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Page 2 December 6, 2018
Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces by
Michael Chabon
Reviewed by Kristina Kora-Beckman,
Librarian, El Segundo Public Library
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and father of
four Michael Chabon’s latest, Pops: Fatherhood
in Pieces, is a collection of essays about
the complexities of fatherhood. Central to the
short collection is a story Chabon wrote for GQ
magazine about accompanying his adolescent
son Abe to Paris Men’s Fashion Week in 2016.
Abe is in his element, thoroughly enjoying all
the shows have to offer while his “minder”
(Chabon) literally and figuratively trails behind
attempting to make sense of the spectacle and
how best to support his young charge.
In the collection, Chabon explores his own
complicated relationship with his father and
how it affects his parenting decisions. He also
muses about the effect raising children has on
a writing career and benefits and sacrifices he
personally experienced as a result. I appreciated
Chabon’s humor, insights and vulnerability as
he discusses the challenges of raising independent,
confident, caring children who can
freely explore their individual passions.
To check out Pops, or browse more titles by
Chabon, please visit the library to apply for your
free library card. For more parenting contemplations
and advice, stop by our 306 non-fiction
section. Not sure where that is? Come see us at
the Information desk and we’d be happy to show
you or help you find titles on other topics! •
Film Review
Vox Lux: Pop Goes the World
By Ryan Rojas
for www.cinemacy.com
Listening to pop songs brings about a
rush of feel-good happiness to listeners,
but when thinking of it as an engineered
product of an industry, it might also be
seen as a highly-concentrated construction
of fantasy for consumers to buy into for
momentary escape.
This relationship between the artificiality
of pop music and the culture that empowers
it, is what director Brady Corbet explores
in his new movie Vox Lux -- a fictional portrait
of a pop star set in modern America. With
bold and unflinching storytelling, as well as
mesmerizing visuals and performances, Vox
Lux is one of the most powerful films I’ve
seen this year.
Vox Lux is a portrait of the rise of a pop
star, but that’s largely just the story that allows
the movie to act as a mirror of this 21st
century America where entertainment,
image and pop culture hold all value. Vox
Lux has a storybook-like quality, where
meta elements such as its three chapter
structure and omniscient narration by Willem
Dafoe give it lyrical quality. However, that also
includes its significantly darker tone (which
audiences should brace themselves for as seen
in the film’s opening sequences). Our future
pop star – young Celeste (Raffey Cassidy) –
is born from darkness. After being the sole
survivor of a horrific and deadly rampage, the
soft-spoken New Jersey native is thrust into
the national spotlight as the face of a nation’s
sorrow and strength. Poised and collected,
we see that Celeste not only has words of
honest strength to share, but music in her
heart as well. An original song co-written
by her sister Eleanor (Stacy Martin) soon
becomes a national anthem to a grieving
and shaken country. With the guidance of a
new manager (Jude Law), Celeste and her
sister are introduced to a whole new world
of entertainment and all that it brings.
We see young Celeste go through the
ropes – recording in the studio, dealing with
her publicist (Jennifer Ehle), and further
entrenching herself in the debauchery of the
industry, but it’s when Vox Lux jumps years
ahead that we find present-day Celeste
(Natalie Portman). Now she is no longer a
novice of the pop music machine, but
its biggest superstar. And although years
have passed, the film plants us back into
now on the day of another horrific rampage,
sending a tour-bound Celeste back into
national headlines through comments
to reporters (Christopher Abbott). We’ve
seen Portman embrace against-type roles
before, including her Best Actress awardwinning
performance in Black Swan, but
in Vox Lux she is a full-on diva playing every
bit the self-obsessed celebrity who is manic
in ego and as drug-dependent as one can
imagine. It’s a terrific performance that sees
Portman play the full range of pop star and
should be remembered this awards season.
Audiences should be warned beforehand
that Vox Lux depicts horrific events in vivid
detail. Rampages with firearms are shocking,
but only serve to show what it is that pop
music tries to do – which is what young
Celeste wisely notes: “I make pop music to
make people feel good.”
110 min. Vox Lux is rated R for language,
some strong violence, and drug content.
Opening this Friday at ArcLight Hollywood
and AMC Century City. •
Entertainment
Check It Out
Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces by Michael Chabon. Courtesy of NEON.
Ryan Rojas.
Kristina Kora-Beckman.
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