Jesus Is (almost) Risen And So Have I - Issue #4
It’s been a hot minute.
Hello, my people. I am aware that I, like a Rihanna album, have been away for so long. A lot of you that know me personally asked why I haven’t sent a letter in a month, well, March was a lot for me. I have been writing tests and exams while asking myself existential questions like “Who sent me to fill this course in my JAMB form?”, “is it too late to drop out?” and “Why am I eating so much?”
Anyway, drawing from professor, philosopher, and all round baddie, Beyoncé, I’m back by popular demand. During the course of March, I was not as invested in the “culture” as I would have wanted but a few things caught my eye and I had some conversations that I loved and thought to share. So, let’s call this newsletter My March Recap. In no particular order, these are some of the things that piqued my interest in March.
I was having a conversation with my friend about assholery and being a genius. We were talking about a very popular artist who will not be named because, honestly, his stans move weird. A lot of times when artists are indisputably great at their work but are also assholes, we tend to make excuses for them. We say “that’s the curse of genius”, “we’ll manage them like that” and other stories which, to me, doesn’t cut it. Why does genius have to absolve them of being a shitty person? I personally believe that we should hold them accountable for their behaviour, genius doesn’t excuse being an asshole. It’s almost the same story for those accused of sexual assault, we find people saying that we should separate the art from the person when a lot of times the person inspires the art. What of those that have been assaulted? What of the art they could not create because of these people that harmed them? I hope we can have robust discussions about people’s harmful behaviours and their art, prioritizing those that have been harmed.
Being fashionably late to the party, I finally saw WandaVision! First of all, it takes a lot of balls to create a show solely based of characters and backstory from a web of movies and it makes me wonder how strong the hold is that Marvel has on media and pop culture as a whole. That is a discussion for some other time because I want to focus on the complexities of grief that WandaVision deals with so wonderfully.
Grief is something that shapes superheroes in so many ways, for example, Spider-Man steps into his role after the death of his Uncle Ben and Batman [the fraud] is known to have lost his parents, but a lot of these movies and shows tend to gloss over the grief, letting them serve as only as plot devices and tools. WandaVision allows Wanda Maximoff to sit in that grief as we are taken on a journey in a weird, ever changing sitcom world she creates. The show is set a few days after Infinity War and Vision’s death has broken her to the point of her creating a perfect world where he exists. Grief does a lot to us on a personal level, it changes us as we mourn and sometimes we are willing to exchange anything to see that person we have lost again, beyond the superficial magic and action of WandaVision, that is what it explores. I do not want to go further because I have already spoilt it enough but there is a lot of pondering I did over WandaVision which birthed one of the greatest and most poignant lines in the MCU: What is grief, if not love persevering?
Also, the Grammys happened in March! Long before the show itself, the Grammys had already effed up majorly by not nominating The Weeknd so I didn’t come into this show with any high hopes. As a Nigerian, I was proud of Burna Boy finally getting a win in the [problematic] Global Music Album category and also very impressed with his performance which I have gone back to over and over again, despite the obviously bad lip syncing from the backup singers. A lot of other wins excited and shocked me and some came as no surprise to me [looking at you Taylor Swift]. I’m not here to talk about the wins though, I’m mostly interested in the show itself. There was a certain intimacy in this year’s Grammys that I haven’t found in any of the shows. You could see artists on the sidelines mouthing the words of songs being performed by other artistes and a lot of the performances were stripped of the usual glitz and lights you would find in the Staples Centre. For a moment, it was truly about the music and the incredible work these people put in their art. The politics and lobbying of the awards disappeared for just a moment and I hope the Grammys learn from that as they grapple with their tumultuous history. I’m still not forgiving them for snubbing Beyoncé twice for Album Of The Year when she fully deserved.
That is all for today and I might be off for another month because I’m writing my first MB [a weird professional exam that medical students write] in about a month and I need to prepare. I hope you all have an awesome week and I hope you also respond to this letter in any way you deem fit.
What this newsletter is listening to...
I recently got a Spotify account since they’ve finally come to Nigeria and during my fine tuning process I discovered some really good songs. Team, a song by Noah Cyrus and Max which came out in 2018, was one of the good ones I discovered. It’s a guitar driven song about a couple basically reassuring each other that they’ll always be on each other’s team with a dash of toxicity. Some other good songs are Good Stuff by Griff and Dimension by JAE5 featuring Skepta and Rema.
What this newsletter is watching...
I’m still doing a Modern Family rewatch but I recently started Falcon and Winter Soldier. It’s not as complex and encompassing as WandaVision [maybe I’m judging too early], but it has great action scenes, introduces us to new Marvel characters and gives depth to those we thought were on the sideline in the MCU.
What this newsletter is thinking about...
COVID has made me wonder who is disposable in our communities. It’s been over a year and I keep on thinking about the way older people and people with co-morbidites were talked about when reporting the pandemic. A lot of the rhetoric sounded like “at least it’s just old people that are dying” and a lot of panic only started when young people started dying. I do not think anybody is disposable, and one way we can reclaim our humanity is understanding that. Jesus said something in the Bible “Whatsoever you do for the least of my brothers, you do unto me”, and it makes me wonder: who is even the least? The people we consider the least will always be a function of power and until we reconsider the hierarchy of power, there will always be a group considered the least and they will always suffer.