em>The Last of Us</em>?’”<em> </em>Lillibridge says.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">nice try Erewhon I don't fucking think so <a href="https://t.co/GCq6XAobES">pic.twitter.com/GCq6XAobES</a></p>— delia (@delia_cai) <a href="https://twitter.com/delia_cai/status/1623850307515199488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 10, 2023</a>
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<p id="AoyJ8l">He’s just one of many mushroom superfood sellers, educators, and influencers who are receiving an influx of frightened, curious, and sardonic inquiries about the zombifying capabilities of their products. Over the last five years, a confluence of venture capital, scientific research, and culinary interest has produced a “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/24/business/there-is-a-lot-of-fungus-among-us.html">shroom boom</a>” that has sunk its spores into everything from <a href="https://nymag.com/strategist/article/mushroom-design-trend-murano.html">fashion</a> to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/t-magazine/mushrooms-wellness.html">medicinal treatments</a> and has produced a cluster of fungi-centric start-ups. Chief among them is a new generation of health food companies who champion the long-believed medicinal benefits of mushrooms like reishi, lion’s mane, and, yes, Cordyceps. Now, these same fung-evangelists find themselves in a scenario straight out of a shroom trip: A superfood they sell is also the villain in one of <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2023/01/last-of-us-hbo-ratings.html">the most watched shows</a> in the world. “If <em>The Last of Us</em> is your first context for Cordyceps, obviously that would make you scratch your head when you see a product now selling something that says ‘Cordyceps,’” Lillibridge says.</p>
<p id="Tzhf0c">Now, as these experts and businesses field an onslaught of misinformation from shroom-curious viewers, they’re aiming to capitalize on what may be the biggest pop culture moment in recent history for mushrooms. Using as many debunking videos and zombie memes as they can muster, they hope to take this newfound and widespread public fear of an especially resourceful fungus and cast a universal veil over it—and maybe even get more people invested in this growing subculture. </p>
<p id="QBR0TM">“I have heard a lot of concerns from major mycologists saying that <em>The Last of Us </em>is myco-phobic propaganda further brainwashing people to be hysterically afraid of mushrooms,” Alex Dorr, the founder and CEO of a health supplement company called <a href="https://www.mushroomrevival.com/">Mushroom Revival</a>, wrote to me from a shaky Wi-Fi connection in a boat on the Brahmaputra River in India. “While I get this perspective, I also think it’s a perfect opportunity for us educators to open their minds more about this whole kingdom of life.”</p>
<aside id="mjl6Nh"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Consider the Fungus: Mycologists Talk the Realities of ‘The Last of Us’ ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/tv/2023/1/24/23568993/the-last-of-us-hbo-fungus-mycologists-explained"},{"title":"Role Reversal, Joel Traversal: Breaking Down Episode 8 of ‘The Last of Us’ ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/the-last-of-us/2023/3/5/23626403/the-last-of-us-episode-eight-recap-joel-ellie-david"}]}'></div></aside><p id="xnJz3U">Ironically, Cordyceps mushrooms have been coveted, not feared, for most of modern history. As little as 10 years ago, the only way to get your hands on them in the U.S. was to go foraging in the Rocky Mountains or import them from Asia for up to <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6106062/">tens of thousands of dollars</a> per pound. Cordyceps were <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40390468">first mentioned</a> in a 15th-century Tibetan medicinal text titled “An Ocean of Aphrodisiacal Qualities.” Known as yartsa gunbu, which translates to “summer grass, winter worm,” the wild species of the mushroom has been collected on the Tibetan Plateau for centuries. Its origins likely inspired the setting of Indonesia in the opening scene of <em>The</em> <em>Last of Us’</em>s second episode, where a mycologist, played by the excellent Christine Hakim, is brought in to examine a human infected with Cordyceps and subsequently advises a military lieutenant to bomb the city. Unsurprisingly, searches for the term “Cordyceps” spiked in Indonesia around that episode’s air date, according to <a href="https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&q=cordyceps&hl=en">Google Trends</a>.</p>
<p id="9IDatw">For decades, the wild mushroom (<em>Ophiocordyceps sinensis</em>) has been a sought-after status symbol in China, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2011/10/09/141164173/caterpillar-fungus-the-viagra-of-the-himalayas">hailed</a> as “the Viagra of the Himalayas” and as a respiratory and energy booster after it was <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110835/#:~:text=Cordyceps%20gained%20world%20attention%20in,m%2C%20and%2010%2C000%20m%20events.&text=Their%20coach%20attributed%20their%20success,these%20athletes%20via%20antioxidant%20effects.">used</a> in the diets of the 1993 Chinese female track-and-field team, whose runners set records in several events. Its rarity is rooted in its long, terrifying, parasitic fruiting process. The fungus infects caterpillars in the fall, consumes their body over the winter, and grows a mushroom from them in early summer. Sensing a larger demand for these mystical mushrooms, farmers adapted a different species (<em>Cordyceps militaris</em>)<em> </em>to be cultivated at scale. Compared to <em>Ophiocordyceps sinensis, </em>it can grow without infecting the corpses of insects, and it contains higher amounts of healthy compounds. Commercial cultivation of the species began to pick up steam in East Asia in the late ’90s and 2000s. “If you travel to, say, Eastern Europe or China, mushrooms are ancient news and have been loved for thousands of years,” Dorr wrote via email. “In the US, the main driver is the adoption of the internet and social media where people around the world can share ideas, culture, content and open our mind to new and old possibilities and paradigms.” </p>
<p id="mHFoee">Mycological interests beyond criminis and portobellos began to sprout in the United States in the aughts as passionate advocates like Paul Stamets broke through to larger audiences online. When asked what major mushroom-related pop culture moments came before HBO’s <em>The Last of Us</em>, multiple enthusiasts pointed to Stamets’s 2008 <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world?language=en">TED Talk</a>, “6 ways mushrooms can save the world,” which has over 8.6 million views. (It apparently also reached the writers of <em>Star Trek: Discovery</em>, who later named an “astro-mycologist” character after Stamets.) <em>The Last of Us </em>video game, which places the original wild Cordyceps at the center of a zombie apocalypse, was released in 2013. </p>
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<p id="BhTnNS"><br>It was only in 2017, after a self-taught mycologist named <a href="https://www.outsideonline.com/culture/books-media/william-padilla-brown-mushroom-mycology/">William Padilla-Brown</a> published a cultivation guide he developed at his “decentralized citizen research effort,” MycoSymbiotics, that Americans were able to figure out a way to grow the mushroom on a larger scale. “He’s responsible for the fact that we basically grow Cordyceps commercially in the U.S.,” Gordon Walker, a mushroom influencer who goes by the handle <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@fascinatedbyfungi">@fascinatedbyfungi</a> on several platforms, says. Not long after this crucial innovation, an avalanche of Cordyceps by-products descended on American culture. As capsules, gummies, and powders. As <a href="https://goop.com/recipes/gps-morning-smoothie/">Goop smoothie ingredients</a> and meandering Joe Rogan <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@hulkroganclips/video/7178931005506505989?_t=8aVUlWeWmwV&_r=1">podcast discussions</a>. As a supporting character in <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/81183477"><em>Fantastic Fungi</em></a><em>,</em> a 2019 Netflix documentary that is, for some reason, narrated by Brie Larson. As the key ingredient of an “endurance” tincture that my runner friend bought at last month’s Los Angeles Mushroom Fair. And then, as the existentially threatening villain in a hit HBO series.</p>
<p id="paWSgN">“Pre–<em>Last of Us</em>, there was interest from sort of video game nerds, but it was often kind of like a passing interest,” Walker says. “Now, it’s become this sort of societal phenomenon that everyone is now aware of Cordyceps, becoming interested in slash repulsed by them at the same time.”</p>
<p id="NURtSk">As someone who has made it his purpose to espouse mushroom facts to the online masses, Walker has had a front-row seat to the “good and bad in humanity” that comes out when teaching people about mushrooms. The 36-year-old biochemistry PhD (and another self-described “funguy”) began his career as a mushroom educator in 2017. He has since grown his reach to over 2.1 million followers combined across <a href="https://www.instagram.com/fascinatedbyfungi/?hl=en">Instagram</a>, TikTok, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/fascinatedbyfungi">YouTube</a>. He says people have very strong “myco-phobic” reactions to his videos, specifically ones of mushrooms that have pores (like a species known as <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@fascinatedbyfungi/video/7163776906268282158">slippery jack</a>) or secrete sweat-like droplets (like the <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@fascinatedbyfungi/video/7169275929871535402">bleeding tooth fungus</a>). Some people have even reported his posts.</p>
<p id="7c001H">“I’ve had people say all sorts of nasty things to me,” Walker, who is based in Napa Valley, says. “I’ve learned that mushrooms are this emotional lightning rod for people.” </p>
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<p id="Q6VS9u"><br>At first, Walker thought that if he worked to educate people about why a Cordyceps apocalypse is improbable, he could make people less afraid. But he started to realize something else was at play. “There’s a real divide between the people who are very afraid and then the people who are very disappointed that it’s unrealistic,” Walker says. “Almost all the comments are people refuting what I’m saying, saying, ‘No, but it is possible.’ And it sounds like they actively want this to happen. It’s funny. People have that fantasy about living in an apocalyptic zombie land and going around and taking any food you want, any guns you want, shooting things. It’s a cool idea. But in terms of the science of this, it’s just not realistic.”</p>
<p id="t8tYwq">Per Walker, his Cordyceps content has earned higher-than-average views and comments than his usual content. And like any good content creator, he’s also poked the bear a bit. In early February, he made a video of himself cooking and eating what he dubbed “the<em> Last of Us</em> fungus,” set to the opening music of the show. “Bring on the zombie apocalypse,” he concludes. “I’ll eat them all.” The top response of over 700 comments on the video is: “Nice knowing you all.”</p>
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<blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@fascinatedbyfungi/video/7197558993256992042" data-video-id="7197558993256992042" data-embed-from="oembed" style="max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px;"> <section> <a target="_blank" title="@fascinatedbyfungi" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@fascinatedbyfungi?refer=embed">@fascinatedbyfungi</a> <p>Frying up some Cordyceps mushrooms thanks to @mushroommusketeer. These are Entomopathogenic fungi that parasitize insects, hijacking the insects own body to help the fungus reproduce. Cordyceps militilaris is the most common species found in North America, frequently found up and down the Eastern Seaboard and in the Midwest growing on upwards of 50 different insect species, although usually just on larvae in the soil (it doesn’t zombify grown insects like some species of this mushroom do). Thanks to the efforts of William Padilla Brown @mycosymbiote we have a good idea of how to cultivate these mushrooms in a laboratory setting to use them as medicine and food. As I found out here, these are spectacularly tasty edible mushrooms. . In the game and HBO TV show, “The Last Of Us” a Cordyceps fungus makes the jump to infecting humans, starting a fungal zombie apocalypse. It’s an amazing Sci-Fi concept, but it gets some facts wrong. There are already plenty of fungi in our bodies that live above 94F (our skin, intestines, lungs, and orifices are populated with yeast species). Cordyceps hijack insect bodies but generally don’t control their minds (Massospora which infects cicadas does). Fungi produce compounds that help them resist rot and mold (we originally isolated many antibiotics from fungi). Some Cordyceps can already infect humans, but they can a mild rash, not a full blown zombie infection. No amount of evolution or genetic tinkering is going to make them able to turn humans into zombies. Generally fungal diseases grow very slowly and don’t spread easily. We have a number of antifungal drugs we can use to help fight fungal infections (Azoles). Fungal pathogens pose the biggest risk to people with compromised immune systems, but thankfully eating lots of mushrooms (these Cordyceps included) can stimulate our white blood cells and help fend off foreign invaders. So don’t be afraid of Cordyceps, instead eat them up! . <a title="lastofus" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/lastofus?refer=embed">#lastofus</a> <a title="thelastofus" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/thelastofus?refer=embed">#thelastofus</a> <a title="lastofushbo" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/lastofushbo?refer=embed">#lastofushbo</a> <a title="tlou" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/tlou?refer=embed">#tlou</a> <a title="tlou2" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/tlou2?refer=embed">#tlou2</a> <a title="cordycep" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/cordycep?refer=embed">#cordycep</a> <a title="cordyceps" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/cordyceps?refer=embed">#cordyceps</a> <a title="cordycepsmilitaris" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/cordycepsmilitaris?refer=embed">#cordycepsmilitaris</a> <a title="entomopathogenicfungi" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/entomopathogenicfungi?refer=embed">#entomopathogenicfungi</a> <a title="mycophagy" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/mycophagy?refer=embed">#mycophagy</a> <a title="mycology" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/mycology?refer=embed">#mycology</a> <a title="fungi" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fungi?refer=embed">#fungi</a> <a title="zombies" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/zombies?refer=embed">#zombies</a> <a title="mushooms" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/mushooms?refer=embed">#mushooms</a> <a title="ascomycota" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/ascomycota?refer=embed">#ascomycota</a> </p> <a target="_blank" title="♬ The Last of Us - Gustavo Santaolalla" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/The-Last-of-Us-6706104489725659137?refer=embed">♬ The Last of Us - Gustavo Santaolalla</a> </section> </blockquote> <script async="" src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script>
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<p id="RDqisp">But this wild level of fascination, even fear, has gone beyond just morbid voyeurism. From a business perspective, Dorr says that Mushroom Revival’s Cordyceps sales have been boosted, not hurt, by the show. “There’s definitely been a spike,” he says. “This is such a shock and attention-grabber that people want to know what the heck we are doing. We definitely have their attention. That’s for sure.” </p>
<p id="Vg3dLX">It seems as though Cordyceps sellers have learned to embrace, not reject, the marketing opportunity HBO has inadvertently given them, even if it does come in the form of lobotomized zombies. “We’re getting those kinds of questions, like, ‘Oh, you know<em> The Last of Us</em> and Cordyceps?’” says Jerry Angelini, head of science education at Host Defense, another mushroom superfood company. “We laugh along with everyone. To us, there’s no such thing as bad press.”</p>
<p id="o0lVIk"><a href="https://www.malamamushrooms.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQiApKagBhC1ARIsAFc7Mc68upbiqpUsq1Jhsc_1VDpEBfun8FRJi2uVm5Kn_PgM4NiArK-6gM0aAn-lEALw_wcB">Malama</a>’s Lillibridge has come around to the idea too. His sister, Amanda, has taken to posting winking zombie apocalypse memes on the company’s Instagram to give the people what they want. </p>
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<p id="5uSAAj"><br>“Did<em> Jaws</em> do less for sharks or more for sharks, I wonder?” he asked. “I feel like it probably mostly scared the general public from sharks. But I think it’s cool if it inspires people to revere and think more about mushrooms. Like maybe someone watching, that’s their first time thinking about mushrooms outside of a grocery store context. And then maybe they go down an internet rabbit hole and they’re like, ‘Wow, this thing will give me extra energy.’ And then they try a product and they’re like, ‘Wow, that really works.’ And then they learn, ‘Oh, there’s so many species of Cordyceps, and this one occurs here in my state.’ And then they go have a foraging experience where they actually find it, and they get super excited about mushrooms and become a devoted member of the mushroom army, like me.”</p>
<p id="oaNGDc">So even as clickers stalk Joel and Ellie every Sunday night, maybe it’s better for most people to fear Cordyceps than to have never heard of it at all.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="lqH3o2">“It’s a net positive for the fungus among us,” Lillibridge says. “Maybe bad for Cordyceps? But I don’t really care; I’m stoked on the pop culture moment.”</p>
<p id="nZeeJ5"><em>An earlier version of this piece stated that the opening scene of the second episode of </em>The Last of Us<em> took place in Bhutan. The scene took place in Indonesia.</em></p>
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https://www.theringer.com/tv/2023/3/10/23633131/last-of-us-cordyceps-sales-mushroom-influencersAlyssa Bereznak