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Monday
An aspect of ICE’s deadly performance in Minneapolis that goes hand-in-hand with its mission to intimidate is the absolutely farcical tone of the ICE aesthetic. Broadway numbers like Springtime for Hitler in The Producers and, more recently, Das Übermensch in Operation Mincemeat, a showstopper performed with a German techno beat and Nazi boyband – “Third Reich on the mic” – vocals, present fascism as an essentially camp enterprise and we’re reminded this week that ICE fits the mould entirely.
It’s always about the costumes, isn’t it? Here’s border patrol chief, Greg Bovino, swishing around Minnesota in his long, green trenchcoat – as Gavin Newsom, the governor of California put it, “as if he literally went on eBay and purchased SS garb” – while rank and file ICE agents were described by Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s attorney general, as prancing about in “full battle rattle”. The vests, the fatigues, the goggles; I swear most of these goons are only in it for the accessories and an opportunity to admire themselves and each other under cover of rugged co-combatant team spirit. Meanwhile, as Lydia Polgreen pointed out in the New York Times, their sheer incompetence adds a darkly slapstick layer to events via videos of, for example, large men dressed for war slipping on ice and going “ass over teakettle”.
If you laugh in their faces you run the risk of being shot, but there’s nothing to stop it going on behind their backs. If I were an editor in New York I would send someone to Broadway to report on how recent events are affecting audiences at Operation Mincemeat – specifically, how they react to a line that passed unremarked in the London West End production, but has been stopping the show in the US: “If people like us just blindly follow orders, the fascists won’t need to bash the door down. They’ll have already won.” Friends who saw the show two weeks ago reported that the performance ground to a halt at this line as the entire theatre rose to its feet, screaming and clapping. One can only imagine how long the interruption is now.
Tuesday
Just when you think the world can’t get any more disappointing, here’s Nicki Minaj on stage with Donald Trump, supporting him at an event in Washington DC and declaring herself “probably the president’s number one fan”.
Well, this a blow from the artist who gave us the lyric: “My anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns, hun.” Although it does, of course, usher her into the long, tawdry tradition of When Good Cultural Icons Go Bad. From Kanye to Roseanne and the enduring disappointment of David Mamet, whose swing to the right was a particularly bitter pill given he wrote the greatest line in stage history (“coffee is for closers,” from Glengarry Glen Ross). Still, if we got over the loss of Kelsey Grammer, we can get over Minaj.
Thank God for lovely Deacon Blue, who, while on tour in Australia this week, were informed that Reform UK’s “first Scottish leader”, Malcolm Offord, had approvingly referenced their 1987 hit Dignity while making a speech in Glasgow. The Scottish band promptly issued the statement: “It appals us to see the lyrics of any of our songs being used to bolster a campaign and ideology which is completely at odds with what the song, and we as a band, believe.”
A bit crushing for Offord, one imagines, who said he liked the song “for the message of working hard and saving up to make your dreams come true”, but was hazier about how, under a Reform government, a dinghy called Dignity sailing up the west coast would probably be stopped and turned back by UK border patrol.
Wednesday
For some light relief from world events I just finished reading Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, by Caroline Fraser. The brilliant, fascinating, genre-defining book was published last year and posits that lead poisoning in the Pacific north-west caused the huge spike in serial killers in that region in the 1970s. It sounds bizarre, but Fraser is completely convincing and it’s beautifully written to boot. After the book, I turned to what feels like a companion piece, David Fincher’s Mindhunter on Netflix, which covers the same ground from the perspective of the FBI’s first serial killer profiling unit. (And, fun fact, it features Anna Torv, an actor I love who also happens to be Rupert Murdoch’s niece).
The only downside to all this American grimness – 496 pages of murder followed by two seasons of more murder – is trying to readjust to daily life. I went down to my bin room this week to throw out the recycling and had to focus very hard on not picturing Ted Bundy, back from the dead and naturally hiding behind my bins, poised to jump out and get me.
Thursday
To the Australian Open, where the first week was dominated by Naomi Osaka’s Edwardian jellyfish outfit and the second has been all Coco Gauff’s. The 21-year-old American and world No 3 was knocked out of the quarter-finals by the 31-year-old Ukrainian Elina Svitolina – a stunning upset, but not the main story from Melbourne.
Backstage after the match, Gauff was caught on camera unawares as she repeatedly smashed her racket into the ground, trashing it with the methodical rhythm of someone hammering a nail into the floor. The fact it was 44C in Melbourne probably didn’t help her mood, and at the press conference afterwards she explained calmly that it was better for her to release her frustration in private – as she believed herself to have done – than courtside in front of young fans. In fact, Gauff’s actions strike me as the inadvertent provision of a public service. For anyone over-invested in the news cycle, watching the racket smash on repeat may prove cathartic.
Friday
If the Golden Globes two weeks ago were mostly bleached of politics, Sundance this week made up some of the shortfall with “ICE Out” badges being worn by famous attenders, including Natalie Portman, Olivia Wilde and Zoey Deutch. A more useful list of names, perhaps, is that of the people who attended the other big-screen event of the week: the launch of Amazon’s Melania documentary at the White House. While Minneapolis burned, these people showed up to support Donald Trump: Eric Yuan, the head of Zoom, Lynn Martin, the president of the New York Stock Exchange, and Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple. Maybe wait a beat before upgrading your iPhone.
