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famous-aces · 6 years ago

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Simone Weil

Who: Simone Adolphine Weil

What: Philosopher, Mystic, and Political Activist

Where: French-Jewish (active largely in France, Spain, and UK)

When: February 3, 1909 - August 24, 1943

(Image Description: a black and white photo of Weil in the 1940s on the street in Marseilles. She is a pale woman with an oval face and big round glasses. Her hair is short and dark and fluffy. She is wearing a beret and a cap. She is in her early thirties but I would have thought she was older. Behind her are buses, sidewalk [with trees] and curb. There are some other people on the street behind her. End ID)

There isn't much about Simone Weil that isn't odd and often contradictory. A pacifist who went to war, a Christian mystic who refused baptism, a writer whose most important works were not published until after her death, a religious humanist, intelligent but perpetually naïve, an ethnically Jewish woman utterly disconnected from her heritage, despite embracing the questioning and intellectualism that characterize much of the Jewish faith.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls her "a philosopher of margins and paradoxes" and André Gide called her “the patron saint of all outsiders.". Today she an important left-leaning philosopher, but her real influence did not come until after her death. But between 1995 and 2012, more than half a century after her death, over 2,500 newly scholarly articles about her were published. She inspired the likes of Albert Camus, Jean-Luc Godard, Pankaj Mishra, Flannery O'Connor, and Pope Paul VI. Camus said she was "the only great spirit of our times." But her legacy is extremely mixed (with good reason) and some claim she was insane or unbalanced. Even people who greatly admired her say she was a bit odd. Susan Sontag calls her "one of the most uncompromising and troubling witnesses to the modern travail of the spirit." Which may be an accurate description. She was strange, often contrary, sadly comedic, and, indeed, sometimes deeply troubling. Which is odd, considering that her heart was almost certainly in the right place; regardless of her naïveté and occasional hypocrisy her goal was truth and justice. And as mixed as her legacy was there is a lot to admire in Weil's steadfastness and dedication to others. Indeed her uniqueness of character almost makes her worthy of study even without her influence.

Weil's heart was in the right place (she had a darker side that I will get to). She was extremely dedicated to the workers, the poor, and the otherwise less fortunate, and was critical of both capitalism and communism. Eventually this dedication extended to God, not necessarily religion, but an Abrahamic God.

She wrote extensively on a number of subjects including labor, management, politics, war, peace, religion and spirituality, among other subjects throughout her life. She was an activist who threw herself into the fray, mind, soul, and body. This last despite being in quite poor physical health for all her life, including suffering from tuberculosis. Her intellectualism and dedication to others began in early childhood. She was always reading and forming opinions. At age five Weil refused to eat sugar to be in solidarity with French soldiers in World War I (then raging). Her activism often got her in trouble at school, something that didn't change when she went from student to teacher. She was always something of an outsider among her peers.

She was extremely political, altruistic, self-sacrificing, and warm hearted throughout her life. As an adult she worked largely as a writer and teacher, inturupted to spend time incognito working in an automobile factory to get first hand experience/accounts of the plight of workers and the psychological damages caused by industrialization. She was involved in the 1933 general strike in France. Ultimately she was booted from several teaching gigs because of her politics, activism, and contributions to leftist journals.

She briefly fought against the Fascists in Spain (1936) but was very clumsy and a poor shot due to her terrible eyesight. No one really knew what to do with her, but she was dedicated. Weil ultimately ended up injuring herself with hot oil and her parents came and took her away.

Around this time she became very interested in Catholicism. She was never baptized, however, because her religious interests were far broader than one faith, extending to numerous religious traditions of the East and West, and she disagreed with some of the more brutal moments in the Bible. She had sort of her own conception of God and faith, she called it fundamentally Christian, but it was really her own philosophy with a grounding in the Abrahamic concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and above all omnibenevolent God.

It is important to note that despite being ethnically Jewish Weil was in no way religiously Jewish and has been criticized as downright antisemetic. Having barely read anything of hers beyond a little for this project I cannot say without a doubt if she was, but what I have heard described certainly worrisome. This is obviously not exhaustive and she may have said far worse but she was critical of the Torah (without realizing a lot of the things she loved about Christianity actually came from it), critical of the cruelty of the "Old Testament"/Talmudic God (as if Christianity didn't embrace those actions perhaps more than the Jewish faith), claimed that Hitler was no worse than any other colonizer, while comparing Judaism/Jewish people to the Roman Empire/Romans (she hated the Roman Empire). So be aware of that, especially given the era -- both the one Weil was writing in and our own. Her family was secular, she never interacted with Judaism on any real level, so it is possible -- given the political climate at the time and France's history of antisemitism -- Weil was misled, but given the fact that her political views changed throughout her life (starting as a communist and ultimately abandoning it) and the fact that she was so open hearted elsewhere is saddening and negates the ignorance argument. It does seem she failed to understand the weight and reality of what she was saying/critiquing. She was vehemently against racism in other forms, but never seemed to make the connection. According to some sources she was always shocked to be called out on hypocrisy (which she was, more than once). So maybe there is something to be said for her just not getting it. This is not an excuse for hatred, but ignorance might be a huge part of the problem.

After France fell to the Nazis in 1940, Weil and her parents fled and began a life in exile, first in the US, then in England. In England Weil wrote her best known work, L'Enracinement, prélude à une déclaration des devoirs envers l'être humain (The Need for Roots: Prelude Towards a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind) (written 1943, but it wasn't published until 1949). During this time she worked for the French Resistance, although exactly in what capacity seems to be unknown. But her punishing work against the Nazis and penchant for self-denial ultimately ended up costing her her life at age 34 of either heart failure from malnutrition or tuberculosis.

(Image Description: the cover of one of Weil's many notebooks. On it she has written "3 (1941)" in the top left corner. She has covered the rest of it in writing in a bunch of different languages including Greek and Sanskrit [maybe?]. All of it is written in squares/rectangles with one rectangle in the middle with shapes/writing in it. End ID)

Like The Need for Roots most of her work was printed posthumously. Her ouevre has been translated into other languages, including English, Arabic, and German as she reached international acclaim. During her life only a few of her works were published of the 20-some volumes that survive today. Her most important works include (French / English) L'Iliade ou le poème de la force / The Iliad, or the Poem of Force (1940), La Pesanteur et la grâce / Gravity and Grace (1947), Attente de Dieu / Waiting for God (1950), Lettre à un religieux / Letter to a Priest (1951), Oppression et Liberté / Oppression and Liberty (1955) among others, including a lot of eccentric, esoteric, and diverse notebooks kept throughout her life, like the one above.

Probable Orientation: Aroace

As is probably obvious I do not quite know what to make of Weil, but one thing I can tell you is she was definitely asexual.

Weil's sexlessness (and by extension asexuality) has long been part of the narrative oddness of her life. The fact that she shunned physical and romantic relationships is often thought of as part of the pathetic humor as her personality. Clumsy, naïve, downright weird, sexless has become part of that persona, that cloak of oddity.

People love to claim political reasons for others chastity and Weil is no exception. There has to be some reason beyond natural disinterest. The alternative is too foreign or strange for allos to fathom. All of these suppositions are equally aphobic. The idea that asexuality must be a conscious choice rather than a natural part of a person is extremely damaging as is the idea that not feeling sexual/romantic attraction/desiring sex/romance is unnatural. There have been people who try to explain away Weil's lack of sexual desire as well: some Christian writers say she was devoting herself to God years before she found the church (Weil herself says the idea of pursuing what she calls "purity" struck her at 16, she would not find Catholicism for more than a decade), to certain subgroups of feminists her sexlessness a conscious choice to escape the patriarchy. But really it seems much more to be her sexual orientation than a political statement. Weil was a woman who made a lot of political statements, constantly, but the avoidance of sexual contact seemed natural rather than put on.

For one thing she spurned physical contact, but only that with sexual intent. She didn't spurn friendly contact and she would kiss her friends in a platonic way more common in her era. Weil wasn't prudish nor offended by the idea of sex. When she was asked if she was seeing anyone she laughed, but was unbothered, it was more like she thought the idea of her dating was ridiculous rather than looking down on the idea. She had many friends both male and female.

In her teen years Weil started dressing oddly so that no one would find her physically attractive. She had a reputation from youth as being a weirdo in part due to her asexuality, but an attractive one. Although it seems that people, especially boys, had a mixed response to her attempts to mask her beauty. Some of them said it was a shame, others said she was never attractive in the first place.

Many of her critics in the modern day claim her odd traits and behaviors can be explained away by extreme sexual repression, once again giving into that belief that sex makes us normal and whole.

Also like many aroaces it seems that Weil put her love and attention into someone or something other than a significant other/partner. For many of them it is a specific friend or family member, for others it is a passion or cause. These are the historical figures dubbed to be "married to their work". This includes the likes of Erdős, Rankin, Franklin, Santos-Dumont, Nightingale, Wang, Woodson, and Tesla. This is not to say they were friendless, indeed some of them have extremely close relationships but overall these are people who dedicate themselves utterly and completely to their passion and their work. People with more than drive. People who are happiest not in a romantic/sexual relationship, but when doing what they love. I think Weil is part of that category. Her love was not for one person but for nearly the whole of the world.

(Image Description: a photo of Weil as a young woman/teenager. She is a pretty and pale woman with fluffy dark hair, dark eyes, and full lips. She is not yet wearing her glasses. She is shown from the neck up. End ID)

Quotes:

"The idea of purity, with all that this word can imply for a Christian [so, virginity], took possession of me at the age of sixteen, after a period of several months during which I had been going through the emotional unrest natural in adolescence. This idea came upon me while I was contemplating a mountain landscape and little by little it was imposed upon me in an irresistible manner."

-Simone Weil, letter sent to a priest friend on May 15, 1942. (Years after the fact Weil attributed her lack of interest in sex to an inclination to Christianity, but it sounds as if she herself is trying to explain away her lack of sexual attraction or interest. This is something a lot of baby aspecs still do, try to explain away why they aren't interested in sex or romance. I know I did.)

"The Red Virgin"

-The taunting nickname given to Weil by her classmates due to her chasteness and lack of romantic interest. She was also referred to as "the Martian" for being "inhuman" and was widely mocked for being aspec.

"As for her death, whatever explanation one may give of it will amount in the end to saying that she died of love.”

-Sir Richard Reeds (due to the fact that, despite being chronically ill with a fatal disease she continued to work for the French Resistance while also not eating anything above the French ration to show her solidarity.)

(Image Description: a colorized photo of Weil from 1936 when she was fighting in Spain. She is wearing a dark military uniform with a dark bandana around her neck. Her dark hair is even darker than usual. She has a rifle on her back. There are some men behind her on a fairly quiet street. End ID)

#queer #lgbtq #asexual #ace #history #aromantic #aro #20th century #authors #europe #activists #academics #jewish #France #French #philosophers #Simone Weil #bio

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weekendwarriorblog · 4 years ago

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ED’s 2020 Oscar Nomination Predictions – The Actors

Listen, I’ve been analyzing and making Oscar predictions for almost 20 years now, and just because I’m no longer considered worthy of being a Gold Derby expert, that’s really just their loss, because I still plan on covering the Oscars whenever and however I can.

I don’t have to go further down into the well of this expanded season and how we’re still nearly three months away from knowing the Oscar winners. I’ll just start with the actors, as the title might suggest, since I feel it might be easier to cover those four categories then getting into all the nitty gritty that goes into some of the other above the line categories. (And you just know I’ll cover any of the artisan and technical categories over at Below the Line.)

What’s always interesting about the performances that get attention is that they often follow very similar routes, and sometimes, a good actor gains momentum from having a great script or even a good make-up and hair team.

LEAD ACTOR

I feel that every year, this tends to be a crowded field, and maybe more this year than ever, but it tells you how many movies are still being led by men, and that’s not just in front of the camera but also behind it.

Kingsley Ben-Adir - One Night in Miami There’s a little confusion about which category this talented and still relatively unknown British actor playing Malcolm X in Regina King’s historical drama should be placed, which is only going to be compounded by the Golden Globes and SAG nominations. Ben-Adir is indeed great in the role, giving us a very different take on the black activist then Denzel Washington’s performance in Spike Lee’s movie, but by being put in lead means he’s facing much tougher competition, including…

Chadwick Boseman - Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

The late Black Panther actor tragically died last year leaving us with two final performances in Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloodsand George C. Wolfe’s adaptation of August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. The latter is where he’s likely to get the nomination (and many think the win) because his role as the brash trumpet-player Levee who butts heads with the title character, played by Viola Davis, makes the movie so unforgettable. It seems likely that the Academy might want to honor Boseman with a posthumous Oscar, and his performance here is good enough that it won’t seem like a token if they award the Oscar to Boseman.

Riz Ahmed - Sound of Metal

Ahmed is an actor who has been getting more attention with every role from starring opposite Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler to his starring role in the HBO limited series The Night Of, for which he won an Emmy and was nominated for a Golden Globe. His role as a metal drummer losing his hearing in Darius Marder’s drama shows another side to the actor who really goes to some extremes in terms of emotions. It’s a fantastic performance that almost guarantees him a nomination, and we’ll have to see if Amazon Studios has the clout to move him into the frontrunner’s field.

Anthony Hopkins - The Father

Based on his own stage play, Florian Zeller’s drama about a man suffering from dementia, played by Hopkins, has all the elements and backing that could get Hopkin his second Oscar nomination in a row after last year’s The Two Popes. Personally, I wasn’t too big a fan of the movie, and though Julianne Moore finally won her Oscar by playing a woman with dementia, I’m not sure this is that great a role for Hopkins, so best he might do is get another nomination.

Delroy Lindo - Da 5 Bloods

That brings us to another actor who has been gaining much respect from his peers over the past few decades and whose starring role in Spike Lee’s latest movie has been gaining him new respect among the critics. One of the top critics group, the New York Film Critics Circle gave Lindon their top award, as did the National Society of Film Critics, as did Boston and Philly. That’s a lot of clout right there, which will help the Netflix film get a lot more traction.

Gary Oldman - Mank

One of the performances expected to be front and center during Oscar season is the Oscar-winner’s latest real-life portrayal, having won that Oscar for playing Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour a few years back. This time, he plays classic Hollywood screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz who fights alcoholism and Hollywood critics as he co-writes Orson Welles’ 1941 film, Citizen Kane. Besides being about old-time Hollywood and a classic film – which plays well to the ego of Oscar voter -- Mank also teams Oldman with director David Fincher, who has directed probably half a dozen or more actors to an Oscar nomination. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like Mank is getting as much love from the critics some expected and that could ultimately hurt the movie if it doesn’t connect with the industry people it portrays, although Oldman has a good chance at sneaking into nominations.

Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth – Supernova

Two brilliant performances come from the previous winner Firth and the one-time nominee Tucci, who play long-time lovers dealing with the latter’s terminal cancer in Harry Macqueen’s well-reviewed drama. The movie missed out on getting any critical love, so it’s really up to SAG to give either actor a push. Unfortunately, they’re both so good in the movie they might cancel each other out.

Steven Yeun – Minari

One of the most beloved audience-pleasisng movies going all the way back to last year’s Sundance Film Festival is Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-autobiographical family drama, and Yeun’s performance has gotten quite a bit of attention as it follows his rise to serious actor legitimacy that began with the Korean drama Burning a few years back.

A few others in the mix include Sacha Baron Cohen in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (a Golden Globe nominee for sure), Tom Hanks for News of the World (ditto?), Lakeith Stansfield for Judas and the Black Messiah, John David Washington for Malcolm and Marie, and Tahar Rahim for The Mauritanian, but they all need to up their game, especially the latter two which are opening later in the season.

My nomination predictions: Ahmed, Boseman, Hopkins, Lindo, Oldman (The last three seem to be the most vulnerable to be replaced by Ben-Adir or even Yeun, who have roles in far more popular movies.)

LEAD ACTRESS

By comparison, there aren’t nearly as many actresses up for this category, and that’s somewhat telling that this seems to be the case every year. In fact, there’s only five or six actresses that I can see being nominated, and then it’s gonna be a bloodbath for the win.

Andra Day – United States vs. Billie Holiday

One of a couple amazing musical biopics about great women from music history, this Lee Daniels drama based on a tough period in the acclaimed singer’s later life reminds me a bit of last year’s Judy and others. Early critical takes on the movie were pretty negative, but there’s no denying that the singer, making her feature film lead debut no less, really embodies the title character and shows so many different sides as Daniels directs another Oscar-caliber performance. The question is whether Oscar voters can get past the tougher aspects of the film and Holiday’s life to fully appreciate Day’s work. Being on Hulu in late February will make sure that Academy members are seeing it while filling out their ballots.

Viola Davis - Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Davis won her first Oscar for supporting Denzel Washington in his adaptation of an August Wilson play, and she’s back in another Wilson adaptation. For this one, she’s in a far less recognizable role with elaborate costumes and an actual horsehair wig and dental prosthetics that give even more weight to her performance of the “Queen of the Blues” recording in Chicago in the late 1920s and not putting up with guff from anyone, whether it’s her manager or her brash trumpet player, played by Chadwick Boseman.

Vanessa Kirby - Pieces of a Woman

Giving a head-turning performance that includes an unforgettable (but hard to watch) 20-minute labor sequence, Kirby has already impressed her peers with her work on Netflix’s The Crown, as well as her scene-stealing in the 2018 action movie Mission: Impossible – Fallout. This drama by Hungarian filmmaker Kornél Mundruczó’s gives us another look at the actress, but the biggest hurdle Kirby is facing is that her co-star Shia Labeouf (who is also quite good in the movie) has been accused of horrible behavior and essentially cancelled, even by Netflix from its awards and marketing campaign for the movie. Will that hurt Kirby chances or will Oscar voters be able to focus on her craft?

Carey Mulligan - Promising Young Woman

That brings us to a thriller that normally might not be considered Oscar-worthy except that mostly everyone who sees this movie loves it and is blown away by the performance Mulligan gives, which shows so many sides of the actress previously nominated for one of her early roles in An Education (which also premiered at Sundance!). Few people aren’t impressed by Emerald Fennell’s directorial debut, and people will continue to talk about the movie and its shocking climax in the months leading up to Oscar nominations. Expect SAG and Golden Globe nominations leading up to her inevitable second Oscar nomination.

Frances McDormand – Nomadland

Although the two-time Oscar-winning McDormand stars in Chloe Zhao’s drama, which many people are already considering the frontrunner for Best Picture, some might even feel that McDormand’s performance is better than the two for which she won Oscars, it feels like this nomination is a given and many Oscar voters might prefer to draw attention to the newer talent in this category. But no one should be surprised if McDormand pulls out another surprise win on Oscar night without doing any of the campaigning others always do.

Zendaya - Malcolm and Marie

Another late arrival in this extended Oscar season is this movie from Sam Levinson, the writer/director whose HBO series Euphoria made the singer/actor best known for playing Mary Jane in the recent Spider-Man movies the youngest Emmy winner. Her role in the tough drama about a couple either will connect with Oscar voters or will hit way too close to home, so this might put her right up against Andra Day for that fifth slot.

Oddly, there aren’t nearly as many possible contenders in this category except for the other veteran, Sophia Loren, starring in her son’s Italian film, The Life Ahead; Amy Adams in Hillbilly Elegy, which suffers from horrible reviews; Kate Winslet in the mostly forgotten Ammonite or Meryl Streep in The Prom, although the latter of those is likely to be a Golden Globe Musical nominee and go no further.

My nomination predictions: Day, Davis, Kirby, McDormand, Mulligan (Zendaya seems like the spoiler but it seems unlikely she can win a nomination over five five flashier roles.)

SUPPORTING ACTOR

This is going to be a really interesting category this year, since there are three or four movie that have three to five (or more!) great male roles that have brought so much to those movies we’re likely to see them making waves in the SAG Ensemble category even if not all of them can get individual attention via supporting nominations.

Chadwick Boseman – Da 5 Bloods While Boseman is likely to get more attention for his performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, some critics groups have also been giving the late actor attention for this relatively small flashback role in Spike Lee’s movie, although it’s not nearly as showy or memorable a performance compared to Delroy Lindo.

Sacha Baron Cohen – The Trial of the Chicago 7

Speaking of what could be a SAG Ensemble frontrunner, Aaron Sorkin’s recreation of the famed government case against a number of 60s activists accused of inciting a riot (sound familiar?) features a number of strong performances, but the actor getting the biggest push (and doing the rounds, as they say) is the star of Borat who plays Abbie Hoffman in the movie and seems to really be flexing his dramatic muscles. The only thing that might hold Cohen back are his co-stars and voters who might not be sure who to push for the film.

Daniel Kaluuya - Judas and the Black Messiah Some might feel that Kaluuya’s performance as Black Panther Fred Hampton – a far more minor role played by Kelvin Harrison Jr. in Trial of the Chicago 7 – should have been deemed the lead, since it is a movie about how Hampton was set up by an undercover FBI agent, played by Lakeith Stansfield. Kaluuya already was nominated for an Oscar for his role in Jordan Peele’s Get Out (in which Stansfield had a minor role), but the performance he gives in this could certainly put him over the top with Oscar voters.

Leslie Odom, Jr. – One Night in Miami

One of the most memorable performances in Regina King’s narrative feature debut is this Tony-winning Hamilton star in his performance as legendarly soul singer Sam Cooke, as he butts heads with Kingsley Ben-Adir’s Malcolm X (see above), but with him being put into lead, it seems like Odom is likely to get the most love from SAG as well as Oscar voters, which puts him into direct competition with Kaluuya.

Paul Raci - Sound of Metal A name that isn’t very well known but is sure to be an actor we’ll see more of is this actor who has been mainly taking small roles on various TV shows for many years but as Riz Ahmed’s mentor in coping with his loss of hearing, Raci is likely to get some love as well, although he would really have to step up his game and get out there more.

David Strathairn – Nomadland

Chloé Zhao populated her acclaimed movie with many non-actors that come from the nomad community depicted in the film, and while much of the attention is rightfully put on Frances McDormand’s lead role, Strathairn’s supporting performance gives the film true heart. If nominated, this would be Strathairn’s first Oscar attention since starring as Edward Morrow in George Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck.

Mark Rylance, Yahya Abdul-Mateen, Frank Langella - Trial of the Chicago 7 The big problem with the large ensemble cast of Sorkin’s movie is that there are so many great performances all working from his sure-to-be nominated screenplay, and no one can seem to decide which of the great actors is the best. Rylance already on an Oscar in this category, Abdul-Mateen is a hot upcoming star, and Langella is a veteran who has only been nominated once 11 years ago for Frost/Nixon. It feels Langella’s performance as the judge in the case is the most memorable, but these three might cancel themselves out especially with Cohen in the running.

Then we get to a lot of decent performances that might be hard to make a mark with so much competition in this category including Trevante Rhodes in United States vs. Billie Holiday, Charles Dance in Mank, Glynn Turman and Colman Domingo for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (with the same issue as Trial of the Chicago 7 acting against flashier performances), and the problematic candiates: Jared Leto in The Little Things, Shia Labeouf in Pieces of a Woman, and James Corden in The Prom.

My nomination predictions: Cohen, Kaluuya, Odom Jr, Raci, Strathairn (One of the last two seems the most likely to be bumped by a second Trial actor.)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Welcome to this year’s “problematic” category, not because there aren’t many great actresses giving supporting performances that any filmmaker or actor would kill for, but more because two of the movies have issues, either in term of bad reviews or a problematic co-star.

Maria Bakalova - Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

Sacha Baron Cohen’s surprise sequel wasn’t just praised for his decision to tackle COVID and the current American government but also for the performance by Bulgarian newcomer Bakalova as Borat’s daughter who keeps on being put into awkward situations to get laughs. Bakalova performs supremely, holding her own against the veteran Cohen in many scenes with many people leaving the movie awed by Bakalova.

Ellen Burstyn - Pieces of a Woman

Another acting legend, Ellen Burstyn, returned for Kornel Munduczo’s drama, playing the meddlesome mother of Vanessa Kirby’s character, who tries to push for a lawsuit after the latter loses her child. Like many great supporting roles, this one is almost exclusively about one memorable scene and monologue by Burstyn that was partially improvised, but there’s still that Shia Labeouf in the room that might sour voters’ desire to give Burstyn her first acknowledgment since Requiem for a Dream twenty years ago.

Glenn Close - Hillbilly Elegy

A few years back, we nearly saw Glenn Close win her first Oscar for her performance in The Wife but she was snubbed in favor of Olivia Colman’s memorable role in The Favourite, which helped put the prolific British actress onto many radars even before she took over the lead in Netflix’s The Crown. Close is back with another memorable performance, this one playing the cranky Mawmaw in Netflix’s Hillbilly Elegy. The movie was obliterated by critics who refuse to give Close her due for what she brings to the movie. I don’t think that will be the case with the Golden Globes or SAG and not even the Oscars’ acting branch, all whom should nominate her again.

Olivia Colman - The Father Although much of the attention for Florian Zellers’ adaptation of his own play has been put on Anthony Hopkins’ performance in the title role, there’s still quite a lot of love for Colman, who looks to once again hijack Glenn Close’s Oscar chances, even if this role isn’t nearly as showy or memorable.

Amanda Seyfried – Mank

People seem to be all over the place in terms of their feelings about David Fincher’s Mank, his first movie since 2014’s Gone Girl, but there’s a general sense of love towards Amanda Seyfried’s portrayal of old Hollywood starlet Marion Davies who seems to be a bright and shiny counterpoint to Oldman’s title character. I’m not sure she can win but has enough support for her first nomination.

Yuh-jung Youn -- Minari

There’s a lot of great performances in Lee Isaac Chung’s family drama but the one that the critics seem to be drawn to the performance by this Korean acting vet who plays the eccentric grandma who mostly brings laughs to the film. I don’t think either SAG or Golden Globes will pick her and the absence of the Chinese grandmother from The Farewell being nominated last year makes me dubious Ms. Young will get nominated either.

As with supporting actor, there are quite a few outliers who could sneak in, and we’ll be looking towards the SAG and Golden Globe nominations to see if there’s any consensus for any of the following.

Without going into further details, others in the mix include Olivia Cooke in Sound of Metal, Saoirse Ronan in Ammonite, Helena Zengel in News of the World, Jodie Foster in The Mauritanian, and possibly Dominique Fishback in Judas and the Black Messiah. As with the lead actress vis-à-vis lead actor, there just aren’t as many

My nomination predictions: Bakalova, Burstyn, Close, Colman, Seyfried (This seems like a pretty strong roster that should be able to navigate through SAG and Golden Globes, with the two oldest actresses having to overcome the hurdles of co-stars and/or critics. Who knows? Maybe Bakalova will win it.)

Hopefully soon (but probably after Sundance) I’ll offer my predictions for the screenplay categories, director and Best Picture, but look for the Golden Globe nominations to be announced on February 3, launching this year’s Oscar race in earnest.

#Oscars #AcademyAwards #LeadActor #LeadActress

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easyfoodnetwork · 5 years ago

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Even in a Pandemic, Death Is a Popularity Contest

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The food media paid scant attention to the Indian-born chef and restaurant owner Garima Kothari when she was alive. That lack of coverage has extended to her tragic death.

This is Eater Voices, where chefs, restaurateurs, writers, and industry insiders share their perspectives about the food world, tackling a range of topics through the lens of personal experience. First-time writer? Don’t worry, we’ll pair you with an editor to make sure your piece hits the mark. If you want to write an Eater Voices essay, please send us a couple paragraphs explaining what you want to write about and why you are the person to write it to [email protected].

When the COVID-19 pandemic began earlier this spring, the Indian-born chef Garima Kothari saw business at her Jersey City restaurant, Nukkad, evaporate overnight. Yet she found little time to despair. Instead, she strategized.

She started selling DIY dosa kits. She tried curbside deliveries. She offered discounts. When we spoke over the phone on April 9, Kothari said that her numbers continued falling, yet she tempered her concern with hope. She laughed nervously when I asked if she feared that the restaurant, just five months old, would have to close for good. “I hope not,” she said. “I have plans.”

Just two weeks later, on the morning of Sunday, April 26, Kothari died in an alleged murder-suicide at the hands of her partner, Man Mohan Mall. She was 35. According to the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office, authorities discovered Kothari with multiple upper body injuries in the apartment the couple shared, eventually concluding that her death was a homicide. A day after her death, an autopsy revealed that Kothari was five months pregnant.

I had spoken to Kothari as part of my reporting for a short piece on the impact of COVID-19 on small, immigrant-owned restaurants. Though our conversation only lasted nine minutes, Kothari talked candidly about the challenges of operating a tiny, newer restaurant that focused on Indian cooking, which still struggles to gain high regard in America despite the valiant efforts of gifted chefs. She had applied for many relief funds and grants, but feared that the nature of her restaurant, coupled with its relative infancy, would make capital elusive. “For a very small restaurant like mine, especially a restaurant that’s not doing Italian and French food, I don’t know if I will ever get a single penny,” she told me.

Who gets spotlighted by the food media, and how do such decisions determine who publications choose to remember?

The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the food and restaurant industry has stretched digital food publications thin, forcing journalists to dedicate all their resources to coverage of a rapidly shifting landscape. Stories that seemingly bear no overt relation to the pandemic — like, say, Kothari’s brutal death — have consequently fallen by the wayside. Such circumstances may explain why the tabloid and celebrity media covered the death, but few food publications in the country dignified Kothari with so much as a blog post, barring a short article on Tuesday morning from Grub Street (owned by Eater’s parent company, Vox Media).

But the response to Kothari’s death raises enduring questions: Who gets spotlighted by the food media, and how do such decisions determine who publications choose to remember?

Kothari’s death may be the first time that readers will hear about her, an embarrassing truth that suggests her demise will eclipse her accomplishments. She bid farewell to the life of investment banking in her native India (she’d later call the corporate world “too cold”) after realizing her life’s great love was food. In 2010, Kothari entered MasterChef India, making the top 15. Following that experience, she decamped for Paris and attended Le Cordon Bleu, where she received her pastry diploma in 2013. She then moved to America, working as a pastry chef in Jacksonville, Florida, before heading north to New Jersey in 2015. Kothari managed her own catering and events business; she was also an occasional writer, having contributed to such sites as Food52, the Kitchn, and the Michelin Guide.

Coverage of Kothari was so scant in her lifetime that some may reason that she wasn’t yet “famous” enough, that her restaurant was too young, to justify immediate reporting on her death. This argument is precisely the issue at hand, one that exposes the inherent bias of a food media whose narrative gaze skews towards white, materially advantaged, cis male chefs, who also tend to have aggressive public relations teams that help to guarantee media saturation. Such privileges also dictate access to capital, like the kind Daniel Humm’s Eleven Madison Park has gotten from American Express. Without them, few aspiring restaurant owners stand a chance of catching the mainstream food media’s attention.

Given the sheer number of restaurants that open each year, and the fact that Jersey City is flush with Indian restaurants, you may wonder what made Kothari’s restaurant so special. At Nukkad, she was trying to do something different with her native country’s cuisine; she saw street food through the prism of her own nostalgia, filtering childhood staples through the culinary techniques she’d picked up throughout her career. This approach resulted in dishes like butter chicken mac-and-cheese and pizza dosas filled with mozzarella, as well as fare one might consider more typical for a nominally Indian restaurant, such as idlis, chaats, and biryanis. Kothari didn’t care about being slapped with the dreaded “fusion” label, much less about the distinctions between north and south Indian cuisines. Like many chefs before her, she worked strenuously to push people past their worn perceptions of Indian cooking, and fought this battle in a highly individualistic way.

Viewed from a purely editorial standpoint, in other words, Kothari’s approach to food — and her winding path to it — made her a compelling character who should have been more famous prior to her death. But she operated at a distinct disadvantage within the restaurant world as a condition of her womanhood, her race, and the fact that she was not born in America. Her creative impulses, like the self-described “Indian soul food” she cooked, likewise put her on the fringes of the industry. In death, food journalists have further pushed her to the margins.

As such, Kothari’s case speaks to a rot in food coverage that existed long before the pandemic illuminated its fissures. While American food publications are infatuated with celebrity, they too often seem to impose a higher barrier of entry for figures like Kothari, an immigrant woman of color who didn’t quite have the resources (nor, eventually, the time) to become a media darling.

What credentials would have rendered Kothari important enough for food publications, in both life and death?

Critics may gripe that I’m reading these outlets in bad faith (or that Jersey City is too far from the food media’s pulse in New York City, but I’d point to stunningly consistent coverage of its critically acclaimed pizzerias). They may also charge that such intense scrutiny is unwarranted at a time when a pandemic has food journalists operating under unprecedented duress. But the muted response to Kothari’s death reveals a fundamental imbalance that Grub Street’s Chris Crowley illustrated in his sensitive piece on the April 1 death of Jesus Roman Melendez from complications of COVID-19. Melendez was a long-time cook at Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Nougatine — the “backbone” of the restaurant, as Crowley wrote. In eulogizing Melendez, he gave flesh to a man who’d usually remain nameless in stories of Nougatine’s success, and simultaneously questioned the mechanics of a food media that deifies a man like Vongerichten.

Crowley’s posthumous profile of Melendez feels exemplary because it’s an outlier, pointing toward a future for food journalism that honors talents who so often remain unseen. But a piece like his shouldn’t be so unique. Two weeks elapsed between Melendez’s death and that piece’s publication; once the wound of Kothari’s loss begins to heal, I hope that other outlets will make room for a story that gives Kothari similar narrative consideration, framing her not in terms of erasure but instead focusing on what she achieved. Letting her story dissolve into the ether would merely confirm the anxieties Kothari expressed to me about the eventual fate of Nukkad: a fear that gatekeepers would look right past her.

It’s no secret that the press has unique power to mold public opinion and inform our ideas of who we consider to be stars worthy of respect. Just last year, the editor of a major newspaper’s food section asked me why I’d pitched a profile of a small restaurant owner in Bushwick when I could write about a more established name like Nigella Lawson. The question revealed this publication’s reactive, not proactive, default posturing. So I now find myself wondering if the food media’s commitment to the status quo will continue, despite how unsustainable the pandemic is revealing that to be?

In an ideal scenario, publications will emerge from this pandemic with greater sensitivity for the stories of restaurant owners like Kothari who suffered acutely as a result of the pandemic’s financial strains. To be fair, scores of food journalists are already doing this work, and no longer just at smaller and/or more regional publications. Such coverage should appear with even greater consistency in mainstream, national publications. But in a more likely (albeit cynical) scenario, these outlets may very well continue to give real estate to the blandly familiar cabal of well-funded celebrity chefs, figures who’ve become poster boys of this uncertain moment for American restaurants.

What credentials would have rendered Kothari important enough for food publications, in both life and death? It shouldn’t have taken some arbitrary metric of success, be it a James Beard nomination or a profile from the New York Times, for writers to extend her the very basic courtesy of aggregating an article about her death. Such anointments have more to do with access than intangible variables, like talent and dedication. Those prerequisites shouldn’t determine whether a woman who devoted her life to food gets a fair remembrance.

Mayukh Sen is a writer in New York. He has won a James Beard Award for his food writing, and he teaches food journalism at New York University. His first book, on the immigrant women who have shaped food in America, will be published by W.W. Norton & Company in fall 2021.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2WguReL https://ift.tt/2WeLwQ5

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The food media paid scant attention to the Indian-born chef and restaurant owner Garima Kothari when she was alive. That lack of coverage has extended to her tragic death.

Who gets spotlighted by the food media, and how do such decisions determine who publications choose to remember?

But the response to Kothari’s death raises enduring questions: Who gets spotlighted by the food media, and how do such decisions determine who publications choose to remember?

What credentials would have rendered Kothari important enough for food publications, in both life and death?

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thepoetryofillusion · 8 years ago

Photo

Dylan Thomas as Orpheus (Ages Repeating)

Down, down, along the threefold rivers, float,

Windswept treasured wonders, of sad clown,

Complete with doubts, debts, and drunk-soaked coat,

Coiled tokens sold, for golden crown.

Moneyed gifts, soothing widow’s bitter tears,

Smoothing children’s sound tomorrows:

Hound dogs paid-off, as well sorrowing dears,

A lifetime’s struggle of constant borrows!

Look, look, the herons stalk, receiving bread

From swarming crowds, whom he once said,

Would flock, to flaunt their praises: all too late

For his gaunt-gout, and gaudier cold hate.

Clank, clank, boom links of poet’s heavy chains,

Sung to sea-maids, from his house on stilts,

Come, come, listen to cramped breathless strains,

Poet’s plaintive pleas: freed from guilt’s.

Hark, harken to those bloody barking dogs,

Knock, knocking loud and hard on Boathouse door

Chasing Orpheus with song into dour bogs,

Nigh upon his 39th year of spore!

Lost and longing far from weathered haven,

Yearning, ‘Buggerall’* world , of sodden Wales.

Bright son, fiercely eyed as black raven,

Urging his fragile health, track foreign trails !

Seeking wealth, exhausting poet’s tired wings.

Weep, weep for: “what might the neighbors think”

Mentality: where drink, forever clings,

Drowns Celtic sorrows: mourns lost link. . .

Woeful longings for things, in tidy homes.

Poet spun his tragic woven romance

Divine; meticulous molded icons,

Sculptured souls : defying decadence!

* = llareggub – ( invented by Dylan)

Myths and wondrous tales, of Merlin’s magic,

Celtic comedy; where Welsh mime rebounds

Timeless pith, of ancient rhetoric,

Birthed before Bible Black ‘nd White sounds.

Harmonies, pounding out sacred knowledge

Thru underground subconscious transit

Able to transcribe and write new presage:

Vision of collective cosmic spirit.

Genius stalks alone: ponders, perceives all,

Where cattle failed to recognize rare prize,

Oddity of humor and holy pierced gall -

Awkward albatross falling from Welsh skies.

Fellowmen find fault, asks wind to bellow sail:

Demanding deadlines of a snail’s slow pace

Whose speed could barely scribble words of wail:

Heavily draped and veiled in shapely grace.

Poet’s urge of ecstatic energy

Surpasses static human rational :

Town too local to escape easily -

Ruled by strict conventions: provincial.

Angry-voiced habits of teacher-father,

Highly inbred rhetoric preparing

To breed an intellectual scholar:

University degree: or nothing !

Alas, poets come programmed ripe from start,

Born to master and practice one mission:

Transmigrated scribes of poetic art,

Prophetic: caused father’s deep deception.

Rascal, scamp, precocious, headstrong vandal,

Quick to brag, steal, play controversial bard:

Promethean sea-giant: causing scandal

Offering spoiled sacrificial flesh to herd!

He was want to haunt sea-shores, to look

At old men, watching boats, coming in,

Going out, of the docks, where he took

Long walks; never swam, just watchin’.

Favorite past-time, spent studying Himself:

Serious, fastidiously intense, nervous:

Body became scrolled map on shelf

Packed to brim, with wit, as dying Orpheus.

Life believed, as living source of senses,

Expressed as representing everything

Found within the human body’s flashes:

Home of inspired universal offspring.

Opening and closing, as huge tidal waves

Full of emotion, rising and sinking:

Breathing inside nature’s pulsing enclaves:

Erotic passions forever creating.

Dylan’s plight of grown-up sadness: results,

Of childhood’s over-happy gladness,

Refusing to pardon ban by adults,

On children’s freedom, replaced by manliness.

Awful need of responsibility,

Curbing joy of succulent innocence,

Causing fiends to rob sensibility,

Leading him towards indecent nonsense.

Dragging feet deep into Hell’s darkness

Away from warmth of ‘mustard-seed sun’*

Pulling him out of light and brightness,

Causing decay like singing head of Brân!*

Dylan fed the cattle what they asked;

Of a poet’s soul: sacrificial flesh

Throwing in as bonus: an extra blast:

Lying, borrowing, and huge drunken mess.

*Dylan’s line * Brân of Welsh Romances

Wales, a land who never understood,

Or hailed, this son of the sea, gave him

Little to nourish and raise his brood,

Eyeing what their tidy lives, saw, as grim.

Womanizing, wicked-devil, with doubt,

Wrapped around maternal feathered-fussing,

Deeply ground within sad paternal clout,

Inherited gene of inbred drinking.

Above all else spoke with angel’s tongue,

After death became universal son!

Up till then poet to dull silences,

Who imposed deluge of social humdrum.

Drowning sorrows, as they listened to rhyme,

This his audience; entirely self-composed –

Not without a spark, of what we suppose,

Magic blending of something divine -

Before captivating voice, sublime !

Joining nostalgia of times, decomposed,

Easy to imagine, poet’s desire,

To create a world of something, other –

Than bleak reality of pub prattle?

Ethereal rhetoric rose above the mire,

Miming father’s incessant bother,

Claiming high grades from boys, as life-battle!

Nothing trivial in Dylan’s character,

Turbulent, troubled, spoiled, funny: spores

Piled high of puritan saws, as nurture:

Parental protection robbing youngster –

Whose imagination learned to ignore,

All and sundry, who didn’t bow to adore,

Sown seeds imbibed and stored inside nature:

Remnants of family fears of madness.

Well-known intermarriage of cousins: rife,

Insular-culture keen on preserving;

Roots and language, against foreign badness;

Traits and traces entwined inside a life.

Such bewildering boy, oh so charming:

Dylan, as magical singer: Orpheus,

Sappho, or Brân of the Mabinogion -

Whose singing head, buried in London.

Metamorphosed son of the sea, Proteus

Inventing outrageous tales: to seduce

Playmates, worthy of cloned sibling;

Born of a disillusioned man, winning –

Acclaim of pupils, as well, Icarus!

Metaphoric resemblance of Dylan

Burning wings in hell’s drunken fire: Welsh

Echo, of transmigration of past hero.

Not unlike Jean Vigo: who created –

Greatness out of conduct: graded zero!

Rebellious genius’ of saturated

Energy, seeking childhood’s lost echo.

Lurking behind a deal of Dylan’s work,

Looms his father’s voice, incredibly rich,

Oh high-standard English idiom, which irked –

Many colleagues of Welsh lilt and pitch.

Son likewise, had no trace of accent,

Added nothing to enhance his favor:

Countrymen denounced it as indecent –

Poets surely should nourish Welsh flavor?

Yet, should they have paid more attentive ear,

Would have caught sounds musical, which invoke

Image, colors, fraught with love of land, so dear !

Lauding druidic eloquence of yoke.

Absorb, what not many nations can claim,

As did this Orpheus, singing in his chains !

Great golden sea-horse in his silver cloak;

Who came to show us what not to seize -

Or leave undone, giving death’s dark chance, claims,

To advance: causing fiery flame to freeze:

Yet, do not grieve too long, for he lives on,

Poet’s sporous spirit reaches everyone.

In art, love, life, and death, his Orphic song

Posthumously spreads word he has BECOME!

Panmelys April 2017

#panmelys #poetry #dylan thomas

3 notes · View notes

easyfoodnetwork · 5 years ago

Quote

Facebook The food media paid scant attention to the Indian-born chef and restaurant owner Garima Kothari when she was alive. That lack of coverage has extended to her tragic death. This is Eater Voices, where chefs, restaurateurs, writers, and industry insiders share their perspectives about the food world, tackling a range of topics through the lens of personal experience. First-time writer? Don’t worry, we’ll pair you with an editor to make sure your piece hits the mark. If you want to write an Eater Voices essay, please send us a couple paragraphs explaining what you want to write about and why you are the person to write it to [email protected]. When the COVID-19 pandemic began earlier this spring, the Indian-born chef Garima Kothari saw business at her Jersey City restaurant, Nukkad, evaporate overnight. Yet she found little time to despair. Instead, she strategized. She started selling DIY dosa kits. She tried curbside deliveries. She offered discounts. When we spoke over the phone on April 9, Kothari said that her numbers continued falling, yet she tempered her concern with hope. She laughed nervously when I asked if she feared that the restaurant, just five months old, would have to close for good. “I hope not,” she said. “I have plans.” Just two weeks later, on the morning of Sunday, April 26, Kothari died in an alleged murder-suicide at the hands of her partner, Man Mohan Mall. She was 35. According to the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office, authorities discovered Kothari with multiple upper body injuries in the apartment the couple shared, eventually concluding that her death was a homicide. A day after her death, an autopsy revealed that Kothari was five months pregnant. I had spoken to Kothari as part of my reporting for a short piece on the impact of COVID-19 on small, immigrant-owned restaurants. Though our conversation only lasted nine minutes, Kothari talked candidly about the challenges of operating a tiny, newer restaurant that focused on Indian cooking, which still struggles to gain high regard in America despite the valiant efforts of gifted chefs. She had applied for many relief funds and grants, but feared that the nature of her restaurant, coupled with its relative infancy, would make capital elusive. “For a very small restaurant like mine, especially a restaurant that’s not doing Italian and French food, I don’t know if I will ever get a single penny,” she told me. Who gets spotlighted by the food media, and how do such decisions determine who publications choose to remember? The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the food and restaurant industry has stretched digital food publications thin, forcing journalists to dedicate all their resources to coverage of a rapidly shifting landscape. Stories that seemingly bear no overt relation to the pandemic — like, say, Kothari’s brutal death — have consequently fallen by the wayside. Such circumstances may explain why the tabloid and celebrity media covered the death, but few food publications in the country dignified Kothari with so much as a blog post, barring a short article on Tuesday morning from Grub Street (owned by Eater’s parent company, Vox Media). But the response to Kothari’s death raises enduring questions: Who gets spotlighted by the food media, and how do such decisions determine who publications choose to remember? Kothari’s death may be the first time that readers will hear about her, an embarrassing truth that suggests her demise will eclipse her accomplishments. She bid farewell to the life of investment banking in her native India (she’d later call the corporate world “too cold”) after realizing her life’s great love was food. In 2010, Kothari entered MasterChef India, making the top 15. Following that experience, she decamped for Paris and attended Le Cordon Bleu, where she received her pastry diploma in 2013. She then moved to America, working as a pastry chef in Jacksonville, Florida, before heading north to New Jersey in 2015. Kothari managed her own catering and events business; she was also an occasional writer, having contributed to such sites as Food52, the Kitchn, and the Michelin Guide. Coverage of Kothari was so scant in her lifetime that some may reason that she wasn’t yet “famous” enough, that her restaurant was too young, to justify immediate reporting on her death. This argument is precisely the issue at hand, one that exposes the inherent bias of a food media whose narrative gaze skews towards white, materially advantaged, cis male chefs, who also tend to have aggressive public relations teams that help to guarantee media saturation. Such privileges also dictate access to capital, like the kind Daniel Humm’s Eleven Madison Park has gotten from American Express. Without them, few aspiring restaurant owners stand a chance of catching the mainstream food media’s attention. Given the sheer number of restaurants that open each year, and the fact that Jersey City is flush with Indian restaurants, you may wonder what made Kothari’s restaurant so special. At Nukkad, she was trying to do something different with her native country’s cuisine; she saw street food through the prism of her own nostalgia, filtering childhood staples through the culinary techniques she’d picked up throughout her career. This approach resulted in dishes like butter chicken mac-and-cheese and pizza dosas filled with mozzarella, as well as fare one might consider more typical for a nominally Indian restaurant, such as idlis, chaats, and biryanis. Kothari didn’t care about being slapped with the dreaded “fusion” label, much less about the distinctions between north and south Indian cuisines. Like many chefs before her, she worked strenuously to push people past their worn perceptions of Indian cooking, and fought this battle in a highly individualistic way. Viewed from a purely editorial standpoint, in other words, Kothari’s approach to food — and her winding path to it — made her a compelling character who should have been more famous prior to her death. But she operated at a distinct disadvantage within the restaurant world as a condition of her womanhood, her race, and the fact that she was not born in America. Her creative impulses, like the self-described “Indian soul food” she cooked, likewise put her on the fringes of the industry. In death, food journalists have further pushed her to the margins. As such, Kothari’s case speaks to a rot in food coverage that existed long before the pandemic illuminated its fissures. While American food publications are infatuated with celebrity, they too often seem to impose a higher barrier of entry for figures like Kothari, an immigrant woman of color who didn’t quite have the resources (nor, eventually, the time) to become a media darling. What credentials would have rendered Kothari important enough for food publications, in both life and death? Critics may gripe that I’m reading these outlets in bad faith (or that Jersey City is too far from the food media’s pulse in New York City, but I’d point to stunningly consistent coverage of its critically acclaimed pizzerias). They may also charge that such intense scrutiny is unwarranted at a time when a pandemic has food journalists operating under unprecedented duress. But the muted response to Kothari’s death reveals a fundamental imbalance that Grub Street’s Chris Crowley illustrated in his sensitive piece on the April 1 death of Jesus Roman Melendez from complications of COVID-19. Melendez was a long-time cook at Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Nougatine — the “backbone” of the restaurant, as Crowley wrote. In eulogizing Melendez, he gave flesh to a man who’d usually remain nameless in stories of Nougatine’s success, and simultaneously questioned the mechanics of a food media that deifies a man like Vongerichten. Crowley’s posthumous profile of Melendez feels exemplary because it’s an outlier, pointing toward a future for food journalism that honors talents who so often remain unseen. But a piece like his shouldn’t be so unique. Two weeks elapsed between Melendez’s death and that piece’s publication; once the wound of Kothari’s loss begins to heal, I hope that other outlets will make room for a story that gives Kothari similar narrative consideration, framing her not in terms of erasure but instead focusing on what she achieved. Letting her story dissolve into the ether would merely confirm the anxieties Kothari expressed to me about the eventual fate of Nukkad: a fear that gatekeepers would look right past her. It’s no secret that the press has unique power to mold public opinion and inform our ideas of who we consider to be stars worthy of respect. Just last year, the editor of a major newspaper’s food section asked me why I’d pitched a profile of a small restaurant owner in Bushwick when I could write about a more established name like Nigella Lawson. The question revealed this publication’s reactive, not proactive, default posturing. So I now find myself wondering if the food media’s commitment to the status quo will continue, despite how unsustainable the pandemic is revealing that to be? In an ideal scenario, publications will emerge from this pandemic with greater sensitivity for the stories of restaurant owners like Kothari who suffered acutely as a result of the pandemic’s financial strains. To be fair, scores of food journalists are already doing this work, and no longer just at smaller and/or more regional publications. Such coverage should appear with even greater consistency in mainstream, national publications. But in a more likely (albeit cynical) scenario, these outlets may very well continue to give real estate to the blandly familiar cabal of well-funded celebrity chefs, figures who’ve become poster boys of this uncertain moment for American restaurants. What credentials would have rendered Kothari important enough for food publications, in both life and death? It shouldn’t have taken some arbitrary metric of success, be it a James Beard nomination or a profile from the New York Times, for writers to extend her the very basic courtesy of aggregating an article about her death. Such anointments have more to do with access than intangible variables, like talent and dedication. Those prerequisites shouldn’t determine whether a woman who devoted her life to food gets a fair remembrance. Mayukh Sen is a writer in New York. He has won a James Beard Award for his food writing, and he teaches food journalism at New York University. His first book, on the immigrant women who have shaped food in America, will be published by W.W. Norton & Company in fall 2021. from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2WguReL

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/05/even-in-pandemic-death-is-popularity.html

#EasyFoodNetwork #ComfortFoodRecipes #EasyRecipes #GoodFood #BestComfortFoodRecipes #TastyFoodv

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