Downtime #6

Culture picks across books, film, journalism and theatre – plus a guide to Goa

A few years ago I used to live blog the Oscars, where I would arrive at the office on Sunday at 9pm, having spent the day in a fretful state of dread, then stumble out at 6am, blanched and withered, about to be sick from the 250 sweets I ate to stay awake.

Inevitably, once I got home, I would lie awake for hours, wired on sugar, thinking about the trail of typos left in my wake as the sunlight streamed in through pointless curtains and my neighbours sounded like they were demolishing and rebuilding their apartments brick by brick. It was a gory shift for someone usually asleep by a feeble 10pm (apologies to any doctors rolling their eyes), though I did enjoy the preparation: weekends spent watching all the nominated films and creating my own runners and riders.

Though Oppenheimer will likely beat it to Best Picture, riding very high for me this year is Poor Things, from the ever-brilliant Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Favourite, The Killing of a Sacred Deer). It’s a black comedy sci-fi bonkbuster, which, despite all the thinkpieces about how it’s single-handedly challenging alleged Hollywood prudery, I found no more X-rated than Saltburn. Emma Stone plays Bella Baxter, who, thanks to a crazed experiment by mad scientist ‘Godwin’, has been resuscitated from a near-death experience by swapping her extinguished adult brain for that of her unborn child’s.

The film is a bildungsroman of sorts: we watch her experience the world anew, discovering the joys of food, sex and conversation without any sense of shame, judgment or public decorum. The physical comedy is joyous – the scene in which Bella dances for the first time, aided by a deliciously camp Mark Ruffalo, had me wheezing in my seat – while the dialogue is full of absurd zingers that seem almost tailored for meme potential. Bella warning the man who loves her that “I have been whoring, you understand” is sure to become a TikTok feminist mantra, while Bella spitting out her food at a restaurant, because “why keep it in my mouth when it is revolting?” might well revolutionise British dining etiquette. 

Away from the awards season, I've been watching Sick of Myself, the Norwegian black comedy from Kristoffer Borgli about a woman so obsessed with being the centre of attention she goes to gruesome lengths to acquire it. Specifically: by purchasing black market pills that cause facial disfigurement, and posting the results on Instagram so that her friends will visit her in hospital, and ask her the hallowed question she even forces her boyfriend to ask her during sex: "are you OK?" Some reviewers have called it cruel and grotesque, but I found the parody of online narcissism and 'are you ok?' culture (paging Holly Willoughby) to be darkly funny. This four-star Financial Times review put it well: 

"Some may consider Sick of Myself objectionably flippant or callous about such real-world malaises as Munchausen syndrome or histrionic personality disorder. But that’s the point: Borgli is suggesting that in the age of the 24-hour online persona, western society in general has assumed the characteristics of what were once marginal pathological states."

I’ve been reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. I seem to save long, depressing, brilliant books for the Christmas holidays. Last year it was Shuggie Bain, this year Demon Copperhead, the Pulitzer Prize-winning, 550-page take on David Copperfield, which follows the young life of Damon as he bounces between foster homes and tries to make something of himself, backdropped by America's opioid crisis. It is a bleak novel, but as Kingsolver says in this Slate interview, it is also a novel of resilience. 

And, Gay Bar: Why We Went Out by Jeremy Atherton Lin, a heady, literary and beautifully evocative memoir embedded in the history of gay bars from West Hollywood to Vauxhall, with Lin revisiting the strange alchemy of comfort and alienation he has felt within them at various points in his life and collective queer cultural history. 

I recently went to the theatre to see The Motive and the Cue, an electric play about two clashing male egos – Richard Burton and John Gielgud – trying to remain relevant as their stars wane, by working together on a bold new production of Hamlet. It stars Johnny Flynn as hot-headed Burton and Mark Gatiss as snooty Gielgud, and the chemistry, comedy, dialogue and set design is incredible – best play I’ve seen since To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s also a moving love-letter to theatre itself. There are still tickets.

For anyone continually anxious about AI’s world domination, this New York Times piece on how AI might be the best thing to happen to culture in years, by forcing us to take stock of where our own creativity has become lazy and dull, should provide a little inspiration. “…these perpetual mediocrity machines, these supercharged engines of cliché, end up pressing us to revalue the things humans alone can do.”

The New York Times, however, has been having a particularly rough month. As well as the grief they got over their Taylor Swift op-ed, they were lambasted on social media for running a highly provocative headline on this longread about a woman refusing further treatment for her anorexia. After decades of living with the illness, she was considering palliative care, an incredibly divisive topic among psychologists. It’s a difficult but interesting piece. 

I’ve always enjoyed fellow substacker Helen Lewis’s clear-eyed, whip-smart analysis of politics, culture and people, which never feels influenced by the sometimes claggy media bubble of prescribed ‘good’ or ‘bad’ opinion. Here is writes persuasively about how cultural discourse has become too politicised, with ‘opinion culture’ replacing ‘review culture’ in journalism, and lazy anti-wokeness debasing comedy. She quotes Yair Rosenberg: “The deep-seated need to justify one’s own relevance is how we end up with cultural criticism that evaluates art as politics, rather than as art which also has political elements”.

This New Yorker dispatch on why we’ve all been lusting over Jeremy Allen White – apparently fuelled by the forbidden desire we had for restaurants during the pandemic, with White embodying our “repressed urges and thwarted carnality” – made me think about all the slightly odd takes we journalists have just for the sake of having a ‘point’. Maybe he’s just hot?

I was uplifted by this essay in the always entertaining Fence magazine about how January is not as miserable as we are told it should be. In fact, there is solace and freedom to be found in the fact that January contains “no pressure to achieve anything” and it is “categorically impossible for January to disappoint”. February and March on the other hand – terrible.

I can’t stop thinking about beautiful Goa, where I went last November and now seem to be inundated with requests from friends and strangers for recommendations. I spent three days in the north and seven in the south (where the beaches are particularly gorgeous and the vibe is one of unhurried fun.) These are four hotels I particularly loved, all relatively affordable compared to Europe prices:

Ashiyanya Yoga⁠ in the North: a gorgeous yoga retreat that seems to be particularly popular with solo female travellers. There is a real sense of new friendship and community, with guests all having meals communally and yoga sessions twice a day. A smart new decision from the owners is to only offer Wi-FI at reception rather than in the rooms, which encourages everyone to socialise in the evenings, be that over meditation or sound healing.

Cabo Serai⁠ in the South. A romantic, clifftop hideaway that has the most incredible treehouses looking over a canopy of palm trees and the hotel’s own private beach. You really do feel like you’re on a desert island, and waking up to the sound of tropical birds singing in every tree is simply heaven.

Turiya Villa ⁠in the South. A short drive from the gorgeous main beaches of Palolem and Agonda, this small guest house is lovely and simple, with the room rate offering one of the best multi-course breakfasts I’ve ever had. Ask for the coconut pancakes.

Silva Heritage⁠ in the South, close to Colva and Benaulim beaches. A grand, 350-year-old colonial mansion with four poster beds, magnificent bathrooms and enormous, sweeping grounds as well as a brand new spa.

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