Lifestyle
'Time of the Child' is a marvelous blend of despair and redemption
A village “on the western edge of a wet nowhere” populated by men who drink too much and women who smile too little. Throw in cows, an addled priest, an abandoned baby and a thick cloud cover of shame and you have the elements for a quintessential Irish story.
So quintessential, in fact, I’ve held off reading Niall Williams for a long time, despite hearing raves about his work. My skepticism, it turns out, was misplaced. I’ve just emerged from a Niall Williams binge with a belated appreciation for his writing, which invests specificity and life in characters and places easily reduced to clichés.
Time of the Child is Williams’ latest novel, a companion piece, rather than a sequel to, his 2019 novel, This Is Happiness. Both books are set in the rural village of Faha — a town in the far west of Ireland whose inhabitants, we’re told, possess “the translucent flesh that came from living in an absolute humidity.”
Time of the Child takes place in the weeks leading up to Christmas 1962 and opens — and closes — on a set piece of Mass at the parish church, where most of the village gathers. In between lies a story that feels, at once, realistic in its rough and comic everyday unfolding and mythic in its riffs on the grand themes of despair and spiritual redemption.
Jack Troy is the town doctor and central character here. He’s a melancholy contained man who, we’re told, “carrie[s] himself in a manner that [the townspeople of] Faha might have summarized as Not like us.” Dr. Troy lost his wife and then the older woman he unexpectedly fell in love with, who’s now also dead. Keeping house for him is his 29-year-old daughter, Ronnie, the eldest of three sisters; the one who remained at home.
Ronnie, too, is a semi-enigma to the townspeople: Our narrator tells us that “Added to [her] reserve was not only the screened lives of all women in the parish at the time, but the marginal natures of all writers, for Ronnie Troy’s closest companion was her notebook.”
Dr. Troy has become haunted by despair and by a particularly heartrending question: “Why does no one love my daughter?” The answer, he fears, is his own glowering presence that may have repelled one especially promising suitor.
Inspired by what we’re told is a “mixed fuel of … brandy … [and] a parent’s fear of the unmade world after them,” Dr. Troy, uncharacteristically, resolves on a bizarre scheme to make things right. As the saying goes: “Man plans, God laughs.”
Instead of unfolding the Troy family narrative chronologically, Williams layers it on top of other simultaneous storylines, all of which are graced with language as bracing as salt spray from the chill Atlantic. We follow, for instance, the wanderings of Jude Quinlan, a 12 year old “on the rope-bridge between man and boy.”
Jude’s father drinks and gambles and his mother, Mamie, possesses “the anxious look of one married to an instability.” Listen to how Williams moves fluidly from the mundane to the wider lens of the numinous in these snippets from an extended passage where Jude helps to unload a van full of Christmas toys for the town fair:
There were toy soldiers, kits for flying gliders, … skittles in a net, balls, bats. … dolls of one expression but many dresses, …
For Jude, carrying everything from the van … was as close has he would get to handling any of these things. He had no resentment or bitterness . Rather, from nearness to the marvelous something rubbed off on him …
The other thing, the one that only occurred to him years later when he would recall what happened that day, was that what he was carrying out of the van that December morning was his childhood.
For those who believe in such phenomena, Jude will be the instrument for bringing a miracle — a Christmas miracle complete with a baby and a virginal mother, no less — into this story. The other miracle here is a literary one: Time of the Child itself, which gives readers that singular experience of nearness to the marvelous.
Lifestyle
John Lithgow on having a “good ending” — on and off screen
A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: Who is your John Lithgow? We had a staff meeting recently where we all went around and named the character who made us love John Lithgow and the choices were as varied as his career.
Mine is Reverend Shaw Moore, the pastor from the movie Footloose, who banned dancing in his small Texas town and, in doing so, gave Kevin Bacon one of the best “I’m-so-mad-I-need-to-do-gymnastics!” scenes of all time.
Our producer said her John Lithgow is from the 1983 Twilight Zone movie. Our editor said his Lithgow has to be Dick Solomon, the patriarch of the alien family in the massively popular TV show 3rd Rock from the Sun.
John Lithgow seems to have done all the things: theatre, movies, TV. Good guys, bad guys… lots of bad guys. Or just maybe complicated characters, including Winston Churchill in The Crown and a very small king in Shrek. This is an actor who is willing to take a risk, play against type, and elevate the profound and the ridiculous.
And it must be said the man loves to work. Just in the last few years, he’s been in the Hulu series, The Old Man, a play about the writer Roald Dahl, the movie Conclave that came out earlier this year, as well as the new animated film Spellbound.
This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly-selected questions from a deck of cards. Tap play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.
Question 1: What was a moment in your life when you could have chosen a different path?
John Lithgow: Oh, my entire childhood I had chosen a different path. I grew up in a theater family but did not want to be an actor. I didn’t even consider it because right up until I was about 17 years old, I fully intended to be a painter. I was quite committed to it [for] as long as I can remember. You know, if I were ever asked any version of what you want to be when you grow up — it was always an artist. And I had great encouragement from my parents.
Rachel Martin: So, they were not steering you in the direction of the theater?
Lithgow: Not at all. They weren’t discouraging me. Although I do remember when I told my dad that I was auditioning for a Fulbright to study acting in earnest in London, his face fell, like, “Oh, my God, no.” And I said, “Dad, you’ve produced all these Shakespeare festivals, you’ve even hired me to act. What did you expect me to want to do?” And he said, “Well, I always thought that it would be a good idea for you to go to business school.” And I said “What?”
Martin: Oh, interesting. So it’s not like he held up your artistic dreams. He wasn’t like, “Oh, I really thought you were going to be a painter…”
Lithgow: Yeah. And I said, “What are you thinking? I would never go to business school.” He said, “Well, as a theater manager, I’ve always felt that my great failing was in the area of business.”
Martin: I mean, we all as parents do that to some degree, I imagine, even though I try not to, my kids are sort of young, but, you know, project your own, “I’ve learned the hard way. You know, the theater is tough!” So, you know, he struggled in the trenches and maybe he wanted something different for you.
Lithgow: He struggled terribly. It was a very tough life for him. And I think he just felt the need to spare me.
Martin: Right. And I bet your dad was proud of you in the end.
Lithgow: Oh, ultimately, yes, of course. It’s worked out just fine.
Question 2: What period of your life do you often daydream about?
Lithgow: I think it’s my early years in New York theater – the 1970s. I would say in any given year, in the 1970s in New York, I probably was acting on stage or on Broadway on about 300 of the 365 nights. I mean, I just went from one theater job to another.
Martin: It sounds exhausting…
Lithgow: Oh it was just – I was young! I got everywhere on a bicycle. I acted. God, I did a show in 1975 at Lincoln Center, Trelawny of the “Wells.” Among the cast were Mary Beth Hurt, Sasha von Scherler, and Mandy Patinkin in his first role – and, in her first job out of Yale Drama School, Meryl Streep. We were all thick as thieves and we would have big potluck suppers together.
Martin: That’s worthy of daydreaming, yeah. Things felt limitless for you then?
Lithgow: Yeah. Even though it was really tough and the town was dirty and dangerous and depressing in every way — except if you were a young actor, it was just electric.
Martin: Does that in any way mean that theater is still where you feel most at home?
Lithgow: In a sense. I mean I like everything I do as long as I’m employed. But the theater is where you feel like you’re using absolutely everything you’ve got and you’re in charge of the story.
Question 3: Do you think there’s more to reality than we can see or touch?
Lithgow: I have a pretty simple version of reality. You’re immediately making me look around me like what’s real and what isn’t. And everything I see is real.
I think of death as death. I don’t think there’s life after death or a soul after death. I had an extraordinary death experience, two years ago. I directed that wonderful New Yorker, Doug McGrath, in his one-man show that he had written for himself. He had a wonderful little off-Broadway success with it and it was in his third week of a run. He was going to do it as long as he wanted in a tiny theater downtown. And he didn’t show up at the theater one night because in his office, by himself, at about four in the afternoon, he’d lain down, had a heart attack, and died — at age 64.
And it was such a traumatic thing to experience. He died painlessly and almost courteously. He didn’t make anybody else suffer over his death except over the fact that it had happened like that [snaps].
Martin: And did that change anything for you and how you think of it? The end-ness of it all?
Lithgow: I was startled at how soon I was able to absorb it as just having happened and the new reality. This lovely man who was quite a dear friend, having worked together so closely, he was simply gone. And I knew that he was gone. And the brain simply adjusts.
Martin: Did it make you any more or less comfortable with your own demise?
Lithgow: More. I just know it’s coming. And I think the best thing is to have a gracious ending. You know, I calculate my exit from any film or television or stage play, and I always want to have a good ending. Well, I want to have a good ending to my life too. That no one grieves over.
Martin: Well, people will grieve.
Lithgow: I can’t believe I’m talking about these things. I’ve had three cancers in my life. First in 1988, 2004, and then only a couple of years ago — in every case dealt with immediately and put an end to, you know. Melanomas that could be detected early and removed. A prostatectomy that eliminated prostate cancer from my life. But I’m almost glad that I had the shocking experience of being told, “You have a malignancy.” To have realistically contemplated, “Oh my God – this might really, I might die of this.” I think it was a useful experience to have in terms of just putting your whole life into perspective.
Lifestyle
Disneyland's holiday fest dazzles with Latin traditions and a candlelit 'Silent Night'
One of the Disneyland Resort’s new holiday offerings is a show featuring the young guitar-slinging character of Miguel from “Coco.” But it’s ultimately rooted in a culture and history that long predates the 2017 film.
Show director Tobi Longo pulled from her childhood, her family roots and a cultural heritage in working with her peers to bring the mariachi-focused performance to life. In turn, its primary influence was not the Disney/Pixar film, but Las Posadas. The latter — think a festive procession that travels among the community — are traditionally staged in Mexico between Dec. 16 and 24. In their purest form, Las Posadas depict the biblical story of Joseph and Mary and the search for shelter at the time of Jesus’ birth.
The Disney performance deviates from the religious overtunes. But some of the key touchstones — a mix of music and stories, a centering of children with candles — are present. The early evening weekday show, officially dubbed “A Musical Christmas with Mariachi Alegría de Disneyland & Miguel,” is part of this year’s expanded programming for Disney California Adventure’s Festival of Holidays, now a nearly decade-long tradition that focuses its events on the cultures that Disney films represent rather than the films themselves.
In that sense, Festival of Holidays taps into the original mission of Disneyland, that is, presenting an aspirational view of society that looks as much as the world beyond its gates as it does the fantasies held inside them.
Longo, asked about the inspiration behind the show, spoke of her upbringing.
“My grandfather was going to become a priest at the San Gabriel Mission, and he met my grandma and didn’t go that route,” Longo says. “But my family participated in Las Posadas, and in San Gabriel there was a blue line painted on the ground and everyone would follow it, and it was a big tradition for the Mexican Catholic community. I always dressed up as an angel and had a little candle.
“I remember beautiful lanterns and candles and people processing and depicting different characters from the Christmas story,” Longo continues. “So when they talked about doing a sing-along and a processional, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be beautiful if we took inspiration from that?’”
Dancers holding glistening, star-like lanterns lead a musical stroll to the main hub of Disney California Adventure. There, a narrator and singer welcomes and regales guests with tales of how different Latin countries present stories of Santa Claus, or, say, the joy of unwrapping a tamale.
Popular carols — “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town,” “Jingle Bells” — are presented bilingually, and while the performance is building to an appearance from Miguel, the climax instead is serene, a candlelit rendition of “Silent Night,” with audience participation. What a moment ago was festive theme park fare becomes something more reflective, all while slightly nodding to the holiday’s more spiritual underpinnings.
“Bringing children up and giving them a candle — I was thinking if that would be controllable?” Longo says. “But the kids get into it and are almost hypnotized by the candle. It turned out to be very sweet, but it’s fun and lively and kind of teaches people a little bit about the Mexican culture and their traditions around Christmastime.”
Such an approach has become a mission of Festival of Holidays.
Disney, says Susana Tubert, creative director of the resort’s live entertainment, has significantly increased the amount of acts it features for the event, which runs through Jan. 6. Musical groups touch on jazz, klezmer, reggae, polka, gospel and more, as the festivities strive to reflect Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and other cultural traditions, this year delves deeper into Southern California’s Filipino and Aztec communities.
It’s a doubling down on diverse and inclusive programming, making Festival of Holidays feel timely, lively and even risk-taking, especially when Disneyland could simply lean on its popular films and fairy tales and avoid the sometimes politicized scrutiny that can come with multicultural programming.
It’s reflective of an approach that has been happening resort-wide. The Walt Disney Co. in recent years has been taking a broad view of its theme parks, looking at places to increase diversity or remove outdated stereotypes. See, for instance, the recent change from Splash Mountain to Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, or tweaks to such classics as the Jungle Cruise to bring the attraction up to modern sensibilities. Coming soon: An update to Disneyland’s Peter Pan’s Flight to remove caricatures of Native Americans.
“Representation — I think it’s so important,” says Disneyland’s Paul David Bryant, who helps orchestrate Festival of Holidays, focusing heavily on its musical performances.
“And I think that’s exactly what it is we here at the Disneyland Resort are going for,” he continues. “We want to make sure when I, or you or Tobi walks into the park, hopefully we can see someone who looks like us. We are a small world. It makes me feel good when I walk out there and see all these different cultures. When I walk out and see a Kwanzaa group singing R&B that sounds like gospel and is talking about a Disney tune, it takes me on a journey.”
A journey, adds Bryant, about expanding and opening guests’ views of the world. “You get to walk in, and walk out knowing more than you walked in knowing,” he says.
This year for Festival of Holidays, there are three signature shows. Joining the mariachi performance is a new weekday afternoon tale that uses the songs of “Encanto,” only reframing them into one about the frenzied festivities of getting ready for Christmas. It does so while alluding to the film’s Colombian influences.
The two new entertainment offerings join the long-running “¡Viva Navidad!” street parade featuring the Donald Duck-led Three Caballeros. “¡Viva Navidad!” runs on weekends and serves as a folksy event that from beginning to end is a boisterous celebration of Latin art and music, complete with folklórico dancers and mariachis as well as 12-foot-tall mojiganga puppets, that is, large-scale, papier-mâché sculptures.
“Mirabel’s Gifts of the Season” builds up to a large Cumbia finale, with an actor playing “Encanto” protagonist Mirabel trying to teach the audience some dance moves. Throughout, the show humorously captures the hectic nature of decorating and cooking for a Christmas gathering, with the characters sometimes having to make the most out of a little, such as a hastily constructed Christmas tree.
While using a number of songs from the film, the performance isn’t a retelling of it. The show even attempts to re-center the tunes, such as using “All of You” as a borderline ballad for lighting holiday candles.
“Colombia is one of the founding homes of magical realism of Latin America,” Tubert says. “So even the fact that Mirabel crafts this little tree out of sticks and sees it as her Christmas tree is part of that poetry of the everydayness that makes magical realism what it is. We go there. We take ourselves into Colombia and say, ‘What makes this authentic?’ Our dialect coach is giving us perfect accents for Colombia.”
“Mirabel’s Gifts of the Season” show director Linda Love Simmons says Tubert challenges the team to think beyond just creating a performance that serves as references to the film, even while acknowledging audiences would probably be happy to simply sing along to the songs that they know. Notes Tubert: “It would be the low-hanging fruit to do a sing-along, but that’s already on Disney+.”
“Early on, it was, ‘Let’s do a sing-along,” confesses Simmons. “Susana and I go, ‘We can do better.’
“Susana always says to me, ‘You’re a better storyteller than that.’ So it causes me to dig deep down. … We did a lot of digging and a lot of crafting. But the most important thing is we wanted to create a feeling — when people watch it, that they relate to the characters and feel something. That’s what we get to do intrinsically in musical theater. Normally everything in a theme park is like, ‘Fast!’ But three-quarters of the way through, we bring it all the way down and sing ‘All of You’ and pass a candle.”
The Festival of Holidays lasts just a few weeks, but it also is making an impact on Disneyland year-round. Tubert, for instance, says that the mariachi band that leads the “Coco” show — Mariachi Alegría de Disneyland — will be sticking around past the holiday season. Expect them to become part of the resort’s musical offerings, she teases.
“This is part of the tapestry of diversity that Disneyland represents,” Tubert says. “This is who we are.”
Lifestyle
Fandom rules social media's cultural landscape in 2024
The biggest trend in culture on social media in 2024 can be summed up with one word: Fans.
Major broadcasting networks and mainstream media, and in more recent years streaming companies, have had near-total control over entertainment habits. But now it’s the fans who are making an outsize impact on what Americans listen to, play, read and watch — through social media.
The new end-of-year reports released by social media companies including YouTube, TikTok and Spotify point to this overarching trend — Instagram did not produce a trends report this year.
“When I look at these reports, I am struck by how much fan activity and fan-ish consumption and engagement is at the core of social media,” said Abigail De Kosnik, an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley who studies social media and fandoms. “All of these platforms are basically touting how much they were able to host creatives that could attract and inspire large fandoms, and how proud they were that so many fans are participating in liking, commenting, sharing and buying from these creative influencers.”
Making big cultural moments even bigger
One way in which fans exerted an outsized influence on culture in 2024 was through their “participation” in the ongoing controversy between Kendrick Lamar and Drake.
The hip-hop stars’ mutual accusations of domestic abuse, fathering illegitimate children etc. existed independently of social media, largely through the exchanging of diss tracks — attacking each other through songs.
But the spat was hugely amplified by fans dissecting every beat of it on Spotify podcasts and TikTok and YouTube videos, and through making their own related content.
In one animated short from May, for instance, a cartoon Kendrick Lamar confronts a cartoon Drake about hiding a child he fathered. The Japanese-language video racked up nearly 2.5 million views on YouTube, and 3 million on X. All of this fan-created content seems to have increased the fan bases of both Kendrick Lamar and Drake.
“The moment turned into this global phenomenon because of the many ways that fans engaged with it,” said Gina Shalavi, a senior marketing manager at YouTube who leads the company’s culture and trends team. “They were creating content in the form of animations and reactions. And it actually got to a point where the artists were not only uploading their music directly to YouTube, but Kendrick Lamar even allowed reactors to monetize their content.”
From social media to full-fledged franchises
Fans also helped to transform native web content into full-fledged media franchises.
In the case of The Amazing Digital Circus, a satirical indie animated web series for adults about a bunch of humans trapped in a virtual world, fans not only caused the show to become a social media hit in the space of just a few weeks, but also responded to each episode with a deluge of fan-created content including tribute videos, online commentary, new storylines and art. And then Netflix picked the series up for streaming.
“The fandom around the thing is just as important, if not maybe even more important, as the thing itself,” said Shalavi. “We saw 25 billion views of videos related to The Amazing Digital Circus. And this is not including viewership of the actual episodes themselves.”
The dark side of social media fandom
Not all of this “sideshow” content is positive.
The social media landscape also includes obscene videos related to the animated series The Amazing Digital Circus and bootleg merchandise on e-commerce sites such as Amazon.com such as unauthorized toys based on its characters.
UC Berkeley’s De Kosnik said the social media companies’ end-of-year trend reports completely failed to address the more questionable trends within fandom — whether that’s offensive content or political disinformation.
“The reports are really sort of like, ‘there’s nothing wrong with social media and it’s all great, because it’s all about fostering love and admiration and affection and laughter,” said De Kosnik, noting that even the reports’ design schemes convey this unmitigated positivity through bright colors and chunky graphics. “It would be ethical for these companies to reckon with the challenges that everybody knows are happening through social media.”
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