The late roundup with mothwrites and Jane Fonda
Today's links look like comedy critique, algorithms, and Jane Fonda
I heard you wanted some Sunday videos! You know I love to give you what you want.*
*I heard I got behind again! You know I love to not stick to a schedule.
A Fonda read
1. Jane Fonda, vindicated
I love everything about this interview with Jane Fonda:
DCB: What was it like working with Katharine Hepburn?
JF: What an interesting woman. I mean, we were not friends. She was really competitive. She really thought that I was out to win more Academy Awards than she was, and when she won for On Golden Pond I called to congratulate her, and she said, “You’ll never catch me now.” What I loved about her was that she took the job of being an elder very seriously. She was intentional about teaching me and talking to me, including giving me line readings, and I found that just wonderful. She did not like me. She told … not Griffin Dunne. No. Who’s the other writer? John?
DCB: John Gregory Dunne?
JF: I don’t know. Somebody like that. A gossip kind of—
DCB: Dominick Dunne.
JF: Dominick Dunne. She once told Dominick Dunne that I didn’t have a soul.
A Dolly Parton break
2. No one does it like Dolly
Everything I read about her just makes me like her even more.
A watch and a read
3. A shy defense of Bo Burnham
I saved this essay on Bo Burnham’s Inside: looking out by 19-year old (NINETEEN AH) Zoe Coles because I love everything about Inside and the cultural impact it is and isn’t having. My favourite bit is when sad men on reddit say that they hate it because it’s not comedy (read: it’s not comedy that they understand/care about/lets them laugh at their wives). There is one main critique:
Today I’m thinking of another hypothetical Judith, and wondering whether a female comedian would have received the same kind of critical acclaim had she been responsible for the 2021 special Inside, written, produced and directed by former wunderkind Bo Burnham. What would it mean for a woman to place cameras around herself, alone in her house, both deteriorating and performing for an invisible audience? How could this act be cathartic when performativity and self-surveillance is a signature of daily womanhood?
And no, a woman probably couldn’t do this comedy, for a variety of structural reasons, including the fact that other men come to the defense of Bo on those same threads where men say they don’t like him. I’m reminded of that time I once asked why Jesus had to be a man. I was scoffed at; “Because he had to be”. Yeah. That’s an issue.
Bo is not Jesus. He’s a dude, but he’s a particular kind of dude who, in this moment, is the most well-placed to do what he did, and he was also well aware of the cultural landscape he was doing it in.
Katie Mears’ video on this is the best I’ve seen to explain it:
Meme break
4. On science
hmm.