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New European
01-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New European
The poster artists firing back at Musk and Trump
The brainchild of Americana-obsessed UK artist Ben Turnbull, toiling in cahoots with his maverick alter-ego Candidate Q, the series of artworks collaged from villains, comic superheroes and kitsch advertising ephemera tells the terrifying story of MAGA and Trump's second coming. If you're quick, and not too far from the capital, there are a couple of days left to catch a remarkable exhibition titled Rebirth of a Nation. The venue is Dray Walk, off Brick Lane, London E1, but the stark and witty imagery has migrated to the surrounding streets and alleyways. Turnbull created the first of his Rebirth of a Nation series in 2022, when most reasonable folk all thought the US bare-faced liar-in-chief was finished. Alas, his diet of division and disruption is very much back on the menu. One of Dr D's hand-stencilled 'Dogs Dump for Trump' posters, which raise funds for the Red Cross Profit-Driven Pricks (2025) by Frank Riot Ben Turnbull Candidate Q's Rebirth of a Nation Political poster graffiti featuring King Charles, Trump, Musk, Zelensky, Erdoğan, Farage, JD Vance, Kim Jong Un, Putin and Xi Jinping on Brick Lane, London Photos: Matthew Chattle/Future Publishing/Getty; Adrian Burnham Featuring Capitol rioter and 'QAnon shaman' Jacob Chansley in horned headdress, furs and face paint superimposed on a 1970s film poster for Alan J Pakula's political thriller The Parallax View, this work proved to be a rumination on conspiracy culture and prescient harbinger of the ultimate resurgence of alt-right populism in America and, it would seem, across the world. The brilliant visual activist powerhouse that is @grow_up_art_ are also directing their critical ire towards a veritable rogues' gallery of dangerous right wing dingbats: Trump, Vance, Farage, Musk, Netanyahu and Putin all appeared on the streets in their finest Nazi uniforms and regalia. When these bold, graphic black and white posters went up, crowds flocked around to share the carnivalesque atmosphere, thoroughly enjoying a 2D public pillorying of six self-righteous, self-serving and minacious manchildren, aka The Turd Reich. Another cheeky scatological intervention has seen Grow Up liberate ad spaces on tube trains and replace them with a nod to Tarantino's film Inglourious Basterds, except this time the coterie of undesirables materialised under the strapline Inglørious Badturds. Meanwhile poster art by a group calling themselves @everyonehateselon has been going up across the country. Their crowdfunded initiative is on a mission primarily concerned with 'pissing off Elon Musk, one small action at a time.' Their posters of Musk, caught mid sieg heil, pithily remark 'X Marks The Rot' and 'Delete Your Account'. After Trump parked one of Musk's Teslas on the White House lawn, ads mysteriously appeared in bus stop display sites declaring, 'Tesla, The Swasticar Now With White Power Steering'. A series of anti-Elon Musk posters that have appeared around London and the South East. Photos: Krisztian Elek/SOPA Images/LightRocket; Leon Neal/Getty; Adrian Burnham Dr D, the subvertiser extraordinaire, is offering up one of his subtly blunt word plays in the form of faux newspaper headline posters that read 'Tesla Tanks In Europe'. It's a terse reminder, if Musk needed one, that so far this year the Tesla stock's epic plunge has wiped out $650bn of the company's market value and cost the tech oligarch $140bn. Dr D's hand-stencilled 'Dogs Dump For Trump' posters are also raising money for the Red Cross. Finally, no less affronted by tech billionaires' excesses, the artist and campaigning activist Frank Riot's poster titled Profit-Driven Pricks is, however, a poo-free and altogether more poetic offering. Encountered in the wild, Riot's plangent black text set against a golden background, invites passers-by to stop, to take stock of our precious world, to think a while. And act somehow, anyhow, to try to counter all the megalomaniacs seeking to 'shamelessly carve this garden of Eden into a fiery graveyard.' Adrian Burnham writes and lectures about art and urban culture
New York Times
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Severance' Asks: What if We're Not Paranoid Enough?
As the second season of 'Severance,' the lavishly surreal series on Apple TV+, comes to an end, faithful viewers may be left with an unshakable unease. The show is about many things — work, grief, elaborate cut-fruit buffets — but this season proved especially interested in the unsettling notion that you can never truly know the people you love the best and trust the most and that some of them may actually mean you harm. Now is a time of great paranoia, and an ambient feeling of distrust is being manifested in the streets, at the polls and on our screens. Spy films and secret-identity thrillers have long been genre staples, but the recent crop, including 'Severance,' is conspicuously concerned with a particular anxiety: the creeping fear that you can never truly know anyone, possibly including yourself. 'Severance' follows a quartet of employees at a mysterious company who've had their consciousness split into two identities: innies, the people they are at work, and outies, the people they are everywhere else. If its first season was an extended, absurdist riff on the notion of work-life balance — the outies carried on obliviously while their innies were consigned to a fluorescently lit, purgatorial office — the second season expanded the show's concerns to explore the ways in which people often aren't who they seem or profess to be. Some innies were covert outies, while some outies were at war with their innies. In one story line, a woman cheated on her husband with his innie. One of the season's great reveals — spoiler alert if you haven't yet watched the whole thing — involved the emotional fallout when the main character, Mark S., realized he'd had an intimate encounter with a woman he thought was his office romance but was, in fact, the malevolent future head of the company. (Thanks to the mechanics of the show, those two people inhabit the same body.) All this reflects our national dilemma, in which we're experiencing our own kind of bifurcated daily reality. We seem fated to follow every election from now on by looking across the partisan divide and wondering: Who are you? And how could you? We don't trust each other. We don't even believe we know each other. Maybe you thought you knew your kindly next-door neighbors until one day they unfurled a MAGA flag on their front lawn. Or perhaps you thought you knew who President Trump was until he decided to gut the Department of Veterans Affairs or threaten to annex Canada. It's a destabilizing realization — that people who once thought they were involved in a common project, informed by common ideals, are living in different realities. And there don't seem to be any ready political remedies. While we muddle through, there's a fascination and perhaps even a comfort in seeing these anxieties reflected in the fun house mirror of our entertainment. The 1970s were a similarly fertile period for paranoid thrillers, with movies like 'The Parallax View,' 'The Conversation' and 'Three Days of the Condor' (recently remade as the limited series 'Condor'). But those films pointed to the apprehensions of a different age, telling tales of vast, complicated conspiracies that played out at the highest levels of power — perhaps not surprising, given the real-life revelations of vast, complex conspiracies, whether Watergate or the efforts to cover up clandestine military actions in Cambodia. In our mutually mistrustful moment, the enemy is not — or at least not only — a vast unseen conspiracy; it's our office colleague, our neighbor, our spouse. In 'Black Bag,' a new espionage film starring Michael Fassbender, a spy suspects that there's a turncoat in the ranks and that it may be his beloved wife. In 'The Agency,' an espionage series also starring Mr. Fassbender (a master of bloodless opacity), a C.I.A. operative becomes chillingly expert at ensuring that no one close to him knows who he truly is. 'Black Doves' delivers Keira Knightley as the seemingly benign wife of a government minister who has lethal weapons hidden in her clothes drawer and a lethal vocation hidden in her past. On 'Special Ops: Lioness,' an operative goes undercover to become the best friend of (then falls in love with) the daughter of the person she must kill. The recent readaptation 'Ripley' and the reboot of 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' reimagined their stories as parables about the perils of opening up to those closest to you — a mistake that can leave you distrustful, despondent or dead. Perhaps we've become too culturally cynical to be titillated by whispers of official malfeasance in the halls of power (that familiar cry that the conspiracy goes 'all the way to the top!') given we're busy screaming that idea at one another online. Or maybe we've been numbed to vast conspiracies by the sheer abundance of theories on offer — Kate Middleton's body double, microchips in vaccines and the truth about the mysterious death of Jeffrey Epstein. Lacking a shared public reality, we've started to doubt our private ones. The McCarthyite Communist scare of the 1950s was another time when paranoid thrillers turned their eyes on our fellow citizens — an era whose vibe, notably, is once again rearing its head. On the political stage, that era ended only when national figures stood up and decried Joseph McCarthy's efforts to wield cultural distrust to political ends. On 'Severance,' reintegration is the painful but necessary process by which people restore their split personalities into one functioning consciousness. Such a resolution, no matter how painful or how necessary, is hard to envision for us in real life. For now, we're left to eye one another suspiciously while we enjoy our weekend viewing and worry that, until now, maybe we haven't been paranoid enough.
New European
22-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New European
Matthew d'Ancona's culture: Zero Day, a loving homage to 1970s espionage classics
In his first regular television role, Robert De Niro plays former US president George Mullen, called back to head an emergency government commission after the American internet is turned off for a full minute – causing thousands of fatalities. A message flashes on the screen of every phone, warning that 'this will happen again'. Who is behind the cyberattack? Naturally, the generals think it's the Kremlin (this is not Donald Trump's America – the Russians are still the bad guys in Netflixland) and want President Evelyn Mitchell (Angela Bassett) to authorise a retaliatory strike. But what if it's home-grown terrorists? And what exactly is CIA director Lasch (Bill Camp) up to? Jesse Plemons plays Mullen's former sidekick Roger Carlson, who may not be all he seems. To complicate matters further, his daughter Alexandra (Lizzy Caplan) is a congresswoman, appointed to the committee that oversees her father's investigatory commission – notionally to ensure that it does not abuse its far-reaching emergency powers. Though the ex-president is trusted implicitly by the American people, he too has a secret that seriously imperils his capacity to do the job – but I won't spoil that. Suffice to say that De Niro gets to use his full range of facial expressions, from dangerously irritated to somewhat confused. Zero Day is as much a loving homage to 1970s espionage classics such as The Parallax View (1974) and Three Days of the Condor (1975) as it is a pacey riff on hypermodern cyberwarfare. Extremely entertaining. I'm Still Here (selected cinemas) The cunning of tyranny is to be absent – or apparently so – from everyday life for much of the time. In 1970, Eunice and Rubens Paiva live with their five children by Leblon Beach in Rio de Janeiro, soaking up the sun, playing volleyball, hosting parties for their friends, cheerfully busy with a boisterous family life. At the borders of his happy tableau, however, is the darkness of Brazil's military dictatorship. When a group of heavies in plain clothes – army? police? – arrives to arrest Rubens (Selton Mello), a former congressman recently returned from political exile, there is no violence or uproar, and Eunice (Fernanda Torres) asks if they have had anything for lunch. Soon after, Eunice and Eliana (Luiza Kosovski), her second oldest child, are also taken into custody: hooded in the car so they cannot see where they are going. Day after day, Eunice is held without explanation in a grubby cell, and shown photographs of suspected militants by her interrogators. When she and Eliana are released, but Rubens is not, she grasps immediately that her role in life has been transformed utterly and that she must not only seek justice for her husband but hold her family together in desperate circumstances. Torres gives a stunning performance as a woman who is consumed by dread but must marshal all her energies and remain stoic for the sake of her children and her own sanity. Based on a 2015 memoir by the Paivas' son Marcelo – played here as a boy by Guilherme Silveira – Walter Salles's enthralling movie is much more than a pointed exploration of autocracy and its machinations (though it is certainly that). I'm Still Here is also a profoundly personal account of the ways in which ordinary people respond to the traumatic intrusions of history and fight to protect those they love. Torres would be a worthy winner of the Best Actress Oscar for which she has been nominated. A must see. Richard II (Bridge Theatre, London, booking until May 10) Shakespeare's meditation on the divine right of kings and its abuse is one of the most cerebral of the history plays: in the words of the literary scholar Jonathan Bate, 'an extraordinary study in what happens to a king after he has abdicated one of his bodies [the political, as opposed to the natural]'. Though best known as Anthony in Bridgerton , Jonathan Bailey is a seasoned stage actor and brings class and imagination to the lead role in Nicholas Hytner's sharply observed and kinetic production. Snorting coke and lolling on John of Gaunt's deathbed, his Richard is an archly capricious figure – making his moments of reflection all the more powerful. He head-butts a mirror, dramatizing the fragmentation of his soul. Also excellent is Royce Pierreson as Henry Bullingbrook, Duke of Hereford, oscillating between fierce ambition and conflicted self-awareness. Even as the crown is offered to him, he hesitates just long enough to signal his recognition that the rewards of usurpation are ambiguous. Hytner never lets us forget that – for all the characters' cogitation upon the nature of kingship, law and nationhood – this is a drama about raw power: when Richard takes refuge on the balcony, a heavy field gun is rolled out and aimed at him. Grant Olding's music would not be out of place in a thriller. After the long and triumphant run of Guys & Dolls , the Bridge remains the best theatre in town, A Thousand Blows (Paramount+) London, the 1880s: Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) and Alec Munroe (Francis Lovehall) arrive from Kingston, Jamaica, eager to make their fortunes. Hezekiah aspires to be a lion tamer but is soon plunged into the world of bare-knuckle fighting at the infamous Blue Coat Boy pub in Wapping. William 'Punch' Lewis (Daniel Mays) may be the landlord and master of ceremonies, but this boozer is definitely the realm of the Goodson brothers: Treacle (James Nelson-Joyce) and Sugar (Stephen Graham, whose physique has been transformed for his pugilistic role). Hezekiah's talent in the ring is an intolerable provocation for Sugar: 'It's like looking in a mirror – and there can't be two of us'. The pub is also a gathering point for the all-female gang of thieves, the Forty Elephants – headed by Mary Carr (the fantastic Erin Doherty). Though she has been close to Sugar since her days in the workhouse, Mary has her sights set on cracking the opportunities presented by the new 'Queensberry rules' fights at the West London Boxing Club promoted by the Earl of Lonsdale (Adam Nagaitis). She is also planning a daring heist, as a grand Chinese delegation arrives in the city. As one would expect from Steven Knight, the creator of Peaky Blinders , A Thousand Blows bristles with authentic period detail and boasts historians David Olusoga and Hallie Rubenhold as consultants. It also strikes a deft balance between brutal action in the ring and the complex emotions that crackle between the principal characters. The first six episodes are terrific, with the promise of more to come. Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy by Jonathan Rauch (Yale University Press) For anyone interested in the intersections of culture, politics and belief, the publication of a new book by Jonathan Rauch is always something to be savoured. As long ago as 1993, in Kindly Inquisitors , he warned of the soft authoritarianism that would go on to grip so many liberal institutions under the banner of 'social justice'. In The Constitution of Knowledge (2021), he provided a definitive account of 'cancel culture' and what distinguishes it from legitimate criticism. Now, the Brookings Institution scholar trains his sight on Christianity's role in American society: a choice of subject that is all the more intriguing as he is Jewish and an atheist. In Rauch's account, the founding fathers, and especially James Madison, believed that the constitution would only thrive in a context of flourishing civic republicanism: a cultural setting that was both pluralist and religious in character. Now, he continues, the role of religion as 'a load-bearing wall' has been undermined by the rise of what he calls 'Sharp Christianity' – 'a divisive, fearful, partisan, and un-Christlike version of Christianity with dangerously illiberal implications'. This evangelical nationalism is, of course, intimately entangled with the return of Donald Trump, who, since surviving two assassination attempts, has explicitly presented himself as divinely chosen to govern. 'I did not appreciate the implicit bargain between American democracy and American Christianity,' Rauch writes of his long commitment to secularism – calling upon believers to restore the tolerant, forgiving and gentler version of their faith. Unexpectedly, he finds much to admire in the adaptations to the needs of modern liberal democracy made by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Intrinsically fascinating in its analysis of the most powerful nation on earth, Rauch's concise book also has lessons for other societies where religion is less dominant in political life. In the modern digital Babel, as trust in traditional institutions plummets, everyone is seeking meaning, and will find it somewhere: in conspiracy theories, wokeness, SoulCycle, nativism, New Age cults and all the other tribes that offer some sort of navigation system. That alone should be enough to focus the reader's mind.
