Tag: Julia Baker

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Never Seen It: Watching Parasite with Memphis Flyer Writer Julia Baker

Cho Yeo-jeong and Song Kang-ho in Parasite.

My mission as a film critic is to get people to watch more and better movies. For the Never Seen It column, I watch a classic film with an interesting Memphian who missed it the first time around. Julia Baker is the person who runs the We Recommend section here at the Memphis Flyer. She was so busy recommending stuff to the Bluff City, she missed Bong June Ho’s Palme d’Or and Best Picture winner. From quarantine in our respective homes, we watched Parasite together.

Before Parasite

Chris McCoy: Tell me what you know about Parasite.

Julia Baker: Before you came to me about watching this with you, I didn’t know much. I knew it was a Korean film, and that it did really well last year. It won a bunch of awards and everybody was talking about it. But for some reason, maybe because of the name, I thought it was a horror movie. Like, up until like a few minutes ago. When I read the description online, I found out that it’s, I guess, a comedy plus a thriller.

CM: I think it’s all of those things.

JB: Okay, so I wasn’t too far off.

CM: Anyway, just open your mind, because it’s weird.

JB: Okay

Nothing can wrong at this beautiful birthday party!

132 minutes later…

Chris McCoy: You, Julia Baker, are now a person who’s seen Parasite. What did you think?

Julia Baker: I had this realization, kind of in the plateau, where the man who’s been living in the basement was chasing the son, and the son didn’t think to pull off the neck wire. It kind of reminded me of a Korean version of Knives Out, with how ridiculous it was.

CM: I can see that. I hadn’t really thought of it in in those kind of terms. But the plot’s all twisty, and everybody’s out to get everybody.

JB: It was called Parasite, not only because the poor family members conning them were parasites, but also the man living in the basement and his wife, the old housekeeper, they were parasites, too. They were kind of feeding off that rich family.

CM: But then, also, the rich people are parasites as well. That’s the classic communist propaganda line — the rich are parasites on the working class. The rich people are feeding off of the misery of all the poor people.

JB: That sounds like a symbiotic relationship

Park So-dam and Choi Woo-shik search for free wifi in the bathroom of their basement apartment.

CM: Basically. I think the title has layers of meaning in it. Because you’re right, they’re all parasites. The guy in the basement is the parasite off of the rich family. But you know it also goes the other way around, too. Why is this guy so desperate that he has to live in the basement? Why does he think this is a good existence?

JB: Better than getting attacked by his creditors, I guess. Interesting. Then, right before everything went down, you see the landscape rock sinking in the water. I thought that was interesting. I’m guessing this was on purpose, but you know you see you notice that the guy in the basement is doing Morse code with the lights on the stairwell And then they [The Kim family] go back to their basement apartment, and their lights are flickering. I’d like to know if the lights actually say something.

CM: I noticed that this time too, because it’s a visual echo. It’s so striking And then the little boy signals his parents with light in that same room. You know, he shined a light at them when he’s outside in the teepee, and they’re inside watching him.

Never Seen It: Watching Parasite with Memphis Flyer Writer Julia Baker

CM: So, was it what you had expected?

JB: Um, no. Like I told you earlier, I just thought Parasite sounded like a horror movie. I was expecting some kind of parasitic monsters to coming crawling out of the basement. I definitely didn’t expect it to be kind of more on the thriller side, and kind of clever.

CM: Did it feel like a horror movie at any point to you?

JB: Yeah, when they have the the sex scene in front of the whole family. That was kind of horrific … When I think of horror, I think of ghosts and monsters and things like that. But in this movie, the people were the monsters.

CM: You know, when the kid sees the guy in the basement, he thinks he’s a ghost. I love that shot of the man just peeking the top of his head above the stairway. And I noticed this time that when she starts to tell the story, the birthday cake appears is in the room. There’s not a clear cut between, this is the present, and this is the flash-back. The past kind of creeps in. It’s not exactly uncomfortable to watch, but it’s like he’s always just on the border, making you feel not at ease.

JB: I guess he somehow knew when the when the husband came into the house and was walking up the stairwell, so he would turn the lights on for him?

CM: Yes, exactly. You assume it’s some sort of automatic system, but actually it’s just invisible labor. There’s this guy who’s taking it as his job to to greet the master of the house whenever he comes. He kind of worships Mister Park.

JB: Yeah, I know! He absolutely worships him!

The Kim family tries to eek out a living folding pizza boxes.

CM: How did it feel watching this movie in this particular moment?

JB: I didn’t think about it that way, but that that is an interesting way of looking at it. We’re not completely locked in like the main in the basement, but being in quarantine, we almost feel like that … locked in. We can go outside, and I guess he gets to go outside sometimes, too. But you know, it is kind of similar.

CM: I really felt that this time. The whole bit with the TB, how they get the old housekeeper fired by claiming she’s diseased, wow, that lands completely differently.

The Kim family yukking it up as they hijack the Park family home.

CM: So, did you like it?

JB: I did! I like it when movies can kind of incorporate comedy with a level of seriousness. And I feel like that’s kind of where movies are going these days. You can see it with the superhero films. They used to be so serious, and now they have humor in them. It just makes it more interesting.

CM: If a movie is all one emotion anymore, it really gets me down. I love a story that’s going to like have ups and downs, and filmmakers who have the ability to make you feel all kinds of different emotions. I think all too often, young filmmakers get really focused on, like, I’m going to have one emotion, and it’s going to be really intense through the whole thing. I think being able to modulate, to fine-tune your mood like Bong Joon Ho does in Parasite is the sign of a true master.

Jung Hyeon-jun as Park Da-song

JB: It kind of got you comfortable. I think probably three quarters of the movie was comedy. There’s a level of seriousness, but it was more comedy than anything. Then it got really serious. It kind of got your attention and got you laughing, then got you wrapped up in it. You got to understand all of the characters, where they were coming from. Although I kind of got to where I hated the rich family, Because the guy turned up his nose to the poor people, and it was all kinds of wrong to bring in the Native American thing. They’re just pretty much insensitive to everybody around them who’s not in their immediate family.

CM: And that’s what that’s what drives Mr. Kim over the edge at the end. He’s trying to save his daughter’s life, and the rich guy only wants his car keys.

JB: He’s disgusted by the smell of them, too.

CM: Would you recommend this movie to somebody?

JB: I would. Definitely.

Never Seen It: Watching Parasite with Memphis Flyer Writer Julia Baker (2)

Categories
News News Blog

The Flyer’s April 22nd Digital Issue

Here’s the story lineup for this week’s virtual issue. Enjoy! We’ll be back in print next week, April 29th. — BV

Letter From the Editor: Blue Skies From Now On — Bruce VanWyngarden

MEMernet: A Very Memphis Easter, a New Bar — Toby Sells

The Week That Was: Data, Abortion, and Domestic Violence — Maya Smith

The Fly-by: Displaced Actor Finds Work, Purpose Serving the Underserved — Toby Sells

Politics: Commission Gets $1.4 Billion Budget From Harris — Jackson Baker

Cover Story: Memphis Cultural Organizations Learning to Deal with the Pandemic — Jon Sparks & Chris McCoy

Steppin’ Out (Stayin’ In): Silky O’Sullivan’s Hosts Virtual Happy Hour — Julia Baker

Books: Corinne Manning’s We Had No Rules — Jesse Davis

Music: Chris Milam’s Meanwhile is a “Good Album for Quarantine” — Alex Greene

Food & Wine: The Rendezvous Adapts During Quarantine — Michael Donahue

Film: Oxford Film Fest Debuts Pioneering Online Format — Chris McCoy

Last Word: Coronavirus is a Dress Rehearsal for Global Warming — Alex Greene

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Rainy Night in Arkansas: Bill Clinton Helps Celebrate the Arkansas Gazette

It was a cold, rainy late-November night — not the kind of evening to tempt you out of doors and certainly not as far away as Little Rock, Arkansas. Not without good reason.

But I had several good reasons to brave the elements and the mileage. The occasion was a banquet celebrating the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Arkansas Gazette, my former newspaper, where I learned all kinds of things about journalism and in whose service I twice served jail time for declining to reveal confidential sources to a grand jury.

It was the newspaper that challenged local tradition and upheld the rule of law when a federal court, in 1957, ordered the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School. Governor Orval Faubus attempted to defy the court by ordering the state’s National Guard out to deny admission to the brave young men and women who came to be known as the “Little Rock Nine.” President Dwight Eisenhower responded to that by ordering in the 101st Airborne Division to enforce the court order.

This was well before my time with the paper, but the effects of that moment would endure. There had been passion, emotion, and conflict in abundance, as the old, segregated order was rent asunder and a new way of life came tentatively into being. And, from day one, the Gazette did its duty as the state’s daily newspaper, the same duty it had been doing since its founding in 1819 as the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi. It took a principled, unwavering stand for obedience to the law in the face of threats, boycotts, and organized hostility.

The Gazette would receive two Pulitzer Prizes for its efforts — one for public service, another for editorials. That was the high side of the thing. The other, more difficult side was that the newspaper earned the everlasting and unforgiving enmity of part of the population, the part that resented the break with the segregationist past.

In years to come, that fact would wear against the Gazette, especially when, in the late 1980s, the paper got into a fight-to-the-finish newspaper war with the Arkansas Democrat, Little Rock’s afternoon daily, which switched roles and became a morning paper in direct competition with the Gazette.

The Democrat won that war. Among other things, it had superior financial resources by virtue of its owners’ extensive holdings and was able to offer its classified ads (at the time the chief source of revenue for newspapers) free of charge. The end came in 1991, with the Democrat purchasing the name “Gazette,” along with other assets, and publishing from that point on as the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Fade to 2019, when the D-G‘s publisher, Walter Hussman, conceived the idea — both self-serving and gallant — of the commemorative banquet in honor of the Gazette‘s history. I wanted to contribute to and be a part of that alma mater moment. But there was more to it than that. Hussman’s project was a two-fer: He was staging this overdue moment of reconciliation, this consolidation of newspaper histories, as a prelude of sorts to his ambitious next project.

Faced with the same flattening of circulation and squeeze on advertising revenues that have afflicted print media everywhere — and shrunk their bottom line — Hussman had resolved on an innovative remedy all his own. Henceforth, only the Sunday edition of the Democrat-Gazette will appear as usual on stands throughout the state and in the homes of subscribers. On the other six days, the paper’s contents will be available online — and via the medium of iPads, one of which each subscriber will receive free of charge.

In other words, if you can’t beat the social-media model that is triumphant everywhere, absorb it. If you can’t beat it, then be it. Hussman’s model is designed to let the Democrat-Gazette do that and remain a newspaper, one for the new age. Explaining that wrinkle and imagining out loud the impact of it on the future of newspapering at large was a major aspect of  the evening, and — to get to another important motive for my being there —it was something I wanted my daughter Julia, who accompanied me, to be able to envision as well.

Julia is a journalist, too, having joined me two years back on the staff of Contemporary Media Inc. — which publishes the Flyer, Memphis magazine, and numerous other ventures. We share an office at CMI’s digs at the Cotton Exchange Building, and, as I said (without irony) when she assumed the role of staff writer a year or so back, I fully expect her at some point to become my boss.

Beyond that, I wanted Julia to have the opportunity to encounter for herself  the unique personality who would be keynote speaker at Thursday night’s banquet. That would be native Arkansan William Jefferson Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, and a man, I had assured her, whose phenomenal impact on people had to be experienced first-hand to be understood. Clinton’s presence for the occasion had been arranged by another pivotal figure for the evening, my old friend Ernie Dumas, the great former Gazette political writer and editorialist who would play a major role at the dais, and had been Hussman’s partner in arranging the event and the evening’s general synchrony.

Julia, as I had hoped, got to meet and speak with Clinton before we left, and, before that, we had all heard him deal publicly with the moment.

“Old-fashioned newspapers are important,” he said. “We are at risk today. Not just of losing our newspapers but of losing what we like to take for granted — or I have most of my life — which is that I might agree or disagree with the newspaper’s editorial policy.” Clinton spoke of his erstwhile habit, at the beginning of his political career, of sampling six newspapers each morning, each with a different slant on the news.

“It’s really important to understand that a movement toward authoritarianism all over the world today is driving us to the point where ordinary people may find it impossible to tell fact from fiction or truth from a bald-faced lie. If that happens,  then it will be impossible to sustain meaningful democratic governments.”

Of Hussman’s proposed solution, he said, “You can’t know if this is going to work, but it’s better than doing nothing. We need to be able to have discussions, even arguments with our neighbors based on a received set of facts. And we do know that knowing is better than not knowing.”

Well said and well received. Outside the elements were still raging, and each of us headed back to the security of home or mayhap a motel under the spread of new umbrellas given to us by the host, and of new ideas born of the evening and of the same old, same old everlasting hopes.