What to Read, Watch, and Listen to This Week: June 17
Dave Chappelle’s 8:46
Image: Courtesy Netflix
The news is stressful. We get it—we write it! Maybe you’re protesting, maybe you’re donating, maybe you’re reading up or keeping tabs on the way your representatives are responding to the present moment, maybe you’re buying from one of these Black-owned Portland brands. Keep doing that!
Staying engaged is a marathon, though, not a sprint. You’re gonna need breaks. When you take one, consider checking out some of the stuff keeping us sane (or somewhere close), which we’ve collected here in our weekly culture roundup.
Dave Chappelle’s 8:46
Dave Chappelle’s surprise new special derives its title from the length of time Derek Chauvin kneeled on George Floyd’s neck. Chappelle drives the point with a sledgehammer: eight minutes and 46 seconds. It was also the time at which Chappelle was born, he says. 8:46 a.m. “I can’t get that number out of my head,” he says. And, now, neither can we, nor should we. “Who. Are. You. Talking to. What are you signifying? That you can kneel on a man’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds and feel like you wouldn’t get the wrath of God? That’s what is happening right now,” Chappelle says. “It’s not for a single cop. It’s for all of it. Fucking all of it.”
To use a word that’s been used and overused this week, it’s an unflinching observation of the dots that led us to this moment, this legacy of stolen Black lives. Chappelle offers a small apology, saying, “Normally I wouldn't show you something so unrefined, I hope you understand,” but it’s exactly that unrefined anguish that gives every word such depth. It’s a powerful reminder that the road from slavery to Jim Crow to now is not very long at all. George Floyd called to his dead mother as he was dying. Chappelle says in his set that the only other time he’s seen someone do that is when his own father was dying and called out to his grandmother. Later he comes back to his great-grandmother and great-grandfather—“and they were slaves! Are you out of your fucking mind if you can’t see that?”
Eloquent Rage
Little did we college students know when this book was assigned to us for an interpersonal communication class how radically powerful it would be. New York Times best-selling author, professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies, public speaker, and Black feminist Brittney Cooper expresses her anger at a perpetual system of racial injustice that is and continues to be reinforced by those who benefit from it. Through the lens of Black feminist theory, in a conversational and at times comedic tone, she reminds us that lived experiences and emotion cannot and should not be erased from the testimonies of women and people of color. As the title suggests, Cooper has a way of channeling her rage—and she knows how to unapologetically call out bullshit when she sees it—into the voice of an activist who genuinely invites readers into the conversation. Listen to Cooper herself read the audiobook aloud to fully experience her superpower come to life. —Lauren Carlos, editorial intern
Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts
Punisher
Of all the records in all of alt-rock history to name-check Joan Didion and Elliott Smith as influences, Punisher might be the first to remember those California doom poets had jokes. Phoebe Bridgers’s sophomore album (misleading, given the two barnstorming collaborative releases she’s put out since her 2017 debut) is full of the dark, prickly humor she’s become known for on Twitter, where her display name is Traitor Joe. “I hate your mom / I hate it when she opens her mouth,” she spouts suddenly to an ex on “ICU”; “We hate ‘Tears in Heaven’ / But it’s sad that his baby died,” she sings on wrenching standout “Moon Song,” puncturing unbearable emotional tension with a weird, mean jab at Eric Clapton.
Punisher is sad, but it's not a downer. Bridgers expands her sonic palette from the dirgy folk she cut her teeth on, conjuring end-times bluster on “I Know the End,” tense garage rock on “Kyoto,” a trippy fairy tale on the title track. She makes jogging and drinking and sitting in a Goodwill parking lot vibrate with civilization-defining importance; she sings about unsatisfying relationships without admitting or assigning blame. It's staggeringly confident music, so sure of what it wants to say and how it wants to say it that you feel like you’d better wise up or get left behind.
These songs will make you cry and laugh and feel like you've hit a personal breakthrough, and they will make you want to be friends with Phoebe Bridgers, if only so you can hear a mundane afternoon you've spent together through her eyes. —Conner Reed, arts & culture editor
