Latest news with #absurdism
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Julio Torres: Color Theories review – prismatic brilliance from comedy's most vibrant absurdist
Fans of the former Saturday Night Live writer Julio Torres know him to be the current torchbearer of Izzardian absurdism. Whether on television (Los Espookys, Fantasmas), in cinema (Problemista) or in his children's book about an aspirational toilet plunger (I Want to Be a Vase), his is a world where inanimate objects are sentient and diversity thrives in defiance of the corporate. In Color Theories, the charismatic Salvadoran American comic reveals another string to his bow: 'I'm sent all over the world to find colours,' he confides, daring us to doubt him. Like his previous show, My Favourite Shapes, this is an hour of sit-down comedy aided by an overhead camera which relays Torres's theories – illustrated with crayon squiggles – on to a screen behind him. Sporting a copper-coloured pixie cut and a pair of pink feather antlers, Torres himself resembles a child's doodle. His inquisitive mind produces interconnected ideas about Catholicism, the blandness of Pixar and what orange sounds like, while his insights train us to spot 'highly purple behaviour'. His casual millennial delivery, peppered with 'um's and 'ah's, makes surreal concepts sound like items on a brunch menu. Avoiding standard associations (such as green for envy) or obvious jibes (there is no mention of the US president's orange hue), Torres uses colour to explain everything from tax avoidance to superhero vigilantism – his sage advice to Batman made that bit funnier by addressing him as 'hun'. The anticapitalist, nonconformist philosophy that runs through all of Torres's work is present, and deftly integrated. Weak material, such as underdeveloped observations on the animal kingdom, is in the minority. Phrasing, as ever, is immaculate: Torres defines words as 'the jobs that letters are hired to do'. Though he may have failed so far in his colour-scouting mission (he hasn't yet found a new one, he admits), this hour leaves you tickled pink. At Soho theatre, London, until 16 August.
New York Times
04-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
The Pointless Triumph of a Hapless President
When the history of Donald Trump's remarkable political career is written, we should all hope, if only for the sake of American literature, that the task falls to someone like the historian G.M. Trevelyan, who believed that the 'dignity' of his chosen profession need not be 'afraid of contact with the comic spirit.' I am praying for the appearance of this masterpiece in my lifetime, but my guess is that before too long, grave chroniclers will be neglecting all the absurdist Trumpian set pieces — his firing of his secretary of state Rex Tillerson via Twitter; his dogged insistence, despite official forecasts, that Hurricane Dorian might hit Alabama, prompting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to issue a statement supporting his view; Rudy Giuliani's accusations of voter fraud in the 2020 election, delivered in the parking lot of Four Seasons Total Landscaping — in favor of earnest analysis of the economic impact of withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement. We have been advised to take Mr. Trump, if not literally, then at least seriously. I do not think we should extend him even that courtesy. We should see him not as a Caesarean figure set upon remaking the United States in his own image or an ideologue who has attempted to impose a coherent philosophical vision on our unruly public life, but as a somewhat hapless, distracted character, equally beholden to vast structural forces and to the limitations of his own personality. The only thing more remarkable than the rhetorical élan with which Mr. Trump has laid out a revolutionary new agenda for the Republican Party — realist in foreign policy, populist and protectionist in economics, moderate on social issues — is his gross unsuitability for any task more consequential than the lowering of marginal tax rates. On issues ranging from military intervention to health care to the stock market, Mr. Trump is simply the continuation of the G.O.P. establishment by other means. If Barry Goldwater was the book and Ronald Reagan the movie, Mr. Trump is the glitzy jukebox musical. This understanding of Mr. Trump's political career is, among other things, the best way to make sense of his recent decision to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. His dovish admirers reacted with shock, interpreting the move as a betrayal of noninterventionist principles. Republican hawks told themselves that like George W. Bush, with his abandoned vow to avoid nation-building, Mr. Trump had simply evolved. Both sides assumed far too much ideological intent. His decision is best understood not as a betrayal of principle or the result of a deliberative process of coming around to his opponents' view, but rather as an expression of his desire to accomplish something — anything. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
