Anyone else feel like all they’ve done this month is go out to eat?
With restrictions lifted and some gorgeous weather, you can’t deny that it feels like school is out for summer, even for those of us no longer governed by a school timetable.
As a result I have listened to lots of audio books on long car journeys up and down the country and really made use of my subscription music services. Check out my recommendations of things to watch, read and listen to now that we’re back to a little bit of what was before.
Film and TV
My Unorthodox Life, Streaming on Netflix
This show is everything I need from my reality TV. Part Keeping Up with the Kardashians, part Breaking Amish with a large helping of the late noughties fashion shows like, Janice Dickinson’s Modelling Agency or Kell on Earth.
In My Unorthodox Life, star and business mogul Julia Haart juggles the fashion industry and secular life after leaving the ultra-Jewish orthodox Haredi community. I can’t help but feel like Netflix saw the success of Unorthodox (a stunning drama about a young woman leaving behind her orthodox jewish life in New York for a new future in Berlin) and thought how do we turn the volume up on this? The answer: let’s find a woman who in her own words basically did not exist before 2013, when she left her orthodox community, and now is the multi-million dollar CEO of Elite World, owners of Elite Model Management (and any fan of America’s Next To Model will no exactly how much of a big deal that is).
The show is over-top, some of the scenes so brutally staged that the Haart family can’t get through them without grinning, but for anyone who loves a reality show about fashion or has an interest in Judaism (two tick boxes for me) it has all the glamour and cultural exploration you would want. A typical episode hinges on the clash of orthodox faith and the contemporary world, for example in Episode 6, ‘I Haart Paris’, it is Paris Fashion Week but also the Jewish festival, Sukkos, how will Julia do both? Julia also attempts to undo some of the past wrongs or assumptions about the fashion industry, lightly touching on exploitation, body positive initiatives and creating opportunities for models to expand their brand and longevity through social media. But make no mistake this show is sparkly trash and I love it!
Waking Sleeping Beauty, Streaming on Disney+
Calling all my millennials; this documentary was a really entertaining exploration of the Disney Renaissance. After a series of animated flops in the early 80’s, there was a huge overhaul at Disney Animation from 1984 to 1994, and with it the creation of some of the most iconic Disney films to date. This was the period of The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, and the documentary uses archived interview footage, press junkets and home movies often filmed against company policy in the animation building by the artists to show us how Disney ‘woke up Sleeping Beauty’ and created these now much-loved classics.
I was shocked by some of the revelations made in the documentary, the back-stabbing, underhand decision making and lack of communication from the leadership team but most shocking of all…the fact that so many of the artists in the early days just spent day after day at work fucking about! Literally playing games and filming skits like they were at a holiday camp!
Anyway, the documentary encapsulates the time period wonderfully, the rise of computer technology and how Disney re-introduced music to their films, making them animated movie-musicals under the talented ears of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. Ashman’s story gives the documentary an unexpected emotional weight and we see a young Tim Burton and John Lasseter, before he became the Pixar giant! This is a great watch for anyone who loves Disney or finds themselves reaching for a Disney movie on a rainy afternoon.
Love Island, Week nights on ITV2 and streaming on ITV Player
Its’s back for another year my babes. I won’t say it started with a bang because let’s be honest- it didn’t. For the first few days the islanders all wandered around the villa looking mildly disappointed, and it hasn’t reached those heady heights of drama, lust and passion like past seasons, probably because it is now very clear that none of the contestants are really in there to find love. They’re there to find success, fame and all the social media followers and brand deals that follow. The black contestants are still fighting for scraps of attention from men who honestly are about as interesting as a plank of wood and the men still think that romance is cutting some toast into raggedy shapes or bringing someone an iced coffee. My favourite moment so far has got to be the girls ‘Aww-ing’ at the fact one of the boys asked them questions on a date… is that just not a standard conversational skill?
Despite this I can’t stop watching, Casa Amor has lit up my life this week as these boys have revealed exactly how ‘chaldish’ they really are. We’re getting to the final stretch so let’s see who wins- not the show, but rather who’s name we can still remember this time next year.
Books
Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
This audiobook was in a league of it’s own! Daisy Jones and the Six tells the fictional story of 70’s band The Six and their collaboration with singer-songwriter, Daisy Jones. The story is told through a series of interviews with band members, close family and friends, journalists and managers and this is where the audiobook really comes into its own as each character is voiced by a different actor, making it feel like an audio-documentary, you also get a downloadable PDF of some of the bands song lyrics which is a lovely additional touch. The book explores everything you would want from a rock band in the 70’s: parties, kaftans, drugs and life on tour. It explores creativity, the art of songwriting and the unique connection between creative collaborators, something regular Midnight Culture readers will know I am obsessed with. If you are a fan of Fleetwood Mac, the movie Almost Famous or ever wanted to be a rockstar you’ll love this book!
Animal by Lisa Taddeo
Animal is the debut novel from bestselling writer Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women (a non-fiction read that I would definitely recommend). Taddeo does not shy away from the intense, raw and wet crevices of the female experience and in Animal the narrative hinges on the tapestry of traumas, narrator, Joan carries with her. There are several jaw-dropping revelations in the course of the book and often you find yourself wondering if there is anything that hasn’t happened to Joan. Her trauma defines the way she sees the world and with the first person narrative at times this can feel unbearable, the way she interrogates each interaction with another character, the way we are never shielded from the darkest shadows of her brain. I loved Taddeo’s use of place from her wet and glossy New York, to the dry, red heat of L.A’s Topanga Canyon and she depicts time periods beautifully cutting between Joan’s present and her childhood in the late 70’s. The book is heavy and never sparing but it is like nothing I have read before.
Doing It by Melvin Burgess
This is the book I wish I had discovered when I was a teenager. It would have saved me a lot of time and late-night analysis with my friends had I known there was a book that contained all the inner angst and turmoil experienced by teenage boys when it came to sex and relationships. I read Melvin Burgess’ most famous book Junk, when I was at school and it is one that I still re-read often. Burgess writes books for young people that are honest about the realities of the teenage experience and this makes his work incredibly divisive amongst critics. Doing It was published in 2003 and sits on the cusp of technology past and present (a trope of culture from 1998 to about 2005 that I love). The characters have mobile phones that only take calls or send texts and often they’re turned off, the music is still played on cassettes and unfortunately vaginas are continuously referred to as a minges. Minge made me cringe every. single. time. it came up (which was a lot) but I felt that the characters were well drawn and the girls were the one’s portrayed with knowledge, experience and agency over their bodies. If you have an interest in vintage YA or books that caused controversy, check it out.
Music
Pocahontas Soundtrack and Score
After watching Waking Sleeping Beauty I spent a lot of time shamelessly listening to Disney soundtracks but my favourite is Pocahontas. There is a lot of nostalgia attached to my love of Pocahontas and like many Disney films the origins of this story have been scrubbed clean by the Disney machine, but the soundtrack and score is absolutely beautiful. Alongside recognisable songs like ‘Colours of the Wind’, instrumentals like ‘Steady As a Beating Drum’ or ‘Farwell’ are just stunning and I have watched the film so many times I can hear the lines in my head over the top of the music. The album also has the bonus 90’s R&B covers that play over the end credits. For Pocahontas we are treated to the vocal stylings of the original diva Vanessa Williams doing ‘Colours of the Wind’ and Jon Secada and Shanice singing ‘If I Never Knew You’, the emotional duet between John Smith and Pocahontas that was cut from the film.
Spotify Daily Mix
I have spent a lot of time over the last 18 months of lockdowns and isolations, carefully feeding my Spotify algorithm. As someone who uses music for work, my algorithm is often skewed by ‘Pop Party Music for Kids’ or music from The Lion King Jr. soundtrack, so to combat that I spend a lot of time listening to tracks and albums on repeat to let it know what I really like. (Although I won’t lie, the Trolls album slaps!)
This listening has really paid off this month and my Daily Mix’s have been absolute fire! For anyone that doesn’t use Spotify, Daily Mixes are six curated playlists of a combination of songs you’ve listened to and some tracks you might not have heard before, which changes each day. Each daily mix is usually based on a certain genre you listen to. I love it as it is a playlist ready to go that you have curated just by listening, even if that does mean occasionally skipping over an ‘I Just Can’t Wait To Be King’ instrumental.
Midnight Culture 