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MadelineMersa
Reviews
Marc Maron: From Bleak to Dark (2023)
Heavy gets Light
Marc Maron is not a yuck-yuck comedian. He is not an icing-on-the-cake comedian. He's not there to bring light to the end of your tunnel. Not in the way you'd expect. Ever had some darkness inside and bottled it with distractions and denials, but really wanted to own it for a while? Maron is the father and godfather of that. He covers heavy topics in a way that allows you to think and talk about them yourself, without having that grip on your throat. Darkness becomes easy. It becomes light. There is room to think and speak and laugh, even through the most heavy and difficult topics.
Maron is known as the person behind introspective podcasting, be-real-about-your-world podcasting. This is also his style of comedy and way of being. The new norm where men can be open about their fear, their broken childhoods, and irreparable hearts. Where you can be shameless about your mistakes. Admit to them openly, often, learn how to say sorry. Get over your own broken self. That started with Maron.
That cultural wave began over a decade ago when a lone man, sitting inside a studio he just got fired from, decided to make that space a confessional, and those that listened became an audience of followers and forgivers. It was his style of comedy, journalism, and way of being that opened doors to the inner-self for so many. If you've had a tough journey and want to make sense of it, laugh at the absurdity that is this life, and learn how to speak like an adult instead of a broken meme, Maron is the human for you.
This special takes a walk with you down some broken bends in the road, like parents getting older, and losing your partner in the midst of a world losing its mind. He manages to ask the hard questions and come up with answers that are both harder and lighter, and tinted with love. In true Maron-form, when he comes to another fork in the road, he does not say, where do we go from here, but affirms, he will see you at the next one. He does, and will, see You.
Make It Plain with Mark Thompson: In the Heights and Colorism (2021)
Too Far
If you want to take an earnest piece of art and turn it into a propagandizing political platform, this will be must-see. Lin-Manuel, a modern visionary who made American history accessible and palatable for individuals who could not find their voice, their tone, or their rhythm in a mired, oppressive past, created a palate and a playlist of modern faces and voices. Lin-Manuel has been unfairly cast into an arbitrary lens of colorism. Lin-Manuel, himself a man of color who draws upon his personal experience, is asked to question whether his motivations and perspectives have been white-washed by the industry that has catapulted him, and yet, what these segments do is ignore the heart and experience of its creator. Is our society doing a white-wash reversal? Are Latinos who find themselves in the middle of the color-spectrum and ever-struggling to find a semblance of identity, equity, and representation in the industry, as In The Heights largely depicts, to now come under scrutiny for not being diverse enough?
The media loves critique and controversy, and instead of a conversation where we can ask, how did this film inspire change and magic, we look at the seams, rip it apart, and point out all its flaws.
Decades ago revolutionaries challenged the future, demanding that it stop seeing and judging a person for the color of their skin. Now revolutionaries ask you to reconsider that notion, erase it, and make color the first and primary aspect you see.
I'm not sure any of us are seeing things clearly at all.
Chronically Metropolitan (2016)
Ignorance is Infectious
1 minute in, a post-middle aged Christopher North is quoting Yeats to a probable teenager who's drinking from a flask in the backseat of his car.
She clutches the front row bench seat while he clutches her, providing a recital of the dead Irish poet's prophecies to a fit of drunken giggles and indifference. Mr. North, wearing the worst fake goatee I've seen since a 1970s middle school Halloween party, proceeds to slip her a very visible tongue. I feel incredibly confused and unclean.
#MeToo
Arsenio Hall: Smart and Classy (2019)
Disappointing all around
Arsenio delivers some crass, cliche jokes within the first few minutes in. I was excited for this for nostalgic reasons when what I got was a dose of vintage American stereotypes that need to die with the past. Was very surprised some of the content made it past the editing floor. Sad that some disrespectful racist humor still thrives.
Homeland: Tower of David (2013)
"Why am I here? Well that's a dangerous question."
*Possibly contains spoilers*
Carrie and Brody are trapped in parallel hells, prisoners of people who say they are trying to protect them. Carrie is in an institution with no answers. Brody is on the last leg of his journey, holed up in Caracas, inside the ruins of David, an unfinished complex that is home to outlaws who give him no option but to stay, though the real motive remains unclear.
No conclusions are drawn out. Not yet. The episode is leading to something bigger, and darker. The episode does it hauntingly. You're never sure whom anyone really is or why they're there to begin with. The line "Why am I here?" as spoken by the unnamed doctor, asks the question in the bigger sense. By the end, Carrie and Brody are turning away from their waking life and self-medicating to escape it.