The Washington Post - USA (2021-11-22)

C2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22 , 2021

the few signs of awareness that the power structures she cri- tiques have farther-reaching ef- fects than her own discomfort on a beach vacation. Artist Hannah Black’s online sound piece, “My Bodies,” from which the collection takes its title, is described briefly because it’s the author’s “favorite.” It’s a mash-up mostly of Black women, including Rihanna and Beyoncé, saying the phrase “my body,” their voices forming a chorus. A connection between Black’s piece and Ratajkowski’s collection is implied but never deeply ex- plored, a nd the cultural r eference feels decorative, adding texture, not depth. The starkest difference between the two works is evidenced by their titles: Black is interested in plurality, and Ratajkowski is not, although she claims to be. In the collection’s weakest essay, “Men Like You,” a righteous letter to her f ormer m anager, she writes that she supports, and works in concert with, other women. It’s a curious claim within Ratajkows- ki’s book, a book that neglects to mention its subject’s context or long history, a savvy but myopic collection about its author’s indi- vidual body: the crimes enacted against it; the life afforded by it; and its limitations, too. [email protected]

Maddie Crum is a writer and editor in New York.

ments sit with these warring feel- ings, allowing several to coexist. In “Beauty Lessons,” she writes critical yet sympathetic frag- ments about her mother’s obses-

Ratajkowski feels, is contingent, transient, addictive, and also what gave her the opportunity to publish a book. “My Body’s” smartest and most moving mo-

the director saying. “She ad- dressed no one in particular, her megaphone now hanging loosely at her hip. I pushed my chin forward and shrugged, avoiding eye contact, feeling the heat of humiliation pump through my body.” In these entries, Ratajkowski guides us through the scenes where popular images of her were initially captured so she can reorient us; we’re in her point of view now. Her prose is direct, almost journalistic. We a ccess the interiority of a woman who left school during the recession to make money and who’s blunt about that objective. “They were the talent, we were more like props,” she writes about the “Blurred Lines” set. “I wasn’t bothered; I was there to work.” Later, she writes, “The more money I made from modeling, the more I enjoyed having it.” Most of the essays oscillate between pride and disenchantment with her own beauty, especially as a means of making money and attaining a restricted kind of social capital. This sort of power,

It’s a formidable project that
mines old questions, not so much
to provide answers as to suggest
that the questions are still rel-
evant. Does profiting from the
male gaze come at a cost, or is the
male gaze a source of genuine
power for some? Yes, Ratajkows-
ki writes, and yes.
In “Buying Myself Back,” first
published in New York Magazine,
she writes about a photographer
who published allegedly unli-
censed portraits of her in a best-
selling book, using her name as
its title. On the day of the shoot,
Ratajkowski recounts, he gave
her wine; by the time he assault-
ed her, she writes, she was drunk,
barely conscious.
In “Blurred Lines,” she writes
about another instance of on-set
harassment, skillfully showing
one woman’s complicity in an-
other’s oppression. When Thicke
grabbed her breasts between
shoots, there was a long silence
before the director, a woman,
“finally spoke.” “Okay, well, no
touching,” Ratajkowski recalls

BOOK WORLD FROM C1

Ratajkowski’s essays

highlight old questions

that are still relevant

TOM NEWTON In “My Body,” actress and model Emily Ratajkowski guides readers through scenes they think they know through her point of view.

BY CELIA WREN

The politicization of education.
The toppling of monuments. Ten-
sion between those demanding
immediate progress toward jus-
tice and those who trust a slower,
arguably steadier route. South Af-
rican playwright Athol Fugard’s
1989 play “My Children! My Afri-
ca!” may be set on a different
continent, in a different century,
under a different political system,
but its themes and conflicts find
echoes in 21st-century America.
In director Gerrad Alex Taylor’s
occasionally stiff but eminently
watchable Washington Stage
Guild production, those echoes
reverberate alongside the aching
cadences of the story’s specific
time and place, with the very fine
actor DeJeanette Horne especial-
ly pivotal to bringing out the tale’s
energy, hopefulness and heart-

break. Horne portrays Anela My- alatya, known as Mr. M, an inspired and tireless teacher in a Black school in 1984 apartheid South Africa. In part to bolster the credentials of his star pupil Thami (Jordan Brown), Mr. M arranges for the young man and Isabel (Libby Barnard), a high- achiever from a local White school, to team for an interschool literature competition. But when Thami and Mr. M take radically different views of a politically mo- tivated school boycott, the dis- agreement threatens much more than the team’s possible win. Horne expertly captures Mr. M’s exuberance, stubbornness and passion — the qualities that keep the teacher toiling in the most dispiriting reaches of apartheid education. When he confides in Isabel a cherished dream that

Thami will score a university scholarship, the charismatic in- structor (and self-described Con-

fucian) cackles and even pirou- ettes in glee. Tiffani Sydnor’s set — depicting a run-down classroom

in Mr. M’s under-resourced school — drives home how zealous this educator must be to keep going. Brown and Barnard don’t meld as seamlessly with their characters as Horne does with his, and once in a while they make bits of stage business look contrived instead of spontaneous. But for the most part the two actors convinc- ingly channel the students’ dis- tinctive personalities and out- looks: Thami’s wariness, intelli- gence and determination; Isabel’s extroverted diligence and ex- panding horizons. A scene of competition practice, during which the two students volley bits of poetry and writerly trivia back and forth — lines from “Ozyman- dias,” Byron-related facts — mov- ingly shows them bonding and shedding self-consciousness in a shared delight at literature. (Cheryl Yancey designed the apt

school uniforms and other cos- tumes.) But it’s what Mr. M says that has particular resonance, especially when he’s confessing how hard it is to hope in a world of division and systemic injustice. The power of language and dis- cussion, as opposed to violence, is another of his beliefs. He tells Thami, who is tempted by mili- tant activism: “If the struggle needs weapons, give it words.” [email protected]

My Children! My Africa! by Athol Fugard. Directed by Gerrad Alex Taylor; lighting, Marianne Meadows; sound design, Kaydin Hamby. About three hours. Tickets: $50-$60. Through Dec. 5 at the Undercroft Theatre at Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, 900 Massachusetts Ave. NW. stageguild.org. 202-900-8788.

THEATER REVIEW

‘My Children! My Africa!’ resonates with timely themes, inspired performance

DJ COREY PHOTOGRAPHY/WASHINGTON STAGE GUILD From left, Jordan Brown, DeJeanette Horne and Libby Barnard in director Gerrad Alex Taylor’s “ My Children! My Africa!”

self. “I wound up becoming sort of quiet about it.” Each weekday, the magazine would send a car to Harlem to pick up the kid cartoonist, who worked four-hour shifts after school. Billingsley says he missed out on many social activities and sports — the job “started to separate me from kids” who “had a chance to lead completely nor- mal lives” — yet he loved the work, which continued until he was 18, and liked the steady income. Billingsley graduated from the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan and then the School of Visual Arts. He started intern- ing at Walt Disney Studios in 1979, but left to launch “Lookin’ Fine” before freelancing in vari- ous areas of illustration and design. The creation of “Curtis,” though, allowed him to channel so many of his youthful experi- ences. Two of the female classmates in Curtis’s orbit — Mi- chelle and Chutney — were based on real people from his life. With the strip, he also created a close and communicative bond between father and son. “The relationship between Curtis and his father is actually the relationship I wish I’d had,” Billingsley says. “I couldn’t talk to my father. He was there but didn’t have time for me.” (They reconciled shortly before his father died of leukemia in 1990.) Billingsley instead found a father figure in Mort Walker, the “Beetle Bailey” creator who became a mentor and Connecticut neighbor. He also received encouragement from Schulz, the “Peanuts” creator, and advice from another late cartooning legend, Will Eisner. It was Walker and Schulz, in fact, who assured Billingsley for years that awards would come his way — even as he held out hope for book and animation deals that never materialized. “They used to tell me: ‘You’re going to win the Reuben one day.’ ” Years went by, and hope faded into resignation. Billings- ley takes a breath: “That made the win more overwhelming.” [email protected]

beloved teacher who contracted the coronavirus. The educator who was hospi- talized and recovered is the cru- cial “Curtis” figure Mrs. Nelson, whom Billingsley created in homage to the real-life third- grade teacher who first spotted his artistic talent. Billingsley was born in the Wake Forest area of North Caro- lina, and his family moved to Harlem by the time he started school. He began to emulate his elder brother, who liked to draw; young Ray soon doodled on most everything, including the mar- gins of his homework. He won an art contest after encouragement from the teacher surnamed Nel- son, and at age 12, he was discovered by Kids, a ’70s children magazine that hired him as an illustrator and graphic artist. “That’s when I knew life was going to be different,” he says. Teachers and classmates noted his work, which drew sometimes uncomfortable attention to him-

didn’t have ideas to support, but I decided to put myself out there,” says the artist, who drew strips about virtual learning, social distancing in school and a

weave pandemic story lines into “Curtis” in ways that were relat- able for young readers. “I think either a lot of cartoonists were afraid of doing it, or they just

evolve, and have never looked back.”

B

illingsley first achieved major syndication at the dawn of the ’80s with a strip, titled “Lookin’ Fine,” that featured Black characters who, like their creator, were in their 20s. The cartoonist soon real- ized: “I knew I was going to be in trouble.” Billingsley had studied classic, sometimes-political strips, such as “Li’l Abner” and “Pogo,” and he sought to offer commentary in “Lookin’ Fine.” “There were things I wanted to say — I was very political at the time.” But a sticking point was the weight of his words when such dialogue was uttered by adult characters: “It makes the messages a little stronger than if an 11-year-old says it.” Another issue: “I had editors who didn’t understand the Black family at all.” They suggested he introduce a new character — perhaps his strip’s family could adopt a White child? He ulti- mately decided to walk away from the feature in 1982. Returning to syndication six years later, Billingsley found the sweet spot with “Curtis.” Through the lens of the Wilkins family, whose members live in a brownstone in an unspecified city, the cartoonist could mine his own childhood for humor while also thoughtfully address- ing such serious issues as smok- ing, drug addiction, bullying and covid-19. “He’s always asking what he can do to push comics — and ‘Curtis’ — further, and to bring contemporary issues to his readers with humor and heart,” Tea Fougner, the editorial director of comics at King, says by email. “In 2020, he doubled down on showing the way the covid-19 pandemic impacted the lives of middle- schoolers and their parents, the frustration and isolation kids felt and the scary experience of un- certainty of a beloved adult and role model falling ill. He does all of this while continuing to tell a uniquely African American story about an ordinary family doing their best through extraordinary times.” Billingsley felt compelled to

puter’s camera as he records an
acceptance speech from his
Stamford, Conn., home. “I never
thought I’d see this day,” he says
last month, pausing as he feels
the moment. He recalls later by
phone: “I was on the verge of
tears.”
Billingsley has just won the
Reuben Award for outstanding
cartoonist of the year. It is the
75th year of the National Car-
toonists Society’s peer-voted
prize — whose legendary recipi-
ents include Charles Schulz,
Matt Groening, Rube Goldberg
and Roz Chast — but 2021 marks
the first time that it has been
won by a Black creator, accord-
ing to comics historians. “This
has been a huge step for me, as
well as a [huge] step for the
NCS,” Billingsley says into the
camera, adding: “This has been a
very long journey, and I have
literally lived my life on a dead-
line.”
Billingsley, 64, has spent more
than a half-century at the draw-
ing board, having turned profes-
sional at age 12. He grew up
devouring all types of humor and
became very aware of such pio-
neering mid-century Black car-
toonists as Morrie Turner (cre-
ator of “Wee Pals”), Ted Shearer
(“Quincy”) and Brumsic Bran-
don Jr. (“Luther”).
“It’s been Ray — alone — who
has bridged the gap between the
first Black nationally syndicated
newspaper cartoonists in the
[mainstream] White press in the
’60s and ’70s to the current lot,”
says cartoonist Barbara Bran-
don-Croft (“Where I’m Coming
From”), daughter of Brandon Jr.
and the first African American
woman to be nationally syndicat-
ed to mainstream newspapers.
Such strips as “JumpStart,”
“Mama’s Boyz” and “The Boon-
docks” followed Billingsley’s syn-
dication debut.
Jerry Craft, the “Mama’s Boyz”
creator and best-selling “New
Kid” graphic novelist, says a
critique session with Billingsley
was career-changing: “It helped
me get to the next level. My work
just didn’t look fun, he pointed
out.... After a few hours, I
headed home with a new outlook
on how I wanted my work to

BILLINGSLEY FROM C1

‘I never thought I’d see this day’: Cartoonist Ray Billingsley receives top honor

KING FEATURES SYNDICATE

JEFFREY NELSON

“Curtis” creator Ray Billingsley, left, pushes himself to address such issues as drug addiction, bullying, gentrification and, most recently, the coronavirus pandemic, above.

sion with looks and her parents’ support of her modeling career, leaving her with a belief, related tearily to her therapist, that “everything is ranked”; “that is how the world works.”

In “Bc Hello Halle Berry,” she writes about visiting an expen- sive resort in exchange for post- ing a few photos of herself there in a bikini. “The whole of the ocean stretched out before me, and yet I felt trapped,” she writes, comparing herself to the ultra- rich hotel guests whose bank ac- counts, not bodies, afforded them the trip. In that same essay, though, the collection’s weaknesses are most apparent: the thin or absent anal- yses of the artists, writers and thinkers who’ve preceded her;

Most of the essays

oscillate between pride

and disenchantment

with the author’s o wn

beauty, especially as a

means of making money

and attaining a restricted

kind of social capital.

The Washington Post - USA (2021-11-22)

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