PRICE $8.99 NOV. 7, 2022
The Most Acclaimed
“A triumph of the
“
“
“A coming-of-age story that
“ The #1 New York Times-
“Damning both for the horrors bestselling memoir that has
also achieved pop-cultural
and the systemic failures
”phenomenon status.
”to which her story points.
“ ”Gut-wrenching, jaw-dropping
and hilarious.
NOVEMBER 7, 2022
4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN
15 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
Jeannie Suk Gersen on the affirmative-action cases;
Andrew Cuomo’s new podcast; King Gizzard on tour;
the manager in “The Bear”; the U.S. Goncourt Prize.
THE POLITICAL SCENE
Eliza Griswold 20 State of Denial
In Pennsylvania, democracy is on the ballot.
SHOUTS & MURMURS
Glenn Eichler 27 Thank You for Making the Trip
ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS
Margaret Talbot 28 California Dreamer
Weyes Blood’s apocalyptic soft rock.
A REPORTER AT LARGE
Rachel Aviv 34 A Reckoning
An Oscar-winning director’s intellectual-property scandal.
SKETCHBOOK
John P. Dessereau 47 “River of Runners”
ANNALS OF EDUCATION
Paige Williams 52 Class Warfare
How school boards have become political battlefields.
FICTION
T. Coraghessan Boyle 64 “Princess”
Malcolm Gladwell THE CRITICS
BOOKS
71 General Electric’s legendary C.E.O.
75 Briefly Noted
A CRITIC AT LARGE
Stephanie Burt 77 Can the multiverse keep expanding forever?
THE THEATRE
Vinson Cunningham 82 A portrait of Robert Moses in “Straight Line Crazy.”
ON TELEVISION
Inkoo Kang 84 “Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire.”
THE CURRENT CINEMA
Anthony Lane 86 “Armageddon Time,” “Bardo.”
POEMS
Edgar Kunz 41 “Piano”
Joyce Carol Oates 68 “The Wishbone”
Adrian Tomine COVER
“Fall Sweep”
DRAWINGS Johnny DiNapoli, Jason Adam Katzenstein, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Liana Finck, Victoria Roberts,
Amy Hwang, Sam Gross, Asher Perlman, Sara Lautman, Maggie Larson, Jeremy Nguyen, Frank Cotham,
Benjamin Schwartz, William Haefeli, Zachary Kanin, Roz Chast, Emily Flake, Gingle Pingle,
Michael J. Johnson, Joe Dator, Sophie Lucido Johnson and Sammi Skolmoski SPOTS Riccardo Vecchio
CONTRIBUTORS
Rachel Aviv (“A Reckoning,” p. 34), a Paige Williams (“Class Warfare,” p. 52)
staff writer, won the 2022 National is a staff writer and the author of “The
Magazine Award for profile writing. Dinosaur Artist,” which was named a
Her first book is “Strangers to Our- Times Notable Book of 2018.
selves: Unsettled Minds and the Sto-
ries That Make Us.” Adrian Tomine (Cover) is a cartoonist
and an illustrator. His most recent
T. Coraghessan Boyle (Fiction, p. 64) graphic novel is “The Loneliness of
recently published his twelfth collec- the Long-Distance Cartoonist.”
tion of short stories, “I Walk Between
the Raindrops.” His new novel, “Blue Eliza Griswold (“State of Denial,” p. 20),
Skies,” will come out in May. a contributing writer at the magazine,
received the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for
Margaret Talbot (“California Dreamer,” general nonfiction for “Amity and Pros-
p. 28) became a staff writer in 2004. perity.” She published “If Men, Then:
Her latest book, with David Talbot, is Poems” in 2020.
“By the Light of Burning Dreams.”
Edgar Kunz (Poem, p. 41) is the author
Malcolm Gladwell (Books, p. 71) has of two poetry collections, “Tap Out,”
been a staff writer since 1996. He is from 2019, and “Fixer,” out next year.
the host of the podcast “Revisionist
History.” Inkoo Kang (On Television, p. 84), a
staff writer, became a television critic
Jeannie Suk Gersen (Comment, p. 15), for The New Yorker in October.
a contributing writer to the magazine,
is a professor at Harvard Law School. Stephanie Burt (A Critic at Large, p. 77),
a professor at Harvard, co-hosts the
John P. Dessereau (Sketchbook, p. 47) is podcast “Team-Up Moves.” Her latest
an artist based in New York City. book of poems is “We Are Mermaids.”
ON NEWYORKER.COM
COMPLETE COVERAGE OF THE 2022 MIDTERMS MIGUEL PORLAN
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THE MAIL
OUR SHARED STORIES majority of orchestras in the U.S., most
of which are not full time and do not
I was surprised and delighted to read own their own performance venues.
Joan Acocella’s review of a new trans- For our ensemble, not only is there
lation of Alessandro Manzoni’s “The pride in our new home; being part of
Betrothed” (Books, October 17th). I the “tuning” process and having our
was born, raised, and educated in Italy; input sought out and respected have
eighteen years have passed since I stud- enhanced and deepened our commit-
ied the book, in my second year of ment to our orchestra.
high school. Acocella’s survey of the Amelia Hollander Ames
novel’s complex plot, with its count- Arlington, Mass.
less tangents and digressions, made
me laugh, but I was also pleased to re- In her discussion of ancient tech-
discover characters I knew in my youth, niques of sound engineering, Gal-
from the novel that taught me and so chen mentions the Hagia Sophia’s
many other young Italians what an angled walls and the echoes they pro-
omniscient narrator is, among many duce, once deemed “angels’ wings.”
other things. Although sound engineering does
have a long history, the analysis of
As Acocella notes,“The Betrothed” ancient buildings is not a particularly
created an entire body of national lan- effective way to learn about acous-
guage and imagery which is drawn tics. And, indeed, the sound quality
upon in the course of ordinary life. in the Hagia Sophia—which, admit-
The word perpetua became a common tedly, provides a unique visual spec-
noun for house helpers of priests after tacle—is terrible. The building’s ar-
Manzoni used it as the name of a chitects were grounded in geometric
house helper in his novel. When the theory and influenced by a heady dose
coronavirus began to ravage Italy, in of Neoplatonism. Acoustics were far
2020, many articles derived their anal- down on their list of priorities. Am-
ogies from Manzoni’s descriptions of bient noise plagues the Hagia Sophia
the plagued in Milan. It is also to to this day, even when it’s empty;
Manzoni that we attribute the famous lengthy reverberation time destroys
phrase “sciacquare i panni in Arno”(“to all clarity of sound. Though it might
rinse clothes in the Arno”), a meta- have been filled with music—such as
phor for expressing oneself using a the Byzantine liturgy, which was sung
correct Italian, based on the Tuscan there—the words would have been
variant—which was,as Acocella points unintelligible. Recent technical anal-
out, Dante’s language. yses have taught us much about acous-
Enrica Nicoli Aldini tics in ancient times, but it is almost
impossible to name an ancient inte-
1Boulder, Colo. rior designed primarily with the qual-
ity of its sound in mind.
SOUNDS ABOUT RIGHT Robert Ousterhout
Professor Emeritus of Byzantine Art
As a professional violist, I thoroughly and Architecture
enjoyed Rivka Galchen’s piece about University of Pennsylvania
the renovation of David Geffen Hall Philadelphia, Pa.
(“Sound Affects,” October 17th). The
orchestra that I play in, the Vista Phil- •
harmonic, is also on the verge of open-
ing a new hall. This has been very ex- Letters should be sent with the writer’s name,
citing, not least because we get to address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
discover how good we can sound. Until [email protected]. Letters may be edited
now, our concerts always took place in for length and clarity, and may be published in
a high-school auditorium. Playing in any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
makeshift spaces is the plight of the of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
NOVEMBER 2 – 8, 2022
GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN
Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth, the twenty-three-year-old British musicians behind the experimental
pop band Let’s Eat Grandma, have been playing songs together since they were thirteen. After two stunning
albums, the pair experienced turmoil—Hollingworth’s boyfriend died of cancer, their collaborator SOPHIE
died in an accident, and the friends drifted apart for the first time.They slowly reconciled, working through
grief to make their latest album, “Two Ribbons.” On Nov. 4, they continue to reconnect at Webster Hall.
PHOTOGRAPH BY LINDA BROWNLEE
As ever, it’s advisable to check in advance ferring a certain authority.—Johanna Fateman sound and illuminated by video landscapes and
(Higher Pictures Generation; through Nov. 26.) glowing collages sewn from SCOBY leather,
1to confirm engagements. a material grown from a symbiotic culture of
Las Nietas de Nonó bacteria and yeast—a restorative distillation of
ART
The siblings behind this intriguing Puerto Rico- 1social commentary and healing sanctuary.—J.F.
“Just Above Midtown: based duo, mulowayi and mapenzi nonóare,
are best known as performers and community (Artists Space; through Dec. 3.)
Changing Spaces” activists, and the sculptural vignettes, multi-
media installations, and new film in their first MUSIC
In 1974, the now legendary gallerist Linda solo exhibition, titled “Posibles Escenarios,
Goode Bryant, a single mother who had Vol. 1 LNN,” collectively suggest an imaginative The Beatles:
worked at the Studio Museum in Harlem, site for improvisation. An oracular “emotional “Revolver Special Edition”
opened Just Above Midtown, or JAM, in its tools station” near the show’s entrance invites
first space, on West Fifty-seventh Street. She visitors to take a seat, draw from decks of flash ROCK Unleashed in the heady milieu of 1966,
borrowed four thousand dollars to get it up cards, and record their thoughts in a communal “Revolver” marked a point of no return for the
and running, establishing what she called journal. A phalanx of worn steel desks, each Beatles, leaving the band untethered from their
a “laboratory,” which played host to an in- displaying a vintage security monitor and a mop-top origins and headed into the psyche-
credible range of artists of color at several careful arrangement of clay rocks, is a poetic delic unknown. Consider it the smart-money
locations until 1986. JAM was a singular place, indictment of bureaucratic dead ends, a response choice as the best Beatles LP—and, as you may
one where an artist’s meaning and intention to Puerto Rico’s ongoing housing and climate have heard, the runner-ups aren’t so shabby.
could be expressed in an intellectually free crises. The enigmatic, immersive “Sala Portal The album sparkles in this boxed set, which
ethos and without commercial interference: Omi” is a darkened room filled with ambient
a down-home, do-it-yourself cosmos for per-
formance art, happenings, and conceptual, IN THE MUSEUMS
rather than narrative—read: ideological—art.
And what art! David Hammons, Howardena
Pindell, Lorraine O’Grady, Senga Nengudi,
and Lorna Simpson, among many others, had
their first significant New York showings at
JAM. This exhibition at MOMA, organized
by the brilliant curator Thomas Jean Lax, is
dense and beautifully hung, with ephemera
beside video, sculptures next to documentary
performance photographs, each piece jump-
ing out at you, full of youth and surprise. It
is, among other things, a gorgeously femi-
nist show, and when you look at Nengudi’s
unexpected and powerful sculpture “Swing
Low” (1977/2014), which uses panty hose and
sand to represent the sagging breasts of a wet
nurse, or images of Nengudi performing,
her hair and body both free and controlled,
you understand that what Goode Bryant was
showing, at times, was her own biography in
motion.—Hilton Als (Museum of Modern Art;
through Feb. 18.)
© ALEX KATZ / COURTESY ARS Tommy Kha “Gathering” is the title of the Guggenheim’s triumphant Alex Katz retro-
spective (on view through Feb. 20), but it might easily have been “Con-
The complicated bond between a son and versations with Friends”—and not just because a stylish detail of a Katz
his mother is unsentimentally depicted in double portrait graces the cover of Sally Rooney’s novel by that name.
this Memphis-born photographer’s ongoing (That daffodil-yellow canvas, from 2009, is not among the more than a
collaborative series “Má,” which he began a hundred and fifty works here.) Two subjects have absorbed the ninety-five-
decade ago. (The title means “Mom” in Viet- year-old native New Yorker across his eight-decade career: the people he
namese.) Judging by this concise exhibition loves—above all, his wife, Ada, and such close pals as Frank O’Hara, John
of six color pictures, made between 2015 and Ashbery, and Meredith Monk—and the landscapes of Maine, where he
2021, the pair has found a winning approach, has summered for some seventy years. One bright outlier in the exhibition,
merging deadpan absurdism and formal acu- “Round Hill,” above, from 1977, finds his friends in the endless now of a
ity. In the striking “May (Betwixt),” from Caribbean getaway. For years, Katz was something of an outlier himself.
2015, Kha’s mother, May, appears in a hallway, A figurative painter who favors the flatness of Ab Ex, his style is singular,
a small figure in blue reclining on an orange neither Pop nor Photo-Realist. His sharp eye for fashion (a chic red lip, a
carpet; only her head, nestled on one arm, patterned scarf, a snazzy pair of sandals) can be deceptive. Such details are
and her shoulders are visible, emerging from to Katz what apples were to Cézanne (whom Katz has called “the first artist
a doorway. “May (A Costume Drama)”, from I understood”): an invitation to eye the interplay of color and light, load a
2019, shows the artist and his mother together, brush with oil, and master the depths of a painting’s surface.—Andrea K. Scott
in a living room, wearing serious expressions
and what appear to be moisturizing facial
sheet masks. An additional layer—drawn-on
eyebrows, and a mustache on Kha that evokes
yellowface caricature—fills this intimate, in-
terior scene with acid commentary. Kha’s proj-
ect poses interesting questions about power
dynamics, which are as endemic to families as
they are to the medium of photography; it’s
telling that, in this image, it’s the stern May
who controls the camera’s shutter release, con-
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022 5
includes a glistening new stereo mix. The rev- a hair corny. Such quibbles take a back seat, generational pronouncements, unravelling
elations lie in the collection’s outtakes, which however, when the music pours out of a club’s their songcraft into a sprawl with each grand
allow us to spy on the quartet as they mold their mighty sound system.—Michaelangelo Matos attempt. “Irony is okay, I suppose / Culture is
jarringly novel sounds, the shocker being “Yel- (Elsewhere; Nov. 5.) to blame / You try and mask your pain / In the
low Submarine.” Even the non-Beatles-conver- most postmodern way,” Healy sings on “Sin-
sant can hum it; even Beatles disciples tend to Mike LeDonne Quartet cerity Is Scary.” Whether the band is ironic
undervalue it. Here, we learn that the song or genuine, the 1975’s identity is wrapped up
began life not in its droll “Revolver” glory but JAZZ It’s time to praise the diligent and fully in Healy’s piquant lyricism, which usually
as a mopey John ballad. In a lesser band, the committed—yet too often taken for granted— finds the self-proclaimed genius searching
recording likely would have remained in that craftsmen who constitute the very founda- for answers to the existential questions of
zone. The Beatles nudge the song along until it tion of the jazz art. The omnipresent Mike the screen-time age. On the new 1975 album,
houses the Paul-penned chorus, Ringo’s dead- LeDonne, whose spirited work on the piano “Being Funny in a Foreign Language,” pro-
pan vocal lead, and comedy sound effects—a and the organ displays an unerring devotion duced with the idol-whisperer Jack Antonoff,
master class in next-level collaboration.—Jay to the verities of hard bop, has been fighting Healy pushed toward analog, recording every-
Ruttenberg (Streaming on select platforms.) the good fight since the early eighties, soaking thing possible live in the studio. It transfers
up secrets from such giants as Milt Jackson, to the stage on this tour, aptly (or facetiously)
Alan Braxe & DJ Falcon Benny Golson, and James Moody. Here, Le- titled “The 1975 at Their Very Best.”—Sheldon
Donne’s creative support unit is composed of Pearce (Madison Square Garden; Nov. 7.)
HOUSE Alan Braxe and DJ Falcon are among fellow foot soldiers, including the saxophonist
the key architects of the “French touch” ver- Vincent Herring, the bassist David Williams, “Peter Grimes”
sion of house music that emerged in the late and the drummer Joe Farnsworth.—Steve Fut-
nineties, rife with disco samples and heavy terman (Smalls; Nov. 4-5.) OPERA In the spring, the British tenor Allan
filters, plus hammering machine rhythms de- Clayton made a searing début at the Metro-
ployed with an implicitly cocked eyebrow. In The 1975 politan Opera in the title role of Brett Dean’s
June, they released their first collaboration, “Hamlet”; now he returns as a different kind
“Step by Step.” The EP showcases the artists at ROCK Few bands working today are more po- of loner in Benjamin Britten’s roiling drama
their sharpest, with spangly production tricks larizing than the 1975, a British quartet led “Peter Grimes.” Like his Danish prince, Clay-
giving the grooves extra heft, but also their by the provocateur Matty Healy. Across five ton’s Grimes—a socially awkward fisherman
most light-headed—the title track, featuring albums of ever-mutating pop rock, the group shunned by the provincial townsfolk of a coastal
Animal Collective’s Panda Bear, is more than has taken several cracks at making sweeping, English village—is resentful, mad, paranoid,
and prone to fits of poetry, but Clayton carries
ROCK his musings aloft with a menacing, hypnotically
beautiful voice. He is a theatrical force. An
ensemble of vivid, if broadly drawn, charac-
ters, anchored by Nicole Car’s warm Ellen
Orford, redeems John Doyle’s aggressively drab
production. During the score’s sea interludes,
the conductor Nicholas Carter taps into the
orchestra’s raw power—turbulent, hostile, full
of premonition—though he can’t necessarily
1control it.—Oussama Zahr (Metropolitan Opera
House; through Nov. 12.)
DANCE
Beth Orton first rose to prominence three decades ago, as a folk fusion- BalletCollective ILLUSTRATION BY HOLLY WARBURTON
ist who paired her rich, luminous voice with trip-hop beats and, for a
number of years, joined the epochal Lilith Fair tour.The English artist’s The perception of time and space is at the
recent years have been marked by motherhood, chronic illnesses, and a heart of the two new works in this enterprising
shifting relationship to music. But Orton’s arrestingly fractured recent group’s tenth New York City season. Founded
album, “Weather Alive,” has been widely regarded as her career best. by Troy Schumacher, a soloist at New York
Writing on a soot-filled old piano, she found that the decaying instru- City Ballet, BalletCollective is a laboratory
ment provided regeneration. She conjures a crackling glow in rhythms for new dances created in close collaborations
that rustle like leaves, and sings with fatigued grace about “dreaming of between choreographers, composers, and art-
Proust,” evoking the vibe of wandering inquisitively in your own mind. ists, often based on non-dance sources. Bryn
Orton, who plays Bowery Ballroom on Nov. 5, often brings a charge of Cohn’s “The First and Last Light” takes as
improvisation to these ruminations on alienation and grief, which took its starting point “The Weather Project,” the
root in uncertainty but emerged as offerings of comfort.—Jenn Pelly Icelandic Danish artist Olafur Eliasson’s at-
mospheric installation made of mist, mirrors,
and light. For his “Forest of Shifting Time,”
Schumacher has teamed up with the visual
artist Douglas Fitch (the designer of the New
York Philharmonic’s production of the opera
“Le Grand Macabre”) and the composer Au-
gusta Read Thomas. The dancers come from
City Ballet, Juilliard, and the Martha Graham
Dance Company, and music is performed live
by Akropolis Reed Quintet.—Marina Harss
(Trinity Commons; Nov. 2-3.)
Ayodele Casel
“Chasing Magic,” a show that this ever-radiant
tap dancer filmed at the Joyce and released on-
line in 2021, was among the most live-feeling
of pandemic virtual events. A repeat at the
6 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022
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ON BROADWAY Paul Taylor Dance Company and co-director, with Ben Kidd), murmuring ILLUSTRATION BY MARCO QUADRI
about nineteenth-century ideas of the “super-
With his befuddled geniality and Ev- Michael Novak, a former Taylor dancer who fluous man” and explaining the plot. Soon, he’s
eryman’s dad bod, the comedic story- took over as artistic director before the pan- spiralling: he obsesses about the “Chekhov’s
teller Mike Birbiglia is a friendly guide demic, has a vision that becomes clearer with gun” idea (that if you see one in a play it must
to life’s existential puzzlements. His each passing season. The company’s two-week eventually go off), and complains fretfully about
previous solo shows have explored his fall run reveals an emphasis on live music, pro- his actors. The stage begins to reflect his sui-
sleep disorder (“Sleepwalk with Me”), vided by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, under the cidal mental state—or is the voice in our heads
love (“My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend”), baton of both the Taylor music director, David somehow another Chekhov character?—and the
fatherhood (“The New One”), and LaMarche, and Tara Simoncic; some evenings set and the company fall apart in sometimes
humor itself (“Thank God for Jokes”). even include pure-music interludes. The compa- shocking, eventually tedious ways. Ultimately,
In his latest Broadway outing, “The ny’s recently named choreographer-in-residence, an audience member is called upon to take part,
Old Man and the Pool” (in previews Lauren Lovette, has produced a new work, “Sol- and, in the last, sharply conceived minutes of
and opening on Nov. 13, at the Vivian itaire,” set to music by the early-twentieth-cen- the short seventy-five-minute production, the
Beaumont), the forty-four-year-old tury composer Ernest Bloch. There is another focus returns to human superfluity and the
raconteur reckons with middle age première, by Amy Hall Garner, a choreographer impossibility of mending broken things.—Helen
and mortality. When his doctor warns who combines ballet, modern, and jazz sensi- Shaw (Irish Arts Center; through Nov. 6.)
him about his failing health, he must bilities. Novak’s interest in dance history is
confront his fear of death, his fear of revealed in his revival of the powerful, newly The Unbelieving
exercise, and his fear of Y.M.C.A. relevant 1932 antiwar dance “The Green Table.”
pools—after all, he reasons, he has less And then, of course, there are the Paul Taylor The director Steve Cosson and his company,
of a swimmer’s body than a “drowner’s works, ranging from the dark, unforgiving “Scu- the Civilians, have a history with documentary-
body.”—Michael Schulman dorama” (1963) to the lyrical “Arden Court” style theatre that addresses issues of religion:
in 2008, the Civilians débuted “This Beautiful
Joyce, this time for in-person audiences, was 1(1981) and the nostalgia-filled “Company B” City,” which used interviews with evangelicals
scheduled for January, 2022, but postponed to as its text; more recently, Cosson worked on
now. Some of the cast has changed: there is no (1991).—M.H. (David H. Koch; Nov. 1-13.) “Dana H.,” another verbatim project that grap-
Ronald K. Brown. But the pianist-composer pled with faith. “The Unbelieving,” a sixty-
Arturo O’Farrill and the singer-songwriter THE THEATRE five-minute collage, feels like a footnote to
Crystal Monee Hall are back, as is, of course, those more substantial works. The Civilians
Casel herself, whose ability to spread warmth Chekhov’s First Play and the writer Marin Gazzaniga have turned
through her improvisations, choreography, to Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola’s
and stage presence is indeed magical.—Brian The inventive Irish company Dead Centre “Caught in the Pulpit,” a study on clergy who
Seibert (Joyce Theatre; Nov. 2-13.) presents a sometimes clever, sometimes ef- have lost their belief in God, from which they
fortful journey into bonkersland, so stuffed draw confessional morsels for their cast of
Lia Rodrigues Companhia with wildness that, eventually, only the quiet veteran actors. Some tonal choices, particularly
de Danças moments register. At first, all seems sane: after the musical underscoring from Christian Fred-
a warm welcome, the audience prepares to watch erickson, create an anodyne, soft-focus mood,
This Brazilian company, founded in 1990 and a version of the titular drama—an unwieldy, though touches of humor—most frequently
based, since 2004, in Rio’s Favela de Maré, unpublished, stuck-in-a-drawer teen-age text wry looks from Dan Domingues and Richard
makes its New York-area début with two shows (sometimes called “Platonov”) recovered post- Topol—do break through the too pleasant
in two venues. First, at Montclair State Uni- humously from Chekhov’s papers. Via our pro- haze. Except for one short, sharp moment of
versity’s Peak Performances (Nov. 3-6), comes vided headphones, we can hear running com- grief from the wonderful Jeff Biehl, playing a
“Fúria,” in which mattresses, plastic, and other mentary from Bush Moukarzel (the co-writer man who prays for his interviewer so she can
junk are slowly arranged onstage before the witness speaking in tongues, the episodes are
dancers erupt in a writhing mass, blood spurt- too short, too muffled, too distant. Certainly,
ing. For “Encantado,” at the BAM Strong none of them feels like a long dark night of the
Harvey Theatre (Nov. 8-9), dancers slowly soul.—H.S. (59E59; through Nov. 19.)
lay out a hundred and forty colored blankets
and lie naked with them. The eruption that Walking with Ghosts
follows is bright and carnivalesque.—B.S.
Gabriel Byrne’s solo narration of scenes taken
Dimitris Papaioannou from his most recent autobiography, on Broad-
way, directed by Lonny Price, is light on bells
The Greek choreographer Dimitris Papaio- and whistles—the staging is Byrne, alone, in
annou started as a painter, and he composes front of what looks like a fractured mirror—
his theatre works as slow-changing stage pic- but freighted with images: a woozy young
tures, spectacular and dreamlike, frequently Byrne shrinking from a priest’s grasp; the last
alluding to European art history and almost glimpse of a child’s waving hand as he drowns
always including naked bodies and physical in a Dublin river; Byrne’s father in the fog;
illusions. The technique is incredibly pre- the lights around a movie screen fading, one
cise, the tone often light, even self-mocking. by one. Byrne’s storytelling focusses on his
“Transverse Orientation,” set to Vivaldi, fea- Irish childhood and its textures, with very
tures a fake baby, a woman stuck in a fold-up little about his stardom (except for one boozy
bed, lots of water, and a life-size puppet of night with Richard Burton), and these mem-
a bull.—B.S. (BAM Howard Gilman Opera ories, it turns out, mostly deal with gestures
House; Nov. 7-11.) of farewell. His performance varies across the
show’s two hours: there is hesitation and even
a few false notes, some of which might have
been solved by his simply reading, openly,
from a script. But when he’s deep in a scene,
acting out an old comedy routine he saw with
his beloved, much missed sister, for instance,
his evocations of the past become unbearably
poignant. His light voice points us to images
of joy already missing, carnival rides that are
sweet only because the carnival will soon be
gone.—H.S. (Music Box; through Dec. 30.)
8 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022
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1 Dorfman’s key themes were self-presenta- verse by Christina Rossetti, a recording of
tion—her own and that of her subjects—and Caruso, Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony,
MOVIES the profundity expressed in spontaneity and souped-up cars (with a man crushed under
personal style. Her art reflects a life richly one), a whiff of narcotics, a primordial an-
The B-Side lived, as does the wisdom of her epigram- swering machine, bloody street fights, and
matic musings.—Richard Brody (Streaming nuclear catastrophe. The actors’ idiosyncratic
Errol Morris’s documentary portrait, from on HBO Max, Google Play, and other services.) voices, wrapped around such chrome-plated
2016, of the photographer Elsa Dorfman (who phrases as “the great whatsit” and “va-va-
died in 2020, at the age of eighty-three) is Kiss Me Deadly voom,” are as hauntingly musical as Aldrich’s
both a celebration of her art and a study images. In his vision of ambient terror, the
of photography itself. Dorfman welcomes Robert Aldrich’s flamboyant and hectic 1955 apocalyptic nightmares of the Cold War ring
Morris into her studio in Cambridge, Mas- film noir opens with a pre-credit sequence in everyone’s heads, like an alarm that can’t
sachusetts, and tells the remarkable story of that announces its blend of sexual voracity, be shut off.—R.B. (Playing on TCM Nov. 8,
her accidental career. After graduating from sadism, found poetry, sharp-edged perfor- then streaming on the Watch TCM site and app
college, Dorfman worked in publishing in mances, and visual invention. The story is through Nov. 22.)
New York, then returned to Boston and took adapted from a pulp novel by Mickey Spil-
a job in an M.I.T. lab, where a colleague en- lane, and its detective, the brutish Mike Ham- Krisha
couragingly gave her a camera. Soon she was mer (played by Ralph Meeker), has none of
selling her photos (including portraits of such the suave command of Sam Spade or Philip The actress Krisha Fairchild plays the title role
literary friends as Anne Sexton, Audre Lorde, Marlowe. He crashes blindly through his in this 2015 drama. She’s the real-life aunt of
and Allen Ginsberg) from a shopping cart in case—a forbidden quest for a mysterious the filmmaker, Trey Edward Shults, who plays
Harvard Square. She also photographed her- object of surprising importance—and leaves Krisha’s son, Trey. Shults’s mother plays Kri-
self and her family, and published a book of a trail of collateral damage, both human sha’s sister; his real-life grandmother plays his
photos of her home life. (She later specialized and cultural. Along the way, the film offers grandmother; and a bunch of professional ac-
in large-format Polaroid studio portraits.) tors join Shults and his relatives to realize an
explosive, wildly funny, and deeply disturbing
ON THE BIG SCREEN fictional story of a family reunion on Thanks-
giving. Filmed at Shults’s parents’ house, in
Texas, the movie has the scope of a novel and
the condensed fury of a tragedy. Krisha, a
recovering alcoholic bearing a lifetime of
trouble, has long been estranged from her
family, and her tentative return to the hearty,
rowdy fold dredges up stifled resentments
and plunges her into a horrific vortex of pain.
Fairchild, who performs like a counterculture
Gena Rowlands, is irresistibly passionate and
volatile even in repose, and Shults displays a
bold visual and dramatic sensibility with his
impressionistic rearrangement of time and his
repertory of darting, whirling, plunging, and
retreating camera moves, which seem to paint
the action onto the screen.—R.B. (Streaming
on Plex starting Nov. 7.)
James Baldwin’s 1966 essay “A Report from Occupied Territory,” about Notting Hill COURTESY WOODIE KING, JR.
a police rampage of brutality and racist abuse that occurred in 1964,
involving the so-called Harlem Six, was based in part on Truman This 1999 romantic comedy, reuniting the
Nelson’s investigative book “The Torture of Mothers.”That book was screenwriter Richard Curtis and the leading
also adapted for a 1980 film of the same title, directed by Woodie King, man Hugh Grant after “Four Weddings and
Jr., who wrote it with Nelson. (“The Torture of Mothers” screens on a Funeral,” is less inclined to tomfoolery; the
Nov. 5 at BAM, in the series “Watch the Cops! Policing New York in gags are quieter and more sparsely planted.
the Movies.”) King’s impassioned, ingenious docu-fiction is centered Grant plays a London bookseller named Wil-
on testimonies from six Black teens who were arrested for a white liam Thacker; Julia Roberts plays Anna Scott,
storekeeper’s killing, from their mothers, and from other witnesses—in- a movie star who wanders into his store. The
cluding a passerby who was so severely beaten by police, whose actions two of them fall in love, then out of love, and
he questioned, that he lost an eye. These accounts are performed by so on; you feel lulled rather than excited by
actors (among them Ruby Dee and Novella Nelson) in the presence the sway of the plot, and Curtis’s essentially
of a tape recorder, to dramatize the creation of a historical record that benign attitude—most of the characters are
corrects falsehoods in mainstream media. The movie details, with cold charming but screwy, and they get along just
horror, the violence that the Harlem Six and their families endured, the fine—seems to tame the director, Roger Mi-
courtroom injustice that they faced, their efforts at resistance—and the chell. The scene in which William crashes a
eventual, belated acquittal of five of the defendants.—Richard Brody press junket is a convincing vision of media
hell, but the other pokes at celebrity are half-
hearted; the problem is that Anna, who should
be softening from goddess into human being,
never really melts—she remains trapped in
icy fame. Still, there are plenty of incidental
pleasures; some of the supporting players—
especially Tim McInnerny as a lousy cook
and Rhys Ifans as a scrofulous Welshman—
threaten to steal the picture.—Anthony Lane
1(Reviewed in our issue of 6/7/99.) (Streaming on
Hulu, Peacock, and other services.)
For more reviews, visit
newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town
10 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022
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1 dar and daubed in a sauce made with pork and shrimp into an elegant dome. PHOTOGRAPH BY YAEL MALKA FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
pineapple and chipotle; crisp, fat-capped Nary a table was without the pecao frito
TABLES FOR TWO hunks of pork-belly chicharrón, served (pecao is a Caribbean Spanish short-
with sticky-sweet caramelized segments ening of pescado, or fish), featuring a
Jalao NYC of plantain and batons of casabe, a tra- deep-fried red-snapper skeleton fash-
2420 Amsterdam Ave. ditional bread also made from cassava; ioned into a basket, from which spills
ahi-tuna ceviche with passion fruit and a bounty of fried morsels of the fish’s
The heat was set higher than I might pomegranate seeds, with crunchy, salty fillet, strewn with cherry tomatoes and
have preferred at Jalao the other night, plantain and cassava chips for dipping. red onion. Much less dramatic, but even
but a tropical temperature felt fitting. more delicious, was the rich braised goat,
The restaurant, in the new Radio Hotel, Washington Heights is an unlikely served with chenchén, a savory cracked-
in Washington Heights, is an outpost neighborhood for a hotel that describes corn pudding made with coconut milk,
of a popular place of the same name itself as “boutique,” and, indeed, the coarse but creamy, which originated in
in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican enormous tower that houses it—the the southwest provinces of the D.R. and
Republic.The slightly steamy clime was first major mixed-use development is thought to illustrate the culinary influ-
a good excuse to order from a menu of to be built there in almost fifty years, ence of Haiti, where a similar dish, mais
refreshing cocktails. A margarita with with a façade of color-blocked bricks moulin, is common.
tequila, agave, and passion-fruit juice that has earned it the nickname the
is topped with a frothy, fuchsia layer of Lego hotel—looms jarringly over its At the original Jalao, in Santo Do-
hibiscus-rosemary foam, and garnished surroundings. And yet Jalao seems to mingo, there is an enormous stage, and
with a sprig of rosemary that’s been cater to the local community, which live music is a major draw. During my
gently singed, to release its fragrant includes one of the largest populations visits to Washington Heights, there
oils. A syrup made from zapote—also of Dominicans outside of the D.R. was no band, although the restaurant
known as mamey, a soft, creamy fruit The colorful chandeliers in the hotel plans to use an enormous courtyard
that grows in the Caribbean and tastes lobby are made from riotous arrange- to host performers. Still, a manager
a bit like sweet potato—goes into a mo- ments of the type of perforated plastic could not help dancing among the ta-
jito, mixed with rum and lime juice be- hair rollers used at Dominican salons. bles as he made his rounds one night;
fore it’s poured over crushed ice flecked Three-quarters of the restaurant’s staff on another evening, two women stood
with fresh mint and finished with a live in the area, and most of them are up for an impromptu merengue. The
sugarcane stirrer. Dominican; on two recent visits, the women were celebrating: later, serv-
place was packed with multigenerational ers brought their large group desserts
The cocktails whetted my appetite Dominican families. with candles—the menu includes a cinco
for bocaditos, or snacks: bombones de yuca, leches cake, and a corn custard called
deep-fried golden orbs of stretchy cas- The décor—including striking cane- majarete, topped with cinnamon and
sava dough, filled with orange Ched- back benches with plush cushions—and ice cream—and sang a round of birth-
the plating evoke a high-end resort, but day songs, including the D.R. standard
the food is homey nonetheless, with Do- “El Regalo Mejor” (“The Best Gift”),
minican classics such as sancocho, a hearty as a bouquet of heart-shaped balloons
stew made here with chicken, beef, pork, bobbed overhead. (Entrées $22-$49.)
corn on the cob, and root vegetables, and
mofongo, pounded cassava molded with —Hannah Goldfield
12 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022
STORIES & SOUNDS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
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COMMENT the statute prohibiting any “program or ones. (The school denied that it dis-
CONSIDERING RACE activity”that receives federal funds (this criminated; the percentage of Asians in
category includes virtually all colleges the entering class has now risen to 27.9
When Supreme Court Justices want and universities) from discriminating per cent.) But S.F.F.A.’s purported ef-
to justify overruling long-stand- “on the ground of race,color,or national fort to protect Asians is widely seen as
ing precedent, the paradigm often cited origin.” At the time, this claim was a a vehicle for Blum’s broader agenda,
is Brown v. Board of Education, from clear loser under Supreme Court prec- which is to rid society of all so-called
1954, which, in declaring segregation edents that interpreted both the Con- racial preferences; he has already shep-
unconstitutional,overruled Plessy v.Fer- stitution and the statute to mean that herded six cases to the Court,including
guson and its “separate but equal” doc- schools can consider race as one factor Shelby County v.Holder,which sharply
trine,from a half century earlier.During in a holistic review of an applicant. In- curtailed the Voting Rights Act.
the last term, Justice Samuel Alito of- deed, it was dismissed before trial. But
fended many people when he compared S.F.F.A. also claimed that Harvard and Each university prevailed at trial by
the Court’s overruling of Roe v. Wade U.N.C. had deviated from those prec- proving that it had complied with the
to Brown’s overruling of Plessy. (He edents to achieve “racial balancing,” Court’s precedents. But the Court is
continued to offend people last week, which the Court prohibited, and that hearing the cases to consider whether
when a new book by John A. Farrell re- Harvard had discriminated against Asian those precedents—including Regents
vealed that, during Alito’s confirmation Americans in particular. That set of of the University of California v. Bakke
hearings, he had privately told Senator claims against Harvard made it to trial and Grutter v.Bollinger—should them-
Ted Kennedy, in reference to Roe, “I in federal district court in Boston, in selves be overruled. If it finds that they
am a believer in precedents.”) 2018,and some of the evidence was trou- should, the ruling will also raise doubts
bling, suggesting at least implicit bias about the permissibility of affirmative-
This term, the Court will lean more against Asian applicants relative to white action practices in employment, and
pointedly into Brown’s legacy in a pair cast a further shadow on race-conscious
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA of cases about the use of race in college efforts to protect voting rights.
admissions.Eight years ago,Students for
Fair Admissions,a group founded by the For decades, conservative Justices
conservative activist Edward Blum, filed have read Brown as standing not for
lawsuits claiming that the policies of an anti-subordination idea but, rather,
Harvard and the University of North for a color-blindness principle that dis-
Carolina are racially discriminatory.The approves of determinations that con-
universities successfully defended them- sider race. That reading claims to find
selves in the lower courts, but the Su- support in Justice John Marshall Har-
preme Court,which hears oral arguments lan’s famous dissent in Plessy, in which
in both cases on October 31st, will likely he stated, “Our Constitution is color-
overrule more than four decades of prec- blind, and neither knows nor tolerates
edents, and declare that it is unlawful to classes among citizens.” Chief Justice
use race as a factor in admissions. John Roberts has repeatedly made clear
his distaste for actions that take race
S.F.F.A.alleged in the 2014 suits that into account. In a 2006 case about cre-
race-conscious affirmative action violates ating majority-minority voting districts
the equal-protection clause of the Four- in Texas, he wrote, “It is a sordid busi-
teenth Amendment and also Title VI, ness, this divvying us up by race.”A year
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022 15
later, in explaining why the Court dis- of 2019 would be accepted. But, if affir- other groups, racial minorities (except-
allowed Seattle from undertaking a mative action is ruled unlawful, Har- ing Asians). Another possibility is to
race-conscious measure to ameliorate vard and other schools will surely not promote students from low-income fam-
de-facto segregation in public schools, abandon their commitment to diversity, ilies or neighborhoods, or from poorly
he wrote the highly quotable line “The which they understand as indispensable funded schools, which have a high con-
way to stop discrimination on the basis to the educational mission—in part be- centration of underrepresented minori-
of race is to stop discriminating on the cause the Court itself has said so for de- ties. But the coming years will undoubt-
basis of race.” It was a polar rejoinder cades, holding, in Bakke and in Grutter, edly bring an onslaught of litigation
to Justice Harry Blackmun in his con- that promoting diversity is a “compel- about whether strategies designed to
currence in Bakke: “In order to get be- ling interest.” Those schools will then produce a diverse class without using
yond racism, we must first take account need to turn to a variety of methods applicants’race are themselves unlawful.
of race. There is no other way.” that are race-neutral but may still help
to achieve racially diverse results. The Court’s view, in its affirmative-
What has been contested since action precedents, has been that educa-
Brown is what, exactly, “discrimination One of the most widely discussed of tional diversity is a foundation for a
on the basis of race”means. For conser- those methods involves standardized multiracial democracy. Rejecting those
vative Justices, it appears to mean tak- tests. The pandemic gave Harvard and precedents would be a key piece of
ing account of race in any way, even to other top universities an urgent reason a “color-blind” vision, in which race-
remedy the effects of prior discrimina- to make the submission of SAT and conscious efforts to insure citizens’equal
tion. When Harvard went to trial, in ACT scores optional, but more could rights are seen as discriminatory. At the
2018, it said that the consequences of follow the University of California sys- heart of the issue is which definitions
not considering applicants’ race would tem, which last year ended the consid- of discrimination and equality best fit
be dire: fewer than half the Black stu- eration of all standardized-test scores our democracy. The character of that
dents and fewer than two-thirds of the in a settlement with students who al- democracy hangs in the balance.
Hispanic students admitted to the class leged that the tests disadvantaged,among
—Jeannie Suk Gersen
SECOND ACTS lem. “The radical left of the Democratic “It was great!” Cuomo said.
NEVER ASLEEP Party, the wokeness, whatever you want “God bless, man,” Scaramucci said.
to call it,” he said. (He cited his alma “Please tell Chris I say hi.”
The other day, Andrew Cuomo vis- mater,Tufts:“They have a white-cleansing The studio manager, Eric Pearce, a
ited a recording studio in the gar- instructional thing where you have to, bearded veteran of multiple right-wing
ment district to tape the first episode of like, disavow your whiteness.”) “I would outlets (Newsmax, the Blaze), entered
his new podcast, “As a Matter of Fact.” say you, Governor Cuomo, are actually the studio and played a promo video for
His first guest, beamed in on a video victim of the woke radical left.” Cuomo to review.The ad presented the
monitor, was Anthony Scaramucci, the podcast as a unifying political force.The
former communications director in the Cuomo nodded. “You’re right about former governor’s voice played over pho-
Trump White House who was fired the cancel culture,” he said, laying out tos of him in office as well as of the Jan-
after ten days for declaring,among other another premise of the show. “There’s uary 6th attack and protest signs bear-
things, “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not an arrogance to the woke movement. ing the slogan “DEFUND THE POLICE.”
trying to suck my own cock.” Cuomo, Because some of us never fell asleep!” Cuomo promised not to “toe the party
who resigned as New York’s governor
four hundred and thirty-four days (or Cuomo is using the podcast, which Andrew Cuomo
43.4 Scaramuccis) ago, amid allegations premièred two weeks ago, to dip a toe
of sexual harassment, sat at a newscast- back into the public arena. His crusade
er’s desk in front of a backdrop of the against wokeness has required some
skyline wearing a dark suit and a pur- strange alliances.The show is produced
ple tie. He began the conversation by by Quake Media, a subscription service
outlining the “operating premise” of his dedicated to “premium podcast con-
show. “Our political dialogue is domi- tent,” whose other offerings include
nated in many ways by the extremes,” “The Laura Ingraham Show,” “The
he said. “I believe it’s actually worse on People’s Podcast with Mike Huckabee,”
the Republican side.” and “Pete Rose’s Daily Picks.” Cuomo
noted that he’s not just a podcast-
Scaramucci, wearing a zip-up fleece, er—“I’m a vodcaster,”he said.“Like the
disagreed. He identified the real prob- Joe Rogan show.”
The interview continued with dis-
cussions about McCarthyism, Mar-a-
Lago, and family. (Scaramucci: “I have
cousins that are clamdiggers,I have cous-
ins in the auto-glass space.”) Afterward,
Scaramucci asked how he’d done.
16 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022
line.”He gave Pearce a high five.“Great 1 lars,” Galea said. “It’s not good for skat-
job,” he said. ing, but it looks awesome.” In the back-
HARD YARDS DEPT. ground, a heavily graffitied scrap-yard
“Is it too much glitz?” Pearce asked. NIGHT OFF wall bore the inscription “2 EVERYBODY
Cuomo had another worry: “Why IN BROOKLYN, THE WORLD IS YOURS.”
does my nose look big in those pictures?” King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard,
“I could put the nose filter on,”Pearce the pretty-much-every-genre rock Stu Mackenzie,the band’s leader,was
suggested. band from Australia, boarded a tour bus back at the hotel, in Williamsburg. He
“I love it,” Cuomo said. in Montreal at 2 A.M. one night this suffers from Crohn’s disease and needs
Cuomo stepped out of the studio, month and arrived in Brooklyn nine to conserve his energies while on tour.
humming to himself. He wanted a cof- hours later. No gig until the following He certainly doesn’t seem to conserve
fee, so he headed for a shop a few blocks night,in Queens: a rare day off.“I passed them onstage—or at home. King Giz-
away. He noted that he has lost roughly out for an hour at the hotel, grabbed a zard plays a fierce set and was about to
twenty pounds since leaving office. An- chicken burrito, and here we are,” Am- release its sixth (!) studio album of the
other perk: he now has more time to brose Kenny-Smith, one of the band’s year. The band has more than a hun-
devote to fixing up classic cars. Has he singers and multi-instrumentalists, said dred songs in rotation in its live show,
taken up therapy or meditation? “No, that afternoon. “Here” was a skate park and the members decide which to play
no, no,” he said. He explained that he under the Kosciuszko Bridge, on the each night shortly before they go on.
has found peace in other ways: “I did Brooklyn side of Newtown Creek. “On
more for this state than any governor in off days, we try to go for a skate,”he said. “I don’t know at what point we’re going
modern history.” “It keeps the mental health in check.” to start having to have music stands,”
He did have one regret—he may have
worked too hard.“Relationships have to The “we” encompassed himself and Ambrose Kenny-Smith and Jason Galea
be nurtured,”he said.“I never vacationed. Jason Galea, the artist and designer re-
I wouldn’t leave the state.” He went on, sponsible for King Gizzard’s vast ico- Kenny-Smith said.“It’s pretty wild to see
“I go to my sister’s house in Martha’s nography—the posters,videos,and some how much your mind can contain.”
Vineyard, I said, ‘How long have you two dozen album covers that supply a
had it?’ Her answer? ‘Twenty years.’” visual incarnation of the song-o-sphere They made their first trip to the U.S.
Cuomo doesn’t listen to many pod- that the band’s fans call the Gizzverse. eight years ago. The Australian brewer
casts,but he felt that his experience lead- The six musicians in the band consider Carlton Dry had awarded them a grant
ing New York’s daily televised corona- Galea to be an honorary seventh. They of fifty thousand dollars,which they used
virus briefings was good practice.“It did call him Juicy. Their name for Kenny- to finance a tour (“Played to no one the
win an Emmy,” he said. He turned Smith, the band’s youngest member, is whole time. It was sick,” Mackenzie re-
to an aide. “Didn’t we win an Emmy? Shrimp. His recording booth in the cently told Stereogum) and then to rent
Where is that Emmy? I remember see- band’s studio in Melbourne is the Shrimp a house for the summer near Hunter
ing the statue!” Dungeon. (Add Aussie accent, to taste.) Mountain, in the Catskills, woodshed-
The aide said that she’d look into it. ding their fifth album,“I’m in Your Mind
“Who took the Emmy?”he said.“You Galea and Kenny-Smith met at a Fuzz.” “We had that Big Pink romantic
took the Emmy?” (The Emmy was re- skate park in a Melbourne suburb,when dream,” Kenny-Smith said. On week-
scinded the day after he resigned.) Galea was nineteen and Kenny-Smith, ends, they vanned down to the city, to
Walking down a drizzly Twenty- embarking on a teen career as a spon- perform and record.For a while,they had
ninth Street, Cuomo passed a woman sored skater, was twelve. (They are now a residency at the Brooklyn club Baby’s
who was sitting in a doorway smoking thirty-six and thirty.) Galea,graying hair All Right. Now they were headlining
what appeared to be a crack pipe. She spilling out from beneath a ball cap, had the old tennis stadium in Forest Hills.
recognized him and said hello. Another on baggy corduroys, an oversized thrift-
woman dropped her umbrella in shock. shop Kid Rock tee, and burgundy Vans. It had been a breakthrough tour so
“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” she said. Kenny-Smith,tall and lanky,with a dark
“How are you, Governor?” mustache and shaggy longish hair, wore
“I’m doing O.K.,”Cuomo said.“How all black: hoodie,dacks,socks,and sneaks.
are you?”
“I’m fine.Not really happy with what’s They’d brought skateboards and a
happening,” she replied. “I loved when Super 8 camera, which Galea was using
you were there.” to film Kenny-Smith doing tricks. Juicy,
“We’ll be O.K.,” Cuomo said. The riding goofy, swooped in on his board to
pair hugged, and the woman kissed the get quick shots of Shrimp attempting
air by his cheek. ollies, pole jams, kick flips, and slappy
After they parted, Cuomo said,“She grinds. “With the Super 8, you get three
hugs me, she kisses me. That was sex- minutes,and it costs,like,a hundred dol-
ual harassment? No, it’s not.”
—Hunter Walker
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022 17
far. In some cities, the audiences have friend’s brother ( Jeremy Allen White), a smashed on the plate, and all the dress-
been six times larger than they were the chef who wants to give the place more ing exploded all over this lady’s nice dress.
last time the band came through.They’d fine-dining cachet. Moss-Bachrach said, That was the end of it.”
just played two sold-out nights at Red “The high when you’re going into ser-
Rocks. In Williamsburg, everyone got vice mode must feel really good, a kind “I can’t see you as a waiter,”Yemchuk
a hotel room of his own. “We slogged of adrenal thing. But then you end up said, shaking her head.
it for ten years—we’ve done the hard completely depleted at the end of a shift.
yards,”Kenny-Smith said.“We’ve never It’s like drugs.” “Why not? I like to please,” Moss-
been a big buzz band. No one knew Bachrach protested. “I like to take care
where to put us. We’re too weird.” With soulful eyes and the regulation of people.”
close-cropped beard of the hot Brook-
Shrimp and Juicy, their faces flushed lyn dad, Moss-Bachrach is gentler and The two met at a friend’s dinner party;
from their skate-park exertions, wan- more thoughtful than the fuckup he plays neither was single. “When I saw Ebon, I
dered across the street to check out the on “The Bear.” He likes to cook, but the was, like,‘Oh, my God, he’s cute. Who is
activity at a vast industrial transfer sta- atmosphere in the kitchen of the airy this guy?’”Yemchuk said.“My friend was,
tion. They used up the last few feet of Brooklyn Heights apartment that he like,‘Forget it,he has a girlfriend and he’s
film shooting a crane claw chomping shares with his wife, the artist and pho- an actor.’ And I was, like, ‘Ugh!’ When
clumps of construction debris. tographer Yelena Yemchuk, and their you think of an actor as a boyfriend,that’s
two daughters has no trace of the show’s not where you want to go.They just seem
What was their plan for their night stressful brutality. His culinary explora- like such a pain in the ass.”
off ? tions began fifteen years ago,when Sasha,
the couple’s older daughter, was born. “I’m not sure that’s fair,” Moss-
“We’re going to the hockey,” Galea “You know how it is: you have a baby, Bachrach said with a smile.
said. and it’s like you’re the first person to have
a baby in the history of the world,” he “That’s just how I felt at the moment!”
“Never been to the hockey,”Kenny- said, passing spoons to Yemchuk, at the Yemchuk explained.
Smith said. kitchen counter. “And the world is full
of poison, and you’re trying not to screw A year and a half later, they started
The hockey: someone had got the up. So I started making her baby food.” dating. “Ebon is the least actor-y actor
Gizz a box at Madison Square Garden, Adult cuisine followed. I’ve ever met,”Yemchuk said.She looked
for a Rangers-Sharks game.That night, at him appraisingly. “You’re just not ob-
about twenty of them—band, crew, as- “I used to cook, before I met Ebon,” sessed with yourself.”
sorted friends—came in hot. In the sec- Yemchuk said, her speech slightly ac-
ond period, the jumbotron caught them cented. (She emigrated from Ukraine Ego or no ego,Moss-Bachrach is hav-
mugging for the camera,a melee of mus- when she was eleven, and she has an up- ing a moment. He’s been in New Mex-
taches. Later, back in Brooklyn, the fes- coming show at the Ukrainian Museum.) ico, shooting opposite Sarah Paulson in
tivities went deep. A cry from the stage “I’m just not as good. He has a real gift.” a period movie set during the Dust Bowl
in Queens the following eve: “New York (“I play a mysterious stranger”), and
City, you fucked us up last night!” The Wearing black jeans and woollen slip- he has appeared on “Andor,” a “Star
band’s set felt like a retaliation. pers, Moss-Bachrach puttered in the Wars”-franchise TV show on Disney+.
kitchen as the family’s new kitten, a
1—Nick Paumgarten Nermal-esque long-haired tabby, scam- “People respond to nuance and com-
pered by.He pulled out a loaf of rye bread plication,”he said, of the enthusiastic re-
HOT KITCHEN he’d baked that morning and began la- ception to “The Bear.”
NOT ACTOR-Y dling vegetable soup into bowls. (“Kabo-
cha squash, mustard greens, some bar- “For Ebon,it’s so exciting to play these
“It’s really easy to romanticize work- ley.”) Moss-Bachrach grew up in Amherst, characters who are so different from him-
ing at a restaurant,” the actor Ebon Massachusetts, where his father ran a self,” Yemchuk said, buttering bread.
Moss-Bachrach, who stars in the FX music school and his mother owned “Richie reminds me of guys I grew up
show “The Bear,”said the other day.“But, a children’s-clothing thrift store, and with in Bay Ridge. When you’re in your
from the little window I got into it through moved to New York in the mid-nine- twenties, dating these jerks.” She went
the show, it’s the least romantic thing ties to attend Columbia,where he began on, “I knew these guys! One date, that’s
ever.” Moss-Bachrach, who is forty-five, to act,supporting himself with odd jobs.
was until recently known for his role as A gig as a cater waiter began promis- 1it. That’s all you get!”
Desi, Marnie’s guitar-strumming hus- ingly enough. “They called me Speedy,” —Naomi Fry
band on “Girls.”Now he’s getting acclaim he said. “Everyone else was a seasoned
for playing Richie,the tough-talking man- veteran, over it, but I was, like, ‘I have DEPT. OF AWARDS
ager of an Italian-beef joint in Chicago. my clip-on bow tie, my shiny shoes—’” YOUNG JURY
As the guy who runs his dead friend’s Yemchuk laughed.“But then one day we
restaurant, Richie skirmishes with the were in Greenwich, and I had to serve On a sunny Saturday in the spring,
this, like, cannoli tube stuffed with salad, ten university students—two each
and it was really hard to balance, and it from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Duke,
and N.Y.U.—gathered at the Fifth Av-
enue headquarters of the cultural insti-
18 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022
tution Villa Albertine.The task: to award “For the last time, no. I’m not jogging south for the winter.”
the first-ever U.S. Goncourt Prize, a
Stateside version of the storied Prix Gon- ••
court, France’s biggest literary honor.
The mood: tense and eager. The Gon- Harvard’s turn. “It’s actually funny Other options were mulled. Prince-
court recognizes the “best and most that Émile and I are out here represent- ton went for “S’Adapter,”by Clara Du-
imaginative prose of the year” (written ing this text,” Obeegadoo began. The pont-Monod. (“It depicts the quotid-
in French, naturellement). In its home text was “L’Éternel Fiancé,” by Agnès ian challenge of facing disability and
country, the citation is bestowed by a Desarthe; neither Obeegadoo nor Émile the heroism of daily life.”) Votes were
board of authors each fall. (The 2022 Lévesque-Jalbert—a stubbled youth also cast for “Le Voyage dans l’Est,” by
prize will be announced this week.) The who, during introductions, had warned, Christine Angot. (“It puts the phe-
award has launched careers—the 2020 “I have a strong theoretical lens”—par- nomenon of incest into plain light.”)
winner, Hervé Le Tellier, went on to sell ticularly liked the book. Still, they con- But it was clear that the race was be-
more than a million copies of his novel ceded, the protagonists were relatable, tween “La Carte Postale,”a meditation
“L’Anomalie”—despite a purse that, at the narrative beguilingly piecemeal. on French Jewishness by Anne Berest,
ten euros, hasn’t changed much since “Does the binary between serious liter- and “La Plus.”
1903. Lounging around a table strewn ature and light reading exist, or is it just
with coffee,pastries,and quiche,the stu- in our minds?” Obeegadoo said. “Do we really want to highlight the
dent jurors chatted about the nine nov- same book that won the main prize?”
els on the shortlist: a total of twenty- “Thank you, Harvard,” Ait Ali said. Sophia Millman, of Princeton, said. “I
three hundred pages. A few months earlier, the primary mean, this one is already going to get
Goncourt winner had been “La Plus translated into English.” There were
“It’s hard not to be too harsh,” Léa Secrète Mémoire des Hommes,”a mazy murmurs of assent.
Jouannais Weiler,who is pursuing a Ph.D. mystery by the thirty-two-year-old Sen-
in German literature at Yale, said. She egalese author Mohamed Mbougar Sarr. “I want to vouch for ‘La Carte Post-
wore a black turtleneck and black slacks. A tacit understanding animated the ale,’” Kurtz-Nelson said.
“The prize is for the reading public, and room: this book was the one to beat. It
they’re not focussed on, like, intertextu- inspired intense responses. Lévesque-Jalbert frowned. “It was
ality.” Sitting next to her was Nikhita “We felt that the prose was in con- a bit long and had some flaws in its
Obeegadoo, a grad student in Romance stant motion,”Samuel Holmertz,a clean- construction.”
languages.“In the French classroom, the cut second-year from N.Y.U., said.“We
text is more of a sacred object,” she said. were bewitched by a magic spark.” “It’s not our first choice,” Millman
“In American classrooms, we ask, What Jouannais Weiler, the German-liter- said.“But I think it’s the most equitable.”
does this mean today?” ature student, snorted.
Héloïse Billette, Jouannais Weiler’s Ait Ali reminded the jury that its
Obeegadoo went on, “I like thinking partner, offered that Sarr’s style could deadline, 3 p.m., was approaching; the
about how different texts can speak to be too lyrical. “But while he may not be students had been deliberating for nearly
different people.” Case in point: her for every reader, he still deserves to be two hours. “ ‘La Carte Postale’!” several
fellow-Harvardians—each two-person considered,” she added, diplomatically. jurors cried. An air of finality prevailed.
delegation was representing a larger This time,the snorts came from mul- One by one, the delegations gave their
group—had pooh-poohed her favored tiple locations. blessing. “Cool,” Ait Ali said, adjourn-
title. “I was so fired up,” she moaned. ing the court, and a group of students
Jouannais Weiler, too, had clashed with sprang up,grinning like hooligans.“Let’s
her peers. “We have completely oppo- go see Central Park!”
site aesthetic ideas,” she said, gesturing
at the other Yale ambassador (glasses, —Katy Waldman
black pants, white top).
Yassine Ait Ali,the student president
of the committee, called the room to
order. Up first: Duke. Grace Kurtz-
Nelson, a freshman with straw-blond
hair, endorsed “Enfant de Salaud,” by
Sorj Chalandon. “The reflection on fa-
milial violence was powerful,” she said.
“The representation of being a traitor
was also interesting to us because the
character’s allegiance was never resolved.”
She paused. “Our class also got to in-
terview Sorj Chalandon,so that factored
a little bit into our choice.”
“Thank you, Duke,” Ait Ali said.
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022 19
THE POLITICAL SCENE Democratic governor, Tom Wolf. Mas-
triano has promised to outlaw the pro-
STATE OF DENIAL cedure without exception, and to prose-
cute women who get abortions and doc-
How election subversion went mainstream in Pennsylvania. tors who perform them for murder.
Perhaps most notably,in 2020,Mastriano
BY ELIZA GRISWOLD was one of the architects of the attempt
to overturn the results of the Presidential
On a recent evening at the Keystone tears in your eyes, ‘Please run for gover- election and award Pennsylvania’s electoral
Horse Center,in Columbia County, nor,’” he said. He had also received in- votes to Donald Trump. On January 6,
Pennsylvania,Doug Mastriano,the fifty- structions from Heaven, Rebbie added: 2021, he attended the insurrection at the
eight-year-old Republican candidate for “God said go!” Mastriano was down in Capitol. (Mastriano did not respond to
governor and a onetime insurrectionist, the polls, but his supporters shouldn’t be repeated requests for comment for this
climbed onto a dais in the soft dirt of fooled by phony numbers; he’d proved article, but he has said that he left the
the show ring, surrounded by chrysan- the polls wrong before. Capitol when it “was no longer a peace-
themums. Columbia County occupies ful protest.”) J. J. Abbott, a political strat-
an edge of the state’s northeastern coal Mastriano is, by almost any measure, egist with Commonwealth Communi-
region. Mastriano, who is tall and bald, one of the most extreme candidates cur- cations, told me, “He engaged in a con-
wore a black baseball hat. His wife, Reb- rently running for office.Since 2019,when spiracy to overturn Pennsylvania’s election.
bie, a chaplain, stood at his right hand, he was elected to the State Senate, he And there’s little dispute about that.”
her jean jacket unzipped. Mastriano re- has supported prayer in schools, the ab-
minded the audience that he was run- olition of gay marriage, and conversion In the barn, the story of the stolen
ning only because, a year earlier, in this therapy, a medically discredited practice election dominated the evening. Webb
very barn, a small group of followers had to “reverse”homosexuality.Pennsylvania’s Kline, who runs Missiontrux, a program
begged him to.“You urged us, even with Republican legislature has tried to ban that recruits truckers to work as mission-
abortion, but it has been blocked by the aries, took the lectern and compared the
Democrats to Nazis.“This is Auschwitz!”
“What’s at stake is faith in the legitimacy of democracy,” a political analyst said. he said. “They are coming for you.”The
reign of the G.O.P. establishment also
needed to end: “Tell them we’ve got our
own candidates,and those guys are taking
your place.” Kline praised a canny and
influential organizer in the state named
Sam Faddis, a career C.I.A. operations
officer, who had led a team to destabi-
lize Saddam Hussein in Iraq. After Fad-
dis retired, he began writing and editing
And Magazine, which is now a newslet-
ter that publishes a mix of news and elab-
orate conspiracy theories. (Faddis told
me that the newsletter “tells the truth.”)
Kline said that Faddis had found “defin-
itive evidence”that the election was rigged.
Mastriano has pledged to radically
transform voting in the state. Last May,
Faddis invited sixty-nine right-wing
groups—including We the People, Bal-
lot Security Now, and Unite PA—to the
rotunda of the state capitol, in Harris-
burg, to sign an “Election Integrity Dec-
laration.” The oath, which begins with
the words “We the People,” calls for the
abolition of most voting that is not done
in-person “with photo identification,
proof of U.S. citizenship, state residency
and hard copy paper ballots.”These mea-
sures could restrict voting among poor
people, people of color, and other likely
Democrats; they would also force poll
workers to count ballots by hand, a pro-
20 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022 ILLUSTRATION BY ADRIA FRUITOS
cess that could make tampering easier. time,Steve Bannon has called on his sup- wins, will oversee future elections—is an
And even the notion of widespread fraud porters to volunteer as precinct captains. election denier. “This is my fear,” Mal-
lays the groundwork for future denials of “We’re taking this back village by village, colm Kenyatta, a Democratic state rep-
election results.Toni Shuppe,Mastriano’s precinct by precinct, and they can’t stop resentative, told me. “Republicans are
presumptive nominee for Pennsylvania’s it,”he said, on his podcast. Some of these going to a place of only accepting elec-
secretary of state, who will certify elec- candidates will lose, but some will win, tions when they win, and that’s danger-
tions if Mastriano wins, led a prayer at and they will influence how future elec- ous as hell.”
the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection. tions are run. “Hopefully most of these
In Harrisburg, she sanctified the voting deniers won’t make it into office,”Charlie To outside observers, Pennsylvania
declaration by praying for a “spirit of Dent, who served as a Republican con- once appeared reliably blue: the state
unity” in the burgeoning movement. gressman from Pennsylvania until 2018, voted for every Democratic President
told me. “But elected officials are plant- from 1992 until 2016. “Those victories
When the slushy-and-hot-dog stand ing seeds of doubt.And that’s a concern.” masked the reality that Pennsylvania was,
closed and the barn rally began to break by most other measures, deeply purple,”
up, I walked among the crowd. Adele During the primary, Mastriano faced Borick said. The legislature has been
Stevens, a sixty-four-year-old who owns a field of moderate Republican candi- under G.O.P. control for nearly twenty-
the horse center, milled around, yanked dates.Josh Shapiro,the Democratic can- five years. This is, in part, a result of the
by a border collie.Stevens,who is Puerto didate, spent eight hundred thousand fact that Republican voters historically
Rican,told me that she was tired of hear- dollars on ads highlighting Mastriano’s turn out for midterm elections at higher
ing Republicans cast as “racist.”She also campaign. Observers have argued that rates than Democrats. “If you scrape to-
told me that, unlike Mastriano, she sup- the effort reflected a common strategy gether five to ten thousand dollars from
ports “a woman’s right to choose.” But in which candidates boost their most ex- acquaintances at your church or rod-and-
in 2021, amid resentment over Covid treme potential opponents in the hope gun club, you can knock on one thou-
lockdowns, she and a dozen neighbors, that they will also be the easiest to beat. sand doors and win,” Mittleman said.
including Kline, had started a chapter of When I spoke to Shapiro recently, he The oil-and-gas and insurance indus-
We the People to combat “abusive”gov- emphasized that the ads were critical of tries pumped money into Republican
ernment overreach; they read the Con- Mastriano,and that they probably hadn’t campaigns to swing the legislature. In
stitution aloud and researched the deep affected the outcome, because Mastri- 2011,Republican lawmakers carved some
state. “If you were a Democrat trying to ano was already the front-runner:“I didn’t of the most misshapen districts in the
figure out the truth about something, it have a primary, so we were ready for the nation. For the next seven years, until
would be hard to find because you’re not contrast.”But Democrats used this strat- the state Supreme Court ruled them un-
part of these groups,”she said.“We’re on egy in at least five states this year; in constitutional, the districts pushed state
Telegram, we read things, we look at al- Michigan, they funded John Gibbs, an politics further to the right.
ternative news.”She told me that,for ex- election denier who has opposed wom-
ample, she had recently learned that en’s right to vote, and he won his pri- Trump played on working-class griev-
George Soros secretly owned Fox News, mary by a narrow margin. The tactic, ances to turn formerly blue swaths of the
and that this explained why the network however, was risky. This July, Mastriano state red. Pennsylvania’s No. 1 industry is
had turned against Trump. (Soros does was polling within three points of Sha- still agriculture, and many farmers came
not own Fox News.) She liked Mastri- piro. “The idea that Shapiro put money to believe that regulation was driving
ano’s commitment to taking on voter toward getting Mastriano elected is a lit- them out of business; steel workers and
fraud: “Anyone can just walk in and give tle unnerving,”Christopher Borick,a po- coal miners resented that jobs were being
someone else’s name.” litical scientist at Muhlenberg College, moved offshore and that unions were dis-
told me. “If you do the math, from the integrating. Trump also stoked distrust
Election denialism is now so main- health-of-a-democracy point of view, of the government. Pennsylvanians’level
stream that it has become a kind of Re- this loss would be epic.” He added, “It’s of trust in state and federal politicians is
publican purity test. According to an Russian roulette.” among the lowest in the country. Katie
analysis by the Washington Post,the ma- Muth, a Democratic state senator, told
jority of G.O.P.midterm candidates have In this year’s midterm elections, much me, “I don’t trust the government, and
publicly claimed that the 2020 election hangs on how Pennsylvanians vote. I’m in it.” In 2020, pandemic lockdowns
was stolen. Dan Cox, the Republican “What’s at stake is faith in the legiti- intensified the anger of those who felt
candidate for governor in Maryland, has macy of democracy,”Ari Mittleman,who squeezed. “That’s when the bitterness
called Mike Pence a “traitor,”and bragged runs the bipartisan nonprofit Keep Our began,” Stevens, of We the People, told
about serving as one of the “volunteer Republic, told me. The race between me. Jeffrey Yass, a libertarian billionaire
lawyers”who helped Trump fight the re- John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz could who started the investment group Susque-
sults in Pennsylvania. Eric Schmitt, a determine the balance of the U.S. Sen- hanna with earnings from poker games
Senate candidate in Missouri,was among ate, and is currently a tossup. The shape and horse racing, funded candidates who
the attorneys general who sued to over- of the Pennsylvania legislature could de- took part in anti-masking and anti-vax
turn Pennsylvania’s vote. Kari Lake, who cide the future of reproductive access and rallies. And, after the 2020 vote, govern-
is running for governor of Arizona, has voting rights in the state. And one of the ment distrust focussed on the notion that
said that she would not have certified gubernatorial candidates—who, if he Democrats had stolen the election.
Biden’s victory in her state. At the same
In the past year,grassroots groups,led
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022 21
by Faddis and others, have come to de- acterized by Dominionism: the idea Common Good, a progressive evangel-
scribe themselves as part of a statewide that God has ordained Christians to ical group,sponsored a tongue-in-cheek
“patriot movement,”which Borick char- exercise control over political institu- billboard along Pennsylvania’s Route 19
acterized as a “broadly defined populist tions in order to prepare for the Sec- that featured Mastriano and the line
and xenophobic movement.”Faddis,who ond Coming of Christ.“They don’t be- “Blessed are the insurrectionists.”
has built a network of these groups called lieve in one person, one vote,” Philip
the Pennsylvania Patriot Coalition— Gorski, a sociologist at Yale, told me. In 2019, Mastriano starred in an inde-
which includes We the People; Ballot “They think they’re involved in a bat- pendent film, which he also helped
Security Now, which pushes for changes tle between good and evil.” fund,called “Operation Resist,”set during
to voting laws; and Firearms Owners the Second World War. In a bit of his-
Against Crime, which focusses on the In 2020, this ideology helped drive torical revisionism, the film casts evan-
Second Amendment—told me, “The the moral call to overturn the election. gelical Christians as members of a reli-
patriot movement is theTea Party,MAGA, “Some of their most fanatical supernat- gious minority in Germany who were
and America First all rolled into one.” ural beliefs have been mainstreamed persecuted along with Jews. Mastriano
He added, of his network, “Sometimes, into the MAGA movement, such as the plays an American military spy helping
at meetings, it’s hundreds of people, notions that Democrats are demonic or to evacuate them from the country. In
sometimes it’s eight guys in a barn.” engaged in witchcraft,” Jennifer Cohn, one bizarre moment,Mastriano is jumped
Members of these groups think of them- an election-security advocate, told me. by a Nazi played by his son,Josiah,whom
selves as part of a kind of conservative In November, 2020, Abby Abildness, Mastriano chokes until he is unconscious.
civil-rights movement: an alliance with the state director of Pennsylvania’s Prayer “Tell Hitler he’s next!” Mastriano says.
a variety of aims but a shared fight for Caucus and an “apostle” with the New The film occasionally skips to the pres-
individual rights. Some groups, like the Apostolic Reformation, a network of ent, where, at a school-board meeting,
Three Percenters, are armed militias. A pastors, hosted a series of “Jericho “politically correct editors” try to erase
2020 analysis by ACLED and MilitiaWatch, marches”—religious precursors to the the Holocaust from school curricula.Mas-
groups that monitor political violence, insurrection.Followers gathered in Har- triano shared a similar message in a recent
ranked Pennsylvania among the states risburg, likening it to the Biblical city ad: “Radical leftists are using the schools,
at highest risk of election-related militia of Jericho, where, according to Scrip- the media, and Hollywood to indoctri-
activity. A recently leaked membership ture, God knocked down the walls. At nate your kids with woke ideology.”
list of the Oath Keepers militia included similar marches in some states, people
four elected officials from Pennsylvania. wore animal skins and blew rams’horns, Mastriano grew up in a Catholic,
as they imagined the ancient Israelites Democratic family in Hightstown, New
The movement is fuelled in some did on their way into battle. Abildness Jersey. His father, Richard, spent twenty
quarters by what scholars call Chris- declared her intent that,with God’s help, years in the Navy. His mother, Janice,
tian Nationalism, which is centered on Pennsylvania’s electors would “go to the served as a Democratic member of the
the notion that America is and should President”rather than to Biden.(Abild- school board,until,according to the local
be a Christian country. Few people ness told me, “Our Jericho march was news organization PennLive, she said
self-identify as Christian Nationalists; a peaceable, worshipful prayer march that “most homosexuals are pedophiles,”
in 2021, Mastriano asked me, “Is this a allowing God to move and bring forth and lost her bid for reëlection. In high
term you fabricated?” But social scien- His purposes and election integrity school, Mastriano joined an evangelical
tists describe it as a belief system char- in our nation.”) Earlier this year, Vote group called the Way. In 1986, he began
a career in military intelligence, serving
“Let me find some water for these.” in Germany; he was later deployed to
Iraq,during Operation Desert Storm.At
one point,Mastriano has said,his battalion
was facing a squadron of Saddam Hus-
sein’s élite forces.At home,Rebbie began
a prayer circle to engage in “spiritual
warfare,” leading God to send down a
sandstorm to vanquish Saddam’s troops.
“Prayer changed the course of nature and
perhaps the outcome of the war,” Mas-
triano wrote on his Web site. During the
war in Afghanistan, he was deployed
there three times. In 2017, Mastriano be-
came a professor at the U.S. Army War
College, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Two years later, Mastriano won a
special election for the State Senate. He
pushed bills that would mandate prayer
in schools and allow adoption agencies
to turn away same-sex couples. “ ‘Sep- part in two Jericho marches. Later, on a come a fight not just to win the vote but
aration of church and state’—anyone conference call,he prayed that God would to safeguard the integrity of the electoral
who says that, show me in the Consti- help protesters “seize the power” on Jan- system. Shapiro, the Democratic candi-
tution where it says it,” Mastriano has uary 6th. He continued, “Bless these let- date, said that he hopes his record has
said.“It’s never been there.”In the spring ters that President Trump asked me this earned him the electorate’s trust.His pol-
of 2020, when Governor Wolf called for morning to send to Mitch McConnell itics are moderate. As the state’s attorney
places of worship to suspend in-person and Kevin McCarthy outlining the fraud general,he launched an investigation into
services, Mastriano appeared at protests in Pennsylvania, and this will embolden Catholic-clergy sex abuse, won a settle-
alongside armed men who wore fatigues them to stand firm and disregard what ment from opioid distributors,and found
and Hawaiian shirts, a look associated has happened in Pennsylvania until we frackers responsible for environmental
with a militia called the Boogaloo Bois. have an investigation.” Mastriano was crimes. “Shapiro is running on the idea
scheduled to address the crowd from the of competency,”Borick told me.“He just
In November, 2020, Mastriano Capitol steps on January 6th,and he used looks competent and sane.”
agreed—reluctantly, according to leaked campaign funds to pay for six buses of
e-mails exchanged with associates of the supporters to travel to Washington.Weeks Recently, I met Shapiro on a cam-
Trump campaign—to be the “point per- later, when I spoke to him by e-mail for paign stop at Super Natural Produce, a
son” for the effort to overturn Pennsyl- a previous piece, he told me, “Everyone grocery store in a Latino neighborhood
vania’s election. (“I am after truth,” he that I know of left early, returned to their in Berks County. Shapiro, who is forty-
wrote to me in 2021. “Is it not appropri- buses and was not involved in any nefar- nine, inspected a pile of pork shoulders;
ate to ask questions and seek answers to ious or illegal activities.” But videos and their price had doubled since the start
ensure each person has a legal vote?”) time-stamped photographs indicate that of the pandemic. He attempted polite
Several counties were delaying certifica- he was present after the rioting began, at banter with a woman behind a counter,
tion in an attempt to undermine Joe the back of a crowd that tore down police in a mix of English and Spanish, but she
Biden’s victory. Mastriano convened a barricades. (Mastriano has denied cross- didn’t understand, so he smiled and
mock tribunal at a Gettysburg hotel,with ing police lines.) Several of Mastriano’s moved on.There were few voters around
Rudy Giuliani playing the role of faux supporters have been accused of felonies. to court, but Shapiro told me that he be-
prosecutor. Via speakerphone, Trump Sandra Weyer, a woman from Mechan- lieves in “showing up” in person. The
called in to outline his frustrations.“This icsburg, was charged with conspiracy to strategy has worked in the past; in 2020,
election was rigged,”he said. Mastriano, obstruct Congress. Samuel Lazar, a man he outperformed every other Democrat
who claims that he spoke to Trump “at from Lebanon County who was nick- on the ticket, including Biden. Berks
least fifteen times,”travelled with his son named “Face Paint Blowhard”on the In- County also has a particular electoral
to the White House, but tested positive ternet, was charged with assaulting an significance. In 2020, local officials re-
for COVID and was ushered out of the officer with a deadly weapon and disor- fused to count mail-in ballots with un-
building. Trump said, “There is no one derly conduct. (The cases are still pend- dated envelopes,until a judge intervened.
in Pennsylvania who has done more, or ing, and both have denied wrongdoing.) “It actually gives me chills,” Mittleman,
fought harder, for election integrity than of Keep Our Republic, told me.
State Senator Doug Mastriano.” Since securing the G.O.P. nomina-
tion, Mastriano has led a highly uncon- If Shapiro is trying to woo technocratic
Mastriano is a proponent of the so- ventional campaign. He has blocked Republicans spooked by Trump’s ex-
called independent-state-legislature the- reporters from covering his rallies and tremism,John Fetterman,the Democratic
ory, a fringe idea that holds that, among installed a “security team”of Oath Keep- candidate for the U.S. Senate, has taken
other things, legislatures have the power ers to guard his events.He has organized a left-populist approach, in an attempt
to allot electoral votes as they please, re- much of his campaign on Gab, a fringe to win back working-class defectors. On
gardless of the vote. In 2020, Republican social-media platform. Luis Rueda, who a recent Sunday afternoon, the gym at
legislators in Pennsylvania selected an led the C.I.A.’s efforts in Iraq, where he Montgomery County Community Col-
alternative slate of electors, who signed was Faddis’s boss, told me that the cam- lege was packed with women who had
certificates claiming that Trump had paign’s use of election misinformation come to see him. Hundreds more waited
won.These certificates, along with those reminded him of intelligence officers’de- to enter. Inside, the crowd was a sea of
of alternative electors from six other bat- ployment of propaganda to press for re- T-shirts in Planned Parenthood pink that
tleground states, were submitted to the gime change abroad.“Mastriano is wag- read “FETTERWOMAN.” Fetterman was
National Archives for congressional de- ing a classic PsyOps campaign,” he said. late,and people started calling out “John!,”
liberation.Mastriano and several of these The idea that Mastriano could be in as if coaxing a rock star onstage. “He’s a
electors have since been subpoenaed by charge of future elections in Pennsylva- no-show!”a woman shouted.Then a cam-
the House committee investigating the nia has alarmed some observers. “Offi- paign volunteer began herding a flock of
insurrection. (Mastriano has sued the cials are legally bound to follow the man- photographers toward the stage,and John
committee to block the subpoena.) This date of the secretary of state,” Abbott, Fetterman,wearing boots and a Carhartt
fall, in the state capitol, I watched as two the political strategist, said. “There’d be hoodie, appeared. “I am John Fetter-
of the fake electors made the rounds in almost no way to reverse their directives woman!” he announced amid a roar.
the rotunda, shaking the hands of Re- in regard to voting.”
publican lawmakers. Fetterman’s opponent, Mehmet Oz,
The upcoming election has thus be- is a doctor who grew to prominence as
In December, 2020, Mastriano took
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022 23
a health expert offering dieting advice she said. “I was eighteen and it wasn’t it,”he said recently.Some supporters have
on “Oprah.” He has suggested that zo- legal for me to have a gun, and yet I implied that questioning Fetterman’s fit-
diac signs can indicate health information could’ve been killed.” She would never ness is a form of ableist discrimination.
and has touted raspberry and coffee-bean vote for Shapiro.“He tried to bypass the In October, an NBC reporter stated that
extracts as miracle weight-loss cures.His Constitution and ban a gun-parts kit,” Fetterman had trouble comprehending
Republican-primary opponent was she said. But she was also turned off their small talk, which occurred without
David McCormick, a financier whose by Oz, and his “ridiculous high-end or- captions. The journalist Kara Swisher,
wife had ties to Trump, but Trump en- ganic”vegetables: “He is so out of touch.” who suffered a similar stroke, defended
dorsed Oz. Oz’s campaign has focussed Fetterman: “Maybe this reporter is just
on pandemic-era government overreach Recently, however, Fetterman’s lead bad at small talk.” Others, pointing out
and election denial. has begun to shrink. In May, Fetterman that we often ask Presidential candidates
suffered a stroke. There was little effort to release their medical records, have ar-
Fetterman grew up in York, Pennsyl- to pull him from the race.“It’s really diffi- gued that Fetterman’s health is relevant
vania; his father owned an insurance cult to replace a candidate,” Abbott said. to how he will serve as a senator, and will
business. After graduating likely influence voters. “This is an audi-
from the Harvard Kennedy “Fetterman had won the pri- tion for a job and people have questions,”
School,he returned to Penn- mary with such an over- Dent, the former congressman, who is
sylvania and served as the whelming margin.” When supporting Oz, told me.
mayor of Braddock,and then he returned to the campaign
as the state’s lieutenant gov- trail,supporters noticed that Eventually,Fetterman agreed to speak
ernor. Borick told me, “He’s he sometimes garbled his to me by video chat,which features auto-
found that spot between words. Republicans posted matically generated captions.In the early
higher-educated Democrats, memes of his flubs. twenty-tens, I worked in Braddock, and
who are the real burgeoning Fetterman’s home was around the block
movement, and paired it This summer, I texted from my office.We sometimes spoke, or
with an image and experi- Fetterman asking to sit down shared a takeout order. Back then, at
ence on the ground—a little Harvard, a with him,and he texted back ease on his couch, he seemed brash and
little Braddock—rolled into a six-foot- that day.But,when I tracked self-assured. But onscreen this fall, sit-
eight-inch package.”He added,“If you’re down his press person, Joe Calvello, at a ting before a backdrop of yellowed ho-
thinking of long-term remedies that can reproductive-rights rally this fall,he apol- tel-room curtains,Fetterman looked ner-
combat this grassroots, far-right patriot ogized. “John hasn’t granted an in-per- vous and gaunt. I asked him about his
movement,it could be burly Democrats.” son interview since his stroke,” Calvello campaign, and he stumbled, catching
said. Fetterman was still suffering from himself immediately.“The martyr—ex-
Fetterman gained ground early by tak- speech and auditory-processing delays, cuse me—the margins coming out of
ing aim at Oz’s élitism, a tactic that Re- which affected his ability to understand red counties are critical,” he said. It was
publicans often employ against Demo- what was being said and to answer clearly. humanizing, in a way, to see him less
crats. In August, Fetterman retweeted a With the use of closed-captioning, swaggering. “I have a really much kind
video of Oz complaining about the price though, he could participate in a conver- of deeper kind of connection now with
of “crudités.” Fetterman wrote, “In PA sation. Calvello sent along tweets that he people that have all those kinds of chal-
we call this a . . . veggie tray.” He has as- said Fetterman had written, including a lenges,” he said. It remained unclear,
serted that Oz lives primarily in New response to a photo Oz posted of him- though, whether this sort of empathy
Jersey, not in Pennsylvania. (Oz has re- self feigning a touchdown at the Dallas would win at the ballot box. “I’m grate-
sponded that he has a house in the sub- Cowboys’stadium.“The Cowboys blow!” ful that I survived,” he told me. “I’m
urbs of Philadelphia.) He enlisted Fetterman wrote. But last week’s live de- grateful that I’m able to bounce back in
Snookie, from “Jersey Shore,” to tell Oz bate did little to assuage voters’concerns. a way that allows me to be in the race.”
in a video that he’d be “back home in Jer- A team of stenographers transcribed Oz’s
sey soon.”He started a petition to induct comments so that Fetterman could fol- The U.S.Senate campaign in Pennsyl-
Oz into the New Jersey Hall of Fame. low along, but he frequently misspoke, vania has garnered tremendous na-
and struggled to explain a controversial tional attention,and for good reason.But
The strategy seemed to be succeed- policy shift. “I do support fracking,” he Democrats often focus disproportion-
ing. One former Trump voter told me, said,at one point.“I don’t,I don’t—I sup- ately on national races, and neglect races
of Oz, “I don’t know why he needs, like, port fracking. And I stand and—I do for state legislatures, where much of the
thirteen houses when most Pennsylva- support fracking.” A prominent Demo- country’s rightward lurch is taking place.
nians only have one.” At a gun-rights crat in Pennsylvania described the event “Other than something crazy-bananas
rally, I met a bisexual woman carrying a to me as a “total shit show.” happening,very little information makes
rifle and waving a “Don’t Tread on Me” Oz has weaponized Fetterman’s con- it out of Harrisburg,” Muth, the state
flag in rainbow colors. She told me that dition in a way that can seem ugly. Fet- senator, told me. “At the top of the bal-
she became a gun-rights activist in col- terman has asked audience members at lot,politicians want it to seem like they’re
lege, after a carful of people drove past rallies to raise their hands if they, or a the ones holding the line on abortion or
her one night calling out homophobic parent or child, have suffered a health voting. But the truth is, the fate of those
slurs. “They circled me three times and crisis. “I certainly hope that you did not
I was sure I was going to be attacked,” have a doctor in your life making fun of
24 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022
decisions really begins at the state level, On a recent evening at Love City ing school boards since I was eleven years
where no one is paying any attention.” Brewing, in Philadelphia, a group of old!”she announced.DelRosso,who wore
young women gathered to raise money a red business suit, began to recite her
If Republicans win the Pennsylvania for progressive legislature candidates. stump speech, but the crowd grew rest
legislature, even a Democratic governor Suburban white women compose a major less. “When a lot of people are going
might not be able to block their efforts. swing demographic. At the edge of the doorknocking and talking to family,
In 2020, at the height of COVID, the leg crowd, Sarah Shelton, a twentyfour friends, neighbors, we’re all hearing that
islature, led by Mastriano, put forward a yearold social worker, stood awkwardly a lot of women are concerned about Doug
referendum to limit the governor’s power by the open bar.“I’ve never gone to any with the women’srights issues,” an oc
to impose lockdowns. It passed with thing like this before,” she said. Shelton cupational therapist said. “I feel like it’s
fiftyfour per cent of the vote, and has had recently moved to Philadelphia from really hurting him.” Another woman in
become a blueprint for getting around Virginia. “I grew up in the white the audience called out, “They’re really
the governor’s veto. An omnibus refer evangelical world,”she told me.“I thought concerned about abortion!”
endum, planned for the spring, would abortion was wrong.” Her grandfather,
ban abortion, roll back voting rights, and a Pennsylvania politician, had served in DelRosso attempted to answer with
mandate election audits. Others could Ronald Reagan’s Cabinet,and her brother a personal anecdote: “My daughter was
amend the state constitution to, say, worked at a conservative organization born at thirtythree weeks. She wasn’t
change how Presidential electors are ap that had filed an amicus brief to reverse breathing.Josh Shapiro might have killed
pointed. In September, at Trump Tower Roe. But in 2016 Shelton told her dad her!” The audience shifted uneasily.
in New York, Donald Trump met with that she was reconsidering her position “There’s got to be exceptions!”a woman
Faddis, from the Pennsylvania Patriot on abortion. He sent her an article that shouted. DelRosso attempted to change
Coalition; Doug McLinko, a Bradford described the procedure in graphic terms, the subject, but the room was lost to her.
County commissioner who sued over and she read it sobbing, but stood firm. A woman sitting on a barstool said, of
the state’s voting procedures after the “I knew that I had to be able to look my Mastriano, “He seems too much like a
2020 election; and the political strategist dad in the eye and defend it,” she said. colonel,”and stiffened her arms and legs
Michael Caputo.The trio said that they At the brewery, she decided to go door to imitate a wooden soldier. Afterward,
sat in Trump’s personal office, overlook to door in support of progressive candi I asked DelRosso to clarify her position
ing a rainy Central Park, and pressed dates fighting for reproductive rights. on abortion. “I support exceptions,” she
him to lend his support to a proposed told me.“Very much.”This was a depar
bill or referendum that would ban mailin The spectre of abortion bans is threat ture from Mastriano’s platform. Mastri
voting in the state, except in cases where ening to fracture the loyalty of Republi ano himself has backpedalled recently,
voters are unable to vote in person. Fad can women, more than a third of whom saying that the matter won’t really be up
dis told me that, with the law as it is, favor keeping abortion legal in most or to him but “up to the people.”
there was a danger that no Republican, all cases. At Local Tap, a bar in Lansdale,
including Trump, could win the Presi Carrie DelRosso, a fortysevenyearold This fall, Mastriano began to sink in
dency in Pennsylvania in 2024. “We state representative who is running for the polls.He had refused,on a num
wanted Trump to put his finger on the lieutenant governor alongside Mastriano, ber of issues, to move to the center after
scale,” Faddis said. According to Faddis, attended a meet and greet with a group the Republican primary. Shapiro has
Trump was enthusiastic: “He was one of middleaged women.“I’ve been fight raised more than fifty million dollars
hundred per cent in support of it.”(Trump
did not respond to a request for comment.)
Muth told me,“If we flip two seats in
the State Senate,we can block these kinds
of bills.” Rage over the Supreme Court’s
reversal of Roe v. Wade, in June, may
make this possible.Andrea Koplove,from
Turn PA Blue, told me,“What I’m hear
ing at the doors and what we’re seeing
with voter registration and volunteers is
unprecedented. Women are showing up
in droves.”In 2018, only three per cent of
voters said abortion was their top issue;
in 2022, twenty per cent did. La’Tasha D.
Mayes,a reproductivejustice activist from
Pittsburgh campaigning for the State
House of Representatives, told me that
the reversal of Roe has bolstered support
for her candidacy: “The general election
in Pennsylvania will tell the tale of the
future of abortion in our commonwealth.”
for this race, and Mastriano has raised erate soldiers had battled Union troops suppression, it’s subversion,” Kenyatta,
less than four million, leaving him un- to claim the high ground.Shapiro noted the state representative,told me.Around
able to pay for television advertisements. that Mastriano had chosen to wear a the country, Republican candidates are
Increasingly, Republicans were speak- Confederate uniform for his faculty refusing to commit to honoring the re-
ing out against his candidacy.The Com- photograph at the U.S. Army War Col- sults. “I’m going to win the election,
monwealth Leaders Fund, an organi- lege in the 2013-14 academic year, and and I will accept that result,”Kari Lake,
zation funded largely by Jeffrey Yass, until recently it had hung in the insti- the gubernatorial candidate in Arizona,
donated fifteen thousand dollars to Mas- tution’s hall.“He opted to wear the uni- has said. An aide to Tudor Dixon, the
triano when he first became a state sen- form of a traitor,” Shapiro said, “those Republican nominee for governor of
ator,and the Commonwealth Children’s who literally fought to defend slavery.” Michigan,told the Times that there was
Choice Fund, another group funded in After we descended Culp’s Hill, and “no reason to believe” that state offi-
part by Yass, gave him ten thousand Shapiro wandered off toward the cam- cials “are very serious about secure elec-
dollars the following year, but those re- era, I spied three Civil War reënactors tions.” DelRosso has dodged the issue,
lationships have since ended. Matt wilting in wool uniforms.Two were wear- saying, “We’re not going to lose. I’m a
Brouillette, the treasurer of the Com- ing Union blue; the third was clad in winner.” Mastriano has ignored multi-
monwealth Leaders Fund,told me,“We green—the uniform of a Union sniper ple requests from media outlets for com-
spent millions of dollars trying to beat called a Berdan Sharpshooter, he ex- ment on the subject. But he has already
Doug in the primary. Our problems plained. I asked them how the upcom- raised doubts about the election, claim-
with him weren’t about policy—we didn’t ing election, and the political tenor in ing, in a now deleted Facebook video,
think he could win critical swing vot- Pennsylvania, had become so polarized. that it would take a large turnout “to
ers, or that he could govern.” It’s possi- “Look down at where you’re standing,” overcome the fraud.”
ble, of course, that Mastriano’s support- the man in green said.
ers are not responding to polls; a recent Battles over results are looming.
article on the Bulwark, a center-right Two hours later, I accompanied Sha- Courts have issued contradictory rul-
news Web site,raised the fear that Mas- piro to his campaign office in Cham- ings on whether undated ballots should
triano’s base could resemble a fifty-foot bersburg. Gathered there was a group be counted, setting up a future contest.
shark—invisible to observers, but no of young men who’d formed a Students After meeting with Toni Shuppe’s or-
less real. Mastriano, certainly, has re- for Shapiro organization at Shippens- ganization Audit the Vote,York County
mained steadfast. In September, he an- burg College, in a traditionally red part commissioners have decided to count
nounced that, to win God’s favor, he of the state. “We’re like a blueberry in a ballots by hand. Since 2020, election
would undertake a forty-day fast,to end bowl of tomato soup,” one told me. I workers across the state have received
on Election Day. also spoke to a mother and daughter, numerous threats. A spokesperson for
both registered Republicans, who were Pennsylvania’s secretary of state told me,
In September,I joined Shapiro at the voting for Shapiro. The daughter, who “It’s disturbing that these workers are
Gettysburg battlefield, where, in 1863, was in her late forties, asked to remain still experiencing these issues.” Some of
the Union Army drove back the Con- anonymous,for fear that speaking against Mastriano’s supporters have announced
federates, turning the tide of the Civil Mastriano might cost her her job. She that a motorcycle rally called Governor
War. Mastriano has often used the bat- found Mastriano’s mix of militarism and Douglas Mastriano’s Ride to Victory!!!
tlefield as a backdrop for his campaign. Scripture alarming. “He’s a Hitler wan- will take place on Election Night in the
Lance Wallnau,a QAnon celebrity,cited nabe,” she said. She wasn’t voting for state capital,which observers worry may
Abraham Lincoln’s remarks at the bat- Oz, either: “His signs look best when be a harbinger of violence. “This is the
tlefield while speaking at a Mastriano you turn your head. They read ‘NO.’ ” warmup act for 2024,” Mittleman, of
rally: “Pennsylvania will be like Little Sheri Morgan, the chairwoman of the Keep Our Republic, told me.
Round Top, and America will have a county Democratic committee, wearing
new birth of liberty.” In 2020, after a a pair of aviators, noted that there was At Gettysburg, just below Culp’s
hoaxster posted on social media that real rage around this election. She told Hill, there is a creek called Spangler’s
Antifa was coming to Gettysburg to pull me that recently, near a polling place, “a Spring, where both Union and Con-
down Confederate statues, Mastriano Mastriano supporter claimed that I was federate boys collected water; the place
showed up, alongside white nationalists, intimidating him by standing outside. became a symbol of common ground.
to defend them.This past April, at Get- He screamed at me, ‘I’m going to fuck- Today, the spring is barred by a grate
tysburg,Julie Green,a self-styled prophet, ing run you over!’”She added,“I’ve never and a padlock. “There is no common
told Mastriano that God had this mes- seen anything like this.” ground,” Shapiro told me. The most
sage for him: “Doug, I am here for you frightening aspect of Mastriano’s can-
and I have not forsaken you. The time Mastriano will, in all likelihood, lose didacy, he said, was his repeated refusal
has come for their great fall—for the the election. “Women may win this to respect the electoral process.“I’ve run
great steal to be overturned.” round, but one electoral loss will do lit- against seven or eight Republicans and
tle to defeat the movement,” Borick, wanted to win every race, but I’ve never
Shapiro was filming a video for so- the political scientist,said.And whether felt they posed a threat to the underly-
cial media there,in Mastriano’s symbolic or not the results of the election will ing system,” Shapiro said. “Never.” He
back yard. Before he shot it, we climbed be honored remains a question. “The added, “This guy is a clear and present
the ridge of Culp’s Hill, where Confed- biggest threat to the election isn’t voter danger to our democracy.”
26 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022
SHOUTS & MURMURS We’ll bring out the latent profun-
dity in your music by filtering it through
THANK YOU FOR my interpretive lens. I still smile when
MAKING THE TRIP I think about “In the Nuthouse Over
You.”But take away the maniacal laugh-
BY GLENN EICHLER ter and the xylophone and add a verse
about psychiatric-medication abuse and
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ First of all, thank you both for mak- know I’m supposed to find threatening. you’re left with a pretty chilling record.
ing the trip. I know it’s not a sim- I’m part of the fabric of American music. The kind of record I could chart with.
ple one,especially for you,Gil,with your I just can’t seem to make a hit record.
mobility issues.Thank you also for being I do have a few rough guidelines.First,
so understanding about not dragging Which brings me to my point, and as obvious as it sounds, the song has to
your walker on the sandalwood floor. not a moment too soon, based on the have lyrics.I only mention it because you
way Marty has begun arranging his had such a monster hit with the instru-
Second,I realize a seaside compound pocket change into stacks. You’re prob- mental “Bicycle Horn Für Elise.”
in Amagansett probably isn’t the sort ably wondering why the singer-song-
of working environment you’re used to. writer responsible for “I Waited All And those lyrics have to be ones I
My team says you actually had an of- Night” and “Wracked,” an artist who’s can sing. Just my voice, sans gimmicks.
fice in the Brill Building. Incredible. received a Kennedy Center Honor for While I love the basso-falsetto back-
What that must have been like back “capturing the angsty Zeitgeist of his and-forth you wrote for Screamin’
then, rubbing elbows with Goffin and generation,” wants to meet with the Eamon in “Ro-Meow and Julie Cat,” I
King, Leiber and Stoller. I wish I’d been composers of “My Cross-Eyed Baby don’t think I could pull it off.
there the day you two dreamed up “Con- Loves Both of Me”and “No More Fon-
nie, Don’t Comb My Crewcut.” That due.” It’s simple. Not to be crass, but I Second, no cheap ripoffs. I’m not
one slant rhyme? “I got a buzzing/’Cause need a hit. A track that does what I’ve here to judge what anyone wrote when
I don’t like fussing”? Genius. always done best—touch the deepest, the music business was the Wild West,
most fragile places in my listeners’ but I don’t want to record a song that’s
Third, believe me, I know what a big hearts—but in a way that wraps the dog trying to cash in on someone else’s hit.
deal it is to even consider coming out pill in bacon, as it were. I’m saying I And I won’t do name-checks. So no
of retirement. I don’t mean that liter- want you to write me a novelty song. “Blue Shade Shoes” or “Rock Around
ally, of course. I’m not, nor have I ever the Cork” or “Ferry ’Cross to Jersey.”
been, retired—despite what the Bill- You’re shaking your head, Gil, and And definitely nothing along the lines
board Hot 100 might have you believe. forgive me if I say I hope that’s just a re- of “The Baby Looks Like Ringo (But
I still mean a lot to a lot of people. I can action to medication. But, if it is in fact He’s Yours).”
fill a midsize suburban venue like the skepticism, I understand. You’re think-
best of them,especially right after a PBS ing that all my best work has had one Also,I think we need to acknowledge
pledge week when they’ve aired my 2006 overriding theme: that the only con- that tastes have changed, to my mind for
special. I probably get a hundred D.M.s stant in our lives is pain. But, in a sense, the better. There’s a new level of sensi-
a day from people swearing that “My isn’t that also the theme of your greatest tivity out there, so let’s steer clear of the
Tears Won’t Stop”is their life story, and songs? If “I, the Hollow” is about the Ellis Island stuff, like “Oy! This Ham’s
twice that many during ragweed sea- futility of trying to control our destiny, Not Kosher” and “Dialect Lullaby.”
son. I get sampled all the time by art- isn’t that equally true of “This Dog’s
ists whose names I can’t quite parse but A-Walkin’ Me”? You’re shaking your head again, Gil,
and that reminds me: we don’t want to
make fun of anyone’s personal chal-
lenges, no matter how whimsical the
approach. I’m saying that, in today’s
market,“E.T.’s Got the D.T.s”wouldn’t
fly. And I don’t mean on a bicycle.
Otherwise, guys, have fun. Go as
wacky as you want. Just remember that
people do expect a certain amount of
gravitas from me, but that won’t be
a problem. Just take those infallible
commercial instincts of yours and give
them a little tweak. There’s no way I
could have recorded “The P-Terodactyl
P-Twist.” But change it to something
like “Dancing Toward Extinction” and
it wouldn’t surprise me if it drew com-
parisons to Dylan.
You’re shaking your head again, Gil.
But, filtered through my interpretive
lens, I see a nod.
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022 27
ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS fornia Dreamin’ ” and “Monday, Mon-
day.” The ceilings were high, the equip-
CALIFORNIA DREAMER ment sumptuous. Inside, it was as cool
and dim as a bank vault. A string quar-
Weyes Blood gives seventies soft rock an apocalyptic edge. tet would not be out of place there, and
that day Mering had brought one in.
BY MARGARET TALBOT
Her previously recorded vocals for a
One afternoon in June of last year, ring had recast the Laurel Canyon folk- new song, “Grapevine,” filled the con-
Natalie Mering,the indie musician pop of the nineteen-seventies for a new trol room.Mering has a warm,pure alto
who performs as Weyes Blood,was work- era of existential unease. Mering half- voice that has often been compared with
ing on a new album at EastWest, a sto- jokingly described the record to me as Karen Carpenter’s—though it’s less sug-
ried recording studio in Hollywood.The “a doomer classic.” ary than Carpenter’s sometimes sounded.
album, “And in the Darkness, Hearts I’d never heard “Grapevine” before, but
Aglow,” which comes out on Novem- EastWest, which is on Sunset Bou- it exerted a curious effect that I’d no-
ber 18th, is her first since “Titanic Ris- levard, was the fanciest place Mering ticed with other Weyes Blood songs, all
ing,” in 2019. For the cover of “Titanic had ever recorded. The building, from of which Mering writes. The first time
Rising,” Mering had an elaborate re- 1933, had once been a burlesque joint you hear them, you feel the swell of bit-
creation of her teen-age bedroom sub- called Madame Zucca’s Hollywood Ca- tersweet emotion that usually comes
merged in a back-yard pool, and was sino and had been taken over in the from songs that you already know and
photographed underwater,wearing jeans early sixties by Bill Putnam, the pio- have overlaid with memories and asso-
and a T-shirt. It was a nostalgic image neering audio engineer known for in- ciations.“If a man can’t see his shadow/he
rendered deeply eerie. The album, her venting many modern recording tech- can block your sun all day,” went the
fourth, was her breakthrough, critically niques. The Beach Boys made “Pet opening lines of “Grapevine.” Mering
acclaimed for the imaginative way Me- Sounds” there; EastWest is where the told me later that the song was about
Mamas and the Papas recorded “Cali- breaking up with a “narcissistic” musi-
cian she’d been “madly in love with”
Natalie Mering, who performs as Weyes Blood, has a complex view of nostalgia. during the pandemic.She had been sick
with long covid, though she hadn’t
known at the time what was afflicting
her, and he kept telling her that she was
depressed, or just had to get outdoors
or exercise more. “I basically needed to
leave him to go be sick on my own with
my mysterious illness that nobody un-
derstood yet,”she said.“And it was heart-
breaking.”(She has now recovered, and
the ex has apologized.)
The song’s title refers to a stretch of
California highway known as the Grape-
vine—the steep grade on I-5 that takes
you out of the farmland of the San
Joaquin Valley, over the Tehachapi and
San Gabriel Mountains, and into the
vast, glittering bowl of Los Angeles
County. If you are coming home to the
city, where Mering lives, from the north,
it’s the final stretch of road-trip driving,
and there’s a romance to it. In the win-
ter, the pass can become so shrouded in
dense fog that big-rig trucks get stranded.
Mering used to drive on the highway
often to see her ex. “Grapevine” is a
breakup song,but in typical Weyes Blood
fashion it also evokes more apocalyptic
sorrows.“California’s my body,”she sings.
“And your fire runs over me.”
Mering’s played-back voice had a
melancholy grandeur when set against
the live strings, which were lush and
28 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022 PHOTOGRAPH BY CHARLOTTE RUTHERFORD
cinematic. She sounded like an embod- tistic vision, but one that she pursues to pop as the aspirational category. Me-
iment of womanly wisdom—a cool hand through a lot of improvisation and open- ring’s cohort is perhaps the last to har-
on a fevered brow. The actual Mering ended experimentation. In addition to bor tactile memories of a world before
in the studio exuded a game, tomboy- singing and writing songs,she plays gui- omnipresent smartphones and a ten-
ish energy.She was cheerfully in charge. tar, piano, bass, and drums. “I can make tacular Internet, but not everybody her
She sat on a black leather couch listen- noise out of anything,” she said. “But age is as wistfully pissed off about tech-
ing to the track, her chin resting on a mainly guitar.”Rado,an acclaimed indie nology as she is. In 2019, she told the
tented knee,with her dog,a rescued Po- producer who is also a member of the magazine The Believer that she was “a
meranian named Luigi, nestled next to band Foxygen, told me that Mering very nostalgic person,” adding, “I miss
her. Periodically, she sprang to her feet was “deliberate and freewheeling at the so much. I miss going to the video store
and headed over to the console to talk same time,”adding,“She’s not necessar- and renting a video. I miss calling a
to the engineer, Andrew Sarlo, or to the ily looking for the perfect take, but she’s friend on the landline.I miss when peo-
album’s co-producer, Jonathan Rado, or looking for the perfect vibe—always try- ple couldn’t break a plan because they
to the musicians on the other side of ing to get at something with the right had no way to get in touch with you,
the glass. At one point, she requested feeling and emotion. And she’s down to so they couldn’t leave you hanging and
“more arpeggiation”; at other moments, take as long as it needs to get there.” just send you a bullshit text.”
she asked for sounds that were “less
classical” or “more jammy.” Like many artists of her generation, Still, if Mering has often looked to
Mering has a complicated relation- the past, she has also expressed frustra-
“That first entrance to the cello?”she ship to nostalgia. At a time when pop tion with her elders—baby boomers, in
told the musicians.“You can totally swell and indie music of all eras—including particular.She especially resents the grip
that. Because it’s such a pretty note, I’d the deep cuts once accessible only in that boomer-era classic rock has held
love to hear it come out a little more.” musty record stores—can be instantly on everything from radio formats to
found online, it can be tempting to es- song purchases. “Now that we’re all on
Mering, who is thirty-four, has long, cape our twitchily demoralized present streaming, you’re competing with every
straight brown hair worn parted in the and lose yourself in a romantic version other music that’s ever been made at any
middle; her ears peek out from the glossy of the musical past. At the rented house time,”she told me.It was harder for new
curtains, Galadriel style. She was wear- in Pasadena that Mering shares with a music to break through and define a
ing the same outfit that I’d seen her roommate,the living room is dominated generational identity. She’s not the only
in earlier that week at the studio: slim, by a used grand piano; when I visited, person to say this: the cultural critic Ted
high-waisted brown tweed trousers Joni Mitchell and Elton John song- Gioia recently pointed out in The At-
with a tucked-in white T-shirt, orange books were open on its music shelf. On lantic that the streaming market is heav-
socks, and Nikes.“That sounds wrong,” a nearby wall, Mering has hung, in a ily skewed toward old songs, and radio
she declared at one point. “Can we try frame, the lyrics of a song by the Los stations are reducing the number of songs
a pass where the violin is quieter?”Me- Angeles singer-songwriter Judee Sill, in their rotations.“I really do appreciate
ring has the good posture of a choir who died of an overdose in 1979, at the greats,” Mering said. “But I would
kid, which she was in high school, in the age of thirty-five. Sometimes, Me- love to see new music and culture get a
Doylestown, Pennsylvania. She stood ring told me, she thought of her own little more limelight. It’s already so dis-
up tall behind Sarlo, who said, “It’s a music as “atemporal”and felt a little bad posable and so fragile, because we don’t
C-natural at bar eight.” about it,wondering if she wasn’t attuned have the same kind of ecosystem that
enough to her own times. these people had”—a captive radio au-
Mering, bouncing on the balls of dience and generous budgets for studio
her feet, said, “Can we try C-sharp? Is In conversation, though, she often time and album promotion.
that crazy?” expressed a jaundiced view of contem-
porary trends. She had “a short fuse”for At first listen, Mering’s music might
When she heard it, she grinned and online dating. She preferred “fate” to remind you uncannily of some long-lost
swayed to the music.“Now that sounds “algorithms,” and “meeting people and track from the seventies that’s recently
right.” falling in love in real life” to working been rediscovered through TikTok or
the apps. She’d never made a checklist Spotify. Yet much of what makes her
Earlier, Mering had described an- of what she was looking for in a part- music feel contemporary is its relation-
other new song as having the “vibe” of ner. “I don’t think you know your soul’s ship to the past—her capacity to con-
“Whiter Shade of Pale”—a song that, in mate,” she said. “You probably know jure, with longing and irony, a period
turn, had a “Bach vibe.” That reminded your ego’s match. You can meet your that was more bright-eyed about the
her of how Jim Morrison and the Doors, ego mate,but how much fun is that going future. Her lyrics combine a yearning
whom she loves,had come up with “Rid- to be?” As an artist, she remained com- for sincerity and conviction with a se-
ers on the Storm” while jamming on a mitted to an ethos that she associated rene fatalism.“Give me something I can
1948 cowboy song,“Ghost Riders in the with Gen X: she believed that it was see / Something bigger and louder than
Sky.”Learning about such inspired pas- possible, and desirable, for an ambitious the voices in me/Something to believe,”
tiches, she said, made her feel better musician to remain in “rebellion against she sings on a track from “Titanic Ris-
“about all the influences that come out mainstream music,” and not to default ing,” the word “believe” quavering like
in my music.” She noted, “People have a falling leaf. In the shimmering song
been doing that since the dawn of time.”
Mering’s collaborators describe her
as having an uncommonly confident ar-
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022 29
“It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody,”from while we need to go be primitive else- vaudeville singer who once played the
the new album, Mering channels the where.We can’t be, like, standing on the role of Indian Child in a lost silent
disorientation caused by the pandemic: shoulders of these giants.”She laughed. movie called “The Gateway of the
“Living in the wake of overwhelming “I’m not trying to make a tribute album.” Moon.” Mering’s mother, Pamela, also
changes / We’ve all become strang- sings; she had a florist’s shop in Santa
ers / Even to ourselves.” Mering is a movie lover,a big reader, Monica for a while, and when Natalie
and something of an autodidact. was little Pamela would sometimes take
She doesn’t want her music to sound In conversation, she generates cultural her along on deliveries and entertain
exactly like an artifact. In time, she and references as abundantly as an air pop- her by crooning standards. Natalie’s
Rado decided that finessing the line per generates popcorn. She spoke to me father, Sumner Mering, was the good-
between a too-on-the-nose retro sound with equal confidence of Ingrid Berg- looking front man of a New Wave band,
and something more current required man’s “Method-y”performance in “Gas- called Sumner, which put out a record
the delicate introduction of sonic ef- light” and of Christopher Lasch’s de- on Elektra/Asylum in 1980. Her par-
fects—echo, delay, and what Rado spairing social critique “The Culture of ents got together after a mutual friend
likes to call “primitive sampling.” They Narcissism.”She dilated breezily on the arranged a blind date; Pamela Mering
wanted to layer in weird noises such career of the avant-garde composer, in- told me that she agreed to it after hear-
that, as Rado said, “the average listener strument inventor, and Depression-era ing that Sumner had gone on a few
is not going to be, like,This is too weird hobo Harry Partch.She brought up Stan- dates with one of her musical idols—
for me.”To accomplish this artfully,they ley Kubrick’s philosophy of, as she de- Joni Mitchell.
needed to take their time. They ended scribed it,“appealing to the subconscious
up leaving the costly EastWest and de- more by saying less.”(Kubrick once said, In the early eighties,Sumner became
camping to Rado’s own studio, Dream- of the minimal dialogue in “2001,” that a born-again Christian. He eventually
star II, a converted three-car garage in he had tried “to create a visual experi- abandoned rock music and began a ca-
North Hollywood with a lot of instru- ence, one that bypasses verbalized pi- reer in medical publishing.In 1999,when
ments stacked everywhere and string geonholing and directly penetrates the Mering was ten, she and her brother
lights looped haphazardly on the walls. subconscious with an emotional and Zak moved with their parents to Penn-
Several weeks later, Mering and I met philosophic content.”) Mering told me sylvania. (Another brother, Ean, who is
for tacos at HomeState—a Tex-Mex that she takes a similar approach to writ- eleven years older than Mering, stayed
place in Pasadena whose menu includes ing music:“I love lyrics,I love folk music, in California.) Pamela told me, “We
a vegan item named after the singer but I do think there’s a lot of emotion were a Christian family,” but added,
Phoebe Bridgers’s pug—and she told in instrumental, melodic themes, and “We came from an angle of nothing
me why the change in atmosphere had you can use them as your own canvas to was impossible. ‘Look at God’s cre-
been important. At EastWest, she said, paint feelings on.” ation—how intricate, how wild and bi-
“you could really feel that room sound. zarre.You can do anything you put your
It’s a really historical room, but also the Mering’s family background and up- mind to,don’t limit yourself,there’s free-
chambers for the reverbs—we’d be, like, bringing set her up nicely for the kind dom in Christ and God.’ We weren’t a
That’s the Beach Boys. It was so fun to of cultural time travel she likes to en- religious household in the sense of hav-
record a band in there live, but after a gage in. Her mother’s mother was a ing a lot of rules and regulations. We
were kind of a different breed.”
“It was very large. It lived millions of years ago. And it went thataway!”
Mering, who identifies more with
Buddhism now, is close to her family.
Her rental in Pasadena is a modestly
sized ranch house, but Mering initially
didn’t have a roommate, and found it
too big to rattle around in alone, so her
mother and Zak stayed with her for ex-
tended periods.“I’ve come to terms with
their Christianity,” she told me as we
talked in her dusty back yard,which had
a badminton set, many succulents, or-
namental trees, a birdbath, and mis-
matched patio furniture.The yard is vis-
ited regularly by a flock of feral peacocks,
and they screeched as we sipped herbal
tea, to which she had added, for tingly
effect,the buds of a flowering plant called
spilanthes. (When Mering was in her
twenties, she briefly apprenticed with
an herbalist on a farm in Kentucky.)
She said of her parents, “I’m just very
grateful that they were spiritual at all. I in common with the more political idea ing equipment, a music studio, and a
really appreciate their faith, even if it’s of “temporary autonomous zones”— sensory-deprivation tank, but no cen-
not the same kind that I have now. We uncommodifiable experiences that, as tral heating. Mering loved it there. She
can talk about God together. We’ve Strong put it, would only “last for a mo- had started to write songs that anchored
healed a lot.But obviously it can be hard ment, and in story and memory.”They experimental noises with more tradi-
growing up religious.” One upside was once staged an “upside-down-forest tional melodic structures. The results
that she watched a lot of classic Holly- show”—taking “truckloads of branches sounded a bit like Gregorian chants
wood movies at a young age, in part be- and painstakingly tying them to the produced by Brian Eno. She said of the
cause they lacked explicit content. ceiling in this South Philly basement.” warehouse,“I made my first album there,
and I could be loud and use the space
As a little girl, Mering told me, “I Some fans of the dreamy chamber and run around. Warehouses are to
was moody and weird, and I had a lot pop that Weyes Blood makes today me so expansive—it’s kind of unlim-
of extra emotional software that I didn’t might be surprised to know that she
know what to do with.”She said of her- was once the lead screamer ited what you can do there.
self,“I am a really high-functioning de- for a grindcore band called It’s, like, this alternative,
pressive. I definitely feel all the feels.” Satanized, whose perfor- liminal creative space.” In
In middle school, Mering discovered mances sometimes involved the winter, Mering sewed
the D.I.Y. music scene and began tak- exploding packets of fake hot-water bottles into her
ing the train to Philadelphia to see punk blood. Around this time, sweaters; on the coldest
and experimental music shows in run- Mering and Strong also days, everybody huddled
down row houses and dank church base- had a performance-art act, around a wood-burning
ments.She particularly loved noise music the League of the Divine stove on the second floor.
that churned up discordant waves of Wind. Their shows often Mering said, “It was actu-
feedback and fuzz, pounding her chest featured the odd spectacle ally very cool, because we
like rough surf. By the time she was fif- of the duo biting into fruit had a roommate commu-
teen, Mering had adopted the name embedded with microphones, which nity based on ‘We’ve got to build the
Weyes Blood—inspired by the Flan- amplified the sounds of their chewing fire and sit next to it.’ And we’d talk
nery O’Connor novel “Wise Blood”and and swallowing.“There was a lot of cit- about things—talk about ideas.”
pronounced the same way—and was rus,” Strong said. “It was very juicy. I In 2011, Weyes Blood released her
performing noise-music shows herself. think we may have overplayed our hands, first album, “The Outside Room,” on
in terms of the citrus factor.” a tiny label, Not Not Fun Records,
Jim Strong, an artist and a musician playing all the instruments herself. It
who dated Mering in high school and For a while, Mering found this scene sounded lo-fi, spooky, and out-there—
who remains a close friend, remembers very heady and inspiring. She told me there was no call to release a single.
meeting her for the first time, at a show that, at the time, she was convinced she Around this time, she used the entire
at the First Unitarian Church of Phil- was hearing the sound of the future: modest advance that she received from
adelphia.“We were introduced by a mu- “It’s going to be noise—it’s going to a record label to get her wisdom teeth
tual friend, who said, ‘This is Natalie. move past the structure of music as we taken out. She recalled bursting into
She just built an eight-foot guitar.’ ” know it to something ecstatic and im- tears when she found a parking ticket
Mering, after coming across a book provisational and on the cutting edge on her car, wondering how she could
about experimental-instrument build- of sound design and expression.” Mer- possibly pay it. Before the success of
ing, had learned how to put two gui- ing observed, “Instead of feeling like a her next two albums, she was admired
tars together with their necks touch- regular singer-songwriter, I felt more by other musicians, but she “didn’t have
ing—a contraption that produced, as like an explorer—exploring realms of a leg up or a patron,” and she got by
she remembered,“a ghostly sound where sound for my generation.” with a string of day jobs, from census-
you could only hear the harmonics of taker to “dog-hiker,” which involved
the strings.” (Mering lugged the chi- Mering went to study music at bringing packs of dogs into the woods
merical guitar to gigs in a ski bag—the Lewis & Clark College, in Port- to let them run around.
only case big enough for it.) Strong and land, Oregon, but she left after a year These impecunious years, she says,
his friends, who were a little older, were to make songs on her own, and to play shaped her artistic outlook. “I felt like
starting to make their own instruments with an experimental noise band called it was my responsibility to be excited
out of found materials. “She was just Jackie-O Motherfucker.She soon ended about things that might not have the
immediately a weird little leader in this up back on the East Coast, bouncing most capitalistic value but might have
scene we were creating,”he recalled. He between Baltimore and Philadelphia. value for our psychology and be valu-
said that the young Mering “had an in- In Baltimore, she lived for a time in a able in terms of expression,” she said.
credible depth of knowledge about three-story abandoned warehouse that “It’s almost like that replaced the faith
avant-garde music.” had been converted into a communal I grew up with as a kid in some ways.
art-and-living space called Tarantula It didn’t replace God, but there was this
Mering, Strong, and their friends Hill. Twig Harper, the musician who idea of How do I help people? I’ve got
became interested in sixties “happen- ran it, let artists live there for next to to believe in the frontiers of art and
ings” and the Fluxus art movement. In nothing. It had a library, screen-print-
retrospect, their projects had something
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022 31
music.” She went on, “It was always re- “I think I used to mute my sexual- would emphasize more accessible
ally important to me to make sure my ity and my femininity so that I could sounds—most notably her voice, which
generation didn’t get completely swal- be considered a peer and a bro,” Mer- was honeyed and languid, but with a
lowed up by capitalism. Because it ing observed.“And that has its own pit- kind of dignified force that made her
seemed to me that this was what was falls. Learning how to basically turn lyrics sound composed and oracular.
happening to millennials—and our music my pheromones off in a situation and The resulting album, “The Innocents,”
was really boring.” She recalls being a make it really, explicitly, subconsciously which she released in 2014, had a cover
teen-ager and “asking my dad, because clear that nothing was going to hap- reminiscent of a vintage folk LP: a sim-
he was a musician, ‘When are we going pen. It’s a good skill to have, but it’s ple black-and-white photograph of a
to have the next wave? When is some- also a strange skill.” ponytailed Mering in profile. Tracks
one going to come and reinvent music such as “Land of Broken Dreams” and
again?’Because we were getting ’NSync In early 2016, Mering moved to Los “Summer” harkened back to the mys-
and Britney Spears and Hanson and the Angeles, where she gravitated more tical medievalism of sixties folk reviv-
Spice Girls, and it was bad.” (She has strongly toward the singer-songwriter alists like Fairport Convention. In 2016
lately grown more admiring of Spears.) mode burnished by such seventies for- came “Front Row Seat to Earth,” an
bears as Harry Nilsson and Laura Nyro. album that showcased a lyrical turn to-
Men dominated the indie-music Though she was still incorporating “weird ward generational angst and pushed
scene Mering was in, though she was a sounds and tape loops,” she said, her Mering’s vocals into a more ethereal
more technically proficient musician music had been “morphing toward what register. But 2019’s “Titanic Rising,”
than most of them. Elaine Kahn, a poet I do now.” She noted, “As the songs got which came out on the prominent indie
who first met her in Philadelphia in better, the noises got quieter, because label Sub Pop, represented a big musi-
2007 and has stayed friends with her they didn’t need the atmospheric sup- cal leap, and it turned up on many
since, recalls getting emotional when port anymore.”It struck her that the truly album-of-the-year lists.There was less
she saw Mering perform the songs from “nonconformist thing to do”was to make gloomy grandiosity and more humma-
“Titanic Rising” at a record-release music that was “as beautiful as possible.” ble swing—a more knowing incorpo-
party: “Though there were definitely Guys in noise music had liked it when ration of soft-rock charm. The Guard-
people in that noise scene who fostered she got loud and dissonant and crazy ian described it as “beauty deep enough
her talent, I was also thinking about all onstage.“They’d be, like”—she assumed to drown in” and “gorgeously smart.”
the dudes over the years who had tried a gruff dude voice—“ ‘You looked really Pitchfork noted that the “songs are more
to steal her light a little bit. Here she good doing that.’”But Mering wanted to stoic and elegant even when Mering
was, this beautiful young woman, who hone her songcraft, creating music re- sings of apocalyptic imagery like a ‘mil-
could play way better than most of them plete with grace. lion people burnin’.”
could. And they would try to make her
their girlfriend, or their muse.” She recalled a distinct turning point. As Mering’s career has taken off, she
“I went to this international noise con- has participated in buzzy collaborations
I asked Mering about those gender ference,” she said. “And I was playing in that highlight her limpid vocals and
politics. “Oh, I’ve been on tour with a basement and the amps caught on “Licorice Pizza”style. She turned up on
people where they’re, like, ‘If you don’t fire—I was playing so crazy and loud. I Lana Del Rey’s 2021 album, “Chem-
sleep with me on this tour, it’s gonna trails Over the Country Club,” where
be the tour from living hell,’” she said. honestly felt like the Devil had showed she and the singer Zella Day harmo-
“Threatening me. Or somebody wants up to my gig and said,‘Don’t do this any- nized with Del Rey on a gauzy cover
to work with you creatively but also wants more.’ I mean, this was a basement full of Joni Mitchell’s “For Free.” For the
to sleep with you a little bit.” We were of people and the amps were on fire.And soundtrack to the recent “Minions”pre-
driving to her house after a fitting for this was before the Ghost Ship fire.”(In quel, a compilation of seventies covers
a music-video shoot—she had tried on December, 2016, a conflagration broke produced by the hitmaker Jack An-
white sailor pants, a jaunty sailor’s beret, out during a show at the Ghost Ship, an tonoff, Mering channelled Linda Ron-
and a striped T-shirt, for a scenario in alternative art-and-living space in Oak- stadt with a crisp version of “You’re No
which she would dance with a cartoon, land that didn’t meet building codes; it Good.” She conjured Carole King on
like Gene Kelly in “Anchors Aweigh.” killed thirty-six people,casting a shadow “Suddenly,”a groovy, psychedelic hom-
Instead of being paired up with a car- over the D.I.Y. scene.) age written by one of her friends from
toon mouse, Mering would dance with Baltimore, Michael Collins, who has
a malevolent animated cell phone. (She Mering decided that her new music also found indie success in L.A.,record-
talks often about how drained and ex- ing as Drugdealer. That track has be-
ploited we are by self-obsolescing mod- come one of Mering’s biggest hits on
ern technology.) In the car, she had put Spotify, with thirty-two million plays.
on a nineteen-forties playlist—the Ink (Her top song as Weyes Blood,the coun-
Spots, Frank Sinatra singing “I’ll Never try-tinged “Andromeda,”from “Titanic
Smile Again.” Perhaps the velvety vo- Rising,” has received nearly forty mil-
cals helped, but Mering turned out to lion plays.) Collins, remembering their
be one of the calmest drivers I’ve ever youthful immersion in Baltimore’s ex-
shared a car with in L.A. traffic.
32 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022
perimental milieu, said of Mering,“You “ You’re not thinking frog thoughts, Maurice, I can tell.”
know,she could have gone out and tried
to have the career she has now from a ••
younger age. But she’s so much more
of an odd bird. She was interested in One of the rewards of a Weyes Blood notes describe the track as an “other-
gravitating toward the freak zones.” album is the sense that, beneath the worldly dirge” that “serves as an alle-
transistor-radio prettiness, something gory for our collective hubris.” Dua
Some of the confrontational, theat- stranger lurks. On the new record, the Lipa will probably not be coming out
rical verve of her youth is visible in her song “Children of the Empire” pairs a with a remix. In a short essay about the
more recent videos and album-cover bouncy and captivating melodic line album, Mering writes that “the pliable
concepts. The drowned-bedroom image with almost comically grim lyrics: “So softness of a flower has become my
on the cover of “Titanic Rising,”for ex- much blood on our hands”; “We’re all mantra as we barrel towards an uncertain
ample, could easily have been realized lost.” Originally, the song had finished fate.” The song comes off as a twenty-
with Photoshop. Instead, she worked on a bright musical note—a fun, vamp- first-century version of sacred music,
with an underwater photographer,hold- ing outro recorded at EastWest. But with a wash of Disneyesque bird sounds
ing her breath in the back-yard pool for Rado told me that, at his studio, he and that suggest a tripped-out sublime—
longer and longer as night fell and the Mering decided instead to fade out the or, as Mering puts it, “a musical sob.”
particleboard furniture began to dis- song with a moody swirl of strings, and In its capacity to both haunt and soothe,
solve. In the video for “It’s Not Just Me, to make the finger snaps that punctu- the song feels like the album’s defini-
It’s Everybody”—a title for our times, ate the song sound “colder, louder, more tive moment.
if ever there was one—Mering scam- metallic.” These touches, he said, were
pers around a bombed-out cityscape “so much more Weyes Blood.” So was One afternoon last fall, I asked Me-
constructed on the stage of the Ace Mering’s decision to include, on both ring where we should meet for an in-
Theatre, a concert space in downtown “Titanic Rising”and “And in the Dark- terview, and she picked Huntington
L.A. that still looks like the Spanish ness, Hearts Aglow,” an ambient in- Gardens, in Pasadena. It was a clear-
Gothic movie palace it originally was. strumental track that deconstructs an skied day, and we walked among glow-
earlier song on the album. On the new ing Japanese maples and dying roses.
Mering told me she is grateful that record, the instrumental piece is “In Mering spotted a woman and her young
she started her career on the margins. Holy Flux,” which takes the vocal loop daughter eating ice cream and looked
It allowed her to try strange stuff and from “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody,” at them longingly. We got in line for
to practice among like-minded friends— and, in Rado’s words, “runs it through some cones. We’d been talking again
not, say, on TikTok or in some other a lot of effects to morph it into some- about her relationship to the past, and
contemporary platform where she would thing sonically different.” she said that she was maybe becoming
have felt immediate pressure to brand less nostalgic.“I’ve been using the word
her music and her style.When she made “And in the Darkness,Hearts Aglow” ‘sentimental’ more,” she said. “I think
the move toward less transgressive music, contains an especially striking track I’m sentimental.”She paused.“Because
she said,“it wasn’t about money—I just called “God Turn Me Into a Flower,” it leaves you open to experiencing the
wanted to reach people.”With the kind which features heavy synths played by future as something that’s worth re-
of noise music she had initially been the experimental electronic musician membering. In our culture, it’s so easy
creating, “you could maybe go the art- Daniel Lopatin, who performs as One- to just assume the future is going to
museum route, or get real academic. I ohtrix Point Never. Mering’s album keep getting worse.”
liked people. I wanted to play big shows
with people.” She feels that her years
spent “doing something that was very
ecstatic and free” organically led her
to consider other approaches—“to do
something that was very orchestrated
and planned.”
Mering’s two styles of music-mak-
ing continue to “feed into each other,”
she added. “I now know that, as much
as I bang my head against the wall some-
times—it’s gotta be perfect, or it’s gotta
be like this, or this melody has to feel
like this—at the end of the day the raw-
est form of emotion is more of an im-
pulse, an improvisatory thing. I learned
a lot about improvisation from noise
music, and I default to that if I’m over-
thinking it. You can’t be too self-aware
and calculating.”
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022 33
A REPORTER AT LARGE
A RECKONING
At a dangerous time in Iran, the celebrated director Asghar Farhadi is on trial for using a student’s ideas.
BY RACHEL AVIV
A zadeh Masihzadeh’s family focus on lies that reverberate through find her own story. To keep her ex-
owned a VCR,a rare possession middle-class families,as one of the great- penses down, she looked for ideas in
in their neighborhood in Shi- est filmmakers of all time. Farhadi has Shiraz. A friend’s aunt said she’d seen
raz, a city in the south of Iran. Using an extraordinary ability to shift among a local TV report about an inmate who,
long cables, her father connected their different characters’perspectives,so that on leave from prison, had found a bag
machine to the televisions of seven other each character, even when committing of money and returned it. His name
households, so they could watch, too. At acts of violence or deception, seems was Mohammadreza Shokri, and he
night, after her father chose a movie, moral and reasonable.“The drama comes had been in prison for five years for a
Masihzadeh,the eldest of three children, from making very small mistakes,” he debt. Masihzadeh couldn’t find any in-
rode her bike down their alley to alert has said.“Very specific mistakes.Which formation about the story online, so
the neighbors.She honked her bike horn is the core of the story for me.” she went to the office of the TV sta-
once if it was a foreign movie. If it was tion and asked a reporter there to show
an Iranian film, she honked twice. Masihzadeh was one of eighteen stu- her the segment.
dents admitted to the workshop, which
Masihzadeh learned English by cost the equivalent of roughly fourteen One of the class videos captures Ma-
watching these movies, and, when she hundred dollars—the most expensive sihzadeh presenting her idea to Far-
was eighteen, she became an English class the Karnameh Institute had ever hadi. She speaks with a half smile, de-
instructor,teaching her students the lan- offered. At the first session, the insti- lighted by the details.When she explains
guage through dialogue from films. To tute’s director was surprised when Far- that she has received approval from the
practice greetings, she told them to act hadi announced that the workshop authorities to film inside the prison,
out the moment in “The Matrix” when would be about documentaries. Farhadi Farhadi, a small man who talks in a
Neo says, “It’s an honor to meet you,” brought in news articles about people soft, steady voice, tells her, “So your job
and Morpheus replies, “No, the honor who had been celebrated as heroes after is to go to Shiraz.”
is mine.” If her students didn’t say their they found lost money or a valuable
lines with enough feeling, she made item and chose to return it, rather than Nearly three months later, Masih-
them do it again. “They would get so to keep it for themselves. He split the zadeh showed part of her documentary
angry at me,” she said. “One student class into small groups, and instructed to the class. Farhadi complimented her
told me, ‘You are a teacher, not a direc- each group to report on one of the sto- on her ambiguous portrayal of Shokri.
tor,what are you doing? We are not your ries. He said he wanted to explore how But he seemed less pleased with the rest
actors.’” She thought the student had a a person gains the status of a hero—a of the class.They had been told that all
point, and she began saving money to subject he had been thinking about their documentaries would be edited
make her first short film, a silent por- since college, when he saw “Life of Ga- into a group film,and they had expected
trait of a boxing match. She completed lileo,”the Bertolt Brecht play, which in- that Farhadi’s name would appear in
it in 2013, when she was thirty-four, and cludes the line “Unhappy is the land the credits.Farhadi told them,“My name
it was accepted by more than a dozen that needs a hero.” won’t be in it at all. This is your work.”
film festivals.
Masihzadeh, who came from Shiraz “Can we at least thank you?”Masih-
The following year, she learned that for the workshop, taking an eighteen- zadeh asked.
Asghar Farhadi was holding a film- hour bus ride, tried to join two differ-
making workshop at the Karnameh In- ent groups, but she felt excluded from Farhadi didn’t answer, except to say
stitute of Arts and Culture, a presti- both.Rola Shamas,a student who video- that he hadn’t liked it when a student’s
gious cultural center in Tehran.Farhadi, recorded every session of the workshop, film had listed “Asghar Farhadi” in the
who is fifty, is the only director in the told me,“There was this unspoken com- credits in larger letters than the title.
twenty-first century to have won the petition,”because the students expected
Academy Award for Best International that Farhadi might pick someone from At the next class, two months later,
Feature Film twice.After his first Oscar, the class to work on his crew. Masih- Masihzadeh showed the final part of
for “A Separation,”in 2012, Time named zadeh “was a bit of a black duck,”Shamas her film, a chronicle of her search for
him one of the hundred most influen- said. “She didn’t play games. She was the woman who claimed the money that
tial people in the world. The English naïve, because she was not a city girl.” Shokri had found. Masihzadeh finally
director and playwright Mike Leigh locates the woman in a rural valley,eight
has described Farhadi, whose dramas Masihzadeh received permission hours from Shiraz. But, when Masih-
from Farhadi to work alone and to zadeh meets her, it’s unclear whether
she ever lost—or claimed—the money,
or if Shokri and the prison concocted
34 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022
Azadeh Masihzadeh is among those people who believe that Farhadi used their work. “I just want him to be honest,” she said.
PHOTOGRAPH BY FOROUGH ALAEI THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022 35
the story of his good deed in order to who had seemed honest when she in- rough footage. Negar Eskandarfar, the
create positive publicity for the prison, terviewed them had actually been con- director of the Karnameh Institute, told
which Shokri said had executed a girl cealing the truth. me,“The students were so disappointed
on the day that he discovered the money. with the process.They felt that Mr. Far-
“Yes!”Farhadi said.“They themselves hadi had abandoned the workshop.”
Farhadi told the class that Masih- don’t realize that they lie.”
zadeh’s documentary showed the im- With permission from Eskandarfar
portance of layering revelations until Toward the end of class,Farhadi asked and Farhadi,Masihzadeh hired her own
the viewer reaches a “beautiful point” the students to raise their hand if they editor and submitted her documentary
where the different pieces fit together. wanted to become feature filmmakers. to film festivals.At the Shiraz Film Fes-
“You let this case go,” he told her. “You Everyone put a hand in the air. “I have tival, in 2018, her movie, which she ti-
let it get edited.” a suggestion for all of you,”he said.“First, tled “All Winners, All Losers,”won the
make a full documentary.. . .Spend your Special Jury Prize.“I will definitely,defi-
Although the workshop was sup- time on it, about six months or a year. nitely continue making documentaries,
posed to have ten classes, spread out Don’t show the documentary to anyone. because I feel it is part of my life,” she
over nearly a year, Farhadi told the stu- Write your script based on the docu- said as she accepted the award.
dents that he was ending it after five mentary. Now you know the characters.
sessions.“What did you learn from this This way, your hand is fuller.” He told Masihzadeh said that, after her doc-
class?” he asked them. them,“It is possible that I will do it my- umentary was nominated for the best-
self.”He said he might dispatch a group research award at another Iranian festi-
“Your style and modus operandi,” of researchers to make a documentary, val,a woman from the Bamdad Institute,
one replied. and then, after a period of time, perhaps an educational center in Tehran run by
five years, he would “write a script based Farhadi’s wife, called her and said that
Though Masihzadeh had been dis- on it, out of its heart.” the class film would be completed after
appointed on hearing that the class all, and that the first segment would be
would focus on documentaries, she said Four years after the workshop, a final Masihzadeh’s documentary. But, the
she had thought, “Definitely Mr. Far- cut of the group project had not been woman added, if she continued screen-
hadi will tell us something about writ- completed.The students had hoped that ing her documentary at festivals,it would
ing scripts for feature movies that I will a professional editor would work on the not be included. According to Masihza-
be able to use.” film, but instead Farhadi had selected a deh, she asked if Farhadi’s name would
student from the workshop named Vahid appear in the credits, and the woman
“What was that?”Farhadi asked her. Sedaghat,who was given all the students’ said yes.Masihzadeh immediately agreed
“The most interesting stories are to stop showing her film. She withdrew
within and around us,” she said. Mak- it from a festival in Italy. Eskandarfar,
ing her film, she’d realized that people who had been an executive producer of
“A Separation,”recalled that Masihzadeh
“We’re lucky to live in a city with so much unaffordable art.” was “very, very excited, because she felt
that bigger things were going to happen.”
In 2019, Masihzadeh moved to Teh-
ran and founded a short-film distribu-
tion company. When she learned that
Farhadi was holding a workshop at the
Bamdad Institute, she decided to en-
roll, since the class would be focussed
on screenwriting. On the first day of
the workshop, Farhadi asked the stu-
dents to introduce themselves.Moham-
madreza Shirvan, a student sitting next
to Masihzadeh,told me,“Farhadi paused
when he saw her.” Shirvan introduced
himself next,but,he said,“I noticed that
Mr. Farhadi was not really paying at-
tention to what I had to say,and he went
back to Azadeh and asked her, ‘Are you
commuting from Shiraz?’” Throughout
the workshop,it seemed to Shirvan that
Farhadi was more interested in Masih-
zadeh than in the other students.
At one of the last classes, in August,
2019, Farideh Shafiei, an administrator
at the institute, told Masihzadeh that
Farhadi wanted to meet with her in the there are so many rumors in the world She immediately booked a flight back
institute’s main office,an open room with of Iranian cinema, he’d wanted a state- to Tehran. She dropped off her luggage
a balcony overlooking the city. Farhadi’s ment clarifying the origin of the idea, so at her apartment, put some clothes into
wife, Parisa Bakhtavar, a director, was in there would be no misunderstandings. a backpack, and took a flight to Shiraz.
the room. Farhadi invited Masihzadeh Shafiei said that the conversation was She wondered if Farhadi had tried to
to sit at a desk and then told her that he so friendly that, after Masihzadeh left, call her but hadn’t been able to get
was working on a new film, called “A Bakhtavar said, “Such a nice girl.”) through, because she’d been in Europe.
Hero,” which was set in Shiraz. Mostly, though, she said,“I just wanted
Shirvan,Masihzadeh’s classmate,was to ask him, ‘Why did you take my sig-
According to Masihzadeh, Farhadi planning to drive her home that day. “I nature? Did you put all these questions
complimented her on her Shirazi accent remember her crying as she entered the into my head just so you could make
and asked if she might want to act in car,”he told me.When they were stopped
his film. “I asked him, ‘Me?’” Masihza- at a red light, Masihzadeh your film? Is that the way
deh said. “An actress?” She said she had began recounting what had you are teaching me?’ It is
no acting talent; when watching her doc- happened, saying that Far- very painful.”
umentary, she cringed when she heard hadi was her idol. “I told
her own voice. But she said she would her, ‘If I were in your posi- The friend said that
be thrilled to work as an assistant, per- tion, I would have done the Farhadi was shooting at a
haps scouting locations in Shiraz. She same thing,’” Shirvan said. school on Ghasro Dasht
and Farhadi discussed her knowledge of Street. There are several
the city, and then, she said, Shafiei put The next morning, Ma- schools on the road with
a typed piece of paper on the desk. Ma- sihzadeh went to the Kar- the same name. Masihza-
sihzadeh assumed it would be a contract nameh Institute to tell Es- deh’s mother drove her to
formalizing her job, but the paper said: kandarfar, its director, what each one. When they got
had happened. “It was as if to the last school, the front
I ____, daughter of ____, holder of National she had been struck by trauma,” Eskan- door was partly open. Masihzadeh
I.D. No. ____, residing at ____, herewith, in darfar told me. “Her hands were trem- walked into a courtyard, where actors
full physical and mental health, and with utter bling.” Eskandarfar added, “It crossed were dressed as teachers,and told a crew
consent, declare that the documentary film “All my mind that Farhadi would want to member that she wanted to speak with
Winners, All Losers,” which was produced be- use her documentary.” Farhadi. Masihzadeh said that the crew
tween 2013 and 2019, is based on Mr. Asghar member went inside but returned say-
Farhadi’s proposal and idea that he shared in The next week, Masihzadeh came ing that Farhadi didn’t know anyone
his documentary-filmmaking workshop. to the Bamdad Institute before class. with Masihzadeh’s name. She assumed
“I said, ‘Mr. Farhadi, I want to tell you that her name had been mispronounced
Shafiei gave her a new sheet of paper that the idea and the plot of my doc- and said it again, louder. Eventually, Se-
and told her to rewrite the statement, umentary are mine,’”she said.“He an- daghat, the student whom Farhadi had
filling in the blanks, and then sign it. swered, ‘O.K.’ And I asked him, ‘So selected to edit the class project, came
you agree?’ He said, ‘O.K.’” outside. He was now working on Far-
For a moment, Masihzadeh said, she hadi’s crew. He told her that Farhadi
felt as if she couldn’t breathe: “I raised According to Masihzadeh’s account, was busy and suggested that she call his
my hand and said,‘Mr. Farhadi, can we which Farhadi says is false, she asked assistant to schedule an appointment.
perhaps speak about this?’He said,‘Well, if they could revise the statement she’d Masihzadeh considered Sedaghat
sign for now and write down your Na- signed, but he told her that this could her friend, and she asked him if the
tional I.D. correctly so we can buy you serve as a lesson, and that one day she’d movie they were filming was similar to
a plane ticket to Shiraz.’” thank him: the next time someone put her documentary. According to Masih-
a paper in front of her to sign,she should zadeh,Sedaghat responded that he didn’t
She asked him, “Mr. Farhadi, is ‘A get a lawyer, to avoid stress. He said it remember her documentary, and, when
Hero’ related to my documentary?” was clear that she was anxious and not she reminded him of its story, he said
sleeping—he saw circles under her eyes. that he hadn’t been given the script of
He told her he had written his film Now he needed to think twice about “A Hero.” (Sedaghat told me, “I don’t
before she made hers, she said. whether she should work on his film. remember having that conversation,”
and disagrees with Masihzadeh’s account
When she continued to hesitate, She asked for permission to sit down. of what happened in the courtyard.)
he said that he had been teaching all When he granted it, she sank into a She said, “I looked around again, and I
day—he was tired, and she was wast- chair and began crying. She said that thought,O.K.,this is the yard of a school,
ing three people’s time. “He kept re- Farhadi was smoking and didn’t look and there are actors dressed like teach-
peating that it was a simple paper be- her way. When he finished his ciga- ers,and my documentary has no school.”
tween us,” she said. rette, he walked out of the room. She felt silly for having doubted Far-
hadi, and she left. She never called to
Masihzadeh began copying the state- Ayear later,in September,2020,Ma- schedule an appointment.
ment, but her hand was shaking and she sihzadeh was in Germany, visiting Ten months later, “A Hero” had its
kept making mistakes.When she finally her sister, a landscape architect, when a
completed and signed it, she said that friend called her and told her that Far-
Shafiei told her, “Please leave. Mr. Far- hadi was shooting a movie in Shiraz.
hadi is quite tired.”(Farhadi and Shafiei
dispute Masihzadeh’s account of the
meeting. Farhadi told me that, because
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022 37
In other interviews, he said that for
years he had been thinking about the
ways in which heroes feel trapped by
societal expectations.“In Iran, someone
is ready to lose everything to retain their
reputation,” he said. “The serenity and
sense of confidence that comes from
knowing you have a good reputation is
such that, in order to maintain that, you
end up in an ambivalence about your
own life.”
“Make sure that both of you get there at the same time.” An Iranian film called “The Cow,”
about a man who mourns his dead
•• cow so passionately that he begins to
act like it, is often credited with saving
world première, at the Cannes Film Hero.”She said,“If in the middle some- Iranian cinema. After the revolution, in
Festival.In interviews,Farhadi explained where, in very small letters, he had 1979, movie production nearly ceased—
that he had tried to cast people who thanked ‘a student from my workshop cinema was seen as a corrupting, deca-
were not professional actors, because in 2014,’ I would be quiet forever.” But dent force from the West—and thirty-
he wanted to go beyond realism and there was nothing. two movie theatres in Tehran were
make the film look “exactly like life.” shuttered, many of them burned down.
He said, “I thought it should be closer On Instagram, some of Masihza- But, after watching “The Cow,” Aya-
to a documentary.” deh’s friends posted synopses of her tollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder
documentary along with the hashtag of the Islamic Republic of Iran, was re-
Masihzadeh asked a few friends #AHero and tagged her; people began portedly impressed by the educational
who were at Cannes to call her after reposting the messages. Masihzadeh potential of Iranian films. (It helped
watching the film. They reported that shared about twenty of these posts. that “The Cow,” made a decade before
it was about a prisoner in Shiraz named The Iranian Web site Café Cinema, the revolution, dealt with poverty under
Rahim.When Rahim is on a leave from which publishes movie reviews and the Shah.) In Khomeini’s first speech
prison, where he’s been incarcerated for news, ran a short article about the pos- after returning from exile, he said, of his
a debt, his girlfriend gives him a bag sibility that “A Hero” was based on regime, “We are not opposed to cin-
of gold that she found on the street, Masihzadeh’s documentary. “While ema,” only to “the misuse of cinema.”
and he returns it to the owner, a mys- Farhadi was busy with press interviews Movie theatres hung banners with Kho-
terious woman. A few lines in “A Hero” and the red carpet in the South of meini’s picture and the words “We are
are nearly identical to remarks that France,” the article said, filmmaking not opposed to cinema.” The govern-
Shokri, the subject of Masihzadeh’s students had “mentioned another per- ment began working to establish a new
documentary, makes. Like Shokri, son as a ‘hero’ and considered her the movie industry, which would adhere to
Rahim is a thin, fragile-looking man cause of these successes.” Islamic values and avoid sensitive social
who is divorced with one child, works and political subjects that one member
as a painter in the prison, has a family At Cannes,when asked by BBC Per- of the government described as “circles
member with a speech impediment, sian about the origins of the movie,Far- of perturbation.”
and moves through the world passively, hadi said that he’d held a workshop that
with a hapless smile. “Even when I am had “research purposes.”When writing Farhadi,who grew up in central Iran,
so angry, I smile,”Shokri had told Ma- the script, he continued, he’d integrated the son of a wholesale grocer, was seven
sihzadeh. In interviews, Farhadi said elements from each news story that his years old during the revolution; two
that he instructed the actor playing students had investigated: “For exam- years later, he saw “The Cow.” “It
Rahim to “put on that broken smile ple, from the person in Shiraz, I chose changed my childhood world,” he told
whenever possible.” Farhadi told the to film in Shiraz—although the char- me, on a Zoom call in July, from his
actor, “When the character has more acter is completely different from that home, in Tehran. “I realized that there
problems, smile more.” Shirazi character,” he said. In an inter- is nothing more beautiful for me than
view with the Hollywood news site the medium of film.” Nearly all the
Masihzadeh asked her friends to Deadline, he reiterated that “ ‘A Hero’ older kids on Farhadi’s street fought in
pay close attention to the credits of “A was not inspired by a specific news item.” Iran’s war with Iraq, which began a year
after the revolution and lasted eight
years. One of his friends lied about his
age in order to enlist. Not long after-
ward, the friend’s dead body was car-
ried through town in a procession for
martyrs. The revolution and the war
38 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022
created an “atmosphere where every- as a judge at an Iranian film festival and Asghar said,‘Hang on, do you have
thing was solid and literal, the reality where Farhadi’s first feature, “Dancing some paper?’” Haghighi told me. “And
was in your face—there was no fan- in the Dust,” was screening. “I saw that he started jotting down these ideas.”
tasy,” Farhadi said. “The only way that this is the same story with a little change Farhadi stayed until the early morning
I could escape all this was cinema.” and without my name!” Jahangirian and then, after going home to sleep,
wrote me. He gave an interview to a came back later that day. They worked
Farhadi studied theatre at the Uni- newspaper,saying that he was “distressed this way for eight months, until they’d
versity of Tehran, writing his thesis on and astonished.” Afterward, Farhadi finished the script. Haghighi told me,
the difference between a moment of si- apologized to Jahangirian, and added “The day we met was the day we started
lence and a pause in the work of Har- his name to a version of the film that writing. It was like love at first sight—
old Pinter. “The main trait of his char- was broadcast on TV. (Farhadi said that it really was.”
acters is that they say certain things to he’d heard the story from one of his
avoid saying what’s actually in their co-writers, and hadn’t realized the orig- The film,called “Fireworks Wednes-
heart,”Farhadi told a film scholar.“And, inal source.) Jahangirian wrote that, de- day,” premièred in 2006 and won three
for those of us who grew up in Iranian spite never receiving money for the film, awards at the Fajr International Film
society, this is very tangible.” “I did not protest, and I will not pro- Festival, in Tehran. Farhadi directed it,
test,because Farhadi has mentioned the and he and Haghighi shared the writ-
In 1994, when Farhadi was twenty- name of my country many times in pres- ing credit. The movie explores the way
two,he directed a play called “Car Dwell- tigious international festivals. . . . For that, in a marriage, lying can become
ers” for a student festival. The play had me, national interests are more valuable normalized, as if it were the only way
been written by Ali Khodsiani, a fel- than personal interests.” to maintain stasis. After “Fireworks
low-student. Khodsiani told me that he Wednesday,”Farhadi came to Haghighi
was dismayed when he saw a bulletin Farhadi’s next movie,“Beautiful City,” with a new idea: a group of middle-class
for the performance which listed Far- which came out in 2004, was about an friends go on a seaside vacation, and
hadi as the author. He confronted Far- eighteen-year-old who, after killing his one of them, an enigmatic woman, dis-
hadi, who said that the credit was a mis- girlfriend, faces execution unless his appears. Haghighi said that Farhadi
take. But he said that Farhadi also told friend and his sister can persuade the proposed that they write the film to-
him, “Please do not speak out now, be- victim’s family to forgive him. “It was gether, and that Haghighi direct it. But
cause I got engaged to Parisa, and we the first time I became aware of a very Haghighi was underwhelmed by the
are going to get married. I’ve told Parisa important sentence, which has affected plot. “What I was presented with was
that I’ve written this play myself. If she all of my films,” Farhadi told me. “The the nucleus of the story,a detective story,
finds out that I lied to her in the first classic tragedy is a battle between good and I kept saying, ‘Asghar, what is in-
days of our lives, our relationship may and evil. But in ‘Beautiful City’the story teresting about this? I don’t get it.’”
break down.”Several months later, Far- is a battle between good and good—and
hadi directed the play again, at a theatre we don’t know which side we want to Haghighi said that they developed
in Tehran. Khodsiani was upset when win. We have an affinity for both sides.” the idea during the next two months,
he saw the poster: this time, although meeting nearly every day to talk and
Khodsiani was credited as the author, Mani Haghighi, an Iranian director write. (Farhadi recalls discussing the
Farhadi, who had made revisions to the who had recently gained international idea for only a day or two.) In the pro-
play, was listed as the “rewriter.” (Far- recognition for his first feature film,told cess, the woman’s disappearance—and
hadi said that he never claimed to be her companions’frantic attempts to ac-
the author, and added, “I don’t under- me that, when he saw “Beautiful City,” count for it—became a riveting portrait
stand why he’s telling this fake story.”A “I was just devastated. I was weeping. I of a culture in which telling the truth
friend of both men at the time,who wit- was shaking. It was a shattering expe- is not always a viable option. “I think
nessed them fighting, told me, “What rience.”He invited Farhadi, whom he’d Asghar realized this was going to be a
Mr. Khodsiani said is the truth.”) never met, to a gathering at his house. really great film, and he sort of took it
After the other guests left, Farhadi back,which was fine with me,”Haghighi
Farhadi wrote for state television and shared an idea for a new film, about a said. Haghighi ended up acting in the
radio for several years and, in his early middle-class mother who suspects her movie, called “About Elly,”and was not
thirties, began working on his first fea- husband of having an affair. Haghighi credited as a writer.
ture film. Abbas Jahangirian, an author made a few structural suggestions. “At
and a playwright, said that at a meet- this point, it’s, like, two in the morning, The lead role was played by Gol-
ing with Farhadi he told him about a shifteh Farahani, who had recently be-
story he was writing: a lovelorn young come the first actress based in Iran to
man,working as an apprentice to a snake act in a Hollywood film since the rev-
catcher, is bitten on the finger by a poi- olution, playing Leonardo DiCaprio’s
sonous snake.They decided to work on love interest in Ridley Scott’s “Body of
a movie version, which Jahangirian be- Lies.”Iran’s intelligence service launched
gan researching. Jahangirian was wait- an investigation into whether she had
ing to receive a contract before starting broken the law, both by participating in
a script, but he didn’t hear from Far- a Hollywood film and by letting herself
hadi again. In 2003, Jahangirian served be seen in public without a hijab. She
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022 39
was interrogated several times and faced Ali—and the imam told me to apolo- view with an Iranian news site, Iran’s
the possibility of being banned from gize for what I did—and then they deputy minister of cinema said, “We
working in Iran. Before filming “About would let me back into Iran.” She con- designed, and even lobbied, for this
Elly,” she, like many actors in Iran, had tinued, “It was a complete mindfuck. to happen.” He hoped to fulfill a mis-
to sign a contract stating that,if the gov- First he hates me and ignores me, then sion that Ahmadinejad, a hard-liner
ernment halted the shooting or the pro- he says he is concerned about me—but widely accused of violating human
duction of the film because of her par- in this unbelievable way, that I should rights, had given him, to “internation-
ticipation in it, she would be liable for have a dream where my sins are washed alize Iranian cinema.” In 2009, he and
the costs. away—so you don’t know what you are other ministry officials had invited a
dealing with, really.” (Farhadi says that delegation from Hollywood, including
After shooting was completed, the he never asked her to apologize.) four members of the Academy’s board
Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guid- of governors, to visit Iran for eleven
ance blocked the film from screening Farahani described Farhadi as a vasat days. They put up the guests at a ho-
at festivals. But Mahmoud Ahmadine- baz, a person who plays the middle—a tel in Tehran—on their hotel pillows,
jad, the head of Iran’s government at concept so prevalent that one popular they placed rosebuds and candies—
the time, reversed the ban; he later said Iranian late-night talk show names a and showed them “About Elly,”which,
it was “not fair that a film be condemned “Vasat Baz of the Week.”“He is clearly according to one of the event’s orga-
by the mistake of one actress.” ( Javad not part of the dictatorship, but he is nizers, “they talked about in amaze-
Shamaqdari, then Iran’s deputy min- making deals with that dictatorship,” ment.” (The organizer also told an
ister of cinema, told me that one of she said. “And yes, sure, all artists have Iranian news agency that the Holly-
the movie’s producers had come to to do that to be able to work and live wood guests were detained at the Teh-
him for help.) Farahani, worried about and breathe there—but to what extent? ran airport, and that throughout their
threats to her freedom, went into exile Living in a dictatorship, we all have this trip he had to hide his fear that they’d
in Paris. “I was the first actress who instinct of lying to survive, but there is be arrested.)
really left like that, and I was being a point where you can go so far that
battered by the people, by the govern- you forget what the truth is.”Some Ira- After “A Separation” premièred in
ment,”she told me.“There was no sol- nian filmmakers, like Jafar Panahi and Iran, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, who
idarity from anyone in the business. It Mohammad Rasoulof, don’t seem ca- had taken a screenwriting workshop
was like when you want to lapidate pable of lying, she said. Both have been with Farhadi in 2009, said that some
someone, and everyone just gets an- charged with “propaganda against the of his former classmates called him to
other stone to throw.” state,” and, this summer, they were im- say that the movie seemed to draw
prisoned. But, for Farhadi, she said,“ev- from a short film that he’d made in
She planned to reunite with the cast erything is a move—every step, every Farhadi’s class. Pourmohammadi’s film
of “About Elly” at the 2009 Berlin In- blink, is calculated.” was about a domestic worker in a mid-
ternational Film Festival, but she had dle-class home who tries to hide her
to walk the red carpet alone. (She said Farhadi has described writing a script job from her husband, because she
that Farhadi wanted it this way, which as “finding a suit for a button.”The knows it will insult his honor; in the
Farhadi denies.) Farhadi and the other starting point is often a single image. end, her secret is exposed. “A Separa-
members of the cast arrived after her “A Separation” began with a memory tion”has a similar plotline.“I had some
and took pictures together. She was hu- that one of his brothers had shared, of expectation that a professor, if he gets
miliated, and spent the evening trying crying as he bathed their ailing grand- a good idea from a student, will also
to hold back tears. She wondered if father. That moment, Farhadi told me, support that student and try to help
“maybe deep inside Farhadi wanted to was like “a magnet that starts attract- him find his way into the field,” Pour-
punish me for causing the movie trou- ing all the experiences from the sub- mohammadi told me. He hadn’t been
ble,” she said. “Or maybe he wanted to conscious, and I gather these things, credited, or even informed that a sim-
pretend to punish me, in order to show and it begins to shape the suit.”Farhadi ilar story would appear in the movie.
that he was on the right side, accord- elaborated on the image, writing an in- “It was very paradoxical,” he said. “I
ing to the government—because I took tricate story about a man whose com- still loved Farhadi, and I loved the
the veil off, and I was the bad girl who mitment to taking care of his sick fa- film. It was both an honor and a be-
everyone was insulting.” She added, ther leads to the dissolution of his trayal.”(Farhadi had portrayed domes-
“The irony is that my interrogators marriage.The film offered another vari- tic work in “Fireworks Wednesday,”
didn’t manage to make me feel guilty. ation on what had become for Farhadi and he told me that, if anything, Pour-
But Farhadi managed to do that. He a central theme. “According to what mohammadi’s plot may have come
made me believe that by leaving Iran, scales, according to what system of from that movie.)
by not wearing a head scarf, I had done weights and measures, can I recognize
something terrible.” a behavior as ethical and another as not Not long afterward, Farhadi told
ethical?” he has said. “This is the great- Mani Haghighi that he had written a
She said that Farhadi, after ignor- est question of my life.” film called “The Past”and summarized
ing her publicly, spoke with her at a the script. Haghighi was taken aback:
hotel in Berlin: “He asked me to write “A Separation” was the first Iranian the story was a dramatization of an ep-
an apology to the Supreme Leader, say- movie to win an Oscar. In an inter- isode from his own life. Years earlier,
ing that I had dreamed of the Imam
40 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022
PIANO he was working on a film in Spain, his
first without any Iranian characters,and
I held him together he was struggling to capture the way
as long as I could, she says. that Westerners respond to infidelity.
Haghighi,who has written and directed
He stopped working, eight films, invited him to his house.
stopped coming upstairs. But he said that he told Farhadi, “You
know what? I really don’t want to col-
He was like tissue paper laborate with you anymore, because I
coming apart in water. always feel bad about it afterward—
even though I don’t really want any-
Like smoke in my hands. thing from you except that you just,like,
It had nothing to do come to me and say, ‘That was really
helpful. Thank you.’”
with you, baby. You left
when you had to. Yet, as Farhadi described his con-
cerns with the script, Haghighi became
I met a woman once interested. “Fine, this is what we will
who worked on pianos. do,” Haghighi told him. “I don’t want
a contract. I don’t want money. I just
Said it was a hard job. want you to acknowledge that this day
The tools, the leverage. occurred. So we will take a picture of
us in front of the whiteboard as we start
The required ear. I love it, writing the script together.Then, when
she said, but it’s brutal. the film comes out, and you don’t ac-
knowledge me, and you just forget who
The second I step away I was, I will show you this picture. At
it’s already falling out of tune. least you will know that there was a mo-
ment when this happened.”
—Edgar Kunz
They took the photograph. For four
he had gone to Ontario to finalize his When “The Past” came out and Far- months,Farhadi came over to Haghighi’s
divorce from a woman he’d met when hadi was interviewed by journalists, he house nearly every day to write. They
he was studying abroad, and the re- mentioned that he’d been inspired by finished a forty-two-page treatment
union had been unexpectedly tumul- a friend’s anecdote, but he did not name for the film, the notes for which are
tuous. On returning to Iran, he’d shared Haghighi.“That was the moment when still in a box in Haghighi’s living room.
what had happened with Farhadi: “I I just thought, Forget it,” Haghighi The plan was that Farhadi would send
told the story in minute detail—not as said. “This is just too weird. I don’t a draft of the script to Haghighi, so
a narrative but as ‘I can’t believe what understand him. He confuses me. He’s they could continue collaborating, but
happened to me.’” making me uncomfortable about so Haghighi didn’t hear from him again
many things.” Haghighi didn’t partic- until after the film, called “Everybody
Farhadi told Haghighi that he was ularly care if his name was attached to Knows,” premièred, in 2018. (Farhadi
considering him for the lead role in the the story, but he found it curious that says that the script was based on a re-
film, which would be set in Paris. “It’s Farhadi wasn’t saying it.“I think he has vised treatment that he worked on with-
weird when somebody listens to your this image of himself as a solitary guy out Haghighi.) The film starred Javier
life story and goes and writes a script with a pack of cigarettes in an empty Bardem and Penélope Cruz. Haghighi
about it, and the way he tells you is room writing away, like a novelist,” he was one of fourteen people, including
‘Would you like to act in this film?’ ” said. “But, I mean, film is communal. Farhadi’s wife and daughter, thanked
Haghighi said.“That’s kind of a round- People come together and make a film, at the end of the credits, but he was
about way of communicating some- and everyone chips in.” not acknowledged beyond that. He
thing, but it wasn’t offensive to me. It joked to me that, though perhaps he
was just, like, Asghar is a very strange Haghighi and Farhadi drifted apart. had “a sort of Stockholm syndrome,”
man, extremely awkward, very defen- But, Haghighi said, eventually “Asghar he didn’t care. “The question is: why
sive, and protective of his style.” called me out of the blue and said,‘Mani, not?”he said.“We wrote the treatment
let’s meet.’ At this point I was, like, together, and I can prove it. I have all
Haghighi took French classes for ‘Asghar, what do you want?’” He said the documents in my house. My thing
six months, to prepare for the role, but that Farhadi laughed and explained that is: there’s absolutely no way I would
Farhadi decided to cast someone else. have had this much joy and intensity
and pleasure in making art. For me,
there was never a sense of transaction.
It was: here’s this fabulous guy who is
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022 41
brilliant and fun to talk to, and, when you should be quiet. Don’t tell any- There was no response, but, a month
we write, it really is a beautiful experi- one.’ I would say, ‘O.K., Mr. Farhadi, later,Masihzadeh was invited to a meet-
ence.” He described it as “agape,” a thank you for telling me.That’s O.K.’” ing at the House of Cinema, a film
Greek term for love that persists with- guild whose leadership is controlled by
out the expectation of reciprocation. “I “A Hero”was Farhadi’s first film fol- the government. Manouchehr Shahsa-
acknowledge how deeply painful it is lowing Bloody November, a period of vari, the House’s chief at the time, was
for him to acknowledge me,”Haghighi civil unrest in the fall of 2019.The gov- there,along with Farhadi’s lawyer,Kaveh
said. “So I won’t ask him to. Fuck it.” ernment had responded to protests, Rad, and the head of the House’s ar-
sparked by rising gas prices, by killing bitration council, which resolves dis-
Taraneh Alidoosti, arguably Iran’s at least fifteen hundred people.Though putes between filmmakers. Rad in-
most distinguished actress, who has conservative critics have accused Farhadi formed Masihzadeh that, according to
starred in four of Farhadi’s Iranian law, she had committed the
films,including “The Sales- of siahnamaie—a Farsi crime of defamation: reposting false
man,”which won an Oscar word for “showing things stories, even if she hadn’t written them
in 2017,said that she laughed through a black lens”—he herself, was illegal.“It’s so simple to file
when she saw the title “Ev- now came under increas- a lawsuit,” he told her, according to an
erybody Knows,” because ing pressure from the other audio recording of the meeting. “It’s
it seemed to speak to Far- side, for failing to use his very easy.” To prevent a complaint from
hadi’s own fears. His films international platform to being filed against her in court, he said,
portray characters who lie advocate against a govern- she needed to delete her Instagram sto-
to protect their social sta- ment oppressing its peo- ries, which she had saved to her pro-
tus and are terrified of what ple. At a press conference file as highlights.
people will say about them at Cannes, after the pre-
if their secrets are uncovered. She said mière of “A Hero,” a jour- “A Hero” had not yet premièred in
that,for a long time,“we always laughed nalist alluded to the fact that the mov- Iran. Masihzadeh’s knowledge of the
about it, like,‘O.K., everything is yours, ie’s lead actor had previously starred in film was based on reports from her
Asghar, go on with it.’”She added,“We a movie financed by the Islamic Rev- friends at Cannes and on international
are talking about a genius, but he is also olutionary Guards Corps. “I see the news coverage. She told Rad she agreed
a genius in the ways that he has to suck actor as an actor,” Farhadi responded. that the themes of her documentary
the people around him out of their “When actors go to play in a movie, had come from Farhadi, but said she
ideas.”When she learned a student had they try to play the role as best they was amazed that people were saying the
claimed that Farhadi took her idea, “I can.” The director Mohammad Rasou- actual story was his, too. “It’s been four
said, ‘Of course. I know it. I already lof—who had been charged with cre- months that I’ve been trying hard to
know it.’” ating propaganda but was not yet im- reach him,” she said. “I keep sending
prisoned—wrote on Twitter, “Dear messages and telling everybody who I
Most of Masihzadeh’s former class- Asghar Farhadi, according to your ar- know who maybe has some contact with
mates accused her of lying. Sed- gument, Eichmann was just a soldier Mr. Farhadi to ask him to contact me.”
aghat, the student who had worked on who tried to do his duty well!” She went on,“For me, Mr. Farhadi was
the crew of “A Hero,”posted a story on Masihzadeh was uncomfortable the master of everything related to eth-
Instagram saying that “the plan, idea, when critics of Farhadi latched on to ics.I don’t like to say this word,but lying
and process of making that documen- her claims in order to further their own is very strange.”
tary was completely formed by Asghar arguments. “I don’t like that people are
Farhadi.” He wrote, referring to Masi- insulting him,”she told me.“I will never Shahsavari, the head of the House
hzadeh’s allegation, that he’d refrain insult Mr. Farhadi. I feel that he is a of Cinema, told Masihzadeh to be-
from “analyzing why such behavior takes human being, like all other human be- ware—people could use her accusation
place, and the pathology of it.” Twelve ings, who made a mistake. I just want as an opportunity to impugn the pres-
students from the class signed a letter him to be honest with me, that’s all.” tige of Iranian cinema. He reminded
stating, “We want to strongly deny the Masihzadeh consulted a lawyer, a her of one of the last scenes of “Casa-
false claim by Mr.Farhadi’s student that friend of a friend, who suggested that blanca,” when the hero, Rick, conceals
‘A Hero’ is a copy of her documentary, she contact Farhadi through Sana, an the truth by telling the husband of
which is a completely reverse account electronic portal in Iran that allows cit- a woman he still loves that their ro-
of the truth.” izens to send legal notices to anyone in mance is over, before helping them es-
the country. In September, 2021, the cape the Nazis.
Masihzadeh wanted to meet with lawyer sent a message to Farhadi say-
Farhadi, but her message to his pub- ing that Masihzadeh’s intellectual-prop- Masihzadeh, who knew the scene
lic-relations team went unanswered. erty rights had been violated. He re- well, said,“He doesn’t lie, but he doesn’t
“My hope was that everything could quested “dialogue and negotiation in tell the truth.”
be solved by a very human speech,” order to achieve peace and reconcilia-
she told me. “I just wanted him to tion,” adding, “If this friendly demand “This is what we’ve learned from
come to me as a person and say,‘I liked is not met, we reserve the right to use cinema,” Shahsavari said. He advised
your story. But you are a student, and the courts.” Masihzadeh to think carefully about
the moral implications of telling the
truth: Was it right to tell someone in
42 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022
a loud voice that she had too many told her that, when he’d heard her story to use the word.” He said he could no
freckles on her face? Or to tell a per- about feeling forced to sign a state- longer even understand what she was
son that her nail polish was poorly done? ment, he had been shocked. He said saying: “You are telling a story that is
He said, “The difference between tell- that he’d given each of his students a so unreal.” He told her he’d associate
ing the truth and shamelessness is a sapling. Yes, they had planted the sap- her image with ungratefulness for the
very thin hair.” lings, but he had provided them with rest of his life.
detailed instructions on where to plant
The next day, it was announced them, and on how and when to water After the meeting,Masihzadeh called
that “A Hero” had been chosen the soil. Years later, she had seen him Ghazaleh Soltani, one of only a few
as the country’s submission for the with a piece of fruit and accused him students from the workshop who had
Oscars.That night, a virtual room was of taking it from her. But, he told her, openly taken her side. “She was crying
set up in the app Clubhouse to dis- “it was my tree.” a lot, and she couldn’t talk,”Soltani said.
cuss the decision. People complained “I told her to please come over, because
that a new generation of Iranian film- Masihzadeh tried to explain why it was not good for her to be alone.”
makers was not being given the chance she’d felt pressured to sign the state- When Masihzadeh arrived,Soltani said,
to rise, because, whenever Farhadi had ment, but Farhadi interrupted her, say- “she was disintegrated. She had been
a movie, other Iranian directors were ing, “This can be recorded, as you are waiting for months for Farhadi, whom
ignored. Mehdi Asgarpour, a mem- actually accusing me, and we can legally she admired like a father, to come to
ber of the nine-person committee that prosecute.” He asked, “How does your her and say ‘O.K., Azadeh, I’m sorry, I
made the Oscar selection, was in the conscience allow you to tell such lies did a bad thing.’”
Clubhouse room, and he explained about a teacher who did all these good
that the “people who choose the films things for you?” Masihzadeh struggled to sleep,
for the Oscar in the Academy are very and she began stuttering, something
old, and they don’t feel like watching “It is not a lie, Mr. Farhadi. You may that had never happened before. “My
films.” He said that his committee’s have forgotten—it’s O.K.” jaw and tongue weren’t in control,”
strategy was to select whichever Ira- she said.When Negar Eskandarfar, the
nian movie, owing to the director’s ré- When she continued recounting her director of the Karnameh Institute,
sumé, would have the best chance of memory of giving her signature, he told heard Masihzadeh speak on the phone,
being watched at all. her, “Ma’am, it seems like you are suf- she was so concerned that she invited
fering from—I’m sorry, I do not want
“Something that came up in our con-
versations was that there might be a
complaint about Farhadi’s film,”one of
the moderators of the room said.
Masihzadeh had joined the room, as
had Shafiei, the Bamdad Institute ad-
ministrator. Shafiei informed everyone
that Masihzadeh had signed a state-
ment saying that Farhadi had given her
the idea for her film.
Masihzadeh interjected, “You were
present in the room where Mr. Far-
hadi told me to sign this letter, do you
remember?”
“Yes,I remember exactly,”Shafiei said.
“Mr. Farhadi was also in the room?”
Shafiei, avoiding the question, said,
“Were you under torture when you
signed the letter?”
“I just asked a question,” Masihza-
deh said.
“I want to know,”Shafiei said.“Were
you under torture when you signed that
letter?”
Two days later, Masihzadeh was in- “If you want to turn it off, you just pull this chain
vited to a second meeting with the until you accidentally turn it back on.”
head of the House of Cinema, and she
was relieved to learn that Farhadi would
be there. But, at the meeting, Farhadi
Masihzadeh to spend the night at her Soltani told me. “We are always being Farhadi told me that he hated the idea
house. “She wasn’t even able to say my humiliated throughout the world, and of bringing a criminal complaint against
name,”Eskandarfar told me.“She would Farhadi gives us a sense of power and his student, but said that his lawyer had
say, ‘N-n-n-n-negar.’ ” progress. I think, from the unconscious told him, “We have no choice, because
part of their mind, people just don’t they are spreading these dishonesties on
Eskandarfar related to Masihzadeh’s want to listen to any story that might social media.”
state of mind, because, while working make our idol, our hero, come down.”
with Farhadi on “A Separation,” as an To prepare for the trial, Masihza-
executive producer, she, too, had felt A few days after the second meet- deh saw “A Hero,”which had premièred
forced to write a letter. After the film ing with the head of the House in Iran four days after her meeting with
was completed, Farhadi had signed an of Cinema, Masihzadeh was asked Farhadi, six times in a week. One night,
international-distribution agreement— to attend a third meeting. But, at that as she was going through her notes for
one that Eskandarfar says was finan- point, she couldn’t speak without stut- court, she remembered a piece of ad-
cially favorable to him—without her tering, and she no longer believed that vice that Farhadi had given the screen-
knowledge. According to the original anything productive could come of writing-workshop students: they should
contract, Eskandarfar alone had the talking to Farhadi, so she declined. A give their characters ordinary, recog-
authority to make such a deal. When representative from the House of Cin- nizable jobs. She sensed that Farhadi’s
the founder of an international distrib- ema called her lawyer and offered the favorite character in “A Hero” was the
utor discovered that the original con- equivalent of roughly sixteen hundred man to whom Rahim is in debt. The
tract had been breached, she sent an dollars for Masihzadeh’s contribution man articulates the thematic heart of
e-mail to Farhadi saying that “the re- to “A Hero,” which has earned more the movie, asking why a person should
lease might be blocked.” By then, “A than 2.8 million dollars in theatrical be celebrated as a hero for simply re-
Separation” was a favorite to win the releases and is now streaming on Am- turning money as opposed to keeping
foreign-film Oscar. Eskandarfar felt azon Prime, and proposed that she be it. “Where in the world are people cel-
that, to resolve the crisis, she had no listed in the credits as a member of ebrated for not doing wrong?” he asks.
choice but to write a letter stating that a group of researchers. Masihzadeh
she transferred her rights to Farhadi— turned down the offer.“When you hu- She realized that the creditor owns
and to backdate it, so it appeared as if miliate someone by saying, ‘You are a a photocopy shop with a copy machine
it had been drafted before Farhadi liar, you are deluded,’ and then later that whirs as he talks. “Mr. Farhadi,
signed the international contract. She say,‘I want to credit you as a researcher,’ why?”she said to herself.“Why did you
didn’t want to be responsible for pre- my response is ‘No,’of course,”she told choose a job like that? Do you yourself
venting the film from receiving the me. “I was not the researcher of ‘A know what you did?”
recognition it deserved. “If the whole Hero.’ I was the director of my docu-
thing came crashing down, I would mentary. No one came to me asking In November, 2021, the investigative
have to answer to history and to a whole me to do research for ‘A Hero.’ ” She branch of the Tehran Media and
generation,” she told me. (Farhadi asked for a credit saying that “A Hero” Culture Court held its first hearing on
disputes Eskandarfar’s account, and had been inspired by her documentary, the defamation case. Masihzadeh told
showed me a letter saying that she had but Rad told me that, given the dif- me that she made sure to shower be-
not fully paid the investor’s portion of ferences between the two films, “we fore the hearing, knowing that “they
“A Separation.” Eskandarfar said that could not accept this.” The House of will arrest me for two or three days,
the payment was a separate issue; owing Cinema’s arbitration council had al- until my family brings me money.”She
to sanctions placed on Iranian banks, ready issued a formal decision con- went on, “Because of that signature, I
she was delayed in transferring money.) cluding that Masihzadeh’s claim was felt that, whatever happens to me, I
false,an “anti-cultural move”that would deserve it.” But in her first conversa-
Eskandarfar worried that Masihza- interfere with “A Hero” becoming “a tion with the magistrate deciding the
deh might break down. “I was con- worthy ambassador and representative case, she said, he told her that the state-
cerned that what I went through psy- of Iranian cinema in the road of its ment she had signed was legally mean-
chologically—she would go through global success.” ingless. She was still stuttering, but,
the same, or even worse,” she said. after the magistrate’s remark, “little by
“When I myself was in that position, I Masihzadeh continued reposting little, I got my voice back,” she said. “I
had adopted silence.” Instagram stories in which people re- felt released.”
marked on the similarity between her
Masihzadeh’s mother flew to Teh- documentary and “A Hero.”A few weeks That day, Farhadi made the most
ran to take care of her. “I am one of after the House of Cinema meetings, explicit political statement of his ca-
those girls who is so outgoing,who likes Farhadi filed a complaint with the reer. In an interview with a news agency
to travel, who knows so many people,” investigative branch of the Tehran in Tehran,a pro-government filmmaker
Masihzadeh told me. But she felt aban- Culture and Media Court, accusing had accused Farhadi of being “both in-
doned by most of her friends and col- Masihzadeh of defamation and of side and outside the government,” and
leagues.Soltani said that people attacked spreading false news. She faced up to a of “eating at everyone’s table.”On Insta-
her, too, for supporting Masihzadeh. year in prison or seventy-four lashes. gram, addressing the filmmaker, Far-
“I think we can really study the mind hadi wrote, “I have nothing to do with
and culture of Iran through this case,” your regressive way of thinking, and
44 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022
don’t need your praise and support. If
the selection of my film ‘A Hero’ as
Iran’s official Academy Awards submis-
sion has made you reach the conclu-
sion that I’m under your banner, can-
cel this decision. I don’t care.” He went
on, “Let me put it frankly: I hate you!”
He said that he wished to stay in his
homeland and continue making films
for Iranians, but noted, “It seems that
there is a great effort on all sides to dis-
courage this love and hope, some by
publishing distorted and fake memo-
ries, others by slandering and making
false claims.”
Masihzadeh said that, when she read
the last line, she felt, “he is mentioning
me, but it is hidden. And I was not the
only one who had that thought. People
kept sending it to me and saying, ‘He’s
saying your memories are fake.’”
Two weeks after the first hearing, “Have you seen Meredith? She just got her braces off.”
Masihzadeh flew to Shiraz to visit
Mohammadreza Shokri in prison. She ••
had decided to make a documentary
about what was happening to her, but, said. “I want to take you to the cinema documentary, Shokri had asked her not
she said,“I was looking at it not as a film to watch a movie together.” to film his brother, who had a disabil-
but as a document to show to the court.” ity that made it difficult for him to
Shokri burst out laughing. speak, and she had agreed. In “A Hero,”
Shokri was in Adel-Abad prison, “You don’t believe me?” she asked. Rahim has a son with a stutter who
which has thousands of inmates, some “We want to go to the cinema and watch becomes a kind of sympathy prop for
of them political prisoners who have a movie—will you come with us?” a charity raising money on his behalf.
been sentenced to death. In 2020, there “If they allow me,” he said, laugh-
was an international outcry when the ing so hard that he put his head down “I told you please do not show my
prison executed a wrestling champion on the table.“I swear to God, you know brother’s video anywhere,” he told her,
who had protested Iran’s regime; before better, you are just like my sister.” crying.
he died, he said that officers had tor- She had applied for permission to
tured him, beating his legs and hands take Shokri to a 10 a.m. screening of “I am truly sorry,” Masihzadeh said.
with a baton, pouring alcohol in his “A Hero” at a theatre in Shiraz. Shokri, “God bless you,”he said.“My broth-
nose, and pulling a plastic bag over his whose feet were shackled, sat in a plush er’s part put a lot of pressure on me.”
head. (The government denied this.) red seat,next to a prison guard to whom “Did your brother pass away, Mr.
he was handcuffed.The manager of the Shokri?” Masihzadeh asked.
Masihzadeh, with a cameraman theatre did not want customers to watch He nodded, still crying.
and a sound technician whom she’d a movie alongside a prisoner, so Masih- “My condolences to you,Mr.Shokri,”
hired, met Shokri in the prison’s vis- zadeh, after borrowing money from an she said. “I did not know that.”
iting room, a long hall with a row of acquaintance, had purchased every seat. “He has put this boy’s stuttering in-
windows near the ceiling. “Hello, Ms. Masihzadeh hadn’t told Shokri any- stead of my brother’s disability,”Shokri
Masihzadeh, how are you?”Shokri said, thing about the movie in advance.When said. He wiped his eyes with the surgi-
holding his palm to his chest. It had it was over, he was crying.“I’m on edge,” cal face mask that he had worn during
been seven years since they’d seen each he told Masihzadeh in the lobby of the the movie.“Excuse me for saying this—
other, and during that time he’d had theatre. “The life story that happened this is really a robbery. He was not sup-
only one visitor, his mother. He wore to me . . . they came and used it with a posed to play with my dignity.”
an olive-green prison uniform; the different script.” They returned to the prison together,
stubble on his face had grayed. “I am When Masihzadeh was making her and, as Shokri continued to reflect on
at your service,” he told her. the movie, he sometimes called the
They sat down at a plastic table. “I
want to take you out of here right now,”
she told him.
“How?” he asked, laughing.
“I have thought of some ways,” she
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022 45
prisoner Rahim, and sometimes re- he feared it would be used for “arous- film is somebody who can’t make de-
ferred to Rahim as “me.” He said, “My ing pity.” cisions,” he said. “But, at the end of
feeling is that Mr. Director could have the film, he makes a decision.” Rahim
at least come to visit me.” He began When Masihzadeh went to the refuses to make a video that might
imagining how Farhadi might have House of Cinema to pick up a docu- help free him from prison, because it
asked his permission and then told him, ment for the court, she said that Shah- would mean exposing his son’s speech
“I will help you to get out of here. I savari, the head of the institution, urged impediment to the public. “That de-
will make the movie and help you to her to retract her complaint. She said cision makes him a hero in front of
get out.”Shokri had a daughter, whom that she would, if Farhadi took back his child,” Farhadi said. “That’s why
he hadn’t seen for many years.“I would his. But, in January, Farhadi filed a sec- I put in this issue of the kid having a
have accepted,” he said. ond complaint against her, this one for speech impediment—so he can make
defamation and spreading false news a decision.”
Masihzadeh bought two textbooks by saying that she’d been coerced into
about intellectual-property law. signing a statement. “Why should I Copyright law differentiates be-
She had decided to represent herself. force her into doing this?” Farhadi said tween ideas, which cannot be owned,
“Unfortunately, my life was cancelled,” to me. “It was a very normal letter.” and the expression of ideas, which can
she told me. “From morning to night, be. Farhadi and his lawyer presented
I was just thinking about my case and Iran has not joined the Berne Con- two different arguments to the court:
memorizing law sentences.” Often, she vention for the Protection of Liter- first, that Farhadi had given Masihza-
showed up for the hearings crying. ary and Artistic Works, signed by a deh the idea to work on Shokri’s story,
hundred and eighty-one countries.The and, second, that it didn’t matter who
The case was focussed on her state- country has domestic copyright laws, originally found the story, because
ments on social media, but she hoped but they are irregularly enforced, in Shokri’s case had been reported in the
to introduce new evidence, like video part because few lawyers specialize in media before Masihzadeh’s documen-
footage of the workshop. “People were the field. Some Islamic legal scholars tary, so neither of them could claim
telling me, ‘You have to sue Farhadi, have questioned the legitimacy of a ownership of it.The court ordered the
too, so you can bring all the documents right to intellectual property, which is Karnameh Institute to give Masihza-
to the judge,’” she said. She called the not clearly laid out by early Islamic deh the roughly sixty hours of videos
secretary of the House of Cinema. “I jurists or by the Hadith, the corpus of documenting the entire workshop. Ma-
said,‘Excuse me, please tell Mr. Farhadi sayings passed down from the Prophet sihzadeh compressed the footage into
that it does not give a good impression Muhammad. Earlier this year, in an an hour-long compilation of the mo-
to society when a teacher opens a case online cinema magazine, Behrouz ments most relevant to the case, so that
against his student. Please ask him to Afkhami, a film director and a former the magistrate could analyze whether
take it back. Otherwise I will sue him. member of the Iranian parliament, Shokri’s story was an established set
I don’t want to, because he is my mas- characterized the notion of copyright of facts, free for anyone to interpret, or
ter, but I have to defend myself.’” She as a Western construct. “Anyone who whether Masihzadeh had uncovered
didn’t get a response. thinks he has an idea that has not been its contours for the first time.
discussed before usually has not read
On November 30, 2021, nearly a enough stories,” he said. In March, 2022, after numerous
month after Farhadi filed his complaint, hearings spread over five months, the
Masihzadeh lodged a counterclaim, for Masihzadeh’s documentary ap- magistrate issued an eighteen-page
plagiarism, intellectual-property theft, proaches Shokri’s story with a level of opinion, concluding that the story had
and “illegitimate gains by fraud or abuse rigor and curiosity that feels anthro- not been in the public domain. He
of privilege.”If convicted,Farhadi could pological and almost joyful. Farhadi’s wrote that the classroom footage
face up to three years in prison and the film is seeking a different kind of truth; showed Masihzadeh introducing the
possibility of handing over the proceeds to observe how he takes small details idea of Shokri’s story and explaining
of “A Hero” to Masihzadeh. From from Shokri’s narrative and knits them that there were two newspaper articles
prison, Shokri also filed a complaint into intersecting strands of plot is to about it. Neither was available online,
against Farhadi, for defamation and see the process by which a story be- so Masihzadeh had borrowed old cop-
“revealing personal information and se- comes art. Even a seemingly minor ies of the papers that Shokri kept in
crets,” among other allegations. He detail, like Rahim’s son’s speech im- his prison cell. The magistrate wrote
wrote that he had “granted the exclu- pediment, justifies its own existence, that he had searched for the articles
sive permission of making my real life altering the film’s moral and emotional online himself, to no avail.
to Ms.Masihzadeh”and had never given atmosphere. In an interview at the
Farhadi permission to depict his story. Santa Barbara International Film Fes- The magistrate dismissed the com-
He described how “A Hero” drama- tival, when asked why he’d chosen to plaints filed by Farhadi and Shokri,
tized the “laryngeal problem of my include “that heartbreaking speech but he found merit in Masihzadeh’s
brother suffering from shortness of impediment, which is so instrumen- claims, pointing to forty-four segments
breath while speaking”—a subject that tal to the script,” Farhadi said that in “A Hero” that either resembled her
he had told Masihzadeh not to men- he’d made the choice when he began documentary or drew from her research.
tion under any circumstances, because writing. “The main character of the He indicted Farhadi, for violating his
student’s intellectual-property rights,
46 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022
SKETCHBOOK BY JOHN P. DESSEREAU
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022 47
• • heard from her, I think this is what has
happened.” He said that the filmmak-
and referred the case to a criminal court, become Farhadi’s antagonist, and she ers who supported her were jealous of
to determine if Farhadi was guilty of seemed bewildered by her own com- Farhadi’s success.
the charge. mitment to continuing the fight.“Some-
times I think it is not a good thing,” In a statement on Instagram after
Eskandarfar said that one of the she told me. “Until this year, I was a the magistrate’s decision, Rad repeated
twelve students who had signed the state- very simple kind of girl.” She said that, the claim that Shokri’s story had been
ment in support of Farhadi came to her when Farhadi first filed his criminal in the public domain, and, as proof, he
office crying. The student was worried complaint, “I thought I would go to posted links to two articles about Shokri
that she could be sued for putting her court and accept all the consequences in Iranian newspapers. Masihzadeh
name on the letter.“She was quite scared,” and show how weak I was in front of searched for Shokri’s story online. “I
Eskandarfar told me.“I asked her,‘Why Farhadi, how he betrayed me. I would thought,Wow,they have suddenly filled
did you sign that letter?’ And she said, be the person who is the victim.” She the Internet with this story,” she said.
‘For the same reason Azadeh signed her guessed that Farhadi had made this (When I asked a veteran journalist in
letter: Farhadi was my teacher, and it calculation, too. “But suddenly I said, Iran how such a thing might be possi-
was expected of me.’” ‘Why? So people can cry for me? So I ble, he said, “Give me a piece of news,
can close my eyes and give all the power and I can put it on a hundred sites—
After the magistrate’s decision, Ma- to him? Because it is the rule that it’s easy.”)
sihzadeh and I met in Istanbul, women are weak, I should be weak?’”
because it was safer to meet there than Masihzadeh was more than thirty
in Iran, where many journalists have Although the magistrate had ruled thousand dollars in debt, after borrow-
been arrested. Although Masihzadeh’s in her favor, Masihzadeh received hun- ing money to pay for consultations with
hair was black, she immediately con- dreds of messages attacking her char- lawyers,among other expenses.She had
fessed that she’d dyed it.“My hair went acter. She was accused of being a whore, gone for a year with barely an income.
completely white,”she told me.“It hap- a spy, an opportunist.“It was a good op- She’d been making a short film in the
pened in one year.” Our first conversa- portunity for her to show her film to north of Iran, but she said that the pro-
tion lasted thirteen hours. Masihzadeh many people,”Sedaghat told me.“With ducer abruptly pulled out of the proj-
was struggling to process how she had my knowledge of her and the lies I have ect, citing her case with Farhadi. (The
producer could not be reached for com-
ment.) “I wanted to confess to you that
I am not powerful at all,” she told me,
crying. “They are killing me in the cin-
ema. My career is going to end.”
The international film community
did not seem fazed by a decision ren-
dered by a legal system known to be
unjust and corrupt. When I met Ma-
sihzadeh in Istanbul, Farhadi had just
been named a juror for the 2022 Cannes
Film Festival. Later, he was elected
president of the Zurich Film Festival
jury.“It’s like the whole world is laugh-
ing at me,” she said.
Iran’s judicial system categorizes crimes
as “forgivable”and “unforgivable.”For
crimes in the first category, victims can
ask the state to stop the trial process if
they have decided to make peace with
the perpetrator. After the first hearing
before the criminal court, in June, 2022,
Masihzadeh said, one of Farhadi’s law-
yers, a human-rights advocate who had
been hired for the proceedings, sug-
gested that she and Farhadi have a joint
press conference and announce that
there had been a misunderstanding.
Masihzadeh said that she responded,
“Please ask Mr. Farhadi to go to the
press conference and confess that ‘a
48 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 7, 2022