Razzle-Dazzle 'Em
The Mary Sunshine and Mama Morton of newsletters reflects on the latest May-December power couple and a legendary female film critic who’s not Pauline Kael (she does exist!). Also: What IS beauty?
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Spreadphiles,
We’re gonna to do things a little different around here this week—at least in this intro (your reads are below, as per the usual)—in honor of Karen Durbin. Pour one out for the second female editor in chief of the Village Voice, who died on April 15 at the age of 80. Karen’s New York Times obit recalls her as an ardent feminist and former Redstocking who tilted the Voice “toward often incendiary coverage of feminism, gay rights and avant-garde culture.” All true, but your Spreaditors knew her better in her second (or third…or sixth) act, as the longtime and legendary film critic at our former alma mater. Karen was on contract at Elle for well over a decade because that’s the kind of thing a women’s mag could do back then: hire renegade former editors in chief to be contract critics! Gah! Sigh! Predictably, though, her Elle years are barely a blip in the Times obit, so we thought we’d offer Karen a suitably Spready send-off here, with help from two brilliant and beloved ex-colleagues: former features editor Ben Dickinson (who had the formidable job of extracting copy from Karen—not exactly a deadlines gal—on a monthly basis) and current Elle entertainment director Jen Weisel (who estimates she spent “a good chunk of my life in conversation with Karen,” debating the merits of each month’s slate of films). Sadly much of Karen’s Elle oeuvre is hard to find on the magazine’s website, though we did manage to dig up a random assortment of reviews (see here: Wild, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Fruitvale Station). Take it from Ben and Jen: This woman had “unwavering confidence in her opinions,” and those opinions mattered. When Karen caught an unfinished cut of Paul Haggis’s Valley of Elah, she had such strong convictions on the matter that Haggis (then fresh off his Oscar win for Crash) jumped on a call with her, and eventually changed the film’s ending at her urging.
BEN DICKINSON: No decorous, demure little lady was Karen. She lustily embraced the chaotic metropolis in full, and somehow I was not surprised to find that she lived on the ground floor of a Chelsea apartment building with picture windows through which any passerby on the sidewalk could peer in, when the blinds were open, on an abode that looked something like an ABC Carpet showroom. This living situation, too, struck me as typically fearless and in character for Karen.
JENNIFER WEISEL: A publicist once called me right after she’d reached out to get Karen’s reaction to a movie—a formality that’s usually a five- or ten-minute chat with a journalist. Ninety minutes later, she was still on the phone, scribbling notes as fast as she could, completely caught up in Karen’s analysis. She told me it was more intense and enlightening than any class she’d taken in college. Conversations with Karen were like a master class—you often had to take the wheel and steer her back from tangents and detours, but you always walked away with your brain buzzing, grateful for the ride.
BD: Karen was driven by endless curiosity and a zeal for further information that would lead her down a million rabbit holes of knowledge, from which she would emerge with the preternatural capacity to outtalk and, more important, outthink you on virtually any topic that might come up in conversation.
JW: She talked a lot about her years at the Voice—especially about the moment, as editor in chief, she discovered her salary was about half what her male predecessors had earned. Karen raised hell and eventually got something closer to parity, but she was let go not long after—officially for unrelated reasons.
BD: I think Karen would—perhaps because she was secure enough in her sense of self, reputation, and accomplishment—have embraced both the labels Social Justice Warrior and Childless Cat Lady (she cohabited with at least two fluffy beauties), and said, in the gently mocking, elfin voice that I can hear in my head to this day, “Yeah. Wanna make something of it?"
JW: Reviewing movies gave Karen a way to write about the human condition, and she tackled each one with intelligence and genuine glee. But then, Karen did most things with glee. Forget the stereotype of the angry feminist—Karen was a bubbly, giggling feminist.
Thank you, Ben and Jen! And thank you to Karen Durbin, for singularly elevating the art form of writing and thinking about movies in the pages of, yes, a great women’s magazine.
Now, on with our feature presentation!
Rachel & Maggie
P.S. Any Spreaders in the Providence, Rhode Island, area looking for something to do this coming Friday night? Join Maggie and a gaggle of mom-friends and shake off your worries (and your booties) at this week’s interaction of the roving dance party Earlybirds Club. Your Spreaditors’ only complaint with this organization is that we weren’t the ones who came up with it.
P.P.S. It’s spring at last, love is in the air, why keep it to yourself? If you like us, ❤️ us!
“If you aren’t going to the gym, if you aren’t taking care of yourself, if you don’t like children, if you only care about your career, and you hate the patriarchy” then a desirable man is “not going to go for you.”—YouTube poet laureate Brett Cooper
Oof, what would Karen Durbin make of this “womanosphere” that—some fifty years after she set to work battling “the boys club” of media—is now bubbling and boiling, spreading ever-widening circles of anti-feminist falsehoods and misinformation? Writing in the Guardian, Anna Silman offers the most wide-ranging portrait of the young right-wing female media world we’ve seen yet, including quotes from your very own Spreaditor, Maggie. (Merci, Anna!) In addition to magazines Conservateur and Evie, which any Spread reader knows too much about by now, this sphere includes the new, vaguely Oprah.com-looking lifestyle site of Candace Owens; “sneaky conservative” wellness influencer Alex Clark’s MAHA talk show, Culture Apothecary; anti-trans activist Riley Gaines’s podcast, Gaines For Girls. Oh and let’s not forget all the #tradwives making babies and butter (and bank) while pretending to be stay-at-home wives. Read it and weep here.
So riled up were we by Silman’s story that when another Guardian headline hit our feeds, our heads just popped right off our bodies, bloop!, and briefly rolled down the sidewalk (we’re better now, but it was touch and go for a moment): “New Independent Press to Focus on Male Writers.” Wait, what? Was there a shortage of male voices that we somehow missed? Let us nutshell this one for ya, Spreaders: Turns out Conduit Books is a new imprint that exists to seek out and bolster all the delicate young male lit stars who are apparently getting drowned out by the Sally Rooneys of the world. Honestly hard to think of a less timely endeavor, but sure, good luck with that. Read it here
They All Reached for the Gun
If we ever end up a liiiiiittle bit famous, we too are taking it straight to Broadway, baby. Like so many random celebrities before her—Alyssa Milano, Ariana Madix, Ashlee Simpson, Pamela Anderson, Rumer Willis, Brandy, Christie Brinkley, Lisa Rinna, Dakota Johnson’s mom, Brooke Shields, that lady Paige from Trading Spaces, Michelle Williams (the Destiny’s Child one), and, our favorite on the list for its sheer arbitrariness, Rita Wilson—model Ashley Graham is strapping on her tap shoes to become fame-obsessed murderer Roxie Hart in Chicago, Broadway’s longest-running show! Graham told Vogue that, to get into character, she’s been keeping a diary in the voice of Roxie, and in the process, she really warmed to the homicidal hussy: “She’s really taken a lot of her ‘nos’ and turned them into ‘yeses’—that’s literally my whole career.” Reviews have been “mixed.” Graham stans: she’ll be onstage through May 25.
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