Fidos and Fraud
(Illustration by Nathan Graber-Lipperman)
So much to watch, so little time. Jake Graber-Lipperman writes a bi-weekly newsletter with his takes on what’s streaming. To read his last letter on Avatar: The Last Airbender, click here.
As a man of high culture and the resident culture sommelier on my little brother’s internet website, I recognize my duty to share with you the culture I’ve been consuming so that one day you too can become as high-cultured as me. Welcome to this edition of MacGuffins and White Russians!
Tear-Jerking Culture
I just got a pandemic/stimulus pup, so I saw it fit to revisit Marley and Me (available to rent on all streaming services), the second-saddest film in movie history. The first? Obviously Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Arnold was the only father figure young John Connor ever had in his life! And just before he sacrifices himself to save John, Arnold utters the famous words, “I know now why you cry, but it is something I could never do.” The robot learned to feel human emotion because of the love for his adopted son. That’s heart-wrenching. Powerful stuff, man.
Like T2 before it, Marley and Me is another unconventional family story about the worst dog in the world making every moment of columnist John Grogan’s adult life memorable. Hoping to surprise his wife Jenny for her birthday, John lets her pick out the perfect pup among a basket full of adorable labrador puppies. Jenny, altogether unaware that you never go for the clearance puppy (the exact strategy I followed when choosing my puppy), picks the cheapest one of the bunch. And so begins a beautiful trip through the most trying years of adult life and parenthood for John and Jenny, played by a delightful pair of Owen Wilson and Jen Aniston. Wow, what star power!
Now that right there is a cute doggo (20th Century Fox)
In some ways, Marley and Me functions as the unpretentious Boyhood. The film makes no attempt to mask Wilson or Aniston’s lack of aging, yet it shows their progression through thirteen years of their lives as their family grows bigger and bigger in moving fashion. You’ll laugh as Marley refuses to submit to the world’s meanest dog trainer. You’ll cry as Jenny struggles to get pregnant. You’ll think about starting a family as the Grogan’s beautiful children come into the world. And believe me, you’ll cry for the last twenty minutes of this movie. Marley and Me doesn’t hold back--seriously, my parents let me watch this as a kid? I don’t want to spoil the movie, but I also feel like the ending to Marley and Me is one of the worst-kept secrets of the cultural zeitgeist. I’ll just let you know it’s a rough experience for the unprepared viewer.
I didn’t really remember Marley and Me from way back when, but for someone about to bring my first pup into the world, I felt like I saw his whole life flash in front of me. And as someone only beginning my adult life, the all too real struggles John and Jenny experience as clueless adults hit me in an unexpectedly profound way. From bills to careers to kids to moves, and one terrible dog, their journey into parenthood seemed closer to me than ever. Likewise, Marley and Me worked for me at this moment in my life more than it ever did for my kid self.
If you know movies make you cry, I might recommend you stay away, but this is one of those delightful yet difficult films that will ring true for most audiences. For added fun, drink every time Owen Wilson says “Wow!” or speaks in the third-person (he’s always like “I’m John freaking Grogan!” for some reason). That’s the only way I imagine you can be more of a mess than I was by the end of Marley and Me.
Under-the-Radar Culture
I tend to play by the rules - it’s probably one of my defining personality traits. When I’m feeling extra unruly, I love watching true crime shows and movies as a way to live vicariously through people who care a lot less about “living in a society.” HBO’s newest feature film perfectly scratched my itch. Bad Education tells the story of the multi-million dollar embezzlement of school funds by administrators in Rosslyn, New York in the early 2000’s. For a crime film, this is a pretty tame crime; Rosslyn Public Schools Superintendent, Frank Tassone, is no Jordan Belfort. Sure, Tassone, played by the charisma-oozing Hugh Jackman, likes a nice suit and a face-lift or two. And his right-hand woman Pam Gluckin, played by a remarkable Allison Janney, has a house or two in the Hamptons. But these are normal upstanding citizens, highly visible in the community and beloved around town.
That’s what makes Bad Education so fascinating. Crime and corruption in America doesn’t look like mob movies or The Wolf of Wall Street. Greed and grift happen behind the scenes. Theft happens all the time by way of inflated budgets, disappeared funds for hurricane-devastated states, and preferentially-distributed medical supplies. American crime is boring (I should know! I work in proving fraud in financial markets and products for a living).
Jackman and Janney really are a wombo-combo (HBO)
Bad Education likewise never tries to be an exciting film. It’s slow. No mention of the embezzlement occurs until the half-hour mark. The plot and those involved unravel slowly: not by way of dramatic reveal, but rather resigned acceptance. Instead of showing off the spoils of the criminals’ excess, the film chooses to establish the PTA-induced hell of administering schools in affluent areas. You feel sympathy for Tassone and Gluckin, slaves to rich parents demanding high achievement not for the benefit of the students, but to drive up neighborhood real estate prices. You even realize how easy it would be to put your hand in the cookie jar if you were living off of administrator wages.
But we know white-collar crime is still amoral and cruel, even if our predetermined prejudices don’t allow us to see these people as the same monsters we might consider drug dealers and gang members. Just like the student journalist in the film who uncovers the embezzlement learns, it’s hard to make people care about crimes that make boring headlines. It’s even harder to make people care about crimes committed by white people. In today’s day and age, where politicians grift a little bit here and there from insider trading, foreign real-estate deals, and conveniently-located downtown hotels, this is the crime that we hear and forget to care about.
Bad Education shows us the mundane side of Trump’s America that all the media stunts divert our attention from. Bad Education sells us The American Ethos.
Did I miss out on any must-watch culture you’ve been consuming? As a man of high culture, I find it unlikely, but not impossible. Join in on the conversation with our community here!