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    Review: In ‘Crowns, Kinks and Curls,’ Getting to the Roots of Black Hair

    Keli Goff’s series of vignettes feature Black women recounting how their hair affected their school lives, relationships or careers.I have 4b hair that remained virgin hair, mostly styled in box braids and cornrows with extensions, until I was 13, when I got my first relaxer. My scalp has known chemical burns, hot comb burns, curling iron burns, flat iron burns and the unrelenting throbbing that comes with hours of tight root-wrenching braiding. I got my big chop at 21 and have been natural — years of T.W.A.s and twist-outs and wash ‘n’ go’s — ever since.Do you get what I’m saying, or am I speaking another language?I’ve written about my hair before, and every time I do I’m well aware of the vocabulary, which I’m sure is unfamiliar to many non-Black readers. Though it’s not just a matter of terms or phrases: Black women often encounter unprovoked opinions and wrong assumptions from employers, strangers — even family and friends — about what their hairstyle says about their professionalism, their social status or their relationship to Blackness.The personal, cultural and political implications of Black hair are at the root of the well-meaning but less than inspired “The Glorious World of Crowns, Kinks and Curls.” (And yes, pun definitely intended.)Written by Keli Goff and produced by and filmed at Baltimore Center Stage, “Crowns, Kinks and Curls” is a series of vignettes, each one featuring a Black woman recounting how her hair affected her school life, relationships or career. The piece channels the spirit of Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls,” though the writing, albeit earnest, is far less poetic.The actresses Stori Ayers, Awa Sal Secka and Shayna Small embody all of the fictional women, donning different do’s to do so. (Nikiya Mathis handled the eclectic mix of hair and wig designs.) Most of the scenes are monologues, though occasionally two or three women meet, say, in the office of a mostly white law firm, where an older straight-haired lawyer named Sharon (Ayers) berates a younger one, Ally (Sal Secka), for wearing her hair in braids: “I’m sorry, I can’t let you meet a major client looking like this.”Gaby (Small), with sleek face-hugging Josephine Baker-style finger waves, recalls her mother’s distress that she cut her “good hair” for her wedding day, showing how hair reflects the generational trauma held by some Black women. Wanda (Ayers), in bouncy mocha and champagne blonde curls, recounts how an ex-boyfriend reproached her for pressing her natural hair for an interview, illustrating how “authentic Blackness” is often policed even within the Black community.And so every tale has its moral, none of which should be new to any Black woman. They certainly weren’t for me, a woman who has had white people make awkward comments about my hair, ask questions and even ask to touch my crown in admiration.Which is to say “Crowns, Kinks and Curls” excited me more conceptually than it did in its actual execution, which was all perfectly serviceable, from the performances to Bianca LaVerne Jones’s staging, to Dede Ayite’s set, with a big, puzzling backdrop of large flowers.Scenes span recent history, some taking place during the Obama Administration and others referencing former President Trump and 2019’s Crown Act against hair-based discrimination. These glimmers of vibrancy underscore the timeliness of the topic, given how the social consciousness of Blackness has shifted since the Obama era.In one humorous monologue, Sal Secka, wearing an Afro pony — ethereal and exquisitely cloudlike — plays a woman named Adaora who has accompanied her biracial daughter to see the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and cheer on the Black princess.In a somber scene, two unnamed women (Sal Secka and Ayers) unwrap and unpin their hair in silence, as “Strange Fruit” is sung offstage; they are preparing to go to a funeral for a Black husband and son unjustly killed. It’s the one sequence in which hair is not so explicitly the topic of discussion, but rather is powerfully positioned as part of a larger expression of the Black experience, particularly at this moment in history.In a somber scene, Stori Ayers unwraps and unpins her hair in silence.Diggle/Baltimore Center StageThe show’s program includes a brief timeline of the history of Black women’s hairstyles and hair practices, referencing enslaved women’s use of head wraps and braids before enduring the Middle Passage, along with the work of hair pioneers like Madam C.J. Walker and George E. Johnson Sr. There’s so much to be mined in the history of Black hair that “Crowns, Kinks and Curls” feels like it has missed opportunities to go further — or even incorporate real stories.Why not use the smart, funny and vulnerable voices of real Black women? Why not devise scenes that are more than neatly prepared monologues?And because it is a rarity to see Black women talking about their Black hair onstage, what I saw only made me hungry for more: I wanted to see more Black women of different shades, in not only wigs and weaves but also their own natural ‘fros. I was disappointed, in scenes where women were supposed to be wearing natural hair, to see false approximations.I believe this very capable show — which had a creative team entirely comprising Black women, to my utter delight — can be more. I hope it happens if and when it’s staged in person, as it’s the kind of work I both want and need to see, as a Black female critic and as a Black woman writing about an art form that too often fails people of color.So as I undid my own head of flat twists this weekend in preparation for a much-needed trip to the salon, this earnest request crossed my mind: more Black women, and more (and more and more) of those curls.The Glorious World of Crowns, Kinks and CurlsThrough April 18; centerstage.org More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Extinction — The Facts’ and ‘Hysterical’

    A sobering nature program with David Attenborough airs on PBS. And FX debuts a documentary about women in comedy.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, March 29-April 4. Details and times are subject to change.MondayINDEPENDENT LENS: ’TIL KINGDOM COME (2021) 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The filmmaker and journalist Maya Zinshtein looks at the unusual relationship between American evangelical Christians and Israeli Jews in this documentary. Zinshtein follows Yael Eckstein, the president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, and the Kentucky pastors William Bingham III and his son Boyd Bingham IV, exploring why many evangelical Christians in America actively support Israeli Jews, and why their help is courted by some. Zinshtein has a “patient, observant approach,” Devika Girish wrote in her review for The New York Times. The director, Girish added, “catches her subjects in moments of damning irony: Eckstein smiles awkwardly whenever the End Times are mentioned by her evangelical allies; the Binghams encourage their poverty-stricken congregation to send their spare change to the Holy Land.”RUNNING WILD WITH BEAR GRYLLS 9 p.m. on National Geographic. The actor Anthony Mackie has been tearing through bad guys this month in the new Marvel TV series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” That show presumably has a far more robust on-set catering setup than “Running Wild With Bear Grylls” does, so Mackie was being a good sport when he signed up for Monday night’s sixth-season premiere of Grylls’s wilderness survival series. In the episode, Mackie joins Grylls for an expedition into one of the world’s great mountain ranges: the Dolomites in northeastern Italy.TuesdayA scene from “The Last Cruise.”HBOTHE LAST CRUISE (2021) 9 p.m. on HBO. You may not have heard of this documentary’s cinematographers, but you’ve probably heard about them. They’re people who were onboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship when it became a coronavirus hot spot early last year. “The Last Cruise” revisits the outbreak and the ensuing full-ship lockdown using footage shot on board by passengers and crew members.REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955) 9:45 p.m. on TCM. See Natalie Wood at three stages of her career on Tuesday night, when TCM airs “Rebel Without a Cause” sandwiched by “The Green Promise” (1949, airing at 8 p.m.) and “Inside Daisy Clover” (1965, at 11:45 p.m.). The iconic role here is the one in “Rebel,” in which Wood, James Dean and Sal Mineo play a trio of teens whom Bosley Crowther, pulling no punches in his 1955 review for The Times, described as “young people neglected by their parents or given no understanding and moral support by fathers and mothers who are themselves unable to achieve balance and security in their homes.”WednesdayEXTINCTION — THE FACTS 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The prototypical English nature series host David Attenborough presents this sobering look at humans’ role in speeding the extinction of species across the globe, and how human activities affect the prevalence of pandemic diseases. Attenborough, 94, begins the program by looking straight into the camera, addressing the audience directly. “Over the course of my life, I’ve encountered some of the world’s most remarkable species of animals,” he says. “Only now do I realize just how lucky I’ve been — many of these wonders seem set to disappear forever.”ThursdayTRUE GRIT (2010) 7:05 p.m. on HBO. Jeff Bridges stars in this Coen brothers remake of a 1960s western. Bridges plays Rooster Cogburn, a growling U.S. marshal who is hired by a young girl (Hailee Steinfeld) to hunt down the outlaw (Josh Brolin) who killed her father. That mission leads them to cross paths with a Texas Ranger (Matt Damon) whose self-importance, like much else here, is played for laughs.FridayIliza Shlesinger in “Hysterical.”FXHYSTERICAL (2021) 9 p.m. on FX. Margaret Cho, Lisa Lampanelli, Kathy Griffin, Nikki Glaser, Fortune Feimster and Iliza Shlesinger are among the several generations of comics interviewed in this documentary, which looks at the experiences of women in the industry. The comedians talk about how they got their start, the women they looked up to as beginners, the stereotypes and sexist expectations they overcame in clubs, and what drove them to do comedy in the first place. Says Shlesinger: “I’m offering up myself, in an effort to find myself, hoping that in doing so you will also find yourself.”SaturdayCAROL (2015) 9:45 p.m. on TCM. Few films from this century make more sense to air on Turner Classic Movies — a channel known for vintage Hollywood titles — than “Carol,” the director Todd Haynes’s adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel, “The Price of Salt.” Haynes both meticulously recreates the story’s midcentury setting and, thanks in large part to the screenwriter Phyllis Nagy’s reworking of the story, subverts it. Like the book, the film hinges on a romance between a young woman in New York, Therese (Rooney Mara), and an older housewife in the suburbs, Carol (Cate Blanchett). But while the novel specifically follows Therese, the film shifts between the two women’s perspectives. In his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott called that decision “radical.” At once “ardent and analytical, cerebral and swooning, ‘Carol’ is a study in human magnetism, in the physics and optics of eros,” he wrote. “With sparse dialogue and restrained drama, the film is a symphony of angles and glances, of colors and shadows.”Danielle Brooks in “Robin Roberts Presents: Mahalia.”LifetimeROBIN ROBERTS PRESENTS: MAHALIA 8 p.m. on Lifetime. The actress and singer Danielle Brooks (“Orange Is the New Black”) plays the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson in this biopic, which dramatizes Jackson’s growth into a star singer and a symbol in the civil rights movement. Brooks, who was nominated for a Tony Award for “The Color Purple” in 2016, is joined by several other Broadway performers — including the Tony-nominated actress Joaquina Kalukango, who was also in “The Color Purple.”Sunday27TH ANNUAL SCREEN ACTORS GUILD AWARDS 9 p.m. on TBS and TNT. Nominees for the top honors at this year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards include many of the films and performers that are in the running for the Oscars, which are less than a month away. “Minari” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7” might have the most to gain — both are in the running forbest picture at the Oscars, and the ensembles of both movies are up for the best cast honor at Sunday night’s SAG awards. A win for either film would create momentum going into the Academy Awards. More

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    Doc Severinsen Recalls High Notes, Low Notes and Everything in Between

    Doc Severinsen hadn’t been able to practice his trumpet in a couple of days, and by his own admission, it was making him irritable. “I’m getting a little bit antsy,” he said one afternoon earlier this month.Were he not currently conducting a video interview from the kitchen of his home in Tennessee, he said, “By now, I’d have a trumpet in my hand, and I would be pretty much doing that the rest of the day.”Instead the 93-year-old Severinsen was sharing reflections from his life and career as a trumpeter and bandleader of “The Tonight Show” while his companion, Cathy Leach, sat nearby. As he occasionally, instinctually pursed his lips to practice the embouchure he uses on his mouthpiece, he explained that he was a different man when separated from his instrument. In his reedy, rumbling voice, he said, “I don’t become the most pleasant guy to live with.”Audiences got to know Severinsen best during his 30-year run on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show,” where he served not only as its musical frontman but also as a flashily attired comic foil to its host, who became a close friend behind the scenes. Carson died in 2005, and his announcer and sidekick, Ed McMahon, died in 2009, leaving Severinsen the most prominent surviving face of that influential late-night show.Over 30 years on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon, Severinsen was both musical frontman and comic foil.Douglas C. Pizac/Associated PressNow, Severinsen is pulling back the curtain on his own life in a new documentary, “Never Too Late: The Doc Severinsen Story,” which will make its debut Friday on PBS’s “American Masters.”The film, which is directed by Kevin S. Bright and Jeff Consiglio, chronicles Severinsen’s upbringing in Arlington, Ore., where his father was the local dentist (thus earning his son, Carl, the lifelong nickname “Doc”). The documentary also explores his work as a musician, on “The Tonight Show” and off, and dives deeply into his personal life, his marriages and his family’s history with alcoholism.If the movie uncovers much that viewers didn’t know about him, Severinsen said, “I found out how much I didn’t know, too.”Severinsen spoke further about the making of “Never Too Late,” its revelations and his fulfilling, frustrating obsession with the trumpet. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.You’ve been off “The Tonight Show” now for almost as many years as you were on it. Does that experience seem distant to you now?It does. But at first — and I can’t tell you how long that went on for — I would wake up in the morning and think, Oh, God, I’ve got to get going or I’m going to be late for work. I’ve got to pick out a program of music. Oh, wait a minute — I don’t do that anymore.What keeps you occupied now?I’ve got that jealous bitch over in the corner — the trumpet. And if you don’t pick that baby up and treat it right, you’re going to have nothing but trouble.“All you know is you’ve got to pick out the right music, conduct the band and be ready to talk,” Severinsen said of his time on “The Tonight Show.”Ron Tom/NBCUniversal via Getty Images How were you persuaded to be the subject of a film about your life?Kevin Bright has had a working relationship with my eldest daughter, Nancy. They had renewed their friendship, and Kevin said: “How’s your dad? What’s he up to?” The next thing I know, Nancy’s calling me, saying, “Dad, I spoke to Kevin and he wants to do a documentary.” I laughed and said: “That’ll be the day. No thanks.”What changed your mind?Kevin knew how to handle me. One thing led to another, and all of a sudden we’re sitting in the kitchen, here in this house. I had this feeling of, Why am I doing this? What the hell is going on? Then we started talking and we never stopped.Are people surprised when they see you dressed casually, as you are today, instead of sporting some of your memorable apparel from “The Tonight Show”?The way you see me now, it’s the way I’ve always been. I’ve got a cowboy shirt on and jeans and cowboy boots. I thought I might go riding today — it turns out, that’s not going to happen, but I’ve still got the right clothes on for it.Severinsen, known for his garish outfits on “The Tonight Show,” opts for more muted attire these days.via Just Bright ProductionsSo all that eye-popping clothing you wore on the show was a kind of affectation?It was at first, yeah. It was a desperation kind of a thing. You don’t know when they’re going to talk to you or what they’re going to talk to you about. All you know is you’ve got to pick out the right music, conduct the band and be ready to talk. Because the one thing you don’t want to have happen is, you’re sitting there, [mindlessly] “Oh boy, I sure enjoyed that dinner last night,” and you hear Johnny say, “Isn’t that right, Doc?”Did Carson ever catch you off guard?One time, he asked me to hit a double high-C on trumpet. And I thought, Holy Christ. I knew I was capable of it if I had time to work on it. But somehow, from past experience, I hit that note and did a pretty doggone good job. And I thought, I’ve got to have a finish for this. So I did a take of great pain and reeling around and fell flat on the floor. I didn’t know I was going to do that! Neither did Johnny. It’s all about being in show business, I guess.Is it fair to say there was a kind of friendly one-upmanship in your on-camera relationship with Carson?Well, there was no one-upmanship because we knew who had the one-up. It was mostly me paying attention and trying to fit in. But Johnny, he was an artist. He could produce and write a script in his mind while he’s saying it.“You get out of the trumpet exactly what you put into the trumpet,” Severinsen said.via Just Bright ProductionsCarson had a behind-the-scenes reputation, even among people who worked for him, for being enigmatic or elusive. Was that your experience with him?Well, the only person who could answer that is Johnny. He knows if he’s thinking in his mind about some friend who’s passed away or a secret desire he has to do this or that, or God, I wish I’d had a hamburger for lunch. But he was an extremely bright man. He was friends with Carl Sagan, and he used to love to get together with him and talk about the universe. I’d go out with him on his boat, and we’re sitting there, looking up at night, and he’s explaining the whole damn works up there. There was a lot more to him than he ever let on.You felt you saw a side of him that he didn’t necessarily share with others?I did, and I can tell you right now, I ain’t going to talk about it. [Chuckles.] Us guys, sometimes, when we have real pain — Oh, I wish I hadn’t done that, or I wish I had done that — you don’t get the whole thing.You’re candid in the film about your history with alcoholism — how it ran in your family and how your first wife’s problems with it led to the dissolution of your marriage to her. Were you nervous about sharing this with people?No, I wasn’t nervous because it’s fact. If you’re an alcoholic, you should be one of the first ones to know. Well, I wasn’t one of the first ones to know that I was an alcoholic. My wife at that time, I’ll tell you, I feel sorry for her. I’m not angry over any of it. There I was with three little kids — I’ve got to be Dad, I’ve got to be Mom, I’ve got to be the maid. I’ve got to do it all. And then I have to go over to the police department and say to the guy at the des:, “Listen, if your patrolmen see my wife driving our car — and especially if there’s little kids in there, would you do me a favor? Would you pull her over? And if she’s been drinking at all, take the car from her, take her home and make the kids safe.”“If you don’t pick that baby up and treat it right,” Severinsen said about his trumpet, “you’re going to have nothing but trouble.”Kristine Potter for The New York TimesThere was often a lot of joking about drinking on “The Tonight Show.” Did that make it hard to maintain your sobriety?I didn’t come to work and say, “Now, Johnny, there’s something I’ve got to tell you — I’m an alcoholic, so look out now.” Quite the opposite. And about the time I was just starting out on “The Tonight Show,” I also became aware that if you’re an alcoholic, you’re probably a drug addict also. And I found out that I was. And I said, “Whoa, boy, they’re taking away all my toys.”But you’re better for it.I’ll put it to you this way, I’m alive.What drugs were you using?I don’t even want to discuss it. None of the rock-hard stuff. But close. Very close.Your third wife, Emily, is an on-camera subject in the documentary, and she speaks frankly about how your marriage to her unraveled after your time on “The Tonight Show” ended. Were you concerned about including her in the film?No, I had to trust Kevin on that. If you’re doing something that’s extremely revealing, about private matters, there’s a producer that will make that decision and you’d better figure out how you’re going to live with it. Emily, she’s a very bright person, and fair. She’s — well, I’m in a much better place.You’re happy in your life with Cathy Leach, who is a professor emeritus of trumpet at the University of Tennessee?I don’t know how to describe it. But when I pull the covers up under my chin at night and she reaches over and makes sure that I got my arms covered and I’m all settled and everything’s OK — I don’t want to get into religion, but I thank God she came into my life.Are you still discovering new things about the trumpet?Oh, yeah. But when you pick up a trumpet, don’t think it’s going to be a bouquet of roses the rest of your life. You get out of the trumpet exactly what you put into the trumpet. If you put bad timing and a bad attitude, anything negative at all into the trumpet, it comes right back to hit you in the face.Do you ever have days when you think, I can’t play that damned thing for another minute?Yes, but I don’t call it a “damned thing.” Because the trumpet has the last word. I try to remain respectful of that damned thing. More

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    On ‘S.N.L.’, Maya Rudolph Hosts a Unity Seder as Kamala Harris

    The “Saturday Night Live” alumna reprised her role as Vice President Kamala Harris in a sketch that also featured Alex Moffat’s return as President Biden.This weekend, “Saturday Night Live” added one more question to the four that are customarily asked at a Passover Seder: Why wasn’t this sketch chosen as the cold open?You had to wait until just before midnight for the topical, politically themed satire that usually kicks off an “S.N.L.” broadcast — this one featuring the host, Maya Rudolph, in her recurring role as Vice President Kamala Harris. Her task? To M.C. a Passover meal intended as a call for unity.“This has been a difficult year for all of us,” Rudolph’s Harris said. “But I really do feel that we are about to see some light. And what better night to celebrate a new beginning than Passover — or as my adopted people call it, Pesach.”Rudolph explained the four questions that would be asked at this particular Seder: “How’s school? Did you eat? When are you giving me grandchildren? And what’s with the haircut?” Then she introduced the man she described as “my rock, my everything, my Semitic smokeshow, my stepbaby-daddy” — Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman, as played by Martin Short.In customary “S.N.L.” style, they were joined by various cast members playing prominent political figures, including Aidy Bryant as Senator Ted Cruz, who brought Israeli-flag cupcakes and pigs in a blanket. (“Well, we can’t have pork or bread, so thank you,” Rudolph told her.)Chloe Fineman appeared as Ella Emhoff, the second daughter, model and fashion designer. “Am I breaking your eyes?” she asked. “Good. You may think I look insane, but I assure you, I’m the most normal looking girl in Bushwick.”Kenan Thompson arrived, playing Senator Raphael Warnock, and was asked by Rudolph to make certain that Georgia remained a blue state.“That won’t be easy,” Thompson said. “They’ll do everything they can to keep Black people from voting. We wouldn’t vote on anything if they had their way. Not even ‘American Idol.’ Jennifer Hudson would have been knocked out in the first round.”The group was then joined by Alex Moffat as President Biden, a role he had played on only one previous occasion, in December. In this appearance, Moffat portrayed Biden as brimming with confidence after his first formal news conference on Thursday.“It was so easy,” Moffat said. “A lot of critics thought I wasn’t mentally prepared enough but I think I” — he paused here to look at a note card — “proved them all wrong.”Moffat then informed Rudolph that he was giving her the responsibility of handling immigration conditions. “Thank you for the opportunity,” Rudolph said dryly. “Such a fun, solvable problem.”Moffat also reintroduced his colleagues to his not entirely tamed dog Major. A few prerecorded growls played, and that was Short’s cue to wrestle gamely on the ground with a stuffed dog.Beyoncé impersonation of the weekIf you’re going to bring Maya Rudolph back to “S.N.L.”, you’d better have her play Beyoncé Knowles-Carter in preposterous circumstances. This time, that setting was “Hot Ones,” the streaming talk show in which celebrities answer questions while trying to eat spicy food.Mikey Day played the role of its host, Sean Evans, and even he seemed confused as to why Beyoncé would appear on the program. “I feel you,” Rudolph said. “I still can’t tell if this is beneath me. But my sister Solange loves this show, so I said I’d do it.”Rudolph didn’t answer many questions, but she did successfully embody an overheated Beyoncé, sweaty and with tears streaming down her face after sampling a sauce that was too hot even for her.Music video of the weekNow that more than 39 million Americans age 65 and over have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine (according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), what are they going to do with their new status?Why, rap about it boastfully, of course.As Chris Redd raps in this video, playing one such cocky vaccinated senior:Baby boomers, greatest generationGot all the money, now we got the vaccinationCrashed the economy three whole timesAnd when it comes to the vax, we’re the first in lineWeekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on possible new White House efforts at gun control after shootings in Atlanta and Boulder.Jost began:Well, this week kind of felt like Biden on those stairs. You thought it had to get better, but then it repeatedly got worse. In the wake of the Colorado and Atlanta shootings, President Biden called for universal background checks for gun purchases. And background checks are a great start, but shouldn’t we also do current checks? Like, what are these guys up to now? How much “Call of Duty” are they playing? Have they recently DMed a girl “hey” 30 times? Or, how about this: If you want a gun, the gun store has to talk to at least five people from your life who agree it’s a good idea for you to have a gun. It’s not really that much to ask. You’ve got to list three references on an application to work at Foot Locker.“And Republicans,” he added, “please stop pretending this is a Second Amendment issue and just admit:You love guns more than people you don’t know. These are your political ads; look at them: [Here a composite image appeared of several Republican figures posing with guns] “You look like you’re running for president of ISIS. If you actually cared about the Second Amendment, you’d also care about the well-regulated militias part. And I don’t know if you noticed when they almost hung you two months ago, but our militias aren’t super well-regulated.Che picked up the riff, replying: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just bought a gun last summer when all those white kids started talking about getting rid of the police.”He then switched gears to Biden’s news conference, saying:President Biden gave his first press conference, which lasted for over an hour. Wow, shout out to Fixodent! At the conference, President Biden was asked if he plans to run for re-election in 2024, which is probably the nicest way to ask him if he plans on being alive in three years.Weekend Update deskside segment of the weekThough Bowen Yang is often seen here playing characters like the Chinese trade minister Chen Biao, this week he appeared as himself to address recent efforts to reduce anti-Asian hate and attacks. Yang read from what he said were calls to action he had seen on Instagram, with titles like “Six ways you can check in on your A.A.P.I. friends and tell them they’re so hot,” using the abbreviation for Asian-American and Pacific Islander people, and “Call your Senators and demand that they know about the lesbian characters in Sailor Moon!”Acknowledging that he had no easy solutions to these problems, Yang asked, “What can I say to help how insanely bad things are? If someone’s personality is Punch an Asian Grandma, it’s not a dialogue. I have an Asian grandma. You want to punch her. There ain’t no common ground, mama.”All work and no play of the weekIf you’re a fan of precise parodies of Stanley Kubrick films, or you just like seeing past “S.N.L.” stars reunite with their former castmates, there’s something here for you. In this filmed segment called “The Maya-ing,” Rudolph goes wandering through Studio 8H as if it were the Overlook Hotel from “The Shining.”But no one gets his brains bashed in with a bat — it’s just a clever opportunity for Rudolph to cross paths with old pals like Tina Fey (playing the ghost of an original “S.N.L.” writer) and Rachel Dratch (as herself, in a bathtub). Enjoy your stay, Maya, forever and ever and ever. More

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    Racist Moments in WWE Catalog Are Missing on Peacock Streaming

    Peacock, NBCUniversal’s streaming service, is now showing old and new episodes of WWE Network wrestling. Some troubling segments in the network’s history disappeared in the transfer.Fans of the WWE Network have seen and heard racist tropes in the ring for years.In 1990, during a showdown between Roddy Piper and Bad News Brown, a Black wrestler, Mr. Piper, who is white, showed up to the match with half his face painted black.In 2005, Vince McMahon, the chief executive of WWE, used a racial slur repeatedly in a prepared skit before he was taken down by Dwayne Johnson, then known as the Rock.Until recently, those segments were available to watch on the WWE Network, which allowed subscribers to revisit old episodes and seasons of WrestleMania going back to the 1980s. But this month, after WWE episodes began moving to Peacock, NBCUniversal’s fledgling streaming service, longtime viewers of wrestling noticed they could not find either segment.“The whole match is gone,” said Christopher Jeter, 30, who has watched professional wrestling since he was 10 and now writes about it for Daily DDT, a news and opinion site about WWE. “I wouldn’t say it’s a big loss.”NBCUniversal said that Peacock was “reviewing WWE content to ensure it aligns with Peacock’s standards and practices,” as it does other shows and films on the platform.“Peacock and WWE are reviewing all past content to ensure it fits our 2021 standards,” WWE said.NBCUniversal said in January that Peacock had acquired exclusive streaming rights to WWE Network content through a multiyear agreement.In March, the company announced that Peacock would feature WWE “fan-favorite content at launch, including all past WrestleManias leading up to WrestleMania 37.”The company said that Peacock would continue to add WWE Network content to its library, making the entire archive available to fans.The removal of the segments come as other streaming services and entertainment companies have sought to give audiences context for older films and television shows that feature offensive content.Disney’s streaming service includes a 12-second disclaimer that cannot be skipped before films like “Dumbo” and “Peter Pan” that tells viewers they will see “negative depictions” and “mistreatment of people or cultures.”“These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now,” the disclaimer warns. “Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.”This month, Turner Classic Movies showed 18 classic films, including “The Jazz Singer” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” that were preceded by commentary from film experts who prepared viewers for scenes they could find jarring or upsetting.HBO Max initially removed “Gone With the Wind” from its streaming service, then added it again with a four-minute introduction by the TCM host Jacqueline Stewart, who explains the enduring cultural importance of the film even as it “denies the horrors of slavery as well as its legacies of racial inequality.”Last June, an NBC spokesman said four episodes of “30 Rock” that featured blackface were being removed from circulation at the request of Tina Fey, the show’s creator, and Robert Carlock, an executive producer and showrunner.Mr. Jeter, the WWE fan who writes about wrestling, said that racist and sexist depictions of women, Black people and other people of color have long been a part of professional wrestling.“It became such a part of watching the product that it became expected,” he said. “But it’s not why I watch wrestling.”Most fans, he said, watch wrestling because they enjoy the combination of athleticism and dramatic storytelling. The racist tropes were often a distraction from that, Mr. Jeter said.“I’m sure there are fans who are saying, ‘Why are you censoring?’” he said. “But it really isn’t a big deal that they’re getting rid of these stories and segments that haven’t really aged well, and weren’t really good at the time.” More

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    Craig muMs Grant, Actor and Slam Poet, Dies at 52

    He was a star of the HBO series “Oz” under the name muMs, which he also used on the poetry circuit both before and after finding success on television.Craig muMs Grant’s biggest success as an actor was the role of Poet on the HBO prison drama “Oz,” but fans of that series were accustomed to seeing him credited simply as muMs. It was a name he adopted as a young man when he was exploring rap and slam poetry, influences that he said changed his life.“Before hip-hop,” as he put it in “A Sucker Emcee,” an autobiographical play he performed in 2014, “I couldn’t speak.”Mr. Grant compiled a respectable career as an actor. He appeared on “Oz” throughout its six-season run, which began in 1997, and turned up in spot roles on series including “Hack,” “Boston Legal” and “Law & Order” and its spinoffs, and in movies like Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled” (2000). But before his “Oz” breakthrough he was a familiar presence on the slam poetry circuit in New York and beyond; he was in the 1998 documentary “SlamNation” as part of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe’s slam team.He returned to his poetry/rap roots often, even after “Oz” gave him a measure of fame — appearing onstage with the Labyrinth Theater Company in New York, where he was a member of the ensemble, and performing at colleges and small theaters all over the country.Mr. Grant, third from left, in an episode of the HBO series “Oz” in 1997. He played Poet, a drug addict who writes verses while incarcerated.HBO“I love words,” he told The Indianapolis Star in 2001. “Anybody ever wanted to buy me anything for Christmas or my birthday, they can buy me a dictionary. The bigger, the better.”Mr. Grant died on Wednesday in Wilmington, N.C., where he was filming the Starz series “Hightown,” in which he had a recurring role. He was 52.His manager, Sekka Scher, said the cause was complications of diabetes.Craig O’Neil Grant was born on Dec. 18, 1968, in the Bronx. His father, Samuel, was a locksmith and carpenter at Montefiore Hospital, and his mother, Theresa (Maxwell) Grant, was a teacher.Mr. Grant graduated from Mount Saint Michael Academy in the Bronx and was taking college courses in Virginia when, he said, he started exploring writing, seeking to infuse poetry with the energy of the rap music he enjoyed.“The problem with poetry is, a lot of the audience sometimes has a short attention span,” he told the Indianapolis paper years later. “So poetry has to have rhythm to capture people who can’t listen for so long. They’ll just close their eyes and ride the rhythm of your voice.”He took the name “muMs” when he was around 20. He was in a rap group, he told The Philadelphia Daily News in 2003, and still had a bit of a youthful lisp, so a friend suggested he call himself “Mumbles.”“I thought about that for a week and shortened it to muMs,” he said, and then he turned that into an acronym for “manipulator under Manipulation shhhhhhh!” That phrase, he told the Indianapolis paper, symbolized the notion that “as great as I want to become or as great as I think I am, I can always go to the edge of the ocean, stand there and realize I’m nothing in comparison to the universe.”Back in New York, he didn’t succeed as a rapper. But he began performing spoken-word poetry at places like the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which is where someone involved in developing “Oz” saw him and recommended that Tom Fontana, the show’s creator, give him a look. Mr. Grant auditioned by performing one of his poems, and he was cast as Poet, a drug addict who writes verses while incarcerated.Mr. Grant, who lived in the Bronx, joined Labyrinth in 2006 and appeared in various roles in its productions. He also began writing plays, including “A Sucker Emcee,” in which he told his life story largely in rhymed couplets while a D.J. working turntables provided a soundtrack.Mr. Grant is survived by his partner, Jennie West, and a brother, Winston Maxwell.In 2003 Mr. Grant released a spoken-word album called “Strange Fruit,” taking the title from the song about lynchings famously recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939.“Today, strange fruit means we’re the product of everything Black people have been through in this country — Middle Passage, Jim Crow, segregation,” he told The Baltimore Sun in 2004. “It’s a new way of looking at it. The metaphor of strange fruit means life and birth for me, where it used to mean lynching and death. Blacks have been doing that for years, taking the bad and flipping it, making the best of a bad situation.” More

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    ViacomCBS stock tanks, losing more than half its value in less than a week.

    Shares of ViacomCBS, the media goliath led by Shari Redstone, took a nosedive this week, with the company losing more than half of its market value in just four days.The stock was as high as $100 on Monday. By the close of trading on Friday it had fallen to just over $48, a drop of more than 51 percent in less than a week.There’s no better way to say it: The company’s stock tanked.What happened? Several things all at once. First, it is worth noting that ViacomCBS had actually been on a bit of a tear up until this week’s meltdown, rising nearly tenfold in the past 12 months. About a year ago, it was trading at around $12 per share.That rally came as the company, like the rest of the media industry, had made a move toward streaming. It recently launched Paramount+ to compete against the likes of Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max and others. The service tapped ViacomCBS’s vast archive of content from the CBS broadcast network, Paramount Film Studios and several cable channels, including Nickelodeon and MTV.That shift matters because ViacomCBS has been hit hard by an overall decline in cable viewership. The company’s pretax profits have fallen nearly 17 percent from two years ago, and its debt has topped more than $21 billion.But the stock rose so much that Robert M. Bakish, ViacomCBS’s chief executive, decided to take advantage of the boon by offering new shares to raise as much as $3 billion. The underwriters who managed the sale priced the offering at around $85 per share earlier this week, a discount to where it had been trading on Monday.You could say it backfired. When a company issues new stock, it normally dilutes the value of current shareholders, so some drop in price is expected. But a few days after the offering, one of Wall Street’s most influential research firms, MoffettNathanson, published a report that questioned the company’s value and downgraded the stock to a “sell.” The stock should really only be worth $55, MoffettNathanson said. That started the nosedive.“We never, ever thought we would see Viacom trading close to $100 per share,” read the report, which was written by Michael Nathanson, a co-founder of the firm. “Obviously, neither did ViacomCBS’s management,” it continued, citing the new stock offering.Streaming is still a money-losing enterprise, and that means the old line media companies must still endure more losses over more years before they can return to profitability.In the case of ViacomCBS, it seemed to hasten the cord-cutting when it signed a new licensing agreement with the NFL that will cost the company more than $2 billion a year through 2033. As part of the agreement, ViacomCBS also plans to stream the games on Paramount+, which is much cheaper than a cable bundle.As the games, considered premium programming, shift to streaming, “the industry runs the risk of both higher cord-cutting and greater viewer erosion,” Mr. Nathanson wrote.On Friday, an analyst with Wells Fargo also downgraded the stock, slashing the bank’s price target to $59.But the market decided it wasn’t even worth that much. It closed on Friday barely a quarter above 48 bucks. More

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    ‘Kid 90’ and the Days When Even Wild TV Teens Had Privacy

    A documentary from Soleil Moon Frye, star of “Punky Brewster,” and a reunion of “The Real World” remind us that Gen X didn’t curate themselves for mass consumption.Sometimes I remember the clunky devices of my youth — the boxy Polaroid cameras, the bricklike car phones, the shrill answering machines, the pagers that could be made to spell an angular, all-caps “BOOBS.” This was the personal tech of the early-to-mid-1990s, in the years before AOL Instant Messenger provided an internet on-ramp, which means it was pretty much the last time an American teenager could behave with some expectation of privacy.Still, camcorders existed back then and Soleil Moon Frye, the child star of “Punky Brewster,” rarely turned hers off. In “Kid 90,” a documentary now streaming on Hulu, an adult, manicured Moon Frye — filmed in the kind of all-white room usually associated with near-death experiences — revisits her endless home movies, as well as related ephemera: diaries, voice mail messages and photographs. If you are a young Gen Xer or an old millennial, “Kid 90” may provide the uncanny and not entirely welcome experience of having your childhood returned to you — the syntax, the celebrities, the fashions that haven’t come back around (the backward baseball cap, the vest as a bustier). Revisiting your youth culture when your own youth has mostly fled is an exercise in estrangement and mild humiliation, like running into your therapist at Victoria’s Secret.In the 1980s sitcom “Punky Brewster,” Moon Frye starred as a girl being raised by a foster father.Gene Arias/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty ImagesBefore I clicked play, I asked an editor how many drinks I might need to make it through the documentary. “A 40 of Mickey’s malt liquor,” she wrote.The early ’90s also reappear on “The Real World Homecoming: New York,” a Paramount + show that reunites the cast members from the first season of MTV’s flagship unscripted series. Seven people, strangers no more, return to the New York loft (well, one is waylaid by a positive Covid-19 test) where their teen and 20-something lives were taped for a few months in 1992. It wasn’t the first reality show, but its wild popularity and subsequent franchise profoundly influenced what came after. “We didn’t know what it was going to be,” the journalist and activist Kevin Powell, one of the original roommates, says in the first episode of “Homecoming.” “We were just ourselves.”To watch the series and the documentary is to dilate, helplessly, on what has changed (or not) in the past 30 or so years. It’s to realize that Moon Frye, by cheerfully surveilling her own life, and those first Real Worlders, by agreeing to the constant presence of producers and cameras, were the harbingers of today’s culture, in which self-image is shaped in the expectation of a lens and personhood collates with brand identity.“The Real World Homecoming: New York” reunited the cast of the hit reality show, which premiered on MTV in 1992; from left, Norman Korpi, Kevin Powell, Julie Gentry and Heather B. Gardner, with Andre Comeau looking on.Danielle Levitt/MTVMoon Frye seems to have known every other child star in Los Angeles and its outlying counties: Sara Gilbert, Emmanuel Lewis, Brian Austin Green, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Joey Lawrence, Jenny Lewis (hilarious) and at least a dozen more. These were children valued less for who they were and more for the fandom and ads they could generate, the tickets they could sell. Today, that’s everyone with an Instagram account, potentially.“Kid 90” also reminds us that until pretty recently, the dumb things teenagers wore and the dumber things they did and said didn’t have an afterlife, because there were few ways to record them and even fewer ways to disseminate those recordings. A crucial aspect of adolescence is performance — trying on different outfits and identities — and seeing if they feel OK. (The comedy of adolescence is that it’s practice for adulthood. The tragedy is that adolescents practice on one another.)I was a teenager in the ’90s, and I’m unutterably grateful that my own mortifications — lines like, “I’m not a feminist, I’m really more like a humanist,” and a grunge-adjacent look that my high school bestie still calls the Lumberjack Sexpot — persist only on the bloopers reel in my head. Until young adults achieve some reasonable sense of self (and style), why get the internet involved?When Moon Frye moved to New York, she fell in with a group of skaters, some of whom were in the movie “Kids.”Soleil Moon Frye/HuluThe kids in “Kid 90” are filmed during their off hours: poolside, at house parties, high on mushrooms in a field somewhere. They sometimes perform for the camera — winking, pontificating, flashing a don’t-tell-mom pack of cigarettes — but they perform confident that almost no one will ever see it. “We never thought, ‘Oh, well, she’s going to use that in a way that’s going to come back and haunt us,’” Gosselaar says in the documentary.Back in 1992, those “Real World” participants knew that MTV would eventually air the footage, but not how that footage would be organized. They didn’t know that the producers would fabricate a will-they-or-won’t-they story line for Julie Gentry and Eric Nies, or that Kevin Powell would be edited to seem like a “politically angry Black man,” as he said in a recent interview. “We all thought it was a documentary about seven artists,” Rebecca Blasband says in “Homecoming.” If she and her loftmates didn’t act entirely naturally, they don’t seem to have spent the series trying to build a marketable brand.The producers and editors did the building for them, giving each a type (naïf, himbo, rock god, firebrand), which the cast members then spent years trying to live up to — or live down. “I had this notoriety, but I had no idea how to utilize it,” Gentry says in “Homecoming.”Moon Frye as a teenager; she is now appearing in a “Punky Brewster” reboot on Peacock.Soleil Moon Frye/HuluMoon Frye seems to have also struggled with her image and with how the industry treated her when her body began to diverge from Punky’s. In an agonizing section of the documentary, she talks about going through puberty, developing breasts and being seen, at 13 and 14 years old, only for bimbo-esque roles. Peers called her Punky Boobster.“It’s hard when you’ve got boobs and you can’t work in this business,” a teenage Moon Frye says. “I just want people to see me for the person I am inside.” Here’s a thought: What if the business is the problem and not children’s bodies?She wanted serious roles, so at 15, she had breast reduction surgery. But the serious roles never came. After years in the entertainment wilderness, she is now starring in a “Punky Brewster” reboot, now streaming on Peacock. “Kid 90” presents this comeback as a chirpy capstone, but it feels darker. The documentary honors a slew of friends who didn’t make it to their 40s (including Jonathan Brandis and Justin Pierce, a star of the movie “Kids”) and mentions the addictions suffered by those who did. Some of that pain must have originated in the space between what the industry (and the fans) told these actors they had to be and who they felt they were. Maybe Moon Frye is Punky once more because “the business” wouldn’t let her be anyone else.I was, unconvincingly, so many people as a teenager — a rebel, a sophisticate, a drama nerd, a go-getter, a witch. I could try on a persona for size and then return it, tags on. There was no social media then and no one wanted me on any reality series, so I never had to curate a self before I had one. But I did stupid things for love. What would I have done for likes? What would that have made me?Like Moon Frye and a lot of girls with big feelings and poetic inclinations, I kept diaries as a teenager. I’ve never gone back and read them. Why? I’m afraid that I might be embarrassed by my younger self or that she might be embarrassed by boring, wine-mom me. But I hope we’d get along. And then we could take a kiss-face selfie together, filter it, Facetune it, post it with some cute caption and watch the little hearts roll in. More