Shouts from a Third Act

Art = Life: connecting the dots, story by story

Monthly Archives: April 2016

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A Star is Born

Anyone who’s a fan of the podcast Serial knows what I mean by “a star is born.” Sarah Koenig spent many diligent years as a journalist and as a producer at the public radio show This American Life, but Serial made her a phenomenon, and in the process, she made the podcast a rising art form.

I arrived late to the wonders of Serial, Season 1. Debuting in October 2014, it was half-way through its 12 episodes when a young friend in her late 20s downloaded it onto my cell phone: “You’re a ‘mystery’ person, you’ll love it.” She was right. I was instantly hooked by Sarah’s way of telling a story. And what a story! A modern-day Romeo & Juliet romance comes to an end, and the girl winds up dead–but there’s a twist. In Shakespeare’s tragedy, blame is placed at the feet of the two families, but in this story they’re merely a complication. Adnan Syed is currently serving a life sentence for the 1999 murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, a popular senior at a public high school in Baltimore. She broke up with him twice: the first time over the stress of keeping their relationship secret from their parents; the second time because she’d fallen for somebody else. But did Adnan kill her? Sarah, investigative journalist, explores that question. We hear from many different people there at the time, including Adnan himself, who speaks to Sarah from a prison phone. I was often surprised to find myself charmed by Adnan and hoping he didn’t do it. Then again there were things he did–and didn’t do–on the day of the murder and afterwards that made me suspicious that he did. Right now none of us know except for Adnan, and we may never know even if he gets a new trial. That’s a real possibility, and the dots lead to Serial’s influence: the questions raised by Sarah and her team as well as the world-wide attention generated by the podcast.

According to Apple, Serial was the fastest of any podcast to reach 5 million downloads. By the time it wrapped about three months later, the number was at least 40 million and has since grown to more than double that figure. That’s a staggering number–for any art form. To put it in perspective, movies like Avatar and Jurassic Park each sold around 80 million tickets at the box office. The final Harry Potter movie sold about 48 million tickets.  Serial’s success can be summed up like this: 1 compelling story + changes in technology = new megahit art form.

The technology: in September 2014, one month before Serial’s debut, Apple made the podcast app a permanent part of its latest operating system. Other smart phones also had the technology. No doubt I wasn’t the only person suddenly walking her dog and listening to Serial instead of music. Ditto that for any commute or road trip longer than 15 minutes. Ditto that for household chores or working out at the gym. Listening to Serial was as good as listening to a great book on audio, but with an added perk: the suspense of waiting for the story to unfold. Once I caught up with the series and started listening to it in real time (once a week), there was no binge-listening. I had to wait. BUT, all this chatter is just a prelude leading up to Serial 2–and why I think it’s the more important story, even though the media says it’s not quite as popular and that listeners were less engaged.

Serial 2 began this past December and wrapped at the end of March. Like millions of other fans, I couldn’t wait for it to start. Another true story told in installments but with one noteworthy difference. When Serial 1 first aired, almost nobody knew about Hae’s murder, except for the people in Baltimore. At the time of her murder in 1999, the internet was new to the general public and Google was a fledgling company. Fast forward to 2014, and the world news is a key stroke away. Most of us know the basic facts about U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl. In 2009, he voluntarily left his army post in Afghanistan and, within hours, was picked up by the Taliban. Five years later our government brought him home by swapping him for five Guantanamo Bay detainees. Initially praised for serving with “honor and distinction” by National Security Advisor Susan Rice, he now faces a court-martial on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. It’s possible he could get a life sentence. It’s also possible the military could consider his five horrendous years as a prisoner ample punishment. It’s a complicated story–far more complicated than Serial 1’s Romeo & Juliet Redux–because it’s about all the terrible things that can happen in war: disillusioned youth, torture, death, serious bodily injury, misinformation, PR mistakes, miscommunication between different branches of the military, lack of communication between the President and Congress–and the list goes on. War is foggy and confusing. Serial 2 does a great job of conveying the complexities and confusion, but it also shines a light on some misinformation. The most important one being whether Bowe’s disappearance resulted in the death of six soldiers who may or may not have been looking for him.

The criticisms of Serial 2 are mostly comments like: not as compelling or riveting, most people already knew Bowe’s story. I disagree. Most of us only knew the sound bites–isn’t that the way most Americans get their news these days? As Sarah Koenig has pointed out, the serial format is as old as Charles Dickens. One hundred and eighty years after The Pickwick Papers captivated readers, people still want to be tantalized and entertained. But this was a story about a war we’re in, which has affected our country in countless ways. As citizens, shouldn’t we have a desire to listen closely? To listen thoughtfully with an open mind, hoping to learn something?

What are your thoughts? I’d love to know.

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John Lennon, or is it pronounced Lenin? Ask Fidel

There’s a great statue of a long-haired John Lennon sitting on a park bench in Havana, Cuba. I was oblivious to its existence until several weeks ago. Reporting on the death of George Martin (record producer, often called “the Fifth Beatle”) my local newspaper ran a photo of him sitting on that bench with an immortalized version of his old friend, John.

When the media isn’t talking about all the Presidential candidates, it’s often talking about Cuba. Whether or not to lift the trade embargo, President Obama’s historic visit, the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, etc. But I still know very little about the country, apart from where it’s located–southeast of Florida–and the fact that Fidel Castro incited the revolution that overthrew the Batista dictatorship, then became Top Comrade for something like a gazillion years, and then (no surprise) passed the communist reins onto his younger brother Raul. In high school, I also learned about the Bay of Pigs fiasco which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis show-down with Russia that could have turned into Nuclear War. But there is much I hadn’t been taught, or else it was long forgotten.

Seeing the Lennon statue made me want to learn more. I did some research and also talked to a young friend getting her PhD in history. Elizabeth has been to Cuba a number of times.

John Lennon was murdered in New York City in 1980, but he had to wait exactly twenty more years for a seat on that park bench in Cuba. In 1964, the Castro regime had declared a nationwide ban on Beatles music. The Fab Four represented the worst part of capitalism: vulgar consumerism. Bell bottoms and long hair on boys & men were a no-no. Cubans were jailed for anti-social behavior (including homosexuality) and forced into labor camps. Elizabeth told me things began to loosen up as of 1972, and by the year 2000, Fidel had reimagined Lennon as a political dissident (hounded by the U.S. government) who was dedicated to emancipating the down-trodden. “I too am a dreamer who has seen his dreams turn into reality,” Fidel said, unveiling the Lennon statue as All You Need is Love played in the background.

The total about-face seems kind of funny, but Fidel wasn’t unique in this regard. Even in the United States, political figures see enemies who are later seen as friends. Yet I have no wish to move to Cuba. But I fervently wish we could have Cuba’s adult literacy rate: close to 100 percent! Even if it’s a hopeful or slightly fraudulent number (what government tells the absolute truth?) education in Cuba is a source of civic pride. All schools are free, even at the university level. Meanwhile, the U.S. has a literacy rate of 86 percent. Some experts dispute this number as too high. But even if you accept it, that means 32 million adults in the U.S. can’t read. Studies show that 21 percent of adults read below a fifth grade level, and a scary number of high school graduates (19 percent) can’t read.

Castro did something interesting back in 1961. In Cuba, they called it the Year of Literacy. Fidel mobilized many thousands of young people–middle school age and up–to go out into the countryside and teach the poor farmers how to read. Apparently it was very successful.

Today it seems strange that a poor communist country like Cuba has a higher literacy rate than we do. Most people I know think of education as the great liberator. Through education, people get ideas–sometimes ‘outside the box’ or radical ideas. But as Elizabeth pointed out, education can also be a huge socializing agent, especially when the state controls most of what you can read and learn. Like, for example, F is for Fidel and C is for Communism?

Our own Justice Department claims that the link between delinquency, violence and crime is WELDED to reading failure. I think we’d all sleep better knowing more people could read. In the U.S., we have freedom. We’ve got great libraries and access to all types of literature. We’ve also got fast computers and great wealth. In the race for literacy, it’s not just Cuba who has us beat. Surely we can find our own creative ways to teach and inspire more people to read.

That Lennon statue was created by the artist and sculptor Jose Villa. I’d like to thank him, and the photographer who took the photo, and the newspaper who ran it, for everything I recently learned about Cuba. (Only a tiny fraction of my new knowledge appears in this blog.) If I couldn’t read, or read well, I wouldn’t be able to say that.