Category Archives: Culture

Ours is the Age of Play Acting, in which small characters strut and fret their hour upon the stage, impersonating greater figures.

Consider Donald Trump’s mugshot, taken at the Fulton County Jail following his indictment for conspiring to interfere with the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Trump evinces a pose of heroic defiance, a pose he clearly rehearsed. Within minutes of its being taken, the mugshot was featured on fundraising messages, and on Trump X’s (formerly Twitter) account, where it soon garnered a quarter of a billion views. Beneath the heroic visage are the stirring words: “Never Surrender.”

For his hour upon the stage, Trump chose to play Winston Churchill.

It’s a free country, and such silliness is constitutionally protected. But these antics demand to be put in perspective.

Barbie and Oppenheimer are unlikely cinematic twins. Released on the same day, they both achieved immediate, immense success.  Barbie generated $1 billion in ticket sales in 17 days, the fastest time any Warner Bros. film has reached that landmark. Oppenheimer crossed the half billion dollar mark in the same time span, making it the highest grossest World War II movie in history.

Barbie is a playful fantasy about a Barbie doll whose arched feet suddenly flatten. She must venture out of Barbie World to the real world, to find the human owner responsible for this and other “malfunctions.” The film features colorful plastic backdrops, and rocking song and dance numbers performed by troops of Barbie and Ken dolls. There are occasional gravitas breaks for sermons on feminism, but the most part this is a movie that wants its audiences to relax and have a good time.

Oppenheimer is a 3-hour biopic about the creation of the atomic bomb. Like the critically acclaimed biography American Prometheus, upon which the movie is based, Oppenheimer takes a generally sympathetic view of its subject, portraying him as a brilliant and patriotic scientist, unfairly caught up in the Cold War hysteria following the end of the war. Whatever its editorial bias, the movie is a thoughtful work of history, accurately depicting the scientific and engineering challenges faced by Oppenheimer’s team, and even offering extensive expositions on nuclear physics.

Unlike Barbie, Oppenheimer has no songs, no dance numbers, and not a single joke. This is a movie that wants its audiences to take it seriously.

With their cosmic content differences, one might expect the movies to appeal to vastly different audiences. Surprisingly, there has been much overlap in viewership. On opening weekend, 200,000 viewers paid for tickets to see both. Culturally, “Barbenheimer” has become a meme, with t-shirts showing Barbie and Oppenheimer together watching a pink mushroom cloud rising over the desert.

On Monday night, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, in the course of what appeared to be a routine tackle, received a hard hit to the chest. He got up from the turf, stepped backward, then collapsed.

Since his fall, the public has fixated on Hamlin’s condition. By the time the game was officially suspended with 5:58 left in the first quarter, it had become the most watched “Monday Night Football” game in ESPN history. The story was front page news on the New York Times for three consecutive days, matching the coverage devoted to the vote for House Speaker and the war in Ukraine . Hamlin’s online toy drive, which had a goal of $2,500 before his collapse, soon topped $8 million in donations. President Biden called Hamlin’s parents to offer support, then tweeted about it.

Why the fascination? Damar Hamlin is a well-respected and well-liked athlete, but he hardly qualifies as a superstar. He was a 6^th round draft pick in 2021, and was used sparingly in his rookie year. He did not win a starting position until September, when his teammate Micah Hyde suffered a neck injury.  It is safe to say that before his collapse, few sports fans outside Buffalo knew much about him. Yet he has become a national celebrity, with millions of people, including many who do not even follow football, keeping up with the daily medical updates and praying for his recovery.

The answer may lie in the trade that we strike with the superbly conditioned men and women who entertain us by playing professional sports. They are our heroes. But they are not our gods. The distinction is important and relevant to the trade.

My wife, who rises earlier than I do because she has the morning dog-walking duties, woke me the other day to tell me that Thatcher was not moving.

Thatcher is a Goldendoodle or “Groodle,” a species developed in the 1990s by crossing a Golden Retriever with a Poodle. She joined our family about the same time our youngest child graduated high school and headed off to college. Thanks to Thatcher, we did not become empty-nesters.

The previous day, my wife had taken her on a five mile hike. That night, she lay by my feet in the living room, asleep by the fire, while I binged on White Lotus. When I got up to go to bed, I stepped over her carefully and wished her a good night. Sometime that night, she had stirred, moved to our bedroom, lain down, and died quietly without disturbing us.

When my wife woke me, Thatcher was lying beside our bedroom door, facing toward the patio. It appeared that she had been thinking of going out. Instead, she died as she had lived, causing no trouble.

She was just shy of 13, a long life for a dog.

Thatcher had the sweetest disposition an animal could have. She was visibly overjoyed when anyone – friend, relative, postman, deliveryman — rang the bell. She raced to the door to welcome the visitor and to ascertain by a hurried nasal inspection where he had recently been, whether he had pets, and whether he was carrying treats. She held a firm conviction that any creature walking on two legs was put on Earth to play with her.

Unless you are a hermit, you have probably listened to a “land acknowledgment.” These are short statements uttered before social gatherings, acknowledging the prior possession of the land on which the events are taking place by indigenous peoples. Originating in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, they have become popular in the United States, and are now regular features in theaters, sports arenas, academic conferences, college commencement ceremonies – and even private family gatherings.

Land acknowledgment details may differ depending upon the event and the attendees, but certain characteristics apply more or less consistently. The statement is delivered in solemn and serious tones. The Indian tribe or tribes identified in the statement are portrayed as innocent victims, and their land described as “ancestral” or “unceded,” thus implying that the non-Indian attendees are trespassing. For the most part, the statements are gentle. Few go as far as the Northern California ACLU, whose website advises readers that land acknowledgment statements help us “confront our own complicity in genocide.”

These statements do carry educational value. They remind us that the conquest of the North American continent by settlers of European heritage was accompanied by massive, often monstrous mistreatment of the native peoples. And learning about the people who earlier inhabited one’s place of birth or residence is always a laudable undertaking.

Yet at the same time that land acknowledgments have proliferated, so have criticisms.