TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2019 C1
NNEWS CRITICISM
2 ART
Frieze London carries on,
Brexit or not.BY SCOTT REYBURN
3 #METOO
An ex-Obama aide will lead
Time’s Up. BY KAREN ZRAICK
5 THEATERFor ‘The Lightning
Thief ’ musical,
staying close to the
books. BY NANCY COLEMAN
At Comic Con, where attendees show off
meticulously prepared costumes inspired
by their favorite fictional characters, one
generally does not dress up as the Joker
without knowing which Joker they are.
Are they Heath Ledger’s Joker from “The
Dark Knight”? Are they Mark Hamill’s car-
toon villain? Or Jared Leto’s, or Jack Nich-
olson’s? Or have they harkened all the way
back to the 1960s to portray Cesar Romero’s
merry prankster version?
At the Comic Con convention this pastweekend at the Javits Center in Manhattan,
there was a new Joker to consider. The
“Joker” movie had just opened in theaters,
and this rendition of the comic book charac-
ter, played by Joaquin Phoenix, has drawn
scrutiny for exhibiting psychological traits
of real-life mass shooters.
The chilling twist to the Joker’s past has
been criticized for having the potential to in-
spire young men with similar inclinations.
At Comic Con, some costumed Jokers clung
instead to the characters of the past, while
others embraced Phoenix’s tortured por-Fans of the Joker
Find Their Tribe
Top, Mei Velasco, as the Joker for Comic Con, inspired by Heath Ledger’s portrayal in “The
Dark Knight.” Above left, Andrew Rancy combined different versions of the Joker character for
his costume. Above right, Julio Cruz bought his Joaquin Phoenix-style Joker costume online.Homages to Ledger, Phoenix and Romero, too, at Comic Con.
THEY WOULD NOT AT FIRSTseem so differ-
ent from you and me.
Teresa works in media and lives with an
actress roommate. Kevin has a stultifying
job but spends his off-hours watching “Port-
landia” and devouring internet porn. Justin
reads a lot of books and worries about the
state of the country.
Yet unless you’re a hard-line Catholic con-servative, you probably don’t have much in
common with these people, who were un-
dergrads together at Transfiguration Col-
lege of Wyoming: an anti-abortion, anti-
L.G.B.T. school where sex and cellphones
(and federal funding) are forbidden.
And unless you live in an alternative the-
atrical universe programmed by David
Mamet for the Heritage Foundation, you’ve
probably never seen their like onstage.
That’s one of the things that makes WillJESSE GREEN THEATER REVIEWIn a Dark and Holy Wilderness
From left, Zoë Winters, Jeb Kreager and Julia McDermott reuniting
at a conservative college in “Heroes of the Fourth Turning.”SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMESRisking a rare stage subject:
Christian conservatism.
Heroes of the Fourth Turning
Playwrights HorizonsCONTINUED ON PAGE C6“MY NIPPLES ARE LIKE THE TEATSof a rain-
god,” the writer Mary Shelley (1797-1851)
declares on the third page of Jeanette Win-
terson’s new novel, “Frankissstein.” This is
perhaps not a typical way to begin a book
review. This is not a typical novel.
One knows it isn’t typical right away, with
its epigraph. Not enough study has been put
into the quotations at the fronts of novels.
Typically, in literary fiction, epigraphs are
gloomy, perhaps some Hannah Arendt or
Robert Oppenheimer or Nietzsche. These
sentences will often be followed with a lyric
from Radiohead or P. J. Harvey or a similar
act, to demonstrate that the author is down
with the Coachella and Glastonbury
masses. Sometimes there will be a terse, fi-
nal, so-dumb-it’s-smart snippet from some-
one like Lorena Bobbitt or the Big Bopper or
PewDiePie, to cut the funk like smelling
salts.
The sole epigraph in “Frankissstein” is
from the Eagles. No one quotes the Eagles.
The line Winterson has selected, “We may
lose and we may win, though we will never
be here again” is from “Take It Easy.” PokeDWIGHT GARNER BOOKS OF THE TIMESIt’s Peculiar Before
The Sexbots Arrive
Frankissstein:
A Love Story
By Jeanette Winterson
CONTINUED ON PAGE C6By JULIA JACOBSCONTINUED ON PAGE C2PHOTOGRAPHS BY NATHAN BAJAR FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES